Insane Pet

[Decaying Smurf]

Was in a guildy group last nite agg kiting Murks and Mountain Bazu's in NC. Pulled the bazu at max casting range with Embracing.......Resist....Take off running towards group, Bazu on Chase. Stop, cast again.....Resist.... Bazu smacks me,(Jibabn) moves to protect his master, I fd at the feet of the Bazu. Bazu IMMEDIATELY turns to my pet, ALTHOUGH 5 other people were casting on it, he only attacked my pet.

5 hits Jibabn (Saryns Companion) is vaporized, 63 Necro with Saryns Companion her pet was Vaporized. Only pet left is the lvl 70 guildy mage with water (Rogue)? pet. The Rogue pet Tanked the ENTIRE time with no heals and little help from its master whatsoever while everyone else dotted and dd'ed the mob down. My question is. Are mage pets really that strong at tanking? And does anyone have a rough estimate of how many hp's the rogue pet has vs the mages warrior pet?

I was simply struck in awe at how durable their pets are. After loosing this pet (4th one that evening) I simply decided to pull w/o summoning a pet. Damn pet kept taking aggro from me, even with taunt off and me throwing my highest aggro spells in my arsenal at the mob... :angry:

[Dranul]

I'm guessing it was the air pet. Air pets are ridiculous for how often they stun, dodge, and I think they can riposte, though I might be wrong with that. But yes, since the air pet will chain stun and WoS mobs don't resist it that often, you can have a mage pet tank WoS mobs, especially if those mobs are slowed.

Just remember, mage pets >= beastlord pets, and ours aren't even good enough to compare to either. It's like comparing an enchanter's nuke to a wizard's nuke; there is *no* comparison.

[Xenh]

Envision our pet as a DoT with feet.

Unless you're fighting drunk, fangless, level 1 snakes...don't imagine that it can tank anything.

/taunt OFF will help with that.
Hold the pet if you can.

BTW their pets are that good...

Aside: Something I didn't know though was that magi cannot crit on their heals. They use the same heals on us, but are stuck with the spell description (and their foci) allow.

Aside2: I noticed early on that when duoing with a BL friend of mine that my pet would grab agro loads. It's like their attack range is 1" shorter than the kitty's melee range (odd since it's using claws and mine is using a freakin' scythe).

[Decaying Smurf]

Originally posted by Dranul@Dec 27 2005, 07:36 PM

Just remember, mage pets >= beastlord pets, and ours aren't even good enough to compare to either. It's like comparing an enchanter's nuke to a wizard's nuke; there is *no* comparison.
I agree with you Dranul. What Im saying is, it was a water pet. The Guildy said it was her rogue pet?? I know only one mage pet and thats the earth pet which is a warrior right? Anyway we did not have a Shaman at the time to slow (Didnt need one because we were agg kiting). Im not saying the pet was invincible and I did see the pet loosing health, but the rate it was loosing health was at a verrrry sloow rate.

Also a Guildy pulled one of those damn Fecund Murkgliders and when you kill it 5 lvl 52-55 murkglider puppies start running rampant. I had to FD because I could not get them the hell off of me. The mage water pet tanked all 5, killing 3 before I was able to snare the remaining 2 and kite them around. The mage then summoned another pet and we finished off the remaining 2.....

[Decaying Smurf]

Originally posted by Xenh@Dec 27 2005, 07:40 PM
Unless you're fighting drunk, fangless, level 1 snakes...don't imagine that it can tank anything.



Never said I did. And I was not using the pet for tanking. The Mob aggroed the pet, 5 hits later it was vaporized. I have never really grouped with a mage so it was pretty interesting to see a pet survive past 5 whacks.

