Killer Instinct: The Beastmaster Compendium

I Re-Started back on my BST much later than a lot of the contributors here. I used the jug pets that Theraisie sold in Upper Jeuno. I did a lot of soloing and BST parties/Vagary/Omen solo for cards. Here's what I used:

Solo/Party CP:
Vivacious Vickie/Caring Kiyomari (Raaz; Sweeping Gouge is defense down and Decimation SC linker to Induration)
Generous Arthur (Slug; def down was huge, vs. Dho Gates Bats gave me Monster Correlation bonus via Killer Instinct(merits))
Rhyming Shizuna (Sheep; Rage is pretty amazing, used Sheep Song to handle links)
Swooping Zhivago (Tulfaire; Allowed me to use Killer Instinct(merits) and get the Monster Correlation Bonus when fighting Aquansin Dho Gates; she also has a defense down move, and I think Pentapeck pairs with Axe for a decent SC to use).
Bouncing Bertha (Chapuli; mostly for aoe party or cleaving UNM stuff like the fly in Misareaux Coast)

Vagary/Omen card farms:
Warlike Patrick (Lizard; requires a good MAB set, but being able to spam Fireball for 15k~ dmg every 7~ seconds is amazing for group aoe). This guy is by far my favorite pet for sure, but I haven't used Lynx in the same way, so I might have to check that out. Fireball is so freaking good, its crazy how fast you can spam it.

There were some new pets that came out that were pretty nice, but they were released after I did a bunch of my exploring. The Lynx gives a really nice attack bonus, and has a Thunder based ability you can use to MB, was kind of nice vs Dho Gates bats (I guess you could use Matsui-P to help you make SCs). I didn't get a ton of use out of Randy besides using him for Unleash on stuff I needed to drop, like Omen Boss Fu while he was taking a lot of damage. The Beetle/Crab/Hippogryph didn't particularly get used a lot by me for what I used BST for, but Hippo has the Fragmentation property in his Hoof Volley move I believe (think its 3 charges?), so you can get some use there.

tl.dr - I would start with the starter pets from the NPC and find uses for them. They are cheap and disposable and will teach you how and when to use them. Once you start progressing in skill and gear a bit, you can try other pets out.

Awesome thank you for the reply!

Headbreaker ken is also really good, cursed sphere does very well dmg wise for 1 charge, think its your strongest 1 charge aoe nuke actually

Another question, what are the ideal weapon setups when both pet and master are dpsing?

I am going to have to try this. I had no idea. Only reason I knew about Warlike Patrick is because I used to use him in Ballista to harass people and then tried it with ilvl gear and was surprised how good it was. It would do about 600+ dmg aoe in level 60 cap Ballista, so I knew it was BROKEN broken back then. But will check out the fly asap.

I had a similar question.. For a physical, master focused DPS set up - I am thinking either Dolichenus+kclub or naegling+tp bonus is top tier and are more viable with the implementation of tandem strike - can anyone confirm and offer how these set ups compare? I imagine with a damage focused pet out Aymur+tp bonus wins? Aymur or farsha + tp bonus for master mag dmg?

You don't fight apex mobs on bst. You have Ken cleave half of reisenjima to death.

I have a gut feeling that Kclub would beat TP bonus, but Im not sure. You will wear full Malignance and storeTP gear for AM3 anyway, in which case your offhand wouldnt have any multi-attack and KC would probably have like 2.8 attack per round advantage. With Samurai roll you should have at least +150storeTP. So you should do ~155 TP per hit. So 2.8 attack would be around 434TP. With TP bonus offhand, you would most likely need around 3 rounds after WS to WS again, so KC should give you more than 1000TP. That was a fast math tho and I could have missed something.

EDIT: Ofc thats assuming 80acc less on KC wouldnt be a problem.

Dolichenus+kclub or tp bonus is not the best. Its damage doesn't scale with tp and it hits very hard at 1k tp. So the offhand Ternion Dagger+1 is better due to the triple attack boosting WS damage and the high accuracy bonus.
Aymur/Pangu + Offhand Kclub/Tp Bonus is a good setup for Primal Rend/Mistral Axe.

He didn't write Doli+tp bonus. He wrote Doli+kclub OR Marbling+tp bonus. He meant kclub offhand for Doli to increase WS frequency, not WS damage. That being said Ternion could be better. Kclub will lower damage a lot on offhand hits on Decimation and those hit/s are important, since fTP is transferred. Also tp set with Ternion can take advantage of better items, since you don't need that much acc.

Yes this is the point I was making. Not sure I buy that ternion+1 adds enough dmg to decimation to compete with increased frequency.. I can get behind the point about the accuracy requirement for kclub though (D skill..), on anything meaningful the TP gear difference is going to close the frequency gap significantly on top of better wep skill dmg and white dmg. Was also wondering if nagling+tp bonus could complete with this combo, sword skill sucks on bst but can still pull off a great savage blade and tp bonus axe benefits from A+ skill.

Hi Falkirk,

Do you know if Corrosive Ooze's effect is guaranteed even vs Thunder or Water based monsters? According to wiki, Attack Down debuff is water based, so just confirming if this was tested on monsters that would natively resist the same element type

BG wiki comments for Attack Down:

Debuff element is not always the same element. For example slow from Siren is wind based. There is probably several BLU spells that also has debuffs with element different then what you could call base element for that type of debuff.

C Ooze is water based attack tho, so it debuffs might be water based too. The easiest way is to just try it on Thunder/Water elemental.

