shaodu cub skills

rst777

so i just got myself a shaodu and am wondering what skills he should have. i expect that he will be around for a long time, so i dont mind investing some coin. i'd like to avoid the super expensive skills, but who knows.
i expect to use him as tank>dd> minimally as lure.
he has pounce, flesh ream, pierce and (i think) boost. im thinking of dropping atleast one of them for a bash skill (either bash or thunderbolt, maybe?)
any and all good suggestions for what to keep and what to get are welcome.
thanks

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

The cub and DD don't go in same sentence...... Its DPS is comparable to the DPS of a wet paper napkin underwater.

I would keep pounce, fleshream and tough, and drop the 4th skill and add regular bash.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Unfortunately, all the pets except the legendaries involve some sort of compromise. The drawback of the cub is its low attack. So you will want to level another pet, something with high attack, for when someone else is tanking.

That means the focus of the cub should be on tanking. To tank, it has to keep aggro, so Bash is a good choice. As for which skill to drop, Tough is a tanking skill, Pierce is mostly duplicated by Ironwood until higher levels. So most opt to drop Pierce. (A veno who melees a lot may feel differently.) If you really wanted to keep aggro, you could replace Flesh Ream with an 8 sec elemental attack skill. But that would make Pounce the default skill and you would have to remember to select Bash every time you summoned the cub, just like the herc.

Pounce is nearly impossible to replace, so most don't want to get rid of it. But replacing it is an option too since it has a 60 sec cooldown and the stun and attack speedup are only marginally useful. It's your call. I kept it since it's my only land pet with a stun, and it does come in handy to stop certain kiting mobs (most archers will not run after a stun/freeze even after it wears off).

I found the cub to be a pretty good pet up til about level 60. But I still kept my magmite leveled for its high attack and ability to tank high phys damage mobs which the cub couldn't handle. At 60 you'll start doing TT and encountering reduced damage bosses. Player damage against these bosses is reduced by 75%, while pet damage is unaffected. So your pet ends up doing the majority of the damage, and this becomes one of the primary jobs of the veno. Unfortunately the cub's weak attack really hurts it in that role, and you will find yourself using it less and less in favor of a high attack pet.

rst777

ok, so it is not a dps pet, no problem. it will suffice to be a tank and with pounce maybe a lure too? i imagine the stun is nice in giving time to re-summon.
i will keep my mag leveled too. though i want to use him as little as possible. i just dont like it may not be a great reason, but its the truth.
i thought that flesh ream was a good skill for keeping agro? does bash do a better job?
as for the bashes, they are all equal aside from the elemental bonus right? thats why i was thinking the metal one as an added bonus since so few enemies are metal resistant. but im sure regular will do fine too.
i think that pierce will be the one to go.
as for boost, would you consider that better than tough? hp restore over def? boost gives 8,10, or 12% hp back with a 10sec cooldown, where as tough has a 60sec cooldown and the skill only lasts 15secs. if anyone has done the math on this it would be appreciated.
thanks for the help

LloydAsplund - Sanctuary

Luring with pounce is not very smart. Firstly, it deals no damage (or did it? cant remember, i have to check) meaning it doesnt aggro the mob when you store it. Second, it has a 1 minute cd, not very spammable for luring. I would use pounce as a life saver, go just added DPS when tanking.

Bash is generally a better aggro holder than flesh ream because of its lower cd (8 seconds instead of 15).

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Pounce does indeed fail to lure, if you manage to recall the pet between the pounce and its next hit.

Cub makes a pretty good tank - not the best maghic defence, not the best physical defence, but pretty good both.

Damagewise though, yeah, I agree it sucketh. Still ditching pierce (and maybe tough as well, though that makes it a less good tank) for bash-alikes should let it keep aggro well enough.

Edit: Also the skills on the cub are only level 1, so levelling them up is a good idea if you plan to use it as a tank. And that costs a lot which could go into your "Buy the actual good tank" fund...

