Beastlord Class Guide (Classic - Prophecy of Ro)
This guide will cover the Beastlord Class from when it is added at the start of Luclin to the end of Prophecy of Ro. I consider PoR to be the end of the classic era of EQ and a good place to end my first batch of class guides. Beastlords are one of the classes that I have a lot of experience on during this era. When I played EQ as a teenager Druid and Beastlord were the two mains I had. If you take a look at some of the oldest EQ videos on my Youtube channel, I was playing my old Beastlord.
I also have a lot of experience on Beastlords after this era, I raided on one during Rain of Fear and Call of the Forsaken. The Beastlord class is designed to be very good at soloing - they have Slows, Heals, Shammy Buffs and a very a solid pet... However they come with a fatal flaw and that's 90% of their damage comes from melee attacks.
As a Beastlord, in order to be doing good DPS you have to get in there and melee a mob. This also means that when soloing - you need to take hits from the mob. Since all you have is leather armor, you're not very good at tanking unless you have some really good equipment (like raid armor).
When it comes to raiding, during this era you're almost entirely useless. Beastlords come with a line of spells commonly called "beast crack", this gives you regeneration that stacks with all other regen spells (including KEI). This spell is your only real benefit to raids since you don't bring much DPS and all of your other spells are lesser versions of what Shamans have.
Beastlords won't shine during raids until much later in the game. One of your best ADPS spells (Savagery) sucks when it's first added in Luclin; this gets better as time goes on. You also will eventually do enough DPS to get into the top 10 on parses; during RoF with my Beastlord I could rarely get into the top 5-10 on the DPS meters.
I eventually stopped raiding though on my BL because I had so many skills to spam on raids that it legitimately hurt my wrist by the end of raids that night. This is a story for another time though, because this is one of the main reasons I started using third party programs in EQ. I felt like without using them, I was unable to reach the max DPS potential of this class.
Important Stats & Focus Items
Since Beastlords are added in Luclin, you'll never have that inital struggle to max your stats that many other classes do. The gear, buffs and AAs available in Luclin will let you easily max your important stats. After maxing out your stats the only way you raise them again is with AAs or Heroic Stats which is a feature of later expansions.
Beastlords will want to prioritize Strength, Dexterity and Attack for damage increases. Attack is a secondary stat that is only on some pieces of gear, if you can get some great if not don't worry about it until later in levels. As with all melee, you'll also want to get an item with Haste on it as soon as possible too.
For survivability you'll want Stamina, Agility and AC - all three of these stats are important for BLs that want to solo. Last but not least, as a BL you'll also want some Wisdom, Mana and Mana Regen if you can get it. You do have a mana bar and will be casting spells; I would make this a second or third priority though. Focus on your melee damage and survivability first.
Strength: This increases your Attack and weight limits.
Dexterity: Increases chance to proc during combat and accuracy.
Stamina: Gives you HP.
Agility: Increases AC.
Wisdom: This gives you mana, until you max it out it's the best source of Mana for your class. How much Mana you get per Wisdom scales in level; at 1 it's 1 Mana per 1 Wis and at 60 it's typically 10 per 1 Wis.
Once PoP is released you'll start to notice Heroic Stats appearing on gear. This will become more and more common until eventually every piece of gear starts getting HStats. You will get benefits kinda similar to normal stats with the HStats, just slightly worse. The nice thing about Heroic Stats though is they have their own caps independent of the normal stats.
Each Heroic Stat will start to give diminishing returns past a certain point, this is known as a soft cap. Therefore it's typically best to get a mixture of HStats instead of dumping them all into one. As a Beastlord you'll want Heroic Wisdom, Heroic Dexterity, Heroic Stamina and Heroic Agility.
Heroic Dexterity (Accuracy/Proc Chance): Heroic Dex increases your accuracy and proc chance during combat; it has diminishing returns later in the game once you start getting a lot of it.
Heroic Agility (Avoidance/Strike Through): Increases AC, Dodge, Block and Many of the most important Mod2s. Use my Heroic Stats Guide for more information.
Heroic Wisdom (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max Mana Regen for Casters. Once you cap Flowing Thought, you'll need more Heroic Wisdom to increase your potential cap.
Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.
Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.
Important Focus Effects
Starting in Luclin and becoming more common as the game goes on certain pieces of gear will come with Focus Effects. For melee classes you don't start getting tons of Focus Effects until OoW and beyond. Below are the main Focus Effects that you want to get on your gear when they become available.
****Haste: Not really a focus, but this is the most important secondary thing you should get on your gear. Eventually it becomes a staple on your gear in the future and you don't have to seek it out anymore.
****Cleave: Increases your chance to crit with all combat skills by a significant amount. This is the most important focus you should seek out once it's available.
***Ferocity: Your chance to double attack is increased by a small amount. Your second biggest DPS increase will come from this.
***Improved (Spell) Damage: Aside from meleeing, you do cast spells. Your Ice nukes are a decent part of your damage and this will improve them.
***Pet Focus: Using this focus will buff the level of your pet, improving all of their stats. This focus is typically found on earrings but it can be on other pieces during these early eras too.
