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Give me a good bear pet!! not a craptastic one.
Karble
Member UncommonPosts: 750
In EQ1 I really was looking forward to getting the bear pet. Once I had it though, I found it was fairly useless. The only fun I really ever had with it was dueling my friend's alt characters with it once in a while.
The concept was a good one in principle, but the bear could have been so much more. He could have had more AA chains that raised his lvl and stats so that he could stay with you and be a really valued part of the higher end druid specialty builds.
I really just hope they bring back a static pet that is functional this time around. I don't want to have to be locked into a choice early as in a full player class choice at lvl 10 or 20 but rather an alternate advancement the same way but just actually worth it this time as a pet.
Comments
the druid bear pet was garbage
Druids were also given the AA Dire Charm animal
EQ2 fan sites
I agree with you. There were classes in games over the years since EQ where pets seems more like just a small part of character. With EQ 1 the Mage pets were great. I grouped with as a druid with a group of mages in an area with mineral springs and such. The theme of this zone seemed to be mostly various elementals and the mages with pets and me as extra heals and regens and some specialty nukes and snare worked very well.
I really enjoy the concept of druid bear pet actually being more than just a bit of fluff. As a previous post here said, you had to spend alot of AA points for a pet at player level 55 and the pet was level 35 and a very weak level 35. Even with all buffs on the druid pet did very little damage and died very fast. A twinked level 22 character could easily kill our AA pet if we didn't continually heal or buff the pet with thorns etc.
The reason I think this might work in this new EQ Next version is simply due to the fact they are building Sandbox which pushes stereotypical class norms into new and fun areas.
The problem is in gaming,they are just going to divide the damage among you and your pet,so it will never feel that good.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Beastmaster class in FFXI just because you can charm the actual game mobs you are fighting ,except for the some you can't.Also you can use what is called magical Jug Pets that stay around for an hour or two which are about as good as you and get much better at higher levels like 2-3x better than your player.
However to give a pet class that kind of power you need a game that is designed to group not solo,otherwise it would be overpowering solo and way overpowered if even 2-3 man group.SOE needs to put some better thought into their classes and combat design.They tried to bring back Beastlord in EQ2 and it just felt boring as heck for that simple reason,they just give you a weak boring pet.
Honestly they are not going to give you anything great,otherwise everyone would play it and speed through content too quickly.
This is just one more reason that creating solo linear questing games is so weak,it just does not let you do much of anything with class design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I am not asking for a pet the same strength as a strait pet class here. I am talking about a pet that will not die in 1 hit from any mob my level as soon as I gain access to it.
There is a huge difference there.
Make it a real chore to try and use an AA pet as a druid if they want to, but make it a viable and interesting direction to expand into instead of just a fluff ability that is utterly useless.
Just as almost all other druid abilities worked, make the pet weaker than all other strait class pets.
druid was not the best at dots Necro and shaman were
druid was not the best at heals. clerics were
druid could not tank.
druid had no pet except charm spells that would break all the time.
druid was not the best nuker Wizards and mages were
Once again only asking for a viable pet AA that can actually function with a good bit of work and management. That is all.
The pet for druids was never meant to be a significant source of dps (and yes they got a non AA pet, though it was largely useless if you ever wanted more than a very minor DoT). The AA pet wasn't either it was merely meant to add a small amount of DPS in addition to the druid's offensive spells for no mana outlay and without the use of a cooldown on their main abilities. For the roles they were designed for they fulfilled their role.
Druids still did great in the game with their heals (more than adequate for grouping), DPS (with decent damage output, granted not top of the line but they also fulfilled other roles), buffs and transport line of spells (with succour being a lifesaver if things went bad). They were never seen as a pet class.
I would rather EQN, if it did include static classes, continue the concept of different classes having differing toolsets rather than everyone being a cludge of everything with the only difference being how adept they are at given roles. This would not only promote some interaction but also add some thought into which classes you brought along with your group.
You could not zone with it. If you went invis it was gone. If it got tapped even once by any mob it instantly died. How is something that dies in a single hit considered a small dps? The most damage it ever did with buffs was around 35 hp per hit with tons of misses since it was tagged as a much much lower level than anything you would be fighting. Maybe if they gave the druid pet 80K health and kept it at only 35 damage it would at least absorb about 30 hits before dieing. That would actually allow it to be a short dot and distraction for about 50 seconds or so until it died from being double hit for 3k and critted for 5k.....lol
Here Here.
CoV MasterMind FTW.
Druids were the best at snares -- very powerful debuff (no healer could snare except druid)
coupled with their travel buffs, Druids were one of the best solo classes for dot kiting (Bard/Necro being other 2)
due to being a jack of all trades except tanking,
Druids were the most popular class in EQ1
EQ2 fan sites
Because it was a small amount of DPS. If you sent it at the enemies back it wouldn't get hit unless the enemy was one of the very rare ones that ae rampaged or did a nasty AE (in which case lots of such pets would die not only the druid's), if your pet was being attacked or eating ripostes you were doing it wrong. The AA pet also hit for more than 35...granted it was not even close to a pet classes pet, but then druids were not a pet class and as I said it was a small DPS increase (I had a druid back in the day and still have a druid now in EQ).
Druids had strengths...pets were not one of them, nor really should they have been given the classes role in a group environment (or even in a solo environment). If you wanted a class with worthwhile pets I would have suggested a mage or beastlord, but in doing that there are things you would lose. That was part of the beauty of EQ, co-dependancy, because one class alone couldn't do everything..
One pet related thing I did love about my druid was the ability to charm animals. I would charm a rat in plane of disease, buff it with sow, regen, skin like X, thorn coat, and strength. Then I would take it to where an enemy group was, send it to attack the healer and cast snare on the healer then zone out clearing agro.
I was on a team based server so this sort of thing was common place. If the healer died or they were weak from the fight I would go get another and repeat. Sometimes they would head to the exit so then I would just succor instead of totally leaving a zone. Good memories : )