Talk: Beast master

Here's the Beast Master article. I'll be working on re-directs soon and add to it with a Beast Master Guide. Let me know if I screwed up something. :P --Relax And Play 17:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Good job RT 17:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks RT. Also, I'm trying to get "BM" to re-direct to this article specifically, but I'm not so sure on how to do it. :o --Relax And Play 17:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I just did it for you, but on the BM page, you would type #redirect [[Beast master]] . --Shadowcrest 17:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah ok. :P --Relax And Play 17:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Some Personal Observations and Adventures in Beastmastery

I've always had a soft spot for pets ever since I charmed my first Melandru's Stalker in Pre-searing Regent Valley. Mel Kitty, as I called her, went everywhere with me, through all missions in all campaigns. She was there when my ranger became a Legendary Grandmaster Cartographer and Legendary Protector and Legendary Skill Hunter. I never left town without her.

But times changed, and it was on what was to become my first successful vanquish of Dalada Uplands that the limitation of pets became brutally apparent, and I left her for dead and continued on without her for almost the first time since I started playing Guild Wars :-( I then thought I saw why beastmasters were rare, but I had a nagging doubt as neither Dalada nor Hard Mode existed when beastmastery had become so neglected.

Cut to a month or so ago. I like creating new characters of different classes to see and learn how to play them effectively. After my original ranger I created a full-on dervish and then went back to prophecies and created a fire nuker elementalist. More recently I took over a Tyrian female Mesmer that one of my daughters had played to level 9 and then abandoned. All four are TGMCs, a feat of which I'm quite proud :-) My dervish is, like my first ranger, also a Legendary Cartograhper, protector and skill hunter. My ranger is a Tyrian guardian and Elonan vanquisher I'm working steadily on vanquishing Tyria... one area at a time, all with hero and hench only. What I'm saying is that I'm been around a bit and I'm not a noob. But what of beastmastery? Ah, well, I have two daughters and the other one had another abandoned character, a level 10 Tyrian ranger. I had decided to zap her, transferring all her useful stuff to my other characters or selling it as appropriate, then when I went to play her I found she had Cities of Ascalon active and partially completed. So I thought, why not play her to get the 55 monk grim cesta and then zap her.... but I'd already played a lot of rangering, so how could I make her interesting? I know, I thought, let's run her as a beastmaster and see for myself why they were so rare.

The only problem was, try as I might, in PvE at least, I couldn't see where the problem was. I was expecting to find some glaring weakness in the build, or the pet, but I couldn't find one. All this relates to PvE only, and I cannot make any useful comment about PvP play. I found that I was ripping through everything as fast and as effectively as with any the classes I'd played. Each has their strong and weak points of course, and for the beastmaster the strength seems to be mainly against good ol' melee classes, however, they are not "weak" against others, just not as devastatingly effective. Put it this way, I'd not want to come up against me and a decent pet (which made my Doppleganger encounter particular fast - sub ten seconds - as it didn't have my pet :-) ) I pressed my beastmaster on as fast as possible into EotN and other high level areas, trying to find the weakness, all to no avail. As a level 16 ranger I pushed straight through to Magus Stones to capture my very first elite with this character (using the free capture signet from Magi Malaquire in Lion's Arch) - Enraged Lunge. Well, what other decent BM elite is there... Yesterday I discovered the power of the only other decent BM elite: Strike as One.

That those elites are the only decent beastmastery elites, though your mileage may vary on that, possibly tells the story of why beastmastery isn't taken seriously. Both are not Prophecies skills. Enraged Lunge was added in Factions, while Strike as One came in Nightfall, and until recently worked very differently and very poorly :-( So, initially, beastmastery was significantly under powered, but this was addressed in Factions which added many useful non-elites as well as the Elite to rule them all Enraged lunge. With the change and massive buff to Strike as One I feel the time has come for beastmasters to be taken seriously, though as I'll discuss below, there are some issues to deal with for that to happen.

So, enough of my history and motivation for beastmastery, what is it that I have found?

