A guide to pets, by Jenosavel and Epinephrine

Been meaning to post for a few days now and i can confirm pinephrine is not "shitting you"
you can grab bears with the help of another in pre-searing, it all takes time but it can be done.

With the help of a friend "ty hippy" and a spare half hour we capped one a peice
just to show off really, but it was fun running around pre-searing with a team of 4!

"EDIT"
Just wanted to say another ty to gou for helping me get my lizzard to dire after many
many early morning hours and many coffies, carefully leveling it up, cheers mate...

Since I'd like to believe people aren't just coming in here to ask questions before reading the guide (hint hint), and are just missing things in the sheer immensity of it:

Great guide, good to see some results from controlled testing.

Moas are moas They are indeed ratites.

your image shows a triangle...

your image shows a square...

I recently changed to a warthog pet and I have noticed that attack skill visuals do not appear around it, I assume this is a display bug.

There was something else I was going to comment on but the forum ate my first post and I can't remember what it was... oh, well...

good work, congrat's

Testing Request:

Warthog normal damage against plant, vs Warthog damage converted to cold (Greater Conflagration + Winter) against plant.

Theory: Additional damage type "Biting Damage" that is physical but different from slashing damage (plants are supposed to be weak against slashing).

Details: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Talk:An...t_Damage_Types

Or if you can find somethig that has high resistence against slashing damage and test it vs fire, that might work even better (in case winter isn't properly converting fire to cold due to ordering issues).

Thanks (-:

Hmm, mis-linked skill photos I guess... I'll take a look.

As a note, an update a while back broke the graphics for the petskills, they're all messed up, with odd lines and such. I reported it and got a standard reply of "we'll look into it" but if your graphics in game are not matching those posted (with the exception of the link pointing to the wrong file) it is because nobody at ANet takes anything to do with pets seriously. The pet warping was brought up months ago, and still hasn't been addressed, the graphic changes are over a month old and haven't been fixed. The GW Support people seem to vary between quite good at their work (GM Jabberwocky, for example) and able to understand the concepts to semi-literate and unable to comprehend a description of a bug, however clear... this type will respond with "we've determined that the skill is acting as intended" or something, when it is clearly completely backwards.

Hmm, without seeing some data I'm not convinced that there's much reason to do more tests, but I could level a warthog quickly on my second account (I'm loathe to delete my painstakingly levelld critters again). There are two major problems with his testing though:

1.) 100 hits is nothing in terms of detecting a difference on such a small range - we used hundreds (well, thousands once you pool them) of hits at level 20 with 12 BM to ensure that the damage ranges were large.

2.) he's using a "+4" shield and a "non +4" shield with 0 tactics - however, the AL bonus from an item varies when you don't meet the requirement. If he had a plain white shield and a purple +4 to blunt shield the ALs will be different anyway, since the higher quality item has a higher default AL. This can be seen easily with foci, use several different foci without meeting the requirements and you'll see that they can vary from +3 energy to +6 energy without meeting the requirement; the same is true for shields, they vary in their base values, and that variance could well account for the difference, particularly as the +4 vs blunt is clearly a special item, while the other may be a low-quality white item.

Has there been any word on whether or not they're planning to upgrade/revamp the pet system? I really like having a pet, I like using it despite negitive views and unfair stereotypes.... but my beef with pets is that they're all exactly the same. I mean we have four different types of bows. People can choose between a wand/offhand and staff. We have lots of weapon mods. Why can't pets have different attributes? I understand that Anet has a hierarchy of needs/wants/issue to resolve. But I don't see any other attribute of the game as neglected as the pets.

I just got my primary PvE characters pet to dire. Thanks for the guide. One note though. I found the Elona Reach mission very good to raise a dire pet. The damage in the first part of it is all physical, and the Minataur tend to only attack the master. I was only able to take on 2 at a time safely, but at level 20 I was getting 100xp per kill and I took my pet there at level 9. So, I suspect it was getting pretty decent xp from the kills.

