Guild Wars 2

I posted this a while back in my guild and server forums … figured I’d share it here with the official Ranger subforum:

Summary:
For every 5pts in Beast Mastery, your pet gets …
+50 Power = +2.35% damage
+50 Precision = +2.38% crit chance
+50 Vitality = +500 health
+50 Toughness = +2.35% damage mitigation

DPS-wise, this translates differently due to the different base crit chances for Pigs (9%), Cats & Birds (59%), and Every Other Pet (26%)
+3.67% DPS per 5 Beastmastery for Pigs
+4.26% DPS per 5 Beastmastery for Cats & Birds
+3.87% DPS per 5 Beastmastery for Every Other Pet

These could be even more if you took the +30% pet crit damage trait.

As requested, attached are the pet stats.

I couldn’t get the font to be monospace so I simply took screenshots from another post I made on my guild’s forum about ranger pet stats.

DPS values are based on tooltip values … if anyone is willing to submit video, I’d be more than happy to extract pet data from it.

thx for sharing data

I don’t think, these calculations matter much.
You get beastmastery mainly to make your pet more beefy, so it doesn’t die, when it gets stared at for half a second by an opponent.
The damage increase, even if existing is only a nice secondary benefit but not the main reason to sink points in BM.

Depends. If you zerg then hp matters but for 1on1 fights your pet will very rarely die. DPS matters here and nice to see how much going 15 instead of 30 will change dps. Never really did the math myself.

naphack.9346:

I don’t think, these calculations matter much.
You get beastmastery mainly to make your pet more beefy, so it doesn’t die, when it gets stared at for half a second by an opponent.
The damage increase, even if existing is only a nice secondary benefit but not the main reason to sink points in BM.

If you look at the numbers, I included what it does for your pets’ survivability as well (i.e. more hitpoints and damage mitigation).

With this info, you can see that sinking 30 points in beastmastery will up your pet’s survivability by:

• +3,000 hitpoints
• +14.1% damage mitigation

I find it more beneficial to know “how much” something is doing … not just that it is “doing something”.

Many people simply say “put 30 points in Beastmastery to make your pet stronger” … this shows that those 30 points gives your pet:

• +14.1% damage
• +14.28% crit chance
• +3,000 health
• +14.1% damage mitigation

Sebrent, I’m going to extend the olive branch here. Thanks for posting this and you ought to make sure jub gets this on his compilation post. Rock on its solid work.

Sebrent.3625:

naphack.9346:

I don’t think, these calculations matter much.
You get beastmastery mainly to make your pet more beefy, so it doesn’t die, when it gets stared at for half a second by an opponent.
The damage increase, even if existing is only a nice secondary benefit but not the main reason to sink points in BM.

If you look at the numbers, I included what it does for your pets’ survivability as well (i.e. more hitpoints and damage mitigation).

With this info, you can see that sinking 30 points in beastmastery will up your pet’s survivability by:

• +3,000 hitpoints
• +14.1% damage mitigation

I find it more beneficial to know “how much” something is doing … not just that it is “doing something”.

Many people simply say “put 30 points in Beastmastery to make your pet stronger” … this shows that those 30 points gives your pet:

• +14.1% damage
• +14.28% crit chance
• +3,000 health
• +14.1% damage mitigation

the fixed stats are pretty much irrelevant. What’s more important is the relative stats.
“how much was there before, how much after?”
As it stands, the pet which probably benefits the most from bm stats is the hyena.

Thanks for a very useful post, +1!

naphack.9346:

the fixed stats are pretty much irrelevant. What’s more important is the relative stats.
“how much was there before, how much after?”
As it stands, the pet which probably benefits the most from bm stats is the hyena.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll update this when I get a chance with the stats for the various pet families (and hyena since it differs from the other dogs).

I’m not exactly sure if you’re right about the hyena benefitting the most from this, but you may be on to something. I’ll try to pay extra attention to it.

@Chopps: it isn’t any problem with you. It is a problem with bad posts which I define as posts with misinformation or a lack thereof to support their claims. It just so happens that there have been an abundance of such posts from yourself and a few others. If you may a good post, I’ll be sure enjoy it and possibly even add to the conversation if I have something potentially worth adding.

