Beast/Nature MM Underated?

[josewales]

After all the meh reviews, I am still trying to understand why no love. I endgamed other  MMs such as Bot/FF and still prefer the Beast/Nature. 8x4s hands down. If MMs had a bigger radius for mastery electric fences then I can see the fun for bots. But my beasts are always at my side while spamming ravens call on as much recharge as I can slot including perma hasten. The pbaoe hold are gold for this melee build. Spam nearest target and back up a few feet for dps and pet command. Once mob is down it’s time to refresh the 1 minute 3 buffs again.

 

Anyways. It’s a monster combo imo.

 

Peppers

[plainguy]

Nature is great.. I don't like some of the animations.. 
But Entangle Aura is kick ass !

I run a petless whips Nature and it does great.. 

[WumpusRat]

/Nature is a great secondary, there's no question about that. The problem is Beast Mastery. It was already one of the under-performing primaries, and with the upgrades to Robotics, Necromancy, Mercenaries and Ninjas, it's now firmly at the bottom of the pile. The pets are purely melee, don't have many attacks, have self-buffs on extremely  long cooldowns and very short durations, and Fortify Pack forces you to choose between damage and defense, you can't do both. 

 

Ideally, I'd like to see them tweak BM, Thugs and Demons to follow the same theme as the other sets they revisited. Thugs and Demons don't really need much fine-tuning, they were already very good sets. Beast Mastery needs a thorough overhaul, though.

 

One thing I'd really like to see is to do away with Fortify Pack, and replace it with something like "Pack Tactics". Make it an ability like the Staff Mastery power, in that you have several toggles you can switch on to direct your pets to fight in certain ways. It would give Beast Mastery a unique feel, as well as removing the penalty of using Fortify Pack. For instance, you could have it be something like:

 

Pack Tactics -- Selecting this power gives you three toggles, only one of which can be on at any given time. 

Aggressive Tactics -- Pets have a slightly increased crit chance per stack of Pack Mentality (same as current)

Defensive Tactics -- Pets have a slightly increased positional defense (melee, ranged, aoe) per stack of Pack Mentality

Harrying Tactics -- Pet attacks will cause targets to be slowed, and have a small chance to knockdown opponents on hit

 

I'd also like to see the various pets get a "Pounce" type ability (particularly the lionesses). You could more or less just clone Spring Attack.

[josewales]

16 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

/Nature is a great secondary, there's no question about that. The problem is Beast Mastery. It was already one of the under-performing primaries, and with the upgrades to Robotics, Necromancy, Mercenaries and Ninjas, it's now firmly at the bottom of the pile. The pets are purely melee, don't have many attacks, have self-buffs on extremely  long cooldowns and very short durations, and Fortify Pack forces you to choose between damage and defense, you can't do both. 

 

Ideally, I'd like to see them tweak BM, Thugs and Demons to follow the same theme as the other sets they revisited. Thugs and Demons don't really need much fine-tuning, they were already very good sets. Beast Mastery needs a thorough overhaul, though.

 

One thing I'd really like to see is to do away with Fortify Pack, and replace it with something like "Pack Tactics". Make it an ability like the Staff Mastery power, in that you have several toggles you can switch on to direct your pets to fight in certain ways. It would give Beast Mastery a unique feel, as well as removing the penalty of using Fortify Pack. For instance, you could have it be something like:

 

Pack Tactics -- Selecting this power gives you three toggles, only one of which can be on at any given time. 

Aggressive Tactics -- Pets have a slightly increased crit chance per stack of Pack Mentality (same as current)

Defensive Tactics -- Pets have a slightly increased positional defense (melee, ranged, aoe) per stack of Pack Mentality

Harrying Tactics -- Pet attacks will cause targets to be slowed, and have a small chance to knockdown opponents on hit

 

I'd also like to see the various pets get a "Pounce" type ability (particularly the lionesses). You could more or less just clone Spring Attack.

I have resist incarnate and raven cone slotted debuffs. My beasts mow through mob clusters with ease. My keybinds always combine all pet attack which keeps them in front of me with spamming nearest target. Dunno man. Right now I am building a demon/nature to compare with a similar build.  MM/FF had to much single target hunting for my taste.

[lokiie1984]

On 11/19/2022 at 10:13 AM, josewales said:

I have resist incarnate and raven cone slotted debuffs. My beasts mow through mob clusters with ease. My keybinds always combine all pet attack which keeps them in front of me with spamming nearest target. Dunno man. Right now I am building a demon/nature to compare with a similar build.  MM/FF had to much single target hunting for my taste.

Would you mind sharing your build? I have a beast/nature sitting at 49 that I've wanted to get 50 and do a build with. She was made around when homecoming first launched and I knew next to nothing about builds in general, let alone how to build an MM. Now i know next to next to nothing about builds lol. 

 

I really enjoyed the combo though and always felt like they were meant to be played together. Always felt the same about Necro/Dark too. 

[C U R S E]

Like Wumpus Said earlier with the Buffs to Necro,Bots,and Mercs BM is at the bottom of the barrel. Necro with a high recharge Spammable Soul Extraction is now king.

[TheMoncrief]

Somebody has to be at the bottom, and now BM is it. It's still nowhere near as bad as Mercs used to be, but it definitely could use some work. I feel like Demons and Thugs just need to be modernized with actual enhanceable effects in their upgrade powers to bring them back to glory, but Beasts do need more than that. They were nowhere near as good as Demons and Thugs before the changes, so they really need some help.

[WumpusRat]

Beast Mastery suffers from two major issues, imo.

 

1) The buffs/debuffs the pets have have cooldowns that are far, far too long. And the AI will cast buffs whenever they're off cooldown, making it spam their abilities every time they recharge, even outside of combat. Given that the buffs are short duration (15-20 seconds) and have 90-120s recharges, it means you're not getting anywhere near the use out of them you should be.

 

2) The set is completely reliant on the passive bonus of Fortify Pack. Without the crit bonus, BM's damage is miserably low. And if you ever USE Fortify Pack to give them some bonus defense, they lose both the ability to crit and the +damage effect of Pack Mentality for 60 seconds, in exchange for a defense bonus. So you have to choose damage or slightly higher defense. You can't have both. The power shouldn't have such a massive penalty.

 

Overall, the set needs a lot of work. Cut the cooldowns of the various buffing powers the pets have in half, or more -- the set is all about pure melee damage, after all, so it should be the best at that. The lionesses and the dire wolf need a couple more attacks to give them a proper attack chain, and the heals need much lower cooldowns (60s for a 120ish heal is pretty miserable).

 

Then Fortify Pack needs to be retooled. The set shouldn't be so reliant on this one power, and it shouldn't have such a massive penalty to use. What I'd like to see is changing it around to function more like Staff Mastery, in that you have several toggles you can switch on to direct your pets to fight in various ways. Make aggressive and defensive stances just provide bonuses, not penalties, with the ability to switch between the two as necessary. Could even add a third or fourth one if you really wanted to. Maybe 'Harrying tactics', where they slow, trip, and cause bleed damage.

 

But the set definitely needs some work.

[josewales]

On 11/30/2022 at 3:11 PM, WumpusRat said:

Beast Mastery suffers from two major issues, imo.

 

1) The buffs/debuffs the pets have have cooldowns that are far, far too long. And the AI will cast buffs whenever they're off cooldown, making it spam their abilities every time they recharge, even outside of combat. Given that the buffs are short duration (15-20 seconds) and have 90-120s recharges, it means you're not getting anywhere near the use out of them you should be.

 

2) The set is completely reliant on the passive bonus of Fortify Pack. Without the crit bonus, BM's damage is miserably low. And if you ever USE Fortify Pack to give them some bonus defense, they lose both the ability to crit and the +damage effect of Pack Mentality for 60 seconds, in exchange for a defense bonus. So you have to choose damage or slightly higher defense. You can't have both. The power shouldn't have such a massive penalty.

 

Overall, the set needs a lot of work. Cut the cooldowns of the various buffing powers the pets have in half, or more -- the set is all about pure melee damage, after all, so it should be the best at that. The lionesses and the dire wolf need a couple more attacks to give them a proper attack chain, and the heals need much lower cooldowns (60s for a 120ish heal is pretty miserable).

 

Then Fortify Pack needs to be retooled. The set shouldn't be so reliant on this one power, and it shouldn't have such a massive penalty to use. What I'd like to see is changing it around to function more like Staff Mastery, in that you have several toggles you can switch on to direct your pets to fight in various ways. Make aggressive and defensive stances just provide bonuses, not penalties, with the ability to switch between the two as necessary. Could even add a third or fourth one if you really wanted to. Maybe 'Harrying tactics', where they slow, trip, and cause bleed damage.

