Guild Wars 2

Video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFrgfUw2c4
Wiki info: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soulbeast

SUMMARY
New weapon: Dagger mainhand.
New skill type: Stances.
New profession mechanic: Soulbeast will be able to gain the abilities of their pet.

Opinions?

While I’m sure a ton of people are gonna hate, I am beyond excited. Love animal themed characters but hate how pets are useless in some scenarios. So glad we have the option to be petless. I really hope it’s a toggle type deal that can last as long as you want, not like a 10 second thing with a cooldown or whatnot.

Hopeful, but we’ll see. There’s an open beta happening between Aug. 11-13, so we can test drive it for ourselves in order to give a more, well-informed opinion.

Wulf.5431:

While I’m sure a ton of people are gonna hate, I am beyond excited. Love animal themed characters but hate how pets are useless in some scenarios. So glad we have the option to be petless. I really hope it’s a toggle type deal that can last as long as you want, not like a 10 second thing with a cooldown or whatnot.

I mean I think it should have a Cd, but more like how our avatar state or pet swap works to restrict you from constant swapping.

That being said, idk if anything Anet does will dethrone Druid for me, but I am excited for the soul beast, really curious for how it’s playstyle will be, and how the fusion dance with my pets will work, because if I can get my hands and my healing power on that Harmonic Cry from moas…. oh ho boy

Not much I can get from that short clip but to add to what you said, we get a new PBAoE attack and the new pet looks kind of like some deer and has the deer rear up and kick attack so its probably a completly new type of pet.

Not really excited for it at all. It feels like this is their way of avoiding fixing the problems with Ranger pets by taking them out of the equation completely. This wouldn’t be a problem IF I didn’t know that they probably won’t fix the issues with base ranger and pets. I don’t enjoy melee at all and I like having my pet next to me so I don’t see the point of grinding out an Elite specialization that doesn’t appeal to me.

Combined with having to go out and fight undead armies (yet again) and the continuation of a story that I find pretty nonsensical, it looks like I’m giving this expansion a hard pass.

Why does it always seems to me, that every specialisation gets a deepen concept and in the end the developers says: oops, we need something for ranger … put something together.

The druid was first announced and didn’t get a beta so it was released with a clumsy mechanic (as clumsy as the revenant :P )

And in the trailer there was only the information that he fights with dagger and can combine with his pet. (Just 30s of information while other specialisation get 35-56s). In addition, the german comunity manager said, that he don’t know the current state of the ranger. There were concepts of a permanent petless class and temporary petless class.

I’ve low expectations -.-

Speaking of new pets, who do I have to waterboard inorder to get that rabbit mount as a combat pet?

Does that mean we get Defy Pain if we soulmeld with Bears?!

It could be an interesting Spec if fusing with a pet of a certain group would give you skills/abilities that make sense for that group: for instance fusing with your Bear would increase your hitpoints and Toughness big time and add some extra heal skill.

Fusing with a Moa would give you skills that Daze and such. This would greatly add to our choices and Utility I think.

But that probably sounds a bit too good. Having to think up skills for each group would be a lot of work.

How many distinct pet-groups do we have?

And I agree with the above poster who is afraid that the Pets themselves stay as bugged as they are now: that would really suck.

in the premiere from twich i could see:
- Still static spirits. Such a shame in a class which goes to even more mobile gets something so counter intuitive.
- Dagger offhand no rework. When irenio said something about the cripple thing with the dagger i died a little inside. That skill is not something i would feel proud to show off. Ever.

For the rest we will see next weekend .

Hell I could care less about the mechanics… I just want dagger to be a power build item so I can stop with the burn/bleed spam.

Idk why everyone’s acting like the elite spec fusing with pets will make them not fix pets when it’ll literally only be ONE SPEC that avoids using the pet, it’s not like ranger and Druid are going to be able to shelf their pet and pretend it’s not there just because soul beast can (and even then we don’t know how long or frequently)

and actually… could they please stop adding new powercreeping pets which make the old ones underpowered and obsolete?

i’m kind off completely bored of being forced to play with the same two pets all the time because the core ones are so underwhelming.

