The Summoner 2010

[Gormak]

<p>Ive no doubt we can all agree weve seen alot of posative (all be it slow) improvements for the summoner over the last 2 years. I wanted to open discussion in a more diplomatic way (hell maybe even provoke a dev response /wink) to see how some of the rest of you percieve things, and what "category" the general summoner population falls into.</p><p>What i now see though IMO are 2 types of thought on the summoner mechanic:</p><ol><li>The Gear for the Pet summoner. This type of player happily acknowledges that the point and purpose of the summoner in 2010 is to micromanage and sustain their pet. They are of the beleif that and are happy to accept the pet is the primary source of damage, and as such they work to that goal. This type of summoner then would like to overall see more pet temp buffs, more pet special abilities, more micromanaging to best utilise the pet (read as in more skill to get best bang for buck), and very importantly, MORE widespread availability of gear with pet focus effects.</li><li>The Mage with a permanant Dot (it may be a big dot). This is the player who doesnt nessecarily see the summoners pet as the be all and end all. They are the advocate of shared pet stats, the pet being a reflection of the summoner him/her self. This player wants a balance struck between what the summoner itself is capable and delivers and at the same time has a pet of sufficcient power that the two combined entities are a force to be reconed with. This is the summoner that is a balance of power between both the summoner and their pet.</li></ol><p>Now neither thought process IMO is the wrong one. They are simply 2 different approaches for two different styles.</p><p>So, you guys, Devs, ladies with children and old people with nothing better to do, What category do you fall into or what are your thoughts?</p><p>Its there a common ground between the two groups? could we have the pet being the focus AND have shared stats perhaps if i thought on this more we could identify a third group?</p><p>However the reason ive left it as these two groups is that these are the realities we see more generally. I dont expect a hybrid solution of the two to be viable on the basis its a ton more work and the games 6 years old... The two options available are viable and achieveable without drastic change to the game/archtype itself.</p><p>-------------------------</p><p>Personally, I was originally in group 2. I hated the playstyle of gearing for the pet. This was the previous expansion (TSO) however and the availability of pet focus gear wasnt quite so widespread as it is now. Shared stats make alot of questions easier to answer. Maybe this is a good thing, but ultimately im really starting to see the benefits and enjoy frankly, the summoner pet mechanics in The Sentinals Fate.</p><p>I now feel much much more favorable to group 1.</p><p>Why? Its a very very different dynamic to any other class available in the game. A conjuror summoning beings from the earth/air/fire/water to aid him, while the necromancer does the same with plages, death and rottenness. Its so much more in theme with where i feel the class truely belongs. But we arent there yet. Ultimately dps is dps, but the playstyle described in group 1 is so so different to any other style ingame, i really think we should go further with it instead of back the other way. The group 1 category of playstyle is just so much more unique than any other class around.</p><p>For the group 1 idea to be a reality coming updates, expansions and development of the class, must expand much further on the availability of gear with pet focus effects (make the summoner gear differently for different occasion), expansion and improvement of pet temporary buffs, much friendlier and viable use of swarm pets (and meaningfull damage). The opportunity for this type of summoner to stand out as a truely different playstyle, well we're heading there.... but we arent there yet.</p><p>To classes who see the summoners pet as overpowered.... I ask that you look at what the summoner is capable of without their pet. Then youll see that we arent any different from a dps class, its just our dps is channeled through our pet. I parse like a bard without my pet.... i feel so wrong <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Xalmat]

