Guild Wars 2

Hello I run a beast master ranger since beta and I’ve always defended pet based builds in this game and pretty much in any game that has pets. I want to confess here my feeling for the current beast mastery system as well as my experience as running a pet centered build since release.

First I want you to know I ran many defrent pet from the black moa (my first pet in game) to the Snow leopard which is my current pvp killer. I appreciate the various choice offered in game each with its strength and weakness. Pet handling has been an adventure I have embraced since the creation of my ranger and I never turned my back on it.

Beta
I started pvping with a axe and a horn as well as a jungle stalker on a charr female. Matches in the beta ran mostly around longbow users and or sword shield warriors with a few elementalist and necro (very few Mesmer around). While I admit at this time pretty much everyone was noobish the spec felt infinitely better to run around as the ranger self healed large amount from the signet periodic healing and stuff like heal as one were most efficient. Pet also dealth way larger damage (they have had their damage nerfed on several ability later on) and I barely even acknowledged that the pet could sometime mess up because it actualy was efficient (it could easily kill players but sometime got stuck in a wall or didn’t fight at all etc).

1rst year
Running beast mastery didn’t felt much defrent from the beta although they did nerf signet of the wild I ran a somewhat simple 0 25 0 15 30 build centralised around building pet might on multi hit and criting. Considering the fact stuff the like of fractals didn’t exist yet people had no needs for a meta and the zerker joke wasn’t running rampant yet. Pet dealth some lovely 10k and I was happy for my build as I ran around might stacking it. Later this year warrior gets a buff so to be able to keep up to pvp and at first it just look like they are finaly able to keep up.

2nd year fractal of the mist emergeance
When fractal of the mist appeared the game started to aim itself more toward direct efficiency less then originality warrior behing the most used class for this comp. While the Spvp wasn’t much for the better itself behing very strait on the builds the fractals brought that junk strait into pve as well and from that moment if you had a pet or ran anything not the way some tought guy wanted for the purpose of behing a 100% dps class for maximum effectiveness (no originality there you don’t even play your own build anymore) you were automatically branded as useless. While perfectly able to run the meta guardian and warrior I simply refused to play my ranger and my minion master necromancer otherwise then the way I intended them wich is to say as pet users. As such I was relayed to pug team only with a few elite team at time wich I generaly declined the offer from preferring to run my main the way I wanted then to run my alt for some easy quick earned reward. When ranger and necromancer officialy got branded as useless class pve wise I stopped playing guild wars 2 for a while.

2nd year scarlet junk
I skipped about 80% of the year because of the scarlet arc although I did come a few time online so to play my ’’infamous’’ ranger or necromancer in low level fractals. I did reach level 40s fractals on my warrior but got sick of it and stopped playing the moment I reached the level. The same year ferocious bite get its damage nerfed by a serious amount while pet necromancer keep behing lovely playable. A little later pet necro get nerfed as well for a joke amount of stat but keep behing playable. For some reason many instance suddently either get themselves nerfed or upgraded to ridiculus level (I should mention here that Simin used to be the worst boss in arah for a reason and that since the nerf she became a huge joke while that pirate zombie boss ended up getting boosted to boot when she used to practicaly just be a hide and seek in the corner. I didn’t play for most of the arc save to check on the recent upgrade to the fractals of the mist wich I didn’t enjoy that much in the end.

Current time September 15
When axe and longbow got buffed to boot with a damage increase and a triple might stack on hit I jumped on my ranger right away so to see if now the build I’ve been waiting for so long became viable. Since Beast masters now all benefit from the signet affecting both you and pet I directly saw the damage upgrade however to make running a pet actually viable in pve there is several issue that first needs to be addressed.

1. Pet cannot cleave and as such any great sword freak or aoe spamming ele easily outshine pretty much any if all ranger which would even bother running the pet itself. Maybe an ability like Sic em could grant the pet the ability to deal aoe damage in a small cone for the duration of the effect on its attack. You did it for the thief dagger and the necromancer dagger so why not allow ranger pet to cleave?

2. Pet have no stat scaling no mather how the ranger is built the pet will never deal more damage unless you stack might on it as well as the bloodlust. While I understand Anet decision to decline the ranger the ability to scale its pet stat on himself for the purpose of deciding the pet damage health and armor so to make using pet less complex of a choice it also largely limit the possible damage your lovely furrball can do. The worse is that even when you totally invest into it the pet still is utherly easy to destroy pve wise. Because of its unability to dodge aoe red circle wich normaly may 1 shot players it just end up dead within seconds, Pet as such should benefit from a massive damage reduction to aoe effect or gain the ability to get the dodge invincibility frame when the masters do.

