Beasty making bad impression

[TheOriginalGronker]

Sitting back and letting pet do all the work is not efficient at all in the latter levels.  well, it's not effecient at any time because your melee/defensive skills will suck ass.  

My pet did 90% of the tanking but I jousted ... my melee skills were fine.  I got hit enough so that defense was not bad ... didn't max that till 55 I think though I know of 65 BSTs that don't have it maxed.  I was never at full health or full mana, and neither was my warder.  You can't possibly get more efficient than that.

I cannot remember a time at all, that the pet tanked better than me.  I have better heals for the pet, true.  But mitigating damage, etc..  not even comparable.  

Then you were twinked seriously from at least 15-50.  At 22 I moved from kurns to SoNH and it wasn't me that tanked the red froggy berzerker and red ton warrior simultaneously.  I'd be dead tanking either for more than 30 seconds.  At 39 I'm sorry my recollection is that a drovalg rager would take 6 swipes at me and I'd go from 90% to half health and start hoping Snuggles had aggro.  At 49 I stood up to Gullerback and Trakasaurus Rex for 10% of each fight because getting less than 20% health is NOT a good idea.  At 62, my pet tanked so rediculously better than me I was in melee for less than 1/3 of every PoP solo fight I tried (PoN/PoI trash).  Even now at 65.270+ my focussed warder isn't tanking too much worse than me, given the same hp buffs.  You can't remember a time your pet tanked better than you?  I can't remember too many times he did tank better (lesse, levels 9-14, 26-29, 37/38, maybe 47/48, 54/55 I got close again ... then not till 'the end') and in any event healing the pet was much, much more efficient than healing myself timewise with bandages/sit regen (or healing spells) except early on when inner fire ruled ...

When I was lower level, I would pull at 75% health and tank to 25%, let pet finish them while I bandaged.  This to me was more efficient than the shitty heal we get early on and saved much mana for everything else.

Are you kidding?  You are going to sit there and REGEN 25% of your health between pulls (bandage to 50% and pull at 75%)?  You call that efficient?  /boggle  Levels 30-50 that really must've sucked even as an iksar (gonna wait 5-10 minutes for a couple hundred hps?).  Mr Pet cleric was constantly pulling with no mana regen however, though it took an extra 25% time to kill the mob - which was maybe 30 seconds extra.  

But to just pet cleric is severly handicapping yourself and not doing much to learn all the different tactics that are at your disposal as a BST.  And learning the different tactics will only help you and the people that group with you later down the road.

You are kidding again right?  What kind of tactic to you get by standing up and hitting 'a', or 'q'?  Or are you talking about the sit-and-regen tactic after the fight?  Some things I got out of pet clericing included: learning to watch the surroundings for adds, learning to balance pulls with hp/mana regen, handling multiple mobs at once solo (and this maps to groups), more observations on how mob aggro works, pet control, the list goes on.  Yeah I could learn these by meleeing too ... but hey look I learned them.  And let me tell you, for every one person that knows most of the above, there are 10 level 65 BSTs that dont.  They could have done/learned alot more solo pet clericing then /pet attack and autoattack "tactics" in groups.

I will agree with anyone that says, in the original post that the BST had no business pet clericing - completely non-efficient.  He had a cleric there with him.  But if someone goes and makes blanket statements about pet clericing being useless, and you suck as a BST if you do it, I have to go and say they are WRONG and/or are missing an important aspect of playing a BST, especially in the lower levels.  There are plenty of places where pet clericing makes sense ... from solo to pet groups to pet off-tanking and beyond (how often do I see BSTs pet off-tanking and letting their pets die because they don't seem to be able to watch the pets health?  LOTS).  Heck before they opened up BoT I was trying to solo a blasted militis multiple times and I COULD NOT stand up to it for more than 30 seconds before a double hit would send me off to PoTranq.  But with pet clericing, I just had enough mana to balance health on myself and my pet for a win.  I guess I must suck though because I didn't stand there and get pummelled to death :roll:

[Hrann]

The fact is, there are beasts out that that used to and continue to equip their bst as a "pet cleric".  All wis and mana and no melee stats/hps.  This will serve you poorly in the long term due to the need to swap out equipment, and poorly in the short term because you won't be able to stand up and fight as much.

