R
Roo Stercogburn
Guest
Observations and thoughts...
The Commander (I call Bond) is fairly solid. Does what its told, smacks away at things dilligently. Will occasionally actually produce a cool looking move. Remembers to hit mobs that are attacking you. Not really many problems here by itself. Shpeeks like thish, but in an acshent that lady shkeletonsh find very shexshy. Most agree that this original pet is the best.
Archer Pet. This one is flakey as hell. I think its a bitch and its in heat. Likes to run off for no apparent reason and can come back with a slavering pack of mobs after it which its obviously been flaunting itself in front of because DAMN those beasties want someone's leg to hump. Have to set to passive as soon as pull finished to make sure it doesn't go off. Of course, being female and in heat all the other pets run away after it. I'm POSITIVE they have a wider rictus when they come back. I'm daren't ask what they've been doing.
Tank Pet. I think this is the little brother of the Commander. When it appears on the scene they can start fighting each other when you're not looking. Half expecting them to say "Are we there yet" when I'm wandering out to Vanern or somewhere. Brings out the worst in the normally placid Commander. I think its jealous of its big brother since big bro gets the cool looking headgear. I think it has weapon-envy.
Healer Pet. My healer pet is called Osbourne because its possibly the most flaky character I've ever encountered in game. Nervously skitters around a fight trying to find somewhere safe, and then decides the safest place is in the middle of that bunch of agro mobs you are trying to keep away from. This is the kind of logic you get in most horror films of the its-safe-out-here-so-I'm-going-into-the-dark-scary-house-by-myself kind of way. If the healer pet had large breasts and blonde hair the scene would be complete.
I think it would like to own its own pet budgie since it keeps trying to attract every fecking quasit in Darkness Falls. Why take the nice safe route around the wall when you can lag behind, and cross the middle of the room attracting anything that feels hungry. On the plus side it is the only healer you will meet that doesn't have a macro "Peel!! PEEL! FFS GET THIS BEASTIE ORF ME! ARE YOU AWAKE!!!" etc. This is refreshing, however it takes this to extremes since when its getting gnawed on it forgets to mention it to its skeletal buddies who happily ignore for example as a Fell Cat is munching on its butt.
Spells:
Shroud of Pointlessnes (focus area effect speed decrease). Is this the most useless spell ever invented or what. Tiny area (unless very highly specced), average range and you have to stand still. Fantastic. I can think of an amazing number of uses for this if I wanted to race fix, but not much else. (Ok slightly off. In game you could have someone area nuking and slow the targets from reaching them but unfortunately, every ae spell in game I'm aware has a larger radius of effect than this spell so your unlikely to be completely effective).
----
And now my friends, the rant...
I hit 40 with my bonedancer last night. I was seriously going to respec to darkness and be a full on nuker with it having tried out both the other lines, and also done a mixture. The various atrocious bugs with the AI have convinced me that the only way to control this class to any reasonable degree, is to have the pets sidelined and the focus of the action on the caster.
Also, I have little hope for the AI issues being sorted in any timely fashion. There are some ludicrous flaws in the control for this class. For example, having pets with ranged attacks, but only being able to get them to attack something by sending in a melee pet. This is ridiculous and obviously hasn't been thought through.
This means I've had to go mainly suppression, which I absolutely didn't want to do and in fact, my choice of race and stats were based on the fact that I had no intention of going suppression.
This means probably a variation on the cookie cutter specs that are floating around, rather than something that I can tailor to my own preferred style of play which is after all, the idea of having different spec lines.
Lazy programming means 2 out of 3 spec lines being a liability to people that would group with this class, and hence not really something you want to do unless your only taking the char as far as battlegrounds.
The reason I say they are a liability is because the only thing you can do in a group is set pets to passive except in emergencies because of the collection of bugs with these npc chars and the extremely dodgy control method in place which is obviously just a kludge to fit them into the existing interface. What is the use in speccing in lines that increase the effectiveness of your pets when you are going to have to set them to passive most of the time to stop them from getting hunting groups killed? The only pets of any use when in passive mode are healers. Guess what. They are on suppression.
Good grief, pets that attack rooted mobs which aren't even attacking the caster? I know this affects all pet classes but this is a fairly fundamental flaw and made worse by the fact you have multiple pets going completely bananas. Healer pets that simply stand there and die when attacked rather than the other pets attacking the mob. Doh!
Everyone finds the pets fighting each other hilarious until you realise that the only way to stop them is to release the commander. Bear in mind that resummoning and buffing can use nearly all your power. Hope your MCL timer doesn't have 4 mins 30 to go when the pets start fighting, you just got yourself time to make some coffee. Again. Thats actually another point: you shouldn't need to depend on an RA to get your class functioning after logging on. REDUCE the amount of power needed for summoning and buffing this class. Its appalling.
Mythic refer to these as Indirectly Controlled Pets. There is only one reason for this: they couldn't figure out the ergonomics of giving you the option to have greater control if you wanted it and fitting it into the existing interface. Even some \ commands which could be put on toolbar would be a start. Formation ones don't count. This has never proved to be of much value I'm afraid and doesn't enhance the use of pets, just their layout.
4 pets, only 1 you can control. Possibly forgivable if they worked properly. Sorry, bad job.
To finish: I still think the Bonedancer is quite fun, BUT its appalling to control and if its your first pet class your going to get frustrated very fast and expect to have very annoyed group buddies from time to time.
