Unleashed is SO counter-intuitive...

[Liewec.2896]

so i've been playing Soulbeast with a hammer for awhile and having fun, but today i figured i'd try the elite spec that was made for the hammer, Unleashed!

and what i discovered was that everything works exactly how it shouldn't...

firstly this spec is all about disabling foes and yet when the ranger is Unleashed none of your hammer skills can disable foes, FANTASTIC. 🫤

a perfect example is Enhancing Impact which grants quickness when you disable a foe, but only in Unleashed mode, which takes all of your Hammer CCs away,

so quickness on CC but only when you have no CCs on your hammer...

i had enjoyed using hammer as soulbeast being able to select which version of the skill i wanted to use (obviously keeping the CC skills),

but when using the hammer in the spec it was designed for you somehow have less control over what it does, great...

but ok, so i'll play with my pet unleashed instead, and then i discover that unleashed pets can't auto cast their pet skills. 

an "unleashed!" pet must be told precisely what to do!? 😩

and then i also discovered that ambush skills are unavailable when your pet is unleashed. (i'm using "Let Loose" and 2 hammers) 😠

wonderful.

 

any chance that Unleashed will get another pass to just make things actually work?

Let us use "Let Loose" ambush skills when our pet is unleashed,

let us set our pet skills to auto cast when our pet is unleashed,

let us use the better version of the hammer skills when the ranger is unleashed. (or add CC to the Unleashed versions)

Edited July 15 by Liewec.2896

[latlat.4516]

The whole concept of untamed is to switch the unleash between your pet and yourself, so doing what you are proposing would actually go against the spec design.

- you have more control over hammer because you actually have access to all of them.  

- "unleash pet skills" are not actual pet skills, they are ranger skills, which is the reason you can't auto cast them. And honestly, I wouldn't want to auto cast any of them seeing how situational they are

[Liewec.2896]

54 minutes ago, latlat.4516 said:

you have more control over hammer because you actually have access to all of them.  

which is crazy, why can i choose to use the better hammer skills in every spec apart from the one that Hammer was made for?!

the only saving grace would have been if the unleashed variants had different cooldowns, then it might have been worthwhile to swap between unleashed and normal,

but nope, they share cooldowns, and the "unleashed" variants give you a full bar of skills that do more stuff against disabled enemies but you have no disables...

its like a sad joke, "here is a bunch of skills that do more damage to disabled enemies, oh and btw we're removing the disables from your skills."

it seems far better to never be unleashed so you can actually use the traits/sigils/skills that benefit from spamming CCs.

but then you don't get to use the ambush skills, so you're getting screwed whatever you do, unleash and you lose your CCs, don't unleash and you lose your ambush.

Quote

unleash pet skills" are not actual pet skills, they are ranger skills, which is the reason you can't auto cast them. And honestly, I wouldn't want to auto cast any of them

they literally replace your pet skills, you might not want to use them on auto cast, but i see no reason why we can't choose to, i would certainly like to.

Edited July 15 by Liewec.2896

[AliamRationem.5172]

You don't want to ambush in unleashed pet, though.  It's a 25% damage hit.  Why would you use your highest damage skill in unleashed pet even if you could?

I agree on the design of hammer, though.  It reminds me of elementalist, where we add extra skills and complexity which ends up being strictly a disadvantage.  For example, compare sword/axe to hammer.  Sword/axe has two CCs and deals similar damage to hammer.  Meanwhile if you want to CC on hammer you cut the damage in half on two of your skills on top of the 25% damage loss in unleashed pet.  Then you have traits like enhancing impact.  If I want quickness I have to CC, but instead with hammer I get stability which is great if that's what I want, but I don't have the choice when using hammer because unleashed ranger has no CC at all.  Meanwhile if I want stability in sword I just go unleashed pet before I CC, but if I want quickness I can still CC at full damage in unleashed ranger.  The core weapons work better and are more straightforward than the spec weapon! 

 

[Liewec.2896]

Just now, AliamRationem.5172 said:

You don't want to ambush in unleashed pet, though.  It's a 25% damage hit.  Why would you use your highest damage skill in unleashed pet even if you could?

i don't want too, but its the only way to use hammer as a hammer (knockdowns, dazes) when specced into Unleashed.

i'd like to be able to stay as unleashed ranger and choose which skills to use like every other ranger spec can do.

but the spec that the hammer was made for forces you to lose all of your CCs when unleashed,

so i'll begrudgingly take the 25% damage hit if it lets me keep the GOOD versions of 3 and 5!

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

 If I want quickness I have to CC, but instead with hammer I get stability which is great if that's what I want, but I don't have the choice when using hammer because unleashed ranger has no CC at all. 

You can swap unleashed stance mid cast, which allows you to proc quickness with hammer cc for example.

1 hour ago, Liewec.2896 said:

which is crazy, why can i choose to use the better hammer skills in every spec apart from the one that Hammer was made for?!

What the better skill is depends entirely on the situation and as such it is strictly better to have access to both versions, instead of being limitd to only one that will not always be the best. On Untamed you can choose cc/defense or damage, depending on what you need. On other specs you are stuck with either low dmg cc skills even when you don't need any cc or you maximise dmg but don't have any cc.

1 hour ago, Liewec.2896 said:

but nope, they share cooldowns, and the "unleashed" variants give you a full bar of skills that do more stuff against disabled enemies but you have no disables...

its like a sad joke, "here is a bunch of skills that do more damage to disabled enemies, oh and btw we're removing the disables from your skills."

