I was just curious as to whether there is any advantage to having a pet attuned to the Fire element?
I think fire is pretty cool (no pun intended...sort of) but once you attack an enemy then they will attack back, right?

Well the problem I am seeing with the Fire element is that the fire attack can attack up to two targets which can be helpful if more than one target has so few hit points left that it can be wiped out in one attack BUT since you have no control over having a singular or multi-target attack, once more than one target is git then your party faces the prospect of having to fend off more than one assault.

SO..as it stands, is there any advantage to fire or is it only helpful depending on what the other pets are attuned to? I do wish we had a choice of singular or multiple target hits but that's how the cookie crumbles.

Fire's main focus is hitting multiple opponents, so best used against hordes.

Points:
1: Critical hits with Fireball can inflict Burning status for three turns, which basically means that the opponents inflicted with it are getting hit with the equivalent of an extra Fireball attack while they have it. And it can be inflicted more than once on the same opponent at the same time.

2: In a fight against three opponents, you use Exploding Fireball, which hits all opponents on the field... and the Combusting effect in ALWAYS inflicts
An overview of what it's doing against these enemies I went and found, this pet using Fire
Turn 1) Hits all opponents for damage (982 on A, 769 on B, 717 on C) and inflicts Combusting on all opponents.
Turn 2) Combusting activates and, 107 damage to opponent A, 97 to B, 113 to C
Turn 3) Second activation, 223 damage on A, 188 to B, 257 to C
Turn 4) Combusting explodes, each one hitting each opponent for a total of Many hits (I'd say nine, but like... I have nine hits, the qitari that was in this group faints, and then there are two more hits that do 0 damage, so I don't know what is going on there) The lowest damage of all these hits (excluding those weird zeros) is 355, the highest is 1502

3: in that fight, the damage summary informs me that one pet did ~4.7k, one did ~4.1k... and our Fire pet did 19,337 damage

I still kind of miss pre-update, where Fireball itself could be raised to 'hit all opponents at once' but on the other hand I get Exploding Fireball our of the update, so.

In summary, Fire element's hecking amazing.

Edit because I didn't get the "once more than one target is git then your party faces the prospect of having to fend off more than one assault." bit's meaning until seeing Rixva's post... If Rixva interpreted that correctly... Hitting opponents doesn't incite them to hit you, all opponents attack every turn regardless of if they've been hit

I don't know for sure where you got the info that enemies don't attack unless you attack first. As far as I know, if you're fighting multiple enemies at once, they all attack your party regardless of which one you're targeting.

The advantage to fire is high levels of magical damage, spread over multiple targets. Like all the elements it has its pros and cons - for example, during battle contests, it's helpful to take down the 3-enemy encounters really fast. With my double-fire party I generally only have to aim at one enemy in order to take them all down in a couple turns. However, my build is really rotten against bosses, because the damage spread doesn't cut down on the turns for facing a single enemy.

Anyway! Like all the elements, the key is to figure out what works for you. No "advantages" or "disadvantages" are really universal ^-^

Edit ;; ah, Scath beat my reply. Sorry if my answer was unnecessary ^^;;

I see. Thanks for the replies.
I do like Fire but based on what I had been reading, it sounded like it was a bad idea to have a fire pet in ones party.

Maybe I will try out a fire attuned pet to see how it fares. Thanks again