Killer Instinct: The Beastmaster Compendium

It's some level of interesting, but lacked core important things

What happens when you do fail a charm, you're toast. No emergency cure, no reraise, no shadows

Dying no rr and having to walk back was, painful. No sneak/invis either from /whm or /nin

As a duo, maybe, as uncommon as duoing bst was

if you didnt have at least 2 reraise earrings and 3-5 warp cudgels you were playing the game wrong. lack of shadows is probably the biggest killer back then since that's 6 free hits(assuming you could time it right) was hopefully enough to get 2-3 charm attempts out

lol

I don't remember having an effective emergency cure from /whm anyway.

you have stoneskin and blink for that. not cure. cuz you will 100% get interrupted.

The emergency button might be lullaby. dunno haven't leveled it high enough yet to see how reliable it might be.

cures were a mixed bag anyway as if you were trying to cure from being hit, the cures likely going to return very little HP, and bst has no MP, and if you did it at any point while the pet was fighting? Likely pulling hate right there if you didnt go out of hate generation range. SS might tank 1 hit at best iirc, especially when if solo every mob has crit rate +80%, blink got you 1 shadow then the next will never proc when you need it lol.

Lullaby with a light staff might work on DC stuff, feel like EM and up itll start failing just due to half of a an already low skill

I remember when they introduced Feral Howl i macro'd it as "Oshi" button, thinking it'd be game changer for my survivability.
Oh the disappointment...

I loved Feral Howl as a Dyna Proc (when I was soloing Dyna currency as BST/DNC with Ladybug).
It was an additional JA proc every 5 mins and also an oh-***button if you happened to pull/aggro too many mobs at the same time and needed some breath.


When I levelled BST back in the old 75 days for me it was a "break" from the insanely stress that was "waiting hours trying to get a PT invite for exp, or trying to build a pt from zero".
We all had that experience, especially if you were levelling a job that wasn't considered meta, it was a very long wait for invites, then a long wait to reach the camp, then people getting lost, then getting to camp and someone having to leave or DC 10 mins after.
Made you want to flip several tables.

So yeah BST for me was a rigorously solo experience to play at my pace, relaxed, as /WHM exploiting camps with Charm.
Wasn't fast but it was helluva relaxing and you felt such a nice series of feelings when you were using Familiar on a strong pet to slaughter capped zones (like in Sacrarium etc), maaan I loved Charm and was so proud of my charm build.

To the point that to me was the "core" element of BST and I was really angry when they slowly shifted towards jugs (which always existed, Courier Carrie anyone? But they were an "alternative" for when you couldn't charm anything, a backup plan, not the main element of gameplay).
In hindsight what can I say? They would've had to completely rework how charm works for it to make it work in a cooperative game like this.
Jugs were the easiest path. I still feel jugs should work differently, but whatevs.

There was a point before trusts where BST was a unique solo job, especially with an Adventuring Fellow. You had an extra body that could heal or take hate away from you, along with a disposable pet. I still remember running around on BST doing tasks with 3 bodies and it made things easier. The trusts system basically killed any niche BST had with soloing, because it dipped too far into what made BST unique. You now had 3-5 extra bodies that could split the hate, heal, and support you. What made BST unique is that you could bounce roles between you and your pet (you heal/dd, it tanks/dd, or it just DDs for you). The trust system was just pets-for-everyone.

The current BST vision from SE as a solo "fight with your pet" job is archaic and has since been lapped by most other jobs with ease, due to the Trust system basically doing everything BST could do but better. BST should have gotten an overhaul or improvement after Trusts were released, because now they have only the identity of a slow Axe-wielding Warrior that can fight with a sheep or something. They should have gotten more pets, more things they could do with them (buff others), more monster ingenuity and insight (charming HL monsters as an SP etc). They just stopped updating it and the
It didn't age well.

Always thought they saw BST being able to potentially lock some camps down due to charm shenanigans, as well as being able to "solo" some NMs where there was only 1 pop available as the reason they slowly just moved away from it in favor of jugs, along with simply removing charmable mobs in later areas entirely plus just being a more controlled way to make it able to do content.

bst/brd wasn't all that good, brd/bst otoh was great, and you could charm lvl 75 mobs if you had a main job lvl 75 bst.

You got full power songs, crowd control + charms. Only issue was charm duration is a lot lower.

The jug system is horrible, but they could still use it to release new pets. I'm still bothered by the fact that (and I've said this before) pretty much every pet is a complete p*ssy. Sheep. Beetle. Crab. Rabbit. What about any of those mobs looks even remotely beast-like? You're a glorified fledgling Pokemon trainer. There's an entire line of really interesting mob types they could have tapped into and just...didnt. Yztargs (huge gorillas), Krakens, Scorpions, Peistes. Jumbo Cactuars? Giant Gnats? Even the NM version of the pets are exact lookalikes to the NQ familiar, they didn't tap into that as heavily as they could have from a visual perspective. It would have been so much cooler if crab familiar was the small one and HQ crab was like the huge one from Abyssea. Rhyming Shizuna = NQ, and be able to call a Ram as the HQ. ETC.

They released an entire line of Naakuals, they look great. I had always wished they had given BST access to additional lines of pets via Familiar (similar to Unbridled Learning spells), like mini Naaks or something (powered up versions of every Ecosystem BST can control). They simply stopped giving BST more familiar options, probably because they fear it being OP. Which is understandable, but the game has shifted way more towards player-DPS and away from pet-focused DPS. There is no "OP Pet" meta anymore. Giving BST better pets barely moves the needle. SE is just out of touch with BST altogether and is lazy when it comes to addressing it. Which is frustrating for me, because BST is one of my more interesting jobs to play.

Yup. 1000% agree. I unlocked every monster in monstrosity, only to realize that there are a METRIC TON of abilities that jug pets do not get to use! ....So frustrating.

I did a little fidgeting w/ bst/brd on my main character. I'm Mlvl 50 and singing skill caps at 201.

I built a set for offensive songs focusing on Macc and CHR:

ItemSet 402128

I was happy to find I could reliably land offensive songs on Locus mobs.
Lullaby and Horde Lullaby only have their default duration of 30s

I haven't been resisted on Requiem or Magic Finale yet. Threnody spells are useful, still mostly light threnody.


The buffing songs are weak, but not insubstantial:
Advancing march is only 10% haste
Paeon 2hp/tic
Paeon II 3hp/tic
Paeon III 3hp/tic
Peaon IV 4hp/tic

Ballad 1mp/tic
Balld II 2mp/tic

Blade Madrigal 24 acc
Sword Madrigal 27 acc

Minuet 32 Attack
Minuet 2 39
Minuet 3 34 attack

Minne 3 46 def

etude +5 to stat

Carol 35 resistance
240 skill >>> 40 resistance


Ironically because of how the scaling works... sometimes the lesser song gives a bigger buff. like sword madrigal > blade madrigal at low skill.

AMarch isn't 10% at 201 skill

The wiki's kinda glance over this but marches with uncapped skill go below listed minimums


201 = ~3%