Discussions of Otyugh's Cry

Otyugh's Cry - Beast Mastery Mana: 5 recharge time: 30 | Description - Shout. All animals within 100' become hostile to your target and gain +20 armor for 30 seconds. Otyugh's Cry cannot turn charmed animals against their masters or their master's allies. (50% failure chance with Beast Mastery 4 or less)

That is the current state of this skill, and as many know, it seems fairly useless at the moment. I contacted Arenanet to see if any plans to fix it in any way were underway, and this was the response:

Thank you for contacting Guild Wars Support. There are currently no announced plans to modify this skill. If you believe Otyugh's Cry needs rebalancing, we highly encourage you to consider posting your suggestions for appropriate ways to do so on one of many of the Guild Wars Fansite message boards. A compiled list can be found on the official Guild Wars website at http://guildwars.com/community/default.html. By posting on one of these message boards, other players can comment on your ideas, concerns, and suggestions, and Development Team members are able to catch up on what the community wants to see in Guild Wars. Fansite forums make it easy and efficient for us to learn from those playing the game.

Thank you for your efforts in assisting us to create the best gaming experience possible.

Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team


So here I am to start a community discussion on this, possibly the most useless skill in the game, in an effort to come up with ways to improve or replace it. Feel free to leave any ideas.

Personally, if left like this i believe more natural "animals" need to be put into the various explorable zones so that an opportunity to use this skill actually exist outside of 1-2 spots in the game, also the animals levels are usually too low for this to help at all anyways, perhaps a better passive bonus to animals then slight armor boost would help.

If it worked by turning all "monsters"(minotaurs, rockshots, etc) againts each other it may be decent

ya that skills is the most useless skill in the game, i mean seriously when there are like 20 hydras running around and u use outogs cry even like 50 of those dune lizard wont be able to kill the hydras... it cant be used for pvp so whats the use, its friggin gay

Cant think of any other skill that doesnt do anything in PvP (couple of necromancer skills did not work but that was fixed in a patch).

Should be call/summon for an animal that helps out (time or health based like undead minions) or something.

Does this affect pets? If it doesn't, it should.

Maybe the +20 armor should be changed to +10 damage per hit.

Agreed. Make animals more level appropriate to the zones they are in and more of them, and I will load this in my skill bar. Otherwise this is just a +20 ac buff for the pets in my group. Not a boon worth mentioning when SO MUCH of this game is dps based. As far as dps, this skill lacks a lot. As far as protection, this skill lacks a lot. As far as focusing pets on a target, why load a skill that will do the same thing as calling a target? I just don't see the use.

Nothing more than a parlor trick in the end. Someone once said it would turn the whiptail devourer type creatures on your target, but I don't recall that ever happening for me. What I have witnessed is call of haste focusing random *green* animals on my target instead. Even more reason for me to not load Otyugh's.

I would love to see Anet impress me with their creativity on what this skill *could* be. This could be the "wow, what was that?" skill for Beastmastery. Make it elite if you have to. Please, make me want to load this skill.

Why only 100' ?

Make the skill charm all the animals in the area for the entire period that you are in that zone.

I would like to gather a pack of wild animals (like minion masters with minions) and set my group on an enemy.

As stated above, make the animals an appropriate level, not just level 5.

As for PvP use...i don't know about that one, perhaps raise 2-3 undead pets?

100 is alot.

Perma charming all the animals in a zone is a bit extreme, not that it would matter much, so you have 20 level 5 pets...unless your a necro it wouldnt help.

As for pvp use, this skill, like many others doesnt have one. Thats the nature of skills, there is no reason for every skill to be usable in pvp and pve.

I use this skill all the time. Otyugh's + Call of Protection = tank pet. It's just 5 energy to give your pet +20 armor for 30 seconds, good deal I say. The animal aggro is just a side effect. This is also the only pet shout that affects all the pets on your team. No rebalance needed.

Thinking about this now . . . I did a little research to try and find out the actual value of +20 armor on the pet. From what I'm reading, a pet's armor class is 60, meaning their natural defensive adjustment is %100. In a pet's natural state, if a mob does 30 damage against the pet, there is no defensive penalty or boon . . . in other words, the mob does 30 damage, the mob does 30 damage.

A pet's armor class is boosted to 80 from otyugh's and gains a 70.7% defensive adjustment. If a mob does 30 damage normally, the defensive check will lower that damage to 23 damage if there was no account for armor penetration or illusionary weaponry, etc.

So against mobs that do low amounts of damage, the skill might not be worth it; however, if you go against a mob that hits for say 60 points of damage with no armor penetration, the defensive check will lower that damage to 42.42 with otyugh's, which would end up a bigger boon than call of protection which only gives a base damage reduction that caps at I believe 15 with a 16 in Beastmastry.

Interesting. Can anyone check my math and my head there? Possibly I was undervaluing Otyugh's and the value of 20 AC.

The GWG armor calculator says 42.43, close enough. Out of that 60 points of damage, call of protection will soak up another 14 or so coming out to 28.43.

Now let's add symbiotic bond to the mix. 60 damage to AL80 pet: 42.43 damage. Divide by 2 for symbiotic bond: 21.22 goes to you. The pet still takes 21.22, 14 of which is soaked by call of protection, for a grand total of 7.22 damage to the pet. From that 60 damage, you took 21 and the pet took 7.

Now, I'm assuming that symbiotic bond comes in before call of protection. If it's the other way around, the 42.43 is reduced to 28.43 and you and your pet each take 14. Either way, the total damage is 28, so your defensive-buffed pet can take 60 point attacks all day long before it feels anything; all of the skills used basically have no recharge gap, they are cheap and can be used continuously.

Then I think the real problem with the spell is that the animal agro effect is given top billing. From the way the spell description reads it sounds like the spell is not being used as intended, good or bad.

From reading that description it sounds like someone was trying to build a skill that would boost the level 5 animals in the *natural* environment with 20AC and make them agro your target to add their ~1 dps. Instead what the skill is being used for is to give your own pet (and any pet in your group) +20 AC.

Anet should rewrite the skill description so it isn't deceptive as to its real use vs. its intended use . . . or recode it that way.

or, as was first proposed, boost the natural animals in the environment to make this work as advertised.

2 cents and thanks for the head check on this skill . . . I may load this again and test it out now.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this skill effects ALL pets in the area. So that of your allies too. 20+ armour is not to be shunned at.

yeah, that's what we were just talking about.

I think a rewrite of the skill description as follows would be less deceptive:

"Otyugh's Cry - Beast Mastery Mana: 5 recharge time: 30 | Description - Shout. All animals within 100' gain +20 armor, increasing their damage absorption for 30 seconds. They will also become hostile to your target. Otyugh's Cry cannot turn charmed animals against their masters or their master's allies. (50% failure chance with Beast Mastery 4 or less)"

That gives top billing where top billing is due.

I still maintain that creatures roaming around in the environment need to be boosted. You know, the level 5 bears running around in Lomar's Pass. I mean, if they've grown to full maturity in the environment, they should be a bit touger by nature than the chokobos near ascalon. That would help the pathetic dps this skill is trying to produce.

Or here's an idea . . . dump the "hostile to your target" idea and make that AC scaleable according to your level of Beastmastery?

I think ANet's original idea was that Otyugh's wouldn't just be a different version of another skill (call of protection), which explains the animal aggro billing. Otherwise it would appear to just be redundant (which, as it turns out, it is). None of the other skill trees have totally redundant skills within the same tree (aside from elites, which are supposedly better versions of other skills). I can live with that.

The annoyance is you have to be in spell-casting range to use otyugh's; sometimes I prefer to use a long bow in PvE to distance myself from the battle between the mobs and my pet, and having to be in range to use it nullifies the effect. All's fair in games and balance I guess.

We were hoping this would focus allies pets onto the target you cast cry on but unfortunatly it was not the case.

Now, correct ME if I'm wrong, but if this effects all pets in the area... Doesn't that mean in PvP, pets belonging to your enemy also get the +20 AL?

Yes. The same way spirts effect the enemy team. Has it's uses, but timing and situation is the key.

do all pets have the same value 60? If so I am very disappointed I thought a bear should be more but slower, yada yada yad.

Disruptive lunge is outstanding. Try using it on a seige worm you will silence them, nothing. They won't do a thing while you are killing it your pet can completely stop their attack with this skill.

All the charmable animals have different strengths and weaknesses. I don't know what they are though...the novelty of pets wore off a long time ago for myself.

Generally speaking this is a very useless skill for the ranger. I have played the ranger from the beginning I started this game and the ranger is my favourite character. It also comes to me that the ranger is underbalanced. I have a lv 20 ranger in the Chrystal desert and over there it is a hard game to play. So I'm trying out different skills and builds.
For Otyugh's cry you have to engage an enemy and then you can call in a friendly animal as an ally. West of Beetletun (Kryta) are a lot of lynxes roaming around, but it was not easy to work things out. Your enemy moves, the friendly animal moves, you, as a ranger prefers a fixed position on higher ground. I had to figure this all out and at that moment I was alone to try it out. Normally you fight in a group against another group; how do you get things organized?
The freindly animal is indeed to weak to be of substantial support. So forget this skill.
Another personal thing is this. The animal you call in will in most cases get killed. Its friendly creature, living in the wild, not harming anything. I don't like this skill.
The skill would work best this way and would match the description as there is now. According to the level of your beastmastery you could gather a pack of animals and then set them up against an enemy.

I looked right over that extra fact in the description, +20AL to all pets.

I use "Call of Protection" all the time to help keep my pet alive. Now I will have to add this skill to my bar as well. I will have to investigate this further. Maybe time to try another Beast Master build for PvE.

The skill would be useful if it summoned a random pet out of thin air.

It seems to be a good skill on a Pet team. Use Otyugh's Cry and all pets will aggro your target, raising the dps there. Or am I wrong?

Wrong unfortunatly. Even if they're idle they won't respond to the cry. It Does give them all the armour though and it does stack with call of protection.