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

Besides the fact that it wasn't Daegun who posted that parse - because he never, ever posted a parse involving practical tanking scenarios - it still wasn't an accurate parse. The ONLY discipline used by the warrior in that parse is Final Stand, followed by NTTB. He never layered the two, despite the fact that the two DO layer, because obviously that results in less DPS and that won't do in a parse dedicated to showing that pets > warriors. And further, warriors don't just have Final Stand and NTTB. They have a plethora of other abilities, none of which were used. This is particularly galling because the poster, immediately after the post showing that warriors under Final Stand took ~the same amount of damage that the BST warder did, posted a parse where he was spamming ALL the defensive mitigation abilities available to a BST warder to show that a BST is able to out-mitigate a warrior under Final Stand.

Of course, he never did so for the warrior.

You were tricked again.

I thought fort comp was 12 min, bout same as some of the sk/apl discs, but sk/pal do get 3 discs, even one that lowers our dps. Also if you look at the sk/pal disc to react to dmg spikes its only 25k 90% for 2(3 if raid rk 3) hits, so not much more than the pet ones. I wouldn't mind seeing the pet ones get a bit of a boost, but I wouldn't expect it, as they are not that far behind.

Obviously people are going to switch to solo/molo friendly classes as the player population decreases and the desire to group drops.

That's been the case for all MMOs.

Why did you think mercs were introduced? Why did you think soloing/moloing abilities were increased across the board? Because the devs understand full and well that as the player population shrinks, and as players get older, they become less hardcore and less open socially.

Yet lately, instead of adapting to the player base, it looks to me the devs have been trying to reverse the course of the game.

I am reminded of the famous 'being on the wrong side of history' speech.

really when did people get more solo ability? with the swarming changes? witht he shinning bastion/fatiuge changes? hey war, zerker, rouge, where are your new solo abilities? now if you mean molo, than many classes can molo older content, but not many can molo/solo current content (including any expansion at current max level). classes that could solo/molo before, can still do it now. they have not introduced anything that added more solo ability to the games since mercs, and moloing.

you are

HS, Swarming, Decap, Assassinate, etc. didn't use to be solo/molo abilities? News to me.

That's why I said lately the devs have been going against the course of the game. All the changes you listed came this year. Prior to that, the game was, in fact, becoming increasingly solo/molo friendly.

Pet nerfs simply go along with the rest. My working theory is that devs have been seeing a lot of 'there are no groups' complaints from people quitting EQ, and short of having a solution to this beyond nerfing soloing/moloing, that's what they've ended up doing. The HAs in COTF also support this idea.

Mage pets are also immune to many mob abilities that even mercs are affected by. There was a particular mob in Veil of Alaris that the standard strategy was to mage tank it, since it cast a silence on any player who cast a spell on it - including pressing the taunt button - that ended up hitting the group. Even mercs weren't immune to it. The mage pet nerfs have been coming for years, just the easy fixes that they've attempted several times just didn't work.

Actually, no. They were group and raid abilities with defined and specific uses that spiraled out of control due to multiplicative changes to other abilities. Just like the current state of pets. They were never intended to be solo abilities.

The worst part about this entire debacle is that the lowest common denominator set the agenda for the developers.

There was a huge scream on the veteran's board and the dev's raced to the rescue before getting context. Full speed ahead. We take the torpedoes.

Maybe this is the result of their skeleton crew, but a skeleton crew should back-burner and thoroughly study a situation which is as complicated and obviously fraught with controversy as this issue has been.

I do think the devs are trying to do a mathematically managed proper scenario, but I think they are using the improper context of a game which has significantly evolved from the days of "everyone is grouping." To embrace the evolved context is to properly balance "issues."

The playerbase is talking LOUDLY here, and that deserves attention.

Actually, yes. I (and a couple of other old-timers) was part of a very long discussion during a (closed) beta where the aforementioned "golden standard" for pets was created.

The golden standard specifically mentioned the ability to solo a blue mob with a pet out of the box. This scaled up where it is today. The pertinent question now is how much scaling is proper. (The multiplicative effects you correctly mention.)

The dispute is over the ravaging of our pets in situations we have been able to handle since the golden standard was introduced. In that context we are underpowered on test. It's a disaster. No kidding.

Bara

When they were first introduced? Sure. But the devs let these abilities become what they were. They knew full well what was going on and did zip for years and years.

