Do you think a.net knows about beast mastery?

people who say BM sucks are noobs

I use beastmaster rangers in GvG, the team usually laughs at our pets but they arnt laughing when we have them dped to hell and trapped by their lord within 8 minutes.

Fero strike
disrupting lunge
hammer bash
irres blow
TF
charm
comfort
res sig
15 bm, 11 hammer, 9 exp

running under qz for uber damage and natures, each beastmaster gets on a monk(or 2 monk 1 spiker) and keeps spamming spells(disrupt lunge every 2.5 seconds, bash every 4 or so, ect)

The big problem with the pet is the AI. Unless you're sitting on one target and never changing the pet is never going to be doing what you want it to. If you want to retreat, or if the other guy runs, your pet just commits suicide. More maddening is all of the pet skills that are clearly designed to be used tactically...but can't be used tactically because your pet is retarded and won't attack the target it needs to.

Needing to bring two otherwise useless skills to run a pet is annoying but not crippling. Pets don't autores with any consistency for some reason so you really don't have a choice in the matter if you want to actually use the pet. So you need Charm Animal, which is strong for the effect it has, and Comfort Animal, which is terrible besides the res effect. I'd like to see that skill buffed in some way to actually make it useful - I don't think a combined skill is needed but it would certainly be nice.

...It's really just the AI and space. The skills are great. Too bad you can't use them intelligently since you're at the mercy of whoever your pet is attacking =/

Peace,
-CxE

i think comfort and charm should be combined. most BM builds must bring both while one of the skills does nothing. i don't understand the res affect of comfort being good as stated by ensign. your pet dies all skills disabled for at least 5 seconds (haven't timed exactly but i know its 5 or more) and then will be disabled another 8 seconds if you want to res him. when you do res him it won't even be at full life.

combine comfort and charm. remove the 8 second disable on res affect and had a 3-4 second casting for the res. keep it at 1 second for the healing. with a 3-4 second casting you do have a chance of being interrupted so it will keep it in balance but not overshooting it. charm does nothing but waste 1 skill slot for something that you will need to devote 3-4 more slots to get it even close to comparable to other attributes. most attributes i can have a few points invested and have 1-2 skills from that attribute to be affective. BM will take nearly maxing out and take up nearly your entire bar.

very straight forward commands would make the pet so much better. command modes would be very simple as it would only focus on one AI thinking at one time.

Attack: pet attacks target until another commande mode is set.

Attack as one: pet attacks the same target as you and changes targets with you. once target is attacked pet will not stop attacking if you stop.

Follow me: pet comes to you and stays by your side. pet will attack closest foe but will not go outside of arggo circle.

Defend: pet follows target ally and attacks closest foe to ally until another command mode is set.

Do nothing: pet will only follow behind you but will not attack until another command mode is set.

those 5 commands would be able to accomidate every style of gameplay. some people like that he attacks with you some people want him to attack a different target. maybe you can use him to defend another player. follow me would keep him from chasing a target arggoing other groups of monsters. do nothing would keep him out of the way while not hindering you from a spiteful spirit or other attack triggers. since all of the controls on the game can be set to any key you choose and plenty are not even used at all this would be no problem from a control aspect.

I never have more than 9 in Expertise when running a Beast Master. BM skills are either 5 or 10 energy. I run 16 BM, 9 Exp and 10 Marks.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...sts-id1154.php

I read in a thread that moving above 12 in BM isn't very beneficial. Since Sticky Icky joined up with me, I'm thinking otherwise.

its not i run 10 BM on my warrior with my pet and he still does around 25-30 dmg with regular attacks. problem is anything below that will just about scrap using BM at all with a pet.

I'm not sure of your point. Are you saying I should only have 10 in BM? Punctuation helps.

I didn't say it was good, I said it was neccessary. What I meant is that the healing effect on your pet is worthless, it's way to little to matter. The blackout from the res and pet death is neccessary, though, otherwise there's no point in killing pets at all if they just pop right back up at no cost. My gripe is that the skill really is nothing more than a pet res, and I think it needs to do something more than that if they're going to keep things divided.


That'd work. It just needs to be non-trivial to get your pet back up. This sounds more like combining Charm Animal and Revive Animal, making it act like an actual hard res. Comfort is weird because it needs the 1 second cast time to be a (terrible) heal.

Peace,
-CxE

Interesting discussion. I'm playing around with a BM build, so I appreciate the thoughts. Has anyone noticed that a BM build is also expensive on skill points? I just did some quick research. I picked the main attribute lines from my (and my husband's) characters and looked up which skills could be learned through quests and which had to be 'bought'. To gain all the skills available to me in a BM build, I have to buy half.


Not counting elites, number that must be learned from trainer or capped (skill points and gold) vs. number that can be learned through quests (free):

BM - 11/11
Marksmanship - 0/10
Axe Mastery - 1/7
Death Magic - 7/15
Fire Magic - 7/9
Domination Magic - 4/16
Healing Prayers - 1/12



Just something to chew on...

No offence bud but id hardly call that a beast build. Id like to run a purist beast build which is what i think most people are refering to.

