Guild Wars 2

Lord Velar.1509:

Sifu.9745:

Necro or Reaper? Necros are strong but not that powerful as Reapers. Reaper has by far the best and easiest defensive tools in the game, just enter reaper shroud and laugh at your opponents, especially if they play condi builds, which deal zero dmg to you. You can easily 1 vs 1 anything (with exception of Warriors maybe), you can survive 1 vs 2 for quite long, your dmg is insanely op.
Would you be so kind, Anet, and nerf reaper shroud for additional 30%? Ty!

Ummm ,kitten no

With full health and a full life bar ive been taken down in a matter of seconds by just 2 ppl sometimes one

Yeah no, definitely a kitten no

Then you are bad at necro, sorry

true, it looks like a meta for SB will be something like SB / Defense / Discipline … you have enough tools here to be effective and don’t need MmR as the trade offs wouldn’t be worth the endurance regen but it makes core insanely strong at the moment.

Shaogin.2679:

I’m guessing people are upset because they feel as though you are handicapping the team by playing a minion master build which, if you are playing against competent players, is true. It’s great that people want to play fun and unusual builds, but don’t go into ranked with some minion master or transfusion necro and act all surprised that someone is upset about you gimping the team.

Now there are exceptions of course. If you are playing in unranked then screw those guys complaining about your build, it’s unranked, none of it matters. If they wanted to get serious about an unranked match, they could have easily made a team to queue with. Also, if you are in gold or below and ok with that, forget what others are saying about your build. It’s not like those other gold and below players on your team are any better or else they wouldn’t be stuck with such a low rank.

The title of this thread should be

“Why people are so hostile towards people who run useless builds in PvP”

This isn’t a necro problem, if you run a bad build regardless of the class , people will call you out and let you know about it.

Of course, this is an extremely toxic community so you’ll probably get called out for just about anything really.

This post to me seems like it’s just bait to try and say necros in general are bad, but they’re not that bad and the point was an entire miss and ultimately makes no sense because the OP is making a common sense statement.

It’s common sense to know that if you run a below par build regardless of class, you accept those consequences of being called out for it regardless of how fun it is.

Sorry, that’s Gw2 Pvp though in a nutshell and you’ll get that criticism in just about any competitively PvP oriented game doing this.

Ohhhhh how you really don’t know what true glass cannons are

ugrakarma.9416:

Warrior will continue a joke with spellbraker.

Raids: Ele, Mesmers, Rangers/Druids, everything will mock ur DPS.
High Level fractals: same as above. all that “counter” stuff dont bring anything new, expect being carried cuz the survivability is a jocke too.
WvW: everything shine except warrior. even full zerker scrappers mock at it.

But the last option – “I just want to parade with cool look at Open World Pve”: Not even that, the general consensus is that the looks of the new elite seems like a last-minute thing. Dagger #1 is the same as Thiev with yellow glows. Why get the warrior to look “big bad guy” when you have DeadEye or Reaper?

+1 troll , but could be alot better

Stacks for blinding HAHAHAHAHA , yea man , nothing would be broken resulting from that at all.

nEmM.3076:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

nEmM.3076:

It needs to be there to let others know you are in beastmode. For pvp reasons.

You don’t think they will notice the big blue icon under your health bar or your lack of a pet? If they don’t notice those things, I doubt knowing you are in beastmode is going to help them at all.

Anyway, they can just give the option to turn it off client-side.

Eh not really, there needs be obvious visual cues. Your pet isn’t by your side all the time anyways. But yeah an option for yourself only would work.

Like visually looking to see if your opponent has stability?

If you can’t look at your enemy’s bar to see what things they’re running and what boons and conditions are visible to know what they have throughout a fight then I think being able to see if a soulbeast is in beast mode is the least of your concerns in PvP and you need to learn more important fundamentals.

Go necro, find a top tier elementalist support and you’ll do well.

Literally

cPS renegatus build or qtfy’s builds both work well.

LughLongArm.5460:

mistsim.2748:

Sartharina.3542:

Levetty.1279:

The damage increase from Sic’em is one of the best things about Soulbeast, why would you want to remove it? Theres already enough condi utilities, this is our only power one. I agree about making it work like the Warrior shout though.

Because Rangers are so used to having terrible damage for so long, that when it reaches "Almost competent’ levels, they get scared of it.

16k+ mauls are stupid. Sic Em is getting nerfed 100%. I’d prefer if the damage bonus was lower in exchange for more utility.

I think it’s quite generous that the Soulbeast in beastmode counts as an animal in the first place, and benefits from the BM tree.

Sic’em is not the reason for big mauls, It’s the AoO bug, which supposed to be applied to the next attack(will get fixed for sure). Without this bug, Sic’em is a great power boosting tool for sure, but I’m not convinced is should get a nerf. I don’t think it’s "generous " we can benefit from our “shouts” and traits in beastmode, I think this is the obvious thing, just look how bad is SoR with soulbeast because it’s broken in beastmode(and I hope it will get fixed).

It depends , what should guard do in beast mode , should heal as one apply twice and sync twice since it affects your pet as well , should rampage as one affect you twice since you’re melded with your pet? Should you guard yourself, since your pet guards with “Guard!”?

Shouts simply don’t make sense right now with Beastmode for more than half of them, it’s easy to point out the op one that gives a 40% dmg bonus and say “this! this one belongs to be applied with ranger in beast mode!” without looking at the role Shouts played way before Beastmode was even implemented and how they all work in BM.

I have a feeling they will nerf the affect given to us by half for weapon skills and utilities, so the ranger receives 20% of that damage and a 40% dmg increase on BM abilities. So your actual weapon abilities are halved from sicem but your worldly impact would have 40% for example.

