pets

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Finduilas
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Re: pets

Post by Finduilas »

So if all you had was the EM2 focus from Void E, you are better off using the 81 Pet with EM2 focus rather than the unfocused 86 Air pet? I am not in that situation but I knowa few who are.
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Voragath
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Re: pets

Post by Voragath »

First, my comment about the pet tanking was a difficulty comparison. Notice I used the same pet focus and pet in each group. Before the final tune of mobs, which was made easier, I was molo'ing Feer 2.0 in the gear I had when I was molo'ing in Kora. I could have used any focus and made the same conclusion.

Gnome, your argument falls flat. It's going something like this: UF was too hard for me, therefore UF is a non-expansion to me, and thus HoT should be an extension of SoD. Sorry, but new content is always based on the old expansion. Just because YOU chose not to progress in UF first does not mean they should change their model. There are sufficient and ample opportunity to get proper EM focii in UF, and it's been available for a year. If you choose to skip it, you really have to deal with the consequences. I sympathize with it's difficulty, but we saw minimal gains in UF in terms of power so even the raid mage is just as strong at the end of UF as we were at the beginning. EM 4 is the first EM focus in UF and is found off an easy mob in Cooling Chambers. It was discussed in another forum how easy that camp and mob are. It's on you to get a group and get that item, since you don't want handouts. If you choose not to get it, you have no argument.

You can't just cycle down the old EM focii. The way they have it set now is so that they give us 3-4 new ranks, essentially, they are only making enough pets to satisfy the same number of pet templates each expansion to minimize their time and tuning. Also, you can't just automate pet power; they don't just say, add x ac, y hps, and z dps. The earth pet needs a special amount of ac and mitigation. The air pet needs a set amount of dps, ac, and mitigation. The water pet needs his bs looked at and his dps. The fire pet has his own spell system that needs to be looked at. The RS pet has dps and hp's to tune. They each are their own thing and need to be adjusted independent of each other. We saw this in beta.

We all know pet power isn't what we wanted and pet power has NOTHING to do with our mage community and everything to do with how the devs listen to garbage from the forums. I'll admit you are right that the devs now aren't as clued in as in the past but that just means we have an extra challenge ahead.

And to be clear, the devs have said, even during FF, that HoT is to continue from UF with some overlap. HoT isn't designed to pick up from SoD or be the expansion after SoD, that's just where the overlap in the very first zone starts. It ramps up fast from there. They are fully expecting people to have spent some time in UF and geared up there.
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Voragath
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Re: pets

Post by Voragath »

Finduilas wrote:So if all you had was the EM2 focus from Void E, you are better off using the 81 Pet with EM2 focus rather than the unfocused 86 Air pet? I am not in that situation but I knowa few who are.
I can answer this, I believe. I'm at school, about to hit up class, so I don't have time or the ability to access parses atm. I did parse the base 86 air pet and posted it on the mage forum on eqlive if you wanna check there in the meantime. I also have a parse of an em8 focused pet with no aa's if any are interested.
The parse on the live forums is in a thread about HoT pets or something. It's recent, so look at the top of the subject list.

Edit: The parse I posted on live would be the EM 8 focused pet, not the unfocused one.

I think this is the right data for a totally unfocused, This is for an EM 8, un-aa'd 86 air pet. I did this run of 3 to test the gain from our spectral weapons (which is 40 dps with Jolting Blades as a noticeable exception as mentioned elsewhere) so these are the 3 without weapons:

Xaner -vs- Test Ninety: -- DMG: 285472 -- DPS: 440 -- Scaled: 439 -- Hit: 259820 -- DirDmg: 14402 -- Bash: 6726 -- Kick: 4524 -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 975 -- Hits: 622 -- Missed: 278 -- Defended: 75 -- Accuracy: 69.1% -- Avg Hit: 458 -- Max hit: 617 -- DMG to PC: 0 -- Max normal hit: 617

Jeker -vs- Test Ninety: -- DMG: 275945 -- DPS: 461 -- Scaled: 461 -- Hit: 251709 -- DirDmg: 12128 -- Bash: 6372 -- Kick: 5736 -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 914 -- Hits: 604 -- Missed: 245 -- Defended: 65 -- Accuracy: 71.1% -- Avg Hit: 456 -- Max hit: 560 -- DMG to PC: 0 -- Max normal hit: 560

