Suggestion: Merge Charm Animal and Comfort Animal

Yeah but my point is that beastmastery alone can do shit. If you're a thumper, you're relying a lot more on your hammer skill and expertise than on your pet. Same goes for barragers, they use barrage and bows, the pet is just a bonus (and in B/P it's worst it's a corpse producer... Anything an honorable ranger would despise...).
What I mean is that going pure Beastmaster is less efficient than going pure marksman (for interrupt) or even pure wilderness (for trapping). Especially since no pet skill, except for Revive animal, can affect more than one pet now (killing any pet synergy a lone beastmaster did have: before beasmastery changes, you could take one beastmaster to boost every other pets armor (I was using the old Otyugh cry, yes i swear ^^), thus providing a very good use. Now the beastmaster can only affect is own pet, which destroys the synergy it could have before by bringing lots of pets on secondary rangers.

*Laughs at Bazompora just for the hell of it*


/Signed

When it comes down to it... nobody should have to waste two skill slots just to maintain some retarded Leeroy Jenkins of an animal... especially when at the core of it all it only takes one skill slot to maintain a Flesh Golem or Shambling Horror.

Is this the kind of "counter-argument" I get from now?

• The Flesh Golem takes 1 Elite skill slot.
• The Shambling Horror can only be maintained if one fills a 2nd skill slot with a skill to heal it.

/unsigned

I play around with beastmaster builds alot. Before i even thought of trying out BM i was well for the merge of Charm + Comfort. Not anymore.

Like said before Charm Animal is your pet. Comfort is your pets heal and res combined. I see no need now to put the two together.

Also what is the fad in this thread with Minions and Pets? you can control pets and allow them to deal conditions through BM. Your pet does not turn hostile to anything around it when you die and it remains with you all the time. It can be healed and ressurected through a single skill.

Minions will attack anything that isnt on their side whilst allied with a MM without control and they have a natural -10 degen. Sure MMs can heal them but at the cost of sacreficing their own health the more minions their are. They cannot be resurrected and require corpses to be made. Again the moment a MM dies the Minions turn hostile and can go on a rampage.

Now tell me what kind of skill Flesh Golem is? last i heard it was an Elite skill.....it takes an elite skill slot straight off the bar.

BS

Have you even tried Beast Mastery with anything that isnt a Thumper? Most of the Pet skills can deal conditions. Some can interupt. And the damage at high BM levels is evil.

Does nothing? does nothing?! Charm Animal brings a level 5-20 companion that can evolve into 3 stages,has its own control panel and even has a huge range of skills to be used with it!

^ QFT. Most players are too scared to stray from their cookie cutter builds to even try BM out. They would rather go for SP Sins,SF Eles and SS Necros than the "forbidden" Beast Master.

Oh and one last thing

Because someone doesnt agree with the things you say and has a counter argument does not make them a flamer/troll.

/signed i really like the idea of having an extra slot for another skill

^ There it is...

Just try it out more. From your assertion that a Beastmaster alone can 'do shit' I would wager you need more practice. Or perhaps more experimentation. There was a reason Thumper's began replacing certain warrior builds for damage. Also you can't just divorce yourself from the synergy of having 2 damage lines (be it hammer/spear or even bow if you want the mediocre). It's like any other class only putting attribute points into 1 line.

A pet and a Spear chucker'/hammer ranger does far more raw damage than a ranger with a bow (Burning Arrow rangers being and exception). Simple fact is Bows can't Deep wound, while Thumper/spear builds can. Having a full-spec pet doesn't necessarily mean a replacement for your damage. That's actually pretty silly these days. You need to see it as augmentation. Like running a damage supplemental like Conjure or Brutal Weapon but far more potent.

Another misconception is the belief that you need to run 9 expertise to make it worth it. You don't when you have adrenal skills on your bar. I normally run 15/16 Bm, 12 Hm and rest in Exp. When you can max both Hammer and Beast mastery, the damage numbers are rather impressive. My hammer usually crits for around 68 while the pet crits for around 53 (give or take a few. Can't remember for sure). Significant damage.
Then theres the fact that pet's don't get dp in pve, and nobody usually targets them in pvp since they know the real problem is the Beasmaster controling them.

Regardless... Just because something isn't the most powerful course, doesn't mean it isn't viable.

EDIT: Let me rephrase: You don't need 9 expertise 'unless' you plan to use RaO

BS?
Yes I tried several BEastmastery builds. And they suck if you don't bring anything else.
"high damage at high BM" sorry, bring numbers to the table. Yeah, you know real numbers, not just "feelings". Like the one on wiki that has been tested a lot of time by numerous players and say that the DPS of a Dire pet is around 13 damage/second, so completely pitiful.
Interrupts? Conditions? With a pet? ARE YOU MAD? Seriously, you don't know what you're talking about. A bow can do all this with a lot more success. Even using your expertise with distracting shot is better than any pet interrupt. Trying interrupting a opponent with a pet is like trying to wand to death a prot monk. Sometimes it works. But this is just luck.

Don't you think that beastmasters in PvP has never been tried? Don't you think in PVE full ranger teams are not tried also? I tried several beast mastery builds. It works relatively.. But as soon as you have to deal damage quickly, to disrupt, to heal or even to tank, or in High-End PVE or PvP, beast mastery sucks. Not less than, say, a meleemancer or a mending warrior, but just are so less efficient that they are just not worth it excepted for the fun.


