Guild Wars 2

Shadow Behemoth
Spellbreaker
Spongebob

Aomine.5012:

They remove throwing traps but release Shade which is like a stronger throwing traps?

This is the Anet we know too well!

Remember they also highly reduced spirits and basically gave old spirit ranger to Revenants!

Mobile Boon bot with Herald and

Multi summons with Renegade!

Revenant is the more efficient spirit ranger!

And our spirits are not ground targetable, can be affected by CC and not mobile, and rangers are mostly about mobility

anduriell.6280:

Entering/leaving beastmode should work as a weapon swap same as it works now for the druid.

I’m fine with entering/leaving Beastmode not counting as wep swap

Entering/Leaving CAF makes sense as it changes skills 1-5 and synergizes with Primal Echoes

I feel like the ‘On swapping pet, pet attack applies poison’ should move to Refined toxins (+ its current effect)

Poison Master needs some different mechanics and/or effects

• Vuln on Poison?
• Reduce boon durations on target by X%?
• Convert a boon to a condition on target (on X seconds ICD)?
• Apply poison when applying a damaging condition (on X seconds ICD)?

Or maybe as it is in the Grandmaster line of WS which is related to condition management,

• Transfer a condition to your foe when you apply poison (on X seconds ICD) ?

Thematically, I guess reducing the effectiveness of poison on yourself would also be interesting -

• Reduce both poison damage on self and reduce healing lmpediment from 33% to 15% – think of Mithridatism

InsaneQR.7412:

Sharpened edges should proc a lesser sharpening stone. Whoch gives your next kittens bleed. The chance is on hit. Sure the percentage chance has to be tweaked.
Thats how i would like to see sharpening edges.

I’d actually love to see Hidden Barbs getting a ‘Cast Lesser Sharpening Stone when hitting a foe under 75% health’ (I do miss the removed Keen Edge trait!)

But changing Crit Hit to Hit would be nice, just some tweaking to the numbers.

Always thought On-Crit related effects that deal conditions are weird – Critical Hits are generally related to POWER, kinda limits gear (Rampager, Viper)

I guess griever stats will be interesting (but no Expertise IIRC?)

Hydrolysis.6810:

Second Skin – gain light aura when you gain protection. using protection to reduce condi dmg is so limited since protection can be corrupted/removed.
or
You and your pet take less damage from condition while your health is above the threshold.

Twice as Vicious – think should grant furry along with it’s current effects.

Live Fast – doesn’t work with pet’s f2 why?

The other traits are ok , no pet boost / effects for leaving beast mode guess the plus is reviving dead pets.

The more I think of Second Skin the more I like it – it really feels like an ‘evolution’ of the Protection boon – while typically only covering power damage, this trait basically makes it cover all forms of damage. Rangers are the only profession in the game that have traits that enhance protection, and we have a healthy amount of access to it.

Twice as Vicious really feels lackluster, fury on disables would have excellent synergy, I love this idea

Live Fast is most likely bugged, I highly doubt it’s by design, feels like an oversight

The 6th bonus of Rune of the Water is a small AoE Heal burst with 755 healing and 0.5 healing power coefficient, its somewhat minimal.

With Rune of the Monk, as a Druid, you get access to the 6th bonus at all times, and it’s not dependant on healing skill, so any CAF skills will get the 10% bonus, as will the glyphs in CAF form and any other form of healing source.

Most traps are fine, they just need some tweaking in numbers.

The skill type that could definitely benefit from charges/ammo is…

Spirit skills. Now they sacrifice after a single use – give them 2 charges (especially since now there aren’t cooldown reduction traits, the elite spirit is on 120s CD…)

The spirits need rework in general. I understand they don’t want mobile spirits (why.) BUT

They should at LEAST make them ground-targeted AND immune to hard CCs – I mean they’re (underwhelming version) Banners/Turrets and whenever they get knocked back a thousand units behind from their spot the allies lose the effect.

Fun observation: So they granted a boon sharing trait but removed mobility, so that makes them similar but weaker than Herald Facets.

Now with Renegade they’re giving summons to Revenants. Why are similar but much stronger.

