August BST Update

Its the same issue you have with say phys blu spells, you have to account for the lost swings + likely ws you just lost out on and due to hiw dmg scales with buffs and just how strong ws are now, youd have to drop something pretty strong and if its too strong, not nake it spammable

I play COR full time but BST is my fun job and would never assume I know everything about it. I have played it for years and it was at it's best before it was it was hit with the distance nerf. I play BST only for merits and salvage these days.

Although there was one good response to this, I am not fully satisfied with it, and the follow up comments lacked even more information.

Heyoka set is only option currently for master and pet white damage. You get a big chunk of accuracy, and you cap gear haste for both master and pet. You also get some crit rate+ for master, which has long been SE's response to bst having low attack power. You can actually do pretty well w/ white damage from both master and pet...

HOWEVER, as has been mentioned, this just gimps bst damage for a couple of reasons:

1. White Damage does not compare to Weaponskill damage.
2. You don't need to build tp on pet.

Building up tp is not very important for the pet. First because Ready moves are on a timer, and second because there are many good tp bonus pieces for pet.

On the flip side, Master wants tp as fast as possible, skill-chaining and BURSTing with your pet is the best way to do damage on bst. So maximizing master tp gain (like any other dd job) is optimal. When doing this though, the pet falls far behind, and does not have acc for high level content.

Generous Arthur and Fluffy Bredo are not ONLY good for their great debuffs, they are good at taking abuse AND doing magic busts after the skillchains.
Fluffy Bredo takes extra magic damage, but has 75% blunt damage reduction without any gear. Arthur has alot of hp and defense as well. They are also the highest damage burst pets for bst.
Darkness and Water so darkness aligned stuff. With geo-malaise and regular skillchain I've burst 65k w/ bredo and even 75k with slightly longer skillchain. This could be increased. These are not bsts' only bursting options. There are plenty of pets which can burst ~30k damage without any special support.

There are several niche abilities for each pet already, though It sounds like this update will try to do better and differentiating pet use. This sounds like a great idea, but we'll see how they actually pull it off.

Pets are where the subtle and versatile abilities of beastmaster come from. The pets have unique abilities based of their species, their jobs and their families. Embellishing those differences is definitely the way to go, as long as its done well.

I'm really hoping for some good fragmentation ready moves and more bust options. Also some more master buffing abilities as well. Also, even though we have a few pets that actually have blm and rdm jobs, none of them actually have magical ready moves. I want a better burst pet. I would love it if we had a ilvl 119 lynx for Charged Whisker bursting. Having alot more pets (and modified abilities) will give me something new to play with.

granted its an old pet so they would have much better stats if brought to 119/changed entirely, what numbers was bloodclaw putting out with whisker if it was ever tried?

Think couerl is the only thunder element pet BST can burst with. I don't recall the damage, but that was a long time ago before augments so he can do a ton more now. But I would like to see the snow rabbit revived, only ice user pet.

In any 18-man content, BST easily adds the most benefit of any single job to a group. -10% HP on bosses. -33% defense and attack for wave 3 volte NMs. Able to dump 99.99999% of it's hate on any target, increasing survivability. Pet versatility allowing it to play defensive, offensive, or support/crowd control support when necessary, all while providing decent DPS (their damage is sufficient with buffs, let's stop exaggerating). Damage dealing really isn't a valid concern anymore with all the buff power we have; if BST parses 5-15% less than another job, they still contributed a great deal to support.

I cannot fathom how people are still confused with BSTs usefulness in a large group. Could argue in 6-man party, but 18?

think it also has the 2nd highest mdb debuff aswell(-25) next to tearing gust(-30) which takes UL, not counting bubbles.

Just to put it in the aether, if you are a bst and you don't feel like you fairly get invites to content etc

unethical protip, do exactly what I tell rdms to do. lockstyle and say you're a war. Once you're already there it doesn't matter if you call a pet, you're already in.

You can drop beastmaster in the tank party, or as a DD even, for Dyna. You get the killer debuffs either way, and Buukki is right, BST DD is fine. Beast also has an awesome hate dump, so you don't have to worry about enmity at all, ever.

Subtle Blow will be useful if it's Subtle Blow II and a lot of it, like +50 or something. Same with accuracy, if it's a large amount (+50 or more) then that is a decent little boost. Gamechanging? No, but something. I think what BST really needs on the master side is the same WSD trait that DRG gets. You get a base WSD bonus and then an additional amount when your pet is alive.

