Guild Wars 2

It’s Turret/Decap engi all over again, but with more mobility, support, and sustain.

As others have said, yeah, a bad ANYTHING will afk on a point. It doesn’t really matter what’s sitting on that point, generally, if you’re pushing into a 1v1 on a node you don’t own, you would have been more effective being a +1 elsewhere and then rotating accordingly.

Ventari rev is a huge issue because when played well (not a discussion of the effort that goes into playing it, that’s a different topic), it can decap any point in any situation and take the full cap with relative ease, even in outnumbered situations.

The first problem with that is that is brainlessly spams CC on a point which is bad gameplay design that has no counterplay to it (note I’m intentionally saying counterplay and not counters).

The second is that ventari rev doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are other classes/builds that basically require a +1 to kill them as well, and that essentially means that the enemy team can “camp” 2 hard to kill classes on 2 different nodes have have the other 3 people on the team roam and decap, and that essentially gives these team comps a free win.

CC spam, ESPECIALLY the kind that provides decaps, takes the competition out of a supposedly competitive environment because you now have to play around a poorly designed mechanic instead of being in direct competition with other players, and that’s why it doesn’t need a “nerf,” it needs a gameplay design correction to restore the integrity of a gamemode that intends to be competitive.

@shadowpass;

Yeah as Frosty said it’s for the swiftness and other boons, which to me personally ends up being really valuable since I can rotate faster. I also have not missed the dagger evade as much as I figured I would.

@Frosty;

I understand what you’re saying, I just ultimately ended up making the swap because there were times when I needed the passive CA generation after I got CC’d in a +1 situation that ripped my regen and my SoR passive isn’t up.

I’m well aware that that’s a fringe case though, and I really do miss QZ, I’ve just felt Protect Me has given me more of an impact to carry games because 11 out of 10 times I’m the only thing keeping our node(s) from being lost, teamfights or otherwise.

As for Healing Spring, I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t played around with it and most other core ranger weapons/utilities in so long that they all feel foreign to me. So when I slotted Healing Spring I felt like my ability to reset with just my heal dropped so considerably that I had a hard time even trying it again, especially when I’m the only person utilizing the benefits of the field for the vast majority of my fights and matches.

I do think/agree that with a little coordination I would be more comfortable opening up my utility selection a bit. But right now I’m feeling like I have to essentially 1v5 enemy teams, so my build reflects that lol.

I just want to preface this by saying as far as this thread is concerned, this isn’t going to be some revolutionary build posting, just a refinement.

So, after stress testing some more builds, I think I’ve gotten to this version of all the builds as the one I like the best: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYD7kQFoWQsfFwhFgrFsMJYOVuLXmrJA84mAw/0iaTtEjnG-TphIQB+7BAsj9HAwRA4YHEg3VGwgXAAA

I’ve found this build to have the most staying power and be the most capable of killing things in an environment where you need to constantly worry about being outnumbered and surviving/winning the outnumbered fight. As well as roaming and dueling and all of the other roles/strategy discussed previously.

Note:

• I’m still deciding between battle or energy on the sword set. I don’t know that the might stacks are significant enough to run them over getting dodge energy back.

I hope you guys get some good mileage out of it, I know I’m enjoying it.

Miaz.8521:

leadership rune courage/failbility on staff cleansing/purging on sd
everything else is cookiecutter as always because ranger doesn’t work without beastmastery (deadpet and long petswap) and naturemagic (boonspam) since the specialization patch it’s been a broken cookiecutter class that didn’t get fixed and instead got a healer spec that’s why soulbeast will be trash ofcourse.

How have you been dealing with the thief +1 when you’re in a fight? I ask because while personally there are bigger things to worry about, I find the thief interrupt spam to be the most annoying thing in the game that ANet refuses to fix, and the long cast times on top of people having learned all of the metabuilds tricks can make for people out playing the cast times.

shadowpass.4236:

I’m top 20 in NA and I’ve found that core ranger is a lot stronger than druid. I am able to hold up to 1v4 in ranked if I have stability/don’t have a thief spamming interrupts on me. If druid is necessary for team support, WS/NM/DR or WS/BM/DR both work well. Also, at least for solo/duo que, longbow sword/dagger is fantastic for both team fights and 1v1s. I find staff unnecessary as it is only good for CA regeneration and a small heal with the water field and 3. The pressure you are able to apply with longbow drastically overpowers staff’s dps and it lets you keep a point decapped as well.

Don’t take me as being dismissive, but from how long I’ve known you and come across you in game, you could run anything with relative success lol xD

That said, my biggest hang up is still that Druid with Menders stalls better than it kills, and I’ve been wanting to run more damage oriented so that I can push kills better and be more independent instead of relying on teammates to actually be competent.

I’ve been back and forth about whether to run WS/NM/BM or swap out one of those for Druid, with a damage amulet. I actually find the hardest thing for me to cope with is the loss of staff, since staff is so strong to me relative to core Ranger weapons and the metagame.
It could just be that Druid has spoiled me for far too long now lol.

@Pterikdactyl.7630;

Np! Happy to help if I can.

3 common classes I don’t expect to kill (at least not in a reasonable amount of time). Scrapper, Dragonhunter (symbolic build), and Tempest. You can force them into their immunties and then at some point thy won’t be able to handle your on point pressure and can get the decap, but it’s not really reasonable to expect to be able to kill them without making mistakes. Also other Druids running similar/same builds.

So yeah, if you aren’t getting the kills against those classes/builds, that’s not really something you can do anything about. The only real thing you can do is practice pressure application so you can force them into their states that will grant you the decap asap.

The role of this build relative to past seasons metabuild is completely the same. You’re “off-support,” where you have the mobility and capability to rotate the map and carry small scale fights and even large team fights, as well as win all your 1v1s. This is important because it means you can force 2 people to rotate in to you to have to deal with you, and in effect win the teamfight for your team by forcing the enemy team to have to fight outnumbered teamfights so they can deal with you.

Sword mainhand has always been used for the in and ouf of combat mobility and defensive utility. Without damage stats, the GS doesn’t have the DPS pressure nor the defensive strength to make it strong enough to compete with running sword. Higher skilled players will bait out the tiny burst you do bring with Mender stats, and take the opportunity to either reset or catch you mid aftercast on one of the abilities and light you up with a burst.

Ultimately, if your goal is to be doing big damage and bursting targets down, while whether or not that sort of build is competitively viable at a high tier is a discussion on it’s own entirely, the fact is; these builds will not make you a high damage dealer.

