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Role of a beastlord.

Started by Mazame, August 01, 2009, 06:50:00 PM

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Khauruk

QuoteA druid's only home is a raid or boxed.  If a Merc can't keep you up, you probally need a real cleric anyways

Sounds like you group w/ subpar druids.  The ones I group with heal 10x better than a merc, and are more than ready to enter into CC and dps roles as well.  Mained by a smart person, druids are pretty damn amazing again.
TURNCOAT!!!!!

wildwaters

Quote from: Khauruk on September 22, 2009, 02:25:46 PM
QuoteA druid's only home is a raid or boxed.  If a Merc can't keep you up, you probally need a real cleric anyways

Sounds like you group w/ subpar druids.  The ones I group with heal 10x better than a merc, and are more than ready to enter into CC and dps roles as well.  Mained by a smart person, druids are pretty damn amazing again.

Yeah I like duids too. Attack debuffs and dps is good and heals are good too.

I spent a good portion of the double exp weekend non-stop pulling 6-10 mobs in mech gaurd on my sk with just a single druid healer. Of course I boxed beast a bit and kept her paragoned but she was kick ass >.<

When I was building SK and tanking on my beast one of my druid friends could keep me up easy on some rough content.

I'd have to agree with Kh that you must know some suckass druids.

Kanan

For the longest time, the Dru/bst duo was arguably the most powerful in the game.  It's still a seriously effective one.
Kez's Magelo 85 "Arch Animist" of Final Empire on Povar

AbyssalMage

Quote from: Khauruk on September 22, 2009, 02:25:46 PM
QuoteA druid's only home is a raid or boxed.  If a Merc can't keep you up, you probally need a real cleric anyways

Sounds like you group w/ subpar druids.  The ones I group with heal 10x better than a merc, and are more than ready to enter into CC and dps roles as well.  Mained by a smart person, druids are pretty damn amazing again.
Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PM
Quote from: Khauruk on September 22, 2009, 02:25:46 PM
QuoteA druid's only home is a raid or boxed.  If a Merc can't keep you up, you probally need a real cleric anyways

Sounds like you group w/ subpar druids.  The ones I group with heal 10x better than a merc, and are more than ready to enter into CC and dps roles as well.  Mained by a smart person, druids are pretty damn amazing again.

Yeah I like duids too. Attack debuffs and dps is good and heals are good too.

I spent a good portion of the double exp weekend non-stop pulling 6-10 mobs in mech gaurd on my sk with just a single druid healer. Of course I boxed beast a bit and kept her paragoned but she was kick ass >.<

When I was building SK and tanking on my beast one of my druid friends could keep me up easy on some rough content.

I'd have to agree with Kh that you must know some suckass druids.

The problem you post Wildwaters is that your grouping where your gear & aa's > content.  Yes, I know some sucky Druids and trying to convince them to DeBuff was an exercise in futility.  Thats why I don't group with them.

If the Druid is able to provide CC along with Main Healing and Debuffing and then throws some DPS in the mix, sounds like this is more content where the gear & aa's > content.  If Cleric's have trouble with damage spikes of some of the current higher zones using Promised, HoT, and Fast heal to keep a Tank up I don't see how a Druid is going to make this better as Main Healer.

In Raid environments, the Druid has seen signifigant gains in order to keep his individual Group & the Raid going.  But in the Group role, they still lack the fundemental abilities they used to have...
...I keep wanting to discuss the roles and utility druid's need inside a group and this isn't the forum for that...

What I want to discuss is that I don't ever want to see us get to this point.  I want the Beastlord community to continue to discuss the latest expansions, spells, abilities, and how best to use them.  I want our role in a raid and group to mean something and not a become a charitable reason for inviting us.  Where the items are dropping that fellow members might find as upgrades or "cool" trinkets or quests that have good rewards.

But in order to get to this point we need something more than what we are getting from the developers.  I haven't been a big fan of raising our pet DPS but have been a great fan of increasing pet survivability and tanking (You can search the many posts I've done on the topic).  But many want our pet's to be real "beasts" and I'm not against that, just I worry about competing with Mages about what they think is their role as "Pet class."  It's easier to say, increase the amount of damage we do and unlink our Disc's so we can provide the damage Rangers' do while their utilty would be pulling and ours.....

