Guild Wars 2

Lilyanna.9361:

If we are talking about the sole meta builds:

Ele: Mender
Thief: Marauder
Guardian: Marauder
Druid: Mender
Rev: Marauder
Engie: Mender
Mesmer: Sage
Necro: Carrion

Most of the builds are Marauder builds for DPS, Menders for the supports, and then necro and mesmer being the only outliers. Now this is /only/ the most meta of builds.

So where is that amulet diversity? I understand Celestial was horribad, but you can’t actually believe there is more amulet diversity now.

There will always be a best option; but there being options and differences is better than there being none.

It isn’t a problem of a lack of amulets to support builds; it’s a lack of competitive builds to support the plethora of amulets.

Great job on the wiki. Fantastic work and effort.

Chiming in on the underwater information collection; you’ll only be able to get that info from WvW for people not aware. No elite specs for PvE and no underwater in PvP.

Alongside Moa Stance and all of the AoE petswapping traits that were slightly reworked with the last patch, Warhorn should be able to find its place in a boon based build.

It 100% depends on whether or not the boons get shared by the stances with the GM equipped or not.

Ranger/Druid was not struggling in PvE or PvP. Do people dislike the builds or build mechanics that are optimal in those environments? Of course, it’s impossible to make everyone happy, all of the time.

WvW is where Ranger/Druid really struggles to find it’s footing in a group environment. Composition slots are already hyper competitive which means each party slot needs to have maximum party composition potential, and Druid sees a lot of competition from Support Tempest and Chrono.

If stance sharing also shares the boons, ANet will have FINALLY given WvW a response to how dominant Guardians are in the party composition metagame because of boon and minor heal support, which is exactly where Soulbeast will compete with the stances functioning as mentioned.

If not…. Well, there will definitely be a Soulbeast version of the PvE Condi DPS build that’s better than the core ranger version, and I’m positive that Soulbeast will be able to compete with Druid in PvP due to the fact that Druid nowadays has a much harder time of gaining momentum by itself on a team, and is really relegated into more of a stall/team support backcapping solo node defense role.

On its own this isn’t disappointing. Personally, if Leader of the Pack doesn’t work as I hope, I will be disappointed though, because at that point Soulbeast isn’t filling any gaps in our gameplay options.

Also I REALLY need Beastmode to count as pet swapping to even justify taking Soulbeast. Essentially, it needs to be an alternative to Beastmastery (not that running it alongside BM won’t be something I do) and to Druid.

Until the weekend I won’t know if it’s functionally capable of fulfilling those roles.

That made me have an interesting thought; how is SoR going to work in Beastmode?

Please don’t screw this up ANet lol, there’s no middle ground on these sorts of things, they’ll either be great or god awful.

Ranys.4028:

While I can’t be sure of it myself I think you got one big thing wrong:

F1 F2 F3 were not called “Beast” skill in their tooltips while I was looking through all the pets. Only F4 had “beast” written in the tooltip.
I think for a good reason. They don’t want us to spam our enemys with all these perks we get with them the whole time.

So much this.

The tooltips I recorded from Peachy’s video alone indicated only 1 Beast skill; the one granted by the classification of the pet merged (supportive, etc).

There’s only a few options; we get both pets and it counts as a weapon swap or it replaces the pet swap and we only get to loadout with 1 pet. If we get everything, as in, pet swapping, Beastmode, and pet swap traits working with Beastmode, I’ll be so happily shocked I’ll be at a loss for words lol.

Either way, knowing which could vastly change how we think about builds. I’m excited and nervous haha.

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

Kreed.2768:

Caeledh.5437:

I saw the traits in the wiki just now.

And so died the hope that shapeshifting might be one of the unrevealed ones.

That’s two for two in disappointing elite specs for ranger.

Considering how many different pets we already have and will get in the future, shapeshifting would have been too huge an undertaking to achieve visually. And why are some people so hung up on the whole shapeshifting thing anyway? I’m honestly curious here.

They want the game to sacrifice it’s identity so that they can play a ripoff WoW shrugs

Let’s not seriously pretend that our Druid wasn’t heavily inspired by WoW’s druid with it’s focus on healing and zapping moonbeams and lunar energy all over the place.

We even turn into a spirit wisp with our staff.

Are you sure it wasn’t DnD? Or literally any other Role-playing game even before the era of digital gaming that had Druids?

Alright, I’ll use GW2 lore instead of being dismissive; outside of “potions/concoctions/etc,” the only PC race that can transform (Dervishes in GW1 took on Godly Avatars, but thematically channeling that sort of magic has translated into the Revenant’s area of expertise already) is Norns. Similarly to those Dervish Avatars, Norn transformations can occur because of the bond they have with their “gods,” ie Nature Spirits.

