Thrall/Pet Health - Too strong?

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Now before I make a suggestion, I mostly want to hear everyone’s thoughts on the health of thralls and pets in general. Do you think it’s fine, too strong, too weak, etc…

In my personal opinion, I think the health is WAAAY over the top. Buffing their health was not the right move, as not only are 100s of thralls lagging up the servers, but they are being used as a main defense when they (in my opinion), were never meant to be the main defense, but as side help. As a companion, they also seem to be a bit strong in that they can clear entire higher tier camps by themselves while barely taking a scratch. I don’t mind them as companions, but they shouldn’t be unkillable, especially since this can be a bit problematic in a PvP situation. It’s especially problematic with this health when they can potentially hit just as hard as a 50 strength player.

This is mostly from a PvP standpoint, as I’m not concerned with their strength in PvE (even though it’s still a bit ridiculous how well they can tank bosses).

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when you say its health is to strong do you mean normal and not greater pets or greater pets in general?, there is a difference greater pets have double the health.
But the different species are not sharing the same health values in every corner, for example wolf has 2800’ish hp while the tigers have lower then that.
Iknow since player health and damage has not been updated since the pets came out its hard to kill a Greater Pet, not impossible but hard.
It does need balancing but then you would need to make some sort of PvE Pet Ressistance higher so that PvE npc’s dont kill the pets as easy, so they still retain some value instead of nerfing them entirely to a useless state where no one would use them ever again.
This is what the developers are trying to do Infectious1X believe me when i say that they have noticed it, but they are also working on a new map for conan exiles to keep the game interresting which means development is slowed down on trying to balance the pets right now.
i totally agree that they are op in pvp and that should change as soon as they get a handle on it.

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yea captain got overbuff my spinas look like a joke to them
i hope pve thralls get limited to 20-30 found a base full of thralls 100+ thralls and pets outside they are not even usefull why place soo much thrall only 5 thralls move when there are enemy

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Thralls need a buff in my opinion, they seem useless. As for pets, I think they are fine. I don’t know what bosses you are talking about, single skull ones? Those are easy without the pets as well in later levels. Against say the White Bat, my Greater Tiger got half his life taken off with one dive the bat done. I was running away like crazy jump-climbing not to survive, but to make sure my Tiger didnt die. Managed to pull him off the boss with like 10% health left.

So ummmm… No, in my opinion they are not op. For end game content they are fine and dont do much more damage than I do anyway.

With regards to PvP on the other hand, sure I think they might be on the op side of things. Hard to make all content viable though. If they nerf them to balance for PvP they will be useless for PvE and become nothing more than mid game content. At which point, why bother with pets period? Also, their fighting does not make them crash hot vs larger level content and they can die easier than you make it sound. A camp is not a good example. I can now take out an entire camp on my own as well with barely a scratch on me, without kiting, running in and just going berserk. If I can do it, my greater pet better be able to do it as well.

Had 2 greater hyenas agains a Mini Boss Wolf up north at a point. 2x Greater Hyenas. You would think they could manage. The demon Wolf almost killed both of them. They were at around 15% health each. (I dragged the second one up with guarding mode on my way to pick up the first one since I had died unexpectedly and was running all the way north again, hence why I had 2 greater heynas)

Add the time it takes to farm a few pets, then take them back to breed, the chance of getting a greater pet and then also the time it takes to have it come of age, and I think its perfectly fine for PvE. They reduce health on them they would be completely a waste of time.

I would be ok if they nerfed their damage though. That could be perhaps a solution?

I am also assuming that we are going to get different level pets and this is just a placeholder. I noticed pets have levels but they are stuck on zero. Maybe the idea is that they start small, and then level up to the health pools they currently have. That could be a solution as well. Also, it makes no difference whatsoever at the moment what animal pen you have. Even a tier 1 pen got me a White Tiger at the same health that the Tier 2 Pen did. I am assuming this too is not complete and it will be finished when the leveling system is finished.

As in, tier 1 pen can only have say pets randomly from lvl 1 to say 10. Tier 2 lvl 20 to 40, and tier 3 level 40 to 60. Something like that. And perhaps this hasn’t been implemented yet since levels are not implemented on them? No idea.

That is the only route I would agree to. Anything else in terms of a straight up all around health pool buff or nerf I think will on one end ruin pve and on the other ruin pvp. A leveling system could work. Perhaps what we are experiencing now are the highest tier and level pets we can get.

Not sure how much this will bog the servers down. Maybe a limit can also be set for how many active pets a clan can have. To say idk, 20? Would that sound ok for people? As it is now it gets a little crazy. I must be up to 40 pets myself atm and all this because I was trying to get a few greater pets here and there.

The process of getting these pets is what makes it op. Again, tier 1 animal pen and White Tiger made me rek shop at lvl 30. Changing the % to get greater pets in my opinion is also not a good idea. I dont think rng is the solution. We deal with enough rng in most games as it is, I find the % to be just fine here.

