Untamed Beta 4 changes + ambush skills

[OGDeadHead.8326]

On 11/26/2021 at 7:57 PM, Bast Bow.2958 said:

Aw man these forums, I was afraid for what I’d might find here. 
 

I for one think the changes are awesome, they listened very well and on such short notice. 

I for one want to clarify - I too think the changes are good (well, let's try them out live to really see), but sill,  the point made by Heimskarl Ashfiend above, and which I supported, imho is a valid one. Tbh, what we [seem] to get now i core ranger +++, instead of opting for a completly new way of approaching how to play this class.

 

To each to their own, but personally, when I saw the release I was at first actually hoping for a worthy succesor to the bunny thumper, and as soon as I realized that's not going to happen, I was hoping for a true pet focused elite spec, as  in, quite the opposite of Soulbeast.

 

As for now, this spec is core+++. I'm pretty sure they are going to slap on some drawback, but imho it would have been better if the core gameplay and HOW you actually play this class would have been altered in a much more profound (and interesting) way.

Edited November 29, 2021 by OGDeadHead.8326
Spelling, grammar...

[Bast Bow.2958]

I understand. Of course, I also see room for improvement. 
 

I find the general consensus rather negative here. But hey, indeed, to each their own. 
 

Happy gaming all 🙂

[anduriell.6280]

I see and I like the changes I see.

With one second cd for the untamed stance should  reduce the impact it has on the pets damage when they don’t do anything else than the auto attacks while in unleash. Ideally pets should perform also the other  attacks while in unleash mode but let’s see how this play out.

I agree the changes to cantrips are good but there are some weird boons in there and those may need to be changed. Also not having a mechanic to reduce the cooldowns in all the cantrips feels like a missing opportunity to give some depth to the mechanics.

the traits and ambush skills look very good but I’d like to see the actual cooldown of those ambush skills, I hope they aren’t very high otherwise they could easily become like a footnote on the book of the untamed.

CMC talked about moving the F1-F3 to core but they did not want to downgrade it  by having everything on manual. I think the easiest approach if possible is to allow the player to select one of the skills on auto. Usually the player will want one of the 3 on auto and the other can be on manual. At least in my experience.

Untamed needs the functionality to be able to set one Fs on auto also. Just one. Otherwise the mechanic will feel very cumbersome, probably they can see that already happening on the  soulbeast and low CD pet skills with low impact. It is not just one more button to press, it will be another button to press every 5 seconds which won’t do what you expect  sometimes because pet AI and skill queueing.

The pet survival will still be an issue in  WvW because of conditions unless the elite has the same duration in WvW than in pve (10s) and reduces condition and strike damage.

The pet will end up dying anyway because of condi ticking but at least you will have time to swap.

 

[Gorem.8104]

I just really hope they let us put pet abilities on auto cast, if anything put it back to the original system anyway., or give us the option to do so. Kinda sucks that if we go down, the pet doesn't use abilities. 
Still a lot of changes to happen, and my guess is they did not really have enough time to fix everything. Will be interesting to test the changes so far. 

[Leonidrex.5649]

1 hour ago, Gorem.8104 said:

I just really hope they let us put pet abilities on auto cast, if anything put it back to the original system anyway., or give us the option to do so. Kinda sucks that if we go down, the pet doesn't use abilities. 
Still a lot of changes to happen, and my guess is they did not really have enough time to fix everything. Will be interesting to test the changes so far. 

I agree with you, but they might want the pet be stupid as a " trade-off "
I thought having us decide when the pet does its attacks would be awesome, but in practice its just tedious spam off cooldown.
As for the devs, amazing job, you fixed almost all issues I had with untamed, number balance can come in later, fixing specs mobility and pet control should be absolute priority.
And to people wanting a trade off, if its needed it can be added in later, we need the spec to be fun, and functional first and foremost, numbers and trade offs can come in later.

