Guild Wars 2

I guess it’s no surprise to see the wall of complaints on a new spec release. In so many years of playing mmos I’ve come to get used to that. Things always seem to follow the pattern of:

1. Sky is falling, worst class ever!
2. Okay, okay, maybe there’s some potential. Hmmm.
3. Oh crap it’s awesome! Oh no we’re going to get nerfed!

Or some variation of that.

My views on soulbeast, as things seem now, is that I’m VERY excited by all of the variation that the pets bring to the mix. So far now, across many hours of testing, I’ve found some very viable condi setups and a few potential power ones as well (though very burst reliant, which I don’t mind). Needs more testing in real world PvE scenarios as well, but I’m very hopeful now that the initial confusion has passed.

As many have posted, I think it’s a legitimate criticism that the beast mode effects could use some tweaks. It’s a little too visually blinding to have over my character all the time and more specifically, I wish there was some hint in the effect of what pet family I have melded with at any given time. I feel this would be a good visual reinforcement when I’m switching back and forth.

I don’t mind swapping in and out, as seems to irk so many of the “petless ranger” crowd. I actually feel this is just a mindset adjustment after having played for so many years with a pet. Considering how powerfully bursty some of the setups can be, the play style of playing with your pet out, and then invoking beast mode to execute an insane blast of damage at just the right moment seems cool and viable. Alternatively, some setups favor the other way around, focusing on playing in Beast Mode and popping out to switch pets and gain access to another set of abilities entirely.

Anyway, props to the devs for daring to make such a complex and interesting elite. There is, as I said, a lot of the usual vocal angry voices, but also a lot of love and positivity out there as well.

I don’t know what the policy on cross-linking is here, but this thread on the sub-Reddit has some constructive and interesting findings:

https://reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6uj44t/soulbeast_what_is_strong_what_have_you_discovered/

Except in this case your 1-3 are happening in the reverse order. Many thought it looked good, but as more details surfaced and people were actually able to test it for themselves, they discovered many glaring flaws.

My observation has been that it’s QQ right out of the gate.

Loving Soulbeast too. I really appreciate the added complexity of swapping in and out of beastmode as needed and the endless possibilities presented by the various skills. The play style is almost a little more ele or engi and hence I can understand that many rangers might find it a bit strange at first.

I run a condi trap build and am really excited about the options available to avoid damage whilst being close enough to drop those traps. As an ele from way back when the ranger rotations have always felt a bit simplistic to me, but soulbeast has definitely changed that for me. Pretty hyped for POF now!

My observation is, that people don’t test the elite specialisation against other class like in wvw or pvp. Especially against the old invulnerable warrior, the deadeye, the non-stop stance/aura weaver, the “I’ve-more-dodges-than-a-daredevil”-mirage or the drive by scourge.

For pve it is great. Just like the rest of the ranger.

Enjoying it so far, bit confused with daggers real purpose. Quite strong in PvP but don’t really know since everybody is testing new builds. Play-style is far more enjoyable than druid. Jacaranda and Rock Gazelle seem like winners.

Judge za.7601:

Enjoying it so far, bit confused with daggers real purpose. Quite strong in PvP but don’t really know since everybody is testing new builds. Play-style is far more enjoyable than druid. Jacaranda and Rock Gazelle seem like winners.

Oh and +smokescale!

Before I could even log in myself there was so much negativity arround the soulbeast. I was almost to scared to play because I got my self so hyped up for the spec. But man I love this spec. Being able to switch in and out beastmode to combo with your pet is amazing.

Dagger/Axe + Greatsword feels good and as pets I’m using the pig and smokescale.

new utility skills + elite skill are boring and feel like extra signets…

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

“I’ve-more-dodges-than-a-daredevil”-mirage

Thats just blatently false.

Levetty.1279:

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

“I’ve-more-dodges-than-a-daredevil”-mirage

Thats just blatently false.

how exactly did soul beast has more dodges then dare devil it is just pure lie .

I love this elite, I think when all the bugs will be fixed it’s going to be amazing!

It is fun to play the amazing GS again. Nice work Anet.

Lickage.7318:

Before I could even log in myself there was so much negativity arround the soulbeast. I was almost to scared to play because I got my self so hyped up for the spec. But man I love this spec. Being able to switch in and out beastmode to combo with your pet is amazing.

Dagger/Axe + Greatsword feels good and as pets I’m using the pig and smokescale.

new utility skills + elite skill are boring and feel like extra signets…

Yes, I agree about the utilities. They’re fine, closer to the sharing boon style of glyphs really, but that kind of straight “buff” utility isn’t my favorite. Still, I love the kind of gameplay where if just the right moment arrives, you can pop everything and do that massive burst if required. Also considering their group buffing synergy with Leader of the Pack, they have potential for group play anyway.

