Pet push

[Jagze]

Hello everyone.

Status: 58 Vah Shir using 58 pet and Spirit of Storm

Problem: Getting blamed for my pet pushing.

My veiw: I solo quite a bit and do not see alot of pet pushing when I am on opposite side of pet. In raids, I see alot of tanks with Copper Hammers of Striking and other stun or DD Proccing weapons that seem to be doing more pushing then my warder. I even put my warder on the proper side to offset any push that may be happening.

You alls insight: I really dont think my pet is doing all the pushing like I am being blamed for. I even got rid of my pet and the push was still very much present. Someone told me that /pet hold will keep pet from pushing but I dont see how. Also, said person was told thats great but I am not level 59 to aquire the AA. Anyone have any info or insight on this item?

Thanks you much.

Jagze
Tribulation Guild on FV

[Tastian]

Pet push isn't nearly what most make it out to be.  The number one cause of pet push rumors is people that don't control their pet well.  Lots fail to position pet right at first and then reposition as needed.  If you left a monk whaling away from the wrong side it'd matter to.

My pet pushes ~as much as I do.  I've solo'd a ton, I've parsed and moved mobs and everything else.  Simply put my dw, 15% atk'n @$$ can counter my pet's push, so it just isn't that great.  People cling to all these wrong opinions and it's getting out of hand.  Spirit of wind and some effects have big push, but copper hammers and shock line for mages have built in push too that most don't do anything about and totally miss.  I've seen whole raids without pets and it's the same old story.  Pet hold really helps with positioning pet, but again just paying attention and moving as the pin/push/whatever requires and you are in good shape.

[houbbs]

I think the biggest problem is tanks do not work to position themselves opposite of their group and the pets. Our pets do push quite a bit if you let them, but it is only noticable when there is no counter push. I always try to make sure my pet is pushing towards the tank, but usually the tank does not help with that. Lot of PoV groups you have tanks going in circles because lack of taunt and aggro.

[Jagze]

Thank you all much for the replies.

I am always trying to position my pet at first and if I notice he is pushing something badly, I back him off, reposition him then resume his attacking.

I am always moving about but I really dont see many others moving to sounter anything.

Our raids usually have 2 BST, some Mages and a necro plus all the clerics gotta summon their little hammers too.

[Jagze]

I also know the CHoS is a .5 knockback stun effect. I also know that stunning a mob with the clerical line can be used for postioning. I have done this and tried it.

You simply face your cleric the direction you want the mob to go and cast the stun line spell and walaah...mob is bounced that direction some distance.

[Coprolith]

I've been thinking a bit about the whole 'pet push' issue and here's my take on it.

As Tastian said, by themselves pet's don't push anymore then PCs. In fact, a dw'ing, da'ing toon with stun procs prolly pushes more. There are two important differences tho.

Firstly if a melee toon doesnt pay attention to his/her push, the mob will get out of range and he no longer pushes. Pets however never miss a beat; they keep a fixed distance to the mob and as soon as it moves an inch, so does the pet, without changing its direction. This brings us to the second difference which is the real heart of the problem: alignment. Push doesnt just have a magnitude, it also has a direction.

(For the mathematically savvy: each PCs or pets push is a vector. The net total push is found by adding all the vectors, for which you not only have to consider the magnitude, but also their direction)

When you're soloing, you will almost automatically line up the mob directly in between you and your pet, so the two pushes cancel out. But if you position the pet at even a slight angle, then the sideways component of its push doesnt get cancelled out and the mob will get slowly pushed to the side. The very instant the mob moves, the pet will move also. The angle between yourself and the pet has now increased and with it the sideway component of the push. So the cycle repeats itself, but faster and faster each time and unless you correct for it things'll get out of hand pretty quickly. Now when you are soloing its easy to correct, as i said you'll do it almost automatically, but the point is that its you that has to the repositioning. When there's two pets on the mob, its not so easy anymore to get the sideway pushes to cancel out, i know this from experience (i 3-box with a druid and a mage).

The same applies to raids, except now there are dozens of individual push vectors that need to be canceled out. The PCs will more or less automatically self-correct their position for push from intuition and raid experience (if they have experience of course, a player that just hits autoattack and steps forward every once in a while to keep in melee range is worse then a pet). But pets can't correct themselves. They just keep going and going unless you tell them to stop and reposition them. This is where /pet hold comes in handy. It stops the pet from attacking even if its taking damage (from an AE for instance). You can then tell the pet to follow you and reposition him. Its not required to have /pet hold for repositioning tho, but having to spam /pet backoff to do so isn't going to make you a lot of friends.

Mage and necro pets are just as bad when it comes to push. The difference is that the mages and necros themselves stand far away from the melee field, and therefore have a much clearer view of how the push is going. Because of that, they may have a better response time in correcting their pets. Then again, they lack the experience of seeing the effect of their own push if they've never played a melee class before.
Its easy to blame push on the pets but in the end, its the players not the pets that are responsible. And when i say players i mean the entire raid force. Everyone has to do their bit to keep the mob positioned. A single PC that's not paying attention to his/her push, be it his own or his pets push, forces everyone else to make up for it with corrections (if correction is at all possible!). As they say, the IQ of a group is equal to that of the individual with the lowest IQ divided by the number of people of the group  :P

It would be nice tho to have a command that tells the pet to always face the same direction, tho i realize that by saying this i risk the wrath of the people that feel that the game is already dumbed down too much and should require more skill.

