Why is no one talking about beastmaster?

[Vyrerus]

Lack of interest. I mean, even in FFXI where Beastmaster was absurdly good, a lot of people ignored it because of its penalty on party EXP. This basically forced anyone leveling it, for a long time, to have to solo all of their levels.

Not only will it be a limited job, more than likely, but I doubt anyone will really want to play it. Unless it can like... Jug-Pet 7 party slots and solo old fights with relative ease.

[grinkdaboy]

i'd like it not to be a limited job.

[Mhaeric]

Lack of interest. I mean, even in FFXI where Beastmaster was absurdly good, a lot of people ignored it because of its penalty on party EXP. This basically forced anyone leveling it, for a long time, to have to solo all of their levels.

This myth really needs to be put to bed. The flat experience penalty for simply having a pet in a party was taken out in 2004 or 2005 sometime around Chains of Promathia launch. A BST pet's level will still determine the party level if it is higher level than all the other party members and thus indirectly lower experience gained, but BST are never going to use a T+ pet in normal solo or group play where experience is the goal anyway so it never has an actual impact. The later buff to jug pets and jug pet duration just added another nail in that coffin.

The real reason people soloed with BST was because it could and was extremely good at it, and before the jug pet buffs BST would often not have any worthwhile charmable pets nearby popular full party camps.

[Vyrerus]

This myth really needs to be put to bed. The flat experience penalty for simply having a pet in a party was taken out in 2004 or 2005 sometime around Chains of Promathia launch. A BST pet's level will still determine the party level if it is higher level than all the other party members and thus indirectly lower experience gained, but BST are never going to use a T+ pet in normal solo or group play where experience is the goal anyway so it never has an actual impact. The later buff to jug pets and jug pet duration just added another nail in that coffin.

The real reason people soloed with BST was because it could and was extremely good at it, and before the jug pet buffs BST would often not have any worthwhile charmable pets nearby popular full party camps.

I played FFXI from 2003 until 2019. It wasn't a myth. Any pet worthwhile for EXP parties was going to lower the EXP you were getting, and knowing this in general, even after the change, made people rather unlikely to invite Beastmasters. Even with an Even Match pet, the pet counts as an additional party member for the EXP averaging, so you get slightly lower returns for lower level party members (members lower than the BST). Early FFXI was playing as much off of what was actually good vs. what people expected to be good.

So the general knowledge became, "BST lowers party EXP regardless of anything." Maybe that's the "myth" you're referring to? Soloing on BST for good EXP per hour was hard. You were as likely to kill yourself from your monster going uncharmed as you were to beat the monster you were fighting. If BSTs could have sped up their EXP by partying regularly, they totally would.

It was a long time though, before jugs got good enough that people didn't mind'em. And an even longer time until they got good enough to make BST somewhat decent compared to other party options. I remember partying with a BST in King Ranperre's Tomb, and dealing about double their damage, even coupling Saber Siravarde with them. They suffered from the same issue that DRG suffered from. SE overbalanced them towards low low damage because of the option/focus for pets, so their attack power was pathetic.

That all said, BST was one of my favorite jobs. Though my friend Draginhikari loved it much more. He made a Guttler, Aymur, and even a technically unfinished Farsha iirc.

[TroySoFab]

Because we are all secretly wanting the new limited job to be puppet master.