Rangerdeity.5847:

Deadeye is coming its short on mobility but its probably the single most powerful 1v1 spec

The steal ability will kill deadeye more than anything. No plasma against condi mesmers in wvw? Good luck with that one.

Maybe for +1’s , but it won’t be as good for 1v1’s , too many limitations and gear won’t help you cover the loss of defensives and the forced playstyle it entails.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Warrior was awful. Might Makes Right made it quite strong.

Yes, it’s quite true. Might Makes Right’s heal isn’t the powerful part though it’s the endurance gain from it.

You’re playing condi mesmer, it is not Anet that will be letting you down, but only yourself.

lighter.2708:

GhandiBot.6257:

Only thing I can think of is the aoe boon strips and reveals for pvp. Other than that, a vanilla power warrior who goes into Strength, Defence and Discipline with Might Makes Right is better. Puts out a lot more pressure than Spellbreaker.

why take spell breaker when you have scourge with sand sade aoes and elite converts every boon to condition

Because you 100% need a ele support with a scourge/reaper to be effective it’s really literally the only reason necro is viable in team fights. Otherwise, he would be useless and die way too fast even with barrier.

Warrior doesn’t rely on an ele support , although they would obviously benefit from one.

Also, with resistance uptime and proper ccing you should not lose against a scourge especially in a 1v1 , you’re literally built to counter condi scourge.

ChocolateBlaze.7840:

Pip Squeak.3418:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Pet Bug?

“Sic ’Em!” the shout that gives your pet 40% damage and run speed for 10 seconds? Yeah it gives YOU that in Beast Mode.

Yeah i don’t think that’s a bug… The whole point of merging with your pet is that it will make you stronger, and the things that affect the pet will affect you instead. MAYBE the damage can be toned down a bit. But if Sic ‘Em and other shouts and traits that affect the pet normally didn’t affect the ranger during beast mode, that would go against the premise of the elite spec, and therefore render even worse than it currently is.

Well , you have to look at other shouts then .. Rampage As One would essentially give you the bonus 2 times at once since it affects your pet as well, Heal As One would heal you twice and you would sync with your pet twice since it affects your pet and also syncs boons with your pet , Guard would essentially mean you guard yourself since it is your pet guarding you.

Many of these things from a functional and logical perspective make absolutely no sense, of course the reason why is because they were re-worked far before Soulbeast was even introduced as a spec.

Of course, it’s fine to say a 40% dmg bonus and speed bonus working for you is , in your mind, intended but then you have to look at every other shout as well. You can’t just pigeonhole the one that is op and then say that one is intended without looking at the others.

I do agree though, I think there are some glaring issues with how Soulbeast works with existing core functionality mainly Traps, Shouts and Spirits.

Synergy between WS and Soulbeast seems fine for the most part but above and beyond there is so much lack of trait synergy that it’s really hard to pair with a truly good Soulbeast spec that would be better than druid.

They will most likely nerf/half the benefits of shout actives while melded. So if you’re not melded, it will be the full effect , when melding , you receive half of the dmg and speed. So 20% for you , 40% for your pet. This seems fairly consistent with other traits, etc without making it broken since they’ll be fixing the AoO pre-application on Maul stacking even more percentages of dmg bonuses.

Heal on it’s own, then you would need to nerf Might makes Right’s endurance regeneration or something else to compensate for a heal on a ~6 sec CD… I don’t think survivability is the warrior’s problem in these regards , it’s more about damage and offensive prowess.

I don’t think the idea for Spellbreaker is to allow warriors to face tank more, it’s to implement skill play. Passive healing doesn’t accomplsish that and as we all know, passives are often abused by many classes (still yet to be fixed on some classes).

I would highly suggest something more in the realm of active offensive prowess.

Quickness would be nice on F2 to assist in burst setups and as it should, since you’re countering your opponent they should be at a heavy dis-advantage from a burst setup. Quickness would help in regards to this.

I have a bad feeling they will up the CD on full counter, however overall I think Spellbreaker was the most fun next to Holosmith out of the elite specs tested and I think Spellbreaker is rather balanced and realistic as opposed to some other specs and how they performed. Dagger was nicely done for the most part.

Mirage seemed stale , it was powerful with Sage amulet but Chrono I think has better functionality and utility overall. Weaver will be basically bunker support. Deadeye will not be used competitively simply based off of it’s functionality of steal alone not to mention how Malice generates in general (no consume plasma against mesmers = a dead thief, etc).

Really though it was too short lived to test COMPLETELY the possibilities and a lot of classes had bugs (mainly Soulbeast , horrible testing experience riddled with bugs – alot of positive bugs and negative bugs).

One issue is I don’t want them to panic balance, by that I mean there’s very little time before the next expansion drops , with such a short testing period prior to this launch I have a bad feeling they will do massive quick adjustments for the expansion then slow , smaller balances after it drops.

This would leave us with possibly over-nerfed/over-buffed classes due to a lackluster testing period just before the official launch period.

I’ve always advocated a boon / condition bar addition to either the pet ui or added as a unique portion somewhere else for the ranger class. But I’d like to take it a step further for Soulbeast that I feel would provide a lot more QoL in terms of managing pets in general throughout a given fight.

Clicking your pet to see the conditions and boons it has is hardly realistic when fighting , especially in mid/top tier where I’m more focused on my condition/boon bar and more importantly the enemy’s boon/condition bar and his positioning and skill usage to try and click my pet midfight and see a quick glance.

With soulbeast, this necessity becomes so much more in that you LITERALLY need it.

There should be an improved UI not only for boons / condition but to go further, add a skill bar for your pet that is out with a cooldown visual system to show us what skills are on cooldown.

