Guild Wars 2

Also I think another problem could be that every time we get on our mounts we will automatically get kicked out of beastmode, like it happens now, when you go into water and your pet disappears.

In PoF you want to always engage every enemy group on your mount because of your mount opening skill. I don’t want to reenter beastmode for every group I engage.

Since we’ve not seen a real beta with all new features combined I can only hope that the devs have thought of this and that we will be able to stay in beastmode on our mounts.

liking it so far, definily a more offensive aproach to the power druid build, i really wish though that they allowed us to switch pets while merged, having to unmerge, wait 10s to remerge takes the fun out of having 2 pets at the time as soulbeast.

i honestly dont see why couldnt they keep the F4 button to switch on beast mode, the button just vanish when you merge and you use only F1,2,3,5 so its not like they even needed that button for something else

Sadly, as much as I enjoyed dueling in spvp and roaming in WvW with the Soulbeast, it was only fun really because of the bugs if I’m completely honest. 23k Charge with the Gazelle, 10-15k Mauls and the forever stuck Wolfpack on friendlies were pretty much the highlights of my evening. That being said, I’m not sure if Soulbeast is going to be much fun once those gets fixed.

I’m aware things needs to be toned down, but knowing Anet they will come after us with a nerf bat of doom, Soulbeast’s damage will most likely take a huge nose dive and I doubt they will buff any of the old pets, leaving us with a mediocore elite with mediocore damage (Followed by several nerfs to Gazelle till we get the next expac, just like with Smokescale). The mainhand dagger didn’t really impress me much, it felt clunky/slow and I found most of the old utility skills better than the new stances. I mainly used dagger #3 for escaping from blobs and it worked for that quite nicely when paired with GS and eagle’s skill #1 in beastmode. Most of the beastmode pet skills have ridiculously short range, making it almost impossible to hit moving targets as most of the Soulbeast’s stuff has long-ish cast times.

To say something positive, I guess I did like the green glow around my character, I found the Wolfpack aura more disturbing on friendlies than that. I will probably continue playing on my Soulbeast through the weekend and enjoy the ridiculous numbers I can muster out with a melee power build, because once the expansion comes out I doubt I will switch away from my Druid.

edit: Underwater combat was pretty good fun on Soulbeast!

So far, my enjoyment of the soulbeast is 50%. I like how somethings feel about the elite spec, but other aspects are really really lacking.

First what I like:

• 1. Merging with pet has the potential to increase the complexity of the ranger class, if the merging is worth
  doing.

• 2. Satisfying to land combos

• 3. Dash with ammo system could be cool

• 4. Overall great potential

• 5. It’s fun to play, even if it’s lacking atm. The future might improve the fun massively

A lot of my possitives are haunted by a “but…” and that is exactly how I feel about soulbeast. It is fun to play to an extend, there are good things… but there’s also a lot of things that need improvement.

Things I didn’t like:

• 1. There are 0 new animations. Come on Anet, Druid also got 0 new animations while other classes have enjoyed getting something new. It would be apreciated to get 1 new animation on a elite spec. Sword got it because it got reworked, but it only took away from a unique animation set to a more generic one.

• 2. Dagger. The weapon feels weak at the moment but I can accept that we should not focus on numbers. However, the weapon feels very slugish. It feels as if you are swinging a two-handed weapon without the weight to it, without the impact. Skill 2 feels like it’s the same as skill 1’s first two chains which makes it feel really really lame. Even the leap manages to feel slow. Why can’t the leap feel much more animalistic? Dagger animations really need some work to get the feel of “fighting tooth and claw”. Spellbreaker feels way faster and smooth from what I’ve seen thus far. What happened here?

• 3. Stances all feel like they’re skills that already exist elsewhere in the game. The Elite “One Wolf Pack” doesn’t even have any animation for the extra attacks… like you could add some spirit wolves that pounce the target every time an impact happens. For Spvp atleast, the only two good stances are the heal and the dolyak stance… and the dolyak stance doesn’t even work at the moment so I can’t even be sure if it’s that good. I would wish for a rework of the stances. Stances being an aura of sorts but you only have 1 at a time would be more satisfying than what we got at the moment. They feel rushed and as if very little thought went into them. Not saying this is the case, but it’s how it feels.

• 4. Very inconsistent what trait and shout works and doesn’t work in beastmode. S&R shout seems to do nothing, nor do protect me or the warhorn 5 skill and whether or not maul is supposed to give us the 50% dmg on next attack is beyond me, it works whenever it wants to which is almost never. I think you need to edit the tooltip of all these pet skills and traits to reflect what they do in beastmode so that it’s clear to the player. Now all we can do is guess. It is here it truly starts to feel as if this elite needed more time.

• 5. Often beastmode skills feel weaker than an Auto Attack. This should not be the case, especially not for the pure attack skills. If these skills with cooldown don’t feel as if they’re worth using, than honestly there’s no point to making this elite spec at all, since we’ll just not bother entering beastmode and might aswel sloth a core trait line or druid.

