Tanino

Just curious but where do you see the benefits of the dog in ACT? The healed amount I see is usually such a small percentage.. for instance I healed 1.2 million and the dog only healed 40k. Also when you have the group AOE immunity is that showing up as a heal amount? I am using the dog now but honestly it doesn't feel any better than when I took heal crit from the agil line.

Koinoo

No, the AOE immunity is not going to show up as heal amount, since it does not heal anything. While it would be nice for an AE that is blocked to display in the logs how much damage the blocked AE would have done. The best you can do is create a custom trigger that fires a sound off when the AOE effect hits you. Do that and you'll notice it goes off a LOT. I have had the dog block a significant amount of damage on my group just with the AOE avoidance. That's not parseable, but if my dog's AOE avoidance trigger goes off 2 seconds before an AE hits and every group except mine drops to 30% health while mine is full health then I can only deduce that the dog's avoidance has done it's job.

I wouldn't worry much about the heal parse numbers. The number displayed does not take into account stoneskins, damage prevented from cures (though at least we can tell who's curing a lot in the parse), damage prevented from AOE blocking, damage prevented from mitigation and anything else that is not direct healing. It's not the same as parsing DPS--you can be a really shitty healer and top the heal parse easy by not curing and doing everything possible to make your group take more damage (i.e. allowing your wards to soak up more damage). While the Aura of Warding proc isn't making up a huge amount of the heal parse, it's still free wards and there's the chance that the AOE avoidance he's hitting the group with will completely negate a bad AE from landing on them. The 16% heal crit from the AGI line simply isn't going to compare to this, especially with all of the heal crit that is on gear these days.

That being said, the dog line actually lowers your potential heals shown on a parse, since it can block AE's that would eat wards or require healing. THAT'S NOT A BAD THING. The same has been said about the belt from Byzola/Gynok or the book from Emperor's Anatheum--they actually hurt your heal parse by taking away potential healing. So if you want to be a parse monkey, don't go with STR line at all, stop curing anything and lean away from any equipment that can potentially block damage from being taken. None of the above will show up in your heal parse, so by the same logic you're applying none of it is going to "help" your heal parse. But having those extra tools will make you a much more efficient healer even if it doesn't do anything visible on a heal parse.

In closing, the dog line will not show a huge difference on a heal parse but is much better than the AGI line for a healer unless your heal crit is already low (i.e. <60%). I'm sitting between 84-87% depending on what gear I swap in/out, so the AGI line would be worthless to me as a healer. The STR line, however, adds possible AOE immunity and some extra wards that I would not have otherwise.

Tanino

Thanks for the info. I am at 63% heal crit now but I proc 16% more from my T3 armor set. I wonder if it shows up as a stone skin for the aoe immunity, in which case it may show up in the avoidance report. Either way I like the str line except for the times when my pet dies in which case I lose the bonuses... Aiden is one fight that I notice it dies all the time.

Koinoo

If it helps at all, the dog is probably dying to whatever Aiden's frontal/rear AE is (physical, so counts as somewhat direct I guess). On that fight in particular, I usually flank Aiden at all times and keep the dog with me. If he's attacking from Aiden's flanks, then he'll take no damage from any of the physical AE's. Also, make sure you're pulling him off Aiden when the dragon flies up. The dog will keep trying to reach him otherwise and end up dying as a result every time if you aren't pulling him off each time.

As for a parse, the AOE avoidance actually avoiding an AE for your group isn't going to show up at all in a visible parse. There's literally no text in the logs if an AE fires and you have a block up from somewhere--you just don't get hit with the AE while other people without a blocker will get hit.

You will get some text in the logs for when the proc actually lands on you. That's the line I have a trigger for to know when the block is up on me and to just track how often the AOE avoidance ends up going off in a given fight (NOT how often it actually is up when an AE hits). Some of my groupmates in my main groups also have the dog trigger in their ACT so they'll know if the blocker is up when an AE is incoming.

Pouncer

How long does that AE block last?

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Second greatest kitteh evar

Tanino

Oh another question and this going to sound really noobish, but what setting do you usually put your pet to for a fight especially if it has a bunch of adds? I usually set it to attack right on the pull but after the first add is down it, the pet just decides to take a nap till I tell it to attack again. Is there a better way?