My proposal would be:

1. Static UI window that displays a UI inside of that for the pet that is out
2. This window is scalable for resolutions of course and can be sized down and up accordingly
3. I would like to see my pet’s conditions and boons
4. I would like to see a smaller portion inside with the skills of my pet
5. When a pet uses a skill, inside the UI it visually goes on cooldown, this allows me to know what pet’s skills are used and what is on cooldown. This is entirely to help with preparation alone for the ranger in coordination with his/her pet.

This is really needed even more so now with Soulbeast coming especially the boon/condition bar.

My question to devs would be: Have you decided on something in terms of planning for this?

If so, how do you plan on implementing it and some sort of time frame. If not, then I highly urge you to reconsider and make it a priority , it would help our play in preparation a lot more throughout a given fight.

Crinn.7864:

Dirame.8521:

Crinn.7864:

What?

Scourge has less defenses and worse disengage than Reaper, and reaper was already considered a glass cannon.

Also Scourge has enormous trouble dealing with ranged attackers. It’s got a lot of melee hate though.

One Skill. Poison Cloud. What was that about Ranged attacks again?

Also when we learn how to manage Barrier, we could possibly even outlive Reapers.

Because CPC obviously has 100% uptime. CPC is delay mechanic, it doesn’t change the outcome of the matchup, it just buys you 8 seconds. Assuming of course the circumstances of the fight don’t force you to abandon the CPC early.

Also learning how to use Barriers isn’t going to solve Scourge because Barriers are the least of Scourge’s problems. The problem of Scourge is that it lacks the target control, and counterplay options of Reaper. You don’t have the CC options of Reaper, you don’t have the mobility of Reaper, you don’t have the stability of Reaper. Scourge’s counterplay options are limited to the F4 fear, and Path of Corruption. Oh and thanks to scourge’s boonhate being rips rather corrupts, Scourge can’t even use stability conversion for target control as well as reaper can. Scourge’s counterplay options are essentially limited to trying to burst down the opponent before the scourge dies.

Scourge’s design is basically ye olde Procmancer taken to the extreme, and just like Procmancer it’ll only really work with a dedicated support duo, and be trash elsewhere.

Well I think this is why Scourge will end up being an essential class in PvP teams with a ele support whether it be tempest or weaver , weaver might get tuned up in this period because people complained about it’s damage. It’s already an amazing support class overall.

I really wish people would understand the way Maul is operating right now isn’t healthy gameplay and obviously will get nerfed.

Does that mean I support other classes being able to do the same thing? Absolutely not.

This is not what I wanted for ranger and I know alot of people like it this way but I don’t personally.

I want a high skill ceiling class not a gimmick full of bugs that allow the ranger to over-perform temporarily only to get a bad rep then be nerfed into the ground again most of which OVER NERF the ranger allowing it under-perform in generally every area.

This is almost what happened with Druid, luckily , Druid ended up making it out alive because CA is a good concept overall and they didn’t want to bust druid for PvE raiding but most importantly druid has really good trait synergy.

Druid allows you to go into marks/skirmishing without taking AS MUCH as a hit in survivability as if you were to pair it with soulbeast and allows you to have the group support while also being able to go into more defensive wide specs.

Soulbeast doesn’t do any of this. It attempts to mask that lack of trait synergy by trying to introduce melded utility with your pet, most of which underperform and forces you into an even narrow path not only in trait setups but pet archetype choices. I guess the pet choices though are nothing new for us as HoT pets have been the truly only consistent thing since it came out with Bristleback, Smokescale and Electric Wyvern’s CC capability.

There is a lot of polishing to be done with Soulbeast before it can even compete with Core / Druid specs… I’m all for introducing a new playstyle in that they’re all different so you have an option, but right now aside from WvW roaming and doing un-ranked just to mess around – Soulbeast has no place just from what they gave us this past weekend.

Tharne.3298:

ZhouX.8742:

The maul proc is not intended, it’s obvious, and in light of that it will get nerfed.

The sic’em working on us in Soulbeast is not intended either obviously, this is a pet only buff and since it has already been asked numerous times from people asking devs if that is working as intended, there was no response.

Thing is, every traits and skills (skills more than traits) need to do something in Beastmode, if not it means they failed the Spec. If going into Beastmode cuts you from 1/5 of Traits and Skills that’s not good design, everything needs to work even if they have to make some other effects.

So you’re essentially saying “Guard” should be the ranger protecting himself? If you Heal As One while melded with your pet, would you get 2 heals essentially since it effects both you and your pet and you should get your pet’s buffs as well?

This design from your perspective doesn’t make much sense. Shouts were redesigned for the pet to assist the ranger way before Soulbeast was even introduced. They are 2 entirely different concepts from the elite spec to the shout implementation.

You would need to redesign how shouts would work were you to have them work the way they are while melded because some of them simply make no sense.

I know ranger would love to have the dmg bonus and I think it should be included but I know it’s not realistic from Anet’s standpoint. This will definitely be nerfed if it is intended to work in Soulbeast because they will simply not allow ranger have this kind of consistent damage output.

Unfortunately, it has been this way since the beginning of the game for ranger, any form of massive dmg output has been either directly or silently nerfed by Anet with little to no reason as to why except the fact that we have a pet. This was their reasoning behind ranger having generally low dmg coefficients on weapons to begin with.

Soilder.3607:

ZhouX.8742:

Soulbeast was completely underwhelming, the new weapon is terrible and the functionality very clunky in general. Worldly Impact is decent, cancelling is nice and easy as well to bait defensives. Outside of that, not being able to swap pet in beast mode is a massive let down … Half of the stances don’t work… The heal , 2 condi removal and a 4k base heal? Really? WHO would take that over troll since you would need to run WS anyway for the immense amount of condi builds popping up. At this moment in time core is way better as well as druid. Massive let down overall.

