Guild Wars 2

I’m looking at the numbers for the Soulbeast, compared to actually having a pet, and I can’t help but wonder how this is an elite specialization. Beastmode causes you to lose a significant amount of attributes. It seems that this was only made to pander to the pet-whiners.

As an example, let’s look at the Lynx pet. By itself, at character lvl 80, the Lynx has
Power: 1524
Precision: 2211
Toughness: 1524
Vitality: 2211
Condition Dmg: 1000
By itself, the Lynx does some very nice damage!

When you enter beastmode, you trade all those atts for +200 condi dmg and +100 precision on yourself, a SIGNIFICANT decrease, not to mention the loss of a combat companion and meatshield. 200 condi dmg increases bleed dmg by a measly 12 dmg per stack while 100 precision yields a paltry 4.75% crit chance. These numbers seem utterly pathetic to me.

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

Why are so many people glued to being stuck in Beastmode is beyond me. Beastmode doesn’t mean Godmode.

It opens you options, not removing you anything. The advantage from SBeast is that you can CONTROL your pet skills, which you can’t right now.

What’s better ? A random Smoke Assault/Knockdown from the Smokescale or only when you decide ?

Musha.4025:

It seems that this was only made to pander to the pet-whiners.

It does fix that problem, but the most effective way would probably to play In and Out of BMode. At least, it gives the Ranger another option to ’’swap’’ the pet before it dies or that it doesn’t become an hindrance in some contents.

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

How is the loss of not having the option and use all the new skills SBeast has access to ?

Maybe SBeast is not for you after all.

Your assumption is that a pet with those stat numbers and a player with those stat numbers are of equal value and do the exact same damage. Which is not remotely true.

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

Durzlla.6295:

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

I dunno, the first lot of Elite specs were almost always a direct upgrade to the base class.

I’m thinking they’re making the Elites upgrades but making sure each Elite is on even footing with each other.

On topic, Soulbeast looks like it’ll fit a few of my rangers nicely and shouldn’t disappoint.

psizone.8437:

On topic, Soulbeast looks like it’ll fit a few of my rangers nicely and shouldn’t disappoint.

Other than the concept of the Soulbeast, which is AMAZINGLY cool, and playing something entirely new for the class, I’m very interested to hear more about how you think it will fit with your rangers. Could you please maybe elaborate a little?

Durzlla.6295:

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

I just logged in to say what the kitten?
Of course Elite Specs are meant to be upgrades to the main profession, their entire point is to be an upgrade to the main profession. I mean, the Druid isn’t and that is the entire reason why it sucks, but for any other profession the elite spec is clearly an upgrade.
I can vividly remember the rage of some people complaining about the elite specs being superior in PvP and you see almost noone not using an elite spec at level 80. How anyone could seriously suggest that the elite specs are not meant to be upgrades is beyond me.

My opinion is that the Soulbeast will disappoint, because it entirely sidesteps the Ranger’s core mechanic, the pet, yet again, as did the Druid. ANet will again be able to ignore the sorry state of the pet compared to all other core profession mechanics, because the Soulbeast is not reliant on the pet, as is the case with the Druid as well. For a profession that is supposed to work in tandem with its pet, the devs sure do everything they can to not having to deal with it as much as possible.

Soulbeast mode, for lack of a better term, doesn’t look like its something that is intended to be camped. What I mean is you may start a fight with your pet out and dps’ing, swap to SB to use skills and swap back out or maintain it for an attack chain. The same way we swap weapons might be the better way to look at how to use this. SB provides more play options, not to just sit in it, similar to what weaver will be for ele.

Prophet.1584:

Soulbeast mode, for lack of a better term, doesn’t look like its something that is intended to be camped. What I mean is you may start a fight with your pet out and dps’ing, swap to SB to use skills and swap back out or maintain it for an attack chain. The same way we swap weapons might be the better way to look at how to use this. SB provides more play options, not to just sit in it, similar to what weaver will be for ele.

And while in beastmode, you lose the pet and the 1524 power, the 2211 precision, the 1524 toughness, the 2211 vitality, and the 1000 condition dmg that you once had while that pet was at your side, which, getting back on point, was the concern for the initial discussion. How can this be an elite spec if you’re not upgraded by using it, like every other profession’s elite spec, but instead, DOWNgraded? Getting a few extra skills is not an upgrade equivalent to the other elite specs.

