Pet Recharge Inheritance Change

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There has been a lot of discussion regarding this Patch Note:
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• Pet Powers Change:
o Recharge times on pet attack powers will no longer be affected by any outside source. This includes buffs and debuffs. What this means is that pets can no longer have the recharge time on their powers increased by player buffs (like Speed Boost) or their recharge time decreased by player or NPC debuffs. This change was made to allow pets to correctly cycle through their attacks instead of getting locked on using the same attack over and over and neglecting to use other available powers.

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I wanted to take some time to more fully explain the change and the reasons behind it.

The “CopyCreatorMods” (or “Pet Inheritance”) code was originally written so that things like hitting "Build Up" then casting "Burn" would cause the Burn to do more damage. To my knowledge, most pet powers were set to only accept Damage, Accuracy and/or Status Effect mods. Recharge time was never specifically allowed for pet powers. This happened in Issue 7.

Meanwhile, we have a long standing 'bug' that we cannot fix: Say you have a Damage power that for whatever reason doesn't allow Endurance Reduction. If you slot an enhancement (say, a Hammi-O) which does both, both effects are applied to the power, despite the fact that the power is not supposed to accept Endurance Reduction. We pretty much have let that become "by design" since it cannot be fixed.

Now, you combine the two things...and suddenly, pet powers which were never meant to have recharge be altered (Lightning Storm is a great example here) are firing off much faster than intended. For a long time, we didn't notice, but then we introduced the Recharge Intensive Pet IO Sets and suddenly HUGE amounts of Recharge were available to certain pets.

We tried a few alternatives, which essentially ended up making RIP IO's broken for several months in a variety of ways. One day, while discussing this, another programmer who was looking at AI issues came over and began talking to me about the fact that one of the issues causing aberrant AI behavior was the powers recharging too quickly. Again, we tried some things, but ultimately, the change that is on the Training Room now ended up being the only viable fix. The alternative, as I understand it, would be to fix that long standing bug I said we couldn’t fix. That would result in up to a 50% increase in server CPU time in the Powers computations, though and that simply isn't a workable solution.

So, that’s the background. There is no other solution that we are currently able to implement at this time.

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Wait are you FREAKING kidding me??? Not even am and speed boost or AB are going to affect pets recharge!??? WTf, thanks for ruining at least 3 of my controllers. Not only are you going BACKWARDS, where you SHOULD be allowing ANY recharge slotted into a pet boost their attack rate, but you are making outside buffs not affect them? What about things like imps, who only have one attack, how unfair is this...

Please, do NOT give this an end-all fix like this. Its not our fault that you can't figure out how to fix it, but a general NERF is NOT the answer. At least immediately as far as outside buffs go, do NOT make it so they dont affect pets recharge, thats OUR decision to cast the +rech powers on our pets, for now, if it messes up their attack cycling, let that be OUR choice to do so or not.

And then again to my main topic, this better not be an end-all "fix" aka nerf. Please work harder to find a solution, one that includes what since I5 has been IMO necessary which is to allow any type of +rech slotted into a pet boost the pets attack rate.

So as far as test to live goes "no other solution at this time" then please, for the love of the game leave it as it is until you find a REASONABLE solution first. Don't "nerf now fix later" cause we both know you'll just put it on the back burner and leave so many sets gimped because of it and never look back itno fixing it. At least not for a couple years so far as the history of this game has taught us all. And that is far too long to have to deal with this like you are trying to do so.

And P.S. "locked on" to one power, i think you need to be looking at "certain" pets that do this. Because no matter how much rech i put on stoney, he still cycles pretty normally, but fly trap has been broken since day 1. Again, perhaps you need to work on a REAL fix first, one that includes USING rech enhancements to increase a pets attack rate while letting them cycle, before just "quick fixing" the issue which is an overall loss to the playerbase in the meantime.

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But what about exemptions to this fix. Thats what most of us want to know about. We already know its possible for some exemptions because there have been reports that the defender lightning storm still behaves the same as on live as on test yet the controller/corrupter/mastermind version of the power is now uneffected by recharge. I do think at the very least if you are making the powers not take recharge any more and if they arent able to be targeted anyways then maybe you can up the damage or change the recharge itself. I just really hate for lightning storm to become worthless outside of boss/av fights.

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Powers like Lightning Storm, Voltaic Sentinel and Auto Turret are precisely the powers that were targeted by this fix. Making exemptions for them would defeat the purpose, don't you think?

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so youre afraid of having a way to make some poewrs like these less suck-tastic? Good going... wrong mindframe.

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LS, VS, and the Turret became too powerful and now been nerfed

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*laughs hysterically* Oh my how the devs have lost their way if they think those powers with increased attack rates are overpowered :/

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I smell a ragequit on the horizon. ^^^

But other than that, this doesn't bother me too much. I only play Scrappers and EAT's, so...y'know, nothing much'll be changing. Castle, thank you for finally making a change that doesn't encorporate me hating you.