Scourge is easily better in design and functionality, but I would say it isn’t like you can just pick up the class and be insanely godlike with it , it has some weakness against range but as a melee class without resistance you’re going to get your ass handed to you – the only way to win against that is to bait and cc and pop resistance at the right times to setup burst following CC.

Bear Stance has a 5k base heal and removes up to 8 conditions over 4 seconds for a maximum base heal of ~9k. It’s a good heal.

Against power matchups though? It’s a horrible heal, not even worth taking.

Also, good condi players know it will heal 8 conditions over 4 seconds, hence why nobody would bother throwing conditions on you in this period and make sure to apply poison prior to the very low base heal it provides which would leave you pretty defenseless for the next 25 seconds (of which is also higher than RaO / Troll ungeant when traited) – it’s essentially a much more horrible version of necro’s consume conditions heal.

This is the main reason why people bait CA and just dump conditions onto you after you pop into it nullifying the condi removal on entering CA , same concept and it would be no different here. It should flat out remove 6-7 conditions on heal like the new warrior elite spellbreaker does (which also btw has a 11.6k base heal with demolisher amulet on) or consume all conditions into healing like necro’s heal does, otherwise it’s complete trash.

Good rangers will not slot bear stance and it has no play in this condi meta, why would you when you can just use use WS especially with the new muddy terrain trait which procs on heal? That means I heal 4 conditions in one heal and no I don’t have to wait 4 entire seconds for it to clear 8 condis in this condi spam meta in a less CD with a much higher over time heal? WHaO is also much better.

Again, trash heal , but keep trying to spin it as much as you want.

Atros.9607:

I dedicated 8 hours in WvW to soulbeast with a hybrid assassin/commander’s spec. I went marksmanship, skirmishing, and soulbeast. I took longbow and greatsword. Pets were tiger and smokescale.

The Result:
This spec is a very versatile roamer with ability to burst hard. Hitting mauls for 10k with 10 might or less. The movement is okay given the greatsword swoop and range of longbow. It was clear this was meant for a condition oriented build play, but also lended itself to maybe ally support. However, this build shines in selfish gameplay where you leap in and smash stuff hard.

I felt that worldy impact was slow and rarely hit unless I chained a CC in somewhere. One wolf pack should not critically hit because I can proc the skill 10 times in a single burst which hit for 1.2k a hit for 12k in total damage alone. Added to longbow 2, smokescale assault, worldly impact (if it landed), and 2x mauls. I could stack 50k in damage.

The condition clear in this spec was very lackluster which required very conservative play in terms of sitting in conditions or facing the condition reaper/daredevil.

There is no zerg play in this sepc. Don’t do it; you have better use of your time than getting mowed over in the mass of bodies. Play for picks and don’t be dumb. Pair this spec with a holosmith or deadeye, and you have a potent combo for pressure and instanukes.

I don’t think it matters if you were to make this non-criticals or criticals, the elite is garbage compared to RaO and will never be viable other than being in some very specific build ideas.

8 seconds is not enough as I would know when you had it up and would just avoid the burst setups in this time period as I know you would need to dish out a massive amount of damage to get it to be worth the 8 seconds.

Since it also has an activation time that also means you would need to stop mid-combo and activate it after a CC , not a realistic situation as you would give me ample time to break it or lose a portion of time involved in causing dmg to proc the dmg from the elite. If it were an instant cast like Berserker Stance/Balanced Stance or some of the other stances then I could see it being a proper implementation but probably still wouldn’t use it.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

ZhouX.8742:

Ranger trying to be frontline with GS , you get GS maul every 4 seconds and you have to adjust for a big hit. Not realistic, and it has been tried before. Soulbeast will change nothing unto which you will survive or deal more damage in a frontline zerg spec.

Ranger belongs in the back with longbow picking out players like Necro / Thief.

Druid isn’t bad either, but to be honest , blasts in water cover this adequately to even bring a pocket druid and eles cover aoe condi cleanse.

Again, ranger has always been a backline and this will not change , soulbeast will not change that no matter what gimmick build you try to bring.

If stance durations with LotP were 100% it would be as good as anything frontline.

Maybe, but what would you do for the next 35-40seconds after the 6-8 seconds is up? If they were to make it 100% you would never see a reduction in CD.

Barrier I think is fine, the problem with weaver isn’t the defensives, it’s more so the pressure (which is another form of a defensive) offensively… I saw very little of that in my testing and dueling with top eles over and over. Even with marauder I didn’t see this from weaver.

Sword has a massive chain , not allowing proper attunement swapping to make weaver effective so dagger will obviously be used here.

Also, the dmg is so low I could barely pressure and dueling top eles on it , we all had that same consensus.

You can make weaver work in a bunker support spec , but Tempest already did this well which leaves little to no QoL improvements except having a slightly better bunker support spec (PvP obviously and zerg play).

Again, it IS such a small period to test but also there will be adjustments across ALL classes not just weaver so it’s better to do actual testing once PoF comes out to see.

I think obviously the idea of weaver is great , i just hope some of those aspects get looked at.

anduriell.6280:

Levetty.1279:

The damage increase from Sic’em is one of the best things about Soulbeast, why would you want to remove it? Theres already enough condi utilities, this is our only power one. I agree about making it work like the Warrior shout though.

Not saying i want to remove it, i’m saying, as many of the veterans here, there will be a 99,99% chance of an smack nerf of the 40% damage buff before even PoF is released. Same as the AOO trick with the maul.

And before they destroy another shout i’d like them to give something back and make the shout still useful.

