Test Update 8/08/2014 - Pet Changes Round 3

The other side of that coin is a tank is still having to use defensive abilities while tanking with a healer merc, while doing less dps. So should a mage. I posted a parse on V1 of testing with just defensive spell/aa being cast and no heals, and was still able to dps just as much or more than any tank, with a necro war pet. Now with the latest changes I can do even less defensive and put out even more dps.

No one has an issue with the mercs helping people molo, the issue is the gross imbalance that pet users have over the rest of eq atm when including a merc, if you included a real healer, then yes the mage should be able to destroy the mob without having to cast anything but emergency defensive spell/aa because of the gross power difference between a real healer and a merc.

The other issue is because pets don't have to deal with the same mechanics from named/raid mobs and they have huge HP pools and great mitigation, they could out do tank classes in certain situations.

This thread has reminded me that this is a video game and the majority of vocal people want everything for themselves and do not care about the enjoyment or expense of everyone else, this comes from both sides tanks/dps/casters, healers are really the only ones not joining in so far that I have seen. Please take the time and think about the other side of the coin when posting, because you will be called out and most of the time it degrades into a spiral of misinformation and cover ups etc.

Sour grapes, envy or poor reading comprehension are what most of the complaining can be chalked up as. Certain classes from inception by design have been able to solo stuff that other classes can't. Thats not a gross imbalance it was a design feature and an option everyone had at character select. Mercs further amplified this but they also further amplified ever other non solo specialist class as well.

If pets were not taking DI 20 rounds it was an issue, pets passively mitigating better isn't when you factor in the other parts of the puzzle and its shown as everyone knew that pets were never better than player tanks, except in two rare cases. Pet owners should not suddenly be forced to have to have raid focus effects to handle group content with pets and pet owners should not be penalized by focusing exclusively on "keeping their pet up" even when they have a healer merc out. Otherwise tanks should have to work on healing themselves with a healer merc out and not actively tank. Or work to dps if they have a dps merc out instead of being able to tank or heal themselves as the merc does its job automatically. its a dumb argument unless you see it for what it is envy, class regret or I'm peeing on everything because i don't have it mentality. Mercs auto doing their job is not an issue for pet owners and A OK for everyone else.

Like has already been mentioned, ur comparison is laughable. No group is going to ask or expect a Mage to be running in over and over and separating singles, even if he can use some fancy tricks with his/pet fades and CoN. Rangers and monks run singles back to my groups faster than we can kill them. Mages can do a pull every once in a while, useful in those times when travel across a zone is blocked by a single camp.

Look, I'm sorry rangers can't mitigate for crap. I'm sorry tank have steep gearing requirements. Your complete unwillingness to champion these issues and instead go on a pet nerf crusade certainly didn't help them. Most likely no dev has noticed any of it because some good points are buried underneath a mountain of pet class envy.

Oh my server btw, where raid gear is more accessible, I see as many or more rangers than mages. I'll be sure to start calling them stupid now, stupid rangers going around in their raid gear with their bad class choice. I'll tell you this right now, I'd trade my raid geared Mage for an equal or better raid geared ranger any day, especially if I was only going to play 1 account at once. Being serious, id love to do that. Rangers have so much more to fine tune and min/max and look like a blast to play. That DOES matter. Mages are powerful, but boring, which tends to make me burn out on EQ faster

As an sk, speaking in the theoretical situation of trying to molo something difficult, that's *exactly* what we have to do. If we die the fight is over, and our dps is so poor that the difference in going full dps and just trying to stay alive with taps is pretty small.

The difference in all of this that the pet community doesn't want to seem to face is that with pets in their current state, molo, you do 2 jobs very very well, and the merc makes 3 for the best possible combo of all critical functions. For any other class, at best they'll do 1 thing very very well and at best a secondary role just adequately or maybe even "good". Apparently it's ok for this to apply to 13/16 classes, but not to the other 3. And the response is to say: knights can do that too nerf them also!! ....alrighty then. Your 3 roles molo is apparently weaker than our ~2.5. Touché. Not to mention the sk doing it is substantially more reliant on gear/aa.

As an sk molo I have 2 choices: healer merc which is safer, but mobs die slower than sin, or wizard merc and self heal, but riskily do nothing but spam taps and hope for crits to stay ahead of mob damage output and or spikes. The key to this is that molo for us means there's a *tradeoff*, and we're probably one of the better classes at moloing, yet there are still substantial drawbacks and risks. The relative power of pets has basically meant that a couple of classes haven't had to deal with the same choice that even their closest rivals in being a "solo class" have to, which doesn't inspire a lot of empathy.

I rolled a dps box (rog) specifically because I play late at times and like to be able to effectively camp stuff myself, and I realize 2 accounts isn't for everyone, but it's also certainly not realistic for me to expect the devs will let me dps at 80-90% of a pure dps class just because the class description says I can solo.

Once again, if we are defining things as rigid "roles", we remove all the things that separate knights from warriors. Warriors tank and mitigate better, they are better at their "role", therefore, why do knights even exist? Who would want to play the "weaker" tank? There must be something about knights and what they can do, that separates them from warriors.

