Awakening tamer's pve is in a sorry spot and has been for many years now. Ever since the reworks, classes have been getting buffs (mainly the popular ones) and i understand why they would do this but it's very irresponsible to ignore other class balancing. I dont really want to flame pa too much so here's some options on how they should balance awake tamer to put her on par with other classes. Keep in mind i will only be talking about pve on awakening tamer.

There are 4 ways PA could balance tamer's pve. Before you read all of it right before the big text walls is the very summarized list of where i show the changes i would suggest if you aren't interested in reading it all (please read it all). If anyone from PA is reading this: I do not go over the problem that is dekiah/endgame and survivability/protections because some of these changes would impact it and potentially make the class better there.

Feedback is appreciated, PLEASE PA AT LEAST A RESPONSE.

1. Fix Heilang

2. Increase AOE of most awakening skills

3. Damage buffs to most awakening skills

4. Improvements to Pull Skills (aggro time/speed for mobs)

1. Fix Heilang

Ever since the class reworks about 2 years ago, heilang as been completely gutted unintentionally. He now does literally no damage to mobs past very beginning game (example: pollys). On top of this, his cc's are now completely unreliable and his ai far worse than pre-rework. The way pa could buff tamer is by either fixing the damage numbers (i believe they did try and failed in a patch post rework) or rework heilang to be similar to other summon classes, where the summon is locked inside a skill animation. The extra damage from the combo skills (values are in the game already just don't work) should be a decent damage buff to pve but comes with a potential downside for balancing. Pvp damage would also be changed and if PA fixes the ccs and ai with it, tamer could potentially be a lot stronger than she currently is in her niches in pvp. This could lead to future nerfs but would give the class literally half of her kit back and maintain her identity.

2. Increase AOE Size

One of tamers main drawbacks is the lack of aoe. Pve on the class consists of using the biggest aoes she can muster but some of the best damage options come from the smallest aoes (moonlight strike & LBD tiger). LBD tiger seems to be one of the smallest aoes in tamer's kit. You have to be literally touching the target in order for it to hit. It has good damage but is mostly unused only bc of the aoe. Beast rampage and allaround spinner have similar issues. Spinner has damage and BR doesn't in comparison, but they both have poor aoe vs the better options. These better options are garuda (skybound stab) and LBD turtle. Not only are garuda and LBD turtle spammable and maintain their full damage amount, they have way more aoe which makes mobs much easier to do consistent damage to. The only reason to use spinner and BR right now is for bsr or fg/hp sustain. By increasing their aoe size it will make both a bit more usable for damage and give tamer protections that it lacks severely. I would also recommend increasing the aoe size on just about every skill in the awakening kit (not a joke). The only skills I would exclude from this would be LBD vermillion/turtle, LBDE turtle/azure, as well as soaring strike, garuda, and ascension. Increasing aoe size comes with a drawback. This is the potential to impact pvp balance. Bigger aoe on tamer might make her a lot stronger depending on what skills are adjusted. This might lead to her getting nerfs to other aspects of her kit in the future and may end up changing her identity as a rat class with really small aoe that does well in smaller fights.

3. Damage Buffs

I know this is contraversial, but i do think that the most feasible buffs that could happen to the class are just flat damage buffs. It is the lowest effort change they could do in my opinion. The first skill that needs buffed bad is beast rampage. BR has the lowest dps out of the entire awakening kit, even worse than cloud ride, which is basically a movement skill. For one of the most notable skills in the kit to be rendered next to useless compared to others is really disappointing. In order for the damage to catch up to LBD turtle and garuda, BR would need to literally have double the damage it has currently and even then would not be a priority over the spammable skills due to its aoe being a lot smaller than them. Pretty much all other skills would have to be at least brought up to par with garuda/turtle and then some being buffed further to increase trash numbers. With tamer having among some of the smallest aoes out of most classes, i think it would make sense for her to make up for it in damage. The problem is right now isn't necessarily her damage (which keeps up with a good amount of classes), but by increasing her damage in many skills it would allow tamer to keep up with most classes and keep her in her niche as a small aoe rat class, as well as give her a niche in pve being able to excell in spots that dont need much aoe. One problem with this is that if pa raises the damage numbers too much tamer may become too prevalent and I dont think pa would like that, being that tamer isnt a popular class by any means.

