DoD Pet Survivablity

[Kanan]

kk.. we did tacvi farming last night.  Had a lot of berserker mastruq (AE ramp for abt 2-3k on low end hits for those unfamiliar).  On the first one, I blew abt 4 trips worth of shissar fangs all at once, so for the rest of the night, i sat back near the rogues, getting Deadly Strike spam, nuking when they came up, and casting the DoD pet spell.

Now I'll admit to liking it.. but I'm a lil irked.  Why is it that they can code it such that this new pet is able to survive AE ramp very easily & well, but the lasting pet has one  round of AE ramp & its toast?

I would usually cast it, see it die, and then the gem would refresh.  Next time, I'll targ the pet to check its hps, but i think it was "dieing" bcs the 18 secs had elapsed.  This illustrates that they can be able to give our real pets ability to survive in ae ramp situations.  I'd rather this pet were a pantywaist and resembled the 70 necro pet as being massive dps for no hps and our regular pet be able to tank.  Hell.. in clearing MPG to trials, my nukes were down, so I pulled a mob with the pet (i banzai lead the charge pell mell thru mpg.. we move too slow if we pull regularly ;p).  It lasted, on the Odiumate named ph, the full duration of the spell before it died.  I doubt Putty would survive that long if it weren't for enrage.

/grumble off.

[Shamno]

Pet surviability is a touchy thing like pet DPS I am assuming. Don't want to  adjsut it for raid content or in group content they become an insane monster. Surviabiltiy and DPS wil just be an insane item from our pets in that case.  Tanks will complain about being replaced by pet classes and other DPS classes will just complain about why would you want anything but a beastlord, mage or necro for the DPS slot. It is a tricky balance I think, trying to balance the 2.

[Kanan]

here's my issue here.. this 18 second pet can outlast my permanent pet.  And its dps is better as well.  Damage return/cast = far better of course if warder survives, and usually (Hanvar abt only case to contrary) warder far out-damages pet.

But there is proof here that a pet can survive in an ae ramp situation.  Whatever was added to this pet to let it survive & tank in such a situation is what I would like to see on our regular pet.

I don't expect it to be able to OT a 1k hitting mob for the minute or so that it would take to be able to kill the named we just pulled.  But i want our permanent pet to at least be as tough as the new summoned pet.

guess I'm a lil rant-ish on this one.

[Oiingo]

I find that myself and other ``end-game'' beastlords have been getting in the habbit of parking our warder behind the raid and keeping it unsuspended just for our shared HP buff/regen/damage and not even having it engage the targets.

This definately isn't how it should be.  :( Change, please!

[Bengali]

The DoD swarm pet just has a whole lot of defense/avoidance or whatever and extremely high resists. There's no real "secret" to why it survives other than it has been tuned to be virtually immune to spells and has very good defense for 18 seconds (and it was tuned that way because of concerns about having a swarm pet that would just get instantly killed when you used it).  They were able to do this because the pet only lasts 18 seconds, and couldn't really tank something very effectively.

Duplicating that effect for normal pets is much trickier -- they'd need to have a solution that made regular pets tough as nails when it came to AE ramp, but *only* on AE ramp, or otherwise the pets become really powerful tanks.

But yeah, that's why AE ramp is probably going to make the top 10 list (assuming it isn't already there).

[Rarrum]

The rampage goats in txevu also eat the DoD pet up within a few seconds usually.  I even saw it eatting the mage's DoD pet.

As for normal pet.. lets just say that after unsuspending the second one... it didn't even last long enough to get a cast of growl in.

[Kanan]

those txevu ramp goats are really strange.. first time I ever sent pet in.. I had waited a while.. and it never got eaten.  Yet next time, it got eaten in first ramp round.

[Tastian]

Yeah the DoD pet is basically just a monster in terms of stats and that is why it lives.  That change doesn't work for real pet because it would effect other aspects of the pet.  What I'd like to see a change similar to what they did with the aggro list that nerfed pet tanking such that if the pet isn't tanking then the pet just eats less AE ramp.  Even code it to factor in real ramp by checking that list and let the pet eat full damage in that case for balance reasons. 

Most bst I know aren't even asking for AE immune pet, but that could help us with a bit of a raid niche.  What would be nice though is if the DI got defaulted to 1 when pet ate AE ramp, or maybe just give it 90% mitigation or something.  Enough to where we'd have to watch the pet, maybe back it out, maybe heal, etc.  Right now it's to the point where the pet usually poofs before you can go for the heal, let alone cast a spell. 

