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Soulbeast Specialization Updates for the Path of Fire Launch


Karl McLain.5604

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Greetings, Rangers!Your daggers are sharp ready. Your pets well trained. The Soulbeast awaits you!Here are the changes that have occurred for the Path of Fire launch, which have not been shown in a Demo or Stress Test. What we're showing here today are Soulbeast changes only, with Core/Druid changes being left for the more official channels.

  • Dagger auto-attack chain: All condition durations increased from 3s to 4s. Re-tuned each of the dagger skill animations for general smoothness and added a next skill shortcut so that it will move through the skill sequence a touch faster. Notably the 2nd and 3rd steps in the sequence are about 0.3s shorter, with the 4th attack being about 0.25s longer.
  • Double Arc: Bleed Duration increased from 4s to 5s and increased stacks applied from 4 to 5. Reduced the duration of the poison proc buff from 10s to 6s.
  • Player version of Iboga Crippling Anguish - reduced durations of conditions from 6s to 3s base.
  • Player version of Iboga Narcotic Spores - reduced durations of conditions from 8s to 5s base.
  • Maul: This skill grants a merged ranger 25% increased damage on their next attack.

The goals here have been mainly to improve the damage components of the dagger to feel more fluid, while also giving more counter-play to the condition side of the Soulbeast. With that said, we'll continue to watch the new elite specialization at and after launch, making changes where applicable.

See you in the desert!

*Edit: Because there's a big difference between 0.25ms and 0.25s...

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Changes seems positive ones. The daggers should feel much better now although if those are all the changes i'll have to stick to the classic GS-LB combo.

I guess the pet swap while merged wasn't possible? Could you consider then to add the 10 secs CD to the "leave beastmode" instead after the separation?This change may interfiere with the trait eternal bond.

The reason a lot of players ask for this as i'm sure you understand is to get advantage of the on pet swap traits, like zephyr's speed or lesser call of the wild as soulbeast being what it seems a dps class can benefit greatly from more short duration unblockable attacks. Best choice would be to have the F4 available while merged but if that's not posible having no CD and no delay when you need to swap pets could be the best next thing.

Also couldn't your team fix the "When cast a beast ability" (ex: beastly warden) to behave the same as it does until now with the pet's F2? In the beta the taunt was cast after the casting the beast ability (F3) which made it not good for dps beast abilities ( Ex: Primal cry and wordly impact )

I think that was the most concerning limitations i found with the new class.

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Maul: This skill grants a merged ranger 25% increased damage on their next attack.

Can we get some clarification on this? Does this mean Maul will not get the 50% attack of opportunity anymore? Or does this mean we will get the 25% damage buff in addition to the 50% attack of opportunity on Maul cast?

If it's the former then a really cool interaction with ranger GS and soulbeast Beastmode has just been erased and power ranger continues to be a massive joke. 25% on my next attack means nothing when I'm hitting with the wet noodle that is the ranger GS auto.

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Thank you for the update!

With that said, both daggers are underwhelming in many respects, and slot skills leave a lot to be desired. I'm hard pressed to think that any Soulbeast will be able to stand toe to toe against any decent player using a decent build in wvw and spvp. This xpac was a great opportunity to tackle many things, and I know we appreciate what has been done so far, but daggers and slot skills need major love or they will not be wanted or used in any spvp or wvw scenario... Honestly, I'd suggest taking on an expert thief or warrior in melee and see how fast a Soulbeast gets destroyed... Also, Soulbeast brings almost nothing to any team, be it wvw, spvp or pve stuff, and I see zero areas where this elite spec will shine.

Was looking forward to some interesting, and competitive, Dagger/Dagger play in wvw and spvp, but sadly Longbow/Great Sword (players have used this weapon set up since launch so it's boring as all get out at this point).., and mostly running old slot skills, will be the go-to build choices and best fitting for the Soulbeast design. The meat and bones of this spec are D.O.A...

Edit- And I know the team may see this as a complete joke post from my thread, but it's really not... just sayin', daggers really need some anet magic sooner than later.

"Overall, both daggers need complete reworks because they are really mediocre weapons comparatively, but there also needs to be some extra umph to them too… We really need to get our own cool “naturey” version of the “Backstab” skill, but not exactly like “Backstab”, though, more like a stealthy “frontstab” that does a major critical (ya know like up to like 20k on thief). It should also critical like that from the flank too. This would be very balanced because we have this in-game already and the devs are cool with it.

I’m thinking we just add a lot of heavy hitting skills, and some evades, and more movement skills and target tracking and some stealth skills… So something like this revised idea…

Dagger 1- Groundwork Gouge- Add target tracking. 3 targets.1- Leading swipe – 3 targets.1- Serpent Stab- Add evade. 3 targets.FREE Skill from stealth (Just like Backstab)- “Nature Stab” aka Deadly Delivery- 1 target.

