Mania’s Arcania

Since I now have some data on Scorpid Poison, I decided to continue gathering data on the spell-like pet abilities. Last night I spent some time investigating Fire Breath 2 

Fire Breath Rank 2 in the Beast Training window says that it does 111 damage over 2 seconds. But there is a level component to Fire Breath damage as well: the tooltip for FB2 on a level 67 dragonhawk says it does 123 damage over 2 seconds; a level 68 dragonhawk, on the other hand,  shows a tooltip of 126 damage over 2 seconds. This same effect has been noted on lower level dragonhawks, although we don’t yet have a complete map of the relationship of level to damage. (It doesn’t seem to be perfectly linear; it seems to wobble a little.)

Happiness does not change the damage shown on the FB2 tooltip, although it does change the actual damage (as you would expect). The hunter’s RAP also has an effect on Fire Breath damage. My tests indicate that FB2 gains about 2 damage total for every 100 RAP — although, as with my scorpid tests, that’s a simplification: the relationship isn’t linear. For comparison, scorpids previously gained almost 9 damage per 100 RAP; so dragonhawks don’t seem at all overpowered. Note, however, that Fire Breath is an area-of-effect spell and might have some powerful uses that way.

In practice, Fire Breath appears to tick three times — once immediately on application, and twice as a DoT one and two seconds later. At least, that is what I am getting from the combat log, which looks like this:

1. Dragonhawk’s Fire Breath hits Enemy for 57 Fire damage.
2. Enemy is afflicted with Fire Breath.
3. Enemy suffers 57 Fire damage from Dragonhawk’s Fire Breath.
4. Enemy suffers 57 Fire damage from Dragonhawk’s Fire Breath.

(My thanks to Tiiaa, who ran these tests on Fire Breath herself and sent me her resultss ome time ago, which is part of what prompted me to get off my butt and start checking out scaling on pet skills. It’s a pity it took me so long to get back to Fire Breath!)