Frosticus

ML will be changed, it is just a matter of time

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Thanks for continuing to post. I know I would have given up a long time ago.

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And I would have banned half the board.

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and I would slide the duties onto a community rep who is hired and trained to not only handle unruly forumites, but post constructively in the best interest of the developer team. Thus freeing up very limited resources to do their specific specialty to the best of their ability rather than spreading them thin.

but you can't keep everyone happy and iirc the last rep was left to burn by the dev team...

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Issue 7 patch note 06-06-2006
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Many Location based powers (Such as Rain of Fire and Blizzard) can now be affected by the casters Buffs (for example, using Build Up will now increase the damage of Blizzard).

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I went through each pacth note between I7 and I8, there is nothing further. Certainly no specific mention of recharge inheritance.

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Well then I feel justified, since I certainly view Hasten as a caster Buff.

Anyway it doesnt matter. They are changing it and that's that. Make your choices based on the result. What else can you do?

Lewis

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We wait for another 1.5 to 2 years for the next datamine to determine that some of the pets that never had any ai issues and some psuedo-pets are in need of a buff.

If you mean what to do in the meantime.

Grow some agave. There is a good chance it will flower before they get around to correcting the wrongs

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Hey I want to move past this issue personally.

Can anyone point out a pet/pseudo-pet class that is benefiting from this change a lot?

I've played thugs, necro, and ninjas into the 30's and I make heavy use of binds so I never had issues with them getting stuck really. I did however really enjoy being able to make brusier, knights and jounin cycle their attacks faster.

I've also done earth and never had stoney really get stuck in hurl spam.

So what pet class is really going to notice an improvement that would be applicable to me?

keep in mind I DO spend a lot of time IO'ing and would like the toon to improve considerable like all the other archtypes get to enjoy. Or is it a matter of that optional system put in place to add value not applying to pet classes anymore?

Any pet/pseodo-pet heavy toon you guys can suggest? or should I just roll a ss/wp brute or an sr scrapper and be done with it?

thx

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My Io-less pet users are exactly the same as they were before.... good. It eludes me completely as to why you would think an enhancement designed to reduce the recharge of a single power should have an effect on the powers of pets as well.

Like if they made a MM set that gave enhanceable sonic bubbles and this happened would you be crying that you were no longer able to through Io's to increase the inherent resistance of your pets through a loophole? Or if putting in a heal effected the regen? Or end mod effected the end regen? The answer I'm seeing is yes, that you would consider (as a group, not sure about you in particular) that pets were completely and utterly gimped and that this was worse than ED, GDN, and all nerfs in general.

Sorry, I never tried to exploit the loophole so I'm pretty much going to be the same as (which apparently was gimp? ).... and I will prob still use the Pet recharge set on my toons ..... but as it was intended.

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thanks for telling me how you enjoy the game. I take it you have no advice for me then based on how I enjoy the game?

Forgive me for exploiting the game and having no idea I was doing it. You are smart enough to realize that if you put a rech SO in a fire imp the detailed power widow tells me it is attacking faster right?

Same for lightning storm...

How the hell was I supposed to know they weren't and only by slotting a thunderstike dam/rech was LS actually benefiting?

I guess I should have asked the devs to send me the code to know I wasn't supposed to be benefiting...

Anyway, anyone with advice of any value? I am honestly wanting to play a pet/pseudo-pet class, but I do enjoy heavy IO'ing. So Im just curious if there are any left that notice an increase near the significance that all the other AT's get to enjoy through IO's..

thx

Hey I want to move past this issue personally.

Can anyone point out a pet/pseudo-pet class that is benefiting from this change a lot?

I've played thugs, necro, and ninjas into the 30's and I make heavy use of binds so I never had issues with them getting stuck really. I did however really enjoy being able to make brusier, knights and jounin cycle their attacks faster.

I've also done earth and never had stoney really get stuck in hurl spam.

So what pet class is really going to notice an improvement that would be applicable to me?

keep in mind I DO spend a lot of time IO'ing and would like the toon to improve considerable like all the other archtypes get to enjoy. Or is it a matter of that optional system put in place to add value not applying to pet classes anymore?

