Test server patch notes

I was use to the current system, sometimes jumping in when pet would about to die, a lot of lower levels, and at least sometimes even at high levels.

I do not Like the changes for group and solo play. I'm fine with changing things for raid targets, but why for anything less than that?

The old system worked, and its not severely affecting things, if you wanted a classical feel, then why change a core mechanic that's been around forever. I honestly do not get this team at all, if you wanted to fix a pet problem then you could have found a way to nerf pet damage (yes I've heard why they said they cant), not change the agro and root system.

The constant, were not adding breeze, berserkers/bls, etc, "because we want to keep it as classic as possible" is really starting to become total hypocritical BS at this point. That's an excuse to justify not adding in certain things a majority request, but you don't want to add. However it simply doesn't work when you change classic mechanics or leave in non-classic features (advloot, etc) that far outweigh features players have requested.
Changing classic core mechanics to fix a pet prob that is created by non-classic pet damage is not in the spirit of a TLP.

Rooting a mob and having the tank get closer than other melee is not strictly a detriment, its often a benefit. We've always played with these mechanics, Why change them now?

A Charmed pet is ALWAYS going to have more agro than the player, he now cant jump in to save his pet. This goes for Enchanters, Necromancers, and Druids.

A Normal pet at low levels is usually going to out agro the player, they now cant jump in to save the pet.

Grouping with Charm- You simply do not out aggro a charmed pet, especially at higher levels, and never in Kunark+. This is especially detrimental to grouping with a charm DPS, as your pet can now take agro constantly and end up dieing frequently. once you have a charmed pet, you do not want to have to keep finding a new one if your pet is frequently dieing, as that would be incredibly inconveinant (level restrictions, mob type, debuffing pet's MR, etc). And if a charmed pet is constantly taking agro, which they easily will, it also makes the healers job harder, as the tank is now being out aggroed by a pet. the healer cannot target the pet like they can other players (without advanced knowledge of a target macro, etc). For example, A druid charming a dog (and hasting) in chardok is significantly out damaging any other player in the group, so much so in fact that theres little chance a tank will actually have a higher agro without a forcible taunt.

Its kinda how EQ has always been. We still don't fully understand how AC works .. its just the nature of the beast I suppose.

See my post above yours for some minor details.

The biggest change for mages on the new TLP is going to be that you can tank with your pet, and when you have a tank in your group you can use the pet calm AA to reduce your aggro by 40%.

Other than that, the pet nerf seems to be more of a gentle scaling change in stats.

I think on LIVE right now pet stats are capped early on, now on TEST, and the soon to be released TLP server the stats are going to be more in line with what a player could achieve. So expect some minor damage reduction in the way of more missed attacks, and a few less max damage hits.

Thank you for the reply Delph.

Im still frustrated at them not giving us more details, and changing core mechanics that have been around forever. They have stated so many times they will not release certain content to keep it as classic as possible (even if that content is majority favored), but then they change basic core mechanics that have been around since the dawn of this game.

The whole point of pet walling and such on Phinny is already significantly reduced from it being a true box server. Your not going to have entire mage armies running around like you are on rage and lock.
These changes seem completely unnecessary.

Furthermore, they just now put these changes in? Mere days before the server goes live? Your changing core mechanics that have been around since the game started. ANd to boot only with minimal testing time, especially after all the problems with launching Rage and such.

While I agree that it seems strange they would make such a drastic change on a TLP server, they have also said it is not a classic server. However they do remove some elements, such as classes and races that were not around at the time. Also many spells and abilities which would drastically through the balance of the game off.

Now with all that said I am elated at these changes to pets. It is going to take some getting use too but all in all I think it's a positive step forward.

Others will disagree and I expect many frustrated thread to pop up over the next month or so about pets taking the place of tanks in group content, and pets gaining too much aggro for their owners on raid targets. We'll just have to wait and see how DBG balances things as time goes on.

