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Originally Posted by Ninja OniX
ok its edited, but revive animal would give you more health back so it wont die again whereas comfort animal recharges your skills. Death of pet is 8 seconds and reviving with comfort animal is another 8 second, using revival animal would chop that in half and give pet hp. wouldnt you rather have that?
The 6 second cast on Revive Animal makes it so that, from my experiences, you should expect it to get interrupted at least half of the time. Also, with its 20 second recharge, a single interrupt on it hurts bad as it will mean you are now stuck for 20 seconds without your pet. The recharge also hurts it, because if the enemy team has decided to take out your pet (which they are more inclined to do if they see large numbers coming from your pet such as with Brutal Strike), you will need your rez again well before 20 seconds, regardless of what defenses you have on it.
Comfort Animal, on the other hand, has a 1 second cast and so is almost never interrupted. Even if it does get interrupted, it only has a 1 second recharge so you'll be trying to res the pet again very quickly. Also, the 8 seconds of blacked out skills is still 8 seconds that your pet is up and running towards its target, or starting to attack its target. Provided you don't have a Hearty pet, you can't ignore the normal attack damage of the pet and count those 8 seconds as entirely useless.
I believe there is no need for concern with Comfort Animal not bringing the pet back at full health in comparison to Revive Animal. Comfort Animal brings the pet back at over half health, which is more than enough to survive stray damage. As I said before, if the enemy team decices to focus on your pet, it is going to die anyway, so having the faster reses becomes more important than a slower more potent res.
Also, with regards to Symbiotic Bond, pets are usually not targeted before their masters and have such high armor that with Call of Protection up, Symbiotic Bond becomes unneccessary,
especially if you run this as an elementalist primary. People will stick to you like glue and tear you apart, since when given the choice of taking out an AL 60 target or an AL 80 target with ~15 absorbtion (and possibly halved damage if you really are using Symbiotic), there is no question. A dead master means a pet that can't dish out pet attacks and if the master will die 10x faster than the pet, then the enemy will simply wipe out the master.
Also, an elementalist primary would have no Expertise and would be limited to 12 Beast Mastery, which would hurt the build immeasurably. Expertise is a far superior attribute line for a Beast Master than Energy Storage, because while Energy Storage will increase your maximum energy, if you're dealing with skills only (as this build is) Expertise increases not only your maximum energy but also your energy regeneration.
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My build for an E/R beastmaster is:
Pred. Pounce
Brutal Strike
Feral Lunge
Call of Haste
Troll Unguent
Symbiotic Bond
Charm Animal
Res. Signet
12 Beast Mastery
12+1+1 Energy Storage
9+ Element of choice (I go earth for if I feel like throwing Obsidian Flame for an extra damage spike).
Symbiotic bond over Comfort simply because people 95% of the time ignore the pet anyway, and when they don't the +3 regen and half damage is great (and the half damage is nothing troll can't handle). The lack of a rez jumps out as a major concern obviously, but at least for RA (where I've been using it) the need hasn't come up too many times anyway, once or twice in the kill point match, but with symbiotic they need more than one person on the pet, and if they have multiple people on it they're likely to be hurting pretty badly already.
The problem with Symbiotic Bond on an elementalist Beast Master is that any enemy with half a brain is going to target the Elementalist first. Therefore, Symbiotic Bond is doing nothing when you need it most, and does a little something when you were already on top anyways. It would be much better to take a skill that will help in a pinch, such as some kind of self defense from the Earth line.
I also seriously question the wisdom of shooting for Energy Storage over Expertise. Expertise reduces the cost of every skill currently on your bar, which in effect increases not only your maximum energy but also your energy regeneration. Thus it becomes much more effective to play as a ranger Beast Master than an elementalist one. This is especially true if you come across any energy denial, or use any energy management skills.
For example, take the skill Predator's Pounce. It can be used once every 5 seconds for 5 energy normally. This equates to 3 pips of energy degeneration (1 pip = 1 energy every 3 seconds) or 75% of an elementalist's natural energy regeneration. Under expertise of an equivalent value (using your 14 points here) Predator's Pounce costs only 2 energy, which equates to only 1.2 pips of degeneration or only 40% of a ranger's natural energy regeneration.
And that's a cheap skill. When you look at the cost of Brutal Strike, the ranger's effectiveness comes out much more sharply. While I know you won't be spamming Brutal Strike right from the get-go, crunching its numbers will give you a plainer view of why Expertise is so powerful.
Brutal Strike can be used once every 5 seconds for 10 energy normally. That's 6 pips of energy degen or 150% of the elementalist's natural energy regeneration. Under Expertise, however, it costs only 4 energy every 5 seconds, which is 2.4 pips of energy degen or only 80% of a ranger's natural energy regeneration.
When you start dealing with multiple attack skills on your bar, then the ranger's superiority is unquestionable. For example, before your opponent hits half health and you're using only Predator's Pounce and Feral Lunge, provided you use them to their fulll potential (every time they're charged and not overlapping on another), you're dealing with 4.5 pips of energy being used and an ele will be at .5 pips of energy degen. A ranger, on the other hand, would be using only 1.8 pips of energy, and thus would still be getting 1.2 pips of energy regeneration.
After your target hits half health and you add Brutal Strike to the mix, you're now dealing with 10.5 pips of energy being used. The ele will be sitting at 6.5 pips of energy degen. The ranger, however, is using only 4.2 pips of energy and thus is sitting at only 1.2 pip of energy degen.
Of course, the ele has a higher max energy which needs to be taken into account. At 6.5 pips of degen, 84 energy (14 Energy Storage + staff) lasts approximately 39 seconds. At 1.2 pips of energy degen, 32 energy lasts 80 seconds. This means the ranger will be able to continue spamming out the attacks twice as long as an elementalist.
Of course, the more skills we add into the mix the larger the gap between the ele and the ranger will grow. |
Also, for a pet build you might want to have Charm Animal on your bar.
It really, truly is aweful and should only be used in the most specialized of builds. Even then I shy away from it. You're so much better off using Comfort Animal.
If it works for you, run with it. Just know that there might be more effective stuff out there.
Good luck.
