Revised top 10 list (july 18th)...

[Tastian]

This is going to be a first draft of the updated top 10 list.  I will add more information, but I want to show people where it stands now from all the feedback I've gotten.  If you have suggestions for changing items, moving items around, or think a point isn't quite what it should be please post here and I'll see what I can do.  Please do bare in mind though that beastlords are a very versitle class and there are somethings that not everyone wanted or agreed with.  I tried to just go with what most seemed like they wanted.

1)  Weapon skill caps -  This is a long standing beastlord issue that needs addressing.  Currently the differance in skill caps does very little as far as beastlord power is concerned.  However, it has a very negative effect on weapon selection.  HtH weapons are quite rare and if you look at the case of PoP progressiong you see Battle fists on TZ, followed by wraps on xegony, then shinai in time.  That's it.  Now a beastlord who is duel wielding needs two weapons and like most weapons all of these are lore.  What happens is you have beastlords looking to other weapon types such as 1hb and piercing.  The problem becomes a weapon that is a clear upgrade for another class might actually be a downgrade for a beastlord.  HtH weapons will always be highly desired by beastlords because of the quality of the weapon.  Having 1hb/piercing and 2hb capped the same would simply allow beastlords to help fill the gaps at times when hth weapons simply aren't available.  Also it would make most upgrades much more intutive.  Most other classes don't have to ask around before going from a 17 on 20 to an 18 on 20.

Possible solution:

-  Raise all beastlord skill caps up to 250 just like HtH is currently.


2)  Pet buff box -  The resent changes to pets have been wonderful and I think it's safe to say all pet classes are very happy with the changes.  What most of us were wondering is if it's possible to have the pet buffs display their remaining time and to also be able to click off pet buffs like we do our own buffs.  

There are a lot of situations where this would be very useful.  For example pet haste is a very important buff, but it has a big refresh timer when you first mem.  If it fades during a fight the beastlord will be in a much harder situation.  Spell slots are already pretty limited as it is and not everyone has half a dozen egg timers around to keep up with pet haste, fero, haste, regen, etc.  

Also you have situations like with hobble of spirit and other buffs that once they land on the pet you can't get rid of or overwrite.  When a paladin lands brells on the pet there is no way to get vigor on the pet for the extra atk outside of waiting for brells to fade or dispelling the pet down to the buff you are after.  With all the ninja buffing going on, pet affinity and now pets zoning it's simply become more and more common to find a buff on your pet that you simply don't want or that is blocking something you do want from taking hold.  

Possible solutions:

-  Make it so that pet buffs show their remaining duration just like player character buffs now do.

-  Allow the player to click off buffs (non-detremental of course) from their warder's buff box just like they can their own.

3)  Aggro issues -  This is a big beastlord issue that a lot of people don't quite understand.  Beastlords are ok with getting aggro from high aggro spells such as slow and incapacitate.  Beastlords are also ok with getting aggro when they are simply putting out more damage or doing things that obviously should draw attention.  The problems with beastlord aggro becomes rather clear in raid situations and many grouping situations.  What you'll have is the beastlord operating in a total dps role.  By that I mean the beastlord isn't on slow duty or debuffing the mob, but rather is just contributing damage via melee/nukes/dots.  In this situation a beastlord is generating far more aggro for the damage they are doing than most if not all other classes.  

Again the problem isn't when a beastlord is doing 200dps and they get aggro over someone doing 150dps.  It's not even when the beastlord is doing 200dps and someone else is doing 200dps.  Rather you have situations where a beastlord is actually doing less damage than many other classes, they haven't debuffed the mob or done anything else to generate aggro, yet they are the ones that pull aggro off the MT or get summoned and killed first on tank changes.  Some would say that the beastlord simply has to do less damage or watch their aggro with that tank.  However, this same tank that can't keep aggro off the beastlord doing X damage is successfully keeping aggro off the wizard doing X+100 damage or the rogue doing X + 50 damage, etc.  

There are currently several reasons for this issue.  The first of which is how beastlords do their damage.  Melee, nukes, and dots all generate differing amounts of aggro.  DoTs are currently very high aggro, poison counters are high aggro, and it's been shown that focus effects and crit DoT AA add to aggro well nuke focus/AA does not.  Also you have the fact that beastlords are the only offensive melee class that doesn't have any means of lowering their aggro outside of simply doing less damage.  Rangers have jolt, rogues evade, monks FD.  

Possible solutions:

- Look into DoT aggro.  As it stands now the ratio of damage to aggro on many of these spells is far to high both before and after focus/AA are considered.  This is not a beastlord specific issue by any means as shaman and necros have similar problems.

-  Consider adding a proc buff that lowers aggro.  Currently beastlords are the only "hybrid" that don't get a self proc buff.  The major upside of this is that beastlords will only be lower'n their aggro well actually melee'n.  Adding a skill like evade would allow beastlords to lower aggro from slowing and other higher aggro activities.

-  Make future AAs more in line with how beastlords work.  That means more spell crit AAs and things that add damage without adding extra aggro.

