EM 15/16

[dorfillya]

micker, our pets weapon procs don't automatically land on mobs now. If the mob has immunities they can fail to land.

Guys, is that change not what's causing this? Is the DPS down on raid mobs where they aren't resistant?

pet weapon procs only amount to about 30 dps, so, no, that is not responsible for the huge drop in pet dps

[Savil]

I find it funny myself that for the last several years mages have been yelling we needed more *raid* dps and now ... that is the very dps that gets a nerf. Intended or not, its pretty funny to me.

The fact they don't know WHY it happened is even more so. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the current EQ devs are *IMHO* clueless.

Savil

[Voragath]

I find it funny myself that for the last several years mages have been yelling we needed more *raid* dps and now ... that is the very dps that gets a nerf. Intended or not, its pretty funny to me.

The fact they don't know WHY it happened is even more so. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the current EQ devs are *IMHO* clueless.

Savil

It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue. PJ's own data has shown he can hit pre-nerf numbers but it isn't consistent. This means one of two things: 1) There is no issue* or 2) The issue is a special case.

*I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise; however, devs don't fix problems that can't be proven to exist (hence PJ's post asking for parses).

[Piemastaj]

I find it funny myself that for the last several years mages have been yelling we needed more *raid* dps and now ... that is the very dps that gets a nerf. Intended or not, its pretty funny to me.

The fact they don't know WHY it happened is even more so. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the current EQ devs are *IMHO* clueless.

Savil

It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue. PJ's own data has shown he can hit pre-nerf numbers but it isn't consistent. This means one of two things: 1) There is no issue* or 2) The issue is a special case.

*I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise; however, devs don't fix problems that can't be proven to exist (hence PJ's post asking for parses).

It is 100% guarenteed. There is an issue, you don't have a pet do 12k+ on Pillars then the next 4 weeks it does under 3k. Whether you want to believe it or not is another issue all together. Aristo severly messed something up and refuses to go back in and change immunities back. Which leads me to believe it was an intentional change. I have shown parses from more then myself to prove this.

I have never been able to hit prenerf numbers on Sep 1-2, Pillars, Rubak, COB. You should read my parses more carefully before making assumptions.

EDIT: I was merely asking for parses because SOE is so moronic. I do the majority of parsing for Mages, but my word isn't good enough when I showed that my parser is working perfectly fine. They are obviously not taking the proper route in fixing this issue, which is disturbing. They have known about this for over a month now. That is more then enough time to diagnose an issue, visit a raid, and or invite Mages to Test the issue out. They have yet to even attempt this (even with an invite from me personally for them to come watch my guild raid). It is just stupid, and it is one of the major reasons why we have like no1 parsing, they have simply pushed out every Mage that would be parsing. So it is doubly SOEs fault why this issue happened, and why there is limited data to go off of.

[Aumeldarie]

I find it funny myself that for the last several years mages have been yelling we needed more *raid* dps and now ... that is the very dps that gets a nerf. Intended or not, its pretty funny to me.

The fact they don't know WHY it happened is even more so. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the current EQ devs are *IMHO* clueless.

Savil

It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue. PJ's own data has shown he can hit pre-nerf numbers but it isn't consistent. This means one of two things: 1) There is no issue* or 2) The issue is a special case.

*I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise; however, devs don't fix problems that can't be proven to exist (hence PJ's post asking for parses).

I usually stay out of everything because I hate the animostity that exists in our class but I'm offended. Communicating that an issue exists doesn't mean anything if at the same time you are communicating that you aren't 100% sure there is an issue. You are our representative. You volunteered for that job. If you are unwilling or unable to parse on raid fights then you have to go off of what the rest of us are telling you. We see a problem. We aren't imagining it. It started happening right after the immunities patch.

[Voragath]

I usually stay out of everything because I hate the animostity that exists in our class but I'm offended. Communicating that an issue exists doesn't mean anything if at the same time you are communicating that you aren't 100% sure there is an issue. You are our representative. You volunteered for that job. If you are unwilling or unable to parse on raid fights then you have to go off of what the rest of us are telling you. We see a problem. We aren't imagining it. It started happening right after the immunities patch.

