Test Server Pet Mitigation Parse thread.

I agree, how fair is it that a pet can replace a pure tank completely in function? It would not be fair, but it is also not true. A pure tank brings a huge amount of versatility, and often quite a bit of utility (knights), and a bunch of other intangibles like human intelligence and not having to deal with melee proximity agro weirdness. A pet out-mitigating a paladin, is not a pet replacing everything a paladin can offer. As soon as a paladin stuns one add, or spot heals the healer who has aggro, it has done something no pet can do. And I think only the most arrogant of mages would be demanding to be able to molo current content, and right now they cannot, even on live.

Mages will always be able to do good soloing older content because of their nature, a hybrid of good tanking and dps. Paladins will always be able to do well on raids because of their nature, good tanking and good healing. If you are upset at a class doing well at their niche, well, you are always going to be upset with everquest

I agree a well played war/pal/sk will always be better then a pet in a group. But a war/pal/sk who is not played well(weather that be someone who hasn't/won't learn how to play the char well or someone who is just being lazy) can be out done by a pet. And I think this is where most of the crying/whining is coming from.

I understand, and I agree with that. But honestly, lol, if you are talking about a player who is lazy and not good at EQ, it's more likely that player is on a mage hehehehe j/k

There are nerfs, there will be nerfs, and hopefully its enough to make that medicore sk not want to quit his SK and rush to make the server's 295,103 mage....but also not so bad that when that SK is offline, that the mage pet can't tank current content with good group support

That 's untrue the whole problem was the base mitigation , Warriors the kings of mitigation were getting hit way more often and much harder then any pet including light blue shadowknight pets so much more that the developers decided to look into it and as it turns out they were being hit for di 1 80% of the time. Real tanks would dream about having that smooth of a damage line . Instead of 4 - 8 clerics on raids it would only take 1 - 3 great ones to keep us alive even against the nastiest hitters.

100 Mage Earth Pet, Max AA, EM18 from War, Cycling all abilities, Burnout, Iceflame, and Cert is only buffs.

NO WARRIOR ABILITIES AT ALL.

Tanking Summary:

/GU Tanking summary for: Akirage --- Total damage: 12128725 --- Avg hit: 8681 --- Swings: 2683 --- Defended: 1018 (37.9%) --- Hit: 1397 (52.1%) --- Missed: 268 (10%) --- Accuracy: 83.9% --- Dodged: 48 (2%) --- Parried: 69 (2.8%) --- Blocked: 175 (6.5%) --- Riposted: 75 (3.1%) --- Absorbed: 651 (24.3%)

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I find this interesting. I don't know if the RNG is just trolling or what. The pet in this instance had a lower average hit, with nearly an identical hit count over 23 minutes-- Yet it still took almost a million less damage than when it had warrior / cleric support buffs.

Another thing that I noticed while not clicking over to cleric or warrior to refresh things is that the Mage spell "defense" is a buff that can be refreshed every 2 minutes, and lasts over an hour. During combat though, this buff is dropping on a named like Roon in 10-15 seconds consistently.

My personal opinion is that if a mage is actively using things to keep their pet a live, they should be able to tank much better too. This buff seems to be a decent way to go, but the way that hits / dmg are inc now, it needs tweaked to be more than a 2 tick bonus.

IF the direction is like a lot of people have said to make it so that mages "can't have the cake and eat it too" mages have some abilities that they cast on themselves that when they nuke, it can affect their pet in certain ways. Perhaps this mentality can be reversed, and if you are actively making your pet a monster tank comparable to what-ever-deemed-tank-status a mage should be able to actively make their pet, it would likewise under those abilities that allow it to be a monster tank, BUT impede the mages ability to do comparable DPS to every other DPS class during the active pet tanking roles. A frame of reference, possibly a Warriors Turtle mode DPS.

Possible ideas, a spell slow on non pet supportive abilities, a recast delay on non pet supportive abilities, or a crit / dmg muffle and or cap on abilities to bring their tanking + DPS combo into the desired spot.

Kind of like how warriors now can either be permanently under 25% defense (amazing), OR choose to sacrifice 40% of their tanking skills to do 60% increased damage.

DPS, OR Tank----- while still being able to lower the passive mitigation on pets, which is the whole intended purpose of this change.