-  Finally, consider adding a DEaggro component to feral swipe (see below for more information please).

4)  Improve pet heals -  Current healing of sorsha (62 beastlord heal) is all but unuseable by beastlords.  The spell sees some use as the beastlord goes from 62 to 65, but as the beastlord progresses the spell gets used less and less.  The main problem with the heal is it's 9 second casting time.  In almost any situation a beastlord would find themselves wanting to cast a heal on their pet 9 seconds is just far too long to wait.  As such many beastlords simply don't mem the spell at all.  This, again, is not just a beastlord issue, but a pet class issue in my opinion.  

Possible solution:  

-  Lower the casting on sorsha to ~3.5 seconds.  This makes it possible to actually have the heal land in the situations where you would be using it.  With the lower casting time beastlords would understand a recast time being added to the spell so that our sustained healing per second and our efficency didn't change from what it currently is.  Our intention isn't to improve the spell as much as it is to simply make it functional.  

5)  Feral swipe issues -  Feral swipe is an AA that has a lot of potential, but unfortunately suffers from several issues.  The first problem with feral swipe is that it's current dps boost is very minor.  In even the best of situations the skill does noteably less damage than kick does.  The skill being on a one minute refresh is very streaky and it's not unheard of to go 15 minutes without having a single feral swipe land.  Also the AA still has a small range issue.  The range was increased once, but it wasn't quite enough.  There are still monsters that you can melee, but you can't land your feral swipe.  Spacing is extremely important in these cases and as such feral swipe becomes completely useless.  Finally, feral swipe takes up  yet another hot key space that is getting to be in almost as much demand as spell gem spaces.  When a beastlord has pet controls, kick, prot spirit, possibly spells and macros along with other AAs in their hot key bank they simply don't have room to add another button.  I know several beastlords that haven't purchased this skill simply because they have no room to actually activate it well playing.

Possible solutions:

-  Please improve the range of feral swipe a bit more.  The first change fixed most of the issues, but there are still some fights where the skill simply can't be used.

-  Raise the damage on feral swipe and have it lock out kick.  This keeps the AA as the dps booster it was, but allows it to take the place of kick.  Thus just swapping out the kick hot key for the new feral swipe one.  Having the new skill average out to being a bit more damage than feral swipe + kick now does would be great.

-  Forget the dps portion of feral swipe and turn this skill into a means of lowering beastlord aggro.  The skill should always land in that case and would simply reduce the beastlords hate similiar to jolt or possibly lowering hate intitally and then lowering it a bit more overtime.  

6)  Pet runspeed -  This is mainly an issue indoors, but what happens is you have beastlords have various ranks of AA run speed and swift journey and the pet simply gets left behind sometimes or takes awhile to catch up.  

Possible solution:

-  Have the pet naturally move at a faster rate.

-  Have the pet take on the AA runspeed that the owner has.

7)  Suspended pets zoning -  I know it's been stated that currently there is no desire to have suspended pets zone, but beastlords would like this looked into a bit more, or perhaps more of an explaination given.  The real issue with this comes about well running through several dangerous zones, or if your invis drops well you are leaving a dangerous zone.  In those cases you either have to try to unsuspend your pet before zoning or lose them.  Most can understand how having 2 pets (1 out and 1 suspended) well zoning could be overpowering, but the main issue is zoning well invis in which case you wouldn't have 2 pets.

Possible solutions:

-  Let suspended pets zone

-  Have a check that sees if the player is invis'd and if so allow the suspended pet to zone.  This guarantees the player only has one pet and that pet is already suspended.

7+1)  Hobble of spirits -  This is an AA for beastlords that again sees very little use because of a few major issues.  First of all the proc buff overwrites rellic, but you can't overwrite hobble back again.  This would be a non-issue if #2 from above were done.  Currently though being locked into hobble and losing your other proc for it's duration is a problem.  Also hobble doesn't stack with rellic.  The beastlord gives up a lot of damage and a stun to get a semi-reliable snare currently.

Possible solutions:

-  Allow all proc buffs to overwrite each other.

-  Allow hobble of spirits to stack with other beastlord proc buffs.

-  Add a second rank to hobble that gives the snare proc a DD component as well.



I'm going to wait on the last 2 items until monday so more people can respond and offer feedback.  There are a lot of other issues mentioned already from beastlord only weapons to pet upgrades to dps AAs.  Please offer any feedback you feel neccessary and I'll do what I can.  Now is also a good time to fill in some numbers if you want to.  Is ~3.5 seconds on sorsha heal ok?  Should skill caps go up to 250 like hth?  Things like that.  Also don't forget all of the other AAs.  I know some still have issues with beastial alignment.  Still have almost a week before this is passed along, so please keep up with the information and feedback.

[Lorathir]

Yeah, that's looking good. Not much of it will impact on me, but that's cool, just some stuff to look forward too.

