Untamed Feedback Thread

[OGDeadHead.8326]

5 hours ago, LughLongArm.5460 said:

I figured why Untamed  feels so bad to play, and actually, there is quite a simple solution to make this spec really cool and effective. It does not need a full redesign and the adjustments could easily be made until the release.

 

You nailed it pretty much. Unleashed pet not using their normal skills besides the autoattack have to be a dps loss.
 

I think that the unleashed pet should have the special F1 and F3 abilities, but the F2 ability should be a boosted version of their normal F2.

 

Just a few examples of "boosted F2" abilities, what they could be for the unleashed pets:

 

Smokescale F2: Smoke Cloud + deal damage to enemies within range of the cloud

Jacaranda F2: Jacaranda's Embrace + bleed damage

River Drake F2: Lightning Breath + daze foes that are hit

Tiger F2: Furious Pounce (grants fury) + bleed damage

 

I hope you get the idea. Or, use the unleashed F2 in combination with the pets normal F2, that could also work.

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Introduction

I hereby present my feedback on the Untamed elite spec for the Ranger class. I will divide my feedback into several sections and will try to look at things from mainly a PvE perspective with sometimes a little bit of PvP or WvW mixed in.

To be upfront: This spec needs a lot of work to function in PvE, work on the level of the Catalyst and Harbinger specs. There is no damage, the Unleashed buff is not very enticing, the utility kit is overly PvP centric, there are no stunbreaks, it completely breaks the pet and has no synergy with it, and a lot of the traits are underwhelming. There is a solid idea hidden away beneath the current mess, but it will prove challenging for Anet to make this spec live up to its true potential. There is so much wrong with this spec that I have rewritten this wall of text four or even five times, and I am still convinced that someone will point out another major problem that I somehow managed to miss. It really is thát bad.

 

Possible issue with the theme: 

It is impossible for me to have an issue with the idea of the GW1 Bunnythumper becoming its own elite spec. I have loved that playstyle ever since the first Guild Wars and I am happy to see it making its way into the sequel game. It’s also logical that after a spec that ditched the pet (Slb) we now get a spec that has more of a focus on the pet.  No issues with the theme nor the lore for me. It’s the current execution that is severely lacking.

 

Possible issue with its damage in PvE:
What damage? There is no nice way to say it: The damage from this spec is a joke. Neither power or condi benchmarks (where benchmark means under ideal circumstances) is managing to hit above 30k, it is even doing lower damage than Vindicator at this point. Unless the Untamed gets absolutely MASSIVE damage buffs and mechanic changes, this spec will never see play outside of maybe the Roleplaying community.

Possible issue with the mechanic(s):

Unleash:

 

1. The core idea of tossing a buff between you and your pet for new skills, stats or effects is solid and something I like.  I also like the Untamed getting access to other pet skills than just the F2, no complaints about that idea either. The problem? The buff is almost useless, I would even hesitate to call it a buff.

 

2. I also have issues with the fact that the pet gets no damage bonus from the Unleashed buff whatsoever, it pretty much only gets the new F skills while losing functionality (behaviour commands and the automatic use of what have become the new F1-F3 skills when the pet isnt Unleashed).

 

3. The cooldown on the “buff” is also something I feel is not low enough to encourage players to tactically pass the buff around. The fact that the minor Vow of the Untamed also nerfs your own damage by 10% (not just not getting +15%, but actually taking a -10% penalty, meaning you deal 25-30% less damage when you are not unleashed) if you are not buffed with Unleash also does not promote swapping around of this buff at all, defeating what seems to be the purpose of the mechanic.

 

4. There is simply no reason to ever pass the effect on to your pet, the loss in DPS is simply that big, especially on a spec that is already having a hard time to compete with other power specs as it is (it can’t anyway, neither power or condi get 30k+, even 28k seems very hard to achieve).
Give me reasons to play ping-pong with this buff, right now (at least in PvE) you don’t really have any.
Remember how back during the early to mid PoF era the Iboga pet was bugged and did way more damage than it was supposed to do?  How we got sarcastic Iboga-only benchmarks that talked about “pet Ranger set to avoid combat”?  THAT is exactly how it should feel when we give the buff to our pet. That pet should become a DPS and survival monstrosity when buffed, so monstrous that giving the buff to it does not kitten us.

 

5. I am also disappointed that Unleash on the ranger only affects Hammer skills, with other weapon skills staying the same no matter if you have the Unleashed buff or not. This feels very limiting, where playing as Untamed forces you into the Hammer weapon or you lose access to a big chunk of your spec’s mechanic. It may be unrealistic to ask at this point in development, but I really would have loved to see the core ranger weapons getting Unleashed versions of their skills as well. I mean elementalist gets 20+ new weapon skills with each new spec, why not ranger for once? I am all for encouraging people to play a spec with the spec weapon, but this feels very limiting.
Getting locked out of a huge part of your Unleashed bonus when you don’t run a hammer in your build really does not sit right with me.

 

6. Another thing is that Unleashed pets all seem to have the exact same 3 new abilities. That does make it easier to remember what each ability does, but I would have liked to see different abilities based on the pet family ( meaning drakes have different unleashed abilities than for example hounds, spiders or birds). I will dive some more into the pet unleashed skills later.

 

7. Something else:  the fact that if the pet is dead you cannot really use the mechanic (no passing around when the pet is dead). Would it be broken to allow the use of Unleash to resurrect a dead pet? This is supposed to be a spec with a lot of pet interaction, seems logical that this would be the spec where the pet is available the most.

 

Some proposals:

 

1.    I think Unleash should give the pet a base bonus before any possible traits. Give it + 20% damage & damage reduction or even + 40% damage & damage reduction ( Sick’em on steroids), or make it get a percentage of the Untamed’s stats when it gets the buff, or drastically increased attack and movement speed (something unique, not simply quickness+superspeed) something worthwhile. Give it SOMETHING.

 

2.    10 seconds of unbuffed cooldown means you cannot tactically pass the buff around, since the Untamed loses a load of damage from doing so. The cooldown should be shortened, and perhaps you should be able to trait for your damage/bonus to linger after you pass the buff along, or get a special buff when getting/losing Unleashed, something to makes us WANT to play buff ping-pong with it (and makes passing the buff at the right time a rewarding decision). Perhaps you can accumulate stacks of a buff when Unleashed and when you pass the buff to your pet/from your pet to you those stacks get consumed into boons/bonus damage/bonus attack&movement speed/ bonus stats or something, or maybe it can get stacking buffs for each succesful cc (like how Spellbreaker’s Attackers Insight works)?

 

3.    Increase the damage boost for the Untamed as well, 15% is not enough, and get rid of the 10% damage penalty when not having the buff. This spec currently has trouble to hit 30k, it is benching even lower than Vindicator. You could make this a 30% buff and it would probably still struggle. Up those numbers.

 

4.    Make Unleash change other ranger weapon skills as well, not just the hammer.

5.    Pet Unleash skills should have some variations among them, if it is not possible to do this for each individual pet then at least for each pet family. Ranged pets should not teleport into battle, and there is no reason for power pets to have condi attacks when they Unleash.

 

6.    Unleash should make sure that the pet is always available when used. Minor traits can make Unleash resurrect the pet when it’s dead, or heal the pet when it’s alive.

 

7.    Give the Untamed control over the pet back, we need those commands (attack target, come to me, avoid combat etc), as well as make the pet use their non-unleashed skills in both leashed and unleashed state. Make the player skills duplicates with a new skill ID or something, but don’t make us do silly things like smashing F1 every 3 seconds because basic Bite is off CD and my pet forgot how to bite people. It’s our pet, not a braindead piece of meat.

Possible issue with the new Unleashed Pet skills:

 

Venomous Outburst:
There is little reason to use this outside of a condi build, and it is a no-go on any pet that is ranged (why the hell would I teleport my ranged pet into melee range?).
Why would I kitten my damage for 10 seconds just so my pet can deal a bit of damage, some poison, and if I am lucky vulnerability?

 

Rending Vines:
PvE mobs do not have enough boons to make this worth using.

 

Enveloping Haze:
This is the only potentially interesting one since it comes with projectile block, but once again this is not enticing enough to make me lose out on my own damage.

The pet Unleashed skills seem mainly PvP oriented with meh damage, I don’t think they will see a lot of use in PvE, simply because it is not worth giving up the already abysmal damage from Unleashed or because it provides things we don’t really need or can get through other means.

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Give pets different Unleash skills based on their pet family and if they are power/condi or at least if they are melee or ranged. Make these skills worth using, make me WANT to pass my Unleash buff to the pet to use these attacks.

 

2.    Perhaps the Unleashed pet skills can setup some buffs for the Untamed? Ranger weapons often have attacks that give the pet a bonus for its next attack (pet gets swiftness, pet inflicts bleeding, etc), perhaps this time the pet can give the Untamed some bonuses, with additional bonuses if the target is disabled? Make the pet give out additional cc options ( your next attack dazes/stuns/knocks down maybe?) or typical ranger buffs like an enhanced version of Opening Strike or Attack of Opportunity, or multiple of these ( next X attacks get Enhanced Opening Strike/Enhanced Attack of Opportunity, gain additional of X if condition Y is met).

 

3.    Unleashed pet skills should count as Beast skills for trait bonuses.

 

Possible issue with the artwork of skills and traits:  

I actually think the Untamed icons are in a pretty good spot. The only thing I noticed is how when you get the Unleashed buff all icons flip into a new green version, except the auto attack. Even if the auto attack does not change, I would like to see it get the same Unleashed green coloring, just for consistency.

As for the non-Unleashed hammer skills, I am unsure of they feel like ranger skills to me, I am missing the greenish/brownish/yellowish mix of colours most ranger weapon skills have. This might have been done deliberately to visually mark the difference between Unleashed nor not being Unleashed, but adding a bit of ranger colours/hues would really go a long way here.

Possible issue with the Hammer weapon and skills:  

In general, I feel the hammer skills do not have synergy where you would want it. The normal hammer skills have CC on them, but to take advantage of CC you need to use the Unleashed hammer skills. Meanwhile, the Unleashed hammer skills have no CC at all. It is tantalizing. When you want to use CC to get benefits you have no access to it nor do you have a way to keep foes near you, and when you don’t need CC you have plenty of it. In a vacuum I feel both could be decent weaponsets designwise, but the current design of how Unleash works means you will never be able to solo trigger a CC hammer skill into a hammer skill with bonus damage vs a CCéd target. Somehow these two sets of hammer skills need to become one ( as in: accessible when you want. Use the CC from leashed hammer into heavy damage vs CC from unleashed hammer, back into leashed for CC, and back into the unleashed set again).

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Either give the Unleashed hammer skills some CC, give us a way to instantly swap between hammer sets ( unleashed -> leashed and vice versa) or at least somehow give us access to both skill types ( like using leashed hammer 3 to apply CC, followed by instantly going for unleashed hammer 2+4, going back to leashed hammer 5, and back into unleashed hammer 2+4. That way you could make use of both sets, which you cannot do currently. Right now you need someone else to CC for you. Sure, you can make your pet do it, but it hurts to use the hammer and knowing that the best/most fun combo’s are impossible because the needed skills are divided between the leashed and unleashed states). As it is, you can either setup CC or do damage, but rarely both, and even more rarely with the hammer. The GW1 Bunnythumper, which this spec apparently got inspired by, was able to do both.

 

2.    Or switch the versions of hammer 3 and hammer 5 with each other, so the not-unleashed set gets the boons and cripple/tactical blinds/immobilizes, and the Unleashed set actually gets the damage but now also the CC to take advantage of the bonuses the damage skills have. To me, this would feel like the best of both worlds for DPS purposes.

3.    Or make weaponswap a function that can swap without CD between leashed and unleashed skills while you have the unleashed buff

 

4.    Another thing that would help: Allow damage and trait bonuses to not only trigger for disables, but for movement impairment as well (so you have a use for the cripple and immobilize you can inflict).

 

5.    Hammer could make use of either a gap closer or some form of snare on the auto attack to keep foes near you (like a cripple).

 

6.    It wouldn’t hurt to update the Two-Handed-Training trait to also improve Hammer skills, it IS a two-handed weapon after all.

