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If not buffs, then what?

Started by Tastian, October 18, 2005, 05:07:09 PM

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Tastian

I think the fero discussion has gone pretty well, but it's made me wonder about something else.  Recently I've seen more and more bst talking about how they don't want to be buff bots or whatever.  I've seen some want fero to stay single target, I've seen some that don't want it upgraded so they don't have to use it, some that don't like upgrades to SA, etc.

Bsts are an offensive utility class.  We always have been.  On a raid we have SA as our main buff, used to have fero as a secondary buff, and had filler buffs based on other classes not being present(haste, hp, sv, infusion, etc).  Also we offer slow, but with recent changes to other slows, proc slows, AE slows, clicky stick slows, etc it just doesn't pan out for a lot of bst.  We have perfection as well, but that's highly debated and many find it wanting these days.

With that in mind, exactly what do those of you againist buffing propose as the reason for bringing extra bst along to a raid?  Obviously, we aren't ever going to be wanted by the dozen, but what exactly is the second bst supposed to bring to a raid outside of modest dps.  Balanced a bst isn't going to out dps a wiz, a rog, a zerker, at the very least.  Mage, necro, monk can all be debated and vary.  And in many cases we are at about ranger level dps.  If that held then bst would be middle of the road dps and unlike a shm that is doing champion and panther extra bst aren't actually adding any other dps to people.

I ask because I am honestly confused and unsure what some people want.  People have wanted dps fixed and that I understand and want as well, but with dps fixed bst still aren't going to get raid spots over rogues or many other classes.  We need something that makes a second and maybe even a third bst desireable to a raid.  Fero seems like an obvious choice for that as each bst could fero 3 or 4 people so that represents a sizeable boost to the raid outside of just their personal dps.

I guess what it comes down to is if I'm a guild leader that already has 100% raid attendance for bst what is your sales pitch to get a raid spot over say a rogue, a zerker, a shaman, a bard, etc?  This is mainly for those that don't seem to want more utility or atleast more buffs/buff changes. 

Discordant

Its a big plus for those of us that want to see group fero.  Group fero would make beasts widely wanted for raids because of the fact that we not only add dps ourselves, but add dps to the raid as a whole.

Koullyn

The offensive utility class is the main reason that I chose a Bst to begin with. Being pure DPS as a Wizzie was fun, but it was a lot more fun to be in the action and be useful to groups. I spent 3 lonely years as a quadding Wizzie, being a Bst was fun because you could solo, duo or group. Without buffs to provide groups there wouldn't be a big use for us. Wizzies can out DPS.
-- Retired Level 70 Beastlord --
http://www.wowgamers.com
http://www.wwm.net

Et^Cetera

I just hope that group Fero is in addition to single target, not instead of.

Not everyone raids.
Cailus EtCetera with her trusty side kick Elllerton
Always lost, somewhere on AB.

Nimbin

I'm pretty happy with the changes we have received recently with DoD spell and disc, plus the change to SA.  With that said our raid function really hasn't gone up much still.  During our raids we have 1 to 3 BL's but most of the time it was just 1, myself.  The other BL's were never really missed quite frankly but I guess you can say the for many of the classes.  Without adding any type of buff or utility to our current line up there really isn't much use in bring more than 1 BL for those raids with strict numbers. 

I was trying to come up with some type of function that didn't overlap too much with other classes:

We could have some type of mirror/reflect spell for group to use during AE encounters.  There was a weapon proc (from Ldon??) of this sort but seemed hard to managed due to timing.  Or make it similar to our pet rune that absorbs 3-4 number of hits or spells before it wears off. (Yes I know this is a buff and opposite of the title of this post)

If we are not getting buffs then perhaps some type of recourse effect similar to necros and SK's.  Since they have mana and health covered (although that seems like our area with SA) perhaps an endurance recourse effect from a spell or proc.   Useful to all?  No, but would help perhaps half or 2/3 of a raid.

A short duration long recast AA or disc to share our Protective Spirit discipline, or along the same line but making it offensive is to make a mob vunerable to melee attacks for a short period of time, say 30 secs?  and have 2-4 times the damage similar to the MPG weaponry trial.

These would also benefit group situations and soloing, so just not for the raiding BL.


hokarz

The only thing I can think of is an endurance buff. Maybe not an endurance regen, but something that add's to another players endurance, like a hitpoint buff adds hitpoints. Not sure how feasible that would be. Not really sure how much Endurance a warrior goes through tanking a mob.
Savage Lord Hokarz

Kanan

I know roges with 9.2 endurance will have troubles doing more than themselves in theives' eyes and its only 200end/shot.

