Role of a beastlord.

[Panthur]

What we realy need is to clear out the grey areas of our class definition, start from the basics and strengthen those. There are so many shades of our "roll" that obscure what we are, or were intended to be, that we no longer are anything anymore.

[nedoirah]

What we realy need is to clear out the grey areas of our class definition, start from the basics and strengthen those. There are so many shades of our "roll" that obscure what we are, or were intended to be, that we no longer are anything anymore.

AMEN

[Gamgan]

I agree 100%.  The way I see it there are two types of beastlords.  One that wants to be the best class ever (tank, heal, FD, mezz adds, did I forget anything?).  In other words, they are completely out of touch with the reality of the game.  The danger is that these folks represent themselves as the majority of the class (mostly because they whine the most and loudest).  I guess the other type is happy the way the class is.  There are some issues that would be great if they were fixed.  Here's my fix for the whiners:

1) get AAs and spend them on offense (our DPS is actually pretty good, not the best but respectable)
2) you might be immune to enrage (hint: your pet isn't) call them off before the mob enrages, they will actually live thru a fight!
3) load a heal and even a pet heal.
4) if you want to play a class that does something other than beastlords do, start that class

1) Our dps is at the bottom of the DPS ladder, any decent rogue/zerker/monk/ranger/necro/wizard will outparse us most of the time, guess some people have different definition of respectable.  And honestly, I'd be fine with that, if we had a well defined role that made us desirable in a raid setting.  Being delegated to mana battery is pretty much last on my list.
2) It's not so much the enrages, but the nasty AEs, and wild rampages that usually tear pets up.   Thankfully AE rampage is hardly an issue in SoD (Fall of Tosk is about the only one that comes to mind), like it was SoF, but who knows what Underfoot content will bring in this regard.
3) When pet used to take 20k+ in one round of AE ramp, our mediocre pet heals did very little even when spam casting
4) It's not necessarily about comparing our abilities to other classes, but comparing the decline of our relative (compared to other classes) usefulness through the expansions.

1) Improve Pet defense (Its DPS is fine)
2) Improve our Buffs (Overcap)
3) Heal (non-pet, possibly like Rangers)
Those are the top priorities that need fixing.

3) Increased DPS (80/10/10 PC/Spell/Pet split respectively) *I think this is the current split, correct?*
4) PoS and FPoS Increases
5) HP/Regen Line
Things we need every expansion and is our current class defining abilities

6) Personal Slow upgrade (Spell lvl. vs. Mob lvl reasoning)
7) Haste that lasts 30 minutes, Group version if their feeling really nice ;) (No other mods, just so its better than potions)
8 ) 2HB AA
Stuff they can do but haven't...

9+) Fero, Taste of Blood, DeAggro (no damage preferable), and Pets summoned w/gear (no weapons)

Things that are BROKE but we have survived with out for so long even if they worked, we would probally be lost.

P.S. Our DeAggro isn't broke, I just want DeAggro on a 18 sec refresh (I admit it)

1) Our pet dps is pretty bad as well.  My warder is usually hovering just below 600 dps, which gets boosted to just shy of 1k w/ disc (which is still considerably lower than mage disc-less pet dps).  As it is, our warder is around 15% of our total dps (5% of which is straight up procs).
2) While this may be fine for soloing or grouping when no shm is around, it won't do much to make us more desirable in raid situations.
3) Like ranger heals?  Their heals are just as bad as ours, with the exception of the cure line spell they got back in TSS (or maybe it was TBS).
3b) My numbers are way different, for me, it's more like 55/30/15 or 55/23/22 for personal/spell/pet damage (depending on if yowl is included under pet or spell)
4) Even if they didn't change the net mana regen of those lines per hour for instance, I would love to see them triple the reuse time, and triple the regen amount.
5) Like with out mana regen abilities, HP regen line in general had degraded into near uselessness.  I would rather leave it alone, and focus on more useful abilities.  Shm regen buff was one of the first somewhat useful buffs that made my buffblock list (after spell haste) in order to make free up some needed buff slots for raid burns.
6) At the rate slow is mitigated by mobs these days, any upgrade to this spell line will not have a major effect. Our 65% slow is mitigated to somewhere around 15% (23% effectiveness), meaning that any 5% face value change to our slow will only have little more than 1% actual effect.
7) Yes, and ungroup it from our pet haste buff.
8 ) With the amount of disparity between 1h and 2h weapons for melees, I don't see this very worthwhile.  Monks get such AAs, yet you never see any of them use a 2 hander (outside of arena jousting).
9) yes, more or less, I would rather not step on mage community's toes w/ summoned pet armor though.

What we realy need is to clear out the grey areas of our class definition, start from the basics and strengthen those. There are so many shades of our "roll" that obscure what we are, or were intended to be, that we no longer are anything anymore.

