Pet Class Guide

Say Hello To My Little Friend

At first this was going post was going to be a sort catch all pet class write up. But, as I was writing it, I realized that there’s so much that that can be said about pet classes I couldn’t possibly do it all in one shot. So here it is, the first in a series of posts about our little friends who fight with us, and for us. I give you the pet classes.
Way back in the ol days of EQ, there were 2 classes that I loved playing. The ranger and the beast lord. The ranger was the master of bow kiting, but was hard to get a group with. The beast lord was a, pardon the expression, whole different kinda animal. The pet could sort of hold aggro, as long as you weren’t in melee range.
Now flash forward to WoW. WoW had the hunter, a combination of EQ’s ranger and beast lord classes. What could I say, I had found the perfect class. Now hunters weren’t the only pet class, there was also the warlock which was similar to the necromancer from EQ. I had dabbled in both of those caster classes, but neither was as appealing as the ranger, beast lord or hunter class. I’ve lost track of all the pets I ran with in WoW. I remember when you had to train different pets to learn different levels of skills for your pet. When it mattered if it was a caster pet class or not. Back then you had to keep your pet happy or it would run away. People complain now that they have to level their pet 5 levels now, back then if you got a low level pet at higher levels it stayed at that level until you raised it’s level to your level.
Then Rift came out…. and boy did they have pet classes. Each of the 4 callings have at least 1 pet based soul. From druids, in the cleric calling, with their faries and satyrs to beast lords, in the warrior calling, with their big cats. There’s a plethora of pet souls to choose from. Whatever your preference is, they have it.
Right now I’m leveling 3 different toons with pets. Daikaiju the beast lord, Fuzzbaal the ranger, and Finz the necro. I have Galleon the elemental summoner and Quickfix the druid sitting and waiting at level 1 to be played also.
Pet classes, in my opinion, are the most fun to play in any MMO. They bring extra DPS and versatility to both solo and group play. However, they do bring extra responsibility with them. Never expect your healer to heal them. Keeping them alive is your responsibility, the healer’s is to keep everyone else alive. If they have the extra time and mana to throw Fluffy a heal, be grateful. Don’t get mad if they don’t look at Fluffy twice.
So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Here Kitty, Kitty, or The Beastmaster

