I know you are better than this xal...

[Tastian]

http://www.magecompendium.com/library/petheals.html

Seriously man.  I've done a lot of parsing and reading and everything else over the years, but this is seriously lame man.  There's wrong information, there's obvious bias toward mages and a complete lack of understanding of how beastlords function shown.  You focus on the numbers you want and you completely ignore the numbers that you don't.  Most high end beastlords complain about their heals as being unuseable atm because of casting time, yet you deem them overpowered.  It's seriously a bad joke man.  

A beastlord that heals their pet is LOSING dps.  They lose dps because if their pet is tanking they aren't doing melee/proc dps.  They LOSE dps because of the time spent casting the heal is MORE time spent not melee'n.  Well a mage ALWAYS has the pet tanking and because of how nukes work you can still heal and have almost no impact on your dps outside of mana used.  To give you a very easy example, I tank solo in HoH, blast myself, pet bites mob in the @$$.  I go can go almost non-stop.  A couple weeks back I decided to pet cleric one for S&G's.  Guess what?  Burned 80% of my mana, used pet mend, and had the fight take ~3X longer than it usually does.  

You throw in a bunch of information about clr/dru/shm well ignoring some of their heals, you make direct comparisions between heals that can land on anyone and heals that are pet only, you sigh.  Seriously man wtf?

You look at the bigger heal numbers and you completely miss the situations where a heal would actually be used....

If a pet is taking a little damage or a stray riposte you let it heal up after the fight.

If a pet has taken a lot of damage and you are about to lose it you blast it with Pet mend (Which all pet users get and is by far the best pet heal in the game).

If a pet is taking a ton of damage so fast that you can't wait for it to regen the damage after then a 9 second casting time heal won't save the pet!!

The only cases where beastlord heals are noteably better than mage heals is when you are fighting like a mage fights with pet on mob and caster behind it.  However, this isn't how beastlords fight, and it's not a situation you will see.  The mana to heal ratios are reasonable imo with beastlords having an edge.  The casting time issues needs to be addressed and I'm all for changes to all pet class heals (as are many here), but your direct comments againist beastlord heals that you obviously don't understand (or worse yet do and are simply ignoring basic knowledge to further your cause) is completely unreasonable.  The only time I've ever been upset with a thing you said and also the only time I've ever been disappointed in ya.  8(  

Here are the current OoW pet heals for both classes....

Beastlord
1:     Increase Hitpoints by 2730
2:    Decrease Disease Counter by 16
 
Mana:    531    Skill:    Alteration
Casting Time:    9    Recast Time:    2.25

Mage
1:     Increase Hitpoints by 1750
2:    Decrease Disease Counter by 24
 
Mana:    400    Skill:    Conjuration
Casting Time:    3    Recast Time:    10

Now the beastlord one is better if you fight like a mage, but (fights off using caps) beastlords are not mages.  I know a large number of beastlords that would rather have the mage heal than the beastlord one listed.  9 second casting time is a joke.  Ok I'm done, I'm sorry if this is considered a rant or a flame, but I was honestly shocked when I saw this and had felt it needed to be addressed.  You a good guy xal, you've done a lot of great things, but this was seriously wrong on a bunch of levels.

[Sarrik]

Actually no that post was extremely well written and well researched. I happen to agree with what it says.

Your right that some beastlords have problems with their heal being 9 seconds, and that may be an issue, currently the mages heal is 7 seconds, take note of the recast times though. I really consider that a seperate issue really, perhaps beastlords need an upgrade in casting time.

The fact that is shown very very very clearly here is that beastlord pet healing is way over powered in comparison to any other pet class. The devs have said multiple times that shamans healing is significantly LOWER because of SLOW and how powerufl it is. Why then are beastlord pet heals so incredibly high while the beastlords have slow? should the same logic begin applied to shamans not be applied to beastlords aswell?

I realize its hard to accept that your class may have been given a bit more then they should have, and i have no doubt that most of you will disagree but that matters little facts are facts. I use to play a 65 Beastlord on Ayonae Ro, so im well versed in how beastlords work, I play a mage now, and I see the horrible problems that plauge the class especially in comparison to the beastlords.

The best thing about Xalmats post, is that it calls for upgraded mage healing of pets within reason and doesnt call for any nerfs to beastlords or  any other classes. I think that is well done and something that beastlords should be able to agree on, if they are objective. if mages got the exact sme heal as a beastlord the fact that a beastlord has slow is just so far ahead.

[Coprolith]

No kidding. I think its safe to say that just about every beastlord would rather have the 3s pet heal then their own 9s heal. I'd gladly pay twice the mana for it as well.

