Guild Wars 2

When I first put trait points into the Beastmastery specialization I defaulted right to Zephyr Speed because it’s amazing. However, after looking at the grandmaster traits over again I noticed that Beastly Warden had some interesting interactions with certain pets..

It’d be hard to let go of Zephyr Speed, but are there any nice tricks that Beastly Warden can be used for?

It got slightly nerfed to not go through everything (invuln, etc.) recently, but it’s still extremely solid. I take it because I’ve always played ranger as a CC class, whether I’m using condis or power or cele. I use BW to just overload people’s escape plans. Taunt brings people out of stealth which is a really, really big deal.

Quickness isn’t good at all unless you make use of it. If your build is based around just autoattacking and slowly killing things over time, BW is going to beat it. If you have a combo that benefits from quickness, it can probably surpass BW. Dead is better than CCed.

Only if you’re using birds coz they’re more consistent. Other pets are likely to miss their taunt since they will do it instantly when you press F2. Due to the small radius of taunt, they will most likely miss. Birds on the other hand will track down their target before using taunt.

EDIT: This might help https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-Beastmastery-Traits-Explained/first#post5240273

played around alot with both traits, while Zephyr Speed is amazing, it feels like its “more of the same”, help you to win when u’r already winning. Beastly Warden is a tool you just dont have, it can create big swings, create openings for combos, break blocking, just brave new world for ranger. But it requiers lots of attantion and timing, ZS is more of a “facerolliing” skill.

kiwituatara.6053:

Only if you’re using birds coz they’re more consistent. Other pets are likely to miss their taunt since they will do it instantly when you press F2. Due to the small radius of taunt, they will most likely miss. Birds on the other hand will track down their target before using taunt.

Birds or canines. With a wolf you can chain 3 hard CCs in a row.

Fluffball.8307:

kiwituatara.6053:

Only if you’re using birds coz they’re more consistent. Other pets are likely to miss their taunt since they will do it instantly when you press F2. Due to the small radius of taunt, they will most likely miss. Birds on the other hand will track down their target before using taunt.

Birds or canines. With a wolf you can chain 3 hard CCs in a row.

Yea I know. But I’m preferring birds over canines now. I’m finding canines’ taunt harder to land due to the F2 telegraph + small radius. Birds taunt pretty much land every time.

kiwituatara.6053:

Fluffball.8307:

kiwituatara.6053:

Only if you’re using birds coz they’re more consistent. Other pets are likely to miss their taunt since they will do it instantly when you press F2. Due to the small radius of taunt, they will most likely miss. Birds on the other hand will track down their target before using taunt.

Birds or canines. With a wolf you can chain 3 hard CCs in a row.

Yea I know. But I’m preferring birds over canines now. I’m finding canines’ taunt harder to land due to the F2 telegraph + small radius. Birds taunt pretty much land every time.

Lol birds have 120 radius taunt, canine have 240.
The dog is the best taunt pet because of it’s 16sec cooldown.
The only issue is that, like birds, the wanna reach their target before using F2 making it sometimes miss.
Birds have really nice dps (especially hawk and eagle) but they taunt radius is smaller just like bear and spiders, which is kinda kittened.
From my testing the most practical pet to use for beastly warden are moa because they always activate instantly when you ask and with the right 240 radius.

Another thing to know is that signet of the wild will increase taunt radius by 50%.
Not sure weither that’s intended

Have fun getting canines F2 to hit when you want it to. I use one, but the huge problem is that they cast where they are…and have a slight delay…so you have to predict a bit if you want to hit with it.

The ONLY problem with birds right now is the insistence on giving you swiftness. That does waste a lot of time. Birds giving quickness instead of swiftness would be funny…probably OP though.

No all pets taunt is instant, for canines it’s the immobilize / fear that has a cast time (and a bigger radius)
As I said birds have another problem which is the radius of their taunt
Moa are the best taunters right now.

From my experience, if we are talking PvP then yes, Beastly Warden is worth it over Zephyr’s, but if we’re talking WvW, then only in the smallest scales has it been truly effective for me (the larger the fight, the more “melty” it tends to get for pets).

As others have said Canines, but I saw Eura mention it first, because the Taunt is instant, you can F2 then cancel cast it with F3 before the full animation goes off and save your pets actual F2 effect for when you want/need it, but still get off the effects of both Beastly Warden and Go For the Eyes.

You can use it to do things like with a Drakehound, Taunt into the Canine knockdown into the immobilize, and although it does have lots of team play potential, the most immediately noticeable effect is that you can force people to eat all of your damage.

Hitting somebody with a full Rapid Fire channel is usually pretty uncommon, and most of the time you have to catch them in the open without blocks/dodges (the ones who get by full channels otherwise are the L2P baddies always making QQ threads in the forums). Being able to guarantee not just your damage, but anybody else attacking the target with you at the time, is amazing for taking people out, in either gametype I mentioned.

Zephyr’s on the other hand is good in its own right, and is more versatile as to how you can use the effect (stomps, rezzes, speeding up swoop to escape, speeding up casts of Rapid Fire, turning the LB auto into a semi-burst, etc). You can get whatever you need to do done faster, and it makes your damage more of a twitch reaction to counterplay at the cost of not being able to lockdown the target as well to damage it.

But that’s my take on them.

jcbroe.4329:

As others have said Canines, but I saw Eura mention it first, because the Taunt is instant, you can F2 then cancel cast it with F3 before the full animation goes off and save your pets actual F2 effect for when you want/need it, but still get off the effects of both Beastly Warden and Go For the Eyes.

I made a thread about doing that minutes after the patch went live. Not that I need the credit for my self esteem or anything… not sure why that would even be brought up…

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

As others have said Canines, but I saw Eura mention it first, because the Taunt is instant, you can F2 then cancel cast it with F3 before the full animation goes off and save your pets actual F2 effect for when you want/need it, but still get off the effects of both Beastly Warden and Go For the Eyes.

I made a thread about doing that minutes after the patch went live. Not that I need the credit for my self esteem or anything… not sure why that would even be brought up…

Hahaha sorry I read it on Eura’s first so I just credited where I saw it

I stayed off the forums for a few days after the patch…. realized afterwards I should have given it a few weeks instead lol.

Both are solid. Its up to your playstyle. However, I find that quickness is better for power specs than condition.

When I run settlers, I use beastly warden. If I’m power, then I’m going with zephyrs speed. Honestly though, zephyrs speed makes full melee ranger the kitten. Try it out.

kiwituatara.6053:

Only if you’re using birds coz they’re more consistent. Other pets are likely to miss their taunt since they will do it instantly when you press F2. Due to the small radius of taunt, they will most likely miss. Birds on the other hand will track down their target before using taunt.

EDIT: This might help https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-Beastmastery-Traits-Explained/first#post5240273

Based on that post most pets track down their target before using taunt. Birds might be the best ones for using taunt but their disadvantage is having a low health pool.