What gave you the idea that gattaiing with the pet gives you all of its attributes? Ranger would then become most op profession, with Rapid Fire and Maul powered by 4k unbuffed power + 100% unbuffed crit chance.

Sarision.6347:

What gave you the idea that gattaiing with the pet gives you all of its attributes? Ranger would then become most op profession, with Rapid Fire and Maul powered by 4k unbuffed power + 100% unbuffed crit chance.

Musha.4025:

I’m looking at the numbers for the Soulbeast, compared to actually having a pet, and I can’t help but wonder how this is an elite specialization. Beastmode causes you to lose a significant amount of attributes. It seems that this was only made to pander to the pet-whiners.

As an example, let’s look at the Lynx pet. By itself, at character lvl 80, the Lynx has
Power: 1524
Precision: 2211
Toughness: 1524
Vitality: 2211
Condition Dmg: 1000
By itself, the Lynx does some very nice damage!

When you enter beastmode, you trade all those atts for +200 condi dmg and +100 precision on yourself, a SIGNIFICANT decrease, not to mention the loss of a combat companion and meatshield. 200 condi dmg increases bleed dmg by a measly 12 dmg per stack while 100 precision yields a paltry 4.75% crit chance. These numbers seem utterly pathetic to me.

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

So…I don’t know what to think.

I’m mainly (and by mainly pretty much 99% at this point) a WvW player. Looking at the SB I’m not sure how it’ll actually fare compared to the Druid.

It’s actually sad because Druid is a pretty boring deal in WvW…basically bunkering to have any hope of surviving the other classes. It’s obscenely evident by celestial shadow being in every build as well as managing the AF meter way more than any other mechanic (including the pet).

I basically see SB in WvW terms being ‘find the pet that gets you stealth’ and ‘find the pet that gets you sustain’. That’s about it. Can’t dare to use any other type without dying in 15 seconds flat.

Anyway, excited for Friday, but don’t see much changing here. Heck, one look at the Mesmer’s elite pretty much confirms what’s going to be stupid dominant for the next year. I normally dislike ‘class whining’, but man that looks way cooler than pretty much anything else.

I have so many things to say to this and not a long enough break to type it in. For WvW, Soul Beast is most definitely an upgrade. Black Bear will bring double damage mitigation, roughly the same stats as durability Runes. Birds give swiftness and a 1200 leap. Smoke Assault will be fun to play with. There will probably be a META for SB but there will plenty of build diversity with it as well.

sadly i dont expect much for it. Sure it will be an upgrade for wvw, if you play wvw in groups you know the pet die in the first seconds and there is nothing you can do, your whole class becomes useless. So merging with the pet will be an upgrade since you wont have to worry anymore for it dying, that said i think it wont deliver and rangers/soulbeast will be still last for everything. Groups will still kick rangers out and they wont be wanted, time will tell but i am not expecting much from anet.

NemesiS.6749:

sadly i dont expect much for it. Sure it will be an upgrade for wvw, if you play wvw in groups you know the pet die in the first seconds and there is nothing you can do, your whole class becomes useless. So merging with the pet will be an upgrade since you wont have to worry anymore for it dying, that said i think it wont deliver and rangers/soulbeast will be still last for everything. Groups will still kick rangers out and they wont be wanted, time will tell but i am not expecting much from anet.

I think even if you don’t actively use beast form, taking the line itself is an upgrade to some aspect already.

You might just merge it for 0.5 sec just to get quickness/ cleanse , and have access to the use of stance, which looks very powerful. (Doyak and Wolf in particular)

Have you seriously check every traits / skills you get?
I’m much more happy getting Soulbeast compare to Druid despite I use Druid in high-end fractal, mostly because I am roamer and often play solo.

PS: I also find it funny that no-one consider the scenario of the pet actively dying in some scenario/ fight (even in PVE), that merging with the pet is the sure way to contain their benefit instead of just being dead meat. Before Anet turns all pets into invulnerable entity, there’s always a use for beast form no matter how you look at it.
I say it’s also another way to keep your pet alive and well if you find the pet swap is on CD and your pet is constantly dying still.

Also have you consider the bonus aoe you get and your aoe dps upgrade when merging? Pet is always lacking in the AOE department. If you considering the aoe scenario, which your 2k dps pet will be stuck with one target as compare your stat boost working on 3~5 targets, maybe it really is an upgrade to dps.

https://youtu.be/UzLppqBnt4g

Reading the main post I just couldn’t resist making this video. Maybe it will even give good perspective. Dunno.
Anyway, thinking that we should stay in soulbeast mode all the time is quite unimaginative. I think there will be good builds where we will swap in and out of it all the time. Also yes, especially in PvP and WvW we will get HUGE builddiversity.

