WTB a cure for dumb misconceptions

[Miaow]

   Hi folks, hoping for a bit of insight and/or advice, or that posting this just makes me feel better for getting it off my chest. I'm in a guild that I love 90% of the time, but I'm growing more and more frustrated over the general lack of knowledge of beastlords from a couple of our officers and a lot of our members. There aren't many beasts in the guild, about 10-12, and there are only 3 of us who regularly raid. (Youngish guild, just getting settled into EP and working on back-flagging a whole bunch of new recruits ATM) A few of the officers are former members/officers of the #2 guild on the server, so they're not new to the game by any means, but they're utterly clueless about beastlords sometimes, which makes for some headaches on raids.


   Biggest issue is "pet push", and I'm so sick of it I could just scream. A lot of the newer guildies seem to have no grasp of their push, so we'll end up with 20 melees on one side of a mob, and they'll shove the bejeezus out of it. Add in the fact that Warrior_04 is swinging a SoD, and Paladin_04, Paladin_07, and Paladin_08 have decided that a raid is a swell time to use that irritating knockback stun, and...well, push is horrid. Just when it's getting good and frustrating trying to keep my pet positioned properly via backing it off and running around, the RL will announce, "Beastlords, get those warders on the other side and pin that mob down." Sometimes after that call, the MT will add " If you can't control your pets better than that, kill them." or something to that effect  Uh, yeah.....2 warders are gonna counter 20 people being dumb. That generally prompts a "WTF?" tell from the other beast on the raid, and as I'm typing a response, some paladin hits that stun again and blasts the mob right through Fluffy again, /sigh. A minute or so later, I'll get a tell from one of the officers about how I need to watch my pet's push and keep the mob still, then another will come a few minutes later. After enough of the announcements being made in raid channel, every now and then a group member will take it upon themselves to give me friendly reminders about my pet, which just adds to the annoyance. I've tried having a friendly chat with a couple of the officers after a raid, and being non-confrontational and rational so as to not appear to be a raving nutjob, but only two have listened so far. One of those two required a demonstration, as in watching a monk shove a mob right through my pet, to be convinced, and the rest of them are just stuck in the mindset of, "Well, I've heard that warders push a lot, so it must be true." Is this pretty common among guilds, or are some of our officers just especially closed-minded? And has anyone has any luck in getting someone to listen on this? I'm to the point of not even wanting to summon a pet some nights, depending on who's leading/MTing the night's raid.


   The other issue I've had recently is that one of the warriors in the guild got it in his head that Fero will double his end regen, and has spread that through some of the other  tanks in the guild. A good percentage seem to have ignored him, but enough didn't to make for another headache. The main one who bugs me is another officer, he's been just plain confrontational about it, and quoting the spell data on Lucy did no good.  I generally keep fero on myself, my favorite rogue, one of the rangers, etc.....whoever's there and in range when the spell gem pops up, and I'm fine with that. The rogues love it and offer me bribes of catnip for Fero  :-D The idea of casting it on a warrior just because of some misguided notion, however,  and cutting off one of the DPS classes who actually get some benefit from the buff and appreciates it, grates on me. Yeah, I suppose I could just shrug it off and cast the damned buff on him, but he's going on another one of the "I heard it from a friend who has a level 45 beastlord alt" statements, and not willing to listen to anything to the contrary. Should I just bite my tongue and Fero him, or would you continue to cast it on a DPS class and let him think you're being an ass?


   I realize that I've made a long-winded post about two relatively trivial things, but they've built up over the last few months to something I'm just tired of dealing with, and I guess maybe I'm just developing a bad attitude. As I said at the beghinning, I love my guild 90% of the time, but that other 10% makes me want to drown some of them in the nearest lake    :| I don't think that any of the officers are going out of their way to be jerks, I just think they've been misinformed on some stuff, and their minds seem to be pretty well made up on these things.

Anyway, thanks for listening and letting me vent, and hopefully someone will have the magic answer as to how to educate a couple of people.

[tunr]

on the pet push issue, before the next raid get with your fellow bsties and set it up that when the first call to watch pet push comes around either pocket your pets or kill em off, then stand back and watch.

On the Steelewarror site there are a number of posts about Fero. They may be getting our spell confused with the Aug items and AA.
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11568&highlight=Fero

Here is a nice little discussion they had as well. http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6349&highlight=Fero

[Khayden]

Make a post on your guild message boards that reads:

I am sick and tired of my pet being blamed for pushing a mob more than 20 or so melee, please read this link http://www.beastlords.org/forums/index.php/board,28.20.html and STFU.

Then make a hotkey that says:

/rs It is impossible for a pet to outpush 20 clueless melee, SPREAD OUT and STOP STUNNING.

Every time someone mentions pet push hit the hotkey.

That should make your feelings clear :)

As for fero, I'd just tell the warrior to point you at a link to lucy where it shows endurance regen and then you'll cast it on him.

Khayden

[Dummkopf]

It sometimes is a good idea to leave a guild and join another or just take some time out from the game. Especially if you have to deal with raidleaders who dont have a clue and dont care to educate themselves. Good raidleaders let you take care of your pet on your own and just scream if you obviously screwed up (like pet running into pull etc.).

