What you would like to see in the next balance patch.

SOULBEAST

Dagger mainhandAutoattack chain:Leading swipe: Base damage increased by 15%Serpent stab: Base damage increased by 15%Deadly Delivery: This attack now applies Torment instead of Vulnerability. Base damage increased by 15%.

Double Arc: Changed the animation of this skill. This skill now perform a whirl finisher,evading attacks for 1¼ sec. Number of targets: 3. Conditions applied are the same.Instinctive Engage: This skill now dazes the target for 1½ sec. Remove a boon if the target gets interrupted.

StancesGriffon Stance: This skill now grants 50 endurance instead of 25, and breaks stun. This skill now makes you remove a condition every time you evade an attack while in this stance.Vulture Stance: This skill now grants 33% condition duration for 6 seconds. While in this stance, inflict torment to foes if they are above the health threshold (50%) and inflict torment and poison when they are below it.One Wolf Pack: Strikes triggered by this stance grants might (8 seconds) and fury (4 seconds).

BeastmodeYou can now swap "pet souls" while in beastmode (pet swap). This action will have an animation, showing your enemies that you are swapping pets. A pet icon is now displayed under your name to make merged pets more recognizable.

Beastmode skillsBearsBite: Base damage increased by 100%. This skill now removes a condition on hit.Defy Pain: This skill no longer have a cast time.

BirdsSwoop: Fixed a bug causing this skill to travel a shorter distance than intended. Damage of this skill increased by 70%.Quickening Screech: This skill now daze up to 5 enemies near you in 300 radius. This skill now it's a blast finisher.

CaninesCrippling Leap: Fixed a bug causing this skill to travel a shorter distance than intended. Damage of this skill increased by 80%.Brutal Charge: Fixed a bug causing this skill to travel a shorter distance than intended. Damage of this skill increased by 200%. Radius of this attack increased to hit multiple targets more reliably.

DrakesChomp: Health gained from this skill increased by 30% x target. Radius of this skill increased to hit multiple targets more reliably. Damage of this skill increased by 40%.Tail Swipe: This skill now knockback enemies. Damage of this skill increased by 70%.

FelinesBite: Damage of this skill increased by 300%. This skill now grants 4 seconds of stealth on hit and grants Attack of opportunity on the next hit.Maul: Damage of this skills increased by 60%. Number of bleeding stacks increased from 4 to 6.

MoasHarmonic cry: Base healing from this skill increased from 1780 to 3250 hp. Radius increased from 240 to 400.Frenzied Attack: This skill now grants 5 seconds fury and 4 seconds of quickness. Damage of this skill increased by 70%.

SpidersEntangling Web: This skill now is a ground targeted aoe that pulses immobilize for 4 seconds.

JaracandaCall lightning: Radius of this skill increased from 180 to 400. This skill now call multiple lightnings x pulse.

Soulbeast Beast skills:Unflinching Fortitude: Removed the activation time.Primal Cry: This skill now fear enemies (2 seconds) and inflict 5 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds if you interrupt them. Bleeding stacks increased from 3 to 6. This skill now is a blast finisher.Prelude Lash: This skill now shoot roots that immobilize, remove 2 boons, and pull up to 5 enemies.Worldly Impact: This skill now makes you jump on the targeted location, and it's a blast finisher. Enemies struck are knocked down for 2 seconds.Spiritual Reprieve: Cast time of this skill reduced to 1 second.

Traits:Live Fast: This skill now grant boons if you use your pet F2 aswell.Essence of Speed: Gaining quickness increases the duration of other boons affecting you and grants superspeed to you and your pet.Predator's Cunning: Gain stealth when you leave beastmode, and gain Attack of opportunity.Leader of the Pack: Now Stance skills grants their effects to nearby allies for the entire duration. Reduce the recharge of stance skills by 20%.Oppressive Superiority: Deal increased damage to foes who have less health than you and Conditions you apply to foes with less health than you last longer. When you apply poison to a foe that has less health than you, steal some health from them.Eternal Bond: When you live beastmode, grant all your boons to your pet.

Just dreaming.

Very solid suggestions all around.

-Instinctive Engage: This skill now dazes the target for 1½ sec. Remove a boon if the target gets interrupted.In addition, it should also have its range increased to 600 and have evade frames during the animation. This dagger set up should be mobile and evasive or is still wouldn't be competitive enough against sword.

-Griffon Stance: This skill now grants 50 endurance instead of 25, and breaks stun. This skill now makes you remove a condition every time you evade an attack while in this stance.Good suggestions. But this stance also needs a CD reduction. 45s is just too long, reduce it to 35. Take away the stun break. Dolyak Stance is there for that.