Im also sick and tired of people using our ability to slow mobs when we're soloing as justification for demanding upgrades of their own power. Soloing ability is nice to have if you cant find a group, but its not a valid argument to use in class balancing, because any upgrade you'd get based on solo ability alone works thru in groups and raids. Equal power in soloing ability gives a huge advantage in a group, completely destroying theclass balance there where its most important.

Xalmat must think we're pretty gullible to be impressed by pretty numbers alone. Unfortunately for him we're not; his pretty numbers are meaningless, as they don't apply to any realistic situation. Take his mob dps numbers against mage vs beastlord pets for example. They would apply only to the situation where a beastlord is pet-clericing, in which case the beastlords own dps would be no more then 60-70 dps, easily 2 to 3 times lower then a mage solo dps. The beastlords pet would take far more damage then a mage pet over the duration of the fight despite the fact that the mob was slowed. Who needs the bigger heal? The pet that takes the most damage. Who needs the faster heal? The pet that takes more dps.

I don't have Tastian's self-control so im just gonna say it for what it is. This write-up is the biggest piece of junk I've ever seen. I'm also pretty sure Xalmat is smart enough to have considered the things I've said above, so i consider this a deliberate attempt to get more goodies for your own class by trying to put another class in a bad light thru misinformation.
This is extremely bad form for someone with such influence over a class community.

[Lheo]

ah yes, so the mages want more pet power, already done (but they want still more..., and they want BETTER petheals TOO  2100 heals castime 2,75 sec or so..ROFL what stuff are they smoking??

[Xalmat]

You know what? I'm not gonna sit back while my class is being nerfed to oblivion and becoming so underpowered that we are a mere shadow of our former glory. If you don't like my methods, I can't help that.

[Lheo]

LOL what NERF?

your pets got a HUGE Boost some months ago

(noway will SOE turn Mages in a "Godlike-class" with huge dps AND superior petheals..)

[Tastian]

"Actually no that post was extremely well written and well researched. "

Well written I'd argue because it's more less propganda.  The well researched I call BS on too.  The whole thing ignores several key facts and actively focuses on the points that he wants.  It's "well written" in the sense it delivers his message and shows what he wants it to show.  It's poorly written and researched because it ignores several key facts and is overly biased toward mages.

"Your right that some beastlords have problems with their heal being 9 seconds, and that may be an issue, currently the mages heal is 7 seconds, take note of the recast times though. I really consider that a seperate issue really, perhaps beastlords need an upgrade in casting time. "

The 9 second casting time is THE BIGGEST issue with beastlord heals atm.  The casting makes the spell almost completely unuseable for almost every besatlord.  Check the threads on these boards, check class discussion, I guarantee you less than 10% of beastlords have healing of sorsha mem'd full time.  The recast timer is much less of an issue.  If you are chain healing your pet then things have changed a lot.  For a beastlord that means they are doing zero melee dps, they are also doing nothing else (no slowing, no healing others, etc).  Yet a mage can heal pet, drop nuke, heal pet, etc.  

"The fact that is shown very very very clearly here is that beastlord pet healing is way over powered in comparison to any other pet class."

BS again.  I guarantee you almost every mage in the game heals their pet more than a beastlord does.  Beastlord heals have several things going for them and they even look ok on paper, but in practice they aren't useable currently.  You have some people like beng that have been trying to find a use for their pet heal, but some beastlords even before they get pet mend have the spell perma un-mem'd.  

"Why then are beastlord pet heals so incredibly high while the beastlords have slow? should the same logic begin applied to shamans not be applied to beastlords aswell? "

I'm sure most people get this, but beastlord heals only work on the beastlords pet.  We can't even heal other pets with our heal.  A shaman slows a mob and it effects everyone.  Every heal the shaman would cast, every heal the cleric would cast, etc.  The warrior can tank it the shaman can tank it, etc.  However, a beastlord has to have their pet tanking to use these heals.  That means that the beastlord as well as everyone else can't be tanking.  That means you are doing signifigantly less damage, that means you are fighting longer, etc.  The healing efficency beastlords see is similiar to the reason bard dots are lower than most classes, it factors in the total picture.  Beastlord heals have to be very efficent to ever be used over simply blasting ourselves or someone else.  As it stands now they aren't even close to useable in almost all situations a beastlord will ever find themselves in.

"I realize its hard to accept that your class may have been given a bit more then they should have, and i have no doubt that most of you will disagree but that matters little facts are facts."

BS again.  I am without a doubt one the most level headed overall EQ players you will ever meet.  I've played every class and I'm not some beastlord lover that just wants his class to be the best.  I'll be the first to tell you how good beastlords have it and I'll be the first to tell you what's worng with them.  I don't go around yelling for malo or SoS or anything of the sort.  That's the problem with xal's writing it's completely biased, it totally ignores several main points about the game and comes across as a "I wanna be better" whine to anyone that has any real comprehension of all the things in the post.