Frojack, I told you, that's not your pet that is thereatening in Thumper builds, that's your hammer. You would just keep your pet at home and run RaO if it were working without needing your pet alive. Heck, thumpers are builded the same way that touch rangers in fact... That's only another expertise (would it be small) abuse.
Even with no Beast mastery, with frenzy and no point in BM a thumper is still viable. But remove the hammer or expertise, just to do something with your pet alone, you'll see that doesn't work.

If the Shambling Horror dies its no big deal. If the pet dies, your well and truly boned.

The skill button itself, once the charmed animal is with you, the skill is assigned a slot, it then does nothing. I can not use it for anything, leaving players that bring charmed animals with them 7 skill slots.
That to me is unbalanced. And yes the BM has a wide range of skills that can be used thru the pet, and everyone of them takes up a skill slot, which mean in order to use that one BM skill, there has to be TWO skill slots for it.

For instance look at capture signet, it gets used and replaced with a usable skill slot right? the charm animal skill does simply bring the animal with the BM, but thats all. Now if I could use it to say "release" the pet and if I choose to attempt to re-charm it, or heal it, or select a different pet to swap out with (mostly cosmetics there) it would be used for SOMETHING.
The charmed animal is unlike the combo attacks, where skill one, then two , then the third (or fourth) require they be used consecutively the charm animal skill is NOT used.
It is also unlike the necro spells, that can get used each time they want to create an undead creature. It is not used, it has to be equipped, (providing you have charmed an animal ) and take up a skill slot, and then do nothing.

What I am getting at is the fact that the skill button takes up a slot and unless your attempting to charm a pet, it does not get used. No other skill that takes up a slot does that. Giving it the ability to heal, or select a different pet or *something* would give the BM a *use* for the charm animal skill.

*suggestions*
The charm animal skill could be made, like the capture signet, use it to charm animal and then until that pet is released, that pet will simply always be with you, as long as the player stays a ranger, no skill need be equipped to have the pet with you.
OR
Allow it to pick from previously charmed animals, something along those lines
OR
Like this thread started with allow it to heal the pet.
OR
Allow a BM to pick a skill to associate with the charmed animal skill. (ya I know I am reaching here; but I am hopefully making my point.) Rangers, even IF they were able to assign a skill to be used WITH the charm animal skill, you still will not see in game as many rangers as you do warrior/monks. Talking about overall game balance, how many players ever get killed by a rangers pet? How many even feel threatened by a pet? Allowing the charm animal skill to be used for something else other than than reducing the usable skills a ranger has; I feel has merit.

/SIGNED

Solution is simple. Pets can be ressed by anyone.. monks.. anyone.
Comfort Animal gets a slight heal boost, allowing you to still have an advantage over a monk regarding healing your own pet.

Done.

Why can't pets be ressed by monks? Hell if I know. Perhaps you need a freakin' vet monk to res a pet. It's stupid. There's your solution right there... stop yapping your mouths. You're scaring away the chicks.

Want numbers? fine by me. Here we go.

At 12 BM my Dire Pet (Black Widow so Piercing Damage)

- On a 60AL Target the pets damage ranged from 21-34 at its normal attack speed with critical hits hitting for 42-44.
- On a 80AL target the pets damage ranged from 16-26 at a normal attack speed. Critical hits hitting for 29-32.
- On a 100AL target the pets damage ranged from 13-17 at normal attack speed. Criticals hit for 20-22.

DPS would be around 13 like you said

At 16 BM the Dire Pet:

- On a 60AL target the pets damage ranged from 24-39 at normal attack speed. Criticals were 41-47
- On a 80AL target the pets damage ranged from 18-28 at its normal attack speed. Criticals this time hit for 31-35
- On a 100AL target the pets damage ranged for 12-18 at its normal attack speed. Criticals hit this time for 21-24

DPS 15

This is all without skill use and speed increases which would take it to around 20 DPS. Then remember tha some of the skills inflict damage based on the condition of its target for instance Brutal Strike deals damage to foes who have <50% health and Melandrus Strike deals damage to all nearby foes based on if that foe has enchantments on them.

Then there are the conditions that can be inflicted on a pet which if i'm not mistaken are Bleeding,Poison,Dazed and Cripple? at " the high level" or i'll just say 16 Bm these conditions can last up to...lets see Poison : 21 seconds ,Bleeding: 26 seconds,Dazed 10 seconds and Cripple 16 seconds.

So if you combine IAS buffs and Conditions you will see your "Pitiful Damage"


Sorry of course. I dont know what i'm talking about. I was under the impression we were talking about Beast Masters? Yes a bow can interupt and inflict conditions but a player with a Beast Mastery build isnt exactly gonna be reaching for Burning/Poison Arrow/Apply Poison ect now are they?

So when you play beast mastery builds you dont take any skills that inflict conditions at all?. Oh and you must really suck at interupts. I've managed to interupt casters fine in the past when i used Disrupting Lunge. No wait....its only my luck

I'll pass on wanding the Prot Monk to death though


Yes but if the merge came into play Charm Animal would be like this:

-It brings your pet into battle
-It heals your pet
-It resses your pet

Oh course i took that from Nevins post on page 1 because i read what he had and realised a possible solution. An Elite skill with these properties.

Of course you would need to cap the pet again and something should be put in place to stop Charm Animal and Bond Animal from being used on the same bar (much like how Kurzick and Luxon skills cannot be used together if they are the same skill) but its pretty much the same right?

