We all love doggo. Doggo is bestest boy/girl. So we don’t want Doggo to be BAD. But how do we make the Doggo balanced?
I feel like it’s too easy to get the powerful nodes for the dog and build an OP Arbites, but I’ll leave the other Arbites issues aside for now.
My thoughts on this are that
Dogs kill VERY quickly. Even without a lot of talents, they will pounce and kill enemies, disrupting everything near it, at a very high rate. So its damage should be tuned down by default so that, unless you do invest in it, he’s helpful but not overpowered.
Also, he attacks just so quickly. As soon as he finishes an enemy, he pounces another a second later. He should have a little more of a cooldown.
Now, I know people who love dogs don’t want him to be bad, so I think that when you tell him to attack an enemy he does more damage. This means that if you want the most out of your doggo, you need to actually manage him instead of just having an extra player whose entire job is keeping you safe.
Dogs can deal with much stronger enemies than they should.
I think that against Ogryns dogs need to do the jump and latch onto attacks they do against bosses. Also, perhaps they cannot actually pin and kill Maulers unless specifically ordered to, given that these are heavily-armored elites. Maybe some enemies can even push them off after a few moments or something.
Not true. I had similar opinion when i was leveling up my arby(Because i was just happy with the fact on pinnings, even without damage).
But what i forgot is that i was going through lowers difficulties. When i got to aurics i’ve noticed how long it takes to kill anyone without shock jaws.
Furthermore, dog damage consists out of several damage sources andbase damage is a solid chuck of it. If you will nerf it - most likely you kill invalidate dog damage talents and dog killing talents and while i’m aware that other classes are full of useless trash-tier nodes - this is a bad design, not the standart others should be brought to.
Dogs can deal with much stronger enemies than they should.
I think that against Ogryns dogs need to do the jump and latch onto attacks they do against bosses. Also, perhaps they cannot actually pin and kill Maulers unless specifically ordered to, given that these are heavily-armored elites. Maybe some enemies can even push them off after a few moments or something.
You either can or can’t. There’s no point is making this ‘order only’. Furthermore - i don’t really see any problem with dog pinning human-sized enemy. Even in lore they are kinda capable of doing what are they doing in game.
there ARE enemies dog can’t pin, and they all are making sense. Being unable to pil mauler doesn’t make sense.
P.S. Also what kills targets like maulers is electrocution effect. Without shock jaws it will take forever to kill them.
I was unclear, but I mean with the dog talent nodes it kills very quickly. If you lower the base damage you’ll also get lesser results from these nodes, meaning that you will have to choose specifically to make your dog a main source of killing or it will be useful but not extremely powerful.
Why, lol? Some people are legitly enjoying base ai. This is kinda dubm idea.
Agree. I was really surprised to see that it’s actually AoE.
No. With dog keystones sometime dog runs too far away for player to actually reach pounced target. Not even to mention that 5s duration for something that will make player move and re-target so drastically is laughable.
“Target selection” talent works like this and it’s literally never taken.
With “Let’s start with that.” I mean FS could drop a patch and see how the playerbase responds to it. Then tweak whatever. But that’s not how they work. They don’t read this forum and they don’t even listen to their own playtesters, so we’re all just theorycrafting here.
I get your thinking but I don’t think this works very well for any pet that doesn’t just stay glued to your side.
I can’t imagine I’d want my dog going out trying to disable specials proactively if there’s a good chance it’s just gonna go around a corner then get one shot by a mauler overhead while it has something pinned.
I dunno I don’t really have faith in Fatshark to get the HP numbers right so it isn’t either unreasonably fragile or virtually unkillable in practice.
Like the balancing implications of what you’re asking for are a hard task even for much more competent Devs.
my thoughts , if the Arbites does need a nudge down, i would do it by loosing 2 from the capacity of its guns.
think it would be a shame to neuter the unique part of the class.
I’ll just drop this here for anyone that missed it:
I know it’s not the Fatshark Way but fixing the bugs before doing anything to the dog is the best course of action.
The more I pay attention to my dog, the more I see it stagger boxing everything as it runs around. I don’t know if this has been happening since release, but it has to be a big part of the OPness (lel) of it.
Oh, and inb4 “elitists want everything nerfs REEE” It’s an acknowledged bug. Checkmate atheists.
That wouldn’t do much besides make it more annoying to use. It can still rush into a pack of crushers, left click while watching Youtube and come out on top.
Definitely don’t neuter the dog, but don’t let it savagely hump all enemies on the map either.
Kinda, but it should require more investment, and even without investment it’s surprisingly good.
When I was doing the penance - in aurics, mind you - for the “block attacks from different enemies”, the dog would nearly stunlock crowds with how fast it would pounce a mob, stagger them all, kill it, then pounce another. I had to go dogless to complete it, and that was with zero talent investment.
It just feels like the dog is too strong at baseline and with talent investment; it needs to be brought down a notch for both. As it is, it’s like having a second player, when it should be an assistant. I figure that reducing its base ttk and also requiring ordering it to get the most out of it would mean that players are consciously making a choice to utilize the dog in-game, not just picking some nodes and having it outdamage their team mates. XD
By all means, though, if you are ordering your dog around it should be useful, because that means you are intentionally utilizing it. So give that a power buff so it can still be strong. It just should not be “2-3 nodes for doubling your damage over the course of a run even if you do nothing else”.
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but, c’mon… dog hits a thing, puts three different stacks of bad times on the enemy, jumps again and reapplies all them stacks, if not add more stacks. Can be directed to go stack on another enemy while the previously attacked enemy is stun locked. As Arbites I am not afraid of ogryn enemies. I’m just not.
Should it pin pox hound? Sure, idgaf. Should it pin mutants and ogryns? No, I don’t care and the community can whine and moan about that all they want. It shouldn’t be turning so much of the game off. Pox Bursters I care less about because their only weakness is player awareness, you deserve it if they explode on you.
Dogsplosion, without my latching suggestion, maybe needs less unyeilding damage. Dog damage is already passive income for dtide, and if its overall damage was tuned down against flak and unyielding (including DoT stack application) then there would be no need to tune down dogsplosion much. With my latching suggestion it will need more down tuning since the dog bouncing off of ogryns is legitimately 99% of the obstacle I have to pay attention to before I can use dognade. When the whole screen is enemies it’s basically impossible for the dog to not be in optimal postion unless it does its 5 mile long bounce off a Bulwark. It sounds like I’m being hypocritical, but I’m not, dognade really is only good while the dog is animation locked, the complete opposite of dog talents that only apply when the dog jumps.
but fixing the bugs before doing anything to the dog is the best course of action.
