When Rift first came out I really liked the idea of doing a 'tag team' set up with a pet which I assumed was the idea with Beastmaster.
This was long before WoW changed Survival hunters to be pretty much that. I never got round to doing that in WoW or playing Rift til recently. But when I did I went back to my original idea.
As a levelling build I have found Beastmaster with Champion and Warlord subsouls has a lot to offer with plenty of heals, plenty of AOE and powerful finishers which synergise well with Beastmaster's DOTs.
I've spent 16 points in Champion to get Savage Sweep, Shared Suffering, 3/3 One on many, Chains of Life, Mighty Blow
Chains of Life which is great survival tool allowing you to pull big groups.
Even with 0 spent in Warlord you get Sergeant's Order which is an extremely fast way of getting a mob away from the aggro range of others. After some experimenting with various subsouls for different ranged abilities for pulling this ability is by far the most efficient means ive found. You could argue that the default ranged auto attack is sufficient. But then you dont have a pet that's in and pulled a whole load of ads by the time your shot goes off.
I've gone 12 points into Warlord to get Battlefield Medic, Calculating Blow, Backhand, Neck Punch, Breaking Blow, Bladefury.
Mark of Inevitability has some usefulness but it has MASSIVE aggro range,
Everything else has gone into Beastmaster, though I'm only 51 atm so I still have points to come. They'll probably go into BM too.
I've focused mostly on BM talents that buff me and my DPS rather than my pets. Or ones that help with survivability. That's because I'm using the tank pet more as an offtank. Ive started giving my pet's DPS a bit of love too. And it's starting to put out some decent DPS.
As to which pet is best I actually prefer the armoured cat. Its hard to keep her alive when she's toe to toe with a tough elite. But she is a great off-tank. She also kicks out a decent amount of damage too. (Compared to me anyway)
(I personaly hate the DPS pet as the constant flapflapflapflap gets on my nerves. Plus theyre too squishy to use as an offtank.)
I dont use macros. I have 12 keybinds for the abilities on my bars and i toggle between a bar for single target setup and a bar for AOE.
For single target my builders are: Cutting Slash/Fierce Strike/Empowering Strike. Then I use Backhand/Vicious Opportunity (if its procced) followed by Tearing Slash
Then I start building again first with another Cutting Slash and then a couple of Vicious Blow which should really be hurting by now with all the dots.
At this point i finish with a Breaking Blow which takes out a nice big chunk of health. if they are an elite I'll probably have to do all that again. If it's not then a mix of DOTs and Vicous Blows should take off whatever's left.
For groups I set my pet on one target and gather up the rest using Sergeant's Order to drag in any casters/ranged.
I start with Savage Sweep and then 2 Mighty Blow plus maybe a Primal Heal to get some extra effect from Savage Sweep.
Then I'll use Chains of Life if its a tough pack or theyre chewing me and the pet up a bit. Or Bladefury instead for extra DPS.
Anyway, no doubt Im doing a few things very wrong.
I'm more than certain this isn't suited for group/raid play, but I'm a long way off having to worry about that right now.
So far this has let me solo a few dungeons, take on tougher elites and large packs of ads.
And I'm having a blast!
