Since information is good, and gut feeling is ... less good, I'm posting relevant information on upcoming pets here with breakdown so the members of this community are able to see the big picture. Included in this thread will be old parses under the exact same circumstances against the same mobs (relative attack vs new ac changes) so that the scope of the changes can be appreciated. This is a thread for the deposition of information. If there is discussion, please keep it civil. Knowing how these threads tend to get out of hand, it might be best to create another thread solely for discussion. I will leave that decision up to the moderators. Nonproductive posts will be reported. Status of EM15 Earth pet before the July 16 stealth patch: DI Spread: DI range: 1-17 (1 hit at DI17, no hits DI18, 19 or 20) Round by Round Bold lines at 10k damage increments. Each line on the graph represents one melee round and the height of the line indicates total damage received in that round. Avoidance Status of EM15 Earth pet with changes currently on Test server DI Spread: Round by Round Avoidance: Key differences: -although the DI spread still looks very good for the Earth pet, they are now seeing hits in the DI17 range and above. Prior to these changes in > 20 hours of parsing a DI 18, 19 or 20 hit was not seen for any pet that was tested. The mac daddy of tanking pets is now seeing max hits from time to time (albeit not terribly often). -As expected, with a greater expression of higher DI hits and fewer proportional low hits, as seen in the round by round graphs - pets are now behaving more like player tanks and are spiking not only more frequently, but to greater degrees. For comparison sake - these are the original parses of a raid warrior with 10430ac and a raid shield with appropriate augment. In full disclosure, this is my first time parsing in > 2 months so this does not include changes made with regards to stances. DI spread: Round by round: Avoidance: Group geared shadowknight with best shield + ac (tier 1 CoTF at the time) and a smattering of CotF attunables (raid equivalent): DI Spread: Round by Round: Avoidance: Group geared warrior with best shield + ac (tier 1 CoTF at the time) and a smattering of CotF attunables (raid equivalent): DI Spread: Round by Round: Avoidance: The changes have some notable impacts - but if the developers goal was that group focused pets still passively mitigate better than raid geared tanks (they indicated as much in their posting), then it would appear that the changes were not over-reaching. What I do not know, however, was if they meant that all pets regardless of relative tier of focus should passively mitigate better than all PCs from expansion to expansion ... or if they just meant that a raid focus pet compared to a raiding tank ... and group focus compared to a group tank. More parses to follow with various *other* pets.
Hi Daegun, this isn't really more information per se, but would you mind explaining your bar/line graphs a little more? I'm not sure what to take away from them is all Great looking info, I just don't get how to read it atm
If a group geared tank can be healed by a reactive merc while tanking Shoon, and an EM 20 Earth pet can no longer tank Shoon with a reactive merc, you think that is proper balance?
Thank you for the parses, mind posting the DPS to NPC? Even if this doesn't kill tanks I'd really like to know.
I'd be happy to. The DI spread: What this graph does is take every single hit received by the target over the block of time parsed ... and graph it out. As you can see .... there are (or should be) 20 bars on the graph representing the equation for how much you get hit for. Damage received per hit is DB+DI DI is a dice roll made server side - weighted by the relative attack of the attacker compared to the ac of the defender. It's a 20 sided die - and weighted statistically based on the relationship of the aforementioned attack/ac of the combatants. This graph is useful in looking broadly at how well a target mitigates at baseline. The more hits to the left and the fewer to the right - the better the tank is passively ... tanking. The round by round: In my opinion, this is the most important graph. It shows you in real time what happened during the fight. Each tiny little bar represents one round of melee damage. It paints a much more useful picture than the DI spread - it practically applies or demonstrates the probability of those bad rounds that kill tanks (or pets in this case). The lower the numbers spike to - the safer the pet. This graph is also arguably the most important because it factors in not only the base DI spread but also the avoidance. If a mob misses 3 attacks out of 4 - that melee round is already 1/4 the potential size it could have been if all hits had landed. This is very important when comparing tanks that have such large differences in avoidance (ie pets with low avoidance vs tanks with higher avoidance). We know that tanks avoid better. We know pets mitigate better ... but what's the end result on incomming damage and spike potential? This can't be easily estimated by just looking at average dps, just looking at Di spread, or just looking at avoidance. The round by round is where the money is. It gives you a visual representation of what your poor healer is seeing ... round by round. The spikier this graph is, the more your hp pool yo-yos and the higher the level of danger. Of the targets parsed, the SK at face value has the most dangerous pattern. The RbR doesn't catch it all either. These are just baseline parses. SKs have self taps - take away some of that danger. Both of the player archetypes have disciplines and activatable abilities- take away some of that danger. The pet owner (should he or she decide to use them) has pet heals, vies/blocks, and fortify companion ... the pet also has melee proc reflective block abilities - take away some of that danger. Hope that was a little bit helpful ... if not, I apologize.
