Current Top 10 list

[Tastian]

Beastlord Top 10 list for 02/07/05

Items 2, 4, 6, and 10 have mulitple "Proposed solutions," please see post above for detail.
1) Beastlord slowing: This will most likely be considered as part of the class Re-Envision process.
Beastlords currently are unable to perform the role of main slower in a group to a reasonable level in an increasing number of zones. The problem with our slow isn't the % it does, but rather the resist rate on the spell and as a result of the high resist rates the streaks of resists we see.
Proposed solution: Add a new slow spell for beastlords in our omens spell line that has a -30 resist mod on it.. This will allow beastlords to better land slows and function as main slower for groups without having the beastlord actually debuff the mob or affect how other classes or even other beastlord spells are landing.

2) Beastlord sustained dps: DPS for all classes to be evaluated with the class Re-Envision process
This is an issue that comes about because of progression. Since beastlord dps is divided up among melee, proc, pet, and non-melee beastlords simply gain less % wise from a weapon upgrade than other classes do. If you take a class like monk or warrior and give them a weapon that is 10% better than what they are using they will see almost a 10% boost to their overall dps. However, a beastlord getting that same 10% weapon upgrade will see closer to a 3% boost to their overall dps. Weapons have had a major tendency to improve in terms of dmg/del ratio, but stay the same in terms of proc damage. This causes a lot of problems for beastlords because we rely so heavily on proc dps. An example of this would be the ED from time that only has a 16/22 ratio, but out performs a SotA that has a 23/20 ratio. Weapon ratios have gone way up, but with few exceptions proc dps has stagnated for awhile. With the GoD expansion and now omens all of those smaller % gains have added up to beastlords at the higher end doing less sustained dps than they should be. Please note that this is a problem that comes about because of progression, itemization and a few other factors. Beastlord sustained dps is nice up through about the plane of time level of the game. However, after that things start to fall off and beastlords dps simply doesn't scale up as well as it should resulting in beastlords doing less sustained dps than they should be.
3) Beastlord "burst" dps: DPS for all classes to be evaluated with the class Re-Envision process
This is a similar issue to #2 in that it comes about largely because of the beastlord division of power. Most other classes are able to "burst" by using a disc to raise their damage or mana dumping. A beastlord, however, can't mana dump because our nukes are on a 30sec refresh timer. Also our discipline only affects the melee portion of our damage. That means that while other classes can disc and almost double their damage for the duration of the disc a beastlord only doubles their melee damage. This leaves their warder damage, proc damage, and non-melee damage at the same level as before.

Proposed solution: The easiest way to fix this issue is to make it so that beastlord burst disc and AAs boost more than just the melee portion of a beastlords damage. Bestial alignment is a GoD AA for beastlords that raises just our melee damage currently and has roughly double the reuse time of most burst disciplines. Lowering the reuse time on this AA to be inline with other burst disc type of skills and having it give our pet a buff would help raise our burst dps. Another thing to consider would be adding an effect to it that raises our non-melee damage well the effect is going. Again it's an issue of the division of power and beastlords need some way to "burst" the other aspects of their damage and not only their melee damage if they are expected to stay inline.

4) Beastlord aggro issues: Currently being discussed
I know it seems kind of funny to talk about aggro problems right after talking about how beastlords aren't doing enough dps in various cases, but that's just how it goes. The fact is beastlords generate far too much aggro for the damage they are doing. In fact, part of the reason many people think beastlord damage is higher than it really is currently is because beastlords are generating so much more aggro than they should. The main cause of this is because of how much aggro is associated with non-melee damage and the fact that beastlords have to be close and melee'n while doing their non-melee damage. Please note that beastlords are ok with getting aggro well slowing or doing other things that generate aggro, but doing 100+dps less than another class and still pulling aggro off the MT isn't right.

