Beast Mastery Improvements!

There have been countless posts and topics about ranger's sucking and it's simply not true. Expertise can half up to all mana skills, making their potential limitless in many cases. A topic that could be greatly improved however, is beast mastery.

1. Increase the pet's max level to possibly 24 or 25. You can get better by skill points after leveling up, why shouldn't your pet?

2. Allow basic commands that can be activated such as flee/attack/useskill/comehere that can be easily accessed by means of a small hotkey somewhere on the screen.

3. Give pet's some skill slots where you can input skills that you buy from a tamer or such (Or possibly even stick in those beast mastery skill such as Bestial pounce/call of haste). This will make pet's more unique and if not, atleast usable/worth putting 8+ points in.

These were all the ideas i was capable of thinking currently. If you have any ideas supporting or reasons declining this suggestion, please feel free to do so.

First off I am not a ranger so I don't have much experiance with Beast mastery but I really like the hotkey idea. The hotkeys are real simple to use and very conveniant. A pet can be used as a very effective tank; even more so if the player had the ability to command it. it would be cool if you could buy skills for your pet but that might unbalance the classes. But overall a great idea.

I agree, Deathlord. I wish my Pet to be more of a partner with her own skills. I also really wish Rangers could have more than one Pet. Maybe something like Beast Mastery as a second profession for Rangers. My second profession is Mesmer, and I focus most of my skill points on Beast Mastery, Domination Magic and expertise. I am most often really enjoying this combination. I don't even use a bow anymore. I have, with a Beast Mastery rune, a 10 in Beast Mastery points. But when we are mobbed, she's often the first to die. So sometimes I feel like I am wasting my points on Beast Mastery. If I were able to have that one slot back that I feel is wasted on Charm Animal I could then slot Comfort Animal. Maybe she wouldn't die so much.

I really wanted to keep her(Stalker) for the entire time I played. Now I keep reading I will have to give her up and get a Spider if I want to do damage with a pet. If Pets were able to be stronger this would not be. It's not that I couldn't give her back to Jarrel, I just wanted to keep her as my partner who does real damage as she leveled more than a Pet that tags along.

I agree about making pets and the beast mastery skill more viable. The idea of upping the max level is neat, but the precise degree to which pets need improving would need to have careful attention to avoid going the other way and making them *too* powerful. At the moment, there's little danger of that as Anet seem committed to a slow and cautious approach to rebalancing - an approach with which I agree.

I totally agree with the idea of a set of commands for one's pet -I'd also suggest a command "guard me" such that the pet will engage enemies who are meleeing with you.

Another command that would be useful would be "move" (or perhaps under the "flee" command) to prevent oneself from getting hemmed in by one's pet. In real life, my dog gets underfoot all the time, and I often have to tell him to move.

I'm not sure that I'd go for the skills idea for pets...after all, skills are something that *you* have. But why not do it more along the lines of upgrades, such that one could upgrade one's pet with modifiers such as "attack trained" or the like. I see this in a similar way to the way in which one can attach grips and strings to bows etc. I'm not saying that one's pet should do elemental damage or whatever, but things like a spider might have an upgrade that gives a 20% chance of poisoning an enemy, or perhaps another upgrade could be a blanket +15% increase to damage (ferocity training?). The cat-based creatures could have an upgrade of the "9 lives" form, such that there's a %age chance that when the pet dies, a divine-intervention like effect is triggered.

And I agree with buying these upgrades from a tamer, possibly with a quest attached to allow the possibility of having the upgrade.

Lastly, for PvE, have the pet acquire the bonuses from infusion when one gets one's armour infused - that way, there's at least *some* chance of having a pet useful versus the Mursaat.

Also, with regard to Beast Mastery, something really needs to be done to improve the skill Otyugh's Cry. For most level 20 creatures, being attacked by a slightly peeved level 5 wild animal is nothing more than an annoyance.

It is a big topic lately . . . and to add to this thread in hopes that it will gain some more attention (shameless /bump) . . . here's a lot of recent discussion on pets and beastmastery in general from only this particular forum on these boards.

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Petstats
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=21526

Pet emotes
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=20453

Lack of Beastmastery foci
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=21640

Ideas for making pets better
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=21418

My own post about playing a "beastmaster" . . . with additional tips from other players
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=21310

*by the way, just finished the sanctum cay mission and am now about to look around crystal desert*

More discussion on pets
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=20401

The only think I can think of pets needing is equipment. They are powerful enough as is. I have 16 beastmastery and with Symbiotic Bond + Call of Protection he is IMMUNE to physical damage. Warriors can't kill him and only people that can truely drop him is elementalists. Anyway they just need a minor damage boost or able to wear different types of special pet armor or something. I devote 7, yes 7, skill slots to my pet and he damn sure better be useful. Welp thats my couple of cents.

