Beastlord dps...

[Tastian]

I'll say sorry for the length of this post right off the bat.  However, if you are going to respond to it please make sure to read it all.  This is just a first draft and more a way for me to start organizing various issues/problems with beastlord dps.  PM/e-mail/post data, suggestions, etc.  Ok, here we go...


Beastlords actually have two different dps problems.  The first being sustained dps and the second being burst dps.  Although some changes will address both there are some specific issues to each so I'm going to break this up into sustained dps issues first and then address some of the issues that severely hinder beastlord burst dps.  Also please realize how huge a game EQ has become and how broad the power shifts and numbers are from bazaar geared 65s to tacvi geared level 70s.  I'm going to try to provide some general numbers to illustrate certain points, but going to hold off on specific parses for the time being.

Sustained beastlord dps:

Beastlord sustained dps has been in a state of relative decline for awhile now.  The major cause of this is the beastlord division of power and how that division is effected by progression.  A beastlord has their dps divided up in more ways than any other class in EQ.  What this means is that every boost we get only effects a fraction of our dps.  That is because unlike most melee classes that have ~80%+ of their damage tied up in their weapons and melee a beastlord has a much smaller %.  Take for example a monk/warrior and a beastlord that are all doing 200dps.  Now the monk/warrior is likely doing ~180 of their 200dps from the weapon.  Meanwhile, the beastlord is doing ~65dps from pet, another 20 in non-melee, another 20 in procs, and ~85 in actual melee damage.

Itemization -  

As was mentioned above we can see that melee damage is a much smaller portion of their overall damage than it is for most other classes.  In the above example it was 42.5% of their overall damage, but for a monk or warrior melee damage makes up ~90% of their damage.  Now lets assume that each character gets a weapon that is a 10% upgrade over what they have.  The monk/warrior is now doing 218dps, but the beastlord getting the same weapon upgrade is only doing 208.5dps now.  This is what has been happening to beastlords for awhile now.  Every weapon upgrade we get a smaller overall boost than other classes that can use the very same weapons or recieve similiar upgrades.  Not only does this apply to weapons, but also to effects such as ferocity, cleave, haste, +atk, etc.  All of these effects simply give a smaller overall boost to beastlord damage than they do other classes.  

AA -

The division of power also has a major effect on beastlord progression in terms of AAs.  A wizard that spends 12 AA on SCF3 sees almost a 7% boost to their damage.  Meanwhile, a beastlord that spends those same 12 AA for the same exact skill sees maybe a 1% increase to total damage.  This is true of dot AA, melee AA, spell AA, etc.  

The answer to getting less of a return from all of these generic AA was beastlord specific AAs that granted a much larger boost to one aspect of a beastlords damage, but because of the division they granted a smaller overall boost.  AAs like bestial frenzy sound overpowered for other classes as it is effectively a 15% boost to melee damage for 10AA.  However, with the beastlord division of power that 15% boost to melee damage works out to being about a 5% boost overall.  

This worked out well, but expansions after PoP simply failed to give beastlords the needed beastlord AAs to compensate for our division of power.  In GoD we gained access to pet only AAs that cost us a grand total of 60 points.  However, the actual damage boost from these AAs was a small % to the pet and of course an even smaller boost to our overall dps.  Also in GoD we gained access to feral swipe.  This is another beastlord only AA that granted us an extra attack once every minute.  The problem with this AA is that it again simply gives too little.  This AA doesn't even do half the damage of our base kick skill and most beastlords will see about a 1dps boost over time out of getting it.  Meanwhile in GoD beastlords are spending 30AA to raise our dot damage by 9% just like shaman and necros, but are seeing a much smaller return than them because of how small a % of our damage actually comes from dots.

Now omens is out and we see the offensive AAs for beastlords are a generic melee upgrade to crit hits, a generic caster upgrade to spell casting fury and a beastlord only AA that has a 15 minute refresh time and at best works out to being about a 1.5dps boost overtime.  