Any pet/pseodo-pet heavy toon you guys can suggest? or should I just roll a ss/wp brute or an sr scrapper and be done with it?

thx

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I think people are getting hung up on the comparison to AOE "rain" powers. Let me put the OP's thought as I understand it in different terms. Right now on live, Lightning Storm's attack has a cast time of 1.17 seconds and a recharge time of 4 seconds. What would happen if you changed that to a cast time of 5.17 seconds and recharge time of 0 seconds, leaving all other power parameters unchanged?

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ah there we go. This is what I was trying to get to with the idea that they should have set LS to be an activate period in i7 even though that wouldn't work.

thanks, I knew it was entirely possible to 100% restrict the fire rate in i7 had they chose to when they allowed caster buffs to affect it.

all well, cold for trollers soon plz.

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As I recall from the discussions with the devs, the code basically just cloned all of the current buffs (types, magnitudes and durations) of the player onto the summoned entity. That was to allow powers like Burn and Blizzard to buffable like other non-summoned entity attacks like Nova.

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Actually, that makes a lot of sense. They can't just turn to the bufffs and say, "Hey, are you a damage buff? A recharge buff, maybe?"

This would seem to suggest that yes, Lightning Storm and Burn and Blizzard and all the rest of them, if targetted, would have whatever defense buffs the player had on them.

Ooo, Extracted Essense can be buffed? It's targettable, isn't it? So it would be interesting to see if it inherits the defense buffs. (They wouldn't last long, though, the WS shields tick every 0.75 seconds. Do an Eclipse, though, and then Extract... )


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Actually the solution at the time was so blatantly obvious that i'm surprised they never thought of it (or am I? )

Very few of the pseudo-pets that were receiving the i7 caster buff transfer actually have "attacks" as we think of them. The vast majority opperate like blizzard with "activate periods".

*If recharge was never meant to boost a power like LS all they had to do was change it from using lightning bolt with cast+rech, to lightning bolt with activate period = 5 seconds akin to something like bonfire with an activate period of 2 sec.

The question is "why" it wasn't done?

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Because that can't be done without changing how the power works?

You could make it function like the damage auras. And deal damage to everyone around them. But for it to shoot a bolt of lightning, it has to be a power called "bolt of lightning" that has a cast time/recharge time.

Unless you're talking a power aura that when it hits, summons a second pet on the person, which uses a lightning attack. But that's STILL the same problem

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Hmm interesting. there are so few pets this applies to that I can't think of any that shoot things away from them with an "activate period" probably because there aren't any.

did they try changing LS to be an activate period or something else that would lock the cycle time? I follow what your saying, but I'm just guessing they didn't try anything at the time because at the time things like LS getting +rech was fine, which Castle even said; they knew, it just wasn't statistically significant at the time.

It really doesn't matter though, they have effectively changed every pet to have "activate periods" on their attacks now because they can't be manipulated at all.

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As I recall from the discussions with the devs, the code basically just cloned all of the current buffs (types, magnitudes and durations) of the player onto the summoned entity. That was to allow powers like Burn and Blizzard to buffable like other non-summoned entity attacks like Nova.

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Actually, that makes a lot of sense. They can't just turn to the bufffs and say, "Hey, are you a damage buff? A recharge buff, maybe?"

This would seem to suggest that yes, Lightning Storm and Burn and Blizzard and all the rest of them, if targetted, would have whatever defense buffs the player had on them.

Ooo, Extracted Essense can be buffed? It's targettable, isn't it? So it would be interesting to see if it inherits the defense buffs. (They wouldn't last long, though, the WS shields tick every 0.75 seconds. Do an Eclipse, though, and then Extract... )


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Actually the solution at the time was so blatantly obvious that i'm surprised they never thought of it (or am I? )

Very few of the pseudo-pets that were receiving the i7 caster buff transfer actually have "attacks" as we think of them. The vast majority opperate like blizzard with "activate periods".

*If recharge was never meant to boost a power like LS all they had to do was change it from using lightning bolt with cast+rech, to lightning bolt with activate period = 5 seconds akin to something like bonfire with an activate period of 2 sec.

The question is "why" it wasn't done?

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Honest question; why would they lie?

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Because they are human. However, I didnt say they lied. They could also be mistaken, as could I.