3. Axe while now useful for stacking might lacks the ability to deal serious damage, Short bow stack conditions at extreme speed while longbow now has quick strikes and heavy damaging combos. Axe on the other hand has the most useless second skill in the whole class list history, that multi axe toss that cause bleed not only is subpar to short bow auto attack for bleed stacking but also deals terrible physical damage making it totally unreliable for both the dps or defensive uses. While axe 3 and axe 4 are very useful and axe 5 has a role for missile deflection axe 2 not only fits no role but is time consuming to use (auto attack deals more damage and proc 3 might). Axe 2 could either proc 1 might per axe hit or have its bleed damage removed and replaced by a serious damage bonus equal to what the engineer blunderbuss skill gives (the more axe that lands the heavier the damage gets which is to say that this skill would be a range based attack dealing way better damage at close range) Because yes you’ll notice that axe not only has no evade move (short bow both got a stun and backward dodge, sword retreating backward dodge) but also lack a melee ranged attack to defend itself (longbow push) Which means anyone can just close the gap and melee the ranger head on. Worse yet stuff like path of scar only pull the target to melee range with us which really doesn’t help to keep a gap between us and the target which if melee specialised will clearly deal twice our damage (don’t get me started about whirling defence the damage is jokish and is not worth using unless fighting against another ranged target which you know already wont get a sword out at the first notice).

4. Still no possibility for ranger to gain a serious condition removal save for when specing 30 in survival or running the anti cond signet and the healing spring. This makes any build which doesn’t have 30 in survival utterly easy to destroy via a condition build and highly limit ranger viability in pvp to survivalist spec who runs on condition effect (I heard you don’t like tank well that’s pretty much the role your forcing the rangers into). Bear can cure one condition when using its special but that takes time and running a bear in pvp is poor choice damage wise (kill people with a bear? not likely).

5. Running a pet is a marriage of sort between you and a complex yet not always answering AI. Sometime you have to do a huge load of work to direct the fur ball at what you want it to kill (aka Mesmer fights, thief fights, necromancer fight with a lot of pets). I’m not talking either about when the pet accidentally agro things or just refuse to react immediately but literally at how the pet keep track of its target. While I approve the fact Mesmer can hide behind illusion pet should have the option to attack exactly what YOU are attacking which is to say that if a Mesmer hide behind an illusion and you spot it the stupid cat should react accordingly and attack your new selected target rather then force you into several precious loss of second recalling him back to attack something else then a clone. Again the thing also stop attacking once a thief stealth which means that since it disengaged combat not only the thief got a free shot but you also need to direct your pet to attack it again because the thief may either break out of pet agro by moving away or literally backstab you and hide again with pet doing absolutely nothing. Once engaged the pet should seek it chosen target the moment it break out of stealth rather then wait for a likely stunned master to do the first blow. While I am way over the pet standing still and not answering anything when you point it out at a way distant target there is always more space to improve my relationship with it.

I applaud what Anet has done for the petmaster rangers this year but the spec is far from finished and could still use many changes to be actualy truly viable as a pvp and pve choice even to the elite guys above Please don’t forget our lovely cats and dog this year Anet we love your work and thanks for the axe change.

I agree with everything you’ve said. I’ve been playing a BM ranger for a while now and while it is pretty effective and has definitely gotten a big buff this patch, it still feels a wee bit underwhelming.

One thing that will go a long way to improving our effectiveness in PVE as well as variety of good pets would be to give bears and porcine pets cleave and devourers piercing. Our tankier pets are designed to wade into groups of enemies and draw aggro to itself, so cleave would both increase the pet’s ability to get that aggro in trash clearing encounters and increase the ranger’s overall damage considerably without having to use a bird or cat that can’t take a hit. Bear/Drake pet compositions would be pretty strong.

I also found it a bit strange that conditions are a ranger’s biggest weakness. Rangers are survivors who live in the wilderness and thrive in harsh conditions. Bleeds, burns, cripples, chills, poisons… These are all things rangers should be perfectly capable of dealing with on their own. Without pulling them to our pet and thus crippling our primary means of damage. Survival of the Fittest is is a BM ranger’s best bet for condition cleansing, and that requires 6 in Nature Magic, which combined with the obligatory 6 Beastmastery means we have… 2 points left to be creative with. Not a lot of build variety.

