Beastmaster implimentation

[VillainQueen]

I actually think that is kind of a nice idea. However the beast companion should have less skills than our chocobo otherwise it would be overpowered in group content. I personally don't mind to use the same 3 pets. If we get to tame a monster it would end up as a limited job and I rather see it as a normal one.

[Xenosan]

I think beastmaster could work, just the pet management would be different than arcanist. Arcanist pet is wrong and unnecessary pet management. They could get it right with a fresh attempt.

Bst as a barriers tank (pet hp being the barrier) could work and be interesting.

Puppet master being a totem/bubble driven healer/dps focus job I can imagine too

[Berkilak]

As long as it isn't limited, I'll be fine. Make it DPS, tank or even heals - I just want to be able to enjoy the game regularly on a Beastmaster. It's an archetype that's been notably missing since launch.

[Stormfur]

I wouldn't even mind if they had to limit the number of beasts in order to make it NOT a limited job. Taming the ones that we do use could be our job quests just as easily.

[Berkilak]

I wouldn't even mind if they had to limit the number of beasts in order to make it NOT a limited job. Taming the ones that we do use could be our job quests just as easily.

There's a really simple solution to that - simply have your choice of beast be an aesthetic choice or an equivalent choice, instead of having them be hyper-specialized carbon copies of mobs out in the world.

[Shougun]

I wouldn't even mind if they had to limit the number of beasts in order to make it NOT a limited job. Taming the ones that we do use could be our job quests just as easily.

In WoW you had a massive list of beasts you could tame, but they used archetypes in order to control balance (like a tank pet or a damage pet, etc). They used to be far more personalized but it was difficult to balance / expect players to have / do certain things.

While I'm not suggesting FFXIV copies everything from WoW I would really hope whoever makes Beastmaster in FFXIV plays WoW's Hunter Beastmaster spec in order to broaden their ideas and what players might expect (rather than accidentally underdeliver as they had a limited pool of ideas, meanwhile players go pointing off to games that did it better and wonder why they couldn't have done it at least 'that good' if not ideally better of course). It's had some ups and downs but it has had quite a few really good moments. Also when trying out WoW's beastmaster also check out WoW's warlock again, and the pet ai, and try to make a better ai / interaction gameplay wise lol. FFXIV's pets are not known to be the easiest to work with sometimes .

[AnotherPerson]

I honestly want Beastmaster to be more like Lyon, where you get to use a copy of Beast skills in your natural attack rotation. Then in the open world, you also get to use your Beast summon and command your pet to attack, something like Castrum's final boss. So basically a mix of something like the FFXVI skills trailer (instead of primals, we have a demi ability of the beasts we capture) and a more fleshed out system than what SMN currently have. The limited portion of the job is the beasts themselves due to collection and having different beasts means different stats. The normal part of the job are the skills - and the flavor will be assigning a beast action to the initial rotation changes the animation slightly. Though I can't see this ever happening due to the amount of work involved to make it work, it would be really cool to have.

At the same time, the normal jobs are missing a glaring factor to having an actual pet job. SCH's faerie doesn't feel like an actual pet but more like a very unresponsive AI. SMN is also a mix between egis and demi summons, so it doesn't really feel like a pet class itself. If it really does go into the direction of a fully fleshed out pet class that would be nice too.

[TeraTyrantShadic]

In terms of pets a Beastmaster can have, they should take inspiration (Not follow) WoW's example where whatever you tame goes into a menagerie and you can pick and choose. Charm can be used here where you can go into the wild and charm a monster, however to make it part of your menagerie you need to register it at the main cities. In previous iterations of Beastmaster the pet that you charm is temporary, however with FFXIV's system your pets can still be active even when you change zones or go into a ward or city which is a good part on the pet system.

As for Charm, it can be a fun overworld or dungeon thing and it'll be like a miscellaneous ability or it can be related to the menagerie idea. It'll rarely ever be used in raids and FFXI had the same thing going, when you do ambudasce or any high end content (Which is rare and most of the time you solo) you only use pots which summons the beasts because charm doesn't work.

Beastmaster is not about collecting beasts, it is more like taming beasts to your side to help you in battle. In no point in the FF series Beastmaster was never about collecting monsters. However FFXIV can allow it to be about collecting and maybe gives us something like a fishing log for a Beastmaster.

As for Job Gauges it would be like Scholar's where certain pet moves take up certain amount of resources. Beastmaster is bound to have weapon skills so it can generate the amount necessary for pet actions and different pet actions will have different costs.

I mean the same can be applied to Normal Jobs where they are conformed to be balanced and have a job gauge.
But a Normal job is better than a Limited Job. Mainly because it teaches you to manage your resources instead of just spamming a skill.
All of the casters can spam their own magical skills, and still they have a rotation. Blue Mage, Summoner and Red Mage are all considered Burst Caster DPS while Black Mage is a Constant Caster DPS.

It doesn't need to be a limited job because Beastmaster has a different type of weapons, which are whips (FFV), Brushes (FFVI), One-handed Axes (FFXI), Scythe (FFXI), Instruments (FF:TA/A2) .
So we already have an idea of what kind of weapon skills can be brought in and the type of roles it can fill. Not just that but abilities for a Beastmaster are learned through levelling.

Already with this sort of idea the need for implementing as a Limited Job becomes obsolete.
I can see some people using limited job as a way to implement it and I have to say, you are really "creative" especially when you are relying on a crutch for your ideas.

However I think it is more important before we can try implement it as a Normal Job is to ADDRESS THE FACT THAT THE PET SYSTEM NEEDS TO BE IMPROVED FIRST before anything else.

[Limecat]

What I'm realistically expecting is that it'll put in the monster affinity chart from XI, sort of like BLU elements in Carnivale. Beyond that, something kind of like the personal islands in Adoulin where you raise monsters, you can stable only so many at max, and you aim for final forms that either focus on single-target or AoE.