Should upgrades in pets be a dead subject?

[Tomorrow]

Oh gosh, i am going to open up a can of worms =)!!

What drives pet survivability?

If the answer is.......... we lose dps, then why do we want more pet dps?  Wouldn't it make more sense to request a focus on more melee/spell dps rather than pet dps?  At least this way if our pet dies we can actually still do some decent dps.

I can understand why devs are a bit scared of making pets "overpowering" mainly because of exploits.  There is a huge difference between a raid gear beast with full buffs and a group geared beast with group buffs, or even a solo beast with self buffs.  If they (devs) were to scale pets to be able to survive raid type mobs..... then omg...... pets can easily tank group type mobs or even out dps group geared toons.

Say for instance we do get an increase in pet dps!!.  Does that mean our melee dps would remain stagnant? 

On SINGLE raid mobs my warder is actually a very useful dps tool currently parsing at 150-225 dps depending on toys and group set up (i.e. bard + shammy)......... and because our pet has decent dps, we melee worse than most,....... if not all equivalently geared melee classes (i.e. parse with no pets)

On clears though, most the time my pet is on hold.  Mainly, due to liability thus I do not reap the benefits of my pets 150-225 dps.  On mobs that spawn adds i.e. Sendaii, Performer,heck....... Rage is still broken to pet classes!!!! i better stop =/..  and numerous other named's my pet does not last too long =(.  I would like to know the secret of how a beast could actively use their pets to their potential dps on each of the add mobs and being a pet cleric is not an option

1)  Now What if they increased pet dps? does this really help us?
2)  What if they increased pet survivability to be able to survive hits from mobs?
3)  On clears do we actually use our pets to their potential or are they a growl battery.
4)  Please feel free to list other events in which you cannot use your pet to the max potential.

And thats one of the reasons why, i more or less recommend focusing on beastlord melee dps more so than pet dps.  Any thoughts?

[Urim]

My personal opinion is that any increase in a beastlord's dps should include both the beastlord itself and the pet. This is because the lore behind the class is one that the beastlord and warder work together and are a close team so one or the other shouldn't get left out.

Now for the questions:

1) An increase to pet dps would certainly help us and it is something i really want to see happen. The only problems with keeping pets alive (for me at least) is with enrage and ae rampage. One round pretty much kills our pet so being a half second late on /pet hold ends up with resummoning. So an increase in pet dps would help our overall dps in the long run. I think it should be at least double what it currently is.

2)I think pet survivability is actually fairly decent. As i said in previous question, the only times i have difficulty keeping pet alive is with enrage and ae rampage. If there was a way for the devs to get the pet DI AA idea to work I think it would make for an awesome AA and help in enrage/ae rampage situations where pet is killed in a half second.

3)I only use my pet on clears when i have a monk in my group with aura on. Any other time than that it is really not worth it. Since pet dps is so crappy, why risk that the pet would die and lose raid buffs and pet gear when chances of it dieing are almost a certainty.

4)SOE has actually done a decent job in recent expansions making encounters more pet friendly. There are still some that pose problems due to ae rampage. A few events in Frostcrypt -- Gargoyle, the Shadow Selves event (i think thats right name for one im thinking of) -- are the only ones i can think of off top of my head this early in morning.

To rap it up -- Yes please increase pet dps (as well as our own) and try to figure out a way to mitigate the 1 round deaths that occur so frequently to enrage/rampage.

[Pakratz]

I've always thought pet dps should be a risk/reward scenario.  The risk being we lose all pet dps like 35% of the time, so the reward should be zerker-level dps when we CAN use our pets. 

Instead, our dps is tuned under the assumption that the pet is always up and attacking and this is just not true a good chunk of the time.  SOE needs to realize this and put in some kind of reward to match the risk.

[Tomorrow]

I can see both your points Ulrim and Pakratz,  If SoE would double pet dps, i.e. 300-450 dps, without penalizing beastlord dps anymore than it is compared to other melee's.  Now, I can now see that risk/reward scenario.  Its just a bit of a small disappointment, to myself,  seeing that chain casting BaTM will out parse my warder with no where near the maintenance headaches.  I do hate straying away from the lore of the BL class, however SoE strayed away from that long ago.  Right now, i am just trying to work with their inadequacies.

