Test Update 08/12/2014 - Pet Changes Round 4

That larger hit point pool will somehow have a resounding advantage when the other 2 pet classes can slow those 2 mobs? You start to almost sound like you've come around, then you go off the tracks again.

You're taking my post out of context ... Or maybe I wasn't communicating clearly enough. In a group situation where the pet is being used to tank, the earth pet with stronger baseline mitigation and a lot more total health will give it a decisive advantage. Incoming damage is more predictable and the total health pool is measurably larger. You can draw similar parallels between warriors and knights. The total package a knight brings the the table (self healing) eclipses the warrior on easier content. With dangerous enough incoming damage is present and adequate support exists - warrior shines. With support, the earth pet remains the beefiest, but the owner has fewer if those extra tools (slows in particular). With an ench, shaman, or heck even a bard or necro there to slow - that advantage vanishes.

I doubt the developers intended anyone solo/molo to walk into argin hiz and just handle ugly pulls easily. Based on how the zone is set up, it would appear the intent was challenge and danger. Is this content not intended to provide groups of appropriately geared, aa'd and experienced individuals with challenging but rewarding content? If that's the goal, is it a problem that single classes have difficulty with multiple mobs or rares in this zone? Clearly solo/molo is possible, that's been shown. But doubles? Triples? Named? Maybe the intent was cooperative play. Bring a real healer - some support - slowers. AHiz doesn't represent the baseline for balancing. It's the hardest content officially part of CoTF.

EQ has always been a multiplayer cooperative progression game. You seek out those who have abilities you lack and team up to tackle challenges. The hardest zones and content are generally designed with this concept in mind.

Oh and look what the answer was?

Pet classes tank better than you, burst DPS better than you, and sustain DPS better than you.

As a monk, I'm in the same boat - pet classes are just better at the main roles. It's not balanced - well, some classes are for soloers so it's "fair" for them to be stronger tanks and have better heals and do more DPS and (depending on which of the classes) arguably better utility.

It's cool though, we can melee and use weapons and stuff!

I wonder how many reactive mercs it would take to keep a group geared ranger toting a shield up vs a single slowed AHiz mob.

Apart from the whole pull/FD/Selfheal/CC package you got, I know a couple of very well played monks who regularly come close to or even out-dps me both on burst and on sustained in raids and/or groups.

And their pulls are godlike! Nothing to be shy about as a monk, imo ...

Ah, class envy abounds. I drink it up, it sustains me

EM15 Mage + healer mercenary in Argin-Hiz:

To understand these parses, you must understand the methods. Mages cannot slow, the other pet classes can. What the mage possesses that the other classes don't have - is such a strong swarm pet from a threat generation standpoint. Methods were simple. Self buffed mage pulled mobs 1 at a time. Swarm pet triaged as highest importance - why? On initial summon it will quickly snag aggro and absorb this damage until death. On second summon, it will also out-pace mage pet with aggro proc blades and eventually eat damage. 3rd will likewise - eat some damage. Spell casts are included. DPS included swarm pets, 2 rains, and Surge of shadow on primary earth pet. No long cooldowns were used. Twincast (spell not aa) was used once. Results are interesting.

Using the swarm pet not only as dps but as a tool does a couple of things.
1) damage eaten by swarm is damage pet did not receive
2) this allows for more effective uptime of mage interventional avoidance buffs
3) decreases burden on the mage to heal and the mercenary to likewise heal

Drawbacks:
1) on extended fights, you will get to the point that swarm pets do not generate enough threat in their relatively short duration - thus you lose this "it eats aggro/damage for you"

4 fights back to back

DPS:


Avoidance


Round by rounds:


Spell casts


Playing to the mages strengths in the absence of a slow but a single powerful swarm pet that generates more aggro ... mage pet required less exogenous healing than even the necro pet with slow and more powerful interventional abilities.

Average outgoing dps: 24602 without using any cooldowns or attempting to maximize dps (just 2 rains, swarm pet, and Surge of Shadow DS buff.

Average incoming dps for roger vs unslowed mobs (the damage that needed to be healed): 3075

How much would rogers incoming dps vs an unslowed AHiz mob have been without considering swarm pet? Admittedly, it would have been considerably higher. Part of being a talented player, however, is to know your strengths and weaknesses and adapt accordingly. Play to your strengths, know where you are weak - and capitalize on what you can.


PS: AH CRAP ... i think I forgot to put iceflame on Roger for these fights

But what about a double pull? Yep just did that too with on healer mercenary.

Methods: same as before, this time capitalizing on using the swarm pet only on the add. Single target nukes exclusively on primary target. Pets health reached an all time low of 30% with this method. I healed him once. After primary target went down, reverted to rains and the same methods as above. Full disclosure, I'm 99% sure I forgot to give Roger Iceflame buff.

1 try - no deaths.

DPS:


RbR


Avoid


Casts


Rogers effective incoming dps burden with 2 unslowed mobs in AHiz (whole fight): 6648
Rogers effective incoming dps while both mobs were still alive (most dangerous): 10-11k dps
1 heal cast by mage (in retrospect was not needed)

3 block spells on top of allowing swarm pet to take over for periods of time allowed merc healer to keep up. There was a steady and predictable decline in average post-heal health for Roger (merc unable to keep up without assistace). Each time the swarm took over, Roger topped off. Runes also turned the tide in these moments. Roger never lost more than 46k damage in a single round, 4 total melee rounds where their combined damage broke the 40k threshold. Roger has 185k hp with certitude.

My personal dps was understandably lower for two reasons:
1) more complicated target swapping
2) inability to use more efficient and more reliable dps rains until first target was dead

So there you have it folks. Group geared mage with EM15 (earth) .... 2 mobs in AHiz.

Know how to play your class and use it's strengths to your advantage and you'll do just fine (imo better than fine and actually *too good*). Expect your pet to just passively tank two AHiz mobs unslowed and undebuffed and your pet will probably bite it.

I will be repeating this later tonight but with iceflame ... expect roger to do better round 2.

Holy nuts ...

Will run many more parses to verify this one to make sure it's not a fluke.

EM15 Air pet:



Healer has to cover 2654 incoming dps (unslowed).

Will get a good few fights to average.

You gotta look at your RS pet line as a defense in and of itself lol.

While I do admit that what daegun shows is a very good strategy to lower incoming damage, this should not be the norm for trashmob fights. If I have to use everything on single-pull trashmobs (against which mobs did you fight, anyways, Daegun?) - there is no room to improve to against multiples or nameds. Also, as always, those numbers won't hold up against multiple mobs, but this has been stated so many times already that it becomes boring ...

From a DPS point of view, against singles his rotation is by far not the worst to use - against multiples, I strongly suggest against it. The rains WILL sooner or later pull one of the tanked mobs on the mage.

EM 15 air pet (same methods) multiple fights to get a more predictable average.

DPS:


Avoidance:


RbR:


Spells cast:


Slightly better innate avoidance with still rock solid mitigation on top of mage air pet stun. On stunnable content it will put out more dps. Drawback to this pet is lower total hit points. Trying to tank the double mob encounter would have been difficult given that lack of hit points (less pool to deal with attrition/catchup).

Mage air and earth pet consistently have lower incoming heal needs when played reasonably by a mage - using available tools compared to either the necromancer or the beastlord pet. This comparison also takes into account that magicians cannot slow ... while the other two classes can. Having any slower in the group will see further survival gains for the mage pet.

Mage only healed once in all of these fights - and then only on the double pull. Mage was free to pew pew away in between unintelligent twisting of block abilities.

A) I parsed a multiple pull. It was more useful there as the primary pet did not build up threat. Whenever a swarm is up, the add is beating on that swarm and not the primary pet.

B) They are non cooldown abilities you possess. They are an important facet of your tanking potential (albeit an unconventional way to consider swarm pets).

C) I did not use rains on the multiple pull until the first target was down. The point behind this approach was to not let either myself or Roger build threat on the second mob.

D) Named fights? Fortify companion is available. Should you need to further increase your pets survivability you can use your promised line and single target heals that I, for the most part, did not use at all. For that named fight you will also have your own cooldowns to burn to increase your own dps waaay above baseline. These burns can also be used to decrease the length of time you spend fighting multiple targets on a bad pull.

E) At 3 thousand average incoming dps, I was assisting the healer by improving my pets sturdiness way beyond what the mercenary actually needed. This approach, therefore, is an unnecessary precaution that already is not "the norm" for a trash mob fight. Quite literally, I could have done nothing but spam dps spells and the healer merc would have kept up just fine. This was to demonstrate to the community what you CAN do for your pet should you CHOOSE to do it or find yourself NEEDING to do it.

I'm not the most talented magician out there (far from it). If I can walk in there and survive a double pull by myself with group gear and group focus ... I have no idea why more seasoned mages with much better gear and more time in the saddle are having so many problems. Tomorrow I'll dive deeper into the zone to see what I can do vs some of the harder mobs in the zone.

T1 Group geared (plus ancient cloak of flames) ranger using shield, self buffed with clicks and cleric certitude 8598ac

First attempt: 2 reactive cleric mercs - dead
Second attempt: 2 reactive cleric mercs + 1 balanced cleric merc - lived, health hit 7% once and dropped below 20% a handful of times

DI spread:


Round by round:


DPS:


Group geared ranger gives up a huge portion of his outgoing damage in equipping his shield for this kind of "survivability". The traditional light tank in everquest? Yeah .... ... ...

Going to get ballsy and try to dual wield one with 3 cleric mercs ... pray for me ...

