Raids, pure melee, hybrids and dps

Nailed It.

So, how much of a Beastlords DPS is Melee, vs. Spells, vs. Pet?

I'm guessing their personal melee damage is actually much lower than mnk/rog/zer, and only by adding the fast cast/long recast spells and their pet do they make the top parses; so they need to grind melee, spell (DD and dot), AND pet AAs, as well as collect all of weapons, haste, spell focus, pets focus, etc. items. I wouldn't be surprised (but haven't checked) if they have the highest total AA count of any class.

Rangers/Pallys/SK's only need Melee/Spells (discounting SK pet) Mage/Necro only need Pet/Spells, but BL's need, and therefore gain the advantage of all 3 damage sources...

In hindsight, maybe BL's shouldn't have been given fast/instant nukes like rangers so they would have to choose between spell or melee damage in a given fight; but still have both be a viable option; stand back and cast like a mage(nuke)/necro(dot) mix; or close in and melee like a ranger(DW)/sk(pet)/pal(heals) mix.

Right now, there is no downside to their flexibility (AFIAK, my best BL is on a FTP account, 95/500aa's)

I'm not at level 100. Just a casual player that has taken many breaks over the years with a Beastlord as a main. I created my beastlord the day Luclin launched.

I find it ironic that Beastlords are getting so much attention now. We were basically nothing for the longest time. Weak heals. Weak slows. Weak buffs. Then, paragon came about and we were "needed." Those days are long gone. A few improvements here and there, but nerf-worthy? Wow. Never thought I'd see that day.

As someone else stated, classes have had their ups and downs since 1999. Remember when rangers would out agro everyone and then seem to die in two hits? Remember when warriors couldn't hold aggro to save their lives? Remember when Monks could tank raid bosses just as good, if not better, than warriors? Remember when there was seemingly not a mob that couldn't be solo'd by a necro? And, I don't even think this particular scenario comes close to those I just wrote about.

I don't understand this "pure melee should do everything better than a hybrid" line of thinking. Should a warrior out DPS a ranger? Should a shaman out DPS a beastlord? Tank better? C'mon. If you're going to use that logic, apply it across the board. Hybrids, for the majority of their careers are the best at nothing and fail miserably in many areas. It's the added challenge. Difficulty level, if you will. This was one of those reasons that originally, certain classes/races had experience penalties. Those combinations became very powerful later on, but you had to suffer through some rough times.

That being said, I suppose these days, those hard times aren't as noticeable because of mercenaries, power leveling, non-combat regen, skills raising 100x faster, etc...

The way I see it...Beastlords are weak in many areas. Quantity of skills does not beat out even one quality skill. Would you rather have a hundred dollar bill? Or five 10 dollar bills? So many people talk about the heals and the slows and whatnot, but in-game, they'd always rather have a shaman or a cleric for those things. Always. Sony had to give us something. They gave us a DPS boost(something that doesn't change group/raid positioning. DPS class is a DPS class, for the most part) after a VERY long time of mediocrity.

I posted this on beta a while ago when I was first invited, and it still holds true for the time frame and perfect 'Adps buffs'

Disclaimer: I'm aware certain classes are used to exceling on certain raids, for certain reasons, all of the information below is based on 'best possible' scenarios for the classes. Not real time.


I've done extensive testing personally. The only fix if the true intention is to finally balance 'all' dps...is to give a blanket balance, something like a new glyph that excludes certain things and buffs others so it's good for everyone really. Aside from that I'm at a loss...since we have no true response from developers as to who is supposed to be where and why, or not that I've read.

Assuming your lineup is the hypothetically set up tier set below.

Rogue/Berserker/Wizard/Monk;This is tier1 (aka pure classes, no pets, no hybrid qualities)
Ranger/Mage/Necromancer/Beastlord;This is tier2 (hybrids, have pets, hybrid qualities)
Enchanter/Druid/Shaman/Bard; This is tier3 (support tier, intended to be viable at both healing & dps but never excel)
Warrior/SK/Paladin/Cleric; This is tier4 (pure tank/healer tier, they tank...and heal.)