Koinoo

I don't want to make up something about the duration of the pet blocker, but it only lasts a few seconds. I'll check tonight when I am back in game and post the actual duration. I want to say it's around 5-6 seconds, though, but don't quote me on that just yet. I've had it chain proc long enough to block around 25-30 seconds of AE's in one spurt, though. The proc chance definately increases if you have a dirge (the melee skill song helps his hit rate a ton and Luck of the Dirge affects the proc rate for both the dog's wards and AOE block, I believe). If you have a mythical templar in the group (i.e. main tank), their skill bonus from group Aego probably helps a good bit with the pet's hit rate as well I'm assuming. So in the typical tank group setup, the AOE block will fire quite a bit more than in your typical pickup group or while soloing. Again, I would encourage making a custom trigger in ACT to fire a warning when the block actually hits you and you'll understand how often it fires.

I keep my pet from guarding himself or me by default. There are cases where if he is continually taking damage and hurting my wards (which isn't often, and usually not in a raid encounter), I'll back him off and leave him idle at my side until everything stabilizes again. For a while I had actually macroed all of my debuffs with /pet attack, so that might help keep him attacking (but only if you debuff a lot). I prefer having complete control in knowing when and what he's attacking, though, so I took those macros out not long ago.

I also have three separate macros on all of my alts that use pets--one with /pet attack, one that backs him off and clears him from aggroing anything and another that has both functions to toggle his guarding me or himself. Those have been on my hotbars since my days as a magician in EQ1 and I've always used similar keys on all characters I play that have a pet. Using those hotkeys can be a lot faster than the pet window and provide more control over the pet when you're in the middle of a fight and spamming heals.

Something else Profe mentioned earlier in the thread were the interrupts from leg bite. I do use this quite a bit on fights where timing interrupts can help (Varsoon being one group level example). I actually have leg bite tied to my pet attack key, so that works pretty well for keeping the proc going. So, having the pet there for the occasional chance of interrupt is nice, since the developers seem to have a hard-on for interruptable effects these days.

I notice we both play on Crushbone, Tanino, or at least I'm assuming that's where your defiler is located. If you want to talk to me in game I would be more than happy to chat. I won't pretend to be an expert on our class, but I wouldn't mind lending a hand on any questions someone has if it's easier than going back and forth on a messageboard. I'm usually on every night as Koinoo on Crushbone, so drop me a tell if you would like to chat.

profe

Assuming you have no auto-defense settings enabled, your dog's hate list is controlled by you. Every time you send your dog in for attack on a mob it inserts that mob to the top of the list. So your dog will continue to attack this target until it is dead or until it is given something else. If you then send your dog to a second target, it will attack that new one until it dies and then automatically return to its first target because that is now the only one in its list. If at anytime you want to reset it, ask your pet to back off to clear the list.

The problem with auto-defend as a mechanism for controlling your dog's hate is that it only adds mobs to the bottom of the list on the initial damage. So in the case of maximizing AOE avoid, your dog will just go to the boss and not bother with adds until the boss is dead and that is only if those adds attacked you in some way. And really at that point it doesn't even matter--the boss is dead already.

A simplified fight would go like the following: send pet to boss, add appears, send pet to add, add dies, pet automatically returns to the boss, and repeat the process of sending pet to adds as they appear.

The dog does very low DPS. Its purpose isn't to actually contribute towards the kill of anything. The dog is simply there to support your group. The value of sending the dog in on mobs that are closest to your group is that you will maximize what your dog brings to the group. Other than coordination issues on your own part controlling the dog is completely separate from controlling your character, so there is no excuse. Paying attention to your dog is as important as the next spell you cast and those can be done simultaneously. If you aren't getting enough out of your dog to see its value, YOU aren't doing enough. There is no setting that does it for you.

Denna

I'm pretty sure that the ability gained from the shadow lines is a CA the dog can use. I was in Kurns x2 when we were still just learning Ione, and I somehow became the dog and had that attack (forget it's name off the top of my head) and auto attack.

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