Guild Wars 2

How is soul beast useless? Even if you continue to play as a power range build, beast mode now gives you even more stats bonus. I am literally speechless when people claim specs that are working fine as underpower, meanwhile actual specs that are badly designed like renegade are being said fine.

Soulbeast sounds very disappointing. It sounds like the only way it can be decent is if you use exactly the right progression in exactly the correct way. So really a PvP Spec. I guess I’ll be sticking with my non-Elite Ranger build again.

Saves me from a lot of HP collecting on this character anyway.

lmaogg.7325:

How is soul beast useless? Even if you continue to play as a power range build, beast mode now gives you even more stats bonus. I am literally speechless when people claim specs that are working fine as underpower, meanwhile actual specs that are badly designed like renegade are being said fine.

The damage is bad and the spec is useless in PvE. Even in PvP, after your burst damage is done you will be vulnerable for 3/4 of the time. The stat bonuses are far too low to make up for the loss in damage by removing the pet. Remember that supposedly 30% of the damage comes from the pet. When you combine, you lose the pet, aka 30% of your damage not to mention the meat shield. What do you gain in return? 80 in each stat + 200 extra in 1 stat based on your pet choice and 3 mostly useless abilities or actually 2 abilities since you lose the pets special ability. It would be nice if they at least gave us the 30% damage back while in Beastmode. It wouldn’t be that hard to add it to the 1st trait.

Dark.1823:

The damage is bad and the spec is useless in PvE. Even in PvP, after your burst damage is done you will be vulnerable for 3/4 of the time. The stat bonuses are far too low to make up for the loss in damage by removing the pet. Remember that supposedly 30% of the damage comes from the pet. When you combine, you lose the pet, aka 30% of your damage not to mention the meat shield. What do you gain in return? 80 in each stat + 200 extra in 1 stat based on your pet choice and 3 mostly useless abilities or actually 2 abilities since you lose the pets special ability. It would be nice if they at least gave us the 30% damage back while in Beastmode. It wouldn’t be that hard to add it to the 1st trait.

You are not even suppose to stay in beast mode after using the skills. Watch the developer’s video. They specifically mentioned that.

Are you serious? Soulbeast is a good class. People don’t know how to play the new specs and that’s why people say that they suck. You need alot of practice. No one could play the tempest on day one.

lmaogg.7325:

Dark.1823:

The damage is bad and the spec is useless in PvE. Even in PvP, after your burst damage is done you will be vulnerable for 3/4 of the time. The stat bonuses are far too low to make up for the loss in damage by removing the pet. Remember that supposedly 30% of the damage comes from the pet. When you combine, you lose the pet, aka 30% of your damage not to mention the meat shield. What do you gain in return? 80 in each stat + 200 extra in 1 stat based on your pet choice and 3 mostly useless abilities or actually 2 abilities since you lose the pets special ability. It would be nice if they at least gave us the 30% damage back while in Beastmode. It wouldn’t be that hard to add it to the 1st trait.

You are not even suppose to stay in beast mode after using the skills. Watch the developer’s video. They specifically mentioned that.

Really? …Ok rangers, here’s beast mode, but don’t stay in beast mode!

Swagger.1459:

Really? …Ok rangers, here’s beast mode, but don’t stay in beast mode!

Beast mode is just a new mechanic. You are like saying necro get reaper shrouds and they must stay in it forever? Or revenant permanently sticking to glint?

No. You burst, and exit the mode. The devs even explained the cooldowns on beastmode skills are not shared with the pet’s personal cooldowns.

I absolutely love it! I’m leaving my Guardian main and coming back to my Ranger. I hated the pet and didn’t like Druid. The Soulbeast is what I think a Ranger should be, channeling animals. I’m very happy!

Yeah out of all elite specs I was most excited for but dissapointed with soulbeast. I get that a lot of time was invested in developing the design and pet skills/animations etc. But it just doesn’t play very smoothly/have anything interesting to offer. It has a lot of variety I can’t disagree but it isn’t a fun style to shift in and out beastmode only to do a few underwheming skills. The stances could be strong if only they had a longer duration or shorter cooldown. Now it seems redundant to use them when there are better utility skills to choose from. The visuals aren’t really as impressive as what other elite specs too. Holosmith on the other hand.. just wow.

Emprer.7256:

Yeah out of all elite specs I was most excited for but dissapointed with soulbeast. I get that a lot of time was invested in developing the design and pet skills/animations etc. But it just doesn’t play very smoothly/have anything interesting to offer. It has a lot of variety I can’t disagree but it isn’t a fun style to shift in and out beastmode only to do a few underwheming skills. The stances could be strong if only they had a longer duration or shorter cooldown. Now it seems redundant to use them when there are better utility skills to choose from. The visuals aren’t really as impressive as what other elite specs too. Holosmith on the other hand.. just wow.

