Khauruk's attempt to fix beastlords

[Sikkem]

Are you guys not the only beastlords in your guilds or something? I have been for the entire year, I don't see a main change being viable for a while haha.

I was pretty much the only beastlord in my guild from about GoD onwards except for as few short periods. Now there are 3 of us in my new guild and we look like picking up a fourth with the server transfer merges.

Seriously even if I was the only one I doubt I would be missed if I changed classes, what do we bring to the table for raiding?

[Zunar]

Well....we bring mediocre dps, poorly stacking burn dps (GBA), unwanted utility, un-needed buffs and half our spells are for keeping our low dps pet alive...
On the plus note, we piss off monks by stealing HtH weapons to make poor dps with it  :evil:

The one actual use we have in Underfoot raids, I guess is our warders hobble of spirits, for agro kiting unsnareable mobs.
That's just one event tho? Even that's not a must either....can manage without bsts too.

Damn...that sounded sad lol

[Caurion]

what do we bring to the table for raiding?

Really sad trying to think about something that I bring to the raid  :-(

[bobokatt1970]

Only BST in my guild and have been for a long time -- and sadly I have been playing less and less.  Good luck with this and great job.

[bradam]

The one actual use we have in Underfoot raids, I guess is our warders hobble of spirits, for agro kiting unsnareable mobs.

Don't mention tha to loud or it'll get nerfed next >.<

[Khauruk]

The one actual use we have in Underfoot raids, I guess is our warders hobble of spirits, for agro kiting unsnareable mobs.

Don't mention tha to loud or it'll get nerfed next >.<

Rangers mention it enough for us now :D

[Hzath]

If our utility does not get upgraded in any substantial fashion with House of Thule, our dps needs to be substantially boosted.  We should *significantly* out-dps monks and rangers in every normal burn and sustained situation.  We should be very close behind rogues.  The only situation that we should be out-dpsed by a ranger is when we are forced to play ranged dps.

I sent a PM to CHanaluss with a response/defense of the quote section.

This statement is sure to be met with an outcry of distaste from Rangers and Monks but I'm fully behind you.


Multi-faceted Damage dealers



Our dps is more multi-faceted than either of the other two classes (pets, melee, and spells) and because of this fact we are often partially inhibited in many "real world" factors that don't exist on the test dummies.  Increased resistance or mitigation to a particular spell resist or weapon type will decrease the damage of each of us, so those factors we can consider a wash that hurts all 3 classes the same.  However, because a substantial (relatively) portion of beastlord dps comes from pets our damage lowered for additional reasons.



Pathing - bad pathing is something so ingrained in this game we've all accepted that it will never go away.  It is all too common, sadly, to be fighting a mob and after hitting /pet attack to see my warder running around in the back ground on top of a cliff.  DPS lost due to bad warder/swarm pet pathing en route to an enemy is lost dps rangers/monks don't have to ever worry about.



Pets have HP - Pets can die.  We have a multitude of abilities to increase the survivability and to heal our warders.  Many of these abilities have cast times and/or the requirement of switching target to the warder which both take away from damage done.  Swarm pets are also susceptible to AEs/rampage damage and have the potential to die in harsh environments due to lack of buffs/heals.



/Pet attack - Khauruk mentioned this in his post as well, but I want to comment also.  We cannot control our swarm pets once they're out.  If a mob gets mezzed it stops attacking, if the mob dies or we want to switch targets we can't make it switch with us.



AE What?

In additional to being hampered in many situations due to our pets we also completely lack any ability to AE, damage or nondamage.  In situations with lots of mobs in camp we're limited to just our standard attacks against one target while Rangers and Monks can damage multiple targets at once with Storm of Arrows and Destructive Force in addition to their normal damage.



In Conclusion

I want to reiterate Khauruk in saying that if beastlord utility remains in its current state our dps should have a substantial advantage over rangers and monks.  With the added dependency on pets for dps we also gain an increased number of factors to potential lower our dps from the idealized test value (pathing, pet deaths, inability to control swarm pets).  We also lack any form of AE so when dealing with multiple mobs we're resigned to fighting them off one at a time.  For these reasons beastlords should have a significant advantage over monks and rangers in idealized parses against test dummies, because in live events we fall off of these idealized parses for a much greater number of reasons.

