Allow Soulbeasts to swap Pets in combat again

[Lifespark.9628]

Personally, balance aside, the change really just made the entire experience boring. There's not much reason to collect any other pets as a soulbeast since you're only ever going to be able to use one in combat anyway. Once you have that one or two that everyone uses, the rest are pointless. I think that's the biggest letdown for me, personally. Some of the flare of the class and the ability to mix and match pet strengths/merged benefits is just torn away by not being able to swap. 

I wish they had found a better way to balance the spec instead of stripping its versatility and class specific customizability out.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Lifespark.9628

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 hour ago, enkeny.6937 said:

If you say it is no different the thief getting swipe for stealing as merge for pet swap, than you may start getting the point. 
If you just want to say, there are other specialisations with better trade-off, yes there is, rangers in most case are the average, so ~ 4 professions better, ~4 professions worse. 
But still, crying for others being better is not mean we are not good. 

 

See, you are missing the point, daredevil retains steal in the form of swipe and gets that extra dodge, he isn’t giving steal. Imagine allowing soulbeasts to fight while merged with 1 pet and have the 2nd pet fighting beside us, that’s essentially what daredevil is doing with its class mechanic. It has its swipe and an extra dodge.

What is worse than rangers trade off in your opinion, you say it’s average?

 

[enkeny.6937]

13 minutes ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

See, you are missing the point, daredevil retains steal in the form of swipe and gets that extra dodge, he isn’t giving steal. Imagine allowing soulbeasts to fight while merged with 1 pet and have the 2nd pet fighting beside us, that’s essentially what daredevil is doing with its class mechanic. It has its swipe and an extra dodge.

What is worse than rangers trade off in your opinion, you say it’s average?

 

mirage, holosmith, spellbreaker. for pof
why? 
mirage change the dodge, a core mechanic not for the class, for the game. 
holosmith change a skill for a skill (actually it is more skill because it is different for every elite skill), that make its weapon skills and kits unusable.
spellbreaker loose an adrenaline bar, not be able use higher level burst. get another burst.

I won't write a list for all the 27 elite specialisation to say where the soulbeast is (too much time). druid is worse for sure. reaper, habringer, dragonhunter, herald around the same place. deadeye, chrono, scrapper is worse too. 

[Abyssisis.3971]

18 minutes ago, enkeny.6937 said:

mirage, holosmith, spellbreaker. for pof
why? 
mirage change the dodge, a core mechanic not for the class, for the game. 
holosmith change a skill for a skill (actually it is more skill because it is different for every elite skill), that make its weapon skills and kits unusable.
spellbreaker loose an adrenaline bar, not be able use higher level burst. get another burst.

I won't write a list for all the 27 elite specialisation to say where the soulbeast is (too much time). druid is worse for sure. reaper, habringer, dragonhunter, herald around the same place. deadeye, chrono, scrapper is worse too. 

Just gauging where your head is at in terms of trade offs across the board.

mirage is a rough trade off, I quit playing it afterwards. Holosmith doesn’t have a trade off, it’s actually a trade up. And well spell breaker is on par with daredevil, still has 2 lvls of bursts +full counter. Maybe if it loses core bursts in order to have full counter it would have a real trade off or at least be on par with soulbeasts trade off.

mirage, Druid and soulbeast and all extreme trade offs, those are the top 3 for me.

[enkeny.6937]

21 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Just gauging where your head is at in terms of trade offs across the board.

mirage is a rough trade off, I quit playing it afterwards. Holosmith doesn’t have a trade off, it’s actually a trade up. And well spell breaker is on par with daredevil, still has 2 lvls of bursts +full counter. Maybe if it loses core bursts in order to have full counter it would have a real trade off or at least be on par with soulbeasts trade off.

mirage, Druid and soulbeast and all extreme trade offs, those are the top 3 for me.

spellbreakers lose resource, and even with 2 adrenaline bar the burst skill is only level 1, so they lose the skill upgrade. 
so they have a bar for burst and 1 for counter.  So it is like druid: base ability nerfed (not as druid, but in long term it is weaker then core burst) and get an ability, next to the core mechanic.

 and why is holosmith a trade up? They lose a toolbelt skill to get a skill, that prevent some (7) of it's skills and only usable by the cost of weapon skills. It's like saying the druid: ok you've got celestial avatar, so if you use it, you can't use commands and being a druid means your pet only use it's auto attack and beast skill. 