Honestly, changing the buff utility would change some of the most basic facets of our class.  We are high agro (only one deagro ability, barely worth the mention, except in emergency situation), medium dps (as tast said, we show about on level with rangers for dps), poor raid tanking (we got good avoidance, but just can't mitigate for spit), monks w/o FD if spells are stripped/removed from equation.

I enjoy the utility aspect of us.  Being so highly concentrated in other departments can make it difficult for other classes to get groups or be able to functionally solo/duo/etc.  Our raid utility is decreasing atm. 

Tast's very valid point here is we need to be able to present what our problem is in getting included in a raid.  What the problem is in why to add a bst vs adding another rogue/wizard/monk etc. that can dish out the big dps.

Before, we would be able to point truly to mgb paragon and SA.  Now, not quite so much, esp on former.  I am terrified of the prohibitive potential cost of a group ferocity.  It would add the flat out most raid usage to us.. but god.. it would totally negate our ability to use the new spell toys we have been given in the last few expansions.

I can do some pulling.. that's bcs I'm patient enough and have watched some of the monks well enough to learn some of their lessons.  The tricky pulls are, of course, beyond me, due to the inability to FD.  This is a monk's primary add to a raid, getting lessened somewhat by fewer zones requiring good pulls (mpg trials, most of anguish, DoN raids).

I can dps fairly high in some situations... Hell, I had a shocker last week when I was top dps, on my own & a ranger's parses.  It was on a mob that was highly susceptible to blunt & mitigated piercing, so my pair of blunts made me able to outdo the rogues.  But rest of time, I'm less than the rogues or the wizards or other classes.

Buffs.. I get tells for SA.. guild still highly thinks of and prolly misunderstands the power of PoS still.  Fero, the return is mediocre really if I were to forget/decide to omit casting.  HP buffs/haste, the other buffs.. I never have a raid w/o a chanter, shammy, ranger or pally to cover the other grounds there.

Our dps has improved tremendously.  I love that facet about us now.  But we need to be able to present another facet.  I think it should be our buffs, in an improved fashion, in both effect and mana efficiency.
Kez's Magelo 85 "Arch Animist" of Final Empire on Povar

Grbage

I'm one of the people that do not want to be turned into a toon that spends a lot of time casting single target buffs. I think of what shammies go through trying to keep leopard up on a bunch of people, just not my playstyle. But we do need to bring something to raids.

A short or medium duration group buff would fit in with my playstyle just fine. See the buff start to blink, stop, recast and go back to what I was doing. That type of buff is very doable for me. As to what that effect should be.... I'll leave that up to more imaginative people then me.
Grbage Heep
85 Beast of Torv

Stingite

What if our pets proc'd a short duration unique, major debuff on raid bosses? Something like "after proc, the next attack has a %chance to miss" debuff?  hmmmm. Thinking.  Trying to create a need for multiple beasts and justify having them use their pets at the same time.

Maybe a debuff that acts as a reverse damage shield? "after proc, the next attack has a %chance to heal 500 hp of boss mob's target"

Just brainstorming. hehe.  :wink:

Tastian

I know what most of you are saying and that has all been said before.  Many agree we need more utility and we've offered up a lot of good ideas imo.  Upgraded fero seems like something that could greatly help out as perhaps a bst gives up 20 of their own dps, but raises 3 other peoples by 30dps.  That's the thing a bst can bring.  Solo a bst won't take a raid spot on dps alone unless numerous other classes aren't available.

However, in recent weeks I've had an influx of people that share a sentiment like grbage that they just don't want to buff.  Some vary in terms of what is an isn't exceptable as a buff(6 mins, 10 mins, 20 mins), but many of them just don't appear to want to do anything but dps and maybe SA.  This means they probably aren't even doing much healing(not that healing is a major bst selling point, but it can be very useful in spots).  My question to those bst in return is what do you see being the reason to take extra bst on a raid?  One bst will get a spot for SA, that's almost a given.  What do the other bst do in your opinion that justifies a spot over numerous other classes.

