Which mage pet is best dps, the pet won't be tanking and shouldn't be getting hit. Is it the 60 Water or 59 Air?
Between 60 Water and 59 Air pets, the 60 Water pet will not only be more DPS, but is less likely to draw aggro than the Air pet since the Air pet has a stun proc built in.
To my understanding, the highest Fire pet is usually better DPS (at least on raid bosses), but situationally you can get better DPS on other mobs.
The fire pet absolutely destroyed the others in terms of straight DPS. Make sure to position it in a group where it will melee (as it self roots). I have seen around 120 to 160 DPS while not tanking from it. And even higher when he does. Just make sure to malo the mobs, the nuke is the majority of the damage and is resisted a lot more often without malo.
While I like that post, I need to nuance a bit, even in group content you won't get 120-160 dps constantly with a fire pet (assuming you use the level 58 one of course), that's too much. You may have spikes, yes, but in the long run your dps will be lower because the fire pet randomly spaces its nuking, so it's only partially a machine gun. I haven't parsed group content with fire pet where I prefer epic usually, on raids the maximum I've seen in Luclin would be around 70 dps under ideal circumstances (non fire resistant boss, clear line of sight, no aoe, long fight where you can use at least once Frenzied Burnout). Be sure to park the fire pet away from the group or from where the tank stands and fights mobs, and be sure to have a clear line of sight for the pet, you'll get higher dps. If the pet melees, its dps will go down because it is a poor meleer and it will nuke less. If you have a druid, use systematically Ro's Smoldering Disjunction and the Breath of Ro dot, they give additional fire resistance debuffs to the Malo line. Don't forget your fire pet is a level 48 NPC which nukes higher level mobs than itself. I haven't parsed water in group content because I rarely use this pet now, but you should also give it a try and check if fire is significantly higher dps in Luclin era. High AC mobs disadvantage water over fire, fire resistant mobs disadvantage fire over water, so chose accordingly. However, a water pet, while not meant to tank, might hold a mob a few more seconds than a fire pet if things get ugly and buy that enchanter the time for a mez. That said, by using water or fire, you go the dps route, which is fine of course. But you lose your ability to do ghetto mez, /pet hold-stop offtanking an add, snapping aggro quickly with an epic or air pet, with taunt on, to assist your chanter/shaman while he mezzes or slows (you send pet with taunt on on chanter/shaman target), and so on... Be aware of what you lose and remember pets can be used as a secondary crowd control tool (epic, air, and to some extent earth for ghetto mez) and not only a dps tool. And always equip your pets with Phantom Armor and summoned jewelry to gain a bit more AC and hps (and, no, sorry, the fire pet does not benefit from nuke foci, no pet does, whatever the focus). And don't forget to Velocity them, it's a bit faster than SoW and it is crucial to keep pet under a movement buff.
That should take you... 5 seconds ? Keep Summon Companion memmed or use a Summon Companion clicky ;-)
Fire pet DPS goes up significantly when you can get it into melee range. I've had groups tell me they have never seen a mage pet do the kind of damage I can with good melee pet positioning and forcing melee. I was not exaggerating when I said 120-160.
Well, ok, let's do some tests and parse a meleeing fire pet in group content, nothing beats experimental proof in EQ. But please remember if one of us gets 120-160 dps on one mob, it means nothing. We need to calculate the average dps the fire pet will reach, not dps spikes. And we need to make sure it is in melee range for every mob. And do not cheat and do not use FBO every time the AA pops please (and no damage proccing pet weapons either)
Here a log on Seru we can use as counter-reference and call it the "raiding fire pet under ideal circumstances" : The log time is long enough to be significant (437 seconds which is not the entire fight but the first sequence before I had to switch to adds) ; The pet does not melee at all, it is parked on the central platform with a clear line of sight; Every nuke hits for full, not one resist or partial resist (504 damage, whereas in group content it will be 629) : 51 nukes which make 25.704 damage ; No use of Frenzied Burnout. As you can see, a 'nuking raiding fire pet' reaches 60 dps in this 'ideal' fight. It nukes only every 8.5 seconds (51 nukes in 437 seconds), so it is only a partial machine gun as I already said - that doesn't mean it nukes, stops 8.5 seconds, nukes again, etc, actually it nukes several time in a row and then does nothing for seconds randomly. I checked the other log sequences, the dps is always between 59 and 65. The difference is explained by the variance in nuke spacing and FBO which I used once. So this is the parse I suggest we use to compare with a fire pet in group content and mixing melee and nuke damage.
Great info and presentation as always! I do not raid yet, so my info is strictly from groups. Opening combat with a nuke, pulling into melee range for the duration of the fight, depending on nuke RNG cool down (seems to be anywhere from 2 - 12 seconds apart) I see 120+ constantly. I am sure your numbers are correct in a raid environment, and while not in melee range, or utilizing its DS (which can parse upwards of 200 when tanking). Also there seems to be some sort of internal timer when the pet will chain nuke, so on short fights it may burst at the beginning almost every time, however in a 4-5 minute fight that will average out, as you said, to about once every 8-9 seconds (which feels long to me). I think we are talking about two very different data sets, in two very different encounter types.
Thank you Delph Let's parse and see what numbers will come out of the hat. I expressed my doubts because the gap between 60 dps and 120-160 dps seemed way too big to me. MotM in Luclin is only a -20% malus, so the nuke dps on a group mob would be 72 dps. If your hypothesis is correct, that would mean the pet gains additional 50 to 90 dps through meleeing - and fire pet is the worst melee pet out of all. If you add DS damage, it means the pet is tanking, I think you have a very open minded cleric in your group, he
Hey, Delph, guess what... You were partially right . Yesterday, I parsed a meleeing fire pet to see what numbers I would get and I was surprised to get higher values than I expected : Scarlet Desert on Sun Revenants (and these tend to be fire resistant) : combined on 14 mobs, 90 dps ; Maiden's Eye in front of Akheva : combined on 24 fights, 100 dps (mobs are higher level but not fire resistant). But I got close values with a tanking epic pet (I cheated a little bit and gave it two sarnak summoner's daggers though he...) : Acrylia Caverns (undeads before Inner port up and first rooms in Inner) : combined on 14 fights, 101 dps ; Akheva Ruins (in front of Va'Dyn room) : combined on 44 fights, 92 dps. As you can see, the dps is comparable although the daggers raised a bit the epic pet's one which would have done less without them. DS damage is counted in for epic which was tanking. To be honest, I didn't expect a meleeing fire pet to match or outdps a tanking epic pet with proc weapons. While my samples are still a bit small to draw statistical conclusions, I obviously underestimated the damage a meleeing fire pet can do (both pets of course got the same burnout buff) - I still need to compare it to a non-tanking fire pet nuking from far away in group content though to verify if it does less dps, but theoretically it should be 70 dps as explained before. That said, it's not 120-160dps as your friend told you. I have fights where these values are reached, but that is burst dps. If you combine the fights, you get a lower average dps value. The problem with the fire pet is the irregularity of nukes which generates a higher variance in single dps logs.
