Update(11-5-04)...

[Tastian]

The top 10 list should be updated today, but unless some news comes flooding in during the next few hours there won't be much to report.  The one issue I do have something to report on though is perfection of spirit.  

The last few days I've talked with rash about this AA and as it stands now it's very unlikely we'll see any change to this AA.  He claims it was brought in-line with other healing AAs and that they have to be careful how much mana regen is out there.  I explained to him that this AA isn't just a HoT for us or mana regen, but one of our only defining abilities.  I explained that it's one of the only stacking things we have that get us raid spots.  I explained we got paragon back at level 59 in luclin and in the 3(ish) years since then that we've been waiting for an upgrade mana pools have more than doubled in size as well as spell costs.  I pointed out that beastlords weren't asking for the +20 per tick because it was in beta or we feel entitled to it because of that, but that the upgrade as it stands simply isn't enough.  That if +10 mana per tick had shown on beta the whole time there would have been more uproar sooner about it.  Sadly, though I don't see this being changed.  

I'm going to wait until I get an offical response or the top 10 list is updated, but currently I'm thinking about removing perfection from the list and putting another item there.  I don't intend to remove perfection entirely though because I think it's a big issue.  Instead I am thinking about adding it under our utility and raid desireability issues because simply put it's one of the only things we've got and a 37.5% increase after 3 years, 5 expansions and 11 levels just isn't sufficent in my opinion for 15 more AA.  *shrugs*
Sorry,
-me  8(

[Bheran]

Damn. Thanks for trying though.

[Dummkopf]

Thanks for trying Tastian, but at the moment i feel like they do everything to get beastlords out of the raiding game. We're certainly not needed as a dps class, get a rogue, he will replace 2 bsts dps wise, we're not needed really to buff with the current SA, we cant help the raid in a tight situation like we could back when paragon was new. So, why let beastlords tag along? Just to give them the chance to loot the odd beastlord item that might drop really.

[Tastian]

I'm definitely trying, but some of it is really discouraging.  I never understood how someone could understand the laws of addition, understand you already have 2 apples, understand you are now given two more apples and then say that you don't have 4 apples lol.  I keep trying to find out exactly what they think beastlords are doing atm because I can't figure it out for the life of me.  

Solo we are "ok" we can do it, but omens is a pita to solo in most spots and the higher levels removed some hunting spots from us.  We are maybe top 6 in solo'n and not a single mob or spot we can solo that no other class can.  

The grouping game that used to be our niche where we could fill in everywhere from buffer to slower to haste to dps to OT to MT is now one of the most frustrating parts of the game for me.  I don't get nearly as many group invites as I used to and half of them I do get I have to turn because I'm sorry I just can't be main slower in RS lol.  

Raiding we were never "needed", but paragon has gone forever without an upgrade and now that it finally has one it's weak.  Our burst dps has always been weak, SD doesn't stack and one bst-bot can handle that easily.  *shrugs*  I don't want to be wanted by the dozen on raids like clerics or solo like necros or do rogue level dps, but I'd really like to know exactly what the devs see beastlords doing because I don't see it.  I really miss PoP and even LDoN (never thought I'd say that lol).

[Yllandra]

how about going at a different angle on it then, if they aren't going to increase the gains from it.

Try and get them to change the cost from 5 per level down to 2-3 per level.

It's completely BS to make us pay 2x the cost of the original, to get 1/2 the upgrade (if that. Too tired to do the math).

Or, what about having it made into a seperate skill from Paragon. Thus, we could use Paragon, then follow it with Perfection (with Perfection still going off the stats it has now)

or yet another thought just popped into mind. Keep it as a complete upgrade/overwrite of Paragon. Keep the +10 a tick per level. Maybe increase the duration a few ticks? or perhaps lower the reuse time by so much per level?

Hell, as it stands now, Paragon itself only gives me like 1/2 bubble of mana back. 480 mana vs 6300 mana pool.  Yep. that's *so* unbalancing of a skill.

As it stands Perfection isn't worth bothering with.

[Sikkem]

I'm definitely trying, but some of it is really discouraging.  I never understood how someone could understand the laws of addition, understand you already have 2 apples, understand you are now given two more apples and then say that you don't have 4 apples lol.  

I kinda think the same thing about them Tast only i goes kinda like this.

EQ Dev and wife go shopping for some steaks.

Wife : Oh look 2 x 2lb t-bone steaks for $5

Dev : No we bought those 2 last time we have to upgrade now. Look here we can 2 x 1lb chump steaks for $15 thats a much better deal buy them.

Wife : Are you mad your paying 3 times the amount for half the meat and it isnt even as good as the t-bone?

Dev : Well thats the way we do it at work and people keep paying us?

Wife : Why do people keep paying you to play the game?

Dev : No idea  no one in the office has ever actually seen the game running let alone played it.


Kinda sad really.  :roll:

[Azmod]

I kinda think the same thing about them Tast only i goes kinda like this.
EQ Dev and wife go shopping for some steaks.
Wife : Oh look 2 x 2lb t-bone steaks for $5
Dev : No we bought those 2 last time we have to upgrade now. Look here we can 2 x 1lb chump steaks for $15 thats a much better deal buy them.
Wife : Are you mad your paying 3 times the amount for half the meat and it isnt even as good as the t-bone?
Dev : Well thats the way we do it at work and people keep paying us?
Wife : Why do people keep paying you to play the game?
Dev : No idea  no one in the office has ever actually seen the game running let alone played it.
Kinda sad really.

Horrible thing is, this is too true.
Over the years we have heard the stale line form SOE/Verant that 'We have devs playing high levels in every class' blah blah blah... Soo So so blatantly untrue.

