The beastlord situation - balancing requests

[Wesell]

I do not see it as overpowered in the least. I doubt that they would give such a class dual weild or monk level melee weapons. What they could have would be improved melee caps, defense caps, and Wiz willing, some of the BST stances.

The shaman class would benefit from being able to wear MNK/BST armor. Shaman would probably lose chain, which would make Chain easier to balance as it would nto be scattered all over the stat board. It would add a second wisdom seeking class to leather armors. Shaman already lack access to some common caster/priest centric items, and already appear with the hybrid/dps classes on several more items.

Spell wise, you remove the shaman pet, add in the BST pet, MAYBE the BST pet proc, and the three spell lines SB, SV, and CotB.

I have no idea what would be required to convert current BST into shaman... it may well be impossible. However, I am sure that a Vah Shiresque message about being unable to choose beastlord as a class is not out of the question.

Essentually, you get a standard shaman of today with a tougher pet, 3 more buffs, and little bit more melee ability/survival. That melee ability would be severely tempered by the need to canni/torpor, esspecially torpor, so I fail to see where it is too overpowering. Unless they are going to give them the wtfpwn hammer, I doubt shaman melee dps would even be on par with clerics. Maybe they would consider giving shaman bash to compensate for the loss of Dual Weild, as several already have the racial slam.

Otherwise, I fail to see how you are going to make a DPS slot class out of 20 level old spells of the DPS aenemic shaman lineup without putting in special damage increment and affliction enchancement items of insane numbers.

Whoa, lets not forget that for a good chunk of the game the beastlord is a fair melee DPS class with good secondary tanking capability via the pet. What about everybody who wants to play a beastlord?

 

[AoiMasamune]

What about everybody who wants to play a beastlord?

*raises his hand* Aye, like me.


Talking about removing the beastlord class doesn't seem very helpful in a thread about fixing the beastlord class either.

 

[Glamrin]

what I tried saying is that the shaman is pretty ok as he is.. its a well defined class and it works as it is atm. sure I miss groupheals.. and yes they have added slows in to every class these days so he isnt only slower anymore, but his definition as slower, debuffer, healer or dps is easily there.. he can do any or all of it.. for dps he has 2 dots that runs for a bit above 800 dmg per tick, one that runs for 400 per tick with savagery on. add to that all crit chances and the initial dd's of the spells and you have a class that can pull off (2000/6=) 333 dps to (2000x1.25=) 416 dps (+dd parts which add even more).. with cani, heals and debuffs and slows added to that the shaman is fine as is.

the beastlord isnt.

 

[Thinkmeats]

BTW, I was not kidding when suggested merging the two classes of Shaman and Beastlord into the same Class.

We can't really do this for a variety of logistical reasons.

 

[ryutakin]

9. beast illusion... illusions you into a beast (makes you look like your pet), gives some nice functions maybe some of the ones mentioned above, maybe higher atk or why not make this pretty much a copy of enchanters giantkin spell however illusion is beast pet instead and making it self targetable only?

What is the staffs opinion on this?

 

[Tempus]

What is the staffs opinion on this?

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I support and changes that center more around the "beast" theme of the class and less around the "shaman-lite" part of the class.

 

[Aaubert]

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I support and changes that center more around the "beast" theme of the class and less around the "shaman-lite" part of the class.

agreed.

if beast pets are dying too quickly to AEs, could they be given a spell-rune proc that goes off when they make successful attacks?

I know that theres a rule that hybrids don't get relics. why not break it?

 

[Enlityn3]

agreed.

if beast pets are dying too quickly to AEs, could they be given a spell-rune proc that goes off when they make successful attacks?

I know that theres a rule that hybrids don't get relics. why not break it?

I'd be interested in seeing that.

In general I think it would be nice to see beastlords slightly more beast-ish.

 

[Glamrin]

after the last changes to beast and magician pets, keeping the beast pet alive isnt really a big issue.. a beast has an easier time to keep his pet alive from ae's than a magician does. The pet dps output is lower over the board compared to the magician pet though and more importantly and worse, the pet dps goes down more when the lvl of the mob goes up, than other pets (ie it becomes less useful when you reach higher tiers in the raidgame... in simple English so it cant be missunderstood: it does better dps on trash in say Thaz than on Nameds in same zone (compared to magician and necromancer pets))

and yes I cannot but agree with tempus that any changes that focuse more on the beast aspects are changes I would like to see. The suggestion with a spell that turns you into a beast is one I personally think would be perfect.

 

[robopirateninja]

If I were you, I would think out hybrid relics a little bit more than "let's do it" before I suggested it. I imagine that part of the reason it's met with such resistance is that every suggestion I've ever personally seen was either laughably overpowered or just a blanket "give us relics"

A well-thought out plan for 2 or 3 relics per hybrid class, or even the full five, with a description of what they would do and how they would work would be a lot more constructive, imo.

