The Beastlords' Den

Everquest 1 => The Campfire => Topic started by: wildwaters on May 09, 2010, 06:13:50 AM

Title: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: wildwaters on May 09, 2010, 06:13:50 AM
This might be useful in terms of providing devs with feed back and it would satisfy my curiosity since I don't play the class as a main anymore...

Lets stick to people who play Beastlord mains - I'm not interested in beast alt opinions atm

What do you think of the class at the moment? Obviously it needs improvment but are you happy with it? Do you feel that the class is 'dead'?

Are you a raiding beastlord main, a grouper or soloer?

What level are you and how many aa?

What direction do you think the class should head? Should they play dps or support? Should they be good tanks? Healers?

Are you satisfied with the upgrades you have recieved or are there rooms for major improvment or is the room for improvment more average?

I wont comment here cause I'm not a main but I would be interested in your answers.

-Tony
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Mazame on May 09, 2010, 07:27:48 AM
QuoteWhat do you think of the class at the moment?
The class as is before the patch coming in jun. is ok, we have many areas that could be improved on but as it stands were not bad off.  come the changes in jun. I not sure if I will feel the same or not.

with each passing year it feel as if were falling farther and farther behind the curve.

QuoteObviously it needs improvment but are you happy with it?
Happy NO but making it work and dealing with it.

QuoteDo you feel that the class is 'dead'?
I feel it is dieing not dead. most people who used to play bst have main switch there are fewer and fewer of us that still play as main and fewer guild that have uses for us in raid setting so if changes are not made soon to improve the class weakness I feel it may end up dead.

QuoteAre you a raiding beastlord main, a grouper or soloer?
Raid 3-4 nights a week
Group 7 days a week when I can find them
Box 7 days a week when I am LFG / working on quest that other don't want to help with.
Solo/molo never. I box rather then solo.

Quote
What level are you and how many aa?
85 with about 4.5k aa.
Quote
What direction do you think the class should head? Should they play dps or support? Should they be good tanks? Healers?

Support is our key role. how ever support to me means I focus on DPS yet when needed I can fill in where need.
Example
group healer dies or is oom I can temp heal the group till he back and ready to go
If tank die i can step up and tank to finish off the mob ( not talking about raids on this one ) leave raid tanking to the pro's.
Slow / debuff / weaking the mob when sham / chanter are not present
when all things are going smooth then DPS I want to be able to support my group / raid and burn the targets down.

so IMO I am a support class that fills in the holes in both raid and group to keep the team moving be it refilling their hp/mana, hold the mobs off or burning the target down. I want to be able to set into the role that is needed. yet I don't want to be the best at any of them leave that to the pure types. but i am the back up support for when it needed.

QuoteAre you satisfied with the upgrades you have recieved or are there rooms for major improvment or is the room for improvment more average?

some of the things we got in UF were a step on the right path. our new nuke for example other were a joke Friendly pet and safe fall. the thing is we need Major improvements in some key areas to get us back in line with where we should be.

top 5 on my list are

1 Warder Love
2 paragon / SE revamp and improved to be inline with current mana / hp pools
3 Fero ( need resist turned in to over caps / add crup resist / add a +crit % mod / and make it group )
4 Burst DPS .. we need some badly
5 Update old spell lines / disc. included would be  Cripple line, defense disc lines, slow line, Dot lines updated so they will land, etc.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Razimir on May 09, 2010, 09:29:06 AM
Background information:

I'm 85lvl around 4250 AA raiding beast and I'm doing fine atm. Our guild is hybrid heavy (quite many bst, rangers and knights) and our guild dps is lowish. Guild is raiding 3 nights / week and we are farming tower and Fippy. We are close to beat The Beast. I used to end in top 3 dps quite few times in SoD and rangers never out dps me. Now I'm starting to struggle with keep up with ranger dps (Using 11th event h2h weapon and SS in off hand. ).

About the class:

I'm ok with the current state of it, but we have a problem. SoE can't give us powerfull enough utility to become usefull on min max raid guild because that would make other classes cry (monks, mages, sham..). On the otherhand SoE can't boost our dps to roof, because that would make other classes cry (monks, mages etc.). 

