General

@trojanmagnum: I honestly was considering xenon but decided not to due to the following reasons. Xenons DPM is great unfunded but they start to scale off due to inflated ranges from total damage. Base DPM is not that great so they rely on the scaling with all stat, and the all stat scaling is not that great either because #1 its inflated range from total damage that doesnt multiply w/ boss and #2 all stat is super hard to find. In short, Xenons DPM at high funding is very bad. They have decent versatality with different modes of attack, but honestly you wouldnt really use any other mode aside from snipe anyways since the functions of each mode are relatively the same (being ranged). They dont have a dash for dodging and also their mobility is very uncontrollable at times making the mobility aspect of it poor. They also lack any sort of healing or sustain skill or any party support skills. Lack tankiness and damage reduction too. Only real good thing I can see in the class is they have a bind, but then again there are way more classes with binds that do whatever xenon does but better.

Versatality is misleading. Unlike phantom, you cannot mix in builds and cannot have mobility + dps, utility + dps, etc. Each mode is one dimensional (pure support, pure immobile damage, pure mobility/lack of damage). Despite being able to perform each role, each role tunnels too much on 1 specific thing like how bear mode provides good dps but gives you low mobility or how cheetah provides good mobility but low dps (switching modes midfight is very hard and you would have to do it constantly to make it good). As a bosser, BT is not that great. As a support it could find a few uses but overall not a very good class. Phantom's funded DPM and even their unfunded DPM blow BT out of the water and there is absolutely no comparison in terms of damage either.

i summon @quang

@nitsua2789: nailed it

BT is the worst class in the game in terms of bossing (worse than Jett). In cat mode its basically just a worse version of a Bishop (with no real options to do damage). In Hawk Mode you can move around quickly and deal no meaningful damage. In Leopard mode you can mob decently well. In Bear mode you can do mediocre damage with 0 mobility and die to every boss attack in the game.

They basically took the things that typically make a class good (damage, mobbing, mobility, buffs) and isolated them into different modes. It sounds novel but in reality its quite horrible, as each mode is entirely 1 dimensional. You can never have damage + mobility, you can never have buffs + damage, you can sort of have mobbing just because Leopard mode has large, sweeping attacks that cover a lot of area, but even the mobbing isn't that great compared to most classes.

BT is like Jett, except Jett still sucks more.

What about of a xenón? Reading youra requeriments and play style i think xenon will like

@yiffyfurry: No offense taken. Like you mentioned I also feel it's a fun class to play but definitely not one to take seriously to bring to endgame.

i main a beast tamer and i can honestly say you don't want to main it.

here's a basic overview: as a lvl 213 who regularly does bosses with guild and stuff (and is quite funded (1.3m clean 2.3 buffed) from my experience it's DPM sucks (literally the lowest dpm, lower than jett). Also the mobbing sucks really bad. the damage isn't that bad but defense could be better; alot of HP but not super tanky

Let me go a little more in depth here:

So bear - the strongest animal mode, but you really only use like 3 attacks and it's really spammy. when u do bosses you want to use bear, the problem is your forced to stay in one spot when attacking; furious strikes and fishy slap don't allow you to move. this is good for things like zakum and horntail, but, magnus and others become alot harder considering how slow it is to charge up furious strikes everytime u need to move. mobbing kinda sucks too because evenb though fishy slap and table flip are good, they aren't super quick and have cooldowns. this also brings up the problem with furious strikes and the slowness of it.

Leopard - this animal has better mobility than bear, but the damage is like half. Honestly the damage goes Bear> leopard/cat (about half damage)> then hawk with no damage output. so, ultimately unless you have like a 10m range, leopard is useless for bossing. this also brings up the problem with training too, even though leopard has pretty good mobbing, with the low damage it's kinda worse considering how long it takes you to kill the mobs (on higher level mobs). Not to m,ention one of the main attacking skills (three point pounce) has a 2 second cooldown. it's really annoying because it's low enough u want to spam it, but can't.

