I have been considering a beastlord as part of a new duo (with a shaman) or trio, but I've never played one before. Are there any starting considerations for which race to play, particularly in terms of fun quests and faction needed to do them? For the shaman I am going to go Iksar as it seems easier faction wise to do the cudgel quests with little to no faction work. Further, are there gear considerations to take into account that might change my mind about any given Beastlord race? Also, do I have it right that the pets for each race are: Barb: wolf Iksar: scaled wolf Ogre: bear Troll: alligator Vah Shir: tiger Any other info that might be useful is appreciated.
Ogre is the min/max choice due to frontal stun immunity. That makes it easier to cast spells while tanking, and increases your DPS a bit due to spending less time stunned. Other than that, troll and iksar regen is nice. I think most folks pick based on how cool they think the models and pets are. You have the pets right.
Barbs are blind at night, etc. Still Barb or Vah Shir only choice for me. Ogre STA starts off high, so it will take less time to max your STA. This ends up being a saved buff slot on raids since you don't need the raw STA buff from Shamans.
I would skip the beast/shammy duo, so much overlap and shammy heals suck. A druid or cleric would be a better choice. Channeling AA makes up for a lot of the ogre racial bonus.
Also, if you do choose Ogre, bear in mind movement limitations unless you have shrink available. For Beastlords i think that's lvl 30. For Shamans its 19. I think Sol A is problem, among a couple of other dungeons without it. And yeah, BST/DRU is really strong for a duo. It covers most things you need, except for indoor lulls and rezzes.
I can concur that the druid brings a lot to the table (snares, heals, thorns, nukes, ports, etc) - and if you want, there are always plenty of people looking to hang out. So you could easily grab an enchanter or someone else and get haste/clarity and probably some extra DPS, too.
Ogre (-15%) and Troll/Iksar (-20%) will level slower with their large exp penalties, while Vah Shir (0%) and Barbarians (-5%) will level fastest. If you're creating the characters for the journey and not the 60/65 end game, then it does make a noticeable difference. Otherwise take the min/max approach and select based on your preference for appearance/pet.
As a non-BL player, and just a mere citizen of our online world, gator pets are just more fun to see and play with. Chompy is the spice of life that your pixel elves will recall fondly years from now.
I appreciate the confirmation on the pets. Looks like Troll BST for the gator pet! I also appreciate the comments from yourself and others about min/max and other duos that would be "better," but that is not information that I really need as I've looked at this quite a bit. Between my wife's characters and the characters of our kids, we have a lot of the classes available to try out different trios and group combos, and to power level. I should have mentioned this in my original post. My apologies. We are missing a beastlord however, and I have wanted to give a shammy a whirl to do the cudgel quests. Figured two birds one stone. The wife is trying to decide if she wants to add 1-2 mages or other characters to help round out our family army, and either way we will be using our level 60 characters for buffs and heals. If not, she plans on helping me along to power level these two up, and when she doesn't have the time, I want to be able to bring along a druid, cleric, or sham with this duo so I can grind them up. It would be really helpful to get information on BST specific quests, especially ones that might be heavily dependent on faction. As I stated, I want to do the cudgel quests without doing a ton of faction work, and I haven't been able to find much about whether there are similar BST quests where race could make a big difference on whether any given quest would be roadblocked by faction/deity. If questing based on race/faction is not a concern, then I'm more interested in which pet the BST gets than I am min/max. Thanks for the replies so far.
You know that is a good point I hadn't really considered. These are a couple of characters I want to play for the fun of it, and was actually considering going with Iksar for both charactes just so they would start Cabilis because I really want to dig into everything Kunark has to offer from that perspective. I started in Kunark before Velious came out and enjoyed a that expansion a ton, but I played a Wiz through it and when I later played some Iksar characters it was later on in Luclin and then PoP era and was more interested in getting to 65 and AAs than I was questing them. Your point about xp penalties and how those might effect playing a couple of character just for the fun of it is a perspective I hadn't considered, and maybe should. Thanks.
I do a Vah Shir beast and druid combo and love it. The two classes are very complimentary down to sharing some wis gear for skillups. I personally did not find the regen on any of the evil races that have it to be a motivation. Druids have heals down and a regen line as well. So it is not much additional help over what you lose from the large xp penalties. Front stun is handy if you are soloing a lot. But I find the only time I'm lacking for it is on a tough to (re)slow mob. If the mobs can be pulled in generally slow to start and you use flash of light for additional agro then you wont lose much in game play there. The best epic is one of the best returns on effort of any epic in the game. It centers on Shar Vahl but faction really is not an issue as the cats are basically neutral to anyone. I don't know what the other races have in terms of special quests for beasts. There is a Vah Shir line of cloaks that you can get. I'm on the penultimate one (I need a Grimling War for the last) on both my beast and shammy (also Vah Shir). You need other Vah Shir to do it too though, I couldn't find a Vah Shir of every class and ended up making my own. So have to be a little masochistic to do the quests.
I think https://www.takproject.net/allaclone/item.php?id=8420 is the one quest Vah Shir Beastlord's specifically get. Would be an interesting thing to do as you level up I suppose. That cloak does exist here, right?
