How do the MM sets compare against each other these days?

[Seroster01]

I quit playing Live around 1-2 years before shutdown, & as such it seems I missed quite a few changes to IOs & such in the later stages of the game, while at the same they added many more layers to the Incarnate system & several new power sets were introduced. Given that & adding in the FURTHER changes from i25, I'm curious about how the sets compare to each other (mostly the pet sets).

 

The 2 MM sets I'm most interested in hearing about are Demons & Time.  From what I hear it seems that those 2 sets don't have much synergy, but are there other sets that pair well with one or the other?  I always wanted a Demon MM but I'm not sure how well the set works in practice.  Last I was playing, robots were typically considered the best overall set,  due to being ranged, very survivable, and having both a solid damage type & very solid AOE for an MM.  That was probably followed by Thugs, due to having very good LT mobs & a solid Boss pet (though their Boss pet always had very questionable AI.)  Ninja's were looked down upon because they weren't very good at AOE while ALSO having pretty questionable AI & pathing, but did very good ST DPS if well-managed.  Undead were considered too easy to kill to be very useful (I think it was due to having a weakness to S/L). Mercs were considered just bad overall as far as I can remember.  Did any  of this change significantly?  How do Demons & Animals compare to those? 

 

The only other question I can think of is have there been any changes to IOs that have significantly affected MMs, or new strategies on how to build them?

 

Thanks for answering any of these!

[Apparition]

Robots, Demons, and Thugs are considered the top three, and pretty much in that order.  Beasts is dead last.  Everything else is in between.

 

Robots and Thugs like defense.  Demons likes resists.  So, Robots and Thugs would go well with FF, Cold, and Time.  Demons would go well with Sonic and Thermal.  They all go well with Dark.  Of course, that's a guide.  My main is a level 50 Thugs/Sonic Resonance Mastermind.

[Dakkaface]

Beasts is dead last.

 

Really? From what I've head it's Ninjas that are dead last. Why would you say it's Beasts?  I mean, from this post about their innate resistances and traits, they all share the same speed boost.  But the first two tiers of Beast minions have higher defense and resistance, and with Pack Mentality stacks, higher damage.

[WumpusRat]

Generally all of the MM sets are solid, though some are better than others, and much of it will depend on what secondary you take and how you capitalize on it.

 

Robots are pretty low damage until you get your 32nd level upgrade power, which adds pretty much ALL your aoe damage, especially the Missile Swarm and Incendiary Missile Swarm powers to the assault bot, then the set skyrockets in damage. Drop a kb-to-kd proc in the assault bot and just plow through stuff. Your ideal targets with bots at high level are large groups of minions and lieutenants, to capitalize on their aoe damage. They're also decent at taking down AVs due to the assault bot's plasma cannons having -500% regen baked in.

 

Beasts are almost entirely single-target damage until you get the dire wolf fully upgraded, and even then their aoe is lacking. However, they are insanely good at tearing down single hard targets such as bosses, elite bosses, and AVs, as the longer they fight, the more damage they do due to stacking pack mentality, and all the pets can crit. They lack -regen, but their pack mentality damage will let them overcome the regen by just dealing more and more damage. They also have slows and a speed buff for themselves, which lets them chase down runners easily. One of the downsides is that many of them have buff/debuff powers (which you wouldn't think would be a bad thing) which make them stop attacking and howl/roar to use the de/buff, stalling out their damage for a few seconds. They also deal almost exclusively lethal damage (the dire wolf deals cold damage), which is the most resisted damage type in the game, though the pack mentality buff (and crits) can make up or this a bit.

 

Thugs are a mix of a single-target melee pet (the bruiser) and ranged pets (the rest of them, with the exception of the arsonist who has a tendency to run into melee even though he has ranged attacks). Their biggest strength is the enforcers, who provide leadership bonuses to all the pets giving them significant defense and some minor bonuses to damage and to-hit. The bruiser also does a lot of damage and provides some solid cc in the process, having many of the super strength abilities, but it's mostly single target. They also have the advantage of their gang war power being able to hold all the aura abilities, meaning you have more flexibility in slotting the pets themselves.

 

Mercenaries are kind of a middle-of-the-road set, in that they have the advantage of range and decent damage, but it's almost all lethal, which is the most highly-resisted damage type in the game, and they have no way of buffing their own damage to make up for it. Many people slot the Achilles Heel -res proc in the soldiers to compensate. Another major downside is that the commando's best powers are on ridiculously long cooldowns (1m for full auto and FOUR minutes for lrm rocket), meaning after he pops those two abilities he's essentially just a tier-1 soldier with more health. If the commando's abilities had more reasonable cooldowns, the Mercenaries would be a much more viable set.

