As some of you have already noticed, the summoner AI and Appearance UI changes have gone to test this week. Below is an excerpt of the patch notes: Summoners can now right-click their pet and use the "Change Appearance" functionality. The summoner and their pet must be out of combat. The appearance list is generated based upon the caster's knowledge book. Possession is now Flash Cast. For a short duration, the summoner's next primary pet spell will have no cast time, reuse time or recovery time. The second pet summoned will have a reduced cast time. Flash Cast itself has no cast time or recovery time and has a 120 second reuse. It terminates after two pets are summoned. Summoner Pets now use a new AI system and cast their spells more reliably. All Summoner Pets now gain the effects of Doublecast. Summoner Scout pets now are immune to AE Auto Attack. Summoner Fighter pets now hold aggro more reliably off of the summoner. They are also focused exclusively on encounter damage and effects. Summoner Mage pets now focus exclusively on encounter damage. Summoner Alternate Advancement priest pets are now single target pets that function similarly to scout pets. They have longer range, reduced damage and heal the group. Necromancer Undead Knights no longer can ride horses due to systematic changes to how pet appearances work. Please keep any Summoner AI and UI feedback within this thread
Does this include any kind of change to Plane Shift? Perhaps something that makes it worth pulling a scout pet out in raids? If the scout pet shares our stats then wouldn't make sense to allow the conjy and necro to gear up like scouts. Right? I've never understood why scout pets are useless. It kind of takes the fun out of playing summoners. Does the priest pet still require unlocking with AA's? How does it compare to a healer merc?
The issue with scout and tank pets had nothing to do with stat sharing, it had to do with their base casting function.
I am assuming that communion will still work as it has before or will it recieve an increase? Also do stats affect the pets the same way as they do characters so if planeshift is up the pets will increase their sda or flurry with the increases in attack speed and casting speed?
You know what would be an awesome addition in a future xpac? The ability to gear up our pets and mercs. An additional character window exclusively for them. Tabs on the side to rotate between individual mercs and pets. Imagine being torn between putting gear on your merc and putting gear on your alt. Mmmm!
would put summoners at a disadvantage due to constantly needing to get gear for pets as well, however adding pet stats to gear I think would be acceptable
I like that the hydromancer can do do at least some dps. But his healing abilities can no longer crit makeing his healing mostly useless.
Since i played eq2 before the removal of Pet Stat Gear... You do NOT want to ask for this. Summiners got a large boost by consolidating Pet stats down onto just the casters stats and bassing it all off of the casters stats.
That's a good point. Players have 1-4 million hitpoints now. Baby heals without crits aint gonna cut it.
All fights here are 10+ min in duration on a training dummy by a lvl 90 Heroic Necro. Mage Pet 1 Heroic Fight – 15.5k dps Scout Pet 1 heroic Fight – 19.8k dps Mage Pet Group of Heroic Fight – 65.6 k dps, since all died Scout Pet Group of Heroic Fight – 18.2k dps since all died So it looks like on fights with 2 or more mobs the mage pet will be better, but on Single Target named the Scout pet will be more dps and is now a viable option. Nice change.
I am just worried and this making Summoners do Less damage on None linked encounters like some boss fights where dps is the most important also currently some of are fire pets most potent abilities are single target and it does not seen that the new scout pet will be equivalent dps single target to what our fire pet is currently. Also my pet rarely dies anyways and if it does i have a stored pet. Sow why do we need a Fast cast pet?
is possession possessed minion? If so then this is essentially a free pet storage and you can free up that aa for something else.
Just reposting my initial impressions of the pet appearance thing since the mods wanted that thread ended. First of all, I love that this finally went in. I did find the interface a little clunky though. The fact that you had to select "next page" or "previous page" and hit okay wasn't particularly intuitive imo. With use I'm sure it'll be no problem to navigate, I just felt I should post initial impressions.
" Summoner Mage pets now focus exclusively on encounter damage." I'm thinking this is a bad bad thing here, some aoe dmg is good, but Exclusive.. Hell no.
They never did their own AoE damage to begin with. You really don't want a pet doing AoE, especially where mobs might wander over and decide to squish the pet then you.
For the pet appearance interface, instead of the blue swirly icon, can it have a picture of each appearance? Even just a headshot? Alternately, maybe it could be done with a page on the persona window? A dropdown menu at the top to pick pet type, a dressing-room style preview window below that, and a scroll list next to the preview window where we can quickly switch appearances. Since all summons of the same type for a class share a name (Undead Knight, Earthen Avatar, etc), the dropdown can have the type name, and then the sidescroll option list could be abbreviated to "Adept," "II Master," "VII Apprentice"?
Another thought for the appearance interface would be to have the ability to CTRL click to see the appearance in the dressing room.
Hopefully the single target dps of the mage pet isn't reduced. Cause there are some fights where scouts have to joust a lot or have to fight ranged. A scout pet would't be a reliable option in these cases, though these fights are single target.
The scout pet supposed to be immune to aoes so probably no need to joust it. also ye, no need for pets to do blue aoes, we better control it ourselves.