Why would anyone play an enchanter? They only have 1 role. And in area with mobs they can reverse charm, they can solo faster than anyone. But how can this be, they are only "good" at one thing? Control. Yet they are some of the best solo'ers and most desired group classes in the game?

I get so tried of people making bullet point lists of "but u can do this AND this!". So what? Lots of classes do just 1 thing, and are better suited to more situations in this game with just that 1 thing they do

I can tank and self heal, that's why I play a knight. But I also realize that being able to do both doesn't mean I should be 80-90% of a cleric and 80-90% of a warrior at the same time with a minimal amount of effort. And as such, even as a diverse class with multiple roles or sub roles or whatever you want to call them, there are drawbacks, sometimes minor, sometimes major.

Diversity of abilities is good. Diversity to such effectiveness that it hits the point of where the role can be completely assumed by the hybrid is another story entirely. Maybe pal can act as a group cleric at 80-90% effectiveness, they're in a good state right now. If they can I'd be against it for the same logic. And sks definitely can't right now.

There are drawbacks indeed. Necro's can do a ton of stuff on paper, yet their group dps is pretty low, and rarely do I hear a group say "we need a necro for this mission". I hear a group say "we need an enchanter for this part" far more often then I hear "we need a mage for this". The drawbacks to being good at one role that is in demand, and good at another role (dps) that a wiz merc can do 3/4th as well and most of the classes can also do, is that you're still not an enchanter, a cleric, or a warrior. You're not even the "strong center" of small 2-3 person box groups either, especially as a necro or beastlord. Despite being 80% effective in "two" roles

even if warriors had a significant edge on knights in tanking, there would still be knights. Not as many for sure, but they would still be around. And only for the reason that they would be tanking in a different and interesting way. Pets do that negatively. They do it in a different way, one that is more group makeup restrictive than any other classes' "infringement" into other class roles.

So yes, drawbacks always. An enchanter is in demand more than a Mage or necro, and an enchanter + almost anything makes better small 2-3 man groups than Mage/nec/BL + anything as well

I agree pet owners should need to use their defensive aa's/spells against a named/multiples, even with a merc healer, and I always have had to do just that, even before this nerf, on the harder named. I am saying that with a dedicated healer in the group, merc or real player, the mage should not have the burden of healing the pet also. Mercs were created to cure the problem of being unable to group because you don't have a tank, healer or dps. They replace real players, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse, but they are considered a second person in the group.

Mage/Necor/BL pets were designed to be tanks. Not visual dots, not speed bumps. Pets are designed to be able to hold aggro on a mob and absorb damage while the owner casts against the mob, as long as the pet has someone focusing on healing it, it should be able to do that job well.

I understand that some people feel this is not fair. Pop a merc and you have an instant group. Well this is a huge saving grace for many people playing this GAME. It is part of the game design and it always will be, you would have to create another game to change this fact without causing . Anyone can play a mage and see how wonderful they are(they have plenty of issues). If everyone in EQ decided to play a mage, would it matter?? Raiding would be tough, but if everyone was happy playing a mage, the game would be no better or worse than it is now. They don't need everyone playing each class evenly.

Nec is the pet class I have experience with and can agree there are plenty of tradeoffs in the nature of how they work. Interestingly enough there seems to be a lot more rage from the mag community about these changes, though, which is odd since they will continue to function very well in most group situations, unlike their nec counterparts. This is why I kept saying I hope they reviewed the changes for pet class separately. What's reasonable to one may not be to the others.

Nec seem to have their own set of issues given how well others have caught up on sustained.

I would hate to actually try to solo with a pet now. I mean it is the best form of exp for the Magician, not with the merc. Our heals finally got a nice boost so we'd be able to do this and then bam! /smack in the face.

Pets nerfed .

I'm not saying I'll withdraw my 10000 accounts, just please tune them fairly and keep in mind, not all of us use our mercs to go solo..And the term solo these days often seems to be implying molo..They are different terms people, let's not confuse them..


Also, pets on test atm feel not nearly as bad as the first round, swarm pets for Mage need to be reverted. Reasons? #1 it's basically our ONLY form of CC, it's also a huge part of our DPS in group and I would theorize then in raids as well. Please keep in mind that changing how our pets get hit is all fine and dandy, but don't go messing with the deps bruh.

<3

THIS THIS THIS,. With mercs there is no reason for any mage/bst/necro to have to do any support(outside of things that cleric mercs can't do) in 1v1 trash fight. Do some of us? YES.
I have stated before that I will cast runes during 1v1 trash fights.

But the dervs has decide that we must. Now us pet classes are going do our best to keep this at a bare min. I personal can see max 15-20% of a fight doing support. But there are tank classes that want that % be much higher. But they are to scared to come out and say what they want it to be. I know I have tried to get them to say it. But I would guess it round 40-50+% of the time. At that point there wold be no reason to molo.

