as a higher end bst, i am pretty happy with my class minus the short duration buffs, the fact our runic 2 is such a minor upgrade from a level 63 spell.. and our stances being awful minus 4 and 7. if these issues were addressed i would think there wouldn't be much to complain about.
Endurance system: BST
- Thread starter Zaela
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Warning: I wrote this post out of boredom, so it will be dumb.
A few more adjustments might more or less fix Beastlords and put them in a better position, but I think in a lot of ways Beastlords just aren't very interesting. Shamans aren't a great class to be a hybrid of, and for one of the weaker melees among the hybrid classes they don't get a whole lot of spell power to show for it. Even most of the bandages they've gotten (Cunning, the new pet procs) tend to be passive buff things, stuff that goes "hey look, you really are useful!" without actually making the class more fun to play.
My boredom-induced idea is to rebuild Beastlords a bit, both in terms of styles and spells. As a class that is supposed to go into melee with their pet at their side, I think pet micromanaging could be an interesting concept for them. Also I remember back when BST were released on Live they originally summoned through their pet through an ability and then buffed them up and I think something like that could be neat if it was automatic.
Stuff
Inherent Ability: Companionship
A Beastlord and his pet are as one. Rather than getting a new pet each spell level, they get one pet summoning spell at level 9 which scales up in power with its owner. The pet's level is automatically 9/10ths of its owner's level, its HP and AC are 80% of its owner's after items but before buffs (HP still increased by Companion Health), its damage scales up automatically with level and also receives a bonus based on the ratio of its owner's weapons or fists (still increased by Companion Strength and Codex of Power), and it receives 50% of its owner's resistances from items. They also share the Beastlord's defensive skills/avoidance chance. Oh and size increases with level too (it already does, technically).
In addition, the pet benefits from its owner's Focus Effects and worn Haste and maybe Critical Strike and nuke/heal crit? - though maybe requiring an AA since it's starting to sound like that Mage AA.
Endurance Abilities
A Beastlord's Endurance steadily fills as long as both the Beastlord and his pet are in melee combat (or if the Beastlord is casting a spell, as long as they are in melee range of their target). They can spend their Endurance on instant abilities centered around managing their pet in melee. Like the Warrior abilities, some will have constant percentile costs while others will have flat costs and thus be usable more often as you gain more levels and max endurance.
/s 4 - level 20 - Blood Scent: Increases your pet's melee damage the lower its target's HP is for 10 seconds. For example, if its target was at 25% HP, its damage would go up by 75% for the duration. 1 minute reuse, flat cost.
/s 5 - level 30 - Turtle Spirit: Decreases damage incoming to your pet by 25% for 10 seconds. 10 second reuse, 25% cost?
/s 6 - level 40 - Spirit Guise: The Beastlord transfers 10% of their aggro with their target to their pet. 30 second reuse, 50% cost?
/s 7 - level 50 - Monkey Spirit: The Beastlord's pet mimics any single target spells the Beastlord casts in the next 20 seconds, including heals and pet heals. 1 minute reuse, big flat cost.
/s 8 - level 60 - Spiritual Empathy: The Beastlord diverts 50% of incoming damage to their pet for 15 seconds. 3 minute reuse, 80% cost? maybe usable at any % with duration scaling to Endurance used like current Warrior Enrage, so that it can be used at the drop of a hat.
/s 9 - level 65 - Dragon Spirit: The Beastlord's pet growls, tracking damage it takes in the next 10 seconds. At the end of those 10 seconds it unleashes a PBAE nuke equal to the amount of damage it took, capped at its current max HP value (before focuses etc?). 10 minute reuse, 100% cost?
Spells
Getting a little too tired to set out an entire spell list like I was intending to when I started this post, but basically two things here:
*Possibly take out Cunning, mini cunning, maybe Savagery, their current Runic spells, and most of their existing offensive spells.
*Add two-ish new spell lines/concepts:
-nukes and dots through the levels which have various short term pet-buffing recourses. So you have your crappy nuke, but attached to that crappy nuke is a short burst of pet haste, or extra pet AC, or pet resists, etc. Perhaps something like Harsh Winter, which increases your pet's spell damage, and which can be combined with procs and Monkey Spirit stance for enhanced damage. Synergy with endurance abilities in general would be a plus.
-short term pet proc spells that stack with their long-term proc buffs, with various effects: a fire one might add a big fire damage proc and fire resist for the pet, a cold one might add a moderate nuke and root/snare proc and cold resist for the pet, magic a pbae nuke and magic resist, poison a strong single-target dot and poison resist, disease a pbae disease dot with AC debuff and disease resist, blah blah blah. Dual purpose and more active decisions regarding your pet.
