Pets Do Not Benefit From Ultimate

There were a lot of unanswered questions, so I decided to do a bit of SCIENCE!

I got some pets and an Ultimate Inspiration. First I summoned a Henchman and a normal Pet without using the Ultimate.



The boss Henchman cons yellow, and at +1 because of Alpha. The Pet conned white, also at +1.

Then I used the Ultimate, to see if it had any effect on already-summoned pets.



Nope, Bruiser now cons white, and the Rikti Drone blue.

So I summoned another Pet while Ultimate was active.



Tsoo Sorcerer here cons white, but he's a Lieutenant. Ultimate did not affect him: he's still +1.

Then I summoned another Henchman.



Nope, not these guys either. The Thugs and Arsonist are conning green, at +1.

I thought maybe Incarnate content might affect things, so I hopped over to Dark Astoria.



Nope, Bruiser's still conning white at +3. The minion Henchmen are at +5 because of the way Supremacy works in Incarnate content.

I decided to summon Henchmen again now that I was in Dark Astoria.



Still no benefit from Ultimate. The Enforcers are conning white, at +4, which is standard-issue for Incarnate content.

Not to leave any questions unanswered, I also summoned my Lore pets.



Nope, they're spawning at +3 as well, with the Cataphract conning blue.

When the Inspiration wore off, it conned white once again.



So the moral of the story is this: Pets cannot, under any circumstances, benefit from Ultimate whatsoever, regardless of whether you use it before or after summoning them.

One thing I didn't try was feeding an Ultimate to the Henchmen directly via the Pet window (or drag-and-drop), which I figure should work on Mastermind and Lore pets alike.

To the OP:

Have you tried using the ultimate, and then spawning your pets?

My understanding is that your pets will get the level shift if you're shifted when you spawn them.

I can't say for sure, because with all the really hard way attempts, I'm not going to blow one for this test, but I am pretty sure it will work this way.

Dogma and I were able to run a couple of tests and found that while Ultimates can be given to Mastermind Henchmen, they CANNOT be given to Lore pets. )-:

That puts MMs at a strong disadvantage... I realize most other inspirationss don't propagate from the MM, but it would seem there should be an exception made for the ultimate inspirations or even for all tier 4 inspirations that are purchased with astrals.

Just out of curiosity... do the pets receive the shift if you drag the ultimate insp to them like you would other inspirations?

Um...



Mastermind Henchmen do. Lore pets do not.

Totally disappointed that pets, which already do an awkward job of attempting to survive in Incarnate content, don't benefit from Ultimate.

You mentioned Masterminds can give an Ultimate to a henchmen, but Lore pets couldn't be given them. What if the player is a Mastermind, who can pass normal inspirations to anything which appears in their pet list?

Oh, if any devs are reading, you should rework Ultimates so if given to a henchmen by a Mastermind, it works as a 40ft unique PBAoE buff, so it can affect all henchmen pets at the same time.

Thx for doing SCIENCE for us Guy, I had wondered how it worked

Thanks for the effort Guy. Also, your screenshots are so small I can't make out their level shifts. :X

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

I can confirm the same. I tested this long ago with my Crab and it's spider pets and was disappointed at the results.

My thinking on this is that pets are a power of the player character so if the character is 51 it's using level 51 powers. In other words, if I'm a fire/fire dom I don't understand why my Blaze has level 51 values but Fire Imps have a level 50 value. It just doesn't seem right. A level shift, is a level shift regardless of how it's obtained. On magi, trial, if I'm +9 and spawn my pets, they come out as +9.

The common rebuttal to this is as you've heard "lol, pets shouldn't get insps!". I honestly believe, however, that this is more of a technical hurdle Paragon just doesn't have time/care to address so it's just left as "oh well... WAI I guess *shrug*".

I think this case in particular is something that was just never considered; that is, they didn't sit down and decide that pets shouldn't benefit from Ultimate. That still may be, of course, but I don't get the impression that's what happened.

Pets in general don't inherit any buffs from their caster. It's explicitly disabled in their definitions. However, I do think it should be tweaked so that the one buff they DO inherit is Level Shift, from any source. This would mean level shifts on pets are temporary just like they are on the caster.

On the other hand, when we're talking about Mastermind Henchmen, those aren't just some arbitrary pets the user happened to spawn. Those are the bread and butter of what Masterminds can do, where the secondary power set is... like, the toaster, which brings it all together. A Mastermind using an Ultimate, presently, will only increase the effectiveness of his secondary powers and his attacks lolwutderpbbq.

There's already precedent for Supremacy granting level shifts to Henchmen: they do it in Incarnate content so all the pets are even with the caster. Minions become +5 and lieutenants +4. So it would be a reasonable extension, in my eyes, to also have Supremacy propagate any additional shifts on the caster, including those from Ultimate.