I don't think my idea for a lv49 intermediate (non pet) healing spell is gonna make the grade eh? Ah well, can't win em all, but I would like the 'pet's keeping up with you' suggestion implemented. This could have particular relevance now that they zone with us, thus will be 'staying up' more often. Please don't make this subject to AA's  :(

I'm loving the agro issue btw. Out of all of this list, this one has particular relevence to me. Perhaps a jolt type spell could be implemented.

[Tastian]

"This could have particular relevance now that they zone with us, thus will be 'staying up' more often. Please don't make this subject to AA's"

I'm a bit curious on this.  My understanding is that most have issues with the pet because of runspeed AA.  Simply put with AA the owner moves faster than the pet.  If you don't have any AAs then the only way you are going to be moving faster than the pet is if you buff yourself with a spell, in that case you can just buff the warder as well.  I guess I'm kinda confused.  Do you want the pet to just naturally move at sow speed so you don't have to buff it when you buff yourself or?

[Lorathir]

After Run3, I often don't bother SOWing myself (or, just don't refresh it when it wears off) so I often move about unSOWed.

When you run at Run3 speed, your warder still moves as you would without Run3 (unless he's SOWed)

I'd like the pet run speed to advance as you advance, but I want my warder to recieve it innately proportionate to me gaining RunX aa's. I wouldn't like the idea of a Pet Run Speed set of aa's - ie Pet Run 1, Pet Run 2 etc - just worried Sony may introduce aa's for this.

[Tastian]

Oh lol.  No of course not.  This wasn't meant as an AA, simply having the pet automatically take on the run speed AAs the owner already has.  If owner has run speed 2 then that's how fast pet moves, etc.

[Rarrum]

was part of my list on previous thread.... however the single biggest issue I have with things right now is still:

Replace teruptan spirit.  About anything is a better spell at this point.

[mythral]

i dont personally like adding deagro to feral swipe, if bst agro is gonna be looked at, it needs to be looked at across the board and not jsut 65 with aa's. its a class thing. id just like feral swipe to do more dps and tied with kick personally

[Tastian]

I agree that aggro is a beastlord issue.  That's why you have a section that is just besatlord aggro in general where one of the suggestions mentioned feral swipe.  Another seciton on feral swipe that mentions the deaggro, but also mentions tieing it to kick.  If it's tied to kick then it's tied to slam too which some don't care for atm though.

[Dummkopf]

I have to agree with Rarrum, Tureptan Spirit should be exchanged with another spell, best would be a heal but i guess everything is better than the spell it is at the moment.

[Kensia_]

Agree with the others Turepan Spirit spell needs to be change to something useful. A heal the same as the ranger or a HoT if they are trying to seperate us from the rangers heals.

[Nalitra]

List looks good.  Don't agree with it all, but agree with enough of it.  ;)

Big one for me not on the list is:  Replace Turepan Spirit.  I'd be very happy if they replaced it with the same heal spell rangers get.  

Other choice as a replacement would be an upgraded Spirit of Rallic.  Up the damage a bit and up the level that stun lands.  

I would also like to see the spell issue raised up on the list to replace run speed on warders.  

Nalitra

[Jkal_Shihar]

Replace Turepan Spirit. I'd be very happy if they replaced it with the same heal spell rangers get.

I just cant aggree with this though. Not that I will ever see the spell(I am trying though) but looking at lvls going to 70 which will probably mean increase in stats of 5 that you can max.
So, with planar power 5 and lvl 65 you should be able to raise your stats to 305. Then add in lvl 70, that will take it up to 330 presuming this is the case.
I know I read somewhere here where a use was found for it. Now mind you I have not been to that zone so taking word of mouth on it what it does to ones stats.
Most I group wish I had this spell. Other classes do know bout it at least. And not having a shaman in the group where as I am the buffer they know how fast we drain our mana down.
A heal would be nice but while looking over the Post 65 to 70 spells, we will get one so I can wait till then.

[Taiglin]

Think the list looks good. Might want to relook the 4th point though. The last line states that pet healing is something that affects all pet classes but the point to the 4th..err...point is only about our lvl 62 spell casting length. Anyway, would just suggest some rewording for clarification.

[jitathab]

On the point about agro (yes i know,  again,  I fully comprehend your arguments for it btws)

I prefer the 2nd and 3rd solutions i.e. do not mess with the dots please.

Feral swipe should remain a DPS AA i.e. fixed, or taken away and replaced with a DPS AA that works.

Rest looks fine. Feral swipe should remain a DPS AA i.e. fixed, or taken away and replaced with a DPS AA that works.

[Jkal_Shihar]

- Look into DoT aggro. As it stands now the ratio of damage to aggro on many of these spells is far to high both before and after focus/AA are considered. This is not a beastlord specific issue by any means as shaman and necros have similar problems.

As Tastian has said, other dot classes also have this problem though. We have other means of creating and generating aggro if we so do so. But we must also look into helping other classes that might share our woes.

There's a shaman I group with from time to time and has said he would love to use his DoTs more on raids and such but due to the aggro and summoning its just not worth it.