Some thoughts on the Primalist/Beastmaster

Here are some of my balancing and playstyle thoughts on the Primalist/Beastmaster

  • Low geared +minion stats lvl 64 (20/41) Beastmaster at max wave 76
  • I’ve been mainly testing minion-focused specs in arena-based combat lately
  • Shaman builds are excluded in this post

Skills & Specializations

----Flanking Strike

  • (positive) Pet instantly follows the attack-command
  • (negative) It’s hard to hit arena-barrels and small foes with this skill. This is a problem, if you are using Flanking Strike as your only melee attack ability and will slow you down (2s cooldown)
  • (suggestion) The nearest summoned beast should destroy everything in its path and leave a broader trail of destruction, or melee strike should have a wider arc (and lower cooldown)

----Swipe

  • (positive) Highly boosts player damage with Aspect of the Panther
  • (negative) Skill feels more like a warrior or sentinel type of attack
  • (suggestion) Add a synergy effect to boost minion damage by X% on strike for Xs

----Healing Wind

  • (positive) aoe is big enough to reach everything inside the screen, mana efficient, cast instant, suits agile playstyle and strategic character placement
  • (passive not implemented yet)

  • (negative) 15 health regen is low compared to other skills and stats (Spriggan Aura of Life)
    Healing Wind lacks viability and utility, other skills are far more powerful, mostly uninteresting for those, who don’t equip +health reg gear

  • (suggestion) increase Healing Wind health regen to X% of total health per sec for X seconds, add a longer cooldown, upscale with player level

----Summon Wolf

  • (positive) great in numbers and in combination with item the fang
  • (negative) Cooldown Recovery Rate is too high without the passive

  • (negative) If you decide to run a rapid summoning/fleeting pack built, you are mainly occupied with summoning and don’t have much time for standard swipe/serpent strike attacks

  • (suggestion) player should be able to set a passive/aggressive stance on his beasts and gain more control
  • (suggestion) players should be able to strategically position beasts with a position command

----Thorn Burst

  • (positive) Protector’s Briar passive is great in combination with minion-build
  • (negative) Not very useful for player dps without many specialization points spent in direction of shamanistic fury
  • (suggestion) Protector’s Briar should be applied instantaneously on all minions at the same time with one cast

  • (suggestion) Protector’s Briar should be available at the start of specialization tree

----Fury Leap

  • (positive) Great escape/engage mechanism, passive leader of the pack makes it interesting for wolf-specs
  • (negative) Skill feels more like a warrior or sentinel type of attack
  • (suggestion) add serpent-wings or some other visuals to highlight the nature aspect of this ability

----Thicket Blades

  • (positive) Aura style spell useful for running through enemies, while totems are on cooldown
  • (passive not implemented yet)
  • (suggestion) Add aura effect which boosts minion retaliation/thorns

----Serpent Strike

  • (positive) Suits Polearm playstyle in combination with poision dmg and dodge mechanic
  • (negative) Not usable with shield and one-hand weapon
  • (suggestion) Add higher +minion damage and crit stats on polearms to add value to primal serpent passive

  • (suggestion) Add a synergy effect which boosts Scorpion dmg with every strike

----Summon Bear

  • (positive) Thorn Bear passive feels and looks great (never thought a bear minion could be a caster one day)
  • (negative) Never dies, always casts
  • (suggestion) Implement a reoccurring taunt ability, which taunts every enemy in a circle around the bear

----Summon Thorn Totem

  • (positive) Spirit Thorns Heatsinking passive feels and looks awesome
  • (negative) Screen is overwhelmed with poison dart effects (low fps issue)
  • (suggestion) Add fewer but stronger Totems

----Summon Sabertooth

  • (positive) Agile and fearsome creature with bleed attack
  • (negative) Lvl 20 Sabertooth feels weak compared to wolves and bear at max lvl
  • (suggestion) Increase physical damage by adding a Sabertooth claw and fangs cooldown passive, equivalent to the thorn bear passive

