Combat Pets

Combat with Pet

Having pets in combat can be very complimentary to each individual profession, particularly for general increase in DPS, agro, distracting enemies onto your pet, and other strategies. Below you will find a list of pets I recommend for each Profession:

Smuggler:

Cats: Provoke, Bite, Claw, Flank, Slash
Bugs: Provoke, Damage Poison, Claw, Slash, Dampen Pain (Klikniks)

The idea here is to Pistol Whip your opponent and have your pet do a good deal of DPS as the same time. The seven points in Ploy, Scndal and Smooth Move can be used anywhere as they are just filler to get to the Pistol Whip expertise. Your pet will have 3 slots for specials for cats use Bite, Claw and Slash; for bugs use Damage Poison, Claw and Slash. The cats do straight DPS and the bugs apply two DoT's; player preference here. I find this really effective in PvP as I cap Whip a medic in PvP and still have some ranged DPS after the pet dies.

Bounty Hunter:

Lizards: Provoke, Bite, Enfeeble, Disease, Bolster Armor
'nocks: Provoke, Bite, Flank, Wind Buffet, Health Leech

My favorite BH/BM build by far. Here you target your opponents action and damage output; from BH you have Dred and Intimidating Strikes to join with the Lizards Enfeedble and Disease specials. Don't panic when you seem to be losing early, keep fighting, soon your opponent will be trying to save action and panicking to get a heal off, and at the same time they are doing less damage to you! Another option here is the 'nock family of pets, that offer two debufs one that increases critical hits and an other that increases glancing blows.

Medic:

Lizards: Provoke, Bite, Enfeeble, Disease, Bolster Armor
Large Quad-Peds: Provoke, Charge, Stomp, Shaken, Trample, Dampen Pain

My favorite BM build, although it requires two pets in my opinion. You can do high end PvE and PvP. If you constantly PvP BH's will come for you have that Lizard out and ready. With Traumatize/Thyroid Rupture paired with Enfeeble/Disease combined with your heals, no one will kill you if your at the keyboard one on one. For mass PvP use the large pet with AOE's so you can get GCW without getting in the middle of the action. You will not have /drag, but do have stasis so you can kamikaze yourself and /area rez when needed. For Heroic Instances, the enfeeble/thyroid rupture is amazing against bosses, and you can heal everyone. I feel this is the best all around fit for BM.

Commando:

Large Quad-Peds: Provoke, Charge, Stomp, Shaken, Trample, Dampen Pain
Bugs: Provoke, Damage Poison, Claw, Slash, Dampen Pain

With Commando it gets down to player preference. Stand fast is all the rage right now, and it's fun too. But the fun of heavy weapons and the new goodies on the assault tab is tempting too. With pets it gets down to play style too. I'll keep saying it a traveling AOE root is just too much fun in PvP, and with commando you can DoT them all. The other option is to land a cold or acid DoT and let the Bug land it's poison and bleed DoTs. With the Assault build I recommend the large pet to root your opponent.

Officer:

Large Quad-Peds: Provoke, Charge, Stomp, Shaken, Trample, Dampen Pain (any pet with trample - include Nerfs)

Opposite faction hanging at the med center? /muhahahahah free GCW for you! You guessed it:

1.Zerg in on vehicle to EH spawn
2.Click the large pet on your toolbar (vehicel goes away - pet spawns)
3.Send teh pet in with Trample as first special -root a bunch of them
4.Artillery Strike
Yes, you will die depending on the number and quality of opponents, but if you have the Hellstrom set (like me) you take alot of them out, and you get rez'd by your buddies coming from behind the theater. This is my current build and man is this fun. Your heal will likely be pretty poor, so in PvE you really need a medic nearby. You have the supply drop line and some group buffs to offer players in your group as well. For the pets specials I use Shaken(due to the low heal) and of course Trample. On the officer side, you could swap out the supply line for whatever else you would like.

Jedi

Jedi is pretty straight forward: Pick any pet with any build. For Dark Jedi builds I would go with Cats and Bugs, with Light Jedi go with Larger Birds or Large Quad-Peds. For a PvP build I would stick with large Quad-Peds, for knock down effects, Trample, Shaken and similar attacks.

Spy

Large Quad-Peds: Provoke, Charge, Stomp, Shaken, Trample, Dampen Pain
Dogs: Provoke, Hamstring, Bite, Puncture

This is for the hardcore detect spy. No snipe and very little DPS. Your pets are to draw out the enemy and then to snare them so you can get away. Use your Decoy special to avoid damage, remember you take no direct damage while it's out. Look for the treasure map bracelet to add to your detect along with the recruiter binoculars.

Some Helpful Macros:

You need to use these simple macros to keep your pet on track.

In bunkers I use this first macro below to keep my pet near me; it will still get stuck often. You then have to get out of combat and store the pet and recall it.