How things stand now there are lots of buff based utility solutions for bst(fero, end regen, pet debuff procs, etc), but all those fall under the heading of buffing/casting.  Some people clearly seem to have issue with this buff based approach to increased bst utility, so I'm curious what their solutions would be.  The answer obviously can't be "more dps" because dps alone won't put a 2nd bst on a raid over a zerker.  Buffs they seem to not want, so the question then becomes what?  I'm honestly hurting for ideas here as buffs seem like the obvious choice given our class, but from what I've seen some bst will be very unhappy if fero winds up being a highly desired buff and they have 4 people a cycle requesting the buff.  Maybe there is some other idea that we haven't seen or heard and that's what I'm trying to get at.  For those of you bst that just don't like buffing or want to buff or whatever how do you sell yourself as the 2nd or 3rd bst to a raid to get a spot over say a bard(who is raising others dps) or a zerker that is just straight out dps'n you or whatever?  This isn't a flame or bash on anyone's playstyle, but rather an attempt to make as many happy as possible.  Thus far almost every solution to bst utility/raid desireability issues have centered around improving our buffs or adding new ones.  Some clearly do not want this, so that begs the question of how else do we go about fixing this.  Hope that makes it a bit clearer.  8)

Dummkopf

Well, beastlords always were a utility class with medium dps. We're back where we should be with our recently added spells and aas, at least in my opinion. But we still lost most of our utility and we need to get it back. Ferocity once hat a pretty big impact on the dps of very few players in a raid, so at least me selected the top dps melees to receive it, we need it to be back there, we could do with some other utility as well and there are quite a few very nice ideas flying around on this board, i kinda like the pet based stuff although ae ramp hurts even more then.

I honestly dont understand beastlords who asks for more dps and no more buffs because that would mean were basicly monks with pets and nothing else. Being a beastlord was always about being a buff/pet class and i'd like to return there.

Tastian

I hear ya dumm and that's by far the overall opinion, but there's still enough people that don't care(for want of a better term) for buffing.  Maybe they have some ideas of a beastlords role on a raid that we all might prefer or that could be implemented as well so more are happy.  Right now as it stands many want fero upgraded and have for awhile, that alone will be a big shot in the arm to our raid utility as it's high impact(once fixed hopefully lol) and it's selective so multiple beasts are useful for it.  Some won't care for that though, so what do we do to raise our utility on raids outside of buffing others?

The pet proc based utility has some merit, but they seem pretty happy with debuffs overall atm, so that doesn't seem too likely, although maybe we could push for a variation such as a mana drain or maybe group tap type of things.  That'd just require buffing the pet with a hobble type thing every so often.

I could see pets gaining some use via AE ramp adjustment.  In my mind AE ramp is one of those fights pets(esp beast) should thrive on because we should be able to have the pet there, heal it some, and do dps when lots are having to stay away or change tactics.  Having pets take less damage when not at the top of the hate list seems like an easy way to implement this in my mind.  If pet isn't tops on the hate list or ramp list(to prevent exploiting) then pet takes say 10% damage, or maybe the DI is adjusted to 1 automatically.  This allows the pet to still take damage, we still have to heal over a fight, but the pet is up and running and doing far more.  *shrugs*

The pet shield ability could also be expanded imo.  That's a fun little concept that just never came close to its potential.  Being able to issue a /pet shield command for a certain player on a raid would be kinda nice.  Our pet would basically be a % rune for a cleric or maybe even an MT early in a fight where they could help jump start aggro generation or something.  It'd help us on some fights where we take damage, but at the sametime we again have to watch the pet and possibly heal more.  This give smore use to growl line and again makes the pet more useful and less of a burdon for no gain.

LIttle things like AE ramp damage change and pet shielding though imo aren't nearly enough for a bst to get a spot over many other classes.  A total bst toolkit of blast heals, perfection, ability to slow, higher AE ramp fight damage, bit of protection via shielding, fero for a few casters, and modest dps seems like something that would make a guild looking to add another person or two atleast consider extra bst, but still not make bst the clear choice over a lot of other classes.  What other ideas do people have though?  What haven't we thought of or haven't we considered? 

Rarrum

#12
I think some attention on expanding the variety of pet procs... including debuff procs as was discussed in the thread:
http://www.beastlords.org/forums/index.php/topic,5380.0.html
Would be the most benefitial... assuming they do something about ae rampage eatting pets so that it even works.

It'd be nice if they fixed up /pet shield... been monthes since I'd seen it go off on my pet.  Increasing the range on it would probably be the biggest help... I'm usually on the opposite side of a mob as my pet to balance push.  Possibly allowing it to /shield other players would make it more interesting also.

jitathab

What makes a bst unique is we do have various tools to keep outselves alive during a raid better than other mellee classes through buffs that effect us more than others.

Self heals, pet heals, the best resist buff and panther.

At Time and leading up to it BST's had awesome DPS compared to other classes, after that our DPS dropped off the curve. That is what I want to recapture, a position much higher than we are now.  Also in those days our buffs were actually a valid backup, all but the "ubah" could use IoS.

