Can only DPS at about 40% of normal with new pet aggro changes

I main a necro. But ya I can unless I fd every other cast. remember SC is not a 100% aggro reduction anymore its more like 70-80% so even under SC we still build aggro. Once SC is done. All it takes is a few high crits form swift dots or the super tbm dot and its game over I have full agro. Mages would be the same way a few high crit spells in a row and its them on aggro. Also I have had my healer merc take aggro form my pet form just healing. As well have mage friends of mine and people on this board have said the same thing.

So if I'm doing >50% of other DPS classes, my raid capability is fine? Personally, I find that idea ridiculous.

Considering the solo capability that mages generally have and will probably regain easily once this aggro issue is fixed, how much dps should mages do? Heck, keep it civil, but what about the other dps classes? Let's get this thread up to 100 pages!

DD crits do not generate any additional aggro.

This is due to the fact that we simply can no longer use the dps necessary to kill the mob, before our dics run out, without over aggroing the named.

The Silent Casting AA you speak of has a 135 sec duration and just under 12 minute recast.

It takes a molo mage alot longer than 135 secs to kill those mobs. Also even cycling though all of our pet defensive and offensive aa's their duration ends before the fight is over. The last 25% of the mobs health is spent healing along with the merc, versus having the fight ended just as the discs were previously starting to fade. (which was just as perfectly balanced is it should have been before the change)

Not to mention that if we ran into trouble, before the Silent Casting disc faded, we could switch to having three RS pets up to bounce the aggro from our main pet a bit to help it to survive. Now the RS pet can't take aggro from the main pet, or the mage. (as it did previously)

Well if classes that did not roll a tank are going to tank or use a pet to tank it's only fair to review the dependence of some classes on groups and their DPS. IF this was a Mage or DPS Class discussion it would be in the proper forum.

An unofficial guideline was once 125% (DPSers)/100% (Warriors)/75% (Hybrids and not DPSers)

I'm sure the last two categories could use the 200K DPS they are missing and some posters turn their nose up as ridiculous. It is ridiculous - ridiculously OP especially for a class that is not a tank yet tanks anyway. Other classes are even more ridiculously OP? Cool.

(see https://www.everquest.com/classes for current Class Descriptions - there is no "can solo" for Mages and no "dealing heavy damage" for Warriors) There's a difference between "protect" (jump in front of the bus) and "tank" (jump in front of buses and make yourself the focus of attacks for a long duration).

Battleaxe, go to server select and then the character creation screen. Pick mage and read the class description. Then do the same for warriors.

If it's on the character selection screen, it must be true!

Danille go to https://www.everquest.com/classes. I'm sure you've read it before. And I'm certain you knew Mages were not Wizards AND Warriors before level 105. I'm also certain it was great fun when Mages were Wizards AND Warriors and I understand not wanting that to change

(not that as a Warrior I've ever experienced being OP and able to solo as if I was a full group. Oh, Warriors are the best [Raid] tank? And where does that leave the many many many Warriors who do not raid?).

No, I'm discussing a classes abilities. You seem to feel that you should be better than them, at some point, on raids, -without- giving up anything from other areas (like the solo/group game.)

Basically, you are saying "I want my class to be better than wizards often on raids and better in some groups, while being better soloers all the time."

If you want to be better than another class at something, it's expected you give something else up, somewhere else. You say that mages should be the better soloers... Why shouldn't wizzies be the better raiders? Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't be viable DPS. Just you shouldn't want to be tops at DPS, when you are tops at another area.

Classes all have to have trade-offs. These trade-offs have, over the many years of this game, changed. But the fact remains, that all functions of a class have to be added up, when compared to all functions of another class.

Wizards are better raiders than magicians. That is why guilds want 6-7 wizards and 1-2 magicians if it was their choice.

Reason a magician wants to be tops on a "middle ground" parse is because we want to raid. And unfortunately our ability to solo has zero bearing on our ability to raid. Because on a raid, you need one of the 54 slots for a magician for mod rods. After that, our value and importance dramatically decreases. And when you have a class that provides little to no value to a raid, raid leaders that have options will choose more valuable classes than a magician.

Like illustrated already, there are a number of classes in TBM that have molo'ed TBM named mobs. But no one has given two hoots about those classes. Instead it seems to *always* come back to magicians as being the OP class. It seems to *always* be the magician pet that is the topic of heated and animated discussion. And it feels that the changes made to magicians *usually* are in making them less powerful than before. Even though, to be honest, we are not as powerful as everyone claims we are because whatever we can do can be done by other classes as well...

a diminutive kromrif
Gelden
Squire Gordon Flock
Squire Thomas Olson
Evoker K`Lexor
The Lost Devourer
Master Sage Lowenn
Warleader Jocelyn
Arsin the Blaze
Glorious Cistina
I haven't been doing Hunter achievements, so there are probably more than these.
Do go on with your more relevant nerf discussion though.

If this were Wizards or Rogues or Berserkers or Warriors ect ect receiving a nerf or 2 per month there would be double the amount of threads currently. Plenty of proof of this, but Magicians are not allowed to voice their concerns. Even better, instead of allowing facts to be brought out the classes above are choosing to add their 10 cents (way more then 2 cents at this point, lets be real) to a conversation that does not involve your class in anyway. Tanks? Well this removes tanking power and overall grouping power so no it doesn't involve you. Wizards? You can do literally everything better then us outside of tank, and we were lead the believe it is because we hold this amazing solo power that almost every class has, again it removes some of that power without giving us anything back.

