Whats the best way to level a pet?

Close this thread please my question has been answered

There is no best way, or none that I know of.

It depends what evolution of pet you are wanting to get and where you are at in the game.

Also... When your pet is dead it gains experience, but when it dies it may end up evolving into a hearty pet.

1. Show the pet to Ermyd to unlock it on the Menagerie grounds.
2. Turn it in to Ermyd.
3. Come back with a death leveling team.
3a. Player character needs 55 gear (or 105 if you don't have the cesta), a vampiric weapon, a non-vampiric weapon, and a health sacrifice skill or two.
3b. Gwen and Norgu as Me/Rt with max fast casting and Flesh of My Flesh
3c. Other hero doesn't really matter. A battery necro can help with the rezzing a little. It can have heals as long as you don't give it anything spammy enough to keep you from dying.
3d. ANY team member can have charm animal.
4. Death level the pet.
4a. Kill all but one of the same type (so that the xp isn't spread).
4b. Stand near the pet, put on your 55 gear, swap to a vamp weapon, and kill yourself with health sac.
4c. Mesmers rez you.
4d. Repeat until pet is level 20. (Takes ~15 minutes. After a couple deaths the vamp weapon should kill you rapidly without any need to sac.)
4e. When you rez, QUICKLY swap to non-vamp weapon.
4f. Have whoever has charm animal charm the pet.
5. Show pet to Ermyd.
6. Come back with character you want to have the pet and have Wynn spawn one for you.

I believe he is looking for the fastest when he says best.

Evolution variations are important for some builds. Wiki and Wikia will both explain them in more detail if you need it, but the short is that Dire has less health but does more damage, Hearty has more health but does less damage, and Elder is in the middle of those 2.

To use the menagerie to level a pet you need to have a couple things available. If you only have a level 5 pet, you need to be able to die repeatedly while next to the pet, and have a hero rez you. This takes a long time though. Or, if you have a pet level 12 or higher, you can get Wynn to summon a pet to tame, and then let it kill you repeatedly so it gains XP and levels up (also requires a hero to rez you). Or you can talk to the NPC to trade Baltazar Faction in to unlock other evolution states, and then have Wynn summon one to charm.

In case you are too lazy to check the wiki's here is a short explanation on how to achieve the various evolution states.

Hearty = you deal more damage than the pet and take less damage than the pet. This means you need the pet to do very little damage in combat and take a lot of damage while you take little to no damage. This is easy to do in normal combat situations with little attribute points and skills invested in Beast Mastery.

Dire = you deal less damage than the pet and take more damage than the pet. This is the harder one to do unless death leveling the pet. It requires you to take a build where the pet has skills to dish out large damage and you do very little if any damage. Plus, you need to keep the pet well protected so it takes less damage than you do. Letting a pet kill you and having a hero rez you allows this to occur since you are doing no damage at all, and the pet is taking no damage at all.

Elder = a combination of the above methods. Usually you advance to the first evolution state for either Hearty or Dire (which is Playful or Aggressive). Once it reaches that first evolution you then change the way you level the pet to the opposite. Not easy to do, but possible. However, if you turn in a Hearty OR Dire pet at the menagerie you also get access to an Elder version of that pet.

For Dire (which seems to unlock all available evolutions in the menagerie) go to Balthazar Isle and make your pet attack one of the healers, go afk 45 minutes, your pet will keep doing damage while the monk heals, then go to one of the areas in NF that has Wurms, when you enter the wurm, your pet will die but it won't be penalised and will still level as you kill.....repeat. I got 6 animals to Dire this way, then I realised that pets probably not gonna carry over to GW2.

Someone else posted this method so I'm not in anyway claiming it is my idea, but it does work!