....What is our utility other than slow?  In group setting's FPoS isn't as essential unless non-stop pulling and you don't have a group member with a weak bladder or RL concerns taking care of children.  We have hobble for back up snares and a few buffs we can cast once all the GL buffs fall off our group members or until they can run a box out or get a "drive bye."  But other than that, we only have our DPS and slow, wich is being phased out of the game.  So discussing what are "role" is, is a healthy discussions and we've handled it better than some class boards (remember to pat yourself on the back after reading this).

Note to self:  Need to do some parses on Slow in the group game
Grimwar
81 Beastlord
Theris-Thule...errr....Prexus

wildwaters

Quote from: AbyssalMage on September 22, 2009, 07:28:31 PM
Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PM
When I was building SK and tanking on my beast one of my druid friends could keep me up easy on some rough content.

The problem you post Wildwaters is that your grouping where your gear & aa's > content.

Let me qualify 'rough content'. Group geared sub-1000 aa druid healing my beastlord tanking in korafax up to two mobs at a time. Not only was she healing me, dpsing and debuffing but she was doing it with fairly efficient mana useage.

Again I was paragoning as soon as it popped and slowing.


As far as us being charitable inivites on raids and stuff, I suppose that is why when we do hard tower we try and make sure we have at least one beast in there somewhere? It may also be the reason why as an SK I go looking for beasts to group with, cause I'm charitable, uh-huh (of course if you suck at playing beast I'll drop you faster than Obama dropped ACORN).

Having a discussion about our role in groups and raids is healthy and beneficial.

Stating that any class is useless or should only be used on raids or boxed is short sighted and indicates that you don't understand the class well or haven't had the opportunity to witness good ones in action.

Btw, FPOS is a pretty powerful tool if you use it.

As far as utility, well everyone bitches about our lack of it but I have yet to see any one offer a viable suggestion as to what our utility should be.

Everyone likes our class because we can do a little bit of everything but as soon as we turn around we forget that and start looking for what we are good at. You can't have it both ways.

You either excel at one thing or you are pretty good at alot of things.

If you are good at everything you lose any kind of balance and wouldn't need any other classes.

Now I don't like raiding my beast because it takes alot to do it well and I prefer to tank. However, I always enjoyed being able to slow, buff, mana regen, dps, of tank in a pinch and generally make my groupmates lives easier and efficient.

If you play well and to the full extent of your abilities (no matter your class) you are going to be valuable in any setting.








Goldy

AbyssalMage, its nice to see someone mostly agree with me.  I don't want to be a downer on this topic but it's probably time to shock someone and let them know the frustration of the BL community.  A lot of these posts seem to focus on the group aspect of our class like slow, etc.  I'm still looking for a defining characterstic for us from a raid perspective.  Maybe most of the BL's left in the game are just grouping toons, I don't know.  Its funny how this game has oscillated around the classes over time.  Over the years you can see "cheats" for the lack of a better word that classes have received.  Necro's the most, heavy dots, snare, FD, you name it.  Recently the rangers got the magic arrow, that has placed them in a major cheat area in my opinion.  Ranges are out there laying waist to mobs with that arrow and head shot (group aspect).  I have a buddy that can get somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 AA in about 1/2 hour solo.  It will slow down some after he gets over 1000.  Anyway, I understand the BL class was introduced in Luclin and really didn't fit into the roles offered in the game at that time and still probably doesn't.  They did make the pet monstrous at the time.  The mages bitched and they have changed that over the years.  I think the BL was really a duplicate of a mage to some extent, why they now picked them to be better at dps than us is who knows? I picked up the BL because it was fun to play, we were part monks which I thought would be good at dps with a twist, some dps being split between the pet.  I saw the slow as kind of a cheat that made us good at soloing.  I kind of feel the say way, why ask for something over the top but hay, that is how the game has progressed over the years and maybe that is the only thing that will stand us apart.  Anyway, I ramble on (in raids sorry if cryptic).  I haven't verified it but saw someone post that our dps, pets dps, and our spells are about 1/3 each for the total.  I know most of the time our dots won't stick on the named raid mobs, maybe that can be an improvement for us from a dps stand point.  The druid skin, symbol and WOD is the combo I'm talking about, better than Gallentry.  Got to run, oh yea, the BL's aren't represented in the new MM since it was suppose to mimic the game back then, Luclin wasn't out yet.