 

Undead deal lots of rarely-resisted damage (toxic and dark), but when you run into something that resists it, they tend to get resisted a LOT. The backbone of the undead set is the grave knights, which are the majority of your damage output, as the tier-3 lich only has one damaging power (dark blast), the rest being cc. When combined with /Dark, undead can stack some immense -to hit on enemies, as the zombies have life leech, the grave knights have dark blast, gloom and life leech, and the lich has pretty much every /dark control power, plus dark blast. The biggest weakness they have is that the pets are fairly squishy, as they have no lethal resist and are mostly melee. Plus no movement speed bonus, which makes them slog after enemies dealing limited damage a lot. Like thugs, their 18th level power can hold pet auras, making slotting the pets themselves a lot more flexible.

 

Ninjas are often referred to as the weakest set in the game, due to the ninjas themselves having no resist, and almost no defense. Prior to several of the new/ported sets, they were incredibly hard to keep alive unless you went /FF. These days, you can use /Cold, /FF, /Time, or /Dark to provide them with defense and/or -to hit on enemies, though they'll still be somewhat squishy. The pet aura powers can help them out a good bit though. Their biggest weakness is that they're almost exclusively single target damage, with very little in the way of aoe outside of the oni, and they deal lethal/smashing, which are highly resisted. Their advantage is that they deal a LOT of damage, with the genin having 6 attacks (3 martial arts, 3 shuriken), meaning they can churn damage if you can keep them alive.

 

Demons are kind of the outlier set, in that the pets have good resists, the demon prince has a lot of defense on top of good resists, and one of the tier-2 pets (the ember demon) also provides a +resist aura to all the pets as well as the mastermind, making the demons VERY resilient right out of the box. They also deal damage types that aren't resisted nearly as much (cold, fire, toxic), making their damage output quite high. They're also mostly a ranged set, though the demon prince has a few melee powers, and one of your tier-2's (the stone gargoyle) also deals melee damage. Their 18th level power is another pet-aura holding power, so you can slot the demons themselves more easily.

 

As far as secondaries go, there are way too many to go through in any sort of detail without this post being like 10 pages long. :) But for the most part, synergizing your primary/secondary is the best way to go. For robots, thugs, ninjas, and beasts, a secondary that gives them defense can work wonders. For mercenaries, demons and undead, a set that provides resists will probably work well, though overall defense is always good. The pet aura IOs can provide up to 35 resists, 10 melee/ranged defense, and 25 aoe defense, which will make your pets FAR more durable. Other sets, such as /nature, /empathy, or /poison, don't offer any def/res, but have copious amounts of healing, or a debuff toggle that lowers to-hit, which can add some survivability.

 

All in all, pretty much any combo can work, though obviously some are better than others. /Time is generally considered one of the strongest secondaries, as it does just about everything, and with perma Farsight (which gives defense, to hit and perception) being one of the reasons the set is so good for masterminds.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

WumpusRat did an excellent write-up although there is one thing I'd add to consider which is that the pet tier of your primary damage dealer is important. Sets which lean on their T3 for damage (such as robotics) have an advantage since the T3 is even level to you. Conversely sets which rely on T1 or T2 pets suffer a disadvantage since their damage dealer powers are more affected my the level scaling than T3s.

[Seroster01]

WumpusRat did an excellent write-up although there is one thing I'd add to consider which is that the pet tier of your primary damage dealer is important. Sets which lean on their T3 for damage (such as robotics) have an advantage since the T3 is even level to you. Conversely sets which rely on T1 or T2 pets suffer a disadvantage since their damage dealer powers are more affected my the level scaling than T3s.

 

Where does Demons fall in this spectrum? It sounds like the Prince is relatively powerful, but the write up above didn't really say where the damage was concentrated for the set.  I saw the other thread in these forums about slotting damage procs,  and it sounded like slotting the Prince with them seemed pretty powerful.  Not sure if that's even a good idea, but it seemed pretty interesting to me. 

 

On the subject of Slotting, how do MMs usually slot? I don't think I've put much time into one since IOs were a thing.  I had a Thugs MM (/dark I think) I played a lot which I think had IOs, but I didn't have a very firm grasp of IOs at the time, or a lot of influence to devote to them.  In particular, I can't remember much of anything about the pet IO sets. Sounds like there's some pretty solid uniques for the archetype, are there any solid sets?  Is it realistic and/or is there a decent return on investment to push defense or resistance set bonuses with some of these secondaries so that the MM doesn't get insta-gibbed?

 

Last general question for anyone who wants to answer, what's peoples opinions on which would work better for Demons, /Thermal or /Sonic?  (Those are both available aren't they?)  I always wanted a Sonic support character, but I never really found a supporting set I liked in any of my attempts to make one, regardless of class.  Seemed I always have a rough time in CoH without some variety of self-heal.  On the subject of these 2 sets, I can vaguely remember that they made all the "shield-style" buffs AOE to simplify group buffing, but I can't remember if that applied it to the caster or not.  That one's probably an easy answer, but my computer is in another state so I can't check for myself atm.