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Post deleted by Moderator 08

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How about you be the community rep from now on hm?

It's quite possible that Castle isn't this unholy [censored] from hell that is trying as hard as he can to piss you off by nerfing everything you like.

50/50 at least.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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Because it doesn't affect you. So why are you even putting your 2 cents in when it means nothing. Please delete your post until you actually play a controller that this affects.

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Post deleted by Moderator 08

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[color= orange]While you could always slot powers like Lightning Storm and Fire Imps with Recharge enhancements, that Recharge did not carry over to the attacks belonging to the summoned pets. That situation did not occur until i9 (in some cases) or i11 (in other cases), when you were able to "sneak Recharge through" using set enhancements (that were not technically "Recharge enhancements") with Recharge in them.[/color]

The information in the Combat Numbers window is generally reliable (if you know how to read it), but when you're looking at reported Recharge rates you're actually using a "Power Info" window, and those are unfortunately not always reliable, especially when it comes to things like Recharge. Just look at the reported Recharge for a power, activate Hasten, and see if the number changes (it does not). On the flip-side, [u]look at a pet power slotted with regular Recharge enhancements, and see if the reported Recharge rate changes when you change that slotting. It does, [color= yellow]but the *actual* Recharge rate does not[/color].[u] Basically, the Power Info for pet powers always gives false positives for Recharge slotting, so it's not in itself a way to notice that slotted Recharge has in some cases been carried over to pet powers.

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Yeah, when I slot common recharge enhancements on my Fire Imps, the Combat Window would report enhanced recharge rates for their one power. I never noticed if they were attacking faster or not, though, but wasn't it the case for LS as well? Or LS bolts were not affected by recharge slotting but only by the player's global recharge bonuses (including Hasten)? Given recharge enhancements (IOs or not) were "enhancing" (in Combat Window numbers) Fire Imps' attack rate, one would figure it would enhance LS bolts' recharge as well, which could lead to the assumption that recharge being carried over to pet powers was, in a general sense, "working as intended," and hence they could invest their bazillions of inf on slotting for recharge. The only exception would be MM pets, which powers, by design, do not accept recharge slotting, except through one purple set.

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[color= orange]Orange[/color] part re-added by me.
[color= yellow]Yellow[/color] emphasis mine.

Slotting regular Recharge enhancements into Fire Imps or Lightning Storm will make their power info windows *report* a reduced Recharge for their powers, but that is only a display error, and it will *not* actually reduce that Recharge. Those Recharge enhancements have no effect on the powers belonging to those pets. The powers simply ignore any enhancements of the type Recharge.

However, set IOs make it possible to bypass that. When I slot a Decimation: Acc/End/Rech into Lightning Storm, that's not a Recharge enhancement, it's a *Damage* enhancement (that just happens to improve Recharge, and not Damage), and thus Lightning Storm's Lightning power happily accepts its bonuses, which happens to include Recharge. Because of that, you can use (set) enhancements to improve the Recharge of Lightning Storm's Lightning power, even though that power is intended to ignore all Recharge enhancements.
*That* is what they're trying to fix here.

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On a side note Im wondering just what Castle has against "pets" or what it is that he sees in them that makes them unstoppable engines of destructions. Remember the whole Patron debacle? "Villain epics are more powerful than heroes which is why they cant respec them...." lol.... these were sets with a pet with a 4 minute lifespan and a 15 minute recharge and were a gigantic failure in all aspects (including RP lol) Those were keep in excremental spec for 6 issues before minor lipservice was finally applied to them.

Perhaps some time away from math, spreadsheets and tables would do Castle some good, pick up a character and play it on live.

Oh and as for my personal position, I have very few characters with pets and certainly dont rely on them for damage, my stormie uses thunderstorm for a rousing game of keep away and knockback on mobs when I eventually summon it.

I have had several electric blast characters and VS isnt worth it, 26% of your blue bar every minute on a pet that doesnt even do a t1 blast, hell it does the same damage as POWER THRUST which isnt even a damage power

Lets see what Castle thinks of VS, well its listed as a dominator t9 alongside, Bitter Ice Blast, Blaze, Thorn Barrage and yes, Psychic Shockwave. Roffle, thats sure worth fighting to 38 for. Im actually most annoyed about VS being singled out by Castle as one that was OP, I have tried over the years to make it work on several characters and its just too rubbish to be viable (even in its current "gamebreaking" state) when considering other powers you can use instead.

These changes do seem pretty mean spirited, theres been no "we may increase damage if it negatively effects certain sets too much"

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Got it. Thanks for the clarification.

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Perhaps some time away from math, spreadsheets and tables would do Castle some good, pick up a character and play it on live.