Gamgan

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMLet me qualify 'rough content'. Group geared sub-1000 aa druid healing my beastlord tanking in korafax up to two mobs at a time. Not only was she healing me, dpsing and debuffing but she was doing it with fairly efficient mana useage.

Gonna have to call BS on this one.  There is absolutely no way that a 30k manapool druid is keeping you alive while you're tanking 2 5k quadding mobs.  Not to mention with "ease", haah.  Not even with spam healing it's not happening.  I know I had to bust out a merc or two alongside my cleric bot (3k AAs, 30k manapool) for Korafax nameds, because spam heals weren't keeping me alive past protective spirit.

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMAs far as us being charitable inivites on raids and stuff, I suppose that is why when we do hard tower we try and make sure we have at least one beast in there somewhere? It may also be the reason why as an SK I go looking for beasts to group with, cause I'm charitable, uh-huh (of course if you suck at playing beast I'll drop you faster than Obama dropped ACORN).

Guess RoI must be clueless to have this clearly powerful class sit out from hard raids, because for us beastlords are the class who sit out most often, and often enough, the raid has no beastlords at all (the only class that's happened to so far).

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMStating that any class is useless or should only be used on raids or boxed is short sighted and indicates that you don't understand the class well or haven't had the opportunity to witness good ones in action.

Not useless, since having a beastlord on a raid is better than leaving that raid spot empty.  But almost any class is able to bring considerably more to the raid, either via their support/tanking or DPS abilities.

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMBtw, FPOS is a pretty powerful tool if you use it.

It's all right, but there's no need to glorify it.  In group content, it's really not needed with 30 sec ooc timers, and most of the raid encounters are tuned to players' manapools.  A few K extra mana won't make or break a raid.  Yes, if some healer app managed to die somehow on these ridiculously easy raids, it could enable the cleric to cast 2 spells, but that really isn't going to save the day.

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMAs far as utility, well everyone bitches about our lack of it but I have yet to see any one offer a viable suggestion as to what our utility should be.

This decision is ultimately in SoE's hands.  The thread on the AA suggestions has tons of good ideas about utility abilities.

Quote from: wildwaters on September 22, 2009, 05:13:20 PMEveryone likes our class because we can do a little bit of everything but as soon as we turn around we forget that and start looking for what we are good at. You can't have it both ways.

You either excel at one thing or you are pretty good at alot of things.

If you are good at everything you lose any kind of balance and wouldn't need any other classes.

Guess your definition of pretty good differs from mine, and a lot of other beastlords I guess.

Altof

Between staying in melee range, casting spells and discs constantly, and watching hp of both pet and self. It can get a little overwhelming sometimes.

As far as a beastlords "role" goes.

In a group i think we have to be the most aware, again stay in melee range cast 4 different spells + fpos and maybe can hang with mnk dps (both raid gear), our buffs are mediocre, they help, but eh, and slow...i don't use it unless it's a named mob.

I find a beastlord in a raid almost useless...SE is the only thing we have a use for at the moment. Our feeds(paragon) have almost no role if the healers are doing their job right. Our dps is at the bottom of the charts. Our survivability is low. Like Gamgan stated on hard raids, we're almost always sitting.

Sharrien

Quote from: Altof on September 29, 2009, 11:16:48 AM
As far as a beastlords "role" goes.

I find a beastlord in a raid almost useless...SE is the only thing we have a use for at the moment. Our feeds(paragon) have almost no role if the healers are doing their job right. Our dps is at the bottom of the charts. Our survivability is low. Like Gamgan stated on hard raids, we're almost always sitting.

Sorry, but I have to disagree.  Granted, my guild is not end game and we have truely horrible luck getting weapon drops so our dps overall is not great, but we commonly raid with 4-5 beastlords every night.  Our beasts are usually among the first chosen for the groups with a bard or shaman.  When we parse, our beasts show in the top ten and compete with the rangers and monks, sometimes even edging out a rogue or zerker or mage.  Survivability demands attention, probably more for us aggro whores than for most other classes, but you just have to minimize your porn window while raiding.

