Next: Either Renegade or I might fast-track the Mirage, depends on a few things. If I can get both out tonight before I need to sleep I'll be very happy. Cheers all!
"And this is the renegade! It has a shortbow which skills don't really do much and has one good utility! There are also skills on the function keys that aren't worth the energy cost."
You missed some cool things: - The shout "Sic' em" gives *you* the 40% damage bonus when you are in beast mode - When in beast mode, casting Maul (Greasword 2) apply the attack of opportunity to *you* and consumes it instantly, so basically *all* your Mauls do 50% more damage. Add that to all the classic damage modifier from ranger + Opening strike, and you can oneshot everyone using your Greatsword. (We are talking 20k crits at least). That is probalby gonna be fixed though. But there is something else that is intriguing and that you seem to have overlooked completely: 40:27 The tooltip of the passive attribute of the "Supportive" pets states: -100 Vitality + *25% Healing increase per Target* I have not tested it, but does that mean that if my Spirtual Reprieve heals 5 allies it gets a 125% boost? Because that could be crazy.
Awesome stuff, man! Yeah we played with "Sic 'em" on stream but it felt a bit inconsistent, so I wasn't very comfortable going over it on this presentation.
I hope they don't lose that. I love Greatsword for the utility and style, and using it in tandem with wolf knockdown/fear/chill makes demolishing breakbars easy- but it just doesn't have the damage of other classes, and having something high-damage for Ranger would be a nice change of pace. x.x Sometimes we wanna be _more_ than just support.
@Kajex Surnahm, I do too, GS is such a fun weapon. It is also the one weapon that makes me feel like I really work as a team with my pet, at least with beastmastery and marksmanship traits. @Martin Frisk Nielsen, That remains to be seen, but there is hope.
Now we have an elite spec without your pet out, the next Expansion should ENHANCE the pets. Make them huge, giving them temporary extra skills, have BOTH of your pets out. Call it Animal Handler or something.
I’d actually love to see a “Packmaster” specs, I still remember the Aristocracy rune from release which summoned an infinite number of Drakehounds, obviously this specs wouldn’t be as broken but it’d nice to have a Minion Master build for the Ranger. In any cases I’m hyped for the Soulbeast, it might bring Power builds back in PvE for Rangers and I love that.
My assumption, especially given the way they flavored some of the skills, is that going for Dagger/Dagger was intended to be evocative of the idea of an animal attacks with it's claws.
Wow, it's crazy how detailed the new elite specs are now, you can really see the difference between the two generations of elite specs, PoF is looking to shape up to be amazing :D keep it up anet
I like it so far. Some of the traits need some work imo but it's a nice sort of "core ranger +" to appeal to both people that have wanted to go without a pet, and to those that were kind of alienated by druid, since they didn't make a ranger to be a healer.
When you mentioned the part that ranger stances gets shared out to allies, the first thing that popped in my mind is when Power Rangers transform or do some special attack or something, and they all get into a stance or pose together, maybe that's what anet is kinda referencing?
You can merge with a dead pet too. Further, you can then instantly un-merge and have it revived at 100% health, putting your pet "swap" effectively on a 10s cooldown. Bug?
the whole point of that is to provide counterplay. If I kill your pet and you just swap to beastmode and swap back to revive it, that defeats the purpose of killing them in the first place.
it's one of those PVE vs PVP things. in PVE the big bosses one-shotting your worthless AI-controlled pets and then the long wait to be able to use them again takes away a lot of the utility of having them at all. this is kind of the direction we PVE rangers come from when we bitch about our pets. in PVP it's everything Cobra0798 just said, i think (i'm not a pvp'er so i can't speak to it).
