The basics of E6 pet building guide

[mistrose]

This guide is not intended to provide specific information on how to build your pets. I will not go into details on the differences between petclass and non-petclass builds nor any other specific build types. Rather it is intended to familiarize you with the basics of pet building and provide you with some tools that will make planning your build easier. Some of the information may seem like common sense to experienced players but it is important for the newer players to understand it. In most cases a generic type of name will be used for a pets skill in order to try and keep this simple. I am also not going to try to re-invent the wheel, there are several very good guides posted already with specific build information in them. Check out some of the links provided for more detailed information on builds.

If you do find any errors, omissions or have constructive feedback I would love to hear it and will do my best to update this guide. Please feel free to link to or repost this article in part or in its entirety as well as the worksheet.


Planning:
Try to plan ahead as to what it is you are going to expect your’ pet to do. Will your pet need to tank, deal damage, support or perhaps something in between. Having this idea in mind will help you in planning out where you will need to spend your pets job points and will help you avoid getting skills early on to levels you may never need them at later or leave you wishing for some of those job points back. An important thing to note is also the timing of when you level skills. It is very easy to start raising skill levels of wanted or needed skills early on. Then suddenly your pet hits level 95 and you find out that you do not have enough job points to max out it’s unity! So you must plan ahead to reserve those job points or you will have to wait until your pet levels further in order to max the skill out.

The template:
All pets of all tiers use the same type of template for their skills. Now these skills will vary of course but this is a good point to keep in mind when you start to plan your pet build. In other words a good tank build for an orc will be a good tank build for a yeti and an angel and so on. Yes you may need to tweak a few things to fit your particular pet and class but this is much easier once you have a plan and understand the basics.

Evolution:
You can evolve you pets at level 50 for evo 2 and 100 for evo 3. To over breed them you evolve them at level 60 for evo 2 and 115 for evo 3. You should make sure to over breed all your pets, if you do not do so you will have lost out on 25 job points when they reach max level. So by waiting to evolve your pet at level 60 rather than level 50 you gain an extra 10 job points, hence the 60 +10. By waiting to evolve your pet from 100 to 115 you gain 15 more job points, so that is where the 115 + 25 comes from if you have ever wondered. OK, one more time just to make this clear, do not gimp your pets by evolving them early!

Job points:
If you fully over breed your pets they will have a total of 175 job points available to them when they reach 150. Now at first glance this looks like an awful lot of job points, but when you take into account the large number of skills available versus the cost of the skills it is not. There are not enough job points available to make any pet fit every roll.

Skill areas:
There are four main skill areas: Actives, Passives, Toggles and Racial Skills. Higher levels of a pets skills are made available at several different levels and evolutions. The percentage or amount added to a pets skill varies by the tier of the pet. Again in most cases I am using a rather generic description of the skill.

Actives:

• 2 hit skill – 2 hit skill % based on pets attack type
• 1 hit with a debuff skill – 1 hit with a chance to apply a specific debuff
• A blind/fear skill – Does no damage, higher levels raise the time the debuff lasts
• 1 hit stun – Does damage with a chance to stun
• 3 hit skill – 3 hit skill % based that does a lot of damage
• AoE skill – Endgame skill AoE with a chance to DoT

These skills are one of the 2 cornerstones of your pets build. These are the skills that that give your pet its ability to heal, stun, nuke or smash whatever it is you are fighting. Some actives are more beneficial at higher levels than others. The levels and skills you choose will be dictated by the type of build you are aiming for. Obviously with some pets, such as blue pixies or sirens, some of these skills are a heal or debuff rather than a strike.

Passives:
I break passives down into four categories; Primary, Secondary, Overbred and Card Ability.

Primary Passives:

• Awakening of P/M Attack
• Awakening of P/M Defense
• Item Expert - Gives the pet a % of the stats of equipped items
• Armor Unit - % bonus given for the pet using specific armor type
• Weapon Unit - % bonus given for the pet using a specific weapon type
• Edens Blessing - Raises all of your pets stats
• Awakening of Regeneration - % based regeneration bonus

These are the second cornerstone of your pets build. Each pet gets an Attack and Defensive passive. These passives are magic, physical or a combination of the two in nature. They weigh heavily into the role of your pet in its build. Also included in here are the obvious must have passives of Item Expert and Weapon Unit. The Armor Unit passive may be suspect at times. For a pet such as an orc that gains 10% max HP for wearing warrior armor this passive is a must have, for others such as a blue pixie whose passive is for mage armor it may not need the additional MP but leaving that pet in warrior armor may increase it’s survivability. Pets also get Eden’s Blessing at level 149 which costs 2 job points per level for a maximum of 2 levels but raises all the pets stats by one per level. This should be considered a very good skill to save job points for due to the low job point cost compared to the overall gain. For 4 job points your pet gains what would have cost you 12 job points if you had leveled up the overbred blessings. The last passive I include here is Awakening of Regeneration which is unlocked at level 140. This skill will grant the pet a percentage based regeneration increase in one or more areas. Again it is a pretty good bump when compared to some other skill costs.