First, QA is not my job. Second, being a CRT didn't give me any special tools/abilities in which to do anything resembling QA. I don't have to parse nor is it required. My job entails communication. I communicated this issue and am staying in communication with the devs on this issue. Third, it is my job to be somewhat skeptical because I'm a filter for the devs. If I brought every little perceived issue to the devs, both mine and the mage class' word would quickly mean jack squat to the devs. I'm not about to do that because we've had 3 years of that. If you have more info to add other than "my pet does less dps," I'll be excited and would gladly forward that info for you. Finally, I've not exactly said there isn't an issue causing pet dps to be lower; I said pets aren't the reason (like I said, pet templates are untouched). What I'm skeptical about is what the change is because I haven't seen one thing in anyone's parses that suggests what's causing the problem.

I have done testing around this issue. I'm not all communicating an issue doesn't exist. I've only communicated my findings and the findings others have posted. I've even communicated my findings on the eqlive boards. My parses before and after that patch are roughly the same so I have no reason to suspect my pet is doing less; I have to rely on people who are in higher dps guilds where a dps issue is more noticeable. I just haven't seen anything other than PJ's parses. While that is enough to bring to the devs attention, it does not give enough info for them to carve out time to fix nor does it give them enough info to go on to work on a fix.

What I see is that pets are unchanged. The template determines if pets are broken and they aren't. Now, something that affects pets certainly can be and that is tougher to track down. This is not 100% investigated by the players. Sometimes things are wonky enough that the devs can't see it on their end or they just don't have the right setup. It took them until a few months ago to figure out the issue with mercs healing players and that one started back in SoD when mercs were introduced. That's a weird buff bug that no expected would have an issue. It's likely the same scenario is playing out here. A bug no one is looking for could be causing the issue.

Let me use a recent example to show everyone how to get this fixed. The last patch broke player focus effects. That was reported and devs were alerted. It wasn't one post saying, "I do less dps now" that got it fixed. It was lots of people sending devs PM's, lots of people posting/pm'ing parses, and lots of people pointing at potential causes. Leads were chased down and a problem was eventually discovered.

tl;dr PJ's parsing isn't going to get this fixed. My parses aren't going to get this fixed. Lots of parses with lots of thought out reasons to why the dps is lower, will. From what info I have, so far only what PJ has sent in and my own testing is it.

[Voragath]

It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue. PJ's own data has shown he can hit pre-nerf numbers but it isn't consistent. This means one of two things: 1) There is no issue* or 2) The issue is a special case.

*I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise; however, devs don't fix problems that can't be proven to exist (hence PJ's post asking for parses).

It is 100% guarenteed. There is an issue, you don't have a pet do 12k+ on Pillars then the next 4 weeks it does under 3k. Whether you want to believe it or not is another issue all together. Aristo severly messed something up and refuses to go back in and change immunities back. Which leads me to believe it was an intentional change. I have shown parses from more then myself to prove this.

I have never been able to hit prenerf numbers on Sep 1-2, Pillars, Rubak, COB. You should read my parses more carefully before making assumptions.

EDIT: I was merely asking for parses because SOE is so moronic. I do the majority of parsing for Mages, but my word isn't good enough when I showed that my parser is working perfectly fine. They are obviously not taking the proper route in fixing this issue, which is disturbing. They have known about this for over a month now. That is more then enough time to diagnose an issue, visit a raid, and or invite Mages to Test the issue out. They have yet to even attempt this (even with an invite from me personally for them to come watch my guild raid). It is just stupid, and it is one of the major reasons why we have like no1 parsing, they have simply pushed out every Mage that would be parsing. So it is doubly SOEs fault why this issue happened, and why there is limited data to go off of.

Doesn't matter where you hit pre-nerf numbers, it matters that you did somewhere.