• 6. The elite spec lacks focus and has some weird traits and abilities. Moa stance increases boon duration, but ranger does not have nearly enough tools to share boons, this elite spec gave us almost nothing on that field. The dagger seems the perform poor on both power and condi, perhaps tries to do both but fails at both. There is random life-leech thrown into the spec that triggers on poison, but scales off power… power builds won’t use weapons with poison on this class, so who’s going to use this trait?

I seem more negative than positive, but it’s easier to explain the flaws that I personally see. The good aspects are just feelings I get, things that feel nice in spite of all the negative aspects I can find. I enjoy ranger, and this spec gives more ranger… but it should not give more ranger. It should give us SOULBEAST. With work, I am sure this spec can feel unique but right now it just feels like a mess that is fun to play with for a while, but will get frustrating if it gets released like this.

Some suggestions I can come up with:

• 1. As mentioned before, make dagger feel more fluent and add new animations to atleast skill 2 and skill 3, preferably to all. Ranger has gotten so few of that with druid (0).

• 2. Make this spec primarly power focused or condi focused, don’t go 50% effort in both directions. It fails to satisfy either sides. I personally would prefer a more power focused approach since core ranger has very good condi, but lacks in power aspects (in pve anyway, in pvp all can work somewhat, but gets overshadowed by druid ofc).

• 3. A trait like Predator’s Cunning should really scale of condi damage since it’s based around poison. You could make it so that every thick of poison adds a little extra damaged that scales lightly with condition damage and that heals the ranger, or just make the flat damage scale that way.

• 4. Stances just need a rework. They need to feel more unique. Dolyak stance is good (if it would work) but feels like a slightly better version of traits found elsewhere in the game. Perhaps make stances a perma effect, an aura of sorts that only 1 can be active of at a time. Right now I feel nobody will use these. For example “One wolf pack could grant you and allies an extra attack every second, which would be a spirit wolf leaping at the enemy.” This would look cool and fit the name of the stance too. You’d feel like a wolf pack.

5. Some petskills in beastmode need a little bit extra. Birds’s swiftness to nearby allies seems lackluster especially if pve is going to have mounts. Also, make sure that every pet skill is worth using over weapon skills, because else the pets that don’t have that, will be neglected.

And meanwhile we are pumping out mediocre melee damage…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE

The sad part is with 4ish weeks to go this is probably how the soul beast ships. They are probably in bug squash mode so there wont be any substantial changes. I’m really beginning to consider refund.

Useless spec.

Worthless utilities in PvE, so we’ll still use spirits. Most of the pet skills are incredibly undertuned.

Worse of all, the bonus attributes are a joke. 200 power and 150 ferocity do not come close to making up for the 2-3k DPS loss of a pet.

Hard to give feedback while in demo mode. The only good news is that they released everyone at the same time. Last time, as we all know, the Druid was last and suffered. Lots of quick changes and hot fixes.

Personally I am tired of masteries. The new stuff with our class isn’t bad but it also has not made me say ohhh, take my money. I think that is what I find rather interesting this go around. Mount isn’t going to do that much for me. It won’t be allowed more or less in WvW. I don’t see a WvW overhaul. I didn’t notice any new animations. I’m honestly wondering what would make me say:

“kitten , that was fun”.

I’ve just not seen it this time.

Swagger.1459:

And meanwhile we are pumping out mediocre melee damage…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE

holy kitten wtf? LOL

AEFA.9035:

Swagger.1459:

And meanwhile we are pumping out mediocre melee damage…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE

holy kitten wtf? LOL

It’s just utterly absurd! ANet needs some malevolent testers.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

AEFA.9035:

Swagger.1459:

And meanwhile we are pumping out mediocre melee damage…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE

holy kitten wtf? LOL

It’s just utterly absurd! ANet needs some malevolent testers.

Favoured classes by ANet: Warrior, Thief, Engi. Repeat.

I really liked the elite class soul beast, I managed to adapt the builds in a way that I had a lot of fun, people who are complaining about soul beast is because they did not learn the mechanics, but the damages for example of f1 and f2 of the wyverns when absolved is very weak, What has discouraged me, I liked the new pets but I prefer the pets hots, also need to improve the attributes when absolving the pets, also the trait of the second column left me with no option of choice because I do not use protection, I do not use quickness or poison .. ..

In the most irenio is to be congratulated, I liked it very much and I intend to use soul beast, so I bought the POF expansion

AEFA.9035:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

AEFA.9035:

Swagger.1459:

And meanwhile we are pumping out mediocre melee damage…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXn0jljaCE

holy kitten wtf? LOL

It’s just utterly absurd! ANet needs some malevolent testers.

Favoured classes by ANet: Warrior, Thief, Engi. Repeat.

