Spells for House of Thule

[Nusa]

You're right, the timer doesn't really matter on disease dot's since it only affects the recast time (1.5 sec), but it is there. I guess what really matters is how many spell icons you can devote to DoT's. But then there's no point in having 12 spell icons if you don't use them, is there?

[Razimir]

Promised Rejuvenation: I for one think this is nice for clerics but as a pet heal my pet doesn't last long enough for me to wait for this heal to trigger. You can remove this line.

Very strange.  Dragonscale Guard and Promised line are the only 2 pet heal spells I use outside of extreme circumstances.

I use regular pet heal and bulvark of tres'quesos (spelling tm). Never bought promised line since mages got it nerfed.

-Raz

[k9wazere]

6 - Spells that haven't kept up
Player cast heals - our base heal now (rk2) is less than 4% of a reasonably geared grouping beastlord, and even less on a tank class.  I know that the HP inflation isn't necessarily indicative of where the dev team wants players to be, but please, for the love of god, at least double the base heal and double recast timer!

Cripples - our last cripple was received at lvl 54 (incapacitate).  We'd fall over ourselves in happiness to receive the version that shaman got in Omens.

A ) yes, increase the heal already, the tiny piece we can heal is pointless on a mob which sigle rounds for more than the heal. The recast timer is FINE where it is.

B ) More cripple please.

A big fat heal which isn't anywhere near mana efficient and has no re-cast time would be my choice, as opposed to a big fat heal which is mana efficient and has a long re-cast time. Or a big self-only heal.

Personally I'd go with poor efficiency emergency heal, as I really don't like re-cast timers. Plus I can't burn my whole mana bar with nukes anyhow, so a poor efficiency heal would give us another way to convert that useless mana into something useful :p

If its going to be 2/3 or more of a shaman heal, then naturally it would have a proper casting time, not fast-cast. We don't want to become regular healers, so anything with a short cast time could hurt us in the end, but we do want to be able to heal in a pinch. Utility healing as opposed to regular healing. Where we have a choice between healing spell or DPS spell, but not using them both together and still meleeing, which would simply be more button mashing hell.

To be frank, if they made our current heal instant I still wouldn't use it. The heal amount is important, and roughly 2k base is so poor it doesn't even cover 1/2 of a single mob melee round.

[bradam]

6 - Spells that haven't kept up

Our little AC buff Shifting Sheild is another good example, while not much AC it was still better then no AC. I used to use it quite a bit soloing and sometimes grouping depending on classes in the group.  Wouldn't mind seeing this updated or maybe merged into Spiritual Verve for hp/ac/attack buff.

[nedoirah]

It could cause stacking issues with Gallantry since our ac buff is on the same slot as the ac in gallantry

[Umlat]

Spells

Totem of the Savage Spirits - (needs casting component Tailored TS item, stack, buyable components ?)

Summons Item : Totem of the Savage Spirits - No Trade, 2 charges
Casts -
Summons an 10 slot No Trade Bag with the following :

Collar of the Savage Spirits (waist item) - provides AC/HP (of about 67% to 75% of equivalent mage belt?), Mod2s
Fetish of (x) (one for each of the six spirits freed during the bst epic 1.0, ie Omakin, etc.)
Each fits in one of (chest, arms, legs, hands, feet & head) - provide AC/HP as above
Talon of the Savage Spirits (pri weapon, no proc, effect with increase damage all skills (x))
Fang of the Savage Spirits (sec weapon, no proc, effect with increase chance to hit all skills (+x%))

Spell summons a Staff similar in appearance to epic 1.5/2.0. Each of the animal spirits carved on the totem has a removable fetish that is part of it, ie a wolfs eye, tiger's claw, snake's tongue, gorilla's paw, etc. Each detaches from the staff, with the snake's tongue being one end of of a longer strip that is tied around the warder's neck as the collar. Each fetish is then tied to the collar with a thong or in the case of the "weapons" to the forelegs or the warder.
The magic each of the (grateful) freed spirits empowers these items with magic to strengthen and protect the summoning beastlord's warder. When both set of fetishes have been removed from the totem , it crumbles to dust.

The description of the staff, although of no real impact on game mechanics , is a way to explain the how and why of giving us "pet gear" of our own. Assigning indiviual slots to the items is a way to keep abuse to a minimum. While the bag is no trade, the gear really can't be, so while its meant for someone's OWN warder, I suppose you can toss the gear on somebody ele's pet without some programming work to stop this.

No procs but extra damage/chance to hit is imo a better option for us since it will help our warders with hitting and damage which they need instead of adding more Procs, which they don't.

[wildwaters]

Hey speaking of 'totems' how abour some sort of spell that you cast that creates a stationary ward. Maybe put fero aura on that.

That would solve the problem of giving us a aura as hybrids and would keep the attack whore dpsers off our backs.

[Zunar]

Hey speaking of 'totems' how abour some sort of spell that you cast that creates a stationary ward. Maybe put fero aura on that.

That would solve the problem of giving us a aura as hybrids and would keep the attack whore dpsers off our backs.

Personally I'd like to see a useful revamp to the spell itself, like suggested here before. We need perhaps a group version of fero, or the reuse timer greatly reduced/removed, to allow us to then cast it efficiently on group members...

For raiding, making fero a useful group dps buff, makes us more appealing to the dps groups, where we would want to be imo.

a totem that is limited to only boosts the group could possibly work as well I suppose, but I'm not a total fan of that since you'd lose the effect soon as you stepped away from the totems range. Then you'd end up having to reclick it after each time the group moved.

[Umlat]

Oh -- Would rather see any stat overcap buffs we might get be added as a separate spell similar to "Infusion of Spirit". While it would require an extra buff slot, overall it would make us more useful since other classes could use their own self HP buffs and still be able to get stat overcaps with it.