Revenants are the new Spirit Rangers.

If you’re main purpose is really focused on healing, Rune of the Monk is probably your best bet; You have Healing Power as a stat bonus and the 6th bonus is a percentage-based modifier. Add to that some boon duration bonuses and possibility for small heals on hit, it’s a solid (if not the best) choice for Healer-Focused druid.

For regen-based builds (which I don’t exactly recommend) Rune of Dwayna is good as it has Regen Duration bonuses, and with the recently reworked traits to have better synergy with protection, Rune of the Grove has some nice protection-related effects and duration bonuses.

But again, Rune of the Monk is the best option. For optimal outgoing healing bonus,

• Rune of the Monk 10% outgoing healing
• Sigil of Transference 10% outgoing healing
• Natural Mender (Minor Trait, 10 stacks) 20% outgoing healing
• Delicious Rice Ball (Food Consumable) 10% outgoing healing

That’s a delicious 50% extra outgoing healing!

Thief dagger MH is a hybrid weapon slightly leaning towards power spec while Soulbeast dagger MH is full condi

Having a bursty power effect wouldn’t fit.

Ranger/Soulbeast daggers are underwhelming right now but they are not designed for heavy hitting.

• Auto attack simply needs to be much faster and have higher base Condi duration
• Double Arc (skill 2) needs an evade and a boost in numbers
• Instinctive Engage (skill 3) is in an okay spot – some more vuln wouldn’t hurt

Off Hand dagger needs some revisions too…

• Dagger 5 would GREATLY benefit from the ammo system and
• Dagger 4 could have double base damage and still be meh – it is meant to be used defensively though but still lacks something

Both Soulbeast and Spellbreaker (Heh, SB and SB) feel like they have dagger skills built around having high quickness uptime to have ‘okay’ DPS, they both feel slow and underwhelming – Only 20 days to know what’s changed and tweaked since the Preview Weekend!

Thinking about it, I guess I could be fine with petswap in beastmode as long as the pet swap cooldown/timer is exactly the same as out of beastmode – would also kinda help me time my on petswap traits ahaha

If they could at least apply the reveal effect, it would enhance this skill greatly – but still feel lackluster.

Even a minor pulsing damage effect/minor pulsing healing effect would make me happy

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/How-to-fix-the-Soulbeast-Aura/

The Beastmode F skills are fine as they are right now (in terms of mechanics, not current numbers)

• Beast Mode F1 and F2 gives us ways to control pet family skills
• The auto attack doesn’t need control, its the auto attack
• The Pet Unique Skill (unmeld F2) is fine when unique to the pet, we have control over that skill when un-merged

They said the design wasn’t to camp beastmode either – it gives us incentive to meld out

People were crying about lack of control of pet family skills and now they gave us control over them

Melded mechanics are fine – we just need better numbers on most Beastmode F1-F2 skills.

This weapon is in a good spot.
The auto coefficients could see a little boost but as a hybrid weapon its in a good spot.

Survivability with this weapon relies a bit on kiting, I mean it is a (mid) ranged weapon, you can’t have low risk AND high reward

Winter’s Bite also does a good job at adding some survivability – Chill is a very powerful effect, as is weakness. both lower enemy movements and reduces enemy offensive efficiency.

While I disagree with leaps and evades,

• Auto attack does need some revision in its numbers. Base 295 dmg (15% increase) on 0.85 coefficient (20% increase) would be a minimal yet welcome change
• Split blade needs to be unsplit for different game modes

P.S. Winter’s bite actually pulls off reaaally good numbers -

• Perma Weakness uptime
• High Chilled uptime and when traited,
• The AoE packs a solid punch. With some ferocity, I often seen 4-6K crits (on 8s CD, AoE)

LughLongArm.5460:

ProtoMarcus.7649:

Yeah I’m actually fine with not being able to swap pets while in BM, its not meant to be camped

Though as others pointed out, entering BM would be interesting if considered a petswap, and maybe some effects on leaving beastmode from the soulbeast adept traits

I feel that the most awkward part is to leave beastmode, swap pet and wait another 9 sec to re-enter, when you want to use a utility skill from the beast mode kit.
I suggested it also in another thread:

They should get rid of the entering beast mode ICD. The traits related to entering beast mode(like Unstoppable Union) should get the ICD. They may consider making entering beast mode to be considered as a pet swap instead of a weapon swap which doesn’t make scene anyway. The parts of “pet swap” traits that effect pets, should effect the soulbeast while in beastmode, don’t forget that all the “swap pet traits” got an ICD so they can’t be abused.

