Hi, it's the pet guy. I noticed the changes on /servernews today. I think each point leaves several questions, for several classes of pets - summoned, FNF, and charmed.
First, to clarify for all readers, how pets worked in 1.65 and in many cases live is as follows:
Ref 1) For summoned pets, hit rate, miss rate, resist rate and interrupt rate were based on the level of the caster regardless of con. Therefore, a level 50 Druid with a grey pet or a 50 Theurg using a green ice pet would 100% interrupt a 50 target in RvR.
Ref 2) For charmed pets, however, hit rate, miss rate, resist rate and interrupt rates were based on the level of the mob. Therefore green Body Sorc pets (often torcans) would fail to interrupt at a rate of roughly 50-37 * 5%. They'd interrupt only about a third of a time (I can double check this). Minstrel/Mentalist pets would resist spells at their level, and could interrupt MOC at roughly 5% per 1 level over 50. This can also be tested on live, and I can do it upon request.
Ref 3) For pet spell level, sometimes pet spells scaled with the level of the pet (Enchanter, Cabalist), but often times each mob was assigned a specific spell with its own spell level that was static regardless of caster level. This is what worked with Theurgist ice pets and Animist pets - Theurg ice pets at levels 25 and above had similar spells, and thus did similar damage and had roughly equal spell resist rates. At one point you would see in your log "You begin casting your Theurgist Ice Pet Spell VI" or something. This was the balancing point for devs, they would tweak spell power up and down if a specific pet was too weak. Upon casting, the interrupt rates would work as described in the two above paragraphs.
That said today's changes leaves several questions open for now and on future development. I'll go class by class. For reference, Live is DaoC on the live state, OG or Original is DaoC on the original 1.65 state, and Here is Phoenix, present.
BD Pet Spell Lists - https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6309&p=42700&hilit=bonedancer#p42700
1. As noted before, BD pet spell lists here deviate significantly from OG 1.65 and Live. BD dark pets and debuffers cast significantly faster, and BD dark pet spells hit harder even after these April adjustments on Phoenix. However , BD healer spell lists are different. The top level healer pet healed for over 100, could not be interrupted, and casted healing spells at around 3.2s unbuffed (vs 4.0s Here). The current iteration of BD healer pet represents a major nerf to Supp, while the present iteration of Dark is a major (but needed) buff to Dark.
I think it's important to know if these are conscious balance changes, because we don't have documentation and dev notes to work with. imo, this sets the stage for further balance changes when previously, we are under the impression that we want to be conservative with balance changes. But as you can see here,with just .5-.8 second tweaks to pet spell lists, the demographic of a class is completely altered as is the general playstyle - BDs were never the go-to farm class. But these custom changes to BD dark aremuch better balanced than OG where dark pets were worthless!
If there are plans for change, is the original blueprint OG or will they be custom balance changes that require the full amount of careful dev discretion as any other major balance change?
Animist Shrooms
1. As noted in Ref3, shrooms casted their spells that were set based on the level of pet summoned on the Animist's lists. On Here, even grey shrooms are hitting targets at full high level resists. So when you walk through a grey pile of shrooms, instead of seeing maybe 30-50% resist rate, you will take damage from almost 9 out of 10 hits. This is a significant change, especially for debuffing/tangler pets, raising effective to-hit%.
Will this be explored as a means to balance Animist pets in RvR?
Theurgist FnF Pets
1. As noted in Ref3, Theurgist ice pets were given set spells that did not scale much with the caster's level. This has long been a complaint of Theurgist players (https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/6bd36e53-6e42-47fe-9704-4d77eef06a24), and its one that makes sense - it doesn't stand to reason that higher level pets have close to 0 impact on the game.
Current status on Here, at least before the April pet changes, are Live-and-OG-like - however, a buff would be a sensible balance decision: what will be done?
Enchanter, Cabalist and Summons:
1. There have been several complaints that summoned pets are doing less damage Here than OG: https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/831f4dd0-5f86-4dd0-aad9-ea8ac311a20a
Does today's fix alter the damage of these pets considerably (scaling on level), and in what direction, and is this the intent of the patch?
Charm
1. I noticed upon testing, that Minstrel pets are doing even less damage than they were before: quoting /servernews, "pet level in RvR combat is no longer the higher of pet or owner level but instead always the lower of the two, this affects outgoing and incoming spell and melee damage." If I understand this correctly, this means that Minstrel and Mentalist pet bonuses are attenuated per level over 50, which makes it pointless to take anything over level 50 as it yields increased resist rates, but receives none of the benefits on OG/Live (greater resist rates, greater damage, greater interrupt rate).
