Beastlord Stance/AA Changes

Waldoff

Administrator
Staff member
The recent bug found in the 65 beastlord stance (and whether or not you think it should stay the way it was is a separate argument - it was found as flawed code that did not work) made me turn a critical eye to beastlord stances. They have one less stance than every other hybrid besides bards (who are more than fine power wise) and their stances are really lackluster. I have always wanted to make Beastlords have more synergy between themselves and their pet. I think revamping their styles are a good way to do that.

Before I begin, this is not a thread to complain about the change to Spiritual Empathy. There are plenty of other threads for that. I want input only into the proposed changes I outline below. These are all very early ideas, and have not been run through the normal dev processes yet. I just figured that after the outcry over the recent stance change, opening up a dialog earlier in the process than normal might assuage some beastlord sensibilities.


The proposal in the abstract is this: Revamp all beastlord stances to be synergistic effects between the beastlord and their pet, and change the beastlord haste AA into something interesting and useful. To compensate, we will add one more attack to the appropriate beastlord pet levels, which equals out to the same damage increase as the pet AA buff.

First, the current stances:
Code:
Skill Name 	        Level 	Description
(4) Spiritual Guardian 20 	Reduce hate Beastlord generates
(5) Focus of the Lemur40 	Raises Damage
(6) Rending Rage 	 55 	Interrupt all spells until exhausted
(7) Spiritual Empathy 65 	Share damage with Warder

My proposed stances:
  • 4: Savage Unity. Lvl 20. The beastlord's warder mimics all spells and procs cast by the beastlord onto its target. Low stamina drain.
  • 5: Feral Bond. Lvl 35. The beastlord broadcasts 35% of all damage received away from him and to his pet. Medium stamina drain.
  • 6: Leeching Savagery. Lvl 65. All melee damage dealt by the beastlord becomes health for his pet. Medium Stamina Drain.
  • 7: Ferocious Link. Lvl 55. Beastlord hate reduced by 50%, Warder hate increased by 50%. Medium Stamina Drain.
  • 8: Incorporeal Warder. Lvl 65. Channel your very life energy into your warder. 100% death save on warder while active. Medium Stamina Drain. Exhaustive.


I think these stances increase beastlord power and utility a bit, while having the downside of being dependent on an alive warder. On the up side, tricky use of the styles will improve beastlord pet survivability a good deal. I also like how Savage Bond increases Beastlord DPS and Utility a bit when there are two of a mob. I imagine a beastlord slowing two mobs, or getting their DOTs on multiple raid mobs early in a fight before switching to other stances. The one complaint I could see coming up is lack of a pure damage style, but I think that increased utility and pet survivability would overcome that given the current damage style is nice, but not huge.


Now on to the new AA. The AA has the limitation of being a 5 minute recast, and being targettable. Currently it is simply a pet haste buff of 25% that can always be kept on the beastlord pet.

I have a couple of ideas for the AA. Some pure utility, others small pet abilities. I am more open to AA suggestions then I am style suggestions - but here is what I currently am looking at.

  • Throw Spirit. 5 minute recast. 5 second cast. -200 mana. Teleports you and your entire group to the location of your pet.

Think hard on this one before you call it useless. It is not combat utility, but it sure would add convenience utility. Park your pet at X, and get your group to X later on. I actually worry it might be a bit exploitable, though.


  • Merge Spirit. 5 minute recast. 1 second cast. Absorbs the spirit of your warder into yourself, casting a three tick HoT on you for a total of the pets HP (bard slot).

This is more meat and potatoes, but I still think it may be worthwhile as an oh shit moment, nearly always available ability. If your pet has full health, along with focuses, it is basically a mini Call of the Blessed on the beastlord for three ticks.


  • Untamed Shelter. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. -200 mana. Casts a ~1250 spell rune and 750 damage rune on your pet.
Small bit of survivability increase, but to be honest I think survivability would be better handled through the above styles.


  • Curse of the Wild. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. 30-60 seconds duration. -100 resist mana check. Casts a curse on your target, increasing the damage the target takes from all pets.

A pet burn curse. The 5 minute recast keeps it from being crazy high, but I could see some cool synergy happening with burnout, swarm pets and the like and casting the curse.



Comments welcome - if they are on topic. I really like how the styles turned out (but still a Derogatory, shitty or strident posts will net you a forum break at least.
 

  • Merge Spirit. 5 minute recast. 1 second cast. Absorbs the spirit of your warder into yourself, casting a three tick HoT on you for a total of the pets HP (bard slot).



  • Curse of the Wild. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. 30-60 seconds duration. -100 resist mana check. Casts a curse on your target, increasing the damage the target takes from all pets.


Thank you for addressing the recent concerns regarding the stance changes that occured. I think the new proposed stance change is actually very exciting, and the proposed ideas I agree with. I think it will give us something to look forward to, and having multiple stance options can bring new helpful abilities.

