Killer Instinct: The Beastmaster Compendium

I mean I don't think making a 6 BST party at 69lv was that easy and fast too (or I guess maybe it was, because none wanted invite them to party, so it was easy to pick them up lol). Just find the right people.

I mean try to convince anyone to take Rng.. anywhere.

Being off-meta means you kinda have to go at it solo most of the time.

I was in a 6 bst party.. once.

Yeah, you just had no other option then. Times were very different. Now, if people have the option to be efficient or playful/have fun, they generally pick most optimal almost all of the time, unless you are playing with friends during a very redundant event that you've all mastered and nobody cares about the outcome. My old Segs static had no problem with me playing any DD job to C segs, including BST, because most of us had like 500k+ points and they were meaningless after a point. But a truly generic group of people who genuinely want to play jobs to have fun? Yeah, everyone will come WAR and nobody will heal or buff, lol.

I mean 6xBST party was functional, just less efficient, so 6xWAR party isn't a great example. Im pretty sure you can easily make a party with only one buffer. You can take DNC, BLU or DRG as a healer to MLs. You can take BST for debuffs. There are tons of setups that will work, just less efficient, like 6xBST.

Talking about Digirbalag.
While i was trying my luck hoping for something similar, i got dual wield +5 meaning i can get rid of suppa and use sroda earring instead.
So now i'm not sure if i want to keep trying for something different or if i should be happy about it, cause "indirectly" that axe gave me DA +10%...

Speaking of inefficient but fun.

I've been soloing stuff on RDM without trusts. I find it fun, but people think I'm nuts for doing that. But seriously it's fun. ( Good practice surviving when SHTF or when a party wipes.)

Kinda helped me get intimate with that job and I learned and got experience on it first hand. Also has some old school/nostalgia vibes.

Its actually kinda exciting. You don't get that too much with this game anymore.

Isn't really pointless if you enjoy doing it lol.

Would like to screw around on BST, but S/E kinda killed that old school method of play. The closest thing to this was day one of Limbus. I was just pulling for my group with a huge train on Generous Arthur.

There are still plenty of fun setups to try!

I really want to take a full mage party to dynamis.

blue mage puller/crowd control/tank
geo, smn, sch, blm and nuke all the things!

Helix everything and nightmare it!

also want to do a single pet party dynamis run at current abilities.

I'm always looking for fun party setups. (especially pet parties) but good synergy in abilities, and I found anew one the other day thats really good! (see dancer forum for Fan Dance Counterstance Dancer!)

Why would you come to the BST thread and ***on 2005 BST play styles? This was when XP per mob was capped ~200/kill AND before SE's first reduction of XP from 51-75. (SE first reduced XP post-51 in April 2005)



If I'm not being clear, it wasn't extremely efficient. In fact, it probably was incredibly broken. we went from BST 66 to 71 in just 5 days. From Monday to Friday. Then 6 months later (Dec. 2025), SE released the Great BST MPK Nerf of 2005:



Truly, a very sad day for all Beastmasters.

Again, BST XP parties (and the resulting nerf) is a very special situation in FFXI history, so please don't lump it in together with common platitudes, like "inefficient", "not meta", or even "people don't do new ***". There were plenty of Beastmasters around (which really means like 10-20 tops) and that was perfect because you only needed a BST Duo to make it viable. Having 6 BSTs was a dream.

Indeed, my one experience with 6-bst parties was in Bibiki Bay fighting camels for 71-75.

It was, at the time, the fastest method for any bst to level 71-75.

Three of us dinged 75 for the first time, on our first job, within 30min of each other.

At the time 6 bsts with wild pet rabbits fighting camels was faster XP than a full party on the same camels.

pet dynamis is extremely fun. pld to pop statues and be main healer, one bst to ooze things, bunch of bst crickets to aoe, cor and geo to buff. works best in Jeuno obviously, but can manage other zones too

my favorite bst leveling was level 67 ish in Vunkerl Inlet.
/rdm or /sch

charm crab and pugil
send to fight djinn.
cast tier 1 nuke on djinn matching day of the week to give djinn 1000 tp (100 at the time) and encourage it to boom! be careful not to draw aggro off pet. best in duo or trio to keep killing pace up.

I also used to take 6x bst party to get people clears on all the Promyvion boss fights to advance CoP story. did that so many times. 6x tigers did not have trouble w/ any of those bosses.

How's the accuracy with KC off hand?

Can you share your TP set?

Acc is fine if you use Acc+ food like daifuku +1 or sublime sushi

Does the Pet level+ equipment need to be full timed, just used before Call Beast/BA, or just put on prior to Ready moves/pet DT sets?

Call beast+ gear only needs to be on for precast of Call Beast.

Pet level+ gear like Gleti's boots need to be on full time to get the pet level effect.

If you take them on/off, a tick needs to pass before the pet level+ will take effect - meaning no swapping for precast only.

Question for you, or anyone else with a kclub - do you find bst/war does more dps than bst/nin with a kclub? This is with R15 Farsha main hand.

Idk if it's an issue with TP set or what, but bst/war for me does more dps than bst/nin with kclub on the same mobs and party setup.

ML xp-ing mobs if it helps, levels 134-137, bibiki locus crabs specifically. Accuracy in the 90+% range - double madrigal.

BST/war would be getting use out of fencer trait. But it's slower TP wise. If you hold TP longer, damage should be roughly the same, minus the attack bonus traits and berserk that warrior sub gives.

I don't see a benefit to /NIN over /DNC.

I was /nin because someone else was doing haste samba. /nin with a haste samba means you do not need any DW+ in gear and can load up more on storetp.

