Guild Wars 2

Soulbeast was fun to play, but purely because of the bugs/skills that will get nerfed later.

-Soulbeast doesn’t feel like an elite spec, it’s just a base ranger with few more buttons.
-Soulbeast traits weren’t really interesting and doesn’t justify dropping other traitlines
-Several skills and traits do not work while in beastmode or conflict with each other, make it clear which ones are supposed to work and which ones are not
-Stances are boring and ineffective, including the elite
-Beastmode skills have short range, low damage, long cast times and it’s impossible to hit moving targets
-Beastmode cooldown needs to go, it doesn’t feel fluid and you just end up camping the beastmode
-What’s with the green fartcloud?
-Dagger is clunky and slow
-Beastmode allowed me to run with squishy pets that I wouldn’t normally run with in WvW which was a nice surprise
-New pets seemed good, the felines needs more oomph

Maybe it’s intentional? Once the expansion comes out there will be tons of stuff that got nerfed (There will be lots of negative topics popping out) so to soothe out the pain they will give us a working Dolyak Stance (Distract us from the nerfs and to keep us quiet!) /Straightens up my tinfoil hat

Sorry for necroing this, but this topic did absolutely nothing and the issue is still there, footage from the weekend’s demo is being moved here where nobody sees it. Feedback on skills and traits do not belong here in this subforum, it belongs in the class specific subforum. I’m really puzzled by all this, doesn’t it just cause even more work for developers to go through yet another subforum when they are looking for feedback from the players, especially when all the important balance/feedback stuff is being buried under fanfics, drawings and recipes?

I don’t want to post any of my WvW videos anymore since they just get moved here where I am not getting any usefull feedback. If you want to support your creators, you got to stop this madness.

Holland.9351:

I completely agree.

We need to be able to swap pets while in Beastmode. I fear we can’t “because the tech isn’t there yet”, which would be the only valid reason, but then we need instant Beastmode switching without delay.

Also, currently it’s better for me to NOT use Beastmode at all because Beastmode doesn’t have the pet F2 skills. Why doesn’t it? It really blows my mind. It must be because of time constraints because Weaver already had 180 new skills to look at.

I’m guessing it’s intentional, the weaving kind of gameplay Anet mentioned in the preview so you don’t just camp beastmode but pop out of it to utilize the pet and go back in again.

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.

This has been reported few times already, there’s a video where Gazelle does 50k damage when buffed up and paired with Sic ’em. The guy skipped downed state and dropped dead on the spot.

I love how everyone around me knows that I had a burrito for dinner!

ZhouX.8742:

Aomine.5012:

ZhouX.8742:

Ok,

From testing already I am happy but also sad because I know how ranger gets nerfed especially WI.

1. Worldly Impact will almost 100% be nerfed in terms of damage. You’re talking 8k+ numbers in PvP with 10k+ being tested in WvW environments.

This will be definitely nerfed so I wouldn’t get too attached to it. This is an obvious and people will complain like kittening crazy about it.

Why would this be nerf when most of the Holosmith F5 skills hit for 7~16k?
The holosmith F5 #4 is a stronger rapid fire with shorter cast time. (Half of the channel time of Rapid Fire while doing MORE damage than Rapid Fire at 1200 range, and also causes burning. )

Didn’t say that was balanced did I?

It will get nerfed man , too many people will cry about it. I know now from the many balance patches ranger has received since the beginning of this game on top of being nerfed over and over from the time druid was released. I can’t be too excited because I know, from the past, that this will result in the same after even the 1st balance patch.

This was my first thought too when I was going through my combat log “Nope, no way! We can’t have nice things!”

Miellyn.6847:

I had a strange bug where my pet was permanent stowed even infight and beastmode did nothing. Could be fixed with unstowing the pet.

This happened to me when I died while I was on beastmode. I couldn’t unstow the pet, I had to go in and out of beastmode few times before my pet finally decided to pop out. Few times when enemies hit me, the pet didn’t pop out but there were also few occasions when enemy hitting me fixed it and the pet came out (Before this I had tried unstowing it with no success). Odd stuff.

Sadly, as much as I enjoyed dueling in spvp and roaming in WvW with the Soulbeast, it was only fun really because of the bugs if I’m completely honest. 23k Charge with the Gazelle, 10-15k Mauls and the forever stuck Wolfpack on friendlies were pretty much the highlights of my evening. That being said, I’m not sure if Soulbeast is going to be much fun once those gets fixed.