To have this DPS you have to invest in Beast mastery (and yet it is still pitiful). Damage was never its strenght and will never be. Most beastmasters need something else to have a correct pressure. Like a hammer or a spear with 12 in its attribute.
1)Like if the duration of the conditions would matter! Having say a 25 energy skill causing dazed for 189 seconds is completely useless. In PvP it will be removed before it lasts its full duration. In PVE the monster dies long before it lasts its full duration, or you'd better quit GW.
2) My point was IAS and Conditions can be used on a bow with better success. Most conditions from pets attacks are highly conditionnal. In marksman you have BHA, interrupts, Burning arrow, Concussion shot. Each of these are mostly unconditionnal and fast recharging. Again, I would use RaO without the pet if I didn't needed it to make it work. Bringing the pet cost me 2 skill slots. That is too imbalanced IMHO.
When people want to spread conditions, they take bow skills, not pet ones.
3) Yes I did manage to interrupt some elementalists with disrupting also thanks. What's your success rate? 1/100? A 2 sec interrupt is useless, especially when you can't control when it will land. You can just spam it and hope it will interrupt some skills.
Don't try to even compare disrupting lunge with bow interrupts like savage shot, bow interrupts are the best interrupts of this game IMO, with their ridiculous cost/recharge, even more than the costy conditionnal ones from our friends the mesmers.
4) I like my pets. Charm animal need to be a 10 sec rez also, not only a waste of a slot.

.

But its adds towards the damage correct?the degen from the skill i mean. If i had a skill that could cause 189 seconds i would call it far from useless.

Thats free interupts to any of the targets deadly spells! of course it can be removed as you say. But without condition removals that duration would matter alot to the enemy.At the speed the skills recharge it can be reapplied again.


I agree with you. Bows are better at IAS and Conditions. But when you run a BM build it doesnt hurt to have a condition infliction on does it?

Oh and bringing a non elite skill that gives you a lvl 20 animal companion you can control,along with being to heal and res that animal with the same skill is not imbalanced??

I dont think i ever did compare DL with bow interupts such as D-Shot and S-Shot. Perhaps you can point me to where i did and i will gladly admit i was wrong. Savage Shot and Disrupting Shot are amongst the best interupts of this game. When i first brought up Interupts i mentioned that a pet has a way to interupt to which i was told i didnt know what i was talking about. Never did i say that DL was better than all the rest.

Oh and on the 1/100 thing? i personally dont let the foe my pet is attacking live long enough for even a 5th try.


But its not really a waste is it? it does something........it brings the pets you like so much to the battle!!. It acts as a way to capture the pet and activate it when you enter an instance or PvP arena!

I was hoping you would comment back your thought on the idea of a second skill which would be classed as an Elite Skill with the properties of Comfort + Charm in one. But i think i already know your answer.

Charm Animal is a non-elite skill which allows you to bring a level 20 multi-purpose permenant ally... that shares your attribute pool and skillbar. It can be like trying to run both a Warrior and an Assassin using a total of eight slots and 200 attribute points.

This stuff about merging Charm Animal with Comfort Animal is a misnomer. The problem is that a Beastmasters skillbar is far too compressed to do what a Ranger speccing in other lines can do easily. That is: Keep him and his weapon alive, do damage or spread conditions, and have a res and self heal.

Assuming i use the pet for damage and don't play a thumper, i'm probably using Enraged Lunge. I have Charm and Comfort, and Call of Protection. I'm going for pet damage, so i put Call of Haste on too. I need at least one more skill to max Enraged Lunge out without casting Comfort repeatedly, so i take Brutal Strike, Disrupting, Pred's Pounce or such.

And i want a Res, so my skillbar looks like this:

Enraged Lunge
Predator's Pounce
Comfort Animal
>
Call of Haste
Call of Protection
Charm Animal
Flesh of my Flesh

What do i do with my one remaining slot? Take points out of Expertise, put them into Wilderness so i can have a single self heal and keep alive skill? Use Predatory Bond with the downtime? Natural Stride and rely on the healers?

And then i'm damage dealing with two attack skills? I think the change to Otyugh's Cry was perfect: Now i have the perfect tool for killing those annoying Ranger mobs with Whirling/Lightning Reflexes. That still takes up my spare slot (so i have no defensive skill on my Beastmaster), but i can at least destroy those mobs in a few seconds with Enraged Lunge and another attack.


If i were to take Heal as One, it solves the defensive problem, but causes me another: How do i do damage? Rely on Feral/Poison degen? Start spamming 10e skills like Brutual/Scavengers?

>
>
>
Heal as One
Call of Haste
Call of Protection
Charm Animal
Flesh of my Flesh


Rather than merge Comfort Animal and Charm Animal, i'd rather they added Beastmastery skills which aid both the Beastmaster and his pet.

Rampage as One - back before even the first nerf - was a somewhat good example. Rather then offensive abilities however, i'd rather they buffed existing defensive pet skills to provide that missing 'keep alive' function for the Ranger himself.

I like Beastmastery a lot, and it's gotten better since the pet controls - but there are still some aspects that are woolly.

I think the survival side of Beastmastery is one. I think the way conditional pet attacks work is another - they're just too unpredictable (with the exception of Disrupting Lunge pre-nerf, which was a ridiculously fun spammable 5 second distracting shot) for the recast timer.

I'd also rather that there were alternatives to Enraged Lunge for damage dealing. Simply, i can't recreate the effectiveness of that elite using a similar number of alternate pet attacks. Because of that, i'm pushed away from the one skill that would ease the defensive problem (Heal as One), straight into a damage problem.