Here is one example of Here vs Live:
Live Video: https://gfycat.com/idealdimpledarcticwolf
Here DPS. Note that this is even less than a few days ago where the average was around 120-150 before resists (on me, the player target equivalent to today's test dummy)
[12:56:10] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 94 (-33) damage!
[12:56:14] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:14] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 85 (-29) damage!
[12:56:18] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:18] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 100 (-35) damage!
[12:56:22] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:22] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 89 (-31) damage!
[12:56:26] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:26] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 94 (-33) damage!
[12:56:30] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:30] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 96 (-33) damage!
[12:56:34] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:34] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 108 (-38) damage!
[12:56:38] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:38] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 80 (-28) damage!
[12:56:42] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:42] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 98 (-34) damage!
[12:56:46] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:46] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 105 (-37) damage!
[12:56:50] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:50] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 88 (-31) damage!
As you can see, Ellyl sage DPS has gone down from roughly 200 every 2 seconds to 90 every 3-4 seconds, a nerf of 75%. In fact, a level 53 Ellyll sage does less than half the DPS of a single Warmage, even after this week's Warmage nerf. This is pertinent: is this a spell list nerf, a result of scaling down, or both?
Can we clarify on this issue? On Here, Minstrel pets are nerfed in that:
1. Charm cannot be spammed more than 5 times a second
2. There is a hard cap on pet levels
3. Pet damage is generally lower vs. live (not including attenuation - damage per swing is simply set lower for about 90% of mobs I tested, there is custom attenuation on top of that)
4. I have noted no double hits from pets despite the recent patch notes
5. Several mobs have been nerfed in terms of abilities. A brief list: frore lich, cyhraeth, hollow man, far dorocha, goborchend wounder, frost stallion, einhorning, scorcher, wi'voron flamethrower, Ellyll sage, Ellyll champion, Ellyll Windchaser, pictish druid, Arawnite shamaness, Amadan touched, great brown drake, isolationist armsman, cyclops arcana, Priestess
6. Pet resist rate vs spells is generally lower: https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/c59f0a00-38fb-4100-98fa-8146cffe432e
7. Pet DoTs no longer interrupt on each tick (affects Cabs, Minstrels, Sorcs, Necros and Ments predominantly, three Alb core classes). I understand this is intentional, but it's a major balance change that impacts Albs.
8. Pet damage is scaled down, erasing much of the benefit of charming higher mobs.
9. Several mobs have been nerfed in terms of speed. There appear to be no pets over 200 speed, whereas OG/Live, there are; frost stallion (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=763) Ellyll windchaser (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=162) Enhorning (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=758)
10. Pet interrupt rate?
Can we get word on which of these is intentional, which of these were intended to be addressed by today's patch?
Necromancers
1. Will Necromancers be taking significantly more damage now? I noticed already that pet swings and especially the Abom proc have taken massive reductions in damage (50%+ for proc). Necromancers already took much more damage in RvR than on live, and they still suffer from being crit 100%.
General
1. The notes say Absorb from buffs had diminishing returns removed. Yet, this means lower absorb values? Could you clarify?
2. How is Base AF being altered? Was it giving more absorb prior? I think it's behavior before was Live-like.
3. How will debuffs be impacted? Debuffed pets die very fast in RvR. This will especially impact Necro survivability.
I think the big question is, what is the reference point we're balancing pets toward? As it appears to me, the original data that was imported was incomplete, and several holes had to be patched by memory, with ZAM/Prima aiding the process. If it's the case that we want Original behavior, we could try to set up a small player volunteer team to do research (from internet archives as well as Live testing).
Do we want OG-like pet behavior and does this require much more player input and testing?
Or
Were pets simply considered overpowered, and thus nerfed? - imo, the pet realms (Alb and Hib) are a bit underpop compared to Mid for a lot of reasons, the pet nerfs being one of them.
lastly
How is pet balance going to be handled going forward?
Because the documentation is so thin on a complex balance issue, will we be doing custom changes? Right now, many pet movement speeds, dual-hit rates and resists are different than on OG/Live. Afaik, almost all summoned pets were spirit weak for example, but this does not seem to be the case Here. I ask because this is a very significant deviation from the original stated balance philosophy which was OG with some changes. These pet changes go so far to the point where I think we can almost completely abandon that idea and say the server is totally custom with a partially-complete OG as astarting point rather than a reference point
. Personally, I think massive (75-80%+) nerfs to pet effectiveness necessitates equally large balance changes to non-pet powers, like Savage buffs, Bard Amnesia and BD instants, for example.
As always, thank you very much for any input and discussion.