With this build, you are looking to outplay your enemy through superior rotation and better mechanical play than anybody who tries to fight you. Nothing should be able to kill you in a 1v1, and there really isn’t a class you shouldn’t be able to, at the very least, get a point neutralization against within a reasonable amount of time.

My personal suggestion to anybody who feels the damage is low is to first try swapping back to the Smokescale/Bristleback combo. The Bristleback damage is much scarier than the Wyvern and you can bait cooldowns and neutralize points because people kite off point and blow their defenses because of how scared they are of the Bristleback.

Beyond that, try the LB variant Frosty posted. You’ll lose your mobility and be more susceptible to getting decapped/backcapped as well as lit up in teamfights with the lesser mobility, but you do get a knockback and burst that people respect and that you can use to get that feeling of needing to deal more damage than you would otherwise with the sword setup.

Rugged Growth is why we’re going WS (the replacement for Bark Skin). The amount of sustain you get when paired with NM is so much more important than the relatively unimportant loss of what BM offers (unimportant as in it hasn’t changed my ability or speed in which I can kill things).

That’s really the main reason; it’s just that strong.

Besides that, QZ over LR for a few reasons. LR displaces you and the condi removal triggers at the end of the animation. You want to be able to maintain your position and have the defensive benefits activate in full immediately on use. Also, if you were going to decide to use it for mobility, that’s 6 seconds of superspeed on top of sword 2 and staff 3. You can be across the map before people can decide how to react to your presence (I’ve done things like on Legacy I held the far cap against 3 til I had to leave, left to the midfight, outnumbered the 2 there with my team and won teamfight and then while 2 from far tried to follow me into the fight I stealth rotated back into far and held the still neutral point).

I can make an entire enemy team play around the fact that I exist and can rotate better than them alone, and that helped me flat out carry matches I may have lost otherwise.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Grats on top 20.

warhorn *cough favoritism *cough :o

sigil of agility on staff— I thought that sigil would get used by CA, or is that the point?

Thanks! Trust me when I say I’m more in shock/awe than anything else lol.

But yeah, I saw Frosty already responded so I’ll just confirming what he said; Sigil of Agility was only chosen for the swiftness uptime.

I was using Purging/Revocation on staff and Purging/Courage and while I’m certain they were having some sort of effect I really just didn’t notice them. I notice Agility. That’s the only explanation behind the decision I have haha.

But yeah, the quickness never hurts on staff/CA either. It can make your heals come out faster, which in the case of CA can mean the difference between being interrupted or not, and players watching Druids that have interrupts have gotten very good and knowing when to use them.

I finally got around to completing my placements (my new work schedule is crazy) for the season, and after placing top 20 (1748 NA) as far as rating scale is concerned (don’t have minimum games) I can confidently say that the WS/NM/BM build is THE build to carry with, no LB needed.

For reference: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYDbkQFKZx+VwhF4axykg1EAecTA4faRtp6U5ucZuSk+YA-TpxHQB+Y/BldQAS4FAQelBAwRA4bPAAA

NA especially looks like it’s going to have a TON of S/D condi thieves this season, and with cooldown management I could comfortably deal with them, and I only make note of them because they’re the only threatening matchup.

Some things that led me to deciding that this build was the build at higher competition levels of players:

• CC interupting We Heal As One. That long cast time was getting counterplayed.
• Low impact from the loss of BM. I didn’t find that I was losing enough damage for it to be a deciding factor in fights be not taking it.
• Sturdy. I feel better suited to teamfighting without having to kite on and off the point.

In the end I just ended up feeling like I could do more with this build than the other setups I listed when I started the thread. I was absolutely carrying matchups.

Easily a top tier pick and build, I can’t recommend it enough, I had a great experience with it.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

From what I remember, matchmaking puts teams together, then finds opponents as similar as possible to that team. I don’t understand matchmaking enough to know why they don’t just find the ten closest players and balance teams from that, but they don’t. This means that fewer players playing unranked will result in much worse matches. That Platinum team has to face somebody. The route of the issue is really just that most players are playing ranked. A lower unranked population means matchmaking in unranked will be worse during a ranked season.

Another contributing factor is that unranked uses a different rating than ranked. A player who doesn’t play unranked much or rarely plays seriously in it could have a much lower rating in unranked than is representative of their skill. That isn’t something Anet needs to fix, it’s just the result of a non competitive queue.

You remember that from solo queue they essentially used to do that with solo players though, and we remember how that would turn out lol. It would be like, you or whoever else you want to name drop being on the same team with somebody who decided it was a good idea to unbind the dodge key and afk run into creature on Forest all game.

Instead of tightening up the range on their team building algorithm, it was essentially changed to what we have now, which is what the algorithm basically was for the seasons of ranked before solo queue only.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about anything, to clarify if that’s needed.

I’m just saying it’s not like it could really be much better (especially with the use of glicko over the use of an algorithm like trueskill, but that’s my own gripe).

Darn. And ha to the warhorn point, you’re right, I’m probably trying to recreate what was lost too hard instead of just adapting.

I’d say we’ll figure it out with time… But how much time do we really have? Lol.

I guess one thing I can play around with is how “free” sigils and runes are with each build. And at this point I might just default my build to WS/BM/Druid when I’m using LB, if for nothing else than to be decisive lol.

In your situation (Frosty) I know straight up that a NM build is better than a no NM build. The team Support from the rez alone when you’re in 5v5 tourny play is gamechanging with coordination.

In ranked queue…. Well, even in the highest divisions you feel like it doesn’t make a difference because you pick people up just for them to be right back down again (for the whole game), so focusing your build on yourself can actually make a difference since you know that you can carry better that way (though the one time you do drop NM you end up on a team where your team is competent and it would’ve made a difference lol).

Idk, I’m rambling at this point.

I’ll figure it out lol.

Hey Frosty,

Just curious on your opinion since I’m trying to gauge where I sit on the topic. You’re basically of the opinion that BM is no longer as strong of an option as running the WS/NM combo, right?

Essentially, I’m back and forth on running WS/BM/Druid with shouts and either Trooper or Water Runes or WS/NM/Druid with Survival and Water Runes. I think that I’m getting my own bias as feedback when I evaluate how I felt playing as each.

