Savvy.3258

> @Henry.5713 said:

> I will mostly stick to druid. No surprise there. I like druid, play it mostly in raids and it is as strong as ever now. Soulbeast simply adds a few possible options such as replacing condition ranger as a build and giving you a brawler build in PvP. Soulbeast can not replace a druid nor can druid replace a soulbeast.

Brawler build in pvp? If you mean the protection + invul abuse, it'll fail hard in anything above mid silver, might be good for people just starting out not to get instantly blown up but that's about it. A brawler build is what I actually wanted from this elite, something called Barbarian incorporating dual maces or hammer, so that we have a decent option to swap to in melee, upping defenses, providing cc and some mobility. I know the profession is called ranger and hence ranges, but that is a big hole as far as the well roundness of this profession goes, also upping power damage so it doesn't lag behind horribly as it has since forever. Soulbeast, I feel, prevents pets from being used as sources of epidemic in WvW and that's the true purpose of this elite.

Nah man it's just awful, fails miserably compared to druid in pvp. It's clunky and doesn't offer enough, to top it off.

I've got well over 1k games on ranger and played a whole lot as core as well. Soulbeast is _barely_ an improvement over core and falls miles behind Druid.

In open world, I reckon, I'll feel the same way. By the way, I play power not cranger cuz condi be lame.

Nice catch, and unfortunately all too common.

Realistically speaking, there isn't much one person can do to carry a match. It's always relative, and a team effort.

I think of it this way: you are _one person out of ten_. How much can you honestly expect to accomplish? To win you need to hold at least two points most of the time and/or get more kills. Now, I'm certain top skilled players, being able to wreck everyone and giving their team a temporary advantage, have an impact on the final score... but how much? They are still no more and no less than 10% of that particular matchup. I'm certain there are many situations in which one person feels they carried the match and someone else on that teams feels they carried the match also. Bottomline is it's always relative: you can make a difference, but only so much; if you consider this dual point holding necessity and realize that you can't be in two places at once, you'd know you're never truly carrying.

I would say, first, that any game that goes above a 60-40 deaths to kills ratio should be something that the balance team should seek to avoid. If that happens, matching was too poorly done. Queues times will only be lengethened if people feel the quality of matches deteriorate, as more and more people simply give up on GW2 PvP. That's the first point. Second is that there needs to be some measure of individual performance that impacts rating mostly so that people feel they are competing with themselves, striving to get better, win or lose, as that is a battle they can never win and that will keep them hooked... provided, of course, the quality of matchups doesn't deteriorate so much PvP stops being fun altogether, and we're dangerously close to that already.

> @Apolo.5942 said:

> There was a time when elixir might stacking was a thing, now days you would be dead 6 times over, before you got to 10 might stacks...

I like this, good objective comparison. And sadly very true.

I for one think damage in PvP is perfect as it is, it makes it more exciting. There was never a reason to buff defenses or nerf damage for PvP when purposely overpowered traitlines were introduced, who would think that? It being fast paced is what makes it fun, this will attrack new players and would improve viewship if esl was still a thing; fast and exciting is the very reason why F1 races are won by the first person to start their engine.

In all honesty though, that burst, especially in team fight situations, takes away a great deal of skill from the equation.

You can't go near Scourge and Deadeye will snipe you in 2s

GG

That's my take, but I'm interested to hear what other people have to say.

If you're a hardenend PvPer you've been at this for days, including the demo weekend, and have seen enough to form an opinion.

There's no other way of saying it, it's just an awful specialization. I knew this before I even tried it, to be perfectly honest. After watching this video I knew it'd be terrible. You can hear it in the developer's voice themselves. There's zero emotion, no enthusiasm whatsoever; just a casual statement that "it works well with some of the new pets we're adding", in a very matter- of-fact tone. Compare that to, say, the deadeye's introduction, ripe with enthusiasm.

If you're a PvE min-maxer you won't care about flavor, just numbers, but if you actually like your profession and want to use it in open world or PvP, Soulbeast is just terrible. One of the main issues comes down to design itself: giving each pet a unique set of abilities while merged makes no sense, to be honest. It would have been better to give each _pet family_ a _selection_ of abilities (F1 and F2) and have the F3 be common to each pet family. The reason I say this is because you can't select pet abilities themselves, so if you pick a pet you gotta consider their pre-existing abilities _and_ the ones you get while merged. The end result ends up being too restrictive and underwhelming. Whereas if you could select two skills to use while merged, based on the pet family alone, then you have a choice and customization options: you pick a pet whose unmerged abilities you like, whose boons while merged you like, and take the merged abilities that best suit your playstyle and build. This is more in line with what GW is about: play what you like, how you like; as opposed to play what we give you, because that's all there is, which is what Soulbeast feels like.

The second issue I find is with pet swapping: CD on merge is too long, so having to unmerge then swap pets then wait for 10s to merge again, possibly another 10s to swap pets again then another 10s to merge once more.... it's terrible. Too clunky and dull. It encourages you to sit in merged form and/or use one pet only. A better system would be to allow swapping while merged, even if this makes your merged abilities go into CD (5s-8s tops, no more, 8s is already pushing it), the fluidity of the spec would be much improved.

