SoF 2 Weeks later!

[Oiingo]

So far I'd give the expansion a C for its overall grade.  The spells are pretty plain, there are only a few ``must have'' AAs, the zones aren't particularly striking, the raids lack any real creativity (thus far) and the faction is as boring as ever though really a necessity.

It's a good expansion but not a great one.  Just average.

I do, however, like the effect they achieved with Hills of Shade.  Definitely my favorite zone so far.

[laissez]

aura of divinity blocks growl of the panther, i'm not sure on puma cause i dont have it but growl is alot more denefical than the aura is.

[Khauruk]

Spell Issue:
Bulwark of Tri`Qaras:
Description: Bestows a protective guard upon your pet, protecting it from the next 6 incoming attacks. When this protection fades, your pet will gain a large increase to attack speed and damage for 30 seconds.

What actually happens:
Spell autocasts Rage of Tri`Qaras upon dropping, which hastes the pet to 85% (i.e. exactly what we have it hasted to anyways), and increases the dmg mod from what we get on Peerless Penchant (9%) to 18%.  So, we get an 8.25% gain to melee damage for 30 seconds, which does nothing if you're using the Growl of the Panther line.

Suggestion:
Slot X: Increase attack speed (Hasted v2) by (at least) 15%
--or--
Slot X: Increase attack speed (Hasted v1) by 100%

And:
Slot Y: Increase all skills damage modifier by 25%.

This would give a 35% melee dps increase over our normally hasted pet, and a 22% increase over the normally hasted pet with Growl of the Panther running.  For 30 seconds.  Unless I totally did the math wrong.

Sounds like it might be worthwhile to offset the 750 mana cost.

[Nusa]

Oh yeah, I already dismissed Bulwark of Tri`Qaras as being complete junk in my mind, so I forgot to complain about it. It's right up there with Viscious Ferocity, which I also neglected to complain about.

[sunkash]

In no particular order:

Melee, AA's abilities we did rather welll; spellls I'd rank somewhere in the abysmal category, basically a rehash of the lackluster spellls we've gotten for 4 expansions now.

Pact of the Wurine Illusion:   Attended a few raids, beastlords got more than a few ooc shouts: where all these @#$%#$@% giant wolves come from, you all forget
to shrink or raids or what! All but myself, eventually clicked off thier illsuions, as its just way to much a PITA to remem shrink, recast shrink 2x, remem normal raid spell set,
that's if you don't get yourself stomped into the groud, while attempting all this during a raid. This is after all the BEST thing we have from this expansion, and as is, pretty much useless on raids, in its current form.
If you're already shrunk, why can't this be made to give you wolf form, in the size you are at b4 you cast? i.e. insta shrunk wolfie
or drasticallly increase the spell timer, to somewhere on the order of most normal spells??
Illusions "and familiars" should show up in same window with as paragon, and auras do, not that we've ever be given an aura, or create a new window for them to go in.  This could possibly solve 2 problems, I'm normally buff blocked or very nearly there. This might also give them a way to make LoN illusions, familiars and Pact actually useable by beasts. I have an illusion loot card, and a LoN familiar card, in my LoN account, but as is, might as well sell them.

Bulwark of Tri'Qaras  -- broke
Still trying to figure out what the major difference between this and Dragonscale; dragonscale seems to block more hits 8, for 500 mana, as bulwark is 6 for 750

Pet haste recourse -- plenty been said on that already & SOE's answer was "well just recast it when it wears out"; like to see them get away with that on the mage board, or one of the classes they actually listen too.

Ferocity; our class board did manage to get the last upgrade completely deleted to this spelll line, on the last expansion, just as happened to other spells abilities in the past, they said. ok. delete, and gave us absolutely nothing in return, so PLEASE don't run off and just tell them to delete it again, without something useable and wanted by our class, in return!! I'm not in the top 2-3% of the class, I use it and will continue to use it, if only for the increased resists, when I'm 2 boxing, or on raids. as my resists aren't maxed out.. Please don't assume as has happened in the past, that because you don't want or need  it, nobody does.
more on Fero -- one post here, shows a quote from the devs that in its current form, there's really not a lot they could do with it without making  some coding changes... LOL these guys, especially the person who made that statement is a programmer.  Programmers main function to exist is to create/write/modify code. I know I've work with programmers, for much longer than I can to admit to. They should put down the crayons, open up some source code, complle some new code... any new expansion has tons of "new or modified" code. They wouldn't have gotten away with that statement on the mage, or about any other class board.. we just say, oh, guess we'll live with what we got "again". If a programmer made that statement any any of the places I've worked, they'd maybe open the door sometime after they tossed that programmer throught it.