I already found a build where we would have 18 seconds invuln + tanky stats and we could trait to survive lethal at least once, maybe add the new rune of rebirth. If we’re lucky only one of the 2 will trigger at a time and we’ll have 2 ways to avoid lethal damage every 90 seconds.

And that’s just one stupidly funny thing I theorized.

The concept bores the hell out of me. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator, the pet class people who don’t want pets. Make the pet BETTER, not remove it.

Stupid fan service like the kitten quotes they sneak into Game of Thrones lately to cater to the kitten fan base.

But hopefully it’s fun to play.

Fluffball.8307:

The concept bores the hell out of me. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator, the pet class people who don’t want pets. Make the pet BETTER, not remove it.

Stupid fan service like the kitten quotes they sneak into Game of Thrones lately to cater to the kitten fan base.

But hopefully it’s fun to play.

Don’t expect Anet to make an AI entity to be stronger.
It’s already proven that Anet doesn’t like AI to be so strong.

Our pets used to be stronger, even back in Druid era which we gain 2 very powerful pets, they nerfed it to ground, showing that Anet will never release a class where the AI entity is the main focus of the class, let alone a pet buff class that’d make our AI even stronger than currently. If they allow stronger pets, they wouldn’t have nerfed it like 20 times already.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Durzlla.6295:

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

I just logged in to say what the kitten?
Of course Elite Specs are meant to be upgrades to the main profession, their entire point is to be an upgrade to the main profession. I mean, the Druid isn’t and that is the entire reason why it sucks, but for any other profession the elite spec is clearly an upgrade.
I can vividly remember the rage of some people complaining about the elite specs being superior in PvP and you see almost noone not using an elite spec at level 80. How anyone could seriously suggest that the elite specs are not meant to be upgrades is beyond me.

Actually, he’s right. The fact that ANet was TERRIBLE at balancing this until more recently and made them too powerful doesn’t change the fact that they were originally intended to simply be options that further specialized your character in a particular niche. They’ve started reigning in some of the specs recently, and it’s a good idea.

Ranys.4028:

https://youtu.be/UzLppqBnt4g

Reading the main post I just couldn’t resist making this video. Maybe it will even give good perspective. Dunno.
Anyway, thinking that we should stay in soulbeast mode all the time is quite unimaginative. I think there will be good builds where we will swap in and out of it all the time. Also yes, especially in PvP and WvW we will get HUGE builddiversity.

I already found a build where we would have 18 seconds invuln + tanky stats and we could trait to survive lethal at least once, maybe add the new rune of rebirth. If we’re lucky only one of the 2 will trigger at a time and we’ll have 2 ways to avoid lethal damage every 90 seconds.

And that’s just one stupidly funny thing I theorized.

If running something like remorseless valkyrie or just high vitality, the rune of the scourge looks pretty interesting too. Gain barrier at 50% health.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Scourge
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Rebirth

Manijin.3428:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Durzlla.6295:

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

I just logged in to say what the kitten?
Of course Elite Specs are meant to be upgrades to the main profession, their entire point is to be an upgrade to the main profession. I mean, the Druid isn’t and that is the entire reason why it sucks, but for any other profession the elite spec is clearly an upgrade.
I can vividly remember the rage of some people complaining about the elite specs being superior in PvP and you see almost noone not using an elite spec at level 80. How anyone could seriously suggest that the elite specs are not meant to be upgrades is beyond me.

Actually, he’s right. The fact that ANet was TERRIBLE at balancing this until more recently and made them too powerful doesn’t change the fact that they were originally intended to simply be options that further specialized your character in a particular niche. They’ve started reigning in some of the specs recently, and it’s a good idea.

That is not true at all. ANet isn’t bad at balancing, they can be good at it, the problem is just that they don’t see the merit to allocate enough resources to continued balancing efforts. Elite specs are deliberately over tuned because they are expansion sellers. And the only reason why they are reigning in the old specs is because they were leaving not enough room for the new specs (like the Tempest, a support spec, had the best damage or the Reaper, designed as power spec, turning out to be a condi spec).
You just have to look at what elite specs offer to see this. They give you access to a new weapon, 5 new skills and are usually enhancing the profession mechanic. If that is not a straight upgrade, then I don’t know what is.

Prophet.1584:

Soulbeast mode, for lack of a better term, doesn’t look like its something that is intended to be camped. What I mean is you may start a fight with your pet out and dps’ing, swap to SB to use skills and swap back out or maintain it for an attack chain. The same way we swap weapons might be the better way to look at how to use this. SB provides more play options, not to just sit in it, similar to what weaver will be for ele.

I guess we will see soon, but that doesn’t sound exciting at all.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Prophet.1584:

Soulbeast mode, for lack of a better term, doesn’t look like its something that is intended to be camped. What I mean is you may start a fight with your pet out and dps’ing, swap to SB to use skills and swap back out or maintain it for an attack chain. The same way we swap weapons might be the better way to look at how to use this. SB provides more play options, not to just sit in it, similar to what weaver will be for ele.

I guess we will see soon, but that doesn’t sound exciting at all.

lb#4 + furious strength + twice as vicious.

Musha.4025:

I’m looking at the numbers for the Soulbeast, compared to actually having a pet, and I can’t help but wonder how this is an elite specialization. Beastmode causes you to lose a significant amount of attributes. It seems that this was only made to pander to the pet-whiners.

As an example, let’s look at the Lynx pet. By itself, at character lvl 80, the Lynx has
Power: 1524
Precision: 2211
Toughness: 1524
Vitality: 2211
Condition Dmg: 1000
By itself, the Lynx does some very nice damage!

When you enter beastmode, you trade all those atts for +200 condi dmg and +100 precision on yourself, a SIGNIFICANT decrease, not to mention the loss of a combat companion and meatshield. 200 condi dmg increases bleed dmg by a measly 12 dmg per stack while 100 precision yields a paltry 4.75% crit chance. These numbers seem utterly pathetic to me.

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

The point is that, merged, you will hit more often than your pet and more reliably. There is also fewer risk for you to lose access to your mechanisms since it won’t be able to take damages.

There are area of the game where it will be incredibly valuable to have this “beastmode”, like in wvw for example. Just for that, this elite spec can’t really disappoint.

What’s really amasing is the potential of the spec. This spec have huge potential in survivability and mobility. It also allow for amazing potential direct support with fields, combos, boons and heal that weren’t used efficiently before. As for damage, condi build shouldn’t lose a lot since the ranger was already the main source of conditions. And for power, we are already used to suck at power damage…

Musha.4025:

Other than the concept of the Soulbeast, which is AMAZINGLY cool, and playing something entirely new for the class, I’m very interested to hear more about how you think it will fit with your rangers. Could you please maybe elaborate a little?

Sure.

My main Ranger is my old roaming condi bunker build and since HoTs release it’s been somewhat useless in WvW since it’s defense and damage aren’t up to scratch against what others are using to roam. With Soulbeast I can finally get some condition based melee autoattacks to tide me over whilst waiting for longer cooldowns (I dislike Shortbow) and with beastmode I’ll have access to a fair few defensive utilities that will aid in my survivability (mainly black bear) and if I want, I can swap in some condition pets to increase my damage output. Plus, I like the look of Bear Stance and Dolyak Stance to help against conditions and stuns.

My second Ranger is an old zerker bearbow, still plenty fun to play but the pet is all but useless on him. Previously I went with Druid to increase his survivability but I think soulbeast will increase his staying power and damage with black bear and smokescale.

I’ll be leaving my third (boonshare) Ranger as a Druid since it works perfectly fine as is.

Musha.4025:

And while in beastmode, you lose the pet and the 1524 power, the 2211 precision, the 1524 toughness, the 2211 vitality, and the 1000 condition dmg that you once had while that pet was at your side, which, getting back on point, was the concern for the initial discussion. How can this be an elite spec if you’re not upgraded by using it, like every other profession’s elite spec, but instead, DOWNgraded? Getting a few extra skills is not an upgrade equivalent to the other elite specs.

In WvW, pets don’t hit players nearly often enough so for that game mode at least, it’s an upgrade if you can get a buff to yourself and get a decent amount of skills to use that will hit more reliably.

That said, if Anet fix pets and make them considerably more reliable in the future, Soulbeast may lose a large part of its usefulness.

Fluffball.8307:

The concept bores the hell out of me. It’s pandering to the lowest common denominator, the pet class people who don’t want pets. Make the pet BETTER, not remove it.

Stupid fan service like the kitten quotes they sneak into Game of Thrones lately to cater to the kitten fan base.

But hopefully it’s fun to play.

I think it was done to cater to those who wanted a true archer class but annoyed at having a (clunky) pet by its side

Musha.4025:

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

I’m baffled people still think druid was a disappointment. Not to your liking, sure, but it’s a great elite spec nontheless.

And we’re not gonna get another “boring heal spec” down the line. That’s reassuring. No?

Durzlla.6295:

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

Eventually they will be. At some point a profession will have one elite spec that excells better in some role than what the base profession do.
And that’s perfectly fine. You’re still running two core specializations along with it.

Manijin.3428:

Actually, he’s right. The fact that ANet was TERRIBLE at balancing this until more recently and made them too powerful doesn’t change the fact that they were originally intended to simply be options that further specialized your character in a particular niche. They’ve started reigning in some of the specs recently, and it’s a good idea.

He’s not right. They have been reigned in to better portray the role they were made for, instead of having something like a support oriented Tempest doing a pretty decent amount of damage and compete with the damage oriented Weaver. Some time down the road, we will have professions with 4-5 elite specs covering a variety of roles, and there is no reason other than semantics that a full vanilla build should outperform an elite spec in any of those roles. And this isn’t new to Guild Wars. You couldn’t play any of the meta builds with just a copy of Prophecies by the time EotN was out.
As for ranger, both soulbeast and druid can use the pet mechanic exactly like the base ranger. That extra F5 you got really shouldn’t bother you that much..

Lazze.9870:

Musha.4025:

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

I’m baffled people still think druid was a disappointment. Not to your liking, sure, but it’s a great elite spec nontheless.

And we’re not gonna get another “boring heal spec” down the line. That’s reassuring. No?

Useless glyphs, glyphs all blend into the same aoe heal when in celestial avatar, GoTL making it so using your glyphs in avatar form is detremental, last two points mean them being glyphs in the first place was pointless, a weapon designed purly to get us through the celestial avatar gate and then 3 kitten skills and 1 good skill for filler. GoTL stops any of the other healer specs from having a role in raids. No interaction with class mechanic. No interaction with anything the base Ranger can do except the over abundance of regeneration on the class can help with the avatar gate. Single focus on one build with no room for any kind of build diversity. Quite obviously thrown toger last minute to make a healer for raids. This is just without going indepth.

People say its a good spec because of Druidic Clarity in PvP and Grace of the Land in Raids but its by far the most poorly designed one.

Levetty.1279:

Lazze.9870:

Musha.4025:

I am either missing something entirely, or this is going to be another disappointing ranger elite spec. I REALLY hope it’s the former.

I’m baffled people still think druid was a disappointment. Not to your liking, sure, but it’s a great elite spec nontheless.

And we’re not gonna get another “boring heal spec” down the line. That’s reassuring. No?

Useless glyphs, glyphs all blend into the same aoe heal when in celestial avatar, GoTL making it so using your glyphs in avatar form is detremental, last two points mean them being glyphs in the first place was pointless, a weapon designed purly to get us through the celestial avatar gate and then 3 kitten skills and 1 good skill for filler. GoTL stops any of the other healer specs from having a role in raids. No interaction with class mechanic. No interaction with anything the base Ranger can do except the over abundance of regeneration on the class can help with the avatar gate. Single focus on one build with no room for any kind of build diversity. Quite obviously thrown toger last minute to make a healer for raids. This is just without going indepth.

People say its a good spec because of Druidic Clarity in PvP and Grace of the Land in Raids but its by far the most poorly designed one.

Ye, heard all of this crap before. Still get lots of use of it for more than just the condi clear and stun break when I enter the avatar. For something thrown togheter at the last minute, I’m quite happy with it.

The most fun I’ve had on druid was running a power spec in pvp, with no use of the staff you so much hate. Had one of those useless glyphs though. At this point I’m not sorry if anyone else didn’t get any fun out of it.

Lazze.9870:

Ye, heard all of this crap before.

Very mature, no point in trying to have a conversation with you.

Prophet.1584:

Soulbeast mode, for lack of a better term, doesn’t look like its something that is intended to be camped. What I mean is you may start a fight with your pet out and dps’ing, swap to SB to use skills and swap back out or maintain it for an attack chain. The same way we swap weapons might be the better way to look at how to use this. SB provides more play options, not to just sit in it, similar to what weaver will be for ele.

