Partying with a beastmaster: A how-to guideFollow

Well, it's been a couple of days since I posted one of my ridiculously long guides, so I'm getting slack. Anyway, this one is kind of a "What you didn't know about beastmaster..." guide. Having been playing my BST for the past couple of weeks, I've partied a few times and I've been surprised at how little people tend to know about the job. Thus, this guide is born.

Point 1: The Truth
Beastmasters can make an extremely valuable addition to your party. They wear the same heavy armour as warriors, so with a WAR sub they can make adequate tanks. Additionally, by inviting a beastmaster you're effectively inviting TWO characters for the price of one, because their pets are usually as strong or stronger than a same-level player would be. Also, it's important to stress that beastmasters do not gimp your EXP. The Brady guide is full of useless BS like that but it's absolutely not true. IF the BST charms a pet that is one or more levels higher than the highest level character in the party, then YES, you will lose EXP. Say you have a 14-16 party, and the beastmaster is 16. Say he charms a mob that is T to him (the enemy is level 17). You are now a 14-17 party, and just like a player the EXP gain goes against the highest-level in the group.

However, BSTs will only charm T or stronger enemies in emergency situations, because Charm doesn't last nearly as long if the pet is higher than EM. Now, the BST may lose EXP (if his pet is still alive at the end of battle and still charmed, HE and ONLY HE will lose about 30% EXP from the total gain) but that does not count for anyone else's EXP.

Point 2: A Good Spot to Camp
If you have a beastmaster in your party, there will be a few extra things to consider. For one thing, your campsite will need to have IT enemies for your party to fight as well as EM/DC enemies nearby for the beastmaster to charm (until later when beastmasters can summon their own pets). Sometimes this can be challenging, but some zones are great for this. I was charming EM mandragoras right next to IT dhalmels and zus last night in Buburimu. It all depends on the zone you're in.

Point 3: BST's Role in a Party
Beastmasters are pretty versatile in a party, believe it or not. Because they're one-man armies, they have to be good at a number of different things. As mentioned before, by subbing WAR a beastmaster can make a decent tank (especially at lower levels). Beastmasters are skilled with both one-handed axe and scythe, and can wield swords, clubs, staffs and daggers as well, so they're pretty versatile for skill-chains. A BST with a WHM sub can make a great status-remover and backup-healer, too. And of course, there's always their pets. The higher your party's level, the stronger and more effective their pets become. Just be aware that they can only charm DC and EM prey, and if charm fails or wears off at a bad time they may need help controlling the situation until they've recharmed their pet.

Point 4: The Finer Points of Beastmaster
The beastmaster 2-hour ability is called "Familiar". What this does is make the beastmaster's pet stronger and makes charm last for AGES, even on IT enemies. In a party scenario this can be a lifesaver. If the party picks up an aggro link, the beastmaster can charm it, Familiar it, and lead it off to some far corner. If they have the beastmaster skill Leave, they can release their pet without aggro. If not, they can zone the pet (but please don't zone aggro enemies on other parties!) to release it, or they can just run off somewhere to let it kill them, taking it away from the party.

Other notable beastmaster abilities include Stay, which commands the pet to stay where it is and stop following the beastmaster (useful for charming links, ordering them to stay, then calling a retreat), Reward (allows the beastmaster to feed its pet a biscuit to restore its HP), Sic (this is the cool one, Sic allows a beastmaster to command its pet to use their special abilities when they have TP... for instance, a beastmaster can Sic to make his pugil pet use Screwdriver...very very cool), and of course Charm. Charm has a recast timer of 15 seconds, so if a charm fails and the potential pet aggros (and it does happen), give the BST a moment and he can attempt to Charm again and reclaim his pet.

Point 5: Food
Beastmasters (myself included) often take up cooking as our craft of choice. This allows us to turn a water cluster and two stacks of pineapples (three inventory slots) into a dozen pineapple juices (twelve inventory slots). Obviously, this is very very useful to us in the field when we're soloing. But, this can also be put to use for our parties. If you see your beastmaster field-synthing drinks and you'd like one, polite ettiquette suggests that you should offer to buy one from him. If party-members want my cooking services in the field, I only charge them the material costs.

Beastmasters have a larger selection of food items to choose from than any other job. Meat mithkabobs are always a good stand-by choice, but meat chiefkabobs are better for the +1 CHR. Any "tea" item such as Windurstian or San d'Orian Tea will give CHR+, as will things like Flint Caviar and Timbre Timbers Salad. Sometimes we might opt for pies for the MP+, or we might want breads or fish mithkabobs/boiled crabs if we're in a tanking role. So, if you see your beastmaster popping something other than a mithkabob, don't yell at him.... He probably has a good reason for it.

Point 6: Why Party with a Beastmaster?
Well, as I've already said, there are a lot of benefits to inviting a beastmaster. They can tank for you, backup-heal for you, handle links, melee quite effectively, and they give you a free extra party member.

