Curse

Ishamael Sedai · Oct 11, 2005, 01:09 PM // 13:09

While others have used pets in IWAY or before the nerf to smite off of, last night members of RoF & some friends attempted to take pets even further. The experimenting started in random arenas early in the night & ended in a couple of HoH appearances, some wins, & some losses.

What is unique about the build is the attempt to make an HoH level build using pet skills. We had

3 Ranger/Warriors

Each of these ranger warriors had 4 pet skills plus a hammer. Basically they spammed Irresistable Blow & Wild Blow while at the same time attacking with skills like disrupting lunge & predators pounce. The basis of the build was basically crazy interrupts and decent dmg. The pets would often hit for 20ish & sometimes 30ish (I think only once in the 40s). With disrupting lunge an interrupt was coming every 5 seconds. Interrupts were the strength of the build. We lost some & won some. aV killed us but that was more about how good their offense was than anything wrong with our offense. We beat one rank 9+ korean team and some good guilds. Often there was a shock factor. I remember one team hexed our wars only to have the pets get their interrupts started & then it was gg.

We also had a fairly standard fire ele, death necro, & monks. Tonight hopefully we will work some more on the skills used by the Ranger/Warriors & possibly experiment with other types of players in the other two spots.

...just realized that this should be in campfire

Nefastaru · Oct 11, 2005, 03:46 PM // 15:46

If I had mod priveleges here I'd move it for you

. This is odd. Last night I too thought of using pets. I was reading up on the different prefixes pets get along with there damage, and damage types. We were using 4 r/w, 2 mo/me, a death nec, and water(and tried earth) ele. Worked fairly well. Were gonna test more today. Maybe we can compare data. I'll post back here when I get home from work with the skills we were using as well as the problems we were having.

~Nef~

Ishamael Sedai · Oct 11, 2005, 03:55 PM // 15:55

It wasn't the best build ever but for the first night beating some good guilds & a couple rank 6+ teams and a rank 9+ team isn't bad. We originally ran it with 4 r/w's but we moved to 3 because of how weak we were compared to trapper teams. I'm thinking maybe eventually we will move to 2 r/w's. The r/w's attacks aren't bad either. Spamming I blow & wild blow might not give good spike dmg, but the dmg is constant & practically unvoidable. Plus with the pet interrupts if they put hexes on the r/w the pet can still interrupt. Right now we are debating how much call of haste is needed for the pets or should we bring a couple bestial pounce's. We tried one last night & it worked well as another interrupt.

Ishamael Sedai · Oct 11, 2005, 03:55 PM // 15:55

double post

UberRusty · Oct 11, 2005, 04:00 PM // 16:00

Ignore this post. Webmaster, if you see this, I got back into my account. :P

Earendil · Oct 11, 2005, 04:53 PM // 16:53

You only need one call of haste, one call of protection and maybe, one otyugh cry, on the highest BM ranger you have, since they act on all pets in your team.

Ishamael Sedai · Oct 11, 2005, 04:53 PM // 16:53

what i would be curious in knowing is how much the dmg is increased by having a high beast mastery. last night we ran it with 9 in beast, 14 in expertise, & 12 hammer. I'm wondering if a 15 or 16 in beast could take that normal 20ish dmg with maybe 30 when an attack is used to around 40ish dmg & maybe around mid 50s when an attack is used. If that were the case then I could drop possibly wild blow & bring ferocious strike for an elite. Last night we were bringing escape as our elite, but this was really for lack of a better one (we really didn't have space on our bar to get in ferocious strike).

Rey Lentless · Oct 11, 2005, 07:04 PM // 19:04

I've ran a 16 beast ranger in the tombs and the damage the pet does is very impressive. The damage scales up like a bow (and it's the same damage with a 2 sec cooldown). It's worth maxing out. My build only had 1 ranger and it was used for a high fertile season to help out a degen/hex build.

Quote:

You only need one call of haste, one call of protection and maybe, one otyugh cry, on the highest BM ranger you have, since they act on all pets in your team.

You do need call of haste on everyone though even though it sounds like you'd only need 1, it only works on your own pet.. unless this has been fixed recently.

Personally I'd stick to bow rangers instead of having them use hammers, and use two superiors. Probably barrage rangers since that's a skill that doesn't require a whole lot on your bar to make decent and makes room for the many slots you need for the pets. That would also allow a lower exp score using a zealous and ferocious can help with that as well.

I was happy to see you guys get to the hall with this build though, and was hoping you'd win since we were down a monk ;/.

Quote:

ended in a couple of HoH appearances, some wins, & some losses.

Did you guys end up taking it later?

Ishamael Sedai · Oct 11, 2005, 08:51 PM // 20:51

No we didn't take it, although I didn't feel like we were just ran over. We capped at one point but couldn't keep our hero alive. Regardless the offense the 3 r/w's provided was pretty amazing. As long as the people running r/w are good at interrupts 3 casters on the other team have an extremely hard time. I had to advantage of also testing the bestial pounce & it worked well also. The build started as a fun build but quickly ended up being something that I think can work. Using barrage rangers in the build sounds like a good idea. Personally though I enjoy using wild blow. Spamming irresistable & wild are just nice ways to do around 50-70 dmg (sometimes even up over 100 with irresistable) with each of these hits. If the target does have a bunch of aegis & guardian it is a way to continue interrupting through it (with irr. blow).