I don't quite know if the damage is significant over an Eldar Pet, in real life situations, but at level 15, things are looking that way.

Now I wish there was better AI for pets. Specifically for classes that deal Direct damage (Rangers and Warriors). These types of classes seem to work with two styles of pets. Pets that always attack the target that the Master is Dealing damage to, or those that attack the same one to deal some good pressure on one target while the master spreads Poison, for example. I believe that the current AI is one that attempts to do both, but does not do either very well. I would really like to see my pet beside me 100% of the time while I am hacking on targets or fleeing from AoE. I guess there could be balance Issues if the targeting system for pets was too good.

As far as I'm aware there's been no intention of improving the pet system. The only pet-related anything I've heard from ANet in a long time is that we'll get new pets in Factions and the use of pets as fodder for IWAY will soon change. It rankles me that while pets can be a very great addition to a team, they will never see exposure at the top levels of PvP due to failings of their most basic AI (such as pathing... when a pet can't even figure out to walk around a single person to reach a target...).

And I don't think pets being too good if their AI were improved is remotely a problem. If pets became too powerful after AI improvements, they'd tweak the actual skills/stats of pets. I really believe that either ANet's AI department is such a complete failure that it doesn't know how to fix the pet AI, or that ANet really doesn't give one whit about pets. There's constant noise from Gaile that pets will get more attention, but I don't think others within the company are on the same page as her. I don't think its for a lack of trying: she really does seem to have her heart in with us pet rangers. However, despite any talking that takes place nothing happens.

With that cynicism out of my system now, I'd like to mention that I am still holding out hope that the skill balance changes coming soon may include an improvement to pet AI. For the longest time I've been saying that with IWAY all over the place, the time would be great from teams of actual pet rangers to sneak in, but that it simply won't happen under current AI conditions... -_- Watch the response to IWAY be a nerfing of the skill itself rather than addressing the uselessness of the pet's AI or the towering strength of a warrior dominated offense. (Please, please let me be wrong, oh powers that be!)


Oh, and I believe I have a difference of opinion with Epi in regards to the image changes that took place with the last Factions weekend wherein the pet attack animations (or at least the sparkly stuff) where changed. I don't think it was a bug or an unintended side-effect of something else; I'm of the impression that the changes were made to make it easier to visually idenitfy which skills are being used. The majority of the ones that were changed were very similar to others, and trying to pay attention to which direction a sparkly triangle is pointing or if the corner or side of a square is facing forward in the middle of battle probably won't happen. I actually hope the changes stick, as it's quite hard to mistake the new patterns for one another. If someone uses Ferocious Strike now, I'm not going to be able to miss it.

My personal belief, is that IWAY will be nerfed in the sense that pet's will no longer count as allies when determining the duration/power of IWAY. That would be the easiest fix, and in being the easiest, the most likely.

The only reason I say it's buggy is the fact that it is generally the same number of lines as the original, but with a few angles bent the wrong way - thus a square previously has become a pair of Ls and a triangle has become a squiggle like this /\_, which looks rather like the lines are simply being drawn in the wrong orientation. Since Anet is pretty bad with this type of change and documenting them I doubt we'll get an answer...

Thank you very much for that guide on charming a bear. I found myself a very patient monk, and finally nabbed one after about 30 minutes of trying.

Hopefully this screenshot proves I got it today

Wow....just, wow.

This is an amazing guide. Due to the finding of a perfect zealous bow, I was thinking of starting a Ranger character so I cam looking for Beast Mastery info and found this jem waiting. Excellent job and you have my thanks. I think I'll grab a Dune Lizard as soon as possible

Alright, I've finally gotten some screen shots going to help illustrate the differences in pet sizes. There are some further ones I'd like to take, but it's honestly quite tiring to level and relevel pets simply for screen shots. I've done about all of that I can take at the moment.


