Beast mastery

Question for pet owners who actually use their pets in PvE, how good are they?

I stopped using my Pet after leaving the starter island in Factions. I am thinking about picking up a White Tiger, train it for some PvE. I have currently finished with Factions and proceeding pretty good in Prophecies (Thirsty River).

So for kicks and giggles, will a pet actually help in combat (PvE) or would I just be wasting my time?

Thanks!

Some BM skills can actually work pretty well if you play around with 'em enough. Admittedly it is relatively hard to find a good pet build since the need to have Charm Animal along with some form of pet rez does cut down on your skill slots.

One thing to keep in mind however is that with enough points in BM, the damage your pet will deal is a lot like having a constant conjure phantasm.

Using BM skills however does take a bit of practice to get used to. The ability to activate a BM skill while performing other actions/skills can be very advantageous in certain situations.

As always, if nothing else, the pet does make a good shield and does leave a corpse for any MM or death magic necro you may have in the party. This is why the Barrage-Pet build became so popular for farming ToPK.

All in all, I don't think BM is the strongest aspect of rangers, but it is a lot stronger than most people believe when used right.

Thank you the input.

Pets can be amazing when used right, even in pvp. I have made a pure beastmaster that can rip the face off of just about everything... but of course, it leave you relatively weak, so just try to remember that people and monsters will go after you sometimes.

Would anyone care to setup a basic starter build for me to try out?

basic build for what? There are stricly beast master only builds and then there are combination. heres a b/p build that i run.
barrage
brutal strike
predator's pounce
savage shot
whirling defense
ressurection signet
comfort animal
charm animal

this probably isnt' close to the best b/p build, but its what i use for basic pve use. try spamming predators pounce as often as you can as it gives hp to your pet which saves you and your monks energy. brutal strike is just a simple damage dealer. your atributes should be around 13 expertise, 13 marksmanship, and 10 beast mastery. should use all but 7 attribute points. You may notice this has no self heal, as I keep myself distant from harms way and I trust my monks. if you don't trust your monks then go ahead and waste attribute points to put into wilderness survival for one skill (trolls unguent), but i dont reccommend it.

Here's the pure beastmaster build that I use.

Attributes:
BeastMastery - 16 (12+1+3)
Expertise - 13 (10+3)
Wilderness Survival - 9 (8+1)
Skills:
Brutal Strike - Spammable Final Thrust for pets +74 damage at 16 BM and with your target below 50% health
Ferocious Strike/Enraged Lunge - I switch this up pretty often though I find myself using enraged lunge more simply because spamming an attack with +80 damage is awesome
Predator's Pounce - Adds +39 damage at 16 BM and heals your pet for 50 health
Free Slot - I usually stick either Disrupting Lunge or one of the shouts here when using Ferocious Strike as my elite. When using enraged lunge I will put tiger's fury here to help power that skill.
Troll Unguent - Self Heal
Comfort Animal - Animal heal and rez
Charm Animal - Gotta bring it
Rez

Because you're not often going to be targetted I found that I could risk taking 2 superior runes. With a superior vigor and +30 health from my staff I found that my life was still around 400. With this skill selection the focus is on spamming high damage skills for low cost often dealing more damage than a warrior. While a warrior has to build up adrenaline to release his evis+exec/sever art+gash+final thrust combo you can unleash your combo at the beginning of the fight not to mention it is easily spammable with the longest recharge being 10 seconds. The best part is your pet will never overextend itself and doesn't require monks to heal it. Between comfort animal healing for 115 and predator's pounce healing for 50 I have yet to see my pet go below 50% health when playing beastmaster. As for choice of Elite I like to run Ferocious Strike and never have to worry about energy while Enraged Lunge allows me to be more of a pure damage dealer.

A couple notes, Pet attacks are like shouts and that means they activate on the next normal attack of your pet. This also means that you cannot queu your attacks like you would on a normal character. Enraged Lunge counts itself as a recharging skill so you only need 3 other recharging skills to get the +80 damage. Tiger's Fury works extremely well for this since it will black out half your skill bar each use helping to power Enraged Lunge without wasting time and energy actually using those skills. With the attribute setup Enraged Lunge+Tiger's Fury only costs 7 energy to use but will deal +80 armor ignoring damage if it hits.

Playing as beastmaster is unlike anything else you can do as a ranger. You'll be doing more damage to a single target than you can dream of using a bow. However there are downsides. Some PUG's will refuse to take you if you're not a barrager, but chances are you don't want to be part of those PUG's in the first place. Also the pet AI is pretty stupid, even worse than henchman AI. Its about comparable to a Necromancers minions and requires some effort to control properly especially if it gets stuck behind a wall or some players. However overall its a fun and effective way to play your ranger and you can always switch back to bows/trapping if you find it's not your style.

