Guild Wars 2

This is not an actual feedback thread but rather a suggestion thread for QoL and other slight improvements for better soulbeast experience.

1. A petswap while in Beastform would be very useful. Not for Formcamping but rather in such situations when you need the other F3 skill.

2. Spider Poisonfield needs to be ground targeted, its missing all the time.

3. The F3 Wordly impact would be a perfect match for a Explosion finisher instead of a leap. It also roots you inplace which isnt very useful for competitive play or moving targets.

4. Dagger OH could use some of the mainhand Animation. And most importantly better skills. Dagger MH is quit decent and useful as a hybrid weapon. Dagger OH is still lackluster.

5. Unstoppable Union is not very useful when you start a fight inside beastmode. The trait would be better if you would breakstun when going inside OR outside beastmode and when you go outside your pets attacks are unblockable. this could lead to interesting pet gameply and you would not get a penalty for going into combat in B-Mode.

6. Improve the Forage skill of Porcines: porcines would be very good pets especially with soulbeast, but the active skill forage is very bad designed and very unfluent in function. make it like steal from thief that the forage item is swapped with the forage skill and stays like this until forage is off cooldown or you use it.

7. The aura is really really bright and should be tune down a bit. it looks dang cool but you cannot see your own char through that.

8. The F3 primal Cry is very strongly undertuned. Increase the bleed stacks, improve the dmg, put more conditions on it etc etc. Just improve it, to make it better.

9. Gm trait opressive superiority is underperforming. As a dmg trait it does not need a restriction based on your oponends health. Give it the effects it has without health restriction and give it a bonus depending on your enemies health (not yours). So the lower the health of your target the bigger the bonusses you get.

10. Improve cast times of beastskills. The are to slow atm and can be interrupted very easily. Improve the dmg on F1 Skills from vanilla pets while merged, they do less dmg than an AA.

11. Eternal bond: Good concept but lacking of performance. Needs either a stronger heal, at least double it. It also could need a lower cooldown, about 25% shorter would be good.

12. Improve description Tooltips of Petskills and Pet F1-2 skills.

13. Entering Beastmode should not strip special buffs like strength of the pack /sic em.

14. Fresh Reinforcements should be baseline or at least a minor trait. This trait is mandatory for all boon based builds and leave them no actual choice while traiting. The pet should gain the boons the ranger has when leaving beastmode. give it a reasonable ICD so it cannot be abused.

15. The Elite “one wolf pack” could use some improvements. Minimize the strike delay so the ranger can strike twice every half a second for 8 seconds. instead of proccing every half second with a 1 second delay.

16. Give the ranger the poison dmg on the MH dagger skill double arc when in beasstform. This also counts for every other Weaponskill that has this functionality. i.e. bleed from crippling shot on Shortbow or the might gain on the sword AA.

17. Vulture stance: Might is not very useful for this stance. You can get might very easily very fast and it does not bring special benefits to this stance. Change the might to something that improves condition gameplay.
For example: While under the effects of vulture stance you apply poison every hit, if you hit the target under the health threshhold you increase the condition duration of all conditions applied to the target.
This would give us a condi burst and a execute mechanic for the vulture stance in conjunction with condition gameplay.

18. We do less dmg in beast mode, dont punish players with a 10s CD on beast mode when we want to frequently swap pets and modes. tune it down to a very short CD like 1s. The CD on the beastskills will remain so we cannot spam these abbilities but atleast ahve some fluidity in gameplay.

19. Pets Prowess should effect the ranger when in beast mode. This takes also the movement speed into account.

20. The mastertraits are very specific to certain boons or conditions. Broadening the spectrum out or make it better available would benefit the traits.
Second skin: Give this trait a protection proc. Favorable on Stance use.
Predators cunning: You steal life from an enemy that is poisoned (not an enemy you apply poison) . In addition you have a chance to apply poison on crit.
Essence of Speed: Could also proc on swiftness for a broader spectrum.

21. Live fast should work with the F2 outside of beastmode, it counts as a beastskill and should behave like this.

22. Skills that activate on Beastskill (Go for the Eyes, Wilting Strike, Beastly Warden and Invogarating Bond) should trigger at the starting time of activation of the skill not on the skill execution.

23. Stances are undertuned and could benefit of the charge mechanic like the stances of weaver has.

24. Improve the GM Trait poison Master in Wilderness survival traitline. Keep the Poison buff but improve the active effect. i.e. Apply poison stacks every time when you disable a foe. This accounts for all srong cc from you and your pet.

25. Improve Dagger MH attackspeed, its to slow atm and feels clunky.

26. Striders defence should give quickness regardless of what weapon we are using.

27. Griffon stance has a CD that is way to high. Cut it down to 25s recharge (with the charge mechanic i mentioned above). Cut the duration down to 4s. And make ita an evade frame for the duration. The buff is not stackable. Add some superspeed and remove the might gain. This way it is an evade tool like it should be with no initial offensive aspect.

You can make more suggestions i will gather them on the list.

I agree. I’ll also give my take on dagger improvements. You can critique them as you like. Right now, dagger feels too slow and not aggressive enough. To fit in theme with the soulbeast’s “beastly fight-style with tooth and claw” premise, dagger should be as if not more aggressive than greatsword.

