Pet Menagerie – The Spirit of Nature

 

Welcome to the last edition of Pet Menagerie! In this final writeup, I will be talking about arguably the most unique of the LMs pets, the Spirit of Nature. This pet is also the most recently added to the LM’s zoo(leaving out the War Wolf, which is so inconsequential that it doesn’t deserve an article of its own), at level 70.

 

Skills

 

The first skill in the Spirit’s (theoretical)pocket is Flashing Flank. As you may be able to guess from the name, this skill creates an instant flank effect on the targetted enemy. Guaranteed. As such, it is the ONLY pet that can give you a flank on demand, which makes this skill incredibly useful. On the downside, it does have 45 second cooldown, which puts it below the Legendary pets on the flank rate scale, and just below the Raven depending on luck. Regardless, this can come in very handy, either as a Morale heal or Power restore.

The Spirit’s second ability is Nature’s Light. For those familiar with the Captain, this skills functions rather like a weaker version of Revealing Mark, in that it places a debuff on the target that returns 5% of any damage done to it as Morale to the attacker. Unlike Revealing Mark however, this skill is not a toggleable effect, but one of 30 seconds duration, and a 1 minute cooldown. Meaning that in boss fights for example, it can only be kept up for 50% of the fight. 5% is not a whole lot, but in DPS races it can presumably help quite a bit.

The third and final usable skill for the Spirit is called Nature’s Gift(see where these names are going?). This skill has a 20m range, 20m radius, 1 minute cooldown and it heals ALL friendly players(even those are that not grouped with the pet’s owner) for 10% of their maximum Morale. On your average level capped player that would be about 1k of healing, on tanks with a sizeable Inc Healing rating and large Morale pool I would imagine it could go for 2-3k a pop. In the scheme of things it isn’t a massive amount, but in solo situations and instances with AOE damage sources it could be handy in a pinch.

There is a fourth effect that the Spirit possesses, but it is one that it does not actually cast. While the Spirit of Nature is summoned, it carries an Aura effect quite like the Limrafn you encounter in the landscape, known as Light of Nature(Yuuuuuup). This Aura, radiating about 20m out from the Spirit, increases the Miss Chance of ALL enemies inside the radius by 5%. Not a terribly large amount on it’s own, but when added to the the Miss Chance debuff from Fire-Lore and Gust of Wind, it really adds up. Not to mention this debuff will be continuous, and apply to a theoretically limitless amount of mobs.

 

The Stats

 

The Spirit is a tricky one when it comes to stats. Unlike the other non-Legendary pets, which have a level equal to your own(or one higher with the Hardy Companion trait), the Spirit is three levels higher than you, or four with the Hardy Companinon trait. As a result he is by a wide margin the most sturdy of all the pets, and thus the least likely to go down to AOE damage.

Unfortunately this comes with a major downside. As you may have noticed above, I listed no damage output skills available to the Spirit. This is because it has no damage output at all. This creates a few problems. Firstly, the DPS area is left to you alone, which means running any other traitline than red is going to make levelling extremely slow. Secondly, a large number of the traits that buff your pets are useless. Not just the DPS enhancing ones, but the defensive boosts are equally unhelpful since without damage or noticeable healing coming from the pet itself, it will never draw aggro from enemy mobs. Ever. The pet is essentially a walking healer/debuffer that may as well be invisible. But thirdly and most importantly, no autoattack means no chance to Flank, which means that the 45 second cooldown flank is all it has, so use it wisely.

 

The Verdict

 

With the above information taken into account, is the Spirit of Nature worth using? Well, it really is dependent on what you plan to do. I have seen a good number of LMs out in the Ettenmoors with it, due to the okay healing and the constant Miss Chance debuff which helps in raid fights. For solo questing it isn’t so advisable, as you will likely not need the healing and debuffs to begin with. It’s mainly group content where this pet shines, helping out in lots of little ways without bothering your team-mates or getting killed.

Overall it’s quite an underrated pet, and one I think deserves to see a lot more use out there. If you’re at the stage where you’re picking this guy up from the trainer, give him a try when you go to run an instance or if you’re attempting to kill something alone you probably shouldn’t. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

And with that, Pet Menagerie is complete! Thanks to all those who have been reading and commenting thus far through my first attempt at writing guides, it’s been a good learning experience for what I may attempt in the future. If anyone has any requests for something they’d like covered, pet related or otherwise, please feel free to comment below or throw me a message.