Top 10 Fanfaire concerns

[Quinnotetiquan]

I didnt get my 2 cents on the fanfaire topic so Im starting a new one. Here are my suggestions.

1: Unlink our nukes. And if you dont want to unlink them at least give us 3 seperate timers on our cold nukes instead of 2.
2: Roar of Thunder needs its decrease hate values to be increased by 50% or the current values need to be made into fixed agro values
3: Increase all pet class' pet heals by 15-20% since pet hp has increased
4: Add endurance regen to group paragon. leave it off focused cause I think that would be too powerful with endurance regen.
5: Fero blah blah blah youve heard it before
6: Give us some sort of curse cure.
7: Increase our dot damage and give our dots a minor resist adjust.
8: Taste of Blood: At least needs its Increase minimum damage modifier doubled and duration doubled.
9: New Pet models: Im a sucker for graphics. Already a new bear model in the SHIP in the laboratory.
10: Increase duration on group haste.

[Karilis]

My thoughts on these, I know I don't count, but still...

1.  Personally, I'ld rather not have them looking at this, since there's so much other stuff they could fix, and focus on for our class and other classes, I know it's a matter of DPS to you raid level beasties, but frankly, it means nothing to the 50-70% of the solo/lowbie group population, I still use frost shard at level 73 just for the hell of it, I haven't cared to pick up another nuke, my mana is used to slow and cripple and endless stream of mobs, occasionally buffing myself and/or my pet.

2.  I agree, I haven't purchaesd Roar of Thunder, but again this is a raid concern only, using it when soloing, I couldn't give a rats ass less if it decreased aggro, and when grouping, I'm the tank.  Frankly, I'ld like to see a few more aas for it next expansion, to be able to drop it down to 30 seconds reuse time, or if not that, an alternate timer, same ability, but it focuses more on the debuff + hate decrease.  Say level 1 is the exact same stats as roar of thunder, requires Roar of Thunder level 3, level 2 would be roar of thunder plus 25% debuff and +50% aggro redux, level 3 would be +50 % debuff +100% aggro redux, either base of 30 second timer, or able to be reduced to 30 seconds after some quickening aas.

3.  Nay, not if it comes at the cost of mana increase.  If you're asking for freebies, I doubt Beastlords out of all the classes deserve/should/would get them.  Congratulations pets on hitpoint increase, we have plenty of utilities to make pets last a long time, if you want to memorize 3 nukes, that's your own perogative instead of memorizing a pet c heal and a pet heal.

4.  I think that is very reasonable, endurance regen has been missing since acumen was changed way back in the day, when it was called stamina regeneration.

5.  Blah blah to fero-  don't buy or memorize the higher level spell, keep the lower level spell for your or your groupmates resists, or for the 40-90% of beastlords who still solo/group with self buffs, guess what?  We barely reach soft cap with solo gear, sometimes even group gear.

6.  I would love it, but that's asking for freebies again, if we're going to ask for cure stuff, why not radiant cure?  Or an upgrade to our cure poison and disease spells as well?  And throw in an upgrade to our cancel magic line too, I hate long-casting cancel magic.

7.  No, unless Shadowknights are getting an amazing overhaul on DoTs, we are far from deserving the DPS increase on DoTs compared to them.  If it's "Increase all hybrid damage spells(DoT DD AoE) to be worth casting/have beneficial mana to damage ratios" then fine, go ahead with it.

8.  Oh what, you don't like a flavor aa because it isn't all that useful?  How about instead of asking for a bone where we don't need one, we let them decide where to throw us one?  Most activatable aas with timers greater than 3 minutes are meant to be used for flavor etc, this falls mostly in that vein...

9.  I would definitely not want this, I'ld rather have them work on performance and stability and reducing the ram-leak/ram-hoggishness that Everquest already is, than simply compounding it.

10.  I agree, all of our hastes should be 45+ minutes, in fact, the only buffs that should be short duration, are those with durations under 5 minutes to begin with, this does not include Fero, I would like to see durations smoothed out on all spells of similar levels, or even across levels. Put 'buffs' on a 1 hour for rank 1, 2 hour for rank 2, 3 hour for rank three sort of setup, focusable of course, but that requires tweaking hundreds upon hundreds of spells, though I think we as the players deserve it, as one more nod to the casual gamer, and one more simplification to the raiders.


I'm not trying to sound snarky or like an asshole or anything, it's just, I've played every class except wizard, berzerker, cleric, and warrior, to level 70 plus, and honestly?  We are most definitely not in as much need of loving as some other classes, we might not have a raid niche (unless people still need MGB paragon) but we're solid, sustainable DPS, with some pretty good eye candy burst, that can mostly keep ourselves alive.  Now I know I don't speak for the raid members of any class, I'm not attempting to, I'm a completely casual gamer, I pretty much despise raiding, but I know how developer correspondence goes for other classes, I've been pretty close to the process on a few occasions, and asking for bones where they aren't needed, is definitely asking for withholdings of upcoming treats.

For example:  They give us higher pet heals now, then the next expansion comes along, and they give us no new pet heals, and don't increase the pets' hitpoints anymore since that's what we "complained about" in the first place, and then it's either uncovered as intended, or uncovered as an accidental oversight, but doesn't get fixed by the time the following expansion comes out, where they do fix it, but probably give us what we would have had for pet health in the previous expansion in the first place.

Curse cure type stuff it'ld be different, they could give it to us, but give it on a long recast, or a horrible cast time, or both, and purposely revamp content, or make new content that would require three casts from our spell to take it off...

Unlinking our nukes?  That's begging for them to not increase the ratio on item proliferation in the next expansion for beastlords/letting them leave us off of a bunch of monk-intended weaponry.  Or, just asking them to give the upgrades for the next expansion, a horrible mana to damage ratio.

Of course, perfect world, perfect players, perfect devs, I'ld take everything on your list, I still wouldn't use 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, or 9, but I'ld be happy to have it.

[Zebrn Beasword]

I like some of them, but Roar and Fero need to be number 1 and 2.  Penchantment duration number 3.  :-D  Our nukes are fine, I still average within the same 300 dps range before and after the nerf.  Endurance regen is a good one, but its a long shot, would make life a lot easier.  Dots do land of on raid mobs (poisen), but really the aggro associated with them suck. 

[Quinnotetiquan]

Didnt they give our nukes timers just to give us actual upgrades to our nuke lines and not lower DPS? Think I read a dev saying that. Granted lower DPS is the end result but I didnt think that was the original intent.

[Rabekiz]

Dont care about pet heals, I havent memmed one in forever and I've never had a problem with my warder throughout TSS or Solteris.

Leave Taste of Blood as it is, its on par with the other classes. I'd rather see them give us a new AA that affects us not our pet: a bonus damage mod or more attack for a kill shot. Hell could even be endurance regen if linked to an alternative deaggro skill gain (see below).

Nukes or DoTs for an upgrade not both. Since DoTs have sucked for so long, I'd rather just see them go. 3 ice nukes would be fine but its not priority #1.


They wont change roar of thunder to a 30 second cast time, not as long as its a free 3K nuke. Id rather see them leave roar of thunder as is but give us a very low damage skill on a 30 second timer for deaggro, cost to use is endurance (not like we ever go below 60% on raids anyways).

Upgrade our pet's DPS, we are the only true pet class whos pet cannot backstab, throw us a bone.

Would like to see another DPS disc since we havent seen one since DODH.

Also wouldnt mind seeing a group version of spirit of frenzy.

[Karilis]

2.  I agree, I haven't purchaesd Roar of Thunder, but again this is a raid concern only, using it when soloing, I couldn't give a rats ass less if it decreased aggro, and when grouping, I'm the tank.  Frankly, I'ld like to see a few more aas for it next expansion, to be able to drop it down to 30 seconds reuse time, or if not that, an alternate timer, same ability, but it focuses more on the debuff + hate decrease.  Say level 1 is the exact same stats as roar of thunder, requires Roar of Thunder level 3, level 2 would be roar of thunder plus 25% debuff and +50% aggro redux, level 3 would be +50 % debuff +100% aggro redux, either base of 30 second timer, or able to be reduced to 30 seconds after some quickening aas.

Part of what I meant here, is like how we have Paragon of Spirits and Perfection of Spirit, or Spirit of Wood and Convergence of Spirits, being on two separate timers.

I would like a "Thunderous Roar" AA, similar name to Roar of Thunder so people get that the effect is similar, exactly like you said, 30 second deaggro click, with debuff component, but like I was pointing out, maybe it starts out as a 4.5 minute deaggro buff, on an alternate timer to Roar of Thunder, with as much damage as 50-100% of rank 1 Roar of Thunder (something like 375-750) with the damage portion being given a crappy resist check, and allowed for partial resist.  The debuff should last for 1.5 minutes, to allow for when the quickened Thunderous Roar aa is maxed, (30 seconds reuse reduction per rank, 8 ranks, 5 points per) we can either chain it on multiple mobs, or it will last through one time to two times that it gets resisted if we land it once.

