Beastmastery anonomous

Where to begin here. This post comes at the heels of the other current "un-nerf the rangers" thread going around on the boards here . . . Hope this post doesn't get too disjointed.

Background
I've been playing Guild Wars for . . . what . . . a month now? I'm a pretty casual gamer putting in maybe 2 hours most every night. I'm a 20 R/E and worked up to that level as a beastmaster. I'm currently running a maxxed beastmastery build . . . 16 beastmastery. I'm to the Sanctum Cay mission in my progression so far, but I've done this mostly using henchmen. I come to this game from a 4-year stint on Everquest where my main character ended up being a 70th time-flagged epic 1.5 and 1.0 beastlord. Part of the attraction of this game was that I could build a "pet class."

Complaints?
To this point I haven't had too many complaints except for lack of available skills . . . I haven't been able to find all of the skills that are listed on the main guildwarsguru site and some seem to not indicate "where" the appropriate skill trainer is located for that skill. Not that I have to have everything 100% spelled out for me, but it would be nice. I'm also seeing that I need to go to spearhead to capture the elite beastmastery skill that I want . . . that should be fun. hehe.

My pet is my main weapon . . . in fact, I'm using a staff instead of a bow and my attack key is merely to focus my pet on my target, at which point I spam pet damage increasing skills and maintain pet buffs. Is it fun? I'm having fun and working through the missions, but after reading time and time again that beastmaster isn't a viable "sub-class" after a certain point in the game has me either disheartened or bound and determined to prove the nay-sayers wrong. I suppose I've already proven those that say it's not viable post-searing wrong. My next few weeks in game will be interesting at least.

My strategy
Because of the superior beastmastery rune on my gear, my health seems a bit low, but workable . . . my strategy is to basically keep spamming skills . . . including troll's unguent.

16 Beastmastery (1 from mask, 1 from minor rune, and 2 more from superior rune)
4 expertise (lowers pet skill costs to 4 instead of 5)
10 wilderness survival (for the self-regen spell)

(I'm not infront of my game, so I can't verify those amounts 100%)

When playing with henchmen I target the mob I want and use Ctrl+space to focus my pet on the target . . . or use "T" if not playing caller in a group, and my pet chews stuff up . . . uh . . . end of strategy?

Benefits to beastmastery
1- As far as I know, your pet doesn't get hit with any kind of death penalties like a PC does. So, since I don't rely on any weapon other than my pet, I'm not going to be losing out on any bow damage if I'm at -60 for a mission or something . . . my pet is my damage. Suicide on my part can become a viable option. I've performed death splits of mobs on purpose and not felt terribly handicapped.

2- If I'm dead . . . I'm not completely useless. My pet is still contributing damage while I sit there in death mode. All I've lost is possibly a bit of target control (more on that below)

Drawbacks
1- I've seen the aoe smiting monk/elementalist build videos and there's your dps class. whoo boy! I'm just a wannabe with a pet that does decent damage. Unfortunately outside of two interrupt skills, and one bleeding skill . . . I seem pretty much limited to a dps role, which I do ok . . . just not as good or as quickly as other classes. There's no "trick" skills to beastmastery really . . . I'd love to see things like "swarm of insects" or "grow aggressive animal" skills that would allow me to channel unseen beastmastery energies onto a foe. /shrug . . . anything . . . I'm looking for a "wow . . . what was that?!" skill in beastmastery and I haven't found it yet.

Insight to the class
1-Opening myself up to flames for even comparing this game to Everquest . . . I understand . . . but EQ had the right controls for your pet.

/pet attack
/pet guard
/pet backoff
/pet sit
/pet stand
/pet taunt toggle

through much grinding further skills could be opened up

/pet hold

You could also go as far as to poof your pet into the void and pop it back out when you needed it . . . of course, none of these "skills" had to take up a spell gem. Pet skills had its own window.

The character of "the beastlord" was also able to get up and get dirty with the mob through dual wielding, a kick attack, and the magic of slow and self heal and had some fairly nasty ice nukes. (Thus I went R/E for pet and ice nukes . . .only to find out beastmastery and water magic R 4 gimps . . . or at least that's what I'm reading hehe.)

Honestly, it was a great class to play . . . I'm sure after awhile I'll abandon the whole pet idea here in GW and, god willing, forget I even played Everquest, and end up playing something entirely different as a main character, but I'm hanging on to that original idea still.

