pet damage question

Ok so I am making some 7 hero builds for the future, and 3 Pet barrage are in the mix. I was doing some testing in GToB against the 60 and 100AL targets with both dire and hearty pets. I am a Me/R (just for testing, I wont run a pet.) with 12 points in Beast mastery. It seemed like against the 60 AL i was averaging around 32-35 damage and the 100AL was around 14-16 with the hearty pet. The dire pet only went around 34-39 against 60 and 15-19 against the 100AL.

My question is, with the health bonus of the hearty pet and my damage coming from barbs/MoP/Splinter weapon. Is the loss in damage worth it?

Also, am I doing something wrong? I woulda thought the dire pet would do, well not a HUGE, but at least a considerable amount of more damage.

Am I thinking too much into this? I thought there was more to pets lol.

Ur pets gonna die anyway... every bit of damage counts!

Seriously though, if the damage is from barbs/mop id go with haerty go get the extra hit or 2 in. If barbs or mop isnt being as usable as you thought then id go with dire.

Actually level 20 pets don't die so easily. I bring in 4 pets sometimes and they help quicken the rate of killing off hordes. naturally they are only tanks with limited skills and defense and heroes do not really know how to take their time to heal their pets but the seriously they do not die that much. I put in more than 12 points in mastery though.

Since they buffed pets a few updates back, there is less difference in damage between the evolutions, and I now prefer to stick with hearty pets for a slight increase in survivability. I agree with Kojima that pets don't die as easily as Luminarus implies, but the dire pets are noticeably more fragile when I've tried using them with a hero beastmaster team.

However, the autoattack damage of pets is pathetic either way, especially with their slow attack rate, and they really do not make great meat shields. The enemy AI seems to put a low priority on attacking pets, and they contribute very little if you use them on a set-and-forget basis. The only way to get serious damage out of a pet is through the use of pet attack skills, which do substantial amounts of +dmg, shouts, and other buffs. Note that Barbs and MoP do increase the amount of damage the pet will do, and buffs such as Splinter Weapon, SoH, and BUH can be applied to pets.

As long as they can trigger Mark of Pain/Barbs/In ebon ward of honor before they die and bork the ranger bars it shouldn't really matter.

I'd go with dire or elder. The increased damage is okay and the decreased health should make AI target them more, so they'll be better meatshields. You shouldn't worry about them dying that much; they have 80 AL, 33% base damage reduction, and any other defense bonuses you feel like bringing (and you'll probably end up bringing at least one, since B/Ps have a lot of optional slots and heroes have limited skills).