Game Mechanics: Pets don't hold hate like they should: Copious amounts of EVIDENCE

[Velerin]

Great evidence Baalzy. I started on this server some 8 months ago and have been bumping these pet aggro threads every chance I get. I love pet classes, still play mage as main here, but they are so borked. Lousy aggro, don't cast nearly enough, etc.. I just wish some dev will address this one someday. Even if they just say "suck it, we don't like pets. We aren't changing anything." and I'll stop worrying about it and probably switch to the best p99 pet class, enchanter.

[Nirgon]

I do know my necro pal who solo'd on live until 50 had to use fear even with a compliment of dots because the pet would get aggro otherwise.

Dots for sure were Venom of Snake + Blood Boil + Dooming Darkness -> pet could still get aggro off, even without taunt.

Not sure how this applies to raid mobs.

Not sure how this applies to having a pet tank for a rogue... we just never tried to do things like that.

Not sure exact threat values but it appears pets need a significant aggro boost here from my clickings around on a few chars. How much? Should it be damage based? Numbers of attacks based? Dunno that either, sorry.

[baalzy]

Originally Posted by Nirgon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I do know my necro pal who solo'd on live until 50 had to use fear even with a compliment of dots because the pet would get aggro otherwise.

Dots for sure were Venom of Snake + Blood Boil + Dooming Darkness -> pet could still get aggro off, even without taunt.

Not sure how this applies to raid mobs.

Not sure how this applies to having a pet tank for a rogue... we just never tried to do things like that.

Not sure exact threat values but it appears pets need a significant aggro boost here from my clickings around on a few chars. How much? Should it be damage based? Numbers of attacks based? Dunno that either, sorry.

Personally I think it's a combination of the pets not generating enough hate & spells generating too much hate. From what I understand spells generate a static amount of hate per type of effect (1:1 hate:dmg for nukes. 400 for any snare/stun/debuff effect type thing). The evidence of pets just snapping agro off people as soon as they engage even when multiple high-agro spells have been cast is too overwhelming.

I also feel like, given the number of people talking about turning pet taunt off to keep the mob from turning on the pet, that taunt (at least for pets) acted more as something that added to hate directly instead of the way it does with warriors . As taunt works now, it's useless if the mob is higher level than your pet (which is going to be most-cases when xp'ing until the mid/late 50s when DB range gets really huge). Remember, many of these guides are talking about fighting white/yellow/red cons.

[Mirana]

Bump for great justice.

I know this doesn't serve as "evidence," but I remember playing a mage back on live in 2000 and would pull with my level 8 bolt spell, hit something 2 times before it got to me and never had aggro problems.

Pet aggro is most definitely broken.

[Haynar]

Originally Posted by Mirana [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bump for great justice.

I know this doesn't serve as "evidence," but I remember playing a mage back on live in 2000 and would pull with my level 8 bolt spell, hit something 2 times before it got to me and never had aggro problems.

Pet aggro is most definitely broken.

You bumped a thread that had the last post 20 min ago? Seriously?

Clearly you have a grasp on how to get us to revisit an issue.

Pet aggro was nerfed because they had become the prefered tank for raids. It might be possible to make some adjustments.

Haynar

[Potus]

Why did you break them 1-50 over raids?

Also that's not classic. Disappointed you'd ruin 2-4 caster classes over end game stuff.

[Asap]

Originally Posted by Haynar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Pet aggro was nerfed because they had become the prefered tank for raids. It might be possible to make some adjustments.

Haynar

While I understand something had to be done to prevent pets tanking raid targets, it sucks that pet classes were affected in regards to soloing, mages more specifically. I can't nuke a target unless the mob is at 40% hp for fear of pulling aggro off my pet.

I appreciate you addressing the issue and possibly working towards a fix in the future

[baalzy]

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/i...et-aggro.3227/ (2013 discussion after an aggro-meter was added to Live and people realized how much hate pets were generating)

To this day people are commenting on the fact that pet aggro is insanely huge. (theres 10 pages of discussion of tanks bitching pets stealing aggro). The discussion in this thread kinda puts to bed the rule of 4 stuff. At least, the rule of 4 no longer exists (or doesn't exist in new content).

Couple gems:

Yes, there's a reason...pets are used in more than just raid situations, and they actually need to hold aggro in some of those situations while players nuke from range. Can you imagine how well a mage would solo without a pet that could hold aggro over his nukes?

Pets follow different agro rules than PC's, so basically no, a warrior will never out-agro a pet, even if they are top agro.

It's funny bc pet aggro hasn't changed. It's just you can see it now.

How did we deal with this in the past? No1 brought it up and only pet classes knew the aggro issues.

Been in-game for quite some time, need to get over it by now.

Originally Posted by https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/pet-aggro.3227/page-3

As for aggro. We will continue to monitor pet aggro, but generally they are doing what they should for the sake of solo pet class play. This does lead to excessive aggro in group and raid play. As people have mentioned in this thread, there are ways that the pet user can deal with this aggro as they need.

This one is a developer response.

[baalzy]

Originally Posted by Haynar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You bumped a thread that had the last post 20 min ago? Seriously?

Clearly you have a grasp on how to get us to revisit an issue.

Pet aggro was nerfed because they had become the prefered tank for raids. It might be possible to make some adjustments.

Haynar

Thank you Haynar. I would suggest, if you're going to go with a non-classic implementation, you do something similar to the Rule of 4 that Nilbog posted. Maybe up it from 4 to 6 and have it only count actual PCs. This way a 6 mage xp party would still work, but it would make taking out OOA with nothing but pets impossible (pretty sure 6 mages, unless epic'd, couldn't summon fast enough/long enough to down OOA).

I can understand not wanting to let classic mechanics completely trivialize raid content, but the current implementation is hugely detrimental to all aspects of pet-caster play.

[Kazi]

So nerfs that hurt players are justified as classic, but stuff that helps players is nerfed in an unclassic fashion that breaks a whole class? Wut