DPS or Resists? Offence or Defence?

[Llewen]

I've known for a long time now that in pvp with pets, dps (damage per second) is king. You can argue that if you like, but that isn't the point of this thread. However, I've always been of the opinion that in pvm, resists are more important than dps, until this morning.

I always used to farm greater dragons with my hiryu. The resists on the hiryu match up very well to the dragons' damage, and with their special attack (lowers physical resist) I always figured that their dps was good enough. However for the last few days I've been hunting greater dragons with my cu sidhe, the cu sidhe's damage type matches up very well with the greater dragon's weaknesses.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the cu sidhe did, it seemed a little bit harder to keep alive, but I didn't have too many problems in that department. Then this morning I went back to my hiryu, and that was when I realized how much faster the cu sidhe kills dragons than the hiryu does. It seemed like my hiryu took forever, and required far more bandages.

So this leads to my question. When you hunt with pets, do you attempt to match the mobs' weaknesses with your pets damage type, or do you attempt to match your pets resists with the mobs' damage type? Do you prioritize offence, or defence?

 

[RichDC]

Well personally i only ever hunt with a beetle bake combo...so that would be DPS.

That being said...GD's will do vast amounts of damage to a beetle until its half health...so, you have to be smart and send the bake[90fire resist] in first.

Ive always been of the opinion that modern[and even old] day tamers are lazy and go for a GD in all situations because it takes little thought &/or effort.

 

[Wenchkin]

I go for damage first, but I don't want to risk a pet dying, so I do try to use a pet with good resists vs what we're hunting. I think it depends how squishy your pet is to an extent though - GDs let tamers off with much more than a solo nightmare would, and sadly most tamers seem to not care about pet handling/taming technique as much as using the one size fits all methods...GDs, shadow ele training, honor taming etc etc. Easy, but not always necessary or efficient options.

Think my fave for GD killing is 2 kitsune, but I don't hunt them often. I like to have my ethy for zipping away if one of the gits decides to roast me

Wenchy

 

[Llewen]

I'm of the opinion that dps is more important than resists, but survivability is the most important thing. You obviously want to take down your prey as quickly as possible, but your pets need to survive the experience. So while a pack of frenzied ostards has a huge dps potential, for the most part they aren't practical because they are so hard to keep alive.

 

[[JD]]

GDs do physical melee damage, so except for spells and breath weapon, fire resist doesn't matter so much when killing GDs. How much of its time it spends fire breathing or flamestriking/exploding/fireballing VS. Meleeing, I can't say. If you find one that does that, I can see the need for a high fire resist pet.

I hunt Miasma sometimes for stuff to unravel for my newblar Imbuer. All this time because of her mortal, poison, etc I'd been using GD because they are so damn tough. The kills seemed to take a while because GD's damage output is not that good - they're actually more for tanking than doing damage.

I recently swapped to a nightmare/rune beetle combo I'd been training up. The GD could solo 2-3 Miasmas in a row without needing help so I figured at 300 hp they'd die fast.

I was wrong, they kicked the snot out of Miasma, faster it seemed than the GD, and they didn't take bad damage.

the one thing which was different however was the GD could fight unattended while I looted. I made sure to heal cure etc on the beetle/mare after every fight so while they killed faster it slowed down the amount I could loot because I had to take better care of them.

Beetle/mare also kills Swoop faster. Way faster

When it comes to determining what I kill something with I just make a mental check and ask myself how well will something be able to take the damage being dished out to it. What will I need to be doing - will I need to chain meditate? Will I be free to nuke? Will I have to chain loot? I make my decision going from there on either going defensive, or going offensive.

 

[Llewen]

I've said this a number of times lately. People seem to have forgotten how devastating a high quality, well trained rune beetle can be - level 5 poison, bleed, armour corruption that reduces all resists by half, a lot of mana and they dump like crazy. A rune paired with a bake is the highest dps pet combo short of the highly impractical five pet packs, and a rune and a mare isn't far behind that, and both will out dps a greater dragon any day of the week. Not only that but a high dexterity rune beetle is the fastest moving pet in the game, with the highest attack rate.

 

[Warrior of Time]

The key has been overlooked. Dex must also be added into the equation. A slow pet by nature is still slow moving with high dex. A bake with high dex moves faster than a GD by nature. Rate of damage is only part of it. Weakness of the GD is cold and poison.

