Originally Posted by Epinephrine

Not really a skills question, but it isn't really builds either. I'd like to get stats on pets, and was hoping that I could get some help collecting them. Unfortunately there is no way to go into 1vs 1 combat with a chosen foe to test them out, so I think it'll be tough to do any good testing. The things I'd like to know are

Pet attack rates for each type:
Pet damage for each type, at BM 1-12 (or higher, but 12 would be a good start)
Pet damage by level, if it changes, in which case it would need to be tested at varying BMs.
Pet HP.
Pet AL.

I was starting to plan this all out, and realise that it is a huge task, probably best to farm out between people.
Attack rate is the easiest to judge, simply an average over some period of time.
Damage is a bit tougher, you first need to know the health of the victim creature, and select one that doesn't heal. Then you need to beat one to death using a low variance physical damage weapon, so you know how much damage it took to kill it, then using the calculations in the combat mechanics guide, work out the creature's AL, so that the damage dealt by your pet can actually be figured out.

Pet HP and AL are harder. A possible way to determine its health is a poisoned swap, which causes a fixed degeneration. Timing this then allows you to determine its exact health. To get the value of its AL you need to assess damage dealt to it. If you let a creature beat on you for a while you can figure out its damage for its attacks and its special attacks. Taking off armour and trying it again will give two armour values to better understand the dealt damage and make sure that your estimates are correct. Then watch it beat on the pet, and count the number of hits of each type - this gives you a HP/AL ratio essentially, but since you have the HP from the swamp experiment you can determine the AL.

I'll start investigating this with a new character tonight (Mo/Ra so I can stand and take beatings while counting the pet hits.), easy enough to investigate low level effects with wolf, stalker, strider and warthog in pre-searing using the water in the catacombs for HP and the fairly weak creatures there for determining damage. I don't imagine that GW uses step functions often, most things are pretty linear effects, so health will either be noticeably increasing with level or not, as well as with BM or not. Anyone who wants to be thourough and contribute is welcome, since levelling is fast at first I can do a lot of testing quickly, but later on it'll be a pain to try testing each animal type out, levelling each one up, and using all those refund points to raise and lower BM each time the pet levels will be wasteful. Even with BM runed armours for +1, +2, +3 and +4 it will take 8 refund points for each pet level to get values from 1-12 BM (and I only have +1 and +2 setups so far, no Major or Superior BM runes, though I understand they are pretty cheap compared to others.).

Originally Posted by TheZoologist

Not to insult your efforts, but I think these calculations may be a bit of wasted effort, given the limited functionality of pets in their base form. I think you will find that pets differ little outside of faster attack = lower HP. Whether you choose a faster attacking pet with less HP over a slower attacking pet with more HP will depend largely on your choice of pet skills to use. Employment of skills will ultimately make or break the effectiveness of a pet, especially given their extremely limited AI. Focusing on determining the "best" pet or analyzing pet statistics will just divert attention away from where you really need to be concentrating: evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of pet-based skills.