So as Khaleesi, the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, I GMd my taming and proudly took my two freshly tamed dragons around destard for a spin. Come to find out, they are nothing more than sheep in lizard scales. They got smoked by an azure drake (at least i think that was the name), torn up by the ancient wyrm and humiliated by shadow wyrms (missed on the provoke and they ate me and my large lizards for a pre-workout meal. Basically they were able to kill other dragons of the same ilk but anything more and its trouble. My build is as follows: Mage/tamer/lore/vet/music/provo/disco(currently have meditation instead of disco but am going to drop it shortly to level disco up). Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
does training them make that much of a difference between "got their tails ripped off" to "won the fight" against the ancient wyrm?
Fresh tames can definitely kill some of the tougher mobs (Azure Dragon, Shadow Wyrm, Ancient Wyrm) though it's a bit riskier than using some trained up dragons, and you may need to gate out periodically to fully heal your pets. A good veterinary/healing macro will go a long way too, and making sure that poisons (especially deadly/lethal) are cured as soon as possible will ensure your pets stay alive as long as possible. As for training them, if you're going after big game, it's advised to at least get your pets' wrestling up to 100 as this will significantly increase their hit rate, and decrease how often they're hit. Using a shadow elemental, you can GM wrestling on two dragons and a nightmare in less than a night.
The stats of the dragons basically make such a little difference it's not even worth worrying about. What is important is their wrestle skill and resist, this is what will let them tank the damage when you are fighting a harder monster. Of course tactics/anat/magery/med is useful for their damage output. Make two dragons fight eachother until they GM these skills, and then you should be able to use them to tank most things. You might also take a look at the page on healing here, it has some info about vet skill as well. If you're sitting at 100/25/100 stats as most new players here start with, drop an int and put it into dex for an extra half second off your vet heals. You can crank up the dex to 51 by dumping some strength as well. HP is calculated by 50 + STR/2 here. Always have an event number of STR due to the way it rounds. If you have 94 STR, that still gives you 50 + 94/2 = 97 HP which is plenty, you won't even notice the missing 3 HP. Then drop your int down to 80 and you can get 51 dex, which will make your vet bandages do their job in 4 seconds. I think that's plenty to be able to tank any single creature in the game with a wrestle trained pet (and even 60 resist).
I'll echo what snap said 4 sec vet heals make a big difference, I run my tamers with 40 dex + a gm magery bless will get you to 51. When you are big game hunting throw on a bless as needed. Especially on a char with no med you will need as much int/Mana as you can get.
You're hunting bosses and difficult wyrms. Train those dragons all you want, you will probably still be smoked without help. BUT definitely don't bother with disco over med. You are going to find yourself with not enough mana to travel way too often. Disco is rarely useful. For smaller things, you don't need it. For bigger things, you fail, wait 10 seconds, fail, wait 10 seconds, fail fail fail, then you disco the thing when its 3/4 dead and it gains you nothing. Ie, it takes multiple tries to disco something that would actually be useful to disco. The one time disco is useful is for pet training. Discoed pets train up faster. That's all I use it for. ...my 2 cents.
Pets here are like human players. You wouldn't take a untrained dexter out to kill Lich Lords. I recommend training up all your pets. For birds, even chickens can become mean little darlings. With afk macroing skills here, if you choose, doesn't take long.
I disagree. Raw dragons can kill many if not most boss monsters with a little vet healing. Untrained humans, on the other hand, are useless. Fresh dragons start out really strong and just get better with training. Chickens, no, they can never be trained to a useable level. They will be one hit killed no matter what they fight no matter how trained up they are. I nkew a guy that spent days training up a pack llama and then it was still totally weak.
Sounds like your pvming high level spawn right from the start. Monarch Wyvern (dark greenish Wyvern) has a high level poison which vet cures the poison, on a rare occasion you might get a vet heal off before poison hits again but its tuff. You can solo kill them if your experienced but you might need a break to heal them up mid point. Azures (blue dragon) I usually have two tamers to kill them within a reasonable amount of time. Shadow Wyrms can turn your pet(s) onto you and are tuff opponents. If you can get two Shadow Wyrms provod then it's much easier. Ancient Wyrms have a confined area and somewhat constant spawn rate which makes them hard for a solo tamer. You can run your dex at 40-45 and drink a greater agility pot to get the shorter bandie timer. I'm with above post, disco is nice but med/mana is the way I'd go. I have a support disco macer and fail disco all the time on high end pvm. If your going to champ with this toon you'll need meditation for gating or casting blades on Rikktor. Play the build you like!
I didn't mean chickens can be high level killers. Meant in the bird realm. Some things don't have to be a "usable level" can be just for fun. I've used chickens to kill birds lol. Easier way to get feathers. Also some players enjoy in game "chicken fights" As for the "raw dragons" depends on lot of things, how many you are using against a boss, as you said on players vet skill, etc. Yes, pack animals are weak, but for defense, train them up to their highest potential , put on " all guard" A pker shows up, packy attacks pker, can buy you that extra couple seconds to recall out. sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Not every pet in game has to be a gold maker. Just a fun pet. My fav dragon is a red drake. They smack their lips when feed them. Graphics in game the lip smacking shows up best on the red ones.
