Is it girls, girls, girls, or shields, shields, shields (sic/ready -5)?

[Malthar]

Hello SE,

May beastmasters have a shield with sic/ready ability delay -5? Currently, to get a 10 second ready recast, bst's are limited to subbing a dual-wield job so that they can offhand Charmer's Merlin. This dramatically reduces the offhand accuracy and and serve no other purpose than to cut 5 seconds off the ready recast.

Beastmasters are meant to be an axe and shield job. This is what I get from all the adjustments SE has made to bst. So give us a decent shield with sic/ready recast -5, and put some nice pet stats on it, too. :-D

I know some would argue against the sic/ready recast -5 shield because bst's would opt for the 5 second ready recast by equipping both the Charmer's Merlin and the shield. But remember, the pet's level is dependent on the main hand weapon and equipping the Charmer's Merlin in the main hand would lower the pet's level to 99. I don't know about you, but one would have to be nuts to throw a 99 pet at 135 content! Even with 99 level content the pet would get beaten up a lot if it were 99. I remember accidentally calling a pet without a 119 axe so my pet was stuck at 99. I wondered why it was getting beaten up so much. I was using stacks and stacks of pet food and it wasn't doing the damage I expected. Then I realized my error and recalled it at 119.

So a 119 shield with sic/ready recast -5 would fit right into the vision of the beastmaster job and give us a chance to actually melee and take advantage of fencer. The worry about reducing sic/ready recast to 5 is negligible. Sure, it could be done, but the pet would be so ineffectual that it wouldn't matter.

[Gwydion]

Hello SE,

May beastmasters have a shield with sic/ready ability delay -5? Currently, to get a 10 second ready recast, bst's are limited to subbing a dual-wield job so that they can offhand Charmer's Merlin. This dramatically reduces the offhand accuracy and and serve no other purpose than to cut 5 seconds off the ready recast.

Beastmasters are meant to be an axe and shield job. This is what I get from all the adjustments SE has made to bst. So give us a decent shield with sic/ready recast -5, and put some nice pet stats on it, too. :-D

I know some would argue against the sic/ready recast -5 shield because bst's would opt for the 5 second ready recast by equipping both the Charmer's Merlin and the shield. But remember, the pet's level is dependent on the main hand weapon and equipping the Charmer's Merlin in the main hand would lower the pet's level to 99. I don't know about you, but one would have to be nuts to throw a 99 pet at 135 content! Even with 99 level content the pet would get beaten up a lot if it were 99. I remember accidentally calling a pet without a 119 axe so my pet was stuck at 99. I wondered why it was getting beaten up so much. I was using stacks and stacks of pet food and it wasn't doing the damage I expected. Then I realized my error and recalled it at 119.

So a 119 shield with sic/ready recast -5 would fit right into the vision of the beastmaster job and give us a chance to actually melee and take advantage of fencer. The worry about reducing sic/ready recast to 5 is negligible. Sure, it could be done, but the pet would be so ineffectual that it wouldn't matter.

I agree with you but would prefer it be an offhand ilvl axe intead of a shield. (Even if it was a part of R/E/M weapons, that would make the offhand axe moot IMO).

[Malthar]

The problem with introducing an iLvl axe with sic/ready ability recast -5 is that it will be used as the main hand axe and the Charmer's Merlin as the offhand axe giving the user sic/ready ability recast of 5 seconds. To my knowledge, there is no mechanism that prevents an axe from being main hand.

A shield is much more eloquent and opens up possibilities with fencer traits augmented to it, just like the Charmer's Merlin.

[Ulth]

Blood Pact Ability Delay Reduction has a cap. They could just add one to sic and ready. That would stop them from using both to try and get 5 second tp moves. In fact with something like that they could put another -5 ready/sic in gifts somewhere between 550 and 2100 and you wouldn't need a -5 in main or off hand at all.

[dasva]

There is also the issue of bst being the only melee job that uses 1hd weapons that neither has native dual wield nor access to good ilvl shields. Even war gets great shields and it pretty much never uses 1hd weapons.

