09-12-2004, 03:46 AM
A major part of the problem may be that not all the classes are going to be equally easy or hard to play. The more difficult classes are the one that depend on the character effectively managing 2 toons (player and pet). These characters are the warlock and the hunter. Until you have a reasonable understanding of how the game is handling important concepts like the aggro levels and a good grip on the game controls themselves, it will be rather challanging to try to play one of these two classes that requires you to keep track of more than one toon.
For a hunter currently the choice of the pet to have is a rather serious one since there are some serious broken problems with them. A few of the problems that are the most vexing are pet combat damage is 'stuck' at some reduced fraction of what it should be, mobs that notice the pet will aggro on the hunter instead and not the pet to start off with, a mob that aggros on the pet or the hunter or pet will not break off pursuit due to a 'leash distance' as they normally will for other characters. There are more but these are the ones that I see challanging the players the most often right now. Another 'problem' is that with this patch the design team was messing around with how some of the aggro attracting skills performed and it is not clear if the hunters pet Growl ability was a victim of this or not since there was no prior performance to compare it to. But based on how the warlock voidwalkers Torment ability and the warriors Taunt skill were reduced in effectiveness, I would suspect that the Growl is also at a reduced effectiveness.
Some of the pet problem can be mitigated by the selection of the pet to use. While many are picking their pets based on the looks for some 'coolness' or 'wow' factor, the pets are currently only coming in 2 primary flavors that greatly influence their performance. These are normal and elite. If you do not know how to tell difference quickly, just target the pet and look at its portrait icon. If the circle is just plain then it is a normal pet, and if it is a silver looking dragon around the portrait is named mob orginally that is currently handling the same as a normal pet. On the other hand if the portrait has a gold looking dragon around it, then that is a pet tamed from an elite mob (level orginally listed as XX+). These elite pets are still subject to a reduce damage output but they still do considerably more than a normal mob. For example Chaku's pet Ebony is from the elite mob Humar the Pridelord and will currently at level 28 be delivering damages of 14 to 22 points per hit instead of the 5 to 6 that a normal would typically be doing. This amount of damage boost is not really enough to make a great difference in the holding of the aggro, but what is important is that the elite pets also have a considerably better defense rating and more hit points than a normal version pet of the same level has. This lets them more effectively tank the mob or mobs that are encountered without dying as easily. This has lead to a couple of warriors that I partied with being surprised at seeing Ebony effectively tank a couple of equal level normal mobs that would have ripped the warrior appart if they had been the one that would have had to do the actual tanking. When they fix these damage issues and start getting some fo the special abilities in for some of the pet classes, the pets should become more effective and the actual types of pet selected will be more of an issue (spiders getting poisons and web snares, cats with the stealth and rogue like attacks, boars with the charge and stun attacks, etc.).
This appears to be due primarily to not understanding how to manage the aggro in fights. While direct damage is an obvious source of damage, there are many skills that will generate additional aggro beyond what done in terms of damage. Another aspecto f this is that if you are continuing to do normal attacks during this type of fight, then you are ending up generating even more aggro that must be overcome by the pet. There are times in fights that players must learn that if they have drawn too much of the aggro they will need to just stand there without generating aggro (most likely doing no attacks or any healing) and get the snot beat out out of them for a few seconds while the aggro is getting pulled off by a warrior or pet growling (pet damage is too low to be very effective for this even with an elite pet). Another part of this in running a hunter (or warlock) is that you cannot sit back and let the automatic cycling of the things like who to attack and when to Growl (voidwalker Torment) kick in. This means that you need to learn how to use the keyboard commands for these or better yet remap some alternate keys to make this management easier. I am regularly controlling Ebony with commands of attack, heel (follow) and Growl. Sometimes Ebony will be right on the spot with Growling at the right time, but other times it will be necessary to be forcing these growls out as soon as they are ready to manage Ebony handling more than one mob at a time to keep all the fight off of me. This also means that I have to be aware of the distance that Ebony needs to be at to pull a mob off me while still fighting a different mob or two at the same time. I have had to move myself around in some fights to get the added mob that jumped me to be close enough to Ebony so that the Growl can pull the mob off of me while I still stayed far enough away form the orginal mob to allow the continued use of the autofire against the orginal mob. Be aware also that while they are not listed as such that the pets Growl and apparently the Concussive Shot are an area effect for the generating the extra aggro. Both of these at times may inadvertently pull in a mob that was not intended.