The best part of these last few patches is, these changes are not for LIVE servers. They were made to make TLP better. The coders are just unable to split the code up so they can only patch this through for TLP. It's not because people are OP, not meant to solo, shoot lazer beams its for TLP.....

All class warfare aside though, the change makes it so you can't disc without Silent Casting up. Holding about 33k DPS merely using Spear-Spear-Bolt and Force nuke in between I was at 80% hate on my pet that I gave a 10 second headstart. This was in 184 seconds on Shoon in Tainted West.

Now, with allowing the pet about a 160 second head start with Virulent Talon and Frenzied Burnout (Normal Burnout and Iceflame on for both runs), and going through just Spear-Spear-Bolt and Force on Cooldown I got as high as 11% before Roon was about to die. With Silent Casting running and full burns lasting through it you would need to be doing some really low DPS to out-aggro your pet being fully buffed for a 2 minute headstart on you. That is meaning, the mob should be dead before that will come about. However, it will happen as I said we can't disc or we will jump up that other 15-20% we are lacking with just our un-buffed nuking.

We do not have deaggro tools to actually function properly after this change. We should be able to disc (Not twincasting obviously) when wanted without having 100% certainty of drawing aggro. This being based on how the class has functioned for a decade. Can just chalk this up to again removing something we use daily and not giving any compensation or showing any foresight into the change. Merely rolling the dice and seeing how things fall. Unacceptable, inexcusable and overall proves that the developers do not have a clue how their game works.

Magicians are now at rock bottom broken. A little while back, a mage in a group could tank 3 trash mobs at once in a group in Neriak B, maybe 4 hell...unslowed. They nerfed that I dont know about 8 months ago? Now, after this recent nerf, earth pet cant even hold aggro over a ranger in the group. Not only that, but its damage mitigation has been changed also and even in a group its having trouble keeping hps up on named in TDS. How is it ok to untune a class like that? And why?

WHY?

Well, now you're just lying to propagate your cause. Luckily, I have friends in your guild. Here are 3 parses from the 4 events you guys did on 12/27:

Combined: Decay in 1205s, 2052828k @1703591
--- #1 Magician + pets 136267k@(113936 in 1196s) [6.64%]
--- #2 Magician + pets 126309k@(105698 in 1195s) [6.15%]
--- #3 Monk 107376k@(89630 in 1198s) [5.23%]
--- #4 Magician + pets 100988k@(84227 in 1199s) [4.92%]
--- #5 Rogue 96969k@(80875 in 1199s) [4.72%]

Combined: A viscous pile of rot in 825s, 1218015k @1476382
--- #1 Monk 82130k@(99672 in 824s) [6.74%]
--- #2 Magician + pets 75829k@(95986 in 790s) [6.23%]
--- #3 Berserker + pets 68188k@(82853 in 823s) [5.6%]
--- #4 Wizard + pets 60986k@(78997 in 772s) [5.01%]
--- #5 Magician + pets 60532k@(79963 in 757s) [4.97%]

Combined: Hero`s Coffin in 801s, 1298738k @1621395
--- #1 Magician + pets 79907k@(100385 in 796s) [6.15%]
--- #2 Wizard 66729k@(84682 in 788s) [5.14%]
--- #3 Magician + pets 63687k@(80210 in 794s) [4.9%]
--- #4 Necromancer 58458k@(74469 in 785s) [4.5%]
--- #5 Beastlord + pets 58437k@(73321 in 797s) [4.5%]

I can replace the classes with character names if you would like. Unless Mage dps got nerfed in the past month, this does not look like a bottom of the barrel dps class to me. At least not for your guild. I know that my guild also has at least one mage that is very competitive on parses. This may not be what RoI parses look like. You may be able to find some random parses where Mages did not perform very well. But in the 4 events you guys did on 12/27, Mages topped 2 of them, and there were multiple mages in the top 5 in 3 of them. I can also post a collection of parses from many other nights where your mages performed extremely well. So please stop spreading your BS. Mage dps is fine. You guys are extremely competitive in raids. No guild is benching their Mages for other dps classes. Certainly not your guild.

Seems you conveniently forgot Wizards now are one of the best aDPS classes in the game with manaburn. I'm pretty sure that counts as utility. The fact that wizards are among the best (if not the best) burn and sustained DPS in all situations, I don't think there is any comparison between wizard/mage at the moment. I don't think its too much for them to ask for their pet to work as it has for the past 12-13 years,.

I like the cherry-picked parses. Maybe their wizards were horrible? I don't play a magician, but I find it hilarious that wizards are constantly trying to downplay their god-like presence in raids at the moment. Nobody can touch a well-played wizard in much of anything when it comes to raid DPS. Now, they have excellent aDPS as well, so there usefulness has skyrocketed into the stratosphere. To even say mages are even close to wizards when it comes to raid desirability is a joke. Keep trying to convince people otherwise though, you may actually be fooling some people.

Including those parses shown, there is Wiz DPS in every one of them (being given to the Mage) from Manaburn depending on timers and such. Let's not forget that Mod Rods make or break Wiz DPS while Manaburn is a cool toy and nothing more.

Will be comical to bring up all these posts if things get as bad as they did in VoA, and they find the same negative attitudes and comments being brought up in every thread they make. Not too long ago the shoe was on the other foot, and plenty of ideas/help was given.

How is taking 3/4 of the events a guild did in a night cherry picking? All 3 parses were from the same night. You can choose to ignore the facts if you would like. I can also get more parses for a bigger sample size, but it won't help your cause.