[Chana]

already sent those 2 PMs in, thanks for sending them

i should probably introduce myself to those who dont know me.

i am Chana, and im one of the EQ Community Leaders, so if you have any requests, send me a PM here, on evilgamer.net, or on the eqlive boards and ill do my best to send them upwards to the devs. also, im available in-game as povar.chanaluss or povar.lonhouilden.

a little background. my main has been a shadowknight since 2001, but my real passion of late has been my barbarian beastlord Lonhouilden (race changed to troll if they get rid of the basilisk in the future). Im probably still really crappy, but i enjoy the class.

i know im no substitute for a CL that actually mains beastlord and would know more than i would, but i hope that i can help as much as i can in the meantime.

[Khauruk]

I made this up and sent it along to Chana in an effort to be a bit more comprehensive.  I'm also trying to keep the tone nicer, since we're starting to sound like assholes on many forums (Tulisin is not the droid you are looking for).

Developers,

Thank you for recognizing the "dire straits" that the beastlord class is in right now, and having some apparent willingness to fix it.  I recognize the fine line that needs to be tread in regards to how a boost in dps for raids can overpower us ridiculously in the group game (well, until we take a hit), and making our utility powerful enough for raid desirability could also overpower us in the group game.  I also know that we've gotten pretty bitchy lately, so please bear with the expressions of long term dissappointment that many of us have felt.  Third, we're also a somewhat split class atm, so you are hearing many different desires which may easily conflict.  One thing that I have found in talking w/ many beastlords though (I am the de facto admin for forums.beastlords.org, always in serverwide bst channel, etc) is that if our utility is useful enough to make us desireable in raids and groups, we'd be fairly happy.  If our dps is high enough to be desireable in raids and groups, we'd be fairly happy.  One of the two needs to happen, or at least a mix w/ more dps and more utility.

Main problems:
[Note, data for these propositions, and more details are below the narrative.  I'm very sorry for the long post, but I'm trying to be pretty comprehensive!]

We're a slowing class with limited ability.  We have no ability to slow multiple mobs in a reasonable timeframe (vs. sham AE slows, listlessness), or otherwise control a mob while trying get it slowed (enc mez, root, stuns, 10,000 bard tricks).  We also have no way to debuff a mob's resistances so we can land it on resistant mobs.  Our upgrades have been an unsatisfying pet-proc-based slow line which is rarely used except on old raid mobs.  I propose some solutions below.

Too much button pushing - Beastlords currently need to push more buttons than any other class to max our dps.  We know you're looking at consolidating some AA lines, but our spell lines need looking at as well.  I've detailed this already in a msg to Aristo (via Chana) already though, so I won't dwell on it here.

Our buffs seem to have fallen by the wayside, outside of SE, and it's easy to bring a box in to rebuff that, or have people use spirituality potions.  I propose (below) a new niche for our Spiritual HP line (brell's/STR variant), which is needed since as the middle-ground between dps and HPs, it is never wanted.  I also propose a boost for our stagnated Focus line which, while not providing a new niche, at least makes it a much more palateable buff.

Ferocity - I don't need to go into how broken this spell is.  Propositions for potential fixes below.

CC - we formerly had an ability to provide some minor CC via our pets.  This has gone by the wayside, but is very much needed (it would help greatly with the slowing issue, for one!).  I propose a "Bestial Lurch" spell below which would regain that ability without giving us an extremely overpowered pet, root, etc.

Cast Times - the longer cast times on some of our combat spells are making them start to show their age quickly.  The big culprit is Yowl at the Moon and Heaergen's Feralgia - we're at a point where we lose dps to cast them while burning at the higher end raid level.

Heals - please reduce cast timer, triple heal size, and triple recast timer at a minimum.  We don't want to be a main healer, or anything near, but our abilities have far from scaled w/ mob dps.

Something fun - very little has changed for BST gameplay in years.  Some new paradigm would be very well accepted, but I'm not creative enough to come up with one :(.  Rangers have had pulling methods changed giving new playstyles, same for SKs w/ hate step/HA/DE/etc, same for enc w/ recent spells, etc.  Please show us some love with new mechanics and "interesting" but ultimately very useful spells/abilities.

