Pets with Caster Builds

[Eric Ravenwind]

This is a Revised Version of an earlier post.

When training pets, I'd like to have the ability to have pets get a damage bonus to their spells from Intelligence, similar to how they get a damage bonus to melee from Strength. As it is right now, the best pet build in my opinion, is Chivalry plus Armor Ignore. Does massive damage, and I'm not complaining about that at all - it's a melee build, its fine. It's just that magic builds are quite limited. I want to make pet builds that can focus on Magic Damage, and not need Melee Damage and high Strength because the Melee ends up being the most prominent damage mechanism.

Magery, Necromancy, etc should get a damage bonus based on how high their Intelligence is. Also, for melee, there is a "Base Damage" modifier that we could make an equivalent to for magics. "Spell Damage" we could call it for the sake of argument. Set up the same way as Base Damage, just for magics though. It could have a cap similar to Base Damage.

Right now Strength is capped at 700 for untrained pets. Intelligence could have a cap too, 700 for the sake of argument. Of course there will be pets with slightly higher Intelligence but that would modify the control slots similar to how it works for Strength. There could be a balanced cap for having both a Strength and Intelligence limit at the same time - 550 each for example, could be max for having both at the same time.

And because melee damage doesn't have a "Mana Pool", we could add something to balance out how much mana a pet uses per spell so that the mana pool for a pet stays a bit longer. Yeah, I know we have Mana Regeneration but we'll need something else to even out the caster class type pet.

Please read and consider. Come up with ideas and share them. Magic build pets need some love!

 

[Khyro]

There is already a stat cap for Intelligence, and a combined attribute cap across Str/Dex/Int.

Pets are capped at 2300 intensity value for Attributes (Str/Dex/Int), with an individual stat cap of 700 for Str/Int, and 150 for Dex (unless they spawn overcapped).

700 Str @ 3.0 Weight = 2100
150 Dex @ 0.1 Weight = 15
370 Int @ 0.5 Weight = 185

If you add this up, you get the 2300 total intensity cap for attributes, which is why this is the most common loadout for pets.

You can give your pet 700 Int without taking a huge hit to Str, it would look like this:

645 Str @ 3.0 Weight = 1935
150 Dex @ 0.1 Weight = 15
700 Int @ 0.5 Weight = 350

Intelligence does affect Spell Damage, just very little. We are talking 1-4 dmg per spell against an enemy with resists.

A "Spell Damage" stat upon training is an interesting idea, but I don't think it would ever get put into the game. Int used to affect spell damage much more than it does, but it was nerfed to what it is now due mainly due to caster pets in PvP.

 

[Mr. Smither1]

If you want a high damage caster pet get a Serpent Dragon with over 1k int, they also have the highest amount of mana regen.

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

If you want a high damage caster pet get a Serpent Dragon with over 1k int, they also have the highest amount of mana regen.

I have a Serpentine Dragon with 1000+ Int. It sucks.

 

[railshot]

If you want a high damage caster pet get a Serpent Dragon with over 1k int, they also have the highest amount of mana regen.

Int had no direct effect on damage.

 

[Mr. Smither1]

My serpent dragon does 80 with mind blast and 300 on death ray my other magery pets do about 1/2 of that.

 

[celticus]

My serpent dragon does 80 with mind blast and 300 on death ray my other magery pets do about 1/2 of that.

300 sounds pretty nice. How often does it do that?

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

This is a Revised Version of an earlier post.

When training pets, I'd like to have the ability to have pets get a damage bonus to their spells from Intelligence, similar to how they get a damage bonus to melee from Strength. As it is right now, the best pet build in my opinion, is Chivalry plus Armor Ignore. Does massive damage, and I'm not complaining about that at all - it's a melee build, its fine. It's just that magic builds are quite limited. I want to make pet builds that can focus on Magic Damage, and not need Melee Damage and high Strength because the Melee ends up being the most prominent damage mechanism.

Intelligence does boost the damage of a pet's spells, but barely. When the Pet Training system first went on TC, i was testing pets out on a Drone (infinite health, 0 Resists) that Kyronix had spawned in for us to test pets on. At first, INT had no effect on pet spell damage, and i notified Kyronix of this, and they changed it. I then tested pets out again on a Drone, and the Serpentine Dragon with 1,040 INT was doing about 12 more damage per Flamestrike to the Drone than a WW with 700 INT was, but that's on a 0 Resists target. Once you take Resists into account, it's a lot less. For players, every 10 INT = +1% Spell Damage. For pets, it appears to be much less.

300 sounds pretty nice. How often does it do that?