Hmmm

I think the perfect balance would be

• Removing beastmode CD
• Add ICDs to enter-beastmode traits
• but Keep pet swaps on actual pet swaps

With no CD on beastmode, petswapping would flow really well, and entering and exiting beastmode smoothly would add a lot to fluidity of combat.

I do see myself strategically melding and unmelding, rotating between beastmode F skills and pet F skill or pet skills and timing swaps for effects

Yes, the other Elite Skill most people ignore (along Spirit of Nature)

Some patches ago it was mentionned that Tether skills would apply revealed to tethered targets, and it’s now been months and nothing of such applied to this tethering skill

Not only would it be consistant with what was said about tethering, but it’d also greatly enhance the utility of this skill.

Other possible utility would be linked directly to its theme – Offensively sharing incoming damage or Supportively sharing survivability

What I’d like to suggest would be to

• Transfer (reduced) instances of incoming conditions to tethered enemies when out of Celestial Avatar Form and

• Transfer (reduced) instances of incoming boons to tethered allies when in the Celestial Avatar Form.

Right now, despite the low cooldown (which can always be tweaked), it competes with much more useful skills – and I am pretty sure people actually use this elite only to proc Verdant Etching and Grace of the Land and not for the elite’s actual use.

With a coming 2nd expansion, they should re-explore traits/skills that are barely used (thanks for the previous balance patch though!)

…

…

…

SPIRITS

SOULBEAST

Dagger Main Hand

• This weapon is extremely underwhelming. The auto chain is too slow, condi duration is very low – Faster skill chain + base condi duration to 4s would make it more rewarding/useful. Its a high risk, very low reward weapon as is.
• The skill 2 could be tweaked to grant short evasion as well, because again, its a close melee wep with underwhelming utility, speed and damage.

STANCES
Overall need more utility, considering their awful cooldowns and all the other skills they compete with.

• Dolyak Stance You must know by now but this stance wasn’t fonctional for the soulbeast at all. (Also, pulsing stability?)
• Griphon Stance is really unbalanced. Minimal utility (next to none) on a 45s cooldown is ridiculous. Feels like it needs all its numbers looked at – it’s duration buffed OR its cooldown cut OR its initial endurance gain doubled etc. Also rangers now have PLENTY of ways to build might so this stance’s might effect is redundant, especially since another stance grants might. Should also be stun break
• Vulture Stance needs more utility – again, ranger already has enormous access to might AND poison, and this stance applies both… A 33% condi duration bonus effect would be ace – it’d add more utility and compete with other skills. As the Moa is the boon Stance, Vulture should be the Condi stance.
• One Wolf Pack also feels highly underwhelming and will almost always be replaced by Entangle or SotP – since quickness synergy was added to core ranger, why not apply a quickness-related effect to this elite stance? 0.5s Quickness per One Wolf Pack strike?

BEASTMODE BEAST SKILLS
Overall in a good spot, but

• Primal Cry has awful cast time underwater… DOUBLE cast time! Also, double the bleeds, it is the condi-related beast skill after all
• All beast mode beast skills will go on full cooldown when interrupted
• The traits in beastmastery that affect beast skills should trigger ON SKILL ACTIVATION rather than on skill completion

TRAITS

• Live Fast doesn’t work on Pet F2 skills
• Fresh Reinforcements should copy the player’s boons to the pet when leaving beastmode and/or become baseline
• Furious Strength should also apply a 7% condi damage bonus or else its too Power-Centric (especially since we get a condi weapon – no synergy)
• Predator’s Cunning doesn’t quite feel master-tier – maybe add a small additional effect (5% more damage & condi damage to poison foes? Or take less damage from them?)
• Twice as Vicious feels redundant with Predator’s Onslaught BUT it has great synergy with all the beastmode CC skills
• Eternal Bond – Barrier mechanics could work really well with this one when getting kicked out of beastmode
• Leader of the Pack – Needs either CD reduction or Stance duraiton bonus (maybe per affected allies?)
• Oppressive Superiority – Too conditionnal, if you do not respect the condition this trait is useless – maybe add defensive aspect when you’re the one being oppressed? When you have less health than a foe, gain -10% damage and condition damage from them?