Basically fine tactics. For your problem in case 2 of the inconsistancy, that is probably because you are thinking that Growls are automatically working evey time. The growl/taunt/torments are being handled just as mages spells are and can be resisted for no effect. When dealing with higher level mobs the chance of resistance can climb very fast making it dubious if they actually took effect or not. For an alert warrior, they can notice when the resistance message flashes by on the screen for their taunts, but for the hunter or warlock the message is not being displayed to them since it was the pet that actually had the resist. In those cases you need to be very watchful for the graphic showing the taunt effect on the mob actually occuring (and for some mobs it is near impossible to see this effect going off over their heads).
For runnig away it is important to try to get the mobs attracted onto the pet first then run like the blases to try to get far enough away to force the pet to despawn. If this can be done then the pe mearly needs to be 'whistled' back up instead of revived. This is much easier to achieve with a more durable elite pet than the normal quality pets that I see most hunters using. It also helps to to have better control through the hot keys than I have seen the majority of hunters that seem to rely automatic response or depend on mouse clicking the pet action bar.
For Wing Clip, I concur with several of the posters that have reported this to be a broken skill. It rarely seems to last more than 2 seconds instead of the listed 10 seconds and the rate of slowing seems more like 70% speed instead of listed 50% speed. This makes it rather ineffective at being able to open the distance for doing anything other than getting one additional chance at pet growl off to break an aggro hold.
For a hunter currently the choice of the pet to have is a rather serious one since there are some serious broken problems with them. A few of the problems that are the most vexing are pet combat damage is 'stuck' at some reduced fraction of what it should be, mobs that notice the pet will aggro on the hunter instead and not the pet to start off with, a mob that aggros on the pet or the hunter or pet will not break off pursuit due to a 'leash distance' as they normally will for other characters. There are more but these are the ones that I see challanging the players the most often right now. Another 'problem' is that with this patch the design team was messing around with how some of the aggro attracting skills performed and it is not clear if the hunters pet Growl ability was a victim of this or not since there was no prior performance to compare it to. But based on how the warlock voidwalkers Torment ability and the warriors Taunt skill were reduced in effectiveness, I would suspect that the Growl is also at a reduced effectiveness.
Some of the pet problem can be mitigated by the selection of the pet to use. While many are picking their pets based on the looks for some 'coolness' or 'wow' factor, the pets are currently only coming in 2 primary flavors that greatly influence their performance. These are normal and elite. If you do not know how to tell difference quickly, just target the pet and look at its portrait icon. If the circle is just plain then it is a normal pet, and if it is a silver looking dragon around the portrait is named mob orginally that is currently handling the same as a normal pet. On the other hand if the portrait has a gold looking dragon around it, then that is a pet tamed from an elite mob (level orginally listed as XX+). These elite pets are still subject to a reduce damage output but they still do considerably more than a normal mob. For example Chaku's pet Ebony is from the elite mob Humar the Pridelord and will currently at level 28 be delivering damages of 14 to 22 points per hit instead of the 5 to 6 that a normal would typically be doing. This amount of damage boost is not really enough to make a great difference in the holding of the aggro, but what is important is that the elite pets also have a considerably better defense rating and more hit points than a normal version pet of the same level has. This lets them more effectively tank the mob or mobs that are encountered without dying as easily. This has lead to a couple of warriors that I partied with being surprised at seeing Ebony effectively tank a couple of equal level normal mobs that would have ripped the warrior appart if they had been the one that would have had to do the actual tanking. When they fix these damage issues and start getting some fo the special abilities in for some of the pet classes, the pets should become more effective and the actual types of pet selected will be more of an issue (spiders getting poisons and web snares, cats with the stealth and rogue like attacks, boars with the charge and stun attacks, etc.).