***Spell Haste: This will speed up your buffing and your DPS.
***Mana Preservation: Reduces the amount of Mana consumed with each cast.
**Improved Dodge: Chance to Dodge is increased by a moderate amount. Pretty much gives you a bit more survivability.
**Extended Range: Increases the range of your spells.
*Improved Parry/Block: Chance to Parry and Block is increased by a moderate amount. You should never be using a shield, so you only benefit from the Parry. Increases survivability marginally.
Important Spells, Skills, AAs & Disciplines
Like I talked about earlier in this guide, Beastlords get a lesser version of all Shaman Buffs and Debuffs. You can heal, slow, haste, buff and do pretty much everything a Shaman can (just worse). This includes valuable spells like SoW too. As you probably already know, you also get a very tanky pet and buffs for that pet to increase their DPS and survivability.
For the most part, you'll want to ignore the DoT line of spells that Beastlords get. It's typically not worth the mana to cast them, the main damage spells you'll want to use on your BL are the Ice DDs eventually you will get a line of Poison DDs too but they don't exist in this era. Typically in this era, Beastlords will memorize their top 3 Ice DD spells and weave them between melee attacks for maximum DPS.
As a Beastlord you will need many different spell sets and I recommend you make some macros too! You'll be spending a lot of time buffing up yourself and your pet with the various Shaman spells that you get. There are numerous pet-only buffs and stat buffs for you to cast (in addition to things like Haste). You only have to worry about this while soloing though, on raids your buffs suck too much to even bother casting - others will buff for you.
Raiding as a Beastlord sucks in Luclin but progressively gets better and better as time goes on. Below are the two spell lines that are important for raiding in this era (Beast Crack & Ferocity). These buffs are the only ones you'll be expected to cast while on raids. The other two spell lines are what you'll be using for DPS once they're added.
Ferocity: The Ferocity line is the main ADPS line of spells that Beastlords get. During Luclin this spell is called Savagery and it consumes a Peridot which means pretty much no one ever uses it. It stacks with basically all other buffs and it provides a solid increase to melee DPS stats. As time goes on you will get upgrades to this spell line and it will eventually become a group spell. Your melee DPS group will pester you for this on raids since it has a short duration and provides a lot of benefit.
Spiritual Purity/Spiritual Dominion: Known coloquially as 'Beast Crack' this is the main line of spells that casters crave. Just like plants crave Electrolytes, casters crave Beast Crack.
Growl of the Panther (DoDH): Your first Growl spell is added in DoDH. This becomes another one of your short duration buffs that you must keep up while doing DPS. Get used to cycling many short duration buffs like this because the class goes more in this direction as time goes on.
Bestial Empathy (DoDH): Much like Growl, DoDH is the first X-pac that adds your swarm pet line. I am unsure if this is worth using in these early eras but this swarm pet spell eventually becomes part of your main rotation when doing DPS.
Skills
As far as skills go, you will start out with Kick when you're low level and you will eventually unlock Round Kick, Eagle Strike, Tiger Claw and Dragon Punch as you level up. I recommend you use the newish /autoskill feature for these attacks. You'll want to use /autoskill Kick as early as possible.
Once you unlock the other skills, you'll want to /autoskill Round Kick (this will replace the Kick Autoskill) and then pick one of the others. Two skills can be /autoskilled at the same time so you will need to pick which one of the other 3 you want to use. In this era they're just skills but as you get more AAs and grow in power each of these skills will proc a certain debuff.
Eagle Strike: Bite of the Asp (DoT)
Dragon Punch: Gorilla Smash (Stun)
Tiger Claw: Raven's Claw (ATTK Debuff)
The use of Eagle Strike is typically discouraged once you unlock Bite of the Asp for it. Since it DoTs an enemy it uses a debuff slot in raids (bad) and it also will break CC if you punch the target once and it applies the DoT (also bad). For this reason many encourage Dragon Punch or even Tiger's Claw. Despite Tiger's Claw applying a debuff, it stacks with all other Beastlords and only takes up 1 debuff slot.
Just to repeat again though, use whatever skill you want until you get these AAs. If someone parsed which of these 3 is better in the early era let me know, I was told Eagle Strike was the most DPS on Monks but I have no clue if that's the same for Beastlords.
AAs
Like with all of my Class Guides, I am going to cover the clicky AAs in this section and ignore the passive ones. Starting with Luclin you will get 5 different clicky AAs and all of them stay useful forever. The first three important ones are Frenzy of Spirit which is one of your main Cooldowns (use this for boss fights or hard pulls).
Hobble of Spirits is a buff that you give to your pet, it will give them a Snare proc which is great. Then you have Paragon of Spirits which gives a ton of regeneration to your group. You can use Paragon with MGB to buff the entire raid with this AA too. The last clicky AA added is Mend Companion which gives you a long cooldown but large pet heal.
In PoP Companion's Suspension is added but it sucks until later when you can improve it. You get one of your best AAs in GoD called Bestial Alignment, this increases your melee DPS by a lot and it becomes part of your 'burn rotation' once it's added. The last clicky AA we get is during OoW called Roar of Thunder which is meh - I have no memories of ever needing to use this when raiding on my Beastlord.
