Curse

Elrond Afil · Dec 07, 2005, 06:24 AM // 06:24

Nice man, good job

nightrunner · Dec 07, 2005, 07:20 AM // 07:20

Awesome analysis. Thanks for contributing to the community

On a side note, there is a disturbing lack in the variety of GWG's smileys.

Nessa · Dec 07, 2005, 07:37 AM // 07:37

I said it before and i'll say it again... absolutely amazing guys... i hope gaile does read this... even if just to see how much work you put in... maybe varify/clarify a few things (such as bear attacks

)

again thanx so much fro all the time you put in here wish i coulda helped more aside from a few healing runs....

NekoZ · Dec 07, 2005, 11:56 AM // 11:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mercenary662

so warthogs really dont deal blunt? man....got mine for nothing

Yeah I thought that too..

But really nice guide.

tuperwho · Dec 07, 2005, 04:00 PM // 16:00

Great job guys, but there's 1 point I think should be added and considered: passive pet skills. By this I mean 2 in particular.

1) spiders do not do poison
2) bears do have the brutal mauling skill -- did you factor this into your damage? They may have a slower rate due to the ability to occasionally have a higher damage output.... just a thought

Epinephrine · Dec 07, 2005, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Well, I guess I should add the fact that spider don't do poison in capital letters somewhere

Under the pet description we did point out that spiders are non-venemous, but I suppose more is needed...

As for the bear - yes, it brutal mauls, but it has no effect. We did a comparison between pets and all pets did the same average damage per stirke - if the brutal Mauling were an effect it would have altered the average - especially as every 4-5th attack is a brutal mauling. Sadly, there is no bonus.

Edit: There, I put it in italics, again - spiders are not poisonous!

Sol_Silverglade · Dec 07, 2005, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epinephrine

It's really unfortunate that the bear is the least effective attacker - I couldn't figure any way to accurately gauge ability to "body block", so it might have an edge there, but even in AL it is exactly the same - just lower damage over time due to slower attack speed. Gaile is reputed to be a pet lover, perhaps she'll end up reading this and inspire them to balance it a bit.

I certainly hope so. I do so love my bear...

Quote:

Originally Posted by tuperwho

Great job guys, but there's 1 point I think should be added and considered: passive pet skills. By this I mean 2 in particular.

1) spiders do not do poison
2) bears do have the brutal mauling skill -- did you factor this into your damage? They may have a slower rate due to the ability to occasionally have a higher damage output.... just a thought

The mauling, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing but occasionally slow down the bears attack rate/dps. I suspect it originally did, perhaps a knockdown or bleeding effect, but was dropped in favor of balance, but removing the affect, without the slower skill actually swung balance away from the bear, instead of levelling the field.

And I already commented to both Jen and Epi once, but thanks again for all the work you put into this, it's a great, great resource.

Swampgirl Inez · Dec 07, 2005, 07:14 PM // 19:14

Wow. *grabs the Visine* I'm in for a long, but educational read. Thanks.

The undead Mesmer · Dec 07, 2005, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Lucky that i turned in my hoggy for a spider i really thought they would do Blunt damage :'( why dont they do Blunt damage btw? they use their noses wich looks a bit like a hammer they dont bite xD.

Swampgirl Inez · Dec 07, 2005, 09:47 PM // 21:47

I think it's their tusks that do the damage.

Pan Sola · Dec 08, 2005, 08:18 AM // 08:18

I believe warrior or some other profession has a skill (stance maybe?) that prevents critical hits to deal extra damage. This way by setting up a PvP the pet's max damage and critical hit damage can be separated out.

And they should be separated out because for PvE, you won't always be fighting lv20 mobs, so critical hit probablity changes.

BurningPants · Dec 08, 2005, 08:51 AM // 08:51

In about 10 years, you might look back and say "Why would I ever waste my time like that"

But good work anyway.

