Pet Strategy January 2017

Pets were introduced in the fall of 2016.  At the time, I wrote a strategy guide to pets in CC which is still by far the most popular thing I have posted here.  By now there have been some important changes to the game, and I'd like to revisit what I wrote then and add some additional discussion.  First I'll lay out the changes to pets, then I'll look at some of the ramifications for a few aspects of CC play.

Changes Since Introduction

There have been several changes to the situation since pets were introduced.  Let's review.

The first thing is the addition of Yulephant, which happened in the December update.

Yulephant

Yulephant has a purely defensive talent: it shields two heroes against stun and fear, and gives them +30% dodge.   Yulephant is ideal for a hand-to-hand based attack, which often has to deal with stuns coming from magic towers.  For sniping attacks, he's less important, though still 30% dodge is nothing to sneeze at.  Give him to your third sniper if you snipe, or any hero in a HtH team.

The second change worth discussing is that we've had several months to get eggs and open them, so everyone should be getting the pets to medium levels.

My pets are now level 14 (one is level 15), with the rares being level 8 and 9, except Yulephant (the new one in the Christmas update) being level 4.  Unless you've slacked on opening eggs, or started the game after pets came in, you should have about the same.  You might have higher levels if you've been spending gems to open eggs.  Though I would not recommend that for most players.

(If you do plan to pay substantial gems to open eggs, there's an event which drastically reduces the price when you spend at least 24000 gems opening eggs.  It is called "Egg Hatch-A-Thon"; one is going on as I post this.  If it's over by the time you read this, I'd suggest waiting for it to come around again; there have been three so far.  Accumulate your eggs and wait for it.)

Egg Hatch-A-Thon rewards

With increasing pet levels come increasing pet skill maximums.    My average pets have max skill level of 6, while rares have 5.

The final big change to pets was a boost to their attack based on a fraction of the attack of the hero they are assigned to.  This attack boost happened in the December update.  Note that the hero's attack is his "base" attack stat, which is shown on the "Attributes" page for him when you look at him in the heroes altar.  This is determined by his level, his inscriptions and the attack boost of his crests.  War God and Bulwark do not affect it as a talent; as a crest you get each crest's attack bonus but not the bonus for a set.

It's a pretty big increase.  Just looking at my pets, most of them have gotten at least a 50% boost to their attack, and it is nearly 100% for my Aviar (assigned to my 199ee PD).  Does it matter?  We'll consider that...

Pet Offense Still No Big Deal

First off, let's discuss pet attacks as damage producers.  Even with the attack increase they get from their assisted hero, this is still a fairly minor effect.  My Little Havoc, for example, gets 2754 attack on his own, adding 1994 from my Druid (16% of the 8044+4421 shown on his Attributes).  He does 350% of this when he attacks.  So his total attack is 16618, and it has a cooldown of 4.6s.  Since he attacks only with his hero, and it goes 60% of the time, it will usually take him a couple tries to proc.  So, he might average one attack every 6 seconds or so.  Total DPS: ~2800.

By comparison, my Druid (181ee and inscription 90, berserk 5 talent) does 12465 every 0.8 seconds, so total DPS is 15581.  The pet is at least in the ballpark, and it will continue to increase whereas Druid has only a small amount of improvement possible.  But still, at least for now, the pet damage is a fraction of hero damage.  And note that pet damage does not get amplified by Cupid/PD/Druid effects.  Thus, compared to the effects of the pet skills, pet damage is still not worth worrying about much.  So, as in 2016, I am going to continue to ignore pet damage to heroes.

I do predict that as pet levels improve further, eventually I will want to revisit pet damage.

Pet Healing Is Getting Important

Now let's discuss pet healing.  Previously I felt it only really mattered for snipers.  But now I am beginning to notice its effects in several places.

Pets -- Angi and Bubblow -- are starting to make sniping attacks harder.