<p>The problem with going the pet specific effects route (or group 1 as it were) is we've been down that road for a few years now, and it doesn't work. Itemization is extremely hit or miss. You either have gear that's fantastic for the summoner + pet, gear that's crappy for the summoner but good for the pet, gear that's good for the summoner but bad for the pet, or gear that's bad for both the summoner and pet.</p><p>More often than not gear that's actually good for the summoner + pet is also not on equal footing with an equivalent sorcerer item. It also creates significantly more work for the developers to cater to summoners, with the exception of a small handful of special items. We saw this <em>all</em> throughout TSO and we still see it to a large degree in SF. Hell I still wear several pieces of TSO gear because they're better than Sentinel's Fate gear in many regards.</p><p>On the other hand, we also have gear that's very, very over the top compared to other classes. It's not uncommon to see top end Conjuror pets have <em>double </em>the base potency of their masters, capped on spell haste, approaching max crit chance and having equal crit bonus to the master. And you wonder why other classes are calling for a nerf to Conjurors?</p><p>Because the gear is so out of whack, it makes it <em>very</em> difficult to balance us versus other damage dealing classes as well, without potentially going overboard. Frankly I just don't have faith that it can be done anymore.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Itemization has never been a valid mechanic for balancing classes.  Imagine a Wizard class that is out of balance.  If a Dev came and told them "Oh, we'll fix that by giving you better gear" there would be an uprising of biblical proportions.</p><p>The problem is that at the very top end of the scale, in high end raids, killing many hard mode bosses for an extended period, Summoners are able to get where they need to be in terms of overall DPS because the gear they need does drop, but is uncommon or rare.</p><p>Unfortunately, for a large portion of the Summoner population, that gear is unavailable.  The corner that the Devs have painted themselves into is a tight one.  Sure, they can simply share stats and take away pet effects, throwing the high end game out of balance (again).  They can leave things as is, but they need to do something for the middle of the road Summoners.</p><p>Frankly, I think all Mage gear should have a pet effect.  Better yet, all Mage gear should have a "Green" adornment slot, and there should be pet effect adornments so Summoners can put whatever they want in there.</p>

[Lantis]

<p>I pretty much agree - going down the summoner-centric gear path as SOE went isn't the best solution.  Let's look at it strictly from a loot table perspective, in a raid environment.  Let's say a raid force having 4 chanters, 2 sorcerors and 2 summoners.  Taking up a slot on a mob's loot table for summoner-specific loot means that, once you have geared the two summoners, you will end up with a lot of transmute fodder, and it will be longer for your chanters and sorcerors to get the caster-centric version of the item.  I remember back in TSO how frustrating it was to see the summoner cloak drop over and over in Munzok's when our two summoners already had theirs, and the rest of the raid (scouts, fighters, healers and other mages) would still wait for theirs.</p><p>If SOE were to insist on going down the gear-centric path, I would suggest making all the mage loot be mage-generic and allow us to make them summoner-centric through an NPC - same way you can currently upgrade some raid drops.  That way, loot management be simpler and more fair to other mages (currently as the sole summoner in my raid force, I have pretty much zero competition on loot - saves up a fair amount of DKP!).</p><p>But in the end, I would much rather see pet-centric items return to their rareness of pre-TSO, with only the occasional "Wow." item, like the Wand of Elemental Mastery or Yeddad's Caduceus.  Balance the class dfferently through shared stats or any other mean that won't involve gear.  But if they absolutely must stick to gear-centric solutions, then adjust it so it won't penalize so much other classes by skewing drop rates.</p><p>Trinity: I also thought about an adornment-centric system.  The problem with that is: how do you make it so a given item could have PowerFlux III, while another would allow PowerFlux V?  The NPC solution of a pre-determined upgrade path would give more freedom to SOE to balance things based on what item you are upgrading.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Do it the way adornments already work.  For instance, you can only put "Ethereal Adornment of Swift Casting" in certain slots right?  Well, the same might apply to a pet effect.  "Ethereal Adornment of Pet Criticals" might only go in certain slots as well.</p><p>Quality could also work in for the "simpler" effects like Power Flux, Quicksilver Blood, Minion's Resilience, etc.  Treasured (Lesser) = I, Legendary (Greater) = III, Fabled (Superior) = V.</p><p>In order to keep some sort of control on it, SOE could still use things like Destructive Forces and Empowered Minion directly on the pieces.  Perhaps Molten Carnage is sold by an NPC vendor for Seals.</p><p>This is a very do-able solution if the will is there.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p>If we did it that way, then pretty much every smart Conjuror is just going to adorn his gear with Power Flux V across the board. Which would just be insane, as you can guarantee every Conjuror pet is going to have 100% crit chance and 3500 ability mod before AAs or buffs.</p><p>What about gear that has multiple pet effects? Some of my pieces of gear have Power Flux and Molten Carnage, others Power Flux and Quicksilver Blood, and one piece has Minion's Resilience, Stone Defense, and Molten Carnage at the same time. How would your adorn system work in that case?</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Sounds like controls to me.</p><p>Look, I don't *like* the itemization by pet effects bandwagon at all.  I'd prefer that they simply do stat sharing properly and be done with it.  Unfortunately, we've been shoveling dirt out of that hole for a long time and we just don't seem to be getting anywhere.</p><p>Like I said, the limits are already there in the inherent design of the system.  If you could only put PF in certain slots, it's still limited, just easier. Instead of looking for the pet effect, you are now looking for gear that works for YOU.  Sure, you might lose a couple pieces that had two pet effects, but those are pretty rare.  You could still have a few drops that had an existing pet effect on them.</p><p>I've not been asked to design the system, but it seems pretty darn easy to me.</p>

