Guild Wars 2

Buran.3796:

Aomine.5012:

Also condition revenant is a better roamer than Power Revenant in general.

That isn’t true at all.

In mid to large groups Revenant is used as the main source of resistance for the team, so Mallyx provides a solid “ignore all condi damage for a few seconds” to your team mates, specially if your Rev is geared towards concentration. The menace of ranged attacks from foes is covered by other fellows.

As a roamer, you can go either power or condi. In both cases the Revenant or Herald is highly handicaped tue their inability to deal with stealth and enemies poking at range. Oftenly our worst nemesis combine stealth + range + conditions, as happens with condi DDs, Chronos and Druids.

The condition Revenant roamer can proc reistance for a few seconds, but due energy cost is impossible to remain constantly in Mallyx, and a elusive target (stealth, teleports) can easily spam conditions over us and await the legend change to land condi burst. Condi Rev is also weak vs characters with a strong ranged damage, because our tools over the 600 unit range are minimal.

Power Rev is much weaker to conditions, but has better defensive tools and his spike damage is way larger. If you play exquisitely you can survive vs condi foes: we saw a few power Revs winning the 1 vs 1 tournaments casted by Jebro (despite facing skilled Necros and Mesmers); we haven’t seen any condi Rev doing a crap at high level play, neither at 5 v 5 Conquest tournaments or 1 v 1 duels.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t win skirmishes as a condi Rev: you can. But is mostly because those players are worse or have sub-optimal builds.

The Renegade willl add an insult to the injury, because Kalla is useless, as F2 and F4, and the bow not only lacks synergies with Mallyx and the mace+axe combo (which are mostly torment based, whereas the bow is focused on bleeds), but also due lacks any defensive or mobility skill. A staff with shortbow’s #1 and #2 would be infinitely more strong that what we will get. Also, a pistol obviously would have been a better choice because at least would give us the option to defend with off hand sword.

Can’t wait to see in the much demanded greatsword spec in the thord expansion! For sure probably will be a weapon focused on healings to complement a legend oriented towards magic finding boons or something equally revolting!

Well, when my power Revenant meets Condition Revenant, most likely I’d lose the match -.- That’s why I say Condition Revenant might be a better roaming spec cuz condition is just more OP in general when it comes to roaming.

Most of the tough opponents I face run condition build, like condition thief.

So recently I’m testing something no raid composition would care about, the dps of power ranger. Even though raid doesn’t care, this could be useful for fractal composition or open-world

I use full Berserker Gears with Sigil of Force and Fire (I know air is better..)
I’m not using the best food and best utility buff, and my armor is only exotic (With Ascended trinkets and Ascended Weapons plus Scholar Rune ofc). This mean my dps could be assumed to be maybe 1000 lower than the max benchmark, so take this into consideration when you see the dps number.

The testing is assuming me and my pet both have permanent all buffs and I have all the profession specific buffs.
Enemy Golems also have cripple and 25 stacks of Vulnerability on all the testing samples.

My pet of choice is tiger.
My utility slot including Signet of the Wild Passive and Sick-em.

I use these dps traits for testing:

Marksmanship:
Steady Focus , Predator Onslaught

Skirmishing:
Sharpening Edge, Spotter, Vicious Quarry OR Quick Draw

Beastmaster:
Two-hand Training, Honed Axe (Have both of them traited for testing GS too)

Here’s the result:

Greatsword no swapping: 17k~

Longbow no swapping (max range): 17~18k~

Sword + Axe no swapping (Vicious Quarry): 23k~

Sword + Axe swap with Longbow(Quick Draw): 20k~

Sword + Axe swap with Axe + Warhorn (Quick Draw): 20~21k~

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

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

This dps difference is mainly because of the buff in Vicious Quarry in recent patch and Hone Axes giving 250 ferocity.

From this test we can see that the new power ranger rotation is best to not swap to LB at all, contrary to popular belief, and stick to Sword Axe 100% of the time.

From this testing we can also see that GS dps is absolutely atrocious for a melee weapon. (For reference, Dragon Hunter’s GS rotation with no swapping can reach up to 34k dps with the same gears, double the amount of Ranger’s GS)

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.

Also Quick Draw is not worth taking anymore over Vicious Quarry if you don’t plan on playing Druid because it actually lowers your dps.

Also contrary to popular belief, LB is not any stronger than Axe Warhorn, in both Quick Draw rotation and no swapping.