Zontik -vs- Test Ninety: -- DMG: 268913 -- DPS: 447 -- Scaled: 447 -- Hit: 248035 -- DirDmg: 10612 -- Bash: 5487 -- Kick: 4779 -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 892 -- Hits: 586 -- Missed: 224 -- Defended: 82 -- Accuracy: 72.3% -- Avg Hit: 458 -- Max hit: 560 -- DMG to PC: 0 -- Max normal hit: 560

Avg dps: 449 -- Avg max hit: 579
Last edited by Voragath on Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:13 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Gnomeland
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Re: pets

Post by Gnomeland »

Voragath wrote:First, my comment about the pet tanking was a difficulty comparison. Notice I used the same pet focus and pet in each group. Before the final tune of mobs, which was made easier, I was molo'ing Feer 2.0 in the gear I had when I was molo'ing in Kora. I could have used any focus and made the same conclusion.

Gnome, your argument falls flat. It's going something like this: UF was too hard for me, therefore UF is a non-expansion to me, and thus HoT should be an extension of SoD. Sorry, but new content is always based on the old expansion. Just because YOU chose not to progress in UF first does not mean they should change their model. There are sufficient and ample opportunity to get proper EM focii in UF, and it's been available for a year. If you choose to skip it, you really have to deal with the consequences. I sympathize with it's difficulty, but we saw minimal gains in UF in terms of power so even the raid mage is just as strong at the end of UF as we were at the beginning. EM 4 is the first EM focus in UF and is found off an easy mob in Cooling Chambers. It was discussed in another forum how easy that camp and mob are. It's on you to get a group and get that item, since you don't want handouts. If you choose not to get it, you have no argument.

You can't just cycle down the old EM focii. The way they have it set now is so that they give us 3-4 new ranks, essentially, they are only making enough pets to satisfy the same number of pet templates each expansion to minimize their time and tuning. Also, you can't just automate pet power; they don't just say, add x ac, y hps, and z dps. The earth pet needs a special amount of ac and mitigation. The air pet needs a set amount of dps, ac, and mitigation. The water pet needs his bs looked at and his dps. The fire pet has his own spell system that needs to be looked at. The RS pet has dps and hp's to tune. They each are their own thing and need to be adjusted independent of each other. We saw this in beta.

We all know pet power isn't what we wanted and pet power has NOTHING to do with our mage community and everything to do with how the devs listen to garbage from the forums. I'll admit you are right that the devs now aren't as clued in as in the past but that just means we have an extra challenge ahead.

And to be clear, the devs have said, even during FF, that HoT is to continue from UF with some overlap. HoT isn't designed to pick up from SoD or be the expansion after SoD, that's just where the overlap in the very first zone starts. It ramps up fast from there. They are fully expecting people to have spent some time in UF and geared up there.
I'll accept that EM 4 is accessible, with the caveat that I got baited into this argument over EM 4 via the semantics of what constitutes "acceptable expectations," when in reality I am much more concerned about the base pet scaling than the availability of focus items, which only factors it insofar as it shapes developer expectations.

The basic problem remains that the 86 pet is not where it is supposed to be and that you cannot use results from EM 7-8 because those are NOT attainable by the average mage. If we want to be realistic, the discussion should focus on no EM for "behind the curve," EM 4-6 for "at the curve," EM 7-9 for "above the curve," and EM 10+ for "top raid-geared." I think this is widely agreeable.

Towards this end, I want to point out two critical issues that we should focus our attention on in regards to pet balance and testing (which is related but separate from the general issue of raid DPS):

1. The claim that the 86 pet is too little of an upgrade, defensively, compared to the 81 pet. Parses on the SoE mage forums have shown a mere 3% increase in overall damage reduction using EM 5. Yet mobs at 90 certainly do not merely have a 3% increase in their DPS, compared to mobs at 85. It is unacceptable for us to lose relative power against dark blue mobs such that we are gradually again reduced to the role of fighting light blues. The unknowns in this debate are the effects of AAs and improved spells. I would consider this issue "solved" if it is shown that mages with an average number of AAs (~1500) and gear (corresponding to EM 5, which is T1 HoT) can effectively solo dark blues at level 90 as they were able to at 85 (with EM 1, which was T1 SoD when you discount the ezmode zones).

2. The claim that the 86 pet is too little of an upgrade, offensively, due to massive increases in mob hp and stagnant mage spell DPS. The question is whether a 150-300 DPS upgrade (as shown by parses with the new weapons) is "too little," which can only be answered in the wider context of mage DPS scaling through spells and AAs. Once again, we don't have the overall parse numbers from weaves + pets, but the general Beta consensus is that we are way behind the DPS curve. For this reason additional DPS must come from somewhere - whether it's pets or spells is a matter of negotiation.
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Voragath
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Re: pets

Post by Voragath »

Okay, regarding the 81 Air Pet versus the new 86 Air pet without a focus.

The 86 air pet with no focus, aa's, or anything else, totally naked out of the box:
Max hit: ~579

Compare that to the tables we got for a similar SoD 81 air pet with various Focii from the table we were given in SoD:
Base: 326
Servant of Chaos: 357
Spire Servant: 365
Servitor of Scale: 371
EM 1: 379
EM 2: 385
EM 3: 393
EM 4: 399
EM 5: 407
EM 6: 415
EM 7: 423
EM 8: 431

So, if the data on how to determine max hit is right for those SoD tables (no reason not to believe it), then an 86 air pet unfocused is better than any 81 air pet that is focused up through EM 8.
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Zephier
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Re: pets

Post by Zephier »

If for some reason you do not have EM4 go to cooling chamber with another mage and two cleric mercs and camp them yourself. There is no excuse to not have em4 thru current game mechanics. Join your server mage chat and make friends. Or if all else fails server switch/test copy to test and I will camp one for you. This is supposed to be about Hot Pets not about your lack of a focus that works on the new pets.
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Finduilas
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Re: pets

Post by Finduilas »

Voragath wrote:Okay, regarding the 81 Air Pet versus the new 86 Air pet without a focus.

The 86 air pet with no focus, aa's, or anything else, totally naked out of the box:
Max hit: ~579

Compare that to the tables we got for a similar SoD 81 air pet with various Focii from the table we were given in SoD:
Base: 326
Servant of Chaos: 357
Spire Servant: 365
Servitor of Scale: 371
EM 1: 379
EM 2: 385
EM 3: 393
EM 4: 399
EM 5: 407
EM 6: 415
EM 7: 423
EM 8: 431

So, if the data on how to determine max hit is right for those SoD tables (no reason not to believe it), then an 86 air pet unfocused is better than any 81 air pet that is focused up through EM 8.
This doesn't make sense at all and is bad data. I show that the 86 pet out of the box with no focus has a maximum hit of 404, where did you get 579?

**Edit** I didn't mean the SoD data was bad, just the 86 pet data.
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Voragath
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Re: pets

Post by Voragath »

He was not wearing weapons. Did you give your pet weapons?

Also, he was versus a level 90 test dummy. What mob or dummy were you killing/attacking?

Edit: I really need to start renaming my parses. Or doing a /say before or something. It's definitely 0 aa's and weapons but I can't remember if I had removed my focus or not but it was supposed to be the base pet with no aa's and no focus. I'll double check it if I have a /testcopy available.
Last edited by Voragath on Thu Oct 14, 2010 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Finduilas
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Re: pets

Post by Finduilas »

Voragath wrote:He was not wearing weapons. Did you give your pet weapons?

Also, he was versus a level 90 test dummy. What mob or dummy were you killing/attacking?
I tested mobs all over Norrath. Max hit on any and all was 404. No weapons, no focus, no aura, nothing. Just summoned and sent in pet for the kill. I don't have logs at the pc I am currently at, but me and many other mages agree the max hit out of the box is 404 for level 86 air.
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Malleria
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Re: pets

Post by Malleria »

Completely off topic but... I think an equal focus'd warder is a better tank than our air pet now ;)

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