Welcome to part 2 of my pet class guide. Today we’re going to talk about the Beastmaster, and their giant kitty the primal guardian. The BM is the only pet class that likes to go toe to toe with enemy side by side with their pet.
Now the BM soul is a mixed bag of buffs, debuffs, attacks, and other things. Lets take a look at what’s in both the BM tree and root to see what Fluffy does for us, and what we do for Fluffy.
Root Abilities
Fierce Strike 0 pts in BM: Deals weapon damage plus additional physical damage and increases pet damage abilities by 20% for 12 seconds. FS is probably your most important ability. Not only does it do a nice bit of damage, but it makes Fluffy’s abilities hit that much harder. Always, always, always keep this on your pet’s target.
Protective Companion 10 pts in BM: Fluffy gains a boost of 20% to their armor and health. Their attacks generate more threat, but do 20% less damage. In addition to that, Fluffy buffs everyone’s armor, and Bite does 2% more damage per bleed effect on the mob, and Pounce will force the mob to attack Fluffy for 3 seconds. PC is our pet’s tanking stance. Fluffy has a better chance of holding aggro, but don’t expect her to rip through the mobs blazing fast.
Flesh Rip 12 pts in BM: An attack that becomes available after Fluffy scores a critical hit that causes the target to bleed for 10 seconds. While the bleed damage isn’t to make it worth applying by itself, it does count towards the bleed effects for PC.
Enraged Companion 20 pts in BM: Fluffy’s damage is increased by 20%, and increases everyone’s damage by 5%. EC decreases Fluffy’s health and armor by 20% also. Bite will apply a debuff that causes the target to take 5% more damage, while pounce will root target for 3 seconds.
Diversion Strike 32 pts: An attack that deals weapon damage plus extra damage. The attack also increases both your’s and your pet’s crit by 5% for 10 seconds. Once again we have another ability that raises our crit rate. With all of the different abilities and talents that we have, it makes Fluffy and me mad crit machines.
Fight As One 51 pts: Increases damage, hit, and crit for you and your pet for 15 seconds. The increase is based on how many points you have. 1 point 5%, 2 points 10%, 3 points 15%. This is the big one. That’s right hit the mob with FS, DS, and then any other ability, that gives you that 3rd attack point, then pop FAO, and watch the mob die in an explosion of fur, fangs, claws, and whirling steel.
Now just from the root abilities alone, you can see how much we effect Fluffy, and how Fluffy effects us. The BM has the most symbiotic relationship out of all the pet classes, and that’s just from the root abilities.
Now that we’ve looked at the root abilities, let’s take a look at the branch talents. All values, and percents are shown at max points.
Branch Talents
Natural Instincts T1 5 pts: Damage bonus from Fierce Strike is increased by 10%. As simple as it gets, an increase to an increase. Always keep it on the mob.
Primal Fury T2 5 pts: Increase crit by 5%. Another way to make us crit like crazy and increase “on crit” procs.
Strike To Main T4 5 pts: Critical hits cause the target to bleed for 100% of our strength over 8 seconds. Yet another bleed effect that lends itself to the death by a thousand cuts damage we do, while boosting PC’s bite damage bonus.
Protective Instincts T4 1 pt: Increases stealth detection. Good for PvP, and running through new areas where enemies might be hiding.
Pack Mentality T5 3 pts: increases you and your pet’s health by 12%, and damage by 6% while your pet is active. Yet another reason to keep Fluffy alive and kicking. Both of you are harder to kill and hit that much harder.
Tie That Binds T6 3 pts: Increases your pet’s health by 30%. Once again a talent to keep Fluffy killing that much longer.
Improved Protective Instinct T6 3 pts: Reduces stun duration by 30%. Handy little talent that will definitely help in PvP.
Kinship T6 1 pt: Heals both you and your pet. The first of our two self heals, this one also heals Fluffy.
Spoils of the Hunt T7 1 pt: Your pet heals you over 12 seconds, based on pet’s damage and number of attack points. 1- 50% of damage, 2- 100% of damage done, 3- 150% of damage done. This is our big self heal. A big, fast, heavy “Oh Crap”. With 3 attack points, this will top us off fast, while taking some of the pressure off of the healers.
Team Work
The BM soul is all about team work. We have so many talents and abilities that have us relying on our pet, and our pet relying on us. We have a lot of bleed effects that we can apply, and need to apply to maximize both ours, and our pet’s DPS.
Fierce Strike is one of our most important abilities. It’s fast, hits pretty hard, generates attack points, and more importantly increases Fluffy’s damage.
Bleed effects are another major source of damage for us and Fluffy. If you’re soloing, and you have Fluffy running with PC, bleeds are even more important, as Fluffy’s bite does 2% more damage per bleed.
Remember though, neither you or Fluffy is a true tank type.
Other Souls
Now, as far your other two souls, look for things that will compliment your style. Both champion, and paragon offer great melee boosters to BM. Me, I put more in paragon than champion, since I like how it compliments, and rapidly builds up attack points. But in the end, it’s up to you. If you want you can make a more tanky type, you can do that and have Fluffy rip in to your target while you hold its’ attention. It’s up to you, have fun with it, play around with it, change it up, try different soul and point combos. That’s the great thing about the beast lord soul, you can add the extra DPS, and buffs to any build to play style. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

There’s a Pet For That, or The Ranger

Pets. Versatile, always there, never complaining, fighting beside us, fighting in front of us, taking the bullet for us, and looking good. Our pets are the main draw of playing a Ranger. Need a tank while questing? We gotcha covered. Need someone to lower the chance of the mob smacking you? We gotcha covered. Need someone to rip the mobs to shreds, while healing themselves? We gotcha covered there too. Our pets give us a range of flexibility that few, if any, other class has. So Lets take a look at the talent tree, and see what we have that will boost up Fluffy, and us, to greater glories.

