The Forums of Strife

So its just during nameds they are not able to be used, right?

Ive been in a pet tanking group for trash, and it worked just fine.

lol no, that's not what I'm blaming you for...

I think a Mage pet defines a Mage no more than a Shield defines a Warrior Tank. While both help the class and are extremely useful.. A mage can fight without their pet and survive... they would have to really understand their limitations and their abilities and how to use what they have but the pet is not the only thing in their arsenal. Take old days of bad pet pathing.... A mage in a group was not always liked if they only used their pets. I remember many a group in Karnors that would tell mages to drop the pet .... because of the pathing issues. Mages learned when and how to use them. Mages did not complain and scream that the pet defined them... Thats more of a modern idea.

I think you're confusing group progression with gear upgrades. PoWar is not group progression, it's a specialty zone that has gear that is above the level of current group progression(and will most likely be above CotF T2, we'll see about that one in a month). It's a zone to meet somewhere between raiding and grouping. It's not tied to any of the current "story" of EQ, is not required for anything CotF related, and I seriously, seriously doubt that CotF T2 will be tuned with PoWar gear in mind. It's an elite zone for those that want to push themselves beyond normal play.

Tanked him np np...well, I spiked a few times (okay...a lot)...made me clench my butt cheeks that's for sure!

The class envy box is that way ---------------->

Nobody's arguing that mages ought to be soloing / moloing PoWar rares.

I'm finding the title of the thread to be more and more ironic based on the quality of posts here.

You are completely wrong here Tharrg A mage without a pet is useless. Mages cannot root or snare mobs to slow them from coming after us so without a tank in the group or the use of our pet we are useless. WE cannot survive. is simple as that. As for your comparison for pathing issues we still deal with those to this day but we learned how to deal with pathing issues. A mage without a pet is like taking away root and snare from the wizards and telling them they can survive because root and snare aren't necessary for their class.

In a group setting, root and snare are not necessary for their class.

Which is what PoWar is. A group setting.

Root and snare are not necessary.... they are just helpful and make it easyier.

I've not seen anyone say, "Mages cannot have a pet". The only thing I've heard so far is that some of the named mobs get rather testy when a pet tanks them. I don't know for sure, but I've also heard that trash is completely doable with pet tanks.

There's nothing stopping pet use, pet users just have to be careful on named and keep the pet's aggro low. Or the mage will end up tanking the named. Learn to group with other people and fade your pets, and there's no problems.

No just that they shouldn't have to make a well rounded group using the cornerstone of a good group(a tank) .

Can't root or snare? Group with a ranger or a half dozen other classes.

Can't slow? Group with a shaman or enchanter.

Can't survive? Group with a healer.

Pet can't tank? Group with a plate class.

Its really not that hard. No one is going to be solo/molo/duo'ing PoWar names. The only thing I see are a small subset of mages whining that they can't be the one class that does.

Even if mages could pet tank these named mobs they most certainly would not be moloing them, not a chance. The DPS check + the fact that a moloing mage would need to fight defensively would make sure that they would NEVER be able to molo this stuff.

Honestly at this point in the game it's kind of dumb to make a change this drastic to lock a certain type of player from not playing their usual playstyle they have become accustomed to for years.

Some people have their own crew of people they play with that played characters that compliment certain classes, there are a lot of people (non boxers even) that have a crew they play with that revolves around the mage being the tank. It has become a large part of the game.

I've experienced enough of the game, and enough plane of war content (including successfully beating roughly 1/3 of the zones named with just 3 human players) to know a dumb mechanic in need of change when i see one.

The pet tanking issue isn't even the biggest problem in the zone, the mob density in certain areas + agro through walls is a bigger issue, as is the 2 min response in certain areas of the castles. I also find the unbalanced factioning required for both castles to be silly. The castles are supposed to be equal in power yet the faction for one is much harder to obtain than faction for the other.

Quite a lot of problems with the zone tbh, I do enjoy the first to segments of the zone but beyond that it needs some changes, and this anti pet tanking stuff should not even exist (I realize certain people have agendas against mages though while overlooking their own overpowered class abilities *not pointing fingers at anyone in particular though just speaking in generalities)

I see lots of crying from mages about how they have been wronged, yet see no mages with any compassion for the warriors and rogues that have been begging for groups for years.

Perhaps if you really try to understand the above sentence, you might begin to understand your so called "agenda". That agenda is called "the health of the game".

I don't think it is a lack of compassion so much as maybe the people playing the mages aren't experiencing the problem first hand? I suspect if most mages knew of such problems with the class they would be totally in favor of seeing those classes get things that helped them in these situations some. That being said, EQ is very clique based, pickup groups (no matter the class) are going to generally stick to their own trusted crew of friends and/or guildies.

No matter what classes any of my closest friends played I would always rather stick with them and the class they chose to play than a total stranger that was playing an "ideal" class. I think that goes for a lot of people.

Good thing that in this content you can have your group of friends AND a total stranger.

I play a necro and moloing most content is fun in its own way but I want a challenge. In this content I can finally be a good dps in groups again with NPCs having much larger HP pools. Mages are still excellent dps and they can still use their pets to dps names in PoWar, just not tank the names. Same goes with my necro.

When CoTF T2 and future expansions come out you can go back to moloing content like usual. Yes the best drops will be from PoWar, and you can still go there with others. You will eventually see better drops when the next expansion comes out.

The pet issue is more than, "oh, you just need a group to progress." That's not the problem. The problem is that you NEED a probably raid-geared tank that's farmed all the relevant augs and AA and is very good at playing his class.

Any other deficiency can be compensated for. If your DPS sucks, you can bring extra DPS. Same goes with your healers. If they fail the mechanics and get death touched, the other better players can still finish the fight.

However, if you don't have a tank up to the relevant standard, it doesn't matter if you're showing up with 50 other elite raiders. You can't do anything. Tanking characters are the rarest player time to begin with, and due to the proliferation of pet tanking making their primary role useless for years outside of raids, quality tanks that will actually do content like this outside of a clique are extraordinarily rare. The odds of even an otherwise fully formed group being able to pickup a tank up to the standard of this zone are very low.

I have used a tank merc to get zerk diamonds and kill the Judi to get castle access. Multiple times.

I have yet to do the castle quests, as I am waiting on my group of friends to all get adequate faction first.