Guild Wars 2

ProtoMarcus.7649:

Hydrolysis.6810:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tempest makes their protection -40% damage, which is an enhance version of protection already.

The difference is Tempest utility grants protection from itself, while Soul Beast’s whole package does not grant protection at all. You have to grab other trait-line to get protection for Soulbeast because it doesn’t function on its own.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Make it no cast time with a stun break too.

Actually, I’d prefer they put Stability share on Brutish Seals in addition to the Fury, it would make all signets so much better and a full signet build would be pretty great.

They should also add a signet heal skill and elite if they were feeling creative, we are the only signet using class that only has 4.

I also can’t believe we don’t have a elite trap skill -.-

Pigeon hole to Strength of the Pack is getting old.

Also can you return the one condition clear every 10 sec on Signet of Renewel, in addition to the current effect?

Ranger condition removal is now pigeon-hole to big cool down ones or run troopers/ wilderness survival.

Dadnir.5038:

Ranger :
pros : good offensive support (especially as druid)
good mobility
good condi damage
pretty resilient

Cons : low power damage
can struggle against condition
the pet is a mechanism that tend to underperform.

conclusion : the profession is average in open PvE, sought out for PvE group content, a bit weak in PvP and have pet issue in WvW.
Druid made the ranger welcome in PvE and helped a lot in regard of survivability in PvP.
Soulbeast is full of promise for less issues in WvW group content.

Thief :
Pros : Good at both condi and power damage
good mobility
good at disengaging
Blind a lot

Cons : tend to be squishy
situational support
pretty weak against conditions

conclusion : almost faceroll open PvE content, can easily have a dps spot in PvE group content, THE roaming profession in WvW, not in a bad spot in PvP.
Daredevil is more like a direct upgrade of the thief as a damage dealer than anything.
Deadeye seem to introduce a bit more support on top of the damage dealing role.

Condition Thief out-damage condition ranger, and have group support in a form of poison share.

Fallesafe.5932:

My main was a condition-ranger with all BiS gear. I rolled a thief out of curiosity, and loved it so much that I havent logged onto my ranger again in the last 4 months. With the thief, I’m almost always doing top damage in my groups. Sometimes I do more damage than the entire rest of my group combined. And I’m almost always the one still fighting after everyone else has wiped. I literally carry more than half The groups I join. The thief is an absolute monster. He has endless dodges. And, with invigorating precision, can practically face-tank things. Unbelievably mobile. Has a good 30 seconds of uninterrupted stealth even with a full DPS build. And it’s SOOO easy to play. You can literally hit nothing but “1” and still out-damage 90% of the people you ever group with.

Thief all day, every day. I don’t see my ranger getting any more play. I have no interest honestly.

I also like thief Staff alot after the buff.

Stupid high dps auto 1, 5th skill on demand no CD evade is so good, plus it’s a very good aoe skill.

Heck, even in range damange department Thief outperform Ranger after the pistol buff. (Only cost 3 initiative for pistol 3. plus free 25 stack of mights), I were literally doing rapid fire non stop with no CD.

PS: I have every classes fully geared.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Ranger can do anything, thief can only DPS.

Ironically thief excel in both PVP, WvW roaming, raid, and fractal.

They also have higher range dps than Ranger in PVE now after the buff of Pistol.

Ranger does not excel in anything, that’s why they’re not wanted.
You either play Druid or get lost in group content.

maddoctor.2738:

For fractals: that only happens in farm groups, they use chrono+warr+3 ele for maximum damage to do the farm as quickly as possible. Fast runs = more runs = more gold. Although Ele isn’t the top dps anymore so those farm pugs need to update.

As for WvW, once upon a time I was told not to bring a ranger because of Epidemic. Enemy Necromancers could use Epidemic on the pet, which then spread conditions that were active on the pet on nearby targets (the pet cannot dodge it). Since then they changed how the skill works so it’s no longer such an issue.

Your commanders / party members are really behind in terms of meta lol

Did people actually dodge in WVW?
Are we playing the same game? I’m in T1 server constantly btw.

Definitely Berserker because they have much more synergy than the Viper ones for SB.

Dagger sucks.