Root Abilities
Call Razorbeast 0 pts in Ranger: Summons a Razorbeast to your aid. Here’s your tank pet guys. Big, ugly, and smelly lol. He’s actually a pretty decent tank for soloing.
Rejuvenate 4 pts in Ranger: Heals your pet over 8 seconds. One of your most important abilities. Ever. Period. Remember how I said to not count on your healer to keep Fluffy alive? This is how YOU keep Fluffy alive.
Divert Rage 8 pts in Ranger: All threat generated for the next 10 seconds is transferred to your pet.
Call Dire Wolf 10 pts in Ranger: Summons a Dire Wolf to aid you in battle. This your first DPS pet, plain and simple. He does more damage than the pig, but he can’t hold aggro.
Call Greater Dire Wolf 22 pts in Ranger: Summons a Greater Dire Wolf to aid you in battle. The GDW does more damage and has more abilities than the regular Dire Wolf. This will be your final DPS pet if you don’t go at least 31 points in to the Ranger soul.
Call Greater Razor Beast 24 pts in Ranger: Summons a Greater Razor Beast to aid you in battle. The GRB has more abilities than the regular RB. He is going to be your final solo tanking pet.
Diffuse 44 pts in Ranger: All incoming damage is transferred to your pet for 10 seconds. When you need someone to catch a bullet for you, this is the one for you.
Feral Aggression 51 pts in Ranger: increases your pet’s crit chance by 100% and makes it immune to fear and confusion for 15 seconds. Fluffy gets big and angry for 15 seconds. All of his hits hit big and bloody.
Tying it together
Now most of our root abilities are focused on summoning our little friends. 4 of our 5 pets come from our root abilities. That’s it. Really we only get 3 talents from our roots that effect our pet. Those not pet abilities, are extremely powerful and important thou. They can save our hides, or push us over the top for burning mobs down super fast. So now that we’ve covered the roots, let’s look up in the branches.

Branch Talents
Enduring Spirit T1 5/5: Increases your pet’s health by 25%, and your health by 5%. This is a straight up HP buff, plain and simple.
Blood Rage T3 3/3: When your target has a bleed effect, increases your pet’s damage by 15% for 10 seconds. A healthy boost to Fluffy’s DPS. This talent is the reason you always want to keep serrated arrow on your target.
Bestial Fury T3 2/2: Headshot has a 100% chance to gain Bestial Fury, which increases damage by 5%. Lasts 12 seconds per combo point. Yet another boost to our DPS. With a full 5 points, this buff lasts for a nice long time at a minute.
Prey on the Weak T5 3/3: When your pet deals a crit, you have a 100% chance to increase your damage by 15% for 20 seconds. This is why crit is important for you and Fluffy.
King of the Jungle T5 1 pt in Ranger: increases your pet’s damage by 10%, and decreases damages the amount of AOE damage your pet takes by 65%. For each point in the Ranger soul beyond 21, the damage bonus is increased by 3%, and AOE damage is reduced by 1%. This is one of the biggest talents for us. The damage reduction is huge now, the damage bonus is well minimum if you are only going, say 24 points in to get the GRB.
Hasten Call T6 1 pt: Your next call spell is free, with no casting cost. 2 minute cool down. This is a must if you are going at least 31 points in. This will give you an instant pet, at no cost if Fluffy suddenly dies. This coupled with Divert Rage, will almost instantly have Fluffy grabbing aggro back in almost no time flat.
Master Huntsman T6 5/5 pts: Your Dire Wolf’s maul reduces healing on the target by 30% for 10 seconds. Your Razor Beast’s quill cool down is reduced by 5 seconds. Your Blood Raptor’s bloodied blow has a 25% chance to double attack. This is a flat-out boost to Fluffy’s utility/DPS abilities.
Call Blood Raptor T7 1pt: Summons a Blood Raptor to fight for you. The BR is your highest DPS pet. He has an AOE attack, and a self-heal.
Pulling It All Together
The Ranger soul tree offers a lot of diversity, flexibility, and challenges. The right ability at the right time can save your hide. Hasten Call plus Call Greater Razorbeast plus Divert Rage equals Fluffy building fast aggro after he died the first time. Splinter shot is another important ability that you need to keep on the mob to maximize DPS.
Soul Pairings
The Ranger soul pairs up great with the other rogue souls, but it really shines with several. Bard, Marksman, and Nightblade are the ones for your second soul. I’ve found that different pets work best with different souls. The Razorbeasts work best with Marksman and Nightblade, because of its’ shear ability to hold aggro, while you do the majority of the DPS. However, as a Bard, I think the Raptor is a much better choice. Our pets are an amazing lot that can change the way we play based on our situation, play style, and what souls we take. So choose wisely, and remember the choices you make will affect how you play also. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Things That Go Bump In the Night, Or the Necromancer

