Beastlord dps progression issues...

[Fin Beast]

If the issue were fixed with AA's it would fix raiding and non-raiding beast lords. The idea of making the fix require you to be a raider in a power guild is elitist bull IMO. I have been there and done that with my 65(for ever) wizard and his elemental gear.

I play my beastlord for fun, and at 66 I see a growing gap in my usefulness to a grind group in OoW, I most often get groups that have just one tank and no chanter, so I can off tank adds, or as the slower where my DPS is greatly lowered to keep from pulling agro.

I think our pets need to hit harder, have more AC, and perhaps a slow that when cast slows 25% then an additional 20 % a tick up to 65% (for much much lower agro).

The pet changes can be straight changes or AA's or even several Pet based Disc AA's.

[Latang]

If the issue were fixed with AA's it would fix raiding and non-raiding beast lords. The idea of making the fix require you to be a raider in a power guild is elitist bull IMO. I have been there and done that with my 65(for ever) wizard and his elemental gear.

I play my beastlord for fun, and at 66 I see a growing gap in my usefulness to a grind group in OoW, I most often get groups that have just one tank and no chanter, so I can off tank adds, or as the slower where my DPS is greatly lowered to keep from pulling agro.

I think our pets need to hit harder, have more AC, and perhaps a slow that when cast slows 25% then an additional 20 % a tick up to 65% (for much much lower agro).

The pet changes can be straight changes or AA's or even several Pet based Disc AA's.

Sorry man, I think you're wrong. If Sony even look like they are buffing up our pets much, the mage community will cry blue murder. This post is about our DPS. Specifically, high end dps. That means raiding, mainly where a pet is a liability anyway. (Spend too much time keeping pet alive rather than doing damage on the mob/mobs).

[Tastian]

"If the issue were fixed with AA's it would fix raiding and non-raiding beast lords. The idea of making the fix require you to be a raider in a power guild is elitist bull IMO."

This has been gone over a lot, but the bottom line is if you use AAs then you don't have as much control as you do with itemization.  A "time" level of progression beastlord is still "about right" so they'd need very little tweaking in terms of dps.  A GoD(ish) level beastlord needs more than that, and an omens more than that, etc.  You can't just put an AA in that says here's 40 more dps or here's 20% more dps because all you are then doing is taking our dps progression curve and moving it up.  You aren't smoothing it out, you aren't adjusting it where it needs to be adjusted, you are just shifting it.

Most of the fixes would be at the raiding level of the game because that is where most of the issues are.  However, I've covered this many, many, many, many, many.......many, times that the reason for our dps issues is our division of power and how sony is handling it.  For that reason and others our dps problems are shifting down and lower progression points will need more tweaking if this continues.   Fixes through itemization though don't mean you have to raid.  There's attuneable now, there's dropable gear, augs, spells, etc.  There's tons of ways sony could properly adjust beastlord dps at all levels through a combination of aa/gear/pet/etc.

[Choppin]

The single group mgp trials give out an AA reward in form of resistance (Trials of Mata Muram or something called)

so in theory they could give special AA reward for defeating something, like for example kill Ture in Anguish unlocks a +5 pet damage mod, just an example

[seizelia]

all i can say is gah what a headache lol i greatly appreciate all the information tastion but my only question is whether it is really worth all the pain and suffering required to get to anguish so that i can lay my hands on the beast only weapons that drop there including our epic 2.0.  I currently am well past average time equipped and although i have a hammer of the timekeeper i mainly use my ethereal destroyer due to the nasty 750-1500 proc and the increased rates i get with weapons affinity and all the nice buffs.  I use the Handwraps of Captured Magic in off hand for the nice lifetap they have but as a member of a large raiding guild on saryrn server i am always looking for more DPS.

[jitathab]

as an aside if you use Handwraps in mh and Timeweave in offhand, then the DPS will be virtually identical to what you use now, and generate less agro. Yes this does take into account AA's.

So going from Time gear to some GoD has not increased your DPS at all really, which is the point because it should.

[Biostar]

Well i can say this is some interesting reading. I've got quiet a few aas and tend to parse myself to see if the new ones do any significant damage. Most offensive aas i have seem be either hardly noticeable or maybe 1-2% increase. I've been kinda disappointed thinking in terms that those aa's would greatly increase my overall dps. I agree that Bst dps, spells, etc. are lacking in progression and scaling in many ways. Perhaps special innate attacks could be applied to our weapons instead of procs. Such as flurry, triple atk, etc increasing in frequency (or %) the higher you progress through GoD/OoW.

[lulabye]

Well i can say this is some interesting reading. I've got quiet a few aas and tend to parse myself to see if the new ones do any significant damage. Most offensive aas i have seem be either hardly noticeable or maybe 1-2% increase. I've been kinda disappointed thinking in terms that those aa's would greatly increase my overall dps. I agree that Bst dps, spells, etc. are lacking in progression and scaling in many ways. Perhaps special innate attacks could be applied to our weapons instead of procs. Such as flurry, triple atk, etc increasing in frequency (or %) the higher you progress through GoD/OoW.

This would make sense, but think about how every other class in EQ would react to something like that?  They already have things like this for all classes, BoC quests, MPG Trials, both raid and single group, LDoN aug, Intricate Wooden Figurine, etc. etc.  It would need to be some passive thing, But I'm actually 100% behind the itemization ideas.  It really needs to be corrected there more than anywhere else.  Time yeilds a sweet 1hb that I know pretty much every beastlord drools over,  wheres the upgrade to this proc on a weapon in GoD? OoW?  AA will move the curve up, but the curve will still be broken, as any beastlord can attain AA.  Really needs to be fixed through itemization compaired to anywhere else, and there is more than just us that need tweaks, look at bards...they get 2 sweet songs...but the get handed a salomi for DPS.