[Cometar]

<p>One reason why I am not a fan of the pet gear adornments, while a very interesting idea, is I don't feel I should have to buy something extra just to be able to get the most out of my class. This is not EQ2X, yet. That would make summoners (Esp Conjies) forced to all buy something special if they want to make the most out of their dps. Granted, that might not impact higher end players all that much as many of them already have money and seals from raids, but newer players, casual players, and even players in a "familiy guild that raids" like myself could have some difficulties being able to aford yet another adornment to add onto our gear.</p><p>The idea of being able to trade in your drops for something similar with pet effects was also a pretty interesting idea. It would probably be a nightmare for the Dev's though as then they would have to go back, take out all the pet gear, look at all the current mage gear, and create a balanced version of that pet classes could trade in for.</p><p>Like I said, some very interesting ideas, but in the end could be more trouble than it's worth. As was stated previously, no class should be balanced through gear as that just leads to more problems. Unlike shared pet stats. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Lantis]

<p><cite>Cometar@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The idea of being able to trade in your drops for something similar with pet effects was also a pretty interesting idea. It would probably be a nightmare for the Dev's though as then they would have to go back, take out all the pet gear, look at all the current mage gear, and create a balanced version of that pet classes could trade in for.</p></blockquote><p>I suspect this wouldn't be that bad for the devs.  If you look at a large portion of the current raid drops, mobs tend to drop a generic caster item, and a summoner variant of the same item.  Sure, there are a few exceptions, but I suspect that the majority of mage loot drops are already designed with both versions in tandem (for SF anyway).  So essentially, they are already doing that extra work, it's just a matter of moving those items to a vendor.</p><p>Regarding the idea of adorns: they wouldn't have to be actually sold, they could be offered for free on an NPC vendor whenever a summoner class player hails them.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>I see no problems with our gear, and quiet frankly, it is overpowered. But my opinion is I see overpowered gear for me, not a problem <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Our pet is squishy as all hell and has down syndrome when it comes to shiney colors... it tends to go off on its own. In return, if our pet dies, we have a 5 second recast of our pet... not to mention if it happens to die during a raid, with all the other knock backs, interupts , etc etc... it takes longer to cast it.</p><p>Like mentioned above our pet does majority of our dps (if spec'ed that way) which i currently am. My pet has <em><strong>(3x my)</strong></em> 138% Potency, = crit chance, and 43% crit chance. (out of raid)</p><p>The one thing i do have a problem with the gear, was leveling up .. without raid gear my pet was horrible. But then again I guess that is semi acceptable.</p><p>Any "extra" help we get towards our pet will make conj's way overpowered.</p><p>I can go on and on about gear / stats / etc.. but i'll end with this note.</p><p>We play a summoner to take advantage of a pet, I use all the pet stats I can get that are suitable and upon doing so, I've seen a huge improvement in my parses and out parsing most of my guild. I think it helps with a TW'ed EB that does 900k+ every 2 minutes.</p><h3></h3>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The one thing i do have a problem with the gear, was leveling up .. without raid gear my pet was horrible. But then again I guess that is semi acceptable.</p></blockquote><p>This was our problem in Rise of Kunark: we lacked any real means, except maybe two items (including our Mythical weapon) of boosting our pet's damage output. As a result, we lagged <em>far</em> behind other classes.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>But now we dont? there is plenty of Yellow shard gear and raid zone stuff that can make a conj acceptable... and when you progress into the hole, your stats shoot through the roof and there is no problem</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But now we dont? there is plenty of Yellow shard gear and raid zone stuff that can make a conj acceptable... and when you progress into the hole, your stats shoot through the roof and there is no problem</p></blockquote><p>A LOT of the Sentinel's Fate raid stuff also launched without any kind of pet focus whatsoever, but was added to the equipment several weeks or a couple months <em>later</em>. Was that acceptable? Do you want to deal with that<em> when</em> (not if) it happens again next expansion?</p><p>Also keep in mind that the stats on raid and non-raid gear, as far as it relates to pets, is disproportionately out of whack. For example, Erudin Channeling Choker, one of the better chokers you can get from not raiding, has a mere 10.8% potency for the summoner, and 3% potency for the pet. Meanwhile, Penda's Guardian-caller Necklace, which drops off an easy-mode raid boss, has 11.5% potency for the summoner and 16.6% potency for the pet; a 13.6% difference for the pet.</p><p>Why should a non-raider be gimped like that?</p><p>That's just two items. The list goes on, and it only contributes to the dramatic differences between a non-raid Conjuror and a raiding Conjuror, even moreso than it does for any other class. It's what's contributing to the imbalance, too.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Which is exactly what I said.  When a Summoner gets to the point where he is farming absolute end game, hard mode bosses, he can get where he needs to be.  The problem is that between there and casual exists a very difficult to bridge gulf of equipment problems, which unfortunately, mean performance for a Summoner.</p>