4. Improvements to Pull Skills

I'm not sure of how aggroing works on mobs completely, but if there was a way to increase the aggro speed on mobs by using one of the 3 pulling skills in tamer's kit this might make midgame a niche for tamer if she can potentially aggro mobs as fast as sycraia mobs. Just a thought.

I couldn't agree more with the above suggestions, This wouldn't cause any significant pvp changes that would make us "broken" or "Unbalanced" but would allow us to be able to grind in awake again.

As it stands, Tamer has one option, And that is succession. While Succ is in a good spot in some places, it also severely lacks in others. With proper awaken buffs we could possibly open more viable grind spots for us.

Huge yes to number 1. Heilang has been literally useless for nearly 2 years. PLEASE make his damage scale properly.

Really all of these could work together, I would love to see the aoe and dmg of allround spinner get a massive increase, like to the point of successions roaring skill. the damage doesnt even need to carry over to pvp and the aoe wouldnt do anything since its only use is as a forward guard with no cc (even with the core the cc is on the last hit, really?) so thats an example of a skill that could see huge buffs an not affect pvp at all. 

On the note of the dog,

It feels like that PA forgot that we have access to it in awake, 
While in Successionm the dog is an important part of our kit, While in awake he may as well just be another pet that loots (Woah make heilang loot????) If anything is to be taken from this post is that All around spinner could be the biggest change that we could use. In PVP its just a frontal guard with minimal damage. While in PVE it could be a massive improvement for us

I'm agree to all what is written here but I would like to point some facts that show awakening tamer as a forgotten class afther reboot.

-She had a total of 0 damage changes on skills since reboot. (PVE and PVP wise)
-She had just 1 aoe change in a skill. (LBD Turtle slightly aoe increase).

Adding to what is written.
-Legendary beast dance echo is a bad skill since you cannot access freely to the animation/cc effect you desire.
-Got one of the worse pve change ever made. The RMB spam which is useless. It's unprotected and mobs nowadays cc. If you want to go any high-end spot. Casting a 4 sec unprotected melee skill to a group of mobs isn't good. Even more because you gonna lose the echo effect you are holding.

-Last Global Lab patch with changes to tamer was March 3rd. More than 6 months since the last changes. (ww gap change)

And the worst thing is that I've felt forced to grind with another character that I don't like because I am not competitive in good spots with my class.

Hey guys Archer is really weak please increase archer's range and aoe size of the skills so we can finally be able to grind with Archer... 

As someone that recently started heavily playing Tamer, its disheartening to know that Awakening isnt very viable, even if it is a very fun playstyle. It definitely feeels like a rather forgotten class in general. Your suggestions make a lot of sense, and explains some of the playability issues ive encountered in PVE as awakening. 

Thanks for making this post, I hope PA sees it!

Simple solutions, easy to implement, fully agree and have a few things to add:

1. Fix Heilang
  - Heilang pet damage bugged since 2021 class rework
  - Heilang damage was intended to be significant part of Awake damage, clear from numbers/AoE/behavior

2-3. Increase AOE of most awakening skills, Damage buffs to most awakening skills
  - mostly outdated damage numbers and poor design of Shift+Q skill in awake limits the DPS rotation mechanically

  - DPS spike cancels all require a DPS drop in the form of setup skills that have low DPS limiting their effect

  - AoE is bad, DPS is bad, but also hitboxes are mish-mash shapes that don't line up with each other and vary wildly, e.g. LBD
  - off cooldown unprotected skills of Garuda/Skybound Stab and LBD Turtle/Tiger spam are currently optimal filler DPS, this is just silly
  - all rabams have bad DPS, only reso has good AoE, but even 60% crit buffed reso has bad dps and that's the best one uhhh...
  - Dark Gaoler "nuke" requires a low DPS pre-awake setup skill like Bolt Wave to be used from awakening first
  - Awake E-buff is 30% resist, 15% move speed with no offensive utility and redundant +20dp q-block buff, retool this
  - 60% crit rate buff overcaps 100% crit in PvE Awake DPS skills so it is muted in PvE effectiveness, retool this so some awake skills benefit by increasing damage, lowering PvE crit
  - 60% crit rate buff even on 0% crit pre-awake skills still does not grant them high enough DPS to merit use, increase PvE damage so they can be used as alternates in the rotation when absorb buffed because they have larger AoE (e.g. Roaring, Void Lightning, Whiplash maybe...)

