Soulbeast hamstrung

[RedShark.9548]

@Mr Kelevra.2568 said:The problem, for those of you who only criticize for the sake of it is this: We can no longer respond to changes as the battle progresses but are locked in at the start of the combat. So if you have a dps pet when you need a heal or condi remove pet you're stuck. NO chance to alter your attack or defense as the type of opponent you face changes. Anyone who's been in wvw knows it changes second to second. You can't possibly predict what you'll need for an entire assault on SM for example. And of course we have a heal on our bar, like all classes but No class has just the one heal. You have options. One very important heal option has been removed. This patch actually took away a part of our skill set unlike other classes. It's made the pet swap function useless, which is the core of soulbeast. When you don't understand how to play one you probably shouldn't comment. To help you understand further, it would be like making an Ele decide pre-battle what element they will use and be stuck in that for the entire fight. No chance to change with the ebb and flow and changes you face whilst in combat. It's a stupidly limiting and not at all a balance. When you understand the mechanics, you'll understand that it's more than just some complaint. It's a real problem for anyone who wants to play soulbeast.

Guess what, i cant just change to more condi cleanses or equip a shield to block power attacks in the middle of a fight as warrior or any other class, welcome to tze club.

You have to decide what you want before the fight starts, just as anybody else. Not to mention that you can quickly swap outfight still.

[Yridhrenel.3519]

Context people, context. Specific to the point of the thread: Soulbeast combat options cut by half. Used to have access to 2 pets and the combat choices that option offered. Now you are locked into one pet for the duration of the combat, meaning, a loss of half of the combat choices, options, etc. So lock out 50% of the options from all other specialisations for all other classes and you might see the point of the post.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@Yridhrenel.3519 said:Context people, context. Specific to the point of the thread: Soulbeast combat options cut by half. Used to have access to 2 pets and the combat choices that option offered. Now you are locked into one pet for the duration of the combat, meaning, a loss of half of the combat choices, options, etc. So lock out 50% of the options from all other specialisations for all other classes and you might see the point of the post.

It’s more like about 15-20 percent. If that.

The pet doesn’t give you all new weapon skills nor slot skills. It gives you 3-4.. In the best case scenario.

4 merged skills plus one controllable per skill. That’s 5. Along with the other pets 5, and your 10 weapon skills, plus 5 slot skills .

[Aeolus.3615]

@RedShark.9548 said:

@Mr Kelevra.2568 said:The problem, for those of you who only criticize for the sake of it is this: We can no longer respond to changes as the battle progresses but are locked in at the start of the combat. So if you have a dps pet when you need a heal or condi remove pet you're stuck. NO chance to alter your attack or defense as the type of opponent you face changes. Anyone who's been in wvw knows it changes second to second. You can't possibly predict what you'll need for an entire assault on SM for example. And of course we have a heal on our bar, like all classes but No class has just the one heal. You have options. One very important heal option has been removed. This patch actually took away a part of our skill set unlike other classes. It's made the pet swap function useless, which is the core of soulbeast. When you don't understand how to play one you probably shouldn't comment. To help you understand further, it would be like making an Ele decide pre-battle what element they will use and be stuck in that for the entire fight. No chance to change with the ebb and flow and changes you face whilst in combat. It's a stupidly limiting and not at all a balance. When you understand the mechanics, you'll understand that it's more than just some complaint. It's a real problem for anyone who wants to play soulbeast.

Guess what, i cant just change to more condi cleanses or equip a shield to block power attacks in the middle of a fight as warrior or any other class, welcome to tze club.

You have to decide what you want before the fight starts, just as anybody else. Not to mention that you can quickly swap outfight still.

Now I want all legends available at any time on rev :) , indont want to be limited and pre guess wich legends I will have to use... it’s limiting the gameplay..

/irony off.

The gameplay of soulbeast is to fuse with its companion pet period.

It’s not a pocket monster master...to swap pets like it’s playing Pokémon.

[Sobx.1758]

@"Yridhrenel.3519" said:Context people, context. Specific to the point of the thread: Soulbeast combat options cut by half. Used to have access to 2 pets and the combat choices that option offered. Now you are locked into one pet for the duration of the combat, meaning, a loss of half of the combat choices, options, etc. So lock out 50% of the options from all other specialisations for all other classes and you might see the point of the post.