Dagger 2- Double Arc- 3 targets.

Dagger 3- Instinctive Edge- 3 targets. “Nature Step” (Just like Steal). Add evade. 10s stealth on hit. 1,200 range. This is the set-up skill for “Nature Stab”.

Dagger 4- Dagger Barrier- 5 targets. AoE damage. Bleeding. Reflects projectiles. Stability. 300 radius. You can move.

Dagger 5- Port-O-Potty- Create a “nature” portal and port to target. 300 radius. 5 target AoE “nature” damage explosion. 1,200 range port. EDIT- This is a ground target skill that can be used on walls and cliffs just like some thief and mesmer skills.

5- Port back to original spot

…Perfection"

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Happy with those changes, especially the daggers

Are those the only soulbeast changes?

I mean bug fixes are pretty evident but was anything else changed from the SB traits and utilities?

Can't wait for the Core and Druid changes as there are many core skills and traits that interact with Soulbeast directly

Also thanks for letting us know

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@Karl McLain.5604 said:The goals here have been mainly to improve the damage components of the dagger to feel more fluid, while also giving more counter-play to the condition side of the Soulbeast. With that said, we'll continue to watch the new elite specialization at and after launch, making changes where applicable.

I look forward to playing this spec as ranger main is my love. However, it seems the team was more focused on the integration of dagger main hand over the horrid synergy the spec has with the base traits and vanilla shouts. Hoping to see more work on the spec soon.

See you in the desert.

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A bit less than I was expected, though I might be a bit biased from the absolutely massive amount of Druid changes around launch. That being said, I like these changes. Dagger is now undoubtedly the strongest mainhand condition based weapon now (as opposed to the debatable amount of damage previously, which I still think would have pulled ahead) as well as the auto-attack changes likely making it a lot more enjoyable. I'm a bit disappointed that the #2 skill didn't get anything other than a damage buff, given it's fairly generic skill, as it is currently. However, I'm not gonna complain about extra damage, haha. Assuming the maul change is a nerf (which is very likely in my opinion) I don't mind too much. As it is currently, all it really did was make the greatsword do a bit more damage in PvE, but not nearly enough to be a viable build. And for sPvP, while it was really fun, it wasn't a very 'good' build over-all, and I'm thankful that Arena-Net nerfed, even if it does make it a lot less viable, given that it won't be able to be an excuse to actually improve greatsword over-all. There's nothing worse than weaponsets that are too strong in a cheese build to be buffed, but too weak everywhere else to actually be ran outside of it (maybe eventually we'll get a rework to the auto-attack... some day...).

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@Diskthree.4627 said:

Maul: This skill grants a merged ranger 25% increased damage on their next attack.

Can we get some clarification on this?

In beastmode, any skill which gives a benefit to your pet instead is granted to yourself. Maul by default gives an Attack of Opportunity to the pet (+50% damage on next attack). A player giving that bonus to themselves got a little silly in combination with some beastmode skills like Worldly Impact. So if you grant the Attack of Opportunity to yourself via beastmode, it's now only a 25% increase.

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Disappointing, hasn't really dealt with the clunkiness of Beastmode, either by removing cd of beastmode or allowing pet swap in beast mode, haven't buffed the stance trait to get us into WvW groups, preemptively killed power soulbeast and while it sounds dagger will feel better skill 2 is still just a slightly stronger auto attack and it still looks like it will be weaker then axe.

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Thank you for posting these. Were there not any trait changes at all?

Nice to see dagger being improved, I am excited to see how the AA chain feels.

I am quite underwhelmed by the changes overall though. There is barely anything. I assume the Maul change means that AoO no longer auto-procs on its own Maul; I feared for this because it has terrible synergy with the rest of the GS line. Applying that to the rest of the weapon skills seems clunky when those are utility skills, and we all know about the pathetic AA damage. If meant to be used in tandem with beast skills, the F1-F2 skills need a significant damage increase to be worth it. Relying on something likely Worldly Impact for AoO would just be weird with its long CD. Maybe this means that they are changing the GS design a bit? Since that would be a core Ranger thing, I could only hope.

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so fellas, sic em is still there and you can run remorseless to make up for dps loss. That being said why didnt our traits get touched up? our grand masters are pretty gdamn wack, and why not let stances basline share, one it will make soul beast feel unique and secondly its not like they last all that long by themselves, and maybe you could make the gm actually worth taking out side of team play, stances have reduced cd and cleanse one condition or give quickness or something

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@Eleazar.9478 said:so fellas, sic em is still there and you can run remorseless to make up for dps loss.

It's not included, because it's a core skill. I'm sure it's going to get nerfed. (''Core/Druid changes being left for the more official channels.'')

Poor Iboga getting nerfed before even launch. It was too good to be true. Overall so little change to Soulbeast traits and stances. Traits need to be looked on and they received no changes.

