Tamers got Greater Dragons and the Dread Mares.....

[o2bavr6]

Woulda shoulda coulda? .. the current fact right here and now, in this moment of time, in this incarnation, is.....

TAMERS + *insert pet of the day here* DO NOT DOMINATE PVP! Period. Fact.

Tamers + Pets can dominate SOME templates, but Tamer + Pet do not dominate ALL templates. That is the very definition of balance.

LORD Yalp of Zento, CTDM

Actually the correct response would have been for you to say:
Word of Death was not resistable and there was no way around the damage it did, so that is why the nerfed it. Funny how a GD's firegreath is not resistable either.

On a side note, do you and Sarphus PvP exclusively?
If so, what templates do you play, or what is your Main Temp?
If you don't PvP, why would you care about the change?

 

[Llewen]

So imagine a dominant guild of reds all fighting with GD's. What do you think would happen to PvP?

Honestly, I think they would quickly discover that they won't do half as well as they think they might, unless of course they were fighting weak opposition, then it would be just as much of a slaughter as it would be with any template.

Is it really that much of an issue to the Tamers in this game who do not PvP ever, if they slightly lessen the fire breath damage a GD does in PvP only?

Several of us tamers have discussed this already at various times, and the general consensus was that it might not be a bad thing to have the fire breath damage lessened or capped in pvp. I wouldn't have that much of a problem with it, and in fact, maybe it should happen, maybe %50 damage from fire breath for the greater dragon in pvp would be a good change.

The only thing that would make me uneasy about this is the history of nerfs in UO. The devs tend to use a ten megaton bomb when a small hammer would do the job, as was the case with the pet ball nerfs in my opinion. I would want to be sure this would apply only to greater dragons. Dread warhorses are somewhat useful in pvp precisely because of their fire breath, if they were nerfed along with a nerf to greater dragons, they would become completely useless in pvp.

 

[Sarphus]

I can agree with you and Yalp that PvP is not overun with GD's...yet. But I can also say that on our shard the only reason my guild doesn't PvP with GD's is that no one would ever show up again to fight us. (To be honest, I think we like playing mages more anyway).

It is bad enough that Fel is as dead as it is. We have Yew gate and the occasional spawn to raid, in fact sometimes we raid ourselves for the fun of it.

So imagine a dominant guild of reds all fighting with GD's. What do you think would happen to PvP?

Is it really that much of an issue to the Tamers in this game who do not PvP ever, if they slightly lessen the fire breath damage a GD does in PvP only?

Why was it ok for everyone when they nerfed the 80+ one hit damage Word of Death did in PvP, but yet you don't want the 80+ one hit damage a GD does in one hit nerfed?

Is it really asking too much for us PvPers to want a balanced game in regards to PvP?

I noticed you mentioned kills per minute or damage over time. As I mentioned in the post earlier, word of death takes almost 4 seconds to cast, when it did 80+ damage it still took 4 seconds to cast, during that time a fencer can Armor Ignore you at least 3 times which adds up to way more damage than 80+ points. Yet Word of Death was nerfed, so how does it differ from a GD in it's one hit ability?

First I want to say that it is completely irrelevant to me if they lessen fire breath damage in pvp. I use more effective pets when I'm pvping on a tamer.

Ok...

Now I just want to say that I don't think you'll ever see pvp tamers dominate on any shard where people think. When people think, they counter stuff and pvp tamers are completely counterable. I have seen "pvp tamer guilds" try to pvp and I have fought them in really uneven odds where they 2 people for every person we had. We won. They were all on gimplates using stuff like mounted cu (imo more gimp than gd) and greater dragons. We won...

I can't imagine it would be very easy to successfully raid a champ spawn with nothing bug greater dragons. Or at least, it would be easier to use necro/mages and dexers, because necro/mages and dexers have more agility (mounted) than GD tamers.

that being said, a mixed group with tamers AND other stuff to fill in the obvious gaps that tamers experience could be an extremely effective raiding group.

IMO, you can't use raiding as an example of skill balance, though. Raiding is unbalanced. It's much easier to raid than to defend.