Delay was capped with /nin.

I mentioned dps and not WS dmg specifically to account for fencer pushing WS average higher. Was going at >=1750 tp in both cases.

Total dps over time was higher with bst/war than bst/nin, although /nin with kclub did more WS in that time.

I don't have numbers off the top of my head but can gather some if there is interest.

Thanks for the context. In that case, /War with haste Samba attacks incredibly fast, and single wielding an Empyrean means higher chance of AM3 Procs, whereas with kraken club you get reduced main hand swings in the same window it takes to hit 1750 tp, so less AM3. I'm guessing it's the white damage from purely the Farsha alone as BST/WAR

Hmm, I don't think I was keeping up AM3. Totally legitimate ML-ing at locus crabs and having to swap WSs.. yeah, no AM3.

More specifically, single wielding on any subjob gets BST some use out of its own native Fencer III trait (/WAR sub only goes up to Fencer II, so you aren't getting Fencer from the subjob). Guessing Buukki had that in mind, but I feel like a clarification is in order since that could come across as confusing.

Since BST gets the exact same amount of Fencer bonus if single wielding on, say, /DRG to get the WS Damage Boost trait, that might be another sub you may want to test out for this kind of application.

If I'm /WAR, it's pretty much due to wanting to use Berserk, with /WAR DA trait as a secondary benefit. But yeah I guess I could see Fencer kicking in and all of your single wield swings being stronger white damage than a DW K-Club build, plus stronger (but less frequent) WS with the TP Bonus. Dodik, were you using Berserk? Definitely in the realm of possibility that BST would not be attack capped and could take good advantage of that, to benefit both your white damage and WS damage and pull ahead of your DW K-club build.

I did not use berserk, nor any /war JAs. I chose /war for the extra double attack to help with TP speed and to test it against dw kclub without the extra WS damage from /Drg skewing results (over ML30).

Capes and tp sets also differ - da cape for single wield, storetp for dual among other things.

WSD damage will be higher single weild becauseof fencer... most the significant axe weaponskills have damage varies w/ TP: Blitz, Mistral Axe, Calamity, Primal Rend, Cloudsplitter.

The only oddball that can actually do damage not in the category is Decimation and thats only w/ Dolichenus.

DRK > DRG > WAR will be best support jobs for bst for Weaponskill damage.

/nin and /dnc ofcourse will have dw and thus faster tp building and weaponskills. but depending on what pet you have and if they are a good skillchain partner, the faster weaponskills may not be needed.

Ok so wow, neither of you are answering his question.

I'll just say the dps difference is probably a combination of increased white damage with samba (faster Farsha swings vs more kclub swings, which are pitiful white damage) and the difference in gear (double attacks vs oat OH swings). All things being the same, that's the only thing I can see as to why you'd get higher dps as /war vs /nin (besides the measly attack difference).

I don't have kclub

was there a non-kclub question?

Fencer trait, higher white damage.

I really like bst/war with a Da/TA build.
I think i can get up to 70% DA, plus a splash of TA.
BST/WAR with diamond aspis is what got me up to a 36 step self SC lol
I tried with /drg but couldn't make it past 4 i think.
Thing is, this is all solo, so just for fun.
In any group content i go as bst, i sub dnc or nin and use naegling/ikenga (which i got to R30 today!) because its just too strong to say no to.
I always saw bst using axe/shield combo, so i'd love to always single wield, but bst's fencer trait is too low imho.

Easy to forget fencer also has a crit rate bonus of +7% And was he off handing club on /nin? Kclub damage is of course terrible. But da 12, crit rate plus, higher attack and to bonus can add up.

Do you have the ws damage to white damage ratio? Using same pet?

How much of a damage difference are we talking about?

Bst gets a 630 to bonus from fencer with gifts. With moonshade earring that's 880 total to bonus. It would be rare to do ws less than 2k tp. A lot of ppl seem to forget the gifts

If you are not capping attack, crit hits would be a more signicant boost.



With

I'll post some data when next try with /nin. I have dps numbers for /war but took no screenshots before with kclub.

Some numbers as promised:

Target - Locus Ghost Crab Bibiki Bay. ML30-ish.

Bst/nin with Farsha R15, kclub offhand:




Bst/war with Farsha R15, diamond aspis:



Both using Calamity at >= 1750 tp exclusively.

Bst/nin: 2064dps
Bst/war: 2690dps

Bst/war had ~24% higher dps.

Total time was a bit over 5hrs for both. Accuracy was at 91.62% for /nin, >97 for /war.

Buffs: HM, VM, madrigal x2, chaos roll, crooked corsair roll, dnc main haste samba. Rolls +8, all over 6. Songs +9.
Debuffs: dia2, distract. Sometimes presto box step, sometimes light shot dia2 - when they're up.

No AM3. No pet. No /war JAs. No pet buffs/debuffs.

Sets:

/war TP:

Gleti body R12, malignance 4/5. Gere/Moonlight rings, sherida/nukumi+2 earrings. Shulmanu collar, sailfi belt, dex+DA ambu cape.

/nin TP:
Gleti body R12, malignance 4/5. chirich+1 x2 rings, telos/nukumi+2 earrings. Combatant's torque, engraved belt, dex+StoreTP ambu cape.

WS for both:
Nyame R25-B x5, Oshasha's treatise, regal/cornelia rings, moonshade/nukumi+2 earrings. Republic plat. medal, sailfi belt, str+wsd cape.

The simulator shows 2241 and 2491 for the same sets for Bst/war and Bst/nin(kclub), the difference being the /war one was 20% white damage while the /nin one was 10% white damage.

This on the bg-wiki targets, similar buffs.