Alaztor91 wrote: »

I tested a bit in IC Sewers and Skeletal Arcanist and Spirit Guardian would also fail to cast. I wasn't using any permanent or ultimate pets so according to the patch notes rules they shouldn't fail to cast under any circumstances in this specific scenario.



The ''animation'' would play but the pet wouldn't be summoned, you can see in the screenshot that the in-game timer for buffs would still display for Spirit Guardian, even though it wasn't actually casted.

The ''failed to summon combat pet'' message would also show sometimes when the corpse proc from Ricochet Skull would activate, it also wouldn't show up for ''failed'' BB casts, even though the skill itself wouldn't summon the pet. Pet/Corpse related skills that I was using were Blighted Blastbones, Skeletal Arcanist, Ricochet Skull, Spirit Guardian and Summoner's Armor.

There is something seriously wrong with the new pet rules or their interaction with Necromancer pets and it's not just exclusive to Blastbones. I don't know if it is exclusive to IC, or maybe you don't get to see it in PvE due to the limit being 10 instead of 5.

Yeesh. Your main defensive buff and your weapon damage buff failing to cast is not ideal either.

Yes, will be fixed in U47! Wait? U47???

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, Just wanted to follow up before the day is done. We are exploring options around this issue and will have additional follow up tomorrow.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The workaround is simple: declassify Spirit Mender, Skeleton Mage, and Blastbones as Pets and make them graphical only because let's be honest, these skills last for 3-20s. They shouldn't be considered a Pet just like a Warden Bear or Sorcerer Matriarch/Familiar. Blastbones especially. How is a Blastbone a pet? Doesn't make sense. EDIT: the other thing is that actual combat pets like the Warden Bear and Sorcerer Twilight/Familiar is the player can activate them **again** for a special move. Blastbones, Spirit Mender, and Skeleton Mage do not have special moves that are manually activated. Therefore, they are not actually combat Pets.

Or, separate Corpses as their own category. Corpses aren't pets, either. That's just weird. Plus, Corpses can be sourced from dispatching normal PvE enemies so Corpses shouldn't really count as a summon, either.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We can confirm that there's currently a bug that allows the animation of Blastbones to play when at the pet cap (detailed in the patch notes), even though the pet will correctly be prevented from spawning. This should be fixed in Update 47.

ive played other games where they use this term called i think Hotfix instead making their customers wait an entire patch cycle for stuff to work. just an idea. im sorry gina i know its not your fault or whatever but these devs have never had a sense of urgency.

@ZOS_GinaBruno I feel bad for you having to represent the current combat team

slt101880b14_ESO wrote: »

Maybe I'm blind, but the big question banging around in my head is: Why are DEAD (nonanimated) bodies even considered Pets!?

Im still stuck on the statement that bugs wont be fixed till the next quarters update. Was hoping for a lot sooner than that for stuff to be fixed.

Maybe Update 47 will be in a few weeks. They aren't tied to the quarterly update cycle now because they got rid of chapters... Right?

@ZOS_Kevin Wanted to provide some results of my testing all day yesterday.

In BGs, Blastbones seems to work normally if it's the only necromancer line you are using and if you are not using the Skeletal Mage. This may have to do with not having any corpse consumers, as I did not have Tether or Graveyard - not sure if the game still counts un-consumable corpses the same way.

On my full/pure Necro setup, Blastbones was still failing to cast at maybe a 5% - 10% rate in a BG. Worth noting that on this setup I'm running Intensive Mender and the class script, as well as the Animate Blastbones ultimate. The Animate Blastbones ultimate simply doesn't work - the most Blastbones I ever saw summon was 1, despite the fact that I should be under pet cap even with 4 Blastbones (3 from ultimate, 1 from skill) and 1 Mender.

In IC Blastbones has a very high failure rate (around 50%) once a fight actually gets going. I haven't gotten to test in IC with my subclassed build, so its possible that not having any corpse consumers/ONLY having Blastbones helps this issue, so I can try to report back again after I test. I haven't managed to test Cyrodiil too extensively outside of finding a mob pack to kill because there weren't too many large fights when I was on; that being said, Cyrodiil seemed to have the same issues as IC. Both Ghost and Minion are having the same issue as Blastbones as well.

I think the issue is two-fold.

1) It seems like enemy corpses are being counted as player sourced and thus contributing to the cap. It's very difficult as a necro to reach 4 corpses with only player sourced corpses due to the shortened corpse timers, so there's no reason Blastbones should be pushing me over the cap as I was only using two pets in my testing (Intensive Mender and Blastbones).

