Anyone utilizing pack instinct?

[hawkeye_pike]

Hi all,

I am currently building a tamer (72 skill without jewels), and I read about the pack instinct feature. Pack instinct sounds very interesting to me, as the typical Greater Dragon pet seems too boring to me. It would be cool to have a pack of animals with an increased damage bonus.

Has anyone made some experience with pack instinct pets? Is it worth trying? Are they powerful enough to engage dangerous creatures (like peerless)? What would you recommend?

Thanks in advance!
Hawkeye

 

[Farsight]

I'll gladly assemble a pack of hell hounds or frenzied ostards to demonstrate in game.

But the conclusion is, they're VERY powerful in the right situation.

The things you have to watch out for:
They tend to make horrible tanks against high end creatures. The idea is to kill your enemy before they have the chance to kill your pets. A pack has no trouble with rune beetles or oni or other mid range creatures, but when your opponent has a powerful area effect attack, they lose a lot of practicality since you'll have to heal all five of your pets simultaneously.

For great fun, use a pirate (Lucius, preferrably, Aneirin makes a horrible tank ) to tank an opponent and your pack to kill your opponent.

Right now, the only reason I don't have a pack is stable space. With my current skills and hunting partners, I need a Dragon, my two bake kitsune, my rune beetle, my nightmare, my reptalon (fun pet! Not terribly effective though) and my cu sidhe. That's 7 pets out of my possible 12, and I need a couple stable slots free for collecting swampies, pack beetles, fire beetles and really good pets I "happen" to come across for people who need such things.

Dedigan is working on her lore and vet skills for enough room for a pack as well, even though her skills in other areas will suffer (I'm REALLY missing meditation). If you thought I killed things fast with Flotsam, Jetsam and necromancy... wait'll you get a load of this!

The best thing about a pack is with only 90 real taming and lore you can have a pack of hell hounds, hell cats or frenzied ostards and have 99% control. That frees up a lot of skills to put in other things (so Dedigan can have necromancy, spirit speak, magery and eval int and still be effective)

 

[TimberWolf]

QFT

They should modify the hitching post to hold 1 pack and not take up stable spots...

Poor tanks...great death dealers.

Fun for pvp too...lol

 

[Hinotori]

Packs are awesome. I built one tamer around pack use. I one pack of dark blue frenzied ossies I always use on her. The new pack I've been trying to assemble for the last month is going to have 100+ hits and 150+ str for max damage. (just need one more)

I've tried hell hounds and predator hellcats but I was just never happy with them, and I like being able to just jump on an ossy and run if needed.

When running a pack you have to resign yourself to the fact they will die. Sometimes something goes wrong and it's chomp chomp chomp from the monster, or you're taking them against something that hits really hard and can't heal them in time. Since they really only have melee skills that truely need worried about, they are easy to retrain. I end up doing it every few days.

Packs are oh so much fun to play with though. Watching a pack of the little hell kittens eat a cu sidhe is top on my list of amusing to watch. (Rut Roh Raggy! Mew mew mew!) I've used them to kill those Skeletal Liches at Halloween, and last night they got to do an Oaks spawn. They were mowing through stuff at least 3x as fast as the cu sidhe and greater dragons people were using out there. (they were tanking paragon serpentine dragons fine, I just had to vet)

The little cats only do half the damage of frenzied ossies, and usually I do use the ossies for Oaks, I was just bored and decided to use the hand saw instead of the chain saw.

 

[Kazumi the Wild]

I've heard people mention that Fire Steeds, because they take up 2 slots, count as being 2 animals for pack instinct, and thus 2 Fire Steeds would each get +75% damage.

Is that true? Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

[Diomedes Artega]

I've heard people mention that Fire Steeds, because they take up 2 slots, count as being 2 animals for pack instinct, and thus 2 Fire Steeds would each get +75% damage.

Is that true? Can anyone confirm or deny this?

I am not sure as far as their actual damage bonus. Would have to probably calculate it out to see, as I have personally not seen any statistics. But yes, they take 2 control slots a piece. Nice Daemon and equine instincts they have.

You can't really tank with creatures with pack instinct since they are pretty much situational use. Even the fire steeds have LOW HP to begin with, coupled with having low physical resist. Around 30 or 40 or so.

However, if you have good call macros and excellent vet macros, they really are outstanding pets. Can take down cold-based mobs pretty quickly.

 

[Kazumi the Wild]

In terms of tanking, seems like a really good Gaman is your best bet paired with Fire Steeds. They have surprisingly good resists, decent hp (enough of a buffer to be able to keep up with healing), and are a mere 1 slot pet.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

In terms of tanking, seems like a really good Gaman is your best bet paired with Fire Steeds. They have surprisingly good resists, decent hp (enough of a buffer to be able to keep up with healing), and are a mere 1 slot pet.

I have never used a gaman so excuse the ignorance, but what would you want to use one against? They don't have any pack instincts and they have lower HP than fire steeds.

Lol, Perhaps I make my fire steeds do a lot of work tackling tough mobs.

 

[Hinotori]

Gaman arent used for a pack instinct. They are used solely as a tank. They really do have very nice resists. A friend of mine used one for his wolf pack when he played and he swore by them.

 

[Turdnugget]

Gaman

Physical Fire Cold Poison Energy
50-70 30-50 30-50 40-60 30-50

Hit Points 130-160 (info from UOGuide)

It has no pack instincts, that's ok.

Couple this with 4 frenzied ostards getting 75% Damage Increase. The gaman is the tank so you're not having to vet your ostards soooo much because they've got about 40 or so less HP to take in the damage.

Sure you don't get the full benefit of 100% DI from 5 of the same pack, but it's better than using a 2 slot Fire Steed and only getting 50% Damage Increase from 3 of a pack. Although a fire steed will cast spells, a pack of frenzieds will far out damage what damage the fire steed will provide.

I just think I might find me some ostards/gaman to try this out with =)

 

[Corrupted Goblin]

Fire steeds dont have magic

 

[Escaflowne]

I use my pack of 5 hellcats to hunt sometimes, its really fun. Alot funner than using high end pets .

 

[Diomedes Artega]

Okay good to know. I guess it makes sense they could tank. I never really bothered using them before due to the low HP. Fire steeds ranged attack is a firebreath attack. They don't have magery or eval skills.

How many stable slots would you need to take up though for frenzied ostards? lol, I don't feel like filling 1/3 of my slots up with little birds. No offense. I just like a wide range of different creatures. I'm not a tamer fanatic like some.

 

[Turdnugget]

Oh, that would explain why fire steeds are just for looks then =)

Well, for a pack you'd want 4 frenzieds and a gaman to tank. So 5 slots

If you hunt in groups though, and you know there will be a GD to tank, I think it's definately worth it. Awhile ago I took 5 freshly tamed frenzieds just to check out their pack instinct and tried them out on a gaman... they pretty much one hit killed the gaman. They're deadly if you've got something to tank. I haven't taken the time to train any up though to be even more effective. They were only hitting w/their freshly tamed skills of like 70+ anat/wrestle/tactics. So I imagine it'd be even better fully trained.

I don't think it'd be a good idea to use them on a champion with an area effect special though. Too hard to heal 4-5 different pets before they die.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

Oh, that would explain why fire steeds are just for looks then =)

I don't think it'd be a good idea to use them on a champion with an area effect special though. Too hard to heal 4-5 different pets before they die.

Well yeah. Most people use them to bank sit since you have to have a pretty good setup to keep one, let alone 2 of them alive. They can take down pretty much any ice mob quickly and both of mine have over 110 on their resist spells skill. And, THAT's just "average" for them. At least, from what I recall it is.

Ice Fiends and the wyrms I like hunting with them. Ice fiends are actually more difficult to get setup against in my opinion. They have pitifully low fire resist however. I would say the white wyrms could be, but a player controlled one teleports much more often then the PC controlled ones. lol, At least mine does anyways. Makes it difficult to vet sometimes. HEY, come back here!

 

[Hinotori]

I have both disco and peace on my pack tamer. I dont normally actually use the peace since if I disco most things and sick the ossy pack on it, it's dead quite quickly. I like the ossies for killing Swoop. Just a few greater heals is all they need.

I do really wish that small one slots didn't take so many stable slots. I have all of 5 ossies, one so so greater dragon and my very nice plain cu sidhe on that tamer. Just really don't have space for to much more.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

I have both disco and peace on my pack tamer. I dont normally actually use the peace since if I disco most things and sick the ossy pack on it, it's dead quite quickly. I like the ossies for killing Swoop. Just a few greater heals is all they need.

I do really wish that small one slots didn't take so many stable slots. I have all of 5 ossies, one so so greater dragon and my very nice plain cu sidhe on that tamer. Just really don't have space for to much more.

Intriguing. I love all the different combos and tactics people come up with. So they are pretty formidable against swoops then. Any other large or difficult mobs you can take on using that method?

 

[YuriGaDaisukiDa]

Ostards are the highest dps pet combo in the game, arguablytied with hellcats

with 120 peace and music you can peace almost any non boss monster with 100% success

that includes but is not limmited to

shadow wyrms
rotting corpses
lich lords
miasma
then with disco which lowerd the difficulty you can also peace things with a little harder dificulty
like swoop

against a peaced monster, there is no need for a tank

if your a disco tamer, you can disco almost any monster even bosses, and then tank with a gaman or kitsune with good vet and magery your gamae should be able to tank just about anyhting

 

[Hinotori]

I've used the small hell kitten pack against balrons with no peace needed. I use the ossies (kittens if I want to laugh while doing it) to kill cu sidhe when I dont feel like taming to farm them. The ossies do very good at most of the champ spawns (not undead, wither sucks). Abyss I'm undesided on their use.

I used to kill Ancient Wyrms before they were buffed. I tried after and the amount of ossy deaths just weren't worth killing it with them. Greater Dragons are just to much as well, even when discoed (the kitties laugh at the fire breath, though). Paragon cu sidhe hit to hard so even though packs are good damagers, they die to fast alone. If you get a tank in there, they will gladly help shred it.

Most peerless are bad. Trav just isn't worth the deaths to use them, Mel withers them to death to fast, Fat Boy is just no pets. Dread Horn, though, he dies very well to them.