Test Discussion GU103: Pet Balance

I actually do lol for both elite and especially regular when things die to fast to keep my poisons up lol. But then again I am prec on my nature guy

It feels wrong for Robot Sidekick to outshine Crystal and Fury (though it also felt wrong for Guardian to outshine Fury w/o Offering). Earth and Sorc Might are currently balanced on the fact that their respective pets are better than Robot Sidekick to match ST output, so this change stands to be detrimental to them relative to the field. If they end up having to put Offering/Fortify on to compete unbuffed, they'll lose out even more in practice since the pets can't crit and their damage is effectively static (unaffected by everything but Godwave/Offering/Fortify and Might rotations can't fit Godwave and Offering/Fortify w/o major rotational losses).

It seems to me it would be easier to maintain the relative performance of pets while we buff them; less likely to cause follow-on balance issues. As it stands, Earth and Sorc Might will be made worse relative to other powers with this change while all other powers will be, relative to one another, unaffected. Ie. Every power will gain but Earth and Sorc will gain less than the other powers.

Sorcery also have access to Robot Sidekick. Should a Sorcery player not want to buff their pets, RSK is a good alternative for them as far as a pet. Should they want to play a pet build and use Offering, Fury will out perform RSK by a large margin. The damage increase from using Offering is approximately the average DPS of all your powerset abilities. We have to be very careful with making pets too strong on their own as they essentially are "free" dps and is questionable if they should deal the same or close to damage of an ability a player actively has to cast.

This is why pets should not be attacking they should be above our head giving passive buffs. That way they are out of the way while ur in combat. Also way easier to balance way less combat clutter. I got koed 6x because I could not move my pet was in my way just a side note Batuba I can't do dmg if I'm koed

Right but right now, Guardian > Robot Sidekick > Fury w/o Offering (same holds true for Crystal), and the strongest Might ST Sorc/Earth rotations don't use Offering/Fortify (and that won't change after this buff from the looks of things). Ie. there's currently a differential between Guardian/Crystal and RS (to Sorcery's/Earth's benefit) and Sorcery's/Earth's ST Might performance is relatively balanced compared to other powers in their current state. By making unbuffed Guardian, Fury, and Crystal weaker than RS, you remove that positive differential and Sorcery (and Earth, for the same reason) will have their relative output (ie. relative to other powers) fall behind by ~2-4%ish percent compared to its relative current balance.

Offering/Fortify rotations are already the worst "good" ST rotations for Sorc/Earth and while, yes, Offering/Fortfy do hit comparable to other powers, they don't benefit from higher stats or any buffs (and a Might player can't use Godwave with Offering/Fortify w/o major rotation DPS sacrifices, so that won't help) so they will continute to underperform vs not using them at all on Might.

The issue is that for every power but Earth and Sorc, their pet dmg is increasing 2x. For Earth and Sorc, their pet damage, after switching to RS, is increasing less than 2x because unbuffed Crystal/Guardian are currently better than RS. Therefore every other power gets stronger by an equal amount but Earth and Sorc don't, and their relative balance is made (unwarrantedly) weaker.

umm my only issue is godwave isn't clippable, loadout doesnt flow, espcially with foritfy/offering in it, but its great so far..

I'm looking at Fortify/Offering to see how it can flow better or at least make more sense in your loadout to make up for clunkyness.

How´s the healing of sorcery now?
Still pretty bad or just bad comparing to elect and celestial.
Talking about burst and range.

It used to clip. Change it back to clipping? That would be a start.

change the name back to sacrificial offering and have the amination of a quick slitting of your writs maybe some blood.... too much idk

Stay the course. I think Earth Might is fine. I haven't tried Sorcery Might loadouts for an opinion yet. I feel players should be posting videos of these "clunky" loadouts and the damage they are producing prior to making any changes. My concern is that making it clippable causes a nerf on something else.

Earth is not viable really with Godwave and Fortify because not only are you giving up a loadout slot but Jackhammer doesn't proc Godwave cooldown besides the initial cast. So Earth would have to stop short each jackhammer rotation. Which has the possibility of working but would depend on the artifact rotation.

Just an additional thought on this on top of my earlier reply: I suspect the logic with this decision was to ensure Earth and Sorc didn't get a unique advantage with Source Shard. From a Might perspective, that wouldn't be the case because of where they fall on the DPS spectrum but I can appreciate it could be a Prec balance issue with the artifact. However, since that's not currently a major issue with the pet balance as it is on live, I don't see maintaining that same balance to be problematic.

I recognize that the combos don't reset Godwave because I mentioned it in an earlier comment. many of these might DPS loadouts I see for Earth, including yours, don't involve powering up Crystal. If don't you use Fortify Golem with Crystal, then with this update, RSK is the way. If you want to use Crystal with Source Shard, then it doesn't make sense not to use Fortify.

If the general response is to have Fortify and Offering being clipping abilities, it could only be while Source Shard is in use. So Batuba would likely have to recode Fortify and Offering to be like HV. Once you equip the artifact at a certain level, it would grant the enhanced ability. A general reclassify of Fortify and Offering would be game breaking.

Crystal used to be better in AM days at least then some controller supercharges would provide power and you could place supply drops on Crystal/Fury for the buffed damage. Now the AI's can be pretty "slow" and is more for passive damage. If fortify and offering are made clippable that could see a change in the meta.

p.s sorry didn't see your earlier comment

Yes put crystal fury back to AM where they actually put out damage not just do 1 hit then tiny weapon attacks

with these changes (so far) Crystal's damage from Fortify Golem increases nearly 100%, and Fury's big hit from offering more than doubles.

This isn't "back to AM". But it's quite a buff.

Unless they changed damage from the original post it was only an 15% buff with a negative 8% base damage

When you switch armories with earth and sorcery pets they stay up so you have to resummon them with RSK however it explodes and it takes 4 seconds just for the game to register that he is no longer up then the cooldown starts meaning when you switch armories you lose out on dps making certain playstyles not as viable. Can this be changed so like earth and sorcery pets it just stays up?

I think he means overall DPS. W:W/O Offering/Fortify, Fury is 1900:5000 DPS, Crystal is now 2000:4700 DPS, and RS is 2900 DPS.