More Tuning for Progression Servers: Raids and Player Pets

I don't understand why you don't just nerf the pets themselves till later expans. This is not just a raid issue and it seems like your just doing enough to stop people from quitting but still being able to keep mass players in game for the profit in non raid stuff. Very disappointed and it feels like you guys want these mini raid farmers in game, Why is that?

100% AGREE!

Like I said some pages ago... the pet nerf must hit the mage armyies... then with a small tune it will also hit the raids.

Thats a good solution.. not fix raids.. and pet farmers dont really get touched.

Why not change just the pets aggro/taunt system... the problem would be easily solved in addition of cumulative malus when multiple pets in a group.
Note also that often, mage box dont need to be grouped for their strategy, these change may not impact them

first rarely does this game ban people. even if you are caught red handed uploading a video of yourself using cheats and the bad 3rd party program - you would get a slap on the wrist suspension. if you continued to do the same after is when they ban you.

and second, you thinking or wanting something to be against the rules does not make it so. VI, SOE, and DBG have never had a public stance against isbox. many reps have actually come out over the years and said that is was completely OK on its own. as long as you werent using other programs in conjunction that automate your characters while you are not at your keys. this is the big difference for them. you pressing keys to cause actions vs you walking away and your characters doing actions with no key press whatsoever.

people get punished for not being responsive or at the keys while your characters are performing actions in the game whether that is 1 toon or 50. if you are using isbox to play multiple characters and not paying attention to chat when a GM contacts you - then you may get punished. not for using the program but for being non responsive while your characters kill stuff.

Ofc some ppl think ok.. got 6 chars 1 dru 5 mages.. but dru and mage1 in one grp and the other outside...

Thats why the Mob/Boss gets a buff/debuff... doesnt matter if in grp or raid or outside... the attacking pets @Target counts.

So has anyone tested out the meele / pet changes yet?

Any data to report!

I've been playing a Mage as a main for quite some time (since before kunark), and there hasn't been a time since GoD that I've felt so useless as a Mage after the testing I just did when compared to the other classes. I'll explain what I mean below.

I fortunately have a magician I played in a progression guild on test that was in the Velious and shortly into the luclin era that is a level 60 mage. I decided to do some of my own testing because of that, and I'm not liking at all what I'm seeing at all. So far from the tests I've done (screenshots of parses below) I've determined that a Magician themselves with only average gear (mostly in /testbuff 25 gear which is classic gear) with only a few decent items from velious/luclin era is mitigating damage better than the level 57 earth pet, and the only reason the earth pet is taking slightly less damage is purely due to better avoidance because of ripostes, blocks, etc. Before you say that Velious and Luclin isn't out yet, remember that the level cap doesn't go above 60 until after luclin. Magicians are already going to be stagnating in velious and luclin even if they left defenses the way they are now especially as people get into raid gear.

This change will basically ruin the solo and group magician that wants to pet tank on the current TLP in comparison to the untouched player power. Now before you say, "it's classic, so get over it". I would be perfectly fine with that statement as long as they also go in and revert the monk hth changes. They also should revert the defensive skills caps changes for player characters, and revert the AC Softcap changes that came in that made everyone benefit from significantly more AC than they could before (which is the entire reason the reverted pet defensive changes I feel is inappropriate for the current TLP).

Roshen, you made a comment that you guys didn't want to overdo the change to make Magicians feel worthless, but unfortunately with a global defensive change to pets at this level it's going to do just that. Raiding was the primary issue, and you already have a debuff in place that could be all that's needed to fix the issue. Instead of double dipping in a defensive change (one of which is global), why not increase the damage taken by a significant degree instead of only 3% per tier. Have it cap at 200% total increased melee damage taken at the max tier. Pets shouldn't be tanking in era raid mobs anyway, and they're expendable in a raid situation so there's no reason it should be an issue if a pet is taking 200% damage from a raid mob until we get further in expansion progression. If you insist in continuing with the global defensive change to pets, then please set custom values that will bring the pets to comparable tanking strength to where they should have been when compared to other players. Especially if you're not willing to revert the AC Softcap changes to Player Characters that came in during the SoF Era.

