What should a pet be allowed to do in Everquest?

The nerf sets a precedent whereby they're allowed to arbitrarily nerf pets without testing, without informing the community, and without cause beyond the 'pets are tanking raids' observation. Well, pets are still able to tank raids after this nerf because a 10-20% hp and ac reduction is never going to stop pet chaining. The basic mechanics of the game make it so that a swarm of pets is able to hold aggro over players. So from the mage community's vintage, it opens up the floor for severe nerfs later.

What should a pet be able to do in Everquest?

You have EM XII (T1 group) through to EMXVIII (T2 raid).

One of the problems is magicians expectations.
They want EM XII to be able to tank like a T1 group tank
They want EM XIII to be able to tank like a T2 group tank

That is fair enough. But there are still 5 more levels that HAVE to be better than that.
To me pets aren't tanking on raids. They just have to have the HP to survive the AE's. So EM XIV to EM XVIII should ONLY be providing a HP gain, rather than an AC/mitigiation advantage.

Once the group focii catches up to the raid focii, then adjust that Focii to increase the AC and lower the HP.

How do you know that they haven't tested it? I would bet on the opposite. There are at least 2 people on the team who play mages. They haven't asked you for parses, but you just said that nobody on the internet can be trusted. And now it is on the Test server for everybody to test. If there is something really wrong - they can correct it. 1 week of public testing is enough time.

We don't even know the official reasoning behind it. It may be about pet tanking raid mobs. Or missions. Or just streamlining some data that was out of place. Or preparation for new code features that will be totally beneficial. Probably a mix of more than one of these things.

thumb up

Being outcast from a small group of powergamers is a blessing, trust me. This is the internet, don't believe everything that you read.
I am not for this nerf, initially I did some tests where I thought the decrease wouldn't have been to bad, but some discussions here have brought me to the other side of the fence.

This was the wrong way to go about going after raid pet tanking.

It is hurting the player that is on that fence of being a decent grouper and beginning raider. Which, in terms, is the majority of this game.

Unless the pet nerf is absolutetly gigantic, as in something like they take twice as much damage as they currently do, my ability (as a BST) to solo named will not be much affected. The only thing it might affect is my ability to solo named with loss-of-control effects because the pet might not be able to go 18 seconds without a heal while I run out the fear and get back into range, which they can certainly do now.

The fact is, pets are currently broken, especially combined with a high-DPS wizard merc. It's not just mage pets. I have no raid gear whatsoever. I can still solo the vast majority of T2 named. I can solo three yellow summoning trash mobs at once. If my pet is Mage DS buffed, I generally do this to get AAs faster. Half the classes in the game can't molo a single dark blue T2 trash mob, if the mob summons.

This type of stuff is simple when I can cast bigger, far more efficient heals and buffs on my pet than an actual cleric can cast on a real tank, and the fact that the wizard merc on burn + pet + DoTs I can throw from range will easily outdamage even two well-played group geared DPS classes. Even if pet AC/HP is brought down to group-geared tank levels, I will still be able to solo named because I heal better than a cleric and the merc does much more damage than any DPS class.

The only named I cannot solo are:

- Named with a high damage AoE that hits both me and the wizard merc which cannot be LOSed or outranged, because I can't heal myself, the merc, AND the pet.
- Named that have a non-disease must-cure ability that hits non-pet targets, because I have no way to cure these abilities.

The high DPS of the wizard merc lets me do things that I've never managed in any group. I can clear all the PHs for five different named in Grelleth (Stitches, Plakt, War Machine, Slaunk, Murderer) in one spawn cycle, and can kill any of these named when they spawn. I've never been in a group that kept five named clear. I can make a hundred thousand plat an hour clearing the Xorbb sewer cubes alongside the PHs for Body of the Many, Tunnel Slither, and Corpsehide.

Since classes are balanced around all their abilities; and in particular mages around their pets and their tanking ability, are you guys going to give mages a bump to to their personal/pet DPS in compensation? Fairs fair.

I realize this thread is going off topic, and I hate to contribute to that with this post. Hopefully everyone can get back on topic soon.

I will say that if EQ developers believe that pet tanking raids is because of chain casting, then the changes to hp/AC/mitigation will not cure that. There is an easier solution to that-

Increase the refresh timer of all non swarm pets. Make it so that a pet owner can only summon a pet once every, say, five minutes. For the magician class, group the pets on the same timer so that a magician cannot just memorize all four different pets and just rotate all four. Unless your raid force has 30 pet classes, this should cure chain casting pets.

