Killer Instinct: The Beastmaster Compendium

Would be kinda cool if they tied Ready to the masters WS kinda like drg.

95% of BSTs would call that another nerf, because they would need to not only be in range, but melee. For some reason most BSTs players want to play it like SMN.

SE does this to BST players and it's largely because our pet abilities inherit the same stats as our mob counter-parts who would use the spells on us. (They use the same ability IDs and I guess SE is limited in their ability to tweak our pet's damage directly, without impacting the enemies we fight).

Also, it's important to understand that this situation has nothing to do with a subjective player mindset. The job ability activation rate for Beastmaster is inconsistent and is not unlike playing with a controller that has broken/stuck button. Meanwhile, JA activation for any other job functions in the same consistent way. (With Beastmaster, this is largely due to the distance calculation from player to mob, being a point-to-point calculation instead of a distance that adjusts by character/monster model size, such as the distance from the edges of two circles (where the player is standing and where the mob is standing).

It's also unfair to attack players who refuse this change or endured it since 2015. My favorite (lame) analogy for this situation is a simple one: If we were playing Monopoly and everyone who passes "Go!" collects $200 ...except the thimble, you wouldn't accept that rule without being given something to mitigate that obvious disadvantage, right? Maybe the Thimble doesn't collect $200 passing Go, but can Get out of Jail in 1 turn, immediately. See? There's a trade-off there, and you can speculate as to whether that benefits your play-style. With Beastmaster, SE gave us the 7-yalm restriction and added zero new abilties, job traits, adjusted zero skills, etc ...and made zero visible effort to ameliorate the situation for players. (They gave us re-skinned pets, almost as if they expected us not to use /checkparam, the moment we got them!).

With Beastmaster, SE has consistently taken measures to keep Beastmasters in check (rightfully so) ...but offered little to nothing in return to compensate. If SE says "find a way to melee with your pet" and you reply "we have no job abilities or traits to compensate". They did nothing for 3 years. It took someone dropping a Mythic to get to them to produce a "fair" job adjustment for Beastmaster. (Removing charmer's merlin is a QoL issue that should have happened when i-level/SoA content was released).

As it stands today, Job ability activation for Reward is still broken, and we lost the ability to do Leg gear-swaps (Pet charges fluctuate between 10sec and 15sec charges, inconsistently and in non-deterministic fashion. (Regardless, these trade-offs werenever on the table, anyway....but SE does what it wants).

Anyway, I digress. If SE doesn't fix gear-swapping with the next patch (and hopefully mitigate Reward in some way), I'm cancelling my subscription for a month. Call it a protest, call it a vacation, whatever. I don't care. It's a disgusting disservice to paying customers to allow so much frustration in the end-user's experience. At the same time, I am trying to be optimistic, because SE can do amazing things sometimes and surprise us all. I prefer not to go the pessimistic route...yet.

They might say that, but they would be wrong. SE isnt going to relent on the range nerf. So you are going to be next to the mob anyway. But untill they put out gear that buffs master AND pet. even making you use your strongest pet WS every time isnt going to be a big buff.

Bst basically has two main play styles. run in and out of range for ready and reward. or just gear/buff up like a basic melee that has a pet wiffing against the hard targets. It doesnt do very well at EITHER of those builds.

Well... best get gearing up. CP Campaign's incoming.

Sure it terms of raw damage it may fall short but no one wanted nor expected it to be in the top tier. A case can now be made at least for the utility it offers alongside reasonable melee damage; most potent defense down (matched only by BLU 1hr), high accuracy dispel, high physical AoE dmg, native berserk that stacks with other sources, great hate shedding, good Skillchain potential, potent defensive buffs, to name a few. The downside is the limitations on the call beast timers preventing you from using all of the above in tandem. Though in a way this drawback adds a layer of complexity that I rather enjoy after years of being a relatively brain-dead job.

Is Blurred Axe +1 really worth it as an offhand option, or should I stick with Digirbalag (Ternion +1)? Also, what is the OAT proc rate on Blurred +1 weapons?

JP wiki might have hard numbers, but think its round 40~45%

Blurred+1 have the same OAT rate as Joyeuse etc

Its my go to offhand when using Dolichenus though I think a well augmented Digirbalag should be worth using as well if it has high DA etc for Decimation itself.

I was using Ternion +1 for Apex Trash since we have such a high TA rate in other slots, but I like that as a better fodder speed tp option. Respect.

Well that was mainly a result of the way gear itemization around the start of Reisenjima time made it a no-brainer to go that way.

Bst gear has pretty much always been mediocre for anything but a pet-first approach, but when things like augmented Valorous was top of the line it was at its most pet-centric.

The irony being of course that when we were playing that style, the job was far easier to balance. Now they are clearly trying to moderate any improvement to dps potential by offering only marginal gains to both master and pet.

They created a rock for their own backs when they made the range-nerf, but we the players are the ones expected to carry it.

