January 2020 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Urmom]

Yeah this is a 1 step forward 2 steps back for bst. Really need to fix the distance thing... I get you've changed your mind on how bst should work after 15 years but you can have it be something like 10-15 yalms and still be in melee range... heck some mobs even that would leave you out of range when meleeing.

[JKap_Goat]

please announce something for Fan fest, please be FFXI Reboot and get rid of this PS2 engine. I've been waiting for news for Mobile or Remastered since it's announcement long ago


come on SE please!

[Xilk]

AFter more testing and review, it appears that the ready activation time being .25 seconds does NOT help Unleash damage at all. The Animation delay is still the limiting factor.

I see no good point in keeping the normal ready delay at .25 seconds. It prevents some of the tp phase interruption for master with pet, but it loses ALOT of damage from ready moves and Adds aLOT of complication.

as enthusiastic my first impression for ready activation time is, the potential positives evaporated very quickly. It is better to revert that change, than to keep it how it is.
I think I already listed the other changes that would need to happen to overcome all the downsides of this change.

the plus side is a split second more of melee tp. However, making zealous snort Job ability haste instead of magical haste would do that much better.

[Mavrick]

Thank you SE. This beastmaster Update is much better. Just a few notes.

AFter more testing and review, it appears that the ready activation time being .25 seconds does NOT help Unleash damage at all. The Animation delay is still the limiting factor.

I see no good point in keeping the normal ready delay at .25 seconds. It prevents some of the tp phase interruption for master with pet, but it loses ALOT of damage from ready moves and Adds aLOT of complication.

as enthusiastic my first impression for ready activation time is, the potential positives evaporated very quickly. It is better to revert that change, than to keep it how it is.
I think I already listed the other changes that would need to happen to overcome all the downsides of this change.

the plus side is a split second more of melee tp. However, making zealous snort Job ability haste instead of magical haste would do that much better.

I really like being able to Stun with lizard's new instant ready move But I prefer ready-5 from pants :/

about Zealous Snout:
Right Now, Zealous Haste+25% overwrites WHM Haste II (+30%). Please change this.

A) I agree Change to Job Ability Haste +25%... even if effect was lowered to 15~20% Job Ability Haste, it would still be preferred... or
B) Maintain Magical Haste Effect, but allow combining with Whm Haste II, similar to WHM+GEO+BRD haste effects.


Likewise, Crab's Bubble Curtain Shell effect (Magic Damage Taken-50%) has lower priority than whm shell V (Magic Damage Taken-29%).

A) Please consider giving Crab's Bubble Curtain higher priority... or
B) Change Crab's Bubble Curtain to Magic Defense Boost instead.

[Rwolf]

Thank you for taking the time to adjust Beastmaster again.

Ready Execution Issues
The additional -5 seconds of Ready recast allowed us to finally drop Charmer's Merlin axe which is a step in the right direction for melee. However the changes with Ready animation time as stated is too fast to equip pet damage gear and you sacrifice the Leg slot to Desultor's Tassets.

I would suggest bringing Ready more in line with Summoner.

• Activation Time: 1.25 seconds
• Ability to interrupt the animation to execute another Ready move.
• Ability to execute Ready moves without engaging the pet with Fight.

Ready Buff Concern
My concern is that this style of play locks you into using particular pets to melee more effectively. You will always end up using a Sheep or Raaz pet to make use of their offensive abilities to melee. Crab and Jagil being the defensive side of this.

It feels like this new rock/paper/scissors model of choosing a pet is an unnecessary complication where you already have to consider the pets damage type, element and monster correlation.

If the goal is to make Beastmaster a frontline melee that the master is engaged at all times, then I would suggest alternatives that have worked.

• The boost to damage comes directly from the Beastmaster.
• Like Dragoon, where as long as you have any pet out.
• Like Summoner, where the duration is so long and Call Beast is so short you can stack abilities and move to your preferred pet.

Distance Issue
Distance remains a huge hindrance for Beastmaster. It is unreliable. You have to constantly worry about your distance to your pet and when multiple monsters are present, you have to find and run to your pet if say a caster from a distance uses an AoE spell and aggros your pet.





I'm not even that far away and in regard to buffs, I'm within the proposed AoE circle and cannot execute. Please revert this. I guarantee you, the state of pet damage right now isn't creating an exploitable opportunity.

Beastmaster does not have an endless supply of pets nor the damage to even keep up with current day melee on their own. They will melee if you give them reason to.

Suggestion for further changes

• Melee Gear Access/New Items: Blurred Shield, Iosheka Belt, and Knobkierre. Maybe some BST only shields and ammo that have really good master and pet stats.
  
• Jug Consumption/Inventory Issues: Like the other consumable jobs, maybe it's time BST just has a learn system for individual pets and has universal jug ammo. In this example /ja "Vivacious Vickie" <me> uses Call Beast. Bestial Loyalty changes to Deus Ex Automata and resummons your last recorded pet without full HP.
  
• Pet Poultice/Roborant: Give us a reason to use these. Roborant = Full Erase. Poultice = Potent Regen that stacks with Reward.
  
• Charm: Let us execute it with a pet for utility for a bind/enmity tool. Charm+ also works on duration.
  
• Tame: Can execute while a pet is active to reset hate on a target. Gives BST a unique tool to bring to groups. No more exploitable than death/reraise currently. Make it give a Tame resistance if successful so it can't be spammed.
  
• Feral Howl: Needs to be a useful stun and lowered to 3 mins like the other Killer job stun job abilities. Make mobs less terror resistant.
  
• Run Wild: Like Spur and Ready moves, should be allowed to use without first engaging a target.

