Necro pet (Liches) bugs

[Teron]

By the way, is it me, or animate dead pets dont get better hit or dam with more UC?

It's just vilewight has about 2-3 worse hitroll, then wraith, and my wraths dont have stellar hitroll either (I'm blessing them and singing brothers sometimes). I'd expect vile to hit much more often, but maybe it can be fixed by scaling animates up with UC slightly?

Yeah, I'll test this when I get more corpses

[Thraxas]

I'm in completely 2 minds about necro pets:

One the one hand I'm thinking that perhaps they're not perfect, but actually they work ok as they are and could probably be left alone, I certainly manage to use them effectively enough.

On the other hand I think that they could do with a complete rewrite from start and huge simplification, lets take out all the proc attacks all the special abilities all the blasting and just scale the ac hit and dam up at each x40 so that you know pets from a higher level will always be better than the previous ones, no question.
You should always get 3 of any undead pet (4 with control horde).
Summon undeads should be exactly equal to the next animate dead, the only difference being that animates need a corpse to animate but last twice as long.
That to my mind would offer a far better option for necros, imms and coders. A simple easy to understand scaled series of pets that while less 'feature rich' (aka buggy) got progressively more powerful as you gain levels.
Not sure I'd dare to believe such a radical change could be in the offing ... if only it were Christmas.

On the third hand this continual badgering for tinkering with whats there now is beginning to get on my nerves ... though actually I did just spend an hour on the phone to my sister hearing all about how her family is far better than mine and how her Christmas is going to more special than mine so perhaps I'm just tense and wound up ... perhaps I shall start on the Christmas sherry and relax then all these 'helpful' suggestions about how to make necro pets work better will wash over me and stop winding me up so much.

Thraxas

[Teron]

Thraxas, your 2nd suggestion to scale pets better with all levels is great. In fact, it is one of the options. But from what I understand, imms dont have the time to rework the necro pets completely. Splork said he won't be buffing them either.

I'd add that you might be able to sum 2 instead of 3 mobs, but with the same total damage and hps. This would lessen the requirement for corpses and allow us to save mana on buffing pets (which can be expensive, 35 animate + 40 golem/aegis + 15 ss = 90ma).

Other than that, I support the idea of figuring out a better scaling structure for necro pets and making them actually worthwhile as a whole.

You wouldn't want a scaling scheme with pets, who don't hit mobs, like vilewights, or die as quickly as vampires, though.

However, if you scroll back, you'll see that current suggestions is an attempt to briefly improve pets without requiring much time from Chobbs. If he decides to rewrite them completely, I'd appreciate that as well, of course.

[Dragoth]

Ok, dont take this as an attack on your personality (as people do too often) as its not ment to be one. But I really dont see such a change needed nor wanted and i will tell you why.

General points:
a) The current code took a very large amount of time to write back in the days when we had some very good dedicated coders working on the mud. And it took pretty long to get it polished out to where it is now.
b) You will need a good coder with alot of free time available to work on this and Even if you manage rewrite the code completely right now using your best judgement, its not guaranteed that it will work as intended and how many more years of polishing out do we really want?

Personal points:

The current code as Thraxas said manages to work very well under given circumstances. It takes into account alot of stuff, stuff like weights for each undead and pet points that scale with your necro class and avatar class and total levels, which is great and it adds alot of flexibility to the code itself.

The shortcomings imho are not in the code itself, but in the details that did not get filled out properly ( stats for certain undeads, pet weights, later level undeads are not thought out very well )

Right now up to my level, i am happy with how the pets scale.

Levels: Undeads available (My rated experience)

Newbie 1-20 : All lowbie pets are pretty cool.. (5/5)
Level 20-36: You get your spectres and ghasts and you get more of them every few levels (5/5)
Level 36-40-2x40: Wights and vampires (3 at 1x40 ?). Poltergeists are useless though. (4/5)
Level 2x40: 3 wraiths or 2 liches. (5/5)
Level 3x40: 3 Liches instead of 2. Vilewights suck.. (3.5/5)
Level 4x40: 2 Banshees or 4 wraiths. (4.5/5)
Level 4x40 and Avatar 6 (control horde): 4 lich / 2 banshees and 1 wraith. (5/5)