I do remember the recharge inheritance and buff inheritance and the like being mentioned in the patch notes when it went into effect. When that patch went live, I knew because of the patch notes. I did little else aside from running around, eating as many reds as I could, clicking hasten, and then letting fly with Cages, LS and Tornado.

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Issue 7 patch note 06-06-2006
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Many Location based powers (Such as Rain of Fire and Blizzard) can now be affected by the casters Buffs (for example, using Build Up will now increase the damage of Blizzard).

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I went through each pacth note between I7 and I8, there is nothing further. Certainly no specific mention of recharge inheritance.

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But no mention of it not affecting either. In fact the example given just says BU, were we to assume that ONLY the affects of BU (tohit, dam) would affect a power like LS, or were we to assume that ie. bu meant more than just those affects would carry over.

No one was wrong in assuming rech would be carried over, just like you wouldn't be wrong if you assumed it didn't.

Caster buffs do include recharge though, so ya...

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BUt this isn't something the average playerbase knows. Ask a random person in the game what slotting recharge in their pet does, and I'm pretty certain that 9 times out of 10, the answer will be "Makes the pet come up faster."

There's nothing "intuitive" that makes one think that it makes the pets' powers come up faster. The logical response is that it does what recharge does in every other power...makes that power come up faster.

And since the effects of rech are largely unnoticable unless you already know about what the recharge does, (and/or have *massive* levels of recharge) and decide to number crunch...it's not surprising.


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The one BIG thing that throws this entire lining of thinking into the garbage is that they added detailed power windows into the game.

If I slot an imp with a rech enhancement under detailed info it SAYS it attacks faster as a result.

So really logic, intuitiveness and all that subjective baloney aside, the GAME is telling me that slotting a rech enhancement makes the power come up faster AND makes the pet/summon attack faster (regardless of the fact that rech SO's have no effect on imp attack speed lol). Really I like to think I can 'trust" what the game is telling me, especially as a new player.

This is on test server btw (and live).

So hopefully they'll eventually get around to completing what they started rather than another half complete job being called good to go. Because if detailed info says rech is affecting my pet I'll be sending in bug reports as often as I can.

keep trying devs, you'll eventually get it right.

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Actually in i7 pseudo-pets like LS were actually changed to inherent the casters' state. Now rech (ie hasten, speedboost) "may" not have been intended, but I find that very hard to believe that it wasn't known to be happening like claimed.

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Known? Yes. Statistically significant (as in, a noticeable blip in datamining), no. That came later.

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I <3 datamining and the two year turn around time. Luckily this game has had a long lifespan (and will hopefully continue to). If you ever work on a faster moving project in the future I hope the team utilizes something that has a little faster turnaround time.

Actually in light of actual competition entering soon I hope you guys come up with something that allows for faster turnaround time because 1.5-2 years isn't going to be acceptable as each competitor cranks off things to draw in customers.

Just a thought regarding how business works because soon you guys will really be playing the business game against direct competition. I look forward to it as I hope this team really steps up its performance and good things result.

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I'm for anything that makes the game better. My main toon is an Ice/Storm controller and in all honesty, I find storm very flashy and very unimpressive unless you love lots of aggro. If you don't keep your enemies rooted by your control powers it quickly gets out of hand and you have every mob aggroed on you and your team. I just hope that after this they might either make LS a larger AOE or increase the damage output, atleast then it will be somewhat useful. I couldn't even imagine playing the storm set on a defender with no way to mitigate the knockback with immoblizes and holds and in my opinion really isn't even a viable defender set. This may just be me and the way I play the set, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It would be neat if they gave LS a damage over time component with a larger AOE as well, perhaps some hailstones as well as the lightning =) Just a thought. What I do know is that I will always love my Ice/Storm controller and will still play her but probably because she is my badge hunter. Just my opinion but it is a well founded opinion as at last check I had almost 1700 hours logged on her according to the citizens that you click on that tell you how long you've been on patrol =)

It's all good, I'll find a way to play her that is still fun, mostly because I love the toon's concept =)

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They may very well end up improving powers that were drastically changed by this nerf. But it won't be for nearly 2 yrs once the datamining tells them the obvious.

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But my actual point was to use hyperbole to show that hyberbole was already being applied to the situation by others.

