Pet Synergy

mbs0044b16_ESO · December 2014

Hello fellow Nirn travelers.

I have struggled with the power and functionality of pets in ESO for some time. I love pet focused builds in not just MMORPGs but RPGs in general. The trouble right now is that pets are rare among the classes ,weak and boring. The weakness I understand because the skill needs to not be more powerful then other skills since you only have a limited number of skills you can have slotted at any time and it seems the rarity is going to be resolved shortly. But pets being boring is something I have more trouble with. This made me think, what are pets missing compared to RPGs like WoW or Dragon Age: Origins? Activated abilities! That is something that makes pet builds actually enjoyable.

Having this (to me)new insight, I was faced with another problem. How would such a system be implemented? You could, for example just have the "pet control" key open another bar when pressed. The problem would be that is would probably feel clunky and would not work well with multiple pets. Having separate skills for a pet skill bar that would be activated automatically would not remedy the problem of pets being boring and you cant just put in skills that only work when you have a pet summoned, what's the fun in that?. Then I stumbled onto the idea of the synergy system already in place. What if pets would have separate synergies on certain skills?

For example: A skill I have never seen used except in the beta, "Trapping Webs". This could very well have the effects added to the synergy by the morphs "Shadow Silk"(Poison damage DoT) and "Tangling Webs"(Fear) be Pet Synergies. That way the spiders summoned by the synergy would instantly cast the fear or poison but if there is no-one activating your synergy(which so often happens in a PUG) the skill is still useful as long as there is a pet(Clanfear for example) in the party to activate said "pet synergy".

This could of course be used on non-synergy skills as well with an obvious one being Daedric Curse instantly exploding if the pet synergy is activated this synergy being removed by the new damage bonus for pets morph of course.

Let me know what you think, am I totally wrong on my views about pets? Are there more people that feel like the pets need not so much a boost as much as they need a funfactor-boost? Or do you maybe have an idea about improving pets in a certain way without making them OP? Please discuss below(questions directed at me are of course welcome both private and discussion wise). And if a Dev. was to read this(wink wink, nudge nudge), I would very much like to hear a rebuttal, approving statement or anything in between.

I think ESO is a great game that is in constant improvement and I am trying to help in my own little way by just putting an idea out there. But I understand you guys are busy, so thanks to everyone for their input and time in advance.

Kraven · December 2014

The planned buff for pets is needed, currently the problem is two fold. They're weak and die constantly and they don't do near enough damage to be worth the slot. Having them be actually useful will IMO go a long way toward making them more fun. I have been a big supporter of having more combat pet options however the fix for sorc pets was definitely needed first.

Allowing the sorc added utility to the pets as was mentioned with daedric curse is also needed. With spell crafting already stated to be bringing in other pets there has to be a reason for a sorc to specialize in pets. Currently they are the only characters that get pets at all when that no longer makes them special then something needs to or the entire tree centering around pets is wasted.

As for the trapping webs idea...that entire skill needs to be looked at. It's crap in its current state. The synergy for it is so short range and so quick that it never gets used, and the synergy as it stands is the only decent thing about the ability in the first place. Skills like bone shield even that god awful inner fire synergy last ages longer and are activated at max range versus a half a second activation at half a meter range.

With brand new changes coming it will likely be quite some time before we see other changes to them. Lets be honest pets have been broken since pre-launch pts, the only time they were beneficial was due to a bug that caused imp to explode twice and I suppose they weren't too horrible 1-50 in the easy mode solo content.

Athas24 · December 2014

they could just leave them as is and not make them take up slots. Problem solved.

Dracane · January 2015

I'm using pets since a long time and now again, to practice for 1.6
My biggest problem is, that you need 2 slots for each pet, so you sacrifise at least 2 slots. At the moment, the Twilight is more usefull for pvp and my biggest problem is, that the heal of it is so underwhelming and bugged.

Being under 33% max health is almost the point of being dead in pvp and if you move to much, the twilight will instantly stop healing you and the heal is weak anyway. The only good solution, would be to change the health percentage for the heal proc or make it so, that the twilight makes an instant heal every 10-15 seconds or something, since Sorcerer has no self heal.

They must also increase the base damage of pets or make it so, that you only need to have them on 1 bar. We'll see, what they are going to make. If changing the daedric curse morph and giving pets AoE resistance is the only change, then I have to laugh and cry at the same time.

mbs0044b16_ESO · January 2015

Athas24 wrote: »

they could just leave them as is and not make them take up slots. Problem solved.

Actually, My biggest gripe with the pets is just that they are boring. Making them unslotted would just add to that problem not detract. I wouldn't call that "problem solved"

thanks for your input though.

mbs0044b16_ESO · January 2015

Dracane wrote: »

I'm using pets since a long time and now again, to practice for 1.6
My biggest problem is, that you need 2 slots for each pet, so you sacrifise at least 2 slots. At the moment, the Twilight is more usefull for pvp and my biggest problem is, that the heal of it is so underwhelming and bugged.

Being under 33% max health is almost the point of being dead in pvp and if you move to much, the twilight will instantly stop healing you and the heal is weak anyway. The only good solution, would be to change the health percentage for the heal proc or make it so, that the twilight makes an instant heal every 10-15 seconds or something, since Sorcerer has no self heal.

They must also increase the base damage of pets or make it so, that you only need to have them on 1 bar. We'll see, what they are going to make. If changing the daedric curse morph and giving pets AoE resistance is the only change, then I have to laugh and cry at the same time.

I totally agree with you on the slot argument, they have ZoS have made the pets the power of a 1 slot skill while you actually need 2 slots for them to work properly. This might warrant either a pet power boost(which is on its way, we will see if it's enough) or a pet bar boost like you described where you only need them on one bar.

While I agree with you on some of the problems with the twilight, the heal doesn't seem too weak IMO. With 1202 mana and 91 spell power I get 5 ticks of 333, that's a total of 1665 healing that activates automatically. One problem is that the twilight seems to only have 10 meters range on the heal making it indeed really easy to break. The threshold of 33% might be a bit low but I feel like they should Either increase the threshold and leave the range the same, increase the range and leave the threshold the same or increase both and decrease the heal.

Thanks for the input and what do you think?

Cody · January 2015

The pets can't be that bad, as I have seen VR14s using both pets, both in PvE and PvP.

mbs0044b16_ESO · January 2015

Cody wrote: »

The pets can't be that bad, as I have seen VR14s using both pets, both in PvE and PvP.

I think it is probably true that the 'badness' of pets has been a bit over-hyped. They do seem to be slightly underpowered, but as I said before the fun-factor seems to be a bigger problem IMO. Allot of people seem to be playing pet build despite this thanks to the announced pet boosts for 1.6.

I am just hoping the pets get more love in a way that makes them exiting, I am not a midmaxer, I almost never play optimal builds. All I do is making builds that function in a way that fits my play-style at that moment and are fun to play. That's why I made this post, I think pets are no fun at the moment.

I hope this cleared up some things and thanks for the comment.