I really do like the Dino Tamer, but my biggest issue is how it plays so very differently from how it appears on paper. Looking over the descriptions of it’s skills, you’d think the DT was a pet class, using it’s passive to spawn large numbers of dinosaur buddies to offset the randomness of which buddies it would spawn, using the net and CC from the ultimate to hold enemies in place for your army. In practice, the DT gets most of his power from his (rather clunky) net, using his M1 only to keep the massively powerful poison rolling through the Trove Flux for sale. Throwing out dinosaurs is pretty much an afterthought, and not something I ever really feel like I need to be doing. Looking at the wiki, the Therizinosaurus, which is supposed to be the high damage pet, does approximately 300% magic damage every 2 seconds. Compared to the net, which naturally does 400% damage every 0.5 seconds, and that’s without the ultimate more than doubling the damage value. The Tamer seriously needs a rebalancing of power throughout his kit, away from his net and into other abilities. Here are my suggestions:
Gve Dino Buddies some form of charge system like the Tomb Raiser, where additional charges could be acquired through use of the passive. This would avoid situations where multiple targets die to the net in quick succession, effectively wasting multiple triggers of the passive. To balance it out, perhaps only one charge would build naturally, but up to 3 could be stored at once from the passive.
Reduce the net’s damage, and make it charge faster. The net is really sluggish to use right now, due mostly to how slowly it charges up. Making it a bit faster would make the ability more reliable and the class as a whole a lot smoother to play, as right now the Tamer has to stop attacking for quite a long time to get a net ready.
Buff the survivability and damage of the Dino Buddies. As a whole, the Buddies are an underwhelming part of the Dino Tamer’s kit, dealing mediocre damage and being very easy to kill, even with investment into health. Allowing the Buddies to be more of an assistance in late-game fights would make the Trove Flux ability as a whole worth using, perhaps diversifying their statistics more (Triceratops scales incredibly high with health, Therizino having much higher damage than the others, Quetzal being faster).
Make Dino Buddies spawn in a priority, making sure that the player has one of each type. For example, the ability could always spawn a Triceratops, then the Quetzal, then the Therizino, as needed. If any buddies have been killed, casting the ability would summon new buddies to fill missing Dinos in that order. This would make sure that the player is not dependent on RNG for damage and survivability, and is guaranteed to have one of each of the Dino Buddies at a time. If all 3 Dino Buddies are alive, further casts of the Dino Buddy skill would instead heal all active Buddies.
Remove maximum duration from Buddies, instead giving them a health drain similar to the Tomb Raiser’s skeletons. This ties into the previous point, allowing the Tamer to heal his pets. This would allow the Dino Tamer to be able to keep a team of Buddies alive for extended periods of time with well-timed uses of the Dino Buddies skill, topping off his pets. It would also require the Tamer to continuously play around his passive, consistently targeting enemies that have been hit by the net to generate new charges of Dino Buddies, in order to heal his team and keep them fighting.
To bring it all together, the Tamer right now isn’t all that fun of a class to play, because he’s not actually a powerful class by his mechanics. He’s fairly clunky due to the slow charge speed of the net, and he’s overly reliant on RNG in order to get the Dino Buddy summons you want (which aren’t really all that worth it anyway). What makes the class powerful is his absurdly high damage on his net, which can be continuously reapplied through sustained M1 shots. Only 3 parts of his kit are even worth using, and two of those (M1 and Ult) are just to buff the power of the cheapest trove flux other one (the net of doom). Rebalancing the Dino Tamer’s power throughout his kit would make him an alternative “summoner” class to the Tomb Raiser, trading out sheer number of minions for more power, and requiring more management through use of the net and passive to keep the Dino Buddies alive, as opposed to simply using M1 to heal. Even if the Dino Tamer wasn’t meant to be a pet class, making him one would be much more healthy for the class in the long run than simply making him a one-trick pony with his nets.
Albion Online Silver, Albion Online Gold 