 

Possible issues with the Cantrip utility skills in general:
In general, Cantrips should have some sort of (positive effect) on your pet, either through getting bonus effects, bonus stats, or even a flip-over for a set duration into another pet attack (that could be a way to incorporate a few iconic GW1 bunnythumper/Beastmaster skills into the spec like Bestial Mauling(another daze source), Savage Pounce (knockdown) or Enraged Lunge (big damage if certain conditions are met).

The set is also missing a way to reliably stunbreak or give itself stability outside of the elite, nor does it increase the survivability of the pet. Those are three pretty big red flags for a spec that got marketed to us as a frontliner/bruiser. No stunbreak makes you CC bait (you can bring core ranger skills, but really, not even one stunbreak?), no short recharge  stability makes you a ragdoll, and no way to keep your pet alive means this will not be a frontliner where such a thing matters, being WvW. In PvE nobody cares, the pet will probably live. But in WvW, the untamed will never be able to fulfill a frontline role in zergs when it has nothing do prevent the pet from instantly blowing up.

It may also be interesting to make Cantrips give additional effects based on who is currently under the effect of Unleash, but I am not sure how hard that would step on the toes of the glyphs from Druid.

 

Possible issues with specific Cantrip utility skills:

Perilous Gift:  
On one hand I like this, since it is something ranger doesn’t already have. 3 seconds of immortality, but you will take damage until 1 hp, so better not be careless. But at the same time, it does not really fit thematically right to leech life from your pet (which you cannot guarantee will have enough health when this skill triggers the final effect, and cannot swap to a fresh one).

 

Proposal:

Perhaps a small up front heal for both Untamed and pet, and at the end give pet and Untamed a barrier based on 50% of the pet’s  current/max health? Or make this cantrip affect nearby allies as well (for the immortality + proposed barrier)? It should do something for the pet at least.

 

Exploding Spores:   
Seems like a strong PvE DPS skill that also rewards you for positioning it well, on top of synergising with all of the unleashed hammer skills. But it does nothing for the pet.

 

Proposal: 
Make this do something for the pet as well, from a bonus-attack flip-over skill to the pet spawning some exploding spores of its own, but at least something.

Mutate Conditions:  
This tries to somewhat replace the Wilderness Knowledge Grandmaster trait, but will fail to do so because of not just the additional bonuses that trait gives, but also the fact you can bring multiple Survival skills for multiple cleanses (at different times if needed). If you want mutate to stand out, it needs more.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could reduce its own recharge by X for every condition removed? Or go for a Geralt of Rivia Witcher vibe and convert the conditions into boons on top of a second effect? If anything it should stunbreak, the Untamed comes with no elite-spec specific stunbreaks. And it should also remove conditions from your pet.

 

Unnatural Traversal:  
Looks solid for places that require fast movement (and for PvP), and halving the recharge when hitting something is probably going to feel satisfying. But only 2 stacks of vulnerability? You could make it 10 stacks and it would still be niche.

 

Proposal:
I feel this skill could use a little bonus. Nothing OP, the core of the skill (teleport+recharge reduced on hit) is solid, just a little extra that makes you go “hmm nice one”, at least for PvE. Perhaps the cooldown could be cut in half, or make this an ammo skill (2 charges), maybe give it conditional cc coming from the pet? And when you use this skill to teleport, the pet should automatically teleport with you.

 

Nature’s Binding:
Probably a bit niche, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. In PvE it might need a little bit extra just to make it enticing to run.

 

Proposal:
 It would be great if foes under the effect of this cantrip would count as disabled for related traits however. And maybe when this skill ends it could have another control effect in PvE to trigger CC bonuses (like a 0 range launch)? Or it could continuously damage foes caught? And once again, this should give something positive to the pet, like all Cantrips should.

Forest’s Fortification
I can see this help the Untamed’s staying power, but a single long duration application of boons rarely worked in the past.

 

Proposal:
I would propose to make all the boons it give out to become pulsing instead of just one application with a long duration. That way you have not lost a big chunk of your elite skill’s effect should a random boon corrupt come your way.

In all cases this Cantrip should apply its boons and effect to the pet as well. If you then combine it with the Fervent Force trait you suddenly do wonders for your and your pet’s frontline role. A lot of uptime on this elite may sound extremely strong (and it probably is), but you give up 10% healing converted from your DPS or 15% damage and 25% bonus speed, so I feel it would be a fair solution that makes the grandmasters truly compete with each other. More DPS and speed, more healing, or less damage and healing but a lot more tankyness/damage reduction? Sound like fair options and trade-offs.

 

Possible issues with Untamed traits:

Debilitating Blows:
Extremely underwhelming. An entire trait, just to get a few boons?

 

Proposal:
Considering that Untamed has a problem of dealing low damage in PvE, this could maybe apply a damage bonus of X% for Y seconds when you disable something, or make disables deal damage or do X. The current effect should in my opinion be simplified: If you have the buff, both you and the pet inflict vulnerability, if the pet has the buff both of you inflict weakness.

 

Cleansing Unleash:
Not strong enough to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
This could use a buff to at the very minimum 2 conditions cleansed.

 

Blinding Outburst:
I am not sure how much 2s of blindness is going to achieve. If Unleashed pet skills get changed to count as Beast skills (like they should imo), this trait has no use, considering there is already a blind trait for beast skills in the beast mastery line.

 

Proposal:
Scrap this entire trait and think off something else. Perhaps a Cantrip trait could fit here?

 

Natural Fortitude:
This is Harbinger all over again. Traits that are nothing but a stat boost are boring. Roll the stat boost into the base proficiency, make the trait do something else or make it do something IN ADDITION to the vitality boost. But don’t waste a trait slot by simply giving +X in stat Y. Please don’t do this.. This is a good spot to add additional pet durability if anything.

 

Proposal:
How about this: the stat boost now also affects the pet and makes using Unleash heal the Untamed AND the pet for X if alive or resurrect the pet if it’s dead.

 

Enhancing Impact:
Needs to affect the pet as well and should do a lot more.

 

Proposal:
Same as with Debilitating Blows, the effects should come from both Untamed and pet. You have the buff, both gain quickness, Pet has the buff, both gain stability.  When striking a target under the effects of crowd control the one under Unleashed gains a stack of X for X seconds. When Unleash gets swapped to the pet/to you, stacks get consumed for cool/strong effect Y, where you can only accumulate effect Y for the other ( ranger accumulates for the pet, pet for ranger) to encourage the ping-pong gameplay.

 

Bolstering Unleash:  
Same story, needs to do a lot more AND affect the pet to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could make Unleash cause the Untamed and the pet to stunbreak and get a small window of invulnerability (1s or something?) on top of what it currently does (so taking some inspiration from Berserker’s Savage Instinct)? That would also make it more enticing to pass the Unleash buff around if you know you can time a small invulnerability window with it. It may also do wonders for the WvW frontliner role this is supposed to fill.

 

Corrupting Vines:  
This won’t do much in PvE, or anywhere for that matter.

 

Proposal:
 Maybe something like this: All Unleashed Pet attacks now remove boons (but Vines still remove the most). When a boon gets removed the pet temporarily grows in size, takes X % less damage and deals Y% more ( think of that opponent in the Queen’s Jubilee Gauntlet that grew in size as it ate stuff). Swapping Unleash back to the Untamed copies the effect to the Untamed for a short duration (or resets the duration of the buff on the pet. Ping-pong gameplay!)

 

Vow of the Untamed:
Losing 10% damage when not Unleashed is the final nail that kills the already weak spec as a DPS option in any form of organised PvE, please reconsider this penalty. Untamed already loses so many damage modifiers compared to Soulbeast ( Sick’em! bonus, everything from Beast Mastery no longer applying to the ranger, Soulbeast specific buffs etc), don’t cripple the spec before releaseday.

 

Proposal: 
Get rid of the -10% damage penalty when not unleashed, not having +15% because you are not Unleashed is painful enough as it is, and consider adding a secondary positive effect on top of upping the damage (and once again, MAKE THIS AFFECT THE PET AS WELL). This spec needs buffs, not nerfs. This could also be the place where pets get something they should have gotten a long time ago: When the player/Untamed dodges, the pet dodges/evades as well. This change + the new Bolstered Unleash would go a long way for pet longevity in a spec focused on its pet, especially in WvW/PvP. It would also fit the idea of the Untamed making a promise/vow to its pet (follow my lead and I will keep you from harm).

Fervent Force:

This looks like it could be fun, recharging everything you have by 4 seconds when you disable something is a big bonus...But PvE players will take Ferocious Symbiosis, and hard CC does no damage in PvP...Leaving the question if this trait will be able to find a niche. Maybe in PvP it will, I could see it become very strong there (provided Untamed CC does not get the treatmeant of doing no damage there which was the case in this BETA).

 

Proposal: 
Consider giving this trait additional effects so it can compete with the other two grandmasters in PvE if the intention is to use it there and make pet CC also activate this trait. For PvP, perhaps this trait can get rid of the PvP rule that CC does no damage there. You cannot kitten a CC spec like this.

Restorative Strikes:
Taking this drops your damage even further, but healing a percentage of your strike damage is a solid trait that may open role options that ranger never had access to before ( in raids it may do some roles that require you to be solo or away from the group like Hand kiting or Pylons). But why is this not doing anything for the pet?

 

Proposal:  
Make it so the pet also gets healed a percentage (from either its own or from the Untamed’s strike damage).

 

Ferocious Symbiosis:
This could be a good trait if the current Vow of the Untamed did not completely cripple it. Even without Vow the Untamed this spec is struggling in the PvE DPS department, but with it this trait barely compensates for it. Mandatory DPS trait, but it won’t be enough, not by a long-shot.

 

Proposal:
Increase the damage on this trait, possibly give both Untamed and the pet a bonus to damage if they use an attack skill right after each other ( pet uses skill A, this buffs the Untamed next skill by X%, if the Untamed uses skill B, it buff the next skill from the pet by X%). Something like that to create a flow of attacks between Untamed and pet. It is just an idea, hell if I know how to fix all of this.

 

Closing statement

Bunnythumper was fun back in GW1, but the Unleashed mechanic from the Untamed does not work that well, hammer skills need both versions to function while having access to just one most of the time, the unleashed side has no CC, and a lack of damage kills its dreams of being a power DPS. It could really use some more fleshing out, including unleashed versions of weapon skills for other weapons, and maybe even different unleashed skills for each pet family. I am shocked to see how much work this spec needs in order to become good or strong in any gamemode. Please Anet, take the feedback you are going to get seriously. The Untamed needs you to.

I have no idea if my suggestions are great ideas, but I do know that it would probably still be better than what Untamed currently has.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

[Bast Bow.2958]

42 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Introduction

I hereby present my feedback on the Untamed elite spec for the Ranger class. I will divide my feedback into several sections and will try to look at things from mainly a PvE perspective with sometimes a little bit of PvP or WvW mixed in.

To be upfront: This spec needs a lot of work to function in PvE, work on the level of the Catalyst and Harbinger specs. There is no damage, the Unleashed buff is not very enticing, the utility kit is overly PvP centric, there are no stunbreaks, it completely breaks the pet and has no synergy with it, and a lot of the traits are underwhelming. There is a solid idea hidden away beneath the current mess, but it will prove challenging for Anet to make this spec live up to its true potential. There is so much wrong with this spec that I have rewritten this wall of text four or even five times, and I am still convinced that someone will point out another major problem that I somehow managed to miss. It really is thát bad.

 

Possible issue with the theme: 

It is impossible for me to have an issue with the idea of the GW1 Bunnythumper becoming its own elite spec. I have loved that playstyle ever since the first Guild Wars and I am happy to see it making its way into the sequel game. It’s also logical that after a spec that ditched the pet (Slb) we now get a spec that has more of a focus on the pet.  No issues with the theme nor the lore for me. It’s the current execution that is severely lacking.

 

Possible issue with its damage in PvE:
What damage? There is no nice way to say it: The damage from this spec is a joke. Neither power or condi benchmarks (where benchmark means under ideal circumstances) is managing to hit above 30k, it is even doing lower damage than Vindicator at this point. Unless the Untamed gets absolutely MASSIVE damage buffs and mechanic changes, this spec will never see play outside of maybe the Roleplaying community.

Possible issue with the mechanic(s):

Unleash:

 

1. The core idea of tossing a buff between you and your pet for new skills, stats or effects is solid and something I like.  I also like the Untamed getting access to other pet skills than just the F2, no complaints about that idea either. The problem? The buff is almost useless, I would even hesitate to call it a buff.