************

The reality:
The AI is geared to ignore your pet at some point and go for the owner . . . especially if there are multiple creatures. At 16 beastmastery I can heal 100+ health on my pet and he has a bite attack that heals himself for 50+ health . . . If my pet had a taunt ability, life would be great.

As it is now, there's a fine line to making a mob stay on my pet and not attack me . . . it's very tough to work. I can run out of a monster's range, but the AI of my pet tells my pet to follow me if I get out of a certain distance. In some instances, a monster will follow me if I start to run, but instead of a smart pet that would stick on the mob and do critical hits to the pursuing monster's back, the AI of my pet says, oh, I should now run and not attack because my master is running away . . . just accepting the hits and using troll's seems to be the way so far with the skills I have.

I haven't found a way to work around and with the AIs and I haven't fully understood them. I'm definitely not Neo yet. But, yo, I'm a 20 R/E beastmaster. LOL!

Any ideas on how to play a beastmaster in "the end game" would be fantastic . . . unfortunately I'm suspecting I'll see mostly posts saying, "give it up." Gah, I don't know what I'm looking for . . . a beastmastery anonomous club? LOL. I actually considered making a forum for beastmastery, but I doubt many would visit . . . and the skills for the guildwarsguru site concerning beastmastery seem to be lacking information or discussion. People just don't seem interested in it or are just more interested in other areas of the game. It's a great game, btw . . . I'm thoroughly enjoying myself to this point. Hope this post is not read as a complaint . . . actually any tips and tricks would be appreciated.

**holds nose and dives into the submit new thread button**

***Dangit . . . just realize I probably posted this in the wrong forum . . . can someone please help me move this thread to an appropriate discussion forum?***

Could be the right forum. You suggested some more pet features

If they improved the AI, I would use a pet as part (not all) but part of my ranger build. For now, pet is just a cool thing I can equip when exploring solo (no need for rezz spell, all I equip is charm)

You lose a skill slot to Charm Animal, for this you gain an extra 15-26 dps from your pet's attacks. You also risk losing your pet, and having your skills disabled for 8 seconds.

You can use pet skills to boost the damage done by your pet's attacks, but most them are pet-based versions of bow attacks. Granted, they sidestep the issue of travel time and avoiding bow attacks, but this leaves very little reason to combine pet and bow skills.

The above is my biggest gripe with beast mastery: there's no real reason to combine it with other Ranger skills. A devoted Beast Master is interesting though, I'd like to her how it works out.

I don't know what you're talking about with the AI. You can abuse Comfort Animal in PvE because the AI will ALWAYS target your pet. If the Monk is 99% dead, just rez your pet and every single enemy will abandon their target to re-kill it. This is part of the reason so many people dislike pets, but they are very very cheap in PvE if all you do is keep your pet alive.

Totally in agreement with you sting. Beastmastery isnt as gimped as people seem to think it is. Im no purest on the beast, in actuality im a purest ranger (with a useless Warrior tag), with reletivly equal sitting in most of my attributes. Beastmastery nearly doubles my dmg and makes life that much easier on me which puts me a little closer to the beastmaster class of everquest IMO since I'm just as adept with my bow and wilderness skills as I am with my pet.

I've found if you need a quick escape the easiest way to do it is to summon a spirit, any kind of spirit, winter whatever, and then run. The mobs seem more intrested in getting rid of the spirit and the bonus it provides rather then following after you like a bunch of hounds ripping chuncks out of your hide. you can use this same tactic to give you an advantage. Run a little till all mobs are focused on the spirit and then sic your pet on one of them, while recalling your spirit in case you need to do it again.

Just wait until you meet the Mursaat. Unless they have changed things, you are in for a very rude awakening.

I won't say it, because I know you're expecting it. =/

But I will say, kudos to you for getting that far. I gave up back in Kryta.

Yes, I think it sounds like the pet needs to be infused when you do the infuse quest.

Cool. So be it! :-)

It's too bad pets are not level appropriate for the zones they are found in . . . what the heck is a level 5 lynx doing in the midst of so many high level baddies? I think your strat would probably be much more efficient if there were more roaming animals and they had the levels to back them up. I must say, very interesting strat.

Well and maybe I'm thinking of only situations where either I was the last one alive or when I'm out soloing by myself or with one henchman. I'll keep an eye on this . . . like I said, I haven't figured out the AI yet . . . it seems very well written and reacts to things like health percentages, etc. I'll have to do a search on what people know about the AI and how to react to it.

I like the "use the pet to distract from the monk" strat. That could be very handy.

Awesome. Thanks for the tip. I keep waiting to find a spirit that sounds like something I can use . . . never thought of using one to distract pursuers.