2) According to the notes, Blastbones should be replacing a corpse when summoned. This is clearly not functioning correctly. This is probably contributing to the Animate Blastbones ultimate not working, as the 3 Blastbones aren't correctly de-spawning other corpses in the area and thus aren't summoning.

If the Arcanist beam was bugged out and worked only half the time, making PVE content unplayable, we all know that would get hotfixed. That's why people are upset.

Joy_Division wrote: »

If the Arcanist beam was bugged out and worked only half the time, making PVE content unplayable, we all know that would get hotfixed. That's why people are upset.

Not just the beam, but also breaking other parts of their kit. Like all abilities that generate or consume a crux can no longer be cast.

For other classes it would be like:
removing Siphoning Strikes, Soul Shred, Dark Cloak & Merciless Resolve from Nightblade
removing Overload, Crystal Frags, all Pets, & Power Surge from Sorcerer
removing Scorch, Sleet Storm, Secluded Grove, & Betty Netch from Warden
removing Lava Whip, Searing Strike, Fiery Breath, & Magma Armor from Dragonknight
removing Jabs, Shards, & the beam from Templar

And then telling them just to wait until U47 to MAYBE get some of it back.

PTS Begins Week 1 - April 14th, Corpse Limit Introduced

---

April 14th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676253/limiting-corpses-and-pets-to-5-total-in-pvp-is-such-a-massive-necro-nerf#latest

April 15th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676347/is-animate-blastbones-now-dead-in-pvp#latest

April 17th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676518/necro-can-have-6-pets-from-base-class-skills-only-raise-the-pet-count#latest

April 18th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676674/5-corpse-pet-limit-makes-all-pvp-necro-builds-useless-blastbones-needs-to-not-be-counted-as-a-pet#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676670/corpse-consumers-need-a-buff-if-corpses-are-getting-nerfed-in-pvp#latest

PTS Week 2 - April 21st, No Changes, No Bug Fixes

---

April 22nd
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/676857/stop-considering-bb-a-pet-animate-blastbone-can-not-work-with-the-5-pet-corpse-limit-in-pvp#latest

PTS Week 3 - April 28th, No Changes, No Bug Fixes

---

April 28th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/677139/pvp-corpse-consumers-arent-getting-fixed-before-live-are-they#latest

PTS Week 4 - May 5th, One Necromancer Bug Fix: Bone Goliath Bash Attacks Now Work For Non-Necro Classes

---

May 5th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/677435/no-changes-to-how-corpses-work-in-pvp-will-kill-corpse-consumers#latest

May 6th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/677501/ruining-necro-skills-in-pvp-in-the-name-of-performance#latest

May 12th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/677750/ne-cro-man-cer-s-also-non-beam-arcanists-and-poor-sorcs-though-times-for-mages-archetype#latest

PTS Week 5 - May 12th, No Changes, No Bug Fixes

---

May 23rd
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/678084/5-pet-corpse-limit-for-necro-is-unplayable-in-ic-remove-it-now#latest

May 28th
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/678228/some-pvp-concerns-for-the-update#latest

June 1st
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/678353/the-dev-teams-silence-on-a-core-class-ability-not-functioning-correctly-is-unacceptable#latest

U46 Arrives - June 2nd, No Changes, No Bug Fixes

---

And now we're here. What's the point of a public test server if the bugs found during testing are not addressed?

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang! Later today, we'll be pushing a hotfix to raise the pet cap from five to ten in PvP zones.

We’d also like give a little more context about why we made this change and why it remained as it was on the PTS. We originally reduced the pet cap to five for performance reasons because we saw that internally, even with only a few pets, if ALL players had pets there were performance issues. This was mostly going to be an Imperial City and Cyrodiil issue (due to the sheer amount of "pets" you could have with all the dead targets being generated). We do have the capability to put a cap in both PVP and PVE zones if performance dips below an acceptable amount for both the client or the server. With this change we are making both capped at 10, and will monitor perf along with the usage of pets. Having the cap set to two didn’t feel good, so we raised it to five for PTS and now launch.

We have seen your feedback about the five-pet cap, and have been weighing it against the very real game performance risk the higher we raise it. The other piece of this is that PTS is not the live servers, and we needed to see how things looked on the latter. Five pets may look fine performance-wise on the PTS, where we always see a lower population (especially in PvP content), then look different on the live servers.

So, we are raising the pet cap to ten later today via a hotfix and will monitor how things look. If we see significant game performance issues (severe frame rate drops, client crashes, etc.) we will need to drop the cap back down to five.

