EQ2Wire Guide to Beastlords

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This Guide is would not be possible without Whilhelmina‘s fantastic Beastlord FAQ she wrote during Beta.

Introducing Beastlords

Beastlords really are a very different class, which means we get a whole new set of UI elements. This includes a Beastlord Bar, a Savagery Bar, a new tab in the Character window for keeping track of all your Warders (pets), and a large blue Weakness paw icon which comes up whenever your Warder pet is ready for you to fire off an coordinated attack.

If all of this were available at level 1, you’d be overwhelmed, so these features are unlocked as you level up. There’s also an in-game tutorial specifically for Beastlords.

At level 1, you get your first warder (based on your race). At this point, it really just acts as a basic pet and you can’t do any special abilities with it.

Taming a Warder

At level 10, you gain two new abilities: Tame Warder and Stare Down. As soon as you spend your first point in the Animalist AA tree, you also gain the ability Beastmaster’s Sight.

How do you know that an animal can be tamed?

When you cast Beastmaster’s Sight, you will see every potential warder in the vicinity start glowing blue. You will also see a list of nearby creatures which can be tamed posted in your chat window, as well as which family of Warder they belong to.

Once you decide which creature you want to tame, you will need to fight it and bring it to below 50% health. Now I don’t know about you, but ths type of gameplay drives me crazy.

Tame Warder is an extremely slow casting ability, and it is very likely that the mob will interrupt you. Once you bring the mob below 50% health, you should use the Cheap Shot scout ability to temporarily stun the mob and then cast Tame Warder. While you are casting Tame Warder, use the Stare Down ability to stun the mob for another 2 1/2 seconds. Cheap Shot and Stare Down both increase your chances of successfully taming the mob.

Once you are successful, you will gain a new ability called Summon Warder: and the family of Warder you tamed. If you already have a warder of this family, you’ll just update the appearance of your warder. For instance if you already had Summon Warder: Feline with a tiger appearance and you tame a leopard, you will simply replace the appearance of your Feline pet with that of a leopard. This change does not affect the level or skill of your warder.

Tip for Taming Low Level/Low Health Warders: This can be very tricky especially if your character is a much higher level than the creature, or the creature is a very low tier with minimal health. There are a few things you can do here. You can strip off all your gear except for your main weapon. You can also turn off any buffs you have which do damage. Finally, you need to cancel your current pet so that you can create a new one.

Warder Families

There are 16 families of warder : 12 normal and 4 exotic. You gain the ability to tame normal warders at level 10. Pets are either offensive or defensive types. Exotic warders become available at level 80 once you have spent enough points in the Beastlord AA tree to get the bottom end line ability “Tame Exotic Warder“.

Offensive

• Reptile: lizards
• Rodent: rats, armadillos, beaver, badger
• Bat: bats
• Canine: wolves, hyenas
• Feline: tigers, cats
• Avian: vulrich, falcons
• Amphibian: turtle, frogs

Defensive

• Bovid: dear, cow, sheep, camel
• Bear: bears
• Simian: gorillas, monkeys
• Aquatic: crocodiles, crabs
• Boar: pigs
• Age of Discovery: CE Warboar

Exotic (Offensive)

• Dire: raptors, panthers, sabertooths, dire bears, dire wolves, sasquatch, yeti
• Enchanted: hellhounds, lashers
• Drake: drakes
• Mystical: manticores, cockatrice, displacer beasts

Warder Skills & Abilities

How do you find out how fast your pet is skilling up, or what combat arts your pet has, or what your stored pet looks like? Open your Character window and click on Warders. At the top of the window, you can pull down a menu to view each of your 16 Warders.

Just below the Warder selector menu, there is a progress bar which is the Warder’s Affinity or XP bar. Your Warder will slowly gain experience as it combats alongside you and will skill up from Apprentices to Grandmaster. Once your pet completely fills up the Grandmaster level, you will gain the Primal ability shown to the right which you can use on all your warders.  You may view the progress of all your Beastlord warders by viewing your character on EQ2U.

NOTE: Warders do not start gaining Affinity until your beastlord reaches level 30.

In the Warder tab, at the bottom, you can see the Combat Arts and Spells which your Warder will automatically use during combat. You have no control over these, but you can upgrade them by spending AAs. If you click “Stats” while viewing a Warder, then the Stats flyout on the right side of the Character window will reflect those of your Warder.