1) Beastmastery is an all or nothing skill set. There's little point in being half-hearted about being a beast master. That is why my age-old Mel crumbled in Hard Mode. You have to invest most of your attribute points to be an effective beast master. I run at 16 BM, with a superior rune (currently very cheap, as BMs are so out of favour!) on my headgear giving a +4 boost on top of a full 12 from attribute points.

1a) Enraged Lunge relies for its power on recharging BM skills, therefore you need to have a good number of active/spammed BM skills. I run with a 7 BM skill bar, with one slot for optional skills, such as PvE only (BM is reasonably compatible with the current 60 second limited Ursan Blessing) and or a res, which is probably only needed for Hard Mode. Again, its an all-or-nothing thing: you need the BM skills to fuel Enraged Lunge.

2) I have found the key to effective BMing is time management. Pets attack on a strict two second cycle. BM attacks are not like other skills, they don't act directly. Instead they request the pet to perform the attack on their next scheduled attack. This makes interrupts very hit and miss, to be frank more often miss :-( The queuing mechanism also makes skill management vital, so I run with the Pet control panel on at all times, so that I can see when the pet has actually performed the attack skill. Pet target selection affects this considerably, and all pet attacks have a non-documented timeout period, and if they haven't performed the attack by that time, it expires unperformed. Don't expect pets to immediately perform the attack as soon as you hit the skill icon - pets simply don't work that way.

2a) Time management is everything, and this is the key to understanding the power of pet IAS skills. Pet IASs increase the rate at which pets attack, and therefore increase the number of attack skill slots per second and reduce the chance of the skill timing out. I use Call of Haste as this reduces the "time to target" of the pet as well as its attack rate. This though also shows why pets might seem apparently useless in the early stages of the game. against low level foes, pets often simply don't get to the target before they are dead. Pets really only begin to shine against high-level foes who last long enough for the pet to properly engage them. The same to some extent goes generally for any degen/condition: they produce more damage the higher the health of the foe. As a ranger I've always preferred to get the degen, typically poison, in with the first shot if possible as that gives it the longest time to cause the most damage. Pets are in effect a sort of DoT machine, and should be treated as first strike weapons.

This neatly brings me to Strike as One. This is the BMs first strike skill par excellence and in the limited time I've been using it, is stunningly effective against most foes, but especially healers. In PvE healers like to stand out of the way at the back. This presents some possible problems for pet owners. For a start, they should generally be your first target in most mobs. But, they are a long way away for your pet to run to and they have often to run through the melee front-line, which can body block your pet. Strike as One solves this problem, teleporting your pet to the feet of your back-line opponent, cutting out the possibly several seconds delay, neatly jumping right past and potential body-blockers. All that AND they then inflicting bleeding which you will probably near-instantly cover with crippled! That means most Struck as One healers are toast :-)! So, Strike as One is a critical time management skill, though it is probably not so useful on non-fleshy foes, but they are where the raw damage, around 80 to 100, of Enraged Lunge really shines.

3) Skill management. I touched on this above, but getting to know and understand the attack queuing system is vital. Many attack skills will cancel each other, so there's no point in firing off what might seem like a good one-two of Feral Lunge quickly followed by Predator's Pounce and the pounce will cancel the lunge. Again, keep the pet control panel open and check when those skills are really going in. Interestingly, Strike as One will queue alongside attacks.

4) Energy. As you cannot spam pet attacks any faster than the pets attack cycle, energy is not as much of a limitation as might at first be thought. There are recommendations out there for "pure" beastmasters to use a staff with an energy buff. I have found this to be unnecessary and can be reasonably effective as a BM on just the basic 25 energy of rangers. I use decent levels of Expertise of course, as all Rangers should. I use an attunement rune (+2 energy), though that is more to ensure I have at least 15 energy for use with G.O.L.E.M. 2.0s in Destruction's Depths. My point is that except in long mob fights, energy is not the limiting factor - pet attack cycle time is. This leave me free to use a normal bow, allowing me to use Distracting Shot or another bow interrupt. With a minor rune of expertise, I'm currently running at 16 BM, 11 expertise and 8 markmanship. Writing this surprises me as I've been doing useful additional damage with my Uhiwi's Shortbow (Droknar's Shortbow is similar) even though it requires 9 markmanship! A shortbow also increases your attack rate and conveniently gets you inside the range at which Strike as One works.

5) So, you've got a top level beast, working fast and you're managing its skills carefully and effectively. What else is there? Health of course. As a beastmaster you're only really useful while your pet is alive, so keeping it alive has to be a priority. I run with Call of Protection on my pet at all times. It's cheap - 5 energy - and long lasting - two whole minutes. The only time I run without it is after my pet has died in a long and tough fight and its still recharging after I've rezzed her (and I regard all my pets as "her"). The base damage reduction is very useful and at that cost, what's not to love about it? Other health buffs could work well too, I just haven't tried them all. Whatever you do, some sort of health buff/damage reduction is good for your pet, and essential in Hard Mode. Another key skill in this respect is Predator's Pounce which gives a useful health boost to your pet when the pounce hits. Its my preferred spammable pet attack. Note that with higher BM it is less likely to miss and the health gain is higher: remember BMing is all or nothing and half-measures are not much good. Last thing - I know it I've gone on far too long already - I reserve Comfort Animal for really bad situations even though it often isn't much use in the thick of a fight :-( I do like to give my pet a comfort after a good fight, it's kind of like a thank you to her I suppose. Silly really, as her natural health regen will soon get her back to normal. Its just me being an anthropomorph :-)

6) Teams. In general I've found that in Guild Wars most classes work better in pairs. I've found that in Hard Mode a double hero dervish based team can outperform triple necro/sabway teams, and not just in area of undead which don't provide many corpses for necros, and where dervish's holy damage can really let rip. I'd like try running a double beastmaster based team, but I don't know how well heroes would handle a full BM skill bar. They are known to spam Comfort Animal for one thing, and I doubt they could be trusted to exploit the full first strike power of Strike as One. I have yet to try that experiment. What I do know is that hero and hench healers have no issue with directing healing towards pets. I doubt human healers would be prepared to do that. So running when with PUG healers, don't expect any help from them, they simply don't rate your all important pet as a priority :-( That's a result of BM being so neglected overall  ;-( I do all my adventuring alone, even in Hard Mode -- I even tried to do The Villainy of Galrath first time in hard mode without level 20 - they were level 17ish - and fully runed-up heros. I managed the quest fine, but couldn't quite get the vanquish of Kessex Peak as the Apprentice of Veratas were just too much for my team. Probably would have been no problem at all with a fully evolved hero/hench team. My current bar is OgATY5bmzZ3cb+McmHDvl2sZAA or Predator's Pounce, Feral Lunge, Call of Haste, Call of Protection, Distracting Shot, Strike as One, Comfort Animal, Charm Animal though no doubt I'll evolve that from time to time. Superior BM rune on headgear (+3 +1), rune of Minor Expertise, survivor insignia on chest, beastmaster on rest. Plus Vitae, Superior Vigor and Attunement runes for extra health and energy. I run with a max damage shortbow of +30 fortitude with armour penetration (20% chance). There is a lot of scope for alternative bars of course - experiment and see what works for you!

7) Damage types. This is a very minor point, but pets come in two flavours - piercing damage dealers and slashing damage dealers. Its thought, though I haven't tested it, that the slashing pets are marginally the better types, which is good because most pets are slashers. Other than that all pets are equal. They type you get is a matter of which skin pleases you most. Got to love a Black Moa though!

8) Pet counters. For all pets, one skill that could, in theory, cause significant problems is Vocal Minority. This is because it shuts down shouts and both Call of Haste and Call of Protection are shouts, as are many other key BM buffs. Call of Protection is not so much of a problem as it is so long lasting that you won't be putting it on during anything other than the longest fights. The shut-down of Call of Haste is more of an issue as it significantly buff your pet's damage dealing capacity and ruins your time management efforts. Body blocking can render your pet useless for some time. General anti-melee techniques will also adversely affect your pet. Snares can be nasty, leaving your pet seemingly traipsing through treacle from target to target while never actually getting to any to do any damage. Strike as One is a key here, getting your pet to the right place at the right time regardless of any snare.

Incidentally, this is all with a hearty pet. I haven't yet (because I haven't really tried) to get a dire pet. I suspect that keeping the pet alive is probably more important than how much damage it does... as it cannot do damage at all if its dead. As it is, on total wipes, my pet "Sheep" (don't ask, I didn't name her, my youngest daughter did!) is often the last of the party still standing, and quite often kills after everyone else is dead! Don't forget that in PvE pets don't have death penalty, which is a big plus, but then they don't get all the morale boosts from killing bosses either, though they do from other boosts such as in missions (e.g. killing ballista engineers) or in dungeons from Dwarven blessing.

So, I think that with the improved BM skills, especially the elites, beastmasters should make a comeback in PvE at least. They are a viable and most importantly FUN, specialisation to play but do require different play style to other types of ranger. Though that is how it should be, each class and sub-class requires a different play-style: that is a major part of what make games like Guild Wars fun!

Sorry to take up so much of your time. I just wanted to say how much fun being a beastmaster is, and how powerful (in PvE) pets can be and so encourage others to try "running as one".--Thalestis 18:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The major point about Petmasters is 1) the slow attack speed (heck, it's always slower than a normal weapon, when using comparable buffs), 2) Swapping targets takes quite some time, often (Strike as One, yada yada, I know), 3) The fact a Bow would simply have a better DPS, and at range. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 18:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that beastmastery is some uber-powerful build. Rather I'm trying to say that in my experience its nowhere near as underpowered as people seem to think it is and that it is a) viable and b) most importantly FUN. Points 1 and 3 are one and the same - the argument being that the slow attack rate of pets makes them worse than a bow. Yes, that's one reason I run with both a pet, with IAS at all times if possible, and a decent fast attack rate, armour penetrating bow. Some BM articles have suggested a staff for reasons of additional energy, but I think that there is relatively little need for additional energy and a lot of need for additional fire-power. I also have found that swapping targets - before the last one is dead that is - is generally a bad thing no matter what class you're playing and that target selection is an important skill to master. However on the odd occasions that it is worthwhile, for example putting additional pressure on a stubborn healer by simultaneously attacking them AND those they are trying to heal, that setting the pet on the healer and then turning your bow on the front-line often helps things along as the pet will tend to stay on the healer and you can keep on directing attack skills at the healer while pummelling the warrior or whatever. Again for me, its a question of knowing the strengths of your build and working towards them rather than moaning about its weaknesses. I have found that raw DPS is not the be all and end all of killing things in PvE. I find that things tend to die faster and inflict less damage on my party if I have an interrupt focussed ranger hero build rather than an attack/high DPS build while I personally wouldn't run with more than a single interrupt for occasional use. This is because heroes are so much better at interrupting than humans and interrupted skills means less healing and less damage from foes. My intention of posting this is to show that beastmastery in PvE is viable and FUN, for me at least, and that is what a game is all about. If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it, which is one reason why I don't do PvP as I don't like fighting other real players.--Thalestis 19:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

True. Also, attack rate != DPS. Let's say you can attack once every 2 seconds for 500 damage, or once every second for 200 damage, without exceptions. What would you use? If you chose the latter; shame on you :P Besides, you can run 9 Marks/14 BM, and just spam some interrupts, and your pet would probably have a higher DPS, because it just deals more damage. So, my 2 points are not the same. Kthx.

I agree that you don't need a Staff to be a BM. High max energy is not Energy management. If you can manage with a staff, you can manage with a bow.

Tbvh, I constantly switch targets. Generally, when you focus on one target, they either just die, or they won't for a while. If you spread damage, most PvE healers/protters cannot keep up the pace and will spontaneously drop dead. Well, either I do that, or nuke everything into oblivion without second thought, but that's off-topic.

And another point I agree on; Rupts are epic. It's fun to see Cry of Frustration trigger 3 times in a row (I take 3 copies ^^ ), interrupting, like, 7 spells easily. However, I never rupt the frontlines; Enfeebling Blood takes care of them.

I've BM'ed a bit myself, when I actually played as a Ranger (Now my Ranger carries 6 sets of armor for my Ele..). It's too clunky for my havoc playstyle (as I described above, I swap targets a lot), but it was proficient enough to be viable, as you also stated. It also carries a healthy pack of armor-ignoring damage, which is great. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that a Beast Master can be a fun role to play. When I play my Ranger I usually play a Beast Master - sometimes with a bow and sometimes with a spear. I usually make sure to have a Barbs Necromancer hero along and I often buff the pet with Great Dwarf Weapon. Never Rampage Alone is stapled to my Beast Master bar too. My Ritualist is still my favorite, but I still adventure with my Beast Master and his loyal Melandru's Stalker quite often. Shadowlance 00:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

This has set me thinking... While I don't want to get too deeply embroiled in detailed technical arguments - I want more people to give beastmastery a try - I feel that the soundbite "The pet is the weapon" is rather misleading. In fact while it sounds good, its downright wrong. In accessing damage it leads to deciding whether PB + PA >= BB + BA where PB is basic pet attack damage, PA is pet attack skill damage, BB is basic bow damage and BA is damage from bow attack skills. While there are many complexities and subtleties in accurately accessing the figures, what with miss chance, critical hit chance, attribute levels and the effect of foes skills etc., etc. (which is where I don't want to get involved). I think we are agreed that PB + PA < BB + BA under pretty much most if not all practical circumstances, making pets unattractive in term of "being the weapon" :-(

That's if the pet truly IS the weapon however. The fact is that the game mechanics require that a pet is used with a normal weapon: to provide targeting if nothing else (yes, Strike as One does appear to allow pet targeting without a weapon, yada, yada ...) So, the equation above is not valid. We should be asking something more like is BB + PB + PA >= BB + BA? In other words the pet is a "skill bar" adding to the basic weapon damage, not a "weapon" per se, which of course is no more than a simple statement of fact of how the game treats pets. Charm Animal is more or less an indefinite period DoT skill. The ranger still does their basic attacks from whatever weapon, to which must be added the pet basic attack and then on top of that we add the damage from skills. We have to make an allowance for downtime for pet death and so on and so on, which makes the numbers less easy to accurately quantify.

So, while the soundbite sounds great, I feel strongly that the pet is NOT the weapon for a "pure" beastmaster, it never can be. It is a skill set, just like any other, yet due to its unique mechanics, with damage mediated through a semi-independant third party, it is not quite like any other, and requires its own style of play. A style I happen to like a lot :-))--Thalestis 12:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

PS the reason why Strike as One can be queue with pet attack skills is because, perhaps somewhat oddly, it is a shout, not an attack. Obvious really. That makes it dodgy when Vocal Minority is likely to be encountered. I can't for the life of me remember where I've come across it recently. Maybe Kraits in Asura territory (not that there are any kraits outside of asura territory that is... until Guild Wars 2 at least) --Thalestis 13:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, beastmaster is fun. Beast is a bit like having one more hero in the party that you need to micormanage just that bit more. It's also fun to just put "charm animal" on heroes's skill bars if you have a slot to spare because it speeds up the killing as long as the pet survives (not recommended when the going gets tough). --◄mendel► 13:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If I was to run with BM heroes, and I want to try it, I'd possibly consider running with Revive Animal rather than Comfort Animal as the primary need is for a pet res rather than a pet heal and that heroes are thought to overuse Comfort Animal, wasting energy and needlessly interrupting their damage dealing and skill use. I can't think of any other situation where Revive Animal would be any use :-( For diversity reasons I'd equip the hero with Enraged Lunge if I ran with Strike as One or vice versa. Incidentally, it often seems to be better to let a pet who's dangerously low on health die and then res with Comfort Animal than to try to heal them before they die as they will, at decent BM level, res with way more health. Hmm, thoughts...--Thalestis 13:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

My personal favorite elite ability is Heal as One. I've worshiped it ever since I became a professional beast-master, as I profusely refuse to blow two skill slots on healing (For myself and for my pet.) My damage skills consist of brutal strike, feral lunge, and poisonous bite - bleeding, poison, and super-maimage all in one pacakge. Feral Aggression and Call of Protection won my heart over as shouts (FA's a skill though.) I use mending touch for myself and my pet, to get around the blindness problem, and have a staff with radiant insignias to get 65 energy.

My life-story as a beast-master in a box. :P --RAPDM 07:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)