Ideas for 2011 expansion/State of the Class

[AbyssalMage]

Pet Armor
-- Make our warders summon clothed?

The idea was to add levels here like our other spells, Rk 1 is normal, Rk 2 has armor, rk 3 has armor and weapons(with no procs, or maybe something like lifetap or some other type that won't cause any issues like cold or fire)

Focused pets come with gear, the normal summoned one doesn't. I think your suggestion would work, but in order to do so, they would have to do a major code rework and that doesn't seem likely.

Being able to summon the gear (Spell or AA) or purchase the gear off a NPC Vendor in GL, GH, and/or PoK would be the best idea. Although I like the Rk 1, 2, and 3 idea on pets and getting rid of "Pet Focus" on items. Would probably help developers and free up some memory so they don't have to create a seperate template for each focus/pet.

[Nusa]

Focused pets come with gear, the normal summoned one doesn't.

That's only true for Mages, far as I know. Beastlord pets don't come with gear.

[Orbus1]

Our warders never came with gear as far as I recall.

[Khauruk]

Focused pets come with gear, the normal summoned one doesn't.

That's only true for Mages, far as I know. Beastlord pets don't come with gear.

They do come with one piece of gear, a cloak w/ various mod2s and stats.

[Orbus1]

Seriously? Where do you find information like that Khaur?

[Hzath]

It's what Rytan did to pets when he revamped them for SoF.  I couldn't find his post about it, but there's lots of references to it on the mage forums on eqlive if you search.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=176001&#2657433 is a recent one where it's mentioned


Back on topic here's my dream/wishlist of AAs I don't expect but would love to see

Corruption component added to Nature's Salve
Additional rank of hastened Bestial Alignment
Additional Hastened Forceful Rejuvenation
New rank of Group Bestial Alignment with 45% damage mod
Extended Protection of Spirit 1-2 extra ticks
Increased vie % on protection of the warder to 15% so it's noticeably better than the cleric spell
3rd rank of Frenzy of Spirit to make it also cast on pet (good idea)


As for the spire thing I still think a copy of druid first spire (21% spell crit chance) is the most practical and useful spire to ask for.  There are some gimmicky options that could work such as increased % chance of 4x werewolf swarms, decrease nuke recast timers, or a large MR type buff, but overall I think the spell crit % would help greatly in one of our weaker areas.

I should also note that I *think* we're the only melee class that doesn't have a defensive related spire.  I'm not saying I think we need one with protection of spirit, protection of the warder, companion's sacrifice, and warder's gift all available but it is an area that we're a bit different than others.

[Ranar]

I like all the idea's that has been put forth by others ...

only idea i can think of that i havent seen yet is an aa where warder goes into full bore offensive attk .. resulting in massive damage to NPC for short period (30 secs or up to a min) .. after the burn warder dies ... I know we dont want our pet to die , but be like a wolf sacrificing himself for the pack ... would be on a long reuse , and be more of a final push to kill boss/name ... It would have to be massive damage to be worthwhile . since we have some downtime getting another pet back up , and lose alot of sustain without warder up ... its just an idea to see what rest of yall think of something along these lines ...

I would like to see some kind of spell guard put on playing possum .. and since we dont have a defensive spire .. maybe they can rework 3rd spire to be a defensive spire for us ... since they never really fixed 3rd spire to be worth clicking yet /shrug

thanks for the work you did consilodating the list zunar ..

[Khauruk]

Seriously? Where do you find information like that Khaur?

It happened in a beta a while back....maybe TBS?  Maybe TSS?  Somewhere around there.

If you poke around the forums you can probably find a link to the specific cloaks.  Devs never said what they were publicly, but I think somebody got ahold of a link from a dev while running the Lucy item collector or something, and they're in the database now.

[Inphared]

:-)

[Zunar]

Here's an attempt to collecting all the AA ideas...I miss anything?

UPDATED

Edited from suggestions/info so far.
Please let me know what you think.

4th Spire
-- increase our spell damage for 2 mins, crit mod or twincast possibly.
-- It's been suggested to copy the druid First Spire of Nature (21% spell crit mod)

Playing possum
-- AAs to upgrade it's effectiveness (to maybe 95%)
-- hastened AAs (bring it down to 6sec, or atleast 12sec)
-- AAs to make it persist 100% through an AE/spell cast from an npc.