Roles, that raids basically needs:

1) Healing
2) Tanking
3) DPS
4) CC (root, mezz, AoE stun...)
5) Debuffs (in UF)

Bsts currently got no tools for other role than DPS and those tools are getting old, so we need boost on that area. Numbers 1, 2, 4 are not and never has been our bread and butter, atleast on raid environment (well... I don't count spam heals on tanks or general rapearse fight). We used to preslow in PoP, GoD etc but or debuffs never sticked when shammies did their job (curse of shammy spell heritage). So that leaves us only option 3 unless SoE desided to give us some powerfull unique debuf line, which I doubt (shammies will cry). So the only path to raiding beast is to get more dps imo.

More DPS:

Now that our aggro problems has been somewhat solved, we need dps boost for raids to become viable asset to raids. But how we can manage to get big enough upgrades to our DPS? I don't think, SOE will boost just one area of our DPS tools to achieve the goal, so we need to get reasonable enough boost to our all DPS utility.

Nukes: I'm not sure what to do with them other than give us bigger nukes, more crit AA etc.
DoTs: Add us the same DoT booster AAs than shammys/necs/sks got.
Melee: We need more attacks / round, because weapons are getting huge boosts.
Discs: Upgraded DPS discs, some new stuff like instant feral swipe spam in certain period of time (thanks for idea Zunar)
Pet: Better scaling with pet focuses or total rewamp on pet damage code (like benefit from using higher ratio pet weapons)

I mean the only way to get our dps boosted is to focus on the all areas, rather than trying to get one big WOW boost on some area.

What comes to group game, I  think we are pulling our weight decently. Sure we can't tank or heal or CC, but our sustained dps is decent. I never solo.

-Raz



Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: bobokatt1970 on May 09, 2010, 11:18:06 AM
Lev 85 BST main, 5850 AA's.  Raid 3-4 times a week.
When not raiding, either grouping for UF progression or soloing for AA's but since maxed, don't really do that anymore.
2-3 box if I need to get some work done on alts.

For roles, on raids, with dwindling numbers, I find myself patch healing, DPS, and mana-pumping.  We are not tanks, never will be.  We are never used as key roles in raids such as knights or rangers which we used to MA, off tank etc.

Would love:
Faster heal spells.. we have no way of any OMG-SHIT fast heal.  Even one that is an AA or something.. once every 30 sec or whatever.  Or again faster casting heals.
As others have said, Burst DPS.  I can dish it out sustained, but I have to use a CRAP load of clicks and aa's and discs all around... it's a dance on the keyboard, what stacks, what does not, what order.  It's gotten crazy I have so many combos.
Don't really want to comment on my pet.  He has become just there so I can use our abilities which are tied to the warder. Do i want more DPS from him? Yah would be nice, but I have been happy now for a while with just the fact he longer dies on raids as it used to.  I realize it will never be a mage pet and for obvious reasons.
Paragon all around -- I love it.  Any increases would be nice, but I am leery of asking for regen or other beneficial additions to it, simply due to the fact I am already hitting healers all the time with it, would be insane to have to constantly add say tanks that need regen.  Would MUCH more like to see some bloody freaking aura that worked on some sort of combo -- adding some mana, regen maybe even a "feroish" attack so everyone can shut up.  That and or just get rid of Fero so I can finally stop having to cast it on rogues or Zerks that still swear up and down and want it.

I don't think we EVER again need more deagro... enough said
FD is amazing, more so than I expected and very happy just to have this basic version

Our defensive disc is now useless... period.  On any new raid it makes almost no difference.  In emergencies, it cannot be counted on.  An increase in this period.

As a future "direction" in role, God I honestly don't know. We have been a jack of all trades for so long that it's really hard to put a finger on it.  We do everything sub-par but we can do it all.  This works great on older content but with each new expansion/raids/mobs, honestly we are useless.  Or at least useless in the sense, dedicated classes can do it better IF you have those classes in numbers for raids.

My point is that they have made BST honestly, and I can say this from playing from day one, the single best class to pretty much do your own thing -- mow through light cons and farm aa's or xp or tradestuff... can handle dark blues if need be, can handle summing mobs since we can tank some stuff. be totally self sufficient on buffs and mana etc.  I play 3 other classes and have been for years.

This is where I wonder how current BST's want to  handle this for a future direction.  If we look at solo play and grouping it's one thing and currently we do that very well.  If we talk about end-raiding then I have NO idea how to address our class to improve it since that would mean a total scrap of some basic stuff for us.


Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Khauruk on May 09, 2010, 02:32:23 PM
85/3k(?)

The class is frankly a bit boring.  No real new abilities since DoD when we got the werewolf pet.  Many classes have received tricks since then that opened up huge new fronts for them (clerics w/ VoV/etc for solo, SK w/ hatestep and better dps, tons of ranger stuff, etc).  I don't think there's anything bst can do that I consider "neat."

Too much clicking - I was a proponent of activated AAs, etc, going into UF.  Now Beastlords have to click as many buttons/minute as a bard to maximize their benefit, but we have to keep up 8-9 different dps gems and weave those to maximize our impact.  It's just silly and we don't get the benefit from it that we should (desirability of bards, cool tricks, etc).

3rd rate utilities/other players have forced us to degrade - this one speaks for itself.

I am not sure what I would do to beastlords if I were a developer, but they need a serious revamp.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Grbage on May 09, 2010, 03:36:25 PM
You are missing the boat in saying only mains post. There also needs to understanding of why we no longer play a bst as main after putting years into them.

For me it was the loss of utility. We used to be able to: debuff(slow+cripple), buff, CC via offtanking with ourselves or pet, dps, heal and even main tank hard mobs in a pinch. There was a reason we were called a Jack of all trades, master of none.

In todays game we are left with two things to do: slow and dps. That right there is why I've quit playing Grbage as my main after years of investment. Being able to fill in a variety of holes made the class fun. Now the class just isn't as fun for me being as the class has become second tier 2 dimensional class. I might as well and did go to a pure class that might only be 2 dimensional also but does those 2 dimensions very very well.

For those still playing a bst as main I bet you will find a commonality. Either a high end raider (raid gear helps make up some class deficits) or truly casuals. Most people I know in the middle have jumped ship to another class or quit.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: wildwaters on May 09, 2010, 03:37:17 PM
Keep em coming
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Sikkem on May 09, 2010, 09:49:55 PM
85 about 2k AA (yeah I AA slow I like stuffing around outside of raids  :roll:) Raidwise - Just about to complete Tower for first time.

Most of the problems have already been mentioned. I am one of the bsts that miss our utility and as Grbage has said is why I am levelling a rogue and wizzie atm to see what I prefer.

Some possible fixes, some easier than others.
Buffs:
SV stack with ranger and pally buffs  (it isn't that overpowering) and add a bonus to flurry (or triple attack) to it.
SE add a chance for spell crit to the line.
Fero, just get rid of the millstone. The devs have been promising to fix it for 3 years and have ignored it.
Focus line, just give us the shaman version from 2 expansions ago, that way we will get wanted upgrades and not step into the shamans territory.
Give us a real group haste that pet recourse thing is a pain.

Debuffs: (I would like this to be our thing, we debuff in every melee department just not as well as pure classes)
Incapacitate line: revive it, add an attack debuff to it (though both of a lesser value than shamans and druids) and have it stack with both shaman and druids similar debuffs. (Yeah I still like this idea, I still know most others hate it)
Slows I am happy with just the occasional upgrade with a resist mod on it would suit me.
Maybe our own debuff lines that lowers a mobs accuracy, flurries etc (I am not sure if these exists in game atm). This could be tied in with the pet idea and give reasons for more than one bst on a raid.

Pet:
There always seem to be problems balancing pet classes in MMO's. I am not sure how I would take to this idea (not that I believe it could even be done now) but it is an idea from outside the box.

Our pet to become more like a wizards familiar. We would have multiple familiars to call upon with each one giving a different effect. A raven for example would give our weapons the ravens claw proc, gorilla gorilla smash etc. This would give the devs greater scope for future upgrades whilst taking away the problem we have with Friendly Pet and any future plans for spells like that, that they may have.

We would keep and add to short duration pets for burst dps and class flavour.

Melee:
Being low in AA's I still have lots of dps aa's to get so I will leave that section for others more qualified.


Rambling off
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Zunar on May 09, 2010, 10:06:44 PM
I play my beasty still, level 85, around 5K AAs..and it's always been my main character.

My guild has 4 raiding beastlords, and we raid 3 nights a week farming tower.
We killed Fippy 2-3 times or so, and working on the beast.

