Soulbeast Identity Feedback

[Goohex.8394]

Hello everyone,

 

It's been a week since PoF launch and we have had quite some time to play around with the Soulbeast elite specialization. First of all, I'd like to thanks ANet the huge effort made to bring us the Soulbeast. It brings a mechanic we have been waiting for a long time and it's finally here! Beastmode!

 

## Context

I've to say I've had a lot of fun figuring out how to play the Soulbeast and what roles it can fulfill in the various game modes and I can say I'm getting the hang of it and I'm actually enjoying the specialization all around. However, as everyone may have already noticed, the spec needs some tunning and bug-fixing on some aspects. I think that's all we can agree on and I'm sure they'll be addressed as the time passes.

 

I've been closely following the forums during this week to learn what my fellow rangers had to say about the spec. I do agree with a lot of what they say, the ideas they are proposing and the issues they're pointing out. However, it seems that the identity of the **Soulbeast isn't well defined.** At the beginning of the expansion, nobody had a clear idea of **what is Soulbeast supposed to be**, **how would it be played** or what would be its strengths and weaknesses.

 

 

## Main Issue

As the week has passed by, a lot of us have realized **Soulbeast is all about going into beastmode**, take advantage of those new skills that provide some usefullness **and get out ASAP** to bring our pet back since it's still way better than the stat increase and the access to 3 new skills (sometimes only 2 worth mentioning).

 

While it's true the elite specialization brings a brand new mechanic its **lack of flexibility** and **forced gameplay style** definately has let some players down.

 

## Potential changes

I want to share with you some additions to the **Major Adepts traits** that I've come up with that would allow the player to **define their gameplay style** without bringing imbalance to the specialization.

 

# 1 Fresh Reinforcement

> _Entering beastmode grants you the boons affecting your pet_

This trait is used as an all-in for **high burst situations** in **short periods of time** followed by a **long downtime**. It's acomplished by casting all the available skills that grant boons to the ranger and the pet and entering beastmode to proc Fresh Reinforcement.

 

While this trait is really good and allows the ranger to excell in certain situations there's **not much consideration with the pet** since it's only used to double the boons. After leaving beastmode the pet looses all its boons and all the power asociated with them rendering it **"near useless"**. This is one of the main reasons rangers do not swap pets during combats because loosing the boons on our pet often comes with a great loose on power, pressure and threat.

 

Allowing the pet to retain some of that power when leaving beastmode will **reward players who are loyal to its pet** and weaving in and out of that pet's beastmode, **strengthening its bond** and heavily **focusing the ranger's gameplay in one pet**.

 

`SUGGESTION`

> _Entering beastmode grants you the boons affecting your pet._

> **Leaving beastmode grants your pet some of the boons affecting you**. (Duration numbers may be decreased and stack numbers limited)

 

# 2 Live Fast

> _Using a Beast ability grants you offensive boons_

This trait pretends to empower the use of beast abilities and while it does it job there's still some room to make it far more interesting. Right now it feels very flat and simple and sometimes getting interrupted prevents you from benefiting from it for quite some time.

 

There has been some discussion and expectations about **pet swapping while in beastmode**. I do understand and somehow agree up to certain degree with the points in favor and against beastmode pet swapping. However, we have a good opportunity here. If we are to define a **gameplay style heavily focused on beastmode** and beast abilities, allowing the player to pet swap beastmode pet abilities is the right choice.

In top of that, as it is right now, the stat increase while in beastmode is far from what having a pet brings to the table (Higher damage, AFK damage, Projectile blocking, NPC Tanking,...). The addition of new secondary stats could help with that.

 

`SUGGESTION`

> _Using a Beast ability grants you offensive boons._

> **Allows the player to swap pets while in beastmode**

> **Primary stats granted while in beastmode are increased. You gain additionaly secondary stats**

 

# 3 Unstoppable Union

> _Entering beastmode breaks stun and causes your attacks to be temporarily unblockable_

This trait highly rewards entering soulbeast mode and leaving it immediately to refresh the cooldown of beastmode as fast as possible and make use of the stun break or unblockable attacks on demand.

