Soulbeast Damage Adjustments

[Lazze.9870]

So.. now that the circle has repeated itself and ranger has gotten it's damage nerfed yet again, maybe it's time to look at its other elite spec? The one that supposedly was a dedicated support spec, but never really had a dedicated support role? A spec with the potential to give the profession an actual wvw zerg role etc. What about that?

Nah. You're not gonna do that. Ever.

[Strider.7849]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Shagie.7612" said:how soon until more people start eating a big ol tiger pounce into a bird swapan AI biting everyone's ankles is going to be infinitely less popular than soulbeast was lol

It won't be long at all.

Let me go ahead and share it right now actually:

Marks: 3 - 3 - 2Skirm: 2 - 1 - 3Beastmaster: 3 - 2 - 2

LB: Energy & SeparationGS: Energy & Intelligence or EscapeDemolisher / Resistance

6 - We Heal As One7 - Protect Me8 - Signet Of Stone9 - Signet Of Renewal0 - Strength Of The Pack

Pet 1: TigerPet 2: Bristleback "Important because it can sit to the side of fights and not take damage. The Tiger dies too quickly if kept out too long."

1. This build has enormous toughness stack and does not require the lean on protection from wilderness, nor the condi clear. This makes it benefit more from team fight synergy from things like FB. If it really needs a prot buff, it can use protect me. It also gets a full 13 condi clear from Sig of Renewal, 2s of Resistance from Renewal, and 4s of Resistance when using Strength Of The Pack, due to Resistance Rune. This build can end a fight very quickly before ever needing to use that condi defense.
2. Approach an opponent or it let it approach you while you are on LB side with Bristleback out. When the opponent is in melee range, swap to Greatsword and pet swap to Tiger. Hit first with Hilt Bash > Begin the Maul animation > Press the Tiger's F2 before Maul animation ends. If done correctly, when the Tiger hits he will be benefitting +50% +50% +25%. Between your Maul and the Tiger's F2 Pounce, it will 2HKO most opponents from full health. The only opponents that you should expect to survive this over-tuned Marksmanship combo are Necromancers with deep shroud bars and death line toughness stacking + protection.

~ Enjoy

I tried this in WvW, with my soulbeast current gear which is why it probably didn't work as intended - while it was great for a lot of things - it struggled vs D/P thieves, lots of which roam in WvW. I found soulbeast is much better still for that as I went from getting destroyed by 3 D/P thieves with core ranger to winning a 1V2 against them, and forcing a condi Mesmer to flee. This probably has no relevance in PvP though as balance and builds are different; just I still prefer soulbeast overall to core when outnumbered.

[Eurantien.4632]

I think the damage nerf went a little too far and the reward for going so glassy just isn't worth it for how much risk is involved.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Strider.7849 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Shagie.7612" said:how soon until more people start eating a big ol tiger pounce into a bird swapan AI biting everyone's ankles is going to be infinitely less popular than soulbeast was lol

It won't be long at all.

Let me go ahead and share it right now actually:

Marks: 3 - 3 - 2Skirm: 2 - 1 - 3Beastmaster: 3 - 2 - 2

LB: Energy & SeparationGS: Energy & Intelligence or EscapeDemolisher / Resistance

6 - We Heal As One7 - Protect Me8 - Signet Of Stone9 - Signet Of Renewal0 - Strength Of The Pack

Pet 1: TigerPet 2: Bristleback "Important because it can sit to the side of fights and not take damage. The Tiger dies too quickly if kept out too long."

1. This build has enormous toughness stack and does not require the lean on protection from wilderness, nor the condi clear. This makes it benefit more from team fight synergy from things like FB. If it really needs a prot buff, it can use protect me. It also gets a full 13 condi clear from Sig of Renewal, 2s of Resistance from Renewal, and 4s of Resistance when using Strength Of The Pack, due to Resistance Rune. This build can end a fight very quickly before ever needing to use that condi defense.
2. Approach an opponent or it let it approach you while you are on LB side with Bristleback out. When the opponent is in melee range, swap to Greatsword and pet swap to Tiger. Hit first with Hilt Bash > Begin the Maul animation > Press the Tiger's F2 before Maul animation ends. If done correctly, when the Tiger hits he will be benefitting +50% +50% +25%. Between your Maul and the Tiger's F2 Pounce, it will 2HKO most opponents from full health. The only opponents that you should expect to survive this over-tuned Marksmanship combo are Necromancers with deep shroud bars and death line toughness stacking + protection.