Your talking apples and oranges in a way. No pet at can fight 2 targets at the same time. Same time your attacking the weak points of the GD Poison. Double teaming with 2 fast moving pets. You have 3 things going there.

High damage
Attacking the weakness
Double teaming.

I was thinking we were talking about just one on one. The GD has the high hp to deal with. Endurance. The tamer overcomes that with vet. The beetle will attack the weakness with poison and higher speed. Now see how long it takes to kill one.

I think an interesting combo would be a Beetle / Skree. At that point the only thing the target has is natural resist. Once asleep it don't protect itself. A skree only has about 250 hp. But try to take them with a pet. If he had twice the damage. He would be a holy terror. Try to kill one with a sleeping bake. A skree just don't have the damage. I want a skree with 35 - 40 hp damage with 500 hp. I want to see things wake up dead. With a pet that is 1/2 bard.

 

[A Rev]

I think an interesting combo would be a Beetle / Skree..

Umm, do you play a tamer???

Skrees are[im certain] 4slot pets.

Beetles are [im certain] 3slot pets.

So you would need 7 slots...unless i missed something on a previous publish...you only get 5.

 

[Tina Small]

This is an interesting discussion. I wish I had more to add to it. However, it seems as if I've gotten myself into a situation where I don't have enough time in the day anymore to experiment much with finding my own answers to these very good questions. I find myself spending the majority of my pet training time focusing on the tank pets because I've got too many of them to train! Hehe. (The Abyss is turning out to be a very nice place to train them quickly while making good amounts of gold and collecting ingredients useful to myself and guildmates.) Once I get a GD or two trained for each tamer, then it's on to the cu sidhe, then the hiryu, then the rune beetle and maybe a white wyrm or a pair of fire steeds. And hopefully the pair of nightmares I usually keep for each tamer get a hefty workout while training up skill high enough to get a GD. One of these days I will get serious about trying out bakes or maybe a pair of fire steeds or something else you don't see often and try to figure out where they can best be used. For now the most "exotic" pets I'm using regularly are the boura, but I've talked way too much about them already this week. LOL

One of my guildmates also has multiple tamer characters on a lot of shards. It's always a treat to see him pull out the pack of frenzied ostards and let them loose or to see which pet combinations he uses for PvP. I'll have to give him a jab and see if he'll pop his head in here and add his thoughts.

*Wanders off to find Poo........*

 

[Poo]

So this leads to my question. When you hunt with pets, do you attempt to match the mobs' weaknesses with your pets damage type, or do you attempt to match your pets resists with the mobs' damage type? Do you prioritize offence, or defence?

very interesting conversation you have going here.

there is a massive difference in what i use for a pet, and i must admit, im worse then my daughters for changing their outfits with how many times i change my pets throughout the night.

of course the biggest question is are we talking PVP or PVM, and i can see we are talking PVM so ill tailor my responce to PVM.

offence, defence or damage.

me personally i take a pet that will live through the encounter.
cause offence and DPS dosnt mean anything if you have to pull off, run away and res your pet up. (best offence is a good defence, no)

so that said i wouldnt say that i play a defence game with my pets.
i tailor my pet to what im hunting. and i try to make that fine balance between killing as fast as possible AND having a pet that will not only live but be able to handle things if another MOB comes up while fighting the first.
(cause that NEVER happens.... damn changelings!)

in PVM i also play my disco tamer, so that really helps.
nothing says im gonna kill ya and its gonna hurt like a -28 reduction straight accross the board in ALL resists.

i also have the ability to run a 2nd and 3rd account at the same time as i have 3 computers side by side in my den.

so if im going big game hunting i can send in a meat shield and then send in a pack off ozzies and a beetle mare and they can deal out the damage while a GD soaks up the damage.
case in point, the general invasion from last year.
those generals took a while to do with one greater dragon, not due to resistances, but just the sheer amount of HP they had.
so what we would do is a guild mate would put his GD on it to tank the damage from the general then id send in a pack of frenzied ozzies, or 2 packs if we had the spawn to ourselves and it wasnt too buisy (try keeping track of 10 birds in a spawn area!)
and ill tell ya, a CHAINSAW would be hard pressed to keep up to the damage i was doing.
as soon as the pack was on the general it would be seconds and he was down.
compared to the minutes it would take with just a couple GD.

so in a way i get around this by doing both.
putting up the best defence and then bringing on another account and tamer to deal out pure nasty damage.

but when i just play for fun (as compared to playing competitivlly?) i do a mix of it all.
bust chance of living with highest output of damage.

(and i am a beetle / mare tamer, 9 times out of 10 ill take my beetle mare over my GD, and in pvp they are pretty much ALL i use - ya cant beat armour coruption and level 5 poison and double damage!)

... though..... nothing says fear the poo like a dismount shot and a pack of ozzies on 'all guard' insta jumping on ya to instill fear in someone.

 

[Poo]

hmm

on a side note.
this also comes back to a fundimental point that i am allways saying to my guildmates.

if your gonna take the time to tame and train a animal MAKE SURE ITS PERFECT!!!!

i dont mind spending days farming a spawn to get the perfect (or as close to perfect) animal for my stable.

and that counts for a lot.

maxed out resistances with maxed out STR (for damage output) with nice phat hit points.... mmm mmmm good.

 

[Poo]

im feeling long winded tonight.

and looking back at those post confirms that i guess.


short answer.
i look at where im going, i look at what is gonna be there, i think what resistance they deal damage to and what they are lower in, then i pick a pet that has a nice mix of high resistance in what they hit in and will hit them in something that they are lower in.

and then i disco them to totally push the resistance in my favor and kill 'em

 

[Llewen]

I've put a lot of time into hunting for the perfect pets, and I've got a pretty solid stable. I pvp a lot with my tamer, and I like doing it differently than others do so I pvp as a tamer first, rather than as a dexxer, or mage, or whatever, with pets for supplemental damage and a tough mount, so my pets are my primary damage dealers and my magery is there to support them.

I'm aware of frenzieds. If you can get something to tank for them a pack of five frenzieds has the highest dps of any pet combination in the game, and at the very least among the highest dps available to any single player in the game. I've just never had room for a full pack of five in my stable, or the patience to hunt for five exceptional frenzieds and train them up. Kudos to those who do though.

I'm very much a situational pet user. For most purposes in low to low high level pvm contexts, the beetle and mare combination is my favourite now, but I'm not as experienced in high end contexts such as spawns and peerless with my pets.

For farming pets I will use either my war horse, or my cu sidhe, and sometimes my hiryu, because I want to take my time loring and not worry about having my beetle killing that perfect pet I have yet to find. I also use my cu sidhe when I'm farming fame, karma and honour with the succubus because I have more control and it's easier to make sure I honour my victims, and paragon succubus are very tough, I'm not so sure I'd want to have a go at them with a beetle/mare combo...

 

[Stupid Miner]

As I'm rarely a tamer, I'm curious, how well does Spellweaving work with pets: GoR and GoL. From an outside perspective it seems like it'd be amazing, but I don't see many tamers with it.

To save you the time of looking it up on the spellweaving page

Gift of Renewal:
Spellweaver with 100 skill
No Arcane Focus; 9 points every 2 seconds for 30 seconds
with Level 6 Focus: 15 points every 2 seconds for 90 seconds. (Cooldown ~60 seconds) [675 total healing]
120 skill with L6 focus: 16 per 2 for 90[720 total]

... and you can cast Arcane Empowerment to boost GoR for ~30 seconds
100(L6): boosts GoR healing (from 15) to 23 for 30 seconds [795 total]

Gift of Life:
Rezes with 50% health
Duration:
100: 480s
100(L6): 840s

 

[Tina Small]

case in point, the general invasion from last year.
those generals took a while to do with one greater dragon, not due to resistances, but just the sheer amount of HP they had.
so what we would do is a guild mate would put his GD on it to tank the damage from the general then id send in a pack of frenzied ozzies, or 2 packs if we had the spawn to ourselves and it wasnt too buisy (try keeping track of 10 birds in a spawn area!)
and ill tell ya, a CHAINSAW would be hard pressed to keep up to the damage i was doing.
as soon as the pack was on the general it would be seconds and he was down.
compared to the minutes it would take with just a couple GD

Ummm...yeah....I remember that. Asking a guildmate (not Poo), "So what'd you get." "Nothing." "Yeah, me too. Guess Poo got everything this time. Again."