At least they could have a look and add the pet’s skills and mechanics to the balance patch.

anduriell.6280:

- Dagger offhand no rework. When irenio said something about the cripple thing with the dagger i died a little inside. That skill is not something i would feel proud to show off. Ever.

That part made me laugh. If it was footage on a distant, retreating target to display a new leap or blink skill, that would have been better.

Instead, it was, “…crossing into close range, as well as crippling from a distance… melee distance.” A light jab on footage selection – ya still good, Irenio.

All of my “meh” for this one. My pet is literally the reason I play a Ranger. I don’t want to make it go away. And dagger is one of the least interesting additions I could imagine. Even stances sound kind of bland, though I really need more info on those before making any concrete judgment. Like, I’ll definitely unlock the elite spec, because its content and why wouldn’t I, and I’ll probably play with it on occasion just for the sake of variety, especially if you can avoid the “soul merge” mechanic. But I’ll probably be sticking to core Ranger for the most part. Kind of funny that with most characters, my problem is that I can’t decide which elite spec I want to use (at least based on what we’ve seen so far), but with Ranger I don’t really care to use either of them…

I know its been a very, very, very common request though, so I’m happy for all the people who desperately wanted something like this and hope it’ll perform well enough for everyone who wants a petless ranger to enjoy. With just how often its been requested and all the expectations of how it’d perform, somehow I doubt its going to live up to everything, but here’s hoping.

And I’m very curious how they’re going to pull off all the traits that are pet-based, so that’ll be interesting to see.

But hey, the new pets look awesome. I’ve always wanted some kind of wurm / insect pet, and the deer looks interesting as well. So there’s at least some Ranger hype to be had.

Steam says that there is at least 4 new pets, one of which is an Iboga

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fanged_Iboga

I may be biased but it felt like they spent a good amount of time describing all the other especs, and just flew through ranger in seconds. I wanted to be excited but I didn’t get a chance.

I thought some of the other professions looked cooler and more in line with how I play ranger. The ele one looked neat.

Durzlla.6295:

Idk why everyone’s acting like the elite spec fusing with pets will make them not fix pets when it’ll literally only be ONE SPEC that avoids using the pet, it’s not like ranger and Druid are going to be able to shelf their pet and pretend it’s not there just because soul beast can (and even then we don’t know how long or frequently)

Experience. You know, like how they fixed vanilla pets by not fixing them and adding new, more powerful ones instead. Even though pets hit more reliably now, HoT pets are still tops in most scenarios, pigs are still not worth using because of their clunky special, and they will likely continue the trend of bandaid-ing the problems by throwing in more new pets instead of fixes.

Also, did they finally fix drakes and the fact that they only auto-attack which they broke back in the beginning of the year? This last question is a legitimate one as I stepped away from the game these past months after attempting to slog through the horrifically bad Living Story.

Fluffball.8307:

I may be biased but it felt like they spent a good amount of time describing all the other especs, and just flew through ranger in seconds. I wanted to be excited but I didn’t get a chance.

I thought some of the other professions looked cooler and more in line with how I play ranger. The ele one looked neat.

Agreed. Ranger was rushed and meh all around unless you are someone who really wanted a petless ranger. That whole, ‘you might be merged with your pet but your pet is totally still always with you’ shtick in the preview made me cringe.

This is very close to what I asked for in the old CDI a pet-less ranger (since AI is toooooo hard to fix) let’s hope it’s better than druid which I hate. I’ll let the new players test it for me before I buy. Back to hiatus

Ranger videos were so quick. I’m not sold to the Dagger and Stances, they look simple and boring.

Now, the merging with pet opens up SO MANY POSSIBILITIES (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_pet_skills). If I understand it right, you’ll be able to use the F2 and also the Third Skill (ex : Tail Swipe from the Drake).

Condi Ranger with condi AoE poison field from Spiders ? Power Ranger with Spike Barrage ? Furious Pounce with Remorseless ?

I love pets but I’m still really looking forward to this elite spec. It seems great for complementing Norn-ness.

