I know you are better than this xal...

[Shere Khaan]

Valid points:
...
--Beastlords AND their pets tank and share damage in solo/group. Similar to using Divine Arbitration or other methods of spreading damage out that's pretty effective (I used to tank for pet at times so KNOW it's useful)

This is true for solo but not true for group if there are any melee in the group besides the beastlord (99% of the groups I am in). I have not used this ability ina  group for a very, very long time.

--Beastlords can get proximity, slow and DoT aggro as well as a rampage, plus poison spells are more aggro than others.

Last I checked neither Beastlords nor their pets got a rampage ability. Not sure why you are making a point of a hybrid being able to get more agro than mages.

--Mages dont' have any aggro reduction methods.--Mages have gate, beastlords have SOW as their defences, sans pet.

Should read, "Mages and Beastlords don't have any aggro reduction methods". I have not used sow on myself since GoD came in, Run5 is only 5% less run speed than sow so it is simply a matter of different levels for the same ability.

Shere Khaan

[TerjynPovar]

Reffering to folk who seem to think that I was asking for mages to be able to *cast* slow lure snare when I repeatedly said this was not the case, my suggestions are for OOW and perhaps PoP pet weapon procs, does this have to be carved in stone?

Not ONE SINGLE PERSON believed you were asking to cast these.  Everyone understood that you were only asking for pet procs.

When it was pointed out to you that even as a proc these are overpowered suggestions, you just flailed about, ignored the point, and now you think that the only reason people didn't think this was a good idea is because they were too stupid to read your post?

Sheesh.  Delusional, thy name is Magician (at least lately).

[Silverblade-T-E]

Urim,
Actually that *is* a good idea, hm change pet's innate casts (they cast not proc) to something else, cool! :) IIRC that's sort of what was sugegsted before WAY back but can't recall any details.
Since each pet has specific cast (bar crazy fire pet) either one AA skill changes each to a specific effect, or an AA for each?
--So pet aggro procs are really of no use to beastlords? Has this not been dealt with, debated etc? (genuinely curious)


Bengali,
*nod* I didn't expect BSTs to be sitting there healing pet ad naseum, and with different gear/abilities etc to a cleric, didnt think merely healing pet would be that great a strategy at all ;) Reason I also said pets heals need 3 second cast time across the board was simple fact BST are in melee with enemy, so dont' have much time to piddle around healing pet. Mages because if pet dies they are fubared and have slow casting nukes etc ("Hey Red, need a rod!"..."Sure"..oops dead pet)...and necro pets go down against mobs like well...a certain Miss Hilton? :>
--So yah, be nice to see parses of a mage and BST, doing same mob, both playing pet healer, with jsut their own buffs/items on pets. So while Xalmat had interesting points, as you and others note, his conclusions are I think wrong. Also mage shouldn't end up being pet healers *shakes head*, not a healer class.


Shere Khaan,
By rampage I meant beastlords, as melee class, can get rampaged ON by mobs :) Also some mobs have weird rampage which hits the pet caster, nocs in GoD in particular. Ergo that's a potential hassle for BSTs?
--I should have said "aggro reduction or shedding", in that making pet generate more hate than you can be beneficial, though to a beastlord, you get less use of that because you're in melee range.

Grbage,
Well up till, hm, getting Run Speed3, and even after then at times, SOW potions used to be a heavy drain on my mage's finances ;) Never, ever went anywhere outdoors without SOW, reckon I spent 50,000+pp or so on the damn potions. Current pet zoning changes made a big difference for all pet classes *happy sigh*

Kitvear,
Mages have been one of the *primary solo classes* since Day 1 of EQ, it's like, written in the class description you know :) The fact the class got less able to solo was due to dev's screwups and over sights :/
I don't actualy solo much, it mostly bores me, but I like doing it for a challenge once in a while, or when I haven't got time etc; plenty of other mages players really like soloing, so why shouldn't they? Compare mage soloing in Kunark, which was pretty balanced (bar for rangers or rogues early on) to later.
-My favourite kind of group is often a LDON with no CC/lull pulling melee/pet class heavy, just blasting through mobs, it's much more fun!

feralize

Trying to say that wizard utility is up to par with mage utility is a joke.

