This thread is about the high tier game, lower tiers I would say classes are more or less balanced.
Looking back, mages and beastlords have been frown upon as classes. They are not the first in mind when you try out new encounters (especially 6 man stuff)
This changed when Runic2 pets came. Those with runic2 were now viable options again.
After the pet hp nerf it is close to the same it was before, as in pet classes that have close to 50% of the dps coming from the pets, dont do much when the pets dont survive.
I can see the problem with having pets with too much hp. They can tank more than maybe was intended, even with miniscule ac/mitigation, and thus trivializing some content (at least that is my best guess to why it was nerfed)
So how can we help pets survive?
1. For mages, turn the murk spell into pet heal, with a different timer than the usual lvl 64 one. Larger and with faster recast (I dont wanna go into numbers, that is another discussion) This is to balance the fact that beastlords have targetted heals to use on pet as well.
2. have a /pet attack behind command that makes pet hit the back of mob. this is to help the positioning problem we get when we need to draw back pet to recieve the group heal.
3. Let group heals that hit the pet owner include the pet. (to avoid the problem above)
4. have pets low enough on aggro list and placed behind the mob be immune to whirlwinds/phantom strikes and such. That way the pets cant be used as a tank/offtank, but be pure dps. Then we just have the casted spells, turned mobs and such to heal thru.
I dont expect all these changes to go thru (tbh I would be happy if ONE of them happened at all, or other changes that can help pet survivability) but they are some ideas at least to reduce the pet classes problems to be viable dps in high tier encounters.
Looking back, mages and beastlords have been frown upon as classes. They are not the first in mind when you try out new encounters (especially 6 man stuff)
This changed when Runic2 pets came. Those with runic2 were now viable options again.
After the pet hp nerf it is close to the same it was before, as in pet classes that have close to 50% of the dps coming from the pets, dont do much when the pets dont survive.
I can see the problem with having pets with too much hp. They can tank more than maybe was intended, even with miniscule ac/mitigation, and thus trivializing some content (at least that is my best guess to why it was nerfed)
So how can we help pets survive?
1. For mages, turn the murk spell into pet heal, with a different timer than the usual lvl 64 one. Larger and with faster recast (I dont wanna go into numbers, that is another discussion) This is to balance the fact that beastlords have targetted heals to use on pet as well.
2. have a /pet attack behind command that makes pet hit the back of mob. this is to help the positioning problem we get when we need to draw back pet to recieve the group heal.
3. Let group heals that hit the pet owner include the pet. (to avoid the problem above)
4. have pets low enough on aggro list and placed behind the mob be immune to whirlwinds/phantom strikes and such. That way the pets cant be used as a tank/offtank, but be pure dps. Then we just have the casted spells, turned mobs and such to heal thru.
I dont expect all these changes to go thru (tbh I would be happy if ONE of them happened at all, or other changes that can help pet survivability) but they are some ideas at least to reduce the pet classes problems to be viable dps in high tier encounters.