Man you love these LBA music don't you ;) Great video btw, it was certainly the most necessary of them all considering how bizarre this elite spec is. I really love what they did with it, it'll expand the ranger gameplay without making the druid useless (unlike certain new elite spec which are way better than the old ones, like the scourge or the holosmith)
There's a lot of synergy with traits from other lines, too. For example "Refined Toxins" (Your strikes inflict poison when you're above the threshold, your pet's strikes inflict poison when it is above the threshold) applies both instances of poison when you're in Beastmode and above the threshold. Or "Shared Anguish" (incoming disables are transferred to your pet) means, that when in Beastmode the first incoming disabling ability doesn't affect you. Basically one permanent stability. Unfortunately it's on a 60 sec internal cooldown, so we won't see much of that ;)
Don't forget, you can swap your pet. So you have two pet skills AND your 6 beast modes skills to swap between. You can literally be a good damage sink and damage dealer at once to swap to situations or just find a lot of pet-merge skill synergy. I agreaa, very jack-of-all-tradesy, but I feel like there's so much room for oversight here that there's bound to be some unexpectedly powerful synergy.
Gotta say, a week+ in, I'm really enjoying playing Soulbeast with a longbow. It almost brings back loving memories of playing a "splinter barrage" R/Rt Ranger from GW1. It's not the same, but it feels like it. Slap the elite One Wolf Pack, then hit Barrage, and enemies are taking double hits. Hit Griffon and/or Moa Stances and the damage is even greater. Not to mention all of the CCs you get if you equip electric wyvern, especially when you activate beastmode. I'm not at all sure how well this plays in PvP, WvW, or Raids, but it sure is a lot of fun in PvE.
A stance sharing Soulbeast coupled with a Mirage sounds like a great combination. Giving the endurance regen to the Mirage to keep up their Mirage Cloak buffs will be really cool.
It almost sounds like you can do a straight convert from a power Druid to a power soulbeast, where, instead of switching into celestial avatar and hitting skill 4 for the party heal while you wait for your weapon swap and skills to come off cool down, you merge with your pet instead and spam the skills - and, if you pick the right pet, you get the party heal anyway. Really looking forward to this.
Just an fyi we did and still do have control over concealed assault. Back in the begin of hot his f2 skill was concealed assault, but that was nerfed several times, first in damage, then a new skill all together, cos it was too strong. But even today we still can easily access it, just f3 then f1, this allows the smokescale to disengage from combat then immediately blink back in with concealed
I reckon an awesome combo would be rooting the enemy, then going into beast mode and dropping the lightning in. That would be quite powerful because at least 3 of the bolts would be likely to hit them, including you slashing them while you have increased swiftness.
I love how Soulbeast PLAYS, but I'm not a big fan of how it LOOKS. I really feel Ranger mains got the short end of the stick with PoF specs at least as far as design and appearance goes. And I don't mean like we should have a different character model for each pet, but idk, maybe like a celestial ghostly shroud for each pet archetype or something that wasn't just a twirling twig graphic...
Trainer Bingo yeah it seems more like a nature caster graphic rather than what a soulbeast should feel like...even the name calls for something weighty and badass looking
" I really feel Ranger mains got the short end of the stick with PoF specs at least as far as design and appearance goes" Appearance, Mirage is much much wrost.... just looking at it. it looks like a normal one... Design, tbh idk but Ranger is by far not the wrost or near the end of design. could say it may be the best. alot awsomeness and free here
Definitely in terms of graphical design however in terms of gameplay it’s so simple that it’s hard to see some in depth little quirks that can really show the difference between a bad soulbeast and a good one (kinda like warrior)
didnt think i would like soul beast by looking at it but i had so much fun with it. I played power ranger and you can get a nice spike on longbow with quickness and the new elite then merg and spike some more. I also took bear as the second pet for really nice survival.
Dagger #3 should work pretty well with Fortyfying Bond - any boon you have is shared with your pet. You no longer need to swap pets to get quickness for a potential burst.
@@crimsonwizahd2358 That's the common non-local pronunication but like many other names in this area they aren't pronounced correctly (especially some of the French names geesh) but the local pronunciation of Tchoupitoulas is: chop-ah-too-las or chop-i-too-las - I've heard both but I pronounce the latter :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchoupitoulas_Street
66% boon duration is equal to 990 concentration. For some context of how insane that is, you can only get 633 concentration with a full set of ascended commanders gear, or 3% more boon duration than leadership runes and concentration sigil combo.