As for axe, it does feel a bit lacking. I love that Anet basically made a designated pet weapon, but you still need 3 points in Nature Magic to use it to it’s full effect, which prevents BM rangers from investing in Survival where our best condition clearing trait is or Skirmishing where some of our best pet buffing traits are inexplicably kept.

I feel like axes are meant to be a close to mid-range weapon, evident by our only knock down sort of effect being a pull and you only get the most out of Splitblade if it hits the enemy point blank so all the axes hit. As you said, removing the bleeds from Splitblade and making it a full direct damage skill would help, but I’d also like to see each axe apply, say, 2 seconds of cripple. So potentially 10 seconds of cripple on a 6 second cooldown, but only if you manage to get every axe to hit every time. That combined with Winter’s Bite applying chill and letting our pet cause weakness would make the axe a powerful control weapon to compensate for it’s low damage, and make it exceptional at keeping an enemy slow enough for our pets to hit reliably, and would compensate us for sacrificing the evades/stealth/knockback/block we’re use to having on our weapons.

One thing you didn’t touch on is the weird placement of out traits. There are traits in the Skirmishing line that are vital for enhancing out pet. Why is this NOT in the Beastmastery line? Why is our grandmaster minor trait gaining power based on our healing power and not Pet Prowess or Agility Training? Nature’s Wrath makes no sense in the Beastmastery line. Pet Prowess is a necessary trait to maximize your pet’s burst, and Agility Training would be a huge buff to our pet’s DPS as they’d be able to consistently chase down and hit fleeing foes in PVP.

I also feel like Predator’s Onslaught and Zephyr’s Speed would make loads more sense switched around, since a BM ranger relies so heavily on cripples and quickness is a lot more effective if you have a longbow equipped, but that’s just me.

I do agree a lot of trait related to pet wich aren’t in the BM tree could’ve been merged there however there is a few issue to this

1. Theres to many trait related to pet in the ranger tree already heres the list
pet movement speed
pet condition damage
pet condition duration
pet critical strike damage
pet might on crit
pet heals on crit
pet condition transfer per second
pet CC transfer
pet shared buff

Just there I can see some trait merged togueter
Pet cond damage + cond duration
Pet increased healing + heal on crit
Pet CC transfer and condition removal
Pet might on crit and pet critical damage
Pet shared buff should’ve been the last trait in the BM line at 25 while that stupid healing to power should’ve been converted to vita to power and transferred to the nature magic tree

To many of those traits are spread around in the trees. Also the bloodlust trait for pet is most useless if it disappear each time pet goes down. This buff should apply to ranger and be removed only on rangers down.

For some funny reason when a guy talk about bow or sword everyone jump in but the moment its about pet its like a common agreement from the ranger population that the topic must die its like if from a common accord all player on this forum wanted the pet gone or dead :/ well this is sad it just show how much pet needs to be improved.

Hey there,
I too play a beastmaster sincedecember 2012. While I do agree to some of your point, there are some that i can’t agree with.
- First of, we already got a cleaving pet. Drake cleave and are one of our very best pet because of their blast effect.
- Rangers have more then enough way to get rid of condition. I think right now the game is pretty balanced in this regard. Either you trait for it or you struggle that’s the same for every class out there.
- Axe is a pretty good weapon right now. Axe 2 may seem a bit weird or underwhelming but assuming you face a whole zerg, you got the possibility to hit a whole lot’s of target with just this skill.
- The fact that interesting pet relative traits are out of beastmastery is also fine. we’ve got 14pt and you can only use 6 on beastmastery for 3 traits. If other traitlines were useless for beastmasters, it would be worse.

By the way, the only thing which i think would really help rangers at this state, would be the possibility to disable some skills in our pet skillbar. They’ve got 4 skills but sometime you’d prefer your pet not to cc your target or disable the swiftness skill on birds.

kyubi.3620:

direct the fur ball at what you want it to kill

I read fluff ball….

…

There’s no reason we can’t have more than one pet with cleaving attacks. It’s all around agreed on that bear is one of our weakest pet options because it doesn’t do a lot of damage. Adding cleave to it would make it a viable alternative to drakes.

The reason condition cleansing is so harsh for a BM ranger is because two of the three strong condition clearing abilities we have will just transfer the conditions to our pet. As a general rule the entire build revolves around keeping the pet alive, which means we have to invest 6 into Nature Magic for Survival of the Fittest so we don’t immediately fold against conditions. This kind of ties in to the traits problem. A lot of the BEST pet traits aren’t in the pet trait line. Having a few solid choices outside the BM line makes sense and helps with build diversity, but having the most powerful pet buffs outside the BM line doesn’t make sense.

