Behind the Mask: I'm not bored of pets yet

I'm sort of surprised that I'm not talking about Demonflame this week, but unfortunately, DF hit the Test Server after this article went to print. However, Champions Online's pet update has made it back with a vengeance (on PTS), threatening to change the world as we know it!

Pets have been a recurring problem with CO; they were pretty horrible at launch, aside from a select few. Many of the decent pets were still underused due to the trouble with ritual circles.

But pets have come back, and now they're coming to get you! I've refrained from talking too much about the current pet update, waiting for the update to reach a more or less solidified state. This time, the update was pretty solid from day one, but a lot of tweaks have gone into it, and I'm pretty excited about the results overall.

Pets have all gained some major tweaks. All of the pets I will go over in the article (except the ones I state haven't changed) gained the following buffs:

• Pets no longer scale (poorly) to PRE and INT. Instead, they now scale to superstats. Additionally, the scaling was dramatically increased, so most pets deal much more damage than before.

• All pets scale with rank. Adding R2 and R3 to a pet gives significant advantages in addition to the normal 20% damage bonus all powers get per rank.

• Pets take extremely minute damage from area effect attacks now. In addition, they all have some basic damage resistance; although pet hitpoints are a bit lower now, they seem much more survivable.

• Pets drain a character's energy strength; a pet master gains less energy with pets active. A single pet doesn't make much of a difference, but many pets will.

• Pets now have selectable models. There are quite a few different possible models for each pet. Now you can always summon a female angel or have an imp even with the R3 ebon ritual. Although it's not related to gameplay mechanics in any way, this is a pretty awesome touch.

Elementally, my dear Watson

The elemental pets didn't change, which I'm kind of unhappy about. Fire Snake and Ball Lightning could have used a bit of a buff, especially since their damage is so low.

On the other hand, the Sorcery frameworks had a massive alteration of many of the pets, and the Primal ritual is now much different. Instead, the Ice framework was blessed with something very exciting: The old Primal wolf!

The new Arctic Wolf is very similar to the old Primal ritual. His damage was buffed up, and he retains all the good things the Primal ritual had before. The most exciting part for pet masters: he isn't bound to a circle anymore!

A few things were tweaked so that he doesn't double-stack his perception debuff anymore, but on the whole he's even meaner than he was as a sorcery pet. I'm kind of hoping the devs will give people with the Primal ritual a respec, since they will have to pick an entirely new power in order to keep the same pet.

Go-go-gadget pets!

Muntions Bots were changed a little. They were decent before, so not a whole lot needed to be done. The little transforming robots gained an area effect frag grenade, but they are more or less the same pets with the benefit of the universal tweaks listed above.

Medical Drones, or Support Drones as they are now called, are a dual-purpose controllable pet. They can transform, just like the Munitions Bots; the primary form is the quintessential green healing beam, but the secondary form is a particle beam blaster. They're surprisingly deadly, and a little bit of micromanagement allows a hero to use his healing drones only when he really needs the health; he'll use the damaging drones at other times. The healing beam is better than before too, thanks to superstat and rank scaling.

Attack Toys are the new big bad boys on the block. The new Attack Toys now spawn duplicate toys automatically, instead of requiring the player to activate the "Playtime" skill. The duplicates are weaker than the originals, but the DPS is still insanely high. Although they lack the utility of some other pets, Attack Toys do one thing right, and that is lots and lots of damage.

Did I mention I liked magic?

The mystic archetype has the largest group of controllable pets. It's fitting that mystics are updated along with Demonflame, the first mystic adventure pack.

March of the Dead has a lower energy penalty now, although it still lowers the user's equilibrium. The zombies do much more damage, especially if they are summoned in melee range of the enemy. Their duration scales with INT (this isn't something new), so it's not too hard to get a permanent zombie army.

Tyrannon's Familiar was buffed to include a Hurl-like stone throw attack and some much-increased tanking powers. Unfortunately, his charge buff now expires, so it's in your best interest to expend the charges to improve your damage and grant you energy. The charges were always pretty good at granting energy, but now they grant your hero a damage boost. The damage buff from superstats is the biggest deal; the familiar is basically the same, but tougher and packing a lot more damage.

The rituals changed a lot. All four rituals are controllable by default, rather than requiring an advantage. They also have a new, 2-point Unbound advantage that turns the ritual into a normal, controllable pet (doesn't need a circle)! The ranks were also a little more fine-tuned to make R2 + Unbound worth taking over R3. Lastly, all four rituals no longer cost energy to summon, unless you take the Unbound advantage.

The Radiant ritual is much changed; it does more damage and has a long-ranged Rebuke attack as well as a powerful melee attack if enemies get close. Its healing is still pretty good.

The Ebon ritual is also mechanically different, but still does lots of damage -- even more than before. The biggest problem with the new Ebon ritual is that its Clinging Flames and Leaping Flames no longer activate Thermal Reverberation. I've reported this several times as a bug, but I haven't got a dev response, so I assume it must be intentional. He is good at any rank now, rather than needing R3 to be good.

The Primal ritual is dramatically different. It's now a melee pet that uses Howl and occasionally uses an area-effect lightning strike. It was supposed to have the old ritual's travel-disabling lunge, but as far as I know it's not been reimplemented yet. It is pretty useful in builds that depend on Fear or Enrage, but otherwise is lackluster. Also, the Enrage it uses doesn't seem to scale properly to the user's stats. I'm not sure whether this is intentional or not.

The Arcane ritual is also totally different. He's now a big tank with taunts and laser beam eyes. He's pretty good for a tanking hero with some tricks, but all the tricks involving the old Arcane pet are gone. He is not very good at holding AoE aggro, due to CO's wonky aggro mechanics.

Command Animals is the last set of pets, and like Munitions Bots, they are mostly unchanged conceptually. They have become rather frightening, with new damage-over-time debuffs and snares plus a pretty significant damage buff from superstats. They also retain their travel-disabling lunge, and according to the tooltip, they have high perception. I actually haven't tested it (perception on pets is hard to test), but if it works as well as the tooltip suggests, they could be quite effective in PvP.

Wow, that's a lot of changes! Unlike the melee pass, very little of this patch was homogenous. It's obvious a lot of love went into the pet pass, and overall I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm a little miffed about the Ebon pet's Thermal Reverberation issue and the Primal pet's Enrage scaling, but these are minor things. It's clear Ame and the rest of the devs really poured their hearts into this patch.

Next week, Demonflame! I hope you can see why I didn't include the pets and Demonflame in one column. This one is already huge as it is!

When he's not touring the streets of Millennium City or rolling mooks in Vibora Bay, Patrick Mackey goes Behind the Mask to bring you the nitty-gritty of the superhero world every Thursday. Whether it's expert analysis of Champions Online's game mechanics or his chronicled hatred of roleplaying vampires, Patrick holds nothing back.