To bring more choices for Soulbeast

[Yvern.7608]

Tl;dr : I'd like to see soulbeast's role able to stretch to a unique boon generation on stance or a retouch to dagger to balance out between condi and power build/ Sharpened Edges trait to compensate the lowered hit count in general effecting condi DPS.

 

So they have given alacrity to core ranger. Druid very much enjoys it. I've been happy enough with this change and glad to be not forced onto healing spring and trait for that anymore.

Then we have untamed. With a bit of exaggeration 4 second CD on disable which allows them to pretty much perma rotate alacrity without a single point of boon duration bonus. A more damaging option that could be taken with a flavor of CC added to it. Deal decent damage and able to provide a whole squad wide alacrity.

Then we have Soulbeast. They are still able to burst quite hard in a power build. A damage dump on short phase that can rival the meta specs and builds. However, several nerfs thrown in it's way left some options to be completely neglected and worse, useless. Vulture stance.. OWP.. at least Moa stance is still nice for it's utility and Dolyak stance is one of soulbeast's most redeeming quality.

Of course, we shall not talk about Griffon stance and it's finicky nature in high ping environments.

That said, with the current changes to co-eff(very nice) had kept Soulbeast from dying but also rather stuck. In PvE if you don't run power build and axe or maybe Greatsword you're doing something wrong. The best versatility I can see Soulbeast having is boon beast in WvW.

On the other hand, condi builds have basically fallen. Vulture stance and it's poison generation was okay when OWP could help make the best out of it but with both the duration nerfed and long interval between hits on OWP it's grown incomparably inefficient. Also leaving a whole trait basically not worth taking anymore and dropping the efficiency if Sharpened Edge trait with massively decreased hit count. However, the compensatory buff to power coefficiency in hotfix did not count these in, and now there's massive gap between power builds and condi for not just Soulbeast but Ranger as a whole. Not to memtion a massive inbalance in weapon choices that caused Soulbeast's ability to main hand dagger to be no more than a flavor text.

 

What I suggest to remedy this is by giving Soulbeast access to strong boons like Quickness which core Ranger or Untamed has only limited access to. Perhaps completely altering the Grandmaster trait which no one barely takes now to apply short AoE quickness so you are at least able to apply as many conditions as you are able in an auto attack chain in solo play environment and bring Soulbeast up to a Quickness/Alacrity divided play field if you build for concentration.

Another option I can think of is a retouch to dagger mainhand for soulbeast. Longer bleed duration on AA. Something to bring it's field of specialty to at least make people have a choice to choose from other than Axe or nothing.

The last possibility I can think of could be change to Sharpened Edges trait. Virtuoso have a trait that allows every Blade attacks to cause bleeding on crit, making them able to ramp up to 10k bleed damage per tick and maintain it with good skill rotation.

Perhaps split the bleed between player and pet so player's hit can still only bleed on 33% of the critical hits but pet's will always cause bleed on crit. Giving Soulbeast an easier access to bleed and with a short internal cooldown it would mean Axe will only apply 2 bleed at most with each of it's hits while dagger can actually utilize it's much faster base attack speed to maximize it and Double Arc to have chance to apply 4 extra bleeds. It allows Soulbeast to apply many bleed alone and also allows Untamed to apply mamy bleed with beast skills.

Last unlikely and complicated option is I think to retouch to all the stance skills. There's currently  very little use to griffon stance with it's short evasion and not a whole lot of versatility in PvE environment. Vulture stance also suffering from it's broken synergy with OWP in condi build and elite command utility being simply better in every way for might generation. Moa stance doesn't see much use in groups for Soulbeast due to the fact it is rarely a boon spreading spec and while I hope Dolyak is not changed, wouldn't be opposed if it must be altered for the theme. OWP could also have some adjustments, as right now it is a happy medium for power Soulbeast but nevertheless unnecessary in solo. But I feel this process is very time consuming and long term sort of thing and I have no detailed idea to share.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Yvern.7608
Didn't know putting space would add extra space between paragraphs

[Abyssisis.3971]

To me soulbeast has always performed better with any other weapon set instead of the main hand dagger, and that’s such a shame imo. Would love to see main hand dagger get some real loving.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

To me soulbeast has always performed better with any other weapon set instead of the main hand dagger, and that’s such a shame imo. Would love to see main hand dagger get some real loving.

