Untamed is very strong right now, but before you nerf it.

[Kuma.1503]

Find your best Dev, and have him try to perform the rotation. Then have him try to do it against a boss. 

Even as a long time Engi/Ele player, the APM required to pilot this is insane. 

 

Do not make the same mistake you made with Catalyst. A build this difficult should be rewarded with a high dps number. 

If the top 0.001% starts stacking untamed, don't nerf it. Buff other high intensity builds to roughly that level, then it will be a question of which high intensity build is best for that encounter. Do you want a staff weaver for the AoE? Condi Ren for the potential boon rips, mallyx pulls, ect. 

When relatively easy/supportive builds like C specter are at 39k, Untamed's current number is warranted. 

If benchmarks in the 42k range is too much for this game, then either make mobs tankier to compensate, or get the other high intensity builds up to a reasonable spot, then bring everything down to the desired level. If the latter is chosen, do so CAREFULLY. We don't want a repeat of the Feb 2020 PvP patch.  

Edited August 5, 2022 by Kuma.1503

[Dadnir.5038]

I don't think Untamed having a high dps is an issue, however I do see an issue in the fact that the spec as a whole only work thank to fervent force. Something definitely need to be done in order to make the other 2 GM traits a bit relevant (It is consterning to see that the pure dps trait ferocious symbiosis and the pure self-sustain trait restorative strikes are both totally overshadowed by the all purpose trait fervent force in their respective roles).

[GWstinkt.6094]

16 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I don't think Untamed having a high dps is an issue, however I do see an issue in the fact that the spec as a whole only work thank to fervent force. Something definitely need to be done in order to make the other 2 GM traits a bit relevant (It is consterning to see that the pure dps trait ferocious symbiosis and the pure self-sustain trait restorative strikes are both totally overshadowed by the all purpose trait fervent force in their respective roles).

Different traits for different situatuions.

Ferocious Symbiosis is not a pure dps trait but also a mobility trait. This mobility is not needed in group PvE content but does well on PvP builds and is played there.

The sustain from Restorative Strikes is also something you simply don't need in instanced PvE content. Sustain traits like this are usually targeted at Open World or PvP builds.

Fervent force simply brings the most value to boss type encounters. On a boss you can trigger it frequently and reliably and improves all aspects of performance. Getting your abilities back much quicker means putting out more damage, more CC, more boons, more everything.

All of these traits have their own purpose and role and are being used.

[Xaylin.1860]

2 minutes ago, GWstinkt.6094 said:

Fervent force simply brings the most value to boss type encounters. On a boss you can trigger it frequently and reliably and improves all aspects of performance. Getting your abilities back much quicker means putting out more damage, more CC, more boons, more everything.

All of these traits have their own purpose and role and are being used.

I'm not sure if I agree with that. Unless you are chasing a Thief or anything slippery in a competitive environment, Fervent Force will be not only be more versatile but still be better than the other two in most scenarios as long as you bring skills that fill the respective role (damage or sustain). @Dadnir.5038 is right about that.

However, that's not really a surprise. Most if not all skills or traits that reduce CDs or or reset CDs have caused issues in GW2 before - not all of them where gamebreaking, mind you. Still, they tend to overpower their respective alternative options because this effect is so powerful. Sometimes even long CDs won't help - just look at CS and Mimic on Mesmer.

[Kodama.6453]

Fervent force is fundamentally broken as a trait, in my opinion.

Having access to 4 seconds cd refund several times for all skills... and you still get the benefits of alacrity on top.

For any skill with less than 25 seconds cooldown, just throwing out 1 CC gives you the equivalent of 100% uptime of alacrity. 2 CCs and you can basically get a hyperboosted alacrity for yourself. ON TOP of actual alacrity.

And alacrity is already considered the strongest boon in the game.

That this trait, which improves ALL aspects of your build (healing, damage, boons, defense, EVERYTHING) is outperforming the damage trait when it comes to dps is an issue. The damage trait is fine by itself, but it can't keep up with how busted fervent force is.

It needs a nerf or potentially a complete rework.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[Dadnir.5038]

2 hours ago, GWstinkt.6094 said:

Ferocious Symbiosis is not a pure dps trait but also a mobility trait. This mobility is not needed in group PvE content but does well on PvP builds and is played there.