This is true, from the history of things slipped into the game for ranger that weren’t intended they were all nerfed, very quickly as well. You saw evidence of that just this week with the stance sharing bug. You will also notice Dolyak Stance never got fixed for us to even test it. You can see how fast things get patched that really help the ranger even if they are obvious bugs that should be fixed.

The maul proc is not intended, it’s obvious, and in light of that it will get nerfed.

The sic’em working on us in Soulbeast is not intended either obviously, this is a pet only buff and since it has already been asked numerous times from people asking devs if that is working as intended, there was no response.

As a ranger, please take this advice from somebody who has mained this class since the beginning of the game and has seen my fair share of in-intended things given to ranger to only have them nerfed and that is:

If you see something that is questionable whether it was intended or not, and it’s obvious from the tool tip that it most likely isn’t but you’re still questioning it, and that very same thing HELPS the ranger while at the same time the devs haven’t responded to the concerns of the ranger playerbase then it’s most likely not intended, and it will 99% get nerfed.

Ranger trying to be frontline with GS , you get GS maul every 4 seconds and you have to adjust for a big hit. Not realistic, and it has been tried before. Soulbeast will change nothing unto which you will survive or deal more damage in a frontline zerg spec.

Ranger belongs in the back with longbow picking out players like Necro / Thief.

Druid isn’t bad either, but to be honest , blasts in water cover this adequately to even bring a pocket druid and eles cover aoe condi cleanse.

Again, ranger has always been a backline and this will not change , soulbeast will not change that no matter what gimmick build you try to bring.

Well it depends on the players you play against. Good players murder soulbeast because of it’s obvious flaws. You can’t combo as easily without a pet swap in beast mode so the tells become very one dimensional and once people realize the meta pets Soulbeast will run with (smokescale is an obvious) they will know how to counter. It’s only half-effective right now because people still haven’t adjusted how to fight against it (see scourge as well and it’s playstyle and people not used to fighting against it).

If you are a mediocre player being hard stuck in bronze/silver/gold/low plat, then Soulbeast will probably work for you in a PvP perspective (even then you’ll have no essential role and just be a free roamer, which if that is your thing go for it). If you are a top tier player or a top dueler of any kind, Soulbeast will most likely not work and Druid will handle top tier PvP play over a Soulbeast based on sheer mechanics and group support. Soulbeast , aside from the GM trait, is a very selfish spec and since the effects are halved from stances (one of which we didn’t even get to test) it wouldn’t even provide enough impact to be taken into a real group scenario, or a WvW zerg scenario – again, Druid is clearly better in this respect.

So yes, Soulbeast will work in lower/mid-tier gameplay (bronze / silverish maybe gold and low plat) – but middle plat into legendary you will not see many people run it because it’s a very 1-dimensional spec as it stands. Yes, melding with your pet adds additional mechanics to your class, but they are all easily memorized mechanics that won’t have much impact in a given fight.

Another obvious issue is trait synergy to have a role in either game mode. What would you be as a Soulbeast? +1 , group fight? You’re mostly a selfish spec due to you having such a narrow trait window to work with since you can’t go full bunker or full damage. If you go full damage with marks/skirmish, you lose too much defensives and you will be immediately targetted in a group fight. If you go full bunker, people will just ignore you as you provide no group utility , and they will kill your group one by one then just zerg on top of you.

There are many flaws once you start playing against top players , but again, this is a very small group in the game as a whole.

PvE you will be better off running Core condi most likely (this has yet to be tested enough to make actual correct DPS assesments because this was a mere testing phase in which numbers will most likely change anyway) and Druid varieties in raids.

So where does Soulbeast actually stand in all of this , in a top PvP scenario where would you see Soulbeast’s role? In WvW zerging where would you see Soulbeast’s role? In top dueling against top players, many other classes offer so much more over Soulbeast’s current implementation due to , again, massive lacking of trait synergy.

It’s a confused spec as of this moment, and offers no QoL improvements over what we currently have.

The only thing I can see Soulbeast being right now are very specific dueling builds and roaming WvW skirmish builds of which , again, Druid would seem to be much better in this regard from the Druid trait line alone outweighs a lot of what Soulbeast offers in terms of active survivability.

1. Stances need to have more impact
2. Better trait synergy
3. Group support is very sub-par with SOulbeast , GM on stances offer half the duration and the stances are horrible EXCEPT Dolyak which we didn’t even get to test
4. Dagger needs to be a hybrid variant, so adding dmg is a must – it’s current implementation has no role right now, other weapons are way better and it’s clunky.

There’s many more things but , again, in the top sector from dueling with top players and playing with all of the other elites, Spellbreaker was by far one of the best elites I got to test with. Fluidity was top quality, implementation was nicely thought out , and the ideas behind the class flowed very well. It was such a good elite implementation overall.

Well, there’s plenty of posts detailing bugs so I won’t go into that here AS MUCH but I will get through to why I think Soulbeast just doesn’t provide any additional asset to ranger over the previous core and druid specs.

I will start by saying I’ve been a ranger main since the game released , I’ve always been a dueler/PvPer/WvWer and have met many other good rangers on that path in this game some of which still play the game and testing this very soulbeast spec out with me.

Soulbeast was a massive let down for me , don’t get that confused with the spec not being a nice idea, because I actually think the spec is a great idea it was just poorly executed.

Keep in mind below is in reference to Soulbeast only, not Core or Druid:

This test phase was riddled with bugs that didn’t allow a complete , successful test of the class in the manner I’d hoped for. I suppose that is the point (although I still don’t understand how some of these bugs made it through internal testing if there is any) so hopefully they get squashed in due time.

It seems like with Soulbeast, a lot of these things should have been pushed into core from the very beginning and it seems like they might have had plans to along the way but never did, so they took those ideas , put them together and created Soulbeast as a way to compensate for that.