We're not a super dps guild, so our beastys are mostly doing ok..but we're left to eat the dust by casters and the few pure melees when they focus harder.
Fpos has been good to us to recover a bad situation, or when we've been low on healers it helps to make their mana last longer.
The occasional mgb paragon is useful too, to negate AEs up to a point, together with other classes HoT spells.

Utility-wise we don't bring much other use to a raid, when mana pools and regen has gone up heaps and leaps the last expansions, making Spiritual Edification borderline useless.
SV is ignored by any class, as brells or the ranger buff are better for their respective purpose.
Bst Focus is only useful in group/solo game.
Fero, again useless
Our slows are totally not needed in raids anymore now that shamans got another upgrade to their slows.

So..for raids I feel we are medium Dps..worse ofc at shorter burns especially against casters, but also against most other Dps.
Our healing isn't useful enough to make an impact for raiding, for the loss of the dps we'd suffer from healing too.
Bst buffs aren't needed for raiding, including fero.
Our block skill is abit lowish. Ever since mobs recieved strikethrough and very high atk values, we've suffered more and more on that department (avoidance).
Our tanking ability isn't good enough to survive either as our AC returns are abit poor, making us the worst mitigation class.

The newly added FD and Chameleon Strike helped us to bring out more spell dps without worrying about turning the mobs, which was fun.
I'd like to see something done with us though...either utility wise or through dps to make us a class that can compete in the raid game, and even make high end raiding guilds want to recruit beastlords.

About off raid times....I play when I can, mostly soloing these days because I can't group as much as I used to, because of real life.
I tank for groups on occasion, so I would like to call beastlords light tanks. With slow being mitigated much these days and mobs hiting very hard, it's geting harder and harder though....but I still mostly manage to survive with a good healer.
Our pet always has been a utility for the group game, as we can use it to OT when needed, and manage healing it ourselves.
For soloing it's still some utility too, but the dps it puts out is really laughable. Vaxtn is like half the warder's Dps, with maxed pet AAs.
It'd be nice if the warders dps could scale up with the tier of weapons we are using ourselves.

1) I'd like to see our warder improved
2) Upgrade our discs to improve burst dps
3) Fero - do something useful with it (+damage to attacks or + skill to double/triple attack)
4) SE greatly improved
5) Our paragon improved
6) Our mitigation is too low today, and has suffered from changes in EQ since SoF expansion...I'd like to see us either gain more returns from AC, heightened block/dodge caps or added defense spell lines
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Sharrien on May 10, 2010, 02:45:49 PM
Lvl 85, about 2.5k AA, also play a lvl 85 mage with about 1750 AA.

I raid twice a week, my guild has at least 4 other beastlords who regularly attend raids.  I group after raids and duo with a couple mercs weekday mornings before work for an hour while the family is still asleep.

The direction I think we should push for improvements is firstly DPS (self and warder) but I would also like to see some improved utility (cripple debuff, promised type effect for paragon, maybe dps or defensive aura, something for Fero) as a second priority.  We're not full time tanks, but we do OK in a pinch (my beast tanks 99% of the time in my duo).  I don't think we should pursue any tanking improvements beyond the usual CS/CA except maybe to get access to Shield Block.  It would be nice if our mitigation could be higher, but I doubt that would happen unless we gave up improvements elsewhere.

I used to be in the top ten or so on parses, sometimes top five and occasionally number one.  But now I'm lucky to show up in the top ten at all.  We've definitely been falling far behind in dps potential.  I believe that melee dps should be where we push for the most improvement.  Spells are nice (our nuke damage is actually very nice) but few mobs are immune to melee.  Our warder needs a big boost in dps and could be a bit less squishy.

We do need a little something for utility, something unique to beastlords.  We can't just be dps savants without bringing anything else, we're not rogues or wizards nor will we ever out-parse them.  Paragon is nice, but in it's current form is not significantly helpful in raids, so it needs a boost.  I would like to see us able to debuff melee dps from the mob, either in the form of a cripple type spell or maybe a defensive aura.  I hesitate to suggest the last, I would rather be in a melee dps group than an accessory to the tank group.

Specific suggesitons:
1 - more double/triple attack, flurry chance
2 - improve warder dps
3 - Prolific Minion
4 – Updated cripple (melee dps debuff)
5 – improved paragon with a promised type effect for mana
6 – aura, either offensive (increased crit rate, increased chance for double/triple attack, maybe additive skill attacks like effect on tier 9 arms) or defensive (maybe increased chance to dodge)
7 – Something for Fero besides atk that increases dps

Crazy idea:
Short refresh skill attack that scales up with number of PCs on target hate list, similar to the way Jolt of Many scales up for pets on hate list.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Vatrulle on May 10, 2010, 10:47:46 PM
We are amazing, we need no fix  :-D
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Bumkus on May 10, 2010, 11:42:40 PM
Level:
85 with 4400+ AA

My playstyle:
I raid 3-4 nights a week with a pretty stable open raid group.  I am Tower keyed, but we are still keying the rest of the raid crew, so I have not done any Tower raids yet.

When not raiding, I solo a lot. 

I have never boxed.

Feelings about class:
It is a fun and challenging class to play.  The game mechanics are good if you like to click things and dance around.  I liken playing a bst to driving a yugo.  No matter how much you thrash and grind, you won't go very fast, but it really feels good.  I leveled a Wiz up to 75 and even though the wiz was more powerful, I did not enjoy the play style as much.

I am generally happy with the class.  I accept that there are weaknesses, so I try to focus on the strengths. 

We are average or maybe a little better than average soloing xp on light blues now.  I max out at 10aa per Lesson in Thall if I don't stop to loot.

We are respectable when it comes to soloing named.  I still die about 40% of the time to Pherin in Old Bloodfields, but this just gives me a good target to refine my skills.  (I am very nervous about Riposte damage by the way, because a couple unlucky spikes can destroy us.)

I suspect we are below average on Trophy killing, only because extended fights need better sustained healing abilities.

Our DPS is respectable in mid-tier raiding.  Lack of burst is not apparent in mid-tier raids, because fights tend to last 3-5 minutes at a minimum.

I worry about my DPS ranking moving forward, especially as the pure melee types get more weapons.  Bst does not see the same increases with each weapon upgrade.

I do not think the class is dead, but I accept that our numbers are dwindling.  I think part of the problem is that bst is not a box friendly class.  If SoE assigns dev time based on % breakdown of the different classes, then bst will command less and less developer attention moving forward.  I suspect you would do better picking Mage if you want tp box a pet tank class.

Direction for the Class:
I am a convert from the Utility mindset.  It's no secret that we have stagnated in terms of utility, but we have gained some ground in DPS.  I believe our future lies in DPS.

DPS related fixes
1.  Increase Burst signifigantly (I thing through Emp Fury and BA)
2.  Shorten time on Yowl to 0.5 sec
3.  Build on Frozen Venom type of spells.  Give us High damage spells with aggro limiter.  I like finding the redline.
4.  Give us a big boom type spell to make real use of GoM AA lines.
5.  Give us resist adjusts on all DoTs and Nukes moving forward.

Utility fixes:
1.  Make pet Slow an AE.  It's time, especially when you consider Fellgrip is basically flat compared to Lockfang, or even a decrease if you consider that resist mod lower for Fellgrip Rank III comparared to Lockfang Rank II.  As far a I know, this is the only case were the higher level spell Rank I is a downgrade to the previous spell Rank III.
2.  Make Fero and Aura or group cast, with extra crit mod as others have stated.
3.  Increase heal amount or decrease cast time of our heals to instant.  I think this should apply to Rangers as well.
4.  Give us a targeted version of our Self Cure and/or reduce refresh time on our self cure.  Remove the extra load we place on healers.  Since we suck mana in terms of extra AE damage, AE ramp Damage done to us and warder.
5.  Give us a cast group haste.  Enough of these pet recourses that aren't affected by our AA or Focus
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: wildwaters on May 11, 2010, 01:15:07 AM
More! More! lol.

I appreciate the answers. I am attempting to get a feeling of how the community in general feels about teh class.

Keep em coming ><
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Hzath on May 11, 2010, 04:49:03 AM
What do you think of the class at the moment? Obviously it needs improvment but are you happy with it? Do you feel that the class is 'dead'?
The class is fun to play, but overall I'm not satisfied with where the class is.  I don't think we're "dead" but I do spend most of my hours raiding, which is where I feel the most problems are so that definitely affects my overall opinion.

