Thread: Beastlord Basics

Starting Warders by Race
Arasai - bat
Barbarian - canine (wolf)
Dark Elf - bat
Dwarf - bear
Erudite - feline (tiger)
Fae - avian (hawk)
Freeblood - bat
Froglok - aquatic (crocodile)
Gnome - bear
Half-elves - canine (wolf)
Halfling - canine (wolf)
High Elf - avian (hawk)
Human - avian (hawk)
Iksar - reptile (chokodai)
Kerran - feline (tiger)
Ogre - bear
Ratonga - feline (tiger)
Sarnak - reptile (chokodai)
Troll - aquatic (crocodile)
Wood Elf - canine (wolf)

Beginning at level 10, you can begin to Tame additional warders. To tame a standard warder (one of the 12 non-exotic warders), you damage it under 50%, stun (Cheap Shot or Stare Down), and cast tame warder. You will acquire the ability to summon that pet going forward.

The endline of the "Beastlord" AA tree provides a new ability to tame EXOTIC warders. There are 4 types of exotic warders (Dire, Mystical, Enchanted, Drake).

Gameplay

Beastlords get a new Hotbar

blbar2.jpg

In the center of the bar, you see a Blue Paw. This lights up once your Warder spots a weakness. Once this lights up, the Beastlord can active his Advantages. The pet will spot a weakness as often as every 5 seconds (base) down to 2.5 seconds (with AAs).

ADVANTAGES

Advantages are abilities (attacks/debuffs or buffs) that build SAVAGERY (most add roughly 20 savagery). Once an Advantage is used, another cannot be cast until the next Expose Weakness (Blue Paw; 2.5-5s depending on AA), however, the recast on Advantages is minimal such that you'll be able to use the same Advantage back-to-back if desired.

SAVAGERY

Savagery is essential the currency by which the Beastlords use their special/powerful abilities. Every 100 points of Savagery increases your Savagery level (1-5.... 6 with AAs). Your Savagery level (1-6) will appear in the dark blue circle near the top of the above image and it impacts the strength of your PRIMAL TACTICS. Savagery is gained by casting advantages, casting combat arts with either of your stances (FERAL [offensive] or SPIRITUAL [utility/heal]), or through AA based abilities. Savagery degenerates over time; very quickly out of combat.

PRIMAL TACTICS

These are the Beastlords most powerful abilities. They cost Savagery to cast. However, each time you cast a Primal Tactic, you receive a temporary, stacking buff that increases the strength of the next Primal Tactic cast up to 6 times. (This is a similar mechanic to Perpetuality, the Illusionist AA endline, in the way it builds with consecutive Primal Tactics). In Feral (offensive) stance, this temporary, stack buff is called "Feral Rampage". In Spiritual (utility/heal), it is called "Spiritualality".

Important Note from Buffrat:

One thing you didn't mention is the stacking buff is also an insane dps increase. It lasts 15 seconds, and a 6 stack for feral was 60% cb, 40% ma, 10% flurry. 6 stack for spiritual was 60% cb, 70% recov, 40% cast, 10% reuse (I think, not sure). Stacks also drain savagery, about 1 level per 4-6 seconds. If you're at a 6 stack it drains 2 levels per 3-4 seconds.

And it isn't just the damage of the next primal, it's all primals technically. All primals are modified by feral/spiritual level and savagery level. I don't know the math for the damage abilities but the 20-44% potency buffs work at 20% base, +2% for each savagery level and +2% for each feral/spiritual stack. To give an example on how the damage ability modifiers work, with savagery level 6 and a 5 stack of feral, my claw of khati sha that tooltips at 16000-28000ish solo had a high hit of just over 700k on an epic dummy.

Stances

As described above, Beastlords, like most other scout classes, have an offensive and a defensive stance. Feral (offensive) stance adds weapon skills, dps mod, and increases savagery on a successful combat art. Spiritual (utility/heal) stance adds mitigation, resists, and increases savagery on a successful combat art.

The more important point of the stances, however, is that they impact the Advantages and Primal Tactics you can use. In Feral stance, your abilities will deal more damage, provide personal dps buffs, debuff the mob, etc. In Spiritual stance, your abilities do lower damage, but proc group heals, group wards, group power regen, group potency, group crit bonus, group dps mod, etc.

At max level, you will have multiple options in each Advantage slot and the first 4 Primal Tactics spots. Primal tactics slots 5 and 6 (as they appear on the above screenshot) are powerful/special abilities gained through Pet AA and Exotic Warders (see Stickied "Warder" thread). When you change stances, your beastlord ability hotbar changes. If out of combat, you can toggle between the abilities available in each Advantage/Tactics slot for that stance.

In the chart at the bottom of this post, you'll see a listing of the warder types. They are evenly divided between offensive and defensive pets based on their Grandmaster Ability. That Grandmaster ability, once a particular pet type is maxed, is available for use by all other pets of the same classification (Offensive vs. defensive).

Leveling Warders

Now... the bad news. Each Warder after being tamed, starts at Journeyman quality. If you open your Persona window, there is a new tab called "Warder". You will see a bar there that looks very similar to an XP bar called "Pet Affinity". Well, starting at level 30, you get to level each of your 16 Warders from Journeyman to Grandmaster! Congratulations! Leveling from Journeyman to Adept... may 20 minutes. Leveling Adept to Expert... couple hours. That's as far as I got with any particular Warder, but suffice it to say, its gonna be a bit of grind to max each pet.

Pets level by you playing with them. In order to receive a pet affinity skill up, your pet must spot a weakness, then you must use a corresponding ADVANTAGE on the mob that your pet identified the weakness on. Blue AEs will not result in multiple, simultaneous affinity skill-ups because the weakness is only spotted on a single mob at a given time.

As you level, the pets abilities improve. At Grandmaster level, they acquire a new unique ability for each Warder.

Pet Abilities

nice write up.

anyone crunch any numbers yet to figure out what is more important for the class pot vs. cb or most advantageous aa spec?

i only played beta one day, got my beastlord to 90 and fucked around a bit but that's it.