Test Server Pet Mitigation Parse thread.

I hope you are aware that "more spiky" is the same as "more dead" when it comes to tanking.

Let me put it another way:

Lets say X is the percentage of hits that the tank takes that are in the range of DI1 though DI5.

If X is 100%, then plotting damage taken will give you a fairly flat curve with some minor bumps. In short it is all "average hits" with no spikes. If healing is can keep up with average damage, then what determines the outcome of the fight is will the mob be killed before the healer runs out of mana. If healing cannot keep up with the average damage, then the outcome of the fight is determined by is the mob being DPS'd enough to kill it before the tank runs out of HP.

If X is 0% then the tank is pretty much taking nothing but spike damage and the tank is going to die within a few seconds after his/her void disc runs out.

Basically, the closer to 0% X is, the more likely the tank will take a devastating spike that will outright kill the tank or put the healers so far behind that there is no chance for recovery. In short, "spike" = "dead"
to a tank. This is true of pet tanks just as much as it is to player tanks.


Should X be at 80% for pets? Probably not, but...
To my way of thinking, before SOE does this, they need to take a careful look at what the value of X is for group tanks (I am a grouper, I couldn't care less about raiders, tanks or otherwise), with the appropriate gear, AA's and level for current content.

"average damage", there's another variable. Notice this is "average damage" and not "median damage". If it were "median damage", it would imply that most of the hits are in that range (in the case of those parses, 8,000ish damage taken versus the warrior's average of 5,000). However, "average damage" does not imply this. In fact, according to statistics, if you have a large quantity of hits in the low DI-D5 range, and yet a high "average damage" (such as in those parses), it means that when a spike occurs, it is a very high spike, which is pulling up the average damage. Meaning, spikes might happen less often, but they are more likely to kill you when they do.

The reason it looks like this for pets, is because (in the case of these parses), the pet has on a prism skin (an absrob) vs. the warrior's flat mitigation. Flat mitigation will soften the spikes, an absorb is a binary hit or no-hit. Flat mitigation removes more damage/second the more the sources of damage (more mobs on you) . An absorb will only absorb what it can, then fade. This is why pets have a unique weakness vs multiple mobs, as the bulk of their defense is tied up in absorbs. This does not show up on parses.

You pet-class-only players are so gullible. This is why you need to play multiple classes the way your opponents have done.

Warriors have not remotely shown a proper parse of their effective tanking ability.

Yes, they've shown parses of warriors rotating actives while being healed for 45 minutes to several hours.

But that's not the scenario that you ought to care about. Nobody gets banged on by Roon for 45 minutes to several hours. Parses of this sort are only useful for showing game mechanics, not practical tanking ability.

And of course, effective knight tanking ability is not even parse-able vis-a-vis pets due to the effects of their self healing/god mode disciplines.

What are they not telling you?

Well, for one, in effect there are only three tanking scenarios that apply to 99% of EQ content -

Tank vs. Trash Mobs
Tank vs. Rares
Tank vs. Raid Bosses

The best tank vs. trash mobs is the one that maximizes group kill rate. Normally that involves tanking 3-4 trash mobs at a time. Due to the fact that runes play such a great role in pets' tanking ability, and due to the fact that it is so difficult for pets to maintain aggro on 3-4 mobs at the same time, tank classes have amazing advantages in this area, and they've never shown it to you.

The best tank vs. rare mobs and raid bosses is the one that maximizes peak tanking. When you're up against a rare mob/raid boss, you don't care about 'average tanking over 45 minutes', you care about popping every ability and beating it before it beats you. The best tank vs. a rare mob/raid boss is the one that requires the minimal amount of healing during the time it takes you to beat that encounter. For groups, it's normally under 3 minutes - ie the duration of a warrior's 45% damage mitigation ability.

For raids, it normally takes a lot longer, which is why guilds that aren't able to run warrior rotations at times resort to pet tanking, simply because pets - before the patch - had higher average mitigation and therefore were easier on the healers when you don't have warriors running their disciplines. On top of that, pets ignore specific mechanics in raids, which allows guilds to cheese through them, and that's why pet tanks are used over player tanks at times.

