Mage: monster summoning II vs 51 Earth
 

Upon hitting the right level I started using ms2. I summoned a 51 Earth to handle roots and it was doing a lot better. Thought ms2 was king til 57?

I only use MS 2 if I'm chaining- it's 200mana vs the 300mana for the standard pets. They seem to be pretty comparable the earth pet in terms of hps, melee etc. so why not save the mana I guess.

If I'm in a group though I usually go with earth/air/water (fire is lols) as the mana cost is irrelevant and they have the useful procs. Plus you can give them some weapons (gnoll lariats, velium weaps, etc.) to make them a bit more useful. MS pets can't equip weapons/gear.

Honestly I've seen elsewhere also that MS 2 is the best pet 50 - 57 but I just don't see it. It's mostly green cons to me at level 54 and thus gets owned by mobs that are higher level than the pet. It was fun for a couple of levels though but at 54 I think water is superior in every way once you hit 54 and earth is probably roughly on par with MS at 51 (again, for extra 100 mana per cast). /shrug

Tuurin said it better than I could have.

One thing to note is once you're 56 you should start using Dyzil's Deafening Decoy solo and water pet (lvl 54) in groups. (backstab)

In terms of Chain casting, Monster 2 beats earth for the reason Tuurin mentioned. Mana 200 vs 300. If you know your pet isnt going to die, go with earth pet, more dps. If you know your pet is going to die than might as well use monster 2.

I ironically asked the same question in a private message to dafier last week. In my research, his posts kept popping up being an advocate for the MS2 over the earth pet 51 and how his testings seemed to contradict the wiki pages. When I consulted him, he confirmed that P99 nerfed the MS2 pet to have less HP and hit less often (at least to him it seemed they hit less often). As Baler and Tuurin have already mentioned, the main benefit the MS2 has over the earth pet is the mana efficiency.

I am interested in testing out the MS2 stats once I get a hold of a spell. For the time being, I'll continue to use the earth pet 51 and then switch over to the Dyzil's Deafening Decoy for solo and the water pet in groups once I'm high enough.

Where are you leveling? Mage groups are always fun to try out!

-Gandworf

lol...I just replied and it destroyed my message. long story short, the replies already are dead on.

If you are level 50 - 53 MS2 is generally the way to go if soloing. Use Air or Water in groups and if you are grouped with another pet class (mage or Necro), then choose a pet that has a decent HP pool and slap a DS on it with BO3/4.

:D

You know what i find?

Im no statistician, and i hardly run logs because im scurred it makes me crash more often. But i feel like the 51 earth pet summons the max level pet much more often than the MS2 or lvl 49 Focus'd earth pet ever does.

Not saying your opinion doesn't count or "add up" but, that's a fluke then.

I've run logs on that and spent hundreds of malachite trying to see if there was any weight to what you said and found no evidence at all. It's a simple chance.

NO ONE will ever release the formula used in their DB, but simply put, it's random, completely.

I'm currently level 50, and just got Monster Summoning II.

So MS2 pet has a max of 2800 HP that's stated on the wiki? Or is it 3200 like someone posted on the forums a while back?

Is there a point to using MS2 to solo at level 50? The 49 earth pet has a max hp of 2900, and can be augmented with my Shovel of Ponz to gain even more HP, right? If that's the case, why use MS2 over the 49 earth pet to chain pets?