What to take with Animal Handling?

[CalvintheBold]

Hi everyone!
Just started out with AH (lvl20) and currently running Fire Magic as Primary.
However, the cost is starting to become an issue for me, so what would you recommend as a good pairing for AH?
This is my first toon and I have just tamed a Panther, so have done options on pet choice.
Thanks all.

[ShieldBreaker]

If you wanted to keep running Fire Magic you could improve your power by eating better foods and using flowers to boost your power.

You could use any other skill you wanted with AH, find the one you find the most fun and use that. With a cat pet I would maybe tend towards something defensive Staff or Shield. You want to draw the focus of the fight and let the cat deal damage. But there are lots of ways to do that. Might be able to provide support to your cat with your secondary skill and let them draw the attacks, but I haven't really had good luck with doing it that way, especially with cats. Trying out different methods and skills might be the best way to find out what works for you.

[Vish]

Most skills are nice with AH
Good cloth armors and cost is not so much problem (remember to sniff flower and use good food: both Meal and Snack)
And u can try Spider/AH if u like animal forms

[alleryn]

Not having dabbled in animal handling myself, some things that come to mind are:
Knife Fighting - If animal can take aggro, opens up opportunities for backstabs.
Bard - Buff your pet.
Rabbit - Play dead while your pet kills stuff.

[CalvintheBold]

And with a dawning realisation....I haven't even begun to get into the game. I love the variety of skills and combinations! Thanks for your replies everyone - I am levelling up with Staff/Fire for now as they are fast to do it seems. Once I have unlocked another Weapon/Skill Set I'll bring AH back into the mix alongside my Shield for the Sprint buff. A great game!

[cr00cy]

Advantage of AH is that it need ver little involment, so you can pair it with literally any other skill in game. If you really wnat some synergies, it would be with skills that can either buff your pet, Knife fighting for opening up backstab bonuses, or something with a lot of piercing (it has mod that boost all piercing damage), so Archery or Sword.

It has mods for one of its abilites, 'Sick Em' I think, that boost your slashing/crushing for short time, so that is some synergy too.

Overall, AH is one of best secondary skills in game, not because of utility, but because of how low investment it is. You can literally use only one skill (Sic 'Em), and you'll be fine. It is also one of, if not the least gear dependend skills in the game, making it exelent for leveling other skills. If you stack on pet-buffing mods on your gear, your pet will becoem absolute monster, easily able to take multiple mobs at once. Up to around Kur at least, when you will need to start to actualy pay attention.

But be carefull tho, because Pet aggro is unreiable to say the least. Often you will find mobs just randomly decide that they don't want to fight your pet anymore, and they will ruhs you instead.

To sum it up: Pick any skill that either can buff/heal(Druid, Priest, Bard) your pet, benefits from having someoen taking aggro(Knife Fighting), or focuses mostly on physsical damge (Sword, Archery, Staff), preferrably with soem AOE since AH doesn't have any.

[Stingite]

84 Knife Fighting / 83 Animal Handling build here. As others have noted, it's really advantageous to have your pet taunt which allows you to use your knife skills that do bonus damage when an enemy isn't focused on you. One other factor that hasn't been mentioned is that changing the type of animal you use can also directly effect your game. Where you may fall short with a Fire Build and mobs resistant to fire, you might be able to make up the difference with a pet that uses special attacks that don't use Fire damage.

I eventually swapped over to Knife Fighting / Animal Handling from Fire / Animal Handling when I charmed one of the Fae Bee pets in the Fae Realm. It's "special trick" is that it causes the enemy to have vulnerability to poison. This pairs well with Knife Fighting's Poisoning abilities.

The build I run focuses on high taunt for my pet, bonuses to poison, and bonuses to skills like Backstab or Surprise Throw.

Swapping pets to what your enemies is weak against becomes one of your core strategies, and building a solid stable of pets with different damage types will become a core strategy for you at end game with Animal Handling.

Best of luck!

[Zov]

If you are playing in dungeons, you have to learn to deal with adds - so it's best you have abilities that let you either nuke down the mob fast, or tank/cc the additional adds until you have the mobs killed off.

I started with Fire Mage initially paired with Animal Handling and it worked well enough.

However, like someone stated, you need good power/health regen from food or things will go slowly for you. You also need up to date skills, which is hard to do, because fire magic is so expensive.

I started using Animal Handling with Druid, and it works *really well*. I know it takes getting one combat skill to level 50 first of all, but getting druid is well worth it. I have a bear I use from Animal Handling, and he attacks one mob, and I heal myself with the adds. I have 3/4 heals on my druid with refresh ability restoring some health, so it's a really good combo. What I noticed is that the bear ping-pongs between mobs doing damage, so it's hard to get him to focus on one mob at a time.

With druid, you can pick up healing gear pretty fast, and also bramble gear too, is really nice when you are tanking mobs and healing yourself. The brambles does damage, and with some gear that adds an extra +30 to it, it really mows down those melees.

I tried priest with animal taming, and it's a waste of time. In dungeons, you are always going to agro 2-4 mobs at a time, rarely ever soloing a single mob. Priest has channeled heals, which are a complete disappointment when soloing because you are always being hit.

I haven't tried staff or shield yet, but if they are defensive in nature, they might also be good.

I'll try them both out in time, and see if they go better with animal handling.

At the moment, I am recommending, from my limited experience of the game, healing druid with animal taming. Stack up on healing gear and bramble gear, and you are sorted.

[CalvintheBold]

Another interesting idea! Many thanks