 

But the set definitely needs some work.

I have fortify pack to slot a Gambler recharge. My question are MMs playing and slotting right? I comfortably mow down 4/4’s with 75 S/L resist and over 20% defence. Yes I understand the pet spam, but I am constantly fighting bedside the pets. The only thing that slows me down is the 1 minute refresh buffs. That is my only complaint and wish it was increased to a 2 or 5 minute perma . Raven is a nasty cone aoe and am constant spamming to keep the 20% bonus for the pets. There is no sitting back with the beasts. That’s why I like the build. It’s an aggressive play style. As for the damage…I just got some incarnates on a new demon/thermal. The dps I find doesn’t isnt much different. The raven is a better controlled air compared to the demon pet aoes. Anyways…I am still scratching my head why no love. The build is pretty good imo.

[SableShrike]

I’ll see if I got my old Beast/Storm around somewhere to update it for Page 5.

 

I usually did just fine with it on x8s.  Beast is a set you need to build around pet support for, but for the most part they’re rather capable.

 

T1 wolves proc the two Debuff damage procs a LOT.  This more than doubles or triples their damage.  They are your most-damaging pet.

 

Lionesses aren’t the greatest, but they are very tough.  With good IO slotting mine almost never died.  Good place to fit in all the +defense pet IOs.

 

Direwolf does a notable amount of AoE, which you can ramp up with the two Slow damage procs.

 

As melee pets, you need to drop some flyers for them.  The two bird attacks have -Fly, and Snow Storm is a -Fly toggle if you’d rather.

 

The pets have decent Resist and Defense as baseline, so pretty much any set can be made to add to that.  Beast/Pain works surprisingly well, say.

 

But again, have to be able to apply -Fly with your build.

 

 

[WumpusRat]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:17 PM, josewales said:

I have fortify pack to slot a Gambler recharge. My question are MMs playing and slotting right? I comfortably mow down 4/4’s with 75 S/L resist and over 20% defence. Yes I understand the pet spam, but I am constantly fighting bedside the pets. The only thing that slows me down is the 1 minute refresh buffs. That is my only complaint and wish it was increased to a 2 or 5 minute perma . Raven is a nasty cone aoe and am constant spamming to keep the 20% bonus for the pets. There is no sitting back with the beasts. That’s why I like the build. It’s an aggressive play style. As for the damage…I just got some incarnates on a new demon/thermal. The dps I find doesn’t isnt much different. The raven is a better controlled air compared to the demon pet aoes. Anyways…I am still scratching my head why no love. The build is pretty good imo.

Well, you have to remember that powers aren't meant to be balanced around having all sorts of IO sets and procs. They're meant to be balanced around SO slotting. So saying "I do fine with them with my fully loaded IO'd out build and incarnate powers" doesn't really say much for actual balance. I was mowing stuff down with my fully built mercenary/traps build before the changes as well, but that doesn't mean the mercs weren't in dire need of adjusting.

 

Also, as I said, the set's damage hinges almost entirely on Fortify Pack's passive bonus -- the ability for the pets to crit. If you actually use the FP "buff", your pets' damage will drop drastically, as they lose +20% damage and the ability to crit for 60 seconds. Which is why most people (myself included) only use it as a mule power, and not something you actually want to USE, which is a terrible point to be at for a power in the kit.

 

Apparently their goal is to revisit Thugs, Demons and Beast Mastery in the same vein that they did for the other sets, so we'll see what happens when they get around to it. I'd really like to see Fortify Pack simply done away with, and the +damage/crit from it shifted over to the Pack Mentality stacks, so that power slot could be used for something actually useful that you'd WANT to use, rather than just a mule power.

[josewales]

The recharge is critical for 1 minute perma buffing. And 5+ IOS offer much of it on top of gambler and hasten. I may have found a sweet spot for this build, dunno. Last night I tried 8/4 fortuna missions. The entanglement allowed me to rebuff if I went over the 1 minute mark. And end incarnate handy with the end drains. It went very well. Only problem is being overwhelmed with a second mob.

 

As for the burner slots. The build still needs a few for gamblers and bumps. Therefore it doesn’t matter either way.

 

There is no way I can do this with my bot/ FF with such efficiency. As for my demon/thermal…I need to find a good secondary. Thermal they still get trashed with incarnates.

 

 Anyways I am having a blast with both team and solo content regarding beast/nature.

Edited December 4, 2022 by josewales