Arachnos Soldier Pets

[Zealxi]

Hello,

It would be great to be able to control the Arachnos soldier pets like Master Minds can. At the moment they simply run around attacking everything, and in most cases run off and get themselves killed. If they could be told what to attack they could be used to focus fire specific targets and really assist where their damage is needed.

With such a long cooldown and no control over these pets, they feel often wasted when they run off by themselves to attack a group which defeats them quickly. It's definitely not fun chasing them around, trying to keep them alive so you can continue to utilize them for the full duration, hoping that they will at some point attack the same target as you.

An ability of these summons specifically would be Reinforcements, which summons 2 spider bots. There are a few other Arachnos spider bot pets that I'm sure would benefit from this change as well.

 

 

Thank you!

[Rudra]

Masterminds as an AT devote almost everything to their pets. THis leaves them with just 3 underpowered, endurance heavy, attacks. Crab Spider Soldiers on the other hand have their choice of 17 attacks, 4 of which are mutually exclusive in pairs, with which to decimate and destroy their opposition. They also get 5 armor power choices to MM's 0. So no, I disagree that Soldiers of Arachnos should get to control their pets like how MMs do. They have other advantages, lets not take away the MM's key advantage.

[Zealxi]

If IA Lore pets get some control I'd like to see that applied across all pets as a standard. Having the ability to tell your pets to attack the same target, or set to "Attack My Target" isn't really taking away from any other class. I believe this is a small ask, a more quality of life. Especially for an ability that is a 15 minute cooldown with an up time of only 4 minutes.

[biostem]

57 minutes ago, Zealxi said:

With such a long cooldown and no control over these pets, they feel often wasted

SoAs have many advantages over MMs, so I feel the lack of direct pet control is warranted.  What you'd have to consider is what would they potentially give up in exchange for this additional control.  Given that a "Crabbermind" is only 1 of many viable builds, I don't think such sweeping changes are called for...

[Greycat]

Pfft. Arachnos is all about stabbing each other in the back. You should just be happy your pets help you at all. *nods*   😉

 

That said... I seem to recall the original intent was that MM pets aren't "pets," they're minions or henchmen - and they're the focus of the mastermind, to the point they give up two extra potential attack powers to buff them. That control is part of the tradeoff for making a mastermind. (Yes, I'm aware of petless MMs. I'm also aware they're not very common for a reason.)  Controllers, doms, crabs - and *certainly* not folks who have gotten Lore pets unlocked - are nowhere near that dependent on them.

 

While I'm not against a "No, bad, come here" that's not just a resummon, I really doubt you'll ever get full control or anything near what a MM has.

[kelika2]

I would trade off control over having the mastermind tier cooldowns for pets.

This would eliminate the need for permahasten only on top of frankenslotting your pets to slot in the def/resist aura IOs. 10% def all and 20% resist most on top of your leadership would help them survive

[Chris24601]

As a compromise between no control and MM-tier control, I would suggest pets come with two exclusive toggles (meaning you can only have one of the two active at a time like Dual Pistols ammo or Bio-Armor). Make the default state Defensive Follow (pets only attack what attacks you or them), with one toggle for passive follow (pet ceases attacking and moves to your side) and the other for aggressive (pets attacks anything in its perception range and returns to following you only if nothing remains in its perception range).

 

This leaves MM “Attack My Target” and “Move to this specific place”, plus their advanced commands (arguably the most useful commands overall and their version of Defensive Follow has added bonuses to themselves while MM just get base command) as commands exclusive to the MM while giving just enough control to non-MM that their pets aren’t actually detrimental to them.

[tidge]

Hard no, Crabberminds are not Masterminds, so MM-level controls are not warranted. Crabs don't need to rely on the Spiders for survival or damage.

 

I have to vote "no" on adjusting the recharge times of the Crab pets, but for a subtle reason: The Crab pets are such that for the tiers where more than one pet is summoned, the self-destruct (of all the pets of the same tier) is always timed to the "oldest" surviving pet. Shorter recharge times would IMO simply expose this problem to more players. MMV on wether this should be fixed, but it is the one thing about Crab pets that should be looked at before anything else.

 

There are plenty of ways to make the Crab pets plenty-sturdy, forum neophytes and players trying Crabberminds for the first time should practice some search-fu in the VEAT sub-foum.

 

It is straightforward to get (all three tiers) of Crabbermind spiders to be both "perma" (in the sense that all three of the powers will be recharged before the tier of pets has self-destructed) and tough enough to survive contact with the enemy.