Guild Wars 2

I just want the simple animations on these moves.

Dagger 1: Same 4-hit, 3-cast animations that Thief and Necro daggers have. Current effects remain. Chain altered to: Leading Swipes (2x attack), Serpent Stab, Deadly Delivery.

Dagger 2: Animation changed to a downward X-slash (same one Maul uses in Beastmode when merged with a Porcine and what Elemenatlist’s use on dagger 1 while attuned to Fire, Dragon’s Claw).

That’s all. Not existing animations that are slowed down and cut-up, passed off as new ones. Just the same old stuff that worked and still works.

cafard.8953:

Is there an icd on Predator’s Cunning?

No ICD on it.

Predator’s Cunning could be better by changing it from “Steal life when you apply poison.” to “Steal life when you strike a poisoned foe.”

So, we have the Sand Lion and the Cheetah. The Cheetah having its F2 shadowstep to its target is great – but it provides swiftness.

The Sand Lion has a faster (half the time of Jungle Stalker’s) roar which releases a quick pulsing blind, which is neat, but falls a bit short with Go For The Eyes.

Since the first pulse and the trait will blind at the same time, Rangers are essentially losing out negating 1 extra attack, assuming rapid, multi-hit strikes.

I suggest 2 changes to both of these new Feline’s F2 skills, one of which is to bring synergy with the Soulbeast, and the other to utilize a new mechanic introduced with Path of Fire.

• Cheetah’s F2 swiftness is replaced with quickness.
  This allows synergy with Soulbeast’s Essence of Speed where acquiring quickness extends the duration of boons the Soulbeast has on them by 2 seconds. Better to reduce the duration since the F2 provides group quickness to 1½s for a combined 3s of quickness with both of its strikes.

• Sand Lion’s pulsing blind attack replaced with a non-damaging roar that provides nearby allies with a Sand Barrier.
  Let’s change this feline up and justify it’s lengthy F2 cooldown by altering it’s Blinding Roar into a Shielding Roar. A feline that can provide a defensive option, applying the new Barrier mechanic to negate some damage on you and your allies.

Not sure if Sharpened Edges or the damage bonus from Loud Whistle are supposed to do anything. Bleed on crit seems the same (33%) while in Beastmode and the damage is consistent above or below 90% health.

Can’t say if these are bugs per-say. Need confirmation from Devs on which traits are and are not affected by Beastmode.

Edit: Add another to the list – Fresh Reinforcement copies boons affecting your pet twice when entering Beastmode. If Fortifying Bond is also traited, boons that stack intensity (might & stability) are copied three times; boons that stack duration are still copied twice.

I read “fart cloud” and now it’s forever in my mind. Didn’t seem that bad in the reveal videos, but now it’s very, very apparent.

mistsim.2748:

Aomine.5012:

Dagger is ok, but I think Beast F3 cast time is so long that it breaks the fluidity completely, considering you’re ROOTED in ground when you use those skills.

we’re rooted while casting the F3’s? what a disaster.

Only one that roots is Worldly Impact. The other 4 can be used on the go.

I hope they just give the default dagger auto animations for Soulbeast as found on Thief and Necro. Right now, it’s clunky and slow. It’s like they are going out of their way to make sure our 1-handed melee animations are bad under the guise of “it’s different”.

Add to the list that Pack Alpha minor from Beastmastery does not reduce the recharge of the 5 new pets’ F2 skills.

It also does not recharge the other pet skills of the Iboga, Jaca, and Gazelle since their moves are new. Shared feline moves (Bite & Maul) on Sand Lion and Cheetah are reduced and working with Pack Alpha.

AegisFLCL.7623:

So whats everyone estimate on shouts applying to you being nerfed.

I don’t see devs allowing Sic’ Em for very long.

Maybe not long. Sic ‘Em is pretty kitten to have. Guard and S&R don’t work, which is a shame. S&R could have teleported an ally to you and give them a fixed % of res while Guard working might be suicide – but would work with Defy Pain and SoS.

They might nerf Sic ’Em down to like a 6s buff time with a 25s cooldown, 25% modifiers, and lower the reveal time around 4s.

Kind of crazy. If your pet dies, enter Beastmode, and if you immediately exit, it’s back to full health with no cooldown swap penalty. That’s pretty sick.

Well, some shouts work in Beastmode, others don’t.

Sic ’Em applies the buff to you, WHaO copies boons on yourself, SotP grants yourself might when you strike a foe, and Protect Me taunts the next foe that strikes you.

