Protect

Brionni - Harshlands

So, I'm going to teach my DW protect skill, since he is too weak in terms of magical defenses. But... I'm not sure how good will he be with protect.
Will my DW be better than the armored bear, equal or maybe even still worse when it comes to magical damage? It would be horrible to discover that a protected DW is still not able to manage magical attacksb:shocked

Phoenix_Eye - Heavens Tear

I doubt Protect would do anything good , the buff increases the pet's magical def by % based on it's current mag def ,

so a pet like wanderer , with low mag def wont gain a bit boost from protect .

Also i doubt that with the buff the wanderer will have better def than the bear , the reason why is what i said above.

If u want a way to protect urself from mag attacks teach him " tough " and get it to lvl 5 = less cost than buying a legendary skill.

If i would teach a legendary skill to my wanderer , that would most probably be Claw , to enhance his DD abilities

Hope i helped , and it would be nice if another veno could give some information with some proof since i lack some

Yindra - Sanctuary

Of course, "Tough" only lasts 15 seconds, with a cooldown of 60 seconds. It's one of those pointless skills --- if you can't handle a boss, Tough won't make a difference. In reality the cooldown will be slightly longer due to lag --- you can't queue skills.

That's the difference between cash and free skills... "Protect" lasts for a long time, even longer than buffs. Which doesn't necessarily make it useful (can't judge that).

Desdi - Sanctuary

At level 100 the Hercules has 7961 Magic Defence, the Glacial Walker has 7166 and the Armoured Bear has 8551 .

I'm terrible at maths (please correct me if I'm wrong) but with the Protect buff (maxed) the same pets have: Hercules 11941 Magic Defence, Glacial Walker 10749 and Armoured Bear 12826 .

With Strong the Armoured Bear benefits the most and the Glacial Walker the least. If you compare a Glacial Walker with Protect and an Armoured Bear without, the Glacial Walker has higher Magc Defence and therefore, yes the skill is worth it.
However, you might want to consider buying Strong instead of Protect because most bosses do melee damage and you can time you heals right before the boss casts a magic attack and/or have a Barbarian to cancel the magic attacks.
If you already have Strong on the Glacial Walker, you could try out Tough as Phoenix suggested right before the boss casts magic attacks or when multiple magic mobs attack your pet. This will come cheaper than buying Protect. If you have the money however, sure go ahead and teach it Protect.

For all this I assumed that you use a Phoenix and/or another flying pet with high DPS/Damage while you PK since you are in Harshlands and therefore you use the Glacial Walker for tanking/questing/grinding. If you use the Glacial Walker in PvP/PK then I do not have experience whether Strong is worth it or not.

Brionni - Harshlands

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

the Glacial Walker for tanking/questing/grinding. If you use the Glacial Walker in PvP/PK then I do not have experience whether Strong is worth it or not.

I don't have GW at allb:chuckle DW has good enough pdef already, but mixed attacks he can't manage. Sounds like its worth trying, it may balance his pdef and mdef, ty for replies.

Desdi - Sanctuary

Oops I'm sorry I thought you were talking about the Glacial Walker XD In that case I think Strong is probably worth it but I'd go for Claw first if possible.

LenieClarke - Heavens Tear

does threaten reduce mag attacks too? if so, i'd go with the well known tough-threaten-tough combo, to stretch out the defenses to 45 seconds or so.

tweakz

LenieClarke - Heavens Tear wrote: »

does threaten reduce mag attacks too? if so, i'd go with the well known tough-threaten-tough combo, to stretch out the defenses to 45 seconds or so.

Wouldn't you be better off getting your pet and yourself up a single level?

Desdi - Sanctuary

LenieClarke - Heavens Tear wrote: »

does threaten reduce mag attacks too? if so, i'd go with the well known tough-threaten-tough combo, to stretch out the defenses to 45 seconds or so.

Threaten only works for Physical Attacks unfortunately.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

t

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

At level 100 the Hercules has 7961 Magic Defence, the Glacial Walker has 7166 and the Armoured Bear has 8551 .

I'm terrible at maths (please correct me if I'm wrong) but with the Protect buff (maxed) the same pets have: Hercules 11941 Magic Defence, Glacial Walker 10749 and Armoured Bear 12826 .

