Command Pet

Shadowshire

There is a key-bind which by default is the < Y > key, for "Command Pet". When I use that key while either or both of my Sorc's familiars are in action (i.e., after they have been summoned), nothing happens. There is no menu of actions from which to select. I have searched through some "guides" and everything that I can find from ZOS, and none of this "documentation" ever mentions the Command Pet feature.

So, what, if anything, does Command Pet do? How does a player use the key-bind to command a familiar to do something? What are the options available (if any)?

yodased

Hold y left click attacks

Hold y right click disengages

AcadianPaladin

I wrestled with the same question for quite some time until I noticed someone with the same question on here and got it figured out.

As yodased said, you hold down the command key while you select your desired target and press attack. Then your pet will go after that target.

Note that a heavy attack will also make your pet engage the target that you heavy attack. So if you command it to attack one target then you heavy attack another, the pet will switch targets.

I've never used the disengage command.

Shadowshire

@yodased @AcadianPaladin

Thank-you for your answers. What I'm wondering now is which familiar will obey the command when two familiars have been summoned, i.e., while both are currently active. I suppose that I must experiment with the feature to find out.

FWIW, I learned how the Twilight Matriarch would behave in combat quite a long time ago, while I was new to the game. After ZOS nerfed the Matriarch's healing feature, and introduced a respective "special ability" for each Winged Twilight morph, I began summoning the Unstable Clanfear for healing instead of the Twilight Matriarch (see Note below). Subsequently, the healing ability of the Twilight Matriarch was increased significantly, so that, on the whole, that morph of the Winged Twilight is a reasonable alternative to the Unstable Clannfear with respect to healing.

The respective "special ability" of the Volatile Familiar and of the Twilight Tormentor increases their DPS. However, each of their respective abilities are used at different times, and according to the context of the specific fight and how it progresses.

How the Unstable Clannfear and the Twilight Matriarch behave in combat appear to follow the same priorities with respect to which foes they will attack, and I don't believe that those have changed. However, I'm still observing the Volatile Familiar and Twilight Tormentor which, so far seem to have the same behavior as their alternative morphs.

(Note: the developer who implemented these changes forgot that pressing the same key bound to summon the familiar dismissed the familiar. The developer changed the design so that pressing the key used to summon the familiar would activate their "special ability" instead, and cluelessly neglected to enable a player to dismiss a familiar after it was summoned. So someone pulled ZOS's ass out of the fire by creating the Dismiss Pet add-on, to enable players to bind keys to dismiss their familiars.)

AcadianPaladin

When you command pet to attack, both pets obey the same command if you have two summoned.

I don't often dismiss my summons but when I do, I bring up the character sheet, go to active effects and right click on a summon to dismiss it. Since I rarely dismiss them, that works find for me.

Shadowshire

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

When you command pet to attack, both pets obey the same command if you have two summoned.

I don't often dismiss my summons but when I do, I bring up the character sheet, go to active effects and right click on a summon to dismiss it. Since I rarely dismiss them, that works find for me.

Thank-you for your reply.

On rare occasions, I have used "the character sheet" to click on a line, which deletes it and whatever effect that line currently had upon the game. It's handy for removing a buff that you don't want your character to continue receiving (usually Rapid Maneuver). Sometimes clicking on the line doesn't do anything. It is also useful to see what effect a Mundus Stone has on your character's stats, but then you have to visit that Mundus Stone to restore it, or another one instead to replace it.

FYI: I have two sorcerers. One uses the Volatile Familiar for DPS and the Twilight Matriarch mostly for healing. The other sorc summons the Unstable Familiar for "tanking" and for healing, and the Twilight Tormentor for DPS.

So far, I have used Y+LMB to direct the Volatile Familiar to attack an NPC on which I had positioned the reticule, instead of the NPC that my character was attacking. I've also used Y+RMB to command the Volatile Familiar to stop attacking a target and return to my character (another player's character was engaged with the target and didn't need Volley's help).

However, the Twilight Matriarch has not changed her target in response to Y+LMB while the Volatile Familiar was in play, if only because she was fighting a mob which attacked her. So, I don't know yet whether using Y+LMB will change her target when the Volatile Familiar has not been summoned, irrespective of the circumstances.

In my prior experience, the attack of the Twilight Matriarch is governed by a set of priorities:

1. She will always immediately engage any mob that attacks her and continue attacking it until either the mob is dead or it moves out of her range (she might chase it).
2. When she has no target, ordinarily she attacks whichever mob that my character attacks (if that mob is in her range) and she continues until either that mob is dead or it moves out of her range.
3. When my character doesn’t have a target at the moment, and nothing is attacking the Twilight Matriarch, she either attacks the nearest sorcerer or archer or, if there isn’t one in range, attacks the mob nearest to her. As always, she continues to attack until either the mob is dead or moves out of her range, or she is killed or dismissed.
4. The Twilight Matriarch stops attacking when I press the summoning key-bind to command her to use her healing ability. If she survives after healing, she resumes according to the situation, as I’ve described above.

In the second and third situations above, I expect that I can use Y+LMB to specify the Twilight Matriarch's target. If she and another familiar are summoned, then I suppose that, as quoted above, both she and the other familiar will attack the same specified target.

However, as described previously, I don't yet know whether Y+LMB will have any effect while the Twilight Matriarch is being attacked. She will always be attacked while in a mob's aggro range unless my character engages the mob first. Sometimes even then that mob will go after the Matriarch when another mob joins the attack on my character.

It is worth noting that the Volatile Familiar and the Unstable Clannfear are independently aggressive. That is, they will attack a hostile mob that is within a certain range regardless of whether the player's character has attacked the mob, or whether the player has used Y+LMB to specify that mob as the familiar's target.

So far, I have not found that the Twilight Tormentor is that aggressive. She has apparently been following the same target priorities which I've listed for the Twilight Matriarch above. Pressing the summoning key-bind simply increases the amount of damage that she does, for 30 seconds, to targets that have more than 50% health.

With regard to healing, in my experience the familiar (Unstable Clannfear or Twilight Matriarch) will heal each and every player character and/or their familiar(s) which are within their healing range. They don't have to be in a formal group, just within proximity. (I doubt that will necessarily be so during PvP, however.) Evidently the Twilight Matriarch applies the same constant amount of healing to each character or NPC that she heals. That is, the amount is not reduced by the number of those who are within range to receive it.