It's about time SE decided do they want bst to axe/shield and give us good shields or they want us to dw and give us native dw like all the other 1hd jobs that don't shield it up. But not doing either is a huge gimp

[Ulth]

What about whm, geo, rdm, brd, rng, and cor? I doubt they are going to block with shield, but it would be nice if their were some stats on them that would make them use their 1 hand weapons over staffs. Shields have pretty much been neglected for ilvl. Aegis and Ochain can't even be made 119 yet, and they are supposed to be the best shields in the game. I don't think their special bonuses should be increased or anything, but they should at least get shield skill.

[Malthar]

He said melee jobs. You can make the argument that rdm is a melee job, but rdm has some pretty darned good shields! As a native bst, I'm terribly jealous at the range of shields rdm gets.

Whm, geo, and brd are support jobs and not melee jobs. Rng is a ranged job and cor is a ranged and support job.

So I guess he's right. Bst is the only melee job that both has no dual wield ability nor has access to any good shields.

I like the idea of capping sic / ready recast time, but I suspect they'll say that they looked into it and don't think it can be done. It would be easier just to introduce a shield with sic / ready recast time -5. I know a lot of people like dual wielding, but personally, I prefer an axe and a shield, 'cause it just looks cooler. lol
Now, if SE can find in itself to further buff fencer, such as adding a store-tp bonus or double attack bonus, then more single wielding jobs that make use of fencer would be apt to using a weapon with a shield.

[Ulth]

Well if we are picking nits, then it's pretty easy to argue that bst isn't a melee job either. It's a pet job that fights with its familiar while staying out of AoE range. Even right now you aren't asking for a shield to increase the master's damage, but one to increase the pet's damage. Just like the jobs I listed need shields with the stats they need. Also rdm and bst have access to the same ilvl shields. The shields are still bad though, and rdm is better off dual wielding clubs and swords, or just using a staff for their spells if they can't afford to have a sub that give dual wield. And cor actually does get tp faster by melee which it then uses for it's ranged weapon skills. Actually cor is probably the one job that doesn't have native dual wield that I think should have dual wield. I mean come on they are pirates. Or maybe a daken like trait where if their offhand is empty they will use it to shoot.

Anyway if they just add a -5 second shield without capping, people are just going to use both to get a 5 second ready and Nukumi Manoplas +1 to spam 1600 tp moves.

Just to be clear. I don't think bst, rdm, and brd should be on the back line. Bst should be able to fight with its pet to make skillchains, rdm and brd should be able to land spells with out switching off from their daggers and swords. But really I would say the reason they can't frontline has more to do with mob's aoe tp moves that do more damage than their single target ones.

[dasva]

If bst isn't a melee job then why does it get fencer? And a lot of heavy DD gear like war, drk, drg, and pld, get? What would be the point of all those killer traits? etc. And um plenty of bsts still melee. The harder solos demand it and the whole not meleeing being popular is only recently happened. And half the reason other bsts don't right now is because the tp loss from switching axes makes it poor... but if you don't switch that slot and actually get use those fencer traits and gifts you'd see more bsts meleeing again.

Even if you try to say fine it's just a pet job... what other pet jobs use 1hd weapons? And since 2hd and h2h weapons tend to have higher stat bonuses than 1hd again forced to dual wield. And of course there is the fact that other pets all have much higher versatility than jugs. And trying to compare backline mages and buffer/ranged jobs ability to melee to bst seems quite a bit of a reach to say the least.

Also I'd also like shields for there own sake and not just stat ones. Like the new blurred shield. I'd love for something that gives a real chance to block and some ws dmg and more fencer

And I seriously doubt many people would use shield and a non ill axe to get 5 sec recast. Taking your pet down to lvl 99 for a second or so ever 5 seconds is suicide

[Ulth]

Way to miss the point. Saying that rdm isn't supposed to melee because that's not what most people use it for is like saying bst isn't supposed to melee because that's not what most people use it for. Seriously what is with all the solipsism. I say there should be more shields for all jobs and you guys are all like "nope, only bst matters". Every job without dual wield and uses 1 hand weapons should have a decent option for a shield.