Which again brings full circle round back to the only suggestion I would be fine with. Pet levels. They can start small, and then slowly get stronger, and get extra level for free depending on the tier pen that breeds them. This way you can also focus on one pet as a dedicated companion to make it reach the point of the current 8k health pool and current damage they do. A much rarer occurrence at that point, and without ruining the potency and use of pets to make them completely useless. And trust me, they will be useless for end game content if they straight up just nerf them imo. Again, I already have had plenty encounters where they have been left with a small amount of health. And I wasn’t up against some crazy odds either. Was more like late game content, not actual end game content.

A similar system can be done with thralls, which feel sometimes way too useless if you ask me. A tier 1 fighter can barely hold his own against a single croc sometimes. LOL.

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ps. I am personally more concerned with PvE btw tbh. I don’t even bother with PvP in this game. Until they can get servers that actually reflect my connection and internet speeds I am not bothering. Coming from games where I play at 40ms to play PvP here, in a survival game that can have enemies LOOT ME, and experience constant 100ms spikes and never go under 70ms, is not a formula I care to even bother with.

But yeah, TL:DR
I think a leveling system would be the best solution for all sides of the argument.

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Honestly I think they are good the way they are now.

The best fighter thrall you can have is 7.4k hp wich is less of an “hero” in Unnamed city who die in few hits of my weapon.

Considering their AI (artificial idiocy) they are balanced in PvP as defences (before they was USELESS as defences).

In PVE… well ok, a best T4 thrall with best equip etc. is too good as tank (better than the player himself sometimes)… but if at level 60 with best resources etc. you can’t have a decent follower… well at that point followers will be useless.

Pets at that point of the game are a little useless, Greater pets have 8.2k hp, too few more of a good t4 thrall to compensate their lack of a decent armor. But they was better than thralls when you wasn’t 60, so it’s ok this way imho.

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I’m glad my Captain has 7000 hp to tank bosses while I shoot arrows from afar. Playing solo would be almost impossible otherwise.

Giving them a truncheon to knock down NPCs is nice too. If I do it alone I get flooded by attacks and can only block/dodge, they hit me again before I can hit them with the short range of the truncheon. So I let the thrall do the work. Fighting 3 npcs or more staggering you with every hit doesn’t end well without backup.

It just feels unbalanced because there is no auto leveling, so weak enemies feel even weaker after a while, but strong bosses remains nearly impossible to kill in solo unless you exploit the AI/terrain.

Lowering the HP wouldn’t solve anything, you can just put a bunch of thralls in a T3 bearer with some armors, spawn them near a boss and aggro the boss. It would just be more tedious.

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While I understand that there needs to be a balance between PvP and PvE, the issue here is PvE, even the endgame, is simply too simple to do solo that having a near invincible high tier pet or thrall just isn’t needed. Since it’s not needed for PvE, then why do they need to continue existing with the current strength they currently have?

And when I talk about pets or thralls, I’m talking about the highest tier, such as the White Tiger, Dalinsia, Captains, etc…

Again, since they aren’t needed for PvE (they’re only helpful, but not necessary), then why keep them at this strength when it’s an issue for PvP? Whether a pet has 2k health or 10k health, they will still die to a player in a single fight, with the only difference being the matter of time it takes to kill it. The real issue comes when there’s 20-30+ in a single area with 7k+ health or when a player is carrying one around with them.

For PvE, why do you require a thrall to kill a boss? Where is the challenge and why should a boss be so simple? You receive legendary weapons and items for killing world bosses, so they aren’t meant to be simple. With a thrall, it removes the challenge and strategy of dealing with them and instead turns it into a “you tank, I poke poke poke.” People want PvE to be more challenging, but then claim that thralls are absolutely necessary for it. A bit contradictory to me.

Alone, they aren’t very strong, but with a player, they become blatantly OP since they cannot be focused. They are just free damage and control for those who have them and there’s zero risk in bringing them around.

I’m not saying that thralls didn’t need a buff. Believe me, they seem half useless in MANY scenarios. This just feels like a poor attempt at fixing something that didn’t just need a stat buff, but an entire AI revamp. What I also don’t understand is why thralls and pets have suddenly become so important. This isn’t ARK, so why have such a strong emphasis on them?

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Perhaps the camp example wasn’t the best, but your point against it actually moreso proves thralls and pets are not needed. If you’re able to clear an entire camp by yourself without a scratch, then why do you require a pet? Your entire argument revolves around PvE, yet PvE is too simple and easy to do alone that having a thrall/pet just isn’t necessary. This is why I wanted this thread to be ENTIRELY about PvP. Until they buff the PvE endgame (or just in general), to become too difficult to solo, then thralls or pets are simply unnecessary for PvE, which means their only real use is for PvP.

