Great news for Pet casters

[Airelyn]

Hi,

I wanted to take a minute to let you know about some pet upgrades that we've just completed. The changes are fairly significant, and we think they address a lot of concerns that have been brought up by players.

Here are the changes we've made -

Pets will not attack mesmerized creatures
All pets now think of mesmerized creatures as being dead. Pets will not break mez, will not attack mesmerized creatures, and will forget any hate they had towards a mesmerized creature.

In short, if a monster gets mesmerized, your pet will forget about it and stop attacking it. This is good for all pet classes, and especially handy for Enchanters, who can now trust their pets to not break every mez as soon as it lands.

Pets are neutral to monsters
Monsters will not attack your pet first. All monsters see your pet as a neutral creature, and will leave it alone unless your pet attacks something. This means if your pet wanders off, it won't bring a train of monsters back with it.

Keep in mind, if your pet chases a fleeing monster, other monsters may still attack it. Your pet is only treated as neutral while it is not acting in a hostile manner.

Pets no longer take experience in most situations
In the past, pets would take a full share of experience if they did the most damage to a creature. We've changed this rule as follows -

* Pets take ZERO experience from a creature, unless no player does damage to that creature.

* Pets take 75% of the experience from a creature - if no player does damage to that creature.

This means that your pet takes no experience from you or your group unless your pet kills a monster with no help from players. As long as you or your groupmates do damage to a monster, your pet will take ZERO experience.

Due to the high potential power of dire charmed pets, they will continue to take a share of the experience. In the worst case, dire charmed pets will take a full share of experience - this is the same as it's always been.

The amount of experience taken by a dire charmed pet scales based on how much damage the pet does. If the dire charmed pet is doing the majority of the damage, it's experience share gets larger. If you or your group are doing reasonable damage to a monster, a dire charmed pet will not take much experience. The more damage you do, the less experience a dire charmed pet will take. In most situations, dire charmed pets will take less experience than they did previously.

As with all pets, if a dire charmed pet does the majority of damage, and no player does any damage, the dire charmed pet will take 75% of the experience from the kill.

Overall, these changes are a significant boost to pet classes. The dev team has been hard at work on finding and implementing the right solutions, and we hope you'll enjoy these changes. Thanks for your patience as caster balancing continues, and thanks for playing.


Rich Waters
Lead Designer, EverQuest

[Zaxboan]

While the last item is welcome indeed, I'm of mixed opinion on the first two. The first two items required skills on the part of the Mage to avoid negative results. Very often these skills separated the Mages from the wannabe's.

IMO the reason Mages are so rare is because of the difficulty to play the class effectively. With that challenge came, for me at least, greater satisfaction (read fun) when the job was done right. This will basically make Mages as easy to play as any other class, in fact with the xp loss gone, I'm thinking we will see a glut of mages in the near future.

Who knows, maybe ill start a chanter. It's ironic that these improvements might actually take away the appeal for me of playing a mage.

[Kaneril Knightwing]

These changes affect the Necro class in the same way as the Mage class. On the one hand it will be easier for the experienced pet handler to use his/her pet I think it will still require as much knowledge and experience to do it well. I think the major benifit from this change will be that Mages and Necros in particular will be more welcome in groups. I guess it will be a matter is wait and see :)

[Aelderie]

OMG!!!!

I gotta get my new pet then! Imagine... me... with a pet... after 36 levels.. /boggle

WOOOOT!!!!!

*runs to buy out the vendors supply of tiny daggers*

:D

[Orian]

So, Erm, What about the Cleric pet?

Unswerving Hammer of Faith, anyone? Yeah.. I know.. its uber. :)

[Airelyn]

Alan corrected a statement made earlier today regarding the new pet AI:

I made a mistake when I said:
Pets will still attack who you tell them to. They just won't run out and do it on their own.

With the new changes, pets will not attack a mezzed NPC, no matter how much you beg, plead or cajole. You'll have to break the mez by some other means first.

I'm sorry about the mistake.

- Alan