And that's noit exactly accurate is it? :)
Snare, stun (non-damage), root, evac, lev, EB, Spell shield, vision spells and ports are utilities.
CoTH, mod rods, pet toys, EB and lev items, summoned arrows daggers and shurikens, debuffs, are mage utilities.
--Wizards are in need of a lot more ports and getting rid of the TL fragments, debates on utility for wizards are big on Graffe's ;)
--Mage utility currently is mostly pet toys and debuffs (on hards/elementals), I'm probably asked for summoned shurikens/knives less than a wizard is asked for a port to Sky Fire, a lot less actually, hehe.
Soon as I zone into POK I get tells for pet toys *sigh*, had to go /roleplay for 1st time in ages...be so nice when they are made targetted summons, and I hope the cast/recat delay is reduced. And Evac/Ports aren't nerfed in most recent zones *cough coth nerfs SUCKS!*
--Wizard utility is good but it needs improved/fixed, so do mages, both are largely relying on utilities 3 expansions old.

Skanda,
So, you personally saw a mage solo a blue in barindu? I've heard of a mage with the Minion of Discord focus soloing Plane of Earth, like one mob and it was incredibly hard to do. I can show you necros, shamans, wizards and druids happily soloing the crap out of PoP, but magesHAVE to have an uber rare focus to do this...balanced this is not, said Yoda ;)
if your magelo is correct (BST one), you are not at higher levels/planes etc? Up to lvl 50, mages rock against old world mobs, very good DPs class, but like all casters, mages cannot be twinked/upgraded anything like as well as melee. 50--60 things go in a U-shape curve for mages. And then somewhat static 61+, 61 being great.
--Simple thing for you to consider and check..see how many mages vs BST there are LFG...check how long it takes a BST to get a group...
DPs classes are not really "desired" by typical groups, they are seen as "filler".

[Skanda]

Skanda,
So, you personally saw a mage solo a blue in barindu?

Did you even read that link I provided that YOU asked for?

if your magelo is correct (BST one), you are not at higher levels/planes etc? Up to lvl 50, mages rock against old world mobs, very good DPs class, but like all casters, mages cannot be twinked/upgraded anything like as well as melee. 50--60 things go in a U-shape curve for mages. And then somewhat static 61+, 61 being great.

You make no sense whatsoever anymore. I am watching the mages in my guild build quite a bit in power from VT/Sol Ro gear. None of them seem to have a problem soloing, none of them are screaming and crying on our guild boards about how life is so unfair.

[Kitvear]

Kitvear,
Mages have been one of the *primary solo classes* since Day 1 of EQ, it's like, written in the class description you know Smile

Actually, I don't know, can you provide me a link to where you got that info from?

One thing I have noticed while soloing with my druid lately though is kinda interesting.  I have this one spawnpoint I clear and unless I run the druid over to harmony them it's a double pull.  Since these 2 mobs are in the 51-55 range I don't really mind getting both on a pull.  I have taken to sending my pet at one of them then switching targets to the other and using slow on it to pull it over to me while my pet is tanking the other.  After the mob I have is one me, I assist my pet and slow his mob.  With the mob slowed my pet requires about 2K in heals while I fight.  That isn't a problem, because like most  other beastlords I don't mess with the long casting 2K heal, it's way to easy to get interrupted and then you have no heal hitting the pet which is pretty useless. So I use my faster casting 910hps heal.  Anyways I digress.  It suddenly dawned on me that I was using my druid to put his shield of thorns (24pt ds) on me but here I was intentionallly sending my pet to tank a mob without a ds.  So the very next fight I put thorns on my pet,  He killed the mob faster and didn't even need a heal, actually he got down to 40.  I did my fights that way for a few spawns then I got to thinking, if the mob died that much faster with a 24pt ds while the mob was slowed how would it work if I didn't slow the mob, he would be hitting that Damage Shield a lot more often.  I decided to give that a little test and sent my pet up against a unslowed willsapper and watched to see how well he would fare.

Now I know that everyone likes to toss up numbers and say it proves something but seriously, I can make a pet and not buff it at all and then point at it and say see our pet bites!  I like seeing people put hard numbers up but they don't prove anything because we all  know that mage gear, buffs, haste, damage shields make a huge difference in how our pets peform.

