must do dmg for exp - update 9/20 - how does this work in groups?

So this is supposed to stop afk experiece right? The funny thing is conj can just put up a damage shield and set the pet to defend them, as soon as the mob hits them it takes at leats 1 point of damage and voila, xp when the mobs die. Instead of preventing this, they just give us all these lame situations where we don't get as much xp.

I think your best bet here is to use your PBAE. Since it emanates from you, you don't have to change your target in order to cast the spell.

GS

Ok, I feel a little better now... so, I'll just make a macro that casts the lowbie lightning burst spell and sends pet?

I was harvesting just fine at 3PM EST while my pet was killing a highwayman.

Correct That message will only display if YOU are in combat. F.I: mob has hit you first or you casted or whatever

I have noticed two things that will cause me not to get experience.
1) Send pet and rats in and do nothing else. Doing nothing else falls in to two parts: pet and rats kill mob before you can do anything or you get aggro and turn to fight the aggro. With Shadowy Assassin and Rats I have been unable to do any personal damage a lot on low greens because they die so fast. Not much in the way of experience anyway but I lose the potential for drops. I have also been aggro'd when pet and rats are attacking a mob, I turn to fight new threat, bring pet over to fight and by time I have that under control, rats will have finished off the first mob.
2) The second part, and noticed this yesterday when I duo'd with a wizzie. I sent pet in to pull mob back to us. The wizzies range is a lot farther then mine and they would one hit the mob in some cases. We were doing Orcs in Shifting Sands. Even asking the person to hold off until I could get one hit in didn't matter.

My solutions to the above problems (Solo):
1) I will either nuke/snare pull the mob and I auto-melee attack the whole time.
2) I don't send rats in on a weaker target (I have Adept 3 rats and Pets). Rats I use only for mobs that will last long enough for me to get a dd or aoe in.
3) I make the opening hit using my dagger or wand; melee.
4) Use Ghastly Stench on fight. With just pet and stench up I always get experience.

My solutions to grouping:
1) Aoe using locust swarm. Pisses off the enchanter types but otherwise I don't get squat experience. Was in group with a warlock, wizard, SK, Coercer and templer. The groups of mobs coming in were half dead by the time I could do damage. At least with the aoe I am going to hit something. Since I keep implied targetting on MT, there are good chances that I won't get a DD off. Of course we were fighting blue/white non-heroic groups.
2) Run slightly ahead of the big nukers (Wizzies and Warlocks) and get a DD/Snare-DoT/lifetap in first.
3) I get in the thick of things and melee. This pisses off the healers if my lifetaps can't keep up. Those mob AoE hits for 500pts hurt and is easily 1/3rd of my hps.

Your group solutions will work in good grps where people now each other BUT.
In random pickup grps they will not be worth JACK (pardon the french)
80% of the random pickup tanks CANNOT get aggro of me. NOT EVER no matter what i do. (i dont know if they only use grey app1 taunts) There is a number of tanks on my friends list just so i can have notes on which tanks sucks (only IMO) so i dont grp with them too much.
Casting aoe in a pickup grp=dead necro Especially when you try to cast that uber slowcasting spell BEFORE the nukers.

Who will take a necro/summoner in there group now knowing that we have this problem?

This will be such a pain to groups.

As mentions above, what chanter of healer will want us in groups?

Even better point. Grps with chanters will simply REFUSE us knowing this.
The only fair thing at this point is to cancel that stupid rule when grp'ed.
AND THIS ONLY till they find a real fix for the afk killing, because even when i solo there are lots of situations where i dont do DD to a mob. That is the reason why i have the pet+dumbfire and swarm.
HECK THAT IS THE REASON WHY I PICKED THE STINKIN CLASS

2) The second part, and noticed this yesterday when I duo'd with a wizzie. I sent pet in to pull mob back to us. The wizzies range is a lot farther then mine and they would one hit the mob in some cases. We were doing Orcs in Shifting Sands. Even asking the person to hold off until I could get one hit in didn't matter.