Like, I feel like the passive offensive boosts, shortened pet swap time and additional tankiness from Natural Healing and stats, and active ability to get Protection from Protect Me and Dodging to benefit from Rugged Growth and then extend the duration with the Heal makes it a slightly more offensive but equally sustainable variant (you get condi cleanse from the Pet Swap too, and superspeed, which is nice).

Granted, there’s no might stacking without the warhorn, so without it the offensive difference is probably more slight than I expect and I feel S/D is wanted even more without Protective Ward so I can capitalize on the active defense portion of the build (although if warhorn would give it the boost it needs to make it competitive or offensively stronger than that’s the route I’d go).

Idk, I “like” both builds but that’s subjective and I want to be as efficient and competitive as possible.

(Bonus question; factoring in that sometimes swapping the sword set to a LB is needed for solo queue, on which build do you think it would compliment better? I like the defenses of WS/NM but I also really like the pet swap superspeed with bow and that I can still get swiftness which leaves the runeslot open).

kappa.2036:

The might-stacking nerf is a fact. You need to invest completely on might stacking runes-sigils-weapons (warhorn) to get similar power as we had before. Without them, the dps drop is very noticeable.
Yesterday I was thinking “is We Heal As One mandatory now?” I mean, we used it to get a lot of boons, especially might stacks. But now?

Anyway, the WS traitline is just amazing. So much protection-regen and condi clears. But that Allies Aid on the NM traitline….so much support…and the protection…Also we can’t drop BM cause…cooldowns,regen and swiftness, you know. I think right now ranger is just subpar to engi.

Well running warhorn over dagger solves most of the problems in both situations you’ve listed really.

In the NM/BM/Druid build, running warhorn gets the might “back” into the build.

In the NM/WS/Druid build, running traited warhorn and water runes with the TU/QZ slots gets you your utility cooldowns, swiftness, and regen.

Also running the MM/BM/Druid build gets the boons back in some semblance with Clarion Bond + We Heal as One.

Basically ANet created build diversity with 1 single change that makes each build version have a “specialty” of some sort.

…but yeah I’m not necessarily happy about it either lol.

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Very good summary overall.

The only thing I would add is that the ws/nm variant is 100% ahead of the others in terms of efficiency, but in terms of queueing and carrying ranked, there may be better options that utilise longbow, depending on the situation

Yeah it’s trait efficiency and Healing per Second potential is insane.

Without coordination I think your statement is accurate though, that without the coordination the tradeoff for the build is that it doesn’t generate momentum very quickly, although it’s very effective at rotation and stalling, and you aren’t going to be losing any 1v1s.

For LB…. It’s difficult. A good portion of the time I feel like the enemy team comp beats the weapon choice out of the gate. Tempest + Scrapper = only 1 effective weapon in teamfights. You end up feeling relegated to offpoint positioning and fighting, and sidepoint matchups. And you’re already good at sidepoint regardless of whether you have LB so it isn’t a unique function (although you can get the decap much much quicker in a duel).

Anyhow yeah, it’s not like I need to respond to you directly, you understand lol. Just sharing thoughts. Speaking of which, and you can clarify/correct this if needed:

When he says WS/NM is more efficient, he’s talking trait synergy and functionality investment (for anybody else following this conversation). You get the most output and interaction between all of the moving pieces of the build with this setup.

Eleazar.9478:

jcbroe.4329:

Eleazar.9478:

jcbroe.4329:

If the implication is that LB still needs something, then I’m in total agreement.

5, I really don’t have good suggestions for. It’s just impractical in everything that isn’t a stationary PvE target.

For skill 5 I’d say reduce the cast time and have it pulse boon rip would make it very useful for pvp team fights and wvw zergs, and you won’t die to retal -_- plus ranger could use a little bit of boon rip.

I’d say superspeed for lb 3 would be fair

To OP ya I’d really love piercing to be base line too

Ah, see, my best idea was to make Barrage 1 quick shot that would then leave a damage field behind that cripples and applies vulnerability, and condense the damage into ~5 pulses. A quick immobilize on the first hit wouldn’t be too shabby either.

Ya I was thinking about the imbolb too but with resistance being so prevent its kinda questionable, but ya I see what your saying if you can lock em in that’d be nice

I mean, if you think about it I’m just turning LB5 into a ranger themed Scrapper Hammer 5 lol, functionally your suggestion works better and it isn’t a “rip off” hahaha.

Eleazar.9478:

jcbroe.4329:

If the implication is that LB still needs something, then I’m in total agreement.

5, I really don’t have good suggestions for. It’s just impractical in everything that isn’t a stationary PvE target.

For skill 5 I’d say reduce the cast time and have it pulse boon rip would make it very useful for pvp team fights and wvw zergs, and you won’t die to retal -_- plus ranger could use a little bit of boon rip.

I’d say superspeed for lb 3 would be fair

To OP ya I’d really love piercing to be base line too

Ah, see, my best idea was to make Barrage 1 quick shot that would then leave a damage field behind that cripples and applies vulnerability, and condense the damage into ~5 pulses. A quick immobilize on the first hit wouldn’t be too shabby either.

SeranusGaming.7362:

Dispite it’s flaws, my little hybrid Ranger is my favorite class in the game. I actually do better on her than any other of my characters. Sometimes it’s not the class, just the player behind the class that matters. For me, it just “feels” right and so that’s why I stick with it.

Not sure how much sense that makes…

It makes sense, I’m just coming off of the beta weekend where I got to test the elite spec pretty in depth.

With Dagger essentially being the worst mainhand PvP weapon I’ve ever tried to use, and without the staff from Druid, the core Ranger weapons feel very clunky (inconsistent being the better word probably). The other elite specs had their flaws too, and other classes weapons haven’t aged well either.

I’m just throwing in my 2c that when I compare the core classes weapons to a lot of the elite specs, the weapon functionality doesn’t feel like it’s aged well.

But I’m not trying to change your opinion; just explaining the context of my own, because I’m incredibly happy with LB in its current form. I just don’t feel like it’s a “primary” pressure weapon the way staff feels, it functions much better as a swap weapon for a quick burst, and when combined with GS, the “OG” power ranger combo, classes just absorb all your burst or avoid or outheal it and you’re not left with any damage pressure, which is fine theoretically since it’s a burst based playstyle, but that does to me mean that it needs function, fluid mobility and avoidance options. Hunter’s Shot and Barrage definitely don’t contribute to that playstyle.

If the implication is that LB still needs something, then I’m in total agreement.

