Old Systems Removal
The previous Beastlord rework introduced several new mechanics that ultimately led to unintended consequences. Before that rework, Beastlords were in a tough spot—many of their DPS spells were a loss to cast, their pets scaled poorly, and their utility wasn’t strong enough to justify their presence in challenging content. However, the rework made Beastlords too powerful at lower tiers and introduced mechanical issues.
The Monkey See, Monkey Do stance was didn’t work as intended; it was unintentionally too strong when used optimally and too weak when used as intended. The stance was designed so the pet would deal reduced damage when mimicking spells, but this reduction only applied when the stance was active. This resulted in an awkward play pattern of constantly swapping stances to optimize damage output.
Additionally, Beastlords had a mechanic where their pet’s melee damage increased as the enemy’s health dropped, and the Beastlord would receive a portion of this bonus. This mechanic was not clearly communicated players, buried in quest text, and overly powerful when understood. We’d prefer powerful mechanics be clearly communicated going forward.
Lastly, Beastlords suffered from a punishing stun when their pet died, adding an unnecessarily harsh penalty to losing their pet, which already accounted for a large part of their damage.
To address these issues:
- Monkey See, Monkey Do was not converted to a discipline.
- The Scaling Damage Bonus mechanic has been removed.
- Beastlords no longer suffer a stun when their pet dies.
Beastlord Discipline Conversion
Beastlords have now been fully converted to the discipline system! Some core abilities have been transformed into disciplines, while others have been adjusted or left out for balance reasons:
- New Commanding Strike: A damaging discipline available at levels 20, 40, and 60. This ability hits for a small amount of melee damage (25/50/90) and buffs the Beastlord’s pet, increasing its damage by 8%, 16%, and 25% respectively for 18 seconds. It has a 20-second cooldown and costs 40/75/155 endurance. Runic: Commanding Strike is also available, dealing 150 base damage and providing a 40% damage increase with a 155 endurance cost.
- Jaws and Claws has been renamed to Savage Assault and adjusted to scale based on pet attacks rather than always dealing a fixed amount of hits.
- Spiritual Guardian, Rending Rage, and Spiritual Empathy have been converted to disciplines without changes.
- Focus of the Lemur was not converted due to its extreme endurance cost.
Beastlord Spell Changes
Several Beastlord spells have been revised, focusing on better alignment with the class’s identity. In particular, the damage over time (DoT) spells from the last rework, previously cold-based, have been changed to disease-based to match the class’s existing DoT toolkit. Additionally, resist adjustments have been balanced to ensure Beastlords retain their role in applying damage over time effects without encroaching too far into the niche of Necromancers, who specialize in low-resist spells.
- Glaciation of Blood is now Wildblood Contagion, a disease DoT dealing 150 upfront damage, 290 per tick, and has a -35 resist adjust. It can now be purchased from a vendor.
- Gelid Blood is now Ravenous Wound, dealing 100 upfront damage, 170 per tick, and has a -20 resist adjust.
- Beastlord cold nukes (Ice Spear, Frostshard, and Ice Shard) now grant lesser versions of the Harsh Winter recourse at 8%, 16%, and 24%, respectively.
- Two new disease DoTs (Rabid Bite at level 23 and Sickly Sting at level 43) have been added, both with six-tick durations.
- The shared poison DoTs (Envenomed Breath, Venom of the Snake, and Tainted Breath) have been scaled to provide additional damage for every two levels.
Beastlord AA Changes
Beastlord AAs have been improved to add more power, especially at higher tiers, addressing the loss of damage from previous mechanics and providing a third class-specific AA.
- Paragon of Spirit now restores 60 endurance per tick in addition to health and mana.
- Frenzy of Spirit now affects both the Beastlord and their pet. Its cooldown has been increased to 15 minutes.
- Frenzied Companion now ramps up twice as fast, decays 50% slower, and its tooltip has been updated to reflect its actual functionality (each rank increases the pet’s maximum flurry chance by 15%, up to 60%).
- New Vital Spirit, is a class AA that has been added to the special AA tab. It increases the health, endurance, and mana provided by Paragon of Spirit by 25% per rank.
High-End Beastlord Changes
Beastlords have received adjustments to their runic pet and additional runic spells to round out their toolkit at higher levels:
- Runic: Spirit of the Untamed now has five attacks per round (up from four), compensating for the loss of the mimic stance at high tiers. It also synergizes with the change to Savage Assault.
- New Runic: Venom of the Murk deals 350 upfront poison damage and 425 per tick with a -20 resist adjust and a 1.5-second cast time.
- New Runic: Guile of the Beast grants a 25% increase to spell damage and a 25% reduction in threat generation. It shares a cooldown with Cunning of the Beast.
- New Runic: Sha’s Renewal is a pet heal that restores 2100 health, removes 15 poison and disease counters, has a 1.25-second cast time, and costs 390 mana.
- New Runic: Commanding Strike was previously detailed above in the Displinces section.