God help us, its a BST thread

[Swiftur]

@Tevinter , I agree with you that Spirit of Tearing is pretty much unused. The utility provided by Soothing far outweighs any DPS that Tearing would generate, even if it were significantly higher. pet group heal IS beastlord afaic.

I would think a nice change to this spell could be that when used, the Beastlords pet now mimics Beastlord spells 100% of the time. In this scenario, a large dps increase could be had while losing the benefit of the Gheal procs. Also helps further tie the relationship lore between a beastlord and their warder.

 

[darksabbath]

@Tevinter , I agree with you that Spirit of Tearing is pretty much unused. The utility provided by Soothing far outweighs any DPS that Tearing would generate, even if it were significantly higher. pet group heal IS beastlord afaic.

I would think a nice change to this spell could be that when used, the Beastlords pet now mimics Beastlord spells 100% of the time. In this scenario, a large dps increase could be had while losing the benefit of the Gheal procs. Also helps further tie the relationship lore between a beastlord and their warder.

Tierilo had a nice post in the other thread along those lines. We'd cast our poison dot, and the pet would cast a poison nuke with it. We would cast cold nuke, and they would use a cold dot, for example.

 

[Swiftur]

Tierilo had a nice post in the other thread along those lines. We'd cast our poison dot, and the pet would cast a poison nuke with it. We would cast cold nuke, and they would use a cold dot, for example.

I had a better idea. Rather than mimic spells. Change spirit of tearing to be a permanent mini somatic bond for the Beastlord, duplicating a percentage of all the pets melee damage. This gives the Player the satisfaction of dealing extra player made dps at the sacrifice of utility healing.

 

[nikosk]

Bitter Cold:

the recourse throws a "buff" on your buff window: Increase Spell Damage from Damage over Time spells by 48%
The problem is.. beastlords are a hybrid, and need literally every buff in the game. We have no room for this to help our dps.. it can also block other useful things on yourself during groups/raids if you end up using it.

Suggestion: Make Bitter Cold 1) apply a debuff to the mob instead of a buff to yourself, or 2) grant instant effects to beastlord and/or pet, or party members.

Some ideas for effects to Bitter Cold:
- Glacial Trap: (snare + extra cold dot) , incase any 65 lesser-geared beastlords wish to do some snare kite soloing on mobs that don't summon.
- Winter's Prize: (mana return/heal): when Bitter Cold successfully lands, return a portion of mana to the beastlord, and heal them and their pet for X(balanced) amount.
- Frozen Rage: (pet crit/interrupts) Causes beastlord's current pet's attacks an increased chance to critically hit and cause the spell itself to interrupt the monster's casting when it lands.
- Withering Cold: (increased dot damage) Rather than being a bonus only to the beastlord: all dot damage from any source done to the mob with withering cold are increased by 10%. [Necromancer tells the group, "plz invite the beastlord!"]
- Cold Shoulder: (Jolt, spirit proc boost) negative agro jolt for beastlord, and a temporarily increased chance for "spirit of x" pet buffs to proc.
- The Long Winter: (decrease resists) Temporarily decrease cold resist of the monster.
- Merry Christmas Beastlord!: (phats) Causes mobs with beastlord oriented loot to drop that item as extra loot on the loot table if killed with debuff on. (Bahaha)

 

[fuwok]

Give beastlords a slow that cannot be mitigated that stacks with all other slows. The percentage, understandably, may need to be low.

That and let them slow unslowable mobs.

 

[Silosobi]

Beastlords are a cool class that doesn't really require much to be fixed. They have unique and desirable utility through cunning, savagery, and their pet stance which is useful on specific fights. I think there are two main issues: their pet, and their lack of scaling dps. I like the idea of making the pet AE/WW/PS immune. I also think the runic pet needs a 20-50% dps boost, since right now it is mostly just a hp upgrade to the previous pet. For comparison, a mage pet can do almost twice as much damage. A pet in-between the level 63 and runic wouldn't hurt as a goal for solo/duo/casual raid player who has had the 63 pet forever.

Scaling dps could be added through meele mechanics, but I much prefer the idea of adding it through spells. Consider adding just two spells to the BST line, replacing Rage of the Wild and Plague.

Hunter's Mark: 350 mana / 1 sec cast / 10 tics / 200 damage on hit and 150 damage per tic / increases the damage dealt by all beastlord pets by 15%

Vulnerability Poison: 550 mana / 2 sec cast / 4 tics / 500 damage on hit and 250 damage per tic / grants all beastlord pets a bonus 30% crit chance.

