Beastmastery modifications

As it stands now, pets are *nearly* worthless. Their AI is poor, damage is so-so, and they make terrible tanks. I was thinking, maybe the charm animal skill could be divided into two parts: an animal companion piece and a charm animal piece.

The animal companion piece would work exactly as it does now, i.e. my buddy the pet running around aimlessy while big scary things bite my head off. The charm animal portion would be reworked to be a bit more like a minion master. Any and all animals found while adventuring could be permanently charmed and used during a specific instance. A select few of the beastmastery skills would be usable with them (Maybe seperate pet skills and charmed animal skills?). This would also mean the number of random animals strolling around in areas would have to be increased slightly, and their level would be increased, so that level 5 bears won't be running around the southern shiverpeaks. In addition, this would make the Otyugh's Cry skill a bit useful.

Keep in mind, this is quite different from a MM for a few reasons:
1: Animals are more difficult to come by, so building a huge army isn't very likely. I envision a maximum of 4-5 animals charmed in an instance.
2: These animals are a bit more resilient than the degening undead, but require more care as they are hard to come by.
3: SOME beastmastery skills may be used with them, as the ability to use all the pet skills would be a bit overpowered (10x brutal strike anyone?)

Seems like a fun way to play around with the dunce-like pets, let me know your ideas! Besides, who wouldn't want to see a swarm of pandas charging the enemy in Ch.2?

pets are amazing, with 12 beast i can do 45 to a war and 70+ to casters!!! i dont see how u think that is bad, and plus im only ranger 2ndary! the erocious strike keeps my energy up and does around 65 dmg to casters and 40 to wars!
try this build
12 air (8+3+1)
12 BM
7WS
6 or 7 ES i dont remember

Troll Unguent
Barbed Trap / healing spring
lightning strike
lightning orb
ferocious strike {E}
predators pounce / disrupting lunge
charm animal
rez sig

it kills a lot even rangers with disrupts as spiders and lizards do peircing damage which i think they are weak against.

dont take it personally, but i hate all your ideas for it except outyaghs cry.

somehow the idea of collecting 4-5 pets per ranger doesnt bode well with me. Pets have max armor at lvl 20 and do respectable damage when your beastmastery is high.

Pets can do amazing damage if they could be PROPERLY controlled. This is what needs to be changed.

Having an army of dumb pets isnt better than having 1 dumb pet.

There are two major problems with beastmaster (and you mentioned 1 of them): the AI is poor, and you require a lot of investment in it to work (particularly in terms of skills slots).

Hence, those should be the two issues that they should address; not simply overcompensating for the shortcomings.

For the AI issue, I suggested this. For the skill bar requirement, I dunno. If you really want your pet to stay alive, you could bring 2 or 3 skills just for that. If you want your pet to do damage, the speed buff and a damage skill (perhaps with interrupt) is good too. There are so many useful skills in the Beast Mastery line, but you just won't have the space for them on your bar.

Only the first point is valid. Pets are great tanks (even without Call of Protection) and their damage is excellent with enough points invested into Beast Mastery.

Undivine sums it up nicely, but I'd like to add something. While its easy to see the conditions and hexes that you are suffering from, the same doesn't hold true for your pet. There needs to be a Pet UI that can display your pets status and be used to give some basic commands.

As far as the skill slot requirement is concerned, that may improve with factions. Skills such as Heal As One that affect both your character and pet simultaneouly are one step towards fixing this problem.

Edit: Undivine's Charm Animal idea is also good, but I'd rather have a toggleable UI. If ANet can go through the trouble of giving us pets, they can give us better control over them too.

I wanted to see Charm Animal get some use as a sort of 'sic em boy' button once you've already got a pet charmed. This would let the pet be more immediately responsive to targetting (right now, it takes a good 15-20 seconds for the pet to catch on that you're on a new target) by having it directly player controlled, while not requiring any new interface besides what's on your skillbar.