As we can see the division of power for beastlords is causing many problems because we are failing to recieve beastlord only upgrades that make up for the lower % we get from all of the generic upgrades.  Beastlords need beastlord only weapons that would look broken for another class, but that for a beastlord give us the overall boost we need.  If pets are going to gain very little from progression, if our spells are going to continue barely increasing in power, then our weapon upgrades need to give us the overall boost to damage we need to continue inline with where we were.  On that same note the beastlord only AAs need to go back to how they were in granting major boosts to one area of our dps, but granting an inline boost to our total damage.  


Burst dps:

No real surprise here, but the beastlord division of power really hampers our burst dps as well.  The major problem with it is that our offensive disc only raises our melee dps for its duration.  It doesn't raise our pets damage, our spell damage, our proc damage, etc.  Also our nukes are tied to a 30 second refresh timer that prevents us from mana dumping at all.  This means that a beastlord going "offensive" is now doing the exact same nuke damage they were doing before because they can't mana dump, they are doing the same dot damage, their pet is doing the same damage, but our melee damage just doubled.  Well other classes are going offensive and almost doubling their damage output a beastlord is going offensive and seeing maybe a 30% boost to their damage.

Bestial alignment from GoD is another burst offensive type of AA that many beastlords hoped would help deal with our poor burst dps, but sadly it does very little.  This AA doesn't stack with the mod on our disc, and it still does nothing for our non-melee damage or pet damage.  There are a few things that could be done to fix beastlord burst dps, but the easiest would be simply changing AAs like bestial alignment so that they boosted all of our damage or atleast most of it.  Have BA not only grant a boost to melee damage well it is active, but also to non-melee damage.  Have it give our pet a short duration burst dps boost as well.


Due to how beastlord dps is divided up and because of how progression in EQ has gone through GoD and now into omens beastlord dps simply isn't what it should be sustained or in burst type situations.  Beastlords enjoy being different than other classes in EQ, but it has become a detriment.  Some changes need to be made so that beastlords are able to progress and scale properly along with the other classes in EQ.

[Tastian]

There are a few things I haven't included in the above such as horrible pet scaling and weak gains from pet focus effects.  I don't want to make the thing 10 pages long (although anyone that knows me at all knows 10 pages would be cutting it short), but I want to try to touch on the major problems.  

Please let me what you think.  The next top 10 list won't be updated until the 22nd and I'd like to see something along these lines added to it.  Anyone that has some good parses or logs I'd gladly welcome.  I'm going to do some more pet parsing this evening and I've already parsed out a ton of other things that I'm trying to decide how to work in atm.  Also please stay on the topic of beastlord dps here.  I'm going to start another thread likely this evening dealing with beastlord utility problems atm.

[Oiingo]

Ya' know, you mentioned something that I've always wanted to see: A way to periodically boost the power of the beast/pet combo, as a unit.

We have a melee discipline, why not have it usable by our pet at the same time?  Or perhaps, `/beastrage' where both owner and companion receive a 50% boost to melee and spells/procs for 30 seconds, reusable every five minutes.

I suspect this would be a trivial addition to the existing client and server code and would help return the ``working as a team'' aspect to our class.

Heck, even if I could spend 5 AA points for a ``Beastly Bonding'' button in my hot key bank that would give me this option, I'd do it in a heartbeat.  It could be tied right into the existing innerflame (or whatever we call it) melee damage discipline to make it even easier.

[Tastian]

Other thing I forgot to mention, but that is covered seperately is our aggro.  We just do way too much aggro the damage we do.  Having fixed dps and fugged up aggro so we still can't do it doesn't help us too much hehe.

[Grymlok]

Personally, I think you should mention pet progression/scaling and foci.  The gains we get from these are laughable.  Something else that irks me is Growl of the Beast.  No matter what foci is used, the gain from Growl appears to be the same.  The way things are, the +damage mod from Growl is a waste.  Why didn't they just increase the base damage of the pet?  As-is, we are forced to maintain yet another spell that doesn't scale properly (if at all) with the effects given to us.

[Tastian]

I'm going to, but I'm still trying to work a few things in and finish up various parses.  Pet scaling is one of the major problems and it's a general EQ thing.  Mage #1 issue for awhile has been pet scaling.  Pet focus effects even before omens were rather weak and now with omens it's even worse.