BEASTMODE PET FAMILY SKILLS
They need a LOT of tweaking. Many offensive ones are actual DPS loss when casting them, utility ones don’t feel useful or rewarding.

CORE TRAITS AND SKILLS
Really need to make sure that skills, traits and whatnot have some effect on the player when melded – most currently do but plenty are still left behind

Yeah I’m actually fine with not being able to swap pets while in BM, its not meant to be camped

Though as others pointed out, entering BM would be interesting if considered a petswap, and maybe some effects on leaving beastmode from the soulbeast adept traits

Most on steal traits would apply to F1 only OR also to deadeye’s mark with some short ICD?

Using Deadeye’s Mark would apply the same effect as the new steal – Boon to self and Condi to target.

Peripheral Vision & Fire for Effect trait would apply to both Steal and Deadeye’s Mark

Be quick or be Killed Would apply for Steal and Deadeye’s Mark

We lose some synergy with steal trait, but we can both use steal and deadeye’s mark

Sic ’em – The core itself needs change – the reveal. AoE reveal on 600 radius please! The Beastmode version is fine, as long as reveal is tweaked too

Search and Rescue – In Beastmode, should teleport the player to you and double the rezzing speed

Guard – Reduced damage and might generation on hit

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Fresh Reinforcement – In a perfect world, it’d also apply your boons to your pet upon leaving beastmode

In a perfect world, that would be baseline for soulbeast, imo.

It’s not like you have Weaver that loses half it’s boons everytime they switch attunements or Necro whenever they enter shroud or Holosmith whenever they enter photon forge or Berzerker whenever they go berzerk, it’s crazy that we do.

Those boons we trait and skill to apply to our pets are part of us and we don’t deserve to be losing them everytime we use a mechanic. Pet swapping I can understand, since it is changing the pet entirely. But exiting beastmode should absolutely be copying our boons onto the pet, otherwise we are hindering ourselves just by using it.

It is certainly not condusive to phasing in and out of the mode regularly.

Yeah seeing that trait as a minor would be the actual best! I mean soulbeast has quite an affinity with boons too – Dagger 3, the stances, some beast skills… Would make sense

Eternal Bond is pretty useful, played a lot around it – though some barrier applicaiton would be pretty interesting too! Or taunt on pet when getting kicked out of beastmode? Solid emergency trait Also bug – when kicked out of beastmode, and getting downed, lick wounds doesn’t work

Leader of the Pack Stances have pretty high cooldowns – either a CD reduction effect OR stance duration bonus (self) would be really appreciated.

Oppressive Superiority Problem with that trait is that its too conditional – if conditions aren’t met, the trait doesn’t apply – I’d say add the effect of ‘Get reduced damage from enemies with more health than you’ -10% damage, -10% condition damage (or duration)

Also please do something about the irritating, near-provoking lingering soulbeast aura effect

I do love falling leaves a bit even though not too thematically correct, but the fart cloud gets old fast.

Quick suggestion

BEASTMODE BEAST SKILLS
First things first – The Beastmastery traits that proc effects on Beast skills SHOULD trigger on skill activation. Also currently when you’re interupted while casting an Archetype Beast skill, the skill goes on full cooldown.