Assuming you want each tier to be a tossup, or in other words you want certain encounter mechanics and personal play to equal out what's actually happening in the game. I guess in absolute simplest terms any person vs any other person in their own tier should be constantly fighting to beat the others of their respective tier out.

As it stands currently:

t1 burn rooted (no push) = Rogue>Berserker>Mage>Wizard>Necromancer>Monk>Beastlord>Ranger
t1 burn not rooted (push) = Rogue>Wizard>Necromancer>Mage>Berserker>Ranger>Monk>Beastlord

t1 sustained (no push) = Rogue>Berserker>Necromancer>Mage>Wizard>Monk>Beastlord>Ranger
t1 sustained (push) = Rogue>Berserker>Necromancer>Wizard>Monk>Mage>Beastlord>Ranger

The result was Wizard>Mage>Necromancer>Enchanter on fights between 40-120s where after the 90s-120s mark statistics shift dramatically to Necromancer>Mage>Wizard>Enchanter for casters.

The result was Rogue>Berserker>Monk>Beastlord>Ranger on every fight where the mob was archery immune or perma-rooted on 60-180s marks. After 180s it's more or less a tossup between monk/beast/berserker for sustained damage until endurance becomes an issue.

The result was Rogue>Berserker>Beastlord>Ranger>Monk on every fight where the mob had push mechanics simulated between the 60s-120s mark, rangers drop off exponentially after bullseye drops and are always overtaken eventually by the other classes listed.

What we see clearly from simulations is Rog is #1 in every situation, Berserker/Mage/Wizard/Necro have a tossup for #2 slot depending on whether it's a 60s-120s fight vs 90s-180s or longer. Necromancers get higher on the parse the longer the fight (big suprise right?) While Beastlord/Ranger/Monk fall further behind the longer the fights. I hypothesize this to be a combination of low burst + movement.

What I mean is a mage/wizard/necro can swap targets and continue to dps forever, without little to no worry about sustained mana or moving. To a lesser degree a rogue can swap and still do the majority of their damage instantly, therefore negating having to move or in simpler terms, get behind the mob and backstab + spam key in order to maintain DPS. Classes like Beast/Monk/Ranger have no large instant burst ability to make up for the movement, nor can they effectively as a wizard/mage/necro attack from ranged without worry of losing DPS.

Berserkers suffer as well, but to a lesser degree as a large portion of damage is auto attack combined with a spam key that fires multiple 'burst' damage at 12-20s intervals.

It tends to be the trend that pure classes, or classes that have a way to exponentially refill resources (mana, endurance, harvest, etc) tend to be higher on the burn, and lower on sustained...whereas classes that don't have to manage resources (necromancer with infinite mana, rogues never needing to keep track of endurance) tend to be high on both burst and sustained within certain time constraints.

Also it's worth noting every top 5 class on every parse was there in situations where they have quick re-use abilities modified by longer re-use cooldowns or can sustain damage while moving, or have no need to stay mobile.

I.E. Rogue (backstab/massive strike) + Ruchu
I.E. Wizard/Mage (nonstop casting + no movement required) + Glyph

In closing I can't speak to t3 or t4 (listed at the top) as I didn't test them.

Tests were done with the current burn cycles and everything being sync'd to the best of my knowledge, which a large portion was not public.

With this being said none of the fights from HoT or VoA (the short 40s-150s burns) made it into this expansion thus far. It's a logistical and strategic difference in the design of fights that is making something appear to be wrong. When you're using to DPS'ing for 60 seconds at a time (oratory, windsong phases, CoB mini's) then classes like rogues and monks and zerkers get to disc every round, and have full buffs required to do maximum DPS every round.

When you get into a field of play like NTOV where you have maybe 1 dragon under 200s of a fight, you're talking about pure sustained damage. This is obviously going to be topped by the classes that have the two determining factors in their own control.