You didn’t see the Firebrand doing 50k burn ticks then?

soulbeast my review on it is utility are to high of CD need to cut by 50% an stances need to be made longer.

an beast form need more aoes. that deal damage

Super disappointed with the bird pet gap close. I don’t know if it’s a bug, but it only travels like 450 instead of the listed 1200. Given the length of the precast and aftercast animations, I don’t think this ability is ever worthwhile to use because running is just as effective. At the very least, it needs 900 range and animation times cut in half to make the birds worth taking over other options.

Dagger needs either some damage or further utility love, no way around that. I know this isn’t meant to be a PvE/raid spec, but it’s low even for PvP/WvW standards, and simply the spellbreaker and most vanilla dagger options out-class it in almost every way. People shouldn’t be dependent on using Sic ’Em to get okayish killing potential when engaged in melee on a kit without crazy defensive utility like GS.

Soubeast feels like it’s nearly where it needs to be in terms of the concept as nothing screams overpowered/broken by design (maybe aside from quad stone skin/invuln), but I think it needs some numbers tweaks and some animation cuts to make it reach PvP usability where it was meant to be.

Main hand dagger #3 should have an evade. Attacks are too slow. Dagger feels muddy and lacklustre. Beastmode offers good variation overall. Stances are buggy, especially dolyak.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Was playing full glass LB + GS with Smokescale and Brown Bear.

Won multiple 1v2/3, landed a couple 17k Mauls.

I enjoyed winning the 1vX’s more than I did playing the spec, if that makes sense. 2 more skills and a little more damage didn’t feel very exciting to me.

Also, you can’t combo F4 with Smokescales F2. The field remains after you meld but it doesn’t seem like you can combo with it.

And I’m noticing that I get knocked out of Beastmode sometimes. I may be fat-fingering the F5 but it seems to happen when I’m low health. Willing to accept it may be just me, but just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this as well.

About being kicked out of beastmode while low health, did you “Eternal Bond” trait? If you take damage to be downed, it kicks you out of beastmode and heals you a bit instead.

looks incredibly fine so far the quickness increasing boon duration really makes the protection on dodge worthwile which also heals and has added healing. this kinda makes it so that u don’t need to take both nature magic and beastmastery for sustain. atm testing a wilderniss survival dagger/dagger shortbow ibogu build and the sustain is nicely balanced with the condi damage so build.

Some few improvements

>We need some kind of damage mitigation on main hand dagger even damage reduction or protection on dagger would suffice.

>Reduce the cooldwn of beast mode by half or make pet swapping possible in beast mode. we kinda need to swap pets on demand. I expect the latter to be a bit too much and lore wise kinda strange to swap pets with a pet u just melded with so a cooldown reduction would suffice.

> I see potential for a nice utility support based class. however the stances need a bit more sustain to make it more likeable over surival utilities and signets.

give all stances protection by default. or allow stances to share offensive boons+effects currently already present on you. that would make it synergyse well with the you gain all boons of your pet in beast mode. this allows for another bruiser esque support soul beast to be born.

anyways IBOGU is awsome as hell.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Well, some shouts work in Beastmode, others don’t.

Sic ’Em applies the buff to you, WHaO copies boons on yourself, SotP grants yourself might when you strike a foe, and Protect Me taunts the next foe that strikes you.

Search & Rescue and Guard do nothing at the moment.

Very interesting for Sick-em to work on you!
May consider going a BM shout build for that 40% dps spike!

DeceiverX.8361:

Super disappointed with the bird pet gap close. I don’t know if it’s a bug, but it only travels like 450 instead of the listed 1200. Given the length of the precast and aftercast animations, I don’t think this ability is ever worthwhile to use because running is just as effective. At the very least, it needs 900 range and animation times cut in half to make the birds worth taking over other options.

Ya, bird swoop is garbage. It’s also not a functional leap like Monarch Flight so you get stuck on any objects along your path. There’s no little hop like GS Swoop, you just sort of slide along the ground.

I tried to use it to leap off the cliffs in Alpine Borderlands spawn and you fall strait down when you reach the edge. It doesn’t generate any momentum at all.

Played it in WvW tonight and I gotta say, while Moa and Dolyak stance sound great on paper, Soulbeast is really something that would have only been good 2 years ago when HoT dropped.

Bringing some stab and resistance is absolutely nothing to the massive amount of area control that Scourge and Spellbreaker bring.

Also, Bear Stance is pretty crappy compared to a traited Trolls when it comes to both healing and removing conditions.

It absolutely needs either greater spike healing or a shorter cooldown. 25s for less than 5k health is pretty bad when your stab evaporates from all the scourge corruptions and warrior bubbles ripping boons.

Substance E.4852:

…Ya, bird swoop is garbage. It’s also not a functional leap like Monarch Flight so you get stuck on any objects along your path. There’s no little hop like GS Swoop, you just sort of slide along the ground.

I tried to use it to leap off the cliffs in Alpine Borderlands spawn and you fall strait down when you reach the edge. It doesn’t generate any momentum at all.

I wish I could have seen that

I’m insanely bored by this spec and won’t even play the rest of the preview.