 

Thanks for answering all my random questions!  ;D

[WumpusRat]

Where does Demons fall in this spectrum? It sounds like the Prince is relatively powerful, but the write up above didn't really say where the damage was concentrated for the set.  I saw the other thread in these forums about slotting damage procs,  and it sounded like slotting the Prince with them seemed pretty powerful.  Not sure if that's even a good idea, but it seemed pretty interesting to me. 

Most of your damage in demons will come from the tier-2's. The demon prince has some good attacks, but half of his powers are dedicated to soft crowd control (slow, -recharge, sleep). He's capable of putting out some good damage, but between the hellfire gargoyle and the ember demon, they provide a large chunk of your damage output. The gargoyle in particular is almost exclusively a damage dealer, with very little in the way of support/cc.

 

On the subject of Slotting, how do MMs usually slot? I don't think I've put much time into one since IOs were a thing.  I had a Thugs MM (/dark I think) I played a lot which I think had IOs, but I didn't have a very firm grasp of IOs at the time, or a lot of influence to devote to them.  In particular, I can't remember much of anything about the pet IO sets. Sounds like there's some pretty solid uniques for the archetype, are there any solid sets?  Is it realistic and/or is there a decent return on investment to push defense or resistance set bonuses with some of these secondaries so that the MM doesn't get insta-gibbed?

Most times a lot of what I see people do is franken-slot their various minions, to maximize acc/dmg, while stuffing the aura IOs in where they can. For demons though, they have their 18th level power (hell on earth) which can hold the auras instead, so you're free to slot up your actual demons with whatever you want, full sets or a mix. It depends if you want the set bonuses or not. There are a number of archetype-specific IO sets now, each AT getting two, which provide some very nice bonuses for the "superior" version (which requires getting the basic version for 100 merits per IO and then upgrading them). The auras and your secondary are going to be what determine whether or not your pets get crushed or not. The auras in particular can provide up to 35% to all resists, 10% ranged/melee defense and 25% aoe defense, so those help immensely in keeping your pets alive. Keep in mind however that the bonuses from IO sets don't affect the pets, they affect the mastermind. The only boosts to pet resist/defense comes from either the auras or actual powers.

 

Last general question for anyone who wants to answer, what's peoples opinions on which would work better for Demons, /Thermal or /Sonic?  (Those are both available aren't they?)  I always wanted a Sonic support character, but I never really found a supporting set I liked in any of my attempts to make one, regardless of class.  Seemed I always have a rough time in CoH without some variety of self-heal.  On the subject of these 2 sets, I can vaguely remember that they made all the "shield-style" buffs AOE to simplify group buffing, but I can't remember if that applied it to the caster or not.  That one's probably an easy answer, but my computer is in another state so I can't check for myself atm.

 

Thanks for answering all my random questions!  ;D

Thermal is generally viewed as superior to sonic when it comes to mastermind secondaries, at least as far as pet survivability goes. Mainly because thermal has an aoe heal that has a relatively low cooldown (especially once slotted up), so you can spam that to keep your pets alive. It offers about the same resistance numbers for defense for the castable buffs, though sonic does have the aura buff which can push the pets up a bit further towards the soft cap. The weakness for sonic is that it lacks a heal, meaning you'll have to invest in the medicine pool, and that requires 2-3 power picks  (aid other, another power, and possibly field medic, which removes the interrupt portion of aid other, which is invaluable for a MM trying to heal their pets in combat). Sonic does increase damage quite a bit via the -resist debuffs though, so it depends if you want slightly tankier pets that are harder as a whole to keep alive with sonic, or slightly less tanky pets that are far easier to keep up throughout fights that are with more than 2-3 enemies at once.

 

The castable shield buffs apply to all friendlies in range now instead of having to be done for each individual, so that makes it MUCH easier on us poor masterminds. They don't apply to you however, just to allies.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Where does Demons fall in this spectrum? It sounds like the Prince is relatively powerful, but the write up above didn't really say where the damage was concentrated for the set.  I saw the other thread in these forums about slotting damage procs,  and it sounded like slotting the Prince with them seemed pretty powerful.  Not sure if that's even a good idea, but it seemed pretty interesting to me.

The Demon prince has excellent single target damage (and some AoE slows) but it relatively light on AoE damage. A large chunk of the demon's AoE damage comes from the T2s with a bit from the T1s.

 

On the subject of Slotting, how do MMs usually slot? I don't think I've put much time into one since IOs were a thing.  I had a Thugs MM (/dark I think) I played a lot which I think had IOs, but I didn't have a very firm grasp of IOs at the time, or a lot of influence to devote to them.  In particular, I can't remember much of anything about the pet IO sets. Sounds like there's some pretty solid uniques for the archetype, are there any solid sets?  Is it realistic and/or is there a decent return on investment to push defense or resistance set bonuses with some of these secondaries so that the MM doesn't get insta-gibbed?

Pushing resistance with IOs is not really worth it but you can build a decent amount of defense if you want. Sets like Traps or Time can easily softcap all positions while other sets can aim to softcap either Ranged or S/L Defense.

