Necromancer Spell/Pet Issues (Consolidated)

Can I add that the lack of implied targeting with pets is at best an annoyance, and possibly a bug? it's not important in most situations, but when it IS important, it's missed.

I've been trying to determine the validity of this and could use some more opinions: my xp gain has been widely varied at times with friends who are playing at the same time in the same group. Sometimes they get more xp than I do and sometimes I get more than they do. We are all the same level and consistently adventure together. We are on voice chat and constantly talk about xp gain. Lately, I have been playing with and without my minion during group encounters. Killing the same mob over and over, it appears on the face of it that I get more xp when the minion is gone than when I have him up and killing. I could use some help and other opinions on this. Don't get me wrong, this makes no sense and I'm not certain of any correlation. I just could use some help looking into this as I "think" it might be an issue. Perhaps the minion is getting some of my xp's? I dunno.

Baz

There is a new experience system that Moorgard will be posting about once he gets the information together. This is not a bug, but at this time the specifics of the system are unknown by us =)

EDIT - Here is the link http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=Newbie&message.id=95072#M95072M
Message Edited by Jakanden on 01-11-2005 04:38 PM

Here's another for you...

Level 28 Grisly Brace: After casting, cannot be queue'd up, else it drops all maintained grisly mark casts, no matter how long they have been up... also seems to be fairly random (but often) to if it will drop 'em all even after the recast is up. Example: You buff a monk with Grisly Brace... with his super avoidance the ward takes no hits in a fight, you try to cast a ward on yourself "just to be safe" and it drops his ward and makes you wait the full recast timer to cast on yourself.

This used to happen with the pet buff lines and may still, just haven't seen it for a while. Very annoying since it has a very short cast range and huge agro associated with the cast... pretty much a death sentence if cast when a mob is engaged. The reletively high power cost for limited return makes this a cast out of combat type spell anyway. The main problem though is it is very hard to keep this short duration spell up on anyone but yourself or your tank since you'll get one cast up, maybe even two but never three... if the cast drops them all you have to wait quite a while to try again. This also appears if you're just trying to refresh the spell to avoid the long recast after it drops (just like with pet buffs).

I believe this should be added to the bug list.

DoTs and debuffs being canceled by multiple necros isn't unique--shamans have the same issue. With the shamans, though, the higher level one overwrites the lower, and the lower can't cast spells over a higher level shaman's spells. At least it sort of has some logic to it. Will multiple necro DoTs overwrite each other regardless of level? THAT would be the bug (the other would just be an annoyance other classes also have).

The highest level spell overwrites, which is a very large problem for a class that relies as heavily as the necro does on DoT damage since we only have five DD's throughout our career 1-50. Other classes can make do with DD's, necro's can't since our DD is horribly subpar... I'd actually bet that most of the priest classes nukes do more damage than ours and necro's don't have healing to fall back on. That goes beyond just an annoyance, with two necro's in group, one will be relying on pet damage and our one DD (I have over 800 casts of pestilential blast logged at lvl32 with average damage of 118 every six seconds barring fizzles)... that damage is about half of what an equal level guardian can do.

That being said, you could group a level 50 necro, shaman and enchanter with a 23 necro... they cast all their debuffs and DoT's while the 'chanter mezzes adds, the 23 necro casts swarm of rats, every one of those spells the three other characters cast on any and all mobs in the encounter are now gone, including mez. That is a huge honking bug. Hope that clears up the misconception thisMoriMori.

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Pet Aggro Management - Pets switch targets without being told to. This happens quite often when its master gets attacked or another mob attacks the pet. As in EQ1 the pet should stay on its assigned target and not switch just because we get hit or another mob hits it.
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This isn't how pets worked in EQ1 - A pet would switch targets in EQ1 as well - There was however an AA in a much later expansion that gave you the facility to order a pet not to switch target and continue to attack a particular mob until that mob was dead - It wasn't standard though.

