WTB functional pet commands please!

So I am doing tips on my 50 thugs/time. Pull a Rikti tip mission and I simply cannot put into words how frustrating it is to have my pets constantly running everywhere because of all the rikti monkeys leaving little green gas clouds.

I love masterminds. They are great fun. I get incredibly aggravated however with the fact that pet commands simply do not work when you actually need them to.

Caltrops, nemesis gas, rickti monkey gas etc just cause them to be completely out of control. The 'heel' command is practically useless since they will generally run to where ever they were trying to go before turning around and coming back. The 'go to' command is even more useless since your pets will just tag that spot on the ground and keep going like a runner passing third base.

Bottom line, I want my pet class to have pets that I can actually control 100% of the time (barring mez). I know, it's asking a lot.

Sorry... just had to rant a bit.

I feel the pain too, but every time that happens to me, I just channel Yosemite Sam and yell "Stupid dragon!"

What I really love about the pet controls..is how setting it to Advanced gives us..LESS buttons. Genius that is.

Seriously..we need a command to be able to tell pets to attack at range or melee, and HOLD that stance.

Mmm not sure I agree with that. Although I DO see your point..in that a bots mm + webnade could go to sleep and solo an AV..but the pants on head behavior of pets some/a lot of the time cannot just be passed off as 'wonky'. And if the devs, on purpose, made pets dumb, just because of balance....well, that is as stupid as our pets can be.

It's like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhlQgvHmQ0

Well for years we had a 'bug' with AI that made the melee pets get stuck in range mode, requiring mulitple clicks back and forth with passive/attack to get them to close to melee instead of plinking away with the single ranged attack. We complained and griped but not one word was ever said from a Dev that it was indeed 'bugged'.

Then, Demons were created, and they found out that Demons are broken, with this 'bug' causing them all to act like ranged pets. Demons being one of the biggest features for GR and all meant it had to go.

So they 'fixed' it. Finally the get stuck in range bug was gone!!

However, it was replaced with the new 'Everyone must melee!' bug

We bugged it and started threads about it. We found work arounds and we waited. To this day, pet AI has never been acknowledged as being 'bugged' and therefor we can only surmise that it's sadly WAI. Flaws and all.

Well with the demons playing at range (I made my own demon mm after so I dont know what it was like) I can only assume that it got fixed because a lot of the demon attacks are melee. Or did they in fact have ONLY ranged?

If anything..think of it for a theme/lore/background theme. This person, this mastermind, can summon and force things to do his will..force them to dive into battle with huge robots, super villains, even leap off cliffs. But..then one thing he CANT do..is tell the ones with guns to STAY at range and use said guns?

It's all just speculation on my part really, from the years of playing and reading, seeing whats said and what isn't.

What isn't said in this case is the more telling thing, at least to me.
My hunch is that pet AI was bugged from the very start and by the time it was discovered they had already balanced the class around the fact that pets couldn't be held in position and would sometimes flat out refuse to obey. If they fixed the bug at that point, it'd have meant much much more work rebalancing the entire class, so they left it alone and never acknowledged it's existence.

Then when they created Demons something got borked and they ended up being forced to fix the code, however the same problem of having to fix the entire class balance wise upon doing so still existed. So they reworked the bug and reinstated it, this time as an intended handicap instead, saving them the money pit.

I'd be more than happy to have a Redname finally post that they are aware of the 'bug' and blah blah. However, I wouldn't be shocked to have it never be brought up by them either.

Leave Attack the way it is.
Right-click and "Edit" Follow: change "Aggressive" to "Defensive"
Ignore Heel completely.

On my bots/traps MM the only command I ever use is defensive "Follow". I park myself just outside aggro range, drop Triage Beacon, Mortar, hit the bad guy with a blast from pulse rifle or Nemesis Staff, sit back and watch the havoc. If the bad guy runs, I hit "Follow" and the bots come right back to my side and wait patiently for the next incoming attack.

Personally, I don't have any trouble controlling my pets. I've used thugs, ninja, bots, and demons with just about every secondary except poison. Rikti monkeys don't last long enough to be a problem and I completely ignore the green gas clouds they leave behind. If a bot gets loose, I just hit defensive Follow and it comes running right back to my side. This also keeps them in a constant Bodyguard state, which keeps me breathing even in AV fights. My level 50 bots/traps mastermind has not faceplanted in so long I don't even remember the last time. My Demons/Pain Manipulation has yet to suffer her first defeat. She's lost her demon pack on countless occasions, but she always has time to break free and run for cover.

If you're going to put words in my mouth, please read the entire thread first.

I never said any of it was 'fact', quite the opposite actually. Once you read the rest of the thread you'll see I can't provide 'proof' because that's what leads to the entire presumption.