 

Most of the pet sets aren't that great although I will give a shoutout to Superior Mark of Supremacy which has a 10% recharge as it's 2-piece bonus (so you can potentially put 2 pieces in each pet for 30% recharge).

 

The other thing that's worth looking at is slotting some or all of the Aura IOs. There are six auras that give your pets bonus defense or resistance when they are near you (if you slot all six they get 10% to All Defense, +15% to AoE defense and 35% to all resistance which is pretty significant).

 

Last general question for anyone who wants to answer, what's peoples opinions on which would work better for Demons, /Thermal or /Sonic?  (Those are both available aren't they?)  I always wanted a Sonic support character, but I never really found a supporting set I liked in any of my attempts to make one, regardless of class.  Seemed I always have a rough time in CoH without some variety of self-heal.  On the subject of these 2 sets, I can vaguely remember that they made all the "shield-style" buffs AOE to simplify group buffing, but I can't remember if that applied it to the caster or not.  That one's probably an easy answer, but my computer is in another state so I can't check for myself atm.

The AoE Buffs are AoE but they don't apply to the caster. I will also plug my guide on advanced buff bar filtering since there are some filter options that aren't available through the interface that make it easier to tell who does or doesn't have shields:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,5424.0.html

 

As for Thermal versus Sonic it's a hard call. The advantage of thermal is that you get healing (which is nice for resistance based builds) and Heat Exhaustion gives you a very powerful regen debuff. The advantage of Sonic is that you get AoE mez protection that also affects you and get more resistance for both you and your pets.

 

Personally I lean towards Thermal but that's for thematic reasons as much as anything else (the demons do look cool with thermal shields).

[Seroster01]

I wasn't sure about how good Res set bonuses are considered now.  I've only had a very little bit of time for horsing around in Pines (came down to TX to see my grandparents), but from what I saw the +Res set bonuses seem to have been buffed A LOT.  Like, 2-3x what I remembered them being when I last played on live.  Seems like this was done at the very end of live, so I'm not sure if the buffs were considered significant enough to pull slotting for +Res out of the scrap heap...

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Yep, they basically doubled them and made them all two-type bonuses. So are they worth build for? IMHO yes, but not on a Mastermind.

 

In terms of overall damage mitigation resistance set bonuses still lag behind defense bonuses requiring more set bonuses to get a similar level of damage mitigation (in part because positional defense covers all damage types and partly because of how the defnese soft cap works). So if you've got a character who has solid resistance already then adding more is worth but Masterminds don't really have that. Even the highest resistance MM (Demons/Sonic) will get more survivability for building to defense than resistance.

 

That being said adding the two globals (Shield Wall and Reactive Defenses gives 8% resistance to all for only two slots which is probably worth taking, espeically if you already have a bit of resistance.

[Wintervoid]

So far my favorite MM is Beast/Kin.  It is not the most powerful, but it disintegrates single targets and is the only set that can reach the Def Soft cap and Damage cap on its own.  (Def softcap is reached through Power Boosted Fortify the pack.  Recharge can be made Perma,  but you need around 4-5 stacks of pack mentality to reach cap, and that can take 4-10 seconds)    The main downsides are no good -regen for AV's and you are a bit squishy unlike /Time, /Traps or Bots/.    Beast/Kin is a frantic playstyle (Especially after you get Fulcrum Shift) where you are rushing from spawn to spawn trying to keep your pets at damage cap.  Mobs melt quickly.

 

Probably the top combo is Bots/Time, but the combo is less exciting to me.  At 45 I am playing at +1/4 where I am sure a Bots/Time could do a much higher difficulty.  I also hear good things about Demon/Thermal. 

[Dixa]

Beasts is dead last.

 

Really? From what I've head it's Ninjas that are dead last. Why would you say it's Beasts?  I mean, from this post about their innate resistances and traits, they all share the same speed boost.  But the first two tiers of Beast minions have higher defense and resistance, and with Pack Mentality stacks, higher damage.

 

what is your metric here?

 

if overall then yeah, due to survivability issues ninja's tend to fall off. but by way of damage ninja's are the highest single target, followed by thugs then demons (depending on target). bots rock aoe if and ONLY IF you are using an aoe immob power so stuff doesn't run.

 

beasts will spam no damage roars frequently to keep extremely short d uration buffs up. this means that nearly 30% of their attack cycle has no damage, and mm pets are not affected by recharge boosts. when they hit, they hit HARD, but the infrequent hits makes their dps rather poor.

[Dakkaface]

what is your metric here?

 

if overall then yeah, due to survivability issues ninja's tend to fall off. but by way of damage ninja's are the highest single target, followed by thugs then demons (depending on target). bots rock aoe if and ONLY IF you are using an aoe immob power so stuff doesn't run.

 

beasts will spam no damage roars frequently to keep extremely short d uration buffs up. this means that nearly 30% of their attack cycle has no damage, and mm pets are not affected by recharge boosts. when they hit, they hit HARD, but the infrequent hits makes their dps rather poor.