Well said.

[Zunar]

Well, as to our role as bst, we're primarily a melee dps class, with some shaman spells.
As for utility...it'd make sense that our warder actually was more of a utility than a liability.
Throwing out some ideas here.

* make it tank better/survive AE ramp

* protect self, maybe even others..like a shielding ability

* maybe a pet dps disc, remove taste of blood and give us a triggered AA/disc for pet only?

* pet AE dps proc? helps us do some damage on weak trash mobs clearing

* pet invulnerability, like DA could be useful to save it when it's in trouble.

* ability to sacrifice pet for a nuke like a wiz manaburn/necro lifeburn. Ours could be called warders savage cry.

Those would make me a happy bst /nod

[rhaug]

Started by Mazame - Last post by Gamgan 
Quote from: Gutterr on August 03, 2009, 11:40:42 pm
I agree 100%.  The way I see it there are two types of beastlords.  One that wants to be the best class ever (tank, heal, FD, mezz adds, did I forget anything?).  In other words, they are completely out of touch with the reality of the game.  The danger is that these folks represent themselves as the majority of the class (mostly because they whine the most and loudest).  I guess the other type is happy the way the class is.  There are some issues that would be great if they were fixed.  Here's my fix for the whiners:

1) get AAs and spend them on offense (our DPS is actually pretty good, not the best but respectable)
2) you might be immune to enrage (hint: your pet isn't) call them off before the mob enrages, they will actually live thru a fight!
3) load a heal and even a pet heal.
4) if you want to play a class that does something other than beastlords do, start that class


1) Our dps is at the bottom of the DPS ladder, any decent rogue/zerker/monk/ranger/necro/wizard will outparse us most of the time, guess some people have different definition of respectable.  And honestly, I'd be fine with that, if we had a well defined role that made us desirable in a raid setting.  Being delegated to mana battery is pretty much last on my list.
2) It's not so much the enrages, but the nasty AEs, and wild rampages that usually tear pets up.   Thankfully AE rampage is hardly an issue in SoD (Fall of Tosk is about the only one that comes to mind), like it was SoF, but who knows what Underfoot content will bring in this regard.
3) When pet used to take 20k+ in one round of AE ramp, our mediocre pet heals did very little even when spam casting
4) It's not necessarily about comparing our abilities to other classes, but comparing the decline of our relative (compared to other classes) usefulness through the expansions.



Quote from: AbyssalMage on August 08, 2009, 03:30:45 am
1) Improve Pet defense (Its DPS is fine)
2) Improve our Buffs (Overcap)
3) Heal (non-pet, possibly like Rangers)
Those are the top priorities that need fixing.

3) Increased DPS (80/10/10 PC/Spell/Pet split respectively) *I think this is the current split, correct?*
4) PoS and FPoS Increases
5) HP/Regen Line
Things we need every expansion and is our current class defining abilities

6) Personal Slow upgrade (Spell lvl. vs. Mob lvl reasoning)
7) Haste that lasts 30 minutes, Group version if their feeling really nice  (No other mods, just so its better than potions)
8 ) 2HB AA
Stuff they can do but haven't...

9+) Fero, Taste of Blood, DeAggro (no damage preferable), and Pets summoned w/gear (no weapons)

Things that are BROKE but we have survived with out for so long even if they worked, we would probally be lost.

P.S. Our DeAggro isn't broke, I just want DeAggro on a 18 sec refresh (I admit it)


1) Our pet dps is pretty bad as well.  My warder is usually hovering just below 600 dps, which gets boosted to just shy of 1k w/ disc (which is still considerably lower than mage disc-less pet dps).  As it is, our warder is around 15% of our total dps (5% of which is straight up procs).
2) While this may be fine for soloing or grouping when no shm is around, it won't do much to make us more desirable in raid situations.
3) Like ranger heals?  Their heals are just as bad as ours, with the exception of the cure line spell they got back in TSS (or maybe it was TBS).
3b) My numbers are way different, for me, it's more like 55/30/15 or 55/23/22 for personal/spell/pet damage (depending on if yowl is included under pet or spell)
4) Even if they didn't change the net mana regen of those lines per hour for instance, I would love to see them triple the reuse time, and triple the regen amount.
5) Like with out mana regen abilities, HP regen line in general had degraded into near uselessness.  I would rather leave it alone, and focus on more useful abilities.  Shm regen buff was one of the first somewhat useful buffs that made my buffblock list (after spell haste) in order to make free up some needed buff slots for raid burns.
6) At the rate slow is mitigated by mobs these days, any upgrade to this spell line will not have a major effect. Our 65% slow is mitigated to somewhere around 15% (23% effectiveness), meaning that any 5% face value change to our slow will only have little more than 1% actual effect.
7) Yes, and ungroup it from our pet haste buff.
8 ) With the amount of disparity between 1h and 2h weapons for melees, I don't see this very worthwhile.  Monks get such AAs, yet you never see any of them use a 2 hander (outside of arena jousting).
9) yes, more or less, I would rather not step on mage community's toes w/ summoned pet armor though.