To accomplish this, I would first reduce the cast times on the auto attacks Leading Swipe and Serpent Stab from 1/2 to 1/4. During testing, the dagger auto only felt reliably aggressive and functional when I had quickness. Ideally, dagger auto should attack as quickly normally as it does with quickness now.

Next, looking at skill 2 (Double Arc) just feels like a different, slightly stronger auto attack. To synergize with other ranger traitlines, and with Soulbeast’s theme, skill 2 needs to do 2 important things:

• It needs to be a single, heavy striking attack like maul (To work well with Moment of Clarity and Remorseless).
• It needs to have a quick, “long reach” (like the 300 range movement with Hilt-Bash on Greatsword) to feel good and hit reliably.

I’m thinking it be something similar to Thief’s Heartseeker, but a lunge/dash instead of a leap/flip. The conditions it inflicts now are more or less in a good place.

And finally the skill 3 (Instinctive Engage) is close to where it needs to be, but just needs a bit more utility for synergy. To synergize with other ranger traitlines, and with Soulbeast’s traits/theme, skill 3 also needs to do 2 important things:

• It needs to grant fury in addition to its quickness. Fury would help set up the burst this skill aims to accomplish and synergize with Remorseless, Vicious Quarry, and Furious Strength.
• It needs to disable the target briefly. Nothing too much, but a 3/4 or 1/2 second daze would synergize with Moment of Clarity, Predator’s Onslaught, and Twice as Vicious.

If these changes were implemented and the numerical values balanced, I believe dagger would better fulfill its role as a quick, savage weapon.

- allow Petswap in beast mode
- improve dagger mh/oh
- make stances last indefinitely and only allow one
- we need indicator of cd of our pet F2 skills when we are in beastmode
- update skill descriptions. They’re terrible right now, no one has a clue what works when and how in beastmode. Fix that!
-beastmode aura should be affected by pet archetype, soulbeast is overall an visually underwhelming spec!

Cut/pasted from my comment on the feedback thread.

• Some of the Beast skills really need less of a cast time, running black bear gives 2 damage immunities but are useless with the amount of stuns in the game. Too much planning ahead for an “Oh S****” button.
• Bear Stance could use less of a cast time, since there’s more condition builds in the game now with PoF coming, we’ll need this on demand. It’s currently interrupted too easily.
• One Wolf Pack could use a condition damaging effect
• Oppressive Superiority doesn’t need the health restraints. It’s a GM trait, give it some oomph.
• Give us the ability to swap pets whilst in Beastmode. There are situations where dropping out of Beastmode is a bad idea, being able to swap to use other skills would be helpful.
• Vulture Stance, Might above 50% health isn’t great since might is easily gained. Consider changing to Torment over 50% and Poison under 50%. Perhaps up the stance duration for a slight buff to condition builds.
• Double Arc, let players get the poison damage on strike when in Beastmode.
• For a more extreme suggestion, take the conditions off the Dagger mainhand, buff the power coefficients and add conditions to mainhand Sword. Soulbeast feels more like a power spec, give its weapon power and give Sword a role in making core Ranger condition builds better.

@ InsaneQR: very good suggestions and I basically agree with everything, would add that feline and bear f1 are severely undertuned

Also the first gm is just straight up bad , it’s a 4k heal on a 90 second cooldown under the condition that you 1. die and 2. are in beastmode..

Entering Beastmode should not strip the pet of all boons and special buffs like strength of the pack /sic em.
this hurts builds that use nature magic and all boon reliant builds

Copypaste myself too.

I can deal with no petswap at Beatmode if Beastmode CD will be lowered to 5-7 seconds or even gone to 1s.

Beastmode just give us alternative ways, not empower us in some state drastically like Death shroud or Celestial Avatar.

• Ranger himself must choose, if he need stay in beastmode longer, without pet help, or leave and enter that state frequently.
• 10 seconds after leaving Beastmode feels Punishing, we already have very long CD at our new f1-f3 skills, it’s already limit their use.
• Some Beastmode skills is “Oh kitten” buttons, which can’t be needed at the moment for example. But with switching on Beastmode on demand it can be really used in time.
• Camping in Beastmode with skills on CD really not that OP – it’s just petlessranger, he is really not that great without pet.
• Right now how i feel (i can be wrong, because it’s first impressions) general gameplay – enter beastmode, burst your skills, leave beastmode, use pet as always and wait for next beastmode.
• You just cant alternate playstile with 10s cd after leaving.
• And if we really choose to camping in beastmode, we have reason to do it, we trade our pet for it and that trade in any case not that coseffective.
• If with lower Beastmode CD petswap stay outside, soon or later Ranger leave that mode, for petswap and using our pet skills again, and jump to our next pet.
• Beastmode swap sigils mechanic and enter/leaving traits give more unnesesary attencion and resourse management, not even count some Traits in beastmastery, which give separate CD trait on f3 skill.
• I really dont like count Beastmode as petswap, because it’s mess up our cdswap traits.

Darrio.6098:

I can deal with no petswap at Beatmode if Beastmode CD will be lowered to 5-7 seconds or even gone to 1s.

Beastmode just give us alternative ways, not empower us in some state drastically like Death shroud or Celestial Avatar.

This. Beastmode is a complete sidegrade. We gain buffs/utility but lose the pet dps and support in exchange. That 10s cooldown could be seriously trimmed down if even needed at all.