I'm sorry but I don't see the need to use this trait in any kind of content. You got more than enough mobility out of the core traits and skill while ferocious symbiosis itself is, at best, unreliable due to the fact that the buff depend on the pet actually hitting your foe (which suck in PvP).

2 hours ago, GWstinkt.6094 said:

The sustain from Restorative Strikes is also something you simply don't need in instanced PvE content. Sustain traits like this are usually targeted at Open World or PvP builds.

You'll get more sustain more reliably out of skills coming out of CD than from this trait in PvP (since damage are abysmal in PvP anyway) while in open world PvE you just won't use this trait because you need to spec for damage for this trait to be good and if you spec for damage you'll be drawn to damage traits.

 

Objectively, both ferocious symbiosis and restorative strikes have abysmal return on investment as they stand. One is unreliable while the other provide a non-competitive amount of self-sustain to a profession that already swim in self-sustain options. You can deny it all you want, it's plain facts.

[Kuma.1503]

Im not too upset that FF outshines Furious Symbiosis since the later is completely passive and FF takes a lot of effort to gain max value. 

But it's definitely the reaper's Onslaught problem all over again. FF is so strong you need to take it or the spec isn't viable.  

 

[GWstinkt.6094]

9 hours ago, Xaylin.1860 said:

I'm not sure if I agree with that. Unless you are chasing a Thief or anything slippery in a competitive environment, Fervent Force will be not only be more versatile but still be better than the other two in most scenarios as long as you bring skills that fill the respective role (damage or sustain). @Dadnir.5038 is right about that.

 

6 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'm sorry but I don't see the need to use this trait in any kind of content. You got more than enough mobility out of the core traits and skill while ferocious symbiosis itself is, at best, unreliable due to the fact that the buff depend on the pet actually hitting your foe (which suck in PvP).

This isn't about my or your opinion. I have not played Untamed outside of PvE, but a quick search shows that people are indeed using Ferocious Symbiosis and Restorative Strikes in PvP. FF is for sure stronger if you can trigger it reliably. However those passive buffs really start to add up over time especially in PvP where stability and being able to land disables at all make using the trait much more difficult.

In PvE FF is indeed way stronger as you can reliably hit every single disable. This trait is defining how Untamed is played in PvE and IMO quite cool because it makes for very fast paced rotations and rewards quick thinking. I don't know why anyone would want to nerf this feature in favour of a flat stat boost in PvE. FF is what sets Untamed apart from other specs in PvE.

It should also be noted that while Untamed currently does incredibly well on the golem, pulling of those kinds of numbers with that kind of rotation in an actual encounter is much harder. Should Untamed actually ever become overpowered in PvE, it can be easily brought back in line by tweaking Vow of the Untamed.

As it stands, FF turns untamed into a viable, unique high octane spec in PvE. Removing or nerfing this in favor of a passive % damage increase trait sounds lame and unnecessary. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by GWstinkt.6094

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Well, Kuma, that is sound, common sense advice that will fall on deaf ears.  I don't know much about untamed, but I'm going to use this as an opportunity to rant about the Catalyst nerf for awhile.  In any practical sense, Catalyst is a terrible profession:

1. It's gimmicky sphere mechanic means that the only viable weapon for most content is the hammer.
2. It's gimmicky trait mechanic means that this super-frail profession needs to slowly ramp up its offensive and defensive powers, making it terrible while solo.
3. It's traits and utilities offer nothing aside from boons and minor boosts.  The utility loadout is barebones basic and requires all slots be used for DPS to get its foot in the door.  There's no versatility at all in the spec.
4. Likewise, because it's strongest attack is Grand Finale, the damage is back loaded and terrible for fighting weaker mobs.
5. The margin of error for the empowerment stacks is razor thin, significantly losing offense and defensive power for a moment of downtime.  This makes the catalyst bad against bosses with phases, invulnerability periods, damage patches in the ground, or anything that forces disengagement.  This also makes going down doubly punishing.
6. All traits dedicated to gaining empowerment stacks are terrible.
7. Hammer auto attacks have been nerfed to the point of unacceptability, doing about 10k for all attunements except for fire at 12k.  If the ranged moves do as much damage as the melee moves, then it is poorly designed.

