For making better use of my point distribution when leveling (explore/arena), I'm trying to identify exactly what's being contested for each result.  For instance, "Your move overcame your opponent's move" - was that more about accuracy or contested strength?  Or is that the inverse of "Opponent used countermove", since I don't seem to take damage on that round?  And when both fighters take some damage in an exchange, what happened and is there a way I can level to make those moments come out more in my favor?

I'm also testing pet defensive strategies, based on their initial stats and traits.  One path has been focusing on strength/con for raw defense, and the other on dodges.  Are these both equally viable in the end, or does one pull ahead at highest level?  I'm very attached to the dodge/counterattack style, but I'm aware that with each breed there will be builds based on specific traits that are better. Any tips or favorite builds you guys want to suggest for each breed?

The move-countermove mechanic has nothing to do with pet characteristics. It's just like Rock, Paper, Scissors: Bite overcomes Blow, Blow overcomes Rush, and Rush overcomes Bite. If your move overcomes the opponent's move, you take no damage from their attack. If they countermove, then they take no damage from your attack. If you both take damage, it means you selected the same move. Only after this result do things like accuracy and strength come into play to determine how much damage you do, whether you critical, etc.

I understand the move-countermove mechanic, I just wasn't sure why the messages would be different for my pet doing it versus the monster.  Writing out the question helped me realize what it probably was, though I wanted to be sure.

Regeneration is awesome - I got lucky and my first pound find had it and is still one of my favorite fighters.  I was wondering what opinions other players had on the tradeoff of the Counterstrike combo versus, say, Silent Pace or Poisonous claws. 

On the defensive stats question I was asking if, when I had a pet that started with poor strength or con or something,  I should put points in that to bring it up, or give up on that one and just improve the already better stats.  For instance, if a pet has a negative agility modifier, is it best to try to raise their agility?  Or to raise their intelligence and intuition, which will help compensate for the loss to dodge and accuracy and also improve other things?  I saw advice in a player guide to improve what are already the pet's best stats, when my own impulse has been to try to bring everything up more or less evenly.

Personally, I do a mix of both. I definitely boost two or three stats over the rest, but try to keep the red ones from being too low, especially if they don't have any advantages that make up for it. Generally though, this doesn't happen much cuz I try to stamp out any red genes in my gene pool or don't level pets that do have them.

Anyway, while Timian's player guide does suggest to improve the top best stats, I've found that it's not always the best solution, especially if constitution, strength, and courage are the really bad stats. All the agility, intelligence, and intuition in the world doesn't save your pet in battle if it doesn't manage to dodge or counter an attack and subsequently be defeated in that one lucky shot.

For example, I raised this puma (http://beastkeeper.com/pet/530681) based on that player guide. She's a bit of a glass cannon compared to my other explorers. She naturally has really good strength, courage, and intelligence (which I built to 100+) and really bad (35) constitution due to Thin Bones but also has Sharp Claws/Teeth. If you look at her explore stats, she does decently - she wins 80% of her fights. However, her success comes from crazy damage with those high strength and courage stats, paired with those genes and GP bonus, so it's okay that con is low. 

This puma (http://beastkeeper.com/pet/423590) was also raised like the guide suggested: more in the three stats she's naturally good in (intelligence, strength, intuition). However, her explore stats are not nearly as nice as the previous puma. She only wins half of her fights. For one, she has only has Beserker and elemental resistance as good genes and Faint-hearted cripples her courage. Maybe it's because she isn't lv50 yet or a GP pet, but having those higher three stats doesn't help her much.

If you really like the dodge/counterstrike strategy, pretty much every species is capable of it. However, unicorns, symurghs, cockatrices, pumas and gryphons all have genes that improve dodge chances, which pairs well with counterstrike. Throdamas also have nimble legs, which improves dodge, but cannot have this as the same time as agile paws, which eliminates the counterstrike ability. Honestly, since I don't breed most of these species, I can't tell you whether or not counterstrike is better over some of the natural abilities they may have. (Like if poisonous claws/petrying gaze is better or not.) 

However, unicorns seem to do best with counterstrike, since they have TWO genes that improve dodge: Fragrance (75%) and Gracefulness (45%), which brings up a hefty 120% increased dodge chance. All the other species has one of the two. 

First of all, I find it cool that you guys are discussing things from my guide xD Quite a compliment in itself if you ask me, so thanks a lot! 

Anyway, Doodle, you can't really compare those two pets - the first one has inherently 10 additional points to ALL their stats from being GP1, meaning they will be stronger than the other one, no matter what. And that is a big difference. Considering that monsters on islands never have GP (except Temple Guardians), your pet will be automatically better than most "normal" pets and more likely win. 