[/ QUOTE ] This is why sometimes player experience will trump the numbers they get from so called datamine. I cant believe for one minute that anyone is using VS, Gun Drone or LS in an overpowered way. I am still waiting for what the real reason is behind this nerf because the stated reasons dont make sense at all when everyone knows those powers are subpar in what they do.

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Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!

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Perhaps some time away from math, spreadsheets and tables would do Castle some good, pick up a character and play it on live.

[/ QUOTE ] This is why sometimes player experience will trump the numbers they get from so called datamine. I cant believe for one minute that anyone is using VS, Gun Drone or LS in an overpowered way. I am still waiting for what the real reason is behind this nerf because the stated reasons dont make sense at all when everyone knows those powers are subpar in what they do.

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I'm still waiting for wednesday to come and them say "APRIL FOOLS" Because that's all this could possibly be, is a joke, cause it has nowhere near enough bearings to be legitimate, rational, nor fair.

Outside of the list that i have, i can already think of my baby earth/kin, and ice/emp that i was going to SPECIFICALLY play, to have fun with boosting the pets recharge, which are now completely useless. And looks like i'll probably never play my ice/kin again now as well. Or actually to think about it any /kin.

Emp as a troller secondary in general is now pretty much completely useless when compared to thermal.

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I'm doing programming myself, so I'll say while it sucks that there is no work around to fixing the pet AI issues, its not fair to roast Castle on having to make this change. A 50% increase in CPU load time for pet AI routines is just not acceptable, and it would break the game far worse than a pet attack speed nerf. So it looks like its either they leave pets 'broken' (ie eternally rock hurling), or go with this change. Or leave it alone, which means that thugs brutes (and other pets) will still eternally be stuck in an single attack loop.


However, I'm seeing a possible comprimise here: can you make recharges effect a pet only a certain ammount, ie like a cap of '50%' as opposed to '100%ish' that it does now? Maybe there's a magic number where pets still can see an attack speed boost, but not go all 'gimp' in their AI routines. It may not be possible to do with how 'recharge' is inhereted, but its worth considering. Later on, maybe a long term overhaul of pet AI is in the cards, ideally one that does not come with a 50% overhead cost.

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The truth is the solution from an equation of lies. ~Maileah Kirel

If Pet's AI with -recharge causes major lag problem, then it should definitely be fixed.

However, I am not a math genius but I feel ATs that rely on pets suffer more with this change in comparison to ATs that can benefit GREATLY from global recharge reduction.

Are we going to see some adjustments in "numbers" later? I mean increasing damage or reducing the base attack rate of certain pets won't cause "lag", would it?

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What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.

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Anyone who thinks they're doing this because they think LS, VS, GD, etc. are overpowered really needs to reread the thread.

Short answer: they're not. But the powers are being affected in a way that they were never intended to be. Add in the AI glitch with henchmen, and this fix deals with both issues at once.

Again: they are not doing this because they think these powers are overpowered. They're doing this because those powers currently are broken. Strength has nothing to do with it.

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De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.

not sure on that jib if it would reduce/increase. But there are two certainties. for pets like VS, imps, LS, and AT who only have one atttack, it woudlnt affect their "ai" by having their ONLY attack increased.

Secondly, i've said it before but for some pets like jack, give them a SET attack chain. That way the AI isnt computing, it just follows the list. Itll be effective, and it would let recharges help them more by doing so, and reduce computations necessary. The only computation it would have to worry about for say jack, is to decide between melee, and override if its forced to be at range (ie flying enemy, can only use ice bolt)

Additionally this would let recharge still help pets like imps and such where they are really valuable.

Additionally, though this should NOT be the option IMO, is for pets like imps, VS, LS, and AT is to increase their base recharge, and for something like imps possibly give them fire sword or another attack. I've always seen/wanted imps to get fire blast. Would help them out a lot when they can't get into melee. Still have their ai melee oriented, but would give them a much better purpose for those *tough* to melee enemies. Things like LS/VS/AT would just have a simple attack rate reduction. Especially VS ugh.

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(QR)

Anyone who thinks they're doing this because they think LS, VS, GD, etc. are overpowered really needs to reread the thread.

Short answer: they're not. But the powers are being affected in a way that they were never intended to be. Add in the AI glitch with henchmen, and this fix deals with both issues at once.

Again: they are not doing this because they think these powers are overpowered. They're doing this because those powers currently are broken. Strength has nothing to do with it.

[/ QUOTE ]Broken in what way then? Please explain because to me it looks like a nerf because they are overpowered. The main 3 that got hit worst by the nerf only have 1 attack, so they cant say its because of the AI issues.

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Short answer: they're not. But the powers are being affected in a way that they were never intended to be. Add in the AI glitch with henchmen, and this fix deals with both issues at once.


