Revised top 10 list (July 21st)...

[Tastian]

One more revision lol.  This will likely be submitted on friday unless I hear otherwise.  Please feel free to comment again and PM me/e-mail me with any issues you have.  If you feel an issue isn't clear or have a better example you'd like to see mentioned please let me know.  If you spot some it's/its error or other such issues please just PM me and I'll make the changes.  If you simply don't see an item on the list, then please just wait for the next revision.  These lists will keep changing and a couple of the issues on this top 10 list are things that are very easy to respond to and fix, so just like before we'll have more room to add issues that didn't quite make it in this time through.


1) Weapon skill caps - This is a long standing beastlord issue that needs addressing. Currently the differance in skill caps does very little as far as beastlord power is concerned. However, it has a very negative effect on weapon selection. HtH weapons are quite rare and if you look at the case of PoP progression you see Battle fists on TZ, pet weapon in fire, followed by wraps on xegony, then shinai in time. That's it. Now a beastlord who is duel wielding needs two weapons and like most weapons all of these are lore. What happens is you have beastlords looking to other weapon types such as 1hb and piercing. The problem becomes a weapon that is a clear upgrade for another class might actually be a downgrade for a beastlord. HtH weapons will always be highly desired by beastlords because of the quality of the weapon. Having 1hb/piercing and 2hb capped the same would simply allow beastlords to help fill the gaps at times when hth weapons simply aren't available. Also it would make most upgrades much more intuitive. Other classes don't have to ask around before going from a 17 on 20 to an 18 on 20.

Possible solution:

- Raise all beastlord skill caps up to 250 just like HtH is currently.


2) Pet buff box - The resent changes to pets have been wonderful and I think it's safe to say all pet classes are very happy with the changes. What most of us were wondering is if it's possible to have the pet buffs display their remaining time and to also be able to click off pet buffs like we do our own buffs.

There are a lot of situations where this would be very useful. For example pet haste is a very important buff, but it has a big refresh timer when you first mem it. If it fades during a fight the beastlord will be in a much harder situation. Spell slots are already pretty limited as it is and not everyone has half a dozen egg timers around to keep up with pet haste, fero, haste, regen, etc.

Also you have situations such as with hobble of spirit and other buffs that once they land on the pet you can't get rid of them or overwrite. When a paladin lands brells on the pet there is no way to get vigor on the pet for the extra atk outside of waiting for brells to fade or dispelling the pet down to the buff you are after. With all the ninja buffing going on, pet affinity and now pets zoning it's simply become more and more common to find a buff on your pet that you simply don't want or that is blocking something you do want from taking hold.

Possible solutions:

- Make it so that pet buffs show their remaining duration just like player character buffs now do.

- Allow the player to click off buffs (non-detremental of course) from their warder's buff box just like they can their own.

3) Aggro issues - This is a big beastlord issue that a lot of people don't quite understand. Beastlords are ok with getting aggro from high aggro spells such as slow and incapacitate. Beastlords are also ok with getting aggro when they are simply putting out more damage or doing things that obviously should draw the mob's attention. The problems with beastlord aggro become clear in raid situations and many grouping situations though. What you'll have is the beastlord operating in a total dps role. By that I mean the beastlord isn't on slow duty or debuffing the mob, but rather is just contributing damage via melee/nukes/dots. In this situation a beastlord is generating far more aggro for the damage they are doing than most if not all other classes.

Again the problem isn't when a beastlord is doing 200dps and they get aggro over someone doing 150dps. Rather you have situations where a beastlord is actually doing less damage than many other classes, they haven't debuffed the mob or done anything else to generate aggro, yet they are the ones that pull aggro off the MT or get summoned and killed first on tank changes. Some would say that the beastlord simply has to do less damage or watch their aggro with that tank. However, this same tank that can't keep aggro off the beastlord doing X damage is successfully keeping aggro off the wizard doing X+100 damage or the rogue doing X + 50 damage, etc.

There are currently several reasons for this issue. The first of which is how beastlords do their damage. Melee, nukes, and dots all generate differing amounts of aggro. DoTs are currently very high aggro, poison counters are high aggro, and it's been shown that focus effects and crit DoT AA add to aggro well nuke focus/AA does not. Also you have the fact that beastlords are the only offensive melee class that doesn't have any means of lowering their aggro outside of simply doing less damage. Rangers have jolt, rogues evade, and monks FD.