"The best thing about Xalmats post, is that it calls for upgraded mage healing of pets within reason and doesnt call for any nerfs to beastlords or any other classes."

It is using artifically inflated beastlord data as means of justifying those mage bonuses.  That completely changes the tone of the post to "see mages should have this because of mage issues and mage definition" to "hey beastlords can already do it, so should we".  The problem is it ignores too many facts and is using beastlords to try to get mages boosts.  It strikes a cord and becomes completely unbareable when you realize that the beastlord data he is using is something beastlords can't even use. If he'd used slows atleast beastlords would go "well we do slow and mobs do less damage slowed", but he used our heals which are all but unuseable atm.  Don't you see why this is such a problem?

" if mages got the exact sme heal as a beastlord the fact that a beastlord has slow is just so far ahead."

This just isn't true, and one of the biggest problems with the post is it compares mages and beastlords as if they are the same.  They aren't the same, they don't fight the same, they aren't balanced the same.  Slow well solo is a very powerful thing, but the game isn't built around solo, yet it seems mages constantly go back to this point whenever an issue arrises.  I have said before that I felt all pet heals needed to be looked into, but there is no way on earth a mage should heal their elemental almost the exact same as a beastlord does.  If that were to happen it would signal a change in the game and the direction things were going and other changes would have to happen as well.  Simply giving mages the same healing as beastlords when they are in a better position to use them and the heals are more powerful for a mage is simply wrong.

Like I said before beastlords want pet heals (all pet heals) to be looked at and have said so before on these boards.  However, using manipulated data and overly leading writing to make a point is simply poor taste.  I'm as disappointed in xal as I am upset that beastlord healing was misrepresented.

The biggest issue is that mages keep talking about beastlords like we are the same.  The closest thing I could liken this to is a RNG only tunic that clicked a nuke.  Druids could use and would highly want.  Yet, the casting time would take away from melee/archery dps and be much less desired on a ranger.  If the tunic were made druid useable it'd be substantially more powerful on the druid than it ever was the ranger.  This is the same thing with beastlord heals.  They would be substantially more powerful on mages than they ever have been on beastlords.   Mages keep looking at beastlord heals in terms of mages and that's a HUGE no-no.    

Beastlords melee, and we are a utility class that is often called upon to buff, debuff, and even heal others sometimes.  Our spells are designed around that.  This is kind of like people that complain about how fast hybrid spells cast with no clue about the recast time or the fact that if they didn't cast as fast as they do they'd be unuseable because of how the interfer with our melee damage.  Do you have any idea how many rangers can't cast any of their nukes because once you factor in resists they are using mana to lose dps.  Then realize that their dps is balanced around melee'n + casting.  This is a big ranger issue atm, but it's very similiar in that one class is looking at something another class does in terms of themselves and not in terms of the class that actually gets it.  

I understand beastlord type heals would be more powerful for mages, but as it stands beastlord heals are crap for beastlords lol.  There's a ton of things like this in the game.  If that isn't clear I'm sorry, but it's very obvious what the problems with the post are.  I'm not out to incite a riot and I still respect xal and the work he has done.  However, this definitely the "thott graphs" of his career.  Things like this are the reason you see the class hate and sniping and X verse Y debates you see currently.  There was no need to mention beastlords, no need to poorly represent facts, but that's what was done.  There were many ways to deliver this very point and possibly even reach the same conclussion, but the manner in which it was done was very poor.

[Tastian]

"You know what? I'm not gonna sit back while my class is being nerfed to oblivion and becoming so underpowered that we are a mere shadow of our former glory. If you don't like my methods, I can't help that."

Xal bro I love ya likes the fat kid loves cake.  I've agreed with many mage changes.  I've parsed and ran numbers.  Long before the pet cani nerf, god long before beastlords.  The problem is this isn't how you get it done.  Mages had a LOT of beastlord support in the past and that is diminishing because of all the attemps at direct comparisions and nerf calls coming from mages.  Now having a very respected mage do this kind of analysis that ignores so very much pertinent information is just going to make things worse.  

I don't want mages nerfed, I don't want them useless or unfuctional.  However, I don't want them getting things they don't deserve or to be trying to take shortcuts and con their way into boosts either.  That's exactly what I feel your post did.  

Mages have some issues still, so do a lot of classes, but they aren't in nearly as bad a shape as some are making it out to be and things like this only take away from the overall community support the class has.  Mages are a dps class that is capable of sustaining a very high dps number for awhile and bursting quite high as well.  They also have the ability to solo, something a lot of the other high dps classes like rogues don't have.  Mages aren't the best, they could of course get better, but this just isn't the way to do it.  If you can't already see that your post did far more harm for mages than it could good then I'm truely sorry that you are that frustrated with the state of mages atm.