Pet-side buffs are a little tougher. You could make a couple of changes and beastmaster pets would be as strong or stronger than SMN avatars, but the community wouldn't like that. S-E is terminally scared of giving pets exploitable abilities because it *** with game balance.

Eiryl said,
Just to put it in the aether, if you are a bst and you don't feel like you fairly get invites to content etc

unethical protip, do exactly what I tell rdms to do. lockstyle and say you're a war. Once you're already there it doesn't matter if you call a pet, you're already in.





Deceiving other players is a good way to just get B-listed for not being upfront in the 1st place but if someone doesn't actually check people's jobs before they enter I guess that's their own fault.

without any buffs I burst 32k charged whisker off 2 step light skillchain on apex bat.
(I do have a really good pet mab set though)

I'll mostly agree with this but I feel the pet versatility is a bit too reliant on timers. If you have a pet out already and need to switch to Arthur for HP-10% then back to sheep for Rage, you've just used both your available Call Beast or Bestial Loyalty timers. (This is the part that irks me the most).

I just want them to allow charming of things like Rams and Marlboros again. In ancient FFXI time, you could. I guess they thought it was too OP or their ground shake effect annoyed PS2 players playing on tiny televisions back in 2002.

I'm very excited for a large variety of pet species being brought back to the front. Not likely excited enough to come back though.

Could really use Drg pet buffs on Bst if SE wants Bst to be anything more than gimp War with a pet.

Bst doesn't have a lot going without a pet. In fact it got nothing from traits to job abilities. It's great with a pet but once you start getting a lot of buffs then the pet begins to fall into a support role. This would have okay if SE had planned this from the beginning. However, pet support is something they strapped in after Bst got nerfed.

SE started to realize Drg was falling short even with serious buffs like 25% ATK, DA and Haste buffs as well as instant TP from pet and jumps; they had to add in the WSD bonus.

So I think at the minimum of SE wants Bst to be anything more a gimp dual-wield War with a pet novelty the the job should at least get the similar buffs as Drg plus subtle blows (like DNC) and accuracy bonus. Maybe a weaker WSD and no TP transfer from pet.

So atk, acc, multi-hit, WSD and probably store TP or JA haste if they want Bst to go all single hand axe.

Something like a sphere effect for each pet like avatar's favor would be interesting and probably easy for them to implement

Not sure how to say it nicely but you are totally wrong.
DRG is a DD. Wyvern is just a passive buff (well active when you use it for healing, but thats not much) and cute friend. It only offensively buffs DRG himself.

Now BST is completely different. At lower ilvl mobs, BST pet can do massive AoE damage, but also skillchain and magic burst doing ok damage in solo situation. Pets also provide very powerful buffs/debuffs in solo scenario.

Now group content is where the biggest difference between DRG and BST is. DRG is typical DD in group. Even Angon is nothing unique when most of the jobs can do def down WSs. BST on the other hand, outside of being OK DD, brings amazing debuffs for group content. -33%def/att that is not nerfed like GEO and 10%HP down adds more damage and survivability than whole another DD could provide probably. Then you have other powerful self buffs and 100% hate drop with low recast.

BST(master) dps SHOULDNT ever be on par with top DDs like DRG, MNK etc. because then you would see nothing else but BSTs everywhere. With such amazing utility coming from pets in group content you cant expect them to also be on par with damage. That would be insanely broken. Especially when they add new specialized pets and you would just go with 3BST DDs with 3 different pets providing 3 different powerful buffs/debuffs at all times. Even with current BST's dps that could be very viable option when they add new pets, so please stop trolling and be a little realistic.

Bsts current self buffs are completely worthless. They are almost all tank centered and the bst has no realistic way of pulling hate in a party with real players. Rage? lol.

Bst has a bunch of DPS traps. Using a ready move when the pet circles around and is out of range is the biggest one. The next biggest is ready moves in general. It is worse than a regular JA lockout. Better to ignore the pet if you are going for max DPS.

The master is MUCH stronger than the strongest DPS pet (even with unleashed) with ideal buffs for both. For party set ups it is much better to buff the party, so you will default to that. That means, in high end content, the master will hit the mob while the pet wiffs. All DPS pets become worthless. The debuff pets become SOMEWHAT useful. A lot of the debuffs require a lot of acc/macc, you are only buffing the master, see the problem?. So that leaves the slug. Slug is amazing... in wave three. Mostly unneeded in any other content. Easy to cap attack on most content. So slug is single content hero;;. Goat is nice for sleeping.

Pets are absolutely CRIPPLED by debuffs with no quick and consistent way to remove debuffs from them. You have reward... Pets need more ways of removing debuffs or a massive amount of MEVA.

