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

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

  1. Daegun Augur

    -on one of my hot keys I have cascade of decay, reluctant benevolence, and cloak of shadows bound to my forward key. It ensures that while kiting I have these buffs up at all time - invis is on this key so that if I forget to switch hot key bars it will instantly reinvis me if running through hostile territory.
    -death bloom used at 78% mana - why not use it - it's doing nothing for you unused on cooldown
    -aggro was dumped twice just because. I didn't get over 70% on the aggro meter, however. Being on test I have also reset my aa to buy everything but spell casting subtlety. It made snare kiting easier, less relative pet aggro.

    /shrug


    You're grasping at straws man.
  2. Daegun Augur

    My intent was to see just how sturdy or 'not sturdy' the pets actually are when the owner uses tools available to them. A common complaint of my afk parses was that they were unrealistic and did not factor in the powerful abilities player tanks own. Well if you want to compare the pet absent owner intervention to a tank using everything they have - how is that a fair comparison again?

    All any of this is showing is how the only information that is relevant is the information that reinforces what you want to see. That, and everyone likes to play Monday-morning quarterback and not pick every little detail. Regardless I always report my methods.

    As far as why I included siddar's accidental aggro, it was just part of my graph. You will, however notice that I clearly pointed out to you where it happens so there is no confusion as to what happened and why the damage suddenly went up. That's just transparency.
  3. strongbus Augur

    having some stuff linked to forward key is ok. for kiting it would help.

    Its having using spells in your lineup that very few necro use.

    phantasmal ward? Never have loaded this spell or even the line of spells it belongs to.
    algid mending? Last time I memed a pet heal was before HOT came out.

    What is the spell lineup that you use when pet tanking? If it is not 90+% damage spells as a necro your wasting mana and time.
  4. Daegun Augur

    Why have you never loaded phantasmal ward? Do you not appreciate just how good of a spell it is? Or is it just that you've never needed it before any of these changes went in? They along with your pet heal and cascading line exist for the purpose of supporting your tanking pet. You should be no more expected to willingly ignore these abilities any more than a warrior should be expected to ignore NTTB, shield proficiency, shield use, defensive etc. If you are tanking content that is intended to be challenging, expect to use your abilities.

    Just because you don't ever mem it or use it does not mean it's not there. You guys wanted parses of player tanks using their tools. You got them along with a necro using their tools. I had maybe an hour and a half yesterday. If you guys want Mage and beastlord data I'd be happy to give them today.

    For the beastlord I'll probably not even use the mercenary - just heal my own pet while adding dps.
  5. Behelit Augur

    Phantasmal and cascading have never been needed for trash, and shouldnt be. Likewise a warrior doesnt need to blow Last Stand on trash just cause they pull two. No one is expecting to be able to use pets to tank nameds without dedicating time + spell gems to pet support, but needing them all the time for trash is excessive.
  6. Daegun Augur

    So for trash mobs what you're saying is we only need to compare baseline mitigation and dps intake? Since this frees up pet owners to dps should pet baseline be compared to a warrior in 2hand tanking mode? Or for trash mobs pets should be balanced around the owner doing nothing and the PC tank doing most everything?

    Which do you want?

    The community was unhappy with baseline comparison.
    Now the community is unhappy with interventional comparison?
    Will you only be happy if baseline pets are balanced directly with 'doing it all' tanks?
    Dre. and Xeladom like this.
  7. strongbus Augur

    Phantasmal ward only last for 70 hit/misses. so in a 1v1 trash fight if the mob swings at my pet once ever two sec. its going last 1 min 40 sec. If I have 2 mobs its 70 sec. It has a 36 sec recast time. which means to keep going I have to recast it each time it comes up. Not worth the lost dps I can get form a dot/swarm pet. Remember the faster I get the mob dead the less I have support my pet so each spell slot has to be.

    Remember we only have 12 spell slots. Unlike tanks who can have ever disc they have hot keyed. We have to pick and chose and are limited in how many spell we can have up. So we have to weight ever non damage spell on if it is more important to load then what dps we could get form a damage spell.

    If you tanks want it to be balanced for us to support our pets in the same way you tanks have to then it needs to be changed so like tanks we could have unlimited spells up.
  8. Daegun Augur

    Whether or not you feel it is worth casting is irrelevant. Looking at how it affects incoming dps, is clearly worth casting and maintaining. To what degree it extends the fight is likewise irrelevant. Unless the difference in fight length will run your cleric oom, it makes your pet much safer to heal and exponentially decreases your chance of failure. The point is you've got potent abilities that will take up some of your time but greatly enhance your pets survivability. Any comparison regarding balance can't have one side turtling down and the other side not.

    What if I were to parade afk tank parses compared to a pet owner doing everything? You'd cry foul instantly.

    I really am having a hard time believing we're actually having this conversation at all.

    Knights also only have 12 spell slots, most of them being a required devotion to their tanking jobs.
    Warriors don't have spells as you know, but their offensive and defensive a are generally mutually exclusive.
    SaderakhBertox likes this.
  9. Khauruk Augur

    AC gains on a pet have a disproportionate impact on pets. The gear either needs to be nerfed (and droppables become unequippable) or it needs to be tuned around.
  10. Delbaeth Elder

    Or pets could have the same diminishing returns on AC as players.
  11. Khauruk Augur


    Indeed, though that would require a lot more work as far as I can see.
  12. Daegun Augur

    It would probably require a complete overhaul of ac for all NPCs - likely not an easy task. It would ultimately make balance moving forward easier, but I seriously doubt the small dev team has that kind of time right now.
  13. Delbaeth Elder

    True and so it won't happen but this mess flows from the divergence between mechanics for NPCs and players. If EQ did not make such special cases of the two it would have been simple for content designers to make pets with reasonable levels of mitigation instead of the absurdities they did.
  14. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Last I checked, knights could mem 12 spells just like every other mana using class in the game. And disciplines can only be used one at a time (aka, while they're active, you can't use another until it's done). And there are often specific issues with stacking abilities, too - like, our best 36% defensive does not stack with our best offensive discipline.

