Changes to raid mobs and pets from the 8/19 patch

Hello all. My name is Yukan and I am the guild leader of Ascended Darkness on Lockjaw. I know that there is a thread already addressing this issue, but I feel a new thread to show some visual evidence of how the recent changes to both bosses and pets have actually effected the changes now that they are live is justifiable.

We had really high hopes that the most recent changes to pets would actually bring pets back into line and have been extremely patient in waiting for some form of change. So on our turn for Lady Vox on our most recent rotation day, we decided to test the changes for ourselves. We decided to see what would happen if we sent 15 mages against Lady Vox and we recorded a video of this entire process.

Links to the videos of the kill can be found below. Note that in the first video, we don't actually engage until the 4:45 mark.





To summarize, we had about 80-90 people stand in the back room while 15 mage pets killed Vox. In order to prove that it could be done without assistance, we asked for mages to get no buffs from other classes and to use potions. We actually misfired a little bit on the pull positioning and it took it a couple of minutes to get into the spot where pets don't get feared, and in this time, 3 mages died. We haven't actively tried to figure out where the pull spot is because well, this is the first time we kill Vox with mage pets instead of legitimately tanking it, and it was sad to learn how easy it was. We sent in 1 more additional mage after the first 3 died to have a total of 13 mage pets engaged on Lady Vox for the last 95% of the fight.

What we found was that 13 mage pets was overkill. It took as many as 6 or 7 rounds for Lady Vox to kill a mage pet. Their damage was close to non existent and the fight took approximately 15 minutes from start to finish. Not only this, but the mages, without a bard, were almost all above 90% mana after the fight ended. I firmly believe 5 mages and a bard can kill Naggy or Vox if there are no adds.

The highest level of mark of the old ways, the pet debuff, got up to level 5. I believe the percentage I was told that happens with this debuff is approximately 16% increased mitigation to pets, and 16% less damage output. I don't know much about the numbers, but what I do know is that the changes Roshen suggested were being made did not do anywhere close to enough considering the purpose of the buff was to restrict the effectiveness of pets on raid mobs. Here is the quote Roshen made when announcing the incoming changes to pets.

I believe that pets were nerfed from the most recent patch, but that this nerf was VERY small. But here's the thing, raid mobs got nerfed MORE than pets, so the pet wall strategy is actually MORE effective than it used to be. Vox and Naggy only hit for the 500ish range now, whereas they hit for 700-800ish before the patch.

Here is why this is a significantly bigger deal than I think people realize. I believe that 5 mages and a bard can kill either Naggy or Vox with the current changes. Where this becomes a problem is with enforcing a mandatory rotation on the community while creating a situation that enables any 6 boxer who has the time and desire to level a mage crew to have a claim for entering the rotation. How long do you think a rotation will hold up once 25 different mage boxers decide they are a legitimate guild and deserve a spot on the mandated rotation?

Mage pet crews are still getting 100% of Phinny kills on Lockjaw and they are still farming Hate minis, despite the buffs on both of them. The way I have interpreted Roshen's response for reducing the effectiveness of pets is that the entire purpose of the debuff of pets on these specific mobs is to prevent massive amounts of mages from killing specifically those targets. But this is not working, at all. Mage box crews are still monopolizing Phinny and hate minis and they're doing it by using mages and no other class to kill these mobs, despite the mark of the old ways debuff that is been slapped on them.

I don't know what you have in store to prevent a single class from killing current, in era, end game content, but the pet walls MUST stop if you want to keep both the rotation and community at large healthy.

The changes need to be made sooner than later. The best proposed change I have heard is an increased mana cost for all pet spells. All pet class pet spells cost next to no mana, which directly contributes to mages being able to summon dozens and dozens of pets throughout the course of a fight that is being pet walled. Drastically increase the cost of mage pets, and drastically increase the damage pets take from melee and the pet walls will stop. Either that or make it so mages cannot summon a new pet while in combat, but something drastic needs to be done. I have waited patiently for these changes to get fixed and I was really optimistic the most recent change would fix this, but seriously, enough is enough, stop the pet walls.