 

In order to focus and differenciate this gameplay style from the others, reducing the recharge rate of beastmode would make it even more clear this trait is all about **fast paced transitions** with the beastmode. But we can add a bit more to really create what it has been disscussed sometimes: **weaving between pets and beastmode**. Adding reduced pet swap recharge rate would help navigate between the pets and its beastmodes. This will lead to a **gameplay focused on both pets, their abilities and the beastmode** trait proc.

 

`SUGGESTION`

> _Entering beastmode breaks stun and causes your attacks to be temporarily unblockable_

> **Beastmode gains reduced charge**

> **Pet swap gains reduced charge**

 

## Conclusion

These changes pretend to add more depth, flexibility and **variety for the specialization **in order to make it more interesting and versatile to fulfill the **wide variety of players gameplay styles** expectations and preferences without adding huge complexity.

 

If you made it up to here, thank you very much for reading.

 

_Feel free to share and discuss!_

[Vacant.4159]

To me, most of the issues stem from huge lack of synergy between Soulbeast and core ranger. For example, what are you supposed to so with the Maul attack of opportunity? Use it on hilt bash? Furthermore, anything requiring pet swapping is hard to use with Soulbeast, which includes Clarion Bond, Zephyr's Speed, and Poison Master. Synergy is even lacking within the Soulbeast line. For example daggers don't even have a disable to take advantage of the minor grandmaster trait.

 

Plus the Soulbeast traits are just boring. Passive damage modifiers for both minor traits, some out of place trait that provides us with pseudo resistance while we have protection, even though we barely have anyway of providing protection, a grandmaster trait that is centred around dying. Plus, why can't the grandmaster stance trait reduce stance cooldowns?

 

I dont feel bad-ass, I dont feel like some wolfman who is in tune with his pet, I feel crippled. The Soulbeast identity for me so far, is one of a square peg in a round hole.

 

Edit: I forgot to add that I like the sound of your suggestions.

[Chrury.4627]

As I play with my Ranger/Soulbeast through the story (and having tinkered in the PvP preview) I've been thinking about this a lot. I think some of your ideas, Goohex do a bit too much but I do agree with your premise that currently (paraphrasing) "Soulbeast is all about going into beastmode". And this is ok, but I also agree with your idea that it should be more flexible than that. It should be about playing _around_ Beastmode; jumping in and out as useful, instead of just for a burst of some sort.

 

And I think you, Vacant, also hit on one of the reasons this feels clunky: the minor traits.

 

Now these are _good_ traits. They add some interesting build potential, especially for power builds. But they don't feel like _minor_ traits. They feel like misplaced major traits.

In my mind, the minor traits of a traitline should do 2 things.

1: They should synergize with each other to form the base identity of the traitline.

2: They should always be useful when using that traitline.

 

As an example, let's look at Skirmishing. Skirmishing's thing is getting getting personal and outmaneuvering the enemy. And the minor traits reinforce this idea.

**Tail Wind** - Swiftness on weapon swap for maneuverability.

**Furious Grip** - Fury on weapon swap for more oomph.

**Hunter's Tactics** - Increased crit chance when flanking.

These traits work together for the theme and are always useful when the traitline is active.

 

Second example: War's Berserker. Berserker as an elite spec is about building adrenaline and then powering up to use the powerful F1 skills for a short scary amount of time.

**Primal Rage** - Gain the primal burst ability/berserk mode.

**Always Angry** - Gain a class specific damage buff when you enter and exit berserk mode

**Fatal Frenzy** - Gain boons (Swiftness, fury, quickness) when you enter berserk mode

These minors traits also work together. Primal Rage is the foundation of the traitline while Always Angry and Fatal Frenzy synergize and enhance the package. They are also always useful to the traitline.

 

Soulbeast minor traits don't work like that for some reason. Furious Strength and Twice as Vicious are nice traits but they don't reinforce what Soulbearst is about, nor are they always useful for the traitline. It is totally possible to make a Soulbeast build with no fury application at all and it is even easier to have a build with only 1 or 2 disables.