[Xenh]

Originally posted by Decaying Smurf+Dec 27 2005, 07:56 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Decaying Smurf @ Dec 27 2005, 07:56 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-Xenh@Dec 27 2005, 07:40 PM
Unless you're fighting drunk, fangless, level 1 snakes...don't imagine that it can tank anything.Never said I did. And I was not using the pet for tanking. The Mob aggroed the pet, 5 hits later it was vaporized. I have never really grouped with a mage so it was pretty interesting to see a pet survive past 5 whacks.[/b][/quote]
If you missed it, that was the tongue-in-cheek part of my response...

Our pet can actually do fairly well tanking Trak (or any other lamer old world dragon) to avoid getting banished/summoned.

[Dranul]

It's not quite right to categorize mage pets on class, more accurate to categorive them on general abilities:

Earth - chain casts root, quads, decent hitpoints and ac
Air - chain casts stun, seems to have maxed defensive AAs
Water - can backstab for...800? Something like that. Not sure what it chain casts.
Fire - supposedly can nuke like a mid-level mage/wizard, but it's usually just a crappy melee due to bad pet AI coding. Also has a damage shield.
Decoy - I haven't seen one of these in a long while, but they chain cast a 300 DD and auto taunt AE. Supposedly designed for "Oh shit!" moments, but I think it's more useful for farming greenies.

[Felicite]

Originally posted by Dranul@Dec 27 2005, 01:04 PM
It's not quite right to categorize mage pets on class, more accurate to categorive them on general abilities:

Earth - chain casts root, quads, decent hitpoints and ac
Air - chain casts stun, seems to have maxed defensive AAs
Water - can backstab for...800? Something like that. Not sure what it chain casts.
Fire - supposedly can nuke like a mid-level mage/wizard, but it's usually just a crappy melee due to bad pet AI coding. Also has a damage shield.
Decoy - I haven't seen one of these in a long while, but they chain cast a 300 DD and auto taunt AE. Supposedly designed for "Oh shit!" moments, but I think it's more useful for farming greenies.
You forgot "Monster Summoning" line The "IV" pet is easily researchable and a Monster.

"Bull Rush" attack stuns red to me mobs. Self Rune and nasty proc. I am having a hard time putting it aside for the 67 Water pet cause it's fun to have a teeny monster terror.

[Dranul]

I totally omitted Monster Summoning IV because...um...because I wanted to leave something for someone else to post?

[Nigyl]

Also the epic pet: stuns, procs a 150-ish DD, quads and casts a 50-point damage shield on itself. 5000-ish hit points, maxes at about 300 dps on level 30-ish mobs, but not enough AC to tank PoP mobs or above unslowed, particularly as it doesn't enrage unless focussed.

[nethyia]

Aside: Something I didn't know though was that magi cannot crit on their heals. They use the same heals on us, but are stuck with the spell description (and their foci) allow.

In DoN, the Tier 4 reward is a (3%?) chance to crit across the board, don't have it yet, but I understand its melee, nuke, dot, and heal. So a mage should be able to crit heal with that. Also, in DoDH, mages finally got an AA (companion's gift) that gave them a chance to crit heal. The description says it requires mend companion, but I imagine it works on normal pet heals as well (just a guess on my part, but I'm sure a guildie mage mentioned him getting crit heals when DoDH first came out).

[Xenh]

Originally posted by nethyia@Dec 28 2005, 12:53 AM
In DoN, the Tier 4 reward is a (3%?) chance to crit across the board, don't have it yet, but I understand its melee, nuke, dot, and heal. So a mage should be able to crit heal with that. Also, in DoDH, mages finally got an AA (companion's gift) that gave them a chance to crit heal. The description says it requires mend companion, but I imagine it works on normal pet heals as well (just a guess on my part, but I'm sure a guildie mage mentioned him getting crit heals when DoDH first came out).
Totally news to me, thanks for the correction~ :P

[Necro_Bone]

Anyone remember how great our pets were pre-Kunark? They used to tank way better than pallies did (my first main was a pally). Fine steel daggers! Whoo-hoo!!

Mage pets were way weaker than necro pets until mages were retuned (was this around Velious? Mage heals were added in Luclin I think--letting mages solo effectively for the first time that I recall) in accordance with the "vision" that the mage class was "defined" by the pet.