It wouldn't suprise me if more teams start bringing pets. Maybe RoF will have to develop this some more in tombs, but I see a huge potential. Spamming interrupts with disrupting lunge is really good. At the moment it looks like at least 3 skill slots are needed for pets. Predator's pounce we decided was the best way to help our mo's keep the pets alive since it also did dmg. Disrupting lunge is about 75% of the reason we are bringing pets anyway. Charm animal has to be on the bar. Really a 4th slot is needed for utility such as a rez for all the pets or maybe adding in a bestial pounce for another interrupt. Add in rez sig & that leaves you with 3 other skills. Any build that is solid with just 3 skills can take advantage of the massive interrupts a pet can do. Barrage ranger seems like a definitely possibility. The r/w's we ran last night worked good with using just 3 skills.

Nefastaru · Oct 11, 2005, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Heres some info I picked up somewhere in my travels. I found it pretty useful and thought maybe it would help a bit here.

A) Pet Damage Mechanics
====================================
Increasing Beast Mastery increases the damage done by an Animal Companion, in a similar manner as Marksmanship and other weapon skills. In other words, a Beast Mastery of 12 will allow a pet to do full damage to a target with an AL of 60. Each point of Beast Mastery "offsets" 5 points of AL, and 40 points of AL doubles/halves the damage in each direction. Points above 12 Beast Mastery undergo diminishing returns. In general, if you multiply your Beast Mastery by 5, and it equals your opponent's Armor Level, then your pet will do full damage. This means that sinking no points into beast mastery will effectively halve or quarter the base damage done by your pet.

Currently, the damage charts for animal companions are not well-known, and are under investigation by the Guild Wars Ranger community. It looks like, however, that the BASE damage of a pet is determined by its level, and that the damage done is analogous to the damage range of Hammers. A level 1 pet has a 3-5 damage range while a level 20 pet has a 14-26 damage range. This is regardless of the pet being used (i.e. All pet types do the same amount of damage based on its level).

All pets get 3 Armor Level per level, so at level 20, Pets have a base Armor Level of 60. A level 20 Pet has the same amount of Health as an unmodified character of the same level.

It seems that pet choice is a mostly matter of cosmetic preferance rather than a matter of strategy. The only main difference is that each pet does a different kind of damage, based on its type.

Pet Damage Types
----------------
* Black Bear - slashing
* Lizard - piercing
* Lynx/Stalker - slashing
* Moa Bird - slashing
* Snow Wolf/Wolf - slashing
* Spider - piercing
* Strider - piercing
* Warthog - blunt

B) Pet Evolutions
====================================
Occasionally when a pet levels up, it "evolves", changing its stats slightly. Evolutions do not change the appearance of a pet, although a pet will change size corresponding to its level. When a pet evolves, it will gain a prefix to its name (if you haven't renamed the pet using /petname or /namepet).

Pet Evolution Prefixes
----------------------
* Aggressive = +1 Damage, -30 Health
* Dire - +2 Damage, -60 Health
* Elder - +3 Damage, No change in Health
* Hearty = -2 Damage, +60 Health
* Playful = -1 Damage, +30 Health

Pets typically evolve at around level 10-13 and have a second evolution at around level 15-17. More evolutions can happen, however, depending on unknown parameters. Although the "paths" of evolution aren't fully known, a few have been discovered:
* Pet -> Playful -> Hearty -> Elder
* Pet -> Playful -> Elder (?)
* Pet -> Aggressive -> Dire
* Pet -> Aggressive -> Elder (?)

It is thought that letting the pet take a lot of hits without healing it much makes the pet into a Hearty or Playful evolution, while letting the pet deal a lot of damage in combat gives it an Aggressive or Dire evolution. Once on an evolution "path", you can't go back. I'm told that every Animal can eventually become an "Elder" version.

Hopefully someone finds that useful

~Nef~

Arathorn5000 · Oct 12, 2005, 12:45 AM // 00:45

That's from hahnsoo's awesome ranger guide.

Rey Lentless · Oct 12, 2005, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Pets have 80 AL now.

Jenosavel · Oct 12, 2005, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Nice info Nefastaru, but I think you'll find this thread to have all of that and more.

The stuff you posted is all over the place, and I think it's a bit out of date. The pet evolution paths, for example, are pretty thoroughly understood now. I think you'll find the linked thread an interesting read.

smurfhunter · Oct 12, 2005, 01:57 AM // 01:57

what stats does a pvp wolf have?

jesh · Oct 12, 2005, 04:20 AM // 04:20

PVP pets are the elder evolution, or 18-31 dmg, 80 al, 125% movement speed.

franning · Oct 12, 2005, 07:39 PM // 19:39

I want to try this build can anybody send an invite to Dyosa Ng Pnoy sounds very interesting ........

I will be on tonight.