MH dagger pre patch was the meta pve weapon, for both power and condi. Lb/ dagger/axe or dagger/torch axe/dagger. Dagger definetly needs some love, though.

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 minute ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

MH dagger pre patch was the meta pve weapon, for both power and condi. Lb/ dagger/axe or dagger/torch axe/dagger. Dagger definetly needs some love, though.

That’s all well and good for those pve folk, but not everyone plays pve.

[Yvern.7608]

31 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

MH dagger pre patch was the meta pve weapon, for both power and condi. Lb/ dagger/axe or dagger/torch axe/dagger. Dagger definetly needs some love, though.

Before patch yes. Sadly that's hardly the case anymore with how things are now. Everything was buffed in raw numbers that it's keeping ranger float but it had left a big gap between a purely power build and all the other in terms of damage category.

It would be great to see the dagger at least brought back up to potential choices. Greatsword and LB has always had attention and Sword is niche but viable pick with it's many evades in PvP oriented fields. SB, Torch, Warhorn, Axe had always been used for part of condi/power and would continue to be so assuming both builds retain their viability. Dagger at the moment just stands no real chance anywhere from what I can tell.

[InsaneQR.7412]

I'll be honest, i still think untamed should have had stances, druid cantrips and soulbeast glyphs.

But maybe thats just me.

[Yvern.7608]

3 hours ago, InsaneQR.7412 said:

I'll be honest, i still think untamed should have had stances, druid cantrips and soulbeast glyphs.

But maybe thats just me.

If that could bring more potential or close the gap between the current available builds for Ranger, I wouldn't be opposed. Soulbeast glyph does sound interesting though. Would definitely give Soulbeast more versatility and reason to be in and out of merge rather than forced into merge at all time.

[anduriell.6280]

15 hours ago, InsaneQR.7412 said:

I'll be honest, i still think untamed should have had stances, druid cantrips and soulbeast glyphs.

But maybe thats just me.

You are not alone in this, if anet doesn’t want to work on actually reworking those trait lines and abilities to perform as they should, your suggestion actually makes sense. 
 

[Kodama.6453]

AoE quickness is not going to happen for soulbeast. Anet doesn't want a spec to be able to provide both, AoE quickness and AoE alacrity. That's why chronomancer got changed recently in the first place.

Unfortunately, this means that with alacrity being added to core, ranger might not get any AoE quickness in the future unless Anet reworks spirits again and pushes the alacrity onto an elite spec instead.

[Yvern.7608]

17 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

AoE quickness is not going to happen for soulbeast. Anet doesn't want a spec to be able to provide both, AoE quickness and AoE alacrity. That's why chronomancer got changed recently in the first place.

Unfortunately, this means that with alacrity being added to core, ranger might not get any AoE quickness in the future unless Anet reworks spirits again and pushes the alacrity onto an elite spec instead.

It does make sense. Even while given the circumstances it's unlikely a Soulbeast will be able to provide both at the same time as you already need alot of utility slot for Alac.

Still it feels like a wasted potential when the class have only few very small quickness generation but also have bunch of quickness related traits while Alac just pushed itself in without any hint.

At this point what's the whole purpose of +2 second boon duration on quickness when they don't even use dagger anymore and there's roughly 2 direct ways to gain quickness besides? Not to mention one of them is stunbreak and rather unnecessary in group situation, and other is trading away survivability in Soulbeast trait tree which would be more versatile in solo PvE scenario.

