How to fix pets.

[Piet]

No one can argue the pet system right now just isn't good. It's not fun for tamers, it's not fun for people fighting pets, it's just not fun.

Here's a few suggestions that imo would fix it for both sides.
1. For tamers it's really annoying to lose a pet and have to afk for hours. There's a few easy ways to fix this.

Make it like MO1 so you can train up pets for gold although I would improve upon that system and don't fully recommend it. Instead I recommend pets level much quicker but only if you actually use them and they actually deal damage. This could be to training dummies but only to like level 50 or something so they have a minimum starting point that's more acceptable and after that only to mobs that will fight back. Not even to other players or we will find a way to abuse it.

And/Or and imo preferably

Have a bond system where after your pet reaches 125 if they die you receive an undroppable item that when used summons your pets soul for a spiritist to rez. They can even take an exp hit for the death.

These changes will make tamers more active and enjoyable to play but also make the world more active so more pvp or even just interaction and time hanging with guildies.

2. Go over the pets who take too little points. For 2 obvious examples direwolves and turtles. You currently can hold 3 level 100 direwolves or 2 level 125's. You can hold 1 level 125 turtle with only 82 cc. This will make it so pets in general are more balanced and ya balancing off and on should be obvious. This should be done consistently with changes like pet armor or riding pets to keep things balanced.

3. Make it so beast mastery is not only worth it but required for combat pets.
Currently it's not worth it to ever use some of the actually cool abilities pets have. It makes tamers take less skill because optimally you push 1 button to attack and fire and forget other than to pull back for heals. It's not fun to fight, it's not fun to use. If instead pets did a more minimum amount of damage which wasn't raised by having focus because that encourages people to not use the abilities and the abilities are what did the solid damage and worked better then it would be much more fun to use and take more skill and be much more fun to fight. This also means fixing the pet attacks so the beast mastery is smooth to use.

4. Make it so you are required to take most if not all of the animal skills in order to use tames. Right now any build, hybrid, foot fighter, anything, can get 82 points in CC and become a tamer, not as strong sure, more annoying sure, but that it's possible is not good. CC should be a child skill of beast mastery and ACC should be a child skill of beast influence or care or something. This will make pets more of an investment.

Ill update this with any other good ideas I or anyone else thinks of but even these changes would make the whole system WAY better.

 

[Elijah]

Pet abilities are honestly a bit of a joke at the moment. You sacrifice damage output for an attack that either puts a 1sec DoT on your target, or you do one big attack that is essentially just a basic auto attack. After, though, you're stuck at like 5% damage output because all of the abilities cost all of the pets focus. Most beast masters just don't use them because they're generally bad. Spur on being the one example I can think of that is actually useful.

Also, pets are already an insane point investment for the usefulness and expected lifespan. Takes like 6 hours of grind and 400 primaries just to hold a white bear or something. It's honestly not worth it, and the people that do it have my respect for their dedication.

 

[Weis]

3. Make it so beast mastery is not only worth it but required for combat pets.

Ultimately the developers have not played the game in PVP as tamers, dominators, or ritualists. It is clear to me that they pushed out beast mastery without even putting it on a test server or even attempting to balance it. Any other development team that did quality control on this update would have scrapped the focus system after one hour of pvp or pve testing. Here is what I see as the core problem for beast mastery.
Looking at Targets for skill to work: If you are on foot the pets usually body block your target and there isn’t time to look at a target. The only time this works is if you get lucky or if you are mounted with a pet.

Skills only work on the target you are attacking: With max focus on a target you cannot use a beast mastery skill on an adjacent player. The game will say that you missed the target when you target other players that the pet isnt focused on.

Animation Times: Most pet attack animation times make using a skill worthless. Agile evasion on a direwolve lasts around 6-9 seconds but takes 3-4 seconds for the howl animation. Your pet is gonna eat so many hits just to do a death howl haha. Some pets with active regeneration are the only ones that have a reasonable effect time. Although it eats so much hunger that you would need to carry extra food if you plan on using it.

Debuff Durations: Effects that cause bleeding or other similar debuffs only last around 1-6 seconds and barely do any damage.

Focus cost and total focus amount: Some pets will say they only use XXX focus for a skill but wont let you use it until you meet minimum focus threshold. I usually wait till I have 500 focus to use a 250 focus skill. Kind of stupid.
Spending Focus to do less damage: lets say I have a celeano and want to do the screech skill, it says I need 700 focus. First I have to attack to get focus up to 800 because the previous glitch I talked about, then I spend 700 to screech, and my next attacks will do 4-10 damage until focus is back up. All pets with attack skills suffer this issue where spending focus reduces your damage.

Many Skill effect descriptions are wrong: many skill descriptions say the skill does one thing, but when its used and you hover over the buff/debuff icon near the name, it sometimes has a different skill effect there.

