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Revamp for Jett and Beast Tamer
Hello fellow maplers.
This topic is manly asking for a revamp on Beast Tamer, but Jett deserves some love too.
For Jett: just fixing that clunky starline combo and making Backup Beatdown can be used forever while hold down, allowing to jump while using the skill and making the animation faster would be great.
Beast Tamer could be much more than she is nowadays, she has 4 animals, but we use only the Bear Mode.
Tiger was made for mobbing but bear can achieve that too.
Hawk it have no useful functions besides the high mobility, his damage is the worst i've seen in the whole game.
Cat was supposed to be a support, it has some good buffs but comparing to bishop (and the fact that both exp bonus skills dont stack) its not worth to have in a party.
I have no ideas in how a revamp should be in beast tamer (sorry), but we could start having a level 200 hyper skill, right?
I ask for all the BT mains out there (if there are any): what could be changed ?
I personaly love the concept that we have 4 animals by our side, but we are bound to use only one of them and keep the rest untouched. Hawk and Cat modes are my favorite, but its awful to play with these 2, hawk has 0 damage and cat... well... its cute...
Now what you guys think that could be changed in both characters ?
Comments
Jett just needs damage buffs, and Starline should probably have a linking bonus skill in 4th job (remember that 15 SP Jett doesn't use?) to buff the starline attacks when they are linked together, probably an AS increase alongside FD or equivalent.
For an overhaul I'd honestly like to see a skill tree rather than a skill list.
I picked BT because I liked the idea of having flexible builds. We all know how that works out.
If BT were to get a rework, I'd like to see the ability to use any skill from any animal at once, while following a more branching path.
Similar to the way classes were before (Where you HAD to ignore one or two skills per job level) or similar to Ragnarok Online, where you must ignore several.
First up: Current problems
Beast Tamer has easily the worst damage output in the game. The problem isn't that Bear mode is unable to do damage, but that the moves Bear mode has to do its damage are terrible. Having to do 3 Paw Swipes (just 1 line of damage for your main move) before getting to Furious Strike is way to slow, and then Furious Strike only does 4 lines of damage and forces you to keep perfectly still to do the damage. Its the same thing with Fishy Slap, you have to keep perfectly still in order to do the attack and it takes a lot of time to cancel the attack and move which sucks in a game where bosses are able to move so much and do their attacks quickly. The other moves that Bear has also have its issues: Majestic Trumpet is bugged and may sometimes not come out, Little Fort forces you to get the enemy close to the minion for it to attack, Table Flip and Group Bear Blaster force you to stay still while the attack does its thing making you completely vulnerable for at least 5 seconds in a game where if you don't move you are getting OHKO.
Other than Bear the animals are useless. Leopard was meant to be a mob killer but barely does any damage late game. Hawk also does no damage whatsoever and its mobility focused, the problem with this is that you have to switch to the animal in order to get its effects which in middle of a Boss Fight is impossible. Cat is only mildly useful for his Card buff which is also the only buff BT can use with any animal, but forces you to get to Cat first in order to use it.
The animal change mechanic is bad. You lose all the passives and buffs from your current animal when you change. Before you say its for balance many other classes have layers upon layers of buffs while BT can only use a few. Changing from Bear to any other animal makes you lose a lot of HP and any stance and defense you had so you are pretty much dead when you switch. Also switching to use the other animals make sense in concept but sucks in execution due to the game forcing you to be fast or die.
Possible solutions
1: The lazy dev way
This would make BT work with little changes to its current state. First and foremost, give more SP to BTs. We already get less SP due to not getting the 4th Job SP bonus (because BTs have no jobs) which means we don't get enough SP to max every animal. Then make all the passives and buff skills you get from every animal available with every animal stance. Make the Cat buffs usable instead of being automatic so that they are always available. Reduce the time it takes for Group Bear Blaster and Table Flip to complete or allow BT to move while the move completes. Make Furious Strike a skill you activate at will and increase the amount of damage lines Paw Swipe does. Allow movement while using Furious Strike and Fishy Slap like Xenon's whip move.
2: The job way
I imagined that BT would be able to use any animals when she wanted. After all aren't they a team? Unless they are a team of college students that leave all the work to a single member I don't see why we shouldn't be able to use every animal whenever we wanted. In this solution the idea is to turn BT into another regular class, with jobs and the like. First remove the animal switching all together. Every job you get some skills all related to a certain animal, getting a Bear and Leopard move and passives at 1st job, getting Bear, Leopard and Hawk moves at 2nd job, all 4 animals at 3rd and 4th job. Like in solution 1 allow passives and buffs from any animal to be always available but now also allow any animal skills to be always available. If the Critter Champs are indeed a team I see no problem in be able to have Bear and Leopard damage skills, Hawk's mobility and Cat buffs all available at the same time. It makes no sense why I cannot have Fly and Hawk's flash jumps only while in Hawk, or Cat's heal and revive only while in Cat.
3. The switching way
In this solution we keep the animal switching mechanic up, and we also keep all buff, passives and skills always available regardless of the current animal. The major change being that if you use a skill of a certain animal while that animal is the one you have currently active that move gets buffed. For example if I'm in Leopard mode and use Fishy Slap, then Fishy Slap happens, but if I'm in Bear mode and I use Fishy Slap then the move gets a buff because I'm using a Bear skill while in Bear mode.
TLDR: Overall I think that either making most of BTs moves always available would be one of the easier and better changes they could do to the class. Animal switching takes way to long and gives no advantages, specially with how fast the current game forces you to be. Beast Tamer would definitely love being more mobile in order to keep up.
Jett would need much more than that. It's much more flawed fundamentally than you think.
In the case of Starline, all four of the starline moves are just bad, and have little to no use. They are also flawed heavily, the only way to realistically make them good is to change what they do entirely. I get why they suck, its kinda just auto-attack combo move filler that some classes have (i.e, Kaiser, or DS's lash pre 5th job) but the skills themselves just suck. More damage or faster use wont make them any more appealing to use.