Sorcerer Pet Changes Feedback

Drummerx04 · May 2017

First, damage nerf for Morrowind is fine and deserved.

But the actual pet handling has changed pretty dramatically with the shift in heavy attack meta, so I'll just list the changes and a little about them.

Pets do not auto heal at all any more. This actually sucks quite a lot for the volatile familiar.
ZoS actually made the AI dumber... I didn't think this was possible. It's so bad now, that when I attack a target dummy... the scamp attacks a different target dummy. ZoS, please. Why? Edit: to clarify the automatic targetting, the most probable target the scamp will take is the target that is the farthest away from the scamp. This is almost always the worst target it could pick. Please change the next target it selects to be the closest target to the scamp.
Pets now go straight for the enemy that you are heavy attacking. At first glance this seems nice, but there are times when I don't want the pet humping the leg of my primary target. If I put the pet in passive mode (Y+right click), a heavy attack automatically pulls the scamp out of passive and sends him after my target. For fights like the mage, I run a pet sorc build. When mini mages are out, I send the pet after them, but when only the mage is alive, I hold the pet next to me so I don't kill me group. I can't do this in the current heavy attacks mandatory meta.
Commanding a pet to attack automatically starts combat. Before combat would not begin until the pet actually attacked the targeted mob.

So honestly... I think the new system needs some tweaks. I would suggest the following targeting logic changes.

Passive mode is activated with (command pet) + right click. No action by the sorc will break passive mode except another command pet command.
Heavy attack mode activated with (command pet) + middle click. This is the current default pet mode in Morrowind.
Targeted mode activated with (command pet) + left click. The pet's target will not change until the current target dies, at which point the scamp will switch to heavy attack mode.

This is not begging, this is suggesting a reasonable and hopefully straight forward and practical change to the scamp AI, because it is not in a good place at the moment.

STEVIL · May 2017

i think pets not regen is a bug.

Keldheir · May 2017

I just did a solo-run of Banished Cells I using my pets. Main reason was to take a look at the magicka regen in a longer fight but this way I also got to take a look at the changes to the summons. I'm... not impressed. That they don't regenerate health is annoying and for some reason I have to activate the Twilights heal twice to bring the Clannfear back to full. Since I like to take a breather in between fights that's not really dramatic for me. The magicka regenerates eventually.
The thing that's absolutely frustrating is the heavy attack thing. My clannfear used to target the boss and that's how it should be. Now it attacks whoever I attack, ignores the boss entirely and dies. In a fight against bosses that keep summoning minions over and over - like bone colossi - it is especially annoying.

In the end I agree that some changes to the pets were appropriate. They were over-effective at times and that's why I use them together only when I do group content solo. But I am not impressed with what we got.

Magdalina · May 2017

I assumed a heavy attack would be a nice addition to the current y+lmb/rmb control, with the latter keeping priority, were they seriously bright enough to completely override it? Wow. That's...I has no words.

I also think non regenerating health is a bug but...it's Zenimax we're talking about. Even if it is a bug it'll likely take them 3+ months to fix in best case>.< In worst, it'll just become a "feature".

Drummerx04 · May 2017

STEVIL wrote: »

i think pets not regen is a bug.

I really hope the health regen is a bug that gets fixed in the next incremental patch. Certainly easy to kill pets is going to make my bot killing hobby easier, but in practical combat it sucks royally.

If anyone has a better idea than my suggestions on pet controls (and the controls only) - apart from not using pets - I would love to hear them.

FrancisCrawford · May 2017

One of the best things about the combat design of this game has been that pets are much less likely to actually sabotage your group than in other games.

If ZoS has now increased the likelihood that pets will do something other than you want ... bad move. Very bad move. Quit-the-game level of bad move.

Any such change rises to the awfulness level of "Revert the change immediately -- preferably in a hotfix -- and don't try to reinstate it until you're sure things are working properly."

Taylor_MB · May 2017

The heavy attack overriding a passive command is infuriating.

Coming from a PvP perspective, I'd like to be able to heavy attack sometimes in zerg v zerg to regen without having my twilight run off and try to 1vx.

Feanor · May 2017

The pet AI never was very good to begin with. And the lack of any UI other than friendly health bars (and that after 3 years!) is really another thing that's really turning away from pets. Playing with pets has been fun for me in the last weeks, especially in vMA. But it's a fine line to walk. There is just so much inconvenience and annoyance one can endure. I wish ZOS would just get the AI fixed and a nice clean UI to boot with it.

