I was quite excited to hear that Thralls would be nerfed because my first thought was “Awesome, pets will be viable now!”
However, it seems that your nerfs were for all followers across the board with some T4 thralls taking an extra hit. It is my honest opinion that greater pets were already in a bad place, now they are even worse.
Thralls needed the nerf… 12k health and swinging for 500-600 damage is a bit much… but pets needed a buff more than another nerf.
True.I think same
I think nerf is ok on the horses, but i totally agree for pets, I thought this patch could have let them shine finally
Just started playing this game a couple of weeks ago and I love it, despite the occasional bug here and there, its been a really pleasant experience and I already own all DLCs and Im waiting for more… with that out of the way.
I just joined these forums and I was about to start a thread like this. I would really like to suggest you guys look into the pet HP, from my experience pets are not… as good as human thralls, by a long mile, while the change to thrall HP will take some getting used to, its not bad. But you guys gotta do something about the pets, they should not have been hit with this HP nerf at all.
Not really, there HP changes for bosses happening, so still some adjustments to be done all around board. We got by with 4-5k thralls and 6-7k pets for longest time, and this “nerf” is more a dial back. (and some of them are still higher then some of best thralls we had (which got removed back then)
@Sera67 The issue is that in current state there is no way to improve a pet. Whatever stats a greater pet gets will determine it’s worth. Now, thralls do get a splash of this as well… stat multipliers are of huge importance. However, if you go nab yourself a T4 thrall from just about anywhere you can craft a full set of armor for them with the stat improvement of your choice, plus much higher armor value than any pet can achieve. Not enough? Well then slap some warpaint on them for some more stat modifying.
If you couple the above factors in with the fact most of the T4 thralls just start with higher health than greater pets and seem to widen that divide the more levels that go into them it is fairly clear that once you hit mid to late game the greater pets become little more than a novelty.
If they made the greater pets have more health than thralls that would help with the armor disparity. “Getting by” is not what suggestions for improvement are about. They are about noticing imbalance and offering some options for improvement.
In current state thralls have more health, higher armor, more stat manipulation, and higher DPS than greater pets.
Why not try to make a big part of the game better?
An alternative suggestion…I was testing greater pets today, and while the HP nerf they got is not ideal, it would be “somewhat” manageable if friendly fire was disabled of them.
Example: I order the pet to attack and if it’s getting overwhelmed, I try to pull aggro off them but by doing so I’m also applying every bleed/poison/cripple or sunder that applies to hostile NPCs, and the damage I deal on top of that…I’ve tried with every weapon type, even a direct no splash damage weapon like a pike and even though I do my best to aim, my pet also takes the hit (doesn’t help that it’s the venom-infused pike)
If reverting the nerf is not an option at least let our pets be immune or take reduced damage from us.
I feel conflicted about this because if pets were to be improved, my clanmates would turn our base into a zoo, so nay to all this. Pets take up too much space, especially the big ones.
On a more serious note, yeah, it’s a bummer that pets are still weaker than thralls, but if you look closely at the whole picture, they seem to be intended to be that way.
Overall it seems to me that the current state of pets make them easy-to-get early bodyguards and cannon fodder, protecting your nascent base long enough for you to start recruiting the real fighters in the game (thralls). If we want pets to be the same as thralls, there would probably need to be an overhaul of the pet system so their advantages over thralls don’t make them the only viable choice if they were buffed to thrall-level stats.
It’s fair to point out how something that is harder to break should be stronger. That is where the ability to equip and apply warpaints comes in. The ability to give a high end Thrall bonuses to strength of about +20 makes a huge difference. The better gear also grants them better armor by about double what pets get.
Additionally, lets take a look at potentially the best pet… the Sand Reaper Queen.
10 gold per egg which are only purchasable in Bucaneer Bay on one of the elevated platforms, the seller surrounded by aggressive mobs. You then have to hatch the egg before taming can start which, even if placed in a compost bin, takes an hour. You then have to be around to pull out the locust spawn and put it in the taming pen before the compost bin kills it. After all of that if you feed it the best possible food you can you still only get a 14% chance of getting one.
