Beastmaster Tanking

I know, I just love toying with this idea. but I'm playing with numbers and a certain build.

Bst/Run
Vickie/Kiyomaru for a pet
preferred target: lizards :D



So with just traits, merits, and killer instinct, any bst can have killer effect 30. On NM's I would expect this intimidation rate to be reduced to 10 from 30. IIRC

ItemSet 374243

This build has 50% damage reduction.
With Zealous Snort active:
+66 Magic Defense bonus
Counter Rate: 72% (accuracy adjustment drops it probably to 71%)
Guard +25 as bizarre as that is...

+627 Magic Evasion

Block rate will be at least 20% and should reduce damage by about 90% if I got the shield formulas right.


which means at worst only 16% of attacks should make it thru un-resisted...

By formula, it should be -81.5% dmg reduced on block. But practically speaking, I've never seen any shield reduce more than 80%. And I've tested quite a few. So it'd probably just be 80%.

btw. Block+ doesn't work like Inquartata, if that's what you were thinking. So you aren't guaranteed that 20%. It can push that value below the floor if the mob level is high enough, and your shield skill low enough. So you can have block+20 and still have a 5% block rate.

That said, I've not actually figured out where block rate would be on a likely target with BST shield skill and reprisal procs.

A quick and dirty block rate calc vs a lvl 139 mob with ML0 BST. -10.43% block rate, before block+ or reprisal. 5% After the floor is applied. 9.57% blockrate with the block+20, see how it builds form your base rather than the floor? I wish it worked like inquartata.

Also, Sadly, block+ is added after reprisal, but the skill+ from reprisal still does a lot for your base rate. With the reprisal skill+ we go from -10.43 to 3.97%. Then we apply the block rate multiplier. But. I'm honestly a bit uncertain how it interacts with the floor now. I used to think if you were below the floor it would just modify the 5% floor.. but I've seen a few tests that make it seem like that might not be the case...

So, 3.9*1.5= 5.85% then block+20 for 25.85% blockrate with Reprisal up. Honestly, that ended up better than I expected. reprisal is a big deal.

If you fight lower level mobs(I used this value mostly cause I have a lot of test data for it. I dunno what your use case is.) you could potentially get some pretty decent block rates. Master level skill+ also counts for a lot here.

Thank you very much for sharing your expertise Martel. I'm a complete noob when it comes to shield mechanics. I WAS thinking it worked like Inquartata.

As a follow up from yesterday, I was NOT able to reproduce the issue of guarding on master with axes in hand while under the effects of Zealous Snort. I'll pay attention if it happens again, but maybe a bug was fixed, or I'm getting senile.

On the other hand, I must say I love this build. The strongest defensive point is really the high counter rate.

I was just running thru some solo odyssey segment/lustreless farming, and had an unfortunate aggro and link of all the invisible beastmen around the Halo. Well, not all I think it was 4/6 of them because there were 2 left when I went back to the Halo. but I was able to successfully tank the whole crowd with my bst in my counter/dt build (not full dt though because I didn't go in with tanking in mind) I quickly went after the halo, took it down and pulled 4x quadav (yes its only sheol A) and 6x flytrap to the edge, tanked the whole crowd and won the day. It was most satisfying! And I learned that I could just wade into groups here an take them down w/out wasting time pulling or worrying about aggro :D

no trouble strolling into small crowds in Sheol B either. 4~5 w/ counter build bst. this actually saves alot of time in a solo farming run.

Semi related, I tooled around with this setup as well on Shedu.

Couldn't solo+trust him, but with someone to watch my HP it went super well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkY9eRCQSbM

Celebrity sighting.

Had any more chances to test this? It seems quite fun.

I did a little BST/RUN tanking in Dyna-D Windurst wave 1 and 2, and it was okay with Refresh support.

Any ideas for snagging enmity on multiple targets?

/blu instead of /run easiest for aoe claiming.. I don't know if pet aoe would work or not. best pet for aoe claiming is Roland ofcourse.


I'll have to test it out. pet claim then use something for enmity on master.

just tested and it doesn't work. I did aoe w/ patrice, then spammed all the /run job abilities. it didn't pull the added mobs. there is a need to tag them from master.

/blu makes it easy.

what you need w/ /blu is same as /run you need refresh support.

I'm trying to get moar master levels. so not testing it while leveling.