Beastlord Bar

At level 18, you gain access to the Beastlord bar. On the LEFT side of the Beastlord bar are 4 slots which hold Advantages. During combat, your pet will open up Weaknesses in the enemy, which is indicated by a warbling sound and a large blue paw icon to the left-of-center of the screen. Once a Weakness opens up, you have a few seconds to click an Advantage which can do direct damage, provide a group buff, or debuff the enemy.

At level 20, you will see another part of the Beastlord UI called the Savagery bar. During combat, you will start to build up Savagery by fighting alongside your pet.

On the RIGHT side of your Beastlord bar are 6 slots that hold Primals.  Casting a Primal ability requires a certain amount of Savagery to have been built up. Primal abilities get more powerful the more Savagery you have built up. Using Advantages quickly builds up Savagery, but Savagery then slowly decays when you are out of combat.

Hiding/Showing the Beastlord Bar

If your Beastlord bar doesn’t show, try typing /togglebeastlordwindow. If you find the window to be too wasteful of screen space, you can right-click it and choose Minimize to reduce the Beastlord Bar down to the appearance of a standard hotbar. If for some reason your Savagery bar is missing, type /togglesavagerywindow .

Pet Window Note: for those not familiar with pet classes, when viewing the Pet window, the green bar represents health, blue is power and yellow is threat. You can also name your pet by right-clicking in the Pet window and choosing Pet Options.

Spiritual Stance

Now so far, everything we have been talking about takes place when your Beastlord is in an Offensive or “Feral” Stance. The Advantages and Primals you’ve been using so far are also “Feral” in nature.

At Level 30, the Spiritual Stance becomes available. If you are in a situation that calls for more healing or otherwise a defensive stance, you may switch to your Spiritual stance. The first time you enter a Spiritual Stance, you’ll need to change out the Advantages and Primals on your Beastlord Bar with Spiritual ones.

When you are in Feral Stance, only Feral Advantages and Feral Primals will work. When you are in Spiritual Stance, only Spiritual Advantages and Primals will work.

Rather than fishing around in the Knowledge book, you may customize your Beastlord bar, by right-clicking on any Advantage or Primal. A popup should appear which shows you the other Advantages or Primals that will fit into that slot. Fortunately, the game remembers which Advantages and Primals you’ve picked for each stance and will swap them out as you switch stances.

NOTE: Certain abilities will only go in certain slots on your Beastlord bar. You’ll find that there are Slot 1, Slot 2, Slot 3, and Slot 4 Advantages. The same arrangement applies to Primals.

Summon Spells: Rather than having an entire hotbar filled up with Summon spells for each of your warders, you can place a single Summon spell on your hotbar, and when you right-click on it, you’ll get a popup that shows all the pet families you’ve unlocked.

Skills and Specialization

At level 30, your pet will start to gain Affinity. While your Warder pet is always exactly the same level as you are, when you first tame a Warder, their abilities are only at Apprentice level. Only through adventuring with your pet can you hope to increase that pet’s skills from Apprentice, Journeyman, all the way to Grandmaster. This is a slow process, and the goal is not that you can have all 16 of your Warders Grandmastered out in a few days.

There is a series of six quests you can complete with your Beastlord which can give a major jump in the Affinity of your pet.

When you open your Alternate Advancement window, you’ll notice a Warder tab named for your pet’s Warder family (Avian, Simian, etc.). Although this tab appears in your AA window, you don’t spend AA points here. Instead, at level 22, you start gaining Warder Specialization Points to spend in the Warder tree. You gain one Warder Specialization Point for every 2 levels from 22 to 90. At level 90, you can spend 35 Warder Specialization Points in each of the 16 pet trees.

NOTE: Warder Specialization Points are not “shared” between pets. Each of your 16 pets can have up to 35 points spent.

Beastlords At A Glance By Level

The Beastlords change a lot with the level, so here’s an at-a-glance view:

• Level 10 : Tame Warder – ability to tame regular warders
• Level 18 : Weakness & Feral Advantages – When attacking with warder, you’ll see a blue paw. While active, you can use one of your feral advantages (left part of BL bar). You’ll need to have your Feral Stance active.
• Level 20 : Savagery & Feral Primals – using an advantage will up your savagery bar. Enough savagery will allow to launch a Feral Primal (right part of BL bar)
• Level 30 : Spiritual Stance, Spiritual Advantages and Spiritual Primals – You gain another stance, which is a healing stance. Launch it and then right click your advantages and primals to set them to spiritual advantages and primals.
• Level 30 : Pet Skillups : you’re pet will start to skillup from Apprentice to Grandmaster when you use Primals.
• Level 80 : With 31 specialization points, you’ll be able to choose a 5th slot Primal ability.

