Buff Pets... and more!


Pets are OP… or are they? They definitely have changed the landscape of Realm’s balances. It’s a huge factor in balancing, and it’s often factored in designing enemies and character equipment/skill in terms of mana to skill effect and cooldown.

The view so far, pets need to be rebalanced.

Now, the reality:

  • Players have spent good money on Divine pets, a chunk won’t be happy if they are nerfed
  • Players have spent good time on at least Rare-Legendary, another chunk won’t be happy if they are nerfed
  • Current content has been balanced around the existence of pets; Nerfing them would mean another rebalance of the current content

Now, what is the best way to change stuff in game without offending these points?

Proposal: Buff Pets

That's right, this is the going on the other extreme line of thought. The game's progression is quite tied to pets for a more persistent progression, so why not make it better? Let's see why and what it means.

More robust pet system

The current pet system is: Feed if you have FP/Fame. Fuse if you can. No interaction if you don't have either. It's a very simple interaction, but little actual activity. The most I have done is hunt for the right race and ability, but once you got it, that interaction is gone as well. Being able to tinker around with what your pets can do and just general goofing around with... **pets** would be awesome.

1. Growth System

This is the current "Feed"-ing system. This actually increases your pet's skills and level. Take it somewhat as a loyalty level or synchronize level.

2. Food/Mood System

At 0 Mood, pets wouldn't receive any bonus, but it won't act worse either. You could groom your pet by clicking it in the pet yard. You can groom your pet daily, increasing their mood by 1 every time. Think the animal hearts in Harvest Moon. It decreases every 2-3 days of neglect(log in, but no interaction), so you have a good buffer time in case you can't enter realm. It caps out at 50.

Spoiling your pet is bad though, you gotta balance it with actual work! Get it out and give it food… the souls of your enemies. Enemy in EXP/2000 are worth 1 Food. It caps out at 50, and decreases by 15 per day regardless of log in.

Both of these will act as bonus stats for your character; They will increase your max HP by (Food + Mood) and MP by (Food + Mood)/2 Points. A total whoopin of 150 stats, darn isn’t that good? A generous dollop of pure stats that everyone would enjoy. Do I believe that it would be game breaking? No, not really. 100 HP is a T3 HP ring and 50 MP is a little stronger than a T1 MP ring, but these stats would be much appreciated by late game players and early game players alike. Besides, the title of the idea is Buff Pets, not exactly rebalance them. I’ll take making them even stronger than as is than making them boring.

Skills Revamp

Here's an even bigger kicker!


No more slot 1 and slot 2 eaten by these pesky ability. It basically killed the variety in pets ability, and by making it available to ALL pets, it eases the hunt for the basically mandatory and turns it into the hunt for the preferred skills. So what does it mean for the current pets?

Current pets will be treated as Legacy Pets. They can be traded in for new pets, choosing which abilities they want for skill 1 and skill 2.
This way, people may even hunt for multiple pets, ones with different combinations of skills for different classes. Decoy/Savage is definitely not your cup of tea for a rogue, but as a Necromancer that would be pretty sweet. Maybe Attack Close/Rising Fury/Savage for that low DPS priest to help with soloing dungeons.

Closing Words

Pets are busted, but they are already essential to the game. Instead of thinking of ways to nerf them, I tried the approach of buffing them; make them fun to be used and built. It will definitely shift the fighting power of players up, but it will give players long term goals which persists between characters which is a good pick-me-up to losing characters.


I didn’t read this all, but in order to balance overpowered pets, you want to buff them?


In a way, yeah. They’re still gonna be OP anyway, so might as well make them fun to build/interact with.

Edit: As in, I don’t see them getting the nerf hammer any time soon… if at all


This is one of the few unpopular ideas that i totally agree with, i don’t see this as a buff more of as a general rework to improve pets without nerfing them into oblivion


I mean, they are literally going to introduce a pet nerf some time in the not so distant future…


Lets just turn the game into a pinata hitting simulator


A good part of this idea’s conception is the backlash I read from the PT of pet’s nerf. Sure, it might be a vocal minority (or not. Don’t exactly have the data), but I think their complaints are legitimate. Besides, it won’t be the first time my Idea became obsolete due to game rebalance/mechanic change (RIP Wicked Gameshow, a dungeon based around Realm’s jank)

Edit: Shameless Plug

I mean… isn’t it already for low-mid bosses? I’d be hard pressed to believe that Limon is not one for a warrior. And for high end bosses, 100 HP is pretty much 1 more hit, or even half. MBC and the gang deals pretty hurty shots. Not to mention, pinata hitting simulators can be fun(heck, there’s that one specific pinata hitting simulator…)

That being said, I believe that you have a lot more experience in balancing the game than I do, so please do share your insight on the flaws/risks of this idea.