Hahaha You hit reply, as I hit Edit.

Furthermore, they just now put these changes in? Mere days before the server goes live? Your changing core mechanics that have been around since the game started. ANd to boot only with minimal testing time, especially after all the problems with launching Rage and such.

These changes should be tested for a while before they implement them, not days before you launch a server many have been looking forward to, especially since these are some pretty big changes that can how people play on a TLP.

For example, Did they nerf pets down to player levels again in terms of ac and hp? Whats to keep pets from becoming the new tank norms, and actual tanks losing their places and roles. Why play a tank anymore when a pet can tank for the group? Tanks are already pretty rare on TLPs, and this could further diminish the need for them.

I do not like not having the option to jump in and save my pet, especially at lower and mid game levels. This is further reducing the skill cap of a pet class and taking away many of intricacies of the game. Another example would be rooting a mob with a bad tank, so all he has to do is be the closest one to it, etc.

You were literally testing nothing here - just like why the Agents of Change won't spawn for the planes, the pets on Test right now won't be reflecting that because Test isn't set to a pre-Luclin era in order for that code to apply. (which likely isn't even possible without TLP code)

There is zero means of knowing for sure WHAT that line means unless Beta is made public running TLP code or once the code gets pushed to Live (and thus the TLPs) to try on Phin or another pre-Luclin TLP.

The difference you saw was likely variation in the wan ghoul knight levels (they range from 33-37) and a small sample size.

Again, people need to stop trying to test this line because Test doesn't meet the caveat on it functioning. If Absor or another dev says they flipped something to enable it on Test (which I don't think is possible) - go test the heck out of it then (I'll be right there with you testing it) - but right now this is worthless to test.

I am not so sure about that Vaclav. All the other features were in, such as pet aggro and the root change.

The change to pets is also going to be universal, it is not TLP specific. They altered the power arc of pets from 1 to 60, all pets pre-luclin. I don't see where they stated it had to be on a server that was per-luclin era.

The reason why they could not change pets and monk fist damage previously is because TLP and LIVE servers are all the same patch, if it was changed on TLP it would change on LIVE servers as well.

According to the patch notes the change is in place on TEST, if you see data showing otherwise I would love to see it.

All speculation aside it is ludicrous to NOT run a beta with changes to core mechanics.

Even the lackluster RF beta did show up a lot of problems that were indeed experienced at launch so its equally amazing to run a beta and ignore the feedback... TBM anyone?

Sometimes I wonder what in the heck is going on over there.

If that's true Vac, then it's even worse than I originally thought. Making changes like these with mere days of testing before you launch a new server............................your saying that they are making changes without any testing whatsoever. Whether these changes are live on TEst or not, its RIDICULOUS either way. Your changing core mechanics of something that's been around for 16 years mere days before a major server launch?

Everybody was happy with the no box, that in itself is fixing a lot of the pet problems.

This seems so ridiculous to me in a few ways. There could be some bugs or big problems first of all. Secondly, it could easily impact gameplay design in a negative way. I can see some detriment and benefits to these changes, but mainly detriments. Your removing many fine intricacies of the game such as mobs atking closest target when rooted, being able to jump in and save pet, etc. Now if a pet has agro he keeps agro- hmmmm sounds a lot more like World of Warcraft and simpler games to me. Little intricacies like PC out aggroing pets, and roots are what made this game awesome. Without any testing, how do they know pets are better tanks than players, especially in classic. And if they are, then why would anybody play a tank anymore?

The pet aggro and root changes are stupidly simple and have already been tested. The only unknown for me right now is the pet power arcs from pre-luclin era, and the raid target aggro changes.

I agree with The Badger Lord that those should be tested a bit before released. I would bet money that there will be issues with raid pet aggro at the very least on the TLP and we will see some emergency patches.

"*** Progression Servers ***

- Made further adjustments to the power curve of pets prior to the release of the Shadows of Luclin expansion."