I’m aware things needs to be toned down, but knowing Anet they will come after us with a nerf bat of doom, Soulbeast’s damage will most likely take a huge nose dive and I doubt they will buff any of the old pets, leaving us with a mediocore elite with mediocore damage (Followed by several nerfs to Gazelle till we get the next expac, just like with Smokescale). The mainhand dagger didn’t really impress me much, it felt clunky/slow and I found most of the old utility skills better than the new stances. I mainly used dagger #3 for escaping from blobs and it worked for that quite nicely when paired with GS and eagle’s skill #1 in beastmode. Most of the beastmode pet skills have ridiculously short range, making it almost impossible to hit moving targets as most of the Soulbeast’s stuff has long-ish cast times.

To say something positive, I guess I did like the green glow around my character, I found the Wolfpack aura more disturbing on friendlies than that. I will probably continue playing on my Soulbeast through the weekend and enjoy the ridiculous numbers I can muster out with a melee power build, because once the expansion comes out I doubt I will switch away from my Druid.

edit: Underwater combat was pretty good fun on Soulbeast!

AegisFLCL.7623:

So whats everyone estimate on shouts applying to you being nerfed.

I don’t see devs allowing Sic’ Em for very long.

I was 1 hitting people with booned Gazelle and using Sic ’em. Nerf incoming :x

Oh my goodness. Gazelle does 10k hits with the charge!

Because you knocked a mob away from some dev with your LB and they missed their burst.

Durzlla.6295:

nacario.9417:

Durzlla.6295:

nacario.9417:

I honestly dislike the bark skin change as itdiscourages marauder longbow play, and further promotes hybridtankyheal.

Could always take instinctive reaction and gain some healing power based on your power.

yeah its a good point but then we are locked in nature magic, and wilderness surv was good for its added utlity for longrange annoyance with poison every 5 sec, survival reduced cd+condi removal and u could now even get muddy terrain on heal (which now has pulsing slow for 10 sec onpoint). While this change opened up, it also closed some doors, but thats evolution i guess.

I mean I still can’t bring myself to drop NM or BM to pick up anything new for my Druid, even though WS looks so good now with the muddy terrain heal.

Feeling the same, really. I tried some of the new pew pew things in WvW now that they patched most of the bugs, but watching my pet aimlessly run in circles while not being able to hit most moving things is a bit depressing. I played with that traitline for so long I cannot understand how people can play without it, do you guys just ignore your pet completely and hope for the best?

I’m really not sure what to think about this patch, I suppose in a way they did reach the balance aspect when you cannot have it all at once – damage, reliable pet and condi cleanse. Will have to try again once they have gotten rid off the bugs.

Levetty.1279:

This spec just looks absolutly amazing. Bears just became Meta.

All those bites, Ranger is going to become very kinky.

Not so sure about the kinky bit, but I suppose when people start calling for nerfs Anet should offer them rabies jabs instead? Rangers are filthy animals after all!

Kitta.3657:

Fay.2357:

Kitta.3657:

What in the hell?

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU ARE IN COMBAT? Disable in combat gliding. Otherwise it means anyone can run away from a fight by just gliding away and literally makes HoT Pay-to-win. Seriously. It NEEDS to be disabled to deploy gliding while in combat. Seriously. This is why gliding in WvW has always been the stupidest idea.

I don’t think you have the strongest grasp of how gliding works. If they try and run away by gliding off a cliff, just toss out a little cc and watch them fall to death, lmfao.

For that you require to have ranged CC. So now you have to make sure you have ranged CC on you at all times which means you have to change your build AROUND gliding? That’s kitten.

BEARBOWS REJOICE, OUR TIME HAS COME! It is our time to shine for we have waited for this moment forever, lurking at the back of the zerg.. Never wanted, always rejected. Finally we will be accepted into squads and people beg us to use our glorious longbow #4! PEW PEW PEW!

Jokes aside, this will be fun!

This happens to me once or twice a week, usually after playing for an hour or two. Sometimes it happens after hanging around near big blob fights and/or using a tonic. However, for me, this has been an on going problem for a couple of months already, it was not introduced with the pips change.

This also sometimes happens with the underwater harpoon skill #3 and you get to run around with a wiggly land shark!

If it’s an artsy scenery video featuring a certain class by all means move it here, but if it has pvp/wvw/build/skill/rotation based information, leave it in the class forums as that’s the place where you go to look for that sort of thing. How many people seriously come here in this subforum specifically to watch that sort of videos (And not by an accident)? Pretty much the same logic applies as if you were trying to read news; you don’t open the sports section to read about tomorrow’s weather! Only reason why I’m even replying to this is because the post was in the dev tracker.