[Kodama.6453]

4 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

I agree the changes to cantrips are good but there are some weird boons in there and those may need to be changed. Also not having a mechanic to reduce the cooldowns in all the cantrips feels like a missing opportunity to give some depth to the mechanics.

There is literally a trait which reduces ALL your cooldowns by 4 seconds whenever you CC an enemy. How greedy for cooldown reduction can a single human being be? XD

Edited November 27, 2021 by Kodama.6453

[Dadnir.5038]

17 hours ago, OGDeadHead.8326 said:

For pets, they could have added things like gaining stability, transfer conditions to their opponent, gain evade frames when the ranger dodges, life stealing, reduce damage taken from conditions and 'splash' damage, and so on and on.

I think that would have been exactly the wrong way to do it thought.

The ranger have skills that add effects to the pet's hit, so I think it would have been smarter to promote the pet via traits that buff those kind of skill or even better via making the ambushes have this kind of effects instead of simply being "thief stealth attack for unleashed Untamed".

[HotDelirium.7984]

They did say the Beastmastery traits don't work on the unleashed beast skills and I think they need to balance that by just giving the unleashed pet one of those new skills instead of all three AND letting the beastmastery trait affect them. Thematically it works out because why is every pet shooting out vines, spores, and venom? The new skill should be a reflection of this primordial energy expressing itself through the pet vessel. That skill can be further enhanced with the traits as already listed. I'd rather have one big attack from my pet (like ourselves do with Soulbeast) then managing 3 of them. Since some pet skills CC they can chain their own skill as well. I wish they had more than 3 skills to choose from but this compartmentalizing might look like:

Pets that are plants might have Rending vines (Iboga, Jacaranda, Fern Hound)

Pets that bite, scratch might use Venomous Outburst (Bear,Devourer, Spider)

Pets that fly, misc pets might have Enveloping Haze (Birds, Wyvern, Smokescale)

Edited November 27, 2021 by HotDelirium.7984

[HotDelirium.7984]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I think that would have been exactly the wrong way to do it thought.

The ranger have skills that add effects to the pet's hit, so I think it would have been smarter to promote the pet via traits that buff those kind of skill or even better via making the ambushes have this kind of effects instead of simply being "thief stealth attack for unleashed Untamed".

I wouldn't be surprised after testing if they make the compromise that the base ranger should have more control of the pet with access to all skills and the untamed doesn't. It fits thematically because...were UNTAMED lol It will be up to us to know what pets CC if we plan to combo that with the hammer and disable traits. It does bring up pet balancing as well because if our unleashed hammer skills do bonuses to disabled enemies....what if we have a pet that doesn't have a disable skill? 

[anduriell.6280]

6 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

There is literally a trait which reduces ALL your cooldowns by 4 seconds whenever you CC an enemy. How greedy for cooldown reduction can a single human being be? XD

If my memory doesn't fail me it reduces the skills 1s in wvw / pvp everytime the untammed (and not the pet) CC a target. How much CC is there available for the ranger in a 2 weapon rotation? 2 CC? maybe 3 with hammer or sword ambush? 3s CD reduction in total? Up to last beta  that trait does not work on pets, it does not reduce the ranger or the pet's CDs when the pet does the CC. 

I though you would use our last conversation to actually play a bit with the class so i would not have to read this nonsense.

Now you may want to argue the untammed will be op because a you reasons, but the lack of damage in wvw/pvp is still there. The pet will still melt in wvw with that 30s CD heal, although now it won't activaly kill it at least. 
 Maybe ambushes will be able to bring some damage back but it will all deppends on how long those CDs are. 

And still not a single shread of group utility in the toolkit, and CmC said something about "replacing spellbreaker" . He missed the actual build is shout spellbreaker or support spellbreaker. What is with Anet and not giving actual group utility to ranger e-specs. 