The amount of effort to get one of these is easily comparable to getting a T4 thrall.
First of all, we’re more or less on the same boat. I mean, I still prefer thralls over pets, but I agree with you that the power difference is just ridiculous, and pets sharing population limit with thralls makes them even less appealing. I don’t even want them for decoration purposes for that very reason.
That said, given the amount of stats you can get via perks and leveling, armor is more often used as a tool to offset bad RNG than to buff a particularly good thrall (which, of course, happens too). The max amount of strength you can add via “mass produced”, easily-accessible armor is a meager +9, though. To add the +3 of the warpaint you need to use dragonpowder, and they last longer than on players, but still wear off afaik. To get a +3 helm to replace the +2, you need to farm a particular legendary. Same goes with the chest, which also has the trade-off of being light armor, which deprives the thrall of the highest armor piece in their equipment, or to craft Redeemed Legion chests, which are “mass produced” too, but need a Purge Armorer to be crafted. The +3 gauntlets require (after T4 armorer reductions) 14 armor scraps, farmed at Warmaker’s Sanctuary (which would net you about enough to make one of those every 15 minutes) and another dragonpowder. All this combined nets you a +16 STR bonus, and to gear just one thrall up to this point requires a lot of time and effort in farming materials and grinding bosses and/or being very lucky with purges. I guarantee you, most people won’t go these lengths to squeeze a few more strength/vitality points.
Bottom line: it’s not that thralls, by virtue of being harder to find, knock, gather and break, are somewhat stronger and more durable than pets as-is, and are also given the access to enormously buffing armors. It’s that, being somewhat stronger, they are also given access to a system that can potentially further improve an already lucky thrall or at least make a little more viable an unlucky one.
I agree with you, though, that pets could (and should) be buffed. Special meals that buffed them, warpaint-style, would be a good first approach, though. Allowing you to be escorted by both a pet and a thrall would be great, too, and would give us a reason to actually try to breed and raise good pets. Giving them their own population limit would be even better, too! Pet armor would be freaking awesome; but, given the amount of different pet types in the game, it would take a lot of time before we saw any of that. Maybe just sized armor? Like, giving the small armor to wolves, tigers, hyenas, etcetera, mediom-sized armor for bears and kappas, and big armor for rhinos and elephants? Spiders, scorpions and sandreapers would need their own armor category, but for the sake of simplicty I’d be willing to throw away realism and allow them to share one armor type. Skeletons and ghouls can use human armor, after all.
On a little off-topic side note: sandreaper queen is overrated. Too big to fit through doors, so she can only be effectively used outdoors since she can be killed from outside the room she’s in. Her poison stream attack isn’t a threat if you pack a lot of antidotes or, even better, spec for the survival perk that renders you immune. A pet or thrall with relatively high survival will receive just a few ticks of poison and then it’ll just wear off. Nah, mate, hear me out: Silent Legion warrior. Created through necromancy, requires one fragment of power and six hours (but since it’s created in an alchemy cauldron, it can be greatly reduced). It only has a 15% chance of spawning as a result of necromancy, but it’s worth it. Hits like a truck (by pet standards, at least), good HP pool, immune to bleeds and poison/gas, and applies corruption to players hit. Plus, it’s human-sized and, if it ever gets killed (again), you can loot a free Telith’s Lament from its (re-deceased) corpse.
Based on your above response it looks like we are coming from the split perspective of PvE and PvP. A lot of the factors you listed against the SRQ are PvP specific, as well as reasons in favor of the SLW. The SRQ is, hands down, the best PvE pet but for PvP that title likely goes to Greater Wolf (The squirrely little bastards).
The Silent Legion warrior is great… but your inability to actually gear them out makes them a little less than stellar. The trade-off here being that you don’t need to gear them… which is nice as well. That corruption on hit only applies to PvP so where all the undead shine is their seeming immunity to bleed, poison, AND knockdown. Lots of melee things rely on stunning and knockdowns and these bad boys power through most of it. However, so do most other pets.