Assuming we even used those transformations as a basis for the argument of transformations, you’d have to use different animals/spirits than the Norn so it’s applicable to all PC races, without also “stealing” Revenant’s motif.

And even then, it doesn’t explain how or why or what all the PC races would be able to unanimously align to and subsequently transform into that doesn’t violate or weaken the PC race lore rules.

And if you want to make the potions argument, well, Engineer, especially seeing as how they already have a transforming elixir, would be a more likely candidate. BUT this would be the only logical, reasonable explanation, although you’d functionally want them to to function more like kits than elixirs. And even then, from a visual balance standpoint, ANet reserves transformations for “big” effect skills, as in, they’re all elites.

If anything the closest thing you’d get is the equivalent of a weapon conjure and maybe a pallette swap.

Now Mistsim made me feel like I need to clarify my position to everybody else passing through reading lol.

I’m SUPER hyped for Soulbeast, regardless of my happiness with the traits at this point.

Aside from me needing to confirm some mechanical things, the spec has TONS of interaction with existing traits like Remorseless and new traits like the new Skirmishing fury trait (Ferocious Quarry? I’ll learn names sooner or later). I mean, we’re talking insane burst potential here with that unblockable trait plus pet swap traits plus Remorseless. Things like popping into Beastmode to land the GS combo, traiting for taunt on Beast skill, using idk, the Smokescales Beastmode Beast skill, swapping to LB and comboing into Rapid Fire while their taunted, leave Beastmode, Fury procs Remorseless again on the Knockback and as you Knockback you F1 your Smokescale onto the enemy for the boon empowered smoke assault.

Or with Condi Builds, the Dagger is going to be a strong tool, especially with Quickness. I know people are excited for D/D SB, but we also have the serious potential to revive the old A/D S/T playstyle here by replacing that sword with a dagger, along with more combo ability. Double leap through a fire field, condi burst on both sets, Beastmode skills with condi scaling on player stats.

I know I’ve spoken mostly about my concerns so far, but that’s mostly because I need to ground myself in reality or otherwise my hype will push my expectations beyond the actual implementation in the live game.

Realistically, there are so many potentially viable combinations of builds for the different gamemodes that it’s impossible to see what isn’t effective right now until it faces off against the content and against other players.

What if the bird skill requires a target? Those sorts of details aren’t ever in tooltips.

Probably too early to tell if anything is overpowered.

Me too… Me too. Quite worried about those sorts of mechanics.

Coming back on the topic; I do have some thoughts on pet selection. It’s not anything we know until we see the mechanics of it but here it goes.

Essentially, we’ll need to know how Beastmode works with dead pets. Not that it’s not manageable, but for anybody that’s been in PvP with a glassier pet like a bird and no constant Healing going out to it, they MELT.

The other thing is that no matter how much time we want to spend time in Beastmode, we’ll also inevitably need to not be in Beastmode.

Should we be considering how the pet performs outside of Beastmode as an integral part of the build, or are we hoping we have enough personal DPS regardless to alleviate it?

Also, do we actually know for sure that pet swapping is available to the Soulbeast? I’m not saying it doesn’t appear that way, but the footage we have didn’t actually confirm whether Beastmode is a mechanic placed on top of core ranger, or whether it replaces pet swapping, afaik, but would need info on this if we have it.

Follow up to that is; assuming pet swapping, does Soulbeast cooldown interact with the pet swap cooldown, or are they separate? Pet choices might vary if you end up getting “stuck” with 1 pet for a longer period of time than we’re anticipating.

Clearly we can’t answer all of those questions right now, but mechanically they matter because they are going to make or break builds that want to use any of the current game build’s nonmeta pets for their Soulbeast utility.

borya.2964:

jcbroe.4329:

Still need the info on the last stance though.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Moa_Stance

This one ?

Yeah I hadn’t seen it yet, thanks. That’s actually a HUGE game changer with stance sharing and WvW organized groups, even if the boons from these stances don’t share. But that’s a different thread.

You have some similar thoughts for a condi build as I worked out.

Same weapons, the variant I worked out would be Skirm/WS/Soul. Bleed trait, poison traits, Soften the Fall (even without WK this would be a strong anti damage choice for the slow/cripple field and immob for gaining offensive momentum back from being on the defensive).

My main overall difference would be wanting to take Viper’s Nest, assuming Predator’s Cunning has no ICD. But it really depends on how strong of a burst with a Power/Condi Amulet it would end up being with the lifesteal element.

Otherwise it’ll be the way you have it set up probably.