I asked about the daredevil trade off, and my thief friend said: it is a trade off not be able using normal dodge. like agroing and not reducing fall damage and so on. 
but I agree with you, that they still up in a trade off (I mean dodge change, but got damage/condi remove, extra endurance, swipe is shorter range, but reduce cd, unblockable)

If the druid pet stats reduce would be in exact numbers instead of %, I think it would be better. or at least only effects the offensive stats, saying druids have meek pets.

"Soulbeast’s trade off was when merging, you lost access to your pet and everything it provided while fighting beside you."
I want to ask: what exactly do you think we lose and what are we getting for? 

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 hour ago, enkeny.6937 said:

spellbreakers lose resource, and even with 2 adrenaline bar the burst skill is only level 1, so they lose the skill upgrade. 
so they have a bar for burst and 1 for counter.  So it is like druid: base ability nerfed (not as druid, but in long term it is weaker then core burst) and get an ability, next to the core mechanic.

 and why is holosmith a trade up? They lose a toolbelt skill to get a skill, that prevent some (7) of it's skills and only usable by the cost of weapon skills. It's like saying the druid: ok you've got celestial avatar, so if you use it, you can't use commands and being a druid means your pet only use it's auto attack and beast skill. 

I asked about the daredevil trade off, and my thief friend said: it is a trade off not be able using normal dodge. like agroing and not reducing fall damage and so on. 
but I agree with you, that they still up in a trade off (I mean dodge change, but got damage/condi remove, extra endurance, swipe is shorter range, but reduce cd, unblockable)

If the druid pet stats reduce would be in exact numbers instead of %, I think it would be better. or at least only effects the offensive stats, saying druids have meek pets.

"Soulbeast’s trade off was when merging, you lost access to your pet and everything it provided while fighting beside you."
I want to ask: what exactly do you think we lose and what are we getting for? 

I don’t know how many times I can type the same thing for you to understand it… maybe I need to use some silly references about forks, spoons and soup? When soulbeast merges with their pet, they lose their pet. We don’t get to be merged with a pet and still have access to the pet fighting beside us, the trade off is that it’s one or the other, not both at the same time.  That’s the difference between soulbeast and classes like spellbreaker and daredevils, they retain the core mechanics while having the elite spec mechanic.

As for holosmith, they swap f5 for f5 which gives them 5 more skills to use in place of their weapon skills. It’s a trade up.

[kharmin.7683]

On 6/2/2022 at 5:26 AM, Lifespark.9628 said:

Personally, balance aside, the change really just made the entire experience boring. There's not much reason to collect any other pets as a soulbeast since you're only ever going to be able to use one in combat anyway. Once you have that one or two that everyone uses, the rest are pointless. I think that's the biggest letdown for me, personally. Some of the flare of the class and the ability to mix and match pet strengths/merged benefits is just torn away by not being able to swap. 

I wish they had found a better way to balance the spec instead of stripping its versatility and class specific customizability out.

This is more of an issue with pets in general and not with Soulbeast.

[Canidae Canis.2861]

What if we regained the ability to swap pets as SB, but the pet swap CD was significantly increased? Maybe to 30-40s so that you couldn't swap pets all the time, it would have to be a much more tactical choice.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

2 hours ago, Canidae Canis.2861 said:

What if we regained the ability to swap pets as SB, but the pet swap CD was significantly increased? Maybe to 30-40s so that you couldn't swap pets all the time, it would have to be a much more tactical choice.

That's exactly what I've been saying! But also, merging needs to not heal the pet if this change was put in. Prior to the lock on pet swapping, you'd never have your pet go down, because you could merge, use your skills as needed, unmerge, use the pet skills, and then either merge again or swap to heal. If the pet went down to 0 then you could just merge and unmerge to fully heal them without the current 60s penalty.

