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Beast: HD Edition
Here's the only unlockable class in this game. Fortunately you unlock this class super early, right after beating the first Stratum boss, so it doesn't have the exact same problems as Ronin or Hexer. What's behind a lock isn't a great fit for every party, but for the parties it's a good fit for? Oh boy, what a force to be reckoned with! I'm doing a separate writeup here because I consider DS Beast and HD Beast to be basically 2 different classes. And spoiler alert, HD Beast is well, quite the beast to be reckoned with!
Beasts can be built one of two ways. An offensive tank hybrid. Or taking Loyalty. Why these 2 builds? Oh you'll see in a moment. As for stats you want, HP and TP are good builds. TEC can be ignored entirely as +10 to that awful TEC stat won't fix it. STR is really good no matter which build you go with, so you'll want to max that out. VIT is an odd one. If you're going with the hybrid build, you'll want to max it out. If you're going with the Loyalty build, VIT is completely useless to invest in, and HP is the only defensive stat they can really use.
Common Passive Unlocks
HP Up: Lv3: Autocure
VIT Up: Lv10: En Garde
TEC Up: Lv5: Fetch
LUC Up: Lv5: Fetch
Loyalty
Unlocks: Lv1: Doze Off; Lv2: Preen; Lv3: Bristle; Lv10: Rampage
Gives the user a chance to take damage for an ally, can activate multiple times per turn. Takes priority over any damage mitigating or nullifying skills. Redirects the actual damage taken to the Beast themselves, ignoring their defense stats and buffs. Passive.
This skill made Beast incredibly frustrating to use for most people back in the days of the DS era. Because Loyalty ignored the Beast's defense stats aside from their HP, it actually made Beast very likely to die in practice since there were a lot of fragile classes in the game. You could make it work, but you had to stuff the party with a lot more tanky units, which was kind of counterintuitive for most players since it would be overall fragile parties that appreciate a tank more, not already bulky parties.
So what did HD do to fix this skill? Nothing. Not directly. While Loyalty itself didn't get any changes, there were changes to other mechanics that make it much easier to play around, allowing you to benefit from Loyalty more easily instead of it serving as a hindrance in the wrong situations. The weaknesses are still there, but the amount of parties you can use a Beast in without it horribly dying widened considerably in HD since the requirements got lowered from "use in bulky parties" to "pair it up with a Protector or a Survivalist." Which are far more reasonable requirements. They are a bit situational as a result, but the use cases aren't as narrow as they were on DS, overall buffing up this class heavily. And even if you wish not to use Loyalty, they still buffed up Beast rather directly due to a big change to a certain skill (Preen) I'll go over later on.
If you're wondering what I meant by pairing it up with a Protector or a Survivalist, provokes got buffed in the HD version to be far more reliable, turning anyone who uses them into magnets for attacks. Loyalty can still kick in afterwards, redirecting the damage back towards the Beast. Keep in mind Provoke reduces damage by 27%, and Loyalty reduces it even further by 22%. Which stacks to a whopping 43% damage reduction! Not only that, the Protector actually has better defensive stats than the Beast and can also wear more pieces of armor if they so choose. The only defensive aspect in which the Beast excels over the Protector is their HP stat. So it's a very good pair up here. And since Loyalty redirects damage 75% of the time, this actually spreads out the damage between 2 classes, furthering both classes' survivability, and saving on supplies since you'll only have to heal up 2 party members generally instead of all 5.
Now you might be thinking this is too much defense and doesn't prioritize offense enough. Well you would be dead wrong! Unlike later games where tanks can end up having lackluster offenses more often than not, that is absolutely not the case in this game! Both Protector and the Beast also function as very strong offensive units, Beast especially! Protectors have Smite while Beasts can make use of Rampage. So no, you're not lacking in offense. You're getting the best of both worlds here!
As for Survivalist and Beast, the principle is similar, it just trades damage for utility instead, since the Survialist... sucks at dealing damage. Instead you pretty much use that combo if you want to make use of 1st Turn instead. Survivalists can use Baitstep to attract hits towards them, though instead of defense, it has an evasion boost, which was slightly buffed in HD. Survivalists can function as a dodge tank, and since Loyalty only redirects damage, it won't redirect missed attacks. And any hits the Survivalist does take can be redirected to the Beast instead. Though due to their more fragile nature, you'll have to maintain the Beast a bit more for any stray hits they actually take.