MACRO NAME: follow
/ui action petToolbarSlot1;
/pause 1;
/macro follow;

When attacking a target that likes to move, especially other players this next macro is vital. I use 2 seconds so that the pet can fire it's special if ready before getting another command.

MACRO NAME: attack
/ui action petToolbarSlot0;
/pause 2;
/macro attack;

In instances the following macro is a MUST. During the instances that have heavy AOE's pets always die in the 1st couple seconds. The common solution is to store your pet and give up your cunning bonus, park it in a corner and activate this macro.

MACRO NAME: STAYYYYY
/ui action petToolbarSlot2;
/pause .5;
/macro STAYYYYYY;

PvP (Pet Vs. Player)

One of the many uses for pets is as tools of war in PvP combat. This isn't something to be taken lightly, it requires focus, attention and planning. For those interested here's some tips to help you and your pet survive and succeed in PvP situations.

Stay Sharp - Being aware of your surroundings in standard PvP is important but as a Beast Master it's absolutely vital. It's all to easy for you to accidentally allow your pet to wander deep behind enemy lines, far out of reach of your heals and assistance. Clever enemies will try to pull your pet away from you so they can dispatch it easier, dont let this happen.

Stay Back - Due to the fact that it takes most or all of a players expertise to be an effective Beast Master its never wise to be at the front of a fight. Generally speaking you will always be a softer target then an Non-BM of your same profession. Somewhere inbetween the front line and the medics is ideally where you'll want to be.

Stay Focused - Know your role and know the capabilities of your pet. If you have a Rancor/Graul rampaging beast of destruction that throws AOE's out like candy then keep your beast in clusters of densely packed enemy. If your critter is a direct damage throat ripping killing machine like most of the cats then keep it locked onto key targets that need to be removed with haste. And finally if you have a dibilitating action draining mean machine like a Kimo or Voritor then by all means, keep em permenantly trained on enemy medics.

The role of your beast - Different professions have different uses for beasts, and sometimes a players particular play style also will dictate what type of pet they need or want. Listed below are some of the more common roles beasts are used for. These are in no way the only uses for critters, they are simply some of the more common roles you'll see them in.

•Bounty Hunter- A fully leveled and trained pet can be a deadly addition to a bounty hunter when dealing with player bounties. For the most part BH will want to use their pets as additional DPS and as a distraction to let them dispatch their mark as fast as possible. The numerous other special attack types offered by various pet skills can compliment a BH's skillset nicely, making for evil combos to reduce a player mark's ability to fight back by a large amount.
•Medic - More so then any other class, medics have the potential to keep their beasts in a fight longer. The additional heals and buffs they have on hand go a long way towards turning their pets into juggernaughts of pain. For this reason alone they have some serious flexability in how they build their pets, they can afford to go with lower health or armor because their pets will be recieving much more healing during fights. On the flip side a defensive pet in the hands of a medic can make for a seriously tough pet to remove from a fight.
•Commando- Most pets used by Commando's will be to amplify the Mando's primary role, which is to cause carnage and mayhem on the battlefield. AOE's, additional dots, and the option for a snare are all things most mandos will be going for when gearing up with a pet. It's hard to ignore a mando in a fight so this gives their pets a slight advantage i nthat they may not always take as much fire as some other profs, especially in smaller fights.

Size Matters - As cool as some of the larger pets are visually, the larger the pets profile the bigger a target they are. Most players will attack rancors, grauls and kimos in fights just because they are so obvious and large. For this reason its probably wiser to go with smaller pets in large scale PvP, they will avoid attention far longer then the big nasties will. For some BM's (like myself) they will use a pet because they like how it looks, others will want any edge they can get to win. This is just one more thing to consider when brewing up your dream pet.

The pet toolbar - Mass PvP battle are chaotic enough without juggling a 2nd toolbar. To make your life easier be sure to right click on the specials you want your pet to use in any given fight, this will have your pet auto-activate them whenever they can while fighting. In addition you can make a very simple macro to auto fire your pets heal. You can dothis by going to your commands/macro/new macro area, select an icon, name and paste the following in the macro field.

/ui action toolbarSlotxx; <-------- xx would be 00-11, depending on where you have the heal located
/pause 10;
/macro xxx; <-------- xxx would be whatever name you gave the macro, this line allows the macro to loop

The Most Important Rule - The one thing that you need to remember above all is that the biggest weakness your pet has in battle IS YOU! Once you are dead or incapped your pets chances of living are drastically lowered. Keep this in mind when handling yourself in PvP battles and dont over extend yourself or get to far from your group.

Some Beast Master PvP notes:

•Keep your beast within 60 meters of you
•Keep your beast on PASSIVE while in PvP (to avoid it being pulled away from you)
•Get buffs for your beast whenever possible
•Synchronize your pet attacks with other BM's that your grouped with
•Use a pet heal macro