Dire or Bust?

Hello, Rangers! I browsed the other recent topics dealing with pets, but this question is a bit different than the rest.

I'm a Ritualist, but I'd like to still own a pet. Now, from perusing your forum it seems that every pet out there is only in the Dire form. Is that because the Hearty or Elder pets are "useless"?

Now, I fully doubt that I'll ever run a full-out Beastmaster build on my Ritualist. Basically, he'll only be there to screw around with during PvE things (he'd be tanking with Call of Protection). Because the Spawning Power attribute isn't necessary for most Restoration builds, I'd be able to plug a significant amount of points into Beast Mastery and have a lil' buddy accompanying me while I heal away. I do stupid goof-around things like that. Ah well.

So yeah! Would levelling my pet towards Hearty be better off for my situation? I don't quite see any point in me actually using my pet to deal any sorts of damage whatsoever...I can't be sure, but I'm pretty sure he'll just be there to soak up damage while I chill in the backlines.

Is the attack bonus from Dire that good that I should focus on that instead, though? How much does the health penalty hurt?

Thank you very much for your input. All is appreciated. See you on the battlefield!

Dire pets do 15%more dmg, Hearty is -15%dmg, and Elder is in the middle. The more damage they do, the less health and armor they have. If I ever put Charm Animal on my skillbar, I'm gonna use my pet for damage, rather than tanking. It depends on you and what you use your pet for.

I'm pretty sure that the number of rangers with Hearty pets outnumber those with Dire pets. Making a pet go Dire requires you to carefully watch your pet's health and the damage it does, while making a Hearty pet is as simple as letting it die often. People tend to show off their Dire pets since it takes abit more time to evolve one that way, so that's probably why it might seem like more people have dire =p

Dire pets do 15%more dmg, Hearty is -15%dmg, and Elder is in the middle. The more damage they do, the less health and armor they have. If I ever put Charm Animal on my skillbar, I'm gonna use my pet for damage, rather than tanking. It depends on you and what you use your pet for.

The health/armor penalty has never bothered me, since pets only get dp in pvp and people are usually smart enough not to waste their skills on a pet.

I'm pretty sure that the number of rangers with Hearty pets outnumber those with Dire pets. Making a pet go Dire requires you to carefully watch your pet's health and the damage it does, while making a Hearty pet is as simple as letting it die often. People tend to show off their Dire pets since it takes abit more time to evolve one that way, so that's probably why it might seem like more people have dire =p

If you said you want a pet to deal more dmg then hearty is the way to go.

A lot of people think Dire is great in pvp, but in a 20 minuts gvg or HA match when your pet has 60dp, you really want that -60 health back.


As to the show off your dire pet comment , letting a pet kill you 100 times while Dunkoro ressurects you requires no skill.

if your level 20, then just let a pet kill u 350~times, then charm. the pet will level into a level 20 dire . takes 3-4 hours

sometimes its noticeable, i have a hearty cat, and a dire pig, and the pig does a fair bit more damage (i have 2 rangers)

The extra damage that the dire pet gives out isn't all to noticeable with no Beastmastery. If you only want a pet to absorb attacks, then Hearty's the way to go.

That said... I prefer dire for Barrage/pet teams. The pet'll die faster then, providing a corpse for the MM faster. And if the enemies ignore my pet then he'll do that extra little bit of damage.

Got it, thanks folks! I've started levelling my lil' pet towards Hearty, as he'll pretty much only be a tank.

There aren't any tricks to it like Dire, right? I just let him run in and get whomped by attackers? Seems simple enough.

you just need to keep ressing him, as he needs to take damage as opposed to staying dead

and re the differences between dire hearty etc, theres NO armor difference, just damage and health

Quote:

Yeah only the health is affected by their evolution, no armor change. My mistake....I also didn't notice i double-posted earlier untill now >_<

The 15%dmg differences came from here: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Pet

To make a pet dire, it has to do lots of damage and take very little damage, etc. If you want a hearty pet, just treat it like crap. Send it into huge mobs, let it die, etc.

If you really wanna get into it here's a good guide on evolving pets:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=89491