As for sitting, our guild is first come, first served.  If you are on time to the raid you get in.  If you are late or the raid is full we have a waiting list, but class is rarely a consideration.  We do hard raids on off nights, so we don't have 54 people trying to get 36 spots.  The only time I've been on line and sat during a raid was if I was late due to RL stuff.

Anyone that claims beastlords are useless on raids needs to stop believing the bullshit that if you don't dps like a rogue then you don't contribute.  Any beast who claims that should re-roll or learn to play the class better.
Savage Spirit Sharrien Dreamstalker
Primal Elementalist Ravingronn Blazewarden
Maelin Starpyre

Thorgador

Liked Umlat's post a lot, very well written and great idea's and insight on beastolrd's class; all of the AA's posted look like could us do lot of good and don't look imbalanced.

All in all, I'm one of those beastolrds that thinks that we are quite good as we are in the tanking department. That a mainly SoD group geared beastorld (like me) with a few raid drops here and there (and mostly old content) is able to tank with not many troubles T5 nameds (not tried nameds in Korafax but many in OBF and COD) should tell you something (although it is true that normally two healers are normally needed there, second one normally beeing my boxed druid).

The main point on how to focus the further beastolrds improvements is what are we supposed to do? and that changes in group or raid environment. A lot.
We can't expect to get improvements for both aspects of the game as it would imbalance the class a lot. So watching on our roles:

Raid beastlord roles:


  • Dps
  • Mana feeders
  • Emergency slowers (for when a raid mob is very resistant pet slow is then usefull)
  • Oh crap, all tanks/knight's have died emergency tank (not sure if that's possible in SoD, but I had to tank a few SoF nameds  and did survive until a tank grabbed it back)

Group beastlord roles:


  • Slower
  • Dps
  • Tank
  • Buffer
  • Situational CC with warder (a quite hard job with T5 mobs, but can be done)


what we want to be improved?

DPS

It is evident that the main role where raid and group beastlord is going to gain the most is the dps part, and as we all know at the moment 80-90% of our dps comes from ourselves (be it melee/summoned pets/nukes/dots) and rest of our warder's.
This I find sad, that developers brought our warder's to this when they where supposed to be an important part of our class when it first came out.
In my personal opinion, in the dps department, we shall do like 80% of a monk's potential dps (note potential, as I astonishingly outparse quite a few monks) and of that our warder should be doing around 30% of that dps. In group environment this is easier to achieve, just bump warders melee capabilites, up min/max hit and crit tables; but in raids we get the survability issue; it has improved a fair bit lately but it needs a final bump so they can survive raids without us beeing constantly watching after them (thats bound to a dead warder most of times)


Slowing

Not much space for improvement here sadly, we are stuck with mitigation and slow cap, beeing a second class slower. Resists aren't such an issue lately, haven't have had my slow resisted twice for a loooong time, but the duration can be an issue, if you are main slower and have 3-4 adds to deal with, specially with recast timer. Have the duration raised from 1.5 mins to the 3.5 ase Sha's has, keeping the resist mod, and leave it as the 65% slow it is. I would even ask for the slow aa Shamans got now, maybe with an incremented cost, that would save us a spell gem (although that may be seen as overpowering /shrug).

Tanking

So far, in the grouping perspective, having defensives maxed, and avoidance/shielding + defensive focuses (IB V + ID IV as groupable ones) allows us to tank efficiently the high end zone nameds; imho this means we are doing good on tanking department. As I said before, I managed to survive (for more than 1 minute) Clankwrench as MT(popping out shield and using all I had of course) when our tank died until a proper one grabbed it back. I'm sure high end beastlords could be MT for some raid nameds if they tried to for fun (and no, not with 12 clerics behind lol). I guess SoD's raid nameds no, but that is not what we expect aint we?

Buffing

Well, this part needs some improvements, as we all know; focus/sv/se are our only real buffs we cast on other players (with the odd pet haste if no one haste pots in group) when grouping; maybe fero too if you get asked for. Raiding SE is our only buff. Much has been spoken about, making our focus cast overcap stats, fero brought as aura, etc ... in the end we are NOT a buffing class, thats shaman's role; make them better to suit us better for group content, but either way we are never going to get any buffs that shaman's will cast better, period. Apart of Spiritual line. Even fero is by far outshined by Champion, the only plus is resists and we all know this aint worth anymore.