Another important aspect about Loyalty is that it only transfers the damage taken. Any secondary effects on attacks won't get transferred. So any infliction attempts or debuffs won't even apply to the Beast unless they attracted an AOE, in which case only the actual attack aimed at the Beast will apply any secondary effects. Which further increases your party's survivability. That being said as the game goes on, even with such setups, the Beast dying is a real possibility, but it should be easier to offset that happening by that point. And Loyalty of course still has the use case of meat shielding your party against powerful overkill attacks if you lack other forms of defenses, letting you sacrifice your Beast's life for more important party members if it really comes down to it.
Granted if you want to do the oldschool Loyalty build in a fragile party setup you still can. Though why in the world would you do that...?
Autocure
Prerequisites: HP Up Lv3
Unlocks: Lv5: Autoheal
Restores the user's HP by a certain amount after each battle. Passive.
A more selfish version of Patch Up for less return. It does stack with Patch Up so whether you want to take this is up to you, though I'd consider it super low priority. Especially if you took Loyalty to max level in a party that can't support it and are frequently left with a dead Beast. Though why you did that is beyond me.
Autoheal
Prerequisites: Autocure Lv5
Unlocks: Lv5: Tenacity
Gives the user a chance to recover from any ailment at the start of a turn. Separate chance to the standard Recover Chance. Passive.
Keep in mind it doesn't work on binds, but it does work on Petrification! Which isn't a huge upside as only 5 enemies have access to Petrification in the entire game. Still, being able to get right back into the action is a really good passive to have. This pretty much makes the Beast even more of a bulky unit overall. That being said Loyalty doesn't transfer any secondary effects, but it's nice if they happen to get tagged with an ailment from an AOE or such, as the hit the Beast themselves actually takes will check for any secondary effects there.
En Garde
Prerequisites: VIT Up Lv10
Gives the user a chance to reduce incoming damage by 50%. Does not stack with Loyalty. Passive.
If you were wondering if the anti-synergy Loyalty had with the Beast's skillset was fixed, I'm sorry to say that no it wasn't. So while Loyalty's weaknesses are easier to work around, that unfortunate aspect of its design still remains. In short don't invest in these skills outside of certain circumstances or with builds that don't make heavy use of Loyalty.
But if you're not using Loyalty, then hoo boy it makes the Beast even more hard to kill! For a Preen build in the HD version, this skill is a very good one, and it does work there! It effectively increases the Beast's HP by 38%, which is pretty good when factoring in the Beast's natural bulk. Definitely a must have if your party isn't suited to taking advantage of Loyalty.
Tenacity
Prerequisites: Autoheal Lv5
Gives the user a chance to be automatically revived at 1HP. Can activate multiple times per battle, stacks with Loyalty and cannot activate if the user was killed by Instant Death. Passive.
Fortunately this skill does work with Loyalty even though a bunch of others don't. Ironically Loyalty being easier to play around makes this skill less appealing. Proper use of Loyalty won't have the Beast dying all the time. Which means that this skill won't have too many chances to save your pet's bacon. However late and post-game enemies do hit harder and more people so Loyalty does have a small chance of getting them killed, so it may be worth picking up by then.
Of course if you have a team that doesn't really play well with Loyalty, and maxed it out anyways in this version, even though Preen was RIGHT THERE, then sure. Grab this skill since it'll save your Beast from being splatted all over the Labyrinth a good portion of the time. Even though you didn't have to do that.
Maul
Unlocks: Lv5: Devour
A single target Claw attack that increases in damage the lower the user's HP. Claw skill with Bash damage, uses the Arms.
The only real use this skill has is that at max level it's the fastest damage skill the Beast has outside of a level 1 Claw. Otherwise it's not that great. A Beast that's doing their job correctly won't even be at low HP for very long to benefit from the extra damage applied to this skill. In most other situations, the Beast has a far better skill it could be using. On a Loyalty build of any kind, a Beast should be using Rampage instead to deal damage as it's far better than this skill could ever hope to be. Even on an improperly supported Loyalty build, the Beast will likely be either at full HP or just plain dead, which means they can't use this skill. And on tank builds, Bodyslam is by far the better choice for raw damage, and it comes with a Stun chance!
