Ishna, post: 3433, member: 662 wrote:
TL;DR:
Provoke needs to actually hold aggro
Pets should stay spawned through travel and speeders, maybe even act as your mount in some cases
Pets should keep buffs through death
Pet revive needs range/fix, optional corpse follow like live
Autofire ability lag is painful, AI needs to cycle faster
Creature Knowledge needs more range, longer buff, no channel, usable in combat
Give the BM “master” box something worth grabbing
I’m not here asking for new BM abilities or crazy buffs, just a few QoL tweaks that would make the profession way smoother and more fun to play. BM takes just as many points as any other combat tree, but right now a lot of the gameplay loop is just clunky compared to other professions.
Provoke should actually hold aggro
Right now you use Provoke and the enemy sticks to your pet for maybe half a second before turning right back to you or other players. Even running as a Squad Leader utilizing Misdirected Anger I can't successfully hold aggro. It needs more threat generation or a shorter cooldown so it can actually be used to hold aggro. BM can run defensive/tank pets, so Provoke should work for that role.Pets should stick around through travel and speeders
If you’ve invested in BM, your pet is part of your kit and it should stay with you when you zone between starports or mount a speeder. The current system means every time you land somewhere you have to spawn the pet, spawn a buff bot, buff the pet, and then finally get moving. No other combat profession has to re-equip their weapon every time they travel. The speeder despawn is brutal in PvP because losing your pet also means losing all its buffs, which basically forces you to run everywhere to stay ready for a fight. PvE is more forgiving but PvP momentum gets wrecked.
One possible solution, at least for certain beasts, would be letting your beast also serve as your mount instead of a speeder. That way you keep your buffs, keep your pet active, and still have fast travel without losing combat readiness.Pets should keep buffs through death
In PvP, pets are targeted constantly. Players get to keep their buffs after death and pets should too. Rebuffing every time they go down mid-fight just hands the enemy an advantage for free.Pet revive needs fixing
Currently you have to find a very specific “sweet spot” between where the server thinks the pet is and where it appears on screen to revive it. It’s clunky. Easy fixes:Increase revive range to 15–20 meters
OR, add a “pet pull” similar to doctor corpse drag or let corpse drag work on beasts
OR add the old live behavior where the pet corpse follows you after death, which would fix a lot of revive issues
These aren’t mutually exclusive, any combo of them would help.
Autofire ability lag
Pets on Autofire will often just stand there with all abilities off cooldown and not use them. The AI should cycle its Autofire macro faster so ability uptime isn’t wasted. There's also a lot of moments where you have "recall" your pet back to you before it'll start attacking again if it gets confused.Creature Knowledge needs tweaks
Learning abilities from creatures could use a range increase on Creature Knowledge, a longer buff duration, and removal of the channel and make it useable while in combat. Channeling it mid-fight feels bad and is easy to interrupt meaning you usually have to run 300m to get out of combat to reapply it, or stasis yourself which is such a long cool down you can only do it once before you find yourself running another 300m to drop combat.Give the BM “master” box a reason to exist
The master box is empty right now. It’d be great if it had something unique or fun to make it worth going for.Balance note
None of this makes BM stronger in a way that breaks balance. It’s just smoothing out clunky mechanics and letting the profession function as well as the other combat trees.Possible Future Discussion:
BM 5-piece. Also, delete CH.
Thanks everyone who provided initial feedback and advice for this material.
Make BM Great Again
I am Tank and I approve this message.
I have comments...but overall I like
Also do not delete Creature Handler. Maybe merge CH and BM.
BE pets should be better than CH, but have the taming ability to let people get pets easily. Maybe give BE's the ability to genetically modify tamed pets.
Master could enhance the speed at which you tame, or learn skills to train.
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