Mitigation - please boost our softcap more than normal, or our overcap return rate.  Mob dps just rips us apart almost instantly now, effectively reversing the gains that we have made over silk classes in the past couple years.  Even if this is via more levels of Armor of Wisdom, it is sorely needed again.

Burst DPS - I know that Elidroth is looking at this, but a restatement of ideas is posted below.

Pet healing - we have far too many lines of pet heals.  Please stagnate all by Salve of Reshan and the Promised Heal.  Friendly Pet needs a rework again (or have it work as it did in beta!), and our Pet HoT line is horrific.  The cast/recast timer change was very nice, btw!

Group Haste - timer on that part of the spell appears to not have changed. As long as final timer is 45 minutes plus, I think we'll be overjoyed.

AA desires - a bunch are listed below (but please don't overlook the vanilla upgrades that we get each expansion).  It's late, but please be open to some of these for beta retuning.

Too many small nuke/DoT lines - please consolidate our two 30-second timer cold nukes into one double strength one in the same spellgroup as our SoD cold nuke, and only upgrade this one?  It would be great to see DoT sizes go up as well, to make up for the spell gems that we'll be using for the great utility spells I'm hoping to see.

No Beastlord representation in the CL program - please try to get one up on Zatozia's list.  I realize that the current CL program is not a class-leader, but there are some large gaps in expertise on the current staff.  I know that Zatozia has received several applications, from myself and others, please sir Lead Designer, haul some water for us!  This should help lower the bitchfest from the community as a whole about the program (well, I can hope!)

Beta - I'm not on an automatic invite to beta list.  This *must* be broken then!  I'd love an early invite, and I hope this whole thing shows that I'd be worth it.

So, thank you for reading if you've made it this far, and my ideas are below.

Hopefully,
Khauruk 85 Beastlord, <Five Rings>, Luclin-Stromm.
[contact info snipped]

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Bestial Lurch:
Mana: 2500ish
Cast time: 0.5, recast 2 minutes
TargetType: Pet
Add Proc: Bestial Lurch, procmod rate 1000
Slot 1: Gravity Effect (-200/-250/-300 per rank (same as enc), base2)
Slot 2: Increase Melee Mitigation by 95%
Slot 3: Decrease Melee Damage Modified for All Skills by 95%
Slot 3: Increase Critical Hit Chance for All Skills by 0%
Resist:  -500 Magic
Duration: 15 ticks

This would give us some of the old CC ability that we used to see.  Cast on pet, attack mob we want controlled by pet, it procs, and we reposition with Companion's Relocation.  90 seconds should be reasonable for a group-geared group to kill one more (or nearly so).  Tune hte Increase Melee Mitigation line so pet is *easily* healed without
requiring too much attention (heal every 9 sec or so, 12 sec or so for raiders w/ AAs/pet focus).

Spiritual Verve replacement/upgrade:
Slot 1    Limit: Only applied to Spells with Instant Duration
Slot 2    Limit: Only applied to Detrimental spells
Slot 3    Stacking: Block new spell if slot 4 is effect 'Maximum Hitpoints Modification' and lower than 1637
Slot 4    Increase Maximum Hitpoints by 637
Slot 5    Limit: Only applied to Spells with Effect Hitpoints (Damage Spells / Heals)
Slot 7    Limit: Combat Skills excluded
Slot 6    Increase Direct Damage Crit Chance by 5/6/7% & Increase Crit Damage by 4/5/6%

This a clone of current SV, but with the limits and effects of a very minor Frenzied Devastation (wiz dps disc).  This would give SV a new niche, for casters, since melee mods are pretty well maxed or overpowering in many places.

Focus of Yemall replacement:
Slot 1    Increase Maximum Hitpoints by 1166
Slot 2    Increase Hitpoints when cast by 1166
Slot 4    Increase STR by 75
Slot 5    Increase DEX by 75
Slot 6    Stacking: Overwrite existing spell if slot 1 is effect 'STR' and lower than 75
Slot 7    Stacking: Overwrite existing spell if slot 1 is effect 'DEX' and lower than 75
Slot 8    Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'STR' and lower than 1147
Slot 9    Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'DEX' and lower than 1147
Slot 10    Increase STR Cap by 75
Slot 11    Increase DEX Cap by 75

Leaves hitpoints the same, but closes the gap a bit, which is extremely needed.  Currently BST focus is barely ahead of the Brell's line of HP buffs, and we have lost any stat buffing ability due to no overcap stats.  The following two spells are strongly desired as well, and restore former utility to the class.