Dual wield ... I used Guardian of the Forest, Auspice, and empowered blades to get through the fight fast after watching the pingpong. I'll pull a few mobs to verify this DI spread ... it's friggin ugly:

DI:


DPS:


Isuldar - vs - A rose viper
Attempts 113 100%
Missed 11 9.73%
Dodged 8 7.08%
Parried 16 14.16%
Blocked 0 0%
Riposted 11 9.73%
Absorbed 0 0%
2907 7 6.19%
4824 1 0.88%
5463 5 4.42%
6102 4 3.54%
6741 3 2.65%
7380 4 3.54%
8019 2 1.77%
8658 4 3.54%
9297 2 1.77%
9936 8 7.08%
10575 6 5.31%
11214 1 0.88%
11853 1 0.88%
12492 1 0.88%
13770 3 2.65%
14409 2 1.77%
15048 13 11.5%
Total "hits": 67
DI 1: 7 = 10.4%
DI 16: 1 = 1.4%
DI 17: 0 = 0%
DI 18: 3 = 4.4%
DI 19: 2 = 2.9%
DI 20: 13 = 19.4%
Probability of a DI16-20 hit = 28.1%
Very short fight, need more total data. Almost bit it several times with 3 reactive healer mercs.

Larger sampling:

DW group geared ranger (no shield) 8315 visible ac, max aa:



Isuldar - vs - Combined: A rose viper
Attempts 524 100%
Missed 52 9.92%
Dodged 28 5.34%
Parried 145 27.67%
Blocked 0 0%
Riposted 49 9.35%
Absorbed 0 0%
2907 28 5.34%
3546 4 0.76%
4185 9 1.72%
4824 7 1.34%
5463 9 1.72%
6102 14 2.67%
6741 14 2.67%
7380 9 1.72%
8019 13 2.48%
8658 12 2.29%
9297 11 2.1%
9936 19 3.63%
10575 11 2.1%
11214 10 1.91%
11853 7 1.34%
12492 8 1.53%
13131 2 0.38%
13770 7 1.34%
14409 6 1.15%
15048 50 9.54%
Total "hits": 250
DI1: 28 = 11.2%
DI16: 8 = 3.2%
DI17: 2 = 0.8%
DI18: 7 = 2.8%
DI19: 6 = 2.4%
DI20: 50 = 20%
Probability of DI 16-20 hit = 29.2%
Average outgoing dps: 21,175dps
Group geared ranger hps with cert and self buffs/clicks: 95k

Spamming nukes with shield you can expect an average dps of 14-15k (~loses 30% of damage output). But, when you compare what a shield DOES for you - massive change in the DI spread. Compare to the shield parses.

Regardless, 2 reactive cleric mercs still can't reliably keep a group geared ranger up with a shield. 3 cleric mercs can reliably keep up with shield on unslowed trash. 3 cleric mercs can manage to keep a dual wielding group gear ranger up for the most part - but very much touch and go.

Aristo:

Is it intended that different EM focus effects basically no longer have any benefit? Some parses have shown em 15 = em 19 at least for tanking or its so close its not a noticeable difference any longer.

Do you think a pet tank with a dedicated healer merc should also then require its owner to spam 3-4 spells non stop in order for it to get by on trash mobs? You stated you wanted it to be reasonable to help keep your pet up but thats the owner pretty much throwing every tool he has at his pet for trash leaving nothing else to do for harder content. At least for necro and bst pets.

Do you realize how large the tanking gap is for earth pets and every other tank pet? Due to a bunch of factors like hp pools, like exclusive AA lines, like pet toys.

Why do pet owners suddenly have to defend what they have had since inception because the pitchforks of a few people who make pretty parses are out? I get fixing the broken upper DI issue but unless you want necro/bst pets to require full owner attention on trash mobs and to die for hard mobs or multiples the tuning is still off quite a bit. Despite what someone keeps showing. Other classes issues, PC incoming damage issues, etc all should be addressed on their own and not used as external fodder to support a framed point of view.

I knew it would have to be pretty bad for a group geared ranger because even as a raid geared AC focus ranger its tough on me. Thanks for this parse it was interesting, I am sure one of the posters from above will come in and make excuses over why it should be like this.

In order for it to "get by"?

Maybe you weren't paying attention. These pets aren't "getting by" - they are thriving.

Go back and look through the parses again.

Ps: my beastlord parses were done without a healer merc ... And the merc can keep up the necro merc with all that extra. WITH the merc it takes less than half the damage of a group geared shadow knight cycling his best discs. That isn't just "getting by".

Swarm pets have always been used to offtank multiple mobs. Before change 4, they didn't actually live long enough to do so. They were only lasting 2 sec or so from some of the parses, which wasn't enough time for the healer to catch back up on the pet. It seems the last change made that viable again.

As I said in a previous post, I think 2 yellow con mobs with a merc healer should be doable going all out, but have a chance for failure. You didn't actually list what you fought though in the parse, just said 2v1 and as you said, might have forgotten iceflame. I'd guess you were probably pretty low on mana afterwards too, which is to be expected after an "oh crap" situation of a double pull.

And are you really saying a tank pet should be worse than a ranger? I'd think the other classes should be championing a change in the CC resistance of mobs instead of worrying about pet tanks.

On the double fight ended at 29% mana - started just over 80% iirc. Didn't use mod rods or any other recovery tools. I'd hardly call it going all out. VT, frenzied burnout, spell burns, fortify ... None used. When you say go all out - that's what 'go all out' means to me. With the above the fight would have been easily over - very fast and without any margin of danger.

I don't recall ever saying that. I posted raw data for review.