[Graace]

I wonder if we'd need to provide examples of ways to fix it as well, sometimes SOE isn't very original, and rather than fix something they'll be kinda lazy about it.  They say that dps evaluations are on the way... but... I think they've been saying that for two years now? :)  Only feasible way I can see that we currently help scale our dps along with others is a lower capped Double Attack (I know we went through this entire fiasco once before and argued pros and cons, but it seems to be a quick and easy fix that SOE could do to just resolve the problem with little muss and fuss... as I remember, they usually take the easy route) that stacks with BF5 to give us a more mediocre double attack than others but helps keep us from being blown away dpswise when we get weapon upgrades.  Another way to help improve pet might be to have its dps output grow based on the number of AA the owner has, pet gets 3-5 more dps per say 50AAs the owner has.  Spells, well, they really seem to be about where they should be for us as a hybrid.

[Tastian]

That is part of it graace and things will be mentioned.  Basically what it boils down to is if pets continue to scale poorly, if focuses in omens continue to be inferior, if they continue to give us weak beastlord only AAs, and they don't give us beastlord only weapons that make sense then we need our base melee raised.  

There are lots of other options though.  They could fix us through itemization, through AA, through spells, etc.  Changes to BA and frenzy of spirits could fix our burst dps.  Changes to feral swipe, to pet AAs and adding just one or two beastlord only AAs could fix things.  There are beastlord only weapons atm, but they aren't really beastlord like.   Truthfully I understand sharing armor with monks, but sharing weapons at the higher end just doesn't work.  You've got one class that has 80%+ of it's power in their weapon and another class that maybe, maybe!! has 50% of it.  The weapon you give is either broken to one class or useless to the other in terms of upgrading.  Suggestions will be given though and a few more examples plugged in.  Like I said I just wanted to start getting things up here.

[Graace]

Ah, so they'd need to itemize us like they do Paladins and Shadowknights, insane ratios to counter their lower skillcaps and use of sheild.  Only problem with itemization is that there are already too many itmes out there, SOE's not about to go back through the last 7 expansions and add items for beastlords I don't think just to make us happy.

[Sempai]

As a high end beastlord, I can state that I know exactly what you are speaking about Tastian. I have a good amount of AA, some of the best gear in the game and I still question my role in groups and on raids regularly.

One role that I have taken on due to our lower dps and high aggro is that of tank. I have become a knight that wears leather on raids and often help with the pickup of adds and off-tanking on many of our raids. I have tanked many a raid mob when we were low on warriors, and at 65 I was tanking in EPs, Time, Qvic, Txevu, etc. Heck, at level 62 I tanked Dain for kicks since my guild knew I was going to get aggro anyway.

I do not believe that anyone really thought that tanking was going to be one of our raid roles, but with our current setup it is one I can do fairly effectively on raids. Heck, I even MT for some of my exp groups, since it does not seem to hurt my dps and I have crazy aggro. I doubt the SOE designers think I should be tanking in Riftseekers, including the named, on a regular basis, but I have and it was not really that tough.

The challenge I see is how to properly balance a beast at my level while not overpowering a beastlord early. As a developer myself, I have considered the options and it is tough. If you use spells and AAs, then beastlords might get overpowered since you have to pretty much assume everyone will get them all. If you use gear, then the other classes complain when they see a beastlord only item that "looks" overpowered compared to other classes, but actually is not based upon what you describe.

Another possible raid role for us is that of a support class. We have SA, Perfection of Spirits and Ferocity, but when you look at those buffs compared to the spells that the buff classes just got I am severely unimpressed. All major buff classes got special abilities added to the spells that increase everyone's damage or improves their ability to take damage. We got extremely small upgrades to our spells. When I look at Champion, Wunshi, Fortitude, Might, Vie, Oaken Guard and Salik, these are real new and exciting buffs. Heck, even rangers got new buff power with Nature Veil and Auspice of the Hunter that add some interesting new options for them with exciting new abilities for others as well as themselves. As seen by our lack of new buffs, they clearly do not think we are a buff class.

