Since I anticipate a lot of confusion with the new AA setup, here's a somewhat graphical guide to them. Arrows indicate where to find the AA if it's been moved. Yellow circles indicate the AA was upgraded in some fashion (if there is a circle and an arrow, then it's both been upgraded and moved). An X indicates the AA's effect was removed altogether. Possess Minion: Upgraded to include Empower Servant, which now affects all pets. Healing and Power reduction reduced from 35% to 31%. STR tree: Animated Dagger: Changed from a swarm pet to a direct damage piercing spell. 0.5sec cast, 30 second recast. Higher ranks increase the damage amount. Parrying: Removed, is now: Theurgistic Prowess: Increases Ministration, Focus, Disruption, Ordination, and Subjugation of caster by 6.75/rank at level 90 (max 67.5 at 10 ranks) Wild Channeling: Unchanged Implode: Removed, is now: Theurgist's Detonation: High damage point-blank magic AoE. 0.5sec cast, 1 minute recast. Agi tree: Shadowstep: Moved to the INT tree, is now Transference: Same as old Animist's Transference from the WIS tree. Damage pet, heal target. 2 second cast, 45 second recast. Higher ranks increase the heal amount. Cabalist's Cover: Old effect removed. New effect is the same as Minion's Warding from the WIS tree. 20% chance to prevent 9% spell damage/rank to the summoner (max 90% spell damage at 10 ranks) Minion's Zeal: Removed, is now Cabalistic Conversion: Group buff that reduces power cost to the group by 1%/rank (max 10% power cost at 10 ranks) Reanimate: Moved to the INT tree, is now Teamwork: Grants the pet a group buff. Mage pets increase group potency by 5%, scout pets increase group multi attack by 10%, fighter pets provide a 20% chance to prevent 30% incoming damage, and healer pet increases group max health by 5%. STA tree: Shockwave: Upgraded to allow the Scout and Mage pets to use. Perceptor's Command: Effect merged into Magic Leash and moved to the WIS tree, effect is now: Perceptor's Parry: Increases the pet's parry chance by 1%/rank (max 10% chance to parry at 10 ranks) Perceptor's Bodyguard: Effect changed to allow all pets to use. Effect reduced to 1% health/rank (max 10% health at 10 ranks). Unflinching Servant: Upgraded to allow all pets to use. WIS tree: Animist's Transference: Moved to AGI tree, new effect is: Magic Leash: Combination of old Perceptor's Command and old Magic Leash. Encounter based taunt/detaunt depending on pet, and 12.5% chance/rank to increase Fighter pet's hate position to encounter by 1 (max 100% chance at rank 8, ranks 9 and 10 only increase hate amount). Minion's Barrier: Removed, is now: Minion's Attention: Buff for the pet that has a 0.6 times/minute/rank chance to adjust the pet's hate position by 1 on an offensive action. Mage and Scout pets decrease hate position, Fighter pets increase hate position (max 6 times/minute at 10 ranks). Minion's Uproar: Moved to INT tree, new effect is: Symbiosis: Buff placed on the pet that either siphons the Summoner's hate (if fighter pet), or transfers the pet's hate to the Summoner (if not fighter pet). 1% hate transfer/rank (max 10% hate transfer at 10 ranks) Animist Bond: Removed, is now: Animist's Evasion: 24 hate position reduction for the Summoner. 1 second cast, 3 minute recast. INT tree: Magic Leash: effect moved to the WIS tree, is now: Shadowstep: Similar to old AGI tree Shadowstep, now affects all pets. If the pet is a scout or fighter pet, it will teleport to the target. Magic damage, instant cast time, 30 second recast time. Higher ranks slightly increase the damage amount. Minion's Warding: effect moved to AGI tree, is now: Minion's Uproar: same as old Minion's Uproar from WIS tree. Increases pet's Crushing, Slashing, Piercing by 5.4/rank and pet's Disruption, Aggression, and Focus by 6.7/rank (max 54 melee skill and 67 cast skill at rank 10) Arcane Minion: Upgraded to effect all pets. Increases pet's cast, recovery, and reuse speed by 1.6%/rank (max 16% at rank 10). Empower Servant: Effect moved to Possess Minion, is now: Reanimate: Until-cancelled death prevention for the pet. On pet's death, completely heals the pet and drops the pet to the bottom of the hate list. 0.5 sec cast, 5 minute recast. Recast triggers on pet death. Sentinel's Fate: Aptitude of the Theurgist: Unchanged Cabalist's Aura: Old effect removed, is now a buff to the pet's Fire from Within (for Conjurors) and Beyond the Grave (for necromancers). Increases the effect of the HP portion and Potency by base 10%/rank (translates to 0.3% max HP or Power and 0.3% Potency/rank) Perceptor's Defense: Unchanged Animist's Aptitude: Moved to where Focused Minion once was, is now: Symbiotic Bond: Further increases the effects of Symbiosis by 1%/rank (at 10 ranks Symbiosis and 8 ranks Symbiotic Bond it is an 18% hate transfer). Focused Minion: Removed, is now: Magician's Aptitude: Increases the pet's combat art and spell resistability by 2%/rank Elemental Toxicity: Unchanged Overall changes: Enhance: Roaring Flames and Enhance: Aqueous Swarm are removed Enhance: Fiery Magician, Enhance: Aery Hunter, and Enhance: Earthen Avatar are merged into Enhance: Summon Spells. Enhance: Summoning is upgraded, now grants all pets 342 all mitigation/rank at level 90 (max 1710 all mitigation at 5 ranks at level 90) Enhance: Heal Servant now increases the Crit Bonus by 1%/rank Enhance: Shard of Essence now grants a 0.36% power restoration to the recipient of the shard per rank (max 1.8% at 5 ranks). This power restoration cannot crit and is not affected by potency. Enhance: Vehement Skin now reduces the power cost of the spell by 20%/rank (at 5 ranks, the spell costs 0 power). Unabate is now passive. You can remove it from your hotbars.