Infusion of Spirit upgrade:
Slot 1 Increase STA by 100
Slot 12 Increase STA Cap by 50
Duration 1hr 12min

Transcendent Foresight version:
We'd love to see a 50% strength version of this, but realize it's not very likely.

Fellgrip Jaws upgrade:
Mana Cost: 5000
Slot 4 Add Melee Proc Fellgrip Jaws Strike Rk. XXX (proc rate mod 800)
Slot 8 Increase Dex by 75
Spellgroup Fellgrip Jaws

Fellgrip Jaws Strike
Slot 2: Decrease Haste (v1) by 70%
Slot 3: Add 24 Disease Counters
Duration: 10 ticks
Resist Type Magic (adjusts copied from current, maybe even reduced due to high proc rate)
Max Hits: unlimited
Duration: 15min

If you want us to actually be a slowing/debuffing class, give us the tools.  In many places, a bard slower is better due to their ability to actually land the slow (slow mitigation makes the actual slow %age less important).  Our pet slow is a great idea (and we don't mind the no snare tradeoff on the spell generally), but unless the current pet spell is upgraded, it is far too inconvenient to be worth the extra 5% slow.  Just boost mana cost, remove the DoT (we hate it...uncontrolled DoTs are the devil!), and remove the proc limit on it.  Otherwise, we need one of the following:
   A boost to our lvl70 slow (Sha's Legacy) with -45MR and a 3 second recast delay (current is 6)
   A slow based on poison resist, so that our Focus of Animus AA line can reduce resist rates.  Base resist rate should equal that of current Sha's Legacy (-30MR on that one), and improvements come from Focus of Animus.
   An enhanced cripple spell (we'd love an update of any sort to this, actually).  Our current cripple is a lvl40 enchanter spells (Incapacitate).  This line of spells has been stagnated for both beastlords and shaman.  A clone of the enchanter cripples (Fragmented Conciousness is the current ones) with a resist adjust line (since we can't debuff magic) would be an appropriate addition that's not overpowering.

Disciplines:
Right now an AA (Bestial Alignment (BA)) has replaced our dps disc (Empathic or Bestial Fury (EF/BF)) as top dps potential.  Elidroth has confirmed he is looking at boosting our burn potential, and I see a couple good ways to do this (there's also a thread on forums.beastlords.org about this).  In addition to stacking discs, there is need for more ranks of hastened BA as well (24min max is too long, and our latest tunic also has hastened EF/BF on it, so there is precedence)

Stacking melee disc - main options of accuracy, crits, or hundred hands.  Hundred hands effect would be the preferred choice (timer unlinked to BA or EF/BF) due to stacking issues with other raid effects, and it would be shared with a parent class.  Lore can come from wolverine attacks.

Revamped 1st or 3rd spire - 3rd spire is still useless, and 1st is destroyed by 2nd spire (1st is used situationally if pet is dead)  3rd spire could be fixed to be a useful group damage enhancer, or a strong personal damage enhancer.

Spell damage discipline - we cast nukes a lot now that we have Frozen Venom, and DoTs a lot now that they're instant.  A version of Frenzied Devastation (or another wiz/mage disc) would be a good burn disc if tuned appropriately (and give us some flexibility for ranged fights).

Pet Healing:
Please, lose some lines.  Almost nobody uses the Pet HoT.  Friendly Pet is currently very poor.  Concentrate on the Promised heal, and the Salve of Reshan line please!

Pets:
More powerful pets please!  Stagnate our melee if need be, but our pets should not be a small DoT on the mob.  They aren't worth the time required to maintain them except for some utility (battery to get the Growl part of Haergen's Feralgia, for example).  This is not an acceptable situation...pets should be ferocious to at least some degree.

Ferocity:
The big one.  It's been broken for ages.  We know it, you have said you know it.  If you won't revamp it to be a useful spell, please don't update it!

