Quick question on a duo.

[Inertia]

I'd like to ask for the advice of the Beast community.

 I currently two box my 63 mage with my 63 shaman. They do well but often times I feel like I would  rather have a slower with some dps. The mage is awesome dps and has 62 mostly offensive AAs. Basically what I'm wondering is if any of you know if high level beast pets could out taunt the mage epic pet. So I could just turn off taunt on epic and use the beast pet to tank, as BLs can heal thier pets much more efficiently than a mage can. Primarily using the beast to med and heal during the fights while nuking and shell out the damage with the mage, for as little down time as possible. Primarily just for farming and duo-able spots in PoP.
Thanks for your time and advice.

                                      Inertia
                            63 mage/Terris Thule

[Xarilok]

One: Beastlord pets seem to always tank over other pets.

Two: Beastlord pet heals suck.  They take too long to cast to make it worth it, and the beastlord will out-tank both pets by a large margin.

Three: Mage pets take FAR less damage than beastlords, making them they better choice to tank, even with lesser heals, it is still more efficient.

[Taiglin]

Bst/Mage combos do work well and think there are several on this board. Have you looked into the mulit-box forum here? Think it might be more effiecient to "drive" the Bst using the Mage as the bot but then I am biased.

[Dakat]

Beastlord pet heals do not suck. I never had my pet die because the heal never landed. I make sure I cast heal before pet is 20%. Especially in POP where mobs hit alot harder.  Now if the mob does not hit that hard, I will wait until the pet goes enraged. Casting the biggest pet heal when you get the pets message. I always land my heal a good amount of time before pet is no longer enraged.

As for mage, we can heal our pets alot better then they can.

beast pets get agro more then the other 2 due to proc.

If you dont have a beast already level 63, I wouldnt bother. You already have 2 good classes. Shaman have alot of damage they can put out. If fight duration is long enough and their dots get full duration.  Your shaman, if geared right can stand toe-to-toe alot better then a beastlord, due to the simple fact that their slow is better and they are chain class.

[Xarilok]

I think it was Tastian that posted somewhere here the mana-cost for allowing his pet to tank and healing it vs tanking himself, and using chloroblast.

BL pets tanking and pet heals are bad to the point that it was somewhere on the order of 3-4x the mana to keep the pet healed compared to the beast, due to the pet taking tons more damage.

Also, BL pets usually tank over mage pets NOT because of proc, but proximity.  Sorsha will tank over the lower level, MUCH more taunting mage epic pet.  That pet is a monster for agro, yet our pet tanks vs it.  Same goes for shaman pets.  When I duoed my shaman with a 65 mage in PoD, my pet would get agro in a VERY short time, and take a severe beating, even with taunt off, and no proc (since shaman get none).

As far a mage pet healing vs beastlord pet healing...

Their pet heal heals for 1300 for 300 mana, ours is 2100 for 425 mana.

Mage pets take over 40% LESS damage than beastlord pets.

For the mage heal to be equal, it would have to heal 1260HP for 425 mana...2100x.6=1260 (mage would only have to heal 60% of the damage on thier pet compared to a beastlord, thus the .6 multiplier).

Stated another way, for a beastlord heal to be EQUAL to a mage's it would have to heal 2100HP for 225 mana, or ~4000 hp for 425.

So, again, beastlords do NOT heal their pets more efficiently.

Or, stated another way...

Your claim that beastlords can heal thier pet more efficiently is like saying that a cleric can heal a ranger tanking a krup knight in seb more efficiently than a druid can heal a warrior tanking the same mob....sure, the cleric CAN heal 7500hp for the same mana that the druid can heal 2925 for, but they are also healing a much worse tank.

Lastly, on mobs 61 and below (where rellic can land) Spirit of Rellic stuns mobs enough to make up for the 10% difference in slow.  Added to that, the parses on steelwarrior showed the shaman taking quite a bit more damage than a beastlord, almost 20% more actually, with around 400 more AC too...10% more slow doesnt make up for 20% worse tanking.  A shamans healing abilities DO make up for that tho, which is why shaman can self-tank-heal harder hitter than a beast can.


Also, shaman's slow isnt really ANY better at all, if rellic stun lands:

75% slow mean you take the number of swings in 1 minute that you would in 15 seconds unslowed.

