I recently decided to retrain my thunderbird to be more combat oriented. Up until now I've just thrown on random abilities as I learned them, without any thought as to how they might work together, or leaving room for future abilities. I bought a pony to put all the influencing stuff on, but it looks like I have more room on my thunderbird than I thought. So, I have some questions about the usefulness of some abilities.

What exactly does balancing do? I tend to dismount before I go into combat so she doesn't get left behind when I get knocked off. Other than the increased movement speed from trot and gallop, are there actually any advantages to staying mounted?

I plan on training battle/aggressive only if there's room, otherwise I'll put it on the pony. My thought is that in combat, there's usually something else your beast can be doing that's more useful than attacking. Is this sound reasoning?

Is there any point to armor? It seems to me that most beasts get killed by being left behind after their master dies, so I'm not sure how this would be useful.

I gave her regenerate mana, because I've had her run out of mana before from breathing too much lightning, and she has sleepcloud now too. For the same reason I see no point for armor, I don't see a need for health regeneration.

Is jumping any different from tumbling, other than (presumably) being faster? I tend to die before I can tumble out anyways, so is this useful at all?

I only have beastmastery up to MajorBreath so far, and I gave her sleepcloud so I can -finally- get past insomnia to put people to sleep. When I realized that it works on all enemies though, I was a bit confused. Is there any actual way to make use of this? Other than having your allies trigger some sort of sleep attack when you use it, I don't see a reason to use sleepcloud except when you're trying to get one specific person to sleep.

I plan on getting healing next, and will probably teach her to heal health. I'll put heal ego on the pony. Is heal mana useful at all? Is there any easy way to code healing one and not the other?

Is chameleon just a utility ability, or is there an actual use for it? I feel like it would just be taking up trains for a minor convenience.

Curing and trampling both seem to be very expensive. Are either of them worth it? In what scenarios are they useful?

Does bodyguard help with bashing only, or is it useful in combat as well? It will be a while before I learn that high in beastmastery, so I need to know if I should save trains for that.

If you have any tips on how to use beasts effectively that I haven't asked about, go ahead and post them. I'm not interested in getting too involved in specific tactics, but I'm sure others would love to hear your ideas.

If I recall correctly, Balancing was changed to be an increased level of summon resistance for the rider. Besides accessing some of the physical skills of a beast (flying, leaping, galloping, trampling, etc.), no, there's not much advantage to staying mounted.



Yes. Battle and Aggressive is more suited for bashing beasties than combat beasties anyway.



Armour makes a critter significantly tankier - long enough sometimes to be whistled away if the owner who dies gets rezzed quickly. If the dead owner takes a particularly long time to come back though, then no, the ability won't save the critter from being killed.



Mount jumping is equivalent to a pogo stick or other standard leap abilities. It is not a tumble equivalent. Jump is useful for those who don't have access to leap or a pogo naturally, I suppose, but you have to stay mounted to use it.



Sleepcloud is generally used when concentrating on getting a single target to sleep anyway, rather than an entire group. As long as it's chained properly, an enemied target can get insomnia stripped and put to sleep easy enough.



Heal mana can be situationally useful against manakillers, I suppose. You'll want to poke an actual coder about the latter bit.



Chameleon hides the direction the critter moved to, which helps folk who want to run. Besides that, learning another mind skill like that increases the beast's base mana pool anyway, which is always good for combat beasts who use mana.



I've seen trample more than curing, and trample is handy (if situationally broken, but let's not get into that) in groups, so the cost is worth it sometimes.



Certain combat critters can be blocked by a bodyguarding beast, so it can be somewhat useful in combat too.

Just a few things to add.



I find being mounted in combat can be good for access to skills like blocking and trample. (Though trample's only effective if proned.)



Yes. I use spitpoison for my combat beast, though, while my bashing has battle and aggressive.



Yeah - health regen is pretty useless on a beastie. They don't typically get targetted. If you have the extra trains, though, Xiel is right.



Can save you from being noticed when running around, also when the beast dies.



I know that when I'm raiding, I really wish that my combat beast had bodyguard. It'd make it so much easier, especially when you're getting hit for 1500 by things. Bodyguard is only useful against mob attacks, though. If you've got the room, though, and you raid frequently, I'd say that it'd be worthwhile.

Things I use/would like to use for my combat beast (to give you an idea):
Poison spitting
Bodyguard (for raiding)
Flying
Blocking
Healing (me)
Chameleon
Trotting

Bashing/questing:
Empower influence
Trotting
Scaling
Aggressive
Bodyguard
Battle
Flying is inherent on my bashing beast.