Swarm pets need fix

BUMP!!! Don't want the devs to say it got lost on the list, no excuses to ignore this!!!

well what do you expect the are busy with other stuff however this major topic (almost 60% of classes are affected) get ignored ... where not even get a response like hey we are looking into it !

So frustrating, I hear ya. I know it is on their radar... it has to be right? But yea, a response would be nice

I don't even cast my wolf pack anymore, i used to love it in ROK days. The same holds for my faerie ally.
Indeed the game keeps loosing content, deity cotnent stopped at 70, anti aoe are planned to stop to work, tranquility is too slow, swarm pet are a dps loss, faerie ally is a hps loss. Wish the initial design had not been ruined by people pretending to attract new players.

Just to be clear, any changes to swarm pets should also include the Necro's Undead Tide. This "class-defining" spell has been reduced to almost utter worthlessness in raids because they almost never survive the full duration of the spell, unlike Plane Shift (the corresponding conjy spell) which lasts its full duration as long as the main pet survives, which is not nearly as big an issue. And if anyone thinks you can just "time" UT to allow it to extend to its full duration, that only means you haven't tried to use it on raids. The pets never last for the full duration of the spell.

The swarm pets can pick up memwiping mobs sometimes.. or give opponents targeting problems in BGs. Aside from that they're trash though. I'd take the pre-DOF days when they could be resisted but never died to AEs over this current state of worthlessness..

No need to try and add any more common sense to tthis thread, just a BUMP so the devs don't lose it

Is there a process to getting devs to comment on something? Or is it completly random?

Usually you have to swoon about something you just absolutely love about the game, or bring up a slight cosmetic problem. Asking for possible future microtransactions tends to get a quick response also. Game mechanics and class balance they avoid like the plague but we can keep trying.

i still can not beleive how often we got feedback for minor problems .. yet this lungering imbalance affecting nearly 50% of all classes .. NOT A WORD !

Aliram wrote:

A lot of your post depresses me, maybe we too need a forum change for real names here?
Aliram wrote:

This line above has no meaningful content and adds nothing to the discussion.
Aliram wrote:

So there is time between the AOE's, which was Gutsherren's point, having the pets as real pets that obey the rules of the virtual world (distance, placement etc) then leaves something in the game that differentiates players between bad ones that just spam abilities without a care for what is going on in the fight, and good ones that react intelligently to the encounter to maximise their abilities.
If there is a problem then the solution is making encounter design good enough to leave these opportunities in for good players to excel. I believe that's the solution, not removing another decision from the player and turning pets that exist in the virtual world into a dot. If they want to do that then they might as well just call them a dot and remove the misleading graphics.

MurFalad wrote:

WOW ... do you even play this game !? have you recently (last 2 1/2 years) raided any real (hard) mob ?
every "real" raidmob in the last few expansions have 2-3 aes ... sometims up to 4 aes with dmg shields... do you really think they will change this design ?
This will not happen: it not the way the game is planned right now !

Right now swarm pets are crap and if you cast them you are a terrible player ... this hold true for PvE raid and heroic play
there are not affected by gear at all (this alone makse them terrible)
even if you time them perfectly they only last like 15-18s on any real raid mob

there are pathetic at best ... the best solution would to turn them into dots or something like that ... but at least fix them ASAP !

simpepl question: what is better an easy to use spell or a spell which you could not use at all ?

thog_zork wrote:

Yes, or at least I hope it is a possibility, you also must think its a possibility that they will make game changes or you wouldn't be posting.
thog_zork wrote:

That's actually quite a long time without any game changes, the fact that they don't contribute much in that period is either a problem to solve. Or to alter the encounter designs in future to give longer opportunities to use pets (they could choose a cop out of making pets immune to damage shields, but effected by AOE's, that would simplify encounter design as the devs then know when the pets will die).
thog_zork wrote:

Simple answer then neither My reasoning is that all the classes already have a dot and lots of other simple to use spells, turning pets into a more or less identical spell to one that already exists doesn't add anything interesting to the gameplay.
So if the pets are not useful and there is to be no attempt to make them useful I'd rather see the spells deleted, its a simple change to just add the missing dps to an already existing spell, and one that wouldn't remove any decision making from the game (it would just remove unnecessary complexity clutter from the toolbars).
Personally I think what this game needs now is less complexity, but more depth.
E.g. less near identical spells to cast that really don't make much difference if we cast one or the other first apart from a minute drop in DPS due to following the non-optimal cast sequence we've spreadsheeted, and instead more elements of the game that make the player think and decide the best moment to use them. The pets should be one of these more interesting elements.

MurFalad wrote:

so you agree swarm pets are right now useless made so by encounter designsince years ...
BUT you fail to adress how game mechanic (not affected by gear) also make them patheticto use
without big changes to them (make them affectedf by gear) tweaks of encounters they will remain useless and underpowered by design...as we all know those changes will not happen !
why not turn them into something usefull like a long running dot which increas in damage over time: there you have your depth without much of a problem !

right now there are pathetic and are in a desperate need of a change ... (much overdue since 2-3 years)

Saying that any of the swarm pets available to any class are worthwhile in current content is a completely indefensible position. Either you play the game and understand the mechanics of why they are useless, or you bury your head in the sand and say everything is alright.
There really isn't any middle ground here. Swarm pets need to be fixed. Period.

Yea man, your saying time ur swarm pets between AOEs then aknowlage that game mechanics dont allow that to happen.... As you pointed out yourself, you CAN get pets up and fighting for maybe 10-15 seconds, in that time they do little to no damage and never run their full course of 30+ seconds. And even when they do run for 30 seconds, the DPS is neglegable at best.
So the solution is change AOEs and make every raid mob easier.. or fix Swarm pets... thats a no brainer.
I know the Devs were planning to do something about this when SF came out! I dont know what happened!!!

MurFalad wrote:

Why would anyone think it's a good idea for them to spend many months of developer time systematically dumbing down every boss encounter in the game in order to make dumbfire pets marginally more useful? It makes no sense .

MurFalad wrote:

Even if timed optimally 15 seconds simply isn’t long enough for the pet to justify it’s cast time. If you are a good player you will only ever consider a dumbfire pet when you have nothing else left to cast. Changing your entire attack rotation to fit your worst abilities is not a good idea.

Well since there is zero chance that they will redesign every raid encounter for the past 3 years to accommodate swarm pets, and they are certainly not going to make every encounter easier from here on out to accommodate swarm pets, lets hope they do one of two things:

Make them AOE immune and increase their damage/hitrates

Or turn them into dots.

It is amazing that a class can have 4 spells I dont even bother having on a hotbar (necro) because the swarm pets have zero use in any situation.

P.S. There is no way you can get non ranged swarm pets to stay up for 10-15 seconds, I could believe timing AOEs on an easy mob with no DS, where you can clearly send them at its back so no ripostes, you MIGHT be able to get 5-6 seconds out of them...but that would equate to maybe 10dps? Youre a horrible player if your even trying to do that...just to lose DPS.

yeah ... furthemore the whole not affected by gear stuff need also to be adressed !

but heyyy .. radio silence

+1 for doing something to increase the effectiveness of swarm pets. The necromancer swarm pets are useless for DPS, and I'm sure that the problem is severe for other classes as well.