Using two of my characters as a measuring tape, I took screens of them with both the normal level 3 Moa Bird and the evolution in question. The hard part was to get a screen where the Moa is at a neutral position in regards to the character. It can not be closer to or further from the camera than the character; nor can it be standing on a higher or lower plane from the character. Considering the amount these buggers move around, that's a lot more time consuming than one would think.

Necro with Lvl 3 Moa Bird
Necro with Lvl 15 Dire Strider
Warrior with Lvl 3 Moa Bird
Warrior with Lvl 15 Hearty Strider

Then, overlaying the two images in photoshop, I resized one of them and moved it about until the two images of my character matched up precisely. This creates a ghosted image of the two variations of Moa Bird on top of one another for very easy size comparison.

Necro with ghosted Dire
Warrior with ghosted Hearty

Lastly, I took the these two ghosted images and once again overlaid them in photoshop. This time I adjusted them so that the level 3 Moas both matched up. Then I drew a red line over the Hearty Moa indicating its size, duplicated it, and dragged it over top of the Dire as well. As you can see, the two are clearly the same size.

Final ghosted image with both Hearty and Dire Striders

This should settle the question as to whether or not the Hearty pet is larger than the Dire pet. The two are the same size.

As to the confirming that the Playful pet is indeed larger than the normal pet, I have a couple more screen shots. The Warthog, which is best for noticing size variations, can be seen here in poison. Careful to use the same spot so as to avoid varying depths, you can see the size change from normal to Playful, and then again from Playful to Hearty.

The normal Warthog is almost completely submerged with only the tip of its tail and the very fringe of its mane showing.

The Playful/Aggressive Warthog shows the tips of its ears and considerably more mane than the normal one.

The Hearty/Dire Warthog shows all of its ears and some of its light-colored back as well.

Edit: confirmed my suspicion that Aggressive and Playful pets would be of equal sizes, and thus updated my post accordingly

Editing info to reflect the pet skill changes... will take a few days to get all the charts updated.

I finally got off my lazy ass to test my lv20 aggressive warthog's hp with poison swamp. The HP turn out to be 450, as an aggressive.

The lv20 aggressive warthog damage range is 18~42. However, I am really not sure of the max damage honestly, the reason due to that if the 42 is critical hit then what the hell is with the 41 and 40 poping out once in awhile (aren't critical always the same?); if 42 is not critical, how can I not see any critical hit out of like couple hundreds hits (don't tell me it is my bad luck again)?

That sounds similar to the results Epinephrine and I had, as you can see when you look at the damage distribution graphs. We've been trying to get together a testing session within our guild to do damage testing vs. a target using Balanced Stance to weed out what is and is not a critical hit. Alas, that hasn't materialized yet and it looks like we may have to end up waiting until intra-guild PvP is implemented (1vs1 would be very nice!).

For whatever reason, the critical hits appear to be all over the place. For example, in the damage distribution chart for the Dire pet, you can see that the bulk of the damage was within the range of 20 through 33. However, there is a spattering of damage beyond that all the way up to 47. What could explain this besides critical hits, I don't know. However, for critical hits to appear in a range doesn't fit with how we know critical hits to work. This, unfortunately, opens up the possibility that critical hits from pets may work differently than critical hits from players. Hopefully further testing will clear things up.

Just a quick input on the AI subject...

Do not confuse pathing with AI.

Pathing is determined by the number of way points programed into the game/map.

You can have a completely amazing pathing routine (part of the AI if you want to think of it like that) and without enough waypoints it will not be able to figure out how to get from point A to point B.

Think of it like you or I trying to go somewhere without any idea of the roads between (kind of like dead reckoning). It would work fine in a non complex environment like a small town or open plains. Now try the same thing in a complex environment like a large city or a hilly and forested area... not so easy.

They could add more waypoints but that slows down the process as there are then too many number to crunch and more stuff for the game to keep in memory.

--

I'm absolutely not defending GW's AI either. It's utter crap as far as pets go.

