Curse

Don't Blame the Monk · Jun 06, 2006, 03:48 AM // 03:48

Mo/R Healing 12 Divine Favor 10 Beast Mastery 8
Rt/Mo Healing 12 Restoration Spawning 8

W/N Blood 5 Death 5 Strength 10 Axe Mastery 9 Tactics 10
W/R Strength 10 Hammer Mastery 10 Beast Mastery 8 Wilderness Servival 8
W/Rt Strength 10 Sword 12 Communing 8

E/R Water 11 Energy 11 Beast Mastery 8
Rt/R Beast Mastery 10 Communing 10 Spawning 11
N/Mo Blood 10 Death 11 Healing 10

I know this is probably really bad right know...it's my first build. The goal of this build is to overwhelm the other side with pets/minions/spirits. This will hopefully cause extra damage, hinder movement, & cause general annoyance. The elementalist will slow movement makeing it harder to escape.

any and all help will be appriciated thanks

swordfisher · Jun 06, 2006, 06:26 AM // 06:26

Skills. You must tell us the skills.

The attribute spreads are not promising, however:

Mo/R: monks make poor beastmasters, because both skills slots and energy are in short supply. pet attacks are designed with expertise in mind, and so are very inefficient on a secondary.
Rt/Mo: Your primary attribute, spawning, only helps to keep spirits alive. There are only two spirits in the Restoration line, and they're not the gamewinners. Speccing 12 into healing but having zero divine favor really makes your healing a lot less efficient.

I don't know the plan is for your warriors, but in every single case you need your weapon attribute to be AT LEAST 14, and realistically 16. Strength is not half as useful, so move some points over. The most effective warriors are typically 7/8 pure Warrior with one crucial (and not point-hungry) skill from their secondary (shock, plague touch, hexbreaker).

Ele's, like warriors, tend to put their appropriate element at 16, because the skills are so energy hungry you really need to squeeze every drop of damage and function out of them. For the damage you get from having a pet at 8 BM, you're losing out on a lot more from the rest of your skills. Also, because you need to dedicate at least one skill to having a pet, and at least another three to using it effectively, you're going to run out of space to run the rest of your build.

The rule of thumb with beastmaster builds is that they take at least half of a skillbar to be effective. Dedicating so many skill slots means you'd better follow up with attribute points, putting it as high as possible (again, 14-16 range), meaning you have to be a ranger. You also have to be a ranger because their primary attribute, expertise, is all that makes the pet skills feasible to spam, which is the point of it all.

The long and short of it is that builds which deal in damage (causing it or healing it) need to maximize their effects by focusing, hard, on just one or two attributes. Builds which cause effects are best served by diversifying, bringing as many useful tools to the table as possible.

dansamy · Jun 07, 2006, 04:34 AM // 04:34

Please post a fully-fleshed out build at which time you can ask for tweaks, critiques, etc.