Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’ve been theorycrafting soulbeast power builds for some time now and tried a lot of them in beta weekend. This is what I came up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARTnEqAtsglsAe8CUtglJBjZaFtac552fbxtJA0AmAlcu0A-jpR6gAAHCA9HAQTZg7LAQ1RAIb/BA

PROS:
- high burst (with almost 100% crit chance uptime)
- great CC to lock people into your combos
- decent condi clear: 12 clears + spiritual reprieve that gives AOE resistance
(can get more if you equip bear stance)
- long range AND close range dmg
- decent mobility: GS#3, smokescale’s smoke assault
- a lot of evades (perma vigor + natural vigor)
- 2 stun breakers (3 if you change moa stance for dolyak when it will work)
- stealth with smokescale and LB#3
- 100% swiftness uptime (spam LB#3 in beastmode) – (more for WVW)

CONS:
- no team utilities (exept spotter)
- will not survive heavy condi bursts

You are basicaly a killing machine and rely heavily on your stealth, blocks, evades, positionning and some protection uptime (decent regen from rugged growth + 33% condi dmg reduction from second skin) to stay alive.
In WVW you can even put in some valkyrie gear instead of marauder because of the almost 30% crit chance increase you get from skirmishing.

I am still thinking about swapping skirmishing for nature magic or beastmastery (nature magic for boon duration and protection in grandmaster | beastmastery for the GS cd/dmg and the minor bonus stats you get)
But personally skirmishing worked best for me. Wilderness survival is always necessary.

Tell me what you think, I definitely had fun with it!

I wonder the difference when you use Strength Of The Pack with pet out > then swap pet with Clarion Bond in marksmanship > and then Heal As One copying boons between you and pet > then eating your pet with Fresh Reinforcement which gives you the boons on the pet. Just curious about that.

Well at this moment you cap at 25 might without Soulbeast so might just be a waste for might, not to sure about the exact interaction when you get might when you already have 25.

And then a small rant on the longbow part:

Add to con: max range of pet abilities in beast mode 1200, you know because of all those weapons we have that use 1200 range… what the only weapon is staff which we cant even use without druid… so why oh why would they cap some pets at 1200 instead of 1500 with longbow.

Now you need to move 300 units closer (when on longbow) to use pet ability and then back again or just stay 1200 range, that somewhat defeats the purpose of the longbow’s 1500 range. This complaint is more for people who use longbow as their primary weapon.

Seeing Eboka really makes me wonder why Bear even exist.

Anet has been ignoring useless pets for way too long and only introduce the new flashy toy and ignore the old ones.

Probably will be my go-to pet in expansion cuz I always find Ranger lack cleanse in their utility (Unless you grab WS, which you pretty much is pigeon hole in it if you wanna go in WvW)

Oh, also, your build shows yet again that we’re pretty much kittened with our LB even when go Soulbeast cuz now we can’t even grab the pierce trait for LB…

This build will only be mildly useful in 1 v 1 small roaming scenario. (For zerg, I don’t think this one really qualifies for frontline with the GS cuz no invulnerable and no party support at all)

This is the GS/LB build i’ll use for PvP.
Even if “Sick ’Em!” will be changed I think it’ll be still useful in my build.