DPS = Number of spells/abilities you can use multiplied by the damage you can increase them by. Look at who run out of endurance, buffs, mana, and Adps buffs first? This is Rogues, Zerkers, and Monks...

Mages, Rangers, Beasts, Necros, Wizards all have ways to not only sustain high damage via things like pets, dots, low recast .5 sec cast nukes etc. They also have external and internal sources to refill the resources they diminish. If I as a ranger die, I get up...click rod, kiss...get a second spire, grab regen buffs + para and i'm once again sustaining only slightly lower DPS then I was before the death (negative haste from rez effects obviously) This is the same for all classes listed.

The problem is not with the classes, if there were still 40-60s burns, or fights where you had to kill mini's 5 times and these melee once again had the opportunity to burn multiple times inside of one raid instance, the disparity would be unnoticeable, as there really is no class disparity, only an encounter one.

You're on the EQ Forums as much as I am suspended from them...ALL TEH TIMEZ

Your taking it out of context. Pure melee as in a pure melee dps class should out dps a hybrid because the hybrid gets other abilities to make up for the dps they are lacking to catch up with the said pure melee dps class. Warriors should not be able to dps they are designed to tank. As for a shaman out dpsing a beastlord no that shouldn't happen either, and I am sure if it were the beastlords would be crying because shamans are about healing and enhancing those around them. So you see the real issue is that beastlords are supposed to be 1/2 monk 1/2 shaman, not 1/2 shaman and 2x monk because the devs have let monks fall so far behind in dps.

I'm getting a bit tired of these whining nerf X class posts. I'm sure most everyone else is too. Typing at the end of the post, Im not calling for a nerf, when you basically are doesn't fool anyone.

I'm not taking it out of context. You're applying only DPS here. I'm saying, look at the bigger picture here. Plus, pure melee classes get plenty of other things. Rogues get sneak/hide and poison making. Monks get a "good" FD(but I agree they need to be looked at). Berzerkers can snare, debuff, etc... with their throwing.

Also, when you say, "Pure melee as in a pure melee dps class should out dps a hybrid because the hybrid gets other abilities to make up for the dps they are lacking," I think you're wrong. What do we get that makes up for it? Heals that might buffer a cleric heal, maybe? Slows that get overwritten within seconds? Nukes that barely move the HP bar? C'mon man. Every single one of those things you think makes up for stuff is a ton of levels behind what our parent class has and does next to nothing against current content.

This is exactly why beastlords were given something. For years, we were never in any category. Weren't healers, tanks, crowd control, DPS, etc... We were just kind of there... We're now a DPS class and as many others have said who have actual parsed logs, we're almost never the top DPS'er, but we do show up in the top 10, and even then, it's due mostly to our burst and are mana dependent upon some of our sustained DPS. In a long fight, we're right where we should be.

Good BST vs bad MNK is pretty much the definition of a non-ideal situation.

That all said...more DPS for everyone plx. Boost others, not nerf the stars. Seriously. I love seeing someone do more damage than I do on a raid, it means we're that much more likely to win.

Just out of curiosity, how are monks performing in the group setting?

Yes, the thread seems to imply raids but classes are balanced globally around the entire content of the game. Also, monks were usually at a loss for dps due to their role as pullers. Since raids do not seem to revolve much around pulling as they used to due to all the scripting, and the pulling that gets done seems to fall to SK's quite a bit, monks are still left with the "takeith away" part of their dps so that they can excel at the pulling role. If monks are going to shift to a pure dps role, then what becomes of their pulling ability? Would they be comfortable with stagnation of their pulling ability which could effect group content in exchange for more dps? That is really the crisis for monks. They had a defined role before which probably allowed those who played monks to rationalize the fact that their dps was not as high as other pure melee and it didn't matter because they were either out of camp or flopped.Now they don't have to do that pulling role, and the realization is that monks now have all the time in the world to understand how much was given up just so they could pull.