There you go, naphack. It’s not as “good” as I would like it as far as the pet families, but it’s the best I have on short notice and without knowing the base hitpoints, damage mitigation, etc. of pets up to X amount of power/precision/vitality/toughness.

On the hyena thing, it does benefit them most, as BM investment just adds to base stats rather than a percentage of base stats, however it’s not that big of a difference – a 0BM hyena has 47% of the power of a 0BM wolf, a 30BM hyena has 55% the power of a 30BM wolf. So it’s nice but not game-changing.

Wanderer.5471:

On the hyena thing, it does benefit them most, as BM investment just adds to base stats rather than a percentage of base stats, however it’s not that big of a difference – a 0BM hyena has 47% of the power of a 0BM wolf, a 30BM hyena has 55% the power of a 30BM wolf. So it’s nice but not game-changing.

Thanks for the explanation, Wanderer. Your logic makes perfect sense to me.

Anyone know of a way we could get some more information on pet stats such as what the base hitpoints, damage mitigation, etc. are for each pet family?

Sebrent.3625:

Wanderer.5471:

On the hyena thing, it does benefit them most, as BM investment just adds to base stats rather than a percentage of base stats, however it’s not that big of a difference – a 0BM hyena has 47% of the power of a 0BM wolf, a 30BM hyena has 55% the power of a 30BM wolf. So it’s nice but not game-changing.

Thanks for the explanation, Wanderer. Your logic makes perfect sense to me.

---

Anyone know of a way we could get some more information on pet stats such as what the base hitpoints, damage mitigation, etc. are for each pet family?

hey serb not sure if you’re being sarcastic so thought i’d show my working – should have first time really, even if you were sincere it might help others:

Hyena base power = 824
Wolf (or any other canine) base power = 1718

(824 / 1718) * 100 = 47.96%

Hyena power with 30 BM investment =1124
Wolf power with 30 BM investment = 2018

(1124 / 2018) * 100 = 55.69%

However it’s worth mentioning that although the Hyena itself scales better with BM investment, it’s power is so much lower to begin with because it’s assumed there will be a Hyena Ally in the mix – 2 hyenas with around half the power of a wolf = about the same damage as a wolf. However the hyena ally doesn’t scale at all with BM investment, so only half your damage output scales with BM, so despite the fact “half” scales 8% better, overall it is arguably the worst pet for BM investment.

It is also worth mentioning that no shouts/quickness, signets or traits etc effect the ally, so it really is awful for BM builds unless you want them purely for CC.

Wanderer.5471:

On the hyena thing, it does benefit them most, as BM investment just adds to base stats rather than a percentage of base stats, however it’s not that big of a difference – a 0BM hyena has 47% of the power of a 0BM wolf, a 30BM hyena has 55% the power of a 30BM wolf. So it’s nice but not game-changing.

Sadly though the summoned Hyenas no longer benefit from BM points, it used to be having 2 Hyenas out was better than one wolf (purely damage wise), now they’re “equal”. This change happened back in November (Southsum cove)

@OP great post! It’s really helpful having this since I REALLY like putting points in BM, this will help for future theory crafting builds!

+14.1% damage
+14.28% crit chance
+3,000 health
+14.1% damage mitigation

Now ask yourself, is it worth roughly 40+% of your trait points to make your pet 14% better?

@Mako;

From a PvP perspective, +300 healing while picking up Natural Healing to additional constant regen on top of Signet of the Wild (assuming a bunker style build), while making the pet do more damage, is a very nice thing to have.

From any other aspect of the game, it isn’t as beneficial as you would want it to be, but the game tends to be balanced from a pvp perspective… so what can you do? (splitting pve/pvp seems to be a last resort to ANet, even though in guild wars 1 almost every skill was split…)

Yea it just means you can’t have a decent pet and do decent dmg, plus If you invest 30 on bm you have to put at least 10 in crit for the +30% pet speed else it’s all to waste in pvp. Having a nails jag that can’t catch the target I ussssseless and an expensive 30 trait points for 300 healing, a bit of regen and pet that never dies but never does any dmg lol.