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Thats the problem right there. As i've been saying since i5, it SHOULD be intended that recharge enhancements of any kind increase pets attack rates. I've been suggesting this since then, and it still remains to be a good idea IMO.

The "lag/cycle" issues is the bug, having recharge increase pets attack rate is the part that SHOULD have been INTENTIONALLY implimented.

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The ability to slot def/rech in Mind Link is not a bug. It was known throughout Beta and is working as intended, IIRC.

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Honest, curious question here: If having recharge slotted in Mind Link is acceptable by the devs, why doesn't it just accept recharge enhancements directly?

This leads to complicated and confusing scenarios like the one with the pets, where you can slot recharges into them and they get the benefit, but that's not working as intended so they change it.

I don't want to wake up one day and find that my ML recharge time is fixed at 240 seconds when I worked to have it perma (and I'm rather squishy without it being perma, considering low HP, no RES, no heal).

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First off, my appreciation for being so forthcoming with the information.

Could you speak specifically on what changes, if any, will be made to IO sets where +rech is either a set bonus or an actual buff in one of the enhancements of the set.
In other words, it kinda sucks if you've (I've) spent many millions on a purple set just for your pets only to find out that some of the buffs of that set, either bonuses or direct, are simply nullified, giving us nothing in return. At the very least, I think it would be fair to replace those buffs of that set with something roughly equivalent.
I'm eager to know if I should just dump the set now, or if compensating changes to it are in the pipeline.

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My outsider view of what went down:

1. pets are made buffable, since this is previllians most pets have very few attacks and with all the other stuff going on any balance or AI errors caused by recharge reduction go mostly unobserved.

2. MMs come out and the pets don't always look right, staffing is tight and a lot has just been added. MMs get tweaked when possible.

3. New people are on hand new days are ahead and MMs still don't work right. Problems keep arising from attack queuing and it is magnified with IOs. Someone points out there is no resource effective way to manage queing without controlling recharge. Several ways are tested in house since recharge manipulation has been on pet so long but the resources for advanced attack AI far outstrip what can be yellow or green lit.

4. Dev team breaks out the hard set recharge code and wishes Lighthouse was still around to be the messenger that the player base shoots at.

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Could you speak specifically on what changes, if any, will be made to IO sets where +rech is either a set bonus or an actual buff in one of the enhancements of the set.
In other words, it kinda sucks if you've (I've) spent many millions on a purple set just for your pets only to find out that some of the buffs of that set, either bonuses or direct, are simply nullified, giving us nothing in return. At the very least, I think it would be fair to replace those buffs of that set with something roughly equivalent.
I'm eager to know if I should just dump the set now, or if compensating changes to it are in the pipeline.

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Recharge Set bonuses already have a very limited effect on pet powers.
Many pets aren't affected by these set bonuses (or other global Recharge buffs on the summoner) in the first place, and even those that do inherit Recharge buffs only get to keep them for the duration of the buff. Set bonuses are passives with a duration of 10.25 seconds (that keep refreshing every 10s), which means that even if a pet (such as Lightning Storm) inherits Recharge buffs, they'll only have the benefit for a *maximum* of 10.25 seconds (if the set bonus is refreshed just before the buffs are inherited).
Thus the main benefit (on pets) of Recharge set bonuses is that the powers you use to summon the pets recharge faster, and they will continue to do that after the change.

Set IOs containing Recharge will of course become less useful in pet powers when they don't boost the Recharge of powers belonging to the summoned pets, but they will at least still boost the Recharge of the powers that summon the pets. While this certainly won't be useful for all summoning powers (MM pets tend to have limited need for additional Recharge in most situations), there will still be cases where this is useful.
All of this will certainly make some sets less useful for many, but since the IOs will still have the effect they were *intended* to have, I'm not sure we should expect any "compensation" for it.

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I like BlackSlys suggestion, frontlaoding the damage.
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3) Lightning Storm is on a pretty long recharge, and supposedly balanced around doing close to its full damage, yet its fire rate is too slow to make it worth the End cost in anything but a boss/AV fight. Would you be willing to lower its End cost by about 20% so that it's not a waste to summon it for other fights, and also to give it an "alpha strike" capability by giving it a 1-use Chain Induction attack when its first summoned? That way its overall long-term DPS will hardly be affected, but it will become more useful when summoned for a single small fight.



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Broken in what way then? Please explain because to me it looks like a nerf because they are overpowered. The main 3 that got hit worst by the nerf only have 1 attack, so they cant say its because of the AI issues.

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1. Recharge from the caster was never intended to be passed to the pets.

2. Some pets have buggy AI.

This change supposedly "fixes" both those problems. While I don't agree with the change or the way it was handled, I understand why they want it done. I guess the best thing we can do now is stop complaining and start gathering evidence that some of the pets affected by this change could now stand for buffs, even if they are small ones.

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