Maybe this will clarify:  Playing as a "pet cleric" is bad.  Pet clericing when you are low on health is good.

[TerjynPovar]

At 62, my pet tanked so rediculously better than me I was in melee for less than 1/3 of every PoP solo fight I tried (PoN/PoI trash).  Even now at 65.270+ my focussed warder isn't tanking too much worse than me, given the same hp buffs.

I was with you up until here.  I've soloed Plane of Nightmares/Plane of Innovation a whole lot since hitting level 60, and I tank so much better than my pet that I honestly can't imagine what you are seeing.  If I tank and Chloroblast myself I use so little mana that I can pull nonstop, and Paragon/Spiritual Dominion/Flowing Thought 5(what I have) will keep up with my mana usage.  If I try and let my pet tank even one of these mobs I'll use ~40% of my mana per kill.  And with an unbuffed AC of just over 900 I can hardly imagine that your AC is that much worse than mine.

And I hardly can be called "twinked" if that even applies once you are 60+.

[Phurbi]

Now if you have shitty hp gear and pet has twice your hp's, that's another thing entirely.

Pet has ~6600hp (4800+395+1405), I sit at ~5200hp with my regular exp buffs.  Shitty?  Dunno, works fine for me.

I very rarely go to PoP (we hates it), that could be a big difference due to mob levels vs. pet level.

[zzmaller]

I dont know why this pissies me off but it does

a good beastlord balances his self and his gear and knows when to tank and when to cleric, and to take a potion that is eitehr all melee or all cleric shows your ignorance and weakness.  so all you melee bst learn to cleric all you cleric learn to melee and the world we be a happer place.  when your done if you still think one is better then the other then come back and tell us why other  wise keep you one sided veiws to your self.

ps sorry for rant

[Noxdowne Draggout]

I cannot remember a time at all, that the pet tanked better than me. I have better heals for the pet, true. But mitigating damage, etc.. not even comparable.

Hmmmm.

At level 62 I would go to PoI and my pet would tank mezz when we had adds.

Slowed mobs would kick by butt when I tried to do it, but snappy would hang in there and do a better job than I did.

My gear isn't a ton different than your own and yet I never saw me as a better tank than my warder was at that level.

Even today I can off tank with snappy on BoT giants and keep him alive with 2-3 2k heals and yet I couldn't do that job with only one 6k heal for me.

I dunno..............maybe I was just the victim of RNG.

Nox

[Scalewulf]

I get the feeling that peeps think I'm saying you should melee 100% of the time.  

Look, I solo'd to 65, I think I know how to solo efficiently.  Sitting at 205 aa's, which 100+ came by way of soloing.  Do I have all the answers, certainly not.  But what I do is very efficient.  

I debuff and melee with pet for the most part.  Regen is (self buffed) 46-52.  All defensive aa's maxxed, all offensive aa's maxxed.  With that being said, now I tank about twice as good as pet, she may have a shitload of hps, but they drop quickly.  

I should add that I keep fero up at all times and pet gets nuked and dotted to hell because I won't keep fero on pet.  

My tactic of using bandages / heals 50/50 way back when was very efficient.  

Most bst's I see that pet-cleric (My definition of pet clericing) will turn and run with add's because they can't keep their pet healed while it's taking adds.  

And that just suxxors, those are also the first people in LDoN to yell, "Zone" when we have 4 - 5 mobs in camp.  Luckily I have at least 3 friends in these groups that understand this as the time to lay the smacketh down, not turn tail and run.  

Pet clericing in the latter game just isn't effcient imo, you don't have to agree, you have your opinion, I have mine and we can agree to disagree.  

I know I like to have a$$kicker$ in my groups that go ballz to the wall, not tentative people that wanna run to zone when they get beat on a little.

What people get used to doing as they level up tends to become part of their personality and what they fall back on in later levels...

Please don't think I'm speaking from uber-land, as you can tell from my magelo, I'm not even Elemental.  But I do play my beast very well and efficiently, as the people I group with would tell you.  