Secondary Passives:

• Blessing of Body – Increases the pets max HP
• Blessing of Soul – Increases the pets max MP
• Meditation – Increases the pets HP regen rate
• Clarity – Increases the pets MP regen rate
• Sharp Vision – Increases the pets accuracy

Certain blessings can also play a role in your pets build. Blessing of body, Blessing of Soul, Clarity and Meditation can all be very useful depending on your build.

Overbred Passives:

• Blessing of Strength – Raises STR 1 point for each JP spent
• Blessing of Intelligence – Raises INT 1 point for each JP spent
• Blessing of Agility – Raises AGI 1 point for each JP spent
• Blessing of Vitality – Raises VIT 1 point for each JP spent
• Blessing of Dexterity – Raises DEX 1 point for each JP spent
• Blessing of Wisdom – Raises STR 1 point for each JP spent

Overbred passives may be able to make a tank pet an even better tank by investing job points into something such as Blessing of Vitality. But you need to use caution here as these passives cost one job point for each level and can quickly chew up your pets job points. For each job point used, the pet gains one stat point added to the applicable stat.

Toggles:

• Unity – Adds a specific stat increase to both the pet and the player while the pet is summoned
• Threat – Either increases or decreases the threat level of the pet when it is active.

The new unity toggles should be considered must have skills which need to be maxed out in almost all builds. Each pet has its’ own unique unity. Threat toggles should be considered an optional skill area depending on purpose and build of the pet.

Racial Skills:

• Item Creation – Creates a race specific item which is then used when the pets racial skill is used. This item has a timer on it.
• Racial Skill – This is the skill that consumes the racial item when activated. It has an area of effect on players and pets within the players party.
• Potion Creation – Pets can create a potion that has the same affect as their unity. You must have a bottle purchased from an NPC when this skill is used. The item can be traded sold or consumed.
• Encouragement – Or also known as Inspiration, this skill is a very short duration AoE that affects players and pets within the players party that will temporarily increase specific stats.

These are considered party skills that can benefit not only you and your pet but also your siege or dungeon party. The value of these skills is entirely dependent on what you will be using your pet for. They are not cheap job point wise so think carefully about these skills.

Card Ability/Belt Stats:
The pets card ability passive gives a stat increase to the player when the creature card is equipped on the players belt. At a total cost of 4 job points, this passive is one which may not gimp your pets build.

Updates:
Jan 01, 2009 - New link added
Jan 25, 2009 - New link added
Jan 31, 2009 - Text corrections
Jul 31, 2009 - New link added
Sep 19, 2009 - Link updated
Oct 9, 2009 - Text and Link updates
Nov 23, 2009 - Links updated
Dec 11, 2009 - New link added

[mistrose]

How to use the worksheet:

In order to simplify the planning of building your pet I have designed a small worksheet. This worksheet will work for all pets but you may have to substitute some skill descriptions or names in the appropriate areas. I have left the overbred passives as well as the elemental passives from this worksheet. There is space to add this skills under the miscellaneous column if you so choose. This worksheet should help you to research, plan ahead and provide a simple visual reference rather than trying to skill a pet on the fly. You may also find it useful to build your pet backwards. That is, start at must have skills at its maximum level at evo3. This will allow you to see what job points you will need to reserve early on while raising your pet. Alternately you can max out some skills early on to make it stronger and then use the magic pet respec potion if you take it all the way to 150. No matter what, plan ahead and make sure you will have the needed job points at each level. I made the worksheet an image file just to be able to share it easier. Please feel free to slice, dice or modify it to suit your needs.