Most likely, and I must say that I can see the power curve in my game declining. It's a shame really because I want the build to work. I'll keep you updated here on this thread . . . even if it is to say, pffft . . . I give up.

i find one thing really annoying tho...

in order for u to use a Pet Attack on another monster... u have to be attacking the monster.. then u can use the skill and it will attack using the Pet Attack...

u can't use a Pet Attack on a monster without attacking first with ur bow... i find this annoying cause ... iono.. i kinda want to just not take a bow in if i have 0 in Markmanship... u know?

When targeting a monster, simply push space bar then push s-key. Your pet attacks and you do not. Then apply the skills. I do this all the time with out any issue.

Superior runes are 3, not 2.

Good god, man! Get yourself some Expertise! it is the veritable lifeblood of a Ranger. Troll Unguent alone is not worth you dumping 10 points into Wilderness Survival for. Switch that with your Expertise, and get a major rune on it. Unless you're using a few other things under Wilderness Survival, don't cling to Troll unguent, and just rely on the healer henchman (or a monk. I know, I said rely on Alesia, but Troll Unguent, ugh....Only time I've ever really used it is for running between towns or crossing poison). I know pet skills are cheap, but reducing them that much makes them pretty much infinitely spammable. If you're concerned about your own health, Expertise lets you grab Whirling Defense.

If you really wanted to back your pet up in combat, R/W I think is the way to go.

Oh, and the ironic thing about Beastmastery is its 'wow' skill doesn't affect your pet at all: It's Tiger's Fury.

Tiger's Fury isn't all that wow... as a W/R I'd use Frenzy more often... the double damage, to me, isn't that big of a deal. Though I guess if you're using a bow - wait, that's even more reason to go R/W and get Frenzy >_>


He could also go 9 Expertise and 5 WS, and then a superior WS, and that would push unguent up another pip. If you're gonna use a major, why not just use a superior? Besides availability of course, but with rune traders, I don't think superior wilderness runes are that uncommon now... my point is, 9 -> 10 expertise doesn't affect 5 or 10 energy skills does it? Actually I don't remember, I must check up on that.


Edit: And as a side note, I'd just like to say that my two favorite skills in the beast mastery line are two of the nature rituals: Predatory Season (+4 health and +5 damage! whee!) and Edge of Extinction.

EoE can be a double-edged sword when oen of your own party drops; but against a horde of eight scarabs in the desert, it's just what the doctor ordered. (very good combo with a party member's aoe attacks) And considering I am a W/R whose BM attribute has never exceeded 11, a ranger with 16 into BM can make EoE deadly o.o

I don't have symbiotic bond yet, but I'm thinking that looks like an interesting skill as well >_>

If a mob goes for you and not your pet, you can either knockdown (which will almost guarantee he refocuses on your pet) or run around your pet and cause his path to clip. Bears are the best for this...large and easy to navigate if you're the one running. Most mobs will only chase you for one "round" of attacking...if they continue to take damage they will re-evaluate threats.

[ ]

Actually, that's about what my build is, and alot of the pet skills deal a nice amount of extra dmg... But with wilderness survival you can use poison arrow ^.^

Poison arrow + pet poison skills + pet cripple skills + pet interupt skills... heh

I've got to say, that last thread actually made me go out and get the necisary skills needed to make a pet ranger... and i'm actually quite impressed with the output...

Just for the record, my tests include going into the tombs with the four henchman and trying my luck against an 8 man team... i test it a few times with every character, and see the results (as every team i face isnt going to be the same, and in one case, i actually beat the team.) i don't know how, perhaps they lagged alot or something... but i consider it a fluke. Another way i test dmg, is to go into the 4v4 arenas, and pick out a target that isnt getting hit, and go at it...

Been testing quite a bit, and with different combo's... and well, pets arent as gimped as i thought they were... alot of those skills deal dmg by theirselves, and extra dmg/condition, if the right condition is met, such as melandru's assault, and scavenger strike... i can poison them, hit them with scavenger, and use melandru's assault... and i deal out as much dmg as my warrior did, with a little extra dps... not by much, and sometimes they would actually use their brain and kill my pet quite easily, the comfort animal at 14 beast mastery didnt seem effective enough... but i could waste another skill slot that was nearly needed for another defensive thing for a pet... but more then not, people ignore the pets, and take the extra dmg.

