So I've had some time to toy around with this mount now I would like to rate it and the process it took to acquire it.Note this is just my personal review of the mount and no story spoilers will be talked about here as i have not finished them yet

Collections [7/10]

I didnt expect the mount to be unlocked via collection achievements. I made the mistake of assuming that you would just get it by playing through the story. I like and dislike how it was set up because it means I didnt have to burn through the whole new chapter without my friends just to acquire the mount. I disliked that it was set up via collection achievement. I almost gave up hope right there on the spot from the shock but with some helpful guides to follow it made things much easier.

Collection 1 was ez pz nothing difficult at all it took me all but 15 minutes to get to collection 2.

Collection 2 was a bit of a pain. 2 major components you need for this collection were time gated to world event bosses. I want to share my experince with at least one of those events.The Unstable anomaly

This thing was the biggest pain of all as the maps were flooded with players. That said i have an average pc and I could simply turn down my settings enough to make it happen. But holy cow once the anomaly spawned it was dead in 15 seconds flat. During that time my fps went from 45 to 6. I think i managed to hit at least no more than 10 times even with most of the players hidden and got a bronze for the event and earning me the collection part. I worry for people with lower end pc's trying to get this part any time soon. The rest of the collection was pretty standard and easy to get.

Collection 3 was slightly time gated but most of those were common small game bosses that spawned every 15 minutes or less it was fairly easy to acquire

Out of all the collections i do like how they were set up to grow, build , and charm the new mount it was almost like crafting but with without the crafting...... lolOverallI managed to do it from start to finish in just under 5 hours, 2.5 of which were spent waiting on world bosses to pop and the new map meta events I think in a pinch it can be done in 3.5 hours if you get perfect timers.I give this a 7 of 10 due to the fact that I can still wait to play what i can assume is still most of the new story with others later and that its pretty much free to obtain this mount. :+1: For a collection achievement that didn't cost me any gold overall not bad at all.

Roller Beetle [6/10]

Ehh where do i start

The mount itself

Overall Style and lookI honestly will say I cant wait for a skin for this thing because I'm not a 100% fan of its base look hoping for a Black citadel motor bike but no seriously you guys can make a lot of cash with this bad boy. Don't let us down give us some really unique looking skins for this guy. Its got a rather goofy base look and I get that designing something scary or not cute for a beetle might be a problem for some players so you guys took the more adorable route. But as a charr i look rather silly on the darn thing when sitting still. :astonished:

Base MovementFirst and for most the base movement speed of this mount is too low. ITS SERIOUSLY TOO LOW :-1: :angry: . It feels very unpleasing to ride at its base speed. I think its slower than the skimmer hovering on land and i could be wrong but thats how it feels even with the skimmer on land it never feels too uncomfortable like the beetle does. On a side note the fact that you start with 0 boost when you mount up is also a bit frustrating :-1: . I can understand not starting at 100% if there is some reason for it but at least 50% would be nice. When moving from one place to another thats not a super long distance I tend to just swap back to raptor because I can jump on it and go. Where as the beetle not only has a very poor base movement speed it cant take off right away either.

BoostingOk now we are talking. With a fully charged up saddle you can finally hit that meaty boost button and get to business. Now this mount goes from being the slowest of the bunch to being the fastest on the ground and over short water gaps. This part is done right and i would say its near 100% perfect. Its noted that the boost last significantly longer on flat land and down hill inclines and its considerably shorter going up hill. The mount is BAD at going up any hill without its boost and if you are going up hill you better be about to catch some air or you boost is wasted. I do like that you can skip over deep water for a short duration if you have enough speed that was a nice touch. :+1:Drifting is noticeable but not the greatest thing ever. It will grow on me with more time I'm sure.

MasteriesI'll be blunt here I expected more or at least one more level of masteries for its actually boost ability. Something that makes the boost more potent or more controlled rather than consuming it all at once. Outside of its engage skill and unique feature open world areas ( with smashing into hidden areas.) I had hopes that some of the masteries would solve some of my other critical points with the mount such as its low base speed, its lack of endurance upon mounting, etc.

OverallThe mounts solid and good for covering long open areas with small or no hills I gave it a 6 of 10 with most of the points being lost mostly from its low base movement speed and inability to boost from initial mounting. I can tolerate the adorable look till new skins are released because you don't think about how it looks once you have hit the boost button. The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

Sounds about right to me. They'd want to keep each mount have its niche, not make one universal that renders all other useless. Same reason griffon has such a low base speed.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

To be honest Griffon even feels like it has a higher base land speed than roller beetle or maybe its just the fact that you can jump and flap and increase your speed a bit more when gliding even super low to the ground with it. In any case it does not feel odd and uncomfortable. I wouldn't likely even consider it a problem if you started at least some (50%, 66% ,75%) endurance to boost with upon mounting I think changing that would change its uncomfortable feeling with it.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

Wouldn't that make the beetle straight-out superior to the raptor?

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

Is there a reason it shouldn't be?But to answer your question No... keep in mind,The raptor was designed to clear long jumps even in tight spots with precision and while most people use its jump as a movement boosting tool that was not its primary intended use.

Roller Beetle cannot make the long jumps that raptor can without a naturally occurring ramp (which in alot of cases where you have to use the raptor to clear said jump there is not one.The way I see it is the beetle should be beating out the raptor in near flat ground distance travel , But in tight pocket areas with gaps and jumps the raptor should be superior.Giving it a slow base speed and no endurance to boost off with upon mounting is not the right way to try and slice it farther apart from the raptor if that was the idea behind it. The boost with beetle is not instant like that raptor jump is. There is an acceleration curve you cant press it and instantly go over a gap.

they said that the beetle base speed is 80% of raptor.

@LucianDK.8615 said:they said that the beetle base speed is 80% of raptor.

Thanks for giving me the exact number i knew it was slower but didnt know the exact percent. I think changing the endurance upon mounting would make it less of an annoyance. Other mounts can do things right away even the slower ones which make them feel not as slowEven the skimmer on land feels slightly faster to me (probably because its not flat on the ground) even if its not any faster.

As it stands, I only find the beetle useful for large open areas where I need to cover a significant amount of ground (and where elevation doesn't render the griffon superior). The rest of the time I will use raptor/jackal depending on terrain. I also don't notice the drift to have that much impact on turning, even when held down continuously.

Hmm ....

full endurance and a bit off better handling and in one other thread mentioned some controll about how much you want to spent from your endurance for boost would be cool.

Also i really dont get why ppls cry about raptor/jackal. They got better controll . Better engage skills by far and can do some nice stuff like as OP mentioned precision jumps and jackal can also neglect fall dmg , which the beetle just cant do.( im not sure if the beetle gets actually effect by bunny mastery t4.)Also keep in mind for the beetle you put some effort into it like the griffon ( best mount so far) and the jackal and raptor requires just completing one heart and some masteries atleast for jackal.However both of them wont lose its usefullness in my eyes, since you need jackal for portals still and raptor for jumping over certain gasp.

So i dont see any sense in those "Beetle is too OP if they change it "-comments. Unless someone can open my eyes like sometimes you just cant see the problem clearly. So i would like to hear a decent explanation why and think about it . The griffon is also a mount that is still "OP" . Evade, high jump and can fly over enemies head or let you explore maps in a really fast way, if you find a high spot.I would be fine if they change the beetle to the "better" beetle as people already mentioned it. Allows you to be fast to get from point a to point b under certain Conditions( water, Hills, tight places), maybe for farms or tagging enemies it might be a problem, since peoples cant tag it.

They need to either make the beetle charge up quicker or let us save our endurance between dismounts.

@"Chazz.6709" said:Hmm ....

full endurance and a bit off better handling and in one other thread mentioned some controll about how much you want to spent from your endurance for boost would be cool.

Yes I would love to be able to control how much boost i was using at a time. Its clear you can tell your speed level by looking at the color of the jet on the back of the saddle being able to have more control over that speed would be nice rather than popping it all in one go.As for the endurance if there is some reason they didnt want us starting with 100% i would like to know it and if there really is a good reason why not just start us at 50% or 75% instead with the amount of time it takes to charge that still would be several seconds before take off.

