The rest of us?

[Birdienumnum]

This is about beastlords not at level 70, about the beastlords that will never see Time, about the beastlords that don't have much oppurtunity to raid much.

Will there be much for us to look forward to, with the future patches?
Other than cast times on some spells, I did not notice any other changes.

(61 Beastlord, with bazaar gear)

[Oiingo]

This was only the first step in their class reenvisionment changes.  They have previously stated that their will be upgrades in the next patch, and at a later point, our DPS will be revised to a (hopefully) higher level.

[Khayden]

In terms of balance and the role that a beastlord is meant to play in a group, what do you feel that a beastlord at level 60, 50, 40 etc is lacking in the game?

Personally I feel there were only two or three significant problems when I was at that level:

1.  Lack of weapon choices.   This has been dramatically improved by the skill cap changes I think (assuming they were scaled down as well as up?)
2.  Pet hell levels.  The level or two immediately preceeding a new pet spell were significantly more difficult and it was very unbalancing that xping became almost trivial for a level or two after a new one as well.  I think the proposed changes to spells to smooth things out in one of the coming phases of reinvisionment should address this (and if it doesn't we should push for it).
3.  More Minor.  The slow spell could scale better, going from 0->22->50% is a bit screwy I think.

But you have to remember that this process is about balancing out problems and making sure the classes fit their intended roles.  At levels previous to 60 and in non raid play I personally can't see that many big issues for a beastlord when compared to other classes with a similar level/play style.  It's not a "give out lots of nice stuff" session, it's to fix problems. 

The concensus seems to be that in stages of the game before GoD level raiding a beastlord is a powerful well balanced class, while after PoTime some significant problems start to show.  Of course it's entirely possible that this is down to beastlords at that level in the game being more vocal but we all levelled wearing baz/quest/single group gear once...

Thoughts?

Khayden

[Firriann]

they will add new pet focii (or just more accessibility to them, i dunno) for non-raiders, at least they posted about it. they will reduce cast time on our pet heals, allowing the non raiders a possibility to play pet cleric if wanted. im a raiding beast, so i really cant say much about how the changes that were already done (poison dot agro almost nill, better heal, faster cast on nukes) affect the lower end beast other then "it should be good for everyone".

[Hereki]

There is pretty much nothing intended for 65 or below.  Fortunately, beastlords in that area are or were in good shape - this is actually true of most classes, really.

The need for a focus item has arisen because they effectively made LDoN obsolete, and the pricing of items in LDoN wasn't great to start with.

The biggest gap isn't really between sub65 and 70, however, it is between non-raiding and raiding.  Same as with all classes.  It is also partly created because of changes in the way in which they now balance content.  GoD/Omens/DoN content is radically different from Luclin or even PoP content, as is the itemisation.

[Tiroon]

The one thing I hope for is that the INT casters get their request for more researchable spells fulfilled.

Tiroon is only level 62 but has all spells up to 65 in the bank so any possible change is not going to benefit me but I remember how long it took to find those spells at reasonable prices and I have kept an eye on those spells in the bazaar ever since.

With OoW and DoN out people are  going after drops in the new zones and even spells that used to be fairly cheap are now going for prices I would not have thought possible three months ago. Hunting those spells yourself is more difficult as well simply because there are less groups going after parchments and I feel bad for every main who hits the early 60's and tries to get the important spells.