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Soulbeast is most broken!


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@shadowpass.4236 I appreciate the advice and the civility. I don't mean to come across argumentative. Just trying to make the point that I agree with OP about SB being the most overtuned at the moment. Mirage was for a while, but not since the latest balance update. Chronobunker probably still is. Now that Mirage is finally out of the spotlight, people are turning to the currently most broken spec and that is Soulbeast (though the recent poll would suggest otherwise, for whatever that's worth).

There are two quirks about the build I play and the style I prefer that make pets particularly bothersome. I don't like to move around more than necessary (my personal tactic for trying to blend in with clones), and I have paltry cleave at best. That's not to say I don't know how to kite when needed. I just try to avoid it as long as possible. If it wasn't obvious, I'm not playing Chronobunker.

Just stomp the ranger before downstate 3 comes off cooldown. Dodge the thunderclap, dodge a pet cc if there is one, or pop stab/distort/any safe stomp. If the pet rez goes off, just kill the pet. They are pretty squishy and should only take 4 seconds max to fully cleave out.

^ See how many extra hurdles and contingencies there are when it comes to dispatching Rangers? How often, when you've just downed your opponent, following a decent fight, do you have two dodges or other security measures at the ready? While these things are on c/d you've got Pet to contend with along with Ranger's own s-tier downed skills. And if you happen to lack cleave, well, good luck. Rangers have got to be the #1 most revived profession in PvP.

Anyway thanks for the discussion.

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@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:@"shadowpass.4236" I appreciate the advice and the civility. I don't mean to come across argumentative. Just trying to make the point that I agree with OP about SB being the most overtuned at the moment. Mirage was for a while, but not since the latest balance update. Chronobunker probably still is. Now that Mirage is finally out of the spotlight, people are turning to the currently most broken spec and that is Soulbeast (though the recent poll would suggest otherwise, for whatever that's worth).

There are two quirks about the build I play and the style I prefer that make pets particularly bothersome. I don't like to move around more than necessary (my personal tactic for trying to blend in with clones), and I have paltry cleave at best. That's not to say I don't know how to kite when needed. I just try to avoid it as long as possible. If it wasn't obvious, I'm not playing Chronobunker.

Just stomp the ranger before downstate 3 comes off cooldown. Dodge the thunderclap, dodge a pet cc if there is one, or pop stab/distort/any safe stomp. If the pet rez goes off, just kill the pet. They are pretty squishy and should only take 4 seconds max to fully cleave out.

^ See how many extra hurdles and contingencies there are when it comes to dispatching Rangers? How often, when you've just downed your opponent, following a decent fight, do you have two dodges or other security measures at the ready? While these things are on c/d you've got Pet to contend with along with Ranger's own s-tier downed skills. And if you happen to lack cleave, well, good luck. Rangers have got to be the #1 most revived profession in PvP.

Anyway thanks for the discussion.

Yep, no worries.

While I do believe bunker boonbeast in particular is overtuned, I don't think it's the worst offender in the current meta. Strength warriors have a winning matchup against it. Also, it can't kill scrappers or chronomancers. The mirage matchup can go either way. Furthermore, boonbeast is worse in outnumbered situations compared to other side noders.

With that being said, I still think the bunker boonbeast build takes very little skill to play. I've been playing long enough to recognize when players are getting carried by builds. This feeling happens when fighting builds that "exploit" cheesy or overpowered mechanics like d/d condi evade spam thief, pre-nerf condi mirage (still annoying to fight), the old p/d shadow arts thief, bunker chrono, PU mesmers, bunker boonbeasts, etc. etc.

In other words, if it feels like I'm fighting against the build rather than the player, it's an issue.

As for your point about blending in with clones, I'm not sure what division you're in but most competent players can pick out the real mesmer in under a second. If you're able to stand still and throw them off for just a bit, that's good. However, it's worth noting that this is only effective when stealthing/breaking target + summoning multiple clones as soon as you are visible again. Standing still when another player already locked onto you won't do anything. And, since pets don't track through stealth, a pet attacking you meant that the ranger saw you, then ordered it to attack.