Still need the info on the last stance though.

mistsim.2748:

jcbroe.4329:

I mean, time will tell, but I’m finding the traits for this spec the least impressive out of almost every other spec so far with this expac, and those tooltips from pet skills are NOT inspiring damage numbers.

i dont think damage will be a problem though, at least not on power builds. one of our biggest problems before was simply whiffing all of our damage. Unstoppable Union takes care of that. if you want damage, I believe an unblockable combo of Maul/hilt bash/maul, Wordly Leap and Path of Scars + quickness and our high ferocity should give us a repeatable ~12-14k aoe burst on a fairly low CD. I guess I’m thinking that, high survivability, and stance sharing should make us good enough for frontline deeps in wvw.

i believe we will dominate pvp with sb/d/d bleed/poison + Griffon Stance builds. I’m really looking forward to a monster condi bunker once again.

pve is whatever. looking pretty good.

that being said, i get what you’re saying and I am looking forward to the Spellbreaker, Firebrand and Scourge as well. but then again we thought druid was looking weak relative to other e-specs, and we ended up dominating for 2 years. as you said, there’s really no way to tell until we get our hands on the SLB.

Druid during the BWEs WAS weak though lol, until they realized that Celestial needed to work like Life Force instead of Adrenaline.

Yeah I don’t think it’ll be weak, I just think the traits lack a unique identity. It’s like they rounded up all the ideas that they wanted to add to Skirmishing and Wilderness Survival and threw them all together in a traitline then said “well we need to make sense of boons with this mechanic, so here’s this trait, here’s this Soulbeast version of a Berserker trait, and here’s a trait for stances.”

It’s inarguably strong and I don’t think people will be able to enjoy core Ranger anymore once they feel the mechanical improvements and depth Soulbeast will bring on that mechanical/functional front.

But that is also the weakness of the spec to me; it’s just a QoL upgrade to core ranger, with basically all of the traits being things we really should have and could have had to begin with.

It’s just…. disappointing to me I guess that my hype ended with the mechanics. Not trying to say it’s bad; how would I know, on top of it looking like a great improvement to Ranger lol.

I just really hope that when we get our hands on it first hand, somebody shows me something I’m missing with the traits.

Also if we don’t share those boons on the stances with the actual stance effect itself, we’re dead in the water in WvW groups as a Soulbeast. WvW has powercreeped so much that if you don’t bring everything that a group could possibly want in one build, you’re going to be replaced by something that can (which is why the core organized groups run Guard/Rev/Necro/Mesmer, elite specs on everything but Guard ofc).

All it really boils down to is me fingerscrossed wanting to be wrong about the impression the traits give me lol.

/forum bug 15chars

@Mistsim;

It isn’t that I don’t get it and don’t believe it’ll be strong, I just don’t think it’s strong relative to the traitlines of the other classes.

Also if the wiki is correct, all of the traits you’d want to take together compete with each other. You’d want to be able to take the boon sharing with the boons on beast skill use and the unblock/stun on entering beastmode, but all of those traits compete for a slot unless this is wrong, which I really hope it is because the boon copying on beastmode NEEDS to be a minor: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soulbeast

There is some great looking combinations, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t like how bland that traits in themselves are. I mean, Firebrand is going to be a quickness bot machine that enhances core guardians Aegis theme, Spellbreaker gets a straight up extra mechanic in their tether added to their burst skills, and Weaver is Elementalist on Steroids that rewards the most mechanically and APM oriented players.

Mechanically, Soulbeast is great. But those tooltips on 90% of the pets aren’t offering up impressive numbers, and Stance Sharing is carrying the uniqueness of the traitline. The traits on top of that don’t really seem…. Coherent in their combinations.

Sure, Druid functionally could have been stapled to any other class and it would have ended up working. But the traits were and are mostly unique and powerful options.

And I just don’t get that impression from Soulbeast traits. The seem weak and scattered in their effectiveness.

I mean, time will tell, but I’m finding the traits for this spec the least impressive out of almost every other spec so far with this expac, and those tooltips from pet skills are NOT inspiring damage numbers.

I’m not sure I’m excited for this elite spec. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of synergy between the GMs and the functionality of the rest of the traits within the line. None of the traits themselves seem particularly strong either.

I mean, aside from some of the more obvious interactions, like building for a pet swap offensive build to take advantage of the unblockable trait, going into beastmode and going for the big burst, and F2/beast skill based build, or the condi DPS spec that will probably see more PvE use than anything else, I’m not really seeing how this elite spec competes well with Druid, outside of PvE (and even then people will still want Druids.

Maybe I need to get my hands on it but from the level of information we have, the mechanics are carrying the appeal, and the functionality in the traits is lacking.

Kreed.2768:

Caeledh.5437:

I saw the traits in the wiki just now.

And so died the hope that shapeshifting might be one of the unrevealed ones.

That’s two for two in disappointing elite specs for ranger.

Considering how many different pets we already have and will get in the future, shapeshifting would have been too huge an undertaking to achieve visually. And why are some people so hung up on the whole shapeshifting thing anyway? I’m honestly curious here.