Chokolata.1870:

Guys, Druid was an amazing elite spec. It added a whole new type of role in the game that was not there before, a pure healer + support. It has also had great synergy with core utilities and traits that provided support.

While I understand that the bowman fantasy is not viable at the moment, it does not mean that the Druid missed its mark.

Currently we have a viable support/healer build and condition DPS build. We are missing a power melee/ranged build. Here is hoping that the next elite fills that role.

I have truly enjoyed playing druid! I love to be able to support my guildies properly and heal them while we kick butts.

People got hyped with HoT thinking they are getting spears (on land) based on one of the artworks where the artist had taken liberties when she drew some characters holding their weapons. The artwork can be misleading, don’t get too hyped.

Wondrouswall.7169:

By the looks of the icons, seems each stance has a represented pet already (the heal has a bear, the elite a wolf, the other utilities are a bird, a moa, and 2 that I can’t make out).

Seems interesting enough, especially with a trait icon of a bunny rabbit, even though we’re getting a dagger (I still wanted a hammer). ;/

I wanted a hammer too, I was so disappointed!

@Irijia, the guy who made the comments was a core tester afaik, he posted few pictures as well but nothing to back up his ranger comments. I’m a bit sceptical as well since I trust the pictures more than comments, but as WW said above, the icons seems to implicate that way anyways.

Irijia.6073:

Khenzy.9348:

Players that want to play a pet-less Ranger are going to be very happy with this one.

No word on if it’s petless. Might wind up being an aspect sort of thing to overcome the fact that Rangers melt in melee. If it does wind up being petless, it will be interesting to see how they attempt to modify the rest of the Ranger trait lines without ruining the class (don’t have much faith in them accomplishing that, though).

Regarding the leaks yesterday..
Spoiler alertActually, it was said in the massive leak thread that the new ranger will be petless, pets will be turned into stances or auras if you will. Based on what type of pet, you get a matching aura.

Sorry for a late reply lads, happy to see some discussion going on.

Fluff, I tried double melee few times after HoT landed and I also poked around with it during the pvp season 2 just for the sake of it (Nostalgia, really), but that combo doesn’t cut it anymore sadly. It’s lolsy for sure, but I can’t make it to work with a druid. Maybe it can be brought back to life with the next expansion and elite, fingers crossed. Also thank you for your kind words, much appreciated.

anduriell, thank you for your feedback. I’m sorry you didn’t find the video entertaining, I’m also terribly sorry that I cannot provide footage against Desolation as it is currently impossible for me to do so. It has been a long time since we were against them so recording any footage is a bit difficult. Last time was at the end of January I think? I’m hopping on in game when I happen to have time or when I’m procrastinating which also means I play which ever match up happens to be running, this time it was against AR and DL. I think you are being a bit unfair there tho, Baruch isn’t exactly known for having good players either, but I still enjoy those match ups nevertheless as there are more people on when I’m playing late in the evening. Each server has something to offer, just got to look at the bright side and enjoy the ride.

Either way, thank you for your advice. My playstyle may not be for you, but it allows me to lead, survive and support my party, which I think is more valuable to me than big numbers popping on my screen, I leave that to my group as their classes and builds can muster out more burst and oomph than I can as a druid anyway. However, I do switch to a DPS build if we have someone else to cover the heals, but real life is a cruel mistress and our other supports are not available that often anymore. Pew pewing from afar is not really that interesting, I agree with that, but as a leader it gives me a better view of what’s happening, it’s easier to call targets and downed, I can also easily see whether we should move out of the blob’s way (Or splat gracefully, if I’m not paying attention).

jcbroe, I indeed picked SoR for the reasons you mentioned, it has it’s ups but also downs. I have to admit I haven’t exactly mastered the pet swap and SoR yet, my mistake is that I waste it while my Bristleback is too far out. Shame on me, I know, but I’m working on it. I agree with andull that it has one really huge disadvantage, I have gotten hit by several epidemics thanks to my pet which is frustrating, but I have to work with what we have and what I can fit into my build. Or to be honest, it really comes down to what kind of build I can put together without doing any pve :x I’m glad I have my guild, they are all solid lunatics and fun to play with, but even so we are slowly losing players to real life. Being a grown up is so lame :< Hold on to your friends, don’t lose touch with them!

Rather than being sensible and doing stuff for uni as my deadline is approaching, I ended up going through some footage from our last match up and made a video instead. Woo, procrastinators unite!

Rap Tiger.1257:

FrouFrou.4958:

Zenith.7301:

Substance E.4852:

OGDeadHead.8326:

It’s too late now. They won’t ever really improve the core issues at this stage. Some band-aid fixes slapped on is what we can hope for at most, but I doubt even that will happen.