Also i really dont get why ppls cry about raptor/jackal. They got better controll . Better engage skills by far and can do some nice stuff like as OP mentioned precision jumps and jackal can also neglect fall dmg , which the beetle just cant do.( im not sure if the beetle gets actually effect by bunny mastery t4.)Also keep in mind for the beetle you put some effort into it like the griffon ( best mount so far) and the jackal and raptor requires just completing one heart and some masteries atleast for jackal.However both of them wont lose its usefulness in my eyes, since you need jackal for portals still and raptor for jumping over certain gasp.

I also agree with this there are moments when I use basically all of them including the skimmer even in non PoF maps

I would be fine if they change the beetle to the "better" beetle as people already mentioned it. Allows you to be fast to get from point a to point b under certain Conditions( water, Hills, tight places), maybe for farms or tagging enemies it might be a problem, since peoples cant tag it.

The fun factor just drops when you mount up initially and cant really move far or fast with such a slow speed an have to wait a painstakingly long time for that boost to charge. Maybe they made it slower so that you feel a bigger shift from base speed to boosted speed but perhaps that gap is slightly too big or at least it is for me personally ;)

The whole point of any mount is that it doesn't render another mount useless. If the Roller Beetle's endurance bar would be full the moment you mount it, nobody would take out their Raptor anymore. Also, don't forget that the beetle accelerates when you go downhill, regardless of special mount skills. If you mount it on even ground it will never pick up speed, until the endurance bar is full. It's also equally as fast as the griffon so it won't make that mount pointless either. And the beetle might be fast after use of the endurance bar, but it's also not very manoeuverable, giving it another drawback compared to other mounts so as not to supplant them. I feel the new mount is in a fine place, and the old ones remain as useful as ever.

@"TheNecrosanct.4028" said:The whole point of any mount is that it doesn't render another mount useless. If the Roller Beetle's endurance bar would be full the moment you mount it, nobody would take out their Raptor anymore. Also, don't forget that the beetle accelerates when you go downhill, regardless of special mount skills. If you mount it on even ground it will never pick up speed, until the endurance bar is full. It's also equally as fast as the griffon so it won't make that mount pointless either. And the beetle might be fast after use of the endurance bar, but it's also not very manoeuverable, giving it another drawback compared to other mounts so as not to supplant them. I feel the new mount is in a fine place, and the old ones remain as useful as ever.

Your statement entirely not true & couldnt we just flip the script of your logic and say because the endurance bar starts empty and its so slow no one will use roller beetle because its bad and worse than the raptor?

The idea of locking the mounts sole movement tool on initial mounting is a very bad way to split the beetle apart from the raptor because it removes a portion of fun from the mount and anets whole idea behind the mount system is "The joy of movement" There is no joy in being locked out of a mounts primary movement tool, even more so when the mounts sole purpose is ground speed travel and nothing more. its not made to blink, jump, float over dangers or waters, or fly.

Way too many people seem to have forgot what the raptors intended purpose for and that no mount was made in the launch of PoF with ground travel as its primary benefit in mind. The raptor became the standard mount due to how its jump ability worked. As noted above the raptor was made for jumping gaps in tight open and tight spots. Its jump just happens to work as good instant movement tool even if thats not its true intended purpose. For pure ground travel purposes the raptor without a doubt should not outshine the beetle.

I also have doubts on your claim for it to be as fast as the griffon. The griffon can cross some maps in as little as 20 seconds or less when jumping from the right spot. Even on a well laid out path I can almost promise you the beetle is not going to do that.

