Guild Wars 2

I’m starting to get the feeling that the various GW2 content creators and reviewers were steered away from showcasing anything about Soulbeast. I have a sinking feeling that rangers are getting a bit of the shaft (again) on the elite spec front. Any others that are ranger mains getting that feeling too or are you excited for something thats been barely shown?

I’ve seen similar amounts of reveal for all 9 Elites. What have you seen?

Its a conspiracy man.

I have a feeling that fans of every profession can find justification for imaginary slights to their favorite class if they spend enough time looking.

The expac previews in 8 days. Try it out then and decide whether it’s exciting enough.

I’m not sure, but it sounded like Elite Specializations would be available, not in 8 days, but in 15 (during the second Beta Weekend).

Regardless, one can make a decision in, at worst, about 2 weeks.

Good luck.

So far the only person to “cover” soulbeast was Peachy and her coverage of it was severely lacking in any real substance. I know FAR more about the mechanics of Weaver, Deadeye, Mirage, and Spellbreaker and what they are actually capable of just from WP. So far the only info there seems to be about Soulbeast is “merge with pet and do something different.” Or are you all telling me that there is someone out there who has covered the other new specs? If so I’d love to see their stuff on it.

For the record, my sig shows the classes I main. I was simply noting that the info for Soulbeast seemed decidedly lacking.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

For the record, my sig shows the classes I main. I was simply noting that the info for Soulbeast seemed decidedly lacking.

You’re still reaching to find something wrong with the coverage, regardless of your mains. Why couldn’t it be that the various streamers have their own preferences and focused the most on the stuff that interests them? You’re ascribing a motivation to an entire group of developers and early-access fans based on hardly any evidence at all.

There are only 21 days between the announcement and the release. It wouldn’t be possible to guarantee everything gets identical or even equivalent coverage. In addition, we are getting a chance to preview much of it. (And I apologize: Inculpatus is correct that the elites aren’t available until the 2nd weekend.)

There are enough things that will break or be weird or go sideways, simply due to the complexity of MMOs. Surely we don’t need to borrow any trouble to add to that.

Sorry, but no.

In the lead up to HoT, rangers/druid was left until last on both the reveal and time to test front and when many of them complained/asked for tweaks they were shutdown by Anet. Now none of us are getting to test run the elite specs until about a month out before release so any possible feedback/shakedown on most of them probably won’t hit the game due to dev time (which is understandable as coding is a major pain and shouldn’t be rushed).

All that being said, even if we take into account that these people (who are in some way Anet employees as they are a forward facing entity with early access to the game to play in the demo and explore the new content for the express purpose of reporting on it when green lit by Anet) were simply focused on the parts they they like to play, there is still the fact thateven looking at the Anet created vignettes about the classes there is still more info to glean about all of the other classes and for Soulbeast we get “you get daggers and merge with your pet to do…stuff”.

Seriously. Deadeye, sniper, can mark targets, attacks at longest range/from stealth. Scourge, support class built around buffs and condi. Spellbreaker. Its function is literally in its name for crying out loud. Mirage, pure DPS pressure with more robust illusions. Holosmith uses holographic weaponry and builds up a charge to unleash harsh AOE. Renegade uses the mist to both buff/support allies and to attack ad mid range. Firebrand uses fire based condi damage spec coupled with support from tomes that replace their F skills. Weaver get a billion new skills from comboing weapons and new multiple attunement mechanic and as of right now cam exploit the daylights out of fresh air to unleash ungodly amounts of damage. Soulbeast looses their pet to “gain some of their skills” and stabs stuff.

What role does it play? DPS? Support? Power? Condi? Does it amp the damage of your normal attacks when you merge with your pet? Does it at least stab things better than a core thief while in beastmode? Seriously there is no meaningful info on this class as compared to the other ones.

To me the Druid spec.on the ranger was stupid. This Soulbeast sounds like a fit to the ranger. But yeah its another wait and see for me. Tried the druid thing for a week and never went back to it.

I know a few that did that with druid as well. I also know some that left the game over druid. Unfortunately the soulbeast thing, which does sound far more fitting in general, still feels like Anet just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it sticks. Mind you I think Firebrand and Renegade also seem like “re-skins” of other skills and roles, but at least you have an idea of their place in the party/player make up.

