Smelzlikcheeze

I would have to agree with taking the dumbfires off the hotbar. The only one i use is Pyro which if you look at the parse does have a nice hit rate. I try and time it to when the AE has just hit. Aqueous serpents and communion are junk spells for end game mobs.

Terra

Ummm.... they add a nice chunk of damage if you cast them on pull, I don't see any reason not to cast them!

Iluk

I usually just stack em up on the non-aoe mobs in VP...

Gotta love that trash!!!

aniathor

One thing to consider with the pyro pet is that it does dmg to entire encounters and has much more hp than the serpants, so cast ur pyro on encounters with more than 1 mob, and ur serpants on single target, if ur gonna cast them at all. The only times i find my self using the dumbfire (other than communion) is when im in a fast pace grp and all my other options for dmg are done.

As conjurors we have many different soruces of dmg and routes we can take for doing dmg. Just depends whats available at the time. For max dps with all spells and power available... dont use the dumbfire pets unless there is nothing else to cast (you should ALWAYS be casting something, mainly crystal blast) ... hence the name!

justin_d

what about for non epic encounters? If its just a named lvl 70+ would the dumbfire pets be more useful?

Hey Now

Dumbfires are dogshit even in 6-man groups. Basically all of the trash in T8 will do more than enough AE damage to one shot them. It even 1 shots the worthless shit fire pet with ease. I have an item with Stone Defense 2 on it which added 500 HP to whatever pet I have up. My fire pet was a whopping 1700 sorry ass HP now and STILL gets destroyed if any fuckin' mob so much as farts near it.

There is essentially no way to play around this. Between shit pet pathing which causes the fire pet to stand around a corner, at the top/bottom of stairs, or behind a piece of furniture/small terrain bump and refuse to move within LOS to attack a mob and the only real option of stopping your DPS, clicking the fucking pet "back off" button.. DRAGGING the pet to the mob and hoping the piece of shit doesn't immediately eat an AE (which it usually does).

Then of course the group does a ZW parse and sees that because you had to fuck around dragging your pet to mobs and constantly resummoning them after they get 1-shotted, your DPS is 1500 and they say fuck this stupid class, just get a scout from now on.

Diknak

Before the tank pulls, I cast BM. Then, I start casting Communion while he is pulling. As long as the mob doesn't have a big aoe, then the communion pets will generally survive. Then, I cast Elemental Unity and start my normal casting order. Don't cast EU to start off since you get the most benefits from it when you are dealing with fast cast times.

There are a lot of people that trash using communion for some reason, but I can't remember the last time my communion pets died during epic trash fights or heroic named fights.

Bhow

DPS is DPS. As long as the dumbfires don't slow your normal cast order down theyre worth casting. Hence, why some of us choose to cast em on the pull. Yes they need to be fixed, that doesn't mean they are no longer worth casting at all.

__________________
Fix Summoners in '09

Diknak

The take away from all of the different views is this:

Different strats work for different people. Try some out and see what works best for you.

Charvel!

Does pyro do AOE damage, or encounter damage? Never bothered to check~...