You take a tamer and just about any other pvp template, with equal player skill, and I won't put my money on the tamer, no matter what pet they have, and the same applies in pvm.
This does not excuse the fact that pets should have to follow the same rules as players in PvP. I cant attack a tamer and then recall away, so why should a tamer be able to attack me and then recall his dragon away?
As I said other times, a long time ago, this discussion is rarely about fairness, or game balance, it's about the fact that tamers annoy you, and you don't want to ever lose to them, no matter how skilled, or intelligent they are. And if you are like many of the tamer haters I've seen post, you don't even want to lose if you are outnumbered ten to one by tamers, you simply want tamers out of the game, period.
Can a tamer control precisely the timing and type of attack that is made by their pet? no (every other template can and does, and you know as well as I do that the a.i. doesn't make anywhere near as smart choices as a skilled player does)
1) Every other template precisely controls timing & attack? I guess your dexxer has never whiffed or failed to execute a special? Thats funny
I believe I said "timing and type of attack". Your little straw man argument doesn't touch that statement. The fact is that a pet is governed just as much by the random number generator as a player, when it comes to hit chance and damage, and on top of that it's attacks are almost completely random. They are just as likely to cast curse followed by weaken, as they are to cast explosion followed by flamestrike (on someone with a 70 fire resistance, and a 50 cold resistance and no resistance debuffs).
Does a dexxer's primary source of damage move much slower than a character on foot? no
2) The footspeed of pets is such a flawed argument I am shocked you would even bring it up. Footspeed of pets is only ever mentioned/valid when it concerns pets chasing a player. How is that a concern or issue for the Tamer? If on the other hand though I am chasing a pet and about to kill it, what happens? Uhhh, the Tamer just uses a petball or even worse simply hits logout and the pet is saved. Please spare us all the footspeed nonsense. Your overpowered pet with a billion hitpoints isnt the fastest thing on the screen and thats a disadvantage or balance lol?
And I fail to comprehend how you can see that is a "flawed argument". If you know as much about pvp as you seem to think you know, you would know that in pvp, mobility is king. It isn't just about "pets chasing a player", and if you don't know that you really need to stop pvp'ing on the forums so much and actually get out there and gain some real pvp experience...
3) This thread has never been about player skill vs player skill. It is simply about the fact that it is 100% dead wrong that an AGGRESSIVE Tamer can use his pet to kill and at the same time shield it from ALL harm by simply logging out. It is beyond ludicrous and anyone that can't understand or admit that is either obtuse or extremely biased.
I've already addressed that. I'll try to spell it out so that you can understand it. If a tamer's pet dies it loses stats. It may not be much, but if you know anything about the game you would realize that the difference between a skill at 99.9 and 100 is actually significant. Beyond that, it doesn't take too many pet deaths before your pet skills are suddenly at 96.3, or 94.8. And this stat loss applies to every skill the pet has.
If you know anything about taming you would realize that training a skill like magery on a pet, from 99.9 to 100, can take as much as an hour or two. There is no other template in the game that requires any form of retraining after a death. The only thing comparable is stat loss in factions, but that applies to players, not their equipment, and it applies just as much to tamers as it does any other template, so there isn't really much of an argument to be made for fairness there either.
The truth is Goldberg, that you simply don't like tamers, and you don't want them in pvp, period (and very likely you want them out of the game altogether). You are still singing the same songs you were singing a year and a half ago when I stopped visiting the forums. Your arguments and the points you make rarely have anything to do with fairness, balance, or logic of any sort, as is evidenced by your arguments in this thread, and everything to do with the simple fact that you don't like tamers.
This thread is just another, thinly veiled, "I hate tamers" thread. o2bavr6 was excited by the thought that he might have discovered a logically unassailable way to attack tamers. The truth is he hasn't, and I am simply pointing that out. Having said that, I really don't know what I think of the idea. I'd have to think about it more. But the issues isn't as clear cut and simple as you and o2bavr6 would like everyone to think that it is. As is most often the case, there is an opposing argument to be made.
You say that pets don't "follow the rules". Fine. I have no problem with making them follow
all of the rules that players follow. Make them follow all the flagging rules, spell casting rules and line of sight rules. Give the player full control over all of their attacks, spells and abilities (whether directly or the ability to customize or "train", combat behaviour in some way), and make them move as fast as a player. It would make playing a pvp tamer more challenging and fun, and frankly, I think it would give you a whole lot more to complain about.