4. Improvements to Pull Skills (aggro time/speed for mobs)

  - haven't found a spot other than Sycraia where having THREE instantly cancellable pull skills in our kit matters, which says a lot, although I think you fix this with something from (1-3).

(1) Heilang Bugged in PvE Since Reworks, Never Addressed, False Claims "It's Fine"
I'll leave this link here to patch notes April 27th, 2022 when horseback roaring grind on Tamer got nerfed:
https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=3052&countryType=fr-FR#Tamer

Forget horseback grinding, this MISSION ACCOMPLISHED nonsense statement says a lot given the rework did focus greatly on the pet:
"  After the reboot, many Adventurers have been enjoying combat with the improved utilization of Heilang. "

The Heilang tooltip says he does 752% base damage with +50% accuracy rate now. They adjusted his damage and behaviour repeatedly during our class rework. It is very clear looking at the numbers, and at the behaviour of Heilang, PA intended our playstyle to involve micromanaging the pet to do damage. Unfortunately, NO DPS RESULTS from his animations even with 309ap triple pen blackstar. It is so bad that even if you instantly cancel to get his attacks to come out and just move on to your own skill rotation in parallel with his damage, this results in lost DPS. Anyone can go loop these skill animations on mobs at any spot where you need gear and confirm.

The only feelings tamers have had about Heilang since reworks are frustration and dissapointment. The statement above is what PA intended to do but couldn't. In pretending that it works and we're just fiiiiiine with it, we're just missing all that damage he was supposed to be doing for us in PvE.

Bugged Heilang Damage Is a Significant Limitation on Awakening PvE
Inspecting these PvE pulling skills that all have acceptable PvE AoE size on the Tamer's skill animation, and also acceptable AoE on the Heilang flow skill, then comparing to useable Awakening DPS skills that have a Heilang flow skill, you can see the intended design and how much it sucks for us:

Pretty clear how this is supposed to work, right? These Heilang flow skill animations are fairly long, but they equate to a full or half skill of damage and have decent AoE. The lower damage ones are shorter, have lower AoE, but the Tamer skill makes up for that. The higher damage on the Tamer skill, the lower the damage on the flow. On paper, you can use advanced cancels to 1hp targets in the reticle for a one tap without moving there, drop him on your pull to deal chip DPS, clean up stragglers and such while DPS-ing the main group of mobs. In practice, you can't do any of that fun stuff though. Virtually every drop of this damage is missing, you can go test it yourself if you don't believe me. All of that DPS is just missing from the kit and it feels very obvious if you get sweaty and min/max your grind with advanced cancels to accelerate skill animations and optimize pulls, like Chaytona does. If they can't fix the dog they should just say it at this point because it's been TWO YEARS. There is no pride left to lose, swap the damage into the skill if the dog can't do that damage for some reason!

