TLP Veterans - a mini beastlord survey

I've long known I would play a beastlord on Aradune. I've kind of just been twiddling my fingers with my other characters as I wait until Luclin's release. I had a few questions as I narrow down my choices for the beastlord.

What server did you play on? Please feel free to list all of the TLPs you've done.

For the first two months of Luclin's release, what race were most of the "serious" beastlords ? AKA the raiding ones, ones who actually make it to max level and weren't alts.

After about a year plus, what races did you most often see from these raiding beastlords?

If you played a beastlord as your main on a TLP, why did you choose that race?


Back when Luclin released, I remember a huge percentage of beasts tended to be vah shir. That ratio tended to stay the same even in the upper levels. Barbarians (I guess because of the wolf) also seemed to be very popular, followed by ogres (stun I imagine), then iksar, then trolls.

And yes, I fully understand that race doesn't make much difference in the long-run and that gear more than covers most racial differences. I'm just not a fan of playing the same thing as everyone else and don't want to spend $20 to race change a few months down the road.

Well you want an ogre for the frontal stun immunity. But play whatever race you like. 90% of all the people that jump on the beastlord bandwagon end up quitting Seen it on Phinny and Coirnav. Beastlords are great in group content but because you really don't have an aggro dump you mostly just savagery the real DPS and MGB Mana Regen and Paragon.

)Yep, I know about their roles and am totally fine with it. I appreciate the heads up, though. I played one as my main (Luclin-SoF) until switching to a berserker. It was a choice between the two classes and I decided I'd go the beast route for Aradune.

Fippy, Phinny, Mangler.

Ogre. The best players on these servers typically pick ogre if their class can be ogre.

Ogre and Iksar.

Did not.

In my experience troll and iksar are probably the least played beastlord race. Troll being the least played by far.

Vah shir and ogre seem to be the most popular

How I wish alligator warders still existed.

So few people play Troll Beastlords i didn't even realize this had changed.

As far as which race to go Ogre best race.

Personally i'd roll Barb and rock a Polar Bear pet.

phinny from luclin till now. the minmaxers will tell you ogre due to the stun immunity, i started as a barbarian though, and never felt i was missing something without frontal immunity. since my wife was a we druid and i wanted to be a good race too for the hassle at druids rings etc. that said i liked to be different as well.
the most played are prob ogre/vahshir - iksar - barb - troll.that said, having the ac bonus from iksar makes it my favorite by far. As a beast i get hit, a lot. i still try to help slowing everything on inc, so it's pretty common for me to get a few hits in before the tanks pick up.
1 other reason i picked the barbarian is simply because the white puppy gets you all the ladies. win in my book.

ps. dont worry much about race, after pop most will have disappeared anyways since raiding as a beastlord in those expansions sucks balls. in group we rock with all the utility we bring, but in raiding for all the stuff we can do, there's another class that can do it better. apart from SE, paragon and ferocity. ( i made some fun with ferocity, had a set up with 5 hotkeys, in which i added the 5 dps i'd give fero to, and added some weird message to it as well.from song texts, to guild gossip, to gnome recipes, you name it, i did it).
stick to it though, we only get better and better over the expansions. ( we even get group ferocity and haste after a while, omg omg ). on phinny we're now in eok and i am now competitive dps, still valued for my utility in groups and in raids, and with my pet even an offtank for stuff if needed in raids.

Having mained a BST for past 2 years on TLP. Coirnav - Selo(currently), Luclin - Secrets of Faydwer is just awful on a BST you have alot of utility and can pull some respectable numbers when geared but the way TLPs go you end up starting to see the majority of beastlords quitting around GoD/OoW because of how mind numbing it is to constantly be just "utility" and the mentality of alot of people in this era is "you are a beastlord give me paragon and fero stop rolling on my hdex gear". After SoD though BSTs become real strong and can actually start pulling numbers in raid and once you get group fero you just hit tranquil blessing and forget about it for half an hour. The majority of bsts ive seen raiding on selo all end up being vah shir and me personally im a vah shir bst as well i just feel that vah shir are the best lorewise fit for a BST.

I am doing the same. I am just lvling up toon on another account to buff my BL and PL him. Oh and a mage for the awesome pet weapons and bags. Also as for raiding. Having a role of any kind beats some classes having none at all.

I will see you in Luclin, then, brother !

If a class can be Ogre then its probably the best race for it, thats just true across the board.

I think the only secondary worth talking about is Iksar for the extra AC..

Otherwise, its flavor - Vah Shir are terrible cause they look stupid when they run (don't even get me started on bard speed Vah Shir's who end up in the "bugged" stance and look like they are shuffling their feet back and forth lol). Id say Barb > Troll > Vah Shir.

I would warn you that Beastlord are a rough class to play for Luclin and PoP if you are raiding, they are great in groups and solo. In a raid they tended to be the lowest of the DPS classes, their utility is outclassed by shaman, they are REALLY high aggro with no means to control it (motm doesn't help), and Monk's get really annoyed when you compete with them for weapons.

They get a healthy power boost in Gates of Discord with the pets crit AA's and DoT crits. Give them pet proc weapon and it make a huge difference.

