Bst Job adjustment manifesto concerns and questions.

[Gotterdammerung]

# Vision
Charmers (not necessarily the kind that would buy you a drink at the local tavern) and masters of animal communication that tame feral beasts and call them forth as pets to aid in combat and provide support to their allies.

We plan to broaden the range of monsters that beastmasters can coax into becoming their pets. Furthermore, we'd like to see beastmasters shed their reputation as lone wolves by endowing their pets with more abilities that provide assistance to party members.


# Example Adjustments

* A new ability to call forth pets that, like the avatars Odin and Alexander, immediately use their characteristic ability then disappear.
* Adding more pet-specific abilities.
* Revising the effects of the Familiar ability.

I have no complaints about this announcement about bst. Most of it was pretty vague and could therefore turn out perfect or horrible. So mainly i just had questions and concerns about it.

My first question is pertaining to the flavor text.

We plan to broaden the range of monsters that beastmasters can coax into becoming their pets.

This sounds like it is referring to charmable monsters. But could be referring to an expanded jug list. Can you clarify?


My next concern is regarding this,

Furthermore, we'd like to see beastmasters shed their reputation as lone wolves by endowing their pets with more abilities that provide assistance to party members.

If you are adding onto what a bst can bring to a party then this is fine with me.
BUT if you are considering taking away a bst's ability to solo, I am against this new direction. And the majority of the bst community will be as well.



as for

* Revising the effects of the Familiar ability

its a good idea. The 2 hour is somewhat lacking. However i would ask you to try to add onto the current ability, not simply replace it. There is a thread in the bst forums with several good ideas on the topic.


On the topic of

* Adding more pet-specific abilities.

, this statement is encouraging but generic. New pet specific abilities could mean literally anything.
My concern here is that they will be mostly useless like spur (for those that dont play bst, spur is like a meditate that takes a minute to work and only adds 10-20 tp to a pet who can't ws at 100% like everyone else but has to wait for a command that is on an incredibly long timer. lol).
Please consider the actual value of the pet specific command. Also spoilers asap would be wonderful.


And lastly, on this

* A new ability to call forth pets that, like the avatars Odin and Alexander, immediately use their characteristic ability then disappear.

Since u chose the words "new ability" i assume this is NOT a new function of familiar but a seperate ability altogether.

My concern on this ability is,
Jugs are expensive. 9-12k for a single dipper on my server. As it stands, bst can currently only have 1 PET OUT AT A TIME.

If this rule of 1 pet stands then the temporary pets would not become available until our charmed pet or jug pet was released.

This would make the new ability very frustrating and nonfunctional.

Please consider allowing these "special pets" to be summoned WITH our current pet out. And if their characteristic ability is a BUFF, please consider allowing that buff to also affect our current pet.

If it is not set up that way it will be very bad to have to dismiss your pet (wich is either a tank or a large source of ur DPS) at cost only to use the new JA, then after the animation recall your permanent pet (who will now be behind the hate curve if it was being used as a tank). Especially if this is a reasonable recast ability.



If you are looking for more ideas for abilities the bst forums is mostly full of useful ideas based around functional problems of the class.
Short list is:
Bring charm back
Allow pet TP moves to chain with at least the master if not everyone.
Allow pet jugs and items to bundle or 99stack
Stock more selections in the NPC shops
Allow jug pets to zone.
Make the pet "fight" exclusively what you tell it to fight.
Allow pet to maintain its own claim as it is a seperate entity (1 claim for master + 1 claim for pet)
Carefully consider final lvl 99 jug pet availability and selection.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

For those who don't play bst and those who seem to not know otehrwise. Spur is nothing like mediate, it adds a store TP effect to your pet and is an amazing ability.
As for the coaxing, that is most diffinitively charm based. As for jugs, there's will obviously be more when the level increases.
I also look forward to bst astral flow.
And the 99 jug? I still think it'll be a cactaur. lol

[Zaknafein]

Personally I would like to see a jug pet for Bst that is completely exclusive. By that I mean a new model of monster not seen anywhere in the game except when a Bst calls it into existence. Please incorporate at least one (several hopefully for 99 end game. TY

[Gotterdammerung]

For those who don't play bst and those who seem to not know otehrwise. Spur is nothing like mediate, it adds a store TP effect to your pet and is an amazing ability.

It was a loose comparison for laymen. And it is hardly "amazing".

As for the coaxing, that is most diffinitively charm based. As for jugs, there's will obviously be more when the level increases. lol

Oh, I didn't know you worked for Square Enix as a developer.