[MaCloud1032]

I think I can chime in here. I just got my conji to 81. Right now iam locked to gain AA. Over the weekend I saw a night andday diffrence after picking up some woe gear and other pet gear. It went from me doing most of my dps say maby 60% or so to it out doing me. This was a total change in game play. I personalt think me as the player should do the vast majority of the dps. Not some scriped npc under my possable controll that I buff. I think the pet/s should share our stats maby give them a dmg reduction and up my personal dps. Kinda like a wizzy with a constant eratic DoT. I don't want to micro manage every part of my pets random existance. When the thing runs out of range for me to manage him makes life totaly annoying. Just a few things I have noticed as a fresh conji.

[JenoJeno]

<p><cite>Darksavanna@Venekor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I think I can chime in here. I just got my conji to 81. Right now iam locked to gain AA. Over the weekend I saw a night andday diffrence after picking up some woe gear and other pet gear. It went from me doing most of my dps say maby 60% or so to it out doing me. This was a total change in game play. I personalt think me as the player should do the vast majority of the dps. Not some scriped npc under my possable controll that I buff. I think the pet/s should share our stats maby give them a dmg reduction and up my personal dps. Kinda like a wizzy with a constant eratic DoT. I don't want to micro manage every part of my pets random existance. When the thing runs out of range for me to manage him makes life totaly annoying. Just a few things I have noticed as a fresh conji.</blockquote><p>You want to be more like a wizard / warlock .. then play one. I enjoy the way the class is, and have 0 issues with it. We are ment to manage our pet. thats what we do.. go necro to be more like a wizard? I dont know...</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You want to be more like a wizard / warlock .. then play one. I enjoy the way the class is, and have 0 issues with it. We are ment to manage our pet. thats what we do.. go necro to be more like a wizard? I dont know...</p></blockquote><p>Indeed.</p><p>No offense to Darksavanna, but this class is nothing without its pet.</p>

[MaCloud1032]

I didn't mean it like that. I hate that the pet does its "own" thing. I hate that when I do manage him he changes his mind. If I tell him to nuke I mean nuke where its at not run into AE range then start casting to have me have to pull him back because its in a bad spot. I shouldn't have to watch it like its a 2yr old. There are times when my dog lissens better. I very much like the complexity that you can get from playing what I don't care for is how repeditive it can be to continualy reset what the pet is doing. If I gotta micromanage it at least make it lissen better or give us more tools to assist in this.

[Xalmat]

<p>LOL, if you think it's bad now you should have played a Summoner back in 2004. We have it far easier now than we did then.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>I didn't play in 04... actually i made this guy 4 months ago... it is a stressful situation sometimes, depending on the mob / positioning. But generally he does pretty well and gets a treat at the end of the fight, that being [Removed for Content] gear that i put on for him...</p><p>But on the other hand, there are times this pet just can't listen to save his life and gets himself in a lot of trouble. I personally think they should focus more on PET AI than PET GEAR</p>

[MaCloud1032]

From what I have herd and what my necro buddy told me it wasn't good. This is my first mage I have ever made. My other toons are sk(made well before they were easy mode) a assy, and a zerker. I probly worded it porly for what I was thinking. :/ I was just floored by how much of a change it makes when you start getting pet gear.