I don’t think this is [ an alright idea for RoTMG, but probably for a different kind of mmo], for two main reasons

1, Giving HP and MP heal to every pet does not fix the existing issues with pet abilities.

all this does is make pets more convienent (which is nice), but not fix the other 2/3 of abilities that are useless or majorly flawed. Like I’ve said before, I would like it if an approach similar to what my familiar idea was going for (which was a branching skill tree with revamped leveling), but even if it wasn’t like that, anything would be better than simply moving bits and pieces of the existing system around and calling it revamped or improved.

(the trade in for legacy pets is also a bad idea, this would most likely make people upset still, but there’s not much you can do about that).


2, The food and mood system is eh

I dont really like the idea of this since it can be easily used to push more dubious things (microtransactions, time gating, etc), and I feel like its rather unnecessary for the type of game realm is. That and the pet yard can be quite the pain to go through if you have alot of pets, and I feel like people wouldn’t really bother with it sadly.


To be fair, i like the idea of having heal mheal built into every pet, and promoting more diversity then having heal, mheal and electric as the meta, However, from my understanding, most people who want a pet nerf want it because,

but im not nececarily sure buffing pets is the right approach- the game loses its rogue-like part and the focus on power shifts of skill and onto pet level. Do people really want to start chipping away even more at the fundamental feature of perma-death?

I think pets need a re-balance, not a direct buff, not a direct nerf. Specific skills need to be buffed, and specific skills need to be nerfed, more skills could be added, and perhaps to link all these changes together, some way to swap what abilities pets use

  • Attack Close, Attack Far, Attack Mid
  • Savage
  • Electric
  • Decoy
  • Rising Fury
    -Attack series abilities doesn’t give you SB damage, but it does clear out enemies decently
    -Savage saves you effort on pet location manipulation, very nice for combo
    -Electric is paralysis. From my experience, it can be both good and bad, so by your preference.
    -Decoy is honestly kinda busted, but some class really doesn’t mesh well with it, like the rogue, and sometimes a trickster’'s decoy
    -Rising Fury is probably the only offender here, but from using it, I love it’s huge damage and AoE effect. At high levels, it seems that it can go pretty far, but not quite sure since I don’t have the data
    All of these abilities are nowhere in power level as MP Heal and HP Heal, but in general they are at about similar power levels IMO, but YMMV indeed

Fair nuff, I can kinda see why. I don’t understand about the dubious thing part, it seems like a fair point to let Deca give out special boosters for fame/gold to quickly up your food/mood. It’s just a few stat boost that you can gain normally anyway. About selecting pets for grooming, just like how feeding your pet have been improved, that’s not really an issue. You can even just hover your mouse over the preview on the bottom right when you choose to let it follow you or release it, but with an addition button to groom.

ah, this touches on one of my thought process; I think realm can’t go back to the way it was, not without severe consequences. Like a cooked egg, technically you can turn it back, but it takes a lot to do so.The moment pets are introduced, their presence dominates sales and playstyle and game balance, so this idea embraces it. Now that you mention it, how was the challenge realms that one time where everyone restarted?


Fuck it, Heroic Dungeons for every new feature time.

Pushing the envelope on the encroachment of pets honestly is the one way to go. I like having the system be a tad more interactive (aside find UT, feed pet, or buy pet food). Though DECA has kind of been on the fence of having people just being able to tank shots because good pet, which has led to a whole swarth of new Touhou-esque bosses to counter it. Such buffs may only make this problem worse, since answers to the problem have either been just wide bullet pattern of pet stasis (think marble colossus, Encore got it right in my book) or just turning them off completely, which is bullshit.

This would go great hand-in-hand with the infamous In/Out Combat, having pet healings still exist but not completely sending the Priest to the waste bin.


YOO I actually remember that wicked game show idea from like 2 years ago or something!