I’d rather Ranger core weapons be brought into the “modern” version of the game though.

LB specifically, I don’t mind traiting for piercing. I don’t really understand the 10% attack speed anymore though, I’d much rather extra damage or crit chance against moving targets, or another distance based boost of the same general theme.

Besides that, I really, really, really think 3 and 5 need a rework. 3 could be just a straight up stealth for yourself and the pet, no need to shoot an arrow. Either that or an unconditional superspeed on skill use, with a stealth on top of it if the arrow lands.

5, I really don’t have good suggestions for. It’s just impractical in everything that isn’t a stationary PvE target.

Anyhow, back to the OP’s suggestion, I mean, yeah, I’d take piercing without traiting. But I would rather the performance be improved in a different way lol.

Yeah in WvW I run very differently. Full Minstrels for my guild composition, and I swap the trinkets and weapons to Zealots for roaming, with Staff/LB.

I was still running the NM/BM/Druid setup prepatch, and because it was open world I was fine just playing the range game since in WvW you’re not forced to sit in the cancer area.

Now, there’s really not a reason to run NM over WS since they nerfed my Healing Power to Power conversion trait, and even with no Survival skills I’d still get more benefit/function from the WS traits and Zephyrs Speed (plus a pulsing slow field is insanely good dps reduction for enemies in melee).

But yeah I haven’t built “damage oriented” in WvW for a long time. I don’t “feel” the benefit as much as I do built for survival, I never run into the situation where I can’t get a kill that I otherwise would have if I was full damage. The reverse is true though, there are absolutely situations I wouldn’t have survived otherwise if not for my build.

terrorshard.3854:

I’ve been running the first version with a couple minor changes….that you will probably disgree with.

Instead of OH dagger, I have been running Warhorn. I like having the extra blast finisher and on demand boons/damage. At the cost of an evade.

The next change is, instead of running Zephyr’s speed, I have been running beastly warden, which works really well on the smokescale to help me survive.

Is it great? Meh it’s ok.

After the most recent update I like Warhorn a lot more now since it effectively replaces the might stacking that Zephyrs was lost. It’s definitely interchangeable. I tend to run the cleanse on dodge with that setup though, and Warhorn more with the WS/NM build, but again, options haha.

I’ve also been playing around with the idea of Beastly Warden as well (Electric Wyvern over Bristleback). It’s also just a toss up for me, but I’ve ended up just enjoying the super speed for kiting/mobility more since it fits my playstyle a little better.

Either way, I think we have a ton of options in this meta, and I personally haven’t experienced anything outperforming anything else.

So no, I don’t disagree at all!

Serious question time since apparently this thread is going to keep going;

What build are you running in which a core range can completely negate your condi application?

S/D condi can easily out condi core ranger cleanses, 2 sword 2 lotus dodges and a core ranger blows virtually every removal option they have to completely negate damage ticks. Add in a venom and the fact that you can rinse and repeat a virtually infinite number of times and there’s no way you got out cleansed.

D/D or P/D? Well then yeah, you don’t have nearly enough condi application to deal with any class that decides they don’t like dying to condis.

Got some build links up:

NM/BM/Druid: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8YnUqA1Ci9rAOsActglOBzJwFAKcPtgQ1CDelGTzplMtzA-TpxHQByrMAAOCAJ8BAosDCQAvAA6Y/BA

WS/BM/Druid: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8YnUqA1Ci9rAOsActglJBD+nWUbqPBha1HrJA84mAlMtzA-TpxHQBA4IAIvyAJ8BAosDCgO2fIgXAAA

WS/NM/Druid: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYDbkQFKZx+VwhF4axykgB/TLqN1mAwjbC4U5ucZuSm2ZA-TZxHQB+Y/hE+AAAwRAIgXAA5VGAA

These are just the core 3. With MM you’d run the utilities in which the cooldown trait affects in the associated partnered traitline. 311 with BM and no LB, 313 with LB. 111 with WS and no LB, 113 with LB. LB also gets Ancient Seeds in Druid.

Also there are many effective permutations of these setups, so if anybody can add any information/experience to help determine if there could potentially be a “better/best” version of the build, please feel free to share.

This all is about creating and running the best build(s) we can until balance gets jostled again.

Alright so those of you that know me know the deal by now. There was a balance patch, there is a new PvP season, time to discuss build options.

Granted, while the changes seemed miniscule, they had a pretty big effect on metabuild options even though the rest of the classes builds haven’t changed (meaning no new matchups to learn).

So what changed? The might stacking build from pet swapping using NM/BM/Druid no longer works. More accurately, because of the change to Zephyrs Speed, it now provides quickness and superspeed instead of providing any might.

This is problematic, because it’s a very large damage drop, and after repetitive PvP nerfs (regen duration, natural regen only ticking once every 3 seconds) targeted at hitting the common build setup, it makes the BM traitline really only desirable for traited shouts.

Granted, shouts are still incredibly strong, and Strength of the Pack is still basically mandatory as the elite. With Trooper/Soldier Runes being a stronger option now with SoR providing a ticking source of Astral Force generation, Shouts are also a good teamfight option, as well as still being an excellent dueling option.

Ultimately, there are at least 2-3 build options now with no clear front runners anymore (as far as I can tell at this point.

All of that aside, build options (I’m on mobile so I apologize for text format):

Amulet:

• Menders

Sigils:

• Courage (NM and/or shouts)
• Battle (NM and/or shouts)
• Purging
• Cleansing
• Energy
• Revocation

Runes:

• Soldiers/Troopers
• Water

Pets:

• Smokescale
• Bristleback/Wyvern (Electric preferred)

Weapons:

• Staff
• Sword/Dagger or Sword/Warhorn or Longbow

Skillbar (only variables):

• We Heal as One or Troll Unguent
• Protect Me or Quickening Zephyr
  (The rest of the skillbar is SoR, SoS, SotP. For a shout based build an argument could be made for Guard over SoR)

Trait combos:

• NM/BM/Druid
• WS/BM/Druid
• WS/NM/Druid
• MM/BM/Druid (questionable)
• MM/WS/Druid (questionable)

So far, these are my observations and experiences. I think it’s good we have build variety but so far I haven’t been able to identify if there is a “best” build of the options.

Questions/discussion time.

I’m not posting anything of value with this particular post, I’m just making sure it stays in a place where the devs can see it since the forum search function is buggy and they NEED to capitalize on our feedback.

Cufufalating.8479:

I fail to see the problem.