I hope this testing will enlighten people about what Power Ranger’s dps really is like.
(And as I mentioned before, with full Ascended armor, best food and sigil of Air, the dps can go up about 1k more, so take that into consideration)

PS: Pet contribute around 3.3k of dps, so our actual dps need to be decreased by 3.3k.
That’s about 14.5% of our total dps assuming we’re using Sword+ Axe.

Rhaegar.5120:

on a condi rev……how do you deal with range situations? would using a hammer fit with glint/mallyx?

Hammer doesn’t need any trait to perform at its top peak, so basically you can go either Glint / Mallyx, Glint/ Dwarf, or Mallyx/ Dwarf.

All of them has its uses in WvW, but the most common one is Glint / Mallyx because resistance is such an important boon in WvW.

Condition Revenant is a melee spec, so you fight in melee.
You probably need abit more defensive gears if you want to play Condition Revenant because it’s a front-role class that charge in first. Also condition revenant is a better roamer than Power Revenant in general.

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.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Krispera, thanks for the solid comparison.

and a Typical reaction from the crowd…

Did anyone read the whole thing? (snowywondesr, fail? L2R.)

2 Trolls- Razor and Dahkeus. /sigh

The one guy that thinks everything is fine- Skuzz.

and Anduriell, I don’t disagree but dmn, you’re always ready to throw mud.

for everyone else that is even more casual than me,
!stop mentioning sbow in the same sentence as spvp!

He’s not really incorrect.
The minor trait and most of the major traits of Soulbeast are terrible.
We already have one of the lowest dps power build of any class, and Soulbeast will make it even worse than now with pathetic traitline and losing tiger.

Guardian is dishing out 34k dps easily while power ranger is dishing out around 22~23k with the support of fully buffed pet lolz.. (Which means you actually need to grab Nature magic over Marksmanship if you want your pets to get all the buffs, which will then decrease the dps to around 20k)
A support class doing way more damage than a damage class, typical Anet.

I expect Soulbeast to reach a new low after the Maul bug is fixed.
I thought we’re getting a dps elite specialization but nope, we’re losing dps and getting trash pet skills and terrible traitline.

Only thing worth mentioning is the Stance, and it’s only good because most of the utility of ranger is terrible without traitline support. Most other class have their useless skills change to Ammo system (like Ele’s arcane), but Ranger’s useless utilities still remains outdated with long cd and no Ammo system.

PS: Firebrand can reach around 40+ stacks of burning, probably will be a new condition meta on par with Condition Tempest.

PS2: Deadeye will be the new buff machine that grants might and quickness to the party and they get massive damage bonus from Deathmark

PS3: Holosmith will be the new meta for Power Engineer.

PS4: Scourge would be the new Meta for condition Necro.

PS5: Ranger will still be the pathetic Druid support after this cuz Soulbeast suck in general. I suspect they’d be even less useful than Druid when it comes to WvW solo roaming and PVP, making it useless in every game-mode.

dagrdagaz.4913:

GW1 had two diffulty settings, Normal Mode and Hard Mode.
This was possible becos every map was an instance.

Since (most) Story missions are also an instance, an idea is to make a Normal and Hard Mode (for instanced Story parts).
Players who like more challenge can do the Hard Mode version then.

Hard Mode already exist when fight against Mordromoth.
Hard mode literally requires a team if you really want to beat any of the champions before the Mordromoth fight.

The fight you do it solo is the “Easy Mode” that is intended to be soloed.

Ariurotl.3718:

I’m not being an ELITIST here, I’m a pretty poor player, but I have to disagree. None of the bosses caused me much trouble other than Caudecus (due to the camera and awful AoE bloodstone-throwing mechanics) and Aerin (because screw all this Zephyrite jumping nonsense). If I can beat them, then almost anyone can.

I hate to say L2P, but what are you gonna do?

P.S. Don’t deck your chars in Berserker gear if you have trouble. Toughness and Vitality are the best friends for bad players such as you and I.

Nah, you don’t need any toughness in pve ever.
I do agree as thief and ele, adding around 3k~4k more hp to avoid being OHKO is a good idea though, but trait-line and utility can solve all the survivability issue of any class.
And yes, I did use all 9 classes and soloed the whole HoT story.

Moyayuki.3619:

It would certainly be nice if the strength of enemies in story instances could scale depending on whether you are alone or in a party. I don’t like group play, so I end up doing everything by myself, and have also struggled with many mobs and bosses. Sure, I end up succeeding in the end, but only after extreme frustration. This happens no matter what class or build I play.

But it actually did scale well.
The story difficulty is all intended to be solo by one person.

I have all 9 classes, and all of them cleared the story of HoT without any trouble.
So class is not the issue here.
All of them are either Zerk, mix of Maurader and Zerk, or Sinister, none of them run defensive set. Trait-line and utility slots can solve the survivability aspect of your class, so start changing them .

