Patron Pets

[Spectre7878]

I would love for these types of pets to get fixed in some way. For one their recharge seems a bit excessive and two they can be killed.

 

I would like to seem their recharge taken down to five minutes if they can be killed or make them so they can’t be targeted and increase their duration to eight minutes. 

[Clave Dark 5]

All pets can be killed though.

[SeraphimKensai]

Patron pets are working as designed. They were never meant to be Perma.

[Omega-202]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Patron pets are working as designed. They were never meant to be Perma.

The fact that they can be perma'd is more than good enough.  On the characters I take them on, they are or are nearly perma.

 

To the OP: They are fine as is.  You can perma them and they are plenty strong if you play right.  My Crab and Ill/Storm/Soul keep their patron pets up 99% of the time and they contribute a lot in non-I-trial content.  

[tidge]

I'm in agreement that the Patron pets are pretty much working as intended. There may be (unrealistic) expectations for them:

• They aren't "henchmen" (as from a Mastermind), so the player won't have the same level of control.
• They will require attention, as they aren't a fully-kitted second player.
• You can only have 1 of them, even if you can get the power to recharge faster than the pet expires <- not verified, but I assume the power behaves like spiderling pets

I agree that there are two features of them that can be frustrating, but I don't think these are worth changing:

• The long recharge times. Assuming that you can keep the pet alive (and this is on the PLAYER, not the PET) you can have the pet available 100% of the time. This requires some investment in slots, but there are dedicated "Recharge Intensive Pet" IOs (plus common IOs) that can help with this.
• The power is only available at very high levels (level 44 is the earliest, IIRC)

Personally, I don't expect a 'crowning' power from an Epic/Patron pool to be available at lower levels, even if such a pet power would be helpful the (lower) levels where many solo players could use some extra help (if they want to face challenging content). One of the balance features of the game that I experience (playing solo content at 40+, without exemplar) is how high to turn up the number of enemies (*1)... and a (long recharge) pet will need some attention to handle large spawns. The player either needs to focus on keeping the aggro, or buffing the defenses of the pet. Most ATs can do this, but it does require some active choices on the part of the player, either in power choices or play style.

 

(*1) When leveling, and post-50, I prefer to keep content at even level but to face larger spawns. I find certain content to be a boring 'war of attrition', and I prefer 'drops' over 'pure Inf'. YMMV.

[TheZag]

23 hours ago, tidge said:

You can only have 1 of them, even if you can get the power to recharge faster than the pet expires <- not verified, but I assume the power behaves like spiderling pets

I have recast the power before the pet expired and the result was the power went on cooldown, no new pet was summoned, and the original pet expired shortly after.

[Psyonico]

13 minutes ago, TheZag said:

I have recast the power before the pet expired and the result was the power went on cooldown, no new pet was summoned, and the original pet expired shortly after.

yeah, I've seen this too.

 

IMO this should be changed to a new pet being summoned and the old one dying, much like what happens when you re-summon Dark Servant before he expires.

[tidge]

48 minutes ago, TheZag said:

I have recast the power before the pet expired and the result was the power went on cooldown, no new pet was summoned, and the original pet expired shortly after.

That is the exact behavior of the spiderlings, unless all of the initial spiderlings have been defeated, the ones from the latest recast will expire when/along with ones from the initial cast would have expired.

[Coyotedancer]

You absolutely CAN perma Patron Pets... but for most characters it takes a pretty serious investment. You basically have to go all-in on the global recharge, in a very serious way. (That's how I did it with my favorite Stalker's Adept partner back-in-the-day)

 

And then you have to invest in keeping them alive... Which also may not be trivial if you're dealing with, oh, let's say a glass cannon of a Mu who doesn't know that he really shouldn't float right into melee with exploding Warhulks. (You don't want to know how many times Cardinal did exactly that. 'Not so bright, that guy.<_<)

 

But, anyway. What you want is already at least mostly a possibility. It just takes some build engineering with that as your specific focus.