That does not mean it HAS to work the same way in EQ2 !
Anyway there seem to be a lot of issues with necro spells and they should be looked into asap. It must be difficult to try to balance classes when some of them still have issues with their abilities :smileysad:

At least until 30 and probably later, priest nukes are for considerably less damage than summoners. That's OK; nuking isn't their job. But the DoTs and debuffs apparently work the same way as necros in terms of not stacking. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's probably working as intended and not a bug.

As an issue, it does make having multiple necros in a group almost useless (as well as making groups with multiple shamans pretty un-fun for shamans as their main damage-type is DoTs). I don't think debuffs should stack, but the same DoTs from different casters (or priests) should stack, without the added debuff component.

It's a general game flaw that more than one of a specific class (this is true for several classes) adds very very little to a group. A solution that isn't necro-specific would be very popular.

Verified this last night. Fought for a couple hours in Zek with a four person group, pet not only didn't backstab but maintained approximately the same dps that he displayed while fighting turtles. These results were against mostly lvl33 mobs at 32.
/pet getlost
<Elewood's shadowy stalker> says "Right away, master"

Thats one hellova' annoyance. Talk about inhibiting group formation...
Basically 2 of the same class is a BAD, BAD, idea, because the 'repeated' person will only be 50% or less effective due to less available set of spells.
Also I'm sure it affects different classes to differing degrees. My experience is only with Necro's and we seem to get hit pretty hard with it since it seems mostly group buffs and DoT's are affected, which all of our spells are up to 30 or so.

Please note: I've noticed alot of people don't realize (due to extreemly poor documentation on SOE's part) that when you click the 'guard me' button the pet 'guards you' in that if you are attacked, it will come to your rescue regardless of 'aggro tables'
If you have it set to 'attack' a certain object, it should stay on that object, but if on 'guard me' it should switch targets if you are attacked (to take aggro and 'guard' you)

Mine leaves its target regardless of wether I have turned on gaurd me or not (Which I never do). I have also set it to Gaurd here just to see if that makes a difference and it does not (I figured it would not but I had to try)

Even if guard worked like it should, it is certainly an annoyance that one can't tell when guard is activated. Is there a way to deactivate guard (short of making a new pet)? Toggling might work but it's hard to know if it's on or off. Not that it matters--the difference in pet behavior between guarding and not guarding is very very subtle.

Great list! Keep it up!

I hope some of these bugs get looked at.

FIX NECRO POSTING!
FIX NECRO POSTING!
FIX NECRO POSTING!


wait... necro.. oh [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] the class... necomancer... nevermind

Cool I hadn't thought of that. I'll give /pet follow a try next time I'm on and see if it helps.
I have noticed, however, that if the pet eats a Barrage from a mob other than the one I have told (asked? you're a minion, dammit, its not a request!) it to attack it will switch target.

With today's patch:

Boon/Agitation
Sooth Servant/Mend Bones
Essence Shift/Bloody Ritual

are no longer sharing the same timers and can be chain-cast.

I haven't confirmed any combat spells as of yet but patch notes state that they are fixed as well.


I have one more bug that I didn't see on the list:

Favor of the Fallen does not increase the caster's health pool until the caster logs or zones. For example, as I type this my health pool is 1468 with FotF cast. I recast it on myself in my inn room and my power pool DROPS to 1269. Zoning out of my room changes my health pool back to 1468. So casting this "buff" will actually cost me 199 HP until I zone.
Message Edited by Seeko on 01-13-2005 08:38 AM

Awsome! Glad the fixed that. I will test FoTF tonight to confirm before I add it =)

Aye, these are all valid concerns!

would like to see a "we hear you" post from the devs. We know your working on it, but the reassurance is comforting....like a warm fuzzy blanket!:smileyvery-happy:

and the /pet follow will indeed keep the pet from coming to your rescue if you are attacked...will not however keep it from attacking another mob that is higher on its hate list (please tell me pet hate lists are a bug!!!) I usually just spam the pet attack key on whatever target i want it to stay on...very inefficient...
Message Edited by Gridpoet on 01-14-2005 06:08 AM
Message Edited by Gridpoet on 01-14-2005 06:10 AM