Skuzz.6580:

Soulbeast is the most diverse Elite spec in the game honestly, the amount of combinations that are ’ viable’ are nuts.
I’d play that over that godawful boring spec which is deadeye.

Also, just to get 1 thing clear:
To put it in LoTR terms, Legolas is not a Ranger, Aragorn is, what does he fight with? right, he fights with melee weapons and ranged weapons. It’s his diversity that makes him a fierce combatant.
Stop with the illusion of Ranger’s being Ranged classes..

As a sidenote, Deadeye is very thematic for an assassin class (which thief is), and it should deal more damage than a bow, plain and simple.

Have you fight against a range deadeyes in pvp before?
They’re meant to stall time before the Marks goes up.

It’s too early to tell whether Deadeye is bad for pvp or not.
Currently they’re not bad because of their range burst potential in conjunction with stealth. Plus most of their projectiles are unblockable.

VictoriaCross.3205:

what about Soul Beast +LB + Sic em + Soulbeast elite and LB skill 2 = Best burstt in game ^^

I see more powerful burst right now from mesmer in PVP
(Literally took 0.5 sec to down a marauder engi if I didn’t dodge randomly before he did his rotation.)

Also LB + Sick-em is one of the easiest burst to counter in pvp cuz terrain is our best friend in pvp against projectile, and sick-em only lasts 8 out of 32~40 seconds. Don’t forget the 123521 projectile hate from every single classes.

I do agree this might work in WvW open space 1 v 1 situation against bad roamers .

Swagger.1459:

So the rangers get shafted again in the damage department, and it’s particularly terrible damage (and utility) on daggers because being in melee range has a ton more risk involved….

Meanwhile, though, all the thief mains who complained about ranger long bow (lol) seem to be loving their new ranged toy… that happens to outshine any ranged damage we rangers have to offer…

Why is it that we need overly conservative designs for ranger while this type of stuff is being dropped for other professions?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N3XW8yk7jBA

Anet makes ranger one of the worst damage classes because of pet mechanic, but now when pet is removed, Anet still want us to be the worst damage class because of non existence pet :P

Logic is our best friend.

Thief’s shortbow looks like a very good choice.

Range weapon that bounces 3 targets and hit a wide radius.
Put on a sigil of Fire and watch the firework.

GS of Guardian outdamage Warrior’s GS by a large margin lolz.
Kinda funny really.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Aomine.5012:

…Legendary is always for visual, not stat choice.

I have Frostfang, Nevermore, Howler, Rodgort, Incinerator and Twilight, all on my Ranger and I hardly use any of them for the visuals.

Not many people are as rich as you lolz..
We make legendaries for their skin and visual effect.
If I want the stat I’d just open an ascended box and change its stat through mystic forge.

Skuzz.6580:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Aomine.5012:

…All it gets is a 10% modifier that will never work on any boss.

How do you figure this?

Probably because most bosses worth mentioning have millions of health, so by the time this trait kicks in, the boss is dead anyway.

You are aware that this is based on % of health right?, not actual amount..
If you are 100% hp and the boss is 99% you get the 10% dmg boost.

After doing some research, this info could indeed be correct.

I apologize for the confusion, but this is mainly Anet’s fault for horrible tooltip not explaining the trait well enough.

It never state percentage within any of the tool tip.

Still, all this trait does is increase the condition duration instead of the damage.
Could still be useful though because after the food nerf condition ranger is losing a huge chunk of dps because we can’t hit 100% duration with just food.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Mechanically ranger is not in dire need of a legendary. Maybe staff can use multiple stat sets.

Visually, Chuka and Chumpawat. For every pink unicorn a pony-eating tiger needs to be fired!!

Legendary is always for visual, not stat choice.

That being said, I find that I use LB less and less because of the restriction of forcing you into Marksmanship if you want it to be even functional to begin with. (Plus you have to forfeit predator onslaught)

https://youtu.be/kocCrbvaPQE

This video pretty much sums up everything wrong with condition soulbeast.

Dagger 1 full slow 4 hit chain has worse dps than one Winter’s Bite.
Dagger 2 has lower damage than Axe 2.
Axe has utility like chill and weakness while Soulbeast dagger only has dps, yet the dps is even worse, plus they both only hit 2 targets, but axe bounce further and it’s a range weapon.