I had in mind that Corrosive Ooze was a water based magical attack, so I assumed the debuff was the same. I guess there's a chance it could be different, but Falkirk probably tested the element, which is why I was asking. If its guaranteed to land 100% regardless of element, none of this matters, but just making sure.

Edit: how does testing it on water/thunder elementals confirm if the debuff is water based if the effect is 100% land rate?

I have never heard of absorbing shield in my life. My mind is blown. TY Falkirk

Mine too, almost when I discovered that item for DRK... Ups no that's for another time

Falkirk when players want verification on BST guide:

Great test! The duration seems to vary a bit (70-80 secs). I thought I read somewhere it always hit for 70 seconds but this doesnt seem the case, unless the absorb on the shield is impacting the debuff duration?

The Absorbing Shield transfers the debuff with its remaining duration, so you can start the countdown from the timestamp where Corrosive Ooze hits the target.

You're right, the duration isn't exactly 70 seconds - I've seen 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, and 81 second durations. It's probably a range from 60-90?

Edit: 84 seconds duration data point added -


And 87 seconds duration -


I know it's been said before, but it would really be nice to see when pet enfeebles wear off the target, so reapplying them wouldn't be such a shot in the dark.

Cool, good to know. Do you know any other notable 100% land rate debuffs for BST?

PS - Incredible work on this guide. I don't get to play BST as much as I used to but this is one of the best guides to ever hit this site and love the continued testing to support it.

So debuffs and elements can be super duper weird. Sometimes the element of the debuff can be different than the element spell which leads to different resisting and the same debuff can be different by spell and different what they might count for RoE. Super weird. It's particularly weird with blu spells (and drk absorbs) where their debuffs tend to have the same element as most other debuffs of that type but the spell is whatever element they want. there was some attempt to nail things down but seems somewhat stopped mid way thru

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/110245-Debuff-Elemental-Affinity

I think Falkirk mentioned Purulent Ooze is also 100% land rate, as it can land on dynamis bosses as well as Mireu (even pre-nerf).

While it can land on some powerful targets as you mentioned, it's unfortunately not 100% guaranteed to land.


If someone really wanted to include BST into a Sealed Fate Master Trial setup, confirmed Purulent Ooze knocks 500,000 HP off of each of those bosses.

Working some BST into Wave 3, and yea, not 100% but with the right debuffs pretty high.

It helps not just with the W3 boss, but also the NMs on each Halo.

Tested out Jettura in W3 yesterday, it was landing on the normals, but not the NMs. Hard to tell if they're flat immune, I just didn't have enough MACC to make it land, or if the chaos of the fight keep the gaze from going off. I think they might build resistance to it, however, but again, lot of things were going on so didn't get a good count. On my third use on a mob it only lasted 4-5 seconds, but I didn't get a good count on the first two.

Was hoping Choke Breath could land it's Paralyze and Silence on things, but results were fairly bad, which is unfortunate. Wsnt to give the Lynx a go on that front as well, being able to land Silence on the various problem mobs like BLU or RDM would be very nice.

We're doing a magic based setup for low man runs, so also trying to work either Bredo or Zhivago into the mix, but it's a bit of a pain to tell if their debuffs are landing. Bredo seems especially interesting, given the -50 TP and the nature of how NMs use their TP moves in W3, if it can reliably land it might be quite powerful. But the Fomor seem very resistant to darkness, so judging how well it's landing is difficult.

^ This highlights some of my frustration with BST and wave 3. You benefit greatly from bringing at least one beastmaster, it's got broad benefits and doubly so if you can deal consistent magical damage since stacking many CORs has diminishing returns, but it's pretty limited to GenerousArthur and Bredo/Zhivago from the pet standpoint. It would be nice if beast pets got an inherent macc bonus and S-E gave us a way to see debuffs on a target. Even Tandem Strikes +50 macc is not quite enough. Pets have very good and unique debuffs so let us use them!

Worth noting that Unleash makes Call Beast have no recast.

I'm thinking about setting up a rotation sort of thing where I can Unleash and drop a lot of jugs in a rapid sequence to throw out all the random debuffs the pets can hit. What I haven't looked into is if any pet past the first gets the 3k TP, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Still, do it fast enough and you could likely put a lot of random debuffs out, and take advantage of the edge case ones like the Spider's slow. This can also be used to apply a lot of self buffs as well, Sheep, Crab, Boar, Lynx, etc.

I'm about to go test if the pet gets 3k TP when summoned.

Edit: Pets summoned while under Unleash come out with 3k TP. So every pet move you use during this timeframe will be at full duration.

Oh that would be great :O


how many pets we can realistically use like that? This sounds OP af :D

inb4 Rua delaying his BST guide again, because he will need to include this :D

Off the top of my head, you can apply the Slow from the Spider/Diremite, the ATK/DEF and HP down from the Slug, the MDB down from the Bird or Bredo, and some random smattering of other abilities that might or might not apply depending on what other debuffs your group brings. Edit: I haven't really tested it, but I recall Blaster not being a gaze and being very strong in terms of paralyze. If that holds true for our Lynx, it might also be worth considering.

For self buffs, you can Sheep, Lynx(I believe these two stack, but I don't recall for sure), the Pugil(longer duration, you might do it a couple times to get a longer one) and the Boar.

You've got 60 seconds, which is a fair bit of time, though this does cost jugs(more if you're burning HQ on this, since Bestial doesn't have a reduced cooldown).

Still, in self buffs alone you're doing pretty damn good in comparison. Too bad jug pets don't have an ACC buff to provide, or you're be almost self sufficient.