My pet buffed with the following:
Infusion of Spirit
Arag's Celerity
Talisman of Krag
Spirit of Wolf
Spiritual Strength
Shifting Shield
Spirit of Rellic
Skin like Nature

versus a slowed wilsapper requires on average 2K worth of healing

My pet buffed as before:
Plus Shield of Thorns

versus a slowed willsapper doesn't require healing and ends fight at 40% health

My pet buffed as before including the thorns:

versus a UNslowed willsapper doesn't requre healing and ends fight at 20%

I found that to be pretty interesting.  Now while I'm running around with my lil druid pet on autofollow I make sure that I always keep thorns up on my pet as well.  

So please everyone before you start tossing up your magical parses that you claim means something, try and give us a little info.  Seriously for all I know your making a pet not giving it pet gear nor a ds (and yes I know your fire pet has a innate ds)  then taking a parse and saying it means something, but it actually means nothing because nobody is bothering to specify under what conditions that the parse was taken under.

[Tastian]

The main thing is you are only talking one fight and anything can happen in that one fight.  I was recently re-testing BF on test and over the course of a 2.5 minute fight I had a whopping 4% off hand double attack rate.  The RNG is fuzzy and if you talk about a fight overall you just add more variables.  In the case of your pet fighting and the other mobs you have...

-  Mob damage

-  Pet mitigation

-  Pet damage

-  Pet avoidance

All of these have huge swings in them on their own.  I don't doubt what you say, and I think your conclussions are close to what would be expected, but such a small sample size is just as misleading (if not more so imo) than a large samplesize that leaves out certain classifications.  

Btw, just as a note of something I found funny...

I was starting to test pet mitigation.  I threw my beastlord pet in front of a mob unslowed that I used to fight with my magician and my pet died lol.  The spike damage + casting time + bigger heal so have to land later on for max effectiveness and it got eaten.  Now that was just a mistake on my part and not casting sooner, but I had to laugh at that.  I am doing more tests as I find time, but I just thought that was too funny.  Everyone talks about our bigger heals and all these perfect world situations, but half the time I don't even heal my pet for the full amount of the spell especially if it crits.

[Silverblade-T-E]

Kitvear,
True you really have to be specific when doing comaprison parses :)

On Pre-PoP mobs, a damage shield is very mean, because they don't have thehuge DPs of PoP+ mobs, thus they will literlaly burn themselves down on a damage shield ;) That's one reason why I said mages up to lvl 50 rock. The old fire pets versu sold content mobs = totally evil, hehe.

There was also IIRC a parse on an Avatar of War fight years aog, showing a fully stacked damage shield, about 120 points back then, did around 120+k damage, out damaging everyone on the raid.

Damage shields though became of negligible worth in PoP+, so after complaining about this, they got slightly upped in power, but importantly, the duration went up. Since mobs HAD to be slowed even in normal xp situations, a DS becme very poor return and lack of buff slots was a concern. When fighting 20k+hp mobs who hit for 500+, a 45hp DS wans't worth much versus a 1.5khp 90hp hitter and a 20 hp DS (comparison of old world versus PoP)
Maelstrom of Ro, group DS, was changed from 45hp 7.5 minute to 48hp 15 minute (450 mana), so that's actually worth using now.

DSes are superb when fighting lots of mobs quickly, not so great on slowed singles (which is PoP basically). On an Easy LDON a great strategy is NOT to slow, have a melee/pet heavy group, group damage shield, and let the mobs fry ;) Was nice hearing a shaman say "Stuff slow, I'll just heal and AOE, let the damage shield do the work!" hehe.

There is a potential in OOW for mage balancing without screwing around too much outside class.
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=5492&source=Test
There's been debates on this on the Magetower, could be a winner if tweaked!

