Are beastmasters useless for fortress defense? And just in general?

[Todd the Godd]

Are beastmasters useless for fortress defense? Or even just for sieges?
Their advanced class doesn't really seem to have any helpful use against enemy captains, most beasts -and with "most beasts" I basically just mean Caragor- usually die fast, they can't even summon them in pitfights.

[Pandora]

Some beastmasters are good in close fight but they are few and you are in cheaters ranks so avoid everything wich could trigger those guys. Like cara.

The graug summoning is a no go, its to crowded, the Graug will more likely hit one of your guy and he will kill it, when its not the beastmaster himself who does it...
But plan a beast slayer for the throne room: most players are bad in sword play and need a graug + bodyguard to deal with 3 captains.

[Chogathmainop]

Unless I need orcs, the game is mostly balanced to front-line orcs. Summons are nice, but the problem is the AI works in such a way that the more heads you put in a fight the more of a mess it's going to be for both sides. As for pit fights, summoning is a no-no. In short, the only orcs I keep are Tanks, Assassins, Berserkers, Destroyers, Slayers, Tanks, and Tricksters.

Beastmasters are summoners, so that's a mixed bag, same with commanders.
Every fight quickly goes into hand-to-hand, so marksmen are at a massive disadvantage
Trackers only work if the enemy lands exactly on the trap. If the enemy is an Olog, the trap does nothing.

[Todd the Godd]

Originally posted by Chogathmainop:

Unless I need orcs, the game is mostly balanced to front-line orcs. Summons are nice, but the problem is the AI works in such a way that the more heads you put in a fight the more of a mess it's going to be for both sides. As for pit fights, summoning is a no-no. In short, the only orcs I keep are Tanks, Assassins, Berserkers, Destroyers, Slayers, Tanks, and Tricksters.

Beastmasters are summoners, so that's a mixed bag, same with commanders.
Every fight quickly goes into hand-to-hand, so marksmen are at a massive disadvantage
Trackers only work if the enemy lands exactly on the trap. If the enemy is an Olog, the trap does nothing.

I didn't really try that, but couldn't we shadow strike pull Marksmen up to the rooftops, where they could just snipe enemy captains? I should give it a try at some point.

[Mohaty]

If he can summon ghuls it is good for everything (if you can deal with the urk 's personality that comes from that )

[Pandora]

Laisse les ghluies tranquilles!
Depend, at high lvl they have no issues with ghulies. Be careful, the Ghul keepers tend to betray. They are like women, they think they can change us, ghulies slaugterers but when they understand they cant...

[ressenmacher]

They're pretty bad in terms of combat effectiveness, both against other players and other orcs.

This is because their bonus is summoning or controlling monsters. At high level, monsters are bad because they don't scale with the exception of beasts allied to the player or directly ridden by them. A caragor summoned by a level 1 captain is the same as the one summoned by a level 80 captain. And by the time captains are that high a level, many of them have either the Beast Slayer trait (kills monster before it becomes a problem), are immune to beasts entirely, or are enraged by some or all of the beasts (in which case the beasts become a detriment rather than just useless). They also have no way to boost their beasts, unlike commanders, who can at least enrage their gangs to get them to attack.

So they can't effectively harm other captains. Beasts also have another issue: they die fast. Beasts are large; they take up a lot of space, which lets them be surrounded and attacked by many more enemies at once than a standard orc or captain. This means they take huge amounts of damage compared to everything else (because they face a greater volume of incoming attacks), and die very, very quickly.

So they can't hurt anyone and go down too fast to be a distraction or meat shield. Beastmasters have a third issue, too: their traits are bad. Their best summoning traits, the graug and dire caragor pack, are epic. That means they sacrifice either good damage or good health to get these already lacklustre abilities. Both caragor mounts are a detriment rather than a boost because it replaces the captain's much higher damage attack with that of the caragor, renders them almost immobile in combat, and puts them into a vulnerable position when the mount is killed. Their drake summon summons a drake that isn't even allied to them. Their caragor summon calls up too few beasts to be effective. Their ghul summon...is actually OK vs players, but it does next to nothing against other orcs. Their other abilities also suck; the roar is a worse version of the tank's Wave of Might or just bombs in general, the charge is OK against other orcs but super easy for a human to dodge, beast slayer/immune is something most people at that level have anyways (and it isn't valuable because the beasts are just so weak), their animal enrage seems to have literally no effect on their monsters whatsoever. Compare this to what other tribe bonuses and traits are: tanks get double the HP with their second wind, assasins get the most dangerous trait in the entire game as a normal bonus, the commander gets much better summons that also don't eat into their epic trait allowance, slayers get stronger the longer a fight with the player drags out, etc.

Olog harpoons are pretty good in pit fights, though. I give them that.

[Pandora]

Commanders arent that great in siege, but for Beastmasters you need to find one strong in fight and forget the summoning part.
@Ressen: I think you forgot to point "almost everyone is raged by caragor or Graugs".

[ressenmacher]

Originally posted by Pandora:

Commanders arent that great in siege, but for Beastmasters you need to find one strong in fight and forget the summoning part.
@Ressen: I think you forgot to point "almost everyone is raged by caragor or Graugs".

I actually did include this in my response (first paragraph: "And by the time captains are that high a level, many of them...are enraged by some or all of the beasts."). It is true, though, that many overlords (esp. hacked ones) are specifically given either caragor or graug enrages or the Bestial Frenzy trait.