~~~Legenary pet skills scrolls!

Mystic-Night - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I knew it was a good choice not to make a character there b:surrender

Impetus - Lost City wrote: »

Just remember to oneshot her pet and post a SS of it here

Desiree - Harshlands wrote: »

Here's an opinion from an experienced venomancer who has experimented with numerous combinations of rare pet scrolls.

My tried combos:
- Petite Sawfly with Claw
- Baby Blazing Phoenix with Reflect
- Baby Blazing Phoenix with Strong and Protect
- Crystalline Magmite with Strong, Protect and Reflect
- Glacial Walker with Strong and Reflect
- Baby Hercules with Blessing of the Pack

My comments:

Sawfly vs nix:
A buffed sawfly is almost the same an unbuffed nix in terms of base damage; HOWEVER, the nix is far superior due to numerous reasons.
For PvE, a nix's attack speed (1.0 attacks/second) is almost double that of the sawfly's (0.6 attacks/second), meaning a lot, lot more damage over time and greater ability to hold aggro - at 7x or higher, you will easily be able to steal aggro from your sawfly, even if it uses Bash and has the Claw buff.
For PvP, attack speed is meaningless due to the laughable damage pets do with normal attacks (yes, it builds up, but its really not significant later game). A nix's 3s stun skill Pounce is invaluable; while a sawfly can learn it, you have to find the scroll, which is quite expensive considering its great use in PvP. A nix's final flying speed is 11.0 m/s compared to a sawfly's 8.8 m/s - this speed difference can make the difference between whether or not your PK target gets Flesh Reamed (a ~5m ranged skill) or not.
In the end, a PK pet only serves one purpose: Flesh Ream the target. After it has done that, its only purpose is to hang around, maybe add in a few supportive skills like Pounce, then Flesh Ream the target again 15s later if the target hasn't been killed yet. Early on in lower lvl PvP (i.e. 7x/8x), the nix's stronger buffed base damage is deadly. At higher lvls where everyone's gear is much, much better (i.e. refined 9x/95/99 gear), the difference between a nix's bleed damage and a sawfly's bleed damage isn't all that significant compared to the damage the veno itself deals with her magic attacks. Thus, for PK damage purposes, a Claw'd sawfly is plenty sufficient and easily a sufficient PK pet as long as the venomancer knows how to play her class.
There is only ONE major problem that would prevent any venomancer from keeping a sawfly on an open PvP server. This would be the sawfly's terrible survivability. At lvl 90, a sawfly has under 2.3k HP and measly 6k pdef/mdef. That's an easy 1-shot by any respectable class. Any right-minded PKer would quickly dispose of the sawfly, then move on to the veno. In comparison, a nix has almost 3.5k HP, 9k pdef, 11k mdef. Not to mention a default Blessing of the Pack buff, increasing that HP to 4.5k HP. That means something like 3-4 shots to kill the nix - plenty of time for the veno to either react and heal the nix or go in for the kill while the target is distracted. Trying to buff up your Sawfly further than a Claw scroll would be a complete waste of money. In a large scale PvP situation like TW, a sawfly will be dying non-stop if caught in any AoE of sort. In such situations where a veno's role is to constantly purge+amp targets and bleed the squishy targets, nix survivability is highly important. See the Strong+Protect nix combo.

Reflect nix:
This was a fruitless experiment. I wanted to see how useful Reflect on my nix would be against BMs that AoE in PK, and also for AoE grinding purposes. The result is that the Reflect damage is terrible for both damage back to the BM and damage to the mobs (I was testing it on 3rd past mobs - my Gundam did a much better job though single target defence-mode nixing still ended up being faster EXP). Unless you tank with your nix (i.e. almost never), putting reflect on a nix is a waste of a skill slot (especially when you removed Blessing of the Pack like I did). Instead, if you plan on removing Blessing of the Pack, add in either Strong for PvE or Sacrifice for PvP. Sacrifice is like a fourth bleed tick at the cost of your nix losing 75% of its HP. It can be combined with Bloodhunger, but that would require trashing both Bless and Pounce for a combo I have never tried (due to the skillbooks being so rare).

