Guild Wars 2

Returning player here, so far I have the impression that everything you do with soulbeast can be done with core ranger with the exact same skills.

One of the things I dislike most about ranger|druid is that neither is suitable for zerg play in WvW, except by perhaps the top 1-5% of the ranger/druid player base. From my preliminary testing, Soulbeast looks to continue this sad trend.

It would be nice to have a ranger spec that is good at dealing AoE damage, so that it can be useful and meta or at least acceptable in zerg play. Sadly, if you show up to a WvW zerg with a ranger or druid, you are not likely to be contributing very much to the zerg, and in some cases are likely to get kicked or asked to bring something more acceptable/useful.

Anet, please give us a ranger spec that is going to be suitable for more than just roaming in WvW.

Also, Incinerator does not have nice/cool effects on Soulbeast. It looks actually like the Incinerator effects are disabled.

I’m really sorry you guys. I don’t main a ranger, but my wife does, and i was really hoping that once we got our hands on Soulbeast that it was going to be better than this. :/

I don’t know why Anet seems to hate ya’ll ranger mains. I really don’t. I’m kinda hoping the other elites get a serious nerf to some of their damage right now because its frankly insane.

Miellyn.6847:

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.

“My name Miellyn, and I fear options and hate when other people ask for them.”

This elite spec is the perfect opportunity to provide ranger players with a petless option. They need to fix it. Beast form needs pet swap, some minor stat improvements, and a visual noise reduction.

I don’t even main a ranger, so this isn’t an emotional topic for me. It’s just common sense.

I’m a casual WvW player. Ranger was my first character, and like many, wanted a build that could work well in zergs where AoE damage is a necessity. Axe skill 5 would have been great if you were allowed to move while using it. Anyways, soulbeast. This is exactly what I have been waiting for. AoE condition damage of vulture stance seems ok but range could be better. Healing stance works well, especially with so much condis being used these days. Survivability is ok with me. As long as you remember you are not a tank and can’t blow through bombs, you are fine. Axes and greatsword are what I like in zerg play, and it seems to work out fine. I haven’t tried the dagger main hand so can’t comment on that.
Keep the general mechanic here as is, and just tweak things here and there. The perma transformation is perfect—don’t use the adrenaline style like in druid, I hate that.
I like the bristleback AoE skills. And, many of the other animals have some neat skills so you can adjust your play as needed. Can’t find the new pets to charm anywhere and try them out. What am I missing?
Anyways, I certainly appreciate all the hard work here, and hope you guys keep up the work. The ranger is now 3/4 fixed, if not more, for WvW and I am very very happy. People need to really try it and hopefully commanders will be less salty towards it.
The green cloud animation is a bit thick on my computer—you could make it less dense.
I like the lightning effect, that’s cool.

Spiritual Retrieve and Worldly impact both need shorter cast times. Wordly impact needs a larger AoE. 240 is too low for that type of skill.

Miellyn.6847:

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.

Look this is what you’re saying:
-Beastmode is a complete dmg loss, unless you use an F skill in it.
This means: NEVER go into beastmode, unless you want to immediately use an F skill.
This means: 90% of the time, play vanilla core Ranger, with an additional annoying mechanic that makes the pet AI now even more clueless and useless when spawned/despawned .

Imo that is just bad game design.

yeah, you lose both the pet and its F2 skill completely. The only saving grace for Beastmode is that skills/utilities/traits that appy to the pet now apply to the Ranger in Beastmode.

people want the spec for being petless Ranger, if it can’t deliver on that, then people simply won’t buy the expansion.

Eponet.4829:

The bird beastmode skill Swoop moves a much shorter distance than the 1,200 range that is listed on the tool-tip.

Just made a thread on our forward mobility. It would be awesome if we had something other than greatsword 3 to propel us forward. 1200 distance would be amazing, hell, even 600 haha

Miellyn.6847:

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.

Try to think for once. Time spent in beast mode is DPS loss, regardless of whether you stay there 2 seconds or 2 minutes.

A godkitten class mechanic should not be costing you DPS. That’s exactly why shatters are trash for PvE for mesmer outside chrono’s F5.

The thing a lot of people are forgetting here is that if you allow pet swapping while in Beastmode, you’re going to need visual tells for the enemy (PvP/WvW).

If ANet were to allow this, they would need something like an icon that shows what pet you’re currently attuned to (like Revenant and Legends) or some kind of animation like the spirit of the pet appearing above you.

