Beastmaster Class Lore

Though I would love a Beastmaster class to be added to the game, where players can tame animals, there would need to be a Lore reason why it is added.

"Lyon, the greatest beastmaster from Garlemald and beyond rose through the ranks quickly and gained the respect he deserved among his peers."

"Lyon became one of a handful of powerful soldiers sent to lead Garlemalds troops to secure Bozjan, with great success. Though little did he know, the Warrior of Light [You] would be arriving on these very shores to liberate and destroy the Dalriada."

"Little is known of Lyon's apprentice - Lexan sae Balmung, who exceeded all his other apprentices with his knowledge of taming the beasts, dragonkin and undead against their enemies. Before the Warrior of Light arrived in Bozjan, Lyon told Lexan "Please, make sure the knowledge of beast taming is passed on to those willing to learn, find one that will make the world a better place."

What is the basics behind the Beastmaster class:
You can have 3 pets out at any one time - in a triangle - a tank, healer and DPS pet - the size are scaled automatically when in a dungeon, and may only show 1 pet instead of all 3 when in group content.

You can tame a variety of creatures from beasts, dragonkin and undead. PSA: Dragonkin requires Heavensward progression, and Undead require the first Eureka zone completed. Could be other taming creatures requiring certain progression.

Class Requirements:
Level 80 (any class)
Level 30 Bard

Story requirements:
Dalriada in Bozjan must be done once.

Bard and Beastmaster gear are interchangeable, but some might not be used by Archer class.

I wouldn't say that Dalriada or Bozja would be required. Pagaga's field records put Beastmasters in Ala Mhigo as well as Lyon's Landis.

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The house of Vochstein is known in Ala Mhigo for producing many skilled beastmasters. They specialize in the breeding and training of griffins, and those they have raised were much beloved by members of the royal family. As griffins offer their riders an unrivaled degree of mobility and are stalwart allies on the battlefield, they had a central role in Ala Mhigo's beastmaster battalion.

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It goes on to say that the head of the Vochstein family released the griffons so that they wouldn't be used by the Garleans and his son offered to join the Garlean legions so his dad wouldn't be executed. He went on to eventually meet Lyon and gained enough respect from him as a beastmaster to not be executed himself. He also went on to train an orphan Lalafell girl: Pagaga. Beastmaster would be easily learned in Ala Mhigo and it would be simple to bring up that whole story without needing to involve Bozja since it's not critical.

The main problem with Beastmaster is that it would definitely be a limited job and I believe Yoshi-P even said as such. Even if he didn't say it, he seems to have a bad opinion on pet classes and we've seen them all eventually whittled down to almost nothing.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The main problem with Beastmaster is that it would definitely be a limited job and I believe Yoshi-P even said as such. Even if he didn't say it, he seems to have a bad opinion on pet classes and we've seen them all eventually whittled down to almost nothing.

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My next video touches on Beastmaster, so my recent research can confirm that Beastmaster is earmarked for 'the second limited job' if that ever happens. Which is fair; much like Blue Mage, Beastmaster is a job with a class fantasy that just fundamentally doesn't fit into standard MMO progression. So rather than make a shoehorned-in 'standard' version of the job that only captures the most superficial reasons people would want them, make a limited version that can use the freedom from that system to be exactly what people think of as 'Beastmaster'.

I'd also hardly characterize the developers as 'having a bad opinion on pet classes', so much as them just making the best of the fact that pet classes are really goddamn hard unless basically your entire game is designed around it. This is hardly the first time I've seen a similar problem: City of Heroes had a pet class added in City of Villains, the Mastermind, and over the years Mastermind got worse not because of actual nerfs but because the Mastermind pet implementation was a house of goddamn cards, and eventually the actual pet AI stopped responding to commands and nobody knew how to fix it. Summoner and Scholar aren't as bad, but they suffer from clear issues in pet implementation so big and unfixable that it's easier to just design the pet jobs to not hit those problems than it is to actually fix them. Remember that XIV's dev team isn't just Yoshi-P, Ishikawa and Soken sitting in a room riffing and then giving the results to Koji Fox to translate; there's an entire team that we just don't hear much about, who've had comings and goings over the years. It's entirely possible that nobody who originally implemented the pet functionality is still working there, which would make actually fixing the thing SO much harder.

All that said, I could see them implementing Beastmaster almost as a testing ground if they wanted to reinvent that squeaky wheel; since limited jobs don't necessarily have to stack up in the same ways, they could potentially use a limited pet job like Beastmaster as a 'beta' for potential new approaches to pets that could be ported over to Summoner and Scholar if they work.


As to the OP, though: One of the things we do know about Beastmaster is that it's not a ranged job! All three Beastmasters we've met (Lyon, Clarricie and Pagaga) use the same weapon style: a one-handed axe, and a shield. What equipment type that'd actually be, that's not clear; you could make decent arguments for Striking, Maiming or Fending.

Pet classes are typically very popular when and where they're present. I had a lot of fun setting out into the game world on my night elf hunter back in World of Warcraft and taming all manner of different feline companions. Equally, I had a lot of fun conjuring a small army of demons on my blood elf warlock.

I think it's perfectly fine to question the handling of a pretty common class fantasy, especially if it's fated to be a limited job and likely to use an unconventional weapon type instead of a bow.

But are limited jobs really that popular to warrant a 2nd?

I say no.

But Beastmaster can be repurposed to tank. Make their lore be about controlling monsters on the battlefield to keep your allies safe and that only evil Beastmasters enslave monsters to make war. They have a shield already too, so it's not a far stretch.

Granted this negates the whole, have a pet do half the fighting thing, but look at Summoner, they aren't going to do another pet class. Yoshi-p said pet classes are hard to balance too. I feel this is the only way Beastmaster will work for this game is as a tank.

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Originally Posted by Kesey

But are limited jobs really that popular to warrant a 2nd?

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Difficult to say, since with only one limited job it's impossible to separate 'limited job popularity' from 'Blue Mage popularity'. But going by achievement stats, 62% of people have maxed out Blue Mage, and 32% of people have completed thirty Masked Carnivale stages. For comparison, Extreme completion outside of solo-unsync-ables seems to hover in the 45%-60% range, Savages tend to hover around 24% from the end of their tier's currency to until they become unsync-able, and in terms of jobs, the level 90 achievements tend to be at around 45% with some outliers on both edges (Monk is lowest at 33%, Reaper barely beats out Conjurer as highest at 51%). I was going to check the level 70 job achievements, but those are all over the place to a degree where they're clearly influenced by other factors.

I dunno how much effort goes into a limited job compared to any of those, but it sounds like just the job alone would be at least as popular as regular jobs, and a Masked Carnivale equivalent would be more popular than Savage raiding, but not Extremes.

So, yeah, probably worth it!

Blue Mage and Masked Carnivale was nice, though you do need to follow a guide when doing them as to not got frustrated.

Though, if Beastmaster would be the second limited job - It could be a first to try swapping multiple weapons, which can determine the role you play whilst sending beasts to attack.
You can be a tank role by going melee and shield then get someone else to tank, you go range swap to bow then jump back on your target with a lance.
The beastmaster can be a very flexible limited job class if you think of it this way. And right now, there's no class that uses multiple weapons so it be as unique as it gets.
Obviously, the beasts we can tame would be the main focus of the class, whilst adding the ability to switch roles on the fly would add flexibility.

I do not care for the addition of other limited jobs especially when it would potentially take the place of other much-requested midcore battle content in this game. Furthermore, if WoW has a hunter class with a pet running around that can access all the content everyone else can do, then I will hold FFXIV to the same standard. Period.