Thread: Pet changes we'd like to see

Hello LM community,

following the great success of the "Trait changes we'd like to see"-thread (many good ideas got actually implemented!), I want to point out some issues with our pets and some proposals to polish them the same way - hoping that some of those are discussed for the class-update polishing following Isengard.

General issues
Some pet skills have long cooldowns (Lynx/Sabercat) which can be reset by releasing and resummoning the pet out of combat. But constantly releasing and resummoning pets after fighting trash mobs is annoying.
Proposed change: All pet skills reset automatically when the pet leaves combat.

Small bug: The placeholder icons for the pet skills were not changed with the introduction of "Return to Master". Now the two last skills of the pet have the same icon (III/3), where the last skill should have a IV icon.

Pet changes
Raven:
Evasion: The armor value of this skill has not been adjusted with the patch that revamped all armor value ratings. Currently, at level 65, it provides an 195 armor buff, which is not much for a "survive" skill.
Proposed change: The armor value buff of the raven should be scaled to current armor values.

Bear:
Bear Hug and Roaring Challenge:
The skill order of these two skills got unintentionally(?) changed when "Return to Master" was added as new skill, resulting in Bear Hug being switched with Roaring Challenge when it is unlocked (thanks for the clarification, Anyelir)
Proposed change: Return those skills to their intended order: Roaring Challenge | Shatter Arms | Bear Hug when all three are unlocked.

Bear Hug: The damage of this skill doesn't seem to scale at all. Currently, at 65, this skill does 51-60 damage.
Proposed change: Increase the damage of this skill to be in the 250-300 range at 65.

Lynx:
Feral Strike has a very long cooldown compared to Slashing Claws (2m vs 1m) despite Slashing Claws being the superior AoE skill.
Proposed change: Reduce Feral Strike CD to 1m to be in line with Slashing Claws.

Sabercat:
The sabercat has very high cooldown/low damage skills which make this pet a poor choice for AoE trash fights compared to the Lynx, who may not have AoE auto-attacks, but high burst attack skills. This pet needs some love to make it a true sustained AoE DPS pet compared to the burst AoE of the Lynx or the utility of other pets.

Frostbite: A medium-damage skill with 2m cooldown and a 1m debuff, with the CD being too high for this skill to be of much use.
Suggestion: Increase damage from the 179-211 to the 250-300 range. Reduce debuff duration and cooldown to 30s, making the debuff sustainable and increasing DPS.

Fury of Winter/Throat Slash: these skills seem to have been designed to work in tandem, with the former applying a flank attack on crits and the latter using said flank for a chance to open a conjunction.
Because of the high cooldown and low critical chance of Fury of Winter, the flanks are very rare (I've seen this skill crit only once when farming Gauredain in Forochel, and it applied flanks to every target) and the 1m cooldown of Throat Slash messes up the skill queue when both skills are set to auto-fire, resulting in TS being always executed before FoW. Also, both skills do little damage.
So the only way to get an actual Conjunction is to wait for an (also rare) random flank and then firing TS manually, but TS has a low chance to actually open a CJ on a flanked target (still always consumes the flank though).

Suggestion 1: Remove the conjunction chance of Throat Slash. Reduce both skill cooldowns to 30s (FoW) and 32s (TS) and make these skills deal increased damage (300-400 range at 65). Fury of Winter has a 30% chance per target to apply a "Shivering" debuff for 10s which makes the next Throat Slash a guaranteed critical hit, along with a 50% critical magnitude boost on Throat Slash.

Suggestion 2: Reduce FoW cooldown to 1m and give this skill increased critical chance (instead of magnitude as it is now). Increase the cooldown of TS to 1m2s (to fix the skill queue) and increase the conjunction chance of TS to 50% on a flanked target. Increase damage on both skills.

Oh, and both skills should get their own icons.

Limrafn:
Issue: Skills are underpowered and provide less healing than using a high flanking pet with Improved flanking. Also, Limrafn are evil and don't fit with the theme of the class.

Suggestion: Replace Limrafn with a White Stag that does average damage (like the raven) and has no innate abilities. It has no random flank chance.

