Test Update 8/5/2014 - Pet Changes Round Two

i) You're right. It is stripped in nothing-flat. My eyes pop out when I see it disappear. "Didn't I just activate that....?"

ii) We've heard about the multiplicative effects of pet scaling upward. Now, as you correctly point out, we are experiencing multiplicative effects of pet scaling downward.

Bara

Maybe some confusion because this is not one mob - its 9 of the tree mobs in WK, in succession, combined. Passive AFK tanking has been parsed enough already, continuing to do so would be redundant/a waste of time on my part.

Ombek -vs- Combined: An avenging treesoul:
-- DMG: 14788028
-- DPS: 7495
-- Scaled: 7495
-- DirDmg: 6996538
-- Crush: 6548857
-- Hit: 529783
-- Bash: 474475
-- Slash: 189682
-- DoT: 48693
-- % dmg as normal: 48.2%
-- % dmg as critical: 51.8%
-- Non-crit rate: 84.1%
-- crit rate: 15.9%
-- Attempts: 6404
-- Hits: 5481
-- Missed: 923
-- Accuracy: 85.6%
-- Avg Hit: 2698
-- Max hit: 120960
-- DMG to PC: 8459786


Combined: An avenging treesoul on 8/5/2014 - 8/7/2014

Ombek - 737
--- Blood of Ralstok Rk. II - 1
--- Death's Effigy - 1
--- Demand for Power Rk. II - 28
--- Dire Insinuation Rk. II - 76
--- Dire Stricture Rk. II - 1
--- Grelleth's Horror Strike II - 61
--- Grelleth's Skin Rk. II - 2
--- Insidious Deflection Rk. II - 2
--- Leech Touch - 1
--- Ragged Bite of Agony - 7
--- Shroud of the Darksworn Strike II - 60
--- Spell Empowerment - 60
--- Steadfast Stance Rk. II - 3
--- Terror of Poira Rk. II - 14
--- Touch of Dyalgem Rk. II - 12
--- Touch of Falsin Rk. II - 124
--- Touch of Klonda Rk. II - 43
--- Touch of Piqiorn - 52
--- Touch of the Cursed - 63
--- Touch of Urash - 119
--- Vicious Bite of Chaos - 7

Produced by GamParse v1.0.5

Some of the spells are weird/bad, and my spell lineup did change.

How about we take Host in the Shell:
[33909] Host in the Shell
Classes: MAG/254
Skill: Abjuration
Target: Pet
Range: 200'
Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes
Casting: 0.5s, Recast: 1.5s, Rest: 1.5s
Duration: 5m (50 ticks), Extendable: Yes, Dispelable: Yes
Max Hits: 30 Incoming Hit Successes
1: Absorb Melee Damage: 25%, Max Per Hit: 5000, Total: 50000
Text: You are protected by a shield of runes.
Protects your pet in a shield of runes which lasts for up to %z, while absorbing a percentage of damage per hit, up to 50,000 total.

And Make it like this:
[33909] Host in the Shell
Classes: MAG/254
Skill: Abjuration
Target: Pet
Range: 200'
Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes
Casting: 0.5s, Recast: 1.5s, Rest: 1.5s
Duration: 12s (2 ticks), Extendable: No, Dispelable: Yes
Max Hits: 50 Incoming Hit Successes
11: Absorb Melee Damage: 25%, Max Per Hit: 5000
Text: You are protected by a shield of runes.
Protects your pet in a shield of runes which lasts for up to %z, while absorbing a percentage of damage per hit.

While lowering the recast timer to something more reasonable than 4 minutes (30 seconds to 1 minute?). That way it's more likely to drop due to the 12 second duration rather than the 50 Hit limit (or the 50K damage limit). Also this way it stacks with the merc's Vie (otherwise it'd probably be better not to cast it to keep the constant 10%). This could even be a spell and lock out one of our Aegis line (or lock out our AA aegis). I guess I could have altered Groundswell Stance instead, but I dislike that spell for a variety of reasons.

Now I don't know how that would play out in game, it could be ridiculously overpowered for all I know. The idea is it would fade based on duration assuming you were fighting multiple targets, while allowing you to give some buffer for them.

This could be combined with an increase in the damage cap of Fortified Companion so that it isn't stripped so quickly. Whatever happens we need some boost in this area (just trying to float possible ideas).

[33909] Host in the Shell
Classes: MAG/254
Skill: Abjuration
Target: Pet
Range: 200'
Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes
Casting: 0.5s, Recast: 7.5 min, Rest: 1.5s
Duration: 3m (30 ticks), Extendable: Yes, Dispelable: Yes
1: Absorb Melee Damage: 20% Total: 600000
Text: You are protected by a shield of runes.

Thanks, that is a very important piece of information. That makes sense.

That works too

Hi there

Playing as normal with some extra spells

Level 100 Mage EM 14 pet has Iceflame eminence rank 2 burnout 11 rank 2 and arcane distillect Certitude rank 2 with level 100 j5 merc on reactive. Earth pet with Spellhold off.

