Beastlord dps...

[Tastian]

We already have ancient spells, sadly they are weak nukes in most cases.  No uber pet, no chain castable nuke, no zero aggro dot, etc.  We get another nuke that lands "ok" in spots and not well enough in others and still can't be chained.  The ancient spells could be a way to help address those issues, but sadly they aren't.  8(

[Strigori]

not to mention the rarity alone of the anchient spells.  Adding those as a "fix" for us are little to no use for the vast magority of the community

[Coprolith]

I dont see the raid-useable-skills as something that would fly.  As much as i like the idea, the non-raiding people would scream louder than they do now about locked zones and loot.    The biggest issue really is that durring the sub-65 area of the game, we are very well balanced.  Its once we cross 65, or start into the raiding portion of the game, we start to rapidly fall behind.   Durring the  grind to 60 especially, making fundemental changes to the class would result in a more "overpowered" appearence to others.  This more or less restricts the changes to spells and AA modifacations.

I think you're mistaken about the non-raiders. I am a non-raider and you don't hear me screaming  :) .
The problem with our class is scaling. Our power does not scale with our gear-level in the same way as it does for other classes. If the non-raiding beastlord is currently well balanced (and i agree with that assessment)then any solution to solve the raiding beastlords problems must have zero effect on the non-raider. For that reason I've always been a proponent for the complete separation of the high-end raiding crowd and the casual players, much more then it is now. Trying to maintain class balance throughout all the game aspects, that is playing style (solo, grouping, raiding) and all gear-levels, while adding spells and abilities that are generally accessible and usable has so far proved less then succesful. There's a big difference in not being able to get raid spells which are usable only during raids anyway, and not being to get spell drops that are generally usable.

Also what im proposing is not just a fundamental change to our class, its a fundamental change to the game, because im sure there are many other classes that would benefit from raid spells.
What I'm looking for is a way to maintain the inter- and intra class balance on every level. The only solution i can think of is by taking the separation of the raiding and non-raiding content well beyond what it is now. If you don't then any change in a raiding beastlords' power will reflect in the abilities of the non-raider and vice versa. If you up our sustained and burst dps so that raiding beastlords are more in line with the other classes without any regard for how those changes affect the non-raiding beastlord then you're *really* going to hear some screaming.

Whether my solutions are viable is very much debatable, and I'll gladly embrace any other solution as long as it deals properly with the scaling problem.

/hugs

[jitathab]

To have 6k+ mana and nothing to use it on is a joke :)

Since getting into the EPS' and increaseing over 2khp's and mana my DPS has stayed the same.

[TalleyRN]

I think one trend that helped us out significantly in the Luclin era, pre VT stage, was the fact that my pet always did more dps than me, if not around the same.  Our pets have seen a massive nerf in that area. As it is, i'm constantly breaking the 100 dps margin~ I have parsses of me doing 200 dps pure melee on Cyno (granted a minute of that 3-5 min. fight i had BA/Frezny on) I'm lucky if I see my pet break the 100 dps margin. Yah, that's w/ full pet AAs too.

[Strigori]

I think you would probly be the exception testian.  I mean, just look at the pasion people talk about for opening the elemental planes, and thats largly just for xp.   The largest argument those in favor of it make, is that sence they pay the same as the raiders, that they should have acsess to everything.  I dont agree at all with that attitude.  

As far as class balance, after we start moving into the 65+ and GoD+  part of the game, we really arnt balanced anymore.  Slowing really drops out of what we bring to a group( and yes i realize that some  have enough hp to"tank" mobs in some of these zones, most players do not, resist more than once and your down as soon as Protective spirit is) Our buffs are next to worthless, IoS and Kragg is so far behind the curve its not funny, no one uses SV, SD and fero are nice, but thier of these is enough to make us a hot choice for groups.  And our DPS drops down drasticly when we start getting our hands on raid gear in relation to other classes.  If warriors are out DPSing us, i would have to imagine that that would pretty much leave just clerics and chanters (without a charm pet) that cant out dps us, at least in a mana dumping fasion.

I also dont think there is anyway we can get the fixes we think we need without ruffling the feathers of either mages, monks or shaman.   So if we need to ruffle some feathers, so be it.  All three of those classes(and some others with regards to some specific aspects of our class) have had a tendency to make us thier #1 with a bullet.  Any dps upgrade via melee will anger the monks, upgrade pets or nukes and we anger the mages, fix slows and buffs or boost dots, shaman will be mad.  In order to get us back to being where we should be we are going to make others mad, i dont see anyway around it.  As a whole, we have been very open minded to what all other classes have needed for fixes, and I'm sorry to say that it does not apear that the other class communities share our open mindedness to look at the big picture.   Other than a grudging admitance that our OOW spells suck,  they by and large still hold that we need nerfs, not fixes.  By fixing what we have broken, we wont make other happy, but we need to worry about where beastlords are now and where we are headed more than we need to be concerned with the egos of other communities.

[Graace]

An AA that further grants additional double attack at 66 would actually make sense, it'd have to have a larger boost than the POP BF5, as to make sure we're not still lagging behind though.  I'd suggest an Innate double attack that can be trained at 66, but not sure if that'd work or not.  What if people don't have training points? :)

[negrismorte]

To have 6k+ mana and nothing to use it on is a joke :)

Since getting into the EPS' and increaseing over 2khp's and mana my DPS has stayed the same.