Your play-style is exactly the same, your choice of weapon is exactly the same, your choice of utility is exactly the same because none of them are worth bringing.
With pet bug, many of your bonus condition stat is pointless.
You lose around 3k dps from your pet and get a tiny bit of dps back through some stats.
It’s literally an inferior condition ranger that loses its pet.

Skuzz.6580:

There really is no reason to supply feedback from a stress test about a Class/Spec, a stress test is about testing server performance, nothing else.

It was very highly unlikely that they would have another build active, so obviously the same things that were the case 2 weeks ago are still the same for this test, and thus, no need to ‘complain’ about.

But my opinion, I think Soulbeast is awesome, yes it could need a few tweaks here and there, but overall I am just glad I can play something else than druid or core ranger.

Holosmith F5 #3 and #5 are already heavily nerfed, so they did change something.
Now those skills are doing around 3k damage instead of 12~15k back in beta.

Also the point of this post is actually testing the build in the real Path of Fire map.
We can only did that in pvp and wvw back then.

Also, by providing feedbacks, Anet were able to fix alot of skills’ bug on OTHER specialization back in beta, but apparently ranger did not get any attention.

BadSanta.6527:

im fine with soulbeast beeing power , since we alredy have condi as top tier of the class, and espec its about another play style

Top tier in another parallel universe?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6tumlb/qt_updated_benchmarks_and_builds_for_all_classes/

It’s worse than every classes’ top dps build, just barely above condition mesmer, and it only works against stationary foes at point blank range while flanking, and need to count in pet as well. (Around 3k dps from a fully buffed pet, so our actual dps is even worse than condition mesmer)

Ranger is now officially the worst dps class in the whole game because our traits are weak and spreading all over the place. (You need to grab 3 lines just to get the condition traits within ranger)

Soulbeast condition will be even worse than core ranger that’s for sure.
All it gets is a 10% modifier that will never work on any boss.

A mix stat of Power and Ferocity main, Precision and concentration minor.

This stat would benefit so many classes.
Many classes have trait that give out flat crit rate, so precision is not as useful as before.

mistsim.2748:

you are completely delusional.

let me translate:

- condi Soulbeast does not look very strong, true.
- MH dagger seems better than the whining on this dreaded subforum represented it to be (this is what my post is saying).

extrapolation:

- there likely is not a causative association between a weaker MH dagger and bad condi builds on the ranger/Soulbeast.

We praised about the power Soulbeast synergy -> you ignore it and pretend no-one praise about Soulbeast.

We criticized about some lackluster aspect of Soulbeast like dagger, stance, and traits -> we are the dreadful whiners who’re not productive at all.

Your attitude is what I call the dreadful cancer of the forum.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Stress-Test-result-Soulbeast-in-PoF-map/first#post6732160

mistsim.2748:

Aomine.5012:

mistsim.2748:

Aomine.5012:

Saying Soulbeast dagger is fine -> It’s the weakest condition weapon ever.
Logic.

I’m afraid logic is not your friend.

You might want to check your post again lolz.
You admit it’s the weakest condition build ever and you then say it’s fine.
How is it fine then? It’s not only weak, it barely has any defensive aspect in it too.

how is what fine? what are you talking about? you seem to have an independent narrative going on inside your mind.

“What’s wrong with d/d?”

“did they buff MH dagger compared to what you guys were talking about before? I dont find it sluggish at all, albeit your damage is dependent on landing the #3 for the quickness. with a few slashes + quickness, you’re doing ~3k dps with rabid gear.”

Your own quote. Also title.

mistsim.2748:

Aomine.5012:

Saying Soulbeast dagger is fine -> It’s the weakest condition weapon ever.
Logic.

I’m afraid logic is not your friend.

