When are we getting beastlords?

[White_knight]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The class was basically a big hand-out for the casual player base, and took away from some of the uniqueness of the Mage class. Want a super powerful pet, with very efficient pet heals, some other general healing capability, and some slows, and some buffs, and SoW, and melee capability too? Okay, now you've got it! Pretty much every easy-to-use mechanic in the game, rolled into one class.

Beastlords and Mages shared two main aspects:

1. a strong pet with associated buffs etc.
2. no CC capacity

Where they deviated is their 'play styles' aka they were two different type of pet classes.

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.


It's just a matter of perspective.

One of the funnest duo's I did for general kunark exploring was a beastlord + druid combo.....BY GOD YOU COULD DESTROY KUNARK CONTENT FOR AAs, it had everything.

Chardok was one of my favorite locations with the Druid DCing a doggie...the Beatlord Pet...the beastlords slow...the beastlord tanking...the beastlord pet dpsing...the druid DC pet dpsing...the druid healing and general CC works...

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by White_knight [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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.

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.