Daedric Summoning AI and Improvements [ideas]

SirMewser

The purpose of these suggestions is to improve pets’ survivability with AI response, commands, and conditional triggers along with some added passive utility, which should have never been replaced by active skills in the first place.

Necropotence is not the answer, using gear to compensate for something else's lack it is a lousy solution and does not fix the pets’ survivability. I do love the set for the whole maxing resource purpose, so the pets are dealing higher numbers, yet, I would rather be using a Nightblade with the shades to proc the set. I get to keep a skill slot while they provide a passive debuff while dealing damage that benefits from the champion system and a free active teleport morph while I don’t have to worry about them being alive/warded (another free slot which for setup diversity) and a cast time.

I’ve done veteran dungeons and trials with pets where they never die, but watching the pets’ behavior is underwhelming as they are unresponsive to many situations where they are not doing anything or are in need of micromanaging.

I do like the idea of micromanaging the pets, however, they output such small numbers, many of the bonuses they receive are less potent and never get used because either the scamp took too much time chasing a target or the winged twilight started using her weaker melee attack and needs you to defend her instead.

For the sake of Cyrodiil:
Force pets to warp to players locations when they exceed more than 30 meters or something. Sometimes they will be a few whole cells over from the players’ location chasing something till you command them to stop or die.

Giving pets 5K more health in pvp (which you took away from them anyways when the veteran system was removed) does not fix anything holistically, just look at how players burn a Daedroth in a split second with 47K+ health.

Let’s not forget their ward was reduced to half the duration so if they are out of range then this skill is probably expired, therefore, rendering empowered ward useless till you are in range of them again.

For the sake of everything else, make pets scale with champion points and stop with the misleading tooltips updates when the pets’ output results are the same (or slightly higher for simply spending mage points for max magic). Please give them back the health pool they had: Currently it does not scale past level 50 to champion 160 as it originally did with veteran 16.

Scamp (Summon Volatile Familiar: Morph of Summon Familiar)

• This pet deals weak damage passively and the fact that it has to be close is gimmicky, the scamp should charge for 3 seconds (can be interrupted): a moving current of electricity at a range of 16 meters every 10 seconds that deals (7.5% max magic) shock damage. This ranged attack has a 1 meter hit box and should also continue through NPC/player collision till it reaches a static object or its’ full range. The facing cardinal of the scamp will change direction to face the primary target till the cast time is over. Yes, don’t be sloppy. This is intended to boost DPS in dungeon and keep players moving in PVP.
• The scamp (if in close range) will deal low shock damage and little utility (hold aggro), this pet needs a passive effect such as granting minor breach for 3 seconds and causes the target to get a static shock animation that deals (.5% max magic) shock damage. This way there is a small bonus damage between the scamp’s 2 second attack intervals if the fight endures while granting a small penalty to the target for staying in melee range of the scamp.
• To improve pets’ responsiveness to being attacked, the scamp should have a 10% chance when taking damage to create a “static ward” on itself for 5 seconds that causes enemies’ to take 5% of the damage dealt when using melee attacks on the pet.
• Make the active skill benefit from Daedric Prey or change Daedric Prey tooltip to say “Pets’ passive attacks…” because this is misleading and silly.

Clannfear (Summon Unstable Clannfear: Morph of Summon Familiar)

• The charged tail swing needs to be an AoE with a lower priority than player taunt for 4 seconds.
• The Clannfear should also aid in crowd control every 12 seconds, charging forward dealing (6% max magic) physical damage that will knock down enemies with a 1.5 second stuns.
• Replace the active ability animation to a red aura and red channel from the pet to the player similar to guard but will heal player and Clannfear for 11.66% health every .5 seconds while granting minor protection for 1.5 seconds. This will make the ability look unique from the twilight matriarch while behaving as a damage mitigation technique that can be timed when necessary. The active ability cost is ridiculously high either way.

Winged Twilight (Summon Twilight Matriarch: Morph of Summon Winged Twilight)

• When a target is close to the Winged Twilight she does a melee attack that is weaker than her ranged lightning bolt, give her a shove that pushes target back by 2 meters after she does two consecutive melee attacks, this way she can follow up with one ranged attack before going melee again while delaying the enemy from attacking multiple times in a row at close range.
• Let her passively heal a player with a channel that she use to have for (1.2% max magic) every second for 3 seconds up to a 8 meter range when a group member is below 20% health once every 30 seconds. This way she might be able to help prevent execution of a player.

