Conjured Pet Reworks

The_Titan_Tim

As the title suggests, I am of the mindset that pets in ESO need a rework. Here are my thoughts, and potential solution to the problem.

Sorcerer:
For far too long, Sorcerer pets have been much too demanding with very little payout. You never see them in PvP, they do very little damage, and require you to double bar them, this doesn’t work.

Nightblade:
Summon Shade… this ability and its morphs deal nowhere enough damage to be used in PvP, where the Shadow Image is over performing with very little counterplay as a MagBlade can just keep teleporting.

Necromancer:
When was the last time anyone has seen Skeletal Mage or any of its morphs in PvP? This ability does way too little damage, as undead minions are iconic to the class, this ability should be a staple.

What I propose as a solution to these problems, is that Sorcerer pets get a duration and require only one slot to remain active as Skeletal Mage and Shade do, while those two abilities just mentioned receive cast times and health bars like the Sorcerer pets have.

These changes would add more conditions to these pets, enabling the abilities to do much more damage and result in an influx of pets onto the PvP scene whereas they are currently very niche on Nightblade and Sorcerer and non-existent on Necromancer.

Now for counterplay; this would result in adding a risk/reward functionality to them, as they can now take damage and expire before their timers are up like prior TES games, while also counting as more targets for abilities like Lacerate, Magicka Detonation, and Shock Impulse, and for sets like Plaguebreak and Dark Convergence.

Overall, I think this would be an incredible change, if you agree, be sure to let me know, and if not, how do we make this better?

phaneub17_ESO

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/618136/

The_Titan_Tim

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/618136/

Thanks for the link, that discussion only covered about one third of the changes that I believe would fix the problem, and the duration of the pets mentioned is too long. I’m talking about following the rules set by the other abilities, taking those values then moving them.

acastanza_ESO

Sorcerer pets do need to be made one-bar-able, but they do not need a duration added unless the cast time is completely removed as well.
Even then, they only do meaningful damage if you're also keeping up Daedric prey, so I would push back on the need for a duration at all.

Adding a duration with also only further nerf Sorc's only decent burst heal - Matriarch. Which is already a garbage skill that runs off and gets itself killed constantly because of the terrible AI (if it hasn't already been focused down first by any competent player).

I can't really speak to the suggested changes for Nightblade and Necro, but putting more micromanagement into the Sorc pets is not what they need.

The_Titan_Tim

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Sorcerer pets do need to be made one-bar-able, but they do not need a duration added unless the cast time is completely removed as well.
Even then, they only do meaningful damage if you're also keeping up Daedric prey, so I would push back on the need for a duration at all.

My idea of adding a duration would allow more damage to those same Sorcerer pets that aren’t performing.

The pattern I’ve seen with buffs done to active abilities, is that they usually come at a cost in the name of balance. This new cost would be insignificant, if the pet lasts 20-30 seconds, that would be highly manageable.

Pets won’t just do more damage… that would break the game because of Daedric Prey, and the pet sets in the game, there would have to be a trade off. Why Sorc pets perform slightly better than the other two, is because they can be killed.

Currently these abilities are considered free damage, you slot them and forget them, what I mean by that, is that you cast it and never have to cast it again until it dies and as it is right now; they aren’t worth taking out in PvP unless a healer has the Twilight.

Pelanora

I get the whole familiars thing, with sorcerers, but if they don't do a total redesign of what they are and how they look, and a nix to anything flapping, id rather they ditched them altogether.

Merlin never used a familiar.

Turtle_Bot

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Sorcerer pets do need to be made one-bar-able, but they do not need a duration added unless the cast time is completely removed as well.
Even then, they only do meaningful damage if you're also keeping up Daedric prey, so I would push back on the need for a duration at all.

My idea of adding a duration would allow more damage to those same Sorcerer pets that aren’t performing.

The pattern I’ve seen with buffs done to active abilities, is that they usually come at a cost in the name of balance. This new cost would be insignificant, if the pet lasts 20-30 seconds, that would be highly manageable.

Pets won’t just do more damage… that would break the game because of Daedric Prey, and the pet sets in the game, there would have to be a trade off. Why Sorc pets perform slightly better than the other two, is because they can be killed.

Currently these abilities are considered free damage, you slot them and forget them, what I mean by that, is that you cast it and never have to cast it again until it dies and as it is right now; they aren’t worth taking out in PvP unless a healer has the Twilight.