• UNFLINCHING FORTITUDE – Love it – I think it’s in a perfect spot
• PRIMAL CRY – I don’t understand why the underwater version has a 2.5s cast time. I’d easily see it as a single blast finisher too
• PRELUDE LASH – It is a utility skill, but the damage values are pretty low – otherwise, good spot
• WORLDLY IMPACT – The leap finisher is good, as long as primal cry becomes a blast finisher! The CD is a little too long for its limited use (purely damage + leap finisher) – Base 20s CD would feel fair
• SPIRITUAL REPRIEVE – Since you gain access to this skill through supportive pet and therefore automatically gain +25% healing effectiveness, the numbers are really good (5293 heal with 0 healing power!). The CD is pretty long, so is the cast time, so one of the two needs to be balanced (1s Cast time would feel fair)

SOULBEAST TRAITS

• Fresh Reinforcement – In a perfect world, it’d also apply your boons to your pet upon leaving beastmode
• Live Fast – Currently doesn’t work with Pet F2 beast skills – a short CD would most likely required then (10s CD)
• Unstoppable Union – In a good spot, but I’d like to see an effect applied to pet when leaving beast mode?

• Furious Strength – In a good spot - though condition damage could benefit from a bonus too

• Second Skin – Adds even more synergy with protection, in a good spot - maybe 10% lower condition duration?
• Essence of Speed – The flat 2s increase is very interesting, didn’t get a chance to test this trait much though but on paper, looks interesting as we gain more quickness access. Added utility would be to gain short swiftness on quickness application?
• Predator’s Cunning – Interesting effect, but doesn’t quite feel Master-Tier – Maybe some damage bonus to poisoned foes? Something minor – like 5%

• Twice as Vicious – Although I kinda like the effect, feels redundant with Predator’s Onslaught – though the condition damage bonus is nice, and all the new CC from beastmode has great synergy

• Eternal Bond – Played a lot around this trait in WvW and PvP – better than people expect! A very interesting effect would be to grant a barrier to the player when falling out of beastmode Also seems theres a major bug – when you fall out of beastmode and then get downed, the lick wound skills doesn’t work… The pet doesn’t revive you
• Leader of the Pack – Needs an additional effect – Stance CD Reduction? Longer Self Stance Duration? Something! Otherwise the stanceshare effect is brilliant (although greatly reduced) – Maybe +1s to stance duration per allies?
• Oppressive Superiority – The only ‘problem’ I have with this Grandmaster Trait is that it simply has no effect if you have less health than the foe – Maybe add an effect related to that – when you have less health than a foe, gain -10% damage and condition damage from them? You are being oppressed, but have some form of superiority!

BEASTMODE EFFECTS AND SKILLS
Whew. I’ll try to make it short.
Most skills need a lot of tweaking – the way I see it, the burst skills should be interesting enough to entice you to use them or else they break DPS optimisation. if the skill’s goal is utility, it should also be rewarding.
I’ll eventually make an extensive feedback post about every skill but yeah – many feel undertuned.

Also there is a lot of work needed to ensure that while in beastmode, the effects that would otherwise apply to the pet applies to the ranger – Warhorn 5 doesn’t apply the unblockable to the ranger, some shouts have no effect to the ranger, and some traits don’t work

All in all, I actually really like the concept of the soulbeast – on paper it sounds amazing, needs a bit of polishing and tweaking, but I feel it’s headed in a good direction. The recent core traits rework was interesting, synergizes well.

Little Comment -
Strider’s Defense – We get some interesting synergy with Soulbeast now, but this trait still competes with 2 other strong Master Traits – Spotter and Hidden Barbs.

I’d like to see this trait have an additional effect, in the same vein as Guardian’s Stalwart Defender – this guardian trait competes with Strength in Numbers which grants extra toughness to neighboring allies, while Stalwart Defender is shield skill CD redution AND self toughness +240.

That being said, Strider’s Defense could have a similar change – Currently competing with Spotter (+150 precision to allies), Strider’s defense could also grant +200 precision to the ranger. The quickness on evade is aldo very interesting, and removing the necessity to wield a sword would make this trait VIABLE in non-sword builds – GS, Shortbow, Dagger OH, Dodge, etc as right now, this trait only has use with the sword – most other ‘weapon traits’ have other effects to make them viable when not using the weapon itself

Thanks for reading!

I love it! Overall feels undertuned for most but I’m hopeful polishing and tweaking will be applied for release

I could only play the preview for a few hours (curse you, stupid job) but here’s some feedback based on what we had.