Search & Rescue and Guard do nothing at the moment.

Refined Toxins nets 2 stacks of poison in Beastmode, Potent Ally grants yourself might on crit, and Pounce on sword nets you might as well.

Might have to focus on just bleed and poison for a condi spec to be competitive, as burn Firebrand is crazy strong from my testing.

So far, I can’t get over the main-hand auto chain and 2nd skill. That chain needs to be cut down to 3 hits by removing and distributing the damage from the first attack to the others. It’s so slow for a main-hand dagger that it comes off clunky.

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.

While I enjoyed it, I got a kick when they were on Renegade, and Irenio described their 7-shot shortbow skill. It starts spread then comes together at the end of their range.

He went on about how there are skills that are shotgunned where – even if the player were using a ranged weapon – would stand really really close to someone so that they might hit them more times. Then, went on to note he didn’t think that it was super healthy since it puts ranged characters with melee ones.

I am then reminded of Split Blade and Poison Volley….

jcbroe.4329:

You guys might not be understanding my point.

No, we got the point. The opening post doesn’t call specifically on one of the issues that can be resolved, and that’s Fresh Reinforcement, its placement, and what it half-does.

If it can be moved as a minor and have it also copy boons on the player to the pet when exiting Beastmode, then things get better.

GUFF.5692:

Looking forward to a net DPS increase in pvp since the player can control more of the outcome of the battle. Our CC and some burst will now be much more controllable in beastmode while allowing second chances at both when leaving BM with standard pets. To me that alone makes Soulbeast super worth it.

That is something to look forward to, indeed. My main concern are the traits. Those are the pillars, and an important base that can make balancing easier or difficult.

Beastmode is at least a weapon swap like Necro Shrouds and Druid’s CAF, so that’s all good. But the traits? Some rocky stuff there.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Every trait and skill that does not include “…and your pet.” or words to that effect, are poorly thought out for us.

Yeah. Too many suggestions over the years to include the pet, most of which were omitted. I’m chiming in on the suggestions concerning SotW’s active.

Even Rangers sometimes forget that it’s there. No biggie. Just a reminder to try and include it so it’s not just looking at us while we cast SotW and go, “Oh, so we’re trying to be a Warrior now? All right, I get it. Just press F5 ‘cause I’m out!”

Player can pet swap when out of Beastmode, so this is no surprise. It’s everything else that surrounds Soulbeast is more concerning.

Personally, I’d love a trait-shuffle between Skirmishing and Soulbeast to work this out better.

Replace Tail Wind with Sharpened Edges as a minor adept; Replace Hunter’s Tactics with Furious Strength from Soulbeast as a minor grandmaster; Hunter’s Tactics is moved as a major adept and altered to be +10% critical hit chance against bleeding foes; move Fresh Reinfocement as a minor master and include boons affecting the player are copied onto the pet when exiting Beastmode; insert new adept trait for Soulbeast.

Cleans up some of the odd placements while meeting fair compromises and building stronger synergies.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I like this logic. Any suggestions for other effects?

Nothing specific, but if the swap is not the sensible move, then SotW needs a new active that also applies to the pet.

Some of you Rangers probably forgot that it was suggested for 2+ years after launch for Signet of the Beastmaster to become baseline, and after almost 3 years, we now have 1 signet nerfed and its pet interaction lost on activation.

If there’s going to be any suggestions moving forward: it needs to involve the pet.

+1. Swap ’em like a pet, Irenio!

Unimaginative is fine, as long as there’s synergy and functionality. Both traits you draw attention to lack both, so almost anything is better.

I’d like to have Twice as Vicious similar to Always Angry. “Gain Twice as Vicious (10s: +5% damage and condition damage) when exiting or entering Beastmode.”

I find the trait layout bad. While other specs have minor traits revolving around their new functions or thematics, our minor traits have nothing to do with entering, exiting, or remaining in Beastmode.

Instead, Soulbeast has a bonus with Fury which is found more on core Ranger, and another minor that procs on disabling foes, which is found on power/defensive/Druid setups. No one else finds that the least bit odd?

Cool. Thanks for the update and fixing Instinctive Reaction and Taste for Danger a couple of days back.

Eh, Anet had a chance to make a Bard role a thing with Siren’s Landing, but unfortunately limited it to only Siren’s Landing. Mechanics for it were also lacking.