I would never, ever, ever, go R/W (Or W/R for that matter) and use a bow. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot by removing your access to everything a warrior is good at except Tactics. Either go melee or don't bother. And Frenzy becomes a very big deal when multiple things are attacking you at once. It works though in PvP since Warriors are last targetted, and also if you're not the primary tank.

W/R is another condition where you're shortchanging yourself IMO, except maybe to pick up Apply Poison or for some reason, traps. Bye bye Marksmanship, hello....Strength and better armor. Not a trade I'd want to make, especially with the crippling warrior energy handicaps.

And no, Tiger's Fury is not that wow if you're a W/R, because you have Frenzy from so early on. It's just the most widely use (and useful) of the Beastmastery skills because it doesn't rely on a pet.

Nah I think ur doing a decent job, I dumped pet sort of before riverside mailnly because my build wasn't centred around them and I needed those 2 skill slots taken up by charm and comfort. At 16 Beastmastery your Pet does become quite powerful that it is quite effective against monsters in desert. Best thing about beastmastery is that most skills last very long allowing you to buff your pet up quite high and make it last for a long time. I've been planning to try out a 16 beastmastery build with a necro secondary and see how it goes.

Call of Haste is a must have and Call of Protection is a good buffing, and Maiming strike is nice way to start the battle and following it up with scavenger strike. Ferocious strike is good for damaging and gaining energy and predators pounce for healing. Those are my favourite skills in beastmastery.

Good luck with this build, I really do hope they make pets a bit more stronger to be quite effective in the last areas.

so stingite figure out how to get through ring of fire? T_T I'm still working on it myself, but i will do it! i don't care what people say! I will find a way! Arena net needs to infuse our pets!

Are you guys suggesting to use 2 superior runes (minus vigor or absorption) or 1 sup and a major?
That will be suicide I tell you!

_Zexion

I'm an E/R20, I've had a wolf pet since pre-searing, he was level 2 when I got him and now he's level 20. He's stuck by me the whole way through to the desert, and I've finally abandoned him now in the middle of Ascention.
I never took any beastmastery skills except charm and comfort. I had about 4 points in BM, so he was not really strong enough to survive in the desert and so I ended up taking thsoe points out and putting them in Wilderness where they help my Winter and Troll Unguent.
Most of my attribute points are in my elemental lines of Energy Storage and Fire Magic, though I'm thinking of changing to Air soon.

I've run a beast through all of Kryta and Maguuma, but with 5 slots dedicated to him and only 3 for me it was getting annoying. I did ok with him, but when I shifted attributes and dropped him I did better - granted, I only had 12 BM or so and a level 18 wolf, but my impression with how much faster I was killing when I ditched my pet was that even with a fairly large investment in BM and a high level pet they aren't as good as other reanger builds. Not saying impossible, but weaker than they should be. Pet controls would help a bunch, as would making it take one fewer slot - merge Comfort and Charm animal!

Unfortunately I dumped my beastmastery build and went with a modified flame slinger build with only a 4 in beastmastery. I sold my 20th level stalker and now have a lizard pet I'm leveling while my guild all catches up to me (that and leveling my monk). I keep hoping to see that pets will be infused in an upcoming patch so I can rebuild my beastmaster.

on another note . . . I only get 100 gold for trading in my 20th level pet? sheeeesh . . . talk about not enough bang for the buck.

I just a made a Mo/R , and i'm seriously considering BeastMastery as a secondary to my primary healing [PvE only]. Primarily because as monk you can't really focus on fighting AND healing properly, so any damage i do, i'd prefer doing a "release and forget" type of scenario [traps and spirits apply here too]. I.e. sending a pet out and using pet-attacks [which do not require me to focus on the enemy he is attacking] sounds like an ideal solution without having to focus on any targets other than maybe getting pet to initialise an attack (thus staring at the red bars).

Im talking PvE now, the whole disabling of skills when my pet die in PvP probably makes it a death-wish for a monk to take a pet [which is quite sad actually].

I obviously dont need to take Comfort animal, because all my Monk healing applies to my pet as well [so freeing up that slot at least]. I assume whatever monk enchantments is good for henchies/players will be good for my pet as well. Anyway i asusme going R/Mo you can do almost the same except for energy issues.

Alternately i will probably have to go with the various bow skills [ignite/apply poison] but that again requires alot of attention on a target, which is not ideal.

Anyway currently purely using Bow-skills because i lack beastmastery skills atm, will check back in when i get that far :P

Except that you can't resurrect a pet. Sucks, doesn't it - you've got slots for healing, and a slot for resurrect, yet you need a "special" slot just for a resurrect on your pet. One of the many reasons I endorse a combined Charm/Comfort animal skill and/or the ability to resurrect a pet using monk skills.

