Magician: The best tracker in the game.

So, as a Ranger in Runnyeye, I see a picklaw Slayspell pop on track. Ahead and to the left. I run to engage, but my hall ends and the mob is so close! I run down the hall, make a U-turn and watch a Mage pet kill it.
I follow the Mage pet back to it's owner (and he appears to be AFK.) I retraced the pet's path to the Picklaw Slayspell an it seems the pet is able to cross a bridge, traverse a hallway, go through 2 closed doors, traverse a hallway with a hairpin turn, and engage a mob that no tracker could possibly run directly to based on, "ahead and to the left."

PLEASE disable pet tracking! IMO, the pet class should require line of sight to "direct" their pet anywhere.

Appears to be AFK does not mean they are AFK. I spent the weekend trying to get a BAM (I did eventually manage it.) At first I tried to move around a little when ever some roaming person peaked in on the spawn point I was camping down there, but around hour 5 or 6 I really stopped caring and started to "appear AFK". I saw all of the people who ran through my room looking for spawns and I just stood there. I read the OOC chat that accused all the mages of being AFK bots. All while binge watching Twin Peaks and killing my 2 goblins on their hour long respawn timer.

Want to beat the mages? Pick a room to camp and stop running around aimlessly. Yes, mobs will pop elsewhere and someone else will always get there first. Just wait at your spawns, track the respawn timers and engage before anyone else. Avoid the middle room, it's the most camped. The North East, South West, and two story round room are the best spots. They each have a named possible spawn point and a couple more for those destroyer/slayspell pops. They are also far enough away from the heavy spawns in the center that it takes the mage pets a while to get there. Should give you enough time to do some damage and secure you the kill. It will be a long annoying camp, took me 14 hours over 3 sessions to get it. I tend to have bad luck though, and I did spend the early time running around aimlessly.

They aren't going to change fundamental game mechanics because you lost a few bams in runnyeye....don't know what to tell you, I guess you better make a few mages!

No. I'll not be making mages. I will bet; however, that the ability of the pets to attack mobs who's location is unknown to the caster will be adusted as it should be.

No one has put forth a reason why it's ok for a tracker to be forced to make path decisions based on a general direction where a mob lies while a pet can find a perfect path in milliseconds.

IMO, if the caster can't cast on it (no LOS) they shouldn't be able to "cast" their pet on it. - "I cannot see that target."

IMO the caster shouldn't even have known the mob had spawned. Let alone track and kill it without even having to move.

So, the mages just use a macro to /target and /send pet. The other night a mage team had a druid to SoW the pets as well. It was not possible for me to out DPS since I was level appropriate to the area and not 50. I'm not expecting anything to change, but I really wouldn't find that type of playing enjoyable. Then again I care about other people more than the average krono farmer.

The mages (or any pet class for that matter) just make a hotkey that looks like this:

Then either spam the key themselves or use some kind of autofire method... cause you know someone that has been sitting in runnyeye for 20 hours a day 7 days a week is totally not afk at some point

The real issue with mage pets is the "/pet attack" and "/pet qattack" commands, which allows them to attack stuff the summoner has not targetted and has not in sight (within a certain radius that is way too big atm). The easiest way is to either reduce the effective range of the command to spell casting range, or to disable the command altogether and only make it work on stuff you have targetted.

I play a mage and enjoy it a lot, even with the pet defensive nerfs.

I would be totally fine with pets only attacking things within line of sight, or requiring pets to only be able to be sent to attack what the mage has targeted himself.

Why would it be adjusted now? It's been this way on Ragefire, Lockjaw, Phinny, and now Agnarr. Personally, I think it's stupid that pets work in this way but I'm not holding my breath for a change.

The real problem is the horrid focus itemization that leads to a mid 20's dungeon being camped like this. The rest of the complaints are just symptoms.

Why now? Agnarr will not be the last TLP ever.
When's good for you? Lol.

That's like saying a security vulnerability exsited in Windows for the last 2 years, why fix it Now?

No, the real problem is that pet casters can track specific mobs thorough a maze better than the tracking classes can.

Sounds like a good plan to me, when do we start?

No, it really is the fact that BiS items drop off level 25 mobs. In Kunark and beyond all these mages and mage boxes will fall off the face of the planet because they become less effective at a rapid rate. Would you laugh if I said that I chose a mage because they are rare? Because they will be, in an expansion or two.

I doubt they are going to pour a ton of man hours into a self limiting problem, and make sweeping changes to the way pets work. Effecting live servers as well. Who knows though. They have surprised us before, but I wouldn't hold your breath. I mean, do you really think Agnarr is the first time someone brought this up? By Kunark everyone will have forgotten about RE and the mages.

Anyone using track is going to be worse than a pet going immediately to the mob. Learn the zone if you want to compete over killing named there.

No. You are just wrong. The pet class tracking substantially better than tracking classes may be most apparent on TLPs; however, nothing precludes daybreak from releasing a brand new zone that will lend itself to the same abuse.

The problem remains, you can't let NPC AI (pets) be significantly better at the Ranger's class defining ability (tracking) than the Ranger is. Hell, might as well allow you to equip the pet with a bow and give it head shot.

Breath sweety, it's hardly better than track. In very small confined areas it's kind of useful, but the range is actually very short. You can't just barely cover the whole of the basement if you sit in the very middle, and the RE basement is small. Try to camp quillmane using /pet attack and you will see how useful rangers are. Honestly, it's not even that useful in RE. I tried it, and got beaten by anyone who was sitting on the spawn point when the mobs popped. Didn't start getting named down until I started sitting on a spawn myself. You aren't losing mobs in RE because mages are sending their pets in, you are losing because you are playing poorly. Change your strategy, play to your advantage and you will get mobs.

Not to mention, 3 classes get track, so it's hardly class defining for a ranger.

You are simply incorrect. You can't interpret, "oh, so you didn't know that this particular random spawn happened to pop over a bridge, down a hallway, through 2 doors, down another hallway and around a hairpin turn" as me playing poorly...

This is solely and squarely a problem with the way pets are allowed to attack targets that the owner wouldn't have a way to even know are spawned.

There are specific, static spawn spots for each RE named. The phs are unique in name. This means if you are tracking while intimately familiar with the zone, you could feasibly get all of them timed and actually position yourself before they repop.

The problem here is the item. You have similar salt and toxicity at efreeti room and hill giant hill, but mages aren't seen as broken OP there. Hmm.

I must say it is frustrating being at a camp and within a second a named spawns 2-3 Water elementals from a mage box group are already kicking its before my nuke can even go off. If I am paying full attention though I have a decent chance of getting the kill its just that if i react a second or two late they'll get the kill.

Im just curious, do the spawn timers in RE change? I set up shop and killed trash at camp I was in, set a timer and marked when RePops happened. Did this several times but maybe 60% of the time they would spawn at time X while at others they would spawn at 1.5*X.