The wizzie does damage, so you will get exp. The restriction on exp and loot only applies when the pet does all the damage to an encounter and kills it. If any pc does a single point of damage to an encounter, you will get xp and loot.
Personally, I don't see this as such a big deal. When grouping, it doesn't apply because other players do damage at some point. If I'm duoing with a healer and the healer is only healing my pet and not doing any damage, we shouldn't be hunting low greens that die so fast that I can't get a single damage spell off. If I'm soloing, two things come into play. One, I only have to do a single point of damage to an encounter in order to get xp and loot. Think about that... how many encounters do you engage in which you don't do a single point of damage? Maybe I'm just too impatient to wait for pet to solo the mob, but when soloing, I do damage to each and every mob I fight. Pet attack, dumbfire pet(s) then a quick damage spell (usually siphon life). If the encounter is a group of mobs, I throw in the aoe lifetap every time, and my pet has not failed to keep aggro a single time yet.
If mobs are dying so quickly that you don't have time to cast three spells, something is wrong and you are fighting the wrong mobs for xp. If they die so fast that you can't get a spell off after casting rats, why cast rats in the first place? Cast a dd or dot! This should be as simple as re-arranging your spell progression. The snare spell takes, what.. 2 secs to cast? Throw that one on first every battle and you'll never have a problem. Pet attack, Darkness, Rats, etc.
/not trolling, just don't see this as a big deal since a) it doesn't really come into play in groups and b) I actually do damage to every mob I fight anyway.

All of our dumbfire pets should count as us doing damage to the mob, or Rats should get a 1 pt unresistable DD attached to it or something like they currently don't count. I often use Rats to kill off the first mob of a multi mob encounter quickly. Now, I also generally use our PBAoE, but sometimes that first one is dead before I get around to it.

If the goal is to stop a necro from farming exp while afk, then any spell that does damage should count.

Without having played with these changes, I can't really say how it will impact me, but I'll definitely be paying attention to my exp bar tonight.
Message Edited by wurtin on 09-23-2005 07:05 AM

i agree with wurtin. This would only be HALF the problem if the dumbfire would count as our dmg.
As for legaleagle: I think you or me should do more research. If others in my grp do dmg and i do not; I STILL GET NO XP. you are mostly right about the solo part. But most of the people here are complaining that the nerf applies to grp situations as well.

I found the "perfect" solution. Logout anyone who has not issued a command for 1 hour+.
That covers quite a bio break there ;-). And if someone uses a 3th party program to issue a command every hour; FIND HIM and BAN him. Instead of screwing an entire class (not even a subclass but an entire class)

Last night i lost out on a TON of xp last night before i noticed that the mobs that i killed just using Pet, rats and ghastly stench zombie and then healing my pet a little were giving me no xp. This sucks balls. those spells are the core of my combat system. it isnt until i hit harder mobs that i start using the other dots likes bats and deaths coil. or even my fast nukish dot. and what about multi mob encounters. i usually put rats and stench zombie on the toughest one so they last longer and use my pet to kill all the other mobs. so im only getting xp for killing part of the encounter. This is forcing me to remember to cast locust swarm just so i've done damage to every single mob. FIX THIS!!!!! My dumbfire and swarm spells arent smart enough to be called pets.