~ Enjoy

I tried this in WvW, with my soulbeast current gear which is why it probably didn't work as intended - while it was great for a lot of things - it struggled vs D/P thieves, lots of which roam in WvW. I found soulbeast is much better still for that as I went from getting destroyed by 3 D/P thieves with core ranger to winning a 1V2 against them, and forcing a condi Mesmer to flee. This probably has no relevance in PvP though as balance and builds are different; just I still prefer soulbeast overall to core when outnumbered.

In WvW roaming you always want to bank on high mobility and burst over anything else, which Soulbeast is perfect for. The build I gave you here for Core Ranger is meant to be used in a very specific situation such as: "I have 2x FBs in my team which will boost me in team fights, and I know Vaans is going to push me the entire game at far on his power damage based Spellbreaker."

You can use that Core Ranger build in wvw, I've been doing it. But again, it's part of a triple build Ranger meta. You need to have all 3 builds ready to swap to and maintain your map awareness of what is approaching you, so you know which build to swap to before you engage. If you want to use that Ranger build in wvw for say vs. Spellbreakers or high powered DEs or even high powered Soulbeast damage, you need to replicate the stats of Demolisher. Pretty much what I did, is you turn your trinkets & backpiece into Knight's stats, and leave armor/weapons as berserker, and then of course wear Dolyak Runes. And then look into this food -> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Holographic_Super_Cake and writ of masterful accuracy -> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Writ_of_Masterful_Accuracy This food/utility will make you a raid boss in power based 1v1s. Also as a side note, use Energy/Cleansing on LB and GS side. The +3 condi clear per 9s weapon swap helps a lot, even against non damaging condis like cripple/chill/immob/invuln/weakness.

For vs. condi situations, you actually want Druid for sure in WvW. There are actually pve gear options that makes Druid broken AF in wvw.

[Substance E.4852]

@Lazze.9870 said:So.. now that the circle has repeated itself and ranger has gotten it's damage nerfed yet again, maybe it's time to look at its other elite spec? The one that supposedly was a dedicated support spec, but never really had a dedicated support role? A spec with the potential to give the profession an actual wvw zerg role etc. What about that?

Nah. You're not gonna do that. Ever.

No they're gonna make it even worse by nerfing pet damage so we get paper pets on top of a stat penalty when picking druid

[Strider.7849]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Strider.7849 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Shagie.7612" said:how soon until more people start eating a big ol tiger pounce into a bird swapan AI biting everyone's ankles is going to be infinitely less popular than soulbeast was lol

It won't be long at all.

Let me go ahead and share it right now actually:

Marks: 3 - 3 - 2Skirm: 2 - 1 - 3Beastmaster: 3 - 2 - 2

LB: Energy & SeparationGS: Energy & Intelligence or EscapeDemolisher / Resistance

6 - We Heal As One7 - Protect Me8 - Signet Of Stone9 - Signet Of Renewal0 - Strength Of The Pack

Pet 1: TigerPet 2: Bristleback "Important because it can sit to the side of fights and not take damage. The Tiger dies too quickly if kept out too long."

1. This build has enormous toughness stack and does not require the lean on protection from wilderness, nor the condi clear. This makes it benefit more from team fight synergy from things like FB. If it really needs a prot buff, it can use protect me. It also gets a full 13 condi clear from Sig of Renewal, 2s of Resistance from Renewal, and 4s of Resistance when using Strength Of The Pack, due to Resistance Rune. This build can end a fight very quickly before ever needing to use that condi defense.
2. Approach an opponent or it let it approach you while you are on LB side with Bristleback out. When the opponent is in melee range, swap to Greatsword and pet swap to Tiger. Hit first with Hilt Bash > Begin the Maul animation > Press the Tiger's F2 before Maul animation ends. If done correctly, when the Tiger hits he will be benefitting +50% +50% +25%. Between your Maul and the Tiger's F2 Pounce, it will 2HKO most opponents from full health. The only opponents that you should expect to survive this over-tuned Marksmanship combo are Necromancers with deep shroud bars and death line toughness stacking + protection.

