Guild Wars 2

Lets talk first about the elefant in the room here – the Beast Mode….

It absolutely doesn’t feel really beasty.. it feels like juts Core Ranger Redux, but just weaker, with now a more direct access to the same old Pet Skills, just only that now the Pet isn#t anymore with you and therefore you received a tiny Stat Boots, that feels incredibly underwhelming therefore that as a Core Ranger the Pet was designed to deal like felt 40% of your total DPS in regard of Stats.

Under a spec like this i woudl have expected personally some cool unique for this Spec Beast-Pets, that aren’t just generic aniomals, but really fearsome bigger BEASTS with that you can fuse/shapeshift to decide of either lettting its Sooul become 1 with you either, or the other way around your soul gettign fused to the pet so that you can play as the beast, like you know, that shapeshifting witch of Dragons Ages – Morgaine kind of which can transform herself into all kinds of big beasts.
But also fusing with just the normal animal pets feels underwhelming, due to all of them beign just 3/4 skill recycled and not individual pets that improve the build diversity of the class, even still when we can have maximum only creatures with us, which decide and limitate the amount of skills we can have with us.
So I see no reason here, why not each pet/Beast should also have 100% individual own skills.
Sure, it the cheaper solution to rycycle 75% of all the pet skills among the pet classes, but man, for an Elite Spec like this it completely feels underwhelming and outdated and for Core Ranger and Druid Build Diversity it would alos be better, if each pet woudl truly be 100% unique and not just a 3/4 rehashed reskin of pet Class X
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Lets start with the Dagger Skills and how they could be made more interesting and useful:

1) Groundwork Gouge = Effect changed to: Deal damage & vulnerability with a strike and if the hit is critical, then the attack ignores the defense of your foe
>) Leading Swipe = Effect Changed to: The next Strike is unblockable and causes Bleeding
>) Sloth Stab = Exchanged/Renamed from Serpent Stab, the Skil ldeals now Slow instead of Poison
>) Natural Thrust = Replaces Deadly Delivery. Perform a quick thrust attack, that deals double damage, when perform right when the enemy is about to attack you to and lets you auto evade the incoming hit in such moments. You lose 1 Boon to your Pet/Beast and you lose a Condition

2) Staccatto
Throw rapidly a flurry of maximum 8 Daggers in a cone, like lots of Bee Needles.
Each hit of them will cause a stack of poison to up to 3 Targets standing in that cone.
Grants now your Pet Quickness when you aren’ in Beast Mode. Grants you Super Speed under Beast Mode instead.

3) Instintive Engage
Effect changed to: Strike a foe and gain on successful strike Stealth when used in Beast Mode. Leap Forward and gain Quickness on successful strikle when used while not being in Beast Mode

Next Healing Skill

Bear Stance renamed to “Companionship”. Effect changed to:
Heal yourself and your Pet. Heals your Pet more, if it has less health, than you.
Lose Conditions per second when unmerged. Gain Boons per second, when in Beast Mode (Protection, Resistance, Stability), but the Heal Efficiency is then lower.

Griffon Stance renamed to “Heket’s Rampage”. Effect changed to:
Gain Might and Vigor on successful evades while unmerged. When in Beast Mode you gain on successful evades instead Fury and Quickness

Moa Stance renamed to “Run As One”. Effect changed to:
Gain Swiftness and avoid Traps as long as you have Swiftness, while beign unmerged.
Under Beast Mode, Swiftness turns into Super Speed and activatign the stance will stun break and causes a line of dust behind you, while you are running, which blinds foes that get in touch of it.

Vulture Stance renamed to “Serpent’s Quickness” Effect changed to:
Gain Quickness when you deal Poison to a foe under this stance and counterattack the next incoming attack with a poisonous strike that Poisons and weakens foes, while being unmerged.
When being in Beast Mode, poison will be replaced by a stronger Torment and Cripple Combo and the Counter attack will leech some health if your Health is below 50%
As long it is above 50%, you will gain instead Might when striking foes.
A Counter Attack lets this Stance end automatically.

These nostalgic GW1 skill names of stances give the class just more flavor, than these boring X stance, Y stance, Z stance names … give them then also some nice animations and everything is fine
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Elite Skill

One Wolf Pack
Effect changed to: Tripples for a while the Attribute Boost of your Pets/Beasts you gain, when going into Beast Mode while being in Beast Mode and lets your next 2 Skills deal 2 more Hits. When used while not being in Beast Mode, the Skill revives your Pets/Beasts and puts them both with all Boons active for some seconds into Combat, letting you have temporarely both your Pets out at the same time.
If you use Beast Mode then, when both your Pets are temporarely out and still alive, you’ll start Beast Mode with all Boons active for a short while.

Next post is about proposed Trait Changes

Trait Change Proposal

- Minor Profieciency – Unchanged
- Minor Adept – Elevated Band, renamed to “Bond of Soul & Spirit” – changed to:
Gain access to Stances. Survival in the desert has enhanced your connection to your pet & nature spirits, granting you the ability to meld with them by entering beastmode *to become one of 4 unique Beasts *based on which Nature Spirit has merged with you and your Pet’s Soul together. More on this on the next posting.

Major Adept – Fresh Reinforcement – Effect changed to: The moment your first Pet gets defeated, your second Pets Soul is sacrificed to instantly revive your first Pet with Full Health and some Boons again.
With this Trait grants temporarely your Pet for nearby allies Concentration to your nearby allies by + 150 Points at Level 80 , whenever you manually exchange your pets, or your pet gets through this trait automatically revived by sacrificing your second pet.
- Major Adept – Live Fast – Unchanged – Using Beast Skills under Beastmode grants Quickness and Fury
- Major Adept – Unstoppable Union – Effect changed to: Activating Beastmode stunbreaks and you gain for a few seconds Stability. Your Attacks also become temporarely unblockable.