I would dismiss your idea, PookieDaWombat, if the feeling didn’t were so similar to the one we got with Scrapper last time.

IMO is still too early to know, and the situation CAN’T be so bad as it was for engie when HoT arrived. They already have the elites working, and they have promised to get us put our hands on them at the same time, in a few days. Soulbeast is not going to be as neglected as Scrapper was. It could still be really poor.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Seriously. Deadeye, sniper, can mark targets, attacks at longest range/from stealth.

And after the sniper identifies a target from large distance, the closest engineer launches a thermonuclear rocket towards the location marked by sniper.

hmmm……..

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r21vn/soulbeast_skills_mechanics/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r7kp0/links_to_each_of_the_elite_specialisation_tooltip/

Well, there you go! Thanks for the links, Tex. =)

Soulbeast was probably the one I was excited most for but I can’t help but be disappointed that the fusion process is just swirly green smoke. :v
As it is now though it’d still be cool if it worked like a type of Blue Mage class.

This isn’t much but actually doesn’t sound terrible. You get the pets special abilities, if you can use their special attack this is going to be kitten. Instead of a fire wyvern taking to the skies it’ll be the ranger, meaning you get to avoid attack and lay an AOE fire. That’s if it works that way. I’m actually more excited seeing this. The ranger in the vid uses wing buffet.

Also found a thorough breakdown video of 15 min, it went over much of the skills and abilities that were in a pretest video. No it doesn’t sound bad, if anything they’re saving it to the launch so that rangers can be surprised to find the new spec is a much needed improvement. It’s also condi based so the best of damage with the current ranger is there as well.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

You’re still reaching to find something wrong with the coverage, regardless of your mains.

Did you even watch the video? Not only did she kitten up the recording by chopping off the skill bar but moused over only 3 traits.

I don’t expect 30 minutes of someone using each pet skill in beast mode but 5 seconds of mousing over each trait quickly wouldn’t have been too much to ask.

Substance E.4852

The longer vid I found where not only does it show the bar, it also goes over the skills and dagger skills. Just search Soulbeast GW2 in YouTube was literally the first video. The guy in the video shows the tooltips and everything.

TexZero.7910:

hmmm……..

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r21vn/soulbeast_skills_mechanics/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6r7kp0/links_to_each_of_the_elite_specialisation_tooltip/

Thanks for the links. Seriously, I mean that. Up until this there seemed to be an absolute lack of info on it.

lol xpac hasn’t even hit and already rangers are crying that they aren’t stronk enuf
good meme

Stand The Wall.6987:

lol xpac hasn’t even hit and already ranger mains are crying that theyre aren’t stronk enuf
good meme

If you had actually read the thread, you’d have realized that the OP does not main a ranger. OP had just noticed a difference in amounts of information released regarding the new elite specs from they had found and was posting about it.

So the OP wants us to believe that ANet plus all of the partners who got early access were in a massive conspiracy to put off showing features of one class for … reasons, which won’t matter in a few weeks.

Look, if you guys want to ask for more details about the elite, do that. But just because the info you want isn’t readily available doesn’t mean anyone is trying to hide it from you.

Everything seems normal now. The shaft if for Engie, as usual. XD

There is nothing wrong with Druid. Perhaps it does not fit with how everyone or the majority want(s) to play, but I’ve seen it played incredibly well.

Just let Soul-whatever germinate a bit before we judge. Would you not go on a second date because of the shirt he/she wore?

You’ll get to play it next week or the beta events that will eventually come, then you’ll be able to judge for yourselves so stop whining about the lack of info.

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

Snow.2048:

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

I am really excited by the idea of the soulbeast, but a lot of how this pans out will depend on how they treat pet orientated traits.

For example, if empathic bond stops working when you are in soul beast mode, condition clearing would be a total nosedive even with this new heal. and that would be terrible in what is obviously an expansion that favors conditions over everything else (unless you are warrior and have a magic-negating elite spec).

still wish after all these years spirits would’ve gotten some love. i keep waiting for the day spirits are aura’s attached to the ranger and not some killable 3 hitpoint world of warcraft shaman totem.