Creepy dead things. That describes the Necromancer, or just the Necro, to a tea. The master of the undead, raising the bones of old, all the while draining the life from the enemy. So let’s see what we can dig up on our grave robbing friends.
Root Ability
Summon Skeletal Horror 0 pts: Summons a skeleton to fight for you. This is your first DPS pet.
Revivify 4 pts: Channels energy in to your pet, restoring 10% of its health every second for 8 seconds. Consumes charge. Your basic ZOMG FLUFFYS GONNA DIE!!! Heal spell.
Essence Link 10 pts; Reduces healing on target by 30% for 60 seconds. When your pet hits do damage, you are healed for 9. Yet another ability to keep us alive through our pets.
Summon Skeletal Stalwart 12 pts: Summons a skeletal warrior to fight for you. This is your basic tanking pet.
Exhume 16 pts: Reduces the casting time of your next summon by 15 seconds. This is our instapet ability.
Summon Shadow Revenant 26 pts: Summons an undead Mage to your aid. This is another DPS for us, this time we get a caster.
Death’s Grip 32 pts: Stuns the enemy for 3 seconds. For the next 60 seconds when your pet damages them, their speed is reduced 30% for 3 seconds. Good for making a fast get away in PvP.
Mass Grave 51 pts: Summons an uncontrollable level 50 zealot and revenant for 30 seconds. Lots of high DPS pets running amuck killing for you.
Getting to the Roots
Most if our root abilities are summoning abilities, or deal with healing us or Fluffy. Picking the right pet at the right time can make all the difference in the world. Exhume can help you switch out from one to another on the fly as needed.
Branch Abilities
Death’s Ally T1 5/5: Increases yours and you pet’s death based damage by 5%. A flat out boost to DPS plain and simple.
Fresh Graves T2 5/5: Increases Soul Rend’s damage by 25% per stack of Deathly Calling. Grave Touch reduces damage to pet by 10% for 10 seconds, and has a 100% chance to deal 50% more if target has Necrosis. Yet another ability that will boost our pet’s DPS.
Symbiote T3 5/5: Increases healing from Essence Link by 30%. More self healing for us, means less our healers have to worry about us.
Life Bane T4 5/5: Increases pet’s damage by 2% per point in the Necromancer tree. The more points we put in this tree, the more damage our pet does.
Detonate Bone T4 3/3: When your pet dies, it has a 100% chance to explode stunning nearby enemies for 2 seconds and dealing damage equal to 10% of the pet’s health. Fluffy becomes a suicide bomber. The more HP Fluffy has, the bigger the bang.
Soul Purge T4 1/1: Channels deadly into the enemy doing 431 damage over 8 seconds, and heals you and your pet for 593 health. Consumes charge. Yet another way to help your healer, by keeping you and Fluffy alive.
Ancient Tomb T5 1/1: Summon an undead rogue. He’s a DPS pet plain and simple.
Master Chirurgen T5 5/5: Increase pet’s health by 50%. More health means Fluffy stays around.
Vengeful Spirit T6 3/3: Increases the number of stacks of Deathly Calling converted by pet’s Blood Corruption by 3, and gives BC a 100% chance to not consume stacks of DC. Oblivion has a 100% to interrupt to spell casting. Ruination’s damage is increased by 9% per stack of DC. More damage and utility for your pet.
Clattering Bones T6 1/1: Bone Shatter reduces pet’s incoming damage by 6%. Blood Spike’s critical damage is increased by 150%, and increases cool down reduction by 1.5 seconds. Even more pet DPS and utility for Fluffy.
Lich Form T7 1/1: Turns you in to a Lich for 30 seconds. Increases your mana regeneration by 20%, damage by 20%, and pet’s damage by 30%. The final form. We become an undead ourselves.
Pulling it all together
DPS, DPS, and more DPS. Our branch ability are all about boosting both ours and our pet’s health and DPS. Everywhere you look in our tree you’ll find talent after talent to boost our health and damage output. All of our talents work together. Master Chirurgen is a huge boost to Detonate Bone. Everything works together to boost other abilities. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Take A Walk On The Wild Side, Or The Druid

