Edit: Verdant Animist PBAoE was not fixed until patch 1.68. Unless that changes here, I cannot recommend this specline. It plays OK at very low levels. The lack of damage due to not considering Int&Skill is crippling at higher levels.


I keep seeing a lot of new (or new to Hib) players confused by Verdant Animists.

So here is a few tips.

First. This is not a RvR spec. However, in the right situation it is a powerful leveling spec, without the monotony of endless focus pulling, watching your pet eat your powerbar, and repeating. And it's useful in all group types, with the possible exception of a group that is all three of caster-based, moving constantly, and fighting grape+++ mobs.

Making your character. If you have any intention of respeccing for RvR, go Celt, with 15 in dex. Con or Int with the other 10pts is your choice, both have benefits.

If you intend to never put on a necklace, Sylvan is acceptable for the bonus Int. In this case I'd likely go 10dex/15int for maximum pbaoe damage.

Make your groundtarget macros. Much faster than fiddling with the groundtarget key and the mouse.
/macro GT0 /groundset 0
/macro GT9 /groundset 950 (max shroom range is 1000, but every little terrain hump shortens it slightly)

Know how the focus stat on your staff works. Find a guide elsewhere.

Save your Forester points. You won't be speccing Arborial.

Level 5-7. All your points go in Verdant. You want the L6 briar burst and the L7 bladeturn as soon as possible.
L8 - all in Creep (1-3). This gets you two key things. The L2 Grove Executioner with it's 40% snare, and the L3 Sporespawn Seedling.
L9+ All in Verd, until you have the L48 Briar Burst. Any extra points go in Creeping.


Hotbars
Shroom bar. You need a bunch. On mine I have...
Controlled:
Verdant Spec - Battle Crier, both highest level available and the L5 one.
Creeping Spec - Grove Executioner, highest available (you are stuck with the L2 one until you hit 24, but all the snares are the same, you don't care)

FnF
Forest Hearts (creeping baseline) - you want the highest level one you have full focus for, not the highest level one you can cast. Generally that's going to be somewhere around half your level. It's far more power efficient, you just put a few extra lower level ones down. You will RARELY use these. They are for killing high grape bosses, not for general use.

Sporespawn Seedling (L3). This is a PBAOE debuff shroom, same range as your controlled. This is how you add attackers in general play. They don't pull when you aren't ready (unless the mob walks over you), they use minimal power, and they debuff.

Ligenous Shield. Highest Available

Combat bar(s) - /qbind lots of this stuff instead
Briar Burst line. I keep THREE out. Highest damage, most efficient (based on focus level of staff), and the L1 minimum power one.
Lifetap. Variance will be terrible, but this is how you heal yourself in a hurry. Not used much.
Bubble bomber (Woodspirit Sheath). I keep two out. The L7 one (lowest power, only 3 targets) and highest availible (up to 7 targets)
Armor Bomber, short term (Emmisary Line)
Instant Con debuff
Root bomber - single target (and yes it's slowwww to go save you. Cast it really early.)
Root bomber - AoE
Health Regen bomber (this is a slow regen, not a HoT). I typically just use the lowest level one. If there is an underhill ally in the group, the two buffs do not stack, so save your power. Tell your healers you are casting it, so they don't bother topping off tanks post-battle. You cast this after the pull, not during.
Petheal bomber. Since the bomber casts the heal, not you, you get minimal heal aggro!
Pet attack
Pet defense mode
Pet passive mode
Target Pet button
all your standard stuff, like quickcast, /assist, etc.


Buff Bar
Self AF buff
Self Abs buff
Dmg shield
Long Term ABS buff - This goes on everyone who doesn't have their own ABS buff. Like the Druid.
Damage Shield

Play

Starting out. Same as any other newbie. Remember you have lifetap starting at L2, so save some power to use for healing up on the next pull.

L5: Hooray, I'm an Animist now! As I said in the prior post, all your saved points go in Verdant.

Learning to pull.
Find a camp. Hit your GT9(950) macro. You are using this to gauge the 1000 range on your pet taunt.
Is your groundtarget past most of the camp? If not, adjust your position so it is.
Without moving, hit your GT0 macro, moving the groundtarget to your feet.
Put your controlled Battle Crier down.
Put damage shield on it.
Stand directly behind your pet (in melee range)
Tell pet to attack a monster (start with blue, maybe yellow). It will cast a taunt, attracting the monster.
Cast Briar Burst yourself. You cast it, then the pet queues it up to cast. Which won't happen until it completes it's own taunt cast or melee attack. Takes a couple seconds. Learn to time it so it fires as the mob gets into range. Practice on single mobs. At higher levels you will often put your pet on passive so your first few Briar Bursts fire immediately.