  • (suggestion) Implement bonus dmg against bosses and isolated mobs

----Summon Spriggan

  • (negative) Spell feels too stationary to fit agile playstyle. The Spriggan will most likely become isolated in a group fight and hence be killed while other minions stack in a pack
  • (positive) Summoner passive slows down large groups of enemies and leaves them vulnerable to pack-raids
  • (bug ) often ignores the “a”-attack command and stops casting from time to time
  • (suggestion) Make the Spriggan follow other minions like wolves

----Summon Vale Spirit

  • (positive) Great to add some damage type variability (lightning), whilst most minions deal physical dmg
  • (passive not implemented yet)

  • (negative) Clearly more utilitarian with the shaman mastery

----Summon Frenzy Totem

  • (positive) Boosts overall damage drastically
  • (passive not implemented yet)

  • (negative) maybe a little too strong with fully equipped minion damage armour

  • (suggestion) Decrease overall attack speed gain by the totem or increase cooldown

----Summon Scorpion

  • (positive) Great to add some damage type variability (poison), whilst most minions deal physical dmg
  • (passive not implemented yet)
  • (suggestion) Add poisons sting execution ability, which instantly kills mobs below a certain hp cap

–Items

—The Fang

  • (positive) Essential for every wolf-pack-build
  • (negative) 20% increased Minion damage per active wolf could become too powerful in combination with passive rapid summoning
  • (suggestion) +50 max. health should be applied on all beast-minions instead of character

I will add more information in future on this topic…

–New Passive and Skill Suggestions

—Thorn Totem

  • Passive Uproot (1/1 points)
    Your Thorn Totem uproots itself instantly and follows you around like a beast-minion.

Every uprooted Thorn Totem increases player and minion movement-speed by 1%
----- active on every cast, health and damage affected by minion damage

*Passive Burn at the Stake (1/1 points)
Your Thorn Totems now stack on top of one another and build a stake for torture.
After stacking 7 totems, the construct explodes and bursts into a cloud of fire and poisonous gas.

—Roc n Roll

  • Skill Roc n Roll (1/1 points)
    A mighty Roc-eagle sweeps down from the skies, crushing foes in its way.

Unit flies in a wide arc in front of the character
---- instant cast, 4 sec cooldown

  • Passive Barrel Roll (3/3 points)
    Every 3rd / 2nd / 1st Roc does a barrel roll and knocks off small critters, followed by a wind surge.

Knock off has a 1% chance to stun an enemy for 2s
Wind surge increases enemy lightning damage taken by 15%

----- active on every cast, damage affected by minion damage

  • Passive Hit ‘em Hard and Fast (10/10 points)
    Almost every type of enemy but bosses are affected by Barrel Roll knock off and take a hard hit.

Increases Barrel Roll knock-off range by 5/10/20/40/50%
Increases stun chance by 2% per point spent
----- active on every cast

  • Passive Call in the Big Guns (1/1 points)
    Roc n Roll now summons not one eagle, but an army of noble feather-wings.

Rocs don’t swoop down any longer but spread their wings and protect you as minion-beasts
They will fight at your side for 16s
2% of total Health Ward Protection Barrier cast on character
Roc n Roll cooldown and cooldown recovery rate increased by Xs

----- health and damage affected by minion damage, unsummoned after skill ends

Conclusion

The Primalist Beastmaster is a fearless prey-hunter, who relies on his mobility and swiftness to survive in the wilderness. He harnesses the power of nature itself and overcomes every foe by means of his loyal pet minions, totems and destructive force.

Hope you guys enjoyed the post. Let me know, what you think about the current state of affairs.

I would love to hear about your experience with the Beastmaster mastery so far.

My questions: Which passives are considered overpowered or underrated? How do class and mastery hold up compared to the other classes/masteries? What changes might we see in future patches?

Thank you for the in-depth feedback!

 

Could you please clarify what you mean by this?

Cooldown Recovery Rate refers to the rate at which your character recovers from cooldowns - to put it another way - the higher it gets, the shorter cooldowns will become.

I’m just double-checking because I’m thinking you may have meant to say the opposite.

 

Just as a quick note, forums highlight when new posts in a thread have been submitted and we do read these as they appear. The discoverability of edits is close to non-existent - generally if I have already read a post, I will not check it again to see if it has changed since.

Please do consider putting additions in new posts rather than editing them into an existing one. They’re just not going to be seen by many people otherwise.

