It might be a tad short-sighted on my part, in regards to coding and balance wise but perhaps a damage hardcap for players and player owned assets on PvP could effectively restrict some of the more excessive damage outliers. Say for example the katana combo-special follow up is capable of reaching 1k damage, and certain pets can deal 600 damage (just a number i’m pulling out my rear) with the average high end HP of a well-specced player being 1200. Wouldn’t it be a decent solution to cap damage that can be applied within a single second to a player to 400 ish? Things like environmental damage could perhaps be exempted from this, like stepping on one of the tall braziers or stepping in lava. Even if not, not a big loss i’d think.
I am guessing this might still cause issues in one shape or another when it comes to latency and such, but that’ll remain an issue regardless of measures.
Again, this might be shortsighted thinking on my part when it comes to difficulty of implementation and actual effective balancing. If possible however, it’d also remove a lot of the need to keep (downward) tweaking pets, thralls and weapons excessively. It’d also put in place a hard measure on any new sorceries, weapons or pets that might be introduced in the future.