Nerf Beastmaster

[Tidis]

Beastmaster (8/27)

A report on the planned adjustments for Beastmaster.

We are planning on making the adjustment to pet command distance in the September update. This adjustment is being done to add greater risk to playing Beastmaster without directly affecting their damage output.

The following commands will be affected:

Ready/Sic/Spur/Run Wild/Reward

Nerf almost confirmed.

[bazookatooth]

Nerf almost confirmed.

Congratulations. You can almost start complaining about how everything is being done by RNG and SMN only and how they need to be nerfed.

[Tidis]

Congratulations. You can almost start complaining about how everything is being done by RNG and SMN only and how they need to be nerfed.

I'll get right on that.

[Inx]

I'll get right on that.

Now just watch as every bst caps out on gear over the next 2 weeks then stops playing for the next 2 months.

[dasva]

If that's math I think you need to show your work.

Sure thing. But first let me remind you that I said if pimped enough... so before we start do you really want me to thru the effort of doing math in max buff/geared situation?

[Zekander]

I only have one anecdote to add to this conversation, treat it as circumstantial evidence if you must, but for me it was a real eye-opener.

My linkshell decided to do sinister reign a few days ago, so we cobbled together a party out of whoever happened to be online at the time. We ended up with: WHM, GEO, PLD, SAM, BST, SMN. The SAM was decently geared and knew how to play his job. The BST was pretty casual, only plays once in a while, only has one gearset (much of it dated). The SMN was about as skilled and well equipped as I can imagine anyone being, Nirvana, max augmented helios, 1200 JP, gearsets for just about everything, etc. The run went fairly well, all things considered, and when we exited the SMN posted his parser data. The BST had out damaged the SMN by more then 10%. To me this was just outrageous. I knew this SMN pretty well and I know he can do some crazy damage, I have personally witnessed him do 95% of an Escha NMs HP with a single Flaming Crush -> Light skillchain. He can easily out DD SAMs in almost any content (the SAM in this case did less then half the damage the SMN did). To make matters worse, when he shared accuracy data, his avatars had accuracy ratings of around 85%, while the BSTs pet had an accuracy of 30%. Yes, I know this includes melee attacks that don't contribute much damage, but it shows that the BST had a lot of room for improvement, the SMN; not so much.

This damage was not a single instance of spike damage, it was damage over a significant amount of time, against the same mobs, with the same buffs/debuffs. This is not a theoretical calculation of potential damage, it is damage potential under real game conditions. I know that this is just one instance, and that there were many factors helping or hindering damage, but even if the BST had every random number in his favor I do not believe that any random casual BST should be able to so easily outperform what I believe to be one of the best SMNs to play the game. If an event like this does not indicate that there is a serious problem with the BST job, I really don't know what will.

[bazookatooth]

I only have one anecdote to add to this conversation, treat it as circumstantial evidence if you must, but for me it was a real eye-opener.

My linkshell decided to do sinister reign a few days ago, so we cobbled together a party out of whoever happened to be online at the time. We ended up with: WHM, GEO, PLD, SAM, BST, SMN. The SAM was decently geared and knew how to play his job. The BST was pretty casual, only plays once in a while, only has one gearset (much of it dated). The SMN was about as skilled and well equipped as I can imagine anyone being, Nirvana, max augmented helios, 1200 JP, gearsets for just about everything, etc. The run went fairly well, all things considered, and when we exited the SMN posted his parser data. The BST had out damaged the SMN by more then 10%. To me this was just outrageous. I knew this SMN pretty well and I know he can do some crazy damage, I have personally witnessed him do 95% of an Escha NMs HP with a single Flaming Crush -> Light skillchain. He can easily out DD SAMs in almost any content (the SAM in this case did less then half the damage the SMN did). To make matters worse, when he shared accuracy data, his avatars had accuracy ratings of around 85%, while the BSTs pet had an accuracy of 30%. Yes, I know this includes melee attacks that don't contribute much damage, but it shows that the BST had a lot of room for improvement, the SMN; not so much.

This damage was not a single instance of spike damage, it was damage over a significant amount of time, against the same mobs, with the same buffs/debuffs. This is not a theoretical calculation of potential damage, it is damage potential under real game conditions. I know that this is just one instance, and that there were many factors helping or hindering damage, but even if the BST had every random number in his favor I do not believe that any random casual BST should be able to so easily outperform what I believe to be one of the best SMNs to play the game. If an event like this does not indicate that there is a serious problem with the BST job, I really don't know what will.