Hypothesis: Because elite specs are meant to change the playstyle, they turn off players who chose the original profession UNLESS they are purely upgrades like tempest or reaper were, which didn’t change the class at all but merely upgraded them.

Because SB and druid are distinctly different, they are also incredibly unpopular amongst ranger mains.

Fluffball.8307:

I’m insanely bored by this spec and won’t even play the rest of the preview.

Hypothesis: Because elite specs are meant to change the playstyle, they turn off players who chose the original profession UNLESS they are purely upgrades like tempest or reaper were, which didn’t change the class at all but merely upgraded them.

Because SB and druid are distinctly different, they are also incredibly unpopular amongst ranger mains.

What do you think could help mate?

I think having the pet swap traits proc from entering/exiting and making the skills more fluid would help a lot, from what I have seen, have not played it at all myself. Hopefully by the time I can, it is improved somewhat. That said, it still looks pretty good to me personally.

Crapgame.6519:

Hard to give feedback while in demo mode. The only good news is that they released everyone at the same time. Last time, as we all know, the Druid was last and suffered. Lots of quick changes and hot fixes.

Personally I am tired of masteries. The new stuff with our class isn’t bad but it also has not made me say ohhh, take my money. I think that is what I find rather interesting this go around. Mount isn’t going to do that much for me. It won’t be allowed more or less in WvW. I don’t see a WvW overhaul. I didn’t notice any new animations. I’m honestly wondering what would make me say:

“kitten , that was fun”.

I’ve just not seen it this time.

what are you rambling about man? you sound depressed. Druid was completely broken OP on release. we could aoe daze people for 6 seconds, spam blinds, and generate perma avatar.

In PvE I believe that the Soulbeast will replace the Core Condition ranger, which has fallen off due to pet bleed proc nerfs.

Furious strength needs to improve condition damage as well, unless it already does. Other then that the spec gives us ideally for this PvE condi build:
- 5% damage and condition damage
- 10% damage and 10% condition duration
- 200 condition damage stat
- 100 precision stat
- weapon skills self buff.

Perhaps this will happen.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

What do you think could help mate?

It doesn’t necessarily need help. I am so turned off I don’t have an eye for balance, much like I HATED druid at first.

I don’t LIKE either. They could both be amazing. I ASSUME it’s a colossal step forward in PvP but I just can’t drag myself into a match, so boring.

Fluffball.8307:

I’m insanely bored by this spec and won’t even play the rest of the preview.

Hypothesis: Because elite specs are meant to change the playstyle, they turn off players who chose the original profession UNLESS they are purely upgrades like tempest or reaper were, which didn’t change the class at all but merely upgraded them.

Because SB and druid are distinctly different, they are also incredibly unpopular amongst ranger mains.

I think the biggest problem is the whole class archetype seems to be pigeonholed into this “sustain dodge troll” design and it just gets tiresome to play that year after year.

Druid and Soulbeast might superficially feel ‘different’ but they both perform at their best when played defensively as sustain just like the ranger always has. Our best builds always seem to be some kind of bunker/sustain build (spirit bunker, regen build, mender’s druid, ect)

Other classes often genuinely feel like their elite specs give a new way to play the class while ours always seem like a new way to do the exact same things.

Sb just feels like base ranger with access to a few more pet skills.

It’s still an improvement, but most of my hype is gone and I really don’t have much hope for Anet to buff up it’s short comings but I absolutely expect a lot of it’s damage output via gazelle and sic em to be nerfed.

I honestly can’t even see myself slotting Soulbeast in the expansions overworld areas which is really sad.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Has anyone tested if Oppressive Superiority is by % or by raw numbers? I would if I was able to log in but can’t.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6ujle9/soulbeast_oppressive_superiority_testing/

Here is some thoughts i had after about 6 hours of Soulbeast gameplay in WvW, PvP and against the poor, poor Golems in PvP Lobby.

The Dagger weapon is … not good. It’s a joke, to be completely honest.
It can’t compete with the sword. It cant even compete with the Greatsword. It cant even outdps Mainhand Axe. And that is a problem.
The power portion of the weapon is just… not there.
Then we take a look at the condi aspect, and see single stacks of bleed with a 3s duration (untraited) which is, …ehhh. And suddenly there is poison on there.
The Dagger 2 is just. “okay”. it is there, it feels boring. cooldown is way too long for what it actually does
Dagger 3 is supposed to be a gapcloser. too bad that a dodgeroll covers more ground than dagger 3. Cooldown is too long

And too top all that off, Dagger feels CLUNKY A.F. I’m sorry, did i miss something? My Greatsword feels way more fluid than a dagger, and it is supposed to be what, 20 times bigger than that dagger and way like 100 times more? The way the dagger currently handles and feels just make me want to put it under “not touching that ever again”

The dagger autoattack chain feels slow, overly long, clunky. Necro dagger Auto chain feels WAY better, and that one already feels slow.
It needs to be faster, more fluid, and feel like more impact, because tbh, your character doesnt move AT ALL when you use the autoattack chain, it feels like you just hold your weapon out in front of you, and the enemy runs into it on their own. REALLY disappointed in the dagger as a weapon.
Please make it more fluid, give it more mobility, Give it the same movement that the sword has. (sword feels like what dagger SHOULD feel like….). If Dagger doesnt get reworked before launch, it will be another never used weapon of the ranger.