65% slow means you would take the number of swings in 1 minute that you would in 21 unslowed.

Rellic procs 6.5 times a minute, stunning for 2.75 seconds each time.  So, in that minute, you have only 42 seconds or 'swing-time' for the mob to hit you.  42 seconds x65% slowed means you take the number of swings in 1 minute that you would take in 14.75 seconds.

60/15=75% (Shaman slow)
60/14.75=75.4% (Beastlord slowed + rellic stunned)

[Giledorm]

Also, I duo with a 65 DPoC mage and her earth pet (rathe's son) will EASILY outtank my pet, and outagro him almost every time.  Only way to keep agro on my pet is to throw just about everything I've got at the mob, which causes it to run at me most of the time...  :oops:

[Dakat]

1300 heal for 300 mana

2100 heal for 425 mana

2100 heal x 5 times casted = 10500 hp healed

425 mana x 5 times casted = 2125 mana used

2125 mana used by a mage will allow casting 1300 heal 7 times.

1300 heal x 7 times casted = 9100 hp healed.

So you can see we still heal better then a mage.

They would have to heal their pet 8 times, use 2400 mana and still be 100 hp shy of what we casted 5 times.

[Tastian]

You are forgetting specialization.  Every mage has spec if they choose to train which is a 10% mana savings on all casts.  If a mage also has SCM3 AA then that's another 10% savings.  

Also...

Me tanking:
I cast 38 heals * 175 mana base for 6,650 mana spent

Pet tanking:
I cast 50 heals * 425 mana base for 21,250 mana spent.

Also note that me tanking instead of pet resulted in fights taking less than half as long simply because of the dps boost.  The pet just takes too much damage to make sorsha efficent for many beastlords.  If you actually compare the damage taken by a beastlord and by their pet you'll see that the efficency of sorsha is completely offset and you are better off to be getting hit yourself and CB'n yourself than letting pet get hit and sorsha'n them.

Also the example xar gives shows another point because the bigger the heal and the longer the casting time the more likely you are to over heal or have a "boo-boo".  In the testing I did I'd always start sorsha ~50% and would get almost all full normal sorshas, but 3 times I had to step in because my pet would have died before sorsha landed.  I also had several crit heals that didn't get close to their max value.  These are just some of the things you see once you actually stop looking at things on paper and go see how they work in game.  The heal is too slow in most spots you would efficently use it and beastlord pets take so much damage atm that you can't efficently use it in as many spots as most originally think.

[Zashir Swiftpaw]

In any case, if you want to duo a mage and a beastlord, you'll want to ditch the epic pet for the mage and go with water for backstabs.  If the epic pets proc is able to land, it will easily outagro the beastlord pet.

At the levels you're talking about, the beastlord pet will out-agro the mage water pet constantly.  Also don't forget that the BL pet will have pet toys and armor to help with his tanking.  Summoned mage armor helps a lot.

A beastlord and mage chew things up rather nicely.  Very good duo combo.

[Tastian]

"If the epic pets proc is able to land, it will easily outagro the beastlord pet. "

I've yet to see tests showing resisted or non-resisted spells generate anymore or less aggro.  

Also if the epic pets proc is landing nice then it's likely it'll out dps the water pet hehe.  

Mag/bst is definitely a fun duo though.  8)

[Zashir Swiftpaw]

"If the epic pets proc is able to land, it will easily outagro the beastlord pet. "

I've yet to see tests showing resisted or non-resisted spells generate anymore or less aggro.  

Also if the epic pets proc is landing nice then it's likely it'll out dps the water pet hehe.  

Mag/bst is definitely a fun duo though.  8)

Mages have tested the agro generated by the epic proc in the past.  If it lands, the epics damage and agro is increased significantly.  If it doesn't, then the pet is no longer as effective at holding agro.

A 62 water pet will outdamage the epic pet if it's positioned behind the mobs and the epic proc doesn't land.

One of the reasons that I made a beastlord was because I had so much fun with a bst/mage duo.  We duoed from around 43 to 65, and I've never had a better partner.  I suppose, on paper, that a shaman is a better partner for a mage, and that a druid is a better partner for a beastlord, but I had a blast ripping through mobs like they were paper with my bst friend.

