Mage pet Reclaim / Resummon / out DPS Level 1-39 and 39+

[Auuken]

Given the 2011 exp pet patch 'pet does 50%+ it takes 50% of the xp':

I hear that post 39 it's best to chain summon pet and nuke at 1-5%.. or something like that

But i'm confused about 1-39, should I be trying to outdps my fire pet (easy at low levels since their dmg is mostly DS) OR should I be reclaiming and nuking?

Any advice is appreciated, i'm pretty confused on this one.

[Auuken]

For instance, currently at Blackburrow, i'll summon until I get a yellow con fire pet. After giving the elemental a dagger, I cast level 1 or 4 fire spell to pull. Pet quickly takes aggro. During this time I'm casting 1 and 4 fire spells to try to outdps pet.

Am I doing it right? lol i have no idea

[darkreap]

From my understanding, the DS doesn't count toward you or your pet's damage total. Try to add up how much damage your pet actually does from hits during a fight and just try to beat that number. Find out the % of how much damage you need to do to the mob and, in theory, this should be the number you try for each fight. Count the % the mobs health goes down every nuke and try to hit that total every fight. Say you need to do 35% of the mobs health to get full exp, count the % each nuke brings it down and try to get over that number. That being said, I don't have a mage on this sever....

[Jmcwrestling]

You'll have a better time chain petting from the beginning. At low levels you may find it good enough xp to just let the DS eat mobs alive but soon it'll yield better results to just chain pet. Always use the fire pet if applicable since the DS is always more powerful than any DS you can cast.

[Gustoo]

Yes sadly with the exp modifiers here you need to let your pet get murdered all the time as a mage. It's a bad deal for a class that already has serious solo crowd control problems, but thats how it is.

[kotton05]

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

Yes sadly with the exp modifiers here you need to let your pet get murdered all the time as a mage. It's a bad deal for a class that already has serious solo crowd control problems, but thats how it is.

Root nets

[Brontus]

The imposition of an experience penalty on pet classes was a very stupid and misguided decision on part of the original EQ dev team. I can't think of any good reasons why they would introduce such a silly mechanic.

If there are good reasons I'd like to hear them. Pet classes are already penalized enough with the mitigation of their core abilities to balance out the power of a pet.

In fact many times, due to bad pathing mechanics a pet will cause the owner to get needless aggro or aggro the group which results in player death and possible death to other group members.

Pets can't zone with their owners. Pets also die when their owners die unlike PC pets which do not die. Again, this is just more evidence how pet classes are unfairly penalized.

Getting the very best pet is a crap shoot. On various occasions it has taken my mage up to 15 mins of constant summoning to get the very best pet. That's valuable time I could be exping. Then I have to equip the pet with weapons and haste the pet. Oh and if your pet dies, you can kiss those weapons good bye. Yep, just another penalty.

Therefore the owner of the pet is already sufficiently and intrinsically penalized.

So what do pets do with this experience that they steal from their owners? Nothing at all.
The original EQ designers could have implemented some kind of temporary talent and ability system for pets to "level up" their skills but they did not.

A player should not be competing with his pet to see who can do the most damage. Pets stealing experience from their masters is just another bad "classic" EQ mechanic that is being reproduced here on P1999 that serves no real purpose but to irritate and frustrate players all in the name of authenticity.

[turbosilk]

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

The imposition of an experience penalty on pet classes was a very stupid and misguided decision on part of the original EQ dev team. I can't think of any good reasons why they would introduce such a silly mechanic.

If there are good reasons I'd like to hear them. Pet classes are already penalized enough with the mitigation of their core abilities to balance out the power of a pet.

In fact many times, due to bad pathing mechanics a pet will cause the owner to get needless aggro or aggro the group which results in player death and possible death to other group members.

Pets can't zone with their owners. Pets also die when their owners die unlike PC pets which do not die. Again, this is just more evidence how pet classes are unfairly penalized.

Getting the very best pet is a crap shoot. On various occasions it has taken my mage up to 15 mins of constant summoning to get the very best pet. That's valuable time I could be exping. Then I have to equip the pet with weapons and haste the pet. Oh and if your pet dies, you can kiss those weapons good bye. Yep, just another penalty.

Therefore the owner of the pet is already sufficiently and intrinsically penalized.

So what do pets do with this experience that they steal from their owners? Nothing at all.
The original EQ designers could have implemented some kind of temporary talent and ability system for pets to "level up" their skills but they did not.

A player should not be competing with his pet to see who can do the most damage. Pets stealing experience from their masters is just another bad "classic" EQ mechanic that is being reproduced here on P1999 that serves no real purpose but to irritate and frustrate players all in the name of authenticity.

Because this is supposed to be a game of dependency and socialness not a game of solo isolationism like live turned into. Same reason boxing isn't allowed. Group up no penalty easy fix.

[Brontus]

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

Because this is supposed to be a game of dependency and socialness not a game of solo isolationism like live turned into. Same reason boxing isn't allowed. Group up no penalty easy fix.

I agree 100% that EQ is a MMO primarily about grouping yet other classes have the ability to solo but only pet classes are penalized. Why is this?

Druids can solo quite effectively, so why aren't they being penalized for soloing? The same argument can be make for twinks, I see them in Oasis all the time and most of them refuse to group.

Personally, I hate soloing but in P1999 many players just refuse to group, so I solo not because I want to but because out of necessity. This has the effect of making pet classes who can solo more popular.

To this day, I have still not found a valid argument from SOE (Alan VanCouvering, Rich Waters) as to why there is a pet experience penalty.

[Danth]

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

Druids can solo quite effectively, so why aren't they being penalized for soloing?

They were indeed penalized, just not effectively. The 33% penalty on damage over time spells when the target is moving but not fleeing was an attempt to penalize Druid solo power. This attempt failed because Druids simply chose to use other methods instead, much like pet classes did.

Expecting a valid response from Verant was touch and go....as far as game studios go that one seemed pretty inept. They made plenty of changes which made no sense, and class balance was never one of this game's strengths. Verant wasn't above nerfing (or buffing, hello Monks) classes simply because someone there disliked (or liked) them. The game is what it is, just take it for what it's worth.

Danth