I have a Mystic as well, and the dogdog is doing the same thing. It's not happening all the time, but it's often enough to affect gameplay. I haven't purchased the expansion pack yet, but the last patch must have messed it up. It will often say "You may not attack the implied target..." or something to that effect when I use the attack button or the /pet attack command. The only way the pet will attack is if I have him on defensive and I initiate the attack. If I'm in groups, then this is really frustrating because he can't "defend" when the tank has agro. Please fix!
Yes this is really annoying. They have to hit me in order for my pet to attack, which is bound to kill me.
I sent in-game feedback on this. Since I solo 99.9% of the time - not being able to send my pet in and having to body pull is COMPLETELY P!&&!NG ME OFF!! Mega annoying, please fix! Please and thank you!
You might already know this, but just in case you didn't: EQ2 targetting is based on Line of Smell (LoS). It means your nose (or your eyes if you prefer) must have a direct sight on the target's feet, or else you will not be able to attack it. THis is especially true with pets.
Yep, LoS is important... MY issue is that (and this is what I sent feedback on) I click Pet Attack and I get my nice little message of "You send your pet in to attack!".. and the stupid thing just sits there next to me like an inbred laborador retriever. I fully expect that if there is a LoS issue, I will get the message that I can't tell my pet to attack that. He refuses to move until I am physically hit - and THEN he jumps to action. Very irritating.
Doing Palace of Roehn Theer today, my pet would not attack at all on the Sages, and only after turning on protect would it attack Roehn Theer himself. Using /pet attack did nothing, pet just sat there and got no error messages.
I've noticed this problem as well. It appears to have something to do with whether or not the mob is 'under' something, like in a hallway, or under a tent. No idea why it makes a difference, but I can get him to attack something outside of a tent when he won't target what's standing under it. There are also some times when I order him to attack too quickly after I stop moving/running. In that case, I just order the attack again and it goes through.
Sorry to bump an old thread, but it has been over 14 months since the creation of this thead, and I am still personally experiencing this exact issue with any character I have created which utilizes pets. I am a returning player from 2006, and bought a 3-month subscription in early April. I experienced this issue on an illusionist, conjuror, necromancer, coercer, and mystic, so I did a Google search and found this thread. Considering how long this has apparently been occurring, this is utterly ridiculous, especially considering how irritatingly significant this is to gameplay. Come on SOE, there is no possible way you are not aware of this issue, so fix it already. Otherwise, you'll lose a customer within the next 2 months. I simply cannot bring myself to pay for a game when its core gameplay mechanics do not function properly.
So, trying to understand the issue that you're having. In my experience on five different pet classes (Both summoners, illy, mystic, BL) there are two distinct times my pet refuses to attack/initiate combat. During the first type, my pet appears to enter combat (gets into fighting stance, but does nothing) and stays in place. This ALWAYS seems to due to line of sight/positioning on a pet that is attempting to use a ranged attack. In the case of a mage, you can simply move, summon your pet, and tell it to attack and there is no issue. This problem has been huge thus far in skyshrine as there is trash strewn about that seems to constantly be causing my pet line-of-sight issues. The second type seems to be due to either leashing (target is too far out of range, possibly even vertically) or a result of a stationary mob that remains in it's spawn point. I get the message the OP mentioned "you may not order your pet to attack your implied target." A common example of when this occurs is in OOA, in the hallway between the second room and the energy weilder. If I order my pet to target the void stalkers on either side of the hallway, I will get the message. If I say, root one of them and my pet is in passive mode, I am unable to force him to attack until they move from that static point. If the mob then breaks it's root and moves from it's static point, my pet can attack without issue. Another example I've seen of this is Lord Bob in Pools. If I run right up to his spawn point(standing on it) with my pet in passive, I cannot make my pet attack him until something moves him from his spawn point. Repositioning (usually) seems to fix this issue. What have your experiences been recently with this? Have you noticed specific mobs/zones you're having a problem with? Have you found any work-arounds? Lastly, I would say that after one of the updates a few months back there was an issue with soulburn/EB not working properly, but that was seperate and has already been addressed.
Azomonas wrote: I get the line of sight issue rather frequently, especially on my illusionist, since he's a fae, so even fairly small objects can block his line of sight. So yes, this is rather annoying, and it would be nice if the pet would, say, move next to you if it can't find LOS, as it obviously stands to reason that if you're sending the command to attack the target, you have LOS from where you are currently standing. Or at least give us a message when your pet doesn't have LOS ("Your pet must have line of sight to the target to attack!"). Instead, we receive no messages, and your pet just stands there in attack stance. It's irritating, to say the least, but at least this particular issue is explicable and 100% repeatable, so you can learn to alter your playstyle in order to avoid it. Not that you should have to do that, but the option is there. The second issue is the reason I came here to post this. Those are all valid explanations, but they don't explain every instance I have experienced. Sometimes I receive a message "You send your pet in to attack," and he just stands there doing nothing. This has even occurred at times while standing just slightly outside of the target's aggro range, so I don't necessarily think that the pet's distance to the target has anything to do with it (just before posting in this thread, I was on the beach in Butcherblock with my illusionist and experienced this issue with a rustfiend - close distance, no obstacles blocking LOS). Although, in a scenario in which the target is too far away (e.g., the target is on the opposite side of a canyon, so your pet has no way to clear the distance between it and the target, and the target is out of range), I would at least expect an error message ("Implied target is too far away"). Having only played for a month now, I haven't had a scenario like this, so I can't speak to the actual gameplay behavior in such a situation. Other times, though, I do receive the message that I may not order my pet to attack the implied target. Perhaps this does have something to do with static spawns. I have not been playing long enough to be able to test this. All I know is that it happens frequently enough to negatively impact gameplay. Sometimes I can un-target the mob in question and re-target it, and my pet attacks just fine. Other times, though, this accomplishes nothing. It seems to be random. In that scenario, the only thing I have found that usually works is to have the target attack me. However, when you're wearing cloth, that's not a good option. Also, there have been some occassions where my pet wouldn't attack the target even after it started to attack me. My pet would literally just sit there and stare at the target throughout the entire fight. The bottom line is that pet mechanics got broken some time between 2006 and 2011. Very, very broken, apparently, as there seem to be a multitude of possible things which cause your pet to ignore your attack commands. It was never this bad before. Not even close.
Ettican@Unrest wrote: I have my game updated to include Skyshrine. Am on the Crushbone server. Just wanted to say that I have experienced everything that Ettican and Azomonas have said above. I have used only my Earthen Avatar as a tank in solo play so far (am now at level 22). What I find most annoying is having to run up to the mob myself in order to attract his attention, simply because the AI refuses, for any of the reasons given in the posts quoted above, to allow my pet to attack. Rather dicey for a Conjuror clothed only in cloth armor.
I just wanted to add the following. I recently created a new conjuror in new Halas. It was impossible to play him well. The reason is that my pet moved only about once every 100 times when I commanded him to attack. I think it was the terrain that caused the problem. The pet simply could not move to attack in snow. When he was on the icepack he moved fine. When I got to level 8 I got discouraged, so I moved to Kelethin. Much better there. Hardly any problems with my pet, except for the line of sight problem. However that's fairly easy to work around. The only other major problem is with the shadow spell that causes my pet to teleport to the enemy and start a magic attack. Sometimes what happens is that my pet does not move, but the enemy believes that he is being attacked and thus runs up to my pet who is standing next to me, forcing me to back away so that I can cast spells safely. I can handle this problem okay, but of course I would prefer that it didn't exist.