Perhaps the change is to make thrall and pet resistances be different depending on whether it’s PvE or PvP. So perhaps for PvE, thralls can soak up a ton of damage like they do currently, but for PvP, they will die relatively quickly.

At this point, it just seems like Funcom only buffed thralls/pets so that people would have a reason to use them, which isn’t a good enough reason imo. They didn’t have a need before and don’t have a need now. If they were a need but were simply too weak, then it makes sense, but they were never a need.

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At level 60 I can also craft weapons and armor on par with most legendaries - weapons that can be repaired by any blacksmith, too. Legendaries are nice, and some of them have a slight edge over craftable weapons in terms of a stat bonus or something, but the benefit is so marginal that it doesn’t feel like killing world bosses is required to access endgame equipment.

There’s also a huge difference in difficulty between various world bosses. White tiger lacks reach so can be easily poked to death with a spear; scorpion king and Sand Reaper queen are predictable and can be dodged; the Giant spider has huge reach and poison and stuff and is suicide to attempt to solo; Rotbranch is similarly hard because it has enormous reach and hits hard; and Reptilian monstrosity, although predictable and easy to dodge, takes only one slip of concentration and you go splat. So there’s no homogenous “world boss difficulty” for getting legendaries - you can simply farm the one boss you know you can beat.

Thralls are not necessary for most PVE, as you say - but they make life a little easier. Having thralls with lots of hitpoints gives the player the chance to actually bring the thrall with him to dangerous places. Before the update the risk of losing your (semi-useless) thrall to random demi-boss was too great, so thralls were mostly used to guard your base. Now they can pull their own weight and you don’t need to be constantly afraid of their dying. And, as thrall damage is dependent on the same settings as NPC damage they don’t tip the balance too far in the player’s favor on easier game settings.

As for PVP, I have no personal experience with it, but I see constant complaints on these very forums that thralls and pets are still too stupid to be an effective defense against other players and can be killed too easily. But now it takes at least a little effort to murder other people’s thralls.

They got an update to their AI too. Now they can use weapon combos, and NPC fighters and animals know how to flank their target, etc. They’re still not human-level, of course, and I’m sure Funcom will continue to develop their AI - but what we have now is still a working temporary fix to thralls being useless.

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Like a few others, I feel that thralls and pets are good as they are at the moment.

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That’s sure, to much thralls do a bad job.
Small groups work way better, in a fight only a reducted number can engage. The rest will stand around, and create lag.
Good thralls well stuffed, and greater pets are better than an army of all and nothing. :wink:

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Thrall health is fine as it is now.

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Speaking of A.I btw, I sure do love when a pet attacks enemies from right behind me and I get stuck in a swirl of enemies and pet behind me that doesn’t allow me to even dodge back out :smile:

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Because the game don’t stop when you reach level 60, and overall in PVE-C it’s not the end, but the beginning.

When I just leveled up to lvl 60 it was right to use 20-30 mins to fight a boss.
It was fun and it was self-rewarding winning this way with not best equip.

When you’re level 60 since 6-7 months and you raiding Unnamed city or legendary creatures to find the few last weapons you missed or just to gain feat points for decoration feats and EVERY fight you search in the game for farming resources vs AI creatures is against a boss you CAN’T have to use 30 mins to win.

Because the 30 mins fight must be something 1 in a (long) while not one “all of your fights” thing !

Another reason is I had demon purges, and in PVE / PVE-C you need something to deal with it if it happens, even if they’re rare.

Is this a problem in PvP ? I don’t think so, I played pvp before start to play in PVE-C, offline defences like thralls was totally useless, or you’re online or doesn’t matter how rich is your clan and well defended is your base: you’ll lose it.

And that was one of the reasons I left PvP.

Maybe the problem is the Sword of Crom wich is incredibly op in the hands of a good thrall. It’s awfull rare anyway (you can’t have an army of thrall with one of them) but anyway I’ll don’t cry if the devs will decide to nerf it.

But I see no reason to nerf thralls or pets

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I might cry a little :stuck_out_tongue:
Really think a leveling system is the best way to go.

Straight up nerf makes them useless for endgame content.
At the moment they are fine, just pets are too easy to get and walk out buff already. Tier 2 and 3 pens are pointless.

With a leveling system, they can start small, then get to the point they are now, and larger tier pens can make more sense this way as well. Same as Thralls.

This way it takes a lot more time with again, a dedicated pet/thrall with you, to reach said levels that can make them somewhat useful in endgame content (somewhat, I many times end up sacrificing a greater pet for a boss… more often than not the boss will kill it, giving me just enough time to do as much damage as possible before that happens. They are hardly op).

What makes them op is the fact that I can make an animal pen early on, drop a few hyenas in it again early on, and have a greater hyena in 8 hrs off the spot… early on. That is what can make them feel unbalanced. They are considerably very strong for smaller content. Understandably so, its the trade-off for making them useful for the entirety of the game thereafter.

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