That's not even near "half of combat options being cut", what are you talking about?And now if you want a swappable pet, don't use SB. Finally you actually have an opportunity to make some meaningful choices.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@Yridhrenel.3519 said:Context people, context. Specific to the point of the thread: Soulbeast combat options cut by half. Used to have access to 2 pets and the combat choices that option offered. Now you are locked into one pet for the duration of the combat, meaning, a loss of half of the combat choices, options, etc. So lock out 50% of the options from all other specialisations for all other classes and you might see the point of the post.

It's pretty disingenuous to say it's a 50% reduction in combat options. It's a 50% loss of pet combat options for soulbeast compared to pre patch, but You need to consider the other specs, not the previous state of soulbeast. Considering soulbeast increased the number of pet skills by introducing the merged mechanic, you lost some core options and gained some new ones. So it's not a 50% loss at all compared to the other ranger specs, which is all you should really be comparing soulbeast to anyways.

[Gwaihir.1745]

Soulbeast is hardly hamstrung, you just need to rethink your build. Don't come to us to whine about it when you're trying to shoehorn your op pre patch build into post patch.

[acidic.4356]

@Gwaihir.1745 said:Soulbeast is hardly hamstrung, you just need to rethink your build. Don't come to us to whine about it when you're trying to shoehorn your op pre patch build into post patch.

i havnt changed build or gear, nor changed how i fight , slb is still great tbh, the no pet swap means i cant run away as fast...but thats it... so yes there are builds/gear u can use still after patch,

[Chaba.5410]

@acidic.4356 said:

@Gwaihir.1745 said:Soulbeast is hardly hamstrung, you just need to rethink your build. Don't come to us to whine about it when you're trying to shoehorn your op pre patch build into post patch.

i havnt changed build or gear, nor changed how i fight , slb is still great tbh, the no pet swap means i cant run away as fast...but thats it... so yes there are builds/gear u can use still after patch,

Same. Soulbeast is still plenty powerful. Yea, pet swap helped make disengages and soloing tower lords easier. All it means now is you gotta play a little tighter on your kiting. I haven't noticed too much of a change.

[Safandula.8723]

isnt soulbeast actually 1 of the best specs right now? xd

[Shroud.2307]

Crazy how so many Rangers used to complain about how dumb and useless pets were, then ANet made Soulbeast so you could merge with that pet and forget about it.

Now they take one away and you want it back? I wonder why that is.

[Voneveric.8507]

@"Balthazzarr.1349" said:

@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:Its even worse for SB. If you are on your mount and get attacked, your pet is perma-stowed so you are denied your pet AND the ability to merge. Definitely a bug, but knowing Anet it won't get fixed anytime soon. That being said, the ability to pet swap is central to ranger and making that its "trade off" definitely seems a touch much, but we'll have to see how it affects overall game-play once this bug is fixed. While the bug is in the game though, SB is unplayable in WvW.

I simply don’t understand all this soul beast “issues”. These updates have caused zero change to my game play and I still destroy as much if not more than I did before.

Yes I’m baaack. Now that other classes are nerfed nicely my kills are faster than ever. ahhhh

Doubt it, if many other soulbeasts are having issues, I highly doubt you're doing better than the vast majority

[Some Call Me Tim.2319]

@"DeusVolt.4307" said:

@"Balthazzarr.1349" said:

@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:Its even worse for SB. If you are on your mount and get attacked, your pet is perma-stowed so you are denied your pet AND the ability to merge. Definitely a bug, but knowing Anet it won't get fixed anytime soon. That being said, the ability to pet swap is central to ranger and making that its "trade off" definitely seems a touch much, but we'll have to see how it affects overall game-play once this bug is fixed. While the bug is in the game though, SB is unplayable in WvW.

I simply don’t understand all this soul beast “issues”. These updates have caused zero change to my game play and I still destroy as much if not more than I did before.

Yes I’m baaack. Now that other classes are nerfed nicely my kills are faster than ever. ahhhh

Doubt it, if many other soulbeasts are having issues, I highly doubt you're doing better than the vast majority

Might be a tiny exaggeration... but seriously I’m not hurting due to the changes. I have also found that my cheese condi build that I hated playing has also suddenly become very very useful.