To this day, I am not really sure what SOE thinks we should be doing on raids. I think we are positioned as a dps class in their minds, but the stats and parses do not reflect that role. In fact, for raiding classes at the very high end, our dps is reletively low. I would welcome the chance to take on the role of a dps class for raids both in sustained and burst dps. It is really tough when raiding and you need to burn down a mob or lose, like we were last night, and my only real help to the raid at this point was to mgb perfection and then tank it as long as I could as others went all out dps. Bottom like is we just do not have burst dps at all, and Bestial Alignment was SO BAD, that I have just refused to train it and I have about 500AA.

Bottom line, I think this needs to be addressed. I currently use the 2 best hand to hand weapons in game, I have a good amount of AA, a nearly full spellbook and I am in the top group of geared beastlords serverwide. I can attest to our issues at this level and believe this needs to be reviewed closely. I do understand the need to balance classes across multiple levels, so I am unsure what to suggest as a change, as I only know our issues from my level.

I wish there was something I could do to help you out here Tastian, and if you have ideas I will do it.

[Tastian]

I do think other peoples perceptions are a problem.  It amazed me when monks started complaining about the ratio of our epic verse theirs.  Monks actually get to MH their epic lol.  Monk will use their 1.5 MH over EPWs.  Meanwhile I've seen beastlords finish their 1.5s that still put it OH and keep weapons like fist of glowing acrylia MH.  Other people and even some of the designers imo just don't understand beastlords and how our dps works.  

Like you say if you do it through spells/AA you have certain issues, but that goes back to what I said in another thread about how beastlords were always more caster(ish) than melee(ish).  Look at a wizard at level 65 in bazaar gear and one tacvi flagged verse a bazaar geared 65 war and a tacvi geared one.  Some classes just progress differently and that's ok as long as they are "about right" in most cases.  What is happening now though is with GoD and now omens beastlord dps both sustained and burst simply isn't what it should be.  

Keep ideas coming, parses/logs/etc.  Like I said this is just a first draft and this is just for the dps side of things.  I'll post another thread probably by tomorrow that deals with utility issues.

[Volsykat]

Tas...I agree with you fully, my only concern is, please don't put the stress too highly on the end-game, since the problems stems much sooner than that.  I'm in a group that's broken into EPs, and I feel all of these problems even before then.  Lack of a significant Elemental-level pet focus (jumping from LDoN to Time just is too much time, since after that the focii come much sooner progressionally) is noticeable, some mini/ring should drop something at this level to adjust our DPS as we get into the higher ends of the game.  We're the only pet class without specialized pets, and even if our warders are supposed to be different than mag/nec pets, there's no reason that gaining in levels and improving ourselves shouldn't inherently (inherently, I don't like the idea of having to pay hundreds of AAs to fix base problems) gain specialized attacks and abilities.

Aggro is of course a significant problem...almost every time our MT goes down, at least 1 beast is in the top 5, usually 2nd or 3rd.  I've seen half the bsts on a raid go down in order right after the MT and they be the only other casualties.

We what?  We punch, maybe double sometimes, we kick, and we cast.  Monks triple, all their specialized attacks, shaman cast with far less aggro with the same spells.  Both can do over twice the dps we can at the same level of the game.  Granted not everybody should be doing the same dps, but we shouldn't be doing as little compared to others.

Going from normal game to mid-level (bazaar -> EPs) is when I feel the disparity begins.  LDON focus does less for us than others because we start at less of a base, our pets simply don't compare, and we can't get another until Time.  We've no weapons of our own except the standard pet weapon, and monks, given the same weapon cache, can put them to an immensely more powerful use.  I almost feel bad bidding on BFs, REBBs, or anything else I see because I know the raid would benefit more from the monk getting it, and I should never have to feel that way.  The fact that I do shows we're lacking from this point and beyond.  Our spells stay our spells, and focii to increase the damage don't do nearly as much for us as others.  It takes us 30AA to even make a slightly larger dent into the DoT damage our parent shaman can do, and that's not much.  Given a constancy in spells and dot damage, and, with lack of an Elemental focus our pet damage, the only increase we can get going from Bazaar to Time is in melee damage, which as you said is only a small percentage of our total damage, and so any increase is an even smaller increase in overall damage.  

