I’m leveling a Beastmaster now, around level 41, using DoT aftershock earthquake (WMDs), serpent strike (stacks dodge and global DoT damage with primal instinct and chrono strike and does respectable damage on its own), frenzy totem and entangling roots. Should I choose a companion for my final skill?
I’m quite certain I’m going to stick with frenzy totem, earthquake and serpent strike, but I’m not sure what else to pick. I don’t have any minion stats, I don’t really have the mana to use on companion abilities and none of the companions seem to boost my damage in a big way without investment. Can any of them be made to work well with a pure melee build?
Other options also seem poor. Fury leap is mobility, but overall will almost certainly be a DPS loss, tornado gives a modest attack and movement speed buff for a manageable mana cost, but I won’t be able to make it do any damage. Given my mana issues, even entangling roots doesn’t really seem worth it so far compared to just murdering things and leeching health back with earthquake. I feel very strong, with massive damage output, great sustain and lots of health and dodge, but I’m not sure what to do with my skills.
If you did take a pet, you could then pick up the passives that give you buffs while you only have 1 let out. I’ve not really played beastmaster much, but the wolf’s howl is a nice buff. Also, don’t forget that Serpent Strike can be modded to kill any mob at 24% of their hp so you get to avoid the final quarter of the fight which is a ~32% (100% / 76%) dps increase.
If you really don’t care for the pet much wolve is probably the way to go, since it’s ability buffs you.
Also don’t underestimate Fury Leap, while the animation is pretty long and a dps loss when you can do straight dps, it’s mobilty and buff component are nice, especially for the later MoF bosses.
You can spec into self buffs afer fury leap and increase it’s area and take the node that pulls enemies together on the landing area.
Self buffs include up to 30% attack and cast speed.
It can also summon poisonous vines which poison on hit(usefull for your other skills synergies with poison)
Also in case you wanna take wolve and fury leap you can spec that your wolves leaps with you, which makes your wolv a little bit more controllable.
There is also a node in frenzy totem which resets compaion ability on frenzy totem cast, which can lead to high uptime for the wolv buff. And there are frenzy totem nodes that increase the potency of wolve, sabertooth or scoprion companion ability.
You could also go for fully poison scorpion. It has alot of stuff that poison and interact with poisons. There is also a node that gives you attack speed when standing in one of its poison pools.
There are two major nodes in the passive tree which boosts your companion considerably if you only have one active. One of the nodes boosting it’s health, the other it’s damage, whgile the damage probably is neglectable if you don’t spec into minion stats, the health one certainly can help that your companion is not dead 24/7.
There is also a pretty strong branch on the passive ftree involving aspect of lync, which gives crit chance and requires you to use your companion ability. This in conjuction with the companion ability reset on frenzy totem is bonkers, especially the wolve one.
TL:DR:
Either Wolve(for crit) or Scorpion(for more poison)
Fury Leap for self buffs and Vines that poison.
Frenzy Totem has nodes that resets and boost companion abilities
I assume that wolf howl won’t stack with frenzy totem since both are “frenzy”. Is that correct? I probably won’t have time to test today.
Does aspect of the lynx stack? That seems crazy, though the bulk of my damage is DoT since I don’t think I can afford any of the buffs to the direct hit of either earthquake or serpent strike, so I’m not sure how much I can get out of building for crits.
Going for chrono strike leaves me very inflexible with other choices in serpent strike. Considering how much other attack speed I can get elsewhere, maybe I should ignore those nodes and pick crit chance and instant kill threshold? Attack speed is just so good for me, though.