Hell, strip the DD component entirely if you think it'll make a stronger case, but I think asking to have to spend another 52 aa on what amounts to a 0-10 DPS upgrade that simply gives us a utility we're supposed to have (deaggro and debuff) as a DPS class with the incapacitate line of spells (We should get a retroactive catchup on these spells starting at 66, but that's a whole 'nother ball of yarn.)  DPS class = needs a fade ability to reduce or whipe aggro entirely from one mob, monks, rogues, rangers being the primary examples, have all had this for a long, long time.  (Hell even wizards and enchanters get concussion and memory blur, paladins and clerics used to get atone, I don't know if that line still works or has been continued or not)


As far as pet DPS upgrade?  I wish.  I was told we got a -huge- tanking upgrade, so that's why we got shafted on DPS increase compared to magician and necro and SHADOWKNIGHT! :( pets...  Then I find out, that shadowknight pets got 3 times the tanking upgrade (differential) magician pets are still about 20% better tanks out of the box, and magicians can spend their aas on focusing on their pet earlier, since they don't have to worry about melee aas... at all really.  Necromancers get all those utilities, snare slow dots fear feign, and their pets because of large lifetap procs, are tanking as well as Babe if not better with the same focus.

So let's see...

Necromancers over 15 levels went from having a 4200 hp pet, to having an over 14000 hp pet, with a dps increase from 47 to 66, for their warrior, or their rogue from a 2500 hp pet, to an 8000 hp pet, going from 65 dps to 99 dps.

Magicians went from(we'll just do earth pet, because otherwise the pet spell level comparison gets thrown off too much)  4800 hp 66 dps increased to 16000 hp, 198 dps...  (Their air pet however went from 50 DPS to 215 DPS, and their fire pet went from 70 DPS to over 370 DPS)

We went from Spirit of Sorsha, 4100 hitpoints, 77 dps, to 11(?) or 12000 hitpoints, and 110-141 DPS depending on who is reporting it.  The other pet classes got a 300-350% upgrade in hitpoints (and more avoidance/stronger stuns/better innate procs etc) and anywhere from a 50% upgrade in DPS(that necro information has to be way off... otherwise their rogue pets are less DPS and HP than shadowknights) to a 500% DPS increase for magician's fire pets!  we got a 50-100% dps increase.

My opinion?  What the bleep was the dev smoking that said we got a bigger pet hp/tanking upgrade therefore we didn't need as high of a DPS upgrade?  What they probably meant was, Beastlord's in general with item proliferation got more tanking ability than before, so they turned our pet into a DoT to compromise for the fact that we can stay in the fight and use our melee DPS on content that used to be too tough to do so.

Sure, these are 'out of the box' numbers, that don't factor in pet haste or pet buffs or pet toys.  But rationally speaking- only magicians have guaranteed access to pet toys(add another 20-50 % dps depending on how much you think the procs go off and how much the mowcha muzzle haste effects pure melee dps), and pet damage shields, everyone has access to pet haste, and necro's and magicians both have innate procs on their pets so they don't need to cast a proc buff like we do.  Though I can see that logic being used against me:

"You just complained that their out of the box DPS is higher, but you admitted they have an out of the box innate proc, but your out of the box pet needs to be buffed with a proc, so there's your missing DPS upgrade"

My answer to that is to call BS.  If we're supposed to be evened up by our proc, why not just roll it into innate with the warder, rather than having the most awkward length buff out of all of our spells?  I understand utility/resist purposes, but honestly, I've never, since luclin, switched a buff because I thought my warder was getting resisted too much, and back then, I had to resummon to be able to do that.  But anyway, why should an external buff on the warder, we cast, be necessary to even up the pet to the out of the box dps of other class pets? (and it doesn't for the most part)  All the other classes get their own utilities to buff up the pet, damage shield for mages (very large dps increase) necro rogue positioning while kiting...  our class defining bonus buff, is something already ingrained into other pets.  unless they mean to tell us the insane cost on growl of the leapord panther puma etc... is supposed to be our DPS that we're missing?  Even then, it's only 20% more, compared to 500% on the mages best increase.  I think out of the box, our pet should fall at least 1 dps higher than magician air pets, bare minimum, because that actually seems to be their lowest DPS pet.

[Quinnotetiquan]

The mages needed it. Mage DPS was so lacking compared to wizards and necros before thier upgrade. And their pets have always hit for more than our pets anyway. Comparing Mage DPS to beast DPS simply becuase we both have pets is like comparing apples and oranges becuase they both have seeds.

[Inphared]

I readily admit I have read maybe %5 of everything that's been said in this thread.

With that in mind:

Magician pets will always be better than our pets. We will always be better than a Magician. There's your balance.

Necromancer pets are still hardly worth the time and effort to maintain and thusly aren't used anymore.

