I don't know exactly what you mean, but maybe i'm subconsciously trying to recruit for our guild by using that word too much... haha
I find it strange that people are complaining about the dps of the pet as of being "massive" now. Just to shed some light on the pet. The scout pet and the epic pet are both scout pets in the sense of abilities. Their abilities don't scale any better than the other. If the epic pet and the scout pet are both journeyman rank and both use x ability, x ability will do the same damage, because it is based on the tier of the pet itself. The only difference between the epic pet and the scout pet, as far as abilities are concerned is the epic pet has 1 extra ability - celestial something for conjs and soul drain for necromancers. These abilities also only scales based on the pet's tier. Other than that, the epic pet has a lot higher base auto attack. The epic pet auto attack, although looks good on paper, is only effective through a certain point of content. There are fights, usually T2+ encounters, where the pet's auto attack does significantly less damage. It is hard to tell where the problem lies as even strikethrough did not fix the issue, which was made to be a pet sharing stats. So the issue for that lies elsewhere. Auto-attack also doesn't scale in the long term. The only way to increase auto attack damage, as a player, would be to increase damage rating (weapon specific and pets can not receive weapons), wdb (caps and doesn't pet share), dps mod (shares, but only a fraction and has diminishing returns at ranks), crit bonus (caps and does pet share), skills (like piercing/slashing/crushing, doesn't share with pet), and primary stat (only affects it in small quantities and no way to otherwise scale it over time). Feb 28th Patch: ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT Primary and Swarm pets will now share 20% of the casters DPS stat, and 100% of the casters strikethrough. Now on to soul drain. There are pros and cons to this ability. Just a couple to list is that it does decent damage, usually top 5 of my parse (just like most of the other epic damage/modifying abilities); however, it is cast by the pet so I can't change the damage type of the ability except through ascension means. More or less, that is a con for having pets, since a summoner can not readily change their damage types without ascension, which makes it harder for us to scale on higher tier mobs compared to other classes.
I must be lucky, then, because the only time I pull aggro from our MT is in heroic zones when he's not really paying attention, and even then, it is only if I"m in my main ascension and he is in an off ascension AND not paying attention. I have also grouped with another MT from a different guild, and I did not pull aggro off of him. Again, stats were similar. So that's the experience I was basing my comments off of. I'll be able to let you know soon if my other friend who is currently building his tank towards gaining his epic is able to hold aggro off of me. His will be close in stats as well, though a little behind, whereas our main tank is a little ahead.
Summoners do a lage amount of DPS and because of this they generate a lot of agro. Except the position deagro a conjurer has no possibility to reduce this agro anymore with the planeswalker. A nice and easy solution would be changing the summoner / wisdom tree / minor attention (position deaggro every X Seconds of the pet) to the pet (for old pets) and the char (if Epic 2.0 Pet is used) but I think this will never be done If Rising Tide triggers.. it's easy getting aggro with a huge burst - even if the tank is good
Solutions I tried Beee but are fails, Options 1, wait 20 seconds after tank engaged to start attacking. Options 2, don't use rising tide at all on pull (can't anyway if using option 1) Options 3, use dying as a means of clearing aggro Options 4, attack different mobs to try split the hate Nothing really works. I can even sometimes rip aggro off Leedsen (Pally) with amends on me. I'm going to try the undeath AA, maybe the mob will think I died and drop aggro. Would prefer the pet aggro to be shared again like other pets, this is surely not working as intended?
Yesterday I did some pug groups with a paladin tanking. I did not rip aggro frequently or at all that I noticed. Though we did have a very solid defiler healing, so there may have been times that I pulled aggro and didn't notice. Though I do have the threat meter on, and I didn't see it hit 100 in any noticeable way. I was top of the parse for most of the time during the couple of dungeons we did. I don't know if he put amends on me, as there was a ranger in the group who was pretty close to my dps. I later did a zone with our guardian. I never came close getting aggro except when he was fully drained of his power in shrouded. Again, the aggro is a problem, but it is most noticeable when you are well-overgeared to the tank you are with or when group setup is not optimal, meaning zero help from others in terms of threat. I would potentially say this was done by design, since in last expac, there was quite a bit of talking about how certain classes were all but useless. For example, last expac, it reached a point where you did not need a healer if you had a good tank. Here, we are in a situation where in a heroic, you do not need a tank if you have a great dps and solid healer. But now we have expert zones where you pretty much need both, as well as a group setup that promotes threat transfer and high dps. My experience has been that the threat is only a big problem when you have a non-warding or way undergeared healer, or a tank who is considerably less geared than the dps. though as always, group setup and class differences also can make the problem more or less apparent. I'm just saying in my experience, I'm still able to do zones with multiple tanks without feeling like my experience is destroyed by aggro management. If anything, tanks could be given a bit of love in the threat department, so that they don't have to be 100% on top of their game along with having better gear than everyone else in order to maintain aggro.
Well to be honest - I noticed that Paladins are kind of tanks that lose agro very easy (unlike zerks) . I am also able steal agro from paladins under amends even in SPIRITUAL stance (yeah to be completely honest - I did hit "Big" chain namely Tide - 2 Pot temps - Dagger storm (to proc fervor) - Savage Ally - Septic - Virulent- Blood-Revocation)
Why is you being in spiritual a relevant fact if you only cast ascensions? 8 fervor, whatever. Paladins can hold agro very well, but if you burst out 50 billion damage of course you're going to get agro.
I don't get aggro from our guardian, even when there are only 3 people in the group. I didn't grab aggro from an SK I went with yesterday. I don't grab aggro from at least one monk I've grouped with. I mean, I'm not the best necro on the server, but I'm a necro who is always in the top 5 of our guild in raids, usually 1 or 2. You're not going to find a ton of people with better gear right now, and I'm sticking to it that if the tank and summoner are in similar levels of gear, there is not much of a problem, even when you go crazy with burst immediately. Though I will say that a good dps should always allow a few seconds for the tank to actually get the mob positioned prior to unloading. I'm sure I could pull aggro off of our tank if I hit my big things as SOON as he said 1 in a countdown. But honeslty, even then I might not. And again, I'm not saying aggro is not an issue. I'm just saying the problem is less on our end and more on the 'something needs to be addressed with tank threat' end. From the beginning of the expansion, tanks have had to work extra extra hard compared to in the past. And with the number of dps checks this game is throwing at us, especially in the heroic zones, it makes life challenging, so say the least.
I know this is an old thread, but the behavior is still a problem: The ancient Planeswalker (with all buffs, playerspells, procs..) generates huge DPS and really a lot of aggro. Wish there would be a way for reducing the amout of aggrotransfer. I got aggro while named was immune. It seems that the damage of the pet which is absorbed by stoneskins of a named is still added to the aggro of the conjurer.
I've always felt privileged compared to other dps classes that my pet had its own threat level. Now we generate the agro proportional to our total damage output which i think is fair. I'm not sure if i've seen my pet ever take AE hits, unless directly targeted, which will never happen with the current system. This new system also comes with its own benefits, they can pull without dying, u can feign dead with the pet still up are some examples. Besides now we actually have a great use from some AA skills in order to manage your position on the hate list
It would be nice seeing as though the new pet mechanics are a tad dif if mimicry worked on summoner dps as a whole not a split set up we get for pets and caster.
