Looking for Support Pet Advice

Baritomaris - Sanctuary · May 2009

When going solo in PvE, a veno will almost always be using her/his pet as a tank.

But what about in a squad? Often, someone else will be tanking instead, and a tanking pet will be largely unnecessary. Basically, you would want a pet that will help the party out the most, a support pet rather than a tank pet.

So there are two parts to my question.

a) What is the best type of support pet?

b) What are the best skills for a support pet?

A have a few thoughts on both options.

Four pets in particular come to mind for support pets. I can't figure out which would be best.

1) Varicose Scorpion. It has acceptable speed and a high damage output. It doesn't have great defense, but it doesn't have to, since it's not tanking, though this might be problematic against strong AoE.

2) Kowlin. This is the fastest pet, so it can get to where it needs to be better than any other pet. It has so-so damage, but that's not so important because you'll likely have DDs in your squad anyway. Its mediocre defense could be a downside against strong AoE.

3) Armored Bear. These have good defense, so they would be useful against bosses with AoE, and they have good speed. The damage is poor, though again, this might not be a big issues as other party members will DD.

4) Magmite. Good damage and defense. Its only real downside is its speed.

I think I've figured out the best skills, though let me know if I'm wrong on these.

1) Pierce - Debuffs physical defense.

2) Howl - Debuffs magical defense.

3) Threaten - Weakens physical attack.

4) Shrill - Interrupts skills.

Why no bash? Because this is a support pet, not a tank. It doesn't need to keep aggro, because someone else will be tanking, and again, its damage output isn't that important. If you have two or three people in your party who can dish out a lot of damage, I'm thinking that your pet will be far more useful as a debuffer.

Any advice you could give me would be appreciated.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear · May 2009

Baritomaris - Sanctuary wrote: »

When going solo in PvE, a veno will almost always be using her/his pet as a tank.

But what about in a squad? Often, someone else will be tanking instead, and a tanking pet will be largely unnecessary. Basically, you would want a pet that will help the party out the most, a support pet rather than a tank pet.

So there are two parts to my question.

a) What is the best type of support pet?

b) What are the best skills for a support pet?

A have a few thoughts on both options.

Four pets in particular come to mind for support pets. I can't figure out which would be best.

1) Varicose Scorpion. It has acceptable speed and a high damage output. It doesn't have great defense, but it doesn't have to, since it's not tanking, though this might be problematic against strong AoE.

2) Kowlin. This is the fastest pet, so it can get to where it needs to be better than any other pet. It has so-so damage, but that's not so important because you'll likely have DDs in your squad anyway. Its mediocre defense could be a downside against strong AoE.

3) Armored Bear. These have good defense, so they would be useful against bosses with AoE, and they have good speed. The damage is poor, though again, this might not be a big issues as other party members will DD.

4) Magmite. Good damage and defense. Its only real downside is its speed.

I think I've figured out the best skills, though let me know if I'm wrong on these.

1) Pierce - Debuffs physical defense.

2) Howl - Debuffs magical defense.

3) Threaten - Weakens physical attack.

4) Shrill - Interrupts skills.

Why no bash? Because this is a support pet, not a tank. It doesn't need to keep aggro, because someone else will be tanking, and again, its damage output isn't that important. If you have two or three people in your party who can dish out a lot of damage, I'm thinking that your pet will be far more useful as a debuffer.

Any advice you could give me would be appreciated.

For your list of pets, I would offer an alternative.

1) Antelup Pup. Excellent mdef and decent pdef. On top of it is one of the best damage dealers (4th or 5th) and it is fairly fast.

2) Orchid Petali. The poor veno's luring pet. Same pdef and mdef as sawfly,very high evasion, medium damage, 9.4 m/s speed (not as fast as kowlin, but also not 2mil)

3) Golem. we all know why

For Skils, I would drop Pierce and put Roar on the golem and maybe on the Antelup. In case the main tank goes down, you can have the golem get the aggro in one sec flat, and either tank it until help arrives or give everyone a few extra seconds to run away and not get killed.

Personaly I have only 1 pet with pierce, for the times I am in fox form. For the others I would use roar, so I would be able to steal the aggro from the tank if the tank got in trouble, best skill to prevent partywipes....

Ladydeadlock - Heavens Tear · May 2009

Ive been thinking of same... But for me I think the pet has to have high DPS. I was thinking of Ninetailded Firefox, although it's kinda far there. Some reasons for this is: high speed, one of top 10 DPS (according to succubuae guide), high mag def.. Also comes with howl 4 which is a plus. Cons: Very low HP and not very great phy def. Biggest con: Have to get to lvl 85 first. b:shocked However I've always been waiting to tame her.. b:pleased

ton23 · May 2009

So what I gather is, for a pet to fill the party support slot, you are looking for

-High DPS.
-But it can't have such low hp/pdef/mdef as to be **** by aoe.