[Sirius.4510]

I think the easiest way to make quick soulbeast a thing without doing both that and alac, is to tie it to stances the same way alac was tied to spirits - if there's a trait that makes stance share give quick, but only enough that you need 2-3 stances to do it, then you can't get full uptime of both quick and alac simultaneously (and would trash your dps if you tried anyway).

[Yvern.7608]

12 hours ago, Sirius.4510 said:

I think the easiest way to make quick soulbeast a thing without doing both that and alac, is to tie it to stances the same way alac was tied to spirits - if there's a trait that makes stance share give quick, but only enough that you need 2-3 stances to do it, then you can't get full uptime of both quick and alac simultaneously (and would trash your dps if you tried anyway).

I think that could be a thing yes. I say tie it or replace the Leader of the Pack as at the time it's seeing very little to no use for Soulbeast who have very small supporting capabilities and have no reason to take it over Oppressive Superiority for damage oriented roles.

Perhaps share the stance at half it's timer(which is like 3 and 3/4 seconds for most and 6 seconds for Moa Stance with the trait I think?) like before but also grant additional Quickness of 3 seconds which would be increased to 6 seconds with extra boon durations(Moa Stance is subjected to boon duration cap). It also gives player to have a choice between adding some diviner's gear to have 100% duration only during Moa Stance or 100% at all time to not worry about down time in between. Making a Quickness sub-DPS class which can't overlap with, say, an Alac druid builds as you'd need good amount of healing power to keep the spirits alive.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Yvern.7608

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Dagger works decently enough on boonbeast in WvW; quickness trait is very good there with instinctive engage.  

I think the tldr; of this thread is that anet broke a lot of synergies for soulbeast by altering OWP the way they did, and per usual there is no compensation because they adjusted some coefficients to make certain ranger weapons not as bad.

I'd say before worrying about how to rework soulbeast further it'd be a good idea to see if they are going to carry these changes to competitive or focus on some other area for the next balance patch.  

As right now I'm almost tempted to say I'd rather the massive damage increase of splitblade over having normally functioning OWP, but hard to really say that without trying it.  Too bad there is no trying it, they just sort of do things and the community deals with it.

[Kodama.6453]

On 8/2/2022 at 5:46 PM, Sirius.4510 said:

I think the easiest way to make quick soulbeast a thing without doing both that and alac, is to tie it to stances the same way alac was tied to spirits - if there's a trait that makes stance share give quick, but only enough that you need 2-3 stances to do it, then you can't get full uptime of both quick and alac simultaneously (and would trash your dps if you tried anyway).

It wouldn't trash the damage that much, tbh. Especially since you might be able to forego alot of concentration for that build thanks to moa stance.

This would need to get balanced around requiring 4 stances instead of 2-3. Because you can reach 100% alacrity with just 2 spirits and you can take 5 skills on the utility bar.

To prevent a soulbeast to provide both, they would have to balance these things around requiring an extreme amount of investment. Which is not really desirable.

Besides, they could have done that for chronomancer, but didn't. There is a reaaon why they made quickness and alacrity mutually exclusive for this class. They don't want a class to bring both in AoE, period.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[anduriell.6280]

5 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

This would need to get balanced around requiring 4 stances instead of 2-3. Because you can reach 100% alacrity with just 2 spirits and you can take 5 skills on the utility bar.

3 spirits please, Nobody can do 2 unless using a bot with milliseconds perfect timing. 

Anyway: alac on spirits another bad idea brought to you from the team who balance ranger by the wiki. 

Edited August 4, 2022 by anduriell.6280

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

5 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

3 spirits please, Nobody can do 2 unless using a bot with milliseconds perfect timing. 

Anyway: alac on spirits another bad idea brought to you from the team who balance ranger by the wiki. 

