We Need Beast Master Job in FF14 ARR

[Khalithar]

I will repeat what I said in the Other Battle Systems forum thread about pet classes and how I feel.

I want to agree with the topic but I honestly can't bring myself to and I'll tell you why, MMO design nowadays has turned pets in to little more than a glorified DoT while the player does the majority of the work. It's why I don't like Smn, the pet is basically nothing more than a bit of extra damage rather than being about you know actually SUMMONING things. Imagine if Smn actually summoned a large version of the avatar then mounted it and your hotbar was replaced by various attacks that you'd make the pet do. Essentially making you feel like you're a summoner commanding this powerful creature from it's back.

If we get a pet class, I'd want the focus to actually be on the pet and commanding it. Not on it being something that just supplements the job's damage.

To elaborate further, a pet focused class can work, Blade and Soul's Summoner is a perfect example of this. The pet does the majority of the direct damage while the Summoner acts as a support for the pet, keeping it alive and supplementing it's damage with some dots, buffs, and debuffs. But the pet's survivability is balanced in such a fantastic way that it won't die to to stray AoE if you're doing your job of supporting it right but it can't solo tank a boss either so it won't just die and cripple your performance from stray boss AoE but isn't so OP that it obsoletes an actual tank class. Now granted the class will be in bad shape if you let the pet die, but keeping it alive and supporting it is where your skill as a player comes in.

You and your pet feel like a team in Blade and Soul and one can't work without the other, it's exactly how a Beastmaster style class SHOULD play if it's ever added to this game.

[Kazrah]

Really how I'd expect Beastmaster in FFXIV is as a melee version summoner where some attacks would cause the pet to strike with you and have some pattern of BST attacks buffing the pet and pet attacks having a chance to increase the BST's damage or something along those lines, and it would have at least one cooldown to spawn extra animal companions to fight for some limited duration.

Puppeteer would likely fit that mindset of "QQ I want a real pet class", where it would look like it's shadowboxing while the puppet does all the actual damage. On the plus side, it would make for a more interesting alternative to physical ranged damage-dealers.

[AlphaFox]

Puppeteer, just name alone makes me think that you just do double damage but at less potency, having a doll or puppet follow and mimic your every move, which I suppose could lead to some interesting skill options. Never got to play with it in XI myself.

[Tanathya]

No, the jobs here a re good. I asay this for the people who insist on compare all with FFXI, and ask for same thigns than FFXI.

And how many times I read in this forums "THis class on FFXI has this feature and not here" and other similar things, like Samurai is a DPS on FFXI so wil lbe DPS on FFXIV to (Could be or not, that Yoshi-P team decission). A class what work in a determoned way in FFXi doesn't mean that should be traspased here as is. That's why I specific, I want a Puppet master, but a FFXIV vision of the Puppet Master.

As much as it might hurt you, and as much as someone else brings the balance issues up, FFXI had the jobs right. And, you know, this is a FF, and I don't see you guys complaining about people asking for WoW things. So please.

Also, it's not like this dev team is being true to the roots of the jobs anyway.

[Blackcanary]

First off I want to make a point about the poor choice of the word "true" by the Op. It is a very vague and loaded term that does not actually help out game designers. It is really easy for players to agree with but does not actually tell them anything about what you want.

Both of the following are much more helpful bits of information. So please keep that in mind.



So for you a "true" pet class is one with a risky pet glamour system that when you succeed you feel you have created an actual psychological bond with your pet's new glamour.



And you think that a "true" pet class is one where the primary focus is on managing the pet.

I can see how the current 3 pet classes (Summoner, Scholar and Machinist) currently fail to meet both sets of prerequisites.



Actually I think they limited the number of abilities effected by the current summoned pet in order to make the class easier to balance. When you have a class in which most of its abilities are determined by the currently active pet and that class is actually a number of different classes with one meta class. Each different pet would create a different version of the class that must be balanced against every other version and every other class.

Recheck my OP I have gone into more detail about what I mean about a true pet class.

[Anienai]

http://www.ffxiah.com/player/Phoenix/Anienai

This one agrees we need BST!!!!!! Also I don't want some crappy lalafell npc involved.

[Blackcanary]

This is a key aspect about designing a more (taming monsters) pet-focused job in XIV. This game is built upon balancing everything so nothing is glaringly a better option in every way. People get excited at the prospect of taming their favorite XIV mob, but as monsters are now, there would be some monsters so incredibly useless and so incredibly overpowered that the devs would be sloppy not to simply homogenize every monster to have the same move pool to avoid lovely little "only BSTs using Narbroois can join this PF (they have a vulnerability stack ability I think?)" scenarios and in the end we'll end up with the type of pets being nothing more than glamour. If everyone can settle for that, then by all means...

They could just create new mobs that are made for BST or make it so certain mobs already in the game are made for BST and thoes mobs will learn new attacks which BST helps train the mob to learn once they have been tamed. Example once they get enough exp mob learns a unique attack. There could even be mobs which would mainly be used for healing and u could help heal the Tank.

[AlphaFox]

They could just create new mobs that are made for BST or make it so certain mobs already in the game are made for BST and those mobs will learn new attacks which BST helps train the mob to learn once they have been tamed. Example once they get enough exp mob learns a unique attack. There could even be mobs which would mainly be used for healing and u could help heal the Tank.

While I wouldn't argue it would then pull the WoW aspect of people complaining how every mob is tameable, including the elites last time I recall playing. I can only imagine a BST trying to tame the S rank in Shroud or such. I mean as long as it is said straight up "Only certain marked mobs can be tamed" then I can see it working but I can't really see them giving so much variety to BST that wouldn't force other classes to cry foul. Least not till a skill tree (assuming one ever does come) is seen.

[AnaviAnael]

As much as it might hurt you, and as much as someone else brings the balance issues up, FFXI had the jobs right. edit for limits

I have to respectfully disagree a little. I liked the way XI did most of its jobs, but I also enjoy the XIV version of the jobs too. I played SMN in XI and play it here too. Different strokes for different folks.

With the balancing statements, I think most of us who bring it up do so because we don't want to go back to the days where our main job may not be wanted. I loved playing dancer, but it was absolute crap in endgame. Or, black mages had a rough time for years getting exp parties because colibris reflected magic. Even with this game warriors weren't wanted in Coil because initially paladins mitigated damage so much better.

In regards to a pet based pet job, I strongly get the impression that the dev team flat out has no clue how to implement one. Sorry, but that's just how I feel.

[Yasuhiro]

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I agree with this, I love Dark Knight even though people complain it's not like FFIV, FFXI FFwhatever, some liberties obviously have to be taken.
I am new to XI but even playing that I do sometimes wish XIV can be a little more like that game with support jobs though rather than strictly sticking with the holy trinity.

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I always get sick of WoWfugees here on this forum asking for XIV to be more like World of Warcraft than it already is saying "this is how its done in WoW!" and I hate it when they complain about XIV being Final Fantasy (Too many cutscenes, I don't get this reference! Why do I need to play the story? blah blah), these people will end up stop playing XIV when Legion hits anyway, but I digress.