There are a few other approaches to handling this, but sony still has to decide they want it changed as well.  It is a top 10 issue already though and has been for a few months as I recall.

[iamweaver]

I had a question on this. What makes Feral Guard useless or mana inefficient? Are the AE ramps quad hits every tick?  Since I don't play Lupic actively during raids, I don't know the answer at all.  I do know that the Goats in Txevu seem to ramp fairly frequently, but I don't remember how many times I have gotten smacked around per rampage.  Given the mana cost of Feral Guard tho, I can see why you would rather use it on the Bestial Empathy pet  :).

[hakaaba]

Because

1.  feral guard's recast is almost always longer than the time in between 4 hits on the pet
2.  We usually have better things to do than spend all our time to spam our (~100 dps) pet with runes/heals, particularly during heavily scripted encounters.

[Tastian]

FG is 500mana(base) and has a 36 second refresh.  I used to go overboard trying to keep a pet up all fight for various encounter and honestly just hit a point where the work wasn't worth it imo.  I'd have a pet suspended, guard on, guard refreshed, mend compaion maxed, pet affinity, full pet kit, etc, and the pets just poof sometimes.  The pet is only putting out ~100dps depending on the situation and in a lot of fights it just got more efficent for me to hide the pet and use it as a growl battery, depths pet, etc instead of all the extra work with a chance that the pet would still die on bad luck. 

Also note how much time you spend trying to keep your warder alive and how much melee time you lose.  FG is 6 second base casting time, I don't recall suspend casting time atm, but it's there, even healing of mik down at 3.75 base still cuts into your dps quite a bit.  If I could guarantee my warder would survive I'd try harder again, but in too many cases you can be actively trying to keep the pet alive and bad AE ramps will still eat the poor thing.

What really sucks is feral guard can get blown on other effects too sometimes so if there are AE's, damage shields, other mobs, etc you don't always have full charges waiting to soak up the AE ramp.  I really wish they'd tweak feral guard coding a bit so it wasn't wasted on one missed damag shield dispell or whatever. 

[Kanan]

I try to keep it up in anguish clears, but if I run into ikaavs or hear them inc, I usually stop bothering, bcs the next 3, 4 pulls are likely gonna have a DS on them & that will totally negate the rune.  And, of course, one of the pulls is an ae ramp golem that would eat the pet, fully runed, fully raid buffed, in one shot =/

[Dreead]

It's the golems in Anguish that get my pet nearly everytime, and it really irks me.

On Vish, i have long learned to park pet nearish to me, only for panther.

In Tacvi, everytime i see *inc An Elite Mastruq Berserker* bam, i cast suspend minion.

For 95% of raid mobs my pet will stay alive, unless i make a mistake. BUt it usually doesn't die.

BUT if 1 golem is pulled to  raid, and it AE ramps, pet dies in 1 round majority of the time. Now when my pet is raid buffed it has nearly or over 10k hp. I have never had a AE ramp golem take over 10k life off me from ramp, but it nearly, or kills my pet everytime. It's quite annoying, espically when i miss the inc call.

[Tastian]

Using suspend as a hide might work.  I like to keep a spare warder ready incase I mess up and my first dies, and I like having disc/growl available, so I tend to try just parking it and moving it accordingly.  *shrugs*

I really would just like to see AE ramp damage adjusted.  Especially with all the other pet factors at work.  It drives me nuts when I'm positioned just right for AE ramp, the warder goes in, does great, things are going well, *POOF*, pet just repositioned, and didn't catch that 0.2inch movement that cost me. 

[hakaaba]

Sound like a good beastlord to anyone?:
--------------------------------------------------------
"ok kitty are you ready for the big fight?"

*Hakaaba's warder nods*

"Great, now i need you to go hide in the corner.  Whatever you do, stay right here."

*Hakaaba's warder looks confused*

"I know you've been my loyal companion for years but you need to hide in the corner so i can use our bond to do more melee damage, but you can't fight or you'll die."

*Hakaaba's warder's eyes portray a deep sadness but it reluctantly follows its beloved master's instructions to hide in the corner*
-----------------------------------------------------
It happens every day o,0