If ignoring the elite, yes you technically can do 2 spirits (as ranger doesn't have a better support elite than the elite spirit) since you only need 2 utility spirits and that's what most people ask about, but you need 3 of any spirit skill. It could be water+frost+stone (or any combo like that), frost+stone+sun (or any combo like that), or water+frost+elite, but you need 3 total, 2 util 1 elite or water 1 util and elite.

[Yvern.7608]

On 8/4/2022 at 2:39 PM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Dagger works decently enough on boonbeast in WvW; quickness trait is very good there with instinctive engage.  

I think the tldr; of this thread is that anet broke a lot of synergies for soulbeast by altering OWP the way they did, and per usual there is no compensation because they adjusted some coefficients to make certain ranger weapons not as bad.

I'd say before worrying about how to rework soulbeast further it'd be a good idea to see if they are going to carry these changes to competitive or focus on some other area for the next balance patch.  

As right now I'm almost tempted to say I'd rather the massive damage increase of splitblade over having normally functioning OWP, but hard to really say that without trying it.  Too bad there is no trying it, they just sort of do things and the community deals with it.

Not a unreasonable point made, though I'd have functioning Elite Spec that could be utilized by multiple weapons than a single weapon to out perform every other build a class can offer.

That said, I have not personally tried boon beast. I'm not very pvp/wvw oriented player. But I'm sure you can agree you don't actually need the Instinctive Engage for quite near permanent boon duration. It's a decent mix choice there for both damage and condition for cele stat but I find it to be hardly the go-to-choice.

 

On 8/4/2022 at 4:41 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

This would need to get balanced around requiring 4 stances instead of 2-3. Because you can reach 100% alacrity with just 2 spirits and you can take 5 skills on the utility bar.

On 8/5/2022 at 3:59 AM, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

If ignoring the elite, yes you technically can do 2 spirits (as ranger doesn't have a better support elite than the elite spirit) since you only need 2 utility spirits and that's what most people ask about, but you need 3 of any spirit skill. It could be water+frost+stone (or any combo like that), frost+stone+sun (or any combo like that), or water+frost+elite, but you need 3 total, 2 util 1 elite or water 1 util and elite.

In conclusion I think one does need three spirits to have reliable 100% upkeep. Also a steady healing source like Water/Elite spirit with enough healing power to keep the two utility spirits alive. This leaves only two slot for stance and if Moa Stance retain it's bonus duration, you still only get Elite or Healing slot to fill the last. Which will be a stretch even if both bear stance and moa stance have shortest cooldown. So I can say it could stretch to 4 for balance, sure, but definitely not needed to have five. Either way I'm certain it could be balanced in duration or some other way to be either one or the other. 

On 8/4/2022 at 4:41 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

Besides, they could have done that for chronomancer, but didn't. There is a reaaon why they made quickness and alacrity mutually exclusive for this class. They don't want a class to bring both in AoE, period.

Also Chrono CAN still provide both boons. Just you are forced to focus on one or the other by the trait.

[Xaylin.1860]

10 hours ago, Yvern.7608 said:

Not a unreasonable point made, though I'd have functioning Elite Spec that could be utilized by multiple weapons than a single weapon to out perform every other build a class can offer.

It can actually be quite fun with Sword. Or more specifically Striders Defense. It's not meta or anything but I sometimes play it for fun. Works with Sword and Dagger OH and to some extent with GS or SB. Of course, it is far from meta.

 

10 hours ago, Yvern.7608 said:

Also Chrono CAN still provide both boons. Just you are forced to focus on one or the other by the trait.

If it was the same on Ranger, the Quickness trait would have to be on a Nature Magic GM, not on Soulbeast. Or both in Soulbeast. That's Kodamas point.

[Yvern.7608]

On 8/6/2022 at 7:02 PM, Xaylin.1860 said:

It can actually be quite fun with Sword. Or more specifically Striders Defense. It's not meta or anything but I sometimes play it for fun. Works with Sword and Dagger OH and to some extent with GS or SB. Of course, it is far from meta.