Possible solutions:

- Look into DoT aggro. As it stands now the ratio of damage to aggro on many of these spells is far to high both before and after focus/AA are considered. This is not a beastlord specific issue by any means as shaman and necros have similar problems.

- Make future AAs more in line with how beastlords work. That means more spell crit AAs and AAs that add damage without adding extra aggro.

-  Consider adding a disc to beastlords similiar to what warriors got except instead of increasing hate, have it lower hate.

- Finally, consider adding a DEaggro component to feral swipe (see below for more information please).

4) Improve pet heals - Currently healing of sorsha (62 beastlord heal) is all but unuseable by beastlords. The spell sees some use as the beastlord levels up, but as the beastlord progresses the spell gets used less and less. The main problem with the heal is it's 9 second casting time. In almost any situation a beastlord would find themselves wanting to cast a heal on their pet 9 seconds is just far too long to wait. As such many beastlords simply don't mem the spell at all.

Possible solution:

- Lower the casting on sorsha to ~3.5 seconds. This makes it possible to actually have the heal land in the situations where you would be using it. With the lower casting time beastlords would understand a recast time being added to the spell so that our sustained healing per second and our efficency didn't change from what it currently is. Our intention isn't to improve the spell as much as it is to simply make it functional.

5) Feral swipe issues - Feral swipe is an AA that has a lot of potential, but unfortunately suffers from several issues. The first problem with feral swipe is that its current dps boost is very minor. In even the best of situations the skill does noteably less damage than kick does. The skill being on a one minute refresh is very streaky and it's not unheard of to go 15 minutes without having a single feral swipe land. Also the AA still has a small range issue. The range was increased once, but it wasn't quite enough. There are still monsters that you can melee, but you can't land your feral swipes on. Spacing is extremely important in these cases and as such feral swipe becomes completely useless. Finally, feral swipe takes up yet another hot key space that is getting to be in almost as much demand as spell gem spaces. When a beastlord has pet controls, kick, prot spirit, possibly spells and macros along with other AAs in their hot key bank they simply don't have room to add another button. I know several beastlords that haven't purchased this skill simply because they have no room to actually activate it well playing.

Possible solutions:

- Please improve the range of feral swipe a bit more. The first change fixed most of the issues, but there are still some fights where the skill simply can't be used.

-  Raise the hit% on feral swipe and give it a higher min damage.  Most are happy with not having to spam feral swipe like they do kick, but with feral swipes current hit% and it's damage range the skill simply doesn't do enough damage to warrant the 9AA and the skill slot.

- Raise the damage on feral swipe and have it lock out kick. This keeps the AA as the dps booster it was, but allows it to take the place of kick. Thus just swapping out the kick hot key for the new feral swipe one. Having the new skill average out to being a bit more damage than feral swipe + kick now does would be great.

- Forget the dps portion of feral swipe and turn this skill into a means of lowering beastlord aggro. The skill should always land in that case and would simply reduce the beastlords hate similiar to jolt or possibly lowering hate intitally and then lowering it a bit more overtime.

6) Pet runspeed - This is mainly an issue indoors, but what happens is you have beastlords with various ranks of AA run speed and swift journey that leads to the pet simply getting left behind sometimes or taking awhile to catch up.

Possible solution:

- Have the pet naturally move at a faster rate.

- Have the pet take on the AA runspeed that the owner has.

7) Suspended pets zoning - I know it has been stated that currently there is no desire to have suspended pets zone, but beastlords would like this looked into a bit more, or atleast more of an explaination as to why this isn't allowed. The real issue with this comes about while running through several dangerous zones, or if your invis drops while you are leaving a dangerous zone. In those cases you either have to try to unsuspend your pet before zoning or lose them.

Possible solutions:

- Let suspended pets zone.

- Have a check to see if the player has a pet currently out or not.  If the player does already have one pet out then poof the suspended pet upon zoning.  If the player doesn't have a pet out, then simply let the suspended pet zone.  This would keep the player limited to 1 pet well zoning, but would let them zone well invis and zone after losing invis without trying to unsuspend their pet.