Raven.9603:

Snow.2048:

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

I am really excited by the idea of the soulbeast, but a lot of how this pans out will depend on how they treat pet orientated traits.

For example, if empathic bond stops working when you are in soul beast mode, condition clearing would be a total nosedive even with this new heal. and that would be terrible in what is obviously an expansion that favors conditions over everything else (unless you are warrior and have a magic-negating elite spec).

still wish after all these years spirits would’ve gotten some love. i keep waiting for the day spirits are aura’s attached to the ranger and not some killable 3 hitpoint world of warcraft shaman totem.

I get the feeling that once you meld, a lot of those things may fail (which would be ‘acceptable’ because you can enter and exit beast meld.) It would be hilarious if you got the effects though (stuff like your crits give might to pet/pet crits giving bleed instead giving you both effects), which I would really think would be fun to build around.

Although its just speculation, I think in reality we’ll be enters beast mode to fire off one or two skills, then dropping it. If this is this case, I’d be far more worried about what happens to the buffs on the pet (if they get reset then melding isn’t going to be anything more than an opener in most cases).
-After looking at Auroras stream it looks like beast mode replaces f1-f4 with new f skills (3ish?) which confirms my suspicions when I started writing this. But maybe the f skills have great scaling/damage making up for the loss of the pet? I doubt it but I dream…

I too would love to see them revisit core ranger more. The buffs/changes since I took a break from ranger have been amazing but I feel like I have very little choice..

Snow.2048:

Raven.9603:

Snow.2048:

Soulbeast was requested multiple times in that huge feedback thread years ago, I am happy to see it arrive.

However, the information so far (I watch the wiki mostly for elite specs because these streamers are failing to properly showcase on so many levels) makes me think that melding with your beast will be a huge damage loss, making it nonviable for the purpose I would most enjoy, namely petless Ranger. But this is just fear at this point and not based on anything subtantial. I really really want to see the traits, and hope we can see it the 11th.

That said, our traits have always been weird to play with, so I’ll probably try to make it work anyway xD

Edit: I like the condi clears though, might be worth slotting it as a defensive line.

I am really excited by the idea of the soulbeast, but a lot of how this pans out will depend on how they treat pet orientated traits.

For example, if empathic bond stops working when you are in soul beast mode, condition clearing would be a total nosedive even with this new heal. and that would be terrible in what is obviously an expansion that favors conditions over everything else (unless you are warrior and have a magic-negating elite spec).

still wish after all these years spirits would’ve gotten some love. i keep waiting for the day spirits are aura’s attached to the ranger and not some killable 3 hitpoint world of warcraft shaman totem.

I get the feeling that once you meld, a lot of those things may fail (which would be ‘acceptable’ because you can enter and exit beast meld.) It would be hilarious if you got the effects though (stuff like your crits give might to pet/pet crits giving bleed instead giving you both effects), which I would really think would be fun to build around.

Although its just speculation, I think in reality we’ll be enters beast mode to fire off one or two skills, then dropping it. If this is this case, I’d be far more worried about what happens to the buffs on the pet (if they get reset then melding isn’t going to be anything more than an opener in most cases).
-After looking at Auroras stream it looks like beast mode replaces f1-f4 with new f skills (3ish?) which confirms my suspicions when I started writing this. But maybe the f skills have great scaling/damage making up for the loss of the pet? I doubt it but I dream…

I too would love to see them revisit core ranger more. The buffs/changes since I took a break from ranger have been amazing but I feel like I have very little choice..

it looks like the other F skills become some of the pets other normally non-commanded abilities, for example, charge (boars), knockdown (dogs), ignore pain (bears)

Testing tiger maul on a crit build asap then ^.^ but don’t expect much, hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I really want to see the scaling, can’t wait to get my hands on it to run tests…

I’m really hoping that the damage gets balanced back to “normal” levels. I know some time back Anet lessened the damage rangers put out on average because they “had a constant pet” and if that pet is gone when melding, I want to be sure they get that damage back. Especially after seeing the numbers that Holosmith can put out in the Bog video. (Also hoping Bog has a Soulbeast episode coming up). Still that thread linked above (once again thank you Tex) has some good info on what can be expected skill wise at least. I’m still worried it will be overshadowed by the other elite specs but that will hopefully shake out in the first month.