Team Build: 7H Enraged Beastmasters

I know that beastmasters are really not too popular but since I was bored this morning I tried a 7H beast/pet build. It's pretty solid so far and does great damage. Great survivability, interrupting, and great fun to play. The only thing is, only one res and that can be pretty bad if things go south. Just a little build that is fun to play, and since my friend still uses the old school B/P team build for EVERYTHING, the first role fits in relatively well. Any constructive feedbackis always welcome and mahalo.

Love it.

But it has 2res, not one:P UA+Death pact sig. Looks to lack hex removal too, perhaps drop Scav bite on the domi mes, bring shatter hex, and fit Cure hex on the UA. Hexes are always annoying, but I suppose it 'may' not be needed since hopefully the crabs will soak them all up I wouldnt use Suffering either(15e, and bleh degen which Bleeding can match:P), and maybe fit Death Nova in somewhere (and/or drop 1of the shambling for Animate Bone Minions, more soul reap for quad necro and better minion/petwall)

If running a similar build with a Melee player, ebsoh would be a must

Keep making fun builds!

This is pretty terrible. Using UA and ST together is always a sign you don't trust your build. ST with minions and pets is also a very bad idea.

Quote: Originally Posted by Relyk

This is pretty terrible. Using UA and ST together is always a sign you don't trust your build. ST with minions and pets is also a very bad idea. I agree, UA alone may be useful but ST is just an awful idea with minions and pets. The rest of the team build looks fun though.

Haha takes me back to my barrage/pets days, love it!

Some advice though (some of which has already been said, so I'm emphasizing those)

1. Drop suffering, too high of energy for not much results. There are much better cover hexes out there for you to choose from.
2. ST with all these minions and pets will make your spirits explode in seconds, especially with any aoe in HM areas. With no spirits, a ST rit is practically useless. Hopefully the minions and pets will be tanking well, and provide a nice meat shield. So i'd recommend some other form of healing.
3. Death nova would be a big plus, with so many things that could die fairly easily, it would add some major aoe damage to this team.

Take Shared Burden on the illusion mes. Two copies of PI won't be necessary and the snare will help pets in some areas. It also reduces cast/attack time, which makes for nice layered defence.
Drop Necrosis for EBSOH on your bar. Necrosis is shit anyway, but with that many pets, you really need to abuse the packets. It will far out-do anything necrosis can achieve.
Drop ST bar completely for something like SoS resto hybrid or an ER prot. Alternatively, you can take some form of off-hand prots on one of the Minion Bombers and resto skills.

Fine, my suggestion means losing ONE PET, but that one dedicated character is the difference between live and dead pandas.

Thanks guys, all is noted and appreciated. And..."This is pretty terrible. Using UA and ST together is always a sign you don't trust your build. ST with minions and pets is also a very bad idea." Although I understand that is a bad idea, it's not that I don't trust my build I was looking for some prot. Everything else looks great and I'll make those changes as suggested. And relyk...thanks for the "constructive" criticism and keep hitting that meth pipe.

I'm curious, have you actually tested this out in regular use? Because you're utterly RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed if you face a mixed mob like in slavers or vloxen, especially at the start where you are unlikely to have many (if any) minions to bait the initial surge of damage. Even moreso if they carry anti-physical skills.

ST is perfectly fine with minions and pets so long as they are all lvl 20 or above. Just use Shelter though, maybe Displacement as well in certain areas. Union is completely unneeded and a waste of ST-usages. UA is OK if you are afraid of dying (which is perfectly normal with odd builds like these), but otherwise HB is generally better. ST and UA certainly would be better off without the pet, but if you want a maxmimum pet build then you gotta take it I suppose...

Player character should go AP, drop ER. Deep wound doesn't stack, so you probably aren't losing much here. Trust me, with all those physical packets you want to throw out MoP constantly (especially thanks to pets who can lock on to your target, 7 pets alone will make MoP hit 140ish DPS). Throw in the usual AP stuff (EVAS/Finish Him/YMLaD), much more effective than Necrosis spam. Yes, you do lose your pet from needing to be /A, you will get over it quick I think.

2 Necros should go ahead and be full MMs, though keeping the pet is perfectly fine if you want max training of MoP'ed enemies. Another good candidate for dropping ER in place of Heal as One or an MM elite. HaO makes for a convenient partial self-heal for saccing necros, worth giving a try. Also great bar compression of course.

Without need for Necrosis triggers the curse necro can either be dumped for another build or changed around a bit. More things like Reckless Haste/Shadow of Fear/Rigor Mortis. Blood Bond would be cool if you could squeeze it in.

On the other hand, off the top of my head one good thing to replace the curse necro with would be a Smite Monk, keeping SoH up on as many pets as possible. Blessed Signet makes the first ~6 SoHs cost 1/4th the normal cost, and with it on all 7 pets you are looking at a cool +120 DPS. Not sure how well heroes work with Mantra of Inscriptions these days, but if it turns out good you can still have enough energy left over for a full Smite build.

I would switch one PI out for Shared Burden, as the decreased cast speed will do a lot to make sure the other Mesmer hits their PIs more. Mesmer hero AI seems to have real troubles using PI consistently unless the enemy is slowed. And with PI you pretty much have to take Wastrel's Demise somewhere. They are made for each other.

Quote: Drop Necrosis for EBSOH on your bar. Necrosis is shit anyway, but with that many pets, you really need to abuse the packets. It will far out-do anything necrosis can achieve. EBSoH requires running up into the front lines, and if the pets have to chase something else then they lose the bonus. Wouldn't advise it unless he has a lot more ranged damage packes (bone fiends basically). Time spent running around in melee is time you could have spent casting either Barbs or MoP, both of which boost your physicals either a bit more or a heck of a lot more, respectively.