 

While I still don't like how pet healing is managed when they go down to 0 (at least with swapping pets), we shouldn't infinitely have the pet if we just keep sending it in to die. However pets in general need a much better system to make better than a 2012 mechanic, so it's another thing on my list.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

53 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

That's exactly what I've been saying! But also, merging needs to not heal the pet if this change was put in. Prior to the lock on pet swapping, you'd never have your pet go down, because you could merge, use your skills as needed, unmerge, use the pet skills, and then either merge again or swap to heal. If the pet went down to 0 then you could just merge and unmerge to fully heal them without the current 60s penalty.

 

While I still don't like how pet healing is managed when they go down to 0 (at least with swapping pets), we shouldn't infinitely have the pet if we just keep sending it in to die. However pets in general need a much better system to make better than a 2012 mechanic, so it's another thing on my list.

 

It's been an easy fix for a long time, just make pet swap always 10 seconds, and 8 seconds if beastmastery is traited.  

That makes it match what soulbeast can do as far as 'healing' the pet through merge, and gets rid of the death penalty that never has made any sense.  Because losing the pet IS the penalty--when the pet goes down you lose up to 40% of your DPS on certain specs, without the stupid recharge increase.

Should never at any time be increasing CDs.  Messing with CDs on ranger is like messing with initiative gain on thief, it has a big impact whenever it is done, and usually it isn't needed in favor of other possible changes.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[enkeny.6937]

6 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

That makes it match what soulbeast can do as far as 'healing' the pet through merge, and gets rid of the death penalty that never has made any sense.  Because losing the pet IS the penalty--when the pet goes down you lose up to 40% of your DPS on certain specs, without the stupid recharge increase.

While I agree with you, but if your pet do 40% of your dps, your damage is not significant at all.
A pet do around 500 to 2000 dps, iboga can do more in some case.
sadly a 250 stat bonus almost compensate this. But the traits (and some skills) will absolutely do it.
And that is while soulbeast is the top dps option for ranger.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 minutes ago, enkeny.6937 said:

While I agree with you, but if your pet do 40% of your dps, your damage is not significant at all.
A pet do around 500 to 2000 dps, iboga can do more in some case.
sadly a 250 stat bonus almost compensate this. But the traits (and some skills) will absolutely do it.
And that is while soulbeast is the top dps option for ranger.

I guess I should have put 'theoretically' there; but that's the sad part, as the spec originally was designed for pets to be just less than half of our DPS. 

In today's game that wont' shake out due to the quickness bug, number of pet damage nerfs, and the fact they don't hit anything in general.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Gotejjeken.1267

[enkeny.6937]

6 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

I don’t know how many times I can type the same thing for you to understand it… maybe I need to use some silly references about forks, spoons and soup? When soulbeast merges with their pet, they lose their pet. We don’t get to be merged with a pet and still have access to the pet fighting beside us, the trade off is that it’s one or the other, not both at the same time.  That’s the difference between soulbeast and classes like spellbreaker and daredevils, they retain the core mechanics while having the elite spec mechanic.

As for holosmith, they swap f5 for f5 which gives them 5 more skills to use in place of their weapon skills. It’s a trade up.

I hoped some exact answer but well, my mistake.
ok if a holosmith is a trade up so do the soulbeast: (copy-paste)
As for soulbeasts, they swap f4 for f5 which gives them 3 more skills to use, 250+ stat bonus, extra bonus from skills (including weapon skills) and traits, in place of their moving  DoT (did I say it may do less damage the bonus from the stats up?). It’s a trade up.

Lets do some maths:
2000 dps is good for a pet, use "Sic' em!" it gives +40% damage = 2800 dps for the duration. it is 800 dps 
so Sic' em! gives +25% damage for merged soulbeast. x+800=1.25 x  => x = 3200. So as long as you damage is higher then 3200 in merge, Sic'em is more useful for soulbeast in merge.

