What do you folks think of adding an ability for pet wielders to make their swarm pets self destruct / go away on command? I'm tired of hearing bellyaching in raids to control pets and then to "attack something else" to make /pet swarm behave since they just keep attacking. For a mage, swarm pets are a huge part of our potential dps, so being told not to use them is just plain misguided / uninformed.
Swarms will jump on a target that damages you (either melee or cast) while they are unengaged. I have /pet qswarm as the second line on my /pet attack key, and where possible I hit the attack key on the next mob before the first one goes down so that the next target is queued on the swarm instead of becoming unengaged. I set one of the buttons in the pet window to swarm and use that for direct manual control outside of that to make swarm immediately change targets. /pet swarm should make an immediate target switch, barring any lag that delays the acknowledgement of the command. In times I've been pulling and the mob casts on me engaging the swarm, I've thought it would be nice to be able to call back swarm or whatever, but then they cross the line into standard pets than damage spam. A destruct key would cut too much of our DPS, and as it would destruct ALL swarms not only those engaged on "wrong" mobs it's not the answer. Actively using qswarm and swarm should be as much management as we need, and people that don't (or choose not to) giving them a new destruct command isn't going to help them any better.
Maybe we need a new rank of pet discipline to allow greater control of swarm pets I think that the greater problem is how the game has handed out swarm pets to pretty much every class so we have too many all eating up processer cycles that hurts Mage DPS probably more than it helps it. I'd like to see everyone, Mages included get their swarm pets reduced in number but increased in strength and something done to refactor the "...of many line" to account for that. I'd happily lose the Berserker Pet and have that damage added to something else.
I think the three pet classes should really be the only ones that have swarm pets in any significant number, and even those should be significantly less than the mage counterpart. Even then I wouldn't mind losing them altogether and just make the permanent pets significantly better and have mages get a nuke line to replace "of many". Granted I don't play a mage, so maybe they have become synonymous with the class at this point.
I have my own issues with swarm pets. The only real issue for me is my SK swarm pets. I pull with the SK so I often tag, run back to camp, and... no mob. Run back to the mob and 4 swarm pets are beating on it. That wouldn't bother me but the taunt on those swarm pets is huge. So then I have to taunt, cast, etc. to get the mobs attention so I can run back to camp. A lot of the time I just sit down until the swarm pets are dead. Once they have engage, there's no way to pull swarm pets off, right?
I was having similar issue pulling on my boxed bard due to the swarm pets on a short timer - I ended up not using them at all outside of burns on named due to the hassles they caused.
I was thinking that was probably my best option. They don't add that much DPS for SK but they're my little buddies.
We need... swarm leave swarm ghold swarm stop swarm assist pet (to tie swarm to pets so they just do whatever the pet is doing)
Really the whole swarm pet concept needs to be eliminated for almost every class. It is really rediculous now. Righteous servant needs to have a recast delay so that you can't have a second until the 1st dies. ENC abilities need to be 1 per ability not 3 or more. AA swarm abilities like the mage fire elementals needs to be reduced to 1 as strong as the multiples. Any AA swarm pets that survive the revamp needs to work like the cleric pet, attack that mob and if that mob dies they go away. The only exception being AA pets that are specifically designed to be defensive, like doppleganger, can stay on a timer and they need to be set to a radius of like 50 from the chanter they are defending, and only taunt if the ENC is #1 on the hate.
I would suggest that the Swarm Pet has a zonewide aura that only affects the caster, that aura blocks casting of the spell - when the pet dies the aura drops and the spell can be recast.
Hypothetically question: IF swarm-pets was removed from the game as a player-spell(boss mobs could still use them). Would that solve the lag-problems many servers have on raids? or are there other better solutions? As a wizard I find swarmpets useful and would be sad if they went away(I could probably live with it though). Im just curious...
Swarm calculate last, so no, its just a cherry on top of the pile of issues, that just has higher visibility. Its why spells keep casting, but pets become stationary in high lag situations.
in isolation? I agree in conjunction with swarm pet numbers being massively reduced? I think its viable.
As a magician whose primary raid DPS spell revolves on how many pets are engaged on a mob for it to be maximized, I vehemently would oppose the removal of swarm pets on raids. As far as this entire topic goes, I find it laughable. There is only one raid event that I can think of where you would not want a swarm pet attacking, and that is on the last drake during the first T3 raid on the first two waves. Competent magicians just ensure that they don't /pet attack that mob that competent raids communicate to everyone not to attack. Or, since it is just a minor trash mob.... don't cast the swarm pets during that part of the raid event? O no I am losing out on a couple thousand damage cause I did not cast a swarm pet. Boo hoo.
If they ever did decide to expand there, I think it'd be a good idea for them to introduce a /swarm command instead of trying to awkwardly fit everything under /pet. /swarm attack /swarm queue /swarm leave
I mean /swarm ghold + /swarm back off would make sense in addition to what we already have.... As well as following pet logic...
I would like it if going invis would make swarm pets poof, but not main pets. Like main pets used to. So we can /pet back and hit fade+invis ability more reliably. Then it could also be used where needed to clear out unwanted swarms.
As in you want swarm pets under any & all circumstances and will accept no alternative to them even if the damage of the replacement to the "...of many" line was comparable or maybe even slightly better and more reliable?
That's the issue though. Maximizing number of pets. The Quantity is easily corrected with more Quality. If they just scaled back all of the abilities so they casted a single pet, and the recast timer was not less than duration timer, then there would be a lot less pets. Simply adjust the DPS of that 1 pet to match the 10 current pets. Your DPS is unchanged, but there is a lot less mess, animations, melee and spell calculations, etc. Like RS, if they adjusted the recast to match duration, slightly increased RS DPS to offset the longer recast and upped Conjure synergy % to offset the longer cast timer, then your DPS would be unaffected. Really raid DPS would be higher with less lag, and events would be shorter with less rubberbanding. I forget the name of the one that drops the fire elementlings, but isn't that... 5 of them? Why 5 instead of 1 tuned the same? Why does a bard get charmed and fill my entire Xtar window? Why would a bard have more than 1 pet, ever, for any reason?