Thanks for the post. This sucks. I don't understand how you can design a raid boss buff for a specific situation and then it literally doesn't change anything. Need a different QA process for these changes. Why don't they ask a few of the top guilds to come participate in testing changes and then tweak it? We're literally about to move to Kunark (on RF) and the raid bosses and pets haven't been properly tuned yet.

DBG won't like that, as it affects the regular servers.

Could also nerf classes more to classic values, limit max chars that can be used so guilds dont use 100-150 people, and upgrade raid mobs so only the top guild on each server can kill. There will be a lot less crying and wont have to deal with rotation BS.

Well, DBG over did it on the nerf, especially in Sky. I expect some of those changes to be rolled back in the next patch, at least.

How hard is it to just make these raid targets ignore any and all pet agro? This would solve mage walling while keeping dps intact.

This is sad. We were promised a fix to the mage army situation and if anything it sounds like it's even worse than before.

A few observations about the above part of your post . . .

AD came into Hate last night and 4 minis were up and just sitting there. AD killed all of them and then, over the course of several hours, killed a couple more minis that repopped. The previous day, Faceless Insanity had a similar experience.

Minis are not raid targets. Minis are doable with small numbers of people, hence the reason the are called Minis. The 10 spawn locations for minis in hate have no PHs. Their respawn is very random. Any mini can pop in any mini location. The respawn windows were greatly increased, randomizing the spawn further. Please remember that minis in Hate have always been killable by single groups. They are now harder to kill on the TLPs than regular servers. They are not intended to only be killed by large rotation guilds. They were added to Hate to make specific drops more accessible rather than just dropping from Innoruuk.

Yes, mage crews roam Hate killing trash for armor, and the larger mage crew sit in wait for Magi P`Tasa to spawn for a shot at an earth staff. However, this is hardly mage crews decimating raid targets.

Phinigel Autropos was a 16K hp epic quest dropper, that could be killed by less than one group in classic and soloed in Kunark. I never understood why it was considered a raid target on the TLPs. Phinigel is only slightly harder than killing the King or Ghoul Lord in Lower Guk.

Yes, mage crews sit in wait to kill Phinigel, because they want the water staff. I personally have killed Phinigel many times. I have also given out about 15 to 20 of each BCS, Robes, and Back Bones. If someone in any guild wants a drop, they simply need to show up a few times. I believe I have given out about 30 epic quest drops to AD members alone. Of course I was there for the water staff, and you may have mages in the guild that would like it yes? Phinigel is on a 4 to 6 hour respawn. Get the raid set up and go down there and wait a few hours for him to pop. I know Faceless Insanity has the attitude that it is the responsibility of the members themselves to organize and kill Phinigel, as they do not want to waste time on that NPC. Hence the reason so many members show up to loot rots. Considering he drops the Enchanter wand and Shaman rod most of the time, it's an incredible time drain on anyone camping the spawn. BTW, when I was killing Phinigel, I was rotating with several other mage groups, including Tulkas. I passed him to guilds that showed up, even after sitting there for 10 hours.

As for the overall post . . .

I have never tried to kill actual raid targets such as Vox or Nagafen. I do not know what it takes to kill them. I know Vox casts a great deal, would Nagafen also be killable with 15 pets? Was Vox positioned as to exploit the AOE (pets avoiding getting hit by the AOE?).

The buffs on raid targets, to make them more difficult, actually had the reverse effect. They made them very difficult for a tank to handle the DPS, and actually pushed guilds to use pet walls more. The change to decrease their overall DPS was to bring them back in line so your average rotation guild could actually tank and kill them without using mass pets.

The overall nerf to pets defense was significant, soloing mages weep. However, raid targets will always be able to be pet walled simply because of the game mechanics. Right now you have several guilds in the raid rotation. You have a few guilds that relay on pet walls and you have more upcoming guilds using the same strat. I'm sure if more vigorous anti-pet mechanics were employed, there would be less guilds in the rotation overall and down the line.

You also have to remember that magicians DPS is based heavily around the pet on many raids. Wizards get -300 lures in Kunark and Necros get -200 life taps and -100 resist dots. Magicians get magic and fire nukes with no resist adjustments. Any mechanic implemented would realistically have to be focused directly around a pet tanking. If Anti-pet AOEs are implemented, you are taking too much DPS away from a DPS class. If anti-tank mechanics are implemented, the mage crews will simply use PC tanks, while the pets DPS away.

