Thread: Pet statistics (DPS, flank rate)

Probably the most useful thing I've ever read on the forums.

It confirmed a few ideas (bear being the best dmg dealer at later levels) and helped me figure out a huge problem in my pet usage (couldn't figure out why my raven hardly flanked and was always out of power ).

It is funny that for most situations, whether group or solo, I will be running with either the bear or the raven which are the first pets you ever get.

I will say that you nailed the following points:
1. Lynx is great between about 30 and 50. Surprise strike is just beautiful.
2. Bog Guardian is a bit difficult to handle and position which is a turn off for me.
3. Sabercat shines in things like skraids and bigger skirms. The AoE dmg combined with a warrior allows me to roflstomp duo skirms by myself because all that AoE dmg keeps the 10 mobs off me unless I go ISG, lightning or ents too early.

One point that I think you could have touched on was the fact that ranged auto-attacks on the bog guardian make kiting possible. Most pets just end up chasing the massive mob you are kiting so the ranged autoattacks are kind of nice in tricky situations. Also, it is the only pet that can provide flanks, dps, and FM's while staying out of AoE range.

Overall amazing guide, +rep.

Thanks for the feedback.

That's a good point about the bog-guardian and kiting - it's not often that you want to use it, but there's certainly situations where it can be useful.

The DPS thing is interesting. I never did exact testing, but my recollection is that at level 65 all of the pets did about the same damage as they do now (topping out about about 80dps for the bog-guardian) - except the bear. I think the bear is the only pet that's actually had its damage scale with the level cap increase. I'm not sure whether DPS levels while levelling have changed post RoI but it'd be interesting to see if the bear having the highest DPS is only true at end game. It certainly shouldn't be the case, the bog-guardian should win out here (and it did at 65 by quite a margin from what I remember).

PS. it's no wonder i hardly ever use these forums nowdays. Not only has the first reply there done the "go above the OP" thing, but I had to click on the lore-master forum about a dozen times after logging in before it would do anything other than boot me back to the top level, and the first couple of times that I was finally able to hit reply, the reply box was greyed out and unable to be clicked on :@

You guys might be interested in my latest column, which reports some statistics on pets which I recently put together. I put together stats on DPS, attack speed and flank rate. It's too hard to format all the stats for the forums, but the conclusions I reach from them are:

• The eagle is the highest flanking pet, doing an average of 3.0 flanks per minute compared to 2.5 for the bog-guardian and 2.3 for the raven.
• The bear has approximately the same flank chance as the raven, but it has a 50% slower attack speed and so only actually flanks half as often.
• As expected, the lynx has a truly awful flank rate.
• All of the pets do pathetic damage in the context of level 75 mobs, but the bear had significantly higher DPS than any other pet, including the bog-guardian.
• In the 152 attacks recorded, the bear didn’t miss a single time which was very surprising.
• The legendary status of the eagle and bog-guardian pets (which gives +1 level) doesn’t actually seem to give them a higher hit chance than the other pets.

Check out the article for a full overview of pets and these stats .

I found the most interesting part of this post to be the highest DPS - who would have thought it would be the bear?

Thanks for putting all this together, PB.

Two small mistakes that I spotted: The recipe for Raven talismans can now be bought from jeweller vendors. It still drops off mobs as far as I know, but it is now in reliable supply at every crafting hub as well. And the Ember Eagle is not Store-bought; a talisman for it can be made with the standard random-drop recipe. IIRC the Eagle only has one Store-exclusive skin, the Tundra Eagle skin.

Nice written but I found a few mistakes:

Rawen: Windlore and Distractions make together -75% ranged dmg, not -100%.

Eagle: Its aura has 60 ICPR and will have 85.2 ICPR at lvl 75 with u7

Spirit of Nature: nature's gift - it's not a 10% of spirit's morale, it is a 10% of target's morale, so the number is between 600-2500 because it is affected by incomming healing rate.

And my opinion about bog-guardian buff-food. Its skills have short cd in comparison to almost all other pets, so it spends its power too quickly in longer fights. And ca +500 at lvl 75 are 3-4 more attacks. On the other hand, lm can give him his own power.

I use in landscape lynx with blue set of ToO - thread-reflecting Air-lore. It can hold good thread of more mobs on himself with air-lore. There are certainly more effective possibilities how to play, but this my fun in this game.

Estelrandir already mentioned the small mistakes.

The only thing i'd like to add:

I'm not a fan of "coolest skin". I don't think it should be part of the column. it jusrt depends on personal flavour.
For example: I really like the asheneagle. My default eagleskin. Simple, grey and subtle. Something I like for my LM. I can't stand the embereagle , too eyecatching.