I appreciate the warning. Even through rose-tinted glasses, I still vividly remember my key role in PoP was "Ferocity please" over and over. I still enjoy the class, though. Masochist, maybe.

I play on phini and im the king of all of the beastlords on EQ.

Vah shir is the best race, we get safe fall which will save you when you're staring at a bunch of people in one area while jumping off a mountain.
Sneak is also really nice when wanting to do some quests without having to grind the faction and a great way to turn in quests later on and not agro a whole room.

Beastlords and mages alike are busted due to motm. It gets better in PoP if you're tanks arent trash, but until ldon hits you will be dieing a lot in raids.

As far as dps goes the class can be as good as you play it. I can top 10 parse in my guild and have been doing so for a long time.

I've only hit #1 in Prophecy of Ro and Solteris xpac

How to be a good Beastlord on TLP
1. Keep Ferocity on the DPS.
2. MGB Paragon when your raid leader calls for it.
3. Coordinate #1 and #2 with other Beastlords.
4. Tell other Beastlords they suck and should re-roll for not doing #1.

That's literally all you have to do. Every TLP there's a swarm of terrible Beastlords when Luclin opens, because everyone wants to pretend that they're a DPS class with their stupid cats. Because of this, the people that quit every TLP by GoD will think your class sucks.

Races
Vah Shir: Their only positive is that their origin is extremely nice during Luclin. This benefit is immediately lost upon PoP opening.
Barbarian: No benefits at all.
Iksar: AC + Regen is nice.
Troll: Regen is nice but Iksar is better.
Ogre: Frontal stun immunity is nice.

Great information to hear, I appreciate it. I was a bit bored, so I decided to do a small experiment. Sorry in advance to those it might bore.

I ultimately (because I've had time as I twiddle my thumbs waiting for Luclin) created a ranking system for myself to rank each race. For those interested, here was my system:

Two scores over 5 categories. First system: A 5 if the best, 4 if second best, all the way to 1 for worst. That score then averaged out and multiplied by 20 (so it could be ranked by a 100 point scale). The end results of this system were:
Iksar: 76
Troll: 68
Ogre: 64
Barbarian and Vah Shir: 48

Second system was ranked off of a weighted 100 point scale, where 100=Perfect // 90=Best or second // 85=second or third or average // 80=below average //75=terrible or worst.
Troll: 87.4
Iksar: 85.8
Ogre: 84.4
Vah Shir: 83.8
Barbarian: 81.8

These two scores were then averaged to come up with a final ranking to consider the top two. The five categories for each system were warder looks, character race looks, starting stats (averaged STR, DEX, AGI, STA, WIS), racial stats (ie regen, etc), and most played (where being the most played race is seen as a detriment).
Iksar: 80.9
Troll: 77.7
Ogre: 74.2
Vah Shir: 65.9
Barbarian: 64.9

Reasoning for the two different scoring methods? I wanted the 5-4-3-2-1 scoring to exclusively show what was best and worst in my opinion. The problem it is is that a 5 might be a star, but 4-3-2 could be extremely close and not reflect how close they were.

The other system has a weighted approach, so if there is a trait that I really appreciate or dislike, it can receive an appropriate ranking. The problem is that unlike the 5-4-3-2-1 system, is that sometimes you end up scoring different races the same and it doesn't separate them.

Unique scores: Vah Shir and Trolls earned the only 100's on the weighted ranking system. Vah Shir for their warder looks&animation, the Troll earned a 100 for being the rarest played race (which to me I appreciate).

The Vah Shir also earned the lowest ranking for being the most heavily played, while the barbarian did too for having the racial features I was least interested in.

So, needless to say, it has helped me narrow my choices down to an iksar or troll. The troll earning big scores for being the least played, high melee starting stats, and 2nd best looking warder. The iksar earing big scores for being the best looking race, having my favorite racial traits, and never really scoring low on any rankings.

The barbarian ranking surprised me, because it is what I chose and played originally for my beast when they first came out (and for multiple expansions)


============================================================
The raw stats (no offense to the races out there that I might have scored low)
Warder looks & fight animation
Barbarian:===85%===2
Iksar:=======85%===3
Ogre:=======75%==1
Troll:========90%==4
Vah Shir:=====100%==5

Player looks and animation
Barbarian:===80%== 3
Iksar:=======90%== 5
Ogre:=======85%== 4
Troll:========75%== 1
Vah Shir:=====80%== 2

Starting Stats (based off the actual stat numbers)
Barbarian:===89%== 3
Iksar:=======84%== 2
Ogre:=======97%== 5
Troll:========92%== 4
Vah Shir:=====84%== 2

Racial Stats
Barbarian:====75%== 1 (Slam, Faction)
Iksar:========90%== 5 (Regen, Forage, AC)
Ogre:========85%== 4 (Stun, Slam)
Troll:=========80%== 3 (Regen, Slam)
Vah Shir:======80%== 2 (Faction, Sneak, Safefall)

Played:
Barbarian:=====80%=== 3
Iksar:=========80%=== 4
Ogre:=========80%=== 2
Troll:==========100%=== 5
Vah Shir:=======75%=== 1

you forgot wood elf

Not available for TLP servers I believe until much later. Could be wrong.