I too recommend alone. :\ even IF you can combo as a team a pet or 2 will often mess up and rebel, dunno why... its so strange so solo is better. Just match the pet with the owner.

As for debuffing i personally think its just a waste. you have a limited amount of time in which you can stay on the island, vouchers aren't cheap and when you can manage to get even a few one i think you should make the most of it and only go on double exp days. Using skills or debuffs just slows things down plus if you are using a pot you don't get any extra bonus' by doing debuffs with a pot on so whats the point in debuffing? Also unless you're a mage, and your pet is also a mage and you cannot kill with poking then i say use a low skill like newbie skill or starter skill that takes about the same action time as a poke and doesn't waste seconds with extra animation.