Quote: ST with all these minions and pets will make your spirits explode in seconds, especially with any aoe in HM areas. With no spirits, a ST rit is practically useless. Hopefully the minions and pets will be tanking well, and provide a nice meat shield. So i'd recommend some other form of healing. The point is that the spirits explode and your pets/minions don't. Enemies can't spam their AoE 24/7, use the spirits to stop the initial spike and then roll over them while their big stuff is on recharge and they are spamming Flare. If you take only Shelter you can put it up every 5s. 99% of enemy AoE is going to take a lot longer to recharge than that.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

I would switch one PI out for Shared Burden



EBSoH requires running up into the front lines, and if the pets have to chase something else then they lose the bonus. Wouldn't advise it unless he has a lot more ranged damage packes (bone fiends basically). Time spent running around in melee is time you could have spent casting either Barbs or MoP, both of which boost your physicals either a bit more or a heck of a lot more, respectively.

Firrst thing I suggested was Shared Burden :< hence, melee foes not going to be kiting much. But yeah, MoP nuker would be a better bar to run compared to that, but he wants a pet,so. You can always take Great Dwarf Weapon or Technobabble to abuse all the physical packets, too.

GDW would definitely be a cool idea. Almost impossible to keep up on all pets even with AP, but still good regardless. With HaO and SoH you are looking at +85ish damage per hit (might try to squeeze in IAS on the pets that stack damage buffs the most). Technobabble... ehh. Being dead is the best anti-spell

Shared burden's snare is more for stopping enemies from kiting out of your MoP too quickly. Melee still generally runs amok into wherever they please, especially in HM.

lol 8 pets its a nice screen to see, i bet is fun but I have doubt it have great survivability like you mention. I'm not going into your damage output but just a comment having lot of the same skill doesn't stack will.

Anyways I see 4 healing skill (not counting SofLS) which all have long recast time. I have doubt its that survivable in most HM area. Specially your overall damage output isn't that high vs time. I'm saying this because pet as the lowest attack speed so the longer you battle last the more healing your team need which is lack of.

Try changing the elite to "Heal as One" that way you and your pet get some pocket HP regen per attack. Also with that elite you don't need to take "Comfort animal" which will open up 4 skill slots. With that open slot I suggest bring "Bestial Mauling" to take advantage of the knock down from the 2x PI your running. (Which btw I think you can do with just 1 and bring a e-surge). Remember if your bring a Elite AoE skill you should do all you can to take full advantage of its effect. If not then might as well bring something else. Also with all the MM and Pets it worth looking into "Order of Pain".

Since your doing elite and attack skill from Beast Master you should pump that attrib to max and not the other attib. Horror is nice but their so expensive and long recharge time it worth it if the hero is actually a mm master. But in your bar it look more like a mm bomber so i would just do Animate bone + Nova.

Like mention above lost "Suffer" -3 degen don't do much in HM, especially you have not skill that take advantage of hexed foe. And bring "Define/Desecrate Enchantments" since you have 0 skill that take advantage on enchanted foe. On that note you should consider also bring a enchantment removal skill. "Shatter Enchantment" is a good skill to bring in your Dom mes.

Look at your foe during a battle with all the mm and pet I can imagine all the foe would be spread out (I don't know but base on how mm and pet aggro foe is likely so). If it's all spread out then I suggest you lost the Melandru's Assault (since it wouldn't meet the aoe requirement) and bring "Call of Haste" or "Otyugh's Cry". 33%+ attack speed or cannot block skill help lot on your pet. (pet misses or get block quite often hehe).

As of ST and mm will lot of people out their take on that topic, but now you add on 8 more pets. I'll will have to say your pushing it your hero mostly like can't keep up ST for 100% or even 80%. Also on comment about defensive spirit get recharge if it go down. Yes and no, on paper yes ST will recharge all your spirit ie typically you can spam 24/7. But in real combat I'll ask you to monitor closely on your hero or even make a recording of a long battle and replay it back. Then you see it really doesn't work that way there lot of thing that get involve in the Ai then just spamming 3 skills (unless you marco it 24/7). I does that in all my team build and it helped me alot. What it say on wiki and how you think it can work is one thing. But how it pan out with the over all of your team is another, as Ai system have there own way of doing stuff.

If you like monk prot you can consider bring 2 (which mean drop ST hero) smiling monk ROJ (depend how good your hero control PI and out spread out your foe is. But should work nicely with those 2x PI ) and 2x copy of Aegis, at least 1 copy of smite hex (because you have 0 hex removal skill), at least 1 copy of smile condition (again you have 0 condition removal skill). Save UA for area with no res shrine when it can prevent a full wipe, other then those place it's rarely useful (personal opinion). More then 2 res skill in most area is overrated , as you should build a team that can last and not relies on res.

Like I said earlier, this build was just something to kill some time and have fun with. I never intended on doing any HM dungeons or even Slaver's for that matter with it. The most I did was a couple Canthan Vanquishes, which were fine, so the purpose of those builds and the reasoning behind my idea for the build worked perfectly. I wish I could put so much trust in all those cookie cutter builds out there, but hey...I can't. Nothing is more fun than coming up with your own team build and testing it. Thanks again for all the help, ideas, suggestions, and criticism.

I might actually try this for some giggles.
Nice job on trying to create a pet zerg.

Probably weak against anti-melee (e.g. blocking) but should be fun.

Quote: Originally Posted by Daesu

Probably weak against anti-melee (e.g. blocking) but should be fun. Nothing Rigor Mortis can't handle, so long as it's not too widespread.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kunder

Nothing Rigor Mortis can't handle, so long as it's not too widespread. Or Defile Defenses. Just thought I would point that out since the build has strong emphasis on melee physical damage.