Why exactly is soulbeast inferior?

...to core ranger in conquest? (The builds: core and SB1 nad SB2.)

I personally find them to be at least equal. And I thought that being less effective on SB comes from me having a lot less experience with it than with core. But I wouldnt take the courage to argue with Boyce or Treesixty on the matter.

Personally I lean towards the build marked with 'SB2'. As it keeps the opening strike burst still available, adds unblockable uptime through unstoppable union. But I have to admit that without wilderness survival getting the so much needed fury procs is much harder.

All in all I dont have enough experience to see the nuts and bolts of these builds - when and why they win or lose in certain situations. And I'd really appreciate the insights of those who have already chewed themselves through this dilemma.

cheers

edit: plus I find the double smokescale teleport (one from pet and one from merging) really handy when it comes to handling the feared LoS problems that pewpew classes need to face.

I don't think it's inferior. It has a distinct play style and theme, so it's different. It's not everyone cup of tea and getting the hang of it seems to take a longer time. I know it's not mine in PvP (Prefer Druid), but I use it in all other modes.

I prefer to have the utilities of BeastMode than being Core Ranger. Plus, you can ''rez'' your pet with BeastMode, which is a huge positive.

i actually play both, mostly core tho. there different roles, core i use to hold nodes and take 1v1s the sb2 build as a roamer and +1 role. cant really compare them if i play differeny roles with them but i think the core build has better allround matchups. i actually play the sb2 build with scholar and berzerker amulet tho so bit ddifferent

Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth, survivability, and outplay potential.

@Poelala.2830 said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth, survivability, and outplay potential.

Explain me the survivability point please, I tried soulbeast in PvE few days ago but I find that the lack of a pet around you who tanks damage, reduce a lot of your survivability.

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@Poelala.2830 said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth,

survivability

, and outplay potential.

the context of this topic is pvp so that would be irrelevant to the topic

@Ashkew.6584 said:

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@Poelala.2830 said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth,

survivability

, and outplay potential.

I know that very well but I wouldn't like to open a thread just for that simple question, so could you or anyone else answer it here please?

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@Ashkew.6584 said:

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@"Poelala.2830" said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth,

survivability

, and outplay potential.

You could bond with a Black bear and have bears Defy Pain + Unflinching Fortitude then swap pets it gets low to say a smokescale and use it's Smoke Assault to evade and survive a bit longer.All of that is on top of you being able to use your pet as a aggro tank in general pve.This build is what i'm running around open world pve and dungeons and stuff, maybe swap wilderness survival with skirmishing's Vicious Quarry to boost that crit damage to 270%+ and go for gs + axe/axe, but that's up to personal pref.In beast mode with Natural Healing + Rugged Growth and regeneration from Moa Stance is enough to sustain yourself for the most part. Then if you need to you can swap to your defensive pet and then bond with it for 2 invulns, that said there are other combos you can go with.Soulbeast has more survivability tools it can use than a core ranger and more than just one stone signet (2 if traited in marksmanship) and passive pet aggro.Hope that answers your question at least partially.

@Deax.1572 said:

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@Ashkew.6584 said:

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@"Poelala.2830" said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth,

survivability

, and outplay potential.

yes, thanks!

Soulbeast is considered less effective than Core Ranger because even just taking the Soulbeast traitline is considered sacrificing utility and/or defense for more offense.

Now granted, a hyper aggressive playstyle with Soulbeast could/should have similar success to Core, but the basic idea is that Soulbeast functions more as a roaming damage +1'er that can't really get into the fray of a fight and stay there safely and doesn't have the tools to sidenode fight against common sidenode dueling builds.

Personally, although I also rank Core above Soulbeast, I don't think that it's as drastic of a comparison as maybe peoples assumptions make it seem to be? It brings more defense and general utility to the table to the degree that it can play much more as a generalist than Soulbeast, making it more capable of holding its own in sidenode fights/duels while still maintaining much of its potency as a floating damage dealer.

I think that what Soulbeast is really lacking is an identity, because it exists within a sea of other builds/classes designed to perform the same role, which is ultimately why Core seems like it separates itself away from and above Soulbeast on the totem pole, because it can perform outside of a singular role.

@"jcbroe.4329" said:Soulbeast is considered less effective than Core Ranger because even just taking the Soulbeast traitline is considered sacrificing utility and/or defense for more offense.

First of all thank you for the helpful information. Secondly I'd like to ask whether the above line only stands for the core vs SB1 or for core vs SB2 as well? Or is 'SB1' so bad that you didnt even bother to take that into consideration? :)

@Nimrud.5642 said:

@"jcbroe.4329" said:Soulbeast is considered less effective than Core Ranger because even just taking the Soulbeast traitline is considered sacrificing utility and/or defense for more offense.