Indeed, this was a missconception on my part. I hope the rest of this feedback was useful none the less :slight_smile:

Glad you clarifyed it. I will do some more post on other classes another time then!

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I’ve been playing a BM as well (just started yesterday, lvl 50), and the Fang issue with Rapid Summoning was the first thing that came to my head as well, some investigation should be done into this item - passive combo.

I would also like to add:

  • it is really frustrating as a pure summoner build that I cannot break barrels, doors etc (I don’t have an attacking spell/skill bound, as I want pets + spell support for them. A normal attack key would be great to have)
  • the high level passives on the BM tree don’t seem that attractive to me, for such a big investment, I’d rather keep pumping points in the lower level passives
  • Pet AI is not that good, pets tend to scatter randomly, wish there was a way to control pet aggression, AI etc

I will add more feedback later on, as I only played for several hours.

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I won’t comment too much but did you guys actually try play testing rapid summoning like I did? It’s not nearly as good as it seems;) I would never use it. Pssst The points are much better spent in all those sweet multi damage nodes and flat lightning nodes. The fang is still sweet though. Just not with rapid summoning.

With GG gear though I could see being able to make a really really good rapid summoning build. But would it be better than the alternative GG geared non rapid version? I think not. Wolves are just really good haha.

Hint with my Str based beast master summoners (the only way to go imo so far) I use entangling vines with the power up nodes (damage/bleed/poison etc with the reduced mana cost nodes as well). Really easy to break barrells! In case you’re wondering its just Wolves/Sabertooth/Bear/Scorpion/Entangling Vines. Simple.

Having more ai control would be nice but that might make beastmaster op (or even more op?). That being said I don’t think the random scattering is a bad thing. I’m looking at it from the perspective of someone pushing high arena wave numbers. Especially given the wolves powerful lightning counter attack when taking damage. Basically your dps will be solid enough regardless and the more they spread they more they keep the bad guys away from you:)

A minor side note on your thoughts on the fang amulet. In hopes it will change your view of balance and the overall look of the game. Your suggestion to add 50 life to minions instead of character is basically equivalent to only 5 str points. Which is just really bad. 50 life on the other hand is a very strong life roll. Probably worth it. Without that youd be better off without it. Amulets are one of the most valueable item slots in the entire game. This is because its one of the set affix items. Sets affixs are EXTREMELY powerful. Not to mention the other really good affixs amulets can have. Therefore unique Amulets/rings/ relics have to be very strong or special in there attributes to justify the item slot.

Well, after playing a bit more (lvl 80+) and getting to wave 300 in Arena, I realised that rare items are WAAAAAAAAY stronger than uniques (at least the ones I found so far)

The fang amulet, although a very good item for a low level character, is outshined even by a 3 stat rare amulet, not to mention a 4 stat one.

Really hope to see a balance when it comes to items, as in the current form, I feel, that it is a D3 (original D3) item environment, where rares are the way to go (although here, with only 4 affixes and an interesting crafting system, it is way better than D3).

The AI still seems bad to me, especially for targeting, thinking here of summoner mobs, pet AI randomly attacks useless summoned mobs, instead of focusing on summoners. Also I find myself quite often (as my char main focus is to dodge combat / stay away from monsters) isolated, with my pets fighting offscreen with random mobs instead of following me around in case I walk away from a fight and intercept the mobs that are attacking me

Have to say I disagree with you about the fang. An extra wolf is such a dps increase. Not to mention the 80% minion damage. Also titan’s heart is a very good unique body armor.

Also I have some builds that use specific uniques that are extremely powerful. Hint: Ward Trail/Mourning Frost :slight_smile:

Thats being said most uniques are horribly underpowered but I’m sure they will be balanced properly in time:)

PS. Who are you on ladder LSA ?:slight_smile:

Indeed the wolfs are the bulk of the dmg, I just took advantage of snapshotting the amulet to summon the wolf and then use a 3 stat rare one, although when snapshotting is fixed I might go with the fang.

I also only found about 10 different uniques so far, and could really only justify using the wolf amulet so far, other ones (by themselves) are pretty sub-par.

I am Crewd on ladder btw :slight_smile:

Thinking about the item ‘the Fang’ I think maybe it should have a cap to how high the boost can go.

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