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Well, I hope my response to his post addressed the counter argument and not the hyperbole. Hyperbole is fine, as long as you do not introduce an assumption that does not apply. (Such as that slotting an attack for recharge is the same thing as having a pet fire more quickly)

If you are in fact not taking a side in the argument, but instead mocking the debate, I can appreciate that, too. I addressed the side you seemed to be taking, sorry if I got it wrong.

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You are using the word pet, but for clarity you might want to specifically say LS, or gun drone (not VS) because those are the only situations that benefit from having the pet up more often (because it makes it perma where it isn't out of the box and/or stacks) and it attacks faster.

Being able to buff the attack speed of an imp or stoney or MM pet is not unbalancing in the least (bugged though apparently for some of them due to poor ai programming). The only way it would be is if you could still stack multiple instances of them like the old days.

Some are gaining in that their bruiser will work better. Some are losing for no good reason in that their imps are now unbuffable even if you specifically chose a buffing set for that reason.

Castle (and followers) can spin it however they like, but my earth/kin is never going to kiss his butt and call it ice cream. It is 100% a nerf for no reason on a toon like that.

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True pets were NOT intended to have recharge effected by Recharge enhancements (because that effects how often they are summoned, instead) and they were not intended to inherit their parent's powers. (Because they are true pets and thus don't inherit)

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I would be perfectly happy to have set IOs with recharge not affect the power, so long as external and inheritable buffs still apply.

Now, if these things are internally inseparable, then they should ONLY modify the pets that need the AI adjustments, since the current state of affairs hasnt exactly been unbalancing the game, but it HAS been contributing to the fun in the game, and especially the "what do I do at level 50?" type fun.

Lewis

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In the case of LS I'd rather have it's rech locked at 90 sec, but when I summon it have it useful in more fights. As it stands now I can summon a highly situational power more often, even though situations that warrant it aren't very common.

To me its like having a short recharge on singularity. The dam thing never dies, so why do I need it up more often? I'd much rather it attacks faster.

Castle hopefully realizes (some time before this game eventually dies off) that just because you increase the frequency that a highly situational aspect is able to occur at, does not increase the frequency of the situation you would use it.

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The ability to slot def/rech in Mind Link is not a bug. It was known throughout Beta and is working as intended, IIRC.

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Honest, curious question here: If having recharge slotted in Mind Link is acceptable by the devs, why doesn't it just accept recharge enhancements directly?

This leads to complicated and confusing scenarios like the one with the pets, where you can slot recharges into them and they get the benefit, but that's not working as intended so they change it.

I don't want to wake up one day and find that my ML recharge time is fixed at 240 seconds when I worked to have it perma (and I'm rather squishy without it being perma, considering low HP, no RES, no heal).

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Stuff like this is part of why people are upset. The dev team throws out stuff with no internal consistency.

The went on the record saying it was ok to sneak rech into ML for f-sake, but apparently that is NOT ok in a different group of powers.

I have no desire for ML to be nerfed at all, they should just change it to accept normal rech.

A lack of consistency from them and decisions that make me question their thought processes just leave a bad taste.

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[color= orange]While you could always slot powers like Lightning Storm and Fire Imps with Recharge enhancements, that Recharge did not carry over to the attacks belonging to the summoned pets. That situation did not occur until i9 (in some cases) or i11 (in other cases), when you were able to "sneak Recharge through" using set enhancements (that were not technically "Recharge enhancements") with Recharge in them.[/color]

The information in the Combat Numbers window is generally reliable (if you know how to read it), but when you're looking at reported Recharge rates you're actually using a "Power Info" window, and those are unfortunately not always reliable, especially when it comes to things like Recharge. Just look at the reported Recharge for a power, activate Hasten, and see if the number changes (it does not). On the flip-side, [u]look at a pet power slotted with regular Recharge enhancements, and see if the reported Recharge rate changes when you change that slotting. It does, [color= yellow]but the *actual* Recharge rate does not[/color].[u] Basically, the Power Info for pet powers always gives false positives for Recharge slotting, so it's not in itself a way to notice that slotted Recharge has in some cases been carried over to pet powers.