So in theory I need to use 40 trait points to get the pet to be any use really…
Works a bit better in wvw when they don’t know flea bag is chewing the trousers off them from behind.

Mako.1942:

Yea it just means you can’t have a decent pet and do decent dmg, plus If you invest 30 on bm you have to put at least 10 in crit for the +30% pet speed else it’s all to waste in pvp. Having a nails jag that can’t catch the target I ussssseless and an expensive 30 trait points for 300 healing, a bit of regen and pet that never dies but never does any dmg lol.

So in theory I need to use 40 trait points to get the pet to be any use really…
Works a bit better in wvw when they don’t know flea bag is chewing the trousers off them from behind.

What about signet of the hunt? Ideally the build I’m thinking is some combination of axe/sword/torch/dagger and 0/0/30/10/30. The control options on the weapons plus signet of the hunt should make the pet land hits fairly often.

Psssscht use just a longbow, your pet gets perma swiftness from LB #3

Doesn’t sig of the hunt reduce to normal speed once engaged? I run with it in every build but it feels like it’s only a non combative 25%?

I did not know that about the longbow #3

Mako.1942:

Doesn’t sig of the hunt reduce to normal speed once engaged? I run with it in every build but it feels like it’s only a non combative 25%?

I did not know that about the longbow #3

Nope you just get a 25% increase to the noncombat speed which puts you A LOT faster than combat speed.

IE: you just run a hell of a lot faster out of combat, but still maintain the 25% in combat.

Durzlla.6295:

Mako.1942:

Doesn’t sig of the hunt reduce to normal speed once engaged? I run with it in every build but it feels like it’s only a non combative 25%?

I did not know that about the longbow #3

Nope you just get a 25% increase to the noncombat speed which puts you A LOT faster than combat speed.

IE: you just run a hell of a lot faster out of combat, but still maintain the 25% in combat.

I’m confused

So I get both in and out o combat speed but only feels like it’s out o combat?

Sry it’s early here

Mako.1942:

Durzlla.6295:

Mako.1942:

Doesn’t sig of the hunt reduce to normal speed once engaged? I run with it in every build but it feels like it’s only a non combative 25%?

I did not know that about the longbow #3

Nope you just get a 25% increase to the noncombat speed which puts you A LOT faster than combat speed.

IE: you just run a hell of a lot faster out of combat, but still maintain the 25% in combat.

I’m confused

Lets say out of combat you run 50% faster, you add in the sig of the hunt and you’re now running 75% faster, so you’re booking it. But once combat kicks in you drop down to a meesily 25% faster so it seems like you’re not getting a boost anymore.

Mako.1942:

So I get both in and out o combat speed but only feels like it’s out o combat?

Sry it’s early here

Exactly! And it’s cool I totally understand xD

Just stopping by to say that your calculations look pretty good with the exception of damage mitigation.

The % decrease in damage taken caused by x number of points of armor/toughness gets lower as your total armor increases.

With 100 armor, adding 100 armor will cause you to take 50% the original damage.
With 200 armor, adding 100 armor will cause you to take 66% the original damage.

As you can see, each additional point of armor adds less than the one before. Because of this effect, your 2.35% damage mitigation value for each 50 points of toughness is not going to be accurate. That will (I assume) be accurate for the first 50 points of toughness, but the next 50 points will add less.

Additionally, as I understand it, different pets have different base stat values. This means that 50 points of toughness will produce a higher % damage reduction value for a more fragile pet than for a pet that already has high base armor.

Edit: Power actually suffers the same diminishing returns effect as well, so you may want to take a second look at both your power calculations as well as your armor calculations.

Ah that’s cool I forgot about the normal speed difference once in combat, I run soh so much I can’t remember running normal speed I don’t think I could ever go back if I think the 25% feels slow

To OP, sry for the tangent…

Uhhh, I could be wrong about that armor post, but doesn’t adding 100 toughness (which adds 100 armor) increase mitigation by about 3.4%? With Diminishing Returns? I could be misreading the post, because if I read it as having to double the current armor value to mitigate 50% damage then that is absolutely correct and I am just getting caught up on the value chosen and whatever else.