Perhaps making pet acc/atack/ma based off of master. That way you can atleast have the tiger autoattack for a small boost in damage if there is no benefit from the slug (most of the time sadly).

A problem I am seeing with a lot of people is they are GREATLY overvaluing the pets contribution. A bst without a pet is about the same as a bst with a pet in most content. Wave three being an exception. I dont care how good bst does at killing trash mobs in zitah lol. Bst can do small burst damage? LOL. Everyone compares it on apex content... The hate drop is GIGANTICALLY overvalued, in group content the master aint pulling hate lol.

Master DPS? I am happy with it. It needs the pet to be improved and the playstyle needs to be smoothed out. The ready range is a BIG problem. Imagine trying to use an ability on any other job and it doesnt work because an NPC you can barely control is out of range. Stupid pet likes to run around. Wish they could just force it to stand right next to you. Pet needs to be able to hit 1700 acc and around 4k attack at the same time as the master. IF it doesnt do that, then DPS pets will remain worthless on high end content. MACC needs to scale up as well or else you are only EVER going to use the slug. The other debuffs rely on acc/macc, on higher end content it might take more ready moves (giant DPS sink) to land.


My biggest wish if for bst to get access to some JA haste... that alone would be enough for me lol. Put bst on blurred shield +1. Make fencer builds viable.

In solo/extremely low buff, I would agree with you. In highbuff bursting is pretty far behind. Even with 99k Bursts it is more DPS to just smash Decimation. Ready Lockout is brutal.

Yeah, wierd that they are mentioning acc to the master... Might as well give cure potency lol.

Honestly, i have done a lot of wave three on bst going full DPS with full buffs and never had to dump hate. Just doesnt do enough dmg. Which is fine, master is in a good place. Pet needs improvement. I always laughed that the best hate dump is on one the the jobs that will have the hardest time actually getting hate.

While that might be good for bst, that is pretty bad damage. Even solo. SCH and Rune can both do bigger bursts by themselves. BLM can do WAY more if solo. Just use a trust to make the SC. I bet nin can burst higher than that solo. In group content you are going to bring a SCH and a BLM if you are going to burst. We need to get bst into 6 man parties. Bsts issue is it is not worth having in a 6 man group. You dont play an MM0 to play by yourself lol.

Yeah, that's really the point - how can BST get into a damn party? What meaningful / realistic buffs/debuffs can they give the pet that will make you want to invite BST to a party? The best att/def down debuff in the game largely does not move the needle for the community, even for this month's v1 where it's literally the best...

SE doesn't want to give the pet aoe buffs, which is a missed opportunity. I'm looking forward to the changes, but just not seeing where this will improve BST in a party composition.

Just to be clear, BST is "not" a party oriented job, and that is ok.

Not every job is supposed to be for every scenario. that's by design. (that's what makes 11, 11, job change capability)

it is capable of party contribution, but not supposed to by design, rise to the level of equal contribution (if it did, it would be imbalanced)

We judge every job by the same metrics, instead of accepting that they simply aren't supposed to be.

Exactly. I dont want to play by myself on bst lol

Ooze is sometimes nice. this month, wave three... everywhere else? meh skip it.

The released a press conference about how they are making bst a party job. Bst is now SUPPOSED to be a party job. They just suck at making it happen.

Bst isnt even a good solo anymore. Quite a few other jobs are better solo's than bst. So if it isnt a party job and isnt a solo job.... what is it? an alliance job?

There is nothing I see that amounts to "party play"


Is it in the freshly picked?

It isnt recent. They have wanted bst in parties for YEARS. 9 Years lol. They wanted the pets to help the party. Which is why slug does 33% down instead of 50% up on the master. How do you assist a party if you are not geared toward party play?

Here is their job role manifesto

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/11485-FINAL-FANTASY-XI-Job-Adjustment%EF%BD%93-Manifesto

Spaitin, how about you post some dps numbers you are getting instead of follow around the forums to say how your method is so much better and anyone who doesn't play like you is doin it wrong?

its really annoying and you have not substantiated your position.

don't you all realise 11 jobs competing for that melee spot is not enough? it is essential to add BST to melees cause even numbers cure matsuis OCD.

Drop bestial loyalty to one minute timer with slightly reduced stats and I'll gladly "provide support" to my party by swapping out pets rapidly like a damn mix DJ. Until then, it's literally impossible to provide effective support in a 6-man party setting on BST without being encumbered by call beast timers

Can spam revitalizers lol.