Question about the ranger beast

Is it true that when your beast DIE all of your skills and spells are disbled for 8 seconds?

Well, its not when your beast dies. When you attempt to resurrect it with the skill Comfort Animal and succeed, that is when your skills are disabled for 8 seconds.

Yes, your skills are disabled when your pet dies.

If you see a badly damaged pet nearby in PvP, kill it. Your going to take an enemy ranger out of the battle for a few seconds! (Unless the enemy ranger is a Necro using death Nova, then leave it alone! lol)

I haven't played a beast mastery ranger so I guess I can't say anything about the dying part. But this is crap. They're disabled for 8 seconds, and if you use Comfort Animal to revive, they're disabled again? I looked up the skill and that's what turns up.

yea its true, and yea its anoying, i gave up my pet the day i steped out of ascalon

I'm quite shocked at the 'THATS CRAP' and 'Yeah I gave up' replies.

All that really says is that you have no idea how to use your pet! A pet can be a very powerful ally. Yes you have to worry about the 8 second issue but then I have to ask you - What is your pet doing anyway?

I mean, you have to plan what your doing with your pet. Your going to use up some skill slots for him so you had better make sure you have an effective plan.

If your just using your pet as a fire and forget npc. You dont put much into beastmaster and you have no other plans for him.... DONT use a pet.

Same can be said for any other ability or skill in the game - If you dont know how to use it effectively, either learn or do something else!

hmm, they must have changed things since when I had a pet on on of my /r chars and it died my skills were NOT disabled for any length of time untill I used Comfort Animal. So unless they have changed something in a patch and you loose access to skills when/if a pet dies (and you haven't used Comfort Animal) then I'd say thats a bug.. or maybe me not having any skill disabled was a bug? but I doubt it.. So either they have changed something, or certain ppl in this thread are either mistaken or knowingly lying about this situation.

My lil strider hasn't died in 50 hours >_>

pets are very good for screwing up trappers, but is there a way to send your pet one someone and move on to another target.. without your pet comming back and attacking what you do?

quick question here, does pet have DP?

Leventh: I don't think so - maybe Ouyugh's Cry might work if they stay focused only on the initial target.

igormak: Yes, your pet will accumulate its own DP, but it no longer affects you directly.

Can't tell you about Beta as I never played any rangers in Beta. But it has been this way since release and descriptions on the skill in beta were the same.... Not a bug!

Tormunda - I never played in the beta's either and have played a Mo/R & a E/R and had pets die on me in the middle of a battle and *NOT* had any of my skills disabled for any time untill I cast Comfort Animal - at which time I had my skills disabled.

so as I said, unless they have changed something since I played those chars.. either your char/account/pet or mine is/was bugged. Either that or your mistaken and cast Comfort Animal the moment your pet died.. in which case your skills were disabled for the 8 seconds as per the skills description. Or you were in the process of casting CA when the pet died.. and thus your skills were disabled as per skill description.

Because as I said, had a pet dye on 2 different characters with 2 different builds and niehter of them had any skills disabled when the pet died, only when I used the Comfort Animal skill - and this is in the full retail version, not in the beta's.

As far as I'm aware, in retail version, you only have skills disabled when you use/complete Comfort Animal skill while your pet is dead. If your pet dies and you don't use the skill, from my experience, you don't have any adverse effects - ie you don't have skills disabled. Just my experience in retail with the pets I've played around with.

My pet Stalker dies from time to time. When he dies, my skills go out for a time, and when I rez him they do as well. So I guess they may have changed things since the Beta, which I didn't get to play.

While on the subject of pets, I was wondering which pet, when equal in level, is the stronger companion, the M. Stalker or the snow wolf? I'm about to pass out of the mountain areas and wanted to make a decision soon so I can level up the wolf, if it is a stronger animal in combat.

i can also confirm that a pet death causes your skill bar to blackout. comfort animal will also blackout your skill bar if you rez your pet with it. i do not believe revive animal blacks out your skill bar.

as for otoyugh's cry, i experimented with it once and it did not have any effect whatsoever on my pet. it drew local charmable animals upon my target but i had to actually attack the target for my pet to attack it.

It's been my observation that bears, as tankers, seem to have a bit more durability than other pets of equal level, but their attack rate seems slower. As for disabled skills; you will lose them for a short period when the animal dies and when you use comfort animal...there is an upside here, while waiting for skills to refresh, you can continue to attack, your pet can attack after res and your energy continues to recharge while you wait, giving you a large pool of energy to use for high cost skills that (at this point in battle) might have caused you to slow your attack anyway....think of it as taking a breather.

I've had my pet Missy since pre-sear. I haven't changed her because she's a level 20 and I don't want to start with a level 5 again. I did a mission with a ranger that had a level 20 "lizard", I forget what it's called and it did seem to do more damage than my pet, but it died faster too. I wish there was a way to store my pet so I could try a different one without losing Missy.

By the way, yes your skills are disabled both when the pet dies and when you revive it. During the last BWE you received dp when the pet died but that was taken away in actual release. Early after release your skills where disabled only when you used comfort animal, later they started to disable when the pet died also.

I've also found (this has just started lately) that if I target a monster, wait til my pet has engaged, then switch target, my pet stays with the first target untill it dies, then changes to the new target.

I always use my pet, she's a great tank and seems to do a lot of damage when using lunge (wish there was some way to know exactly how much damage). She also bugs the s... out of the tanks, which really just adds to the fun!

i think you'll find the point of it is that you take Comfort Animal along and heal it BEFORE it dies. Sure most people take it along just as a tank but still, a true beastmaster would rarely let his pet die. Although I don't ever heal my pet anymore because even around Droknar Forge, my Moa rarely dies. But when he does I hate the fact i lose my skills; you can guarantee he will die just as I'm casting Troll Unguent so that I can't heal for 8 seconds!

And two ways round the skill disabling when ressing it: 1. don't res til after the fight is over or 2. use revive animal; it takes longer to cast, can't heal like comfort can and you have to be near the pet BUT you can ressurect ANY allied pet and it doesn't disable any skills when cast.

There is no skill blackout for pets dying in pre-sear, that starts when you hit post.

It is a good trade off for the amount of damage that a pet can dish out as a tank. As someone said, it is a fire-and-forget weapon, and will constantly deal out damage to enemies without costing you any energy. The problem is, for them to be effective at higher levels, a decent amount of Beastmastery is essential as well as equipping at least a couple of related skills (aside from Charm and Comfort). In my opinion, those skill slots are better suited to skills associated with your primary profession since those will generally be the most effective.

I'm thinking of creating a a char that is a primary Beastmaster just to see if that is a viable build, but I have my doubts...

I have actually tried a beast mastery / marksman build.. i was quite surprised by what happend..

with the right skills (like dmg reduction, haste, etc) the pet can do massive ammounts of dmg, for little energy cost, and stay alive quite a while, useing comfort, and rangers heal area spell..
but, i am a ranger / monk, i put extra points into smiting, to get the +5 dmg buff, to put on my pet as well.

How did you get a bear as a pet? I tried and tried but he kept breaking the spell I finally gave up and got a stalker.

how can you tell a pet to attack another target? once it goes to the first target and I switch a target, it continues to hammer away on the first one I chose.