Balancing of Pets

[Salius]

Long ago, in the time of gpose and lack of bracers, the ability to decompose corpses from pets was seen as such a huge imbalance that we had decompose turned into breo. Since that time pets have not changed.

I propose pets should consume everything they kill, so we can have pets looked at again. In this way, I believe we can achieve a balance of worthwhile pets (ones comparable to skills) and not have to debate how it would affect our overall balance.

The current state of pets leaves us with bears as meatshields for those few extra seconds of combat. I'd like to see some originality and creative rendering to make upgraded versions of swallows and hawks worth calling upon again.

Salius

[Fire]

I would like to see the animals last longer.

[SSDave]

I would like to see some "Mystical" Animals. The 2 headed Snakebear XD. No but really it would be cool to see some new creature that could have some unique commands.

How about the possibility of a creature the multiplies itself to a limit of 4 or something. Perhaps there all as strong as the 1st one or they loose a piece of there stats for making a new creature.

1 Creature = Full Stats
2 Creatures = Half Stats
3 Creatures = 1/3 Stats
4 Creatures = 1/4 Stats

What do you think?

[Lucid]

I think it'd be cooler for druids to go down the path of having to tame animals they find first in the game than to summon them in the middle of tolnedra and login and run around spamming their i-never-take-damage prowess. A lot of people sell gear with a pack of pets as a deliberate annoyance to others.
To do this we would need a lot more animals, which is easy to do.
With the setup of ranks or whatever we can have it so you can take your learned pet? and level it up. [The design helps do this, we don't actually have it like this] It will not die so easily as before, and you can summon that same kind of pet later on with ease and at it's max level after you've trained properly.
You should be able to have more than one pet, but I think it'd be fun if you put two opposing animals together that you would start to lose control of one and you'd have to stop to try to tame it again by some means. Say, food, petting, etc.

The druid pet discussion needs it's own thread.
Targeting their stats alone is really not going to work in this combat system, as they do next to nothing but help skills and hp which a pet only has one of.

Also, each pet should have a specific ability that you will teach it. You get three choices for each which you cannot unlearn.
A) Offense (melee most likely, sting for bees), B) Defense (hp, lots of damage absorbtion), C) Balanced (trainable up to half of each.)
Now while that me be hard to figure out which is best to do, you can basically assume that a larger animal like a bear would be best at defense compared to a bee. But know also that a bear would get a decent claw/swipe type maneuver when set to offense. This would have to act as a special because unarmed doesn't do anything to any substantial mob.

Thoughts? (Or move to new thread.)

[Lucid]

Re: mystical animals

I think the golden gryphon from Styl should suffice.
Although you would not achieve it's power and it would not be golden. Just a plain Jane one that looks neat to have follow you around. This would be a high-end tank pet that would not stay with you for very long.

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I had some other thoughts about if your pet dies before it leaves on its own, or you dismiss it, that the skill % should go down when you want to (nix summon) tame it again (in the wild). And to help prevent this drop, you should be alert to its health and dismiss it before it dies. But then you cannot breo it for regen after. A fair trade-off for all the work involved with doing these changes that will never be coded.

[Salius]

I think the taming of specific animals is a bit more like hunters than druids were envisioned. I like the way hunters work in WoW, but I would prefer if we somehow limited the pet numbers and blocking ability--if you can hit a creature then the creature should be able to hit you, especially if you are the one doing major damage (aggro and all that).

How about we take from Pyro's book and allow one pet (plus as many pixies and fireflies as you want) and add a gcommand that would enhance the timer and pet abilities--reagent to be named later (maybe ginseng and a corpse)--.

[Salius]

Druids as a class should not have any kind of long term allies. They are a class of wandering forest folk, not enslavers of pets.
I agree that their natural charisma should give them some limited control over forest creatures, but trying to get some brute force with limited intelligence to continually do your bidding is just too much.

I would like to see druids move towards single instances of using pets as damage over time to a single mob, single shield against a mob, single damage shield for limited time (one room only), and other single use possibilities. The natural way of interacting like a druid should set them as over time and single points of contact.

Let some class of zombie trainer be the long term pet class, and let Druids pull their heads out and act like the drunkards they were born to be.