Magician Changes Made?

[Hesyous]

Necromancers have in-combat only lifetapping abilities, possibly to compensate for our pets being significantly weaker than mage and beastlord pets. As far as pure pet heals go, necromancers have 2. One at level 8 and one at level 28. I would guess mages have several more than that, and the spell parser seems to confirm it. Can we not turn this into Mage vs. Necro vs. Beastlord? Could we justify mage pet heals on their own ground, not saying "hey, they get something, so I want it too"

If this is really about reducing downtime because pet heal recast is too long, maybe an out of combat only boost to hp regen would do the job.

I imagine that any pet healing boost will come with a matching decrease in pet strength, and in my opinion, it should. Just saying that I'd be careful what I wished for.

Oh great and powerful Enasc, no I am not being sarcastic. I like that idea too, however that isn't what I would like to see. Plain and simple, I think to be fair in general. The heal time needs to be reduced by 50% (Talking about Mage only here). I think the current spells, the line of heals were changed based on a biased and unfair belief. Believe me when I say this; I am not trying to point a finger and say 'you' are wrong to whomever made that decision. I am just saying maybe it should be thought about again and changed back.

Again! Mages have a mana pool. The spell costs mana thus can only be cast SO many times before mana is gone. Mages are squishy so they rely on their 'protector' so to speak to keep them alive. Yes, mages get root at level 63, but still....healing your pet is necessary to staying alive.

Again 2! Everyone involved, if you agree what what I am saying even though you don't play a mage, could you please help me with what verbiage I would come up with on the Suggestion Thread in order to make a viable and non-bias case.

This IS a great discussion and I really appreciate everyones thought regarding the Mage Pet Heal line of spells.

 

[enasc]

Sounds like you should be careful what things you tell your pet to attack! As much as she is your protector, you are also hers. Soloing the hardest monster you can for xp is rarely the most efficient way to do things.

Mage pets are the strongest of all pets in this game (aside from some charmed pets that can/will break and kill the charmer). Combining that strength with the best pet healing in the game (part-shaman beastlords) does not sound like balance to me. It sounds like making the strongest pet class also the best-healing pet class.

 

[Hesyous]

Sounds like you should be careful what things you tell your pet to attack! As much as she is your protector, you are also hers. Soloing the hardest monster you can for xp is rarely the most efficient way to do things.

Mage pets are the strongest of all pets in this game (aside from some charmed pets that can/will break and kill the charmer). Combining that strength with the best pet healing in the game (part-shaman beastlords) does not sound like balance to me. It sounds like making the strongest pet class also the best-healing pet class.

From your point of view, again, I agree, but you are on the wrong track. It's not about bad management with the 'pet attack' button. It's also not about soloing the hardest mob possible for xp. Also, it's not about getting the best heal in the game. Because if it were any of that, you are completely correct, it would be unbalanced.

What it is about is a decision a long time ago to increase the pet heal cast time for Mages because of, what I think, which could be wrong, is a biased point of view. Mages do have a powerful pet, but they can be compared to any class or another pet in the game. The heal should have never changed or if it did maybe to a slight degree, not a 100+% increase in cast time.

Just like what you said in an earlier post, each class is different and you are happy about that. So am I. But, if you play your class and learn how to destroy a mob that you couldn't before because you made several actions that allowed you to maximize your defense/offence of your class, then would you want a Dev or Admin to come along and say...humm, that looks OP to me, let me look in to this and then change it to where you can no longer do something in which your creativity came up with?

That's what it looks like what happened a long time ago. I think it's a biased point of view and maybe that dev or other admins can look it over again and make a cast time change in which would agree with what my arguement supports.

Does that make since?

 

[speakeroo]

The example is from soloing experience I have had. I am just trying to state my understanding of the balancing problem.

There's a two part problem here as far as balance and the pet heals. The first part is really pre 65. Because of how fire pets work. Their DS is equal to their level plus 1. So, when you had the old system of healing. It is a viable strategy to just chain heal the pet with all your heals and let the mob ds it self down. On live you could solo red cons that way, it was pretty nifty. An on level fire pet can solo a lot of the liodreths in our game just because of the ds. At some point, the scales tip and because your rain is so hard, it is no longer mana efficient.

Post 65, I see the pet's job as just to keep the mob away from me so I can rain him. So, as stated before it is annoying that the mage has 90 + mana, but the pet in < 50 % hp. Since a single mage heal only does about 11-15 % of the pet's health. It could easily take a minute before the pet is ready to engage another mob.

As for comments for an S&R thread you could point out a few aspects.