[Lantis]

<p><cite>Darksavanna@Venekor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I think the pet/s should share our stats maby give them a dmg reduction and up my personal dps.<strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Kinda like a wizzy with a constant eratic DoT</span></strong>. I don't want to micro manage every part of my pets random existance. When the thing runs out of range for me to manage him makes life totaly annoying. Just a few things I have noticed as a fresh conji.</blockquote><p>Like others said - that is what distinguishes a summoner from a sorceror, otherwise the whole class would be pointless.</p><p>The sudden change from T8 to T9 is very harsh, because SOE is trying to balance the class through gear rather than the class itself.  So, you just started the tier where everything is gear-based for our DPS balancing.  Which means that anyone not yet in T9 will suffer from all the same issues we have always suffered.</p><p>Xalmat, how I do remember...  I started in April 2005, so I was playing a conjuror before LU13.  LU13 made the class go from "totally broken" to "pretty good".  And then RoK broke everything again with all the new gear mentality...</p>

[Lantis]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I didn't play in 04... actually i made this guy 4 months ago... it is a stressful situation sometimes, depending on the mob / positioning. But generally he does pretty well and gets a treat at the end of the fight, that being [Removed for Content] gear that i put on for him...</p><p>But on the other hand, there are times this pet just can't listen to save his life and gets himself in a lot of trouble. I personally think they should focus more on PET AI than PET GEAR</p></blockquote><p>The AI used to be even worse, believe it or not.  For a while, ANY stairs whatsoever would prevent the mage pet from being able to attack.  It would also rush into melee whenever there was a downtime in its casting order, or if thought it saw candies inside the mob's pockets.</p><p>Over the past few years they added the pet ranged/melee toggle (which do not work 100% of the time, but at least work most of it), they also improved the AI to favorize AAs over spells (I forgot which expansion had this in its release notes).</p><p>AI ciould definitely still use some improvements, especially on the line-of-sight issues.  At some point it looked like the SOE devs themselves just gave up, and gave us the Recall Servant spell as a workaround.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Lantis@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite>Over the past few years they added the pet ranged/melee toggle (which do not work 100% of the time, but at least work most of it), they also improved the AI to favorize AAs over spells (I forgot which expansion had this in its release notes).</p><p>AI ciould definitely still use some improvements, especially on the line-of-sight issues.  At some point it looked like the SOE devs themselves just gave up, and gave us the Recall Servant spell as a workaround.</p></blockquote><p>Actually favoring AA spells was based on Fan Faire 2009 feedback, if I recall.</p><p>We've always had Call Servant as long as I can remember, but they only recently (within a year or two?) changed it to be instant cast.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Lantis@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite>Over the past few years they added the pet ranged/melee toggle (which do not work 100% of the time, but at least work most of it), they also improved the AI to favorize AAs over spells (I forgot which expansion had this in its release notes).</p><p>AI ciould definitely still use some improvements, especially on the line-of-sight issues.  At some point it looked like the SOE devs themselves just gave up, and gave us the Recall Servant spell as a workaround.</p></blockquote><p>Actually favoring AA spells was based on Fan Faire 2009 feedback, if I recall.</p><p>We've always had Call Servant as long as I can remember, but they only recently (within a year or two?) changed it to be instant cast.</p></blockquote><p>Well thats one amazing spell i'm accustomed to casting on a regular basis lol... glad its instant!</p>

[Lantis]

<p><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Lantis@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite>Over the past few years they added the pet ranged/melee toggle (which do not work 100% of the time, but at least work most of it), they also improved the AI to favorize AAs over spells (I forgot which expansion had this in its release notes).</p><p>AI ciould definitely still use some improvements, especially on the line-of-sight issues.  At some point it looked like the SOE devs themselves just gave up, and gave us the Recall Servant spell as a workaround.</p></blockquote><p>Actually favoring AA spells was based on Fan Faire 2009 feedback, if I recall.</p><p>We've always had Call Servant as long as I can remember, but they only recently (within a year or two?) changed it to be instant cast.</p></blockquote><p>I remember Call Servant was only added a few years ago, probably around EoF days.</p>

