Animal Companion Stealth and Knockout Wounds?

[Arranvin]

Hello folks. I was wondering if someone with more experience of the game than I have can answer a couple of questions for me. First off, how is an animal companion's proficiency with stealth calculated? Do they become more stealthy when you put points into your ranger's stealth skill, or is the value determined by the animal companion's level?

 

Secondly, are animal companions meant to take knockout injuries? I've been noticing this since I started a solo PotD run (3.01), given how often my wolf is tanking for my woof elf. It seems a bit odd given that animal companions are essentially unkillable as long as their ranger survives but if it's intended fair enough.

 

Thanks for reading!

[Ymarsakar]

Hello folks. I was wondering if someone with more experience of the game than I have can answer a couple of questions for me. First off, how is an animal companion's proficiency with stealth calculated? Do they become more stealthy when you put points into your ranger's stealth skill, or is the value determined by the animal companion's level?

 

Secondly, are animal companions meant to take knockout injuries? I've been noticing this since I started a solo PotD run (3.01), given how often my wolf is tanking for my woof elf. It seems a bit odd given that animal companions are essentially unkillable as long as their ranger survives but if it's intended fair enough.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Animals used to have more severe penalties for rangers, but the code was hard to hash out in Unity, so they rebalanced the class and made it easier to use, with less inter connection between the ranger pet and ranger.

 

I haven't noticed the ranger's stealth skill affecting Sagani's fox.

 

Originally the design was to have the ranger take part of the health damage from their pet's endurance damage.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Arranvin]

So knockout injuries for animal companions are intentional then? I'm just surprised that I've never noticed them before. And I think I'll do some testing tonight with different stealth values, see if it makes a difference.

[nem0]

I can't comment on the stealth question, I remember reading about it somewhere but now I am unable to find it; I would assume it matches the rangers stealth though.

 

Knockout injuries were added in the 3.0 or 3.1 update.  They are supposed to be there but I believe there is an option in the menus to turn it off if you don't want it.

[MaxQuest]

The thing about animal's knockout injuries is that you can see them only when you mouseover them in combat...

 

As for stealth... Look at this screenshot.

Pallegina has 0 stealth.

Sagani has 11 stealth.

[Arranvin]

Hmmmm, that's really weird. I do feel that more recently (as opposed to 1.06, where I played a fair bit then stopped and started playing again at 2.0) stealth just seems to influence the range at which people notice my characters, rather than how quickly they are noticed. Maybe there's a minimum range where your skill doesn't matter?

[Arranvin]

Oops, never mind, I was viewing this on my phone and it looked like Sagani's circle was fuller than it is due to the position of Ituumak's tail. I guess animal companions don't get skill ranks. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise, if I remember correctly they used to get really fatigued from not having athletics.

[Teioh_White]

Man, these knock-out wounds are putting a damper on my all ranger playthrough, almost crippling it if intentional. (Or at least forcing me to actually rest more than once an Act). Seeing as even the trash pull plan generally relies on at least a few of the critters taking a dirtnap, those wounds add up fast. And for the hard fights, which I largely won through Revive Scroll spam, loses a lot of luster as a plan when all the pets have 4+ wounds.

 

It is a bit of a shame, half the reason I loved Rangers so much was the pets had infinite health, and when you're trying to win with as few rests as possible like I like to play, that was a big appeal.

 

Unreleated, but playing with 12 Chars, plus sometimes more from Idols, really just shows how horrid the pathing is in this game. Fights I should be able to just let the team largely handle itself, only keeping an eye if I need to peel if they try and end around, I instead have to micro. This is because things frequently just try to somewhere, run into something, and just stop. Or they keep running back and forth to get around something, instead of committing to a path, and end up going no where. Or they try to attack something they could get too by running around one guy on their right, but instead choose to try to run all the way around literally everyone else to come from the otherside.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Teioh_White

[KDubya]

What would be cool is if you get Itumaak ten or so wounds that Sagani makes some sort of comment to you to stop getting her dog hurt Or Itumaak stops taking orders from you to attack and instead runs and hides.

[Maxzero]

Man, these knock-out wounds are putting a damper on my all ranger playthrough, almost crippling it if intentional. (Or at least forcing me to actually rest more than once an Act). Seeing as even the trash pull plan generally relies on at least a few of the critters taking a dirtnap, those wounds add up fast. And for the hard fights, which I largely won through Revive Scroll spam, loses a lot of luster as a plan when all the pets have 4+ wounds.

 

It is a bit of a shame, half the reason I loved Rangers so much was the pets had infinite health, and when you're trying to win with as few rests as possible like I like to play, that was a big appeal.

 

Unreleated, but playing with 12 Chars, plus sometimes more from Idols, really just shows how horrid the pathing is in this game. Fights I should be able to just let the team largely handle itself, only keeping an eye if I need to peel if they try and end around, I instead have to micro. This is because things frequently just try to somewhere, run into something, and just stop. Or they keep running back and forth to get around something, instead of committing to a path, and end up going no where. Or they try to attack something they could get too by running around one guy on their right, but instead choose to try to run all the way around literally everyone else to come from the otherside.

 

Eh most of the wounds are actually quite tame. -saves is meaningless since pets have awful saves. -healing is pointless because you have little pet healing anyway. A -2 to stat is weak as well.

 

You only really notice -DR wounds. I often had pets with 3-4 wounds with little to no effect on their effectiveness at all.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Maxzero

[Teioh_White]

Twisted Ankle was the one really messing me up; pets already move slow to begin with, and this really hurt their ability to peel enemies making an end around. Plus the whole, -20% hp and DR's not helping their tanky ability, and the -25% attack speed hurting their dps quite a bit.

 

Just two or three is fine, but the 6x Ranger plan generally calls for almost all the animals to die at least once per encounter, so they'll get the whole collection soon enough if not resting to cleanse them.

[kvaak]

Twisted Ankle was the one really messing me up; pets already move slow to begin with, and this really hurt their ability to peel enemies making an end around. Plus the whole, -20% hp and DR's not helping their tanky ability, and the -25% attack speed hurting their dps quite a bit.

 

Just two or three is fine, but the 6x Ranger plan generally calls for almost all the animals to die at least once per encounter, so they'll get the whole collection soon enough if not resting to cleanse them.

 

I ran PotD with six rangers, meet team bear. I didn't really notice knockout injuries doing a whole lot, if I had to rest it was due to one of the rangers getting mauled. I'm also fairly sure pets move at the same speed as other characters although they can't get +MS items or talents.

 

And no, I didn't realize elves had a racial designed for ranged combat until I was already done.

no slightest idea why the PC is using swift aim

Edited March 8, 2016 by kvaak