Why do our pets go from being companions to little sidekicks?

[Drexion]

Let me start by saying I haven't played EQ for over a year...Was taking a look to see if I wanted to come back and have frankly seen few reasons to do so. I have always been a pet-class lover, i've played a necro/mage/beastlord(lvl 65). Let us look at the beastlord and his pet for a second. Throughout most of my career up till 65, the pet has been doing roughly 50% of my overall damage but as I approached 65 this started to get lower and lower...Now I come back and see people with fantastic weapons, I hear of rogues who can do over 1000 DPS (oh my god, is that right?). *Warriors* are doing over 500DPS. I know beastlords are already DPS-gimped, with the best of us doing 350ish DPS (including pet)...I'd think we all agree we should be above warriors, etc, but that is not what this post is about. Even given our 350DPS number, the pet does what? 70DPS? 80DPS? So the pet, who uses to do 50% of our damage, is now doing 20%? Does that seem right for a BEASTLORD? Heck, when we get our much-deserved DPS increase to above warrior-level (lets say it ends up being 650-700DPS just like Rangers)...Will our pet DPS stay at 70ish? I mean, that would be 10% of our total DPS!

Does anyone else want SOE to make us BEASTlords again? Make them our companions and not sidekicks? Give us back our pets who do 50% of our damage! I, quite frankly, would not be happy if we just got a DPS increase...If I just wanted DPS i'd have been a rogue.

What does the rest of the beastlord community think? I read our TOP_10 list and nothing seems to address this aspect of being a beastlord.

[hakaaba]

Pet upgrades would be nice and your basic point is right -- but i think this belongs in the rant forum prolly :)

[Drexion]

I put it in this forum because I was hoping pet-DPS increase (versus our own dps increase) would make its way to prominence among our "TOP 10" list...Also wanted to express to Tastian that at least some of the Beastlord community cares about this issue =).

[Dreead]

My pet dps seems to be fine, i have no complaints. If my pet scaled up with my personal melee it would be retardedly over powered.


With the release of DoD and our new pet spell, and disc our dps is very much not "gimped" as you put it. Just as Tastian said, he feels people are insane with they think that our dps didn't get a nice boost in DoD.

[Drexion]

Yes DoD has helped out DPS quite a bit. I'm not claiming to want a overall DPS increase (that would be over-powered as you put it). I'd like to see a more even distribution of our current DPS among us and our pet. Maybe the next expansion can focus more on pet-improvements than our own melee improvements? shrug.

[Kenudil]

DoD has helped those Beastlords out that can actually get the new spell and disc.  I think most casual BL's are not able to do this in a family guild.  I know that with our Guild tanks it would be extremely difficult.

[Tastian]

I've seen repots of ele(ish) geared people doing the missions since the changes.  I'd be curious to hear more stories of people that attempt them and what their findings are. 

As for the breakdown of our dps there are a few issues.  Beastlords catch a lot of universal things because of how the class works.  If they wanted to intentionally raise pet dps then they'd have to either raise the pets dps a lot, or limit our melee/spell dps.  The raises of pet dps could be done with spell/AA/focus, but that'd mean we'd likely see less from melee items which isn't too likely.  Also you've got the cases where the pet just dies.  For solo'n and stuff the pet doing more dps would be nice(imagine actually being able to pet cleric again lol), but on raids and in some groups the pet dies a lot and having more tied up in the pet makes that loss much worse. 

I think it's a nice idea for longer term, but nothing that can really be implemented as far as a patch goes.  I mean it took years and expansions for our pets to fall off to the point they have now.  It'd take a pretty big design decision change to put them back close to where they were.  Also I can assure you some would freak over that.  *shrugs*

[Sklak]

Well, side discussion response to Tast's question on spell progression.

Technically I'm only "Elemental" geared as far as progression, and I think 1.5 epic is the only raid drop I'm currently wearing, but with a regular group similarly geared, that has completely farmed 1-group progression from LDoN through DoN, averaging 700+ AA's, all with 1.5 epics, we're not your typical Elemental pick-up group, and probably not "casual" by most non-raiders definition.

68 spell missions, other than #3, were trivial.  #3 was rough, we weren't ready for a 3600 hitting mob (on our Pally MT), wiped at 5%.  Wiped at 9% on boss 2nd time with cleric having knockback walled/lag issues.  Won finally on 3rd run at 68 mission #3, though doable, don't look forward to flagging a few others on it.  Final 68 spell mission had to evac after boss reset to 100%, but medded up, and took him in 2nd round easily.   Last mission was fun, exploring totally new area with tricks/triggers.

Just started working on 69 missions now, haven't been hard so far, even "hard" setting quite doable just have to be careful.  Haven't started on 70 missions at all yet.  However, rewards for the missions, other than the spell itself, have almost all rotted/been destroyed, horrible risk/reward setup.

Regarding the pets, yeah, I miss having a warder that was a real 50-50 partner, and still suprised how many folks I run into that still think my pet is the offtanking, dps god he was back in early PoP.... but frankly I'd be scared of fluffy if he was as relatively powerful now as he was then ;)

[Boolanga]

maybe pets should be 25-35% of our dps at upper lvls .. not quite the 50/50  but still decent....

[Kanan]

yesterday, in sol ro, I tried coupla things on the protector paired pulls.  First one, I tried having pet OT.  Next one I tried just tanking the pair of them.  It worked fairly well both ways.  Frankly, it took me a long time to notice I'd forgotten crack potion.  Anyways, on the split, the pet was tanking that thing pretty well.  Frankly, better than it could possibly at c1, my preferred solo xp spot.  It got its mob down to 32% before I'd killed mine.  Granted I was slowing, having to cast coupla heals on me, and not going nuts with new pet/nuke dps.

Its early, and I'm a bit tired still (comeon caffeine, hurry up & work!), but does that sound like the 30%?

[Taiglin]

Not the thread but just happened to be reading this one and saw Tast's remark/question. Tried 68.2 and wiped with the mob around 72%. That said the chanter in the group fell of the ledge and got ate by a repop and unfortunately I stole aggro somehow and got ate by the named. 8.1k (buffed) hp SK tank, 5k mana pool on cleric that he said was going fast. Had Druid there who was patch healing as well. Average AA count is probably in the 100 range, maybe a wee bit higher but probably not my much. I probably buff out at 6khp. Frankly I didn't hold too much hope that we would win (let alone the 68.3 mission) but wanted to see how we would do.

Edit: think the boss was 82% vs 72%; the boss hadn't rumbled as Kanan put it. Not sure what the SK was/wasn't doing. After I went down I think the boss went for a toon other then the SK. Will see if I can talk them into another shot at this. Think they are scared though hehe.

[Kanan]

following the derail.. that group sounds like it could have done it.. just needed to burn the boss early.. once he does one rumble, the cleric prolly could've gotten away with chaining CH.  Tho an SK losing agro boggles me.. he needed to fear etc more ><