Solution: If there were two skills - a Troll Unguent and Natural Stride in the Beastmastery line that applied identical effects to pet and ranger, my skillbar could look like this:

Enraged Lunge
Predator's Pounce
Disrupting Lunge
Beastmastery Troll Unguent
Beastmastery Natural Stride
Call of Haste
Charm Animal
Flesh of my Flesh

And suddenly, i have no more trouble keeping myself or my pet alive than i do when using a bow.

The solution doesn't need to be those exact changes, just the function of those changes - to provide shared defensive skills to the player and pet to compress the skillbar a bit.


Also, i still like the idea of being able to charm and raise multiple pets (though obviously not to use multiple pets simultaneously). Changes to the conditional skills (giving them a cast time or whatever) would be welcomed by me, even if they were only active in PvE.

The Natural Stride counterpart you have in the form of Run as One, albeit somewhat weaker. Something as strong as NS for both the the pet and the Bm (50% Block) would be too strong in my opinion.

The self-heal is a tricky one. Obvious choice is Heal as One. On an 8 second recharge, it's pretty good these days. Thanks to this skill alone I go thumping in pve as well as pvp. It's just far more satisfying to bash things than it is to fire arrows. Naturally in pve you have monks watching you, but it's a good skill that also frees up a slot.
It would be nice to have non-elite heals in the spirit of HaO though. Perhaps a change to Comfort Animal allowing it to heal the user as well as the pet. Putting it's recharge to something like 12 and leaving it's stats as is but healing the user for the same amount as the pet.... This would make HaO look like a really poor elite.
If the 75% hp clause was added and the healing dropped from 110 at 16 to 82 (maybe even less), would be enough to balance it I think. Or leave it at it's initial stats while allowing it to heal the player, but make it cost 15 energy under a 10 second recharge. Expertise will bring this down but It's still expensive enough to make it a considerable investment.

Charm Animal, after having charmed an animal with it, is a passive skill! This means it does have a function like all other skills, but you don't need to click it to activate it's function.

The skill function of Charm Animal (when an animal has been captured with it)is:
a formerly captured animal is summoned, for infinite duration this animal follows you as an ally and can be controlled by only you. This skill can not be deactivated and is kept up for no energy cost.

Now really ... why would such a great skill be a waste of a skill slot?

Now that's more like a true Beast Master.

Buffing Charm Animal with a second skill function, would make many non-Beast Master builds, that just bring along a companion for additional dmg and defense, overpowered!

IMO, no.
If you take any minion skill, and compare it to Charm animal, frankly it's not.
In PVE that means finding him and training him.
When your pet dies it disables all of your skills. If you're only secondary that hurts.
Minions need corpses. They are not so controllable, have somewhat weaker armor due to their low level (excepted when you cheat in PVE... Bringing your death magic to 17-18 by blessings eggs and so on...) and accumulate degen. But actually when they die you.. gain energy. They deal damage too. But the worst of it that most of them have one secondary effect WITHOUT ANY NEED OF OTHER SKILLS, like giving you health, having two lifes, being ranged with severe DPS, or putting bleeding for each attack. And you know what's beautiful on top of that? You can not have one, but up to 10 minions. And when you have, tanking ability or DPS outclass completely any beast master.
And all that can be in ONE skill. I repeat, ONE. In corpses abundant areas, I don't even take a skill to heal my minions.
When your pet dies, you have to bring another skill to be able to use it again. pets are somewhat immune to regular rez, I wonder why. For a MM, you just need to kill another creature, and then use the same skill you used to produce your first minion, again and again.

Either minions skills are overpowered, or either beast mastery need some tweakings again.

I will stop writing in this thread. I was not trying to say beastmasters are useless. But I am saying that they still are not optimal in the ranger potentialities.

Can i ask why you think that?

I mean right now pets can get an unremovable massive duration cheap -21 damage reduction. Rangers, if they spec in Wilderness (which a Bow ranger would for the stances, unless he was taking Lightning Reflexes instead), can already get Natural Stride.

Call of Haste, which i run on a Pet if i'm looking for damage, already has that +25 % movement speed bonus.

Call of Protection is, in my opinion, more powerful than Natural Stride. The skill would be weaker than Natural Stride and Call of Protection trigger alongside, and would have the sole benefit of compressing the skillbar (which is the whole point).

I was almost really happy with Never Rampage as One, with the +3 HP regen. If that was instead a block chance or damage reduction or something, ...it would be run by thumpers and probably better than pure Beastmasters. Hmm.

For a thumper, HaO is brilliant. For a pure Beastmaster, it strips you of Enraged Lunge. Sure, i could run HaO with some non-Enraged Lunge attacks, but i feel that i need my Beastmaster to be a viable party member if i'm going to take that and not spike with Glass Arrows + Brutal Weapon.

Running Enraged Lunge with enough Beast skills and Otyugh's Cry, i feel like i have a distinct function within the group - considerable sustainable damage, and the ability to go straight through blocking. I can't say the same as soon as i take Enraged Lunge out.


What if Symbiotic Bond was expanded a bit: When triggered, you and your pet share one HP bar (with both max HP added together). As such, healing your pet with Comfort Animal would heal the joint HP bar, and monks healing you would also heal that joint HP bar? Maybe if other things were carried along that bond, like stances/buffs/hexes/conditions etc?

You'd give up the advantage of having a separate disposable entity on the field, but in exchange you'd gain massive HP with the best skills from both sides?

Of course, with the massive increase in HP, you'd be much harder to spike in PvP. Probably a bad idea, unless it was PvE only. Actually thinking about it, you'd gain all the benefits from other skills in a completely ridiculous over the top way - Call of Haste would suddenly become a low cost infinite Rampage as One. A bit much.