The buffs we have in no way currently add signifcantly to others DPS apart from haste, and they never have. Our buffs are long duration stuff done before a fight not during. Our buffs except SA are group back up buffs not raid ones.

So the question should be why do people want to change us to a mid fight buffer instead of a pre fight buffer?

Tastian

"At Time and leading up to it BST's had awesome DPS compared to other classes, after that our DPS dropped off the curve. That is what I want to recapture, a position much higher than we are now."

The problem with this is you are looking at a bad point in beastlord progression.  It's good in that we really piled on the dps relative to other people, but it's bad in that we were in a situation where our dps was often higher than it should have been because of our dps curve.  This would be like bazaar rangers talking about the hey day of BoT with ele bows and EQ/AM3.  As I've said there were times in progression where I beat rogues, but that's just not how it should be.  Right now with depths new, AAs, and spell bst dps is relatively higher than it'll be at the end of progression because of our division of power.  Hopefully progression isn't horrid to where we are really gimped by it, but it is a leveling off factor that plays into our overall power curve.  Also zerkers have been added to the game since time and they are definitely above us in dps.  That means we have in no particular order:

Definitely above us:
-  Wiz
-  Rog
-  Zerker

Argueably and usually above us:
- mage
- necro

About the same:
-  Rng
-  Mnk

These of course very, but the classes a bst really out dps(again talking in general) is:

-  Warrior
-  Bard
-  Clr
-  Enc
-  Shm(depends and they add lots of dps to others)
-  Dru(curious once stances happen, but haven't seen lots from them so not certain)

Bst isn't a top tier dps class.  It's tier 2 at best and in most cases tier 3 where we are an offensive class above warriors, but not such that we are top 5 every mob.  Some fights yes because of our abilities and how they effect a script and sometimes at other points in progression, but overall a beastlord just isn't a top tier dps class.

"So the question should be why do people want to change us to a mid fight buffer instead of a pre fight buffer?"

I don't think people want to change us to a "mid-fight" buffer as much as content and other changes make this possible in some cases.  I don't see anyone that wants an 18 second duration buff or even a 1 minute duration buff for others, but fero is balanced around a 6.5 base casting time.  On longer scripts you do have to recast this, or in a fight you might hit someone with it when it finally refreshes.  That doesn't mean the bst is supposed to be doing laps around the raid just dropping buffs all day, but it does mean that the bst is trying to impact the raid dps in more ways than just doing dps themselves.

This brings us back to the issue of if not buffs then what?  Upgrade to SA is good, but still one bst covers it.  Upgrade SV and that's great, but seriously one bst can still cover this.  Upgrade infusion or focus or some other buff, ok but one bst still covers it and it's still a buff which some don't like.  Fero is an option that has merit for various reasons and seems to fit in well, but again it's a buff and it's a more time/attention intensive buff than just dropping SA every hour or so. 

It just keeps coming back to the if not buffs, then what?  Even if someone wants to argue that bst should be solid tier 2 dps and above mag/nec and right behind wiz/rog(don't flame I am talking hypothetical lol) that still doesn't mean a 2nd or 3rd bst should get a raid spot over the rog or wiz.  Whether we are 4th best dps in the game or 7th best dps in the game it's still not enough to get a bst a raid spot over another class if you already have one bst.  That's the issue and that's what I'm trying to get ideas on here.  There are tons of ideas centering around utility and buffs, changes to fero, etc, but many object to those and will complain when some of them happen.  My question to those that are againist buffing and increased buffing to secure our usefulness on raids is what else?  More healing?  That's just like buffing really and even more attention intensive and mana intensive at times and really wouldn't fly anyway unless rangers got it.  More dps isn't the only answer, there needs to be something else and outside of buffs I've yet to see any suggestions as to what that could be.  If you're a beastlord that doesn't want to do more buffing than please tell me what it is you think you bring to a raid over a better dps class like a rogue or over a shaman or a bard that are helping others more than the gain of just the bst makes?  Again this isn't a bash to play style, but rather an attempt to gather more information.  Some don't want buffing, all facts seem to make it clear that dps(no matter how reasonably high) aren't enough to secure spots unless a guild simply couldn't get a rog/etc past the first bst, so it falls back to then what?  What do you bring, what do you offer, what role do you see a bst servering on a raid past the first?  Maybe there are some ideas others haven't thought of that would give a bst a more defined role, but so far the only reasonable ideas I've seen thrown around center on buffing.