Allielyn said:
I'm not entirely sure how possible it would be to share resists with a player coding-wise. Also since it would be a pet buff then caster stats (4 FT) would likely get dropped off completely.
What if instead of "sharing resists" each AA would bestow upon your pet the given stats you list (AC/haste/etc) and then add 200 of whichever resist (magic, cold, fire, poison/dis)?
Also, if you change the resists so they don't get hit as much, would healing changes be needed? Or vice versa?
I'm kind of divided on it now b/c of the whole not over cap revelation...or is it? I'm still confused about that. If not dropping it would be better for high end, worse for low end. Though it would need tweaking as to have it be comparable to what the elemental forms do now (- current stacking problems in terms of use evaluation). I still think resists for a pet would be far better in a tome.
As for the 2nd part yes, then no. Part of the major problem with healing having so large of a recast is soloing. Healing your pet takes quite a while, creating far longer downtime. One is better off in most cases, not using it, or using it very sparingly, and just doing the best one can manage to kite things. Which is a ridiculous pain in the ass without a snare. Thus mages cannot really effectively pet kite. Without mend companion? Pretty much just don't bother. At least certainly not on mobs that hit for a decent amount. Not that you can't actually kill them, it's more the amount of downtime healing your pet afterwards (because you certainly won't keep up to par on the fight), is generally huge. This also comes into play in groups, where pets occasionally offtank, and we can't really heal them worth a crap leading to the aforementioned, don't bother trying, just blow stuff up. Taking an otherwise valuable role a mage might provide, and tossing it mostly out the window.
The other part of the problem comes into play on raids. A different thing entirely because if your pet gets aggro on a raid. Well it's dead. So the mobs actually attacking it, are rare. Same thing if you manage to get aggro on a mage. Pretty much dead 90% of the time (unless your healers are really really really spot on, or have you targeted already for some reason). The big problem healing it then comes in with ae's. Places where they are frequent, which are quite numerous, we cannot keep a pet up alone, and most of the time, the healers have better things to do than to worry about the mage pet constantly. Our best option in this general case is to spam the mend companion aa and pray. Or cast the heal if you have it up. I generally do not bother on a raid. The spell slots are more important to use for other things, rather than a spell that will probably not be up if you really actually need it.
To clarify, do we want 0 recast? Well it would be a fantastic x-mas present. But too powerful. Do we want the large recast we have now, no, certainly not. There are many problems inherent with it, and I don't see it making us ultimately powerful either compared to other classes in terms of what we can solo, which was a problem originally cited in the thread about the change to a recast itself. I've seen classes without pets, or with terrible ones, do far more ludicrous soloing. The recast was originally added, back when pets were mitigating 50% of damage. Certainly no or a low recast and 50% mitigation..makes it more powerful than it should be. So the recast was added, and then mitigation was fixed. At least this was my understanding of the situation from the plethora of threads about it. Like I said in the last thread about the mitigation bug, if I'm wrong about the timeline there, someone please jump in. Personally I think a 10 second recast would be appropriate. Though it would warrant actual field testing.
Thus while I have been relatively long winded about it, a resist change would help in terms of raids. The other part of the problem would still be present. A healing change would help in terms of all parts of the problem. So possibly no need for a resist change. At least not a drastic aa one. A tome would still probably be a good addition at some point, but not completely necessary for the class. It's like patch v. core problem. Core problem is when they're getting blasted, beat on, chewed up, etc. We can't really help all that well, other than recalling it and taking the hits ourselves. Which of course doesn't work in terms of ae's, because we are already taking those hits. The patch is increasing the resists with an aa set. Which if the stacking problems were fixed, with some slight modifications (stacking issues and nonsense parts, like the atk on fire form), all would be worthwhile the way they are. It would patch a bit of one problem sure, but would do nothing to the others. Taking it to tomes, would put it so that mage pets would not be ludicrously resistant during low end raiding, but it would certainly help with the mid-high end if one wishes to put the effort into the character. Which makes sense to me.
