So I listened to the recent podcast concerning the new expansion and honestly I am going to start a Beastlord ALT.. but I have, as many of you, poured much time and effort into building my Conjuror. Players usually stay with this class only if they really like the concept, much like the mage in EQ1. I doubt I will ever have another character at 90, I'm just very specific on what I like. From what I understand the Beastlord will be the "best" pet class and much will be done to insure it is. In addition Beastlords will have a skill tree for their pets? At least that is what was infered in the podcast. I'm not sure what to think of this since the Conjuror is strongly linked to their pet and in my opinion there should be further customization provided, including skill upgrades, for the Conjuror pet as well. This seems to be a bluring of class roles, Conjuror's will have to compete with another hybrid DPS class that also has pets and aparently might even have stronger pets it seems. Thoughts?
Playing the BL class in beta has given me the opinion that everyone will need to make and try the BL before you can make judgements on how they will play. Only time will tell how they will change the class dynamics because it will all depend on players and it's not something that can be tested in a beta setting.
People on my server were creating characters and getting to 90/300 in a single day. Even without bonus xp, expect to see a lot of 90/300 beastlords in less than a week. I have every class at 90 with several at 300AA , i will make one and whoop it up to 90 as long as my RaF holds out.
Beastlords have plate mitigation, do more damage, and have melee autoattack and 0.24 Autoattack modifer, there pet does almost as much damage as yours, and by switching stances they can refill the groups mana. All I can say is.... Lol!
Talathion@Antonia Bayle wrote: The bold part of the above quote is false. The warders themselves do not do a lot of damage compared to the beastlord (around 15-20% of the total DPS). The majority of the beastlord damage comes from advantages and tactics, which do require working with your warder to use. Those abilities are attributed to the beastlord, not the pet.
Following the original post, I do feel that both summoner classes should get a specialty point system similar to beastlords. Currently all of the "families" of warders gain specialty points as they level (up to 35, with a total of 40 after special quests). Those can be assigned independently to each of the family trees to enhance abilities of each one. The "endlines" of these trees are special abilities the warder gives the beastlord (which require working with the warder to execute). The beastlord pets themselves are not stronger or more sturdy. At least as of the most recent beta build, the pets lack survivability compared to summoner pets. The entire class requires coordination between the beastlord and warder to obtain the best results. Without the warder, the beastlord has very, very few triggerable abilities (I would say around 5-6 combat arts). Basically, the warder spots weaknesses (i.e. a passive proc), which allows the beastlord to execute special advantage abilities. As the beastlord and pet work together, the beastlord gains savagery. That savagery is used in turn to execute more powerful abilities. The entire concept is interesting, but the class requires quite a bit of interaction to maximize their potential. You can't just send your pet in and spam the spam the CA's over and over without paying some amount of attention.