You might want to check your post again lolz.
You admit it’s the weakest condition build ever and you then say it’s fine.
How is it fine then? It’s not only weak, it barely has any defensive aspect in it too.

mistsim.2748:

Aomine.5012:

So you expect a melee weapon that cleave 2 in a small range will suddenly beat the aoe condition application of Necro’s shade/ wells or thief just spamming dead blossom and dodge?

what in the world are you talking about? where did I say this? I feel condi Soulbeast will be one of the weakest condi builds in the game, but this has very little to do with MH dagger. you cant have one weapon solve all of our problems, like our other condi weapons and traps being trash.

secondly, just stop using other profs to compare weapon abilities. thief dagger is never gonna work like the warrior’s or ranger’s dagger. thieves have always been way squishier than rangers, so they need the extra evades. and your argument is moot anyway, because condi thieves are trash-tier, and I can smoke them on my druid playing with one hand.

and I have hundreds of hours on my thief, so I don’t need to “try dagger” to make your point more salient.

Saying Soulbeast dagger is fine -> It’s the weakest condition weapon ever.
Logic.

I question you about thief because compare to thief’s dagger, Soulbeast’s dagger is far from fine. It’s barely functional, especially for a melee weapon.
When a weapon is barely functional, we express our opinion about why we want Anet to change it, so why are you stopping us from doing so?

Do you expect Anet to magically read our mind if we don’t express our opinion about their design flaws?

Also saying Thief is squishy (chuckle). It’s more tanky than most of the classes I play in Open World with so many innate dodge on their powerful skills.
They even have a trait to heal 15% base on the damage they do, making them extremely tanky in open-world.

With so many evades and dodge, it’s far from squishy, if you don’t compare to dedicated healing class like Druid or Mediation Guardian.

So you expect a melee weapon that cleave 2 in a small range will suddenly beat the aoe condition application of Necro’s shade/ wells or thief just spamming dead blossom and dodge? The condition sequence is terrible too because first 3 hits apply different condition and if the 4th one doesn’t hit you lose alot of dps. (This is why we say the 4 hit combo is way too slow cuz the main dps is on 4th hit yet it takes 3 hit animation for it to reach the 4th one)

Thief’s dagger condition application works because it’s a much better aoe with innate dodge in it. I have no idea how you can expect a slow / short cleave weapon like that with no cc/ gap closer/ dodge would work in pvp. Seriously, just play a thief with a dagger and you’d know what’s the difference. The flow of auto attack, the aoe, the innate spammable dodge , the gap closer, and the stealth all synergize together to make it work.

mistsim.2748:

im not sure what the point of this thread is, other than to whine some more. i certainly didnt expect them to put out a new build for the stress test. likely they will discuss any changes and our feedback during the e-spec livestream.

tldr: stop whining, and be patient.

My post is 100 times more constructive than this whine post about other people expressing their experience and opinion.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Wondrouswall.7169:

…Think the one thing testing it again that bothers me is the effects of stances (unique buff portion) does not also apply to the pet by default.

Sure, Griffon Stance’s effect would be completely wasted on a pet since it doesn’t dodge, but Bear’s condition removal, One Wolf Pack’s second strike, and Dolyak’s immunity to movement-impending conditions would be nice aid to our pet if it’s out.

At least then we wouldn’t have to slot Leader of the Pack just to share (half of) it with the Pet – assuming allied target cap isn’t reach.

How ridiculous is it that 5 years on they are still making skills for the pet class that do not affect the pet by default? Uuuugh.

Maybe they’re assuming rangers will camp in beastform 24/7 after the patch so there’s no need to design addition effect for pet? (But if that’s the case, why is the bonus of entering Beastmode so small?)

Heck, the terrible dagger doesn’t even has any skills that helps the pet, unlike sword or axe or any other weapons.

This class is such a rushed and incomplete class through and through.

I tested it with my condition build and it’s such a terrible weapon in every aspect.
Auto attack got to be the slowest dagger auto ever existed.

The condition aspect is WORSE than axe, with no utility, defensive aspect, gap closer, cc whatsoever, and does garbage damage, and it’s a melee weapon that hit 2 only.

Also going d/d meaning your damage will be even worse than going d/t or a/t

I have no idea how you can tolerate this weapon when a range weapon like Axe outdamage this weapon as condition weapon.

First, I’d like to say that power build of Maul burst still work, and with Worldly Impact and Maul, Soulbeast power build is quite nice.

Basically it’s best to go into Soulbeast form JUST to use Sick em -> Worldly Impact -> Maul for good burst damage then swap out and do your rotation.
Camping in soulbeast mode may not be the wisest idea, and it’s best to go back to your regular form and let pet do your thing after Sick em expires.

