Pet changes

[muurian]

Disclaimers : Wiz is master and lord
I fully understand the intent of the pet changes
For 85% of the time, its great.

The hard cap of "Pet cannot be top hate if PC is in melee range" is a little rough on smaller groups/duo/soloing.

As it stands now, a pet cannot be main tank in a group (duo, trio.. not that crazy. Having a mage pet tank and using a melee to add some DPS)

Also, this directly effects the beastlord, who is instantly aggro'd upon entering combat to add DPS. Since the BL's healing abilities are vastly in favor of the pet, and his tanking is poor, it just adds a lot of sitting/spamming minor/light/normal/greater heal.

A possible unintended effect is that if a mob follows you to continue fighting, you will remain in its melee range, thus making it very difficult to have a pet take a mob off you if you happen to be tanking and you have a decent amount of aggro. No amount of non-attacking will help either.

Is there a possibility that the hard cap can be removed? Possibly replaced by the pet being top hate in groups of <3 or not being able to "taunt"? It would be much easier to balance the sheer DPS taunt of the pet during a fight, and it would still be fair to pure casters.

 

[dannin]

as a beastlord, I've found the pet changes very helpful.. it makes agro management while soloing alot easier.. I can let my pet go to town for a while and then step in and take over agro whenever I feel the need to.... it would be nicer of course, if I could hit the NPC while my pet is tanking, but I think it is better now than it was before the patch.

 

[Wiz]

This change is more than likely staying. Pets being MTs has issues in itself, since they are "expendable" tanks. It was just too hard to balance pet aggro.

 

[muurian]

I suppose my reply to this is that having a pet as MT only helps you when :
you're under-50
you're in duo/trio

Anything above and beyond and pet MT becomes problematic.

I have been grouping with a rogue as of late, and our combat is entirely a result of crazy DPS with weapons way over our level. Previous to the patch, it was possible to maintain good aggro management. This has been replaced with hack-slash-repair.

Also, the no-pet hate list thing creates some interesting exploit scenarios involving pets and a single tank.

I would love to volunteer some time with some various level pet classes and seeing if the pet as main MT is actually too powerful 1-50.

 

[Wiz]

I suppose my reply to this is that having a pet as MT only helps you when :
you're under-50
you're in duo/trio

Anything above and beyond and pet MT becomes problematic.

I have been grouping with a rogue as of late, and our combat is entirely a result of crazy DPS with weapons way over our level. Previous to the patch, it was possible to maintain good aggro management. This has been replaced with hack-slash-repair.

Also, the no-pet hate list thing creates some interesting exploit scenarios involving pets and a single tank.

I would love to volunteer some time with some various level pet classes and seeing if the pet as main MT is actually too powerful 1-50.

I can't think of a single exploit scenario with many pets and a tank. Especially one that couldn't have been done before too, with pet miniscule aggro, that any tank worth his salt could top.

Are you talking about single tank, maybe 8 pets, healer or something? Exactly what would that prove? I mean, you still have to keep the tank alive. You still need 8 people to summon those pets, who could be monks or rogues instead, and do more DPS, without getting aggro for that matter (evade/FD). Or you could just have those pets,a nd every time the mob killed a pet, someone of the pet classers summoned a new one.

And I saw, time and time again, groups with plenty of tank-capable melees using pets to MT during the days of high pet aggro, because guess what? They could let the pet die while pounding down the mob, then the melee could take over aggro. Saved a lot of mana on heals, and made the encounters no-risk-at-all.

 

[muurian]

Is there no chance for compromise?

Pet cannot be main hate when more than 2 PCs are on hate list/in melee range, and then lower hate generated on a "pet taunt". Still works for pet casters who solo, small groups.

In the scenario you described above, are you insinuating that all groups must require a healer to function?(Especially small ones) Isnt the idea of having a pet class/melee combo using the pet to avoid the requirement of heal?

 

[Wiz]

Is there no chance for compromise?

Pet cannot be main hate when more than 2 PCs are on hate list/in melee range, and then lower hate generated on a "pet taunt". Still works for pet casters who solo, small groups.

In the scenario you described above, are you insinuating that all groups must require a healer to function?(Especially small ones) Isnt the idea of having a pet class/melee combo using the pet to avoid the requirement of heal?

No, I'm not insinuating that all groups must require a healer to function... but the entire pot of pet tanking is a badly cooked mess. I understand why it'd be a nice tactic to keep a pet as the tank, but it's just a really bad thing in certain situations, because a group member like a healer eliminates the risk part of pet tanking which is being defenseless when your pet dies.

I'll give it some thought, though.