The bottom line, though, is that none of the parses have shown you the way tanks actually play. The easiest way to see this is to observe that there has never been a parse of 'peak tanking' during the 3-4 minutes when tank classes have all their disciplines up and running, and which actually speaks to how tanks play in group settings when they need to be 'tanky.' Against single trash mobs, which is what the bulk of these parses are vs, it doesn't even matter because in that situation even a wizard merc is able to tank the mob from 100 to 0.

What you ought to care about, as a pet class, is how the changes affect your ability to -

Efficiently exp with a pet tank
Defeat challenging encounters with a pet tank

And while the devs demand parses for 'average DI spread' that they ought to get from their own simulators, those stats are ultimately less relevant than people try to make you believe, because when push comes to shove, a warrior is taking 45% less damage than your pet during the course of a fight where tankiness matters, even with equal DI spread.

It is beyond the pale for pets to be in any way comparable to player tanks.

1. They belong to DPS class players who can tear mobs up like no tank class can even begin to do.
2. They are cheap to get needing just a spell, an earring and a moderate chunk of AA. Tanks need to be fully geared in the present expansion with a huge time commitment in rare aug camps.
3. They are expendable and trivially replaced. If one dies the next comes out of the holding compartment ready to rock and roll. No res, no res sickness, no lost xp, no delay. You can even chain them like a bind rush and they don't even complain.

There are DPS classes with some side abilities in standing up to the mobs. Rangers and monks are like that. All the melees to some extent. Somehow these players who must pay heavily in time and equipment for their limited tanking ability get just a pale shadow of what a pet gets. Pets out perform them by a mile. All the comparisons here are to genuine tanks.

The only way any of this makes sense is "pets should be powerful because solo class", which is no sense at all.

warriors dont pop everythign that whould be to screw ourselfs for the rest of the time. here you truly show that u dont know what your talking about theres certen abilitys that get paired with eatchother for maximum effctivness if they are needed. in a so called grind group if tank where to pop everything on one pull then they whouldent have anything els to help their healer out on the rest of the gap os 5- 7 seven minutes.

you should keep it on topic this thread is about pets then vs now

Thinking of classes in terms of simple archetypes ie DPS, Tank, Healer is what makes for a very dull and ultimately not-worth-the-money experience. All the popular MMOs today have long moved away from this carry-over paradigm from classic CRPGs. Mind you, it was a logical paradigm for classic CRPGs because you controlled an entire party instead of a single character. Therefore, having specialist archetypes did not pigeonhole you into being a dull functionary of a group the way it does in MMORPGs.

It is also why players tend to receive the highest amount of enjoyment from patterns of play that transcend the archetype. For example, swarming, charming, kiting, pet tanking, old raid boss soloing, and raids/encounters that do not involve tank-and-spank. These are the activities that have traditionally drawn people to classes capable of pulling them off; of course, they were all nerfed to the ground eventually due to class envy.

In short, games that try to force players into being functionaries ultimately fail to comprehend what players find fun and enjoyable; that is why there are less and less of them in today's MMORPG market.

The developers asked the players to describe how the pets are tanking after the nerf. The players respond "worse". Ok, are we done? No. Obviously they are going to be worse, but how well are they tanking now??

....How well compared to what? "good" and "bad" are comparison terms, they have no meaning unless they are compared to something. Considering the developers mentioned player tanks DIRECTLY in the pet nerf thread, and because the pets are a TANK archtype, I don't think it is some kind of absurdity to be comparing to tanks. I didn't see the developers ask "hey just wondering, how does your pet tank compared to a shaman now?"

Playing around on Test I haven't really seen anything that tells me the Magician class is screwed. My EM 15 earth pet can tank Roon / Shoon with two healer mercs and standard pet buffs (no active abilities) just fine and no outside help. The same earth pet using the same buffs can still tank handily trash mobs molo style in Tower of Rot. I'm not quite sure what the problem is they are having. Is not having the ability to molo names in current content the biggest complaint?

Apart from the debate about what tank pets should be able to tank, there's real concerns about the ability of servant and DPS pets to be able to uphold their own roles with their newfound fragility. This isn't all about whether earth pets can survive named fights.