Edited November 27, 2021 by anduriell.6280

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

15 hours ago, Bast Bow.2958 said:

Aw man these forums, I was afraid for what I’d might find here. 
 

I for one think the changes are awesome, they listened very well and on such short notice. 
 

 

Yeah, the changes are good, but Untamed is still objectively worse than Soulbeast at everything. There is no reason to even use it right now because SB has better damage, defense, support and CC. At least two of those things need to be markedly better on Untamed for it to have a point and those two things are not going to be damage or support.

 

[anduriell.6280]

5 minutes ago, Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

Yeah, the changes are good, but Untamed is still objectively worse than Soulbeast at everything. There is no reason to even use it right now because SB has better damage, defense, support and CC. At least two of those things need to be markedly better on Untamed for it to have a point and those two things are not going to be damage or support.

 

Ambushes could have been something to do between the pet and the untammed instead the single ranger skill they are now. Like a combo attack.  It would have made better sense and they even could revive the pet with a little hp so it make them more usable in group combat. 

But welll..... 

[Aleksander Suburb.4287]

1 hour ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

They did say the Beastmastery traits don't work on the unleashed beast skills and I think they need to balance that by just giving the unleashed pet one of those new skills instead of all three AND letting the beastmastery trait affect them. Thematically it works out because why is every pet shooting out vines, spores, and venom? The new skill should be a reflection of this primordial energy expressing itself through the pet vessel. That skill can be further enhanced with the traits as already listed. I'd rather have one big attack from my pet (like ourselves do with Soulbeast) then managing 3 of them. Since some pet skills CC they can chain their own skill as well. I wish they had more than 3 skills to choose from but this compartmentalizing might look like:

Pets that are plants might have Rending vines (Iboga, Jacaranda, Fern Hound)

Pets that bite, scratch might use Venomous Outburst (Bear,Devourer, Spider)

Pets that fly, misc pets might have Enveloping Haze (Birds, Wyvern, Smokescale)

I think that is a really good idea. Fewer different skills, but better and changing with different pet(types) for different playstyles.

 I will dislike the F6, F7 for pet control. I use attack and come back often in a fight and then remembering which elite specialization I play and which keys I have to push. The I will prefer a changing leahes/unleashed pet F2 skill

[Psycoprophet.8107]

4 hours ago, Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

Yeah, the changes are good, but Untamed is still objectively worse than Soulbeast at everything. There is no reason to even use it right now because SB has better damage, defense, support and CC. At least two of those things need to be markedly better on Untamed for it to have a point and those two things are not going to be damage or support.

 

Not 2 things better but 1 thing better and 1 thing worse and the last thing comparable :).

Edited November 27, 2021 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Kaenaydar.5631]

19 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

I just really hope they let us put pet abilities on auto cast, if anything put it back to the original system anyway., or give us the option to do so. Kinda sucks that if we go down, the pet doesn't use abilities. 
Still a lot of changes to happen, and my guess is they did not really have enough time to fix everything. Will be interesting to test the changes so far.

 

 

I agree i main Ranger myself wasnt into Soul Beast and dont have the build for Druid. Given i went ascended marauder. I wouldnt be hurt if they let us put all 3 skills for pets on auto.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Kaenaydar.5631

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

6 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Not 2 things better but 1 thing better and 1 thing worse and the last thing comparable :).

IMO, SB has access to everything better than Untamed, can you explain the better or comparable things on Untamed?

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

10 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

Ambushes could have been something to do between the pet and the untammed instead the single ranger skill they are now. Like a combo attack.  It would have made better sense and they even could revive the pet with a little hp so it make them more usable in group combat. 

But welll..... 

They could have given the pet Superspeed and it would improve them dramatically too, masking all the issues with pathing and short range melee skills etc, but here we are.

[Gorem.8104]

1 minute ago, Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:

IMO, SB has access to everything better than Untamed, can you explain the better or comparable things on Untamed?