Why would a beastmaster choose to party if we're so good at soloing? Well, lots of reasons really. Sometimes the EXP flows faster in a good group than solo, or maybe the BST is stuck in a particularly nasty level (13 was hell for me) where there aren't a lot of charming options. At this time it's advantageous for the BST to party. Also, there's the social aspect. Just because someone is a beastmaster, that doesn't necessarily mean they're an antisocial git. I enjoy partying, even as a beastmaster. I may not have my flag up, but I probably wouldn't turn down a /tell offering a party, either. It just depends on how I'm doing soloing, what kind of mood I'm in, etc.

So, hopefully this post will help encourage everyone to try partying with a beastmaster sometime. The job was unfairly maligned by that damnable, hated Brady guide, so the popular belief is that BST is a "solo-only" job. Hopefully you guys will go out there and find out for yourself that BST can be a lot of fun to party with!

Rate up because too many people still belive what the Brady guide spewed forth, making my treck though 13bst a pain...

Mind you most people here are intelligent enough to know this. We just need to help educate the masses on our servers who don't read this or other informational sites.

Thumbs up!
Thanks! I'll take a note on this strategy.
My BST is only level 22 and has hardly ever partied with anyone. So if I get the party next time, this will be a part of my own guide of how-to.
And my cooking is just 3-5 levels away from Pineapple Juice and Pet food Delta~ The idea of field-synthing Pineapple juice sounds great for me. Thanks again Saboruto.

Some how I still dont see the party invites coming. =P

BTW i always have juice ingrediants on me when I lvl BST. I usually lvl my cooking as I lvl BST. So I went thru the juices and i just finished making grape juice. Yuagudo juices next. :)

Edited, Mon Oct 18 22:47:00 2004 by xxVortecHxx

Can BSTs pull too? I've never PT'd with one, but I would assume they would be excellent pullers. Can pets draw links by attacking linkable mobs? If not... that would be an awesome puller.

As a side note, this is a brillant post. I hope it dispels some ugly misnomers BSTs have been carrying around. Nice job Sabo... and huh, yeah! I added it!

Yeah, BST can pull the same way as SMN can pull with poor Carby. Send the pet into a link-infested area, tell it to attack, go back to camp, wait for your pet to die, then the mob it attacked and ONLY the mob it attacked comes back to you (minus a fairly good chunk of HP, better than what Carby can pull off). Alternately, we CAN equip bows and arrows (though we have 0 skill with them, so we do no damage when we actually manage to hit) if we need to pull that way.

I just think it's amazing that, given how well BST *can* party, so few people can actually say they've ever EXP'd with a beastmaster before. That's why I did this post, I got a random invite last night from a thief to go party in the maze. I did, and I think everyone was shocked at how well it worked. My pets softened the enemies up while the mages rested during downtime, then we jumped up to fight it. Because of this method, we were pretty much fighting nonstop. It's awesome to watch your next enemy's HP drop while you're resting between fights. XD



<shrug> I periodically get rate-downs out of the blue, on posts that one wouldn't normally expect to get rated down. Board trolls I guess, I don't worry about it too much. Though I'm throwing a party and handing out free when my karma hits 4.00, or when my post count hits 1000, whichever comes first. :D

Edited, Tue Oct 19 01:06:29 2004 by Saboruto

Ive only partied with one BST before, and it was a pretty good party. The BST tanked, and called out Tiger Farmiliars for some extra dmg. We got very nice exp since we essentially had another party member fighting with us.

BST's are quite underrated for parties, dunno why...

Ummm Could you remember which mob was that?
I don't know if some "linking" monsters have special ability to "track" the pet's trail back to the camp...

As far as I have experienced, the linked gobs and some other mobs (Zu, Lizard, and Rarab) that had been ganging on my pet never hunted me down when my pet died. Only the first one which I originally ordered my pet to attack would come.

Is it possible that some specific species of monsters can detect the pet's master even when it's not the originally attacked mob? Maybe it's some higher level mobs only?

I think the deal with pet pulling failures resulting in links is probably due to something linking late.

Let's say there's three goblins next to each other, and you decide to send in a pet to die and pull just one of them. Your pet attacks one, and one other links with that one, but the remaining one of the three is turned around facing the other way and doesn't link with the one your pet attacks.

When your pet dies, the one you sent it after comes after you, and the one that linked with that one just stands there because of the delay period after killing a target before it can link again. But, then, at the exact moment your original target takes off after you, the goblin that didn't link originally turns around and then links with it.

I've only seen this problem happen once and didn't really see what happened, so this is a theory, not an observation, but it would make sense, anyway.

It's a good basic guide, but I think it lacks elaboration. You mentioned they can tank decently, well how? Do they tank like wars via damage to gain hate and provoke (from war sub), or do they do so in another way? What other positions can a bst fill (hardly touched upon)? Can they be DD?

There are 2 simple reasons why saboruto is not a guru. He posts too much and is too helpful. The people who have the highest ratings here always post very few times, and avoid getting their noses into dirty situations and really porviding conflict in a serious dilema. If a guru went around explain to people how whm/war is a bad idea, he'd/she'd be rated down, and no longer be a guru. The guru I see here post about 5 times a month, eah post being extremely noncontroversial, and although usually helpful, not very helpful, because to truly assist people you have to engage in conflict, which means rate downs.