Was really hoping for something different from soulbeast. I main druid so had high hopes for this spec. Kind of disappointed in the lack of identity that all the others that have been covered in this series have which are awesome. It just looks a bit plain and doesn't seem to have a real purpose. Maybe it will be clearer with some play testing though...
Omg, I am so glad to be maining a ranger now. I was excited for this elite, along with the holosmith but with your videos I am even more happy for my ranger plus have gained some excitement for my necro for scourage (sp?). I see so many things I like with this elite though for wvw. Not sure what I'll be doing in pve with it though
PvE: Niche seems to be *unique buff* team support with high condi DPS, although those traits seem to compete. Unless core traits change up, I have serious doubts that a power DPS role will be meta. It will also likely remain a close range brawler. PvP: Very clearly could have some aspects of GW1 Dervish skills (thinking of scythe mastery mainly), with a lot of the class being about an initial burst that allows for a pushed advantage (specifically you rely on Poison to maintain a higher HP percentage). I expect countering will be all about condi cleanse, sustain, and vitality (This could really be anything; low vitality would be vulnerable to bursts but make sustain for keeping over 50% easier, while a kite-based play-style would be better countered with high vitality so as to kill the Soulbeast before getting low) which could either be disastrous or successful depending on how Anet has managed balance (from what I can tell, PvP players currently hate everything about condi meta). I don't expect long range gameplay to be big for Soulbeast, as Druid is far superior at that strategy.
You can pretty much play any role with Ranger, I love it. I can see why they didn't make One Wolf Pack have no interval, because imagine it with LB burst lmao.
Would love the devs to revamp the generic green cloak/aura around your character in beast-mode to make it look slightly unique for each of the 12 pet types. I'm down with Rangers being more rustic and less fantasy based than an Elementalist, for example, but the aesthetic design space has fantastic opportunity to work with here. Light green dragon wings, paws, claws, tails, horns, etc.
I have never played ranger and i wasnt really excited to see this one at first, but when i tried it on the Beta. Well I think i know now wich class to play at release :P
dont care so much about elite specs as they arnt forever. care about the class as a whole. 2 years elite spec wont be current ( we dont fully know how well elite specs will work with gen1 and with each other still mid way tho PoF)
ALL those pets and they still don't allow you to hide the nameplate of your pet? I for one hate seeing it constantly turned on and in all these years and a million forum posts they still don't have that ONE option.
i think its mostly because of the pets i mean for each pet type bear, bird, spider, so on each has one of the new soul best skill so if you wanted bear skills but you wanted more cc with a pull they have that. or a spider with that a heal skill yeah got that too. i feel that they did that because there so man ways to build ranger now you can't really pin them down with one right and wrong builds with other classes i feel like soul best true strongest build is the fact there so flexible or even a little bit of a jack of all trades build to help where your group might be lacking.
Does anyone know if you're able to activate two stances at the same time and have both of their abilities work for the full duration? Or as soon as you activate a new stance you lose the abilities of the previous stands?
You can have multiple activated at a time and the profession mechanic icons will all pop up on your boon bar. As far as I know, they only end once they time out and cannot be overwritten by another stance. Thus, in theory yes you can have them all at once.
I think one of the concepts that just confuses me the most is condition damage. Unlike power dmg which is upfront in your'e face damage which has a million ways of being blocked or mitigated, conditional damage doesn't really seem to have a way to be mitigated. Sure, there are cleanses, but you use that ability, and before u know it bleed, poison, etc stacks are back on top of u and you're cleanse isn't up and when I try to play condi dmg I just don't see it as effective. In my experience I am specifically talking about ranger shortbow condi vs longbow power. Longbow I like so much more because of barrage and rapid fire. Rapid fire just feels so nice and can really take a huge chunk out of an enemy. Shortbow condi not only brings me closer to an enemy but i don't get the same chunking feeling as I do when i play power. Condi feels less satisfying to me and I don't like it, but seems to be a major part of pvp, wvw builds and tbh kind of turns me off of playing either.