Shadowknight pets got a DPS increase. Newsflash: they still blow goats.

Really, the only thing we need to bring up at fanfaire are the re-re-re-re-rehashed Ferocity issues as well as MAYBE a group paragon issue. The new expansion has a lot in store for us, but it's better to wait until Beta opens until we start trying to pinpoint the most minor issues we have to worry about.

[Quinnotetiquan]

What might help is if Shadowknight and shaman had a pet rune that blocked all spells up to a certain amount. Would make pets viable on raids. But Im getting off topic.

The way i see it rangers got a curse cure why shouldnt we? I mean all hybrids can cure curse except us. Im not asking for the same mini heal and cure that rangers have but something would be nice.

And Shadowknights should have thier dots damage increased too. They already have the resist adjust. The way I see it either give us 3 seperate timers on our cold nukes or increase our dot damage cause Ive got an extra spell gem to fill since the March patch so its either or. Even rangers get 4 seperate nuke timers.  2 cold 2 fire.

[Shieara]

Really I am pretty satisfied with my beastlord right now.  There's a lot of little tweaks they could do to make the class better, but not much that is major.  I guess my biggest problem right now is aggro.  Fortunately 90% of the time I group with an awesome tank who has maxed aa and very good gear, but even he loses aggro to me if I am not careful.  Maybe if I bought more then rank 1 of Roar it would help that.

[Dilgartownguard]

Roar barely does anything at all. You'll end up maxing it eventually just because you want the 11 dps,the deagro doesn't even cover 1 poison nuke. Things I would push is making fero not a complete waste of time (just make it group and last over an hour, the gains are so small there's no reason not to do this), the chokadai model freezing when it casts a spell (the pet will stop moving while in the 1-2 second freeze, causing it to lose damage should the mob be pushed/move out of it's range while frozen), DoT spells being worthless (decrease the cast time to 0.5 and throw on a -20 resist mod?), and pet scaling (This is true for all pet classes, the pets just simply do not keep up in dps and cause the classes that have them to fall way behind in raid content).

[Denti]

Aggro is indeed a major issue, even more so at the raid level than in the grouping game (well, if all groupmembers have comparable gear and AAs). Of course i would love to see the possibility of more nukes, especially as that is the trigger for the chanters proc buff and that gets an upgrade each expansion.

More dps or tankability for pets would be nice, but as Inph pointed out mage pets will allways be better than ours, however in total we do quite a lot more dps than them (and we can probably tank better as well).

[Quinnotetiquan]

Aggro is indeed a major issue, even more so at the raid level than in the grouping game (well, if all groupmembers have comparable gear and AAs). Of course i would love to see the possibility of more nukes, especially as that is the trigger for the chanters proc buff and that gets an upgrade each expansion.

More dps or tankability for pets would be nice, but as Inph pointed out mage pets will allways be better than ours, however in total we do quite a lot more dps than them (and we can probably tank better as well).

Quite. Rangers have deagro out the wazoo. Rogues have thier sneak macro. Monks have FD. Bards have fade. Zerkers have thier Jarring Smash. And all casters have thier deagro with exception of mages. My question is would what I proposed cover a good amount of agro? Double the current value or make current value into Fixed Agro value?

[Sharrien]

I would like to see our de-aggro ability increased either through improving Roar or some other mechanism. 

Raid utility can be improved too.  We do respectable DPS, but not as much as the top tier classes and since we can't buff much at a raid level that severely limits our desirability (old news).  If we had a spell or ability that is an attack debuff, that could be something significant for us to bring to raids.  We already have this ability in the form of the Mace of Grim Tidings, so it's not something that is completely out of bounds for our class.

[AbyssalMage]

More dps or tankability for pets would be nice, but as Inph pointed out mage pets will allways be better than ours, however in total we do quite a lot more dps than them (and we can probably tank better as well).

Can anyone actually confirm this?  Ive been messing around on the Mage boards sense making a Magician for Tinkering (I'm a TS junky) and duo'ing with my mostly retired Druid and the top magicians are posting top 5 DPS on raids.  Mabye there are so few high end game Mages (SoF content) that people are still feeling sorry for them?  Or there lying mabye?  But I doubt people in the highest end guilds would be lying about the DPS they are doing.

So back to the original reply.  Can we confirm that Mages are not out DPS'ing us?  I guess we would have to further comment on duration of fight. Less than 3 minutes, 3-7 minutes, greater than 7 minutes, or however the Raid Time breakdowns are done now days and fight/event (mana draining mobs would probally lower a Mage's DPS).

As a side note: Wouldn't we need a Mage's parse to remove some of the "DPS" lost to the battle spam/OoR?