Condition dagger Soulbeast, however, is quite terrible.
Dagger is such a terrible weapon through and through.
The 4 hit combo got to be the slowest combo of any dagger auto.
All the other dagger has the double attack on their last 2 chain, while Soulbeast’s dagger auto take it’s time to do the slow 4 hit, making the condition application of this weapon terrible compare to any other condition weapon out there.

Dagger 2 is also very slow and terrible with no utility whatsoever.

Dagger 3 is extremely slow leap with extremely low duration of quickness and long cd.

This weapon has no defensive or utility aspect as a melee weapon, making it very hard to use against tougher enemies in melee range, especially when you go into beast mode which you lose your meat shield. This weapon has no damage, no cc , no mobility, no evade, no gap closer, no nothing.

This is such a terrible weapon. Seriously, who designed this?

Overall condition Soulbeast is a huge downgrade of a condition ranger.
Dagger is a much MUCH worse weapon than axe and does not worth using it whatsoever with no redeeming factor.

Doyak bug is still not fixed, and most stance are terrible at best.

Even the most anticipated stance: Bear Stance, is not as good as I thought because the initial healing amount got reduced by poison before the heal. The duration is too short for the cleanse aspect to really shine and the healing amount is so low for a 25 cd healing skill, with no addition boons to help you out. I say traited healing spring is a much better heal than Bear stance in pve.

Mao stance is fine when pair with Worldly impact.

Other stances does not worth bringing whatsoever.

Traits are the same as beta, mediocre at best, so no need to mention about it.

We’re not allowed to use new pets in beta so can’t test about this part.

Overall the power build has pretty good synergy with Soulbeast, while condition aspect of Soulbeast is very crappy.

Dagger need a complete redesign, maybe making the dagger 2 condition damage go into dagger 1 and make dagger 1 auto-chain faster.
Dagger 2 need to be a utility skill, like cc or gap closer or evade.
Dagger 3 need to apply quickness before it lands and increase the animation, as well as reduce the cd.

Bear Stance need to cleanse initial condition before the initial heal pulses, as well as reduce the cd. (Or add a trait to reduce stance cd)

Most of the stance need a redesign too because they’re such underwhelming utility with long cd.

Also none of the weapon skills and utility benefits pet whatsoever.

This makes me think that the whole class is rushed and incomplete at best.
It’s the same of what happened to Druid back then all over-again, the mechanic of Druid is rushed, and they have to redesign Celestial form and energy regen like 10 times to get it right. (They changed the mechanic like 10 times)
Same goes to Soulbeast.

Good idea but piercing LB should be baseline..

This weapon is proven to not doing that much damage in the first place..

How long does it exactly last?

This is crucial information for me because I want to test various build on real pve, maybe on raid Golem if it’s accessible.

OGDeadHead.8326:

For general openworld PvE I’d go with power before condi.

Very true.

Condition ranger is bad for open world because:
1. It requires too much positioning (flanking at point-blank range sucks)
2. Takes time to build up the stacks , it’s a waste when you deal with trash mob.
3. Requires the foe to stay completely stationary.
4. You literally give up all the defensive traits you can grab for the condition trait.
5. You literally give up all your utility for traps and no survivability.

Power ranger is MUCH more flexible in Open-world.

VictoriaCross.3205:

Hey;
With recent changes to Vicious Quarry power ranger is good again.I started playing game again after 4 year break,so i crossed same path as you now.
I prefer LB Axe /WH Full Zerker plus full scholar runes. My Amulet + Rings + Accessories are ascended.(all from LS Story and Fractals).It is very easy to use and very safe for fractals, boss mechanics
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAT3XjUqQNLWyCGsAXLGyDKeD69gvvhh/I2AoAW7RcG

Power ranger is NOT good again, it’s still way too much dps difference between Power Guardian. But it’s abit more useful in open-world at least.

Our highest dps sword + axe is around 23k with fully buffed pet, but ironically if you want a fully buffed pet you need to grab nature magic, which lowers your overall dps by at least 2k compare to grabbing Marsmanship.

Power Guardian can hit 34k without swapping out GS even once, and 35~36k if do the scepter rotation.

lorddarkflare.9186:

This complaint is not without merit.