Sorcerer pets need a complete rework. It's not that they lack damage, since pet builds are currently the strongest pve build for sorcerer dps (even stam sorc runs pets + prey). Like everything else about the sorcerer kit though, they are far too unreliable for pvp.
1. They die far too easily.
2. They are entirely reliant on a 6 second, single target, cleansable debuff, that cannot be on multiple targets at the same time, to deal meaningful damage which makes them clunky to use as DoTs, especially in pvp where cleanses are prevalent.
3. Tying in with the first point, their abysmal AI only makes their longevity/survivability even worse.

To fix the pets, a few things need to happen.

1. Remove the required survival tool (the instant burst self-heal) from the pets and transfer it to another ability (ideally to dark deal/dark conversion, make those abilities instant cast and bring their values up to be in line with other class's burst heals).
2. Make them into 1 bar abilities that act like DoTs (or HoTs) with a duration that allows them to supplement the sorcerers existing kit instead of forcing sorcerer into using the pets only.
3. Make them untargetable.
4. make them instant cast to summon them.
5. Balance them out for their new DoT/HoT standards.

Since they are no longer targetable, give them a duration, but make it a fairly lengthy duration of say 25 seconds so it isn't super hard or clunky to have a higher up time. I would also improve their base damage (or heal over time) to make them less reliant on prey (or if they are a HoT, make them equal to other HoT abilities). This would allow for prey to be reduced back to a more sensible 20% increase from its current 45% increase.

As for shade, not sure what to do here, the utility provided by shadow image is far too strong to be matched by anything they could give to shade that wouldn't be completely gamebreaking.

For necro, the archer could definitely do with a small buff to damage, got to be careful with mender though and would only look into the tiniest of buffs here, no-one should ever want the return of the intensive mender meta where that thing provided a free up to 18k tool tip (9ish k actual heal after battle spirit) burst heal every 2 seconds that made necros literally immortal from just that 1 skill alone.

The_Titan_Tim

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Sorcerer pets need a complete rework. It's not that they lack damage, since pet builds are currently the strongest pve build for sorcerer dps (even stam sorc runs pets + prey). Like everything else about the sorcerer kit though, they are far too unreliable for pvp.
1. They die far too easily.
2. They are entirely reliant on a 6 second, single target, cleansable debuff, that cannot be on multiple targets at the same time, to deal meaningful damage which makes them clunky to use as DoTs, especially in pvp where cleanses are prevalent.
3. Tying in with the first point, their abysmal AI only makes their longevity/survivability even worse.

To fix the pets, a few things need to happen.

1. Remove the required survival tool (the instant burst self-heal) from the pets and transfer it to another ability (ideally to dark deal/dark conversion, make those abilities instant cast and bring their values up to be in line with other class's burst heals).
2. Make them into 1 bar abilities that act like DoTs (or HoTs) with a duration that allows them to supplement the sorcerers existing kit instead of forcing sorcerer into using the pets only.
3. Make them untargetable.
4. make them instant cast to summon them.
5. Balance them out for their new DoT/HoT standards.

Since they are no longer targetable, give them a duration, but make it a fairly lengthy duration of say 25 seconds so it isn't super hard or clunky to have a higher up time. I would also improve their base damage (or heal over time) to make them less reliant on prey (or if they are a HoT, make them equal to other HoT abilities). This would allow for prey to be reduced back to a more sensible 20% increase from its current 45% increase.

As for shade, not sure what to do here, the utility provided by shadow image is far too strong to be matched by anything they could give to shade that wouldn't be completely gamebreaking.

For necro, the archer could definitely do with a small buff to damage, got to be careful with mender though and would only look into the tiniest of buffs here, no-one should ever want the return of the intensive mender meta where that thing provided a free up to 18k tool tip (9ish k actual heal after battle spirit) burst heal every 2 seconds that made necros literally immortal from just that 1 skill alone.

These changes would be incredible, the AI for these pets could get an update with the Overland update everyone’s raving about, if they update those AI, it would be easy for them to tune the pets in the process.

My remedy to Shadow Image would be a health bar, that way if a Nightblade is just jumping around constantly, you can kill the shade; in effect, shutting it down. The other morph does next to no damage in PvP which is why you will never see it, the other Nightblade abilities just give way too much, it needs a big damage spike; the class doesn’t have Daedric Prey, and nobody is going to run the Ritualist or Necropotence on a Nightblade, at least not until max stats matter again.

