Swapping Pets While in Beastmode...

Anet, please let us do this. I feel like soulbeast is very clunky without the ability to swap pets during beastmode. I've been trying to run builds with one pet for damage and one pet for support. However, these builds are basically useless because I can't get heals from my support pet on-demand; I have to wait for soulbeast to cd. Letting us swap pets while in beastmode would make soulbeast feel so much smoother.

they will never do this because soulbeast isnt suppose to be camped in beastmode 24/7. enter beast mode use abilites. leave and let pet attack on its own and use f2 like normal

@Zeek.6743 said:they will never do this because soulbeast isnt suppose to be camped in beastmode 24/7. enter beast mode use abilites. leave and let pet attack on its own and use f2 like normal

Irenio said during the stream that "I'm hoping to see players realise that it's not just about camping soulbeastmode and never seeing your pet again... weaving in and out of beastmode", but the problem with that is it is completely counter-intuitive to play it like that and better to just let the pet do its burst, then camp beastmode for the remainder of the encounter. Particularly if you are playing at range.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@Zeek.6743 said:they will never do this because soulbeast isnt suppose to be camped in beastmode 24/7. enter beast mode use abilites. leave and let pet attack on its own and use f2 like normal

Well they can't blame the users for this.

• Weaving in and out is a fun way to describe something with a forced cooldown (or double enforced cooldown with pet swap) as there is no option to 'weave back in' during either of those forced timers.
• They way they've designed the traits adds plenty of reasons to turn into beastmode, but none for swapping out of it. (I mean aside from the ~20 traits that don't work anymore while you are in beastmode. Not to mention the buttons that turn into 'I do nothing' skills while in beastmode)
• PvE wise it was already a major dps loss to swap pets beause they lose all their stacked buffs. Now we just get another option to spawn unbuffed pets.
• The poor performance of the pet AI in general is also not really helping this topic.

I think I’m about fifty games in sPvP with both a power and condition builds, and in both cases you want to play with a dps pet (deadly or ferocious) and a survivability pet (stout or supportive), which makes the gameplay quite strategic because you need to read the situation correctly each time, while it’s better to keep your dps beastmode for ambushes and at the beginning of large engagement, you’ll need to take the survivability one if the fight prolong itself or if you’re against a foe dealing too much pressure to you, but the issue is swapping between both require to wait for 10s., and a lot can happen in that time lapse, so what I found most of the time is either having the need to quickly disengage to wait for that 10s. delay when I’m pressured, but of course I leave my teammates and I’m also at the mercy of eventual chaser, or stay in the fray of battle and try to dodge/mitigate most of the fatal blows, but here most of the time I’ll die few seconds before the cooldown is off, and my dps will always suffers during that “stay alive” phase. The issue with the way you currently swap pets in beastmode is you need to do excellent reads of the situation and plan a lot ahead, but with the current balance most of the planning will fall over as too much pressure is applied to you, and Soulbeast (alongside Weaver) is kind of the only specs that has to do that kind of planning against specs that don’t necessarily have to, which at this point is more of a weakness than anything else.

While pet swapping in beastmode will encourage players to stay longer in beastmode it won’t erase the benefit of starting an engagement with your pet out in order to let it rotate with its skills, then merge with it for almost the rest of the fight, neither the benefit of using your pet to apply pressure to two players at once, or the benefit of using your pet “f2” ability to make your disengagement smother.

I think the reasonable thing would be to reduce beastmode cooldown from 10s. to 8s., that’d be a good start, but I also quite like the idea of having a pet swap in beastmode sharing the same cooldown as the one outside of beastmode.

In PvE a pet swap would also be nice as you’d be able to change your pets without having to leave beastmode, and therefore the archetype bonus, which would lead to I think better rotation, but also an increase in dps to a specs which can already deal around 35k to 40k with condition builds, and since the rotation in PvE doesn’t seem to include unmerging at all, it wouldn’t be such a loss.

Soulbeast would be so OP if you could pet swap,.

Honestly we asking to get pet swaps will get the current skills we have nerfed and I'm glad you can just camp soulbeast. It might be part of the ranger identity to have a pet out but it would make the spec way more annoying to swap in and out all the time

@Billy.1879 said:Soulbeast would be so OP if you could pet swap,.

Could you please explain why?

The abilities aren't just tack on abilities, they're legit. It's like having 3 extra utilities.

It would be too strong, way to strong, would be pretty fun though to use a jacaranda and be able to swap into like a pig tank

@Billy.1879 said:The abilities aren't just tack on abilities, they're legit. It's like having 3 extra utilities.

It would be too strong, way to strong, would be pretty fun though to use a jacaranda and be able to swap into like a pig tank

I fail to see how having 3 additional skills is OP compared to Tempests possible 46 skill bar, Engi's 35 possible skill bar or Revenant's 21+ possible skill bar. We'd only have access to a max of 21 skills.