CC

So far we can make the pet work as an offtank in some situations/zones but they have lost a lot of beeing a CC offtank as they have fallen well behind in their defensive capabilities. Either beef up their defense a fair bit (warder's need it anyway) or become "imaginative". A hobble-like aa or buff proc that could proc a small duration root (1 minute, and not breakable by pet) or a small duration (2-3 ticks) recursive mezz proc (of course exclusive, either hobble,root or mezz) could add a lot of utility for us in groups and raids.


Another imaginative proposals that come to mind:


Selective warder buffs/stances: have a range of buffs (maybe instead of actual pet haste, replacing it) / aas we cast on our warder that affect him (and why not the group) in specific ways:



  • Melee DPS buff "warder's rage": the warder becomes more fragile but deals more melee damage; the group gets some kind of dps increment type aura (like increasing min damage done by x%, or +X to crits; whatever that would stack with          existing auras). Dps the pet does could be in the 60-70% of mage's air pet for example.

  • Caster DPS buff "warder's fury": the warder becomes more fragile but procs like mad (any proc it has); the group gets an aura that powers up damage/crit chance of spells or adds Spell Damage or the like (altho this doesnt add much it seems)

  • Defensive buff "warder's prescience": the warder does sustantially less damage but gains a great boost on defensive       capabilities; additionally the group gets hit by a defensive aura (increasing dodge or block) or a group rune recourse          off the pets proc (like absorving 500 damage).

  • Healers buff "warder's careness": the warder deals no damage but procs lifetap-like procs with group-healing recourse (proc hitting for 500DD lifetap and healing 500 to group); the group gets a heal powering aura allowing healing spells to be cost less and get increased crit chance.



I'm aware that such implementations would take quite some work and some interfere with other classes (bards/enchanters/zerkers) but it would add a lot of utility for us and maybe desiderability both in group and raid scenarios.


AA's proposed by Umlat look awesome, specially the crit chance of paragon lines and the ones increasing our Moon's spell (our biggest source of spell dps atm); maybe that "Pack Leader" aa could affect not only to the Moon's line, but to any spell/aa/proc that has a set number of pets summoned. I'd love to see group BA have increased tiers, and become, in the end ranks, a valuable aa like Ranger's forest line, aa cost is secondary, if it were as good as GoF aa line id spend 12 aa a rank with closed eyes.

Anyway those are me two copper, one likes to dream :D

Altof

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PM

Sorry, but I have to disagree.  Granted, my guild is not end game and we have truely horrible luck getting weapon drops so our dps overall is not great, but we commonly raid with 4-5 beastlords every night.  Our beasts are usually among the first chosen for the groups with a bard or shaman.  When we parse, our beasts show in the top ten and compete with the rangers and monks, sometimes even edging out a rogue or zerker or mage.  Survivability demands attention, probably more for us aggro whores than for most other classes, but you just have to minimize your porn window while raiding.

As for sitting, our guild is first come, first served.  If you are on time to the raid you get in.  If you are late or the raid is full we have a waiting list, but class is rarely a consideration.  We do hard raids on off nights, so we don't have 54 people trying to get 36 spots.  The only time I've been on line and sat during a raid was if I was late due to RL stuff.

Anyone that claims beastlords are useless on raids needs to stop believing the bullshit that if you don't dps like a rogue then you don't contribute.  Any beast who claims that should re-roll or learn to play the class better.

Sooo many things are wrong with this post. First of all if your out parsing a rogue, zerker, or monk...then they must be terrible so that doesn't count. Second you put mage in there? wtf mage are not all that great of dps either on raids. Last, how in the hell would minimizing porn help our survivability? dunno why you attacked me but there was so many things wrong with that post i had to reply :p

wildwaters

Quote from: Altof on September 29, 2009, 05:48:10 PM
Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PM

Sorry, but I have to disagree.  Granted, my guild is not end game and we have truely horrible luck getting weapon drops so our dps overall is not great, but we commonly raid with 4-5 beastlords every night.  Our beasts are usually among the first chosen for the groups with a bard or shaman.  When we parse, our beasts show in the top ten and compete with the rangers and monks, sometimes even edging out a rogue or zerker or mage.  Survivability demands attention, probably more for us aggro whores than for most other classes, but you just have to minimize your porn window while raiding.