[mistrose]

Useful links:

Detailed information about pet skills, this is a great place to learn about specific pet skills and to start planning your build.
http://rappelzcharacters.com/db_viewpetskills.php

A very handy visual reference and overview of pet skills, stats and abilities for all pets in one big happy spot. Also a great way to compare pets of differing tiers.
http://angelite.awardspace.us/e6pet.html

Soloing dungeons in E5 Part 2. A recent post from the wonderful cammy / ZooZoo. Although not directly a post about pets and builds, it has a lot of excellent advice about what it will take to dungeon solo as a Soul Breeder. The information in there can help all classes in my opinion.
http://rappelz-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=934616

ZooZoo’s pet FAQ. Some very good general information about pets:
http://rappelz-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=426&t=844023

ZooZoo’s Epic 5 pet builders guide. Although cammy has posted prominently that the guide is not complete or fully up to date it is a great place to look at different types of builds that will allow you to compare build types as well as a place to start in planning your build:
http://rappelz-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=423&t=825243

Discussion and information comparing the merits of the passive skills MP Regen vs MP Expansion vs Overbred INT and HP Regen vs HP Expansion vs Overbred VIT.
http://forum.ancientkingdom.org/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=1522

Stats and their effects. Although titled for characters under E4, these stats are still accurate and relevant. A handy reference when trying to decide which stones you want to use or if you are considering overbred stat passives.
http://rappelz-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=533603

Interactive pet builder. A handy tool to see how different builds break down and their associated job point cost. It appears to still have a couple of bugs here and there in the English version but they do seem to be actively updating it.
http://bdorappelz.fr/index.php?page=pet_builder_en

Excel sheet to calculate Pet leveling/Char leveling, very cool spreadsheet that tells you what level you will be when your pet will reach the target level you input.
Pet leveling spreadsheet

Rappelz Wiki - This fan site has very reliable information on pets, classes and other assorted information.
http://rappelz.wikia.com/wiki/Rappelz_Wiki

[xkassidyx]

Rogton Rules ^_^ This NEEDS to be stickied seeing as they KoS'ed our pet forum -_-

[predatortoto]

Fantastic. Great worksheet, very easy and simple to use. thank u very much for your hard work ^^

[tiarond]

Really good guide - thank you!

Sticky!

[cammy537]

Good work. It's great to see user created content. I sure do hope they fix this awful forum structure soon so that useful posts like this are not buried within 2 days with random topics from 10 combined forum headings.

[pcmaster3]

First post is flooder
Second same
and third is usefull but i know them from head already.

[majicker1]

Please sticky!!!

[mistrose]

Thank you to all who have left a comment, even the gentleman who already knew everything.
I see I still need to clean a few things up despite proof reading this post.
Also in case anyone else misses it in the opening paragraph, this is an introduction to pet building in E5. If want to see some great guides and specific builds, hit ZooZoo's posts in the links area.

[thowedthanka]

a guide for epic 5 pets?
is that needed? they almost all skill the same cept for magi pets (siren, rp & bp)
melee (physical) pets work the best skilled the same on non & pet classes
ob passives dont mean much
overbreeding doesnt make a difference since epic3

[rogton]

Rogton Rules ^_^ This NEEDS to be stickied seeing as they KoS'ed our pet forum -_-

This was all Mistrose. Excellent work, beautiful!!

Very nicely put together. Now get to work on the different builds and what skills to invest in!

[mistrose]

a guide for epic 5 pets?
is that needed? they almost all skill the same cept for magi pets (siren, rp & bp)

Yes, all pets use the same basic template as far as skills, which is mentioned in the first part of the guide.

melee (physical) pets work the best skilled the same on non & pet classes

Not true. Pets are now much more MP intensive. A pet class will rarely have any problems with MP issues. Non petclasses may find that investing extra job points into skills such as Blessing the Soul will not only expand their ability to use pets skills for longer periods of time but that it ultimately helps in MP regeneration.

ob passives dont mean much

What OB passives can provide is the icing on the cake so to speak. When you have extra job points, putting some extra VIT on your yeti can help. Also when you are looking at a build such as ZooZoo's "glass cannon" OB passives do figure into that type of build.

overbreeding doesnt make a difference since epic3

Yes, it does from a job point perspective. Since pets are more job point intensive now every point counts. I myself will use a little bit of patience and go for those extra 25 job points. Not to mention that the resale value of any gimped pet is going to take a huge hit.

[mistrose]

This was all Mistrose. Excellent work, beautiful!!

Very nicely put together. Now get to work on the different builds and what skills to invest in!

Hiya and hugs!
For now I think I will leave the builds to the pro's like ZooZoo. I was just trying to fill in some gaps so to speak. Glad you liked it and nice to see you in the game!

[makrise_]

Moved to the guides area so it doesn't get lost in General. Maybe a GM can make a copy of this thread here on Monday and move this one back to General so you can still discuss/update it. (I think we can not edit posts in this forum )