~ Enjoy

I tried this in WvW, with my soulbeast current gear which is why it probably didn't work as intended - while it was great for a lot of things - it struggled vs D/P thieves, lots of which roam in WvW. I found soulbeast is much better still for that as I went from getting destroyed by 3 D/P thieves with core ranger to winning a 1V2 against them, and forcing a condi Mesmer to flee. This probably has no relevance in PvP though as balance and builds are different; just I still prefer soulbeast overall to core when outnumbered.

In WvW roaming you always want to bank on high mobility and burst over anything else, which Soulbeast is perfect for. The build I gave you here for Core Ranger is meant to be used in a very specific situation such as: "I have 2x FBs in my team which will boost me in team fights, and I know Vaans is going to push me the entire game at far on his power damage based Spellbreaker."

You can use that Core Ranger build in wvw, I've been doing it. But again, it's part of a triple build Ranger meta. You need to have all 3 builds ready to swap to and maintain your map awareness of what is approaching you, so you know which build to swap to before you engage. If you want to use that Ranger build in wvw for say vs. Spellbreakers or high powered DEs or even high powered Soulbeast damage, you need to replicate the stats of Demolisher. Pretty much what I did, is you turn your trinkets & backpiece into Knight's stats, and leave armor/weapons as berserker, and then of course wear Dolyak Runes. And then look into this food ->

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Holographic_Super_Cake

and writ of masterful accuracy ->

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Writ_of_Masterful_Accuracy

This food/utility will make you a raid boss in power based 1v1s. Also as a side note, use Energy/Cleansing on LB and GS side. The +3 condi clear per 9s weapon swap helps a lot, even against non damaging condis like cripple/chill/immob/invuln/weakness.

For vs. condi situations, you actually want Druid for sure in WvW. There are actually pve gear options that makes Druid broken AF in wvw.

Thank you! Going to try this out tonight. I like having variety in my build choices and while I had a few builds for soulbeast and druid I like, I didn't have one for core until now. Cheers.

[anduriell.6280]

There is no point of discussing anything here when it is proven Anet does not listen. The fact is some at the balance team got owned by a ranger and this is their retaliation."I've got killed by a combo of RF + Maul + WI, let's nerf 'em all".Meanwhile Leading the wind is still as trash as it was before the patch, The whole as class lacks definition and they keep nerfing like they are completely unknown to the game they created.

In the meanwhile Thiefs and Mesmers still can 1HKO any player and even elementalist hit Autoattacks for 4-5K

This game is just a meme and not fun at all.

[Tayga.3192]

@anduriell.6280 said:In the meanwhile Thiefs and Mesmers still can 1HKO any player and even elementalist hit Autoattacks for 4-5K

Lol xD WvW is still a kittenfest.

[Leonidrex.5649]

immagine talkinga bout 1shoting with a class that can land 25k hits xdand making reeee rage post about getting 10% dmg nerf XD

[Vornollo.5182]

I really like the premises of this post. Soulbeast now, wonder what's next. Truly hope you guys will keep up these quick adjustments to the balance.Props for how you all have been doing in 2020, I feel like it's all heading in the right direction!

[Revolution.5409]

@Moira Shalaar.5620 said:The issue is that Rangers have a high burst damage, but very low sustain damage. That means that we can hit hard for very brief time and then almost nothing for the next 20-30 seconds while our burst skills are on cool down. Other classes can't necessarily hit that hard burst, but can sustain a higher DPS over all. But in order to really maximize the burst damage on a soulbeast, that means traits, pets and skill choices to maximize that burst potential, leaving the soulbeast also more vulnerable to sustain damage without mitigation. The very definition of glass cannon.

However, now that everybody has complained about the soulbeast burst damage and are quite satisfied with it being heavily nerfed, what is left is a bursty class whose burst damage is in line with everybody else, but whose sustain damage is LOWER than everybody else, and we have to give up all of our mitigation traits and skills just to get the bursty damage that others can enjoy while still keeping decent sustain damage AND mitigation.

I was about to write something like this, absolutely agree with you.Giving more sustained damage and a lower burst would solve problems with Slb, you could also modify sickem and make it like Assasin's Signet, I don't want a profession that needs a skill slot to do good damage.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

@Leonidrex.5649 said:immagine talkinga bout 1shoting with a class that can land 25k hits xdand making reeee rage post about getting 10% dmg nerf XD

Except it's not a 10% dmg nerf.

