1. At 18, and upwards through 39 or 40 when most guides say start chain summoning pets - should I just damage shield my pet and let it solo mobs?
Up until near 40 this is correct. Most importantly look at the pet information guide on the Wiki, max level summoned pets are very important and will do more damage/tank better. When you hit a hunting ground, spend a few pulls to make sure you have the strongest pet you can summon, DS it, and keep it alive with some heals if needed.(If in a group, if solo, refer to answer 2)
2. When I played live I thought I remembered pets taking 50% of the xp if the mage didn't do 51% of the damage to the mob. Is this still true? If so, is it worth the ease of just letting the pet do the heavy lifting anyway?
Solo, you need to do 51 pct of the damage but there is a trick to this. You summon a pet, sick it on the target, wait until the target is at 10pct or lower, reclaim energy on your pet to get your mana back, nuke and kill the mob in one shot, and you'll get full XP for the kill. Once a pet is dead/reclaimed the amount of damage it did to the mob is forgotten, you then only need to do 51 pct of the remaining HP of the mobs 10pct for full XP. In any group this doesn't matter, just let your pets hammer away and you'll get full XP even if the pets did 100 pct of the damage.
3. (closely related to question 1) Many of the guides recommend not really nuking at all. If I tag a mob with a low level nuke, do I really get full xp credit for it?
Depends, if you are tagging for a group, simply use the lowest level nuke to drag it to camp. If solo'ing refer to my answer to question 2. You'll only need to nuke to finish off a target for full XP after you reclaimed your pet.
4. During the fight - should I bother healing my pet, or just let it fight 'till it's pretty much dead and summon a new one?
Covered a bit in answer 1, up until mid 30's, its more efficient to have a max summoned pet and keep it alive IF in a group. Past 40's the amount of Pet HP you get for the mana cost outweighs healing it, it's more efficient to simply summon another pet once it gets hurt enough.
If you are solo'ing past 40, you need to do the chain summoning tactic. You summon a pet, send it in on a target and sit back a safe distance from the fight. Once your pet starts getting low on HP you start summoning another pet, a second or two before your summon cast goes off, tell your pet to go away(killing it), the new pet gets summoned, and you send this pet on the target again. Rinse repeat until the mob you are fighting is sub 10 pct, then reclaim energy your pet, and nuke the mob for full xp.
The mage focus items that let you instant click reclaim energy is a very useful tool and lets you be more exacting in getting a mobs hp as low as you can get it for the cheapest nuke you can use to kill it.
Also at certain leveling points the Fire pet is the best one to use, it has the weakest HP by far, but the innate DS can do insane amounts of damage to targets netting a quicker and more mana efficient kill. At later levels you get Dyzil's Deafening Decoy, a fire pet with earth level pet HP levels...simply fantastic for chain summoning end game solo.
/end book
Hope this helps.
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