I know this feeling all too well.  Other than a few small increases due to more AAPs, I havent had a DPS upgrade in over a year (that includes weapons).

[Armanthuzz]

One thing that wasnt mentioned is we got DPS upgrade from skillcaps.

Grinding 66 blues tanking them i can get around 150-175 dps with handwraps of captured magic and offhanding epic. Pet from behind adds about 90ish atm.  I havent taken a good parse lately, but i would guess that puts us on even ground with monks roughly.

The skillcap increase is why we didnt get jack for spells or AA imho.

The real issue is that developers are petrified of risk atm, most likely from new releases soon.  They refuse to try new ideas and want to stick to path of "lets play it safe".  Everything and i mean EVERYTHING i have seen except skillcap increases is watered down crap.  I went from an epic that for its time was good ratio and proced slow and gave me 41 percent haste, to this poor excuse of an epic i have now.  Besides the ratio (which will be outgrown) its crap... You can get a better focus for ice nukes from qvic sleeves which are a dime a dozen, the clickie is not only broke, but even if it wasnt its a joke.  At least on the first round of epics, they tried really hard to be original and made epics.. well EPIC.  Now its mage clickie rewarmed and renamed...

The spells were so poor i considered them an insult, extremely minute increases in spell power for alot more mana, and absolutely NO increase in duration.  


AA are as poor as i have seen in any eq expansion period. Unimaginitive reheated other class leftovers.


Honestly, they have WOW and eq2 coming out in 30 days.... I was really suprised this was their best effort.  And if it wasnt, it should have been if you want to keep your playerbase.


I dont personally feel we got screwed on DPS REAL bad, i was more insulted that they think im gonna be satisfied with this reheated bunch of crap they are tryin to serve us. At least have the cahones to TRY something creative and new.  Theres absolutely NO original ideas in this expansion.  Its regurgitated yogurt

[Xilef]

One thing that wasnt mentioned is we got DPS upgrade from skillcaps.

Grinding 66 blues tanking them i can get around 150-175 dps with handwraps of captured magic and offhanding epic. Pet from behind adds about 90ish atm.  I havent taken a good parse lately, but i would guess that puts us on even ground with monks roughly.

The skillcap increase is why we didnt get jack for spells or AA imho.

But other melee class got the same skill increase (assuming you're talking about skillcap increase from leveling and not the 1hb/2hb/1hp cap increase that meant nothing to our dps).
And again, ever other melee class (save bards) got better dps increase from it overall (since our dps also comes from pet and spells...)

[negrismorte]

One thing that wasnt mentioned is we got DPS upgrade from skillcaps.
<cut>
The skillcap increase is why we didnt get jack for spells or AA imho.
<cut>
I dont personally feel we got screwed on DPS REAL bad, i was more insulted that they think im gonna be satisfied with this reheated bunch of crap they are tryin to serve us. At least have the cahones to TRY something creative and new.  Theres absolutely NO original ideas in this expansion.  Its regurgitated yogurt

Which skill cap increase? The one to bring other weapons to the same as h2h or the one that is level based?  If it was the weapon based, that was not a dps increase. The new caps only increased selections and made choices easier.  If you are refering to the level based increases, then yes, you get a small increase in your overall DPS.  By your numbers, you do about 2/3 of your damage by melee, pet is 1/3.  So once again, the increase is marinalized relative to someone who only does melee damage.

[Dummkopf]

Not to mention that other classes got a higher increase in theyre weaponcaps than beastlords.

[Yzak]

Also kinda late on this but here are my thoughts.

I'm going to start with spells.  

Firstly, I think the spells are extremely top heavy, as probably do many others.  I know myself and probably a few others are using their level 54 nuke at 70 due to no KT access or the lack of 3 69 runes magically appearing in my inventory.   Drop the 69 OoW nuke + regen to 68.
Or better yet add a poison nuke.

Secondly, fix the dots.  How many of us find ourselves 100% mana?  3 things need to be changed.  
A) Agro
B) Casting time
C) Duration

If I weren't risking my life casting Chimera Blood or Scorpion Venom I would probably use them more often.  Somebody suggested a while back for 3 or 4 tick dots that have a deagro effect with them.  Just so that the deagro would counter the agro from the dot.

Now to pets.

I don't really have much to say here other than fix the higher end foci.

For AA

There is just a couple abilities that are like broke or out of whack.  Improvements to Feral Swipe (has potential but isn't where it should be), Beastial Alignment (too long of a reuse), the terrible end costs of Warder's Alacrity.  Fix our dots and you'll make Critical Affliction something close to SCM3/FoM line (other than insane costs).

[Tastian]

I'd like to see dots fixed and talk about this issue atleast once a week if not once a day in most cases.  FM got changed and is "close" to being right.  It's a decent spell at say 66 or really it's what our level 65 disease dot should have been.  If they raised the damage up a bit more I'd keep the spell mem'd most of the time.  I'd also like to see our epic not just focus cold DD, but dots as well.  There need to be more beastlord only items that provide us a gain to more than just our melee or just our pet or whatever.  The epics could fit that bill nicely.

[jitathab]

So our weapon caps are now lower than others? so our relative advantage in atk has also dropped? Please say this isnt true.
[/quote]