We hope that helps give a little extra context and we'll let you know when the hotfix has been rolled out. Thank you!

Are there any plans to rework the pet skills if performance becomes an issue? or is leaving certain classes in an unplayable state an acceptable solution for ZOS?

Why aren't pets that summon an AI controlled entity reworked into ''visual effects'' similar to something like Scorch? You already know that they have a negative effect on performance, why wait?

Also, any words on why the new ''pet rules'' are seemingly not working correctly in certain places? I was getting the ''failed to summon combat pet'' notification when casting some pets like Skeletal Mage and Spirit Mender in IC when a certain number of enemy corpses where present, without any permanent or ultimate pet active, this shouldn't be possible according to the patch notes.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang! Later today, we'll be pushing a hotfix to raise the pet cap from five to ten in PvP zones.

We’d also like give a little more context about why we made this change and why it remained as it was on the PTS. We originally reduced the pet cap to five for performance reasons because we saw that internally, even with only a few pets, if ALL players had pets there were performance issues. This was mostly going to be an Imperial City and Cyrodiil issue (due to the sheer amount of "pets" you could have with all the dead targets being generated). We do have the capability to put a cap in both PVP and PVE zones if performance dips below an acceptable amount for both the client or the server. With this change we are making both capped at 10, and will monitor perf along with the usage of pets. Having the cap set to two didn’t feel good, so we raised it to five for PTS and now launch.

We have seen your feedback about the five-pet cap, and have been weighing it against the very real game performance risk the higher we raise it. The other piece of this is that PTS is not the live servers, and we needed to see how things looked on the latter. Five pets may look fine performance-wise on the PTS, where we always see a lower population (especially in PvP content), then look different on the live servers.

So, we are raising the pet cap to ten later today via a hotfix and will monitor how things look. If we see significant game performance issues (severe frame rate drops, client crashes, etc.) we will need to drop the cap back down to five.

We hope that helps give a little extra context and we'll let you know when the hotfix has been rolled out. Thank you!

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Thank you for addressing this as quickly as you guys did! As a console player I'm actually excited for U46 because I'll actually be able to use both Necromancer IA sets (I JUST finished my Stickerbook maybe a week ago) in PvP.

Going forward, I would suggest altering the definitions of what is and isn't considered a Pet.

Like I said, the Winged Twilight, Unstable Familiar, and Feral Guardian are Pets. They are long term, semi permanent abilities that all have special combat moves when activated again and don't despawn unless killed or the ability is removed from the skill bar.

Blastbones, Spirit Mender, Skeleton Mage, Betty Netch, and Storm Atronachs do not have manually activated special combat moves and they all despawn within 2.5-20s no matter what. These abilities *should not* be defined as combat pets. They should have their backend AI packages removed and transition to a "Visual Only" entity like the Warden Shalks ability. A happy side effect with this solution for Necromancer Players is Blastbones would no longer be susceptible to CC or be killed prematurely before detonating and they might have better target tracking and success rates.

That should help the backend performance aspect immensely.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang! Later today, we'll be pushing a hotfix to raise the pet cap from five to ten in PvP zones.

We’d also like give a little more context about why we made this change and why it remained as it was on the PTS. We originally reduced the pet cap to five for performance reasons because we saw that internally, even with only a few pets, if ALL players had pets there were performance issues. This was mostly going to be an Imperial City and Cyrodiil issue (due to the sheer amount of "pets" you could have with all the dead targets being generated). We do have the capability to put a cap in both PVP and PVE zones if performance dips below an acceptable amount for both the client or the server. With this change we are making both capped at 10, and will monitor perf along with the usage of pets. Having the cap set to two didn’t feel good, so we raised it to five for PTS and now launch.

We have seen your feedback about the five-pet cap, and have been weighing it against the very real game performance risk the higher we raise it. The other piece of this is that PTS is not the live servers, and we needed to see how things looked on the latter. Five pets may look fine performance-wise on the PTS, where we always see a lower population (especially in PvP content), then look different on the live servers.

So, we are raising the pet cap to ten later today via a hotfix and will monitor how things look. If we see significant game performance issues (severe frame rate drops, client crashes, etc.) we will need to drop the cap back down to five.

We hope that helps give a little extra context and we'll let you know when the hotfix has been rolled out. Thank you!

Remove the flag where BS is considered a "pet". Also I would suggest changing the name from "pet" to some other form currency like bodies so people dont get confused.

If you remove the flag where BS is a pet...and leave the bodies currency cap to 2 or 5...then what? Wouldnt that fix both problems? Less bodies to keep track of on the servers and people are still able to cast BS?