I did make a build around it once. It was fun in solo/open world. That trait by itself does allow you to have perma quickness if you can time every evades. Though yes, you won't be wanting to use that for any end game scenarios. Mostly due to positioning issues in raids.

 

On 8/6/2022 at 7:02 PM, Xaylin.1860 said:

If it was the same on Ranger, the Quickness trait would have to be on a Nature Magic GM, not on Soulbeast. Or both in Soulbeast. That's Kodamas point.

And that is a fair point. But at the same time Ranger won't be able to have 100% uptime for both with limited space that is utility slots even if you do take both traits unlike Chrono whose boon is focused on their shield and Shatter. So by having quickness to Stance utility skills I wouldn't say it's weird to have the option. Players will still be forced to take one or the other for efficiency.

[Mell.4873]

On 7/30/2022 at 6:08 AM, Yvern.7608 said:

What I suggest to remedy this is by giving Soulbeast access to strong boons like Quickness which core Ranger or Untamed has only limited access to. Perhaps completely altering the Grandmaster trait which no one barely takes now to apply short AoE quickness so you are at least able to apply as many conditions as you are able in an auto attack chain in solo play environment and bring Soulbeast up to a Quickness/Alacrity divided play field if you build for concentration

An Quickness/Alacrity Soulbeast would be pretty OP and goes against ANet idea of only have supports provide one of the two boon.

Honestly though I don't think you have played Soulbeast enough, Quickness is its bread and butter. I agree that dagger needs a slight buff but the dagger main/offhand combo was deadly on hybrid Soulbeast(post patch just mean axe outclasses it). Pair that with Essence of Speed and "Heal as One" and you have never ending quickness and any other boons people throw on you.

I had situations where I had permanent Protection/Regeneration/Resolution from the odd guardian application in end game content.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Yvern.7608]

21 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

An Quickness/Alacrity Soulbeast would be pretty OP and goes against ANet idea of only have supports provide one of the two boon.

Honestly though I don't think you have played Soulbeast enough, Quickness is its bread and butter. I agree that dagger needs a slight buff but the dagger main/offhand combo was deadly on hybrid Soulbeast(post patch just mean axe outclasses it). Pair that with Essence of Speed and "Heal as One" and you have never ending quickness and any other boons people throw on you.

I had situations where I had permanent Protection/Regeneration/Resolution from the odd guardian application in end game content.

It is stated multiple times throughout the thread that the idea is not to have both but only one or the other. Currently alac is tied to Spirits which take up the utility skill bar to have access to. What I am proposing is, by tying it with stance and Leader of the Pack trait which no one uses over Oppressive Superiority since nerf, SoulBeast gets an option to use it for party wide quickness while having to sacrifice most if not all of the utility slots to it. Which effectively stops SoulBeast from having access to permanent Alac/Quick in a single set up.

I also know boonbeast is a thing, and even when playing berserker gears I keep permanent fury, swiftness, regen and some might between axe/warhorn dagger/axe in open world. I've played condi, hybrid, power so far, but at the moment no matter what build one goes for it's just axe over every other one handed weapon if you want to be taken seriously in end content with power build shooting over the other two. That is what I really want to address.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Yvern.7608

[Mell.4873]

22 minutes ago, Yvern.7608 said:

It is stated multiple times throughout the thread that the idea is not to have both but only one or the other. Currently alac is tied to Spirits which take up the utility skill bar to have access to. What I am proposing is, by tying it with stance and Leader of the Pack trait which no one uses over Oppressive Superiority since nerf, SoulBeast gets an option to use it for party wide quickness while having to sacrifice most if not all of the utility slots to it. Which effectively stops SoulBeast from having access to permanent Alac/Quick in a single set up.

I also know boonbeast is a thing, and even when playing berserker gears I keep permanent fury, swiftness, regen and some might between axe/warhorn dagger/axe in open world. I've played condi, hybrid, power so far, but at the moment no matter what build one goes for it's just axe over every other one handed weapon if you want to be taken seriously in end content with power build shooting over the other two. That is what I really want to address.