The largest cause of aggro problems currently for beastlords is poison dots. Many beastlords simply can't use these in a group or raid setting because the aggro they generate is so much higher for the damage done than other forms of damage. Initial aggro tests done showed the level 61 poison dot having roughly double the aggro to damage ratio of our nukes. Add in the fact that extra damage from crits/focus don't raise nuke aggro, but tests have shown extra damage from crits/focus to raise dot aggro and things just get worse. Actually things get worse even without factoring in focus/crits because the level 66 beastlord poison dot has 80% more poison counters on it than scorpion venom had. This spell should be a proc on an uber warrior weapon, not a spell for a dps class that has no reliable means of actively lowering aggro.


5) Spell casting reinforcement mastery (SCRM) Currently being discussed
Beastlords are a buffing class and this AA seems to fit us well.  This AA would help a beastlord in group sustaining short duration buffs such as haste, regen and fero.  Also this AA would finally make it so that a beastlord could have their SD line of spells last as long as the refresh timer on MGB.

Proposed solution: Grant beastlords access to this AA.


6) Ferocity of Irionu - Currently being discussed
This spell simply costs too much mana for the small boost it gives over the level 65 version.

Proposed solution: Increase the benefit of this spell in relation to the previous version.

7) Add a group version of Infusion of spirit - Currently being discussed
This spell didn't fit well with our GoD spell lineup because of where it dropped. With omens out now though and 66 runes being tradeable it seems like a good place to add this spell in for beastlords. The beastlord omens spell line up is weak to begin with and this spell + stat cap mod would be a nice addition to it.

Proposed solution: Add in a group infusion of spirit spell at level 66 that breaks the stat cap.

8) Pet buff box: Currently being discussed
The ability to now see pet buff timers is a nice change, but pet classes are still wondering if changes will be made that allow us to manage our pet's buffs like we do our own. There are many stacking issues, ninja buffing happens and especially with pet affinity it's very common to have a buff on your pet that you don't want for whatever reason.
Proposed solution: Allow us to click off or somehow selectively remove the buffs we want from our pet.

9)  Omens utility issues: This will most likely be considered as part of the class Re-Envision process.

Beastlords have always been a DPS class with group utility in the form of slow and buffs. Slow was mentioned above, but buffs also need to be mentioned now. Especially with omens beastlord buffing could some adjustments. The main problems are lack of useful buffs, marginal increases to buffs we do use and the tediousness of maintaining buffs.

Proposed solution:

    * Change Focus of Alladnu to be a group hp buff.
    * Change Spiritual Ascendance to give +11/11 instead of the +10/10 it currently gives. The spell line for Beastlords has followed the same progression from level 44 up to now. Even by keeping the same constant +2/2 boost the % gain we see is still diminishing.  Please remember that unlike many of the other mana regen buffs that also receive upgrades to the HPs or wis/int they give SD is only a regen buff with the mana being by far the most important part of it.\
    * Increase the duration on the entire spiritual line of hp/mana regen. Currently a beastlord even with maxed SCR AA can't sustain MGB'n SD because the spell has such a low base duration. Beastlords aren't asking for 2+ hour base duration, but would like to see at least a base duration of 1:12 like our hp/atk buff line of buffs has. 


10) Beastlord pet heals: Currently being evaluated
Pet healing is one of the main things the beastlord class was built on. We had hands down the best pet heals in the game. In fact, our heals for our pet were comparable to cleric heals. However, since PoP beastlord pet healing has fallen off a lot. Both our level 61 and our level 66 pet heal spells have a 9 second base casting time. That is simply too long for the heal to be useful. Beastlords are a melee class and in most cases the 9 second pet heal simply isn't practical. Many high level beastlords don't even keep a pet heal spell mem'd anymore and instead find themselves relying on the exact same tools every other pet class uses (pet mend, pet regen, PoC, etc)

[Urim]

Or in other words ... Nothing Changed and New!

[Tastian]

I'd say I detect some shock in your voice, but then you'd detect some sarcasm in mine.  8P

The expansion hits in a couple days.  Hopefully some issues will be addressed via content and those that aren't will be soon after.  I've got some more data I'm going to pass along soon, but like I've said there really just hasn't been much happening I'm afraid.  8(

[Karve]

Keep at 'em Tastian :)

I'm sure we'll have a balanced and workable class before they turn the lights out.




edit:spooling mistoks.