Epinephrine · Dec 08, 2005, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pan Sola

I believe warrior or some other profession has a skill (stance maybe?) that prevents critical hits to deal extra damage. This way by setting up a PvP the pet's max damage and critical hit damage can be separated out.

And they should be separated out because for PvE, you won't always be fighting lv20 mobs, so critical hit probablity changes.

Interesting idea - I hadn't thought of that. The variable nature of pet "criticals" if they exist (I'm assuming they are the upper tail of the pet damage distributions) made it hard to identify a critical, but I suppose it would be possible to ascertain the true damage range, and a critical hit probability for the BM level/character level. Sounds difficult to test for all levels/levels of BM, but doing it for level 20/12 BM seems feasible, and even choosing a few levels of BM represented might work. Thanks

The skill is "Balanced Stance" by the way, and it is a warrior tactics stance - with QZ up I could probably manage to keep it up 100% of the time, so it is feasible.

Yukito Kunisaki · Dec 08, 2005, 05:11 PM // 17:11

Good thing you guys have time to do this. I with my real life situations involving a job, my wife, and school, can't do this...

Thanks! ^_^

Now I want to use a Melandru Stalker or Snow Wolf again... ^_^ Probably the wolf... Howling is cute.

Shwitz · Dec 08, 2005, 05:20 PM // 17:20

Many thanks to Epi and Jenosavel for taking the time to do the math and figure all this out. I will most certainly be referring back here whenever I want to whip up a beast mastery build

Banebow · Dec 08, 2005, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Now that is what I call a lot of information.

Thanks for taking the time to do this you two, I am sure it will be put to a lot of good use

Dralspire · Dec 09, 2005, 05:13 PM // 17:13

I sent Gaile a message about this thread ...

Shwitz · Dec 09, 2005, 05:58 PM // 17:58

That's awesome Dralspire, nice job alerting Gaile

Maybe bears will get some love in Chapter 2

Jenosavel · Dec 09, 2005, 08:18 PM // 20:18

Thanks for getting some official attention over here, Dralspire!

I hope they give our pets some variety now, even if it would invalidate this guide. It would just make my day if they gave bears blunt damage. It's probably just one of my idiosyncrasies, but a bear dealing slashing is kind of irritating. I mean, why would a bear deal slashing? They kill by blunt trauma to the head, being able to fracture the skull of even a big cat such as a tiger or a lion. They certainly don't go for blood.

The warthog could stay slashing though. Those little critters really gore up their opponents with their tusks.

Falconer · Dec 09, 2005, 11:40 PM // 23:40

Nice work Epinephrine. Although a small point on which you contradict yourself. Just because you're using call of haste, doesn't mean that the skill timing is off. It's a shout, it can be used at any time with 0 timing penalty.

If it doesn't go off on that 5th attack which is halfway executed... it'll go off on the 6th. And then the timing of the call is such that it'll happen on the 4th attack ofter that. (eg: averaging out to every 5.5 attacks)

The other bit, is I still find pets a PvE commodity. The requirements to invest to get your pets usable in PvP are just too extreme. If you do invest a lot of points (let alone skills) into the pet... you MUST have some method to ressurect them. That pretty much always works into requiring having comfort animal on the bar as well. The only builds which conciously get a lot of use out of pets currently are the IWAY setups, and those tend not to care about pet rez... and in many cases the pet is brought in one skill slot and no buffs (or even attribute investment), as it's ony there to be a corpse. (spitefull on the pet(s) is actuallly a blessing to these builds as it makes it that much easier to activate IWAY). Many PvE players playing in tombs will intentionally charm a level 5 pet to take in with them, just to ensure it dies as quickly as possible.

Other synergism I think you could have covered is melandrius arrows or apply poison (even with zero wilderness spec) paired with the pet attack +dam if conditioned target. Pet attacks your bow target... your target is poisoned for 4s at least every time your arrow nails it... making it a quick and easy source of +dam. Problem with this is that apply poison used in this manner is you can't use it to spread poison over the other team... the pet will simply run itself ragged with the target switching.