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I sense that yet again all the other devs of the other classes looked into making their class OP while the ranger dev looked into balance. Unfortunately this has been the norm when it comes to ranger. We get nerfs and sub-par class buffs while other classes get massive damage and defensive buffs. Base rangers lose all but one stability utility while warrior and thief get more invul or stealth. When I read/heard the "Deadeye" description it sounded like what a ranger does in the wild. But no, it was "let's give the thief more and more stealth and the range of a ranger's longbow." Instead we are getting yet another, what feels like, an afterthought. That's just how it feels to me. Don't know if other players who love the ranger feel the same way about this.

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@Heibi.4251 said:I sense that yet again all the other devs of the other classes looked into making their class OP while the ranger dev looked into balance. Unfortunately this has been the norm when it comes to ranger. We get nerfs and sub-par class buffs while other classes get massive damage and defensive buffs. Base rangers lose all but one stability utility while warrior and thief get more invul or stealth. When I read/heard the "Deadeye" description it sounded like what a ranger does in the wild. But no, it was "let's give the thief more and more stealth and the range of a ranger's longbow." Instead we are getting yet another, what feels like, an afterthought. That's just how it feels to me. Don't know if other players who love the ranger feel the same way about this.

Scourge begs to differ.

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@Karl McLain.5604 said:

  • Maul: This skill grants a merged ranger 25% increased damage on their next attack.

While I understand the nerf for sPvP/WvW, I don’t see why it should apply in PvE, because power Soulbeast is going to need any kind of damage increase it can get to reach the other top dps classes, please if you have to nerf Sic’ Em, and you’ll probably need to in sPvP, do it there but not in PvE.

Also no words about Guard! and Search and Rescue! not working in Beastmode, alongside the Loud Whistle trait, and no words about a buff on pure damage dealing pet skills in Beastmode, because right now they deal less damage than a greatsword auto-attack.

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So let's get this straight; the double cooldown gated mechanic is staying the same, the long cast times are staying the same, the weak, underwhelming traits are staying the same, the low base heal and relatively underwhelming stance functions are staying the same, and we're knowingly eating a nerf up front on the only thing that made Soulbeast playable by any sort of non-laughable standard?

I must say, the marketing team is a bunch of geniuses. Design an elite spec so awful it pushes HoT sales to be able to play the spec that's actually able to keep up/compete with the rest of the game, but at face value people see "petless ranger spec" and buy the new expac too.

It's pretty incredible that you pushed this version of the elite spec to live. And by incredible I mean that you should be ashamed of the low quality trait and spec design that is apparently passable as a final product.

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@jcbroe.4329 said:So let's get this straight; the double cooldown gated mechanic is staying the same, the long cast times are staying the same, the weak, underwhelming traits are staying the same, the low base heal and relatively underwhelming stance functions are staying the same, and we're knowingly eating a nerf up front on the only thing that made Soulbeast playable by any sort of non-laughable standard?

I must say, the marketing team is a bunch of geniuses. Design an elite spec so awful it pushes HoT sales to be able to play the spec that's actually able to keep up/compete with the rest of the game, but at face value people see "petless ranger spec" and buy the new expac too.

It's pretty incredible that you pushed this version of the elite spec to live. And by incredible I mean that you should be ashamed of the low quality trait and spec design that is apparently passable as a final product.

Exactly.

  • No dolyak stance bug fix?
  • No smoke assault (BM) evade fix?
  • Crappy (Uninspired) GM traits?
  • Beastmode coefficients?
  • Dagger Power scaling?
  • Condition damage of pets lowers when you Meld?
  • More..
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@Exedore.6320 said:

@Diskthree.4627 said:

Maul: This skill grants a merged ranger 25% increased damage on their next attack.

Can we get some clarification on this?

In beastmode, any skill which gives a benefit to your pet instead is granted to yourself. Maul by default gives an Attack of Opportunity to the pet (+50% damage on next attack). A player giving that bonus to themselves got a little silly in combination with some beastmode skills like
. So if you grant the Attack of Opportunity to yourself via beastmode, it's now only a 25% increase.
  1. I already knew that.
  1. That doesn't clear things up. The way the OP is written it sounds like we'll be getting the 25% damage buff in addition to AoO. NOTHING is mentioned about the AoO buff or any other functionality of Maul while in Beastmode changing, so we could assume that this is just something getting tacked on and not a major rework.

So what is it Karl? Are we getting a massive Soulbeast GS nerf or a minor buff?

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hey Fellow Rangers,

For reasons I don't understand, Karl's posts are not currently flagged as officially being "ArenaNet staff." However, I can assure you that Karl is 100% legitimate, and his posts do represent those of a staff member.

I tried a tweak and it still didn't add the ArenaNet red banner, so I'll be looking into this tomorrow. But in the meantime, Karl's the real deal. :+1:

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