/hugs

[Tastian]

hehe I think it's funny you mention it as vectors because I was doing some testing in PoI factory and was actually trying to put numbers to pet push verse melee push in terms of magnititude based upon direction I was going at mob verse pets hehe.  Got a few real nice drawings, a bunch of variables, and successfully wasted another couple hours play time lol.  Oh wells hehe.

[Jagze]

Very nice reply Coprolith. I can relate to your meaning with vectors and X,Y,Z coords. Its a tough game of numbers that way but the point is understandable.

I dont really mind in outdoor or solo with the push. Its in tight quarters that is getting annoying. Hard to get a tank to understand that he needs to let the mob come to him fully before ingaging as I need to run past to position pet if he isnt the one turning mob around. Tanks think they are doing just fine if they fetch mob and start fighting but they lack the understanding of the Whole picture of mob placement.  I played a warrior, cleric and shaman to get a good picture of how those TYPES of classes are played. I actually learned to play with the cleric first and learned that way about my stun line of spells and mob control. Used stuns to pull mobs from walls and away from cliffs when the tanks wouldnt stop, think act and respond to pull mob from egde text messages.

So, upon our conclussion, I see that its not so much our warders as it is the melee and casting forces. And, others needing to know how others classes need mobs positioned for us hybreds and casters to be effective and helpful.

Thanks for all your insight.

Keep it coming.

[Tastian]

I just have to say again to pay attention.  I know a few times I've used me + my pet to try and balance a push.  Sometimes melees do after or just don't get it or are too slow.  If you pay attention you can either 1) completely offset the push of your pet or 2) use it along with your own to really help in a situation.  Just think that's the main thing.  Some people talk about push like it's always a bad thing, but really it's in how you use it.  Just like tarnation and dragon punch AA's.  They have uses just when unchecked or used wrong they can cause problems and that's what people always seem to notice.  People are quick to blame a pet when something falls in lava (even when all pets are on /hold *boggles*), but miss nice corner pins and stuff.

[Ttony]

Have also noticed caster spells have a push but not how you might think. The push is based on the way the caster is facing not on which side of the Mob they are. We use this fact when "cornering" a mob to have casters facing the same direction as the MT to push the Mob out as the Mellee and pets are pushing in. Also use it to control placement of range fights such as Fenin Ro.

[DocMoriarty]

61 ogre bst using spirit of snow

Yes we are often blamed that our pets push a lot which in fact isn't true. I fought a lot at PoV with a war and intentionally engage my pet on the opposite side of the mob than the war (using a blunt weapon, copper hammer of striking or so, not sure what else). Now guess who pushes more ? Right, the warrior. But if you tell people they wont believe it although its so obvious.

I think spirit of storm pushes more tho than spirit of snow. Don't have spirit of flame yet, so dunno about that one.

New to me was the info that caster push (cleric stuns, nukes) is based on the direction the caster looks, i always thought its the line from caster to mob along which the mob is pushed. Will experiment with that after servers go up with my cleric friend.

Gorgul, Morden Rasp

[Tastian]

Nah spells always push in the direction the caster is facing.  This is what allows VP and tarnation and a few other spells to be very useful in spots.  You can basically tug a mob or throw a mob wherever you want.  Also holds true for bard mez's.  Used to get dizzy pushing one mob there, pulling one here, oh have some haste, oops charm broke lol.  Wind is the big pusher for beastlords level 51 as it has actual knockback on it, without that the pet really doesn't push that much relatively speaking.

[Coprolith]

I suspect melee push, be it from PCs or pets, is simply a fixed amount per hit, so push rate would be proportional to #hits/unit of time. I'll try to see if i can verify that with parses and put some numbers to it. Not giving an ETA tho, i haven't been able to play much lately.

/hugs

[Naib]

the pet proc is what is doing the major pushes....if you can't see it, you are blind. The early 50 pet procs have a huge push. I have watched my warder kick the snot out of a mob as he pushed him straigh across a room. PCs do not normally push near that much. It takes attentiveness on our part to control the push when it becomes a problem and lack of slackness on the melees part for adjusting to overcome this. It is so annoying hearing everyone blame someone else for this. Our pet proc has push and so does our pet. Control it and everything is fine. Tell the lazy melee who isn't compensating or adjusting to do more than just hit auto-attack. Don't feign ignorance about this fact, it just makes the beastlord community look stupid because it is blaringly obvious to everyone.

[Kherryn]

Spirit of Wind (51) has a push, I know that for sure (duoing in Gunthak, Wind pushed the mob a foot or two everytime it proc'd).  However, Snow/Flame/Rellic doesn't have a push.  Proc goes off, mob stays still.

Honestly, any push is from our pet meleeing, which is the same push any PC does while meleeing.  I can counter the pet's melee pretty much all the time on push just by meleeing, and usually do.