I do still think that concentrating on the defensive side of things is the way to go, unless Anet want to start adding Pet Attacks that rival Enraged Lunge builds on their own (which would be bad, imo).

... and getting to keep him for indefinite duration!

Not much, if you invest enough in Beast Mastery rank, like Beast Masters should.

That does not result from the differences between pets and minions;
• as a primary Necromancer, I also gain energy when pets die, granted I invest in Soul Reaping rank;
• primary Rangers can invest in Expertise to reduce energy cost for skills.

They are also all RANGING FROM LOW LEVEL 13 TO 18 (except for the Flesh Golem, summoned by an Elite Spell) on Minion Masters with 16 Death Mastery.

• Corpses abundant = very steep requirement for MM.
• Since the last couple of nerfs to Soul Reaping, replacing minions on the fly instead of healing them, became quite costy in energy.

• If pets could be resurrected by "regular" resurrection skills, "pet resurrecting" skills would have to be removed, in order to compensate.
• If pets would be treated as "regular" party members, the care for them would be shifted from the owner to upon the shoulders of the "allready overstressed-during-battle" Monk.

For a pet owner, you have the luxury of not having to kill another fleshy creature to have your pet by your side.

• Beast Mastery: maybe yes.
• Charm Animal: definitely no tweaking, because:

Well contrary to the guys playing quote wars in this thread, I happen to think that Beastmasters are pretty strong. They need to be weak in one aspect or another. Having something like NS provide 50% block and 33% speed would just be too much. Opponents need to be able to neutralise the bm somewhat by either the Bm or the pet itself. Like you say you can get this kind of functionality with the use of other skills, but that requires more skill slots so it's balanced.

While I can understand the conundrum of a pure Beastmaster (I used to, and occasionally still, play pure bm) the damage options of a thumper or spear chucker can't be ignored quite simply because they exist. If you increase pet damage across the board, you end up over-powering the other 2. Having 2 damage lines is just such a major advantage over having just 1. With the new pet controls it's even possible to split your dps and utility between 2 targets. Or an opponent sticks Insidious on you. You stop attacking and let the pet handle things for a while till it get's removed or ware's off. There are just so many more options.
Incidentally I did some tests again last night. Pet's at 16 actually crit for 58 damage on regular attacks (at least my dire wolf Omachi does). Significantly high for a damage assistant. Not amazing for your sole damage.
To get over this, Anet could possibly introduce weapons for Beastmasters but that's a messy solution (and expensive in terms of time).

That's the thing you see. Thumpers and spear chuckers are just inherently stronger than pure pet Bm's. Anet could affect this by adding Beastmaster staves that increase pet abilities: 20% pet damage increase for a customised stave. Vampiric staves for a vampiric pet. 20% ap staves. Elemental staves. Inherrant dps upgrades (+15 damage per attack (or attack skill) while you use the staves). Things like that...
It could work, but again the balance is dubious at best. Pet's can be ressed forever as long as the BM has the energy. However pet's get dp in pvp. Do they lose dp when you get a morale boost? Haven't tried it extensively enough to find out, but things like this need to be checked for balance. I'm sure Anet have considered this already.

Again you can upgrade your bows all you want with skills like those, you will still deal less damage than a thumper/spear guy with a pet. Plus the Thumper/Spear guy has sustainable dual-dps without the need for supplements so he can pack utility. While the buff ranger needs to keep re-applying his buffs and has far less space (and energy) for utility. Energy is a big thing also. In addition to having dual-dps lines you also have dual energy lines when you factor in adrenaline on hammers and spears.


Enraged is a great elite. I used to be bound to it indefinitely also. However there are other options which may not be as potent in raw damage but still offer quality. For example my bm crew did Raisu a while back using Melandru's Assualt under an Orders necro to do impressive damage to single targets and great aoe. Mixed with Brutal Strike you get some very potent offense. This is only sustainable under Feral Lunge.


This is actually an awesome idea! I really like the idea of really 'becoming one' with your pet and sharing hp, energy, conditions, hexes etc. All the buffs bar Otyugh's Cry and Call of Prot could work. (Call of Haste could but it would need a few changes). Theres no saying this combined hp need be exactly double. It could be inline with a Melandru Dervish under Vital Boon. Perhaps maxing out somewhere between 600 - 700 hp. There are exploits though. You could activate it and put your pet in idle mode so he'll have less change of being attacked.

There are more problems with it that I'd rather not get into right now, but it is definitely worth investigating. It would probably have to be elite also and have a similar cost structure to RaO. I dunno'... Great idea though!

The only thing that I think pets need for buffed is to have the skill recharge reduced when it dies. Charm animal can rez your pet from very far away and heal for a good amount. Lots of BM builds are used in PvE today and there are some areas of PvP where they could dominate...and one quasi-PvP area where they do.

If you took comfort animal out of the build pets would become overpowered. You could put other damage reducing skills in to make them even stronger than they are now (and Dire pets are...pretty strong).

GGs

See, my point is that when i run other builds, and get access to skills like Natural Stride, i don't need to keep my Bow alive. A Beastmaster does. I reckon it is that extra need that is the biggest problem with beastmastery in PvE.

Really, i do know that the alternatives exist (i do use them myself occasionally), but somehow it seems that a pure beastmaster being less effective than a partial beastmaster is somehow perversely wrong. I don't mind that Thumpers etc exist, but i think that pure beastmasters should at least be given some tweaks to take them up to a similar level.