If you get an add and a Briar Burst doesn't attract it to your pet, tell your pet to attack it. The monster should turn almost immediately. If that doesn't work, use your quickcast to get another Briar Burst off. Don't run from your pet!

Once aggro is firmly established on your pet, switch to your most efficient burst (which is the same one at L5, but at L6 you will have two to choose from, and later you will have 3. Check the monster health. Check your shroom health.
It doesn't matter which Briar Burst you use for resist purposes, all are cast at the pet's level. So if your pet is doing well on health, conserve the power by using the more efficient lower-level spell.

When the monster is nearly dead, you can stop casting and let the pet finish it off with melee. Don't bother sitting down until it's dead, your regen doesn't speed up while your pet is still in combat.


Multiple pulls. Hopefully you have a naturalist class friend who can buff your pet to toughen it up. But you can do small amounts of yellows solo once you have a few levels under your belt. Just like for focus pulling, a Mentalist with power regen and HoT is nice.

Stick to yellow (orange with buffs) monsters. Have your groupmate pull. He stands (or runs back to) your Battle Crier. He should go just past it, so the monsters stop as close as possible to your pet. As before, time your first Briar Burst to fire just as the monsters arrive. It's best to have your pet in passive mode for this, so the bursts fire quickly. Use your highest level burst. Once aggro is peeled off the puller, settle in. There is a judgement here between using efficient bursts and taking more pet damage, or using your maximum level one to minimize damage taken. Use big ones if you aren't sure, or if your healer is low on power. Remember you have your own pet heal as well, and it heals for a lot, don't be afraid to use it. Since it's a bomber, it has more delay than a normal heal, so you need to cast it a couple seconds early.

Large amounts of green/blue monsters actually works well. While the experience per monster is limited, you can kill them very quickly and efficiently.

The PBAoE group. Several mana enchanter or eldritch, support, etc.

Pet buffs are critical here. It will take a lot of damage very quickly. Skip having your support buff you if needed, in favor of your pet.

Someone pulls multiples. Red, or lots of orange. Casters wait on the shroom. Pet is on passive. When the monsters arrive, your shroom takes initial aggro via your well-timed bursts. Once aggro is established on your pet, the casters kill it all quickly with mass PBAoE. Use your highest damage burst and spam it. Once you see the first monster die, put the pet back on defense, and switch to an efficient burst (or just stop - depending on relative power levels in the party). If a caster pulls aggro, go back to your heaviest damage output.

Keep your pet targetted. Inform healers that they can assist you to get a target on the pet quickly, and maybe make a macro to ask for pet healing. They may need to be switching targets quickly if casters take damage, and since there are casters and monsters stacked on top of your pet, targetting is difficult with the mouse.

Anyone who gets aggro should run TO the mushroom.

The Tank Group.
You can switch to a support role for this. Casting bubble bombers to block damage on the tanks, keeping one lig shield up to buff the party (it chain casts for it's entire duration), etc. I often use the Grove Executioner pet here. It's mostly just idle, but if a monster breaks off to chase a healer, use it to snare the monster. At higher levels you are also using the short-term ABS buff bombers on the tanks.

Roaming. Whether solo or grouped. Keep your GT0 and Grove Executioner keys handy. If you pull unwanted aggro, cast (or quickcast) the Grove pet at your feet. Let it snare the monster so you can get away. Either flee and let it die, or stop at a distance and cast Bursts to kill the attacker. You do NOT need to be using the Verdant pet to use the PBAoE, it works fine through the Creeping or Arborial controlled pets as well.

Note that the PBAoE normally fires out of your controlled pet. There is an exception though. If you have a controlled pet down, but target one of your FnF shrooms (even a non-combat one like a Ligineous Shield) the PBAoE fires through the FnF you have targetted. Useful, but also dangerous. FnFs have far less health, and if it dies, all the aggro transfers to you.

