What skills/build are you guys using, and how is it working out?

Some other builds i tried:

Druid/bc - initialy was weak, but when i got better gear it started to shine. nice surivability, with good AoE burst. Only downside is that skills have long cds, but you cna always use haste concotion to run off and wait for skills.

Shield/bc - after (a bit unexpected) succes that druid/bc was, i decided to "combatize" my traveling set up. It turned out rather well - i have just enough burst to kill most regular mobs(even in gazluk)in one rotation, and just enough sustain to surrive till cds when i dont. Not somethign i would use to farm end game content but enough to fight off few wolves when gathering wood, or farm said wolves for skins.

Psychology has heals, strong damage and a fear.
Animal Handling has a medium nuke (shrill command) and that's it.

You can get away with just shrill command and the one pet heal in-combat on your bar, since the other skills don't do much. Not because they're bad ... a certain percentage of a low base number is still low. Animal Handling pets have, even with fully modded for damage gear, an output comparable to any other skill, without gear for it.

You can't kill anything before it kills your pet or you with AH alone. If you stand by and don't do anything but nuke with shrill command as soon as it's up or the heal on cooldown, the mob would turn to you (before the last patch) and beat you to pulp. Now it just kills your pet before it turns to you.

I ran AH with Psychology, Lycantrophy, Sword, Fire Magic, Druid, Archery and Bard. I am now mainly Bard and have AH because I'm stupid.

I like pets, I like the idea of being a pet class. However ...
I can live with being the main source of damage with my pet as blocker, or being the support standing behind while my pet does the work, but honestly, the pet just runs alongside you, mauls the enemy while you do and doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things. You can send it in to attack first (sometimes, this requires several tries, which are also on cooldown, so you can have phases where you stand on the same point, clicking the skill 5 times until your pet finally runs up to the mob - test it in Wolf Caves or the Wintercourt camp, for example), in which case it will tank the mob for a while, until you inevitably pull aggro, unless you deliberately do pitiful damage.

With my char set to Archer, without Archery mods on gear, my damage is roughly equal to that of my pet - only that Archery has AOEs, which will pull aggro, since your pet has none.
When I ran with Druid, I ended up tanking all the time, unless I removed the mob's armor first, then let the pet wail on it while I stood there taking the hits for a while - and Druid only has 1 real nuke.
Right now, I can send my pet in, then start Song of Discord and the damage ticks from the song generate enough threat to draw the mob's attention and make me the tank (which is fine, because I put maximum effort into making Discord tanky, with armor/hp refresh and stun chance).

In a fight where I use the Bard to it's maximum damage potential, I tank. I end up with 80-90% of the damage done, and my Bard is 8 levels below my AH, with the next Discord up for grabs in 4 more levels, so that's that.

If you play Sword, which is one of the strongest skills, and plan to switch to Animal Handling, which is, hands down, the weakest damage skill in the game, you'll be in for a ride.

You could pair Bard with Psychology, Mentalism or Druid for moderate damage and great sustain. You could pair Druid with Fire or Ice for good balanced sustain/damage, or with Staff for supreme tankiness. Psychology works with everything. But Animal Handling, which I leveled to level other skills with, will stop working for anything in the lvl 40s, after you left the goblin dungeon and move on to Kur Tower/Yeti/Wolf Cave. You better bring the big guns there, or you won't survive, because your pet doesn't make any difference whatsoever in these places.

Beyond 50... even your guildies will tell you they'd rather you switched to something else, because the useless pet is detrimental - it may draw unwanted mobs without doing anything for the party in return.

Animal Handling needs more damage and the pets need proper AOE to work. All their attacks need higher damage (I'd say at least 25%) and some sort of AOE effect (for, say, 25% of the damage, so adds don't turn on you for so much as you drawing a breath).

While it's true that the general aggro bug of armor damage negating hp damage is fixed, hence the pet drawing full aggro for it's damage, the damage in question is so laughable ... seriously, try it out and give feedback here. Get the polar bear from Kur at 40 first, gear up for maximum power, because that's what I did ... and then go for it.

I hope the devs take this seriously, because I feel like I'm the only one complaining about this, but I'm also the only one actively playing this skill as main (again, because I'm stupid), so I'd not hold my breath.

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Originally Posted by kazeandi

I hope the devs take this seriously, because I feel like I'm the only one complaining about this, but I'm also the only one actively playing this skill as main (again, because I'm stupid), so I'd not hold my breath.

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You're not the only one complaining about it. AH is a broken, buggy, unbalanced mess that no new player should pursue because they'll likely leave PG with a woefully incorrect impression of the game. If they don't leave PG in frustration, at a minimum they'll have wasted their time playing in way which could have been much better enjoyed with literally any other combat skill.

You might well be the only one complaining about it that still uses it, however. I can't do much to remedy that other than suggest replacing it with something more useful for combat... like Interpretive Dancing.

