What is Beastmaster?

I often find my self wondering what type of job bst was meant to be when SE designed it. This topic of conversation isn't as simple as saying Warrior is a DD, Paladin is a tank, and White mage is a healer.

With no real support abilities or magic that leaves dd and tank. By just looking at the job it appears to be a melee type dd with focus on a pet for added damage or defense. But the FF community has made it much more then that(well mostly into a solo job). So much so that I'd love to know what the original concept was for bst.

I usually like to guess what SE was going for with job development by looking at the artifact armor sets, but it didn't help me much in this case. AF1 is aimed at just charming. AF2 was the same with a bit of call beast love. And empyrean armor is purely DD. Then there is the bst only armor(khimaira,bison) with MP+ on it to add even more wtf to my identity crisis.

Beastmaster has always had a bit of a solo edge to it from what I've seen and heard.

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Originally Posted by Areola

Then there is the bst only armor(khimaira,bison) with MP+ on it to add even more wtf to my identity crisis.

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BST/WHM used to be one of the most popular combos for soloing. You sub White Mage to cure yourself, and have the pet do most of the fighting, but you get to jump into the fray when the situation calls for it.

These days, you Beastmasters generally sub Ninja or Dancer for Dual Wield and healing/damage mitigation. I've also seen Red Mage as a viable sub, since it also comes with some crowd control and MP regeneration, meaning less time spent self healing.

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Originally Posted by Economizer

BST/WHM used to be one of the most popular combos for soloing. You sub White Mage to cure yourself, and have the pet do most of the fighting, but you get to jump into the fray when the situation calls for it.

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I know. But I still find it odd that they would add MP to a job specific armor that belongs to a job with no native mp. But now that im thinking about it bard is the same way with the sha'ir set.

Bst had a huge selection of armor pre-abyssea like the kirin's osode set hecatome set, adamant set, other awesome stuff that I'm forgetting atm. I've been pondering about bst for years i love it but i still dong get why ^^;

You ask "What is Beastmaster?" answer, What is Brown Mage.

Beastmaster is a hybrid job, but its not as broad-ranged a hybrid and pup or blu. Its mostly in the physical approach. I think originally it also had alot of crowd control. It probably would have had alot of pulling jobs to begin with if it weren't for the party xp penalty from the charmed pet at the beginning.

It is a hybrid mainly between the tank and dd roles. It is the tank of pet jobs. BSt is really quite a good tanking job.

I don't think SE was overly caught up w/ a rigid party role during th initial job designs. Some roles were obviously catered towards: Pld tank and whm healer ofcourse, but There are actuallly alot of hybrids in this game that can fill various roles.

I think the xp penalty really does show that SE intended bst as a primarily solo job.

It was always DD and secondary croud control. The heavy solo aspect was the role that was forced upon it by other players, mostly by those who never played the job. In much the same aspect of how nin was forsed into a tank role instead of it's original ranged DD role.

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Originally Posted by Tsukino_Kaji

It was always DD and secondary croud control. The heavy solo aspect was the role that was forced upon it by other players, mostly by those who never played the job. In much the same aspect of how nin was forsed into a tank role instead of it's original ranged DD role.

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I partly agree with the above statement, however, I do believe the capability to solo was intended by SE. All MMO's tend to have at least one job designed to cater to the soloist, and in the case of ffxi, bst was it.

The decision of SE to originally have an xp penalty for having a pet is SUPER strong indicator that they intended it for solo play.

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Originally Posted by Xilk

The decision of SE to originally have an xp penalty for having a pet is SUPER strong indicator that they intended it for solo play.

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The decision of SE to originally have a high damaging consumable item is a strong indicator that they intended it for party play. The quote, "SUPER strong" for charm pets is an indicator that they intended them them to not be used in XP.


Edit: I just remember a gob XP pt at the entrance to the cauldron where I had to be the tank. lol