A pet has 30% or 63% if you can place fury it is 50% or 83% may force it almost 100% but they has 1524 or 1674 power
meanwhile your power over 2000 or even 3000 your crit chance is bigger and pet's prowess give 300 ferocity. It means it is give the soulbeast more damage than it gives to pets.

1 skill, 1 trait, I don't want to go thru all the traits and skills, but it isn't just this 2 example. 
You saying merge is more than enough trade off, but soulbeasts got a lot more for merging than lose for dismissing the pet. 

(by the way scourge lose they shrouds, chrono, reaper, harbringer, dragon hunter, willbender, firebrand, herald, deadeye, holosmith, scrapper, mechanist change they (1 or more) core class-mechanic skills. And ask some warrioir about spellbreaker "retains the core mechanics", I think they will love the idea that level 2, level 3 burst is nothing)

[enkeny.6937]

36 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I guess I should have put 'theoretically' there; but that's the sad part, as the spec originally was designed for pets to be just less than half of our DPS. 

In today's game that wont' shake out due to the quickness bug, number of pet damage nerfs, and the fact they don't hit anything in general.

well yes, there are funny case when it really count. especially for druid 🙂 (i mean, it is really more the 40% but your damage is insignificant). Once I said my raid, I will use short bow, because it is +2k dps. We laugh, but the boss went down thanx to the bonus damage (and the remaining time was aboub 3 sec)

quickness bug is sad, but usually, we need nature magic to maintain boons on pet, without it, they usually boonless. even with the golem in training area, you copied boons won't stay in your pet, it will fade after some time and pet don't get new ones. 

The early concept in the ranger dps, pet dps ration has a fatal mistake, and it is: the ranger stats are changing, the pet's not. that means, the pet has an exact dps, like a moving DoT, But the ranger is different base on the build.
well, after the dps meters came in the game, this was a measurable thing. So it can be balanced by changing some numbers. 
(by the way, a casual player in the open word still can play to let the ~30% damage comes from pet)

[Abyssisis.3971]

40 minutes ago, enkeny.6937 said:

I hoped some exact answer but well, my mistake.
ok if a holosmith is a trade up so do the soulbeast: (copy-paste)
As for soulbeasts, they swap f4 for f5 which gives them 3 more skills to use, 250+ stat bonus, extra bonus from skills (including weapon skills) and traits, in place of their moving  DoT (did I say it may do less damage the bonus from the stats up?). It’s a trade up.

Lets do some maths:
2000 dps is good for a pet, use "Sic' em!" it gives +40% damage = 2800 dps for the duration. it is 800 dps 
so Sic' em! gives +25% damage for merged soulbeast. x+800=1.25 x  => x = 3200. So as long as you damage is higher then 3200 in merge, Sic'em is more useful for soulbeast in merge.

A pet has 30% or 63% if you can place fury it is 50% or 83% may force it almost 100% but they has 1524 or 1674 power
meanwhile your power over 2000 or even 3000 your crit chance is bigger and pet's prowess give 300 ferocity. It means it is give the soulbeast more damage than it gives to pets.

1 skill, 1 trait, I don't want to go thru all the traits and skills, but it isn't just this 2 example. 
You saying merge is more than enough trade off, but soulbeasts got a lot more for merging than lose for dismissing the pet. 

(by the way scourge lose they shrouds, chrono, reaper, harbringer, dragon hunter, willbender, firebrand, herald, deadeye, holosmith, scrapper, mechanist change they (1 or more) core class-mechanic skills. And ask some warrioir about spellbreaker "retains the core mechanics", I think they will love the idea that level 2, level 3 burst is nothing)

Damage output is only part of what pets contributed, the rest of which I doubt you can account for, as it varies across the game modes. And since you are talking pve numbers, soulbeast is only middle tier dps, even with all those damage mods and skills. 
 

As for your last comment about the other classes swapping one or more core mechanics for espec mechanics, that pretty much equates to soulbeast trading pet swap for the ability to merge while still maintaining a pet fighting beside you. I mean we are trading pet swap for merge right, no need to lose the pet fighting beside as when we are merged right? 

