GU47: Pet changes for Earth and Sorcery

Since there is no topic about this, I would figure I would make one.

Crystal and Fury had a great improvement to damage. They are now viable and on par with Quantum and Munitions.

I haven't had a chance to test out Brick, but not sure how to w/o doing a hard raid. Any experiences?

On a side note, I really wish an aftershock viable loadout would be good. Something as simple as giving aftershock access to the crushed PI. It would be a lot of fun.

I assume you tested on the dummies, do the dummies still give the pets infinite power? Because that will really skew your results when looking at DPS.

Yeah, I did and to be honest. I forgot to mention, how come the powersets don't have a power back mechanic like all other powersets do?

Also, was having problems with Fury staying on the targets I was attacking. Because Soul Well's range is so massive, Fury will attack anyone you are hitting, including passive dots. Had to position myself in an awkward spot.

Crystal's damage bonus works with either crushed or dazed PI.

You could setup a loadout like;
Pebble blast or tectonic break or gag glove, reinforce, jackhammer, upheaval, fortify, crystal

Clip the PI applicator with reinforce and use WM>aftershocked power (depending on weapon to how many wm>shock you can repeat during reinforces cooldown, HB x2, DW x3)
Keeping fortify on cooldown as well of course.

Would be interested to see the effective dps on that.

This is still the huge issue with having a Pet "AM" (Not very advanced.. You click one power and watch an AI hit things..), You really have little control over your pet, and have to rely on AI to do the work.

It's stilly... I've played games from over a decade ago that have implemented control functions on summoned pets, yet DCUO can't?

The combo damage scalar is pretty standard now between HL, Rage, and Celestial I can't imagine making that buff activate with upheaval and jackhammer breaks anything at all.

Or that it's would be an inordinate amount of work given that most of the coding has been introduced already.

On par? What? O_O

I could post the screenshot from the raid vs a top Quantum DPS. That is far from on par. He was 5 millions behind me when I was at 12 mio and he at 7 ^^

Currently the pet damage is broken and Sorc and Earth DPS is just over the top atm, will be fixed but I had to laugh on the stream all the time how ot of the world the dmg difference was.

They're really good in PvE but they do the exact same damage in PvP which is stupid because it's literally hitting 13-20's on players. That needs to be toned down for PvP at least.
Here's a video of both Fury and Crystal.

Part of that is the out of combat power regeneration allows the pet to fully engage every new group of adds front loading a lot of damage.

Yeah that's too much for PvP.

Holy ****...

I didn't test it in a raid situation. Comparing it to Quantum, they were getting about the same damage with optimal rotation. I was assuming the slightly higher was the infinite power that the test dummies give to the pets. Since Earth and Sorcery doesn't have a power back mechanic, Quantum is still a better choice. You might be too OP. #nerfstable

Joking aside, the damage from the pets are really nice and if the pets still are based on bracket CR, I don't see how this would need to be adjusted.

I'm Earth on top with 5 mill ahead.
2nd is a top Quantum DPS.
3rd and 4th doesnt matter as they were switching around for troll and heal on 1 attempt.

If that makes it to live we are going to see tons of Sorcs and Earth DPS (prob more Sorc due to the Weapon of Destiny thing).


EDIT: Note he used Prefab Expert mods, I just used normal vendor VI mods. He also took Might Soda buff whenever he could, I didnt took any. So If I would used same Prefabs and would buff with Prec Soda (doesnt makes much difference in this case but should be a slightly upgrade). The card would be even worse.

Posting this for someone.

Well thats right but as said, mine was done in action with supplies and such being used. I know you just copy-pasted for him but I want to point that out.

Where this pet mechanic is stronger is that you are getting a quick burst before a power like Quantum can get off it's entire rotation. I, like Veritech, was using PB clipped with Reinforce as they are cheaper powers. A sorcery player and I ran through the LH duo in under 9 minutes, he was full 108, I was full 99 gear. The adds just disintegrated. Even running the solo mission in New Genesis was super easy. I decided to run it as Earth tank with brick and my health bar barely moved so the 50% mitigation with Brick is well appreciated.

Raw damage increase was not what we needed or what I wanted for Pets.