As for sitting, our guild is first come, first served.  If you are on time to the raid you get in.  If you are late or the raid is full we have a waiting list, but class is rarely a consideration.  We do hard raids on off nights, so we don't have 54 people trying to get 36 spots.  The only time I've been on line and sat during a raid was if I was late due to RL stuff.

Anyone that claims beastlords are useless on raids needs to stop believing the bullshit that if you don't dps like a rogue then you don't contribute.  Any beast who claims that should re-roll or learn to play the class better.

Sooo many things are wrong with this post. First of all if your out parsing a rogue, zerker, or monk...then they must be terrible so that doesn't count. Second you put mage in there? wtf mage are not all that great of dps either on raids. Last, how in the hell would minimizing porn help our survivability? dunno why you attacked me but there was so many things wrong with that post i had to reply :p

Actually I was speaking to the top zerker in the game and we were discussing how decent beasts have occasionally given decent zerkers a run for their money and can often out parse other melee dps. It does happen.

Mages aren't horrible dps either. They may be the weaker of the silkies but they are pretty solid. Not sure why a mage would top out a parse all the time though.

Gamgan

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PM
Sorry, but I have to disagree.  Granted, my guild is not end game and we have truely horrible luck getting weapon drops so our dps overall is not great, but we commonly raid with 4-5 beastlords every night.  Our beasts are usually among the first chosen for the groups with a bard or shaman.

4-5 beastlords getting first pick for dps groups?!?  No wonder you guys never reached the end game ;).  Just kidding (well, more or less), sorry, just couldn't resist.  There's a reason to the madness behind what high end guilds do.  Like why they don't recruit 4-5 beastlords, or why they have beastlords sit out from hard raids.  Sure, 4-5 beastlords could keep 2-3 clerics perma paragon'd, which'll enable them to heal tanks longer, but at the same time, replacing them with real DPS will result in significantly shorter encounters.

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PMWhen we parse, our beasts show in the top ten and compete with the rangers and monks, sometimes even edging out a rogue or zerker or mage.  Survivability demands attention, probably more for us aggro whores than for most other classes, but you just have to minimize your porn window while raiding.

That doesn't necessarily say anything about how good beaslord DPS is, but how bad/lazy some of the rogue/zerker/monk/ranger players are.

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PMAs for sitting, our guild is first come, first served.  If you are on time to the raid you get in.  If you are late or the raid is full we have a waiting list, but class is rarely a consideration.

This is another difference from high end raiders, where benefit to the guild mostly thrumps other factors (if you showed up 30 mins early or just 15).  There's absolutely no way we'd make our 5 rogues sit out from a raid just because they showed up only 1 minute before raid time when the 36 spots were already filled.

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PMWe do hard raids on off nights, so we don't have 54 people trying to get 36 spots.  The only time I've been on line and sat during a raid was if I was late due to RL stuff.

Raiding only 2-3 nights a week, most of our nights are off nights.

Quote from: Sharrien on September 29, 2009, 01:31:25 PMAnyone that claims beastlords are useless on raids needs to stop believing the bullshit that if you don't dps like a rogue then you don't contribute.  Any beast who claims that should re-roll or learn to play the class better.

It's not that we don't DPS like a rogue, it's many things combined.  We don't DPS like a rogue/zerker/monk/ranger, and only marginally outdps warriors.  Put a decent warrior with a shaman and a bard, and I'd love to see some of their parses (actually, will provide this for ya).  Aside from the DPS issue, we don't really bring anything essential to the raid.  SE is only marginally useful, I'm really close to putting that on my buffblock list to make room for more useful buffs (rogue poison).  We do have paragon, which is ok, but as I mentioned above.  Why would you want to make your encounters last longer just so you can have selected few casters mana regen boosted?

Gamgan

Below is pretty close to the optimal burst a beastlord can expect.  Not completely the best possible parse, since I had no bard or MR, and had to hit protective spirit due to my aggro, so I was forced to use BA over fury.  Note that I got outparsed by a warrior, and the top rogues with similar gear/AAs as me more than doubled my damage output.  So saying we can't dps like a rogue, is almost like enchanters can't dps like a bst.