Megabyte_ - Heavens Tear

rst777 wrote: »

ok, so it is not a dps pet, no problem. it will suffice to be a tank and with pounce maybe a lure too? i imagine the stun is nice in giving time to re-summon.
i will keep my mag leveled too. though i want to use him as little as possible. i just dont like it may not be a great reason, but its the truth.
i thought that flesh ream was a good skill for keeping agro? does bash do a better job?
as for the bashes, they are all equal aside from the elemental bonus right? thats why i was thinking the metal one as an added bonus since so few enemies are metal resistant. but im sure regular will do fine too.
i think that pierce will be the one to go.
as for boost, would you consider that better than tough? hp restore over def? boost gives 8,10, or 12% hp back with a 10sec cooldown, where as tough has a 60sec cooldown and the skill only lasts 15secs. if anyone has done the math on this it would be appreciated.
thanks for the help

I used my cub until level 80 without too much problem. Like you, I just didn't like the golems at the time (mainly hated a huge pet that always got in the way).
On my cub, as someone said before, I opted to remove Pierce and added Bash. All other skills I kept. I found that by selecting Bash as the auto-skill each time I summoned the pet, the pet was able to hold aggro quite well. Occasionally I would have to use Flesh Ream between Bash cast times to help on tough/high HP mobs tho.
Since Bash has a much shorter cooldown than Flesh Ream, I would suggest using that as your primary auto-skill rather than Flesh Ream (8 sec cooldown vs 15 sec cooldown). This will help the cub maintain aggro. Then, as I was doing, you still have the Flesh Ream to grab aggro back if he loses it (and pounce as another alternative to prevent getting hit).
The only problem with the elemental bashes is that some mobs are more resistant to them, while others are less resistant. Since you can't always choose which mobs you want to grind on, this can lead to losing aggro more easily.
As for Tough, I rarely used that skill during grinding, but used it quite often on bosses or when the pet was being attacked by multiple high-damage mobs. Since you want to use this pet as your primary tank, I would suggest keeping Tough rather than adding Boost (sorry, never did the math to figure the Boost skill VS the Tough skill).

mooman321

I just reached 70 and i absolutly love my cub. I keep my magmite leveled and skilled as a back up and for tanking lower physical based bosses for guildies, but the cub is my primary now for several reasons.

Small (its easier to click around in crowded fbs)
fast (i know its not a knowlin, but it does the job as far as luring goes)
better overall tanking

Skills:
Even fully leveled the cub was scarily unpredicatable at holding agro with only flesh ream. Something had to go. Pounce and tough, while not used much are invaluable when you need them. I dropped pierce, replaced with bash and brought both bash and fleshream to lvl 2. total cost was 800k and worth every coin. It holds agro like a pro now. I would not drip flesh ream as it is an agro skill and when pulling it takes a chunk out of the mob while you are resummoning. Biggest drawback is having to train yourself to right click bash after resummoning.

xxxdsmer

yeah, its definitely a pain to havta retrain urself to right click bash (b/c its slot 4 when added), but u get used to having to do it after a while.

but adding an agro skill (like bash) to shadou cub (or evn any pet u'll be keeping for a long time, like eldergoth marksman / herc / w/e) is definitely worth doing. the better the pet can keep the mob's attention, the faster the two of u can kill it, making it easier to quest/grind/lvl pet. but, as some have said, id definitely keep pounce. got rid of it on my herc for an agro skill (bash in my case), but definitely decided to keep it on the cub. its practically impossible to replace, and however limited it definitely has its uses.

rst777

thanks for the advice y'all.
i dropped pierce for bash (already made a habit of making it default action)
so far he has been a beast. may not do as much damage as mag and requires an extra heal every now and then, but he gets to the mobs before my first spell hits and holds agro great. i havent pulled agro from him once. plus his size is great for targeting easily. and of course he is damn cute...*ahem* i mean vicious looking!
i think he will be around for a long while.
and still if anyone has worked out any math on the tough vs. boost thing. i would love to know what works best.

kenlee

rst777 wrote: »

it will suffice to be a tank and with pounce maybe a lure too? i imagine the stun is nice in giving time to re-summon.

just dont ever lure bosses with stun because this skill never lands on bosses

Solandri - Heavens Tear

rst777 wrote: »

and still if anyone has worked out any math on the tough vs. boost thing. i would love to know what works best.

Tough cuts damage in half for 15 seconds. At higher levels, bosses and some mobs in instances can do 50%+ damage to your pet in one hit (if not killing them in one hit. Touch will reduce that to 25%-50% for 15 seconds.

Boost heals 12%(?). There's no comparison.

kenlee wrote: »

just dont ever lure bosses with stun because this skill never lands on bosses

Skills which don't do damage can't be used to lure. None of the debuffs (including Slow and Threaten) nor stun will work to lure. If you want to apply those debuffs, you need to leave your pet out so it can do a regular melee hit after debuffing.

Sevas - Heavens Tear

kenlee wrote: »

just dont ever lure bosses with stun because this skill never lands on bosses

Bosses are immune to stun type skills anyway... And yeah, using debuff type skills doesn't work to lure. b:surrender Used to forget I had my debuffs on my Kowlin when I used him for luring.

kenlee

Sevas - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Bosses are immune to stun type skills anyway...

this is what i was pointing out first not that zero damage type skills cant be used to lure... both are true anyway

rst777

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Tough cuts damage in half for 15 seconds. At higher levels, bosses and some mobs in instances can do 50%+ damage to your pet in one hit (if not killing them in one hit. Touch will reduce that to 25%-50% for 15 seconds.

Boost heals 12%(?). There's no comparison.

yes but boost can be used every 10 seconds whereas tough is every 60 seconds. so you can get a total of 72% of your hp back in the time you can get that 50% reduction in damage for only 15 seconds. so i wonder which makes out to be better in the long run.
obviously tough is great if you wait for that right moment to hit it and reduce that one major hit, but that also means you are saving it up and not even using it every 60 seconds, therefore reducing its effectiveness.
my math may not be right on this so correct me if im wrong:
on shaodu cub(at 90) has 3149 hp boost would restore 2267.28 hp every minute. lets assume that this 50% damaged hit only comes twice in one minute. using boost you would take 3149 damage (assumed damage from 2 50% hits) then you would end up with 882hp left.
using tough it would only block 50% of one of those 2 hits. 1574 damage each hit(again with the damage from 2 50% hits) so the blocked hit would be 788 damage and the untoughed hit wound be 1574 damage. totaling 2362 damage taken. you would end up with 787 hp left.
it seems to me that boost would be better especially since you have to really be careful to hit tough at the right moment. also, with boost going you are more free to DD rather than having to heal as much.
but, of course, none of that is tested and there are probably other factors to consider that ive missed.

kenlee

i never liked boost, it only regen a small amount of hp and its not really that visible while tough can be used on lurer pet to avoid getting 2 shots or can be used on tank pets to avoid a death when bosses does spike damage

rst777

thats what i wanted to figure out, whether the spike damage protection vs. the overall healing of boost was better in the long run.
but you are right, tough is better for lureing.

tweakz

Boost is a pain to use efficiently. It can save you time grinding by avoiding direct heals under specialized circumstances. I used it for a while and got tired of it. I highly don't recommend it.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

rst777 wrote: »

lets assume that this 50% damaged hit only comes twice in one minute.

That's just it. When you need Tough, you're not going to need it for just 2 hits. You're going to need it for nearly every hit those 15 seconds.

Lemme put it this way. Boost helps you do what you normally do (grind) a little better. OTOH, Tough lets you do things you normally couldn't do. Boost saves you a little bit of healing. Tough lets you survive situations (extra mob or two attacks pet) where you would have died without it.