Quote:My second frustration is that while hunters are definately good at ranged attacks, and can melee a little, they can't melee too much.That part is fine. But what frustrates me is the skills Hunter's have to manage aggro and avoid too much melee seem hit-and-miss and inconsistent at best (though, of course, it could be I'm just not expert enough in using them). Once I attrack aggro, I find it very hard to use my pet to get rid of it (typical combat log after I've got in trouble: "Kitty growls. Kitty hits monster X for 5 pts. Monster X hits you for 50 pts. Your Raptor Strike is not ready. Kitty Growls. Kitty hits Monster X for 3 pts. Monster X hits you for 64 pts. etc. etc.") Maybe when the low pet-damage bug is fixed this will be easier. Ideally, of course, you get as much aggro as possible fixed on your pet first before you open up with lots of damage yourself, but you can't always arrange this, and even when you do it's not uncommon for the monster to break away from your pet and attack you instead.
This appears to be due primarily to not understanding how to manage the aggro in fights. While direct damage is an obvious source of damage, there are many skills that will generate additional aggro beyond what done in terms of damage. Another aspecto f this is that if you are continuing to do normal attacks during this type of fight, then you are ending up generating even more aggro that must be overcome by the pet. There are times in fights that players must learn that if they have drawn too much of the aggro they will need to just stand there without generating aggro (most likely doing no attacks or any healing) and get the snot beat out out of them for a few seconds while the aggro is getting pulled off by a warrior or pet growling (pet damage is too low to be very effective for this even with an elite pet). Another part of this in running a hunter (or warlock) is that you cannot sit back and let the automatic cycling of the things like who to attack and when to Growl (voidwalker Torment) kick in. This means that you need to learn how to use the keyboard commands for these or better yet remap some alternate keys to make this management easier. I am regularly controlling Ebony with commands of attack, heel (follow) and Growl. Sometimes Ebony will be right on the spot with Growling at the right time, but other times it will be necessary to be forcing these growls out as soon as they are ready to manage Ebony handling more than one mob at a time to keep all the fight off of me. This also means that I have to be aware of the distance that Ebony needs to be at to pull a mob off me while still fighting a different mob or two at the same time. I have had to move myself around in some fights to get the added mob that jumped me to be close enough to Ebony so that the Growl can pull the mob off of me while I still stayed far enough away form the orginal mob to allow the continued use of the autofire against the orginal mob. Be aware also that while they are not listed as such that the pets Growl and apparently the Concussive Shot are an area effect for the generating the extra aggro. Both of these at times may inadvertently pull in a mob that was not intended.
Quote:I've basically only used 3 methods of attack: (1) fire at a monster from a distance to take down as many hps as possbile before it closes, then switch to melee to finish it off (fine vs. lower lvl monsters); (2) send my pet in to attack, have it taunt the monster with a couple of growls (for some reason you seem to require at least a couple to have a reasonable chance of fixing the monster to your pet -- another example of its inconsistency) and then fire from range while the pet tanks, hoping the monster doesn't come after me instead (for equal/higher lvl monsters); (3) fire one normal arrow to pull a monster then tell pet to attack and growl etc (when just sending the pet in could activate several monsters).
Basically fine tactics. For your problem in case 2 of the inconsistancy, that is probably because you are thinking that Growls are automatically working evey time. The growl/taunt/torments are being handled just as mages spells are and can be resisted for no effect. When dealing with higher level mobs the chance of resistance can climb very fast making it dubious if they actually took effect or not. For an alert warrior, they can notice when the resistance message flashes by on the screen for their taunts, but for the hunter or warlock the message is not being displayed to them since it was the pet that actually had the resist. In those cases you need to be very watchful for the graphic showing the taunt effect on the mob actually occuring (and for some mobs it is near impossible to see this effect going off over their heads).
For runnig away it is important to try to get the mobs attracted onto the pet first then run like the blases to try to get far enough away to force the pet to despawn. If this can be done then the pe mearly needs to be 'whistled' back up instead of revived. This is much easier to achieve with a more durable elite pet than the normal quality pets that I see most hunters using. It also helps to to have better control through the hot keys than I have seen the majority of hunters that seem to rely automatic response or depend on mouse clicking the pet action bar.
For Wing Clip, I concur with several of the posters that have reported this to be a broken skill. It rarely seems to last more than 2 seconds instead of the listed 10 seconds and the rate of slowing seems more like 70% speed instead of listed 50% speed. This makes it rather ineffective at being able to open the distance for doing anything other than getting one additional chance at pet growl off to break an aggro hold.