Pet Design Suggestion Guide

[Infiltraitor]

How to suggest Pet designs

Want to make a summon/pet suggestion? Here's a quick guide on how to make suggestions for pets.

Pets and You

Pets serve one of two combat roles. DPS Percentage Boost, and Role Surrogate.


DPS Pecentage Boost

Pets that serve as DPS Percentage Boosts have identical stats to the player character except for being penalized by a percentage. The Favored Soul's Lantern Archon is the sole example of this in DDO. Because it's damage uses the player's stats, it is equivalent to a 20% dps boost. This type of pet is useful at all stages in the game, due to the fact that it's highly scaling nature keeps it relevant despite power creep. They tend to be the cheapest, most effective, and most balanced type of pet.

DPS Percentage Boost roles for pets are cheap to code, effective in gameplay, and balanced regardless of power creep.

Role Surrogate

Role Surrogates perform functions that the player themselves do not perform. They almost always exist with static pre-defined statistics although some examples exist (in other games) where the pet's stats are dependent on the player's stat of a different type. I.E. The pet's attack damage stat is based on the summoner's spellcasting stat. Role surrogates are extremely difficult to keep balanced and effective. They swing wildly between being too effective and too ineffective. The vast majority of summons and pets in DDO are of this variety. As such, they all suck. A skeleton that does 50 damage per second is not only worthless compared to a player that does 1500 DPS, but the skeleton has almost zero survivability. So it is worth 50 DPs for the 1 minute that it is alive and 0 dps thereafter.

Role Surrogates for pets are expensive to code, time consuming to keep balanced, difficult to maintain.

The Cost of a Pet

Pets commonly have one of several costs: Ability costs, Itemization costs, Penalty costs.

Ability costs are dependent upon the player diverted some amount of his own stats to boosting the pet.

Itemization costs are dependent upon the player acquiring gear to boost the pet. Items farming is self-explanatory.

Penalty costs are penalties imposed upon the player during the time that the pet is in use. I have no confidence that it can be executed properly within the confined of DDO and therefore shall not elaborate on it.




In DDO, 1 Feat is worth 3 action points. 1 Action point is worth 1% dps or 1% hp or 1% damage mitigation. In DDO, where players do anywhere from 1500-3000 DPS, 1 action point is worth 10-20 dps. This means that to be worthwhile, 1 AP must equivalently increase a pet's DPS by 10-20 points. This is important since pets attack extremely slowly, do very little damage, and have terrible crit profiles. To be worthwhile, 1 AP in a pet must increase strength by 20-40 points.

Example 1: I attack 2.2 times per second for 250 damage. I have 30% double strike and deal 4x criticals on 15-20 rolls. ~ 1358 DPS.
1% extra doublestrike is worth 10.4 dps.
1 extra strength is worth 10.1 DPS.

Example 2: Skeletal knight attacks 1 times per second for 35 damage. He has 45% double strike and deals 2x damage on 19-20 rolls. ~55 DPS
1% extra doublestrike is worth 1.2 DPS.
1 extra strength is worth 1.6 DPS.

For Skeleton Knight as well as pretty much any pet, 1 AP must grant at least 6 strength to be worthwhile. Augmented summon needs to grant at LEAST 18 to all stats to be worthwhile.

This creates a second problem of having an overpowered level 4 pet with 70 strength. For this reason, DPS Percentage Boost roles for pets are so much cheaper to design and keep balanced.

Pet Survivability

For pets to function in the role of either the DPS Percentage Boost or the Role Surrogate, the pet needs to survive.

An immortal pet functions as a permanent buff, like the Lantern Archon. A mortal pet, however, functions either as a defensive shield or a combat handicap.



Combat Handicaps

For all defensive values where the Pet's defensive abilities are less than the player's, it functions as a combat handicap.

If I run with 100 PRR, 15 Dodge, 30 DR, 20% Blur, 10% incorporeal, 30% Miss Chance from Armor Class, my expected damage taken is about 17% of any damage coming my way.
If my pet runs with 50 PRR, 8 Dodge, and 15% Miss Chance from Armor Class, its expected damage taken is about 48% of any damage coming its way.

If I normally need to heal X amount for damage taken by me, I have to heal 3X amount for damage that reaches the pet instead of me. This also ignores the fact that I run 200% healing amp. Therefore, if I normally had to stop to heal myself every 12 seconds in combat, I would have to stop to heal the pet every 2 seconds in combat.


Defensive Shields

This only occurs when and only when the Pet's defensive abilities exceed that of the player. In such instances, the player's healing burden will be either an equal amount or less than normal.

If I run with 100 PRR, 15 Dodge, 30 DR, 20% Blur, 10% incorporeal, 30% Miss Chance from Armor Class, my expected damage taken is about 17% of any damage coming my way.
If my pet run with 100 PRR, 15 Dodge, 30 DR, 20% Blur, 10% incorporeal, 30% Miss Chance from Armor Class, its expected damage taken is about 17% of any damage coming its way.

In such a case, I would not care who gets hit since the amount of healing that needs to be done is identical, assuming we both have 200% healing amp.


TO BE CONTINUED

[Infiltraitor]

Example of a bad Pet Suggestion:

Hey Devs, I think we should totally buff the Summon Monster Spell so that the monster can survive longer than a couple seconds in epics.


Example of a better Pet Suggestion:

Hey Devs, I heard that you guys were looking into fixing Druids. Instead of giving critical bonuses to yet ANOTHER class, how about we use the druid companion to function as a Percentage DPS Boost. If the wolf were to attack at the same critical profile, melee power, double strike, but have a 60% penalty to damage and 60% penalty to attack speed, it would be equivalent to a 16% dps boost. Then we could give the druid some enhancements that would reduce the penalties to 50/50, which would be equivalent to a 25% dps boost. This would surely be better than +2 critical threat range being given out to yet another class.

We could balance this out with a Penalty Cost of -50 all spellpower except healing while the wolf was alive. This way, the wolf companion is useful but the drawbacks means that many builds would still be better without it.

Edit: To be continued