Then, after they nerfed it, they cited a 'goal' from 10 years ago to try and make it look to be a bug fix. This is called 'retcon.' You were tricked.

Pets were designed to be solo abilities from Day 1. Read the class descriptions.

It wasn't surprising, that tanks would want to make themselves appear as weak as possible. I don't think it's entirely to try to hurt pets, I think that the issue of tank gearing has come up often enough in these threads to recognize that player tanks are secretly hoping for a bone to be thrown their way, this pet campaign just gives them another platform to speak

Edit: tweelis, I dunno why u keep parsing ROF mobs. I personally am not all that interested in tanking multiple mobs from last expansion

This is because our SKs are doing completely different things. Mine is using Grelleth's Skin (cast once every 5-10 minutes), autoattack, lifetaps, and the AC tap (cast every 2 minutes). No cleric merc was used, SK was self healing only. The mob was not debuffed or slowed.

I wanted to show something a little more realistic. Especially because the pet parses I used were also more realistic (pets were attacking and receiving rune procs / stunning the mob). What I did I would still consider lazy SK play, and did not include any disciplines (especially because I didn't do the same for the pets).

I did get some more data:

The spike in the DI distribution is DI 1. The ones below it, are low DI hits that were reduced by Grelleth's Skin.

A lazy group geared SK is easily out tanking the mage earth pet on Test. The pet was not standing there doing nothing, and neither was the SK. The pet was not discing, and neither was the SK.

All three tanks are completely fine vs. content presently. Their biggest issue is not pets but the discrepancy between raid tanks and group tanks - the gap is gigantic, but raid tanks are the loudest people in the tanking community, and that has implications for how the game is tuned, which eventually results in the casual tanks getting screwed.

It's definitely 15 minutes, but the biggest problem is it's getting stripped in under a minute on multiples.

Again, there is no amount of skill that negates the fact that our abilities are half as effective (even less than 1/2 because it compounds) with 2 mobs, which is starting to really show through now that our passive ability has been "fixed."

Honestly, we don't need much of an increase in 1v1 scenarios, even with tough mobs like named. Add in a second mob and our pets get trashed if we don't start spamming heals. Yes, we can heal through it (while doing no damage), but I don't understand the logic in limiting our tanking to 1v1 situations. I find it easier to tank Roon with my pet than two trash mobs in T2, which doesn't logically make sense to me.

I already stated my suggestions on my previous post about the issue (briefly: increase RS pet back to previous levels and give duration based abilities).

Were you pressing Reprove each time it was up?

Just making sure, because this is the best parse I've seen yet when it comes to being honest about a class' abilities.

I would agree to upping the damage absorbed limit, but they would have to impose an amount per hit limit to make it where it was balanced. currently if the mob hits for 5 di 1 hits, all 5 hits will be absorbed. If a mob hits for 2 max di hits, it will be absorbed. If you raise the cap without lowering how much can be absorbed in each hit, then you are back to the pure block mechanic that was taken out for being over powered. I have no issues with pet classes being given something to help them, it just has be in a way that makes it not increase vs a single target, and that is really hard to do, otherwise you will be getting mages that will be pulling groups and raining them down.

Is there a difference between Test and Live for SKs? Or am I reading the parse wrong? Did you selfheal for the entire duration? No epic clicks and what now their zombie illusion disc is?

Mage pets are only stronk vs. single targets because of runes.

Remove runes, replace with melee mitigation abilities, and you get the exact same crowd tanking situation that warriors have minus the warrior's ability to hold AoE aggro.

This isn't difficult to understand, people -

Runes, eg Aegis = great vs. single targets, bad vs. crowds
% Melee Mitigation, eg Last Stand = great vs. both
DI distribution modifiers, eg AC = great vs. both

edited a lot out of replied post so that we didnt fill the board. Please post your dps vs said mob and your cast list during that time. I'm curious, I cannot parse that as I am raid geared, so it wouldn't be the same.

my problem is with the self healing of an sk you will kill that mob from reposts and life tap damage, and bond dot, you can use the manalinked gauntlets to try and prolong it. If you use autoattack and epic then you are going to kill the mob well before 33 minutes. You are also having to pray for crits from life taps, but that will also kill the mob in less than 33 minutes. I cant test that as my gear is raid and it might be my experiences that skew what I think should be. Seeing the rest of the log will fill in the blanks.