I encourage all Beastlords to post in this thread with their ideas, encompassing all aspects of the game from exp groups to raids.
First of all I have to admit that I started my Beastlord long after I had abandoned playing my Cleric (Morak) at 65, I had the benefit of pleveling myself with that Cleric up through the lower levels and cannot give an accurate impression of those levels because of it.Most of my sugggestions will come from my experience at the raid level and because of that I strongly encourage Beastlords who have experienced the earlier levels, without the benefits I had, of posting what deficiencies they see.
At the raid level I see a class that is in need of a defining vision from the staff, primarily Wiz, of what they are supposed to be.I see this class primarily as being a utility/melee dps class but we seem to fill that role poorly.The one class I compare myself most closely to (perhaps erroneously) is the Bard class, one that in my opinion very clearly outclasses us, their melee dps comes close to ours and their non-melee dps very easily tops ours along with their buffs being of much greater use to the raid.
The comparisons I make below are from the perspective of a raid having to choose between a second Bard or a Beastlord.These our are most useful raid spells in comparison to the closest Bard equivalent:
Resists:
Psalm of the Four
Savagery
Savagery is the only resist buff we cast during raids and while it does stack with POT4 it only affects one melee (without duration effects/AA's) and has a very short duration while POT4 affects the entire raid and gives a huge permanent resist benefit while the Bard is alive.With two Bards this becomes even more plain because he can also sing the Blademaster song giving an entire group of melee a big ATK boost while also giving the entire raid the resist boost.
Mana Regen:
Spiritual Bliss
Lcea's Lament
Paragon of Spirit
Spiritual Bliss gives a solid 8 mana/hp a tick while Lcea's Lament gives a greater amount of hp/mana a tick with the raid also being assured of gaining an additional +5 mana per tick above the mana regen cap.Paragon gives 480 total mana after 6 ticks with a recast of 14 minutes.
ATK/HP buffs:
Spiritual Vigor
Blademaster
As has been said above Blademaster gives a very sizeable chunk of ATK to everyone in the group, SV gives 40 ATK to everyone in the raid and 225 HP, with a Paladin in the raid the HP buff is a small consideration as the majority of the raid will opt for the greater pure HP buff of the Paladin's SSS with only the diehard melee DPS clicking it to gain the benefits of SV.
Spell Damage Focus:
Cunning of the Beast
Relic:Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl
CoB gives 20% spell damage bonus while also giving -20% aggro, Warcry gives (from what I can see from the parser) 13% spell dmg bonus and an additional overhaste of 22%.These two buffs to me seem very nicely balanced with the bard giving less spell damage but offsetting that with overhaste and the BST giving 7% more spell damage but also 20% less aggro.
Slows:
Requiem of Time 40% (before singing mods?) 3 sec cast time, no recast, no mana cost, 1 min duration
Sha's Reprisal 50% 5.25 cast time (before hybrid innate spell cast haste),5 sec recast, 195 mana cost, 3 min duration.
During a raid both of these slows are merely used as a pre-slow before the shaman lands his own 55% (with mask,pre-archaic) slow, with innate hybrid spell haste they amount to the same cast time, the bard has no recast time, no mana cost and the duration (because it is a pre-slow) doesn't matter, by the time it wears off the Shaman will have slowed the mob.
Non-melee damage (base damage before focus/instrument mods)
Relic: Chant of Destruction 600 damage over 3 ticks, 3.5 cast time, no recast, decrease MR by 50
Ice Shard 450 base damage 3.2 cast time (before hybrid innate spell haste, after 1.? seconds) 30 second recast, no resist mod or resist debuff effect
The damage of Ice Shard is easily outclassed by Chant of Destruction, cast time is not a factor since bards can continue meleeing while "casting the song", subsequent castings of the Chant are more easily landed whereas Ice Shard has no resist mod, and no recast time for the Chant.The limitation of the Bard being able to only land 2 detrimental spells on the mob at once is offset by the Chant doing more DPS than Ice Shard alone along with his melee dps being equal (or close to) to a Beastlords also he can land 2 detrimental spells on 2 mobs at the same time when the songs are twisted/timed properly.The fact that this is a "Relic spell and should be better than a lvl 54 spell" should not be taken into consideration because a Beastlord of the same average raid time would (if he had access to relics) have the same chance of obtaining those Relics as the Bard.