Literally the best we can hope for is another 1-2 good pets in the next expansion that will then be nerfed down to barely passable after enough pleb tears flood the pvp forum.

Or we get the pretty cool but completely useless wyverns whose stats are so horrendous and attack animations so slow that they miss any moving target while also doing absolutely dreadful DPS.

HoT version of bearbow!

Bearbow version? If you have not equipped with beastmaster die fast and bristlback and smokescale can be bearbow too, especially smokescale that can use f2 to blind enemies. I want Wyverns strong as Smokescale then

Uhhh, I have no idea what you are on about. Bearbow as in when you see someone running a wyvern pet, you are about to score a free kill or you have a rallybot on your side.

Zenith.7301:

Substance E.4852:

OGDeadHead.8326:

It’s too late now. They won’t ever really improve the core issues at this stage. Some band-aid fixes slapped on is what we can hope for at most, but I doubt even that will happen.

Literally the best we can hope for is another 1-2 good pets in the next expansion that will then be nerfed down to barely passable after enough pleb tears flood the pvp forum.

Or we get the pretty cool but completely useless wyverns whose stats are so horrendous and attack animations so slow that they miss any moving target while also doing absolutely dreadful DPS.

HoT version of bearbow!

Someone popped a ranger pet question @ AMA reddit thread, no one answered :<

I’m not quite sure why you are so fixated on the word havoc there. It isn’t supposed to be the kind of omg look how amazeballs I am 1 shotting people, but sort of look how much stupid stuff we do and how much fun we have while doing utterly stupid stuff as a group. I don’t do duels nor GvGs anymore so I picked the havoc word there because well uh, that’s what we do and havoc is what smaller groups do? Flip stuff and kill stuff, occasionally we also run off cliffs but that’s another story for some other day. Nothing to do with me insta killing anyone, because that’s not what I am even aiming to do, I’m just leading my guild to adventures and to be able to do that better, I am asking for feedback on how to change my build for the better so I can get the best out of this gimmicky class.

Fluff, every now and then I switch it to something else but I always end up going back to Sic ‘Em purely because there’s just way too much stealthing going on in our tier and in EU roaming scene in general. I mean, looking at our team: druid, thieves, mesmers, scrappers..! The downside is we struggle with stomps as it is with our group combo due to lack of stability and having downed enemies getting stealthed is just making it worse, thus Sic ’Em is more or less stuck in my utility bar for now.

I switched to QD for the rest of the week and it is nice indeed. I’m a bit torn about this because with that change I lost Clarion Bond and I also miss the piercing bit from Lead the Wind. I don’t miss getting stuff reflected back at me when someone places a reflection wall behind my target tho!

Gannicus, I just think everyone should play whatever they feel like playing, so we usually end up with odd outside of meta combos, which is tricky to pull when you face meta groups but it can be tons of fun. Reaper is a total beast when paired with a druid, but sadly it takes a certain kind of mentality to run reaper in small scale.. Which is that you don’t mind getting left behind and get sacrificed for the greater good. DHs have a bit more mobility but usually after few weeks we find our DHs taking a break from the game or switching classes. I started calling it a judge curse because it happens every single time :<

I tried the tiger for one evening but I have to agree with Umbra here, it’s just too squishy for bigger fights.

Thank you for the build suggestions Borya, will give those a go as well and see how it goes.

Oh snap! That was actually my mistake, I was fooling around with the editor and copypasted the wrong link, sorry for the confusion and thank you for pointing that out! Instead of Remorseless it should have been Lead the Wind :x

Outside of Clarion Bond I’m relying on my party to provide fury, I picked the Rage sigils for some faster pew pew and CA healing really. Due me being quite far away from the rest of my party I suppose it’s not the best choise, even though occasionally my pet picks fury from them and I get it via Heal as One. Any suggestions to replace those sigils? Condis haven’t been a big problem unless I get focused really hard, but I guess that might change once our tempest is gone.

Ohoi ohoi! I gots 2 WvW havocing videos to share with you lads and ladies! We have had a staff tempest running with us lately, but sadly he is going to take a break from the game soon which means I need to step up my healing game. We don’t run any heavies, so this is not your usual GWEN setup, but a rather uhh.. Kity squishy group.

