I'm starting to despise my 'weapon' of choice...
I play tamer hybrid characters, mainly treasurehunters. It's 2025, and I feel like we're still being viewed and judged by the developers for the heavily overpowered class tamers once were during Trammel's 'golden age', even though we're now often being overclassed by other melee or magic templates. There is a lack of balance and definitely an enormous lack of pet-control compared to weaponwielders and spellslingers compared to those of us who use their pets as their weapon.
If I fight the new event spawn (just one example) with my pet, my pet is not only my strenght, but also very much my weakness, and the lack of control I have over my 'weapon' is appaling. When I fight with my pet it has its own will apparently, if I tell it to attack a certain creature, I have to spam for it to keep killing it and not to run off towards another target on the other side of my screen, leaving me vulnerable to attack. If it's fighting multiple targets, it switches whenever it wants to, instead of being focussed on the target I want it to kill first. My weapon doesn't listen to me, no matter how many skillpoints I have invested, and I can't put it on some sort of passive status. My weapon doesn't protect me when I tell it to guard me...
Compare this to an armored melee class, and I look silly with this lack of control. When my weapon runs off, it can't find its way back to me. It gets stuck behind trees, behind rocks, bumps, walls, or anything else that might obstruct its path, unless I move aside. Monsters however have no problem running after me, they don't get stuck and have perfect pathfinding. And when my weapon decides it wants to kill something it has no problems walking around whatever objects there are to reach a target. Often targets which I don't want it to target.
My pets are its skills, its hitpoints and its special attacks. It receives no benefits from me carrying a slayer, its hitpoints and skillsets receive no benefits from me carrying certain armor pieces, what you see is what you get. Other classes benefit greatly from carrying armor, weapons, spellbooks. Those increases their melee power, magic power, this power transfers to the weapons they carry. A tamer's weapon is just that, pixelcrack with set stats that don't benefit from anything. You can increase their power with scrolls, but if you need to switch between 'weapons' you need to scroll and train those up as well.
I'd like more balance. I want what I wear or carry to impact my weapon. I want my armor sets to benefit my pet's stats or attack power, like a melee or magic user's weapons impact their weapons of choice. I want the slayers I carry to affect my pet. I'd like to see my pet getting bonusses from things I carry. It makes for a more even playing field.
I need more reliability when I command my pet. I need my pet to stay at my side and defend me at all cost. If I'm being attacked by a mob, I want my pet to be able to grab aggro from me so that I can get away from big hitting things. I want my pet to be smarter, currently they're dumb, do stupid stuff and cause my tamers death lots of times.
I told someone on another forum that I do the massive dragon nests with my tamer/t-hunter. They said to kill the spawn fast, do them with your melee toon. I don't have one. But I feel like I need one. I don't want to feel like I need one, I'd like a more even playing field instead. I feel the investment in Taming/Lore/Veterinary/Magic should compare to a melee's investment in Weapon Skill/Tactics/Anatomy/Healing.
Anyway, that's my rant for now, on with the show. Be nice if this would be seen by someone who could say something about the terrible lack of control. Cheers.
Comments
I have zero complaints about the types of tamables and versatility of templates.
Other than that though I don't think tamers really need any other boost...we get pets with 900hp and massive damage outputs and all we need to do is stand back with consume damage running. Can they do all content faster? No, but that's the way the game should work... it isn't a 1 template fits all type of game. I feel like this is the first event in a while where I really have wanted to use my sampire... but my sampire almost always dies during the matriarch bc I get hit with a flame wall (or 2) along with a few fireballs and I'm toast... now my tamer has zero issue bc the pet walks in does its thing and then comes back with 75%+ HP every time.