They want the game to sacrifice it’s identity so that they can play a ripoff WoW shrugs

It’s not going to happen, it’s a visual QoL thing. Having a massive lion stand on top of half the raid groups models, covering group indicators, and being visual noise in general when the game already suffers from way too much of it as it is? Not going to happen.

Personally, I understand that it can ruin immersion. But it’s done to preserve user end quality gameplay experience.

I’d just like to point out that this is an old build of the game, so we have no idea what changes will be live with the actual expac.

Also, it doesn’t seem as though the tooltips accurately reflect stat investment (could be wrong, I didn’t play the demo characters long enough to notice).

Not to mention PvE/PvP splits for anybody worrying about damage immunities or anything. With the way Stoneform is already split (only 2.5s in PvP), ANet seems on top of their damage immunity balance.

@cafard;
Yeah, the regen in this case seems so Druid specific in it’s usefulness that it seems like it’ll end up being wasted for the most part other than thinking of it as passive damage mitigation (depending on the do you’re receiving it will at times outperform the passive toughness from SoS, and will always outperform against conditions in that direct comparison.

Maybe it’ll have some interaction with Soulbeast we don’t see. Just like I’m really hoping Soulbeast also has some additional interaction with all of the fury sources we now have.

I still can’t get over how economical Druid ends up being for utility. Even after all the nerfs, it really is still a straight up upgrade to base Ranger in basically every regard (if only we could take 4 traitlines, we’d have perfect trait setups for everything xD).

Now I’m just sitting here going “we have such a good baseline of features for ranger for things to interact with, please let Soulbeast have good traits” lol.

Actually from your description, I think you and I look at things very similarly lol. In a sense, I’m really only arguing that besides trying to prove that a utility is only “bad” based on opinion and not effect, that “optimizing” for full cleansing and synergy should actually be considered unoptimal build crafting when also looking for a versatile range of functions within a build. You’d want to pick the smallest investments with the most strength towards a particular thing until you satisfy your output at that thing while also trying to incorporate synergy in those choices with any other outputs you’d want to focus on using in the build.

So in a sense I guess I am a min/maxer, in that I want to maximize the amount of resources I have at my disposal and minimize waste through over investment or lack from under investment lol xD

@cafard;

Delving more into what the chart doesn’t cover, it’s also occurring to me now that I’ve had my morning coffee that if we consider the potential waste of cleanses not used, we’d also want to consider the potential waste of cleanses on Survival skills too, as well as factoring in functional waste, like usage cases where you’d be using a survival skill or shout or etc purely for the cleanse, and losing out on the rest of the function of the the skill itself.

I don’t even know how I’d begin to start calculating all that (I mean I do, I’d have to collect every single variable I’d be looking to track and probably have to do multiple cross comparisons, but realistically I work and have life to live lol).

I know you know what you’re talking about, I’ve seen your posts before. Any more elegant, less time consuming ways to track all the moving pieces?

I have my assumptions on what the results would be but I still don’t believe them without numbers backing them lol.

I’d like to see ammo on LB3 and sword3 as well.

Glad you guys saw this too!

I’m blanking right now, so somebody else that can check, did the tooltips for pet swaps change?

I don’t imagine they have, I’m sure the Beastmode mechanic was built on the existing stow mechanic, which already functions as a pet swap, so changing that tooltip wouldn’t be needed to match and functional additions/changes, just clarity. But still crossed fingers I like info lol.

sevenDEADLY.5281:

cafard.8953:

I like your accounting of opportunity cost in terms of skills/traits/rune requirement, but you don’t seem to take account of the granularity of the cleanses (and therefore the potential cleanse waste).

Don’t try to to show him his obvious flaws, he doesn’t want to see them and only sees his perfect scenario where old SoR passive worked as a perfect cleanse every 10 seconds 100% of the time.

I did the calcs with the new SoR too, no passive removal.

2.4 opportunity cost to 0.8 on the WS + BM options you keep mentioning in their BEST CASE scenario.

You’re being willfully stupid at this point shrugs

I’ll take the infraction, but somebody clearly needs to let you know because you’re not self aware.

Edit:
You don’t even know what he’s saying, do you? All you did was scroll until you found something that responded to me that made you feel like your opinion was justified.

All he’s saying is that I didn’t factor something into the calculations, but that wouldn’t skew the results to suddenly make you right lol. Every option is affected by the potential for waste, and even though the opportunity cost ratios would all change, you’d see results that still makes you and your ongoing crusade wrong.

Stop being dismissive and looking for an echo chamber, you don’t understand what you’re doing. Don’t piggyback off of other people’s unbiased, constructive responses in an attempt to work in your opinion that still isn’t factually supported by anything.