Concerning Beastmode, i like it. some beastmode skills are a bit slow. Needs more fluidity.

Concerning Stances. Oh Boy. OH BOY. Who even thought of that. Who woke up one morning and said: “hey, i got a great idea, let’s give ranger stances. but let’s make them totally boring and uninteresting and also useless most of the time”.
Moa stance okay. Dolyak stance good idea. The rest are wasted utility slots. Flat out.
Bear stance: Heal is okay. Ongoing effect is just WAY too short. 4s of “loose one condition every second” is… not good. my Healing Spring does the Same, but also grants regeneration on top, AND lasts longer.
Dolyak stance: I cant believe you took our signet for that, but it’s okay. Cooldown is way too long for a 6s stability skill. Retaliation doesnt fit thematically, i’d rather see protection, but whatever. At least it’s a stunbreak
Moa stance: Good stance, but why does it give protection? And the duration increase on boons is kinda weird, but whatever.
Griffon stance: Ranger has more than enough vigor, more than enough evasion abilities, this stance is just flat out not needed. Gaining 1 stack of might when you evade an attack is just a joke. There is minor traits that do better things on dodge, and they dont eat a utility slot. i’d rather see heal on dodge, or attack speed on dodge, something that fits thematically with the griffon. Right now it’s just a waste of a skill.
Vulture stance would be fine, but it doesnt last long enough… i’d rather have it last 8s instead of 6, but i guess you know what you are doing cough
One Wolf Pack: The idea is good. The extra dmg is meh. But ranger elites have never been good anyways, so who cares. This is …not worth it. in pvp you will want strength of the pact or entangle, in pve it’s strength of the pact, in wvw it’s strength of the pact… oh, i see a pattern here… you took out stability signet and gave us a stance that doesnt last long enough.
The idea of extra dmg is good. sharing it sounds also good. but the 1s delay on it just makes it feel so so so lackluster, i dont know where you are going with this elite, because it doesnt make sense thematically

Right now i am only disappointed in the Soulbeast. Beastmode is cool, But the stances feel weak, the dagger is boring and clunky AND weak, and some of the beast abilities feel like they were rushed and don’t feel good.

Anet, do yourself and us a favour and take this remaining month to redo the soulbeast’s utilities and weapon completely, then it might become an actually good elitespec. Right now it’s a boring clunky mess.

Where i see soulbeast? Apart from in the trashcan, it is a solo-pve spec. Druid offers so much more for every type of group, and i promise, Glyph of Empowerment is a higher dps increase for the group than one wolf pack, with a lower cooldown, and better traits for it.
In raids, maybe condi soulbeast. i doubt it though.
In wvw, maybe in roaming, but it wont feel as good as druid. druid feels smother, more fluid, and flat out stronger.

tl;dr: Soulbeast feels clunky, the dagger is bad, stances are partly great, partly a joke, the beastmode is okay. Needs work, needs lots of work!

Ps: i am sorry if i sound angry or desperate, but by now it’s been 5 years in guild wars 2, 5 years of maining ranger, and i get disappointed again and again. I was happy to get an offensive spec after we got druid last time, but this is overall just not a good spec, and i am disappointed and sad. Can’t a girl have some actual buffs please? Q_Q

Also is it normal that the icons for Dagger#1 third and fourth AA are the same ? Feels weird on top of the clunkyness of the weapon.

Having finally gotten my hands on it for a few hours, all I can say is disappointing.

Part of it is just straight up core weapons suck in the PvP meta. Half your ranged burst it swallowed or reflected by some field that every other classes drops every other time they blink or do something, and you end up spending most of your time trying to bait people into a melee combo with a faceroll Smokescale or Gazelle F1-F2-F3 into GS maul.

It’s clunky, you’re forced into Jacaranda as your other pet for sustain, it’s bugged so sometimes pets and even players disappear from existence when entering/exiting Beastmode and the most important utility Stance doesn’t work right now.

A few hours into it and I was back to using Druid with new pets.

The good news is, Stance Boons do share, which means WvW Soulbeast can secure a position in organized parties. But in PvP? You’re forced into wombo style gameplay with poor pressure, so you have to just throw everything at damage spike.

It’s not weak, it’s just neither strong nor particularly effective.

It needs LOTS of TLC and mechanic smoothing. EVERY utility needs to work in and out of Beastmode for starters.

Again, a large part of it is that a lot of the spec relies on core Ranger and most of core Ranger’s weapons feel outdated.