I’d rather focus on what the e-spec brings us now, balance updates would probably take a backseat to ironing out bugs/more LS episodes after release.

One of the things I’m thinking of is how you can reposition pets due to the use of Beastmode, since people do like to kite out and LoS your pet’s distinctly average AI. You can also force a stow while pet swap is on CD to prevent them from dying to focus fire.

It might seem trivial, but being able to hard reset pets on a potential 10 second CD means I can probably increase pet uptime on my target, instead of them running up stairs across half the map/want me to take it to a vet in 70% of the fight. In half the situations the pet isn’t where you want it to be e.g. when you want to peel/combo with Beastly Warden, or when you’re on jump puzzle maneuver #927 and leave your pet to path away into the distance.

Since we now have some pet-skill evades and endure pain on demand if we build for it (I hope it can work, we have clarion bond v2 now), Rangers have more ways to evade and CC than ever (unblock on beastmode), we just need to be managing and weaving beastmode into the usual things we are already doing.

Lazze.9870:

Durzlla.6295:

Musha.4025:

And how is the loss of all those attributes that exist on the pet, even for 1 second, elite?

Elite specs are not upgrades, they’re a variation of the base class, the part of soulbeast that’s “elite” is being able to fuse with your pet and use some of their abilities at your own whim, as well as gaining access to MH dagger and stances.

Eventually they will be. At some point a profession will have one elite spec that excells better in some role than what the base profession do.
And that’s perfectly fine. You’re still running two core specializations along with it.

I mean, elite specs are supposed to change your playstyle, so if the playstyle you’re looking for is better at a certain role than core ranger, than I guess you could call it an upgrade (IE druid and being support). But unless the elite spec is truly a must take in all situations, then it’s not an actual upgrade. Using Druid as an example again, if you’re trying to be a damage focused build, you’d never run Druid since it is just a straight up DPS loss to do. Sure it gives you the utility and the heals, but you’re going to pay for that either through personal survivability or damage.

i fear our pets will getting nerfed further on with SB.
some pet skills will be heavily unbalanced at start as the pet skills are not meant to be used by the ranger when they were created. for example the jaguars’s F2 (6 seconds of stealth while you can still attack and get +25% crit chance and +25% crit damage) looks a bit op when used by a player especially in PvP.
the SB can add some nice options to ranger’s play, but it might hit the “normal” rangers when they start balancing everything around SB.

rojoka.5976:

i fear our pets will getting nerfed further on with SB.
some pet skills will be heavily unbalanced at start as the pet skills are not meant to be used by the ranger when they were created. for example the jaguars’s F2 (6 seconds of stealth while you can still attack and get +25% crit chance and +25% crit damage) looks a bit op when used by a player especially in PvP.
the SB can add some nice options to ranger’s play, but it might hit the “normal” rangers when they start balancing everything around SB.

You won’t be able to use the stealth, cats give you Bite(F1) and Maul(F2) along with another ability based on the archetype of the pet, Jaguar is ‘Versitile’ so you get ‘Prelude Lash’ as an F3 ability.

It 100% depends on whether or not the boons get shared by the stances with the GM equipped or not.

Ranger/Druid was not struggling in PvE or PvP. Do people dislike the builds or build mechanics that are optimal in those environments? Of course, it’s impossible to make everyone happy, all of the time.

WvW is where Ranger/Druid really struggles to find it’s footing in a group environment. Composition slots are already hyper competitive which means each party slot needs to have maximum party composition potential, and Druid sees a lot of competition from Support Tempest and Chrono.

If stance sharing also shares the boons, ANet will have FINALLY given WvW a response to how dominant Guardians are in the party composition metagame because of boon and minor heal support, which is exactly where Soulbeast will compete with the stances functioning as mentioned.

If not…. Well, there will definitely be a Soulbeast version of the PvE Condi DPS build that’s better than the core ranger version, and I’m positive that Soulbeast will be able to compete with Druid in PvP due to the fact that Druid nowadays has a much harder time of gaining momentum by itself on a team, and is really relegated into more of a stall/team support backcapping solo node defense role.

On its own this isn’t disappointing. Personally, if Leader of the Pack doesn’t work as I hope, I will be disappointed though, because at that point Soulbeast isn’t filling any gaps in our gameplay options.