 

2. I also have issues with the fact that the pet gets no damage bonus from the Unleashed buff whatsoever, it pretty much only gets the new F skills while losing functionality (behaviour commands and the automatic use of what have become the new F1-F3 skills when the pet isnt Unleashed).

 

3. The cooldown on the “buff” is also something I feel is not low enough to encourage players to tactically pass the buff around. The fact that the minor Vow of the Untamed also nerfs your own damage by 10% (not just not getting +15%, but actually taking a -10% penalty, meaning you deal 25-30% less damage when you are not unleashed) if you are not buffed with Unleash also does not promote swapping around of this buff at all, defeating what seems to be the purpose of the mechanic.

 

4. There is simply no reason to ever pass the effect on to your pet, the loss in DPS is simply that big, especially on a spec that is already having a hard time to compete with other power specs as it is (it can’t anyway, neither power or condi get 30k+, even 28k seems very hard to achieve).
Give me reasons to play ping-pong with this buff, right now (at least in PvE) you don’t really have any.
Remember how back during the early to mid PoF era the Iboga pet was bugged and did way more damage than it was supposed to do?  How we got sarcastic Iboga-only benchmarks that talked about “pet Ranger set to avoid combat”?  THAT is exactly how it should feel when we give the buff to our pet. That pet should become a DPS and survival monstrosity when buffed, so monstrous that giving the buff to it does not kitten us.

 

5. I am also disappointed that Unleash on the ranger only affects Hammer skills, with other weapon skills staying the same no matter if you have the Unleashed buff or not. This feels very limiting, where playing as Untamed forces you into the Hammer weapon or you lose access to a big chunk of your spec’s mechanic. It may be unrealistic to ask at this point in development, but I really would have loved to see the core ranger weapons getting Unleashed versions of their skills as well. I mean elementalist gets 20+ new weapon skills with each new spec, why not ranger for once? I am all for encouraging people to play a spec with the spec weapon, but this feels very limiting.
Getting locked out of a huge part of your Unleashed bonus when you don’t run a hammer in your build really does not sit right with me.

 

6. Another thing is that Unleashed pets all seem to have the exact same 3 new abilities. That does make it easier to remember what each ability does, but I would have liked to see different abilities based on the pet family ( meaning drakes have different unleashed abilities than for example hounds, spiders or birds). I will dive some more into the pet unleashed skills later.

 

7. Something else:  the fact that if the pet is dead you cannot really use the mechanic (no passing around when the pet is dead). Would it be broken to allow the use of Unleash to resurrect a dead pet? This is supposed to be a spec with a lot of pet interaction, seems logical that this would be the spec where the pet is available the most.

 

Some proposals:

 

1.    I think Unleash should give the pet a base bonus before any possible traits. Give it + 20% damage & damage reduction or even + 40% damage & damage reduction ( Sick’em on steroids), or make it get a percentage of the Untamed’s stats when it gets the buff, or drastically increased attack and movement speed (something unique, not simply quickness+superspeed) something worthwhile. Give it SOMETHING.

 

2.    10 seconds of unbuffed cooldown means you cannot tactically pass the buff around, since the Untamed loses a load of damage from doing so. The cooldown should be shortened, and perhaps you should be able to trait for your damage/bonus to linger after you pass the buff along, or get a special buff when getting/losing Unleashed, something to makes us WANT to play buff ping-pong with it (and makes passing the buff at the right time a rewarding decision). Perhaps you can accumulate stacks of a buff when Unleashed and when you pass the buff to your pet/from your pet to you those stacks get consumed into boons/bonus damage/bonus attack&movement speed/ bonus stats or something, or maybe it can get stacking buffs for each succesful cc (like how Spellbreaker’s Attackers Insight works)?

 

3.    Increase the damage boost for the Untamed as well, 15% is not enough, and get rid of the 10% damage penalty when not having the buff. This spec currently has trouble to hit 30k, it is benching even lower than Vindicator. You could make this a 30% buff and it would probably still struggle. Up those numbers.

 

4.    Make Unleash change other ranger weapon skills as well, not just the hammer.

5.    Pet Unleash skills should have some variations among them, if it is not possible to do this for each individual pet then at least for each pet family. Ranged pets should not teleport into battle, and there is no reason for power pets to have condi attacks when they Unleash.

 

6.    Unleash should make sure that the pet is always available when used. Minor traits can make Unleash resurrect the pet when it’s dead, or heal the pet when it’s alive.

 

7.    Give the Untamed control over the pet back, we need those commands (attack target, come to me, avoid combat etc), as well as make the pet use their non-unleashed skills in both leashed and unleashed state. Make the player skills duplicates with a new skill ID or something, but don’t make us do silly things like smashing F1 every 3 seconds because basic Bite is off CD and my pet forgot how to bite people. It’s our pet, not a braindead piece of meat.

Possible issue with the new Unleashed Pet skills:

 

Venomous Outburst:
There is little reason to use this outside of a condi build, and it is a no-go on any pet that is ranged (why the hell would I teleport my ranged pet into melee range?).
Why would I kitten my damage for 10 seconds just so my pet can deal a bit of damage, some poison, and if I am lucky vulnerability?

 

Rending Vines:
PvE mobs do not have enough boons to make this worth using.

 

Enveloping Haze:
This is the only potentially interesting one since it comes with projectile block, but once again this is not enticing enough to make me lose out on my own damage.

The pet Unleashed skills seem mainly PvP oriented with meh damage, I don’t think they will see a lot of use in PvE, simply because it is not worth giving up the already abysmal damage from Unleashed or because it provides things we don’t really need or can get through other means.

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Give pets different Unleash skills based on their pet family and if they are power/condi or at least if they are melee or ranged. Make these skills worth using, make me WANT to pass my Unleash buff to the pet to use these attacks.

 

2.    Perhaps the Unleashed pet skills can setup some buffs for the Untamed? Ranger weapons often have attacks that give the pet a bonus for its next attack (pet gets swiftness, pet inflicts bleeding, etc), perhaps this time the pet can give the Untamed some bonuses, with additional bonuses if the target is disabled? Make the pet give out additional cc options ( your next attack dazes/stuns/knocks down maybe?) or typical ranger buffs like an enhanced version of Opening Strike or Attack of Opportunity, or multiple of these ( next X attacks get Enhanced Opening Strike/Enhanced Attack of Opportunity, gain additional of X if condition Y is met).

 

3.    Unleashed pet skills should count as Beast skills for trait bonuses.

 

Possible issue with the artwork of skills and traits:  

I actually think the Untamed icons are in a pretty good spot. The only thing I noticed is how when you get the Unleashed buff all icons flip into a new green version, except the auto attack. Even if the auto attack does not change, I would like to see it get the same Unleashed green coloring, just for consistency.

As for the non-Unleashed hammer skills, I am unsure of they feel like ranger skills to me, I am missing the greenish/brownish/yellowish mix of colours most ranger weapon skills have. This might have been done deliberately to visually mark the difference between Unleashed nor not being Unleashed, but adding a bit of ranger colours/hues would really go a long way here.

Possible issue with the Hammer weapon and skills:  

In general, I feel the hammer skills do not have synergy where you would want it. The normal hammer skills have CC on them, but to take advantage of CC you need to use the Unleashed hammer skills. Meanwhile, the Unleashed hammer skills have no CC at all. It is tantalizing. When you want to use CC to get benefits you have no access to it nor do you have a way to keep foes near you, and when you don’t need CC you have plenty of it. In a vacuum I feel both could be decent weaponsets designwise, but the current design of how Unleash works means you will never be able to solo trigger a CC hammer skill into a hammer skill with bonus damage vs a CCéd target. Somehow these two sets of hammer skills need to become one ( as in: accessible when you want. Use the CC from leashed hammer into heavy damage vs CC from unleashed hammer, back into leashed for CC, and back into the unleashed set again).

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Either give the Unleashed hammer skills some CC, give us a way to instantly swap between hammer sets ( unleashed -> leashed and vice versa) or at least somehow give us access to both skill types ( like using leashed hammer 3 to apply CC, followed by instantly going for unleashed hammer 2+4, going back to leashed hammer 5, and back into unleashed hammer 2+4. That way you could make use of both sets, which you cannot do currently. Right now you need someone else to CC for you. Sure, you can make your pet do it, but it hurts to use the hammer and knowing that the best/most fun combo’s are impossible because the needed skills are divided between the leashed and unleashed states). As it is, you can either setup CC or do damage, but rarely both, and even more rarely with the hammer. The GW1 Bunnythumper, which this spec apparently got inspired by, was able to do both.

 

2.    Or switch the versions of hammer 3 and hammer 5 with each other, so the not-unleashed set gets the boons and cripple/tactical blinds/immobilizes, and the Unleashed set actually gets the damage but now also the CC to take advantage of the bonuses the damage skills have. To me, this would feel like the best of both worlds for DPS purposes.

3.    Or make weaponswap a function that can swap without CD between leashed and unleashed skills while you have the unleashed buff

 

4.    Another thing that would help: Allow damage and trait bonuses to not only trigger for disables, but for movement impairment as well (so you have a use for the cripple and immobilize you can inflict).

 

5.    Hammer could make use of either a gap closer or some form of snare on the auto attack to keep foes near you (like a cripple).

 

6.    It wouldn’t hurt to update the Two-Handed-Training trait to also improve Hammer skills, it IS a two-handed weapon after all.

 

Possible issues with the Cantrip utility skills in general:
In general, Cantrips should have some sort of (positive effect) on your pet, either through getting bonus effects, bonus stats, or even a flip-over for a set duration into another pet attack (that could be a way to incorporate a few iconic GW1 bunnythumper/Beastmaster skills into the spec like Bestial Mauling(another daze source), Savage Pounce (knockdown) or Enraged Lunge (big damage if certain conditions are met).

The set is also missing a way to reliably stunbreak or give itself stability outside of the elite, nor does it increase the survivability of the pet. Those are three pretty big red flags for a spec that got marketed to us as a frontliner/bruiser. No stunbreak makes you CC bait (you can bring core ranger skills, but really, not even one stunbreak?), no short recharge  stability makes you a ragdoll, and no way to keep your pet alive means this will not be a frontliner where such a thing matters, being WvW. In PvE nobody cares, the pet will probably live. But in WvW, the untamed will never be able to fulfill a frontline role in zergs when it has nothing do prevent the pet from instantly blowing up.

It may also be interesting to make Cantrips give additional effects based on who is currently under the effect of Unleash, but I am not sure how hard that would step on the toes of the glyphs from Druid.

 

Possible issues with specific Cantrip utility skills:

Perilous Gift:  
On one hand I like this, since it is something ranger doesn’t already have. 3 seconds of immortality, but you will take damage until 1 hp, so better not be careless. But at the same time, it does not really fit thematically right to leech life from your pet (which you cannot guarantee will have enough health when this skill triggers the final effect, and cannot swap to a fresh one).

 

Proposal:

Perhaps a small up front heal for both Untamed and pet, and at the end give pet and Untamed a barrier based on 50% of the pet’s  current/max health? Or make this cantrip affect nearby allies as well (for the immortality + proposed barrier)? It should do something for the pet at least.

 

Exploding Spores:   
Seems like a strong PvE DPS skill that also rewards you for positioning it well, on top of synergising with all of the unleashed hammer skills. But it does nothing for the pet.

 

Proposal: 
Make this do something for the pet as well, from a bonus-attack flip-over skill to the pet spawning some exploding spores of its own, but at least something.

Mutate Conditions:  
This tries to somewhat replace the Wilderness Knowledge Grandmaster trait, but will fail to do so because of not just the additional bonuses that trait gives, but also the fact you can bring multiple Survival skills for multiple cleanses (at different times if needed). If you want mutate to stand out, it needs more.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could reduce its own recharge by X for every condition removed? Or go for a Geralt of Rivia Witcher vibe and convert the conditions into boons on top of a second effect? If anything it should stunbreak, the Untamed comes with no elite-spec specific stunbreaks. And it should also remove conditions from your pet.

 

Unnatural Traversal:  
Looks solid for places that require fast movement (and for PvP), and halving the recharge when hitting something is probably going to feel satisfying. But only 2 stacks of vulnerability? You could make it 10 stacks and it would still be niche.

 

Proposal:
I feel this skill could use a little bonus. Nothing OP, the core of the skill (teleport+recharge reduced on hit) is solid, just a little extra that makes you go “hmm nice one”, at least for PvE. Perhaps the cooldown could be cut in half, or make this an ammo skill (2 charges), maybe give it conditional cc coming from the pet? And when you use this skill to teleport, the pet should automatically teleport with you.

 

Nature’s Binding:
Probably a bit niche, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. In PvE it might need a little bit extra just to make it enticing to run.

 

Proposal:
 It would be great if foes under the effect of this cantrip would count as disabled for related traits however. And maybe when this skill ends it could have another control effect in PvE to trigger CC bonuses (like a 0 range launch)? Or it could continuously damage foes caught? And once again, this should give something positive to the pet, like all Cantrips should.

Forest’s Fortification
I can see this help the Untamed’s staying power, but a single long duration application of boons rarely worked in the past.

 

Proposal:
I would propose to make all the boons it give out to become pulsing instead of just one application with a long duration. That way you have not lost a big chunk of your elite skill’s effect should a random boon corrupt come your way.

In all cases this Cantrip should apply its boons and effect to the pet as well. If you then combine it with the Fervent Force trait you suddenly do wonders for your and your pet’s frontline role. A lot of uptime on this elite may sound extremely strong (and it probably is), but you give up 10% healing converted from your DPS or 15% damage and 25% bonus speed, so I feel it would be a fair solution that makes the grandmasters truly compete with each other. More DPS and speed, more healing, or less damage and healing but a lot more tankyness/damage reduction? Sound like fair options and trade-offs.

 

Possible issues with Untamed traits:

Debilitating Blows:
Extremely underwhelming. An entire trait, just to get a few boons?

 

Proposal:
Considering that Untamed has a problem of dealing low damage in PvE, this could maybe apply a damage bonus of X% for Y seconds when you disable something, or make disables deal damage or do X. The current effect should in my opinion be simplified: If you have the buff, both you and the pet inflict vulnerability, if the pet has the buff both of you inflict weakness.

 

Cleansing Unleash:
Not strong enough to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
This could use a buff to at the very minimum 2 conditions cleansed.

 

Blinding Outburst:
I am not sure how much 2s of blindness is going to achieve. If Unleashed pet skills get changed to count as Beast skills (like they should imo), this trait has no use, considering there is already a blind trait for beast skills in the beast mastery line.

 

Proposal:
Scrap this entire trait and think off something else. Perhaps a Cantrip trait could fit here?

 

Natural Fortitude:
This is Harbinger all over again. Traits that are nothing but a stat boost are boring. Roll the stat boost into the base proficiency, make the trait do something else or make it do something IN ADDITION to the vitality boost. But don’t waste a trait slot by simply giving +X in stat Y. Please don’t do this.. This is a good spot to add additional pet durability if anything.

 

Proposal:
How about this: the stat boost now also affects the pet and makes using Unleash heal the Untamed AND the pet for X if alive or resurrect the pet if it’s dead.

 

Enhancing Impact:
Needs to affect the pet as well and should do a lot more.

 

Proposal:
Same as with Debilitating Blows, the effects should come from both Untamed and pet. You have the buff, both gain quickness, Pet has the buff, both gain stability.  When striking a target under the effects of crowd control the one under Unleashed gains a stack of X for X seconds. When Unleash gets swapped to the pet/to you, stacks get consumed for cool/strong effect Y, where you can only accumulate effect Y for the other ( ranger accumulates for the pet, pet for ranger) to encourage the ping-pong gameplay.

 

Bolstering Unleash:  
Same story, needs to do a lot more AND affect the pet to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could make Unleash cause the Untamed and the pet to stunbreak and get a small window of invulnerability (1s or something?) on top of what it currently does (so taking some inspiration from Berserker’s Savage Instinct)? That would also make it more enticing to pass the Unleash buff around if you know you can time a small invulnerability window with it. It may also do wonders for the WvW frontliner role this is supposed to fill.

 

Corrupting Vines:  
This won’t do much in PvE, or anywhere for that matter.

 

Proposal:
 Maybe something like this: All Unleashed Pet attacks now remove boons (but Vines still remove the most). When a boon gets removed the pet temporarily grows in size, takes X % less damage and deals Y% more ( think of that opponent in the Queen’s Jubilee Gauntlet that grew in size as it ate stuff). Swapping Unleash back to the Untamed copies the effect to the Untamed for a short duration (or resets the duration of the buff on the pet. Ping-pong gameplay!)

 

Vow of the Untamed:
Losing 10% damage when not Unleashed is the final nail that kills the already weak spec as a DPS option in any form of organised PvE, please reconsider this penalty. Untamed already loses so many damage modifiers compared to Soulbeast ( Sick’em! bonus, everything from Beast Mastery no longer applying to the ranger, Soulbeast specific buffs etc), don’t cripple the spec before releaseday.

 

Proposal: 
Get rid of the -10% damage penalty when not unleashed, not having +15% because you are not Unleashed is painful enough as it is, and consider adding a secondary positive effect on top of upping the damage (and once again, MAKE THIS AFFECT THE PET AS WELL). This spec needs buffs, not nerfs. This could also be the place where pets get something they should have gotten a long time ago: When the player/Untamed dodges, the pet dodges/evades as well. This change + the new Bolstered Unleash would go a long way for pet longevity in a spec focused on its pet, especially in WvW/PvP. It would also fit the idea of the Untamed making a promise/vow to its pet (follow my lead and I will keep you from harm).

Fervent Force:

This looks like it could be fun, recharging everything you have by 4 seconds when you disable something is a big bonus...But PvE players will take Ferocious Symbiosis, and hard CC does no damage in PvP...Leaving the question if this trait will be able to find a niche. Maybe in PvP it will, I could see it become very strong there (provided Untamed CC does not get the treatmeant of doing no damage there which was the case in this BETA).

 

Proposal: 
Consider giving this trait additional effects so it can compete with the other two grandmasters in PvE if the intention is to use it there and make pet CC also activate this trait. For PvP, perhaps this trait can get rid of the PvP rule that CC does no damage there. You cannot kitten a CC spec like this.

Restorative Strikes:
Taking this drops your damage even further, but healing a percentage of your strike damage is a solid trait that may open role options that ranger never had access to before ( in raids it may do some roles that require you to be solo or away from the group like Hand kiting or Pylons). But why is this not doing anything for the pet?

 

Proposal:  
Make it so the pet also gets healed a percentage (from either its own or from the Untamed’s strike damage).

 

Ferocious Symbiosis:
This could be a good trait if the current Vow of the Untamed did not completely cripple it. Even without Vow the Untamed this spec is struggling in the PvE DPS department, but with it this trait barely compensates for it. Mandatory DPS trait, but it won’t be enough, not by a long-shot.

 

Proposal:
Increase the damage on this trait, possibly give both Untamed and the pet a bonus to damage if they use an attack skill right after each other ( pet uses skill A, this buffs the Untamed next skill by X%, if the Untamed uses skill B, it buff the next skill from the pet by X%). Something like that to create a flow of attacks between Untamed and pet. It is just an idea, hell if I know how to fix all of this.

 

Closing statement

Bunnythumper was fun back in GW1, but the Unleashed mechanic from the Untamed does not work that well, hammer skills need both versions to function while having access to just one most of the time, the unleashed side has no CC, and a lack of damage kills its dreams of being a power DPS. It could really use some more fleshing out, including unleashed versions of weapon skills for other weapons, and maybe even different unleashed skills for each pet family. I am shocked to see how much work this spec needs in order to become good or strong in any gamemode. Please Anet, take the feedback you are going to get seriously. The Untamed needs you to.

I have no idea if my suggestions are great ideas, but I do know that it would probably still be better than what Untamed currently has.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

I was hoping you’d elaborate a bit more.

 

 

Anyways thanks for the post 😉

[Yumesaki.7082]

Untamed Feedback

UI
- needs stow pet button. (stow pet is only available in the pet management window.)

Unleashing
- Unleashing needs to trigger weapon swap sigils and effects.
- Unleashing needs to trigger pet swapping traits.

Pet Skills
- Venomous Outburst / Pet F1 Skill needs to trigger the default ranger pet action of attack my target when on cooldown or in addition to the pets attack.

- Enveloping Haze / Pet F3 Skill needs to trigger the default ranger pet action of return to me when on cooldown or in addition to the pets attack.
Different visual effects or coloring for enemies and allies, also ally Enveloping Haze needs to be more transparent.

Traits
- Vow of the Untamed needs to apply the opposite effect of the ranger to the pet as well.
(when ranger is unleashed, pet does less damage and takes less damage / when pet is unleashed, pet does more damage and takes more damage.)

- Fervent Force change icd to 1-5 sec.
(too strong in competitive game modes atm.)

[Puck.3697]

Unleashed mechanic needs to be better. 

Unleashed pets don't use base pet abilities. Pets should seem wild in this mode with increased damage, faster attacks and start using everything the idea is the pet goes crazy. Where ATM it just don't. 

Unleashed on ranger needs work. Being restricted to hammer is pretty lame. But even then it's pretty weak. 

Unleashed is useless on ranged pets. 

Pet bugs persist for 7 years and still need fixing. 

Speccs DPS is too low considering it has 0 utility. Why do other speccs get alacrity and more on 40k+ DPS speccs while untamed as a pure DPS does 28k?? 

The weird green haze needs to be turn offable. It's ugly it breaks appearance... Half the end game is fashion. So it shouldn't be this invasive. 

Traits need some work. It's damage is too reliant on CC.. it doesn't need this much dedicated to it realistically. I like the idea of additional affects on CC'd targets but damage shouldnt be in this. 

Give the damage baseline and introduce additional effects on CC targets. 

 

[BlueTurtle.9263]

I like the Untamed in concept but it could use some reworks.

 

First of let me say I like that this build focuses more on power damage as soulbeast is heavily condition focused and druid, while can be played both ways, is so heavily skewed towards pure support that it makes making a dps build with it moot.

 

The pet

The pet skills should have the have the ability to set a loop cast the same way we can set a weapon skill (usually the basic attack) to automatically cast off cooldown. Additionally, the pet not having access to its normal skills in unleashed form is making it do much less damage even with the damage boost from Vow of the Untamed; when in unleashed I think it should let the AI use its normal skills like before with the player controlling the unleashed skills. Ranged pets are also useless in unleashed state. Pets entering unleashed should trigger pet swap sigils.

 

Weapons and abilities

Having hammer be the only weapon to benefit from the unleashed state feels like it pigeon holes the spec into only using that weapon which would be a shame considering many players were waiting for a power focused spec to help their power weapons. The other weapons should benefit from the unleashed state too even if it just modifies the basic attack or gives some sort of effect like the "does more damage to CC'd targets" effect that most of the unleashed hammer skills get. Also having the player go into unleashed state should trigger weapon swap sigils.

 

The heal, elite, and Exploding Spores are in a good spot. Unnatural Traversal is fine for the most part though needing a target to use might hinder its applications or be passed over in favor of other utility skills. Nature's Binding is fine on its own (or in a pure untamed skill loadout), but in a build with mixed skills it probably won't see much use. In a pvp trap build for instance, a player would not take the highly synergistic Nature's Binding due to the need to take a stun break and two traps. Maybe rework this skill into another skill and transfer the effect as is to the hammer so it could be used more often with trap utility skills. Mutate Conditions is a worse Signet of Renewal and should be reworked into a completely different skill especially since you'd likely need to activate this when in the less tanky unleashed state which would end up giving you multiple stacks of vulnerability on top of the extra damage taken from Vow of the Unleashed.

 

The hammer is a decent weapon but it has no movement abilities, blocking skills, or supportive abilies. The damage is low which shouldn't be the case if it brings no support to the table. I think at least one of the weapon skills should be reworked into a leap or some other type of movement skill as currently it relies entirely on Unnatural traversal (which might not be taken due to the need of other utility skills) to close gaps. Throwing in some (self) swiftness in somewhere might help with this too. Turning Nature's Binding into a hammer skill could also make up for each other's weaknesses; the normal version could make the wall of vines around the player to block attacks/projectiles and the unleashed version could activate the skill as it is now around the enemy. The hammer would gain more utility and the effect of Nature's Binding would see more use.

 

Traits

Vow of the Untamed is the main issue that is holding this spec back. I get the idea of swapping between offensive and defensive states but the 10% more damage taken and 15% less outgoing damage are extreme downsides on a trait you have no choice but to take. I think the downsides should be removed so that it really is just swapping between an offensive buff and a defensive buff and not juggling debuffs. The current values could be reduced to balance out only having positive effects. If nothing else this is the one design change that must happen before release of EoD.

 

There is no cantrip trait to reduce cooldowns or add other effects. Maybe combine the extra effects on unleashed pet skills traits into one to make room for this one in the major adept line.

 

Cleansing Unleashed does too little to be worth taking especially since Mutate Conditions is so bad that other utilities that condition cleanse would be taken instead. This should either cleanse more conditions or be reworked into another trait after maybe adding resolution in more places throughout the kit.

 

Fervent Force does not affect pet skills and using a pet a skill to disable an enemy does not benefit the player character.

 

On a minor note:

The visual effects for the unleashed state are horrendously ugly. While it's nice it's not permanent and goes away after 20/30s, it could still dissipate faster. An enemy player doesn't need 30s to visually confirm which entity is in the buffed state.

Edited October 28, 2021 by BlueTurtle.9263
clarified some points

[Amadeus.5687]

Untamed feedback from sPvP

So I first liked what I saw when I saw the untamed reveal; but after playing it I'm not really feeling it.

The concept of bouncing a buff back and forth is cool, but in reality it just turns out to be a lot of busy work, for very little:

The new Pet unleashed F1, F2 and F3
F1: Venomous Outburst is a cool teleport in, but it really needs to actually do power dmg aswell in sPvP.
F2: Make it remove 3 boons in sPvP aswell as some power dmg

F3: I think this one is fine, but for some reason it's a "channel" and is removed if the pet moves, attacks, get stunned ect. The UI does not say it's channeled? I would like that fixed

 

Have access to your pets standard attacks;
I thought I would love this and on some pets I do. But as many have said; We need a toggle for the F1 for some families where it's very short CD. We all ready have so many buttons to press and this one just feels bad.
Another issue is the UI bugs out and gets very dark, but no CD number going down. Same issue on the Mechanist Mech and I gues it's the new Ui.
also the removal of F1 attack and F3 return to me is horrible. I need to be able to call my pet back and pick a target.

Another general observation; But it feels like our pet AI gotten stupider when playing as untamed? A lot of the time when I ask it to use a skill it just simply won't do it when it's the new F1 and F3. Not sure if I'm the only one that have noticed, but it's been really jarring how many times I told it to do something and it don't.

Hammer

To much bust work, for to little gain sums it up. 
I feel it deals way to little dmg in sPvP and it suffers massively from the 0 dmg from CC skills balance we got going in there right now.
I tried to slot in a ton of CC skills and moment of clarity setup, but hammer burst dmg falls short compared to greatsword, so what's the point? Greatsword even got easier acces to the built in CC on that weapon. 

I'm really not sure how to fix hammer, but I feel like it either needs more dmg or shorter cast times, in special skill 4 and 5 with 1 sec cast time feels horrible.
But I actually kinda feel the entire; Swap skills with unleash setups is bad? I didn't feel rewarded for the extra skill requirement it needed

Cantrips:

Exploding spores; The requirement for the knockdown that the target needs to stand in the middle makes it useless. The dmg is ok, but it's fair easier to hit with Spike trap for reliable CC.

Mutate Conditions; Covert all conditions is okay, but in the current state of conditions it's more about rapid condition application vs rapid condtion removal. That's why wilderness survival when traited feels so good. It's an ok skill, give it a stunbreak and it might see play?

Unntural Travesal; Didn't find much use for it, beside cheesy stuff like combing it with Nature's Binding and Axe 5

Nature's Binding; It were okay in some teamfights, but I feel the attack radius need to be atleast 360 or maybe even 480 to be really worth it.

Forest's Fortification felt okay in teamfights, but really bad in duels 

 

Perilous Gift were just bad :S

The traits;

I feel like all of top row should trigger when our pet disable an enemy. Fervent Force were in special fun to play with.

Cleansing Unleash should remove 2 conditions

 

Bolstering Unleash just feels weak overall and should be reworked.

Restorative Strikes I need more time to play with, but weren't able to make it work

 

Not sure about bot row; I felt Blinding Outburst were outshined by the two others.

 

Corrupting Vines felt useless since nothing in untamed support condition dmg

 

Ferocious Symbiosis got outshined by Fervent Force 







 
 

[HamBetwing.8397]

My point of view with pvp in mind.

 

The class feels like it has nothing new to offer. 

It was called a 'bruiser' during the life stream. You know what is a bruiser? Scrapper. Use that as a benchmark.

Just giving something a hammer and calling it a bruiser is strange.

Take a look at the traits: extra vitality? okay....but you take extra damage when unleashed? ok.

Then: the Utility condition cleanse: you turn conditions into vulnerabilty? But...it should be a front line bruiser right? Why do i want to make myself more vulnerable?. Why does guardian turn it into boons with their meditation skill, or engineer with their elixer? it's a dissapointment and you are better off using the same old skills like always...Survival skills and the wilderness line.

 

The teleport is a bit strange. The one hosting the stream (showcasing the classes) even said during one of the showcases 'we gave it a teleport, because other classes get one too'. That is not how you should do things. Where is the synergy? The class also lacks stablity, protection, aegis...where are the protective buffs? the traits do NOT cover this at all. 

 

Then the pet. all pets have the same unleashed skills. Soulbeast WAY better in terms of versitality, where it actually matters which pet you use.

 

The big damage hammer skills require targets to be cc'ed. But the cc itself comes from the normal mode and the big hits from unleashed. But on the same time you keep the cooldowns? no. They are different skills, so treat them differently. When en elementelist uses staff 2 fire mode, and then go to air attunement, the 2nd skill is not on cd right? Well same story. I want to use number 5 on hammer to cc someone, switch to unleashed and then use 5 again (it has a big wind-up, so the cc'ed target is easier to hit then).

 

Ranger and necro are my favorite classes, but for ranger i'd say, THERE IS WORK TO DO.

 

Good luck, I hope you take some feedback to heart :)

 

 

[Kovu.7560]

For comparisons sake, when merging with their pet Soulbeast can trait to get +75 to all stats through Pack Alpha, easy 5-10 might generation through Potent Ally, 10% damage through Loud Whistle, 150 ferocity and +30% movement through Pet's Prowess, +10% damage through Oppressive Superiority as well as a crazy amount of boon uptime and an additional 7-12% damage through the Soulbeast traitline. Some of these are minor traits, including the movement boosting one. Finally, there's Sic 'Em. I haven't run the numbers but I'm betting that's around 60% increased damage.

If that's not enough Soulbeast comes with a trait that potentially reduces condition damage by 33% and a heal that's more potent, doesn't screw over the pet and basically negates the effectiveness of condis on you for 6 seconds every 30 seconds. Certainly beats a heal that transfers a bit of health from your pet after a delay and a full cleanse on a 30 second cooldown that eats a utility slot. Soulbeast can build to tank sustained condition pressure for a while with limited impact on your 1-10 and without having to dip into WS, Untamed basically cannot.

I don't even think the damage numbers on hammer are all that low compared to other ranger weapons. It's just a super slow weapon with Maul-like tells. They probably should be a bit higher considering the clunkiness of the weapon  but I think folks are just not used to having to deal with core ranger power damage output again. This profession have some of the worst base damage and coefficients in the game, (supposedly to counterbalance the pet mechanic).

At their most basic ranger pets are relatively useless, unlike a certain mecha that was recently introduced to us. If a wolf lands a knockdown on a player its a actually a kittening miracle and the person who was knocked down was clearly away from their keyboard at the time but will probably still hop on the forums to whine about ranger being an AI class. A lot of folks were happy being able to just remove the pet mechanic from the equation and gain a bunch of extra stuff in exchange, but I always felt like that was a band-aid solution to what was supposed to be the pet class. Untamed doesn't overtly support condi builds in any way (though there's nothing stopping you from running one), whereas Soulbeast got a bit of support through a number of those damage multipliers that affect a merged Soulbeast (as well as one trait in Soulbeast itself) as well as the only somewhat decent main-hand condition-based weapon for ranger. Untamed has, well, Fervent Force I guess. That would probably work well with Shortbow's relatively short cooldowns and can be paired with a trapper build. I'm theory crafting at this point as I've only been playing with the hammer. That said, I'm certain Soulbeast and even Druid will still outclass it here.

So no, I'm not overly impressed with the spec. I wouldn't be even if the hammer skills did all of their things at once while in both forms. Its clunky, slow and probably does less damage than a core ranger (that can pick up a third traitline). Moreover the traits are mostly lackluster. Even if I thought the spec was all that great we're still dealing with the awful AI pet mechanic and now we can't even tell them when or who to attack.

I also might be a bit salty that I was actually hard-countered by a Juggernaut mecha the other day whilst trying out hammer Untamed.

~ Kovu

[HotDelirium.7984]

Its beyond confusing to me that the trait that has some synergy with CC and interrupts is MARKSMANSHIP lol like the exact opposite on the spectrum of a hammer. One trait gives bonus strike damage the further you are away.....but we use a hammer up close....You might need to update that trait line a little bit more to have attenable synergy with Untamed.

[Lazze.9870]

3 hours ago, Yumesaki.7082 said:

Vow of the Untamed needs to apply the opposite effect of the ranger to the pet as well.

 

The entire point of the trait is some form of a built in trade-off... and it is enough of a trade-off that the ranger itself either takes more damage or deals less damage.

[Infusion.7149]

Having played it a bit more I would like to see Vow of the Untamed change from
"Your outgoing and incoming damage are increased while you are unleashed. Your outgoing and incoming damage are decreased while your pet is unleashed."

into something more fitting as a minor trait:
 "Your outgoing and incoming damage are increased while you are unleashed. Your incoming strike damage is decreased while your pet is unleashed."

The tradeoff is you lose 15% damage mod of Untamed already when your pet is unleashed and all the damage on hammer is on Unleashed Ranger not Unleash Pet. By running Untamed over core ranger you would probably give up either beastmastery or marksmanship , both of which have damage modifiers in them. You wouldn't want to drop beast mastery because the pet is much too slow without the 30% movement speed buff and 120 ferocity modifier is in that traitline on honed axes (120 or 240 ferocity = 8-16% crit). Marksmanship has Predator's Onslaught (15% mod) which is quite fitting with Untamed. Skirmishing has Vicious Quarry (250 ferocity = 16% damage mod) as well as 10% from Hunter's Tactics.

CORE Beast Mastery (+20% pet crit damage from minor , +150 pet stats , up to 16% crit for both you and pet) + Marksmanship (15% from Predator's Onslaught for both , +5-10% depending on range)+ Skirmishing (16% crit damage , 10% damage mod)
---> with double axes your pet does +36% pet crit , +150 base stats , 15% damage mod for pet
---> your weapon and utility damage is boosted by 20-25% mod along with +32% crit

VERSUS

UNTAMED (30% max mods for player, +15% pet damage) + Beast Mastery (+20% pet crit damage from minor , +150 pet stats , up to 16% crit for both you and pet) + marksmanship (15% from Predator's Onslaught , +5-10% depending on range)
---> you trade off 16% crit damage of skirmishing and 10% damage mod for 30% max mods and 15% pet damage (since pet damage on its own is a few thousand DPS... not great) = not crit capped and gain at best ~4% crits

UNTAMED (30% max mods for player, +15% pet damage) + Skirmishing (16% crit damage , 10% damage mod) + marksmanship  (15% from Predator's Onslaught , +5-10% depending on range)
---> you trade off 20% pet crit , +150 pet stats, and 16% crit for both you and pet for 30% max mods and 15% pet damage which is  net loss in pet damage and ~14% improvement while unleash ranger


UNTAMED (30% max mods for player , +15% pet damage) + Skirmishing (16% crit damage , 10% damage mod)  + beastmastery (+20% pet crit damage from minor , +150 pet stats , up to 16% crit for both you and pet)
--->you trade off 15% damage from Predator's Onslaught and 5-10% damage mod for at most 30% mod for player and +15% pet damage which is a minor gain in damage of 5% or so

You're talking about a net gain of ~5% on average for any trait combination of power Untamed vs core power ranger which isn't used seriously by players outside PVP.

[Gomes.5643]

So last but not least I managed to test my main profession on some overworld event chains in drizzlewood ..... and I must say i am a little bit underwhelmed.....

 

While I absouletly love that you can now control all pet abilities (which to be honest should be a feature of the ranger in general), I kinda miss the "attack my target" and "return to me" functions. I would suggest attack my target to activate with f1 abilitiy (and f1 flipping to standard "attack my target" when on cooldown) and return to me then becoming f4 (petswap f5 then).

 

But other than that i feel that the untamed doesnt really provide anything interesting ..... for a "beast master" spec there is definetly to little synergy with the pet itself and the hammer is interesting but also just a weapon.

 

But I think there are a few ways to improve the situation in my opinion:

 

- Let Vow of the Untamed apply the opposite on the pet. When I let the pet go rambo it shall go rambo. And if I do dmg I probably need the pet to protect me .... also more synergy, which shall be the theme of the spec.

 

- I really like the idea from another user here that the "unleashed skills" are replaced by buffed up pet skills. The cool thing about the pet is that every pet have their own style..... with the Untamed they feel much more samey because of the unleashed mode. So the when enleashed the skills should do what they normally do + extra effect and the whole "when target is disabled do xy". Extra effects should be adjusted to pet type - e.g. melee pets have a shadowstep on f1, range pets a shadowstep away from the enemy etc.

 

- The "When Foe is disabled do XY" is a cool theme to simulate you and youre pet are like preparing the enemy for the other one to hit, but why is it only in one direction? Pet CC should trigger the entirety of the upper trait line. Weaken the effects if it becomes to strong then but that is easy synergy which would feel cool - also nicely synergized with traits from beast mastery (taunt on f2)

 

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by Gomes.5643

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

This has probably been repeated constantly in this thread, but I feel one of the glaring issues why Untamed is not working is because it puts a significant focus on your pet while simultaneously doing nothing to improve them.

Rangers have always been balanced around the fact that they have an NPC companion fighting alongside them. While every other class is balanced around “internal” power (ie, all your output capabilities come from your character), Rangers have always had their entire class power split between them and the pet. This is obviously reflected in all of our traitlines and weapon abilities where “doing X causes pet to do/gain Y” and other bonuses like “your pet gains Z extra stats”. However, the pet is essentially useless in the majority of actual competitive content.

Open World PvE, honestly, doesn’t really matter. Basically anything can work so glancing over that.

Instanced PvE, such as fractals, raids, strikes, etc, Soulbeast is so overwhelmingly powerful than base Ranger. Power Ranger was never a thing, and Soulbeast gains a tremendous amount of bonuses from being merged (Sic ‘Em, pet archetype stats, Beastmastery stats, Attack of Opportunity, etc). Condi Ranger, pre-PoF, was an actual dps build. When PoF was released though, Soulbeast was better in every scenario. For Druid, pets are usually taken for CC in pug groups. Any DPS they provide (primarily Iboga) are just a bonus. Bottom line is, pets can’t carry their own weight in instanced PvE.

In WvW, the pets are nothing but a negative in zerging content. When roaming, pets aren’t usually taken because of their damage. It’s typically because of the utility their provide such as CC, smoke fields, merged abilities (in case of Soulbeast), mobility, etc. You wouldn’t take a pet because it does damage or actually poses a threat to an enemy by itself.

I can’t speak much for PvP, but currently Base Ranger seems to be one of the stronger/strongest Ranger builds at the moment. Drake is notorious for its massive burst on one of its passive skills, but this is considered an exception due to the historic trend to nerf Ranger pet’s damage.

When running Untamed, you don’t actually get any bonuses or buffs related to your pet which is already negligible to begin with. When Unleashed Ranger you get a large damage bonus and your pet functions as normal. When the pet is unleashed though, they don’t gain any significant increase in power while at the same time the player is nerfed. The Untamed pet skills, while interesting and powerful in their own right, are just glorified utility skills. Boon rip and Bubble by themselves are not actually threatening, it’s just extra utility we get access to that we didn’t have before.

If Untamed actually wants to focus on their pet, there needs to be an actual, tangible increase to their power. If we think of normal the player Ranger as 66% of the class’ power and the pet as 33%, Unleashing Pet should cause that to flip to Ranger as 33% total power and the pet as 66%.

Furthermore, if the elite wants to participate in any meaningful way in PvE, we need to have some way to actually do damage. None of the Untamed talents interact with Condi damage in any way (the stronger of the base Ranger dps builds), and power Ranger literally does not exist in instances PvE outside of Soulbeast. I have yet to see any power Untamed benchmarks, but I doubt the two Untamed dps traits will be enough to help in that regard.

[DavidTheHero.5917]

On 10/26/2021 at 10:02 AM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

Let us know what you think about the untamed! What do you really like? What needs to be improved or adjusted?

Found a bug? Let us know in the bug thread.

the untamed at the current state will not used at all in any type of content, motives: does less dmg than a soulbeast and doesnt have the utily of the druid, yeah is beacuse is a new elite, but for a new elite doesnt bring anything new to the ranger, the cantrips are not that interesting, the core abilities do allmost the same, the masteries is the same dosent bring something new the only good mastery is the disable a foe rute, then nothing at all the unleash yeah is good on pet but lose a high dps and you rotation get larger and on the character the only is only "usefull" if you use hammer who is no not a good weapon in comparision for the other two handed weapon, example doesnt have a leap and a dash like Gsword, dosent bring as much dmg like Longbow, dosent do the same condi dmg like SHortbow, is because "it dosent have to like the other yarara" yeah but at least focus the hammer to do something, cc yeah is something but for doing cc with hammer i better use warrior who can be used with other elites and the same cc utility 

 

resume: 

cantrips: want to do somethings that core abilities already do 

hammer: is not that usefull for a weapon slot 

unleash: pet dmg losses, a longer rotation, less utility  more dmg for the unleash 

masteries: such a mess and dosent bring something new to ranger or the elites 

 

srry for the long text and my poor grammar, i hope this will get read 

 

see you in tyria guys :)

[AllDatAngst.4208]

The good stuff!

- I love the CC potential. It's nuts. It's almost too much. 10/10.

- Bouncing the unleashed mode makes an interesting level of micromanaging for the pet. Not just their skills, but where they are for their AOEs. More control over the pet's attacks is nice.

- The boon removal/corruption option is a great thing to give to ranger.

 

The bad stuff:

- I understand that the low DPS is a tradeoff for the CC but I feel like it's too low to get a foothold in organized PvE. It doesn't provide any group buffs either - no healing or boons for allied players. Without that, I don't think it will really pick up steam in the gamemode.

- The unleashed visual effect. I get the theme behind it but it covers your entire model. I'll be honest, I want to see my fashion. Something that maybe covers/drips off the arms or wispy like the ghostly infusion effect. The soulbeast merged aura is a really good middle ground of being visual without overtaking your character model.

[Shin Ryu.5802]

10 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Introduction

I hereby present my feedback on the Untamed elite spec for the Ranger class. I will divide my feedback into several sections and will try to look at things from mainly a PvE perspective with sometimes a little bit of PvP or WvW mixed in.

To be upfront: This spec needs a lot of work to function in PvE, work on the level of the Catalyst and Harbinger specs. There is no damage, the Unleashed buff is not very enticing, the utility kit is overly PvP centric, there are no stunbreaks, it completely breaks the pet and has no synergy with it, and a lot of the traits are underwhelming. There is a solid idea hidden away beneath the current mess, but it will prove challenging for Anet to make this spec live up to its true potential. There is so much wrong with this spec that I have rewritten this wall of text four or even five times, and I am still convinced that someone will point out another major problem that I somehow managed to miss. It really is thát bad.

 

Possible issue with the theme: 

It is impossible for me to have an issue with the idea of the GW1 Bunnythumper becoming its own elite spec. I have loved that playstyle ever since the first Guild Wars and I am happy to see it making its way into the sequel game. It’s also logical that after a spec that ditched the pet (Slb) we now get a spec that has more of a focus on the pet.  No issues with the theme nor the lore for me. It’s the current execution that is severely lacking.

 

Possible issue with its damage in PvE:
What damage? There is no nice way to say it: The damage from this spec is a joke. Neither power or condi benchmarks (where benchmark means under ideal circumstances) is managing to hit above 30k, it is even doing lower damage than Vindicator at this point. Unless the Untamed gets absolutely MASSIVE damage buffs and mechanic changes, this spec will never see play outside of maybe the Roleplaying community.

Possible issue with the mechanic(s):

Unleash:

 

1. The core idea of tossing a buff between you and your pet for new skills, stats or effects is solid and something I like.  I also like the Untamed getting access to other pet skills than just the F2, no complaints about that idea either. The problem? The buff is almost useless, I would even hesitate to call it a buff.

 

2. I also have issues with the fact that the pet gets no damage bonus from the Unleashed buff whatsoever, it pretty much only gets the new F skills while losing functionality (behaviour commands and the automatic use of what have become the new F1-F3 skills when the pet isnt Unleashed).

 

3. The cooldown on the “buff” is also something I feel is not low enough to encourage players to tactically pass the buff around. The fact that the minor Vow of the Untamed also nerfs your own damage by 10% (not just not getting +15%, but actually taking a -10% penalty, meaning you deal 25-30% less damage when you are not unleashed) if you are not buffed with Unleash also does not promote swapping around of this buff at all, defeating what seems to be the purpose of the mechanic.

 

4. There is simply no reason to ever pass the effect on to your pet, the loss in DPS is simply that big, especially on a spec that is already having a hard time to compete with other power specs as it is (it can’t anyway, neither power or condi get 30k+, even 28k seems very hard to achieve).
Give me reasons to play ping-pong with this buff, right now (at least in PvE) you don’t really have any.
Remember how back during the early to mid PoF era the Iboga pet was bugged and did way more damage than it was supposed to do?  How we got sarcastic Iboga-only benchmarks that talked about “pet Ranger set to avoid combat”?  THAT is exactly how it should feel when we give the buff to our pet. That pet should become a DPS and survival monstrosity when buffed, so monstrous that giving the buff to it does not kitten us.

 

5. I am also disappointed that Unleash on the ranger only affects Hammer skills, with other weapon skills staying the same no matter if you have the Unleashed buff or not. This feels very limiting, where playing as Untamed forces you into the Hammer weapon or you lose access to a big chunk of your spec’s mechanic. It may be unrealistic to ask at this point in development, but I really would have loved to see the core ranger weapons getting Unleashed versions of their skills as well. I mean elementalist gets 20+ new weapon skills with each new spec, why not ranger for once? I am all for encouraging people to play a spec with the spec weapon, but this feels very limiting.
Getting locked out of a huge part of your Unleashed bonus when you don’t run a hammer in your build really does not sit right with me.

 

6. Another thing is that Unleashed pets all seem to have the exact same 3 new abilities. That does make it easier to remember what each ability does, but I would have liked to see different abilities based on the pet family ( meaning drakes have different unleashed abilities than for example hounds, spiders or birds). I will dive some more into the pet unleashed skills later.

 

7. Something else:  the fact that if the pet is dead you cannot really use the mechanic (no passing around when the pet is dead). Would it be broken to allow the use of Unleash to resurrect a dead pet? This is supposed to be a spec with a lot of pet interaction, seems logical that this would be the spec where the pet is available the most.

 

Some proposals:

 

1.    I think Unleash should give the pet a base bonus before any possible traits. Give it + 20% damage & damage reduction or even + 40% damage & damage reduction ( Sick’em on steroids), or make it get a percentage of the Untamed’s stats when it gets the buff, or drastically increased attack and movement speed (something unique, not simply quickness+superspeed) something worthwhile. Give it SOMETHING.

 

2.    10 seconds of unbuffed cooldown means you cannot tactically pass the buff around, since the Untamed loses a load of damage from doing so. The cooldown should be shortened, and perhaps you should be able to trait for your damage/bonus to linger after you pass the buff along, or get a special buff when getting/losing Unleashed, something to makes us WANT to play buff ping-pong with it (and makes passing the buff at the right time a rewarding decision). Perhaps you can accumulate stacks of a buff when Unleashed and when you pass the buff to your pet/from your pet to you those stacks get consumed into boons/bonus damage/bonus attack&movement speed/ bonus stats or something, or maybe it can get stacking buffs for each succesful cc (like how Spellbreaker’s Attackers Insight works)?

 

3.    Increase the damage boost for the Untamed as well, 15% is not enough, and get rid of the 10% damage penalty when not having the buff. This spec currently has trouble to hit 30k, it is benching even lower than Vindicator. You could make this a 30% buff and it would probably still struggle. Up those numbers.

 

4.    Make Unleash change other ranger weapon skills as well, not just the hammer.

5.    Pet Unleash skills should have some variations among them, if it is not possible to do this for each individual pet then at least for each pet family. Ranged pets should not teleport into battle, and there is no reason for power pets to have condi attacks when they Unleash.

 

6.    Unleash should make sure that the pet is always available when used. Minor traits can make Unleash resurrect the pet when it’s dead, or heal the pet when it’s alive.

 

7.    Give the Untamed control over the pet back, we need those commands (attack target, come to me, avoid combat etc), as well as make the pet use their non-unleashed skills in both leashed and unleashed state. Make the player skills duplicates with a new skill ID or something, but don’t make us do silly things like smashing F1 every 3 seconds because basic Bite is off CD and my pet forgot how to bite people. It’s our pet, not a braindead piece of meat.

Possible issue with the new Unleashed Pet skills:

 

Venomous Outburst:
There is little reason to use this outside of a condi build, and it is a no-go on any pet that is ranged (why the hell would I teleport my ranged pet into melee range?).
Why would I kitten my damage for 10 seconds just so my pet can deal a bit of damage, some poison, and if I am lucky vulnerability?

 

Rending Vines:
PvE mobs do not have enough boons to make this worth using.

 

Enveloping Haze:
This is the only potentially interesting one since it comes with projectile block, but once again this is not enticing enough to make me lose out on my own damage.

The pet Unleashed skills seem mainly PvP oriented with meh damage, I don’t think they will see a lot of use in PvE, simply because it is not worth giving up the already abysmal damage from Unleashed or because it provides things we don’t really need or can get through other means.

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Give pets different Unleash skills based on their pet family and if they are power/condi or at least if they are melee or ranged. Make these skills worth using, make me WANT to pass my Unleash buff to the pet to use these attacks.

 

2.    Perhaps the Unleashed pet skills can setup some buffs for the Untamed? Ranger weapons often have attacks that give the pet a bonus for its next attack (pet gets swiftness, pet inflicts bleeding, etc), perhaps this time the pet can give the Untamed some bonuses, with additional bonuses if the target is disabled? Make the pet give out additional cc options ( your next attack dazes/stuns/knocks down maybe?) or typical ranger buffs like an enhanced version of Opening Strike or Attack of Opportunity, or multiple of these ( next X attacks get Enhanced Opening Strike/Enhanced Attack of Opportunity, gain additional of X if condition Y is met).

 

3.    Unleashed pet skills should count as Beast skills for trait bonuses.

 

Possible issue with the artwork of skills and traits:  

I actually think the Untamed icons are in a pretty good spot. The only thing I noticed is how when you get the Unleashed buff all icons flip into a new green version, except the auto attack. Even if the auto attack does not change, I would like to see it get the same Unleashed green coloring, just for consistency.

As for the non-Unleashed hammer skills, I am unsure of they feel like ranger skills to me, I am missing the greenish/brownish/yellowish mix of colours most ranger weapon skills have. This might have been done deliberately to visually mark the difference between Unleashed nor not being Unleashed, but adding a bit of ranger colours/hues would really go a long way here.

Possible issue with the Hammer weapon and skills:  

In general, I feel the hammer skills do not have synergy where you would want it. The normal hammer skills have CC on them, but to take advantage of CC you need to use the Unleashed hammer skills. Meanwhile, the Unleashed hammer skills have no CC at all. It is tantalizing. When you want to use CC to get benefits you have no access to it nor do you have a way to keep foes near you, and when you don’t need CC you have plenty of it. In a vacuum I feel both could be decent weaponsets designwise, but the current design of how Unleash works means you will never be able to solo trigger a CC hammer skill into a hammer skill with bonus damage vs a CCéd target. Somehow these two sets of hammer skills need to become one ( as in: accessible when you want. Use the CC from leashed hammer into heavy damage vs CC from unleashed hammer, back into leashed for CC, and back into the unleashed set again).

 

Some Proposals:

 

1.    Either give the Unleashed hammer skills some CC, give us a way to instantly swap between hammer sets ( unleashed -> leashed and vice versa) or at least somehow give us access to both skill types ( like using leashed hammer 3 to apply CC, followed by instantly going for unleashed hammer 2+4, going back to leashed hammer 5, and back into unleashed hammer 2+4. That way you could make use of both sets, which you cannot do currently. Right now you need someone else to CC for you. Sure, you can make your pet do it, but it hurts to use the hammer and knowing that the best/most fun combo’s are impossible because the needed skills are divided between the leashed and unleashed states). As it is, you can either setup CC or do damage, but rarely both, and even more rarely with the hammer. The GW1 Bunnythumper, which this spec apparently got inspired by, was able to do both.

 

2.    Or switch the versions of hammer 3 and hammer 5 with each other, so the not-unleashed set gets the boons and cripple/tactical blinds/immobilizes, and the Unleashed set actually gets the damage but now also the CC to take advantage of the bonuses the damage skills have. To me, this would feel like the best of both worlds for DPS purposes.

3.    Or make weaponswap a function that can swap without CD between leashed and unleashed skills while you have the unleashed buff

 

4.    Another thing that would help: Allow damage and trait bonuses to not only trigger for disables, but for movement impairment as well (so you have a use for the cripple and immobilize you can inflict).

 

5.    Hammer could make use of either a gap closer or some form of snare on the auto attack to keep foes near you (like a cripple).

 

6.    It wouldn’t hurt to update the Two-Handed-Training trait to also improve Hammer skills, it IS a two-handed weapon after all.

 

Possible issues with the Cantrip utility skills in general:
In general, Cantrips should have some sort of (positive effect) on your pet, either through getting bonus effects, bonus stats, or even a flip-over for a set duration into another pet attack (that could be a way to incorporate a few iconic GW1 bunnythumper/Beastmaster skills into the spec like Bestial Mauling(another daze source), Savage Pounce (knockdown) or Enraged Lunge (big damage if certain conditions are met).

The set is also missing a way to reliably stunbreak or give itself stability outside of the elite, nor does it increase the survivability of the pet. Those are three pretty big red flags for a spec that got marketed to us as a frontliner/bruiser. No stunbreak makes you CC bait (you can bring core ranger skills, but really, not even one stunbreak?), no short recharge  stability makes you a ragdoll, and no way to keep your pet alive means this will not be a frontliner where such a thing matters, being WvW. In PvE nobody cares, the pet will probably live. But in WvW, the untamed will never be able to fulfill a frontline role in zergs when it has nothing do prevent the pet from instantly blowing up.

It may also be interesting to make Cantrips give additional effects based on who is currently under the effect of Unleash, but I am not sure how hard that would step on the toes of the glyphs from Druid.

 

Possible issues with specific Cantrip utility skills:

Perilous Gift:  
On one hand I like this, since it is something ranger doesn’t already have. 3 seconds of immortality, but you will take damage until 1 hp, so better not be careless. But at the same time, it does not really fit thematically right to leech life from your pet (which you cannot guarantee will have enough health when this skill triggers the final effect, and cannot swap to a fresh one).

 

Proposal:

Perhaps a small up front heal for both Untamed and pet, and at the end give pet and Untamed a barrier based on 50% of the pet’s  current/max health? Or make this cantrip affect nearby allies as well (for the immortality + proposed barrier)? It should do something for the pet at least.

 

Exploding Spores:   
Seems like a strong PvE DPS skill that also rewards you for positioning it well, on top of synergising with all of the unleashed hammer skills. But it does nothing for the pet.

 

Proposal: 
Make this do something for the pet as well, from a bonus-attack flip-over skill to the pet spawning some exploding spores of its own, but at least something.

Mutate Conditions:  
This tries to somewhat replace the Wilderness Knowledge Grandmaster trait, but will fail to do so because of not just the additional bonuses that trait gives, but also the fact you can bring multiple Survival skills for multiple cleanses (at different times if needed). If you want mutate to stand out, it needs more.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could reduce its own recharge by X for every condition removed? Or go for a Geralt of Rivia Witcher vibe and convert the conditions into boons on top of a second effect? If anything it should stunbreak, the Untamed comes with no elite-spec specific stunbreaks. And it should also remove conditions from your pet.

 

Unnatural Traversal:  
Looks solid for places that require fast movement (and for PvP), and halving the recharge when hitting something is probably going to feel satisfying. But only 2 stacks of vulnerability? You could make it 10 stacks and it would still be niche.

 

Proposal:
I feel this skill could use a little bonus. Nothing OP, the core of the skill (teleport+recharge reduced on hit) is solid, just a little extra that makes you go “hmm nice one”, at least for PvE. Perhaps the cooldown could be cut in half, or make this an ammo skill (2 charges), maybe give it conditional cc coming from the pet? And when you use this skill to teleport, the pet should automatically teleport with you.

 

Nature’s Binding:
Probably a bit niche, but thats not necessarily a bad thing. In PvE it might need a little bit extra just to make it enticing to run.

 

Proposal:
 It would be great if foes under the effect of this cantrip would count as disabled for related traits however. And maybe when this skill ends it could have another control effect in PvE to trigger CC bonuses (like a 0 range launch)? Or it could continuously damage foes caught? And once again, this should give something positive to the pet, like all Cantrips should.

Forest’s Fortification
I can see this help the Untamed’s staying power, but a single long duration application of boons rarely worked in the past.

 

Proposal:
I would propose to make all the boons it give out to become pulsing instead of just one application with a long duration. That way you have not lost a big chunk of your elite skill’s effect should a random boon corrupt come your way.

In all cases this Cantrip should apply its boons and effect to the pet as well. If you then combine it with the Fervent Force trait you suddenly do wonders for your and your pet’s frontline role. A lot of uptime on this elite may sound extremely strong (and it probably is), but you give up 10% healing converted from your DPS or 15% damage and 25% bonus speed, so I feel it would be a fair solution that makes the grandmasters truly compete with each other. More DPS and speed, more healing, or less damage and healing but a lot more tankyness/damage reduction? Sound like fair options and trade-offs.

 

Possible issues with Untamed traits:

Debilitating Blows:
Extremely underwhelming. An entire trait, just to get a few boons?

 

Proposal:
Considering that Untamed has a problem of dealing low damage in PvE, this could maybe apply a damage bonus of X% for Y seconds when you disable something, or make disables deal damage or do X. The current effect should in my opinion be simplified: If you have the buff, both you and the pet inflict vulnerability, if the pet has the buff both of you inflict weakness.

 

Cleansing Unleash:
Not strong enough to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
This could use a buff to at the very minimum 2 conditions cleansed.

 

Blinding Outburst:
I am not sure how much 2s of blindness is going to achieve. If Unleashed pet skills get changed to count as Beast skills (like they should imo), this trait has no use, considering there is already a blind trait for beast skills in the beast mastery line.

 

Proposal:
Scrap this entire trait and think off something else. Perhaps a Cantrip trait could fit here?

 

Natural Fortitude:
This is Harbinger all over again. Traits that are nothing but a stat boost are boring. Roll the stat boost into the base proficiency, make the trait do something else or make it do something IN ADDITION to the vitality boost. But don’t waste a trait slot by simply giving +X in stat Y. Please don’t do this.. This is a good spot to add additional pet durability if anything.

 

Proposal:
How about this: the stat boost now also affects the pet and makes using Unleash heal the Untamed AND the pet for X if alive or resurrect the pet if it’s dead.

 

Enhancing Impact:
Needs to affect the pet as well and should do a lot more.

 

Proposal:
Same as with Debilitating Blows, the effects should come from both Untamed and pet. You have the buff, both gain quickness, Pet has the buff, both gain stability.  When striking a target under the effects of crowd control the one under Unleashed gains a stack of X for X seconds. When Unleash gets swapped to the pet/to you, stacks get consumed for cool/strong effect Y, where you can only accumulate effect Y for the other ( ranger accumulates for the pet, pet for ranger) to encourage the ping-pong gameplay.

 

Bolstering Unleash:  
Same story, needs to do a lot more AND affect the pet to be worthy of a trait slot.

 

Proposal:
Perhaps this could make Unleash cause the Untamed and the pet to stunbreak and get a small window of invulnerability (1s or something?) on top of what it currently does (so taking some inspiration from Berserker’s Savage Instinct)? That would also make it more enticing to pass the Unleash buff around if you know you can time a small invulnerability window with it. It may also do wonders for the WvW frontliner role this is supposed to fill.

