How satisfied are you with soulbeast?

How satisfied are you with current state of soulbeast? And why?

Soulbeast is a great idea, but just with another clunky mechanic like druid. There are plenty of bugs with the beastmode skills and underwhelming pet and dagger skills.In addition leaving soulbeast mode when entering water or mounting is very annoying.

Soulbeast needs many improvements and some changing in mechanics.

I put Moderate. Have no interest in the spec.

I guess I could say Im disappointed that they didnt release a spec that Im interested in, but its just a video game and Im still having fun with PoF so Im not worried about it.

Moderate. I have issues with the traits and some utilities. The rest of the spec I'm fine with, notwithstanding the bugs.

The bugs and issues aside, Its decent. It could do with a few QoL changes but its not as if its dreadful or anything. I have fun playing it. The bugs and issues are down to the POOR testing on Anets side. How they managed to release an Elite spec with SO many issues i dont know.

i like soulbeast and all but the problem with the spec is that there are only a handful of useful pets to merge with. the rest are garbage. if you're not going to be using one of the handful of useful pets then you're better off running core ranger or druid.

I like the mechanic, but it needs work (the swap, it needs it).I like the utilities in design, but they are lackluster(dolyak is cool though).I like the new pet abbilities, put they are buggy and underpowered as hell.I like dagger, but it underperforms as a condi or hybrid weapon.I like the trait interactions with core ranger, but the traits are missing key parts to make them good.

Overall i like the new e-spec. I like the flavor, the mechanic, the theme of the skills and traits.But everything needs improvements, fixes, buffes and changes.

The E-Spec is new and has the most potential of all the new e-specs. I hope Anet uses this potential.

As long as soulbeast has to deal with this list full of bugs and non-functional abilities and traits I can't give it a good rating.

Speaking from a raiding PvE perspective, extremely pleased. Condition-ranger was slowly nerfed and nerfed into obscurity, Soulbeast changed all of that. It's now one of, if not the strongest choice for condition DPS. My only downside so far is the feeling that the class could have been far more complex and engaging given some proper pet swapping/remerging mechanics.

Performance wise is not bad in "PVE only"

But the lack of innovation and the lack of new way to play the class as a whole disappoints me.

This is coming from a guy like me who actively play EVERY CLASSES , and tried all 9 of the new specializations.

Absolutely love Scourge, Spellbreaker, and Deadeye. (Renegade is awesome in pve too)

From a pvp/wvw perspective, stances are sh*t. Some of them need numbers adjusted, others just need a complete overhaul. Furthermore the elite is the second time rangers got an elite thats just not playable in any form of pvp (have you ever seen someone use the glyph elite in pvp? eehmm NO). Pet merging is cool, but to be honest when they announced it I got the idea that it was going to be a little more complex and it all seems pretty flavorless now, why doesnt the jaguar give a 3s stealth for example? What's with all weird animations on most pet abilities and why do so many pets have the same abilities, really way simpler and less interesting than I expected.I dnno I've pretty much started playing other stuff because I just can't keep playing a boring staff-druid & soulbeast is anything but playable.

Currently moderate, I would put displeased if it wasn't for the fact that I like its potential. They need to buff and rework the undertuned skills and traits, give us pet swap in beastmode on an universal cooldown with normal pet swap, and make all core traits and skill to actually interact properly with it. And, last but not least, fix the damn bugs. That list is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.And I won't stop bitching about it until they do.

this is the first time since launch i've not played my ranger for an extended time, i'm completely bored by condi ranger mechanics. i've been stuck playing basically the same thing for years. I was really hoping we'd get some profession flexibility with Soulbeast and a competitive power build. It's an upgrade for condi ranger for sure but i'm just over it now.

I never use soulbeast competively, but I do enjoy it for pve for the most part where reactions and counterplay are easier to calculate. I play mostly wvw though, so it ultimately falls short, hence the displeased vote.

it's not even playable

In spvp my mains were necro and ranger. Now it's just necro.

Problem with ranger is that it's a poor man's warrior with pet. Whatever ranger can do, warrior can do better, save super long range sniping and party protection.Druid broke that curse by introducing a healing spec, something a warrior definitely can't do. And that was awesome. Not for raid balance due to GotL but for ranger as a unique, viable profession it was.