So once again, content gets put in game without really thinking about what it is going to do to percieved
class balancing, parses etc. Beast Lords have found their niche as good sustained dps and will only get stronger as mob hit point counts get even more and more ridiculous. It might be even reasonable to say that with pure melee having to spend more effort in killing adds from scripts than any continuous focused efforts on the so called "boss" which is left to the long haul dps people like necros/ mages etc, you can't look at the same parse and draw any conclusions what so ever. People just are not doing the same job. Chasing adds and burning them down is not even the same sport, let alone the same ball park as maintaining a steady stream of rot on a boss, be it from a pet, archery, dots or a steady stream of well timed nukes. People just tend to get wrapped around what parsers say without thinking what everyone is really doing. They just see numbers that are bigger than theirs and then the jealousy/nerf calls/posts to these boards start to flow.

The thread blatantly specifies Raids lol. That said, the group side it is really hard to tell for a number of reasons.

1. People in groups are not always making an effort to max dps in the same way as raiders do in raids.
2. A lot of groupers slack off, a lot. A lot of people phone in groups, this is especially true in PUGs.
3. A lot of players today have a lack of understanding on how to best play their characters; this is present in some raid guilds to a lesser degree (senior members of a class will teach new recurits what they are doing wrong in good guilds).
4. Tying in with #3, a lot of players don't care about finding out how to play their toon at peak performance and get upset when you try to offer advice.

Though among the equally geared/AA'd/skilled/effort players in the group ranks, you will find that while the situation is not the mirror of the raid situation, you see the same situations play out in the group game, if to a slightly lesser extent.

Pulling has been dead in the raid game for a long time from what I hear; and it has stagnated in the group game for about as long to the point where now, anyone at all can pull singles in 95% of the the last several expansions. The zones which that was not the case generally weren't popular zones to group in anyway. Truth be told, good pulling has far more to do with the person behind the toon, than what pulling tools you have, the pulling tools just speed things up. For the record though, Mend and FD were the reasons our dps was lower back before Heals & FD came in a bottle along everyone having a Fade. There is pretty much nothing left for us to sacrifice, other classes already have similar or better tools & can do better DPS.

I cannot think of anytime in the whole of my playing EQ, that monks chose to "give up" DPS for more pulling tools, or even DPS being lessened because of our "role" as a puller. Back when they listed those roles pulling was always a secondary role, even when the Dev's listed it. We have always been primarily DPS with secondaries of puller and lite tank; all classes had a primary job and 2 secondary ones at the time those roles were given. We gave up nothing so that we "could pull" as mentioned above our lower dps was always attributed to Mend and FD, both of which have had their contributions minimalized to some degree due to what other classes have gotten and potions/drinks which have been added via TSs.

If people were only using scripted raid targets for the parses they were comparing your last part might have some validity. However, that is not the case. I know there are several people who parse a lot that have done comparisons in controlled settings where both toons were equivalently geared/AA'd/played at an equivalent level and they did the same "job"; the results were the same as what has been discussed here by the monks and others that have posted.

Well at least you got your post count to go up. Thank you very much for your very insightful input regarding the topic, it was much appreciated

This one was funny because it's from a rogue.

I have a very simple solution for you.


Log in, open your inventory, open up your first bag slot, in there should be a "play better" hat, equip it and your problem should be solved.

30 second mend.

Saying everyone has a fade is not yet true (beastlords don't, and the mage one is pretty restricted). It's only almost everyone. And some of those that do have it have a long recast timer.

Beastlords have playing opossum

As a monk you should KNOW that FD isn't the same thing as Fade. Especially a 90% FD with no secondary FD/fade ability to back it up.

But you have a heal bro! Like if you got dat aggro, just chain heal yourself till it comes up again. Hybrid!

Well by saying every class gets a fade except beastlords I assumed u were classifing fd as a fade. Since there are other classes that get fd and not a fade aswell. So was thinking you ment a way of loosing agro.