Nr 16: This is actually the case for everything except Warhorn 5: The unblockable buff.(though it could use a small buff icon for clarity)

Adenin.5973:

- make stances last indefinitely and only allow one

The only way this could be even remotely balanced is if every single one got nerfed heavily and we could no longer share the effects.

No thanks.

Should Happen

• Allow us to swap pets while in Beastmode (see Elementalist). If necessary, give “Leave Beastmode” a cooldown after swapping pets in Beastmode.

• In Beastmode, F1, F2 and F3 should all count as “Beast ability” and should all trigger the traits for them. If necessary, give the traits a short cooldown.

• Pet F2 should trigger Live Fast trait since it’s a “Beast ability”. At the very least, it should give it to the pet.

• Pet’s Prowess should give the full 30% movement speed while in Beastmode. It has to be able to compete with Druid’s Natural Stride.

• The master traits all have odd requirements. If your build doesn’t apply poison, quickness and protection, then they’re all worthless.
• Second Skin should always work, not just when you have protection.
• Essense of Speed… I don’t even know… it’s strange. Hard to trigger and the effect is tiny.
• Predator’s Cunning remove the poison requirement.

Wishful Thinking

• Allow us to use pet F2 skills in Beastmode. If necessary, give us a “lesser” version if the effect is too powerful. For example: Jaguar in Beastmode would only give 3s stealth. Would make Beastmode far more interesting.

My improvements to Soulbeast, aside from “Make Dolyak Stance Actually work”, are purely cosmetic, and mostly charr-focused:

1. Rework the animations. Charr have tails, teeth, claws, and horns. Let us use them in our attacks. Chomp and Bite should be actual chomps and bites, not those weird open-palm strikes and punch-things. Likewise, our Tail lash and Tail Swipe should actually put our tails to use – Devourer tail lash should leap up and lash the tail under to knock our foes back, while the Drake Tail Swipe should be a duck+spin with the tail out. Charge attacks should be a headbutt, like the Warrior’s Bull Rush or Headbutt skills. Maul and other attacks should let us go to town with our claws.

2. PLEASE REDUCE THAT GREEN AURA! Core daggers skills neither have nor need the green bladetrail. Mainhand dagger skills, except those that apply poison, don’t need it either. The Soulbeast merge is just overpoweringly green smoke and tendrils, and should be toned down significantly. It looks bad, and smells bad.

Substance E.4852:

The only way this could be even remotely balanced is if every single one got nerfed heavily and we could no longer share the effects.

No thanks.

“Nerfed”? You mean they would be adjusted so they wouldn’t be completely op? That’s not nerfing. Yes anet would need to do that. Right now their pretty much useless in anything but some pvp situations.
But I get what you meant.

Also there are already many indefinitely buffs that are shared on allies.

BUT: I am not a fan of the stances though. These are such lame passive skills.
-First we got signets. They’re passive and really boring.
- Then we got glyphs. Same, boring mostly passive and useless for the most part.
- Now we get stances. Again something that is a small buff for you that doesn’t last very long and has a relatively long cd. Boring and useless and passive.

Passive buffs or buffs that activate under certain circumstances should be made available through traits, not through your skill bar.

I wanted way more active skills with this spec. I am still using only vanilla utility skills in PvE content. It’s getting boring. Idk if I want to play with the same skills another 2 years.

Adenin.5973:

“Nerfed”? You mean they would be adjusted so they wouldn’t be completely op? That’s not nerfing. Yes anet would need to do that. Right now their pretty much useless in anything but some pvp situations.

lol so are 90% of our skills. Are you slotting lighting reflexes or muddy terrain in pve? I doubt it.

Boon duration increase and spamable stab are fantastic group utility and not worth giving up for whatever piddly perma-buff you would rather have.

Substance E.4852:

lol so are 90% of our skills. Are you slotting lighting reflexes or muddy terrain in pve? I doubt it.

Boon duration increase and spamable stab are fantastic group utility and not worth giving up for whatever piddly perma-buff you would rather have.

Lol, you would rather have 6s 66% increase with 30s cd than permanent 15-20% or something like that?

I wouldn’t call 6s stability on 30s cd exactly spamable (3s for your allies).

Also you only share stances at the moment you activate them and only in a 360 radius and only with 50% of the duration.

So your allies can get happy if they stand directly near you when you activate your dolyak stance once every 30 sec and then they get 3s stability.

Imo that’s bad. For open world pve completely useless and even for structured group content not that great.

So yes, I would absolutely prefer a indefinitely lasting stance. Or a stance that builds up stacks over time that then get automatically used under the right conditions, something like that. Maybe you could even activate the stance to use all the current stacks of your stance and get a nice extra buff or whatever.

Adenin.5973:

Substance E.4852:

lol so are 90% of our skills. Are you slotting lighting reflexes or muddy terrain in pve? I doubt it.

Boon duration increase and spamable stab are fantastic group utility and not worth giving up for whatever piddly perma-buff you would rather have.

Lol, you would rather have 6s 66% increase with 30s cd than permanent 15-20% or something like that?

I wouldn’t call 6s stability on 30s cd exactly spamable (3s for your allies).

Also you only share stances at the moment you activate them and only in a 360 radius and only with 50% of the duration.

So your allies can get happy if they stand directly near you when you activate your dolyak stance once every 30 sec and then they get 3s stability.

Imo that’s bad. For open world pve completely useless and even for structured group content not that great.

