Beast Mastery is actually powerful

well, had a day with nothing to do, and remembered someone saying theyd done a pure beastmaster build somewhere.. so i tried it out myself

after much experimenting in team arena, we came up with this build:

2 identical BM rangers

16 BM
10 Exp
10 Wildy

Res sig
Call of Haste (invaluable for both increasing dmg and chasing down cowardly monks)
Brutal Strike (not nice to get hit by, i was whacking casters for -130 with it)
Predators Pounce (great + dmg for the cost and recharge, AND heals your pet!)
Ferocious Strike {E} (Energy Management and dmg rolled into one)
Disrupting Lunge (Distracts. Every. 5. Seconds. By golly we annoyed some monks with it)
Troll Ungent (self healing, self explanatory)
Charm Animal (/doh)

Domination shutdown mesmer.. or something.. I don't know what he was doing to enemy monks, but they werent doing anything back. It's handy if theres 2 monks, so he can focus on keeping one useless, while the rangers beat up and annoy the other, and with Disrupt Lunge hitting every 5 seconds divided by 2 rangers, not much got cast.

And finally, a healer or a boon prot or something. Boon prots were hard to kill with this, so i can only assume theyd be good on our team.

At first the enemy teams just laughed at our seemingly innocent hog and spider. But slowly we learnt what to do, and arrived at this build, by which time they were chasing W/Mo's around, and killing active healers in a matter of seconds. And at the end of the match, as Flawless Victory comes up like it did so much for us, you can laugh your ass off that two pets just decimated an entire team

I never felt pets were underpowered before this last update. I think what always held them back was their AI. The update boosted their power and did nothing for their AI, which seems like all the wrong approach to me. As you say, pets are extremely powerful now. I'm still not certain they'll see wide use in the upper crust of competitive players, because their AI failings are so easy to take advantage of to mess up an opposing team if you know what you're doing. *coughpathingcough*

I guess, as a lover of pets, I should take this time to really let my Moa go wild. A whopping +70 armor ignoring damage every 5 seconds once someone drops below half health is quite impressive.

Beastmastery is powerful. Ive been using a beastmaster/touch ranger mixed build. using:

blood magic 11
beastmastery 14 (10+3+1)
expertise 13 (10+3)

vampiric touch ( heal+ damage)
disrupting lunge
ferocious strike[elite]
call of haste( for the runners I cant chase)
comfort animal
whirling defense
charm animal
res signet

I used this for random arenas, and It worked really great. I killed ( alone ), a monk and two elementalists while all my team was dead.
the only problem, as always, the pet AI problem, and heavy degen and hex.
Ishould try other pet attacks and see if they can work (and have a mighty 16
attribute beastmastery).I am asking myself what a full beastmaster team can do...

Rangers energy = 32 (with druids) and vampiric touch 15 energy.
You can use it twice, and your energy is gone. Was it worth it?

Durr Expertise.

I forgot that, doh.

Quote:

do u need 16 bm?

My Smite BM Build

10 Smiting Prayers
11 Expertise (8+3)
16 Beast Mastery (12+1+3)

Balthazar's Aura
Judges Insight
Ferocious Strike [E]
Brutal Strike
Call Of Haste
Comfort Animal
Charm Animal
Res sig

Insightful PvP Smite Staff of Enchanting (20%)

Mainly a pressure build, takes down even warriors with ease. Monks are no problem if theres only one and you aren't being targeted. Everything else succumbs very easily to this build.

Absolutely zero self defense, but you can keep on the move while still dealing damage through pet attacks.

Quote:

I wish I could tell my blasted pet to stop attacking! It is completely and utterly frustrating. Or even to attack someone else. Or to defend me. Etc. Until the intellegence issue is fixed...I fear BM will never see its absolute potential...

Pets need the Henchie's AI for attacking, Crtl+shift+space bar FTW!

Although I agree with the points on the need for an AI fix.

I have found pets can be very effective when combined with melee rangers.

My guild Runs a set of GvG and Tombs builds sometimes now which I created (Well we were highly inspired by rifts build). Both of Which at the current point incorparate a Thumper and a Sword Beastmaster, I may post the builds for the rangers up here at a later date.