Feldon Are you ready for some concrete info about Beastlords?
The decision to bring Beastlords to EverQuest II was made less than a month before Fan Faire according to an SOE source, and a lot of things were said at Fan Faire, including what type of armor and weapons they’d use, what class they’d be, and how Warders would work. Now that the team has been working on them for four months, there have, not surprisingly, been a few changes.
Here is EQ2’s Lead Designer Akil “Lyndro” Hooper talking about Beastlords on EverQuest2.com:
Q. What is a beastlord? What makes it different from the existing classes?
A. “Beastlords are a new class for EverQuest II, based on beastlords from the original EverQuest. In EverQuest they were loosely based on a combination of shaman and monk. In EQ II we’ve tried to keep them based loosely around a combination of these two classes. One of our goals for beastlords is to experiment with some new play styles. Beastlords have warders that they can tame, who work in combination with the beastlord to create a new style of combat tactics. Beastlords have fewer buttons to press, and a more active and reactive playstyle than our other classes as they react and interact with their warder.”
Q. What archetype does the beastlord belong to? Fighter, scout, mage, priest?
A. “Beastlords are scouts, and as such they can wear chain armor.”
Q. What is a warder?
A. “The warder is the beastlord’s special companion. The warder assists the beastlord in combat and augments their abilities, as well as allowing the beastlord to access their more potent abilities.”
Q. How do I get a warder?
A. “Every new beastlord starts out with a warder; which warder the beastlord starts with will vary depending on which race they select. When the beastlord reaches level 10, they’ll be able to find creatures in the world to tame as warders.”
Q. What is the difference between warders; why would I want to use different ones?
A. “There are 16 different warder families (cat, wolf, bird, etc), when the beastlord tames a warder they receive a spell to summon a warder in that family. If they tame a new warder in a family they already have, it’ll change the appearance associated with it. For example: Timmy the beastlord goes out and tames a lion, and receives the spell to summon warder from the cat family. When they cast that spell the cat warder will have the appearance of a lion. If Timmy decides to go out and tame a tiger from that point on the cat family summon will appear as a tiger instead of a lion. Furthermore, all 16 families are broken down between offensive and defensive. The exact difference between offensive and defensive warders varies on a family by family basis, but as a general rule defensive pets will survive better and augment your group, while offensive pets dish out more damage.”
Q. How does my warder interact with me during a fight?
A. “Beastlords have some new tools at their disposal. They have two additional ability types, Advantages and Primals, as well as a new resource bar to manage called Savagery. As the beastlord and warder fight in combat together, the warder will open up weaknesses in their opponent. The beastlord will be able to use Advantages when they’ve spotted the weakness in their opponents. Successful use of advantages will build up Savagery which allows the Beastlord to use their powerful Primal abilities.”
Q. How do warders level up? Do they get AAs?
A. “In terms of straight level, the warder and beastlord will always be the same level. Whenever the beastlord levels up, the warder levels up as well. Warders also have two additional axis for growth: Warder Specialization Points and Affinity. As the beastlord levels up, they’ll gain Specialization Points that can be spent in trees to customize their warders. As the beastlord and warder fight together more, the warder gains Affinity. Gaining affinity increases the power of your warder spell from Journeyman, then to Adept, then Expert, then Master, then Grandmaster. When the beastlord reaches Grandmaster with a pet family, they’ll unlock a new primal ability.”
Q. At Fan Faire it was mentioned beastlords may wear leather armor. Is that still the plan?
A. “Beastlords are scouts now, so it made the most sense for them to wear chain like the rest of the scouts.”
Q. If the beastlord is a scout class, will existing scout raid armor patterns that drop in the Velious zones be changed so that beastlords can use them also?
A. “That’s correct!”
Q. What player races can be beastlords?
A. “Any and all races will have access to beastlords.”
Q. Will the beastlord have an epic quest? Class hat?
A. “Yes to both.”
Q. What is the coolest thing about beastlords?
A. “Personally my favorite thing about beastlords is the variety of warder appearances available, however I’ll leave it to all of you to decide what your favorite thing is about beastlords when you get your hands on Age of Discovery yourselves!”
Discuss this on the EQ2 Forums.
Looks pretty cool! A few people in my raid were looting left-over brawler gear thinking they might be able to gear out a Beastlord when they go live. Hehehe. Never mind.
Yay another one to wear scout gear … and here i thought it was pretty brilliant of them to have them use brawler gear :/
For the rest sounds good, although i expect they will need heavy nerfing as i doubt soe will be able to balance them properly compared to the rest lol
woot 😀 I cant wait!
Is it funny that i have left over scout jewelery at 90 on my swash? hehe ^^
Scout gear, oh well all the brawler gear i been saving from raid because nobody wanted it. Oh well there will a transmuting fest in a few minutes.
This is suspiciously close to the Hunter class in WoW. Which admittedly, is fun to play. Bad news — no one wants them in raids. Good news, they are extremely easy to solo.
Interesting. I wonder how they will compare to the other true pet classes as I think about how Conj/Necro have a different balance of personal/pet DPS that only varies somewhat based on the type of pet you have out. If Beastlords can skew that formula dramatically (e.g., truly decide whether it’s more about them or more about the pet on the fly) they will be more versatile in situations that shut down or favor pets.
Just some interesting notes. There are 16 pet classes, there are 16 in game classes. Pet classes will have a variety of defensive and offensive skill sets, Current game classes have a variety of defensive and offensive abilities. Does this sound to anyone else like they are mimicking the pets after each of the current game classes?
Ooh, that Iksar looks beasty 🙂
Yeah the most relevant information in this post is that they won’t be wearing leather (brawler) gear after all. Maybe they will still be using brawler weapons but one of the issues raised at Fan Faire was how brawlers have their own loot table and way too much brawler loot is dropping and subsequently rotting. Their answer to this problem was “Beastlords! Beastlords will use the brawler loot, so that should fix that.”
Oh well. I suppose a leather scout trying to melee mobs would have been eaten alive. I still feel like the biggest problem with Beastlords is going to be survivability since they and their pet both have to be within melee range unlike summoners. I guess that’s why their wearing chain after all.
Beastlords wearing chain. I guess if Berzerkers lost their EQ1 restrictions in EQ2, why not beastlords? Creature taming sounds good, and I’m pleased to see it isn’t exactly like catching pokemon lol. I’d like to reap some havoc as a Ratonga with a Plague Rat for a warder. 😀