The ultimate pet guide

[Juggernaught]

Finally had my account approved. woo-hoo. So I figured my first post ought to be something special. So I will share with you my work on pet tanking and burst damage for the hunters among us...

Apologies for the formatting. I'll keep trying untilI get it right...

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Juggernaughts comprehensive guide to pet survivability:
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The base stats:
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Firstly, we need to know the base stats for the types of pets. The following table shows the stats for a lvl 41 pet (Damage reduction = Armour / (Armour+85*pet level+400)) - (Note: As the pet levels up the percentage inrease will be uniform so the comparative % results shown later will remain unchanged - This table is purely for refence)

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				Damage	
	DPS	Health	Armour	Reduction
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Bear	26.3	1712	2223	36.4%
Boar	26.0	1648	2330	37.5%
Turtle	26.0	1585	2395	38.1%
Gorilla	29.5	1648	2115	35.3%
Scorpid	27.1	1585	2330	37.5%
Wolf	28.9	1585	2223	36.4%
Crab	27.4	1522	2395	38.1%
Owl	30.9	1585	2115	35.3%
Croc	28.9	1505	2330	37.5%
Cat	30.9	1554	2115	35.3%
Raptor	31.8	1505	2180	35.9%
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(with me so far? Good) )

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Life expectancy:
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So what do these armour and health values mean? Well, your pet will surive until it's health = 0 (incase you didn't know)
So if we divide the pet's Total Health by the Damage Per Second it's taking we get a value that shows the Life Expectancy of the pet (in seconds). For this comparison, let's make an assumption that your pet is being hit for an average unmodified 60 dps (the actual dps value doesn't matter as we are really only interested in the percentage ammount this value increases after applying talent points). The following table shows how long your pet will survive being attacked at 60 dps (purely physical dps for now, after taking into account damage reduction due to armour)

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	Life Expectancy (at lvl41/60dps)
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Bear	44.9
Boar	43.9
Turtle	42.7
Gorilla	42.4
Scorpid	42.3
Wolf	41.5
Crab	41.0
Owl	40.8
Croc	40.1
Cat	40.0
Raptor	39.2
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This Life Expectancy value is going to be used as the base to answer the following questsions;
What difference does 30% armour make?
What difference does 15% health make?

Well. The easy answer on to answer is that 15% increase to health will be a direct increase life expectancy by 15% (regardless of anything else). Life Expectancy however will vary slightly with Thick Hide depending on the original armour of the pet: the higher the base armour value, the more effect a percentage increase will have.

The table here shows the increase to the pet's life expectancy gained by a 30% increase to the pet's armour.

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Bear	10.92%
Boar	11.25%
Turtle	11.44%
Gorilla	10.58%
Scorpid	11.25%
Wolf	10.92%
Crab	11.44%
Owl	10.58%
Croc	11.25%
Cat	10.58%
Raptor	10.78%
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Q - So which is better; Endurance Training or Thick Hide?
A - Per talent point, Thick Hide gives the best increase to Life Expectancy - 3 points in Thich Hide gives a 10.5% - 11.5% increase to Life Expectancy (depending on the pet's base armour), compared to a 9% increase to life expectancy if 3 points were spent on Endurance Training.
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But if you're going full BM spec, then the chances are you'll be putting a full 8 points into both Endurance Training and Thick Hide. The following table shows the pet's Life Expectancy as a percentage of the the higest life expectancy a pet can have (the Bear). (i.e the Life Expectancy of a Cat is 88.9% of the higest Life Expecancy possible - The Bear)

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The tanking pet list;
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Bear	100.0%
Boar	98.2%
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Turtle	95.6%
Scorpid	94.5%
Gorilla	94.3%
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Wolf	92.6%
Crab	91.8%
Owl	90.7%
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Croc	89.7%
Cat	88.9%
Raptor	87.2%
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Pet Damage
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This is where things start to get complicated; We've established which pet lives the longest. Now we'll attempt to determine which does the most damage over a fixed period of time, factoring in claw and bite. For arguments sake we'll take a period of 30 seconds.

First we need the base dps of each pet:

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	DPS	Total damage over 30 seconds
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Raptor	31.8		954	
Owl	30.9		927	
Cat	30.9		927	
Gorilla	29.5		885	
Wolf	28.9		867	
Croc	28.9		867	
Crab	27.4		822	
Scorpid	27.1		813	
Bear	26.3		789	
Boar	26.0		780	
Turtle	26.0		780	
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Now let's factor in Bite and Claw (lvl6 for a lvl 41 pet) where applicable;
Claw = 26-36. Average damage =31
Bite = 49-59. Average damage = 54

Bite procs every 10 seconds. That's 3 bites over 30 seconds adding 93 damage to pets with the bite ability
Claw procs once every second. But we need to account for focus regeneration. With 2 points in Bestial Discipline, pets generate 29 focus every 5 seconds. This gives us a total of 9 claws in a 30 second period, adding 279 damage.

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Pet damage over 30 seconds with Claw/Bite
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As we did with Life Expectancy we will express the Burst Damge as a percentage of the highest Bust Damage a pet can have (the Raptor).

