MP pets

[atlasdreamer]

Yeah, while we're at it let's do away with weapon reloading times as well, i mean you have to reload your weapon once a minute or so, more if you're a soldier and you burn through ammo extremely fast, so if pet casting times get reduced, or their durations extended, why not give guns infinite clip sizes as well and do away with ammo.

so your clip doesnt auto refill?
or maybe your "clip" takes 30s to refill or longer?
Perhaps you have to rebuff that "Clip"?
No?
then hush. there is no comparison.

[Slakrr]

Yeah, while we're at it let's do away with weapon reloading times as well, i mean you have to reload your weapon once a minute or so, more if you're a soldier and you burn through ammo extremely fast, so if pet casting times get reduced, or their durations extended, why not give guns infinite clip sizes as well and do away with ammo.

Or increase weapon reload times to 29seconds and have them dissappear after 30 minutes.....

[Klodovik]

so your clip doesnt auto refill?

Heh, actualy, this part is bugged to some degree.

But yeah, not comparable at all.

[Ebondevil]

so your clip doesnt auto refill?
or maybe your "clip" takes 30s to refill or longer?
Perhaps you have to rebuff that "Clip"?
No?
then hush. there is no comparison.

Actually no, it doesn't auto refill till you try to take you next shot, so for example if an Agent stops attacking with an empty clip, hides and tries to take an aimed shot on a mob, the agent will enter combat mode, unhide, and get a report that the clip is empty, then they have to wait another 10 seconds to hide again to get the Aimed Shot, or go without.

Also, over 30 minutes if you do the maths for, for example, the Ofab Cobra Mk 6, Clip Size: 25, Assuming one shot every second with one second between each shot, this will empty the clip in 50 seconds, after that I believe there's a 1 second reload, so in 1800 seconds (30 minutes) you'll end up reloading 35.3 times (1800 / 51 = 35.294), basically every 30 minutes someone with a gun with a reasonable sized Clip not using any specials, will spend 35 seconds in reload which cannot be decreased, whereas a Meta-Physicist with capped nano init will spend about 20 seconds casting the Rihwen, and maybe 8 to 16 seconds rebuffing it, Sounds pretty much comparable to me.

[Klodovik]

Sounds pretty much comparable to me.

No, not realy.

[Ebondevil]

No, not realy.

Care to explain your reasons, or are you just going to deny it without any facts or opinions to back it up?

[Technogen]

Well covering basics, your not in combat that full 30 min, so reload time is much lower. Reloading does not leave you with other options unavailable to you for self defence, and it doesn't stop your movement. While casting pets you can't attack, can't use nanos and are temp rooted in place while casting.

[Ebondevil]

Well covering basics, your not in combat that full 30 min, so reload time is much lower. Reloading does not leave you with other options unavailable to you for self defence, and it doesn't stop your movement. While casting pets you can't attack, can't use nanos and are temp rooted in place while casting.

True, however while reloading you also can't attack, other than perks, which are still available when casting nano's, and while you can cast a nano while reloading if you do then the reload is cancelled and restarts, and yes you're not always in combat the full 30 minutes, but then neither is the Rihwen, and you can still walk while casting nano's, albeit at a slower pace than you can move while reloading, you also don't have to pay creds to cast the rihwen or worry about running out ammo either.

I never said it was a perfect comparison, but it is comparable.

[windcaster]

Also, over 30 minutes if you do the maths for, for example, the Ofab Cobra Mk 6, Clip Size: 25, Assuming one shot every second with one second between each shot, this will empty the clip in 50 seconds, after that I believe there's a 1 second reload, so in 1800 seconds (30 minutes) you'll end up reloading 35.3 times (1800 / 51 = 35.294), basically every 30 minutes someone with a gun with a reasonable sized Clip not using any specials, will spend 35 seconds in reload which cannot be decreased, whereas a Meta-Physicist with capped nano init will spend about 20 seconds casting the Rihwen, and maybe 8 to 16 seconds rebuffing it, Sounds pretty much comparable to me.

i dont know how you play but when im on a range char i always reload after a fight.. it's automatic.. hell i even do it when im on a melee just out of habit.. course it never reloads my sword, damnit >.<

sure some reloads happen in battle.. but a lot of the time you can shift the reload time to post battle and it's often quick enough to hit reload and be ready to fire before you get to the next target.. you can also still keep moving.. so the time required to reload can be dramatically reduced and really only need to worry about in combat reloading.

not to metion even if you could'nt manually reload while moving the time would be spread out which is much more manageable to the rest of the team then coming to a complete stop for the entire length of time.

[Chrys]

I'll happily bear reloading on my pets when they get Burst and Full Auto.

[Klodovik]

Care to explain your reasons, or are you just going to deny it without any facts or opinions to back it up?

Can't use bug that affect all professions, including MPs, as a comparison. With given example (reload bug), we have double the trouble in that case.

'ello, we have AS/fling weapon as well and it acts the same way as your rifle.

[Camatrid]

Here is what you do when you cast your pet,, seems you are too high to actually compare the 2 of em O_o

1-You hit the 'cast pet' button.
2-You get rooted for 29 secs of casting.
3-You cannot attack, cannot run away, yeah yeah i know you can use specials but thats not the point. (You also got the very chance of getting interrupted)
4-You finish casting and wait for recharge.
5-You hit the rename macro and rename your pet if you care about that.
6-Start casting pet buffs.
7-Finish casting each pet buff, and also wait for their recharges in order to cast the next buff. And when ready, wait for that annoying moment when your brand new shiny pet disappaers in the next 30 minutes.
8-You go into the stress of watching the buff timers on the pet to see when to recast it so it doesnt just * poof * during the fight. (They also expire during fights since sometime).
9-If you are just wandering around and killing stuff, being HAVE TO do this every 30 minutes is damn annoying. It is also very annoying in teams.


Now let's see what you do when you want to reload your clip:

1-Hit V ?

There are NO similarities at all in the 2 given situations.

MPs are such cool people tho, most of them manage all those steps of remaking the pet even during missions without their team not even realising they do it if the MP himself doesnt announce he is gonno redo the pet.

A second bump from me for dear MPs and crats to have infinite durations on their TL7 pets. Or at least 2 hours ^_^

[Ebondevil]

2-You get rooted for 29 secs of casting.

29 seconds minus the benefits of high nano Initiative which easily takes off 8 or 9 seconds at higher levels

3-You cannot attack, cannot run away, yeah yeah i know you can use specials but thats not the point. (You also got the very chance of getting interrupted)

You still have your Heal and Mezz pets which continue to be useful and of great benefit to the team, or insure that the mob your fighting doesn't keep hiting on you while you're solo.

4-You finish casting and wait for recharge.

All of 2 seconds.

6-Start casting pet buffs.
7-Finish casting each pet buff, and also wait for their recharges in order to cast the next buff. And when ready, wait for that annoying moment when your brand new shiny pet disappaers in the next 30 minutes.
8-You go into the stress of watching the buff timers on the pet to see when to recast it so it doesnt just * poof * during the fight. (They also expire during fights since sometime).

Which you'd still have to do every 30 minutes anyway.

9-If you are just wandering around and killing stuff, being HAVE TO do this every 30 minutes is damn annoying. It is also very annoying in teams.

So's running out of ammo mid fight, in fact it's even more annoying than having to recast your pet, admittedly it doesn't happen often, but I bet it's happened to everyone once or twice.

Now let's see what you do when you want to reload your clip:

1-Hit V ?

Assuming you have enough ammo, that your ammo stack hasn't run out and you don't need to get another one out of your inventory, or even worse, you've completely run out of ammo and need to beg your team mates for some or run back to the nearest vendor to buy some.

Considering all the recent improvements MPs and Crats have received recently, asking for more seems a little greedy to me, I'm not saying the extra time on pets wouldn't be convenient, I'd appreciate them on my MP, but that's about all it would be convenient, same as doing away with ammunition, it would be convenient. My suggestion would be to stop bumping this thread in game suggestions, and add it to the MP and Crat wish lists respectively, the Dev's actually seem to bother looking at them unlike a few other professions. (Yeah, I'm bitter, I have good reason to be )

[Jonalethian]

Not sure whats happening here.. is Ebondevil who has high level MP listed in sig really arguing against long pets? Or just splitting hairs about a fixated idea thats not really comparable...

bump for 2h pets (carlo included yeah)

[crattey]

bump, fix pet pathing while you're at it.

Also, people who are 'against' this really need to piss off. There isn't a single reason how this affects game balance other than being yet another hugely annoying factor for pet profs.

[Ebondevil]

Not sure whats happening here.. is Ebondevil who has high level MP listed in sig really arguing against long pets? Or just splitting hairs about a fixated idea thats not really comparable...

bump for 2h pets (carlo included yeah)

I think there's other things that need attention beforehand, and both MP's and crats need time to get used to their new toolsets before any more changes happen to them, as it is you're being given a lot of toys and not really getting to try a lot of them out, and you're still asking for more stuff, I think 2 hour pets would be great, but I also think you don't really need them.

[Norbal]

I think there's other things that need attention beforehand, and both MP's and crats need time to get used to their new toolsets before any more changes happen to them, as it is you're being given a lot of toys and not really getting to try a lot of them out, and you're still asking for more stuff, I think 2 hour pets would be great, but I also think you don't really need them.

Wait what?

You confused me something horrible here.

