[dev1042] Level Cap Increase (BST Related)

[SpankWustler]

I"ve been toying w/ apkallu. Does good damage... but really can't figure what the "special way of attacking" is...

I'm confident the phrase "special way of attacking" is just vague language obscuring something obvious. It's a long-time favorite of people working on FFXI.

I'd bet my favorite eyeball that the phrase just means "The apkallu punches like a Monk. Punch punch!"

[Xilk]

I've been toying w/ apkallu more on test server. Beak Lunge and wing slap are so completely lackluster that there is no point in the store tp trait. I mean sneaking in a sam level store tp trait on mnk pet is kinda interesting... but then you remove anything it would be good for. The damage for the 2x ready moves are not noticeably better than normal hits... they probably will be a bit better on something w/ high def... but I don't want a mnk jug on a high def mob in the first place.

The apkallu is a good mnk dd type, otherwise.. it hits fast and frequently (h2h & 'beak attacks'" but really what is the point in store tp when the ready moves are so useless... 2 charges for stun, 1 charge for big knock-back. well, I guess you can keep a macro for the knockback as a spell interruptor... and it might be semi reliable if you aren't using /dnc for stun.. I'd rather lose the store tp and get some more useful ready moves. The store tp is a waste as it is. Otherwise, beaklunge and wing slap should get a boost.

There might be other bonuses hidden in there... but if so, they are hidden so well, they may as well not even exist.

[Rukkirii]

Why is the development team heading in the direction where BST only use jug pets?

Recent content contains a lot of areas with monsters that cannot be charmed as well as confrontations where summoned pets will be dismissed upon entry. Since it would be difficult for beastmasters to perform with only their Charm ability, we wanted to make adjustments to add familiars and make it so they can select their pets based on the situation.

Of course, you will still be able to use monsters that were charmable up to now since they are still roaming the lands of Vana'diel.

Can the devs. make it easier to change between different pets?

Making it easier to change pets means a reduction in the call beast ability's duration, so this would be a difficult problem.

From the beginning, familiar pets have had strong attacks and durability, so being able to constantly summon these pets would make it so a variety of monsters could be defeated with only a pet. Also, depending on the situation, if beastmasters were able to constantly change pets, it would make it possible for them to do everything.

We would like more damage dealing pets, instead of tanking pets, so that they can be more useful in parties.

When adding new pets, we design them by adding a special feature to them such as high attack or high defense. In the future we will be adding more pets, and among these new ones there will be an opportunity to introduce some strong attacking pets.

[Dreamin]

So you limited us to only Jug Pets but not willing to give us a faster call timer. So basically you're telling the BST community to go and play a different job.

If the Jug is all we can use in all 'RECENT CONTENTS', then you need to be sensitive to the fact that our call beast timer is limiting us to the point where we basically cannot use BST as a job in these contents.

[Luvbunny]

This is just laughable - they could make BST shines and better, but they refuse due some "content balancing" issue. Reducing the call timer to 3 mnts won't break the game, summoner can call pet every one minutes, and poor puppetmaster and dragoon have a much longer timer and have to just deal with it. Yes we want beastmaster to be able to do everything, it is time for them to shine for once.

[Olor]

Hi Rukkirii, first of all, I appreciate the answers you're giving us, but Dreamin has it correct - you can't have it both ways - where you say "oh if you want that ability use this pet!" but then make the call beast timer so limited that we can't switch pets in a reasonable fashion. No other job is limited to 2 or 3 abilities at a time (and at any time at least 2 of them suck completely)

Have you guys actually used these ready abilities? Most of them suck. Then you take all the good monster skills off jugs, and make most of the reasonably decent ready abilities cost 3 charges. It is infuriating. I hate to break it to you, but a move which costs TP, and is on a timer needs to do more than 10 extra damage to not suck. Most ready abilities do less damage than a critical hit. I don't think anyone really uses most of the ones that don't have debuffs. I sure as heck don't.

And in content like WoE - it costs SO MUCH MONEY to be a bst. Just ridiculous amounts - the biggest reason being that pet food is disgustingly expensive, and if you don't use it every time the timer is up, your pet dies and you can do NOTHING for 1-2 minutes.

If you want BST to get invited to groups you can't have them standing around doing nothing for 1-2 minutes because their pet died. You don't limit summoner to 1 pet every 5 minutes - and with all the -perp gear (nevermind in abyssea) MP is not very limiting - and PUP can get their pet every minute - so why the long cool down on call beast? It isn't reasonable - especially with things like those birds in WOE flux 9 that do a max HP down effect and kill your pet in like two hits. It really sucks to spend 30K per run and get nothing but logs and ingots as a reward 95% of the time.

I don't see how it is balanced to make a BST pay 5K+ to buy the pet that can paralyze, make them get at least 100 tp to do it, and then restrict them from using any other pet skill for minutes at a time.

If RDM doesn't get invited for Paralyze that is not on a ridiculous recast timer and doesn't require feeding the boss TP, (AND THEY CAN BUFF AND USE OTHER DEBUFFS) why the heck would anyone invite a BST to their party when they are less useful?

[Dreamin]

This is just laughable - they could make BST shines and better, but they refuse due some "content balancing" issue. Reducing the call timer to 3 mnts won't break the game, summoner can call pet every one minutes, and poor puppetmaster and dragoon have a much longer timer and have to just deal with it. Yes we want beastmaster to be able to do everything, it is time for them to shine for once.

Just to correct here, there's no timer limit on how fast you can call another 'pet' for SMN. You can immediate release and summon a different avatar. Or any other spirit. And even if you insists on resummoning the same Avatar, there's only a 30s recast for any of them. [For those that are not familiar with SMN, all pets are summon as magic and the only timer associated with those are magic cast and recast timer and not JA timer].

[Olor]

This is just laughable - they could make BST shines and better, but they refuse due some "content balancing" issue. Reducing the call timer to 3 mnts won't break the game, summoner can call pet every one minutes, and poor puppetmaster and dragoon have a much longer timer and have to just deal with it. Yes we want beastmaster to be able to do everything, it is time for them to shine for once.

Deus Ex Automata allows you to call your auto. It has a 1 minute cool down. Although the pet will start with almost no HP unless they were at full when you dismissed them - autos can also heal themselves pretty much infinitely with no pet food required and PUP gets oils as well. Our only pet that can heal itself is hard-capped healing (based on LL's HP) once every 3 minutes.

[Xilk]

Thanx again Rukkirii chan.

Thank you for addressing these concerns in the bst community. Its fantastic to hear that this level cap increase will not be end of new jug pet choices!

I think SE's team is on a great track to add variety of abilities in the ready moves and traits of the different pets. There are alot of ideas out there for jugs. I"m sure we'd love to see ruzsor, opo-opo, hecteyes, and many other mobs for jugs.
Keep up the great work! REmember event he naysayers love the game (we keep paying subscription and playing it afterall!)

I don't think the Call Beast ability needs a shorter recast. However, it would be nice if starting a voidwatch battle or similar would reset the call beast ability.

[Helel]

So nobody is going to comment on VW procs--the real reason this is a problem? Pet procs are basically impossible or near impossible to proc, and even then it's usually a waste of time. Outside of VW, who cares...? BST can hold its own without a pet.

SMN is completely useless without a pet so I'm not sure why anyone is comparing them to BST. They're so dissimilar it doesn't make any sense. Or do people actually melee T3 VW mobs with their staff?

PUP is closer to what a BST does, so basically the discussion that we should be having is: what is the difference between a BST and a PUP, and how does that difference play into the summoning of pets. Stop talking about SMN.