Anyone else feel PM skeleton really needs evasion?

[BMurph]

So I've been playing with my vamp monk build for a good while now (currently 14 wiz/6 monk/1 epic as unyielding sentinel 3). I've been loving this build as it has had some of the best survivability for a melee build I've had so far. I've basically been able to solo hard at streak on most quests without a problem. However, my point comes in that I've seen a falloff of usefulness in the skeleton pet to the point that it is basically useless at this point, even with augment summons and fully spec skeleton in the PM tree. Let me explain why:

In the early levels, you can keep the pet buffed with +30 resistances and +2 stat buffs from the ship or throw them on via spells. I can also use GH/heroism and blur on it to further help it out, and since I'm a melee build, the skeleton is always in the death aura so it's kept alive pretty easily early on. Later levels, it still tends to fair well against melee dmg with the mentioned buffs, however it doesn't have evasion. With the wonderful logic of pets, they either end up going through traps needlessly, or just draw all the enemy spell damage and basically get nuked down in a few seconds making just the death aura not good enough and even negative energy bursts often not much help for them as there simply isn't enough time to spam the skeleton alive.

Now I realize that the skeleton is a little weaker as I'm not pure wizard, but it shouldn't feel like the skeleton is not even useful to me anymore as it dies only a few minutes into a quest and I don't feel like wasting a shrine just to get him back to die again. I really feel like the evasion with all the save boosts would really help its survivability so that it doesn't feel like I waste 1/4 my ap on the skeleton. It's that or remove the one skeleton life per rest limit so I don't care if it dies as much.

Any other thoughts on this?

[stoerm]

I'm admittedly not an authority, but based on what I've heard it's pretty much the same with all summons. Even druid and arty pets decline in usefulness towards higher levels. Investing too many enhancement points isn't worth it. I think it was Shamgar how said just think of them as DoT spells that you fire off and let die.

[Missing_Minds]

I'm admittedly not an authority, but based on what I've heard it's pretty much the same with all summons. Even druid and arty pets decline in usefulness towards higher levels. Investing too many enhancement points isn't worth it. I think it was Shamgar how said just think of them as DoT spells that you fire off and let die.
If the skeletal pet works anything like an arti dog or druid wolf, your skeleton is only a lvl 14 version of the creature and not 20.
They get nothing as far as I can tell for epic levels.

Assuming I'm correct in what I'm thinking, how well do you think a lvl 14 anything would survive epic content? With or Without evasion?

[Charononus]

skelle survives pretty well, did a short man en chrono for laughs last night just because we missed running it and only had 3 people and didn't want to pug. We put the skelle on the voltron abishai and let the skelle tank it for a while with no dps to see how it held up with just a pm glowing nearby, it had no problems. Yeah not hard content but still that's not horrible for a pet, make it much stronger it might start getting into a weird power level.

[Failedlegend]

Evasion would be nice maybe as an option like the Arty Dog but they should also get their own AP like Arty Construct or Druid Companion not require PMs to waste AP on them

[Moonsickle]

Evasion would be nice maybe as an option like the Arty Dog but they should also get their own AP like Arty Construct or Druid Companion not require PMs to waste AP on them



maybe the other caster pets... Fighters & Barbarians can get Evasion too and they already get their own AP... so the caster doesn't have waste any on them either.

[Failedlegend]

maybe the other caster pets... Fighters & Barbarians can get Evasion too and they already get their own AP... so the caster doesn't have waste any on them either.

Huh?

[Charononus]

Huh?

A fighter or barb is a pet to a caster was how I read it it. Here barb, sit barb, good barb.

[BMurph]

I'm admittedly not an authority, but based on what I've heard it's pretty much the same with all summons. Even druid and arty pets decline in usefulness towards higher levels. Investing too many enhancement points isn't worth it. I think it was Shamgar how said just think of them as DoT spells that you fire off and let die.

Well the biggest thing for me here is that compared to the druid and arty pets, I don't think it's possible to revive the skeleton through resurrect as it's stone seems to disappear almost immediately probably for being an undead. In contrast, it's possible to revive the druid and arty pets so they can be reusable so even in the event that they do die, they can reuse them without needing to rest every time. I also know that the druid and arty pets also get equipment slots, but the undead trait and dmg type seems to offset this for the skeleton so that's fine. Also, I know that even with evasion a pet can only do so much, but from all the toons I've done, I found that it's almost become a must for any toon I make to have evasion if I can reasonable multi-class it in as it greatly improves that toon's survivability.

Roughly put, the biggest argument here is just that if one where to fully invest into the PM skeleton, it should be more rewarding then simply seeming like a waste of points, even in the late game.

[Gljosh]

My pure druid Wolf worked out fairly well in Epics. Granted this was my 3rd Druid life, I had augment summons (+8 total), and was in the primal avatar ED. So a 1k Wolf with Vampire Stonedusts and Black Dragon Scale armor might not be the same as a Skeleton Warrior. Summons in DDO overall are quite lacking, unless you really build to them then they are just mediocre. Pretty mush summons and companions make pretty decent tanks. Now if the skeleton had its own enhancement system, like the druid or arti dog then it would be pretty powerful. That is the difference between free to play classes and pay to play.