Revenant is still one of the best class in WvW with how good the damage and utility hammer offers. One of the best range weapons in WvW for sure.

Hammer 2 ignores projectile block and does massive damage that’s hard to tell it’s coming.
Hammer 3 is a free evade and very good aoe damage.
Hammer 4 is a free projectile block as well as some minor healing source because of the field.
Hammer 5 is a decent range cc which is quite valuable in wvw.

Glint provides permanent might/ fury/ swiftness/ regen uptime and have antiburst heal that works on both condition and power damage.
Mallyx provides stunbreak and lots of resistance for self sustain.

Not to mention this class is a heavy armor too with decent hp!

Revenant and Guardian are the Meta of WvW.

Holland.9351:

Funny, it’s already way better than it used to be.

You used to go into 2 trait lines to get your Longbow traits (Marksmanship and Skirmishing) and get 3 different traits for it Eagle Eye (1500 range), Piercing Arrows (piercing) and Quick Draw (20% cooldown reduction).

And when you did all that it couldn’t even hit a target that was moving sideways.

But, I would be happy to see piercing become baseline. I just wanted you to know how terrible it used to be and maybe appreciate having Lead the Wind a bit more. They made 1500 range baseline, as well as like 100%+ projectile speed, and put both piercing and 20% cooldown reduction in a single trait.

It’s still a horrendous weapon in zerg fight though.
It’s even more useless if you don’t grab Marksmanship.
Problem is if you grab Marksmanship, you literally give up most of your survival measure.
Ranger is a funny class where all the cleanse you need in wvw is tied to Wilderness Survival or nature magic or Soldier rune. You can’t find a ranger utility that’s functional against condition aside from healing spring and signet with huge cooldown.

I play a power LB ranger and a Power hammer Revneant, and Revenant is doing way better than the ranger ever could in a zerg fight with hammer 2 neglecting reflection and do huge BURST damage (not stupid channel that everyone can dodge it), hammer 4 block projectiles, hammer 3 evade to survive zerg fight and hammer 5 to do massive cc.

Ironically Revenant’s hammer doesn’t need any trait modifier to be good, it’s always an awesome weapon with high damage and alot of utility, and the arc of hammer 2 is way bigger than Ranger’s pierce too.

Just go check the Metabattle and you’d see Power Revenant is in top tier for wvw while LB ranger is nowhere to be found because everyone knows LB ranger is worthless in WVW, aside from some roaming 1 v 1 scenario, which Druid is still stronger.

Wolfric.9380:

i main viper/cele S/F + E/Ar/T and like it .. otherwise i would not main it …. It´s just not raid optimizen but i don´t care..

Don’t worry, Sinister gears are super darn easy to obtain, and condition ele has the most brain-dead easy rotation I’ve ever see in any build, so if you wanna do raid, just get a Sinister set.

It is also the set that’s easiest to hit 100% uptime of their respected condition cuz all you need is burning.

Svarty.8019:

Nothing is safe. We’re at the mercy of monkeys pulling the balance levers.

Having said that, if you have Celestial, you will always have a bit of everything – regardless of what our merciless overlords nerf.

You’ll always have an inferior build in general if you go Celestial.

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker is pretty crap so I might. Tired of berserker/condi was hoping for a power alternative. Guess I’ll just change my armor over to my DH.

Yeah, DH feels more like Warrior now.
Very good GS melee damage and aoe, very good range attack damage that have more utility in general, mediation making survival very easy with massive instant health, cleanse, active frontal block, invulnerable all in one build. (Litany of Wrath is extremely OP in PVE.)

PS: I have all 9 classes all with optimal gears and build all with ascended trinkets and weapons, and used them to clear all HoT maps and story already. Though I’m not an expert in every class, I have a good understanding of how every classes perform.

Sifu.9745:

Even if AA on staff would have been buffed to 1200 range it won’t be op at all imo. So i really don’t get this 300 range nerf …
Please, Anet, buff aa to 1200 range and you can lower its dmg a bit, if you really need to.

If they make it 1200, might as well change the cone attack arc same as Druid’s staff.
They both have terrible dps, so it’s ok for them to hit 1200 range while ignore every projectile blocks and hit a long range.

Also staff’s damage is never the problem, the problem is Permeating Wrath makes condition staff build too strong in wvw. No matter how you nerf the damage of staff 1, Guardian’s passive aoe burning proc will always trigger.

Quarktastic.1027:

RIP loot stick. You will be missed.

