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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliber" data-source="post: 4772220" data-attributes="member: 1310">Beastmaster Rangers are an odd breed, more towards a Defender, with the extra body and the huge pool of "free" HP, than a Striker. Your damage is likely to be lower if you try to rely on your beast for damage at all, at least once you start leveling up. The lack of any magical item bonuses, or even feats to improve damage, will quickly leave your beast behind anything you can dish out. For Beastmasters, I have seen just a few builds that seem reasonably playable:Beastmaster Archer v1 - essentially use your beast to place your Quarry on whomever you want (you can measure the "closest enemy" from your beast) and otherwise play like a normal Archery Ranger, with the beast making up for your loss of free Toughness. Beastmaster Archer v2 - as above, plus use Beast Protector and the Sharpshooter PP to give yourself an OA anytime your beast is attacked. Send him into harms way and happily fill anyone who lays a hand on him full of arrow. Beastmaster Dualer - somewhat like the first archer build, just use your beast as a mobile flanking platform, but only attack using standard melee Ranger powers. Note you lose the ability to use one-handed weapons in your off-hand here, a rather heavy blow. Full Beastmaster - this one is tricky to pull off. You don't get an At-Will comparable to Twin Strike, and in fact only get to attack with both yourself and your beast using Encounter or Daily powers. Your beast's damage will be respectable at first, but will rapidly be outclassed as you gain levels (although their to-hit will always be rather nice, as will their HP). Even using big heavy two handers, expect to do noticeably less damage, not to mention that your scant number of healing surges are being eaten up not only by you (that two hander means wading into melee) but also by your beast, which only has two surges of its own. Also, you are now doubly vulnerable to affects like Stun or Daze, as they can easily take out one or the other of your two man team; Stun or Daze the Ranger and the beast if effectively Stunned or Dazed as well. Stun or Daze the beast and most of the Ranger's Encounter and Daily abilities lose out on over half of their benefit. For the record, I'm playing a Full Beastmaster myself right now. A few other players have remarked on my low damage, and I've noticed it myself. I have some ideas on how to transform it into a better build (look at "<a href="http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1141405" target="_blank">Da Bleeder</a>" for an idea on where I'm going) but I'm not sure what would give a more viable route. Good luck, post any solutions you come up with. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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