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Lack of pet classes makes me a sad caster
Kordesh
Member Posts: 1,715
I was really hoping that at some point down the line they were going to roll out with "oh hey heres some pets!" but as the game gets closer to completion its looking like the ONLY pet classes we're going to have are the squig herder and one for the Order side. This is both surprising as DAoC was huge on pets and pet-related summons so you think this would be something that Mythic would be all over, and highly disappointing. Personally, I tend to stray away from pure casting classes. Necros and various other pet based classes have always been my favorites. Sure you can say "just go play a squig herder then!" but it's not the same. For one it's not a casting class in any way shape or form, and secondly, you're locked into being a goblin /=. The chaos zealot MAY get some pet-like abilities, their ability to summon crows is briefly mentioned in their description, but I have a feeling it's not going to be quite the same.
I know actually discussing the game rather than flying off the handle about "THIS SUCKS, THIS GAME RULES, WORDS IN CAPS HERE!" is taboo here, but anyone else disappointed by this? I'm actually a bit stuck at this point because while the RvR system in WAR and the WAR universe is very appealing, the lack of pets is a seriously offputting issue for me.
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Comments
Yeah but look at WoW (ok ok I know, terrible example). Hunter and warlock are two of the most powerful classes...and they have pets. I think pets make it a bit harder to balance, because you not only have to work on the actual player but also his pet. Maybe they will add some classes in later...or maybe the warhammer lore has a limited spot for pets, I don't know.
--------------------------------------
A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
well all i got to say is everything mythic does has to be approved by GW first and seeing as how there really aren't pet type troops in warhammer fantasy its not a stretch of the imagination by any means to only have 2 pet classes and the odds really aren't that bad 1 out of 12 (per side) is a pet class.
and no im not dissapointed by warhammer at all but then again i love mythic and i play the tabletop
Sorry but Pet Classes blow! I havn't read alot on WAR since I'm keeping alot of it in the dark but I hope there won't be one or several or any!
Pets are cheap...
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
Actually the warlock used to be one of the classes in need of the most love before they overhauled their spell tree.
That still doesn't give much reason to exclude pets though. As I said, Mythic in particular has extensive experience with pets and pets in an RvR environment. I mean look at DAoC. For pet classes we have:
-Bonedancer
-Enchanter
-Thurgest
- Spirit Master
- Animist
-Druid
-Cabalist
-Necromancer
and if you want you could toss in the classes that can charm them. In addition, they're really not that hard to balance. Unless you get exotic with them (which most pets are now though) basic pets are nothing more than a walking DoT that deal physical damage. The hardest part in dealing with them is pathing.
As far as lore, there is plenty of room in the warhammer universe to toss in pet classes aplenty.
Yes, and your opinion, likely biased because you don't know how to fight pet classes, is good enough to strike and entire subset of classes from a game because since you hate them, everyone else should hate them too.
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I'm not so sure about that. I think part of the reason many pet classes are hard to balance is because they aren't defined well. For instance, the Hunter is really two classes in one: ranger and beastlord. If they were separate classes, it would be easier to balance.
They are releasing with only two pet classes, the Squig Herder and (most likely) the White Lion, but the lore allows for many more additions if they choose introduce them in the future.
STOP WHINING!
Uhh There are pet classes...aka the Squig Herder is a pet class...awsome lil squigs of death..and then the second one is debated as the long awaited High Elf White Lion class so that there's only 1 pet class Per Side.
Anymore pet classes than that would be completely out of control.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
I disagree that more than that would be out of control by any means, and you didn't read my post, as I mentioned those.
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Black Orc ftw.
Me eat pet!
I personally think that pet classes as implimented in most current MMOs take a low degree of skill to play, especially in most PvP situations. Looking at WoW as the standard example, Hunters and Warlocks can have a significant portion of their DPS done by their pet, depending on their Spec. I personally don't see this as fair to other classes, and I for one am glad that WAR is only going with one pet class for Destruction, and (Probably?) one for Order. Obviously the game is still being tweaked, so it will be interesting to see how these classes are finally balanced.