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Originally Posted by Tsugumori

Very off-base assumption to compare animal handling to psych.

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Why would it be off-base? AH has sic'em and aggro abilities and damage abilities and healing which one would think would at least be on par with the cc or healing or damage that you get out of Psych. They're both also first-village, first-tier skills.

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Originally Posted by Crissa

Why would it be off-base? AH has sic'em and aggro abilities and damage abilities and healing which one would think would at least be on par with the cc or healing or damage that you get out of Psych. They're both also first-village, first-tier skills.

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For them to be on par, they have to be much stronger.
The heal has a long CD that ensures you can't use it more than once in a fight, while the pet is only tanky if you go full ham on the mods at the cost of damage/utility.

All pet abilities suffer from the low base damage, some directly, like dmg mods, some as a result of lonh fights.

They're not on par by any stretch of imagination.

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Originally Posted by kazeandi

For them to be on par, they have to be much stronger.

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Ahh.

Well, that's fine, but I didn't say they were on par.

@Crissa

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Originally Posted by Crissa

I'd assume Animal Handling has the same output of Psychology, since they're both skills gotten at the same point.

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On par = same. (Or 'even' for knitpickers, thus the golf term.)

Also I did say about AH not being 100% functional. Even so they would be in different categories. Psych is a support skill, sure it has its damage but ratio wise it has more cc and heals in its kit. Animal Handling is a 'summoner' skill at its core. Its not yet at the point where the animal can be at the forefront but I imagine it will get there at some point.

TL;DR - AH and Psych do not have the same output mate xd

(As an after thought... Psych and AH aren't both "first village skills", psych is starter island, as is archery/sword/unarmed. AH is a bit, a good bit, after that. Around Fire Magic/Mentalism)

This is a video of me doing South Rahu, where the mobs are lvl 60. My bear is 63. I tried to show a 1:1 mob vs. bear, but had adds. However, that had the nice side effect of showing off how pets do in such fights ;)

Failed taunts, Clever Trick not doing anything, no damage by pet until I start Discord song etc.

My focus was in showing off the pet, not playing exceptionally carefully. I could have pulled mobs further out and tanked against walls to deal with the knockback, but that was not the goal here. What I wanted to show is the strength of the pet in an environment with almost even-level mobs.

Here we go ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osJfpSTV3-8

Okay, since there was Psychology mentioned as comparison, I thought, let's make another short one, where I switched out 63 AH for 42 Psychology.
Needless to say, it's not even fair game. 42 Psycho wins against 63 AH hands down.
Also, I didn't use the big Psy nuke and my gear was for Bard/AH (as you can see, didn't switch anything out, still the same Bozo The Clown outfit), so no boni or mod on anything, just the naked 42er skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnrloMZHCWw

PS:
One thing you can see pretty early on in these videos is how control of the playing field works. See how the mob knocks the pet up the ramp, into an add? Or how, in an earlier fight, a patrolling mob adds when we fight the mage? If I'd play without pet, I could just run further away or break line of sight to drag the mage to a safer spot, but once in combat, I can't move my bear anymore, at all. Pets don't react to any commands when they take damage, other than pets in, say, UO, WOW, DAoC and the like, where you're always in control and can reposition - which you can do as well in Gorgon, if you're without pets. When I played with Psychology, hopelessly weak against mobs 20 levels too high and with zero gear, I made up for that a bit by pressing my butt against the fence - as you can see, no knockbacks, no interrupted Discord (which plays a huge part in my sustain).

Pet play depends on control and reliability of the pets in their chose role (as tank or DD), but pets here don't have a role and there is no control, so they're a security risk and, to add insult to injury, they don't make up for it in any way.

Necromancy is another skill in a bad spot, but talking about that would mean opening a whole new can of worms.

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Originally Posted by Tsugumori

On par = same.

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I didn't say they were the same. I said I'd assume they would be.

I'm exiting this conversation. You quoted me and then aggressively ignored the first full word. Again. Both 'would' from 'I'd' and 'assume' are conditional verbs, which are used to indicate a possible or imagined scenario, not a real action or historical data.

So you're arguing against a position that I never said did exist.

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Originally Posted by Tsugumori

(As an after thought... Psych and AH aren't both "first village skills", psych is starter island, as is archery/sword/unarmed. AH is a bit, a good bit, after that. Around Fire Magic/Mentalism)

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Fire magic has a quest, but it's off the first zone past the tutorial. It's meant to be the first hard skill you encounter. AH with mouse cheese is in the tutorial.

...And I really fail to see how 'summoner' and 'support' are contradictory terms. Are you saying AH shouldn't be used for offtanking, aggro management, or include heals?

Lastly, head to head comparisons are usually bunk, as that's not what this game is supposed to be doing. Every skill is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages, and gear matters quite alot. So that's not really evidence. The aggro and damage outputs from running a similarly geared character are much better, though you do have to track power consumption.