what skills are good in beastery

[Sathrax]

My character is now much higher level, so far I'm running with maxed beatles, maxed palpatine, maxed boost (speed and damage one can't remember the name) and the horse from hell . I believe i removed every point fro mthe turtle, because once u start having as many summons as I do (7 including the turtle, as well as 2 from the centaur amulet) he completely stops using the shiny shell ability, and it's the only reason he's good. He takes hits while the ranged units pump out damae. Without shiny shell he might as well be a rubber duck with a thorn in it's beak. the horse is too aggresive and dies too often because of it. The flower of power I found to be a good choice spell, it may only be temporary, but by the time it dies the recharge will already be 3/4ths of the way through.

[Gorthaur]

OK, I can tell about my experience playing Lilith Masteries Mod.
I've went Archery + Bestiary first, and in the beginning of the game all went more or less smoothly. But during the mid-game (Hel-Gon manor, Siran and beyond) i've found myself in the situation when i had to dodge almost every single mob like it was a boss...
All the creatures from bestiary became inadequately, pathetically weak for Lilith a**-kicking mobs. The bosses... it was just a nightmare... the usual routine in mid-game:
1) Summon phalanx, stallion and Iaso (because they usually are dead after first 1-2 mob packs) ;
2) Boss does area effect attack (not a main quest boss, just an average hero-kind boss, in Lilith there always are 2-5 of them in almost each map).
3) After attack - Phalanx is short to 1-2 demons (and already useless, due to loss of synergy), 50-75% of stallion's HP are gone.
4) Few more seconds (or just another AOE attack from boss) - all pets are dead except Iaso and and 1 demon (if you are lucky)...
5) You''re are effectively on your own with 1 mastery... and since you are just 30 lvl and already spend a half of your skillpoints on useless Bestiary, your archery skills will be not very good either.

Bottom line: For my game experience in Lilith - it's not even worth to invest skill points in pets, e.g. Stallion gets only 10 (!) HP from one additional point (at least in the beginning, and only +20 HP later). I've spend like 10 points in stallion itself (5 pts.), Agressive Beast skill (another 5) and Demonic Horse breath (some 2-3 pts.). Animalistic Resilience (Iaso skill) is good, but somewhat bugged, sometimes Iaso cast it and sometimes does not (even if other pets are taking heavy damage) - i just cannot get the pattern. Selene usually stands in the back doing nothing until dissapearing... What a waste...
The overall effect is ridiculous - the stallion still is getting his a** whacked in seconds... In comparison - in Lilith you are getting an amulet from a side quest that gets you 2 centaurs for just 130 MP, without wasting any skillpoints. I'll just give you their stats on Normal difficulty:
-7500 hp (each of them)
-12% dam. res.
- Healing ability (they fully restore your char's health and heal themselves)
Now if you'll compare this to the creatures from the Bestiary (max. Stallion HP is just 920) you will see how pathetically weak they really are. And taking into the consideration the fact that for all the strength of the centaurs they still are dying pretty darn fast in end-game stages (Sheol) you could figure what will happen to the Bestiary's pets - they will die as soon as their summoning animation will be over... Nature mastery form vanilla TQ had some powerful auras and Bestiary doesn't have any, just some weak healing skill and some useless traps.
I had to delete this mastery in defiler and change it to alchemy. The effect of this change is simply stunning. As weak is the Bestiary, as omnipotent is the alchemy - both masteries are equally unbalanced.
Maybe in TQ/TQIT Bestiary will do, but it is just inadequately weak for Lilith.

[minisav]

Pets always struggle later on in Normal difficulty don't they? I'd assume the same for Lilith. You should try it in Epic and even better Legendary where pets can be very useful.

[Gorthaur]

Yes, you are right, they certainly do struggle on Normal. But i'm absolutely sure that pets from Bestiary will also struggle in Epic/Legendary Lilith. Perhaps not in the very beginning, but close to mid-game thats for sure... besides I've already tried Alchemy, so there is no way back to Bestiary for me.

[TheDemise]

Originally Posted by Gorthaur

Yes, you are right, they certainly do struggle on Normal. But i'm absolutely sure that pets from Bestiary will also struggle in Epic/Legendary Lilith. Perhaps not in the very beginning, but close to mid-game thats for sure... besides I've already tried Alchemy, so there is no way back to Bestiary for me.

The pets get more life, when your char reaches epic
I play Xmax+Masteries and here is my experience of my lvl 56 Overseer (-100 cooldown since lvl 55):

Normal act 1-3:
-I started skilling the flaming stallion, phalanx, iaso, they did a great job, as a petmaster no problem as far their aren't monsters doing elemental dmg in large area...they almost die ALL in 2 seconds, I can't even heal that fast.
Act 4:
-reaching act 4 phalanx and horse were a mess and died pretty often, because of the horse's aggressiveness and the less life of the little cute demons...1 machae mob and horse went to heaven.
I could't control the horse, I wish I could switch it into "Normal" or "Defensive" behavior, unfortunately it's always aggro.
-then I discovered the beetles...HELL, great pets the hidden attack (only at lvl 20) is just awesome, and they can insert a lot of dmg
- the suicide seagulls - pretty helpful doing much dmg, little recharge

Epic Act 1:
-I reskilled the horse! The life got tripled and thats really beautiful, but I guess in Act 4, he/she likes to die often...again.
Act 2:
I just began ^^

My current pets are:
5 beetles
Iaso
Horse of the devil
Talos (Automatoi)
(2 Selenes)

With the aura from construction and the one casted by the iaso the pets get a dmg resistence of 74% Thats pretty nice.
I love playing this char...just standing around and watching the wonderful nature.

Greets,
TheDemise

[NorrYtt]

I use Phalanx, Pal Patines, and Iaso. The Phalanx does good damage, AoE lightning thing. If you max it you can have 5 but only need 4 for them to AoE. The Phalanx skill cools down quick and you get four per summon. The Pal Patines are ultra slow cooldown but you get two and they have murderous innate Lightning Bolt damage. The Phalanx tanks well enough considering you can just summon more when they die.

If you can keep the boss aggro on you, you can juke and jive to where the boss whiffs melee attacks on you while your Phalanx surrounds and pounds. Just turn, shoot once, run, turn shoot once, and it should work ok. Most boss AoE are in a cone at you so it won't kill all the phalanx. Summon the phalanx at point blank and they should already be surrounding the boss. Bosses with AoE are definitely the stumbling block of Bestiary.

I found the Turtle worthless, the horse worthless. Beetles were ok I guess especially their AoE was nice, but I needed the points to get to Conversion.

I was able to kill the witch Hecate on her island with my Bestiary + Mysticism toon but couldn't do it with my Alchemy + Sorcery toon.