^this is assuming that what skills at what level the pet comes with is no object, as you're willing to spend the coin or sp or whatever

I remember reading somewhere that someone said they killed two birds with one stone and had their lure/pull pet be the same one as their "party support", to conserve pet slots; they took off bash and put a different party support-skill on their kowlin. But then fleshream would have to be removed and replaced, too, ideally, surely?

Then what I gather is, that good, sound skills are, pierce and howl for definite, like what are on a kowlin, and then threaten and shrill. Or maybe roar if the "support pet" is strong enough to tank for a few moments if you spam heal it if the barb takes a **** break. To prevent party wipes.

Personally, kowlin as the support pet, is a bit too squishy? AOE **** it. Also his dps is kind of on the sucky side of average. I use it to lure, his function is just to die and die again. Over and over. Later he will be used for PVP, I think. Anyways, Speed for party support I didn't think mattered much (or not THAT much, anyway), the pet just has to stand by the boss, do good dps, withstand aoe, and use the awesome party support skill set you gave it. Except I'm not confident in my roar->spam for a sec->prevent party wipe skills, so I'd rather go with a pet (with the 4 other skills added), so it doesn't have to have INSANELY golem/cub-high tanking survival ability, just enough to withstand aoe **** without needing to be spam healed, because if you're spamming it then you're not dding yourself..

So my question being, which pet would you guys reccommend for that? o__o
then again frequently I am told not to set my pet on the boss if he has aoe. and just dd, cause it just dies in 2 hits. so is hp/pdef and m def rly a factor? since it would only be used in non aoe situations it doesn't need those, maybe? so you should just look for the mega high dps?

And are there any other skills good to have? Are any of the others good? I'm not able to go and read them all at Zoologist at the moment.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear · May 2009

Well on a support pet Roar, in my opinion is a must, since the goal is not to have your pet survive the aggro, but to give the rest of the party, specialy the clerics, times to run away so they can res you (since after your pet dies, guess after who will that boss go after). You sacrifice your pet so the clerics can run away and res the ones that got killed. There has been a few times where my golen was actualy able to tank the boss long enough for the tank to get a res and take over again, but most often, after the tank dies, my pet takes aggro, cleric runs like a mad man/woman, shortly after I die, and usualy so does the BM, than boss resets aggro, cleric comes back and res the party.

The tree frog is also pretty good for support, it comes with shrill (which saves you some money), it has decent hp and mdef/pdef, ok damage and it is small. In my opinion the big thing on support pets is that they need to be small enough as to not get in the way of your party members.

Both my antelup and my golem can survive 2-3 hits from any AOS I have been exposed to, without me healing, if I heal, I have been able to have them last long enough to kill the boss, with some healing here and there. My lurer, the Petalii, is a tad more fragile, but her high evasion makes her survive her job very well, most mobs seem to miss when they use regular attacks on her.

Baritomaris - Sanctuary · May 2009

The more I think about it, the more I think that a magmite/golem or an armored bear might be the best pet.

The magmite's speed doesn't seem like that big of an issue. Once the tank is on a mob or boss, it's not going to move around. It might kite a time or two, but that's about it.

Defense though seems important. Sure, it doesn't need to tank, but I'd hate to spend hundreds of thousands of coins tricking out a support pet that is hard or impossible to use against AoE bosses.

I still don't think DPS is important. If you have a couple of good wizards or archers in your squad -- which you usually will -- then the extra damage from a high-damage pet isn't really going to be that significant.

I've never had a pet with roar. If the main tank goes down, then your pet is likely going to be torn up against whatever boss has taken down the tank. Is it really worthwhile to have an entire skill devoted to taking aggro for a second or two? It might save the party, it might not. It would be nice if someone with this skill could talk about the usefulness of this skill. But if you accidentally pull several mobs and are overwhelmed, roar might be useful in pulling mobs off of squishies or relieving the tank. It's too bad pierce doesn't stack with Ironwood. =/

Solandri - Heavens Tear · May 2009

ton23 wrote: »

I remember reading somewhere that someone said they killed two birds with one stone and had their lure/pull pet be the same one as their "party support", to conserve pet slots; they took off bash and put a different party support-skill on their kowlin. But then fleshream would have to be removed and replaced, too, ideally, surely?

Then what I gather is, that good, sound skills are, pierce and howl for definite, like what are on a kowlin, and then threaten and shrill. Or maybe roar if the "support pet" is strong enough to tank for a few moments if you spam heal it if the barb takes a **** break. To prevent party wipes.

Personally, kowlin as the support pet, is a bit too squishy? AOE **** it. Also his dps is kind of on the sucky side of average.