Someone posted a good idea though. A seperate skill bar thing that would say..only let you apply beast mastery skills (without having to bring along charm animal) and NO other skill line. Secondary professions would be allowed to keep it fair. But a ranger running his normal skills+could bring his pet for free would be overpowered. I always sink at least 7 points in BM for a moderatly efficient TF. With a free charm animal id do way more dps.

looking over your posts on this site makes me think you really dislike this game. If youre always going to be so damn negative about it find something else to play that you can enjoy.

If they can make the pet AI better that would work wonders. I mean while pet smite is really fun and allows me to solo up to 4 dumb warriors in 4v4 it sometimes make it hard when the pet downs a monk then takes forever to switch targets. They also need to improve damage just a bit since well weapons can be customized and have +x% damage alrdy. Maybe allowing pets to have the same may be the boost it needs to gain some popularity? Oh well my opinion only.

Quoted for serious emphasis.

Pets are not underpowered by any means. They are faster than human players, have higher armor than most, and have high base damage, with the pet attacks working as sorts of modifications to the pet "weapon." So why don't more people use them?

Because the pets have AI's equivalent to those of a five year old playing a W/Mo. And I mean that seriously. They need to figure out what they're actually attacking. And then attack it.

As a mesmer, I have no problem interrupting skills with Cry of Frustration. As a Warrior, Disrupting Chop prevents the big spells from coming through. With Disrupting Lunge, though... I just click it and hope for the best. And that's assuming the pet showed up to the battle, and didn't get stuck behind a rock.

Here's the deal, ANet. You've upped Henchman AI. You've given a boon to enemy AI. Why are pets still so artificially stupid? Couldn't you at least make them more responsive to targeting and attacking, like aforementioned Henchman? This is all I'm asking. Improved Pet AI. PLEASE.

I also like to add that when you face a pet in pvp and it's not an IWAY-type build, it is not as effective because you can't go high bm and carry all the skills. So, basically what people end up bringing in is a pet that doesn't kill people and when it's down, an eight second window for the owner to get attacked without any way to counter or defend except a firing bow and running.

Don't think that a target-caller isn't looking for little opportunities like this to capitalize on. A quick-reacting team can get the ranger down in eight seconds, or close to it.

You want to put yourself in the best possible position to win. Pets as they are currently don't do this. They add one more way you can lose.

Ideally yes, but our guild has been running beast masters (with 14 in beast mastery) in tombs and team arenas, and have found that 90% of people don't attack the pets, and if your monks can protect your rangers, then theres alot of pets running around with high armour and, with only 2 pet attack skills, still a decent damage output. Beast mastery is not underpowered, though there are problems wth it, primarily the AI.

I just ran a full BM build in CA. Totally owned. Disrupting fixed that monk's rez and orison. Icky spreads the love through bleeding. And the BM elite gives me 10 energy every 8 secs. What more can a tamer want? Oh yeah, an attack that heals Icky.

Since the advent and molestation of IWAY builds, no one wants to kill pets anymore. That's fine with me, lol.

i have been messing around with beast mastery lately and i love it
i have been using 2 BM builds alot the last 2 weeks
1 is a hammer beast master
12 hammer
3 expertise +1 - 4
12 BM + 1 + 3 - 16
hammer bash
irrisitable blow
tigers fury (lasts 11 seconds, 10 recharge ITS GREAT)
ferocious strike
call of haste
comfort animal
charm animal
res sig

even with the low expertise, i really have no trouble with energy managment

and the dominatrix

11 domination
6 expertise +1 - 7
12 BM +1 +3 - 16

blackout
shatter enchant
shatter hex
ferocious strike
call of haste
comfort animal
charm animal
res sig

blackout the casters while my pet shreds them into pieces, shatter any enchants the monks and wars have on them, shatter those annoying life transfers and ss/empathy/insidious you get the point, and also help out a hexed monk on your team

i wouldnt mind a better AI pet, but i love it as it is right now

I just think animals need a better AI.

In PVE with my R/Mo's, I'll target a boss, which sics the cat on them, then throw Balthazar's Aura on the cat as soon as it arrives. Had a lot of success with that trick.

Pets don't suck. Their AI does.

I made up this thread a while back and I thought very few people cared. lol

I've seen more and more beast masters in competition.

I think anyone who has tried BM knows that pet AI is bad and they get stuck a lot. I wonder why A.net hasn't fixed this yet? It's so obvious. I wonder if they even try beast mastery to see what are the obvious problems?


Besides Pet AI, pet skills also suffer some issues. I think somebody started a thread about improving pet skills and mostly it has something to do with pet skills that require a "condition" like Miaiming strike, when the target is running, you Cripple the target.

Brtual Strike, Melandru's Assuault, Scavenger Strike and Beastial Pounce all need some improvement. You are NOT doing more dmg with those skills. Predator Pounce is all you need. Since beast masters are so limited with skill slots, it's rare if the master brings more than 2 pet attack skills. Normally it's Ferocious + Disrupting/Feral.

A lot of beast master's problems come from pet's AI and hope the dev can do something about it soon.