Mages just cannot heal their pet effectively, and we cannot chain cast pets. So, when the pet is dead, the mage is very much in trouble. Whether this is an aspect a mage should have or not is really an opinion and up the devs. If you look at the differences in mobs from different exp zones: EW, DN, Remn, Emerald Jungle, OG, ToE. A high level mage who is soloing is forced to just stick with the low hanging fruit. It's a similar problem that people have discussed about high tier exp groups just camping the easy zones. The reasons are the same, just simple economics.

Due to the significant time constraint of healing a mage pet as is. The water elemental form is the best for soloing. Each time the pet procs, you just got saved two seconds of healing time. At this point, mana is not really a problem for any single fight it's the time before the next fight.

The fire form is the best pet dps, and the + 30 to ds is awesome. But, I use that only when I duo or in groups. For soloing, the problem isn't dps.

Honorable mention: Earth Elemental : I have tried to find a use for this one. I do snare kiting, but because when you're snare kiting all the dmg comes from the mage until you build up enough agro to sick the pet. It just takes too long.

I don't solo with the air form.

In the end, the best method to deal with how the game is, is to box a healer. That is the most economical.

 

[donfolstar3]

My sarcasm module must be broken today. I would like to think these two posters just did not get it, but with two in a row the problem must be me.

Enasc- that long run on sentence of mine that ended "...you get the idea" was meant to convey that these types of threads quickly turn into class pissing contests where people rant and rave about what spells their class does and does not have, so instead of doing that lets just look at the two spells people are talking about and try to come up with some reasonable solution. I guess I did not do a good job of that since you posted exactly what I had meant to ridicule before it started, sorry. As you astutely point out any boost is typically balanced with some degree of nerf which I thought a mana cost change did fairly well (since Mages have larger mana pools than on-tier BSTs and BSTs are still the better healers as healer-hybrids). Additionally, changing the 64 spells makes the 60 spell still useful to certain characters in certain situations is icing in my mind, as player choice makes for a more interesting game.

Darksabbath- yes, I know you are active on the forums and have been around for a long time and can verify that by glancing at your 2007 join date and 1k+ posts. Perhaps I should have said "sarcastic" instead of "shitty" as I was trying to, for the second time, poke fun at how these threads often go with people calling for nerfs to make everyone miserable instead of fixing problems in a positive manner. I thought immediately responding to you saying "at the risk of getting Beastlords nerfed..." with "lets nerf Beastlords" and then saying "you must be new around here" when obviously you are not would get my tongue in cheek point across. I completely agree with the sentiments you express in post40 but was trying to do it in a backhanded, ideally chuckle worthy, manner.
Maybe you will understand this when you have been around a little longer, like in about 5 days. You see, that last sentence was not meant to be taken seriously as it is such a ridiculous statement that really anyone should see right through it... though I understand assigning tone to written words is difficult especially when they are poorly written as mine often are.

 

[Hesyous]

The example is from soloing experience I have had. I am just trying to state my understanding of the balancing problem.

There's a two part problem here as far as balance and the pet heals. The first part is really pre 65. Because of how fire pets work. Their DS is equal to their level plus 1. So, when you had the old system of healing. It is a viable strategy to just chain heal the pet with all your heals and let the mob ds it self down. On live you could solo red cons that way, it was pretty nifty. An on level fire pet can solo a lot of the liodreths in our game just because of the ds. At some point, the scales tip and because your rain is so hard, it is no longer mana efficient.

Post 65, I see the pet's job as just to keep the mob away from me so I can rain him. So, as stated before it is annoying that the mage has 90 + mana, but the pet in < 50 % hp. Since a single mage heal only does about 11-15 % of the pet's health. It could easily take a minute before the pet is ready to engage another mob.

As for comments for an S&R thread you could point out a few aspects.

Mages just cannot heal their pet effectively, and we cannot chain cast pets. So, when the pet is dead, the mage is very much in trouble. Whether this is an aspect a mage should have or not is really an opinion and up the devs. If you look at the differences in mobs from different exp zones: EW, DN, Remn, Emerald Jungle, OG, ToE. A high level mage who is soloing is forced to just stick with the low hanging fruit. It's a similar problem that people have discussed about high tier exp groups just camping the easy zones. The reasons are the same, just simple economics.

Due to the significant time constraint of healing a mage pet as is. The water elemental form is the best for soloing. Each time the pet procs, you just got saved two seconds of healing time. At this point, mana is not really a problem for any single fight it's the time before the next fight.

The fire form is the best pet dps, and the + 30 to ds is awesome. But, I use that only when I duo or in groups. For soloing, the problem isn't dps.