You can’t just swap pets without allowing people to know what you’ve swapped to or it lacks counterplay.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The thing a lot of people are forgetting here is that if you allow pet swapping while in Beastmode, you’re going to need visual tells for the enemy (PvP/WvW).

If ANet were to allow this, they would need something like an icon that shows what pet you’re currently attuned to (like Revenant and Legends) or some kind of animation like the spirit of the pet appearing above you.

You can’t just swap pets without allowing people to know what you’ve swapped to or it lacks counterplay.

Or not. I don’t get why the ranger must be the only game with so many “tells”. the enemy alreayd has the indication with the archetype.

Adenin.5973:

Miellyn.6847:

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.

Look this is what you’re saying:
-Beastmode is a complete dmg loss, unless you use an F skill in it.
This means: NEVER go into beastmode, unless you want to immediately use an F skill.
This means: 90% of the time, play vanilla core Ranger, with an additional annoying mechanic that makes the pet AI now even more clueless and useless when spawned/despawned .

Imo that is just bad game design.

agree

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The thing a lot of people are forgetting here is that if you allow pet swapping while in Beastmode, you’re going to need visual tells for the enemy (PvP/WvW).

If ANet were to allow this, they would need something like an icon that shows what pet you’re currently attuned to (like Revenant and Legends) or some kind of animation like the spirit of the pet appearing above you.

You can’t just swap pets without allowing people to know what you’ve swapped to or it lacks counterplay.

I don’t know how anyone can see anything with the amount of visual clutter and auras and flashes, effects and explosions etc etc going off continuously, I don’t think there is a real need for a tell to let people know what pet is being used.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t know how anyone can see anything with the amount of visual clutter and auras and flashes, effects and explosions etc etc going off continuously, I don’t think there is a real need for a tell to let people know what pet is being used.

Also, remember that it were the devs themselves that decided that they would only give you one single aura for all the pets and archetypes. If they thought that your merged pet does not matter it can’t be brought up now as an argument against pet swapping.

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t know how anyone can see anything with the amount of visual clutter and auras and flashes, effects and explosions etc etc going off continuously, I don’t think there is a real need for a tell to let people know what pet is being used.

Also, remember that it were the devs themselves that decided that they would only give you one single aura for all the pets and archetypes. If they thought that your merged pet does not matter it can’t be brought up now as an argument against pet swapping.

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Not to mention the fact tht if I’m fighting a sb in WvW or PvP, I’m not trying to remember what every pet/pet class can do. I’m just gonna remember that its a soulbeast when they are glowing green and hit them with as much condition damage as possible.

Well, I guess I’m one of the rare people enjoying it. It’s just more of the ranger I love. Same jack of all trades, with a fair few additional tools and combos on demand. It’s fun to play, and doesn’t feel completely unrelated like the final Druid design felt to me. Don’t care much for the dagger or even the stances, but the beast skills and pet traits affecting the ranger while merged are enough to make me a happy bunny. I’m just waiting for the inevitable gutting before seeing the final state ot it all since some skills/pets are obviously overtuned and Anet doesn’t generally do half-measures…

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

Very very disappointed.

Dagger is weak, animations are clunky and basically recycled from other classes.

Stances look nice but half of them are trash and useless (endurance increase? Might when evading? What?)

Traits are weird too. In most cases it’s hard to figure out which you want cause they all are mediocre, for both power and condi there isn’t a spectacular setup.

Beastmode is alright, some of the pet’s abilities are really nice but I feel like playing around being in and out of beastmode is barely affecting ranger’s effectiveness. Just an additional mechanic that you need to follow but there is not enough reward for it.

Overall, definitely the biggest letdown out of all elites. Look at how amazing holosmith is, how deep and complex weaver is, how different scourge is! Soulbeast barely adds anything and half of the things it does add are trash and were not needed.

Unless they seriously buff some of the traits, dagger damage or redesign it partially, ranger will stay where it is now. Might even be in a worse state cause necros seem to rise up with their scourge spec.

Memes about necros are already shared with rangers, I feel after PoF they will be exclusively about rangers.

Someone asked what is the role of soulbeast in GW2? Casual open-world exploration spec – that’s what it is. At least at the moment, it doesn’t seem good for anything else.

Already started playing some other alts more, might need to stop torturing myself and main something else.

Adenin.5973:

Miellyn.6847:

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.

Look this is what you’re saying:
-Beastmode is a complete dmg loss, unless you use an F skill in it.
This means: NEVER go into beastmode, unless you want to immediately use an F skill.
This means: 90% of the time, play vanilla core Ranger, with an additional annoying mechanic that makes the pet AI now even more clueless and useless when spawned/despawned .

Imo that is just bad game design.

This is absolutely incorrect. It makes me think that you haven’t even tried playing it. The damage – particularly burst damage – in beastmode is completely INSANE. It so good in fact that I just don’t see how it can last too long without getting nerfed.

I find the SoulBeast very amusing to play,
But it feel a bit clunky.

The purpose of not giving the ability to swap pet is because they don’t want rangers to stay in Beastmode forever.

Suggestion :

To fix that, they could reward us by entering AND leaving Beastmode, like giving 5 stack Might + Fury. This would synergize well with the trait Unstoppable Union.

However, this still won’t work because there’s no cooldown to leave Beastmode when entering it. Only to re-enter it after leaving it (~10s). It would feel much more fluid to split this cooldown, 6s cooldown when entering Beastmode and 6s when leaving it. And this would work better with the reward of entering/leaving Beastmode. With maybe a trait that could reduce it to 4~5s.

The pet swap while in Beastmode would share its cooldown with the normal pet swap.

Once that is done we could have pet swap while in Beastmode and the SoulBeast gameplay would be way more fluid.

Trait line are really clunky too. I mean, check the Weaver, there’s clearly a path to go more superspeed oriented build that synergize with Fresh Air Trait and an other to go more dual attack oriented build. I would like to see that with the Soulbeast. ex: quickness oriented, beastmode oriented, condition oriented, etc

Corwin.6397:

Very very disappointed.

Dagger is weak, animations are clunky and basically recycled from other classes.

Stances look nice but half of them are trash and useless (endurance increase? Might when evading? What?)

Traits are weird too. In most cases it’s hard to figure out which you want cause they all are mediocre, for both power and condi there isn’t a spectacular setup.

Beastmode is alright, some of the pet’s abilities are really nice but I feel like playing around being in and out of beastmode is barely affecting ranger’s effectiveness. Just an additional mechanic that you need to follow but there is not enough reward for it.

Overall, definitely the biggest letdown out of all elites. Look at how amazing holosmith is, how deep and complex weaver is, how different scourge is! Soulbeast barely adds anything and half of the things it does add are trash and were not needed.

Unless they seriously buff some of the traits, dagger damage or redesign it partially, ranger will stay where it is now. Might even be in a worse state cause necros seem to rise up with their scourge spec.

Memes about necros are already shared with rangers, I feel after PoF they will be exclusively about rangers.

Someone asked what is the role of soulbeast in GW2? Casual open-world exploration spec – that’s what it is. At least at the moment, it doesn’t seem good for anything else.

Already started playing some other alts more, might need to stop torturing myself and main something else.

Agree with you on this one, ANet has a choice to either buff soulbeast to some degree not all traits, or revisit some of our core traits like kittenty marksmanship trait line cough all 3 master traits, all trash. Skirmishing and others are there, but how do you combine them with Soulbeast? I only have 1 build that I enjoy and Soulbeast is not even needed, sure we have a one trick phony power build with new specialization, but look at Guardian new spec, Thief, Warrior, and Godlike HOLOSMASH. WTF moving holosmacking shield that blows up in your face? wth and we cant do that with whirling defense? and whats with Wordly Impact in slow motion i thought if you trait this with Beastly Warden it would Taunt right away, but no it happens when you land which is like after 1hr after. not buying expansion till new skill patch

cafard.8953:

Well, I guess I’m one of the rare people enjoying it. It’s just more of the ranger I love. Same jack of all trades, with a fair few additional tools and combos on demand. It’s fun to play, and doesn’t feel completely unrelated like the final Druid design felt to me. Don’t care much for the dagger or even the stances, but the beast skills and pet traits affecting the ranger while merged are enough to make me a happy bunny. I’m just waiting for the inevitable gutting before seeing the final state ot it all since some skills/pets are obviously overtuned and Anet doesn’t generally do half-measures…

Despite my constructive criticism I must state that I am also enjoying soulbeast to a fair degree, but im doing some weird stuff. I think a few quality of life changes would make a big difference for the class. Some people are frustrated that ranger still does not serve a standard boon-circle zerg role for wvw. I’ve seen the suggestion mentioned before, but having the stances have a pulsing effect much like the way glint reve utilities work would give it that role. It would be a major mechanic change, but zerglings and fight guilds might like that. As for me, I will always roam, so ranger fits that small group composition well. Might not be a great 1v1 class like staff druid in some settings, but its LB pressure is quite strong with soulbeast traits. Also I think these builds should take more than a day to master. Hopefully between balancing and practice it hits its groove. I’m kind of relieved all the new elites didnt just blot out older builds like HoT did. Viability remains for many older classes from what I see.

