Phantasm and Force Feedback +recharge

Has anyone ever experimented with putting a Force Feedback chance for +recharge into Phantasm? Since he has two knockback powers, and a decoy which uses knockback powers too, I figured that slotting him with one of these would help make his Energy Torrent and Decoy Phantasm recharge faster for him whenever he attacks.

However... it seems to have messed up his AI quite a bit. His powers may recharge faster, but now he always moves into close ranged blasting (i.e. right next to his target) after a couple of blasts. As a result, he will almost always die against an Archvillain I'm fighting, or move into close range when he shouldn't do, which kills him.

Is this a known bug, and any chance of being fixed? o_O

Known bug I'm afraid. See clicky. Might be good for the Bruiser, not so great for Phant .

It's not really a bug, just a quirk of the AI. It does mean your phant draws more aggro from you, and proably hits more mobs with his aoe, so it is desirable under some circumstances. Would be great for /FF for example.

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It's not really a bug, just a quirk of the AI. It does mean your phant draws more aggro from you, and proably hits more mobs with his aoe, so it is desirable under some circumstances. Would be great for /FF for example.

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So? Let me get this straight. You're saying that this IO changes the way the intended AI is supposed to work and it isn't a bug?

Also...cones tends to be somewhat lacking in melee y'know.

Why would you want a Phant, who creates a decoy himself anyway, to run into melee? It just means the idiot can now see further and is more likely to draw extra aggro, especially if he runs into melee range, his target dies and then he casts Decoy at another spawn across the room.

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Why would you want a Phant, who creates a decoy himself anyway, to run into melee?

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Because sometimes he hangs so far back he is out of the fight all together.

If the Phant is buffed with FFs he makes a passible tank anyway. With a decoy, a double tank.

The proc is bugged to fire 100% of the time anyway. When that is fixed I doubt the effect on pet behavior will be so noticable.

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Why would you want a Phant, who creates a decoy himself anyway, to run into melee?

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Because sometimes he hangs so far back he is out of the fight all together.

If the Phant is buffed with FFs he makes a passible tank anyway. With a decoy, a double tank.

The proc is bugged to fire 100% of the time anyway. When that is fixed I doubt the effect on pet behavior will be so noticable.

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I disagree that he ever makes a decent tank himself, due to the decoy. It means that if he does run into combat and his attention then focuses elsewhere he effectively spreads out his aggroing range due to the fact that unaggroed mobs will suddenly "wake up" and spot his materializing decoy. (this is always the case and is one reason I'm careful not to be the first around corners or opening doors in large teams, the PROC AI change breaks this, it could be disasterous in that lab room with the 4 bits of breakable equipment).

A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet.

If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

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A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

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ah, but this is great with /TA, the more mobs you can get into the Oil slick/disruption zone the better.


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Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet

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...until the PA duration expires and the mobs all come after you...



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If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

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So I have to move closer than I need to to use my powers, thus putting myself at unnessassary risk? No thanks.

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As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

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If there is a bug, it's the Phantasm accepting KB sets in the first place. No one is forcing you to slot it with this proc, if you don't like the way it affects the phants behaviour then don't.

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If there is a bug, it's the Phantasm accepting KB sets in the first place. No one is forcing you to slot it with this proc, if you don't like the way it affects the phants behaviour then don't.

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No - the bug is the proc is making the pet's AI freak the [censored] out contrary to the ten previous issues of working pretty much the same.

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A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

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ah, but this is great with /TA, the more mobs you can get into the Oil slick/disruption zone the better.


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Disruption Arrow caps at 10 mobs anyway. And on large teams a Controller (or their pet) attracting Adds is generally considered a Bad Thing (Oil slick arrow isn't available all the time either, and won't one-shot kill Yellows or higher)
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Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet

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...until the PA duration expires and the mobs all come after you...


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This is standard with Illusion and any Illusionist knows how to counter it, unpredictable & undocumentated pet behaviour introduced by a PROC is a different kettle o fish.

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If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

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So I have to move closer than I need to to use my powers, thus putting myself at unnessassary risk? No thanks.


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All powers have a range. If you want to use a power effectively you may need to get closer than you want to. That's a basic premise of the game.