Also I REALLY need Beastmode to count as pet swapping to even justify taking Soulbeast. Essentially, it needs to be an alternative to Beastmastery (not that running it alongside BM won’t be something I do) and to Druid.

Until the weekend I won’t know if it’s functionally capable of fulfilling those roles.

I’m very tempted to make another ranger just so I can have one that fits a bit more thematically when I make them spit poison.

Krispera.5087:

Why are so many people glued to being stuck in Beastmode is beyond me. Beastmode doesn’t mean Godmode.

It opens you options, not removing you anything. The advantage from SBeast is that you can CONTROL your pet skills, which you can’t right now.

What’s better ? A random Smoke Assault/Knockdown from the Smokescale or only when you decide ?

Musha.4025:

It seems that this was only made to pander to the pet-whiners.

It does fix that problem, but the most effective way would probably to play In and Out of BMode. At least, it gives the Ranger another option to ’’swap’’ the pet before it dies or that it doesn’t become an hindrance in some contents.

Precisely the converstaion we’ve had for the last 5 years whenever someone has asked for a stow pet option. For some reason the pet-whiner-whiners simply don’t get that there are times in the game when the pet is a hinderance and most of us want the control to switch pets out when necessary. That’s not the same as wanting to remove the pet from the game completely.

Soulbeast fills a need in the Rangers tactics and allows us to contribute in ALL encounters rather than switching toons because pets standing in AoE or being hit by certain attacks makes fights much harder and longer than necessary.

Will it dissapoint? Sure, if it’s poorly balanced. If not it will be far more welcome than core ranger usually is.

jcbroe.4329:

Also I REALLY need Beastmode to count as pet swapping to even justify taking Soulbeast. Essentially, it needs to be an alternative to Beastmastery (not that running it alongside BM won’t be something I do) and to Druid.

Until the weekend I won’t know if it’s functionally capable of fulfilling those roles.

I could imagine BM beastsoul being extremely effective if used tactically. As you say would be dependent on Beastmode counting as petswap. If not, that could be really crippling for the Elite. That’s quite the concern you’ve raised….

Every new elite spec threatens to disappoint.

The pet is pretty bad at damage application and with timing their attacks. They can waste a lot of time with moving around and using skills that miss, or the target is simply unreachable.

Removing the pet to gain 3 new skills could be a big improvement in many situations, and like others have already said, you can exit Beastmode whenever you want for situations where the pet is better.

I’m not very impressed with the SoulBeast traitline, but remember that pet traits will affect Beastmode as well in some way. This could make the Beastmastery traitline very useful in combination with Beastmode, even to the point where staying in Beastmode might often be the best course of action.

Live Fast: 3 seconds of quickness and 6 seconds of fury every time you use a beast skill.
-Unstoppable Union: when you enter beastmode your attacks are unblockable for 4 seconds. That’s, a lot of seconds lol.
- 7% more damage while you have fury.

So when i see those things on paper, soulbeast screams “burst,” so for me is going to be all about stacking boons, particularly quickness…and bursting. If you have a ton of quickness then that in essence makes up for less hard “stats”

Don’t focus on the pet attributes too much; coefficients and condition stacks matter more. In a vacuum, the best dps pets contribute roughly 12% due to all the power creep.

In other modes such as pvp and wvw, utility and bursts from the pet will be taken into account. The stat boosts seem low – that much is true.

The overall offerings SB has is a lot of condis, which isn’t hindered by coefficients like power. Combined with the stat increase, it might make up the loss. Testing will tell.

Krispera.5087:

What’s better ? A random Smoke Assault/Knockdown from the Smokescale or only when you decide ?

Not going to talk down on SB or anything, but this part right here brings us to the core of our new elite spec, and is something Anet could’ve given us long time ago by allowing us to control pet skills.

My main concern is that its going to be heavily “requested” for nerfs simply because people wont know how to deal with the potential options it may present. Black Bear’s Endure Pain and other bunkering strats becoming prevalent would also get people whining about “too much sustain!!1”. =/

Euthymias.7984:

My main concern is that its going to be heavily “requested” for nerfs simply because people wont know how to deal with the potential options it may present. Black Bear’s Endure Pain and other bunkering strats becoming prevalent would also get people whining about “too much sustain!!1”. =/

Can you imagine how heads would explode if “bearbow pew pew” becomes “meta”?

Now I just need to go take a long shower for using the phrase =P