Why is no one talking about beastmaster?

[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.