Improvements to Buff and Vanity Pets?

[Random Robot]

Buff and Vanity pet powers from the P2W vendor could use a little love. There are so many great pets and I can't remember the last time I saw somebody use any of them.

 

The first two issues are ones that affects both Buff and Vanity pets. Firstly, they don't persist over map changes. This was a fantastic addition to Masterminds when it was added and would be a nice way to mitigate the second issue, that being that they are rather fiddly to cast. Being both toggles and locational powers there's currently no way (that I know of) to combine the PowExecToggleOn and PowExecLocation commands to allow them to be cast with a single keypress. (Unless it's bound to the left click I suppose.) It would be great if the locational component could be removed and the toggle would simply summon the pet at your side, or if the toggle element could be removed and they would be summoned indefinitely like Mastermind pets.

 

The third issue is one that only affects Buff pets and may be a little more controversial. Basically, they really aren't worth the effort of resummoning them when they die, and they die -very- quickly. An obvious fix would be to make them untargetable/undamagable by enemies in the same way certain Incarnate pets are. In -my opinion- the buffs provided are small enough that this wouldn't really be overpowered, but others may disagree. Another option would be to increase their health, and/or buff their defense to levels that would keep them alive longer. Somewhere along the levels of Force Field Generator. Alternatively, perhaps giving them some sort of placate or other way to lower threat? Anything to keep them active for more than a few seconds would be nice.

 

However as I said this last suggestion may be too controversial so I do have another option. Make Vanity versions of the Buff pets, so you can have the visual effect of having them out without them dying constantly. No buffs, no controversy. 🙂

[Rudra]

I can't speak for others, but I don't take the buff pets because like you said, they aren't worth it. Last I checked, they had 1 HP and -1000% resist. I'm not sure about the resist though, I'm running off memory. So if an enemy sneezed and the buff pet was affected, it died. (I think the vanity pets are the same way actually.) I would love for the buff pets to be worth fielding. I'm fairly confident others don't field them for the same reason. (I mean aside from the fact that like the vanity pets, they aren't persistent and have to be re-summoned every time you change maps.) I have a few characters that having the buff and/or vanity pets fits, I got the pets for them, but I don't use them. So count me as in favor of anything that made them worth taking and fielding. I would be perfectly fine with them staying a toggle, in fact I prefer they stay a toggle, as long as that toggle stopped turning off every time I went anywhere.

[Greycat]

Well, you *can* buff the buff pets. I don't remember what numbers we got up to, but I do know some friends and I had them to pretty decent numbers.(Rusty memory says we had them with def better than some of our characters.)  But that was all of us concentrating on it.

[FupDup]

I don't think the buff pets should be unkillable because then that makes them a mandatory for everyone. The bonuses are small, yes, but I'd still rather not have that. The vanity pets however pose no such risk so those being unkillable would be completely fine. 

 

I think the buff pets should just have similar health as an underling or minion. Enough to survive a sneeze so they can better fulfill their purpose of making the early game a bit smoother. And perhaps a reduced threat level or minor stealth or something because right now enemies like to prioritize them even when you're playing an AT with higher base threat level like Sents. 

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, FupDup said:

I think the buff pets should just have similar health as an underling or minion. Enough to survive a sneeze so they can better fulfill their purpose of making the early game a bit smoother. And perhaps a reduced threat level or minor stealth or something because right now enemies like to prioritize them even when you're playing an AT with higher base threat level like Sents. 

This.

[Random Robot]

With the addition of several new (and very cool) vanity pets in the most recent patch I feel like this thread deserves a bump. Switching vanity/buff pet powers to be a toggle that summons them at your location instead of being a ground targeted toggle power would allow them to be used with the "Pow_Exec_Toggle_On" command and make summoning them with a single button press much more convenient.

 

For example binding your W key to "+forward$$powexectoggleon pet: spiderling" would cause your W key to summon your spiderling vanity pet the first time you move forward after zoning and then function as normal while your pet is out. As it stands the above binding just activates the summoning cursor and requires an additional mouse click to complete the action. The only way to summon one with a single press would be by using "powexeclocation me pet: spiderling" which unfortunately would detoggle the power with the second press.

[Coyotedancer]

I just wish they'd stick around when you zone... As fond as I am of Spooky and Spark (Kai's green panther and Arcanus' lantern-), having to resummon them constantly is kind-of a bother.

 

I also wish that our Peacebringers and Warshades could keep their pets active when they're in crab or nova form again. We used to be able to, but that was removed late in the retail days when the old devs revamped the way Kheldian form-shifting and toggles interacted.