DPS pet trinkets hierarchy...... go

A more applicable comparison would be: you bought the fastest, most HP car out, because it's the "best". Then you take it in for service (oil change etc.) and they detune it thru the computer (no engine change needed) nerfing the power in half citing "whatever reason". The car still has the capability, but all the power cannot be accessed due to manufacturer access to onboard computer is proprietary and the general public doesn't have access to this.

Same as we don't have access to change damage of pets. It would of been nice to know there was an issue they were addressing before a nerf bat just hits pets and purchases people made making them useless. COMMUNICATION is key and there has remained too much of a lack of it. The new pet formula sounds alright, but it's frustrating when I put the vampire bat on one toon to look a certain way with a themed character and it does the same damage as DCB basically and that will now change because it's a free pet?! So all pet testing is out the window atm, because it will no longer be valid soon.

I believe since the purchased, aquired pets are getting changed, an account bound unlock should be done so the pets can be moved to benefit the toon of choice. I want to best damage one on my main which is currently no longer the case because of unannounced changes. And based on what is the new tier coming, PG is currently highest damage tier, but will be in lowest damage tier because it's free after changes are made. The option to get more than one of these ONE only pets Vampire Bat, PG etc., would be a nice addition, but since free ones will be worst, not as many people would want it.

Glad changes are being made. Not happy with communication and how it's handled which seems to be the majority issue.

The Dark Construct Bat is a rare drop (also has a feat.)
This should be inline with SM pets or just below in a rare tier, but it shouldn't be the same as purchased from vendor NON feat. pets. I suggest SM tier, rare feat. tier, and vendor/free together. The free ones are taking too much of a nerf.

Likewise, back up/henchmen should have tiers. Feat./Rare (bat comandos, dark robins) do the most damage and free/common drops less damage.

Dark Robin's and man bats are terrible now. A friend did a lot of testing recently as did Rej and OC and AV, seems like reapers/water/hulk's were tops in different situations. Only thing I don't agree with is vendor ones being same as normal drops because then why bother buying them

Dark Construct Bat can also be purchased directly from the broker, removing the rarity entirely depending on your in-game financial situation. SM tier pets such as the Shadow Bat required you to successfully complete the higher levels, which depending on who you are as a player highly improbable. In short, the odds of obtaining a Dark Construct Bat did not come close to obtaining the Shadow Bat from SM.

Drop rates for the Dark construct bat are extremely low. I had it drop once for myself and was in a run where a friend got it. I run 1st boss of Damage control often, on 6-7 toons. Ask my leaguemates and friends if you want, they reluctantly come along and none of them have it. It's in the broker rarely now. $500 million was the last price. Way overpriced and normally sells in the $200-300 million range. It constitutes, because of it's rarity, to have higher damage than a vendor bought trinket. I'd be fine with the shadow bat doing 1 extra tick of damage or a slight increase of damage over the DCB like 0.005% better, but not by much.

I know quite a few players are enraged by this and they are pointing fingers to a certain very biased elitist who has caused unpopular nerfs in the past. Causing that person to mainly benefit to "look better or more OP" disregarding the effects to the majority of the community & Not in the best interest of the majority of players.

This whole pet trinket was a non issue until now. And it's another questionable one.

I agree, the rare drops backups/henchmen need to do better damage. The base theme ones should be the lowest. The episode ones can have that episode related buff, more damage in that content, but they should not be better than the rarest which are Manbat commandos, Dark robins and paradox reapers & whatever rare drop ones to come...

The drop rate might be low but not as low as Shadow Bat, which you can no longer get. You can still obtain Dark Construct Bat through more than one avenue.

Not saying DCB should be same as shadow, but what's acceptable difference in damage? Shadow bat does 20 hits of damage, DCB 19 hits, Seahorse 18 hits etc.? Sound like they will all do the same hit amount now and they just do more percentage of damage. Knowing what percentage would help clear up speculation.

DCB is harder to get than seahorse, MB, FB etc. Therefore it should do more damage than them as it currently does. Not happy about vampire bat and paradox pet getting the nerf though...they become more vanity pets.

Some good points were brought up here, regarding the actual pet discussion in the thread. I was being silly and thinking that the freebie pets were one per character options not one per account. The freebies thus far (Vampire Bat and Gazer) then will be brought up to the normal tier standard (Boxes, Drones, Seahorse).

All of the pets will be getting an overall bump in DPS in general due to the increased attack rate, despite the lower damage per attack.

I see the point on the DCB rate and increased DPS on rarity. Even though it's the only rare combat pet (of that category, not counting henchmen at this time), others will likely join its ranks at some point. The Boxes would have been in that category but got added to the vendors.

Values are still up in the air but currently the SM pets do 10 percent more internally. Was thinking the DCB could do 5 percent more than the vendor/free one per account pets? Again, with damage variance being a thing, that percentage increase isn't an insane difference but it is there.