I think HoT map and SOME story sections should probably do a better job scaling to smaller groups/solo players.

The LWS3 maps do an infinitely better job. They learned quite a bit by the time they’d designed those.

Merit or no, the hyperbole does not help.

They did give you like 3 npc meat shield on the more difficult part.

I can reach 14327260 with my thief in bloodstone map.

Probably can reach higher than you if I go warrior and sentinel armor, but would I really wanna do that??Hmmm.

Rodzynald.5897:

So I’ve been wondering how would that turn out. Just now I’ve had a few conversations with PvE players who came for farming legendary armour like bees to honey. The thing is, one or two players get to win while the rest is just playing for giggles, knowing that they will get pips anyway.
Because of that, unranked and ranked look almost the same with just the fact that ranked gives better rewards. The word “ranked” says that this is where some of us get some fun, but not fun like unranked or pve content kind of fun. This is that fun that we get from losing or winning against an opponent that knows how to bite, to fight back.
Unranked and hotjoin is for giggles, but if we have ranked play, let it be serious. Serious rewards, serious dedication. Because of that it seems that it is easier to get pvp legendary armour just by not caring and farming them pips one way or another, while in other modes you need to try. Raiding? You can’t be lazy, you need to know the strats. So if you have to learn the strats to get into raiding and get that sweet legendary armour, so should players know the value and cost of getting such armour in ranked PvP.

TL:DR
Players get pips for win as it is now. But! There is no pips for loss, or just one pip to tease the losing team to improve. I don’t think that would discourage the playerbase, but improve the quality of every fight.

Have you been through Season 1 ?
That pip drop on losing is cancer.
No pip gain is pretty bad too .

Aldath.1275:

With this, do you think that PVE Power Ranger will pass from terrible to…. passable?

I think it’d be even worse with the introduction of Soulbeast.
You lose your pet which is like 2~3k of your dps and get one useful skill and some stat buff.

But that aside, power ranger is more convenient to use than condition ranger because you don’t need flanking and camping in one place to dish out damage.

However, ranger does have one of the worst dps in an organized set-up.
If you take away pet dps, the dps of ranger is atrocious in most cases.

Anet manage to make a mediocre skin Legendary even more mediocre by adding this worthless animation to downgrade it even more..

I made Bolt for the lightning effect around me back then.
Guess this was a big mistake…
And they did that right after they introduce a far better new sword legendary.
When you make a people who own the legendary regret about owning it, you’re seriously making something very wrong.

Looks like this is all planned ahead already, to destroy people who own Bolt and make them want to make new legendary.

Thanks Anet for ruining us who spent alot of effort making Bolt.

Astralaria is wonderful and it is used soooo often, more so after the buff in axe trait.

Shinning Blase is also a good choice because sword is used very often too.

If you like playing Druid alot in group, then Nevermore is your top choice.
The projectile effect is amazing.

Hot Boy.7138:

Daishi.6027:

Hot Boy.7138:

I always thought confounding suggestions was blockable until today.

Uhhh it really should be. Unless something triggered your block and you were stunned following it, the evade is only 1/2 second… If it’s a bug might need further testing… that said you might want to double check the evade on offhand sword because that could be bugged too.

Nothing else took the block because it was the start of the match. I grabbed home and he came to take. so just a 1v1 at the beginning. I immediately saw the purple fire and stealth, you know what that means. Some big burst is coming. I wait a bit then use off hand sword block. Off hand’s sword block is relatlively long. 2.5 seconds compared to shield’s 1.5 second. So i’m sure the block was up when I was blown up. I even typed in say chat after saying, “what is block?”. Cause really what is block if it does nothing to mitigate that kind of burst.

I don’t want to dwell on the block though. The point I want to make is that this particular burst combo is broken and shouldn’t even exist even if it is a non meta build. Power shatter gs mesmers can blow up anyone 20k hp and under in 1/2 a second or less from stealth. This build goes under the radar because it’s not used in tournaments that I know of. Nonetheless, burst combos of this scale just shouldn’t be possible.