BST will not be stronger then dedicated heavy DPS, in exchange it provides utility. That utility tends to be either really good or useless. This is from a group of people who actively experiment with these things. We have several people gearing and tweaking BSTs to see how far we can stretch it.

When i think about bsts uses, i think about group content. Using rage to better kill apex mobs solo is just depressing to me. I have been promoting the use of bst in dynamis for a long time now. But it needs to be better at other stuff lol.
It does have utility, i will give you that. However, most of it looks better than it is. it is nice but not really any fights where it is helpful or needed to any high degree. And if you are using that pet, that is basically all the utility you bring. Not enough. RDM will provide more utility. AOE dispel is kinda never useful.
not needed in most parties with buffs, and when used you are basically begging to die to 1 autoattack round. I havnt seen much need for it in a group since i pulled bst out to play with it. I can take it or leave it to be honest.
this one is quite nice on dynamis, but basically nothing on all other content. Overall it is perhaps the best thing that bst has, which is sad.
in an actual party the cor is going to pull more hate than the bst, so kinda whatever on hate shedding. not gonna have hate anyway. With the defense buffs, i would actually prefer more hate generation for the master so you could actually take advantage of defensive buffs.
Most DD have that.
Dont get hate so honestly i can take it or leave it on that. And really only worth it if rotating pets after a rage.
I wont argue that bst used to be quite brain dead to play, but i dont really see how that has changed too much.
Mostly useful for cleaving reisen. Kinda whatever after master.
I am fairly certain it is 20%, could be wrong, easy test would be to single wield it in a set with 0 MA and count the double proccs. Easier if you have low hast imo.
To fix bst you can either increase its DPS somehow or give it some other use that has a wide range of applications that actually fit into group content. Give it a pet that has ONLY debuffs and a pet that has ONLY buffs, but more of them than the others. Maybe make those buffs effect the entire party. I am completely down for debuffing bst. Just the debuffs arent all that amazing yet. It doesnt have a wide range of applications that fit into group content. Honestly bst is great for dynamis and fairly poor for everything else.
the only complexitty it adds is deciding which buffing pet you wanna use after your 9 minute rage is used.
I agree with this quite a bit, sadly, most of it is on the useless side.
In the rdm thread i read something to the effect of "rdm is the 7th member of a 6 person party". Granted this was before the update for rdm which actually improved the job. Bst did not get an update like that lol. Bst is closer to the 9th member of a 6 person party. Just doesn't fit in clean to anything other than alliance groups.
I want something that makes bringing bst into a 6 man party a good idea.

im just basing that number off
https://www.ffxivpro.com/forum/topic/48957/gearing-newly-99-cor/#3166725
and the post or 2 above, its not hard data, but it matches up with what it "feels" like dagger was on cor. Like you said wouldnt be hard to test, but i am lazy

I'm pretty sure all standard OAT weapons are 45%.

We would, because historically that's how beastmaster has been played. You have to remember that most of us go back to the pre-Ready distance nerf days. BST and SMN were largely interchangeable for content then from a strategy standpoint.

Now, against PUP and SMN, BST isn't well-balanced. SMN does more damage during zerg, and about the same outside of it, and does so more safely. PUP does probably more melee damage, about the same pet damage (plus Overdrive which is just staggeringly good!), and is the ultimate "safe" job. I don't really care much about balance against other melee DDs but for pet strats BST is a struggle session.


I just want to say that this is a good post and makes great points. I made some of these points on the OF.

Though I feel like, if you can tolerate the pain points, beast is still great for Omen, all 6 bosses. You'll just need some kind of support for Pro/Shell and occasional healing/-na spells. Between Pangu path C and Defending Ring we're at a constant 35DT on master, so capped MDT with Shell V.

Bit of flip flopping here. The extra attack from Rage is not required yet jug pet choice is diminished by being shoehorned into using the sheep 1st? Rage is risky yet BST's hate shedding and defensive buffs are not useful?

You can't say an extra attack buff is not useful particularly one as potent as the one BST has been given. If you find yourself over-capping then it enables you to change the composition, reduce the party size or swap in other useful buffs.

I noticed the set for Decimation recently changed on the front page. Is this due to safety reasons or because it's truly BIS?

It was based on feedback that full Argosy was unsafe and less necessary with attack buffs. Credit goes to these folks.

I will relent, it is perhaps the nicest aspect of the new update. It just fixes one of the MANY large issues.
I still find it to be rather meh. I would actually prefer if it mirrored berserk at 25% attack/defense. Or maybe another pet that did a traditional berserk as well.

FURY/FRAIL DIA + SONGS was capping attack without rage on neak and yakshi. In group content i dont find a big need for it, you dont really get to swap buffs out simply because ONLY the bst gets that buff. Hate shedding i still find to be pretty unneeded. Same with defense buffs. In group content, you really are just never pulling hate. Physical AOE are a risk, but fairly rare tbh.