Controlling the amount of hits is trickier and it's also causing some spiky behavior. I will be looking into normalizing that but not sure how successful that will be. The average randomness of hits may have to stay or maybe it can be totally removed.

I will not be touching Henchmen for now - it's a whole can of worms that isn't nearly as easily brought in line and balanced with one another but it's not off the table forever. I would like to see them revamped as a whole. For now it's only the combat pets mentioned and the turrets being normalized. More turret options are coming with SM and additional content in the near future.

Well, that should make mostly everyone happy I'd think. While we've got you in here lol can I ask a question? Since turrets don't get buffed from godwave, is there a way to make it so they don't absorb the buff from pets that could benefit from it? Or is that overly complex? Or even intended which is what it is and at least a known thing. I've never used or planned on using them but can see it being a deterrent to anyone thinking about a source build if they like them.

Really appreciate the response. The extra tick damage was just a recommended example option, but didn't think it was viable. The percentage more in damage option, what you said, is what I thought was most likely. Thanks for confirming that. So the Survival Mode shadow bat does 10% more damage than a purchased vendor trinket such as Brainiac drone? That seems like too much. That one survival mode was the only one that had a damage pet. All the others only had vanity pets (no damage) cats etc., there were styles and titles only. Only a select few of the community play survival mode, myself included, I display the styles and titles, but nothing gives an extra advantage from any of them. I do think it's fair to those that earned the shadow bat to have a slight advantage as it's the toughest to get and to have new trinkets in a new SM that fall into the same category.

The bats all do about the same damage at this time. Some will never earn the SM ones. I was thinking more a 3-2-1 percent more system. SM trinkets 3% more than vendor trinket, Dark Construct (other future rare drop with a feat. associated with it ) trinket 2% more than vendor. NOTE: asking for Vampire & Paradox gazer (future 1 per account) to be better than vendor trinkets as they can't be purchased or obtained any other way to be 1% percent better than the bought vendor trinkets. The PG & Vampire bats are currently the best ones at this time, but should be dropped behind the harder obtained one, but better than vendor to sum it up. The damage difference shouldn't be Overly Powerful to the degree that the majority can't have something competitive. Seahorse and the boxes could go into the 1% above category as seahorse needed some rare collections, MB FB were rare drops (no feat.s) but cost A LOT of bounty marks to get.

On a free pet trinket, is there one specific you can refer to? Not thinking of any at this time. Or was that just a mistake as you didn't realize PG & VB were 1 per account not 1 per toon.

Summary: SM trinkets 3% above vendor trinket, "Rare" DCB (feat. related drop trinkets) 2%, "Hard to get" SH MB FB or 1 per account trinkets PG VB 1% above vendor. Brainiac Drone seasonal is considered vendor lowest as it's easier to obtain along with other easier vendor pet trinkets.

I thought that you said vendor pets would be in the “earned” tier along with rare drop pets with free gift pets being the tier below and SM pets being the tier above. Did I misunderstand?

I said I am considering the uber rare drop pets to possibly be a higher tier than the vendor pets you earn via farming episode currency. A new tier as it were. Free, One per account/vendor, Rare Drop, SM.

This is a phase where changes can happen, hence the communication. Example - there are no currently free pets that I can think of that were free in such a way that it was accessible for any toon at any time during a window of opportunity. I had mistakenly thought the Gazer and Vampire Bat were accessible on any toon on your account during that time period but in truth it was just one per account. That bumps it up, in my mind, to the same status as vendor.

To put it in another way - pets you could get free for any character would be lower DPS, one off free pets - that would likely become vendor pets anyway the next time they were relevant (Vampire Bat on vendor for next Halloween for example) and other vendor pets like Seahorse, Boxes, Drone, etc. would be the same as Vendor pets, and now *possibly* rare drop pets could be a tier higher than that. If we had fairly common drop pets, then they would possibly be same tier as Vendor pets. After ALL that, then SM pets - which there will be more of and they will be more accessible than before - you still have to play and rank up but it won't be as high as a rank as last season.

I will not bump up VB or PG pets up first, just to lower them again when they become vendor items like the Brainiac Drone did. No one would care for that. It will not happen. They will release at the same level as Vendor pets.

At first glance, that is overly complex, but will investigate.

Gotcha. And btw, the communication and attention to such things like this is very appreciated. I’m sure I’m speaking for many others in that regard as well.

On a somewhat related note, if console players had a tool like the combat log analyzer for PC, you devs would have an exponentially greater wealth of live server data to utilize in such endeavors like this one. As the situation is currently, the vast majority of data you’re getting from live server is from sparring target testing and as you well know, actual combat introduces a whole litany of relevant factors that affect performance and outcomes. Just as an example, someone mentioned above that the brainiac drone pet gets stuck on the ground and doesn’t attack in actual battle which doesn’t happen against sparring targets. Very few people if any would notice something like that without a combat log analyzer tool.