[LetoII.3782]

@"DeusVolt.4307" said:

@"Balthazzarr.1349" said:

@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:Its even worse for SB. If you are on your mount and get attacked, your pet is perma-stowed so you are denied your pet AND the ability to merge. Definitely a bug, but knowing Anet it won't get fixed anytime soon. That being said, the ability to pet swap is central to ranger and making that its "trade off" definitely seems a touch much, but we'll have to see how it affects overall game-play once this bug is fixed. While the bug is in the game though, SB is unplayable in WvW.

I simply don’t understand all this soul beast “issues”. These updates have caused zero change to my game play and I still destroy as much if not more than I did before.

Yes I’m baaack. Now that other classes are nerfed nicely my kills are faster than ever. ahhhh

Doubt it, if many other soulbeasts are having issues, I highly doubt you're doing better than the vast majority

There's 2 types of ranger players.Every class, when it was really strong but gets nerfed, goes through this. The players who hopped on when it was OP but didn't really learn how to use the class or build properly will move on to the new fotm, then we stop hearing how weak it is.

Though ranger is special in one way, an impressive amount of long term players ALSO seem to be pretty clueless, but they hang out in the ranger subforum.

[Zalani.9827]

My biggest problem right now is the fact that I keep forgetting that pet swapping in combat isn’t a thing anymore and then proceed to lock myself out for 9 secs. Currently just trying to adjust to that since I was used to a more active swapping style.

I do wish that they would make a bigger variety of pets useful, it typically is just smokescale, deer with some owl/pig most of the time. I just want to see more pets brought up to that level so we could get more playstyle variety since we are locked to only 1 pet in combat now. It feels like we lost gameplay options with the 1 pet lock even if I get why they did it.

(Would also be nice to see rangers have more roles in pvp but that’s another big issue entirely, Druid included)

[JorneMormel.9850]

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:Crazy how so many Rangers used to complain about how dumb and useless pets were, then ANet made Soulbeast so you could merge with that pet and forget about it.

Now they take one away and you want it back? I wonder why that is.

The thing is, and has been an issue since launch, that similar to mesmer clones, pets simply do not perform well in group combat. Core and druid F2 abilities might seem worthwhile additions to your build as utilities, but more often than not the pet gets killed and you're left without your profession's base mechanic.

To people complaining about "All the damage added by a pet", please mind that the ranger's damage scaling is and always has been lower than that of other professions to balance out the fact it plays as two seperate entities.

The soulbeast, having F5 effectively revive pets, circumvented the pet's major downside of the minute long pet swap timer and gave way to access the profession's core mechanics and utilities in situations where it otherwise might have been useless. Losing the ability to swap pets in combat means there's a much smaller toolbox available, and, in addition, dumbed down the ranger tremendously.

A much more elegant tradeoff for the soulbeast would've been changing the recharge time on pet swapping to 1 minute by default. This would have made your pet choice impactful, but retained some of the utility and kept, if not raised the skill ceiling.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

I did wonder what happened to the pig pet.

[Strider Pj.2193]

@JorneMormel.9850 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:Crazy how so many Rangers used to complain about how dumb and useless pets were, then ANet made Soulbeast so you could merge with that pet and forget about it.

Now they take one away and you want it back? I wonder why that is.

Losing the ability to swap pets in combat means there's a much smaller toolbox available, and, in addition,

dumbed down the ranger tremendously.

It dumbed down soulbeast. But you can merge and unmerge, where as ranger and Druid cannot.

.

[LetoII.3782]

Letting the first swap still be at will, which would accomplish little.

[JorneMormel.9850]

@LetoII.3782 said:Letting the first swap still be at will, which would accomplish little.

As far as I was aware of, soulbeast was already in a pretty good place before the patch. The removal of pet swapping catered to the idea that every elite specialization needs a tradeoff. I merely offered a suggestion that would heighten the skill ceiling, rather than lowering it as it has been. An idea that could even be expanded upon by say; unmerging with a pet initiates the default 20 second cooldown (16 with beastmastery) on pet swapping.

Rather than /agree or /disagree, I'm looking to explore options. At the very least you can all agree that the soulbeast has in fact been dumbed down.