Are you a raiding beastlord main, a grouper or soloer?
Raider, cleared first 7 raids in UF.

What level are you and how many aa?
85+4500

What direction do you think the class should head? Should they play dps or support? Should they be good tanks? Healers?
I don't think we should be good tanks, and we should be good enough healers to heal ourselves +2 others through most AEs.  Right now I have trouble keeping 1 other person up if the shaman drops.  I think if mgb timers were dropped that MGB para every event+ranger level dps+one other small situational utility role would be enough to get us the desireability we're looking for.  So basically I think a dps bump+ maybe one more small utility upgrade would put us in a good place.

Are you satisfied with the upgrades you have recieved or are there rooms for major improvment or is the room for improvment more average?
I think our spells from UF were great, Frozen venom and Haergen's Feralgia are our two best spells.  Friendly pet is worthless, but the other 2 are so amazing I'm still very happy with them as a whole.  Our AAs from the first half of UF were very lackluster.  Second half release addressed our dire agro concerns well, but those really should have gone in at launch.  Overall though, I think the past year we have been given some good things, other people have just been given great things also so we haven't gained much ground.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Karve on May 11, 2010, 09:46:19 AM
Quote

What do you think of the class at the moment?
I enjoy the Beastlord class very much, I have no desire to mainchange and have been playing my Bst since day 1 of luclin (or early release heh)

QuoteObviously it needs improvment but are you happy with it?
There are a few areas where change is definitely required. From day 1 we had the best pet in game, the best lineup of spells and really could solo our way in the world. Things have drifted way too far from this, now we are nolonger beastlords, merely their companions and shadows of our former selves.

QuoteDo you feel that the class is 'dead'?
No, not at all, it just needs revitalising.


Quote
Are you a raiding beastlord main, a grouper or soloer?


I raid 2-3 times a week when life permits, otherwise solo or group/box depending on time and who else is about.

Quote
What level are you and how many aa?
85 / 1300ish - finding  it increasingly more difficult to catch up with the number of aa's puring into the game now.

Quote

What direction do you think the class should head? Should they play dps or support? Should they be good tanks? Healers?
The class as a whole was always an all-rounder, decent healing at a huge mana cost, good group buffs and great pet dps/off tanking while our own dps was very worthwhile. We need that again, while we could buff like a shaman, the mana cost was prohibitive and teh buffs were a level behind, but now we've lost that entirely. Healing again, has reduce in direct proportion to mob HP/damage increasing. a 2-3k heal is no use at all on a char with 40k HP and something hitting them for a minimum of 5k a hit.

Pet does need a boost to put it back where it belongs.

our DPS oddly I think is about right, burst DPS needs a hand and our group/raid group desirability needs a HUGE boost.


Quote

Are you satisfied with the upgrades you have recieved or are there rooms for major improvment or is the room for improvment more average?

see above ... improvement can be achieved by going backwards to provide more.
e.g a 5 sec cast heal which has a base of 7-8k would be much more fitting to the current content, mana heavy.. how many bsts ever die OOM ?

Being able to sacrifice our pets to save ourselves would be handy too .. poor fluffy, RIP :)


Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: bobokatt1970 on May 11, 2010, 09:30:49 PM
We are getting many hits from 85's that have a crapload of aa's... folks have played this character for eons.. and put the time in.  I was actually expecting levels here and there with low AA's... interesting.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Bumkus on May 11, 2010, 10:26:01 PM
Quote from: bobokatt1970 on May 11, 2010, 09:30:49 PM
We are getting many hits from 85's that have a crapload of aa's... folks have played this character for eons.. and put the time in.  I was actually expecting levels here and there with low AA's... interesting.
AAneras did a couple player distribution analysis over on the EQ forums.  He looked specifically at Mayong.

Bst was about average starting out, but had lower overall population at high levels because of lower retention.  BST, PAL and DRU were all in the same boat about that time.