Flashing Flanking: Cooldown too high to be useful against high-flanking pets. Also allows getting flanks of CC-ed targets.
Suggestion: "Coordinated Strike" Reduce Cooldown to 20 seconds. Add very small damage component (50-60 at 65) to break CC.
20s Cooldown along with possibility to be BPEd/missed and no random flank chance balance this pet against Eagle and Lurker flank chances and utility.

Nature's Light: Damage return too low to be of use in 3-mans. Also benefits high-DPS classes more than low-DPS classes, and is more useful in raids than 3-mans, which should not be the case.
Replacement suggestion "Grace of Nature": All damage dealt by the stag is returned as healing to the attacked targets' target instead (heals the player the mob has currently aggro on). Duration: 15s. Cooldown: 30s. Still breaks any CC on attack.

Nature's Gift: Morale return is too low to sacrifice the pet for it.
Suggestion: Instead returns 40% of the pets current Morale to all nearby fellows - sacrificing an almost dead pet does little, so the pet should be healed first.

Bog-Guardian:
Issue: The innate guaranteed flanking attack is only available from melee range. The proclaimed "ranged" pet suffers a significant drop in flank rates from range because of this, so we have to force the Lurker into melee in order to get an acceptable flank rate.

Suggestion: Make the guaranteed flanking attack available from range to equalize melee and ranged flanks per minute.

Issue: Bog-Guardian DPS is very low compared to other Pets, especially Bear. See this thread.

Suggestion: Buff Bog-Lurker auto-attacks to grant the legendary, 5-traits+capstone requiring pet to have comparable damage to the Bear, both from melee and from range.


Buff food
Issue: Besides the Bear food, all other buff consumables are extremely underpowered and not worth the materials and bag space. The buffs are almost unnoticeable and need a big bump. Some buffs should be replaced by others that are better suited for the pet.

Bag of Crumbs:
Adds +7% melee critical in rating instead of melee offence, to enhance the Raven's ability to apply the Dizzy effect.
Evade Rating increased to 7% rating as well.
Fire and Acid defence is removed. +7% (in rating) tactical mitigation added.

Cut of Meat:
Buffs melee offense by 7% in rating.
Buffs melee skills critical chance by 7% in rating. (Enhances Lynx Surprise Strike and Sabercat Fury of Winter)
Adds 5% (in rating) physical mitigation.
Other buffs are removed.

Pot of Honey and Oats:
Fire and Shadow mitigations are replaced by tactical mitigation.

Bowl of Water:
Adds 7% ranged offence in rating.
Max. Power buff is replaced by +240 ICPR (at level 65), as the Lurker runs out of power in longer fights.
+ Tactical mitigation added.

Ranged items
Announced in the last Month of the LM, but forgotten as it seems.
So the LM still lacks equipment for their ranged item slots.

My proposal would be two different Sigils that buff some of our pet's abilities noticeably, and fit with the theme of our pet buffs: Rage and Protection.

They would be available as crafted item starting at Level 40, and a new one every 10 levels and the cap (65/75).

Sigil of Rage
This sigil increases the power of your companions as well as enhancing some of their abilities.
+ (Level*4) Companion max. power
Raven:
+50%: Dizzy proc chance on criticals/dev.criticals
Bear:
-20s Shatter Arms cooldown
Lynx:
+20% Critical chance from Stealth
Sabercat:
+3 AoE targets
Stag:
-5s Flanking Attack Cooldown
Eagle:
-20s Fan the Flames Cooldown
Lurker:
+5% Root Strike Ranged Critical Chance

Sigil of Protection
This sigil increases the morale of your companions as well as enhancing some of their abilities.
+ (Level*4) Companion max. morale
Raven:
Improved Shield of the Raven's Wing (increased tactical mitigation)
Bear:
-30s Roaring Challenge Cooldown
Lynx:
-20s AoE Skills Cooldown
Sabercat:
+10% Fury of Winter Critical chance
Stag:
+10s Grace of Nature duration
Eagle:
Improved Nobility (increases ICPR)
Lurker:
+10% Bursting Root Conjunction Chance


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That would be all from my part - thoughts and ideas as always welcome.