Mage level 99 heal using Aegis of Kildruikin AA, Aegis of Nefori Spell Auspice of shadows Spell and Groundwell stance. Normally I do not use these but used these as they refreshed

Also used Replenish companion, fortify companion companions blessing Virulent Talon Host of elements Frenzied burnout RS pet (seemed to last full time) Nuke when I was able. I ran out of mana merc seemed to be ok, but in my opinion I was busy keeping pet alive so that I could not do any damage to Roon

Sadly Shoon came along and killed me though

HI there

Level 100 Mage EM 14 pet has Iceflame eminence rank 2 burnout 11 rank 2 and arcane distillect Certitude rank 2 with level 100 j5 merc on reactive. Earth pet with Spellhold off

Single Yellow con bandit in EWK
I did not use any AA, blocks or heals.
I don't know why the hits are to the left on the first graph and then to the right of the second

It's because there is about 475 seconds of 'dead time' in the rolling DPS parse. The avg DPS is obviously not accurate due to it.

The hits are to the left to show more lower di hits on the first graph. On the first graph it also shows some damage mitigation abilities used (maybe cleric vie or if you used an earth pet their proc) because of more than 20 DI values. Also need to state what pet you used.

The second graph shows maybe a combined parse or you kited it for 8 minutes before sending pet in or it was hitting something else for 8 minutes.

Fortify Companion is not a tanking disc per Elidroth. Its sole purpose is as a DS mitigation tool which is why the caps are in place. I asked for 2 years now to get Fortify boosted, and Companion's Blessing (this is a joke nowadays for how quickly it fades). Apparently this has not been in the works for too long or they would have been looking at our discs a long with the pet changes.

That is the biggest issue with these changes. We are being forced to heal/tank and not DPS and our class does not have the abilities to properly handle that. We do have some 'ok' things that pass, but nothing compared to what we should have based on classes we now have to mimic. Yet another flaw in this hastily set out plan by the developers. Takes years to make the problem, a problem but lets 'fix' it in 2 months seems like a perfectly logical plan....

Hi there

Thanks for the info guys I do not parse often but as most of the posts show EM15 or higher I thought I would give it a go as I only have EM14

Was using Earth pet, I thought I included that

I could have been out of range as I did not want to get aggro of the pet.

Regards

There's also a side issue with balance between pet classes that has come up now that devs are nerfing pets.

Previously, while there were imbalances between pet classes, the fact that all pets were adequate for tanking content largely rendered them annoyances rather than game killing issues.

For example -

* BSTs have the best pet buffs/mob debuffs/heals by a long shot; before, it didn't matter b/c all pet classes were still able to deal with the content, now it does because it puts BSTs on a vastly greater footing than mages and necros when it comes to tackling content solo/molo and tackling adds
* Necros have weaker pets than BSTs and Mages; this was/is balanced b/c of the other advantages necros have; but it puts Necros in a situation where their pets are trash vs. current content, which renders the 'we want pets to remain viable tanks' statement false
* Mages not having a single CC/pulling spell was contingent on their RS + main pets in combination being beefy enough to handle several mobs at the same time. This is no longer the case, and mages are now powerless when they get an add.

All of these issues have to be addressed. Simply leaving the changes as they are leaves necros and mages broken in their pet tanking capabilities.

Think of this as a new chase item for mages then:

Slimy Ooze Ejector

MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: AMMO
Charges: Unlimited
Effect: Root (Any Slot/Can Equip, Casting Time: 3.0)
Recast Delay: 120 seconds, Recast Type: -1
WT: 0.2 Size: TINY
Class: ALL
Race: ALL

or a new economy in :

Crystalline Silk Net

MAGIC ITEM
EXPENDABLE Charges: 2
Effect: Ensnaring Roots (Any Slot, Casting Time: 2.0)
WT: 0.1 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL

or get some friends together and go get:

Wooly Spider Silk Net

MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: AMMO
Charges: Unlimited
Recommended level of 85. Required level of 80.
Effect: Earthen Roots (Any Slot/Can Equip, Casting Time: 1.0)
Recast Delay: 14400 seconds, Recast Type: -1
WT: 0.1 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL

Not even close to sufficient. That's like telling us to go farm that 10 shot instant cast darkness clicky scepter from warrens to spam click to fix sk terror issues heh.

Ooze ejector duration sucks, the recast is long and gets resisted quite often to boot.

*BST not being able to melee seems like a fairing trade off for those benefits to me. They give something up really, for better or worse.

*MAG could solve this by leaving RS mitigation alone, similar to how it works currently? Then main pet would be squishier as intended, but RS could still oh crap off tank in a pinch.

*NEC pet needs to be tuned even closer to mag earth pet then? If the gap is large, mag will continue to function with a pet tank but nec will not and anything they can't kite will be a hassle, which'd be a crappy place to be (though, one most wizards and Druids have been for a long time...)

The changes really do impact each class very differently, hopefully the devs acknowledge that fact

yes it was supposed to be facetious

thats also good to know about the ooze injector, haven't actually seen one, but I have actually used the nets before.

I can agree for the most part on necro and beast.

Mages definitely have tools to single though. 3 of them.

Easily can use blur pet and the two fades to split. It just takes some skill.

If anything, mages could use a little more hastened to this, and maybe reduce drape to like .2 cast time (.1 can be channeled on the run, ala Pre-Nerf Circlet).

I was singling mobs from the packs of 3 all throughout "Into the Hills" with just base mage abilities, never died, pet never died.

I say again though, I do feel that for the sake of... continuity during play... they could use a little more hastened.

Good bc I'm not going back to Warrens!

Should have thrown in fungus beast glands for good measure.

Try doing what you just said to do in a zone that isn't a trivial outdoors HA.

Try Argin-Hiz, for example. Tower of Rot.

Mage pulling is extraordinarily fickle. And of course, no way to deal with an add that patrolled INTO your camp.