Best pet for killing Barracoon the Piper

[Eternal Knight]

Greetings All,
Appologies if this question has already been answered, however I could not find the answer using the search function, I would like to get some recommendations from the veteran tamers out there on the best pet to kill Barra Ref: (Barracoon the Piper - UOGuide, the Ultima Online Encyclopedia) in the quickest amount of time. As people generally ask for more information about character etc when such questions are asked, my current Archer Tamer build with jewels is

120 taming
120 lore
113 Archer
80 heal
99.5 Necro
115 Tactics
93.8 Vet

So I guess I am happy to take advice on builds as well, initally I tried a ABC archer, but found he died way to often as compare to the Sammy Archer mix. Still tossing up changing healing back to chiv or even bushido. My character is mostly used in PVM, however occassionaly has to PVP esspecially when doing the above spawn which seems to attract all sorts of rift raff wearing shades of red.

Thanks all in advance
EK

 

[SwordofExcalibur]

ABC archer requires that you tank your own mobs, so you would need Necro for Life steal. Arch, Tact, Anat, Chiv, Bushi, Nec at 120+skills (Spirit Speak in there would do you wonders) would be a fine template. There's several variations of it from there.

With a Tamer, any pet with strong, single target physical damage will do really, because Barracoon is a push-over.

As far as best pet, a Chiv/Armor Ignore Cu with Goo is about the standard, since it heals itself and AoE's champ spawn like a mach-truck. But as far as the actual, clocked, deeps+tanking pet who would win out against all others vs Coon, that's hard to say. I would have to vote something that has access to Chiv/Ai and is over-capped on STR. That would be your pre-patch dragons that are usually around 750 strength.

But seriously, you could go tame a broomstick and give it Chiv/Ai and it will pretty much spank Coon til kingdom come.



BTW, your current temp seems stretched all over the place. You're building it for self-reliance, but if you're going to do that, you're dps with your Arch will suffer. If you want to build a support to your pet & self-heal/(de-)buff, go Magery/Disco, or Magery/Weave. If you want to deeps alongside your pet, its better to go Chiv/Tact/Anat. Theway you have it now, you're auto-attack (white damage) is going to probably be pretty boring and unfun because you're not either debuffing mobs or buffing yourself.

If you go Chiv, you can Close Wounds on yourself (40hp) and get Life Steal from your bow (% depending) and use swapped in-out Balanced bow for GHeal pots. S'wut I do. Oh and evasive maneuvers. As long as you have 120 Arch, 45DCI, you should be able to tank decently. Trick is to not get swarmed by mobs during the champ push.

GL! Have fun storming the castle!

 

[Eternal Knight]

Thanks for your advice Sword, although one thing, there seems to be alot of discussion on this board that says that the use of Chiv on pets is to be avoided due to the fact that they use Enemy of one to often and then gets smashed by mobs in return. I have not tried goo yet, although alot of other people have told me to go with Conductive Blast, as it goes with the fact CU use enemy damage. How do you think goo will compare with conductive blast? Your other points ref build are great and I suspected as much, I acutally had Chiv in place before switching to healing to test out. I also was going to sub in Anatomy for vet and see how that improves the build.
Thanks again mate
EK

 

[SwordofExcalibur]

You're welcome! Honestly, I just deal with EoO.

The only time that I've ever experienced a real problem with EoO is when I got too bold and let my dog creep up into 20+ mobs during a champ spawn. On my Mage-Weaver, I was forced to sit there and bomb-heal til he recovered and it took several minutes, but he still died due to reinforcements.

Well... there was that one time at band camp, when I was fighting Semidar and my Cu was getting 150hits off of her due to the Cu EoO'ing on another mob. lol but that was kind of fun having to spam heal and try not do die. (I eventually mounted with a swift retreat.)

Usually, the rule is: if you're Chiv pet is getting hammered, just walk up and mount it (if it's mountable.) Otherwise, be clever about how you approach spawn and getting overwhelmed by too many mobs. (And don't let your pet EoO on a mob, then hit a boss!)

On a normal day, EoO versus a couple different mob types is really not hard to heal. It just requires quick button mashing, reflexes, thinking, and experience.

I wouldn't let it deter you from Chivalry. Chiv/Ai is about as good as you're going to get on deeps vs single target. The Goo just makes a Cu even more lethal. Kind of like a triple threat actor in theater: one who can act, dance, and sing. :-]

Conductive Blast was just -OK.- It lasts all of two seconds. A recent publish did change the MP use of it for pets, but I really do not find it attractive on my Cu-s. I usually nuke alongside my dog and I rarely if ever notice when CB even goes off. Now, when I use a beetle, it's widely apparent when it uses Rune Corruption (reduces all resists by half.) But play around with CB on test center and see if it's to your liking.

Some like it, some don't. I do not. lol

 

[Basara]

If you're planning on collecting gold, a Giant Beetle is a good choice because you can load everything into it (can carry 240k gold, and the fatigued-when-ridden issue goes away after you improve its strength), but it might not have the damage over time to get through the last few candles without help from the tamer, depending on how the spawn is spread out (less an issue in Ilshenar than Fel). Also, if doing an Ilshenar Barracoon, you can typically bail out quickly at around 9-12 candles and switch pets from an AoE pet to the Beetle and come back without losing much (if any) progress.

 

[Pawain]

To answer the title:

Any pet is good for him. His resists are 70 - 80 all across.

One was at the humility spawn the other day. Right before it he came out all the others left for RL things. I had my Chiv Cu on him till about 3/4 life and when I saw the others were not coming back, I brought in my other toon with a Chiv lesser. Coon went down pretty fast.

Giant beetles are good at most spawns because of Rune Corruption and their backpack.