Healing Focus:
Relic: Hymn of the Saviour
BST: none
8% "Divine Intervention" spell healing the person to full health, ??% percent healing bonus.
No Beastlord equivalent
Smaller Consideration, Tanking/Aux Tanking Abilities:
While I admit this comparison is only valid when both classes are exceptionally geared and both able to actually fill this role, at the endgame Bards have access to plate armor with much higher AC and higher +HP equipment and comparable aggro, while suffering from a higher riposte from being unable to wield 2 handed weapons.I really have no way to accurately compare whether the higher riposte rate outweighs the higher AC/HP, I'll leave this up to others.
Crowd Control Abilities:
Lullaby of Shadows
BST:none
A Bard is not only able to offtank/tank at a level comparable if not superior to a BST they are also able to mez more than 2+ mobs.
A Beastlord is able to offtank while offtanking a secondary mob with a pet, draining his mana or his group healers mana keeping the pet alive, with the pets offtanking abilities giving greatly diminishing returns as the level of the mobs increase.
As a raidleader there is virtually no reason to include (comparably geared) a second Beastlord when compared to a second Bard, or even a second Bard when considering adding only one Beastlord, you get both greater utility,greater dps and as I said comparable if not superior tanking from choosing the Bard.As an exp group leader with less slots to fill and trying to achieve greater efficiency with fewer choices there is even less reason to choose a Bard over a Beastlord for the same reasons.
This post is not a plea to nerf Bards,I believe they are where they should be in the grand scheme of things, it is only when in comparison to Beastlords, a class which I believe is at the moment not fulfilling it's role, that they appear to be overpowered.I am simply using Bards (ability by ability) to point out the deficiencies of Beastlords.
In conclusion, from my perspective, Beastlords should become primarily focused on DPS with utility becoming the secondary role with debuffs/buffs/tanking staying the same and their melee dps increased to be comparable to that of an equivalently equipped Monk.The sad fact is when you come down to the very basics of the game nothing stacks better than DPS and it is much easier to tweak than adding or tweaking other aspects of our class.Both classes would then fill their own roles with greater emphasis on one side. Bards:UTILITY/dps Beastlords
PS/utility
Thank you for reading my long winded rant, point out the errors/inconsistencies I've made, flame me and add your own suggestions for the Beastlord class.
First of all I have to admit that I started my Beastlord long after I had abandoned playing my Cleric (Morak) at 65, I had the benefit of pleveling myself with that Cleric up through the lower levels and cannot give an accurate impression of those levels because of it.Most of my sugggestions will come from my experience at the raid level and because of that I strongly encourage Beastlords who have experienced the earlier levels, without the benefits I had, of posting what deficiencies they see.
At the raid level I see a class that is in need of a defining vision from the staff, primarily Wiz, of what they are supposed to be.I see this class primarily as being a utility/melee dps class but we seem to fill that role poorly.The one class I compare myself most closely to (perhaps erroneously) is the Bard class, one that in my opinion very clearly outclasses us, their melee dps comes close to ours and their non-melee dps very easily tops ours along with their buffs being of much greater use to the raid.
The comparisons I make below are from the perspective of a raid having to choose between a second Bard or a Beastlord.These our are most useful raid spells in comparison to the closest Bard equivalent:
Resists:
Psalm of the Four
Savagery
Savagery is the only resist buff we cast during raids and while it does stack with POT4 it only affects one melee (without duration effects/AA's) and has a very short duration while POT4 affects the entire raid and gives a huge permanent resist benefit while the Bard is alive.With two Bards this becomes even more plain because he can also sing the Blademaster song giving an entire group of melee a big ATK boost while also giving the entire raid the resist boost.
Mana Regen:
Spiritual Bliss
Lcea's Lament
Paragon of Spirit
Spiritual Bliss gives a solid 8 mana/hp a tick while Lcea's Lament gives a greater amount of hp/mana a tick with the raid also being assured of gaining an additional +5 mana per tick above the mana regen cap.Paragon gives 480 total mana after 6 ticks with a recast of 14 minutes.
ATK/HP buffs:
Spiritual Vigor
Blademaster
As has been said above Blademaster gives a very sizeable chunk of ATK to everyone in the group, SV gives 40 ATK to everyone in the raid and 225 HP, with a Paladin in the raid the HP buff is a small consideration as the majority of the raid will opt for the greater pure HP buff of the Paladin's SSS with only the diehard melee DPS clicking it to gain the benefits of SV.