[Gormak]

<p>to address some of the points:</p><ul><li>Yes it was a hard road to get here, yes we went through alot of pain with some very very buggy pet focus effects, however by and large this expansion they've been very good</li><li>I agree with Banditman and alot of what people are getting at by what is being said regarding "balancing through gear". BUT it was the fastest path, and the path of least resistance to getting summoners to an easier playing field at the end game with other dps classes.</li><li>Again agreeing with Banditman: There NEEDS TO BE MORE pet focus gear available, and widely spread. This includes and is not limited to heritage, signature, heroic and normal quests, there should ALWAYS be a pet focus option.</li><li>Regarding Oonej comment of gear being overpowered, i dont believe thats the case. Why? well:<ul><li>consider current gear and AA are structured - by and large the summoner has so little AA that effects the pet comparative to what effects the summoner. The summoner has aa's that improve group buffs, that reduce reuse times of primaty skills by crazy amounts, that improve damage and potency of our primary damage spells by good amounts.... All in all its a rather small percentage that actually "for the pet". As a net result the only way to give the summoners pet a sizable damage capability, is re-engineer how all that works, or chuck seemingly crazy amounts of bonuses into the pet effects. The net result isnt as bad as some would think. The pet as an entity has the same stats youd expect to see on a dps class. This is overpowered?? imo no its not.</li><li>consider the way the summoner without their pet does dps, Summoners are practically bards in dps terms without their pet. Very mediocre, and no where near as usefull utility wise. This just illustrates my point on why im more and more loving the synergy that exists in TSF between the summoner and their pet.... If we "balance" things such that the summoner is the primary source of damage and not the pet, then they begin to play like every other dps class in the game. Summoners now are VERY unique in playstyle. Somthing this game needs more of. Unique gameplay.</li><li>We arent blowing away sorcerers on parses... But we are very very competative. This is overpowered? I dont think so, again to my original point, we are now on a level playing field. The way we got here may have been unseemly, but its a unique style, its fun, and we now have a rightful place at the dps table.</li></ul></li></ul><p>Make no mistake, i wasnt suggesting "everything is now perfect" Simply that the way the summoner is heading is IMO the best direction. Through chaneling more dps contribution through the pet (honest id like to see MORE pet temp buffs) and making the summoner feed buffs to the pet and provide utility to the pet, we can become a truely unique style of play.</p><p>I dont agree with the developer line of "you dont need all items with pet effects" thats just bull. The summoners personal damage capabilities simply are not up to matching other dps classes without those pet effects. We'd need some serious revision for the summoner him/her self for this to be viable. It just wont work as things are right now.</p><p>The other option of being just another mage who cycles damage spells and has the pet there for "support damage", well, it just plays out too much like ther other mages.... Different gameplay styles is what makes the class attractive... push that further. Its what EQ2 needs more of, differences in gameplay.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>If you raid end game in TSF you will know what i'm talking about.</p><p>Compared to the other mages / classes in the game, no other class can match my ~1.2 mil EB thats up every 2 minutes. On shorter fights, they have no chance. 100% crit chance, 60%+ crit bonus, 175% potency, 1300 abil mod. For every fight under 1 minute, which is majority, i'm usually top parser, by 20-30k on names.</p><p>On other longer fights, we tend to balance out and i'm usually near top if not on and only slightly under the wizard / warlock depending on the fight.</p><p>I'm not saying what your saying is false in any way, just saying from my perspective, that I see the gear setup fine. Have nothing to complain about with this class except the pets AI that was slightly fixed but still needs some work.</p><p>If we add gear in instances similar to that of end game gear with destructive forces or other stats similar. I can see this running into a huge issue to balance the game for raids as I will be at 200% potency and 100% crit bonus on my pet which would just make my pet a monster. If there is another way to balance this, then i'm all for it.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Oonej, like I said, you are in a very unique situation.  Your fights are *exceedingly* short compared to what most raiding Conjurors contend with.  It influences absolutely everything about your gameplay.  It's great for you, and I'm not saying it's not valid, but it just isn't reality for most Conjurors.</p><p>You might, in your situation, feel Conjurors are close to overpowered, but that simply isn't true for the vast majority of Conjurors, even the vast majority of raiding Conjurors.</p>