[Tastian]

"A 62 water pet will outdamage the epic pet if it's positioned behind the mobs and the epic proc doesn't land. "

Hence why I said if it was landing lol.

Also I've now tested:

- nukes
- dots
- slows
- stuns
- blinds
- resist debuffs

And cannot get numbers that show a resist generating any different aggro than a landing spell (more or less).  The only exception would be heals that do actually generate differing amounts of aggro based upon how much the heal lands for and not how much the heal spell can do.  Maybe I missed some good parses that showed otherwise, but please PM me some links if you could because I'd really like to see them.

The biggest problem with testing the epic pets proc is that in order to have it totally resisted in one spot and not in another you have to change mobs.  Possibly change level of mob as well.  The second you do that then the proc isn't the only thing different.

[Dakat]

Mage heal is 1200hp for 300 mana with 7 sec cast time not 1300 as previously mentioned.

ours is 2100hp for 425 mana and 9 sec casting time. With spell haste its cut down to 6.5.

Also wanted to mention that as both of our classes can wear an Improve Healing 4 item, Mages do not get Healing Gift or Healing Adept aa.

[Xarilok]

None of that changes the fact that mages:

1) Get specialization
2) Can also get spell haste, making thier heal faster still
3) Get FAR better tanking pets

Rathe's Son takes 40% less DPS than Sorsha.  So, by the time Sorsha would have taken 2100 damage, Rathe's son has only taken 1260.....

So, lets say you are fighting a hypothetical mob that does exactly 2100 damage to Sorsha in the time frame it takes to kill it.  If you have rathe's son tank it, it would have taken 1260 damage.

Now, you heal the pet in between pulls....

1 cast of Healing of Sorsha = 425 mana, pet is at 100% health
1 cast of Planar Renewal=300 mana-spec savings, pet is at 99% health...

...

......

It does NOT matter that BL get a larger pet heal, because in the same amount of time, thier pet takes much more damage.  No matter how you want to try and look at it, its far better to heal 1200 for 300 than to heal 2100 for 425.  A beastlord is NOT healing 2100 for 425 on a mage pet, he is healing his own pet, which takes so much more damage that his "superior" heal is really only costing hime 125+ more mana per period of time.

Also, you mention "higher" level beast pets.  Well, I have the level 62 pet, and let me share a few experiances:

Location: Greig's End, random mobs.  I get healed every other mob, to every 4th or more, never ever ever needing a heal to finish off a mob, and only needing a heal every other one if I get two back to back that each resist slow 3+ times (it happens a lot, actually)...my warder needs 2 heals just to make it thru a fight on the lowest stuff in the zone.

Location: Fungus Grove, shrooms.  I never get below 95% health, constant fighting.  I send my pet to fight while I med up a bit, she drops 20-30% health on each shroom.

I can post tons more examples, but trust me, you are going to get the least downtime with the shaman/mage duo, with the second least being bst/mage, with the bst tanking, not his pet, the 3rd least having the mage pet tank, and the most downtime will be having the bst play pet cleric for your mage.

[Xarilok]

1200 heal for 300 mana

2100 heal for 425 mana

2100 heal x 5 times casted = 10500 hp healed

425 mana x 5 times casted = 2125 mana used

2125 mana used by a mage will allow casting 1300 heal 7 times.

1200 heal x 7 times casted = 9100 hp healed.

So you can see we still heal better then a mage.

They would have to heal their pet 8 times, use 2400 mana and still be 100 hp shy of what we casted 5 times.

Let me fix this for you.

Mage heal: 1200 for 261 mana, SCM3 + Spec. other than Alteration
Soo...the mage can cast 8.14 heals for 2125 mana.

1200 x 8.14 = 9770

Now, lets not forget that Rathe's Son takes only 60% of the damage that Sorsha does, so it needs 60% of the heals.  So, if a beastlord needed to heal 10500, the mage would only have to heal 6300.

6300/1200=5.25 heals from the mage, for his pet to tank for the same amount of time as the beastlord.

5.25x261 mana per heal = 1371 mana

So, the mage can keep his pet up for 1371 mana for just as long as the beast can, but the beast used 2125 mana...

Yea, your right!!  Beastlords heal their pet so much more efficiently....NOT.

Unless, somehow you think using 754 more mana in the same time period is more efficient...