Honorable mention: Earth Elemental : I have tried to find a use for this one. I do snare kiting, but because when you're snare kiting all the dmg comes from the mage until you build up enough agro to sick the pet. It just takes too long.

I don't solo with the air form.

In the end, the best method to deal with how the game is, is to box a healer. That is the most economical.

Great points. The comment about the Fire pet and the DS and soloing: In SoD there is no way you can pull that off even chain healing a Fire Pet/Fire Elemental form with a high level mage. Pets take FAR to much dmg for it to be even thought of. Taking on a blue con which SHOULD be soloable but isn't because you are waiting 20 seconds to heal your pet is...not balanced. It was balanced back before 2006 I gues, but 8 years later...even though it's been mention in between that time, in my opinion needs to be looked at again by the devs.

Some people are getting crazy about this and saying this is a bitch session or they think it is a bitch session, but really this is a class discussion and focusing on the Mage class pet healing spells. Maybe the Devs will read this and understand what we are talking about instead of having a point of view like "Hey, this mage is just bitching!". That is NOT what is intended....I am either looking for an explaination of why it's not going to change or and understanding with a change that will coinside with my suggestions.

 

[speakeroo]

People have talked about the mage healing recast time. People have talked about how pets in general do not mitigate dmg well and become very weak at high tiers. You might have some luck boxing a druid for exp/farm wise. That's what I do, some use clerics. I think the HoTs are more awesome myself.

 

[enasc]

People have talked about how pets in general (...) become very weak at high tiers.

(sections removed all my doing)

I imagine that is what runic 2 pet addresses. That pet can tank monsters from what I've seen/heard. Weak is not a word I would use to describe high tier mage pets.

Does your level 4 pet feel underpowered as you reach level 8? Sure does.
Does the level 63 pet feel underpowered when you're at the point of killing relic dropping mobs? Absolutely.
Does the relic pet feel underpowered when you're capable of getting runic 2 pages? Sure.

Maybe you're just ready for a new pet?

 

[darksabbath]

My sarcasm module must be broken today. I would like to think these two posters just did not get it, but with two in a row the problem must be me.

Enasc- that long run on sentence of mine that ended "...you get the idea" was meant to convey that these types of threads quickly turn into class pissing contests where people rant and rave about what spells their class does and does not have, so instead of doing that lets just look at the two spells people are talking about and try to come up with some reasonable solution. I guess I did not do a good job of that since you posted exactly what I had meant to ridicule before it started, sorry. As you astutely point out any boost is typically balanced with some degree of nerf which I thought a mana cost change did fairly well (since Mages have larger mana pools than on-tier BSTs and BSTs are still the better healers as healer-hybrids). Additionally, changing the 64 spells makes the 60 spell still useful to certain characters in certain situations is icing in my mind, as player choice makes for a more interesting game.

Darksabbath- yes, I know you are active on the forums and have been around for a long time and can verify that by glancing at your 2007 join date and 1k+ posts. Perhaps I should have said "sarcastic" instead of "shitty" as I was trying to, for the second time, poke fun at how these threads often go with people calling for nerfs to make everyone miserable instead of fixing problems in a positive manner. I thought immediately responding to you saying "at the risk of getting Beastlords nerfed..." with "lets nerf Beastlords" and then saying "you must be new around here" when obviously you are not would get my tongue in cheek point across. I completely agree with the sentiments you express in post40 but was trying to do it in a backhanded, ideally chuckle worthy, manner.
Maybe you will understand this when you have been around a little longer, like in about 5 days. You see, that last sentence was not meant to be taken seriously as it is such a ridiculous statement that really anyone should see right through it... though I understand assigning tone to written words is difficult especially when they are poorly written as mine often are.

Well, I guess I have to wait 4 more days to get it then (A /sarcasm off or something would have went a long ways there.) What made it worse, was the post actually got liked by somebody also, who may have have seen it as serious also. I am rather tired of the constant calls for nerfs on the forums, obviously. I would rather see some get a boost then to drag everyone else down.
As for the mage pet heal, since mage is not a "healing class", then drop the cooldown to 12 seconds from 20. More than the BST, for less healing, for a pure caster class. Still far better than how it is now, without "stepping on toes".

 

[Gawain]

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[speakeroo]

(sections removed all my doing)

I imagine that is what runic 2 pet addresses. That pet can tank monsters from what I've seen/heard. Weak is not a word I would use to describe high tier mage pets.

Does your level 4 pet feel underpowered as you reach level 8? Sure does.
Does the level 63 pet feel underpowered when you're at the point of killing relic dropping mobs? Absolutely.
Does the relic pet feel underpowered when you're capable of getting runic 2 pages? Sure.

Maybe you're just ready for a new pet?

I would agree I am ready for a new pet, but I don't have much time to play as of late. So, I can not personally speak of the runic 2 pet strength. Maybe an r2 mage will come in and toss in their opinion. If I remember correctly, the mages I talked to were annoyed when all our pets lost hp across the board. But from what I've seen. r2 mage pets are awesome, and I do want one, and much more powerful than the relic.

I think you may of unfairly chopped up my statement. Most the arguments I remember seeing have to do with how pets improve on mitigating the dmg, which is to say a lot of times they don't improve on mitigating dmg. Which is difficult when you go through the tiers. An example of this, if you were to plot the base hp of all the earth pets up to relic ( I don't have access to r2, but r2 won't fit properly on the plot) versus the level of the spell you will find it is an exponential curve. y = m(e)^rx. The effects you get from items and loots through the tier, pet heal, pet str, etc. They improve in a linear fashion. So the curve of the pets literally flattens out, until you get an r2. That would begin a higher point, but by the time you get him you have pet health 8 and str 8 most likely. So no more possible improvements, though you get 2 more pet class tomes for cool ww and DB!

Now here is the key: Pets do fine with the mobs as you level up 0-63, because every few levels you get the new pet. But, because the you start to get relic spells at tier 3-6. It is spires where you get access to r2. So, how do mobs in relative exp zones improve in strength. Is it linear or exponential. To me, that's the crutch of the argument. I think it is exponential in fashion, because in my experience my pet does very well, then barely, then very poorly as monster's toughness improves. It's a rapid change. (I could be picking the wrong mobs and as a person I always suffer from a confirmation bias.)

From my understanding, the reason the problem happens is because the mobs are balanced against the tanks and rightly so. As the tanks go up in tier, their mitigation of dmg improves. Pets by their design can't improve their mitigation much. Mages have lightning reflexes and the AA to share it with their pets. Some of the pet silks armor has dmg reduction on it. Companion armor I. These are mechanisms to help with the problem, but maybe not enough. Also, CoP.

One suggestion I had, I don't know if it's practical. Would be if you could some how tie a pet's (any class's pet) mitigation to the hp/mana of the owner. Because that is one way that we gauge tier level. It could come out as a set of companion tomes and it would be in the same vein as the others.

 

[Hesyous]

Last post for me here. I don't have my Relic Pet. I've been told by several Mages that the Relic pet is like night and day for a mage when comparing the 63 lvl pets to it. I know it is night and day because I've grouped with a mage just doing quests and xp. I saw how their pet DOMINATED compared to my little level 63 pet. NOW! I really want to becareful what I say because 1 day I will have my Relic.

To help ME out (per my other thread talking about Elemental Mastery) I've been focusing my AAs on those particular ones that is going to boost my pets overall ability to help me solo. Tank better/live longer/better chance to hit.

Already I've noticed a difference but the difference is small. I know none of this is going to matter when I have a relic pet because I'll be up there with the elite Mages (most are boxed and never played much).

Anyway, if this is the way mages are....which is powerful relic pet, and 'blah' 63 lvl pet, then maybe heals need to be changed for the better to help balance the 'blah' pet mages out there.

Additional: It looks as if this opened up more a discussion about high level mages. Comparing upper level pets.

Speakeroo said it. Simple example: Mage 63 pet go to ikkisith to xp solo. It can be done but with GREAT difficulty and you HAVE to have AAs or you will die. *** Mage Relic Pet go to Ikkisith to xp solo. Pet owns a lot of lower lever stuff that the other mage without the Relic would mostly likely die to or have to blow all cool downs just to stay alive.

The gap in the end game for a mage to solo is visible in that aspect. Once a Mage gets in to the light (Relic Pet) it's mostly down hill from there.

 

[Hesyous]

accidental post...please delete or disregard.

 

[Hesyous]

Ok, I lied...this is my last post. I just want to correct something I wrote in an above post.

Quote from myself above:
"To help ME out (per my other thread talking about Elemental Mastery) I've been focusing my AAs on those particular ones that is going to boost my pets overall ability to help me solo. Tank better/live longer/better chance to hit. Already I've noticed a difference but the difference is small"

I have the AAs...that are supposed to assist, help and whatever for your pet. I still need 3 more in Unearring Precission, but all else is maxed per the AA helping your pet. Ultimately, I see no difference. If there is one, it's < 1% of a difference. The AA abilities to evade incoming melee attacks doesn't appear to do anything at all. Also, after looking at 'Pet Hit' logs. I really don't see much of a difference (same mob) if any.