I would like to talk trait synergy with Soulbeast and how conditions and damage mitigation is handled along with amulet combinations in PvP. It seems as if that if we want to be bursty with Soulbeast to have an impact you would need to run Marksmanship and Skirmishing to provide enough damage to pressure as a soulbeast.
This leaves you with no virtually condi management outside of shout runes (forces you into a shout role) and condi removal sigils (forces you into not being able to run offensive sigils , which I could understand a little bit).

You can then have the option to run a defensively specced ranger with Soulbeast’s cool utility, but you don’t provide enough combo damage to make a difference against specific classes. You will have high defensives , but your damage isn’t pressuring enough (even with Marauder) to make a difference. You would essentially be somewhat tanky, but provide no value outside of that. I suppose as a point contest role this would “do the trick” , but again leaves other classes suited for it – or you could just go druid which handles this role nicely when done right.

With demolisher I can pressure an immense amount on several classes. Why doesn’t this hold true with ranger’s soulbeast? Only if I force myself into 2 entirely power dominant trait lines which leave no survivability do I have even a portion of the power output some classes have running with defensive lines (Warrior example: Defense, etc) and still have enough pressure to make a difference.

Between all of this, there is no middle ground in top tier , you cannot run 90% of the amulets with success with the new spec, it doesn’t open up much , if any build diversity because Soulbeast forces you even further into a narrowly specced pathway in terms of traits and really doesn’t offer many QoL improvements outside of Druid. Core and Druid seem to be better, no , they ARE better than Soulbeast in it’s current state.

—

My question to devs is, what route do you plan on continuing Soulbeast with , amongst the bugs and once they are fixed in time – after this, is there any other adjustments you see that you would be implementing outside of the feedback people are testing with right now?

My other question would be, what was your idea for implementation of the mainhand dagger. What role did you see this as being in the sense of PvE / PvP or Condi / Power?

I would urge you also to reconsider the flow of the dagger with other weapons and not the weapon itself. Adding an evade on 3 would allow synergy with offhands like torch and axe and still be really useful in offhand dagger combinations. Add more damage coefficients to the 1 and 2 attacks to give it more life and allow it to be a useful weapon for both power and condi variants to help pressure for the risk of being in such melee range as a ranger. Currently the MH dagger offers very little damage, and no utility to justify going into such close range especially with the burst of classes like Holo , and Full Counter of Spellbreaker.

It’s funny because Spellbreaker’s dagger seems like what ranger MH dagger SHOULD have been, but again, I’m used to other classes having better weapons than us (thief shortbow, dh longbow, etc) so this isn’t rather new or surprising to me to see this.

I hope devs take a look at this and reconsider some of the other thing mentioned by a good friend Shadowfall as well , his post highlights a lot of the other issues with the class.

Thank you

Mirage was actually designed pretty well , I’m not being bias as I spent a lot of hours on mirage testing specs… My favorite would be spellbreaker, very consistent smooth functionality and the idea is great and it was laid out nicely.

If Soulbeast stays the way it is , my ranger will literally become a condi PvE bot.

Soulbeast was a massive let down IMO , the idea is nice , but the functionality and the lack of certain mechanics that are obviously needed (like pet swap in beast mode) are non-existent and had so many bugs.

To be honest though, had it been an amazing turnout and it was very nicely put together then I’d be scared because being a ranger main since the beginning of the game I’ve always been afraid when something on ranger is too good – it almost 100% calls for a nerf to the class and in that I will always be happy but sad about this class.

Soulbeast was completely underwhelming, the new weapon is terrible and the functionality very clunky in general. Worldly Impact is decent, cancelling is nice and easy as well to bait defensives. Outside of that, not being able to swap pet in beast mode is a massive let down … Half of the stances don’t work… The heal , 2 condi removal and a 4k base heal? Really? WHO would take that over troll since you would need to run WS anyway for the immense amount of condi builds popping up. At this moment in time core is way better as well as druid. Massive let down overall.

Scourge is easily better in design and functionality, but I would say it isn’t like you can just pick up the class and be insanely godlike with it , it has some weakness against range but as a melee class without resistance you’re going to get your ass handed to you – the only way to win against that is to bait and cc and pop resistance at the right times to setup burst following CC.

I can agree with holosmith, even then it has limitations with the heating mechanism but soulbeast is garbage , riddled with bugs, smoke assault is nerfed and is only a portion of the time and doesn’t even proc evades.. While the idea of soulbeast might seem like it’s “more warrior than warrior” , it’s not , it’s a really bad class and it is only even mentioned because of the pet bug that allows it to do 40k+ dmg , which will be fixed.

Spellbreaker is a really good spec and while I main ranger, I’ve actually had a fun time on spellbreaker and might even swap over. I’m still not done testing with scourge or mirage though.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The thing a lot of people are forgetting here is that if you allow pet swapping while in Beastmode, you’re going to need visual tells for the enemy (PvP/WvW).

If ANet were to allow this, they would need something like an icon that shows what pet you’re currently attuned to (like Revenant and Legends) or some kind of animation like the spirit of the pet appearing above you.

You can’t just swap pets without allowing people to know what you’ve swapped to or it lacks counterplay.

That’s why we have a blue archetype buff on our bar , so they know what skills to expect as each archetype has a specific set of skills that are the same per archetype… When you swap, it would change.

I think if you were to add a tell , possibly another buff for the pet icon – if it’s a bird, it’s a bird icon , and so forth. It doesn’t need to be flashy, people aren’t blind and good players know what archetypes you’ll be using by simply looking at the blue icon.