-You took away the useless might stacking from Vulture Stance, made it into something useful and gave the might stacking to One Wolf Pack. Good one.

-Felines:Maul: Damage of this skills increased by 60%. Number of bleeding stacks increased from 4 to 6.Condi Soulbeast, besides the dagger, doesn't really need any more condi damage buffs, not in PvE nor in PvP. The 60% buff might be enough.

-Primal Cry: This skill now fear enemies (2 seconds) and inflict 5 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds if you interrupt them. Bleeding stacks increased from 3 to 6. This skill now is a blast finisher.If you're going to turn it into a CC, the damage should stay the same.

-Worldly Impact: This skill now makes you jump on the targeted location, and it's a blast finisher. Enemies struck are knocked down for 2 seconds.Same case as above. If you're going to turn this skill into a ranged AoE knockdown, the damage should have to be nerfed, this thing hits like a truck. Not everything has to be buffs everywhere, you have to compensate in some places.

-Predator's Cunning: Gain stealth when you leave beastmode, and gain Attack of opportunity.I like this one the most. This spec si supposed to be evasive and slippery. I never understood why they gave Druid stealth, it makes so much more sense as a Soulbeast.You should gain the stealth when you ENTER beastmode, not when you leave it. The way it works is that you enter soulbeast to briefly cast those pet skills, do some damage and leave immediately, at least in PvP. It's an in and out dance to make the most use of beast skills and pet skills. The greatest benefits such as stealth should come when merged which is the main mechanic of the spec. BUT I think is fair to think that you should also gain some benefits when leaving beastmode.

-Oppressive Superiority: Deal increased damage to foes who have less health than you and Conditions you apply to foes with less health than you last longer. When you apply poison to a foe that has less health than you, steal some health from them.You gave this boring passive trait the Predator's Cunning funtionality without making it an overwhelming must have choice. Brilliant!

-Eternal Bond: When you live beastmode, grant all your boons to your pet.In addition to its current effects, right? If that's just it, it wouldn't be anywhere near worth it as a grandmaster trait. Eternal Bond's CD should be normalizaed to 60s across all game modes.

Now I'm going to leave some changes of my own in addition to your own:

Fresh Reinforcement is now baseline.Elevated Bond description changed to: Gain access to Stances. Survival in the desert has enhanced your connection with your pet. Granting you the ability to meld with your pet and gain all of its current boons by entering beastmode.Fresh Reinforcement new functionality. When you enter beastmode you convert two conditions into boons. When you leave beastmode you and your pet gain 3s of Resistance.

With all these changes Soulbeast would be top tier in all game modes, for sure.

Not gonna go in to details about everything when there is so much I would like them to change.I would like it if they fixed all the wierd inconsistencies with the traits when you're melded, reworked vulture and griffon stance to something usable, fixed all bugs with the melded pet skills and increased their direct dmg, reworked the traits to something more fun and made them synergise with eachother and other traitlines.

I would also like it if they removed the horrible fartcloud/vines >.>

Balance... :(

Next Balance patch:

Anet thinks Soulbeast is in a good spot, so they hereby nerf all the stances, traits, and dagger dps.

Live Fast together with all other beast traits, works on activation and not at the end of skill.All core ranger traits, weapons skills and abilities, being adjusted to work with beastmode.

Sword AA 2 damage increased by 300% to compensate for not cleaving.I can dream, right?Also:

@LughLongArm.5460 said:Live Fast together with all other beast traits, works on activation and not at the end of skill.All core ranger traits, weapons skills and abilities, being adjusted to work with beastmode.

^ This.Among other things, Remorseless always giving Opening Strike for the hit of Worldly Impact would be sweet.

OP... I would be happy with Soulbeast if these changes were made. I don't have a single issue with anything you've typed.

+1000

I'd be happy if we stayed in beastmode on dismount.

Increase the range of our F1-F2-F3 and reduce the cast time, I've got no idea why they make our skills so hard to land and take so long to cast......

I love these suggestions, even if some are a bit overtuned IMO. I agree with most of what @"Khenzy.9348" said on her critiques/suggestions. I like that you actually make some of the pets feel more competitive. You did a good job at making them feel like they actually have an individual niche, which I really appreciate. The feline and moa sound like a lot of fun. I was most disappointed by the bird family when PoF was launched. That charge only really gains you a bit of distance if you weapon swap at the end, which is just sad. A short CD "1200" range leap has so much potential to be good.