[Sathras]

I don't think the comparison of a 63 (aka PoP) pet against a lvl70 (DON) pet is a fair one. Wait till you get the 67 pet and you are in for a surprise. Though not a rogue but a tank pet this beast is a huge upgrade. Just look up the pet stats in the bonechips board. It should give you an idea. Even with these numbers in mind I think the little bugger will surprise you. :)

It won't win against the mage tank pet but why should it. After all mages rely on their pet.

Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?

[Felicite]

Originally posted by Sathras@Dec 28 2005, 09:25 AM
Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?
You are cracking me up.

Mage Heal = Full Health and Mana at Bind Point (Ranger Gate)

Mage Crowd Control = Gate

Mage Root = Ask someone (or.. "wait while I summon this Earth Pet, k?")

Mage Snare = wishful thinking

[Nigyl]

Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?

Summoned bandages, but you can't bind wound on pets :(.

[Nirruden]

Originally posted by Sathras@Dec 28 2005, 04:25 PM
Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?
They can chain their top (two?) heals, but if they do, they do NOTHING else - think about trying to keep two mobs locked down with Screaming Terror. Same principle. In addition, since pet DPS < Mob DPS, chaining heals is not often done. Instead, mages tend to operate on the "Now You See It, Now You Don't" principle. Basically... now you see the mob. (NUKENUKENUKE)... Now you don't.

Failing that, mages will sometimes band together to form a "pet chaining" group, where all the mages simply summon pets, and the pets do all the work unaided - a group of 6 mages is very definitively walking death to anything that can be stunned. The stun lock is frighteningly powerful, when it works right. (There's some math tucked away in the mage compendium somewhere about how air pet stun is ~25% slow, and adding additional mages ends up somewhere between a 25% and 100% slow, depending entirely on the randomness of pet stun time overlaps, IIRC... but it's been a while, and maybe it was elsewhere).

Assuming no spells/sitting from the mages, they can just fire off 6 airpets - by the time the mob kills one, the others have (much) more agro than their masters do, so the mob stays on the remaining pets. The mage with the dirt-nap pet simply summons another one, and the pet count returns to 6. This breaks down at the high end somewhat, IIRC, for various reasons.

As far as classes of mage pets, they are warriors, with only two exceptions:

1) Water pets are rogues.
2) Fire pets are warriors 1-49, and wizards 50+. They're also totally useless (50+) due to horrible spell list and poor AI coding - like casting root on fleeing mobs, dispelling randomly, burning all their mana on self-shielding spells, using long-cast nukes on targets that have been mezzed during the cast and so forth. Mages generally revile their firepets (50+) for anything other than farming greenies and pet pulling. Below 49, firepets aren't bad at all, from what I gather - my mage isn't high enough to say with any authority.

[Nigyl]

Yeah, up to the 50s fire pets are pretty good for soloing: they don't have many hit points, but they self-cast a nice damage shield. Past 50 they're pretty much useless: the only time I used mine was to try it out on orcs in Nektulos... it cast an AoE snare and aggroed half the camp on me, not something I'd want to do on XP mobs or in a raid.

Monster Summoning pets used to be bad-ass when they had earth pet hit points and cast the fire pet damage shield on themselves, but SoE nerfed them a couple of years ago.

[UsulDaNeriak]

mage stun pet can easily tank in wos on noc hill. if a named inc, add 10 nec pets and its done :lol:

ok you need a healer behind. and this healer should have loaded stun, too)
but no tank needed, just single pulls and a bit cc.

Usul

[nethyia]

IMO, most mages don't realize how powerful their pet can be. I've seen the OOW air pet tank an entire creator as well as slightly better than EP geared knight (Minion of Darkness focus). And with correct timing and a bit of luck, they *can* chain pets up to a certain point to solo more places than people realize (not up to our soloing, of course, but not as bad as most mages make it out ot be). This has been nerfed by higher end content of course.