Take the time to educate yourself instead of wasting the effort to justify your incorrectness.

Gaile Gray.6029:

jcbroe.4329:

@Gaile;

Any word on staff 3? Or quickness not interacting with pets?

You may have missed my comment: I just merged a few more threads, and wanted to update you on the bug with Skill No. 3. That, too, has been addressed and you should see that fix rolling out very soon!

Yeah, I saw it after the fact. But thanks for taking the time to respond anyhow.

And the communication. I know it’s your job, but I also remember that you’re a Ranger player and was looking forward to fixes just as much as the rest of us!

Happy gaming!

So either the Jacaranda has a root or the Beastmode does (or both).

@Gaile;

Any word on staff 3? Or quickness not interacting with pets?

Hey, I’m a dev myself, I understand.

But we’re 5 years into development now with an expac dropping and SERIOUS bugs just rolled into the live version of the game. If you’re supposedly a triple A development company, how do you not have a testing methodology for this yet? How is your test server not live server with restricted access so that you can test changes in a live environment?

Sure, maybe my hyperbole isn’t needed, but 5 years later and I’m no longer feeling much like I should be holding back as a nicety anymore.

Also, I haven’t been able to play my Ranger for the 3rd day in a row now. Either make seamless updates without taking the game offline, or take the game offline to make sure updates go smoothly. If they dedicated themselves to this service model and then disrupt our service because of quality issues, then it’s no different than just taking the game offline.

I don’t make comments about ANet because I enjoy attacking them. But without feedback, the devs aren’t going to know that they, or SOMEBODY is falling down on the job, and the only way that they will ever put out better quality work is if they are aware that their current work is unsatisfactory to their customers.

But I’ve said my piece.

Maybe Ranger will actually be playable by the preview weekend. That would be nice.

Forum bug /15characters

Yeah this is unacceptable, the game is actually unplayable right now because of how horrible the gameplay quality is right now.

Somebody screwed up the code on the back end big time more than likely, in preparation for the Soulbeast (other backend changes that can be been through tooltips are things like traits referring to beast skills, which is the pet F2, but is also present in Soulbeast tooltips).

They were probably trying to make the pet swap function compatible with the Beastmode form and in doing so changed some sort of delay option or even networking option. Pet AI is inherited from PvE AI, and as you’ll notice, when PvE AI objects are created they “stall” too. So somebody messed up the code that differentiated ranger pet object behavior from the inherited behavior.

That or the super class is overwriting the pet class since it may have been slightly altered for PoF changes.

Regardless, how this didn’t get caught by a QA person with 3 seconds of testing their changes…. Unacceptable. ANet, there is no way your employees did their job on this one. Somebody on one of the teams said “eff it, I’m sure it works fine” when they pushed their changes or when the QA decided it didn’t need testing.

Bast Bow.2958:

I missed your former post with the numbers Jcbroe. I read it now. Since english isn’t my native language I’m having some trouble understanding everything you’re saying. I also don’t understand the index of your former post pointing out cleanses before patch and after patch, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Anyway, I did not mean to be disrespectful towards anyone, also the people which I should respect like you’re saying. And yes I’m mostly talking from a PvE-perspective, I usually tend to say that, I forgot now. There’s probably a lot of players I should respect which are far better than me, especially in PvP. Never meant to disrespect all of them mighty allknowing rangers.

Maybe best for me to lay low for a while on forums, seems I can’t handle all the saltiness while I see so many possiblities, I wasn’t specifically referring to you, I was referring to all the bitterness in this post while I see a ton of options. Off “feeling” all excited about what’s comming, bye! Good luck on “thinking”, sorry if I also misinterpreted the title o/

Sorry, my tone doesn’t get carried well on the forums and I wasn’t referring to you, I was referring to the person who got me started to begin with because they thought their words were stronger than my numbers.

Also, I know who you are

You and I just haven’t communicated enough to know the tone of my typing, which in this case was purely informative with no intended malice.

Also because you’ve been around on the forums for some time, you’ll recognize a lot of these names of common posters. I haven’t been very active recently because of content drought and irl, but most of these guys know me from my forum guides/information posts and my community conversation topics (for anyone who remembers how we started our own gigantic community conversation that was longer and more effective than the actual CDI, before the CDI was a thing).

If you DO feel like I attacked you though, then I didn’t convey myself well, and I apologize.

For the chart: the bigger number on the very right column, the better your condition cleansing is for the amount of things being put into it to make it work.
The less things you put into, the more room you have in the rest of your build for building towards other/more things.

cafard.8953:

I like your accounting of opportunity cost in terms of skills/traits/rune requirement, but you don’t seem to take account of the granularity of the cleanses (and therefore the potential cleanse waste). It’s obvious that in a 10s burst scenario full cleanses will be the obvious best performers, but that’s not the only scenario.

