Pet Mitigation: Parses and Discussion

PS: No pet class wants to be able to solo a named in Plane of War. It would be cool to grab five other magicians and try a named, which is something that ( due to mechanics of zone) is impossible.

I do not think I should be doing that, however SOE ensured it can not be tried. It sets a terrible precedent for any other type of content they intend to release in the future.

And what happens when I have a group missing a tank? Well my pet used to fill that role but not in POW no sir......

Let me summarize your statements:
1. You are upset so many are calling for re-balancing on the Issue.
2. You think Devs have it handled and should do their jobs without player feedback (becuase feedback results in nerfs to oblivion? yea at this point im pokng fun, sorry)

I'm sorry but there is a reason these forums exist. As far as i can see no one denies that Tanks should tank better then pets. People just disagree how it should be handled. Maybe you should have a bit more faith in the Devs. Most of the time when classes get re-balanced they survive just fine, as evidenced by your 7 "nerfs" already.
The fact is we want to have a conversation on this, or at least enough people do. And we have every right to do so.
I'm a Beastlord main, a few years ago my pet was literally Nothing. It was barely 9% of my dps with no tanking power. Now he's a powerhouse and I find him very useful. Do i want him to be useless? No. But do i think it's fair i can out tank all my group geared friends with my Pet just because ? No. Do i know the perfect balance? Of course not. I come to theses forums to see what other people think.

So you either got a PM to start this data or you just wanted to for fun? The story does not add up.

Anyway deflecting is fun. You started a terrible topic that I am sure you fully knew about with the intention of dredging up topics that have indeed been locked in the past (iirc that is grounds for locking this thread in itself).

Your not using raw data merely, your using data comparatively. You are comparing X to Y, when that should not happen based on the fact that they are 2 different things that hold no bearing on the other. Why else would you choose to compare pets to players?

You would also need to do the same thing for a pet class who is fully utilizing healing their own pet in the same way that a tank needs to approach his/her attention soley on their own self defense: using Fortify companion, melee guards, vies etc - but that is not the point of this thread:

Raw passive mitigation.

I'm not sure what doesn't add up or what you're so confused about. It started off to satisfy my own curiosity and parse out my anecdotal experiences. Then I got this PM yesterday after starting this thread:

Raid Geared warrior: Magelo below, using shield - 10430ac
Buffs: Certitude Rk. II

DI:

Round by Round:

Avoidance:


Average dps on warrior: 5568dps

No debuffs on mob.

DI20: 6.36896% (Chance for DI20 was one in 15 hits)

DI19-20: 8.63836% (Chance for DI19-DI20 was one in 11.6 hits)

Passive damage intake numbers:

Average hit raid warrior: 5828
Average hit earth pet: 3706
Average hit BL warder: 3566
Average hit Necro War pet: 4025

Average dps raid warrior: 5568dps
Average dps earth pet: 5240dps
Average dps BL warder: 5061dps
Average hit Necro war pet: 5696dps

Passive strength of tank (zero input from PC)

Mage pet > BL warder > necro pet > Raid geared warrior


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Up next: parses of group geared warrior, shadowknight, and paladin. Gear quality will be more or less maxed out CoTF t1 with all relevant augments (not best in game, but close).

Just for the record there is no single mage in eq today that will be soloing (or moloing) any of the real named mobs in the plane of war if pet agro is changed to work like it does elsewhere in the game.

I doubt the judicator could be molo'd too but he's kind of a fake named and like half the power of the other 10 named in the zone. I can say with certainy though that no mage would be moloing any other named in the zone even if they could be pet tanked. No mage is even asking for the ability to molo those mobs, but the pet agro functionality is exceptionally annoying in the zone.


I've killed 5 or 6 different named mobs (currently 7 are doable with less than 3 groups, the commanders are a bit wonky atm, gyrup is a pain, and the grandmaster is not accessible yet) but despite that the pet agro functionality in this zone is terrible

I very much agree that the new pet code is terrible. I would hope a more practical solution is figured out rather than shutting off pets altogether.

Daegun, Would you consider doing some parsing on tanks using rotations of their standard non-emergency tanking discs? i'd be interested in seeing some parses involving short timer discs an average tank mighty rotate in. (though i know that would be a lot of work)

The problem is that I can't test vs current mobs in a controlled situation where buff timers do not run out. Unless each hit is receiving the same percentage of vie, disc, NTTB etc for the duration of the parse - you will not get any kind of interpretable clean DI to look at the one factor this thread is aiming to achieve:

passive mitigation and relative ac on PCs (player tanks) vs NPCs (pets).

Doing a 'real time' scenario would also be near impossible to graphically demonstrate given knight's self healing potential and pet owner/heal potential. I well played knight would be able to survive vs this one mob (providing it had enough hit points to survive the parse indefinitely as their self healing will surpass that of mobs potential to kill them. The same is also true of pet classes. Necros can keep their pet up indefinitely with cascading line and pet heals. Mages likewise with promised and direct heal. BL even more so with potent fast cast heal, pet heal over time, and promised heal line.

To make that "real life" parse even less relevant - a knight can keep mobs under level 100 pretty much stun-locked grinding the actual damage output to negligible levels.