 

[enkeny.6937]

13 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Damage output is only part of what pets contributed, the rest of which I doubt you can account for, as it varies across the game modes. And since you are talking pve numbers, soulbeast is only middle tier dps, even with all those damage mods and skills. 

so soulbeast is middle tier, where is core ranger? but it is irrelevant, pet switch don't change it.
But can you please enlightenment me, what is the rest I missed. well, whenever I try to ask you to specify something more accurately, I've got the same answer. no new information.  
If someone is wrong, try to say the correct thing to him/her, not just shouting it is wrong. It will be more effective. 😉 

[Abyssisis.3971]

7 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

so soulbeast is middle tier, where is core ranger? but it is irrelevant, pet switch don't change it.
But can you please enlightenment me, what is the rest I missed. well, whenever I try to ask you to specify something more accurately, I've got the same answer. no new information.  
If someone is wrong, try to say the correct thing to him/her, not just shouting it is wrong. It will be more effective. 😉 

Core ranger and Druid don’t even even rank. And you are finally correct about something, pet swap won’t change the dps ranking of soulbeast, but pve isn’t the only game mode and pets brought more than just dps to pvp and wvw environments. If I have to explain it then it’s clear you either don’t pvp/wvw on ranger and shouldn’t even be discussing ranger issues.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Agree with OP and a lot of other people.

Please make soulbeast good again.

 

I have 3 rangers and had to make them all untamed.

However, I want to have one of each ES.

 

My main ranger was originally SB.

When the nerf came, I changed it back to Core... and don't get me started on Druid. 

It quickly outlasted its usefulness... if it was any good to start with... and I feel so much frustration with it, because it has great potential to be an awesome ES.

 

But back to SB.

Having played with Untamed; it got me thinking that the other two are so much lacking of that humpft. 

For starters, we could have pet swap back.

Perhaps improving some F skills too.

 

I love my soulbeast, so please don't make it another item that just sits on a shelf gathering dust.

 

[enkeny.6937]

On 6/5/2022 at 1:04 AM, SoulGuardian.6203 said:

Agree with OP and a lot of other people.

Please make soulbeast good again.

 

I have 3 rangers and had to make them all untamed.

However, I want to have one of each ES.

 

My main ranger was originally SB.

When the nerf came, I changed it back to Core... and don't get me started on Druid. 

It quickly outlasted its usefulness... if it was any good to start with... and I feel so much frustration with it, because it has great potential to be an awesome ES.

 

But back to SB.

Having played with Untamed; it got me thinking that the other two are so much lacking of that humpft. 

For starters, we could have pet swap back.

Perhaps improving some F skills too.

 

I love my soulbeast, so please don't make it another item that just sits on a shelf gathering dust.

 

What do you mean "good"? 
For me, soulbeast is good. But in my definition being good is It can do the role you want to use there. 
So as a dps, If the character can go above a certain number, it is good or it is in the top 5 dps benchmark it is good. 
(I personally support the first one, the second don't care what is the different of 6th or 10th in number. )
Of course there are other things for measure (dps is just for example), like group condi cure, stability. Even underwater!
Why the soulbeast is not good? What is your desire with them and what prevents you using it?

You wrote getting pet swap back is for starters. It sounds like it is not enough. So do you mean it like soulbeast won't be good just with pet swap, but cannot be ever good without pet swap?
Improving F skills (for pets) will be good for all rangers and many of us hope it because this will improve the pet system effectively and more easily then changing AI.

[anduriell.6280]

@enkeny.6937lets imagine for a minute Anet fixes the pets so all of them stick to targets like the smokescale and they feel useful. In that case I am open to discuss  for other trade offs 

About the numbers for the merged skills: for comments like those I get the feeling you do not play with ranger, at least not enough. Mains from other professions, usually thieves and warriors, get very mistaken concepts about how the class plays. 