[Avatar.3568]

Adjust/rework stances (especially griffin) and soulbeast would be in a good not op spot

Aaaaand fix protect me

[Psycoprophet.8107]

@"anduriell.6280" said:There is no point of discussing anything here when it is proven Anet does not listen. The fact is some at the balance team got owned by a ranger and this is their retaliation."I've got killed by a combo of RF + Maul + WI, let's nerf 'em all".Meanwhile Leading the wind is still as trash as it was before the patch, The whole as class lacks definition and they keep nerfing like they are completely unknown to the game they created.

In the meanwhile Thiefs and Mesmers still can 1HKO any player and even elementalist hit Autoattacks for 4-5K

This game is just a meme and not fun at all.

I love thief and slb and been playing alot of both last few weeks and I can assure u slb still does far more damage than thief does on average, by far.I do more in one combo of lb4 and rapid than I do setting up and performing a backstab.i wont even compare the damage maul, hilt, maul takedown followed with WI combo does and with alot of quickness access it lands often. Theif doesn't even compare on a damage only comparison

[Eurantien.4632]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi Everyone,

Outside of various bugfixes, the main balance tweaks we have in today’s build are some adjustments to Soulbeast damage, most notably the single-hit potential of both Maul and Worldly Impact, but also reducing Soulbeast damage output in general. We’ve seen a lot of discussion on the topic and a lot of discussion on what adjustments make sense to bring the damage down, so we wanted to provide some details around what we did and why.

There were a handful of things that were considered:

• Marksmanship traits (Moment of Clarity+Remorseless)
• Sic’Em
• Beastmastery attribute bonuses while merged
• Merged attribute bonuses from ferocious pets
• Power coefficients of Maul and Worldly Impact

Marksmanship adjustments were dismissed pretty early due to the impact they would have on other ranger builds, notably core ranger builds that rely more heavily on marksmanship due to the absence of Sic’Em, other multipliers from the soulbeast traitline, and the stat bonuses from merging. In addition, we’re currently less concerned with the build of soulbeast, beastmastery, marksmanship. This is the glassiest iteration of soulbeast and while it hits the largest numbers, it's also extremely vulnerable to enemy pressure. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the build moving forward as it will still be able to have massive single hits under ideal conditions, but in general we expect it to be held in check by more balanced builds in the meta.

Moving on, we essentially had two choices. Shaving coefficients of Maul and Worldly impact was definitely warranted, so the remaining question was whether we hit Sic’Em or the soulbeast merge bonuses to make up the remaining damage reduction. We went with the attribute adjustments due to how free they are, or rather the lack of opportunity cost. Beastmastery is full of valuable traits and is a strong choice even in the absence of the soulbeast specialization, so the bonus attributes while merged are just bonus value on top. Similarly, many of the ferocious pets like gazelle and smokescale are already competitive options before considering the extra 200 power and 100 ferocity while merged. Sic’Em, while a powerful utility skill (and probably still a bit overtuned relative to where we want offensive utilities to be), does require a slot on the skill bar, and we’d rather see players continue to slot Sic’Em to maximize damage than simply replace it with something else had we nerfed it and left the merge buffs alone. For some frame of reference, the combination of changes we made is a slightly heavier nerf than if we reduced the Sic’Em multiplier from 25% to 15%, plus the shaves to power coefficients on top of that.

These changes may be a bit light overall, but as we talked about previously our plan is to make smaller, more controlled adjustments more often and re-evaluate as needed with the goal of improving balance in the long run.

That's all for today's update. There's definitely more to discuss balance-wise than just soulbeast, and we'll have more to talk about in a future post.

-The Systems Team

Here are the relevant soulbeast changes for anyone who doesn't want to cross-check with the update notes, but definitely go check out the notes for the full list of bugfixes.

• Pack Alpha: Reduced stats granted to merged soulbeasts from 150 to 75 in PvP and WvW.
• Pet's Prowess: Reduced ferocity granted to merged soulbeasts from 300 to 150 in PvP and WvW.
• Ferocious (Soulbeast Pet Archetype Effect): Reduced power granted from 200 to 100 in PvP and WvW.
• Maul: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.
• Worldly Impact: Reduced power coefficient from 1.512 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.

So, I see it was decided just to nerf marksmanship and greatsword on soulbeast as well... neat...