White Lion pet damage on abilities.

[Theseus]

Issue:

Neither the playerinduced pet abilities like leonine frenzie, brutal pounce, coordinated strike nor the pets selfinduced abilities scale with the pets DPS.

Why is this an issue:

A minor problem with it is, that the pet contributes far less to coordinated strike than the White Lion himself. Actually its contribution is almost zero. But thats a minor problem, since White Lions on Hunter and Axeman speccs have enough other abilities to compensate.
The main problem is the Guardian tree. This tree concentrates on playerinduced pet abilities like leonine frenzie, throat bite and brutal pounce. Those abilities only have the pet damage without contribution from the player himself. So these abilities will perform under par comparing them to the rest of the possible speccs. So we get one specc which is not viable and two who performing under optimum but quite well. Thats something even the devs repeatedly stated, that they want to avoid. As an example would be the DOK/WP damage path, which should become viable according to Azarael. In my oppinion we have kind of the same issue now with Guardian specc.

Solution:

A solution I would see, is, that you let the skills of the Guardian Specc use 100% of the pets DPS and coordinated strike about 60% or 70%. The decrease of DPS contribution on coordinated strike is due to the fact that it also has a player contribution and therefore it doesnt need the full pet dps to be competetive.

[Faef]

Reworded my original proposal based on Penril's feedback:

White lion issues:

1. Lack of variety in play style/choice, axe man is the only viable route at the moment, due to a lack of viable mastery options, pet usefulness/survivability/damage.

2. Due to high ap cost of skills and their rotation/usage, if a WL hits the enemy back lines they have no ap left to escape. Additionally, as they must spec all tactics for damage, they are unable to make use of available tactics that aid defence for said escaping. In/out attacks have a very low chance of success in large warfare.

3. A White lions trade mark burst predominantly comes from a forced choice of 4 tactics, rather than core skills, reducing player choice.

4. The pet stance choices are pretty much useless and only used to either add crit or aa haste, they affect the lion and its usage very little.

5. The pet damage in its "glass cannon" mode is not sufficient to trouble a player, in all honesty its pretty lack lustre in all stances.

7. The pet doesnt last very long in large warfare and is slow (general speed and pathing issues) and occassionally disappears.

8. The pet doesnt always respond to attack commands (whether vanilla or with the use of petassist or loyalpet).

9. The recent change to pounce, the initial speed boost is not long enough, and as the boost ends on skill usage, an auto attack can end the boost before you have landed cleave limb, which can enable an escape.

10. Pet does not move with player during pounce, 20% of my damage should not be turning up 5 seconds later on a burst reliant class.

10. WL lacks group utility, most useful abilities are tied to the pet (which has above issues)

Proposals

Escape aiding tools:

1. Baiting strike, its base effects should be that of the baited trap tactic (+10% disrupt and +618 armour for 15 seconds), baited trap tactic should change to enhance this to 100% disrupt and reduced to 7 seconds.

Spoiler:

2. AP Management (to allow usage of escape tools after skill rotations), Primal fury will now additionally reduce ap cost by 50% for 6 seconds (much like the stealth setups the WH has), enough for 50% for one rotation, allowing enough ap for the WL to escape the backline.

3. Further pounce change, WL speed is boosted and immune to cc for 5 sec (increased from 3) duration. Skill usage doesnt end the effect, cool down increased to 20 seconds (want it used as an one off opener, not as a way to avoid cc, requires a target to pounce to anyway). This means pounce will land 100%, the speed increase will aid a players positioning.

Group utility:

1. Blindside, its base effects should be that of the tactic blindside (50% disorient for 10 seconds), blindsided tactic changes blindside to 3 sec disable (target is blinded).

2. Thin the herd is switched to an all healing debuff.

Spoiler by Penril - We have already discussed WL AP issues in a different thread, so let's refrain from doing it again here. There is an open thread for Pounce as well. As for Blindside and Thin the Herd, I have to outright say no to those suggestions.

Lion stance changes:

the pet now has 3 distinct modes:

Trained to Threaten (support)

1. Pet takes, 100% players hp, 200% players armour/resistances.
2. Pet takes on 100% of players current wpn dps
3. Shred is now a 100 wounds debuff (currently its a lesser armour debuff, we already have forced opportunity)

Trained to Hunt (Support / Damage)

1. Pet takes, 100% players hp, 150% players armour/resistances.
2. Pet takes on 120% of players current wpn dps
3. Pet permanently has the speed attributed to speed training tactic, 50% increase (speeed training tactic now makes pet immune to cc instead) (this mode would be for enhancing pet pulling)

Trained to Kill (damage)

1. Pet take 100% players hp, 100% players armour/resistances.
2. Pet takes on 125% of players current wpn dps
3. Pet takes 100% of players melee crit bonus (so as to effect the pets own abilities and auto attack)
4. Player gets a 20% damage reduction

Pet specific abilities / Enhancements for Guardian tree:

1. Summon War lion now has no Ap cost.
2. Pet stances now have an 45 ap cost, add a 5 second cooldown, still instant, stance dancing can now become a further class mechanic to add some interest/skill.
2. Coordianted strike damage increased from a base 109 per hit to 209 per hit.
3. Leonine Frenzy, currenlty base 159 per hit no more than once every 2 seconds, should be upped to 300 (its a 14 point master spec)

Pet fixes.