What I wouldn't be against seeing is pets used for more utility reasons than combat reasons. Maybe for buffs, or the like. Or perhaps having pets DPS, but having their DPS output being SIGNIFICANTLY reduced from how pet DPS was handled in WoW. Granted their DPS wasn't enough to kill another player solo, but when you figure that hunters and warlocks were DPS based to begin with, it just kinda gave them an extra un-needed advantage in PvP. IMO anyways.
Pet classes have just never been all that interesting. If you're going to make a pet class, go all the way to the point where the pet is essentially the class. Right now, pets are either perpetual DOTs or temporary meatshields and nothing more. Classes like the minstrel from DAoC and the bard from EQ were always interesting in that a smart player could do some impressive stuff if he/she knew what she was doing. I'll also give Mythic props for at least trying different things such as the Necromancer(casting through the pet), Animist('planting' pets to create a combination of effects), and Bonedancer(multiple pets).
If you're going to have a class like DAoC/WoWs hunters where the pet is there, I'd rather see that sort of pet provided through alternative advancement such as with the beastlord/tamer advanced path in SWG where everyone can make the choice to enhance their character through pets or through more class specific paths. So, you're either a really really good spy or your a spy that can bring a long a wolf on the mission, which helps with differentiation.
However, I'm looking forward to the squig herder, because it seems like a very different implementation of a pet class.
Stop right there. If you haven't played one, or only played one in WoW, you really can't talk about "low degree of skill". First of all, lets get down to this. You're talking about "skill" in an MMO which essentially is people smashing buttons and hoping their set of statistics is better than that other persons set of statistics. In addition, if anything it's more work on the side of a pet class because you don't need to just worry about yourself and spam off spells. You need to worry about that mildly retarded zombie shuffling behind you and if it's pathing correctly, if you need it near you to tank or if you can just ship it off, and keeping the thing buffed/alive while at the same time using the rest of your arsenal effectively. There is a big big difference between the guy who throws his pet off randomly into the wilderness and people who actually use their class effectively. It is NOT an easy thing to do.
WoW never really did a good job balancing their pet classes, and its not terribly surprising as they've never done it before and they were trying to flip flop them between being balanced between PvP and PvE. Ultimately you had both pet classes sucking at the beginning and then being completely over the top overpowered on the other end when they went to go "fix" them. This isn't a problem with the pet class itself, this is a problem with implementation.
I completely agree, and I like the direction they took the squig herder. I'm not saying that if they add pet classes they should be simplistic and play like oldschool pet classes. I'm saying they should continue doing what mythic has done best with them and change them up and make them unique, but at least have them. Being pigeonholed into being a goblin archer to play a pet class is not exactly a great solution to "having pet classes." I could point out an example of the possibilities for pet classes but I REALLY don't want to mention that game as it will immidiately throw this thread off topic into a flame posting oblivion.
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Be thankful that you have DAOC to occupy the remainder of your mmo life with it's large selection of pet classes. You know what WAR has, so either accept it or move on.
Your post contributed nothing , was retaliatory and defensive to absolutely nothing, and was on the whole pointless. Thanks for that.
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Some people love pet classes, and you can't say that they are not appropriate in the Warhammer fantasy setting. Chaos beast hounds would do it.
What I do expect is that pets will appear in the expansions - with Skaven (clan Moulder) and Wood Elves. Taking that approach would also mean that the expansion would have both new races and entirely new classes, increasing its appeal to players who already have well developed characters in-game, because the new races would not simply be the same thing in a new graphic wrapper.
A lizard man skink priest of Sotek with the ability to summon and control various types of snakes would be the perfect type for a caster/healer/pet class, and would fit with the traditional Skaven/Lizard Man pairing. Ofcourse I want my skaven Clan Moulder Pack Master with a rat ogre pet.
Lizard men would also counterwight the greenskins by being 2 races in one army (skinks and saurus), and in being asexual.
I've always loved pet classes because they usually require a bit more attentive micromanagement. The Squig Herder is a "pet class but not crap". In Warhammer Online RvR, pet classes will not find their pet ignored like in so many other mmo´s – The battle armored squig ensures that you HAVE to shoot the squig to get to the herder! Kill the squig, and it'll puke up the herder...
Jeff and Paul have talked a second pet class for the other side.
Ok I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. There are a couple of important reasons why they have such a limited number of pet classes.