I would like to see a new pet combat stance for all pets. IE: Passive, guard, assist, aggro (follow/stay)

I want a stance that allows the pet to guard/assist/aggro, but not go running off on its own.

In particular, I want to see the pet assist my attacks but have a maximum range it is willing to travel away from me before it returns, (lets say 30 meters).

This way I don't have to manage it quite so closely when I am ranging creatures so far away that if the pet goes after them it will travel outside of my controllable range and become lost.

When i want the pet to actually go farther away I can toggle back to regular assist, but otherwise I would like it to "Stay Close"

Just to avoid confusion on the bear's skills... I have levelled a loremaster recently and I have watched the skills being unlocked.

The first skill the bear gets IS Roaring Challenge, then comes Shatter Arms and the Bear Hug gets added last. But at the time the Bear Hug is added the order of the skill ICONS gets rearranged. Roaring challenge starts out in the slot right of Return to Master, stays there when Shatter Arms is gained and is moved to the rightmost slot when Bear Hug is added. Bear Hug then goes to the slot that used to hold Roaring Challenge.

This change in arrangement was very confusing to me at first. I had to more or less relearn using the bear's skills after it got the Bear Hug. I think this is confusing for others who use the bear too (I know that not everyone does).

So the fix should be keeping the skill icon order even when Bear Hug is added. The order in which the skills are gained is fine.

The changes you proposed are quite nice....

The sabertooth cat definitely needs some looking into....it is a bit lackluster, or atleast seems so when compared theoretically.....although I like the conjunction opener its skill has....they should keep it.....I would rather propose they change the damage type to something else or atleast the debuff to maybe light damage or something......we have only one frost damage skill and that too on a long induction....that debuff is useless since even other classes dont have enough frost damage skills.....

Havent seen the limrafn pet yet so I am really still mystified how it will be....so no thoughts at all about it yet.....though I have a vague feeling I wont be using it over the lurker or eagle.....

And yeah please scale the passives and damage or buffs/debuffs of the pet skills.....be it the Eagle's ICPR aura or the Raven's buff.....lot of these skills and stuff need to be scaled....

though I wonder if there is still time that they might be able to do all this for us.....RoI is about a lil under 2 weeks away....

I would be hugely (but pleasantly) surprised if any of these changes made it in the near future. There are a LOT of things going on with RoI, including some big-picture issues and a zillion little issues.

I agree that our old pets need some updating, especially scaling. I was confused about your revised Nature's Gift - it doesn't return power (or did they change that that in yesterday's build?). Further, healing the pet and then providing party-morale can be simplified to just healing the party for 40% of it's full morale.

One thing I'd add is to allow our cosmetic pets to attack. It would obviously have no real value in content, but it would be so much fun to have my pet rabbit attack. Another thing that would be cool is to have a pet cosmetic horse. We'd be the only class who could stand *beside* our mount.

Good list.
Here is the one I would like to see:

COMBAT SUMMONING: Please decouple this skill from the bog-lurker legendary trait. It should either be a set bonus for 5 blue traits, or moved to noble savage.

Originally Posted by anteku

I would be hugely (but pleasantly) surprised if any of these changes made it in the near future. There are a LOT of things going on with RoI, including some big-picture issues and a zillion little issues.

I agree that our old pets need some updating, especially scaling. I was confused about your revised Nature's Gift - it doesn't return power (or did they change that that in yesterday's build?). Further, healing the pet and then providing party-morale can be simplified to just healing the party for 40% of it's full morale.

One thing I'd add is to allow our cosmetic pets to attack. It would obviously have no real value in content, but it would be so much fun to have my pet rabbit attack. Another thing that would be cool is to have a pet cosmetic horse. We'd be the only class who could stand *beside* our mount.

First, those proposals are not for Isengard, but for the updates following (Update 5 and onwards) where the big class changes get polished and adjusted.

Natures Light, got that one wrong - I think I read that Natures Gift also restores power, but that is not the case with the current build. Either way, 10% morale is too little to sacrifice the pet for.
The current morale restriction ensures that the LM keeps an eye on his pet, and keeps it healed. Sacrificing a near-dead pet to get 40% max morale (at estimated 75 pet morale levels, that is 2800-3000 morale) is very powerful. In an emergency, where both pet and group morale levels are low (big AoE, ouch) the LM will be forced to choose - sacrificing the pet immediately, restoring only 40% of its half morale (1400-1600) or heal it first with Beacon of Hope, which takes time and puts BoH on cooldown. A fair tradeoff.

And more than allowing non-combat pets to attack, I'd rather like LMs being able to summon a non-combat pet alongside the combat pet.

Originally Posted by MysterX

COMBAT SUMMONING: Please decouple this skill from the bog-lurker legendary trait. It should either be a set bonus for 5 blue traits, or moved to noble savage.

I love this suggestion.

I think these ideas are really interesting and I hope they get seriously considered.

I'd also like a way to change the damage type for some skills from common damage (especially the legendary bog guardian). Nobel Savage seems like a good candidate (I know it's a trait change but it's also a pet one)

Solid suggestions, unfortunately I am afraid it is too late now, but oh well maybe they could add it in update 5. I had slightly different ideas for ranged items (that they should buff the trait lines not single pets) but I would be more than happy to get these as well.

Add one more signature under the petition to move combat summoning to noble savage.

I don't have anything to add to this, especially as the OP already proposed my pet changes. Just wanted to +rep this for the excellent quality. These are all great ideas.

I just noticed the following unannounced changes:



- Benediction of the Raven is now Area of Effect! Radius 5m, Number of Targets is not in the tooltip. It now plainly reduces Fire mitigation by -10% instead of rating.

- Benediction now states the Dizzy effect: When Benediction is on the target, Dizzy has a 50% chance to apply on crits and dev. crits, as stated in the tooltip.

- Shield of the Ravens Wing now adds directly to tactical mitigation!

Thanks Rask, and keep em coming

For me the ranged item proposal which will modify pet stats/skills is the single awsomest idea to make this class more diverse and interesting.

For the limf, a good fix on the bugged sacrifice would be a bubble maybe? so it dies, and instead of healing you for a little moral which is pointless, it bubbles you like the WL bubble.

Love most suggestions, especially the in combat pet summoning. I could see how I could change pets in a raid for instance in order to become more versatile. I could even see how I would summon the fuzzy ball of light in a raid this way instead of having it sitting somewhere doing nothing for most of the time.

+ rep for the great OP!

Originally Posted by grinko.at

I just noticed the following unannounced changes:



- Benediction of the Raven is now Area of Effect! Radius 5m, Number of Targets is not in the tooltip. It now plainly reduces Fire mitigation by -10% instead of rating.

- Benediction now states the Dizzy effect: When Benediction is on the target, Dizzy has a 50% chance to apply on crits and dev. crits, as stated in the tooltip.

- Shield of the Ravens Wing now adds directly to tactical mitigation!

Thanks Rask, and keep em coming

Benediction of The Raven always was Area of Effect.

I've reported this as a bug before, but I noticed it is still broken.

Bog-lurker pet:
If the pet does not have line-of-sight to mob when it uses a skill (I notice this on Angry Bees quite a lot), the skill will go on cooldown but it will not affect the target.

LYNX: please get rid of the horrible new sounds you have inexplicably decided to have him make.

Originally Posted by Ritenn

Benediction of The Raven always was Area of Effect.

I checked some old screenies - you're right, I missed that somehow.



By the way, has anyone noticed how pets (especially Eagle) now sometimes randomly stop attacking? It has nothing to do with CC, but sometimes they just sit around doing nothing and then start attacking again. This is with Guard + Assist toggled on.

Originally Posted by MysterX

COMBAT SUMMONING: Please decouple this skill from the bog-lurker legendary trait. It should either be a set bonus for 5 blue traits, or moved to noble savage.