 

[o2bavr6]

Honestly, I think they would quickly discover that they won't do half as well as they think they might, unless of course they were fighting weak opposition, then it would be just as much of a slaughter as it would be with any template..

Well my guild has 168 members in it, of which at least 65% are reds and we have at least 15 tamers with GD's even though we hardly use them.

So you think that 15 red tamers at yew gate with GD's will get slaughtered?
Also our tamers have complimentary skills to attack you with and KNOW how to PvP.

Several of us tamers have discussed this already at various times, and the general consensus was that it might not be a bad thing to have the fire breath damage lessened or capped in pvp. I wouldn't have that much of a problem with it, and in fact, maybe it should happen, maybe %50 damage from fire breath for the greater dragon in pvp would be a good change.

The only thing that would make me uneasy about this is the history of nerfs in UO. The devs tend to use a ten megaton bomb when a small hammer would do the job, as was the case with the pet ball nerfs in my opinion. I would want to be sure this would apply only to greater dragons. Dread warhorses are somewhat useful in pvp precisely because of their fire breath, if they were nerfed along with a nerf to greater dragons, they would become completely useless in pvp.

I've been saying it since my first post, I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE CHANGE PROPAGATE TO THE TRAM FACET< ONLY IN PVP AND IN FEL AND JUST THE FIREBREATH.

I don't see anyting wrong with dropping teh 80+ damage firebreath to around 55 damage. I would consider this reasonable, would you?

 

[Nightsorrow86]

Read 2 pages and get bored, but wait, isn't the topic "So what skill,armor piece,or weapon did the other templates get to compensate for this?" lol?

 

[Yalp]

On a side note, do you and Sarphus PvP exclusively?
If so, what templates do you play, or what is your Main Temp?
If you don't PvP, why would you care about the change?

I play all aspects of UO, right now I am on my crafter working the lumberjacking so I can enhance some bows. Later I will be on my tamer, after that I will hop on my dexer. I'm working a bard, so she needs her gains today. I have another dexer that also needs some work. My archer may even come out to play. If I get time I may hit up a spawn, fish some, take on DF, make some pots, or hit up Melissa. Today I will be in Tram and Fel, Ilsh and Malas. And of course since I live in Zento, I'll be in the Tok islands!

None of this makes me an expert nor irrelevant to the discussion. None of this negates the facts of the tamer + GD, or the pvm or pvp worlds. None of this is actually relevant to the discussion at hand.

LORD Yalp of Zento, CTDM

 

[Sarphus]

Actually the correct response would have been for you to say:
Word of Death was not resistable and there was no way around the damage it did, so that is why the nerfed it. Funny how a GD's firegreath is not resistable either.

On a side note, do you and Sarphus PvP exclusively?
If so, what templates do you play, or what is your Main Temp?
If you don't PvP, why would you care about the change?

I don't do anything exclusively. I run more templates than you probably can imagine and I participate in almost all aspects of UO. I have 50+ soulstones on my main account and change my characters around fairly regularly to try things out.

I think pvping exclusively is somewhat similar to bank sitting. The only real difference to some aspects of "pvp" and bank sitting is that instead of trying to sell stuff, you are trash talking. I pvp when there's action, but when it starts to resemble bank sitting, I go do something else. I haven't pvp'd exclusively in about 8 years.

Some days I will pvp for as much as 10 hours. Some days I don't pvp at all.

I don't have a main temp, but I have been playing a discord/tamer, provoke tamer and necro/mage/spellweaver/peacer a lot recently. I can pvp effectively on both characters, but they are certainly not optimized for pvp.

For pvp, my preference is on a necro/mage. I love the diversity necro/mages have in their templates and don't have the gear to pvp on a dexer. Well built casters have a solution for almost every pvp situation. Also, my pvp caster suit is great

Edit: I forgot to answer your question.

Why do I care? I've actually already expressed that I don't care if firebreath gets nerfed in pvp. I don't use a greater dragon in pvp unless I have my dragon out for something else and someone tries to pk me. Greater dragon is a little too easy to counter and too inflexible for my taste. Ever since about 4 patches ago, I've been getting 100% cpu usage spikes from the UO client, so I have primarily been running packs if I'm pvping on a tamer. If I run anything else, people just run away as I wait for my screen to redraw (if you saw it, you'd be amazed I can even play). I use packs to limit people's mobility so I can kill them. What I do is totally counterable and gets countered by some groups of people. It's also extremely lethal if I'm left unchecked, and I counter other tamers VERY well.

