The viability of tentacles

[Repth]

Yes, so a character of mine became a Wyrm Master and I finally got the tentacles I wanted. Then I set them up and aside from killing tier one characters which grants me no xp, I noticed they were pretty lack luster.

Ok, I said to myself. I need to get favor of Gnak, that will help. Well it sort of helped. Aside from making the damage less soakable, arguably, I have not really noticed the benefit. I don't feel like I spent 90 cp or like this is a tier 3 pet.

The acid damage is still soaked by most people that run into my tentacles. The % chance to hit makes them miss on anyone that's not mortal, some tier 2's and almost all tier 3's.
The hp increase is insignificant as what's 5 hp if people can charge attacks and do 20+ easily.
The increase in mp and ap is not felt because the tentacles never really hit.
The rejuv on kill is nice, but like I said, they can't hit anything other than mortals, resulting in no xp.
No despawning is nice, but they still can't hit anything and rejuv, so there's very few moments where this comes in handy.

Here's are an example of my log.

[Hungerer]

Earlier in the breath tentacles ruled. Now there are mostly tier 3 characters they don't pack enough punch to be used as an xp net.

[Mallich]

As a a member of the Raggeds (currently on loan) I can say that Udolf The Insane was deadly with his tentacles.
When we moved into the mountain research facility pocket space he was pretty much scattering them all over the space. When the stronghold was down he could move in and deny us ground by spawning those tentacles, then withdraw back to his stronghold.

I think that tentacles (whose advantage is "you can be elsewhere") are best used when you're elsewhere. If you hide out in a stronghold and Dark Heart people on full MP you'll be able to produce quite a few tentacles.
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|The Devil On Your Shoulder 4407 | Mira Lasan 1724 | Officer Horwood 1763 | A Ghast 5143 | A Velociraptor 3721 | Father Christmas 3115 |

[Madz]

I dunno. I just released my Wyrm Master to make a Lich.

Basically, Tentacles felt underwhelming. The ambush thing is a double edged sword since you can't bring them to a raid, you need to either get imps for 90 more CP or you DH on raid. Non-aura'd non-wearing-posion-armor non-dodgy targets are the first to die ,usually, so it's a race against time you can also go crazy and bring in MRs.

But even then when I did manage to get a good tentacle mass it was just a matter of time before either someone dodgy or with some defensive abilities (prayer can yield some pretty nasty stuff) and it was all gone, maybe one or two kills and a faction kept out of their home for some time, time that their main roster wouldn't really be there due to organizing a recap/doing whatever when you don't have a SH.

It's good to mess around and plant them in resource buildings but then, eh.

[Repth]

That's what I'm saying. And even leaving them in strategic places doesn't usually result in much exp because mortals don't grant xp and ninjas or sponges come along and laugh at the tentacles.

It just doesn't seem worth it. They're supposed to be defensive pets but even with favor of gnak they have less defensive capability than the basic unupgraded 30 cp hell hounds. Less health, less chance to hit, even less defense % on a defensive pet. 30 cp Hellhounds even have fire immunity. Tentacles only advantage is being left behind in odd ball places and surprising people; they aren't even a threat to over half the people they surprise.

Shame... just a darn shame.
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hi

[pancakes]

I agree with a lot here, since they have such low hp and mp and with dark heart being a terribly unreliable MP source, it takes much work getting tents up. Then they are easily slaughtered by any tank, anyone who hits hard, any wisp conduit, anyone with potions, and anyone with a aura or aura spellgem.

So pretty much they are useful against unpotioned T1s, and half of the T2s. Starting to wish I went with hellhounds. The novelty of being able to place them anywhere is cool but mostly it just provides xp for passersby.
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Alternative Heroes, we're the best. petep has agony curse.

<GK> I now have 3 puppies, and 3 kittens, thinking about eating them

[Repth]

Yeah, it's more than just "oh darn this pet isn't what I wanted it to be". It's more like "Oh, this pet is completely broken...."
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hi

[Terrion]

[pancakes]

[oblivious]

One thing you don't always see as the WM is that your tentacles may be forcing other players to adjust their behavior. eg maybe a rival faction has fewer faks than they would have if you hadn't set up tentacles in the hospital.