Daym those stances can be actually quite powerfull in WvW. Finally other class that can give AoE Stbaility on 30s cooldown? Hll yea. And that Moa Stance? Holy moly thats insane.
But what happens when you go down in beast mode? if you don't have the trait that kicks your pet out and heals you on death, will it stay inside you when your on the floor? what about down state skills like lick wounds?
Hello , how do you think this work in the world? i dont think dagger dagger is the best they could of given soulbeast .Not sure how these daggers will help you against mobs like in HOT. It is a jack of all trade, but i feel like they were a bit sloppy in the final execution. i like the stances more but it was very nice when you did dagger and warhorn :) i do enjoy the stances:) but any idea on a good weapon and gear set for this :) im a ranger and ele main and love these classes. The pets are awesome
This ended up slightly missing the mark in the end as you generally end up just dipping in and out of the pets rather than camping one way or the other. So that idea of playing a ranger that doesn’t have a pet never really materialised. I think a grandmaster that encourages not getting the pet pet out would have gone a long way. Similar to the engineer juggernaught trait where you stack boons whilst in beast form.
Just waiting here rather interested on your thoughts on Mirage. Probably isnt going to be longer than 15 min since there isnt really much to talk about that elite spec but nonetheless hopefully you can make me feel better about that spec than I do right now. Edit: Also lol at that wiggling with the auto attack at 4:50. Seems to be ingrained in all of us.
So the passive pet traits like the one giving passive health regeneration and toughness will apply to you once you enter beast mode or they are still exclusively for them?
Hey WP, I just wanted to disagree with you a bit about your ongoing opinion that all elite specs should be a certain niche. I think it's fine that some of them are, but I don't think every one should be. I have a few reasons. 1. It punishes people that like to do a bit of everything and like a certain play style more. Like if Spellbreaker was only ever "good" in pvp like it seems it might be, the. Anyone who really likes the skills and the play style of having a dagger will be worse off doing it in other areas of the game if there is something better. 2. The devs have said before that they do not want to be predictable. They said it for this expansion, they didn't want us to kill another dragon and have it be one after the next and so predictable. This time we have to save one it seems, so we never know what's going to happen. If they make an elite spec for each class for each little niche, it's completely predictable. If they make an elite spec for pvp, one for support, one for condi dmg, one for power....it is limiting. It would force the devs to do things in an order. This way, if they make some of them a bit more general, it can damage and support and maybe a bit of tank, all depending on your build, then it frees them to make an elite spec however they want. It will provide people with way more choices. That is their motto of these new specs, "it's another way to play your character." In the future you might be able to say whether you want to be a healer with this spec or this one. Maybe this one is better at providing barrier, while the other one can also pump a good amount of damage. So having options isn't a bad thing. Anyway, that's my thoughts. Happy to hear what you think.
Im about to get back to the game (i have no expansions, bought the game at launch), the idea of a ranger class who can go greatsword aswell sounds cool. Do you recommend this to me?
I would've much preferred this spec to be all about damage honestly, we already have a very support heavy elite spec in druid. Jack of all traits specs will always be a bit weaker than pure dps for instance. Still, I am very excited about Soulbeast, but I do hope they fix alot of the little fixes and possibly some balancing, things just feel abit undertuned (not counting the Gazelle, which is probably bugged)
Sorta interesting. Kinda wish they went for bestial character animations and make your character snarl and roar than just a twiggy particle effect and generic animations, but I understand new animations are a lot more work.
Specs8i Well yeah. Running druid is quite important. What this spec means is that there can be more options for rangers. Remember, the meta won't change instantly.
