Beast Tamer Proposed Class Changes. Written by Flearas. version 1.5.
This'll be a long one. First, a primer: This changelog focuses on the mechanical nature of the class. Beast Tamer has an issue with its damage ceiling but that's a separate issue from the goal here. After the changes proposed in this changelog, the class may even be strong enough as is. If not, then any further damage boosts can be given through Growth Spurt, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For the purposes of this post, Beast Tamer's power in Bear mode is treated as the damage ceiling for these skill changes.
Before we begin, I'll list out a number of over-glaring flaws this class has which make it, for the purposes of argument, unplayable or which negate the purpose of the class.
-Mode switching has a disgusting delay. Beast Tamer respawns without being in an animal mode and there's a hidden cooldown upon respawning before she can switch into an animal mode, further compounding the problem.
-Each mode limits itself too heavily on the thematic of that mode.
-Bear, a mode focused on power and tanking (in a game where defense doesn't matter), is so limited in mobility it easily gets itself killed in bosses (eliminating the point of bossing) and the power is heavily gimped by the hefty cooldown on Fishy Slap and the requirement to lead into Furious Strikes with 3 attacks of Paw Swipe.
-Leopard, a mode purposed for mobbing, is middling in power compared to bear making it unsuitable for mobbing. The forced mobility already made this animal hard to use in bosses for survival reasons. Bear is used over Leopard for mobbing eliminating the point of this mode.
-Hawk, a mode designed to be mobile, lacks any form of damage making it futile for any damage application. The delay applied to mode swapping eliminates the usefulness of swapping to Hawk to move around. Flight is difficult to control, working against the "mobility" purpose of Hawk mode.
-Cat, a mode built around party support utility, overall has inadequate, or futile, support skills and no damaging power to make up for the overall loss in DPS. Having a Beast Tamer in your party for the purposes of the EXP buff results in a net loss of exp for the player trying to benefit from Beast Tamer's EXP buff.
-Despite being restricted to one animal mode at a time, Beast Tamer is unable to max out the potential of all animal modes due to SP restrictions.
-Beast Tamer deals Paltry amounts of lines to an extreme degree.
Let's get into the meat. A lot of these changes are extreme. No exaggeration. This is an overhaul of how the class functions. If, after these changes, the result is an overpowered class (unlikely,) then certain damage buffs can be modified, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Finally, one concept to keep in mind when discussing these skill changes: Beast Tamer has a total of 593 SP to invest across all her animal friends.
===Changelog===
-Mode switching removed. All animal skills can be used at the same time. Number of skills BT can spec into still limited by tree pathing and number of skill points available.
Bear:
-Paw Swipe: Now grants a 5 second 20% damage boost to Furious Strikes if used to initiate Furious Strikes (additive to the base damage %.)
-Deep Breath: Node removed (replaced by Furious Strikes.)
-Fort Follow-Up: Now activates on every 8th attack from skills outside of Bear's tree.
-Furious Strikes: Can now be used without Paw Swipe. Damage decreased to 140%. Number of attacks increased to 8. Now has its own node (replaces deep breath). Furious Strikes unaffected by Paw Swipe nodes.
-Li'l Fort: Li'l Fort's area of effect doubled.
-Fishy Slap: Damage decreased to 160%. Number of attacks increased to 3. Cooldown decreased to 8 seconds. Now allows movement speed while in use. Movement speed is equal to 50 + half the passive movement speed bonuses from Hawk mode rounded down.
-Table Flip: Cast delay reduced to 200 milliseconds. Cast speed increased by 80%. Grants 1 second of invulnerability. Cooldown increased to 25 seconds.
Leopard:
-Leopard's Hide: Health restored from skills outside of Leopard's tree apply at half the rate up to 5% of maximum life restored.
-Macho Slam: Animation can be cancelled with Leopard's Paw, Thunder Dash, and Three-Point Pounce.
-Bro Attack: % chance to summon a leopard reduced by half for skills outside of Leopard's tree. Bosses no longer immune. % chance of summoning a leopard against bosses reduced to 1/3rd of the original value for skills outside Leopard's tree.
-Leopard's Roar: Damage decreased to 300%. Number of attacks increased to 3. Increases the number of attacks from Leopard's paw and Leopard's Pounce by 1. Upon skill activation, Three-Point Pounce comes off of cooldown.
-Deadly Fangs: Activates at half value rounded down (2% with base value of 4%. 1% otherwise) for skills belonging to other animals.