Bst does get hate shedding, regardless of how I feel about it, so the defensive buffs ironically get diminished by that same ability.

Also, if you are only going to single out a small part of my post just quote that part lol. Giant responses eat up pages.

I never said that. It just works well because of the 9 minute timer. A lot of the other buffs are just too short for me to really justify juggling them.

I stand by that.

Which dispel are you referring to?

Gloom spray?
Molting Plumage?
Geist Wall?

Not exactly new. But like Blu we have long had access to both light and dark dispelga

Going to toss my two cents in the kiln for the first time in a long while.

For the Pets;

It would have been nice if they turned loyalty into like Deus Ex for Bst, free, and quick (45-60sec or something), but the pet comes out with half HP or something. Then at least you swap between pets if you're not made of gil. As it is now at least for me, loyalty and call are what make the job so unplayable, even if you had unlimited gil, the moment the pet dies you sit there like a drg, with nothing much to do but spam like another DD until 3-5min are up and you spend gil on a pet. Would go a long way to allow us to do things for the party.

I wouldn't mind the range with the pets if I could at least trigger self-targeted buffs (i.e. Rage, Wild Carrot, Scissor guard, etc.) without have to force the pet into combat. Just seems silly, I know that would put Bst a lot closer to Smn in style, but hey, they've been screwing us over on pet utility for years, auto targeting things that attack the master and such. So I find this a small price to pay back to us.

Also, the buffs should hit the party within 5-7' of the pet. Currently can only think of Wild Carrot that hits everyone nearby, and all that does is help a lazy mage. I doubt it would change the overall acceptance of the job, but for low-man content it would make it far more viable. I don't really want to see Bst fall into the cor/brd/smn/geo pile of supports, but some party help would be cool.

As for the Master;

Ditch fencer, unless they give us some crazy Bst only shield it's mostly wasted on us. Replacing it with DW II-III like every other one-handed job. Then at least we can /war or /drk. A lot more utility for the master since they will never put the pets up to a point where they can compete with the other DDs (even combined with the masters damage.) Fencer now is just a /mage crutch to feel less bad about not having a decent thing supporting you in your off-hand.

or...

Give the master an ability actually worth using, since Charm/Tame is pointless now. Either something for us preferably, or go the Smn route, and something that helps the pet even more.


Feel free to melt down my change, but hey, we can all dream right?

At this point it is worth trying any change.

Having to engage your Rabbit in order to activate Wild Carrot is just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen on BST.

I always felt like if you Leave a pet with 100% HP, you would just get the timer back. PUP and DRG have that natively, and even GEO gets some of the MP it casted back from the Luopan. SMN has disposable pets, so they suffer none. Very odd you have to rely on timers on the primary pet job in the game. SE wanted you to fight alongside your pet, would make sense to support more opportunities to do that.

In my opinion I dislike the front page Onslaught and Decimation sets, I've tried using them both and find them to be inferior to Argosy+1 though the safety is a valid point Argosy+1 quite literally leaves you defenseless and with Rage and such active you probably would get one shot should you get caught in it without shadows, still I prefer Argosy+1.

Edit- I actually switched to what Xilk was using for Calamity and honestly I can see why he likes it so much, I do still prefer Decimation for better chaining options but with a TP offhand and a max ranked Tri-Edge I could see Calamity being pretty fun.

I really cannot agree with this. I've had a fun time playing bst/drg and making solo skillchians with just master. Fencer + wsd bonus from /drg was very nice combo.

I would like some pet shields, but I think fencer is a cool trait.

So more on the rage topic.

If you have geo cor (lightshot) and bst. you can basically cap attack on all content that doesnt resist geo spells
42% for frail, 33% for ooze, 15-20% for dia. So 90-95% defense down. You wouldnt need fury/chaos/bard attack buffs to cap attack. Not to mention the attack down on the mob. Even if the mob has 5k defense you will easily cap attack

If you are using the sheep, you might as well just use the slug since it would not only cap your attack, it would actually help the party. So yeah, i double down on rage being meh. You can cap attack easily without it and be quite durable because you drop the mobs attack. However, it does help the bst utility arguement. But the job needs more variety than just the slug.

Could use wilt or something instead of fury. Making parties quite durable to physical damage. Would actually floor the mobs attack. Wilt does 71% attack down. then an extra 33%... War can do that with weapon break and it lasts longer.

Given that this is likely 'defense down', and stacks with Geo, I wonder if there are implications of value outside of Dyna too. Could be useful on Omen, Aeonics, anything that is commonly conducted by 18 players.

It has implications, it does stack with geo, the problem is you can easily cap attack without it on jobs that bring more to the table outside of dynamis. Omen it gets a bit less value because mobs like to erase themselves. Maybe if they gave the slug something that is similar to bad breath?

33% attack down is nice, but groups dont really need that.

I’d say if nothing else the -33% attack is going to go a long way for the survival of the group