Devs: Pets are paper on Test. Please abort patch.

What do you mean by "now"? You mean after the incoming patch?

So....which is it? Are pets losing their ability to ignore "soft cap"? If so, that's another pet nerf.

For what it's worth, I find the whole "soft cap" thing absurd. I understand it's a relic of ancient, outdated code. Players should be able to see what their true stats are (and the stats of their mercs and pets).

Pets keep the no Soft Cap thing except on AC Spell Buffs now, they will only receive ~1/4-1/3 value of the AC buff like all Player Characters receive (0.25-0.35x depending on specific Class) for the same buffs.

"now" is post patch, yea

Players post patch will also get their real AC values shown, and Mercenaries already showed real AC values, since they are NPC's they had no soft cap

All while player tanks go unchecked doing massive DPS and mitigating at insane rates.

yay more pet nerfs

I just registered to the forum this is my first post...
I'm a coming back player, played 15 years ago for years, left some time, came back in 2007 or so, then left again because i was missing the old E.Q... Recently i discovered the TLP, so i came back.
I am a casual, solo player, so... i mostly played a mage and a druid, now i come back, create a mage...
And seriously i can hardly believe it, i'm just level 15, my EARTH PET, FOCUSED (shovel of ponz), cannot tank a SINGLE blue mob (from orcs to crocodiles in oasis, to skeletons or anything dark blue in fact, and i've tried all the continents). Now i have to play it like a wizard, pull, nuke, med, pet is useless, i'm not twiked and i can tank 2 blue safely (while i nuke and burn mana ofc), while my pet die to a single one in the same amount of time...
Is this some kind of joke ? I don't care about the raiding abilities, the mage have never been designed for it, for god, the mage is (WAS indeed) the perfect soloer. (after the necro, but the mage was more for lazy players, less effective, more time consuming but more secure than necro)
On my previous mage, on live, i NEVER died, i had the time to run when i was seeing OOM and pet low HP, now, the pet is dead in 5 hits from a blue (if i'm lucky), i'm dead like 20 times at very least, because i always run out of mana, even if i spend half my day medding and doing nothing else.
ALL my AOE are now useless, it's a shame.
I've played nearby other soloers... monk, pal, SK, necro... they are ALL more effective than me, less cooldown between fights, better sustain during fight, overall better dps on the long term, and they mostly have solutions to escape/FD/heal if something goes wrong, my mage ? nothing.
Seriously there is something really up, i play the mage on the TLP, i am in the same zone i was when i played with my first mage and only kunark was out, and there is nothing i can do.
This is discouraging, disgusting, the mage pet was a lot more than necro or chanty pets, i mean nearly HALF our spells are about it, and now he's as useful as a necro pet ?
I'm level 15, and i have 2 spells that are useful in fight, 2 bolt of fire, rest is useless, pet is useless, so burnout is useless, AOE are useless as i cannot handle more than 2 mobs... that's really an AMAZING Gaming experience, med, grab an enemy, hit 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 sometimes if it run, med again for 5 minutes. The pet now is just a backstabber with taunt off while i tank...
I guess i'll give up, the targeted consumer is the guy raiding, now DBG just 'mess with the code" without understanding the basics of everquest, the differences between classes, and they just try to "balance" it like a smith messing with a clock mechanism. That's just sad.

I strongly suspect they are tearing their hair out trying to figure out a way to nudge (shove?) players back toward group play (returning players morosely begging for a group for XP are becoming common on my server).

That said, it is, I think, a little late in the game (cough) to try and re-enforce the early model today.... this is a bad idea, a bad change at this stage in things, and very likely going to have serious, negative repercussions for their revenue stream.

That said, when have you ever seen a game company actually listen to customer feedback that is consistent in theme and reasonable? *sigh*

I've already shelved my mage, deleted my enchanter.... it almost seems as if they're trying to convince me not to pay or play anymore.

Since I cannot believe that is the goal, I'm a bit confused by changes like this.

Wow, /necro'd the heck out of this 18-month old thread, eh Tarask?

Well-played, sir.

necro post...

Patch is still there, so the post is still appropriate/current.

Ya'll say that like it's a bad thing (reassures her necro hubby they really don't mean it).