If you get 2 condis applied to you every 10s, that single full condi cleanse before a 50s cooldown is going to be less desirable than 4 separate dual condi cleanses.

In that context, the old SoR was very prone to wastefulness. You don’t control the single cleanse which might happen when not needed, and the full cleanse will rarely be used up to its theoretical maximum.

Not that it matters anyhow, it’s done already and we don’t have a say, but for the sake of comparing what’s left, I feel that granularity/potential waste should be accounted for.

What you’d end up doing is taking the number of conditions cleanses divided by the cooldown. If you’re using more than one cleanse in the calculation you’d either want to use the longest cooldown as the time period to divide by while factoring in any condition cleanses that can be used more than once within that time period. Or you could find a common multiple of the cooldowns and divide by that.

Either way, that would be going full circle for me. I only calculated the burst because I was told (not that I agreed) that cleanses over time was the wrong way to calculate it since it isn’t a “realistic representation” and that SoR was “bad and useless.”

I wanted to prove that either way, that opinion of SoR is a misrepresentation. Which I believe I did.

Whether or not people are willing to accept facts or not is a different days dilemma though lol.

If you’re referring to me; I did math for opportunity cost on both pre and post patch across our numerous condition cleanses. I get irritated when people who neither have the apparent skill level (easily discernable based on the opinions they cling to) nor the math to be able to prove their point get on here dismissing respectable people while “loudly” restating their wrong opinions over and over again like a broken record, which is why I even chimed in in the first place; I don’t like seeing you guys who are warmly acquainted with me being attacked and dismissed even though you’re right.

If I wanted to hear about what people “feel” about things I’d become a therapist, not get on the GW2 forums. Besides that, the title of this thread uses the word “think,” so that’s what I figured we were here to do.

Besides all that though.

Running those numbers, ignoring the obvious SoR result (when build crafting, starting with it as your cleanse leaves you the most options after making that selection to gear your build towards), it actually reaffirmed for me what a lot of people have never stopped saying; that Druid is a straight up add-on/upgrade to Ranger.

Looking at Soulbeast, mechanically that’s obviously true which is good because elite specs need to compete with each other, but now I’m incredibly worried about the rest of the traits.

As far as the patch goes, my initial impression was that I’d like to replace Beastmastery on the NM/BM/Druid PvP build but the HaO is so strong, especially against the current metagame, while TU really isn’t (if I wanted to go WS, but TU isn’t a strong enough up front heal with all the burst, and classes like thieves can just auto you through it and negate/beat it) and there is no traited Heal at all in Marksmanship, so where you’d want to use the new Lesser Call of the Wild to might share to the pet where you now can’t with BM, you lose a lot of Healing per Second by not having a traited heal.

MM/BM/Druid will probably be the way to go until expac in PvP, but even then it’s not something we can truly test the efficacy of until ANet bug fixes everything.

Which really is ultimately the annoying part of the patch, ANets spaghetti code being garbage and them clearly not testing or not caring about pushing all the broken things. As a programmer; if I pushed glaring user-end bugs out to my companies customers, my boss would kindly ask me to go back to school before I come back to work, or to just not come back at all.

I stated explicitly net total. You’re all wasting your own energy by defining the difference to yourself.

And it’s still factually the best opportunity cost cleanse prenerf for the Ranger. Just like I said, AS WELL AS one of the strongest burst cleanses.

But since people want to misrepresent arguments by comparing prepatch conditions to postpatch conditions and mistake their opinions for facts, it’s time for some math. So here, let’s create an analysis for pre and postpatch opportunity cost:

Some notes/explanations: base is the explanation of used utilities, conditions cleanses is the number of conditions cleanses in a 10 second period (we need to compare against best and worst case scenarios while retaining the concept that this is burst cleansing. Worst case scenario overlaps with post patch numbers, so prepatch will handle best case), number of utilities used is the number of utility slots used to achieve the total cleanses, traitlines is the number of actual trait families needs for the utilities to cleanse, traits are the number of actual traits selected for the case, runes is binary, will be a 1 if a runeset bonus is used to achieve condition cleansing.

We use condition cleanses as a positive number, and subtract the numbers to the right of it, before dividing by the number of elements to get the “score” of the case (cleanses – (utilities + traitlines + traits + runes) / 5), higher score = better opportunity cost. Better opportunity costs means more options to choose from which implies better resource management and more value per resource invested.

Sigils could been seen as constants, so we’re not going to include them because algebra (A < B and A + c < B + c where c is a constant is equivalent). Evasive Purity could be seen as a constant as well, but I’ll include it for the visual in a few cases and at a value of 2 cleanses.

The postpatch won’t contain any values that were included in the prepatch section and unchanged.

Why is this important? Choosing options with good cost values allow for more resources to be invested elsewhere in the build. Of course there is a positive correlation between the amount of investments being made towards doing a thing and how well that thing gets done, but every investment made is less resources you get to make elsewhere, so choosing the best opportunity costs leaves you with the most investment opportunity.

This is how you create versatile, multipurpose builds that are strong in multiple areas.

tl;dr Unsurprisingly, Signet of Renewal provides the best condition cleansing pre AND post patch for the opportunity cost. Druidic Clarity comes in second in most cases, also unsurprisingly, even tying Signet of Renewal in some extreme cases.

Maybe next time people should check their passionate arguments at the door and remember that their subjective opinions aren’t facts. Not liking something != it being bad.

As far as net totals go, SoR was one of the best condi clears in the game. The list of single utility skills that could remove 6 condis per minute in the game is incredibly low, it’s more than the Soldier Runes + the 3 “common” shouts (WHAO, PM, SotP) combined. It’s competitive with a traited TU prepatch, which required a specific traitline, GM trait, AND utility to achieve the same net condi removal that 1 utility provided passively, LET ALONE actively.

To be clear, I love the new SoR, it’s utility bar compression that frees up rune selection (in PvP specifically) which creates more build variety without there being clear cut, optimal choices.

But the SoR argument is like saying it’s inefficient to get paid $100 a month for a year when you could make $200 which is a bigger chunk, but at 2-3 (or more) time slower. In a worst case efficiency, you’re breaking even, and beyond that, the monthly payment is more money. The only argument that can be made for the other options is that people prefer the delivery method.

Even though we know some skills will be altered, let’s make the quick assumption that the pets skills will be the same exact skills you can use in beastmode.

Here’s just an obvious combo with the meta pets; unmelded, smokescale F2, double dagger leap (assuming finisher) through smokefield, meld. Now you get a long stealth and stealth opener. Melded knockdown from stealth into melded smoke assault into dagger 2 then unmeld Smokescale AI smoke assault into knockdown while continuing to weapon combo.

I mean, that’s just 1 pet. There’s going to be so much combo opportunity.

Take what I just said with Bristleback as the other pet (assuming pet swapping will still work the same). Continued from AI knockdown; swap into Bristleback F2, meld, melded Bristleback sharpening stone into melded spike shotgun skill.

All the while being able to use weapon skills and utilities.

I mean, I can understand why people who spend most of their time in PvE might not be as hyped, but there is going to be so much depth and strength to our gameplay. Not to mention damage diversity.

Currently, people generally know which Ranger pets and weapons to watch out for and they can outplay us by waiting for the damage to come out, which is why Druid wins fights through long term attrition by sustain and capitalizing on mistakes.

Soulbeast on the other hand will have a larger set of skills being brought into the fight to begin with, but on top of that, the sheer amount of ways we can approach a situation and the number of things enemies will have to watch for has gone up so considerably that on paper it will make Soulbeast one of the strongest classes to play as/fight against in the game (Weaver is like this too). Compared to fighting games (not going to get into why it’s a good comparison but it is, and I will if someone asks); where some of the highest tier fighters have the best 50/50 mixups and combo options, and we see that as long as ANet didn’t botch anything up, Soulbeast will be one of the stronger fighting specs in the expac.

LughLongArm.5460:

anduriell.6280:

jcbroe.4329:

We’re still missing info on a 4th stance, aren’t we? Realization I had.

Which instance? I think we got the info of all 5.

He’s referring to that all HOT elite specializations got 6 utility skill kits(like our glyphs). Not sure it will be the same this time(we can hope).

LughLongArm.5460:

anduriell.6280:

jcbroe.4329:

We’re still missing info on a 4th stance, aren’t we? Realization I had.

Which instance? I think we got the info of all 5.

He’s referring to that all HOT elite specializations got 6 utility skill kits(like our glyphs). Not sure it will be the same this time(we can hope).

Yeah that’s what I meant. Every class that received competent coverage was shown to have a heal, an elite, and 4 utilities.

Krispera.5087:

jcbroe.4329:

We’re still missing info on a 4th stance, aren’t we? Realization I had.

And you made me realise that. It’s Moa Stance, no info.

Maybe we will get a Stun Breaker somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised it’s support/defensive oriented.

Dolyak Stance is the stunbreak afaik, but yeah, if it’s Moa Stance, it’s almost definitely supportive.

Limit details, turn down graphics, pray.

Especially cuz you know none of that flashy stuff is actually using your gfx card.

Rashagar.8349:

So, anyone know if this “if you would be downed” bit means that you’d also be affected by the condi reset you’d get if you’d been downed?