Winged Twilight (Summon Twilight Tormentor: Morph of Summon Winged Twilight)

• Let her active ability increase her attack speed to hit every 1 seconds from 2 seconds while dealing 33% damage (down from 50%) to targets with more than 50% health for 12 seconds. This way the active ability is not useless for half the fight and still behaves as a reverse execute.
• Let her passively damage an enemy after she does 2 consecutive melee attacks by knocking the target back by 2 meters and cast a purple channel that deals (2.3% max magic) damage every second while snaring for 40% for 3 seconds up to an 8 meter range, no cooldown.

Daedroth (2nd piece bonus from: Maw of the Infernal boss set acquired from veteran Banished Cells and Undaunted pledge chests)

• ZoS make sure this guy has physical and spell resistance please…
• Set the proc chance to 10% from 5%.
• Set the duration to 20 seconds from 15 seconds.

Storm Atronach (Greater Storm Atronach: Morph of Storm Atronach)

• Have his channeled attack deal (1.4% max magic) shock damage to all enemies within a 6 meter range of the primary target. This will make the player active synergy beneficial to the atronach itself.
• Give him the ground smash that summons the AoE lightning storm from the other morph but have it proc when the atronach receives 3 melee attacks within 5 seconds with a 6 second cooldown and get rid of the other morph of this ability. Give stamina players an air atronach dealing physical or get rid of the atronach skill entirely and throw it into a destruction staff ultimate and let the atronach correspond to the staff type.
• ]With these changes, the storm atronach could promote players to move and spread out in pvp, whereas for PVE, should make him become a decent DPS in crowds and responsive to being swarmed at close range.

Turn pet command button into a menu composed of 4 options similar to the Quick Slots menu.

• “Ignore combat”/follow
• “Attack my target” (turns into “Attack cursed target” if Daedric Prey is slotted).
• o If I am going to use Daedric Prey I want it to be more of a priority than my character to ensure it’s used effectively.
• “Attack freely” (Pets will attack the target attacking them, this is more defensive and those passive melee attacks that I’ve suggested for the Winged Twilight will become most efficient).
• I can’t think of another right now…

Make bound armor do something, I only run it for the max magic, the resistance is useless with damage shields, while it takes up two bars. It should be like magelight; only needs to be on one bar, has two slotting bonuses, an active effect, and a few passive bonuses from the skill line for having slotted and activating the ability.

• Have it summon a weapon that turns your stamina based weapon skills into magic based one or something.
• Why not make it increase heavy attacks like the stamina morph? I would however like something more unique and creative if this were the case.

Daedric Summoning passives need to be about being good to your pets!

• Rebate: I don’t want my pets to die and it’s odd to be rewarded if they do. This should instead be thrown into Daedric Protection since really this is just another recovery but a situational one that is. By situational I am referring to either a mechanic auto unsummoning/killing them because why would I ever want them to be dead?
• Power stone is great despite being somewhat irrelevant to daedric summoning (yay fillers).
• Daedric Protection is fine.
• Expert Summoner: The max health only has one connection with summons and that is the Clannfear’s fixated percent heal, so really this is a tank passive. I don’t want any power creeping bonus to stats since we have gear for that and having broken pets with our champion points makes it less potent, so I think this passive should summon a Banekin for 10 seconds when the player attacks the same target as their summon, it should have very low health but rewarding if it lasts for the duration or gets a kill.

1. Entropic Touch: deals (0.5% max magic) shock damage and sets concussed enemies off balance.
2. Dire Wound: A 2.5 second charge attack that deals (2.6% max magic) shock damage.
3. Envelop: Snare up to 2 targets in front within 4 meters for 2 seconds.
4. During the last 2 seconds of the duration the Banekin will conjure a small 1 meter AoE dealing (0.6% max magic) shock damage every 0.5 seconds before banishing back to Oblivion.
5. If the Banekin gets a kill, it will spawn a 1 meter AoE with a little floating blue orb as the animation then it dies/times out, when picked up (by anyone) within a 5 second frame will restores 1.7K max magic (at champion 160).