[Malthar]

This is the bst forum, in a thread specifically related to bst. If you wish to request shields for other jobs post in the appropriate forum.

[Ulth]

Yeah and when the topic of daggers come up in the thf forum, sometimes dnc gets brought up, because both use daggers. Lots of jobs use shields. You start a topic even in the bst forum about shields, other jobs that use shields are going to get brought up.

[Malthar]

Please stop trying to derail this thread. We are discussing shields having sic/ready ability recast -5 for beastmaster.

[Ulth]

You derailed it first.

[Malthar]

Ok, Ulth is just here to be childish and troll. Anyone else have an opinion?

[Ulth]

No Seriously go back and read. I said that there were no good ilvl shields for any job that uses shields, then you start in about rdm. You seem to be doing a lot of finger pointing, but just remember when you point your finger there are three pointing back at you.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

Bump: You know the Parrying skill was applied to give weapons the block ability that shields were meant to do as to give some weapons the same chance of a shield.. Just saying and yes lot of jobs could use a shield and a buffed up shield to match todays par for it but dmg have to be increased to match that loss of 2nd weapon or a weapon that counts as two weapons by itself...

Okay, hope this my only reply i'll have here as i'm sure in a moments notice i'll be reminded how its not matching the bst thread since its not matching this guys hears content on intended events to happen, Laters!! :cool: :p ;)

[dasva]

Way to miss the point. Saying that rdm isn't supposed to melee because that's not what most people use it for is like saying bst isn't supposed to melee because that's not what most people use it for. Seriously what is with all the solipsism. I say there should be more shields for all jobs and you guys are all like "nope, only bst matters". Every job without dual wield and uses 1 hand weapons should have a decent option for a shield.

Way to miss the part about until last update most bsts meleed and the job was designed to melee or how they actually are in the heavy DD gear slots or how the very reason bsts don't DD much right is a combination of the last update and the fact they have to switch in and out of a non ilvl weapon. Should also add SE has come out several times saying they were balancing so that master + pet dmg would compare to other DDs. Bst is a melee rdm is not period.

So your comparison again is stretching it to say the least. And again with point I was making before you derailed into but these other jobs can melee too bst is the only actual melee that pretty much has to use 1hd weapons that has neither good shields nor native dual wield. And yes every post you've made in this thread has been a derail of what about this job or that job or job number 3 or trying to assert mages and buffers or ranged jobs are just as much melee as bst.

[Ulth]

You act like what I said was a new concept, but it's been going on for years. The only reason it stopped is that bst's pets didn't scale with ilvl. Now that pets have caught back up it's back to how it was. And my comparison isn't off at all. Rdm was designed with melee in mind. It's why it gets the fast cast trait, so it can spend less time casting, and more time attacking. It's why it has all those self target only spells that help with melee like temper and enspell. Much like the reason dnc didn't have an A in daggers rdm had ways of lowering their targets evasion and defense. Only now everyone can cap fast cast, buffs/debuffs are needed for any job to cap attack/accuracy, and to land debuffs other than dia rdm has to use a staff. So even though rdm was designed with melee in mind what it has become is a backline buff/debuff machine.

And again, I'm not the one who derailed this. You said there were no good ilvl shields for bst. I agreed and expanded stating there aren't good ilvl shields period. Well there is one now, but only war will ever use it, and even then they will complain about how it takes SU2. But even pld the job that is synonymous with shields still use level 99 ones. Malthar is the one who turned this into a discussion about pigeonholing jobs. I personally believe that many jobs are flexible enough to fill many roles. My calling bst just a pet job was rhetorical, trying to point out the hypocrisy of him saying those other jobs can't melee. I even stated it in my conclusion of that post that I think bst should melee. Or did you even read that far, and just assumed I was anti-bst after the first line?

