86+ pets very underwhelming...

[Malleria]

Danille isn't invalidating anyone's playstyle. The only ones doing that are at SOE HQ.

I'm wondering though. Are you keeping chaotic boon up? Refreshing promised heals when they go off? I never had any trouble soloing in Tosk, even with the 81 pet. The 86 pet's level alone should be giving you a significant advantage over the 81...

[Eandori Raintree]

Sure, maybe that's not what her intent was. Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate her on these boards and the time she puts into the mage class. But what she wrote does come off like I described. That's my opinion anyways.

Wow, Chaotic Boon! No I was not even aware that it exists. I do look over Lucy and ZAM for info, and I read these boards, but I have not yet ran into threads or info about Chaotic Boon yet. I just read up on it, and I will DEFINITELY have to go get a copy and make sure it's up. I can very much see how that might close the gap of needing a merc. Thanks very much for the suggestion!!

[Malleria]

There aren't too many threads cause it has stacking issues with some pretty mainstream buffs (like enchanter's aura). But it's definitely a boost while soloing. Has that added bonus of healing our gargoyle pets too.

[Danille]

LOL - Shooting the messenger is always an interesting reaction to the person who delivers unwelcome news or facts.

Soe is catching on that most folks playstyles are way more casual than they were in the past. They still have a way to go.
The guild I belong to on our same server only raids 12 hours (three days) per week. My own playstyle is raiding only 30%, but solo/grouping 70% of the time.

My comments were based upon level 76 and not clicking on the magelo link. My error.
BTW - Here is the graphic with working link to magelo so your current profile is always up to date.
(not as good looking as the custom one but at least its accurate.)



If you want to send me a tell or group in game let me know.

[Eandori Raintree]

No, not a shot at the messenger. It was the way you said it and what it appeared you were stating was THE problem. The problem as you first stated it was my gear, not the design of the HoT pets.

Anyways,

Thanks for the help with the sig! I have already updated it and that's indeed much better. It appears that Magelo will auto-update this as I change my profile too. Very cool.

I'm excited to pick up Chaotic Boon and give it a Whirl!

[Merlaina]

While what I'm about to say might make it sound like I'm ignoring everything you just said, please believe me when I say I did hear it and understand what you're saying. That said: get level 90.

I don't say this to invalidate your play style, I say it because, as Svenalo pointed out, SOE doesn't seem to really take your play style into consideration and the perks we get at 90 reflect that. The boost in our power from 89 to 90 is night and day. Improved twincast, spear of magma, aegis AA, large AA mod rod, gather potential... the list goes on. SOE has become very formulaic in their methods, and all of our best abilities (and available gear) require level 90. At level 86 you just get the new pet, new bolt, and the first AA rod which is only a bit of a boost from the spell version. Very few good AAs become available. Those are all locked behind level 90.

I'm not saying I agree with it. I was one of the people who pushed Ngreth to make the cultural seals and whatnot work on level 81 as opposed to 85 last expansion (and thankfully we got that at least). I'm of the mind that if you can muster the resources or have the skill to get a piece of gear slightly higher than what the expected level is to attain it, by god you should be able to wear it. I know they put required level on things to prevent higher level toons from twinking alts or lower level toons, but it punishes players who can legitimately get it despite being several levels below the content. I've always been a big fan of trying things that are way harder than I should be able to take, either individually or in a group. And I think if you CAN do it you SHOULD be rewarded the same as players of the target level range. You shouldn't NEED to have level 90 to wear gear from Morell's if you were able to do the progression and kill the mobs. Unfortunately in this age of task adds and 3 boxing with mercs that's not going to happen.

But I digress. I feel your pain, I understand where you're coming from, and I used to play in much the same way you do. But as someone who used to pretty much exclusively solo, let me say you're not doing yourself any favors and only inviting frustration by not going ahead and leveling to 90.

[svenalo]

I agree Merlania. It's unfortunate, but the way things are designed (and it's been this way at least since gargs were added in TBS if not longer), you get one smallish boost at the first new level with your new air pet, bolt, and burnout (if you can even use it - see other threads, this time we got it fixed finally), then at the final new level you get the big boost. In between you get the new pet toys and some other pets, but the firepower bang is at the end. In this case it's 86 for the small boost and 90 for the big bang.

[Emotion]

I also agree with Merlaina. The EMV pet at level 86 and the EMV pet at level 90 are not the same thing.
a) You can cast Surge of Shadowflares on it.
b) You can use Chaotic Blessing instead of Chaotic Boon
c) Merc buffs are better
d) etc

You may be finding the pet underwhelming at level 86, but you should probably hold off until you are level 90 before finally deciding.

Em

[Voragath]

Maybe it's because I dealt with all this with the other mage beta testers but it seems to me no one was in any form negative to anyone but Sony. We pushed hard in beta and, in the end, all we got was a big F U for our efforts. Then, a stab in the back with the mana return augs. To me, it pretty much looks like everyone in this thread was telling you, "yeah, you are right, we got screwed over" and then told you "and you can alleviate the pain by doing this..."