Loss of Cunning and Sav might be a big hit to overall "contribution" but I think maybe the enhancements to the Beastlord's pet might make up for it somewhat. As some people have said about Enchanters, doing the damage yourself is much more fun than passively increasing damage for someone else.
I'd still leave Beastlords with their other long-term buffs and slows. Maybe expand pet heals, add a divine unbinding-like pet-only spell, etc.
/ramble off
A few more adjustments might more or less fix Beastlords and put them in a better position, but I think in a lot of ways Beastlords just aren't very interesting. Shamans aren't a great class to be a hybrid of, and for one of the weaker melees among the hybrid classes they don't get a whole lot of spell power to show for it. Even most of the bandages they've gotten (Cunning, the new pet procs) tend to be passive buff things, stuff that goes "hey look, you really are useful!" without actually making the class more fun to play.
My boredom-induced idea is to rebuild Beastlords a bit, both in terms of styles and spells. As a class that is supposed to go into melee with their pet at their side, I think pet micromanaging could be an interesting concept for them. Also I remember back when BST were released on Live they originally summoned through their pet through an ability and then buffed them up and I think something like that could be neat if it was automatic.
Stuff
Inherent Ability: Companionship
A Beastlord and his pet are as one. Rather than getting a new pet each spell level, they get one pet summoning spell at level 9 which scales up in power with its owner. The pet's level is automatically 9/10ths of its owner's level, its HP and AC are 80% of its owner's after items but before buffs (HP still increased by Companion Health), its damage scales up automatically with level and also receives a bonus based on the ratio of its owner's weapons or fists (still increased by Companion Strength and Codex of Power), and it receives 50% of its owner's resistances from items. They also share the Beastlord's defensive skills/avoidance chance. Oh and size increases with level too (it already does, technically).
In addition, the pet benefits from its owner's Focus Effects and worn Haste and maybe Critical Strike and nuke/heal crit? - though maybe requiring an AA since it's starting to sound like that Mage AA.
Endurance Abilities
A Beastlord's Endurance steadily fills as long as both the Beastlord and his pet are in melee combat (or if the Beastlord is casting a spell, as long as they are in melee range of their target). They can spend their Endurance on instant abilities centered around managing their pet in melee. Like the Warrior abilities, some will have constant percentile costs while others will have flat costs and thus be usable more often as you gain more levels and max endurance.
/s 4 - level 20 - Blood Scent: Increases your pet's melee damage the lower its target's HP is for 10 seconds. For example, if its target was at 25% HP, its damage would go up by 75% for the duration. 1 minute reuse, flat cost.
/s 5 - level 30 - Turtle Spirit: Decreases damage incoming to your pet by 25% for 10 seconds. 10 second reuse, 25% cost?
/s 6 - level 40 - Spirit Guise: The Beastlord transfers 10% of their aggro with their target to their pet. 30 second reuse, 50% cost?
/s 7 - level 50 - Monkey Spirit: The Beastlord's pet mimics any single target spells the Beastlord casts in the next 20 seconds, including heals and pet heals. 1 minute reuse, big flat cost.
/s 8 - level 60 - Spiritual Empathy: The Beastlord diverts 50% of incoming damage to their pet for 15 seconds. 3 minute reuse, 80% cost? maybe usable at any % with duration scaling to Endurance used like current Warrior Enrage, so that it can be used at the drop of a hat.
/s 9 - level 65 - Dragon Spirit: The Beastlord's pet growls, tracking damage it takes in the next 10 seconds. At the end of those 10 seconds it unleashes a PBAE nuke equal to the amount of damage it took, capped at its current max HP value (before focuses etc?). 10 minute reuse, 100% cost?
Spells
Getting a little too tired to set out an entire spell list like I was intending to when I started this post, but basically two things here:
*Possibly take out Cunning, mini cunning, maybe Savagery, their current Runic spells, and most of their existing offensive spells.
*Add two-ish new spell lines/concepts:
-nukes and dots through the levels which have various short term pet-buffing recourses. So you have your crappy nuke, but attached to that crappy nuke is a short burst of pet haste, or extra pet AC, or pet resists, etc. Perhaps something like Harsh Winter, which increases your pet's spell damage, and which can be combined with procs and Monkey Spirit stance for enhanced damage. Synergy with endurance abilities in general would be a plus.
-short term pet proc spells that stack with their long-term proc buffs, with various effects: a fire one might add a big fire damage proc and fire resist for the pet, a cold one might add a moderate nuke and root/snare proc and cold resist for the pet, magic a pbae nuke and magic resist, poison a strong single-target dot and poison resist, disease a pbae disease dot with AC debuff and disease resist, blah blah blah. Dual purpose and more active decisions regarding your pet.
