The state of our pets

[Rhoam]

Last night a mage friend of mine was joking around and asked if we could duel our pets. He is level 69 with the 66 spell pet and I have the 70 pet focused from don. His pet was unfocussed. Well, the results were damn disappointing. My pet also had Orishars on and every hitpoint buff we get. My pet fell down to 20% before it got his pet to 63%. Another sign of just how far our pets have fallen off in recent years. I know it doesnt constitute hard evidence but this fight wasnt even close, not at all close. Given their ability to deal dps and the fact that our slows are now mitigated like crazy, is this class balancing? Our pets are begining to fall into the afterthought that SK and Shaman pets are at present. Is this issue being advanced with the developers? Should a level 66 spell pet beat out a level 70 spell pet with FOCUS that badly?

[Askyn]

Was he using his Fire pet? ...

If so, the problem was that your pet ate its self up on it. Have him test with earth / air / water etc.

[Rhoam]

No he used his 66 child pet which I believe is an air pet? He did have the chanter scarescrow illusion on it but no fire damage shield. So I assume his pet benefitted from the illusion in lifetap, but the fight was still so lopsided. Just amazed me.

[hakaaba]

any mage pets have always beaten an equal bst pet.  Now that we get pathetic gains from upgrades, you can see the same thing with unequal matches as well.  Not very surprising tbh.  Ive seen a mage pet successfully tank a tacvi add before  (ukun from the horse at the entrance)

[Nusa]

Maybe. Not enough information. And why did you mention slow, unless you actually used it in the test?

Did your pet have pet gear? Probably not. Did his pet have pet gear? Probably. That means his pet had 11% more haste, extra hp gear, and two weapons proccing on top of its innate stun proc.

Your pet was buffed by you. Did that include fero and/or panther? Do you have your 1.5/2.0 epic click? His pet was buffed by him and an enchanter, at least. Magicians get equivalents of our pet haste and Orishar's spells. The chanter buffs made sure his pet was maxxed out on dex (scarecrow is +120 dex as well as a small lifetap) for procs. Did he have his 1.5/2.0 epic click?(roughly same thing as ours, btw)

What do your pet AA's look like. How about his? Collectively, AA's have a significant impact on any level's pet performance, and you can't turn them off. Also remember some pet abilities, like resists, are based on YOU, not the pets level or spell level.

But your biggest goof is in assuming that the level 66 mage pet is worse than the level 70 mage pet. Both spells produce a level 65 pet unfocused (beast pet with DoN focus would be 66, I think). Both are the TOP of the line pets for their pet type. Earth pets have more hp and have a root proc, making a better tanking pet. Air pets have a stun proc and the best all-around melee dps (water pets are better on the backside, being rogues). Oh, air pets are also near-immune to cold-based attacks (i.e. Spirit of Irionu).

Bottom line, a properly selected mage pet probably is a bit better, all other things being equal. In this case, I suspect you also had the deck stacked against you and didn't realize it.

[Tastian]

Nusa mentioned it, but you have to keep in mind the spell levels mean basically nothing.  The level 66 pet for them is the last pet of that kind.  As bst we see multiple pets, but they are just basically upgrades and the same overall pet.  Also the gains we see are horribly small lol.  You should have just used your level 68 pet and it wouldn't have bothered you as much when it lost.  8P

I'm not sure on the focusing, but pet gear is huge and some mage pets will come with phantom plate automatically equipped. 

The gear, the buffs, the randomness, and the fact that straight dueling is a horrible test method to begin with, doesn't really allow for much insight.  Our pets do have scaling problems and all pets have fallen off in usefulness for the most part in recent years, but the situation doesn't really "prove" that.

Oh and DS will totally skew a pet on pet fight, even a little 11pt one from a watcher or passer-by.  The scarecrow illusion actually helps more than you might originally think too.  *shrugs*

[jitathab]

If it was a fair fight you should have used pet heal and panther..

[Thaeliun]

Mages get much better pet aas.  If your friend had his pet's avoidance and mitigation aas maxed then that would explain the difference.  Is the question whether or not mage pets tank better then ours?  If that's the question then the answer is yes and it should be imo.  Mage pets should be better tanks then BST pets.  It's not even a fair comparison unless you try a melee duel with your mage friend, if you lose that one then we need to talk to the devs.

Don't get me wrong.  I would love it if our pets could tank better then they do.  More importantly, I would love it if our pets had better mitigation of aoe damage effects when they aren't the mob's target.  I don't think that has anything to do with a mage/bst pet comparison though.  It's two different worlds.

[Rhoam]

I know this mage had much poorer resists than I do and he also has about 32 AA, none of which were pet defensive AA. I used Orishar on my focused pet and I was just surprised by the turn out here. Neither of us had our 1.5 epic.  His pet ate my pet alive and the only reason why is wasnt worse was because my pet enraged.  His pet most probably had pet gear, but I didnt see any message for a DS coming back, ie Rhoam's warder was burned or such. He did have the chanter buff on, but still, without enrage I would venture to guess that his pet would have been at 80% when mine was at 20%. Is the mage pet supposed to tank or deal that much more dps than our pets? I know its just one example but it was amazing as far as the difference. It made my pet look pathetic, truly pathetic.