FrancisCrawford · May 2017

Feanor wrote: »

The pet AI never was very good to begin with. And the lack of any UI other than friendly health bars (and that after 3 years!) is really another thing that's really turning away from pets. Playing with pets has been fun for me in the last weeks, especially in vMA. But it's a fine line to walk. There is just so much inconvenience and annoyance one can endure. I wish ZOS would just get the AI fixed and a nice clean UI to boot with it.

I'm OK with the previous trade-off between the good aspects of pet mechanics and the bad.

But if the good ones are destroyed ... blech.

AcadianPaladin · May 2017

I use a clannfear for my bowstamsorc. Since his health scales by level instead of magicka he tanks just fine. I'm having two very aggravating problems with him though:

1. Send him in to draw aggro from stealthed range now instantly draws aggro. This is aggravating but can be (sort of) worked around.

2. He does not autoheal at all between skirmishes like he used to. As a stamsorc the only way I have to heal him is his own heal which uses a very big chunk of a stamsorc's magic. Constantly running out of blue trying to keep him healed which only happened after the patch.

I hope both these changes are unintended since there is zero about them in the natch potes. If I have to perma eat these changes, this character may have to retire - those tiny changes take that much fun out of her playstyle.

I also run a clannfear & matriarch magsorc but her blue pool is huge and the matriarch's heal is cheap so the healing thing is a minor irritant.

Drummerx04 · May 2017

Feanor wrote: »

The pet AI never was very good to begin with. And the lack of any UI other than friendly health bars (and that after 3 years!) is really another thing that's really turning away from pets. Playing with pets has been fun for me in the last weeks, especially in vMA. But it's a fine line to walk. There is just so much inconvenience and annoyance one can endure. I wish ZOS would just get the AI fixed and a nice clean UI to boot with it.

I'm glad at least some people agree with me. The new pet controls are more convenient in places like vma, but can be a hindrance in larger group content. With forcing the heavy attack meta down our throats and then having pets chase heavy attacks can lead to awkward situations like nuking your melee group in vAA.

ADarklore · May 2017

I believe they added the HEAVY ATTACK control because consoles had NO means of directing their pets, unlike PC players. With Warden, the bear is SO much better than Clannfear, he takes very little damage and does a lot of damage, unlike Clannfear who did little damage and died a LOT. I can leave the bear to fight and he'll take things down on his own, if I left the Clannfear to fight on his own, he'd end up dead.

People say this pet not healing is a bug, but it was something that was posted on beta testing a several weeks ago and ZOS never once mentioned it or addressed it... I think it's intentional. Usually if there's something that's strange, it gets mentioned and they never respond, 9x out of 10 it means it was intentional and they don't want to discuss it. I'm OK with it the way it is, my Warden can easily heal the bear as Sorcs can self-heal their own pets. I think ZOS wanted a 'cost' associated with pets... especially with Necropotence giving such high Magicka, now we have to use some of it to keep our pets alive.

leepalmer95 · May 2017

ADarklore wrote: »

I believe they added the HEAVY ATTACK control because consoles had NO means of directing their pets, unlike PC players. With Warden, the bear is SO much better than Clannfear, he takes very little damage and does a lot of damage, unlike Clannfear who did little damage and died a LOT. I can leave the bear to fight and he'll take things down on his own, if I left the Clannfear to fight on his own, he'd end up dead.

People say this pet not healing is a bug, but it was something that was posted on beta testing a several weeks ago and ZOS never once mentioned it or addressed it... I think it's intentional. Usually if there's something that's strange, it gets mentioned and they never respond, 9x out of 10 it means it was intentional and they don't want to discuss it. I'm OK with it the way it is, my Warden can easily heal the bear as Sorcs can self-heal their own pets. I think ZOS wanted a 'cost' associated with pets... especially with Necropotence giving such high Magicka, now we have to use some of it to keep our pets alive.

They could of just changed it to tab targeting = target for pets.

ADarklore · May 2017

leepalmer95 wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I believe they added the HEAVY ATTACK control because consoles had NO means of directing their pets, unlike PC players. With Warden, the bear is SO much better than Clannfear, he takes very little damage and does a lot of damage, unlike Clannfear who did little damage and died a LOT. I can leave the bear to fight and he'll take things down on his own, if I left the Clannfear to fight on his own, he'd end up dead.