The only pitfall is, a 300-450 dps pet = group geared toon.  This might fall along the line of overpowering.  Who knows maybe they will raise the Double Attack Cap on the next expansion.  In doing so, it might change beastlord dps to stray away from relying on the Cogblaster procs (i.e. nullify eachother out and the output of dps is still the same with a lower proc higher dmg weapon)

Pet Survivability has been a topic for a long time, with mainly the Mage class pushing for it the strongest.  I do agree it should be fixed however, with SoE sitting on a topic for a long time (and i am sure they are aware of ramp/enrage problems) I really do not feel they will do anything about that........ other than take away a possible upgrade in spells ..........for yet another pet invulnerability or another pet heal or heck a new pet rune.   I hope they concentrate more on a new Cure spell or a new Poison DD spell, or a new buff to increase utility.  I felt in the last expansion BL got shafted out of cures or even a group haste because of the fact we got "new" pet invulnerablities and a new pet slow.  I would love for soe to at least work with a CC to help stop some of these mistakes, and yes wtb a CC before its too late.

[Shamno]

Anything that involves increase in our pets ability to survive and DPS should never be out of the question. It is the corner stone of our classes design and needs to be addressed to be always viable. There shouldn't be work arounds and cases where we don't want our pets out....sort of defeats the purpose of the class if this is ever the case.

[Tomorrow]

Hehehe, omg, i am not saying its out of the question lol, nor am i saying just to forget about it lol......... please read beyond the title.  I am just pointing out the fact that nothing has been done about it an feel that they have no intentions of doing anything about pets being one rounded, Shamno, in fear of being overpowered.  As the game moves on and with every expansion we are getting closer to its limitations a good example of that is fero.  Should we say, omg Fero is what a BL is known for and is the corner stone buff of our class and by no means we should work around it.

I am going to have to say SoE is totally aware of our pet situations, and had countless suggestions from experienced players on how to fix it.  Are they doing something about it?  Only time will tell, but i will not hold my breath.  In the meantime, what i am trying to ask is, and maybe i didnt word it correctly.  Until we get what we want in pet survivalbility and numerous fixes with pet problems........ for example
a) able to survive rampage for more than a round
b) able to survive enraged for more than a round
c) able to cure self from death dots that are detrimental unless clicked ... i.e. Daosheen
d) heck in Rage, there is still a charm pet bug which crashes the whole instance if a BL is charmed with a pet
e) pet auto attacking npc's after it got hit once ...... i.e. performer, certain dodh group events........ and does not forget so pet will be on hold the rest of the event
f) and i am sure there is more than i am aware of .... or can remember currently
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Now, should we build upon the problem and push for increased pet dps knowing that these issues have not been fixed 3 expansions ago?  Why compound the problem?

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I do like Ulrims idea and Pakratz idea about doubling pet dps ............ as for risk/reward angle, and could actually accept that easily.

In the meantime until pet survivalbility is fixed!! FIRST.  I am going to say we should concentrate on our melee dps in which will in return bring some utility to the beast class in raids.

[Grbage]

There are two major issues with fixing pet survivability that I can see.

1. Mages insist there pets stay above everyone elses and SOE appears to agree with them. So to increase our pets survival they have to boost mage pets equally, which leads to the second issue.

2. Mage pets are not to far behind casual tanks of around the same level and low aa count. Maybe even better then that since one mage bragged (raider) of how his pet can tank named in FC or AG, can't remember which. I don't know any truly casual tank willing to tank either of those zones.

That leaves us in a really bad spot and is why I believe they have been trying to fix the problem using rune type spells. It's the wrong way to go IMO but they are at least trying to do something.

[Tomorrow]

Yah i heard that as well on my server ... Maelyn Starpye........ I didnt think it was that spread yet.