Flitting Fae, and rampaging Saytr, slashing through the enemy or helping to keep you alive. These are the trademark pets of the Druid. Druid pets aren’t like other pet class pets. While the other pet classes have abilities that allow their pet to tank, our pets aren’t made to tank, instead they are designed as support for us and our group. We have a pet that can use a HOT, but can’t main heal. We have a DPS pet that’s ok, not great, but gives everyone a boost to your DPS. We are the one that does the tanking, and the majority of the healing or DPSing in this partnership. So without further ado, let’s take a look at our roots and talents.

Root Abilities

Summon Faerie 0 pts. Summons a Faerie who will help heal you and your allies. This is your first pet. She has a HOT and a weak damage spell. Not great, but she’ll help to keep you topped off, while adding something to your DPS.
Combined Effort 14 pts. A blow that deals weapon damage plus 41-44 damage, and increases pet’s AP/SP by 50% for 15 seconds. This is it folks, this is a must. Use it every time it’s up it is the single biggest boost you can give your pet.
Summon Greater Faerie 26 pts. Calls forth a greater Faerie to heal you and your allies. The upgraded version of the basic faerie. Not the brightest healer but its’ HOTs will help to top people off.
Hidden Path 32 pts. Removes harmful effects from your pet. When Fluffy has all kinds of crud on him, this will fix him right up.
Friend of the Weald 36 pts. Increases your pet’s AP/SP bonus by 10%, plus 10% more per point spent in the Druid tree above 36. This is a big one here guys. If you’re not going to go at least 45 points in to the Druid tree, you will not get the most bang for your buck period.

What It Means
So as you see we don’t get many root abilities for our pets. Almost half of them are used to summon them. So what’s left? Three very useful abilities that can buff our pets, making them an even bigger asset than they normally would be.

So let’s see what we have in our talent tree next.

Talent Tree

Touch of the Fae 5/5 T1 Increases your endurance by 5%, and your pet’s by 25%. A straight up boost to both of your hit points plain and simple.
Heed the Call 3/3 T2 Reduces the casting time of your summon spells by 6 seconds. It makes Fluffy come to you that much faster.
Spirit of the Wood 6/5 T4 Fervent Strike has a 30% chance to cause your pet’s next ability to automatically crit. An increase to Fluffy’s healing or DPS is always welcomed.
Rage of the Fae 1/1 T5 Sends your pet in to a rage, increasing it’s healing and damage by 100% for 15 seconds. Double the damage or the healing is a big boost, especially when combined FotW, and CE, you get a huge boost that will push Fluffy over the top.
Forest Blessing 1/1 T5 Reduces AoE damage to pet by 65%, plus 1% for each point over 21. With this talent, and enough points spent, Fluffy can withstand almost any AoE.
Hot Blooded 5/5 T6 Reduces the cooldown on RotF by 1 minute. Fluffy can fly in to a frenzy again that much quicker.
Summon Satyr 1/1 T7 Summons a satyr to fight for you, and increases everyone’s AP. Here he is folks, your main DPS pet and group buffer.

Branching Out

So once again, we’ve a shorter list than the rest of the pet classes. We get some major buffs with RotF, SotW, and HB, but there’s not much else here. FS goes from being used sometimes, to use every time it’s up, so we can maximize our pet’s chance to crit. Now Druid pairs nicely with almost all of the other cleric souls. Druid paired with Justicar and Inquisitor make for a nice AoE grind build. Try different things, and combos, and builds. There is wrong way as usual. So go ahead and let your wild side loose, and see what you come up with.
So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Captain Planet or the Elemental Summoner
Earth, air, water, and fire. Their power is yours to command. The elemental summoner is the master of all of them. With a flick of the wrist you call forth the elements to do your bidding. With pets designed to tank, PvP, and burn down our enemies. So let’s dig in to the roots and see what we have.