As for the AA change I quoted the two I think would be interesting. I think the Merge Spirit AA could somewhat replace what s7 gave us previously, and that is the one that I would implement imo.
 
Thanks for the opportunity to provide input. Below are my early thoughts, subject to possible revision after testing and/or seeing it live. In general, the below makes me happy, since in its current state there's little reason to use any of the beastlord stances.

Proposed stances:
[*]4: Savage Unity. Lvl 20. The beastlord's warder mimics all spells and procs cast by the beastlord onto its target. Low stamina drain.

[*]5: Feral Bond. Lvl 35. The beastlord broadcasts 35% of all damage received away from him and to his pet. Medium stamina drain.

[*]6: Leeching Savagery. Lvl 65. All melee damage dealt by the beastlord becomes health for his pet. Medium Stamina Drain.

[*]7: Ferocious Link. Lvl 55. Beastlord hate reduced by 50%, Warder hate increased by 50%. Medium Stamina Drain.

[*]8: Incorporeal Warder. Lvl 65. Channel your very life energy into your warder. 100% death save on warder while active. Medium Stamina Drain. Exhaustive.

Proposed stances 4, 5, and 6 will get very heavy use. I see the proposed s4 as a replacement for s2, depending on how long beastlords can maintain a low stamina drain stance. Proposed stance 5 is the replacement for the pre-patch stance 7, and although it is a lesser amount, it reads as a one-way damage transfer, which I feel is critical, so I can live with it. Proposed s6 will see constant use in raid aoe environments, so like proposed s4 I will be quite interested in seeing how long a beastlord can keep that active.

Proposed s7 is somewhat similar to my proposal several threads ago, and gives beastlords a potential hate dump that they don't currently have. Kind of peeking ahead a bit, if the replacement AA is Merge Spirit, that AA might overshadow this stance as the oh-shit-moment solution. If not, then this stance becomes very useful and needed.

Proposed s8 has some exploitative capability, so I'm not as enamored with that one as the rest. If you made this a very high stamina drain reverse of s6 (pet white damage heals the beastlord), I think the package would be nearly perfect.

As a potentially off-topic aside, these would be even better if the Horok proc didn't overwrite druid regen, since stamina regen will become much more important for beastlords with a set of useful stances. I understand that this problem only applies to a small number of beastlords.

Now on to the new AA.

Throw Spirit. 5 minute recast. 5 second cast. -200 mana. Teleports you and your entire group to the location of your pet.

Think hard on this one before you call it useless. It is not combat utility, but it sure would add convenience utility. Park your pet at X, and get your group to X later on. I actually worry it might be a bit exploitable, though.

Sadly it would be extremely exploitable, especially considering the way hostile NPCs treat pets. This would make content skipping trivial in many zones, just as one example.

Merge Spirit. 5 minute recast. 1 second cast. Absorbs the spirit of your warder into yourself, casting a three tick HoT on you for a total of the pets HP (bard slot).

Following my comments above, this would become the go to oh-shit ability, if I reasonably believe that I will live until the next tick. Fully buffed beastlord pets with full gear and Companion Health 8 top out around 14.7khp or so, so this would be roughly half a COTB. Just curious, why would this be a 1s cast, and not instant?

Untamed Shelter. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. -200 mana. Casts a ~1250 spell rune and 750 damage rune on your pet.

Seems lackluster compared to other options. On many raid fights one side or the other of that rune would be worn through almost instantly.

Curse of the Wild. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. 30-60 seconds duration. -100 resist mana check. Casts a curse on your target, increasing the damage the target takes from all pets.

[Assuming you mean magic and not mana in the description]
If this were unresistable the way rending and striking curse are, I would be very excited about this. As it stands, it'll be resisted too often to be reliably stacked in the way you envision.

In order I'd rank my preference as Merge Spirit, then Curse of the Wild. If Curse of the Wild were unresistable, then I'd prefer it over Merge Spirit as long as the proposed s7 was available to me. The other two AAs I don't see nearly as useful as Merge or Curse.
 
Throw spirit does seem highly exploitable, my jaw dropped when i read that the first time. Even if people have enough common sense to not outright exploit with it, it still offers an unprecedented amount of utility and mobility to the beastlord and their group. This is already a class that does competitive dps and has amazing utility and buffs. If i was a beastlord i would vote for that one.


Also Barbii, for Curse of the Wild, even if it would stay at -100 magic(?) resist as opposed to unresistable, it will land 99% of the time. That is a big mod and there a lot of magic debuffs that typically go on during raids. That one does seem like the most fun, but 5min recast for a 30-60sec duration seems low. I guess that would depend on the damage increase it allows, assuming its not a 'pet curse' type deal and more like 'pets melee/spells hit xx% harder'.
 
I dont even play a beastlord but merge spirit and curse of the wild make it seem worth while to make an alt.
 