To take over our tempest’s healing duties, I crafted some new ascended gear and I’d like to hear some feedback about my build: I chose a mixture of clerics and serkers, I need to be able to finish people on my own too (Preferably by actually dealing damage to them and not by boring them to death via bunkering down too hard). I’m aware there is massive amount of projectile hate going on in WvW at the moment, but I picked LB anyways for the sake of being able to keep on eye on the HP bars, enemies/our movement and calling targets. Any tweaks, tips, suggestions?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqA1CitCCOsActgl9Ab52FAObPxhy1TD+tWX/rlMtzA-TVSBABZt/gHPCgrUGAwRAIMleOqEEPdBfq+jFXAgNDCA3YDYbbrZtpSBE4yI-w

Deso -> Gandara -> FoW -> Arborstone -> GH -> SoR -> Piken

Left Deso because of all the blobs in t1 and went down a few tiers, then left Gandara around the second season (back then the queues were long, buggy and would let you through randomly.) Then went through some lower tier servers while looking for small scale action, spent a month over at NA SoR (think it started falling from t1 after I left, this was around the time they added EotM in) and finally landed on Piken. Best community by far!

Missy.7356:

Gandara > SoR (went for a vacation since my GW1 friends were all on NA servers, have yet to return) > TC

(Please make it so that you can visit NA from EU to open world, then I will stop being one of those off hours people that unbalances matches, and play EU prime in EU and still have contact with friends in NA!)

Hey I remember you from Gandara! Even bumped into you during our NA vacation!

Chaba.5410:

Started game at launch on FA. A year later my “hardcore WvW” guild moved to IoJ then BP so I bought another account that was on sale to play with other friends still on FA. Then guild disbanded and I ended up with both accounts on FA, which seemed silly. Decided to use my first account to explore supposed differences between tiers and NA/EU that players related here on this forum. At the time a few friends asked me to level their alts so I ended up playing briefly on both NSP and Mag. Afterwards used it to play with a few different guilds in their GvGs before the scene completely broke up or to play WvW casually with some of the friends I made along the way. Purchased another on-sale account just to keep on an EU server but I barely play it.

First account: FA -> IoJ -> BP -> FA -> SoS -> TC (T1 tour) -> Kodash (EU tour) -> BP (T8 tour) -> YB -> SoS -> BG

Second account: FA

Third account: Kodash

So I chose both the migration and the server loyalty paths. They offered two different experiences that helped me retain interest in the game.

Out of curiosity, why did you end up picking a German server?

Next expansion elite spec confirmed, kitten on a roomba! Max DPS! No longbow sadness, no disappointment!

Not to be that person but.. I wouldn’t get too attached to this, this is too good to be true so it will be taken away sooner or later.

Mr Pin.6728:

My gut tells me that they are nerfing healing even with investment, maybe condi clear on the druidic clarity trait. Six instead of thirteen. Reducing the damage of smokescale and bristleback considerably and nothing else as far as buffs for core ranger. This would be inline for what the community has been screaming for. That’s what I’m expecting to read on Tuesday. I’d be VERY surprised if they actually did anything to re work core ranger or pets.

The community largely thinks that rangers should be a worthless class and anet largely goes along with the community. Expecting any love at this point is only frustrating.

This. After the patch they will then ask for feedback and ignore whatever we have to say till some mouthbreather month later makes a new topic how OP druid is.

I’m guessing druids will be hated even more after the patch if it’s possible, no one likes bunkers!

Not working for me either

You could try replacing dagger with an offhand axe. Works nicely against DHs

Would be nice to see some statistics on how many idle reports there has been so far and how many of them got punished.

Just keep on running through hard terrain, your pet will be lagging behind or taking silly routes so you will rarely see it if at all.

I agree, I should be able to blast that puddle that forms from all the tears of frustration when they can’t hit a moving target.

Just roll an asura, no matter what class it is you just gotta love those wiggly ears and chubby little feetsies.

I just like to touch your body. That’s all.

I think I will join the mass of people spamming the chat with /upset and /sad.

Gaile’s reply in another topic:

If you have ideas for the future, the best way to share them is with concise, brief descriptions. Posting walls of text is off-putting to busy people — be they forum members or developers. I suggest posting the idea in a concise manner and, if necessary, sharing details below that synopsis.

Just going to repost your reply from another topic Wondrous, as I think it’s really important for the devs to see why the pets sucks so much. If pets are supposed to do 30% of our damage it’s ridiculous how badly they do against such a simple thing as a golem.

Wondrouswall.7169:

There is still this thread LINK that was done by Firelysm several months ago on pet DPS against the moving Golem in Heart of the Mists.

Data should only be skewed in regards to Bristleback and Smokescale as they were the only 2 Pets altered in some way since then, so the rest of it should hold up.

Also here is Firelysm’s test against a non moving target https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Community-knows-little-none-about-PETS/5679580

Here’s me hoping that one day when I read the patch notes it says maul is now also a blast finisher :<