[Lantis]

<p>ACT numbers don't always tell the whole truth.  A single nuke used in a very short fight is meaningless when it comes to class balancing.  If you want to rely on ACT, then you have to look at the big picture: the final zonewide parse.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>Unique situation, most likely.</p><p>But as far as ACT goes, the zone wide doesn't really change much from the named fights. I tend to fall behind on the trash in the hole but other than that I'm right up there.</p><p>But I guess I'm just a little tainted with our dps in our guild, and my ability to put out higher numbers in shorter fights. I just hope the suggestions you guys are making are considered carefully by the devs and something is done to make you happy <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Banditman]

<p>Well, the "problem" for Oonej, and a lot of guilds would kill to have this problem, is that their parses are unbelievably high.  For most easymode bosses his guild kills them in under a minute.  At that rate of kill, he is able to largely ignore pet crit as a statistic, since (for him) plane shift lasts the duration of the fight.</p><p>He is thus able to lean more heavily on things like Molten Carnage to simply push the pet Potency factor higher and higher.</p><p>I'm not coming down on him at all, I wish I could do that!  What I'm saying is that his experience is fairly unique.  Most of us don't have a guild that can drop a mob like Sara Greenhart in 50 seconds.  I see what he's saying, and I agree with him as far as he goes.</p><p>To him, if Summoners were suddenly given shared stats for their pet, it would be a fairly sizeable nerf.  His pet potency is really, really high.  I think *most* Summoners would see it as a buff.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>Lol, if we did stat sharing, i would have... uh - 50 crit bonus? lol 60 potency? 800 ability mod?! oh boy would that be a huge difference! lol</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Lol, if we did stat sharing, i would have... uh - 50 crit bonus? lol 60 potency? 800 ability mod?! oh boy would that be a huge difference! lol</p></blockquote><p>It would also require us to regear. Gear wise we'd probably look a lot closer to whatever Sorcerers and Enchanters are wearing.</p>

[JenoJeno]

<p>yeah horrible! imo</p>

[Masuma]

<p><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>On the other hand, we also have gear that's very, very over the top compared to other classes. It's not uncommon to see top end Conjuror pets have <em>double </em>the base potency of their masters, capped on spell haste, approaching max crit chance and having equal crit bonus to the master. And you wonder why other classes are calling for a nerf to Conjurors?</p></blockquote><p>My raid alliance is raiding T2 content and my pet still has only 30% crit chance or 42% with crit specced troub.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Shalin@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>My raid alliance is raiding T2 content and my pet still has only 30% crit chance or 42% with crit specced troub.</p></blockquote><p>Well to be fair, T2 content isn't top end. Hard mode content (T3 as it were) and mobs in the Hole is.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>Additionally, if you don't have a number of items from LAST expansion already bagged, your pet crit will suffer.  Power Flux is not easy to find this tier.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Additionally, if you don't have a number of items from LAST expansion already bagged, your pet crit will suffer.  Power Flux is not easy to find this tier.</p></blockquote><p>Indeed.</p>

[Blambil]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Which is exactly what I said.  When a Summoner gets to the point where he is farming absolute end game, hard mode bosses, he can get where he needs to be.  The problem is that between there and casual exists a very difficult to bridge gulf of equipment problems, which unfortunately, mean performance for a Summoner.</p></blockquote><p>I absolutely agree with multiple points in this thread, but I had to add on to this one..</p><p>I would love to be #1, where the Pet is a Force-To-Be-Reconned-With{tm}.. But I'm not a high-end-raider. And any itemization that helps the pet, generally hurts me.  Worse yet, I play on a PVP server, so I have that 3rd tier (toughness/resists/reactives) to consider.</p><p>As a result, trying to balance self/pet/pvp, I can put out decent DPS (10-15k grouped DPS, 20k raid dps), but my pet has a 6% crit chance... I'm never going to get the crazy high EB's, for example, without the pet's potency/CC/CB being a LOT higher..</p><p>i get outparsed by.... wizards, warlocks, rangers, assasins, brigands, swashbucklers, paladins, shadowknights, berserkers..... and the occasional crazy fury.. (you know who you are..)</p>

[Blambil]