[Areola]

If you are looking for more ideas for abilities the bst forums is mostly full of useful ideas based around functional problems of the class.
Short list is:
Bring charm back
Allow pet TP moves to chain with at least the master if not everyone.
Allow pet jugs and items to bundle or 99stack
Stock more selections in the NPC shops
Allow jug pets to zone.
Make the pet "fight" exclusively what you tell it to fight.
Allow pet to maintain its own claim as it is a seperate entity (1 claim for master + 1 claim for pet)
Carefully consider final lvl 99 jug pet availability and selection.

lol i think you just summed up everything in the bst forums with that part

[Xilk]

I find spur to be useful.. It guarentee's that I get tp when I can finally use the ability.. but yeah I also see the point about reducing ready/sic recast timer, or better yet, removing it. That is needed to make this really useful... Let tp be the limiting factor, not dual limiting factors.

As far as adding more abilities that help the party, thats all cool. It sounds like party-wide buffs instead of just pet specific buffs. It all depends on what abilities are added, and how potent they are. Pet abilities are hit and miss for their usefulness. I can't think of many off the top of my head that would really help the whole party...

I'm not thrilled w/ astral flow for bst... it could be really good, but the idea itself doesn't thrill me.

[Sortis]

I pretty much agree with everything the OP has said, nothing more to add than that, just making sure they understand this is how yet another BST wants things going

[Gotterdammerung]

I find spur to be useful.. It guarentee's that I get tp when I can finally use the ability

Dipper Yuly on average will get 17 swings in one minute. This is enough for him to reach 100% in the time it takes to get a charge. This is without pet haste 9% from gear wich would be 19 swings per minute.

Spur adds store tp 20 and store tp 50 with emp feet.
for 1 minute

The effect this has on dipper is
tp return= 6.1 (a 17 hit build) 103.7 tp on average in a minute

tp return with spur 20 stp= 7.3 (a 13 hit build) 124.1 tp on average in a minute (20.4 extra tp from the skill)

tp return with apur 50 stp because of emp boots= 9.1 (an 11 hit build) 154.7 tp on average in a minute (51 extra tp)

*my earlier comments were based on the results of the ability without emp +2 feet, I feel an ability shouldn't need a piece of gear to become worthwhile. It should stand on its own, and the gear should be ice cream.

So to be more specific, Spur WILL increase the speed at wich your pet gets TP. But as anyone knows, the value of an X-hit build is the increase to WS FREQUENCY. And since a pets WS FREQUENCY is locked in by a CHARGE TIMER
AND since a pet can reach 100 TP every minute WITHOUT augmentation, Spur does NOT increase WS frequency.
Wich means it can only be used in 2 ways.
#1 to increase the potency of the pet WS. (i.e. more tp when u use the sic/ready is supposed to mean more effect.)
However, there are very very few pet WS's that show drasticly different results when used at higher TP. So this particular use is very meh.

#2 to do 2 WS's in rapid succession for some tactical reason. (like hitting ironclad smiter with 2 footkicks while he is slashing weakness, instead of just the one.) However, there are very few of these times.

Ultimately, the true test of an ability is comparing results. I personally try to perform these tests casually as i solo NMs.
I fight it sometimes with using spur every time its up and using ready any time its up. Then record the time it takes to complete the solo. Then i solo it a few more times NEVER using spur, and using ready every time its up. Then i record that time. And i compare. From my experience, I have noticed that spur has almost no effect on the speed of your kill.

That is why i deemed it "mostly useless" in my OP. And notice i said "Mostly". I didnt say competely useless.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

It was a loose comparison for laymen. And it is hardly "amazing".

It is amazing and your comparison is extremely missleading as you would gain no TP while idle like meditate would.

[Gotterdammerung]

your comparison is extremely missleading as you would gain no TP while idle like meditate would.

That's why i went ahead and clarified in my last post. I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time typing out the exact parameters of spur just to make a quick point that it isn't very useful. So i used a quick loose comparison. I'm sorry that it was an inadequate comparison. I have Since gone back and written the long explanation of why spur is mostly useless. Its the post right above your post.


Usually, using spur will not result in a faster kill speed against a bst who does not use spur.

I'm not dogging spur.

I'm not complaining about spur.

I don't care what they do to spur.

I am only pointing out that the NEW pet commands should actually be useful. We don't need another pet command like spur. Look at every other pet command.

Fight- cant live without it

heel- must have it

Stay- incredibly useful

Sic/ready- Versatile skill with lots of useful tricks

Leave- Useful

Snarl- invaluable incredible wonderful

Spur- barely worth having

I'm saying i hope the pet commands that come next will be like the predecessors to spur.