Pet Changes (Current and Future)

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Voragath
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Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Voragath »

Ok, there is a lot of heated emotions about this and a lot of misinformation. I am making a post to help corral all that and clear some things up. Right now, we--as a community--must rally together and work very hard to steer this course in the direction we want. I am completely against losing any solo ability and would like to avoid a mass exodus.

The unfortunate circumstance is that a change WILL happen and there is nothing anyone can do about this. What we can do, is work together to help direct this so that we don't lose too much ground.

I am going to try and do this chronologically and some is based on Aristo and Roshen's posts about pet changes. Aristo's post. Roshen's post. Some is based on Roshen's post about the recent changes that are going to be reverted in the next full patch.

Before CoTF launched, the devs noted a problem with pet AC. They attempted to correct it but only managed to partially solve the problem (it's up to the reader to believe this or not). This, as far as I know, was never mentioned to the players.

A post is made laying out the calculation for AC and a certain warrior ran terribly designed parses to show pet AC was skewed heavily to one direction and showed what the devs already knew. The DI value was too low and devs didn't like it. In a later CoTF beta, they noted this and stated their value had nothing to do with current warrior abilities; rather, it was all based on their target value.

During all this hullabaloo, the devs told the CRT's that a pet change was coming based on the errant AC values and that we would be notified well in advance, that community input would be asked for, and changes would be a long way off so that could happen. Shortly after, the community received the same communication.

Shortly after, as would be expected, many comments fearing a stealth nerf had been implemented started showing up. Recently, a change did make it into the game on accident. This is being reverted at the next full patch.

With the discovery of the accidental release of some of the changes, the devs finally made good on their word to test this. Now, they are keeping their word to ask for input. This is critical. While many of us have busy lives and can't dedicate their time like a certain warrior can to parsing, as many of us who can contribute data should. Our input on that data is critical as well but please make it constructive as possible. How much time they give us is unkown so we can't take our time.

So, a change is happening regardless of the reason(s). Pet defense is being scaled back while their offense is being beefed up (including air pet getting it's +3 stun cap back!!!). The current live change is an accident and is not going to reflect the final change. This is good news and we need to jump on this as a community. Relying on a few people will be a grievous mistake. You can either contact the devs directly or send your data to me or Baramos if you prefer or want to remain anonymous. I'd rather see parses sent directly to devs and posted publicly in the thread started by Aristo (I linked it above).

My personal opinions on the matter seem to have been attacked recently. You can ask Baramos and find out I'm just as unhappy about the changes as everyone else. As a CRT, emotion can't be used to lobby the devs, only facts. In a huge change such as this one, my voice is no more powerful than anyone else's--only the collective voice counts. I can sum up the community's position for the devs but that is about as much as I can do. Also, as a CRT, I've had the privilege to gauge each developer's attitudes towards pets and their place in EQ. As of this post, none are "pet haters" and they are willing to work with us so we should be willing to work with them.

In sum, changes are coming, nothing nefarious is going on, and the devs are keeping their promise. Now it is our turn. Come together, post data, and post your feelings (constructively) on how the changes on test are going. It is again time that we come together as the positive, informed, community we always have been to make sure we keep our ground.

Regarding the various topics and posts here at The Tower, lets try to put all of the comments on pet changes here, including parses and data about the changes on test. There are too many threads already and I'm considering merging or locking them to keep the data localized.
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Voragath
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Voragath »

Note, I will be draconian about insults, harassment, and bully language. I am not always around but I will not tolerate ridicule or berating. I am lenient on language and tone but insults, ridicule, and berating is tantamount to internet harassment. Bully attitudes serve one purpose: to silence a voice.

It truly is possible to disagree without throwing insults, putting someone down, or generally being harassing. Either state you disagree and leave it there or put down your reasons.

I don't like being a heavy handed mod or removing someone's voice so edits will likely only remove the offensive language; multiple offenses may require further action(s).

I know this is not the general mod policy for the boards and the members almost always are polite/tactful but it is a critical time for us and we need to band together; so I'm trying to stop bad behavior before it starts. =)
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Cielli
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Cielli »

The JPEGS on roshen's post which I assume were charts of the pets AC are broken links, so it's hard for me to say how smurf this is or isn't... Does anyone have another source for those charts?
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Voragath
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Voragath »

Cielli wrote:The JPEGS on roshen's post which I assume were charts of the pets AC are broken links, so it's hard for me to say how smurf this is or isn't... Does anyone have another source for those charts?
Do these work?

1st chart: https://assets-cdn.soe.com/uploads/dcsc ... 65/462.jpg

2nd chart: https://assets-cdn.soe.com/uploads/dcsc ... 65/441.jpg
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Cielli
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Cielli »

I reset my DNS settings to default ( they were still 'fixed' from that whole DNS mess a couple weeks ago ) & can now see the graphs.

I don't understand the graphs AT ALL. Does anyone else?

Why is the 94 pet above the 99 pet... why does the 99 pets AC not scale on the same curve as the 94 pets? Why aren't their any actual numbers...?