I actually love this idea, when druid was announced in HoT i had hope it would have been a shape shifter into beasts, and this is an all new way to do just that. Alot of the pets mimic and take on aspecs of other player classes like smokescale are basicly pocket versions of reverants. also love the idea of breathing fire from fire drake and bristlebacks are down right deadly. Another question about assuming powers of pets could we say take the power of a shark while were in the water , then carry it out of the power through us on land and visa versa? I think it gives us rangers a ton of versatility and sort of makes ranger the jack of trades.

Irijia.6073:

Durzlla.6295:

Idk why everyone’s acting like the elite spec fusing with pets will make them not fix pets when it’ll literally only be ONE SPEC that avoids using the pet, it’s not like ranger and Druid are going to be able to shelf their pet and pretend it’s not there just because soul beast can (and even then we don’t know how long or frequently)

Experience. You know, like how they fixed vanilla pets by not fixing them and adding new, more powerful ones instead. Even though pets hit more reliably now, HoT pets are still tops in most scenarios, pigs are still not worth using because of their clunky special, and they will likely continue the trend of bandaid-ing the problems by throwing in more new pets instead of fixes.

Also, did they finally fix drakes and the fact that they only auto-attack which they broke back in the beginning of the year? This last question is a legitimate one as I stepped away from the game these past months after attempting to slog through the horrifically bad Living Story.

I mean they have been fixing the old pets… so slowly… oh so very kittening slowly… so given their current speed I think in another xpac they’ll finally have most of the pets (except pigs because for some reason Anet hates them) working.

And as for the drake… I don’t know, it seems like the kitten things break every other patch, I’ve come to the conclusion that the code for the Drake pets are just intertwined with every other aspect of the game.

Smokescale form is going to be pretty epic, as is Jaguar, Siamoth, Murellow, Electric Wyvern, etc. A lot of the pets that never get used may make for interesting additions.

I agree the preview was somewhat lacking, I was loving the rest of the preview and it was almost like when they got to Ranger eSpec, it was “oh yeah, Ranger has one too” and that was about it. Hardly showed anything compared to the rest. Anyway, it has potential, here’s hoping eh?

I’m not too upset by our espec being brushed over this time since Druid was their crown jewel last xpac lol

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Smokescale form is going to be pretty epic, as is Jaguar, Siamoth, Murellow, Electric Wyvern, etc. A lot of the pets that never get used may make for interesting additions.

I agree the preview was somewhat lacking, I was loving the rest of the preview and it was almost like when they got to Ranger eSpec, it was “oh yeah, Ranger has one too” and that was about it. Hardly showed anything compared to the rest. Anyway, it has potential, here’s hoping eh?

The unused pets still won’t be getting a boost as you will only be using them to absorb their abilities. Unless they fix them to be good outside of being a buff/skill bot animal soul that resides inside of your character, they will still be useless as pets.

Durzlla.6295:

Irijia.6073:

Durzlla.6295:

Idk why everyone’s acting like the elite spec fusing with pets will make them not fix pets when it’ll literally only be ONE SPEC that avoids using the pet, it’s not like ranger and Druid are going to be able to shelf their pet and pretend it’s not there just because soul beast can (and even then we don’t know how long or frequently)

Experience. You know, like how they fixed vanilla pets by not fixing them and adding new, more powerful ones instead. Even though pets hit more reliably now, HoT pets are still tops in most scenarios, pigs are still not worth using because of their clunky special, and they will likely continue the trend of bandaid-ing the problems by throwing in more new pets instead of fixes.

Also, did they finally fix drakes and the fact that they only auto-attack which they broke back in the beginning of the year? This last question is a legitimate one as I stepped away from the game these past months after attempting to slog through the horrifically bad Living Story.

I mean they have been fixing the old pets… so slowly… oh so very kittening slowly… so given their current speed I think in another xpac they’ll finally have most of the pets (except pigs because for some reason Anet hates them) working.

And as for the drake… I don’t know, it seems like the kitten things break every other patch, I’ve come to the conclusion that the code for the Drake pets are just intertwined with every other aspect of the game.

Last time I checked on the drakes, non AA skill usage was poor. They would use Tail Swipe sometimes, but with no real discernible trigger for it. Sometimes they would use it on swap, some times they would not; sometimes they would use it on a mob with 1hp left, sometimes they would just AA it from 100-0.