For bad players, aka ones that don’t like to look at people’s boon/condition bar (usually bads that complain on these forums coincidentally) , maybe there could be some visual addition to it, probably not though as an icon would serve it’s purpose.

Mr Pin.6728:

From what I was told by a dev that raids with my guild its not that Ranger was picked last per say, its just that their original idea didn’t work. Originally I was told the rangers became their pet and you controlled the pet and their skills. The animations were too buggy and it never came together.

Soulbeast was a “crap we got to get this out the door” response as the dreaded deadline doom approached I think. Which is fine if you approach the spec with purity of purpose. If its a dps spec give it some punch. Otherwise what are they even doing.

I’m pretty sure devs have to sign some form of confidentiality agreement regarding internal development knowledge and information on that level and discussing it publically.

Most likely either you’re full of kitten or it’s true and the dev is in major breaches of contract that he has most likely signed and could be fired for doing such a thing. I’m leaning more towards the former.

You guys should know of all the classes that if something isn’t intended to work in the fashion it is and it benefits rangers , then it will be nerfed and quickly nerfed.

Please do not get used to the maul AOO proc, it will most definitely be nerfed as it’s obviously a bug.

Less visual = less tell , from a pvp perspective that is alot better … This is kind of what makes holosmith weaker , the tells on the attacks are way too giving so you know their combos.

As much as I’d like to have eye candy and flashy attacks and animations, they need to work on the functionality of Soulbeast because it is very buggy , clunky and to be honest with you I can’t even test the class because half of the important things don’t work properly.

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.

Aside from that, I like bird archetypes abilities mostly because of the F1 as it is a good gap creator as well as gap closer and avoidance measure and the swiftness is nice.

Being in control of smokescale’s knockdown and the smoke assault is insanely nice for gap closing and evading damage are both good attacks and add value to the ability to maintain.

Cancelling WI is nice and is good for baiting dodges and defensive cooldowns but this will , again, most likely be nerfed in damage so it won’t be as much a necessity to avoid it , so the baiting might cease if it is indeed nerfed.

We’ll see,

Overall the stances (Dolyak looks broken and doesn’t work at all) are DECENT, nothing too crazy honestly.

There will most definitely be an ICD put on Live Fast , its too good right now.

I’ll keep testing but this stuff popped out at me while testing and dueling so far.

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.

Then you’re bad

Shrug

No, don’t bring back celestial it’s broken, thx

Lilyanna.9361:

ZhouX.8742:

Lilyanna.9361:

I find it funny people say burn guardian is easy to handle, but it somehow sneaks into most plat games I’ve had the pleasure of watching.
I also find it funny that people said, a long time ago back when guardian, as a class, was being discussed and those same people said it was a low-skill class therefore it would not see much popularity in the high tier play aka plat and sometimes legendary.

Now let us take a look at the platinum rank as a whole, hell or even just pop into the PVP lobby at any time and count how many people carry either as just simply a guardian or a burn guardian.

Plat is literally either guardians or thieves. Thieves, at least it has mostly a high skill cap. I can respect players who can bring themselves up into plat with thief because I’ll tell you right now, that class is hard to truly master in a highly competitive mode. Guardian is a downright laughable because its an easy class in ALL modes that it has been in.

Best part, burn guardian is getting even STRONGER when the xpac drops, so not only will they be even HARDER to kill, they most likely will have even STRONGER burn ticks even though their core traitline for burn has been slightly tuned and fixed to be a ‘nerf’.

Because platinum is extremely easy to get into, quit making it out like it’s a hard thing to do and that if you are to get into plat then you will be paired with actually good players… Platinum is nothing special and is , again, very easy to get into especially if you do well on your placements with a duo.

Excuse me sir, did I complain anywhere about my MMR or the fact that I was in t3 gold?
Did you just make an assumption because I was talking about a /build/, and not MMR.

I know it may be hard for you to understand, but there are actually some people that don’t zero in and complain about being in set tier because their ‘teammates are bad’

So I’ll sit here and wait for you to point out the direct wording as to where I was whining about the fact that I wasn’t in plat this season.

I think it may be hard for you to read what I actually wrote. Please re-read it and get back to me.

You should know by now after like literally since the release of this game that open world content isn’t meant to be difficult. It’s meant to be farmed, every day for shiny skins and gold.

I don’t agree with that, but it obviously is what is and has been that way for a very long time.

Silmar Alech.4305:

I now did each tier once, no cm, and I must say it is ok how it works now. The difficulty level is now ok with regard to the tier level.

In T3 and T4, I would say Viirasta is more difficult than Arkk. With my guild team, in our first 100, we wiped about 4 times at Viirasta before we got sufficient knowledge of the mechanics to not wipe, while we wiped only once at Arkk, and that was very close.

Would do 100 again, but it’s not really fun.

It’s not my favorite fractal, and will not become my favorite. If it’s daily, I will probably skip fractals altogether and will do other things. It has a mechanics overflow. Feels too scripted. I feel I am being scripted. Nightmare T4, on the other hand, became a welcomed addition to my repertoire.

Well of course, because nightmare is rather easy. You’re most likely just accustomed to easier mechanics and don’t like more challenging fractals , obviously.

That is your option and opinion to not like it though but I don’t think that excuse should hold weight in whether a fractal were to be nerfed or dumbed down just because you simply don’t like the fractal and it’s not your style of play.

I see a lot of this on the forums.. People, again, want it to resemble that of farming MC 40 and that is literally just dull and boring. Every fractal up until 100 CM is dull and un-engaging. 100 CM breaks you from that but again, people might not like it because it doesn’t suit their casual playstyle. These will be the people that have spent years since HoT and before that have been doing braindead meta events on a daily basis.

