Sorcerer, Pets, and Infinite Archive (TL;DR it's a bit of a mess)

Amarthiul · October 6

After seeing the changes in 10.2.0 to the Expert Summoner passive and the Beacon of Oblivion set, I headed into the Infinite Archive on PTS 10.2.2 to test how various Verses and Visions interacted with them, along with the Hardened Ward morph of Conjured Ward.

As a reminder:

Expert Summoner: "Increases your Max Health by 10% if you have a permanent pet active. Increases your Max Magicka and Stamina if you have no permanent pets active."
Hardened Ward: "Conjure globes of Daedric energy for protection, granting a damage shield for you and your pets that absorbs x damage for 6 seconds. If no pets are affected, you also heal for y health. This ability scales off the higher of your Max Health or Magicka and the shield is capped at 72% of your Max Health."
Beacon of Oblivion: "(5 items) While you have a permanent pet active, gain 1840 Health and 1980 Armor. While you do not have a permanent pet active, increase your Damage Done and Healing Done by 15%. This value is reduced to 5% while affected by Battle Spirit."

These are the results. Note that due to the random nature of IA I wasn't able to test everything, in particular the Undead and Ice Avatar transformations. I also didn't test the Sorcerer Class Mastery Signature scribing script, mainly because I forgot about it. However I think this is enough to paint a picture of how complicated and confusing the current situation is:

Expert Summoner IMO, seems fine. You could argue that Apocryphal Emissary is a permanent pet but if you were going for the Max Health part of the passive you'd have something else active to trigger it before getting that Vision.

Hardened Ward is all over the place, and I hate it. Some stuff isn't counted as a pet when you'd think it would (Loyal Auditor), and something like Fire Orb counting as a pet really isn't obvious.

The Beacon of Oblivion 5-piece bonus is the weirdest of the three. Despite having the exact same wording as Expert Summoner ("permanent pet"), it applies to a lot more things as well as some really unobvious ones - Gilded Sleight, Pustulent Globs, Tomefoolery and Glamorous Scholar. Even Guardian of Pestilence has that strange period right before it respawns when it doesn't count as a permanent pet. There is also the bug where it removes the 15% Damage and Healing Done, and applies the Armor bonus but not the Health.

Ultimately I think there are 2 paths you could go down here to simplify things and make it far less frustrating to run a non-pet Sorc in IA:

Change "pet" in Hardened Ward to "permanent pet" and have it and the Beacon of Oblivion 5-piece work in exactly the same way as Expert Summoner does.
Change "pet" and "permanent pet" to "Sorcerer permanent pet", and have all 3 only apply to Unstable Familiar and Winged Twilight (and morphs).

I would prefer the latter as even if I go out of my way to avoid getting Verses and Visions that alter my build, I could still get a negative verse from one of the random offensive / defensive / utility verse consumables. Right now even with the PTS changes, it feels like Sorcerer is unfairly affected by summoned pets in the Infinite Archive.

IncultaWolf · October 6

Not sure if it's changed on pts, but on live if you take the lich avatar and summon the undead minions, you lose the heal from hardened ward.

Tannus15 · October 6

i'd love to know how daedric prey and the "pets damage" vision work with these

Pelanora · October 7

"Ultimately I think there are 2 paths you could go down here"

there are always two paths you can go by

but in the long run, is there still time for zos to change the road theyre on.

And it makes me wonder.

Why is it so hard to bring back no pet sorc.

jaws343 · October 7

They really need to make the sorc passives/skills ONLY apply with sorc pets. That's it. That's the change. Any other out of class pet should be irrelevant to a passive related to sorcerer skills.

Necrotech_Master · October 7

yeah i think it sounds more like there is a huge lack of consistency/distinction amongst what is actually counted as a pet lol

im not even sure how its possible gilded sleight even counts as a pet at all because it doesnt summon anything (except the pile of gold)

the passives should definitely only count the sorc pets themselves, it would be far less confusing, because there are so many things in this game which are "pseudo pets" an object spawned to produce an effect but is in effect counted as a pet because its an actual entity and not just a 1 time graphic animation

this would go for the various visions and verses in the archive, procs, and normal skills

ZhuJiuyin · October 8

Socr has the most complex and confusing skill determination in the game currently. Due to unclear instructions (or even no explanation at all), it's difficult for players to determine what exactly a "pet" is. Even though they have similar skill animations, Cinders of Anthelmir is not a pet, while Mad Tinkerer, who also rushes towards the enemy, is a pet.
The description for coldharbours favorite reads: "summons Coldharbour's Favorite", but it is not a pet. However, Defiler and Morkuldin will be recognized as pets, and Morkuldin is even just a weapon.

Maybe it’s time for ZOS to face up to and fix the confusing pet system in the game. This is also a great opportunity to make no-pet sorc (in PV) more feasible.

Tannus15 · October 8

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Socr has the most complex and confusing skill determination in the game currently. Due to unclear instructions (or even no explanation at all), it's difficult for players to determine what exactly a "pet" is. Even though they have similar skill animations, Cinders of Anthelmir is not a pet, while Mad Tinkerer, who also rushes towards the enemy, is a pet.
The description for coldharbours favorite reads: "summons Coldharbour's Favorite", but it is not a pet. However, Defiler and Morkuldin will be recognized as pets, and Morkuldin is even just a weapon.