Also, if all my damage is coming from the pet, all the same anti-melee defenses still work (with the exception of Blocking <3 Otyugh's). Blind, Snares etc. I don't think letting the Beastmaster share some defensive skills with the pet is going to upset that balance, because just blinding or snaring a Pet is already much easier and quicker than killing one with CoP or suchlike on it.

I think that the pure beastmaster is:
1) strong in offence,
2) strong in player defence (you're a ranger after all),
3) great with pet defence (Call of Protection is insane)

Pick any two.

I do love Beastmastery, and i do think it's very strong, but i think the fact that you're trying to keep two entities alive at the same time with limited space strangles it.

Yup, that's exactly my problem with the situation. The pet damage is just about fine, if you take enough skills. And the defence is there, if you concentrate on that. And if you don't try to run a purely Beastmaster build, it all works fine. When you try to run a pure beastmaster, the skillbar size gives you a headache. I think the cleanest solution is to start compacting defensive skills together, and the way that makes most sense to my thinking is to have defensive skills affect both Beastmaster and Pet.


I agree with all of this. I think it's a shame, and an indication of the problem with Beastmastery in PvE, but true nonetheless.


It depends. I like Melandru's if i can be guaranteed of enchanted targets (and this is much easier since the pet controls were added), that works well. I used to use it on Griffons when they cast Spell Breaker. :P

Brutal Strike is great if you can get a lot of attacks on mobs under 50% HP, but i find that once a mob in general PvE is that low, it generally tends to die off very quickly (unless they're high HP bosses, Brutal works great on Abbadon), leaving me with a 10e Predator's Pounce with no secondary effect.

Like you say, it would be dangerous to start adding and messing with pet attacks. You can't have something of the quality of Enraged Lunge as a non-elite. But without Enraged Lunge, are two-three pet attacks enough to make the choice of pet damage worthwhile? If you have a load of clumped up enchanted enemies with loads of HP and armour, sure. It's so much easier just to roll a Thumper and make the problem go away.


If the skill is under Beastmastery, and you have high Beastmastery to make the skill effective, then you have slightly more than 100 skillpoints left to make yourself useful, so i don't think leaving the pet as defensive would be a valuable exploit for a pure beastmaster. I suppose again this could be exploited by people running less than maximum Beastmastery, like Thumpers etc. What if it has a short duration, and renews itself whenever a pet criticals?

I think the skill would need to scale the HP bonus based on Beastmastery skill. Also, if the skill made the Pet easier to spike at lower Beastmastery (by reducing AL or whatever), you could discourage non-pure beastmasters from using it. I feel tempted to start referring to all non pure beastmasters with Charm Animal as unpure.

Also, we get into the elite problem again. You can take the elite skill, and solve the defensive problem, but you take away from the offence. Unless this skill were to free up several slots (so every IAS pet strike was a good attack skill), it again wouldn't solve the problem.

Brutal
Melandru's
Disrupting (Scavenger's? Feral maybe?)
Call of Haste (Tiger's Fury? it'd screw up Natural Stride, i digress)
Nightmare Weapon <- lolexploit
Natural Stride (or whatever)
Bond Skill {Elite}
Flesh of my Flesh

I don't think it's doing enough in its current state. Maybe if they skill also added AL, so it was in itself the defensive skill? That way i'd be able to drop out Natural Stride (or whatever). Still, i find that i can only really cycle three pet attacks without leaving some untriggered. This is an awkward problem.

/signed since ages

You seem to not care about skill balance or forum policy;

imo, the mere fact that so many are disagreeing on this might mean that a change is in order. A compromise of some sort.

Personally, I'd play around with the idea of having different charm animal skills that would alter the behaviour of your pet and came with one additional function that could be used if you already have a pet.
Something like.. an offensive version where your pet has +15% damage, -30% hp, and if you use the skill it does a generic power attack. A defensive version where your pet has +15% hp, -30% damage, and if you use the skill, you will res your pet with a 10s cast time that's easily interrupted. Just some random numbers to illustrate, you get the idea.

Like I mentioned earlier though, I definately think that simply merging charm and comfort would be way too powerful, as it would make all rangers always bring a pet, even on non-pet builds.

It's really just another product of expertise being stupidly good (I won't use the term over-powered, religious reasons). The only non 'pure' Beast master who can use pet's better are rangers doing the jobs of other professions.
Rangers make better life stealers than Necro's. Better attack skill users than anyone else (the only reason you don't see more R/W with axes and swords is because all the really exploitable attack skills are in Strength), and the most abusive and downright infuriating of them all, they make better spirit spammers than Ritualists. If spirit spamming wasn't rather poor this would indeed be a balance issue.

Correction: I mean't Ferocious Strike not Feral Lunge. I guess you realised ^_^. Anyway yeah you’re right about Melandru's. It's quite situational, but that’s the point of having options. In a situation like Raisu, most of the opposition becomes enchanted at one point. In fact I'd wager the total damage was actually higher than if we ran an Enraged build thanks to the aoe. Certainly in pvp nearly everyone's got an enchantment on them these days. I'd really like Anet to increase the AoE on Melandru's to 'in area' or even crazily 'nearby'. Or have it strip enchantments under 50% would be very good if a little... (removed for religious reasons!). Utility is always better than damage.

Brutal Strike is just Final Thrust every 5 seconds when you think about it. No one would say Final was bad . Though I guess Final usually comes after a DW. Say's a lot really.


Idea: Let's say we were going to buff all skills under the Beastmaster line. An interesting potential 'fix' for the situation of 'non-pure' abuse is to tie a lot of the extra power of these skills to another line (Wilderness is good, but not Expertise obviously). This isn't an entirely new mechanic; Anet's designers used it on Lion's Comfort. So:

Beastmastery change: For each point in Wilderness Survival your pet does has +1 armour penetration on all attacks. All Wilderness Survival additional functionality requires rank 10 or more in Beast Mastery.