Cata was only strong if it was stacked in mass with dedicated aura providers on bosses with large hitboxes and few disengage mechanics.  It was for this reason that all catalysts everywhere were ruined, taking a further -20% damage (more with coefficient reductions) just to stop people from stacking the profession.  On the surface, it looks like Cata stacking is the intended design, since all of the aura and empowerment traits only work if you have someone else spamming auras, which only come from other elementalists.  Cata was a spec that had a high skill ceiling, but a performance to match it when done well.  If cata stacking wasn't the intended purpose of all of these slow-to-ramp-up traits, then what is their purpose?

Catalyst is now broken.  I don't mean as in overpowered, but I mean non-functioning at a basic level.  It's bad for trash mobs, it's bad for nearly all endgame bosses, most of the traits are either detrimental or do almost nothing, it's utilities are plain damage boosts, it's overly punishing for failure while being incredibly easy to fail, and the balance person would've known this if they had just played the spec for a few hours.  Catalyst needs to be reworked.  Empowerment is terrible, the aura stacking buffs are terrible, the energy system is terrible, and the hammer is too punishing

 

This is a lot of words to say this:  expect Untamed to be nerfed into oblivion.

[Kuma.1503]

43 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Well, Kuma, that is sound, common sense advice that will fall on deaf ears.  I don't know much about untamed, but I'm going to use this as an opportunity to rant about the Catalyst nerf for awhile.  In any practical sense, Catalyst is a terrible profession:

1. It's gimmicky sphere mechanic means that the only viable weapon for most content is the hammer.
2. It's gimmicky trait mechanic means that this super-frail profession needs to slowly ramp up its offensive and defensive powers, making it terrible while solo.
3. It's traits and utilities offer nothing aside from boons and minor boosts.  The utility loadout is barebones basic and requires all slots be used for DPS to get its foot in the door.  There's no versatility at all in the spec.
4. Likewise, because it's strongest attack is Grand Finale, the damage is back loaded and terrible for fighting weaker mobs.
5. The margin of error for the empowerment stacks is razor thin, significantly losing offense and defensive power for a moment of downtime.  This makes the catalyst bad against bosses with phases, invulnerability periods, damage patches in the ground, or anything that forces disengagement.  This also makes going down doubly punishing.
6. All traits dedicated to gaining empowerment stacks are terrible.
7. Hammer auto attacks have been nerfed to the point of unacceptability, doing about 10k for all attunements except for fire at 12k.  If the ranged moves do as much damage as the melee moves, then it is poorly designed.

Cata was only strong if it was stacked in mass with dedicated aura providers on bosses with large hitboxes and few disengage mechanics.  It was for this reason that all catalysts everywhere were ruined, taking a further -20% damage (more with coefficient reductions) just to stop people from stacking the profession.  On the surface, it looks like Cata stacking is the intended design, since all of the aura and empowerment traits only work if you have someone else spamming auras, which only come from other elementalists.  Cata was a spec that had a high skill ceiling, but a performance to match it when done well.  If cata stacking wasn't the intended purpose of all of these slow-to-ramp-up traits, then what is their purpose?

Catalyst is now broken.  I don't mean as in overpowered, but I mean non-functioning at a basic level.  It's bad for trash mobs, it's bad for nearly all endgame bosses, most of the traits are either detrimental or do almost nothing, it's utilities are plain damage boosts, it's overly punishing for failure while being incredibly easy to fail, and the balance person would've known this if they had just played the spec for a few hours.  Catalyst needs to be reworked.  Empowerment is terrible, the aura stacking buffs are terrible, the energy system is terrible, and the hammer is too punishing

 

This is a lot of words to say this:  expect Untamed to be nerfed into oblivion.

Catalyst is my guilty pleasure spec. A lot of this I agree with, with a few minor disagreements here and there. I am by no means a catalyst expert through, and I will admit now that, while I try to account for bias, because I enjoy this spec as much as I do, I may be overly charitable in some aspects. (But that won't stop me for laying into it in other aspects. Especially the elemental empowerment mechanic).

