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Let's discuss Soulbeast's latest Pet changes!


DarkFlopy.8197

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@Aaron Forestman.4758 said:

@"Kodama.6453" said:Soulbeast gave up absolutely nothing, they just got another button added to their gameplay. They needed to get brought in line with other elite spec designs and removing pet swap during combat fits both gameplaywise and thematically. It was a good change.

I've been quite confused about this update since they first revealed where they were going with soulbeast. It's had a tradeoff since PoF first came out, one of the most glaring ones out there: when you merge to get your extra skills/stats, you don't have your pet there anymore. That seems like a pretty explicit tradeoff to me.

Not exactly.

The thing with Soulbeast was that they were able to play like a core Ranger. Nothing was forcing you to merge with your pet, you could have your pet out attacking all the time if you want it to. So even if the pet disappears when merging, it is not really a trade off. It is giving you another option you can use if you desire and it benefits you, but you still had the choice.And having additional choices is always good. It was not really a disadvantage for you to get the option to merge with your pet.

Other classes had to actually really give something up permanently, without the option to chose. The equivalent of what the Soulbeast had for the Necromancer, as an example, would have been not to replace his death shroud with reapers shroud, but giving him both shrouds available, with death shroud staying on F1 and reapers shroud becoming a new F2 button.It would have been the same situation like the Soulbeast. Both shrouds consume your life force, so you won't be able to use both shrouds too frequently because of your lacking resource. But having the option to either use death shroud or reapers shroud would have been an advantage and there wouldn't have been a trade off anymore.

Another example: HolosmithIf Holosmith would have the same "trade off" Soulbeast had back then, then they wouldn't have replaced his F5 skill with the Holoforge, but give it to him as a F6 skill instead. Because by your logic he obviously had a trade off since using Holoforge would replace your weapon skills with the Holoforge skills, meaning you can't use your weapons in this mode. But this isn't a trade off in their sense, Holosmith would still have all the same stuff the Engineer has, but more, thanks to the Holoforge.

This is the thing here. Giving up something permanently, meaning that it is not at all available to you anymore. Many classes already had such system before Soulbeast got theirs.Scrapper and Holosmith give up their F5 skill permanently (Scrapper additionally has permanent 180 vitality removed)Reaper and Scourge give up their death shroud on F1Firebrands and Dragonhunters give up their virtues on F1-F3And so on. Soulbeast never really gave up a mechanic, they just got another button added, but they still had everything avaiable at their disposal as the Ranger.

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@Kodama.6453 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Soulbeast gave up absolutely nothing, they just got another button added to their gameplay. They needed to get brought in line with other elite spec designs and removing pet swap during combat fits both gameplaywise and thematically. It was a good change.

I've been quite confused about this update since they first revealed where they were going with soulbeast. It's had a tradeoff since PoF first came out, one of the most glaring ones out there: when you merge to get your extra skills/stats, you don't have your pet there anymore. That seems like a pretty explicit tradeoff to me.

Not exactly.

The thing with Soulbeast was that they were able to play like a core Ranger. Nothing was forcing you to merge with your pet, you could have your pet out attacking all the time if you want it to. So even if the pet disappears when merging, it is not really a trade off. It is giving you another option you
can
use if you desire and it benefits you, but you still had the choice.And having additional choices is always good. It was not really a disadvantage for you to get the option to merge with your pet.

Other classes had to actually really give something up permanently, without the option to chose. The equivalent of what the Soulbeast had for the Necromancer, as an example, would have been not to replace his death shroud with reapers shroud, but giving him
both
shrouds available, with death shroud staying on F1 and reapers shroud becoming a new F2 button.It would have been the same situation like the Soulbeast. Both shrouds consume your life force, so you won't be able to use both shrouds too frequently because of your lacking resource. But having the option to either use death shroud or reapers shroud would have been an advantage and there wouldn't have been a trade off anymore.

Another example: HolosmithIf Holosmith would have the same "trade off" Soulbeast had back then, then they wouldn't have replaced his F5 skill with the Holoforge, but give it to him as a F6 skill instead. Because by your logic he obviously had a trade off since using Holoforge would replace your weapon skills with the Holoforge skills, meaning you can't use your weapons in this mode. But this isn't a trade off in their sense, Holosmith would still have all the same stuff the Engineer has, but more, thanks to the Holoforge.