Protip: engis have a 1500 range loot stick. It’s called “grenades”

Grenade is finger killer, and terrible at tagging foes above 600 range lolz.

The better “loot stick” right now is thief’s shortbow.
They bounce further and shoot at rapid pace.

Lonami.2987:

Just remove energy altogether. It’s pointless resource management with no reward whatsoever. That, or remove all cooldowns, though that’s harder to balance for obvious reasons.

At the end of the day, revenant needs a redesign, because it has problems everywhere. Some ideas here.

If they remove energy management, all Mallyx’s skill will recieve a huge cd boost making them essentially useless. (They’re used for resistance and boon removal anyway)

They’d also have to redesign Jallyx hammer and Glint’s boon pulsing.
All of them will receive a huge CD if that’s the case.

Shiro need a redesign too with massive CD on key utilities as well.

Be careful of what you wish for.

Amante.8109:

It’ll still be Daredevil. Deadeye has really bad damage in PvE at the moment.

You don’t need to use rifle even if you pick Deadeye though…

The main attraction is the bonus damage and large amount boon from marking your target. The boon will be applied more frequently because Mark’s cd is reset as soon as you kill a foe.

Lokki.1092:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

OriOri.8724:

I don’t understand why so many people are upset over mounts. Fundamentally they are no different from any other mobility mastery we have received so far. They allow you to travel to new places in teh world that are locked behind that mounts’s upgraded ability.

If you don’t like them, then don’t use them. But just because we have mounts doesn’t mean GW2 is a generic MMO

Another thingy: Anet always said there server cant handle more speed (then swiftness/superspeed). The engine doens’t support it. Jump shot has the fastest possible speed, anything fast simply is not supported (it was a quesiton why jump shot doenst shoot further). Now suddenly we can move faster? I don’t believe it. It’s ‘use Mount, or be nerfed in speed forever’. Choose , be dispising slow, or be dispising ugly (for the ppl that dislike it, which topics here proved are a lot).

I now see only one way (two solutions needed), so implement it. Make a option to hide all mounts and ‘fake’ the other ppl as though they are walking. Make swiftness speed equal to mount speed, or vice versa.

You may be happy to know that so far from what I can tell, mount speed is slower than swiftness. Hopefully it stays that way, I like the idea of the mounts being movement skills. Jumping, teleporting, and hovering, like gliding they just give us new ways to move around. They don’t need to be faster than running.

In fact personally I hope they are simply 25% movement speed. An optional replacement for the passive 25% every class but guardian gets.

People say they’re slower, but in fact they have superspeed effect that entering combat won’t slow them down one bit, so they’re far better than swiftness.

ProtoMarcus.7649:

LughLongArm.5460:

ProtoMarcus.7649:

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

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

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

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

Hmmm

I think the perfect balance would be

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

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

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

Guys, you can use some imagination here.

I think the best way to solve the beastmode issue is spread the cd between entering and leaving beast mode.

Enter beast mode → beast mode go on 5 sec cd.
Leaving beast mode → beast mode go on 5 sec cd.

This can make the beast mode transition and swapping pet much more fluid.

Ranger SB is more of a pvp weapon + raid weapon.

Renegade SB is more of PVE tagging weapon that’re better at fighting hordes.

Simple as that.

Renegade SB 2 and 3 are all terrible + waste of energy btw.
Renegade F2 is god-awful waste of energy too.
Renegade legend itself will only work in pve due to severe lack of functionality.
I’d even go as far as not using the legend itself entirely and just grab the traitline purely for the bonus stat. It’s a dps upgrade to many default Revenant build.

Euthymias.7984:

The same reason why Weapon skills have Cooldowns AND energy costs lol
""""Balance""""".

The weapon energy cost is quite fair for the HoT weapons.
The Renegade’s energy cost is out of place though, most likely because Anet rushed it and didn’t have time to balance it properly.

Actually it acts more like Mesmer’s phantasms which do get destroyed easily.

No, there’s nothing in story that requires group work or need a group to do the contents.
Anet make sure everything is tone to at most Veteran level enemies’ of difficulty.

If you stop using absolutely atrocious build, and maybe start using 1~2 trait lines that has some defensive capability, you’d have a much easier time in HoT maps.

I have all 9 classes unlocked everything , including HoT hero points, story and most of the maps.

Ardid.7203:

I really don’t like “Pure DPS” classes. But. Since engie is in a place were ANYTHING seems to be better, I will not complain about Holosmith. With some luck I can make it work with rifle and FT. Maybe.