A nerf to Daedric Prey would be necessary if Sorc pets got more damage as you mentioned, and yeah I’m aware of Sorc pet builds in PvE easy-moding through content. My vision isn’t just more damage for pets, I mean a LOT more damage from pets. Killing off a pet should be a strategic move. Currently they are too easy to kill without giving anything in return, if they actually hurt other players, people would consider running more off-heals to keep their pets alive. And the cast time would be non-negotiable with health bars in play, as someone would just instantly resummon their pet unless they increased the costs of the them to around that or something like Purge or Time Stop which I don’t think anyone wants.

As far as Necromancer, I believe the Devs have already played around with giving the Wraith a health bar but it negatively effected PvE tanking somehow. I would find a way for it to work, the wraith doesn’t need more healing, they could have Spirit Guardian pulse an AoE heal to compensate for the added health bar, making it also usable by healers in the process. Leaving us with Skeletal Mage, simply having this ability hit harder would solve the problems with it, like Shade. But to do so, I don’t see any other way, than either reducing the duration, drastically increasing the cost, or adding a health bar and making that pet act similar to the other summons in the game. And a health bar would be less detrimental than all of the other options, while also homogenizing all the pets under a similar system for future introductions to be balanced and performing on entry.

Turtle_Bot

My remedy to Shadow Image would be a health bar, that way if a Nightblade is just jumping around constantly, you can kill the shade; in effect, shutting it down. The other morph does next to no damage in PvP which is why you will never see it, the other Nightblade abilities just give way too much, it needs a big damage spike; the class doesn’t have Daedric Prey, and nobody is going to run the Ritualist or Necropotence on a Nightblade, at least not until max stats matter again.

My only thing about shade is that it works vertically, horizontally and completely ignores pathing and LoS, so to try and balance the utility it provides would require a lot more than simply giving it a health bar (although that is a good short term band aid). Players can get very creative about where they place their shade in a safe spot to escape and kite enemies.

A nerf to Daedric Prey would be necessary if Sorc pets got more damage as you mentioned, and yeah I’m aware of Sorc pet builds in PvE easy-moding through content. My vision isn’t just more damage for pets, I mean a LOT more damage from pets. Killing off a pet should be a strategic move. Currently they are too easy to kill without giving anything in return, if they actually hurt other players, people would consider running more off-heals to keep their pets alive. And the cast time would be non-negotiable with health bars in play, as someone would just instantly resummon their pet unless they increased the costs of the them to around that or something like Purge or Time Stop which I don’t think anyone wants.

I can get behind these changes as long as what I mentioned above is also done. Key survival tools need to be removed from the pets before something like this is done. The issue with sorc pets (outside of double barring, being super squishy and a lack of damage in pvp) is that if the pets are dead, the sorc is also very likely dead too. This will only be exacerbated even further if the pets are made into even more of a priority target than they already are.

As far as Necromancer, I believe the Devs have already played around with giving the Wraith a health bar but it negatively effected PvE tanking somehow. I would find a way for it to work, the wraith doesn’t need more healing, they could have Spirit Guardian pulse an AoE heal to compensate for the added health bar, making it also usable by healers in the process. Leaving us with Skeletal Mage, simply having this ability hit harder would solve the problems with it, like Shade. But to do so, I don’t see any other way, than either reducing the duration, drastically increasing the cost, or adding a health bar and making that pet act similar to the other summons in the game. And a health bar would be less detrimental than all of the other options, while also homogenizing all the pets under a similar system for future introductions to be balanced and performing on entry.

For the mender (wraith), it feels fine as it is, it provides a unique 10% mitigation and some passive healing while its alive which works very nice to supplement the strong necro defensive kit, so I don't think this ability needs a rework. The archer/mage could use a slight damage buff though.

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of giving pets health bars (far too many people are already complaining about "sorc pets (and engine guardian monster set) being meat shields" even though we have tab-targeting to work around this), so I'd rather they went the opposite direction and made all of the pets more like summonable buffs similar to how the necro pets, shade and netch all work currently.
This way they can still provide their unique playstyle where they are still summons with long durations and their own buffs/debuffs/builds/sets, but they will no longer need to be double barred and won't mess with targeting which affects both pve and pvp.

Dr_Con

Sorc pets need an extra ability slot, or they need to not go away when single-bar swapping immediately (give it 10-20s?)