If a bug fixing pass could be done on the pet pathing/command classes/methods that would be appreciated.

Numbers needs testing but its a starting point, this should give some class options and enhance large warfare usage, there are many things listed but no single wl is able to achieve all these things, they will have to choose.

[Penril]

Moving to discussions. I merged both of your threads. Please focus on the Pet and, specifically, Guardian tree.

[Theseus]

Hm, regarding the Trained to hunt point of Faef. 120% of the owners weapon damage is to strong in my oppinion.... it should be 90-100& of the owners weapon dps. So the difference between trained to hunt and trained to kill would be more pointed out.

[bloodi]

I am not sure pets are getting "live like" contribution to their abilities from the owner stats, i doubt anyone at this point can tell us what they were because no one ever said anything while lions had a 100 dps weapon.

I tried to look around a bit in this post viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18751&p=203973#p203973 we didnt get a reply so i am clueless of how wrong in am in it but something seems real odd about the pet ability damage, specially when a t3 guy is getting more than a t4 wl.

So we would have to clarify things like this before goin any further imo.

[blaqwar]

Is this not clear enough? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=18649

War Lion

Armor: 100%
Resistances: 100%
Hit Points: 100%
Weapon DPS: White Lion's main hand DPS

+ Tooltips on stances (100% STR+WS in TTK, 100% TOU+WOU in TTT, 50% STR+WS+TOU+WOU in TTH)

I don't see why the stance contribution would be any different than live and not specifically listed by Azarael.

In my opinion the numbers on the damage/armour/resists need tweaking. I'd also be afraid of turning lions into unstoppable balls of fury without the assistance of the owner when utilising the stance-dancing mechanism (speed/cc immunity stance on the way in, DPS stance when in, durability stance when focused makes for a very dangerous kitty with the owner behind a tree). If it can be balanced the idea is interesting but the stances would need to be taken off GCD (like Mara stances) for stance-dancing to be viable.

[bloodi]

Is this not clear enough? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=18649

Well, the question is not what they are now, is what they were on live, the nerf occured because they had "more damage than on live" on their white damage but currently they seem be getting less contribution on the pet skills than on live.

Also stances cant be out of the gcd till they fix the pet abilities refreshing each time you use them, its quite abusable already, imagine with it beign out of the gcd.

[blaqwar]

Is this not clear enough? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=18649

Well, the question is not what they are now, is what they were on live, the nerf occured because they had "more damage than on live" on their white damage but currently they seem be getting less contribution on the pet skills than on live.

Also stances cant be out of the gcd till they fix the pet abilities refreshing each time you use them, its quite abusable already, imagine with it beign out of the gcd.

You are right, I guess as the second post clearly states, we'd need several bug-fixes on the pet before any real changes can be made.

And I doubt we will be able to find a clear answer to the question of what the stats/weapon DPS contributions were on live, I've tried looking it up but all the forum sources seem to be gone for good and none of the blogs went into detail on pet mechanics. I doubt it matters at this point, Azarael has made it clear he doesn't care and that they will be adjusted for RoR specifically. I hope this thread being moved to discussion means we're going to get another look at pet DPS.

[Korhill]

Hello,

i have stoped to play the WL after the last mobility and damage nerfs. But it is good to see that people still care. I may try him again after some changes.

I would start with some small changes:

1) Brutal pounce is not working correctly. It has very low damage ( I made a post on bugtracker).

2) Nature's Bond heals just for 153 (lol) per Tick. The Skill does not fit into T4 with all the AOE Cannons and AOE skills. It should gets an increase. That would help more the WL to keep his Pet alive.

3) Like mentioned before are all useful abilities are tied to the pet. That is mostly an disadvantage. But you can make an advantage about it aswell. Let us use Pet abilitites in the Path of Guardian aswell, when the WL is stunned or KD for example. It is the Path of Guardian and for me that sounds logical that the pet wants to help his Master or his Teammates, when he/them are in danger.

Greetings Khorhall

[Faef]

Is this not clear enough? viewtopic.php?f=52&t=18649

War Lion

Armor: 100%
Resistances: 100%
Hit Points: 100%
Weapon DPS: White Lion's main hand DPS

+ Tooltips on stances (100% STR+WS in TTK, 100% TOU+WOU in TTT, 50% STR+WS+TOU+WOU in TTH)

I don't see why the stance contribution would be any different than live and not specifically listed by Azarael.

In my opinion the numbers on the damage/armour/resists need tweaking. I'd also be afraid of turning lions into unstoppable balls of fury without the assistance of the owner when utilising the stance-dancing mechanism (speed/cc immunity stance on the way in, DPS stance when in, durability stance when focused makes for a very dangerous kitty with the owner behind a tree). If it can be balanced the idea is interesting but the stances would need to be taken off GCD (like Mara stances) for stance-dancing to be viable.

Thats where I think you balance it by geting the right amount of ap costs / cooldown, I put what I thought was a fair for these. Also, you couldnt get speed AND cc immunity via a stance alone, cc immunity would only happen for someone in this suggested TTH stance if they burned Elven Grace or slotted the suggested revised speed training tactic (which would mean one less dmg tactic).