Ferocity and other buffs from Beastlords are nice too; but it's still not enough for me to bring any more than 1 on my raid. I don't use melee DPS groups which is a big factor for that too - Beastlords have decent ADPS for Bersekers which maybe would change my opinion on how shitty the class is played with MQ2.
My main gripes with Beastlords is pretty straight forward though....
I HATE boxing raids while have any MQ2 macros running. All MQ2 does is interfere with me while I am trying to play - having the Beastlord attack a target then refuse to be peeled off of it even after I /end the macro he'll keep attacking/sticking to the target thanks to MQ2 melee is just too annoying for me (I know this is easy to fix, I have a fix for it but it's still bloody annoying). It's why I said in my original post I don't play with any macros running while boxing raids, I control all 54 toons myself with the exception of 1 tank group usually. MQ2 adds to my frustration while boxing raids it doesn't subtract from it, I prefer Isboxer and depend on that. This part is my personal preference and I get that. Also one of the largest factors why I dislike Beasts/melee.
Second reason I hate Beastlords is because I can't get them to do good DPS with MQ2 and I have never seen anyone ever link me a parse that was comparable to a real beastlord. I've seen someone get a Beastlord to do about 60-75% of the total damage the class can do with MQ2 but that's not good enough for me when I can get a Wizard to do 90% of what the class can do with MQ2 and it's 20x easier to get the Wizard to do that good of DPS and (the most important part) the Wizards DPS is far superior to the Beastlord AND the Wizard class is MUCH easier to control because they don't depend on MQ2melee or "sticking" to a target.
I'm POSITIVE I suck at setting up the Beastlord class and that I am to blame for why my Beastlord does shit DPS. However, as previously stated no one has proven to me (not suggesting people in this post, I have argued with many many raiders on FV about this) that they can get a Beastlord to do good dps. By good dps, I mean prove to me that, with MQ2/Kissassist, you can get the Beastlord to deal at least 90% of what you can do by manually controlling it. You can do this for nearly every other class except Beastlord and it's been tried and retried by many people who have argued with me about the class. I'm open to having my mind changed - this isn't like my opinion is set in stone or anything. I'd love for my Beastlord to serve some purpose other than Paragon and buffs on raids.
Also third side gripe - without MQ2 you basically can't even box the Beastlord class. You *can* box it but you're going to be doing like 20-30% of the DPS you can do and the majority of your attention is going to be focused on the Beastlord trying to DPS. It's far too spammy and too situational; since I don't like using MQ2 on raids I don't like classes (melee) that depend on it. Again, I recognize this is my personal preference.
Druids do get a fast heal, they also get a .5sec group heal, a group heal AA last time I checked and a real group heal + ADPS (and their own dps). I've never been on a raid (boxed or otherwise) where they put a Cleric in a caster DPS group. Unless there weren't enough druids online of course then they put a cleric in there. Also, a Bard should never find himself in a Caster group imho. Unless there is no melee groups available then maybe. But Bard + Ench in the same group is dumb because then you have too much shit that overlaps. Some of the Bard burns strip off IoG and they're worse than IoG for casters. You could say, well then don't have the Bard use those burns? Well, easy solution yes but who the fuck wants to tweak INI files/macros for each raid they do when they don't have to? That's a total waste of time.
Also, as said before I primarily DPS on my Druids too. They do about as much burn DPS as an Enchanter does which is fantastic imho because I can down the majority of non current xpac raids shortly after my burns fade. Since all my groups still need a group healer, I rotate 2 DPS spells + Group Heal. Even if my group is full health I still cast group heal because I am not botting the druids and I care more about not dying than I do doing DPS with them.
In the chance situation that I need the druids to heal, I hotbar swap them to Heal spells and I target the tanks and start healing.
Here is a guide I made explaining hotbar swaps and how I use them;
https://almarsguides.com/eq/getting...des/Macros/AlmarsBoxingMacros/HotbarSwapping/
I also hotbar swap between Shaman slows/debuffs and Enchanter debuffs too since I control all characters manually I enjoy having the same buttons for DPS, Debuffs etc. It makes things easier, you remember less buttons and everyone is always good to go without any INI tweaks etc.