Hawken.7932:

This is absolutely incorrect. It makes me think that you haven’t even tried playing it. The damage – particularly burst damage – in beastmode is completely INSANE. It so good in fact that I just don’t see how it can last too long without getting nerfed.

And this makes me think you haven’t played anything else but soulbeast because you don’t seem to have any clue what “insane” dmg means for the PoF elite specs.

There is power burst which largely revolves around the 40% dmg shout and also there is currently a broken gazelle bet. Both are one trick ponies that won’t really help you in PvE content and that won’t work in anything but low rank spvp. Also gazelle and Sick ’Em! are very likely to get nerfed.

Then there is condi burst which is quite good, especially if you use Bristleback as pet. The overall sustainable soulbeast dmg is not that bad but not so great either. High burst and then you’re pretty helpless and pray to god you don’t need your second pet for an invuln/heal etc because you have no way to switch your pets in time to get those F skills.
The sustainable dps over a longer period of time is better than what we had before. But only slightly higher and that higher dps needs now much more work and doesn’t feel as fluid as with what we had previously.

Also the new spec was supposed to give the class a new/fresh feeling. There is really nothing we either couldn’t do before or something another class couldn’t do way better with less effort.

Right now we are stuck with a clunky core ranger with 3 extra skills.

And I am not even talking about the dagger, which is at this point nothing anyone should choose.
If you want to use both, the new elite spec and the new dagger, you have now less survivability, less dmg and more work than you would’ve had with a core ranger.

Adenin.5973:

There is power burst which largely revolves around the 40% dmg shout and also there is currently a broken gazelle bet. Both are one trick ponies that won’t really help you in PvE content and that won’t work in anything but low rank spvp. Also gazelle and Sick ’Em! are very likely to get nerfed.

Yeah, I totally agree on this point.

I tested SoulBeast first since ranger is my main class and at first I tough it was dealing enormous damage, but after playing Holosmith, Weaver and Deadeye, this is quite pitiful, not because it doesn’t do damage, but because you mostly need sick’em on a 40s CD combined with 1~2 awfully slow skill to do those damage, furthermore it can easily get blocked / evaded.

And as you said, these are most likely gonna be nerfed at some point. The same goes for GS Maul which instantly proc AoO.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The thing a lot of people are forgetting here is that if you allow pet swapping while in Beastmode, you’re going to need visual tells for the enemy (PvP/WvW).

If ANet were to allow this, they would need something like an icon that shows what pet you’re currently attuned to (like Revenant and Legends) or some kind of animation like the spirit of the pet appearing above you.

You can’t just swap pets without allowing people to know what you’ve swapped to or it lacks counterplay.

That’s why we have a blue archetype buff on our bar , so they know what skills to expect as each archetype has a specific set of skills that are the same per archetype… When you swap, it would change.

I think if you were to add a tell , possibly another buff for the pet icon – if it’s a bird, it’s a bird icon , and so forth. It doesn’t need to be flashy, people aren’t blind and good players know what archetypes you’ll be using by simply looking at the blue icon.

For bad players, aka ones that don’t like to look at people’s boon/condition bar (usually bads that complain on these forums coincidentally) , maybe there could be some visual addition to it, probably not though as an icon would serve it’s purpose.

My impression on Soulbeast is that it is rather weak and doesn’t bring anything to a Ranger that core or druid could do better. It really feels like they put all the effort into the animations, and then called it a day.

The new beast skills. Most have too long a cast time for too little value. You enter beast mode, start a beast skill, get interrupted. I’d like to see all their cast times cut in half and/or give more value for using them. Celestial avatar is always better than beast mode.