Beast Mastery: 16
Expertise: 9
Wilderness: 3
Marksman: 11

Ferocious Strike
Brutal Strike
Apply Poison
Call of Haste
Troll Unguent / Whirling Def.
Comfort
Charm
Res

Becoming a beastmaster takes years of practice, rah, rah, rah... :P Sorry. Bad joke.
Seriously though, being a beastmaster can be awesome. For the most part, I swear by it with my ranger. There are only a few places where I wouldn't take my wolf Omachi.
The Fire Island Chain. Too much degen. If pet's could become infused, it wouldn't be so bad, but they can't. So Spectral Agony just destroys there potential. Also I never used my pet in the Titan areas. I just figured the fire degen would cause too much problems, as I usually count on myself to heal my pet. Monks will not always be inclined to bother.
Some monks would actually start healing my pet half way through a mission. After they see how much damage they do to the monster running them down, I guess they then see them as valuable part's of the team.
Fow and UW are places I wouldn't take my pet either. Though I might experiment in future. I can't say for sure if it would be a complete waste of time or not.
The Canthan mission where you fight Kuunavang. I figured that my pet couldn't hit her anyways (until the end) so there was really no point.
Other than that, I have taken Omachi everywhere. I've even fought Shiro with him tanking. Pet's are very cool for the simple fact that they can dish out some significant damage.
Brutal Strike and Ferocious Strike are the cornerstones of their power. While some builds won't use it for various reasons, most will have them tucked in there somewhere. I won't go into too much detail (there's an excellent pet guide already if you search the main page).
Here are a few of builds I tend to use...

General:
Predator's Pounce
Brutal Strike
Ferocious Strike
Call Of Haste
Predatory Bond
Res
-
-

Degen:
Feral Lunge
Poisonous Bite
Brutal Strike
Ferocious Strike
Predatory Bond
Res
-
-

Usually do THK with this:
Predator Pounce
Brutal Strike
Distracting Shot
Barrage
Predatory Bond
res
-
-

My 'leave me alone' build:
Brutal Strike
Ferocious Strike
Ignite Arrows (or Kindle if scatter will be a problem)
Troll Urgent
Call of Protection/Haste (whatever I think is best really)
res
-
-

Another favourite. Ferocious let's you keep up TF constantly:
Brutal Strike
Ferocious Strike
Read The wind
Tigers Fury (with a vamp short/recurve bow)
Predatory Bond
res
-
-

Well I suppose there's more than just a few. I'm not saying that 'these are the most effective, ftw!!!11" but these are my favs .

Running Beastmaster is fun, and profitable ( I even have a solo build). Like someone said, in the even they die, necros can use them for minions. Then you just re-rez them and they don't have a Death Penalty. I will post a few of my builds later.

Sweet, thank you all.

Beastial mauling + gale etc = good stuff

Actually, more than just good... because you even got 2 people hitting 1 target, causing 2x more interrupt on the daze.

Sha's Beast Mastery Build:
-Poisonous Bite
-Feral Lunge
-Melandru’s Assault
-Enraged Lunge {E}
-Call of Haste
-Predatory Bond
-Comfort Animal
-Charm Animal

Notes on Sha’s Beast Mastery Build: Finally, with the coming of Factions, Beast Mastery can be run on a non-laughable basis. Poisonous Bite and Feral Lunge add some impressive degen to the build, which compounds the tremendous amount of damage you’ll be dealing with Melandru’s Assault and Enraged Lunge. As it is (intentional or not) I’m pretty sure Enraged ignores armor, as I’m consistently getting the +120 damage. Call of Haste combined with Predatory Bond creates an impressive self heal, and Comfort and Charm are, of course, givens.

Beast Mastery: 12+1+3
Expertise: 12+1

There you go, that's what I'd run. Enraged Lunge deals insane damage.

Got a question. Can someone explain to me how pet shout skills work? Specifically, can I use both call of haste and call of protection at the same time? Or does the latter override the former? Thanks for the help.

Sha, since you have nothing in Marksmanship, what type of a weapon are you wielding?

It doesn't really matter about the weapon, because the damage output is coming from your pet. A bow would be a good option, because you won't be close enough to get aggro'deded, and the healing from Pred. Bond and Comfort Animal should be enough to keep your pet up.

You could put some points in Marks if you wanted to. Sha's build uses 12 (+1) Expertise. This, for the listed skills, only gives a benefit of -1 on using them as they all cost 5 and 10 energy over 8(+1) Expertise. In the long run, this will stack and the benefit will eventually be a noticeable one.
If you decided to pull back your Expertise to 8(+1), you could achieve 10(+1) in Marks. The problem is, with just a simple minor rune you will not achieve 100% damage from your weapon (ignore weapon requirement for the moment). Your damage is roughly 90%. Not a big deal if your pet is your main weapon, and if you don't mind losing 35 points from your max hp, you could use a major rune (+2) and achieve 100%.

So It boils down to this; You either prefer the benefit of the -1 energy cost over time. Or you want to do some noticeable damage with your bow.

That is actually a really good breakdown Frojack. I don't want to depend fully on my pet. So running with that setup of yours makes sense for my play style.

Also, what do you by this 100% damage issue? If my weapon req is 8...what do you mean by getting 100% by ignoring weapon req? Something I am missin here? Any more info would be greatly appreciated.

Um, Expertise breakpoints are 9, then 13. 13 Expertise is the most effecient.

I actually use my trapping staff for running Beast Mastery, since the bonus Energy is better than 2-3 damage from a bow you don't meet the req on... and I don't bother meeting the req on a bow, because all of your focus is on your pet, since you're running a Beast Mastery build.