Quote from: Panthur on Yesterday at 06:52:34 pm
What we realy need is to clear out the grey areas of our class definition, start from the basics and strengthen those. There are so many shades of our "roll" that obscure what we are, or were intended to be, that we no longer are anything anymore.


Well said.

i like your realistic view of the beastlord

altough sometimes its not much fun to see in what position we are when compared to the total of everquest classes

anyway i appreciate that you just say how it its for most of us.
if we dont speak the truth about how it really is for most of us.
then we cant expect to see improves

when we show that we are actually a class in need of a lot of love and improves and support of the development team
we will get who knows a good change soon.

thumbs up!~

i see a strong beastlord class rising up in the coming time!
or is this positive thinking jeje?

[rhaug]

So back to the topic.  What is the role of a beastlord?  Hmm well this is how i see it.  Provide mana regen, and replenishment on draining fights (necros, enchanters do it better) Provide okay dps if played to perfection. (most all melee classes, casters do it better with much less attention and gear)  Fill a raid spot. Eat healers mana. Ya know what, we have NO role and the posts on this board seem to prove that.  So many have wildly different visions of what the beastlord class should be but what are we really?  Everything we do others do better.  As some of you know when sod was launched i was in the dev's ear hard to get our warder fixed along with a few mages that agreed i got brushed off with promises of fixes but nothing ever got done.  Jili is dead on right with this comment "For a raiding Beastlord, the warder is really detrimental for the class. We are being held back because all other classes and devs see warder as utility" now the truth behind that is simple.  The perception is correct for those dev's and other classes.  Problem is we have become complacent and have tried to adapt to what is given us instead of lobbing to get our warder up to par or leave the warder as it is and up our personal utility/dps.  We fell behind in SoD and we are going to keep sliding unless we as a class do something about it.  Now i know i will see some comments from people that are top of the game in gear / arrogance / whatever, about how content they are with the class but that is not the majority of beasts but unfortunately those are the beasts that get listened to the most so suck it up and help make suggestions to the ones that matter.  If we don't i guarantee you that this conversation will present itself again this time next year but with only 25% of the current beasts arguing.

agree we need to stand up and say what we want to see changed on our class.
i feel open for positive ideas to our class
lets give the devs something they can work with and return a new shining beastlord class to us
that can compete again with the other classes in game

[AbyssalMage]

Gamgan...
Yeah, aware of slow mitigation and how useless the spell line has become.  Seen more than one posting here and on Sony boards about people not even casting in groups anymore unless it's a named or their bored.  I still cast it out of habbit and one day ill probally actually parse the benefit in group content.  My guess is that parsing hundreds of 1 minute fights will show the RNG has more effect on Mob DPS than slow will.  But until then, I'll still cast slow out of habbit and having a version that isn't resisted cause of spell vs. mob level will be a high priority.

With the exception of Rangers (and mabye Necro's) the other classes you listed should out DPS you/us in a raid setting.  Guess it comes down to the event, "burst vs. duration", although not sure how munch even that argument holds now for figuring out where Mellee, Caster's, Hybrids, and Utility fall.  Mabye DPS needs to be addressed for everyone with SoF/SoD causing as munch inflation as it did.

Being a Mana battery sucks, thats why Necro's petitioned to have their twitch line killed.  But I like the "mana battery" only cause it is better than necro's twitch.  It actually helps us where it was a drain of their mana.  But I also understood that gaining the ability would cause raid leaders to focus it towards cleric's (some guilds do wizards from what Ive read) but I welcome it cause its mana free and works in raid, group, and solo where twitch only worked on group/raid and used mana.

[Bumkus]

Like it or not, we are a Slowing class.  It does make a difference, probably around 15% on current content.  I would recommend still using it as it is still one of our class defining characteristics.

Now if you think 15% is not enough, then I would build a case to improve it (add an atk debuff component, for instance) but we aren't gonna wish it away and just say Slow doesn't count.  Enc and Shm have the same issue.

My role in groups is to 1) Slow and 2)  DPS.  Not really a bad role.  It bothers me that I would boot myself in favor of a Shaman, but that does not mean we don't have a role, it just means that another class fills our role better.

My role in raids is 1) DPS, 2) Cast SE, 3) Feed mana to main cleric or other critical person on hard fights and 4) watch for emotes and do calls in /RS during fights.  I am good for watching emotes and trigger phrases because I don't need to be in the typical CC, Tank, Healer channels.