I'd agree that it COULD be a jack of all trades. However I do not believe it could ever truly reach that until they add more options for pets with absorbable ranged abilities. Currently only Spiders, Bristleback, the Jacanda and the Ibloo (sp?) have usable ranged abilities. As a player who enjoys my ranger to actually use bows/axe+horn and stay at range, I do not have many options. Those options all but cease to exist if I do not want to be forced into a Condi build. I know pets take a while to design, but I feel that this was a huge oversight on the devs part. Even if I COULD use the Jacanda for its single Ranged Lightning strike (which is extremely unusable since unless I imob first then they would easily run out of the AoE) that is a single pet. The only REAL pet that is usable for a ranged/bow focused Soulbeast would be the Bristleback, which has one PBAOE and a new version of Sharpened Stones. But even that would lean towards Condi.
I don't understand how people playing Rangers, or even people NOT playing Rangers view the Soulbeast as a Specialization without their pet. It's not a /core/ feature, of the class, but the pet is still there. You're not meant to stick in Soulbeast-mode all of the time but to swap back and forth. And in-between the swapping your pet does not disappear, it is still with you by your side. If it were truly a petless Ranger, the pets would be non-existant.
I disagree with your statement regarding ranger being the only class with a pet, almost every class has a pet of sorts. Ele has the elementals, engi has the turrets, necro has the undead stuff, theif has the elite that summons some buddies... granted none of them (minus the necro's pets) have as much permanancy or choice... but ranger is not the only one that can have a pet.
temp pets dont count as real pets.... only 2 pet classes in game really are ranger n nero.... IE if theirs a time limt how long they are be out. its not a real pet
If you don't feel like the utilities are worth using without having the grandmaster to share them, then it just feels like they are horribly undertuned
I really wish that the ranger stances had the ammunition mechanic on them. After seeing ammo on weaver stances that seem better than soulbeast stances already, it made the soulbeast stances feel even less underwhelming to me.
Drimz I think it's Vice versa. They did this so your pet wouldn't agro the enemies in raids or fractals. It wouldn't be in the way of all the aoe's as well. Still viable for pvp though.
Drimz It's hard to tell what pets can do and how to control them from making mistakes when you have to micro manage. They should make a parasitic pet that latches on to the ranger. It would some how have a turret and would only attack when you do.
That's not the problem, the problem is the lack of consideration to racial skills in design and readressing how they can be viewed in buildcraft. In truth the game has always had shapeshifters at it's core - the Norn - and if the developers played their cards right people looking for that would have been satisfied a long time ago.
Next: Either Renegade or I might fast-track the Mirage, depends on a few things. If I can get both out tonight before I need to sleep I'll be very happy. Cheers all!
I know I am probably a freak but I can't wait for the mirage and deadeye videos.
Oh yes, *please Mirage!!* Great job btw, your covering of the elite specs is fantastic, as usual.
i am loving these videos, since I missed the demo weekend. Keep up the great work as always
"And this is the renegade!
It has a shortbow which skills don't really do much and has one good utility!
There are also skills on the function keys that aren't worth the energy cost."
I'm really curious to see what you think about Mirage. Fast track!
I feel like it lacks some coherence.
You missed some cool things:
- The shout "Sic' em" gives *you* the 40% damage bonus when you are in beast mode
- When in beast mode, casting Maul (Greasword 2) apply the attack of opportunity to *you* and consumes it instantly, so basically *all* your Mauls do 50% more damage.
Add that to all the classic damage modifier from ranger + Opening strike, and you can oneshot everyone using your Greatsword. (We are talking 20k crits at least).
That is probalby gonna be fixed though. But there is something else that is intriguing and that you seem to have overlooked completely: 40:27
The tooltip of the passive attribute of the "Supportive" pets states:
-100 Vitality + *25% Healing increase per Target*
I have not tested it, but does that mean that if my Spirtual Reprieve heals 5 allies it gets a 125% boost? Because that could be crazy.
oh god...
Awesome stuff, man! Yeah we played with "Sic 'em" on stream but it felt a bit inconsistent, so I wasn't very comfortable going over it on this presentation.
