Current Top 10 list

[Skratz]

everyone has said most of this, but putting in my vote.
I think invis is fine.  Group buffs would be very nice, extend spiritual line and haste, Lower re-use on Roar of Thunder, dps, SA to 11?, new slow going live.

Do agree DPS is the major issue.

[Rhoam]

Where do we stand on the lack of increased regen on the focuses beyond dpoc? I read the mage boards and they confirm that the regen is still at 96/second on the mod focus but at 272/sec on the dpoc. If this is right, is it intended or a bug?

[Shieara]

I personally am okay with our buffs except for the level 70 fero.  I mean, I would welcome group haste and group ios or new buffs with open arms, but I can live without them.   This is assuming that the new slow goes live sometime this decade. 

What I remember is that at 65 I was sooo proud to have ferocity.  I felt like being able to fero our major dps classes on a raid (or our tanks in some instances for resists) really made a difference and made up somewhat for my not-so-great dps.  I'd really like to see that "wow" factor come back with the 70 fero.  I know it has been brought up a lot and there are tons of things that could make it cool that have been mentioned by others, so I won't add to them. 

I can't comment on pet survivability or dps so much since they aren't really an issue yet at my level of game.  My pet never dies unless I do something stupid like forget to rune it  these days, and my dps, while not stellar, is okay compared to others...at least noone has complained yet (though maybe that's because I am leading the raids and they can't kick me out).  I know that it becomes an issue later on though, so I hope you guys find a good resolution.

One thing I might suggest is moving some of the LDoN spells out to mobs or vendors, or even making quests for them.  I know that my alt is having a heck of a time getting groups to go farm the spells.  I'm not sure if it is worthy of a top-ten spot but it might be something to just discuss.

[Jkal_Shihar]

One thing I might suggest is moving some of the LDoN spells out to mobs or vendors, or even making quests for them.  I know that my alt is having a heck of a time getting groups to go farm the spells.  I'm not sure if it is worthy of a top-ten spot but it might be something to just discuss.

This is what I also have been trying to bring up. When I am on one of my alts for a off night I'll try to send feedback about it. I find this as a benefit to all classes though. But there is wishful thinking.

[Tastian]

Spell aquisition is an ongoing discussion.  Some people don't like going back to content or don't like how rare some spells still are.  We were in PoP or luclin I think and they were still tweaking some of the kunark drop rates.  Ry doesn't like vender spells and sees spells as gear for casters.  I don't see anything major changing anytime soon when it comes to getting some of these spells, but who knows.  When it comes to LDoN I always found it easier to get a few lower level people and do some easy instances than trying to get an even level group.  Grabbing a couple of 62's or whatever and doing the "normal" 65 missions is very easy and I used to solo/duo them back in the day.  *shrugs*  We'll see what happens and I'll try to have a rough draft of the new top 10 up by monday.

[Rhoam]

If they made the ldon spells obtainable by other than points, would people buy the ldon expansion still? i doubt it. I dont see them changing the spell source any time soon.

[Strigori]

The argument of "gear for casters"  can be easily debunked when refering to older expansions.   Gear gets updated in every expansion, with more tradeskilled and dropped items replacing the older ones.   Do people go back into kunark dungeons to farm gear to use at lv 60? No. That gear is horribly outdated by then, even by the 30s and 40s in todays terms.  Now spells,  there are not same level useable upgrades for spells.  Malo is still Malo,  for example.  Shaman still need this spell, regardless of where it drops.  The 'gear for casters' argument only holds up on current expansions really.   Once the content is outdated and groups no longer go theer to xp, then it becomes a hastle to even get help to obtain the spells.    And for expansions like kunark,  and luclin, even the former raid drops are outclassed by todays bazaar items. 

[Bengali]

I mostly disagree with that.  For the most part, spells *are* upgraded with expansions just like gear.  Malo may be one spell that isn't upgraded, but Malosinia is an upgrade of Malosini, and just about every other spell line is upgraded as well.  Groups may move on to do new content, but the reason they can do that is because they don't have to do the old content.  If something really is "needed," then people will go back to do it.  Mages used to *kill* for the Greater Vocaration pets, but now if they have trouble getting them they often just wait a few levels and get the upgrade.  A lot of our new recruits have skipped over all sorts of spells that the rest of us depended on when we were leveling, and they have zero reason to go back and get them.  How many beastlords, for example, don't get any of the GoD spells at all nowadays?