Bestial Mauling: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Bestial Mauling that deals +5..17..20 damage. If the attack strikes a knocked-down foe, that foe is Dazed for 4..9..10 seconds. This attack also blinds target foe for 1 second for each rank in Wilderness Survival. 50% failure at rank 4 or below.

Notes: Utility is always good.


Bestial/Savage Pounce: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Bestial Pounce that deals +5..17..20 damage. If the attack strikes a foe who is casting a Spell, that foe is knocked down. With rank 8 or higher in Wilderness Survival, that spells is also disabled for an additional 5 seconds.

Notes: Good if you catch something with low recharge like Freezing Gust or Parasitic Bond.


Call of Haste: Shout. For 30 seconds, your animal companions have a 25% faster attack speed and move 25% faster. With Rank 10 or more in Wilderness Survival you also move 25% faster.

Comfort Animal: Skill. You heal your animal companion for 20..87..104 Health. If your companion is dead, it is resurrected with 10..48..58% Health. For every rank in WS you are also healed for 5 health.

Note: Self heal. Not amazingly strong but remember it recharges in 1 second. Cost keeps it in check.


Feral Lunge: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Feral Lunge that deals +5..29..35 damage. If the attack strikes a foe who is attacking, that foe suffers from Bleeding for 5..21..25 seconds. With rank 8 or more in WS that foe is also knocked down and becomes crippled for 6 seconds.

Notes: Solid anti-melee tool. Aid your kiting monks.


Melandru's Assault: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Melandru's Assault that deals +5..17..20 damage. If that attack strikes a foe with an enchantment, that foe and all adjacent foes take +5..29..35 additional damage. At rank 10 or more in WS, this attack also removes an enchantment on foes below 50% health.

Notes: The definitive murder tool (tm). This plus Brutal Strike would be very effective.


Otyugh's Cry: For 10..22..25 seconds, your animal companion gains +24 armor and cannot be blocked. For every 3 ranks in WS this skill also removes 1 condition and 1 hex every 4 ranks upon activation.

Notes: Sounds powerful for sure but it's not that strong really. Condition cleaning and removal of 1 to 2 hexes every 30 seconds isn't so hot. Just takes the edge off.

Poisonous Bite: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Poisonous Bite that poisons target foe for 5..17..20 seconds. At rank 10 or above in WS this skill also transfers 1 condition and its remaining duration to target foe.

Pounce: Pet Attack. Your animal companion's next attack is a Pounce that deals +5...17...20 damage. If the attack strikes a moving foe, that foe is knocked down. At rank 10 in WS this attack also inflicts a deep wound for 10 seconds.

Notes: Hmm... Beastmasters need a Deep Wound to really be taken seriously, but this skill will need to cost at least 10 energy.

Predatory Bond: Shout. For 5..17..20 seconds, attacks by your animal companion heal you for 1..25..31 Health. For every 3 ranks of WS you gain 1 point of health regeneration.

Notes: Makes this more efficient as a self heal. Even if your pet is snared, or miss-hexed to all hell.

Scavenger Strike: Pet Attack. Your animal companion attempts a Scavenger Strike that deals +10..22..25 damage. If the attack strikes a foe who is suffering a condition, that foe takes an additional +1..12..15 damage, and at rank 8 WS both you and your animal companion are healed for the total damage of this attack.



Ok this is somewhat insane and there are balance issues, but it makes 'pure' Beastmaster’s very viable I think (even perhaps a little too viable). It'll never happen so nobody knows! ^_^

Well after doing some more tests, with a 'pure' BM, I still feel they are just about ok. The only thing I'd really like to see now is certain 'small' things fixed.

The initial pause before the pet begins to attack has no real purpose but to retard pet damage. I can't see a need for it. Would be very happy if this went away.

More importantly I say increase pet attack rates up to 1.33 per second in line with swords, axes and spears. A ranger just taking a pet along to look like tarzan won't see much benefit from this, but a pure Bm with Pet attack skills and more importantly 16 Beast mastery will be significantly buffed. A 2+ attack rate is really too slow.

Replying to your previous post first:

Ferocious, yeah i assumed you meant that. You still lose the elite though (and therefore HaO), but your point stands. I need to play with Melandru's more often really.

I really like the idea of tying Wilderness into Beastmaster skills. Somewhat recently i tinkered with 16 BM, 9E, 11 Marks with RtW and suchlike, and came across the whole bow damage sucks thing. Being able to spend those points in something that actually gave me a bonus other than a break point here or there would be brilliant. So we run 16BM, 9-11E, 9-11WS. I really like that.

Doesn't hinder people using x/R, does limit people who want the advantage to pure builds. <3 surgical buffs.

I was about to type <3 Feral, Melandru's and Pounce, but i really like all of these options you've suggested.


I've been tinkering with a Thumper recently :P Knocking stuff down over and over is actually really quite addictive, and the deep wound is too good to pass up.


Actually you're quite right. I'd noticed and cursed that delay, but hadn't even considered it in this debate. It might be a legacy thing from when Pets attacked your target? Wouldn't be necessary now of course.

Increase to pet attack speed would suddenly solve the problems i was having with HaO, in that i'd be able to actually rotate more than 3 pet attacks. I would settle for that quite happily. This would also make conditional pet attacks like Beastial Mauling much more usable.

