Some thoughts on the Tamer profession

Hello,

the goal of this thread is to present to you a flow to the Taming profession, and to provide you a way to play two aspects of the job instead of one: Taming as a crafting profession and Taming as a combat skill.

First of all, thank you for the update to the Taming tree. It's a been a very nice update for players who would like to play dedicated Tamers. Finally you can live without going (deeper) into the Life tree, which I found has nothing to do with the Tamer job.

I think there are still more ways to make the profession even more interesting.
Let me write down what I think to give you another angle to approach the skill and gameplay mechanic as such.

Taming requires you to have collars as a reagent.
Making these however, doesn't require the taming skill and has nothing to do with the Tamer profession.

Let's analyze how Taming works currently.

To tame a creature, you need collars made of silver.
Silver is expensive and you are not self-sustaining, you need a crafter to make those for you (or skill it to function at all).

That's like requiring crafting skills to use repair kits, while making repair kits only craftable by players.

That can't be a solution, especially since you don't find silver in newbie zones and even if it was there, you couldn't harvest it with low Mining skill.
This means, you have to be an experienced adventurer to even start with this job (or have highlevel friends around who are willing to support you)., which not only makes it not fun to play it, it would also be not a viable route in Solo Offline play.

Taming smaller creatures would be the way to go now. Little wolves or spiders somewhere. No matter your Taming skill, you'll get better by taming as small as possible things to prevent your expensive (!!!) collars from being eaten. Yes, you can turn off the consume on failure, which would make it more worthwhile to tame higher level creatures and that would be a better solution than now, but it would not help the underlying mechanic that suffers from having costs to perform the skill.

We have two premises on which the Taming profession is based:

• Taming as such does nothing for you in combat.
  
• Tamed creatures are only worth money if everyone can use them.

In order to approach the economic side of the Tamer profession, make handling requirements for certain creatures.

I had some Elder Wolves from before I rerolled my character (with gimped innates) and started out as a new character with a big bad killing machine that could solo packs of skeletons while I was running around in circles, playing cheerleader for my pet.
If handling a pet would require you to have a certain skill level (that gained points by issuing commands in combat and when the defensive pet attacks a new target), I would have to have started out with the smallest and weakest pet in the beginning, slowly working my way up, into regions with more difficult enemies. It would also have felt more like "fighting as a pet class" than "farming with a pet", I would have been more engaged in the specific pet gameplay experience.

It would make sense to be able to tame everything and anything at some point, but not handle it in combat, as well.
Just have a second 1st tier skill "animal handling" in place, that has to be skilled separately (or make it quick to get to 10 points in Taming for and make it a dependable skill at tier 2, so you first have to learn the basics of the Taming profession before you can start to control the creatures).

This would allow you to play Tamer as a money making "crafter" profession only, without having pets accessible in combat.
It would also feel more natural to play the character with this, as the progression as a character would be less clunky and forced.
Right now, everything here cries "game play mechanic!", which kills immersion.
You are being reminded that you're playing a game all the time.

I think that Taming is not a good skill for needing "reagents".
From the economic side, having to go to dangerous places alone should be restrictive enough - you also need the Taming skill in order to tame.
It's like Mining, where you have to be able to kill the creatures near the nodes and the skill to harvest them. That's fine and feels suitable.

Playing with pets is restrictive as is already due to the focus debuff. While I think it's true that you can still function as a complete char without pet, there are better ways to approach the issue.

If the required item to use pets as a weapon (and tank, to some degree) was a Handler's Rod or something, which you have to hold in your hands while handling a tamed creature, this would enable you to control the damage output of a Tamer, preventing them from running around with OP creatures while still functioning as a complete character without a pet and hence discourage everyone from using no pet at all.

Handler's Rods should not be consumed, however. It should be a "weapon" that wears off every time you give your pet a command or even call it. Make it some material type to fix it like a normal weapon. Carpentry or Blacksmithing would be a way. Make it craftable like every other weapon, maybe a carpenter's item, since Blacksmithing already has lots of weapons and carpenters can produce something useful for combat.

Equipping a Handler's Rod should put the called creature under your control - you can either make it impossible to call a pet without the needed skill, or the creature should be uncontrollable on call if the skill is not there or the Tamer rod not equipped.
Also make you lose control of your pet (or dismiss it) when you unequip the item.
Equipping the rod should also have the side-effect of being unable to use offensive magic spells.
This way, you could still heal yourself, but you can't channel magic to damage enemies, making your creature your sole source of damage output. Much, much easier to balance the Tamer profession and pets this way for you, too.

Now a Tamer feels like all other ways to play:

• Needs a weapon like a fighter (mages use reagents)
  
• Weapon needs to be repaired
• Does only do damage with points in the according skill tree
• Can only be good at what it does if it's the main focus of the character
• Has a progression path

Last, but not least, please remove the "beating into submission" mechanic.
Taming a pet should work only if the creature didn't take any damage. You can't befriend a wild animal by beating it - if anything, the creature becomes aggressive and either fights or flees.

• On starting a Tame, stop the aggressive behavior of the creature and listen to the Tamer.
  
• On fail, the creature attacks.
  
• On success, the creature becomes a companion.

This feels a lot more like a Tamer, it's also possible to perform this profession on higher level animals without having to resort to survival mechanics or crowd control unrelated to the Taming job.
It will still be risky to get to the places and failing will still cause the creature to attack you, but you don't have to "tank" your potential future friend.
In case it fails, give the creature a mechanic called "adrenaline rush" or something that doubles its attack speed/damage and run speed, so taming something powerful is a dangerous adventure that is very likely to end with your death, but also very rewarding, because a strong pet is a valuable asset.