For starters, they need to not try to force players to stance dance between pet mode and beast mode. It feels clunky and pointless, and a lot of ranger players really want an option to not have to deal with the pet – I see no reason whatsoever to obstinately deny it to them since the dev to support it is already there, and tying it to an elite spec is the perfect way to give players the tools to utilize the pet mechanic in an alternate way like this, as opposed to just letting them perma-stow and taking the efficacy hit.

They need to just add pet swapping to beastmode and get rid of or significantly reduce the visual noise of that weird nature aura.

Swagger.1459:

lmaogg.7325:

Dark.1823:

The damage is bad and the spec is useless in PvE. Even in PvP, after your burst damage is done you will be vulnerable for 3/4 of the time. The stat bonuses are far too low to make up for the loss in damage by removing the pet. Remember that supposedly 30% of the damage comes from the pet. When you combine, you lose the pet, aka 30% of your damage not to mention the meat shield. What do you gain in return? 80 in each stat + 200 extra in 1 stat based on your pet choice and 3 mostly useless abilities or actually 2 abilities since you lose the pets special ability. It would be nice if they at least gave us the 30% damage back while in Beastmode. It wouldn’t be that hard to add it to the 1st trait.

You are not even suppose to stay in beast mode after using the skills. Watch the developer’s video. They specifically mentioned that.

Really? …Ok rangers, here’s beast mode, but don’t stay in beast mode!

Yeah, it’s idiotic. It really feels like they just have a purely emotional vendetta against ranger players that want alternates to having a pet. This was the perfect opportunity to give ranger players that option, and they hamfisted it for no good reason. Hopefully they’ll see some sense before the expansion hits.

Dark.1823:

RedDeadFred.1256:

Danikat.8537:

According to the profession forums every single new elite is terrible and proof that Anet hates that profession. Yes, including the Deadeye.

I mean that’s just par for the course. People on these forums always think Anet is out to kill their class. Doesn’t matter how good the class currently is. It could be at the top of the meta and people would still complain.

According to Reddit, there’s some pretty ludicrous power burst with Soulbeast since one of your shouts just gives you 40% extra damage. There’s people mauling for 26k apparently. Yup, Soulbeast useless guys!

This is either a lie or you misread something. Maul cannot do 26k. It’s true that “Sic ’Em!” works on you (inb4 nerf) when you’re combined but even with “Sic Em!”, Maul does at most ~15k dmg or so which is not that impressive considering you only get 10sec of that sweet dmg boost. Right now it seems that a lot of pet traits and skills affect the player instead when you’re combined. Oh btw I was hitting for 30k+ on Thief Deadeye.

lmaogg.7325:

How is soul beast useless? Even if you continue to play as a power range build, beast mode now gives you even more stats bonus. I am literally speechless when people claim specs that are working fine as underpower, meanwhile actual specs that are badly designed like renegade are being said fine.

hey at least renegade got new animations , all that soul beast give rangers is an aura and thief vanilla skills

Zoid.2568:

Are you serious? Soulbeast is a good class. People don’t know how to play the new specs and that’s why people say that they suck. You need alot of practice. No one could play the tempest on day one.

So Soulbeast needs a lot of practice for players to see that it’s good but Holosmith and Deadeye (only mentioning two brought up in this thread) don’t need a lot of practice for people to rave about them? Still doesn’t sound very good.

BadSanta.6527:

hey at least renegade got new animations , all that soul beast give rangers is an aura and thief vanilla skills

Lol you try it, then let us know is the spec even good. Animation? Who cares when the entire spec is pointless. At least Soulbeast is playable like how it’s intended.

Zoid.2568:

Are you serious? Soulbeast is a good class. People don’t know how to play the new specs and that’s why people say that they suck. You need alot of practice. No one could play the tempest on day one.

well tempest got cool animatons at least what does soul best got?

lmaogg.7325:

Swagger.1459:

Really? …Ok rangers, here’s beast mode, but don’t stay in beast mode!

Beast mode is just a new mechanic. You are like saying necro get reaper shrouds and they must stay in it forever? Or revenant permanently sticking to glint?

No. You burst, and exit the mode. The devs even explained the cooldowns on beastmode skills are not shared with the pet’s personal cooldowns.

Shroud isn’t their new mechanic, it’s their old one, their new mechanic is the sand shades and you absolutely should have as many out as you can 100% of the time.