First, to clarify for all readers, how pets worked in 1.65 and in many cases live is as follows:
Ref 1) For summoned pets, hit rate, miss rate, resist rate and interrupt rate were based on the level of the caster regardless of con. Therefore, a level 50 Druid with a grey pet or a 50 Theurg using a green ice pet would 100% interrupt a 50 target in RvR.
Ref 2) For charmed pets, however, hit rate, miss rate, resist rate and interrupt rates were based on the level of the mob. Therefore green Body Sorc pets (often torcans) would fail to interrupt at a rate of roughly 50-37 * 5%. They'd interrupt only about a third of a time (I can double check this). Minstrel/Mentalist pets would resist spells at their level, and could interrupt MOC at roughly 5% per 1 level over 50. This can also be tested on live, and I can do it upon request.
Ref 3) For pet spell level, sometimes pet spells scaled with the level of the pet (Enchanter, Cabalist), but often times each mob was assigned a specific spell with its own spell level that was static regardless of caster level. This is what worked with Theurgist ice pets and Animist pets - Theurg ice pets at levels 25 and above had similar spells, and thus did similar damage and had roughly equal spell resist rates. At one point you would see in your log "You begin casting your Theurgist Ice Pet Spell VI" or something. This was the balancing point for devs, they would tweak spell power up and down if a specific pet was too weak. Upon casting, the interrupt rates would work as described in the two above paragraphs.
That said today's changes leaves several questions open for now and on future development. I'll go class by class. For reference, Live is DaoC on the live state, OG or Original is DaoC on the original 1.65 state, and Here is Phoenix, present.
BD Pet Spell Lists - https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6309&p=42700&hilit=bonedancer#p42700
1. As noted before, BD pet spell lists here deviate significantly from OG 1.65 and Live. BD dark pets and debuffers cast significantly faster, and BD dark pet spells hit harder even after these April adjustments on Phoenix. However , BD healer spell lists are different. The top level healer pet healed for over 100, could not be interrupted, and casted healing spells at around 3.2s unbuffed (vs 4.0s Here). The current iteration of BD healer pet represents a major nerf to Supp, while the present iteration of Dark is a major (but needed) buff to Dark.
I think it's important to know if these are conscious balance changes, because we don't have documentation and dev notes to work with. imo, this sets the stage for further balance changes when previously, we are under the impression that we want to be conservative with balance changes. But as you can see here,with just .5-.8 second tweaks to pet spell lists, the demographic of a class is completely altered as is the general playstyle - BDs were never the go-to farm class. But these custom changes to BD dark aremuch better balanced than OG where dark pets were worthless!
If there are plans for change, is the original blueprint OG or will they be custom balance changes that require the full amount of careful dev discretion as any other major balance change?
Animist Shrooms
1. As noted in Ref3, shrooms casted their spells that were set based on the level of pet summoned on the Animist's lists. On Here, even grey shrooms are hitting targets at full high level resists. So when you walk through a grey pile of shrooms, instead of seeing maybe 30-50% resist rate, you will take damage from almost 9 out of 10 hits. This is a significant change, especially for debuffing/tangler pets, raising effective to-hit%.
Will this be explored as a means to balance Animist pets in RvR?
Theurgist FnF Pets
1. As noted in Ref3, Theurgist ice pets were given set spells that did not scale much with the caster's level. This has long been a complaint of Theurgist players (https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/6bd36e53-6e42-47fe-9704-4d77eef06a24), and its one that makes sense - it doesn't stand to reason that higher level pets have close to 0 impact on the game.
Current status on Here, at least before the April pet changes, are Live-and-OG-like - however, a buff would be a sensible balance decision: what will be done?
Enchanter, Cabalist and Summons:
1. There have been several complaints that summoned pets are doing less damage Here than OG: https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/831f4dd0-5f86-4dd0-aad9-ea8ac311a20a
Does today's fix alter the damage of these pets considerably (scaling on level), and in what direction, and is this the intent of the patch?
Charm
1. I noticed upon testing, that Minstrel pets are doing even less damage than they were before: quoting /servernews, "pet level in RvR combat is no longer the higher of pet or owner level but instead always the lower of the two, this affects outgoing and incoming spell and melee damage." If I understand this correctly, this means that Minstrel and Mentalist pet bonuses are attenuated per level over 50, which makes it pointless to take anything over level 50 as it yields increased resist rates, but receives none of the benefits on OG/Live (greater resist rates, greater damage, greater interrupt rate).
Here is one example of Here vs Live:
Live Video: https://gfycat.com/idealdimpledarcticwolf
Here DPS. Note that this is even less than a few days ago where the average was around 120-150 before resists (on me, the player target equivalent to today's test dummy)
[12:56:10] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 94 (-33) damage!