Strong and Protect add 150%, so the pet ends up with 250% its original defense. So assuming your level 100 figures are right, the above pets would end up with:

herc 19903 mdef (16.7% damage transmitted by a level 100 opponent)
walker 17915 mdef (18.3% damage transmitted, 9% more damage taken than herc)
bear 21378 mdef (15.85 damage transmitted, 6% less damage taken than herc)

In terms of damage transmitted, all three are within spitting distance of a 2x improvement from their initial mdef. 2.00x for the herc, 1.96x for the walker, 2.02x for the bear.

tweakz wrote: »

Wouldn't you be better off getting your pet and yourself up a single level?

Threaten doesn't reduce matk so won't help in this case. But the threaten-tough-threaten combo reduces physical damage by about one third to one half for 45 sec, or a 50%-100% increase in survivability. It makes a lot of otherwise hopelessly unsurvivable situations survivable.*

You'd have to level up a helluva lot more than a single level to gain more survivability. The survivability increase from gaining 1 level is less than 1%. In fact, leveling a herc 10 levels from 90 to 100, factoring in defense gain, hp gain, and level mod gets you less than an 8% increase in survivability against level 100 opponents.

*I've been curious if two walkers with coordinated threaten could tank Polearm. If you time their threatens right, it'll always be applied. Polearm has a patk of 2308 - 5386. He eats hercs because he has a huge pdef debuff, meaning he can hit hercs for almost the full 5386. But if you can keep threaten 5 applied, that'll knock 36% off meaning he would hit for only 1477 - 3447. Walkers should have about 3000 hp at 80-90, so whether it'll work will depend on how much pdef they have left after the debuff. Anyone know how much his debuff lowers pdef?

tweakz

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The survivability increase from gaining 1 level is less than 1%.

Really? So if my herc has 100 hp and goes to 101 hp and the boss sometimes hits for 101, then I'm only gaining less than 1% more survivability?

Solandri - Heavens Tear

tweakz wrote: »

Really? So if my herc has 100 hp and goes to 101 hp and the boss sometimes hits for 101, then I'm only gaining less than 1% more survivability?

Yes, there could be a boss where a one level change from 56 to 57 makes him go from not-tankable to tankable. But you can't use him as a general argument that people are better off gaining one level. You can use him as a specific argument that if you are level 56 and wish to kill that specific boss, then you should gain one level. But the fact that he exists in no way invalidates the argument that in general you are better off with a more effective skill combination than by gaining one level.

The fact that leveling only gives about a 1% increase in survivability means a strategy which gives 50%-100% more survivability will be effective in about 50x-100x more situations than the 1% increase from leveling. Simply finding one exception does not invalidate the general advice. Just like finding one example of a case where someone burned to death in a car because they couldn't unbuckle their seat belt, does not invalidate the general probability that you are much, much less likely to die if you have a seat belt on. Or finding one case where someone opened a pack and got a scroll of tome does not invalidate the general case that you are highly likely to end up losing money by buying and opening packs.

tweakz

If a pet can tank a boss sometimes with tough + threaten; it's because it's close to being able to without. That closeness eliminates the ability to put a percent survivability on it. The example I gave was just to show the flaw in your reasoning: not to give an example of a loophole.

Levels come too fast to be wasting temporary use skills on disposable pets.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

tweakz wrote: »

If a pet can tank a boss sometimes with tough + threaten; it's because it's close to being able to without. That closeness eliminates the ability to put a percent survivability on it. The example I gave was just to show the flaw in your reasoning: not to give an example of a loophole.

Nope, it's still the same. What you describe applies only to the narrow case where you're barely able to tank a boss because it can one-shot your pet. The much more common scenario is that a boss two-shots your pet when your heal in between is unable to repair all the damage. Tough and threaten help in this much wider range of cases where a mere 1% would make little to no difference.

Levels come too fast to be wasting temporary use skills on disposable pets.

Only if your goal is to reach 100+ as quickly as possible (in which case I suggest you try Progress Quest to satisfy your leveling addiction). If you enjoy actually playing the game through all levels instead of power-leveling, they're a great way to improve your enjoyment of the game.