Early Beta AAs

[Catnip_Inny]

I agree, id love a 100% avoidance disc but its just not likely to happen.  Id really love to see us push for a pet shared health disc that is seperate from our def disc... between the two of them i could accomplish a lot!

[Denti]

I don't mind my pets DPS being behind Mages, let them get screwed as a DPS class cause they want their pets to provide so munch DPS instead of better nukes.  What I want is out pets to have the same defensive abilities as theirs.  And if our pets are balanced around "pet gear" then we need to be able to cast pet gear cause getting a "knowlegable" mage to make you a pack is like "finding a needle in a haystack."  Monks should have better DPS than us. mabye they'll give up run 8 and FD (at will)  Wont happen and FD is such a strong utility, that even though their a "pure" mellee class, its more of a utilit role they are in now.  Rangers are Hybrid like us.  Ideally they should be equal in DPS and spell DPS to us.  But better Defensive abilities being 1/2 tanks.  Shammies need to give up over cap buffs.  We should have the same abilities as them being 1/2 shammy which is 1/2 buffer.  They can keep Panther, its their class defining abilitiy along with Cani/heal

I don't think any beastlord is really asking for our pet to have the same dps than mage dps pets. However it should have the same dps as the mage all purpose pet before equipment (which is hard to parse for mages as theirs come fully equipped). The current difference is just too big though. A nice comparison parse event by the way is Synarcana, usually beastlord warders come out around 450 dps fully equipped with highest ingame focus and using disc, bp clicky and second spire. Mages do around 1500 to 2k dps there. That difference is simply too big at this point in the game for a 10 to 15 minute fight.

Monks allready have a lot higher dps than we do, so there is nothing for them to give up to achieve that. As monk hybrids however we should be able to use FD, same as SKs can use it.

Rangers usually have higher spell dps than we do as they have still unlinked nukes. Granted, they got hit by the recent nerf, but they still can outdo us especially on multi-mob fights. Their melee dps is usually higher as well, however not as much as it used to be and of course their pet dps is considerably lower. All in all on single mob fights we have a slight advantage, on multi-mob fights they do, its all pretty eval. They do tank considerably better though.

Shamans never wont give over cap buffs, and frankly i do not see any reason for that. However i do see quite a few reasons for us getting overcap buffs too, however lowers than shamans are.

All in all shamans and mages are quite a bit overpowered in the general schemes of things at the moment and i do hope that part of that is corrected in UF, but we have to see if that will happen as both their communities are very vocal and ours isnt.

[rhaug]

quote

don't think any beastlord is really asking for our pet to have the same dps than mage dps pets. However it should have the same dps as the mage all purpose pet before equipment (which is hard to parse for mages as theirs come fully equipped). The current difference is just too big though. A nice comparison parse event by the way is Synarcana, usually beastlord warders come out around 450 dps fully equipped with highest ingame focus and using disc, bp clicky and second spire. Mages do around 1500 to 2k dps there. That difference is simply too big at this point in the game for a 10 to 15 minute fight.

1500/1750 dps for our pet sounds ok then as a compromise, then we gain 1350 dps on our pet.
and mages still have higher pet dps then.

then do some dps on the beastlord and we are alive again.

[Maylian]

Firstly this is more a thread on AA's than on spells and DPS and it is not a personal attack Denti but some of your statements are getting very mixed up and confusing. Monks are pure melee, they should be higher dps than us, FD shouldn't be diluted into the beastlord class. Yes we come from monks but we should just have another decent non FD way to drop agro.

We should get some sort of overcap buff to make up for the stagnation of our stat buffs which are now meaningless for the majority of players. Obviously this should be a lower form of the shaman line so as not to take away from their desireability.

Our position against rangers is probably where it should be except in terms of curing / healing, why shouldn't they tank better? They are an armour type above us so should mitigate damage better than us, we do have the advantage of slow, which whilst not massive anymore is still useful.

I think people are right that if our pets are balanced based on having gear then they should either give us a way of getting that gear or summon with gear already. I haven't had mages summon me gear since probably PoR / TSS era so it would be a welcome change to get something like this again.

[AbyssalMage]

Wasn't our nukes linked because we were out DPS'ing Monks.  Heck, I remember almost everyone out DPS'ing Monks after SoF or SoD and the Monkey website was a leading contributer of us getting the nerf bat.  They did a crap load of parses to prove their case but I only remember us getting hit with the spell linking, not rangers (And to be fair, alot of people got hit with spell linking cause I think they wanted to stop any problem before it started).  And last I looked, monks are still a considerable ways off from beserker/rogue DPS and falling farther behind.  But in all honesty, those 3 classses are all crying over their DPS for as long as I can remember.