I’m also loving Dagger/Axe + Greatsword, it’s pretty wild to play with those combinations effectively.

What I seem to gather from people after actually reading posts for a while is that people like the idea of the soulbeast and think some aspects are fun of it, but that the excecution thus far has been poor once you actually test it against other people. Sadly we were not allowed to test it in pve so it’s hard to tell how things will perform.

I personally think both the side of “It’s unredeemable trash” and “It’s the best thing ever!!!” are silly. There are problems with the spec at the moment and I feel often the people that seem to ignore the problems are those that have less experience with ranger or people that haven’t tested it out in multiple scenario’s yet, or perhaps they’re just aware of the issues but focus on the good and hope that the devs will change things because it’s still in beta. At the other hand, bashing every single aspect of the class is also not healthy. Many had hoped it would be much more of a petless ranger than it turned out to be and others are super fixated on the problems.

I personally think the soulbeast is fun to play, but under performs. Atleast in spvp it feels weak at the moment and sadly dolyak stance did not function right so it’s hard to figure out wether this one stance would make a huge difference or not. The Dolyak and Bear stance are really the only stances I’d use in spvp, again can’t talk for pve but maybe the one wolf pack would be useful there. The other stances need something extra and the Moa stance needs a full rework to me because else it’s going to have the herald problem where you share a +66% boon duration buff with other people (via the trait) and we know that’ll just end up being nerfed, so I’d rather have this skill changed than end up in the gutter. I just want stances to feel a bit more unique than improved version of traits.

Dagger is a weapon that can be fun to play with but at the moment it feels very slow and the attack 2 needs a different animation because it looks the same like AA first two chains and to me that feels unacceptable. Your enemy needs to be able to see what you are doing and well… druid also had no new animation (atleast no character animation, lots of particle effects tho). Numbers are weak too but those will change i am sure.

Some traits are just odd to me and there seems to be little condition damage support in these for a class that gets a condi weapon that has almost no power scaling. There’s work to be done here too.

And beastmode is fun to play with, I just hope the aura effect will be toned down because it just hinders the look of our character, and they should make sure that pure damage skills feel better to use. A lot of them just do the same damage as a AA but they have cooldowns.

So all in all. Yes, it’s fun to play for now atleast. However, fun doesn’t mean it’s good. A condi ranger is better off taking core trait lines, bunkers / team support is better with druid. Power is actually the best spec for soulbeast, but you end up not using dagger because it’s a condi weapon. I don’t think power will be viable in group pve, but in solo pve it’ll probably be fun to use and in spvp there’s some crazy burst combo you can pull off with Maul + Hilt bash + Maul + Worldly Impact but it requires the enemy to basicly stand still and have no stabi or you to have quickness, and since you’re power you have to get it from somewhere else than dagger since the dagger scales so poorly with power it’s not even funny.

Still, even if it gets released in it’s current state I’ll probably do the pve story and zones with a power soulbeast build and might use it in open world. I’m sure it’ll be fun there. I just hope it’ll end up being useable elsewhere too.

For WvW zerging I plan to get an owl. A leap, swiftness, and a heal, and no pet to manage – absolutely perfect.

jaif.3518:

For WvW zerging I plan to get an owl. A leap, swiftness, and a heal, and no pet to manage – absolutely perfect.

So from 8 skills you could use, you plan on using 3.
Using 37% of your potential is hardly “absolutely perfect”.

Don’t get me wrong. Atm I am also only really using one pet, but I don’t think this is a good state we’re in right now.

jaif.3518:

For WvW zerging I plan to get an owl. A leap, swiftness, and a heal, and no pet to manage – absolutely perfect.

i mostly just play wvw, i like the soulbeast the idea and all but i dont think for wvw it will be much of an improvement, well you can merge with the pet and now wont die as easy which is good. Still the ranger wont have much aoe, i dont think it can be frontline and do damage with melee, doesnt give much support (i dont think as of now sharing stance will be good unless anet make changes). It will probably be a little better but nothing wow, we probably still be low tier. Hope i am wrong, i want to play my ranger in wvw but other than open world PvE i dont see the soulbeast been that good/at the top, not even close.

Well it depends on the players you play against. Good players murder soulbeast because of it’s obvious flaws. You can’t combo as easily without a pet swap in beast mode so the tells become very one dimensional and once people realize the meta pets Soulbeast will run with (smokescale is an obvious) they will know how to counter. It’s only half-effective right now because people still haven’t adjusted how to fight against it (see scourge as well and it’s playstyle and people not used to fighting against it).

If you are a mediocre player being hard stuck in bronze/silver/gold/low plat, then Soulbeast will probably work for you in a PvP perspective (even then you’ll have no essential role and just be a free roamer, which if that is your thing go for it). If you are a top tier player or a top dueler of any kind, Soulbeast will most likely not work and Druid will handle top tier PvP play over a Soulbeast based on sheer mechanics and group support. Soulbeast , aside from the GM trait, is a very selfish spec and since the effects are halved from stances (one of which we didn’t even get to test) it wouldn’t even provide enough impact to be taken into a real group scenario, or a WvW zerg scenario – again, Druid is clearly better in this respect.

So yes, Soulbeast will work in lower/mid-tier gameplay (bronze / silverish maybe gold and low plat) – but middle plat into legendary you will not see many people run it because it’s a very 1-dimensional spec as it stands. Yes, melding with your pet adds additional mechanics to your class, but they are all easily memorized mechanics that won’t have much impact in a given fight.

Another obvious issue is trait synergy to have a role in either game mode. What would you be as a Soulbeast? +1 , group fight? You’re mostly a selfish spec due to you having such a narrow trait window to work with since you can’t go full bunker or full damage. If you go full damage with marks/skirmish, you lose too much defensives and you will be immediately targetted in a group fight. If you go full bunker, people will just ignore you as you provide no group utility , and they will kill your group one by one then just zerg on top of you.

There are many flaws once you start playing against top players , but again, this is a very small group in the game as a whole.

PvE you will be better off running Core condi most likely (this has yet to be tested enough to make actual correct DPS assesments because this was a mere testing phase in which numbers will most likely change anyway) and Druid varieties in raids.

So where does Soulbeast actually stand in all of this , in a top PvP scenario where would you see Soulbeast’s role? In WvW zerging where would you see Soulbeast’s role? In top dueling against top players, many other classes offer so much more over Soulbeast’s current implementation due to , again, massive lacking of trait synergy.

It’s a confused spec as of this moment, and offers no QoL improvements over what we currently have.

The only thing I can see Soulbeast being right now are very specific dueling builds and roaming WvW skirmish builds of which , again, Druid would seem to be much better in this regard from the Druid trait line alone outweighs a lot of what Soulbeast offers in terms of active survivability.

1. Stances need to have more impact
2. Better trait synergy
3. Group support is very sub-par with SOulbeast , GM on stances offer half the duration and the stances are horrible EXCEPT Dolyak which we didn’t even get to test
4. Dagger needs to be a hybrid variant, so adding dmg is a must – it’s current implementation has no role right now, other weapons are way better and it’s clunky.

There’s many more things but , again, in the top sector from dueling with top players and playing with all of the other elites, Spellbreaker was by far one of the best elites I got to test with. Fluidity was top quality, implementation was nicely thought out , and the ideas behind the class flowed very well. It was such a good elite implementation overall.

Adenin.5973:

jaif.3518:

For WvW zerging I plan to get an owl. A leap, swiftness, and a heal, and no pet to manage – absolutely perfect.

So from 8 skills you could use, you plan on using 3.
Using 37% of your potential is hardly “absolutely perfect”.

Don’t get me wrong. Atm I am also only really using one pet, but I don’t think this is a good state we’re in right now.

Under normal circumstances you have 2 skills that you control, not 8. Your pet is a handy DOT with flavor. In a zerg, your pet becomes a maintenance issue just trying to keep it alive.

So yes, 3 crucial WvW skills that fit in every build? I’m happy.

-Jeff

Hawken.7932:

I don’t mind swapping in and out

I do. I want better usability:

• Give me pet swap in beastmode.
• Give me access to all the pet-swap-traits in beastmode.

Hawken.7932:

Considering how powerfully bursty some of the setups can be, the play style of playing with your pet out, and then invoking beast mode to execute an insane blast of damage

Those kind of things can be nerfed on a whim and having access to pet swap in beastmode doesn’t negate that.

Hawken.7932:

I don’t mind swapping in and out, as seems to irk so many of the “petless ranger” crowd. I actually feel this is just a mindset adjustment after having played for so many years with a pet.

It seems more like a group wants to be able to swap whilst in Beastmode and people like you are being irked by the thought of giving people that choice.

Letting people swap whilst in Beastmode doesn’t take away your gameplay style, it just adds more options in.

Really, who cares if someone camps Beastmode? People are going to do that regardless if Anet add the swap in or not. Adding it in just gives Soulbeast more of an appeal for other people.

NemesiS.6749:

Still the ranger wont have much aoe

really? Maul, Worldly Impact, and Path of Scars isn’t enough aoe damage? they’re all low cooldown and unblockable with the right spec. you can deliver all 3 in about a second with quickness.

I like the idea behind Soulbeast, and most of its skills (Love the dagger, though it might be a bit undertuned. But I like that it feels punchy and vicious instead of flaily), but I hate the animations, bladetrail, Fartshroud, and inability to swap pets in said fartshroud.

I don’t think allowing the beasts to be swapped in fartshroud would stop people from leaving it for greater effect (Accessing their pet’s F2, for example. Or for splitting to split aggro, or burst someone/something with a double-attack). Of course, they could allow pets to be swapped in fartshroud, and put a cooldown on both entering AND leaving it.

“Hopping out of Beastmode to use the pet, then pull it back in” is just as much weaving in and out of beastmode as “Hopping into beastmode to use Beast Skills, then hopping back out”

mistsim.2748:

NemesiS.6749:

Still the ranger wont have much aoe

really? Maul, Worldly Impact, and Path of Scars isn’t enough aoe damage? they’re all low cooldown and unblockable with the right spec. you can deliver all 3 in about a second with quickness.

I am talking mostly of wvw. maul lol yea try landing that in a zerg fight with the current condi meta, you would die before maul finish casting. No one use off hand axe in wvw, the longbow 5 is the only good aoe skill and is not that great. Going full marksmanship for piercing arrows is not worth it. Compare to other classes we bring nothing to wvw, hammer revenants as backline with number 2 does ridiculous damage on low cooldown and is aoe to mention an example, we dont have any of that. Why you think no one bring rangers to wvw, not serious players at least and if they do they either dont invite them to raids or put them alone in groups, We bring nothing, no damage, no aoe, no support, no boon strip, no nothing, the only kind of good usable is healing druid and i hate healing plus elementalist is probably better at that so.

NemesiS.6749:

…

I am talking mostly of wvw. maul lol yea try landing that in a zerg fight with the current condi meta, you would die before maul finish casting. No one use off hand axe in wvw, the longbow 5 is the only good aoe skill and is not that great. Going full marksmanship for piercing arrows is not worth it. Compare to other classes we bring nothing to wvw, hammer revenants as backline with number 2 does ridiculous damage on low cooldown and is aoe to mention an example, we dont have any of that. Why you think no one bring rangers to wvw, not serious players at least and if they do they either dont invite them to raids or put them alone in groups, We bring nothing, no damage, no aoe, no support, no boon strip, no nothing, the only kind of good usable is healing druid and i hate healing plus elementalist is probably better at that so.

That is crux of the matter.
Plus the druid specialisation brings no dmg and a very clunky, short-time mechanic, that is interrupted whole the time, because ranger is sooo slow and only usable with permanent quickness.

I like the concept, the animation, the whole theme. The spec mechanic is cool too.
I lile this e-spec. It brings more to the table than druid did.
BUT it is still undertuned in Weapon, trait and stance design. We need a petswap in beastmode for better fluidity.
Its a fun spec and it encourages to use pets you never used before. I hope they improve on its flaws and i am glad that we are undertuned atm (yeah really). We can expect improvements and not nerfs and i am looking forward to these.

Don’t care for some of the stances (I liek the heal and vulture…dont get what the elite one does tho), however this elite fixes the 1, and only one issue I had with Ranger/Druid…. no access to all of the pet’s attacks.

I am going to admit, this gives a lil ol thoerycrafter a joygasm with the build diversity this brings where now you can access pet’s abilities to better cover your own weaknesses/add to your strengths (cleanses/CC’s/Ranged attacks, more condi applications…etc)

Thing is, they could let us swap in beastmode and out of beastmode with same 10 second cooldown on exit and it’d still not be OP.

That is, make the pet swap timer distinct whether we are in or out of beastmode. I think it’s really the only thing saving the spec as the beast line isn’t good enough on its own.

Even with swap in beastmode, I don’t know how you would take it over Druid in WvW. Druid may do no damage but it at least allows us to run / stealth because we have no stability either.

With beastmode I was getting bounced around like a pinball because dolyak stance was busted and ramapage as one is a 75 sec CD.

So yeah, this isn’t an e spec. It’s a ‘hey we fixed core ranger like we should have 5 years ago…but to use it you actually have to become weaker’. Bleh.

There are legitimate complaints.
There are legitimate bugs.

The reddit posts have been some of the worst. People saying things like
“It’s a specialization so it’s not for all game modes.” And then a bunch of other slowpokes jump on the bandwagon and agree. /yawn.