As I’m doing my overview of Ranger every 1000 hours of playtime on it, I thought I’d share all my thoughts on Soulbeast, so here goes.
First of: The the bad things.
We can’t move during Worldly impact. Moving during the cast cancels the ability. This is not the case for the other 4.(Common we have enough of this crap on ranger — looking at Whirling Defense and Warrior axe 5)
Beside the obviously bugged Dolyak stance that would be great otherwise, and some other bugs, I’m slightly disappointed in the dagger mainhand, and dagger offhand is still lacking. So playing dagger dagger is not really fun at the moment. The precast of dagger 3 without quickness feels clunky.
Dagger 2 is fine really, but it looks so boring. All the other classes attacks look pretty awesome, I feel like this is lacking on dagger, but that’s just looks.
Obviously Dagger 5 needs a rework, it has needed a rework since forever. Even a minor thing like a “your pets next attack” type of buff would be cool, or maybe an ammo mechanic.
“Protect me”: The Taunt is directed towards ourself while in beastmode. Maybe that’s ok? I’d rather have a fear on it, even if just for a second.
“Search And Rescue”: Doesn’t do anything.
And TBH, for now that’s already it… I don’t have any other bad stuff yet.
The “ok” stuff:
No pet swap while in beastmode. I know many people here want it, but I’m really ok with it.
When we go out of beastmode we only have 10 seconds cooldown. Just the right amount of time I’d say. Use your Pets F2, give it time to use it’s 2 and 3 ability, swap to the next pet, same again, F2 and 2 + 3 I think that fits neatly in 10 seconds. So as soon as the pet starts feeling a bit lackluster, we can just meld.
Swapping while in beast mode would probably be OP, and I’m really fine with not being able to do that.
Traits: I feel like all the SB traits can be useful in a way. Maybe not in every gamemode. Leader of the pack maybe in Raids if we’re a good damage spec and we’re in a power oriented subgroup? But it might be well possible that Oppressive Superiority is still better overall.
Things that are great!
Every buff that would normally go to our pet will now affect us, while in beastmode.
Here is everything I was able to think of so far:
Dagger 2: We get the poison buff for ourself.
Shortbow 4: We get the bleeds.
Greatsword 2: We get an extra attack of opportunity!
Refined Toxins: I think we get extra posion(not sure about this)
Sword 1: We get the might on 3rd attack for ourself.
Potent Ally: Extra reliable might for us, if we’re on a crit build!(I think?)
Sic’em!: We get 40% damage buff! For 10 seconds! Worldly impact crits for like… 7.6k on berserker in PvP! Imagine comboing this with Onewolf Pack and then casting a high damage ability like Whirling Defense.
Strength of the Pack: Stack might with yourself.
Similar things that we don’t get:
Sadly we don’t get extra unblockable attacks through Call of the wild, but maybe that would be OP..
Natural Healing does not apply to us in beastform. For Soulbeast this trait becomes absolutely useless. When will we ever have a situation again where our pet needs it to be tanky as a soulbeast?
I’m not sure what “Guard” actually does in beastmode. Our chacater doesn’t get the “Guard” buff. The character doesn’t even shout “Guard”.
So far I was not able to see any effect from it.
And I really like the stannces(if dolyak would work Q-Q). I feel like the might for evades on Griffon Stance will be kinda useless though…
Observations:
If you have 2 pets from the same archetype they will share their F3 cooldown(rather obvious).
Dagger 3 precast feels better if you have quickness.
I definitely see strong fighting abilities in Roaming and sPvP. If it will be Zerg(WvW) compatible I still have to see, though I’m confident that the Stance Share will be quite nice.
If I find any other interesting things, I’ll post them below.
(edited by Ranys.4028)