Not based on personal experience:

Level 5x40: 2 Bonesnarls ( suck as told by wimpy), ?3? Vilewights ( suck as tested by me) ( Expected 2/5)
Level 6x40: Phantoms (suck as told by wimpy) 3 banshees, 2 demiliches (Expecting:3.5/5)
Level 7x40: Empty, no new pets and no additional pets to your existing ones. (0/5)
Level 8x40: Swordwraiths and Dracoliches (Unsure)
8x40 to Avatar 40: No new pets, no additional pets..(0/5)

[Dragoth]

I, unlike others, also remember the terrible times when sloth4 just started; Splork tweaked the code a little bit ( as part of the big conversion from sloth3 to sloth4) and it caused necros to have 1 wraith untill 4x40 and wights were three times as powerful as a pet at 1x40 as opposed to wraith's which required 2x40 to be summoned. At 3x40 i could summon 1 vilewight which was just as crap as it is now..

(And even if you were there at the begining, this part of story you might have not heard):
All of the above was considered fine by Splork because noone complained -and why did noone complain ? - Because certain necros knew that they could animate dead and summon any pet they wanted..so they didnt want that to get fixed, so they didnt complain.
I of course did not know anything about this since noone shares anything on sloth these days and I had to kill stuff with 3 level 36 pets up untill 3x40 at which point i said enough of this and started complaining to Splork every day.

What did i get for this ? While certain necros were enjoying their level 8x40 pets at 1x40 i was arguing with Splork for about a month and receiving an unhealthy dose of abuse during that time.
In the end though, i managed to persuade him to do something about it and he restored Sloth3 undead code to its original and we could all summon 3 wraiths at 2x40 and wights got debuffed to make them comparably weaker than wraiths which at least restored some progression.
After a bit more debting, Splork added .15pet points every 40 levels (instead of a flat points for everyone at any level) which added even further to pet progression.

Right now, im 85% happy with how the system works and i would not want anyone changing that code, because every little bit of polishing that comes, does not come easy.

[Teron]

I have tested all the 1-40 pets briefly as I was progressing with levels and only ghast was useful apart from wights.
That is, I mostly used spectres until I could animate a ghast or animate a wight or two.

I wouldn't call all the 1x40 pets perfect or that useful, even though some of them (bloodworm and mummy) weren't as disappointing as a vilewight. In fact, I'd expect more mobs from 1x40 to 9x40, than from 1 to 40 necro, because it's much slower to get the latter levels, than the first 40.

This, and the latter mess with pets power as you've noted in your expectations is the reason why I think that the hp/dam/hitroll numbers need to be either improved or redone.

I don't really care if it's through restructuring the whole scheme or just by selecting the right base and scaling the numbers right, so they are fair at all levels.

If it's the latter, which seems to be your suggestion, that's fine by me.

But this will too require lots of effort, other than simply tweaking mobs one by one.

[Dragoth]

I do understand what you are saying Teron, but i just feel that anything major can be counter-productive as this whole system can come crashing down like a house of cards as everything is built on delicately matching undead pet weights and giving enough pet points to necros to animate sensible undeads.

I do agree that there might need to be a few filler pets required for 7x40 and for Avatar levels, otherwise it will be very very dull to level those levels using banshees ( granted bonesnarls and phatoms suck )

However, we all need to agree together on what we think needs to be done before we bug immortals for it. Lets get a necro council together, talk things over and then have someone report our thoughts and finding to the immortal team who will look it over and maybe do something instead of just reading ramblings by everyone and deciding what to listen to.

[Teron]

I don't see how anything stops other necros voicing their concerns here.

After there's something we can all agree with, imms can easily (hopefully) implement it.

What form of a necro guild do you propose? An online meeting (a group or a channel)? If so, when? And who is considered a necro?

[Dragoth]

When we are online we can Group together, channel talk, send mudmail, even if only 2 of us can agree on something, then we can just make a mudmail and send it to Thraxas (since he's an avid and opinionated forum user too ) and if he agrees on it we can send it over to other necros to take objections and if there are none we propose it to immortals.

