Agnarr - Beastlords

News of Mischief caught my eye the other day, and - after many years - I fired up EQ to poke around. I ended up on Agnarr since I loved that era of the game and I made a Beastlord. I've never played one before, so I'm learning (and re-learning EQ) on the fly.

My main question: is the class useful in this era to groups/raids? Or am I better off making a shaman (the class I spent most of my time on back in the day)?

I've tried to do my own research before posting this, but I've come across contradicting information. Some people say the BL is handy for everything (and can solo - bonus!) at 65; others say they're not worth the time investment during this era due to limited tools and abilities.

BL is fine PoP locked at 65.

What a dumb response. Was that intended to be funny?

I haven't played in the raid game in years, but from what I've read on here, Beastlords and Mages have some issues when raiding bosses with the MOTM affect. Essentially, the hate generated from your pet is passed to you during those fights. This can cause both classes to draw unwanted attention.

Outside of that, and I think it may be less of an issue with Beastlords than mages, they're fantastic in this era. With some gear they can tank, have great utility and are wanted in groups and raids.

Bsts are great if you play attentive and are not on auto pilot. Take your pet proc off in the beginning of a raid fight and throw it on later because of the agro generation. Don't use Spirit of Snow because it does NOT de agro your pet. Your dots are valuable still. your instant ice nukes are valuable still and have 2 different timers. If you have maximum mana regen from all sources you can do some silly damage

I LOVE beastlord. They are one of the most self sustainable classes and can solo very easily. They have a lot to do in groups & solo. Raiding as a beastlord is an aggro management challenge. Beastlord generate an insane amount of aggro and don't have any natural de-aggro tools. If you go ham on DPS, you can do a lot of damage but you're going to pull aggro and die. So, raiding you often may feel stunted.

Otherwise, you're basically expected to be a fero bot. It's super valuable dps for the raid, but some people don't like feel like a one trick pony on raids.

It's a super fun class imo. I will say there are a LOT of beastlord on the server, it's a popular class.

leave the pet proc on and use a NON-STUN one (aka go farm the spell?) ;-) beastlords are very nice in that era...

Use https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=2639 on raids and you won't get aggro unless you go nuke/dot crazy