 

My metric is looking at the sets overall. I get the roar/howl cycle interrupts are bad for Beast's DPS, but everything I'd heard about Ninjas indicated they were so fragile they'd be at the bottom of the stack. Also, I've heard that Beasts do benefit from Recharge Reduction, but haven't bothered to test it.

[Redlynne]

Ninjas are really good IF THEY LIVE ... the problem is keeping them alive with next to no protection built into them by default.

Solve their survival problem and they (*ahem*) kick butt and stomp on names.

[kelly Rocket]

Ninjas are really good IF THEY LIVE ... the problem is keeping them alive with next to no protection built into them by default.

Solve their survival problem and they (*ahem*) kick butt and stomp on names.

 

Even then though, they're almost exclusively single target, their AoE is all dependent on the Oni and it's... pretty meh. Once you get your survivability up for the pets, you may be running +4 difficulty, but you're *never* going to want to bump the effective player count up, because frankly if you have to cut through more than a handful of mobs at a time it's a huge pain in the ass and just takes years and years.

[WumpusRat]

beasts will spam no damage roars frequently to keep extremely short d uration buffs up. this means that nearly 30% of their attack cycle has no damage, and mm pets are not affected by recharge boosts. when they hit, they hit HARD, but the infrequent hits makes their dps rather poor.

 

This is either misinformed, or an attempt at hyperbole. They don't spend anywhere NEAR 30% of their time buffing/debuffing. It may seem that way because they ALL have buffs and debuffs, but here's the thing ... they stack, and each one is only using one buff per minute typically. The wolves' howl ability is a 25% damage buff. If they all howl, that's +75% damage for 20 seconds. Combined with pack mentality stacks, the wolves can massively increase the damage output of the entire pack. I honestly think they can outdamage the ninjas on single targets, though I'd have to do some real testing.

 

But, here's the list of the wolves' powers:

• Vicious Bite -- 3s cooldown
  
• Wild Charge -- 90s cooldown, +33% damage to self, +100% run speed, +12 immobilize prot for 20s
  
• Maiming Bite -- 6s cooldown (Train Beasts)
  
• Howl -- 60s cooldown, +24% damage, +7.5% to-hit to other beasts for 15s (Tame Beasts)
  
• Feral Charge -- 8s cooldown (Tame Beasts)
  
• Growl -- 45s cooldown, -10% damage, -5% to hit to enemies (Alpha Wolf) (Train Beasts)
  
• Lick Wounds -- 60s cooldown, self heal (Alpha Wolf) (Tame Beasts)
  

 

So their general attack cycle is going to be to pop their buffs, charge in, and start attacking. Every 60s they'll rebuff. In those 60s, they'll likely get off somewhere around 14-16 Vicious Bites, Wild Charge, 7-8 Maiming Bites, and 4-5 Feral Charges.

 

The lionesses are similar, but instead of a debuff, they get a stun instead (on a 120s cooldown), and their attack cycle is 3s, 5s, 8s for their attacks, so they'll generally be spending about 95% of their time attacking.

 

So instead of "30% of their cycle uselessly buffing", they spend two seconds out of 45-60. Or about 3-4%. You seem to have added a zero from somewhere.

[kelly Rocket]

I actually find it hard to believe that they have an attack with a 3s cooldown. My beasts do a *lot* of standing next to the target they've been attacking, literally doing nothing.

[BGSacho]

The Howler Wolves have a decent attack chain. Ignoring their buffs(really long cds), and assuming pets use high-recharge powers first(that's been my experience) it looks like this:

 

0.00 - 1.40 - Feral Charge (8s cd)

1.40 - 3.90 - Maiming Bite (6s cd)

3.90 - 5.20 - Vicious Bite (3s cd)

5.20 - 8.20 - (Staring at the sky)

8.20 - 9.50 - Vicious Bite

 

They do spend 30% of their time "doing nothing", but actually, a lot of pets have 20-30% downtime(I think only ninjas have 100% attack chains).

 

The Alpha Wolf doesn't have Feral Charge though, so his chain is closer to 40-50% downtime.

 

The lionesses have skills with similar cds to the wolves, so their downtime is also around 30%-ish.

 

 

 

 

[Dixa]

All I know is that of the mm primaries I threw at the pylon on Justin these guys had the worst performance and took the longest to drop the avs in the Maria Jenkins arc. I had to use lore pets far more often.

 

Sure they get big hits now and then but their hits are so infrequent that their actual dps is low and like demons they struggle to all get on smaller targets however demons at least have ranged attacks

[WumpusRat]

The Howler Wolves have a decent attack chain. Ignoring their buffs(really long cds), and assuming pets use high-recharge powers first(that's been my experience) it looks like this:

 

0.00 - 1.40 - Feral Charge (8s cd)

1.40 - 3.90 - Maiming Bite (6s cd)

3.90 - 5.20 - Vicious Bite (3s cd)

5.20 - 8.20 - (Staring at the sky)

8.20 - 9.50 - Vicious Bite

 

They do spend 30% of their time "doing nothing", but actually, a lot of pets have 20-30% downtime(I think only ninjas have 100% attack chains).

