Ranger-Pet Build

This is the build that I'm thinking to try at next Bwe. Any recommendations will be more than welcome.

Attributes:
Inspiration Magic: 10
Wilderness Survival: 10
Beast Mastery: 11

Skills:
Charm Animal
Otyugh's Cry
Call Of Haste
Call Of Disruption
Call of Healing/Barbed Trap
Revive Animal
Healing Spring
Mantra Of recall

I was thinking that with this build I will be able to focus all creatures (controlled by the party) to a single enemy, thus making them do decent damage and if the character is a spellcaster then may be he will be unable to cast any spells.
Healing Spring can be used to heal them or the party. Revive animal will be used when some of the animals die. I' am also thinking of using Barbed Trap in order to help with the damage and crippling the enemy.

Of course in order for this to be quite effective then there should be at least a few people in the party that have an pet.

Otyugh's Cry (+20 Armor)
Call Of Haste (25% faster attack speed, 33% faster run)
Call Of Disruption (38% armor penetration, 17% chance interupt spell)
Call of Healing (10 base damage reduction, 3 Health per second)

Since shouts are supposed to stack and none of the above shouts have identical bonuses then may be the pets could do some decent damage.

I still have not decided if I will go for Ranger/Mesmer or Mesmer/Ranger.

i prefer call of feeding over call of healing. although i am unsure of whether it is considered life stealing anymore, but with call of haste on, i believe that you will net a higher health/sec..

i dont really see the benefit of the mesmer/mantra of recall thing.. seems like a complete waste to me.. if you are worried about energy for traps, i would bump up expertise. if you want more pet buffs/heals i would look at a monk for secondary..

I'd also take confort animal over revive

Comfort Animal
Originally Published by Spooky
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Description: You heal your animal companion for 20-87 points. If your animal companion is dead, it is resurrected with 10-48% health, and all your skills are disabled for 8 seconds.
Energy Cost 10
Casting Time 1 second
Recharge Time 1 second
Skill Type Skill
Linked Attribute Beast Mastery


Revive Animal
Originally Published by Spooky
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Description: Resurrect all nearby allied animal companions, they come back to life with 50-410 health.
Energy Cost 5
Casting Time 6 seconds
Recharge Time 20 seconds
Skill Type Skill
Linked Attribute Beast Mastery


i prefer revive to comfort myself. comfort shuts you down if you res your pet during battle. with revive, you can use it on any of the team's pets. the recharge on revive kinda hurts, but hopefully you wont need to use it too much. you are guaranteed some healing from the team monk, and he does have healing spring for emergencies..

the problem with ressing pets with revive is that it is an
AoE centered around you and has a range of almost zero i cant tell you how many times i had to recast it due to not being "close enough" to my dead pet. comfort allows you to res your own pet from normal range and you dont even have to target it.

personally I still think pets are worthless to create a build around. I'm hoping they get fixed so they are not, but right now they seem that way. I only use a pet just for an added dot and some company. There's too many other skills that work better as a ranger than focusing mainly on your pet.

Aladdar is right on the money... if you concentrate on balancing your Ranger out... you will be able to help with more things within the group of palyers you are playing with...

If you have no defense for yourself, or offense then your character will not survive very long in combat.

I see my wolf as a one skill PvE wonder. No buff, no enhancement whatsoever. He gives DoT / meat shield like a weak henchman and he stays alive all by himself. He also creates some chaos in the enemy lines. For PvP, he is useful only against weak/average teams, so I guess it's not that useful.

Anyway I agree that my attempts at pumping up B.Mastery for a few calls were disappointing. My wolf didn't improve much and the loss of skill slots and attributes seriously reduced my efficiency.

IMHO, the overall power of your pet should be passively linked to your attribute: increased dmg, speed, armor or HP (possibly with a bonus depending on your pet's species). As for calls, they are really weak, if usable at all. They should be more powerful and no longer stackable. Lastly, I'd like to be able to buff pets from other players with a couple of specific calls.

But most importantly we need MORE CONTROLS for pets.

im going to have to agree there
the pet AI is not bvery good, although one of the upcoming events i think im going to try out the calls with a warrior/ranger, come at them with a charged up pet and kill them, maybe?


from what im hearing right now, there not very good in gvg.
but this may be a fun build to try, if not for pet for knockdowns, lol if pet doesnt work u could always switch to marks then and attack from afar and close

heres the build i was thinking...

warrior/ranger
hammer - 10 + 2
beast mastery - 10
strength - 10 + 1
tactics - 5 + 1

devastating hammer(elite) - extra damage and weakness, also knockdown
heavy blow - ex damage and knockdown if suffering from weakness
bulls strike - ex damage, knockdown if there moving
power attack - ex damage
charm animal - u hve a pet
healing signet - my self heal
call of healing/feeding - base reducting of 1-11, and health regen 1-3/5-17 health when they attack other person
call of brutality - +1- 11 damage, and 1-41% armor penetration

i know this is kind of off your whole mesmer thing, but i didnt think mantra of recall is effective either, of course this build doesnt hve a lot the animal powers, it is still effective, so u wont be relyin on your pet, btw i would add comfort animal in here when pvmin for devastating hammer, heavly blow, and instead put in tigers fury and comfort animal, since your in and out of combat, energy could be the only problem then, but since like i sad your in and out it shouldnt be to much of a problem and u hve a pet of everything goes downhill for some annoyance and get them all on your pet and not u.



on another note i tryed traps last beta, they dont work very well at all, when ever there are enemies around i found that if i started doin them i would get hit, meaning disrupted. and if i did them before they got there, theyd miss the trap about 50% of the time, the disrupting will kill u, id say put that into something better.

I'm not saying pets are worthless, just that most of the skills that go along with them are. I don't have a problem using a skill slot to bring a pet along, I do have a problem with wasting 4 more on skills to keep it alive or slightly more powerful.

Ya i think pets are fun to have and all but there not such a great thing to create a build around it would just be like having another warrior but weaker. i just like the pets because they work as meat shields thy're cool and ya. i hope in the march bwe there will be some more animals to charm unlike in the feb there were only the mao bird stalker wartog snow wolf and i think lynx

there was also the stalker, it seems bears and wolves could be charmable if you could find a way to make them stop breaking charm. Only time will tell on that one though.