Also, as the game progresses, it becomes easier to obtain those older items that might be needed.  I remember having to form up mini-raids of 18+ to kill guardian wurms and hope Malo would drop for one of our shamans, and I remember people selling the spell for 50-100k.  Now druids and necros farm them and put the spells in the bazaar, and if it fetches more than a few thousand pp it's a rarity.  I imagine that I could probably kill a guardian wurm without even calling out my pet, and those things used to wipe our mini raids. :)  I know *clerics* who solo in VP for those spells.  Clerics.  Solo.  In Veeshan's Peak.  If you said such a thing would be possible back during Kunark people would have laughed you into the looney bin.

Also, casters get other upgrades besides spells, and those upgrades make it easier for them to do older content too.  To use the Malo example, today's level 60 shaman has access to all sorts of focus effects and all around better gear than a level 60 Kunark shaman had.  There are new AA abilities that today's casters have that yesterday's casters didn't.  It may be harder to get help to go farm Kunark for spells, but you don't *need* to get as much help to do it.  LDoN is really the only exception to this rule that I can think of, because it at least requires a minimum amount of people to go back and do it.  But the shaman who started me on EQ years ago spent over 6 months trying to get Malo, and that was back when people were doing Kunark all the time.  It won't take you that long to get it now, even accounting for the reduced interest in that expansion.

We also should not forget that while there are a few spells that casters cannot upgrade w/o doing old content, there are some weapons and items that have the same problem.  There is no "upgrade" to the Journeyman's Walking Stick, or the Wild Lord's BP, or the clicky-shrink Kunark/Velious boots.  There isn't an easily obtainable upgrade to the 8th+ Coldain rings.  More recently and at the higher end, there isn't an upgrade to the Spiked Steel Baton, and many many guilds only bother to do Zun once.  If a melee wants that weapon, they will have to convince some friends to do it, even if they have moved on.  There's no upgrade to Seru's acumen earring, or to the Ornate BP clicky.  There is reduced interest in doing all of these things, and if melees want them they have to go do the old content to get them.

[Shieara]

I don't know on the LDoN thing.  It seems like a lot of the spells you get there you just can't find elsewhere.  For example, spirit of shrew/pack shrew.  You can later on buy run3 I guess but that doesn't help if you are indoors and want to increase pet run speed.  One big one I am trying to get for my ranger is the indoor wolf form for the extra attack.  Getting 650 Guk points to open things up has been incredibly frusterating...noone wants to do Guk unless I drag them kicking and screaming.  As far as I know LDoN is the only place for indoor wolf.  For clerics it's also the only source for the Vie line until they get to 67 and turn in their second rune.

I am fine with working for my spells, but I do wish that they would try to make it easier somehow.  I think maybe a good compromise would be to make copies of some of the spells available at more then one camp.  I guess I am rambling but I'd really like to see some kind of change here to make these more available.

[jitathab]

Omens runes are not caster loot, all classes need them, some just need more than others.

[Bengali]

I guess the thing about LDoN is that if you take the one reason people have to go there (spells that can't be obtained elsewhere) and remove it, then people will have no reason to go there.  I say it's the one reason to go there, but that's not entirely accurate since you can still get augs there.  Believe me, I know it's hard to get LDoNs done.  I spend a fair amount of time trying to do them with no luck (I don't need any augs or spells really -- although I suppose I could buy pack shrew and the lower level Calliav spells just to fill my spellbook) because I want to finish my Adventurer's Stone.  I still need 6 guk, 1 tak, 6 ruj and 7 mm.  :(

Still, I'd rather see some reasons for other people to help me with LDoN without feeling like they are wasting their time (or without me feeling like I'm wasting theirs).  One possible solution is to have points usable toward popular consumables -- like xp potions or those mana/health potions with the long recast that were an in-game item (at a pretty high cost).  Or they could just have an npc that would exchange points for AA or something, or boost the xp in LDoNs overall.  Anything that makes it worthwhile for the people who don't really need the items that are there now.

Anyway on to the top ten:

So far I think the pet heals are fine, so I agree that one can probably come off.  The two biggest categories for me would be "dps" and "utility".  They are pretty much related because we'll often hear how one can't go up because of the other, and both are pretty lackluster atm in my opinion.