Well, my guess is since we already have a dps class such as SB (which requires a lot less effort to pull off and outdps's Untamed by a lot) I really thought this spec was literally just that melee brusier spec they wanted to give us for wvw fights. Which means really they need to make the spec tankier, and give it more cc aoe and more ways to get stab and give out some useful boons to allies. Maybe then we'll see Untamed actually being used at least somewhere. 

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

2 minutes ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Well, my guess is since we already have a dps class such as SB (which requires a lot less effort to pull off and outdps's Untamed by a lot) I really thought this spec was literally just that melee brusier spec they wanted to give us for wvw fights. Which means really they need to make the spec tankier, and give it more cc aoe and more ways to get stab and give out some useful boons to allies. Maybe then we'll see Untamed actually being used at least somewhere. 

My point was that SB performs that role better than Untamed, so why bother using Untamed?

Soulbeast has better damage from traits and skills, better defense from traits and skills, better support from traits and skills and better CC from traits and skills.

[enkeny.6937]

Now we have interactions with the unleashed mechanics. Its great but our pet is not really. I mean, we get something from traits while the pet is unleashed, but the pet don't. And I am not convinced that loosing the beast mastery synergy while not unleashed  is good. (If I remember correctly the cd of the unleashed pet skills not reduced with beast mastery either, we don't have beast skills)
It maybe fine, because we can unleash to do pet skills every 2 second, but Vow of the Untamed may effect the pet too.
Cleansing Unleash better, but the 10 sec cd is too long. It is a master trait and your other options are boonstrip or quickness/stability but need some testing. Well I compared it with druid, so maybe I'm wrong. Druidic Clarity and Verdant Etching feels more potent, well they have bigger cost too (timing your celestial form or using glyphs). 
Maybe I will change my mind after some playing. 🙂 

p.s.: Hammer still has no pet skill! Give some fury to our pets please! (like Feeding Frenzy)

[Substance E.4852]

7 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Well, my guess is since we already have a dps class such as SB (which requires a lot less effort to pull off and outdps's Untamed by a lot) I really thought this spec was literally just that melee brusier spec they wanted to give us for wvw fights. Which means really they need to make the spec tankier, and give it more cc aoe and more ways to get stab and give out some useful boons to allies. Maybe then we'll see Untamed actually being used at least somewhere. 

The problem is Anet wanted to pretend that "frontline bruiser" was even a role in WvW so they could keep us pigeonholed in this ridiculous "selfish with buffs for no reason" design philosophy

The only two roles we could have filled in WvW without entirely overstepping Druid's purpose in pve would be either melee team boonspam similar to scrapper or fragile but devastating backline aoe spam

We aren't getting the ranged aoe so that really only leaves a scrapper'esc role but that would require massive reworking of the spec and one that doesn't require the pet to be alive for it to work

As it stands, the best we can hope for is enough fine tuning to make it effective in spvp and enough damage for it to be worth using at all in pve

WvW effectiveness is probably a pipe dream and they might as well include "Rangers need not apply" in the Alliance update patch notes at this point

[conquistator.6549]

Since I mainly play wvw large scale fight so I’d be making comment on the perspective of wvw large scale fight only.

 

I believe the change is in the right direction. As the base untamed spec was extremely bad, and possibly the worst spec the game has ever had, the buff is probably not enough to make this a competitive build in wvw large scale fight and I would say it probably needs another huge buff similar to the one anet propose here to get there.

My concerns of the current state of the untamed at the moment are the following:

1.       The redid healing skill – if it works as previously not blocking any dmg and resulting in 1 hp at the end of the no-death buff period and heal a certain percent say 35% of the health bar. This wouldn’t do well in wvw large scale fight. I think this need further modification.

2.       The pet swapping needs more flexibility in wvw for it to somewhat work, the extra downtime once pet is dead is probably need to be removed or maybe some sort of mechanism that makes pet alive so f1-f3 can still be used.

