Work In Progress GU 103: Powerset Pet DPS Balance

Really? That is very interesting indeed. I am going to have to get my hands on them lol.

I want a phoenix pet. I always wanted a pet phoenix.
I always feel a little sad having to beat them in Amazon Fury content.
That is all.

But seriously, it's a bit annoying that some power set get pets and some other don't and have to rely on trinkets. Having to have a robot sidekick when you don't have a theme fitting pet in your power set is annoying.

I have ideas to fix that (and several other similar issues) but I expect they might be too radical or some people's liking. Anyway, it would be off topic to explain it all here.

This type of response from a dev is just perfect in my opinion.

It addresses the concern of the op and does not dismiss negligently.
It concisely provides a response respectfully and matter-of-factly.
It shows that a new artifact or addition to the game is not haphazardly slapped onto the game without looking at unforeseen ramifications.
It shows that devs have been paying attention to past criticisms and waiting for the right moment to make some changes.

I don't really need full "transparency" as others seem to want but responses such as these I fully appreciate for the time and effort it took to post it.

Thanks Batuba.

Thats why hes my favourite dev

Just found out about this thread.. VERY happy with the proposed upcoming changes! @ first post

Thank you thank you thank you Batuba!!.. I have been asking for this for forever! @ no self-destruct

I *will* say however.. imho please ..in Controller stance, it would be nice for Turret to be like Guardian and a tank pet for cross-class work. For me damage is not important in Controller stance.. but like Guardian, if you are short a Tank in an alert, Guardian does.. well I compare it to a novice human Tank.. DCUO has some of the best A.I. I have ever experienced*, especially Guardian, it is the highest compliment I could give an A.I.

It would be good if we could duplicate this for ST. If we needed a buff, the buff (health/HoT/PoT) could just be Defibrillator.. at first that might seem like the controller is getting too much out of it, but when you remember that pets come with a power regeneration penalty, which I would suggest halfing in controller stance.. the advantage seems to even out to me. (That is you are cross-class tanking with ST, you can still do some moderate/medium trolling with reasonable power regeneration.. but not enable.. unless ultra high SP.. but not enable the controller to be fully a Controller AND alert Tank, so only half the penalty imho.. would keep that in the middle ground of the two roles)


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Other Pet Stuff
Not specifically about balance, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least include it here after many years of campaigning for the expansion of pets in DCUO:

Iconic Pet Matched for Powerset..
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...pet-matched-for-powerset.307850/#post-4306117

Pet Skill Trees (V1)
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...rees-and-colour-options-tl-dr-warning.253241/

Pet Skill Trees and Styles.. (V2)
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/pet-skill-trees-and-styles-v2.304504/

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*out of my 400+ games on my steam list.

I love all the changes.
Is it possible to let us edit the pets loadouts.
Could you make the Soul Well work like the totem with pets

Batuba
How will update effect supper charges that includes pets
Mental's Horrific Vasage, Gadgets Battle drone ( both roles), and Sorcery's Grand Summoning?
Not sure if missed any.
Also thank you for changing the cool down on bastion.

As a few have said, the pets need to have their own continual power regeneration to keep using their better attacks (through offering/fortify) like in the past (at a balanced rate). The second main issue is that offering/fortify NEED to be a damaging ability in itself. Currently, the question I & many others find ourselves asking is why waste a slot for a power that does NOTHING. With viewing the pets that are affected by those abilities the question is raised why use something that doesn't even have average damage on its own & only gets one attack if I give it power. Refusing to address these problems is essentially locking players into two dead powers with more headache than reward.


Thank you, I look forward to this upcoming update

I believe he mentioned that the update is only for permanent pets so those special pets would not be touched. I said that in an earlier post (not exact words).

They were OP and abused. I don't want to see it again.

they were not op at all in comparison to other powers like mental at the time. even munitions with and without the SC bug, ice and other powers. I think you have some weird memory of how it used to be.

The only thing that will buff these SC is the shards artifact
But for grand summoning since the update is for fury guardian and watcher individually these buffs technically do apply to that SC

Sorcery was top tier along with Mental, Ice and broken Munitions. Those were the majority of DPS you would see in elite and SM. I guess my memory is weird too...

My only fear is that this change will make robot sidekick mandatory for a lot of power sets.

Being honest, Sorcery needs some love.

Isn't already practically mandatory for quite a few power sets?

Agreed but it is getting some from fury being buffed n watcher

While on it, could the passive power regen reduction be removed while using a pet or at least from support roles? And also to have some increased health / defense to it?

To clarify in case it's not common knowledge for the devs, Weapon users generally use RSK because it's passive damage and does not disrupt combos. Light users use it because they have space on their loadout for it and nothing useful to put in its place. Buffing RSK will be an overall buff to those users. So expect new arguments about content balancing because a large percentage of testers will undoubtedly be using it when the BOP episode is on Test Server.

This isn't to bash Obsidian Chill but when 80% of his maximum damage loadouts rely on superspeed abilities and RSK, then it's apparent that things are over performing already. Fact is many players really don't want diversity when doing damage. They want whatever loadout causes the best damage. That's why there is very little variation of the loadouts used by weapons DPS.

So back to the passive damage thing. Because RSK requires no power maintenance, nothing else from the player to ensure does damage (i.e. PI), it should not do more damage than all other pets that rely on those things. This is going to digress a bit but bear with me; I think it's relevant to the overall conversation. Refer to Chill's Ice video where he cranked the numbers on Snow Devil vs RSK. Snow Devil with or without PI is better than RSK. But Chill makes the caveat that he is casting Snow Devil every 12 seconds. If you are late in casting SD when off cooldown there is potential narrowing of the gap. If RSK receives a buff, will it still be lower than Snow Devil? Will it be equal or better? If equal, most players will likely opt for RSK because a cast time was just removed meaning faster rotations, less power used, etc. Chill already calculated that Fury without pi and Offering already does less damage than RSK. Fury is getting buffed so it's scary how much of a Buff RSK could be getting.

To echo off DeitySupreme. For a sorcery player relying on Guardian for damage right now, with nerfs to Guardian they will likely consider RSK instead of returning to Fury and casting Offering. I think this is why he was asking for Offering to be coded as beneficial for clipping: cast times and rotation I understand a concern for making Offering and Fority Golem clipping powers. I share it too. I expect Prec weapons users could be inclined to super-clip with it if they do decide to forego RSK. That's not a good thing either

Remember, dovetails were used in the calculation of abilities for power cost, damage, etc. Once casted, usually out of combat at the start of an instance, there is no dovetail for continued use unlike casting an ability. If RSK dies in combat than those are the same situations where Fury, Crystal and Supressor can die. Yes, I know RSK has a 6 second cooldown. Sure, that can be a damage loss if a player is knocked out or the RSK dies but how often does that really happen?

I think we really need some hard percentages and data. When this goes on test, we will only have our best guesses to know what damage was before vs damage with GU103. Very few of us casual testers (not the special testers) will have the data to know what these changes mean for overall game balance and damage.

I do want to ask about swarm- it's not a permanent pet and nature isn't considered a pet powerset, but that's pretty much only because swarm is just so lackluster. It doesn't even have any power interactions- what's the deal?