f13.net

So, I hit level 20 the other night, and I apparently get a rat companion. A pet! YAY! I bought him and named him Squeakers.

But he doesn't attack anything. And half the buttons on his little hotbar do fuckall. I click and click, and they do nothing. Is the assassin pet supposed to be just decorative, or can he actually fight?

Maybe he's not a rat, but a gerbil.

From a careless search of the EQ2 forums, yes he is a pet, yes he is useless and yes he can't attack a goddamn thing. It would have been nice to know that before I spent the silver on it. Something informative like "Summons a complete pussy hippy rat to laugh at your still twitching corpse as you get gangraped by Heroic ^^ mobs again."

You know, for customer service and what not.

They have these useless pets in WoW.  Perhaps you can sell it to a Queynosian for ph4t l3wtz; that's what people do with kittens and cockroaches in Kalimdor.

Yeah, rangers get a supposed "hunting hawk" that does fuckall but poop on your stil twitching corpse. I feel your pain.

Oh quit your bitching.  I'll trade you that rat or hawk pet for "Illusion: Half Elf".

Not everything needs a use. Stop being such a pellet seeker and enjoy the ride a bit.

I got a kittycat and named it after our library cat. Not to be confused with Ninja Claw over there <----

Monks get the cool-ass kata animation.

I got a floating book that adds Crit damage (or does it reduce casting time?). It is part of my AAXP. Apparently I can also summon a dragonling and something else too. All of this is based on the weapon I'm holding when I do the summon. And all do something different (+Crit, -Cast time, -Refresh time, +Resist). Finally, and I have to test this, but I think it can attack things (though the power of a floating book is arguable).

Pretty cool actually, even if I'm not the biggest fan of the AAXP lines that follow.

I have a uh, mushroom pet that kinda shits out spore gas when he's bored.

I have no problem with it BEING useless. I have a problem with not being TOLD that it's useless before I buy it.

But there are really a lot of things in EQ2 that could use a better explanation. Maybe they wouldn't be if I RTFM, but I don't RTFM unless forced to.

MMORPGs are the only thing I read the manual for, ironically that didn't help with the original SW:G as both the manual and strategy guide were....shit.

Sauced has one of those too. I love it.

Heh, for some reason I thought RTFM meant reading Forums :)

Otherwise, yea, like WoW, EQ2 is inconsistently informative.

That's disgusting.

Funny thing, but that turned out to the shaman first acheivement skill. Ho hum :-P

But on the subject of the fluff skills in general, it is a shame that they didn't manage to think of enough cool fluff skills to go around. Many people get stiffed with a crappy illusion or random particle effect.

Brigand clobber (knockdown target irritating group member) and defiler 'make annoying group member vomit' > all.

The first achievement skill I took was Domination, a buff that has a chance to drop a damage proc on things when I'm fighting them. The buff has a 3 minute duration, and a longer recast time, meaning I hardly ever use it because I just fucking forget. It's pretty worthless.

The first conjuror achievement is possess minion.  For thirty seconds I can take direct control of my pet and annoy people by slithering up and emoting to them, that's about all it's good for.

"Stopgap's Aery Stalker Dances with you!"

I don't know what this dev team is thinking. They definitely need better tooltips! With every single character, I've flubbed the racial trait type of skills because I was thinking something was a passive buff and it turns out to be some 45 second buff on a thirty minute timer that I promptly never use again.

I was FUCKING PISSED with my shadowknight, because I'm thinking 'well, maybe I get an invis later...I do have FD anyway...' and didn't take a racial hide, figuring a better health regen would be worth it (and I'm Iksar..). Then I find out it's basically useless. Thanks. I comfort myself by rationalizing that the fucking hide skill would probably be useless as hell, too.
I got a quest clipper that lets me snip hair from Kerrans. They do a little threatening emote. Here, kitty kitty...

You can't move when hidden using hide. So...