Bubblow in particular is starting to degrade my sniping attacks, particularly in guild wars.  A modern Bubblow should have around 2500 attack on its own; you can probably assign it to at least an evo1 hero for another 1500 or so.  At skill 6, it restores 390% hitpoints of the three allied heroes with lowest HP every 4.5s.  The total heal can be up to 45000 hitpoints; the total HPS (heal per second) can get up to 10000.  That's... a lot.

10000 HPS is not going to be enough to drastically change a hand-to-hand fight involving many high level heroes on both sides.  My Druid has 15500 DPS of melee damage.  A team of six heroes, many of them with offensive procs, will do many times that.  (Never mind adding a PD/Druid/Cupid boost.)

However, in combat involving only a few heroes, 10000 HPS is a lot.  It will matter when sniping in many modes.  It will also appear in limited contexts such as Torch Battle guards.

As an example, I often snipe with the combo of Warlock and Aries.  Both of mine are level 195e; both of their attacks are right around 11200, although Warlock gets another 25% from his War God crests.  When sniping, Aries procs about every 9 seconds; this does 33600 to five heroes.  So his DPS is 18666.  Warlock procs every 8.4 seconds, doing ~64400 to three heroes.  So his DPS is 23000.  Total DPS for the two of them is around 40000.  So, you can see that even a lone Bubblow is going to make sniping considerably harder: you need 25% more buildings.   Give Bubblow to an evo2 hero, especially one with high level offensive crests (War God, Berserk).  That will make any base very hard to snipe, at least for me.  Even a base with an "easy" sniping layout.

Snipers need to up their damage rate, which did not matter much before.  (See my sniping guide for the reasoning.)  So, evolve your snipers if you have not already.  If you have evo1 snipers, think about how you can go to evo2.  Also consider offensive crests and talents.  Before it did not matter if you had Tenacity or Wargod on your sniper; increasingly it does.

You can also counter defensive healing to some degree by adding more snipers, so as to increase their net remote DPS.  For example, I might add my Griz into a sniping attack.  He is evo2 199, and War God 6, for total offense of 23100 DPS; added to the 40000 DPS of Warlock and Aries he makes it harder for Bubblow and Angi to keep up.

One more place where pet healing is starting to be effective is in many-vs-one fights, aka boss battles.  I discovered this accidentally.  I have my Team Dungeons team set up for Lava3, using a team with no healer in it.  But I missed some Lavas for various reasons, and needed to use up my tries in Mesa4.  I used my unmodified team without thinking.  The Mesa started and I realized what happened, but then I was amazed to see that all the damage I was taking was being healed.  It was all the Bubblows and Angis.  I have used it several times hence, mostly in pickup Mesa4, and I have never lost a hero.

It is tempting to try Wretched Gorge 3 without my Druid.  There are DPS heroes I could put in instead... but I have not tried this yet.

I have also noticed some fails in Wretched Gorge 3 that I suspect are related to pet healing.  The final demon does a fair amount of damage, but I think with an Angi or two heal/guarding a hero and several Bubblows healing it, many heroes can take the damage.  Eventually we are going to have to reconsider what sort of teams to have and where heroes go.

Pet Skills

Finally, let's discuss spending on pet skills.  Last year I advised everyone to max all the skills! they're cheap!  That was true enough.  But now, at level 5->6, skills cost 75000 skill experience, which means 3750 shards.  That's still not a huge amount, but it's significant.  So, while I generally stand by the advice I gave last year, there are a few pets who you might be able to scrimp on.

Finix with skill 5

First is Finix.  His attack slows the enemy.  Generally it is never going to make or break any slowdown team to have this.  So you can leave it low to save shards.

Second, Doom Balloon.  DB only affects buildings, so unless killing buildings is important to you, you can leave his skill low.  If you are doing the "DD cheese" attack for GW/raiding, then you can use Doom Balloon effectively and may want to max his skill.  Otherwise, it is not important and you can leave it at a low level.  (Mine has level 3.)  You might want to put a little into it if you are pushing dungeons.