Conncept.7638:

lmaogg.7325:

Swagger.1459:

Really? …Ok rangers, here’s beast mode, but don’t stay in beast mode!

Beast mode is just a new mechanic. You are like saying necro get reaper shrouds and they must stay in it forever? Or revenant permanently sticking to glint?

No. You burst, and exit the mode. The devs even explained the cooldowns on beastmode skills are not shared with the pet’s personal cooldowns.

Shroud isn’t their new mechanic, it’s their old one, their new mechanic is the sand shades and you absolutely should have as many out as you can 100% of the time.

It doesn’t matter if Shroud isn’t the new mechanic – not all of the new Elites have to work the same way. If Soulbeast is supposed to be entered and then exited like Shroud, that’s fine. It doesn’t seem that many people on the forums “got” that fact though, and I’m not sure from what I’ve read that Soulbeast is still that good even if you use it as intended vs. other Elites which many people seemed to understand right off the bat and raved about right away.

Perhaps players didn’t see the similarity because Shroud naturally ends automatically while it seems that a character can stay in Soulbeast indefinitely.

Core/elite specs useless: RIP GW2

(every thread about this in a nutshell)

Carlin Sanders.3587:

Core/elite specs useless: RIP GW2

(every thread about this in a nutshell)

Did you play soulbeast much? Because it does less damage than core, feels hell clunky to play and 80% of it is bugged. Thats’ the general concensus.

Tested it today.. and what should i say.
It felt from its whole presentation so underwhelming and half hearted without a real good concept behind it, that after checking out the skills and traits and testign out effects after changing around a bit the traits it feels like a massive step backwards from the core ranger.

The Main Dagger Skills are nothing special.
The Class should have better receive a completely new weapon, instead of a recycled offhand weapon turned mainhand.
The Class would have been better with either a new weapon type, like Claws, or a Whip, or if it seriously has to be again desperately an already existing weapon, then even something as like the Scepter would have felt better with this for sure.

The Skills are visually unspectacular, all of them, the only visual thign that you have permanently in front of you is the Beast Mode Aura when merged, whilst the merge animation is nothign but a blink away of the pet xD

The Elite Skills effect is just for a few seconds the effect of doubling the amount of hits you do. Good for a quick burst, but that was it then.
The Beast Skills are all too generic. We get more n more pets, but the Pet/beast Skills stay so generic and the same by their type.
Woudl be so much more fun, if more Pets/Beast Skilsl woudl be significantly miore individual, because this would significantly boost the build diversity then of the Class.
Yes, this means more skilsl here, but more skilsl in an very overviewble frame, because the player skill always can have maximum only 2 pets with them on land and in water.
So there is absolutely no need for it to have like half a douzen pets, which have all the same skills, but just look different.
ramp up the amount of individual Pet Skills, then this class and its whole gameplay will become instantly alot more interesting as its variety of playing with lots of diffferent pet combos will make more fun then due to each individual pet becoming more in themself meaningful and not just a meaningless reskin that just shares 3/4 of its skills with like half a dozen other pets, which is boring and uncreative – sorry to say that, but it just feels like this after soon 5 years of having always the same pet skills with nearly no variety and just an ever increasign amoutn of reskins only, when more pet skill variety would make more sense in the first place.

The bosts of attributes you receive for mergign with your pet feel also completely non existent, so low are they.
Whenn you start the demo, you have liek around 17,5k HP or so, when you merge with the pet, you have like whopping (lol) 18,5 HP…INCREDIBLE… 1000 Hp more surely will make a huge difference!!! wtf when unmergec the pet alone has like 16k or more HP.

If you merge with your pet, a player should get at least HALF the amount of Health of the Pet added on top of your max health, not like lousy +1000 Hp, thats ridiculous.
Base Health iof Ranger is aroudn so 22k, Base Heall of most pets is so around 16-17k.
Means when you merge together, you should end up with like 30k Health.
Then this spec would be useful as a melee based elite speciaslization, probably when going for a high Vit Build for even more than this, so that the class should be able to sustain alot of damage, when beign merged, because unmerged you have normally the pet as your meat shield.

Ill go do make in the Ranger section a more detailed proposal now, but just had to let the first impression I got off here. But need first to get an overview again of the skills n traits, to sort my thoughts

For wvw roaming, not many ranger builds beat druid staff for its cc, heals, mobility, and evades. As a power-based LB, I don’t find the stats worth dropping druid for. I suppose you can run it with melee condi, but I think that is already better implemented with druid builds that have been around beforehand. Things like rooting and natural stride are just too far valuable in the competitive domain. Soulbeast leaves you floundering with your rotation long enough to be killed in melee if you like LB. I suppose if you like LB as a way to open up dps and then predominately move to melee for damage, then soulbeast is more for you. If LB is your favorite main weapon, then your evades to maintain 1200-1500 distance are lacking.