Also, I never actually said to boost all the "top stats" and ignore the worse ones. What I did say was that you should boost the GREEN stats (meaning ones boosted by a gene) because you get more out of them, like if you have Quickmind, which gives you 50% additional Intelligence, you basically get 1.5 points every time the game assigns a point to Intelligence. Say if you have a lvl 1 pet with 30 base Intelligence and Quickmind, even at this point it already shows 45 Intelligence (30 base + 50% = 45). Now if you managed to get only one point for every level on this pet, at level 50, the base Int would be 80 (30 + 50 levels*) - and again you would get the 50% bonus from Quickmind, resulting in 120 Int! (80 + 50% = 120). Now if you set the corresponding food for Int to 5 stars, you might actually get quite a few more points per level than 1! 

Take the opposite example: A pet with Silly has an inherent -50% on Intelligence. Let's assume our level 1 has the same base 30 Int. Because of Silly it will only show up as 15 Int! (30-50%=15) Now let's assume you don't change stats and your pet gets 1 stat point for each level, ending with 80 Intelligence again (like in the last example) - because of Silly the pet actually only has 40!!! Intelligence now (again 80 - 50% = 40). 
So if you do what some people do and try to boost this stat, can you see how many points you're wasting, still not getting far?

So what makes sense is to boost the green stats that get a bonus and ignore the red stats that only "swallow" assigned points. 

I generally leave settings on pets with black stats as they are, since the few points difference in the end don't make that much difference in my opinion. At most I would move the stars for Strength to full so I get more breedings. However, if you do want to change something there, my personal opinion would be to boost Strength, Intuition and Intelligence, because with those three you still influence all the battle stats:
 
See how with Str, Intu and Int you still have one good stat for each of the battlestats? Strength affects Defence and Damage. With Intelligence you get Accuracy and Anti-Crit and with Intuition you are covered on Dodge and Crit Chance. 

I have never actually tested anything with this, it's barely my theory that this should work well. It would be rather interesting to level a perfectly "Normal" pet with this and see how it does, what do you think?

* Umm actually it would be 30+49, since you are lvl 1 already and only get 49 levels until you reach 50.. But it's so much easier to calculate with 50 that I left it at that ;-)

Thanks for sticking around this long, I know this turned into a short novel here....

Also on a side-note: Do you think adding this to the guide would make sense? It seems rather long-winded for a new player, but if you feel it would make this whole topic clearer I could certainly put it in. 

Ah, guess I misunderstood that part of the guide.. I had taken it to mean increase the top stats, especially if it was effected by a positive gene.

And yeah, I figured comparing the two isn't fair since one of them is a GP1, but I was trying to find two examples of pets that both had a red gene and have actually participated in fights.

Thank you, I think it would help to add the part elaborating the end worth of points in red vs green areas to the guide! Knowing you get an extra bonus out of raising green stats is good, but that trying to dump a lot of points in a red stat is a waste of points is something I wish I'd known much earlier.  (If I'd sat down and considered it for long I might have realized it myself, but I've been away from MMOs too long to start number crunching a new game out of habit.)

And yes, I've also taken an interest in spending more points in Int and Intu to help raise overall effectiveness.  Complementary stats are important to pay attention to!  I'm doing it on several pets and so far it feels like it's worked pretty well, especially when there's just one low stat to cover for.  And maybe the guide can mention tailoring point spread to useful genes - for instance, a pet that has counterstrike gets their dodge chances improved even farther with Agi *and* Intuition, and the extra Intuition will improve their chances of that being a critical attack. 

I can answer at least one example question from my earlier post - I have one puma with Silent Pace + Second Breath, and others with Counterstrike.  Overall Silent Pace is awesome when it does work, but it's not reliable enough compared to Counterstrike on a high-dodge pet for the Paws slot - It doesn't go off a lot of the time, and even when it does that's only once per battle.  I haven't tried the Poison Claws/Petrifying Gaze vs Counterstrike on a cockatrice yet, but I suspect the choosing species-specific traits will be much more powerful from having used just Petrifying by itself.

@Gryphonic and Doodle6421:

I updated that part of my guide now with extra info on stats.. I tried to make the whole thing clearer, added the positive and negative examples and added the part about Str+Intu+Int and the possibility to tailor to a pet's special abilities. For this, the section got quite a bit longer, but I'm hoping it's changed for the better - I would HIGHLY appreciate any and all feedback though! Is there anything I should leave out / that's too confusing? Should I reword something to make it clearer? 

I can't seem to figure out how battle efficiency stats work. If Defence depends on Constitution and Strength, does that mean that it's those two characteristics added up? Or are they multiplied? What would be an actual Defence stat of a 210 Strenght and 190 Constution?

Second question: How does fighting in the Arena work with that? From what I've gathered through trial and error, the battle math might go like this: (Yourbite+Yourbite*(Yourdamage-Opponentsdefence))*+-30%

This doesn't seem to apply sometimes so it's probably completely wrong...