Thanks for the article. It matches a lot of what my gut was telling me, but never could have won a agrumenent with.

I did not realize the raven mitigations stacked, in a 6 man that would rock.

I LOLed at your abuse of the eagle..... I do to. I take as much as I can, die, get rezzed and win. After that I use the raven for 10 min and switch back.

Great article Doc.

My tests (without combat analysis at the time.. i used something like an offline log parser, cant remember the name right now...) showed that the eagle was the most reliable flanker. I'm pretty sure, although i cant prove it, that the eagle has a hidden skill (much like eyepeck for interrupts) that actually flanks. It must be in a 15-20 second cooldown and it fires according to attack. I need to test it with SoW: Rage, Captains War-Cry and Minstrel Attack Speed ballad to confirm this. There's nothing this certain in Lotro's RNG anywhere, therefore if it's not in RNG it should be a timed skill...

As for the Bog-Lurker did you test the Melee Flank and DPS vs the Ranged Flank and DPS? From my earlier tests i found them to be very different. If i remember correctly the Melee Flank Rate is much higher than the Ranged Flank Rate. Also, one bonus for the Bog-Lurker (hidden again, like some of the eagles skills) is it's permanent Stun Immunity.

Edit: This is what you get for reading things without my morning cofee. Of course you did the test of ranged vs melee. Disregard this part.

Also, the Sabre-Cat is awesome if you use the old lvl 75 Moors Set (Skills have no induction when your pet crits). Since it is aoe and it crits fairly often, its a huge bump in DPS if you manage to keep it alive. Also, you can still by the lvl 65 Moors set for a minimal amount of commendations and straight up trade for the lvl 75 version. I use it alot for the increased morale and the huge bump in Tactical Mitigtion (i have around 10k tact mitigation if i trait correctly), which is awesome for fights like Saruman and Lightning T2. Of course you loose a huge chunk of Will... but its a fair trade.

P.S. Even though i don't have time for my blog anymore (Specially with yours around ;-)), that Flanked article still gets its fair share of pageviews. I'm glad its still a reference.

Originally Posted by Tatuaje

I did not realize the raven mitigations stacked, in a 6 man that would rock.

Hmm.. I thought I read that they don't stack, but the affect is only fellowship-wide. So, in a raid, 2 ravens are useful if the LMs are in different groups.

That was a great article -- thank you, OP!

Great article. +rep

One minor suggestion is to make the bog lurker into 2 columns, one showing the ranged attacks and another showing the melee attacks.

As others noted, the Spirit of Nature gives 10% of the player's morale, not the pet's morale. Hence, buffing the pet's morale does not add to its healing ability.

Also, an important thing about the Spirit is that it is one of the more survivable pets. It doesn't draw aggo and can flank from a distance, allowing it to say out of AOE range (without the need to micromanage its movements).

I'm kinda lazy and like to put Nature's Gift on autocast, with the exception of a few situations where you want to use it strategically (e.g. Dargnakh).

EDIT:
In thinking further, I don't think it's entirely fair to turn off the Lynx's surprise attack, especially given that you enabled the other pet skills. I can somewhat see why you'd do it for this test, but the main reason to use this pet is for that initial attack.

Further, I couldn't help but feel the irony in excluding the sabertooth because of its main value for AOEs. We're LMs, after all.

That said, it's still a valuable article. Many thanks.

Thanks for the comments guys and particularly for picking up some of the errors. I'll edit in some of the more consequential ones. Some good additional tips here too, esp like the interraction between the sabre-cat and the PvMP set. I also might get around to doing bog-guardian ranged parses at some stage, it's a good idea.

Rawen: Windlore and Distractions make together -75% ranged dmg, not -100%.

How sure are you of this? because I'm right in that it makes mobs come in and attack you (provided you have aggro), I've done it dozens of times. I always assumed this must mean that they realised they were doing no ranged damage - why would they come into melee if they could still do 25% ranged damage?

Re: suprise attack - the reason it's not fair to turn it off is that it biases the stats quite severely. Given that I can't use a training dummy for the parse, and what I'm trying to measure is DPS over a sustained period of time, the fact that I'm killing 5 individual mobs, giving the suprise attack 5 opportunities to be used, would unnecessarily increase the lynx's DPS. Also, it simply wasn't feasible for me to test AOEs, it's not really practical to do any sort of controlled testing of AOE damage given the number of variables and the additional complication that it's going to be pretty hard to keep your pet alive vs 2+ mobs at once.

And I had to lol@ the complaint about "coolest skin" - lighten up . Of course people can have different opinions, my main point for putting them there was I think many people still don't realise that there are such things as cosmetic skins for pets so I wanted to show some of them off.