You never tried permanent quickness , 25 might, stability, fury scrapper before didn’t you? (You don’t need to use hammer too btw).
All it takes is 80% boon duration uptime which is super easy to achieve.
It has all the useful boons you ever need with huge amount of cleanse and some anti-burst measure.

Saying engi is in a bad position atm is just ridiculous.

Orion Templar.4589:

I see a lot of people saying Holosmith damage needs to be reduced, but I’m not so sure that’s true. It’s a high risk / high reward specialization, and it doesn’t offer all that much other than high damage. In other words if you reduce damage on Holosmith, what are you left with?

I always find it funny people say high risk on Holosmith, but there’s literally no risk if you play it smart.

You don’t need to camp in Heat mode 24/7. The CD is merely 6 secs and there’s no bar you need to fill up before entering your burst mode, unlike Druid/ Berserker/ Necro.

You can still grab every defensive traitline with cleanse, like alchemy.
You can still grab any utilities / heal/ elite that’d boost your survivablity if need be.
Just because it’s not as tanky as Scrapper doesn’t mean it is high risk class.

You have free “berserk mode” that doesn’t require adrenaline to go in prior, meaning you can do your burst whenever you want, and you have a high damage leap, stability, high damage range attack, and high damage aoe cc all on short cool down.

Kuya.6495:

My HoT nerf wish list:

1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.

2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.

3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.

4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.

5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.

6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.

7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?

8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.

9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.

Druid damage has already be gutted to like half or more of what it could do previously because of the nerf in 2 HoT pets. Staff doesn’t do much damage to begin with so there’s no need to nerf the auto-attack anymore, considering Druid’s 2~5 literally have no damage whatsoever. It is always the pet that does the damage for Druid, and both of the most overused pets has been gutted to like 1/3 of their original damage, so what more do you want?

Herald doesn’t need a nerf. Mallyx and Shiro does, and Anet already did that.
The resistance up-time and infinite dodge from Shiro has all been patched quite awhile ago and now they’re balanced.

As for Chrono, I think they’re quite OP.. Their burst is insane, yet they still have decent survivability.

Lord Snow.3257:

Soulbeast Feedback

Dagger Skills

• Dagger #1: Chain is too slow. Power scalings and condition durations are also too weak.

• Dagger #2: Has no purpose other than being a slightly stronger auto-attack. Give this skill some identity, and buff both its power scaling and number of conditions while on it.

• Dagger #3: Since the quickness-granting portion of this skill can be dodged/blocked/blinded etc, and it barely does damage, 15 second recharge is too long – 10 seconds seems more reasonable.

Overall the weapon is extremely lacking in both design and balance.

Stances

• General: Stances’ effects should be applied to the pet as well.

• Bear Stance: Way too strong vs conditions, but otherwise it’s too weak. Buff the base heal and reduce the condition cleanse per second by 1 condition.

• Dolyak Stance: Possibly a bit too strong, but that depends on if the stance trait get the buffs it needs.

• Griffon Stance: Needs a massive reduction to its cooldown, it won’t ever see use at a 45 second cooldown.

• Moa Stance: Seems fine, though the 66% boon duration increase might be a bit overkill.

• Vulture Stance: Given you get either Might or Poison application, a 6 second duration is too short.

• One Wolf Pack: The duration or the power scaling needs to be increased, currently it does not even come close to the other 2 elites.

Design-wise the stances are good, but they need some balancing.

Traits

• Fresh Reinforcement: This trait needs to be a minor trait; swap it with the Twice as Vicious Minor trait (that one isn’t worthy of being a grandmaster trait anyways), and give the pet the Ranger’s boons on exiting Beastmode. Currently the fact that the pet loses its boons when going in and out from Beastmode discourages us from using the feature.

• Live Fast: This trait’s effects need to be applied when the skill is used, not afterwards. It won’t feel smooth to use otherwise.

• Unstoppable Union: Currently the only good (balance and design-wise) mayor trait.

• Furious Strength: Standard damage-boosting trait, otherwise solid and thematically fitting. Might be more fitting as a Major trait – maybe swap it with Second Skin or Essence of Speed.

• Second Skin: Remove the restriction of needing the protection boon, they rarely synergize anyways. (Consider swapping with Furious Strength)

• Essence of Speed: Remove the ICD, the Ranger doesn’t have access to enough quickness granting sources for a cooldown to be warranted. (Consider swapping with Furious Strength)

• Predator’s Cunning: Give it a 1 second ICD and change it to steal health on attacking a poisoned target, not when applying poison. Currently it’s way too reliant on Dagger main hand and having a lot of poison in the build (and even then it’s too weak of a Master trait).

