My Ranger's pet

I am building a Ranger/Elementalist and am not using too many of the skills on elemental side of the character equation. Therefore I am curious as to whether or not adding to the potentcy of my pet through the Beastmastery skills would be beneficial.
I am still using the cat that I originally tamed and not sure if I want to exchange him for 1 of the other animals. They all seem to have certain abilities and certain drawbacks. I am not sure whether I want to start a discussion of which pet is best. What I do want to know is whether having a buffed up, tough and aggressive pet is worthwhile?
Will he be able to kill on his own with enough points in the various skills?
Would he be able to hold off attackers & force them to concentrate on him & allow me to kill without being rushed & mauled?
I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has built along these lines.

I have a pet too with my warrior/ranger, and it is also the big cat. I only have 1 point in beast mastery though. I like it. If you want to try to run up your beast mastery skill and see what happens go for it, I think I may do that too. thats the beauty of this game, you can fool around with skills and points all you want. take everything and put it into beast mastery adn go out and see what kind of damage your pet can do!

I have a R/E character that doesn't use any of the Ele skills. I've focused on Beast Mastery/ Expertise/ Wilderness Survival. I still have my stalker and it is the same level as me. It can and does kill some mobs by itself. ( I once stepped away from the computer for a tiny bit thinking I was in a "safe" area. When I came back there was loot on the ground next to my (still alive) character. My cat had killed whatever mob had wandered near and attacked me.)

I exclusively solo with this character when I'm in explorable areas. Having the pet is like having a tank npc with me, but I don't have to share the loot.

Just my 2 cents.

elenna, no marksmanship?

I'm a W/R with pretty even Strength, Swords, Beastmaster points and I think my wolf rocks. I use the attack that heals the pet if it hits (sorry, I forget the name right now) and that's it, so my pet does bonus damage and gets an ok heal. Pets are great for stirring aggro too. Here's a tip, especially if you have AE attacks in your group:

Run into a big group of mobs and let your pet die.

Walk back to a safe distance and have your ranged peeps get ready. Rez your pet right when the AE attacks are about to go off. The pet will pull everything to itself when it's rezzed and your AE attacks will totally jack a big group of mobs. Can also use dead pets to distract mobs. Good times. My pet doesn't tend to die too often though.

I have done exactly the same: I'm a R/N but have focused completely on Beast Mastery, Expertise and Wilderness Survival (with remaining points in Marksmanship, to use a minimal bow). These 3 areas form a great combination, because all pet skills require relatively little energy, and with a decent Expertise (I recommend rank 9 in Expertise) you can continously spam your pet skills, while keeping the enemies poisoned and/or in flames with your Wilderness Survival skills. If you do this carefully, the combination of pet damage, bow damage, bleeding caused by your pet, and poisoning caused by your bow, can get to a continous 30 damage per second.

Note that the base damage of your pet increases with your Beast Mastery rank. At rank 12 of Beast Mastery your pet will do as much damage as a max bow. However, if you don't want to invest attribute points in Beast Mastery, you should do away with your pet, because then your pet will just die without doing a lot of damage, and the 8-second disabling of all your skills that's caused by that, is devastating.

i know this thread is about a ranger and his pet.... didnt bother reading anything besides title.... too long

Yeah, I have my spare points in Marksmanship just to get decent damage with the bow. I think I have 3 or 4 points in it.

Then why would you post anyway..

I've seen people talking about marksmanship mainly but not much on Wilderness and Bestmastery.. great info you guys, and great job trying them out and succeed! So was it hard at first to play those lines? I think there aren't much skills from those lines at the beginning.

Pets are extremely weak. Regardless of how you look at it they are just a pain later in the game. You guys are probably all in the earlier stages where it wouldnt matter if your pet was doing damage or not. There is no arguement you can make. Pets are weak and no party would want one, they will just disable your skills come death, or provide a WEAK meat shield that the monks will have to waste so much mana if they chose to heal them in the first place. Personally (I'm a Mo/W), I let their pets die.

I don't know how much more I can convince you; I chose Ranger as my secondary on my elementalist upon the sole purpose to have a pet but quickly realized that it was not as valuable as any other spell. So, in conclusion, this is a non biased (or slightly favoring your guys' bias) opinion that pets are quite useless.

If you want to make a strong character I advise you to go another route. Traps or bow skills. I'm not saying a pet will not let you get through the game. I'm just saying that it will give you a harder time in the long run and will limit your character.