I don’t really understand why ArenaNet implemented Soulbeast.

It will be a disappointment for all the rangers that want to get rid of their pet as that is clearly not what the specialization is meant for. You have to swap in and out Soulbeast so you still need a pet.

I don’t understand what the logic is behind the pet archetypes. For example the three devourers are all in a different archetype. The carrion devourer will give you more condition damage and precision. The whiptail will give you more vitality and concentration and the lashtail will give you more power and ferocity. The only difference between these three are the way poison is used (the first two) or bleed is used instead of poison.
I guess my carrion devourer will get a rest as condition damage is useless for my build. Time to change to whiptail (for the poison) or lashtail to get the power and ferocity for my power LB build. Or simply forget about the Soulbeast.

I will do some more tests today to see if I can get the specialization to work for me.

Djinn.9245:

Zoid.2568:

Are you serious? Soulbeast is a good class. People don’t know how to play the new specs and that’s why people say that they suck. You need alot of practice. No one could play the tempest on day one.

So Soulbeast needs a lot of practice for players to see that it’s good but Holosmith and Deadeye (only mentioning two brought up in this thread) don’t need a lot of practice for people to rave about them? Still doesn’t sound very good.

I have killed many Deadeyes and they were not good. I have only seen 1 or 2 good Deadeyes. It depends on the player playing.. a core ranger can be better than Holosmith. It depends on your skill as a player. But I am disappointed with the merge ability and how you should just spam three skills and then go out of beastmode.

Rose Solane.1027:

I don’t really understand why ArenaNet implemented Soulbeast.

It will be a disappointment for all the rangers that want to get rid of their pet as that is clearly not what the specialization is meant for. You have to swap in and out Soulbeast so you still need a pet.

I don’t understand what the logic is behind the pet archetypes. For example the three devourers are all in a different archetype. The carrion devourer will give you more condition damage and precision. The whiptail will give you more vitality and concentration and the lashtail will give you more power and ferocity. The only difference between these three are the way poison is used (the first two) or bleed is used instead of poison.
I guess my carrion devourer will get a rest as condition damage is useless for my build. Time to change to whiptail (for the poison) or lashtail to get the power and ferocity for my power LB build. Or simply forget about the Soulbeast.

I will do some more tests today to see if I can get the specialization to work for me.

Meanwhile, I love being able to bring my Carrion Devourer back out on my Shortbow ranger, who now has an awesome dagger to rip and tear her foes apart with (I just hate the green bladetrail on it. I really hope Incinerator covers that kitten up). The different archetypes make each pet unique, while also not restricting you to an animal family for your build (But why no Supportive Moa?!), though it seems like it does so to mixed results.

I just wish we could get better animations, at least for Charr. I made a huge post about it nobody cared about. Wimpy punches and kicks are wimpy.

I tried it, admittedly the flavour of it seemed really cool. Quite thematic and thought it would lead to some interesting stuff.

Sadly, was quite disappointed.

Most of the stuff that did make it neat will likely be nerfed into the ground. Such as the Maul combos that are going around.

Half the Shouts don’t work whilst in Beastmode, which was a shame since I thought it would have added some nice utility and teamplay combos without needing the pet.
Was actually kinda liking the idea of having a rather Tanky Ranger for a build through evades, invulnerabilities and had the Shout worked; even took damage on behalf of allies. Sadly, doesn’t seem like it’ll happen.

The worst part of course is knowing this;
“You aren’t supposed to camp Beastmode. Use the 3 skills and get out.”
Why the kitten do we even need Beastmode then? Just put the 3 skills on our bar and be done with it if it’s so mechanically useless outside of that.

Make it worth being in, or don’t include it at all.

Talonblaze.3175:

The worst part of course is knowing this;
“You aren’t supposed to camp Beastmode. Use the 3 skills and get out.”
Why the kitten do we even need Beastmode then? Just put the 3 skills on our bar and be done with it if it’s so mechanically useless outside of that.

Make it worth being in, or don’t include it at all.

This. If you only use it for a brief period at a time, is it really Beast “mode”? Imagine someone asking: “what is your mode of transportation?” and you say “car” but what you do is drive for 200ft and then run for a mile…

Djinn.9245:

Talonblaze.3175:

The worst part of course is knowing this;
“You aren’t supposed to camp Beastmode. Use the 3 skills and get out.”
Why the kitten do we even need Beastmode then? Just put the 3 skills on our bar and be done with it if it’s so mechanically useless outside of that.