What I do care about is the constant stream Ad Hominem arguments that basically say "a tamer killed me... he has no skill and he should be nerfed". It takes just as much skill to run what I would consider a competitive tamer build as it does to run a mage (possibly more). I don't consider greater dragon a competitive tamer strategy because it relies entirely on chance and fails often. Most of these Ad Hominem attacks come from people who aren't running tamers and don't know how to counter tamers. If what you're doing isn't working, try other things. There are lots of ways to shut down tamers. This is especially true with how pet "all kill" follow speed got nerfed. Players have an enourmous mobility advantage over pets. Some players fail to use that advantage effectively.

 

[o2bavr6]

None of this makes me an expert nor irrelevant to the discussion. None of this negates the facts of the tamer + GD, or the pvm or pvp worlds. None of this is actually relevant to the discussion at hand.

It is relavent in the sense that it at least shows that you are able to back up what you are saying by playing experience vs, as an example, someone who says don't fix something in PvP when they don't PvP.

At least you do some PvPing, so your opinion would count more than someone who doesn't... don't ya think?

 

[Yalp]

nah.. my opinion is only worth $0.02 .. same as everyone else's!

Yalpers!

 

[o2bavr6]

Why do I care? I've actually already expressed that I don't care if firebreath gets nerfed in pvp. I don't use a greater dragon in pvp unless I have my dragon out for something else and someone tries to pk me. Greater dragon is a little too easy to counter and too inflexible for my taste.

If we are talking one red against one tamer and his GD with no one else helping either of them, it would be an intersting fight that I'm sure would have either template win at different times. Para on a GD only lasts so long, the moment you try to cast a para spell again on the GD that gives the tamer time to heal up. So in other words a part time pvp tamer would probably lose, but a full time pvp tamer would probably win most fights because he will aid his GD with damage of his own to the red.

What I do care about is the constant stream Ad Hominem arguments that basically say "a tamer killed me... he has no skill and he should be nerfed". It takes just as much skill to run what I would consider a competitive tamer build as it does to run a mage (possibly more).

I never said that tamers should be nerfed, I said the damage a GD does with firebreath in Fell during PvP should be lessened because it exceeds the EA imposed PvP damage cap.

I can agree that a pvp tamer mage takes as much skill to play a regular pvp mage, at least when it comes to spell casting macroes because regular mages dont have an all kill macro or maybe a vet macro

 

[o2bavr6]

nah.. my opinion is only worth $0.02 .. same as everyone else's!

Yalpers!

Well if you had to make a decision on a topic that you know nothing about, lets say brain surgery, whos advise would you take: Someone who has a medical degree or someone who has stayed at a holiday inn express?

So the way I see it, you are at least $0.02 above the people who have no pvp experience

 

[Llewen]

I've been saying it since my first post, I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE CHANGE PROPAGATE TO THE TRAM FACET< ONLY IN PVP AND IN FEL AND JUST THE FIREBREATH.

I don't see anyting wrong with dropping teh 80+ damage firebreath to around 55 damage. I would consider this reasonable, would you?

Well, it should be pvp generally, as pvp can also happen on the Trammel facet. HOWEVER, you are repeating that you only want to see this specific change take effect against greater dragons in pvp, I've been playing UO too long to be comfortable with assurances like that. As I said before, too many times the devs have a tendency to whack a three penny nail with a ten megaton nuclear warhead.

If a change to greater dragons would mean a change to other pets or in other situations, I would not want to see it, however, if it means a drop in damage for firebreath specifically in pvp (55 points is certainly reasonable), then I don't have a problem with it, but my fear is that any change the dev team makes wouldn't be that specific. I would rather see no change at all, because I don't see the huge problem that you do, than to see a change that affects more than greater dragons, specifically in pvp.

 

[o2bavr6]

but my fear is that any change the dev team makes wouldn't be that specific.