[Karbuncle]

I get that you're essentially agreeing BST should melee, but I don't think it can be compared to RDM. it not even close to the same thing. BST can do absolutely nothing when not meleeing that doesn't rely on a sub job, RDM can... It can cure, debuff, buff, etc all with its own natural spells. BST has no natural spells and no support abilities, so it has nothing to do when not meleeing, clearly meaning it was designed to be slashing things with its pet. RDM has a ~B skill rating in its combat skills, decent enough but clearly not its main purposes, where as BST has an A- Axe, clearly a skill rating deserving of being a Melee. It also wields Axes, the strongest one handed weapon (pure base damage wise). All of these things point to BST being designed as a Melee DPS with a pet, having the Master doing the most damage (Since pets really kind of sucked hard before all the patches post 75).

The backline of BST was adopted in solo play, when fighting things that should realistically be unsolo-able, but exploited the fact BST could throw endless amounts of mobs at the enemy so long as there was something in range to charm. But this is true for any kiting class. BLM, RDM, BST, SMN, all of these jobs will stay at range when fighting something powerful. but RDM also has some fights they melee on, and BST as well ( I know I fight in AA's even when I solo).

Anyway, I know its not entirely your point and you agree they should melee, I'm simply pointing out that comparing it to RDM was a bad choice as they clearly have different intentions, as RDM is more of a jack-of-all-trades where as BST was clearly designed similarly to DRG, a Melee with a pet.

But yah, I.lv Shields...? Didn't they just add Deliverance or something? I thought it was neat... I know when I use shield on BST i used Beatific Shield +1, Magic.D.Taken-25% is pretty invaluable in some fights. What particularly are you looking for in i.lv shields? Pet buffs? That'd be cool too... some BST-helping shields would be really nice considering BST has no native Dual wield and the only BST_shields I can think of is Pallas' Shield...

[Malthar]

Hi Carbuncle,

Bst has an A+ in axe (https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Combat_Skills).

Before Ulth's attempts to derail, the original post requested sic/ready ability recast -5 on a shield.

Oh, and if you see Draylo running around on Asura, give him a /poke for me. :-P

[dasva]

You act like what I said was a new concept, but it's been going on for years. The only reason it stopped is that bst's pets didn't scale with ilvl. Now that pets have caught back up it's back to how it was. And my comparison isn't off at all. Rdm was designed with melee in mind. It's why it gets the fast cast trait, so it can spend less time casting, and more time attacking. It's why it has all those self target only spells that help with melee like temper and enspell. Much like the reason dnc didn't have an A in daggers rdm had ways of lowering their targets evasion and defense. Only now everyone can cap fast cast, buffs/debuffs are needed for any job to cap attack/accuracy, and to land debuffs other than dia rdm has to use a staff. So even though rdm was designed with melee in mind what it has become is a backline buff/debuff machine.

And again, I'm not the one who derailed this. You said there were no good ilvl shields for bst. I agreed and expanded stating there aren't good ilvl shields period. Well there is one now, but only war will ever use it, and even then they will complain about how it takes SU2. But even pld the job that is synonymous with shields still use level 99 ones. Malthar is the one who turned this into a discussion about pigeonholing jobs. I personally believe that many jobs are flexible enough to fill many roles. My calling bst just a pet job was rhetorical, trying to point out the hypocrisy of him saying those other jobs can't melee. I even stated it in my conclusion of that post that I think bst should melee. Or did you even read that far, and just assumed I was anti-bst after the first line?Um outside of weird pet groups bsts have melee alongside there pt anytime they actually got into a pt until recently. A long time ago soloing yeah charm some IT and let it do your work for you. But that kind of went out the window around the time they raised the lvl cap and started giving us good jugs and notably snarl. Long long long before ilvl. And the main reason it is that way now isn't just that jugs are so strong but because of the tp loss of switching into charmers merlin and to a lesser extent the huge amounts of other pet augments that actually making using jugs viable and how much of a loss it is to your pet if you don't. If it wasn't for that bsts would be meleeing right next to their pets self skillchaining like crazy.... which is another thing giving the pets skillchain elements was clearly meant to be used with master which we should be taking advantage off especially with that new rdm support spell.