These spells would by synergistic with beastlord pets and give the beastlord the ability to burn during crucial phases. Hunter's Mark would be the standard, used all the time, for its efficiency, and moderate mana cost. During a burn phase though, the beastlord could use Vulnerability Poison as well, doing decent spell damage, while stacking crit on the bonus damage, granting their pet a nice damage bonus, and if they can stack swarm pets ontop of both of these, they should be able to manage dps numbers close to top dps classes, but the mana cost of these, and their swarm pet, is prohibitive enough that even the best geared beastlords would have to pick and choose when to stack up their damage.

I think just adding new, or adjusting the DOTs BST have, so that they provide reliable, scaling dps, as well as a buff to the relic pet/swarmpet survivability (and dps for just the relic pet, swarmpet dps is okay) would make BST a desirable class. You could just make raw damage DOTs, but the numbers would need to be a lot higher than I listed in that case (beastlords realistically need a 300-400 dps upgrade at the endgame).

Another idea that is a bit more off the wall would be to give BST the WW stance monks lost, and allow it to apply to their pet/swarmpets as well. This would give BST a neat niche with AE dps since they will likely never see the single target DPS of other classes. I think it kind of makes sense lore-wise for the beastlord and his pack of wolves to be able to tear into a group of monsters, damaging them all at the same time.

 

[Silosobi]

Solo BST aren't really lacking. Their dps is low as always, but the shared tanking with pet makes them a more capable soloist than most others. Their problem in the exp/6man/raid game is dps. They obviously aren't a tank or healer, and their utility isn't unique or powerful enough to warrant bringing them along just for that. The only remaining role is dps, which is where the class really needs some help.

I think pretty much everyone can agree that some added durability and dps on beastlord pet(s) is due, but they need more than that. I like the idea of a couple new spells that add dps and potentially buff the pet, as I outlined above. I think this is the most simple and effective way to buff the class in a way that will scale. If we want some more interesting/unique additions though, here are some more ideas:

Allow beastlord pets to benefit from the master's gear, they can gain HP, AC, Resists, and somehow scale off of weapon ratio.

Give beastlords a caster version of savagery, maybe 5% crit and 10% mana con.

Give beastlords a spell or AA that makes their pet into a true tank for 30 seconds. Pet gains 50% BST Total HP, 100% BST Total AC, and foelocks nearby enemies until it dies. This would need some tweaking on the numbers to be balanced, but basically an "oh shit the tank died" button.

Give beastlords an exhaustive stance that gives them an illusion of their warder type, giving them a bunch of overhaste, spell damage bonus, and pet damage/haste.

When the warder dies, the beastlord absorbs his spirit, gaining 100% HP, 50% Stamina, and 30% Mana, as well as becoming enraged, granting overhaste.

 

[nikosk]

Another idea that is a bit more off the wall would be to give BST the WW stance monks lost, and allow it to apply to their pet/swarmpets as well. This would give BST a neat niche with AE dps since they will likely never see the single target DPS of other classes. I think it kind of makes sense lore-wise for the beastlord and his pack of wolves to be able to tear into a group of monsters, damaging them all at the same time.[/QUOTE]

Neat idea there! I like it.

 

[darksabbath]

Solo BST aren't really lacking. Their dps is low as always, but the shared tanking with pet makes them a more capable soloist than most others.

I like the rest, but I'll go ahead and disagree with that part. My T9-ish bst (about 15% codex atm) has issues soloing in places my boe/low tier SK (who only has 200 aa's) has no issues doing so. That seems a tad off to me. A lot of that issue stems from the pet not scaling well, and not tanking well, therefore being forced to tank the mobs, and then losing dps to heal myself. Where the sk taps for healing, doing dps at the same time. So, in theory they should be a better soloist, and are as they level, much of the 65 xp zones are closed to a bst until they have end game gearing. At least, that has been my experience.

 

[Silosobi]

Keshuval's Protection -> Spirit Link
Mana: 500
Cast: 10
Duration: 3000 tics
Grants warder bonus hitpoints equal to 50% Beastlord's total hitpoints.
Grants warder bonus armor equal to 25% of Beastlord's total armor.
Grants warder bonus resists equal to 50% of all Beastlord resists.
Increase all damage dealt by warder by ((BST Unbuffed HP)/450)%
If warder dies, Beastlord gains: Broken Spirit Link.