@"TheNecrosanct.4028" said:The whole point of any mount is that it doesn't render another mount useless. If the Roller Beetle's endurance bar would be full the moment you mount it, nobody would take out their Raptor anymore. Also, don't forget that the beetle accelerates when you go downhill, regardless of special mount skills. If you mount it on even ground it will never pick up speed, until the endurance bar is full. It's also equally as fast as the griffon so it won't make that mount pointless either. And the beetle might be fast after use of the endurance bar, but it's also not very manoeuverable, giving it another drawback compared to other mounts so as not to supplant them. I feel the new mount is in a fine place, and the old ones remain as useful as ever.

well but also dont forget you also lose it rather quick , which is why it would be cool to have a better end reg and/or full endurance at the beginning and as mentioned above no one of those mounts will be useless , even IF the beetle got "buffed". You still need the long leap from raptor , Jackal for portal , Bunny for jump, Skimmer for passing water/quicksand and griffon for enjoying maps from above.

I would be fine if they change the beetle to the "better" beetle as people already mentioned it. Allows you to be fast to get from point a to point b under certain Conditions( water, Hills, tight places), maybe for farms or tagging enemies it might be a problem, since peoples cant tag it.

^see it still got it's flaws even if they would do it. So you would still take raptor and jackal. Also currently im testing it on other maps and even if its fast it can be dismounted in 2-3 hits in some places you better to go with other mounts.Run around in pof/hot/tyria . You will see , that the beetle will have some struggle on all maps , where other mounts are better :D

@ZDragon.3046 said:

I also have doubts on your claim for it to be as fast as the griffon. The griffon can cross some maps in as little as 20 seconds or less when jumping from the right spot. Even on a well laid out path I can almost promise you the beetle is not going to do that.

It's not a claim. You should watch ANet's video on the Roller Beetle. Because that's the source of this information.

@"Chazz.6709" said:

well but also dont forget you also lose it rather quick , which is why it would be cool to have a better end reg and/or full endurance at the beginning and as mentioned above no one of those mounts will be useless , even IF the beetle got "buffed". You still need the long leap from raptor , Jackal for portal , Bunny for jump, Skimmer for passing water/quicksand and griffon for enjoying maps from above.

The 3rd mastery enables you to regain endurance faster. I haven't unlocked it yet so I don't yet have a feeling for how well it works, but it's there.

I love the beetle. Sure it starts out slow, but once you get that momentum, you zoom past everything. Only problem I have is that when I hit top speed and hit an enemy they dont die or get seriously pushed back at least.

My big worry is that with it bound to LS rather than PoF it will get low priority for skins since players aren't guaranteed to have it. Similar to how all the stuff from LS3 was abandoned for the same reason.

I do agree that it does not feel good getting on a beetle with the boost unavailable. I feel slow, with is not what I should feel on a "motorcycle" mount.

+1 for Rollerbeetle feeling a bit lackluster with such a long endurance charge time before it can be boosted.I do like it's design and idea otherwise though! If it could boost straight away and the endurance regeneration was a bit faster, it would have it's place among the other mounts without actually replacing any of them, but at the moment it feels like a jackal or a raptor with their jumps and teleports are already at the goal when the rollerbeetle is still waiting for maxed endurance to boost the speed or it's crashed into a nearby rock and waiting for it to regenerate again.

The roller beetle currently have no useful spaces among the mounts due to poor design, simply takes too long to be able to get back up to speed if you pause to gather or you flub and hit something. Fun-ruiner.

@TheNecrosanct.4028 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

I also have doubts on your claim for it to be as fast as the griffon. The griffon can cross some maps in as little as 20 seconds or less when jumping from the right spot. Even on a well laid out path I can almost promise you the beetle is not going to do that.

Either way its still not going to get you that far. Flying at that speed with nothing to stop you vs ground movement at the same speed where hills, water, other bumps, can reduce your speed rather considerably. Even if they have the same top speed their average speeds wont be close to one another.

@"Chazz.6709" said:

well but also dont forget you also lose it rather quick , which is why it would be cool to have a better end reg and/or full endurance at the beginning and as mentioned above no one of those mounts will be useless , even IF the beetle got "buffed". You still need the long leap from raptor , Jackal for portal , Bunny for jump, Skimmer for passing water/quicksand and griffon for enjoying maps from above.