[Karve]

From the casual gamer:

Tastian wrote: A "time" level of progression beastlord is still "about right" so they'd need very little tweaking in terms of dps.  A GoD(ish) level beastlord needs more than that, and an omens more than that, etc

But here the margin between average joe player and God+ player is so huge its a joke.
When I hit 66 I could swear my DPS actually dropped, I miss more then ever...I digress.

So for a part of this comparison,something I'd like to be included in DPS evaluation, is top weapons available to NON raiding BSTs, level 65 and higher (non raiders do exp more slowly, too it would seem so exclude required level 70) and compare to GoD+ bst dps to see if lower down the scale we still add up :).
Also to see if you live long enough to actaully parse anything other than teh mob laughing at you :)
Afterall we have to fight the very same exp mobs as leet  raiding Bsts, we just find it much harder in the end game.

[Doomringer]

I kinda had a weird idea in regards to this DPS scaling issue..... One solution was to add an AA like BF, which was pointed out that yes it would boost DPS to acceptable levels, but it would unbalance Beastlord DPS in lower powered communities (ie ELE peeps vs Anguish peeps) What about making drops in those places like Uqua and Anguish and such that would "unlock" AA's that can only be trained by giving some NPC the Token. I am not aware of all the classes that are suffering from scaling issues, but it looks like Rangers could use some help as well as Monks maybe too. If these tokens only dropped off specialized mobs in uber content and made "no drop" and specific class useable only, then those specific classes will get the same benefit from the scaling that the other classes have.

Just an idea, don't know if anyone else came up with something like it already, but it seems doable.

[Karve]

So if say a time level bst and a non time level bst did an aa for more dps (or however many) the time guy gets more ?.
Surely  the aa should be granted to all who accomplish it, the time guy gets a better dps weapon anyway so scaling is still proportionate.

i'd love to increase mine  even proprotionately. I have like 14/17, + 10% would be great .. add that to time/ god / whatever and the scaling carries....?

[gorgera]

I think they should just upgrade dps on pets that way everyone gets a dps increase.  The casual player pays the same amount of cash a month as a hard core raider does. So why should just the "end game" people get the upgrade

[Tastian]

The idea of AAs or progression point boosts has been brought up before and has some merit.

What I think some people still fail to understand is that "beastlord" dps isn't too low.  Beastlords have itemization and scaling issues that result in them not progressing properly and thus doing relatively worse at various progression points than they should be.  People use terms like "time" or "god", but really it's a progression point.  Yesturday's "EPs" are today's bazaar.  The point isn't to just boost beastlord dps across the board because if that were wanted caps or skills could be changed, all pets including the level 9 could be boosted, and numerous other things.  The point is to maintain balance (or create it lol) such that a beastlord is where they should be at as many points in the spectrum as possible. 

Hopefully with all the data sony is gathering we will see some chages that help address these issues.  Perhaps some fixes will hit time+ or ele+ or even "bazaar" beastlords.  All that will depend on what their tests actually show though.  Tests done back at the "EP" level were favorable.  Tests done at the "time" level were about right.  Tests done in GoD were frustrating and it kinda went from there. 

[Doomringer]

Thanks for the reply Tast, I been waiting a few days for someone to reply.  I understand your point abou just moving our DPS curv upwards and how that does not really solve anything...but I do not understand your solution to fix it.

Bear with me here, I think what you are saying by smoothing it out you would like to see a steady increase of ability as the class advances in levels and indirectly advances in content. I do not see how it can bechanged without taking the Beast class completely off the board and restructuring everything. If this was to occur would th rest of the EQ community understand? and is it feasible? If the only problems are have as far as DPS is concerned is in the high end raiding community why can't the fixes be made there?

In the past some classes have undergone some drastic changes that have either revived them or brought them back into into line with what they were intended. The two examples of this are the Shammies getting a much needed lift in OOW and DoN and the infamous Monk nerf a few years ago. I just don't see SOE taking a class and completely revamping it. I know there are talks of changes in the wind for class rebalancing but I doubt most classes will be affected across the board and I definitly doubt a well rounded class like us will be completely revamped.

I feel our best course of action is to persue the changes needed to fix the class where it is sliding off. And I think that the best way to do that without putting other competeing classes (Mages Monks Shaman) on the offensive is to create content specific abilities through an assortment of AA's so that a beast can progress even grow to the level that they need without having uber item XXX drop that puts everyone else into a jealous frenzy.

PS I put Monk Shaman and Mage classes in there because it is my perception that these are the classes that seem to be in direct conflict with us when it comes to spell lines item drops and pet power/utility.

[Karve]

I also see the points raised, but feel that , yes a non ele geared BST is about right ... for non ele+ content.

If you take a pre ele BST and put him in Omens, does the dps stack up ? No.

Content gets harder to accomodate the high end raider, but those that progress extremely slowy are just finding that  they are getting further and further behind.

To enable all types of player to progress, scaling really does need to be availabe to all types of player, to stay within a reasonable balance of the content provided.

DoN instances are interesting too, based on the average level of the group, (fine) but what yardstick was used for the gear the average group would have ?  when mobs are evens and hitting 1200+, and you hit them repeaetedly for 30-40, or miss lots, you do wonder ifits making any impact at all.