pet training

im training my lvl 9 bear, and he simply isnt leveling up...
is there a good place in which to train my bear?
should i use henchies at that place?
im beggining to despise my pet

The best way I've found to train lower level pets is just to kill em off and do mission and quests.

'Yes you've heard me kill him off. '

If you are level 20 you can just start a mission, let him die at the start and continue the mission without him.

Pets level up even when they are dead and reguardless of the distance they are from you.

I was training my boar when he died, I continued to farm drakes with someone else and after we had killed them all I realized my boar had leveled up during.

This permits you to bring other skills instead of healing ones for your pet, and also protects you from the reset of your skill everytime he dies.

thank you!
that makes this thing so much easier...

last questions: will henchmen detract from the pet's experience gain?

Everyone gains experience according to their level, I do not believe you split experience the way the gold is split.

Henchmen do indeed detract from the pet's experience. As for the "kill them off and then continuing on" advice, this is all fine and dandy if you're interested in a Playful/Hearty pet or already have an Aggressive and are looking to get an Elder. Your play style with the pet will determine how its stats change later on. See the guide for details on that.

If you're level 20 and need to train your pet in the opposite direction (towards Dire), you can level up a pet to 10+ very quickly outside of Ice Tooth Cave, and 20 very quickly outside of Augury Rock. Make use of suck skills as Call of Protection, Otyugh's Cry, and Symbiotic Bond. With those and high beastmastery you can make a lvl 5 pet take no damage outside of Ice Tooth Cave. As it levels up you'll find you can eventually get rid of Symbiotic Bond and just use Comfort Animal occasionally instead. Attack combinations such as Feral Lunge and Scavenger's Strike work nicely for making your pet take things down, and Ferocious Strike is always good to have on hand.

that guide mademe want to train my pet in the first place

i wanna get it to a hearty state at lvl 11, and then change to full beasmaster...

You only get Playful or Aggressive at level 11, with Playful being the one that leans towards Hearty. If your ultimate goal is an Elder, as it sounds to be, then you're on the right track.

yeah, i ment playfull...

One unfortunate thing I've noticed; if you name your pet, you can't tell what type it is. You can reset the pet name back to default (/petname with nothing after) but it'll reset the name to the original, level 5, version.

umm... no... when you type in the /petname command it should reset your pets name to default -- naming it's current evolution stage and the type of pet.

You'd think so, that would make sense; but I have a level 18 "Black Bear" at the moment. I reset the name at level 13 or 15; wish I could recall precisely.

i just had my bear lvl up and it was still a black bear. i reset my pet's name, and it said playfull bear.

I just did as well. I went out, tamed a bear, and then tested the /namepet stuff. It works just fine. I will note, however, that I also trained a Playful bear. If indeed there's a bug with the /namepet or some variance in the evolution, it certainly isn't with the Playful variety. Which type of pet have you been working towards?

I haven't been working towards any particular type of pet actually; I only got the bear for flavor. Since I occasionally have a spare skill slot while farming I decided to level the pet up. I aquired it at level 5 and renamed it right away to "Killer Bear" (ranger's name is Garrett the Thief, some folks catch the reference); it may well be that both having "Bear" for the second word has caused some sort of bug. But I can certainly provide a screenshot of me reseting the level 18 "Black Bear".

then provide away, this could help explain the problem/give soid evidence of a bug...

Here you go:

huh... that's weird... maybe send in a bug report to ANeT?

i've never had this happen to me before... sorry to have doubted u

On the bright side, if it manages to hit level 20 without evolving you'll be the proud owner of one very rare anomoly.

If it does evolve at some point, be sure to give a bug report to ANet that includes that. It'd probably be helpful in finding the problem.

My recently acquired warthog became playful at level 12(pretty late) but hearty at level 15. So do you think it will become elder at level 20.

My friend seems to think a hearty pet is superior to all others due to the +60 health.

No, pets do not evolve from hearty to elder.