You should unlock all the masteries before you start trying to assume thingsThe 3rd mastery actually take some skill and timing to use other wise its pretty much useless. IF you Fail the trick mid air by hitting the ground before you complete the trick you lose on average more energy than you gained for attempting the trick. Not to mention this is only useful when you are in the air.

My buff would be to restore energy by drifting as well as performing mid air tricks.

@LucianDK.8615 said:The roller beetle currently have no useful spaces among the mounts due to poor design, simply takes too long to be able to get back up to speed if you pause to gather or you flub and hit something. Fun-ruiner.

Its main use is ground movement. NONE of the other mounts were designed specifically for ground movement but yes it does take too long to gather speed if you hit a sharp hill or stop and dont have boost available.

@"Boogiepop Void.6473" said:My big worry is that with it bound to LS rather than PoF it will get low priority for skins since players aren't guaranteed to have it. Similar to how all the stuff from LS3 was abandoned for the same reason.

You could say the same would be thought about the griffon though correct? It has just as many skins as every other mount thus far. Most people who have PoF will have access to the living story. I think it will have skins just like every other mount would for every mount pack that is released as well as a few unique ones.

I do agree that it does not feel good getting on a beetle with the boost unavailable. I feel slow, with is not what I should feel on a "motorcycle" mount.

Yeah they really need to do something about that

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

I don't have the beetle yet, but giving it 50% endurance when mounting up sounds like a good idea for a mastery.

@"Chazz.6709" said:

well but also dont forget you also lose it rather quick , which is why it would be cool to have a better end reg and/or full endurance at the beginning and as mentioned above no one of those mounts will be useless , even IF the beetle got "buffed". You still need the long leap from raptor , Jackal for portal , Bunny for jump, Skimmer for passing water/quicksand and griffon for enjoying maps from above.

but you can't drift always perfectly ... so you may end up with a second skill that punsih you hard to gain endurance ... also i think drifting doesnt last as long as those tricks ( atleast from my tries i did so far , but im not really comfy with it ). I really just would like full endurance and faster endurance regeneration and that trick thing as a little reward ... just for fun, even if you sadly cant pull it off always.

ANET PLEASE GO DO IT ! Change the beetle ! give it full endurance and done ! :^) Please stop this madness ! :D .... give us this decent mount we want ! :D Dont believe those peoples with their lies about Raptor / jackal useless. They probably havent tested or played them for long enough :D

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:The fact that the raptor still beast this thing out for medium distance movement kind of annoys me. IF you can get there in 2 raptor jumps or maybe 3 or 4 raptor jumps even there is no point to use the roller beetle due to not having a boost on mounting.

For going cross map distances the quickest the griffin from a choice high point will still move you the quickest in the air with its masteries completed.

No, cause bettle can't jump, and is hard to control at max speed.

Basically, imo, this is how it goes:Raptor/Jackal able to go through any terrain, easy to manoeuvre, can jump and are pretty fast. I consider them more or less equivalent, jackal has a bit more base speed, raptor eats that up with longer jumps (basically you need 2 jackal jumps to cover a single raptor jump). Jackal wins in some hot maps because you can avoid fall damage by teleporting before landing.

Griffon, can fly over most terrain if you start from a high enough place. And it's the fastest mount. But you need to be flying.

Skimmer, extremely fast over water, can climb up some stuff.

Springer, jumps high, good for climbing onto good spots to launch the griffon.

Beetle, really fast on land, takes too long to start, can't jump over obstacles without a ramp. Basically slower than jackal, unless you have been mounted for a while before setting of and have enough endurance to go out boosting, or you're starting off downhill. Loses significant amounts of speed when going uphill.

This is more or less the current picture. Raptor and Jackal are still the fastest means of going from A to B, beetle and Griffon are probably the funnest.

If you front-load beetle endurance a bit, you'd keep most of the current drawbacks, losing speed on hill climbs, still would have the high wind-up after depletion, no ability to clear obstacles, but you'd be able to start off faster. So on roads, or more or less clear and flat/downhill maps, beetle would be faster, while Raptor/Jackal would be the fastest on rougher terrain and uphill.