Me/Ra Spreading thin?

Hi guys. Currently been working my Mesmer / Ranger through some missions. I am finding though as I level and get more and more skills, that as a mesmer/ranger, attributes might have to start spreading out soon. I want high beast mastery for my pet, and high illusion for the DoT type spells. Currently my 'main' skills that I use in a normal PvE battle will be 'call of haste' for pet, have him charge the mob, then I take it with 'conjure phantasm'. So since this is what I use(skill wise anyways) I have all attribute points into illusion and beast mastery. My only worry is that eventually my current strategy will no longer work on mobs, and I will need more skills (still assuming average fighting conditions, pve, etc). So...do you guys think it is ok to ride illusion/beastmastery all the way up, or use other options? I really like having a strong pet with me

P.S. I don't have confort animal in skill bar. Call of haste and charm only. This seems silly, however it is easilly offset with a healing hench, if I feel I need it.

I don't think that it's a wise choice, but you might make it work. To me a pet is only really worth it once it has some skills, to take advantage of them. Not having comfort animal keeps it to 2 slots but makes your pet vulnerable - I am guessing you aren't very far into the game yet - I have seen pets taking on enemies in the Ring of Fire and surviving, so pets are feasible, but it has typically been a ranger using one. As for the choice of mesmer line, illusion is the first one I switch out of - I find it is not that effective once the enemies have a few levels - while 5 pips of degeneration is huge when you are facing 160 hitpoint enemies it really starts looking piddly when they have 500+, but then again it depends on the role you are trying to play. The 10 damage a second isn't very big, considering that a chaos storm can do that, and to a group, and that it drains energy at the same time. I personally play a very defensive mesmer build in that I carry 2-3 interrupts along and stop nasty spells - it relieves a lot of pressure on the monk to stop a Meteor or Fireball before it deals a pile of damage - and using a diversion on the Water Trident spamming boss or the Orison spamming monk makes the job so much easier. I'd look into the 3 and 4 attribute splits to see what makes you happy - is a 10/10/10/5 final distribution good? Are you using your fast casting? How much beast mastery do you want in the end?

10/10/10/5 is actually a good idea, however, i think i could deal with only a 3 distribution, if i go with domination, illusion, and BM. I think I might be able to do some nice damage with chaos storm, maybe something like migraine, and conjure phantasm. Then of course there is the nice DD that converts enemy energy into DMG. plus, backfire brings the pain as well. Lets see.

charm
pet haste
chaos storm
conj. phantasm
migraine(or other 3hp degen+effect)
ethereal burden, or crushing burden(to keep em in chaos storm if they arent stuck to pet, plus, ethereal gives energy)
backfire
rez sig (or other?)

that looks like a pain dealing setup. Maybe swap rez signet(when exp ing) for a pet skill?

I love my Me/Ra for pve. I use poison arrow as my elite and found that symbiotic bond and call of protection make my presearing pet warthog invincable. I take troll ungent and rez sig and I think no self respecting beastmaster would go without comfort animal. That leaves one left which is usually conjure phantasm allthough I switch it out alot depending on what I fighting. Usually for feral lunge so as to not waste atributes on illusion magic.
With this build, (I prolly just got really lucky) I beat ring of fire the first try.

Illusion/Beast Mastery is good, especially when you get Illusionary Weaponry{E}.

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