Test Update 08/12/2014 - Pet Changes Round 4

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by Aristo, Aug 12, 2014.

  1. Vrinda Augur

    The parse Daegun posted yesterday regarding a necro moloing three AH mobs bothered me enough that I'm finally going to throw my 2cp into the thread.

    Looking at Daegun's parse, the first thing that jumped out at me was the utterly incredible avoidance of the EM15 necro pet. I switched down to the spell list to see what the heck he was casting to raise the pet's avoidance to that level. For non-necros in the crowd, the quick-and-dirty summary is this:
    • Aegis of Kildrukaun (AA, 26 casts) is a rune with a 30-second recast delay.
    • Cascading Boneshield (45 casts) is another rune that triggers both a heal and a new, and smaller, Azia rune/heal on fade. Azia fades and triggers a Beza rune/heal, Beza fades and triggers a Caza rune/heal.
    • Phantasmal Ward (22 casts) increases chance to avoid melee damage by 50% for 70 swings.

    That accounts for the truly amazing avoidance, so let's look at what else he cast:
    • Algid Mending (1 cast) cure/heal for base healing amount of 16580 at rank 2. He says the pet came nowhere near dying, so why would he cast this at all?
    • Cascade of Decay (AA, 3 casts) is a buff you cast on yourself that lasts for an hour and a half and has no effect on protecting your pet from damage. Why would he cast this buff three times in roughly 16 minutes?
    • Cloak of Shadows (AA, 4 casts) would presumably be invising himself when each mob was nearly dead on this combined parse while he went looking for a new target.
    • Death Bloom (AA, ten minute recast delay). Running low on mana? You should've ordered a mod rod with those pet toys. :)
    • Death's Effigy (AA feign death, 2 casts) to dump aggro.
    • Death's Malaise (AA, 8 casts) to attempt to slow the mob after temporarily flagging it as undead with Scintillate Bones. Death's Malaise has a very high resist rate, which no doubt explains why he had to cast it 8 times on three mobs and failed to get one of them slowed at all. Base duration is 6.5 minutes, so one successful cast should have lasted the entire duration of any one of these fights.
    • Encroaching Darkness (AA, 1 cast) is a no-damage snare.
    • Scintillate Bones (7 casts) with a recast delay of 18 seconds. The undead flag debuff is short duration, so if Death's Malaise fails to land, you have to recast SB to be able to try again with DM.

    He cast 218 spells total captured on this parse, and 119 of them (54%) had nothing to do with killing the mob. Why would you do such a thing? The necro mind boggles at wasting all that time and energy to no purpose, never mind the spell swapping he had to do to cast 17 different spells (not counting the AA clicks) to get three mobs dead in 16 minutes.

    What a real necro would do in this situation is scrap the pet, suspend the merc, mem dots for dps, and root rot the mobs. Persistent Paralysis (AA, necro version of VP), Encroaching Darkness (AA, non-damaging snare) in case PP gets broken early, Howl of Tashan (clicky orb I farmed years ago because it helps magic-based dots land), and as many of my dots as I deem necessary for the mob to die in well under five minutes each. I can't afford the real estate on my spell bar for such nonsense as Algid Mending, Cascading Boneshield, Phantasmal Ward and Scintillate Bones except in extremely rare situations.

    Necro pets tanking raid mobs and uber current content named were never a problem, because they can't do it and never could. I'm having a hard time understanding why necros are once again being flattened by the nerf bat to "correct" a perceived issue with mage pets. That said, I promise you I will not be going to the lengths Daegun went to in his posted parse to keep my pet alive. If my pet is that weak, I'll simply solo instead of molo. No pet, no merc, no exp sharing required, and if I have to back up an expansion or two to find mobs I can root rot that can be rooted and don't summon, I'm perfectly capable of picking my battles.

    FYI, I created my necro in December 2000 and made her my main with the release of GoD. I've raided on her for years, and by now I have a pretty fair notion what I'm doing. Max level, max exp, 10.5k AAs earned the old-fashioned way with a bunch more banked because I'm too lazy to figure out what useless stuff to spend them on.

    If you step back from this entire debacle and look at it objectively, what the devs are doing (have already done, since they pushed a significant nerf live without benefit of notice or testing) is bad for the community, bad for the game, and totally unnecessary. I won't quit the game over it, but I know people who will, and that's A Bad Thing. The people who cancel their accounts and delete EQ from their hard drives will find other games to play and other hobbies to pursue, and the distrust SOE is sowing will keep them from buying other SOE products in the future.

    Is it really worth that to keep mage pets from tanking raid mobs? Or would flagging raid mobs (and possibly specific, carefully selected named, as well) as "no pet tank" have been a better choice?
    Gyurika Godofwar, Spellfire and Krag like this.
  2. Krag Lorekeeper

    When you run a scientific experiment, you can't be biased and you can't keep changing variables and then comparing the data. He is doing both. Would you trust the cigarette companies to run a study to see if smoking is bad for your health?? Can you guess what the studies would show??

    Don't worry, they are not listening to him. They want pets to be very viable, just needed to fix the AC issue that was causing DI problems.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  3. Gnomeland Augur

    Daegun's parses of the warrior 1v1 is quite fair ... except for the inclusion of 'Siddar trains me' in a 1v1 parse, though that is in and of itself useful because it shows how well warrior abilities scale to 2+ mobs.

    His parses of the necro is not so fair. Parsing slowed vs. unslowed is lulz. But even without slow, I imagine the results won't be drastically different because again, this is a 1v1 parse.

    The elephant in the room, though, is again the 1v1 scenario.

    FYI, Daegun 100% understands how poorly pets scale to multiple mobs. He's just chosen not to show a single parse of it.

    Incidentally, cascading boneshield, which even Daegun admits is the lynchpin of necro pet actives, operates as a flat set of runes. Such abilities not only scale worse than % mitigation, but due to their flat dmg absorb, they are worse against higher hitting mobs, so in no way does this even capture a necro pet's 1v1 effectiveness vs. rare mobs.

    Having said that, I wonder why Daegun has switched to solely parsing the necro pet in Argin-Hiz, when previously he parsed the mage earth pet first...? Is it because he believes that such a parse won't reveal what he wants?

    Oh, and Argin-Hiz's difficulty does not come from the front yard animals. Go a bit inside and parse on the yellow con elves.
    Mintalie likes this.
  4. Gnomeland Augur

    Argin-Hiz mobs are largely immune to runspeed changes and the bulk of them summon. Kiting and root rotting won't work here. Thus, the zone does become a testament to why pet tanking has to exist for necros.
  5. Delbaeth Elder

    Before all we heard about was parses being bogus for focusing on passive mitigation. How player tanks should be compared optimally using all their long cooldown abilities.

    Now when pets and players both get parsed using their defensive abilities we hear about how it unacceptably takes time and attention from doing dps.

    How entitled can you be? Your pet should be fire and forget, good for three at a time with just a merc looking after it.
    Sheex likes this.
  6. ~Mills~ Augur

    Parse a tank doing his normal routine, with group support, with the mob slowed.
    Parse a pet doing his normal routine (rare rune cast for spike only), with group support and the mob slowed.

    Repeat with 2-3 mobs on the tank. Then repeat 2 - 3 mobs on the pet(note you might have to tie 20 fights together for a couple minutes of data if its not a raid mage earth pet with full gear).

    Then parse a full turtle tank verse a hard hitter without extending the duration beyond normal, ie 2-3 mintues tops.
    Then parse a full turtle pet verse a hard hitter, oh wait there is not full turtle outside of spamming 3 runes which you show as normal for trash mobs.

    Then repeat all those with players in range of the npcs and see what happens.

    Don't leave out stuff like self auras, bp clicks, all the sneaky clicks that players have access to and use when needed that pets don't have. Or the fact that everyone died when in range of npc when the pet was tanking. Don't leave off self healing parses and the effects of stuns if the toon has them. We want a complete picture.

    Something tells me the first test might be close at times depending on the situation, skill and gear of the toon if its all ranged in a group. The second and third scenarios with and without ranged players will show what everyone sees daily, that tanks destroy pets 99% of the time in just about every scenario when everything is considered.
  7. Delbaeth Elder

    Please do, it would be interesting to see your results.
  8. ~Mills~ Augur

    I don't have a grudge against tanks so sorry I don't spend my time leveling up every tank nor a mage to show differences between them to use as fodder for my crusade.

    I have shown unfiltered data for my classes pet. With differing EM focus to show its impact which is nil now, with and without slows, with and without mage toys (realizing how giant a gap these create and that everyone doesn't have a pocket mage to get them from) and with and without me spamming my support spells non stop on trash which is ridiculous to expect for trash mobs in my opinion. All on various mobs in various zones.

    We should just look at a warrior under nttb+last stand with various other long reuse tank buffs on him and lots of debuffs on a mob and call that the norm for all tanks and compare from there. As I just randomly want to make that my base data as much as you want to make afk tanks without a slowed mob yours.
  9. Necromonious Augur

    How envious can you be? Rangers sucking at tanking is separate issue, and we all know that's what really irks you. I think that the person you were quoting was just trying to express that pet tanking is not he most effective way to solo before or after the nerfs, which is true, but not for the situation in question.

    Argin-hiz mobs are immune to runspeed changes and almost all (all?) of them summon. No one is cc'ing them, everyone is double-tanking them because you can't peel one....which means.....!!!......oh yeah....player tanks are tanking them best ;)
  10. Vrinda Augur

    This is exactly why you pack up your toys and go elsewhere when not in a group with a PC tank. If SOE wants me to experience that content, they'll make it possible for me to do so without the extraordinary measures Daegun resorted to so he could keep the pet standing. If they think I'll expend 50% of my casts just to keep my pet up, they're mistaken.