Broken Spirit Link:
Duration: 10 tics
Beastlord loses 300 hp per tic.
Gain 50% overhaste.
Gain 20% spell damage.

This basically combines several of my above ideas. It is a replacement to the oddly lackluster final level 65 beastlord pet buff. It adds hp, ac, resists, and damage, all of which scale with the beastlord's stats. Pet scaling has always been a problem. Pet Focus effects help, but are not nearly enough to keep a pet gaining power at a similar rate to the master. The HP/AC/Resists are pretty self explanatory, but the damage is based off the beastlord's unbuffed hp. I figured that was the most consistently scaling stat through all progression, and it actually makes sense that the more healthy the beastlord is, the more energy and power they can transfer to their warder. The numbers I used would grant a 50% damage bonus to pets if the master had 9000 unbuffed hp. These numbers are designed to keep the warder healthy and damage relevant if it recieved no other buffs. If, for instance, the warder gained the mentioned AA/PS/AE immunity, it wouldn't need as many defensive stats, although I'm still not sure they are a bad idea - pets are never really viable tanks on hard hitting mobs because of their abysmally low AC.

I also thought it would be neat to grant a sort of recourse on the beastlord if their pet dies. It is not strong enough to ever make it desirable to kill one's pet, and it actually damages the beastlord, as they suffer from their lost spirit companion, but at the same time it enrages them, granting a small bonus to meele and magic damage.

 

[Swiftur]

While all these suggestions about buffing pet dps is great and all, you all need to understand even with Solo's proposed changes to keshuvals protection, a top tier Beastlords pet dps will only increase from about 170-200 to about 250-280.... When the class already parses right around HALF of every other similarly tiered melee...

These ideas are awesome, but we need to all agree that if the intent is dps increase (which it should be), the BL needs improvement too, not just the warder. I've said it before, I'll say it again, give us 100% no fail double attack with both hands just like all the other melee classes. A simple change to melee mastery AA...

 

[Silosobi]

Yeah, BL definitely need a BIG boost. If the pet buff was combined with the DOTs I suggested, relic pet on a t13 beastlord could get up to ~400 dps when burning, combined with the added 100-200 spell dps, that would be a pretty significant boost. Even with those changes which are big, they would still be far behind a "real" dps, but combined with other potential changes like making all pets more survivable (including swarm pets), improving spirit of tearing, and maybe a bit more utility through other areas, the class could be in a good place, where raids no longer have to say "lets drop the beastlord and pick up a real dps class so we can have a better shot at beating this". There will always be a min/max ideal setup, but no class should ever be so far behind that they are pretty much universally considered the weak link, and better replaced by *any* other dps. I think for a long time there was some concept that it was okay beastlords were weak because they had big utility, but pretty much every class brings utility, and I don't even consider them more utility than half of the high DPS classes like mages, necros, bards. Glad to finally see they are getting some love and attention.

 

[mechkl]

i like alot fo what im reading here. Another thing alot of beastlord dont realize is our tomes are trash also, to quote myself:

So its no secret the beastlords need a little lovin in some way or another, especially the higher in tier they get.
This is mostly due to their terrible melee scaling, the complete absence of pet scaling through the tiers and perhaps that beastlord tomes don't pack the most punch for class tomes.


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Empathic Warder: Shares ? / ? / ? / ?% of Beastlord's critical strike with the pet. Also heals the Beastlord for 7.5 / 15 / 22.5 / 30% of direct heals received by the pet.

This spell has a cool concept, but some super low numbers. adding my crit to my pet even 100% isnt a major upgrade to dps but is still something, and receiving direct heals from my pet is pretty neat idea although those numbers seem a bit low.

My suggestion would be:
Shares 25 / 50 / 75 / 100% of Beastlord's critical strike with the pet. As the beastlord takes damage his companion becomes enraged, eventually unleashing his rage in one devastating strike.

after so much damage is received by the beastlord the pet unleashed a devastating blow on its target with an internal cd of course, something like 5000/4500/4000/3500 damage received by the beastlord. This should go along way in helping beastlords aweful dps at the same time.