That was me. If you convert each pet's attack score to DPS (multiply attack by its attack rate), the Kowlin actually ends up near the top. I kept Flesh Ream on it to add DPS. It's basically a 3x damage attack which only adds aggro once every 15 seconds, and the kowlin comes with level 4 FR for free.

Yes it is squishy, and dies a lot in AOE. This was just an idea I was trying out. I'm not saying it's the end-all be-all of pets. I got the Threaten scroll cheap, and there's no way you want your kowlin using Bash. After having to pay for herc food after it dies, paying for regular pet food is like nothing.

Another big factor for me was to save time. If my luring pet is my party pet, I don't have to waste time unsummoning my party pet and resumming my luring pet after every kill. At the end of the fight, I just send the kowlin to go get the next mob. (Actually, I send it just before the current mob dies so the rest of the party doesn't stop fighting for long.)

Roar is an interesting choice. I have on multiple occasions wished I had my golem out (it has roar) instead of my kowlin. I'm not so sure about shrill - maybe it's lag but I can't seem to interrupt worth a d*mn. Anyway, there are lots of different ways you can do this, and I'm doubtful there's one magical "best" combination.

ton23 · May 2009

I know there isn't going to be a magic be-all end-all solution pet thing, I am just looking for opinions and people's thoughts. As my experience of TT increases I keep thinking a lot about what pets I should have for optimum performance. Number of pet slots/the money/coin to expand not being an issue, for the sake of arguement.

Oh so another thing to look for is small size. Does that mean armored bear and golem aren't so good? People always complain if I break out the rock, which is why I got a little dodo. I always felt like I was being super annoying if I used my golem. But like, don't people know how to assist attack? o.< Mostly I use my golem as a secondary tank in my own soloing/pve, if something bad happens and the cub dies.

I've never tried shrill so I can't say whether it's interrupted anything for me. Does anyone have experience with this skill? If shrill is not so good then maybe roar is the best skill for the fourth slot, so threaten, pierce, howl and roar.

About kowlin coming with FR and treefrog coming with shrill, I don't mind the money or sp. Not a big deal.

So if kowlin is the support pet, drop bash for roar. Where does threaten fit then I wonder? or is kowlin not good for what I'm after. Hm.

I didn't know that pierce doesn't stack with ironwood. That is something I'll keep in mind. I don't want to waste the effect of one by overwriting it with the other.

Solandri, so you did the math and Kowlin comes out near the top in terms of dps? Does that include the use of the lvl 4 FR?

The time saving thing, does that mean you pulled without unsummoning? Like making the kowlin come back to you with follow? Didn't that pull multiple mobs? Or am I misunderstanding and you unsummoned on the pull, resummoned and set it on attack/support, and then moved onto the next pull? I see where time would be saved, then, if you're not bringing out a dps pet to attack, then putting it away when the mob is dead, then resummoning pull pet.

The thing I was thinking, though, is that normal mobs don't really need much of the support pet thing? That's more for the bosses, so they go down quicker, I thought. Which is why I never thought of killing two birds with one stone in order to save time, because I didn't really consider using party support pet much on regular mobs.

Eorween - Heavens Tear · May 2009

regardless pet is doing tanking or not, Magnite does more physical damage then any other pet.
If you worry about pet bash going to gain aggro over the tank, right click bash and its off.

trash mobs regardless tanking or not use Magnite, your pet is you *protector*.
in any case if any noob hitting on target tank isnt on, you might want to put your pet on that mob and activate bash.
cause if you dont next thing is some dead squad member next to you.
dont know if some people just stupid or their computer slow as ****, but i seen way too many people hit target no tank is on and get kill in secs.

If you going to fight a boss with magic aoe, if you dont have a herc.
I wouldnt bother even put a pet on the boss cause every single aoe you pet going to need heal = less damage from you.
All high magic resist pet dont have high physical attack = low damage.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear · May 2009

Eorween - Heavens Tear wrote: »

regardless pet is doing tanking or not, Magnite does more physical damage then any other pet.
If you worry about pet bash going to gain aggro over the tank, right click bash and its off.

trash mobs regardless tanking or not use Magnite, your pet is you *protector*.
in any case if any noob hitting on target tank isnt on, you might want to put your pet on that mob and activate bash.
cause if you dont next thing is some dead squad member next to you.
dont know if some people just stupid or their computer slow as ****, but i seen way too many people hit target no tank is on and get kill in secs.

If you going to fight a boss with magic aoe, if you dont have a herc.
I wouldnt bother even put a pet on the boss cause every single aoe you pet going to need heal = less damage from you.
All high magic resist pet dont have high physical attack = low damage.

Antelup pup has very very high mdef and it is on the top5 damage dealers as well.

Looking for Support Pet Advice

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