DAGGER MAIN HAND
Auto-Attack Skill Chain

• Attack speed is slow and feels like it’s been built around having a lot of quickness uptime – this is bad design if it’s the case. Needs faster chain
• I understand its meant to be a condi weapon more than hybrid, but feels very undertuned – changing base duration of all conditions should be raised from 3s 4 seconds
• If it’s meant to be hybrid, the power damage should be enhanced by at least 20% to make them compete with any other main hand really

Skill 2 – Double Arc

• I feel this skill is missing a little something – a short evade perhaps? Change the animation to the Daredevil’s Weakening Charge (spin-like animation) and make the skill an evade for 0.5s

Skill 3 – Instinctive Engage

• This skill feels in a good spot – the recharge time is a bit long but with traited ‘Ambidexterity’ 12s recharge is fine -maybe change base recharge to 12s ?

So basically, dagger mainhand feels heavily undertuned, doesn’t really compete with other mainhands and feels slow.

Dagger off-hand could also see some love – such as… Ammunition on the skill 5 (yes please)

STANCES
I’ll start off saying the Stance trait is both interesting and underwhelming – partial copy to allies sounds good, but there is no cooldown reduction to rather long CD skills nor any other effect. I’d really like to see something to affect either the stance duration on self OR lower the cooldowns.

• BEAR STANCE – Looks okay-ish if the numbers are tweaked OR it’d be interesting to see something like 0.5s resistance per pulse – not only conditions will be removed but also half effectiveness OR incoming conditions while on this stance heal you instead

• DOLYAK STANCE – Yeah. Broken for the duration of the preview weekend ahaha – On paper, it does look very interesting, but like other stances, rather lengthy CD – Otherwise, looks in a good spot – kinda sad the stability doesn’t pulse like Warrior’s Balanced Stance (8s duration, on 40s CD) – but hey, can’t have everything

• GRIFFON STANCE – Again with the cooldown – this one is VERY HIGH for minimal utility – I’d like to see tuning with either the CD or the duration, or both, feels heavily undertuned and the additional effect sounds minimal, as there are now plenty of self-might options for ranger

• MOA STANCE – I feel this one is in a very good spot – The boons applied have synergy with ranger traits and the 66% boon duration effect is nice

• VULTURE STANCE – This stance feels okay as well but I’m not sure in what situation I’ll use it – again, plenty of access to might and poison. Maybe add a +33% condi duration when in this stance to add more utility? Like moa increases boons, this one would increase condi durations

• ONE WOLF PACK – This stance feels very underwhelming unfortunately, especially with its rather long CD – I’d reaaally like to see a quickness aspect (due to all the quickness synergy now) – perhaps 0.5s quickness on One Wolf Pack Strike? There is a 1s strike delay on the effect. As it currently stands, I’m not sure under what situation I’ll use this elite skill either, competing with SotP and Entangle (…we don’t talk about Ranger Spirits.)

Tom.8976:

I really like the current animations please don’t change a thing it’s a super nice aesthetic and one of the main reasons i love the soulbeast, plus it’s a good visual indicator to the enemy that the ranger has merged with his pet.

Edit: Please don’t label this as a “Fix” there isn’t anything to be fixed this is just some peoples preference.

The effect is reduced on other player soulbeasts and there’s the archetype icon on the player too to tell he’s merged

Playing Soulbeast for long periods of time, the fart cloud gets annoying real fast. They just need to tone it down a little

anduriell.6280:

The massive aura plus leaves and all that crap should last for 10 seconds or so, after that diminish the thing and leave just the aura like when used SotP but softer

Change the aura color depending of the archetype would be also helpful and cool.

Yeah I really like the subtle falling leaves effect but the rest is just too much! Mega fart cloud and fart trail! They should indeed disappear gradually after a few seconds

And yeah like the herald facet icons, light up the active archetype (and some subtle pulsing glow on the icon itself)

Oh and I noticed – if you get interupted while casting a beastmode beast skill, it’ll go on full cooldown.

Please refer to these very rough mockups

So the green fart is getting annoying pretty fast, and doesn’t look super duper good.

An efficient yet stylish fix would simply be to create a design similar to the Revenant and the Herald eSpec

• The Revenants have glowy hands based on the legent
• >> Apply the Soulbeast beastmode auras to the hands instead

• The Herald has a ground sigil that shows active facets
• >> Give the Soulbeast a ground sigil too, and instead of facet icons, its archetype icons, with the active archetype glowing – can even apply the soulbeast icon in the design, 5 claws/fingers for 5 archetypes!

When merging, let the animation play and then 3s of the current aura effect, but after that let it dissolve and show the Hand Auras + Ground Sigil

(please delete, double thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Soulbeast-Trait-Skill-Interactions/first#post6707030 )

Crap, opened a similar thread, I’ll close it.

Thanks for this thread, need to update the Beastmode Wiki Page

Go for the Eyes, Wilting Strike and Beastly Warden DO proc on the Soulbeast F3 skill, but at the end of the cast. But yes, Live Fast doesn’t trigger on Pet F2

Also,

Weapon Skills

• Maul – Grants Attack of Opportunity at the start of the cast to the player.
• Hunter’s Shot – Grants swiftness to the player.
• Crippling Shot – The player’s next few attacks apply bleeding.
• Precision Swipe – Grants might to the player for each foe hit
• Winter’s Bite – The player’s next attack applies weakness.
• Double Arc – The player’s next attacks apply poison.
• Feeding Frenzy – Grants fury to the player.
• Dart – Grants swiftness to the player.

But warhorn skill 5 Call of the Wild does not apply the unblockable effect on the
player.

Shared Anguish basically cancels a disable every 60s when in beastmode (no pet to transfer it to)

• If you stow your pet and enter beastmode, you’ll gain… Nothing. And the CD on Leave/Enter beastmode will trigger.

• Underwater version of Primal Cry has a 2.5s cast time instead of 1.25s

Update – Done. Whew. All unique F2 skills.

Also, I’m pretty sure the F3 melded beast abilities will have differences underwater

Guys, don’t forget to test underwater stuff during preview!

Ranys.4028:

While I can’t be sure of it myself I think you got one big thing wrong:

F1 F2 F3 were not called “Beast” skill in their tooltips while I was looking through all the pets. Only F4 had “beast” written in the tooltip.
I think for a good reason. They don’t want us to spam our enemys with all these perks we get with them the whole time.

I believe you are absolutely correct, was super tired and really didn’t double check, what a horrible mistake O_O

I’m correcting the page to list the Unique F2 pet skills (unmelded beast skills) and edit the description

Thanks a lot for the feedback (and gods, my bad)

Hello! Since the first preview week-end, lots of details emerged on the soulbeast, so I wanted to use that occasion to give some clarification on beast abilities, as they are now unique to soulbeast – since the most recent balance patch, core traits descriptions now use the term ‘beast ability’

I just created a wiki (rough version) to define that term, and include an extensive list of all abilities!

wiki/Beast Abilities

In short, beast abilities are the player controlled F skills

• When un-melded (or core ranger, or druid) the F2 is the beast utility, as it is the only pet ‘skill’ we can control- other F keys are profession mechanic ‘control’ keys and the other pet skills are ‘automatic’
• As soulbeast, when melded, F1-F2-F3 become player controlled skills, so they are the beast abilities

That means there are numerous traits that affect synergize with those skills!

Such traits are

• Invigorating Bond
• Go for the Eyes
• Wilting Strike
• Beastly Warden
• Live Fast (this one also works on un-melded F2!)

One minor trait I’m not sure yet if it affects melded soulbeast is the beastmastery minor Pack Alpha which reduces all pet skills (including F2) – logically, it should reduce melded F1-F2-F3, but the description does specifically mention pet skills and not beast ability, but we’ll have to wait for this weekend to know for sure!

And we were right, Eternal Bond has alower CD in PvE!
90s in PvP, 60s in PvE

I’m pretty sure the damage values are currently ‘bugged’ and don’t yet scale with the player stats

Edited to add all the archetypes! WIth a description of the attribute bonuses – I’m now currently working on creating and maintaining ALL Soulbeast skills on the wiki, I’ll eventually link the skills listed here to the appropriate Soulbeast versions, as some numbers are tweaked on the soulbeast for balance purposes.

• SoR brings better synergy to Druids by generating astral force – the resistance on pet also gives more sustain to the pet

• Vicious Quarry – Rangers make excellent use of Fury with Remorseless builds – no more need to invest in critical chance with such builds

I do TOTALLY agree they missed the mark with introduction of ammo… AND the spirits are still extremely underperforming!

Still pretty happy with overall changes, but the signets, not super happy yet

• SotH could use much reduced CD (and duration in that effect) something like 25s CD but 3s Unblockable
• SotW is…crap now. Maybe add 2 vuln stacks per pulse and lower the CD? I doubt I’ll ever use that signet anymore
• The elite shout wasn’t touched… Still very underwhelming. Needs 60s base CD and a stun break effect to make it interesting, with all the boon hate in game now, you’ll rarely see actual use of it

I believe soulbeast is the elite spec we know least about, nearly everything has been published for Firebrand

Staff is a (mid to long range) support weapon – the auto also cleaves up to 5 enemies through obstacles, it is very strong in some condi builds for the Virtue of Justice proc

Scepter is a mid range power weapon and the LB is a long range power weapon

Interestingly enough, they all offer some control skills

• Staff – Ward
• Scepter – Immob
• Longbow – Ward and Knockback when traited

We don’t exactly know how the PoF open world will look like – Spellbreaker will be pretty fantastic in PvP and WvW but I wouldn’t call it complete crap for PvE

Spirit Skills

• 2 charges – They’d sacrifice on 2nd charge

Dagger Off Hand

• Crippling talon 2-3 charges

Longbow

• Hunter’s Shot – 2 charges

Sharpening Stone

• 5 charges, 2 bleeds on next attack per charge – though not sure how to work out the Wilderness Knowledge trait – perhaps on first charge?

Edit: Unless… a rework of most survival skills and the trait itself:

Wilderness Knowledge has condi removal reduced to 1 but

• Muddy terrain gains 2-3 charges
• Sharpening stone gets charges too
• Lightning Reflexes gains 2 charges

For some reason the first time I read this trait I thought it said Blindness immunity, I do agree it should! But maybe lower the duration to 3s to balance things out, 5s blindness immunity is pretty long! (2 charges, 20s CD)

• No more dead pet
• Control over pet family skills
• Higher self DPS or self Utility
• The dagger main hand looks pretty cool
• I’m a sucker for Celestial gear, with archetype attribute bonuses, it’ll still make good use of it!
• Stances look interesting, especially the sharing trait

Juba.8406:

I hope “might makes right” does not have an internal cool down.
Nice buff to str/def/disc warriors.

The tooltip description doesn’t have a cooldown, so no! That trait will work really well with the dagger trait Sun and Moon Style especially due to the fact that Dagger auto grants might! Wow.

So much sustain. Oh and traited GS too of course!

EDIT: Also I believe, much like the Guardian trait Altruistic Healing it’ll proc for every might stack! 130*5 if you apply 5 stacks of might, etc

WP’s barrier video shows a bit of the new Blue Cheetah-like pet, and it would seem the F3 skill when melded is Prelude Lash (seen casted seconds later on the golems) – possibly hinting at this new pet’s F2 – probably a control skill? Perhaps Taunt? Feline with control skill, woohoo!

Yeah it’s already been heavily discussed.

A few things though:

Merged mode is on a toggle, so you can camp merged mode, while dead or alive you need to build up the Berserk Mode, so there are ‘counters’ to that, while the Soulbeast ‘equivalent’, can’t counter that other than try to kill to proc it and kill again

Also, the 90s is from the PvP area, it’s highly possible it has a different CD or Effect or Coefficients in PvE

I do agree that if it IS the final version for all game modes, it’s a little underwhelming… With that CD, I’d add some 2 stacks, 3s stab, and maybe 1.5s Resistance or something