Disciplines
Resistant Discipline (30) - Classic (Allakhazam, Lucy) My advice for finding Classic era discs is to check Warrior Tomes merchants; Teniyu Emua in West Freeport is my choice)
Increases your resistances by a lot temporarily.
Fearless (40) - Classic (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Fear immunity for 1min.
Protective Spirit Discipline (55) - Luclin (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Gives you 90% Melee mitigation for a short period.
Bestial Fury Discipline (60) - Luclin (Allakhazam, Lucy)
This disc gives a large boost in damage. 50% more damage and 400% minimum damage modifier
Empathic Fury (69) - DoDH (Allakhazam, Lucy)
This is an upgrade to Bestial Fury that you get; it does everything Bestial Fury does and more.
Rake (70) - PoR (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Does a small amount of damage, 30 second cooldown. Add this to your DPS rotation once it's in the game.
How To Play: Beastlord Basics
If you are thinking about playing a Beastlord because people tell you that they're good at soloing - you may want to reconsider. They're correct that Beastlords are good at soloing but it's important for you to understand that they're very gear dependent. You will need good gear in basically every slot if you want to solo effectively at max level.
By good gear I mean raid items. Top tier group items won't cut it in some expansions/zones. A good example of this is Omens of War, stuff hits noticeably harder in that expansion and if you're not geared properly you will get eaten alive. So basically what I am trying to say is you're going to have to raid or purchase raid gear if you want to solo effectively.
With that said, Beastlords have all the required tools at their disposal to solo very effectively. They can buff themselves and their pet with basically every buff that Shamans can do. You and your pet are also a very solid team, you are the main tank and he is the off tank. When you need to heal he can taunt and take agro, he could also tank a secondary mob as you fight a different one.
You're also able to Slow enemies which decreases their damage, your slows kind of suck but they're better than nothing. My biggest advice early on is to make macros to buff yourself and make multiple spellsets. I talk about this in my Advanced Macro Guide in my Boxing Guides. There are more links in the Tips & Tricks section below, read all of those guides and you'll understand what I mean.
For a Beastlord I would setup a Buffs Spell Set, Pet Spell Set and a Combat Spell Set. Buffs is pretty self explanatory, you'll load this each time you buff you and your pet. The Pet set is for summoning and buffing your pet. Normally the Pet set will be much smaller and include some of the shorter duration buffs that you're forced to refresh more often than the normal set of buffs.
Our last set of spells is Combat, this will include a Heal, Nukes, Slow, Haste and anything else crucial for combat. The logic used here is you'll load your Buffs when you need to buff and your Pet when/if your pet dies (or when you need to quickly rebuff the pet). After you're done buffing load your Combat spell set and then you're good to go.
All of this may seem like generic advice but trust me - it will make your life 10x easier and it will speed up your process significantly. You have tons of minor buffs and casting them all manually each time is not something you will find fun. It's boring, repetative and annoying.
Grouping & Raiding
The entire previous section taught you about soloing and how to make your life easier. Let's talk about grouping and raiding here. Your job in a group environment is going to be DPS and maybe Slowing if there is no one around who can do a better job. Most of your damage will come from auto attack in this era but you'll also need to weave in some spells to maximize your DPS.
What I normally do on my Beastlord is memorize my top 3 Ice Nukes and I will use them all back to back while my Mana is good. Avoid using DoTs since they are such a minor DPS increase and their cast times are typically too long. If you have an instant cast DoT or one that is as quick as our nukes, use it while pulling or while the target is running into camp and (in those situations) it's not as useless.
During named/difficult fights you'll want to pop your burns (mentioned below). Burns/Cooldowns will dramatically boost your Melee damage for a short period of time. The reason I am drawing attention to melee in the previous sentence is because you won't want to cast spells during your burn. Casting spells will delay your melee attacks and when you have all your Cooldowns running - you don't want to delay melee attacks.
Burn Cooldowns: Bestial Fury Discipline (replaced by Empathic Fury in DoDH), Frenzy of Spirit, Bestial Alignment
You'll want to pop your Burns on raid bosses too, they have a 15min-30min cooldown so keep that in mind when raiding. Sometimes you'll want to save them for the harder bosses instead of blowing them on the easier ones... this is something you will need to figure out on your own since every guild goes at a different speed and sometimes even does bosses in different orders.
Eventually you will get the Rake in Prophecy of Ro which will be added to your main DPS rotation. As each new expansion comes out you will get more and more skills that you add to your rotation until you have 20 or so different buttons that need to be hit and kept on cooldown. We'll talk more about that in the next class guide for Beastlords.
More Tips & Tricks
- Consider making Buff Macros and other Macros to expedite some of the more repetative processes. Check out my How to Setup Macros Guide for more information.
Beastlord BiS Lists
I have BiS gear lists for this class which include both Tower and Pre-Tower BiS items. For those of you who care less about a BiS list and just want a list of good gear options, I have included that at the bottom of each page too.
Classic Beastlord BiS Gear List
Kunark Beastlord BiS Gear List
Velious Beastlord BiS Gear List
Luclin Beastlord BiS Gear List
PoP Beastlord BiS Gear List