I think a double-pulsing 1/2 daze would be more appropriate for Primal Cry unless the fear triggered after the damage. Otherwise, you'd have enemies leaving the radius of the skill. I also don't like how a fear would mix with open world or anything PvE w/o a CC bar, as you generally want to clump things together to maximize DPS.

Furious strength: Also grant condition dmg when under the effects of fury

Fresh reinforcement: This trait now grants all your boons to your pet when leaving Beastmode.

Unstoppable union: This trait will now activate when leaving beastmode, in addition to its old effects. When leaving beastmode your pet gets unblockable.

Second skin: This trait now grants protection when activating a beastskill in addition to its old effects.

Essence of speed: This trait will now grant you swiftness when entering and leaving beastmode in addition to its old effect.

Oppressive superiority: This skill now grants a dmg and condition durration modifier depending on your targets health.

Eternal bond: This trait now also will activate beastmode if your pet would be downedin addition to its previous effect.If your pet will be brought into downstate it will merge with the ranger, heals him and give him protection.

Leader of the pack: Allies effected by the stances of the ranger will now get the full duration. Stances will get a 20% CD.

Bugs: Pretty much every bug that inhibits playability or viability get fixed.Including pet leap fixes, dmg bug fixes, stance bug fixes (especially one wolf pack), pet stow bug fixes, pet abbility bugs etc.

Increase dmg modifier from dagger AA about 33%.Increase condition duration from dagger AA about 33%.

Mechanic: Allow pet swap in beastmode.

Not all will be implemented thats for sure, but atleast a lot of fixes and improvements.

I want the jacaranda's autoattack to become ranged, because PoF didn't give us any new ranged pet options and we could really use them. Maybe the iboga as well, they both use a lot of ranged attacks in the wild.

Change Twice as Vicious. It is utterly useless atm. Also, some of the master traits should be tweaked to allow more builds (without quickness, protection and poison) to use them.

@Aomine.5012 said:Next Balance patch:

Anet thinks Soulbeast is in a good spot, so they hereby nerf all the stances, traits, and dagger dps.

Lol, yeah! You can be sure of one thing - they will find things to nerf with soulbeast, even though the community as a whole, not only rangers, seems to think the spec is underperforming. Anything that seems semi useful and/or powerful will be toned down - count on it.

soulbeast has been remove from tha game anew elite speclaztion will be uplode shortly

Increase aoe distance on... well everything.Edit: Also add pet beast skill to an f4 while in beast mode. Then BAM soul beast is good.

Before they buff or nerf anything, would be good if they first fixed all the traits, skills and abilities that have limited or no function at all with BeastMode. I along with many would love to see Dagger being USEFUL.

What i would do:

Dagger:Groundwork Gouge: Replace Vulnerability with TormentDeadly Delivery: Replace Vulnerability With TormentDouble Arc: On top of your pet applying Poison with its next 2 attacks, your attack also applies 2 stacks of poison. Used in Beastmode applies 4 stacksInstinctive Engage: Increase Leap distance from 400 to 600 range

Note: direct damage also needs to be increased but ill leave that for others

Stances:Bear Stance: When you use the ability gain 2seconds of Resistance. Gain 1 second of resistance when you remove a condition (1second ICD)Dolyak Stance: Quite solid. No serious changes needed. Maybe increase Stability stacks a little, Warriors and such can melt 6 stacks with easeGriffon Stance: Redesign. Increase endurance gained from 25 to 100. When you evade an attack again Vigor for 3secondsMoa Stance: Dont like this skill myself, never have liked boon spam builds. But others use it so ill let them say what they would changeVulture Stance: While Above 50% Health apply Torment with attacks, While below 50% apply Torment + Poison with attacks. CD reduced to 25secondsOne Wolf pack: Remove the 1second Delay. Reduce cool down to 45seconds. 1 stack of bleeding with both your attack and the ability hitting.

Traits:Elevated Bond: Stun Break now baseLive Fast: Now combined with Furious Strength.Unstoppable Union: Changed to Punishing PoisonPunishing Poison: Corrupt a Boon when you apply Poison

Furious Strength: changed to UnstoppableUnstoppable: You gain unblokcable attacks for 4seconds

Second Skin: Enter Beastmode grants 4seconds of Protection ontop of its previous effectsPredators Cunning: Renamed predatory StrikesPredatory Strikes: Inflict Poison when you or your pet land a critical hit 1second ICD (each)

Twice As Vicious: Is replaced with Predators Cunning

Eternal Bond: Increase base heal to 5k, Cool down reduced to 30seconds.Leader of the Pack: Reduce Stance cool downs by 20%, Stances affect Allies with 25% less durationOppressive Superiority: Deal increased damage and have increased condition duration to foes afflicted with to foes with Poison with more than 5stacks . Condition duration increased from 10% to 25% Damage increased from 10% to 20%

Going in and out of Beastmode needs to work like an Engineer kit.