-Party Time: Cast delay reduced to 200 milliseconds. Animation sped up by 30%.
Hawk:
-Formation Attack: Damage increased to 100%. Number of enemies hit: 8. Number of Attacks: 4. Enemies hit with formation attack are marked. Marked enemies release bird seekers on death which fly out and seek other targets. Bird seeker damage: 100%. Number of attacks: 1. Number of birds: 3. Can now be used while flying.
-Fly: Duration increased to 60 seconds. Cooldown activates when flight is disengaged. Cooldown decreased to 10 seconds. No active skill outside of bird's tree may be performed during Flight.
-Defensive Formation: Can now penetrate boss armor. Damage increased to 150%. Increases damage from bird seekers spawned by Formation Attack's debuff by 50%.
-Feather Cloak: Allows Beast Tamer to perform a dash while flying. Each enemy hit while dashing spawns 1 bird seeker (damage of bird seekers equal to the ones from formation attack.) Damage: 200%. Cooldown: 5 seconds. Now increases max speed and jump by 5 (1 point every 3 levels in this skill.) Can only be used while in Flight (shorter distance than Fly's double tap boosting.)
-Raptor Talons: Now passive.
-Baby Bombers: Damage decreased to 200%. Number of attacks increased to 6. Increases the duration of Fly by 1 second every 5th attack. Decreases the next Cooldown of Fly by 1 second every 10th attack. Fly's duration is refreshed if attack is used 50 times without disengaging flight. The cooldown reduction is also reset when the duration is refreshed. Does not interrupt use of Formation Attack. Now has a node.
-Bird's-Eye View: Now grants +15% crit damage. (When stacked with Sharp Eyes, only the highest bonus will take effect.)
-Razor Beak: Duration increased to 450 seconds.
-Feather Boots: Increases duration of Fly by 30 seconds. Reduces cooldown of Fly by 5 seconds.
-Tornado Flight: Attack stays in place once skill button is released until the end of its duration.
Cat:
-Friend Launcher: Increases damage of party members struck by 10% for 8 seconds. Increases Gold Card's chance by 5% the next time Meow Card is used per attack which successfully strikes an enemy. Decreases the remaining cooldown of Cat's Cradle Blitzkrieg by 1 second per attack which successfully strikes an enemy.
-Purr-Powered: HP Recovery: 100 per 4 seconds changed to HP Recovery: 5% per 4 seconds.
-Meow Heal: HP recovered: 50%. Each party member healed now recovers your HP by the recovery % from Purr-Powered.
-Purr Zone: Friends Healed: 300 changed to Friend Healed: 5% per second. Cooldown decreased to 11 seconds. Healing effects from Purr Zone stack up to two times.
-Meow Card: Blue card changed to 5% damage reduction. Blue card's duration decreased to 30 seconds. (Looking for suggestions on alternative effects for blue card. Not satisfied with how overpowering this damage reduction might be.)
-Friend Launcher - Enhancer: Now increases attack speed of Friend Launcher by one. Increases damage bonus buff applied to party members by 15% (1% per level. Brings the total buff to 25%.) Decreases the remaining cooldown of Cat's Cradle Blitzkrieg by an additional second per attack (maximum of 2 seconds per attack.)
-Meow Gold Card: Chance increased to 40%. Blue card's effects retain full effectiveness for the duration of Gold Card.
-Friends of Arby: Party EXP increased to 50%.
-Cat's Cradle Blitzkrieg: Whatever bug this skill has is fixed. Now successfully applies 1 attack per attack delivered by party members. Cooldown decreased to 80 seconds.
Hyper Skills:
-Group Bear Blaster: Animation sped up by 80%. Cast delay reduced to 200 milliseconds. Now provides an additional effect for each final skill invested in from each of the animal's trees. If invested in Table Flip, Group Bear Blaster provides 3 seconds of invulnerability (1 second if Table Flip is level 1, 2 seconds if Table Flip is level 6, 3 seconds if Table Flip is level 10.) If invested in Party Time, one cub is summoned for every 2 points invested (5 cubs at level 10) at a random enemy on the field for 20 seconds. If invested in Tornado Flight, all enemies hit become marked with Formation Attack's debuff and 1 bird seeker is spawned for every point invested in Tornado Flight (10 birds at level 10 Tornado Flight.) If invested in Cat's Cradle Blitzkrieg, the party receives a buff which reduces damage taken by 5% (1% for every two levels invested) and restores HP by 10% per second (1% for every level invested) for 10 seconds.