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		Burst Damage
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Raptor		1233	100.0%
Owl (Claw)		1206	97.8%
Cat		1206	97.8%
Crab		1101	89.3%
Scorpid		1092	88.6%
Bear		1068	86.6%
Owl (Screech)	1067	86.5%
Wolf		960	77.9%
Croc		960	77.9%
Gorilla		906	73.5%
Boar		873	70.8%
Turtle		873	70.8%
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In Sumamry
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Choosing the right pet is a tough choice, but hopefully the two tables below should help illustrate the gains and losses between the differing types of pet a bit more clearly.

Table one shows pets grouped by Life Expectancy (into groups of roughly equal values), and table two does the same for Burst Damage.
As an after thought I factored in the Owls Screech ability (50AP reduction at lvl 41), which bumps it up a few places in the Life Expectancy table...

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The ultimate Tanking pets table

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Pet		Life Expectancy	Burst Damage
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Bear		100.0%		86.6%
Boar		98.2%		70.8%
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Owl (Using Screech)	96.4%		86.5%
Turtle		95.6%		70.8%
Scorpid		94.5%		88.6%
Gorilla		94.3%		79.3%
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Wolf		92.6%		77.9%
Crab		91.8%		89.3%
Owl (Using Claw)	90.7%		97.8%
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Croc		89.7%		77.9%
Cat		88.9%		97.8%
Raptor		87.2%		100.0%
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The Ultimate burst damage pets table

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Pet		Burst Damage	Life Expectancy
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Raptor		100.0%		87.2%
Owl (Claw)		97.8%		90.7%
Cat		97.8%		88.9%
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Crab		89.3%		91.8%
Scorpid		88.6%		94.5%
Bear		86.6%		100.0%
Owl (Screech)	86.5%		96.4%
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Gorilla		79.3%		94.3%
Wolf		77.9%		92.6%
Croc		77.9%		89.7%
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Boar		70.8%		98.2%
Turtle		70.8%		95.6%
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So use it how you see fit...
Enjoy.

I must mention http:\\thehandofchaos.guildwizard.com\forums\message.aspx?mid=327396 where I got the base pet stats that I used in my calculations.

Any errors let me know and I'll modify the post.

[DamageCase]

Woaaaa,


Very nice guide!

;D ;D

[dhrun]

Yup yup, nice list jugger.

anychance you can add the scorpids scorpid sting to the damage listings? I've actually untrained Virgil (1.6 attack speed Death Flayer rare scorpid) so he can't use claw anymore. leaving more focus for the scorpid sting to use, usually it stacks upto an enemy for about 3-4 times/fight now. I'm interested on how this influences his DPS.

[Juggernaught]

There are a few things about the scorpid poision ability that I can't quite figure. It states that it can stack up to 5 times. However, the effect lasts 8 seconds and has a 4 second cooldown. That means you can ony ever have 2 poision hits at any one time??? How could it possibly ever stack up to 5 times? (unless the info on the times I got is wrong - please correct me if it is).

So. At lvl 41 the poision ability will do 28 damage over 8 seconds. If you are using all your pets focus for the poision ability it actually drops the scorpids burst damage over 30 seconds down to 80.7% of the max burst damage (compared to 88.5% with claw).

However, the damage from the poision abiliy is not reduced by the targets armour, so providing my initial figures were correct if you're fighting a heavily armoured target, poision might be slightly better than claw, but there's realy not much in it.

[dhrun]

Hmm, funny thing, seems we're both right, i checked the discription and you're right, but uhm.. i just took this picrue: www.xs4all.nl/~jfrost/scorpidsting.jpg and that's a 4 there for sure

[Juggernaught]

Weird.

In that case, I have no idea (and no scorpid or free stable slots to investigate further)...

[Nihilus]

Nice guide Jugg, top work.

Just one item to add: The best hunter pet in the game is generally agreed to be Broken Tooth, a lvl 38 cat in the badlands. I have even been advised by a GM that this is indeed the ultimate hunter pet.

Attack speed is 1.0 for starters! But good luck in trying to tame this little blighter, he only spawns once a day and there are ALWAYS at least 3 or 4 other hunters in the area trying to locate and tame him.

I'm gonna keep at it with Duros, but man, I have probably spent about 3 days in total trying to get him now. And no, I dont know when he actually respawns

[dhrun]

Best way for getting a beast like this is probably to log out near the area he spawns, then during some odd hours in the night, login.

Okay, so you'll be wrecked the next day cuz the lack of rem sleep but hey, do you want one or not?

[Juggernaught]

I don't totally agree about Broken Tooth; although he has his benefits, they are so marginal over a lot of other pets to be insgnifigant.

He does the same dps as any other cat or owl regardles of Attack Speed.
And from patch 1.7, there are only 2 benefits to a faster attack speed pet; You interrupt casters more often, and the pet is more likely to stay frenzied if you have that talent. (once you get below 1.4 seconds they stay frenzied pretty much constantly anyway, so going down to 1.0 has no real advantage there).

So there's really not much to be gained by getting a 1.0 attack speed cat over a 1.3. Besides, we all know that owls are the way of the future... ;o)