Then F4 can be added back to the list of usable buttons while in Beastmode and can, at the very least, operate as a "drop Beastmode and pet swap" button (I personally don't need petswapping in Beastmode, and I don't think that ANets code is ready to handle that request, it seems like it pretty linearly takes the existing pet information from the field and used it to build Beastmode, and I seriously doubt they keep the data on hand needed to build Beastmode from the inactive pet).

Add balancing factors to the traits this would break (aka ICDs).

Make Dagger 3 also cripple.

Change the Quickness trait to "applying Quickness to yourself makes your next attack immobilize your target(s)."

Add an additional effect to the Poison Lifesteal trait "inflicting Vulnerability also inflicts poison."

Make the boon copy when going into Beastmode trait also copy all the boons you have back to the pet when you leave Beastmode (remember this has an ICD now).

Make the Protection damage trait also apply Protection on beast skill use.

Scrap Eternal Bond entirely. New trait effect "F3 skills steal health (or just heal you either way) from (or for) every target affected by them (add a small damage hit to the heal F3 that also maybe inflicts an AoE slow). Reduces recharge of F3 skills."

Stance trait: either extend the range out to 600 for the sharing or keep the current range but increase the duration up to 100% of what affects the player.

Oppressive Superiority: I guess this one is okay but it's boring.

Make all f1-f3 skills count as beast skills for traits.

Currently the spec doesn't play with any sort of fluidity, and the traits don't justify giving up an entire traitline for them when every other traitline Ranger has access to is better.

Druid: I would really like to see Cosmic Ray radius increase to at least 240, preferably 360, and a faster cast time. I can't understand why Anet have left this skill in such a poor state ever since the release of Druid. Outside of a tight clusterfuck stacked group, this skill is a joke pure and simple, deliberately designed to be a pain in the ass to use. Fix this skill once and for all.

Maybe soulbeast made anet's dev consider looking at the pet's skills and they will make them less clunky... :lol:

@Dadnir.5038 said:Maybe soulbeast made anet's dev consider looking at the pet's skills and they will make them less clunky... :lol:

Or they'd just nerf all the pets' skills to fit the weaker version of f2 in beast mode.

Outside of Soulbeast, I've been waiting years for the entire sword auto chain to cleave and for Hornet's Sting to have a reduced cast time or the evade extended to cover the entire cast. I would like to see tweaks to those in the next patch, but then again, I should know to keep my hopes down.

All I really want is some form of stealth when entering beastmode. That's instant viability in sPvP and WvW for glassy builds.

Some interesting suggestions here. For my own part I would (in addition to bugfixes) be most interested in the introduction of an ordered scheme to the Soulbeast trait options. Several of the other PoF elite specs have a definite theme to the top, middle and bottom rows of their trait options - I think the Soulbeast would benefit from the same clarity. This could also be an opportunity to refine some underperforming or out-of-theme traits. The scheme I would propose would be to compress all the necessary passive boosts to power DPS into the minor traits, and then convert the three rows into being themed around selfish DPS/defence through conditions(top), group support through boon/alacrity/stance sharing(mid) and counterplay(bottom). As such I'd redesign the tree to look as follows:

Adept Minor - Unlock Trait: N/ASelfish Adept Major - Predator's Cunning: moved to Adept from Master tier, no other change (Since this trait has negligible power/condition scaling I feel it is overcosted as it currently stands, dropping this one down a tier keeps this interesting trait competitive with the other choices.)Support Adept Major - Live Fast: This trait now grants 3 seconds of quickness & alacrity to nearby allies when using a beast skill. (Beastmode skills are a good hook for a buff trait, so this one has been repurposed to fit the new theme.)Counterplay Adept Major - Unstoppable Union: no change (counters CC and blocks, this trait fits its tier well.)(Fresh Reinforcement is merged into Furious Strength from the next tier)

Master Minor - Furious Strength: Merged with Fresh Reinforcement, now reads "Entering Beastmode grants you the boons affecting your pet. Deal more damage when you have quickness or alacrity. [+7% damage with one, +15% with both. The Fresh Reinforcement boon table now also includes alacrity for 1 second.]"(To me the Fresh Reinforcement trait is sufficiently fundamental to interesting Soulbeast pet interactions that I think it should be made baseline. Since we will be removing Oppressive Superiority we are compensating for the lost +10% damage from the Grandmaster Major with an extra +8% damage in this minor trait. Changing the condition for this bonus to quickness and/or alacrity is designed to reinforce the design themes of this class.)Selfish Master Major - New Trait: "Whilst in Beastmode your pet attacks inflict Poison. [This effect will only trigger once per target][1 long stack for F1s, 2 long stacks for F2s]. (This trait is referring to the F1 and F2 attacks the ranger gets whilst merged with their pet; I've seen a number of complaints that these attacks are too weak, especially in the case of the lower-cooldown basic attacks such as cat F1. Appending a flat packet of damage to these skills would help buff the pet attacks relative to other attacks and the low cooldown ones relative to the high cooldown ones. The once-per-target caveat is there to avoid overbuffing multi-hit attacks such as the spider or iboga F2s).Support Master Major - Essence of Speed: now reads "Gaining quickness grants nearby allies alacrity [1 second, ICD 5 seconds]. Gaining alacrity increases the duration of boons applied to you." [+2 seconds, ICD 5 seconds] (Of the two selfish boon-related traits in this tier I feel this one is more interesting, and so whilst I would dump the other I think this one can be converted without much damage into a support trait).Counterplay Master Major - New Trait: Using a Beast ability triggers Lesser Bear Stance [Lesser Bear Stance lasts 2 seconds, has no unconditional healing and converts 1 condition per second with the same conditional healing values as Bear Stance] (I feel that the Soulbeast needs more options to deal with conditions in both PvE and competitive play; I think adding more condition clear at the minor tier that leverages down on the stance architecture would be useful).(Predator's Cunning was moved to Adept Tier, Second Skin has been removed)

Grandmaster Minor - Twice as Vicious: Exiting Beastmode grants your pet the boons affecting you. Entering or leaving Beastmode grants you and your pet increased damage for a short duration. [4 seconds, +5% damage. Boon effect uses same table of durations as Fresh Reinforcement, including the new alacrity entry.]Selfish Grandmaster Major - New Trait: Twice as Vicious also affects condition damage. Furious Strength also affects condition duration. (a condi DPS trait tax and replacement for Oppressive Superiority).Support Grandmaster Major - Leader of the Pack: No change (the structure of this trait is sound, and so the better way to make it more useful would be to buff the skills that it affects.)Counterplay Grandmaster Major - New Trait: Use Griffon Stance when a boon on you would be corrupted or removed [iCD 40 seconds, this effect triggers before the triggering effect] (with a heavier focus on boons than before this trait scheme more than ever needed some counterplay to Scourge/Spellbreaker boon clear. This has been achieved via a passive trait that triggers an anti-anti-boon stance).(Eternal Bond and Oppressive Superiority have been removed)

To support these changes I would make the following changes to stances and other areas:Nature Magic - Fortifying Bond: the boon table for this trait now also includes alacrity.Griffon Stance: Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds. Instead of its current effects this stance now reduces incoming condition damage by 33% and prevents boons on you from being corrupted or removed. (As mentioned, this change is to give the boon-loving Soulbeast more counterplay against boon corrupting foes. I suspect that the benefits of the original Griffon stance will not much be missed.)Vulture Stance: Duration reduced to 4 seconds. Instead of its current effects this stance grants quickness for 4 seconds; whilst the stance is active your attacks will infect downed, mounted or gliding foes. [downed foes will automatically be finished; gliding foes will be disabled and suffer poison+weakness+cripple; mounted foes will be dismounted and suffer poison+weakness+cripple](The animal flavour of vulture stance is interesting, but the implementation feels a bit wonky at both the numerical and fundamental level. I'd prefer to redesign the skill along the same flavour lines as counterplay to the mounts that I assume will be coming soon to WvW roaming/zergs).One Wolf Pack: Instead of its current effects the end of this stance will copy the most damaging attack made whilst the stance was active to all nearby foes.[for the code structure of this skill, each attack made whilst the skill is active grant stacks of a unique buff at a rate of 1 stack per 1000 damage. These stacks would not add to existing stacks but would overwrite if bigger. At the end of the stance an AoE attack would trigger that deals 1000 points of unmodifiable damage for each stack the player had, whereupon all stacks get removed. Damage to ambient mobs would not count for the purposes of adding stacks.](since Soulbeast power damage can be very bursty it makes sense to me that their iconic elite power DPS skill should focus on burst rather than sustain.)