The third issue is how underwhelming it is when compared to some of the other specializations. Let's agree for a second that all we get out of this specialization is three new skills and a weapon, a 2 skill weapon I might add. So, whereas other professions are getting actual changes to their playstyle and flavor, we get 3 new skills we can hardly customize... Onto the skills themselves. Take Worldy Impact as an example and compare it to Holo Leap: Worldy Impact, the one good thing that's not passive you get from merging with a Ferocious pet, has 588 base damage, a 1s cast time which roots you in place and telegraphs your intention far and wide, and a 25s CD; Holo Leap, on the other hand, has 669 base damage, tracking, 600 range and a 6s CD. Either this was designed by two different teams or I don't know what's what. Let me emphasize that point: Holosmiths got a whole bunch of cool stuff. We get Worldy Impact, and how does that one thing compare? It's awful!

Bottomline: soulbeast sucks.

Hilt Bash, not even a SB skill but the good old regular GS 5, has half the range it should.

> @Zeghart.9841 said:

> > You dont see a problem with this? Of course I'm biased too as everything they introduce nowadays is unblockable and the one defense guards rely on are blocks. IE; Full Counter, and Break Enchantments being the biggest offenders. It makes it so mindless.

> > Many of the warriors that posted on this thread pointed out that Full Counter is healthy for the game because it promotes a gamestyle that's not "12345 spamming", but that's contradictory considering Warriors dont have to pay attention to Aegis / F3 blocks.

>

> Warrior bursts (aside from the new one) are not unblockable, and landing bursts is what keeps Core Warriors and Berserkers alive. Only now the class is getting some much needed respite from all the blind/block spam it was forced to deal with for years.

>

> I do find it quite ironic how so many Guardian players who have access to insane amounts of blocks are complaining that Warriors are getting one as well.

>

> Spellbreaker is supposed to be the anti-bullcrap specialization. Seems like it's working fine so far.

Just wanna point out that as a warrior, blocks and blinds are an absolute nightmare. Reason being that you have a few hard hitting skills and if those happen to get blocked or blinded, gg. If full counter weren't unblockable, no one would play spellbreaker. Perhaps a range and damage nerf would be in order, but no more than 20%. A CD increase would gut it for the simple reason you'll be lacking in defense... perhaps this is why endure pain too such a heavy nerf? Because full counter is warrior's damage mitigation now? That make sense to anyone? Maybe.

The only people would could possibly complain about this skill being unblockable are guards, mesmers and other warriors, and I have serious doubts about the latter. So let's see, let's even it out: random aegis procs, aegis on skills, block on heal, a 5s block followed by a 3s invulnerability followed by another 5s block, add two heals to the mix and perhaps enough time to refresh the original block-heal. Sound familiar? All the while dealing massive damage. Now for chronomancer's defensives: 1.5s block followed by another 1.5s block followed, followed by 2s sword distortion, followed by say a 3s shatter distortion, followed by a triple daze, followed by dual stuns, followed by (cough op refresh elite) another distortion, another triple daze, another sword distortion maybe, etc., all the while pestering condis non-stop, blinding your foes with UI clutter and hoping all around the place.

Seriously? And you people complain about full counter?

Like those two don't have _too many defensives_?

Even though ranger's my main, I have yet to find a half decent soulbeast build. My guess is people will take advantage of the extra conditions rangers couldn't apply before and go back to SB trapper ranger, as I don't like condi builds I refused to try.

DH>Firebrand seems the worse of the lot in terms of HoT vs PoF, as the latter lacks in sustain and the former (cough op refresh elite) is overflowing with it.

I noticed they do quite poorly vs warriors and deadeyes, other than that they can pretty much trash anything.

This is looking more and more like a condi meta. I'm judging based on the insane amount of matches I've already played since yesterday and during the demo weekend, and how difficult if not impossible it is to go up against a team with two or more people on condi builds. There just isn't enough cleanse to handle it and that damage is very high, but perhaps it'll normalize as people come to understand the new specs and learn what to avoid? I doubt it.

> @Jinks.2057 said:

> I've noticed you get REALLY upset when Anet nerfs the low risk high reward builds. S/D condi thief was just as bad as cele d/d ele.

>

> I'm glad both are gone

That. Just as I was glad to see Berserker move out of the meta. Yeah it was a rough patch but pvp became much better for it. The ability to headbutt + arc divide you for half your health without a clear telegraph is just ludicrous and takes away the skill factor that's supposed to prevail. Here's the thing though: devs don't seem to consider the most broken combination possible when they introduce a "let's make underused weapons viable again" patch. It is there job to make it, and ours to break it. We exploit any gimmick they'll let us exploit.

For that matter, why does every thief build feel like a troll build? Vault spam, SP blink spam, DD evade spam, PP #2 spam while evading 6-8 times in a fight, and then we got the infamous DP thief which actually requires you to get good. Deadeye does absurd, easy, safe damage, is utterly dull to play and very annoying to play against. That one might take the crown as the king of all troll builds.

Let's look at it a different way: as a spellbreaker you're restricted to level one bursts; full counter costs adrenaline, stops autoattack and all other forms of damage, so you effectively stand there doing nothing but blocking and timing it correctly does require some skill, aka you use it when you think your opponent is coming at you full force. If it weren't unblockable, it'd be useless considering the obscene amount of blocks there are. I'd even go a step further and say it should bypass all defenses, even blind. If anything, I find this skill needs more damage because it does feel quite meh, even on a full berserker build. Fun to use though. GG.