As to the pet focii, I don't remember if it was on a forum by a dev or relayed by someone from FanFaire but the devs said they messed up and made pets too powerful with the SoD raid focii (total bull, btw) so they weren't giving pets that big of an increase anymore. And it's clear, the pet changes with focii in HoT were minute increments.

And, who know's what Aristo did to the pets that last day of beta tuning. I don't know what possessed him to save the biggest project for last. It's no joke, he literally came in and said he was making more changes on the last day of beta and that was how they were gonna be after that. Nor did he ever come in and tell us where he wanted these to be at so we had nfc where the values were supposed to be. No idea if ac values were off, if dmg values were off, etc. For all we know, the values in some of those tables can be bad. And who's gonna go through all the hoops to figure out all those tables by parse extrapolation?

So, what you are seeing in your lackluster new pet is the failure of a dev to properly do his job and tune the pets.

I'll add another new trick we've been forced to adopt while you were gone: RS pet tanking. The trick here is to lead off with RS pet, chain it, and make sure it stays the MT during the fight with your actual pet as the OT. The RS has way more hps and can take more abuse. We all agree that's not where we want to be, however that is where we are.

Welcome to MeleeQ

[Eandori Raintree]

Well I picked up a copy of Chaotic Boon Rk II last night (got the gem for 500pp ) and I'm very happy to say that it definitely helps and it's a very nice boost to soloing ability indeed! I only saw a single copy of the Arcane Distillect Rk. II gem and it was going for 68k!!! Just about every other Trade-In Gem was 500 to 3k. I guess that one must be pretty rare.

In Tosk, I could take down the guards if I "DPS race" a bit more. As in, keep a servant up + drop bolts for high DPS. It was a little risky though, a few of the fights the guards got off a few good rounds and I needed to dump replenish companion. Often I needed to drop a few chain heals and after a crit-heal I could switch back to DPS and let Chaotic Boon do it's work.

Yeah, I hear what you guys are saying and believe me it helps to SEE these comments in a thread. I agree with everything stated, SoE is indeed making expansions about formulas, not finishing the job to balance, and apparently keeping us down a bit based on the complaints of other classes.

Although I can see the statements being true about more power at 90, it also comes with the immense (in my opinion) drawback of losing MANY zones due to light blue/green mobs. This has been one of my single biggest frustrations with Everquest. It seems the developers have always wanted to force players into higher level zones by making exp rewards drop off dramatically as you level, and there are times I can see that as valid (too many higher levels in the lower zones). But I have always felt that between 2 methods to fix that problem... they chose the bad path.
A. Re-balance the even-level fights to be more rewarding while keeping exp rewards for lower level kills going further down the stack.
B. Force higher level players into higher level zones by making exp rewards empty or nearly empty.

I do a lot of group/raid content as a solo player (well Molo really) because based on real life time constraints I never had time to raid with a guild or group enough to make it worth their time to help me. For example I just took out Thall Va Kelun in Vex Thal a few months ago and that was a pretty hard fight! The exp reward for doing that is pretty much nothing, and I don't think that's proper considering the difficulty of that fight. It's VERY VERY FUN to take on those old content areas molo and I find that a LOT of players are doing it these days. I really think Sony needs to re-evaluate their stance on trying to prevent that. Today's EQ is not the same game it was when servers were full and you could not throw a stone without hitting a raid guild.

I see no good reason anymore for old content raid mobs to spawn any longer then 1 day. If you take time to travel around your server and check out old raid bosses (and believe me, I DO it a LOT) you'll see that everything is always dead. ALWAYS DEAD. King Tormax, Lord Seru, The Emperor Sssra, all of VT, Fennin Ro, etc etc.

The reason this all relates to the current thread is because much like what you guys are saying, SoE does not really do anything to support a favored play style of a huge amount of people that play this game. From my perspective, it's really kind of silly when a new expansion comes out that has 5 more levels. When you think about it... NO ONLINE GAME OUT THERE can compare to the sheer vast content amount of Everquest. It's one of the ONLY things Everquest can hold over every other game these days. Immense number of zones, Immense number of quests, Immense physical 3D virtual space. BUT... as soon as you buy the latest expansion, and level up to the new "max" level... GUESS WHAT? 95% of that old content is useless to you for any exp.

This is exactly why I ding into the New+1 level in the new set. To tap into some of that new power, but then continue to enjoy the vast amount of old content and quests in which a solo player like me is finally capable of doing by myself. The single BEST place I have ever found for this power versus level balance is level 76. HUGE power upgrade with the level 76 pet, but still a LARGE amount of content that returns at least some exp. THAT is why I stayed level 76 for so long and I often consider going back to it. I'm pretty certain as a solo mage I could pack in those AA faster at 76 then I can at 86. And in more zones to keep it fresh too.

Anyways, thanks for the thread and feedback all.