Make it worth being in, or don’t include it at all.

This. If you only use it for a brief period at a time, is it really Beast “mode”? Imagine someone asking: “what is your mode of transportation?” and you say “car” but what you do is drive for 200ft and then run for a mile…

Pretty bad analogy. Because there are other precedents in the game, like Druid. I use the celestial avatar in Druid all the time, but I don’t camp it. And that’s the ranger’s class mechanic for druid. It’s the same thing. You jump in and out of it as needed.

No one had this complaint at all about the druid. You also can’t camp deathshroud or reaper shroud. You just in and out as necessary

Honestly taking the literal translation of the word mode to try to prove some sort of point doesn’t make for much of an argument.

I still am happy with what I saw of Soulbeast (as a super casual Ranger player) but I’ll agree with some critiques in this thread that yeah, the utilities at first glance seem ineffective. I only fired them off when I remembered to and didn’t see much result; I was focused on weapons/beast skills.

Then again I was up against unresisting golems and single NPC AIs, so I wasn’t seeing much situational need for the stances.

After trying out Soulbeast in the lobby for a while, I was consistently wondering exactly what I was suppose to do with the whole Beastmode and for me, the best use I had for it was swapping into beastmode after combat started, using my new beast skills, then swapping out or if my pet dies, I can either swap pets or shift into beastmode and out again to revive it.

Reading the various critiques of the spec, I kind of sort of agree that this seems a little lackluster, just going beastmode and using the skill then dropping it. I don’t mind it, but I can see others’ argument about it not being a very novel way to balance a spec…so why not change the effects of the beast mode via the Grandmaster traits to encompass multiple ways of playing?

Like the 1st can be a power-esque spec meant to stay in beastmode for long periods and using the beast skills grant a long lasting buff that grants you increased stats/effects and periods you’re not in beastmode, the buff expires 75% faster so you want to jump out, swap pets and jump back in ASAP or you lose the buffs faster.

The 2nd can be a defensive “jump in, jump out” spec where you gain a % of your pets’ HP in barrier every few seconds for 8 seconds and if you get KO’ed while in beastmode, you are knocked out of BM and instead healed. This trait would also increase the cooldown on beastmode.

The 3rd would be a pet-centric version where it’s similar to the way it is now but when you come out of beastmode, the pet performs some kind of effect upon returning and is empowered for an inverse time for how long you were in beastmode. This would be limited by an internal cooldown.

The core of the problem is this:
Beastmode removes the play how you want aspect from the Ranger, something that, in the past, this class excelled at beyond all others. The Ranger was capable of fulfilling so many roles, from pure DPS, to healtank/evasiontank, to full support healer, and this is a forced attempt at playing a certain way.

Its like every Warrior being forced into Phalanx Strength, or every Guardian being forced to carry a staff for speed. Its not a feature, its just irritating.

There are several solutions:
1) Allow to stay in Beastmode all the time if desired—the best way to do this is with traits that allow you to do either rotation or camping builds.
2) Compliment both power and condition builds.
3) Fix the completely missing synergy with pet traits and skills-this would be most of the power introduced by the spec alone. Pet traits, pet swapping, Shouts, etc. could open up entirely new worlds for the Ranger. -OR-
4) At least allow the use of the pet’s F2 skill (again, trait synergy).

It wouldn’t be too powerful because remember, the Ranger is losing a 15-20k health sink and around 33% of their damage for this to happen.

michelada.2947:

Redfeather.6401:

I really like the soulbeast main mechanic. It’s the stances I didn’t like and won’t use. Their cooldown is so huge and duration so short, and I hate using hotbar slots for stuff like that.

what do you mean ? stances are amazing, the heals is probably the best heal in the game it’s just about using those stances in the exact moment

How come they all got to be like that. I would like some variety between them. They feel like boring buffs behind a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ sign.

Redfeather.6401:

michelada.2947:

Redfeather.6401:

I really like the soulbeast main mechanic. It’s the stances I didn’t like and won’t use. Their cooldown is so huge and duration so short, and I hate using hotbar slots for stuff like that.

what do you mean ? stances are amazing, the heals is probably the best heal in the game it’s just about using those stances in the exact moment

How come they all got to be like that. I would like some variety between them. They feel like boring buffs behind a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ sign.

Well, I hope that instead of nerfing Sic’Em, they instead make the other shouts work like it. Stances fill a much-needed role for Soulbeast. The base skills work well with Soulbeast, otherwise.