So confused.
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Enkel
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Enkel »

The pet buffs to dps really won't matter consider pets have lost more than 50% of their burn dps since RoF. I've talked to different devs about these inc. changes, and imo they don't really know much about the game (in it's applicable form, they obviously understand coding and mechanics), and change their public view depending on the view of the company (which makes sense, but is not something I inherently respect). An obvious example of this is FR for berserkers, and Rake's for rogues. They, as in Elidroth, stated they didn't know that it lasted so long, yet numerous people, including myself, have sent in PM's about the length of the ability. I've played other mmo's and chatted with devs, and the EQ devs seem the most dishonest bunch in my personal opinion. My reasons for retiring from the game were work related, but I am glad I'm not here if the class is continually going to get nerfed (1: this is me explaining emotionally how I feel 2: the power scaling doesn't matter as much as I'm tired of constantly being nerfed 3: Danille, I believe, posted patch notes about mage nerfs over time, but that didn't even cover 1/3rd of the actual changes that have happened via stealth, or by accident (pie and I have parses of many things that have changed since RoF that were not in patch notes).

But, these changes are coming. The outburst from tanks was loud enough, guess it's time to send in youtube videos of tanks soloing named np (glad I retired from the game 2 months ago). On top of the fact that pets will be weaker (I've gone to test to test these changes), but dps still is not even close to what it was. With the nerfs to beam, salvo, and pet dps, we are not even close to what we used to be. I think taking away pet viability is a poor choice, and should have been a balance decision that was made during the beta of the next expansion, not CoTF. It's easier to take a reduction in power when you're not 100% of the percentage changes from expansion to expansion, but people will obviously notice the difference in pet power.

Now that my emotional side of things is done, if someone wants my help parsing these things or my data sometime, just send me a tell and I'll log on to eq to help, if others don't already do the parsing. Outside of our primary pet, make sure you parse (I have previous parses if needed) RS pets, since they're huge to our solo play, and our raid viability. The proper use and interaction of our RS pets and our main pets is what differentiates below average/ average mages from above average in my opinion. Find a top quality mage, there are very few left, and watch how they use their pets, and it's pretty outstanding the difference. The viability of our main pet and swarm pet is paramount in these changes, and the next expansion. But, even if you have a mountain of data (I have over 1000 hours on pets and different aspects of them) it doesn't always matter, the devs don't always listen. But, all we can do is try our best, and hope for the best.

/end random, out of character, rant.
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Tweelis
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Tweelis »

What our community needs to do more of is post specific information (parses) about what's going on with the test server. So far a few of us have posted findings on the Sony boards but more testing and data is needed.

Even if you only fight one mob on the test server please post your findings. It doesn't even need to be a named mob, even a trash mob will give the dev's more information about our pets survivability and playstyle. Make sure you post all relevant information like what buffs your pet had, any spells the mob cast, etc.

Just a few minutes ago I posted my findings about fighting an even con mob solo and the outcome. IMO since we can't even keep our pet alive with current heal spells against a trash mob something will have to give. Either our heals will need to be substantially better, our pets will need to deal with incoming damage better or something else; as it stands I couldn't keep my pet alive long enough to kill a trash mob.

So come on people, feed the dev's as much data as possible.
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Danille
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Danille »

Ok so one of our Sol Invictus warriors after reading all about the pet nerfs and was quite upset.

As a result, he and I have been parsing on test and he is posting the results of his parses. He has been posting specific details regarding inaccuracies that exist in some of the warriors statements, assumptions and opinions about pets in general as well as pointing out flaws in the parse details and buffs or lack of buffs, actives, discs and abilities previously submitted by Daegun.

You may want to check out his posts (his avatar name as Bashan his player character is Brutial) which start here:

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/inde ... st-3111329
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Voragath
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Voragath »

Danille wrote:Ok so one of our Sol Invictus warriors after reading all about the pet nerfs and was quite upset.

As a result, he and I have been parsing on test and he is posting the results of his parses. He has been posting specific details regarding inaccuracies that exist in some of the warriors statements, assumptions and opinions about pets in general as well as pointing out flaws in the parse details and buffs or lack of buffs, actives, discs and abilities previously submitted by Daegun.

You may want to check out his posts (his avatar name as Bashan his player character is Brutial) which start here:

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/inde ... st-3111329
Thanks for that link, Danille. He is putting up some very good info.
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Mintalee
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Re: Pet Changes (Current and Future)

Post by Mintalee »

Yes, this is a great thing for us mages, as Brutial not only is an awesome warrior, but he's not threatened by pets and has no agenda to nerf them, so as far as I can tell reading through the hundreds of posts on the forums, he is one of the few non-mages whose info we can trust. Hopefully the powers that be at SOE will also see his info as objective. I shouldn't be, but I'm genuinely shocked and dismayed at how skewed the anti-pet tank crowd is presenting their data. Almost without exception they are purposely posting parses that are totally inaccurate to the way that PC tanks are actually played, and it's really starting to piss me off. It's already clear that SOE kowtows to the vocal people. Nice to see someone trying to help us with actual data that hasn't been altered to fit an agenda.
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