Rallos Zek on 29/09/2009

Damage byTotal% of TotTimeDPSScaledHitsMax hitAvg hitDmg to PCNPC DPSSpecial
wiz97536610.94%28348343048029854413363300
wiz8129509.12%27301092540529815072803210400547
rog6990397.84%31225502184521423491326615600503
rog6319637.09%31203861974920223530312813000520
wiz5355436.01%29184671673622866342434200
ber4746205.33%3015821148321071344644354987453G
nec + pets4041924.54%3013473126317640574531813000520
rog3959254.44%30131981237315222680260400
rog3883924.36%29133931213712922668301013000520
nec3769754.23%2813463117804120242919413000520
war3667394.11%32114611146118271722015560591808
rog3602384.04%30120081125714221456253613000520
ber3455173.88%31111461079767160835156332251072
bst + pets3110273.49%329720972032017432971385151242
rng + pets3030173.4%301010194697519164404013000500
rng + pets2948893.31%291016992155919276499813000520
mag + pets1948212.19%267493608818723007104100
war1797022.02%31579756161135180159024464941
dru1676941.88%23729152402315303729100
brd1645721.85%30548651431304926126500
nec + pets1518961.7%29523847474616111330213000520
shd1488641.67%324652465249284763038623071947
enc918641.03%27340228711713974540313000520
brd + pets877170.98%2732492741135378164900

Since the monks died on that fight, and their parses were not really representative of what they can do, here's a glimpse into their capabilities:

Rallos Zek on 07/09/2009

Damage byTotal% of TotTimeDPSScaledHitsMax hitAvg hitDmg to PCNPC DPSSpecial
wiz8470099.5%34249122229023819943682615600503
rog5664556.35%35161841490721719032261016962530
rog5491206.16%3515689144511822097930177012250
mnk5139815.76%361427713526419161221226309628857
mnk4844605.43%3414249127493481574013924290022587
war4754165.33%37128491251119738889241317870616
nec + pets4637045.2%3114958122034726858986615600503
ber4409184.94%34129681160310315927428000
wiz4349824.88%28155351144720628762174900
ber3942004.42%3112716103749417230419327122712
mag + pets3621864.06%35103489531294290841231526742394
mnk3471723.89%379383913630297391149636162052G 7
nec3450603.87%331045690814618474750100
bst + pets3191173.58%3688648398251162751271500171613
rng2904013.26%32907576425012987580800
brd2357032.64%35673462031636614144615600503
rng + pets2313692.59%34680560897514058308475333766
mag + pets2288732.57%3663586023155195491476309121405
bst + pets2255612.53%346634593621515677104928550921
rng + pets2192022.46%36608957685921532371562506250
war1917302.15%335810504610434790184311314943
clr + pets1786602%3452554702471661438012707108
brd + pets1781422%34523946881994462895317741271
brd1523391.71%35435340091643400928311871006
enc870530.98%22395722911215274725400

I realize this parse is slightly biased, since in essence it compares each class' best discs, so naturally when comparing current discs of other classes to our 7+ year old best discs, we won't be coming out ahead.  Rangers seem to have similar top end disc, except they can "burst" for considerably longer than we can.  Add to that the nifty AE attacks, and decent ranged attack for those encounters where close range combat is not desirable (either because of silence or nasty PB AEs), and they definately warrant themselves a spot in raid lineup.

Combined: Head Scryer Llkth on 20/09/2009

Damage byTotal% of TotTimeDPSScaledHitsMax hitAvg hitDmg to PCNPC DPSSpecial
nec + pets29952436.35%240124801227673718598406417376434
nec + pets29488676.25%239123381208679819524369511861186
rng + pets25046375.31%243103071026558326792429600
rog24327405.15%242100539970144223334168700G 7
wiz + pets23679645.02%241982697051568426215179007
rng + pets22392094.74%24292539177118724038188600G
rng + pets20477974.34%24284628393123926873165200G
mnk20017034.24%24382378204183220882109200G
wiz + pets17999093.81%236762773771347522513432624008914
wiz + pets17698273.75%2327629725315479714114924160010400
wiz + pets17074523.62%23572666998132799751293500
mnk16672313.53%24468336833153315000108700G
ber15841973.36%24265466493745112312126007
bst + pets15215123.22%2436261623620231442275241250301G
mnk15178813.22%243624662211390198951092239252991G
mag + pets14828563.14%23762576077107528527137900
rog14679883.11%21767656016109615137133900
ber14581593.09%2416050597672511948201100
mnk14079922.98%24457705770147622654953198009900G
bst + pets11480162.43%2394803470516561501269300
rog10462212.22%2434305428878613793133100
mag + pets9673642.05%234413439656062934815961570015700
brd + pets9349001.98%243384738321017491891900
brd + pets7363891.56%2433030301888967028281072510725

LOL, funny thing I just noticed is that I ended up #14 on all 3 of the above parses.

