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.

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.

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.

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.