• Eternal Bond: At least double the heal, and give it the Resistance boon alongside the Protection. Since we should be striving to not have this effect proc, make sure it’s actually noticeable and impactfull when it actually does proc.

• Leader of the Pack: Needs to either reduce Stance cooldowns by 20% + increase duration by 25%, or just increase their duration by 50%. Currently it’s far from grandmaster tier, and has no purpose unless in larger groups (it doesn’t need to be a support-only trait in this case).

• Oppressive Superiority: With its restriction, the numbers are simply too low for a grandmaster trait. Just under-performing slightly for a grandmaster trait.

The traits are almost all in a horrible state.

Beastmode F3 skills

• Primal Cry: Increase the Vulnerability duration and/or damage+bleeding. The cast time could also be shaved off a bit. It currently doesn’t have even close to the impact of the other 4 Beastmode abilities (which all seem to play out fine). Also, change the underwater version to have the same cast-time.

• Prelude Lash: Only slightly lagging behind the other Beastmode F3 skills. Consider making it unblockable, or increase the damage and/or immobilize duration.

• Worldly Impact: Should probably be changed from a leap finisher to a blast finisher.

Beastmode F3 skills are overall extremely well implemented, though, it’s the only thing that seems well made with the Soulbeast.

Saying Doyak Stance is strong even though it doesn’t even work in beta…
Do you really do the testing or just look at the stat and theory-crafting?

Bear Stance too strong? Have you see how Scourge perfomed in PVP back in the beta?
Even with Bear Stance you get melted instantly. One instant cast f1~f4 clicked and 5~6 condition applied to you immediately.
8 condition cleanse over 4 secs is not that much honestly, considering it has relatively long cd and the healing amount is lackluster.
Necro can transform all condition to other with a click of one bottom mind you.
Revenant can spam Resistance and ignore condition entirely, and that’s why they’re much better than Ranger when it comes to WvW.

Mao Stance need to grant some other more interesting buffs or it serves no purpose.
66% boon duration increase for 6 secs doesn’t mean that much..
Protect me is better than this because it breaks stun, so either add some additional effect to this skill or add in some other more impactful boons.

Now I don’t feel like buying this anymore…

This is such a good post.

It highlights every flaws I found from Soulbeast in general.
Soulbeast currently is more like a one-trick pony which relies on buggy Maul to do anything meaningful, otherwise is inferior than core ranger or Druid in every way.

Most of the traits do half of the things other traits in other trait line does.

I really wish Dev can read this post and make some changes before the release, otherwise I have no excitement in using this spec AT ALL.

Nature Magic, Beastmaster, Wilderness Survival and Skirmishing are all better than this crappy trait line.

The laughable part of Soulbeast’s trait it’s they assume you’d pick up either nature magic or wilderness survival, forgetting to add protection proc inside the trait line.

The trait should at least grant protection after successfully does x action.

Also all the grandmaster traits are terrible too…
It’s like Soulbeast’s trait purposely does HALF the thing any other traits does.

It’s like traits developed back in 2014 era which most of the traits are garbage, that Anet need to merge most of them in one patch. Soulbeast’s trait is like half the package of everything.

Healix.5819:

PoF could feature some of HoT’s masteries, but they would have to be entirely optional. You could either do a jumping puzzle or use an updraft, which they did in Bitterfrost for example to reach a vista. Some masteries are too specialized however, like most of season 3’s, and will probably never be seen again. Some will simply be redone, like how tubes are v2 wallows.

The problem with using HoT’s masteries however is that it’ll be confusing for those simply buying and playing through PoF. Some will also be mad about it, when they find out grinding through HoT is required to access shortcuts in PoF. The expansions after PoF are going to be the bigger problem however, because mounts are too big of a deal to ignore.

Why would they be mad because not able to do optional contents like short-cut?

Think it this way, Mounts are most likely be able to use in HoT maps as well, and those mounts will trivialize some of the contents in HoT map too.
So would people who ONLY purchased HoT and ignore PoF start complaining about missing the short-cut through mounts?

Since Mount can trivialize HoT map in a sense too, it’d be fair that HoT masteries should be able to trivialize some contents in PoF too.

AncientYs.8613:

so that having oakheart essence and lava thermal tube mastery and other masteries specific to HoT zones to be a must have outside of HoT maps? in PoF zones? no thanks :>

i’m glad i don’t have to train up those specific niche masteries that were only ever used in LW maps for PoF.

Not must have, but instead, an alternative way to get to certain locations.

Like adding some lay-line energy or updrift in certain sections that’re not linked to Hero points/ mastery points.