I’m genuinely not trying to kill people’s hype but that was just a poor, poor gameplay quality. For the sake of design and balance I hope that once the initial hype dies down for you guys, you see that it’s only good in theory, and that Soulbeast is actually really bad and in a really bad spot in practice.

Meanwhile some of these classes are insane. Holosmith and Spellbreaker, and even Scourge are incredibly well done, and playing most other elite speces feels very night and day between their quality and Soulbeast.

fingers crossed for a working Dolyak Stance

So our spec is crap, has anyone played other specs like the guaridian one or non ele/warrior ones to compare to? Obviously there is balance to be done.

Fluffball.8307:

So our spec is crap, has anyone played other specs like the guaridian one or non ele/warrior ones to compare to? Obviously there is balance to be done.

I haven’t but word on the street is Scourge is ridiculously good and apparently both Deadeye and Holosmith are putting out raid boss damage levels without even trying.

Spellbreaker is going to be a complete game changer in WvW.

Not sure about Mesmer or Elementalist since they always act like their stuff sucks even when it’s amazing.

Rev seems like the only class that got shafted harder than we did.

I do not think its crap. It is under tuned and it has some bugs.

But quite honestly, I think that Druid is the best spec when we look across the whole game. It makes us relevant in Raids, Fractals, PvE open world, PvP and WvW.

It also covers the support/utility and bruiser roles quite well. What we need the SB to be is the DPS class

Fluffball.8307:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

What do you think could help mate?

It doesn’t necessarily need help. I am so turned off I don’t have an eye for balance, much like I HATED druid at first.

I don’t LIKE either. They could both be amazing. I ASSUME it’s a colossal step forward in PvP but I just can’t drag myself into a match, so boring.

I don’t understand how you can like core ranger, yet call Soulbeast “boring”. I can totally understand not liking it, but it’s got MORE options than Ranger. Not your style? Very likely. Boring? I just don’t see it.

jcbroe.4329:

Having finally gotten my hands on it for a few hours, all I can say is disappointing.

Part of it is just straight up core weapons suck in the PvP meta. Half your ranged burst it swallowed or reflected by some field that every other classes drops every other time they blink or do something, and you end up spending most of your time trying to bait people into a melee combo with a faceroll Smokescale or Gazelle F1-F2-F3 into GS maul.

It’s clunky, you’re forced into Jacaranda as your other pet for sustain, it’s bugged so sometimes pets and even players disappear from existence when entering/exiting Beastmode and the most important utility Stance doesn’t work right now.

A few hours into it and I was back to using Druid with new pets.

The good news is, Stance Boons do share, which means WvW Soulbeast can secure a position in organized parties. But in PvP? You’re forced into wombo style gameplay with poor pressure, so you have to just throw everything at damage spike.

It’s not weak, it’s just neither strong nor particularly effective.

It needs LOTS of TLC and mechanic smoothing. EVERY utility needs to work in and out of Beastmode for starters.

Again, a large part of it is that a lot of the spec relies on core Ranger and most of core Ranger’s weapons feel outdated.

I’m genuinely not trying to kill people’s hype but that was just a poor, poor gameplay quality. For the sake of design and balance I hope that once the initial hype dies down for you guys, you see that it’s only good in theory, and that Soulbeast is actually really bad and in a really bad spot in practice.

Meanwhile some of these classes are insane. Holosmith and Spellbreaker, and even Scourge are incredibly well done, and playing most other elite speces feels very night and day between their quality and Soulbeast.

fingers crossed for a working Dolyak Stance

Spellbreaker is a pretty terrible pve spec though.
Their main-hand dagger is really weak, weaker than even ours.
Their off-hand dagger is alot better, with decent burst, aoe, and utility.

I can see spellbreaker be a game changer in high-end pvp because people are forced to fight in small area, but in pve I don’t think it’s a good spec.
It probably can be a tank with full counter in raid, who knows, but the point is don’t use main-hand dagger.

I played for hours now and my first feeling is that soulbeast is hard to take in hands. I kind of like it cuz it’s challenging and I first thought that rangers veterans would be rewarded.

I try to play as fast as I can with my rotations and combos but it’s a lot of pain for a little resulst (power build with sword / axe and dagger / warhorn). I have now 15 hotkeys to use and way too much things to think all the time at the same time : weapons skills, usual pet management, pet’s F2, enter / exit beast mode, swap pet, swap weapons again and again … It’s too much management really. I mean how can you fight a thief who only needs two professions hotkeys to burst you down ?

The management is too much for the little RESULT in terms of damage, like everybody said pet skills while in beastmode are way too weak (felins are absolutely useless as an exemple) AND the management is too much for the insane LACK of FLUIDITY it provides. The CD on entering / exiting beastmode, and most of the cast time on the new skills break everything. I agree with everybody else about dagger and stances. The new pets are very nice (the sand lion is on the side and a bit weak), I like the fact that they will also work with core ranger and druid. Gazelle, jacaranda and smokescale, I feel like I don’t need any of the other pets with beastmode.