[Sikelik]

regarding your 10th point, about SA being 10/10 instead of increasing by another 2 and becoming 11/11 can be explained by looking at enchanter's regen line.


koadic's endless intellect(luclin), lvl 60 - 14 mana per tick
Spiritual Purity(luclin), lvl 59 - 7 mana per tick. half of KEI

Voice of Quellious(PoP), lvl 65 - 18 mana per tick
Spiritual Dominion(PoP), lvl 64 - 9 mana per tick, half of VoQ

Voice of Clairvoyance(OoW), lvl 70 - 20 mana per tick
Spiritual Ascendance(OoW), lvl 69 - 10 mana per tick, ALSO half of VoC.


see the connection here? for the past 3 spells we've gotten, we've gotten half the mana-regen the enchanters get. so as far as i'm concerned, the spell is like it's supposed to be.

[Tastian]

"see the connection here? for the past 3 spells we've gotten, we've gotten half the mana-regen the enchanters get."

So instead of looking at the entire spell line in terms of beastlords you want to look at part of the line in respect to another class?

I mean you ignore that the line for beastlords went 3/5/7/9/...  Also what about at 52 when beastlords give 5 and clarity 2 gives 9?  Or before clarity two was moved to 52 from 54?  No mention of clarity, I mean you aren't even talking about the entire line, but part of it. 

There are tons of ways you can find to justify a number, especially if you ignore entire parts of a series and focus in on 3 out of 5 parts lol.

These are different spells for different classes that do different things.  The +int/wis and mana on the enc buff has gone up.  What about the huge difference in duration seen with kei verse the spiritual line?  I mean clarity two lasted a whooping 35 mins base duration, but kei lasts 2.5 hours.  Maxed on buff extention a beastlord still can't MGB + SA and have it last until MGB is refreshed.

I personally would rather discuss beastlord things in terms of beastlords and their utility and what has happend with them.  Just too many other things to weigh if you are going to try making a cross class comparision.   *shrugs*

[Sikelik]

whooa, down boy.. !

i was simply mentioning a connection, that there is. whether or not that is the reason why SA is only 10 mana per tick i don't know. and only the game developers can really give us an answer to that.

i was sort of disappointed when i saw that we only got 1 more mana per tick on our upgrade to spiritual dominion. but saying you would rather only discuss beastlord issues, when bringing up such a thing as this. this is partially a class balance issue, and then you have to bring other classes spells into consideration.

[Khayden]

It's not a class balance issue, the reason SOE will give for it (and I think have already given?) will be that mana regen was reaching a point where it would trivialise some encounters which explains the smaller increase in both the chanty one and ours.

I can't see how it makes much difference to have a total of 30 extra mana per minute if you had 22 and 11 a tick over 20 and 10 personally.

Khayden

[Tillath]

Just a quick note on the previous topic of chanter vs bst spells.

I agree that there should not be a comparison made between classes.  What SOE should be taking into consideration is how the progression of the spell has been since inception and if any changes to that progression have taken place then they should be fixing it or providing an explanation.

Chanter progression:
Breeze (16) - 2/tick
Clarity (39) - 4-9/tick
Clarity II (52) - 9-11/tick
KEI (60) - 14/tick + 25 WIS/INT
Tranquility (63) - 16/tick + 26 WIS/INT
VoQ (65) - 18/tick + 28 WIS/INT
Clairvoyance (68) - 20/tick + 32 WIS/INT (single target)
VoC (70) - 20/tick + 32 WIS/INT

progression of at least 2/tick until 70 which is group version of 68 spell.