My laundry list of pet AI issues/wants:

- Pet only attacks what I am currently attacking. If I switch, it switches. Sometimes I want to be able to make the pet stay on what it is on while I attack other mobs.

- Sometimes the pet keeps attacking if I stop, other times it stops when I stop. I'd like it to continue until I tell it to stop or to change targets.

- Pet charges in if I use a normal (bow, wand, staff, etc...) attack. Sometimes I would like to pull mobs to me without it charging in. This is somewhat workable if you use a spell (spells don't make the pet charge in) with the drawback that spells don't have as good a range in most (maybe all) cases.

- I want to be able to tell my pet to wait in a certain spot. And then come to me when/if I call it. Sometimes they just get in the freaking way.

--

That's about all I can think of at the moment.

It's seems to me they either:

1. Didn't look at other successfull games with pets in them. After 5 years of frustration in EQ they finally had a really good set of pet controls in place before I quit playing (like 2 yrs ago).

or...

2. Didn't care to make pets truely useful and just added them for more flavor.

or...

3. It just wasn't worth the coding hours (IE, more important stuff to work on).

- - -

Great work on the size pics!

--

I'll have to try Elona Reach next time I need to train. I spent a long time at the Mergoyles (the first one went playful after I let it take too much damage from the mino's).

Yay pets!

Pets ARE viable in High Level PvP, for example Bring Back The Rifts runs a pet based build in GvG. Not only that my Guild have started tinkering with Pet builds. Even if it is in spired by Rifts tactics. Melee Rangers can cause some major damage when combined with a pet, especially after the recent update.

Not only that but we have a Tombs version of the build which got us to the Halls (couldn't cap though). But we have only run this once so far. But I have noticed Sword and Hammer Rangers with pets showing up in Tombs builds.

Hi @ all

I've a question. First of all sorry for my bad english.

How do I detect how much hp my pet have? Or how I get the attitude of my pet(agressive, healthy, ...etc.)

Thanks -- piccolo

Im fairly sure thats covered in the guide piccolo but to reiterate. type /petname in chat to reset the pets name and this will tell you its evolution. The only way of telling your pets health is by lookming at its bar in the party window and geussing.

Not guessing but once you have what your pets evolution is (hearty, dire, unevolved, etc), you can look at the chart in the second post.

I'll repost it here for convenience.

I thought he meant after it had taken some damage. ^_^

HI,

thanks for your fast reply!
I'll test it when i go home from work.

Greez piccolo

I have had my same pet sence level.2 back in Pre. It's name has been the same, is there any way to tell or find out if it has evoled at all?

type /petname

That should reset your pet's name, showing the current evolution.

Allright, I caught a Snow wolf. Using my Ranger lvl 17 (my 8th character existing presently)
I jacked up her beast mastery, dropped her marks.
Took the wolf to Ice Tooth Cave.
Used an Icy bow, did 5-7 damage per hit, while the wolf did 35-45 with predators pounce and feral lunge. Using Symbiotic Bond and Mending on the Wolf until symbiotic bond was enough to keep him alive alone.
By lvl 10 the wolf was taking them down FAST, I was SURE it would be agressive, It probably died a total of 4 times, early on. After that it hardly lost any health at all.
At lvl 11 it turned into a Playful Wolf!!
I am aiming to create a Dire...grrr

Symbiotic Bond reduces all damage to your pet by half. However, your pet is still taking half damage. Regardless of whether or not it's staying alive, that amount of damage will make it Hearty.

Try Call of Protection instead and switching out Mending for Otyugh's Cry or Symbiotic. Since you've got Predator's Pounce your pet shouldn't need much other healing.

hmm...allrighty I will give that a try, thanks for the response. I am determined and very patient. lol

I started out using the build from the main page.
My pet didnt get any aggro when I ran in first.
I was doing minotars in northern shiverpeaks.
So i switched out the pet defence and had 4 attack skills, CoH then physical resistance troll for my defence.
My pet got to lvl 11 quite fast and was aggressive when i got there.
Now im trying to level it in a similar way but its taking ages.
Q1. Does anyone know if i can level it in quicker ways now?
Q2. Now its aggressive does it mean it automatically goes to dire?
Q3. If i take hench or another player to help me (i.e. healer hench) does pet get less exp?
Q4. Could i use something like mark of pain or spiteful spirit from another person and my pet still get exp and head towards dire since it wasnt me that was doing damage ... basically does my pet gain exp from another player killing.