Like already mentioned - you are supposed to swap between both states and if you do that you can follow up your hammer cc with hammer burst just fine.

Yes, it is a bit more complex, but not everything needs to be easymode.

[Liewec.2896]

2 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

You can swap unleashed stance mid cast, which allows you to proc quickness with hammer cc for example.

but thats just needlessly complex when you could simply have your CC skills all of the time.

Quote

What the better skill is depends entirely on the situation and as such it is strictly better to have access to both versions, instead of being limitd to only one that will not always be the best. On Untamed you can choose cc/defense or damage, depending on what you need.

but if you're in pvp/open world/wvw you're probably gonna want to stick with the CC skills, so it'd be better if you could just switch the skills over like all other rangers,

and before doing raids/world bosses you can switch to the pure damage ones.

instead if you want to go untamed for ambush and more damage you lose your CC skills.

it'd be so much nicer if you could just keep your CC skills while untamed.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

5 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

it'd be so much nicer if you could just keep your CC skills while untamed.

So yes...in theory.  In reality though, you don't want this--for instance Hammer #3 is either a daze or a blind, you don't want to use the daze against an opponent with stability, blind is much more useful here.  

Quickness also isn't quite as useful in competitive as it may seem either, as you need to survive too.  So really, the stability (and barrier) is what will save you a lot of times, or instead, take something like unleashed removing condis...this allows you to leave aside other condi clear options for giving up a little quickness.

It's a complicated class, for sure.  

Also:

13 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

but ok, so i'll play with my pet unleashed instead, and then i discover that unleashed pets can't auto cast their pet skills. 

an "unleashed!" pet must be told precisely what to do!? 😩

Right click them, you can set any of them to auto-cast.  

[latlat.4516]

17 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

which is crazy, why can i choose to use the better hammer skills in every spec apart from the one that Hammer was made for?!

You can choose the better skill, there's nearly no cd on the unleash... and if you don't want to play with the unleash mecanic, maybe untamed is not the spec for you as it is its whole design ? 

 

Also, your "better skill" assumption is just not a correct analysis of the way to use hammer on ranger. 

[Liewec.2896]

1 hour ago, latlat.4516 said:

You can choose the better skill, there's nearly no cd on the unleash...

but the thing is you aren't forced to do that with any other weapon, with double mace you get to keep your CCs in Unleashed mode,

you don't have to either sacrifice damage to get CC or sacrifice CC to get damage, you get to keep both.

it is only Hammer, the very weapon that was made for Unleashed which needs to sacrifice either CC or DPS.

i haven't seen another untamed using hammer but i see plenty of mace/mace unleashed because its simply better not being forced to swap swap swap every time you want to use your cc skill.

my solution would be to take the "unleashed" versions away from hammer for all specs except unleashed and then add the CCs to the unleashed versions of 3 and 5,

so they will simply be better versions of the original skills, so when the ranger is unleashed they have better skills and when the pet is unleashed the pet has stronger skills.

 

Quote

Right click them, you can set any of them to auto-cast.  

 not the untamed pet skills, you can set them to auto cast their standard pet skills, but when the pet is "untamed" they won't use the skills unless you make them.

(kinda the opposite of the meaning of "untamed".)

Edited July 16 by Liewec.2896

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

4 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

you don't have to either sacrifice damage to get CC or sacrifice CC to get damage, you get to keep both.

You literally do get to keep both with hammer, you can swap back and forth to whatever fits the situation with an instant-cast swap that you can use as fast as you could ever need. Got a standard enemy that you can CC? Whack it with your #5 while your pet is unleashed, then swap over and hit it with the heavy shots from #4 and #2. You didn't get the quickness from doing your CC (you got stability, which is also incredibly useful), but you said you're running Let Loose so your ambush skill will also give you quickness. Fighting something with a defiance bar? Spam those #3 and #5 CCs while your pet is unleashed to deal some hefty breakbar damage, and then swap back once the bar has been broken to stack up even more damage. Defiant foe that can't be stunned right now? Maybe you want to stay on ranger unleashed for a bit and benefit from the boon removal on your #3 and the might/fury on your #5.

Don't complain that you've lost access to something just because you have to hit one more button to use it, we know you're old enough to have object permanence. Untamed hammer is more versatile than other ranger specs using it for a reason - all untamed skills (weapon/pet/utility) swap what they do as you swap unleashed mode to fit your situation.

[Eurantien.4632]

Just unleash before the CC lands. You can easily get quickness on your hammer CC skills.

[Liewec.2896]

19 hours ago, Aaron Forestman.4758 said:

You literally do get to keep both with hammer, you can swap back and forth to whatever fits the situation with an instant-cast swap that you can use as fast as you could ever need.

but as i've said a few times already, no other weapon needs to do all of that.

with mace/mace you can do your full DPS as unleashed ranger and if you want to CC...you just use the skill,

you don't need to press the skill and then switch stances within 0.1s mid swing with quickness up and then switch back when you've finished that attack.

i love the theme of hammers, but honestly i'm not seeing any reason to use them over maces which give you more damage, same CC and you can just use the skills.

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

3 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

i love the theme of hammers, but honestly i'm not seeing any reason to use them over maces which give you more damage, same CC and you can just use the skills.

Then use maces. They'll be worse, especially if you're forcing yourself to use the same weapon set twice and losing the benefit of weapon swapping, but you can have your cc without worrying about your unleashed state. There's a reason meta dps builds dropped maces when Force of Nature was changed from a 25% damage boost to 10%. It's not enough to make the weapons viable, so main hand mace is only a support weapon and off-hand isn't seeing any use.