Beastlord progression:
SL (44) - 3/tick
SR (52) - 5/tick
SP (59) - 7/tick
SD (64) - 9/tick
SA (69) - 10/tick

progression of 2/tick until 69 at which progression is halved

Another example: druid regen spells
Regeneration (34) - 5/tick
Chloroplast (44) - 10/tick
Regrowth (54) - 20/tick
Replenishment (61) - 40/tick
Oaken Vigor (66) - 60/tick

there is a consistent progression here that continues as the spell line is upgraded

The issue as I see it is not that chanters get more or anything like that, it is that SOE has suddenly changed the progression of a spell line that is given to beastlords only with no reason or cause.  If they are calculating it out compared to chanters then they should have done that right from the beginning and given us an intermediate between our existing spells that are +1/tick.  they have however set an expectation of 2/tick and all other classes get a consistent progression except beastlords.

Can you imagine the uproar that would happen if the 68 chanter spell was only an increase of 1/tick.  Or if the druid OoW regen spell was only 50 instead of 60.  If SOE would have done to all classes what they did to beastlords then fine, it is standard across the board.  But they didn't.  All other classes spells still have consistent progression, and beastlords have suddenly had their consistent progression halved.  And no explanations or fixes have been forthcoming.  To me that is the issue of this - why beastlords are being treated differently than other classes.

[Oiingo]

On a side note, the druid HP/mana regen line seems to be missing from the progression comparisons.  They, like us, only received one extra point of regen between Protection/Blessing of the Nine and Steeloak Skin.

[Tillath]

Yes, you are correct.  I forgot about the mana regen on druid skin when doing comparisons (which is kinda bad for me considering I partner with a druid).

So, here it is:
39 and under Skin spells - 0 hp & mana/tick
49 - Po Nature - 2 hp/tick
59 - Po Cabbage - 6 mana/tick
63 - Po Nine - 8 mana/tick
67 - Steeloak skin - 9 mana/tick

So yes druids also get a reduction in mana per tick, but they have not consistently had mana regen on their skin since the inception of the line.  Comparatively, the hp and AC progression of the new OoW skin spell has actually increased instead of staying constant (an extra 21hp and 3AC from the last increase).

Also, druid self only line (Mask of x) stayed constant at 1 hp per tick increase, cleric self only line (Armor of x) decreased by 1 mana per tick, but increased in the hp and AC progression (an extra 63hp and 4AC).

So, druids lose 1 mana per tick on their skin but get added benefits on the spell line, clerics lose 1 mana per tick on their self only mana regen but gain added benefits, beastlords lose 1 mana per regen on their spells and lose 1 hp per tick hp regen and gain no other benefits.  This may be comparing apples to oranges as their mana lines are very different from ours, but from looking at the numbers other classes who lost the mana per tick get something else added, beastlords still lose something.

/shrug.  Just would be nice if beastlords were treated the same as other classes.  This is not our only OoW spell that does not follow the progression lines (Fero I know doesn't, there may be others). Just my 2cp though - not gonna get in a heated debate about it.  SOE will do what SOE will do and there's not really much we can do about it.  One of the reasons I haven't levelled past 65 yet is to see if the spells get adjusted to where they should be by progression, as it seems like just about every other class gets a lot more out of their OoW spells than beastlords do.  As I said in my earlier post, the question to me is still why beastlords are being treated differently than other classes.

If this is in the wrong forum I apologize. Any admins can feel free to move this convo to its own topic, but I felt the need to respond to what I was seeing.  By the way Tastian, I know I don't post a whole lot on here, but I would like to thank you for all the hard work you do for our community :)

[Tastian]

"whether or not that is the reason why SA is only 10 mana per tick i don't know. and only the game developers can really give us an answer to that."

The "reason" SA is 10 is more/less the same reason they lowered the benefit of perfection.  They said mana regen had to only go up so much.  The issue with that is that beastlords lost utility in omens as it was.  Take a look at the weak upgrade to fero.  Our pure stat buffs are used less and less and haven't seen an upgrade for a long time.  Meanwhile, other "buffs" saw the addition of modifiers to crit rate, to damage, to avoidance, breaking caps, etc. 

"saying you would rather only discuss beastlord issues, when bringing up such a thing as this. this is partially a class balance issue, and then you have to bring other classes spells into consideration."