Maybe it’s time for ZOS to face up to and fix the confusing pet system in the game. This is also a great opportunity to make no-pet sorc (in PV) more feasible.

Not just pets, but clearly label skills!

Why doesn't the tooltips for skills include the basic information of "Single target, Direct damage" or "AOE, Direct Damage, Melee" ?
Hell, just put some icons in and a key in the skill menu.

then they could even add the SAME ICON to the appropriate CP so that people can tell what does what.

Put a little pet symbol next to things that are classified as pets and anything that "buffs pets" also gets that icon. Simple. I really don't know why they have obfuscated so much information.

Quethrosar · October 8

Tannus15 wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Socr has the most complex and confusing skill determination in the game currently. Due to unclear instructions (or even no explanation at all), it's difficult for players to determine what exactly a "pet" is. Even though they have similar skill animations, Cinders of Anthelmir is not a pet, while Mad Tinkerer, who also rushes towards the enemy, is a pet.
The description for coldharbours favorite reads: "summons Coldharbour's Favorite", but it is not a pet. However, Defiler and Morkuldin will be recognized as pets, and Morkuldin is even just a weapon.

Maybe it’s time for ZOS to face up to and fix the confusing pet system in the game. This is also a great opportunity to make no-pet sorc (in PV) more feasible.

Not just pets, but clearly label skills!

Why doesn't the tooltips for skills include the basic information of "Single target, Direct damage" or "AOE, Direct Damage, Melee" ?
Hell, just put some icons in and a key in the skill menu.

then they could even add the SAME ICON to the appropriate CP so that people can tell what does what.

Put a little pet symbol next to things that are classified as pets and anything that "buffs pets" also gets that icon. Simple. I really don't know why they have obfuscated so much information.

common sense would say do this right ?

MashmalloMan · October 8

God.. any time I convince myself that Beacon may be worth trying, especially for something like IA where the dual healing/damage bonuses may be beneficial, something like this comes to light.

Just delete it please.

Theres also still the issue of the Sorc Signature script working with any pet instead of permanent ones, as well as BOL acting like a permanent pet.

Pelanora · October 8

Morkuldins is a weapon AND an invisible Orc! Best pet ever.

kevkj · October 8

This is the kind of testing people should be getting paid for, it is so shameful that it is left to a player to decipher the confusion and then have to suggest solutions.

katorga · October 10

It is a LOT easier to code 1 passive, 1 set, and 1 script to check for presence of 2 abilities and 1 vision than it is go go back and clean up a ton of verses and proc sets. ZOS will never clean up the inconsistent permanent/temporary pet statuses of all the things in the game.

Just make expert summoner, beacon, and Sorc Class Mastery script check for presence of scamp/matriarch/apocryphal emmissary. Those three things are really the ONLY permanent pets in the game for Sorc.

MashmalloMan · October 10

katorga wrote: »

It is a LOT easier to code 1 passive, 1 set, and 1 script to check for presence of 2 abilities and 1 vision than it is go go back and clean up a ton of verses and proc sets. ZOS will never clean up the inconsistent permanent/temporary pet statuses of all the things in the game.

Just make expert summoner, beacon, and Sorc Class Mastery script check for presence of scamp/matriarch/apocryphal emmissary. Those three things are really the ONLY permanent pets in the game for Sorc.

Pretty sure the biggest reason they chose "permanent pets" instead of "non ultimate pets" was specifically to cover Werewolf morphs. It's a pretty unique interaction where the tanky pet WW gets 10% HP vs the dps non pet WW getting 10% mag/stam, but is it worth it to mess with everything else? I'd say no, but I don't play WW.

Just fix the outliers, no excuses. Not sure why they release stuff like this half-baked after making it evidently clear why they made these changes in the first place as per their dev notes.

katorga · October 11

MashmalloMan wrote: »

katorga wrote: »

It is a LOT easier to code 1 passive, 1 set, and 1 script to check for presence of 2 abilities and 1 vision than it is go go back and clean up a ton of verses and proc sets. ZOS will never clean up the inconsistent permanent/temporary pet statuses of all the things in the game.

Just make expert summoner, beacon, and Sorc Class Mastery script check for presence of scamp/matriarch/apocryphal emmissary. Those three things are really the ONLY permanent pets in the game for Sorc.

Pretty sure the biggest reason they chose "permanent pets" instead of "non ultimate pets" was specifically to cover Werewolf morphs. It's a pretty unique interaction where the tanky pet WW gets 10% HP vs the dps non pet WW getting 10% mag/stam, but is it worth it to mess with everything else? I'd say no, but I don't play WW.

Just fix the outliers, no excuses. Not sure why they release stuff like this half-baked after making it evidently clear why they made these changes in the first place as per their dev notes.

Forgot ww, but same applies, four pets to hard code into one passive, one class mastery script and one set.

User should be able clearly and easily make a choice that enables the desired mode of expert summoner, thescribing script, and beacon set.

Pelanora · October 12

@ZOS_Kevin can you see this thread gets to the relevant people? Thank you