So yes, I would absolutely prefer a indefinitely lasting stance. Or a stance that builds up stacks over time that then get automatically used under the right conditions, something like that. Maybe you could even activate the stance to use all the current stacks of your stance and get a nice extra buff or whatever.

It also makes you immun to movement impairing conditions.
Perma 100% endurance regeneration is not even remotely balanced. 50% is useless there is a boon for that.
The stances would be nerfed into uselessness if they last permanent.

Adenin.5973:

Substance E.4852:

lol so are 90% of our skills. Are you slotting lighting reflexes or muddy terrain in pve? I doubt it.

Boon duration increase and spamable stab are fantastic group utility and not worth giving up for whatever piddly perma-buff you would rather have.

Lol, you would rather have 6s 66% increase with 30s cd than permanent 15-20% or something like that?

I wouldn’t call 6s stability on 30s cd exactly spamable (3s for your allies).

Also you only share stances at the moment you activate them and only in a 360 radius and only with 50% of the duration.

So your allies can get happy if they stand directly near you when you activate your dolyak stance once every 30 sec and then they get 3s stability.

Imo that’s bad. For open world pve completely useless and even for structured group content not that great.

So yes, I would absolutely prefer a indefinitely lasting stance. Or a stance that builds up stacks over time that then get automatically used under the right conditions, something like that. Maybe you could even activate the stance to use all the current stacks of your stance and get a nice extra buff or whatever.

Ya actually they are good because I actually play WvW. That mode where being next to allies is the norm and having precise and powerful support skills for pushes is invaluable.

If you don’t understand how good 6s of stab every 30s + immunity to soft cc is then there’s no point to arguing with you.

Substance E.4852:

Ya actually they are good because I actually play WvW. That mode where being next to allies is the norm and having precise and powerful support skills for pushes is invaluable.

If you don’t understand how good 6s of stab every 30s + immunity to soft cc is then there’s no point to arguing with you.

I personally don’t care about WvW. I already knew and said that some stances can have a place in pvp situations.
Fine, now we have 1 skill for spvp, one additional that is also useful in WvW, still the other 3 are pretty useless.

From a PvE perspective there are far better skills you can choose than the stances.

The #1 thing i’d like to see changed is for the F3 skill to be swapped with the F2…. my muscle memory can’t handle the “family skill” being on F3

Substance E.4852:

Adenin.5973:

- make stances last indefinitely and only allow one

The only way this could be even remotely balanced is if every single one got nerfed heavily and we could no longer share the effects.

No thanks.

Thats why i didnt put it on the list. Everything reasonable will be up there.
The stances work fine as they are (except dolyak which is bugged) and they are an interesting support tool for soulbeast. Changes on the behaviour wouldnt give them any benefit, especially when you think about Moa stance-Dolyak stance or Vulture stance-One wolf Pack synergies.

Substance E.4852:

Adenin.5973:

- make stances last indefinitely and only allow one

The only way this could be even remotely balanced is if every single one got nerfed heavily and we could no longer share the effects.

No thanks.

i preffer to have ammo mechanic. the stances need buffs but don’t need CD reduction. What they need is to have 2-3 charges each.

InsaneQR.7412:

Thats why i didnt put it on the list. Everything reasonable will be up there.
The stances work fine as they are (except dolyak which is bugged) and they are an interesting support tool for soulbeast. Changes on the behaviour wouldnt give them any benefit, especially when you think about Moa stance-Dolyak stance or Vulture stance-One wolf Pack synergies.

I completely disagree with that.
Imagine it works like this:
-One stance at a time, stance lasts permanently.
-Stance pulsates and gives you one charge every X seconds.
-Charges can stack up to Y amount..
-As long as you have at least one charge of the stance, the stance gives you a passive.
-You can activate your stance a second time and use all of your current charges of the stance to get a buffed version of the stances effect.
-After consuming all of your stances you have a cd.

It’s basically like the ammunition mechanic, only that the stance has also a permanent passive function to it.

But I would rather see completely different skills and not waste utility slots for skills that look like something that should be in a traitline. More active and interesting skills that actually change the way you play your class!

• Leader of the Pack needs full durations.

• GFtE, Wilting Strike, Beastly Warden and Invigorating Bond need to proc at the beginning of the cast of the beast skills.

• Oppressive Superiority should provide more benefit the lower the targets health, not just a flat 10%. 10% below 100%, 15% below 66%, 20% below 33%. Executioner, Bolt to the Heart, Close to Death, Swift Termination all have 20% more damage to foes under 50% health, so this would be pretty close considering it includes condition duration as well.

• Make Fresh Reinforcement apply the boons to the pet when leaving beastmode in addition to current functionality, give it an ICD so it cannot be spammed and move it to a minor.

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

I came to the forums to mention that we really need pet swap while in beast mode, then I noticed it was already the first item on your list. (Very nice list by the way.)

Adenin.5973:

- allow Petswap in beast mode

This is a bad idea. I agree that right now the skills management on soulbeast is crazy : 15 hotkeys + weapon swap + go in & out soulbeast + pet swap + pet managment is way too much. But there’s no reason to please the lazy rangers player base with beastmode swap and beastmode campers. The spec need to stay challenging but with more fuidity.

