I've played a lot of beastmasters and have posted a couple of times
about their shortcomings. Ekaerok asked which build would you consider
better than beastmaster at the moment?

Well this is easy to answer. Savage is still a lot better, savage blow changes
notwithstanding, I haven't played one after the tweaks but:

* I don't think Nep crippled it, even if it works 50% at best now, it's still useful.
* Near guaranteed ambush onslaught + lightning will kill a lot of people.
* Warpaint is very good and extremely reliable. Should fire in every fight.
* Mud is good and extremely reliable. Situational but extremely useful when needed.
* Protection from metals is huge, I'd pick this over barkskin any day.
* Mace the icing on the cake.

These are very reliable skills that will be useful in pretty much every fight.

What does beastmaster have?

Serpent kinship is just lagging yourself, unreliable to the point where it's a mistake
if one uses it. I'd rather do 2 serpent strikes.

Wasps is very very strong at mid levels (especially with apiarist) but arguably useless
at hero. I haven't killed a single competent person at hero due to wasps, others
may have had better luck. That's also assuming one will land it, given that it's
2 rounds lag, it's not uncommon to waste 10+ rounds trying to land wasps at hero.

Wolf is OK, hopefully all the bugs have been ironed out by now. It still isn't 100%
reliable even perfected which leads to time wasted.

Bears were completely useless, one couldn't even use them in raids. They were
tweaked recently and I haven't played one since so maybe they're OK now.

Predator's stance was good and I think was tweaked for more damage recently,
no comment on that.

Tame is just bad re: mobs that can be used and also nerfs waylay (this needs to be fixed). Kinship wolf can not be tamed.

Looks pretty much a no contest no?

I'd also pick survivalist over beastmaster, just for control weather/lightning.
Call lightning with the edge is better than any skill beastmaster has, including wasps.

I played Drow Caverner beast master.

Since I had high dex I dodged much better than most other rangers, and predators stance was great. Felt like offensive haste.

Wasps was good too for me, right up to hero. Snakes I rarely used but once the paralysed my enemy. I wasn't expecting it so didn't take advantage.

Bears, Bleh, situational but not great in pk. Tame, never used. Wolf kin rarely used.

Let me preface this with this big statement: I don't believe I've played a beastmaster at hero, though I've toyed around with them in the mid ranks. I have fought some as a few different characters.

Really, it looks to me like this comes down to playstyle difference. If you want the big ambush followed by a potential snare and second ambush or call lightning, beastmaster is definitely not for you. You should be playing a savage.

The big advantage in my mind with something like wasps is that it doesn't allow them to rest and causes decent, continual damage (similar in manner to immolate, if not the same amount). If you can land a few entangles then land it and they flee and recall, there is a good chance they are still there sitting at their recall spot healing their health and moves. That leaves potential for planning for someone to sit there and be ready to bash. It really can be quite dangerous if landed late in a close fight right before someone flees.

I still think you are underestimating wolf kinship, more when paired with something like beast call. Tracking mobs that cause people to flee is excellent, especially in random mazes (Like outside outlander of HToS).

Both of these abilities get much better with outlander leader insects, though I am unsure if wasps would stack with it. I suppose that makes the build somewhat niche.

I wouldn't mind seeing the other abilities touched up, but as it is I still consider this one of the three best expertises. As much as ambush onslaught, prot vs metal, and mace are nice.. I hate having to give up metal and it can make gearing a lot less enjoyable - especially if you don't have any druid friends. That isn't to say savage is bad, it and survivalist are both good.

I find the idea of hunter being better as funny, as there have been two I've seen that are scary. I really can't speak to animist as I've never played nor faced one, but from all accounts they don't seem deadly either.

Really, if someone has the time go through the rangers based on pk record and determine their terrain/expertise it could provide some more numbers to actually fuel this argument. As it is, I don't see it as beasmasters are bad.. they just aren't savage good.

I've played 2 hunters to hero (Jurloah, nexun, and Keijrai, battle scout) and another one in battle to mid 40s (cloud berserker). Jurloah was after Nep beefed up some of the skills, rightly so, and hunters felt more than adequate and versatile enough to compete and win some at hero.

I've also fought and played alongside Gougof, dwarf hunter. Hunters are rocking and fun to play now. You should give it a whirl!

An animist in the right hands is super nasty too. See Carriil of late, or Korin before him (similar build).

**No one is underestimating wolf kinship, it's a nice ability. But it's also easy to avoid once called if you keep your wits.