Well, i took some time out after getting fed up being in a monk guild and at the state of beastlords back then (not that much has changed), now i quite enjoy EQ again and hope to find a new home in another guild.

[Jzath]

Kept my warder off the mob...RL yells to get pets off....I say back, no pets on it.  I kept doing that and now there has not been as many kill pet commands.

[neight]

"The Beastlord's warder provides more "push" than anything else except Wizard nukes".

All of you grab a CHoS and some other weapon with a "push" proc, and toss Spirit of Wind on the pets. Show the idiots what push is. Oh, and please invite them to read this topic.

Neight

[Grbage]

I argued with my GL/RL on this topic quite a bit and posted several articles about push on our guild boards that no one read.

Next thing I tried was having him stand and watch while I soloed a mob with the pet in the rogue position so he could see the mob stayed in place. His response was everyone knew I pushed like a Mack truck so of course it equaled pet push.

Finally, I got him to take on a mob with the pet in rogue position. That ended the whole debate, btw this was over a period of months.

[rdahl]

Make a post on your guild message boards that reads:

I am sick and tired of my pet being blamed for pushing a mob more than 20 or so melee, please read this link http://www.beastlords.org/forums/index.php/board,28.20.html and STFU.

Then make a hotkey that says:

/rs It is impossible for a pet to outpush 20 clueless melee, SPREAD OUT and STOP STUNNING.

Every time someone mentions pet push hit the hotkey.

That should make your feelings clear

If you care about staying in the guild, I'd be a bit more diplomatic.  But he makes a good point, in EQ and RL one has to push back when confronted with stupidity.

[Tastian]

Whenever I've been in a situation like this I'll try to use e-mail/message boards/etc to fully explain things.  Show some data, or whatever to explain why the person is wrong.  I'll always direct people to check the thread out and understand that I'm just trying to not only do my best personally, but my best for the guild.

Sadly though there are a ton of people that just don't understand.  On many occasions I've found myself trying to deal with someone that is exactly 100% wrong and there is nothing more I can do.  When someone is unable to offer any data of their own, to refute any of your data, but still "knows" that you are wrong and more importantly they are right there is little more you can do.

I've seen raid leaders yelling for pets to back off when there wasn't a single pet alive at the time.  I've had raid leaders insist that spells don't push even after I took them to a zone and dragged mobs all over the place with spells like tarnation.  I've had people make more dps/gear/items/spells/tactics mistakes than I can remember without seeing a 30 point rise in my blood pressure.  *shrugs*  Some of it just comes with the turf unfortunatly. 

I always found being able to vent and being able to laugh about it helped.  If not for several key people in my gaming life at key times I'd have retired years ago simply because I couldn't stand it anymore lol.  I'd try explaining things in a clear/reasonable manner and if that doesn't work then just enjoy telling some funny stories to other friends that play EQ and have a clue about how things work.  There's always the option to leave the guild, but from what you mention I think educating/venting/laughing will fix most of it.  8)

[Miaow]

 Well, things have improved dramatically since I posted my rant about my guild and the attitudes toward pets. I'm not 100% sure what it was, but the crappy comments have stopped in /rsay and tells, and it honestly seems like quite a few people have gone and read the information made available to them in order to educate themselves. A few are still ignorant, but the ratio has vastly improved, which is all I can ask for.

And, get this.....the other night I was in a MPG xp group with our GL, our rogue had to log so we invited another guild rogue. The guy was there all of 5 minutes before he started whining about my pet's push and how he was missing backstabs because of it. The GL told him that if he was missing backstabs because of push, he needed to work on strafing and moving himself to compensate for push, the guy continued to argue that it was all the evil pet's fault, so I hit my pet hold hotkey for the next 2 mobs. Rogue went off about how badly the mob was being shoved, I said in group, "And my pet's on hold and isn't attacking, thank you very much.". GL laughed, the other 3 people in group laughed, and then, wonder of all wonders, they proceeded to lay into the guy about his ignorance....all of them.  Lame as it may sound, that was one of the coolest EQ moments I've had in a very long time  :-D

[Tannyon]

same thing happened to me in PoFire once with a group; tank said, no offense, he didnt like beastlords and i said why? he said the damn pets push too much. I said oh, he said yeah. I said, ok, lets experiment - and i went and sat fluffy down in an opposite corner and the bard went and pulled. Lo and behold, HE HIMSELF was pushing the mob as was the rest of the group, because they didnt know how to position themselves AROUND the mob but all attacked from the front. After a few mobs, I said... what do you think about push now? he said he was very surprised and believed pets push. I said, sure they do to an extent, but so do your procs, your bash, my weapon procs, everyone attacking from the front, and so on. He apologized and said he learned something that night.

[hokarz]

Why would anyone but the tank attack from the front? everyone else should be to the sides and back.

[Nusa]

When push is critical and you're not against a wall.

[Khayden]

Yeah I've noticed as we go through Gates that true cornering is much less easy, so spreading out around a mob to balance push is beneficial.  With strikethrough and the anti riposte etc AAs it's not the big problem it once was.

I'll tell you one thing.  I do more dps hitting from the front of a stationary mob than I do hitting the back of a mob being pushed all over the place.

Khayden