I agree with Kyubi that merging certain traits makes sense. Moving the shared buffs trait from 3 in Nature Magic to 5 in Beastmastery would go a long way too. Not having those 3 points required in another tree would make it easier to get access to different traits. As is there are way too many pet traits for a BM ranger to reasonably take them all, which is fine except you can’t even take all the power ones together or all the condition ones and still have a viable build. I’d love it if the traits were merged and ordered in a way that it’d be easier to build for either power OR condition oriented pets and still have enough points left over to invest in somewhat decent condition cleansing.

The leash range…

Give me back my leash range for WvW, for crying out loud! I want my wild beast to be able to hunt far away, not limit itself to a short-range dps buff!

Indeed one of the main advantage of pet in guild wars 1 was their very long leash range. you could simply throw them right into the middle of a mob pack have it kill a few then call it back with the ranged pet revive doing hit and run attack witheout any kind of risk. (not to mention pet could chase a very unlucky assasin for kilometers making them the number one nightmares of squishies

Ehecatl.9172:

The reason condition cleansing is so harsh for a […] ranger is because two of the three strong condition clearing abilities we have will just transfer the conditions to our pet.

I’m a rather amazed that rangers don’t ask for huge improvements in this area. The fact that we don’t really get rid of conditions since a part of us (the pet) is still affected by them really sucks. Also the fact that we have to trait to GM level to get decent traits for condition removal is also rather strange imho.

For the sake of build diversity, some forms of condition cleansing should be available in most if not all trait lines, and not only at GM level.

For example in the BM line, there could be a trait that cleanses x number of conditions on pet swap. In the skirmishing line, perhaps a condition cleanse on crit, in the power line, condition cleanse on killing a foe.

I’ve been playing Ranger since launch, came from other games where I main nature based classes as often as possible, which tends to be rangers and typically enjoy pet classes in general. Ranger was the first class I made on GW2 with the specific aim of maining a Fern Hound pet.

Part of the problem in GW2 is that Ranger is a thrown together last minute idea. No one at anet has any idea at all what they want Ranger to be, other than “RANGER IS PET CLASS COZ…..REAZUNZ!!!!!!111!!!!1!!!one!!!”. Some of the traits are designed to benefit using a single pet only, while others, such as the condition transfers are intended for frequent pet swaps. In the meantime while you’re constantly swapping, the pet isn’t dealing any damage or providing any real use, which throws the balancing out of the window unless you trait heavily into non BM lines, which you can’t really afford to do if you want to build BM.

Too many ideas, not enough focus. The class is an horriffic mess of last minute brainwaves, leftover traits from the three previous classes, kitten poor reactionary balancing attempts of ages gone by which have never been redressed and a confused design philosphy which has never really been revised or refined.

If ANet could only be bothered to look at the class properly, decide what the heck it is supposed to be and rearrange/revamp the traitlines accordingly, it would help players and the class, enormously.

As for the spread of the pet traits, it is a double edge sword, trying to provide the ranger with pet survival skills no matter what build the player goes for. The result though is that no one can get the traits they need for a complete build, no matter which trees they focus on and so pets are always subpar. Which wouldn’t be the case if they’d only fix the AI, the kitten ed encounters or give evasion frames and/or AoE damage reduction.

In short – OP I share your pain, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Anet have told us that basically they can’t fix the ai and they won’t change the mechanics.

While its no secret that they rushed the class couldnt they just merge a few of those trait togueter like idk… the pet cond damage/cond duration trait? That already would be progress in making pet specialised especialy if they put that trait in lets say the condition damage line.

The same way they could merge pet crit damage and critical heal trait togueter in the skirmishing line and if they feel even more generous they could make it so to merge the crit grant might to pet with it and or the pet movement speed (this would reduce the number of trait wasted in that line for 4 trait wich cant all be taken to 1 or 2!)

If wed fellow some logical senses and didnt had to waste our entire traitline for nothings

0 marksmanship

5 skirmish (increase to crit damage crit on might movement speed and heal on crit to pet this trait could also affect master if anything)

2 survival (pet condition damage and condition duration)

0 Nature magic (that trait shouldve been in BM in the first place please replace that with a spirit junk)

6 Beast mastery (The trait to survival has effectively been transfered as a beastmastery grandmaster trait and as such would require 6 point to aquire however we now have a serious reason to go 6 point into the line, if they do any form of merging we could actualy save on the wasted dps traits)