Pets should have an innate proc rate bonus with weapons until November 2000

[Dolalin]

Date : 22/11/2000



Topic : Proc Nerf



This came of the official EverQuest message boards.

Alright everyone, here's what happened.

As all weapon-wielding pet users probably knew, up until recently pets would proc weapon effects much more frequently than player characters. We recently changed this so that they now proc effects with just about the same frequency as player characters with the same dexterity. The exception is targeted (meant for only one type of enemy, such as summoned creatures) effects, which will now proc about half as often as they do for player characters, but will still proc on anything (this, as you know, is a bug).

Shortly we will be fixing this bug so that pets with targeted proc items will only proc on the appropriate target. At that time, we will bump up the proc rate to match those of any other weapon proc for the pet.

This only effects weapon procs, not innate procs.

No pet attributes were changed.

All pets currently have the same dexterity. It is possible in the future that we will modify the dexterity of pets based on level and type to make them more flexible for their masters.

I'm sorry that we didn't mention this change earlier.

- Alan

http://web.archive.org/web/20010419131702/www.magecompendium.com/News/Week_Ending_26th_November.htm

I will pull up more data on this as I find it, but if I had to guess at the mechanic, I'd say pets had a hardcoded 2.0 ppm on weapons until this time.

(This nerf was a reaction to the Sword of Runes ward:summoned proc that Verant felt was overpowered, and I guess it led them to investigate proc rates on pets.)

[Dolalin]

This was addressed in an official patch message on November 29th, 2000:


------------------------------
November 29, 2000 3:00 am
------------------------------

*Patch Day*

...

- Random-effects on weapons carried by pets will now behave as if the
pet is a player character rather than an NPC. The change last patch
reduced them to a rate below player characters. As part of this patch,
target-specific random effects will only work if the target is the
intended type. For instance, a weapon that processes "Dismiss Summoned"
will only "go off" on a summoned NPC instead of everything.


http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2000-2.html

This also suggests all NPCs had a hardcoded proc rate above that of PCs.

[Dolalin]

Ah, also from that page (first link):


Date : 23/11/2000



Topic : Proc Nerf Continued



This came of the official EverQuest message boards.

Another possibility that fixing the targeted proc issue has opened up is the ability to give mages bigger and better summoned weapons with target-specific procs as they won't proc on everything.

Why didn't you boost the proc rate on PCs instead ?

Because the proc rate on PCs is appropriate given that PCs can seek to buff up their own dexterity. Pets all have pretty low dexterity, which we'll probably scale up in the near future given this change.

A pet with maxed out dexterity will proc nearly as much as it used to.

Didnt Abashi promise he would post any and all nerfs in the server patch message ?

Indeed, of course mistakes do happen and things fall out of the loop. Given the difference in old procs versus new ones, it would be unreasonable to assume that we were trying to slip this one in, don't you think?

- Gordon


Looking more and more like a hardcoded 2.0-ish ppm. Some tweaks to pet stats might be necessary too.

[Dolalin]

And it seems it had been this way since EQ release:


Date : 25/11/2000



Topic : Pet Power



This came of the official EverQuest message boards.



I would have posted this in the other thread but figured that it was different enough to deserve its own thread for discussion:

I was just sitting here thinking over the latest issue with pet procing, and the sword of runes, and I noticed something.

A number of the complaints in this thread cite changing something that's been that way since release, or saying that if we are going to nerf something, why don't we fix something before we nerf something else.

In truth, we did. Mages only got the ability to hand weapons to their pets 10 months ago (January 28th to be precise). The problem with the procs going off on everything and going off so often only became an issue then. Sure, there was the odd necro who had a magician friend who would summon up weapons, but it certainly wasn't wide-spread enough to make a global difference.

Your pets are more powerful now than they were at release, even given the latest change. They dual wield now. Sure, that was a bug workaround, but the pets were bumped up in power several times before the dual wield workaround because they weren't beating necro pets. In many ways, they became overpowered when they suddenly began dual wielding, an imbalance that wasn't addressed until now.