LegalEagle posted:
The wizzie does damage, so you will get exp. The restriction on exp and loot only applies when the pet does all the damage to an encounter and kills it. If any pc does a single point of damage to an encounter, you will get xp and loot.
I will go check again today if I can get a wizzie partner. I will probably end up bugging this.
Personally, I don't see this as such a big deal. When grouping, it doesn't apply because other players do damage at some point. If I'm duoing with a healer and the healer is only healing my pet and not doing any damage, we shouldn't be hunting low greens that die so fast that I can't get a single damage spell off. If I'm soloing, two things come into play. One, I only have to do a single point of damage to an encounter in order to get xp and loot. Think about that... how many encounters do you engage in which you don't do a single point of damage? Maybe I'm just too impatient to wait for pet to solo the mob, but when soloing, I do damage to each and every mob I fight. Pet attack, dumbfire pet(s) then a quick damage spell (usually siphon life). If the encounter is a group of mobs, I throw in the aoe lifetap every time, and my pet has not failed to keep aggro a single time yet.
Every once and a while my Adept III Shadowy Assassin will hit the mobs right away for over 1/2 their hps (Other times he can't hit for crap up front hehe). This is mainly in Everfrost fighting wolves and bitterwinds. The bitterwinds were dropping chest like crazy and the some of the wolves are aggro. Why do greens where I may run into this problems you might ask? Faction drops, spells, that nice 47% run speed SoW potion that drops from wolves, etc... Trust me when I say that my Assassin has killed the bitterwinds before a DD finishes casting. By the way I am 48th.
If mobs are dying so quickly that you don't have time to cast three spells, something is wrong and you are fighting the wrong mobs for xp. If they die so fast that you can't get a spell off after casting rats, why cast rats in the first place? Cast a dd or dot! This should be as simple as re-arranging your spell progression. The snare spell takes, what.. 2 secs to cast? Throw that one on first every battle and you'll never have a problem. Pet attack, Darkness, Rats, etc.
I learned very fast not to use rats in EF fighting wolves, ice frights and bitterwinds. Now I am mainly in Shifting Sands and surrounding zones so don't have that issue much. Pet did do some tremendous up front damage on a spiderling once where I didn't get a nuke off. Since I am using my assassin pet I usually: 1) Send Pet 2) Throw Heal on Pet and 3) Life Tap Mob. I will modify that to add the snare as the second thing I cast. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I need to at least throw that heal in due to aggro and pet having lower health. Been mostly in gator caves or doing orc camps in the middle of the zone.
/not trolling, just don't see this as a big deal since a) it doesn't really come into play in groups and b) I actually do damage to every mob I fight anyway.

As far as the AoE and enchanters/healers not going to let us in groups once they figure it out. I again will start off with snare if I can. This was a pick up group I was referring to and they stopped and killed anything that moved on our way to PoF. Of course once we reached PoF the group disbanded.

Just hit it and don't worrie

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??
There are numerous detailed posts around here stating that we are UNABLE to hit them lots of times. That is the entire point of this dicussion.

The ability of certain personne to missuse some capacity of the game will always amaze me... and the ability of of ruinning the fun of others only by power mongerring a game not having any fun in leveling without being in front of the screen playing...

well, this modification will modify o_ur way of playing necro.. thank you to those AFK lvlers...

I tested it a bit yesterday.

I was grouped with a Brigant and a Shadowknight, myself I'm a level 26 Necromancer.
I was using the Grim Terror pet.

I tested a few situations.

a) I did nothing the whole encounter, pet was on passive and I just watched. I got XP (message and the XP bar moved), both for each mob and the bonus XP for groups.
b) I send the pet in, but didn't cast any other spells. Pet never got aggro. I got XP too.
c) I sent the pet in and started casting. Again I got XP.

So I'm not sure, but it would seem to me, the changes are merely changes when soloing.

Strange. There are reports stating none of the grp got xp when pets hit the final blow.

I myself have tested as well and here are my results:
Solo:
Pet kills, i do nothing = No xp
Pet kills, i only heal = No xp
Pet kills, i only heal and cast dumbfire = No xp
Pet kills, i do damage = Xp

In a grp:
Others kill, i do nothing = xp
Others kill, i send pet = No xp
Others kill, i cast DB and pet = No xp
Others kill, i do damage = xp


I tested this on solo mobs with some friends, only to test.

On a normal grinding session in the Living tombs together with a 51 Pally and a 52 Healer (cant remember class) and Me (52 Necro)
We were chainpulling spectres in the first room. (pet pulls) and after some time the pally earned 13% the healer 9% and i made a wopping 5%. All of us had vitality before the fights and still some vita left at the end.

So apart from all these tests there is still stuff wrong Summoner XP. Because i can assure you those spectres do NOT go down without me using my full spell arsenal and thus doing the required 1 point of damage.