To me this specifically says on servers where Luclin is not released. If it was just for any pets before a given level they would have stated "pets level X to Y"

They already said they could not differentiate between live and TLP. The wording used tells me that pets prior to the release of Shadows of Luclin (meaning all pets before level 61 on LIVE and TLP) have had their power curve adjusted. They did it this way as to not mess with the end game of LIVE servers and still make the adjustments needed on TLP.

This means that each tier of pets (level 4, 8, 12, 16, etc., etc..) that can be memorized by the caster before the Shadows of Luclin+ pets, had its power curve "adjusted".

I cannot read it any other way.

Times change - we were told many things:
They couldn't differentiate between server types before - that changed.
Making raid instances for old raids was incredibly difficulty - that changed.
Queue systems were impossible - that changed almost overnight.

Ad nauseum - they can differentiate server types these days - thus why we have things like Mitigation of the Mighty on TLP only while Live does not.

It has been my experience that (as you said) are kinda hard to come by, but very necessary in the mid to upper level group content. On the other hand mages have always been abundant. So in a pinch a mage pet can now group for a melee DPS oriented group whereas previously they could only tank for a caster group and many melee DPS classes were left out in the cold waiting for a tank group to come along.

This to me is a good change.

They never said they could not ad a debuff or a buff, but a change to core mechanics, like changing monk fist damage, or mage pet AC has always been impossible because the code between the servers is the same in these instances.

That is why we saw the MotM created in the first place, because it's impossible to change pet stats without effecting them on live.

On live no one cares about pets below level 61, hence the nerf (which seems to be very mild).

I'm not convinced this is a nerf to mages. If a warrior can still hold threat over mage pets they can still use their pets. Also weren't they not using their pets much anyway since they did no damage. This is just a nerf to pet walling, and a pretty nice buff for melees being able to group as well as mages being tanks in group content now. Overall a solid change. I feel for mages and the many nerfs they've endured due to the pet wallers, but this is not one of those nerfs.

A) They already changed pet AC months back for TLP, if you weren't paying attention.
B) They've added debuff to pets when too many engage a mob at once for TLP.
C) When they've done pet buffs/debuffs in the past the phrasing they used was not " Made further adjustments to the power curve of pets prior to the release of the Shadows of Luclin expansion" it was phrased like "Mage Pets of Level 61 and higher now summon with a full set of summoned gear automatically" they were NOT ambiguous - if it was like you think they'd have phrased it as "Pets below level 61 have been reduced in power" and it wouldn't have been put under the Progression header since it would be applied to all servers. (like the other changes weren't since they're universal)

You want to read it that way because you want to be able to test it right now, but you're wrong.

As i said earlier, I took a /testbuff mage and a /testbuff warrior on TEST. The warrior had the equilivant of Luclin era gear (centi longsword and shortsword) so he was significantly more beefy than anything we will see on TLP for a while.

With a base level 24 air pet I would pull aggro off him 90% of the time if we attacked the target at the same time. If I waited until the mob was down to 75% health the air pet would usually pull off him by the second stun proc.

I agree, this is not a nerf to mages, but we still may see some adjustments to the power arc as said in the patch notes, but these are more than likely going to be related to pet stats, not HP/AC/max damage.

This went out on live too, as I was playing a mage on live when it happened.

As I just said, they can add buffs and debuffs specific to a server, but they cannot change the core code as this would force the player to patch each time when moving between live and TLP.

You could be right, but there is little to no evidence to back that up. The patch notes state that four major things are changing, the pet aggro in melee, the pet aggro in raids, the root mechanics, and the pet power arc. Its easy enough to confirm 2 of those (melee aggro and roots) and they are in TEST, I can only assume until a dev tells me otherwise that the other mechanics are also in game.

Maybe

So basically no mage pets at all in raids, which is sort of how it was before, except even worse, and it buffs mages to an extent in groups, just more earth pets will abound.