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Frenzied Companion: Grants the pet a chance to flurry based on the Beastlord's mana usage. Chances initiate when the Beastlord uses mana, gradually decaying until reaching zero. Flurry chances are capped at 15 / 30 / 45 / 60%.

this is another cool concept, but the scaling on the tome as u get the ranks is just aweful, with tome 4 done i can use my entire mana bar and not cap it out cause i am unable to cast enough spell fast enough. not to mention at rank 4 its gives your pet a 60% chance per round to do 2 extra attack which would only equal about 200 damage on the high end. That's assuming u have used your entire mana bar recently to get it to cap.

My suggestion would be:
Grants the pet a chance to flurry when the Beastlord casts a spell. Chances initiate when the Beastlord uses mana, duration of the ability to flurry is based on amount of mana spent. Flurry chances are 25 / 50 / 75 / 100%. At least 500 mana must be expended to start flurries.Every 500 mana spend it 20 secs of flurry time.

So basically get rid of the decay and build up mechanic. Just have them be flat time your pet flurries a certain amount of time as the beastlord casts spells. At rank 4 have the pet flurry every round while the beastlord is spending mana. Having the time based on mana spent makes the tome scale directly with the beastlord as they gain gear.



Now I'm not saying that all that's wrong with beastlords is their tomes but this is a good starting place. Pets in general is a whole other monster in itself to tackle. I left out suggestions for a 3rd tome because there are a lot of goods ones on this forum already. I dont need to copy paste them here.

TL,DR
change beastlord tomes to be cool.

another thing is i think spells glacial strike would fit in very well with beastlords fighting style. dots that give us an extra punch or round even would be good for our lack of inante double attack. keep them as dots thatt are "applied" through melee attacks, like the cleric melee heals use to be.

I like how slaar put it with beastlords being a wisdom puncher with a pet.
I think making beastlord dps dependent on thier pet also being alive and around and scaling it 50/50 up the tiers. I think the best way to do tht would be to make beastlord spells 2 sided. they make the beastlord cast a spell and at teh same time make thier warder perform a complimenting action. like when the beastlord cast venom of the wild, the beastlords pet instant casts poisonous assault, a poison based dd, and when the beastlord casts bitter cold or harsh winter the pet instant casts a cold based dd on its target weather its the same as the beastlords or not. meaning the beastlord can essentially split his dps between 2 targets, or hold the attention of two targets. Also better pet scaling is something that i think is missing in sod, especially for beastlords, who have pets that should be a bestial shadow of themselves. Perhaps scaling the pets based melee ratio and ac maybe even hp bonuses its master gets from gear times a multiplier would yield better scaling results.... or even have pet attack based off the mana pools of the pets casters.

their is spells like this in game already, think how soothing works, its a proc your pet does that makes the beastlord cast the heal. the pet doesnt cast anything. the beastlord part of the spells already exists, i was really jealous when rangers got galcial strike... its doesnt fit them at all as a ranged physical dps geting a melee ranged cold nuke, but that screams beastlord to me. Beastlords dont need a new shitty line of dots, they are savage melee ranged fighter with a natural attunement for mana that allows them to infuse their attacks with elements in coordination with their companion. I would love to see all if not most of the beastlords dots reworked into melee range utility attacks. Beastlords should be up in a foes face savagely mauling their opponents in combination with their warder, issuing and executing attacks in an almost telepathic synchronicity with each other. I do think that the strikes unique to the beastlords tho should carry more utility then dps and beastlords should get a survivaility boost between him and his pet.

I think that if done right the spells that a beastlords get at 65 can scale up with them into later tiers without the need for relics and ancients, buts its going to require a rework of all beastlord spells. No more bandaids or gap filling things. And while a relic pets would be nice perahps another quest somewhere around tier 6 for beastlords to get a new pet would be more fitting.... and fixing the scaling of the pets.... because not only is the runic 2 not a 20% increase in dps over the 63 pet its not even 20 dps increase...

 

[Silosobi]

Sorry I'm sort of spamming this but I really like brainstorming ideas for this video game. Something I just thought of that could be cool. I remember live had a line of pet buffs that gave your pet various damage procs. What if we extended the Spirit of Soothing/Tearing line to include a few more options for utility and stuff, and make them lower mana/cast time, so that the beastlord can strategically switch them mid fight? Something like 1 second cast, 30 second recast each, ranging up to 100 mana for the 65 spells. Here are ideas:

Level 9: Low proc rate, low damage.
Level 22: Moderate proc rate, moderate heal for pet and beastlord.
Level 39: Low proc rate, small PBAE slow.
Level 49: Low proc rate, moderate damage.
Level 57: Moderate proc rate, moderate AC + resist debuff + vex.
Level 63: Moderate proc rate, small group heal. (basically soothing here)
Level 65: Low proc rate, grants all group members +30 mana.
Level 65: High proc rate, reverse intensify (something like 300 damage, 250 damage, 200 damage, then it just stays at 150 damage) - this would encourage switching between the skills.