Fifth Job:
-Champ Charge: Skill now completes itself without needed input after the initial directional input.
*Core skills: (the change below is highly experimental and theoretical. It's only listed here for conversational purposes if Beast Tamer’s power ends up being short after the proposed changes) :
-*Growth Spurt: +1% Final Damage every 5 levels up to level 150. This change is only suggested if Beast Tamer still requires more power after the changes listed above. The total Final Damage provided by this change is 30%.
===Notes===
-Blue card may be overpowered despite the duration for the buff by itself being lowered to 30 seconds. I Would like input and alternative suggestions for other buffs to replace blue card's effect.
-Each animal is purposely given flaws to break up fluidity across animal modes and encourage using one over another.
-Bear continues to be slow by itself. Furious Strikes continues to lock Beast Tamer in place and Fishy Slap retains a hefty 8 second cooldown.
-Leopard skills can’t animation cancel other animal’s skills and forces movement for its attacks when the player might not want to move.
-Hawk’s Formation Attack is the only skill which can be used outside of flight. Other animal’s skills can’t be used during flight.
-Full usefulness of Cat requires giving up DPS options from other animals to charge support skills to full effectiveness. Meow Card is purposely left at a low duration to encourage rolling skill duration (and thus sacrificing power.)
-Beast Tamer's SP budget means not all passives or skills can be taken at once. Maxing out an animal's tree costs 280 SP points in total (Hawk's tree costs 281 to max out.) Players will have to budget carefully to design the type of Beast Tamer they'd like to play.
-Conversely, each animal now fits into its intended mold.
-Despite Bear continuing to be slow, Furious Strikes can now be used independently from Paw Swipe allowing the skill to start up and disengage quicker and Fishy Slap allows a slow movement option during its duration (with Hawk bonuses, movement speed during Fishy Slap can only be increased to a maximum of 97, up from the base of 50. This requires a Beast Tamer to invest to the bottom of Hawk's tree.)
-Leopard is now useful for mobbing, but the forced movement makes it unwise for use in bosses, deals less lines than bear overall, and the power doesn't quite surpass bear's. Also the class now has an easier time comboing with its skills, but not with skills from other animals.
-Hawk is now useful. The power is definitely below Bear and Leopard's (baby bombers applies an attack about once per second) however the added bird seeker utility indirectly helps make up for the power gap. Also, using the bird seeker's utility requires letting up on DPS skills from other animals. Baby Bombers is one of the most unique mobbing skills in the game. It would be a shame not to make it useful. Flight can now be maintained indefinitely but it requires usage of other skills in Hawk's tree.
-Cat's useless healing abilities are now useful. The overall dps support of Cat's tree is improved for party members, but not for Beast Tamer herself. Cat's power is still weak and that's a good thing since mode swapping is removed and the focus of cat has changed to using Cat skills to improve its own support skills.
-Beast Tamer is still limited by 593 SP to allocate into skills, but removing mode swapping makes the class more modular. It's impossible to take all core damage passives with the points allotted. Striving to take as many damage passives as possible also means sacrificing other key skills.
-Continuing with the modular theme, getting the most out of Fishy Slap's ability means investing to the bottom of Hawk's tree which means potentially sacrificing support from cat's tree or mobbing from Leopard's tree. Investing to the bottom of Cat's tree means sacrificing investment in the bear/hawk Fishy Slap combo. I'm interested to see what other type of modular combinations exist in this iteration of Beast Tamer. Feel free to talk about what you can come up with in the comments!
-Leopard's dash, a utility which could formerly only be used in Leopard mode, is now available for use provided the player has invested in this skill. Hawk, while in flight, can't use this skill so feather cloak, a skill which currently does absolutely nothing thanks to changes in V patch, was re-purposed to fulfill this function while in Flight since Fly lacks aerial control. Fly has a double tap dash, but the distance is extreme. Feather Cloak now provides a compromise with a cooldown.
-Group Bear Blaster's retooling was due to the skill being an exact replica of both Bear and Leopard's ultimate skills (neither of which were worth creating a hyper from.) The change also encourages Beast Tamers to invest more points to reach the end of an animal's tree and rewards Beast Tamers with an additional effect playing to the strength of that animal when using their hyper.
-Some skills require over-investing in previous tiers to reach later tiers even if none of the skills in previous tiers were wanted. This flaw was purposely left alone to add weight to skill allocation.
-Paw Swipe now rewards Beast Tamer for using the pre-existing playstyle. Furious Strikes can now be used independently of Paw Swipe to cut to the DPS right away.
-Replacing Deep Breath's node with Furious Strikes was a no-brainer. Really Deep Breath's node made Deep Breath's node useless. This replacement also meant preventing Paw Swipe's node from affecting Furious Strikes.
-Several of Leopard's passives were nerfed for effectiveness with other animal's skills. The effectiveness of these passives retain full effectiveness with Leopard's skills, however.
-Hawk now generates swarms of baby birds to attack enemies. This effect is only effective while in flight which disables use of other animals. I'd like more input on how this version of Hawk is balanced. It's difficult to tell if the power of this iteration of Hawk is balanced since we're scaling up a class which formerly did 6% damage from one of its skills. Yeah. For reference, Formation Attack is a very slow hurricane, defensive formation attacks one target at a time (about once per second) and Baby Bombers also attacks about once per second.
-Friend Launcher is now useful whereas before it wasn't useful in any situation, even as an attack. To make up for this, it was given party damage utility and given methods of increasing party utility of other support skills. This way, Cat's overall utility could be increased without heavily impacting the existing playstyle (without using Friend Launcher, Cat's support skills will still be lackluster like before.) The HP recovery skills have been boosted to be relevant.
-On the concept of keystones: Each mode has what I like to refer to as a keystone. A keystone is a skill which generates a large impact for the class as a whole, but you also have to invest resources to obtain. In Hawk, that keystone would be Raptor Talons which makes attacks from all animals inflict bleed at a 70% chance at max level (14% at level 1.) However, obtaining the skill requires 145 points plus 14 more points to max it out. In Bear mode, the keystone would be Bear Reborn which requires an investment of 176 points plus 9 points to max out. In Cat mode, the keystone is Meow Gold Card which requires an investment of 148 points plus 14 points to max out. Leopard has three keystones: Leopard Hide, Bro Attack, and Deadly Fangs so I nerfed the effectiveness for these skills outside of Leopard, but it's still going to require 129 points plus 14 more to reach and max out the last keystone.
-Obviously no Beast Tamer can have all these "keystones" at once. In fact, most setups will only allow for two keystones (assuming all of Leopard's keystones are taken as a set.) Fort Follow-up is almost a keystone, but unlike Bro Attack, it doesn't put down turrets all over the field and the effect was nerfed for skills outside of Bear.
-The Leafre Codex grants additional skill points in each invested skill. This, and any other effect which supplies the same buff, can be used to allocate extra points in other skills.
===Closing Remarks===
This version of Beast Tamer is far more modular than before. I can see debate over whether to invest in Hawk over Leopard, but Hawk's power output is still below Leopard's. Regardless, Hawk is far more useful now and at the very least there's reason to invest for speed and mobility. Cat's support skills require time investment over other skills to elevate their usefulness. Bear is still slow, but far more functional than before, and the misgivings still present can be made up for depending on investments in other trees. Leopard is now a good mobber competing with Bear, but the forced movement means it's difficult to boss with. No matter the circumstance, no Beast Tamer can have it all so the player will have to choose carefully what type of Beast Tamer they'd like to play.
Despite the changes, I still believe the damage output of Beast Tamer will be lacking. If so, Beast Tamer's beginner skill Growth Spurt, a skill designed to scale stronger over time, can be increased to compensate. All in all, Beast Tamer is now more fluid and mechanically capable than before but retains several flaws depending which trees she invests in.
I look forward to hearing input on these suggested changes and what is or isn't a good idea. How strong do you believe Beast Tamer would be if she were changed like this? Is Hawk too powerful or still not strong enough? Answer these questions and more in the comments below!~
*All suggestions in this changelog are subject to change upon future testing and input. Such is the life of theorycrafting.*
Comments
It was difficult to find Beast Tamers to consult since there are so few. Luckily I side-main Beast Tamer. The original playstyles for Beast Tamer were left intact (Beast Tamer can still be played as her old self if you ignore the quality of life changes.) Kanna and Beast Tamer are covered, so the next on the list is Jett. That'll be rough.