To quote you "Grandmaster trait which no one barely takes now to apply short AoE quickness" . This by definition would give to access to both Quickness and Alacrity. Same situation with Warrior.

Even if you sacrificed some utility slots to preform a stance based quickness application it would still create problems where one profession could apply both boons, even if it was significantly nerfed to lets say 50% uptime (which would only mean no one uses either).

I think its more realistic to have all stances apply a new type of boon. An AoE damage immunity Boon or an AoE Boon duration buff, this would be much better than what you are suggesting.

I mean we have Auras which are not to dissimilar to Stances. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Yvern.7608]

5 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

To quote you "Grandmaster trait which no one barely takes now to apply short AoE quickness" . This by definition would give to access to both Quickness and Alacrity. Same situation with Warrior.

Even if you sacrificed some utility slots to preform a stance based quickness application it would still create problems where one profession could apply bother boon, even if it was significantly nerfed to lets stay 50% uptime.

I still think its more realistic to have all stances apply a new type of boon. An AoE damage immunity Boon or an AoE Boon duration buff would be much better than what you are suggesting.

I mean we have Auras which are not to dissimilar to Stances. 

We do have case of Chronomancer who can provide one or the other but in theory both. But I do see what you mean by it. Still, as far as meta goes you don't want half the uptime on either of these boons for they are currently what most builds are set up around.

On the note of unique boon though I find that even more unlikely with the current trend of removing them. They got rid of that for Spirits already and also from Banners. I'm half way there  expecting SoulBeast stances to receieve similar treatment because Dolyak stance and Moa Stance have potential to be extremely powerful buff except it's duration is so damned short with Leader of the Pack. At least Warrior and Weaver stances are personal buff and doesn't have room to be treated as unique party wide boons.. 😞

[Mell.4873]

9 minutes ago, Yvern.7608 said:

We do have case of Chronomancer who can provide one or the other but in theory both. But I do see what you mean by it. Still, as far as meta goes you don't want half the uptime on either of these boons for they are currently what most builds are set up around.

Well that is factually wrong, they cant provide both. They used to, but the rotation was a nightmare and nigh impossible to do.

Right now It can only provide a tiny amount of quickness while providing Alacrity with Wells or just pure Quickness.

I don't really know the answer to this whole conundrum. My guess is they will continue standardise more boons in the game so they can be stacked. Going forwards new elites can focus on these new boons rather than continuing to add to the pool of elites that use the old ones.

I mean on-hit-enemy boons like we have with the Soulbeast stances have been requested for along time, mostly in response to replacing Auras.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Yvern.7608]

On 8/9/2022 at 9:43 AM, Mell.4873 said:

Well that is factually wrong, they cant provide both. They used to, but the rotation was a nightmare and nigh impossible to do.

Right now It can only provide a tiny amount of quickness while providing Alacrity with Wells or just pure Quickness.

I don't really know the answer to this whole conundrum. My guess is they will continue standardise more boons in the game so they can be stacked. Going forwards new elites can focus on these new boons rather than continuing to add to the pool of elites that use the old ones.

I mean on-hit-enemy boons like we have with the Soulbeast stances have been requested for along time, mostly in response to replacing Auras.

That still does remain as little bit of alac for all the quickness, but maybe there's a way to find balance. I still find it a waste the way they threw alac into the ranger set when they had far more synergy with quickness. Or if that doesn't work there's still other options to approach it.

I'm still all for having daggers get a little boost to bring back conditin SoulBeast back on track with power build for one. Or adjustment to Sharpened Edge trait to be made up for it's loss in efficiency from losing high hit count of One Wolf Pack which has only been remedied to be used by power build. Another thing I feel like is damaging the synergy of SoulBeast when their primary damaging trait seems to focus on both power and condition rather than just power as it is seeming to tilt towards..