None of them are intended to be super powerful, but you could weave a little group healing, mana regen, or mob debuff, between uses of the 65 damage proc, to reset its counter (this might take a little bit of special coding), and utilize the reverse intensify. Ideally damage/healing procs should go through the beastlord to benefit from their item/exp scaling. You could even code the level 22 self/pet heal to be % based if you wanted it to retain viability at 65, that would make it a nice soloing tool.

 

[Swiftur]

@Silosobi That sounds a lot more like playing a bard than a beastlord... im not down with changing a majority of how my class is to be played... Not to mention we dont have spell bar space to be keeping up pet buffs...

bitter cold
venom of the wild
venom of the snake or slow
swarm pets
savagery
cunning
pet heal
chloroblast

 

[Swiftur]

...another thing is i think spells glacial strike would fit in very well with beastlords fighting style.

^^^Lots and lots of this^^^
Reduced spell casting time, more in line with rangers.

Also, make Bitter Cold recourse increase beastlord and warder DD/proc damage by the same amount as it does for dots. Like the gruplok rod recourses for your pets too when you click it, bitter cold could work this way as well. Actually that would pretty much SOLVE beastlord DPS without changing much else. There is still mana cost reduction and tomes that need looked at but DPS would be non issue.

To familiarize newer players with the playstyle, lesser versions of the spell should be spread throughout the levels like solo has mentioned in a previous post.

 

[cornelweezy]

I like my BST but they have issues. Their spellbars pre runics are really hard to work. I don't have runics but the streets are hard out here for low tier BSTs. Venom of the Wild is a cool thing, but the other dots (the disease hand me down from shamans and the BST splurt) have too long a cast time, require so much mana, and do such pitiful damage that you're wasting punch opportunities for not much in return.

I have suggestions!
1. Keep the junk shaman hand-me-downs but add 3 or 4 spells between 62 and 65 that give pre runic BSTs some more offensive power and identity. Their spells don't really jive well together as is. I would like to see:
- a disease based quick nuke comparable to ranger's icerend
- a magic based dot that has cripple built in, kinda like enchanter chokehold, should be cold based. This will play well with the dot enhancer and votw
- a yaulp like spell. 10m cost, 1 second cast time, 3 tick duration and either gives the BST massive overhaste, or gives the pet massive overhaste. could use a recourse effect or a recharge timer to balance
- a duration self buff that grants accuracy and melee stats. Shamans have the best fighter buffs in the game and some of that should trickle down to the BST in a relevant way. Ideally a +power way and not another utility way (waddup Savagery)

2. Just eliminate Spirit of Tearing/Soothing as spell gems and build them into the 60 and 63 pets so they both see use. Soothing is so $$$ there's not much reason to cast Tearing. Give the runic pet better versions of the effects.

3. Their stances could use some attention. [edit because I mixed up /s 4 & 5] /s 5 is big dog but it seems to drain hard and fast. /s 7 is neat but timing is everything or your pet (and it's gear) are bye bye. Maybe we could split /5 into a stance that gives a dps bonus when attacking from the back no matter weaps, a dps stance that always guarantees landing triple attack if you're duel wielding in the front, and a 2h stance that gives a healthy evasion bonus. iono.

yay this thread

 

[daenar_sod]

personally i think the /s 4 idea is really really bad. the only useful ones are 2,3,5,7. i only ever use 6 in yclist. as far as stances go i would really like /s 5 to not drain stamina so ridiculously fast. or change it to the thing wold said in the original revamp post ages ago, where pets mimic ALL spells cast by owner.

 

[mechkl]

since its about being better late game, maybe give the beastlords runic 2 pets some cooler thing, maybe it can backstab or something.

 

[cornelweezy]

personally i think the /s 4 idea is really really bad. the only useful ones are 2,3,5,7. i only ever use 6 in yclist. as far as stances go i would really like /s 5 to not drain stamina so ridiculously fast. or change it to the thing wold said in the original revamp post ages ago, where pets mimic ALL spells cast by owner.

just realized reading your reply I mixed up 4 and 5. I thought 4 was the +damage one. gonna edit my original post.