Guild Wars 2

This is a Beastmaster trait that gives party wide vigor on pet swap.

The latest major patch brought nerfs to traits that granted endurance increases across the board in pretty much all classes.

Given the state of things, i believe that giving vigor every 10ish seconds has become as much importance as frost spirit + spotter to a party.

Therefor i believe this trait is being tremendously underappreciated and often overlooked.

Thoughts?

While it is indeed a good trait we would have to give up on too much to be able to use it.

Since it’s 20 points down the BM line which in itself is pretty mediocre we would have to give up on pet buffs and Hunter’s Tactics from skirmishing line or fortifying bond from nature magic, both of which are pretty essential to the pve build.

Ok, let’s point the discussion towards 5man dungeons. Zerk supremacy isn’t going anywhere, we see daily its effectiveness. In order to go full damage specs, one has to rely on damage nullifiers, dodge being one of them while also being the backbone of the entire combat system.

That said my point stands, since we crown spotter as being corner stone to any build, some even regard it as the only reason to bring a Ranger to a group and the precision gain given all around doesn’t account for 10% of a character total amount. So in the end i’m giving one extra crit every 15ish attacks.

Now on to vigor, math is not my forte but i’ve seen somewhere that the 5s vigor uptime shaves off 3s for the next possible dodge, i think that’s a huge impact while mesmers can bring the same thing with same but having to basically Throw away 10 points in their vit/hp while we can boost our pet’s attributes which directly boosts our damage while keeping a bit waste in HP also.

I sketched a build to ilustrate
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F;4wE-u-d2oDk-0;9-04;1JE-EJ06-0;33;029;7zxrUzxrUU-F;7VOVTWYXcYi3o_61V-70HQ

But now you are gimping your personal damage by leaving out Companion’s might which guarantees 25 stacks of might on the pet in nearly every situation and flanking strikes, not to talk about the +100 precision and 10% crit dmg from skirmishing.

20 points in BM is great for not only Vigorous Training, but Mighty Swap (which gives you might now) and Loud Whistle. It promotes active play, which to me means alot no matter where I am in this game.

Idd. Often i run shout mastery since when i know conditions won’t be a problem to the team, i swap out signet of renewal giving up my stunbreaker (sometimes i go further to switch sick’em for QZ since i have a mental block of feeling naked without a stunbreaker) but getting a 60ish sec search And rescue.

Still pairing that Mighty Swap with Beastmaster Bond can really add up.

I honestly thing builds do have some room to personalization without becoming notoriously sub-par, on the contrary, i’d go as far to say it outwheights the cookie-cutter build. Just two cents though.

It is not overlooked. It is just plain bad for dungeon groups.
Bosses and stuff do one of two things in this game:
1. Slow but deadly attacks
2. Mass (but moderate) AOE damage everywhere that you just have to eat even with vigor.

Based on that vigor is useless.
I never say to myself ‘need more dodges’ but rather..‘need more healing for all this pos aoe I can’t avoid’.

Stat wise the beast master line is pure garbage.
Healing power does us little good as we are not an ele/guard/engi.
Giving pets a little more stats is a /lol small damage boost.
Esp with all that grind happy ascended armor and weapons.

I do agree with you that statwise BM is lacking considerably. I also despise Instinctual Bond (most useless passive trait in the game).

However, what “aoe I can’t avoid” are you referencing?

You give vigor to yourself and your entire party. Chew a dodge while stacking on Alpha > pet swap > people have full vigor.

Stacking melee on Lupi, dodge roll twice > pet swap > people can dodge the next melee strike.

Needing more healing? I don’t really understand. Given the gimmick of dodging being capable of avoid damage to begin with, I would assume vigor aoe would be handy (especially for classes that lack it, i.e. allied necromancers).