Quote:
Originally Posted by White_knight
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Beastlord's were the quintessential "grouping pet class" with all the perks you mentioned in your post...in addition with a bit of gear and a few AAs they could also tank general PoP Era group content okay.
Mages on the other hand we're the "utility/ burst damage pet class", more burst dps, nukes, coth, resist debuff and item summoning, would get smoked in melee range.
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Mages being "Burst" DPS was not really a thing as they got into the 50's, and wasn't very relevant during the earlier levels either, with how easy it was gear a melee character by Luclin era. Nor was the Beastlord some kind of quintessential grouping class (and if they were, exactly how would that be fair to Mages?). All of the Beastlord abilities, except for a couple of generic buffs at the high levels, were redundant if a Shaman was in the party. Both classes were just centered on doing DPS as a group role, with the Beastlord using melee instead of spells to supplement the Pet's DPS.
The tankiness and extra utility of the Beastlord in comparison to the Mage is what made the class feel quite unfair and overreaching on already existing territory. They were performing the same jobs for the usual group composition, but Beastlords didn't have to worry about being squishy and could provide damage mitigation (slow) and downtime healing, not to mention SoW, if it was needed for a more ragtag kind of party. Call of the Hero was more of a Raid thing for Mages; wasn't usually a relevant general group ability.