Going over your points I'll start with the first, and I definitely agree. 

1. Sphere needs you to generate a lot of hits in order to build energy. Hammer is excellent at this because of the orbs. Other weapons like Scepter and staff struggle. Heal Catalyst with staff would have some potential, but building the energy for the jade sphere on staff is a miserable experience. The energy mechanic really holds Catalyst back in my opinion. 

2. I will disagree here. Catalyst is very competent solo, but running zerk/scholar stats on it, like with any ele build, is going to leave you prone to getting bursted. Taking a Celestial setup on catalyst allows you to solo open world content with ease .The prot combined with the sustain, cleanses and damage reduction, and the block in earth give you all the defensive tools you could ever need, and the damage is still very solid since you self provide 25 might, fury, and quickness. 

In the harder fights, I'll run glyph of elementals and let my minion tank for me. This makes it a lot easier to solo things like the Frog in HoT. The earth golem can tank his auto attacks while you just burst the frog down. And for the opening section when he summons the izel mobs, I just use Earth 4 for magnetic aura and reflect their arrows back at them.

3. Back to agreement. The traits in catalyst are very lackluster. I especially hate how Elemental Empowerment is designed. Other stacking mechanics refresh the all stacks when you gain  a new stack. Why doesn't Elemental Empowerment do this? Empowered Empowerment doesn't even do anything unless you're at max stacks, and we cannot maintain it even with a perfect rotation. Evasive Empowerment is also out of place in general and should be replaced. This trait only has use in PvP, and even there, I'd rather have Spectacular Sphere. 

Even if Evasive Empowerment were good for generating stacks, we'd be forced to choose between better uptime on elemental empowerment, meaning more damage, or a flat 10% increased damage. The choice here is extremely muddy and you'd literally need to math them out to figure out which is better. 0/10 trait design. 

4. Somewhat agreeing, somewhat disagreeing on this one.

Catalyst is actually very bursty with spikes at the beginning and end of the loop. 

The first spike is when you stun a mob into your hurricane of pain, drop your air and fire spheres on top of them. That will delete weaker mobs. Our Fire skills also chunk hard. Especially fire 5 and fire 4 when buffed by fire augment. Water and Earth dip a little bit, then you spike back up with grand finale. 

Where catalyst starts to struggle is when there are a lot of weak mobs that are very spread out. Nothing lives long enough for us to generate hits, so we lose sphere uptime.  Our orbs start to fall off as we're walking from mob to mob because hammer is still half melee, so we start to lose our orb buffs. This makes fractals feel miserable, because there a lot of spread out mobs that die in a few hits.

I rejoice every time we have a necro in our party with Spectral grasp, or a rev to mallyx pull mobs together, because then I can burst mobs down with my cleave, and during those few seconds of a pull I'm skyrocketing to the top of the meters, even on quickalyst. 

5. The margin of error on stacks isn't just razor thin, it's impossible to maintain them, even with perfect play. Which means when things go wrong, things go very wrong. This is why I don't even bother with Empowered Empowerment in encouters with a lot of CC. Unless we have a FB to stab/aegis us through it, I'm going to get constantly interrupted. Getting rupted during Hurricane of Pain is especially painful because that's a lot of your dps and it generates the quick hits you need to build up your sphere quickly. 

Getting rupted during any of your 5 skills puts you in a lose/lose situation. Either you camp that attunement until it goes off rupt CD and watch your stack fall off (remember they don't refresh because reasons ). Or you swap to your next attunement, miss out on the damage from that skill and also miss out on the elemental empowerment stack because you need to blast your sphere with that skill to gain an aura, and you need that aura for the elemental empowerment stack. 

6. This is a repeat of previous points, but yes. Gaining elemental empowerment is pain, and the traits do not help. Evasive Empowerment is useless unless you're tanking, and even then you'd rather have the 10% damage increase. 

7. Hammer weapons skill nerfs I haven't felt so much personally since those were mostly focused on the auto attacks, and I very rarely auto attack in hammer unless I'm fire/air autoing while I'm trying to get close to something, but even in this case, I'll usually just detarget, about face, and air 4 towards my target to get there faster. Or water 4 if im in water attunement. The jade sphere nerfs on the other hand... I definitely feel those. 😞

 

[GWstinkt.6094]

1 hour ago, Kuma.1503 said:

1. Sphere needs you to generate a lot of hits in order to build energy. Hammer is excellent at this because of the orbs. Other weapons like Scepter and staff struggle.

Just a side note but both Catalyst and Untamed suffer from this. They tried to give both specs some new and different gameplay from what they were used to but ended up putting a lot of that into the weapon abilities.

Untamed without hammer is just core ranger on crack. It's pretty strong right now because of the passive +25% damage and FF, but it's clear that most of the actual design of Untamed lies in and was built around hammer and how it interacts with unleashing.

For catalyst, the traits and utility skills are built around using hammer. The catalyst gameplay lives entirely inside of hammer. Catalyst without hammer is probably not much of anything.

I hope we won't see this as a trend going forward. As much as I like hammer and as cool as hammer might be on both of these specs, putting so much of a specs identity and power into their weapon makes them play out very one dimensional.

[Mell.4873]

Untamed is in a weird spot arguable its a normal DPS with a brawling mechanic. Fervent Force triggers which honestly where in PvE or PvP it this going to be reliable enough to get the 42k DPS. Over all Untamed is a worse Soulbeast in terms of damage but from someone who mains both Ranger and Mesmer, Soulbeast is a nightmare to keep alive.

I might not do as much damage on Untamed but at least i can run away with super speed or tank it with barrier.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Mell.4873

[draxynnic.3719]

On the fervent force/restorative strikes discussion:

My experience is that Fervent Force wins on sustain if you run hammer, a utility that CCs, and We Heal As One as your heal. Unleash your pet, heal, unload your CC skills, and you can probably heal again by the time you're done. And the CC skills all speed each other's recharge, so you can probably set up a cycle of heals having much shorter recharge than they should. Restorative Strikes can't compete with this in my experience, although it doesn't require you to reduce your damage by unleashing your pet.

However, this is mostly because the balance team have decided that 'sustain as a portion of damage' passive traits are Bad and need to be nerfed out of usefulness. So I wouldn't recommend judging Fervent Force against Restorative Strikes.

[bruakumfd.4817]

7 hours ago, GWstinkt.6094 said:

Just a side note but both Catalyst and Untamed suffer from this. They tried to give both specs some new and different gameplay from what they were used to but ended up putting a lot of that into the weapon abilities.

Untamed without hammer is just core ranger on crack. It's pretty strong right now because of the passive +25% damage and FF, but it's clear that most of the actual design of Untamed lies in and was built around hammer and how it interacts with unleashing.

For catalyst, the traits and utility skills are built around using hammer. The catalyst gameplay lives entirely inside of hammer. Catalyst without hammer is probably not much of anything.

I hope we won't see this as a trend going forward. As much as I like hammer and as cool as hammer might be on both of these specs, putting so much of a specs identity and power into their weapon makes them play out very one dimensional.

I continued playing a Catalyst after the hammer nerfs, and I did fine dual wielding daggers. I do agree that the spec is designed way too much around hammers, though.

[Kodama.6453]

3 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

On the fervent force/restorative strikes discussion:

My experience is that Fervent Force wins on sustain if you run hammer, a utility that CCs, and We Heal As One as your heal. Unleash your pet, heal, unload your CC skills, and you can probably heal again by the time you're done. And the CC skills all speed each other's recharge, so you can probably set up a cycle of heals having much shorter recharge than they should. Restorative Strikes can't compete with this in my experience, although it doesn't require you to reduce your damage by unleashing your pet.

However, this is mostly because the balance team have decided that 'sustain as a portion of damage' passive traits are Bad and need to be nerfed out of usefulness. So I wouldn't recommend judging Fervent Force against Restorative Strikes.

Especially after the nerf that made restorative strikes just heal for 5% of your strike damage in PvE.

 

I still don't understand why this trait and the scrapper minor got nerfed so hard. Was the sustain causing any problems in PvE? At all?