Also Barbii, for Curse of the Wild, even if it would stay at -100 magic(?) resist as opposed to unresistable, it will land 99% of the time. That is a big mod and there a lot of magic debuffs that typically go on during raids. That one does seem like the most fun, but 5min recast for a 30-60sec duration seems low. I guess that would depend on the damage increase it allows, assuming its not a 'pet curse' type deal and more like 'pets melee/spells hit xx% harder'.

I guess my concern is having something with a 5-minute recast resisted. If it gets put in exactly as written, I'll be eager to test it. If you're right that resists turn out to be non-existent, then it sounds like a fun and useful tool, depending on how much it actually increases damage output.
 
  • 4: Savage Unity. Lvl 20. The beastlord's warder mimics all spells and procs cast by the beastlord onto its target. Low stamina drain.

awesome. awesome. moar awesome.

5: Feral Bond. Lvl 35. The beastlord broadcasts 35% of all damage received away from him and to his pet. Medium stamina drain.

Love to see us get this back. even slightly reduced.


6: Leeching Savagery. Lvl 65. All melee damage dealt by the beastlord becomes health for his pet. Medium Stamina Drain.

Very cool concept, adds a nice new flavor.


7: Ferocious Link. Lvl 55. Beastlord hate reduced by 50%, Warder hate increased by 50%. Medium Stamina Drain.

Looks like a pretty solid "jolt" for the beastlord. seems like this could be extremly useful.


8: Incorporeal Warder. Lvl 65. Channel your very life energy into your warder. 100% death save on warder while active. Medium Stamina Drain. Exhaustive.

mostly seems meh.... not alot of times my pets holding that much agro over the beastlord where this would be usefull.



Throw Spirit. 5 minute recast. 5 second cast. -200 mana. Teleports you and your entire group to the location of your pet.

not a huge fan of this to be honest... seems to exploitable, and patching those would probably make it next to useless. Dont need another spell going the way of CotH.


Merge Spirit. 5 minute recast. 1 second cast. Absorbs the spirit of your warder into yourself, casting a three tick HoT on you for a total of the pets HP (bard slot).

cool oh shit button.... would be a clear winner except for curse.


Untamed Shelter. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. -200 mana. Casts a ~1250 spell rune and 750 damage rune on your pet.

Since it doesnt scale in any way it seems lack luster.. think solid numbers are bad for aa's.



Curse of the Wild. 5 minute recast. 3 second cast. 30-60 seconds duration. -100 resist mana check. Casts a curse on your target, increasing the damage the target takes from all pets.

Most awesome idea in this entire thread. would love to see this go in.


Overall: Amazing suggestions!
 
They have one less stance than every other hybrid besides bards (who are more than fine power wise) and their stances are really lackluster. I have always wanted to make Beastlords have more synergy between themselves and their pet. I think revamping their styles are a good way to do that.

While I haven't played in a while, those were my exact feelings while playing. I even envisioned a stance just like #4. So, obviously, I really love all of your suggestions and feel like all of your suggestions really do create a synergy between the pet and themselves. I basically agree with everyone else sentiments that it all looks amazing with the exception of Throw Spirit & Untamed Shelter, basically agreeing with what Tierilo said. Throw Spirit, which sounds awesome, but seems way to easy to exploit. I think it would just create more work and trouble for the devs and end up either being fixed/nerfed into being practically useless or just swapped for something else. Making Untamed Shelter a solid number makes it hard to balance for a fresh 65 and a T13 BST, maybe something like X% of the BSTs hp so it scales. I always thought Paragon should work the same way, but its still good.

Again, you read my mind, A++++ post
 
8: Incorporeal Warder. Lvl 65. Channel your very life energy into your warder. 100% death save on warder while active. Medium Stamina Drain. Exhaustive.

Merge Spirit. 5 minute recast. 1 second cast. Absorbs the spirit of your warder into yourself, casting a three tick HoT on you for a total of the pets HP (bard slot).

I love most of the ideas here, but I see a huge are of abuse with these two. Use stance 8, use merge aa, get big heal from it, and the death save keeps the pet alive to keep killing with. Seems to be allot of room for abuse there.

The rest of it sounds pretty nice, and long overdue imo. Glad to heat BST are finally getting some love. (Though I am unlikely to be back any time soon to see it personally.)
 
I'm not intending to derail anything, but here's a link to a year-old Zaela beastlord/endurance thread with interesting and fun ideas. I don't remember Wold being part of that, so a little backstory to this reiteration should be helpful to all those who have forgotten. Mostly it seems there's a lot of fun ideas that could be implemented with stances, though a complete overhaul didn't seem really desired by the class.
 
Maybe you're about to edit that post, but there is no link to the bst thread by Zaela in it.
 
zaela wanted to give us on use stam ability like warrirors have now... not a big fan of that for beastlord.. we already have a mana bar to worry about. really fell in love with wolds changes tho.
 
Back
Top Bottom