Guild Wars 2

Just wondering what is a good number to keep most pets alive for the times you miss the recall or swap.

another option maybe to use guard for the stealth and or protection

Is this for PvE?

Hard question.

When I was levelling up Ranger through dungeon play, there really wasn’t a defined Beastmaster spec yet and the community at large was still pretty new to the game. So, while I have experiences with the BM spec and varying levels of healing power, it’s in tandem with certain other decisions that relate to the effectiveness of it that are kind of n00bish today (having high healing power and not taking healing spring, for instance). So, I kind of have to frame this answer with all the context, and hope that puts you somewhere in the ballpark of understanding the relationship between pet survivability and healing power.

In my lower levels, I had 150-ish Healing Power due to being halfway through Beastmastery and took Sigil of Life. I really noticed the impact it had on my pet survivability depending on the number of stacks. With Signet of the Wild, Signet of Stone, and careful use of Return/Swap I was able to keep my pet up throughout in most dungeon encounters, and half the boss dungeon encounters I was high enough to access.

Around 600 Healing Power it started to dawn on me my Bear could not only keep standing versus most dungeon mobs until my next Troll Ungent cooldown, but could also reliably keep dungeon mobs distracted by face-tanking them. At that point Signet of the Wild and Natural Healing combined kept my pet up in most situations with Signet of Stone to pitch in if things got troublesome, and I could face-tank most 1v1 encounters and some select minibosses with judicious use of Return and Attack to avoid the worst of it.

It’s really around 800 Healing power with Natural Healing and Signet of the Wild equipped that I started to realize passive regen is overcoming the fact pets can’t kite. I no longer had to active focus on minding my pet all the time, and could trust my pet to start handling itself on weaker mobs. The entire profession mechanic really snapped into place, overcame it’s dissonance with the game design, and left me with enough control utility to think; ‘Oh, so this is what a pet mechanic can do’.

Around 900 Healing Power with Natural Healing and Signet of the Wild equipped, I felt my Bear was managing fine by itself most dungeon encounters. Additionally my pet could face-tank most 1v1 encounters all by itself, most 1vmany encounters, most mini-bosses with Troll Ungent, and the occasional boss encounter with Signet of Stone/Return around to help. It was around then I started to realize the limits of going too far in the Tanky/Controlly Beastmastery. Namely there are diminishing returns on investing in your pet; because some fights are simply designed in such a way pets can’t be used or the damage threshold is meant to be a fatal spike and can never be overcome by a regen effect. So, while you can take it surprisingly far considering how pathetic non-BM pets are, you do kind of have to ease off pet investment a bit and take a sub specialization to make sure your build is viable in more situation and brings something to the table across all encounters.

I sub-specialized into support. Because I had high healing power, I like supporting in other games, and genuinely find running with pugs/newbies more engaging than these eyegougingly boring speedrun things. (I sincerely do think you GW1’ers are off your rocker sometimes :p) So my current build kept Signet of the Wild and Natural Healing, I dialed back on pet survivability by replacing Bears with Double Drakes and Troll Ungent with Healing Spring. Right now I sit at around, 884-1063 Healing Power depending on which weapon I have equipped. And I feel my pet can not only keep on it’s feet in a large number of situations, but can also face-tank a surprising number of them with minimal micromanagement.

When creating my BM build I ended up taking all the healing power I could get. I specced to make my jaguar a wrecking ball. Through up Healing Spring so my group mates could benefit off of the regen, which I also specced into increased regen duration. This was initially though. As Vox Hollow mentioned, he uses a bear and was able to find a sweet spot that worked for him. My Healing Power is a little higher because I use the jaguar and need a little extra to keep him up.

Even though many people would disagree with me, I would suggest getting Cleric’s armor and grabbing Monk runes. This will give you a whole lot of healing power. Then you can slowly change out your Monk runes as you feel more comfortable with your build.

Good points by all. I started with mostly cleric armor as well and have slowly been taking some of it out for berserker. I have 25 in BM and use two wolves. I think starting with cleric armor is a good start. Start taking away healing power when you start to feel comfortable.

There is a difference between a Beastmaster and a bunker build .
As for Bunker builds there are 2 variants :

1)Cleric gear build with Runes of Lyssa or other healing runes , with 0 10 30 0 30 , or 0 0 30 10 30 trait distribution , with over 1200 healing power

2)Shaman gear build with 4 runes of the earth and 2 runes of water , 0 0 20 20 30 build that is bunker in nature but does condition damage instead of physical and has over 3100 toughness , but relies on passive regeneration and protection procs for defense but with lower healing power

Beastmaster builds are any builds that have 30 points in the BM line , irrelevant of other trait distribution

Chokolata.1870:

There is a difference between a Beastmaster and a bunker build .
As for Bunker builds there are 2 variants :

1)Cleric gear build with Runes of Lyssa or other healing runes , with 0 10 30 0 30 , or 0 0 30 10 30 trait distribution , with over 1200 healing power

2)Shaman gear build with 4 runes of the earth and 2 runes of water , 0 0 20 20 30 build that is bunker in nature but does condition damage instead of physical and has over 3100 toughness , but relies on passive regeneration and protection procs for defense but with lower healing power

Beastmaster builds are any builds that have 30 points in the BM line , irrelevant of other trait distribution

Then you have my bunker build that uses 0/0/30/10/30 and uses Melandru runes + GS + sword/dagger + Shamans Amulet because who really likes dying anyway?