A good beast mastery system will give players 4 attack skills. Each one is unlocked with 25 points invested and the utility of the skill and damage goes up with each skill. So players having 100 beast mastery are rewarded with better skills. Remove focus altogether and make it so that the skills are used and have a minute timer before they can be used again. Using these skills will add the timer just like if you used a clade skill like runners high or something. Allow beast masters to use skills so long as the target is still tagged. This will function as me calling out to my pet and telling it to attack X or Y player that I tagged. I shouldn’t need to stare at the guy between the head swings of my terror bird to tell it to peck a guy lol… Let us switch targets using our skills so I can make it turn around and hit the guy behind him with a special beast mastery skill. This is the perfect system. Why doesnt it exist? How come this is so hard? Who tested the current system and said it was good enough for player consumption?

 

[ElPerro]

As long as pets cant stickyback veelas with no stam sure, make them easier to get and lvl up.

 

[Piet]

Ultimately the developers have not played the game in PVP as tamers, dominators, or ritualists. It is clear to me that they pushed out beast mastery without even putting it on a test server or even attempting to balance it.

Exactly they have to fix that to make it actually skill based and not only that but more importantly a lot more fun.

 

[Piet]

Any other input gladly accepted.

 

[Elijah]

No one can argue the pet system right now just isn't good. It's not fun for tamers, it's not fun for people fighting pets, it's just not fun.

Here's a few suggestions that imo would fix it for both sides.
1. For tamers it's really annoying to lose a pet and have to afk for hours. There's a few easy ways to fix this.

Make it like MO1 so you can train up pets for gold although I would improve upon that system and don't fully recommend it. Instead I recommend pets level much quicker but only if you actually use them and they actually deal damage. This could be to training dummies but only to like level 50 or something so they have a minimum starting point that's more acceptable and after that only to mobs that will fight back. Not even to other players or we will find a way to abuse it.

And/Or and imo preferably

Have a bond system where after your pet reaches 125 if they die you receive an undroppable item that when used summons your pets soul for a spiritist to rez. They can even take an exp hit for the death.

These changes will make tamers more active and enjoyable to play but also make the world more active so more pvp or even just interaction and time hanging with guildies.

2. Go over the pets who take too little points. For 2 obvious examples direwolves and turtles. You currently can hold 3 level 100 direwolves or 2 level 125's. You can hold 1 level 125 turtle with only 82 cc. This will make it so pets in general are more balanced and ya balancing off and on should be obvious. This should be done consistently with changes like pet armor or riding pets to keep things balanced.

3. Make it so beast mastery is not only worth it but required for combat pets.
Currently it's not worth it to ever use some of the actually cool abilities pets have. It makes tamers take less skill because optimally you push 1 button to attack and fire and forget other than to pull back for heals. It's not fun to fight, it's not fun to use. If instead pets did a more minimum amount of damage which wasn't raised by having focus because that encourages people to not use the abilities and the abilities are what did the solid damage and worked better then it would be much more fun to use and take more skill and be much more fun to fight. This also means fixing the pet attacks so the beast mastery is smooth to use.

4. Make it so you are required to take most if not all of the animal skills in order to use tames. Right now any build, hybrid, foot fighter, anything, can get 82 points in CC and become a tamer, not as strong sure, more annoying sure, but that it's possible is not good. CC should be a child skill of beast mastery and ACC should be a child skill of beast influence or care or something. This will make pets more of an investment.

Ill update this with any other good ideas I or anyone else thinks of but even these changes would make the whole system WAY better.

I like these ideas. All seem reasonable. I think Instead of the item for resurrecting, your pet should die and turn into a spirit like a player. After that you have a set amount of time, varying by pet level, to find a spiritist that will resurrect your pet. Say a level 50 pet has like a 10min timer and a 125 has something like 20mins to resurrect before they shuffle off to whatever heck there is for Nave. Also might need a hard limit on the number of times you can res a pet. Adds more value to spiritism in the process. Maybe spiritist can even banish your pets to reduce the timer, or just delete it. Feel like there does need to be a way that you will lose your pet if you aren't careful, but also have a way to get more use for the amount of grinding you have to do.

 

[Piet]

I like these ideas. All seem reasonable. I think Instead of the item for resurrecting, your pet should die and turn into a spirit like a player. After that you have a set amount of time, varying by pet level, to find a spiritist that will resurrect your pet. Say a level 50 pet has like a 10min timer and a 125 has something like 20mins to resurrect before they shuffle off to whatever heck there is for Nave. Also might need a hard limit on the number of times you can res a pet. Adds more value to spiritism in the process. Maybe spiritist can even banish your pets to reduce the timer, or just delete it. Feel like there does need to be a way that you will lose your pet if you aren't careful, but also have a way to get more use for the amount of grinding you have to do.

Interesting idea. I am guessing most tamers would hate it tbh but I like it.