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These ventures go beyond the scope of this thread. As I stated many times on the very first page, this is not a head to head comparison of a player tank vs another player tank, the capabilities of a mage vs a necro vs a BL, or a player tank vs a pet with all things factored in. The goal of this thread was to tease out passive mitigation (with a side bar head nod to avoidance) in light of the recently released, previously top sekrit server side ac equations.

All the other drama in this thread is simply the baggage that individual posters came to this thread carrying.

If pets have the best mitigation in the game, why don't we all make mages and use them to tank instead? We already know the answer to this question. The costs do not outweigh the benefits.

At best, this thread will amount to no changes. At worst, pets will be nerfed again, players will be unhappy and we may see less of them. This is sad for the game.

Imagine some of the nerfs that have happened historically in EQ. When charm was nerfed in OoW. Pet pulling. NTTB. What were the results? Did the players really "win" for having these things happen?

You say that this is not about nerfing pets. Yet you hold up pet tank parses next to players'. It's like holding a match up to a haystack and saying "don't catch fire."

Group Geared Warrior using CoTF t1 vendor shield - 8800ac
Buffs: Certitude Rk. II

DI Spread:

RoundbyRound:

Avoidance:

Average dps on warrior: 6062dps

No debuffs on mob.

DI20: 8.07307% (Chance for DI20 was one in 12.4 hits)

DI19-20: 9.664113% (Chance for DI19-DI20 was one in 10.3 hits)

Passive damage intake numbers:

Average hit group warrior: 6191
Average hit raid warrior: 5828
Average hit earth pet: 3706
Average hit BL warder: 3566
Average hit Necro War pet: 4025

Average dps group warrior: 6062dps
Average dps raid warrior: 5568dps
Average dps earth pet: 5240dps
Average dps BL warder: 5061dps
Average hit Necro war pet: 5696dps

Passive strength of tank (zero input from PC)

Mage pet > BL warder > necro pet > Raid geared warrior > Group geared warrior

Notable differences btw raid/group geared warrior: look at the frequency of high damage rounds - the average hit and dps might not show you where the "power" is, but the frequency of >20k and > 30k rounds was pretty big. Beyond that, 56.2% mob "hit" rate vs 50.8% mob "hit" rate - that's the differences in heroics doing their *thing*.

Next up: group geared sk and group geared paladin.

The shadowknight parse will be interesting - those returns on ac .... I expect they will prove to be pretty significant. On top of that, the maximum DI1 and DI20 are noticably different - indicating that Phalanx of the 1 behaves like mod2 "shielding" statistic ... not like "defensive" abilities which only cut the DB portion of damage in half.

My initial impression: Pets mitigate the way raid tanks used to. These days, raid tanks mitigate more similarly to monks of yesteryear.

I'm hoping that some parses of classes beyond the plate tanks can be done, for the sake of consistency of methodology. I'd be curious how rangers and monks, who have very few discs to increase their mitigation, stack up in a passive setting in all this. I'm willing to donate my time as a monk on the test server, Daegun - this is data is great food for thought.

Wise words.

Group Geared Shadowknight - shield use (CoTF t1 vendor) - 8850ac
Buffs: Certitude Rk. II, Steadfast stance intermittently (more hp pool)

DI Spread:

Round by Round:

Avoidance:


Average DPS on shadowknight: 7866dps

No debuffs on mob

DI20: 9.877854% (One out of every ~10 hits)

DI19-20: 11.949018% (One out of every 8.4 hits)

Passive damage intake numbers

Average hit on SK: 7447
Average hit group war: 6169
Average hit raid war: 5828
Average hit earth pet: 3706
Average hit BL warder: 3556
Average hit Necro war: 4025

Average dps on SK: 7866dps
Average dps group war: 6062dps
Average dps raid war: 5568dps
Average dps earth pet: 5240dps
Average dps BL warder: 5061dps
Average dps Necro war: 5696dps

Passive strength of tank (zero input from PC)

Mage pet > BL warder > necro pet > raid geared warrior > group geared warrior >> SK (worst so far by long shot)

Notable differences in group geared warrior and group geared sk: Phalanx of the one - 10% raw reduction in per hit. Beyond that, the evidence is clear on ac returns beyond softcap's impact on relevant, current group content - the probability of those bad rounds goes up exponentially. The most impressive difference is found on comparison of the "round by round" charts. Specifically, compare the > 30k and > 40k round numbers. Furthermore, the SK tank had a round > 50k over 30 minutes ... basically a spike that is almost double in magnitude to any of the pets saw over the same 30 minute time period.

Thanks for quoting me so that Falos and and Pie know what my "agenda" (if any) actually is. I stand my your quote of me. I still feel more or less the same. Pet tanks need to be viable in group content. Unfortunately, at the time I underestimated their actual tanking prowess to a not-insignificant degree.

Round by Rounds over 30 minute time periods

Mage earth pet:

Max round: 31k

BL warder:

Max round: 27k

Necro warrior tank:

Max round: 33k

Raid warrior:

Max round: 42k

Group warrior:

Max round 37k

Group SK:

Max round: 53k

Group Paladin:

Max round: 49k


-As you can see, even these parses are too short to negate the randomness of the RNG. Despite the statistical advantages from a DI spread basis, average hit, and >5% superior avoidance ... the raid geared warrior saw a higher single spike than the group geared warrior. Go go random number generation!

So with the above highlighted in mind, has your following opinion changed?