So, as you see, we did address a problem that resulted in increasing the power of the pet prior to "nerfing" a small portion of it. Now I do wish that there had been less time between cause and effect, but it's too late for that at this point. The point is that this is not an ability that has been around forever. While I agree that many people might have come to take it for granted, mage pets are still stronger than they were for nearly a year after release.

- Gordon

[cubiczar]

No clue where you are getting 2.0 ppm from, I see nothing about frequency that mentions a specific rate, just that it was higher than players (and I think we all remember NPC's proc'ing like crazy). Maybe 2.0 ppm was what players got if they had max Dex? There is one mention of max Dex giving pets the same price rate as they used to have.

2.0 procs per minute seems crazy low, maybe as a base stat but then basically every weapon would have to increase that rate because NPCs proc'd like mad. Hell for that matter so did my rogue who would solo by using SBDs and intimidate for fear kiting (and doing it at half health mind you because he couldn't afford Regen). Of course these are all just memories, but 2.0 seems just completely off and has no evidence to back it up.

[Dolalin]

2.0ppm is the proc rate for a warrior in main hand with 255 dex, last I checked.

That's where I am taking that from.

It's not low, it's the max I am aware of a PC being able to attain on P99.

It is possible the rate was higher but I doubt it was much higher if so.

Following PC rules, it would be 1ppm for a weapon in the offhand if the pet had one equipped.

So theoretically 3ppm on average for a pet dual wielding two proccing weapons.

Again, a guesstimate from me since I don't see anything more specific.

[cubiczar]

Max for P99 is sorta my point, procs have never seemed right here. I'll get maybe 1 or 2 procs for an entire fight here and that is giving 2 gnoll hide lariats to a charmed mob. So yeah maybe 2.0ppm is really good for here but 1-2 procs per fight on live for a charmed mob dual wielding lariats... that is garbage. Maybe the NPC proc rate here isn't beefed up to the 2.0ppm rate, I don't really know but I would have thought it would be whatever the max is given that NPC's/pets on live proc'd like crazy.

Don't believe me? take a look at this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041015092018/http://xornn.tripod.com/Circles/8th_circle_(29-33).htm

Proccing weapons used to proc against any mobs (even those not of the correct type) and very often, but since then this has been remedied. Still, handing an enchanter pet 2 gnoll hide lariats (proc Stun) is pretty much hilarious. He'll stun lock mobs for you.

It's from 2004 (or at least that is when the archive picked it up), but notice that he says that even after the nerf to pet proc rates that an enchanter animation can basically stun lock a mob with 2 gnoll hide lariats. Try that here and watch the garbage results, I mean it will get a few stuns off but I wouldn't call it stun lock by any means.

So yeah maybe for P99 2.0 sounds good, I'm just saying that compared to live I think 2.0ppm quite low for a pet especially BEFORE the proc rate nerf that is alluded to here and the sources you have.

[Dolalin]

Well:


We recently changed this so that they now proc effects with just about the same frequency as player characters with the same dexterity.


And:


A pet with maxed out dexterity will proc nearly as much as it used to.


...would indicate that the pets were not proccing much more than a player with capped Dex would.

It should be tied to the proc rate for PCs, whatever that happens to be. If you think it's too low, you should find evidence of that.

[cubiczar]

Well:



And:



...would indicate that the pets were not proccing much more than a player with capped Dex would.

It should be tied to the proc rate for PCs, whatever that happens to be. If you think it's too low, you should find evidence of that.

I'm pretty sure I just did, unless you can stun lock a mob with 2 gnoll hide lariats here? Pretty sure you can't.

[Dolalin]

That's incredibly vague and people often exaggerate for effect. Find numbers.

I see two newsgroup posts from 2005 and 2006 showing 2.0ppm with 255 Dex mh, 1ppm offhand, from just a very quick search.

If you think that's wrong you need to get digging.

[cubiczar]

That's incredibly vague and people often exaggerate for effect. Find numbers.

I see two newsgroup posts from 2005 and 2006 showing 2.0ppm with 255 Dex mh, 1ppm offhand, from just a very quick search.

If you think that's wrong you need to get digging.