I agree the problem extends throughout the high-end.  But don't let all the focus of change lie there, it begins at the outset of entering the mid-level.

[Nonposter]

I think one thing that needs to be discussed is our role, in groups, raids, solo. Until we know our role, then it is hard to make decisions about what is wrong.

I do not know what my role is anymore. I used to be able to be a gimp slower for groups, adding offtank and dps to the situation. With OoW, since all mobs mitigate slow, I can't perform the gimp slower role. Resists are stupid sometimes - 15 times on one mob? Does that mean I am trying to do things that are above me? I am level 68, fighting blue mobs, is that not what I am supposed to do?

So, Im dps, and can offtank right? Except everyone that does not wear silk tanks better than me, and everyone except the cleric is doing more dps than me (but only because the cleric is healing).

So, I guess I can be a utility player. Except I have yet to receive buff upgrades since the 50's. All my buffs are short term, single target.

I guess we have to give up something to get all that we do. I like being able to fill alot of gaps, but we have fallen so far behind the classes that would be choosen over us (due to their superiority at that role), than it becomes easier to go in a diff direction for most. No chanter/shaman lfg? Grab the cleric/druid, we can just use the heals. Beastlord is lfg you say? Pass, they grab aggro too much, become mana sponges, we would need the extra healer anyway. But they do great dps you say? Compared to who? The cleric? That druid lfg provides more, and snare, heals (even rez!).

I can solo pretty well. Well, it would depend on what you mean by solo. I can chain kill mobs in Griegs, with little or no downtime. Low blue mobs to me. I finally was able to drag a few people there, to show them just how I solo. Waddayaknow, the ranger could kill more mobs than me with the same amount of downtime. Same for the rogue, druid, pally, and sk.

Our problem is perception. People think because we get slow, we are overpowered. Make mobs mitigate slow, and whoops! People seem to have forgotten that part. Monks complain our epic 1.5 has too good a ratio, so they change it. We still OH ours. We get fewer spells than any other spell casting class in OoW. We do not get any new disciplines. I have had the same 4 disciplines since level 60.

Pets have issues for all classes. I know what can help: Let the pet master be able to get gear back from the pet. Let me farm items, give to my pet, and be able to get it back from my pet (and only me). Since the best items are no-drop, let this work with no-drop items as well. To prevent exploitation, let only the pet master ba able to give items to their pet. This would allow us to upgrade our pets like other classes can.

Define my role. Then we can determine if we need dps changes.

[Moffett]

One of the keys to this whole dps issue is our utility (slowing Buffing etc). I would be ok with our current progression in dps if our debuffing and buffing progressed as well. They haven't. A 100hp upgrade to kragg's doesn't count. Spiritual Ascendence is feeble. I think there are 2 possible paths we can take.

First Path: They fix our Buffing and Debuffing and leave our dps more or less as is. We would need a new slow with a resist modifier (-40 MR check 65% slow to keep in line with shaman upgrade) OR a lesser malos with -30 MR/PR/CR/DR that is unresistable. I would also like to see an upgrade to incapacitate that is Beastlord specific and debuffs 250-300 ATK and gives us something unique that other classes don't have.

Spiritual Ascendence should be endurance as well. 10/10/10. We are a hhybrid and we should be able to buff endurance as well especially since we use it. I think this should be done anyway personally.

Second Path: They increase our dps and send us more in a dps role and our buffing/debuffing becomes outdated and less useful. We need significant upgrades to our dps aa's. We just don't get enough out of them. Feral swipe and Roar of Thunder should be about 25 dps between them maxed - although this is problematic as they don't scale. They will always fall behind in relative power.

Our burst dps could be increased by letting BA and disc stack. Very limited but gives us a chance at good burst damage.

[Warderr]

I'm a 61 BST with no AAs and no pet focus. If you need me to run any parses, let me know.

I am bazaar geared (ornate + some WoS items) and duo Velium Inlaid Claws with no proc augs.

I have no Elemental access.

Keep up the good work!


Warderr N'Wolfie
61 BST of The Nameless
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