Beast mode itself is lack luster. The pet skills have always been buggy on pets, using them yourself isn’t much better. Except for a few interrupts, they don’t offer much. Especially, for the amount of DPS and abilities you lose. So many skills and traits rely on pets that don’t work in beast mode. Every trait and skill that affects a pet should have an equivalent effect in beast mode. Some, like sig of renewal, will need different effects, but they need to do something.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

No one said that there would be no indication whatsoever at the moment you change your pet. Your aura could light up for a moment.

But your argument is really ridiculous. If I play pvp I have no clue what my opponent has in his utility slots. I have to wait and see what skills he uses. Same thing for soulbeast. An opponent has to see what beast skills I use and adapt after gaining that knowledge.

This happens everywhere in the game and you are trying to make it look like the soulbeast would be completely op if an opponent had to react and adapt to my merged pet, like he has to every other utility skill that exists in the game.

yep some of the beast skills are nice, and some (like mentioend earlier) like feline and bear f skills are ridiculously bad. Porcine f2 (beast, not beastmode) skills need to be changed. numbers need to be tweaked, at the moment the idea behind it is nice and I found it fluid after a day of playing, but some aspects feel really weak. Primal cry and our first gm traits are also terrible

also bird soulbeast f2 is “???” ? swiftness that’s it? we already have permaswiftness everywhere on every class how much of a waste is this..

Gotta say I love the design behind it which is good, as it means it is a promising spec, but soulbeast f skills REAAALLY need absolutely massive buffs (not all of them though, but some)

Feels pretty fun and has some potential but I think most of the beast skills need to be instant cast or have much shorter cast times, particularly the straight damage ones. There’s no point in using these skills that do very little except dmg and have a high cast time unless it’s a giant bomb like maul. We don’t need that many mauls either…

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

Implying there will ever be more than 3-4 pets that EVERYONE uses in pvp.

There also is a tell. There’s an icon that states what BM type you have active that is there explicitly for your opponent.

If that’s not enough for you then maybe you’re not as good at pvp as you think you are.

I’ll throw my opinion hat in the ring. Some of this will echo what others have said but here goes.

• MH Dagger. Def a condi or condi bent hybrid weapon. I can kinda understand the idea of using Dagger 3 to leap in and get quickness so AA and 2 are better but it does feel a bit heavy/slow usually. I wonder how it might work with 100% boon duration, but then you’re giving up attack power.
• The new pets are nice. That 3 of them are their own type makes for good variety but will we see at least one other Saurian/Iboga/Deer ?
• I like and don’t like that pet choice with Soulbeast is more meaningful. On one hand, it’s nice that some pets that didn’t get play previously work really well in beastmode. On the other hand, I very few pets have a full, useful kit. Most F1 skills aren’t worth using because the damage numbers are so low. The F1 skills that are useful are utility (leaps, sharpening stone, etc). Pigs in particular can be great in beastmode but its F1 and non-combined F2 is meh/bad.
• Furious Strength annoys me. It could be SO good. But it’s a minor trait instead of a major trait. We can’t choose or change the minors so they should all synergize with each other and/or work with the mechanic of that traitline. Look at Markmanship; the minors all are about Opening Strikes. Skirmishing; the minors are about weapon swapping. Look at other elite specs like Berzerker or DH; the minor traits all work with the mechanic of the traitline. But this trait and Twice as Vicious don’t DO that. You have to build around these minors or they will sit there being useless a lot of the time.
• With that in mind, the traits need a serious reshuffle. With that minor trait supports the traitline idea; I’d suggest that Fresh Reinforcement adds “copy your boons to your pet when exiting beastmode” and make it and Unstoppable Union minor Master and Grandmaster traits respectively. That way the traits we can’t change always have an effect for the Soulbeast.
• I love the healing stance in PvP. It’s something Ranger has needed for a while.
• The other stances are…Meh? Dolyak might be good when it’s not bugged but the others…I dunno.
• One Wolf Pack is a neat idea, just underwhelming. Maybe if either the power coefficient was better or if there was no internal cooldown (so attacking with LB 2 or 5, or under quickness would be amazing). Right now though, it’s not too useful. Might be just me.

Overall, I’ll play more Soulbeast. Just maybe after it’s tightened up a bit.

i was roaming this evening we could use some more cleanse or some traits buffed against condi

I really don’t understand why people are so opposed to having a petswap available in Beastmode. It only adds gameplay options.