[Coprolith]

You know what? I'm not gonna sit back while my class is being nerfed to oblivion

This says it all really. You're just so blinded by class envy that you consider someone else having a better toy (on paper only) then you to be a nerf of your own class, and never mind that in other areas of expertise such as pet dps the gap between mages and beastlords is only going to widen.
If you cannot build a case for getting better heals without making false accusations towards another class, then you have no case for getting better heals.

[Dummkopf]

You know what? I'm not gonna sit back while my class is being nerfed to oblivion and becoming so underpowered that we are a mere shadow of our former glory. If you don't like my methods, I can't help that.

Im all for it, give mages those heals but to work around the powerup they have to block all spell gems for 30 seconds (like frenzy), that would about equal the dps loss a beastlord gets for petclericing and thus equal the usability of the healing spells. Or just give beastlord pets an upgrade instead of a nerf (like last time) and let them backstab, normal max hit unfocused like mage pets and add innate nukes (which of course stack with the pet proc).

Seriously, this is one of the worst class envy posts i've ever seen.

[kegulik]

Forgive me, but every beastlord I've played with has cared more about their pet than mages.  We invest a lot of mana into it, and try our best to keep it alive.  Recasting a pet is losing large chunks of our own DPS, and quite a mana investment.  By your own classes admission(chain summoning strategies), yours are expendable.  So shouldn't it follow that we have better pet heals?

Going a little bit farther down that line, from 49-61, our pets are more expensive mana wise.  We also aren't likely to have summoning eficiency, and mana efficiency as well, to a lesser extent.  Throw in speciliazation, and our effective summoning cost is much more.  So shouldn't we have the ability to maintain our pets more-they are just as vital to us as you, and a larger investment.

A question of my own:
I thought we were our own, individual class, not a hybrid.  Spell circles non-withstanding, didn't sony come out and say we were unique, no more a hybrid than bards?

[Incite]

The devs have said multiple times that shamans healing is significantly LOWER because of SLOW and how powerufl it is.

Uh, if the devs said that then they need fired.  The issue with shaman healing is related to the efficiency of shaman's mana regen (Canni line).  

I realize its hard to accept that your class may have been given a bit more then they should have, and i have no doubt that most of you will disagree but that matters little facts are facts. I use to play a 65 Beastlord on Ayonae Ro, so im well versed in how beastlords work, I play a mage now, and I see the horrible problems that plauge the class especially in comparison to the beastlords.

No ... beastlords are pretty well balanced where they are.  Mages have problems, yes, but are better off than their whining implies.  They vastly out gun us in DPS; I'm often left in awe of mage's sheer damage output ... something I can't even get close to.

[Skratchen]

You know what? I'm not gonna sit back while my class is being nerfed to oblivion and becoming so underpowered that we are a mere shadow of our former glory. If you don't like my methods, I can't help that.

The whole article was a complete hatchet job on Beastlords.  It's so nice that of one of the Mages' top representatives would go out of his way to ask for a stealth nerf to another class.  I wonder what we could dream up over here about mages......
Nah nevermind, I'd rather not focus on other classes; I prefer to discuss the class that matters to me most.

[Goretzu]

The problem is although it is (I think) asking for mage buffs it reads like it's asking for BL nerfs (maybe it is).

[Grifdaddy]

Quote Coprolith:
<<Im also sick and tired of people using our ability to slow mobs when we're soloing as justification for demanding upgrades of their own power>>

Welcome to the world of Shamans lol.  People have been using their slow as a justification for either nerfing shaman or upgrading other classes sinec Kunark.  And yes in Kunark and Velious the slow was super powerful, but it's only 5% than chanters and 10% better than Beastlords.  With slow mitigation the differences are even lower.

Quote Incite:
<<Uh, if the devs said that then they need fired. The issue with shaman healing is related to the efficiency of shaman's mana regen (Canni line).>>

Canni just doesn't give shaman the big mana regen lead anymore.  Yes it's great (especially once you get the canni AA) but with Bot9, Beast crack, Kei/VoQ, and lots of self mana regen buffs etc every class can have great mana regen.  Still not quite as good but shaman canni is active, not passive mana regen.  They can't do anything else while they canni.  Necromancers take the mana regen cake tho

Sorry, /derail off... my old shaman coming out in me.  By all means increase mage heals a bit, but we really need to stop "this class has X and my class has Y, nerf that class or upgrade my class" comparisons.  Just in my opinion.