> You run a condi build
> He ran a cleanse heavy build
> You lost
> You switched to power build
> You won.

I mean.. It sounds like he was built to do 2 things well (hit hard and clease conditions) but was weak to direct damage. I’d say that’s good balancing right there.

Right lol.

Loses to his counter, switches to that build’s counter and wins, comes to forums to complain that…. Idk, that one build should universally be capable of beating any other build regardless of the utility that build specializes in?

It’s like we’re back in the first month of the game again. Somebody show this guy the way to the dodge trainer and the conditions wiki page.

Justine.6351:

Wondrouswall.7169:

Kind of surprised no one else caught the other tid-bit Irenio mentioned in the Guild Chat stream about why Anet won’t allow Ranger to have control over all of the pet skills by default: “Because it would be way too powerful.”

lolwhat? He said that?
Firebrand…

Firebrand is balanced by the fact that Guardian players can’t stop crying about their staff 1 long enough to learn how to push more buttons.

I’m not going to have as in depth of an opinion as the more invested ele players here, but just curious; why did attunement swapping not swap my 4/5 skills?

Those are typically the “big” skills, but attunement swapping had to happen twice to get to the ones I wanted/needed when I needed.

Extremely counterintuitive to the point that I immediately thought “nobody will ever play this over Tempest,” so making attunement swapping work to where it swaps the 4-5 skills to the desired element seems like the most important baseline QoL change to be made (granted they’re all important).

I agree exactly with what Erzian said.

At the end of the day, I felt like I was playing a Berserker specialization on Ranger with less sustain and fluidity.

So adding to what was said;

• Traits need to incentize/augment entering and leaving Beastmode. Stability please. Cleanse please. Protection please (if only to synergize with a master trait, could tak it on to Eternal Bond).
• Core traits and utilities need to ALL work with Soulbeast.
• Remove the cooldown for entering Soulbeast, add ICDs to traits that proc on enter/exit
• Make dagger auto 3 attacks, remove aftercast delay on dagger 3, make dagger 2 a lunge.
• Give master traits synergy/use, make GM traits useable, make Fresh Reinforcement give boons to the pet on exiting Beastmode, make Fresh Reinforcement a minor trait, roll the fury trait into the quickness on Beastskill trait and make that trait work with pet F2 skills.
• Make Soulbeast F1 and F2 skills actually match their description and also not suck.

I could probably keep going but I’m at work so I’m not focused on thinking of more lol.

We’re very much on the same page.

Like, I made that thread a few days before the beta weekend annoyed that Fresh Reinforcements isn’t a minor trait.

After playing it? Just give me some Stability and Quickness going into Beastmode.

Give me some condi cleanse for entering/leaving Beastmode.

But yeah, I could go on and on. You understand lol.

I’m not going to lie, figuring out what weapons to run and getting comfortable with core Ranger weapons again was at least half the issue I had. Druid Staff is a good weapon, and having to go back to LB as the only ranged option worth taking felt like a considerable downgrade in pressure/output.

All the frustrating bugs aside, I did enjoy myself. I just didn’t feel what I was doing was all that “special.” What I mean is that role/gameplay wise, I just ended up feeling like a Berserker, kiting in and out of fights, trying to land my big burst.

Realistically, Soulbeast was performing well mostly due to bugs increasing the power of it. Granted, all specs will have to be toned down that were doing damage like that, but other than “class flavor,” there really doesn’t seem to be a reason to run Soulbeast over Holosmith or Spellbreaker.

Now, that could change. I started off the weekend trying to use my swap pet from smokescale as the Jacaranda to get that sustain/utility I felt like I was lacking. But it was incredibly clunky and inefficient to swap between the pets and their respective Beastmode, to the point that it limited my ability to utilize this playstyle effectively.

I ended up just going with Smokescale and Gazelle for being able to swap into a burst from either pet and playing heavy positioning games.

I don’t mean to be down about it because I can tell you enjoyed it and it’s probably a lot more people’s playstyle than Druid (it’s basically an apples to oranges comparison) is, but wow did I not feel like it would compete for a role in a team comp in PvP.

Now, WvW, I am the most hyped I can possibly be for stance sharing. Soulbeast actually brings the utility it needs in team comps to compete with frontline Guardian, a role that until now has remained unchallenged.

In PvP, I just don’t see this competing with Druid. Especially with the level of power creep, it made Druid utility feel almost more mandatory.

I think that Soulbeast just needs a lot of improvement to compete with the other elite specs, especially since half of them are DPS oriented. I hope that they remove the cooldown in Beastmode, and I hope the traits, utilities, and dagger see the bug fixes and improvements they need.

@Borya;

It’s actually not that big of a deal to me, I’d rather have the cooldown removed from Beastmode myself, it’d achieve the same result I’m looking for; quickly getting to the other pet for it’s Beastmode utility.

Just to address what I think of the pet swap, I just think it should be available, but when you press it, it pulls you out of Beastmode AND swaps to the other pet, if the petless Ranger thing really is such a problem right now.

My main issue is that without it working like that, if I need to quickly react to something that has me wanting to pet swap, I have to press 2 buttons to only functionally do 1 thing.

Maybe if leaving Beastmode had ANY function attached to it at all (for examples look at Holosmith traited leaving Forge mode or Druid traited leaving Avatar. Heck, even core necro leaving shroud lol) it wouldn’t be something I request at all.

Right now though, you really are just pushing 2 buttons to do 1 thing, and it bogs down gameplay.

Just my 2c, the removal of the cooldown needs to happen regardless. The swap being available in that format would just be icing on the cake that makes game play that much smoother for me.

borya.2964:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

More importantly, what would be gained is the idea that our pet selections and uses would be more impactful and fluid. Oh, you got lit up when you went for your damage pets Soulbeast skills and are now reeling to recover? Instead of having to drop Soulbeast, pet swap, twiddle your fingers a bit, go back into Soulbeast on the other pet, and use its utility, you could just swap and use it, and then you’d be locked into this Soulbeast mode for the duration of a pet swap (at which point you could unmeld and use the pets AI skills to your advantage or etc).
Thought that needed to be reiterated.

So, once we swap beastmode we’re locked in beastmode for 20 sec ? sure it will be much more fluid. Then if we exit beastmode we ‘ll have the second pet (we swapped beastmode) and we are locked with the second pet for another 10 sec before to enter beastmode again ? and what happens if i want the first pet’s F2 whe i swapped beastmode from pet 1 to pet 2 ? If i want to enter beastmode for pet 1 abilties and then exit beastmode and swap pet 2 to use the pet ‘s F2 it’s still clunky like it’s already.