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Yeah, when I slot common recharge enhancements on my Fire Imps, the Combat Window would report enhanced recharge rates for their one power. I never noticed if they were attacking faster or not, though, but wasn't it the case for LS as well? Or LS bolts were not affected by recharge slotting but only by the player's global recharge bonuses (including Hasten)? Given recharge enhancements (IOs or not) were "enhancing" (in Combat Window numbers) Fire Imps' attack rate, one would figure it would enhance LS bolts' recharge as well, which could lead to the assumption that recharge being carried over to pet powers was, in a general sense, "working as intended," and hence they could invest their bazillions of inf on slotting for recharge. The only exception would be MM pets, which powers, by design, do not accept recharge slotting, except through one purple set.

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[color= orange]Orange[/color] part re-added by me.
[color= yellow]Yellow[/color] emphasis mine.

Slotting regular Recharge enhancements into Fire Imps or Lightning Storm will make their power info windows *report* a reduced Recharge for their powers, but that is only a display error, and it will *not* actually reduce that Recharge. Those Recharge enhancements have no effect on the powers belonging to those pets. The powers simply ignore any enhancements of the type Recharge.

However, set IOs make it possible to bypass that. When I slot a Decimation: Acc/End/Rech into Lightning Storm, that's not a Recharge enhancement, it's a *Damage* enhancement (that just happens to improve Recharge, and not Damage), and thus Lightning Storm's Lightning power happily accepts its bonuses, which happens to include Recharge. Because of that, you can use (set) enhancements to improve the Recharge of Lightning Storm's Lightning power, even though that power is intended to ignore all Recharge enhancements.
*That* is what they're trying to fix here.

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Wonder if they are fixing the display window? or if people are just supposed to know that it does nothing.

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Opinionative, you have no idea what tha game would ahve done had ED not arrived in the form it did. Its an opinion I share though, I too think ED was best for the game.

However developers are not infaliable seers with powers to identify what is best for the game longevity, after all look what SOE did with SWG.

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Oh, I don't deny any of this. I just think it's funny that Ryu is calling on one of the periods of drama that, while painful at the time, proved to be beneficial, and using that as an analogy for why this change is so awful. It doesn't make for a very strong case.

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I too think ED turned out to be the right decision though it is still implemented poorly imo much like DR in pvp they seem to really struggle with the concept of curves rather than hard stops. Under ED if I choose (cause they brag about player customization all the time) to 6 slot for damage it should still provide a noticeable benefit over 3 slotting, 4 and even 5 slotting, but shouldn't be overall as beneficial to a power as mixing (diversifying) my enhancements.

They really struggle with that concept though. And while they talk about curves something that scales to 100 but the curve covers a range of 1 to 3 may as well be a straight line for all intents and purposes.

At any rate, we can't really say if ED was beneficial to the game unless the sub numbers went up a lot. I think they may have actually decreased a bit no or they have remained pretty consistent? I think they have stayed more or less the same, so one could suggest that ED did almost nothing for the game.

We also can't say whether a different group of devs wouldn't have come up with a far better (or worse) idea that made the game grow considerably (or fail).

We can ascertain that the "hero" mmo market is a lot bigger than cox is capturing though unless one believes that the new entrants expect to kill off the competition. I have no idea if cox wants to grow, they may be very complacent (yes I chose that word specifically) with their current subs. I think it is fair to say that if they want to grow they have had no idea how up to this point. MA seems like a great attempt and will hopefully prove successful

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Lightning Storm (et al) were designed and balanced around their base recharge. IOs (and Hasten, for a small part) broke that balance. So they're being reset. They were never designed to do that much damage.

Which, granted, makes them suck more, but that's the point of nerfs, and nobody's going to be happy with less.

What I'm most upset about is the fact that the purple pet sets were lauded as having this as a feature, so people like me spent, literally, hundreds of millions of influence on them, and now that feature is useless, and that money (and time we spent making it) is worthless.

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Actually in i7 pseudo-pets like LS were actually changed to inherent the casters' state. Now rech (ie hasten, speedboost) "may" not have been intended, but I find that very hard to believe that it wasn't known to be happening like claimed. That is pretty... well I think more of cox players than the devs do perhaps heh. Or perhaps it was known and never intended right from the get go, but for some reason never made the "known issues" list.

