B.E.A.S.T Issues

Kirin

B.E.A.S.T. suffers from multiple issues in terms of purely being disadvantaged because of the number of weapons it has. This problem manifests itself in many parts of the game

1) Drop Rates: As such B.E.A.S.T. need more weapons to get started and be fully equipped. Even though many weapons may not be immediately useful, they still need to be procured. You are likely to not get that perfect wristblade for ages and keep getting missile launchers and net launchers in your weapon drops. Further, empirically it seems the rare item drop list for BEAST becomes longer for this and hence seems that they get less other useful items such as Mods. 

2) Mods: B.E.A.S.T. need more mods than any other class simply because of the variety of weapons they use. Yet, there is no way for them to either procure more mods than everybody else. This is also more annoying considering Plasmacasting and Suittech do not receive any benefits from mods. So, you have a random collection of weapons but 2/3rd of your skillset does not benefit from equipping mods. 

3) Artifacts: Somewhat related, the class needs more artifact weapons than any other class to be effective, yet doesn't receive boosts to 2/3rd of the skillset available.

4) Customization: Once again, B.E.A.S.T have to pay more for customization compared to any other class due to the bevy of weapon systems they carry. 

With every new release, the problem of having multiple weapon systems keeps compounding

Solutions

1) Have mods, artifacts and customizations be linked to 'slots' on the MWP suit. This addresses the need of lowering the amount of spending needed for BEASTS and bring them inline with other classes
2) Link Plasma-casting and SuitTech skills to receive benefits from one of the slots which can either be chosen or fixed depending on best compatibility
 

Kirin

On having discussions with multiple players, the consensus is that BEAST also suffers from being the slowest bashing class, only compounding the above problems as it limits their marks generation.

Looking for a BEAST ‘hotfix’

Cubey

Points 2 to 4 are less of an issue than it initially appears because for all their wide collection of weaponry, BEASTs actually end up using very few of them - at least damage-wise. For pve it's basically just the wristblade and maybe the minigun, for pvp replace minigun with railgun (minigun is still used, just not for damage). So you need to mod and possibly artifact/customize only your wristblade and you're good to go. Point 1 is still a problem: you have 16% chance that any new weapon drop will actually be good for you, while for most other classes it's 100%.

That being said: BEASTs are currently underpowered and it shows - they're the least populated class and for a good reason. Very slow in PvE and they are absolutely terrible in PvP*, with slow subsystem damage and harshest instakill reqs from all classes. This used to be balanced out with their damage in the past and they were actually rather *too* good and needed a nerf, but got hit by the nerfbat too hard and became too weak instead.

Starmourn devs are overworked as they are and I know balance updates are on their to-do list - just not the priority right now, and that's frankly fine. Just don't forget when the time comes, BEAST is currently the class that needs buffing the most.

*Except for some pretty sweet utility and crowd control skills for group combat, but that's a poor tradeoff for having bad offense

Kirin

Cubey said:

Points 2 to 4 are less of an issue than it initially appears because for all their wide collection of weaponry, BEASTs actually end up using very few of them - at least damage-wise. For pve it's basically just the wristblade and maybe the minigun, for pvp replace minigun with railgun (minigun is still used, just not for damage). So you need to mod and possibly artifact/customize only your wristblade and you're good to go. Point 1 is still a problem: you have 16% chance that any new weapon drop will actually be good for you, while for most other classes it's 100%.

That being said: BEASTs are currently underpowered and it shows - they're the least populated class and for a good reason. Very slow in PvE and they are absolutely terrible in PvP*, with slow subsystem damage and harshest instakill reqs from all classes. This used to be balanced out with their damage in the past and they were actually rather *too* good and needed a nerf, but got hit by the nerfbat too hard and became too weak instead.

Starmourn devs are overworked as they are and I know balance updates are on their to-do list - just not the priority right now, and that's frankly fine. Just don't forget when the time comes, BEAST is currently the class that needs buffing the most.

*Except for some pretty sweet utility and crowd control skills for group combat, but that's a poor tradeoff for having bad offense

You are right that BEAST do not need to use as many weapons yet since their abilities are rather distributed amongst them you probably need all of them ready to go. 

Customizations are cosmetic and while they do not add anything - not having a complete set of things is like not wearing pants when wearing a suit and calling it a suit. 