I am melded with my pet 1, my second pet is the smokescale. What happens if i want to blast the smokefield to land my melded smoke assault from stealth ? Beatsmode swap doesn’t help at all here, i am still locked in 10 sec CD, this combo (pertty simple one) is impossible and will remain impossible.

I am tired of the simple beastmode swap argument, it’s not even half the solution. The main issue is the cooldown on beastmode, remove the coodown and we’ll have fluidity.

Hey man, I don’t actually care what the solution is as long as it’s the best solution.

My point wasn’t that it’s the best idea, it was that people should really stop saying “but you’re not supposed to be able to play petless” as an argument to why things should remain in their clunky state.

Soulbeast needs an improvement to it’s fluidity, I don’t care how it gets achieved lol.

My own personal solution was to just play Druid with the new pets. That Smokescale/Gazelle combo with Druid is super strong.

I really don’t understand why people are so opposed to having a petswap available in Beastmode. It only adds gameplay options.

The argument “it isn’t supposed to be petless” is ridiculous, not because I have an opinion on what should or shouldn’t be the case, but because it’s a just a perception of how some people think other people will play the spec.

And even if people used the mechanic to decide to never leave Soulbeast, it wouldn’t be an optimized way to play. They’d lose out on pet versions of their skills and traits that affect entering/exiting Beastmode.

More importantly, what would be gained is the idea that our pet selections and uses would be more impactful and fluid. Oh, you got lit up when you went for your damage pets Soulbeast skills and are now reeling to recover? Instead of having to drop Soulbeast, pet swap, twiddle your fingers a bit, go back into Soulbeast on the other pet, and use its utility, you could just swap and use it, and then you’d be locked into this Soulbeast mode for the duration of a pet swap (at which point you could unmeld and use the pets AI skills to your advantage or etc).

Because ANet decided that Soulbeast was going to be in addition to and not a replacement for pet swapping, it is absolutely needed for the sake of fluid gameplay.

Having finally gotten my hands on it for a few hours, all I can say is disappointing.

Part of it is just straight up core weapons suck in the PvP meta. Half your ranged burst it swallowed or reflected by some field that every other classes drops every other time they blink or do something, and you end up spending most of your time trying to bait people into a melee combo with a faceroll Smokescale or Gazelle F1-F2-F3 into GS maul.

It’s clunky, you’re forced into Jacaranda as your other pet for sustain, it’s bugged so sometimes pets and even players disappear from existence when entering/exiting Beastmode and the most important utility Stance doesn’t work right now.

A few hours into it and I was back to using Druid with new pets.

The good news is, Stance Boons do share, which means WvW Soulbeast can secure a position in organized parties. But in PvP? You’re forced into wombo style gameplay with poor pressure, so you have to just throw everything at damage spike.

It’s not weak, it’s just neither strong nor particularly effective.

It needs LOTS of TLC and mechanic smoothing. EVERY utility needs to work in and out of Beastmode for starters.

Again, a large part of it is that a lot of the spec relies on core Ranger and most of core Ranger’s weapons feel outdated.

I’m genuinely not trying to kill people’s hype but that was just a poor, poor gameplay quality. For the sake of design and balance I hope that once the initial hype dies down for you guys, you see that it’s only good in theory, and that Soulbeast is actually really bad and in a really bad spot in practice.

Meanwhile some of these classes are insane. Holosmith and Spellbreaker, and even Scourge are incredibly well done, and playing most other elite speces feels very night and day between their quality and Soulbeast.

fingers crossed for a working Dolyak Stance

OGDeadHead.8326:

Khenzy.9348:

Beastmode not being a pet-swap CD is GOOD. I don’t want it messing up my trait CDs when I swap pets to do a burst combo.

Please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease DON’T make Beastmode affect those trait CDs.

This.

As usual guys, be very careful what you whish for here. We’ve seen suggetions backlash a couple of times. If entering/exiting BM would count as pet swap, that would for sure also bring pet swap cd with it.
Again, think things through fully here…

Except that it isn’t what anybody is asking for. It’s very exact.

Yeah, ANet interprets things poorly, but there is no la k of clarity in this thread, and nobody should be afraid of providing constructive feedback because “it might get taken wrong.”

Nothing will ever get better if nobody provides feedback.

Khenzy.9348:

Beastmode not being a pet-swap CD is GOOD. I don’t want it messing up my trait CDs when I swap pets to do a burst combo.

Please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease DON’T make Beastmode affect those trait CDs.

It wouldn’t. You would swap pets as usual in this case, proc the swap trait, get the pet burst, then go into Beastmode during the ICD of the pet swap traits, leave before the cooldown is up, then you’re ready to swap pets for pet swap trait procs again.

Simple cooldown management.

If it counted as a pet swap proc though, you could enter combat, get the pet burst off from the current pet, go into Beastmode, proc the traits, use Beastmode as a second damage burst, leave Beastmode, swap pets, have the potential to share the boons to the swapped pet with HaO, have that pet do its burst, then go into Beastmode on that pet, proc the traits, and go for a second Beastmode burst. OR, enter combat, pet swap, burst with the pet, camp that pet until ICDs, then have the branches of either going into Beastmode for the burst from the current pet or swapping to the other pet for the other pet burst. Or any variation/permutation of that sequence.

Having options only increases the amount of things available to us and makes the class more robust. Less options is just less things we can do and less gameplay elements to enjoy.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Miellyn.6847:

Changing the boon trait to copy boons to your pet when exiting would be much more useful than copying boons to you when you enter it, the boons weren’t created for you anyway. Also mainting boons on yourself is easier than creating them new for the pet.

Why not both ways? It’s our core mechanic and a new mechanic.

This is still my favorite suggestion.

Make it the minor trait too though. Swap it with Furious Strength, and then add the functionality to Furious Strength (not gonna suggest numbers) striking a foe while you have fury reduce the cooldown on Beastmode.

Now the line actually starts to look synergistic to the gameplay style it introduces, and the first 3 traits are all gameplay defining (do you want your swap into Beastmode to be the augmented characteristic of how you play, the actual Beast skills, or do you want to be able to more rapidly swap between pets and Beastmode).

Bumping this because we need a universal place to discuss it.