Devour
Prerequisites: Maul Lv5
A single target Claw attack that heals the user's HP by a percentage of damage dealt. Claw skill with Bash damage, uses the Head.
As if Beast needed to be even more unkillable! On a Loyalty build with proper support, if you don't need to kill an enemy or overkill them with Rampage, then this can heal off whatever chip damage they took very easily. And on tank builds that don't make use of Loyalty, this is also still a great pickup because this combined with the Beast's natural bulk extends their survivability to absurd heights, letting them tank for even longer. The only time this skill isn't great is if you maxed out Loyalty on a team that doesn't play well with it, as the healing from this skill won't offset the damage they take, or deaths they encounter. But again, why did you do that when Preen exists in their skillset?!
Bodyslam
Unlocks: Lv5: Rampage
A single target Claw attack that attempts to inflict Stun. Claw skill with Bash, uses the Arms.
From levels 1 through 5 it's straight up worse than a regular attack, and it's barely better at level 6. But past that point is where the skill starts getting good. What the fuck is this scaling!? Keep in mind Etrian Odyssey does not tell you the specifics of the skill data, we're pulling this out for you, so chances are a player who invests in this will likely see that this skill is crap and not invest in it further. This class sure has some oddities.
As for the skill itself, it's the best on supportive tank focused builds, as the damage is consistently the best they've got outside of Rampage, and fishing for Stun procs is very nice whenever the Beast doesn't have anything better they can be doing. Those chances an FOE or boss loses to this can really help turn the tide or cement whatever advantage your team already has. The Beast has the 3rd best LUC in the game too, so it slightly bolster's their chances of landing that Stun.
Rampage
Prerequisites: Bodyslam Lv5, Loyalty Lv10
A multi target Claw attack to 3-6 enemies, does not redirect if original target dies. Claw attack with Bash damage, uses the Arms.
HOO BOY! In the original version, this was the best non-conditional attacking skill in the game. It was unfortunately attached to the fact that you had to max out Loyalty to even use. Being the best attacking skill didn't mean much since the Beast would likely be too busy being splattered all over the floor and nearby walls to spend time attacking with this skill. Now that Loyalty is a lot easier to make use of and even benefit from, Rampage is less of a consolation prize for keeping a Beast alive and now a genuine force to be reckoned with! At max level, taking into account the lowered accuracy, it deals a whopping average damage of 546%! Without the accuracy penalty, the average damage increases to 728%! This is almost as much as ECSTASY! Extremely high for a non-conditional damage skill!
This skill pretty much lets your Beast go APESHIT with damage and makes Beast one of the best attacking units in the entire game on top of being basically unkillable! Even if they only land a 3 hit Ramapge, that still outdamages the likes of Midareba at 480% total damage. And if they land all 6 hits, that's 960% damage! And in the right circumstances, can even outdamage the likes of REVENGE. 45% of the time it'll have a better damage modifier than Ecstasy. ECSTASY! The accuracy penalty is a bit of a damper, but it's not so low that you'll be seeing constant misses.
But wait! It gets even better! HD also made binds far more useful than they were in the DS version due to how much easier it is to land them. Since leg binds disable evasion and nothing is immune to binds in this game, you can use those to easily make the accuracy penalty irrelevant, buffing up Ramapge's damage even more. The fact that the Beast now has amazing defense on top of amazing offense just makes the class an incredible unit overall, as long as your party can support Loyalty that is.
Claw
Unlocks: Lv5: Wildcut
A single target Claw attack. Claw skill with Cut damage, uses the Arms.
Well this isn't something you see too often in an EO game. A skill actively giving reasons not to max it out beyond raising the TP costs. You'll have to decide where to stop, but if you want Wildcut, you'll need to level it up to 5. This feels like an experiment that didn't work because SP is already a precious resource, so knowing how to carefully distribute it is already an important skill for players to learn. And skills are already competing to gain SP, so there really didn't need to be more reasons to drag a skill down. Or they thought a Beast having access to Cut damage was really really scary.
And it's still not a great skill in the HD version. I mean I just went on about how godly Rampage is in this version, and there's other better options for a damage Beast even if you don't want to use Rampage. The worst part is that you can't just leave it at level 1 whenever you want your Beast to snipe an enemy if you want to pick up the encounter clearing skill known as Wildcut. And frankly that kills the utility of this skill, since AOE damage is far more valuable in random encounters than sniping a straggler. Of course Wildcut has a massive speed penalty, so if you don't have a way of working around that, I suppose you can just leave this skill at a low level to let your Beast snipe stragglers before they can do much.