    In addition, in a tanking role, a knight is devoting at *least* 2/3 of those 12 spells to tanking functions like aggro and survivability, most of the time closer to 3/4. An sk usually has 4-5 lifetap spells memorized in the majority of situations, along with 2-5 pure hate generating spells, that don't do anything other than generate hate. The few other remaining slots are for things like aggro generation and *maybe* 1 or 2 for dps or utility if we're lucky.

    Try again.
  15. strongbus Augur


    Its a spell that has its uses but not enough to take up a spell slot all the time.

    As I said before my standard pet tank lineup only has 1 pet support spell cascading bloneshield. On both live and test(after part 4 changes) that and the aa rune are all I need to kill mobs in a 1v1 trash fights in cotf t2. Why change out a damage spell for a pet support spell if I don't need it.

    On live that lineup is enough for cotf t1 names(have not tried a t2 named even on live). It also is enough for 1v2+ for me to get mobs under control.

    On test I have not tried to see how that lineup works in a 1v2+ or named fight. If I find out that for those fights I need some extra pet support sure I can see loading it up for some help.

    So ya after these changes I could see using it for area where I can't root adds and I know I am going have a high chance of having to face 1v2+

    Same with facing down names.

    But not for normal 1v1 trash fights.

    Tell me dae why is it you think we should have to use all our spells that deal with supporting out pets one ever fight? Do wars use all their disc on each fight or do they pick and chose based on the mob at hand?
  16. strongbus Augur


    I never said you could use them all at once just that war/pallies/sk can have all their disc on hotkeys. Ie you are not limited in the number of disc you can have memed at once like we are with our spells.

    A tank if he/she wanted to could have ever disc form level 1 to 100 hot keyed. I don't know how many disc a war use at level 100 but even if that number was 20 the war can have all 20 ready to use without having to change them in and out like casters have to.
  17. Behelit Augur


    For trash mobs you should establish baseline parses of all 3 tank classes only autoattacking and likewise with all the major pets (passive baseline). Then you would perform the same set of parses using all available tools/abilities at each classes' own disposal to see what they're capable of (activated +passive basline). Then a 3rd set of parses should be done with all support/abilities from other classes ("best case scenario"). This would then give you a comparatively look at the tanking capabilities of both pets and tank classes.

    Still waiting for that heal parse as well for the SK parse from Argin Hiz.

    Yes a knight has to devote 2/3rd of their spell bar to tanking and in return you completely self-heal and get to roll around with a Wiz merc making up for that lack of DPS you suffer from. I have an SK so I'm well aware of what you can do in the group game and being threatened by Pets is laughable.
    Zunar likes this.
  18. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    The analogy still makes no sense whatsoever. For one, as a knight, there aren't *that* many impactful disciplines, so it's not like we have 40 alternatively useful abilities that could be used if only we could stop fighting and "mem" them. It's a little bit more convenient for disciplines to be able to be hotkeyed, yes, but this is also why there aren't an overwhelming number of them, why they can only be used one at a time even if the functions are completely different, and why they often have very long recasts, especially significant ones. Warriors may be a different story since they don't have a spellbar so I won't speak to them.

    And let's also note that just like certain spell lines, our discs share timers, so it's not like I could whip out my VoA era carapace conveniently when my RoF era one was used/down.

    Have you ever actually played a tank? The ridiculousness of these analogies suggest no.
  19. strongbus Augur

    Never played a tank very high. Not enough dps for me. Do have plenty of melee alts though. The spell limit to disc limit analogy is not new. There have been plenty of post by casters over the years saying its not fair and that casters should be limit to 12 spell gems if melee can have unlimited disc hot keyed

    But pallies and sk get 12 spells x number of aa and x number of disc that they can have up when moloing.

    Pet classes on have 12 spells and for necros anyways 4 active aa that are for pet support(ie the aa are ment to do something to to the pet to help keep it up) Plus we have rb for random group heals.
  20. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    What you're referring to is overgeared raid knights in group content, and just about every class that's overgeared can do pretty well in group content.

    Our self healing is solid, but it also drains mana very quickly and is only high heal wise with our main discs going, which have long reuse(s). It's like claiming we're overpowered and godly tanks because we can deflection 30 seconds out of every 24 minutes.

    So no, I can't completely substitute for a healer endlessly and efficiently in t2 zones. Folks aren't making t2 exp groups with their knights doing all the healing and picking up another dps instead of a cleric, sorry. Paladins may be different, I know they're in good shape right now, but I doubt it.

    It doesn't compare to what a pet class can do currently, *and* it's riskier and requires a ton of gear/aa to accomplish it to boot. The constant defense of "revert all changes, it's not OP because other classes can do it", even though they do it worse, conditionally, with exceptional gear/aa/knowledge is tired. An overgeared knight is one of the most versatile classes at the moment, and even with that said we're still not soloing even remotely as well as the solo pet classes are. And that's OK in the grand scheme of things, they *should* solo better. How much better is up to the devs.

    If folks would like to post some parses of knight healing compared to a real healer and argue that we're overpowered because we're filling 2 roles too effectively instead of 1, they're more than welcome to and more power to them. And if the numbers support their assertion and it needs to be changed because the devs say that it's unbalanced, so be it. But that's not the discussion here. The devs have said tanks are where they want them to be relative to content, and that pets are not. Enough with the misdirection.