Yea, i just found that out the hard way, very annoying indeed. Also, spells like "group heal" do not in fact heal your pet, sucks again. I guess the problem with having monk skills rez the pet is that another monk can rez your pet then....bypassing the skill shutdown etc etc. I only have like Feral Lunge and Call for Speed [or someting] and it generally works quite well while i'm focusing on healing, i don't even have to know where my pet is , if i got energy to spare and no healing i just spam the beast-skills.

Although it is not quite living up the Ignite Arrows yet whn it comes to a horde of mobs :/

Thank you Anet!

I'm also trying the Mo/Ra combo. I intend to eventually use my pet for self defense Only. No more hoping the Warrior will come back and get the MOBs off me.
Seems to be working well so far. The hardest thing has been not getting too spread out on Attribute points.

Played a bit further, i've found with henchies i'm better off with Ignite Arrows/Dual Shot etc because of the lack of damage on the henchies.

With real people i actually found it very hard to target enemies+prepare ranger skills and then heal the players as well. Because the party will do pretty good damage compared to henchies i generally felt i'm wasting my time throwing in weakish ranger attacks [i might consider stuff like distracting shot instead, maybe a poison here and there].

A Pet which can semi-automatically run in and tank/keep aggro was easier on my concentration as a monk with a player team. The beastmastery attacks generally are very cheap+fast too [5 energy it seems] so easy to throw it in there between heals. Another positive it seems like my pet "remembers" an attack, so if it's not actually near a foe and you did feral lunge then it will "eventually" do it, so i can basically "pre-spam" those attacks and go on with my healing.

Still some issues with beastmastery, i still can't see it as a "primary" attrib yet, more as a secondary to something else.

Hell i dont use ne of my pet skills. (att distribution is 15 marks 11 ws and 10 bm or something similar) i just have him hang around and add his dps. They also make decent tanks.

Do you not use expertise?

Beastmastery doesn't take much energy anyways, and Ferocious Strike gives plenty of energy (I have 16 in Beastmastery, give 10 energy back).

I only have 7 in Expertise, but I usually never run dry on energy.

most people dont actually. i would but it would mean takin points out of ws or bm. my pvp ranger has maxed ept but thats pvp isnt it............

yes, i don't not not not not use expertise

I would actually go as far as saying, this is a bigger issue than all the other one's in this thread

I would say a lvl 20 pet is worth 5-10 plat minimum
Think about all the time and the slots sacrificed to get the pet to 20, then to re-level a new pet is another sacrifice of a slot, and no group in their right mind is going to accept a lvl 20 ranger fighting level 20 plus toons with a level 5 or 10 pet just to level it.

Sure you can go spend many hours fighting low level mobs for no personalXP/skill point gain and bad gold/loot...but by doing that I would increase the value of the original lvel 20 pet to 15-20 plat on it's sale

5-10 mayb 15 -20 plat............. thats a new method of farming.

Actually, that seems pretty backwards to me. The guy who provides the service of finding a new home for your pet when you no longer wish to shoulder the responsibility for taking care of it is being generous not charging you any money for the service. The idea that he should pay you money to take on this task just doesn't make any sense to me...

he makes his living selling exotic animals to collectors...............

JESUS! 2 superiors!??! O_o my god.. if you want to die fast just kill yourself right there and then.. cuz with 2 superiors.. your gonna have a lot of trouble.. and with just a troll?? o.O thats insane. Troll takes 3 seconds to cast, and 3 seconds can either cause you death or a mirical.. just telling you now.. become a r/mo or a profession that can heal yourself...

could u plz quote who you are replying to that way we have a contextual reference lol im to lazy to look back.

I'm doing the exact same thing, silver. I thought it would be cool to base a character concept off of of St. Francis of Assisi. I'm running a Protection/Divine Boon Monk that's around lvl 13 right now, just before Borlis Path. Call of Haste is pretty cool but seems to gank you outta 10 points of mana right at the beginning of the fight that would be better spent healing. Plus that 8 second blackout is killer, tho. I think the trick is to tap out your energy when you see your pet about to die, so your not loosing much from its death, you'd be recharging anyway.The two beastmastery skills I'm currently looking forward too, atm is Symbosis and Ferocious Strike. Symbosis should be pretty neat with protection spells and give me some space for a superior rune since I have divine boon all the time. Ferocious Strike becuase it gives me energy.