Animal Handling & Grouping (and some random thoughts)

[Mbaums]

I want to add some stuff after going all in for AH. It started because I didnt think ANYTHING could work AH. I wanted to see how far I could take it. Everyone told me not to do it, and that the pet would just be a liability. But I've come to see it as a damage over time build that is strong single target DPS. And I am planning on gearing up a second AH build (eventually) because I like what it can do.


Looking at the pets Sic Em and Clever Trick is really important. These 2 skills are like two totally diverse abilities you can swap out with each pet. The best two IMO are the cats with a slashing debuff and the sewer rat with the poison debuff. Just because of the pet's temperament, it's place is in long fights. I'm not sure if people have noticed, but ALL NPC's will tend to swing at dead corpses. This is a non pet specific flaw. My build treats it like ranged slashing DPS. And the GK cat, for my build, blows hissy away. The GK cat debuffs slashing and only deals slashing, so the synergy with mentalism is practically screaming at you. If you get anchor runes, you can unload serious DPS vs bosses. You'll need at least two healing abilities for the pet at all times if you run with unnatural wrath, you can bring the heat. It's like having a second monstrous rage. Only problem is getting anchor runes and deciding which NPCs are worthy of burning one.

The other build I was thinking of was a poison knife build with the sewer rat with his poison debuff. AH would be more of a background type of ability, but it could work well. The build in total could debuff poison damage by ~50%, which is outrageous.

*edit*
This post is glowing about AH but there are flaws:
1) the drop rate of anchor runes is nuts. It's very boom or bust, but the bright side of the farm is you'll get so many WOP #3 's youll feel like a boss. But I'd honestly recommend work orders paying 700-800C per each.
2) Pet aggro is bugged. I didnt test anything with aggro since the last patch, but the pet wouldnt hold aggro unless it has 90%+ aggro on the autopsy. This might be part of a bigger problem, I have seen % aggro on autopsies where the NPC's actual target did not match up in a fairly large admin-spawned event. I have not figured out a way to really test this because autopsy isnt 100%. (The issue I've seen is NPC attacks second highest aggro person vs the first).
3) You cannot use any of the auto assist/ auto target features with sic 'em/clever trick because you'll get an error message "invalid target".