[Thraxas]

When we are online we can Group together, channel talk, send mudmail, even if only 2 of us can agree on something, then we can just make a mudmail and send it to Thraxas (since he's an avid and opinionated forum user too ) and if he agrees on it we can send it over to other necros to take objections and if there are none we propose it to immortals.

Happy to be a part of this, maybe the question is pointless without coder time but it passes time, my votes would be for either:

Option 1: Do nothing stuff works now dont break it.

Option 2:

Wipe all necro pets (other than juju which no-one questions works well as is) and replace with:

lvl 10 summon undead Ghost hp 150 ac +4 hit 0 dam 0
lvl 20 animate dead Ghast hp 150 ac +4 hit 0 dam 0 corpse lvl reqd 20
lvl 30 summon undead Spectre hp 250 ac +2 hit +1 dam +1
lvl 40 animate dead Wight hp 250 ac +2 hit +1 dam +1 corpse lvl reqd 30
2x40 summon undead Wraith hp 350 ac 0 hit +2 dam +2
3x40 animate dead Vilewight hp 350 ac 0 hit +2 dam +2 corpse lvl reqd 40
4x40 summon undead Banshee hp 400 ac -2 hit +3 dam +3
5x40 animate dead Bonesnarl hp 400 ac -2 hit +3 dam +3 corpse lvl reqd 41
6x40 summon undead Phantom hp 500 ac -4 hit +4 dam +4
7x40 animate dead Demilich hp 500 ac -4 hit +4 dam +4 corpse lvl reqd 41
8x40 summon undead Swordwraith hp 600 ac -6 hit +5 dam +5
8x40 animate dead Dracolich hp 600 ac -6 hit +5 dam +5 corpse lvl reqd 41

(exact stats up for debate of course)

All of which you can get 3 of (4 with control horde).
All animates lasting (as they do now) twice as long as summons
Level starts from the position of necro in your classo (as it does now)
All procs blasts and other special effects removed from these pets.
UC to add hp and +hit

Thraxas

[Teron]

Well, those numbers have to correlate with firewind and hand dam monk damage (and other stuff) to make sense.

I'm not sure the progression is tied to that as well, which is what Anrok seems to have been talking about.

Thraxas, are you sure that it's better to do nothing, other than adding some minor power to vilewights, phantoms and bonesnarls?

[Dragoth]

Replacing a system that has been on sloth for 4? years with something Thraxas just made up on the spot..yeah thats very likely to happen.

I suggest we stop discussing these delusions and focus our attention on some real propositions.

[Dragoth]

The real current problem is and i agree with Taron is that vilewights are really bad and have been bad since i was talking to Splork about them 1 year or so ago. In their current form they should either not weight more than a lich in pet points, or they should be considerably buffed. Noone in their right mind would give up 1.7 liches or 1.8 wraiths for 1 vilewight. I understand the concept of a tank pet and they do take alot of hits and put a semi-useful debuff on the target, but i sacrifice too much to have one of them.

[Thraxas]

Thraxas, are you sure that it's better to do nothing, other than adding some minor power to vilewights, phantoms and bonesnarls?

overlooking the very biased way you phrase your question ... yes I think it is better to either do nothing or do a proper job rather than tinker at the edges making minor improvements / adjustments that mask the fact the issue hasnt been solved. To apply an analogy I think you're trying to mend the aircon on a open top car in a heatwave, the car still works and drives ok, and the aircon is broken so should be fixed at some point and might even improve things a little but its a pointless excercise til you put a roof and windows on the car.

@Dragoth ... you suggested we discuss specific suggestions to try to come to some consensus and even invited me to join in, now I join in with a specific suggestion and invite comments suddenly you ridicule me for it? ... no I dont believe this thread will lead to any improvement, but then something you've never learnt is that the crier isnt and has never been a good mechanism to promote any change ...

Thraxas

[Dragoth]

a) the invitation was open for ingame discussions not onboard discussion, but that would lead to me telling you the exact same thing: put more thought into what you propose before you propose it.
b) Your current proposition has no sustenance and i find it offensive that you think you can replace the current code with something you just sucked out of your thumb in 2 minutes.


And despite what you may think Thraxas, crier discussions have led to ALOT of recent changes. Druid changes for once, followed by lowered exp loss on death, followed by liches being fixed, need i say more ?