And I have some pretty crazy burst myself. But it’s through a series of well timed interrupts. And i’m not looking down on players that take this build. The fault is not with them for playing “smart”. The fault is with the people that balance traits, skills, and builds, and classes in general.

I experienced the same thing.

My marauder engi got 100-> 0 twice by GS shatter mesmer within 0.5 second of the encounter from range. I was instantly downed as soon as he starts his combo with no chance to react to it. Ik it’s my learn to play issue to not foresee that combo and dodge randomly before engage, but any build that can do this 100-> 0 within 0.5 second is super unhealthy for the game.

I thought Thief burst was nerfed because of that back then, how come they let it return through new Mesmer shatter buff?

It’s like saying: Hey, thief is in a good spot, so that’s make the good things from trickery to be baseline so thief will become more survivable and disgusting because now they free up a traitline and can grab something defensive while picking all the offensive procs and Daredevil.

I wish everything in BM from ranger should be baseline so ranger’s pet would be less worthless without BM.

Idk what account value even worth but the site is telling me my account value is worth 86,124g lolz…

I never have that much money at the same time :P

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Skuzz.6580:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Skuzz.6580:

The question remains, what spec would we drop in favor for SBeast?
Beastmastery becomes a must basically, since Loud Whistle and Pet’s Prowess should benefit you when in Soulbeast mode, which is huge.

The question simply is, will GS be worth it (if so, then Marksmanship becomes the better option with access to a lot of opening strikes (maul granting opening strikes to yourself) and ’Sic Em being very strong in combination with the High Burst potential from GS).
If axes are the better option than it pairs best with Skirmishing (Sword/Axe, Axe/WH).

For what game mode?

Anything PvE related

Then, GS rules supreme for open world PvE because it is burst oriented not DPS, otherwise it is rubbish.

Nah, the only thing good about GS in Open World is Leap that makes you travel faster.

Sword Axe has more utility, with convenient AOE pull from Axe 4, on demand dodge to avoid Champion’s deadly aoe, and Axe 5 reflecting projectiles. (Works very well in Bitterfrost map)

Also the trait is contradicting each other if you go LB/SB.

For SB, you need Light on your Foot, while for LB it’s best to grab Quick Draw or Vicious Quarry. You can’t have both at the same time.

I disagree with your proposal if you going to remove the 250 ferocity from main-hand axe.

Also I think this will make Axe and SB too similar.

My proposal is Winter’s Bite Aoe effect becomes baseline
Brining Hone Axe doubles the duration of bleed of Split Axe and Increased the damage and chill duration of Winter’s Bite, in addition to the 250 ferocity.

Krispera.5087:

Aomine.5012:

Sword + Axe swap with Axe + Warhorn (Vicious Quarry): 21~22k~

Axe + Warhorn no swapping (Vicious Quarry): 17.5k~18.5k~

Also Axe + WH is a vastly under-appreciate weapon set because the damage is actually higher than GS in a long run even when not swapping weapon at all. It also provide convenient boons and can hit up to 2 targets at once in a large area. (So if you can’t cleave 2+ targets with your melee weapon or LB, it’s best to use axe + warhorn.

Interesting, always suspected Axe/Warhorn to be one of the best set we have, all buffed, but was too lazy to do any kind of testing to show.

Will be even more interested to see BMastery traits in BMode and a Ferocious pet. Also, if ANet didn’t forget about the Splitblade split… Splitbade, if unsplit, is a DPS increase.

LB advantage in PvP and WvW is really just the range.

I’d argue the main advantage of LB in WvW is the stealth lolz..
It really is the life-saver here.

Skuzz.6580:

Thanks for the testing!
I was looking at power scalings myself on weapons and the 2 that stood out were WH#4 and Axe#5, have you perhaps tried out Sword/WH + Sword/Axe and if Quick draw actually makes a difference for this swapping?
Also might i suggest Flame Trap as 3th Utility for fire combo’s: leap (sword#2) blast (WH#5) and whirl (Axe#5).
I also assume you are using “We heal as One”, especially when you use WH#5 using Heal skill shortly after will increase Might stacks even more.

It is clear that Sword main-hand is just the superior Main-hand to use in a power build at this time (thanks to Predator’s Onslaught having a 100% uptime), with sooulbeast in mind however, things might change quite a bit.