Wildcut
Prerequisites: Claw Lv5
A multi target Claw attack. Claw skill with Cut damage, uses the Arms.
A very strong AOE skill that can easily clear random encounters, but it comes at the unfortunate price of being an incredibly slow skill with that 1% speed modifier. Of course you can combine this with Torpor to get around that easily. Otherwise it's a very potent way to clear random encounters at the cost of letting them act. If you don't have any other encounter clearing skills than this can be worth a pickup even if you don't have access to Torpor or 1st Turn in that party.
Bristle
Prerequisites: Loyalty Lv3
Increases the user's physical and elemental defense, and reduces their damage output for 5 turns. Buff skill, uses the Head.
This is pretty much meant for supportive tank builds only. On Loyalty builds, this is mostly a pure downgrade since the defense buffs won't affect the redirection damage. On tank builds? Yeah if you want to extend the Beast's survivability over them contributing with their damage output then sure, pick it up if you want and just go even more overboard with making them unkillable.
Preen
Prerequisites: Loyalty Lv2
Increases the user's physical defense and provoke rate for 5 turns. Buff skill, uses the Head.
Okay before I get into this skill, we need to talk about enemy AI in these versions. In the DS versions of 1 and 2, an enemy decides what they will do and who they will attack at the start of the turn. There's no getting around this, and this makes Provoke skills not work on the casting turn. 3 changed this to enemies decide what they will do at the start of the turn, but decide who they attack when they actually get to act in the turn order. This change was backported to the HD versions of 1 and 2.
While this does make Provokes better, it's not exactly an amazing change. But there was one more important change. In the DS version, Provokes only worked if an enemy used their default targeting routine, which prioritized healthy party members in the front row, and the attack had to be single target. If the enemy's AI decided to go after the back row, nothing could change that. The HD version on the other hand, does not give a damn what the enemy AI decides to do. It wants to go after the back row but Provoke is active? Too bad for them, they HAVE to attack the party member with a Provoke buff! This turns all classes with a provoke skill into a massive lightning rod that draws away attacks. And with Beast, this is the alternative to Loyalty if you don't want to make use of it. Provokes only do not work on AOEs or random target attacks. Everything else is fair game.
Since Preen redirects attacks 100% of the time almost guaranteed, the fact that Loyalty is a pre-requisite to this is almost irrelevant since this takes priority over that. Which allows for a Beast to take advantage of its natural bulk far more easily. Even if you don't have the ideal partners for a Beast to run Loyalty safely, this is their other core skill that you can run in its place instead and still have a good supportive tank build.
Wildwall
Nullifies all basic attacks for the entire turn or if the user dies. Buff skill, uses the Arms.
Imagine if parries weren't nerfed in 2. And yeah the HD version of 2 didn't change this. This would truly take Beast into the absurd even if Loyalty isn't changed in this version. Alas, because of only working on regular attacks, it's really not worth investing a lot into, if at all.
Roar
Attempts to inflict Fear on all enemies. Curse skill, uses the Head.
The scaling is still dogshit in this version, and I really don't know why it was left this way. Again, the games don't really tell you much about the specifics most of the time other than "skill gets stronger" in the skill description. At any rate just max it out if you plan on picking it up. You could potentially combine this with Bodyslam to lock enemies out of their turns. Definitely pairs up nicely with a Hexer using the Fear skills, so probably worth a pickup there.
Saliva
Restores HP to a single target. Healing skill, uses the Head.
No. This skill is terrible at healing and your Beast is genuinely better off doing anything else most of the time. Use an actual healer instead if you want healing. And if the Beast needs to be doing that job, items exist. Toss a Medica to a party member if you want them to be healing. Doesn't eat up precious SP. And if the Beast needs to heal themselves, use Devour.
Doze Off
Prerequisites: Loyalty Lv1
Restores the user's HP and puts them to Sleep. Heal skill, uses the Head.