It’s late at night here for me too lol

Thanks for the feedback guys.

@Pyroatheist: I had read somewhere that both power and toughness scale linearly in GW2. However, that could be old news or bad info from arenanet (anyone seen our tooltips, lol!). If what you’re saying is the case, it just means that you get even less from those points in beastmastery :-/

Sebrent.3625:

Thanks for the feedback guys.

@Pyroatheist: I had read somewhere that both power and toughness scale linearly in GW2. However, that could be old news or bad info from arenanet (anyone seen our tooltips, lol!). If what you’re saying is the case, it just means that you get even less from those points in beastmastery :-/

They scale linearly insofar as there is no innate diminishing returns. However, as a product of the damage calculation, they naturally give less and less the more you have if them.

Damage = power * stuff/armor

It scales linear relative to your current amount. Increase it by 5% and you get 5% more damage. However, with more power or armor, that 5% gets larger, and so you need a larger flat increase to achieve the same effect.

@Pyro: Gotcha. Thanks.

Mako.1942:

+14.1% damage
+14.28% crit chance
+3,000 health
+14.1% damage mitigation

Now ask yourself, is it worth roughly 40+% of your trait points to make your pet 14% better?

I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification.

If you look at every trait line, they give you bonuses to 2 different stats. Beastmastery is different in this respect, if gives you a bonus to one stat (healing) and gives your pet a bonus to 4 stats. That’s +14% dmg + 14% crit chance + 14% damage mitigation = 42% overall effectiveness just there. That’s not even counting the extra health from the vitality.

Mako.1942:

+14.1% damage
+14.28% crit chance
+3,000 health
+14.1% damage mitigation

Now ask yourself, is it worth roughly 40+% of your trait points to make your pet 14% better?

The ranger benefits from healing power (which BM provides) so that alone is something you’re not factoring in. In addition to that, pets are often defeated. The extra health and damage mitigation will help keep the pet alive more often. In some situations the extra 15 points (many rangers are already going 15 points for pet swap cool downs) will be the difference between your pet being alive or dead (and thus it’s not just a 14% better pet, if the 30 points in BM made the difference between your pet being defeated or downed, 100% of the pet damage and utility at that point is owed to the defensive gains).

It’s often hard to figure out where points are worth spending, GW2 can be really bad at communicating this kind of information (and that’s in the rare case where he information is available – hidden cooldowns and vague tool tips are common) and it’s often impossible for those of us who don’t like doing maths for games we play. This is very helpful, thanks.

You’re welcome Shiren.

Your post just gave me a nice idea … it’s something that got started on guildwars2guru in the Mesmer section (yeah, Mesmer is still my main). A thread for listing all the current tooltips that are incorrect, vague, and/or have undocumented side-effects (i.e. Sharpening Stone’s interaction with Barrage is different from Sun Spirit’s).

Something I was always confused about with the beastmastery trait line is, why doesn’t condition damage improve? Or healing power?

But thanks for the maths. I’m not apt enough to do the math myself but I can easily comprehend it. It sort of brings up another point though in which pets benefit the most from the extra stats. I’ve always been of the opinion that precision is a rather shallow stat that loses much of its benefits after a certain crit chance is achieved. On low precision pets, the extra crit chance helps some but when the pet already has a good chance to crit and fury is being tossed around, having precision focused cats/birds feels a bit wasted…but I have no clue about the damage coefficients of their attacks and how they differ from other pets so the cats/birds might still blow other damage out of the water (cleave excluded).

Dogs feel well rounded and strongest with high beastmastery to me which make them feel damaging, tanky and reliable. Haven’t used much of the other pets so I’ve got little experience to base my feelings off of.

Sebrent.3625:

You’re welcome Shiren.

Your post just gave me a nice idea … it’s something that got started on guildwars2guru in the Mesmer section (yeah, Mesmer is still my main). A thread for listing all the current tooltips that are incorrect, vague, and/or have undocumented side-effects (i.e. Sharpening Stone’s interaction with Barrage is different from Sun Spirit’s).

