post-50 pets do not increase in power like pets 4-49 do. the 2nd round of earth/air/fire are slightly higher level with slightly (5%?) higher dps and health. nowhere close to keeping up with xp-giving mobs in the post 50 world (the 49 earth pet could solo 4 hill giants in a row if you sat on your butt, or the entiretly of feerott specs)
The consensus is that against level 60+ mobs, the epic pet's dps is less than the 60 water pet, no personal experience on my part though.
And, no doubt, the backstab of the water pet gives it better dps than earth or air, if you can be bothered with positioning and have a good facetanker. once you have water mastery staff from phinny it is quite close to as durable as earth.
the 49 focused fire pet is still quite useful for non-epic mages, probably up to DDD at 56. Sometimes that dang dmg shield does more dmg than the melee of the pet, and in my personal experience, makes getting full xp much easier on a 6 min med timer than other pets, due to the dmg shield shaving off the mob's health without sourcing the dmg to the pet. on a scary target, you're gonna manually dmg shield up your pet right before the fight starts, so there's 120 mana/fight saved on fire pet too.
The root of the earth pet is still insanely useful when soloing, even though the consensus is that it is not a root machine like on live. I'm sure we all have the earth elemental mastery staff for focusing it too...right?
So..some choices..or scenarios, with pet choices. not much though in reality. would be more if half the mobs 50+ weren't immune to stun, making the air pet a joke.
Grouping with a mage sounds like a joke, because everyone puts a mage in the solo category, but the pets are close to about a paladin in dps in the 50's, with the 10000 dmg nuke battery available as needed, and dmg shields are still the most efficient way to do dmg with mana not named jabartik.
|