If Sony raises our pet DPS, they have to reduce/stagnate our personal DPS so I personally would like to see "Fluffy" gain defensive abilities and forgo our pet DPS in exchange for personal DPS gains.  Basically how its been after GoD.  Are pet hasn't grown but our personal DPS has had a nice curve to it.  I'm all about personal DPS and making sure that "fluffy" isn't a "one hit wonder" but a durable off tank.  Currently I think he's closest to a Fire Pet defensively and would like to see this improved to Earth ability (Air's defensive abilities comes from its innate stun which I think is beyond our pet's intent).

This is why AA's are so hard for us.  Which was the original subject.  If you don't know your history, you can't know your future.  Many in our community want our pets DPS increased through AA's and spells(or disc's) while others still have a fresh reminder what happened in GoD and have gone the personal DPS route over pet DPS route.  Both camps have valid arguments because the way a Beastlord can be played 1- 65 is munch different than 66 - 85.  And because our abilities are put in check by multiple classes (Monk, Shaman, Enchanter, Ranger, and Magician) we have to fight for anything we want to recieve.

Personally I come from "what happened in GoD" camp AND switching from a Druid to Beastlord at around the same time.  The changes the community chose then have served us well through SoD.  But as time goes by, the ones who represented us then (GoD time frame) have long sense left for other endevours in life and others have filled in their shoes.  The problem is, the game has changed once again, and we need to fight vocally "for every inch of DPS and utility" we can get.

We may not get a FD AA like ability, but we have to shape our own class and not let the developers shape it for us. 

We also can't be afraid to step on other classes toes, or think outside the box, because it only takes one expansion to become "obsolete."  Warriors/Rogues - lead to the endurance change in PoP/GoD, Wizards - Lead to Insta Nukes in TSS, Pure Casters - OoC regen in OoW(?), Bards - recieved /melody to reduce carpel tunnel, and Mages - Pets recieved a HUGE bump in OoW and later expansions. 

Classes that are still struggling include Druid - Received group heal but their population continue's to decline as their DPS, utility, and Healing (in group content) seems to be in stagnation, Enchanter - Recieved some awsome CC aa's but continue to struggle as risk vs. reward plays a greater role on where people are willing to hunt, and Palidin - Their LOW dps vs. SoD mobs insain HP's creates a "shying" away from if not the MT.

I don't want to be on the "classes that struggle" as a Beastlord.

[jitathab]

When slow was really useful a lot of the "keep bsts down as they have slow" arguments work, now they dont.

To be useful these days in raids or groups you need to be able to either tank, single pull/CC, heal or DPS. As has long been pointed out or Utility has gone, we cant tank or heal, so that leaves one avenue open to us.

The very poor tanking ability coupled with slow being less useful has rapidly erroded our solo ability on decent, (i.e. non reptetive tedious mobs) content.

So we need AA to improve tanking and dps. DPS via warder is needed a step increase to bring back onto the curve, and more damage.

Useful stuff would be

One cast warder and owner corruption etc cure, bonus other people.

swtich warder - change pocketed pet and live pet

mez of some sort

[Denti]

Firstly this is more a thread on AA's than on spells and DPS and it is not a personal attack Denti but some of your statements are getting very mixed up and confusing. Monks are pure melee, they should be higher dps than us, FD shouldn't be diluted into the beastlord class. Yes we come from monks but we should just have another decent non FD way to drop agro.

Never said that monks should have lower dps, i was just pointing out that they are currently even with the other melee dps classes and in some cases, especially longer fights, are quite a bit ahead. And yes, that is fine, they are after all a pure melee class, however with more utility than they should have (pacify, mez, fd, knight like mitigation).

However we have to agree to disagree about FD, i allways was of the opinion, and will be, that we should get FD. I am aware however that we won't get it as the devs i talked about this are quite clear that there will be now new FD class. Thus i lobbied for other ways to drop aggro in recent betas, however not with much luck. Especially compared with the the amount of neg hate rangers can produce.

We should get some sort of overcap buff to make up for the stagnation of our stat buffs which are now meaningless for the majority of players. Obviously this should be a lower form of the shaman line so as not to take away from their desireability.

I didn't say anything else.

Our position against rangers is probably where it should be except in terms of curing / healing, why shouldn't they tank better? They are an armour type above us so should mitigate damage better than us, we do have the advantage of slow, which whilst not massive anymore is still useful.

I have nothing against them tanking better, they are after all a light tank. But to keep things in balance they should have a slight disadvantage in dps vs us, not much but still there. Of course we do have slow, but rangers after all have not only the possibility to shed a lot more aggro than we can which is a big advantage in raids, they also can do very impressive ranged and nearly aggro free dps if needed (up to 7k over 5 minutes on multi-mob fights). Together with WS they have quite an advantage over us, not necessarily in the group game, but during raids.

[jitathab]

Why is it ok for monks to have "useful utility" in current content, and as being a pure mellee they get good dps, yet because we have "outdated utility" in current content we have to have bad DPS because we are a "hybrid"?

Im not a supporter of FD, but for the common bst, we should not be arguing or accepting lower dps because of our alleged utility, which these days is pretty crap in most situations.

[Catnip_Inny]

Why is it ok for monks to have "useful utility" in current content, and as being a pure mellee they get good dps, yet because we have "outdated utility" in current content we have to have bad DPS because we are a "hybrid"?

Im not a supporter of FD, but for the common bst, we should not be arguing or accepting lower dps because of our alleged utility, which these days is pretty crap in most situations.

thats a pretty damn good point about the monks!

[Maylian]

Where is this idea of bad DPS coming from? We are decent dps and sit where we should do, most of the classes that should be above us are. Personally today in raids I out dps'd all monks, rangers, mages, some of our slacker rogues....if you're going to argue a point make sure its a valid one.

I don't care less what monks get and I don't want to argue that we get some upgrade because class x got ability y because it makes the majority of you who hide behind that argument sound like whiny bitches. Increase pet defensive ability, give us some extra deagro tools (not FD) and give us some other utility but make it fit with the role play background of our class. Yes slow is now a rod for our backs, people still over value its ability and because of it try to suggest we shouldn't get other things and we need to get SoE to see that and get some other utility. I wouldn't want FPoS to have an end component because that would just make us what necro's used to be years ago and just constant feeders.

[Panthur]

I don't care about mages whining, i want a REAL GODDANG PET THAT is useful ffs. What we have is crap. There is no reason our warder is so pathetic. It should be on par with mage earth defensives and with air pet offensives. What we buff or gear our pets with is what should set them apart, not this pos pathetic excuse of a warder companion who dies in an eyeblink on wussy mobs with zip for dps.

Almost the next expansion and still not fixed. By the time the next expansion does come out, the warder will be completely useless and with it all our linked pet dps because the warder isnt worth using to bother with.

Would be nice to actualy BE a beastlord. But so far lately, there is nothing beastlordly about us.

As for utility, if we are supposed to be a sham hybrid why cant we inherit the shaman's last expansion focus line? At least THAT would be somewhat a useful utility.

[nedoirah]

I don't care about mages whining, i want a REAL GODDANG PET THAT is useful ffs. What we have is crap. There is no reason our warder is so pathetic. It should be on par with mage earth defensives and with air pet offensives. What we buff or gear our pets with is what should set them apart, not this pos pathetic excuse of a warder companion who dies in an eyeblink on wussy mobs with zip for dps.

AMEN!!

Almost the next expansion and still not fixed. By the time the next expansion does come out, the warder will be completely useless and with it all our linked pet dps because the warder isnt worth using to bother with.

Would be nice to actualy BE a beastlord. But so far lately, there is nothing beastlordly about us.

I agree. The very name of our class should define us as a PET class not some shadow of monks and shamen. In some areas not even a shadow.

As for utility, if we are supposed to be a sham hybrid why cant we inherit the shaman's last expansion focus line? At least THAT would be somewhat a useful utility.

I've watched as cleric hp buffs go up exponentially. We don't have a comparable buff nor should we since we're not cleric hybrids. (just using this as an example for a point later on) Shaman buffs are insane compared to our own. They are very much like cleric buffs in the increase over the expansions. Our buffs are paltry in comparision. At one point we started to obtain some of the shaman buff lines in the spell infusion of spirit but stopped after that. I think if they modify our focus line of spells to include some low over cap stats such as wunshi but the hp part stay in-line with the current focus progression. This would not be overly powerful. Even chanters got mind buffs that until last expansion so completely overshadowed our spiritual light line I wasn't even sure if it was worth using it anymore.

The point is: All these class buffs increase exponentially while our buffs stagnate.
Cleric aegolism: temperence (level 40) 800 hp to gallantry (level 82) 3775 hp
Shaman focus: focus of spirit (level 60) 480 hp, str 67 dex 60 to darkpaw focus (level 83) 1437 hp, 138 str/dex w/ 138 cap increase
Chanter clarity: breeze (level 14) +6 mana pet tick to prescience (level 83) +49 mana per tick 744 mana 60 wis/int

beast focus: talisman of tnarg (level 53) 150 hp to focus of yemall (level 83) 1083 hp
beast crack: spiritual light +3 hp/mana per tick to spiritual edification +24 hp/mana per tick (special note: from spiritual light up to spiritual dominion the increase was actually only +2 to either stat)(after this it was changed to +1 per spell except the inclusion of the ranks to the spells. There they were increased by 1 per rank and the next level would take the regen of the raid rank of the previous level spell.)(I would like to see the current increase continue from epiphany to edification to the nect level)

I know the spells of clerics and shaman aren't the lowest level versions but I used those as the first of the better spells they actually do get.

