[squig] melee spec and tactics?

[Aceboltz]

It’s sad to read that a pet career is better without pet

Yep, this why lions have a big aoe damage reduction. SH does not have it thus pets are not usable un wb play.

[zulnam]

mSH with a pet is more than viable. I've been running with a pet while roaming and in 6man groups a lot lately.

For those situations I have no doubt, however in large-scale RvR, where a lot of aoe tends to happen, the pet just seems to die way too quickly. Even when I was playing range I kept finding myself having to switch pets every 5/10 minutes, depending on how often we'd have an encounter. Sometimes even more often.

[BeautfulToad]

I want to do mSH, but cant get the hang of it. What is the rotation? I assume you go single target, but cant work out exactly what I spam for kills and damage (gear-wise, is it the same as rdps SH?)

Stats wise pets seem not quite as bad as a lot of folk suggest, but do agree that the territorial aggression saves on constantly having to remember to resummon dead squigs (an issue in rdps too) and seems an obvious pick, I dont think there's a single tactic which encourages mSH to use pets (reducing CD on summoning horned squig would probably make me tempted).

[zupaH]

1. I want to do mSH, but cant get the hang of it. What is the rotation? I assume you go single target, but cant work out exactly what I spam for kills and damage (gear-wise, is it the same as rdps SH?)

2. Stats wise pets seem not quite as bad as a lot of folk suggest, but do agree that the territorial aggression saves on constantly having to remember to resummon dead squigs (an issue in rdps too) and seems an obvious pick, I dont think there's a single tactic which encourages mSH to use pets (reducing CD on summoning horned squig would probably make me tempted).

1. The general rotation I use most of the time is: Really Bad Gas! -> Squig Leap -> Big Claw (for the snare and mostly the dot) -> Sneaky Strike/Git Em' (if you have a pet and it's at the target) -> Big Bouncin! -> Ard Noggin' until cooldowns. You also have Taste Like Stuntie that I use instead of Ard Noggin' or to burst people. With bursting people that generally means doing lets say an Ard Noggin -> auto attack -> Taste Like Stuntie until your auto attack timer is refreshed, then go back to doing your general rotation. Stuff like knockdown and cooldown increaser shouldn't really be used in a rotation, since you have to decide when to use it, or they might have immunities.
For gear, I run pretty much the same gear and talismans in melee as I do as ranged. I'm just lazy and don't run 2 sets of vanq nowadays since i prefer making talismans instead

2. Horned squig is already on a 15s cooldown and castable on the move IF you're inside your squig armor. If you die without being in your squig armor, it'll go back to 30s.
And the general rule of thumb is that pet UI sucks, and there's much truth in that. Outside of solo/possibly full groups i'd run strictly loner, especially if you're new to the class mechanic of having a pet. Right now the pets been bugged for a while for both SH and WL and such as terrible to play with. They randomly disappear a lot. They randomly teleport 20ft behind you when you issue an attack command as soon as you go into combat, yada yada. It is however a lot of fun to play with pet and using Git Em' (and i've done it quite succesfully). It kinda makes you feel like a ghetto WL.

[BeautfulToad]

Ah, i did not appreciate that with the horned squig/squig armour thing. I find the pet AI okay for squigs in rdps, but I usually use spike for the buffs, and only blow up the horned one.

Thanks for the tips.

[vanbuinen77]

I dont know, a 65% damage increase without the pet since not much utility is tied to it seems better to me