Priorities for an update:
DPS boost high enough that it's worth the mana to buff ourselves.
Longer duration, with potential higher recast on it!  Group would be an option too, w/ mana price tuned to 4 casts max.
Retaining both offensive and defensive "sides" like the current spell (though ones that are effective in current content). 
A few ideas follow:

Defensive:
Stamina line changed to overcap STA
Resists changed to %age chance to reflect or block the spell
Overcap spell shielding/DoT shielding (if this is even possible)

Offensive:
Skill Damage Amount (XX) to add a boost per hit seems the most appropriate to me.
   This doesn't stack as nicely for burns as the original did, but it is easily tuned, ranked, and will work for all content.
Triple attack boost
Accuracy Boost
Crit Modifier


AA Desires:
Pet runspeed boost!  (please!)
Pet Swap!
Attack Command for our short term pets (Yowl at the Moon, similar to mage Rampaging Servant)
Upgrade for Spirit Frenzy (haste/atk boost....like Fero, Luclin era outdated dps methods)
Upgrade Group Bestial Alignment to higher damage, or add a secondary mod to make it more useful
More ranks of Hastened Bite of hte Asp/Raven's Claw/Gorilla
Combine Chameleon's Strike w/ the Bite of the Asp line!  (or take it away, and add an AA to halve the use timer on the bite/raven's/gorilla line, resulting in similar deagro over time)
Updates to Focused Paragon that are more than 6 mana/tick!
Reuse reduction on Group Shrink!
Protection of hte Warder boosted to be better than Vie line!
A couple more ranks of Bestial Frenzy (double attack cap booster)
Flurry (we're the only melee who doesn't have it now afaik)
Imbued Ferocity
Nature's Reprieve
A version of Outrider's Evasion
Companion's Relocation - rank 2.  Doubles knockback
Reverse Companion's Relocaton.  Moves pet to me, works w/ pet having agro, limited by range (say pet must be w/in 20ft to work).
Bestial Alignment Upgrade
Bite of the Asp upgrade (higher DoT/deagro)
Extended Swarm - more ranks
Hastened Swarm - 3 ranks, each takes 1 second off of recast timer for Yowl at the Moon line.
Pact of the Wurine - one more rank, which splits the werewolf illusion to a separate buff (please, we just want to be our own races again!)
Taste of Blood - please revamp, and extend if revamped (pet never gets killshots, and the boost isn't worthwhile even if it does.)  Or, just let the line die.  Something like the Ranger's "Consumed by the Hunt" buff would be awesome.

[Hzath]

I agree with almost everything you've said here so it'll be easier for me to just respond to things that I find issue or concern with how they were states

Bestial Lurch:
Mana: 2500ish
Cast time: 0.5, recast 2 minutes
TargetType: Pet
Add Proc: Bestial Lurch, procmod rate 1000
Slot 1: Gravity Effect (-200/-250/-300 per rank (same as enc), base2)
Slot 2: Increase Melee Mitigation by 95%
Slot 3: Decrease Melee Damage Modified for All Skills by 95%
Slot 3: Increase Critical Hit Chance for All Skills by 0%
Resist:  -500 Magic
Duration: 15 ticks

Pulling capabilities when combined with FD for sure.  Not necessarily a bad thing but would be held against us.

Spiritual Verve replacement/upgrade:
Slot 1    Limit: Only applied to Spells with Instant Duration
Slot 2    Limit: Only applied to Detrimental spells
Slot 3    Stacking: Block new spell if slot 4 is effect 'Maximum Hitpoints Modification' and lower than 1637
Slot 4    Increase Maximum Hitpoints by 637
Slot 5    Limit: Only applied to Spells with Effect Hitpoints (Damage Spells / Heals)
Slot 7    Limit: Combat Skills excluded
Slot 6    Increase Direct Damage Crit Chance by 5/6/7% & Increase Crit Damage by 4/5/6%

I like the idea in general.  What spell slot would we for the crit chance though, it's a common effect.  Since SV is a long duration buff it wouldn't be terribly bad if there was a superior buff that took effect over this during a burn as long as it didn't knock the buff off completely.

Revamped 1st or 3rd spire - 3rd spire is still useless, and 1st is destroyed by 2nd spire (1st is used situationally if pet is dead)  3rd spire could be fixed to be a useful group damage enhancer, or a strong personal damage enhancer.