1. Make Pets granting increased damage to used tray superpowers.
That way group buffs, trinkets and Supply will be able to buff our AM like other power sets' AM are capable to.

2. Flag Offering and Fortify Golem as beneficial abilities.
More clipping = Speed = Higher DPS and better survival ability for Brick tanking.

Alright so i'm probably going to piss a lot of Sorcery users off with this but as an Earth user I can't let it go on(and maybe some quantum people will be pissed of as well).

So here is the truth. Since Sorcery's AM update Ritualistic word has been giving power to the Fury and it is still happening. This means Sorcery can effectively still hit a damaging power when they give power back to their pet. For example with Offering you had to do WM->Offering. With Ritualistic word you can do WM->Shard/Ritualistic Word in the same amount of time but also get damage. This is one thing that is making Sorcery's AM much better than Earths atm since Crystal and Fury are nearly identical in damage. Either Fortify Golem needs made beneficial(which is my choice) or Ritualistic Word needs fixed to bring Sorcery in line with Earth(not really though read on for more on that).

Now here is the other issue. Earth and Sorcery have nearly identical kits except for two things that put Sorcery over Earth. Soul Well stacking and WoD. Now Earth has Reinforce and Totem but in all honesty they aren't as good as WoD and Soul Well stacking, here's why.

Soul Well stacking means putting 3 Soul Wells out at a time. These things have great range and thus you are getting 3 ticks on everything in the room basically just from stacking these. Totem on the other hand can only have 1 out at a time and the only way to get more ticks it to put it closer to your target(for those that don't know the closer the target is to totem the more damage ticks they will receive because totem will tick faster if they are closer). This requires Earth users to go into Melee range and should the enemies or boss ever move from when you first cast it you are losing damage meanwhile Sorcery is over here clipping Soul Wells and everything basically and not having to worry at all while getting more damage because of it.

Now why is WoD better than Reinforce you ask? Because WoD has a shorter cooldown. The reason this matters is because with the Pet AM you are mainly doing WM combos and not caring about the power you are hitting after the WM if you are even hitting one at all(don't because its a dps loss to hit a power unless it is one of your dots or pet power back). If WoD has a shorter cooldown it means it can more be used more reliably to clip Soul Wells and CoDs than Reinforce can be used to clip Totem and Debris Field.

The last thing Sorcery has over Earth is their 50% pet supercharge. This may not seem like a good supercharge but now with the pet changes Sorcery's supercharge is giving them 2 Furys for 12s.....thats huge now that the pet does great damage. Earth on the other hand has no supercharge option whatsoever for their Pet AM.

Feedback to fix it:
- Make Offering and Fortify Golem beneficial powers allowing them to clip other damage powers.
- Grant Reinforce a stronger Critical Chance buff to make up for it's higher cooldown compared to WoD
- Make Totem exactly like Soul Well or remove the requirement for the totem to be close to the target for extra damage ticks.
- Give Earth a Pet Supercharge. I personally hate Entomb so if you could move Envelope over to the Siesmic Tree and put a 50% pet supercharge in it's place that summons this to tank and a giant Crystal to mirror Crystal:

Sure the damage is good but Sorcery will forever be superior to Earth unless something is done about the powers that are not pet powers.

Ok, now you may remember me saying I might make some quantum users mad well here it is. My parsers have Quantum beating Sorcery and Earth coming in behind Sorcery due to the differences I outline above. You may ask "But Elusian ran a raid and beat the quantum guy" well I'm pretty sure that quatum guy wasn't using a bow weapon which allows you to do this rotation : WB/WR/TBomb->DW->TS->TBlast. Yes you are reading that right if you use the bow you can clip WR with Time Bomb and the dps increase is huge because of it. It allows you to preload a Time Bomb every 2 rotations without adding any additional time to the rotation at all. Sorry Quantum and sorry Sorcery users(for exposing Ritualistic Word) but it had to be done for balance sake.

Crystal in pvp makes 10k dmg with no effort, pls look on this.

Well PvP is just another example how putting all the damage on the Pet is a bad idea. Part of the AM damage increase should come from more speed and increased Might based damage instead.

Edited.