I Also agree with the infusion, and pet commands indea.

There should be a more selection of pets aswell. Also there should be higher level pets, because when I want to get rid of my spider and get a bear it is very annoying to grind out exp till he is lvl20 to be useful again.

Pet needs more armor. Now they only have AL 60, which is equivalent of an elementalist, and is hardly a tank material. Pet needs to have the same armor levels as the rangers. On top of that, pet needs to get infused as well.

Once my Ranger/Elem. is up to Level 20, I'm anxious to try a Beast Mastery/Expertise/Water build as a support class.

I think the reduced mana cost for the Beast Mastery Skills could really help augment an elemental conditions-causing build for going against tanks.

Something else to think about, some Beast Mastery skills say they affect ALL pets in the area. If you have multiple Rangers on your team with more than one pet, the other pet can benefit from the Level 12 Beast Mastery skills, this frees up your other Ranger to be the Damage-Dealer.

Might make a good partner combination. One Beast Mastery, One Marksmanship Ranger team.

I don't believe we should give up on Beast Mastery just yet and start throwing additonal abilities at it. Let's wait and see if something really great comes out of it. Perhaps someone just hasn't stumbled on the right combo yet.

I was watching the guild ACT perform a skit from Dickens in Internation District in Lions Arch the other day, and a member of the GW dev team, "Gaile Gray" was there....Among the huge array of spam questions about improvements everyone wanted to have put in effect, one of the topics was beast mastery. She said that she agreed pets should be made stronger (in many aspects) and it was a change we could look foward too in the near future.

That's great news! I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Anet to see what changes are in the works . . . unless they have a bug zapper.

Hmm, I guess according to whatever skills you equip as a Ranger, as well as whatever second profession you have, and what skills you equip from that, your Pet will act differently.

I will still wish that Beast Mastery could be a second profession one day; with the ability for a Ranger to have and/or control more than one Pet.

Gaile, please don't take my musings as whining, I LOVE this game. And thank you for listening/reading. It means a LOT.

Luna

I want to infuse my pets bones

I also want a /petstats function. I'd like to see what his life is (in numbers) and what dmg he's doing, pet age (how long since tamed) pet exp. (how long till next level) etc.

Darn, I just started a pet armor thread too.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...960#post179960

It also proposes coloring your pet. Some would think this silly but hey, it would be kind of cool to have an all black stalker or wolf. Or a white spider. I'm not proposing Pets out of their natural range like a purple cat or an orange wolf, just being able to make them the color you want. Maybe mixing them to make a striped stalker like a lynx would be cool too.

Good to see the responses here . . .

Couple more recent threads on the topic:

Pet Problem, which morphs into a discussion on pets later in the game
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=21752

Pet Armor
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=22199

As I stated in a previous thread regarding beast riding... if you wanted to really inprove beast mastery, give the pets more of a combo effect.


**before you tune me out, give me a chance at my case.
now, I play tons of fighting games and especially love the Samurai Spirits games. In 3 & 4, Nakaruru has a hawk or a wolf (depending if you're good or evil). The hawk can lift her into the air for a sword dive. The wolf can be ridden or used for rush attacks. Similarly, Galford (same game) can use his wolf to bite and hold the enemy for a short time. It can also drag them to teh ground and hold them for a sec which gives him an opportunity do perform a down attack.

Translating into Guild Wars...
Suppose your pets could detail an enemy. Mesmers have blackout which stops an enemy from using any skills for 1-6 seconds. If you could have your pet bite and hold onto an enemy and disable their skills or attacks for 3-6 seconds, but at the cost of either the ranger's energy or give this skill a 30-45 sec recharge, I can't say it wouldn't be useful.

Also..
In Haunting Ground (Survival Horror), you can tell your dog to heel. When it returns to you, you can comfort it for bonus healing in stamina.
(see where I'm going with this one?)

Haunting Ground also has the wait command, in which the dog crouches to give a more powerful lung attack that knocks over an enemy that's roughly the size of an ettin (if performed correctly). Basically, having pets able to charge for a sec and assume a defensive possition before unleashing a more powerful strike would be nice.

Next improvement.(not from another VG)

Ever notice that in real life, police and others use dogs to run down suspects or distract them? Well, what if your pet could break stances? Think about it... enemy goes into Physical Resistance or Balanced Stance. Use the skill, and your pet pulls them outta the stance prematurely. Again.. give this one a longer recharge time, but you gotta admit, it'd be useful.