7+1) Hobble of spirits - This is an AA for beastlords that again sees very little use because of a few major issues. First of all the proc buff overwrites rellic, but you can't overwrite hobble back again. This would be a non-issue if #2 from above were done. Currently though being locked into hobble and losing your other proc for it's duration is a problem. Also hobble doesn't stack with rellic. The beastlord gives up a lot of damage and a stun to get a semi-reliable snare currently.

Possible solutions:

- Allow all proc buffs to overwrite each other.

- Allow hobble of spirits to stack with other beastlord proc buffs.

- Add a second rank to hobble that gives the snare proc a DD component as well.

9)  Tureptan Spirit -  This spell is the result of the KT rune turn in for beastlords in GoD.  The spell is a copy of our level 61 spell "infusion of spirit", but hits the entire group instead of a single player.  The main issue with this spell is that by the time almost every beastlord can aquire it they simply don't need it.  The spell was something lower level beastlords had requested, but for where the spell comes from it has almost no use.  Beastlords simply want this looked into and made into something that is atleast worth looting the rune for.

Possible solutions:

-  Change the spell to match the current heal rangers get.  Beastlords and rangers have had identical heal/regen spells at the same levels since beastlords went into the game.  With GoD this suddenly changed with no explaination.  If it's intended that beastlords directly heal worse than rangers do because of the shaman/druid relationship, then please consider a heal over time spell.

-  Make the spell tradeable.  There has been a lot of talk about GoD spells becoming tradeable, but this spell could atleast see some use from lower level beastlords.  Of course, then you still have the issue of the spell being basically worthless to those that actually aquire it.

-  Make the spell group talisman of kragg.  Even when a shaman isn't around beastlords at the KT level seldom have to stat buff their group members, but they do hp buff them.  

10)  Bestial Frenzy -  Last and certainly not least is the beastlord double attack AA.  This issue has been brought up already and we have been told that it was passed along, but we still have no word back as of yet.  This issue is actually just a bug that has recently come up.  Originally this AA granted its bonus to both the main hand and the offhand.  However, a patch changed that and now beastlords are unable to double attack with their offhand even after purchasing this AA.  This same issue effects bards currently.  We suspect that it had something to do with the changes that were done to allow the "ferocity" line of worn effects to work for bards and beastlords.  

Possible solutions:

-  Fix the AA back to how it previously was please.  Really no other way to say it.  Currently beastlords/bards are losing 15% of their off-hand damage and ~6% of their total melee damage because of this bug.

[SilvermaeneRZ]

imo turepetian spirit would be better if it was a group kragg than ios.. when I buff because there isnt a shaman prescent I mind casting kragg 6 times way more than I mind casting ios.  

something about pets zoning with suspended minion.  The only realy reason I would like this to work is when zoning invis.. So how about forget zoning with a minion suspended and let me invis myself without my dog popping.

[Shambler]

allmost all good changes, I know im late but Ill pitch some copper.

Do beastlords have any serious GoD issues? or just some spells?

glad to see we are not asking for the moon (/snickers at unintentional pun)
However I think some of these are just ease of play issues and not aimed at balancing the class... although I fell my beast is already in the better off than most classes category... so maybe thats a good thing.

#1 is great, love it
#7+1) Hobble of spirits : I was under the impresion it would stack when I got it heh.. sad for me when i found out it wasn't free snare.

#3 I never get agro from any Tanking class /shrug but if its a problem go for it. I'm guessing its more of an uba beast problem heh. Not using the DoT's seems to help.

#6 Shamies have been trying for years(since they gave em pets) to get their spirit wolf to have the spirit of the wolf as an inate ability. I will laugh if they finaly do it after all these years. I'll save my whining for the crucible if my beast gets it and my shaman dosn't though hehe. A new shrew spell wouldn't be a bad fix, although a somewhat PITA.

#7 I don't mind makeing a decision to zone invis or zone w/ pet.. IMO decisions make the game fun. I don't see the issue as worth pushing.. unless we just need filler to reach 10 items.

[Dummkopf]

#7 I don't mind makeing a decision to zone invis or zone w/ pet.. IMO decisions make the game fun. I don't see the issue as worth pushing.. unless we just need filler to reach 10 items.

You asked if there are GoD problems? well, this is one since you have to move invis or move fast because some invis critter saw you and its not an option to unsuspend a pet if a train is hitting for over 1k each on you before you zone. Letting the pet live during invis would be another solution though.