Two dungeon bugs with pets:

• Imperial City Prison: after killing all 4 Xivkyn necromancers during the Gravelight Sentry boss, pets will automatically unsummon every 3 seconds.
• Ruins of Mazzatun: Final boss, when destroying the statues when given the abilities to, pets are removed from skill set forcing a sorc pet build to turn back on all of his/her toggles. I get that the player should be using the skill to destroy the statues, however, have them face a consequence for not doing it and just giving the player one replaced skill should suffice.
  

What do you guys think? I feel like if this isn't enough to combat the AI of the pets, it might at least be a good start.

Sumpfheini

Pets are useless since release...won't change. ZOS would need to completely change their underlying mechanics which is way too much effort for them. Sadly they also do not consider just replacing them.

hrothbern

Sumpfheini wrote: »

Pets are useless since release...won't change. ZOS would need to completely change their underlying mechanics which is way too much effort for them. Sadly they also do not consider just replacing them.

I think that replacing the pets would be a loss of diversity for the game

How to improve the pets for "normal" pet builds, WITHOUT creating OP effects for some niche pet builds for certain game situations, is I think quite some challenge.
But doable !

I saw a post somewhere stating that ZOS was working on further improvement
Let's wait and see

GrumpyDuckling

hrothbern wrote: »

Sumpfheini wrote: »

Pets are useless since release...won't change. ZOS would need to completely change their underlying mechanics which is way too much effort for them. Sadly they also do not consider just replacing them.

I think that replacing the pets would be a loss of diversity for the game

How to improve the pets for "normal" pet builds, WITHOUT creating OP effects for some niche pet builds for certain game situations, is I think quite some challenge.
But doable !

I saw a post somewhere stating that ZOS was working on further improvement
Let's wait and see

"I saw a post somewhere stating that ZOS was working on further improvement."

Was the post you saw by ZOS?

Aedaryl

Just add in passive Something like :

Increase max magicka and magicka recovery by 3% per pet active.

Make pets needed on one bar or add passives like

Volatile pet' AoE also snare ennemies by 40% for 4sec

Twilight Matriach give you minor mending or minor breach

hrothbern

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

hrothbern wrote: »

Sumpfheini wrote: »

Pets are useless since release...won't change. ZOS would need to completely change their underlying mechanics which is way too much effort for them. Sadly they also do not consider just replacing them.

I think that replacing the pets would be a loss of diversity for the game

How to improve the pets for "normal" pet builds, WITHOUT creating OP effects for some niche pet builds for certain game situations, is I think quite some challenge.
But doable !

I saw a post somewhere stating that ZOS was working on further improvement
Let's wait and see

"I saw a post somewhere stating that ZOS was working on further improvement."

Was the post you saw by ZOS?

not by ZOS

Mentioned in this post on the updated Necropotence set:
IF I understand this wrong @Alcast , please correct me.

Alcast wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

It's because they believe, that this set finally makes pet builds viable.
But then they realize, that it only offers ~1500 more magicka than the V12 version and that is mainly due to the possibility to add max level enchants and infused and divine.

The 5 piece set bonus is actually even weaker in some situations.
Anyway, this set does not make any noticeable difference to what it was before. Pet builds aren't any better now.

But.... I saw the Update 12 monster sets. There is something for summoners.

PVE Wise Petbuild are viable, one or even 2 ppl in my guild are running a pet build actually(Not that the pet makes a ton of difference tho). There is improvement possible ofc, ZOS is aware of some issues and they are working on it, no ETA tho.

Memnock

We have 1 tree with with skills that have to be slotted on both bars to be effective. This is the biggest problem with the entire Daedric summoning tree , at least from my point of view. Unstable familiar , whinged twilight and bound armor.

To be honest, pets in this game, no matter what small changes you try , still won't be a viable thing unless the character of each pet can be developed a bit further and by this i mean , each pet should have their own command bar , with a skill set and with full control commands ( stay , attack , follow , stuff like that ) , but with the limited amount of keys that the game has , this is impossible.

