Pet Tanking Raid Mobs

Might want to ask around, Savrin. You will find that your wish has probably already been granted and has been for a long time now as far as those with a good raid build being able to do raids. Those doing the most complaining, as has been pointed out, are the least impacted by what they are complaining about. Still, they feel threatened. The notion must be that "fixing" the game by nerfing class abilities and forcing raiding to work with only an exact formula to their liking will somehow drive all those frustrated with doing it wrong to their open arms so they can do it right.

Probably they don't care either if their demands to keep raiding strictly tuned around a perfect build end up reducing the player base. Mid tier guilds fold all the time and are seldom if ever replaced. Then the top end picks off the few best players to suit their needs and the rest fade away with no where else to go. Lost subs and revenue.

adjusting pet tanking on a sliding scale so that current content cannot be tanked by pets is not a nerf. They should not be tanking current content. If the devs put in a script so that a current expansion raid mob would ignore pets and then had that script/flag degrade after two years that would be more than fair/appropriate.

It has nothing to do with the relative skill/aa or level of a player tank that has them being bypassed in favor of pets. It is obvious that it is easier to heal pets and swarm them around a raid mob, otherwise guilds would not be resorting to that tactic. Each pet class in a raid represents 2 expendable tanks and when combined with other advantages that I listed earlier in this thread it is clear why guilds are going to extreme lengths to avoid real player tanking.

A player can't make themselves immune to banish or some other wonky mechanic through skill/aa or level, so stop trying to insinuate that a tank improve to compensate. The issue resides in game mechanics favoring pets.

People complain all the time about how their guild is incapable of doing content... maybe if they would support real player issues like warriors/knights being usurped by pets instead of powermongering things would be different.

As an aside, my guild status has nothing to do with my opinion. Nice try though.

Knights shouldn't be able tank raid content so how would that be a player issue?

you must have missed the last decade of raiding then, but i'm not surprised.

Heh. Yeah, we send in the knights to tank all the time in every guild I've been in. They always last soooo long.

Shiftie, I don't think you get it. Well, you understand the technical parts but not why it happens entirely.

The issue is not the viability of tanking classes against mechanics. It is more just a numbers game in a battle of attrition. You can say all you want about how pets are bad or lurch is bad or whatever. Truth is they are tools readily available in the game to take some of the workload off tanks and healing if you just so happen to be short staffed. They are even tools that come with some pretty nasty drawbacks built in with their current forms. Still, no raid leader in their right mind in one of these smaller guilds is going to call a raid off because they won't rob a warrior of their God given right to ALWAYS be the one who tanks. No, that raid leader is going to do whatever it takes within the limitations of the game to win. Even then, lurch and pets will not take you very far but it beats giving up. You take away the options that make up for not having the requisite 10 tanks and 10-12 healers than with VoA the expansion is over at Sarith. A whole 3 raids. RoF might bode better. Maybe because the devs have stopped listening to guilds like your former one for a change and have acknowledged that most raid forces are far from the perfection that the top 5 can put together.

Good tanks and healers are in short supply. They get trumped in the group game by mercs, boxing and what not. Tanks are a true investment of time and patience and you won't get a truly good one with out years of experience under their belt. Getting the gear, the aa, camping augs and just learning when to do what is not something you can just do in a month or even 6 months. Clerics, well, not even going to get into that. Long story short, these critical classes are not a dime a dozen and yet raids are still crafted like they are. Otherwise you would have never seen cleric mercs or tank mercs added to the game. Pets didn't usurp warriors. The passage of time did and the gradual bleed off of players for whatever multitude of reasons. Part of those reasons are devs not being in touch with their game and the influence of players who just live to see the other 95% of the players fail over and over and doing whatever it takes to maintain that status quo.

wth does this have to do with "sorry we suck so bad"?? i never said you suck or dont suck, i'm myself in a guild that has low tank numbers right now. This isnt about whethery ou can beat something with a pet but not a tank etc, it's about WHY people use pets, and in what ways it DOES need fixing. Maybe the pets are fine, but the mechaincs should affect them the same as tanks except things like run and hide emotes (in which case who/what ever is tanking should be ignored by the mechanic period) so either the tanks need to become immune to the same things pets are as long as the tank is top of the aggro list OR the pets need to no longer be immune to them. Simple as that. Then, if a pet is still the only way a guild can beat an event, it's because of gearing (which i did bring up bc of the difference in gearing a pet from one expac to the next vs gearing up a tank, but thats not the main point here, the mechanics are) not because of pets being in some way an exploit. There would still be the give and take of having to use range dps when pet-tanking, but if you dont have yoru tanks geared up yet and you do ahve pets that can take it, then you make the trade-off if you want, it shouldn't be based on mechanics.

heh this reminds me of the HoT debacle wehre sk's were nearly completely removed from raiding because of war/pal dps being so much better on top of their tankign and utlity. But, you are absolutely correct in your analogy. If your pet can tank as well as or BETTER than your best player tank, AND you can do more dps than they can, it's liek that best player tank havign a pet (we'll use SK's since we have epts) doing as much or more dps as the mages and necros do, whether it's at the same time the tank is tanking or not. I know i'd start using my pet if he magically started doing 50 60k dps, heck id use him all the time if he started doing FIVE thousand dps.

Now you're falling into the same trap as the original poster, trying to claim a nerf request isn't a nerf request right up top, making the rest of whatever you wrote not even worth reading.