The most helpful people I know on these forums are rated below 3.00.

I think you forgot to mention that Charm works like 'Bind' on uncharmable monsters.(NPC, Undead, Beastmen, Arcana, PC, Marlboros, Gobbueuesues and the likes, all 'animals' can be charmed)

I actualy met a lv65+ player yesterday... he still thought BST's ruin xp :/

Just another note on pet-pulling and links: Mage type mobs can greatly increase the odds of getting a "real" link, or one that cannot be lost by a Leave command (or pet dying).

Example:
And I only point this out because I am just finishing up the Quicksand Caves levels (57-59, "secret" entrance W. Altepa), and my wife and I have run into this - although it is avoidable with planning once you know to watch for it.

1) BST casts Sneak, runs up and sets his pet on an Antican Questor (BLM type).
2) BST (still with Sneak on) runs past a newly spawned Antican Tririus (sp? WAR type). As pet + Questor pass, Tririus links (as expected).
3) BST Leaves the pet, the Antican Tririus stops dead in it's tracks (as expected).
4) BUT, about the same time, the Questor starts casting Flare. Even when the casting was on the BSTs pet, which is now released, there is that percentage of time before the spell is actually interrupted. In most cases, with Ancient Magic, this delay is longer than the re-link timer on the Tririus. The Questor is still standing near the Tririus.
5) By the time the spell gets interrupted and the Questor begins running again, he brings the Tririus with him. At this point, there is no way to lose the link (well, zone).

In my experience, the re-link, and re-aggro timers on the mobs seem to be about 8-10 seconds. I don't know how much this varies though, but that seems to be a solid minimum time.

Here is some more info I thought about after reading this post - I tried to seperate it out, hope it adds something someone didn't already know. ^^

Sic and AOE / Magic attacks: (directed at levels 23 and later, with Sic)

Two things to watch out for from a BST pet's Sic attack are AOE attacks and Magic attacks.

AOE - Some pets have great Sic moves, but as it is random from the available moves, the BST cannot direct which move to use. For example, the trio bat types generally have Jet Stream - a fantastic attack. However, they also have Sonic Boom, which is an AOE status attack. If a BSTs pet uses an AOE attack, let's say in Crawler's Nest in that famous Beetle hunting spot with the Cave Berries. OMG! Suddenly, 3 or 4 Cave Berries are attacking the pet! All is not lost - a quick Leave command from the BST will kill that entire aggro / link package, since the original aggro was directed at the Pet for the AOE attack. Before 35, simply let the pet die - same effect. DO NOT ATTACK THE NEWLY LINKED MOBS. As long as no one in the party touches them, Cave Berries in this example, they will leave the party alone.

Magic - Some Sic moves, that are not labeled as any kind of spell effect, are still considered Magic. This means they can aggro Magic Pots, Bombs, Elementals. The same rule applies as listed above - a quick Leave will de-aggro the Elemental, otherwise just leave the Elemental alone and let the pet die.


Aggro Pets: (directed at levels 35 and later, with Leave)

Another note, one that especially concerns those partying with a BST, is how to handle a BST's pet when it is an aggro type.

Although there are more than 2 kinds of aggro, few if any mobs that aggro magic / HP can be charmed. I can't think of an example off hand, but who knows what CoP may have in store.

Sight Aggro Pets -

Pets of mob types that aggro by sight are actually quite easy to deal with (an example here is Wasp types). The reason for this is because of Line Of Sight - sight aggros in front of the mob, never behind it. A released Pet will always meander back towards their spawn point. So, knowing where the Pet's spawn point is in relation to camp is the first step. The second step simply involves the BST being careful about his Leave - the pet can be left almost directly in front of party, providing the BST takes a few steps away from the party and towards the pet's spawn point. This will turn the pet so that it is facing away from the party. Once the pet is left, and the re-aggro timer runs out, no one will be standing in front of the pet, so it will not aggro. The only thing to watch here is that the puller avoids running in front of the pet, or does so immediately after the BST Leaves, before the re-aggro timer is complete.

Sound Aggro Pets -

Pets of mob types that aggro by sound are a little more difficult to dealt with, as sound is not L.O.S. but is more A.O.E., all around the mob. The normal benefit of sound aggro pets when a BST is solo or duo is that Leave can be used after Sneak is on, so the pet can be left right at camp (Leave breaks Invis). However, in full party, it will probably be too difficult to keep Sneak on all members. In these cases the BST should probably find a good area a little ways away from camp, in between camp and the pet's spawn point, to Leave.


Leave, Heal, Charm, Repeat: (directed at levels 25 and later, with Leave)

In the event a BST is not able to find a safe place to Leave his pet to heal (safe meaning it won't aggro the BSTs party or another party / pullers nearby), a BST can slowly heal his pet by following a repeated pattern. Leave, keep pet targeted, and Charm again as soon as it aggros. The pet can generally heal 1-2 tics in between these sessions, so while it is slower, it does allow for a BST getting his pet full in a crowded area, with an aggro pet.

Hope this stuff helps ^^ Great post.