Here is one of his theads.  I think he did others as well
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=121355&#1712053

Edit:
Here is another good population analysis thread
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?&topic_id=151162
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: bobokatt1970 on May 11, 2010, 11:20:10 PM
Freaking awesome stats. Thanks very interesting in analyzing our current pop.  Retention is the word of the day.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: wildwaters on May 12, 2010, 01:59:34 AM
interesting
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Catnip_Inny on May 12, 2010, 05:31:54 AM
love my bst but sometimes i wonder if it werent for me working hard for my 4.7K AA if id still be playing a bst main... seems more and more like SoE doesnt care about the class and its spread so thin that its hard to make improvements in any one area...
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Grbage on May 12, 2010, 02:09:27 PM
Quote from: Catnip_Inny on May 12, 2010, 05:31:54 AM
love my bst but sometimes i wonder if it werent for me working hard for my 4.7K AA if id still be playing a bst main... seems more and more like SoE doesnt care about the class and its spread so thin that its hard to make improvements in any one area...

I think they are still gunshy from PoP era for bst. The nerf calls were loud and continous saying we were overpowered when in fact bst were well balanced. Ever since then we've just got a little bit dribbled our way at a time leaving us falling farther and farther behind.

Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: Panthur2 on May 12, 2010, 04:08:28 PM
85 bst 4k+aa

PC heals: Raids--my target is way dead before my 3sec 1964 base heal can finish casting, pray for a crit!

PC heals: Group--heal is slow inefficient and just lacking. I used to be able to pet tank (SOLO! not molo) and heal myself while keeping pet up. Now I can't even do that moloing. Well, to be honest, I was moloing mobs in FF (vigourous earths and spiders) for shawl 2.3 tailoring quest, but still, its pathetic how inefficient our heals have become.

Warder dps: raid---very disappointing, assuming he isn't dead to something enraging while I'm busy patch healing someone with said slow crappy heals (group healer died, new weak app cleric or something whatever the case, I end up healing group or trying to)

Warder dps: group--utterly pathetic, took me 15 mins molo a vigorous earth with my pet tanking and me pet clericing while slaping frozen venom and poison nuke out of melee range. Mercs are really bad in uf, especially in FF+ content hehe. (Takes me 3 mins to straight up tank one assuming merc doesn't forget to heal)

Utility: We have utility? Seriously, my slow doesn't last long enough on mobs these days. Make it 5x longer plz! At least then I wouldn't have to reslow the mob 5x while moloing above.

We lack utility bad. We are so outdated it's unbearable. SV? No one wants it unless no ranger or paladin. Focus? Same thing. No reason to bother casting it unless no shaman. And then when it is wanted we only have a group version which sucks mana like crazy when rebuffing dead raiders. Great when gom procs!

PS: give us a big bang spell to use gom with. Give us a heal that's useful and fast casting. Heck I woudn't mind if it sucked up 5x the mana so long as it was faster and 5x better.

Growl line–heal portion is lacking. Dmg portion hasn't been improved since it was originally implemented. WTF?!

Defensive disc–I'm still using the 12 sec lv 55 one. The ONLY one we actually have. Upgrade plz! Mobs hurt these days, this disc is nearly worthless.

We have 2hb ability yet we almost never use it past lv 60s. We have 0 aa for them. I wouldn't mind some aa/skills in that area. With mobs train wrecking me in uf, the swap for tanking would give me a reason to use a 2hb without losing craploads of dps in that situation. Other then for graphics and show, or because the item was dirt cheap and was gonna otherwise rot, I never see any high level bsts choosing 2h for anything at all.
Title: Re: How do you feel about the class?
Post by: nedoirah on May 13, 2010, 06:22:20 PM
Quote from: wildwaters on May 09, 2010, 06:13:50 AM
This might be useful in terms of providing devs with feed back and it would satisfy my curiosity since I don't play the class as a main anymore...

Lets stick to people who play Beastlord mains - I'm not interested in beast alt opinions atm

Sadly I'm leaning more towards playing a shaman now but bst is still my main.

What do you think of the class at the moment? Obviously it needs improvment but are you happy with it? Do you feel that the class is 'dead'?

Yes unless they give us a solid direction and blanace our class that way.

Are you a raiding beastlord main, a grouper or soloer?

Group/solo

What level are you and how many aa?

85 w/ 1800 aa

What direction do you think the class should head? Should they play dps or support? Should they be good tanks? Healers?

DPS w/ support/utility

Are you satisfied with the upgrades you have recieved or are there rooms for major improvment or is the room for improvment more average?

I believe we need to be more in line with other classes like mages and pets and melee classes. We also need a better defensive capability since we don't take hits well.

I wont comment here cause I'm not a main but I would be interested in your answers.

-Tony