And while this combo wasn't by any means a dps machine, or very mana efficient, I know a mage/enchanter hubby and wife team that that are incredible (he chain heals the pet, she slows and nukes. depending on mobs, he might be able to get a nuke or 2 off). When he started boxing a 65 cleric, they seemed unstoppable (this is how he has gotten through mana DoNs). A mage/shammy duo would probably kick quite a bit of ass.

[Nirruden]

Originally posted by nethyia@Dec 29 2005, 01:37 AM
IMO, most mages don't realize how powerful their pet can be. (snip) A mage/shammy duo would probably kick quite a bit of ass.
Mage + Cleric and Mage + Shaman are capable of a very great deal indeed. Damage mitigation and crowd control are the mage's weakest points. A shaman offsets the damage mitigation weakness with slows and heals, a cleric with raw healing power. Both can off-root mobs for in-camp CC, if the mage and partner are careful.

[Phearinu]

I trio with a mage pretty often. He also boxes a shaman, so its me mage and shaman. We take down nest and hive like nothing. Sometimes when a mob resists i dont even bother FDing and waiting for reset, ill just run back and mage sicks pet on it and takes hive / nest mobs long enough with out dying for me to snare. With mage and shaman debuffs usually everytime i get it snared the second time but it will continue to beat on the mag pet and take me awhile to get aggro back. Mage pet is dominant, but they still cant solo like us.

[Solarra]

Edit: Just kill me

[Vyvianna]

I play a 68 Mage and my Necro of many years of slow soloing is finally at 51. There is no comparison in the pets from my point of view and a few times went brain dead thinking my necro pet was like my 67 air pet, haha.

My Mage assists her pet. My Necro uses her pet as a dot and the pet assists her. I can't decide which class I like more.. I love em both.

And yes, mage heal = ranger gate, lol.

[Baade_Carma]

I never got the water pet, but my 66 air pet would tank in NC with ease. Very little heals or nukes from me. Far superior than my necro's 66+ pets.

[CigamHelspawn]

Originally posted by Felicite+Dec 28 2005, 05:08 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Felicite @ Dec 28 2005, 05:08 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Sathras@Dec 28 2005, 09:25 AM
Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?
You are cracking me up.

Mage Heal = Full Health and Mana at Bind Point (Ranger Gate)

Mage Crowd Control = Gate

Mage Root = Ask someone (or.. "wait while I summon this Earth Pet, k?")

Mage Snare = wishful thinking [/b][/quote]
Mage Heal - pet only, similar to necro pet heal (but necro can heal any undead allegedly lol)

Mage CC - crystalline silk net (I know lame but it works lol)

Mage root - earth pet and hope it procs and holds (heh)

Mage snare - ensnaring concoctions (stacks to 100) and a decent throwing skill. 9-)

(got a 65 mage myself... one thing I think does not get mentioned is I am pretty convinced at this point, from trying to tank similar mobs with 65 mage pet vs 65 necro pet (with DPoC on both, full set of mage toys on both and a conviction on both).

Mage pet benefits of course from better DS (CoB DS is only 16 I think, 65 mage DS is like 44 or so) but DAMAGE MITIGATION seems much better for mage pets than necro pets. Might just be me but Im positive that the necro pet takes a lot more damage on avg per hit than the mage pet seems to.

Any thoughts?

Cig

[CigamHelspawn]

Originally posted by Nirruden+Dec 28 2005, 05:41 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Nirruden @ Dec 28 2005, 05:41 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Sathras@Dec 28 2005, 04:25 PM
Btw, mages do have other heals, don't they?

As far as classes of mage pets, they are warriors, with only two exceptions:

1) Water pets are rogues.
2) Fire pets are warriors 1-49, and wizards 50+. They're also totally useless (50+) due to horrible spell list and poor AI coding - like casting root on fleeing mobs, dispelling randomly, burning all their mana on self-shielding spells, using long-cast nukes on targets that have been mezzed during the cast and so forth. Mages generally revile their firepets (50+) for anything other than farming greenies and pet pulling. Below 49, firepets aren't bad at all, from what I gather - my mage isn't high enough to say with any authority.

[/b][/quote]
To 49 I preferred fire pet to any of the others... the DS rocked and the HPs were not that much less but you are correct 50+ fire pet is useless or worse.

Used to be immune to fire so was used to kill Rak'Ashirr in CoM for Shammy epics but that got the snot nerfed out of it.

You forgot that Air pets are Monks.

Hope that helps some.

Cig

[CigamHelspawn]

Originally posted by nethyia@Dec 29 2005, 01:37 AM


And while this combo wasn't by any means a dps machine, or very mana efficient, I know a mage/enchanter hubby and wife team that that are incredible (he chain heals the pet, she slows and nukes. depending on mobs, he might be able to get a nuke or 2 off). When he started boxing a 65 cleric, they seemed unstoppable (this is how he has gotten through mana DoNs). A mage/shammy duo would probably kick quite a bit of ass.
Another factoid many do not know... mage pets can be triple hasted with enchanters... Enchanter haste will stick and not overwrite on a mage hasted mage pet. (the third haste is muzzle of course) and no other class pet if hasted by its master can be hasted
by a chanter. I know... my 65 chanter has tried them all.

But yes, mage/enchanter is potent... I sometimes duobox in PoI and elsewhere... the chanter slows mobs, mezzes adds/split pulls and hastes the pet (and keeps tranquility on the mage and himself of course lol).

Cig

[CigamHelspawn]

Originally posted by Vyvianna@Jan 25 2006, 01:15 AM
I play a 68 Mage and my Necro of many years of slow soloing is finally at 51.
Wow...

I can usually level a necro from 1 to 51 solo in just a week or two.

Not that tough... same with a mage or BST or shaman.

Others I know can do faster... no PLing, just soloing.

Cig

[nethyia]

Another factoid many do not know... mage pets can be triple hasted with enchanters... Enchanter haste will stick and not overwrite on a mage hasted mage pet
Does this actually stack, though? And does the pet have the same haste cap as a player (100% from spell and item combined, overhaste possible from bards and some clickies)? If it does not stack, not much point. Also, if they are affected by the 100% cap, mage pet haste is 85%, muzzle is 11%, that's alreayd 96% so the extra bit wouldn't help.

Now if they did actually stack, instead of just highest affecting it, and the cap is not their for the pet, then I can see this making a difference.

And I'm not 100% sure, would have to check, but I think the OOW chanter group haste at least will stick on necro pet with necro pet haste, but only the higher will have an affect (but its nice to not worry about haste as much during raid).

Mage Heal - pet only, similar to necro pet heal (but necro can heal any undead allegedly lol)

The main difference between the bst/mage pet heals, and necro pet heal, is target type. bst/mage is target type pet. They will should only affect that players pet (bsts have less powerful single target heals as well, of course). If its like the target type Pet I've used, it will automatically target the caster's pet, actually. With our pet heal target type being Undead, we can actually heal other necro's pets.

[Xelgadis]

Mages did get an AA line in DoD which allows them to crit heal, same as we do with the Theft of Life line. Works with the instant-cast AA heal too, same as ours.

After long discussions with Kirium regarding pets (the mage who's done extensive parsing on pets and who had a large part in getting the upgrades to pets we received last year), it's clear that tank class pets really have no issue with damage mitigation, as they all mitigate fine, it's their damage avoidance which is almost non-existant (akin to a silk class with no avoidance AAs). Take into consideration AE rampage, which likes to vaporize pets, AE spell based damage, etc., and it's easy to see why pets are more of a liability on raids. AE spells are designed, anymore, with the expectation that players challenging that content will be at/near max spell/dot shielding, which again puts pets at a disadvantage. Best solution would be to make summoned pets share their master's worn mods upon being summoned. That alone would address avoidance issues somewhat, as well as AE spell damage.

As far as the OP's post: It's a given that mage pets are significantly better than necro pets. Also take into consideration that mages will often summon the best gear under the sun for their pets too, that alone makes a significant difference in both tanking and survivability (particularly in group content). Mages are also the only one of the pet classes who go out of their way, and apeshit in the process, to get every new pet focus as it comes out. I personally like to skip every other pet foci so upgrades are actually noticable.

[CigamHelspawn]

Originally posted by nethyia@Feb 18 2006, 08:59 AM
Another factoid many do not know... mage pets can be triple hasted with enchanters... Enchanter haste will stick and not overwrite on a mage hasted mage pet
Does this actually stack, though? And does the pet have the same haste cap as a player (100% from spell and item combined, overhaste possible from bards and some clickies)? If it does not stack, not much point. Also, if they are affected by the 100% cap, mage pet haste is 85%, muzzle is 11%, that's alreayd 96% so the extra bit wouldn't help.

Now if they did actually stack, instead of just highest affecting it, and the cap is not their for the pet, then I can see this making a difference.
.
I cant promise anything but in my experience it seems to make a lot more difference than 4%... they seem to stack and my guess is there is no capping, at least not at 100%.

Cig

[Lortania Sar`Armitra]

Yes Most are right if ur lookin for a pet to tank stuff with, than delete ur necro and make a mage =p or bsty ...necro pets arent designed to tank stuff but weaklings , lost soul can tank some stuff and our lvl 70 pet dark assassin has a hp of a peon but nice dps if u have anguish pet focus or Demi
And i agree with u , im amazed of mages and there pets cause they so frikin awsome , but i have mages wizards commin to me sayin wow u necros are sick DPS for MOST FIGHTS i do , Esp for vish fights cause its a long azz fight , necros are the best for it cause during the whole fight , im always 70-80% mana and am casitng 2.0 epic pet , 4x dots ( dread pyre , ancient curse , fang of death and dark nitemare ) and also susin dagger of death proc from inventory and they are amazed at our dps esp if u have ur dot crit AA maxxed.
So hang in there , We so useful its crazy , not sure about other necro's and there servers , but i get picked for grps over mages anyday cause we can do MW , twtichin , uber dots , DPS and in some cases fd split pull ) and for raids we life savers esp if a wipe fd wait for aggro wipe and rez in dead cleric =p

Hugs

[Heracy]

Originally posted by Felicite@Dec 28 2005, 05:08 PM
Mage Heal = Full Health and Mana at Bind Point (Ranger Gate)

Mage Crowd Control = Gate

Mage Root = Ask someone (or.. "wait while I summon this Earth Pet, k?")

Mage Snare = wishful thinking
Mage Heal = Yep when my skeleton grows wings and becomes my flying mount

Mage Crowd Control = AOE Nuke so Mage takes all argo

Mage Root = Ask someone (or.. "wait while I summon this Earth Pet, k?")

Mage Snare = Mage bribing a Ranger/Druid.

Mage Pwnage = Necro beating down a Mage with a rusty dagger. (Level 1 necro vs 70 mage)

[Shrea]

You guys are making me want to pull out the baby mage on my boxed account. After duoing with a similar level mage one evening, I made one because a mage/nec duo was..... devistatingly efficient.

[NylanaFV]

My partner has a 62 mage, and one night while the mage was in his late 50s we decided to goof around and let his various pets duke it out with my CoB. His epic pet just barely beat mine down. Nice. I think we only allowed his Burnout and my Rune of Death but no pet toys were given.

We've duoed mage-necro before, but with the necro I prefer him to play his shaman. The slows and buffs alone are worth it for me, but he also does some decent DPS (okay, not mage DPS but still a decent output). His healing ability is just right for us...being mainly casters, his Daluda's Mending is pretty much a CHeal for all the characters. It's just a perfect fit. :)

With the mage I prefer playing my enchanter.