***Insects and wasps can be called together.

Last thing is I have done research on ranger builds and almost all of them were of 1 of 2 builds:

1- felar savage evil high dam ambush/snare/ambush/savage blow
2- felar evil explorer high dam pursuit (and often insects)

Unless I am crazy and missing something, you are leaving out that the ranger with highest amount of pks (divulged through pbfs) was a mountain/beastmaster (Nreeishe). In fact, it really looks like you are seeing what you want to see when I take an objective look at the data.

Top 10 List (By PKs - coincidentally, only rangers with > 100 pks)
1. Nreeishe Mountain/Beastmaster
2. Paraloiut Marsh/Explorer
3. Nyst Marsh/Savage
4. Sulye Forest?/Explorer
5. Iklahn Bedouin/Savage
6. Rasst Marsh/Explorer
7. Krynna Cavern/Beastmaster
8. Azhelak Marsh/Explorer
9. Garm Forest?/Beastmaster
10. Tjok Forest?/Survivalist?

Not absolutely positive on the one with the ?, but I think that is correct.

Sticking to pure terrain, we see this trend.

Explorer: 4
Beastmaster: 3
Savage: 2
Survivalist: 1

This kind of hints to me that beastmaster can't be that bad.

I don't know how the other 2 beastmasters fall into that timeline, but wasps were pimp when they came out, and right around when Nreeishe finished up they were nerfed.

they racked up a big portion of their kills in the 30s with just wasps. but at hero it was basically only ambush/snare/ambush, some deadfall + insects, too.

paralouit tried to use his beastmaster skills, so there's that at least.

I don't think they were actually changed.

NT

My 'perceived' nerf was when I was playing a felar beastmaster. While wasps may not have changed, I think what happened around that time 3-4 years ago is that you guys changed spells to more actively look at INT for success...and as I was a felar it made me "all of a sudden" land wasps a lot less than I was. either that or I was completely confused.

I have always had a difficult time with wasps landing regardless of character race. Fire giant feels the same as all the others, which is not a high percentage!

sp cloud
Your ability in the spell cloud of wasps is at 100%(100%)

With 25 INT.

In the mid-ranks it landed a fair amount. Toward hero with many enemies having good svs it was not unusual for it to take 3, or 4 casts to land on a good day.

As far as I can tell, the caster's INT isn't relevant.

Edit: Current terrain (not the ranger's terrain) matters a lot, though. A swamp is going to be more wasp-ful than a desert.

You just cleared up a lot of misinformation I was harboring I guess!

Why is a swamp more wasp-ful than a desert? Someone made a questionable assumption when implementing this spell.

On the other hand, when I've played waspy rangers I've found the spell fairly reliable everywhere.

It can work underwater but the success rate is very low there.

I would imagine that there are more prey insects for the wasps to eat in a swamp.

Wasps are part of the ant family and thrive just about anywhere, but in humid climates they exist in crazy numbers. The ratio of wasps to other insects in the deserts probably makes it seem like it's their home terrain, but it is just the failing of other insects.

I remember it being disgusting when it first came out only to get heavily nerfed at some point.

Anyway, as mentioned above, you can't really take a top 10 list to prove a point. A bottom 10 list might be more accurate since you're more likely to have baseline skills at their worst point in terms of nerfing. Really what you'd want to have is some way to give each build a 'budget' for burst damage and CC and use that.

Ranger revamp came in right at the end of Nreeishe's life. She was essentially a forest survivalist for 90+ percent of her life.

Nyst was forester/savage.
Garm was forester/beastmaster.

I played both. I also played Gmrrst, Siden and lots of throwaways.

The top 10 is kind of irrelevant to this discussion, because
pretty much everyone there has insects (besides iklahn).

*Any* ranger build can be extremely deadly with insects, if player is skilled,
and for some combos *cough* even without that much skill :-)

Nreisshe had a lot of things going for her, on top of insects.
The steaks + Lyristeon tattoo are amazing on any ranger.

I was lucky to get both, with Nyst, and I received them fairly late in the
character's life. I have no doubt that given 100 more hrs
with them, I would have killed more than Nreisshe, with a playerbase
that's a lot smaller. So, PK stats by themselves, seldom tell the whole truth,
and in some cases can be extremely misleading when comparing builds.

A good (neutral) way to go about that is to compare the builds in their stock
form. Do not assume leader, or tattoo or extra powers.

See my other response for more details.

Doh, why did I think you were marsh/savage. Played with and liked Nyst.

This is a response to everyone, not just you. The example would never be perfect. Every character in CF has a different skill set, powers, and rewards. I didn't take into account year, player base sizes, alignment, or insects. The variance does make any conclusion reached from the numbers less precise, but its the best that can really be done with how CF is so it is all we have to go on. If someone wants to run numbers POST terrain change, I'm fine with that as well.