Cat - this animal mode is only really useful for meow card tbh. So, it's all support basically, the attacks aren't as good ass bear and mobbing isn't as good has leopard. lets talk about the buffs - they're pretty good buffs, meow card is really good and it has alot of passive buffs for the party (exp increase, attack increase, pdr, drop rate) the thing is the exp buff is like 30% whereas HS is like 50% as i see it, unless you plan on going full support, you never really use cat except for meow card which you can use then switch animals and keep the effect (there's a problem with it though which i'll get to later)

Hawk - this animal is garbage in the attack area, so the only use for it as far as i see it for the mobility. I mostly use it for the glide and jumping abilities to move around and occasionally the door type skill like bishops have.

Now here's a few things to note, you stop getting SP at 200, so you only really get enough to fully max 2 animals and then a little bit into a third, what i would suggest doing is max bear/cat and then maybe hawk. The "+x all skills" does work nicely for beast tamers though so if your like me (i have +2) you can leave skills 2 under max and max almost 3 if you carefully add your sp. Also, with what @gakinotsukai said, switching animal modes in bosses is HIGHLY ineffective. there's no way you'd be able to switch between bear and hawk nearly fast enough, i'd hate for you to get a bad impression (no offense gakinotsukai) there's just no way to effectively move around in bosses beast tamer is a stand still and spam type of class.

Now, here are some problems i have with the class: First off lets talk about 2 major bugs. meow gold card: occasionally the skill doesn't activate properly and it locks your character, forcing a relog. it doesn't happen often but it happens, it happened to me the other day in dojo and i had to relog loosing all my buffs. the death glitch: I don't fully know what causes this (i think it's the bear's revive skill, someone on reddit had mentioned it happens when u potion when your about to die not sure i turned of pet auto potion i've been testing it for a few days) But basically what it does is (and i've only really had it happen to em in bosses) but when you die, it'll show your death but not give you the respawn box which basically means you have to relog, ending the boss run. this is super annoying and happens quite often (although im testing a cause for it) i've had it happen in hilla, arkarium, cygnus, and magnus. i tried soloing nmag a few times and everythime it glitched me and i had to relog, forcing me to wait 15mins before i could try again.

Now, here are some minor annoyances i have:
- beast tamer does not get the skill echo of hero, not a super important skill but it would be nice to have.
- we do not get a level 200 medal or 200 hyper
- The hyper skill and 5th job skill sucks. the 5th job skill was the one chance to make beast tamer a good class but they messed everything up. the hyper skill has a really long casting time making it practically useless (although i do use it sometimes) and with the 5th job skill, the damage is sub par and it also has a slow casting time. it's a combo skill so, in order to get the full effect you have top do the whole combo. kinda sucks when u think about it not to mention as a attack it's not super good.
- also with 5th job, the main attacking skill, furious strikes, does not get an enhancement core from 5th job. rip.

So, in short, bear does damage, hawk has no damage, leopard isn't that great, and cat is all support. bossing is a joke, mobbing is a joke, the whole class is a joke. Albeit, i really enjoy the class it's the only class i've ever been able to main it's really fun IMO but i can honestly say if you plan to make one for any other reason besides it being a fun class, forget about it and make something else.

From my experience of playing a BT from 100-140.

Damage scaling aside, theoretically BT makes for an interesting class where you can build how you like and swap between animals to get the most out of them. The problem is that the class is plagued with bugs and maple overall is not very friendly towards APM and is rather more biased towards buff up and then spam 1-2 skills over and over.

The animal modes in a nutshell:
Bear - 1v1, your primary bossing stance.
Leopard - Mobbing, general leveling use.
Cat - Essentially an alternative to a Bishop.
Hawk - Mobility and magic door.

If maple favored APM and didn't decide to lag all your input you would find that it would be an awesome class to play where you're dodging bosses by switching to hawk then switching back to bear while you're 2nd FJ'ing back into position. In reality, most likely you'll have switched animals too frequently so you just get stuck in limbo unable to do anything. Attack enough times and the game just begins to come to a crawl.

The class is fun, maybe I'll be the only one to admit that but it is hardest hit from general maple issues.