omfg the nerfstick dindnt hit, it beat

the nerfstick has been swung again, but not once, 3 times! on 1 skill! GW history in the making people, a-net f*cks beastmasters again! the gold ticket we had, feral aggression just got whacked 3 times and is now another worthless skill that will waste room when i press "k" WHEN WILL A-NET EVER GIVE BEAST MASTERS A BREAK FFS

It got changed to 15 energy, big deal. Expertise will drop that to 7 energy pretty damn fast, which is very manageable.

If you knew anything about Rangers (which you clearly don't) you'd see that Expertise reduces energy cost. Maybe go learn how to play first, THEN complain about something that is EASILY manageable.

also nerfed damage and duration

What skill are we talking about here?..

Uuuh, I think it's Feral Aggression. It took me some time to figure out, too.

Feral Aggression was completely imbalanced and needed a nerf. Thumpers have it too good already.

They do? So confused. We are talking about PvE skills right?

Tell that to Mesmers, Ritualists and Paragon. They had it even worse.

eh this is fine, there have been worse nerfs - I think the rit owns the title for the exustion nerf...or possibly loot scaling - now THAT was a nerf

If you dont ant to look the fool think before you rant

Feral Aggression got what it deserved, the skill was basically better than any Beast Mastery Elite. Even with the nerf it's still worth using.

IMO AoE nerf still holds the first place

nah armor nerf or fix or whatever it was ...changin it from all damage to physical damage in the reduction and changing the armor knights boots only need for coverage...that was the biggest nerf/fix ever IMO

Did anyone else look at the skill on Wiki after reading this? Jesus Christ, they raped that skill...
It now has a 20 second reset, with a 17 second duration at 12 Beast Mastery, and half as much +damage as before (+9 at 12 Beast Mastery). No one in their right mind would ever use up a skill slot for so little +damage on their pet, which isn't even on all the time unless you're all Beast Master.
I don't know about PvP, but that skill seemed pretty balanced to me in PvE during the preview. I could accept the other changes, especially any that kept Ranger secondaries from abusing it like the other two changes do, but they should have left the damage alone. Who the hell would try to abuse +4 or 5 pet damage?!

Haven't tested it yet, but it looks to me like it still beats out most attack skills.

Compare it to a given pet attack:
Brutal Strike. Brutal strike is the hard hitter of pet attack skills; 10 energy, 5 second recharge, does +29 damage at 12 BM, doubled below 50%. Assuming you get the double it is dealing 58 damage on 10 energy.

Feral Aggression: 17 seconds duration, 33% IAS, +9 damage. At 33% IAS you'll get 12 attacks off on a non-moving target, potentially - that's 12*9 = 108 damage. In adddition, you only would have had 8 attacks normally in that time, so you get 4 times the base attack damage, so at BM12 and an elder pet that's about 4*24.4, or 98 or so damage. So for 15 energy, it deals potentially 206 damage, over 17 seconds.

Now, I'll admit, it likely isn't attacking the whole time, but it could potentially - an to be fair, the Brutal Strike won't always hit for +58 either.

So, Brutal Strike = maxed at 5.8 damage per nominal energy (BM12, hitting for bonus each time), 11.6 damage per second, for 2 nominal energy per second (10 energy every 5 seconds before Expertise).

Feral Aggression = 13.3 damage per nominal energy (BM12, 206 damage for 15 energy), 10.3 damage per second (since it doesn't last its full 20 second recharge), for 0.75 energy per second (15 energy every 20 seconds).

Cry me a river. It's still outclassing the hardest hitting normal pet attack out there. I agree that it's not the nerf I wanted to see, I think I've proposed two different options*, either of which are preferable, but it's not a weak skill.

* Option one: Leave the skill much as before, but only add the bonus damage to pet attack skills. It become less useful to non-BM focussed builds, and the energy per bonus damage is reduced since you need to activate a skill to get damage. This means spamming pet attacks, and costs a ton of energy, though it would potentially make for a nice bar with Ferocious Strike fuelling many pet attacks.

Option two: make it scale from 0..2..3 or 1..2..3 or some such, but make it +0..2..3 damage per attack, per BM skill on the bar. At 12 BM and 4 pet skills it'd deliver +8 damage (+2, for 4 attack skills) per attack, but at 13 or 14 BM (depending on scaling) with 5 pet skills it'd jump up to +15 per attack (+3 damage, 5 BM skills on bar), and for real BM types with 6 or 7 pet skills it could offer huge +18 or +21 damage bonuses, as they are limited to the underpowered pet. Yeah, it'd be powerful, but pets are underpowered, and only true BM builds would be able to take advantage of it - not thumpers. This type of scaling bonus is seen with the warrior skill that hits for more with each signet on the bar, and in reverse is seen on skills like Wastrel's Demise that hit per spell on the bar - so we know that the mechanism is possible, and it does exactly what you want - smaller bonus for passive pet users and thumpers, bigger bonus for BM types.

You cannot compare any attack boosting skill to an instant damage attack. Damage applied instantly is many, many times better than damage applied over time.
Would you say an attack that deals 200 damage instantly is "outclassed" by a skill that boosts damage by 15 for 30 seconds?

The first suggestion you made wouldn't be terrible, but I'd prefer that it kept the ease of use that it had before, and it'd probably have to have a few more damage than it did origionally. The idea for the second idea is pretty good in my opinion, but I think it'd need to scale more cleanly than you described. It's really weak in lower or mid ranges of BM skills and the BM attribute, but jumps really fast at high-end.

But my god... they reduced the effectiveness of that skill by literally more than half. I can't recall a time when any skill in the past has been so badly torn apart from what it once was.