    I agree that pet tanking needs to exist for necros. If the devs disagree with both of us, however, they need to understand that we don't feel 50% of casts just to keep the pet up is viable, and we won't be doing that. It's another data point, just like parse data, and as such is quite relevant to this conversation.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  11. Ratbo Peep Augur

    After reading most of these threads... I'm objectively forced to agree.
    Mind you I play a Ranger and my Wife has an Enchanter.
    We do own a "Box Mage". We use the EM15 pet for tanking stuff that a Max Gear and AA Tank Merc can't tank - or that Rat (with 10k AC with tribute running!) can't tank.
    Pets are indeed playing a "different game" is the best way to put it.
    (Well, that, and Tank Mercs still just "way suck" too much to help "the rest of us non-Mages"!)
    -Rat
    Sheex likes this.
  12. Gnomeland Augur

    The crappiest merc in the game isn't able to function, best nerf pets instead of asking for it to be buffed because you know, that's actually logical...

    And you know what's funny about all this? Nerfing pets doesn't help you. At all. Because all it does, in case pets become incapable of tanking the content you and your wife are doing, is force you to start a Warrior Box - which, had you been smart, you'd have done so years ago.

    Just look at the damage mitigation coming out of that group geared warrior. In case it wasn't obvious, it's pretty ridiculous, and you know which merc doesn't suck? The caster DPS merc. Goes well with a Warrior Box.
  13. Romen Lorekeeper

    Perhaps focused necro and bst pets should come presummoned with some gear just like mage pets? It would equalize the pets some, and give some more benefit to the non-mage classes for using the higher focii. As a mage I don't have a problem with that (I am always happy to summon stuff for others, always free, but if I didn't have to it would just be better for me).
  14. Siddar Augur

    No he didn't play the class like any average necro would. Once the mobs were slowed the constant spamming of runes was not needed. He spammed runes to lower the mobs dps and cause parse to show massive avoidance.

    Those block spells are intended to be used by the necro solo to heal there pet not molo with a cleric merc. If he had been solo he would been spamming heals constantly and ether pet would have died are he would have done very little dps.

    His intent was to misinform and agitate the uninformed. He went from pure passive mitigation parses to parsing active abilities when it was very clear that pets were taking around 40% higher inc DPS then player tanks. What we've seen so far is just how dishonest his first mitigation only parses were when compared to the limited number of parses provided of PC tanks using there abilities.
  15. Siddar Augur

    Pet gear I agree needs to factored into balance but it also should not be the deciding factor in if a necro and bst pet can or cannot tank a trash mob in argin hiz. That is happening now and shows fairly clearly that necro pets are under powered currently on test.

    Pet gear should provide a improvement and should be expected versus named mobs but not against non named.
  16. strongbus Augur

    On live server my spell bar for when I pet tank I have 3 swift dots, 2 swarm pets, bones for slow, cascading boneshield, 5 reg dots. So out of 12 spells I only have one up to support pet. That plus aa rune is all I have ever need to keep pet up on any 1v1 trash fight. The only thing that has ever changed in fights is if I need to cast them and how often I need to cast them. This is decided based on the level of the mob I am fighting.

    Names and 1v2+ fights its the same lineup just add in the long reuse aas.

    On test I used the same lineup for my 1v1 trash mob test. I didn't need to change a thing besides having to cast runes a bit more.

    There is no reason a necro would ever load any pet support spell beside rune. The hp of mobs are not going change. So once I get dots on the mob it is going die in the same amount of time be it test or live. The only difference is on test I have to cast runes a few extra times.

    I am not worried bout the 1v1 trash fights. Its the 1v2+ fights I am more worried bout. As I stated before, if for example the mobs in cotf t2 hit for an avg of 9.5k damage a hit and can hit ever 2 sec, if I have 2 mobs on my pet the aa rune is going last for bout 2 sec and cascading boneshield is going to last bout 6 sec.
  17. Lucius New Member

    Yes, he keeps spamming his 'padded' information.

    Very little good information from him.
  18. Lucius New Member


    You are correct.

    The data are manipulated to look 'just so'.
  19. Siddar Augur

    Phantasmal ward drops NPC hit rate from 78-79% to 72-73% necro only.
    Cascading will turn many low DI hits into absorbs. necro only.
    Slow reduces mobs number of attempts per second meaning lower number of hits per block refresh cycle on Aegis, Phantasmal, and Cascading that increases the % amount of attacks being absorbed.

    He uses earth pet when he wants to show mitigation and necro pet when he wants to show avoidance because earth pet has best DI mitigation and necro pet has the best active avoidance.

    The fact that most people actually parsing on test seem to agree necro pets are under powered is simply ignored in his crusade to produce propaganda parses.
  20. Necromonious Augur

    Necro's in here have a good point. It takes 2-3 swift dots, at least 3-4 regular dots, and at least 1 swarm to have good sustained dps, burst is already meh. Leaves very little spell gems for pet defensive spells. To compare, Mage can just rotate 1 bolt. 1 rain, and garg and be doing good on sustained dps. Less gems needed for dps, and less gems needed for pet support on Mage. Also, necro's have utility options like root/snare (helpful since the AA's have cooldowns), mez (if u can), group mana recourse, etc. they really need to add extra gems for casters if they want necro's to have to constantly rotate 4-5 different pet heals/runes

    Shows that even though the changes seem to be being done carefully, there wasn't very much foresight in trying to cram all the pet classes into the same package as if they operate the same