Beast Mastery! Comments on

Beast Mastery

When this set was announced, way back whenever, I was not very excited. In fact, of the ‘new’ sets (Dual Blades and up), it is easily the set I didn’t care about. This was partly due to the look of the set, and also comments I read on the forums.
But hey..world ending and all..so I figured I would buy it with my last few points and give it a crack. I got it earlier this month, and have been playing it. Just dinged 50, and thought I’d make some comments on it.


Visual.

I don’t like how the pets look, not really. The Wolves are the worst..I think they just look pretty crap. Not so much ‘badly’ don’t as not fitting at all in the CoX theme. Or what I see as the theme. I just see it as the devs getting seriously too excited about their 4 legged rig.

The Dire Wolf looks..ok. Perhaps cause it is more Beast like..as opposed to just a damn dog. Or lion. And on THAT issue..why is the power called Summon Lions..and then they spawn as..Lioness? Really?

Also, as good as some of the 4 legged animations can be..a lot are just..crap. In particular, a lot of the time when ordering pets in a new direction, they just magically spin and rotate on the spot, all 4 legs locked still. I honestly can’t recall how other pets move, but I am almost sure my other MMs (necro, demon, bots) do not have this issue. Perhaps due to being two legged and less complex animations. Not sure.

Also, I think the 3 above MMs spoiled me, but one of the BEST things in this game, was how, when upgrading pets..you could see it. Grave knights get armour and big glowy swords, bots sprout huge missile racks, demons eyes glow and the trial fire.
But..Beasts..umm..wtf? I think the dire wolf’s eyes glow, a bit. That’s IT. GJ art team.

In the good column..The do have some REALLY nice animations. There is s semi pouncey type jump they do, when attacking, that looks great. My fav though is a Lion (sorry! Lioness) attack, where they stand on their forelegs, and do like a 1,2,3 slash with their claws. It looks great..really vicious> There is also a sort of graphic overlay for it, showing claw strikes in the air. Looks cool.


Personal attacks and Fluff powers.

All the MMs have these. Some personal attacks are ok. I think the whip ones can be all right, mostly due to the damage type. A lot of other sets have just lethal or smash damage..which, combined with the lousy base damage, make then worse.

The Beast attacks are like that..all lethal. The hawk has some nice KB in it, and all of them have pretty animations. The gimmick as it were..is that the attacks all add this Pack Mentality..which is a stacking damage bonus and crit chance for the pets. Which sounds great..till you see it is only 2% damage each time. Given most pet attacks are like..50 damage..2% of that, lethal damage, against a resistant baddie..not much! But better than nothing I guess.

The +crit chance does seems to help though, and I see they critting a LOT. The fluff power is Fortify Pack..that adds a stacking +def/regen to pets, depending on how many stacks of PM you have. The values are pretty good..and with a few stacks, its +14% def to all for 60 secs. Trouble is..after that, they cant crit or get the bonus damage.

The power sounds ok..and just owning it lets your pets crit more...but..the amount of times I have used it up to 50, I could skip it. In no way is it crucial like Gang War. Even worse, it can;t take the Rech pet sets.

I think it is..hit and miss. Good in a way, that the personal attacks can help your pets indirected, and the Fluff power works together..but it really is a ‘gimmick’ effects. And not a greatly improving one.


The Pets.

I think all I have read was pretty correct. Especially Reppu’s threads. The damage is all lethal but for the Dire Wolf. He does have some ok stuns and cones, but, compared to the utter crazyiness of AssBot, or the good damage + control of Demon Prince? Just seems..average. very.

The pets do have some nice stats..11% def to all, and a Tri type resist, fire cold lethal.
They do seem to lack some attacks though, and the complete lack of ANY range on the t1 and t2 pets is utterly retarded. If a zombie can at least get a vomit, surely a wolf can get a ranges tail swipe. It also makes it very easy for the pets to aggro, when running in (they have to get RIGHT next to a target) and even more so when chasing someone down.
Also, the heal they get..Lick Wounds. I think this power is broken, sucks, or both. I have only seen it happen ONCE and it does jack. Compared to say..bots and their ally heals, or demons and that heal..just utterly shite. Even zombies and their brainless timing for life drains are better.

They also get a few ally +dam/def buffs which..really don’t suddenly make them awesome. At all. Also, because they are long recharging pbaoes, quite a lot, they miss each other. Again..compared to the Prot bots bubbles and demons Ember shield..just crap. Added that those two examples buff YOU, the player..and..well..nothing special.

Overall..very average set. With serious issues with no range, no constant buffs and broken healing.

It's pretty well known that BM was the weakest MM primary they put out, just another one of those things you don't want to touch, even with a thirtynine and a half foot pole.

Thing is, you have to take Fortify Pack or you don't get the buffs.

The dogs should spit bees.

I haven't played the set... pretty much only reason to play it is if you really want to have animal pets. But I bought it and I finally PL'd my little beast MM to 16 yesterday... gonna try to get to 22 and then play a few times just to get a feel for it and justify buying it. Mostly, though, I was never a fan of MMs anyway, and with a level 50 bots/dark I feel like I've got a good feel for what one of the better MMs can accomplish. Probably should have played one with gang war though, that's one thing I've never had the chance to play with in the game, but it's hard to do everything and I really tried. ^_^

I had fun with Beast Mastery (and it didn't hurt that I've had the name Happy Fluffy Puppy since launch of CoV looking for a concept). Was it the most powerful set? Probably not. But I've never been one to run at +4/8, even on my incarnates, and was reasonably effective.

It wasn't the best set, and I REALLY had to watch my pack to make sure they didn't die, but it was still a blast to play. Yes, I hoped it would get "fixed" some day, but even if it didn't I was willing to trade a bit of power for fun and concept.

What I REALLY wanted was animations/emotes for the pets, so I could tell them to sit, or lie down, or SHUT THE HELL UP!!

I wanted the Vanity Pet myself. It should have followed you by moving whenever you weren't looking at it, you know, like Watson.

Beast Mastery is ok but needs to be run creatively to get use out of it. The Lioness's regularly use an AOE buff that improves the pets speed and damage. but it doesn't last long enough and they usually don't use it at a good time. They tend to use it when 'not' in battle. You can wait til they roar and then attack, but this can be annoying. If put on passive though, they won't use it. Put them on defensive or aggressive and they roar immediately if it's ready, so that you can control when it's used and attack at the best time.
Since they are all mainly melee, you can't heal them all with most healing sets without getting dangerously close to the front lines and single target heals may not be enough. Nature affinity is an exception. Have all the beast attack one target and they cluster on that target, face them and you can use the cone heal on all of them (can't remember the name) and stay at range. Works well with the heal patch also.