Wolf and arti dog

[AzB]

They need some epic-ness. They're great through heroic levels, and reasonably useful in epic hard if you spend the feats and energy to build them up.

But in elite? Useless. They die so quickly, and eat up all your mana trying to keep them alive. They are used only as lever pullers in Maze so I can solo it, and PoP for solo or sometimes groups.

How to fix? The easiest way would be to have some new items for collars that are epic. They need to give the dogs all the defenses that characters can get, but they can only wear armor and collars. Collars are easy, because only the pets can use them. There's no game breaking unbalancing concerns because someone used them on a player character.

Right now, my summoner druid can get his dog to almost 2000 hp, but he still dies in 15 seconds, especially if he runs off and gets blocked from heals. And the heals have to be pretty much non stop, or he will die. And this is ridiculous for a toon that has every single possible boost for the pet, from feats to past lives, and even thunderforged gear.

Right now, collars are offense only (and not much of that, but I'll get to that later) but we could easily have a couple level 28 collars that contain resistance, fort, prot, hit points, prr, etc with a couple slots left for customization. This would allow us to get the dogs to a decent AC, reflex save, and prr for some ability to take a hit without folding up and checking out. Maybe even ghostly and/or a displacement proc. The dogs need an enormous amount to be able to survive, and this would allow it but still keep it out of the hands of players.

Now offense. With enemies having hundreds of thousands of hp, it's pretty silly that a well geared dog with a strength of 60 would do 40-50 pts of damage. The trip doesn't work. The bluff doesn't work. Does sneak attack even work? I've never noticed, but I haven't really looked. At any rate, the damage increase isn't exactly dramatic or I would have noticed. The mobs certainly don't seem to notice. What's the point? This isn't as easy to fix as defense, but redoing the pet enhancements to allow for some *epic* enhancements would be the way I would go. Next, as above, let's see some collars with deadly, and some decent base damage.

The skeletal warrior that wizards get it much hardier, but it also does only incidental damage. When playing a wizard, the pet is a bit more useful as you can send it out to get aggro while you stand back and cast. But this costs you a lot of AP, which seems unfair as the dogs get their own enhancement trees. And the skelly needs armor and a weapon that can be slotted.

[General_Gronker]

They need some epic-ness.

True that, but concerning offense, I think the better idea is instead to stop giving things thousands and thousands of hit points. That's poor, lazy design.

[droid327]

I agree with your basic premise - pet class pets need more "basic defense" attributes to compete in Epic content designed to challenge player defenses. I'd rather see them beefed up to PC-level defenses, even if it means scaling their HP back. Or, alternatively, giving them like 400-500% heal/repair amp, so that your heals scale up to the HP and damage they're taking.

However, I don't think it should come from collars - they really need an overhaul of their Enhancements, and that seems like the proper place for both offensive and defensive boosts. That way, you could warrant giving more powerful abilities on both ends, because its a tradeoff between a fully-specced DPS dog or a fully-specced tank/defense dog.

As for Wizards - skellies should never be as good as a fully invested Wolf or Defender, because skellies only represent investing at most a few dozen AP, while the pet is a component of the class' base efficacy. In other words, a Wizard could choose to forego a Skelly and be a fully-invested Archmage, PM, etc. A Druid or Arti cant choose to forego their pet and boost their other base functions instead.

[AzB]

However, I don't think it should come from collars - they really need an overhaul of their Enhancements, and that seems like the proper place for both offensive and defensive boosts. That way, you could warrant giving more powerful abilities on both ends, because its a tradeoff between a fully-specced DPS dog or a fully-specced tank/defense dog.

I totally agree.

However, collars were suggested as it would far easier to implement and unuseable by player characters. Two collars would be really easy to create, much easier than rewriting the enhancement tree for pets, which I would assume to be very low priority.

But yes, the enhancements need to be upgraded and some epic level enhancements should be available. I really want to be able to use my pet for something after trying so hard to make it viable.

Az

[droid327]

I totally agree.

However, collars were suggested as it would far easier to implement and unuseable by player characters. Two collars would be really easy to create, much easier than rewriting the enhancement tree for pets, which I would assume to be very low priority.

But yes, the enhancements need to be upgraded and some epic level enhancements should be available. I really want to be able to use my pet for something after trying so hard to make it viable.

Az

But then what happens when they *do* get around to modernizing pet enhancements? If the functionality is already in-game via collars, they've hamstrung themselves to being able to improve that functionality via enhancements. It seems like if they gave us super-collars, that'd be all we ever get.

[Bernaise]

Another thing I think that really needs to be added is some way to scale your pet level to your character level. It really sucks when multi-classing that your pet only scales with the class levels taken so your dog/wolf (already only marginally useful) will always be trailing behind on capability.

This could be addressed in a couple of ways;
1. Give an Enhancement choice in the Art/Druid tree that allows the pet to scale
2. Add a passive ability for collars or crafting that allows level scaling
3. Create a new Vanilla Enhancement Tree, much like the new Harpers Agent Tree [in development], that contains pet enhancements accessible to all characters. Much like what we had before the Enhancement Trees were instituted.

[mezzorco]

As a side note:

If pets get fixed, I would really appreciate if devs give rangers the pet they deserve. Maybe as a T5 DWS enhancement...

[droid327]

As a side note:

If pets get fixed, I would really appreciate if devs give rangers the pet they deserve. Maybe as a T5 DWS enhancement...

http://ddowiki.com/page/Summon_Nature%27s_Ally_IV

Fix summons so they're useful, and there you go. Ranger is not a pet class in DDO, they're a dual melee-ranged class.

[PsychoBlonde]

Another thing I think that really needs to be added is some way to scale your pet level to your character level. It really sucks when multi-classing that your pet only scales with the class levels taken so your dog/wolf (already only marginally useful) will always be trailing behind on capability.

This is a feature, not a bug. If you want a useful pet, *take the class levels*.

There is a pen and paper feat that makes you act as 3 levels higher for the purpose of your pet, though (up to the limit of your level). I wouldn't mind if they included something like that.

I don't usually have that hard a time keeping my pet alive on my druid simply because her earthquake is so incredibly powerful--if you can CC the mobs, your pet doesn't get gacked all the time.

Here's some suggestions for ways to make pets more viable, though:

1. Have an ability where when you heal yourself, it heals your pet for the same amount. The hardest part of healing your pet is targeting the ****er. It's much easier to target yourself instead. Likewise when you're getting beat up and don't have the attention to spare for your pet, you'll still be healing it.
2. Make all pets immune to AOE damage and traps. Granted, you can get them Evasion, but I think it'd be better to just make them flat out immune.
3. Make all pets immune to critical hits and sneak attacks.
4. Have them always target the same mob you are targeting. If you're not targeting a mob currently, they should hug momma.
5. Make them able to rapidly engage/disengage from combat by giving them a jump charge type ability. Combined with 4 this will keep the pet out of harm's way while allowing them to occasionally hop in a fight and do their moderate damage--if you want your pet to disengage, all you have to do is clear your target (or target yourself) and they'll instantly leap out of the fight to hug momma. Target a mob and they hop back in chomp chomp chomp.
6. Introduce named collars and pet-only armors that have things like Displacement and PRR and MRR on them or bonuses like "+6 to ALL stats". Preferably add these in as challenge rewards or otherwise crafted items so that people who don't play classes with pets don't wind up feeling like their nice new loot got stolen and fed to the dogs.
7. Make it so that you can put collars on your quick bars and equip them *to your pet* by clicking on them.