Soulbeast feels terribly clunky.

Dagger is a waste of a main-hand weapon. Who came up with this?

But to be honest, I mostly played power soulbeast. The problems for me are mainly:

1. Too many swaps with too many gates. We got weapon swap which is fine. but we also got pet swap, wich is now gated behind the soulbeast mechanic. While before I could swap the pets for F2 (in PvE mostly for break bar), I now have to leave beast mode and swap to use F2 – wasting time and putting beast mode on cooldown…

I don’t get ANet’s desire to put a cooldown on everything, especially on a class that has two swaps with cooldowns already. Why does beast mode have a 10 sec cooldown? Put the cooldown on traits related to it. Let us jump us in and out of beast mode at any time to actually achieve a fluid gameplay.

Just too many gates, too many cooldowns, too many steps to achieve the same result as before. I understand that the dev’s want us to make decisions. But the way that soulbeast plays does feel more like avoiding decisions.

2. Stances suck. No idea if I will ever once use even one of them. Shout+signet/spirit outclasses them for power gameplay IMO.

3. Traits: If we take beastmastery can we please get the 25% runspeed for the character all the time instead of just in beast mode? Who came up with the current trait and thought it would be a cool idea?

This just for a start.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Just too many gates, too many cooldowns, too many steps to achieve the same result as before. I understand that the dev’s want us to make decisions. But the way that soulbeast plays does feel more like avoiding decisions.

This just for a start.

The CD on enter/exit beastmode have no purpose outside of breaking any kind of fluidity. It’s a good idea, merge the 10 sec Cd with Unstoppable Union, a little price to pay if you want a breakstun. The base CD have to be removed.

Pterikdactyl.7630:

It’s hard to test anything honestly, but I’m loving GS w/ Rock Gazelle and Smokescale.

Same but with sw/wh.
It rocks atm..

The tool tips are completely inadequate. There are so many questions about what traits and skill do what when merged with the pet, we can’t see half of them. I simply don’t know what half of the ranger skills or traits do because they were built around the pet. What does Empathic Bond do? Shared Anguish? Guard? It’s difficult to test anything without tool tips.

Some traits which should work with beast mode simply don’t. The BM line has a minor that reduces pet skill recharge by 20% but does nothing for beast mode skills. The same with skills.

It desperately needs a pet swap while in beast mode. Transitioning to a second pet’s beast skills feels absolutely terrible and clunky, I didn’t even bother because it took too long. More important there are so many traits which activate on pet swap that simply do nothing when merged with your pet and that actually creates situations where there is no good trait to bring on some lines (like BM GM trait where you have an axe trait, a pet swap trait and a pet taunt trait – a longbow ranger in WvW doesn’t want any of these while in beast mode and they don’t want to leave beast mode 99% of the time).

Beast abilities are way too restrictive to specific weapon types. What is a ranged power build supposed to bring? Worldly Impact is useless to me when I’m constantly at 1500 range with my longbow. I would even consider using the support skill Spiritual Reprieve except it’s locked to pets that don’t have the Ferocious buff. So when I’m in WvW with a longbow I’m simply never using my Beast skill, or only using it when I’m jumped on by a thief, which simply feels wrong. Why is there no ranged skill option for ferocious pets?

Lots of pet skills in Beast Mode from core pets don’t translate well to this new system. Most of the core pets which give the Deadly (condi) buff don’t actually inflict conditions on their Beast Mode skills. There seems to be very few pets at all which actually give you condition DPS skills and the ones that do usually only give one (Iboga is the only one that gives two that I saw). So many skills we get aren’t that interesting to use.

The Beast Mode aura cuts through the body of a charr because unlike humans (the default in this game) charr are hunched over. It’s weird using a skill like bite on a charr and instead of biting, he shoves his palm forward.

I’m concerned about Oppressive Superiority. It’s absolutely useless in 99% of PvE because everything has more health than a player. The same thing will be for Vulture Stance’s ability to give us more ways to inflict poison. I thought Soulbeast was finally going to be a DPS spec for ranger, especially when core ranger condi was nerfed in the last balance patch, but I’m very concerned after seeing the dagger in play and the PvP oriented design of traits and skills like OS and VS.

I’m beginning to agree with others that I don’t think elite specs have been very good to ranger. Druid was a healer tacked onto ranger and Soulbeast doesn’t do enough to make up for giving up a pet, nor does transitioning between pet and Beast Mode feel good if you try to make use of both. I wish they had simply worked on core ranger and strengthened that. Beastmode feels like a cool concept that falls far short of what it tries to be.

borya.2964:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Just too many gates, too many cooldowns, too many steps to achieve the same result as before. I understand that the dev’s want us to make decisions. But the way that soulbeast plays does feel more like avoiding decisions.

This just for a start.

The CD on enter/exit beastmode have no purpose outside of breaking any kind of fluidity. It’s a good idea, merge the 10 sec Cd with Unstoppable Union, a little price to pay if you want a breakstun. The base CD have to be removed.