Originally Posted by PsychobabbleJJ

Thanks for the comments guys and particularly for picking up some of the errors. I'll edit in some of the more consequential ones. Some good additional tips here too, esp like the interraction between the sabre-cat and the PvMP set. I also might get around to doing bog-guardian ranged parses at some stage, it's a good idea.



How sure are you of this? because I'm right in that it makes mobs come in and attack you (provided you have aggro), I've done it dozens of times. I always assumed this must mean that they realised they were doing no ranged damage - why would they come into melee if they could still do 25% ranged damage?

Re: suprise attack - the reason it's not fair to turn it off is that it biases the stats quite severely. Given that I can't use a training dummy for the parse, and what I'm trying to measure is DPS over a sustained period of time, the fact that I'm killing 5 individual mobs, giving the suprise attack 5 opportunities to be used, would unnecessarily increase the lynx's DPS. Also, it simply wasn't feasible for me to test AOEs, it's not really practical to do any sort of controlled testing of AOE damage given the number of variables and the additional complication that it's going to be pretty hard to keep your pet alive vs 2+ mobs at once.

And I had to lol@ the complaint about "coolest skin" - lighten up . Of course people can have different opinions, my main point for putting them there was I think many people still don't realise that there are such things as cosmetic skins for pets so I wanted to show some of them off.

He is right with range damage. Mobs runing into melee becouse thats how raven's skill Distraction works, even if You use it on mob not debuffed with Wind-lore they do same.

Cheers,

Really nice summary and details, appreciate all the work that went into this!

Ever since I read this, I've thrown my Lynx away for the Bear and had terrific results, he seems to Flank alot too, and so he should !

Recently got the Sabre-Cat ...so I'll see how he fares.

Yes + Rep. A very nice summation. I always preach that all the pets have situational place. There is no good or bad pet. But you have to learn when to use them.

That said, since Isengard release I went back to the Bear (With Tundra Cub skin LOL!) as my default (Not my always) whether soloing or in groups. As nice as the eagle rez can be, I die less overall if I can ISG everything anyway, so I don't see much point in the eagle anymore. If I was to choose a group content default, It is looking more and more like the spirit imho the more I get use to it.

Anyway, thanks for the hard work and sharing. Happy Hunting!

Originally Posted by PsychobabbleJJ

How sure are you of this? because I'm right in that it makes mobs come in and attack you (provided you have aggro), I've done it dozens of times. I always assumed this must mean that they realised they were doing no ranged damage - why would they come into melee if they could still do 25% ranged damage?

In the first place, you are right, that the rangers after windlore and distractions go in melee. But they go also in melee, if they don't have any ranged debuff. Not allways, not immidiently, but they do that. Who knows why. Maybe because in melee they can do more dmg as if they would do ranged dmg.

This thing you must test on hunter. I tested it. He could still make some ranged dmg.

It suffers a form of diminishing returns. If you could theoretically apply another -50% ranged dmg debuff then the debuff would be -87.5% dmg.

At least, that is how I understood it

Ok, I just got my Bog Guardian at lvl 59, and he does by far the highest damage of all my pets at this lvl. Bear has higher autoattack damage, but Guardian crits like crazy and has faster attack speed so his overall dps seems much higher then bear. Maybe this changes by lvl 75, but for now I can clearly see why guardian is a capstone trait, Ill even try to play few lvls with even though I was always MoNF traited.

yeah, this was true for me too at level 65, I remember doing some testing and the bear was ~25-30dps while the bog-guardian was closer to 90. But at the new level cap, it's no longer true - it's like the bear is the only pet whose damage has actually scaled with the level increase.

Originally Posted by PsychobabbleJJ

yeah, this was true for me too at level 65, I remember doing some testing and the bear was ~25-30dps while the bog-guardian was closer to 90. But at the new level cap, it's no longer true - it's like the bear is the only pet whose damage has actually scaled with the level increase.

Well that certainly sucks I guess Ill have to enjoy it while it lasts and then go back to MoNF.

Originally Posted by KopachGrobova

Well that certainly sucks I guess Ill have to enjoy it while it lasts and then go back to MoNF.

Yeah, blue isn't actually a terrible soloing build from a DPS perspective while levelling up. I did some testing on enedwaith giants (with a guard tanking) at level 65 to work out the gap between MoNF and KoA for sustained single target DPS. IIRC I could do about 450 sustained in MoNF and somewhere between 350-375 sustained in KoA, and you obviously have way more survivability and less DPS loss from induction knockbacks in KoA. Factoring against it is that you have much worse burst (which is primarily what soloing is) and very little AOE. But if you like the playstyle, go for it and you aren't even gimping your damage too much!

Of course, this was before the RoI combat/stat changes so things may have changed, idk.