Soulbeast however feels like once again is a poor man's warrior. We got more "defy pain" type defenses uptime, unblockables and bit of resist.Except core warrrior already has all those, and now spellbreaker adds extremely strong boonhate, something ranger & soulbeast is still lacking, not to mention how much resistance warrior has vs tiny bit that soul beast delivers...

The devs spent so much time making sure the mechanics behind their design idea worked that they never stopped to realize that their design doesn't functionally work compared to the fluidity offered by combat across the rest of the game.

Combine that with not bringing to the table anything that core Ranger couldn't already do itself and being bogged down with boring damage multipliers that still don't push the class to the highest damage slot in PvP, and you're left with a linear spec that is only good at doing more damage, and is weaker than even core Ranger at everything else because of utility lost and unnecessarily added mechanical complexity for minimal output (leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design).

@jcbroe.4329 said:...leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design...

Could just have a different mouse button bind that is (F5 { Xms delay} F4) to do that...

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@jcbroe.4329 said:...leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design...

Don't give them the idea of adding pet swap on exit when we already know that pet swap in beast mode should be the top priority.Only on exit doesn't fix a whole lot when the beastmode cooldown is still there. If they end up doing that and call it a day, I'm done with this spec for anything outside pve.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@jcbroe.4329 said:...leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design...

It's a pretty simple (not necessarily fix but simple as in conceptually) software design issue that shouldn't even need to be discussed because it should've been addressed during design/implementation.

Part of the clunkiness in general is the fact that we take a button that works and is used heavily by core Ranger outside of Beastmode and remove all functionality from it in Beastmode.

F4 needs to do something. I personally don't care what it does, but anything is better than nothing, and anything involving mode/pet transitioning would be a welcome QoL improvement (which we shouldn't even have to ask for because it's competent design).

@jcbroe.4329 said:

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@jcbroe.4329 said:...leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design...

Pretty much. The reason I almost think it's intentional and meant as a way of keeping the spec in line. They did that a lot with ranger before druid..

@Kraitan.8476 said:From a pvp/wvw perspective, stances are kitten. Some of them need numbers adjusted, others just need a complete overhaul. Furthermore the elite is the second time rangers got an elite thats just not playable in any form of pvp (have you ever seen someone use the glyph elite in pvp? eehmm NO). Pet merging is cool, but to be honest when they announced it I got the idea that it was going to be a little more complex and it all seems pretty flavorless now, why doesnt the jaguar give a 3s stealth for example? What's with all weird animations on most pet abilities and why do so many pets have the same abilities, really way simpler and less interesting than I expected.I dnno I've pretty much started playing other stuff because I just can't keep playing a boring staff-druid & soulbeast is anything but playable.

Stances are garbage everywhere, not just pvp/wvw.

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Kraitan.8476 said:From a pvp/wvw perspective, stances are kitten. Some of them need numbers adjusted, others just need a complete overhaul. Furthermore the elite is the second time rangers got an elite thats just not playable in any form of pvp (have you ever seen someone use the glyph elite in pvp? eehmm NO). Pet merging is cool, but to be honest when they announced it I got the idea that it was going to be a little more complex and it all seems pretty flavorless now, why doesnt the jaguar give a 3s stealth for example? What's with all weird animations on most pet abilities and why do so many pets have the same abilities, really way simpler and less interesting than I expected.I dnno I've pretty much started playing other stuff because I just can't keep playing a boring staff-druid & soulbeast is anything but playable.

Stances as a skill type has generaly been garbage in guild wars pve since 2005 (with a few exceptions), and has always been a common used skill type in pvp. I don't know why anyone expected them to perform well in pve.But when the majority of them are dreadful in pvp aswell, it does say a lot.

@jcbroe.4329 said:

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@jcbroe.4329 said:...leaving Beastmode is just an extra button press with no functionality that could have just as easily been tied to the swap pet button so that pet swap in Beastmode leaves Beastmode, it's poor design...

Oh, I completely agree, it's absurd that a whole swathe of traits and mechanics do not work while in beastmode, but your idea of pet swap dropping you out of beastmode can be worked around with a keybind, that was all I was saying.

I'm so satisfied that i'm playing all day long....with my druid :bleep_bloop: