Let's discuss Soulbeast's latest Pet changes!

[Chokolata.1870]

The trade off is fair considering how good the perks that SB spec brings are. They could have even limited the pet to one, but considering they gave engineers and elementalists weapon swap options out of combat they left pets with that option as well.

Soulbeast is good in all game modes except large scale WvW

[Za Shaloc.3908]

@"anduriell.6280" said: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.

Yup, I feel the same way 100%. I am totally okay with the trade-off and actually do agree with it. From a thematic standpoint I like it too. I do definitely feel that the problem is in the pets' individual balance (and consequently the balance of the Beastmode skills). One of my biggest critiques when Soulbeast was released was that--despite them spending what I believe they said the most time of all of the elite specs--so much of it was just copy-and-paste. Literally taking the skills from pets from GW2 launch and pasting them onto skills with some numerical adjustments. That's why 3 of 5 of the PoF pets are actually good in and out of Beastmode--because they were designed with Soulbeast/Beastmode in mind (with the exception being both Space Cheetah and Sand Lion because they were placed into the feline category...what a shame), and designed for players and not just AI to use.

There are pets like canines that are pretty good as pets and while merged, but their F2 effectiveness varies. I really like the Drakehound's F2 for example, but if I ran power I would rather run a different pet, and it feels suboptimal (and lame) to run a power pet on a condi build. Ice Wolf is fantastic while merged, but its F2 is lackluster for its CD/cast time. I would love to run Hyena on a lot of builds because Prelude Lash is a great skill, but the Hyena Ally disappears when merged....what an utter disappointment and waste of an F2. Classic Wolf? Well that fear can be clutch, but on a condi pet? Eh, limits its build options a lot.

The list goes on. Pets like spiders could be cool, but the projectile behavior is so embarrasingly, horridly implemented and it makes it feel just not worth it. Porcines are pretty cool, but aside from Siamoth, their Forage skills are too clunky, lackluster, and/or RNG for my tastes. Moas...still don't have a supportive archetype despite having Harmonic Cry for crying out loud. Birds were dominant previously and are one of those pets that are really awesome to be able to revive because of their glassy damage, but the nerf to Swoop was pretty brutal if you are trying to run a balanced build, and swiftness is often redundant on most Ranger/Soulbeast builds. Bears are boring. Drakes are boring. Jellyfish...I want a red land Jelly.

And then of course there is Smokescale. Smokescale remains strong because literally everything is good about it. Not to say that I think all pets should be quite to the power level of the Smokescale, but IMO every pet should be evaluated with the goal of making all of it skills relevant just like Smokescale is: from its primary/secondary skills to its F2. Even its ability to track targets and land hits. Soulbeast 100% needs to be considered when rebalancing these because it is an integral part of the class now. Even a strong HoT pet like the Electric Wyvern feels kinda meh to play because Tail Lash is garbage. If Soulbeast is about gaining access to three new skills, then all three of those skills should be impactful, always, no exceptions. All these outdated filler skills kill pet diversity for the elite spec and exacerbate the impact of having one pet.

I agree with you as well on the traits. Leader of the Pack is an interesting trait despite having its group play potential limited, Predator's Cunning can be exciting with the right build, but otherwise the traits are straight up bland. Not to say that they are all bad, but man are they boring and bring no engaging behavior to the class. You have traits like Fresh Reinforcement which were part of creating the absolute utter mistake balance abomination that was (and is to an extent in WvW) Boonbeast, and then at the other end you have the most lackluster GM selection ever if you aren't taking a stance.

When PoF was released I dropped playing Revenant for a while because I absolutely hated Renegade. I mained Soulbeast for a while, but I was really disappointed at the overall delivery of the spec despite it feeling absolutely amazing and wonderfully fluid with the right pets. Dagger was (is) lackluster, the animations on the pets' merge skills had (have) no flavor, and most of the pets remained (remain) irrelevant. In theory, the Merge mechanic is absolutely terrific, but its actual implementation feels lukewarm at best because most of the pets are outdated. I truly believe that a comprehensive pet rework would do absolute wonders for the elite spec. Not everybody wants to be a Smokescale main for life.

Okay, /endrant.

[Kulcan.8932]

I was coming back after some years of not playing this game and I got really confused on why I could not swap my pet with Soulbeast . There is not any alert in the traits notes to explain this restriction . It just feel to me this specialty got fucked up , it feels empty not being able to swap the pet , it renders useless so many traits in different Core Specializations . Anet needs to update the traits that no longer works due to this bad design change.

[Kodama.6453]

@Kulcan.8932 said:I was coming back after some years of not playing this game and I got really confused on why I could not swap my pet with Soulbeast . There is not any alert in the traits notes to explain this restriction . It just feel to me this specialty got kitten up , it feels empty not being able to swap the pet , it renders useless so many traits in different Core Specializations . Anet needs to update the traits that no longer works due to this bad design change.

There is literally not a single trait from ranger which doesn't work with the current soulbeast.