- Minor Master – Furious Strenth – Unchanged – Increased Damage while you have Fury

- Major Master – Second Skin – Effect changed to: Conditions deal 25% lesser damage while beign in Beastmode and Stance Skill Recharge Times are reduced by 20%
- Major Master – Essence of Speed – Effect changed: Increases your Concentration for every Boon extra on you aside of Swiftness by + 30 and gaining Quickness lets your Dagger Skills become unblockable, while Natural Thrusts gain the chance to turn into “Sonic Thrust” gaining the effect of Groundwork Gouge to ignore defense too.
- Majo Master – Predator’s Cunning – Effect changed: When you deal Weakness, Cripple or Vulnerability to a foe, steal some health from them.

- Minor Grandmaster – Twice as Vicious – Effect changed: Causing Poison to foes, causes now also Confusion for a brief moment and the Effect of Fury in Beastmode is for you 50% increased, so Fury grants you now instead of 20 now 30% more Critical Hit Chance

- Major Grandmaster – Eternal Bond renamed to “Primeaval Beasts”. Effect changed to: While in Beastmode, getting defeated just ends Beastmode and you get healed, if you used for the Beatsmode one of your Primeaval Beasts through the merge of one of the Nature Spirits. Was is just a normal Animal Pet, then you will recover lesser health
- Major Grandmaster – Leader of the Pack – Unchanged – Grants Stance Effects in reduced duration to nearby Allies
- Major Grandmaster – Oppressive Superiority – Unchanged – Deal more Damage and longer Conditions to foes with less health than you.

Primeaval Beasts & Humanoid Beastform (Shapeshifts)

These should be unique Beastforms based on which of the following for Nature Spirits has been merged together with your Pet and your soul

Player/Pet + Frost Spirit = You turn yourself into either a swift and supportive Sahagin-Form with a Staff as Humanoid-Beastform, or you turn yourself into a big beast called a “Frost Salamander”, an icy lizard/drake beastform.
Player/Pet + Stone Spirit = You turn yourself into either a sturdy and defensive Humanoid-Beastform as Gnome, or you turn yourself into a dangerous Coccatrice as big chicken based beastform whoze gazes and bites can turn you into stone…
Player/Pet + Sun Spirit = You turn yourself into either a strong and ferocious humanoid form as an Imp, or you turn yourself into a Wyvern as big beastform, far more deadlier than your small pet wyverns that aren’t even grown up.
Player/Pet + Storm Spirit = You turn yourself into either a kind of agile and elegant Neko-Form with razorsharp sonic claws, if you prefer the more Humanoid Beastform, or you turn into a big beast called a “Tempest Cheetah”, if you prefer rather a big animal based beast form.

With this gameplay mechanic the Soulbeast would combine the gameplay of becoming one with Pets, and woudl put it to a unique stage of shapeshifting with your character into either a humanoid beastform, or a primeaval beast form (monster) that aree bonded also to an elemental nature spirit.

The Feature of Beastmode gets then settled among the Buttons like this:

F1 to F3 = Pet Commands/Pet Skill when outside of Beastmode
F4 = Activate Beastmode without adding Nature Spirit
F5 = Activate Beastmode with adding Nature Spirit. Here the player has to either press, or press and hold to decide, if you transform to Humanoid Beastform, or Primeaval Beastform.

If you choose to use the Humanoid Beastform unter F5, then based on which Nature Spirit has been used (random) the Weapon Skills will gain additional side effects.

Weapon Skills under the affection of the Sun Spirit gain a chance to cause Burnings
Weapon Skills under the affection of the Frost Spirit gain a chance to cause Chill
Weapon Skills under the affection of Stone Spirit gain a chance to cause Vulnerability
Weapon Skills under the affection of Storm Spirit gain a chance to cause Bleedings.

When choosing the Primeaval Beasts over the humanoid beastform, the Nature Spirits will make you significantly resistant against these specific Conditions instead.

With this would have the Soulbeast some kind of more interesting gameplay concept that would make more fun to play, if you could surprise your foes anytime by shapeshifting into a big beast out of nowhere either, or into something, that looks visually as humanoid completely different, other than having just only a simple Aura around you.

After that would be then only the top of the icing, that each pet animal should have its individual own 4 Pet Skills and an individual Beast Skill for Beastmode.
Reduce the total amount of charmable pets (most are either way just only reskisn with currently the same skills) if that is neccessary and change the removed pets just into changeable “skins” you can unlock as player.

One can dream for perfection, no?

Your leading swip with “your next skill is unblockable” brings nothing except another hit, if the opponent starts a block right after this autoattack.

It would be better if you give “the next attack is unblockable” to a unblockable skill.

I would prefer for Instintive Engage something like
beastmode: your attack is unblockable. If you hit your attacks are unblockable for 3 seconds.

The rest of the weapons look very nice. Its something different instead of what dagger gets now (like I said in my thread last week)

Your One Wolf Pack is much too strong if you hit the enemy with something strong like maul or means “two additional hits” the same as it means in the current evrsion of the stance? Then it is too low :P. In addition how would you share your One Wolf Pack with your team? They don’t have a pet.

Can’t say much to the traits

Primeaval Beasts & Humanoid Beastform: It seems to me like a complete new elite specialisation :P