People say this pet not healing is a bug, but it was something that was posted on beta testing a several weeks ago and ZOS never once mentioned it or addressed it... I think it's intentional. Usually if there's something that's strange, it gets mentioned and they never respond, 9x out of 10 it means it was intentional and they don't want to discuss it. I'm OK with it the way it is, my Warden can easily heal the bear as Sorcs can self-heal their own pets. I think ZOS wanted a 'cost' associated with pets... especially with Necropotence giving such high Magicka, now we have to use some of it to keep our pets alive.

They could of just changed it to tab targeting = target for pets.

Console players have complained for quite some time about no control over pets, and if it were that simple, I think ZOS would have done it a long time ago.

Drummerx04 · May 2017

ADarklore wrote: »

I believe they added the HEAVY ATTACK control because consoles had NO means of directing their pets, unlike PC players. With Warden, the bear is SO much better than Clannfear, he takes very little damage and does a lot of damage, unlike Clannfear who did little damage and died a LOT. I can leave the bear to fight and he'll take things down on his own, if I left the Clannfear to fight on his own, he'd end up dead.

People say this pet not healing is a bug, but it was something that was posted on beta testing a several weeks ago and ZOS never once mentioned it or addressed it... I think it's intentional. Usually if there's something that's strange, it gets mentioned and they never respond, 9x out of 10 it means it was intentional and they don't want to discuss it. I'm OK with it the way it is, my Warden can easily heal the bear as Sorcs can self-heal their own pets. I think ZOS wanted a 'cost' associated with pets... especially with Necropotence giving such high Magicka, now we have to use some of it to keep our pets alive.

For a dps build using pets (aka volatile familiar) there is no way to heal the pet on your own without slotting a resto staff or the matriarch.

liviogc · May 2017

@ZOS_GinaBruno o I'm very upset about pet control.

I was one of those who wanted to reshape the entire Daeric tree of the sorcerer by taking the pets, as they were useless, you told me otherwise, I loved playing with pets, even to make maesltron. Now you are telling me the opposite, it is not possible a heavy attack overlapping a passive command, I want to send my pet attacking one enemy and attacking another. Today is no longer possible. I suggest then changing the tree by taking away the pets since they are now being rendered useless. No one wants to pet more in triais. They became uncontrollable.

Chelister · May 2017

Drummerx04 wrote: »

First, damage nerf for Morrowind is fine and deserved.

But the actual pet handling has changed pretty dramatically with the shift in heavy attack meta, so I'll just list the changes and a little about them.
Pets do not auto heal at all any more. This actually sucks quite a lot for the volatile familiar.

ZoS actually made the AI dumber... I didn't think this was possible. It's so bad now, that when I attack a target dummy... the scamp attacks a different target dummy. ZoS, please. Why? Edit: to clarify the automatic targetting, the most probable target the scamp will take is the target that is the farthest away from the scamp. This is almost always the worst target it could pick. Please change the next target it selects to be the closest target to the scamp.

Pets now go straight for the enemy that you are heavy attacking. At first glance this seems nice, but there are times when I don't want the pet humping the leg of my primary target. If I put the pet in passive mode (Y+right click), a heavy attack automatically pulls the scamp out of passive and sends him after my target. For fights like the mage, I run a pet sorc build. When mini mages are out, I send the pet after them, but when only the mage is alive, I hold the pet next to me so I don't kill me group. I can't do this in the current heavy attacks mandatory meta.

Commanding a pet to attack automatically starts combat. Before combat would not begin until the pet actually attacked the targeted mob.

So honestly... I think the new system needs some tweaks. I would suggest the following targeting logic changes.
Passive mode is activated with (command pet) + right click. No action by the sorc will break passive mode except another command pet command.

Heavy attack mode activated with (command pet) + middle click. This is the current default pet mode in Morrowind.

Targeted mode activated with (command pet) + left click. The pet's target will not change until the current target dies, at which point the scamp will switch to heavy attack mode.

This is not begging, this is suggesting a reasonable and hopefully straight forward and practical change to the scamp AI, because it is not in a good place at the moment.

Now imagine all this on consoles

liviogc · May 2017

If the console is good the heavy attack, great, but on the pc we have a passive command talking to the pet if it should or should not attack. The command must override the heavy attack command. This pleases both worlds.

taiji2078 · May 2017

We need a command bar to fully control the pets. You added a full pets class ZOS ... You should actually support it too.
All other MMO's are giving an option to control the pets. It's time to have it in ESO too.

Marabornwingrion · May 2017

Volatile Familiar also started to disappear in the middle of the fight after Morrowind update. In vMA he disappeard while fighting with mobs, on my skill bar and buff tracker he was marked as summoned, but he was absent on the arena.