Also if anybody records anything or is going to stream it anywhere, this is a good place to put that information (I intend to stream but I don’t have specifics so I’ll post those when I have them).

@Borya;

You made a really good point that I hadn’t taken into consideration; that since pet swapping is also available to Soulbeast, it would end up being a lot of internal cooldowns to track.

I want to say now in case people don’t know from me saying it before, but I’m a developer myself. Balance and design philosophy study is one of my down time hobbies, which is why I end up having an opinion on it.

So okay, backtrack here. Looking at Soulbeast at it’s core functionality the way ANet designed it. We have a class who has a mechanic with 2 different swap options, and then on top of it we’ve built an additional usable mode for each option.

Lets assume then that we have perfected the base class. The swap options and everything that can be built on those functions are perfect.

Now we get to the new mode design. At a core level what does that new mode do? Well, on use, it removes some of the options we’ve built for the base modes in order to gain a passive boost and some additional active skills. Tradeoffs are good, but we need to make sure they are horizontal tradeoffs at a minimum.

Now we need to build the trait system that interacts with this new mode (we’re going to skip the step where we build utility skills, it isn’t needed for this theoretical, we’re going to just incorporate their existence into the discussion).

We need traits that interact with the existing mechanic, the new mode, and the new skills we’ve introduced. We want to build traits that enhance playstyles and mechanics that also have to compete against each other, but we need to make sure everything is designed in a way where you feel like when you make a choice, you’re choosing to add onto without creating the feeling of having a lack of.

To pinpoint it, this is where I’m disappointed. If the pet swap traits aren’t going to interact with Beastmode, well, the entire Soulbeast line is underutilized for the mechanic, weapons, and skills it introduces. The GMs are all universally underwhelming in that they’re incredibly situational and don’t seem to be providing much benefit to the situation relative to the expected power of the trait tier. The Master traits are passive and forgettable, and they don’t really tie into the mechanics and mode Soulbeast introduces (neither does the passive damage GM). The Major traits have 2 of the most mechanic and mode defining traits developed for the Soulbeast, and while it would be fine to have them compete with each other, because of the lack of the other traits in other tiers defining or enhancing qualities, it leaves people with the impression that they should be able to take both to augment the mode/mechanic the best, because they’re the ONLY traits that directly interact with the mode/mechanic and people want to be able to enhance active gameplay elements. And the minors? Same issue, passive, forgettable, they don’t enhance or augment the mode or mechanics introduced.

It might be too early to say anything is weak, in fairness. That’s why I made a hypothesis section, because hypothesises are not facts lol. But it definitely isn’t too early for me to say I’m disappointed in the design decisions.

Sidenote; the concept of form following function is very popular in the programming world, if you were ever interested in looking into it.

borya.2964:

jcbroe.4329:

You guys might not be understanding my point.

There are all these traits that give and share boons to/with the pet. Then you go into Beastmode, and you WASTE these boons on your pet that you’ve built, and the pet comes back out of Beastmode boonless.

You’re shoehorned into a trait to even partially refund the boons that are otherwise wasted if you intend to use Beastmode, and realistically, those hard caps you receive are a bad tradeoff for “destroying” a fully booned pet.

Even moreso, in raid situations where you can expext to be fully booned as well as your pet, going into Beastmode removes those boons from the pet. That is a DPS loss, period.

The elite takes synergy the class has without it and punishes you by removing that synergy and gameplay effect.

It’s not okay, it’s not a wait and see situation, it’s functionally counterintuitive gameplay.

I don’t really care about pve to be honest. From my point of view you’re asking for beastgodmode. If entering beastmode would count as pet swap it’s :

- Instant fury, swiftness, might (4sec unblockable ?), break stun, 4 sec unblockable attacks, quickness and super speed with lower CD (MS / BM / SB)

- Instant fury, quickness, superspeed, 2 cleans, break stun, 4 sec unblockable attaks (WS / BM /SB) 10 sec CD

Coupled with weapons swap traits and sigils and utilities … Instant yolo, really ?

Considering that you already listed 2 different builds, which signifies tradeoffs, as well as having to base an entire build around powering up a single mechanic, and sacrifice the rest of the build investment, on top of most of the things listed having counterplay, not being that strong to begin with, and already available on a 15 second cooldown anyhow?

Literally the only thing “extra” that we can’t do right now is the Soulbeast traitline. So the unblockable + stunbreak.

And as I said to Deceiver, I want there to be mechanical and functional synergy. I’d rather see nerfs and better improvements to those areas than the current iteration which just straight up killed build diversity and synergy by eliminating a lot of traits as competitive in slot choices.

This isn’t even a balance discussion, it’s a design discussion. You can’t balance a design until you have a functional design. Form follows function.

Hopefully this comes out well but for clarification on what the devs gear was.

Hepatolith.6389:

okay, i rewatched the stream and there’s one Thing i noticed:
Beastmode does not count as Weaponswap. They enter Beastmode in combat and neither Tailwind nor Furious Grip or Quickdraw. (they use skirmishing Line, as seen at 1h13m10s)
So there’s still hope for it to function as a petswap, because if i’m not mistaken, they don’t use any petswap traits.

He gets might from the PvP sigil of battle.

Also it’s only in the beginning of the coverage from what I’ve seen. Looks like they forgot to turn Dev mode off so they aren’t put in combat for most of the video outside of when they originally begin the coverage with the Devourer equipped.

AEFA.9035:

jcbroe.4329:

sigh

So, the guild chat video, while not verbally adressed, visually showed that entering Beastmode counts as a weapon swap.

Such a hype killer.

There goes a lot of cool combos and trait synergy. Not to mention the ability to actually get/maintain boons is wasted by Beastmode.

It makes the traiting options so, so weak. I just don’t understand what ANet was thinking with these traits based on what they just highlighted.

Hypothesis;

• PvE DPS improvement over current condi core ranger, but in optimal conditions going into Beastmode will be a DPS loss, so you’ll be taking the traitline just for the daggers and passives.
• PvP dueling will be strong, but it always has been. Less team support than Druid, more damage. Ultra ultra ultra shoehorned into pets, as always.
• WvW Leader of the Pack makes or breaks this elite spec in WvW. If no boons are shared, it’s worse for party comps than taking Druid.

Sorry if you guys think I’m being hyperbolic, I’m not trying to be dramatic, I’m just disappointed in how overall poorly designed the spec functionally seems so far.