The Magery Mastery ability is what lets pets cast Mind Blast or Death Ray. It also changes the pet's spellcasting AI somewhat. The pet will cycle between E-Bolt and FS (or MB if target is weaker to Cold), and will cast Teleport when at range, and Mana Vampire when low on Mana. It'll occasionally use Death Ray as well. Death Ray is a channeled ability that does a good amount of Energy Damage (based on the pet's Magery and Eval skills, one of the only times that Magery actually boosts spell damage), and will tick every 2-3 seconds, so long as the pet has Mana. If the pet is damaged while channelling Death Ray, it'll cancel the channel. While channelling Death Ray, the pet is stationary, and will not perform melee attacks.

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

I would like a magical alternative to the melee builds. Lots of spell damage that could equal that of the melee system.

 

[railshot]

I would like a magical alternative to the melee builds. Lots of spell damage that could equal that of the melee system.

I am afraid there is no such thing. Melee easily beats casting in sustained DPS.

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

I am afraid there is no such thing. Melee easily beats casting in sustained DPS.

That's what I'm talking about. Casting for pets should be just as powerful as melee.

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

I'd still really like to see this implemented. Devs, please consider.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

That's what I'm talking about. Casting for pets should be just as powerful as melee.

Problem is, how'd you balance it considering pets can have casting on top of melee?

 

[Anon McDougle]

Just make them all bards

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

Problem is, how'd you balance it considering pets can have casting on top of melee?

Limit how many points can go into INT & STR at the same time. Limit how high a pets "Base Damage" attribute can go. Create a Base Damage for Magic property and limit how high that can go too. Then limit how many points can go into both "Base Damage" & "Base Damage (Magic)" at the same time. It will require a lot of testing, but if they could pull off the new pet training stuff, then this should be very possible.

 

[Khaelor]

Limit how many points can go into INT & STR at the same time. Limit how high a pets "Base Damage" attribute can go. Create a Base Damage for Magic property and limit how high that can go too. Then limit how many points can go into both "Base Damage" & "Base Damage (Magic)" at the same time. It will require a lot of testing, but if they could pull off the new pet training stuff, then this should be very possible.

There are already caps. I am not sure why you want a "pure" caster pet so badly. The only thing I can think of is all the ways it would be exploited.

How would the taming community be better with this change?

I think developers time I should best spent elsewhere.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

I have a Serpentine Dragon with 1000+ Int. It sucks.

This ^^

I was seriously looking forward to running around with a Serp Drag once the pet revamp stuff was announced. The Serp Drag was the first pet I snagged and I was seriously disappointed in it's performance..

The Skree on the other hand? Those are fairly decent imho

 

[railshot]

Problem is, how'd you balance it considering pets can have casting on top of melee?

Melee without training enhancements (AI, Chiv, Bush, etc.) makes minimal damage. Moreover Int and Str share same cap. So if Int had an effect on caster damage, the more Int you have, the less Str and less melee damage you'd have.
To do this right they would need to add some caster special moves and abilities. That way instead of AI you would pick something that say adds SDI for a limited time.

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

Melee without training enhancements (AI, Chiv, Bush, etc.) makes minimal damage. Moreover Int and Str share same cap. So if Int had an effect on caster damage, the more Int you have, the less Str and less melee damage you'd have.
To do this right they would need to add some caster special moves and abilities. That way instead of AI you would pick something that say adds SDI for a limited time.

Great! Beautiful idea!

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

Melee without training enhancements (AI, Chiv, Bush, etc.) makes minimal damage. Moreover Int and Str share same cap. So if Int had an effect on caster damage, the more Int you have, the less Str and less melee damage you'd have.
To do this right they would need to add some caster special moves and abilities. That way instead of AI you would pick something that say adds SDI for a limited time.

INT does affect spell damage for pets. I've tested this before on TC when Pub 97 was on it. At first INT didn't affect it at all, but then when i talked to Kyronix about it, they fixed it in the next update. "Pet Intelligence now affects some spell damage." Publish 97 – Ultima Online. It doesn't seem to boost spell damage at the same rate that it does for players though (+1% Spell Damage per 10 INT), otherwise Serpentine Dragons would be doing 30% more spell damage than even a 700 INT pet, which they clearly aren't. Spellcasting also doesn't have any options to ignore Resists, like melee does.

They'd have to be careful to make sure that making INT affect a pet's spell damage, doesn't also apply to wild creatures, otherwise some bosses would have massively boosted damage output. This may be the reason for the mild INT-Spell Damage ratio for pet's, instead of the usual 10 INT=+1% Spell Damage.