/rant off? For the moment
The Commander (I call Bond) is fairly solid. Does what its told, smacks away at things dilligently. Will occasionally actually produce a cool looking move. Remembers to hit mobs that are attacking you. Not really many problems here by itself. Shpeeks like thish, but in an acshent that lady shkeletonsh find very shexshy. Most agree that this original pet is the best.
Archer Pet. This one is flakey as hell. I think its a bitch and its in heat. Likes to run off for no apparent reason and can come back with a slavering pack of mobs after it which its obviously been flaunting itself in front of because DAMN those beasties want someone's leg to hump. Have to set to passive as soon as pull finished to make sure it doesn't go off. Of course, being female and in heat all the other pets run away after it. I'm POSITIVE they have a wider rictus when they come back. I'm daren't ask what they've been doing.
Tank Pet. I think this is the little brother of the Commander. When it appears on the scene they can start fighting each other when you're not looking. Half expecting them to say "Are we there yet" when I'm wandering out to Vanern or somewhere. Brings out the worst in the normally placid Commander. I think its jealous of its big brother since big bro gets the cool looking headgear. I think it has weapon-envy.
Healer Pet. My healer pet is called Osbourne because its possibly the most flaky character I've ever encountered in game. Nervously skitters around a fight trying to find somewhere safe, and then decides the safest place is in the middle of that bunch of agro mobs you are trying to keep away from. This is the kind of logic you get in most horror films of the its-safe-out-here-so-I'm-going-into-the-dark-scary-house-by-myself kind of way. If the healer pet had large breasts and blonde hair the scene would be complete.
I think it would like to own its own pet budgie since it keeps trying to attract every fecking quasit in Darkness Falls. Why take the nice safe route around the wall when you can lag behind, and cross the middle of the room attracting anything that feels hungry. On the plus side it is the only healer you will meet that doesn't have a macro "Peel!! PEEL! FFS GET THIS BEASTIE ORF ME! ARE YOU AWAKE!!!" etc. This is refreshing, however it takes this to extremes since when its getting gnawed on it forgets to mention it to its skeletal buddies who happily ignore for example as a Fell Cat is munching on its butt.
Spells:
Shroud of Pointlessnes (focus area effect speed decrease). Is this the most useless spell ever invented or what. Tiny area (unless very highly specced), average range and you have to stand still. Fantastic. I can think of an amazing number of uses for this if I wanted to race fix, but not much else. (Ok slightly off. In game you could have someone area nuking and slow the targets from reaching them but unfortunately, every ae spell in game I'm aware has a larger radius of effect than this spell so your unlikely to be completely effective).
----
And now my friends, the rant...
I hit 40 with my bonedancer last night. I was seriously going to respec to darkness and be a full on nuker with it having tried out both the other lines, and also done a mixture. The various atrocious bugs with the AI have convinced me that the only way to control this class to any reasonable degree, is to have the pets sidelined and the focus of the action on the caster.
Also, I have little hope for the AI issues being sorted in any timely fashion. There are some ludicrous flaws in the control for this class. For example, having pets with ranged attacks, but only being able to get them to attack something by sending in a melee pet. This is ridiculous and obviously hasn't been thought through.
This means I've had to go mainly suppression, which I absolutely didn't want to do and in fact, my choice of race and stats were based on the fact that I had no intention of going suppression.
This means probably a variation on the cookie cutter specs that are floating around, rather than something that I can tailor to my own preferred style of play which is after all, the idea of having different spec lines.
Lazy programming means 2 out of 3 spec lines being a liability to people that would group with this class, and hence not really something you want to do unless your only taking the char as far as battlegrounds.
The reason I say they are a liability is because the only thing you can do in a group is set pets to passive except in emergencies because of the collection of bugs with these npc chars and the extremely dodgy control method in place which is obviously just a kludge to fit them into the existing interface. What is the use in speccing in lines that increase the effectiveness of your pets when you are going to have to set them to passive most of the time to stop them from getting hunting groups killed? The only pets of any use when in passive mode are healers. Guess what. They are on suppression.
Good grief, pets that attack rooted mobs which aren't even attacking the caster? I know this affects all pet classes but this is a fairly fundamental flaw and made worse by the fact you have multiple pets going completely bananas. Healer pets that simply stand there and die when attacked rather than the other pets attacking the mob. Doh!
Everyone finds the pets fighting each other hilarious until you realise that the only way to stop them is to release the commander. Bear in mind that resummoning and buffing can use nearly all your power. Hope your MCL timer doesn't have 4 mins 30 to go when the pets start fighting, you just got yourself time to make some coffee. Again. Thats actually another point: you shouldn't need to depend on an RA to get your class functioning after logging on. REDUCE the amount of power needed for summoning and buffing this class. Its appalling.
Mythic refer to these as Indirectly Controlled Pets. There is only one reason for this: they couldn't figure out the ergonomics of giving you the option to have greater control if you wanted it and fitting it into the existing interface. Even some \ commands which could be put on toolbar would be a start. Formation ones don't count. This has never proved to be of much value I'm afraid and doesn't enhance the use of pets, just their layout.
4 pets, only 1 you can control. Possibly forgivable if they worked properly. Sorry, bad job.
To finish: I still think the Bonedancer is quite fun, BUT its appalling to control and if its your first pet class your going to get frustrated very fast and expect to have very annoyed group buddies from time to time.
/rant off? For the moment