An incredibly unusual skill that seems like it's outclassed by using Devour or just having the Beast use an item to heal themselves. In reality there is one genuine use case for value pointing this. Turning off Loyalty on turns you REALLY don't want it active, such as if you know a powerful AOE is coming, or you really want to make use of a Protector's defensive skills or the Dark Hunter's Bait skills. 100 HP is a nice buffer for the penalty of putting the Beast to sleep, and 200% speed is generally fast enough to turn off Loyalty in time in most cases. You can max it out if you want more safety in terms of speed and healing, though honestly 1 point is enough for that use case here.
Howl
Lures non-red FOEs in a certain radius to tile used and stuns them for a set duration. Field skill.
As if the Beast wasn't absurd enough, they gave it the FOE field skills for extremely easy preemptives on nearly every single FOE in the game! Though personally I'd rather spend the SP somewhere else and just use the FOE items (which aren't restockables by the way) instead. But if you really want a stronger version, then sure, take this skill.
Growl
Stuns non-red FOEs in a certain radius for a set duration. Field skill.
And they gave it the stun version too as insult to injury! Pretty much allowing Beasts to have incredible field utility by giving them both versions to suit the player's needs properly in the correct situations. Honestly it's a very good thing being able to manipulate FOE movement wasn't a feature in the later games, because EO2 easily has the strongest FOEs in the entire series, but even having just 1 free turn against these titans can be enough to make them crumple to a strong enough party. If this feature showed up in a game where the FOEs are much weaker? My god, it would just be a slaughter. I don't want to imagine how brutal these would be against EO3's FOEs.
Fetch
Prerequisites: TEC Up Lv5, LUC Up Lv5
Allows the party to gather from Chop, Mine and Take points a limited amount each day.
This is an interesting idea in theory but in practice it plays out the exact same way as investing in all of the gathering skills on a Survivalist. TEC and LUC aren't particularly stats the Beast cares about. And in a gathering party? Beasts are locked off at the start of the game so you can't really make a party of Beasts from the get-go, and Survivalists have actual field skills they can use to reach gathering points easier that Beasts don't have access to. And due to the skill tree design, you don't get the payoff from this skill until later in comparison. A Survivalist can gather from 3 different gathering points with 3 SP, but it'll take the Beast 11 SP for them to do so. Just stick with a Survivalist gathering party.
You also really shouldn't be gathering with your main party unless you're on a lower difficulty because that just increases the chances of a wipe and losing valuable progress considering how much of a middle finger gathering ambushes are to the player in this game. A Loyalty Beast could save your party in that moment but why did you even take that risk in the first place?
Salivall
Heals and revives the entire party and dispels all status ailments. Does not remove binds or Stun. Force skill, uses the Head.
HOO BOY! While this isn't good as Healing Touch, it's still a hefty big heal. And you might be wondering what's so special about this skill. Well you see, because Loyalty or Preen turns Beast into a gigantic lightning rod for taking damage, this actually builds up Force incredibly fast. During explorations, it functions as one big "resupply" button for your team, saving on supplies and extending stays for quite a bit after you slam the button. It's one of the few Force skills you'll genuinely actually get to use during the main game even before you get access to ways to fill up the Force meter much faster and there's absolutely no need to Force grind. Unlike certain classes they don't get a way to accelerate their Force gain later, but frankly they don't need it! Such a tool would make the party functionally immortal!
Because they're one of two classes that can actually use Force in a reasonable timespan during the main game (the other being Protector thanks to the HD version of Provoke), this actually makes this one of the better Force skills simply by virtue of actually being able to use it. Quite often in fact! I actually like how this specific one factors into the Beast's design too. A Beast that does their job correctly will be rewarded with mega healing themselves and the party, which creates a nice little feedback loop. It's a nice way to tie the class's design together, even if it's still pretty messy.
What a glow up! Frankly it's amazing how just a few changes absolutely skyrocketed this class from frustrating and awful to somewhat situational when trying to actually make use of Loyalty, but genuinely great in the right circumstances, or just great and self-sufficient with the new provoke mechanics. Yeah the skill design is pretty messy, though that isn't unique to Beast in this game. But overall, give Beast a try in HD! It's a pretty fun class if used right, and it's a lot easier to slot into a party compared to the DS version! I genuinely love the changes HD made to make more strategies and classes overall viable. Some of these strengths and tactics can apply to the DS version, but since the provokes aren't too great in that version, it doesn't make the Beast self-sufficient and makes them way more reliant on your party's overall bulk instead, limiting the use cases of actually making good use of Loyalty.