On the last mini I killed in Hate, I teamed up with other mage crews and we had 30 pets killing. With the 40% damage reduction and the pet # reduction, pets were doing about 30% to 35% of their full damage.

I'm personally not against changes being made to raid targets, but please leave Minis alone. They should never have been included in the raid target upgrades.

I noticed you conveniently left out Phinny from your post, Drathus.

Anyway, the issue is that the devs tried to fix an issue (mage armies) and they failed. I'm hoping Roshan will see this and stick to his word that the devs will consider more adjustments. Not that it impacts me, but it sucks to see these kind of posts on the forums.

I have two paragraphs on phini . . .

I killed him - I added members to our raid, I gave out loots for anyone that wanted them for free. I listed in general if nobody was there to loot. I was also very happy when we got the drops we wanted and never had to go back there again.

However, Phinigel Autropos is a Mini also. If he required a massive raid to kill, guilds would get very unhappy very quickly, having to go down there with a massive raid to mostly get junk from him . . . unless they changed his table to actually drop the epic pieces more often.

My bad dude I thought you were saying to leave phinny alone too. Too much weed for me tonight haha.

I'm very disappointed with the changes. Mage pets were barely changed, much less fixed. And raids, especially Sky are now stupidly easy. You can just autopilot through them. Not fun.

pets were used to tank the original galenth in WK2, a powered-up mordaur in xorbb 1 or the original tita's ghost in TDS ( bosses with outrageous melee damage output)

even if pet get 1-shotted by bosses , pet walling remains viable... actually, the harder they hit, the more viable pet-walling is.

Adds, or some form of more complex mechanics would be the way to stop pet walls... in planes of power and +.

I thought the way it was supposed to work was that incoming melee dps from the pets was greatly mitigated based on the number of pets. That should be fine, it just needs to be tuned up. You could even further tune it such that the buff/debuff is only applied if pet is top on the hate list. If a pet is tanking, pets melee for 1 damage.

If this causes people to use real tanks, then the job is done. Pets and mages/stacking classes is a thing that will always exist, but having a mage pet as primary tank means EVERY OTHER MELEE is not able to participate in the fight. That is absolutely unacceptable.

This is why their pet fix was useless. Even if they buff the Mark up, it has the side effect of screwing over people who actually play the class.

What's really confusing is they have a working ANTI pet wall code in the game, why on earth are they trying all these new things. Put in PoWar Pet code and bam, you canno't pet wall at all. And you do it without screwing over regular mages just raiding normally or in groups/solo.

Simplest method to disable petwalling:

Make all pets level 1-65 not able to be cast if in combat.

All these ideas are silly, you penalize people actually playing mages/necros either in just traditional raiding, solo or groups.

When there is a working fix already in EQ and you just apply to the mobs/zones you want.

Classic pets 200 mana per cast. Kunark 51 - 55 are 300 mana to cast and level 56 to 60 pets are 400 mana per cast. Considering the amount of AOE damage most Kunark boss npcs put out . . .

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=857

The problem of mass pets will soon start o vanish.

My guess, is that in kunark you will see the rise of the wizard groups - typically x5 wizards and 1 cleric. Multiply this x 4 and you have a 20 wizard army and a dedicated healer in each group. Tank group might be Warrior, SK, Shaman, x3 Cleric. The question is, when you see this boxer downing something are we going to be nerfing wizards nukes? I have seen a couple running in raids now, but I think they will start to replace the classic mage army starting in Kunark. In Kunark wizards start getting the -300 resist lures and Velious, I believe, wizards start getting the unresistable 2k nukes for boss fights?

On FV, RoF and CotF T1 and T2 raids are commonly boxed by single players running raids via the unnamed multibox software.

Clearly, they need to do something immediately to fix the situation.

My suggestion is to increase the re-cast timer to 15-20 mins.

Or give thee bosses an AE dismiss summoned, with proc rate increasing according to. Number of pets on it.