All that being said, I don't think that beastmaster is bad. That doesn't make it good and/or strong though. It would shine with insects and a good ranger player, but any pursuit/explorer would likely shine more in that situation so that is a fairly moot point. I also wonder about how well a beastmaster in predators stance would do as a berserker, but that's a question for another day.

I am not against seeing their skills being tweaked, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon either. There are still other classes that need more individuality.

(As a side note, you must also have much better luck with call lightning to want it so bad. Ninety percent of the time I use it, it hurts them without finishing them and by the time I recover they have bolted.)

Understood, I'm not really angling for immediate changes here, just providing
feedback. Again I can see how someone might misunderstand what I wrote
and think that this is all to make certain builds deadlier or more PK-oriented
or whatever. I certainly play the game for PK more than anything else, but
it's really the fun factor that's being discussed here. You could tweak beastmasters
and make them more fun/straightforward to play without turning them into
PK monsters.

Call lightning (with the edge) is good because it's *reliable* (never fails at 100%).
The weather can be predicted/engineered and factored into the trap. As the hunter,
you have *some* idea of what kind of damage lightning will do to your prey,
say at a minimum a MANGLE. You can then prepare your trap accordingly, meaning
do enough damage to have them < MANGLE before you finish with lightning.

Maybe that's not possible? Then you need to have them stick around for that
to become possible, so you're looking to start slow, not scare them away, let
the damage build and then *BAM* finish :-)

It's something you can count on, that will seldom fail you if you plan it right.
I can't say the same about serpent kinship or bear kinship or ...

...that got predator's stance toned down because he was fisting people with it.

This was years ago though.

Nreisshe had no insect swarm. That leader bonus came after her time.

In fact, she also had no leader weapon or even the detect order spell, all she had was the steak skill that was a RC bonus.

I died to them enough as a serial outlander player at that point enough to remember painfully well. They had insects and were able to camo in the chasm as well though.

Yep, I did it rather quickly and as they don't have a class breakdown page I was just trying to roughly figure it out by looking at their skills/spells. Apparently I failed on a couple.

>Let me preface this with this big statement: I don't believe
>I've played a beastmaster at hero, though I've toyed around
>with them in the mid ranks. I have fought some as a few
>different characters.
>
>Really, it looks to me like this comes down to playstyle
>difference. If you want the big ambush followed by a
>potential snare and second ambush or call lightning,
>beastmaster is definitely not for you. You should be playing
>a savage.

Agreed. I don't think that anybody is saying here that *every*
ranger build should have the potential to be a powerhouse.
Some builds are offense oriented, some (animist) are defensive
powerhouses, others excel at exploring specific areas. This is all well
and good.

>
>The big advantage in my mind with something like wasps is that
>it doesn't allow them to rest and causes decent, continual
>damage (similar in manner to immolate, if not the same
>amount). If you can land a few entangles then land it and
>they flee and recall, there is a good chance they are still
>there sitting at their recall spot healing their health and
>moves. That leaves potential for planning for someone to sit
>there and be ready to bash. It really can be quite dangerous
>if landed late in a close fight right before someone flees.

Agreed. There are many situations that make wasps shine.
Having spent 1000+ hrs on beastmasters alone, all I can say
is that these sort of situations do not arise in practice very often.

You could spend a lot of time trying to engineer them of course,
but it just doesn't feel right. The same goes for serpent kinship.
On paper it looks good, even unchanged, with its random effects.
In practice, it ends up being mostly useless.

I have no problem with wasps as they are. I even agree that they
are very strong at midlevels, maybe even OP with the edge.
Look at Gmrrst PBF, most of the kills there are wasp kills from me
running around and trying to land them on everything that I saw.

Serpent kinship however just doesn't fit, it feels like a wasted
skill. It'd be better for it to be removed, and another skill
that ends up being *frequently* used take its place. Bird kinship
as described by Dallevian would be awesome.

>I still think you are underestimating wolf kinship, more when
>paired with something like beast call. Tracking mobs that
>cause people to flee is excellent, especially in random mazes
>(Like outside outlander of HToS).
>

Wolf is good, I used it a lot at hero. Again it's not something
that you will use in every fight (contrast that with most savage abilities)
and there were tracking bugs with it, but at least it provides results.

Again, I'm not trying to make beastmasters have the killing potential
of savages. I'm trying to make them more fun to play by having abilities
that end up being used in many situations, instead of being situational.

>
>I wouldn't mind seeing the other abilities touched up, but as
>it is I still consider this one of the three best expertises.
>As much as ambush onslaught, prot vs metal, and mace are
>nice.. I hate having to give up metal and it can make gearing
>a lot less enjoyable - especially if you don't have any druid
>friends. That isn't to say savage is bad, it and survivalist
>are both good.