I'm a R/W and I'm finding Beastmastery to be as viable an option as any of the other skills. When I go out in PUG's and adventure with the guild, I actually noticed my Stalker (I just switched to a Snow Wolf for a change) would fare as well, if not better, than the other H2H characters.
I suppose if you completely ignore your pet, then yes it is a hindrance. Luckily, I'm quite talented at multitasking and can actually do my job as a support character AND simultaneously keep tabs on my pet. I keep her alive quite easily with Comfort Animal, and usually she would only die if I died first.
Undertakr--I haven't tried that particular strategy, but I like it. I have noticed that when I rez my pet she would immediately become the center of attention for aggro directly around her. Didn't think to use that to my advantage. Thanks for the suggestion!

Having those 2 skills in your skill bar is quite a waste of skills that could deal much more damage. You also didn't include what level or area you're in. Up until you get to fighting White Mantle I think your pet could fare for itself. But after, a ranger packing 2+ pet skills is completely useless.

Enemies focus on their enemies that have low health, so if you res a pet to 10% health it will get targeted. However this is not a smart move for you've just disabled your skills for another round. And the AoE that your allies can do won't be able to kill the enemies before they move on. Actually they'll come no where close to doing so if you're facing anywhere near worthy opponents.

I don't mean to sound like a jerk I'm just trying to give advice based on the part of the game that I'm at. (The Crystal Desert). And its not the hardest part of the game even, so the effects would amplify later.

Ok. I guess that I need to hear from someone that is close to level 20 and near the end of the game. If there is someone out there that believe in a high pet utilization at end game and is successful at it please leave word here. And leav your point spread & build.

Thanks for all your replies.

I believe some people have said that pets are "somewhat" effective, provided you have 12+ beastmastery and devote at 5-6 of your skills entirely to your pet. However, at the best your pet will be is a Stefan, and that pretty much makes your character a NPC henchy then.

If you want to have 8-9 beast mastery and just have the 2 required petskills and maybe a 3rd petskill, your pet is nearly useless, as later on in the game they'd get killed from 3-4 hits by some monsters. I've seen pets die within seconds upon engaging some monsters in the Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire missions. That disables the owner for about 8 seconds, and he just leaves it dead for the rest of the mission.

Well to be fair, at the best a pet will be like Stefan with bleeds, ability to heal oneself, etc. I'll admit, I'm not through the entire game yet, and my mind is open enough to where if I find my pet is useless later, I'll move on to a different strategy. But for right now, I've never had any problems with it.

>

^WTF^

Anyhow, to answer the posters questions. From what I have read on the beastmastery skills they seem to give 'more bang for yer buck' than typical skills will. Of course, these are for your pet, so you dont really -see- the effects as well as you would if the spell was on you. Take a good look at the mana cost, recast times etc of beastmastery skills and you will see what I mean.

This is so true: Most pet skills are extremely cheap (energy wise), and all pet skills have zero activation time (just the time until the pet's next attack, which can be up 2 seconds). With a reasonable expertise (8 or 9) you can continously spam your pet skills without ever running out of energy.

Just one example: At rank 12 in Beast Mastery Feral Lunge (a pet skill that costs 5 energy), causes +17 damage and 21 seconds of bleeding. This is a total of 164 damage (21 base + 17 + 21*3*2), for an energy cost of just 5! And this in addition to the damage you can do with your own bow.

The reason why many people think pets are useless may be the following:
- If you don't want to spend a lot of points at Beast Mastery, leave your pet at home! At low levels of BM your pet is indeed useless, but at rank 12 of BM, your pet does great continous damage (the base damage of a pet increases with BM rank, up to the damage of a max bow), and can be resurrected with half its life.
- You have to take care of your pet during fights! Actually watch where it's going, who it is attacking, use the appropriate pet skills, heal it at appropriate times, etc. This indeed requires a degree of multi-tasking, but it makes using a pet a lot of fun.

I'm a level 20 ranger with rank 13 in Beast Mastery, and my pet is still extremely useful, and never dies! If your pet dies too often, try using Predator's pounce regularly. This deals +17 damage and restores 41 health to your pet (at rank 12 in BM). If you use this skill often enough, you never need to heal your pet, let alone resurrect it.

cant remember when, but up until maybe...... just before i acsended, i had my pet with me the whole time he was good as, put in left over points into bm and he did great, but after i ascended he just died to much...., i reckon if oy went all out pet skills and points he would be good, but if you had markman at 5, and bm at 5, the markman would cain the bm, bm is just to weak atm.... its either all out pet master or none at all. hope they fix this but you neverf know

My wolf Snowball is a level 19, he's more useful than an extra hench. He takes -60 damage with each bite and distracts the enemy so they don't run for me. He also provides a point to use Chaos Storm when the baddies converge on him. Having a good pet is like having 2 characters to play.

Fix what? How is beast mastery weak, when all the pet skills are twice as good as their ranger equivalents for half the cost?