On Sep 4 this past week the pet did about what it was doing before the F2P patch. However, the week before it was doing around 2k less DPS, and roughly 700 less hits. Odd.

They've known "claims" about less dps. And they have looked into a few possibilities. Afaik, those possibilities weren't it. I've even spoken to Ngreth about it and his thoughts. To presume you know the devs aren't doing anything or doing it the right way, is bizarre. They are trying to find out but it's not an obvious thing jumping out at anyone. To show that they actually have looked into it: when something has Ngreth's attention, it's serious business.

I do agree, it would be a simpler issue to track down if SOE hadn't hurt the mage class so bad that they chased off all the old crew that parsed the smurf out of pets. Few parsers are left now. In fact, my personal opinion is that if the old parse crew were still around, the issue would have been solved before last patch.

[Aumeldarie]

I usually stay out of everything because I hate the animostity that exists in our class but I'm offended. Communicating that an issue exists doesn't mean anything if at the same time you are communicating that you aren't 100% sure there is an issue. You are our representative. You volunteered for that job. If you are unwilling or unable to parse on raid fights then you have to go off of what the rest of us are telling you. We see a problem. We aren't imagining it. It started happening right after the immunities patch.

First, QA is not my job. Second, being a CRT didn't give me any special tools/abilities in which to do anything resembling QA. I don't have to parse nor is it required. My job entails communication. I communicated this issue and am staying in communication with the devs on this issue. Third, it is my job to be somewhat skeptical because I'm a filter for the devs. If I brought every little perceived issue to the devs, both mine and the mage class' word would quickly mean jack squat to the devs. I'm not about to do that because we've had 3 years of that. If you have more info to add other than "my pet does less dps," I'll be excited and would gladly forward that info for you. Finally, I've not exactly said there isn't an issue causing pet dps to be lower; I said pets aren't the reason (like I said, pet templates are untouched). What I'm skeptical about is what the change is because I haven't seen one thing in anyone's parses that suggests what's causing the problem.

I have done testing around this issue. I'm not all communicating an issue doesn't exist. I've only communicated my findings and the findings others have posted. I've even communicated my findings on the eqlive boards. My parses before and after that patch are roughly the same so I have no reason to suspect my pet is doing less; I have to rely on people who are in higher dps guilds where a dps issue is more noticeable. I just haven't seen anything other than PJ's parses. While that is enough to bring to the devs attention, it does not give enough info for them to carve out time to fix nor does it give them enough info to go on to work on a fix.

What I see is that pets are unchanged. The template determines if pets are broken and they aren't. Now, something that affects pets certainly can be and that is tougher to track down. This is not 100% investigated by the players. Sometimes things are wonky enough that the devs can't see it on their end or they just don't have the right setup. It took them until a few months ago to figure out the issue with mercs healing players and that one started back in SoD when mercs were introduced. That's a weird buff bug that no expected would have an issue. It's likely the same scenario is playing out here. A bug no one is looking for could be causing the issue.

Let me use a recent example to show everyone how to get this fixed. The last patch broke player focus effects. That was reported and devs were alerted. It wasn't one post saying, "I do less dps now" that got it fixed. It was lots of people sending devs PM's, lots of people posting/pm'ing parses, and lots of people pointing at potential causes. Leads were chased down and a problem was eventually discovered.

tl;dr PJ's parsing isn't going to get this fixed. My parses aren't going to get this fixed. Lots of parses with lots of thought out reasons to why the dps is lower, will. From what info I have, so far only what PJ has sent in and my own testing is it.

I don't believe I said anything about you being QA. I don't believe I said it was your job to parse. I said it was your job to communicate the issues and if you are unable to parse then you should be going off what people are communicating to you. Please don't twist my words to support your "it's not my job" bit. I did say that I do not like your paragraph that starts off "It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue." and then goes on to say *I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise. That shows you are weak in your representation of the problem imo, not skepticism.

I sent my parses into PJ because he was the one that posted that he needed parses from people. Had you made that post I would have gladly sent them to you but afaik you didn't maybe I missed it and if I did I appologize.

[Piemastaj]

Vora, people posted about lag and around 2 weeks later Eli was at a raid looking at the issue. You can't solve this from parses, pets have 12+ seconds of doing nothing. There isn't anything to even suggest why in the log rips either. It is an issue on their side side of things, so they need to simply visit some raids or invite people to Test to fix this. The buffs and AAs are fine, the pets are doing a bit lower then Beta but not tons lower, that is where our data crunch stops.

[Voragath]

I don't believe I said anything about you being QA. I don't believe I said it was your job to parse. I said it was your job to communicate the issues and if you are unable to parse then you should be going off what people are communicating to you. Please don't twist my words to support your "it's not my job" bit. I did say that I do not like your paragraph that starts off "It isn't even 100% guaranteed there's an issue." and then goes on to say *I'm communicating that an issue exists until proven otherwise. That shows you are weak in your representation of the problem imo, not skepticism.

I sent my parses into PJ because he was the one that posted that he needed parses from people. Had you made that post I would have gladly sent them to you but afaik you didn't maybe I missed it and if I did I appologize.

**WARNING: Long and technical post**

If my representation is weak, it's because the data I have to provide is weak. Let me show you some things and why it's hard to say dps is lower.

The best EM focus I could get during beta was EM 12. The base water pet with max VoA aa's and BO X rank 2, weapons, and no mask had: average dps (2584), max hit (5084), and avg hit (1210).

I reran that same parse on test just a few days ago to double check (I ran a parse back when the pet dps issue came up, same result). This is a representative parse:
/4 Test Ninety Five in 303s, 735k @2425dps --- Fluffyvor (Voragath) 734k @2429dps --- Voragath 1k @1085dps
/tell Voragath Fluffyvor -vs- Test Ninety Five: -- DMG: 764921 -- DPS: 2524 -- Scaled: 2524 -- Slash: 584964 -- Backstab: 126247 -- DirDmg: 53710 -- Non-crit rate: 69.3% -- crit rate: 30.7% -- Attempts: 885 -- Hits: 677 -- Missed: 208 -- Accuracy: 76.5% -- Avg Hit: 1129 -- Max hit: 4788 -- DMG to PC: 0

The max hit is lower and it is known why, which explains the lower average.

So, pets haven't changed. They are doing what they were before, when the issue making max hit lower gets fixed. What is making max hit lower was introduced with the melee bug earlier this month; it didn't exist in March. It was these parses here that showed Aristo there was an issue and I made a suggestion; turns out it was right. I have no info on when it'll be fixed.

Then PJ sends me a few raid parses (first is pre-patch, second is post-patch):
EM16-Water pet-Ice Swords-Burnout3-Iceflame3-FBO7-Virulent Talon-All raid buffs-No Bard DMG: 4023811 -- DPS: 10424 -- Scaled: 10424 -- Slash: 2387885 -- DirDmg: 955804 -- Backstab: 680122 -- Non-crit rate: 78.3% -- crit rate: 21.7% -- Attempts: 1293 -- Hits: 1012 -- Missed: 169 -- Defended: 112 -- Accuracy: 85.7% -- Avg Hit: 3976 -- Max hit: 22500. This fight was 386s.

EM16-Water pet-Ice Swords-Burnout3-Iceflame3-FBO7-Virulent Talon-All raid buffs-Bard DMG: 1340746 -- DPS: 3501 -- Scaled: 3492 -- DirDmg: 589977 -- Slash: 544425 -- Backstab: 206344 -- Non-crit rate: 78% -- crit rate: 22% -- Attempts: 327 -- Hits: 264 -- Missed: 37 -- Defended: 26 -- Accuracy: 87.7% -- Avg Hit: 5078 -- Max hit: 22500. This fight was 384s.