The argument “it isn’t supposed to be petless” is ridiculous, not because I have an opinion on what should or shouldn’t be the case, but because it’s a just a perception of how some people think other people will play the spec.

And even if people used the mechanic to decide to never leave Soulbeast, it wouldn’t be an optimized way to play. They’d lose out on pet versions of their skills and traits that affect entering/exiting Beastmode.

More importantly, what would be gained is the idea that our pet selections and uses would be more impactful and fluid. Oh, you got lit up when you went for your damage pets Soulbeast skills and are now reeling to recover? Instead of having to drop Soulbeast, pet swap, twiddle your fingers a bit, go back into Soulbeast on the other pet, and use its utility, you could just swap and use it, and then you’d be locked into this Soulbeast mode for the duration of a pet swap (at which point you could unmeld and use the pets AI skills to your advantage or etc).

Because ANet decided that Soulbeast was going to be in addition to and not a replacement for pet swapping, it is absolutely needed for the sake of fluid gameplay.

Who knows, they might add in pet swap during Beastmode as long as people chime in on how clunky it is right now. Worked for Revenant getting a weapon swap after their beta.

I’m definitely for it now. I also want that darn Fresh Reinforcement as a minor and for it to go both ways. It seems really odd to lock that as an adept.

Hawken.7932:

Adenin.5973:

Miellyn.6847:

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.

Look this is what you’re saying:
-Beastmode is a complete dmg loss, unless you use an F skill in it.
This means: NEVER go into beastmode, unless you want to immediately use an F skill.
This means: 90% of the time, play vanilla core Ranger, with an additional annoying mechanic that makes the pet AI now even more clueless and useless when spawned/despawned .

Imo that is just bad game design.

This is absolutely incorrect. It makes me think that you haven’t even tried playing it. The damage – particularly burst damage – in beastmode is completely INSANE. It so good in fact that I just don’t see how it can last too long without getting nerfed.

Here’s the thing: to get that burst i need to build out in a very particular way, and then hit a very specific set of skills just to up might enough to hit with a skill that can be blocked.

On the other hand i can go holosmith and basically have a seizure while headbutting my keyboard and splarg insane AoE damage and have no real clue how I did it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

There already IS a visual tell for Soulbeast merge.

I’m having issues with how low the Bite damage is for starters, and secondly I really wanted more ranged Soulbeast skills. Poison cloud is one, but unless I missed something that’s the only one and it’s hard to hit a target? Right now it seems like the Bear Soulbeast is the only viable option for PvE/WvW since it allows for multiple stun breaks and heals and defy pain. Seems like the increase in movement speed is dependent on having the BM traitline as well, in addition to other BM traits. So I don’t see much use of Soulbeast without BM, leaving only one trait line optional.

TBH though… that green auta is almost a deal breaker. Yeah, petty but very annoying.

The aura might be OK for the initial Entering or Leaving Beastmode. It’s is nicely done but it’s Overdone – it’s way too much visual clutter to leave on. Blocks visuals on what you’re doing. I’d be fine with a simple body or chest outer glow or something.

And yes, I really was looking forward to a “petless” ranger mode to run in full-time. The pet is a good percentage of our damage and utility normally, so in theory being able to merge with our pet should increase our DPS and utility since it merges our split-selves (character and pet) back into one.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

That… Doesn’t make sense. Swapping pets and entering Photon Forge mode are 2 different things.

What is comparable is Beastmode and Photon forge. Does beastmode have a telling animation? Yes! It’s super obvious + there is no pet, you know.

I don’t understand why are you making such a big problem out of this pet swap suggestion.

I think the only downside from getting the pet swap in beastmode might be that currently if your pet dies, you enter beastmode and pop out, your dead pet is as good as new without having to swap pets around. Not sure if that was intended, but it made the squishy pets much more useful in WvW at least.

I like the pet(s) on my ranger so doubt I’d use beastmode much.

The upside I see is in group content with weapons like longbow, with its 2 very situational and rarely used abilities (in PvE). That leaves auto-attack and only 2 abilities to activate (plus maybe pet’s, depending on how long its cooldown is). Assuming my pet isn’t needed to tank then beastmode would give me a few extra abilities to play with.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Adenin.5973:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I don’t actually know what you are saying here.

Does your beastmode aura visually change when you merge with another pet? Is it red, blue, whatever?
No.