This is the thing here. Giving up something
permanently
, meaning that it is not at all available to you anymore. Many classes already had such system before Soulbeast got theirs.Scrapper and Holosmith give up their F5 skill permanently (Scrapper additionally has permanent 180 vitality removed)Reaper and Scourge give up their death shroud on F1Firebrands and Dragonhunters give up their virtues on F1-F3And so on. Soulbeast never really gave up a mechanic, they just got another button added, but they still had everything avaiable at their disposal as the Ranger.

Beastmode also revived your pet on a 10-second cooldown, where as core ranger had a 60-second cooldown when swapping a downed pet. Unless I'm misremembering, that was patched in PvP/WvW though.

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@Yasai.3549 said:

@"DarkFlopy.8197" said:

again im asking, so what is the point of having a 2nd pet if i can't use it unless its outside of combat?!

I myself am unhappy with the lazy sort of change implemented to Soulbeast, but this is a pretty stupid question.

Why does Rev have access to 5 Legends when they can only use 2?Why does every Ele and Engi have weapon swap when they can only use 1 set in combat?Why do we have over 27 traits to pick at a time but can only use 9 in combat?

Now for actual discussion about pet balancing.

Soulbeast has long been considered "stronger Ranger" because it literally is similar to Ranger but has beast mode, giving them access to potentially 6 extra skills

What makes me scratch my head is that Druids are the one which got the "weaker pets" tradeoff when according to lore, Soulbeasts are the ones who are supposed to have "weaker pets" which results in the training of the Soulbeast discipline to merge with their pets.

In fact, it even reflects in combat well now, because Soulbeasts now have to keep track of their own health and their pet's health, and merge to save them or else their pet is put out of the fight for awhile.

I'm just baffled as to why Druid's tradeoff was simply "weaker pets" while Soulbeast's tradeoff is "less versatility"

If it were up to me, I would give Soulbeasts "weaker pets" and give Druid another sort of tradeoff.

Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?

The choice of tradeoff for druids was probably done because it was possible to have builds which were build for extreme durability while still having a fairly high damage output through the pets (which had their own stats independent of the druid's gear). Reducing the damage output on pets directly addresses this issue. Personally, I think there are probably more elegant ways of doing it, but it was a tradeoff chosen to directly address a problem that was observed at the time.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?

The choice of tradeoff for druids was probably done because it was possible to have builds which were build for extreme durability while still having a fairly high damage output through the pets (which had their own stats independent of the druid's gear). Reducing the damage output on pets directly addresses this issue. Personally, I think there are probably more elegant ways of doing it, but it was a tradeoff chosen to directly address a problem that was observed at the time.

You really don't want to compare lore, especially when it comes to game balance decisions.

In Guild Wars the ranger's primary attribute, and with that the profession's mechanic, was to lower the energy cost of skills. The pet mechanic was unique to rangers, but also entirely optional.

Damage scaling on the ranger in GW2 has always been a little lower to compensate for the mandatory pet. The pet was overperforming on druid, it got nerfed (again.) Quite frankly, the pet's behaviour and performance has always been problematic in terms of game balance, either due to their independent damage scaling or by sheer lack of a dodge mechanic or invulnerability. End of story.

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@JorneMormel.9850 said:

Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?

The choice of tradeoff for druids was probably done because it was possible to have builds which were build for extreme durability while still having a fairly high damage output through the pets (which had their own stats independent of the druid's gear). Reducing the damage output on pets directly addresses this issue. Personally, I think there are probably more elegant ways of doing it, but it was a tradeoff chosen to directly address a problem that was observed at the time.

You really don't want to compare lore, especially when it comes to game balance decisions.

In Guild Wars the ranger's primary attribute, and with that the profession's mechanic was to lower the energy cost of skills. The pet mechanic was unique to rangers, but also optional.

Damage scaling on the ranger in GW2 has always been a little lower to compensate for the mandatory pet. The pet was overperforming on druid, it got nerfed (again.) Quite frankly, the pet's behaviour and performance has always been problematic in terms of game balance, either due to their independent damage scaling or by lack of a dodge mechanic or invulnerability. End of story.

Not sure how any of that was relevant to my question, or my observations in general?

I'm aware that ranger has been balanced so as to have less personal DPS to account for the pet (and merging on Soulbeast is supposed to address this, especially on a Deadly or Ferocious pet).

The lore inquiry was because I do a lot of reading and investigation into the lore, and there isn't a lot about soulbeast and what there is says nothing about soulbeast pets being weaker than those of regular rangers. So I was looking to get the poster I was replying to to cite their source.

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@"draxynnic.3719" said:

Not sure how any of that was relevant to my question, or my observations in general?

I'm aware that ranger has been balanced so as to have less personal DPS to account for the pet (and merging on Soulbeast is supposed to address this, especially on a Deadly or Ferocious pet).

The lore inquiry was because I do a lot of reading and investigation into the lore, and there isn't a lot about soulbeast and what there is says nothing about soulbeast pets being weaker than those of regular rangers. So I was looking to get the poster I was replying to to cite their source.

Point being it's pointless to compare in-game lore to game mechanics, as all lore offers is "flavour", like skill names. Lore-wise the ranger should be the strongest profession in-game because it fights as two seperate entities, balance wise this is unreasonable and mechanically undesirable. (Compare common pets to their ingame equivalents... Like why can't I tame a veteran or champion devourer? Now consider these common enemies took parties of 4-8 people in the original game to take down. Did wild beasts get neutered somewhere in the past couple of centuries of lore, or did people just happen to invent firearms and steroids?)

Your question: "Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?" shows expectation of there being a logical answer to game balance decisions in story background. Take for example the name of the game itself: Guild Wars, it's got nothing to do with the current iteration of the game, there's not even guild versus guild content. The very game itself is named after lore about a war centuries past, completely unrelated to what the game has to offer.

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@Kodama.6453 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Soulbeast gave up absolutely nothing, they just got another button added to their gameplay. They needed to get brought in line with other elite spec designs and removing pet swap during combat fits both gameplaywise and thematically. It was a good change.

I've been quite confused about this update since they first revealed where they were going with soulbeast. It's had a tradeoff since PoF first came out, one of the most glaring ones out there: when you merge to get your extra skills/stats, you don't have your pet there anymore. That seems like a pretty explicit tradeoff to me.

Not exactly.

The thing with Soulbeast was that they were able to play like a core Ranger. Nothing was forcing you to merge with your pet, you could have your pet out attacking all the time if you want it to. So even if the pet disappears when merging, it is not really a trade off. It is giving you another option you
can
use if you desire and it benefits you, but you still had the choice.And having additional choices is always good. It was not really a disadvantage for you to get the option to merge with your pet.

Other classes had to actually really give something up permanently, without the option to chose. The equivalent of what the Soulbeast had for the Necromancer, as an example, would have been not to replace his death shroud with reapers shroud, but giving him
both
shrouds available, with death shroud staying on F1 and reapers shroud becoming a new F2 button.

Just to make it clear, I have no problems being restricted to one pet while in combat. Other than the fact that it makes the spec a lot more boring after being accustomed to having two.

But I keep seeing the argument that it "could still be played like a core ranger" etc.

Soulbeast is completely useless if you don't utilize the merge mechanic to the fullest, playing it like a core ranger is about the dumbest and most ineffective way you can play the class (I mean the entire class). I get your point, but it's entirely moot. If you're gonna make the argument for no trade off, make it simple. SB added versaility that core ranger doesn't have, given that you use the merge mechanic and properly swap between your pets, and the only real cost is that you have to run what is arguably one of the weakest traitlines ranger has. Keep saying that it can be played like core ranger just with an added button is just beating around the bush. The core of the issue is how strong access two mergable pets is, and the versatility that comes with it. The trade off is less about the pet swap and more about the loss of the skills that came with that second pet while merging.

Which on the flipside means that Anet can finally look at some of the weaker SB traits and skills and make them actually worthwhile/interesting, now that the elite spec got its trade off implemented. Not that I expect them to.

Edit: there is something to be said about merging to revive dead pets which also adds something, but then again, the dead pet mechanic is way too harsh on core and especially for druid in competetive content anyway. Druid should have been petless from the get-go to allow it to be a proper support spec instead of the mediocre middleground it is now (outside pve), but that's another discussion.

And while I get your necro comparison, the ability to chose between both shrouds (especially if they kept the difference in how fast they drain) would be a hell of lot stronger than SB having two pets. Equivalent? I'd call it an overdramatic comparison.


As for the question of the thread... It's called QoL. You get two pets to choose from before going into combat. Less fumbling with the pet panel. It's great in WvW. And I can't understand why on earth people would complain about that.

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@"DarkFlopy.8197" said:As soon as the balance patch hits, first things being said and being changed in ranger are......

