[dev1042] Level Cap Increase (BST Related)

[Mavrick]

We decided to cut the abilities that inflict status ailments to enemies due to the fact that we have armed Apkallu with high HP, Subtle Blow, Counter, Store TP, and a special form of attacking.
If you are looking to paralyze your opponent, please consider using the Coeurl familiar. (The Dev. Team would like beastmasters to select their pets based on the situation and battle strategy.)

Well it looks like (from the developer's point of view) that the aim for the Apkallu is to be a tanking pet (.... yet another useless tanking pet......). In Abyssea any pet can tank with atma buff and provide far more DD capabilities that you get with the bird, not to mention powerful enfeebling abilites and/or self buffing abilities. The Sheep can full time Berserk with a 25%~50% cut to defense, very low evasion, 0% guard, 0% counter and still full time tank a large majority of NM's in abyssea all while under 50% HP. Why should I use Apkallu? Even when he gets 3 attacks in, (kick attack?) its still only a fraction of the damage from sheep/rabbit/Tiger and they can all tank just as well. Counter/Guard does not seem to activate anywhere near enough for you to be able to switch out defensive atmas for offensive ones on powerful enemies, and it certainly does not make up for the horribly low damage output and lack of useful TP abilities. I fail to see why BST would want to use this pet over any of our other pets... Dragonfly, Lizards, eft can all tank and deal better damage yet you don't even see BST walking around with those pets ... There is a reason why we start fights off with our strongest DD pets and then switch to Dipper at the last 1~3%. The only reason to start a battle off with a weak pet is for elemental resistances. Apkallu resist water... just like Turtle, Fungar, Slug, Leech... all of which are superior DD pets with superior TP Abilities and/or have resistances to multiple elements.

The developers have stated on multiple occasions that they are focusing on voidwatch content and moving away from abyssea and they want BST to be more party oriented. So I'm a little puzzled that we are still getting tanking pets which are now overkill in abyssea at 99 and are only useful for lv 75 content... Is there no attempt to make BST useful outside of Abyssea and lv 75 content areas? Vs strong enemies, lack of useful TP abilites or any special/unique characteristics means our pets simply auto-attack and die.

With full -DT atmacites Turtle was the only pet that had any staying power against VW foes the likes of Akvan, Pil and kaggen. Of course, any non-water/Earth based magical attack would drop his HP like a 2-ton brick, but as far as phsyical attacks are concerned he handled them pretty well and he would usually survive 3~4 mins provided you spam the hell out of dawns, rewards and healing salves. After seeing the newly updated Aqua breath doing ~1100 damage at full HP to EP foes I was excited to see how it would do against high level foes. Unfortunately, after multiple attempts at or close to full HP, aqua breath was only doing ~50 damage to VW NMs. 3 mins recast for 50 damage, this level of crap can only be expected from BSTs..., Tortoise Stomp missed in 5/5 attempts so I just stopped caring.

Apkallu on the other hand was taking 200~+300 from normal strikes, counter/guard may as well not exist and he was hitting for a wonderful 10-35 damage, went down pretty fast even with his ~+5900 HP. Hippo? evasion had very little (if any) effect and he took just as much damage, and lasted only slightly longer than Apkallu... None of my pets could put a dent into these NM's. Now obviously jug pets aren't meant to tank VW nor deal any respectable amount of damage, but I have to ask the developers, with the current tools (or lack there of) available to BST, exactly what roles do they expect BST to play at 99? Are we to expect the same level of performance from "The Last Stand" and the dungeon crawls contents that were mentioned for 99? Or are we simply only expected to soloing abyssea, dynamis and other level 75 content? Does the development team actually test these jugs against high level enemies? or do they simply walk into W.Sarutabaruta and do all there testings there? I find it hard to believe that anyone on the development team would bring BST jugs into a serious fight and come out saying that the abilities are too powerful so I can only assume that all BST testing is done on level 0 mobs.

[Olor]

Apkallu on the other hand was taking 200~+300 from normal strikes, counter/guard may as well not exist and he was hitting for a wonderful 10-35 damage, went down pretty fast even with his ~+5900 HP. Hippo? evasion had very little (if any) effect and he took just as much damage, and lasted only slightly longer than Apkallu... None of my pets could put a dent into these NM's. Now obviously jug pets aren't meant to tank VW nor deal any respectable amount of damage, but I have to ask the developers, with the current tools (or lack there of) available to BST, exactly what roles do they expect BST to play at 99? Are we to expect the same level of performance from "The Last Stand" and the dungeon crawls contents that were mentioned for 99? Or are we simply only expected to soloing abyssea, dynamis and other level 75 content? Does the development team actually test these jugs against high level enemies? or do they simply walk into W.Sarutabaruta and do all there testings there? I find it hard to believe that anyone on the development team would bring BST jugs into a serious fight and come out saying that the abilities are too powerful so I can only assume that all BST testing is done on level 0 mobs.

I'd really like an answer on this, cause frankly if my BST is going to forever be useless to my LS and my parties, I might just have to retire it. It's nice to be able to solo monsters - but people on NIN and DNC and THF can often solo most of the same stuff AND they are useful and desired for group content.

Honestly, I'm so dissapointed with how BST is being left to rot. I mean, I totally get PUP needed its PUPdate, but BST is really no better off than PUP when it comes to being wanted in group activities - and it has a lot of versatility where BST is lacking (being able to do magic damage).

If the Devs expect us to get invites to parties so we can use 1 debuff every five minutes, they need to stop plugging their ears and listen to the playerbase.

Either stop nerfing or removing most of the abilities from our pets, or if we are expected to constantly switch pets - lower the call beast timer and reduce the cost of jugs