DPS:

This one has a lot of subissues (which I know Tast brings to the devs on a regular basis):

-Equipment:  It's just not designed very well for us.  Since our power is divided 3 ways (spells, pet, melee), it can take 3 items to realize the same overall power gain that others get from one item.  Even more significantly, the boosts in each category are pretty bad.  Pet focus effects are horrendous past the Plane of Time -- pets don't get the same boost going from Time to Anguish that a player will get by going from Time weapons to Anguish ones.  Many of our spell lines get no upgrades in terms of spell effects (i.e., beneficial spell haste, poison dots, detrimental extension, etc.).  There are various focus effects that are inexplicably missing (bsts are the only class with player heals who can't use Blessing of Anguish).  Note that I mentioned a high-level focus effect, but this actually extends down to every beastlord.  There isn't any beneficial spell haste for us past Quickening of Mithaniel, which will affect level 70 non-raiding beastlords also.

With regard to weapons, we often get put on weapons that don't necessarily take into account our abilities.  Our bst-only weapon from MPG is a clone of the ranger weapon (a 2hb), except the ranger one is actually a DPS upgrade if they have invested in the right AA abilities, whereas ours is a downgrade in a great many circumstances (ambi + sinister strikes > nonexistent 2h aa).  The ratios on the weapons that we can use clearly are designed for classes who can double attack.  This wouldn't be a problem if our spells and pet actually made up for what we lose by not having double attack, but basically they don't.

- Spells:  Here I'd say the biggest problem is resists.  Cold/poison seems to be a much less useful combination than others in terms of mob resists.  Moreover, it also seems that while cold based/resistant  mobs may be immune to our spells (Gelidrans, PoWater mobs, etc.), it's not like fire based mobs are necessarily vulnerable to them.  I have spells bounce in the fire side of RSS all the time.  It's just that on that side the mobs aren't basically immune to me.

The resists on DoTs are worse than those on the nukes, though.  Beastlords (and shamans, actually) are the only classes who depend significantly on DoTs but don't have negative resist mods on them (even classes who aren't DoT-dependent, like clerics, have negative resist mods on the DoTs that they do have).  Some people would say that this is because shamans can debuff resists, but a lot of mobs have resists that take into account debuffs and are still hard to land spells on as a result.  It also doesn't help us any since we don't have any resist debuffs.  DoTs already have a lot of tradeoffs -- in particular, there is a high risk that DoTs won't do full damage and there is a limit to the number of DoTs a mob can have on it (there's no limit to how many times it can be nuked in a given period).  I think one thing the devs should consider is adding resist mods to poison and disease dots for beastlords and shamans the way other classes have resist mods on magic and fire DoTs.  It's corny how a level 50 goblin has a better chance of landing ignite blood on me than I do of landing chimera blood on a light blue noc.

In short, the downside of DoTs could be that they are at risk of being inefficient and falling short of their potential if they don't last full duration, but the *upside* could be that you have a much higher chance of landing them.  That would be pretty fair imo.

UTILITY:

Ferocity:  What more can I say here?   It's essentially to the point where I have a few people ask me for it, but a lot of them can't spare the buffslot for it and they want to make room for Lion's or champion.  If Fero had something like combat effects or crit chance or some kind of skill mod (double attack, etc.) then people would want it, and it might be worth the 750 mana for 6 mins and 2 min recast.  Right now it's "meh".  The stamina on it is completely useless.

Other utility:  I really wish there were some strategic reasons to want a beastlord.  Like how if you're going to fight undead you want to take clerics, paladins, shadow knights and necros.  Or if you want to fight summoned mobs you take mages, druids and rangers.  It would be nice if you were going to fight beasts (i.e., animals) you'd take druids, rangers and *beast*lords.

[sunkash]

How about an invis that last a little longer.

I'll second that. If you don't have another class in your group that has a fixed time invis, "thats not self-only", places like GoD, OoW are just plain risky. I maybe have bad luck, but I've had my corpse drug through MPG, more times that I've been able to run to camp. (that dreaded message "your invis is about to wear off", then a second or two before .. loading, please wait )  Got lost in GoD couple of weeks ago, trying to find the zone I was supposed to meet rest of group at, invis dropped 5 times; luckily  I have Seru's horse, so was able to outrun the mobs, but it really gets a bit frustrating.

[Tastian]

As I said I'm going to try having a draft of the top 10 list up by monday so people can read it over.  What I really want to do though is trim it down as much as possible.  I think most of our issues are while known and we have tons of data to back them up. 

In the case of invis that is largely just a gameplay mechanic.  Invis has a random duration and that is how it is intended.  More classes have been given fixed duration invis.  There are improved invis potions that I believe may become easier to aquire soon.  Also there are things such as cloudy potions.  Even as a beastlord I carry a few of these for the times when invis drops at a bad time.  You can drop your invis and click potion without pulling aggro in many cases.  I know a lot would like to see a more reliable invis, but atm it doesn't seem too likely.