[Alhanelem]

They seriously still need to re-evaluate the ability range thing. But these changes to buff the job a bit with the extension of various monster buffs to the master, which is an incentive to play close. Stuff like this is all you really need to do to keep people in melee range- just make being melee range effective enough to be worth the risk and people will do it. You don't have to strong-arm people into doing it.

[Safiyyah]

This BST update is much better. I want to start out by saying "thank you".

Add me to the list of people saying that:

a) the new Ready activation time means that we either need to give up midcast pet attack or magic attack bonus legs, or eat a 15 second charge timer. It's not ideal. Please just make BST Ready moves identical to SMN as far as activation timers and don't animation lock us during Unleash please.

b) Zealous Snort should be job ability haste. That opens up more usefulness for it.



To beastmaster's overall utility as a frontline damage dealer, though, I think this update sorta addressed one side of that but wasn't a full solution. Melee damage dealers in FFXI are generally characterized by either native multihit:

-thief
-samurai
-dancer

Attack boosts and physical damage limit bonus:

-dark knight

Or both:

-dragoon
-warrior
-blue mage

Beastmaster can now reach high levels of attack but we still have no native multihit, and axe weapon skills are versatile but not exploitable. For example, Mistral Axe has a 50% STR mod and 13.625 fTP at 3000 TP. Savage Blade has a 50% STR 50% MND mod and 13.75 fTP at 3000 TP, and is also two hits. Mistral Axe should have a higher STR mod or higher fTP, or both. And BST needs either access to better melee gear (why are we not on Niqmaddu Ring or Knobkierrie? Rwolf has some good suggestions in his post) or some form of native multihit. We gain TP too slowly and our weaponskills are not that strong.

Why not add a 119 hippogryph pet (or raise the level cap on Falcorr?) and add Fantod to the list of pet abilities that also affect the master? That would provide us with better WS damage and fit into the framework that you have created for BST with the January update.

[Typral]

Please add more MERCH, i love to support the game and get cool stuff

[RandomCanadian]

Re: bst update, I just want to reiterate what has been so well explained above...

i) Fix the haste prioritization on the boar (ready overwrites trust haste II with a lesser magical haste). Extra points if you make Vickie's haste JA haste so that Fencer builds would actually be viable.

ii) Fix the MDEF on crab (trust Shell V overwrites ready with a lesser mdef).

iii) Allow us to hit the BST ready delay cap without resorting to axe-swapping or using non-ilevel pants during ready moves.

iv) Make pets with special ready moves that impact the master reach 119 level cap. I'm not playing with under-leveled pets at this point in the game.

We all really appreciate that bst was finally worked over, we just need to fix these things with the implementation to make it right.

[Jerbob]

Thank for you this adjustment. It's a fun idea and much more interesting than just tweaking a few numbers here and there.

There are, however, a few problems related to the adjustment that I'd like to draw your attention to in the hopes that they will be rectified. I'll be brief as most have already by mentioned by others.

While I very much appreciate adjustments to the Ready recast merit (finally we can get rid of Charmer's Merlin - this is wonderful), we are still forced to use a piece of level 75 equipment in order to fully reduce our recast time. This is really dangerous in an item level environment, even if we remove the Desultor Tassets after one second (which I must emphasise is the minimum /wait time). If the merit reduced recast time by 3 seconds instead of 2, this final piece of ancient equipment can finally be purged from our inventories, and I would owe the development team a round of Tavnazian tacos.

There are some potency and prioritisation issues with some of the shared enhancement effects, notably Bubble Curtain (wiped by the weaker Shell spells), Metallic Body (the effect is really quite weak) and Zealous Snort's Haste effect. As other people here have said, The latter needs careful consideration; it's weaker than the Haste II effect we can readily access with Trust, and overwrites it. If the effects could stack, or at least prioritise correctly, it would be appreciated.

The sharing of enhancement effects is really fun, but it does mean that some pets without enhancement effects are now significantly weakened relative to pets such as the raaz, sheep, pugil, crab, etc. Variety is the spice of life, and having a wide pool of pets to draw from is part of what makes Beastmaster fun. It would be really nice if, in the future, more could be done with this "sharing" mechanic - pets could be given more enhancements, like mandragora gaining access to Photosynthesis, or even things outside of enhancement effects - for example, the MosquitoFamiliar's Infected Leech could restore some HP to the Beastmaster (or even their allies!). Not all pets have obviously applicable moves, nor do all pets necessarily need them, but expanding the scope of pet moves affecting the Beastmaster in some way would be a lot of fun. And if some, or even all, were able to affect our allies... well, that'd be even more fun.

The inclusion of underlevelled pets in the list of transferrable enhancement effects I think highlights a need for Beast Affinity to be improved. There is a perfect opportunity here - simply improve the potency of the merit category, as you did for Ready recast! As I said before, a wide variety of pets makes for fun and flexible options.

Outside of ideas related to this adjustment:

- Charm, Gauge, Sic and Tame still have no place at level 119. Please find a way to make these fun again, while retaining the original functionality. Any chance we could Charm a pet alongside a jug familiar?

- Perhaps you could consider better shields and a higher shield ranking for Beastmaster, as we're supposedly a frontline job?

- Please continue to bear in mind that gearing to support our familiars and ourselves simultaneously is very difficult. I recognise and appreciate the work done so far, but it must continue, and hopefully improve.

- Could we please use non-aggressive Ready moves when the familiar isn't engaged?

- The distance nerf is still broken, unacceptable, and in need of reversion. I don't think I speak only for myself when I say that I will never accept the development team's stance on this matter.

As a final, semi-related comment, I think careful reading of the comments in this thread illustrates the importance of reducing the minimum time permitted for /wait commands for everyone. It's sad when "broken" for some people is the only experience of the game that I legitimately have access to.