Also on lucy we can see proposed OOW mage pet weapon summons, though not details of the items:
Summon Spear of the Deep (probably cold proc)
Summon Staff of the North Wind (probable magic proc?)
Summon Fireblade (probable fire proc)
The names do suggest other effects possible, Staff of the North Wind sure sounds like it may have a stun proc, ala air pet? Now these are level 66+ spells, so they SHOULD be a lot more powerful than previous ones, yes?
Question also is: how to limit them to pets of appropriate level. Folk "twink" low lvl pets iwth mage summoned gear but it is a tad ridiculous adding 600hp to a lvl 4 pet ;)
So, what would the BST community think is good for these items? Now remember these are for lvl 70 folk and content (eventually). So please do NOT say a 150hp proc is appropriate, cause it ain't ;)

I only see 1 BST pet proc for OOW and that seems just a copy of odler one, a place holder as it were until updated so nothing to really go on :/

[Tastian]

Okies threw my pet at some larvae in PoV.  Not a good parse in a lot of ways, but it's some numbers againist easy mobs that anyone can get to.  Best part was I could keep my pet healed againist them unslowed (sorta).

For these tests I had VoQ, Bot9, FT15, Spell haste IV, PoX, Maxed healing gift, rank 4 healing adept, pet mend, paragon.  

Pet had DPoC focus, Pet affinity (means vigor over single target spiritual), had Maxed pet fury, had maxed pet flurry.  Buffed with Vigor (see above), arag's, infusion, kragg, shifting shield, and rellic (note mobs were low enough for rellic to actually land where as in many spots usually discussed such as HoH, BoT, etc it simply won't).

Combined fight duration was 18 mins 32 secs

Average hit againist pet was 272
Average dps againist pet was 120.05
Hit % againist pet was 66%
Total hits againist pet was 490
Total damage againist pet was ~133,000

Pet melee dps was ~67


"When fighting 20k+hp mobs who hit for 500+, a 45hp DS wans't worth much versus a 1.5khp 90hp hitter and a 20 hp DS (comparison of old world versus PoP) "

DS might not be what it was, but looking over the fights the pet ate 490 "hits" * 45 = 22,050  Now just to give that value a bit of meaning the larvaes have almost exactly 20k hps lol.  Basically just having a mage drop a dmg shield on my pet would have done enough damage to have killed another larvae lol.

Also I want to note a couple other things that get lost when looking at numbers just on paper.  

-  I had to save my pet 3 different times when it would have died out from under a heal casting.  I pet mend'd once and stepped in twice as I simply didn't have a choice.

-  All heals started at ~50% of my pets life.  Yet without the spell haste putting my heal to 7.7 instead of 9 my pet would have died atleast once.  

-  There were several times where I basically had to keep chain casting my heal as by the time the heal landed and refreshed my pet was back down in the yellow again (UI mod).  Like was said dps is an average, but over fights it's just not that smooth.

-  There were several heals that simply didn't do as much as they could or should because of what my pets hps are.  It's great to look at a maxed out pet mend clearing 5k hps on paper, but I just can't land heals for that.  The "worst" heal was a crit for over 4600 that only healed ~2700.  

-  Larger heals require waiting longer to get the full effect, but that makes pet dieing to a streak more possible.  It's very hard to balance starting the big heal too early and not getting near max out of it verse starting too late and having a good chance of the pet buying it.

Only thing you can see out of the parse is that bst pet mitigate for schit lol.  Also that heals you see on paper just don't translate well into real world applications.  Oh and that dmg shields especially after tweaks are quite powerful and a very mana efficent form of damage.  8P  I'd have done the tests on crystalline golems or HoH guards, but I didn't have time to get out my cleric and there's just no way I could cover the healing as a solo beastlord.  I really shouldn't bother putting up more data as it will either be a) misinterpreted or b) accurately quoted and then used as the basis for something it doesn't relate to.  12 pages now and we still don't have a single person giving a solid valid reason why mages should out solo beastlords, or out pet heal them, but that's what most of the rants are about lol.

[Kitvear]

Thanks for replying,  yes, I'm talking pre-pop.

I can't solo in pop, my mitigation and avoidence on me or my pet just doesn't cut it.  Not your fault of course and you at least are reading our boards and trying to be objective.  My point is your soloing mob POP+ and me, not time geared of course nor elemental, but fairly twinked for non raiding beastie with a few aa's can't even dream of heading into pop.