It seems that combat summoning is broken now, I've tried it three times but it doesn't work Anyone else noticed that? (I've bug reported it...)
Another thing that drives me crazy since Isengard was released- when I'm riding on my horse through enemies and get aggroed, much later when I'm dismounting, my Bog Lurker runs away to find that mob... I've never seen this before, and it isn't funny
I'd also like to see the pet not longer disappear when I do a fast travel, if I remember right, this wasn't the way it has always been, a long time ago the pet didn't disappear.
There still are some stucking issues with the Bog Lurker, doors too low, ways too narrow... In my Kinship house (Dwarf) my Bog Lurker always has to stay in the small entrance room, because he is to high for the door...
He really needs much space while running, his legs often attract some mobs, while I thought it was far enough away.

One idea I had about the limfran was for lore master spells cast on it be distributed to the entire fellowship such as beacon of hope, cures, sign of power righteous, share the power etc. If beacon of hope and share power are too powerful too often make into a fellowship wide heal/power over time. I like the idea of it being interactive and channeling the lore masters spells.

The ideas in this thread are nice, hopefully they get considered.

I wish bears would hold aggro better since they're supposed to be a "tank" pet. My LM is level 30 so I don't know if it balances out later levels. but it's really annoying.. even after using the additional threat spell (forgot its name) and sending the pet in first it never can keep the enemy on it

I think you might find it more effective throwing your most damaging spells as quickly as possible and use the bear force taunt to pull aggro from you, rather than trying to let the bear build and maintain aggro. At level 30 use the lynx it's stealth attack hits very hard and use the return to master key after combat to instantly restealth it.

Originally Posted by Faerilea

I wish bears would hold aggro better since they're supposed to be a "tank" pet. My LM is level 30 so I don't know if it balances out later levels. but it's really annoying.. even after using the additional threat spell (forgot its name) and sending the pet in first it never can keep the enemy on it

You have to combine the SotW: Rage (+10% threat) with Honey and Oats (+10% @ 24, +15% @ 35). Later on, the Legendary Book we get can add another +15% threat to SotW: Rage.

All combined at higher levels, it gets a decent +40% Threat with a rather substantial melee common attack. Going full KoA + Noble Savage, it usually keeps aggro from me, unless I Devastate with Burning Embers or back-to-back Critical Hit with skills. I just need to back off for a bit, and the Bear usually gets the aggro back. It won't hold aggro like a true Tank, FYI, but it can make for a good distraction easily enough.
Sadly though, it won't steal aggro from a DPS class by any means without help from Burglars or possibly Champs. Sure, its got its Force Taunt, but that only lasts so long.

Anyways, on level 30 solo tactics?

Against targets such as Signatures, Elites, or over-level targets don't be afraid to immediately use Inner Flame the moment the enemy turns towards you. This will allow you to dump ~80% of your threat onto your pet. If you are against multiple monsters, make sure you damage them all before using Inner Flame to have threat to transfer to the bear.

Trait-wise, Hardy Companion and Master of Beasts are both a good idea to have equipped. Light of Hope is a good third, while Healer or Improved Flanking makes a good 4th when you get that slot. Going KoA increases the pet's attack speed and damage, thus its threat generation, for purposes of having it tank for you.

Get and feed your bear Honey and Oats. The +Threat % is the big thing about the pet food. The 35 version is one you'll want the most for its +15% Threat Rating, and any further upgrades are simply up to you if you can afford it.

Send the Bear in first. Let it get a few hits in, while you debuff the creature while its distracted. Then proceed to lob your damaging skills, staying at range. This approach doesn't make use of Improved Staff Strike, but we won't have that traited for now so it doesn't matter too much.

Don't be afraid to kite it a bit if you hit with Burning Embers and it turns towards you. The enemy will be slowed, allowing you to safely stay in front of it, while your bear keeps smacking it in the back. In short time, it should turn back towards the bear.

Only put the Shatter Arms on auto-use, and possibly Bear Hug. Have Roaring Challenge hotkeyed for use when you must need the enemy off your back.