Master Ketsu.4569:

The biggest problem with Path of Fire is it doesn’t seem to be trying to add anything useful to the game. GW2 PvP suffers from extreme spam issues and thus needs abilities that can counter and punish mindless spam better. The only new specialization to do this seems to be Spellbreaker, the rest are just random extra junk.

Take Renegade for example: interesting mechanics and new toys, but Revenant still suffers from poor choices in condition spam countering.

It seems like rather than understand the game and what could help it anets game designers just came up with ideas that “would be cool” rather than ideas that are actually needed.

Scourge also gets huge aoe boon corruption, but it adds more cancer to this game than currently, and it’s even more spammy.

It’d be crazy is there’re someone that support the Scourge in a team fight.

Pirax.6172:

In my opinion Soulbeast should be quicker and with more evading abilities. Main hand dagger is too slow.

It’s slow, no evade, and very long cd non-existent gap closer that take ages to cast.

Bella Kim.4061:

I dont think Holosmith can replace Daredevil
I dont think Holosmith can replace Herald

Daredevil can insta teleport to target and insta CC
Holosmith cannot insta teleport to target and cannot insta CC

Holosmith burst damage is very strong
but its easier for Daredevil to land the burst damage
because Holosmith cannot insta teleport to target and Holosmith cannot insta CC

Daredevil have access to Stealth and many many evades
Daredevil can survive with Marauder/Berserker amulet
Herald have access to many defensive mechanics
Herald can survive with Marauder/Berserker amulet

Holosmith lacks defensive mechanics
It is really hard for Holosmith to survive with Marauder/Berserker amulet

Playing Holosmith felt like gambling
Flip a coin – Heads – You carry the team , Tails – You make your team lose
Daredevil and Herald are much more reliable investment

Don’t make me laugh.
You can go in F5 without any prior resources, and have access to high damage leap , high damage range attack (#4 = Rapid Fire of ranger, except HALF the channel time), and quick aoe CC that also does high damage.
There’s no risk or hindering mechanic to prevent a Holosmith’s burst.
All 5 skills activates quickly, have range burst and physical burst, can go either power or condition burst, can combine with any other weapon you like to use, etc. (P/P, Rifle, anything )

Heat mechanic is by far the easiest resource to manage over every other classes.
It does not reset upon death like Life Force / Astro-form.
It does not reset to zero out of combat or right after a burst like Adrenaline.
Go in any time you like (maybe right after cc), use your burst, then revert back, simple as that.

You can also grab alchemy / elixir to have very strong cleanse without sacrificing anything. People acted as if getting Heatmode is a trade-off, but it is not.
You got 5 utility bars and 2 other trait line to enhance your defensive ability.
Saying Holosmith lacks defensive mechanic is like saying every other non defensive specialization lacks defensive mechanic. (Soulbeast, Renegade, Deadeye traitlines barely have anything defensive to offer, and all require other traits from core class)
It’s just a silly argument.

The engineer community looks like they’re deadly afraid that their op spec will get nerfed and try to derail the real situation.

The skill is mediocre in itself to begin with and need a remake.

It only grants around 120 hp/sec on pet, and does nothing else.
How could Anet nerf it to this degree and not giving the healing portion back to ranger?

The goods of this class is only for pve, which most of the damage can be mitigated and the lack of cleanse/ heal can be covered by other party member.

So a straight group dps buff class would definitely have some uses.
But this is the exact problem of this spec, it has no place in pvp.
I didn’t even use Renegade legend despite picking up Renegade.
I pick Mallyx and Shiro or Mallyx and Dwarf.

So the legend itself is so terrible in pvp that we can pick the trait and not even using the legend involves with it.

xarallei.4279:

You don’t want anything to work like renegade SB3. That ability is terrible. First you need to be at max range for it to even do the best damage (useless for raids) and on top of that it’s bugged and doesn’t work properly on uneven terrain or if you have any sort of object blocking part of it. Which most likely means it will continue to have this “feature” for another two years or so.

Renegade SB2 doesnt hit anything
SB3 barely hit anything twice too.

Both are garbage skills in my opinion.

rdfaye.4368:

I main ranger. What new animations?

This so much.

Soulbeast’s dagger is one of the most boring weapon in this expansion by far.
Not impressive animation with not impressive functionality.
Stances are equally as boring.

Only thing worth mentioning is some of the F3 skills like Worldly Impact.

Bella Kim.4061:

Spoichiche.1290:

" – Holosmith got better damage??? But any class can go for high damage build. "

HaHaaa… cries in weaver

Try “Scepter/Focus Weaver” with “Fresh Air trait”

Scepter/Focus Weaver does high burst damage

I suspect as much.