That said, it could be an e-spec for a class that doesn’t already use a focus. I’d say warhorn but I don’t want fart tunes.

Don’t focus on the pet attributes too much; coefficients and condition stacks matter more. In a vacuum, the best dps pets contribute roughly 12% due to all the power creep.

In other modes such as pvp and wvw, utility and bursts from the pet will be taken into account. The stat boosts seem low – that much is true.

The overall offerings SB has is a lot of condis, which isn’t hindered by coefficients like power. Combined with the stat increase, it might make up the loss. Testing will tell.

Would be fun if they altered off-hand dagger so the two moves had some interaction.

Crippling Talon has a 2-ammo count and applies a brief, unique debuff on a target. Stalker’s Strike removes 1 stack of the Crippling Talon debuff on a successful hit; doing so refreshes Stalker’s Strike and inflicts additional direct damage.

UnitedChaos.8364:

In my opinion, just asking for traps to be buffed is not a solution and doesn’t provide anything to the original issue I put forth. If you’re going to run traps or spirits you’re pretty much always going to run the corresponding trait. If you just buffed them, you’re just furthering the issue. I doubt they would buff spirits and traps just for the sake of it. I provided a trade off that doesn’t make them overpowered and provides reason to and not to take the trait; this makes the traits interesting and provides multiple ways to play with traps/spirits.

Well that’s the thing: small buffs are realistic than doing what you proposed. They are dead set in what they want Ranger Traps and Spirits to be. Propose things that fall into that line or change something else that makes those things relevant.

Recall Soften the Fall. Useless trait for years and they altered it to activate on heal – now it gets slotted by more players due to synergy. If you want things to get interesting, think in those terms if you want them to budge.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If they have to dedicate time to adding a dye channel every pet model, I’d rather a pet sigil slot or auto-consumed-food slot in the pet menu.

^ This. Fashion Wars aside, I prefer functionality. An electro pink tiger is less exciting (to me) than being able to equip it with an air sigil and sharing my consumables.

No thanks. I’d rather have Spirits altered in 3 ways:

• Summoning Spirits is a ranged, ground-target.
• Players cast the Spirit active as a ranged, ground-target which sacrifices the Spirit.
• Nature’s Vengeance increases the passive range instead of the active.

Allows for better placement, the active skill to be in the hands of the player without placing the Spirit in harms way, and NV tweak so Spirits can have more battlefield coverage since mobile spirits returning is just not happening.

As for Traps, adding 1 non-damaging condition to offensive traps on-trigger baseline would help. Flame Trap blinds (3), Frost Trap slows (3s), Viper’s Nest weakens (4s), and Spike Trap immobilizes (2s).

Increase the base burning of Flame Trap from 2½s → 3s; Spike Trap’s bleeds from 6¼s → 8s; the poison field duration on Viper’s Nest from 2s → 3s; and Trapper’s Expertise to add Resistance (2s) on Healing Spring.

Krispera.5087:

So either make them a global cooldown or that you can’t use pets of the same Archetype/Beast Family…

If they allowed pet swapping while in Beastmode, I can see this being implemented.

Substance E.4852:

The only place Soulbeast falls flat is PvE power builds. It’s very solid for every other game mode and will likely have more flexibility than Druid.

Soulbeast looks very promising in PvE as well as a condition build. The recent changes have lowered condition damage from the pets like Lynx and Bristleback, which brings them more in-line with power-focused pets like the Jaguar and Tiger.

That said, Soulbeast is a solid candidate for replacing Beastmastery in the condition Ranger build. Seeing how team caps prevent boons and buffs from being applied to pets, with regards to previously mentioned changes – it’s a safe bet that Soulbeast will see play in PvE as well.

PvE power builds for Ranger probably won’t ever be a thing, but a Griever build might surface in PvE with Marksmanship-Skirmishing-Soulbeast.

Map looks great. Raptor mount performed well enough. Could use some tweaking on the attack so it leaps directly onto a target. Not sure if the walk function works on mounts, couldn’t get it to.

Hearts were grindy. Unsure about unidentified gear. Bounties are a nice. Could be expanded on like provide a larger and more difficult bounty after completing a certain amount.

Did not enjoy the sub-boss in the story. Becoming immune at x thresholds and running away, summoning adds, then repeating quickly became a nuisance and constantly halted the pacing and momentum.

I’m not sure on the sudden fascination myself.