About pet AI - it's now even worse than before update, for example on stage 8 in vMA familiar is attacking pillars which are destroyed.

I don't like the heavy attack targeting, it should be able to toggle this option in game settings. And now we need to wait few months until ZOS will hopefully fix them.

Drummerx04 · May 2017

Oh, I actually missed another pet peeve of mine in the original post.:

If you have the rapid maneuvers buff on your character, then cast conjured ward with your pet nearby, you lose rapids because you "shielded an ally"

It was actually like this before Morrowind, but I think it should be classified as a bug.

Avalon · May 2017

The only 'good' pet build I ever found was as a tank. Because of the horrible pet AI and the lack of ability to really command them, I will do the tanking, they can just do DPS and every so often throw heals to keep all of us alive. When I played in beta, I was excited for the pets, and first tried to play a bow-sorc with the pets tanking... that fell flat. I really wish they would add some way to have pets tank, maybe a morph or something? I don't know... but, would also be great to have a way to send in a pet without having to attack. I am on console now (originally PC), so we don't have the ability to do that like PC does =(

seedubsrun · May 2017

There should be a passive toggle for all systems for pets that overrides anything else when used. Preventing an attack is as important as directing an attack. If they're not passive then they attack the closest enemy. If you target an enemy and hold down that pets skill activation key it should attack that enemy or maybe a quick double click. If you cast deadric prey it should attack the enemy it was cast on. Probably not a perfect system but would resolve a lot of my issues with it. Introducing an update that requires heavy attacks and then making pets attack via heavy attacks is dumb. I want my pets to distract not constantly attack what I attack

Darkstar101 · June 2017

There absolutely needs to be a toggle or option to disable/override the pet attack on heavy attacks. Currently it's impossible to use a pet to "tie up" something while you focus on another target. Currently trying to do that mean the pet spends all of it's time running back and forth between targets doing nothing.

Fallen_Ray · June 2017

STEVIL wrote: »

i think pets not regen is a bug.

Then again, they never clarified if it was an intended change. So most will take it as a bug unless clarified.

Drummerx04 · June 2017

Fallen_Ray wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

i think pets not regen is a bug.

Then again, they never clarified if it was an intended change. So most will take it as a bug unless clarified.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4185298#Comment_4185298

They actually did. Guess what? "Working as intended"

Near the end of that thread Gina says

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just letting you know we've been reading all your feedback in this thread, and plan to re-evaluate the changes made to pet health regeneration in the future.

Fallen_Ray · June 2017

Drummerx04 wrote: »

Fallen_Ray wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

i think pets not regen is a bug.

Then again, they never clarified if it was an intended change. So most will take it as a bug unless clarified.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4185298#Comment_4185298

They actually did. Guess what? "Working as intended"

Near the end of that thread Gina says

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just letting you know we've been reading all your feedback in this thread, and plan to re-evaluate the changes made to pet health regeneration in the future.

Well I'll be shít they did... in some way. I know they don't have to mention every change they make as stated in their End User Licence Agreement but if they do, it would be nice of them

Avran_Sylt · June 2017

Fallen_Ray wrote: »

Drummerx04 wrote: »

Fallen_Ray wrote: »

STEVIL wrote: »

i think pets not regen is a bug.

Then again, they never clarified if it was an intended change. So most will take it as a bug unless clarified.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4185298#Comment_4185298

They actually did. Guess what? "Working as intended"

Near the end of that thread Gina says

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys, just letting you know we've been reading all your feedback in this thread, and plan to re-evaluate the changes made to pet health regeneration in the future.

Well I'll be shít they did... in some way. I know they don't have to mention every change they make as stated in their End User Licence Agreement but if they do, it would be nice of them

TBH, it's probably an issue regarding cross-department communication, and an issue with "Work on stuff? Or do write ups on changes" time is not infinite for them each day.

Waffennacht · June 2017

It is intended, Gina however said she'll bring our concerns to those whom made this decision.

It may change to where they Regen out of combat.

In the mean time, I have a solution, but haven't been able to test do too well yet (new gear needs grinding...) Initial testing was 26k solo with purple gear, not where I want to be but getting there (no trial gear, no vMA gear)

MakoFore · June 2017

my pet has been randomly attacking innocents in belkarth- "bad scamp bad!"

kinda funny though.

Rawreak Rovyre · June 2017

You can have some level of control over pets? I just thought they hung out and they did their own thing...

(Yes, I'm a dirty console casual. Come at me.)