I think a lot of the dissatisfaction may be a special case of dissatisfaction with dodge enchantments.

I have a vague sense that damage auras and high dodge should never occur on the same person simultaneously, which they currently do because of spell auras and dodge enchants.

Unupgraded tentacles are pretty worthless and always have been.

Acid tentacles (WM pets generally, really) are worthless against Howlers and IBs.

It may be in my head, but the mild Seraph aura buff seems to have a big effect on tentacles. Tentacles have always been highly susceptible to damage auras because of their low HP.

I think tentacles look worse because we now compare them to ghouls which are IMO OP.

We have to look at tentacles as one part of the WM class rather than looking at them in isolation. WMs have a bunch of different pets that are individually less powerful than other pets, but each have unique shticks and damage types. WMs also have the advantage of being able to summon bigger numbers more easily, but the value of that has fallen over the course of the breath.

Mainly I think the issue is just dodge buffs, which hit tentacles particularly hard.

[Repth]

The combination of dodge and auras is a pretty big problem for my tentacles. My understanding is that auras activate even when the attack against a person with an aura is missed. Yet, someone who has an aura active only deals supplemental damage when a hit is made, not on a miss. So why does it work one way and not the other? This doesn't make sense to me, especially with how much dodge people can get now.

Tentacles don't even land one hit and take enough aura damage to kill them.

My experience with auras is limited and I only think this is how they work, so if I am wrong, forgive me.
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hi

[Ongewitter]

Just going to pop in and say that most pets (apart from singular pets, Hounds and Boneseekers) have equal or less than the Tentacles' 60% tohit.

So either a lot of people are also getting screwed (because Judgies have 55%) and they're not talking, or something else is wrong with the tentacles specifically.

Oh and regarding this

[Morthalius]

[pancakes]

I know it is kind of comparing apples to oranges but yeah I run a LS and a WM.

My best LS pet's stats:
1182 AP
132 MP
110HP
45% to hit
10 Holy
6 Electric
When I can be bothered to pick up the Exploration badges this will be upped to
55%
12 Holy
8 Slashing

My best WM's pets stats:
174 AP
30 MP
35 HP
60% to hit
8 Acid
5 Impact

The to-hit is almost identical, no qualms there, but the tentacles I find are more susceptible to tanks of both the dodge variety (low low low MP) and aura variety (low low low HP), do far less damage and are much harder to summon in mass, especially with dodge armored faction mates and enemies and since DH can't be buffed in any way to compensate. While the LS is capable of getting MP for 0ap via energize. My LS is energized all day long every time I check my MP is full again.

I understand not every LS receives the same love that I do but it does not negate the fact that this is a possibility for LSes, an option afforded to them and liches but not the WM. It is increasingly hard to get a WM's pets up. If there were a WM skill that buffed DH I would get that in a heartbeat.

It's like you have to choose, do you want your faction-mates to have dodge or do you want to have pets. LSes don't have to make that choice, they get both.

An LS has a small variety of skills that help support their pet skills.
My LS can summon 4 sprites for 15 mp and my WM can summon 1 imp for the same. I have to land 2 successful dark hearts per imp, the LS can get the mp for sprites for free. The sprites can heal everyone in the faction, the imp just protects the WM.

The imp provides 20 hp that is not soaked, a pack of 4 sprites provides 320 hp, 16 times that of an imp and even the average of 2.5 sprites provides 200hp (10x imp) for what I find to be a much lower summoning cost when AP is taken into consideration.

Furthermore, the Death Harbinger skill works on pets, so a herald can soak up, activate holy fury and go to town on a WM and kill all the imps without losing an AP and gain a ton of MP in the process that would more than negate the imps magic drain.
So not only are tents a poorer offensive pets but really what good are imps as a defensive pet in comparison?
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Alternative Heroes, we're the best. petep has agony curse.

<GK> I now have 3 puppies, and 3 kittens, thinking about eating them

[Repth]

Jeez, what an intense post. I wish I knew about the shortcomings of WM ahead of time, I would have made a different class. Oh well, there's always next breath I guess...
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hi