[Gamgan]

Where is this idea of bad DPS coming from? We are decent dps and sit where we should do, most of the classes that should be above us are. Personally today in raids I out dps'd all monks, rangers, mages, some of our slacker rogues....if you're going to argue a point make sure its a valid one.

You should start raiding with decent monks/rangers imo :).  They have much bigger burst.  Where a bst bursts tops off at around 9k'ish, rangers can monks can burst over 12k easily enough, and both of them can burst for longer periods than a bst.  Rangers via discs (which unlike for us, have been upgraded many times since PoP) & summer's mist spam (even after the nerf, it's still considerably better than our burstable spell dmg), monks just by having more (and better) discs available to them.  Hell, even warriors can burst for over 12k on some fights (Rallos comes to mind).  On short fights, no bst should even come close to a well played monk/ranger of similar gear/AAs.  Our salvation comes when the fight starts reaching the 5-10 minute mark, when the other melees have exausted their discs, and our sustained dps kicks in (ie our inability to mana/endurance dump).

We are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to melee dps, which wouldn't be bad if we had the utility/tanking to make up for it.  But we don't.  The majority of our utility has suffered greatly due to mudflation.  Slows mitigated to less than 15% effectivness on most mobs, our blocks getting struck through on every other hit, our ridiculous AC softcap, paragons that restore a pretty insignificant portion of mana (around 1/10th, or so, down from the 1/2 to 1/3 back in the PoP days when it first came out), our healing ability, which takes over 10 casts to heal us to full.  What we're left with is a high maintenance warder, that does sub-par dps.

Unfortunately, nothing on that preliminary list looks like they're addressing the issue.  Do they still think Taste of Blood is a useful ability, or they have nothing better to replace it with?  Nuff cut&paste already, it's time to evaluate the effectiveness of the abilities granted to us.

[Denti]

Where is this idea of bad DPS coming from? We are decent dps and sit where we should do, most of the classes that should be above us are. Personally today in raids I out dps'd all monks, rangers, mages, some of our slacker rogues....if you're going to argue a point make sure its a valid one.

Likewise. What you personally see is anecdotal evidence and therefore only of very limited value. You should try and get parses from several guilds, best of all if you get them from the top serverwide guilds. I do not say our dps is bad, of course not. But saying you out dps all monks, rangers and mages just shows that those classes in your guild must be pretty inept as they can out dps us easily if played right. Again, i do not have a problem with that, well, except mages that is and partways rangers. Of course we can out dps slacking classmembers of every class, even wizards, zerkers and rogues, but equally equipped and competent dps classes we cannot out dps at all (and mages are in there), rangers we can outdps only if they do not get manaflare and the fight is about a single target.

I do agree about end regen on paragon now (used to wish we had it), but i do think we need access to some of the end regen AAs that pure melees get, same as rangers btw, as we use quite a bit of end these days. Yes, we do need a big increase in de-aggro tools and spell casting subtlety is going exactly into the right direction there. However FD would be well inside our class lore as part monks and would be justified from a role playing point of view. However we won't get it and therefore have to pull some very very weird descriptions outta some hat to justify anything else in that regard. I do not think we will see any increased utility as every utility we have is being farmed out anyway. Heck, you can even buy SE as a 4 hour lasting, death persistent buff nowadays, quite a bit better than what we can cast.

So all we can and should push for is more dps (and to achieve that de-aggro), as that will give us a spot in those 36 and soon 24 man raids that are and will be there to stay if you want to get the best loot.

[Hzath]

If we want to burn harder we need to try and get things that stack with what we have.  An activated AA that also comes with a heavy endurance cost.  There are a few options that would stack with emp fury - increased crit strength (like savage spirit), hundred hands effect ( I think rogue's fury has this?), increased crit rate.

On the spell damage side of things something like prolonged destruction - Increased mana cost for nukes in exchange for increased crit chance.

A new idea the AA puts a "buff" on you that would make the yowl line always give us the 4 proc, the "buff" would also have something like a 500/tick mana drain and 500/tick health drain.  Make it last a minute and give us the option of clicking it off if we want to stop the burn.  Make the health/mana drains on the SE buff slots so there aren't other conflicts, another detrimental side effect would obviously be kicking off SE.

Just throwing these out there because I agree we could use really gain a boost in our burst potential (I've hit 10k once, but 9k+ is just getting lucky IMO.)  Also posting them in the AA idea thread, but they came to mind reading you all fight about our DPS.