This is where you are going againist what sony has said many times at this point.  They don't want class "balance" they want class "definition".  They have said that they don't want to balance a beastlords X verse a shamans Y, but rather look at beastlords and see what they should have, what they should do, how they should perform.

In a case as "simple" as this if you bring another class into it such as enchanters you simply can't just look at 3 out of 5 spells or so and note just the mana regen of the spell.  That totally ignores the huge boost to duration the enc spell saw, it ignores other "utility" that was maintained for enchanters in the form of other benefits to their other buffs.  It ignores what the class is actually doing, should be doing, etc. 

I didn't mean to come across agressive at all and I'm sorry if it read that way.  However, as a simple fact of comparision/pattern viewing/whatever you can't simply look at one aspect of a part of a series and come to any real conclussion usually.  *shrugs*

[sunkash]

I'd have to agree with Tastian on that. If we're going to look at another class, we need to look at thier entire line, not just part of it... SOE's always talking about class balance or class definetion.. yadda, yadda, yadda; however, at some point, it's necessary to start looking at how other classes were or were not upgraded, if only to show how the Beastlord has been rather silently nerfed over the last year or so, and apparently even with DoN the trend continues, with no relief in sight.
/shurg From posts above Druids maybe didnt get the upgrades one would think they would; also not part of the holy trinity SOE seems to want to focus on, so no suprise to me. If SOE developers actually play the game as they continue to say, its fairly obvious what classes they play, and which ones they don't.
Also of note, one could look at warder upgrades 60-65 vs. post 65; Mages for example get a new pet every level, ( similar to 60-65, one pet a level, 66-70 they continute to get one pet a level); albeit they get 4 seperate types of pets, and we get one; Necro's get a pet roughly every 2 levels, similar to what they got 60-65; we were getting pet upgrades every 2 levels; only the beastlord has to wait 4 levels 64-68, plus from the little info available the 68 pet doesn't appear to be much of an upgrade to the 64. Not to mention, both classes appear to get some rather nice upgrades on thier spell lines; we can't say that about ours, as noted in other comments above; our new spells can be summed up as "just sad".
Lets not leave out meele; seeing more and more weapons drops, even H2H, that are now monk only;
AA's Tastian has several times commented on ours, in the way of cost, and aslo effectiveness
SOE has done a rather remarkable jobs of nerfing our class from every aspect, almost like they don't really want us.

Read Smedley's letter on allah site, and some of his comments, and conclusions,  just leave me baffled. He's acknowledges that WoW, is pretty much taking them to the cleaners, that a lot of their staff and dev's also play & enjoy the game... now the truely interesting aspect of this is, at least from what I've read on the boards, that the most popular class in WoW is the hunter, that is basically a beastlord with all of the issues fixed that been complained about to SOE, that don't get fixed, but instead of seeing that as an opportunity to actually start adressing some of the issues, they want to create virtual children... what in the world are they smoking?  I can see it now. come home to your cave, your virtual wife starts harping "your late again, you old alley cat, bet you been sniffing around that cute little enchantess in POK again", or take your virtual family on a field trip to lavastorm, and then have to get a family rez, because SOE thought it would be kinda fun having a raid level dragon wandering around a newbie area. It's no wonder people are still leaving the game and going to WoW. SOE right now has the perfect opportunity to squander, by not taking this as a catalyst to start improving the class, instead of slowing degrading it patch after patch. Personally I'm very disappointed that very few of our issues has yet to be addressed; ordered the new expansion, in a last hope that we would get something, last expansion for me, unless and until some improvements actually hit live servers that we play on.

[Tillath]

Good points Tastian and I understand.  This discussion/comparison is for the most part an exercise in futility until SOE decides what they are doing with class definitions.  Hopefully they will come up with some ideas soon and get rid of some of the frustration that everyone is feeling with how the class is progressing (or not progressing as the case may be).  Thanks for replying because what you said makes sense.

[jitathab]

The current top 10 list on official forums shows Pet healing complete unless further comments.
I am happy enough with it, so what new item can we put on there?