That's very anecdotal. Any number of things could have gone wrong. I can tell right off the bat that you guys weren't using proper buffs, food etc. if your acc was that bad. Most of those NMs are highly resistant to fire, so that could have been your summoner's problem right there. That is in no way indicative of the current situation with BST.

Besides that, Summoner does a whole crap load of buffing and utility besides doing damage. They can haste, stun, buff etc. they are incredibly versatile. I don't see why they should have to be anywhere near the top of the parse to merit an invite ever really. Your anecdote points more towards SMN being overpowered than anything. When is the last time you saw a bst pet do anything but hit stuff?

[Inx]

That's very anecdotal. Any number of things could have gone wrong. I can tell right off the bat that you guys weren't using proper buffs, food etc. if your acc was that bad. Most of those NMs are highly resistant to fire, so that could have been your summoner's problem right there. That is in no way indicative of the current situation with BST.

Yeah its a fishy sounding anecdote too. Pets need a lot of accuracy to perform adequately, to the extent that the absolute most crucial gear stat for a serious player of the job is pet: acc/m.acc. You load it onto literally every slot possible or you'll find yourself whiffing readies over and over again against high level targets. Be interesting to see how that BST would fare against an easy Escha T3 like Shockmaw

[bazookatooth]

Yeah its a fishy sounding anecdote too. Pets need a lot of accuracy to perform adequately, to the extent that the absolute most crucial gear stat for a serious player of the job is pet: acc/m.acc. You load it onto literally every slot possible or you'll find yourself whiffing readies over and over again against high level targets. Be interesting to see how that BST would fare against an easy Escha T3 like Shockmaw

I mean anybody who's done that fight before would realize that to win with 30% accuracy, the pet had to be doing like 50k per ready move when they did land. The more I think about it, that's either a broken parser or a flat out lie.


EDIT: Got bored last night waiting on people to form for escha stuff and started reading the BG forums. Wouldn't ya know? People are burning through sinister reign in 8-15 minutes using nothing but mages (BLM,SCH,GEO). NO DDs. OMG guys. Better start breaking out your "Please nerf -_ _ _ _ It's too OP" form letters again.

[dasva]

I only have one anecdote to add to this conversation, treat it as circumstantial evidence if you must, but for me it was a real eye-opener.

My linkshell decided to do sinister reign a few days ago, so we cobbled together a party out of whoever happened to be online at the time. We ended up with: WHM, GEO, PLD, SAM, BST, SMN. The SAM was decently geared and knew how to play his job. The BST was pretty casual, only plays once in a while, only has one gearset (much of it dated). The SMN was about as skilled and well equipped as I can imagine anyone being, Nirvana, max augmented helios, 1200 JP, gearsets for just about everything, etc. The run went fairly well, all things considered, and when we exited the SMN posted his parser data. The BST had out damaged the SMN by more then 10%. To me this was just outrageous. I knew this SMN pretty well and I know he can do some crazy damage, I have personally witnessed him do 95% of an Escha NMs HP with a single Flaming Crush -> Light skillchain. He can easily out DD SAMs in almost any content (the SAM in this case did less then half the damage the SMN did). To make matters worse, when he shared accuracy data, his avatars had accuracy ratings of around 85%, while the BSTs pet had an accuracy of 30%. Yes, I know this includes melee attacks that don't contribute much damage, but it shows that the BST had a lot of room for improvement, the SMN; not so much.

This damage was not a single instance of spike damage, it was damage over a significant amount of time, against the same mobs, with the same buffs/debuffs. This is not a theoretical calculation of potential damage, it is damage potential under real game conditions. I know that this is just one instance, and that there were many factors helping or hindering damage, but even if the BST had every random number in his favor I do not believe that any random casual BST should be able to so easily outperform what I believe to be one of the best SMNs to play the game. If an event like this does not indicate that there is a serious problem with the BST job, I really don't know what will.

How exactly can any job out dmg another job that can do 95% of a mobs hp in one go? Only way I could see it is if your "great" smn wasn't doing great in that situation. Which sounds like a case of using the wrong buffs, debuffs, and/or bps or he wasn't keeping up with his timers.

Because with the accuracies you are giving that would basically mean that the bst was landing 1 ready move for every 1 bp landed and still won. Which either means those ready moves are dealing 200k dmg each (which given that the max dmg without extra bonuses for single charge moves is like 20k yeah no) or your smn who "can" do 99999 dmg was only doing like 5k at that time or missing a lot of bps