14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard Entertainment is apparently trying to score points with PETA, as the developer is currently working on a patch to make pets survive longer in the harsh realm of Greater Rifts.
The news comes from a blue post on the official Diablo 3 forums on Battle.net, with Game Designer John Yang stating that the dev team is meaning to address the issue of squishy pets, that players have been lamenting over since the release of Reaper of Souls.
With Greater Rifts being the most difficult and rewarding activity in Diablo 3, it's understandable that most of the action role-playing title's users have taken to getting the most out of their time with the game by focusing exclusively on grinding them, but some of the classes and builds are struggling with an unforeseen issue.
What's the dealio?
Greater Rifts are quite competitive, not to mention really difficult, and many players are complaining that their pets are simply dying too quickly, especially when facing Rift Guardians and the like, due to taking loads of damage and, on top of that, not being able to avoid various area of effect spells that players usually circumnavigate easily.
This led the team to implement some changes, which Yang explains on the forums, summing it all up in a neat design philosophy that states that pets should have as much survivability as the players, no more, no less.
"Pets should derive their Toughness from yours, and if you skip out on it, your pets' survivability should be noticeably lower as a result. On the flip side, they should be noticeably tougher if you've increased your own Toughness. You shouldn't skimp on Toughness just because you have pets," Yang clarifies.
He says that all pets should scale with a player's survivability stats, which is not the case for the time being. Furthermore, pets shouldn't become invulnerable tanks that players can hide behind, but they should be able to pull their own weight in battle.
How increased survivability works
In order to provide an improvement in pet survivability, the team has decided to make them take reduced damage based on how avoidable the monster attack is for a player, which means that instead of getting AI that would make them run away from attacks, they'll still be able to output enough damage.
The attacks that monsters can perform fall into three main categories, the first of which covers basic melee and weak projectile attacks that are not expected to be dodged by players, and that will continue doing full damage to pets.
The second category includes special attacks such as fireball, that deal significantly more damage than basic attacks, and that are generally avoidable by players, and as such will do also do reduced damage to pets.
The third category is the most significant balance change, covering telegraphed attacks of area of effect spells that are intended for players to avoid altogether, and that deal massive amounts of damage, which will be altered to deal drastically reduced damage to pets.
For the time being, the team is still experimenting with the particularities of how the changes work on an individual basis, but the majority of monsters in the game should already follow the guidelines.