My heals are based on alteration, in which I can't specialize, and SCM isn't available. More to the point since i'm forced to tank for my pet mostly then most of my gear can't be very castor oriented and thus I'm sacrificing potential healing mana for hps and ac.  I'm not trying to say pity me, I have worn FT9, tribute FT5, improved healing 4 plus some aa's and I know my place in Grieg's End where with the help of my now lvl 51 druid pet I can more or less solo very well again pre-pop mobs.  So maybe you can see how it eats at my craw to hear people who can solo things I can't even dream of are saying that i'm overpowerd.

I have no problem whatsoever with mages and/or necro's getting better heals, more aa and better pets.  Rock on, I'm just saying that we have a 2K heal that is useless for our class, and since i'm not in pop my 910 hps heal is more then fine.  There is a lot of AA available to me that I haven't gotten yet for my pet, I"m at pet flurry 1 and pet crit 1, I have pet hold and suspended minion2. My pet flurries and has his little crits, I have my dpoc and life is pretty good, as long as I don't even think about trying to do what a mage can do.   But I do want more.

[Dummkopf]

DS is one of the best dps you can get in this game, sure, you need several stacking DSs and a bard who can enhance them plus as many +ds items as you can get. The best dps ive ever parsed a warrior was 420 against the first original ikkinz1 (one group) named. About 120-150 was weapon dps, the rest was pure damageshield. Now, this mob was unslowable and very fast hitting so a ds would do more damage but i was extremely impressed by that parse.

OT and just for info.

[Tastian]

Btw, just as another small frame of referance I went and solo'd those same mobs in PoV tanking this time instead of letting pet.

Combined fight duration was 18 mins 32 secs (for me 8mins 12 secs)


Average hit againist pet was 272 (for me 225)
Average dps againist pet was 120.05  (for me 76)
Hit % againist pet was 66% (didn't remember to toggle hits missing me back on)
Total hits againist pet was 490 (for me 156)
Total damage againist pet was ~133,000 (for me ~35,000)

Now different beastlords will have different ranks of AA, different gear, different weapons, etc.  However, this isn't even close...

Me tanking:
I cast 38 heals * 175 mana base for 6,650 mana spent (base not counting PoX).  

Pet tanking:
I cast 50 heals * 425 mana base for 21,250 mana spent.  (again base not talking PoX).

Fights were so much faster, and the downtime was even signifigantly less.  Even with letting my DPoC pet get beat down crazy low and then regen'n back where as I had to heal myself back up after fights the downtime for regen'n mana wasn't even close.  After a fight with pet I'd end up down ~50% mana.  After a fight with me tanking I'd be down less than 20% mana.  Also I didn't have Bot9 for the fights with me tanking, but did for the pet tanking fights.

Like I've said before my pet just doesn't tank and certain doesn't tank solo.  I could maybe see backing out at the end of the fight to let pet finish mob well you med a bit and then pet regens back up.  I could maybe see backing out, medding a sec, using pet mend since it was up and then going back in.  However, in a lot of spots I solo I simply have 100% uptime and don't back out, so those options go right out the window.  Even in those situations though I can't find a time I'd back out, let pet tank, then blast them with healing of sorsha.  The pet takes so much more damage than me that the efficency of sorsha verse chloroblast is lost and the long casting time coupled with pet mitigation means I run a high risk of losing my pet or landing a heal for less than max efficency.

Yup dumm DS's can be insane.  I used to play a bard back during early vindi raids with him being unslowable + rampage and the stacking that could be had back then it was just insane.  What's funny though is too many people look at all the things that lower a damage shields value and miss how good they still are.  For insance a log I parsed of a 3 hour session in HoH the other day had me taking on average ~15 hits per minute.  At 45 dmg per hit and 15 minutes duration that means the cast of DS would have done ~10k damage or ~22 dmg per mana spent.  That's pretty impressive imo considering the mobs were 65% slowed and didn't mitigate at all.  In a situation where mobs mitigate slow, you have multiple mobs like pulls in LDoNs, you have rampage, etc dmg shields just get crazy good.  The problem is too many dismiss how good they are in situations that don't even favor them.  I.E.  a block class tanking againist fully slowable 65% slowed mobs that are always fought single.  Also don't forget all that damage is completely aggro free.  Nother really nice bonus hehe.