In terms of a beastlord, A relic pet, a relic pet proc, and maybe some other kind of pet buff would fit pretty well.

I'm really not familiar enough with the spell lineups on other hybrids to offer suggestions that would be balanced, but hopefully this will spur some idea from someone, maybe enough for its own thread?

 

[Allielyn]

agreed.

if beast pets are dying too quickly to AEs, could they be given a spell-rune proc that goes off when they make successful attacks?

I know that theres a rule that hybrids don't get relics. why not break it?

I always figured it wouldn't be overpowering to give hybrids 1 relic in conjunction with casters getting 1 archaic.

But I don't see it happening. Hybrids still get all sorts of great upgrades.

 

[ryutakin]

I can't say this enough that hybrids getting relics is such a terrible idea. The beast pet can easily be given an upgrade without giving out relics to mess things up

 

[Dzillon]

Gladis' suggestion about upgrading spells is interesting ; it's true that venom of the snake is 39 for shamans, plague really lacks interest, ice shard has the harsh recast...At the same time envenomed bolt & the shaman nukes seems overpowered.

BTW I just noticed the changes to Ice Shard and Venom of the Snake in the parser. I'd like to try them but Ihave no time right now. Just how is the new Harsh of Winter recourse ? is it similar to Sidrav's Plagueshock ? (dmg increase for 3 ticks) and if yes does it stack? or does it just work on Ice-based spells ?
The new Venom of the wild sounds really interesting, but the mana cost is pretty huge

 

[AoiMasamune]

BTW I just noticed the changes to Ice Shard and Venom of the Snake in the parser. I'd like to try them but Ihave no time right now. Just how is the new Harsh of Winter recourse ? is it similar to Sidrav's Plagueshock ? (dmg increase for 3 ticks) and if yes does it stack? or does it just work on Ice-based spells ?
The new Venom of the wild sounds really interesting, but the mana cost is pretty huge

Wait... what?

EDIT: Nm, figured it out by retracing your steps. Nifty.

 

[Thinkmeats]

The test spells are my little toys, I'll be tagging some beastlords to play with them in xp groups and in parses on raids. By the by, they aren't meant to fix anything past the "beastlords have no use for their mana" problem, so nobody start in about shaman lite or w/e :toot:

 

[Glamrin]

any and all attempts at solving parts of the current problems are very welcome tm and thanks for looking into it

 

[ryutakin]

Thanks much for trying to help TM you are appreciated for your efforts

I like the way to the dot works but the nuke seems to be iffy to ice shard idk

Much Love

 

[Dzillon]

Don't get confused by my previous post , my bad it's not replacing existing spells but potential new spells (that I would personally LOVE to see in )
I think that's the way to go if pet doesn't get beefier.

 

[soba]

I like the way to the dot works but the nuke seems to be iffy to ice shard idk

Well it's slightly lower damage but has no recast and a lower cast time from what I can see.This spell also seems to land some sort of +dmg mod to the mob similar to the Sidrav proc, any info on this? Just from what I can see from the parser I would say it definitely needs a resist mod added to it.From what I can see of BST's near or above Rakeel's tier CHA is still a forgotten stat when making hybrid (and especially pure melee) items, a resist mod is really needed on this spell.This would really be more of a bandaid to fix an itemization problem however, I'd rather see an across the board addition of CHA to melee/hybrid items.If the resist mods (none) stay the same and the resist rate is the same as Ice Shard/Venom of the Snake it will most likely be relegated back to "spells I never cast."

Also what is the cast time for these two spells when adding in the hybrid spell cast speed bonus?

Beyond the criticism of the spells I have to give a big kudos to TM for making these attempts to fix the problem .

 

[Thinkmeats]

Well it's slightly lower damage but has no recast and a lower cast time from what I can see.This spell also seems to land some sort of +dmg mod to the mob similar to the Sidrav proc, any info on this? Just from what I can see from the parser I would say it definitely needs a resist mod added to it.From what I can see of BST's near or above Rakeel's tier CHA is still a forgotten stat when making hybrid (and especially pure melee) items, a resist mod is really needed on this spell.This would really be more of a bandaid to fix an itemization problem however, I'd rather see an across the board addition of CHA to melee/hybrid items.If the resist mods (none) stay the same and the resist rate is the same as Ice Shard/Venom of the Snake it will most likely be relegated back to "spells I never cast."

As a counterpoint, none of this is really applicable or even terribly sensical (you'll see why after more details about the spells, which you folk plumbed out of spell_us.txt, are released). It's not my fault that the parsers you use got the :dumb: and can't tell what the spells are doing. I hadn't even wanted to announce them in here until I got to do some tests :toot: