Core Pet Problems
This isn't new information for the most part, but I thought I would preface with it since the elite spec is heavily dependent on the pet. Bear in mind I chose specifically the pets that DON'T have issues with Quickness.
I spawned a basic golem and set it to mobile. Even with the 25% move speed signet and Beast Mastery traitline, the pets all struggled to even land a basic hit on the thing. I can't remember all tested, but Jacaranda literally could not land an attack that way. I think Smokescale and Ranged pets had better luck.
The Pet Unleashed F1 would mostly work in these scenarios, but they would often stop moving as soon as they arrived, so the only hit that they delivered would be from the teleport, and even that was a maybe if they were too far. The stop after the F1 meant that if I used the F2 immediately after, the enemy would already be out of range. Once again, this is all on a regular movement, small golem.
The Untamed has a lot of abilities that specifically trigger on disabled enemies by design, but the pet as it currently stands can't even hurt things if they're not already immobile. As it stands, I don't think that's an issue that can be fixed with the numbers. Pets need to be able to hit things on the move without being a Smokescale or Ranged. The new Unleashed abilities for them have Slow and Chill but only if they're disabled. I don't mind working in tandem with my pet and covering each other's weaknesses, but my pet should not be so fundamentally useless.
Honestly they should just be coded at this point to work like Revenant's spinning hammers and not even bother autoattacking.
Trait Problems
First, a lot of old pet based traits are nerfed purely from Unleashed Pet not having any Beast abilities. I imagine this is oversight, or hope it is.
I'm really not trying to be mean, but the new traits are a mess. The Vitality minor one is ridiculous. It was a kitten one on Herald, but at least that one is percent based so you can kitten around with massive vitality stacking if you wanted to. I will at least give it credit for actually synergizing with another trait (Taste for Danger).
The minor traits usually don't bother me, however, since they're not a choice. The mess is in the others. The ones that trigger off Disable are potentially cool, but they screw up in execution. Your pets don't trigger them, which is fine IMO for the Grandmaster Trait, but not the first two. With a Hammer as unleashed, you only have three non-pet methods of disable (four with some racials), and they're all super clunky to pull off (Trap, Spores, Storm Spirit). Getting 3 seconds of Quickness and 5 stacks of Vuln is a pretty kitten trade off for all of that investment. The Unleashed pet ones, by comparison, are effectively useless since they'll only last for a second or so by the time the disabled enemy can react again. The Grandmaster Trait was a knockout, however. I had a blast with that, my only gripe being it encouraged me to use any weapon EXCEPT hammer.
The Adept/Master Unleashed traits are just underwhelming to the point that I probably wouldn't use them even if they were merged into one. Compare that to the pet swap talents and then factor in that you actually want to change pets frequently, and they become that much worse. Passing Unleashed should either be a tactical decision or a rotational decision and the weak effects of both of them don't do enough to make me even notice them. The bottom row Adept/Master traits seem OK, but they don't do anything half of the time. Further add to the Adept one that if you're applying it to a disabled enemy, the Blind has a good chance of wearing off before they even get back up.
The Grandmaster traits are a bit of a mixed bag. The disable one I'll get to in the next bit, the lifesteal one is OK but bland. It's comparable to Parasitic Contagion, which is a good talent to have when needed. The 15% damage boost is insulting at the GM trait spot. It's underwhelming and uninspired. Herald's Forceful Persistence is similar, but it at least interacts with the Herald's kit. This is just a flat boost that you have to (albeit quickly) build up with regular attacks.
Disable Problems
Disabling as a spec that focuses on disabling has been a tough task and isn't nearly as rewarding as it should be. Unleashed Pet + Hammer seems to work as intended, even if it's pretty weak. Unleashed Ranger + Hammer is a kittening mess. My hammer skills have no capability to disable when I'm unleashed and my pet may or may not have an ability that they may or may not land. On top of that, my pet's disable doesn't even trigger my traits, so that's useless. I have three utility skills that can disable, maybe four with racials, and none of them are reliable. Switching to another weapon is literally the best case here for keeping an enemy disabled, so why would I use the hammer? It feels like there was the intention of you CCing and then quickly switching to Unleashed, but that doesn't really play out in execution.
Elite Skills
Nothing really felt good here if you weren't using your new elite. Entangle has way too many issues to be used effectively and Strength of the Pack's cast time feels super clunky in 2021 and does kitten all in organized PVE/WVW. I was truly considering Avatar of Grenth on the condi builds because at least it does something reliably and the cooldown is mitigated by the disables.
What I had fun with
While I don't think the spec achieved what it was supposed to, I did have some fun goofing around with some of the disable builds. Condi trap spamming with a hammer and shortbow was a lot of fun on the golem. I managed to do some OK dps by spamming all CC's + Sharpening Stone + Quick Draw Axe/Dagger + Shortbow.