I would like to see the case of Tureptan Spirit on the list (probably next week if not this one), a useless spell is not very nice and i would really like to see us getting a comparable heal to rangers, probably as HoT though to keep more in line with our parent class.

[Nalitra]

I don't know if they are taking these lists and doing stuff in the order they appear on the list.  If that's the case, I think the Bestial Frenzy bug should go to the top of the list.  

As much as I hate to take a Top 10 slot with a bug, I think that issue needs fixing ASAP, and I don't want to wait the same length of time it took to get the shrink bug fixed.  

Nalitra

[Jkal_Shihar]

I agree, if they are going through it by number 1,2, 3 and so forth. BF needs to be number 1 then we can worry bout weapon caps later.

[Jkal_Shihar]

- Make the spell group talisman of kragg. Even when a shaman isn't around beastlords at the KT level seldom have to stat buff their group members, but they do hp buff them.
( Dont ask for a  spell thats Just as worthless and the 1st. If your going to ask for a Group spell ask for Group Ferocity. This is a 65 God Rune spell we are Talking about here)

Saw your post on EQLive Tastian and i couldnt aggree more. I dont want a heal spell, group IOS or kragg would be nicer but IMO this would take the cake. I would much rather see group ferocity then having to be reminded every 8 mins that it wore off.


Also, most of the rangers and some I know are acting exactly like we did with the mages and the pet heals. Some find that heal as a slap and wished they had a better buff or dd or taken away altogether. I just wonder though, if they never gotten the heal what would we be asking for instead???

[Tastian]

The one thing people need to understand about the heal from GoD is that it's not just one heal.  The entire healing of bst/rng going forward are based upon these things.  If you look at the OoW spells currenltly you'll see this trend continuing.  If it were simply seen as the GoD heal being supplmental and rangers healing more in GoDs then as the level expansion came back bst/rng being equal it wouldn't be an issue.  However, beastlords will continue falling behind more and more and remain the worst direct player healing class in the game.  Again, with no real discussion or explaination.  

The issues are all addressed at once and we'll get answers back all at once just like before from what I've been told.  I personally don't even like having to put the bug we've brought up weeks ago onto the list, but there simply hasn't been any further reasponse (one person is out sick, so they might know hehe) and this is a huge issue to many beastlords.  I mentioned in the drafts that if you felt things were out of order comment on them and most seemed happy with the ordering.  I'll ask if the order really makes any differance and if so consider shuffling the BF issue.

[VoS Jamond]

I don't know if these are in order of importance, but if they are, I would make #10 the #1 issue for SOE to fix right now, imho.

[Deathclaw]

and change 7+1 to 8

[Tastian]

lol I will, but I use "8" ")" as my smiley way too much, so I just put 7+1 as a place holder hehe.

[Oneiromancer]

Also look what happens on this board when you replace 7+1) with 8).  Tastian's a smart cookie, give him some credit.  :D

Game on,

[Xalmat]

Just disable smilies and 8) shows up just fine :P

Great revision btw.

[Tastian]

Yeah that was my point I use 8) as my smiley too much lol.  I will change it once I re-post it because I won't smile as much.  Although I think 30-40 lightly sprinkled 8) throughout the top 10 list would really add some flare!! 8P

Thanks btw, wish more beastlords were happy with it.  8P  oh oh and one more 8)  just because I can!

[Grymlok]

One minor quibble.  I really see no reason to raise our piercing cap at all.  Let the rogues stay the masters of the pierce the way they have always been.  Most 1hp weapons are balanced around Rogue backstab damage, and generally have poor ratios (compared to 1hb, h2h), so post-50 there is really no need to use them.

In regards to the beast-only piercer from ldon (which I view as one of the stupidest itemization choices ever), there should be no reason that it couldn't be changed to a 1hb.  We have had several other items modified.

While I'm complaining about itemization, I guess I can go on about h2h weapon graphics.  We need new ones.  The generic claws are old.  Add to that the fact that the graphic doesn't reverse in the offhand makes us look stupid at times.  Instead of going the route of the "glowing orb", they should introduce new h2h weapon models, such as the Shinai.  That was an excellent step that imo was not taken far enough.