Let us asume that the devs do it correctly in the first place, although I sure can relate to the ooops factor we get most of the time.

Liek I said, I am not interested in destroying the tamer template. I would just like to see all forms of combat in UO to have to follow the same rules that EA put in place.

If they are willing to let me do an 80+ damage in one hit, then by all means they can leave the GD as it is. Although I think that would destroy the game, so I don't want to see that happen.

And not that I want to sound like a broken record, but when Word of Death did the same type of damage it was not only reduced for PvP, it was nerfed into oblivion. Which brings us back to your concern about the nerf bat. But if they didn't nerf WoD, it would do the same amount of damage that a GD can do with Firebreath, yet everyone said WoD was overpowered efven though it took almost 4 seconds to cast.

Couldnt have all the spellweavers just said "adapt, learn to get around us", but we didn't because we knew that the damage was out of balance.

I only want balance in PvP, I don't want to affect any other type of non-PvP template in this game in any way.

 

[Sarphus]

Why do I care? I've actually already expressed that I don't care if firebreath gets nerfed in pvp. I don't use a greater dragon in pvp unless I have my dragon out for something else and someone tries to pk me. Greater dragon is a little too easy to counter and too inflexible for my taste.

If we are talking one red against one tamer and his GD with no one else helping either of them, it would be an intersting fight that I'm sure would have either template win at different times. Para on a GD only lasts so long, the moment you try to cast a para spell again on the GD that gives the tamer time to heal up. So in other words a part time pvp tamer would probably lose, but a full time pvp tamer would probably win most fights because he will aid his GD with damage of his own to the red.

What I do care about is the constant stream Ad Hominem arguments that basically say "a tamer killed me... he has no skill and he should be nerfed". It takes just as much skill to run what I would consider a competitive tamer build as it does to run a mage (possibly more).

I never said that tamers should be nerfed, I said the damage a GD does with firebreath in Fell during PvP should be lessened because it exceeds the EA imposed PvP damage cap.

I can agree that a pvp tamer mage takes as much skill to play a regular pvp mage, at least when it comes to spell casting macroes because regular mages dont have an all kill macro or maybe a vet macro

Actually, the inflexibility of a greater dragon is that you're relying entirely on getting lucky and getting a kill. Pet AI is pretty easily defeatable, which allows players with a mobility advantage to do a number of things to counter you.

If you're unmounted, people can summon ev's on your dragon from off screen. The ev's will slow down how fast your dragon responds to attack commands and will slow down your dragon's chase speed (which is already very slow). A good pvper can easily counter that... If the tamer tries to dispel your summon, you have time to summon more stuff or attack the tamer.

You certainly don't need to paralyze a greater dragon to take it out of commission, but EO/para is one way to counter them. The problem with doing EO/para on a greater dragon is that it gives the tamer pretty much time to do stuff to you that might make it hard for you to outrun the dragon.

GD are also inflexible in that they take up all 5 of your control slots without giving you a mounting option. When I'm running a pack, if I get countered, I usually see it coming. Naturally, when I see the counter coming, I mount one of my birds and run like crazy. Sure, my other birds die, but birds are easy to train. Also, usually people are so obsessed with killing my birds that I'm long gone by the time they're done killing my birds.

Not having a mounting option on a GD makes them very difficult to safely operate outside of guard zones. Sure, they're somewhat safe if you're just doing yew stuff (bank sitting equivalent). In an open field fight, you run the risk of being seperated from your mounted friends and many on 1 ganked. I mean seriously. What do you do if you're running around with your dragon in a many on many fight and all your friends run off chasing one of your enemies? You can try to chase, but if most of your opposing group returns and your friends do not, you're toast.

GD are also VERY vulnerable to bards just like any other 1 pet option. All a bard has to do to shut down a GD is get it discorded. A pack, on the other hand, can box-gank that annoying little bard before he gets many members of the pack discorded. Bards are becoming increasingly common in pvp.

I prefer packs, because they allow me to neutralize the speed advantage a mounted opponent has and some of them give me a mounting option. Of course, I take on a lot of risk to get this counter, but risk is fun. I also like their tremendous dmg output, which allows me to counter pets very quickly.