When are we getting beastlords?

[Jimjam]

I'd love to see berserker. I am entertained how SoE backfilled the vanilla planes, kunark and velious with berserker only armours; by this time GOD and OOW were out and far better tradable armours were available that were more easily attained. I wonder if anyone ever actually wore the 'vanilla' planar berserker armour.

I'd love to see a progression server where these classes are in from day 1!

[jolanar]

Remove horses, spire travel, and /trader at the bazaar (it can still be the trader hub), and new models and I would personally love Luclin. It has so much more to do for non raiders than Velious.

[pink grapefruit]

Let the clerics bash, I always say [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Thermite]

Can't lie it be like sick as hell to have a beast on p99 but we will never travel to the moon to find cats....[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Even though it was some of the best raid content ever!

[therealmd]

Paragon and their mana/hp regen line of spells was worth having them around.

[Zuranthium]

Beastlord as a concept is something that Rangers should have been able to do. The implementation of the class was dumb. They summoned a pet instead of going out into the wilds and taming one, and then they magically buffed up the animal such that it would do random magic attacks. Like, what? It makes no sense. A beastlord is not supposed to be He-Man or She-Ra, as fun and pretty as those characters and their animated cartoon transformations are.

The other random "unique" buffs the class got (in order to make them relevant for Raids) also made no sense. EQ designers had already even tried to do that with Rangers in Velious to make them relevant - a stackable attack buff to justify "needing" at least 1 of the class to be present for min/max purposes at a raid. Pay no mind that someone could just cast these buffs and then switch over to a different character...an inherent design flaw in having long-duration buffs with no downside in a game.

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.

[Videri]

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.

Hm!! Insightful points, as usual, Zuranthium. Perhaps the above reasons were why 14-year-old Tala was able to get a beastlord to level 23 (my highest level char back in the day). Beastlords have all the fundamental ingredients for making progress. I recently played a beastlord to 60 on TAKP and enjoyed it.

[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.

[Worry]

The devs of P99 HATE Luclin with a passion.

You'll never see any of the moon content on here.

A shame too, a lot better than Kunark.