 

Corrupting Vines:  
This won’t do much in PvE, or anywhere for that matter.

 

Proposal:
 Maybe something like this: All Unleashed Pet attacks now remove boons (but Vines still remove the most). When a boon gets removed the pet temporarily grows in size, takes X % less damage and deals Y% more ( think of that opponent in the Queen’s Jubilee Gauntlet that grew in size as it ate stuff). Swapping Unleash back to the Untamed copies the effect to the Untamed for a short duration (or resets the duration of the buff on the pet. Ping-pong gameplay!)

 

Vow of the Untamed:
Losing 10% damage when not Unleashed is the final nail that kills the already weak spec as a DPS option in any form of organised PvE, please reconsider this penalty. Untamed already loses so many damage modifiers compared to Soulbeast ( Sick’em! bonus, everything from Beast Mastery no longer applying to the ranger, Soulbeast specific buffs etc), don’t cripple the spec before releaseday.

 

Proposal: 
Get rid of the -10% damage penalty when not unleashed, not having +15% because you are not Unleashed is painful enough as it is, and consider adding a secondary positive effect on top of upping the damage (and once again, MAKE THIS AFFECT THE PET AS WELL). This spec needs buffs, not nerfs. This could also be the place where pets get something they should have gotten a long time ago: When the player/Untamed dodges, the pet dodges/evades as well. This change + the new Bolstered Unleash would go a long way for pet longevity in a spec focused on its pet, especially in WvW/PvP. It would also fit the idea of the Untamed making a promise/vow to its pet (follow my lead and I will keep you from harm).

Fervent Force:

This looks like it could be fun, recharging everything you have by 4 seconds when you disable something is a big bonus...But PvE players will take Ferocious Symbiosis, and hard CC does no damage in PvP...Leaving the question if this trait will be able to find a niche. Maybe in PvP it will, I could see it become very strong there (provided Untamed CC does not get the treatmeant of doing no damage there which was the case in this BETA).

 

Proposal: 
Consider giving this trait additional effects so it can compete with the other two grandmasters in PvE if the intention is to use it there and make pet CC also activate this trait. For PvP, perhaps this trait can get rid of the PvP rule that CC does no damage there. You cannot kitten a CC spec like this.

Restorative Strikes:
Taking this drops your damage even further, but healing a percentage of your strike damage is a solid trait that may open role options that ranger never had access to before ( in raids it may do some roles that require you to be solo or away from the group like Hand kiting or Pylons). But why is this not doing anything for the pet?

 

Proposal:  
Make it so the pet also gets healed a percentage (from either its own or from the Untamed’s strike damage).

 

Ferocious Symbiosis:
This could be a good trait if the current Vow of the Untamed did not completely cripple it. Even without Vow the Untamed this spec is struggling in the PvE DPS department, but with it this trait barely compensates for it. Mandatory DPS trait, but it won’t be enough, not by a long-shot.

 

Proposal:
Increase the damage on this trait, possibly give both Untamed and the pet a bonus to damage if they use an attack skill right after each other ( pet uses skill A, this buffs the Untamed next skill by X%, if the Untamed uses skill B, it buff the next skill from the pet by X%). Something like that to create a flow of attacks between Untamed and pet. It is just an idea, hell if I know how to fix all of this.

 

Closing statement

Bunnythumper was fun back in GW1, but the Unleashed mechanic from the Untamed does not work that well, hammer skills need both versions to function while having access to just one most of the time, the unleashed side has no CC, and a lack of damage kills its dreams of being a power DPS. It could really use some more fleshing out, including unleashed versions of weapon skills for other weapons, and maybe even different unleashed skills for each pet family. I am shocked to see how much work this spec needs in order to become good or strong in any gamemode. Please Anet, take the feedback you are going to get seriously. The Untamed needs you to.

I have no idea if my suggestions are great ideas, but I do know that it would probably still be better than what Untamed currently has.

Thanks for reading!

 

I was just gonna say, "Neat concept; makes pets feel more relevant than ever, but feels a bit underpowered.  Not horrible, but could stand some improvement."  Maybe give a few paragraphs on my personal general impressions. 

This comprehensive, in-depth overview saved me a LOT of effort, so thanks!  It's far more than I was able to observe during my one hour test run, and every issue is addressed with both constructive criticism and proposed solutions.  If there is a definitive work on this thread, it's this one; agree or disagree, it's at least worth a read.

[Gorem.8104]

Now one quick question as I don't want to login to the worst E-spec for End of Dragons, the Untamed. 

 

When you are downed, does your pet use abilities/can you still use your pet abilities? Cause usually when I go down in SB my pet unmerges, and then CC's whoever did it, knocking them down ect and attacking them with abilities. 
Cause if you can't/ it doesn't, that's actually kinda hilarious how this makes Ranger worse in even more ways. 

[phreephur.8670]

Compared to the other specs, Untamed feels a lot weaker in damage output. Even with cooldowns, and especially compared to the insane power of the Mechanist, their pets don't compare. The damage of their special abilities is like 1/5th what the Mech can do.

[chemiclord.3978]

It's like ArenaNet didn't realize why Ranger players were so enthused by the "Bunny Thumper" in GW1 to begin with.

It really didn't have anything to do with the hammer.  The "hop" Rangers did was a nice little bit of meme bait, but that was about it.  It could have been ANY weapon.  The reason "Bunny Thumper" got so much play was because it was one of the few viable builds Rangers had for most competitive content.

And it was viable in GW1 for the same reason Soulbeast is one of the few viable Ranger specs in GW2... because it takes the pet out of the equation.  The Pet is such a massive drag on the class's viability that the only way we're even remotely useful is when we can just get rid of it entirely.

Whatever you're trying to do with pet mechanics for this class, it's not working; and it hasn't worked over 16 years and 2 separate games.

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by chemiclord.3978

[Rym.1469]

Okay, I will split this feedback into three sections.

 

First, to identify the issues:

 

1. You can't make a pet-focused elite specialization and take pet controls away at the same time. This is absolutely the number one flaw, because it does the opposite you'd think could happen when you give player control over pet abilities - you actually have less control than the basic Ranger. You feel like being a Minionmancer with just one minion (and the same goes for Mechanist). Attack command, return command, at least, HAVE to be bindable and responsive.

2. Pet is the focus, but pets die. Especially the non-expansion ones that weren't loaded with good stats (smokescale). If your pet dies, you can't Unleash and pets dying is common in WvW, place you'd think Untamed could be good for with the Hammer and utilities.

3. Due to Unleash not really buffing the pet and affecting only one weapon set, the whole stance dancing feels rather hollow. There are and will be a lot of builds that can't really feel the effects of stance swaps besides pet having 3 different skills to use on CD. Hell, I imagine in PvE Unleash as a mechanic may be dead from the get-go because there's not much to gain from Unleashing the pet and reducing your own damage.

 

Second, for the  fix suggestions:

1. Pet controls could be on one key, provided you have the tech. Press the keybind on an enemy to send pet to attack that target. Press and hold that keybind to return the pet.

2. Again, I don't know if you have the tools, but I will sneak in a quick suggestion to alleviate the second problem - Pets should take up to 70-80% less damage from enemies that do not target them (as in, tab target selection). This way if you want to kill the pet you can still focus kill it, but it won't die to random cleave that fast.

3. Rather than Unleash modifying weapon skills and the studio being hammered (sic!) by the community for not adding unleash mode to other weapons, make Unleash change the utility skills to a preset of Untamed utility skills.

Finally, expanding the idea described above:

 

Perhaps flip the concept and have your regular Utilities when the Player is unleashed (along some damage bonus) and when you Unleash the pet, you get a new set of utilities are akin to GW1 Pet skills and that's where the power of the pet lies. So rather than just buffing the pet and making it's auto attacks hit annoyingly hard all the time, have skills Untamed has to cast and has animations for (so the attacker can see them, acknowledge that a big pet ability is coming, but doesn't have to split the attention between pet and ranger all the time). Then, based off how successful your were with Unleashed pet attacks you get your temporary damage bonus to use when you Unleash yourself. This way, you have an incentive to Unleash your pet even it PvE, make it use the attacks and you unleash yourself to reap the benefits. Make pet attacks reward more of the buff when they strike a disabled enemy, to stay true to the Bunny Thumper idea of the spec.

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

6 hours ago, chemiclord.3978 said:

It's like ArenaNet didn't realize why Ranger players were so enthused by the "Bunny Thumper" in GW1 to begin with.

It really didn't have anything to do with the hammer.  The "hop" Rangers did was a nice little bit of meme bait, but that was about it.  It could have been ANY weapon.  The reason "Bunny Thumper" got so much play was because it was one of the few viable builds Rangers had for most competitive content.

And it was viable in GW1 for the same reason Soulbeast is one of the few viable Ranger specs in GW2... because it takes the pet out of the equation.  The Pet is such a massive drag on the class's viability that the only way we're even remotely useful is when we can just get rid of it entirely.

Whatever you're trying to do with pet mechanics for this class, it's not working; and it hasn't worked over 16 years and 2 separate games.

 

I dunno where you are coming from with this post, but BT in GW1 was all about the hammer CC and pet. Pets actually do good damage in GW1 because they have a +25% base speed buff which did not count towards the speed cap. And there were/are dozens of viable Ranger builds.

It was not viable because it got rid of the pet, it used it. And to use it was a build choice that required you giving up two of your 8 skills, since you need to take Comfort Animal and Charm Animal for PvP. 

[kharmin.7683]

13 hours ago, Gomes.5643 said:

While I absouletly love that you can now control all pet abilities (which to be honest should be a feature of the ranger in general), I kinda miss the "attack my target" and "return to me" functions. I would suggest attack my target to activate with f1 abilitiy (and f1 flipping to standard "attack my target" when on cooldown) and return to me then becoming f4 (petswap f5 then).

I like this idea.  +1

[Zaxares.5419]

For me, the Untamed has an "almost there" feeling. Like it's on the verge of being a fun and fulfilling spec, but there's a few things holding it back. I'd personally like to see the following changes:

 

1. The base pet keybinds for "Attack" and "Stow Pet" need to be returned to the pet bar.

2. I'd like to see a few more variations in the Unleashed pet skills, perhaps based on the pet's family or type. For instance, you could expand the list of Unleashed pet skills to 5 (the 3 existing ones, plus one "Bunker" skill (a skill that gives the pet Protection, Resolution and Stability while also Taunting all surrounding enemies) and one "Healing" skill (heals allies, cures 1-3 conditions and grants Regeneration), but each pet will only ever have 3. Which of the 5 they'll get for their 3 skills depends on their family/type.

3. There really needs to be some Unleashed weapon skills on other Ranger weapons. Since a lot of the Untamed mechanics revolve around CC, I'd suggest adding some conditional CC or effects to a few of the other weapons. For example, Longbow could have the following:

• - Rapid Fire "If all attacks from this skill hit, the target is also stunned for 1s."
• - Hunter's Shot "Target gains 10 stacks of Vulnerability"
• - Point Blank Shot "Gain 5s of Might(3) and Fury"
• - Barrage "If a target is struck by more than 6 times by this skill, they are also knocked down for 2s."

4. A minor complaint, but the Unleashed effect is a bit bland and hard to see, especially in darker areas. Perhaps consider making there be a bit more of a glow in a brighter shade when either the pet or the Ranger is unleashed.

[Abyssisis.3971]

Imo,

Unleashed form should provide the Untamed ranger with increased offensive potential at the cost of defence. For example, +10% damage/condition damage, increased move speed and might, fury and swiftness on an interval of 5-10 secs while in Unleashed form at the cost of taking 10-15% extra damage/condition damage.

Unleashed form should provide the pet with new skills, increased defensive potential at the cost of offence. Pulsing barrier, increased toughness and regenerate HP.

 

unleashed hammer abilities should just be removed, it’s enough to just have unleashed form apply it’s pros/cons to all weapons rather than alt skills on the hammer.

 

Hammer should be like the following…

1.1 deals damage, inflicts vulnerability 

1.2 deals damage, inflicts vulnerability

1.3 deals heavy damage, inflicts vulnerability and cripple

2 - 400 range leap, inflicts damage, your pets next attack inflicts 1/4sec daze

3 - 600 rage damage cone that inflicts cripple, weakness and vulnerability

4 - 600 range knock down
5 - blocks attacks, your pet inflicts taunt on your selected target and gains protection, resolution and resistance.

 

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by Abyssisis.3971