Did my first raid with our "improved" AA's last night. I ran with: STR line, including Detonation (4 in Animated Dagger). INT line, including Reanimate (10 in Shadowstep). STA line, minus Unflinching Servant (10 in health). WIS line partial of 4,9,0,0 My initial raid with Detonation was disappointing. On a strictly cast time per damage dealt basis, it's a very valuable spell, but in practice, it doesn't work out so well. This clocked in at about 2% of my ZW, in Sullon's . . . a zone with a pretty strong population of linked trash encounters. It's great for any trash fights where you've got the ability to stand on top the mobs. It's cast time to damage ratio is better than everything but EB, SB, EU, BA and WoV. The recast is a definite drawback, in that most times you're only going to get one use per fight (trash) out of it. Against a name where you can actually stand on top of the mob, good spell. Unfortunately, those sorts of fights are not terribly common. Animated Dagger did ok. On a strict cast time basis, against a single target it is more valuable than Shattered Earth, Vampire Bats, Earthquake, Crystal Blast, Petrify and Ice Storm. Obviously, against multiple targets you have to prioritize differently. Anyway, I think I need to find a better way to rotate this spell. It has some potential, and I think I can do better with it. If I can swing the points, I might try putting more points in it. The cast time is really good, and it wouldn't take much to move it above Fiery Annihilation in value. Shadowstep also did ok. The cast time is nice (instant) and the damage is good. I still haven't found a good way to work it in however. What I "tried" last night was macro'ing it to my pet attack which I am constantly tapping between other spells. Unfortunately, that created a VERY odd feel for me, as when Shadowstep was down, it would then cancel whatever else might be queued up and queue up Shadowstep. I've got to find a better place for this, because about halfway through the raid the feeling was SO annoying I just removed the spell from the macro because it was SOOOO annoying. The de-hate proc appears pretty strong. My pet had no, nada, zip, zilch, zero problems with aggro. This includes some TW'ed EB's less than 15 seconds into the fight. I was not even bothering with Magic Leash / Perceptors Command. Reanimate actually works, though the recast on it makes me question it's value. It's a lot of points spent for something that only works once every 5 minutes. Recast doesn't start until it triggers. Necros are going to have an even more difficult job in justifying this AA due to Blood Pact being so strong. If the recast were more like 2 minutes, it would be, imo, far more appropriate. The pet health increase did help my Soulburns, I saw ~8% increase to them. The pet health increase, the mitigation increase (Conjuror Tree) . . . no, it did not help my pet survivability at all. My pet either survived the AE with no damage taken, died, or triggered a save death. I still believe that if it doesn't kill me, it shouldn't kill my pet either, and we definitely are not at that point. The problem we are still seeing is that SOE continues to add "survivability" options that are really, really good in solo and weak heroic situations but don't do anything to address raid survival. The damage reduction AA's available can turn your pet into a MONSTER solo pwnmobile, and even allow it to deal with a very good array of group content. The problem still facing us is that in challenging raid content, these AA's simply don't scale up to the point of being helpful. My overall DPS comp'ed out down about 6%. Some of that I may be able to gain back with some tweaks, however, I also had a Necro in my group with me (very unusual) which boosted my ZW ET numbers way up. I think without the second ET, I'm probably down about 10% with some adjustment I can get it to around 8% down. That's still pretty unacceptable given what was "improved" with regards to our "utility".
So just as expected, the loss of spell double attack is a significant loss in raw dps, and the options we get in place of it does not make up for it (though one could argue the pet not ripping aggro helps).