Besides i can see 2 issues if we can swap beastmode, first you won’t be able to play a go in&out + pet swap active gameplay since the actual pet swap will be locked in CD if you already swap beastmode and it will obviously break a lot of combos. And again, the beastmode swap would probably share the pet swap effects via traits, and i don’t want to do the maths to know when the effects would occur.

The spec need to stay challenging but with more fuidity. You just need to remove the entire beastmode CD since it have no purpose outside a minor trait, so merge the 10 sec CD with Unstoppable Union (if you want a break stun, you’ll have a cooldown).

Fresh Reinforcement have to be baseline and proc the same effect when you leave beastmode (it gives the boon you have to your pet).

Pet Swap while merged

I really really want to be able to swap pet while merged. Not being able to do this borderline ruins the spec for me.

It is not about being lazy to micro but it just isn’t good design at the moment being in weird cooldown locks to access certain skills. This would also make traits like QZ less waisted while in soulbeast. I don’t care if you link this to a trait or just add the pet swapping baseline but it has to happen.

Soulbeast was all about merging with your pet so I don’t get why you force us to play with pet anyway. It feels really awkward to get from merged pet A to merged pet B. Please Arenanet fix this.

Dagger

As a PvPer I actually think dagger MH is lackluster and S/D just feels superior. The only good part of Dagger MH is the #3 – auto and #2 both don’t really do much except some hybrid dmg application.

Stances

Stances feel mostly underwhelming due to low duration. The effects really aren’t strong enough for the casting time and those few seconds. Main culbrits here are gryphon and vulpture but also for some other I would prefer longer duration even if you skale them down a bit in exchange.

Beast Skills

I like the F3 but F1 and 2 have an extreme variance and are the most unbalanced aspect of SB atm. Most of them are bad (especially the F1, they mostly are just simple direct dmg and weaker than a generic autoattack while having longer animation times, these need to be scaled up a lot). There are some good ones, mostly on the new pets and HOT pets (hi smoke assault).

Traits

I only really dislike that +10% dmg GM since it feels extremely boring to me but guess once you show something like that to PvErs you cannot take it away anymore… The adept traits should propably also work when leaving beast mode or be merged but in general the ideas are decent. This kind of stuff is hard to judge though before the swapping pet while merged fix I mentioned because this will significantly alter the way SB plays.

Adenin.5973:

Substance E.4852:

The only way this could be even remotely balanced is if every single one got nerfed heavily and we could no longer share the effects.

No thanks.

“Nerfed”? You mean they would be adjusted so they wouldn’t be completely op? That’s not nerfing. Yes anet would need to do that. Right now their pretty much useless in anything but some pvp situations.
But I get what you meant.

Also there are already many indefinitely buffs that are shared on allies.

BUT: I am not a fan of the stances though. These are such lame passive skills.
-First we got signets. They’re passive and really boring.
- Then we got glyphs. Same, boring mostly passive and useless for the most part.
- Now we get stances. Again something that is a small buff for you that doesn’t last very long and has a relatively long cd. Boring and useless and passive.

First of all, glyphs weren’t useless for the most part (the elite is a joke, it doesn’t count). But whatever. Some people didn’t get the druid memo.

Who came up with this indefinite stance duration idea? Why would they do that? Balance and tweak numbers and effects all you want (and yes, most of the stances need it), but this idea of having them last indefinetely but only one at the time? Hah, no thank you. Ehh.. some of the suggestions I read on this subforum.

@OP, this is as much feedback as anything. Improvement to an unfinished product is feedback. As if Anet is gonna bother go through all of this if we have 10 different threads by the end of the weekend.

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

Poison Master is pretty rubbish and it’s only going to be worse with soulbeast since you need to swap pets to use it, plus two stacks of poison every 15s is pretty garbage. They could improve it a lot, but soulbeast should have more poison synergy in it’s own traits. It’s got nothing additional traitwise to offer condi builds except a tiny amount of lifesteal and some increased duration.

Why does everyone say that stances don’t last long enough? Look at the other stances in the game, compare the duration and the cooldown and be in for a surprise.

The only stance I see as weak is Vulture, the rest ist strong especially with the share trait.
But Bear, Griffon and Dolyak are strong on their own. Moa needs the share trait and Wolf needs a bit more testing.

Same goes for the dagger. It is a condi weapon in it’s current state. Stronger than the axe. ArenaNet never said that it is going to be a hybrid weapon. People want it to be like that but that doesn’t mean it should be a hybrid weapon.

Miellyn.6847:

Why does everyone say that stances don’t last long enough? Look at the other stances in the game, compare the duration and the cooldown and be in for a surprise.

Yes, I took a look at what Weaver got…is that ammo system ? Yes, it is ! Where is it for me ?
Wait, I’m gonna take a look at what their Elite Stance does, now I look at the one from Soulbeast….“Okay, totally on the same level. /s”

Soulbeast elite spec as Stances on par with core Warrior…but when you see what Weaver got even without counting Stances…smh.

Feedback:

- One Wolf Pack isn’t a worthy elite skill. Really.
- Stances seemed a little underwhelming… actually, I don’t believe some of them even did anything..

- The actual mechanic is great. I love the animation and the abilities that you get while in beast mode.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

Poison Master is pretty rubbish and it’s only going to be worse with soulbeast since you need to swap pets to use it, plus two stacks of poison every 15s is pretty garbage. They could improve it a lot, but soulbeast should have more poison synergy in it’s own traits. It’s got nothing additional traitwise to offer condi builds except a tiny amount of lifesteal and some increased duration.

i mean refined toxins which apply poison once every 5 seconds while your health is above the 75%. Do no hope to get a trait better than that one as a minor.