Out of the two SB builds, you'd want SB1. Stances are horribly underwhelming, generally speaking, with Dolyak Stance and One Wolf Pack being the only 2 worth a slot.

Your SB1 setup is a pretty standard/typical LB/GS setup for Soulbeast, which is good and what I would expect. The other effective setup for Soulbeast that I tend to see is a Wilderness Survival, Nature Magic, Soulbeast setup with Sword/Warhorn over greatsword, with the idea being a high boon uptime build.

I can't say which out of those two would be better, and I know good players that are successful with either variation, so really it's up to you to decide what your comfort level is and feel out which setup will work for you.

Hopefully this all helps though :)

And yet we'll still have pvper's tell us how faceroll our profession is and that the AI does all the work.

@jcbroe.4329 said:Your SB1 setup is a pretty standard/typical LB/GS setup for Soulbeast, which is good and what I would expect. The other effective setup for Soulbeast that I tend to see is a Wilderness Survival, Nature Magic, Soulbeast setup with Sword/Warhorn over greatsword, with the idea being a high boon uptime build.

I can't say which out of those two would be better, and I know good players that are successful with either variation, so really it's up to you to decide what your comfort level is and feel out which setup will work for you.

I run what sounds like the SB2 build, usually with a Berserker amulet but sometimes with Demolisher if I feel I the matchups call for protecting against a bit of power burst. I'm beginning to think I should stick with Berserker full time, as I've never really felt the toughness from Demo ever really made the difference.

I can say from experience that SB2, or soulboon as some have taken to calling it, is quite effective. The initial burst is great, and you can overwhelm almost any kind of target in a teamfight. From a 1v1 standpoint, the only class I have trouble with is a decent mirage, but then again many struggle to fight good mirages as it is.

I briefly switched to core ranger after the nerfs to bunker druid, but I found core felt like too much of a compromise. Not enough of the raw sustain/reset power of the old bunker druid, but not nearly as much killing power as soulboon has proven to have. With SB2/soulboon, I can regularly grab 25-40% of the team's total damage output.

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@"jcbroe.4329" said:Your SB1 setup is a pretty standard/typical LB/GS setup for Soulbeast, which is good and what I would expect. The other effective setup for Soulbeast that I tend to see is a Wilderness Survival, Nature Magic, Soulbeast setup with Sword/Warhorn over greatsword, with the idea being a high boon uptime build.

I can't say which out of those two would be better, and I know good players that are successful with either variation, so really it's up to you to decide what your comfort level is and feel out which setup will work for you.

Thanks for the insight!

The SB2 build he's talking about is this btw: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARTnE8CN8id8COsActgl/ALv8eejvLvuMQA4JN8DOalMt3A-jpBHQBN8QAAgHAwAuAAarMQ52fQcHBAA"SB2"

I didn't realize it was a hyperlink in the OP at first myself, on mobile it just looks like regular text.

Whereas I'm assuming your boon build looks more like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYDbkQFaZxSWwhF4axykg1EAaATAnI3lLzlnb/tJ3Sk+bA-jpxHABKfQA8/CAYfZAx3f47HAAAHBAAWith maybe Dolyak over QZ or SoS and maybe One Wolf Pack.

Mine seems different from both, though it shares many similarities. Here it is.

Compared to most core builds and pretty much every druid build, sustain is much lower. That being said, retaining Wilderness Knowledge with Soften the Fall affords me the capacity to cleanse 6 condis with Troll Ung and QZ, and Leadership runes cleanse 2 more when I pop One Wolf. I find that to be an ideal opening for allowing a scourge to dump some condis on me, then I rapidly cleanse most of them off and move in for the kill. Outside of block spammers, I find almost nobody is equipped to really shake off a One Wolf Pack burst boosted by fury and quickness.

Because of the relatively low availability of cleanse, I find blind spam was a surprising weakness of my build. I don't have too many multi-hit moves that I can cast and let run, to burn off the blind. So someone running a core guardian GS/sword +whatever build runs a good shot at negating most of my very single-target oriented bursts. Even then, I can either bait them off point, or run quickly to another objective. Not having GS 3 or staff 3 does hurt mobility a bit, but I'm used to using sword 2 for movement and that's available on a very short CD.

Aside from the rare GS & blind guardian, any brand of mesmer that has good availability on clone spam and target break is another weakness. My bursts, especially when merged, are highly dependent on keeping target. Stealth is less of a problem with the tracking on LB2, but target breaking mirages can just dance around everything I do. I can only kill mesmers when they're otherwise occupied and I can lock them down out at moderate range then move in to overwhelm them with the usual quickness/might/fury + One Wolf.

@Ashkew.6584 said:

@Zaraki.5784 said:

@Poelala.2830 said:Soulbeast is superior. More ranged damage, evades, stealth,

survivability

, and outplay potential.

orly?