My parse target was a Goranga Gatherer (level 45-49 range, max hit 119). My pet tanked for the first 15 minutes with /pet hold, and then I tanked it on the Magician (after confirming all gear I was wearing was in level 60 cap era) for the last 15 minutes with a shaman outside the group throwing HoTs to keep myself and the pet alive for the test.


Navaam Screenshot
**It's censoring this link because there's an M and Q in it, so I put a space between them. You'll have to paste it into your address bar and remove the space between the M and Q to get the link to work.**

http://i.imgur.com/O40xM Qd.jpg


Pet Screenshot


http://i.imgur.com/zJJOm7Q.jpg


Navaam Parse


http://i.imgur.com/u0ymEoT.jpg

Pet Parse


http://i.imgur.com/KdVZuwL.jpg

Couldn't agree more.

Hopefully the devs see the light and change this before the universal mage pet defense buff is implemented on Ragefire and Lockjaw.

As someone who just casually solo's a 30's mage (or groups with one other friend) the majority of my playtime, I'd probably just cancel if the pet defense debuff goes in. A major nerf like this this late in the process is horrible to do to everyone who simply decided to play a mage because they like the class, and aren't multiboxing mage armies or pet walling in raids or whatever.

There has to be a way to protect the "real mages" and nerf the mage armies/raid abusers.

It's simply unnecessary. Just make it only apply when there are 3 or more mages in a given situation and you'll completely solve this oversight.

Maybe we should leave the pet stats and dont adjust them (range 1-65)... but the bzff against mage armies have to come!

Your mage is over powered.

Your mage will still be over powered when this is done, just slightly less.

Your mage pet is more dps than most melee classes.

You essentially have another character running around at your commands.

You're basically boxing.

You guys could have saved significant time and energy by simply making the pet spells only castable while out of combat. Then you could go back through and tweak a few pets to be castable incombat like necro monks and rogue pets and the water pet for mages. Would make the mage epic that more valuable too since its clickable in combat.

No, they are not. At level 50, a mage pet is on par with an average geared warrior on raid bosses...all melee dps do much, much more dps than a mage pet.

A mage nuking + their pet can put out decent dps on Inny \ CT, but get outdamaged by wizards and necros. With the melee buff, they will fall behind melee dps as well. A mage nuking + their pet can match wizards and necros on vox (since they can use fire nukes). On Naggy, a mage can only match a warrior, as no spells will land. After the melee buff, tanks will outdamage mages on him.

In sky, this will all be true as well. Most bosses in sky resist all mage nukes. Only a few of the lower island bosses can be nuked.

Warriors are like the third highest melee dps. Rogues are only higher of they have a decent primary.

Bards are less, rangers are less.

Also pets don't have to deal with the annoying aoes that players do.

What they should have done was toss a buff once your pet engages a boss you get a debuff that makes your pet spell cost twice as much and cast three times as slow.

SKs, Paladins, Rogues, and Monks all outdps Warriors and Mage pets by a considerable margin. Rangers do as well, as long as they are decently geared. The only Warriors that do decent dps are ones using a Fangol, and that requires a drop from Eye of Veeshan and the Efreeti cycle.

I mean I know you're not bad, but I've never seen a ranger, pally, or sk parse over a warrior.

*shrug* I have. Then again, it really depends on how the character is geared. My SK has 242 strength unbuffed (not on purpose...I'd prefer to shed some of it for stamina). Using a 2 hander + vampiric embrace + dots, I can do far more dps than a warrior.

Generally, I parse about the same as a warrior, as I run with a 1 hander and a shield...but, in that case, dps isn't really the goal.

will we really even be able to test the progression changes on the test server? if it is triggered to be removed when LDoN goes live wont the changes already be removed by default on the test server?

wow... my pet is light blue to me, and I'm level 50. that pet is lower con than I am. so tell me again why it can tank an even con mob to me?

but really. this is pointless till we get hard data that is in a legible and understandable format from test this conversation is not worth any more of my time.