Beastmaster.. what is it good for?

what exactly is a beast ranger good for? I'm somewhat new to GW and I just wanted a little clarification. thanks.

-d

Absolutely nothing.

Just PvE only comments here. Watch some PvP or play some to see what pets can do in that arena!

1. Beastmaster is good to level up with, first of all. Makes life much easier.

2. Go to a site like guild wiki (I can't give the actual link here) and look over the skills under Ranger, Beastmaster. A pet can hit a fierce lick with pet skills greatly increasing your DPS. Plus, there are spirits and other enhancements that are very useful.

3. With a longbow and a pet, you usually take less of the direct enemy fire. You only need to keep the pet alive. Let the pet go in and get beat up! Better him than you!

4. Pets can be useful to any class, though some use them very rarely. I have a build for my hammer warrior hero that includes a pet. Excellent damage dealer.

5. Rangers run without a pet mostly when they want to configure as a ranged interrupter, or when mob levels are level 28 and full of degen and conditions. Or, when you want to be a splinter barrager with interrupts, or have some other secondary that needs the points and skill slots you would ordinarily use for your pet.

My Ranger dates back to the original release date of Prophecies. I still have my old Melandru's Stalker that I got in pre-searing.

beastmaster is one of my top 3 fav. builds, you let the pet agro and take all the damage while you sit back and spam enraged lunge to do 100+ damage every 5 secs (just from that skill alone). i find it very fun to use in ab as well, murks necros, eles, mes, and monks with the quickness ^^

Beastmaster can be seen:

PvE: Barrage/Pet combo, you might see this in Urgoz Warden a lot.
PvP: Bunny Thumper (or other variations with the use of daggers or scythe).

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Well, for a dire blackwidow, yes, I would think so!

I've used a modified Bunny Thumper build in the Jade Sea quite successfully (with only henches as back-up). It was great fun .

I absolutely love beastmasters. That said, they aren't terribly useful.

Barrage/pet builds use a pet, and they're popular for certain areas, but they aren't really beastmasters - just barragers with charm and comfort.

Beastmasters can do a HUGE amount of armor-ignoring damage to a single target. Far, far more than a bow ranger. Enraged lunge is good for +80 every 5sec. Brutal strike is another +72 every 5sec. Feral aggression is another +10 on every attack, plus an speed buff. And all of that ignores armor. Toss on Otyugh's Cry (no longer the worst skill in the game) and it ignores blocking too. And you can afford to keep on doing it pretty much indefinitely without energy problems.
Unfortunately for the beastmaster, AoE damage is king in PvE. No amount of awesome single-target damage is going to compare with the overall DPS of splinter-barrage or conjure-barrage.

So what does that leave a beastmaster good for? IMO, 3 things:

1. Fun. So what if it's not as good as splinter-barrage? You can still have a good time tearing monsters limb from limb with enraged lunge. And your pet is still a better damage dealer and tank (Call of Protection + Otyugh's Cry = nigh indestructible) than your average hammer warrior.

2. Skill Capping. I'm working on legendary skill hunter right now. Having a decent pure ranger build so that I can change secondaries at will has proved invaluable. (And huge amounts of armor-ignoring damage for the bosses helps too.)

3. Random Arenas. Show up decked out in your PvE armor with your PvE bow skin (stormbow FTW) and your PvE pet and I guarantee you that the opposing team will think you're some noob who brought a barrage-pet build into PvP. So, at first, you'll be lowest on their target list (mid armor and believed to be low damage) and they won't even think of blinding or cursing, or even kiting, the pet. With your huge armor-ignoring, block-ignoring damage, and your opponents foolishly ignoring your pet, you can kill anyone who's not covered with prot spirit or spirit bond in a matter of seconds. Now, here's the really fun part: This is random arenas, so your opponents aren't on vent (unless they're synch joining cheaters), don't know each other (ditto), and are probably far too ashamed to admit to total strangers that their uber-leetness-sauce assn build just got insta-pwned by an iguana -- so you can just move on to the next victim (and the next and the next) without the survivors ever finding out that it's the pet that they need to blind/curse/kite/prot against until it's too late. Now, of course, once rezzed, people you've already killed once will make a beeline for you (especially assassins), but you can usually just kill them again before the do much damage to you, especially since they've got DP.

Personally i dont use a pet, i generally just put down pain to help me do a bit of extra damage. But thats just my opinion, i can see how a pet can be useful.
A R/RT is pretty good.

This is a quick build i did.

With a better selection of skills, weapons and runes reaching 60-70dps with a beastmaster build is easy.



And if you dont care about dps, you can create builds based in inflicting conditions, interrupting, etc...

wow thanks guys, this looks like a lot of fun, i was looking at either rng, mes, or necro as my first character and i think rng wins lol. i'll test out a bit too but thanks for all the advise!

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Meh pets are awesome tanks, my heroes always have pets to take the brunt of the enemy damage, works pretty OK. Especially in GW:EN, which can be very melee-unfriendly at times.

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In my experience, dedicated Beast Master builds are truly for people who really, really like pets. I've always been able to achieve better results with a bow build and a balanced group.

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