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Yeah yeah, mirage.... but soulbeast


Fortus.6175

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Guys, I understand the frustration that is fighting a mirage, but I find the amount of soulbeasts lately to be dramatically increasing, no game goes by without 1-2 per team. While they arent going to be tugging you around a point the same way mirage does, their dueling potential is extremely high, which in of itself is fine, if it wasnt that their teamfight potential is arguably higher thanks to sharing stances, high survavility and high range damage, and they are not afraid to stand on a point with their axes or to finish a kill with GS. Im not talking about the sick'em gimmick (although extremely strong in 1v1 and ability to hit 16-20k WI, it does take some other strengths away).

I'm talking about the boonbeast with 33% decreased received condi damage, near perma prot (which ticks heals), and well, unprecedented immunity to any CC thanks to the recently [and unneeded] buffed dolyak stance which last 9 s, 40CD, and the lovely, lovely wolf stance 12secs, 60 CD (aka, available every fight). Their sustain might not be all superior but you dont need to heal when then enemy is dead or running away for their lives. Seriously, Wolf pack, is a freaking 12 seconds duration, can be shared in a busy fight, and they have plenty of tools to hit you with ANYTHING, horn 4 into unblockable smoke assault + unblockable WI + Lb2 (or LB5 if im using LoS behind a pillar/wall) if you run away alive somehow after all that, I only got 2 dodges and I cant LoS those attacks once they connect.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unstoppable_Union 4 seconds of unblockable attacks on a 10 seconds CD is no joking matter, specially when you time it with wolf pack, horn 4, LB2 or smoke assault to drive it home. I cant think of a class with enough dodges (other than mirage) to survive the onslaught of unblockable stuff flying at you every 10-15 seconds.

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@"Fortus.6175" said:Guys, I understand the frustration that is fighting a mirage, but I find the amount of soulbeasts lately to be dramatically increasing, no game goes by without 1-2 per team. While they arent going to be tugging you around a point the same way mirage does, their dueling potential is extremely high, which in of itself is fine, if it wasnt that they teamfight potential is arguably higher thanks to sharing stances, high survavility and high range damage, and they are not afraid to stand on a point with their axes or to finish a kill with GS. Im not talking about the sick'em gimmick (although extremely strong in 1v1 and ability to hit 16-20k WI, it does take some other strengths away).

I'm talking about the boonbeast with 33% decreased received condi damage, near perma prot (which ticks heals), and well, unprecedented immunity to any soft CC thanks to the recently [and unneeded] buffed dolyak stance, and the lovely, lovely wolf stance. Their sustain might not be all superior but you dont need to heal when then enemy is dead or running away for their lives.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unstoppable_Union 4 seconds of unblockable attacks on a 10 seconds CD is no joking matter, specially when you time it with wolf pack, horn 4 and LB2 to drive it home. I cant think of a class with enough dodges (other than mirage) to survive the onslaught of stuff flying at you every 10 seconds.

It's not pink and you get to watch them the entire time they kill you.So for this community, even though it's the best 1v1 spec currently, it's not an issue.

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Like Mirage, the issues with Soulbeast are not so easy to fix. It's the idea again of "mechanically, there are some real problems here." It isn't quite as simple as slapping down some numeric nerfing, although I'm sure that is how it will be handled eventually. So where does it become broken and why is it a difficult issue to deal with? Well there are two main features of the Soulbeast specialization that like Mirage, are just messed mechanics to even introduce into the game competitively:

  1. Fresh Reinforcement - Entering beastmode grants you the boons affecting your pet.
  2. Pets instantly revive when merging with them.

Why is that so busted? Well allowing downed pets to instantly revive during merge, avoiding all punishment for a pet dying and allowing a bypass of pet death swap CD timer is OP to begin with, but it's really the Fresh Reinforcement that brought in the power creep, when paired with a couple traits from Nature Magic Core Ranger:

  1. Bountiful Hunter - You and your pet deal more damage per boon that is on you.
  2. Fortifying Bond - When you gain a boon it is shared with your pet.

Bountiful Hunter and Fortifying Bond are fine in the world of Core, but you start mixing this with specializations, particularly the Fresh Reinforcement from Soulbeast, and then we have a Boonbeast. So say the Boonbeast is also running Warhorn. So this turns into a cheesy situation where with a SINGLE Warhorn 5, the Boonbeast buffs 6 stacks of might on himself and 6 might on his pet, but due to Fortifying Bond, the pet actually gets 12 stacks of might. Then when the Soulbeast merges, the 12 stacks of might from the pet go onto the Boonbeast for a total of 18 immediate stacks of might. When you start stacking all of the boons provided with this combo offered through Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement <- This is exactly where it gets broken. All resulting in a character that with plasma incorporated, literally has every boon in the game on them, to make Bountiful Hunter much more powerful than it should be, whith much longer durations of boons than it should have.

I really want to stress that, those 4 specialization selections are where it is broken, particularly the boon amplification from Fresh Reinforcement. It isn't Sic'Em, it isn't Dolyak Stance, those function fine on builds that are not Boonbeasts. It is those 4 trait selections that make EVERYTHING feel broken and overpowered on a Boonbeast.

If I had to give Arenanet suggestions for a quick fix:

  • When pets die on Soulbeast, if they merge, the pet stays dead. When they leave the merge the pet would still be on it's CD timer for death and swapping to the other pet would still create a large pet swap CD. This would limit the Boonbeasts traits for boon synergy, penalizing him greatly for letting a pet die.
  • Fresh Reinforcement needs a complete overhaul. It should never have been amplifying boons to begin with. It should do something else such as: "Grant 3s of super speed upon merging" I don't know, you figure it out. But ultra boon amplification is just busted.
  • Leave Core Ranger alone. Fix Soulbeast.
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I would say holo and boonbeast are much more broken than mirage that need to be nerfed. Be clear that I do agree mirage is overtuned in some aspects. But in this forum most of the complain to mirage come from those with very low skill level who even cant spot the real mesmer from the clones.Seriously holo and boonbeast are the ones who should be nerfed first rather than mirage.

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@bennypig.6428 said:I would say holo and boonbeast are much more broken than mirage that need to be nerfed. Be clear that I do agree mirage is overtuned in some aspects. But in this forum most of the complain to mirage come from those with very low skill level who even cant spot the real mesmer from the clones.Seriously holo and boonbeast are the ones who should be nerfed first rather than mirage.

That's the thing, it doesn't matter if you can spot the real Mesmer anymore, you still have retarget every 2 or 3s anyway. It's just obnoxious and too much.

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@bennypig.6428 said:I would say holo and boonbeast are much more broken than mirage that need to be nerfed. Be clear that I do agree mirage is overtuned in some aspects. But in this forum most of the complain to mirage come from those with very low skill level who even cant spot the real mesmer from the clones.Seriously holo and boonbeast are the ones who should be nerfed first rather than mirage.

MESMER MAIN SPOTTED

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ranger is very strong but u can at least hit them without them going invuln evade evade block teleport-away every three seconds while you're taking dmg. At most a soulbeast will hit you from big range but any projectile reflect or meat shield can help deal with that. Mirage is way more unbalanced than ranger's comparitively unnoticeable mild overpoweredness.

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@"bennypig.6428" said:I would say holo and boonbeast are much more broken than mirage that need to be nerfed. Be clear that I do agree mirage is overtuned in some aspects. But in this forum most of the complain to mirage come from those with very low skill level who even cant spot the real mesmer from the clones.Seriously holo and boonbeast are the ones who should be nerfed first rather than mirage.

Oh if I had my way I would take the hammer to 7/9 classes...and some slight wristslaps for weaver and warrior still.Anet needs to nerf freaking everything if they want PvP to be enjoyable again. Not joking. Unironically. Nerf EVERYTHING.It's not really a "who goes first" kinda discussion.

But on the topic of soulbeast (boonbeast specifically).

As Trevor already said, the spec depends heavily on bouncing boons back and forth with your pet.You see plasma drop from pig > Use moa stance > use Wh5 > use plasma > merge with pet.Boom, every boon in the game; 66% more duration; twice.If you feel like it you could even go with "we heal as one" just for shits and giggles.

I honestly don't think its that hard to fix.

  • Get rid of plasma
  • Nerf moa stance boon duration to 33%
  • Cut mighstacks from Wh5 in half

Some minor things to nerf:

  • Sick em bonus dmg to 20% (for pure DPS specs)-Muddy terrain (from trait proc) duration reduced by half.
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People are salty about mirage because of clone spam and visual clutter on the screen and you see constantly the evade text on the screen and you miss your key skills into mirage cloak or clones.

When people fight against an holo or soulbeast they have the illusion that the fight is fair because they can actually see their damage hitting them, but in reality same as mirage you didn't have any chance as well, without using the healing skills those professions regen 4% health each second, even more than 3 adrenaline health warriors with healing signet.

Those specs are all overtuned, it's not just a mirage problem I agree with that.

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Do not worry, Soulbeast will come nerf exactly like Bunker Druid before him, I just hope not in the same ways, I would not like to have the beastmode cd increased to more than 10 seconds.

To say that Boonbeast, Holosmith or any other class is more broken than mirage is absolutely wrong, Mirage is one of the best duelists and can play the role of +1 without sacrificing anything, and no class in game can do this.

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I'd like to see damage toned down a bit but I don't want to see a bunker meta with nobody ever dying.That seems like a very difficult thing to do.The skill level it takes to be competitive for a lot of professions varies a lot, ultimately though, where is it imbalanced at the top playing level?

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@HeadCrowned.6834 said:Yeh nerf soulbeasts. Give power back to the druids.

I loved druid during HoT time, although I knew it was strong and I was abusing the puppy out of it, I was having a blast; I have always loved supports, and specially supports that can kick butt. I have tried druid a few times these past seasons but they just cant hold up to the powercreep that PoF brought up. I'm still sticking my guns with staff tempest, but it doesnt take much game knowledge to see the discrepant difference between HoT and PoF speccs in terms of overall effectiveness. Whereas HoT elites felt like you were sacrificing something to gain something else, most PoF feel like a straight up upgrade, heck, even weaver, which is significantly stronger than core or tempest (and even then it cant fix the core issues that plague eles, which show that the class is flawed to the core, and no elite-slapping can fix that).

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@Fortus.6175 said:

@HeadCrowned.6834 said:Yeh nerf soulbeasts. Give power back to the druids.

I loved druid during HoT time, although I knew it was strong and I was abusing the puppy out of it, I was having a blast; I have always loved supports, and specially supports that can kick butt. I have tried druid a few times these past seasons but they just cant hold up to the powercreep that PoF brought up. I'm still sticking my guns with staff tempest, but it doesnt take much game knowledge to see the discrepant difference between HoT and PoF speccs in terms of overall effectiveness. Whereas HoT elites felt like you were sacrificing something to gain something else, most PoF feel like a straight up upgrade, heck, even weaver, which is significantly stronger than core or tempest (and even then it cant fix the core issues that plague eles, which show that the class is flawed to the core, and no elite-slapping can fix that).

Nah, HoT did the same as PoF. Tempest, revenant, chrono, berserker, druid, reaper, scrapper were all stronger than vanilla.

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