<p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Lol, if we did stat sharing, i would have... uh - 50 crit bonus? lol 60 potency? 800 ability mod?! oh boy would that be a huge difference! lol</p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, for me, if the pet were to share MY stats, my pet would probably put out 2x or more DPS than it does right now.. I've gone with personal Pot/CC/CB over the pet.</p>

[Banditman]

<p><cite>Blambil@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Oonej@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Lol, if we did stat sharing, i would have... uh - 50 crit bonus? lol 60 potency? 800 ability mod?! oh boy would that be a huge difference! lol</p></blockquote><p>On the other hand, for me, if the pet were to share MY stats, my pet would probably put out 2x or more DPS than it does right now.. I've gone with personal Pot/CC/CB over the pet.</p></blockquote><p>Then you have itemized poorly.  The pet is a far more capable DPS source than you are.  A great portion of what you do is augment your pet.  Itemizing for yourself is what a Sorcerer or Enchanter does.  Itemizing for a pet is what a Summoner does.</p>

[Masuma]

<p><cite>Xalmat wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Shalin@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>My raid alliance is raiding T2 content and my pet still has only 30% crit chance or 42% with crit specced troub.</p></blockquote><p>Well to be fair, T2 content isn't top end. Hard mode content (T3 as it were) and mobs in the Hole is.</p></blockquote><p>Well good that T3 is really an upgrade then. T2 is hardly an upgrade to T1</p>

[Blambil]

<p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Then you have itemized poorly.  The pet is a far more capable DPS source than you are.  A great portion of what you do is augment your pet.  Itemizing for yourself is what a Sorcerer or Enchanter does.  Itemizing for a pet is what a Summoner does.</blockquote><p>I beg to differ..  Doesn't really matter how strong the pet is, if I go down like a wet sack in PVP in 2 seconds..  I now have decent survivablilty in PVP, but at the expense of pet itemization... My EB's that can do >250k dmg on a mob, will commonly do... 2500-5000dmg to a player.. I can't rely on a single spell to winz my fights.</p>

[Banditman]

<p>PvP is completely different, and such a small subset of Summoner you should probably direct that to the PvP specific forums where they are better able to deal with PvP specific problems.</p><p>In a general sense, Summoners are their pets.  If that isn't what happens in PvP then you should probably get the PvP devs to look at that, because that is the class design.</p><p>My experience in Battlegrounds was that I could hold my own for DPS, but that if I was attacked directly, I was pretty much dead.  I expect this.  Using Translocate helps some.</p>

[Allforgrog]

<p><cite>Blambil@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Then you have itemized poorly.  The pet is a far more capable DPS source than you are.  A great portion of what you do is augment your pet.  Itemizing for yourself is what a Sorcerer or Enchanter does.  Itemizing for a pet is what a Summoner does.</blockquote><p>I beg to differ..  Doesn't really matter how strong the pet is, if I go down like a wet sack in PVP in 2 seconds..  I now have decent survivablilty in PVP, but at the expense of pet itemization... My EB's that can do >250k dmg on a mob, will commonly do... 2500-5000dmg to a player.. I can't rely on a single spell to winz my fights.</p></blockquote><p>Devastation Jewely srsly, it is good....i don't know what have of the pieces are that you are wearing for jewelry, but they are doing little for your DPS. All the crushing/peircing/slashing resists aren't going to matter if you can kill them before they get close and if they are already close enough to hit you, they are close enough to stun you senceless which will lead to your death just as surely.</p>

[hellfire]

<p>Trying to fix core class issue/mechanics by way of gear is and has always been a bad idea.There is  nothing but imbalance on so many levels.</p><p> Shared stats puts things into check ......</p><p>Pet gear that buffs the pet 2-3x over what the stats of the summoner is nothing more then say the stock market....sooner or later its gonna crash and burn cause its not ment to be that out of control with imbalance.</p><p>Thats why pet gear was created in the first place cause we had 3x the stats of our pets.</p><p>You dont go from one extreme to the other extreme and actually belive that is a balance.If you do your gonna be very disappointed  in the future.</p><p>See my sig ...that was made years ago and even today it still holds true now we are the pet and the pet is the summoner.</p><p>Until there is shared stats as a base there will be no balance.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p>Bigron, its good to see you posting again.</p><p>And truer words have never been said on the subject.</p>