Discuss (I guess, not much to say, the ball was dropped).

Theres no way it will be a pet swap when youre melding with your pet going into beastmode. Still dont understand the disappointment cause having control not only with your pet moves but with archetypes moves in addition, and the player who is show casing the Ranger during Guild Chat was using a Rampagers amulet if I remember correctly? WHO THE kitten uses Rampagers? LOL! kitten me. Im just happy the kittening Dagger 3 is ammo base so Essence of Speed with perma Protection… confirm!

That wasn’t good damage, and the power scaling illustrated was poor.

Not the part that’s disappointing though, it’s the lack of mechanical and functional synergy, to the degree that it punishes existing builds for building synergistically. And the tradeoff on 90% or so of the pets, especially with the the player version of the skills, isn’t worth it. Not with the tooltips we’ve already seen from Reddit with 2200-2300 power investment and the damage we saw today.

DeceiverX.8361:

jcbroe.4329:

The devs today bragged SO MUCH about how proud they were of their technical accomplishments that they forgot to make sure the mechanics were worth the tech they developed.

But did you really expect anything differently of them? The pasy two years have proven mass ineptitude from the professions team.
I can say with absolute certainty my Deadeye was/is more compatible and healthier for the game than ANet’s. I think Soulbeast is one of the better-designed PoF specs and elite specs in general despite the lack of synergy with two lines because it at least offers some new stylistic differences and buffs some previously-bad builds.

With the amount of time they’ve had to develop and perfect the design, to not even get Fresh Reinforcement as a minor trait?

Unfortunately, I did end up expecting better.

I’m all caught up on responses, we’re having a double conversation. I agree yeah lol.

DeceiverX.8361:

Maybe the intent is to have a longbow ranger with 15s of unblockable attacks and 20+ seconds of damage immunity not have access to permanent 25 might? Just a thought.

I think dagger is meant to be condi. That is a very low number for AA pressure, however.

I think the big gains from this elite are meant to help out MMS/WS/S builds by providing extra utility more than buffing the damage and sustain of NM/BM ones. The druid vastly helped the latter.

What we’re possibly seeing here is that this elite spec actually delivers on changing playstyle while not changing power. Consider the power level of core ranger. I think SB enables some of the more mediocre builds to be potent relative to core. If HoT elites remain OP, that’s not unexpected, and subsequent nerfs to them would be better than just releasing more OP elites.

I’ll take proper mechanics and design over power creep any day.

I don’t think we should get both, I think we should get a properly designed spec.
We can talk balance after we get proper design implemented (not that they should arrive in separate waves).

anduriell.6280:

jcbroe.4329:

You guys might not be understanding my point.

There are all these traits that give and share boons to/with the pet. Then you go into Beastmode, and you WASTE these boons on your pet that you’ve built, and the pet comes back out of Beastmode boonless.

You’re shoehorned into a trait to even partially refund the boons that are otherwise wasted if you intend to use Beastmode, and realistically, those hard caps you receive are a bad tradeoff for “destroying” a fully booned pet.

Even moreso, in raid situations where you can expext to be fully booned as well as your pet, going into Beastmode removes those boons from the pet. That is a DPS loss, period.

The elite takes synergy the class has without it and punishes you by removing that synergy and gameplay effect.

It’s not okay, it’s not a wait and see situation, it’s functionally counterintuitive gameplay.

I got it and you are right: it is not right we get punished for using the game mechanics.
But we already have that with the ranger-pet boon sharing: Why are we forced into NM to be able to share our boons with the pet?

I’m even more worried about the fact we can’t hot-swap pets in Bmode. We could get the unblockable attacks from the lesser clarion bond (or how they pretend to do with the actual horn otherwise, do we lose that effect at all?) but also miss the oportunity lesse QZ would give us.

The animations of going in\out seems to waste a little over a second and with skills that last roughly 3 secs it seems a lot.

Exactly, it’s a bunch of different things that add up to poor design.

Traits that don’t interact well with the mechanic being introduced, the skills, or the weapon.

A mechanic that trades a perfectly good pet to use dumbed down versions of their skills, half of which are still useless because you still have to rely heavily on the pet itself, which means meta pet choices as always.

The devs today bragged SO MUCH about how proud they were of their technical accomplishments that they forgot to make sure the mechanics were worth the tech they developed.

You guys might not be understanding my point.

There are all these traits that give and share boons to/with the pet. Then you go into Beastmode, and you WASTE these boons on your pet that you’ve built, and the pet comes back out of Beastmode boonless.

You’re shoehorned into a trait to even partially refund the boons that are otherwise wasted if you intend to use Beastmode, and realistically, those hard caps you receive are a bad tradeoff for “destroying” a fully booned pet.

Even moreso, in raid situations where you can expext to be fully booned as well as your pet, going into Beastmode removes those boons from the pet. That is a DPS loss, period.

The elite takes synergy the class has without it and punishes you by removing that synergy and gameplay effect.

It’s not okay, it’s not a wait and see situation, it’s functionally counterintuitive gameplay.

sigh

So, the guild chat video, while not verbally adressed, visually showed that entering Beastmode counts as a weapon swap.

Such a hype killer.

There goes a lot of cool combos and trait synergy. Not to mention the ability to actually get/maintain boons is wasted by Beastmode.

It makes the traiting options so, so weak. I just don’t understand what ANet was thinking with these traits based on what they just highlighted.

Hypothesis;

• PvE DPS improvement over current condi core ranger, but in optimal conditions going into Beastmode will be a DPS loss, so you’ll be taking the traitline just for the daggers and passives.
• PvP dueling will be strong, but it always has been. Less team support than Druid, more damage. Ultra ultra ultra shoehorned into pets, as always.
• WvW Leader of the Pack makes or breaks this elite spec in WvW. If no boons are shared, it’s worse for party comps than taking Druid.

Sorry if you guys think I’m being hyperbolic, I’m not trying to be dramatic, I’m just disappointed in how overall poorly designed the spec functionally seems so far.

Discuss (I guess, not much to say, the ball was dropped).

I particularly like the idea of summoning spirits at range.

However, it might be time we just remove the idea of summoned, targetable entities altogether.

Something like you invoke an active effect based on the spirit theme that you then carry on you for a duration, buffing allies in a radius around you because you’ve received the associated spirits blessing/aura/whatever would be a much more updated concept for the state of the game, 5 years later.

But there’s a million ideas that work. Any improvement would be a welcome one at this point.