Gamgan

Quote from: Thorgador on September 29, 2009, 02:11:24 PM
Slowing

Not much space for improvement here sadly, we are stuck with mitigation and slow cap, beeing a second class slower. Resists aren't such an issue lately, haven't have had my slow resisted twice for a loooong time, but the duration can be an issue, if you are main slower and have 3-4 adds to deal with, specially with recast timer. Have the duration raised from 1.5 mins to the 3.5 ase Sha's has, keeping the resist mod, and leave it as the 65% slow it is. I would even ask for the slow aa Shamans got now, maybe with an incremented cost, that would save us a spell gem (although that may be seen as overpowering /shrug).

Slowing is slowly being phased out of the game.  I would not be surprised if we'd see further mitigation abilities to slow from NPCs in the near future.  Asking for any kind of improvements to our slowing ability is barking up the wrong tree.

Quote from: Thorgador on September 29, 2009, 02:11:24 PMTanking

So far, in the grouping perspective, having defensives maxed, and avoidance/shielding + defensive focuses (IB V + ID IV as groupable ones) allows us to tank efficiently the high end zone nameds; imho this means we are doing good on tanking department. As I said before, I managed to survive (for more than 1 minute) Clankwrench as MT(popping out shield and using all I had of course) when our tank died until a proper one grabbed it back. I'm sure high end beastlords could be MT for some raid nameds if they tried to for fun (and no, not with 12 clerics behind lol). I guess SoD's raid nameds no, but that is not what we expect aint we?

No, doubt anyone wants to be able to MT tower nameds.  It'd be nice though if we could surrive more than a couple of melee rounds from tower trash without having to hit jolt asap when HoTT changes to us, or hit protective spirit if jolts are not up.  I see rangers and even monks being able to tank those mobs reasonably well, but we don't even come close to their mitigation abilities.

Quote from: Thorgador on September 29, 2009, 02:11:24 PMBuffing

Well, this part needs some improvements, as we all know; focus/sv/se are our only real buffs we cast on other players (with the odd pet haste if no one haste pots in group) when grouping; maybe fero too if you get asked for. Raiding SE is our only buff. Much has been spoken about, making our focus cast overcap stats, fero brought as aura, etc ... in the end we are NOT a buffing class, thats shaman's role; make them better to suit us better for group content, but either way we are never going to get any buffs that shaman's will cast better, period. Apart of Spiritual line. Even fero is by far outshined by Champion, the only plus is resists and we all know this aint worth anymore.

Ideally, I would have imagined us to have a melee type support role, essentially the niche shamans fill in atm.  The main issue with our buffs, is that they're either not very useful, or someone else has a better buff ours doesn't stack with.

Quote from: Thorgador on September 29, 2009, 02:11:24 PMCC

So far we can make the pet work as an offtank in some situations/zones but they have lost a lot of beeing a CC offtank as they have fallen well behind in their defensive capabilities. Either beef up their defense a fair bit (warder's need it anyway) or become "imaginative". A hobble-like aa or buff proc that could proc a small duration root (1 minute, and not breakable by pet) or a small duration (2-3 ticks) recursive mezz proc (of course exclusive, either hobble,root or mezz) could add a lot of utility for us in groups and raids.

Kind of iffy on this.  We never really had any CC abilities, and it doesn't seem like a beastlord type ability.  Warder offtanking may be all right, but if it comes to choosing between upping the warders defense or offense, I'll stick with offense all the time.

In general, I sort of agree with Umlat.  I think the beastlord and warder bond needs to be the front and center of the class.  When the beastlord thrives, the warder does well and visa versa.  I would love to see our warders become something other than a weak (and fragile) dot.