Any change that removes the ability to do something that was previously possible is a nerf. That's simply the definition of the word in this context.

1. No raid has ever been designed with the intention that it would be tanked with pets.
2. Previous raids have been adjusted when it was discovered that pets were the primary tanks being deployed to beat it.
3. Not all guilds will get to end game; be it lack of tanks, healing or dps.

Pets should never supplant tank classes in raid content.

Then recruit some/lvl some merge with guilds that have some.
The truth is guild that have enough tanks and healer like mine still use pet tanking because it is just more efficient and is the easiest path of defeating raid by exploiting cheesy outdated aggro mechanics.

Dps shouldn't able to fill for tanks, cleric shouldn't be able to be best dps and wizard shouldn't be best healer.

You re totally biased because you want to keep the easy win button at the detriment of the game.

1 - true obviously no raid has been designed that way, on the other hand it wouldnt supprise me if the dev's were to design an event requireing a pet to do something as part of the mechnics.

2 - false , as far as i know never have pets been the primary tank to beat an event. they hame have been a big help but raid events have always required the use of real tanks - War , pal or SK depending on the event. and never has events been adjusted because pets were being used as tanks.

3. all guilds should be able to get to the end game. Everquest should be a game fully enjoyed by all . at any level. the failure of the game in that last several years has mostly been due to focusing on the top players and the losses of lower end guilds that run into walls of difficulty and / or lose too many key members to other / higher guilds / servers. having only the top 5-10 guilds ever able to beat an expansion is not good for the community.

the devs recognize that they cannot design a game for all level / type of players, but they do try. some expansions like underfoot will favor the higher end players and some like TBS , HoT will favor the lower lvls and some like voa , rof will try to strike a balance.

everquest is supposed to be a community game with everyone working together on groups / guilds , tasks , missions and raids. it should not be a race to the top nor who is best and who is doomed to fail.

With the addition of hero's forge they should just make doable raids that every guild can complete without these bang your head into a wall mechanics. Then make hard mode raids that only drop appearance items. That way those who really enjoy challenge get it without destroying the game with another higher tier of armor.

So you want harder raids that have 0 increase in reward? While the easier raids have the maximum reward?

No one wants an easy button. Everyone wants reliable tanks and healers who are good at their job and are there when you need them. This game doesn't work without them. Unfortunately, you can't just wish them into existence.Leveling/merging/recruitment is not going to be an immediate solution while in the mean time raids are cancelled or stagnation occurs. That tends to not be a very good recruitment/retention tool.Using cheezy and outdated mechanics as a stop gap (since healing a tank while dps do their thing is brand new state of the art) can keep things afloat. Ultimately most guilds in a deficit of tanks and healers close down long before those suggestions come about. It is like telling someone who just got laid off in a bad economy that all they have to do is get a job. Jobs might come, but typically foreclosure and bankruptcy comes first.

As for the rest, "AliveTank", what other advice do you really have to offer? Obviously you are using a pseudonym to be critical of your guild's methods to avoid any scrutiny or possible guild removal. Better to use this thread to encourage a nerf while avoiding confrontation with your guild mates or having to go through the inconvenience of finding another guild, correct? Easy to suggest challenges for others while not being willing to shake a few cages yourself, right? The Internet is so good for that sort of thing.

Ultimately...and unfortunately.... it is not completely unreasonable to argue that the game should close down before the standard formula for raiding should be allowed to be altered. Maybe deep down the devs and the top tier end gamers would like EQ to finally close so as to be able to move on to other things.

*smiles* very funny discussion. You could get the impression that most players here are new to EQ. Im sure the devs will change the pet tanking issue with the next one or two expansions. Should they change it now - NO - cause there have always been funky things to beat raid encounters. Load up with copper in Kunark to be rooted and avoid dragon fear. Use chain runing when killing VS. Use charm pets for DT mobs. Btw charm pets were a lot in use to beat scripts up to OOW/ GoD.

There currently is a mechanic in game for exactly that. It's called npc's attack the nearest pc no matter if they are top of agro list or not thus preventing pets from tanking if you care to use any of your melee.

If/When a pet tanks a raid mob it is not like the pet is being summoned and sent on mob and left alone, the mage is already dropping dps to keep the pet under def discs as much as possible just like a tank would do so dps of the mage is already suffering, decreasing pets mitigation and hp would make that impossible and would severely hamper the group mage. Also would like to remind those of you calling for nerfs that A it is against forum rules and B Certain devs were keen on the idea of pets tanking a raid so who are you to say that it is not intended. If it's not the devs will do something about it in the raid aspect instead of nerfing a class because another class is hurt that they aren't where they think they should be. if you want to get there put in the work and parses like the rest of us instead of just calling for nerfs.

The real reason for the shortage of tanks and healers can be described in one word:

Mercenary.

Agree with clerics there ... with one additional word (us/the community).

We often see players asking on these forums should they make a warrior or should they make a cleric and lots say no. That's kind of counter productive I think, even if someone thinks they're giving good advice.

Yes and no. Merc's did hurt some classes but it's more the people behind the toon that make people like myself choose mercs over a real player. If a player can out-perform a merc I'll choose the real player but if a merc does better than a person and the person refuses to learn then said player will be sitting on the sidelines while I go all over with my pet and merc.

And the 4 guys that added the 150 square foot expansion on our house should be able to build a 20 story luxury hotel.