 

The Alpha Wolf doesn't have Feral Charge though, so his chain is closer to 40-50% downtime.

 

The lionesses have skills with similar cds to the wolves, so their downtime is also around 30%-ish.

 

I just ran a test of my fully upgraded howler wolf attacking a practice dummy on the test server. Here's the combat log, for a one-minute timeframe (I removed the ticks of bleed damage from the log):

 

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  HIT Howler Wolf! Your Wild Charge power is autohit.

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf HITS you! Wild Charge power was autohit.

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf begins a Wild Charge boosting their damage and movement speed.

 

2019-06-29 11:12:17 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 68.09.

2019-06-29 11:12:17 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:18 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:20 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 52.10.

2019-06-29 11:12:20 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

2019-06-29 11:12:21 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf lets out an howl bolstering the damage of nearby beast allies!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:26 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 59.88.

2019-06-29 11:12:26 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:29 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 89.35.

2019-06-29 11:12:29 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 0.43.

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:33 Howler Wolf:  MISSED Practice Dummy!! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.90.

 

2019-06-29 11:12:35 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.

2019-06-29 11:12:35 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:38 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 0.16.

2019-06-29 11:12:38 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

2019-06-29 11:12:39 Howler Wolf:  Your Vicious Bite causes Practice Dummy to bleed for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 27.28.

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:44 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 53.07.

2019-06-29 11:12:44 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:47 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.30.

2019-06-29 11:12:47 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 3.88.

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:53 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 71.94.

2019-06-29 11:12:54 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:56 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.11.

2019-06-29 11:12:56 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:01 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.44.

2019-06-29 11:13:01 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:04 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.83.

2019-06-29 11:13:04 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:06 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 77.65.

2019-06-29 11:13:06 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:11 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.21.

2019-06-29 11:13:11 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:13 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 77.09.

2019-06-29 11:13:13 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:16 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 42.91.

2019-06-29 11:13:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

In one minute, it does 21 things, so acting about every 2.8 seconds or so. There are some very odd patches of "dead time" where it's literally doing nothing, even though abilities aren't on cooldown. It looks like not so much like the pet is spending too much time casting buffs (because it's not), it's that there is some odd, baked-in downtime to its attack chain. Like bleed ticks prevent it from attacking again, or the animation cycle for the abilities is set to have several extra seconds where it has to wait for the "animation" to end before it can do anything else.

 

Now I'm curious, and going to test some of the other pets, to see if they have this same oddity.

[WumpusRat]

Here's one for the ninja genin, for the same 60 second combat duration:

 

 

2019-06-29 11:56:46 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Exploding Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 80.84.

2019-06-29 11:56:46 Genin:  Your Exploding Shuriken hits PlayerName for 0 points of Lethal Damage.

 

2019-06-29 11:56:48 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 86.18.

2019-06-29 11:56:48 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:56:49 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 22.20.

2019-06-29 11:56:49 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:56:51 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.92.

2019-06-29 11:56:51 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:56:53 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Crane Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.01.

2019-06-29 11:56:53 Genin:  Genin smashes Practice Dummy with their Crane Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:56:55 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 82.84.

2019-06-29 11:56:55 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:56:57 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 21.15.

2019-06-29 11:56:57 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:00 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 3.67.

2019-06-29 11:57:00 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:02 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 43.03.

2019-06-29 11:57:02 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:04 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 84.57.

2019-06-29 11:57:04 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:06 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 49.18.

2019-06-29 11:57:06 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:07 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 53.44.

2019-06-29 11:57:07 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:09 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Crane Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 94.08.

2019-06-29 11:57:09 Genin:  Genin smashes Practice Dummy with their Crane Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

2019-06-29 11:57:09 Genin:  Genin knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Crane Kick.

 

2019-06-29 11:57:12 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 82.68.

2019-06-29 11:57:12 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:13 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 47.32.

2019-06-29 11:57:13 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:15 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 86.83.

2019-06-29 11:57:15 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:17 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Exploding Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 79.37.

2019-06-29 11:57:17 Genin:  Your Exploding Shuriken hits PlayerName for 0 points of Lethal Damage.

 

2019-06-29 11:57:18 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 36.45.

2019-06-29 11:57:18 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:20 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 28.96.

2019-06-29 11:57:20 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:21 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.34.

2019-06-29 11:57:21 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:23 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Crane Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 63.06.

2019-06-29 11:57:23 Genin:  Genin smashes Practice Dummy with their Crane Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

2019-06-29 11:57:23 Genin:  Genin knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Crane Kick.

 

2019-06-29 11:57:25 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 77.30.

2019-06-29 11:57:25 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:27 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 91.34.

2019-06-29 11:57:27 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:28 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 74.27.

2019-06-29 11:57:28 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:31 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.27.

2019-06-29 11:57:31 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:32 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.30.

