BeastmasterXIV - Repeating XI's mistakes

So what I'm getting from this topic is that Beastmaster was bad in FFXI, because the FFXI devs never properly balanced the class. Which is true, the devs rarely paid attention to class balance in FFXI.

Beastmaster's shortcomings in FFXI could easily have been solved with some balancing work, like:

Charm is 100% charm rate, with a minimum set duration
Charm normalizes monster level to that of the Beastmaster
Charm normalizes monster stats so that you don't have mobs that are useless or mobs that are too powerful
Charmed monsters disappear when charm falls off or are released
Summoned/jug pets are not useless
Pets take reduced AOE damage and give reduced TP gains to the mob
Pets do not aggro other mobs
Pets do not affect exp gain/loss
Beastmaster could select which skills the pets used/had finer control of the pets

The charm/release mechanic failed in FFXI not because it's a bad mechanic, but because there was never any work done for it after beastmaster was implemented. WOW's hunter pet mechanics used to be massively crappy for years before Blizzard finally decided to make pet specializations not be useless in a party setting. SE never cared that much about Beastmaster.

What I get from this post is that the WoW implementation of Hunter is a better Beastmaster than FFXI's BST.

Well.. I have to agree. After all, this is FFXIV, not FFXI v2.

For XIV, I would rather see a Beastmaster follow along the lines of WoW's hunter where once you tame a pet, you keep it and it levels with you.

I also wouldn't mind having the ability to tame multiple pets and switch between them. After all, the class is Beastmaster, not Beastamateur.

On my BST when I partied I used Juggies and did not worry about charming anything. the problem where BST was forced into soloing was before they fixed it so IF a BST did charm a T or higher it used to reduce the entire party's EXP and not just the BST so most people would send the BST on their own solo journey because of this. After that was fixed it was the age of the parsers and seeing as a BST alone could not out DD the non pet classes they were shunned out of most parties.

Sad thing about the age of parsers is NOBODY added in the pet's dmg to that of their owner. In many cases a DRG would do (made up numbers) 10k dmg throughout the party while the others did 14k or so. But then poor little blue skyrat being ignored may have done 4-6k dmg which would put DRG in first place on that parser. This is what brought on the loldrg era and the reason why all jobs with pets were ridiculed and forced to solo or LFG for hours on end.

This will not be the case in XIV unless they disregard(wouldn't be the first time) everything they have learned from trial and erro in XI.

I have faith Yoshi P won't ignore the past errors and walk on those grounds again.

Well i read the whole OP! and i agree! i only played bst to 30~ or so in ffxi but i got to annoyed by the very reasons you said in your post. I really did like WoW's hunter class and i'd love to something similar in ffxiv, as far as pet leveling / claiming works.

It would make me wonder though, if you had a crab for example, and it could tank for you, or your party, should it count as a party member? doing that would help with the player's balance i would think, as long as the pet was strong enough to be some what equal to a player. That way, for certain boss fights, say the party doesnt want you to use your pet, you could still be a strong DD on your own, being up to par with a drg or a war.

beastmaster will be godlike in ffxiv since you can solo on any job, now if you have a pet mob will drop alot faster.

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What I get from this post is that the WoW implementation of Hunter is a better Beastmaster than FFXI's BST.

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thats an archer with a pet >.> they have to mix it up more than steal wow's design

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Originally Posted by Richard_BG

doesn't necessarily mean your charmed pet can't zone into the instance with you. get out of tunnel vision.

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and while ppl are kiling the boss, your pet limit is reach and go out of control, and what do you do ? charm it again while it try to attack you or run to your healer or kill it and become a leecher ?

and in pvp when your pet go out of control, it is DEAD and what do YOU become ? a weakling ?

just admit it already that the FFXI beast-master is a fail version of pet class and it need to improve in FFXIV

I am also a fan of MMO pet classes. One Idea I can think of to assist is the OPs issues, is perhaps to have a stat that modifies the charm spells success rate, and/or modify the charm duration, rewarding those who sacraficed stats that could be benefitial in other areas to become stronger in there pet abilites.

Another option would be for the class to have pet buffs, so once you charmed a pet, you could cast a buff to raise its offencive or defencive capabilities.

Another issue I see in alot of MMOs with pet classes, is players summon or aquire there pet, go to an area and parke near on aggro mob that there pet can solo and afk while the mooch whatever low amount of XP that can aquire them. Some have set it so that your pet is debuffed unless a spell is cast on it regularly to maintain is strength, this minimized AFKing issues.

I am not sure how much of what I suggest could be properly applied to FFXIV, but it is just a few rough ideas.

while I did enjoy the XI version of beastmaster, I agree that in this game it needs to be changed to more of a WoW/Guild Wars 2 style pet class.

1) It lets you farm pet as per your taste/preference in mob families.

(Example: You could choose an Ahriman for their petrify ability, or you could choose a tank-style mob and get a Crab)

2) It brings depth to the pet system.

3) Allows Beastmasters to become a viable option for party-playing while also still being able to solo (but pretty much everyone can solo in this game)

Agreed and liked your post. It was well thought out ^^

NO on the WoW Hunter.. Yes on the FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Forbin

NO on the WoW Hunter.. Yes on the FFXI.

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And why, exactly?