As a side note, add that Splitblade be… unsplit (couldn’t help it) from the PvP version so the increased damage per axe is applied to all game modes. That extra ‘oomph’ would be swell in other modes for shotgunning it.

xBlack.4897:

“great again”, again ? when have they ever been great to begin with ?

During the beta >_>

But yeah, it wasn’t really great. Long ago, it was our only option, which I guess does or doesn’t count depending on the perspective….

Where’s the strong synergy like other elites have? It needs some tweaking and focus. I’d prefer this kind of layout and changes.

Primal Cry does look weak. I guess for starters, 3 bleeds & 3 vulnerability per pulse, as a total of 3 bleeds for a 1.25s cast time is lacking.

It’s going to really suck if it roots us.

+1 to all of these. Would be nice if we can get most of those. I could see some easy stuff on their F2 skills.

Vulture inflicts torment, Hyena has a crippling howl with normal power stats (can’t be stressed enough), Fire Stalker has a pounce that inflicts burning, and the Sand Shark burrows into the ground then leaps – launching foes into the air.

All that stuff would be great.

LughLongArm.5460:

Another thing I don’t get, the stun break skill(for the stout pets) got a casting time, how can stun break ability have casting time?

Some skills in the game already have a cast time with a stun break. Some of them are covered with stability, others aren’t. Well of Precognition is an example of a stun break with a cast time. Pain Absorption is one without stability but a cast time.

OGDeadHead.8326:

CD is way too long.

Agreed. Reducing it down to 20s or 25s would be better.

Seems all right to me. Only able to test it in the PvE demo map where mobs hit once every second or so.

This would be more suitable against rapid, multi-hit attacks from opponents in PvP/WvW and to help a bit securing a stomp.

Album with sample feline beastmode tooltips with armor on/off/different power stats.

Edit: Numbers on chart were with the demo exotic marauder stats, sample pics have the same but with 100 power/70 ferocity food.

Gotta say, the archetype stat increases are odd. Wouldn’t it have been better to alter Deadly as 200 condition damage/225 expertise, Supportive as 25% healing/225 concentration, and Versatile as 200 precision/100 vitality?

Seems odd that Vitality is spread out on 3 of the 5 archetypes and there’s no expertise increase.

A pulsing blind, damaging roar, that’s half the cast speed of the Jungle Stalker. Oh, dear lord – please update the Jungle Stalker’s F2 Anet!

Looks cool. I need to jump in right now to get it. Thanks for the info!

A quick ‘n’ dirty chart of tooltips from the moves the Soulbeast has access to with archetypes, the archetypes’ skill, and which pet is categorized at what per the preview.

Link to the stuff or the attachment at the bottom.

The shoulder pieces are now showing on the T3 cultural armor for Asura. Note that they are part of the chest piece. The update is appreciated nonetheless.

Why not both?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Which traits mate?

Bah. Nevermind. I mistook this person’s suggestions for Holosmith traits as part of the actual Holosmith traits.

Boink. That’s why I recall reading stacking blinds, good thing you challenged me on that. lol

Krispera.5087:

I agree for Crippling Talon and make it bounce to 2 targets with that. Distracting Daggers and Throw Bolas have them, why not this ? Since OH Dagger and Torch are in the same Trait, why not make Throw Torch ammo, too ? Trait would give ammo system to both.

I’m still baffled at the pass they have done to Spirit Weapons in Guardian. Not only they get an ammo system, they have a 900 range and a nice AoE. Can be traited to Burn too. 4 charges (traited) on Sword of Justice ? It’s a better (minus radius and fury) Procession of Blades, but at 900 range. Wow !

Yet, we still have point blank Traps that nobody use outside of instances and niche builds. I can see Traps receiving the ammo system, but only if they are throw-able. I mean, if an Engi can send a mortar at 1500 that do AoE pulsing poison and now the Guardian with his Spirit Weapons at 900 range…

Here we are, still struggling to send any kind of AoE at range that is not Barrage or non-damaging Muddy Terrain. At least the potato plant and the carnivore plant will give us that in BeastMode.

+1 to this. It would have been nice to have at least crippling talon (dagger 5) and throw torch (torch 4) have an ammo count of 2 and Ambidexterity to increase off-hand torch and dagger skills with ammo by +1 along with all of its current functions.

Traps could have used ammo, too. Even if it was tied to Trapper’s Expertise, I’d take being able to set off traps twice with a short interval on them over condition duration.