I think hawk mode should just be removed. I know it won't happen if not only for the reasons of plot, but Hawk mode doesn't add anything to the table besides slightly better mobility than Leopard. It doesn't do more damage than than Bear or Leopard, I'm doubtful that it even has higher dps than the two. Hawk mode's a cool concept, but it's something that a class should be more based around. Soon, if someone wants to play something that fights in the air, they'll most likely make an Illium over a Beast Tamer.
Of course this suggestion could just be avoided by not putting any points into hawk mode, but I feel as though Hawk mode's concept isn't suited for a class like Bt.
Next, I think Leopard's attacks should work like Aran's Smash Swing, in the sense that you only move forward if you're inputting that direction. Bear is still more suited to bossing regardless of whether or not you can control some of leopard's attacks.
Lastly, is the change to furious swipes assuming it's at max level? If it is, I would heavily disagree with this change. First of all, it'd make it incredibly difficult to fund Bt, and once one gets to endgame funding with Bt, it'd be completely broken. If anything, what CMS had was probably the best for bear mode. I don't remember exactly the damage, but 6 lines of 250% would probably be best. Also, a hyper skill increasing damage by 20%, another to increase boss damage by 10%~20%, and one to increase the amount of hits by 1 would be best.
Which change to Furious Strikes are you talking about? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If I had to guess, it's the 20% damage boost. I meant to say it was applied additively to the original 140% before the x8 attacks. This changes the final damage of Furious Strikes from 1,120% -> 1,280%. For perspective, the original Furious Strikes (in current Beast Tamer) deals a total of 1,100% damage. I didn't intend to increase the damage output to 1,120%, but it was the closest I could get to the original with double the lines with rounded numbers. As for why Paw Swipe applies the damage boost, time spent using Paw Swipe is time spent not using DPS skills (Furious Strikes) so the temporary damage boost was meant to give that lost damage back to you. To make up the damage lost with the new Furious Strikes (assuming it was activated through Paw Swipe) you'd have to hit the enemy roughly 15 times to break even. Maybe more. Frankly, I don't think that can be done in 5 seconds, but this isn't a damage boost meant to be stored for later use. If anything, the additive damage boost might need to be higher, but I'm afraid of breaking damage ceilings.
As for Hawk, Baby Bombers is one of my most favorite mobbing skills in the game. It's very unique and I tried to make Hawk an alternate mobbing animal than Leopard (but with less damage and different restrictions.) Flight is something entirely unique to Beast Tamer (Illium doesn't come close) and I don't feel it was fully fleshed out with the Hawk we see today. There's a ton of potential there so i'd like to see what could happen with it before axing it altogether.
Leopard forcing movement only if you hold a direction is an interesting idea. I can see it working. You'll run into the argument of the mode presenting a necessary flaw to make it unsuitable for bossing, however. Many see the forced movement as a design choice to limit the usefulness of Leopard to mobbing only and encourage using other animals. Obviously we know how that ultimately turned out in the live version of Beast Tamer, but it's a nice idea nonetheless. Worth exploring.
Some other improvements to Beast Tamer I would also like to see:
Nice stuff.
-Cat's Cradle Blitzkrieg: Makes sense. For a support tree the bind makes a lot of sense (and has synergy with its effect.) Cradle doing nothing but applying damage (at least with how it's currently broken) didn't make a lot of sense with the rest of the class' thematic. Only giving it the bind property might tip the balance of this skill, but I'll definitely look at it. Nice idea.
-Bro Attack: I overlooked this. You're absolutely correct.
-Meow Card: I wanted to make it 3 minutes, however the other argument is, because Meow Card is a party buff in the cat tree, the new design would encourage a support focused Beast Tamer to roll buff duration and sacrifice damage for support utility. That's the argument, anyway. I'm open to changing Meow Card to 3 minutes, but I'd like to hear what other people think about that philosophy first.
I was referencing the change to furious strikes lines and damage. 8 lines with how fast furious strikes attacks would be nigh broken. The damage % just makes it worse. It makes it hard to fund BT, and makes it broken at endgame. Which is why I referenced the Bear mode before the CMS nerf to furious strikes. I personally feel like having 8 lines of 140% would be going too far in the other direction. 5 or 6 lines with a hyper to increase the lines by one, with around 250% Maybe 275%.
Is that compared to the original Furious Strikes? The old Furious Strikes outputs 1,100% damage in total (275 x 4.) The changelog version outputs 1,120% (140 x 8.) The output is almost the exact same.