Your pet on 8-20-14

level 100 necro raid geared here em20 with maxxed out aa.

I was on test last night. In cotf t2 zones I can still own a 1v1 trash fight of any con. The only change I have seen is in taking out names and 1v2+ fights. I tried a named today. Good thing I had my box toon with me I don't think even with me using my runes each time they refreshed I could have keep my pet up without a 2nd healer. With trying 1v2+ fights last night on test my normal lineup of 2 swarm pet spells was not enough for me to off tank a add or to have pet tank 2 and use the swarms to eat some of the damage form the add.

So for me its box a second healer or see bout changing my lineup for dealing with adds or named.

I like how out of everything I said, you pick that.

Air is a tank, it's the all around pet. EK is a t1 zone, the easiest out of the expansion. If my pet can barley tank a named in EK, I have high doubts about any other zone.

I'm sorry, does my annoyance at the beating my pet took with the nerf bat annoy you? How about instead of trying to antagonize people you add some feedback? Oh you can't cause you're not a Mage? Then why are you here?

OK you all can decide how "trustworthy" I am, but here it goes. Three situations I know I could do before today's patch, and same exact three situations today after patch. In all situations I used-

EM 20 Earth Pet
Burnout 11 rk3
Iceflame Eminence rk3
Flameskin rk3 (dmg shield)
Velocity AA (not that it matters, but /shrug)
Healer merc buffs- Certitude rk2

1. Shoon, red con named, Ethernere

Pre buffed pet w/host AA and fortify AA. I believe I also casted Aegis of Nefori rk3 on pet beforehand as well, sorry did not remember. Sent pet in w/Frenzied Burnout on it. Casted RS rk3 (gargoyle pet) on Shoon, then went into full burn mode. Killed Shoon, ITC faded around 30% or so of Shoon's health. Did not cast one heal or Aegis on pet during battle, did not use Replenish AA on pet, merc handled all heals on pet. Pet health remained between 45-65% for duration of second half of battle; I am assuming that fortify and host AA's had faded at that point. I know when Shoon died I did not see fortify or host AA on pet.

2. An ember keeper, white con trash mob, Argin Hiz

No pre-buffs on pet, just the basics you saw above. Did not cast one heal entire battle, no aegis casted during battle. Normal DPS solo weave. I did notice that RS early in battle took aggro (like it generally does that early) and died relatively quickly. Went from like 100 to 84 to 52 to 37 to 0 in a few seconds. That bummed me out- not sure if that is standard or just a spike, but it got me slightly worried when I did the next encounter. Otherwise earth pet I don't think went below 60 entire fight- could have been higher than 60 but did not pay *that* close of attention- I just know it was never in danger.

3. Two keeper of the flame, yellow con mobs, Argin Hiz

This was the event that was going to tell me how much exactly pets got "nerfed". Before today's patch here I could molo two of them at one time. Here was my strategy then-

Earth pet hits both to establish aggro on both. Pet attacks top one on Extended Window, I cast RS on second. I cast fickle and spear on main (after debuff). I then cast renewal on pet (heal on pet). I then have earth pet attack second mob, cast RS on second, then have earth attack first. Cast fickle/spear, renewal on pet, attack second, RS on second, attack first, rinse/repeat. I use Force AA (58k crit DD on mob) on main mob when it refreshes. Doing this strategy I am able to eventually kill first, then can go into normal DPS solo routine on second when it is alone. RS would die very quickly to second, so there was about a 3-6 second period of time when earth would be tanking both yellow cons at once before I could cast RS on second add. Earth pet never really seemed to be in that crisis of a situation, never used Replenish AA (insta heal on pet), earth would usually be around 35-65% health as it was attacked.

So that was between July 16-August 19. Now here is today's results-

Pre buffed pet w/host AA. Sent pet in on both, same as before. Casted RS on second, then waited and positioned earth so that it was in front of both mobs. When RS refreshed, casted it on second mob and then went into above routine. My observations on this-

-RS lasted much longer than before; in fact the first RS was in enrage mode when I casted the next RS onto second mob. For the majority of the event RS was able to tank the yellow con until the second one took over. When first RS died, I noticed second yellow con would turn to earth pet for a second or two, then back to the second RS. So earth pet would only be tanking both yellow con mobs for 1-2 seconds at most; a couple times it did not have to tank both.

-I had two crisis situations with Earth pet. One I had to use Replenish AA, the other I ... had to pray to Erollisi Marr real fast LOL! Earth got down to 20 in both situations; one more spike would have probably killed Earth pet.

-I noticed, not a tanking thing, but yellow con mobs were resisting my DD spells a LOT more than before. Not sure why.

-I did cast a host AA during the event. Did not cast any Aegis of Nefari during encounter.

At the end... I killed both of the two yellow cons. RS seemed to last longer than before, but Earth was definitely taking more damage than before. But either way... I can do it.

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So there you have it. Three different situations, I was victorious in all three situations like I was before. Earth pet does seem to be taking a bit more damage, RS seems to be living a bit longer (I attribute that moreso to it being summoned at 100% HP whereas before it was being summoned at like 65-70% HP or something like that). But at the end of the day... I still won my battles.

That because it is really the only thing that interest me. Why would you use your air pet, even raid geared, to tank names?

Why am I here? Because I have a magician of course that I play regularly. Does that buy me a seat at the table or must he be raid geared in a top of the line guild first before being allowed to say anything?

RS pet couldn't cope with adds last week, it certainly wont be able after todays nerfs, no point in even bothering.

Funny. Read post #23 on this thread about RS handling yellow con keeper of flame adds in Argin Hiz

Thanks for this, it's good to hear. Would be cool to run the same test scenarios with EM15 (or I guess 16 now that Grael is fixed?), and then the same scenarios for a nec and bst with EM15 & EM20.

Ok, if you play a Mage that's cool. I'm glad you have a Mage box, why do you not know that Air is a tank model? Is it as good as Earth? No, but it's the closest second.

I went back to EK to test of the earth pet, which I found very similar to using the air pet. I burned Shoon down this time and had 3 ITC charges left so obviously the earth pet wasn't taking as much of a beating, but I did notice that my merc couldn't keep the earth pet up by itself either and I had to lend Nefori, Heals and Aegis to keep him up.

Either way I have a feeling that group geared Mages are going to have a very hard time.

I want to hear from an average joe with T1 gear and EM11 or so, not full AAs and EM20 or 21 geared to the teeth. I'm not surprised that Cis was successful, I'm not so sure about lesser equipped mages. I never doubted a maxed mage would do well, the vast majority aren't. I've said this before.

Hence, literally, the next sentence? ....

I said 11 not 15. For a group/solo mage, or a mage in a small guild the EM15 is still hard to get. I'm not really worried about the raid geared mage with 10k+AA and EM20/21 on Roon/Shoon. They will prevail.

11 is a level 95-ish era focus for a grouper, though, eh? Doesn't seem too relevant, and the SL ear with EM12 is often pretty cheap in the bazaar. It's like asking a wizard to parse with only their voa era nukes and focuses.

You're missing the point. This impacts more than T1/T2 CoTF, it impacts the entire class all the way down the line. As I said I'd like to hear from an average joe to see how they faired after the nerf, I'm guessing the impact will be far greater on them.

em 11? that is a t4 voa drop. shot em12 is t1 rof. em15 is a drop form a t1 cotf zone named. a group mage even with a small guild is going have no issue getting that

My wife's mage might be a good test subject then - group geared, Heroic, level 100, 5500 AA (the heroic AA and whatever she's bought with the 900+ AA since then). Has EM12. Have to pull her away from back to school shopping for the n00blets, though!

I only saw them change the high end pets not the whole line of pets lol at lest for necros its only the 2 top rog pets and 2 top war pets that got chagned.

I am not happy with it i think they should increase all Pet Class Mitigation, so we can at least still solo as a solo class.

As it should, there should be a reward for being max aaed and raid gear otherwise whats the point? I have known mages that's solo named mobs all the way back to OoW, it was harder back then but it could be done with lots of skill. If you want to solo everything in game your in the wrong game.

All I can say is this really blows. Thank god it was tuned down from what it was originally because they still really took the power right outta the mages sails. Not yet jumping on the bandwagon of i'm quitting but whats the point of playing when they take away everything you worked so hard to obtain?

I see you still can't shrink wood elf BST warder after using a pet illusion on it.