Dire pet training quesiton (I'll try not to repeat other posts!)

Try typing /petname to reset the pet name, and see if it is aggresive. If it's Playful, you'll need to start over, other wise, it should be on the way to dire....

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You must also zone in and out of a town after your pet leveled up to 11.

North Kryta isn't the best area, because of all the hexes overthere. Take your pet to Ice Tooth Cave and train it against the Minotaurs there. Those are melee fighters, simple, predictable.

It's important to get aggro on yourself, so the pet isn't hurt, some builds even leave Comfort out because of this.
Use stances (Whirling Defense + Oath Shot + ??) and Trolls to stay alive, a starters melee weapon and a shield (why not). A /Me works great with their wonderfull Physical Resistance. It is important that you stay alive so that aggro stays on you.

I just spent the last week training a Dire white tiger. I think the key to Dire pets is that they must do the majority of the damage and take as little damage as possible.
This is how i did it with my tank, your skills may vary.
Capped a level 5 white tiger then mapped to Ice Tooth Cave. The Minotaurs are only level 10, and you dont have to worry about degen on your pet.

Skills I used:
symbiotic bond, call of haste, doylak, heal sig, charm animal, predators pounce, ferocious strike, disrupting lunge.

Get symbiotic bond and call of haste up, then go in and aggro the mob, hit doylak and heal sig when necessary, and just attack with the 3 pet attacks.
The majority of minotaurs would pound on me, and the pet just attacked the minotaurs.
Also, I used scrolls to get more exp for the Pet. Although it would show 0 exp, my pet raised up much faster with scrolls. After you pet reaches level 11, it did not show that it was aggressive until I mapped back into town and left for the next run. Level you pet to 15 or 16 and see if it has turned Dire.
After reaching Dire, you can then go level you pet up at the Droks Minotaurs or Elona Minotaurs with a more common build where you do the majority of damage.

I had a similar problem. I charmed a level 5 white tiger, took it to Ice Tooth Cave, disarmed my character (a mesmer/ranger in this case) and leveled the cat as advised in several of the guides. Unfortunately, it didn't take the dire track.

I am certain it was doing nearly all the damage so I deduce the issue is elsewhere. I wasn't particularly careful about ensuring that I took the aggro but I don't recall it dying many times at all.

Subsequently, I read, possibly somewhere in these forums, that death is essential and that to ensure dire evolution one should take the pet outside the Temple of the Ancients and allow the thorn stalkers there to take it down multiple times.

I haven't explored that tack as I find it repellent; I freely admit that willing suspension of disbelief, to use Coleridge's expression, plays an important part of my enjoyment of the game. I have no interest in intentionally killing my cat.

Nevertheless, I would be interested if someone who has successfully managed a pet through dire evolution could comment more explicitly about the process. Thanks.

Thanks dr1zz one, thats exactly what I was hoping for.

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^ Dont' bother with the Minotaurs. I always go straight for the Mergoyles outside the gates of kyrta mission. It goes much quicker that way.
Death isn't essential. I know that much at least. I made sure the pets I've leveled didn't die at all, and I've not had this problem... It's odd.

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In fact, it was the guide on guru and I mis-read it. Ouch. Apologies, here's the quote:

"It is difficult to test whether it is damage taken, damage healed, or deaths sustained that pushes the pet towards Hearty. However, it appears to be damage taken, rather than the other two, which is the key factor. To test this, a pet was raised to level 10 as an Aggressive pet with all variables remaining constant from my previous successful Aggressive pets. This included the pet being forced to deal 100% of the damage dealt to enemies. Then, it was taken outside of the Temple of the Ages and made to stand in poison until it died. Once dead it would be revived, allowed to naturally regen its health, and then killed again the same way. Rinse, repeat. Upon turning level 11, the pet was Playful rather than Aggressive. The same test was repeated with a second pet, only this time the pet was not allowed to regen to its full health before being poisoned again. Although it sustained the same number of deaths, it took considerably less damage. Surprisingly it still came out Aggressive.

With respect to the healing of the pet, a different test needed to be done. This time, the pet was leveled to 11 by the same method as the previous two pets, but was the subject of much healing through Comfort Animal, Predator’s Pounce, and Heal Area. Although the pet was not allowed to take damage it was still healed. The pet came out Aggressive, thus proving that healing alone has no direct impact on the pet’s evolution. Most likely, previous connections between healing and pet evolution where a side effect of a pet taking too much damage."