All this is creating a flow to the gameplay.

• As an economical profession, it enables you to earn money, since not every handler might want to skill Taming.
  
• A pure pet user can ignore the Taming skill while concentrating on Handling and the pet as such, while not every Tamer might want to fight with pets.

As a combat profession, you can use stronger creatures with higher skill and your pet's strength grows along with your innates.
You will be a pet handler, not a pet handling fighter or mage. This makes hybrids impossible while making balancing is easier.

Why would I speak for this exclusive system in contrast to the principle of "everyone can be anything with just one char?", you might wonder.

Easy. You can still be anything and everything. Be a powerful mage or a tough fighter.
But not while having a pet out, which would shift your relative power and make you very strong with the right pet, forcing you to balance the world around the strength of characters with the most powerful pet in order to keep it challenging.
Everyone would be forced to have a pet to keep up.
But not everyone wants to play with pets, so this is bad for the fun factor.
You could maybe still have a pet out and shoot your bow or cast spells, but the pet might or might not aid you and do whatever it feels suits itself best (this way you can still be a Ranger with bow and pet, but your pet is a companion, not your primary weapon). I listed a special weapon as alternative for Ranger classes at the end of the thread.

A warrior or mage who decides to run with a pet should concentrate on handling their companion for the period it's out, this makes more sense than how it works now. It integrates the job into the current game.

Not many changes for the programmers here:

• Remove Taming collars.
• Create item Handler's Rod.
• Create skill Pet Mastery (the handling skill).
• Separate animals into levels.
• Tie pet levels to a) Pet Mastery skill (so a low skill char can still use a pet tamed by a highly skilled char, but only at the degree their own ability allows them to), b) having a Handler's Rod equipped.
• Automatically fizzle Taming as soon as any offensive action from the Tamer applies.
• Have creatures stand ready for attack while Taming, approaching to melee range, but stop their auto attack and skills for the duration of the action.
• Create buff (attack speed, damage, run speed) to creature in an event of failed Taming action.

You can make several tiers of these weapons, to control higher level creatures.

Apprentice Ranger's Bow
Journeyman's Handler's Rod
Master Handler's Rod
Grandmaster Ranger's Bow

You get my drift.
Damage would be the same, properties don't change, except that it allows for control of higher level creatures. Starting characters (Wind path) could start with Novice Ranger's Bow and starting chars (warrior path) with the Handler's Rod.
Higher level weapons could have various stats, from shortening the taming time to shortening the pet heal CD or making your pet run faster (right now pets crawl).

For PVP:
What changes if a char whose pet dies can just unequip their Rod and do full damage instantly?
Nothing, but there's a way to address that. We have a debuff that prevents us from calling a new pet - I'd change that to "being unable to remove the tamer weapon" and shorten it to, say, 2 to 5 minutes. You planned to go out with your pet today and not to burn it and then cast away with fire.

Thanks for reading this through to the end.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this will evolve.

 

I like it. I am currently wondering if you need a pet to pvp with, but your taming rod Idea would solve that. Nice write up sir!

 

Thank you. I edited the thread twice to explain things better, and to provide another angle. No big changes though

 

Another edit to accommodate for "Ranger" gameplay (bow with pet). Tell me if you think this influences balance in a bad way and I'll change it accordingly.

 

I'm not sure we can balance it yet but I do like the suggestion. I hope that the guild wars will flesh out the pet/pvp balance and then they can work on balance. @Themo Lock do you have any input on this? How are pets/pvp balanced right now?

 

Yeah, balance has to take into account all the data from all possible gear/skill combinations and that's something only the devs can do, because only they know. I don't envy them there, but I'm confident it can be done.

My goal here would just be to establish Taming as a valid, independent skill tree as another viable game play mechanic, without hurting the general class composition. Having only Tamers running around is just as bad as it s now, with only plate classes and pets as a horrible afterthought (albeit better than in R24).

 

I agree 100%. Keep up the good work!

 

Added the handler items with levels and suggestions on how they could work.

 

Added a fix for PVP (pet dies, char switching to different template exploit)

 

I don't think I like anything that directly prevents using other skills.

I could see having a pet out increasing fizzle chances though. Magic is all about focus and having to control your pet is a distraction.

Also don't like the rod, for same reason. If I wanna dual wield and use pets, don't make me choose!

 

In that case, a summon could be an option. Or pets only up to tier X can be controlled without a Rod. That way, you have to choose which route to take.

 

sorry I have an off topic question. How do the magic summons compare to tamed animals? I have never seen the comparison.

 

I'm okay with the taming system so far. I don't tame as a crafter but I love having my wolf fight beside me in combat and I'd be very disappointed if that option was removed or further restricted beyond the focus hit. However, I do think there should be some sort of level restrictions in place for using more powerful pets. For example, I would be okay with starting out with a Grey Wolf at first then working my way up to handling an Obsidian Wolf as my level advanced (e.g., adventurer level or taming skill level). This would also help push more pet sales for dedicated tamer-crafters since people would want to upgrade to more powerful pets as they advanced in the game.

 

Mage pets deal damage similar to a Large Grey Wolf, the doggy that sits at around 150hp, one class below the Timber Wolf.
The tank pet actually does more damage, because it lives longer and spends more time hitting and less time running away.
But that's not great at all, because neither tamer pets, nor mage elementals grow with you and elementals are utterly useless in their current state.