[12:56:14] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:14] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 85 (-29) damage!
[12:56:18] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:18] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 100 (-35) damage!
[12:56:22] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:22] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 89 (-31) damage!
[12:56:26] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:26] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 94 (-33) damage!
[12:56:30] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:30] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 96 (-33) damage!
[12:56:34] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:34] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 108 (-38) damage!
[12:56:38] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:38] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 80 (-28) damage!
[12:56:42] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:42] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 98 (-34) damage!
[12:56:46] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:46] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 105 (-37) damage!
[12:56:50] Ellyll sage casts a spell!
[12:56:50] Your Ellyll sage hits Training Dummy Level 50 for 88 (-31) damage!
As you can see, Ellyl sage DPS has gone down from roughly 200 every 2 seconds to 90 every 3-4 seconds, a nerf of 75%. In fact, a level 53 Ellyll sage does less than half the DPS of a single Warmage, even after this week's Warmage nerf. This is pertinent: is this a spell list nerf, a result of scaling down, or both?
Can we clarify on this issue? On Here, Minstrel pets are nerfed in that:
1. Charm cannot be spammed more than 5 times a second
2. There is a hard cap on pet levels
3. Pet damage is generally lower vs. live (not including attenuation - damage per swing is simply set lower for about 90% of mobs I tested, there is custom attenuation on top of that)
4. I have noted no double hits from pets despite the recent patch notes
5. Several mobs have been nerfed in terms of abilities. A brief list: frore lich, cyhraeth, hollow man, far dorocha, goborchend wounder, frost stallion, einhorning, scorcher, wi'voron flamethrower, Ellyll sage, Ellyll champion, Ellyll Windchaser, pictish druid, Arawnite shamaness, Amadan touched, great brown drake, isolationist armsman, cyclops arcana, Priestess
6. Pet resist rate vs spells is generally lower: https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/c59f0a00-38fb-4100-98fa-8146cffe432e
7. Pet DoTs no longer interrupt on each tick (affects Cabs, Minstrels, Sorcs, Necros and Ments predominantly, three Alb core classes). I understand this is intentional, but it's a major balance change that impacts Albs.
8. Pet damage is scaled down, erasing much of the benefit of charming higher mobs.
9. Several mobs have been nerfed in terms of speed. There appear to be no pets over 200 speed, whereas OG/Live, there are; frost stallion (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=763) Ellyll windchaser (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=162) Enhorning (http://camelot.allakhazam.com/db/search.html?cmob=758)
10. Pet interrupt rate?
Can we get word on which of these is intentional, which of these were intended to be addressed by today's patch?
Necromancers
1. Will Necromancers be taking significantly more damage now? I noticed already that pet swings and especially the Abom proc have taken massive reductions in damage (50%+ for proc). Necromancers already took much more damage in RvR than on live, and they still suffer from being crit 100%.
General
1. The notes say Absorb from buffs had diminishing returns removed. Yet, this means lower absorb values? Could you clarify?
2. How is Base AF being altered? Was it giving more absorb prior? I think it's behavior before was Live-like.
3. How will debuffs be impacted? Debuffed pets die very fast in RvR. This will especially impact Necro survivability.
I think the big question is, what is the reference point we're balancing pets toward? As it appears to me, the original data that was imported was incomplete, and several holes had to be patched by memory, with ZAM/Prima aiding the process. If it's the case that we want Original behavior, we could try to set up a small player volunteer team to do research (from internet archives as well as Live testing).
Do we want OG-like pet behavior and does this require much more player input and testing?
Or
Were pets simply considered overpowered, and thus nerfed? - imo, the pet realms (Alb and Hib) are a bit underpop compared to Mid for a lot of reasons, the pet nerfs being one of them.
lastly
How is pet balance going to be handled going forward?
Because the documentation is so thin on a complex balance issue, will we be doing custom changes? Right now, many pet movement speeds, dual-hit rates and resists are different than on OG/Live. Afaik, almost all summoned pets were spirit weak for example, but this does not seem to be the case Here. I ask because this is a very significant deviation from the original stated balance philosophy which was OG with some changes. These pet changes go so far to the point where I think we can almost completely abandon that idea and say the server is totally custom with a partially-complete OG as astarting point rather than a reference point
. Personally, I think massive (75-80%+) nerfs to pet effectiveness necessitates equally large balance changes to non-pet powers, like Savage buffs, Bard Amnesia and BD instants, for example.
As always, thank you very much for any input and discussion.
https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?p=55070#p55070