Yes, pretty much it. We lost raw DPS. *IF* Reanimate was up more often, 60 seconds after it triggered for instance, you could argue that not having to resummon so often may help. However, last night was a farm night, which means easy mode mobs. Sunday will be our next progression / HM night, and I'll learn a lot more then. Honestly, I *want* to like AGI, but there is just NOTHING worth having in that tree until you get to Teamwork, and even when you get there, 24 AA seems like a HUGE amount of AA to spend for a measly 5 Potency. I'll just stick a Dain's Legacy rune on my belt and not spend the AA. I'm just don't think this tree is any better overall than the old one. There is still only one endline worth getting, and another that is situationally good.
A little bit of information in case anyone is curious. The pet does not share our stat boosts from +disruption or +subjugation on gear, nor does it benefit from Theurgistic Prowess. Minion's Uproar does increase the minimum spell/CA damage of the pet, as do the offensive stances for both necro and conjuror (depending on the specific pet of course).
A few things I learned yesterday. While the old Perceptor's Command was a 10 second recast, Magic Leash (the new version) is a 30 second recast. Furthermore the hate position adjustment is only single target, and not encounter like I expected. All in all it's a pretty large downgrade to the ability. Minion's Attention isn't all that great for the fighter pet. If the pet is already at the top of the hate list, it doesn't give it any additional hate when it procs. Symbiosis doesn't seem to help all that much compared to without it.
Shadow Step is useless. Prior to this weekend, I thought that my problem was my macro. It wasn't. Shadow Step ONLY casts if your pet is not already casting something. It still triggers and goes into cooldown, but if your pet is casting when you click Shadow Step, no damage occurs. So, in the INT line now, we have exactly one somewhat useful ability - and it's the ENDLINE.
Also, a lot of rampant misunderstanding revolving around Teamwork, Fires from Within and Cabalists Aura. Cabalists Aura, which appears in the tree directly below Teamwork, *does not affect Teamwork at all*. Cabalists Aura modifies Fires from Within, which is the buff our pet bestows upon our group / raid. It makes the buff worth 5.4% Potency with 8 points. Teamwork is a buff that currently is rather buggy. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't and I am beside myself trying to find a good set of steps or circumstances that lead to it working 100% of the time or failing 100% of the time. In any event, the Teamwork buff *only* appears on the PET. You don't see ANY BUFF on yourself. (That may also be a bug). When it works, you CAN observe a 5% increase in potency on yourself, which (probably) will appear to most folks as a 10.4% increase in Potency when they summon a Mage pet. (5% from Teamwork, 5.4% from Fires from Within, modified by a fully spec'ed Cabalist's Aura)
Banditman wrote: Your testing mirrors my experiences. Which is unfortunate. I did learn a few other things regarding our AAs, and a few things with the new over-stat mechanics. The pet does benefit from increases to its offensive skills (Disruption, Crushing, etc). The higher it's Disruption, Crushing, etc., the higher it's minimum attack damage will be. The pet does not benefit from going over 100% Ability Haste. While we as players will gain extra Spell Doublecast going over 100% Ability Cast Haste, the pet does not benefit from this in any way (IE if you have 5% Spell Doublecast from buffs/gear, and 1% from going over 100% Ability Cast Haste, the pet only inherits 5% Spell Doublecast). So that basically devalues Arcane Minion completely if you are at 100% Cast/Recast Haste. On that note, Enhance Crystal Blast, Enhance Shattered Earth, Enhance Earthquake, Enhance Petrify, and Enhance Ice Storm do not count towards going over the 100% cap. Theurgistic Prowess does not affect pets. Minion's Uproar does. The pet also does not benefit from +Disruption from our gear nor from buffs we receive (I did some very extensive testing to confirm this). However buffs cast on the pet directly do benefit it.
So, pretty much everything in the "new" AA's regarding pets is broken, buggy, inconsistent or useless. Great. The two things that do seem somewhat nice, Detonation and Animated Dagger, surprise!, don't have a thing to do with our pet.
Banditman wrote: Not everything, the Possess Minion still adds 4 INT per level. But otherwise, yeah, a lot of stuff is broken, Shadow Step being the main example. Not sure what is going on overall, but my dps seems to be down a bit. Crystal Blast, which used to be pretty high up on the DPS list, has dropped way down even though it is specced.
I still haven't had a good run in an old zone to pull comps from. We're working on stuff in the Drunder raids, and the trash there can REALLY inflate your DPS numbers, especially with Detonation.
Bugged Shadowstep more than a few times...still not fixed. Is anyone even looking at these summoner AA problems?
good information thanks Xalmat! also wanted to add..... do you ever do any moonlighting on football playbacks? john madden sit in?
