Guild Wars 2

Question for testers…

I’m grateful for the “petless” Ranger design, but aside from that, what role does Soulbeast bring to a team? How does it compare to the melee capabilities of other professions? What does the Soulbeast bring to WvW and Spvp?

Stances apply to allies. So…there is that….

Group stability and deeps and if bear stance applies to allies well a kitten ton of condition removal and endurance rengeneration . And who’s to say it won’t bring more with minor and major traits, also massive rework coming next week, (they’re apparently even changeing sigs, giving core classes the new barrier mechanic (earth line in ele confirmed) and some people are getting a charges mechanic on certain skills (confirmed for base wars "kick" skill) so ya there is alot of that

Mainly Stances and beast mode skills. The beast mode “archetype” pet skills got nice radius with powerful effects like:
4,200 aoe heal+3.5 sec resistance, 600 radius(on support/healing pets)
1,900 damage(huge for ranger) – 240 radius+leap(on offensive pets like dogs)

Some of pet core abilities will also be great like pig brutal charge(can knock down for 3 sec up to 3 targets in a line, many of the single target pet attacks can effect several foes now, or at least cleave), drake tail swipe(imagine the damage), moa aoe heal and tons of other examples. And we are yet to see the traits.

Just from what I have seen so far.

WvW Zerging: Stances look really good if a ranger wants to run with a melee train. The pet not dieing during a clash lets you bring it out to cleave downed while you continue to push. Or keep it comboed to gain access to skills like defy pain or shake it off from bears. And thats NOT countign the fact that stances can be shared but only considering it as a selfish melee character rocking lets say GS and going for maul bursts on low targets.

Example of a “frontline” ranger combo. Mostly stances (Further defensive utilities of your choice) Greatsword, longbow (swap to longbow if you need to pressure a low escaping target) rock GS for the clash using the evading auto attack to mitigate and the stances to make sure you can keep going forward and maul combos to whale on anyone vulnerable.

Fused with Drake. Gaining access to two high damage cleave abilities chomp (Damage+Health gained) and Tailswipe (Aoe NUKE+ Blast finisher+weakness)

When you generate a down unfuse and allow the drake to assist in cleaving.

Offpet is bear for highly defensive abilities (Defy Pain "Health cannot fall below 1/3rd HP) and bite (Damage+regen)

Or MoA (For the AoE Heal ability and another burst skill)

Done properly you can probably survive without a frontline party. But with the shared stances you have the ability to assist your grp reliably if the frontline meta has a spot for us after the expac.

Wel be able to put out decent frontline support and damage based on the setups we choose. Itl be up to the ranger to swap pets to fit the conflict though. No more camping two pets just cause they are your favorite.

We’re gonna be getting alot of options. Itl be up to the rangers ability to plan though how much wel get out of it.