Tossica wrote:Mhila, what's the benefit of using the spider pet over the skellies?
Exactly what everyone else has already said:) the spell system in EQ2 seems to be a bit more complicated in EQ2 then it was in EQ1. Getting a new spell at level 20, your grim, doesn't exactly make it a better pet then your spider or beetle. Now rather then just scribing the upgrade and saying screw the old spell you have to figure out what the "upgrade" is actually good for and use it in the right situation. Your beetle/spider is a tank. The grim is a Caster. If your soloing your spider can hold agro off of you and take a heck of a pounding while you kick back nuke, DoT and Heal. The Grim on the other hand does fantastic DPS to the point where at times, I think he out DPS's me. However, the grim has fantastic DPS but he takes a hit like a wet paper sack. I don't think I can heal fast enough to keep the grim alive if he ever pulled agro off the groups tank.
One of the tactics that I've started using recently which seems to work out well in the groups I XP with is to never heal my pet. If he gets hit a few times and is close to death I lich his Health away to make power for myself and when he's a tick or two from dying I start casting a new pet. About the time he dies from me sucking the life out of him, my new pet will pop up fully healed and ready to lay waste. It costs a lot less power to cast a new pet then it does to heal the old one... I wouldn't recommend doing this while soloing but it works great in groups.
I have actually used my spider pet to tank for an all caster group before. I let teh spider tank the mob down half a bub of life then everyone in the group just timed thier casts to not go too terribly fast. Mobs dropped like a ton of bricks and once everyone figured out thier limits, we didn't pull agro off the spider again.