That’s obviously a huge project itself, but considering recent announcements of another 10 year run, It would be a worthy investment of developer resources considering the ROI in live server combat data available for the players to give you guys. Just some food for thought.

I am not giving a popular opinion, but personally I think "tier" is a bad idea.

I will try to explain why (I warn you right away, because English is not my native language, but I myself am very old and learn new tricks slowly, there will be many grammatical and stylistic mistakes).

To begin with, I will give a few abstract numbers (these are not exact numbers, they are very averaged and rounded for a more convenient calculation, but they will show a trend).

The increase in DPS from a good pet is approximately 4000 (this is taking into account the difference between cooldown and duration).

Let's assume that the average DPS on a single target is 55000 (well, you understand that we are talking about the average and not about "my gadget is 5 times higher, you suck"?).

As a result, this will amount to a 7.27% increase.

If we make a 10% difference between the lowest tiers and the highest tiers, then the increase in DPS will be only 0.727% (for a 290 CR skip you can safely double this figure, the difference for Shards users will also be more noticeable (well, for 290 CR skip with a shard ...)).

It's not a lot, say ... yes, not a lot, but it is comparable to the increase in damage that we get from 10 additional SP to the maximum of our main stat, which we receive each DLC, this is also comparable to the increase in DPS that we get from the difference in statistics between the two breakouts in the Artifact, and this is already a big chunk of progress.

This creates 3 problems.

The first is that we have to choose between maximum DPS and the visual match of the pet to the character concept.
It spoils the immersion in the game. An artificially created frustration which, in fact, does not lead to anything good, since it is insoluble.

The second problem is the unavailability of SM pets outside of a very short period of time ... so what if my ... healer ... has a Shadow Bat ... if I need one on character I created a couple of months after SM? After the SM passes, this method of progress becomes unavailable (I wonder if the position that "shadow pets" will be available only if the last SM has changed and dont back? This was the official position).

The third problem is a blatant lie that SM is only prestige and cosmetics (as the figures shown above, this is progress, and quite tangible when compared with other methods of progress separately (yes, as an independent point of progress, it is not large, but any of the aspects of progress available after the release of the new DLC, it is not independently significant, and only in the aggregate is tangible ...).

Thank you Charon

Yeah i kinda agree with that last part. The first 2 meh. But the last point. I like doing SM. It's a good time. But in no way should it be tied to any sort of tangible benefit in game or progression no matter how miniscule it is. I don't even use pets personally in my builds. But it should always be cosmetics and fun rewards only. We already have elite content and elite gear along with OP items for the people chasing that. We don't need a fun challenge like SM to be turned into just that as well. But thats just my opinion.

The following will be put on PC Test in the not too distant future. These are basically testing patch notes and are subject to change, even before they ever get to PC Test. I have finally balanced all the pets to be on a roughly similar hit count (can vary a couple hits either direction) and balanced their overall damage per hit amongst each other. I did that without any variance to get exact numbers at first and then added a slight variance to it after it was balanced.

I took out the chances for extra attacks to control the hit variance but increased the overall damage on said attacks.

Currently, there are no Tiers but that doesn't mean Tiers won't happen at some point between Test and Live or some point in the future. My current thinking is rare pets may get a Tier and then that Tier would be shared between Rare, Rare Drops and SM Pets. There aren't enough Rare and Rare Drops currently in the combat pet category to create enough parity with SM (as pets are being added this next Season and the Season after that). I will be observing feedback on it.

• Combat Pet Projectiles no longer have a chance to fire more than once per attack but have had their damage increased and will no longer split damage between targets.
• Combat Pet Ranged Attacks fire much more often now and have had their per hit damage reduced to compensate but overall damage has increased on average.
• Combat Pets now are balanced to be within the same damage range of each other. These pets include:
  • Vampire Bat
  • Shadow Bat
  • Dark Construct Bat
  • Brainiac Drone
  • Paradox Gazer
  • Father Box
  • Mother Box
  • New Survival Mode Pets
• Survival Mode Pets will do increased damage within Survival Mode, this is retroactive to last Season’s pets as well.
• Combat Turrets generally do more damage now as a whole.
• Combat Turret Projectiles have had their damage increased.
• Survival Mode Turrets will do increased damage within Survival Mode, this is retroactive to last Season’s turrets as well.

I agree that your first point was a problem. I’ve been hanging on to the Brainiac Drone and storing it in my bank for two years hoping it would get a fix so I could finally complete my tech style all around. But this is essentially getting fixed now so I’m happy.

As for the other two points, if the pets were tiered as previously suggested the difference in damage would be less than 500/s. At this point when we’re parsing 50K/s-70K/s ST and 100K/s-140/s AOE, 500/s is trivial and negligible. It won’t be the difference in completing content or getting a feat or not and it won’t win any DPS comps. As much as I love SM, I agree that it shouldn’t be tied to meaningful significant progression. But that tiny morsel of extra damage can hardly be considered progression IMO.