As much as I LOVE the idea of barding (aka pet armor) that would take an insane amount of work. Maybe what needs to happen is just a stat multiplier overhaul for pets… that would be the most simple answer to make pets more relevant. I mean, let’s be honest… have you seen what it takes to get a corrupted spider pet? Have you seen how fragile they are? So sad.
I do feel we are on the same page though. A well stated and well geared T4 Thrall SHOULD beat a greater pet. There is a ton of effort that goes into one of those and effort should be rewarded. I just also feel that greater pets, in current state, fall off way too fast and become thrall tax decorative pieces.
lvl 1 snowhunter did better against the bosses then my lvl 20 greater saber and the greater saber had pretty good stat outcome, good vitality, strength and agility. yet snowhunter at level 1 out performed it greatly.
Now I am ok with how good snow is, but I think the pets need a boost, least the greater pets could use a boost. Maybe a change to greater so you level a pet to level 20 then put it into the pen again to restart it as a greater pet that can then be leveled to 20 again, with all the stats stacking. (effectively allowing greater pets to go to level 40 version of normal rather then spawned via rng.)
some kind of change to allow pets to be a bit stronger
Would you believe that I’m more of a PvE-oriented player and never thought of the SRQ as an alternative to thralls when soloing content? I’m super-focused on PvP because of past bad experiences (and refuse to go to PvE servers because I want the full package, for good or bad, and because if I find a clan that claims land accross the entire map I want to be able to destroy it), but we mainly want to build our base/bunker, gather our resources, explore and enjoy. Is the SRQ that good? Wouldn’t it be squished after a couple hits from the Arena Champion?
Also, yeah, a slight buff to base multipliers is in order. Pets are TOO weak. A couple weeks ago I went exploring and went into the territory of a player that had an open zoo with no walls. I was assaulted by a dozen tigers, bears, wolves… Before I could run away, one of them tackled me, and before I could get up, my follower swung her sword. Six tigers dead.
Barding shouldn’t be too hard, though. They already have the saddles for horses. They can go with that template if they want a single piece of armor, or they can go with the thrall template and add head/torso/rear/whatever armor, and assign an armor class based on size and/or pet type.
Idk, I feel like the pet system has room to improve yet, and I at least hope that Funcom has a balance/rework on their priority list; but I also don’t think it’d be very high. They still have all these problems with thrall balancing, and I guess they want to nail that before buffing pets to near-thrall levels and then have two sources of imbalance instead of one.
honestly I don’t want an armor system, I would rather a system connected with the pet leveling, like increasing max pet HP. I wanna earn the stronger pet not just craft it with the piles of junk I have in boxes.
I honestly think that thralls and pets could both use a larger level system that takes a lot more work to grind up, and thralls should be restricted by what gear they can have till they reach certain levels.
Perhaps have both thralls and pets have 60 levels, just like the characters, then restrict the best gear to level 60 thralls. Ditch the random perks and allow players to choose a perk, ect ect you know make thralls a more detailed and enjoyable experience. bring thrall power level down closer to players, perhaps with just a bit better to account for ■■■■■■ AI.
bah there are a zillion directions to go, and I do admit I enjoy my uber thralls, but I also admit that they trivialize the game and make it to easy. they should mutilate trash, but they should have just as hard of a time against the bosses as us, maybe grant bosses extra damage and resistance to thralls?
Correct, the literal hardest hitting boss in the game will chunk down an SRQ pretty handily. To that point, no pets can take down the arena champ without heavy intervention and even then it is more like squeaking by. That is the entire problem. The very fact that the pets have become that comparably weak and the update only made them that much weaker. It’s silly.
I will give you this tip. Have you noticed how the dragons like to hammer thralls into the ground like tent spikes? SRQ only gets effected by that if fighting on stairs (the angle gets tricky). Otherwise they lay on 10 stacks of poison and easily maintain it killing them very quickly with practically no intervention. Against world bosses (especially scorpions) the SRQ doesn’t get flinched or knocked down while maintaining that aforementioned poison. This is what gives it the title of best PvE pet… however, that does not mean it can hold a candle to even a basic Mounds or Volcano Fighter 3.
We both agree, pets need improved upon. I’m just saying the SRQ is the best of the inferior option.
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