Bestial Alignment
-- upgrade
-- extended Bestial Alignment
-- more hastened Bestial Alignment

Group Bestial Alignment
-- upgrade (45% mod)

Empathic Fury
-- extended Empathic Fury
-- more hastened empathic fury

Frenzy of Spirit
-- Make a rk3 that triggers on the warder as well

Flurry of Claws
-- A single target version

Gelid Claw
-- Activated proc instead of innate

Protection of the warder
-- to stack with the cleric Vie line.
-- Increased vie % on protection of the warder to 15% so it's noticeably better than the cleric spell


Protection of Spirit discipline AAs to enhance
-- extended AAs, longer duration 24 seconds
-- more hastened AAs

Increase beastlords AC softcap. (like armor of wisdom does)

Warder's Gift
--AAs to reduce reuse to 1 min (monks mend ability is set at 30 sec, 1min would still be half of theirs only)
--AAs to increase heal

Asp/Claw/Smash
--AAs to increase effect
--make them 30second reuse?

Chameleon Strike
--AAs to increase effect

Companion's Sacrifice
--hastened AAs to reduce Reuse

Paragon and focused paragon
--Increase power on both, especially focused paragon, which falls behind abit
--quickened focused paragon AAs, or make it insta cast

Focus of Animus
-- More ranks

Taste of Blood
-- Rework this to trigger from self or warder, either way hitting both self and warder with the buff

AA slow
AE slow, either self or pet cast

Second Spire
-- 20K total damage over-time-procs isn't too hot anymore. Please upgrade/change.

upgrades to the normal abilities like burst of power, double atk etc.

Third Spire
-- Scrap this one entirely, or upgrade into a useful effect.
-- Been suggested to turn it into a defensive ability, since all other melee/hybrid classes have atleast one spire like that, but beastlords don't.

More Hastened Forceful Rejuvenation

Nature's Fury
-- Hastened AAs

Nature's Salve
-- Corruption cure component added


---NEW stuff---

Sha's Guardian- 5-10 minute reuse offtank pet.  High hp, high aggro but low dps, maybe some sort of aggro proc if needed.  Should stand up to a group mob for a decent time.  My preference for model would be lion or some other animal that isn't often used, or alternatively- a race specific, different coloured version of our warder (red scaled wolf, white bear, etc).  Would be nice to help deal with the odd overpull/add or whatnot.  Would also give pet lovers something new to look at, without forcing us to use more pets to dps.. which is very unattractive in the raid game.

Cheetah Pounce- Short reuse AA that launches the beastlord forward, similar to Shadowknight Hate Step.

Warder's Gemination
--activated ability to make the pet proc at double rate, or double cast all procs.

New Activated AA--Pet Summon Master
1hr reuse/ instant Cast/ Does not wipe agro.  Pet can summon BST to pets location.  
Can work well when parking pet, and BST out of position due to AOE or doing quest turn in.  Etc.

Flurry ability

Pet weapons
-- A way to summon/craft our own, or buy from vendor?

Pet Armor
-- Make our warders summon clothed?
Also been suggested to rank our pet spell, and make rk1 normal, rk2 summoned with armor, and rk3 with armor and some weapons...preferably with no elemental proc.

Terrifying Stare
-- Give our pets an activated ability pet stops dps, but is able to mez-park a single mob (add like ~3% chance of mob fleeing (fear) instead to make it intersting?

defensive AA that has a chance to proc a pet every time we are hit. I really like this spell line that other classes (Cleric, Pally, Mage) have. I would love to have one also. Short duration (2 minutes unfocused), 30 charges, and 200(or 400) mod to trigger would be awsome.

Proc modifier ability - Activated, Make weapons proc every swing for a set amount of time (can be used in many ways depending on the weapon proc, deagro, heal, stun etc)

Specialized weapon AAs
AAs to boost HtH and 1hb

2hander AAs
--Make it worthwhile to use a 2hander for some use

Feel free to forward from this post or use this list maybe.. :)

[nedoirah]

Maybe rework Taste of Blood to work like the Ranger/Paladin/Shadowknight killshot AA whatever they are called...? I see e-motes  like thrill of the hunt or overcome with remorse for the fallen. I don't know what those AA are but why can't we have something like them?