Please understand i’m not bashing your idea which i think is fantastic. But i think it would be easier to give that attribute to a pet family which would allow much better gameplay and stronger effects than a trait, even if is a minor.

I think it’d be nice if there were a compelling reason to actually leave beastmode once ArenaNet implement a pet swap from within beastmode. As it is, I don’t see that there’s much incentive to switch around between regular (separate pet) play and beastmode play. Maybe there could be a trait that gave boons to your pet when you leave beastmode?

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

Poison Master is pretty rubbish and it’s only going to be worse with soulbeast since you need to swap pets to use it, plus two stacks of poison every 15s is pretty garbage. They could improve it a lot, but soulbeast should have more poison synergy in it’s own traits. It’s got nothing additional traitwise to offer condi builds except a tiny amount of lifesteal and some increased duration.

i mean refined toxins which apply poison once every 5 seconds while your health is above the 75%. Do no hope to get a trait better than that one as a minor.

Please understand i’m not bashing your idea which i think is fantastic. But i think it would be easier to give that attribute to a pet family which would allow much better gameplay and stronger effects than a trait, even if is a minor.

Something like Dagger Training is what I mean.

Refined Toxins is not that great for Soulbeast either, on Druid its awesome since you can stay abov 75% a lot of the time and also you have your pet out 24/7, on Soulbeast it’s a different story.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

Poison Master is pretty rubbish and it’s only going to be worse with soulbeast since you need to swap pets to use it, plus two stacks of poison every 15s is pretty garbage. They could improve it a lot, but soulbeast should have more poison synergy in it’s own traits. It’s got nothing additional traitwise to offer condi builds except a tiny amount of lifesteal and some increased duration.

i mean refined toxins which apply poison once every 5 seconds while your health is above the 75%. Do no hope to get a trait better than that one as a minor.

Please understand i’m not bashing your idea which i think is fantastic. But i think it would be easier to give that attribute to a pet family which would allow much better gameplay and stronger effects than a trait, even if is a minor.

Something like Dagger Training is what I mean.

Refined Toxins is not that great for Soulbeast either, on Druid its awesome since you can stay abov 75% a lot of the time and also you have your pet out 24/7, on Soulbeast it’s a different story.

you are absolutely right, sorry i didn’t see it before

Personally, I think all the dagger really needs to be a true and powerful hybrid weapon is to up the dmg about 50% on both strikes of skill 2. that way you can get quickness and fire off a small but effective spike on a foe knocked down from axe 4 or wolf leap sbeast skill or any other kd/immob we have. make it’s final dmg similar to a level 2 eviscerate. Auto attack could be slightly faster but with the access to quickness sbeast has i think its ok as is.

Combatter.5123:

I think it’d be nice if there were a compelling reason to actually leave beastmode once ArenaNet implement a pet swap from within beastmode. As it is, I don’t see that there’s much incentive to switch around between regular (separate pet) play and beastmode play. Maybe there could be a trait that gave boons to your pet when you leave beastmode?

The actual stat improvements you get from merging aren’t that great compared to the stats your pet will have when seperated. Plus the pet F2s aren’t available to use in BM.

Can arenanet also improve wyverns f1 and f2 when joining the ranger? Simply shameful that has less damage in these two skills f1 and f2 compared to other pets …

Rap Tiger.1257:

Can arenanet also improve wyverns f1 and f2 when joining the ranger? Simply shameful that has less damage in these two skills f1 and f2 compared to other pets …

The power scaling on most of the pets’ beastmode F1 skills seem very low and I hope they adjust them. I disagree that Wing Buffet needs a damage buff though; it is a great CC. Electric Wyvern brings a ton off CC for Soulbeast.

Pterikdactyl.7630:

Rap Tiger.1257:

Can arenanet also improve wyverns f1 and f2 when joining the ranger? Simply shameful that has less damage in these two skills f1 and f2 compared to other pets …

The power scaling on most of the pets’ beastmode F1 skills seem very low and I hope they adjust them. I disagree that Wing Buffet needs a damage buff though; it is a great CC. Electric Wyvern brings a ton off CC for Soulbeast.

Even if this is CC, the f2 canines also apply CC and do more damage as the f2 of the wyverns when fused with the ranger …. no, it can not get inferior compared to the canines, after all, I play only with wyverns and I will take disadvantage of that is why?

My ideas for general improvements. I won’t focus too much on numbers but where they seem low / plain silly I will mention it.

Dagger:

• Improve animation speed and variety. I find it unacceptable that the skill 2 has the same animation as the first 2 chains of the auto attack. The speed is too slow, feels more like a sword or even a greatsword than a dagger. Skill 3 needs to feel more fluent, make it so it does not feel like we stop moving for half a second.

• If traits don’t get better condi focus, consider changing the weapon to a power based weapon. If SB traits get better condi support, concider giving skill 3 a condi or give AA an extra stack of bleed on the first strike.

Stances:

• Stances need to use the ammo system like other classes if they remain to function the way they do.

• Take a look at the super niche or just obviously useless stances / aspect of stances.