Basically, pets would act like they do now, except that once you hit that button- they're off like a shot to go after what you've sic'd em on. And they'll stay on that target til a) it dies b) you target yourself or c) you target another enemy. Both (a) and (b) would put the pet back on default, attacking your targets without requiring input.

Zero energy, zero casting, 8 second recharge.

If you used a bow with it's appropriate skills you could interrupt faster than a second as well as do more damage. The pet's rate and response of attack is so bad that those damage values aren't that great.

yes, the only problem with Beastmastery is the AI. Also, I would like the charm animal and comfort animal skills to merged (but still do the same thing), so It would take less space in the skill bar.
the thing to be careful with being a beastmaster is that when you target someone, your pet sticks on that target too long, and wont respond to a target change very fast. So, when playing a beastmaster, be sure to pick your first target right.
This is what should be changed in the pet s AI.
besides that, beastmaster build are powerful, so I will not say anything about that.

i find even using something so imprecise as a Miliu's Pillar (for the energy and health), its not that hard to get my hog to kill who i want it to, and blimey does it kill

I see very little wrong with the pets as they are now except three points:

1. Give a secondary purpose to the Charm Animal skill.
2. Place some untameable animals that are higher than level 5 in Kryta/Maguuma/Desert/Shiverpeaks to give a usefulness for Otyugh's Cry.
3. Place a pet UI somewhere. Even if when you click on your pet - show me what conditions/enchantments are it.

My build for a R/X

Poison Arrow
Call of Protection
Call of Haste
Feral Lunge
Charm Animal
Comfort Animal
Troll's Unguent
Resurrect Signet(If secondary Monk - Resurrection)

Had the whole party killed and my stalker (last one alive) was still killing Stone Summit at full health for another 20 seconds.

dire pets deals more dmg than hammer warriors
so i dont see the bad thing about them

oh exept without right skills they get owned :P

I think the saddest fact of beastmastery is that its most popular use by far is barrage/pet groups and IWAY - in other words the pet's biggest use is to be corpse fuel for a necro's MM or a warrior's IWAY charge. People only bring pets to die.

Although pet builds can do some decent damage and such, they don't fill a particular role. They don't fill the role of interruption better than any other, or spike damage, or trapping. Beastmastery needs some unique characteristic to it that fills a role of some sort in the group, I think.

It doesn't interrupt better than a pure interrupt ranger, no, but it can do a heck of a lot of damage (after the recent buff) while interrupting and healing itself, and is completely sustainable...

I think people fear the pet AI and thus refuse to use pets in any role that relies on them actually understanding the AI... the same reason that 90% of PUGs refuse to leave town with hench monks.

The only thing Id like changed is NOT having to equip Charm Animal to "carry" your pet with you. Instead there should be a slot in the Inventory to assign the pet to. If your BM is low your pet's attack and response to you will be low. The reason to this is because Charm Animal is mainly the reason why its hard to be a beastmaster... unless Anet sees it this way:

1 slot Charm Animal
4 slots dedicated to BM skills
2 slots dedicated for your survival
1 slot for rez

This would mean the beasmaster must RELY SOLELY on the pet and mantain himself alive. This would then be actually viable as thats exactly how beastmasters are: they rely on their pets with very little abilities for themselves. However pets AI is not very efficient. IF the pets AI was more accurate to the player's needs a player could then have a beast that would actually present a menace so much so that an opponent would have to try to take care of pet. I envision the following

1 slot charm animal
3 slot bm skills
1 slot miscellany attack
2 slot miscellany skill (survival/attack)
1 slot rez

Again the real situation is Charm Animal takes up a very important slot that could be used in a diffrent manner.

I'm not saying a pet can't do damage. What I'm saying is they don't fill any particular role. People will shout for "GLF interrupt ranger," "GLF MM," "GLF battery," "GLF spike ranger," etc. Nobody will shout "GLF beastmaster." There is no way for a pet to be an integral part of a team's build except as a sacrafice.

That's what I mean.