Soulbeasts, long standing without a tradeoff, are now receiving theirs—they lose combat access to a second pet and must choose carefully which pet they're going to be bonded with in battle. We're also enhancing several core ranger traits and some select weapon skills that we felt were on the weak side.
  • Soulbeast: Soulbeasts can no longer swap pets while in combat. Entering and leaving beastmode with your pet now counts as a pet swap for the purposes of the Clarion Bond and Zephyr's Speed traits.>

So... i want to discuss this.im going to start with a question here:

WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING A 2ND PET IF I CAN'T USE IT UNLESS ITS OUTSIDE OF COMBAT?

so, what i am going to do with a 2nd pet? literally since the patch hit i have NEVER hit the pet swap, 90% of the time i couldn't because i was in combat and the other 10% of the time it was absolutely not needed to do so.

again im asking, so what is the point of having a 2nd pet if i can't use it unless its outside of combat?!its like telling deadeye "one of your skills makes you crouch down while performing it... so now you can't crouch (use that skill) unless you are out of endurance so it will sync well with restoring endurance".

what do you think about this "lets just push something so it will look like we are working on balance" change?.

What I like about the second pet is I can quickly decide in WvW before I engage an enemy what tools I want to bring - OR if I get overwhelmed I keep my second pet mobility based so I can break combat and swap out.

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Ooof yeah, I've not been having near as much fun with Soulbeast since the patch (mostly testing and PvE stuff for now). For me, ranger has always been my favourite class because of it's potential to play dynamically - to change tempo and fighting style on the fly and adapt to situations. A swap in pet and weapon could quickly take the same build from emphasizing a skirmishing style to being more survivable and in your face.

Soulbeast originally just added to this sort of dynamic fun, giving us a couple more skills to play with in adapting to a situation. And while it was a boost, it generally wasn't the sort of boost which completely changed things since the merged pet skills largely follow their natural role on core ranger. For example, if you want maximum survivability in your Soulbeast then you probably aren't running a cat, and likely aren't running a drake to maximize DPS either. On top, the typing of which pet had which role (Supportive, Deadly, etc.) further limited choices especially between the condi and power damage types.

Now, I completely agree that the elite specs should all have a trade off, and Soulbeast needed one. But taking away the dynamics of the pet swap which added a lot of fun potential to the class when actually playing it was not the right answer IMHO. Trade offs good, duller gameplay not good.

What should Soulbeast give up instead? Admittedly this is kind of a tough question. Core Ranger doesn't have a whole lot of little mechanics to adjust since they are all tied to the pet which is either there or not. Potentially, a nerf to pet stats when not merged. Or a malus of some kind on the Ranger when not merged - after all if soulbeast is the pet themed spec of the pet class, shouldn't they rely on the pet a little more?

Neither are great ideas, but it's some sort of start.

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@"Helequin.2608" said:Ooof yeah, I've not been having near as much fun with Soulbeast since the patch (mostly testing and PvE stuff for now). For me, ranger has always been my favourite class because of it's potential to play dynamically - to change tempo and fighting style on the fly and adapt to situations. A swap in pet and weapon could quickly take the same build from emphasizing a skirmishing style to being more survivable and in your face.

Soulbeast originally just added to this sort of dynamic fun, giving us a couple more skills to play with in adapting to a situation. And while it was a boost, it generally wasn't the sort of boost which completely changed things since the merged pet skills largely follow their natural role on core ranger. For example, if you want maximum survivability in your Soulbeast then you probably aren't running a cat, and likely aren't running a drake to maximize DPS either. On top, the typing of which pet had which role (Supportive, Deadly, etc.) further limited choices especially between the condi and power damage types.

Now, I completely agree that the elite specs should all have a trade off, and Soulbeast needed one. But taking away the dynamics of the pet swap which added a lot of fun potential to the class when actually playing it was not the right answer IMHO. Trade offs good, duller gameplay not good.

What should Soulbeast give up instead? Admittedly this is kind of a tough question. Core Ranger doesn't have a whole lot of little mechanics to adjust since they are all tied to the pet which is either there or not. Potentially, a nerf to pet stats when not merged. Or a malus of some kind on the Ranger when not merged - after all if soulbeast is the pet themed spec of the pet class, shouldn't they rely on the pet a little more?

Neither are great ideas, but it's some sort of start.

To be fair - speaking strictly balance -wise - capping available combat pets at 1 is the easiest, fastest, and probably least "painful" change/limitation to implement.

Elementalist mains often whine and argue about why it's so hard for Arenanet to balance out their class ("we're not allowed to have damage!!!!" etc). It's very simple: flexibility and versatility has to come with a tradeoff; but generally speaking, a jack of all trades -class is VERY difficult to balance in ANY game. League of Legends contains perhaps the best examples in the form of Yasuo, Zed, Azir and others.

Yes, it does gimp the skill and fun factor of the specialization. Yes, that sucks. There are, however, 8 other classes in the game.

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@JorneMormel.9850 said:

@"draxynnic.3719" said:

Not sure how any of that was relevant to my question, or my observations in general?

I'm aware that ranger has been balanced so as to have less personal DPS to account for the pet (and merging on Soulbeast is supposed to address this, especially on a Deadly or Ferocious pet).

The lore inquiry was because I do a lot of reading and investigation into the lore, and there isn't a lot about soulbeast and what there
is
says nothing about soulbeast pets being weaker than those of regular rangers. So I was looking to get the poster I was replying to to cite their source.

Point being it's pointless to compare in-game lore to game mechanics, as all lore offers is "flavour", like skill names. Lore-wise the ranger should be the strongest profession in-game because it fights as two seperate entities, balance wise this is unreasonable and mechanically undesirable. (Compare common pets to their ingame equivalents... Like why can't I tame a veteran or champion devourer? Now consider these common enemies took parties of 4-8 people in the original game to take down. Did wild beasts get neutered somewhere in the past couple of centuries of lore, or did people just happen to invent firearms and steroids?)

Your question: "Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?" shows expectation of there being a logical answer to game balance decisions in story background. Take for example the name of the game itself: Guild Wars, it's got nothing to do with the current iteration of the game, there's not even guild versus guild content. The very game itself is named after lore about a war centuries past, completely unrelated to what the game has to offer.

Obviously, gameplay balance is the most important consideration here, but lore can guide decisions. For instance, the decision to reduce soulbeast to one pet could have been motivated by ArenaNet looking for a tradeoff (gameplay balance consideration) and then someone goes "hey, if the soulbeast bond is so special, why can the soulbeast maintain such a bond with two animals at once?" Lore sometimes leads gameplay.

There's probably also an idea somewhere of exactly what different forms of magic are capable of, which is going to influence skill design. Which is my counter to the "ranger + pet should be stronger than any other profession" claim: most professions have more powerful magic than rangers do, and those that don't have near-modern technology or heavy armour and a lot of physical training. The random non-veteran animals we run into in the wild aren't all that imposing, so why would Fido be expected to give a guy with a bow a clear advantage over the guy who can tell the laws of physics to take a day off?

Seriously, though, the question "Where does it say in the lore that Soulbeasts have weaker pets?" only had one intent - that the person who made the claim that it is said in the lore either justify their claim (thereby bringing my attention to something I'd apparently missed) or admit that their claim was in error. Which, from my perspective, is a win-win.

Mind you, if there is something obscure somewhere where it's said that soulbeast pets are weaker than regular ranger pets, then it makes sense to apply such a tradeoff to the soulbeast. Or adjust the writing of said source to reflect the actual tradeoff implemented instead. Gameplay sometimes leads lore too.

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@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

There are, however, 8 other classes in the game.That's a terrible suggestion. I'm not trying to be personal, I am speaking generally. If a player enjoys a class, the answer to changes on that class shouldn't be to move to another class. As a ranger/soulbeast main, I despise this change and disagree with it. While I do agree that soulbeast needed some trade-off, I don't favor this one and I do agree that this decision seemed the easiest (and IMO laziest). I hope that the devs will listen and find some other means to balance the soulbeast against the other ranger builds that doesn't entail losing this access.

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Can't speak for PVP

In PVE, for folks struggling with the Soulbeast change I figure we're more accustomed to using the pet swap to save a dying pet.

At the risk of sounding obvious or inept, treat merging as that survival mechanic instead if the fight goes that way. Build your battle plan around utilizing the merge for whatever fat bursts you have planned to avoid forgetting you even have it (assuming you're rocking beast mastery and/or commands.) Don't be afraid to take on tankier traits to offset the more regular absence of the pet - getting greedy with glass canon traits easily leads to the glass being emphasized over the cannon.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Garbage change.. thought my game was bugged and came here to find out why I couldn't swap my pet in combat. Well its a lot more boring now I'll give you that, bravo anet.

@kharmin.7683 said:I often used the pet swap to heal me rather than save a dying pet.Me too now missing spiritual reprieve completely because you need a dps pet so now there is 0 variety.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I don't agree with this change. Why do this now? after years of playing ranger with swap-able pets. I don't get it. Of all the classes to nerf the way people play this should be the last class. There is a reason no one takes rangers on raids or anything else for that matter. I use the swap pets for even the mundane daily activities.I beg you ANET, reverse this change. I don't get class changes this drastic after the game has been out this long. I have been playing GW since GW1 beta and I can't think of one change that has upset me more.

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@SaltyDog.4120 said:I don't agree with this change. Why do this now? after years of playing ranger with swap-able pets. I don't get it. Of all the classes to nerf the way people play this should be the last class. There is a reason no one takes rangers on raids or anything else for that matter. I use the swap pets for even the mundane daily activities.I beg you ANET, reverse this change. I don't get class changes this drastic after the game has been out this long. I have been playing GW since GW1 beta and I can't think of one change that has upset me more.

They did this now because Anet has changed their stance on elite specs since their introduction with HoT. Right from the start, there has been a difference how elite specs got handled between classes.

Some elite specs were trading something for their new elite spec mechanic right from the start, some examples:

  • Reaper and scourge gave up the death shroud for reapers shroud / shades
  • Dragonhunter and firebrand were giving up their virtues
  • Holosmith gave up the elite toolbelt skill

But then, there also have been classes which didn't have to sacrifice anything at all for their new mechanic, they just got a button added instead of replacing something else with it:

  • Soulbeast had everything core ranger also had, additionally the pet merging mechanic
  • Chronomancer in the past got continuum shift added, still had all the base mesmer also had
  • Daredevil in the past just got their 3rd dodge added, steal didn't get replaced for a shorter ranged version back then

This difference in treatment for different classes never really made sense and Anet finally came to he conclusion that every class should get treated the same, every elite spec gets new tools with their elite spec mechanic, but now they will also have to trade something the core class has for it in exchange.Removing the pet swap in combat was a logical choice for the soulbeast, both thematically and gameplaywise.

It feels bad for ranger players now, since they were used to having special treatment and getting this mechanic basically for free. No one wants to give up stuff if they don't have to, of course, but fair is fair.

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@Kodama.6453 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:Honestly, and I say this as someone who loves ranger, this should have been the way soulbeast was from the start. Anet should have marketed SB as the elite spec that forms a strong bond with one pet and is able to merge with it. Instead, they gave it two pets, allowed players to grow accustomed to having two pets, and then took it away. Narually, there's going to be some backlash.

I do believe that this was the right choice, however I do not like that this has the effect of also dumbing down the class. Dumbed down means less fun, and a game should, above all else, be fun.

This here hits the nail. This should have been how the Soulbeast worked from the very beginning, people would have been ok with it. But when mechanics are taken away after years, of course this will upset.

Imagine if, for example, the Reaper would have released with the option to use both shroud forms and then they get their base shroud taken away and replaced with the reapers shroud solely. People would have complained here, too. But since Reaper worked like that from the very beginning, there was nothing taken away from them. They didn't play for years with the option to use more and then got it ripped from them.

People did complain though when reaper shroud was changed from having less duration on shroud thus less sustain and more DPS.

They were annoyed about the degen, but it had to happen because of balance.

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@Substance E.4852 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:It feels bad for ranger players now, since they were used to having special treatment and getting this mechanic basically for free. No one wants to give up stuff if they don't have to, of course, but fair is fair.

I guess the years of having to split damage with the pet and having extremely poor team utility didn't matter

It doesn't count indeed. The pet is the class mechanic, the ranger was designed around it from the very beginning. You can't sell the core design of a class as their trade off for elite specs. Or does your logic warrant now that every single trade off in engineer elite specs gets removed because we had to deal with not having weapon swap from the beginning of the game? I don't think so.

And about poor team utility: most classes have some missing spots in what they can do. But guess what, elite specs are supposed o fill these missing spots for the class!Like how thief lacked proper ranged dps and got the deadeye to fix this. Or in case of ranger, giving them team utility through the druid.

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I don't mind the nerf to use one pet.

I mind the pets are really bad against other players or the beastmode skills are really bad in most of the pets.I would like to use felines as soulbeast but i can't because the beastmode skills are kitten.

I mind also because the soulbeast beast traits are really bland, they do not add any flavor to the class or anything special to the mechanics as such i spend all my time in beast mode.

I mind because all of that make the stances feel "meh" as a subproduct.

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@frareanselm.1925 said:I havent played the soulbeast in depth but... if now you only can have one pet... when youre fighting and you pet dies you cant swap to the second like in the core ranger??? This nerf is excessive. Say bye to soloing content.

You can just merge and unmerge and it's at full hp lolIf anything, soulbeast is better at soloing than druid or core because of the ability to rez pet every 10s instead of 20/60.

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