I can't find anything from in era, have you? Earliest I've seen is 2003, your mentions here are from 2005 and 2006 hardly in era. It makes it pretty hard to say what the numbers were in our timeline all I can find are mentions of "watching the pretty light show" and the aforementioned "stun lock" from one of the more notable enchanters, from way back when, that I quoted above.

If you have access to some logs I'd be happy to write some parsing scripts but aside from that I'd say neither of us have any real data that applies.

[Ligma]

Gnoll lariats have a 0 second stun so that's a massively exaggerated anecdote. Pets did have a pretty high proc rate by that timeline, either through having higher dex or modified some other way. It was actually something that had to be addressed by devs when OoW released because the shaman DD proc spell was crazy good on pets.

[cubiczar]

Gnoll lariats have a 0 second stun so that's a massively exaggerated anecdote.

Should be 4 seconds:


http://wiki.project1999.com/Gnoll_Hide_Lariat

Also I don't think that was saying a total stun lock, but anything in the realm of a stun lock would be a huge improvement from what I've seen on p99. But maybe that is just how pet proc rates are tuned here and Dolalin is right that 2.0ppm would make a huge difference.

[Dolalin]

From the posts by Abashi and Absor, pet proc rates were pegged at or slightly above max-dex player proc rates at the time.

Player proc rates on p99 max out at 2ppm mh and 1ppm off-hand.

If you feel that's wrong make a separate thread with evidence, keep this one on topic.

[Dolalin]

More posts that shed some light on the mechanics of this. Pets were moved off the general NPC proc chance table and now rolled like PCs:


Date : 03/12/2000



Topic : Pets Again



This came of the official EverQuest message boards.



Did you say that DEX was much lower for pets now?

No. The Dex of pets is not lower than it ever was. What is lower is their proc percentage chance based off of that dex. It used to roll of the NPC table and now rolls of a PC table.


Does DEX affect the fact that an Attack lands, and also affects damage ?

No. It does not.

Did you also lower AGI on pets now ?

We have not lowered any pet stats.



And incidentally, this next post suggests pet summon level ranges were tightened up on the 44th (I think?) pet summons at this time, and incidentally that there was a material power difference between pets sub-35 and 35+. I'm not totally sure what this would have been. Don't want to start speculating so I'll see if I can find more details.



Date : 03/12/2000



Topic : Pets



This came of the official EverQuest message boards.



Hi.

We looked over all the details about pets (again).

For example, in order to make a sweeping change to pet stats someone would have to change the data for every individual pet (and there are dozens of them). If something like that were done on purpose it would take a lot of time, it would never be an accident. If it happened accidentally, it would probably have had to happen by some sort of software glitch, and would have probably happened to every NPC. Regardless, we looked at the stats, they are all the same as they were pre-patch.

We looked over the code that determines how the pet acts, its attacks and all of that. It's all just as it was pre-patch. We checked it over, summoned pets and looked at their stats, how they fought… Nothing has changed.

But, as of Monday we will be making one small change to something that has always happened. Some spells could summon pets both under and over 35th level. Pets 36th level and over are more powerful than those of 35th and under. We didn't like the idea that pets summoned with one spell would range so greatly in their power. So we've set it up so that such spells will only summon pets over 35th level. This is, obviously, a small increase in the power of those particular spells. But I want to stress that this will be completely new as of Monday. Pets have always had that level range problem. This is one of those fixes that comes of careful scrutiny of a situation like this. So some good has come of all this.

I don't know that there is much more I can say.

I ask you all to keep in mind that your pets were procing more than they were before, and that they could proc even on a miss. Keep in mind that your pet levels can vary greatly with each summon. Pets will have to fight longer without procing weapons, so they may seem to be more vulnerable…

We've looked over everything, and we found nothing wrong in the programming.

I have a few e-mails from mages telling me that they've seen no change with the exception of the procing (and see the improvement from the auto-dual wield ability). Please, take a step back and look at your pet again.



- Absor


http://web.archive.org/web/20010419130402/www.magecompendium.com/News/Week_Ending_3rd_December.htm