Which isn't going to say the pet will just die instantly on every encounter without defensive management. Currently, with an earth pet, it can still tank without crazy support-- it just has spikey moments. LIKE ALL CLASSES NOT UTILIZING ANYTHING (sound familiar? it's the same thing I have seen over and over about PCs not using abilities).

Good in theory, but the problem is that the nerfs affect all pet classes equally, but all pet classes do not dps the same. Necros require a good deal of "ramp up time" to get their dps going, and both necros and beastlords require a lot of small casts in a short frame of time.

Mages, the class with the strongest pet already, would be in the best position to micromanage his defense and damage. For example, he could cast a heal and shield on the pet, then twincast 2 lava spears and if he gets crits he'd do ~160k right there, 3 seconds after he buffed up his pet

Now consider the necro, he could cast a heal and shield on his pet, then switch to laying on some DoTs, maybe a swarm, 3 seconds after he buffed his pet he'd have done maybe 25-50k damage

If they both had to immediately switch back to healing and buffing the pet, the necro would be hugely lagging on damage for a long time, would probably never catch up. Beastlord too

So good in theory, but it would take a huge amount of work and tweaking and tailoring to each pet class individually. Honestly, I dunno why they don't just do this in the next expansion instead of trying now, it's just going to leave everything broken

The problem is, Pets can not tank with PCs in range. Like ALL OTHER CLASSES CAN. They are coded to not be able to tank that way, LIKE ALL OTHER CLASSES CAN.

Lets make whats fair fair. Allow pets to be able to do this and sure you have a point, pet owners should be using their abilities to maximum effectiveness. However, we would also like a tank disc (Fortify Companion is a DS mitigation tool Per Elidroth), our pet DA to work like Weaponshield or a tank ability. Snap aggro, AE aggro ect.

Pets do not work like normal tanks in that they activate their abilities while we afk, we need to cast them. We also need to be their sole healer on top of doing our true role which is DPS. Seeing as for the past decade and then some our goal was DPS, then the ENTIRE class needs a rework to give us abilities necessary to actually heal a tank and then give our tank the ability to actually tank properly.

You are blaming players for SOEs mistakes which is funny. We have asked for Earth pet to risk DPs for tanking, no go. We asked for Water to gain DPS for tanking loss, no go. They refused to give us things that we asked for to appease jealous players like yourself. So, your real goal should be to take it up with the developers and not the players, but seeing as that is too difficult for you to do carry on blaming the wrong people here.

I know the players aren't the reason it is the way it is.

I know the players are defending the way it is.

I address them.

I do sometimes have difficulty with things. Thanks for pointing it out doll.

Moloing mobs on Test with my mage isn't one of them though.

The game has changed. Just because you used to be able to solo some nameds in the original EQ (and even then it wasn't all) it doesn't mean it has to stay that way. The biggest change is mercs. A "solo" mage can now trivially pop a cleric merc, that for starters that should be the new benchmark, not true solo.

Regarding the rest of it, the main problem is how the dps arrives. It was too smooth. Having low avoidance, low parry, dodge, etc means you get majority of hits landing on you. The flip side however was that those hits were mostly minimum. The two combined meant that the dps was very consistent. Compare that to the same average dps incoming from a much higher avoidance, parry, dodge rate but also with a much broader range of hits from multiple DI values. Both similar dps, both relatively comparable when you have your one cleric merc out.

However add in 2, 3, 4 healers and you'll see the big difference. Pets were almost perfect for tanking hard bosses due to the smooth nature of damage. This could be cured by swapping around DI dist for dodge etc, *without nerfing solo play* too much.

Of course whether or not that's the intention I don't know. I wouldn't really expect mage pet to be god, but it should at least still be viable in a full caster group in the old style pet tank & nuke it down mode. That isn't the same as solo though, far from it.

Players are defending our class, not the way it is. Just like I am sure you did when SKs got their nerfs last year. Its called being human. Your posts come across as placing blame on players who have no control over their classes.

Its all very funny that it was fine and dandy until players started parsing in the last few months and now the changes are necessary. The changes were not necessary back in VoA when guilds could not win w/o pets and forced SOE to change DA. But with easier raids, now all of a sudden they are required. Is another issue why Pet classes are not happy.