Ok, let me see if I can understand it by saying it back to you:

You are saying that because crat and MPs have had a combination of old toolset becoming viable again and new tools added to the set; that extending the duration on our pets is um... not reasonable?



How is it not reasonable (for lack of a better way to phrase it)? And why should some toolset improvements just flat out make this a "NO" situation? Tell me how this affects gamebalance. I can think of.... 2 instances.

1) Asking the team to wait once every half hour to resummon/buff the pet
2) Needing to stop hunting every half hour to resummon/buff the pet (soloing or in small teams)

Let me go about this a different way:

I don't know enough about crats to address their improvements, so I'll keep it solely to MP.

What we got (toolset improvements and novelty items since LE):
- Improved PvM nuke <:: No-brainer, everyday use
- New weapons; Dreadloch Tigress, Ofab Peregrinnes, Ofab/Dreadloch Panther <:: No-brainer, everyday use
- New pet buffs; AAD/AC/mezz resist, NR/DoT resist, Master's Bidding <:: They're pet buffs... The hardest one to understand is MB, and it's fairly simple
- SL damage debuffs were made viable <:: Took a few people a while to understand them... If you still don't know how to use them now, you need psychiatric help
- New debuffs; -heal efficency, -nanodamage efficency, ensd <:: Arguably the hardest part of the new toolset to understand. Why? Because nanodamage and healing efficency debuffs didn't exist before
- New "shield" <:: Simple to understand once you cast it 2 or 3 times

Ok, nothing in there stands out as a reason that can say "No 2 hour pets". Not even all of it together stands out a reason. After all, the toolset improvements can be broken down into 3 simple categories:
1) Improved damage - The nuke + new weapons
2) Improved buffs - The pet buffs
3) Imprvoed/new debuffs - The debuffs and shield

I'm sorry, but after flushing out the improvements we've recieved to make us viable, not uber, viable; I still can't figure out a single reason why asking for 2 hour pets is too much.



Ok, changing topics a bit:

You and others have already flushed out most of the reloading vs recasting pet arguements.

But I still have a few thoughts on that, so I'll address it:

Ok, reloading:
You already did some math for us: In the situation where someone uses an Ofab Cobra MK 6, when fighting a monster with enough HP to survive for over 30 minutes (with no kiting, or movement on the part of the player)... 35 seconds are spend reloading. Total.

This is spaced over 30 minutes, so that's roughly... 1.16 seconds reloading per minute. So you get to spend just over a second reloading each minute. Relatively frequent, but short instances.


Ok, resummoning pet:
29 second pet cast time. I personally have just over 2k nano init (any more and it's pretty much useless imo). That's approxamitely -7.3 seconds, but I should mention that I'm always full defense, so the cast time is... ~22.7 seconds.
2 second recharge. Up to 24.7 seconds here.
Evocation of the Enraged: insta-cast, 4 second recharge. Up to 28.7 seconds
High Chant of Effortless Strikes: insta-cast, 1.75 second recharge. Up to 30.45 seconds
Instill with Malign Intent: insta-cast, 2.5 second recharge. Up to 32.95 seconds
Evocation of the Reinforced: insta-cast, 4 second recharge. Up to 36.95 seconds
Evocation of the Pure: insta-cast, 4 second recharge. Up to 40.95 seconds

Add in lag, and I can safely say that MPs spend at least 41 seconds buffing a new pet (assuming the MP uses the last 2 buffs, most MPs I've talked to, do).

That is 23 seconds of unable to partake in combat (interrupted cast anyone?), followed by another 20 seconds of buffing said pet; again, unable to partake in combat... How many MPs don't debuff at TL 7?

Now, we have 40 seconds every 30 minutes (given lag and the "Already executing nanoprogram bug" I can take over a minute to buff the whiner).

How is this different from the reloading example?

We can't engage in combat for that period of time. Why? Well, would you fight without armor for 1 minute every 30 minutes on an agent? Again, no kiting, you have to stand and take the hits. And restarting the first 20 seconds if you get an unlucky hit (nano interrupted).

Seems like something unreasonable to ask anyone to do. At least in my opinion. Find me an agent who would be willing trade the current reloading for the version I just described. I know I won't be able to.


So in conclusion...

Bump for 2 hour pets. There's no game balance issues (well, unless 2 profs being a reason for a team to wait every half hour is intended...), no toolset issues...
Simply a matter of convience and saving sanity.

[Camatrid]

BumP for Pet durations,

[Jonalethian]

So in conclusion...

Bump for 2 hour pets. There's no game balance issues (well, unless 2 profs being a reason for a team to wait every half hour is intended...), no toolset issues...
Simply a matter of convience and saving sanity.

QFT

bump for 2h pets

[Norbal]

Bumpage