I hope they don't lose that. I love Greatsword for the utility and style, and using it in tandem with wolf knockdown/fear/chill makes demolishing breakbars easy- but it just doesn't have the damage of other classes, and having something high-damage for Ranger would be a nice change of pace. x.x Sometimes we wanna be _more_ than just support.
Are you saying theres a possibilty of a viable power spec for ranger ?! id love to stop playing condi tbh.
@Kajex Surnahm, I do too, GS is such a fun weapon. It is also the one weapon that makes me feel like I really work as a team with my pet, at least with beastmastery and marksmanship traits.
@Martin Frisk Nielsen, That remains to be seen, but there is hope.
Now we have an elite spec without your pet out, the next Expansion should ENHANCE the pets. Make them huge, giving them temporary extra skills, have BOTH of your pets out. Call it Animal Handler or something.
Beastmastery ++, I'm down!
sounds rad
I’d actually love to see a “Packmaster” specs, I still remember the Aristocracy rune from release which summoned an infinite number of Drakehounds, obviously this specs wouldn’t be as broken but it’d nice to have a Minion Master build for the Ranger.
In any cases I’m hyped for the Soulbeast, it might bring Power builds back in PvE for Rangers and I love that.
Steve Irwin ranger spec!!!!!
Lawrence Tider they finally grow up. Juvenile no more.
My assumption, especially given the way they flavored some of the skills, is that going for Dagger/Dagger was intended to be evocative of the idea of an animal attacks with it's claws.
So rangers become melee thieves and thieves become rangers. *thumbs up* XD
I had to stop halfway through the video to start playing the Soulbeast. I love all the work you put into this video. Great guide!
Wow, it's crazy how detailed the new elite specs are now, you can really see the difference between the two generations of elite specs, PoF is looking to shape up to be amazing :D keep it up anet
I like it so far. Some of the traits need some work imo but it's a nice sort of "core ranger +" to appeal to both people that have wanted to go without a pet, and to those that were kind of alienated by druid, since they didn't make a ranger to be a healer.
Very nicely done video. You comment on all aspects of the spec and this is a fantastic overview for the elite specs. Keep up the fantastic work!
Thank you for doing these, Potatoes: they are super helpful for understanding the game, both new and old aspects.
I'm glad you think so!
You put in some serious work last weekend for these videos WP. Respect!
Yes! I just finished watching scourge video, and for an half an hour, i kept refreshign WP to see if soulbeast woudl come, couse i need to see it!!!
When you mentioned the part that ranger stances gets shared out to allies, the first thing that popped in my mind is when Power Rangers transform or do some special attack or something, and they all get into a stance or pose together, maybe that's what anet is kinda referencing?
You can merge with a dead pet too. Further, you can then instantly un-merge and have it revived at 100% health, putting your pet "swap" effectively on a 10s cooldown. Bug?
Oh man I didn't even *think* about this stuff.
the whole point of that is to provide counterplay. If I kill your pet and you just swap to beastmode and swap back to revive it, that defeats the purpose of killing them in the first place.
it's one of those PVE vs PVP things.
in PVE the big bosses one-shotting your worthless AI-controlled pets and then the long wait to be able to use them again takes away a lot of the utility of having them at all. this is kind of the direction we PVE rangers come from when we bitch about our pets.
in PVP it's everything Cobra0798 just said, i think (i'm not a pvp'er so i can't speak to it).
In PvE bosses havent been one shotting pets for years, since they reduced damage to pets that aren't explicitly being targetted.
Man you love these LBA music don't you ;)
Great video btw, it was certainly the most necessary of them all considering how bizarre this elite spec is. I really love what they did with it, it'll expand the ranger gameplay without making the druid useless (unlike certain new elite spec which are way better than the old ones, like the scourge or the holosmith)
Information about MERGING with Pet starts in minute 23
There's a lot of synergy with traits from other lines, too. For example "Refined Toxins" (Your strikes inflict poison when you're above the threshold, your pet's strikes inflict poison when it is above the threshold) applies both instances of poison when you're in Beastmode and above the threshold. Or "Shared Anguish" (incoming disables are transferred to your pet) means, that when in Beastmode the first incoming disabling ability doesn't affect you. Basically one permanent stability. Unfortunately it's on a 60 sec internal cooldown, so we won't see much of that ;)
Sic em + maul has never been so satisfying, because shouts also proc when you are in soulbeast form.
