Huge change to pet aggro and melee rules on test

[xantin]

I guess we have to reply as I am unable to reply in the announcement section. I am personally loving the change as I mostly play by myself and my bard is not quite man enough to tank he can now add quite a bit of damage when playing rather than just pulling and singing. I hope they leave it as is and don't downscale our pets

[Sancus]

The change definitely benefits a number of playstyles. Personally I've not noticed much different with the changes apart from my merc dying less, but that is largely because I'm generally molo or grouped with casters.

My main concern is that this makes us too viable a replacement for tanks and as a result pets get tuned down in the future or our DPS gets stagnated even further. The change certainly didn't reduce the whining about pets whenever our lackluster raid DPS is brought up.

[Tweelis]

I've noticed it on both sides of the fence (my primary alt is a sk). While playing Tweelis this change is a great tool. Having melee toons dps is fantastic. Even playing my sk it's getting some getting use to but all in all I'm enjoying it. Granted it takes some work to get agro off a pet but doing things correctly it really isn't that hard.

[xantin]

Lots of changes occurring I like this one for sure but today I was grouped with an enchanter whos pet was able to hold agro over mine which was quite a surprise. Not to mention some of the sick DPS he was doing. I think TBM was very good to them.

[Sancus]

- Reduced the amount of aggro that summoned player pets generate via melee swings. A new AA ability named Companion's Provocative Demeanor has been added to allow summoned companions to generate more than their baseline aggro to coincide with this change.

The above is from today's test patch. This likely means swarm pets will generate less aggro than before (as they won't receive the Provocative Demeanor buff). Hopefully they got the hate modifier value correct so that main pet aggro doesn't change, but would not be surprised if they screwed that up.

Definitely need to see it in action to determine the gravity of the change, but not particularly pleased.

[Ezlano]

I was able to test it out briefly before the servers were brought down again. Provocative Demeanor does not perform anywhere near the level it should, imo. I was easily getting into the 90% range on agro using Earth pet with rage swords equipped, whereas prior to the change I would stay below 40%. I did not have time to see how the Air pet holds up on agro.

[Sancus]

I had the same issue on test. What's worse though is how worthless RS pet's aggro is now, as they got the same hate reduction but aren't getting any buff to mitigate it.