Reworking Beast Mastery

[nudge]

A ranger primary can use a pet effectively, a monk primary can smite off their pet, and necromancers often sadly use other people pets as reusable corpse factories. But something that logically should work, but does not appear to work, is that of the warrior/ranger and the melee pet.

One often gets the feeling that beast mastery was a bit of an after-thought in the game. Our pets deserve better than that. Hopefully Nightfall will offer the opportunity to rework beast mastery.

Below are some suggestions. I suspect they will make the pet too powerfull. But hopefully it will serve as a starting point for further discussion.

1) Charm Animal

Charm animal remains. Either it, or its elite replacement (see below) is the opportunity cost for having a pet. However additional pet commands are avaliable on the function keys. F5 "attack/defend target". F6 "attack your closest". F7 "Stay". F8 "here boy".

2) Symbiotic Bond

Symbiotic Bond is improved and becomes an elite replacement for Charm Animal. But this improvement comes at a cost.

Damage is no longer split between the pet and master. Instead the pet and master share a single combined pool of health and adrenaline (see 3 below). Obviously the death of one kills the other.

The cost is the pet commands outlined above are no longer avaliable. Instead the pet will do whatever you, do as closely as possible. It will attack your target only, if you break off the attack so will he. And importantly the pet and master can no longer be separated by any distance further than the agro circle. Should this happen the pet will attempt to return to master, oblivious to any other events happening around it, and worst still, health degeneration will set in.

3) Pet Attacks

Damage from basic un-powered pet attacks is dependant only upon the level of the pet, and not beast mastery. This increase in pet effectiveness is offset by pet attacks now being powered from pet (green) adrenaline, and not the mana pool of the owner. This allow even mana poor warriors to own pets. Effectiveness of powered pet attacks is dependant on beast mastery however.

4) Barding

It is possible to purchase dyable armour for your pets of different functional kinds. This does not add to the base armour of the animal, but provides appropriate +elemental, +physical, etc bonuses. As well as much needed pet customisation.

[falling demon]

nice idea, i love the new symbiotic bond, it would add new tactics to having a pet, they're both now easier to heal, but also, damage could be given to the master by attacking the pet..

just one question, if a spell such as fireball, should hit the pet AND the master, would the combined health take DOUBLE the damage of the fireball (since it did some to the pet, and some to the master), or normal damage?

[Rush Rocks]

I think it's a well thought out idea and deserves consideration by Anet.

To answer falling demon, taken double damage from one source would be an extreme disadvantage and make it near impossible to survive, especially with the theory of your pet following you much more closely now. My best guess would be that pet and master cannot take damage from the same source.

[nudge]

To answer falling demon, taken double damage from one source would be an extreme disadvantage and make it near impossible to survive, especially with the theory of your pet following you much more closely now. My best guess would be that pet and master cannot take damage from the same source.

With a combined health pool of ~960 to draw from, taking AOE damage twice is quite reasonable. And probably the only effective way to take down a bonded warrior/pet.

[RDarken]

I don't like the sharing HP idea. I think your pet and you should have separate HP. Everything else, though, I like.

[BahamutKaiser]

I think combine health is something for a class who is riding a creature should consider, combining the health pool of the pet and the ranger is a bit too symbiotic.

I think pets work fine, with the possibility to work great, making pets stronger or adding better supportive techniques isn't what a Beastmaster really needs, what they need is better control.

Pets already have better armor than Assassin, so giving them more armor is very unneccessary, also being of lower priority and cheaper support solutions.

If Charm Animal would dub as a control skill for pets it would be all the help a Ranger needs, with as few as 3 functions the Charm Animal key can be used to set A) Engage targeted foe, B) Continue attacking current foe/automaticly attack nearby enemies, and C) Retreat and Follow the Ranger. With these 3 modes the pet could be used as an expendable advance unit, redirect and focus fire on a specified target better, and cease attack/retreat when needed. Charm Animal does nothing after a pet is tamed, so we don't have to overwrite exsisting functions, and better control doesn't allow the pet to do more damage, it just allows the Ranger to put it where they need it.

The only other skill I truely feel should be changed is Comfort Animal, it may serve as a dual use skill, but healing and ressurecting a pet takes lower priority and isn't as effective as ressurecting a player, and using Comfort Animal cost more than a normal healing (like Orison), and more than a normal rez (ressurect), also noting the added penalty to lossing and rezzing a pet. Comfort Animal should cost 5 energy, making it affordable for any class to keep their pet alive and ressurect them, and pushing the focus on killing the pets master instead of the pet in order to subdue them. It should not cost a ranger or anyone else more to heal (only) their pet than it does for a monk to heal another player, Comfort Animal only maintains one minor unit and cannot be used to support other units, it should be as cheap and more effective then player maintenance counterparts (Orison and Ressurect).

Those 2 very simple changes are more than enough to make pets very effective for anyone to use.

[Charger]

good idea man, we should be able to ride bigger pets too.

[Mr Panda]

no, no riding of pets, no mounts, no wow cloning.

Otherwise the ideas are fairly interesting, especially Symbiotic Bond. I wouldn't suggest replacing an existing skill, moreso making a new one, but otherwise its very unique with the shared HP.

[nudge]

no, no riding of pets, no mounts, no wow cloning. Otherwise the ideas are fairly interesting, especially Symbiotic Bond. I wouldn't suggest replacing an existing skill, moreso making a new one, but otherwise its very unique with the shared HP.

Thanks Mr Panda!

This all came from trying to build a character to match a vision. After seeing a fully grown bear, I had to build a character around owning one. Berhrend Ursidae (literally Bear-like Bear) was born. He looks the part, but sadly cannot act the part. It is good for mucking around, but for serious work, poor Humphrey has to stay at home.

http://plm.customer.netspace.net.au/gw304a.JPG

The suggestion at the head of the thread allows the pet to be used in different ways.

A Ranger can use him intelligently. As bait on a trap, as a means to pull enemies, or as a guard for the monk. And in these days of shadow stepping assassins, which monk does not need a guard.

A warrior however, can use him as a war machine. A warrior with a pet is no longer to be scoffed at, but to be feared. And while the bonded warrior is powerfull, he is also limited.

[TheLeatherMansSon]

I don't really like any of those points, other than some of the fourth. Pet customization would be nice, all of those black moa's in aspenwood look kinda get boring to look at.