Beastmasters rolling with their animal charmies/tamed animals... Is this battlerager-kosher or would it be frowned on?

Maybe just bad mojo for berserker? All paths? None? Thoughts?

I've played more beastmasters than anyone I know, multiple top tier ones at hero.

The build is buggy, with serious bugs that have remained there for years
and also compared to other ranger builds, very frustrating with multiple
skills that are pretty much useless game-theory and frequency-of-use wise
in terms of PK. If you're a great ranger player, you can rack up the numbers
since you have ambush, snare and serpent strike. But otherwise, pick a
different build.

Let me re-iterate some of the previous points I've raised:

Tame is simply garbage. For the vast majority of situations you'd like to have
a charmed pet, it's more of a hindrance than a benefit since you can't waylay
with a charmed pet and it's also giving away your position. The pets available
to tame are laughable at hero but the waylay issue alone cripples this skill
which is supposed to be the highlight of the build?!?


Wolf kinship has serious bugs re: tracking and initiating, and it fails often with
2 rounds of lag on you. You also can't tame the kinship wolf which is beyond
lame. Finally, it *will* mess up snared victims too by initiating on them. Still, a
usable skill unlike tame.

Serpent kinship is just lagging yourself, unreliable to the point where game-theory
wise it's a mistake 9/10. You're better off doing 2 serpent strikes in the vast
majority of situations.

Wasps is 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. 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. How many serpent strikes is that?


Bears were garbage but they'd been tweaked some time ago. I assume they
have same issues with tame, messing up waylay and so on. If not, maybe
they're usable.


Predator's stance can and will be frequently dodged and is really only

good for shield users that don't dodge well since it's unblockable. Damage has
been nerfed years ago and it's also useless vs polearms. Since you can't
serpent strike unarmed, in practice it's mostly useless.


All in all, if one wants to be real scary with beastmaster he should stay at mid-levels,
get apiarist and abuse wasps or pick marsh as terrain and look to land both
wasps and mosquitos possibly by feigning weakness and getting ppl to
commit/stick around (good luck killing non-newbies with that but hey it's an
option). This strategy doesn't work at hero.

So overall, we have here a ranger build with extremely situational and niche
expertise skills. The skills that are supposed to define it, are non-deterministic,
fail a lot or extremely weak at hero. Why would you put yourself through that?

>Beastmasters rolling with their animal charmies/tamed
>animals... Is this battlerager-kosher or would it be frowned
>on?
>
>Maybe just bad mojo for berserker? All paths? None? Thoughts?

IMHO you'll be happier with any other build. Beastmasters are broken more or less. Tames mobs suck, don't camo and are a liability more than anything at hero range. Same can be said for bears. Wolves are great, and serpent is... more or less lagging yourself. You lose wasps as a rager, which is great if it lands. I dunno.. way better ranger builds out there imho. Predators stance is awesome tho, esp on a Felar. But your ranger staff will suck as you can't imbue it. ..meh tried it, deleted. If you just have a killer role and like the idea... they are great for explore and NPC fight..

NT

also it's easy to dodge and doesn't work well vs polearms.

However, can still call serpent.

nt

I've clarified this exact point with some Battle imm a year or two ago.

That being said, the primary downside to a ranger villager is that fighting at the big D or the giant, you're not in wilderness. (Unless something has changed.)

Serpentkin are nice if they hit. Again, no wilderness, not sure you can call them either raiding or defending, unless you're attacking the Refuge. So... meh.

NT

If you have truesight (detect magic) up, it's visible. That said, giant is wilderness. Serpentkin can get you a kill or two. Predator stance with deathblow is probably the most DPS you can pump out outside of sick gear and it's more with sick gear. However, the build suffers from no lag and it's a struggle to keep wilderness timer happy with the raids and retrievals. I suspect hero range is no picnic as most have no reason to go to the wilds at all and not many will fight you at the giant.

though I'm not entirely certain it shouldn't be.

At the moment, I generally don't see anything that would be wrong with wolf or serpent kinship.

Themically, I would probably personally be fine with bear kinship and tamed charmies as well.

Mechanically, both bears and tamed creatures count as "charmed". I *believe* it used to show up with detect magic, but once conjurers showed up, that got split to where only detect charm shows it. Means while Ragers wouldn't have any way to see it now, other characters still could, and that's sorta awkward.

That aside, the other consideration as to whether it's "ragerly" or not is the self-reliance. Does that still count if you're hauling a bear around with you, or use your animal instinct mojo to convince some leopard to help you? That's sorta up in the air.

Given all think the part of the tablet concerned for charmed creatures could use a bit of specification. If you go by mechanics, technically Tribunal guards are "charmed". Should they kill any Tribunal with guards?

When it comes down to it, my preference would be to have a logic that makes sense and agrees with the mechanics of the game. Right now, I think there *has* to be a little bit of leaning towards the RP consideration somewhere in the conversation, and that would come down to how well you make your point vs. someone arguing against you. Ysal and I will probably have some debate on the topic and see where we both come down on the issue.

If you kill a trib special guard the trib doesn't take damage.

If you kill a beast masters bear the ranger takes damage.

In some ways that bear is similar to a familiar.

I bet I'd be able to talk my way out of anything concerned with bears as a beastmaster.

VIPs would love to call that cheating, but they can't boot me from the village.

The bear death echo is something about "your extreme empathy" damaging you. Definitely not a magical connection, but you just feeling like #### because your bear-homie died.

Whoa. Thanks for the thorough breakdown!

Definitely a weird grey area there. I'd think it would be a bit more of a problem for a Berserker (as parity is held to a higher standard) than it would be a Scout/Defender, but the "self-reliance" bit is also directed towards all villagers as a whole.

It definitely has nothing to do with "magic," so I don't think that needs to come into the debate at all... My dog will attack you if you assault me. That's hardly magical-- just loyalty.

So it definitely comes back to the grey area of whether or not it's encroaching on a Rager's "self-reliance." That's the tricky part.

20 pks is the most by a battle ranger. Bleh.

I'd argue it's totally cool to let a Battle Ranger use their animals. Mechanically, yeah they might be charmed but I think the RP is solid as it's more of a kinship. Their talent IS befriending animals and that's what makes them more dangerous. (I've never played one just speculating. Unless it's a spell used to befriend them).

I'd also like to opine on if this is a similar situation to nightwalkers being not magical. I think the mechanics point more to them being magical but the RP of them being a cabal granted power make them not?