• Moa Stance: Please change this one. The ranger has enough ways to get protection and the other boons are useless. The 66% boon duration will be problematic with “Leader of the Pack” trait, the revenant boon aura got nerfed for this exact reason and now you want to reintroduce this. Just change this stance, please.

• Griffon Stance: Ranger has enough ways to get endurance back and we have a decent amount of evades on our attacks. I do not think the might on dodge is worth going for this. Perhaps make this stance alter our dodge roll with a swoop of sorts if you wish to keep it’s dodge theme. Consider reworking this trait too.

• Vulture Stance: Above 50% enemy health it’s not worth using in most situations so to me personally it feels like it’s a stance you can’t use till enemy hits 50%. Might is easy enough to gain elsewhere in many of the game modes. Perhaps make it apply a different condi above 50% enemy health, torment or bleed.

• One Wolf Pack: Give the extra attack an animation please, like a spirit wolf pouncing the enemy. Visually it feels really underwhelming right now. Consider adding some condition damage if you wish to have Soulbeast be a condi spec. Consider making it have your merged pet attack the target in spirit form, using it’s own AA. This would add true flavour to the ranger’s bond with their pets as a soulbeast.

• Bear & Dolyak Stance: These two seemed fine, even if Dolyak didn’t work I think it’ll be fine for wvw and spvp and maybe some niche pve content too.

Traits:

• I feel like traits are a bit of a mess. Make them better for condi or for power but don’t go 50% effective for both. The traits lack direction.

• Tier 1 Major: Fresh Reinforcement feels more like a minor trait that every SB should have. Perhaps move Twice as vicious instead.

• Tier 2 Major: 3 traits that seem niche here. Predator’s Cunning needs to be effected by condition damage way better and maybe just change this trait, because we know how afraid Anet is about leeching effects and will never make them worth picking. It doesn’t fit the SB imo, as there’s no other support for leech in our kit. Essence of Speed seems useless, change it too please. Second Skin is maybe niche, but fine enough.

• Tier 3 major: Oppressive Superioty could use a better tooltip, make it explain that it’s based on % health (I atleast assume it is). Leader of the Pack trait depends heavily on how good stances will end up being, Eternal Bond is fine enough for wvw and spvp and even safe solo play here and there.

• Minors: Consider swapping Twice as Vicious to Tier 1 major instead of Fresh Reinforcement. It also seems random to have an interrupt based trait in a spec that doesn’t get any interruption tool.

New pets:

• New Felines: Please make their F2 pet skills have less cooldown. Nobody is going to use these if their cooldowns are extremely long. A shadowstep for an AI that gives some random swiftness, or a rooted roar that blinds really doesn’t warant these CDs. 20 sec should be the max here.

• Fanged Iboga: Nice pet, but make Consuming Bite and it’s spit have faster animation or less aftercast. This pet looks like it’s doing nothing at all for 50% of the time it fights. This seems like it didn’t get the memo that pet skills were made smoother.

• Rock Gazelle: Seems fun and useful.

• Jacaranda: Seems nice and strong, haven’t tested it much.

I’m really hoping with dagger being MH we FINALLY get the offhand training functionality back for offhand dagger. The #4 skill is so, so awful without that extra range.

Continuation of my post (see above for the first part)

Beastmode:

• Fun to use, but needs work.

• Visuals: These need to be more subtle, right now it looks like a foul cloud surrounds us and it’ll not fit with a lot of people’s looks. Make it subtle so that it does not compromise our character’s design. This game is all about cosmetics after all. Just the leaves alone would be enough, or no visual at all and give us a buff that shows the pet’s family.

• Numbers: I will mention numbers here because just as with Moa Stance I feel it’s especially important they’re right here. Please make sure the damage numbers on offensive skills are inline, or slightly above, our weapon skills 2-5 skills. If this is not the case, they won’t be worth using and beastmode will end up being a Archetype ability only stance / pet saving stance.

• Extras: Consider adding something extra to certain skills, like the bird’s swiftness to allies. With mounts coming to pve and wvw having plent of ways to gain swiftness already, I feel a skill like this is just a wasted slot. Don’t be afraid to just make it another mobility skill. Soulbeast could use it, actually.

• Pet Swap: Allowing us to swap pets in beastmode would make us more versatile and make the spec feel smoother.

• Cooldown: Beastmode doesn’t need 10 seconds cooldown, we give up our pet’s damage to gain it’s skills and utility and stuff like that. This having no cooldown would be perfectly fine.

That’s all I have right now.

Edit: Also noticed devourer underwater misses 1 skill when you enter beastmode.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Then make a Minor Adept trait that applies poison ala Sharpened Edges.

That could be used if they change the carrion\spider skills to work like the bristle sharpen spines should work but for poison (now the skill gives only 5 bleed charges), 30 seconds CD, for 30 seconds your attacks apply poison.

Thus if you get a carrion\spider and the trait you may have a poison\regen build. They may balance the healing gained although i think 150 heal by poison application is not that great (you could get 300 heal max per second).

We already have a trait which applies poison in WS trait line.

Poison Master is pretty rubbish and it’s only going to be worse with soulbeast since you need to swap pets to use it, plus two stacks of poison every 15s is pretty garbage. They could improve it a lot, but soulbeast should have more poison synergy in it’s own traits. It’s got nothing additional traitwise to offer condi builds except a tiny amount of lifesteal and some increased duration.

i mean refined toxins which apply poison once every 5 seconds while your health is above the 75%. Do no hope to get a trait better than that one as a minor.