Loss of Cunning and Sav might be a big hit to overall "contribution" but I think maybe the enhancements to the Beastlord's pet might make up for it somewhat. As some people have said about Enchanters, doing the damage yourself is much more fun than passively increasing damage for someone else.
I'd still leave Beastlords with their other long-term buffs and slows. Maybe expand pet heals, add a divine unbinding-like pet-only spell, etc.
/ramble off
These ideas sound fantastic, especially companionship and the new stances. Ideally I'd like to retain some raid benefit beyond sv/sb, so maybe combine cunning and savagery. Change cunning to increased melee and spell crit, plus resists so it stacks with bard fiery song. Have cunning be castable like savagery (15 minute base duration, 7 minute recast), and get rid of savagery entirely.
I think pet heals are generally okay now, but I wouldn't mind seeing one of the short-term proc spells you mentioned be one that heals the pet and its owner based on pet damage.
I think pet heals are generally okay now, but I wouldn't mind seeing one of the short-term proc spells you mentioned be one that heals the pet and its owner based on pet damage.
Rorne
The sad fish is a reactionary creature; an enemy o
Once again coming from the perspective of someone that has played the class casually but the main issues I have are
1)No core ability you're going to be using actively aside from /s 5 (assuming you'd need /s 5 that often with the pet stat changes) due to cooldowns
2)Loss of raid utility which means beastlord dps requirement would need to go up to compensate (you reference the pet making up for this so maybe this is already accounted for)
Changing the nature of the pets and the variation in pet procs (pbae stuff would be a boon in exp) are both cool ideas.
1)No core ability you're going to be using actively aside from /s 5 (assuming you'd need /s 5 that often with the pet stat changes) due to cooldowns
2)Loss of raid utility which means beastlord dps requirement would need to go up to compensate (you reference the pet making up for this so maybe this is already accounted for)
Changing the nature of the pets and the variation in pet procs (pbae stuff would be a boon in exp) are both cool ideas.
Tesselajnen
Dalayan Adventurer
I dunno... This thread is making me not wanting to continue playing my beastlord atm.
We got two spells, that I enjoy a lot. Specially the healing one since that uped the solo abilities a lot, awesome spell.
There are so small things that could be changed to increase the usefulness/fun of a beastlord, that has been pointed out in this thread several times. Why do you want to go all out nuts to change the class more or less entierly?
We got two spells, that I enjoy a lot. Specially the healing one since that uped the solo abilities a lot, awesome spell.
There are so small things that could be changed to increase the usefulness/fun of a beastlord, that has been pointed out in this thread several times. Why do you want to go all out nuts to change the class more or less entierly?
Silosobi
Dalayan Pious Diety
I love these suggestions in general!
A few thoughts/tweaks:
Give a generic dps sta ability that is less effective than the situational ones, but allows the bst to dump sta for dps when they have nothing better to do:
/s 4 Furious Strike: The warder unleashes a furious strike, dealing 20% of his total hp to his target for the cost of 40% stamina.
The current stance for Spiritual Empathy can be kept on the BST for quite a long time. I like the idea of making it like enrage, but does it need a cooldown? Say it takes 45 sec to get to full sta, and lasts 15 sec. If an AE goes off every 15 sec, the bst could use it for each AE, and only take 50% damage, but of course they are sacrificing a lot of their dps in the process.
I really like the idea of removing cunning/savagery, but those buffs make it almost always worthwhile to bring a beastlond on your raid. Remove them and the bst needs to do comparable dps to other pure dps classes to remain desirable. This type of change is dangerous in practice (recent nec/enc changes have caused overall dps in my guild raids to go down by 10-15% - we struggle to beat encounters we have been farming for 6 months). If they do get changed, maybe not entirely remove them, but instead make them more defensive - cunning could just remain -20% agro, and sav could just keep the resists.
A few thoughts/tweaks:
Give a generic dps sta ability that is less effective than the situational ones, but allows the bst to dump sta for dps when they have nothing better to do:
/s 4 Furious Strike: The warder unleashes a furious strike, dealing 20% of his total hp to his target for the cost of 40% stamina.
The current stance for Spiritual Empathy can be kept on the BST for quite a long time. I like the idea of making it like enrage, but does it need a cooldown? Say it takes 45 sec to get to full sta, and lasts 15 sec. If an AE goes off every 15 sec, the bst could use it for each AE, and only take 50% damage, but of course they are sacrificing a lot of their dps in the process.