 

I would propose that these minor traits be swapped with a couple of the major traits that actually work with the Beastmode mechanic.

-Furious Strength could be swapped with Fresh Reinforcement. (FR here should transfer your boons to pet on exit as Goohex suggests). Putting Furious Strength in Adept Minor mirrors Daredevil's Havoc Mastery trait. A conditional damage bonus that's pretty easy to fulfill. FR as a minor would then mirror the previously mentioned Always Angry for giving boons/a bonus when entering and exiting.

-Twice as Vicious could be swapped with Live Fast. Live Fast would be changed to "Using a Beast ability grants _the caster_ offensive boons." This way, your pet would also gain Quickness and Fury when it uses F2. (Which you could then copy with FR on entering beastmode). I'm not 100% on the placement of Twice as Vicious as an Adept but having it as a major trait would be similar to DD's Pulmonary Impact. A bonus damage effect from doing an interrupt. Live Fast as a minor would be similar to Fatal Frenzy; boons/bonus on doing a spec related action.

 

Having FR and Live Fast as Soulbeast minors would, IMO, make the traitline more useful within itself. They would help solidify the idea of the spec, would synergize by themselves, and would _always_ be useful while the traitline is in use.

[Zenith.7301]

Twice as vicious is terrible, but so are most of the traits in the spec for PvE with obsolete features like increasing boond duration when you gain quickness when gaining boons in PvE raids is trivial and you don't need duration increase.

 

The stances are just unspeakable. Most of them are flat out inferior to the warrior stances.

 

But the real problem is that a power ranger doesn't have anywhere close to the burst or sustain with a greatsword or mainhand sword compared to warriors. Autoattack DPS is so horrendously bad, you have no means to counterpressure and keep targets from trivially healing up your "burst" from maul.

 

Maul also has a longer cast time than arc divider or whirlwind, hits for less, and unlike warrior ranger doesn't have a plethora of low cooldown controllable CC to land the mauls like a warrior lands his bursts.

 

Ranger also doesn't have metric tons of resistance, 10+ seconds of invulnerability, and really high sustained healing.

 

A soulbeast is an inferior warrior in every way.

[Kuroshini.9482]

i like where you are going with these suggestions. It makes the minor traits very distinct since they all play around beastmode and how you want to interact with it.

[Sedlina.1097]

Ooooh I was halfway expecting some fun 'shredding' of the soulbeast major master traits. :(

 

on your suggestions. I don't think that we need to double dip into some of the already existing traitlines (reduced pet swap cd is already a part of the beastmastery line and if/when pet swap becomes a thing in beastmode the synergy will already exsist)

 

[Eleazar.9478]

You hit the nail on the head with the CD reduction for beast mode. That 10secs is brutal, I'm not saying we get pet swap while where in or have no CD in bm but 10 secs is a bit extreme I'd say 3-5 would be solid as it would make weaving in and out an swapping feel really really fun.

 

I really feel like for other classes they went ham (cough cough spell breaker 6 1/2 counter CD) but for us they were way to reserved. Come on anet we got to be able to complete with druid here. While I completely love the feel of soul beast; the form in it's current state is far less powerful than druid form which offers lots of cc, sustain, and group utility wether (buffs or stealth) makeing it far better choice in every game mode

[Goohex.8394]

> @Sedlina.1097 said:

> Ooooh I was halfway expecting some fun 'shredding' of the soulbeast major master traits. :(

>

> on your suggestions. I don't think that we need to double dip into some of the already existing traitlines (reduced pet swap cd is already a part of the beastmastery line and if/when pet swap becomes a thing in beastmode the synergy will already exsist)

>

 

I think you're right about it. I thought it would be a great idea to put a greater focus on 2 pet beastmode weaving. However, I also think that it is not healthy for the profession to duplicate the benefits and identity of other trait lines.

 

That being said, `Unstoppable Union shouldn't gain Pet swap reduced charge`.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!