Has anyone heard about or know of any changes that they are planning to make to the class to get it back on Par with other T1 dps in raids? I like the class and I do reasonably well in grps and raids if I have healers that know how to keep pets alive. But after just getting back into playing the class the changes to pet damage and the lack of scaling abilities / temps to accommodate the ToV changes have me wondering if I should delete it and free up the character slot or do like most bruisers do and wait for changes to swing back into the classes favor.
It's already swung into swashies' favor. Try a brig, we have the same general build but have to reforge an extra 55 ae from the stats you get to keep...
I just really do not know how to reply to this other than no raiding guild worth a hoot is actively looking for beastlords or swashbucklers. Of the 7 scout classes, 5 of them can find a spot on a raiding roster, where the other 2 are not really needed at all. Both of these classes need to be looked at, but any suggestions that are made get ignored. At least a swashbuckler has the option to go brigand, but beastlords have no way out of the corner they are in, because they cannot betray to a more desired class like a swashbuckler can.
Bls are on par with T1 dps in raids, if played right. it's just that they don't really offer much else anything that just about all the other T1s have to offer.
Hi, I'm a bard, and I'm wanted in every group in a raid. Hi, I'm predator, I offer high DPS and some debuffs. Hi, I'm a brigand, I offer desired debuffs and nice DPS. Hi, I'm a swashbuckler, I offer debuffs that are not as desired like a brigand, but I can bring nice DPS like the brigand. Hi, I'm a beastlord, I offer high DPS, but the player has to be skilled to keep up with the predators.
We need Koko to come in here and talk about beastlords - I'll tell him to post here when I see him online later in game. As for Swashbucklers... Yeaaaaa I'm like the only end-game swash who didn't betray or roll assassin post-Aeralik. I'm not gonna say we're worse off than Beastlords, but the 55 AE auto is pretty easy to give up in terms of betraying: better debuffs raids want, better utility support, BETTER DPS... The only thing you lose from betraying Swash to Brigand is Reach.... That's it, everything else goes up.
Ok so this thread obviously got derailed. But i'm thinking of dusting off my BL and would like some feedback. Please point this back on track and discuss. Are BL even viable. If i bust butt are BL even good enough to be taken seriously in any high end raid guild? Or are they such a broken class i should find something else to do with my time?
It's strange when BL were released, relatively recently, they were top dps and could switch stance and offer utility while being T2 dps. As a ranger I was quite disheartened seeing a class be as good or better at dps in one stance and an ok healer/power regen utility in another, while my secondary stance did nothing. What's happened during ToV to change that?
I forget the details exactly, but the prestige MA-DPS swapping shafted my melee dps big-time, and ruined my fun of using the left-side spec. In raid, pets dying to AOEs when they shouldn't have been, pets taking too long to summon, Savagery taking too long to get to Savagery 6, Savagery draining too fast, low armor mitigation (less than ranger it seemed), low 2.5% health debuff, and continuous sporadic primal ability lag all ended up being a huge hassle for me specifically. Some of the issues were partially fixed, but too little, too late.
Nothing happened, which is the core problem. At every expansion other classes were given significant improvements. Beastlords were given fluff. Then stat changes happened that significantly boosted other pet classes, but those changes didn't significantly impact BL because the BL's pet never did generate significant amounts of DPS. Other DPS classes caught up to and then passed the BL. Worse than loosing the ability to do T1 damage, the whole buffing line of abilities doesn't scale appropriately with the statflation we've undergone so the whole spiritualist line is useless in current content. So while a BL can be a bad DPS they are a worse utility than a merc. I don't know what to do to fix things. Honestly there is so much that needs to be addressed due to years of neglect I can see why dev doesn't want to even start. Its daunting.
I think a boatload of Swashbucklers, a pack of Beastlords, and a troupe of Troubadours need to go up to SoE with blades, fangs, and fiddles respectively and shake them angrily. At least in the case of Beastlords, they need to demand some Pot/DPS offensive utility and AoE prevention on their pets. The premiere pet class has been reduced to simple not-that-nostalgic nostalgia trophies.
Premier pet class? Summoners are chopped liver I see. And it seems that a lot of issues sprung up when devs decided to make stats 100000000000. That may have been a mistake, you think? I mean I get that stats will naturally get larger, but the past few expansions have been *insane.* Aside from the scaling issues, *so* many AAs have been made useless by it.
really, the state of the BL is simple, they just need -something- to bring to the raid other than just dps (and their like 2.2% max hp debuff), their dps is just fine
I guess the dps is ok ... but tbh the only reason they were wanted on raids was b/c they bought stellar dps and left the others in the dust ... without that ... then .... we have what we have now.
The last time I cared about my BL summoners in equivalent gear were doing x4 the DPS he was. Rangers were only doing slightly more, unless the mob made me move and then the ranger pulled ahead. Enough mobs did large AoEs that would insta-kill the pet that some fights I was doing less than a 3rd of my normal DPS. For all that inconvenience, I should of been able to be a little ahead of a ranger on easy fights. BL was designed to be a straight DPS or a tier 2 DPS with some tricks. Now its tier 2 DPS or tier 3 DPS with very sad little tricks. I suppose if you got rid of the 2 stances and combined the best of both it might...still be tier 2 DPS without the usefulness of decent debuffs/buffs/heals. Absolutely nothing unique that a raid would call for, and still not good enough to replace any other class. A some of the problem with BL is what makes it unique. The whole waiting for the paw to light up so you can do your special BL attack means you can't time those abilities. The BL bar gets used a lot. The whole guessing game of when you'll be able to use it gets in the way of using it. If you get too into waiting for it your not mashing enough other buttons. If your focusing on using the other abilities while you wait for it to come up you miss a few seconds you could of used it...and that could of cost you another proc. This isn't horrible, but as other classes have reliable rotations they follow. BL just doesn't lend itself to that sort of play. Considering that scouts are getting a lot more ability reuse/renewal I think its become even more clunky.
just cause you playing a summoner did more dps than you playing a BL, doesn't mean that a BL does less dps than a summoner