From: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...ide-id1575.php

I'm considering trying again making more effective use of Symbiotic Bond, Call of Protection and Otyugh's Cry.

I've had one instance where my pet didnt evolve, and that was when I took a level 3 straight to the outcasts right outside of leviathan pits. I've never had a problem if I go to level 10 on minotaurs (usually only 4 or 5 clears of minos) then go to pits. Enraged lunge really helps for dire evolution because of its huge mcnasty damage output. "Yeah, thats my level 3 crane pet doing 101 damage to a level 12 minotaur warrior boss".
I never EVER bring comfort when I want a dire evolution, if you need it you're in the wrong place. if YOU die, you map to town... fast...
I generally only take symbiotic bond and call of protection, and it seems enough, but then I pack in 2 pet attacks. So it probably just deals more damage than needed already.

thumbs up to this thread. i wanna train a dire moa or warthog.

I just trained 2 pets to 20 today- goes really fast if you just do minos in elonas reach.. the warthog came out dire and the pheonix I just dunno- it never changed it's name.. just stayed pheonix

you can train dire and to level 20 in a little over an hour after working out the builds- the warthog I did on a warrior and the pheonix was on my elementalist.. all I brought was charm animal and no other pet skills- it does'nt seem to matter if the pet dies, I was doing runs where sometimes he got aggroed and other times not and just sat there attacking till they were all dead- but the key is I did about all the damage.. if he died I just finished em off anyway and rezoned back into the mission- works good to aggro all the minos at once.. not sure about the pheonix but I suspect it's dire too cause trained it exactly the same as the warthog- anyone have the same deal with that pet?

I was expecting to end up with elder or hearty pets from the guides been reading.. but try it out

I trained a Dire White Tiger with my R/Me about a week ago and everything worked like a charm. I used the R/any Tank Master -build from GuildWiki as a guide but did a few changes. I took Poisonous Bite instead of Call of Haste and Physical Resistance instead of Comfort Animal. I also had 16 att points in beast mastery and I went straight to Elona Reach with my lvl 5 pet

It took a bit of timing and waiting sometimes to make sure that no more than three minotaurs attacked me at the same time. I always made sure that I was standing in front of my pet so that the minotaurs attacked me and not my pet. I had three Beast Mastery -skills (Predatory Bond, Call Of Protection and Predatory Bond) already recharging when the minotaurs attacked so I could just use Poisonous Bite and Enraged Lunge and the beast was poisoned and took about 90 damage I never ever attacked anyone, just stood still and used Physical Resistance and Troll Unguent to stay alive. I also killed all the lvl 22 Dune Burrowers during the same "run". I just ran to them and when they attacked me my pet started to attack them...

Against those lvl 20 and lvl 22 enemies the pet is going to level up quite fast. If I remember correctly after about 45 minutes or so my pet already was lvl 11 and Aggressive. After it turned Dire at lvl 15 I headed straight to Tomb Ruins to join B/P -groups and like all the guides said, the pet stayed Dire despite of multiple deaths and all the brutal punishment.

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Well I'm happy to repit Dire Training is done, and down pat. I have the tricks that work for sure, 100%, did this successfully three times in a row.

1. Bring as many attack skills for your pet as possible.
2. Bring Otyagh's and Call of Prot for damage reduction.
3. Train on Wavers outside of Kryta from level 5-15 (then go pop Elona Minos if you like).
4. Train up at least 10 pts in Beast Mastery if not more.
5. 'Attack' with NO weapons in your hand (in fact I used a scroll to get more energy and hence more pet attacks!)

MYTHBUSTER - Healing your pet has absolutely no negative effect on it's going Dire. However, if you find your pet is taking alot of damage, you are doing something wrong. Namely, you're not holding the mobs' aggro.

That's it. That's all you need. Worked perfectly. Thanks for all of your thoughts guys, not sure why the first attempt didn't work.

Peace.

I've found that the best is not attack at all, simply walk into the aggro range of the bad guys and let them attack (which then causes the pet to attack them), this further insures that they don't attack your pet. Because if your pet runs forward to attack your target he may draw fore based upon a further aggro bubble than yours. If that makes any sense...