Been gone for a long time. - Ranged pets stay at range now?

[SmalltalkJava]

Hello.

 

I've been gone for a long time,  I'm starting to get back into COH now as time permits.   I have a question, did they put in a fix or command to ensure that pets stay at range when attacking.   I remember ranged pets like bots and mercs used to run up to slap the enemies.   

 

I used to use liberal applications of Pet Stay and Pet Goto. But i was wondering if they put in some fix to make it easier to manage.

[Mack008]

In short, yes.  They stay at range now.

[ZorkNemesis]

Yep, ranged henchmen had their AI adjusted so that they will stay at range if their main methods of attack are ranged.  This primarily affects Mercs, Bots and Thugs (the Bruiser will still melee of course).  Ranged pets will still throw out melee attacks if targets are close enough to be hit though, so they'll still occasionally Brawl when attackers close the gap.

[Crysis]

Bots are a lot more fun to play now, as are many of the other sets.  It's really kind of cool to hang back with the Bots and manage the battlefield from range, letting them just open fire and drop the hurt.  Most of their best powers work that way.

[kelika2]

Yes and no.  Commando, Assault bot and Arsonist move in to use flamethrowers and buckshot, and every now and again since they are close enough they feel like brawling.

[SmalltalkJava]

Excellent.  Thanks for the information.

[Riverdusk]

On 5/17/2021 at 1:36 PM, SmalltalkJava said:

Hello.

 

I've been gone for a long time,  I'm starting to get back into COH now as time permits.   I have a question, did they put in a fix or command to ensure that pets stay at range when attacking.   I remember ranged pets like bots and mercs used to run up to slap the enemies.   

 

I used to use liberal applications of Pet Stay and Pet Goto. But i was wondering if they put in some fix to make it easier to manage.

 

Welcome back 😎

[TheSpiritFox]

Specific info on pet changes so far

 

Staying at range - Basically they modified the AI so that pets which are primarily ranged damage do not ever try to run into melee anymore. As someone said, they will brawl if nothing else is up to use and things are in range. This makes bots and mercs particularly flag planters. Put them somewhere and they tend to stay there. 

 

Goto command - I'm pretty proud of this one, it was my direct suggestion to the devs and they did it. The old goto command would move pets towards a location, but very unreliably.  They modified the goto command to basically plant a pin where you set it.  Pets will stay within about 30 feet of this pin with the sole exception of running out of damage patches. They will prioritize targets closest to the pin location first, and will attack as normal in aggressive mode firing at anything in range of their weapons or meleeing anything that is within their leash range for the pin. Pet management with this change is now 10x easier as even melee pets can be parked at a certain location and be expected (again except for fleeing damage patches) to stay where you put them. A well controlled mastermind aggroing extra groups with pets running wildly around is a thing of the past. Pets will now switch targets if something runs too far away instead of chasing it across the level. 

 

Trick arrow - What used to be the worst secondary bar none is now actually pretty solid from a debuff and control standpoint. 

 

Pet summon times - T1s now have a 5 second recharge, T2s a 10 second recharge, and T3s a 15 second recharge and summon costs have all been lowered significantly. They cannot be changed with recharge enhancement or global set bonuses, but the recharges are all shorter than you could formerly get with an expensive perma hasten build and with the reduced endurance costs, you can spam lost pets back pretty reliably and it's harder to kill an MM by chewing through all it's pets than it used to be. 

 

Minor merc changes - They lowered the cast time on full auto for AR ranged sets and the merc commando so while its still got a stupid long recharge, it no longer locks your commando up for 6 seconds, down to 2.5

 

There are more changes in the pipe but we have no idea what they are at present. But the devs have mentioned repeatedly over about the last 6 months that they are looking seriously at the MM class for changes and buffs, particularly geared towards buffing the weaker primaries and going through the class itself to figure out what issues can be solved without changing the fundamental aspects of the class. So at some point we have more to look forward to.