Critical Pets: Why You Want to Avoid Them

Critical Pets have become extremely popular - stacking as many as four total critical talents in addition to Fairy or whatever else. But how much are those pets really helping you?

Purpose of a Critical Pet

Critical pets, as I understand them, are primarily used in PvP to push critical ratings through the roof and land that double hit as often as possible. Before some of the more recent updates, criticals weren't reliable at all, and block easily surpassed all critical levels - at least where people were sensible with gear. However, with the Aquila update in particular, critical ratings have gotten incredibly high. So much so that your chances of NOT getting a critical can be lower than the odds you landing one. Fortunately, block is also becoming more and more common on gear.

Rise of the Critical

Screenshot submitted by Evan Silver

Criticals have always been popular, but with Storm being able to get something like 600 or 700 critical in PvP, it's gotten a little outrageous. Some strategies completely center around critical hits.

The number of requests on both Twitter and Wizard101 Central lately for critical pets have gone through the roof, though. So what's the deal with these pets?

Why Critical Pets Aren't Worth the Trouble

It can take a lot of work to train a pet to Mega. What are the odds that you'll get the five talents you want on the pet with the cards you want as well as the stats you want to maximize that critical? Not too high. But let's say you get exactly the pet you're looking for.

Those critical talents end up getting to about 30 critical rating. Little did you know, that's only a 2% or 3% critical chance increase, so for the whole pet, you might get 8% or 12% critical chance increase. Why? Because critical rating in higher concentrations is more effective. Let's say you have 24 critical rating on a piece of gear - you're going to have a 1% higher chance of getting a critical. Let's say you have 148 critical rating on your hat (a little over six times the previous example) - you have 29% critical chance (twenty-nine times the previous example).

Let's use another example that Duelist101 posted. Say you're a 95 wizard with a critical rating that gives you 52% total critical chance - from one piece of gear. Because critical chance is higher in higher concentrations, let's take that same critical rating, and divide it among pieces of gear, and see what happens to the chance.

Screenshot submitted by Umbra9649

If you were to have the same critical rating on two pieces of gear instead of one, you'd only have 47% critical chance. If you were to have the same critical rating on three pieces of gear instead of two, you'd only have 43% critical chance. If you were to have the same critical rating on four pieces of gear instead of three, you'd only have 39% critical chance. If you were to have the same critical rating on five pieces of gear instead of four, you'd only have 34% critical chance. If you were to have the same critical rating on six pieces of gear instead of five, you'd only have 30% critical chance. If you were to have the same critical rating on seven pieces of gear instead of six, you'd only have 25% critical chance. And so on. Duelist101 even notes:

Another thing many players don’t realize is that each Critical or Block pet talent counts as its own piece of gear, and gets its own penalty also. Yikes!

Of course, that's just the beginning. You can learn more about how critical works in a few key posts from Duelist HERE and HERE.

Why Not the Additional Chance?

Why not? If you're pushing your critical rating as high as possible, why not try for that extra 8 or 12%? If there weren't any other options, I might say go for it, but there ARE other options. Spell Proof, for example. If eight or twelve of one hundred hits was doubled (and it could be that wand strike), that's already another wild card in PvP. But if you resist ten percent of every incoming spell, that's definite. Not just that, but it's effective. Start replacing those critical talents with ones like Spell Proof, Spell-Defying, Fairy, Spritely, and some of the other heal and ward talents, and you'll find that they can be much more effective than any critical talents, and they might actually improve your character as opposed to adding those extra penalties. 

What do you think - will you still be using critical pets? Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral! Credits: Thanks to Umbra9649 and Evan Silver for submitting screenshots for this post. I also believe I caught Alex Lionheart in that first photo. Thanks to Duelist101 for their insights on the critical system.