Back when the original Alchemy skill was broken for shaman and we couldn't advance the skill by training, the Devs many times said, 'what are you talking about, it works just fine?' After what a year of complaints, logs, comments, finally they actually got around to testing with characters that levelled by hunting, not /level xx commands, and Lo and Behold! They finally saw it was indeed broken!
Did they learn from this? No, of course not...
They repeated it time and again...
-Monks Instill Doubt skill be untrainable
-Hybrid Damage tables being set too low
-Kunark spell drops for Shaman
-Quests that remain broken for long long times when all that's wrong is a text typo
- Denying that Hell levels existed!!!! Now tell me that anyone there ever played the game if they didn't see these!

...and many many more...

NO! The devs rarely if ever play the same game you and I do. I can pretty much guarantee they skip over the grinds and the drop camps.

Sure they finally get around to fixing these and other problems, but in nothing even remotely close to a timely fashion. But OMG! the instant that players find something broken the helps them, WHAM! Servers coming down in 5 minutes!

[Tastian]

Yll -  I went at it from so many angles I broke out my protractor to make sure I didn't miss any.  What it comes down to is sadly two fold.  First rash feels the heal over time is now "in line" with other heal over times.  That means he feels the return is where it should be relative to cost for us and for other classes.  *T's note* how we can pay the same amount for less healing a 37.5% boost to mana regen 11 levels, 5 expansions and 3 years after we geta skill that shaman pay to immediatly surpass us in the healing and it's "in line" is beyond me lol.  I am totally ok with shaman healing more over time they are a healer, but like I kept trying to explain the mana is what is off and what we care about.

Also on that note was that mana regen needs to be kept in check.  This is two fold imo.  First perfection going from +10 to +20 per tick wouldn't even be equal to FT1.  That means it's exteremly unlikely we'll see SA upgraded from 10 to 11.  It also makes me wonder about how they decided to spread this mana regen out.  Casters can now raise the FT cap by 5.  Yet we can't get +1 mana regen on our SD upgrade like the line has followed and perfection of spirit would be too good or out of line if it gave what averaged out to ~0.46 extra FT.  /boggle  

It's really frustrating and sadly I can't think of anything else I can do.  I just find it really sad that after waiting so long for an upgrade to one of the only unique things we have most aren't buying it, but hey it's "in line".  Sigh, I really wish someone understood what beastlords actually do and that things that might be overpowered or out of line for one class simply aren't for us.  I'm sure "in line" is the exact same reason I have to shell out 5X the AA to get the same overall % boost to my dps too.  Heaven forbid feral swipe for 9AA actually give more than a 1dps boost.  Sigh, just really frustrated atm.  8(

[Zaramak]

You know they wont allow us to change it now cause you just gave them the idea for the next set of AA's for the next expansion.  Pay 10 aa and get +1 to SA.... pay 30 more AA for the added +10 mana per tick Perfection.

[Shirrkarn Ayge]

Ah well.. guess its time to put those AA into tradeskills.. seems to be the only thing that will give me any benefit

[zumu]

heh, sony said in responce to a massive loss of customers (hi2u Gates of QuittingEQ) that they wanted to work more closely with the player base, enter community contacts like tastian. so much for that theory. instead the community contacts provide sony with a much easier solution. hey you 1000 beastlords, please quit bothering us with your ideas, complaints, etc. present them to your community contact so we can just focus on ignoring one person. meanwhile we will put VT / ele quality gear in bot type zones, now eat your candy and shut up children.

this has to be frustrating for tastian, who actually seems to be trying to do a good job in the position sony said would lead to improvement.

as has been said many times, sony is all about the dollars. present the top 10 after 11/23 and see what kind of responce you get then tast )

[Strigori]

Hell with that response testian, we wont get anything looked at.  I can only conclude that the dev who your talking with is such a complete moron that anything involving more than two sylables is beyond his understanding.   Sounds pretty much like they know what all our issues are and are content to keep us where we are to avoid angering any other class.  Its sad to say, but to get what we feel we need we may have to decend to mages level. After all, they have received just about everything they wanted.

[Tastian]

I wouldn't bad mouth anyone and I appreciated the communication.  There definitely seems to be a vast gap between what we feel a beastlord is/does and what sony currently sees the class as.  Our buffing is way down, our pet heals almost don't exist, our dps has fallen way off, we can't perform the role of main slower in an increasing number of zones.  *shrugs*  I really would like someone to tell me exactly what we are doing because the nitch getting carved out for us of "decent at solo'n low dark blue mobs well LFG for 3 hours" isn't all that appealing to me.

[Yllandra]

Hey Tastian, I know they have said they have devs playing all classes...

But have you asked them if they have someone on the dev team, that has seriously played a beast, actually fighting and levelling up and going through some of the shit that we do? A dev-Beast that didn't just /giveAA 31304853 "Ding AA 31304853!"

Maybe try asking them that. Then ask them to actually WORK at that character. Have them work that character into EP/Time/GoD gear... then have them tell you that 15 points for such a shittastic "upgrade" is "in line". /grumble

Stress though the fact that for us... we work hard (well, some of us do anyway) to get those AA's. We can't just use some command line and give ourselves the aa's to buy everything and test it out. IMO that *does* give quite a bit of a skew to the bias of "oh yes, this is perfectly in line!" and i'm rather certain that in the testing phases, that's exactly how they do it, due to them being too busy to actually sit down and test the stuff the way we have to.

*shrugs* I dunno.

Love'em and Hate 'em. heh

[Gospodar]

Hmmm hey how about this... It can get 2 birds with 1 stone so to speak... Change effect on epic from broken pet buff to something like shammie effect or group heal + mana like paragon.... There ya go! No need to upgrade paragon and epic has great and working effect! Everybody's happy!