Awakened Tamer PvE damage numbers, AoEs, and hitboxes are outdated and every stopgap that might workaround the issue is intractable mechanically. All our DPS spikes require a DPS lull to set them up.
Our options for good DPS and/or good AoE aren't mechanically viable, they end up being muted if you compare them to just not using any of them and spamming D+RMB for Tiger/Turtle/Tiger/Turtle, and Garuda/Ascension when you need the AoE, because all of them require some kind of DPS drop in order to set them up or are in conflict with a mechanical requirement of the "filler" section of the DPS rotation. The only way to understand this is to go through best PvE burst DPS skills/methods we have one by one and explain why they get gimped by the setup requirements. If you go frame-by-frame in a video editor these are the top DPS options in PvE to spike damage onto mobs:
1. (W+F or Hotbar) Moonlight Strike
  - problem: the hitbox is literally one mob, like LBD Tiger
  - problem: with the hitbox width reduction patch, you are now likely to zoom away from the pack accidentally
  - WONTFIX: untouchable because PvP so just highlights the fact that min/max of a 1011% x5 skill with a 1-mob hitbox is "optimal" for awake tamer... sad
2. (with LBD dragon preset on bar, Shift+Q) Legendary Beast Dance Echo: Azure Dragon
  - problem: net DPS gain of using LBD Dragon to setup LBDE Dragon shift+Q is too low to justify. Your filler LBD Turtle/Tiger spam will overwrite the dragon preset, and the DPS spike is not quite big enough to even justify LBD Dragon 5-10 frame then cancel just to reset the preset. There is also a shitty bug where if you don't do the LBD animation for long enough before you cancel, it will wipe ANY PRESET from your bar and if you don't notice when you shift+Q you'll just Q-block like an idiot. On a 5s CD the DPS spike and frontal cone AoE would stack up to gains and trash, especially because it cancels the wind-down of Soaring Strike, but there's no way to implement this without griefing your skill rotation.
3. (hit acceleration skill into frame-perfect timing from Hotbar) accelerated Soaring Strike
 - 3rd auto-attack after Flow: Full Moon or Celestial Slam will accel, Flow: Intimidation into Shift+Space frame-perfect will accel
 - frame-perfect shift+space after Garuda (or Ascension 1st/2nd hit) will accel

 - problem: the required accel skills to setup a Soaring Strike "mini-nuke" T3 addon DPS spike don't do good DPS!
4.  (cancel into a low DPS pre-awakened skill, F) Dark Gaoler without the iframe part, the magnus skill

  - Dark Gaoler is our best DPS "nuke" to spike DPS in the skill rotation, because it does fat damage and is our biggest AoE by a mile
  - problem: you are required to use a low-DPS pre-awakening skill to get the F cancel to go, most opt for Bolt Wave. You can be more methodical and trample/reso/ww cancel into Fearful Trembling to get T3 addons first, or use trample cancel roaring or ww air lightning to pull first, you can use the Jolt Stab rabam to -10dp debuff as an alternate to Shift+Q tiger or Flow: Intimidation -10dp, but all the methods have the same issue which is that the setup skill doesn't do good enough DPS!

Specific Solutions In Current Paradigm
1. Shift+Q needs hotbar for each of Tiger/Turtle/Dragon/Verm versions and/or all LBD versions need to be consistent in PvE damage/AoE
2. Dark Gaoler in awakening needs an F-cancel from some skills so we don't have to use a low DPS setup skill from pre-awake:

  - F input after Soaring Strike cancels into Dark Gaoler damage
  - increase PvE DPS of rabams and give resonance an F-cancel
  - Increase PvE damage of Fearful Trembling to justify swapping, tremble for T3s, F-cancel
  - Increase PvE damage of Roaring, Void Lightning, Throat Burn, Bolt Wave... any of the existing F-cancels to justify the swap
3. Increase PvE damage of these to be closer to, but not greater than current DPS spikes of Dark Gaoler, LBDE: Dragon, accel Soaring Strike:
  - Celestial Slam, Beast Rampage, Heilang: Howling, Echo Pierce
  - Legendary Beast Dance (Dragon and Vermillion DPS to match Tiger/Turtle, up Tiger AoE), Flow: Full Moon
  - Skybound Stab/Garuda, Flow: Ascension when off cooldown, same damage spammed since it is low just has the reach we are missing
  - Cloud Stomping, and Skyreach
4. Fix the E-Buff to provide Crit Damage, Attack Speed, AP, basically anything even close to what other rat classes and DPS classes have.
5. Fix the passive to provide a 10% movement or 10% attack speed, which is standard for a class like Tamer. It is currently LT and 50hp, that makes no sense.

Perfect opportunity to rant about it, so I did. I'm sure I repeated a ton of Chaytona's points but it really just does not make sense the way the kit is constructed right now for PvE. Further, it is very obvious where the problems are if you invest the time to push it as far as it will currently go, and doesn't seem like it would be hard to fix it either. Hoping to see it on glabs, maybe it's already in the works.

- Gunrocks