Again, it's really not that difficult to kill a downed ranger. Popping stability/invuln/stealth/etc. etc. before you stomp is more than enough to finish the job in most cases. In a teamfight, it's generally better to cleave instead of stomp anyways. And, to answer your question, I'd say I have dodges/defenses/safestomp available 98% of the time. Unless/even if I'm severely outnumbered in a 1vX against multiple, very good players, I'm usually able to manage my cooldowns well enough to have at least one or more types of defenses to fall back on at all times. If I down someone in a 1vX and I don't have any defenses to secure the kill, I will cleave the rez or retreat if I don't think I'll survive.

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100% agree. Not even just boonbeast, but also more dps oriented builds. Most elites are pretty hard locked into one build with maybe 1 or 2 trait switches and 1 utility switches available. Soulbeast has multiple roles it can perform at S-A teir. Not just that, but if running longbow/GS you are pretty close to shortbow thief in ability to pick the landscape of fights and which you want to engage/disengage. The flexibility of the class to perform almost every role you want to do in PVP is crazy. I don't understand how it has maintained a position in the top classes for so long and hasn't seen any meaningful nerfs.

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An interesting thing to note is that when going dps, unlike other dps classes, ranger has no teleports. Ranger excels at range, yeah. Longbow is pretty easy. But the thing is, all of rangers' dmg can be mitigated by line of sight. The other meta dps, rev, thief, mes can all teleport and continue to hit you, or port into melee range where these classes have much more dmg and tools to stay in the fray (or port in and out). Yeah, soulbeast is good, but at the top end, it's got some glaringly obvious weaknesses that are easy to exploit.

I feel like some of the hate comes from people and their insistence to "fight on the node". Yeah, fighting on/around and holding node is great. But if you have the choice to give up the cap, let the node be neutral, and winning the fight vs dying on point. It's much much better to do the former and win the fight. Get off the point and get on soulbeast. Compared to all other dps, ranger has the least amounts of escape. They're very easy to punish in melee range.

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@Eurantien.4632 said:An interesting thing to note is that when going dps, unlike other dps classes, ranger has no teleports. Ranger excels at range, yeah. Longbow is pretty easy. But the thing is, all of rangers' dmg can be mitigated by line of sight. The other meta dps, rev, thief, mes can all teleport and continue to hit you, or port into melee range where these classes have much more dmg and tools to stay in the fray (or port in and out).

Literally tele is only thing thief has over ranger where as ranger can have higher dps,sustain,a pet to dps and rng knock down, do higher dps from distance,with bird hadvery high mobility all without having to dedicate itself to a one trick build like backstab or rifle De. Yea slb can go full dps and be somewhat glassy.plus ranger poops a good amount of self bond that are incredibly useful.thiefs kit doesnt compare,almost dont to slb right now

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@kodesh.2851 said:

All professions need the same build diversity. Soulbeasts and scrappers are overtuned, but there's only one profession that has been OP for over a year AND STILL has 3 builds in the meta.

Necro? Yeah lets nerf it xD

Scourge has design issues, its to much spam aoe for a game that is already overloaded with it..... well soulbeast and some other stats combos on some builds, Anet likes them to carry players, that's what this game is about in 1st place...

One build isnt meta, or balanced, fun until its carrying or can lead to higher rewards with less effort gameplay, otherwise would be stated as useless build.

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@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Pet died? Not to worry. Its owner can meld with dead pets and then exit the form to instantly revive them. There are virtually no consequences for pets dying. Boonbeast actually downed? Rangers (yes, the profession in general) have no idea what it's like to worry about being downed. Opponents have to get past their interrupting pets who also rapidly heal their owner, on top of the Ranger's own Thunderclap which is an AOE daze, arguably one of the most powerful downed skill in the game. Thus Rangers remain irritatingly unkillable even after they're downed.

Ranger downstate is, yes, aside from the autoattack arguably the strongest downstate IG. However a pet cannot rapidly heal it's owner and interrupt an enemy stomp, it's one or the other. Just saying.

As for allowing pet revival... well, other classes have no idea what its like to have your profession mechanic rendered useless. Playing a core ranger or druid in this powercreep meta, your pet will not survive even if put on passive. This means traits and utilities will be made largely useless. Switch pets? Youve got a 60 second cd and your second pet will die within seconds.Imagine for example that a mesmer would be unable to spawn phantasms upon using a weapon skill because of some dumb reason you cannot control.

It is infuriating. Most pets have around 11k-20k hp. They cannot evade any attacks, nor heal themselves. They get cleaved within seconds. Beastmode revival is a godsend- finally a way to have some control over your pets HP.Either increase pet hp, or let the merge revival stay (with perhaps some tweaks). This system of pet death is ancient and should be changed.

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@ChartFish.1308 said:Ranger downstate is, yes, aside from the autoattack arguably the strongest downstate IG. However a pet cannot rapidly heal it's owner and interrupt an enemy stomp, it's one or the other. Just saying.

The pet interrupts before the heal because the heal isn't immediately available. This allows the pet to interrupt the stomp then get the heal in.

Pet Interrupt -> Pet Heal -> Ranger Interrupt -> Ranger Self Heal -> Ranger Rez

So the ranger gets two interrupts to delay the stomp, which can often be enough for the pet to finish the rez.

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@ChartFish.1308 said:

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Pet died? Not to worry. Its owner can meld with dead pets and then exit the form to instantly revive them. There are virtually no consequences for pets dying. Boonbeast actually downed? Rangers (yes, the profession in general) have no idea what it's like to worry about being downed. Opponents have to get past their interrupting pets who also rapidly heal their owner, on top of the Ranger's own
which is an AOE daze, arguably one of the most powerful downed skill in the game. Thus Rangers remain irritatingly unkillable even after they're downed.

Ranger downstate is, yes, aside from the autoattack arguably the strongest downstate IG. However a pet cannot rapidly heal it's owner and interrupt an enemy stomp, it's one or the other. Just saying.

Yeah, I wasn't saying it's at the same time. Just listing what pets can do. @"DaShi.1368" kindly detailed the typical sequence above.

Also keep in mind that with the abundance of bunkers in this meta, rangers are often easily rez'd by teammates in teamfights since they're able to "hold on" the longest thanks to their pets and downed state abilities. Competent Boonbeasts basically never die. They're effectively bunkers with the damage output of duelists. With their insane amount of sustain, it's a huge blow to the team that managed to down them if they're rez'd.

As for allowing pet revival... well, other classes have no idea what its like to have your profession mechanic rendered useless.

Pretty sure Deadeyes and others would disagree. In fact, many people don't even realize that Mirage's "profession mechanic" was essentially gutted in the last balance update. Mirage Cloak duration was reduced 40% while neither increasing the duration of Superspeed for actually running out of harm's way (since Mirages don't physically move when dodging), nor decreasing the cast times of Ambush skills, the majority of which last 0.5-0.75 seconds longer than the duration of Mirage Cloak. RIP Mirage's profession mechanic of uninterruptible free casting while dodging.

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You're missing the point. It doesn't have to be a circle. The only way a pet will be able to damage you consistently is if you stand completely still.

The infinite range soulbeast pet bug was never patched out. There are a few notable high tier rangers that exploit this.

I've never heard of it. Either way, my point still stands. As long as you keep moving, pet AI will have a very hard time dealing damage to you.

My PoF pets can hit moving targets just fine...?Or are you talking about core pets? If so, then I agree.

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You're missing the point. It doesn't have to be a circle. The only way a pet will be able to damage you consistently is if you stand completely still.