The metal thing is just an annoyance. Yes, no druids means
you're crippled. But how often does that happen?

>I find the idea of hunter being better as funny, as there have
>been two I've seen that are scary. I really can't speak to
>animist as I've never played nor faced one, but from all
>accounts they don't seem deadly either.

My next ranger will be a hunter :-)

>
>Really, if someone has the time go through the rangers based
>on pk record and determine their terrain/expertise it could
>provide some more numbers to actually fuel this argument. As
>it is, I don't see it as beasmasters are bad.. they just
>aren't savage good.

This is not very useful I find, see my other post.

All in all, I think ranger in general is a class that asks for a stalking/trapping/predicting opponent play style, if you're
talking offense. The builds that fit with that, feel awesome to play.

The builds that don't fit with that and require 'runtime finesse', luck,
and the right situations (which beastmaster is a perfect example of)
feel kind of gimped and definitely not as fun as the other ones.

Well reasoned response.

Few small notes..

I am not saying hunter is bad. I think it has great potential, especially after seeing what Gougaf can do.

Having not played beastmaster at hero, you may be right that it does feel gimped.

I think that's part of the problem with insects...people build around it but I don't want to play a beastmaster hoping that the leader will die in a relatively short period of time and I'll also be in a position to steal the spot.

I have liked survivalist, animist, hunter, and savage all better than beastmaster. I've played probably 6 beastmasters in hero range, 2 at level 51.

Predators stance is good for gnome killing, I'll give it that.

Serpent kin is more likely to get you killed than to contribute in killing someone else.

Wolf kinship, great skill, worth the level you get it at.

Wasps, ok, ridiculously hard to land, awesome in 30s, super duper easy to manage once a hero though (either by gold, spells, preps, whatever).

Bear kinship? They have more health since the change, that's the only thing I've noticed. They don't do anything else though, no bash, bearcharge, dirt kick, swipe, claw, nada. Different terrain bears should do different things.

Tame? Let me help some people out on all the mobs that cannot be charmed:

spiderhaunt creatures
siege encampment creatures (jaguar, boar, lizard, etc)
dire wolves and other animals (bear, moose, deer, etc)
cavefisher and juvenile
basilisks
different serpents
arctic bear or yeti
moss, obliviax, or other assorted ysigrath creatures
heck, i even tried charming shrine mobs just to see (thought i might get lucky with baer's jaguar!)

What does that leave you? In order of ok-ness you can charm
snow leopard, crocodile from swamp, and wooly mammoth. yes there are others but they're all low level or worthless

Anyway, wasps and wolfkin are good, the latter more so, but I've found call lightning is a better killer/sealer than the other two combined.

Not only that but there are some terrains where you can't even use some of the beastmaster skills (water, cold, desert).

Now, ideas on how to improve beastmaster

Bird kinship - allows a ranger to call a bird and whisper it a name of a visible opponent. if that person is outdoor it will report back the location or general direction.

Serpent kinship - allow different serpents to be called that are tailored to the effects. Add neurological poisoning as one, confuse as another, + the current muddle, bleeding, hold person, poison. Increase the success rate. Or at least address the hold person effect, it makes no sense why it only last 4 rounds on a pc but 3 ticks on an npc (is it broken?).

Bear kinship - make them stronger in damage + additional effects

Tame - make some current mobs tame-able

Wolf kinship - let the mob be tamed and charmed if the rangers wants

Predator's stance - add some active skills to where if a ranger is fighting like that, they can do some additional in-combat skills, maybe make it terrain based. It'd be great if one of those was a way to lag someone (you're already giving up parry/shield block if so).

It's been years since I bothered to play a beastmaster but they've been in a bad place since predator's stance got tweaked downward with no discernible buffs.

Bears were always a liability, serpent kinship was too random to be useful (and the helpfile for it too vague on the effects) and wolf kinship was basically enhanced beastcall, but if you were already winning you were probably more likely to win just bearcharging again, and if you were losing you were wasting time trying to dump a tracking mob on people who had movement to walk away from it. Most people already fighting you were already fully capable of tanking you at hero.

Most of what was cited above was what turned me off of them after the first time. I wanted to play more with predator's stance but the lack of defensive benefit of doing so makes it nonsensical to use. It's a risky ironhands (and ironhands is already mediocre after being toned down from essentially erasing the opponent's ability to parry completely)

nt

I played one Beastmaster to Hero years ago and agree with everything you stated. I have no plans to play another. The Beastmaster skills are woefully underwhelming. I don't have time to put hundreds of hours into wasted characters.

Oh, I most often tamed the scorpions on the dry riverbed in hopes of getting some extra poison. That's how sad that skill is.

Hutto, the Sleepy