We need a pet swap on BM or no cd at all.

How come Anet yet again brings their new stuff for public testing so short before the acutal release will take place? When we see so many things in need of fixing, and this right here is just for our class? Why do they keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
If they don’t want to have a public test server, they for sure needs to get a much bigger QA team, and they need to have more time to actually test and balance things.
The expansion is in a alpha/beta status right now – do they actually believe they’ll be able to fix all of this before release?

OGDeadHead.8326:

How come Anet yet again brings their new stuff for public testing so short before the acutal release will take place? When we see so many things in need of fixing, and this right here is just for our class? Why do they keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
If they don’t want to have a public test server, they for sure needs to get a much bigger QA team, and they need to have more time to actually test and balance things.
The expansion is in a alpha/beta status right now – do they actually believe they’ll be able to fix all of this before release?

what they need it tomtake some of us and make them quality\beta testers.

Obviously the people is testing now the classes (as a whole) do not use\take ranger ro simply they don’t care.

Some of us would do a greater job to point out deficiencies or improvements when they can be done, so the class can be pushed to be enjoyable. Now it seems like a complete waste of time because it requires a lot of work to save face. I mean oh come on, some astoundingly obvious bugs like the pet swap shouldn’t had being transferred to production systems like never.

My gosh with he lazy development….

Looking at the Soulbeast from a PvE perspective its skills lack the impact they need to perform its role. Going by its skills and traits it is a DPS with capability for support, but is undertuned to the point where it cannot perform this or any role competitively.

Beast abilities are weak. They should feel impactful to use, not around the strength of an auto-attack.

Do they want us to use stances as support or not? First they make us choose between 10% damage and 10% condition duration or support stances, then they cut their duration in half, and only a 360 radius? Maybe if stances were effective support and DPS was improved this would be a competitive specialization.

Live Fast could apply its effect to all 3 beastmeld skills, not just F3, with maybe a reduced 2s of quickness and 4s fury.

Twice as Vicious needs some work. It’s useless against enemies who have breakbars and is fairly weak, only giving a 5% damage increase for 4 seconds. It could use a buff, and weakening a break bar should trigger its effect.

Fresh Reinforcement should be a baseline effect of beastmeld.

Dagger damage needs a buff. It feels rather underwhelming, especially as a melee weapon.

One Wolf Pack could apply a short duration of bleeding to make it work better with the hybrid nature of the class, even if that means a reduction in the physical damage.

Pet swap effects should trigger upon entering and exiting beastmeld, or they should allow pet swapping while in beastmeld.

The cooldown of beastmeld needs to be lowered or eliminated.

anduriell.6280:

OGDeadHead.8326:

How come Anet yet again brings their new stuff for public testing so short before the acutal release will take place? When we see so many things in need of fixing, and this right here is just for our class? Why do they keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
If they don’t want to have a public test server, they for sure needs to get a much bigger QA team, and they need to have more time to actually test and balance things.
The expansion is in a alpha/beta status right now – do they actually believe they’ll be able to fix all of this before release?

what they need it tomtake some of us and make them quality\beta testers.

Obviously the people is testing now the classes (as a whole) do not use\take ranger ro simply they don’t care.

Some of us would do a greater job to point out deficiencies or improvements when they can be done, so the class can be pushed to be enjoyable. Now it seems like a complete waste of time because it requires a lot of work to save face. I mean oh come on, some astoundingly obvious bugs like the pet swap shouldn’t had being transferred to production systems like never.

My gosh with he lazy development….

They need more destructive/malevolent testers ones who purely try and break the game with combinations, otherwise balance is impossible. Either that, or actually utilise the forums because we will find these combos in 10 mins.

Gonna say it again, a measly 200+150 stat buff does not come even close to making up for the loss of dps from the pet.

200 power and 150 ferocity does not equal 2-3k DPS. This is pathetic.

Please try to get someone who knows math when designing elite specs.

Like most others here I haven’t really been wow-ed by SB yet. I’m in WvW more or less just playing it like I was doing ranger before. A few things are nice – I like SotP granting us might, I like +7% damage from Fury. I am one of the crowd who never really liked pets so I enjoy not having one, though I’m not yet convienced it’s worth losing them (other than WvW zerging which I imagine it quite fun on SB, that’s next on my to-do list).

I still feel I need to take Skirm + WK which limits what else I can do.

One thing I love though in the Lashtail Devourer.. There’s something deeply enjoyable about using it with Shortbow and LR. Kite for dys with a knockback and and evade backwards and it is a lot of fun

Zenith.7301:

Gonna say it again, a measly 200+150 stat buff does not come even close to making up for the loss of dps from the pet.

200 power and 150 ferocity does not equal 2-3k DPS. This is pathetic.

Please try to get someone who knows math when designing elite specs.

How many times does it need to be repeated? You are not supposed to stay permanent in beastmode.
It is not a petless ranger. Get over it.