There's an amusing bit of guildies arguing going on at 51:00
Don't forget, you can swap your pet. So you have two pet skills AND your 6 beast modes skills to swap between. You can literally be a good damage sink and damage dealer at once to swap to situations or just find a lot of pet-merge skill synergy.
I agreaa, very jack-of-all-tradesy, but I feel like there's so much room for oversight here that there's bound to be some unexpectedly powerful synergy.
Gotta say, a week+ in, I'm really enjoying playing Soulbeast with a longbow. It almost brings back loving memories of playing a "splinter barrage" R/Rt Ranger from GW1. It's not the same, but it feels like it. Slap the elite One Wolf Pack, then hit Barrage, and enemies are taking double hits. Hit Griffon and/or Moa Stances and the damage is even greater. Not to mention all of the CCs you get if you equip electric wyvern, especially when you activate beastmode. I'm not at all sure how well this plays in PvP, WvW, or Raids, but it sure is a lot of fun in PvE.
Bears, boons, Battlestar Galactica
Identity theft is a crime, stupidinternetman999.
stupidinternetman999 what?
@@bryanmurray1892 quote from the Office, pretty funny scene
A stance sharing Soulbeast coupled with a Mirage sounds like a great combination. Giving the endurance regen to the Mirage to keep up their Mirage Cloak buffs will be really cool.
It almost sounds like you can do a straight convert from a power Druid to a power soulbeast, where, instead of switching into celestial avatar and hitting skill 4 for the party heal while you wait for your weapon swap and skills to come off cool down, you merge with your pet instead and spam the skills - and, if you pick the right pet, you get the party heal anyway. Really looking forward to this.
Just an fyi we did and still do have control over concealed assault. Back in the begin of hot his f2 skill was concealed assault, but that was nerfed several times, first in damage, then a new skill all together, cos it was too strong. But even today we still can easily access it, just f3 then f1, this allows the smokescale to disengage from combat then immediately blink back in with concealed
I noticed that when in beast mode you also get some of the stat bonuses in beastmastery, off of the pack alpha and pet's prowess.
You are doing gods work here!
I reckon an awesome combo would be rooting the enemy, then going into beast mode and dropping the lightning in. That would be quite powerful because at least 3 of the bolts would be likely to hit them, including you slashing them while you have increased swiftness.
I love how Soulbeast PLAYS, but I'm not a big fan of how it LOOKS. I really feel Ranger mains got the short end of the stick with PoF specs at least as far as design and appearance goes.
And I don't mean like we should have a different character model for each pet, but idk, maybe like a celestial ghostly shroud for each pet archetype or something that wasn't just a twirling twig graphic...
Trainer Bingo yeah it seems more like a nature caster graphic rather than what a soulbeast should feel like...even the name calls for something weighty and badass looking
I'm the other way around. I love how it looks, but not how it plays. Dagger should be faster and traits better, imo.
Nah, Renegade has the crappiest animations, the most bugs and it's completely unusable in any game mode (maybe except pve)
" I really feel Ranger mains got the short end of the stick with PoF specs at least as far as design and appearance goes"
Appearance, Mirage is much much wrost.... just looking at it. it looks like a normal one...
Design, tbh idk but Ranger is by far not the wrost or near the end of design. could say it may be the best. alot awsomeness and free here
Definitely in terms of graphical design however in terms of gameplay it’s so simple that it’s hard to see some in depth little quirks that can really show the difference between a bad soulbeast and a good one (kinda like warrior)
didnt think i would like soul beast by looking at it but i had so much fun with it. I played power ranger and you can get a nice spike on longbow with quickness and the new elite then merg and spike some more. I also took bear as the second pet for really nice survival.