Just idle curiosity, I’ve never played with berserker or anything, but if it functions as a condi clear/condi reset too…

The Warrior version doesn’t act as a condi clear, no, so I doubt this would :/

Something I would like to point out to everybody in this topic in general though;

We don’t know if Warriors trait is going to be hit in the balance patch before expac, for starters, and we also only have the PvP version of this skill if it happens to be skill split.

Form follows function.

Also, I much prefer getting the skills on top of still having access to weapon skills. It creates much more build diversity that way.

We’re still missing info on a 4th stance, aren’t we? Realization I had.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

zealex.9410:

So a reduction on the speed you are being pulled or knocked back would help reducing/fixing the issue? And would there be a trade off to it?

That’s what we’re planning to try internally soon. Hopefully, we can find a speed that largely feels the same. Potential trade offs would likely be just changing the way knockbacks/pulls feel. Slowing them down could make things feel a bit sluggish. And of course, slowing things down too much might actually feel like you’re getting CC’d longer.

Once we have the code change in, we’ll be going over it with the skills & balance team to evaluate whether it’s the right change to make.

Specifically with pulls, since anecdotally I’ve seen it happen much more often with them and I’ve even observed people who I would claim are intentionally attempting to pull people into the environment;

Why not make LoS stop pulls? It makes sense from a balance standpoint to begin with, but would also “fix” issues with the environment.

There’s ways of dealing with knockbacks like that too. For instance, a simple solution could be the trend of games to have CC that states something like “CC into a wall causes stun,” but in reality what you would do is “convert” the knockback to a different CC if the knockback would cause an environment collision.

Personally, I’d rather these options be considered than for a solution that will only “reduce” the occurence rate. Your ultimate goal should be to improve and preserve the user end experience, and being knocked into the environment should be treated with a zero tolerance attitude because it ruins entire game experiences for groups of people; not just individuals.

True.

Again, I just don’t think we know enough at this point, not that I’m not worried. But specifically, without knowing all of the traits related to everything or seeing exactly how everything will work, it’s hard to say anything along the lines of what I think needs to be nerfed or buffed just yet.

For example; we don’t even know if it’s just the stance portion of the the stances that get shared, or if it will be all of the moving parts (a good example being that dolyak stance gets a lot less strong if the boons don’t get shared).

We don’t know what the interacting traits will be like (stance cooldown trait, etc) or anything along those lines.

Looking at the other classes that have more of their information readily available, I’m hopeful, but I’m also cautious because we don’t have that information yet, and even looking at other classes I can already see all the best in slot traiting options for different gamemodes, and that concerns me because I also see that situation as well with Soulbeast with just the GMs.

Your details on Griffon Stance are off, unless I’m reading the screenshots wrong. You get 25% of your endurance back immediately, and then for the duration, you proceed to have 100% endurance regen per second (essentially the old vigor boon before it was reworked).

Also, I’ll just address this here, but 600 range isn’t the only range in which support classes support. WvW in organized groups has moved heavily towards favoring Chronos as support, and their support (healing from mantras and additional mantra effects) is only 360 range as well. Will it be annoying to pug with and even PvP with? Yes. But it’s doable now and will still be doable when it’s a mechanic we have to make use of on our class.

Bear Stance is strong if I’m reading it right. You lose 8 conditions over 4 seconds. Sharing that out to allies is 4 conditions removed from allies. That’s one of the strongest removal options in the game, though I’ll be the first to admit the when I see Spellbreakers heal, I wonder if maybe we’re on the short end of the power creep stick this time around.

Nothing else for now. I have my own worries that are very much in line with the OP.

1 second interval from my screenshots.

I’m going to throw this out there since I haven’t seen anybody bring up the “how is this going to work” concept for it yet.

So the way that pet swapping is coded, a new object of the pet (fully healed, no boons except from traits, etc) is created.

Assuming that beastmode uses the same code to bring the pet back to the map; it’ll be a way to save your pet without swapping to a different pet.

Also, assuming you can still use beastmode with a dead pet and it comes back as a new object, no more long periods of time spent petless?

Not that it’s a true solution in gamemodes where it’s a problem but it does seem to have a lot of potential.

mistsim.2748:

https://youtu.be/nqj-yOPEudA?t=2120

One of the GM traits literally gives you a second life if you’re in beastmode when you get downed. looks like an incredibly powerful elite spec overall. as per usual ANet antics, there will be no reason to roll with any GM other than Eternal Bond in pvp.

For the GM traits from a different thread, thanks to mistsim. Can’t screenshot right now or I would.

Personally I think the stance sharing GM alone is incredibly strong support, especially given that some of the screenshots imply that you can bring AoE heals and boons with this spec too. Ultimately we’ll have to see how it works, but sharing out Bear, Dolyak, Wolf, and even Griffon stance looks like strong group utility, at least for PvP and WvW.