The rest about the SA set I agree with, but my advice is sell them before they tank as the chances of any meaningful compensation being given to the set is slim.

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Would it be possible for us to be given a list of things that are not "working as intended" so we will know what to expect? Is building for perma or near perma Phantom Army the next thing to get nerfed? Or what about perma freezing rain? Is it "working as intended" that I can have Ice Slick out again within a few seconds of it ending?

Are controllers that are built for -control- not supposed to do any damage?

Just level with us. Its amazing how much angst you can head off at the pass with a little candor.

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Even assuming they had a list of powers that aren't WAI they would never release it to us because it would force too much accountability, which I think we can all appreciate as we wouldn't want to have a year long todo list published with thousands of people yapping at you to get to it.

It would be nice to help prevent stealth nerfing and backpedalling, but not realistic.

I wouldn't object to a little better use of the "known issues" section though. And in major changes like this it is nice to have a heads up similar to what has been done with such things as blaster defiance in the past.

Asking for player feedback even with no intention of listening to it (i13 pvp pops into mind) is still easier to swallow than "surprise".
Feeling powerless in the face of change is very unpleasant. I gave into the last few days and went off the deep end. I've seen plenty of others do it too and it is basically because in a sick sense we feel like we are being violated.

In all seriousness if +rech to the point where a pet is attack twice as fast is being considered broken by the devs it is only a matter of time before it is determined that some sets being capable of buffing pet damage by 4x base isn't "WAI"

That sounds bleak, but this recharge nerf is intended to flatten the performance across all sets with pets relative to their brethren. It has other benefits as originally stated and as stated later when more was revealed, but flattening performance is key.

Damage buffing will be next once the devs decide it isn't WAI for certain sets to be doing twice as much damage as others.

Debuffers will follow, but given the complexity will take much longer for them to find a "one size fits all" solution.

Not calling doom as this is all i16 or later stuff I imagine. Of course I could just be a crackpot, but take a long look at all of the recent power rebalancing across the game and honestly ask yourself if you want every toon to be the exact same in performance just with different light effects?

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Now, you combine the two things...and suddenly, pet powers which were never meant to have recharge be altered (Lightning Storm is a great example here) are firing off much faster than intended.

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I can admit that when Lightning Storm was allowed to inherit recharge bonuses, the effect of IO sets increasing the zap rate wasnt known. But the developers definitely listed in the changes the fact that these powers inherited these things. So saying they were never meant to have recharge altered cannot be accurate. That was a SELLING point of the issue it came out in.

Now, if you want to say that IO sets affecting it wasnt accounted for then fine.

I wish that at least Hasten still affected Lightning Storm's zap rate. How about a small buff to the damage or the attack rate?

Lewis

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this was what I thought too, I just feel like I am the only one remembering these things, so it is nice to see I'm not the only one. At least hiker found the dev post that supports what I say in my sig, but again I seem to be the only one that even cares.

It is almost like this (coh and castle) is some sort of religion and no one dares question even though the leader one day says you should worship pine cones as the messiah and the next day says they are the devil.

I remember the issue where buffs transfered over to LS as well and I also recall it being a "feature". It is pretty obvious though that IO's are causing things to be rebalanced and revisited, which was only inevitable despite reassurance that IO's wouldn't be treated that way when possible.

all well.

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In fact I would like for someone to prove its game breaking for LS to be the way it is.

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You say that like it matters. It doesn't. "Game-breaking" means its definitely not allowed. "Not game-breaking" means nothing.

Proving something in the game is not game breaking is comparable to proving it doesn't cause acne.


On the subject of what is and is not intuitive, I generally stay away from the subject in general, but one of the things I find most non-intuitive is that pets often use a higher damage scale than their casters, which means a low damage archetype is effectively allowed to summon the use of powers that operate beyond their damage scale.

The "intuitive" bomb does not discriminate targets. It should be considered the nuclear option and left in its silos.

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good point, but didn't really apply to LS or VS did it. VS blast was about equal to a t1 no and LS was about a t1.5? Not saying that as anything other than they seemed to be specifically adjusted to not do too much damage on the AT's they were found on. (ie fender LS hit harder than troller LS and corr VS scourges).

I dunno, never really looked at that part too closely tbh.

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Based on my experience with a reasonably random sampling of player characters in pick up groups, I have not observed hasten to be very commonly used.

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Hmm. Pretty much everyone I know has it and uses it. Maybe the drunk server is just the smart server too

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the three power pools I see most often are:
fitness
speed
flight

(in no particular order). I'd be surprised if data mining showed a diff powerpool higher than any of those in pve.

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1) recharge from set IOs affecting pet attack rate - This had been publically stated as unintended behavior, but not recently enough and in the clearest way possible.

2) recharge carried over from buffs on the player such as Hasten, SB, AB, AM - perhaps that had been publically stated as unintended behavior (I'm not sure - never saw it myself). It seemed a bit odd to me, but in light of all other in-game oddities it wasn't obviously unintended.

3) recharge placed directly onto targeted pets from outside buffs such as SB, AB, AM...I've never seen that stated as unintended, and in fact this type of buffing always appeared to be 100% intended to me.

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Agreed. I think that last one is why the devs hesitated as long as they did, and why "no one was happy with the decision", in Castle's words. The last one SEEMS correct, at least for true pets, it is a separate entity, and thus buffed separately. It may not be correct for psuedo pets, or at least those that are not targettable, as they should probably fire at whatever rate has been set for them. It's the other buffs from the player that should carry over to the pseudo-pet, but recharge is how often the player fires the "pet", not how often the "pet" fires.

The thought just hit me, that if a player is hit by AM, then summons a pet, then that pet is hit by AM, assuming the pet gets the player's recharge carried over, does that mean the pet now has the equivalent of TWO stacked AMs running on him? The AM also lets the caster summon the pet more often, but if he also passes his recharge buff to the pet, that means the damage is not just exponetial, it's cubic. (Actually, it's more like 2xAM^2, which is still squared)

Needless to say, it probably never got that bad (LS probably could inherit AM from the caster, but could not be buffed by it directly) but maybe trying to preserve 3) was a mistake. You still do get the advantage of more frequent summoning, except with Masterminds. And the AI was probably designed around foes, not pets and henchmen, so the devs didn't even bother to find out how recharge would effect it.

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No, true pets like an imp if that is what you are talking about didn't carry over caster buffs.

Pets like LS if that is what you are talking about just carry over the buffs the caster has at the time. If you had one AM on you the LS would summon with 20%more rech and 25% more damage (think that is the AM #'s). It wouldn't start stacking AM's from nowhere. If the buff expires on the caster while LS is still active then the buff drops from LS. This is why assault has no effect on LS, it ticks too often and why global IO rech only buffed it for about 10 sec.

None of the pets could self stack powers to the point the universe would colapse . Nothing beyond the example you give of some pets double benefiting from rech in that they attack faster and you can summon them faster provided of course you can stack that pet, which for LS you can, but for VS you can't.

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what's done is done, but I can assure you most people will be surprised by this on live, your assumption of game knowledge and dev position by the average player is way off.

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Actually, I'm guessing if you walk up to a random player of the game and ask him, "Hey, if I slot Lightning Storm with Recharge, what's going to happen?" he will say, "It comes up more often". If he says "It fires faster -- oh, and it also comes up more often" then more than likely he already knows what you know.

You might run into the occasional player who knows enough about it to say, "Um... I'm guessing it either recharges faster, or it fires more often. Probably recharges faster. Yeah, that's probably it", then he knows enough to know the game, but not about that set specifically.

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No I mean when you speed boost a pet and it now does nothing but make it run into the next mob and die faster, that will come as a nice surprise to live players.

I agree not many people knew how to improve LS. Like I said at one point I just always figured it did, someone else could just as easily figure differently. I didn't set out to game LS though, I just saw that it has an epic recharge, costs a third of my end bar and does low base damage and wanted to improve all those aspects. Most don't know it has very high acc too, and I was among them. With 4 attributes to improve I just jammed in some cheap set IO's and voila. I didn't even consciously know how much LS benefited until I sat down and ran some numbers and was like "woah" this is a good power, it does about as much st damage as my imps.

Which tbh seemed right to me as it cost a lot more end over time than imps and can't move, seemed like how it was supposed to be. I was wrong lol.

At any rate, this patch once people realize they can no longer buff real pets will draw some cockeyed looks.