I really like the idea of removing cunning/savagery, but those buffs make it almost always worthwhile to bring a beastlond on your raid. Remove them and the bst needs to do comparable dps to other pure dps classes to remain desirable. This type of change is dangerous in practice (recent nec/enc changes have caused overall dps in my guild raids to go down by 10-15% - we struggle to beat encounters we have been farming for 6 months). If they do get changed, maybe not entirely remove them, but instead make them more defensive - cunning could just remain -20% agro, and sav could just keep the resists.
I am really underwhelem'd by the new split dmg stance, 15 seconds? as an ogre bst with no worn acumen, just using max spell stam regen, I can s7 ( our current split dmg stance) for atleast 2 -3 minutes, and with a worn acumen im guessing it will be closer to 4. Can we rethink all of this, I really find most of it unnessecary, and unneeded. I really wish we could spend time redeveloping our runic 2, and thinking how our AC table works, and the fact we have so many short duration spell gem hogging things to deal with along with so much buff slot fighting its crazy.
PS: maybe slightly boost our dps through our dot dmg, or something, but all this crazyness is not needed, and I think i would like the class less with massive changes spoken of here.
PS: maybe slightly boost our dps through our dot dmg, or something, but all this crazyness is not needed, and I think i would like the class less with massive changes spoken of here.
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darksabbath
Dalayan Master
I find it interesting that many ideas I have suggested of the years, all of which were shot down, are being discussed and/or implemented. An "I told you so" just doesn't seem to cut it at this point. Jolt, buff durations, the pet heals, and the quick demise of pets to ae until runic2 (which I guess got nerfed), those are all things I have posted about before.
Anyways, those are some cool ideas you have there Zaela, except I disagree with removing wrath/cunning and sav. All those buffs need is a longer duration, and recast to keep them in line, to be for more useful. Adding in a pet between the lvl 63 and the runic2 would make a big difference, perhaps a second murk spell?
I especially like the sound of:
-nukes and dots through the levels which have various short term pet-buffing recourses. So you have your crappy nuke, but attached to that crappy nuke is a short burst of pet haste, or extra pet AC, or pet resists, etc. Perhaps something like Harsh Winter, which increases your pet's spell damage, and which can be combined with procs and Monkey Spirit stance for enhanced damage. Synergy with endurance abilities in general would be a plus.
That could make it worth keeping a nuke on the cast bar.
The biggest problems I see is that all of this depends on the pet (which is logical). But unless the pet gets a boost in resists, or hp in general, then it is all for naught, as the pet will be dead and the bst's dps will be even worse than before the changes. So any changes must address the lack of survivability of the pet through the raid tiers. (Pre-raiding dps and pet survivability are less of an issue.)
Who knows, maybe I'd even come back and play then.
Anyways, those are some cool ideas you have there Zaela, except I disagree with removing wrath/cunning and sav. All those buffs need is a longer duration, and recast to keep them in line, to be for more useful. Adding in a pet between the lvl 63 and the runic2 would make a big difference, perhaps a second murk spell?
I especially like the sound of:
-nukes and dots through the levels which have various short term pet-buffing recourses. So you have your crappy nuke, but attached to that crappy nuke is a short burst of pet haste, or extra pet AC, or pet resists, etc. Perhaps something like Harsh Winter, which increases your pet's spell damage, and which can be combined with procs and Monkey Spirit stance for enhanced damage. Synergy with endurance abilities in general would be a plus.
That could make it worth keeping a nuke on the cast bar.
The biggest problems I see is that all of this depends on the pet (which is logical). But unless the pet gets a boost in resists, or hp in general, then it is all for naught, as the pet will be dead and the bst's dps will be even worse than before the changes. So any changes must address the lack of survivability of the pet through the raid tiers. (Pre-raiding dps and pet survivability are less of an issue.)
Who knows, maybe I'd even come back and play then.
darksabbath
Dalayan Master
You know, I knew you'd say that.
If the prospect of beastlords becoming more active and powerful and--horror of horrors--having more interaction with their pets beyond attack, back off, and heal is so horrendous that people are already prepared to quit at the mere threat of it, I think I can safely say that beastlords don't need shit. Wouldn't want to rock the boat.
Anyway, this was my thread and I no longer have any interest in it.
Anyway, this was my thread and I no longer have any interest in it.
This is how the things tend to go.
Maybe arcane knights will happen. The bst ideas sounded pretty cool to me, too
.
Tesselajnen
Dalayan Adventurer
So, for me that is maining a beast and have been since 2007 expressing my thoughts isnt ok or what? I truly do not see a reason to go way out to change that much about a beastlord as Zalea posted and well, I do think I have the right to speak up about it just as much as anyone that is in favour of Zaelas ideas.
I have given Zae cred for changes she has done for beastlords, just like I pointed out the two new spells that we just have gotten is really nice in my last post.
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