Just a difference in opinions/beliefs we have here I suppose,

:wink:

[Noxdowne Draggout]

I should add that I keep fero up at all times and pet gets nuked and dotted to hell because I won't keep fero on pet.

Pet has whatever resists you have, so if you fero yourself the pet will still have the added bonus of the resists anyways.

Nox

[Scalewulf]

Sorry Nox, not true.  

that is only on your innate resists and gear, not spell resists.

[TheOriginalGronker]

I cannot remember a time at all, that the pet tanked better than me. I have better heals for the pet, true. But mitigating damage, etc.. not even comparable.

Hmmmm.

At level 62 I would go to PoI and my pet would tank mezz when we had adds.

Slowed mobs would kick by butt when I tried to do it, but snappy would hang in there and do a better job than I did.

Thats exactly my experience as well.  From my AA grinding in PoN at 62, my parses showed mobs doing roughly 30% less damage to my pet than if I was tanking.  Mitigating damage, etc .. not even comparable is certainly true but the other way around.

Even today I can off tank with snappy on BoT giants and keep him alive with 2-3 2k heals and yet I couldn't do that job with only one 6k heal for me.

Heck at 64 I could hardly stand up to some of those giants for a few seconds without waiting for a rez afterwards while sometimes the pet could get by without any heals offtanking before the rest of the group finished the first mob.

Course it isn't so bad that people think the pets can't tank .. always nice to impress  :wink:

[Hrann]

Scalewulf, are you sure that's the case?  Everything I've ever read or heard said that pets get the same resists as you, buffed and all.  Anecdotally, it seems to fit for me as well.

[Scalewulf]

I don't believe it to be the case Hrann.  

The original post I saw on this was on the old site and it was referrenced that when pet was summoned, that it would have your resists at the time of summoning.  This would lead you to believe that spell resists would not be taking into account.  

In Droga, I resist hella more spells than pet does.  Level could play a significant part, but these mobs are around level 55 (that I'm referring too).  So I have doubts that its the level difference between myself and pet.  

I just wanted to add, that yes there are times when pet clericing is the smartest thing to do.  Given the choice of dying and your group/raid losing both your DPS and the pets, I'll step back and keep pet alive just to keep some form of DPS on the given mob.  

laterz...

[Thoar Nametaker]

Pet clericing is doing NO melee, just sitting on your ass and healing your pet, maybe nuking dotting, etc.

The only time I have ever pet cleric'd is while medding up on mobs easy enough that the warder could solo them, or when I had 2-3 mobs at a time before I could channel pet heals.

On really hard hitting mobs, AFTER I take 60% damage, I may decide that I can hold out longer by medding and dropping heals on the pet, but This very rarely happens, and really only slows the fight down so I have more mana/hp/options.  

The closest I ever to pet clericing consistantly got was jousting in my 30's.

I really don't think even the level 30 pet tanks better then beastlord, it only gets worse after that, until you hit level 62.

Until I got chloroblast I never healed myself, just tanked until I was down to 25%, then bandaged up to 50% and jumped right back in.  

Pet clericing in groups is very foolish, the only time I have to med is if I'm not KEI'd and I'm the only slower, haster, buffer around.

[Grymlok]

I don't believe it to be the case Hrann.  

The original post I saw on this was on the old site and it was referrenced that when pet was summoned, that it would have your resists at the time of summoning.  This would lead you to believe that spell resists would not be taking into account.  

In Droga, I resist hella more spells than pet does.  Level could play a significant part, but these mobs are around level 55 (that I'm referring too).  So I have doubts that its the level difference between myself and pet.  
quote]

Your pet has the same resists you do.  I'm coming at this from the eplanes perspective with AEs with -200(or greater) resist modifiers on them that you need 400+ resist to think about resisting them.  I always summon pet at beginning of the raid before any other buffs are done (besides SD on group).

The pet does get hit slightly more often than me with AEs, but that is easily attributable to the 5 level difference there.

[Grymlok]

My kingdom for an edit button  :evil: