How to Improve Power Soulbeast.

Soulbeast is a great opportunity to buff the power capabilities for the Ranger, but in the current iteration it’s far from enough, because Soulbeast inherits from the bad base damage + power scaling of the Ranger, and also has flaws of its own.

• The power scaling on greatsword’s auto-attacks should be increased. The first two attacks scales at 0.55, as a comparison Guardian is 0.8 and Warrior 0.7, they should scale at 0.65. The last attack on the chain scales at 0.72 with a cast time of ¾, as a comparison Guardian is 1.2 and Warrior 0.9 both having a ½ cast time, it should scale at 1. The greatsword will still be behind in terms of power scaling and also base damage, for instance the first auto-attack deals around 60 less base damage compared to the Warrior and 100 less base damage compared to the Guardian, but with this power scaling change the greatsword’s auto chain will be worth using without buffing it too much to still take into account the dps of the pet, eventually buffing the base damage by 10% alongside might be a good idea.

• The power scaling on the sword last auto-attack should also go up, currently it’s 0.8, while every other power sword’s last auto-attack is above 1 (with the exception of Revenant which has 0.9 but deals damage with the blast), it should be 1. Again not buffed too much, the two first auto-attacks are still weaker than every power swords regarding base damage, eventually buffing the base damage by 10% alongside might be a good idea.

• The sword third skill (Serpent’s Strike) should be modified, currently because it’s a dodge attack it behaves in a way where it misses a lot of time because the tracking is simply not good. The new skill shouldn’t move your character around, you should stay in place, you still keep the evasion frame though, and the animation would look like the one of Radiant Arc (third skill on Holosmith sword). In addition Serpent’s Strike should be buffed, currently it relies on poison to deal damage, but the sword on Ranger is a power weapon, so it doesn't make any sense. The base damage should go from 293 to 444 and the power scaling from 0.8 to 1.25, and the poison duration should go from 6s. to 3s.

• [Monarch’s Leap range should be 730 instead of 600, since you have to move backwards (130) before using it having a 730 range means Monarch’s Leap is a 600 range leap from your former position, this making the skill more in line with other sword leap while keeping its uniqueness and also facilitate catching running away foes.]

• Loud Whistle should work while in Beastmode, currently it doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s not going to be that powerful in PvP mode, as it’s harder to maintain yourself above 90% health, and in PvE it’s going to be a much than needed damage increase.

• Pet skills (F1 and F2) dealing only pure damage should deal more damage in Beastmode, as right now most of them deal either slightly worse or slightly better damage, depending on the rng, than auto-attacks, which makes them worthless. It’s very unlikely that they’re going to be too powerful in PvP modes as most of them have low range, so just moving away with swiftness is enough to avoid them, without counting the countless other ways to avoid them (blind, aegis …), and in PvE they’d become more than welcomed skills to your rotation. I think an overall buff to both base damage and power scaling is needed here.

• Twice as Vicious uptime should go from 4s. to 6s., in PvE the trait procs whenever you use crowd control, even on break bar enemies, but the uptime is too low considering the condition for the trait to proc.

• In PvE Maul should grant +50% damage while in Beastmode.

Those are I think rather easy to have, and rather balanced changes that would make power builds more viable on Soulbeast.

Soulbeast also has plenty of other issues, from skills not working in Beastmode, when they should, bugs, some of them inherited from core Ranger, some underwhelming skills/traits, and Beastmode being a bit clunky, and I shared a lot of those issues on several other threads and I think those issues should be looked upon before drawing attention to power builds, but power Ranger has been left behind so many years ago I can’t feel but being disappointed by Soulbeast keeping up with the habit.

There are two things that put other classes so far ahead of us in terms of power dps, weapon coefficients and damage modifiers. Just like necro's and mesmers we don't have access to as many flat damage modifiers as ele, warrior and guardian, the power scaling is horrible on every weapon as well as you mentioned. If our weapons added potent conditions it might not be so bad, a true hybrid approach, but they don't. We need to be less punished by positioning, given better damage coefficents across the board especially on pure power weapons like sword and traits need to be added/edited to give us more flat damage modifiers.

all this being said if they did do these things you would have to expect nerfs to things like Maul since it would quickly become overpowered.

Stuff like this has been requested since launch. Will not happen.

@Wayfinder.8452 said:Stuff like this has been requested since launch. Will not happen.

for a good reason. the power damage of rangers has to be balanced around the existance of the pet. So the ranger's power dmg output has to be Formula: (other power class potential dps < minus > highest possible power pet dps) to attempt an equilibrium of balance.Soulbeast offers the button to remove the pet.Therefore it opens up the opportunity to change the scaling while in soulbeast mode (the limiting factor is not active - and the higher scaling disappears as soon as the ranger un-merges)therefore it is valid to address the OP's point. We won't see another elite spec to remove the pet. Therefore soulbeast is the one and only chance to enable power ranger gameplay to break even with other professions

They don't need to change anything with the weapons, just put an appropriate damage modifier on the melded ferocious archetype buff.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:They don't need to change anything with the weapons, just put an appropriate damage modifier on the melded ferocious archetype buff.

If that were to happen, I could see them only increasing the added ferocity to 225. Would be similar to Versatile (+200 main stat / +225 alternate stat), but would it be enough?

The problem here is just for the shake of continuity Anet should not change the actual damage modifiers from the weapons just because Soulbeast as that would be a buff for core and druid as well.

Greatsword autoattack needs to be faster, i would remove the 1 sec last attack chain and make it as fast as the other 2 stages. Remove the evade if needed as well.Increase base damage for the maul to 25% and increase the CD to 6 secs.

@Wondrouswall.7169 said:

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:They don't need to change anything with the weapons, just put an appropriate damage modifier on the melded ferocious archetype buff.

I don't think so. I pointed in another thread, the stats increase should affect 4 stats instead.2 mayor (begins with 1000: power, toughness, vitality, precision) and 2 minor (begins at 0: the rest).Increases of 20% to all 4 or if there are to be fixed numbers: 400 increase for the mayor stats and 200 for the minor. (200 ferocity is a 15% damage increase when crit, 400 in precision means 20% extra crit chance)

That should make it good enough.

While in soul beast form. one should be able to swap pets. it is to much to have to leave the form and swap pets then wait 10 seconds.

just being able to swap pets while in BM ought to do it. the SB cranks out a ton of damage already, just needs a bit more survivability.

@anduriell.6280 said:The problem here is just for the shake of continuity Anet should not change the actual damage modifiers from the weapons just because Soulbeast as that would be a buff for core and druid as well.

Greatsword autoattack needs to be faster, i would remove the 1 sec last attack chain and make it as fast as the other 2 stages. Remove the evade if needed as well.Increase base damage for the maul to 25% and increase the CD to 6 secs.

@Wondrouswall.7169 said:

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:They don't need to change anything with the weapons, just put an appropriate damage modifier on the melded ferocious archetype buff.

That would honestly completely ruin the GS, if you want a DPS GS, go play guard. The evade on the AA is totally unique and the really short CD on Maul is fantastic. It's not a DPS weapon and it doesn't need to be.

They should have kept the autoproc Maul at least...

@Sedlina.1097 said:

@Wayfinder.8452 said:Stuff like this has been requested since launch. Will not happen.

I'm not sure why you're acting like there's such great parity between DPS specs that knobs must be fine tuned like you're suggesting here. In a game where we have some pure dps specs doing 20-25k and some doing 50k+, fine tuning and concerning oneself with the minutia of build balance seems unnecessary.