Super nix:
This is the ultimate mass PK nix (i.e. group PvP/TW). As I mentioned earlier, a nix is meant to Flesh Ream a target, then hang around surviving til Flesh Ream cools down. Replace Pounce and Blessing of the Pack with Strong and Protect, the herc's self buffs, and you have an unkillable nix. Yes, the nix will have less HP due to losing its Blessing of the Pack skill and yes, the nix will not be as useful in 1v1 PvP since it no longer has pounce. It will, however, take far, far less damage (i.e. roughly 60% of the damage it use to take unbuffed), meaning it will probably be harder to kill than you are. In a lagfest situation like TW where you don't always pay attention to the HP of your pet, this can make a huge difference.

Super Magmite:
I am probably one of the few (if not, only) veno who still uses a magmite as the main tank at end-game and does not have a herc (nor plan to). Why? Because my magmite (aka Gundam) has Strong, Protect, and Reflect skills - the three buffs that make normal hercs amazing tanks. Why did I do this? Both Strong and Reflect scrolls were farmed by me in Dragon Temple runs early in the game. Later on, gold prices rose with all sorts of new cash shop items, raising the cost to get a herc to over 70mil. In contrast, getting the last scroll, Protect, only costed me 5 mil. So I made a super magmite. Can it tank stuff well? Yes. Can it replace a herc? For most cases, yes. Can it tank everything I want it to? No.
At 90, a magmite's base pdef is 8.5k and mdef 5.8k and has 2.9k HP. In comparison, a 90 herc has 8.9k pdef, 7.1k mdef and 4.1k HP. When you consider the +150% buffs, these defence differences get more dramatic. Against normal physical attack bosses, a magmite does fine as long as I can keep up with the heals without lag and the boss does not hit more than 1.5k. Against a boss that also throws in a magical attack, however, I have to be careful. A magmite's mdef is pretty low and has under 3k HP. This means that a physical attack of 1k followed by a magical attack of 2k can 2-shot my magmite before I have a chance to heal it. This happens for most HH3-1 bosses and 2-3's Vipenant boss. A herc, on the other hand, will easily survive and can also take in an additional physical attack before needing to be healed.
For PvP, however, I like the magmite. With a base physical attack of 3.2k at 90 (pretty much the strongest land pet apart from scorpions) compared to the herc's 2.7k, a magmite's Flesh Ream hurts. While one may argue that the magmite's slow movement speed and slower attack rate puts it at a disadvantage, keep in mind that 1) most people will ignore the magmite and 2) normal physical attacks do little damage in PvP. Even if the target decides to attack the magmite, its not easy taking down a buffed magmite and the veno has plenty enough time to heal the pet. Its fun watching people be surprised when they either get @#$%d by a magmite or is unable to take it down. Its also sometimes fun when someone asks "where's your herc" and I take out my magmite and say "I don't need a herc, I have a Gundam" and then proceed to tank the boss ^_^

Super Glacial Walker:
In PvE, one of the worst problems with magmite tanking is the magmite's low mdef and HP. Many bosses my Gundam could just BARELY live, so tanking becomes a thing of chance. With a Glacial Walker, however, the higher mdef and HP will help overcome that chance margin. Still not as good as a herc, but for most purposes, plenty sufficient. I would have continued to get a Protect scroll for it but the moment I got a Blessing of the Pack scroll, I knew I had to get an actual herc.

Blessed Herc:
A herc with the Blessing of the Pack skill is the ultimate HH tanking pet. Replace the aggro skill (Bash/Flesh Ream) with Blessing of the Pack and you now have a herc with 5k+ HP. At lvl 100, maybe even 6k HP. Aggro is kept with Reflect and should be fine with [?] bosses as long as your party does not have an OP DD (Bless'd hercs are best for soloing HH). In a normal instance situation like FBs, however, the herc can no longer tank as it cannot steal back aggro. Now what, you may ask, is the use of a herc with limited party tanking abilities? The opening of extreme tanking situations. With a Blessed herc, I can tank world bosses. With a Blessed herc, I can tank HH3-2/3-3 bosses. With a Blessed herc, I can afford to lag badly.


Hope this helps clarify things for venos who have yet to experiment with the rare pet scrolls!

~Desiree