Yes rdm has been given a few melee tools... they've also consistently kept them off of better DD gear, lower skill and on more mage gear/spells. It's clearly intended to be a support job that can do some light melee on easier stuff either solo or lowman content. Meanwhile SE has consistently put bst on either on heavy dd gear like drk, pld and war which get shields or on lighter DD gear like thf, blu, dnc which get dw. And since raising the lvl cap they've been pushing jugs as something to tank for the bst and together with master provide decent melee dmg. They've flat out called bst a melee DD and how it's dmg with jug should be close to other DDs. They only recently started giving pet stats. In short rdm was designed to support job that can sometimes melee bst was designed more like drg or pup as a melee that has a pet that helps out though in bsts case in a much more narrow fashion than drg or pup

Also it's a bit of a hyperbole to say you have to switch to staff to land anything besides dia. Several swds and a dagger or 2 have 215 macc skill and one even goes to 228 with macc on it while rdm staffs only go up to 228. The difference is so little that except for mobs on a certain narrow band of meva you wouldn't notice much if any difference. Now sure if you mainhand one of the 188 macc skill swords there would be a bit of a difference though that would still again is still rather small (less than your spells can reduce) and so would only really make a huge difference on a small range of magic evasions which vary hugely between mobs so even on ilvl content you can find yourself floored hit rates on one no matter what and others you have capped hit rate even with magian staffs.

I'm sorry but in a discussion about shields for bst when you respond to a statement of bst is the only melee that doesn't get native dual wield or good shields saying but what about cor, rdm etc implying they are melees and should also get melee shields is a derail. And that was said before anything about Malth and pigeonholing. So please take your rdm should get good melee shields to the rdm forums please

Anyways I'm fairly certain I will use blurred shield on pld as well. Based on it's stats it should be comparable in overall dmg reduction to ochain with reprisal up. So anything I don't need to block everything or aegis and I want to do more dmg I'd try that at least for fun. Though that brings up another point that I haven't gone over yet. Bst is on a lot of heavy dd gear that goes to jobs on that shield so really why not put bst on that shield too? That would actually pretty good shield for a bst meleeing along with his pet enough possibly to be better the current not engaged swapping out non ilvl axes



Besides I have contributed plenty to the original topic. A shield won't fix it. It needs to be capped before they add anymore gear that reduces ready cooldown. Otherwise you just end up with a thief's knife like problem.
It's already been pointed out why that wouldn't be a problem and why that is specifically why he is asking for a shield and not another axe with it because shield fixes that problem.

[Karbuncle]

Hi Carbuncle,

Bst has an A+ in axe (https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Combat_Skills).

Before Ulth's attempts to derail, the original post requested sic/ready ability recast -5 on a shield.

Oh, and if you see Draylo running around on Asura, give him a /poke for me. :-P

I was speaking on when the job was released. I Could have sworn BST had an A- Axe similar to THF and Dagger, and it was changed to A+ later (like in Seekers)? I guess that could have just been THF alone ._.

[Malthar]

You are correct. Bst indeed did have a lower axe rating, but it was bumped up to A+ around the time of the weaponskill updates.

[Malthar]

Hi SE,

I'm kinda disappointed not to see a sic/ready ability recast -5 shield in the update. :-(

[Glamdring]

The problem with introducing an iLvl axe with sic/ready ability recast -5 is that it will be used as the main hand axe and the Charmer's Merlin as the offhand axe giving the user sic/ready ability recast of 5 seconds. To my knowledge, there is no mechanism that prevents an axe from being main hand.

A shield is much more eloquent and opens up possibilities with fencer traits augmented to it, just like the Charmer's Merlin.

no but there IS a mechanism for killing any benefits from the off-hand weapon which would restrict you to a single buffing axe. believe me, the number of threads bitching about the lack of off-hand benefits is quite extensive. in fact, that's one of the 1st questions with any newly introduced weapon, does its benefit work from the off-hand?

[Malthar]

Can we have a response from the devs about said proposed shield for bst?