The devs thought that visual representation of what pet you merged with does not matter. And now there are suddenly people that tell us that we can’t have a petswap in beastmode because people need to know what pet you’ve equipped, which they didn’t knew before either.

Ah, right, got you now. Agree completely. 100%.

In fact they talked about it taking a lot of development time to get it looking right, which makes me think they don’t intend on it being a tell, just to look good.

If Soulbeast can swap pets while in Beastmode I want to be able to enter Photon Forge with Holosmith without the visual tells.

You see how that could be a problem? It’s a good thing you guys don’t have any actual say in balance beyond slinging your shxt at walls and calling it art.

You didn’t notice the big blue icon below the health bar? Hmm.

jcbroe.4329:

I really don’t understand why people are so opposed to having a petswap available in Beastmode. It only adds gameplay options.

The argument “it isn’t supposed to be petless” is ridiculous, not because I have an opinion on what should or shouldn’t be the case, but because it’s a just a perception of how some people think other people will play the spec.

And even if people used the mechanic to decide to never leave Soulbeast, it wouldn’t be an optimized way to play. They’d lose out on pet versions of their skills and traits that affect entering/exiting Beastmode.

More importantly, what would be gained is the idea that our pet selections and uses would be more impactful and fluid. Oh, you got lit up when you went for your damage pets Soulbeast skills and are now reeling to recover? Instead of having to drop Soulbeast, pet swap, twiddle your fingers a bit, go back into Soulbeast on the other pet, and use its utility, you could just swap and use it, and then you’d be locked into this Soulbeast mode for the duration of a pet swap (at which point you could unmeld and use the pets AI skills to your advantage or etc).

Because ANet decided that Soulbeast was going to be in addition to and not a replacement for pet swapping, it is absolutely needed for the sake of fluid gameplay.

Thought that needed to be reiterated.

if you become one with your pet shouldn’t fresh reinforcement be a base thing ?
worldly impact as leap doesn’t make a lot of sens either.

SB mechanic makes the biggest mechanical sacrifice among the specializations, for probably the lowest rewards. At the moment we lose our pet dmg and utility, our F2 pet skill, big chunk of our traits(also limiting our build diversity) and even some our skill(some of the shouts, SoR etc..). For such an investment I would expect a huge boost in power and utility, but of the most part SB doesn’t deliver. Why most of the SB F1 skills do less DMG than even a single dagger auto attack? those skills are not a filler, they supposed to be my reward... Many of the SB new skills are clunky and not working as intended(bird leap range, smokeassault evade and many more), range in very small and almost no cleave, F3 skills got ridiculous cast time and flashy animation for a mediocre effect. It was my hope that SB will be A.net chance to re-visit old pets and fix/ re-balance some of their skills, but moas are more useless than ever(now they also useless in BM), cats got the worst SB skills, but we have 7 of them... My biggest fear that the SB ambition will be it’s fall down, so many skills to twik, balance and do regular maintenance on.

As mentioned, the SB functionality with existing traits and skills is inconsistent and buggy, every trait and skill we have(pet swap traits included) should have a purpose while in SB.

Please A.met, don’t give us half baked specialization that will never get fixed.

Many talked about stances and dagger and the SB traits being weak, they all need some love and twiking but it mostly numbers changes which are simple to modify.

samanosuke asakura.6240:

if you become one with your pet shouldn’t fresh reinforcement be a base thing ? …

It should either be base or made a minor trait and not competing with Unstoppable Union.

The thing is, if you really want to take advantage of Fresh Reinforcement, you already need to take Nature Magic, otherwise you hardly get any effect since a lot of the boons you get will not be on your pet.

It also needs to place the boons on your pet when you exit beastmode, otherwise entering and exiting the mode is just handicapping your pet and you are better off rarely ever using the mode, or just camping it 24/7.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

samanosuke asakura.6240:

if you become one with your pet shouldn’t fresh reinforcement be a base thing ? …

It should either be base or made a minor trait and not competing with Unstoppable Union.

The thing is, if you really want to take advantage of Fresh Reinforcement, you already need to take Nature Magic, otherwise you hardly get any effect since a lot of the boons you get will not be on your pet.

It also needs to place the boons on your pet when you exit beastmode, otherwise entering and exiting the mode is just handicapping your pet and you are better off rarely ever using the mode, or just camping it 24/7.

agreed a lot of stuff doesn’t make sense in soul beast. oh well i hope they tweak it a bit more.