Your own example , healing screech(harmonic cry) from moas is a perfect example with an effect that goes from 6k heal to 1.5k when merged. So even counting 1.5k healing stay with a multiplier of 0.5 you end up with little more than 2k healing . 25s CD. Only merged skill worth anything from that pet. 

Other skills range from half effective to 3 times less  effective (in damage, CDs, heals or other effects)

So at this point we are talking of double trade offs: one pet and two, merged skills are mostly garbage except CCs or movement skills which utility core utility cannot be that modified without changing the skill. 
 

And then we got the white tiger, where Anet went out of their way to make the pet even more garbage when merged. 
 

as I said: I do not think in current design soulbeast needs any nerfs as you can’t see this one outside from gold3 - plat1, but it needs some later nerfs reversed.

For Unplayed and Druid they simply need a full overhaul, Core needs a restructuring of multiple trait lines and pets need a full on deep rework to be able to behave as something players may enjoy. 

Did you see the video where a Moa pet morphed into a Moa by the mesmer elite works better than the actual pet? 

[Doggie.3184]

When do we get to dual wield pets?

[SoulGuardian.6203]

2 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

When do we get to dual wield pets?

Druid could do just that.

Also druids are supposed to draw health and energy from nature.

What's that celestial thing all about?

It's blatantly useless... so it's the staff that needs a target to fire.

[enkeny.6937]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:57 PM, Doggie.3184 said:

When do we get to dual wield pets?

untamed + Fervent Force + Summon Sylvan Hound (or other summon skill) +lots of CC 😉 

[enkeny.6937]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:36 PM, anduriell.6280 said:

@enkeny.6937lets imagine for a minute Anet fixes the pets so all of them stick to targets like the smokescale and they feel useful. In that case I am open to discuss  for other trade offs 

About the numbers for the merged skills: for comments like those I get the feeling you do not play with ranger, at least not enough. Mains from other professions, usually thieves and warriors, get very mistaken concepts about how the class plays. 

Your own example , healing screech(harmonic cry) from moas is a perfect example with an effect that goes from 6k heal to 1.5k when merged. So even counting 1.5k healing stay with a multiplier of 0.5 you end up with little more than 2k healing . 25s CD. Only merged skill worth anything from that pet. 

Other skills range from half effective to 3 times less  effective (in damage, CDs, heals or other effects)

So at this point we are talking of double trade offs: one pet and two, merged skills are mostly garbage except CCs or movement skills which utility core utility cannot be that modified without changing the skill. 
 

And then we got the white tiger, where Anet went out of their way to make the pet even more garbage when merged. 
 

as I said: I do not think in current design soulbeast needs any nerfs as you can’t see this one outside from gold3 - plat1, but it needs some later nerfs reversed.

For Unplayed and Druid they simply need a full overhaul, Core needs a restructuring of multiple trait lines and pets need a full on deep rework to be able to behave as something players may enjoy. 

Did you see the video where a Moa pet morphed into a Moa by the mesmer elite works better than the actual pet? 

I used Harmonic Cry as an example for bad skill. Because it is a lot weaker than the original. The later part about stats are skills like maul. (I think the moa us it only to heal itself, but I'm not sure, it was a long time ago when I tested it)
I tried to say: there are weaker and stronger skills. I haven't denied the existence of weaker skills. I wanted to say: not every skill are weaker. But in this comment It sound like every skill is at least half effective. 

I will watch the video, thank you for recommended, but I'm not surprised 🙂  

And I think I need to apologies because I've forgotten tho mention, I used PvE numbers for references. 
But also saying I'm not playing ranger enough is not accurate. I mean 9000+ hours are sounds a lot, but it is mostly in PvE and usually I play support. I hardly play sPvP, (mostly I'm in gold). That is why I always think PvE first. (unless they write it)
And in reverse I haven't play 1000 hours on other professions, so my global view is mostly from comparing to my teammates and wiki. Also that is why I try to compare core ranger to soulbeast, not soulbeast to other elites. Imbalanced playtime can cause misconceptions, but it is not equal to not playing (enough). (well.. not playing is sort of imbalanced playtime, but not vice versa)