3.       Hammer skills – Great to see more mobility, however, if the leap skill is less than 600 range, it’s useless. And instead of leaping into target, allowing player to select location is better. In my opinion, the spec needs more mobility even with superspeed added.

4.       Traits/utilities – additional boon is ok but definitely too little, I think it should provide other benefit other than just self boon which has no other use to other people in the group. These addition looks like dead-brain decision just adding more stuff to make it works.

5.       The class has been advertised as cc oriented but overall I think the cc provided by the untamed in wvw large scale fight term is very weak. The fact that it needs to swap between cc and dmg doesn’t help to make this class any more competitive either.

6.       Ambush skills – good idea but I think this one would definitely need some rebalancing if the skill mentioned in some twitch is true.

7.       Condi cleanse is still a thorn on the side for this build to work as it lack adequate mechanism to periodically cleanse.

8.       Mutate Condition is just bad, don’t just add stun-break to it, redo the skill properly.

9.       Unnatural traverse, like hammer instead of target based, allow player to select where he/she wants to teleport. Even with buff this skill is also too weak.

 

What I’d like to have:

1.       I’d love to see Forest’s fortification with no cast time or even making it a stun break.

Overall, I think we have a “playable” build which is better than what we have previously which is totally unplayable but still not really competitive.

2.       exploding spores instead of applying cripple, apply immob instead.

I will try the untamed once it’s out and see if my concerns are valid or not. Hopefully, I will be wrong on these points and we have a meta ranger for wvw at last.

Edited November 28, 2021 by conquistator.6549

[wolfyrik.2017]

On 11/24/2021 at 9:23 PM, Levetty.1279 said:

3) The strong visual effect on the player when Unleashed narrows down visual customization options for your character, and makes it difficult to see the armor, outfits, dyes, or infusions you are using.

Specific changes made in response to this feedback: This visual effect will now appear only when you activate Unleashed, and then fade out after about three seconds, so it will no longer always be present in combat.

 

You've never done this for other classes and specs so I can only assume you recognise how visually awful the effect is? Why not just remove it entirely and replace it with something that doesn't look like the player is being doused in toxic sewage? You can keep or remove the 3 second limit, I just don't want to look like I've been stood under a siege turtle with chronic diarrhea, even for 3 seconds! At least get rid of the stink cloud!

I still also don't see how this imroves the power of the pet, particularly. As far as I can tell, Soulbeast is still the superior pet spec, not least because it allows you to remove the pet from situations where it will either be guaranteed to be killed or will just be a hinderance.

Edited November 28, 2021 by wolfyrik.2017

[enkeny.6937]

8 hours ago, wolfyrik.2017 said:

I still also don't see how this imroves the power of the pet, particularly. As far as I can tell, Soulbeast is still the superior pet spec, not least because it allows you to remove the pet from situations where it will either be guaranteed to be killed or will just be a hinderance.

Soulbeasts don't have traits, that do anything with pets,  untamed has. (not counting the pet skills, only 1, Ferocious Symbiosis )
we get more control and as a trade-off, we loose the auto cast
Soulbeast is not a pet spec. (yes, I know. You can use your pet and I didn't write it is petless, but not merging is uneffective!)

[anduriell.6280]

8 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Soulbeasts don't have traits, that do anything with pets,  untamed has. (not counting the pet skills, only 1, Ferocious Symbiosis )
we get more control and as a trade-off, we loose the auto cast
Soulbeast is not a pet spec. (yes, I know. You can use your pet and I didn't write it is petless, but not merging is uneffective!)

That is incorrect, The untammed traits unless specificaly states it impacts the pet, do not do anything for the pet. I think there is only a couple of those which improve the pet feral skills somehow. 

Soulbeast will be definitely better as untammed doesn't even bring any group utility and the pet will definitely be a hindrance or dead in most of the situations. 

I guess we got another only pve e-spec, two counting with druid. 

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by anduriell.6280