I think it really depends on the mobs you are trying to solo/molo. Addressing molo, against light blue/dark blue/ white yeah 15-20% is ok, sometimes less (weak con mobs), runes should be used to stem the high di spikes, to give you time for your merc to catch up, same as a tank does in those situations, the rest of the time dps your heart out. Against yellow, 25-40% depending on what the mob does, not all mobs are made equal, same as a pally having to target themselves to heal or sk tapping to heal. On red, you had better be ready to do whatever it takes, dps/defensive/extra healing to win. Mind you this is group geared, raid geared will have a bit easier time, but the difference is raid gear ear doesn't scale like raid gear for a tank. So the spells will be a big part of what makes a raid mage better than the group geared ones.

If this the route then the pet rune/heal spells need to be changed so that they don't auto target the pets. The aa heals/runes don't do this so the spells shouldn't as well.

You are still measuring yourself vs solo friendly designed classes. Sk are listed as soloing sometimes and this was mainly when they had fear. And yes you can heal yourself 80% as well as a cleric all while tanking 80% as well as a warrior. Pallies can accomplish the same only heal themselves even better.

Again the major complaints are its not fair, I can't do this, you should have to do this instead over and over when pets are doing exactly what they did prior with them now supported by a hired healer merc. Outside of the few times they were horribly tuned and broken. From inception a necro and mage could walk into zones that groups struggled with and kill high con mobs with their pets. That is no different today outside of a broken aspect with DI 20 and 19 that was fixed, various stupid effects being PC only paired with a whole lot of envy and man I want my class to do the same thing or tear them down because I regret it. One tank started a crusade with flawed data and now its pile on pets because my class doesn't have one because I made the choice to play another class that said not solo friendly or heavily dependent on groups simply to function.

Most of us are talking about simple dark blue to white con mobs. Yes once you get up to yellow and red cons or named the pet owner should be backing up the healer merc some, which has always been the case for most pet classes. Or if you have multiples. Slow, runes, debuffs, more pets for stuns, dps, heals, cures, activated defensive stuff, various pet clicks, etc all come into play.

It can also be play style. When I play my mage (it's usually just boxed on the side), I do so so I can spend time with friends, be useful and honestly be a little more lazy (yes that means not optimizing dps as well). I don't always want to play a class that requires constant button mashing as EQ has evolved to. This is what makes me cringe when the tanks are chiming in saying they want mages to have to actively maintain their pets with button mashing. That's a play style that not everyone enjoys or that everyone wants to be constantly doing. All of the above are all likely factors, but you need to add in play style as well.

I'm working on a warrior now. I still have a lot to learn and figure out. The thing that has aggravated me the most and had me think twice about continuing is the mashing. It's far worse than any other class I've played. It could very well be that I'm missing something that would make my life much easier. It also seems like the warrior community is much more tight lipped about giving out the secret sauce to succeed. Many forum posts are along the lines of "once you figure out the right sequence..." rather than recommending you use such and such abilities.

If the goal is to make playing a mage much more akin to playing a warrior when tanking, I think you might lose a lot of the current mages that just don't enjoy that play style. Some will adapt, some will find other classes, some will just fade away.

Now that I've been playing more and seen and heard how t2 especially is going, pet classes really aren't kings of the mountain. My strength playing pet classes has always been killing hordes of trash mobs quickly and easily. Fast levels, AA's, it was great.

Not as great at lev 100 with maxed out T2 visibles and max AA. Killing trash mobs mans jack squat for me now, no matter where I do it at or how many I kill. Killing named, especially ones in later group missions is what it's about now, and these sometimes have very annoying/difficult mechanics. Named that have pull mechanics (hate these so much), named that don't even allow pet tanks (PoW), named that requires dispels of certain debuffs or mass crowd control. Pet classes really shine at grinding mobs quickly, and this matters less and less the deeper u get into max lev

That's actually something I've proposed.

Set bst warder, necro warrior and earth mitigation to warrior levels and raise baseline avoidance to warrior levels. At least under that model we're all taking damage in the same way. High avoidance with lower mitigation means lower average dps potentially but higher threat potential. Pets will still have prism skin, vies/blocks from their owners and pet heals.

I have a feeling though that you would not like such a change. I'd give up my avoidance advantage in lieu of the baseline DI spread that earth pet currently has in test ... Nevermind the insano DI spread from early 2014. As much as people want to downplay the usefulness of that mitigation, I promise you would hate losing it and gaining equal levels of avoidance.

Once viable healer and dps mercs entered the game the bottle neck to group formation became a lack of tanking capacity. Tank mercs are no where near as useful as the other two. And that's one of the business reasons I think it's some what of an issue to reduce the tanking capacity in game. Put another way a PC tank may not be able to do everything but he / she can do the thing that can't readily be done well by a merc. The missing component that's needed so customers can go out and about and justify logging on. There's 8 dps classes and mercs resulting in ample supply. Three primary healers and decent healer mercs. Again ample supply. When it comes to tanking capacity you don't have the same situation. Tank mercs are not so useful in current content and if the PC tanks are unavailable for whatever reason you end up with a bottle neck. Which is one the business reasons I question a project which may create downward pressure on customers going out and getting something fun accomplished.

Sorry but not reading through 11 pages

Can Relentless Servant now survive against one add again? Or is it time to quit casters and play SKs?