As for Soulbeast, I will say the concept is interesting enough. Whether or not ANet can actually execute on the concept is the big question for me. Look at their execution of the ‘healer’ concept for Druid. To me, Druid was (and still is), a clunky mess that is held together more by stats than any sort of synergy or interesting gameplay.

Shows of the new skills, no description or tool tip and cuts off the UI but looks like dagger has 2 leaps in a row and we finally get some AoE and accerss to new skills form the pet. Also I think I saw a Dolyak fusion.

I was iffy about the option of being a petless ranger, but now that I saw we have the option of having our pets out with us or to meld with them and use their abilities has me excited. I hope we don’t NEED to use daggers cause I am very comfortable using dual axe and longbow!

Levetty.1279:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nflQFIFnpVo

Shows of the new skills, no description or tool tip and cuts off the UI but looks like dagger has 2 leaps in a row and we finally get some AoE and accerss to new skills form the pet. Also I think I saw a Dolyak fusion.

Oh my lord, if I can tame a dolyak this xpac this will be THE best xpac

As I’ve expected, they once again managed to sidestep the pet as mechanic and any problem it currently has. Core Ranger continues to have the weakest of all core profession mechanics, which will have an impact on gameplay, unless the Souldbeast can sidestep the pet permanently.

I think this petanimations around the ranger are his stances.

Because the melting animation is for every pet the same in the trailer.

Shadow Phage.9084:

As for Soulbeast, I will say the concept is interesting enough. Whether or not ANet can actually execute on the concept is the big question for me. Look at their execution of the ‘healer’ concept for Druid. To me, Druid was (and still is), a clunky mess that is held together more by stats than any sort of synergy or interesting gameplay.

The thing with the Druid is that it isn’t a Ranger specialization, it’s just a specialization. You could add it to any profession and it work just as well. The Ranger’s profession mechanic did not play into the Druid at all.

Durzlla.6295:

Levetty.1279:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nflQFIFnpVo

Shows of the new skills, no description or tool tip and cuts off the UI but looks like dagger has 2 leaps in a row and we finally get some AoE and accerss to new skills form the pet. Also I think I saw a Dolyak fusion.

Oh my lord, if I can tame a dolyak this xpac this will be THE best xpac

I guess that will be just one of the Stances.

Looks awesome, and I don’t get how people can’t see that. Access to pet skills on demand from the ranger itself gives tons of possibilites. Hoping for some good stances and that the ranger’s damage isn’t underwhelming (especially when the pets aren’t attacking beside you).

Hoping you can run it permanently and that pet swap switches between the skills of your two pets. From the video it just looked like F5 takes you in and out of it with no limits unlike the astral force with the druid. Video hides the UI, though..

This link shows some more of the specialisation mechanic of the soulbeast
After melting you get the unique ability of the pet and the abilities of its archetype

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

I think this petanimations around the ranger are his stances.

Because the melting animation is for every pet the same in the trailer.

Yeah looks like you are right. Sorry about creating false Dolyak hype.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFrgfUw2c4

This link shows some more of the specialisation mechanic of the soulbeast
After melting you get the unique ability of the pet and the abilities of its archetype

Its looking pretty great.

Noooo! My heart! It can’t take this!

Inc rangers using longbow and bristleback to use bristle and rapid fire simultaneously.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/path-of-fire/#specializations
Website has all the videos too. You get access to both the generic pet skills and specific F2 when melding. Probably F2 remains the same function. I’m guessing F5 to merge, F1 and F3 to do the other generic pet family skills. Not sure if F4 will still be swap while merged? Details will be there soon enough.

For the base ranger complaints: What’s more likely to get something like porcines buffed? Complaining about base ranger pets? Or complaining about the inherited skills in soul beast being bad? This isn’t a get rid of pets so pet balance doesn’t matter. It’s forcing pet skills to be more relevant to balance than ever before. Seriously don’t get some of the negativity here.

Overall, I’m loving the direction it takes. Not sure it’ll actually be condi or power focused as pets can do both. While mh-dagger will probably be pure power, I also think it’s likely that rangers can go A/T+SB soulbeast. Merge with a lynx to use Maul and Pounce instead of Axe auto attacks. I wonder if we could quickdraw a Rending Pounce?