If they wanted us to go in and out of beastmode, then they should have made traits comparable to thief trickery; Furious strength, twice as vicious, and all the major traits are trash. As far as I am concerned they can either get better traits or just give us pet swap in beast mode. We don't trait for swap much anyway since there is I think only 1 per specialization.

Getting pet swap in beastmode would be great, but it could be to hard to do. I would be happy if they remove that 10sec cooldown from leaving beastmode. If there need to be cooldown in beastmode then it should be at entering it.

You cant really "weave" in and out of Soulbeast when it has a 10second cool down. You can 't really use your pets abilities correctly unless you swap to it 10-11seconds before you need it due to pet swap cool down AND Soulbeast cool down. I think just having Soulbeast on like a 1second ICD would be enough.

You dont really get THAT big a bonus for being inside Soulbeast - You lose quite a bit of damage for a start and you lose access to how many traits and skills that dont work because you're inside Soulbeast. I think unless they actually buff Soulbeast mode enough that you arent actually PUNISHED for being inside Soulbeast mode, i think remove the cool down on Soulbeast would be very welcome.

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:You cant really "weave" in and out of Soulbeast when it has a 10second cool down. You can 't really use your pets abilities correctly unless you swap to it 10-11seconds before you need it due to pet swap cool down AND Soulbeast cool down. I think just having Soulbeast on like a 1second ICD would be enough.

You dont really get THAT big a bonus for being inside Soulbeast - You lose quite a bit of damage for a start and you lose access to how many traits and skills that dont work because you're inside Soulbeast. I think unless they actually buff Soulbeast mode enough that you arent actually PUNISHED for being inside Soulbeast mode, i think remove the cool down on Soulbeast would be very welcome.

This, I feel like beast mode is fine as is, it gives a lot of utility/CC/Burst and pet survivability, but overall it's a dps loss (contrary to popular belief).

If they removed the CD from beast mode, or at least knocked it down to like 5s? I feel like Soulbeast would feel way smoother, because then you could weave in and out of Soulbeast and have a much more fluid playstyle.

It wouldn't even really buff Soulbeast that much either, because you'd still be restricted by your beastmode skill CDs, and pet swap so it's not like you could do anything too crazy. Would also make cats a bit more useful too.

@ArmageddonAsh.6430 said:You cant really "weave" in and out of Soulbeast when it has a 10second cool down. You can 't really use your pets abilities correctly unless you swap to it 10-11seconds before you need it due to pet swap cool down AND Soulbeast cool down. I think just having Soulbeast on like a 1second ICD would be enough.

You dont really get THAT big a bonus for being inside Soulbeast - You lose quite a bit of damage for a start and you lose access to how many traits and skills that dont work because you're inside Soulbeast. I think unless they actually buff Soulbeast mode enough that you arent actually PUNISHED for being inside Soulbeast mode, i think remove the cool down on Soulbeast would be very welcome.

This, I feel like beast mode is fine as is, it gives a lot of utility/CC/Burst and pet survivability, but overall it's a dps loss (contrary to popular belief).

If they removed the CD from beast mode, or at least knocked it down to like 5s? I feel like Soulbeast would feel way smoother, because then you could weave in and out of Soulbeast and have a much more fluid playstyle.

It wouldn't even really buff Soulbeast that much either, because you'd still be restricted by your beastmode skill CDs, and pet swap so it's not like you could do anything too crazy. Would also make cats a bit more useful too.

@Durzlla.6295 said:If they removed the CD from beast mode, or at least knocked it down to like 5s? I feel like Soulbeast would feel way smoother, because then you could weave in and out of Soulbeast and have a much more fluid playstyle.

If anything is done about the actual CD of Beastmode, Unstoppable Union will certainly change. If that trait is left alone, however, I can see a compromise of a 5s CD when entering and exiting Beastmode as it keeps the 10s space of what it would usually be for the benefits.

@Wondrouswall.7169 said:

@Durzlla.6295 said:If they removed the CD from beast mode, or at least knocked it down to like 5s? I feel like Soulbeast would feel way smoother, because then you could weave in and out of Soulbeast and have a much more fluid playstyle.

Oh yeah, forgot about that trait, I mean worst case scenario they slap a 10s ICD on it.

And I think a 5s Cd upon entering and exiting would be a good idea, it'd make you have to commit to beast mode a little, but not punish you as much for leaving it.

I'm also of the mentality that swapping in beast mode would be a great improvement to the fluidity of the spec. But, reducing the cooldown for going into beastmode by at least 5 seconds, could really improve the flow in battle, when trying to capitalize on your alternate pets abilities.

@Zeek.6743 said:they will never do this because soulbeast isnt suppose to be camped in beastmode 24/7.

The devs didn't say that. A few people misunderstood what he said and have been spewing that nonsense as gospel.

He said he hoped to see people going in and out of Beastmode and not just camping it. That's considerably different than saying you're not supposed to camp it.

There are many situations where you'd want to stay in Beastmode for an extended period of time (in a zerg, under heavy AoE damage, when your pet can't keep up with a target) so being able to swap pets within Beastmode to use the alternate abilities would make combat flow much more fluidly.

@psizone.8437 said:

@Zeek.6743 said:they will never do this because soulbeast isnt suppose to be camped in beastmode 24/7.

Irenio actually said ""I'm hoping to see players realise that it's not just about camping soulbeastmode and never seeing your pet again..." which can be taken a couple of different ways imo, one being that he hoped players would realise the spec was not designed around camping beastmode or he hoped players would not just camp beastmode because there is a lot more to the spec but play it how you like. To me, it seems as if they specifically designed the beast mode to be used for the majority of a fight because it's not intuitive to weave in and out of the mode at all, there is a lot more hindrance to you by doing that.

If they want people to weave in and out of beastmode, there must be some incentive to do so.

• Allow pet swap in beastmode on the same CD as regular pet swapping, triggering pet swap traits.
• Elevated Bond should copy your boons to your pet and give it superspeed when you exit beastmode.

Allow pet swap in beastmode on the same CD as regular pet swapping, triggering pet swap traits.

It would make Soulbeast so so much fluid. Right now, if you were to have On Swap traits, you would be slapped a total of 20 secs cooldown (Out of BeastMode + Pet Swap).

So much juggling around. Want to use the heal, but you're on a ferocious pet ? Get out of Beastmode, 10 secs, pet swap, 10 secs, wait 10 secs or what is left of BMode cooldown, merge... My god, what a mind numbing experience. Also, 0 reactive/active play.

Even making Pet Swap traits work when you exit BeastMode would be great.

I don't even understand when people say it would make Soulbeast OP to have Pet Swap on BeastMode. Feels like they never played other classes and how fluid and easy their rotations are. Having 3 more skills to your disposition will not make SoulBeast OP, not at all. SBeast is not even in any position to be OP right now.

@Krispera.5087 said:

Allow pet swap in beastmode on the same CD as regular pet swapping, triggering pet swap traits.

Where are you even getting 20s from? It's literally only 10s since pet swap has its own completely independent CD from beastmode, and the CD for beast mode (the limiting factor in swapping to a new pet and using its F3) is 10s. I have no idea how you're getting 20s.

That being said pet swapping in BM to trigger on swap traits would be kinda cool, but I'd expect a lower CD on beast mode long before pet swap in beast mode since it sounds like the devs want you to weave in and out of beast mode.

@Durzlla.6295 said:

@Krispera.5087 said:

Allow pet swap in beastmode on the same CD as regular pet swapping, triggering pet swap traits.

Even if they lower the CD to 3s or something, which would be a great improvement, it still leaves the issue of the pet always losing its boons and appearing at your location each time you exit. Then there is also the condition damage tick from melded/swapped pets to deal with.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

@Durzlla.6295 said:

@Krispera.5087 said:

Allow pet swap in beastmode on the same CD as regular pet swapping, triggering pet swap traits.

I think the pet losing it's boons is fine, you're effectively swapping your pet out and taking it out of harms way, and Soulbeast is the only ranger spec who effectively have an unkillable pet due to have beast mode always on a 10s Cd and reviving the pet, it's a trade off imo.

However, I agree with the pet always being near you really hinders Soulbeast s ability to use ranger weapons, I get that it's meant to be melee focused, but cmon Anet. I liked the idea of giving the pet superspeed when you come out of beastmode, so even though they're next to you they could zoom right into the fray again. Or at the very least slap on some swiftness or something.

@Durzlla.6295 said:Where are you even getting 20s from? It's literally only 10s since pet swap has its own completely independent CD from beastmode, and the CD for beast mode (the limiting factor in swapping to a new pet and using its F3) is 10s. I have no idea how you're getting 20s.

Yes they are independant, I know they aren't additive. They are systems with independant 10-15 secs cooldown.

What I'm saying is that, in total, if you want to come back to your first merged pet, you'll still be out of it for 20 secs, minimum. Whenever you do something, either BeastMode unmerge or Pet Swap, you still get 10-15 secs minimum. You need to be very sure to get out of BeastMode or swap the pet.

The weave in weave out gameplay they describe is full of time gates.

We hardly have one trait that push this kind of playstyle (Fresh Reinforcement). The best thing they could do to bridge the Pet Swap/BeastMode problem is having only one cooldown, the Pet Swap cooldown.

So you are saying that upon leaving beast mode the pet's green soul animation should shoot out at target? Sounds cool.