2019-06-29 11:57:32 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:34 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 36.00.

2019-06-29 11:57:34 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:35 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Crane Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 65.92.

2019-06-29 11:57:35 Genin:  Genin smashes Practice Dummy with their Crane Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:38 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 5.95.

2019-06-29 11:57:38 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:39 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Thunder Kick power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 57.53.

2019-06-29 11:57:39 Genin:  Genin strikes Practice Dummy with their Thunder Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

2019-06-29 11:57:39 Genin:  You disorient Practice Dummy with your Thunder Kick!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:41 Genin:  MISSED Practice Dummy!! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.86.

 

2019-06-29 11:57:43 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Storm Kick power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.

2019-06-29 11:57:43 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Storm Kick for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:57:46 Genin:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Shuriken power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 57.10.

2019-06-29 11:57:46 Genin:  Genin hits Practice Dummy with a Shuriken for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

Unlike the howler wolf, the genin attacks 33 times in one minute, or about 50% more often. Admittedly the genin have more attacks, but theirs are:

Thunder Kick (3s cd)

Shuriken (4s cd)

Storm Kick (6s cd) (trained)

Shuriken (6s cd) (trained)

Crane Kick (8s cd) (kuji)

Exploding Shuriken (16s cd) (kuji)

 

It seems like there's no baked-in animation delay for the ninjas, as they don't spend much time just staring at their target. Given that the beast mastery set was the last one they came out with, and didn't really get much tweaking before the game went down, it's not surprising that it might be a bit more glitchy than the other sets.

[WumpusRat]

Also ran a test of the necromancy zombie, who only has 4 attacks:

 

Zombie Brawl (4s cd)

Projectile Vomit (12s cd) (enchant)

Zombie Vomit (12s cd) (enchant)

Siphon Life (30s cd) (empower)

 

 

2019-06-29 12:17:33 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Projectile Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 0.01.

2019-06-29 12:17:33 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Projectile Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:35 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Siphon Life power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 21.84.

2019-06-29 12:17:35 Zombie:  Zombie drains Practice Dummy for 0 points of negative energy damage reducing their chance to hit and healing itself!

2019-06-29 12:17:35 Zombie:  Zombie heals itself for 114.99 points of health.

 

2019-06-29 12:17:37 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 20.59.

2019-06-29 12:17:37 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:40 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 62.40.

2019-06-29 12:17:40 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Zombie Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:43 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 30.47.

2019-06-29 12:17:43 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:47 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Projectile Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 8.29.

2019-06-29 12:17:47 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Projectile Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:48 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 31.48.

2019-06-29 12:17:48 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:53 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 17.86.

2019-06-29 12:17:53 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:56 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 86.91.

2019-06-29 12:17:56 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Zombie Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:17:58 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 20.66.

2019-06-29 12:17:58 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:01 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Projectile Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 50.73.

2019-06-29 12:18:01 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Projectile Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:03 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 60.81.

2019-06-29 12:18:03 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:07 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Siphon Life power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 62.36.

2019-06-29 12:18:07 Zombie:  Zombie drains Practice Dummy for 0 points of negative energy damage reducing their chance to hit and healing itself!

2019-06-29 12:18:08 Zombie:  Zombie heals itself for 114.99 points of health.

 

2019-06-29 12:18:09 Zombie:  MISSED Practice Dummy!! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.58.

 

2019-06-29 12:18:11 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Vomit power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.

2019-06-29 12:18:11 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Zombie Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:14 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 57.06.

2019-06-29 12:18:14 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:17 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Projectile Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 20.67.

2019-06-29 12:18:17 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Projectile Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:19 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 10.28.

2019-06-29 12:18:19 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:24 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 47.78.

2019-06-29 12:18:24 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:27 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 60.29.

2019-06-29 12:18:27 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Zombie Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:29 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Zombie Brawl power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 56.54.

2019-06-29 12:18:29 Zombie:  Zombie pounds Practice Dummy for 0 points of smashing damage!

 

2019-06-29 12:18:32 Zombie:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Projectile Vomit power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 60.41.

2019-06-29 12:18:32 Zombie:  Zombie hits Practice Dummy with their Projectile Vomit for 0 points of toxic damage!

 

So over 60 seconds the zombie got 22 actions out, which given their lowest cooldown is 4s, is about right. It does seem like the beast mastery pets are simply bugged, and have some odd animation glitches built in.

[Dixa]

The Howler Wolves have a decent attack chain. Ignoring their buffs(really long cds), and assuming pets use high-recharge powers first(that's been my experience) it looks like this:

 

0.00 - 1.40 - Feral Charge (8s cd)

1.40 - 3.90 - Maiming Bite (6s cd)

3.90 - 5.20 - Vicious Bite (3s cd)

5.20 - 8.20 - (Staring at the sky)

8.20 - 9.50 - Vicious Bite

 

They do spend 30% of their time "doing nothing", but actually, a lot of pets have 20-30% downtime(I think only ninjas have 100% attack chains).