As for pet proc choice ... meh - just make it a chromatic resist from now on & give it a better stun duration/max level (ie expansion max spell level +3). Use the 5 or 6 spell difference between us and the rest of the hybrid classes for some more utility spells like a disease based slow/cripple combo (with dbl atk penalty), the stat overcap buff for str/sta/dex and the pet gear spell at minimum.

Other possibilities include : A long duration pet buff that has the same benefits as the epic 2.0 click except the add proc part of the buff is replaced by something that increases the proc rate of the other pet procs and adds a twinproc chance. A Poison DD/silence combo (Civet Strike), defensive deaggro buff (protective coloration), a Frenzy upgrade with heroic stats, pet/self listlessness buff, a replenishing over time pet rune buff (salamander skin guard) or a damage boosted poison/disease DoT combo similar to frozen venom.


A good source for potential spells would be those that would give us access to many of the offensive/defensive/utility abilities found throughout the animal kingdom.

This is beastlords now :-(

This is what a beastlords should be come next expansion  8-) &  :-D maybe even a little  :-o

Beastlords if the devs don't dig in and DO something extensive & POSITIVE - a little  :cry: , mostly  :x and quite possibly (    )

[Umlat]

Not sure if it's implementable but a "cyclic proc" might be useful.

As an example, we AA buff warder with the first proc in the cycle - Lockfang Jaws with 1 charge. On proc it attempts to slow the target 70% and buffs pet with second proc buff in the cycle - Crippling Strike with one charge which reduces the targets AC/stats and buffs the pet with the third proc in the cycle - Hobble of Spirits with one charge which snares target 60% and buffs pet with Lockfang Jaws, restarting the cycle. Refreshing the buff manually with a hotbutton would of course reset whatever the current proc is to Lockfang Jaws in this case.

That's just an example but it might be a good way to allow our warders to be able to handle multiple secondary effects (snare/slow for instance) without requiring us to micromanage or continually manually swap effects.

Cyclical defensive procs might be possible as well. The procs switch between listlessness, DS and a Heal perhaps. Same prinicple as above but the first hit activates the first and proc buffs the second, second hit activates the second proc and buffs the third, third hit activates the third and buffs the first, etc.


I'm sure it could "count down" as well, to provide a finish. Charge counter starts at 50 and counts down by one every time it switches.

[nedoirah]

Sounds just like the shaman spell splash of runedust.

[Umlat]

Sounds just like the shaman spell splash of runedust.

Sort of. But its not a random thing. Procs would always land in sequence, in the main example, the first proc is ALWAYS slow, the second is ALWAYS cripple, the third is ALWAYS hobble, since this is probably the preferred order we'd like to see them land in. The proc cycle may end anywhere in the cycle and pick it up at the next one in sequence, but from when its cast it will always start with slow. This keeps the evil RNG out of the equation and with it the chance that the first 5 procs will be snare, snare, snare, cripple, slow. With a decent proc rate all 3 buffs should land and make a difference.

[Hzath]

I really like the idea of the cyclical proc for the warder, but I can't really see the devs going for it unless it was just 1 proc of each before needing to be refreshed.  I say that because look at lockfang, even after lots of complaining it's only up to 10 (?) counters before it fades and that only does one function.

[Grbage]

I like the cyclic proc idea too but that goes against the devs stated wish of not haiving a fire and forget pet. They want us to have to manage them via positioning and spell selection.

[Umlat]

I like the cyclic proc idea too but that goes against the devs stated wish of not haiving a fire and forget pet. They want us to have to manage them via positioning and spell selection.

Yeah, well the devs need to stop picking on beastlords. Manage this, control that. Desync just about EVERYTHING - 9 sec refresh here, 12 there, 17.5 here, 20 sec there, 50 sec, add in refreshing short duration buffs and clicks, have a bunch of them force retargeting on pet, etc. Now toss in positioning, pet so its OTing a mob, merc so its hasn't just stoped on top of a mob an therefore a target, you so you're not getting hit by OTed mob, all of them so push won't make adds, repositioning on the fly as new swarm pets enter the mix or enrage starts. Keep track of health on 3 targets, warder merc and you - and keep any pet heals going to keep pet alive/merc aggro down/DPS maxxed/and you healed with enough of a buffer that a UF mobs wont one shot you. Don't forget to slow everything, DoT stuff, etc -- allowing for multiple casts multiple times given that we have nothing but single target spells with resist penetration bad enough to require 2 or 3 casts of vital spells on even grey mobs. NOW add in keeping charge limited pet buffs that are mutually exclusive? Let's see, what else... oh continually move yourself so you aren't just pushed out of melee range while still being hit, timed between everything you can't move during. Oh, (Focused) Paragon here and there during longer fights I suppose, too.

You're telling me a little bit of "automation" will turn pet into something classifiable as "fire and forget" by the devs, suddenly making things too easy for us? Gees, I'm surprised they haven't decided to add a couple of things, like making Misty Thicket Picnics from scratch during combat as spell components and maybe needing to play /gems for "balance".

Honestly, given the effort and focus I need to keep on top of everything I need to be doing for as close to optimal performance as possible, just to not look like I'm slacking compared to a "real" DPS class (ie those classes that insist we are a utility class, so we don't really need new/more DPS abilites when expansion time rolls around, but that they do.), I have never even attempted boxing. 1 boxing a beastlord properly is more than enough work, tyvm.

If the devs add much more in the way of "managing" requirements for us and our pets, there will be advantages, I suppose. Most of us will end up being qualified to manage real time control of a nuclear reactor with no more than minimal hardware & software support. :D