Sorcerer Pets dying in Endless Archive

RandomUser123

Can you make it so my actual player friends don't die, too?

Ragged_Claw

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Are the pets viable in Arc 1 at least? I'm not planning to progress any further, but if my flappy dies every 3 seconds in Arc 1 it's a no-go for me. I had no major issues with them in BN.

Up to a point my twilight was ok, but then I got a trial boss and she was just dead all the time. I found myself having to watch her health and keep healing only for her to die anyway. I managed to clear it, but it was a pita.

RoseVex

i found using Hardened ward helped me a lot with my pets

ZhuJiuyin

Here we can see that even if Sorc just finds a bug, he will be ridiculed and slandered by other classes players.
However, this seems to be in line with the official policy (no response to Sorc player feedback), implying that if you give up Sorc, you get everything.

virtus753

Galeriano wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

Pets die in solo arenas. Same goes for maesltrom and vateshran. It's intentional design.

they actually made pet's immune to a bunch of mechanics in the solo arena's like the poison flowers in vMA because they won't move out of AOE's and just die.

Kinda the exception that proves the rule. Pets by design take damage in solo and overland content.

When I did EA last night with my partner, it was not solo content of any kind.

Have they programmed EA to respect group rules when done as a group? (Genuine question - our classes didn’t have pets.) The game can certainly differentiate, or else we would not get solo and non-solo leaderboards. If it isn’t following group rules when we’re running it as group content, that’s a problem.

Soarora

virtus753 wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

Galeriano wrote: »

Pets die in solo arenas. Same goes for maesltrom and vateshran. It's intentional design.

they actually made pet's immune to a bunch of mechanics in the solo arena's like the poison flowers in vMA because they won't move out of AOE's and just die.

Kinda the exception that proves the rule. Pets by design take damage in solo and overland content.

When I did EA last night with my partner, it was not solo content of any kind.

Have they programmed EA to respect group rules when done as a group? (Genuine question - our classes didn’t have pets.) The game can certainly differentiate, or else we would not get solo and non-solo leaderboards. If it isn’t following group rules when we’re running it as group content, that’s a problem.

The only time pets should be dying is PvP. There is no reason for pets to die in PvE when sorc and warden are both dependent on their pets.

Auldwulfe

Is ok, I died once, despite healing, because it decided to delay the heal until after I was dead - and while I was still in respawn ghost state, I got a message saying I had lost a second thread .... I guess they can kill you while you are already dead?
And then, as soon as I was solid, I was blasted off the platform, from the center, flying all the way over, and then, off the ledge.......

So, lost 3 lives in about 30 seconds, first death, because I healed, it flashed, I died, and then my hit point bar flashed red, healed, and then dropped to zero -- then, I randomly died, while dead... and they, I because the game thought I was twice over dead, decided I was an angel flying away.... oh wait, there is no flight in this game... so dropped off into oblivion you go.

Auldwulfe

The_Boggart

Don't use a pet, slot dark exchange, this gives an extra slot on back bar

Varana

Great suggestion! Because as a tank, being unable to block while using your emergency heal is a very wise idea.

Nebs

I figured I'd share the sentiment someone mentioned about the Warden bear being fine until Tho'at. The bear then almost immediately dies as soon as it's summoned. There's nothing to manage in that fight against Tho'at, the AoE's splashed at her feet are literally just a pet and companion slayer. They can't deal any damage in melee without dying. It's really dull.

Tannus15

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin Another thread pointing out these long standing issues with sorcerer and the constant changes over the past half decade that has forced sorcerers into using their pets (removing the option for those players to "play the class as they want").

Can we please get a real explanation (and no more "time to bake" excuses) as to why it is apparently ok for one class to be forced to be entirely dependent on such easily removed outdated summons with their significant downsides as their only modern defense option (healing) and sustained damage pressure (sticky damage over time), yet the other classes get to freely slot multiple other abilities that perform just as good as the pets do while taking the same number of bar slots and don't have anywhere near the massive downsides that the pets have.

It's long overdue for sorcerers to be looked at as a class and freed up from their pets. The class is clearly severely lacking in everything when it comes to trying to run it without the pets and when the class does run pets in content where the pets can actually be killed (PvP and now EA) because the pets don't have their developer inserted god-mode stop-gap solution, the pets are just not good enough from a gameplay perspective to warrant their current multiple significant downsides of:
- long summon times (2 global cooldowns).
- inability to proc sets/secondary effects of abilities.
- taking up 2 bar slots each.
- on top of the downside of them being easily killable.

This has been a long standing issue with sorcerer, ever since Summerset when overloads third bar was removed (this deleted an extreme amount of utility access that was never given back to the class at all ever since then) and almost everything for the class was forced into the 2 pets and it needs addressing.

No more "Time to Bake", this issue has "baked" for so long now that it is nothing but burnt ash and charcoal.

The results have been in for a long time, the class is significantly behind ALL other classes when it cannot use its pets, which are only being made viable by a forced stop-gap solution that is not applied everywhere across all content.

It is time to fix this and allow sorcerers the option of attempting to keep up with the other classes in actual content (not just dummy parsing) and have viable modern defensive options for themselves without being forced to run pets that many players have issues with (including medical issues which required direct intervention via implementation of toggle options to disable pets from being seen in populated areas) and that were (and still are) also balanced around outdated 2018 ESO combat balance designs while every other class has long since moved on from those same balances.

The issues with the current state of communication regarding the many various different concerns and issues being raised about the class:

If this is already in the works, then at least a brief statement addressing the growing concerns and issues players are having with the class is definitely warranted, if not long overdue.
Even if it cannot go into detail, a simple communication such as:
"We are working on changes to the Sorcerer class to bring it more into line with where the balance changes/updates for the rest of the classes that will hopefully address the many concerns raised with healing and being forced into using pets, among others. However, due to how involved it is with addressing these concerns without causing more balance issues, it is taking us longer than expected to find a suitable solution."

But, if it is not being looked into, then an explanation as to why the team feels that sorcerers current state is acceptable despite how many varied issues a significant (and growing) number of players have with the state of the class is warranted.

Because as it stands right now, with there being no communication responding to the many, many threads regarding sorcerer and the various different issues being raised about the class, it is only serving to reinforce the feeling that the class is either being ignored or worse, that the team is hoping that sorcerer players will simply just "give up and go away". Hardly a good look for a class that used to be the most popular class among players based on ZOS's own data (coincidently this was also back when the class had options to choose from that could keep up with other classes outside of just pets).
{/spoiler]

@ZOS_Kevin Can you please try and get any sort of response from the combat team on this?

I don't feel that this is an unreasonable request. We keep getting told things are happening with Sorcs in dev comments update after update and then what we get is a bug fix for frags or minor berserk added to dark conversion.

Literally none of the concerns raised by Sorcs are looked at and the changes we get a extremely minor.

peacenote

Tannus15 wrote: »

I don't feel that this is an unreasonable request.

I agree. Speaking especially as a player who happens to enjoy pet builds and actively wouldn't want to switch to a non pet build just for this.

It does seem like, based on the rules in the game overall, that this was an oversight.

RandomUser123 wrote: »

Can you make it so my actual player friends don't die, too?

While I know this is somewhat of a joke/sarcasm, I will also logically respond by saying that this is not an equivalent suggestion. Player friends have 12 different abilities they can use to survive and mitigate damage, plus they are independently picking up the verses/buffs.

Pets are, when it comes down to it, fancy abilities. For example, the volatile familiar is basically just a low maintenance dot with stun that can be activated. It's not that much different than, say, a Nightblade's Merciless Resolve or a Templar's Repentance or any other "while slotted" abilities, except that those abilities aren't subject to being disrupted by anything except player death. So if classes with pets essentially can't use some of their abilities in the Endless Archive, it's a harsh and unnecessary situation that is unfair to those classes.

Whereas immunity to one player in a duo in the Endless Archive would be giving players a workaround to the thread/death limitation, and a free rez bot.

DizzyMac

its not just in EA. pets die from next to nothing now.. the end of the Sorc is here

Paralyse

Originally Sorc pets were immune to all AoE damage in PvE, I do not know why that is not still the case. They could be damaged only by single target attacks.

Note that one change that is affecting us is that Sorc pets are no longer able to receive the benefit of passive or proc-based damage shield effects after u40. Sets and items which used to apply damage shields to both us and our pets now only apply damage shields to the player.

That being said, I noticed when running EA that after every couple of stages, usually after taking the portal, my pets would randomly despawn despite not being in combat. I also had a couple of instances where my pets would quite literally disappear in the middle of a fight -- not due to damage, but more like they were suddenly removed from existence.

The twilight mother's active cooldown is one of Sorc's key cooldowns for emergency healing. Being unable to rely on that burst heal is problematic for some solo builds, and you can't rely on it when your pet is dead all the time or randomly disappears mid-fight. I don't really want to be forced to waste a slot on Vigor just because my pet self-heal is unreliable.

Jaimeh

Ironically, there is a vision that increases pet damage, you know, for the whole 5 seconds the pet is alive

Turtle_Bot

Jaimeh wrote: »

Ironically, there is a vision that increases pet damage, you know, for the whole 5 seconds the pet is alive

lmao, oh the irony of this

ApoAlaia

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that they 'fixed' pets stealing buffs - like Pillager procs for instance. Maybe something else got 'touched' that makes them weaker?

I seem to be re-summoning them more often in situations where I wouldn't have to before (like dragons or harrowstorms).

Trejgon

ESO_player123 wrote: »

(Are companions allowed in Maelstrom?? I cannot remember).

No, they are not. Neither Are they in Vateshran.

Companions do count as party members, and are barred from entering "solo" stuff. (didn't try them in solo stages of vanilla story)

phaneub17_ESO

Trejgon wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

(Are companions allowed in Maelstrom?? I cannot remember).

No, they are not. Neither Are they in Vateshran.

Companions do count as party members, and are barred from entering "solo" stuff. (didn't try them in solo stages of vanilla story)

Companions do follow you into the solo story quest areas like the Vestige, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild. They still get one shot by Molag Bal because you have the super amulet powers and they do not.

licenturion

Same problem. I have a 2 pets built that I used for years everywhere without issue.

But now my pets get constantly oneshotted very early on, and my magika is drained by all the resummoning.

I like my built and I will revisit Endless Archives after a patch or two hoping this gets resolved.

Four_Fingers

My Necromancer would like to have a word with all you Sorcs about pets dying.

jaws343

Four_Fingers wrote: »

My Necromancer would like to have a word with all you Sorcs about pets dying.

Your necromancer has single barred temporary pets that cannot be killed in PVE and last their full duration. Also no cast times, no chance of being stunned and prevented from using the skills while casting them, no healing micromanagement of them, no positioning problems, etc. Not even remotely the same thing and most Sorcs would love if their pets worked the same or similar to necro pet.

Four_Fingers

And we would love Sorc pets to be illegal in cities like Necro.

virtus753

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

Ironically, there is a vision that increases pet damage, you know, for the whole 5 seconds the pet is alive

lmao, oh the irony of this

It's even more ironic when offered to a class that has no pets. #smartloot

katorga

My experience so far, don't use sorc/warden pets. You waste time/resources keeping them alive in early arcs, but eventually they just get oneshot no matter what you do. They don't do enough damage to justify using. The same with Companions. Pretty quickly tank companions just can't keep up with the damage. Better to use a DD/Healer in medium with Vanish.

Building lower dps, higher resistances and passive healing seems to work best for me.

MashmalloMan

BloodyStigmata wrote: »

I want to say that it makes sense that they can be damaged and that managing them is part of the tradeoff of having 2 on demand passive damage sources with you.

....but you have to have them slotted on both bars, and if you were any other class you could slot 3 DoT's and a self-heal instead and those would actually function when you need them to and not randomly die.

You had me in the first half like ...

adamsmith42

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno Can we please get a comment on this issue? It's really frustrating a lot of players... for instance, the leader of one of my guilds has one character that he plays, a Sorc.. he's a *great* player, he's DPS'd, healed and tanked every dlc dungeon trifecta in the game on that character; but when we go into EA it's quickly a struggle session because he has no reliable/effective source of self-heals when his clanfear insta-dies from arc 3 boss onwards, I really just don't understand why EA is setup to make Sorcs not viable when you already have rules in place to make pets immune to damage in all other group PVE content.

Pelanora

Vigor
Vigor
Vigor

adamsmith42

Pelanora wrote: »

Vigor
Vigor
Vigor

Might work in early arcs, but especially on a tank build that doesn't have the weapon/spell power to get good scaling out if it, it is totally insufficient in later (3+) arcs

Panderbander

jaws343 wrote: »

It's as much of a problem in the Bastian Nymics. Constantly needing to re-summon pets because it is not classed as a dungeon, trial, or arena.

This begs the question: Are Major and Minor Slayer and Aegis functioning in EA?