 

The Alpha Wolf doesn't have Feral Charge though, so his chain is closer to 40-50% downtime.

 

The lionesses have skills with similar cds to the wolves, so their downtime is also around 30%-ish.

 

I just ran a test of my fully upgraded howler wolf attacking a practice dummy on the test server. Here's the combat log, for a one-minute timeframe (I removed the ticks of bleed damage from the log):

 

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  HIT Howler Wolf! Your Wild Charge power is autohit.

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf HITS you! Wild Charge power was autohit.

2019-06-29 11:12:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf begins a Wild Charge boosting their damage and movement speed.

 

2019-06-29 11:12:17 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 68.09.

2019-06-29 11:12:17 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:18 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:20 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 52.10.

2019-06-29 11:12:20 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

2019-06-29 11:12:21 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf lets out an howl bolstering the damage of nearby beast allies!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:26 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 59.88.

2019-06-29 11:12:26 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:29 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 89.35.

2019-06-29 11:12:29 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 0.43.

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:31 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:33 Howler Wolf:  MISSED Practice Dummy!! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.90.

 

2019-06-29 11:12:35 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.

2019-06-29 11:12:35 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:38 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 0.16.

2019-06-29 11:12:38 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

2019-06-29 11:12:39 Howler Wolf:  Your Vicious Bite causes Practice Dummy to bleed for 0 points of lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 27.28.

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:41 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:44 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 53.07.

2019-06-29 11:12:44 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:47 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.30.

2019-06-29 11:12:47 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 3.88.

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

2019-06-29 11:12:51 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf knocks Practice Dummy off their feet with their Feral Charge!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:53 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 71.94.

2019-06-29 11:12:54 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:12:56 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.11.

2019-06-29 11:12:56 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:01 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 87.44.

2019-06-29 11:13:01 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:04 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.83.

2019-06-29 11:13:04 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:06 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 77.65.

2019-06-29 11:13:06 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:11 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Feral Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.21.

2019-06-29 11:13:11 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf bashes Practice Dummy with their Feral Charge for 0 points of Smashing damage and reduces their defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:13 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Maiming Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 77.09.

2019-06-29 11:13:13 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Maiming Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage and reduces their movement speed and defense!

 

2019-06-29 11:13:16 Howler Wolf:  HIT Practice Dummy! Your Vicious Bite power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 42.91.

2019-06-29 11:13:16 Howler Wolf:  Howler Wolf shreds Practice Dummy with their Vicious Bite for 0 points of Lethal damage!

 

In one minute, it does 21 things, so acting about every 2.8 seconds or so. There are some very odd patches of "dead time" where it's literally doing nothing, even though abilities aren't on cooldown. It looks like not so much like the pet is spending too much time casting buffs (because it's not), it's that there is some odd, baked-in downtime to its attack chain. Like bleed ticks prevent it from attacking again, or the animation cycle for the abilities is set to have several extra seconds where it has to wait for the "animation" to end before it can do anything else.

 

Now I'm curious, and going to test some of the other pets, to see if they have this same oddity.

 

i wasn't making that 30% number up. it's in the mastermind issues thread in the old forums. it was never addressed. none of the mm issues there have been.

[Redlynne]

It does seem like the beast mastery pets are simply bugged, and have some odd animation glitches built in.

 

You know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were some ... typos ... of the "off by 1" variety involving how the Pet AI logic reads attack animation times and readies the next attack for use.  So instead of "thinking" that an animation only takes 2 seconds, the AI behaves as if the animation takes 3 or 4 seconds to complete before activating another power for use.

 

As I recall, even the Paragon Studios devs had trouble with the glitchy Pet AI doing "stupid stuff" it wasn't supposed to with the options it was given.  In a lot of cases what they wound up doing was "rigging" the Pet attacks in such a way as to reduce the ... collisions ... of available options for the Pet AI to sort through in order to choose what to do/cast next.

 

I'm thinking this would be a relatively simplistic proposition to test.  Take the current baseline of ...

 

• Vicious Bite -- 3s cooldown
  
• Maiming Bite -- 6s cooldown (Train Beasts)
  
• Feral Charge -- 8s cooldown (Tame Beasts)

 

... and simply modify the recharge times like so ...

 

• Vicious Bite -- 3s cooldown
  
• Maiming Bite -- 5s cooldown (Train Beasts)
  
• Feral Charge -- 7s cooldown (Tame Beasts)

 

As I'm sure plenty of our math majors will notice, that would then put the recharge times on prime numbers for those powers, reducing the risk/opportunity for ... indecision ... by the Pet AI for equally usable options at any given time.

 

The other possibility would involve "educating" the Pet AI system with what amount to a Priorities List of:

• Use THIS power first over other options
  
• Use this power NEXT over all options except the one above
  
• ... etc. ...

 

That way, you prevent the Pet Ai from potentially falling into a "trap" of having more than one option to choose from and not being able to make a choice between them.

[Dixa]

https://web.archive.org/web/20120905032911/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=255708