BST As Future Investment

Gosh, I sure hope I won't step on anyone's toes here...

I have trouble soloing certain missions and fights, even with trusts (Seekers of Adoulin, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel or the Ark Angels II fights), so a friend advised me to use BST for now, since it'd make soloing much easier. I start to see his point, but I do have to wonder....

I have a Taeon set ready, but that one was made for a thief, and given how BST works much different, it would leave a lot to be desired. Some tell me that BST is so overpowered that I could wear anything and I'd be good, but others insist that I'd need a fully optimized and polished JSE type of attire.

Basically... I don't want to be the best BST out there, BUT I want to do a decent job and be capable of dealing this those listed things. Given that: what should I be wearing?

Thank you very much for all responses!

Not a good idea imo, eating aoe is not fun even for pimped bst. I see thf work better in your case, ta-rudra on tank with decent healer gets you through almost everything. If you choose bst route you will need Tons of stones for good augms, dont think what some random butthurt saying gimp bst clear stuff easy.

Your friend seems to have been living under a rock and missed the update that made BSTs stand with their pets which takes away the safety BST had.

So it's not as simple as whack on gear and bam clear stuff with BST you have to have situational gear sets, know when to run out of range etc.

Even before the nerf you still needed the ready reductions to bring you down to 10 seconds to get the most out of BST, which is:

Charmer's Merlin - Drops off Dragua
Desultor Tassets augmented with Sic + Ready delay -5 - ASA final fight reward
Max merits in Sic/Ready recast
100 Job Points

All brings Ready charge refresh down from 30 seconds to 10 seconds.

BST being overpowered is largely a myth.

Under optimal conditions, yes, BST can pump out massive damage in a relatively short space of time, but so can many other DD jobs.

BST has gotten this reputation mainly because the self-sufficient nature of the job makes it possible to emphasize buff/debuff support over healing. This advantage has been reduced by the range nerf, but its still a key point.

As people have already posted its also a *VERY* gear dependent job that requires a significant investment to get it into shape to face high-level targets. The difference between a really good BST and one that's just beginning/bandwagoning is night and day.

And even then, you're largely limited by the support you have.

I'm sorry to say you can't just slap together gears from ur dd set on bstmaster and go out and dominate fights as certain people lead u to believe.

U can certainly do chapter 1-5 fights with trust on bst and other old mission storylines more safely but u can do that on other dds as well. And no u can't just do ark angel II fights off the bat. Takes high end sets and skills.

As for even higher contents u need minimum 1100 accuracy with buffs to be able to hit the mobs.

So I do apologize that you hear certain false things from forum and certain people. If u make another set of taeon with pet augments get ready timer down to 10s u can do some lower tier stuff but requires strategy.

But bst is a great investment if people wanna max it out. but u have to decide if u wanna dedicate a month or two of work

I see, that's interesting and very good to know before throwing stuff out for that job.

geigei mentioned that my THF would likely be better for doing solo stuff, but would it be the best? I mean... are there jobs that would be better suited in these cases? Well, guess there'd be again "effort" as a factor in all this, since it would not likely be a main job for me in any case....

I'm an Elvaan. Is THF really my best bet? Just eager to know before I make some dumb decision.

Thief is one of the easier jobs to get into while not being too hard to play. Blue Mage dancer is better, dancer requires more skills and blue requires everything.

bst is still pretty good imo. Like you i was mostly solo. I also havnt been on much in the last year. And my main was thf as well. Tho limited to unaugmented skirmish gear. A friend had advised me trying bst as well. Tho that was before the range nerf update for bst. But i had started building it so i mine as well finish it. But even with my gimpy bst now, it still far surpasses my gimped thf. I took my theif to the new zone resijema and i caught agro on a skelly. It kicked my ***. It wasnt even close. My bst does so much better. Im sure a well built thf would do much better, but well built a lot of things do better then gimp built jobs. My bst at least allowed me to do AA2 fights on easy to get chapters and what not. So bst is still viable imo, just not as overly great at it was before the nerf.

Its also a little difficult to gear from scratch when your soloish and have no higher job to do things easily with. You need a reward set, rdy set, and most importantly a pet dt- set. Without the dt- set you probably wont get anywhere. Good news is the alluvion skirmish Taeon set and axe weapon are augmentable. Bad news, augments could cost a fourtion. And its probably not plausible to farm every stone you will need. It would take quite a while.

so take it for what its worth. I think its still a decent option. One im sticking with for now. But it takes work.

A myth huh lol, now thats funny~

The myth is get on bst naked n beat the game

Hmmm interesting, but suddenly I remember that I friend mostly said that I should do BST because of Sinister Reign, where people always need BST.

Did that change?

Before the range nerf Sinister Reign on bst was ridiculously brain dead easy and reasonably fast. It's still easy with bsts as long as they're careful and mindful of AoEs.

You can't just face-roll SR gear wise though. You need a 10 second ready timer and a proper Pet DT / Acc gearset to complete it safely and in a reasonable time frame.

That said I've been in much faster non-bst groups.

Exactly.

The problem with this game -and the way its been for a long time truthfully- is that as soon as a good strategy is found, its always assumed that any other approach is inferior and/or unusable.

while thats true, and i completely agree with that, there is the other side from ppl that only have a small amount of play time or who (like me) are currently in and out (mostly out) due to rl crap. And thus seek the best way to get something done with there limited time frame. Noone wants to spend a year on the game and get literally no where. So to that extent i understand it. But of course there are those *** that think 'one way is the only way'.

the only shouts I see out here are for the OTHER boring *** safe route for Sinister, and that's PLD, GEO, WHM, SCH, BLM x2. typically they will also want the BLMs to know Death, so to have spent enough time getting to 1200 JP. it's the "RME only" for Voidwatch all over again, really.

With the game leaning towards solo play, I would definitely say take up BST, but like any other job, if you want to be good at it whilst being a good player it'll take some investments. Time, and money. Nothing in life is easy though. As long as you don't expect to be a Bst soloing everything within days, weeks or even months, you should be fine. It's plenty of fun, and all bst CP parties *** rock!

I think it's worth it. Almost every other job requires heavy investment to be good, but with bst you will be able to do a lot more solo than any other jobs once you've done so.

It has taken me about 5 months of hard work becoming a upper mid level bst. Thief allowed me to get get the skirmish gear and the red mog pells across mules has given me the proper augments.

I am not sure if its anything at all, but I seem to always see people shouting for help with chapter 5 of Seekers, but I was able to solo them all. I also duo'd the final Rhapsodies mission with a SMN. I quite like working with SMN on stuff. So if you are looking to be able to finish all missions solo (as if you were playing any other FF game) then BST is a way to go to play through the story of this game.

Above all you will find Falkirk's guide to BST INDISPENSABLE: http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/45830/killer-instinct-the-beastmaster-compendium

I pretty much owe my ability to play BST to Falkirk. It would have taken me a lot longer to learn.