0 pts. Summon Lesser Earth Elemental: Calls forth an earth elemental to fight for you. This is your tank pet, he’s here to take a beating for you.
12 pts. Summon Lesser Air Elemental: Calls forth an air elemental to fight for you. He’s your DPS pet, he’s here to blast things for you.
16 pts. Quicken Elements: Heals your pet for 5% of its’ health every second for 5 seconds. When Fluffy is taking a beating, this will fix him up in no time.
18 pts. Fast Summon: Reduces the casting time and cost by 100% for your next summon spell for 15 seconds. When you need to get Fluffy back fast, this is what you want.
26 pts. Summon Greater Water Elemental: Calls forth a water elemental to fight for you. He’s your PvP pet, with slows to keep the other guy from smacking you.
38 pts. Sever Bonds: Breaks all control and movement based spell effects on you and your pet. Rooted, slowed, feared, or confused, this will snap you both out of it.
51 pts. Swarming Flame: Summons 5 fire elementals to assist you for 5 seconds. So you get 5 flaming guys who come out and start blasting away at your target.

Ok, so most of our root abilities are summons based or related to summoning. We get our insta-pet and pet healing abilities from here also. We only get one damage ability though, and that’s the swarming flame ability.

Now that we’ve seen what we have to build upon, let’s take a look and see what’s up in our talent tree.

Velocity T1 5/5: Your crystalline missile has a 50% chance to debuff the target, increasing your pet’s damage by 50% for 10 seconds. A basic debuff that you should always try to keep on your target.
Elemental Link T2 5/5: Reduces damage you take by 10%, increases air elemental damage by 10%, and reduces damage done to your earth elemental by 10%. You take less damage and Fluffy either hits harder or takes less damage.
Ashen Armor T3 3/3: Ignite increases your pet’s crit chance by 30%. Fluffy will hit harder more often.
Sacrifice T4 1/1: Sacrifices your pet to heal you for 25% of your total health. Fluffy give his life to heal you. Don’t worry though, he’ll be right back with Fast Summons.
Improved Quicken Elements T4 2/2: Increases healing done by Quicken Elements by 20%. Fluffy gets better faster.
Weathered T4 5/5: Increases pet’s health by 50%. If Fluffy has more life, Fluffy will last longer.
Greater Elemental Affinity T5 1/1: Allows you to summon either a greater earth or greater air elemental. This allows you to summon a bigger, badder, version of your elemental, with more abilities than the lesser versions.
Force Of Nature T5 5/5: Increases your pet’s damage by 2% per point spent in the elemental tree. The more you spend here, the bigger the smack down Fluffy gives out.
Planar Expansion T6 5/5: Increases the damage done by your air and water elementals by 10%, water elemental’s Mind Freeze lasts 2.5 seconds longer, Electrify’s SP buff by 25%, and your earth elemental’s Thud reduces incoming damage by 20% for 10 seconds. More outgoing damage, less incoming damage, better buffs and debuffs. What more can you ask for?
Synergize T6 1/1: You gain 3 charges whenever your pet does damage for 30 minutes. More charges faster. You can use those charge based spells that much quicker.
Intensify Elements T7 1/1: Your damage is increased by 50%, and your pet’s damage is increased by 100% for 15 seconds. Major damage boost for 15 seconds. You and Fluffy will nuke like mad.

We get all kinds of talents to boost Fluffy’s health and damage. We get a boost through some of our talents along the way also.

Now there are several souls that go nicely with the Elemental Summoner. The big one is chloro. Chloro’s healing, along with our pets, make for a never ending stream of health for you and Fluffy. If you want a more damage heavy pairing, it with pyro or warlock. Need support for your support spec? The greater air elemental can add some extra punch to the extra punch that you provide.

So as you can the elemental summoner is a versatile soul that can pair with any other Mage soul. Be it leveling, healing, support or soloing, you will never be alone as long as you have command of the elements.

So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.