My suggestion would be to replace the pets entirely with skills that are beneficial or the caster or harmful for the enemy and since no skill in the game utilizes the ice element , other than the staff skills, how about :

Ice Shards : blast the enemies in front of you up to 20 meters away with a constant stream of icicles for 2 seconds with maybe some sort of debuff for the duration + maybe 3 seconds after the channel , something line "Frost byte" - targets affected by this debuff , will have their physical resistance reduced by X amount.

As for the second one , how about we get a class aoe based on the frost damage element ? Lets name it : Cold Rage and it acts like this : The character looks like an ice sculpture and Spikes of ice come from him in all directions , affecting targets in a 6 meter radios.

I have no ideas for morphs yet , but i am sure that the zenimax guys can come up with some cool stuff.

As for the Bound armor thing... Some people suggested that this should be made into a single target spam skill for us sorcs, since we are the only class that so heavily relies on weapons for these skills , so... yeah , i agree with that thing.
Basically the suggestion that was running around the forums was to keep the passives that the skill has , but on top of that add a dmg component on activation , one for stam and one for magicka. The only addendum would be that they should have some Ice related animations , to keep with the there

SirMewser

@Memnock
You're right, it really comes down to that one skill line being full of skills that are required to be on both bars.
I would really rather have Daedric Summoning thrown into a world skill line so conjuration is still a thing in this game and just give sorcs a cryomancer skill set for sure.

SunBro

Pet classes are fun. One way I could see it becoming more viable in ESO is having pets act like overload where you gain access to a third bar and skill set specific to your summon. When you activate your pet you go to that bar. When you weapon swap you go back to your main bar and secondary when you swap again. When you want to go back to your pet bar you hit the skill button your pet is assigned to to gain access to it instead of it doing a heal. I feel like this would work and let us issue commands to the pets giving us more control and making it more enjoyable

Memnock

SunBro wrote: »

Pet classes are fun. One way I could see it becoming more viable in ESO is having pets act like overload where you gain access to a third bar and skill set specific to your summon. When you activate your pet you go to that bar. When you weapon swap you go back to your main bar and secondary when you swap again. When you want to go back to your pet bar you hit the skill button your pet is assigned to to gain access to it instead of it doing a heal. I feel like this would work and let us issue commands to the pets giving us more control and making it more enjoyable

Your suggestion is kind of interesting , but it would still not work, at least from my point of view, due to it being just a switch of roles. By this i mean, that if a 3rd bar appears , with pet related stuff , then you would effectively changing your character's role to the NPC , instead of the pet. You use and control him , instead of your own actions on one bar , and have to change to another bar to get back to your own thing , which would just give time to enemies to kill you.

In any other game with classes that have pets , the pet itself has its own dedicated action bar , they act as set of complimentary skills to the player. Warlocks and DKs in WoW have 1 active pet at a time , which have their own set of moves that are designed as an addition to the class itself , for instance warlocks use fellhunters to silence other classes , but at the exact same time , the warlock itself can do its own thing.

As far as i can see , unless this works the same or at least close to this , permanent pets without in depth control are almost useless. The only way to keep the pets of sorc , is to make them into spells.

By this i mean , you active a certain skill that has a certain effect and the pet goes to your target and does his own thing , but the summon itself being a secondary effect of the primary skill.

Another example where behave the same as i mentioned above is AION , The spirit master class , has pets as well , but its one at a time , with their own dedicated action bar , in parallel to that of the class , so the player can control both, and the pet providing complimentary skills and utilities to the class.

As @SirMewser mentioned, maybe keep the pets in the game , but make it a skill line accessible to all and provide the sorc with a new skill set as their 3rd skill line and it seems that my ideas for an ICE themed skill set is something that is shared by others

SirMewser

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/50w3jf/data_mining_three_new_skills/?sort=new
Data mined information on "3 new skills"
"I have datamined three new skills in the latest PTS update:
Winter's Embrace
Green Balance
Animal Companions
No additional info yet, only names. Maybe a new class?"

If this is true, do you think ZoS would dare to make more pets with the way Daedric Summoning is? I would be surprised.
Maybe they already had them because this appears to be the scapped warden class from beta.