Sillaen wrote:None of the mage pets are worthless.
People mainly use the air pet because it's the general all purpose pet. You can use it in raids, in groups and solo quite effectively, though not as efficiently as some of the others. This eliminates the need to constantly summon different pets.
In reality in today's EQ, the pets go like this.
Air - 3rd highest dps, 2nd most base HPs/AC, best at avoiding dmg, best aggro pet because of stun
Water - Highest dps pet, 3rd most base HPs/AC, best raid pet, tanks like a wet paper bag on current content
Fire - 2nd highest dps pet, least base HPs/AC, out of the box ready at higher levels, great for keeping dps going when rezzed, non existent tanking ability, generates good aggro (but not really a good thing here)
Earth - Lowest dps, most base HPs/AC, best at mitigating dmg, great pet for mega heavy hitters and mobs that run at low health, agrro generation sucks but the root does help sometimes
There are a lot of factors that go into determining tanking, like how heavy are you nuking and is the mob you're fighting stunnable.
The air pet and earth pet are comparable tanks if the air pet's stun will land. However earth has the best base AC and HPs and as such mitigates dmg better, so dmg spikes are less likely to kill it. Air specializes in avoiding dmg and generates an enormous amount of aggro, so the mob is less likely to look your way than say if you were using earth. In the grand scheme of things, air generally tanks better against single mobs, while earth is better for multiple mobs. It all depends on what your objective is.
All your pets have a place in your line up. Do let anyone fool you into thinking the air pet is the end all be all pet.
I use water on raid names because my job on a raid is generally straight dps.
I use air in groups, general soloing and trash clearing.
I use fire for trash clearing, pulling if I have to and for ongoing dps after a death.
I use earth when soloing something that might kill me if it breathes in my direction and for stopping runners.
Note:
When you add in AA's such as FBO, certain pets make overtake others in a particular department. For example, an air pet under FBO will more often than not out dps a fire pet. Just things to keep in mind, but the above outlined is generally the case.
This is a great post. It illustrates perfectly our pet versatility without the normal "Air is best" hand-waving, which unreasonably annoys me.
I use Earth for the reason you mention btw, and when I know I will (or want to) get a ton of adds. If you want to play around with the idea head to the Library in SoD all the way to the bottom and go to the "left" room spawn point of the Head Librarian. Go just left of his room and aggro the mobs there such that you get all four mobs in that room plus one or two from the outer room. Librarian PH won't add. Try this with an Air Pet and with an Earth pet. You'll have your merc of course. Contrast and compare.
Stuns and avoidance are powerful, and wonderful.
Mitigation is extraordinary, as well. It will really blow your mind, in some situations.
Baramos
to pull the 78 Fire Pet up and see how that combination does. If it does pretty good nuke wise, I may need to load up the current level malo and make sure it sticks to the mob.