Of course being hit with a 100CM is going to be more frustrating, difficult and there will some people who literally just don’t want to learn the mechanics because they don’t want to because they don’t enjoy it.

I’m not sure this counts as a warranted nerf , however I could make maybe a few suggestions.

1. Better rewards for 100 CM / 100 Regular (they will vary on CM or No CM)

2. Difficulty levels on fractals 99 and above , beginner , medium , hard. 100 CM would essentially be “Extreme” difficulty in this case.

With better rewards, more opportunities at ascended pieces perhaps and materials for more money then it might attract those very people, but again – if people don’t want to do hard PvE in the game they won’t … This is the very reason people shy away from raids in general, they don’t necessarily like it due to the mechanical commitment and difficulty of learning boss mechanics and maximizing DPS output.

Perhaps a difficulty adjuster for 99+ would help remedy that to allow people to do 100.

Of course people would simply just do beginner and not go back so I’m not sure.

I just personally like how difficult and challenging 100 CM is and want to continue to see fractals follow this trend and it seems Anet agrees in this respect as Nightmare was a bit higher in tier vs the previous fractals and 100 is a bit harder than Nightmare.

Lilyanna.9361:

I find it funny people say burn guardian is easy to handle, but it somehow sneaks into most plat games I’ve had the pleasure of watching.
I also find it funny that people said, a long time ago back when guardian, as a class, was being discussed and those same people said it was a low-skill class therefore it would not see much popularity in the high tier play aka plat and sometimes legendary.

Now let us take a look at the platinum rank as a whole, hell or even just pop into the PVP lobby at any time and count how many people carry either as just simply a guardian or a burn guardian.

Plat is literally either guardians or thieves. Thieves, at least it has mostly a high skill cap. I can respect players who can bring themselves up into plat with thief because I’ll tell you right now, that class is hard to truly master in a highly competitive mode. Guardian is a downright laughable because its an easy class in ALL modes that it has been in.

Best part, burn guardian is getting even STRONGER when the xpac drops, so not only will they be even HARDER to kill, they most likely will have even STRONGER burn ticks even though their core traitline for burn has been slightly tuned and fixed to be a ‘nerf’.

Because platinum is extremely easy to get into, quit making it out like it’s a hard thing to do and that if you are to get into plat then you will be paired with actually good players… Platinum is nothing special and is , again, very easy to get into especially if you do well on your placements with a duo.

Stability , massive evasion uptime and invulns exist, therefore OH axe will never be good. It has no uniqueness to it. The pull in design is also not great.. If it worked like Revenant sword offhand then it would actually be decent but it doesn’t and for this reason it will always be a 2nd-3rd tier weapon in terms of offhands.

TexZero.7910:

Zenith.7301:

Cut the BS here, this fractal will be a PUG killer, and most of the people doing fractals do so through LFG instead of being guild groups on discord.

The level of coordination this fractal requires (and frankly, it does feel like a druid healer is necessary compared to other fractals) is not balanced to the pay out of completing the fractal.

And since the payout is not appropriate for the effort required, this fractal will be avoided like the plague.

Difficulty and average length of completion must absolutely be rewarded properly. Address this, and more people will be willing to put in the time to improve for the fractal.

The length is quite literally on par with both Chaos and Nightmare.

As for being a pug killer, get better. No seriously it’s that simple. Adapt or drop down a tier because nothing you’ve said is true. You don’t need a healer, druid or otherwise. The rewards aren’t bad (unless you down more than you dps) in which case learn or see above about dropping down.

“As for being a pug killer, get better. No seriously it’s that simple. " – Literally this

People want every fractal to be on par with MC 40 style tactics. It gets old fast. This new fractal is oddly enough, a breath of fresh air.

Please do not dumb this down for people who don’t want to practice and feel that it’s too hard. It’s not hard at all once you actually memorize the mechanics and it is great for interactive gameplay.

It was super frustrating at first but now that you get used to it , it’s actually enjoyable.

I love the direction of the fractals and their difficulty. Doing 100 and 100 CM actually FEELS like a level 100 fractal now instead of mindlessly going through very easy fractals from before.

Just please, please don’t dumb this down.

StickerHappy.8052:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

StickerHappy.8052:

@ALL

1.) So If we meld with the pet, you gain access to 2 skills right? What if the pet uses those skills prior to Melding, won’t they be on CD? or how bout vice versa?

2.) Rather off topic, is the leap from the new dagger skill an evade? I think its very similar to the engie hammer skill but not exactly sure.

1) I really hope not, since they are not really controllable for us when not melded and having them on CD will make beastmode far less enticing, since you get no benefit other than the stat increase which will not make up for the loss of the pet assuming it is attacking.

2) It would be nice to have an evade on the dagger. I hope it is a leap finisher too.

Did anyone else notice it is the same animation pounce on sword used to have? You used to be able to do the “2pounce” with sword which was a double leap exactly like the dagger has except that Dagger #3 is a gap closer with no pre-requisite.

Based on the videos I watched, I think it is a leap finisher. Double even. Someone correct me if im wrong.

Yea I was thinking it was a leap and on an ammo system of x2

Unflinching Fortitude: Take no dmg for 4s , remove chill cripple and immob , Break Stun , with 2 leap finishers one being an aoe knockdown on a 20s cooldown.

Smokescale: Smoke assault , knockdown on 20s cooldown

These 2 pets alone with Soulbeast will be pretty strong in terms of cc capability and dmg mitigation.

Now pair this with what appears to be a 5sec invuln from lesser stone signet trait (2 secs in live?) , 6sec stone signet utility , Dolyak stance with 6 sec invuln to movement conditions and 6stacks of stab alongside rampage as one.

This could be some good stuff for soulbeast, really can’t wait to test everything in a few weeks..