Best mana collector pet?

[☬ Sizzer ☬]

Where can I find the probably best one ? Or just be lucky ?

[mikeydsc]

Look for a genie pet and a wolfen bow. Genie form the City in the Cliffs or The map in the Shard DLC Morrago Desert, and Wolfen bow needs to be unlocked from iirc one of the Halloween Spooktacular maps.

[☬ Sizzer ☬]

I actually doin' Morrago NMHC at the moment. Drops in survival ?
I have to give this bow a look.
Thank you kindly mate.

[mikeydsc]

opps, gave you bum info on pet turns out

http://dungeondefenders.wikia.com/wiki/Familiars#Survival_Reward_Pets - been awhile since I ran Morrago - coulda sworn pet dropped there

Heres an excellent read on the tips and tricks on swirling
https://dungeondefenders.com/1/topic/91151

[☬ Sizzer ☬]

Thanks!

[🐇]

The best mana collection pet is the Genie. The very best genies will most likely come from Moonbase on NMHC as random rewards. For endgame play you'll need a random reward genie, as the guaranteed genies are simply not very good, so I recommend grinding Moonbase until you get a decent one.

For your first genie, the survival reward from Hall of Court (wave 15) is usable. FYI, you can get the same pet on Tavern Defense (wave 15), but although the map is much harder the pet doesn't roll any better. Sadly, these genies can only roll Transcendent at best, and they get about one tenth as much mana collection as Moonbase genies.

City in the Cliffs survival gives the Djinnlet pet (wave 15), which is also quite good. Although it won't give nearly as much mana as a genie, it does damage and shoots through walls. On NM djinnlet mana collection caps at 2899 mana collection stat, which gives you 83 mana per hit, and this number is very easy to reach.

The Companion Cube gives mana, but it's not really usable in end game because the damage, mana, and stats are all quite low. It also flies too high to reliably hit enemies once it's upgraded, but this will be fixed in the update. To get this pet, you need to clear all the original challenges on NMHC.

In the upcoming update the Dice pet will also give mana, similar to a Companion Cube. This will drop from King's Game on wave 25 of survival, so it will be significantly harder to farm compared to the other pets.

[🐇]

Mang's guide is good, but this part is misleading:

If you don't feel like reading the link, long story short is that everyone has weapons that hit hard enough to cap out the mana returned, but you can up that cap by upgrading your genie damage. The relevant formula is:

70*((GenieDamage/12)^0.23)

It's true, we all have weapons that hit hard enough to max it out. But the player base uses Lupine Bows instead, which almost never do enough damage. In fact, if you used a lupine bow that did that much damage, players in pubs would constantly remark on how high your damage was.

Fortunately, it doesn't really matter since Lupine Bows pierce, and unless you're hitting a single target which is immune to your added resistance, you'll usually get 2020 mana even with lower mana collection rate and damage. You don't really need 29004, but having around 30k isn't a bad idea and works pretty well.

So what's the real magic number? Well, there isn't one. But if you're nerdy enough to care, here are the actual formulas you can use to figure out what mana collection stat you want on a genie:

Mana collected by genie (per hit):

(damage/60)*(mana collection rate/12)^.32

. . . which is capped at a maximum of:

70*(mana collection rate/12)^.23

Damage you need to reach the maximum:

4200*(mana collection rate/12)^-.09

Damage to collect X mana (per hit):

X*60*(mana collection rate/12)^-.32

Ideal mana collection rate:

12*(60*mana wanted/damage)^3.125

[☬ Sizzer ☬]

Oh wow thanks guys! Helped me a lot

[Archvile]

Originally posted by Plane:

Mang's guide is good, but this part is misleading:

If you don't feel like reading the link, long story short is that everyone has weapons that hit hard enough to cap out the mana returned, but you can up that cap by upgrading your genie damage. The relevant formula is:

70*((GenieDamage/12)^0.23)

It's true, we all have weapons that hit hard enough to max it out. But the player base uses Lupine Bows instead, which almost never do enough damage. In fact, if you used a lupine bow that did that much damage, players in pubs would constantly remark on how high your damage was.

Doesn't Ming actually procede to say that:
"Only problem is that this formula scales like a garbage can. Here is a nifty table to explain why...."
and then suggests to use a Lupin Bow himself, as an optimum weapon for a Genie? Don't see much misleadings there to be honest =) Unless you mean the formula he shortened.

I always thought that Genies rely on hits made by your weapon, rather than damage from said weapon, can't remember where I read about it, was long ago, but can say that I have been using a low damage Lupin Bow with a Genie with around 13-14k dmg for ages and didn't really have any significant issues. Also I remembered that 29004 sweet spot mentioned in the linked article and always though that 30k+ dmg is overkill usually. And though I did upgrade that old Genie to a newly found one with around 23k I think, sure it does feel better, but as Ming mentioned, if you learn to swirl, you'll be good with a rather low-dmg Genie. Oh and again, as stated, Jester is a nice hero to do the upgrading with.

Not saying I know more than you obviously, just making a simple man observation regarding my own experience with mana collection.

[🐇]

The misleading part is that most people prefer lupines which have very low damage, like 600 base and 6000 elemental. Very few players today use weapons that do enough damage to give 420 mana as shown in Mang's chart.

If you want 29004 collection stat to give 420 mana per hit, your lupine bow will need to do 2083 damage on the dummy, which would mean a minimum elemental damage of 13440, and on my Jester a minimum base damage of 1429 (may be higher on yours, depending on hero dmg stat). Otherwise, you'll need a (perhaps significantly) higher mana collection stat to achieve the same thing.

But as I said before, it doesn't really matter since you can get away with lower values most of the time, because the lupine bow pierces and people mostly fire into crowds of enemies. Most people will get by fine without caring much about the numbers at all, and lupine + genie will work fine. But either way, I would ignore the idea that 29004 is a magic number.

It's still a good guide. Get genie, get lupine, shoot into crowd, get mana. That's all most players need, to be honest. I just wouldn't focus so much on the specific numbers from the guide.

[RedKirby]

The practical effect of above is really that you don't have to dump good genies that have dmg below 29004. And for me, I personally value the genie stats (for jester upgrader) as following: Hero Cast>Hero HP>Hero DMG>AB2. Some ppl prefer AB2>Hero Dmg though.