Over the course of 11347 seconds, I used Virulent Talon and Zeal of the Elements VI every time they refreshed. My pet was buffed with Burnout XII Rk. III, Second Spire of Elements IV, Frenzied Burnout IX, and Iceflame Armaments Rk. III.
/tell Sancus Puksu -vs- Test One Hundred Three: -- DMG: 355690900 -- DPS: 31347 -- Scaled: 31347 -- Slash: 209193985 -- Backstab: 63673084 -- DirDmg: 56659887 -- Rampage: 26161027 -- WildRamp: 2917 -- % dmg as normal: 100% -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 43882 -- Hits: 36745 -- Missed: 7137 -- Accuracy: 83.7% -- Avg Hit: 9679 -- Max hit: 50491 -- DMG to PC: 0
Puksu (Sancus) - 4093
--- Companion's Strike XXV - 320
--- Iceflame Strike III - 1368
--- Second Spire of Elements Strike IV - 574
--- Virulent Talon Strike III - 560
--- Water Elemental Strike XI - 1271
Sancus - 33
--- Virulent Talon III - 14
--- Zeal of the Elements VI – 20
Here are some important figures to derive from these parses:
- Excluding Direct Damage, my pet made 38,844 attempts, which is 3.423 a second
- Virulent Talon Strike III fired every 2.980 seconds on average while it was up (it was up for a total of 1669 seconds). It wore off in 119.214 seconds on average.
- Second Spire fired every 19.768 seconds on average.
- Iceflame Strike III fired every 8.294 seconds on average
- Companion's Strike XXV fired every 4.466 seconds on average while it was up (it was up for a total of 1429 seconds). It wore off in 71.450 seconds on average.
- Water Elemental Strike XI fired every 8.928 seconds on average.
/tell Sancus Puksu -vs- Test One Hundred Three: -- DMG: 248951899 -- DPS: 13012 -- Scaled: 13012 -- Slash: 154162669 -- Backstab: 47861353 -- DirDmg: 46927877 -- % dmg as normal: 100% -- Non-crit rate: 100% -- Attempts: 66632 -- Hits: 54053 -- Missed: 12527 -- Defended: 52 -- Accuracy: 81.2% -- Avg Hit: 4605 -- Max hit: 37500 -- DMG to PC: 0
- Excluding Direct Damage, my pet made 59186 attempts, which is 3.093 a second
- Iceflame Strike III fired every 7.559 seconds on average
- Water Elemental Strike XI fired every 8.580 seconds on average
Arc Facultas Ingens:
Arc Facultas Ingens on 11/1/2015
Puksu (Sancus) - 21
--- Arcane Melody Strike III - 3
--- Companion's Strike XXV - 6
--- Fjilnauk's Strike III - 3
--- Iceflame Strike III - 3
--- Received Bard Epic - 1
--- Received Chromatic Haze Proc - 1
--- Received Quick Time - 1
--- Virulent Talon Strike III - 4
--- Water Elemental Strike XI - 2
Produced by GamParse v1.5.1.5
I buffed the pet with Frenzied Burnout and Virulent Talon before engage, and used Zeal of the Elements VI at the 32 second mark (because I'm forgetful like that ). Despite this, the pet put out only 14k points of damage /g Arc Facultas Ingens in 73s, 20195k @14008 --- #2 Puksu (Sancus) 1023k@(14008 in 73s). Much of this is due to how slowly the procs proced. 4 VT procs in 73 seconds is completely abysmal, and all of the procs fired at significantly slower rates than they would on a combat dummy. Furthermore, looking at the graph, there were significant periods of time during which the pet was simply inactive:
At that rate of proccing, VT would have taken 730 seconds to use all of its counters. While this is on the more extreme end of what I've experienced, it is not uncommon for VT to take 250-300+ seconds to expend all of its procs. This is likely due to the pet making only 1.479 attempts per second, which is just 43% of its rate on a combat dummy. Here is the effect that this has on proc rates:
- The amount of time between Virulent Talon procs increased 512%
- The amount of time between Iceflame Strike procs increased 193%
- The amount of time between Water Elemental Strike procs increased 308%
- The amount of time between Companion's Strike procs increased 53%
Now, let's look at a longer fight:
Praetor Captain Tita Aragus on 11/1/2015
Puksu (Sancus) - 61
--- Arcane Melody Strike III - 16
--- Companion's Strike XXV - 12
--- Fjilnauk's Strike III - 3
--- Iceflame Strike III - 4
--- Received Bard Epic - 1
--- Received Chromatic Haze Proc - 2
--- Received Illusions of Grandeur - 1
--- Received Quick Time - 1
--- Virulent Talon Strike III - 19
--- Water Elemental Strike XI - 7
Produced by GamParse v1.5.1.5
On this fight, I used Frenzied Burnout IX 4 seconds in and Virulent Talon prior to the fight starting. My pet did only 11k damage: /g Praetor Captain Tita Aragus in 200s, 32084k @11177 --- #2 Puksu (Sancus) 2224k@(11177 in 199s), which is very low considering the duration of pet discs (Frenzied Burnout lasts 180s, and VT on Arx raids lasts much longer). Here is a graph of the pet's damage:
Again, you see spikes in the pet's damage at various points combined with huge periods of inactivity. The result is 270 non-Direct Damage attempts, which is a mere 1.357 a second. As a result Virulent Talon procced 251% slower than it does on a combat dummy.
I'd also like to compare this to our pets' performance in older raids, specifically (for this example) WK 2. The fight is notably longer, making the graph less useful because the damage is so compact. However, the difference is evident in the results:
/tell Sancus Xobeker -vs- Combined: Guard Vraymon: -- DMG: 19571275 -- DPS: 21483 -- Scaled: 21343 -- Slash: 11243066 -- DirDmg: 4972175 -- Backstab: 3356034 -- % dmg as normal: 55.6% -- % dmg as critical: 44.4% -- Non-crit rate: 62.6% -- crit rate: 37.4% -- Attempts: 3326 -- Hits: 2796 -- Missed: 304 -- Defended: 226 -- Accuracy: 90.2% -- Avg Hit: 6999 -- Max hit: 54813 -- DMG to PC: 11075
During this 911 second event, my pet had 2723 non direct damage attempts, which equates to 2.989 attempts per second. This is much closer to the results seen on combat dummies, and it resulted in very comparable proc rates. This particular parse was from a time when I still had EM 21, whereas the others I used EM 23. Now pets will admittedly perform better in older content as their offenses are upgraded while the mobs defenses remain constant, but I am not aware of why this would have any bearing on the speed at which the pet swings. Furthermore, I cannot believe that it is intentional for pets to do 1/3-1/2 of the damage that they do just one expansion prior in Arx, which many times brings them well below the DPS that level 100 pets put out in CotF.
Conclusions/TL;DR
In Arx raids, our pets do significantly less DPS than they do outside of those raids, which is extremely detrimental to our DPS as a class. There are a number of possible factors contributing to this, which may include the increased AC, increased mob level, decreased pet accuracy, etc. However, the most startling issue is a pets only performing 40-50% of the attempts that they perform in previous raids and on combat dummies. This has a huge impact on their melee DPS and the speed at which procs fire, which further reduces their effectiveness in raids. I did not play during VoA and do not know the exact nature of the issues pets faced then, but it certainly appears to me that there is some very large issue in the performance of pets in Arx, and possibly going into the new expansion.