RTLFC
As many have said, THANK YOU for showing an interest in addressing this issue. I for one am sick to death of being lumped in with the group of gimpy twinky stealth tamers. I put stealth on my tamer before I even knew people pvped with pets. We aren't all petball-obsessed OCD sufferers.
I've said it in other threads, this problem is simple to fix without going overboard.
Short delay/cooldown on use of petballs - 10 seconds, no more than 20 imo. Seriously, try JUST this on TC and see what the results are. PLEASE don't go overboard, as there are a number of issues that mean petballs are a necessary "evil" for tamers.
I don't like 'em - petballs that is. But I run a fairly basic machine, and it often takes at least three minutes for me to log in/log out. With a big group at a peerless/doom/champs, this can be lead to a serious deficit in my damage total, and a gross waste of time. Petballs are quick, simple and effective, with a cost that (as Al Thorin, I think, sorry if I got it wrong, has already said) is going to increase as old stockpiles of trans powder start to run low. I don't use them often, but its like a pet insurance policy for me because, as others have stated, pet AI is pretty average.
Give us a command that temporarily overrides autodefend for (let's say) 5-10 seconds. Pet cannont be commanded to kill during this time, can only follow, come, or stay. Something akin to the aforementioned "flee" command
. Think outside the box with this one, too, guys - your miner's heavily-laden packy ever decided he can box with a gargoyle? A "retreat!" wouldn't just be handy for tamers in strife. This in conjunction with a 10 second cool-down on petballs would be perfect imo. No one is getting an unfair advantage, the nerf-stick isn't hitting too hard and it's giving those pvpers a bit of much-needed breathing space. Chaining petballs is bad. Let's keep the focus where is should be.
One issue I have with the suggestions so far is the combination of a longer timer (even only 30 seconds) tied to the character. Example: hunting with a pack. Pack gets a bit swamped, you want to vamoose or simply retreat a little. If the timer is tied to the char, its going to take you a fair whack of time to pull five pets out of danger.
I frequently use my stealth tamer in champs. She's a resser, healer and general support char for the lower levels, where I have no show of outdamaging a necromage withering or a dexxer using whirlwind (for example). I use evs for the lower levels then dispel and summon my pets for the champ. An overlong delay tied to the tamer is going to leave anyone who decides to use a two pet combo at a champ as a sitting duck while you wait out the timer to summon your companion pet. Once again - another gross waste of time.
To me, this fix is simple. Code it so that each pet can only be linked to one petball at a time. If a tamer attempts to link that pet to any subsequent petballs, they get an error message, or that attempt simply overrides the first and unlinks the pet from any other balls. One pet - one petball. Timer is applied to the petball. The cooldown timer should be no less than 6-8 seconds. This gives enough time for that poor sod getting chased by the petball-spamming stealth dismount tamer to get a successful bandy/gheal/close wounds off, or wait out his dismount timer, and run a good wee distance away from the lumbering pet before he can anticipate getting whoomped again. On the flipside, no less than 6-8 seconds is an acceptable amount of time to have to wait between forcibly dragging your pet out of a messy autodefend situation.
Anyway, that's my 2 gp. I'm pretty confident you guys are going to be sensible about this - your actions over the past weeks have shown a comforting amount of planning and forethought
