Guild Wars 2

So, after leveling an Engineer and Necro, I have been enjoying Necro the most. I always run power builds and I love the way the Necro power build plays and feels.

Now I’m looking to roll another alt, and went with Ranger after testing out a few classes. I’m enjoying the play style so far, and of course made a power build going 20/30/20/0/0. My question though, is it better to invest more points into the Beastmaster tree to increase the stat sharing to my pet? I know the pet is supposed to be responisble for a portion of damage, so was wondering if I should be investing into my pet’s stats more through that trait line in order to push out more damage?

@OP:
I wouldn’t recommend 30 precision on a power/crit build, honestly. The XI and XII skills are pretty bad there and I don’t believe they are offset by the bonus to precision and critical damage. Putting 25 there is nice, though.

@Fluff:
I think it speaks volumes about what so many rangers want – the option to simply not have the pet and keep the freshness of the skill kits, etc. Consequently, spirit bunker and condi builds are just strictly better than pet variants in all forms of PvP/WvW, so there’s little purpose in pet investment due to the real lack of good pets which interact with conditions or spirit bunker builds. Through a combination of style and simple system inadequacy (AI, control scheme, hit reliability, etc.), the pet’s simply just not something people even want to try and work with in a more competitive environment.

It’s discussable, of course, just like anything in GW2, but I’d say that investing in beastmastery is a good thing – more for WvW, rather than PvE.

At first, when playing ranger I always thought like ‘’Pff, pet lives and dies, does damage while alive, the more the better bla bla who cares’’. This of course just led me to deaths.

I’ve around 900 hours of gameplay on my ranger, maining it, I love roaming in WvW, but also doing as much as I can in PvE, and from my experience I can just say that investing trait points on your pet is – well, OK.

What that means is that it’s not like ‘’OH YEA YOU DEFF NEED TO DO THAT!’‘, but if you do invest around 10-20 points there, it will more than pay off – again more in WvW for roaming, rather than PvE. You would be shocked how many players just don’t notice the pets and when they do, simply don’t know what they do. Just for instance, I invested my points on a trait so swapping my pets is faster and their F2 is recharged faster. So I was roaming in WvW and in the centaur land I saw a necro around 50 meters away from me. So I started preparing my self and all, but I see 2 more enemies coming from the sides around 20 meters away from me, so I use my wolf to send it to them, the necro ofc didn’t even notice him, use F2, wolf scares all 3 of them (I was lucky there though, I’ll admit), start running the oposite side, I’ve no speed boost, but I can quickly switch to my dog and put freeze on them with F2. Only by this constant switching and quick regeneration of F2, did I manage to seperate some warrior from that little group (the other 3 saw that as simply useless chase, I guess) and in the end kill him.

Like everything else, it’s situational, but just as a persional experience, it’s a smart investment. (Even in PvE, since for instance AOE scare from wolf can be OP at times)

It’s a point of contention with many arguments, which can be found all over the ranger forum. To be a true ranger, play with what works for your own particular style of fun.

You will have so called “elite rangers”, more like anal retentive “there’s only one way…” people that actually kinda ruin the fun of actually being a ranger.

Play as you see fit. I don’t think there’s any really true one way to play a ranger.

Short answer: No, BM isn’t worth it.

Long answer: In ideal cases BM could be worth it. Unfortunately, damage you control is much better than damage you can’t control. And with the current state of the game, pet damage is damage you effectively can’t control. Most of its skills fire uncontrollably, the one skill you control fires inconsistently and with a lot of lag, the pet will happily stand in red circles until it dies, a pet trying to attack a moving target loses 2/3 to 3/4 its DPS, etc. So outside of a few ideal PvE cases, BM generally isn’t worth it when you could instead put the points into damage you control – power or condition damage.

The one BM build I’d consider worthwhile is 10 BM while leveling. Master’s bond gives the pet a stack with every kill which increases its stats by +8 per stack, limit 25. This bonus doesn’t scale with level, so at low levels a full 25 stack can turn your pet into a killing machine on steroids.