Spell Damage Focus:
Cunning of the Beast
Relic:Fiery Warcry of Tarhyl
CoB gives 20% spell damage bonus while also giving -20% aggro, Warcry gives (from what I can see from the parser) 13% spell dmg bonus and an additional overhaste of 22%.These two buffs to me seem very nicely balanced with the bard giving less spell damage but offsetting that with overhaste and the BST giving 7% more spell damage but also 20% less aggro.
Slows:
Requiem of Time 40% (before singing mods?) 3 sec cast time, no recast, no mana cost, 1 min duration
Sha's Reprisal 50% 5.25 cast time (before hybrid innate spell cast haste),5 sec recast, 195 mana cost, 3 min duration.
During a raid both of these slows are merely used as a pre-slow before the shaman lands his own 55% (with mask,pre-archaic) slow, with innate hybrid spell haste they amount to the same cast time, the bard has no recast time, no mana cost and the duration (because it is a pre-slow) doesn't matter, by the time it wears off the Shaman will have slowed the mob.
Non-melee damage (base damage before focus/instrument mods)
Relic: Chant of Destruction 600 damage over 3 ticks, 3.5 cast time, no recast, decrease MR by 50
Ice Shard 450 base damage 3.2 cast time (before hybrid innate spell haste, after 1.? seconds) 30 second recast, no resist mod or resist debuff effect
The damage of Ice Shard is easily outclassed by Chant of Destruction, cast time is not a factor since bards can continue meleeing while "casting the song", subsequent castings of the Chant are more easily landed whereas Ice Shard has no resist mod, and no recast time for the Chant.The limitation of the Bard being able to only land 2 detrimental spells on the mob at once is offset by the Chant doing more DPS than Ice Shard alone along with his melee dps being equal (or close to) to a Beastlords also he can land 2 detrimental spells on 2 mobs at the same time when the songs are twisted/timed properly.The fact that this is a "Relic spell and should be better than a lvl 54 spell" should not be taken into consideration because a Beastlord of the same average raid time would (if he had access to relics) have the same chance of obtaining those Relics as the Bard.
Healing Focus:
Relic: Hymn of the Saviour
BST: none
8% "Divine Intervention" spell healing the person to full health, ??% percent healing bonus.
No Beastlord equivalent
Smaller Consideration, Tanking/Aux Tanking Abilities:
While I admit this comparison is only valid when both classes are exceptionally geared and both able to actually fill this role, at the endgame Bards have access to plate armor with much higher AC and higher +HP equipment and comparable aggro, while suffering from a higher riposte from being unable to wield 2 handed weapons.I really have no way to accurately compare whether the higher riposte rate outweighs the higher AC/HP, I'll leave this up to others.
Crowd Control Abilities:
Lullaby of Shadows
BST:none
A Bard is not only able to offtank/tank at a level comparable if not superior to a BST they are also able to mez more than 2+ mobs.
A Beastlord is able to offtank while offtanking a secondary mob with a pet, draining his mana or his group healers mana keeping the pet alive, with the pets offtanking abilities giving greatly diminishing returns as the level of the mobs increase.
As a raidleader there is virtually no reason to include (comparably geared) a second Beastlord when compared to a second Bard, or even a second Bard when considering adding only one Beastlord, you get both greater utility,greater dps and as I said comparable if not superior tanking from choosing the Bard.As an exp group leader with less slots to fill and trying to achieve greater efficiency with fewer choices there is even less reason to choose a Bard over a Beastlord for the same reasons.
This post is not a plea to nerf Bards,I believe they are where they should be in the grand scheme of things, it is only when in comparison to Beastlords, a class which I believe is at the moment not fulfilling it's role, that they appear to be overpowered.I am simply using Bards (ability by ability) to point out the deficiencies of Beastlords.
In conclusion, from my perspective, Beastlords should become primarily focused on DPS with utility becoming the secondary role with debuffs/buffs/tanking staying the same and their melee dps increased to be comparable to that of an equivalently equipped Monk.The sad fact is when you come down to the very basics of the game nothing stacks better than DPS and it is much easier to tweak than adding or tweaking other aspects of our class.Both classes would then fill their own roles with greater emphasis on one side. Bards:UTILITY/dps Beastlords
PS/utilityThank you for reading my long winded rant, point out the errors/inconsistencies I've made, flame me and add your own suggestions for the Beastlord class.