Personally I think Sword is not a good dps weapon.

I think fresh-air build really shines with just 3 sec swap cd.
Use your elite to make a even faster lightning burst.

Lmao, Holosmith can do HIGH BURST with LITTLE CONSEQUENCE, both range or melee, both condition or power.

Holosmith can utilize ANY WEAPONS or BRING ANY UTILITY because it doesn’t lock you in anything. You go F5, have your fun, then go back to your original playstyle until the heat goes down. It’s a free berserk mode that’s stronger than berserker.

The F5 has insanely high range burst, melee cleave, cc, stability, leap that does 10k damage, and so on.

Have you really seriously tested Holosmith?

Maxzero.4032:

I thought to myself if I was going to get anymore entertainment out of $30 then I would get out of PoF.

Even if I hate it it would still take me several days to find out.

Even if you hated it, you still gain access to new specialization and mount, which is a huge asset if you want to stay competitive.

This thread is funny.
Stupid formatting.
Pretending to be poem.
But it’s clearly not.
Pre-schooler writes better.

Jaccaranda will definitely be pve meta pet.

Highest aoe burst on a pet with heal and cleanse.
The CD is not half bad too!

Hope they don’t tone down.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I agree with Siegfried that we’re missing a lot of what come with launch – that being especially race specific gameplay. Their own dedicated zones, personal stories and general feel.
I mean sure they’re all still there, but those of us doing xpacs are stuck as general commander without 1/100th of the starting zones asuran snark, norn brawls, human ranting on flop eared rats and their attitutde, charr military regime and legions competing with eachother, or sylvari making the life of poor asura gate operator a living hell with questions about golem’s feelings.

Seriously i remember when i used to just sit around in rata sum or metrica province to not only admire the view but see all the fun, snarky and humorous dialogues between the only non-bookahs of Tyria.

I really miss that sort of content in expansion…

Even if they introduce new tweaks in racial story plot, people won’t care about early contents like that anymore. They want something big and flashy.

It’s like putting all the effort to only please a very very niche player-base who enjoy those, and even those players will only do that type of content once, which may be another hour of their time and move on.

To a MMO this old, I don’t think it’s worth the effort for that type of marginal gain anymore. Those type of stuffs are only interesting for a game flash new.

Lmao, as if this would ever happen.
You get bored so they need to make you a new game in another 3 years?
Cmon….

Where’s WoW 2 ?
Rebuilding a world took forever and it won’t guaranteed success.
Gutting people’s progress and expecting the whole fan-base start anew is one of the riskiest move a company could make.

GW2 still looks prettier than 95% of other MMO in my opinion despite weaker engine.

killermanjaro.5670:

Aomine.5012:

For 30 dollars I am able to keep on playing GW2 for a long time, why not just buy it?
For people who want to cheap out this 30 dollars cuz you’re too poor or whatever, what’s the reason for you to stay in GW2?
Is there any point left for you to stay in GW2 if you’re going to give up all the future contents?
If I am in your position I’d just drop the game entirely.

I might be reading this wrong, but it sounds like your implying that if people can’t afford PoF then they should give up the game, which is a ridiculous suggestion.

You’re reading it wrong.
What I’m implying is that what’s the point of keep playing the old contents 2352361 more times because all the new stuffs from now on will be gated behind the expansion?

To me it’s not worth my time to play GW2 anymore if I can only play old contents for next 1~2 years, and I’d simply drop the game entirely. I’m just questioning those people who refuse to buy PoF, what’s the point for you to stay in GW2?
PVP? WvW?

Did you even do the test properly before you whine?
All the shroud skills functionality from traits work on Shade.
The synergy is just amazing with super short cd of f2 and f3.

The answer is very simple.
If I don’t purchase PoF, I literally miss the motive of playing GW2 entirely cuz what’s the point? All the new contents/ emphasis would be on post expansion stuffs, so why do I want to keep playing the old stuffs that won’t get any attention ever?

For 30 dollars I am able to keep on playing GW2 for a long time, why not just buy it?
For people who want to cheap out this 30 dollars cuz you’re too poor or whatever, what’s the reason for you to stay in GW2?
Is there any point left for you to stay in GW2 if you’re going to give up all the future contents?
If I am in your position I’d just drop the game entirely.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Soulbeast is a breathtaking work of art and labor of love compared to Mirage…

Mirage is a functional class with so much utility and functional skills.
One dodge = clone+ cleanse+ break-stun+protection+regen + mirage mirror.