Summons should stay up with weaponswitch.

BenjaminKacher_ESO · April 2014

Maybe they should make all buffs drop on weapon switch?

steinernein · April 2014

The easiest solution currently is to simply buff the pets, they do need a bit of love in terms of scaling for now and in the future. However, the mechanic for toggles is perfectly fine and makes them easy to balance compared to other solutions.

As it stands now, for pets, they're only worth it if you go all in. For magelight and bound armor, they're good individually.

Aimeryan · April 2014

It has been said before in other threads that pets are quite different to other toggles - they cost a lot more to re-cast, can die, do damage instead of some utility/buff effect, can provide a distraction, etc.

I do think they should be on a separate mechanic. A timer seems appropriate to me - make them 30 seconds or something. Lower the magicka cost to something appropriate for that length of time (remembering that they can also be killed). Don't make them disappear on bar swap.

Aimeryan · April 2014

LadyChaos wrote: »

Crescent wrote: »

It's not just the sorcerer pets.

I'm talking about things like Bound Armor and Magelight.

If I cast surge on myself, or momentum, I can switch weapons and keep the benefit. Same for storm form.

Instead, nobody wants to use skills like Bound Armor, because it requires 2 slot skills instead of one to even function, because if you have to waste a global cooldown to just keep recasting the skill, on top of the steep mana cost to resummon it every time you swap weapons.

With magelight as a battle mage, who has to worry about it on top of surge, momentum, and stormform, it really eats up the slots and mana bar having to constantly resummon after every weaponswap.

no, I'm sorry. I'm sorcerer myself... you have to pick 2 roles. If you want them to be the same but slight differences fine, but role 1 and role 2 should not carry over.

This would make pets/toggle buff players OP over the players who don't chose those options as their main for starters... you have to think of it as 2 roles, not 2 hot-bars. best wishes sincerely.

Opinion, not fact. Simply don't have to say anything more on this.

~~~

I'll put this in the same post, although it is not directed at LadyChaos.

Regarding the use of buffs and any thing else with a duration rather than a toggle: you can't say that using these is a dps/survival loss, unless they are never worth using (in which case, they need to be buffed). Having these abilities on another bar is unrelated - perhaps not entirely; due to the previously mentioned UI unresponsiveness, switching bars can be frustrating and time wasting. However, again as mentioned, this is a responsiveness issue with the UI rather than a specific game mechanic.

NordJitsu · April 2014

Aimeryan wrote: »

It has been said before in other threads that pets are quite different to other toggles - they cost a lot more to re-cast, can die, do damage instead of some utility/buff effect, can provide a distraction, etc.

I do think they should be on a separate mechanic. A timer seems appropriate to me - make them 30 seconds or something. Lower the magicka cost to something appropriate for that length of time (remembering that they can also be killed). Don't make them disappear on bar swap.

Anything. Please, just fix the things.

The way I see it, there are three possible solutions to the current problem:

1. Leave things the same but majorly majorly majorly buff the pets. I'm talking like double their current health and DPS both. They were balanced around one skill slot. If they now require two then they should be doubly effective for the added cost. I see this as a poor solution because people will complain that pets are too powerful.

2. Go back to how things were. The pets were created and balanced with it in mind that they would only cost one skill slot. Go back to the original cost bringing them in line with all other skills in the game. IMO though this should only affect pets and not toggles like Mage Light.

3. Significantly reduce the magicka cost of the pets and put them on a duration. So you'd remove the permanent penalty (since they aren't permanent) and reduce the cast cost by about 3/4ths. Durations would be for about 60 secs.

Any of these would work but I think 2 and 3 are the better options.

Or ZOS could just keep pretending there isn't a problem and enjoy seeing this mechanic ignored by all competent players.

ahampelb14_ESO · April 2014

pet buff would be nice but they really need to fix the responsiveness of (or lack of) the weapon swap. I've seen 1 second to about 3 seconds sometimes. It doesn't seem like lag since I don't usually see any warping or rubberbanding

Aimeryan · April 2014

ahampelb14_ESO wrote: »

pet buff would be nice but they really need to fix the responsiveness of (or lack of) the weapon swap. I've seen 1 second to about 3 seconds sometimes. It doesn't seem like lag since I don't usually see any warping or rubberbanding

I've been trying to see if the weapon swap itself actually ever lags or such, but it can be difficult to do in a combat situation while trying to focus on doing other stuff. So far, every time I use it when I am not currently doing something else it always works and is very fast - like 0.25 seconds or better. If I do it when I am casting, it usually occurs once the current animation is done, and seems to be about the same speed. Sometimes it doesn't swap, though; not sure why - maybe I cancel it somehow. This is part of the problem with the UI lacking this sort of information.

As previously mentioned, not being able to queue up abilities on the other bar until you have successfully switched slows things down a lot. In the middle of combat I may not be able to pay attention to waiting for the exact moment the bar has swapped. Also, as I said, sometimes the swap hasn't occurred, which means I can cast the wrong ability which can be costly in resources and time.

The UI just needs to be more responsive here. I would prefer to be given the option to swap the bar itself instantly even in the middle of doing something (the UI representation, not the in-game equivalent), allowing me to queue up the abilities on the other bar ready to cast whenever the actual weapon swap goes through.

If I didn't explain that well I'll try another way; say you are casting a spell. Currently, when you hit the weapon swap button this queues up the weapon swap to occur once the current spell has finished being cast. I would still like it to do this, but I would like the skill bar to change instantly (instead of at the end of the weapon swap), so that you can queue up the ability on that bar to cast when the weapon swap has completed.

Edit: Sometimes it wont swap if you hit another spell or attack (mouse button) while queued (or at near the same time), although most of the time it does. Similarly, if you hit the weapon swap keybind too quickly after starting a spell it wont let you (it actually tells you with this one in the top right).

You can also hit the weapon swap twice (by accident) and it will swap back immediately after swapping. There seems to be some form of duplicate keypress delay, but it is very quickly timed out - I have to tap it very quickly to get the second swap to not occur.

Things like this are making it unresponsive in the middle of combat. The weapon swap, once the keybind has been pressed, NEEDs to be queued to occur ASAP (i.e., once the current spell is finished being cast), regardless of when pressed (there can't be no" You can't do that now" business). Also, it needs to NOT occur multiple times when the keybind has been pressed in quick succession (the delay needs to be longer than it is).

Crescent · April 2014

steinernein wrote: »

Crescent wrote: »

Yeah, I'm sure that AI works perfectly in any encounter with actual mechanics and constant movement.

Good luck getting any use out of that pet when you can't just detonate it for AoE.

And good job glossing over the post that actually mentioned summons including those I use, which are magelight and bound armor.

We'll see how many pet builds make it to scoreboards for speed runs or in PvP.

I only summon the pet when I am in position to detonate it which is any time I could normally cast impulse. Or, you know, let the imp wander towards the target while I get to safety to AE. Way to over complicate the process, must be hard to play this game right?

I don't gloss over posts as you're the one who lacks reading comprehension; Magelight and Bound Armor fall under the same principle which you maintain coverage without needing to recast meaning you can stay on a single bar or swap to a second one without needing to rebuff it every 8-20 seconds which is a DPS/survivability loss. Such a very hard concept for you to understand, eh?

The mechanic is sound but the implementation of the individual skills may need an update in balance and that's where your criticisms should be focused.

As for PvP I wouldn't bother using pets, but I am sure someone could find a competitive build that used pets to supplement their ability on the field. Probably not you though since you have no interest in fact finding or being correct. Good luck to you and your subpar DPS!

Yup, still picking and choosing for situations where point blank AoE is beneficial and nowhere else.

The DPS loss comes from the magicka reduction mechanism. Spending a GCD every few seconds, especially when in melee you might have periods of moving out of boss AoE, is hardly a setback. Keep exaggerating about recast's impact on DPS, though.

I await your leaderboard rankings anyways when they are released.

Zaldoras · April 2014

As far I'm concerned, Sorc pets wouldn't even be worth it if they stayed up on weapon switch. I have 10 precious ability slots, none of which are worth being taken up by pets, and having 4/10 slots being taken up by pets is just ridiculous.

steinernein · April 2014

Crescent wrote: »

Yup, still picking and choosing for situations where point blank AoE is beneficial and nowhere else.

The DPS loss comes from the magicka reduction mechanism. Spending a GCD every few seconds, especially when in melee you might have periods of moving out of boss AoE, is hardly a setback. Keep exaggerating about recast's impact on DPS, though.

Do you even play a sorcerer? Your best AE outside of imp is impulse, nothing else matches that and that's PBAE. Run the numbers and try again.

And the only DPS loss comes from fewer casts, not direct damage, and that's mitigated by using things like spell symmetry / pots which boosts your primary nuke. But in the mean time you're still dealing damage every second with a pet out.

You spend 3 GDCs on top of avoiding PBAoEs and also moving in and out of melee combat. Every second you're doing that I am dealing damage, so yeah it adds up on long fights.

Instead of replying, just get Recount and start logging your performance and compare. Your throughput is pretty damn low given your build in any given instance thus far. You do realize that most if not all the dungeons are PBAoE heavy right especially how aggro works? And you do realize that in PvP the current meta is PBAoE heavy as well right?

ahampelb14_ESO · April 2014

good point about the double tap. they need to add a small cooldown to prevent that. maybe 1 or 2 seconds so you dont switch back by accident

Crescent · April 2014

ahampelb14_ESO wrote: »

good point about the double tap. they need to add a small cooldown to prevent that. maybe 1 or 2 seconds so you dont switch back by accident

It takes getting used to, but otherwise you can bind it to a key that makes it harder to mash.

The bigger problem with weaponswap is the server problems themselves causing delay. The instant, no cooldown swap is actually very good when it works.