It seems there is a LOT more to tanking than DI spread.
Please drop the narrow view point and realize that there are more factors than passive mitigation.

Things were brought up about pets back in VoA, even before that. Remember SS 2 anyone? Things were changed back in VoA. It was only part of the problem though. **Problem not even my words alone, comes from the Dev team as well**

I'm one of the few people who have posted anything outside of passive mitigation-- both in defense, and against the mage class. Just like everyone else, I am entitled to an opinion.

Unlike most everyone else though, I am also providing meaningful feedback in the way of ideas and parses that move towards a solution-- Not wishing no one looked at pets with a "keen" eye. It's not like you really needed glasses anyways.

Outside of the limited playerbase I think Mercs were probably the worst creation for EQ.

As a Mage I personally despise them in that it made soloing dumb. It took a lot more skill in Faydwer then it did in SoD+ to kill things solo. That is my opinion though and in no way does it say I agree with the nerfs. I enjoy hard content that is created hard, not content that is made hard because of nerfs. That is essentially what SOE is doing, making content harder by nerfing classes.

Pretty sure even now we can't molo every named, I am not 100% certain though. We haven't been able to molo every single named in EQ history either. Doesn't mean clerics have to heal and Warriors have to tank, but that hasn't changed eh? So, why the change now for pets? Pretty much the issue in a nutshell, they are trying to rush a pet nerf that took over a decade to create, in a month or so. Which forces them to push out what they have now which is over the top to say the least.

Literally will hurt the grouper the most which is the majority of the player base. Well done.

Yes but what got changed? The EVENTS not the PETS. They made it so pets could be charmed or whatever for SS2, they removed pet tanking with DA for Sep 3. Like I said the issue was brought up many times before and pet stats were never adjusted to compensate, so why now? Like I said content is easier then ever compared to VoA or UF (where pets did not get changed), so what all of a sudden got broken that needed to be fixed?

I am pretty sure we could probably document the same values over the years and see them roughly the same. Doesn't make sense that out of the blue pets are NOW a problem that need to be dealt with....

These black and white statements just go in circles. My level 64 rogue can go and "solo named" from old content too. A lot of classes can "solo named" (molo, really) in VoA and RoF zones right now. I know it seems redundant, but you really need to specify what you mean. Because when you say "solo'ing named from current content", I think CotF T2 named. If you feel it is unfair to solo named from last tier's content (aka shoon), then say "you shouldn't be able to solo named from last tier's content". But at least be clear at what you mean, because "named" means nothing, it could mean any named mob in the game

This is really ironic. The entire reason "full caster groups" exist is because of a coding quirk that makes melee players take proximity aggro over pets. Caster's started forming "caster groups" because they HAD to. They didn't all get together and go "hey we're all overpowered, let's make a group! Yeah, screw those melee players!" If you want rogues to be getting more groups, you should be championing the cause for pets to be able to tank with melee dps. That is why "caster groups" were ever born in the first place

They actually goofed, and that's why pets are overnerfed now. They knew pets were overpowered, and figured it was from the EM focus item, so they nerfed those across the board, about a year(?) ago. Then just now, they figured out "oops it was sturdy companion". In my opinion, pets are now underpowered because they still have that old nerf "fix" to EM focus from back before when they couldn't figure out why pets were so strong, on top of the nerfs now.

That would probably fix everything, to leave the changes to base AC and sturdy companion, and to revert that nerf to EM focus. Lol, I bet that is it all along. And I knew it was sturdy companion too, back years ago when I was max'ing my AA. I would put a rank into sturdy companion, and my pet would tank TWICE as well. I was like "holy crap, I gotta put all my AA into this pronto!"

Let's see some parses with warriors using all stances, all defensive disciplines, all activated abilities.

Oh wait that would be honest parsing....n/m

/sigh. There is, in this thread even. And they did perform better than pets with them (more spiky, but 10% more avoidance and 3k less average/hit). And they are honest enough to present it. There are honest people out there

They did. Read the previous thread.

Relentless Servant was already dying fast, now it will be 4-5 seconds after being cast.
How is this going to be fixed?
5x HP boost? 1/4th the duration for 4x the dps?
Very curious.