I'm still personally advocating the short duration spell dps enhancer be put on third spire, but I also want to throw out that I'm pretty sure we're the only class who doesn't have a defensive minded spire.

Spell damage discipline - we cast nukes a lot now that we have Frozen Venom, and DoTs a lot now that they're instant.  A version of Frenzied Devastation (or another wiz/mage disc) would be a good burn disc if tuned appropriately (and give us some flexibility for ranged fights).

Frenzied devastation has the nasty double mana cost and it also has hit counters.  I always say we want it as a spire so we can go without those negatives, but they wouldn't be the end of the world.

Cast Times - the longer cast times on some of our combat spells are making them start to show their age quickly.  The big culprit is Yowl at the Moon and Heaergen's Feralgia - we're at a point where we lose dps to cast them while burning at the higher end raid level.

I didn't see mention of the paragon cast times anywhere so throwing it here, I don't think I'm alone on wanting those reduced.  

Heals - please reduce cast timer, triple heal size, and triple recast timer at a minimum.  We don't want to be a main healer, or anything near, but our abilities have far from scaled w/ mob dps.

Triple heal amount is excessive.  Something like 1.0 cast time 5.0 recast with a 3500 base would be sufficient for UF situations with the added benefit of not being locked in place just spamming the heal button.

Too many small nuke/DoT lines - please consolidate our two 30-second timer cold nukes into one double strength one in the same spellgroup as our SoD cold nuke, and only upgrade this one?

Frozen venom damage is based off of the cold line, would this change affect that spell line as well or would they just be independent going forward?

Friendly Pet needs a rework again (or have it work as it did in beta!)

From what I remember it didn't do anything in beta.  Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I feel like we all thought it wasn't doing anything until they were already in design lock someone told us it was a defensive proc.  It does need a rework though if the line continues, no disagreement there.

Combine Chameleon's Strike w/ the Bite of the Asp line!  (or take it away, and add an AA to halve the use timer on the bite/raven's/gorilla line, resulting in similar deagro over time)

Noooo on combining the effects.  Chameleon strike is the deagro AA we always wanted(needed), short refresh, high -agro, no additional BS making it situational.  Having to click the extra buttons to maximize our deagro sucks, but I really don't want to see a dot or debuff added to chameleon strike.

[Karve]

Heals - please reduce cast timer, triple heal size, and triple recast timer at a minimum.  We don't want to be a main healer, or anything near, but our abilities have far from scaled w/ mob dps.

Triple heal amount is excessive.  Something like 1.0 cast time 5.0 recast with a 3500 base would be sufficient for UF situations with the added benefit of not being locked in place just spamming the heal button.

If these changes were applied now, they would be too overpowering, but if they are intended for release of HoT, the triple heal mentioned here would probably be a very good ball park figure, but overpowering if its intended for a quick mod to the current Cadmaels for example.

Cast times of 0.1 are balanced for us, recast time can be adjusted to make this not overpowering, just don't take away my DPS :)

Edited for readbility.

[Hzath]

3x our base heal is almost as much as devout light, that's going to be too much for us even next expansion if we get a faster cast time.

[Karve]

But devout Light or its next in line will be more, and we'll have a long-assed recast time to prevent us from being a "main healer".

[Khauruk]

Lurch could be goofed w/ to not allow snare to proc, or overwrite.  Same goofing w/ mitigation and agro so it's not an ability allowing for a group to do any fight ranged.

I still dont' see a single DL every 8 seconds (or whatever) as being anywhere near a problem.  Healers spam those now.

[bradam]

Wouldn't hurt to add in pet Play Dead and an increase % change to successfully play possum for us.  I dont care if the reuse is 10 minutes as long as if I hit the button it actually works.   


Interestingly enough if you think waaaaaay back our very first spell was flash of light.  Which was a CC tool really.  May not have been the best one but saved my arse more then once lol    Was trying to think of a way to maybe give that to the warder?  Have him blind or maybe "scare off" a mob and blur it.  Kinda of like a flusterbolt sort of.   Someone mentioned before of say a pet rotwielier growl/barking at the mailman and having them flee in terror and not come back.