Firstly, the IP. I highly recommend going to the Games Worskhop site and checking out the armies from the game. The number of "pet classes" from the tabletop game (for the current armies) are few and far between. Mythic wants to keep true to the spirit of WAR, which means they don't want to artificially insert a pet class, and they definately want to keep the dark, gritty style of the game, which precludes some of the pet styles that could be constituted as "cutesy" (aka WoW Hunters perhaps).
Secondly, the balance. If you look at each of the four career options, it also limits the number of pet classes. It'd be pretty hard to have a pet class serve as a Tank or a Healer, mechanics wise. Those two roles simply work better without a pet. This leaves ranged dps and melee dps, which of course are perfect for pet classes. Unfortunately we have to look back at point number one. For example, the Dark Elves. Now the Dark Elves have characters that train Cold Ones (dinosaur mounts), which are pretty cool and would be a good pet class. However, if you look at the IP, the Witch Elf and the Sorceress are much more prominent and archetypal of the Dark Elf army. This means those two need to come before a Cold One rider or whatever, so that fills up the remaining slots for dark elves. If you look at the empire, they don't have any pet classes in the tabletop game at all (as far as I know), plus again the Witch Hunter and the Bright Wizard are more archetypal of the Empire. Call them excuses if you will, but unfortunately these excuses can be made for pretty much all 6 armies.
Now that's not to say that there won't be pet classes in the future, presumably if/when they add more armies. The Lizardmen with their Salamanders would be one, the Tomb Kings Necromancers, the Vampire Counts Necromancers, the Skaven rat packs, the Wood Elves and their warhawks maybe. It all really depends on what mythic thinks will be good for gameplay and good for balance.
Atleast you get one per side, and they look to be quite fun to play at that. (Assuming the White Lion).
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Look at the Warhammer armies from 10 years ago (I know, I know, showing my age) - they had far more creatures in them. Skaven warp engineers could also ride things like giant scorpions, etc, so if you wanted to you could model and play skaven cavalry under those rules.
What changed is that the creature models didn't sell well, in part because GW made some completely horrible figures - they could make chunky over 25mm scale GW figures, but making a "real" or life-like figure is hard. In my view the Ral Partha gryphons and animals always looked simply a class above anything GW could make at that time.
Rather than try to make better figures for units that were not large sellers anyway, GW re-did the rules (again), cutting out much of the flexibility. That was of course was also encouraged by the fact GW had unit types in the rules for which they never made figures. For any half-decent miniature maker that was never an issue, until GW put in the rule "armies at tournaments must only use GW figures".
The IP and Warhammer lore that has been built up over the 25 year history of the Warhammer fantasy game includes pets. Not for everyone, of course, but the IP is no reason to not have pet classes. Honestly, part of WoW's appeal to me at the moment is that it has actual pets (UO style) rather than a few mono-tone summoned things (EQ style). If WAR had a proper pet class, for example if a ranger could have a wolf or other forest animal as a companion, then I would play it from launch. As things stand, I'll wait and see what happens.
Or, put another way, if I can have a Brettonian sorceress on a pegasus which can actually fly (Vanguard style, but without the bugs-o-doom), then I'd be there.
But I'd pick flight to be probably third or later expansion, so there's no rush ...
If they went crazy with the pet classes that may meen armies of pets with dead owners Annoying the shit out of everything makeing things a bit unfair for whichever side its happening to say there was 10 squigherders and they all got killed and they had 3 pets each thats 30 squigs runen around, unless theres a certain amount of time they are allowed to be out the players may be back out once there dead with more pets.I also hope that with loots in Wars Rolls for seeing who helped the most wont go by dps it could be a problem with pet classes.
No such thing as luck, just believing in it is what makes it real to you and really...thats all you need.
Im on nobodies' side but my own.
Personally, what I'd like to see regarding a chaos faction summoning class. Basically, I think it would be interesting having the chaos summoner call forth just some basic critter or maybe you could cast something and a captured enemy faction member NPC would show up. Then, as you level up, the pet doesn't change with the exception of it's level and stats, but you gain new warp spells. Each spell effects a certain part of your basic pet, some obviously not stacking on others, and mutates it to fit a certain role.