Warder Combat Arts/Spells

• Amphibian :
  • Poison secretions : direct poison damage + noxious debuff
  • amphibian consumption : direct piercing damage + small pet heal
  • Noxious emission : direct group poison damage + deflection, parry, defense debuff
  • Leaping Lurge : direct crushing damage
• Aquatic :
  • Aquatic Regeneration : group heal
  • Crushing force : crushing group DOT
  • Impenetrable Hide : deflection, parry and defense group buff (short duration)
  • Wild snapping : direct crushing group damage
• Avian :
  • Bird’s Eye : chance to hit with a weapon buff for group (short duration)
  • Swarming Dive : direct group piercing damage
  • Sky’s Restoration : group heal
  • Vicious Talons : Piercing group DOT
• Bat :
  • Moonlight Dive : direct piercing damage
  • Piercing Fangs : direct group piercing damage + arcane debuff
  • Sonic Precision : crit bonus buff for group
  • Sonic Shriek : Piercing group DOT
• Bear :
  • Crushing Paws : Crushing DOT
  • Hibernating Restoration : group heal
  • Fierce Growl : physical mitigation group buff (short duration)
  • Maul : direct crushing group damage
• Boar :
  • Feral Consumption : direct piercing damage + small pet heal
  • Frenzied Feeding : group heal
  • Rampage : piercing DOT
  • Wild Charge : direct crushing damage + attack speed debuff
• Bovid :
  • Crushing Hooves : crushing DOT
  • Nurturing Presence : increases healing received by group
  • Territorial Regeneration : group heal
  • Weighted Charge : direct crushing group damage
• Canine :
  • Charging bite : direct piercing damage
  • Crushing Maw : direct crushing damage + physical debuff
  • Moon’s Howl : direct piercing group damage + slow
  • Vicious Charge : crushing group DOT
• Feline :
  • Batter : direct crushing group damage
  • Feast : direct piercing damage + small pet heal
  • Feline Nurturing : group heal
  • Throat Bite : piercing group DOT
• Insect :
  • Virulent mist : direct poison group damage
  • Infectious Sting : direct poison group damage + piercing group DOT
  • Nerve Poison : direct poison group damage + noxious debuff
  • Insect’s Might : crit bonus group buff
• Reptile :
  • Debilitating Venom : direct poison group damage + noxious debuff
  • Poisonous Fangs : poison group DOT
  • Reptilian Vigor : potency group buff
  • Venom Spray : direct poison group damage
• Rodent :
  • Ankle Bite : direct piercing damage + slow
  • Consume Flesh : direct piercing damage + small pet heal
  • Rabid Bite : direct piercing damage
  • Rabies : disease DOT
• Simian :
  • Furious Swipe : slashing DOT
  • Simian Restoration : group heal
  • Simian Siphon : direct slashing damage + small pet heal
  • Spinning attack : direct slashing group damage
• Dire (Exotic – offensive)
  • Enhance:    UncontrolledRampage : Group Crushing + decrease mit vs all dmg
  • Enhance:    Dire Drain : DD crushing + pet heal
  • Enhance:    Savage Mauling : DD crushing + decrease mit vs all dmg
  • Enhance:    Crazed Roar : DD mental
• Drake (Exotic – offensive)
  • Enhance:    Wing Beat : DD crushing
  • Enhance:    Fire Breath : Group heat + group dot
  • Enhance:    Draconic Flames : Group heat + decrease mit vs elemental
  • Enhance:    Draconic Alarcrity : Group buff increase multi attack
• Enchanted (Exotic – offensive)
  • Enhance:    Enchanted Eyes : DD magic + pet heal
  • Enhance:    Magical Pyre : DD magic + decrease mit vs arcane
  • Enhance:    Arcane Affliction : DD magic + DOT
  • Enhance:    Mystic Burst : DD magic
• Mystical (Exotic – defensive)
  • Enhance:    Mental Intrusion : Group mental + DPS debuff
  • Enhance:    Mental Blast : DD mental
  • Enhance:    Psionic Destruction : Group mental DOT
  • Enhance:    Psychic Assault : DD mental + weapon attack on multiple targets debuff