Check the wiki. No really.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crossfire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attack_of_Opportunity_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swoop

It’s only the ranger too. I’ve tried to find other professions that are that thorough, but nope. So far I’ve found ONE skill that isn’t well explained for the Ranger (with ratios, anomalies, etc) and that’s Spirit of Nature. It isn’t stated how the healing scales with healing power and level, that’s all.

Aye HotHit, that’s what I use to double-check myself with things all the time for every class.

However, I was talking about central list of all the skills so that a person wouldn’t have to go to every single Ranger skill’s/trait’s particular wiki page.

Also, the wiki doesn’t mention things like the interaction between Barrage and Sharpening Stone … someone feel free to update that, lol.

That’s… An awful lot of information to have to sift through to get the information you want. Although it would probably make explaining chain skills a lot easier.

I might be wrong but I don’t see anywhere in the math the attack speed, neither the fact that some pets hit twice.

arkealia.2713:

I might be wrong but I don’t see anywhere in the math the attack speed, neither the fact that some pets hit twice.

The attack speed was used with the damage to calculate dps. The fact that devourers hit twice was also taken into account for this calculation.

However, if you show me a test where your data doesn’t match up with mine, I’ll more than gladly change it.

Leo G.4501:

Something I was always confused about with the beastmastery trait line is, why doesn’t condition damage improve? Or healing power?

I think of this as one of the many oversights in the Ranger class due to the class obviously being rushed. Heck, we didn’t even get our last 4 traits until almost live and one of them was a command that should’ve simply been part of the default pet controls; not a utility (I’m looking at you, Guard).

Sebrent.3625:

Leo G.4501:

Something I was always confused about with the beastmastery trait line is, why doesn’t condition damage improve? Or healing power?

I think of this as one of the many oversights in the Ranger class due to the class obviously being rushed. Heck, we didn’t even get our last 4 traits until almost live and one of them was a command that should’ve simply been part of the default pet controls; not a utility (I’m looking at you, Guard).

I don’t know any other game where you can command your pet to take 33% less damage and stealth by default….

And the reason that healing power and condi dmg isn’t gained by just throwing points in is because you can take a trait to increase it by 350 for 10 pts.

So if you are wanting a condi damage pet you just take the Expertise Training from WS, if you want your pet to heal better that’s Compassion Training in BM tree, longer Condis is in Marksman, higher crit dmg is in Skirm and higher boon duration is in NM.

It’s a pretty simple thing…

PS: we were hardly rushed, we were one of the first profs announced… The reason our Utilities were so late was because our pet AI was absolutely AWFUL in the beta.

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t know any other game where you can command your pet to take 33% less damage and stealth by default….

Not exactly a useful skill when you can simply swap your pet (shorter cooldown) when they are low on hitpoints … and in pvp where players will simply go for you since killing you kills your pet.

Durzlla.6295:

And the reason that healing power and condi dmg isn’t gained by just throwing points in is because you can take a trait to increase it by 350 for 10 pts.

By your logic:

• Guardian shouldn’t get +precision from Radiance since their 30 point trait gives them +15% crit chance (that’s +315 precision).
• Axe Warrior’s don’t need +crit_dmg from Arms because they have Axe Mastery
• Sword Warrior’s don’t need +crit_chance from Arms because they have Blademaster
• Trap Ranger’s don’t need +condition duration because they have Trap Potency
• Scepter Necro’s don’t need +condition duration because they have Lingering Curse

The point is, just because we have another way of increasing a stat doesn’t mean that the trait points intended to “Increase Pet Attributes” should not also increase those stats.

Durzlla.6295:

PS: we were hardly rushed, we were one of the first profs announced… The reason our Utilities were so late was because our pet AI was absolutely AWFUL in the beta.

One of the first to be started means nothing when we were the last to be finished utilities-wise. Some would argue that we’re still not quite finished due to a heavy reliance on pet AI and how bad that currently is (though thankfully not as bad as it was in beta).

Sebrent.3625:

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t know any other game where you can command your pet to take 33% less damage and stealth by default….