Necro needs a mage/wraith morph that does fires a beam that does increasing damage the longer it focuses on something, maxxing out after a certain number of seconds and maybe even resetting. think of it like a jesus beam/heavy attack combined.

Warden is in the same boat as sorc but it really points out the silliness of their ults. So far as instantly-identifiable ults, sorcs get negate field, necros get collossus/rez, templars get comet/channeled heal, DKs get leeroy jenkins dive/standard, NBs get something to help assassinate, wardens get a *** bear? Maybe an overhaul while putting them on a different ability slot would be good for the class.

Zodiarkslayer

1. All pets should be timed summons and not be targetable by enemies.
2. All those little exceptions for pets made left, right, front and centre on all relevant classes are just too confusing.
3. Dragonknights and Templars should get at least one, too.
4. If the devs could balance around that principle, it would make the entire game much more consistant and consecutive balancing efforts much simpler.

CameraBeardThePirate

1) Revert the stealth nerf to Archer and Arcanist - no reason they should've gotten a 50% nerf at all, especially since they don't even count as DoTs like they should.

2) Allow necro pets (Archer, Arcanist, and the blastbones summoned by the ultimate) to be commandable by the Command Pets keybind - All 3 of these cases have horrible targeting, and despite the descriptions stating that they'll target the closest enemy these pets will often bug out and not attack anything for a few seconds (or expire completely without targeting anyone in the case of the Animate Blastbones ultimate).

3) Maybe a hot take, but just scrap the double bar nature of sorc pets. You could make them have a fairly long duration as a tradeoff. They'd likely need to be adjusted a bit in terms of how they function, since both have an extra activation after they're summoned. The Warden Bear Ultimate could be changed but this one's a little less necessary in my opinion.

4) None of the pets should be targetable, especially Engine Guardian. No reason this set should give more defensive power just because of bad targeting than other actual dedicated defensive sets.

The_Titan_Tim

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

1. All pets should be timed summons and not be targetable by enemies…

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

4) None of the pets should be targetable, especially Engine Guardian. No reason this set should give more defensive power just because of bad targeting than other actual dedicated defensive sets.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of giving pets health bars (far too many people are already complaining about "sorc pets (and engine guardian monster set) being meat shields" even though we have tab-targeting to work around this)...

I’m noticing that a lot of the comments on here are in favor of removing targeting of pets; although I understand the irritations of wasting your single target ultimate on a pet, I do find that having health and being targetable are one of the major defining characteristics of a pet that separate the ability from long duration weak damage-over-time ability.

One potential solution to these pets accidentally eating an ultimate could be a more accessible, easier to use tab-target system, as to tab-target on console, it is a nightmare, you have to hold one of your sticks in, which is extremely difficult while having a moving opponent running around you with the current movement speed where it’s at in the game.

Why I favor health bars over a drastic increase in cost, or longer cast time to compensate for the massive damage increase that is necessary for these pets to function, is that it creates a counterplay for non-pet users, I would also be in favor, if pets were given the massive damage overhaul that they need, of removal of the Daedric Prey pet damage buff bandaid fix that was implemented, and of converting the secondary abilities of Sorc pets into secondary effects that the pet would occasionally do, or moving the secondary abilities to other non-pet related Sorcerer abilities that do far too little currently.

Giving a lot more damage to pets would make people really consider running them on their builds, presuming they were one-bar duration slot tables, and having all summons retain a health bar would continue the current counterplay that we see when combating Sorcerer healers while keeping true to your summons actually being summons instead of just additional damage-over-time.

Zodiarkslayer

I would reduce pets to being just DoTs witb unique visuals.
I really do not like how they work right now, especially how different they are per class.

FlipFlopFrog

I really think pets could benefit from having their own unique 'companions' style system. From there you could customize everything about your pet, from what role the pet performs (healer, damage, tank) to what appearance or 'skin' it uses. It would definitely breathe some life into an other wise glorified DoT with flashy effects.

The_Titan_Tim

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

I really think pets could benefit from having their own unique 'companions' style system. From there you could customize everything about your pet, from what role the pet performs (healer, damage, tank) to what appearance or 'skin' it uses. It would definitely breathe some life into an other wise glorified DoT with flashy effects.

That would be great, they could also pull from the hundreds of other Conjuration spells that exist in prior games to have a summon for every need people have, under an entirely new Conjuration skill line.