Agree with most other points but at least bashing needs a hotfix because this means that certain players have a lower threshold to gain marks compared to others which is not explained or intended. 

Rylek

Also, BEAST bashing is now minigun after backhand. Wrist blade works but is less efficient as most MWP and all of plasma scale off aim.

Jerom

Rylek said:

Also, BEAST bashing is now minigun after backhand. Wrist blade works but is less efficient as most MWP and all of plasma scale off aim.

I disagree. Tear+Wristblade is still more effective over Backhand+Minigun because of the passive bleeding caused by Tear. Bleeding alone can reach up to 400 damage which is about the same damage of Tear, effectively doubling your damage output. 

Though, I admit I play a melee-oriented B.E.A.S.T., Strength is my highest stat and my Aim is shit. I have no idea how good Minigun is if you ignore Strength to focus on Aim.

EDIT: Meh, I forgot to mention the damage of the wristblade itself which scales with the level of Bleeding your target has (Usually around 600-700 when the target is bleeding for a lot, 800 if you're really lucky). Unless I'm missing something, I don't think the minigun can even begin to compare to the wristblade, to be honest.

Cubey

Jerom is correct. Backhand -> Minigun is faster only if you don't have Tear unlocked yet. Try the melee combo and you'll see how your time to kill improves - especially if you go all ham into a melee build, focusing on Strength over Aim and using Routing to SMALL.

Kirin

I have tried both and I find that BH + MINIGUN is still faster than TEAR + WB (could be because i don’t know the optimal time to switch from tear to wb)

also to note than strength is my main stat

Kirin

So I tested the BH + Minigun vs Tear + WB and the former is definitely faster in my case. 

In any case, it takes me ~19.35 seconds to kill a creeper in Ixsei (level 66) with a 8300 rated minigun fully modded with victory rush. This is without any heal or interrupts which would be additional time. 

This seems really slow compared to ~14 second kills that other classes seem to be capable of. Also this compounds the problem of triggering more windup attacks making the actual kill time even slower. 

@Ilyos @Garryn please remedy this asap. 

RocketCat

Kirin said:

So I tested the BH + Minigun vs Tear + WB and the former is definitely faster in my case. 

In any case, it takes me ~19.35 seconds to kill a creeper in Ixsei (level 66) with a 8300 rated minigun fully modded with victory rush. This is without any heal or interrupts which would be additional time. 

This seems really slow compared to ~14 second kills that other classes seem to be capable of. Also this compounds the problem of triggering more windup attacks making the actual kill time even slower. 

@Ilyos @Garryn please remedy this asap. 

Level 66? 8300 power? 19s seems pretty good to me, all due respect.

Rylek

I've tried both combos a ton. You kill faster with aim and minigun than strength and tear. Minigun does far more damage, making it better vs normal mobs. Boss mobs, bleeding has a chance to catch up and overtake due to the larger health pools

Albion

14s kills are done at lv75 with mid 9k power weapons lol. So all that told me is that beast is still pretty good at bashing. 

Indi

If anyone is interested, tear/wristblade bashing, best time to wristblade seems to be to pick a number of bleed stacks (for me it is usually 2 but I've experimented with 3 and got similar results  ) and only wristblade when there area that many or more stacks of bleeding applied.

Don't just reach a threshold and change to wristblade - if a stack of bleeding is cured, switch back to tear.

Unless that next wristblade will finish the target of course.

Jerom

Indi said:

If anyone is interested, tear/wristblade bashing, best time to wristblade seems to be to pick a number of bleed stacks (for me it is usually 2 but I've experimented with 3 and got similar results  ) and only wristblade when there area that many or more stacks of bleeding applied.

Don't just reach a threshold and change to wristblade - if a stack of bleeding is cured, switch back to tear.

Unless that next wristblade will finish the target of course.

Right. I tend to go with 5 rounds of Tear, then wristblade for maximum damage and bleeding.

RocketCat

Hey BEAST peeps.

I started a Google Doc to crowdsource a breakdown of all our BEAST feedback. The doc is open to comments. Please review and share your thoughts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KKTNdvXrGQXcT-28IdsV0paye53ZI7zsMO_10gRnZfM/edit