1) You can, but you risk not being able to control the environment as well (opening up the possibility that you'll have to completely restart).
2) At one point, this appeared to be the case. However, it is not so anymore. There have been a lot of pets hitting level 20 while still being aggressive.
3) Yeah, the pet gets less experience if you take more players/henches.
4) Anything you or a party member uses to deal damage is taking away from your pet's own damage and thus influencing its evolution. Steering clear of it all is the only sure way to get your Dire. While it's possible to still get Dire while supplementing your pet's damage, it's a gamble. And gambing could mean restarting the entire process over again.

I wanted to throw in an observation here. I have worked on a set of dire pets for my Mo, E, W, and R.

The only character that gave me problems is the E. I came to believe that the E is able to overcast the development stages, thereby moving charmed -> aggressive -> elder despite 12 beast mastery, beast mastery spells only, and stopping his own bow attacks at 0 marksmanship once the pet engaged the opponent.

In so many words, less turned out to be more, and limiting the E from happily casting away rendered better results.

So can you give any recomendations about best way to make it dire.
The best place to farm ... Ive noticed Elona reach start with minotaurs and Ice Tooth Cave outside (however these are low lvl).
From your above post it give me the impression that a pet could not evolve from a agressive pet. Ie its agresive at lvl 11 then when it hits lvl20 it stays aggressive.
Is this true?

The pet most certainly can evolved from Aggressive to Dire. The problem is, it used to be a default thing that if you got your pet as far as Aggressive, it would change to Dire when it hit the right level. That's no longer the case. Now, you have to continue to put in the attack-oriented training even after its Aggressive stage to make it go Dire, otherwise it could possibly just stay at Aggressive. Getting tired of the process near the end, as tends to happen, and trying to cut corners has been keeping several people from getting their Dire pets and ending up with level 20 Aggressives instead.

Ice Tooth Cave is indeed slow leveling, however it is still possible for your pet to reach level 15 using those minotaurs alone. If you prefer the 100% safe but slower more tedious route, then do this.

If that's not satisfactory, some people have been able to use the desert Minotaurs (in Elonas Reach) to finish off their pet's leveling. The nearer you are to level 15 when you make the switch from Mountain Minotaurs to desert Minotaurs, the less likely it is that any mistakes made will adversely affect your pet's evolution. It's up to you to choose when to make the switch.

Of course, once your pet hits Dire you can level wherever your heart desires. Beyond that point it wont matter.

So it may hit dire at any level??

WOOOT
Dire at lvl 15.
Decided to go for some minos in elona.
Warthog hit lvl 15 and I /petname and it was dire.

Note pet lvl and dire (/petname shown also)
My pet basically never took damage as I tanked everything.

Congrats!

What is the best tactic or strategy for capping a bear in preseaering if you are a Warrior and a Ranger?Thanks.

There it is Age, you dont have to use a monk its just easier.

Just to add a little flavor to the guide- which btw is excellent!
Last night my pet hit 11 and after renaming him to see how I did, to my shagrin he remained unevolved. Oh well. I figured I'd keep him around a couple of more levels to see if he does change.
I logged off last night shortly after he hit 11. Today I log in and what do I see? A Playful pet. Hmmmm. It seems that the programming did not update immediately. Not sure why, but it might help someone else down the road.

-A

I'm surprised that was missed in the guide. A pet's default name and size do not update automatically upon evolution. They will naturally update upon leaving the instance (entering town or crossing a portal), and the name can be forced to update by typing in /petname.