An interesting take, I like it.

Neither of these replies are choosing whether the role of the Magician is tank or DPS.
If the answer is "both" that's fine, understanding that both will suffer.

Unless the Devs are planning on giving mages (in specific) a SUBSTANTIAL boost to their personal DPS without factoring in their pet... Pets should not be changed in the slightest. Talking about a class that struggles to compete for a place in raid as is... Take away their pet ability, not only are they going to be even less desireable on raid, your going to kill off the class for group content. Mages are the "Tanks" of the pure casters. Taking any of that away makes them the... Extremely underscaled wizards of the EQ world. Other than casting mod rods, what would be the point of having on? Class thats basically dependant on a super strong pet to accomplish anything? This coming from an SK.... People need to get real, the problem isn't with pets... The problem is with developement.

i got several friends with multi accounts who think the same thing , they just don't know if they want to continue playing this GREAT ??? game ......., NERFS , HURT the game .

tanks ( specially groupers , need a boost ). stop those dumb nerfs..

i play ( pay ) myself for 3 accounts ( one atm got 600 + days before it end ) , and rely on my mage pet since several years , i will see how bad that nerf is, and will consider also if it 's still worth to continue to play that game. we play for fun , not to be constanly frustrated with nerfs....

if you find mage pets are so powerfull , make one, they are available for anyone ..

For mages, there is no way to run a wiz merc because the pet isn't able to hold aggro over a wiz merc on burn, and because mage heals are crap. This is why all moloing mages run cleric mercs except when grinding lower level mobs.

To add to your list of what mages are not able to do -

- Named with the ability to bypass the pet - for example an aggro switch, a gravity pull, a leap attack with root, frequent rampage, etc. Facenibbler from Xorbb is an obvious example. Mages are squishy and are not able to tank beyond 2-3 seconds.
- Named with the ability to charm.
- Named with melee only mechanics, for example Ritualist Blezon
- Named that require pulling
- Named that require bellycasting, because the merc runs out of mana before you're able to do the damage

How about focusing on fixes on horribad raid events, rather than nerfing pets as well? Or is it simply a matter of doing something that is simple to show productivity in the work place? Even non-pet classes are raging about a pet nerf... Who'd have thunk?

And they will. For 99% of content. Some content is harder than others, some requires some minor adjustment (be it just strategic changes or more significant ones). This isn't ruining pet groups. They'll still do just fine.

The enchanter change happened because of a code change to a more modern code base changed how floating point variable math was calculated (it ended up more accurate, which created a small window in perma stunning mobs). It had nothing to do with the video. Similarly this change to pets has nothing to do with tanks or any posts on the forums for that matter.

At what point as a nerf ever kept a class doing... Just fine?

The missions all need to be retuned in tier 2 and 3 now otherwise this patch is just piling on more broken content into the game. The missions in both RoF and to a lesser extent alaris have been the BULK of where the challenge exists in the group game. There are several missions in tier 2 and one mission in tier 1 RoF that are essentially tuned to raid gear players, you will find VERY VERY VERY few GROUPERS that have completed every mission, These missions don't seem to be getting a retune and yet now sony is nerfing one more avenue of group play inaccessible by non raiders. Pets are getting a significant hp and AC nerf (i'd love to see the actual dev spreadsheet numbers though) Despite their claimed intentions of nerfing pet tanking on raids they effectively targeted group geared pet classes and demolished them.


I walked into tier 3 looking forward to more content to do in this expansion and now i'm discovering that groupers will literally have access to LESS content now than they did before tier 3 launched. LOL no wonder sony isnt charging for tier 3, they are removing content for groupers, not giving us more.

I'm going to keep playing EQ like I always do till my subscription on all my accounts run out, but if things stay on this course I will not be renewing.

I'm sorry, what? Noticing that AE's come from the back end of a mob, or that corpses all give off AE damage in one instance is not exactly a secret, nor impossible to figure out without a spoiler. As for sharing the info, we've always done that. I've never been a sit on info type, nor has my guild.

Wow, it only took a few months to get a reply about that out of you guys! How about giving a statement as to why it wasn't fixed like YOU SAID IT WOULD BE?!