But those raid parses are on an event with a knockback component and a mob that can move alot. You'll note I didn't highlight max hit because he was using VT. You'll also notice a few interesting facts: PJ's accuracy goes up slightly with bard post patch (as expected), the average hit goes up with a bard post patch (as expected), missed goes down with bard by 78%, hits dropped 87%, crit rate stays the same, and attempts were down 75%.

Hits and attempts drop by close to the same value. That tells me they are related and in an event with a knockback, it's expected that attempts and hits would be less due to the pet no longer being in proximity. Because the only thing that got worse was how often the pet was beating on the mob, it stands that the knockback is the likely culprit. If pets were broken or something related to them, we'd see far more stats that are worse and that's not the case. Now, comparing to base pet, you'll see the attempts for an EM 12 pet post-patch v. PJ's EM 16 pet pre-patch is comparable to where we'd expect. This further indicates it's likely a knockback or we'd expect the base pet to make the same attempts as the raid pet post-patch.

This, as I have stated, is thus a terrible event to tease out if pets are actually doing less dps. He has given me other parses, the devs far more, and those are being worked through. So, these parses are only to explore the kind of difficulty everyone is facing in figuring out the issue.

Then here is my post-patch Herald of Oratory raid parse with no mask on pet. He is EM 14 focused:
/4 Herald of Oratory in 99s, 3234k @32667dps --- Voragath 2541k @25667dps --- Voragath`s pet 399k @5541dps --- Fluffyvor (Voragath) 294k @3128dps
/tell Voragath Fluffyvor -vs- Herald of Oratory: -- DMG: 294072 -- DPS: 3128 -- Scaled: 2970 -- Slash: 168566 -- Backstab: 86585 -- DirDmg: 38921 -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 83 -- Hits: 83 -- Accuracy: 100% -- Avg Hit: 3543 -- Max hit: 23625 -- DMG to PC: 0

Then, I look and see this post-patch raid with the same pet under similar conditions:
/4 High Priest Vyers Rinad in 194s, 5091k @26242dps --- Voragath 3699k @20780dps --- Fluffyvor (Voragath) 1306k @6767dps --- Voragath`s pet 86k @1322dps
/tell Voragath Fluffyvor -vs- High Priest Vyers Rinad: -- DMG: 1306099 -- DPS: 6767 -- Scaled: 6732 -- DirDmg: 716107 -- Slash: 472576 -- Backstab: 117416 -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 365 -- Hits: 365 -- Accuracy: 100% -- Avg Hit: 3578 -- Max hit: 23625 -- DMG to PC: 0

It looks like some issue is going on but I don't save parses--every so often I delete my log files and I happened to do a deletion a day before that patch--so I can't compare to pre-patch. My pet's dps is still higher than PJ's and more than the base pet. What's different is that the attempts and hits are down compared to base.

Now, without bard, my pet is making about as many attempts as PJ's pet is with bard. PJ has noted that pets aren't attacking at some point for long periods. This issue was explored on eqlive. It is also why I suspect pets were once immune to some mechanic and now are no longer immune (stun? bash? something else?). Pathing was explored but I agree with PJ's assessment of that hypothesis.

If you think the devs are going to reverse the immunities, you may wanna try finding a pink unicorn instead because you'll be more successful. If you think Aristo is gonna rebalance every pet in the game (since this should be affecting Beast and Necro pets), again, go look for a pink unicorn. If you think they'll fix it when they have a culprit, please do your parse thing, turn them into PJ, me, or the devs and make reasonable suggestions for the problem.

The best bet is to get a mob/zone that doesn't have tons of funky mechanics and see what's happening. Also, since the patch affected all pets, we should be seeing beast and necros having similar issues; asking for their assistance could help as well.

Just because you get the numbers PJ has does not mean there is an issue. Suppose PJ's assessment of his pet before patch is wrong, he changed his data, or was incorrect on what his pet had? The only thing you've proved if your data matches his is that he didn't "fix" his data. That doesn't help. We need pre-patch and post patch parses on decent events. That way, we can see what is changing and then start looking for what could make that change and find a fix.