High-con monsters.
This could be solo or grouped. If resists (or misses for your melee groupmates) are a problem, this is when you use the L3 Sporespawn Seedling. Put 2-3 down. Don't stack them directly on your controlled, it makes clicking it for heals difficult. Keep your FnFs just (melee range) behind it. No need to spread them out, unless you are fighting monsters with AoE attacks.

Since they don't do damage, only debuff, they won't keep aggro (they may pull it momentarily), so they don't die often. If resists are still a problem, put a few more down. Group needs to fight in their range to get the benefit (same range as your PBAoE), so they still drag monsters to the shrooms.

If resists are STILL a problem, use more sporespawns.


In a tank group fighting high-con mobs, keep your snaring controlled back by the support, but put the sporespawns right where the tanks are standing to fight.

Very high con monsters, small pulls, setup time.
Basically quest/boss mobs. You want to kill something nasty, but only once. This is where you use Forest Hearts. Put your Creeping controlled out. Then build a maximum size stack of your most efficient Forest Hearts. Just like a Creeping-spec Animist, you pull to the stack, run in circles around it if neccessary, and use your controlled pet to keep the monsters snared until death.

Realm Abilities.

Since you have to wait for your pet to re-cast your PBAoE, dex is only moderately useful. You still want it, but it isn't a massive priority like most casters.

MCL and Serenity. Obviously more power is a good thing.

Damage RAs. Mastery of Magery and Wild Power have NO EFFECT on pet PBAoE. Don't waste your points.
Augmented Acuity does work though.
Edit. There are reports that increased Int doesn't actually increase damage here. I haven't tested that yet.

Thanks for this guide Ebenezer! Convinced me to try something new!

How do you compare the solo leveling ability to that of a Creeping spec ani? I played Creeping on Genesis and found it to be pretty decent. At 50 I was able to solo farm a lot of bosses in Cursed Forest as well. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for the guide

As someone who played verdant for a long time,

if uthgard is correct to form you can PBAOE off any mushroom not just the main pet (i may be wrong if uthgard isnt coded correctly)

So if you can afford forest ambusher as the rr5 (its a bit sucky i know) you can still pbaoe off it if you have it targeted.

Same goes for level 5 shrooms you can drop them and BOOM paboe off them for very little mana cost.

The same goes for the final level mushroom you dont actualyl need the top end verdant main pet to be summoned to pbaoe off it the level 5 shroom is exactly the same just the delve on the taunt is much lower (o no a taunt you say) saves a boat load of mana when quickly casting.

That does currently work, Warky. While leveling I am casting off of my ablative shrooms if my crier goes down.

I have confirmed the int bug with Verdant is active here.

Pet PBAoE is not considering the Animist's intelligence or skill for damage output.

This was corrected in 1.68 as a bugfix. Until the same happens here (if ever), I can't recommend Verd for leveling.

It wasn't noticeable at low levels. Post 20 it is VERY noticeable.

http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Pat ... rsion_1.68

My verd animist is reduced to begging for PBT spots in tank groups until he can get to L40, at which point I'll go Arb.

Please vote this up so we can have it fixed

issue/3545/@/Verdant_animist_PBAOE_is_based_on_pet_level_

eatsam wrote:Please vote this up so we can have it fixed

issue/3545/@/Verdant_animist_PBAOE_is_based_on_pet_level_

PBAoE is supposed to be based on pet level. That isn't the issue making this spec unplayable. Yes, you get more resists, which you compensate for by sticking with lower-con mobs in bigger numbers.

The correct issue is PBAoE is not considering the Int and Verdant Spec of the Animist. (so in effect it's a baseline nuke, despite speccing to get it, and with an int of 0 (or whatever Int the pet has). So you get huge variance and low damage.

Which was corrected after 1.65

Patch Notes Version 1.68

- The Briar Burst line of Animist pet-cast PBAOE spells now take into account the Animist's specialization and acuity (intelligence) stat

Between this and the XP nerf from fnf turrets Animist are full of joy in 1.65 I guess I'm glad I went arb

How is the Verdant pet in tanking ? if you compare Enchanter pet and a verdant tank pet ?

1 vs 1

I am wondering if Verdant pet is better for BIG Boss mob, or is Enchanter pet enuff (meaning does enchanter pet stay alive).

Any insight for this would be nice. (= or anyone know HP pools of each ? soso ? ).

thx.

The verdant tank pet from my (at that time) lvl 46 animist had about 2000 hit points and tanking a red mob was easy but I wouldn't suggest to kill higher con mobs than red.