No matter how much I want to disagree with the OP on principle I just can't. While the world may be ending (to him) I find the skill nerf makes Beastmasters even less likely in PvP. There have only been a few builds that even use pets (IWAY, Thumpers, and pokeway if you really want to count it). Pets have too many issues to become competitive and until the issues are addressed, pets won't happen in PvP even if skills such as these are on the crap pile.

Personally I love the suggestions that Epinephrine made. Not only would it reduce the possibility of abuse from thumpers it could make a BM bar possible.

No, I expect the overall damage to be higher from skills that deal it over time, at least per energy. That much is obvious, but you'll note that I am comparing it to the maximum effect of Brutal Strike (on <50% targets) and that it outperforms it energy-wise by a factor of three to achieve a similar amount of damage over time. That's not exactly shabby. Roughly the same damage over a period of time, at a third the cost is pretty reasonable, and I was giving the Brutal Strike the advantage of always triggering the bonus. Maybe "outclass" is a strong word, but I'd probably take Feral Aggression over Brutal Strike 90% of the time. And it deals substantially more damage per energy.

I'm not saying that the skill is super where it is - but I think that you're not going to see it get much stronger with the current skill functionality, as it'd be too tempting for thumpers etc. Only if the skill gets some new mechanism will it be possible to reap a bigger bonus for high BM. And it needed the nerf before, given that hardcore BM players were commenting on it.

Minion Masters. We went from unlimited minions down to 10 at 16 Death Magic.

I don't see much use in a "pure" BM. That would basically imply points spent solely into Beast Mastery and Expertise. That doesn't leave the Ranger much to do skill wise, other than stand around and direct the pet. BM bars usually have to spec into 3 attributes, since they need high Expertise (9 minimum) to reduce skill costs, and then need to spec in another line for the ranger himself to do something (weapon mastery of some sort, usually). A bow ranger can get away with <12 Weapon mastery because bows aren't used primarily for damage in PVP. But melee or Spears, you want to do some hurt, so you want to put 12 in that.

This skill is now basically a non-elite pet-only RaO that won't see much use. Call of Haste is much better on a non-Rampage bar. 10e, fixed 30s duration and lower bonus damage would have fixed this skill. Anet went overboard with this nerf. GWEN didn't have many good skills to begin with, now it has one less.

This is the type of change i was hoping for. Honestly, i almost assumed that this was what they were going to do.

I'm still not sure how much better Feral Aggression is than Call of Haste; The IAS is better, and you gain the +damage, but when pets have that delay before attacking, it made sense to minimise the time they spent between targets.

It is still better though, and i will still use it, even if grudgingly so. It's a shame that pure Beastmasters have lost most of the buff that brought them up to par with other DPS sources though.

The skill was very good before, but the size of the nerf is ridiculous. The old Feral Aggression at least put BM's on the same power level as other characters.

I'd rather see a buff that encourages active play, but now something needs a buff IMO.

It went from being a skill that could possible result in a half decent pure bm build now its probs just another bm skill that will never see use. Still it beats keen chop :P.

You do know what that funny little "33% IAS" thingy means, right?

That said, I don't like pet nerfs. I've still never actually found a decent reason to take my pet along in general PvE, and the only builds I use where a pet might be useful, are optimal when running a big fat zero (or whatever's left) points in Beast Mastery.

Wait, since when does anyone care about Beast Mastery?

With the amount of Beastmasters out there this would mean the skill would be almost dead. I would rather prefer THIS nerfed version then have it be a specialized pet builds only skill.

While I have a soft spot for pets I never take full BM bars and usually go with 13 Expertise, 12 Bow and 12 BM. I would like to keep this skill, not have it restricted to the very rare pure BM build, then it would become a gimmick skill.

I think 15 energy has already taken care of abuse by non-ranger primaries who do not have expertise, and its also hard and not so useful actually to squeeze it on a thumper bar.

Maybe Longasc, but there are plenty of skills for thumpers/passive pet users to bring. Something to help BM players would be welcome.

The idea of bonus damage per BM skill I like, because someone like you would likely get decent benefit anyway - at 4 pet skills and +2 per BM skill it's still +8 damage with the 33% IAS, hardly different from the current state (and given that most will have Comfort/charm/a pet attack and Tiger's Fury, that's not hard), but it would also help the real BM builds attain some level of competitiveness by further rewarding more pet skills/BM investment.

It's true that it needed a nerf. It was too powerful during the preview. For the most part I agree with the nerfs they put in place, but I think they nerfed the +damage a little too much. It should be around +12 or +13 at rank 12 Beast Mastery.

Also, I've been testing the skill out a little bit and I think it's bugged. It won't activate while other skills are activating. For instance, if you start casting a 5 second Nature Spirit, and then hit Feral Aggression, it will wait for the Nature Spirit to finish before activating.

Ohh Boo-freaking-hoo.

Go have a bit more of a cry, 15e isn't that harsh.

Quit being an ass. No one cares about the 15 energy, the problem is the low damage, and duration which can't be held up as long as the reset without 15+ BM. The 15 energy was just throwing salt in the wound.

The skill is supposed to be a pure damage boost for your pet, but it barely out shines Call of Haste for that alone. Between the two skills, you can either choose +8% attack speed and +9-10 damage per hit, or +25% movement speed to stop runners and the ability to maintain the effect constantly.

After posting that last part, I thought through it's current state without thinking about what it used to be, and while they raped the hell out of that skill, it's not massively underpowered, but it is still underpowered. All they have to do is add 3 or 4 points to the max damage, and up the duration a little.