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As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

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If there is a bug, it's the Phantasm accepting KB sets in the first place. No one is forcing you to slot it with this proc, if you don't like the way it affects the phants behaviour then don't.

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I imagine this will be the annoyingly quick-fix to this behaviour. The AI change is still a bug, its unpredicable behaviour in previously stable code caused by the introduction of new code. Thats a bug, not a "quirk". The fact that Phants (and other pets) accept these new IO sets is certainly an inconsistancy with previous logic and could also be classifed as a bug (unless they start opening out the older sets to pets as well as they did with Fluffy. Per-leaaaaase!!!)

oh man...seriously...

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A tank is supposed to soak up and manage current aggro, not draw additional Adds from unaggroed mobs.

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ah, but this is great with /TA, the more mobs you can get into the Oil slick/disruption zone the better.

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So if a bug works out for you it's not a bug but merely a "quirk"? Come on!

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Plus in a set with PAs (and his decoy cast from range) there isn't really a need for another tanking pet

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...until the PA duration expires and the mobs all come after you...

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....?
So because you can't manage the mobs before PAs run out this "quirk" is fine?

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If he's too far back to be doing anything that means he's effective following the player and thus the player should be moving in order to drag the Phanty into normal ranged combat range.

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So I have to move closer than I need to to use my powers, thus putting myself at unnessassary risk? No thanks.

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Yes. Oh my...you actually have to think about how you're using your powers to get the best benefit?

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As Archy says his powers indicate he's supposed to be a ranged blasting & support pet himself, not a tanking one (unlike the PAs who have more powerful melee attacks and properly close to use them), the fact that the FF PROC breaks this is a bug, not a quirk.

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If there is a bug, it's the Phantasm accepting KB sets in the first place. No one is forcing you to slot it with this proc, if you don't like the way it affects the phants behaviour then don't.

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oh man...please put the crackpipe down.

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The AI change is still a bug, its unpredicable behaviour in previously stable code caused by the introduction of new code.

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The code hasn't changed. It was stable before, and is stable now. Slotting the proc changes the behavior, but it is still predictable. If you want you pet to charge into melee when it would otherwise hang back (e.g. Thugs Bruiser) slot this proc. If you don't want it to do that, don't slot the proc. I.e. we now have a proc that alows us to ajust our pet behaviour to suit our play style, which IMO can only be a good thing.

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The AI change is still a bug, its unpredicable behaviour in previously stable code caused by the introduction of new code.

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The code hasn't changed. It was stable before, and is stable now. Slotting the proc changes the behavior, but it is still predictable. If you want you pet to charge into melee when it would otherwise hang back (e.g. Thugs Bruiser) slot this proc. If you don't want it to do that, don't slot the proc. I.e. we now have a proc that alows us to ajust our pet behaviour to suit our play style, which IMO can only be a good thing.

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Just because you don't see it breaking anything doesn't mean it isn't breaking anything. The Phantasm running in to melee despite only have ranged attacks is helluva buggy as it's never done that before.

I'm sure if it was Singularity and not Phantasm rushing in to melee you'd think slightly different about the proc and it's effects.

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The Phantasm running in to melee despite only have ranged attacks is helluva buggy as it's never done that before.

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Just because it didn't do it before doesn't make it a bug. I can slot a Voltaic Sentinal with a chance of stun proc. It's never stunned anything before, so does that make it broken?

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I'm sure if it was Singularity and not Phantasm rushing in to melee you'd think slightly different about the proc and it's effects.

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No, it would have absolutly no effect on my opinion. I expect it would cause the sing to enter melee more, if the sing could take KB sets. It certainly causes robots and thugs bruisers to enter melee more, to the great improvement of the bruiser.

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The Phantasm running in to melee despite only have ranged attacks is helluva buggy as it's never done that before.

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Just because it didn't do it before doesn't make it a bug. I can slot a Voltaic Sentinal with a chance of stun proc. It's never stunned anything before, so does that make it broken?

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Come on PRAF, let's be serious. The proc is what lets you do something you couldn't do before. This should be predictable (chance to stun, chance for +rechg, chance for dmg, whatever). The fact that it has unintended side effects (like changing the pet AI) is a bug (since the IO description never mentions it). Whether it's a bug which might work nicely on some pets (like the bruiser) is besides the point. If you slotted a chance for dmg proc in an attack and it suddenly drained all your endurance (in a predictable way, but which was not mentioned in the IO description) you would say it was bugged, right?

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The fact that it has unintended side effects

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Many procs have unintended or unpredicted effects. It's a consiquence of alowing them to be slotted in a wide variety of powers. Never slot a proc without doing some research or testing first.

It doesn't say on the proc "This proc is guaranteed not to affect the behaviour of your pet".


Here is your "bug" fix then: add to the text description "Slotting this proc in a pet may affect it's behaviour". There you go, bug fixed, WAI.

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Here is your "bug" fix then: add to the text description "Slotting this proc in a pet may affect it's behaviour". There you go, bug fixed, WAI.

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That's not a bug fix - that's just dumb.

Why? Why should giving your pet a new ability not affect the way they behaive?

Because it's not a new ability - it's a glitch in the AI caused by the proc.

Getting a recharge boost when using a power is a new ability.

That's exactly what a proc is, a new power that is piggybacked onto an existing power.

And many people have slotted this proc because of the effect it has on pet AI. They would be very upset if it was "fixed".

Name one PROC that affects pet AI, other than this one.

I'm not saying new enhancements should be able to affect pet AI, if thats the intended purpose of a new enhancement. But this clearly isn't.

To be honest your whole argument is weak beyond belief, and your continued railing against fact and refusual to accept that maybe you're wrong here is a little bizarre. I've a Bruiser and this PROC and its buggy side effects would be great. But I'm not going to claim its a quirk, not a bug, and campaign for the text to be changed so I can exploit it. Instead I'd prefer the Bruisers AI to be sorted out. Your argument to keeping this seems to be that some people use it as a workaround for another bug. Workarounds in code are a bad way to programme and just end up causing more issues (like say a Singularity or a Phant running in to close combat too) than they solve. Then you end up running around trying to plug all those issues too and end up with a whole raft of rules and subclauses and end up with a big mess.

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It doesn't say on the proc "This proc is guaranteed not to affect the behaviour of your pet".


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Thats a superb argument right there. The Devs should take it and use it to justify the Burning Oil Slick pet bug (sorry, "quirk") too. Then they won't need to fix that either. I think this sums up your argument right here. Theres also a Dilbert cartoon you might like to use "Thats not a bug, to ensure we hit release date all bugs were upgraded to 'Features'".

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"Thats not a bug, to ensure we hit release date all bugs were upgraded to 'Features'".

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I don't have a problem with that, if the "feature" can be advatagous, without being overpowered, or easily avoided if you don't want it to happen.

It may not have been planned, but it wasn't planned not to happen either. Serendipity.

The origin of life wasn't planned either, should all life be declared a bug and wiped out?

Right, you're going right off the radar now dude, I'm not sure if you've been drinking, or high (if so, can I have some, thats some good [censored]) or what but seriously!!

Generally I'd read your mails expecting a logical argument, even if I disagreed with it. This is the sort of nonsense I'd expect with a smilie at the end of it...

Not high, but maybe a little tired and inebriated.

My reason for arguing against treating it as a bug is it's pretty clear what the bug fix would be: "Pets no longer accept KB sets". This is cartainly how the fixed the issue with taunt sets and auras, and stealth IOs in passibve travel powers. As things are now you have a choice. I think removing that choice would be a bad thing.

What you're saying is that I should not slot this IO in any pet that should be ranged, like say Singy because if I did then he'd play rollerball with the mobs and cause me more annoyance on teams, but admittedly tons of fun solo. But I can slot this IO in a Thug Pet because it will make him melee more, which is counter-acting a 'I LEIK HORL' AI glitch, so a bug to fix a glitch? I might as well go back to the Titanic and tell them to use silly putty on the hole, it'll fill the hole, might not stop the water, but that's a 'feature pool' now.

Closing your eyes and covering your ears to the problem is just as unhelpful as the problem itself and yes I have a choice to slot it or not, but that choice should be down to the PROC and the Bonuses and my slotting, NOT because it buggers up the internal compass of a pet.