Mage pet (EM15) incomming dps prior to changes: 5240 Mage pet (EM15) incomming dps after changes: 7579 Raid warrior incomming dps after changes: 5568 Group warrior: 6062 Group SK: 7866 EM15 earth pet went from lowest spike potential and lowest average inc dps to spike potential just below raid warrior and inc dps just better than a group geared SK. All in all a group focused EM15 Earth pet is now mitigating better than a raid warrior, but has slightly spikier incoming damage than and higher average incoming dps than a raid geared warrior. I'm pretty sure they still also have the same ~185k hp with certitude at EM15. The sky does not appear to have fallen. I'm running parses on air pet as we speak - should have those up shortly.
EM 15 Air pet DI Spread: Round by Round: Avoidance: This one I wasn't sure what to expect. The DI spread is strikingly similar to earths, but average DI is a bit higher and you can see this with a bit more spikiness in the round by rounds. Avoidance is marginally better. Incomming dps: 7550 (~20 lower than earth but functionally the same) I was expecting a bigger difference in baseline mitigation. As it stands, on anything that is stunnable air pet will handily win. I'm about to parse water and fire next - if they are mitigating comparably to the earth pet as well, devs may have to go back to the drawing board in tweaking pet archetypes so they do their job ... but not the job of the pets better suited for it. More to come.
Are these parses with or without spell hold on? I'm curious if the 20% mitigation recourse from the earth pet's root is being factored in. Otherwise I don't know the exact HP of the air pet, but I'm guessing that would be the deciding factor between the two. The air pet's niche is stunnable mobs (especially singles) so it should win there. If the water pet follows the trend, that's another story (since air is still more or less a tank pet).
spell hold is on - there are no reflected iceflame procs, no pet cast abilities passive mitigation with pet on hold
EM 15 Water pet DI Spread: RbR: Avoidance: Average dps on EM15 water pet: 8139 All in all, I was expecting the rogue pet that's "should not be tanking" to have a worse DI spread than this. Of all pets parsed it is the spikiest and has higher incomming dps, but not by a very wide margin. On a hit by hit basis it as a rogue pet is taking a lower DI spread than raid geared plate tanks. Fire pet next.
I have level 100 necros and beasts with EM15 as well - i'll be getting to them as well sooner or later.
Thanks for the data, real conclusions must wait on more but ... So far the pets still make a mockery of players. I thought the devs meant to fix this mess.
Gamparse 1.0.3 makes Baby Deity cry. I direct you to this thread: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/gamparse-1-0-5-test.211941/
EM Fire pet stats will be posted in a bit - watching a movie with the wife. Brief summary is average inc DPS 8447 DI Spread slightly worse than water pet RbR likewise worse than water pet DI spread still as with other pets better than player tanks RbR similar to group geared SK Will get graphs posted in the next hour or so, then moving on to other pets (necro/BL). May also run tests on shaman doggie and ench pet for kicks and grins ... i'm also curious to see the SK pet's tankability.
For right or wrong, in this statement Aristo doesn't qualify some pets or some players, he just generalizes. Take this how you may. As for the second part of his statement, I'm on a phone so I can't read the actual DI numbers (on here the pictures are rather blurry), so are pets getting hit for minimum damage 35-40% of the time?
He's doing passive mitigation testing... Players have active abilities. The 5.5k incoming DPS raid warriors are taking does not count, for example, any of their active mitigation abilities. He's not even using stances. Effective incoming DPS is going to be A LOT less.
