Wonderful Places in LOTRO's Middle Earth: Loremaster Skills: Using your combat Pet

In this tutorial I will explain how you can take optimal use of your combat pet.

6 Combat pets + 1 Healing pet
Combat pets are Loremaster pets that can be used as an combat assistant. You can direct them to attack foes, or to defend you if you are attacked by a foe. There are 6 types of combat pets: Bear, Bog-Guardian, Eagle, Lynx, Raven and the Sabertooth Cat. The Spirit of Nature is generally listed as a combat pet, but actually it is a pet that is only useful to protect and heal you; you cannot use it as a combat assistant like the 'real' combat pets. Below is a table of all the pet type, with information about the level when you get the skill to summon them. The only combat pet which isn't earned normally is the Eagle. You can only summon an Eagle when you slot the 'Lesser Giant Eagle' trait in the Keeper of Animals trailt line (thats the blue trait line of the Loremaster). Since you need 5 ranks in other traits to slot is, it becomes available after you spend 5 trait point into other skills of the blue trait line. The 6th trait point invested will be the Lesser Giant Eagle. So, in this case the lowest level when a Loremaster can summon the Eagle combat pet will be around level 15. If you spend points in other traits, you have to wait some levels to earn new trait points, to invest them in the Lesser Giant Eagle trait.
The Spirit of Nature is generally called a combat pet, but in reality it is a healing pet. The Spirit of Nature cannot attack, so these spirits don't have a flank rate. However, you can trigger a flank effect, by using the spirit's skill 'Flasing Flank'. Spirits are mainly used for healing, so if you want only a combat assist you shouldn't use them.

Flank rate
Each pet has a flank rate. This rate is an indication to trigger a flank effect. Flank effects can be used to heal yourself, to get some extra power or to do extra damage. Read my article about flanks carefully to understand this very useful effect. Pets with the highest flank rate are the Bog-guardian (#1), Eagle (#2) and Raven (#3). So, when you summon one of these pets, the chance to get a flank-effect will be very high. To try this out, just sommon the Bog-guardian at level 20 and provoke some enemies. You will notice that a flank-effect will occur many times. After this, summon the Bear. This pet has the lowest flank rate, which means that a flank-effect will occur only now and then.

Varieties
All pets have varieties, which mean that you can summon another appearance of your lynx, bear, raven, etc. These 'varieties' doesnt give them extra abilities or different skills, they only have another appearance. Of course, a Polar Bear is an awesome bear to impress your fellow Loremasters, and the varieties of pets are highly sought-after. You can acquire the varieties by buying a talsiman-book from a Jeweller (they can craf most of the vcarieties named in the table below). You also can buy them on the Auction Hall, or from the Lotro Store (which means that you must pay Turbine Points to get them). Receipts for the Combat-pets talismans are dropped by enemies, so you will find these talismans sometimes in your loot bag. Remember that only a Jeweller can use these receipts, so if you don't want to pay TP-points, you need a jeweller if you want another variety of your most beloved combat pet.

Pet type	Level	Flank rate	Varieties
Bear	14	lowest	Black Bear, Blackpaw-bear, Polar Bear, Weathered-bear, Wildpaw-bear, Tundra Cub
Bog-guardian	20	top #1 flanker	Mountain-guardian, Swamp-guardian, Tundra-guardian
Eagle	15*	top #2 flanker	Ashen-eagle, Ember-eagle, Snowcrest-eagle, Tundra-eagle
Lynx	30	mediocre	Grey Lynx, Mountain Lynx, Onyx Lynx, Spotted Lynx, Tundra Lynx
Raven	2	top #3 flanker	Blood-raven, Frost-raven, Mottled-raven, Storm-raven, Weathered-raven
Sabertooth Cat	56	average	Deep-wood Sabercat, Dusky Sabercat, Grey Sabercat, Onyx Sabercat, Spotted Sabercat, Striped Sabercat
Spirit of Nature	70	none	Spirit of the: Aurochs, Bear, Boar, Raven, Lynx, Tundra Cub, Sabercat