Heal As One buff

Personally I found the buff to Heal As One to be one of the most exciting skill changes provided. I think this skill may finally make an archer beastmaster a legitamate build since a beastmaster now no longer has to take up two skill spots for Comfort animal and a self heal. It may be a bit early to get excited about this since I haven't been able to try this out much yet, but I'm wondering what other people think of this buff.

I'll be trying it out in a few. Working on Grandmaster title, I'll bring my pet for company. Will report soon.

Still pretty worthless imo. Put it this way.

Comfort Animal, heals the pet. The pet is dumb. The pet won't kite. The pet won't retreat (quickly). The pet is dumb.
Enraged Lunge, makes the pet a lethal killing machine. Works well with many pet buff skills.

Heal As One, heals you and the pet. The pet is dumb. The pet won't kite. The pet won't retreat (quickly). You (hopefully) aren't dumb. You will kite. You will retreat. You have no elite slot left. You can either buff the pet midly or give it reasonable damage.

Enraged Lunge wins everytime. Even if it will replace Comfort Animal taking up less slots, you can hide in the background and take very little damage quite easily. Elite pet attacks > Elite heal.

Understandably a pet can't kite, but even if they could it would defeat half the point of using a pet. Pets are meant to tank and hold aggro rather than kite and lose aggro imo, such is why there are good pet buffs like Call of Protection. For the purpose of PvP, I do see pet attacks as being stronger since often an all or nothing offense strategy can work well (such as thumpers), but in PvE where battles can wear on for long periods of time I do see the legitamacy of maintaining a buff to ensure that you can endure the battle as well as participate in the offense of such.

While Enraged Lunge is no doubt an excellent BM skill, I believe Heal as One now gives the defensive school of thought a legitamate tool to enable the ranger to have a self heal without running att in WS for troll, which is generally too slow to come in to effect anyways.

Back in the days when my alliance holded Cavalon, I used to go solo the first room of the Deep (and more when lucky) with a pure BM build (yeah I was that bored). I used Heal as One, and already considered it was a nice skill. However the recharge time is an issue, and I don't know if you can keep your pet alive long enough without Confort Animal.

On a side-note the new beastmaster armor sounds promissing

Thats exactly the point.

A pet can't kite, so needs all the buffs it can get to live (ie Call of Protecton/Haste). Comfort Animal gives it plenty of heal and its not as if its recharge is of any significance. Most of the time as the master your free to just run off, kite, send the pet in after agro has taken to everything else, etc. As a ranger you seem to be ignored by practically everything unless they want to spike you (Skeleton Berserkers anyone?). Any major damage can't really be countered by Heal As One and a monk would probably/hopefully heal you up before you were killed anyway (plus enemies are good interrupts so you might not even get it off).

As a BM your pets ability to kill stuff is priority. If your pet has low damage output or survivability then you might aswell have gone for a Marksmanship build instead. Unlike while doing Barrage or Punishing Shot builds (and many more) you kite, you lose all damage. While kiting your damage is just as constant as it always was using Enraged and its not particularly technical.

Plenty of BM skills are conditional too, stuff like Bestial Pounce = Casting, Bestial Mauling = Knockdown, Ones that need foes to be attack, moving, enchanted, below 50%, etc. Having 2-3 BM skills perma recharging is extremely easy to accomplish, it also ties in well with Brutal Strike with the high damage output.

Heal As One is as Healing Hands is to a wammo imo. Can be very beneficial, but not really worth wasting an elite slot on.

The place I use Heal as One regularly is in Alliance Battles where I run a hybrid marksman + BM. I think having Heal as One double as pet rez is excellent because it frees up a slot to help my personal survivability (vs. the pet's). Throw dirt/whirling defense, here I come

IF you have a BM elite for a pet, and that elite ISNT Fero Strike or Enraged Lunge....Shame on you.

Nuff Said.

Pets are either:
1) There to Die, so why are you wasting an elite on healing it..when your elite could be making YOU better.

2) There to do as much trouble/dmg as they can before they die (cause it WILL die..many times..), so why are you wasting an elite on healing it..when its elite could be one of its PWNAGE pet attacks,

Heal as One is NOT an effective self heal, nor an effective pet heal. It trys to do both and ends up not doing either very well.

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