The infinite range soulbeast pet bug was never patched out. There are a few notable high tier rangers that exploit this.

I've never heard of it. Either way, my point still stands. As long as you keep moving, pet AI will have a very hard time dealing damage to you.

My PoF pets can hit moving targets just fine...?Or are you talking about core pets? If so, then I agree.

PoF pets are better at hitting moving targets than core pets. However, any pet that stops moving in order to attack will have this issue.

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

  • Boonbeast sustain could still use a bit of fixing, but its damage output and mobility is fine. To identify the problem here, one needs to look no further than the chemistry of these two traited abilities: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fortifying_Bond and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fresh_Reinforcement <- This is why it is named a Boonbeast. The problem is not with Dolyak or Moa Stance, these utilities are balanced on builds that are not abusing Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. The real core of the problem is how broken the boon amplification becomes with both Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. I won't claim to have a perfect suggestion for how to fix this as it is more complex than it seems. But a good start would be to rework Fresh Reinforcement entirely. The other thing that is broken on Boonbeast is that merging with a dead pet instantly revives it and still grants the Boonbeast the merged skills. It should be reworked so that when the Boonbeast merges with a dead pet, the merged skills are greyed out and unusable.

They could reverse the funcionality of Fresh Reinforcement. Copy the boons to your pet when you leave Beast Mode and maybe tweak Fortifying Bond a bit.

Pet revives are necessery. Ranger is the only class which you can disable the profession mechanic.

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Pretty sure Deadeyes and others would disagree. In fact, many people don't even realize that Mirage's "profession mechanic" was essentially gutted in the last balance update. Mirage Cloak duration was reduced 40% while neither increasing the duration of Superspeed for actually running out of harm's way (since Mirages don't physically move when dodging), nor decreasing the cast times of Ambush skills, the majority of which last 0.5-0.75 seconds longer than the duration of Mirage Cloak. RIP Mirage's profession mechanic of uninterruptible free casting while dodging.

Mirages mechanic was intended to be an altered dodge just like Daredevil. Not an improved version of it and never a free cast and running out of any danger mechanic. You can cover the same range in one mirage cloak with 3/4 sec of super speed as one dodge roll does. Daredevil also didn't get improved dodge duration.

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I’d argue that soul beast is the 3rd most frustrating class to play against (after scepter mirage/chrono). I don’t think it is really broken compared to other meta builds. It is, however, incredibly easy and forgiving to play. E.g. spell breaker can actually be beaten on weaker builds if the spell breaker misplays enough, which is not really the case for soul beast (or at least the gap in player performance has to be much bigger).

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:
  • Boonbeast sustain could still use a bit of fixing, but its damage output and mobility is fine. To identify the problem here, one needs to look no further than the chemistry of these two traited abilities:
    and
    <- This is why it is named a Boonbeast. The problem is not with Dolyak or Moa Stance, these utilities are balanced on builds that are not abusing Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. The real core of the problem is how broken the boon amplification becomes with both Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. I won't claim to have a perfect suggestion for how to fix this as it is more complex than it seems. But a good start would be to rework Fresh Reinforcement entirely. The other thing that is broken on Boonbeast is that merging with a dead pet instantly revives it and still grants the Boonbeast the merged skills. It should be reworked so that when the Boonbeast merges with a dead pet, the merged skills are greyed out and unusable.

They could reverse the funcionality of Fresh Reinforcement. Copy the boons to your pet when you leave Beast Mode and maybe tweak Fortifying Bond a bit.

Pet revives are necessery. Ranger is the only class which you can disable the profession mechanic.

???

Like you can avoid giving warriors adrenaline by not getting hit. You can gimp mesmer shatters by cleaving away their clones. You can grind Elementalist attunements to a near halt with Chill (I think Revenant is also like this? Not 100% sure). You can 100% avoid Steal by just standing on a no port spot. If you prevent the necro from ramping up life force with skills and kills they won't have much life shroud. Guardian virtues can be corrupted or stolen after their use.

Almost every class mechanic can be severely hampered. If anything, ranger pets are easily the hardest to disable as any attempt to kill the pet free up the ranger to free cast on you.

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You can also just kite necro while it is in shroud, especially reaper’s shroud ends fairly quickly even if you don’t damage the necro. The thing about the pet revive is that it is allows core pets (like birds) to see play who would otherwise be unplayable due to the combination of power creeped damage (especially aoe and cleave) since their introduction and their low survivability.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:
  • Boonbeast sustain could still use a bit of fixing, but its damage output and mobility is fine. To identify the problem here, one needs to look no further than the chemistry of these two traited abilities:
    and
    <- This is why it is named a Boonbeast. The problem is not with Dolyak or Moa Stance, these utilities are balanced on builds that are not abusing Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. The real core of the problem is how broken the boon amplification becomes with both Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. I won't claim to have a perfect suggestion for how to fix this as it is more complex than it seems. But a good start would be to rework Fresh Reinforcement entirely. The other thing that is broken on Boonbeast is that merging with a dead pet instantly revives it and still grants the Boonbeast the merged skills. It should be reworked so that when the Boonbeast merges with a dead pet, the merged skills are greyed out and unusable.

They could reverse the funcionality of Fresh Reinforcement. Copy the boons to your pet when you leave Beast Mode and maybe tweak Fortifying Bond a bit.

Pet revives are necessery. Ranger is the only class which you can disable the profession mechanic.

???

Like you can avoid giving warriors adrenaline by not getting hit. You can kitten mesmer shatters by cleaving away their clones. You can grind Elementalist attunements to a near halt with Chill (I think Revenant is also like this? Not 100% sure). You can 100% avoid Steal by just standing on a no port spot. If you prevent the necro from ramping up life force with skills and kills they won't have much life shroud. Guardian virtues can be corrupted or stolen after their use.

Almost every class mechanic can be severely hampered. If anything, ranger pets are easily the hardest to disable as any attempt to kill the pet free up the ranger to free cast on you.

Warriors also gain adrenaline by getting hit, not only when they hit stuff.Elementalists have more than 2 Elements, you have to play around it but you can use it.Rangers can get disabled for 60 seconds at worst. That's by far the longest duration and they can do exactly nothing about it once it happened unless the other classes which can use condi cleanse. This on top of an already easily kitable KI.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:
  • Boonbeast sustain could still use a bit of fixing, but its damage output and mobility is fine. To identify the problem here, one needs to look no further than the chemistry of these two traited abilities:
    and
    <- This is why it is named a Boonbeast. The problem is not with Dolyak or Moa Stance, these utilities are balanced on builds that are not abusing Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. The real core of the problem is how broken the boon amplification becomes with both Fortifying Bond and Fresh Reinforcement. I won't claim to have a perfect suggestion for how to fix this as it is more complex than it seems. But a good start would be to rework Fresh Reinforcement entirely. The other thing that is broken on Boonbeast is that merging with a dead pet instantly revives it and still grants the Boonbeast the merged skills. It should be reworked so that when the Boonbeast merges with a dead pet, the merged skills are greyed out and unusable.

They could reverse the funcionality of Fresh Reinforcement. Copy the boons to your pet when you leave Beast Mode and maybe tweak Fortifying Bond a bit.

Pet revives are necessery. Ranger is the only class which you can disable the profession mechanic.

???

Like you can avoid giving warriors adrenaline by not getting hit. You can kitten mesmer shatters by cleaving away their clones. You can grind Elementalist attunements to a near halt with Chill (I think Revenant is also like this? Not 100% sure). You can 100% avoid Steal by just standing on a no port spot. If you prevent the necro from ramping up life force with skills and kills they won't have much life shroud. Guardian virtues can be corrupted or stolen after their use.

Almost every class mechanic can be severely hampered. If anything, ranger pets are easily the hardest to disable as any attempt to kill the pet free up the ranger to free cast on you.

Mesmers have a lot of clone generation, and they can shatter before they die if they really want to.

Elementalists have plenty of condition clear. It's not like they struggle against chill.

No port spots can be countered by AoEing the area.

Necros have multiple ways to generate shroud. However, this becomes easier with a dedicated support.

Rangers can't revive their pets asides from weapon swapping/soulbeast merge. Without running soulbeast, a dead pet makes our class essentially useless for 60 seconds as many of our abilities/traits/weapon skills rely/have synergy with our pet.

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:Pretty sure Deadeyes and others would disagree. In fact, many people don't even realize that Mirage's "profession mechanic" was essentially gutted in the last balance update.
duration was reduced 40% while neither increasing the duration of Superspeed for actually running out of harm's way (since Mirages don't physically move when dodging), nor decreasing the cast times of Ambush skills, the majority of which last 0.5-0.75 seconds longer than the duration of Mirage Cloak. RIP Mirage's profession mechanic of uninterruptible free casting while dodging.

Mirages mechanic was intended to be an altered dodge just like Daredevil. Not an improved version of it and never a free cast and running out of any danger mechanic.

Well, "free casting while invuln" is one of the top complaints people make against Mirage. So which is it?

You can cover the same range in one mirage cloak with 3/4 sec of super speed as one dodge roll does. Daredevil also didn't get improved dodge duration.

Only when moving forward. Moving backwards, sideways, or any other direction cover less distance unless you first turn to face those directions and then move "forward". Whereas standard dodges move you a predictable distance in any direction, moving any direction besides directly forward with Mirage Cloak inherently covers less ground because no matter how fast you are at rotating the camera or using about-face (if you have that hot-keyed), there's always that extra step that cuts into the movement.

I don't know how the distances traveled for Daredevil dodges compare to that of the standard dodge, but on my Daredevil, they seem to cover a comparable distance, in any direction.

@shadowpass.4236 said:Rangers can't revive their pets asides from weapon swapping/soulbeast merge. Without running soulbeast, a dead pet makes our class essentially useless for 60 seconds as many of our abilities/traits/weapon skills rely/have synergy with our pet.

Maybe that's why there are a lot more Soulbeasts than core rangers, at least in my experience.

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@Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

@shadowpass.4236 said:Rangers can't revive their pets asides from weapon swapping/soulbeast merge. Without running soulbeast, a dead pet makes our class essentially useless for 60 seconds as many of our abilities/traits/weapon skills rely/have synergy with our pet.

Maybe that's why there are a lot more Soulbeasts than core rangers, at least in my experience.

Correct!

Also, contrary to what people say, our pets do die very quickly. Poor pet control results in dead pets as any sort of cleave/AoE damage is more than enough to kill them if the ranger isn't paying attention.

The mistake people make is attacking the pet and ignoring the ranger. The ranger pet swaps to avoid it dying. Then, they complain that the pet didn't die and the ranger continued to deal damage to them.

That's like someone attacking a mesmer's clones while ignoring the actual mesmer. The mesmer continues to summon clones. Then, they complain that there's more clones and the mesmer continued to deal damage to them.

The same can be said about any sort of build that utilizes AI.

However, unlike other class features, ours get disabled for 60 seconds if you do manage to kill them AND we lose synergy with a majority of our abilities, traits, and weapon skills. No other class is penalized this heavily.

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@"Twilight Tempest.7584" said:^For that minority that continue to play core ranger instead of Soulbeast, right?

I mean the whole "60 seconds of uselessness" is basically a non-issue for Soulbeasts, isn't it? And Soulbeasts are the subject of this discussion... :)

Yep. I definitely think the bunker boonbeast build needs nerfs. However, I also believe other builds need nerfs as well.

I just wanted to provide some clarity on concerns regarding pets.

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