Also I tested what you suggested :

Sword + Axe, Sword+ Warhorn (Quick Draw): 21k~
The 250 ferocity bonus from both Hone Axe and Vicious Quarry really is huge.
Swapping out of Axe is a dps loss according to the testing.

I also tested
Sword Axe + Sword Axe (Quickdraw): 21k~
(Same weapon set shares the CD so Quick Draw advantage is smaller)

Skuzz.6580:

Thanks for the testing!
I was looking at power scalings myself on weapons and the 2 that stood out were WH#4 and Axe#5, have you perhaps tried out Sword/WH + Sword/Axe and if Quick draw actually makes a difference for this swapping?
Also might i suggest Flame Trap as 3th Utility for fire combo’s: leap (sword#2) blast (WH#5) and whirl (Axe#5).
I also assume you are using “We heal as One”, especially when you use WH#5 using Heal skill shortly after will increase Might stacks even more.

It is clear that Sword main-hand is just the superior Main-hand to use in a power build at this time (thanks to Predator’s Onslaught having a 100% uptime), with sooulbeast in mind however, things might change quite a bit.

I did not use any healing in between because this is a raid golem setting, assuming one have all the buffs beforehand. (In dps testing you don’t self apply boons on youself btw, you go for highest dps rotation)

Using healing skill is a dps decrease for ranger, so I didn’t use it.

Also I didn’t bring Flame Trap or Sharpening Stone in utility because I want to test a realistic build. I don’t think any power ranger will bring flame trap or sharpening stone to be honest, that’s why I only include Signet of Wild and Sick-em, both of them are likely to be used by power ranger.

PS: Things like frost spirit is already included in the buff section so no need to bring it myself XD.

Djinn.9245:

Shirlias.8104:

It is not a big deal.
Everybody can start and finish a specific episode.

This is not true. I was not able to finish most of the boss fights of the Stories. That is what we’re talking about here.

You should provide your class, your build, and your gears so people can give you advice as to how you can improve.

Most people can solo story instance because they’re intended to be soloed.

Henry.5713:

Aomine.5012:

Henry.5713:

Kind of weird to compare the weapons without looking at the bigger picture in any way. But since you brought up build viability:

The future cRanger 2.0 will be the Soulbeast. Mark my words.
We might even see a melee ranger for raids with dagger/torch + dagger/dagger.
Utilizing the new condition damage heavy auto attack and the ability to keep resetting both Bon Fire and the new Double Arc skill on dagger with that versatility monster of a trait that is Quick Draw.
Now combine this this with the ability to fuse with a Deadly type pet for an extra +200 condition damge +100 precision and Primal Cry for even more bleeds and you have one strong condition build.

So which traitline are you giving up?
Think about it:
You grab Soulbeast and BM as basic cuz every ranger kinda need this, especially SB.
You need Wilderness Survival for your condition build to work.
You need Skirmishing for your condition build to work.
You need Nature Magic to share boons with your pet.

So tell me, if you grab Soulbeast, how do you let your condition build to even function?
Ranger traitline is spreading all over the place, and Soulbeast provide nothing good and requires you to grab the core ranger traitline to even function.

I’m not speculating anything, I test Soulbeast and all other Espec during the beta.
The only build that can function as Soulbeast is the currently bugged Maul power build because it takes less trait-line to function as power ranger.
You can grab BM, SB, Skirmishing for maximum damage.
But power ranger already have the lowest dps of almost all power spec, and dropping pet as Soulbeast hurt the dps even more. If you don’t become Soulbeast you lose bonus damage from Maul and beastform has a 10 sec CD so you can’t just merge when you use Maul and cancel merge when your Maul on CD.

You were able to test a fully min-maxed condition soulbeast against the golem or in the actual raid environment? If so then I might be wrong about it.
I was strictly talking about a condition soulbeast to replace the current condition ranger. Not talking about replacing druids or about any other game mode. That would be a whole other discussion.

My point is do you think the Soulbeast can replace Skirmishing or WS when it comes to condition spec?

Can Soulbeast reach the current Condition spec 30k dps benchmark?
Which traitline are you going to sacrifice in order to grab Soulbeast?
Is it even worth it? Would the dps really be higher?