[Camikazi]

Maybe rework Taste of Blood to work like the Ranger/Paladin/Shadowknight killshot AA whatever they are called...? I see e-motes  like thrill of the hunt or overcome with remorse for the fallen. I don't know what those AA are but why can't we have something like them?

Those 2 specific emotes are from spells they have, Ranger being an accuracy killshot spell and pally a healing boost killshot spell. The Ranger killshot AA is a chance to  proc a 42% dmg mod plus 390 end lasts 48 sec base duration (believe SCRM will boost the time as well), SK's is a chance to proc a buff that adds around 700ac and a 70% lifetap from weapon dmg. I personally would not mind turning Taste of Blood into a copy of the Ranger AA, not guaranteed on a killshot like ToB but it would be more useful then ToB is now.

[AbyssalMage]

Maybe rework Taste of Blood to work like the Ranger/Paladin/Shadowknight killshot AA whatever they are called...? I see e-motes  like thrill of the hunt or overcome with remorse for the fallen. I don't know what those AA are but why can't we have something like them?

Those 2 specific emotes are from spells they have, Ranger being an accuracy killshot spell and pally a healing boost killshot spell. The Ranger killshot AA is a chance to  proc a 42% dmg mod plus 390 end lasts 48 sec base duration (believe SCRM will boost the time as well), SK's is a chance to proc a buff that adds around 700ac and a 70% lifetap from weapon dmg. I personally would not mind turning Taste of Blood into a copy of the Ranger AA, not guaranteed on a killshot like ToB but it would be more useful then ToB is now.

The problem with Taste of Blood is that Warder is ~10-35%% of our DPS depending on your AA's/Focus. And our DPS isn't all that great (although better than its been in a long time!!!) So the chances of our Warder landing a "Kill Shot" over us or anyone else in the group is low, very very low! Thats why its been on the "to be fixed/discontinue list" on every expansion AA suggestion list sense its introduction. Its second failing is that its duration is way too short when it does go off.

There has been multiple suggestions on how to "fix" or "improve" this AA but either its (A) "working as intended" in the developers eye's or (B) they continue to not give themselves enouph time (on purpose?) for revisioning during Beta's and always assume they will have the time after launch to "fix and tweak" AA's after launch. I would wager "B" only because there are tons of problems with multiple expansions yet they refuse to fix anything older than 2 expansions old unless its Raid related (it seems unless its nerfs for "class balance", then they are more than willing to nerf something 8 expansions old. /derail and rant off).

I would love ToB to work off of us and not our Warder (and placed in our short buff window for multiple reasons), at least then it would be alot more usefull and worth the expendature of AA's. And if the recourse affected both us and Warder, even better!

So in the long winded statement....
Yes, please forward this to the developers (once again) and mabye something will happen this time  :-D

[Striffa]

I'd Like to see third spire made into a ripo type defensive. And I would like to see a shared version of nature's fury. Even drop the  mods on it lower but a version that can be mgb'd.

[Sharrien]

"Flurry of Claws
-- A single target version"

I would rather see this improved with higher damage and more targets.  It's use is situational at best anyway, but when I can use it, I'd like to see it have a real punch.

"Nature's Salve
-- Corruption cure component added"

Yes yes yes.

Taste of Blood-
I don't know if this line is worth dev time to try to fix.  At the very least it should land on beast and warder both.  It should either remain triggered but have a better bonus (add to max dmg rather than min or additional skill atk) and longer buff time or make it passive.  My preference is that it be passive even if Blood Frenzy did not change much.

"Proc modifier ability - Activated, Make weapons proc every swing for a set amount of time (can be used in many ways depending on the weapon proc, deagro, heal, stun etc)"

I like this.

"New Activated AA--Pet Summon Master
1hr reuse/ instant Cast/ Does not wipe agro.  Pet can summon BST to pets location. 
Can work well when parking pet, and BST out of position due to AOE or doing quest turn in.  Etc."

Careful with this one.  I see the possibility here of bypassing content or using it for exploity-like things.  I think for the uses described it would be great, but I can also think of ways that it could be used that tend to make devs want to kill puppies.