How Important Are Selfish Talents?

A while ago we received a question about selfish pet talents. Thus, today we’ll delve into pet training and explore how important these selfish talents actually are. So what exactly are selfish talents? A selfish talent boosts your pet’s stats rather than the stats of your wizard. This selfish talent in turn can improve the stat gains your character receives from non-selfish talents. For example, instead of giving us a 6% damage boost, it will give a 7% damage boost. By choosing a selfish talent you’re going to sacrifice one talent spot – so you have to make sure to use it wisely. Hopefully this article will help clear up any confusion.

Useful Selfish Talents

We can split selfish talents into two categories. The first one is how much they boost pet stats and the second one is which stats they actually boost.

There are plenty of selfish talents, but the best ones out of this first category are Rank 4 Pet Stats Jewels. You will always get one of these when your pet reaches Ultra level. Additionally, you can also try your luck with crafting. A recipe for Rank 4 Pet Stats Jewel is sold by Lowe Springfield, in the Pet Shoppe Boys Pet Shop located in the Pet Pavilion.  Either way you choose, you’ll always receive a random jewel. Low tier jewels aren’t really worth using, unless you’re creating a very specific pet, such as one with max possible universal resist.

So, we’ve already learned that we should strive toward Rank 4 Pet Stats Jewels. But there are still 12 different ones, so which one is the right one? The most popular selfish talents are ones that can affect resist or damage talents, such as spell-proof, wards, and dealers, or both.

After opening the Pet window in your spellbook, hover your mouse over a specific stat to learn the types of talents it boosts.

Which jewel should I pick?

The tabs above will provide you with most of the necessary information for you to pick the right selfish talent for your needs. The second part of choosing the ideal selfish talent is figuring out how much the stat boost will improve each non-selfish talent. For example, we can see that Strength, Will and Power boost damage talents. Thus, Cautious, Mighty, Powerful, Thinkin’ Cap and Vigorous will boost your pet’s damage talents.

So how do we pick the right selfish talent? In order to do that, we’ll need to check the formula for how the talent value is calculated. Let’s proceed with damage as an example and choose the Pain-Giver talent. You’ll need to find information about the talent on Wizard101 wiki and search for its formula. Here’s the calculation for our case:

As you see, Strength and Will are better talents to be increased, because they double their value in the calculation for final damage output. Which basically translates into picking either Cautious, Mighty or Thinkin’ Cap (ones without Power boost).

But that’s not all:

We can add a third, optional variable. While some selfish talents might work perfectly to boost a specific talent, it’s still better not to choose them. A Perfect example is Mighty, which boosts both resist and damage. So if you’re looking to increase your purely damage oriented pet, just pick Cautious or Thinkin’ Cap and save Mighty for any possible triple-double pets (triple damage, double resist).

Adding a regular talent vs. adding a selfish talent

So far, we went through a little theory which will give you a solid base knowledge about building pets with selfish talents. But there are still many questions to be answered. Many of these questions don’t have solid yes or no answers. For example, questions of whether adding a selfish talent is a better option than adding another damage or ward.

Wards:

Let’s start with ward pets and assume we have a pet with proof, defy and triple ward. Adding a selfish talent would roughly add 2% of universal resist and 2% of extra resist for each ward you have (total 2% universal and 4% for school specific). What to add is completely up to your needs and preferences. For a general play-through, however, it’s better to simply add the fourth ward, since we have 7 different schools that can hit you.

On the other hand, for building a Boss/Dungeon specific ward pet, it is much better to add a selfish talent. Since these Bosses often have limited options when it comes to school diversity, there isn’t any need to add an additional ward you won’t use.

Damages:

Damage pets are another popular category when it comes to selfish talent manipulation. And to start with answering our original question. There isn’t any discussion for quint damage pets. Selfish talents are the way to go, since they’re well… the only remaining option to boost your damage. An alternative could be removing a boon and having a quad damage with proof pet. Even in that case, it’s smarter to add a selfish talent rather then boon. Not only will you get roughly an extra 4% damage, you can also get some extra resist along the way.

How important are stat numbers?

Another burning question of many wizards is, do I really need a max stat pet? How much of difference will this small difference cause? The answer is not too big of a difference. Your stats would need to be really really low in order to see the difference. For example, calculated damage for x-giver is 6.4% for max stats. Having strength/will/power at 200/200/200 will still boost your damage for 5%. The difference is almost negligible if you’re only few numbers off of a max stat pet.

But many people still strive toward max stat pets. Why? Well people have different reasons to do so. First off, it looks nice and makes you feel good for finally having a max stat pet. Or, they simply think the difference is bigger than it really is.

Personally, I have max stat pets because I’m a tryhard and know that this tiny percent increase will win you 1 out of every 200 matches. Well, the numbers were made up, but do you know when an enemy lives with 2 hp or you get killed by 2 hp? These kind of fights are really rare and would happen less often if you had a max stat pet as opposed to a non-max stat pet.

Examples of pets with selfish talents

I hope this article gave you a better idea of how selfish
talents work and can be applied to pets in Wizard101!

Will you add selfish talents to your pets?
Let us know in the comments!