Yeah, I look at the Beastmaster skills, and they're as good as any other Ranger skill, but most cost less. If you want to run a beastmaster char, then do it. The only reason to not have a pet is if you don't want to use the skills or you can't manage to keep it from dying.

I wouldn't expect a monk to heal my pet, I can do that on my own. Since I'm a warrior/ranger I have adrenaline for my Warrior attacks and energy for my pet. For 5 energy I use Predators Pounce for a big heal to my pet and since I have gladiator armour, I have plenty of energy for that.

You can't think of the pet as a tank, it's not. If something attacks my pet, I target it and kill it. A pet is a constant, high damage DOT. Yes, it takes up 3 skill slots, however, I only have so much adrenaline anyway. I could have more attacks, but I just take the top 3-4 for my sword and I'm set. I think of the pet as a +(whatever it hits for at the current point) bonus for my sword and a bit distractor whenever I need it.

I'd really love to see a whole group of rangers with pets and see how a group of 8 R w/ Pets would fair against a regular team.

I WILL say that pets with PVP created characters have tended to kind of stink, as far as I've seen, but in PVE they've been pretty cool for me.

Pet Hit Points/Armor increase with each level same as you do. Their damage increases with attribute points same as every other skill you have. If you have 0 BeastMastery your pet will do minimum damage 6-9, with 12 BeastMastery it'll do max damage 15-28 along with chance for critical hits which do about 34 damage.

Ok, so a maxed out W/R the pet would be like adding +15-34 damage plus pet skills to your sword IF you can keep your pet from dying. In PVE it's easy, in PVP if someone targets your pet, you'll be skillless for 8 secs or so. I think 3 skill slots for +15-34 damage plus bonuses and bleeding on top of that would be a pretty good build. Of course, it's dependant on keeping the pet alive. Does the pet attack as fast as a warrior? If it does, that'd be 30-68+bonuses from weapon AND pet skills+Crits an attack round?

Pets attack every 2 seconds, with a 10% chance for critical hit with a 12 BeastMastery.

Dragon Incarnate--Thank you very much for the specific information about pets, as well as the polite way you state it.

You're very welcome, and hopefully you're not being sarcastic, if my posts sounded like I have an attitude I don't

I'll be posting a full spread of pet stats soon which will include the previous info I just posted. I think a lot of people will be surprised by the results...

You must have had a ranger with a crappy pet then, or with no points in beast mastery. My pet is lvl 20 and holds his own in any battle. I am talking heavy battles in the desert too, not early in the game. A lot of times he is a meat shield, but a good one, because he can actually take a good bit of damage, and besides comfort animal takes like 1 second to cast, so it's not too hard to keep em alive.

Well, I can see how a pet would be a detriment if you were a caster/R combo because healing the pet would mean not casting a damage/heal/buff/debuff and would lower your amount of energy. That makes sense. However, for a Warrior that doesn't use energy except for frenzy (that I use anyway), with gladiator armour, it's been relatively easy for me to keep my wolf alive in PVE.

15-28 extra damage every 2 seconds for 12 attributes seem like such a waste. That's basically a 11 dps spell that doesn't ignore armor. Not to mention, how do pets take hits from Meteor showers fire imps cast, or the hundred blades from Fist of Titans? Comfort animal won't heal anywhere close to amount u'll need to keep it alive in those situations. 100+ monk heals are barely able to keep 80 armor warriors alive in those situations.

Edit: I just read the pet guide stating that level 20 pets have 60 AL. From experience I can say that NOTHING with 60 AL should be anywhere close to the front lines.

This is 11 damage per second (DPS) that you get for no cost in energy, so in combination with a max bow you get a base damage of 22 DPS, still without expending any energy at all. Together with bleeding conditions caused by your pet, poisoned arrows, etc. you can easily get into a continuous 30-40 DPS, wich really isn't bad, because you can still spike this damage with other bow or pet skills.
Also note that that the 12 attribute points in Beast Mastery do a lot of other things besides improving base pet damage. For example, bleeding caused by Feral Lunge increases from 3 to 21 seconds, so that the total damage caused by Feral Lunge can be 164, for an energy cost of only 5 (or even less with any rank in Expertise) !

That's where the skill of a beast master comes into play: With Call of Protection you can greatly reduce the damage your pet receives, Predator's Pounce self-heals the pet on each attack, Symbiotic Bond shares the damage between you and your pet, etc. In bad situations you can simply spam Comfort Animal, with its ridiculously short recharge time of 1 second, to heal your pet.
Much of the success of using a pet lies in keeping it alive with the right combination of skills. I take pride in the fact that my pet never dies, and almost always is the last "man" standing when the whole team has died.