For example, lets say you wanted your little default pet to be more casting oriented. Well maybe you cast off a little buff that warps his right arm into a tentacle allowing it to cast complex spells. Maybe you want him to be a tank, so you cast another buff that warps its skin into a chitinous armor shell of some sort. Really, the fun you could have with it is endless, and they could do some neat and interesting things with it.
I'm not saying that there needs to be masses of pet classes. I'm just saying that limiting pet class choice to being either a goblin archer or nothing, is kind of
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I disagree that more than that would be out of control by any means, and you didn't read my post, as I mentioned those.
If you look at any of the designs the reasons why they're doing things the way they are its all about balances between sides. If they gave 1 side a pet class the other side has to have a pet class. If they gave one side 2 pet classes they'd have to give the otherside 2 pet classes. For the sake of simplicity and getting the game started with a decent balance they're keeping it to 1 pet class, 1 Offensive Tank, 1 defensive tank, 1 Nuker Healer, 1 pure caster, 1 standard healer, 1 melee healer, etc etc etc Per Side adding Extras of that would mean more balancing. There's several races in the WAR universe its only natural as more of them are introduced we'll see MORE pet classes, More of this or that classes.
If you really look at it...the more different types of classes or abundance of types you had the more balancing you have to do. If we had several pet classes they'd have to be heavily balanced or some sort of different dynamic so they don't all play the same which adds to the difficulty of balancing. This is a rock paper scissors game they're playing it incredibly smart by sticking to a select few designs. Otherwise we'd have the same issue that dozens of other games have...TO many things to balance all at once...and it destroys the first impression. Very few games have ever pulled off a large number of classes that play unique.
1 Part Common Sense
1 Part Good Design
1 Part Sticking as close as they can to lore and NOT every racial faction has a Pet Class. Infact Im pretty sure the Chaos very few atleast from the God they chose.
makes for a far more decent chance of a bit of balance at launch.
Dont get me wrong I love pet classes infact I plan to play them both..but I've seen some of the other pet classes and it just wouldn't make sense to give people Dragons and other things that would make them to overly powerful and people would bitch if they had a dragon and it was only as good as someone's Squig.
btw he's not a goblin Archer..he's a SQUIG HERDER which is an actual Warhammer Class. The close range pet class is in the High Elves...2 pet classes 2 different designs on how they work. Keeps them from being Boring.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
...btw he's not a goblin Archer..he's a SQUIG HERDER which is an actual Warhammer Class. ...
Yes, but at his most basic level, as he uses a bow, he is not a mage, not a warrior, there for he is an archer. I was trying to get at how limited your choice was in regards to if you wanted to play a pet class, as not only are you limited in race, but you're limited by fighting style as there is no mage pet class option which is generally the norm.
I'm aware they're trying to strike a delicate balance between the classes, however, I still believe that does not preclude having traditional pet classes.
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So here are your reasons.
1) Structure - <24 classes-4 for each race-1 pet class for each side> - All of the classes with the exception of the last pet class for Order, have been chosen. Due to this and not being able to add pets to the current classes due to lore, there can be no more additions at the moment.
2) Games Workshop is in charge of the lore, not Mythic. If the lore does not allow a class to have a pet of any kind, Mythic has to respect GW's authority and work with the choices they are given.
3) Now despite the current lore choices and structure not supporting another pet class for each side, there is another important reason. Pet casters are generally given thier pets in order to create a balance between damage dealing ability and damage intake ability. The fragile caster will most likely have a pet that is either good at tanking or pulling agro away from the caster.
Seeing that Mythic has been focusing on increasing caster survivablility in melee combat, there is not much of a need for a pet to create that balance. Therefore the caster classes are more self dependant, able to take other measures to ensure thier protection and survival.
STOP WHINING!
I know what your trying to get at OP but maybe you need to study Warhammer lore before getting all sad n pissed n crap. Because if there are any pet caster classes in a table top game I've not seen them..My lore isn't complete but...most magic casters are incredibly powerful they don't need a pet to protect them..thats the whole point of a GROUP / RvR Game....to work as a team..Casters with pets are more likely to run out there blasting people in the face while using their pet to protect them...squishy characters like the Squig Herder actually NEED their pet. Casters especially powerful ones like in Warhammer Lore...don't need Pets. A good sturdy smart Player is better than a pet for a PvP caster.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!