It’s just shocking how many WvW and PvP players ignore pets entirely. It’s not ideal to be getting hit by a stealthed cat with 25 stacks of might, and an extra 500 power or whatever all the BM benefits wind up being. BM used to be PvP meta, back in the day.

DeceiverX.8361:

@Fluff:
I think it speaks volumes about what so many rangers want – the option to simply not have the pet and keep the freshness of the skill kits, etc. Consequently, spirit bunker and condi builds are just strictly better than pet variants in all forms of PvP/WvW, so there’s little purpose in pet investment due to the real lack of good pets which interact with conditions or spirit bunker builds. Through a combination of style and simple system inadequacy (AI, control scheme, hit reliability, etc.), the pet’s simply just not something people even want to try and work with in a more competitive environment.

I meant opponents ignore pets, not rangers. People have been so brainwashed to think pets are useless they’ll ignore them entirely in favor of the player, and that can sometimes backfire. Also our brains can only effectively focus on a single thing at a time, so if you’re playing really well against a ranger, perhaps even sidestepping arrows, you may be physically incapable of seeing the pet (or it’s stealthed :-3).

I don’t run a BM, I’m just saying you can surprise people with one.

Fluffball.8307:

It’s just shocking how many WvW and PvP players ignore pets entirely. It’s not ideal to be getting hit by a stealthed cat with 25 stacks of might, and an extra 500 power or whatever all the BM benefits wind up being. BM used to be PvP meta, back in the day.

Here’s the thing. If you’re in a full party or a zerg, your pet will never get a party buff. Buffs prioritize players over pets. And since each buff only affects 5 targets, 5 players will get the buff and your pet will get nothing.

The only way to consistently buff your pet is the 15 NM trait which gives the pet a copy of any buffs you get. A 25 stack of might is +875 power and condition damage. 30 BM is +300 power, +300 precision (and +300 toughness, +300 vit).

An untraited level 80 cat is 1374 power, 2061 precision (59%). So its effective power after factoring in crit chance is

• 1374 * (1 + .59 * .5) = 1779 base effective power.

• Its effective power with 30 BM is:
  1674 * (1 + .73 * .5) = 2285, a 28% increase from base.

• Its effective power with 15 NM and a 25 might stack is:
  2249 * (1 + .59 * .5) = 2912, a 64% increase from base.

• Its effective power with 30 BM + 15 NM and a 25 might stack is:
  2449 * (1 + .73 * .5) = 3343, a 88% increase from base, a 15% increase from the 15 NM case.

So in your example, the vast majority of the pet’s improvement is coming from having 15 NM and the 25 might stack, not from having 30 BM. And I’m completely ignoring the extra condition damage (bleed damage from 42 per tick to 86 per tick due to the might stack), as well as other +power and +precision buffs your party will bring.

Defensively the analysis is a lot simpler. With 30 BM, the cat goes from 1374 toughness to 1674, a 22% improvement. 2061 vit to 2361 vit, a 15% improvement. Other pets don’t fare as well. Drakes go from 3435 vit to 3735 vit, a 9% improvement.

So the question becomes: Given that any pet-focused build must have the 15 NM trait, do you really want to invest another 30 points in BM just to improve the pet’s performance by 10%-20%? Or do you want to invest those 30 points elsewhere to improve your performance? Yes an extra 300 power (if you put those points into Marksmanship) will only increase a berserker build’s power by about 10%. But you do roughly 4x the DPS of your pet (more against moving targets). So a 10% damage increase for you is like a 40% damage increase for your pet. Or put another way, you can make up for the extra damage the pet loses from not having 30 BM with just an extra 5-10 points in Marksmanship, leaving you free to spend those other 20-25 points elsewhere for useful traits.

tl;dr – If you want to play a “strong pet” build, get the 15 NM trait. You can go 30 BM if you really want, but you’re a lot better off spending those points on yourself. About the only way I see a 30 BM build being preferable is if you solo and like to stand in back watching the pet kill stuff.

I’m not suggesting you use a pet for PvE at all (I’d highly recommend against it actually.)

In fact I’m not suggesting you go BM even for PvP or WvW. I’m saying people ignore the pet, so you can take advantage of it if you want. Someone posted the other day that their non-traited cat killed a mesmer on it’s own.