Beastmastery anonomous

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.