Back to the original post, merging Comfort and Charm isn't going to happen because it would mean gg forever for hero battles, which, contrary to the general 'lol beastmasters sux' opinions are dominated by R/P beastmaster spear chuckers. Merging these two skills would mean they'd all start bringing Enraged Lunge as their elite instead of heal as one, resulting in ArenaNet having to completely nerf beastmastery, hurting everyone in the process. That is why it's a bad idea.

imagine for a moment............................................ ................................
if they merged these 2 skills where would it end?

charm animal on skill bar=lvl 20 ally to fight for you.
comfort animal=rez and heal said ally


animate flesh golem on skill bar=animate high lvl ally to fight for you.
blood of the master=heal said ally

if they do it for rangers then mm's would have a fit until it was done for them.
picture that for a minute, hmmmmmmmmmmm.


pretty ugly no?

Fixed for you.

Spear chucklers draw their main strenght from spear attack abuse through expertise.

So... If pets are so insignificant in Hero Battles, why does everyone run them then, eh? And why make the distinction between spear chuckers and pure beastmasters? Theyre both out to achieve the same effect. You can argue about pets playing a secondary role in builds like spear chucker or thumper till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that they do play a significant role and that merging charm and comfort is on the same level of narrow-sightedness as moving Mystic Regeneration into mysticism. It will unbalance the game and remove all the challenge from constructing a beastmaster build. I'd much rather beast mastery stays niche than become totally overpowered and subject to even more complaining than it is now.

People have been asking for this for over a year now.

My complaint isn't that comfort and charm need to be combined. Mine is that Charm is useless after its first use, and is necessary just to USE Beast Mastery. It's like making Favorable Winds necessary to use a bow. It's ridiculous. Pets are so skillbar-heavy to be very useful, I don't see their inclusion necessitating a useless skill slot!

I don't think Charm and Comfort should be combined, but I do think that Charm should resurrect your pet.

Example:
(I don't remember the original skill description, so work with me.)

Charm Animal:
Charm target animal. If successful, target animal becomes your pet and will travel with and fight for you outside of any town or outpost. If you have an existing pet that is dead, your pet is resurrected with 1 point of health.

This would make Charm more sane for use in PvE especially, but would not obsolete Comfort. It also would not obsolete skills like Heal as One, especially in PvP.

/signed Heh Ill go for it. One less skill on the bar makes things easier :P

No; after its first use, Charm Animal becomes a passive skill that auto-summons a companion.

Again, no; the following Beast Mastery skills allready necessit no companion to be usefull: Bestial Fury, Edge of Extinction, Energizing Wind, Fertile Season, Heket's Rampage, Lacerate, Predatory Season, Primal Echoes, Symbiosis, Tiger's Fury, Toxicity & Viper's Nest.

If that's how you see it, why not start complaing about Dagger Attack Chains? Y'know, those Dual Attack skills require an Off-Hand Attack skill, which on its turn requires a Lead Attack skill. Oh, and for the Necromancer, Dark Bond requires me to equip a minion summoning skill, so let's just drop that req too, eh? And what about ...
Your crusade against combo skills is just beginning!

I think Life Transfer's duration should go on till your target is dead.

Having minions heal themselves would make 'em more "sane" too, especially in PvE.

It would obsolete Revive Animal and imbalance PvE aswell as PvP (read up in previous posts in this thread).

/signed

I have been struggling with this also, if not combined with a rez then perhaps the skill can be combined with a petheal instead.

Instead of fighting your pet to capture it, it could be set so you have to heal an animal you want to capture for a certain amount of hp in a certain amount of time (realy charming it and not instant click and capture, but keep clicking to capture...)

Charm Animal
5e, 1/2s, 1sec
Heal your pet for 20-90hp, (small heal)
if you heal an Animal for 500-750HP in the next 15 seconds this animal becomes your pet and travels with you aslong as you have this skill equiped.

Comfort Animal
Can stay as it is and becomes a large pet heal and a rez..

This means pets can become more used in PvP, and kept alive aslong as they dont take tomuch damage, still if it dies you should have brought Comfort Animal to rez it (makes sence to me)

gg 2 year thread res.

Ideas nice

hmm perhaps to make it more intuitive pets can be a different colour interface (say purple), if you attack it becomes red, then when it reaches a hp limit it turns green, from this moment you can start healing or you can slay them..

Heal as one, heal the player. Comfort animal should work like heal as one, since its not an elite, it should heal and rez your pet companion only and not the player.

Since the game doesn't actually lets you keep the animal companion, I assume they are left in the wild, once you charmed an animal, logically they would come whenever you are in the wild.

With the introduction of Zaishen Menagerie, if you desire to bring a pet other then the one that can be found locally, you are require to bring charm animal. Its the players call if they want to have 2 skills slot filled or 1.

However when you have the Zaishen Menagerie filled/have charmed all type of charmable pets, pets of that particular locality will come to your ranger even if you do not have Charm Animal skill equipped. but only one pet will come, randomly.

^^ something for Arena Net to think about.

PS: Revive animals on Heroes is broken

/signed. I like beastmaster.

In HB the main power comes from rangers having high armor and having pets that have 104 armor (if elder) and deal a significant amount of pressure through unblockable attacks, 33% IAS and extra damage. Spears are the ideal weapon for the heroes because it's ranged and allows the use of a shield. It has nothing to do with spear attacks and expertise, most of the heroes only run barbed spear (which is adrenaline).

Anyways, don't know if I've posted in this thread but /notsigned, unless they make it PvE only. PvP doesn't need to have charm/comfort merged.