LOL

Really really made me wish I'd taken the time to train up my own pack of frenzied ostards.

 

[jeza]

As I'm rarely a tamer, I'm curious, how well does Spellweaving work with pets: GoR and GoL. From an outside perspective it seems like it'd be amazing, but I don't see many tamers with it.

To save you the time of looking it up on the spellweaving page

Gift of Renewal:
Spellweaver with 100 skill
No Arcane Focus; 9 points every 2 seconds for 30 seconds
with Level 6 Focus: 15 points every 2 seconds for 90 seconds. (Cooldown ~60 seconds) [675 total healing]
120 skill with L6 focus: 16 per 2 for 90[720 total]

... and you can cast Arcane Empowerment to boost GoR for ~30 seconds
100(L6): boosts GoR healing (from 15) to 23 for 30 seconds [795 total]

Gift of Life:
Rezes with 50% health
Duration:
100: 480s
100(L6): 840s

I know that some do, but not much and the reason could be the following :
When you're a tamer, you have 3 skills used for the "tamer" part of your template.
You're left with only 3 others, what isn't much, so each skill you add has to count and give max effect.

And spellweaving is great as long as you have a good focus.
Without it's completely useless (or so it seems to me).

So would you take the risk to use 120 skill points for something you're not sure you'll be able to use 100% the time ?

What would be the 2 skills left ? And how efficient would you be with just that ?
As a Tamer you already depend a lot on your pet, it's the point of course
But add another strong dependency ... I'm not sure it's wise.

Of course if your shard is populated and/or you're in a guild and know it'll be easy to find a good focus when you need one it's completely different.

So personally I bought 2 120 SW scrolls, one for my mage and one for my tamer.
My mage is raising and using SW at the moment but if I want I can switch the skill to my tamer. (music/peace vs sw/medit)

That's my reason and opinion, maybe others who actually tried sw will give you other reasons

 

[A Rev]

hmm

on a side note.
this also comes back to a fundimental point that i am allways saying to my guildmates.

if your gonna take the time to tame and train a animal MAKE SURE ITS PERFECT!!!!

i dont mind spending days farming a spawn to get the perfect (or as close to perfect) animal for my stable.

and that counts for a lot.

maxed out resistances with maxed out STR (for damage output) with nice phat hit points.... mmm mmmm good.

QFT

One of the most important things is to make sure you have the perfect pet...think of it as your sword[you wouldnt settle for a sub par sword would you]

Took me about a month but eventually got my bake with 425mana [forgotten rest sorry] 59/88/57/59/60

 

[Warrior of Time]

Umm, do you play a tamer???

Skrees are[im certain] 4slot pets.

Beetles are [im certain] 3slot pets.

So you would need 7 slots...unless i missed something on a previous publish...you only get 5.

Yup I have 3 tamers.
Yes a skree is 4 slots. I have 2 of them as well as a pair of wolf spiders.
Said I only wish I could. UO seen to it I couldn't (Was wishful thinking)

I try to use the weakest I can to kill the strong. Best I have been able to do with a skree is to kill two Titans, and two cyclops at the same time. Or kill everything in the Brit graveyard. Skree has a nasty habit of once it is asleep he takes it for dead, and moves to the next target. Not good if he is 1/2 dead and runs off 10 tiles away to the next one. Multiple targets works very well with one.

A word of warning about a skree. When it (Target) wakes up you could be the next thing it attacks. I found out using one to kill 3 OLs. Oh he killed them ok. I was also almost killed.

To get the best pet I can. I use a stealth herder with lore. To get a good beetle I walked all over Beetlescape. Picked the best, and lead it to be peace tamed.

I have also used spell weaving on a tamer. Only thing it is good for is taming GDs when no one is around. I stone the Music / peace. Then move the focus /spellweasving to the tamer.

 

[Llewen]

As I'm rarely a tamer, I'm curious, how well does Spellweaving work with pets: GoR and GoL. From an outside perspective it seems like it'd be amazing, but I don't see many tamers with it.

And spellweaving is great as long as you have a good focus.
Without it's completely useless (or so it seems to me).

I'd say you've hit the nail on the head. I've considered spell weaving, but I'm rarely active when others that I can get a focus with are on. Beyond that there's a lot of down time with gift of renewal while you are waiting for the cool down to expire so you can cast it again.