Dots: I use them all the time when I 2box, its more mana effecient. The big argument I keep seeing is that mobs just die to fast for them to be of any use. I manage to get full times when I 2 box, again maybe because I'm not in the top 2-3% of beasts; please consider that 97-98% are not there as welll. not everyone can be in the top fer percentages.

fixed time invis aa or spelll. we got our current invis at level 43, aren't we more than a little overdue here? 3 expansions or so overdue. I emailed the last 2 correspondents
we had, and they just said, it wasn't even on thier list, and was no plans to even bring it up. Group they played with never had a problem invising them.. a rather sad response that was.

cures and resists; when was last time we had anything here?

overall its more than I expected, as my expectations are so low these days, but still lacking; hybirds need spells to.. think that's why we're called hybirds?

[Inphared]

If you don't like pact, don't use it. Very simple.

I'm pretty sure we didn't get Fero deleted. Sony doesn't read these forums religiously.

It's been said that we won't get a timed invis. Why, we don't know, but it's logical to me.

Cures and resists are taken care of by other classes. We're a mana-regen utility class with reasonable DPS to add.

And last I checked, I was not any form of a bird, but a Hybrid.

[Denti]

Dunno how Ferocity got deleted, as far as i know we got a new and even more useless version each level cap expansion.

Pact is actually a very nice thing to use and i don't see where the big issue is in reshrinking. Time it right (before engaging the next boss, not during) and it is no issue at all. Even better, there is a bst usable shrink clicky from a dodh mission with a 0.1 or so cast time, that is easy enough to camp at level 80. It would however be great if bestial alignment and pact overwrite each other, but at the moment im happy enough to just click pact off whenever i need to double disc.

As to DoT vs. nukes, well, of course dots are more mana efficient if they run for their full length and damage, our new disease dot actually does 5.9 damage / mana, but that requires it to stick on first cast and run for the whole 72 seconds and do max base damage each tick. If it only runs half its duration and does min base damage its down to only 2.87 damage / mana.
The poison dot has a shorter run time to begin with so the variance isn't all that big if you compare it to an average run time of 6 ticks. However it has no resist modifier whereas the poison nuke has one and isn't that much worse at 3.37 damage/mana, actually same efficiency as our highest ice nuke. All info taken of course from rank one spells, scaling should be the same for all of them.

However mana efficiency is allways down to playstyle, with our new focused paragon every two minutes and normal paragon added to that every 15 minutes we are actually a class with very high mana regen at the moment. Add to that the ability to just sit down for a minute and regen back a third or more of your manapool and mana-efficiency becomes a non-issue.

Resists, dunno if we ever got anything more than what we had from Luclin on, except for Fero of course, and as for cures, well, nothing new since at least PoP except for pet heals, so i wouldn't ever expect them to add anything there.

As for pet haste recourse, well, first time i ever blocked one of my own spells on me and my pet, but normal haste just holds longer even if it has a longer cast time, and potions are even better still so i allways carry quite a few around.

That Bulwark spell is something i tried once and then just forgot about it. The dps difference is not even parseable on normal encounters and the issues are too big to use it at all.

All in all spells are somewhat lackluster and just the usual copy-paste upgrades for the most parts, AAs are actually quite nice and well thought out. Our dps is still pretty nifty, monks just grumble in a dark corner about it while some zerkers actually scream nerf (although more at rogues).

[Humlaine]

Thanks for the feedback, a few things I wanna add in there, any spell and bug issues, please please please use /bug , and /feedback in game, it helps somewhat (not always but better then nothing!) as I will also be pushing forward some things, Spell changes are like pulling teeth atm with who our spell dev is. I am glad so many of you liked most of the things we got, I will suggest the pact issues , but I am trying to push for BE to just not give a illusion so it does stack with pack of the wurine.

[Khauruk]

Humlaine - any word on a timeline for Prathun's spell cast-time/recast timer revamp?  Has he mentioned if it would affect any of our spells?

If that's a possiblity, here's my suggestions (can provide an extensive list of spell IDs and suggested cast times/recast timers if needed):
*Utility spells:  Haste, shrink moved to shorter timer (like 1.5 second), and this trend continued for utility spells that won't unbalance combat situation.  If you're feeling generous, it would be wonderful to have our cripple spell have a similar cast time to our slow spells.

*Buffs:  Is there any reason buffs take so long to cast?  I can see some that can be used as group heals (although mana efficiency would be awful, and can just make them slightly slower than group heal), but that doesn't really affect any of ours.  Please lower buff cast times (mainly affecting Spiritual Elightenment line, and Focus of Zott line).

*DoTs:  DoTs are combat spells just like our nukes.  We're still amazingly thankful that our nukes were put on a 0.5s timer.  Please finish the job by putting all of our DoTs post level-65 on a similar cast timer.  The same would be wonderful with our short duration pet (Howl at the Moon line) and the Growl of the Puma line.

*Pet runes:  All of our pet runes are on a 6 second timer.  These are spells that need to be cast in combat, which are mana-heavy.  It is often a question in Rampage and AE spell intensive raid fights as to whether or not it's worth keeping our pet alive.  The work Rytan did on our pets for this expansion greatly helped skew it towards the positive, but the long cast timers on these spells can make it hard to justify recasting during combat.  Or, in some cases (ae stuns), difficult to cast.  Please move these to a shorter timer to help promote their in-combat use.  A decrease on our generic pet heal line cast timer (Salve of Feldan line) would also be greatly appreciated.

[Khauruk]

Oh - are there any efforts underway to fix the Lockfang Jaws spell still?

[Beastfistt]

In no particular order:

Pact of the Wurine Illusion:   Attended a few raids, beastlords got more than a few ooc shouts: where all these @#$%#$@% giant wolves come from, you all forget
to shrink or raids or what! All but myself, eventually clicked off thier illsuions, as its just way to much a PITA to remem shrink, recast shrink 2x, remem normal raid spell set,
that's if you don't get yourself stomped into the groud, while attempting all this during a raid. This is after all the BEST thing we have from this expansion, and as is, pretty much useless on raids, in its current form.
If you're already shrunk, why can't this be made to give you wolf form, in the size you are at b4 you cast? i.e. insta shrunk wolfie
or drasticallly increase the spell timer, to somewhere on the order of most normal spells??
Illusions "and familiars" should show up in same window with as paragon, and auras do, not that we've ever be given an aura, or create a new window for them to go in.  This could possibly solve 2 problems, I'm normally buff blocked or very nearly there. This might also give them a way to make LoN illusions, familiars and Pact actually useable by beasts. I have an illusion loot card, and a LoN familiar card, in my LoN account, but as is, might as well sell them.

Bulwark of Tri'Qaras  -- broke
Still trying to figure out what the major difference between this and Dragonscale; dragonscale seems to block more hits 8, for 500 mana, as bulwark is 6 for 750

fixed time invis aa or spelll. we got our current invis at level 43, aren't we more than a little overdue here? 3 expansions or so overdue. I emailed the last 2 correspondents
we had, and they just said, it wasn't even on thier list, and was no plans to even bring it up. Group they played with never had a problem invising them.. a rather sad response that was.

Ok first, Bulwark, it may block those 6 attacks, but after it drops it has a little damage modifier thats broken attached to it. If it was fixed it would be a nice spell and i would probably use it.

Second, Pact, it rocks, and if your having problems because you have to remem shrink after every cast then why not just keep it up? or cast between mobs?

Invis, we don't need a fixed invis, ours works fine, if you watch for the message saying its about to drop look for a spot nearby without mobs, i find them all the time and have never died from a dropped invis.

read Inphared's post up a few, it basically sums up everything

[Sikkem]

We're a mana-regen utility class with reasonable DPS to add.

Where did this come from?

[Inphared]

Umm... Paragon + Focused Paragon? Maybe? I'm not 100% sure.

[Sikkem]

Umm... Paragon + Focused Paragon? Maybe? I'm not 100% sure.

So this is how you decided to label the class and not something that the devs have said in beta?

[Khauruk]

Dev's won't enlighten us with their view/vision of the class, and haven't for years.