[TenceiCei]

Maybe I am going to be off the mark with this but......

Is a Beasty pet suppose to be a tank at the higher end?  I don't think so.  Beasty pets are assistants for a class that can deal out damage and keep the mob occupied until others can assist in the kill.

Should a Mage pet be able to tank at the higher end?  To an extent yes.  Mages can not take the hits that Beasties can, so they need pets better able to protect the Mage or keep the mob occupied while the Mage runs away screaming like a little girl.

Now do I think our utility as a Class has been neglected?  Very much so, but that is another thread.

[Grbage]

They did a retune on pets some time back where all the pets were upgraded but mage pets were upgraded the most. The reasoning behind mage pets getting a bigger boost was that mage pets do all the tanking when soloing against unslowed mobs. So it is no suprise that the mage pets do better when we set pets against each other.

Still, our pets are in bad shape and need help when current content trash mobs are not even a stumbling block for them.

[hakaaba]

You just have to look at the numbers.

melee damage per hit:

               Pet  I    Solo      I     Group     I   Raid
------------------------------------------------------------
luclin    47    I   150(3x)  I   250(5x)     I   450(9x)
------------------------------------------------------------
recent    104  I    600(6x) I   1200(12x) I    4000(40x)

total hp:

              Pet  I     Solo         I    Group           I   Raid
--------------------------------------------------------------------
luclin  3250 I   12000(4x) I   24000(8x)     I 600000(200x)
_________________________________________
recent     6500 I   36000(6x) I  100000(15x) I 2000000(300x)

These numbers are from maidens eye, akheva ruins, and ssra for luclin; fire, RS, and anguish for recent (note that i did not use the worst case scenerios for each catagory, such as sverag)

Also note that not matter what you compare it to, our pet has fallen in relative power by as much as 50% with the SMALLEST fall being around 33%.

Its most blatant when you compare raid dmg per hit (~4000) to our pets hp (6500).  How rediculous is that? 8(

[Tastian]

Rhoam -  The thing you are missing though is that you are looking at one overall outcome with no insight into the various aspects of how that arrived.  Take the "air pet" and change it to a monk with a T-staff and the warder into a zerker(or rogue, warrior maybe, I hope you get the idea).  The point is, just because the "monk" wins, doesn't mean they out tank the zerker or warrior or whatever, it means that overall the damage they dealt verse the damage they received worked out so they won.  What you fail to see is that perhaps your warder was doing more dps, but the pets stuns mitigated a lot of damage that skewed things.  Perhaps your warder took slightly more damage, but didn't do enough more to overcome it, or the hps started off higher or whatever.  I just feel like the conclussion you are trying to reach is a horrible one for the "test" in question. 

Overall mages have access to a pet that is better than our warder at each of the various aspects of "petdom"(lol).  If you were using this duel to see that, then it's a bad test, but yeah mages have better pets.  If you were in search of progression problems for beastlords, then yeah our warders have that too, but it has nothing to do with a level 70 warder verse a level 66 mage pet.  If all you were after was "which pet wins when fighitng another pet which is basically a forced situation and almost never happens" the answer is the mage pet, especially if a DS is invovled. 

I hope this isn't coming across poorly because I'm really just trying to explain some things, but I am at a loss as far as what you expected to see.  I have seen a level 68 DPoC focused warder beat a level 70 MoE focused warder in a duel before.  Does that mean the level 68 warder is better than the level 70 warder?  (no)  Does that mean the level 70 warder does less dps?  (no)  Does that mean the level 70 warder takes more damage?  (no)  Again we wind up in this situation of trying to make an overall statement from one event that has no real regard for the small points.  Parse pet dps on various mobs if you want, parse their tanking if you want, those are tangible things that can be looked at and discussed, but just throwing pets at each other (especially with procs, gear, buffs, AAs, focus, and other factors) doesn't allow for a clear picture of anything more than who happened to win that duel.  *shrugs*

I guess if I look at your original question...

"Should a level 66 spell pet beat out a level 70 spell pet with FOCUS that badly?"

The first thing is that the level 66 pet is basically the level 70 pet in this case because both are the last pet in that regard for the class.  When focus enters into it, it again depends because focus has innate issues that do need some attention.  The answer I guess would be "it depends".  If the "66" pet is 10% better to begin with, and the "70" pet is focused for 8% more, then no, the benefit of focus isn't great enough to overcome the innate advantage the "66" pet has.  Much like asking if "Should a raiding warrior out dps a casual rogue".  Maybe, it depends if the gear edge overcomes the innate advantages of the other.  At baseline the mage pet is ahead and focus overall is pretty minor.  Should it be that way?  Ehhhh tough call, I'd like to see focus do more in several ways and if the focus were much more powerful, then yeah just like a high enough geared warrior will out dps a rogue I'd like to see one pet overcome the natural advantage of the other.  *shrugs*  Wish I had a better answer, but I don't really.  If you did like dueling the pets though you might want to try summoning fresh unbuffed/focused pets and just having a "first to enrage loses" battle or 6 and see how things turn out.  Also might want to try dueling say an earth pet or maybe a water pet instead of air.  The earth pet has more D and lots of hps, but lower dps, and the water pet does more damage, but wouldn't get backstab to land and neither have the stun proc that is very underrated.  *shrugs*