Optimal Method to Death Level Pets

With The Zaishen Menagerie now active, It seems there is a high demand for leveling pets up quickly. In this post I'll describe what seems to be the fastest way to get this done - death leveling with no shrines involved. I've posted a similar explanation on Wiki, I'll elaborate a bit more here.

The key point here is that if character X has 1 hp and then dies, then resurrecting X with a skill that gives less than 50% health will immediately kill X again. Some examples of such skills are Restore Life (with low healing prayers attribute) and resurrect. This makes the following death leveling procedure extremely fast.

Getting 1 hp on a character is easy, simply die (using a sacrifice skill such as Blood is Power) several times while wearing armor with many superior runes. Note that when you have 1/1 hp, you can't kill yourself with a sacrifice skill; in this case, you must switch 1 sup-rune-armor-piece to increase your heath, use BiP twice, re-wear the sup-rune-armor-piece and use BiP again to die.

In order to expedite things, use 2 mesmer heroes with high fast casting (reduces the resurrection skills' cast time by ~50%) and Healer's Boon (another 50% reduction in cast time for restore life). The third hero can be a Well of Power necro to feed energy into the resurrectors. If at the end of the process you wish to be resurrected and not die immediately then at least one hero should have a resurrection skill that gives 50% or more health to use at that time (such as renew life, which should be disabled until then).

More formally, here is the complete build (heroes on avoid combat):
1. Player (you) - [Blood is Power], ([Charm Animal] if you want to cap yourself and if you are a N/R or R/N)
2. Mesmer (Norgu) - [Restore Life], [Resurrect], [Renew Life] (disabled), [Healer's Boon]
3. Mesmer (Gwen) - same as Norgu
4. Necro - [Well of Power], ([Charm Animal] if you don't want or can't cap the pet yourself, this implies being a secondary Ranger)

The Mesmers should have high fast casting and the Necro should have high blood magic, other than that, attributes are meaningless. Both mesmers should each use 1 or 2 "halves spell recharge" modifiers to further expedite the process.

The entire tactic is as follows: get to the pet you want, you can do this inside the menagerie after you have capped a low level pet and released it, or outside, before you cap the pet; I recommend doing it inside the menagerie, a sterile environment where you won't be disturbed. attack the animal once so it becomes hostile (if you do this to a lvl. 5 pet in the menagerie, it won't attack but that's fine, otherwise, it will attack and Well of Power will compensate for this). Station heroes and yourself there. Wear sup-rune-armor and kill yourself using BiP several times until you have 1 HP and are killed immediately upon being resurrected. When the pet is level 20, capture it. If you did this in the menagerie to a level 5 pet, the pet will be hearty as it never attacked and this will unlock all of the evolutions for this pet.

Note that casting restore life will take ~ 1 second, and casting resurrect will take ~ 2.5 seconds. Leveling a pet from level 5 to 15 should take ~ 10 minutes and from level 5 to level 20 should take ~ 20 minutes (assuming the pet doesn't leave your agro bubble which is where it gains XP from your deaths). What's more, you can be AFK while death leveling.

While there are many ways to death level, this is to my knowledge the fastest way to do it.

Why Well of Power?

To give energy to the ressurectors.

As the mesmers are resurrecting you extremely fast, it consumes their energy. Other infusions of energy (BiP, Blood Ritual) require sacrificing of health by the caster and as there is no healing in the build (and no need to add it) the Necro can't use these skills effectively. Moreover, Well of Power only requires a corpse (no health sacrifice) and as you die every few seconds, there is an endless amount of those just waiting to be expoited. Furthermore, if the pet is attacking the heroes, Well of Power also induces health regeneration so I'd say it is an excellent skill to use here.

Aww...true...forgot that WoP doesn't heal pet...that's why I asked ^^

Good job, Lucia. Nice, easy to understand how-to thread.
I'm interested to see how this would work in the Menagerie if you let the animal kill you several times while you are at 1HP, versus saccing with BiP. Would it affect the evolution? Does that even matter now that you can unlock the evolutions through the Menagerie?

Do the pets in the managerie even attack? Ive gone around wanding them and they didn't even flinch.

other way to die at 1hp without needing to switch armor could be to use [Signet of Agony] or a similar skill to give you degen

Nice method.

In before the nerf!

Very fast leveling, thanks for the guide.

Good idea, I didn't think of that.

As you say, the evolution doesn't matter as long as it isn't "elder". Anything but "elder" unlocks the entire arsenal of evolutions. In this method, it turns out "hearty". Once you hand the pet to the tamer, all other evolutions are unlocked.