With how much pet class anger you had mentioned multiple times in other threads, and considering you have no actual empirical data here, I don't know why you didn't just make up a different scenario that makes pets look stronger. You have only the limits of your imagination after all.

It really helps you sound objective, when you add an antagonizing (and false, even currently on live) challenge like mages wanting to be able to solo current content. Therefore, any parses you DO actually post, I know I personally would take with a big grain of salt. And I don't say that about everyone

yes having a BP focus and a good amount of AA levels turn into something like an innate stat that you don't need isn't fun

Pet class anger? Are you kidding me? Want to come to Test right now and watch me parse some stuff? Carvas is the name you want there.

"Watch you parse?" haha, if you are parsing, post the results. You've gone around on multiple threads saying how fine pets are on test and how angry it makes you that a class can molo current content.

You know where you can start with your data? Take your overpowered pet class on test and go molo a T2 named. Or find someone to do it on live and post it. I have yet to see it, it would be quite a show

I'm doing Shoon now on Test. Come on over guy.

Shoon is the weakest named mob of last Tier, and you just said you need 2 cleric mercs to survive him, that's a group buddy. Are you gonna head to RoF zones next?

And I actually do appreciate those parses you submitted, they are as good as passive mitigation parses can be. They show that pets are indeed taking much more damage on test

I might if I thought it would be fun.

There was never any question that pets are taking more damage on Test which tells me you completely missed the point of the entire exercise the Devs set up on it.

As for DPS, here's why this nerf is concerning beyond tanking ability:

1. Our main pet contributes a notable amount of our DPS. During a burn it's around 10%, +/-, and sustained it's maybe 8% +/-. Now since I don't raid on test I have no idea how the water per now fares on raids. It could be fine, but if we have to start healing it more than previously we either take a loss in our spell DPS or sacrifice our pet DPS. Considering pets already can have survivability problems depending on mechanics this is a legitimate concern.

2. RS pets are a significant part of our DPS, especially sustained. During a burn our DDs are more worthwhile, but as ADPS and self buffs end RS becomes one of our highest, if not out highest, DPS spell assuming it runs its course. Unfortunately it seems this nerf has hit swarm pets much harder than main pets. If on raids the pet is dying before its duration ends it may go from one of our best spells to a mediocre spell, adversely affecting our sustained DPS. These pets are susceptible to AE ramp and spell AEs, and we have no way to help them survive (no heals or runes).

3. Our highest damage DD, Salvo of Many, requires 15 live pets present at all times to reach its maximum potential. As has been reported, swarm pets are dying very quickly. I'm skeptical if our Host of Elements AA swarm pets will survive AE ramp for even close to their maximum duration. Again I haven't been on a raid to test this (don't raid on test), but it's very possible keeping 15 pets on a mob will be difficult, again resulting in a loss of DPS.

So while the intent of this nerf may be to bring our pets into line with the devs intentions tanking-wise, it has serious repercussions on our DPS as a class, which I think needs to be addressed. The small increases in max hit on certain pets are insignificant and don't make up for increased survivability issues on raids.

A group geared warrior already tanked shoon with 2 cleric mercs and did much better than your pet, the evidence is in this thread.

If you think you can beat his parse, by all means, use whatever active mitigation you can. Or another challenge: on live, take your mage, use 2 cleric mercs, and kill any named from Tower of Rot or Argin Hiz. This isn't molo keep in mind, this is with 2 cleric mercs, so technically you'd be grouping it. I just want to see if it can be done

A warrior has to do with what the Devs want how? If you think I am interested in what a warrior can do verse a pet you are wrong. My ranger isn't a "archer," so pet tanking really isn't something I care to do. The only reason I am even on test is because I wanted to see if all the hoopla about pets getting destroyed by everything was true or not. Since I have clearly demonstrated to myself that they can indeed still tank names in T1 and still tank trash in T2 I have found out what I set out to do.

Still looking for my posts with all the mage hate in them. I can't find them sadly. I must have been drunker than I thought today.

Umm.. isn't that the point a pet shouldn't be better than a tank but it still should be able to tank. I would hope any player tank could perform better than something you summon and sic on a mob. Especially when that player has to get gear, augs, and learn how to play.