Please understand i’m not bashing your idea which i think is fantastic. But i think it would be easier to give that attribute to a pet family which would allow much better gameplay and stronger effects than a trait, even if is a minor.

Something like Dagger Training is what I mean.

Refined Toxins is not that great for Soulbeast either, on Druid its awesome since you can stay abov 75% a lot of the time and also you have your pet out 24/7, on Soulbeast it’s a different story.

I made a suggestion like this on the point of Improving the master traits. It incorporates something like you suggested and the life steal.

Dagger

• Change the Dagger auto attack chain with the regular 4-hit/3-cast animations that Thief and Necro dagger auto attack chains have. Compact the chain to: Leading Strikes (2x hit), Serpent Stab, Deadly Delivery. Current effects remain.
• Replace Double Arc’s animation with the downward X-slash that Elementalists use when casting Dragon’s Claw on their dagger auto attack (Fire Attunement). It would make Double Arc flow smoother and noticeable as a unique attack.

Pets

• Replace the Swiftness on the Juvenile Cheetah’s Beast ability to Quickness for synergy with Essence of Speed.
• Change the Sand Lion’s Beast ability from a pulse-damaging area of effect blind to a non-damaging roar that grants nearby allies the new Sand Barrier mechanic as found on Scourge and Weaver. Would be interesting to have a feline with a defensive F2 for a change and justify its hefty cooldown.

Traits

• Fresh Reinforcement needs to work both ways, granting the player boons on the pet when entering Beastmode, and granting the pet boons on the player when exiting Beastmode. Being a minor trait would also help.

Stances

• Vulture Stance could use something unique, such as removing a boon on foes above 50% health and corrupting a boon on foes below 50% health. Would give Ranger a way to counter boons and up their value in WvW groups.
• Griffon Stance has a long cooldown and kind of wastes Vigor if it is applied at the same time. The effect can better serve if altered to grant endurance per second rather than the 100% endurance regeneration so it can stack with Vigor and traits.
• One Wolf Pack should be change so its effect can occur multiple times per interval to cleave targets. That would justify its current cooldown and make it useful beyond single-target encounters.

Another thought i had about the increased stats.
They seems really really underwhelming.

Those stats by archetype increase should:

• Affect 4 stats instead 2, they don’t need to be imaginative just use the equivalent to existing stat sets. Also concentration and expertise should be used. For example ferocious it is obviously for power setups so it could use the marauder stat combination. Deadly could use the equivalent to Viper
• Increase stat should use a percentage instead fixed values to enhance the build instead to add some random numbers. 30% 30% 20% 20% would be a nice fit.
  That way when merged the SB can regain the damage lost for the merge and surpass the low multipliers this class has.

• remove\rework SB traits to avoid giving damage increase. The shoulbeast should get that damage increase (in form of increased stats) instead having weird buffs of damage increase which are very situational (twice as vicious or furious strength comes in mind)

• if Anet want to play the SB as self quickness machine they should make the spec to have easy access to that boon. It is very weird to have traits which work with that but only two abilities which apply very short duration of it (trait and weapon)

Wondrouswall.7169:

…

Pets

• Replace the Swiftness on the Juvenile Cheetah’s Beast ability to Quickness for synergy with Essence of Speed.
• Change the Sand Lion’s Beast ability from a pulse-damaging area of effect blind to a non-damaging roar that grants nearby allies the new Sand Barrier mechanic as found on Scourge and Weaver. Would be interesting to have a feline with a defensive F2 for a change and justify its hefty cooldown.

Traits

• Fresh Reinforcement needs to work both ways, granting the player boons on the pet when entering Beastmode, and granting the pet boons on the player when exiting Beastmode. Being a minor trait would also help.

Stances

• Vulture Stance could use something unique, such as removing a boon on foes above 50% health and corrupting a boon on foes below 50% health. Would give Ranger a way to counter boons and up their value in WvW groups.
• Griffon Stance has a long cooldown and kind of wastes Vigor if it is applied at the same time. The effect can better serve if altered to grant endurance per second rather than the 100% endurance regeneration so it can stack with Vigor and traits.
• One Wolf Pack should be change so its effect can occur multiple times per interval to cleave targets. That would justify its current cooldown and make it useful beyond single-target encounters.

All excellent ideas here.

Griffon Stance could also be made to just bypass the endurance regen cap. It may be easier to program that.

Edit: Played around with some trait ideas

Again, pasted from feedback thread, but being automatically switched out of beast mode and it being put on cooldown when I enter/leave water is really annoying…

Dagger
- Speed AA up to same level whit other daggers.
- Skill 2 add weaknes on it to help ranger stay at mele fight.
- Sill 3 feels like it need some cc like cripple or slow.

Traits
- Move Fresh Reinforcement to minor trait like have been suggested and replace it whit new trait that add poison on crit whit chanse(higer chanse if at mele range lower from range).
- Add cooldown reduction to stanses on Leader of the pack.

Stanses
- Switch might from evade to quiknes at Griffon Stance.
- Add some damagin condi(maybe bleed) to One Wolf Pack.

Beastmode
- Boost every f1 and f2 skill power modifaier.
- Add pet swap or remove cooldown from beastmode.
- Increase all bonus stats by 50% exept consentration and outgoing healing