The level 5 pets in the menagerie don't attack and I've mentioned in my original post that this is inconsequential; the pet will level up whether it attacks you or not (as long as you attack it once and turn it from green to red). If you summon level 12 pet or higher in the menagerie, they will attack. Actually, this may be a way to level up a rainbow phoenix; as soon as you can summon a level 12 rainbow phoenix, you should be able to death level it in the menagerie. So rather than having to level it up from level 5 to 20, you just have to level it up to level 12, then hand it in at the menagerie and re-summon it while you have heroes with you and death level it from level 12 to level 20. I haven't tried this, but it seems like it should work

Or a vampiric weapon, which means you don't have to activate the skill yourself. To stop dying, you need to switch to another weapon.

I've been using Mesmer/Ritualists with Flesh of my Flesh. Gwen and Norgu each with 16 in fast casting, no other hero. There is no recharge for FomF, and the 5 energy cost is minimal. If one of the two runs out of energy, the other will be able to cast -- and by the time that cast is done, the first has regained enough energy to cast again. My Necro/Ranger with five superior runes, Blood is Power and Charm Animal. Aside from the 16 in Fast Casting for the mesmers, attributes don't matter at all. It could easily be a Ranger/Necro as well, no difference.

The end effect for this setup is that as soon as my necromancer falls, one of the mesmers casts FomF. I don't know exact casting times for FomF with 16 FC, but it's a lot faster than another character without FC. If I'm reading the wiki right, should be just under a 2 second cast. It's a very simple setup, and gives times about the same as listed in the OP (I wasn't paying close attention to times, but I do know it's very very quick).

This is a very good method as well. [Flesh of my Flesh] takes 4 seconds to cast. With 16 fast casting, it is reduced to 2 seconds. This is just a bit slower than what I proposed. Due to the use of [Healer's Boon], [Restore Life] casts in 1 second and [resurrect] (unaffected by [Healer's Boon]) casts in 2.5 seconds. On average this gives a 1.75 second cast time per rez spell as opposed to a 2 second cast time using your method.

After I level my next pet I'll create 20/20 healing wands and offhands for my resmers and bring Quickening Zephyr on the necro. These steps might seem insignificant but could skim considerable time off the total death leveling session.

How does the skill recharge affect the times? Seems like that would be the bottleneck to me, but I haven't tried it out yet.

Since each of the 4 rez skills (2 on each mesmer) takes 8 seconds to recharge, it seems that a rez every 2 seconds is viable. This would be equivalent to using [Flesh of my Flesh]

Getting a rez available in under 2 seconds requires weapon modifiers that reduce skill recharge (either 1 or 2, 20% chance each).

If you use a "halves skill recharge" (20%) mod on the weapon of each mesmer then you have a rez available every 1.8 seconds. The math is - [ 8 (second recharge) * 80% + 4 (sec. recharge) * 20% ] / 4 (rez skills) = 1.8. This is the setup I have been using, I'm too lazy to find a 40/40 set for my 2 mesmer heroes, they use hourglass staves instead.

If you use 2 mods on a wand and a focus item, then you have a rez available every 1.64 seconds. The math is - [ 8 (sec. recharge) * 64% + 4 (sec. recharge) * 36% ] / 4 (rez skills) = 1.64 (it's 64% because the 2*20% don't add up, but rather, the 80% multiply).

Anyway nkuvu, thanks for the input, I didn't mention the weapon modifiers in my original post, I'll edit it now.

By the way nkuvu, I've been thinking of 2 details about your build -

1. Don't you get to the stage (after about 9 casts) where [Flesh of my Flesh] causes your heroes to kill themselves due to the health loss?

2. Since you are rezzed with your heroes' current health, you don't die immediately, I'm assuming you use a vampiric weapon to finish the job each time. How long does it take for the vampiric weapon to kill you when you have 1 hp?

Pretty smart.

Anyone know how long it takes to get a pet to lvl 20 with this method?

Im pretty sure its about 40 minutes to an hour with this method, I did it to my phoenix and I think thats how long it took. Funny thing was that when I was done my phoenix was hearty

My original post contains the answer to this, it's ~ 20 minutes to get a pet from level 5 to level 20.

In 40 minutes to an hour you should be able to death level 2 to 3 pets...

I've been afk death leveling my zPets in the menagerie now and then on my PvP character set up with 5 superior runes, a vampiric axe and a Life is Pain offhand. I bring the two rezmer heroes and a N/Mo hero with [Blood is Power] [Blood Ritual] [Healing Touch] [Heal Area]. Giving each of the rezmers [Orison of Healing], too, seems to always keep everyone charged and alive.

Using a PvP character is great if your account is UAX or close - just use the PvP equip screen to set yourself and the heroes up.

It may not be the absolute fastest res cycle, but it's worth a laugh to use your vamp axe to die and set your rezmers up with [Unyielding Aura], (it's the PvE version in the grounds.) Start to level a pet, forget to set the party flag, go afk for 15 min. Come back and see they've carried your corpse off to some random area of the grounds, far away from the pets.