What I personally want is more utility, in the form of CC (root, cast snare) or pulling (FD), even if it came at the expense of DPS.  I would be ok if utility was tied to Warder, provided it was real utility (Slowing unslowable mobs for example).  We have not gotten much real utility through our warders historically.  Typically we are just punished when our Warder dies, because we can't cast certain spells, but that is different.

What I hear other BST ask for is more DPS and Aggro reducing abilities, not expansion of Utility, so I am sort of an oddity.

Personally I don't think asking for DPS is the way to go. We need to compete directly against the other pure DPS classes, and like it or not, we are not a pure DPS class.  So every expansion that goes by where we ask for DPS, we lose more and more opportunities to gain utility.  They are flat out bound in how much DPS they can give us, unless we can completely redefine our class.

I try not to post too much here, because my Utility-oriented view is different than most bst.  If I am able to get into next beta, I would plan to spend most time parsing warders to get them back into shape, but I would leave the DPS versus Utility requests to someone else.

I guess if someone gets into beta they should let us know what list they plan to push.

[Khauruk]

Our warder snare is better than cast snare, tbh.

If we got worthwhile utility, for raids and groups, I'd gladly let my dps stagnate some.  That utility needs to not be tied entirely to pets though.  I don't see any given utility being worthwhile enough to do that though, but who knows?  The last class revamps that SoE did were, imo, about spot on (druid, enc, sk, mage), so we may get some great stuff too.

Main cleric?  What is that?  I toss it mostly on clerics, but also on rezzed in knights, wizards, mages, sometimes an rezzed enc, and the occasional bard.

Largely it goes to whoever I don't get irritated by, and bothers to send me a tell, unless the fight's reaching a critical stage.

[Hzath]

Paragon doesn't work on bards

[Khauruk]

Exactly.  It's a fun way to piss them off in my guild.

[Bumkus]

Our warder snare is better than cast snare, tbh.

If we got worthwhile utility, for raids and groups, I'd gladly let my dps stagnate some.  That utility needs to not be tied entirely to pets though.  I don't see any given utility being worthwhile enough to do that though, but who knows?  The last class revamps that SoE did were, imo, about spot on (druid, enc, sk, mage), so we may get some great stuff too.

Main cleric?  What is that?  I toss it mostly on clerics, but also on rezzed in knights, wizards, mages, sometimes an rezzed enc, and the occasional bard.

Largely it goes to whoever I don't get irritated by, and bothers to send me a tell, unless the fight's reaching a critical stage.

I have been in the main tank group in raids lately, so I watch that cleric's mana bar to see if i need to feed mana.  Otherwise I use it for myself to sustain my own dps.  I also use it on rezzed people.  forgot about that.  Focused Paragon has been a good ability for us.

Cast snare offers some utility that doesnt come with pet proc snare.  For 1, it allows me to maintain aggro on those rare kiting opportunities and it gives multiple chances to land snare before engage.  trying to snare a hard hitting mob with pet is a death sentence to warder, because as soon as snare fires, the mob turns on the warder.  Since proc snare generates so much hate, so I tend not to use it on raids.  I dont want to build up hate on bear unnecessarily.

[Maylian]

With the exception of Rangers (and mabye Necro's) the other classes you listed should out DPS you/us in a raid setting. 

I would remove the "and maybe Necro's" because that's entirely false. I think only Wizards should really be saying and maybe Necro's should out dps us as Necro's should always be near the top end of the parse, especially in a raid scenario.

I don't think many of us are opposed to utility increase and I think I'm quite clearly in favour of it from previous posts in this and other threads. I would prefer that this utility isn't solely through the warder unless there are some large improvements to our warders. I would like to be a mini shaman in groups with the ability to dps but to also add a small increase into group dps through a proc buff and overstat buffs.

I think my opinion on FD is well documented so I'll refrain from commenting on that. What I want to avoid is being a battery to people, we know they're not going to add endurance to paragon as SoE have been clear about this, Paragon does need a big boost to compensate for mudflation but most fights just aren't long enough for it to make too much difference. I would like other special attacks like our AA's gorilla smash etc but have some that are group beneficial rather than mob detrimental.

Just some opinions, not necessarily well thought out since I'm damn tired this morning

[wildwaters]

Main cleric?  What is that?  I toss it mostly on clerics, but also on rezzed in knights, wizards, mages, sometimes an rezzed enc, and the occasional bard.

I <3 you... woudl you liek to move to quellious? LOL!

[Nusa]

Actually my pet peeve is knights who run out of mana and ask for Paragon, but at the same time have SE blocked. And there are less useful buffs on them.

I'm already on Quellious, don't bother asking.