Pet Stamina vs. ArmorFollow

There have been a few posts on this subject and there are differences of opinion.

One school of thought is go for Armor, that way your pet takes less damage and your Mend pet is more effective. The downfall to that is casters who ignore armor.

The second school of thought is Stam, that way you have a larger health pool and your pet sticks around much longer. Downfall is, you may have a hard time keeping him/ her up with mend pet on hard hitting mobs.

The third and the way I have gone, goes hand in hand with number 2 (don't really put number 2 in your hand). That school is the school of rock. Sorry.
The thought behind this one is to max out stam giving a large health pool and then after you've maxed out your pets damage abilities and such, put the rest into armor, usually rank 6. This seems to work well for me (obviously since I use it) and I believe you will find it works for most situations.

If all else fails, respec (and respect) your pet. It is inexpensive and you'll have the opportunity to see which works best for you.

Heres how I was thinking of placing my points....
Growl 8/8
Claw 9/9
Dash 3/3
Prowl 3/3
Passive...........
Greater Stamina 9/11
Natural Armor 7/11
Avoidance 2/2
Cobra Reflexes 1/1
Shadow Resist 1/5

I hav not tried Cobra Reflexes yet so Im not sure if its worth the points. The same goes with Avoidance.

I was having this problem also. The thing is, just how much more HP is 640 at the endgame? I've never been to 70 but from what I hear it wouldn't be that much at all, since I tend to hear about characters dropping in 2-4 hits. Would the stamina boost for pets be worth having any points in at all by the time you get that far?

Well, I'm not quite sure of the answer myself... Let's find out!



Ok, the base armour and HP of your pet at lvl 70 are unknown. We're going to assume a base of 6800 armour and 4100 HP. Your pet is a cat, so it gets no family bonus to armour. It does, however, get a -2% to HP. We're going to assume that you're BM and good geared, landing your armour at 4000 and your stamina at 350.


So, your pet gets 35% of your 4000 armour. [6800 + 1400] = 8200 armour. Take into consideration the Thick Hide talent: [8200 * 1.2] = 9840.

So, your pet gets 30% of your 350 stam. [4100 + (105 * 10)] = 5150. Add the Endurance Training talent: [5150 * 1.1] = 5665. Then the family multiplyer: [5665 * 0.98] = ~5552.


We've now established that your pet has 5552 HP and 9840 armour. That's ~45% (maybe a little more) damage reduction vs. a level 70 mob.

The max rank of Natural Armour = 1600. Let's add that to the pet:

[1600 * 1.2] = 1920. [1920 + 9840] = 11760. That's ~55% reduction vs. a level 70 mob. So, you get 10% damage reduction for 175 training points.

Ok, moving on to Great Stamina: At max rank = 64 stamina.

[(64 * 10) * 1.1] = 704. [704 * 0.98] = ~690. [5552 + 690] = 6242. That's 690 HP for 215 training points.

In summary:

Natural Armour gives you ~0.06 % damage reduction per training point.

Great Stamina gives you ~3.2 HP per training point.



So, for leveling I'd say Natural Armour is ideal, since most mobs are melee:ers. If you know your pet isn't going to be the main target of what ever your doing (instancing and raiding comes to mind), I guess HP would server good too. Although, if your pet isn't the main target, he's probably mostly exposed to AoE:s, which we have another skill we can train them to aviod.

I'd say overall it's in favour of Natural Armour. Anyone have other comments?

Edit: Because pandas will soon rule the planet.

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 12:09am by Xordon

When leveling to 70, I always kept max armor. I figured since the cat is taking the beating, armour would be better for taking on melee mobs cause they take longer to kill than spell casting mobs. I was running SL the other day when it really hit home way I want to do the build I mentioned above. Very seldom did the cat ever take direct melee damage. It took spell damage and mostly from AoE spells. I didn't have avoidance at the time and when they kicked in on the final boss, the cat died fast. We never never did get that last guy. What a waste. The cat still has 1/2 a level to it his 70 and I respect it but I figure the added health will still help out when grind rep or getting a netherdrake. I'll just have to be me aware of the pet's health.

That's true, I wasn't really thinking about pets as main tanks. And I also was thinking of raiding, but I guess my thinking was more in tune with circumstancial momments rather than the full raid.

I was thinking the pet serving as off tank, for those times when a garbage mob goes for a healer, the pet off tanks it long enough for the MT to regain aggro. In those moments I was thinking if the pet took a crushing blow and died, then the healer was in trouble, but I guess I never really thought to deeply into it, to where if by then the MT doesn't regain aggro, then it has nothing to do with the survivability of your pet, but more the skill of the MT. I kind of quick replied my answer and didn't think it completely through all the way.

Two pets for Bordagar;

Owl (Solo & Group): trained in Natural Armor Rank 11, Cobra Reflex (assumed to give approx 11%? increase to pet DpS), Great Stam 4?5?, and that AoE 50% redux thing Rank 2.

Solo - I like how Mend Pet scales with Natural Armor. Greater Stamina has only resulted in down time between pulls for me while soloing, in contrast Natural Armor I never need a break between pulls to heal my pet. Granted, with G.Stam the downtime is only a few seconds while waiting for Mend Pet to catch up to Max pet health, and only occurs about every 5 pulls.. It's still like 10 seconds out of every minute wasted on downtime that I rather would not have while soloing. Yes, I know this isn't a game breaking conclusion nor all encompassing, but it is my prerogative.

Group - Since my owl's primary function is to Screech in support of the tank, I make it a tanker-tool. You see, it builds enough aggro while keeping the AP debuff going that it serves as a speedbump in between the mob and [:random:] clothie. As stated in other posts, I leave growl on and never have problems with stealing the tank's aggro (unless they wants my pet to tank for a second). Our tanks have adapted to understand how to watch and utilize the pet threat in their own task of tanking multiple targets, and often use the pet-threat as a means to "ease off" aggro on one mob to build stronger aggro on another, allowing the pet to possibly even tank for 2-3 hits before slapping out sunders to regain aggro.. yeah I could go on and on. *sigh* I get so defensive! /pun

Woof (group): trained in Greater Stam Rank 11, Resists according to my current instanced focus, and that AoE resist 50% thing rank 2.

Group - In the event that the tank doesn't want or need the owl 'option' to help their tanking, I select the woof. Although Furious Howl isn't a huge benefit, it's pretty worry free. It's not going to cause unnecessary aggro, so the pet probably won't be getting hit (exception: Intimidation). Better off just helping to buff the tank's DpS every so often and if you have any other melee DpS.. yeah.

My advice? Have a pet for grouping, a pet for soloing that can serve a group function, and should you PvP use your third slot for a PvP pet.

Personally I have 1 lifetime HK which shows you how much I PvP. You have to do something pretty dumb to get me involved in an item based PvP game. lol