Not exactly a useful skill when you can simply swap your pet (shorter cooldown) when they are low on hitpoints … and in pvp where players will simply go for you since killing you kills your pet.

Durzlla.6295:

And the reason that healing power and condi dmg isn’t gained by just throwing points in is because you can take a trait to increase it by 350 for 10 pts.

By your logic:

• Guardian shouldn’t get +precision from Radiance since their 30 point trait gives them +15% crit chance (that’s +315 precision).
• Axe Warrior’s don’t need +crit_dmg from Arms because they have Axe Mastery
• Sword Warrior’s don’t need +crit_chance from Arms because they have Blademaster
• Trap Ranger’s don’t need +condition duration because they have Trap Potency
• Scepter Necro’s don’t need +condition duration because they have Lingering Curse

The point is, just because we have another way of increasing a stat doesn’t mean that the trait points intended to “Increase Pet Attributes” should not also increase those stats.

Durzlla.6295:

PS: we were hardly rushed, we were one of the first profs announced… The reason our Utilities were so late was because our pet AI was absolutely AWFUL in the beta.

One of the first to be started means nothing when we were the last to be finished utilities-wise. Some would argue that we’re still not quite finished due to a heavy reliance on pet AI and how bad that currently is (though thankfully not as bad as it was in beta).

I’m not saying i don’t -want- to see ALL our pets attributes increased by putting points in BM, hell i’d love that, it’d make it so you could actually have a condi pet for starters…

That being said, they likely -didn’t- do it because you gain 35pts worth of the stat for taking a 10pt talent in each of the respective trees making it so you don’t -need- to spend points in the BM tree if you want a pet to crit hard, or heal well, or provide boons/condis.

It provides more options in the end, however pets need to be a bit sturdier for any of those options to really make a huge difference because currently without points in BM your pet gets destroyed in PvE too easily (granted in tPvP they tend to be fine).

Our prof wasn’t -rushed- but we still have bugs, hell if any prof was -rushed- it probably would’ve been engi or necromancer. Or do you forget about the mountain of bugs that made them borderline unplayable when they were launched? We have buggy AI, but that’s about the only bug we have that affects gameplay.

And i repeat, our 3 utilities were the last ones in BECAUSE OUR PETS AI SUCKED IN BETA. They flat out could not handle the skills and caused them to become even buggier, they weren’t in the game because they were essentially useless and needed fixing, they said it several times in the Beta Forums while they were still up.

Or did you fail to notice that when our Pets AI started to actually work we got our last handful of utility skills?

PS: Guard is more useful in PvE/WvW than in PvP, but it can be useful in tPvP for an ambush. Also, Guard in PvE is more useful than swapping if your pet is face tanking a mob because when you swap all agro that was on your pet is gone where guard just wipes it for a short duration which could give you enough time to get off a heal before throwing him out of stealth and regaining agro almost instantly.

Fair enough points :-p

Sebrent.3625:

<edit>
Also, the wiki doesn’t mention things like the interaction between Barrage and Sharpening Stone … someone feel free to update that, lol.
</edit>

I added it on the sharpening stone page for you. Including my best explanation for how it works. (i.e. Observations from spamming ricochet.)

They’ve said in old interviews that there was only going to be 7 professions and engineer was added last, literally squeezed in, for the last profession, for anyone who cares about random facts.

I was just theorycrafting in my head and looking again at Master’s Bond.

While I absolutely hate (and think needs to be fixed/reworked) that you lose the stacks when you swap pets or go in water, it does give +8 points to all your pets stats per stack and stacks up to 25 times. That’s a total of +200 points with 25 stacks.

Looking at the math I previously did for points in the Beastmastery trait-line, this results in:

• +9.4% damage
• +9.52% crit chance
• +2,000 health
• +9.4% damage mitigation

If you combine this with 30 points in Beastmastery, that’s +500 points to all of your pets’ stats which is

• +23.5% damage
• +23.8% crit chance
• +5,000 health
• +23.5% damage mitigation

Those are some pretty nice numbers … really makes me want them to fix/rework how the stacks for this trait stay on the pet.