GS also benefits from this. Instead of poor auto attacks, get a power pet merge to fill in downtime on GS2 spam. Certain weapons like sword/dagger combo or axes are also hybrid in nature. At least for PvE, the new stat of power/condi dmg main, precision/ferocity minor can help here a lot for Rangers.

I wonder where the Pet skills are on the bar. When we merge, do we just have the 4 skills and all the rest is greyed out? Do they replace the Weaponskills or the Utility skills?

Or will they become like F1-F4?

Are the stances something entirly different that have to do with the Dagger?

Edit: looking at the post above me, I guess they will be on their own hotkeys. Would make sense, I do not think I would merge if that made me loose all my other skills.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

For the base ranger complaints: What’s more likely to get something like porcines buffed? Complaining about base ranger pets? Or complaining about the inherited skills in soul beast being bad? This isn’t a get rid of pets so pet balance doesn’t matter. It’s forcing pet skills to be more relevant to balance than ever before. Seriously don’t get some of the negativity here.

But will it make the pets better? Will the cast/aftercast times be affected? Will the pet be more reliable? More versatile to use?

Or will it just get shoved to the sidelines, as you don’t have to use it anyways?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-Ranger-Elite-Specialization-the-Stalker/first#post6460939

So kappa, it was a very good idea indeed!

I really like the idea of soulbeast, can’t wait to play it.

Overall I like it. Visuals are decent, especially the ground slam, and stances keep things nice and simple. Sure, they left the old pets and mechanics in the dust, but imo that’s ok. at worst, we’ll have two great elite specs to work with, and 7-8 decent pets. i really curious to see how the spec will play with different weapons.

also, cringe regarding Irenio’s dagger cripple comment. looking at some of our offhands 4 years later makes me wanna puke.

Wuselknusel.4082:

But will it make the pets better? Will the cast/aftercast times be affected? Will the pet be more reliable? More versatile to use?

Or will it just get shoved to the sidelines, as you don’t have to use it anyways?

Since this solution would cost more time and money and they haven’t been inclined to fix these problems thus far (with the exception of better hitboxes for our pets which only came this year) I vote for them opting to shove these to the sidelines. To bring up his example of people complaining about pigs with Soulbeast and this somehow magically translating to getting it fixed for people who still want the pet. They will most likely fix it out of the gate for Soulbeast only and leave pigs to rot for base ranger as they have for the past five years.

Irijia.6073:

Wuselknusel.4082:

But will it make the pets better? Will the cast/aftercast times be affected? Will the pet be more reliable? More versatile to use?

Or will it just get shoved to the sidelines, as you don’t have to use it anyways?

Since this solution would cost more time and money and they haven’t been inclined to fix these problems thus far (with the exception of better hitboxes for our pets which only came this year) I vote for them opting to shove these to the sidelines. To bring up his example of people complaining about pigs with Soulbeast and this somehow magically translating to getting it fixed for people who still want the pet. They will most likely fix it out of the gate for Soulbeast only and leave pigs to rot for base ranger as they have for the past five years.

Reminds me of when Ranger finally had its shortbow reworked. Not because we were asking for it for 4 years, but because of a newly released legendary shortbow. =|

Wondrouswall.7169:

Reminds me of when Ranger finally had its shortbow reworked. Not because we were asking for it for 4 years, but because of a newly released legendary shortbow. =|

Yup. Good times. Anet does some nice things but I’m not expecting them to fix the parts of this class I actually care about once Soulbeast is there to “solve” their problems with pets. I fully expect them to introduce new pets that will get nerfed into the ground for Rangers/Druids while retaining most of their use for their shiny new Elite spec. This will be how they balance our profession, by making the pet a non-factor.

I don’t understand how any one can be disappointment about that. This is exactly what everybody been asking for years, a way to play without a pet. The animations looks amazing, especially the stances, It also seems like they took the old main hand sword AA movement ability and gave it to main hand dagger ability but made it more controlled.
On top of that, new pets.

I only hope core ranger skills/traits and glyphs will get some love.