During the demo, I tried greatsword shortbow with smoke scale...just feels like so much sticking power.
WrittenInShadow hi friend, can u share ur build? As im lost on this new soulbeast traits , haha thanks
I'm still mad that nobody has gotten spear/trident out of water.
agreeeed, year later, still angry
Seriously warrior is running out of options for next xpac that’s a great idea
i really enjoy this series , keep up the good work WP :)
Hey WP, warrior's defy pain has been very recently renamed to lesser endure pain, as all other traits that activate a utility skill.
Dagger #3 should work pretty well with Fortyfying Bond - any boon you have is shared with your pet. You no longer need to swap pets to get quickness for a potential burst.
I just call this the Ranger's Kit Elite Spec but with a beast of a twist.
I died with the pronunciation of the Jacaranda, I'm from South Africa and we have a tree with that name.
I'm from New Orleans - try pronouncing the street name: Tchoupitoulas without help :)
@@chrislaine8807 Is the first T silent?
Crimson Hunter It sure is 😀
cho-pit-o-las
I'm probably wrong, but there's my guess on pronouncing that.
@@crimsonwizahd2358 That's the common non-local pronunication but like many other names in this area they aren't pronounced correctly (especially some of the French names geesh) but the local pronunciation of Tchoupitoulas is: chop-ah-too-las or chop-i-too-las - I've heard both but I pronounce the latter :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchoupitoulas_Street
66% boon duration is equal to 990 concentration. For some context of how insane that is, you can only get 633 concentration with a full set of ascended commanders gear, or 3% more boon duration than leadership runes and concentration sigil combo.
All that boon duration is meaningless the moment 2 spellbreakers show up and go all troll face on people.
I definitely feel Beast Master is a jack of all trades, can't wait to try it out more :D
Awesome finaly a good soulbeast video! 😍😍
Was really hoping for something different from soulbeast. I main druid so had high hopes for this spec. Kind of disappointed in the lack of identity that all the others that have been covered in this series have which are awesome. It just looks a bit plain and doesn't seem to have a real purpose. Maybe it will be clearer with some play testing though...
Omg, I am so glad to be maining a ranger now. I was excited for this elite, along with the holosmith but with your videos I am even more happy for my ranger plus have gained some excitement for my necro for scourage (sp?). I see so many things I like with this elite though for wvw. Not sure what I'll be doing in pve with it though
I guess double dagger is like fangs of a beast and thats why it's dagger
PvE: Niche seems to be *unique buff* team support with high condi DPS, although those traits seem to compete. Unless core traits change up, I have serious doubts that a power DPS role will be meta. It will also likely remain a close range brawler.
PvP: Very clearly could have some aspects of GW1 Dervish skills (thinking of scythe mastery mainly), with a lot of the class being about an initial burst that allows for a pushed advantage (specifically you rely on Poison to maintain a higher HP percentage). I expect countering will be all about condi cleanse, sustain, and vitality (This could really be anything; low vitality would be vulnerable to bursts but make sustain for keeping over 50% easier, while a kite-based play-style would be better countered with high vitality so as to kill the Soulbeast before getting low) which could either be disastrous or successful depending on how Anet has managed balance (from what I can tell, PvP players currently hate everything about condi meta). I don't expect long range gameplay to be big for Soulbeast, as Druid is far superior at that strategy.
Soulbeast is one of the three I am the most excited for!
RIP 66% chance bleed on crit trait. You made condi longbow good
You can pretty much play any role with Ranger, I love it.
I can see why they didn't make One Wolf Pack have no interval, because imagine it with LB burst lmao.
Cheetahs i have been waiting for sooooo long for that pet. I am very happy
Would love the devs to revamp the generic green cloak/aura around your character in beast-mode to make it look slightly unique for each of the 12 pet types. I'm down with Rangers being more rustic and less fantasy based than an Elementalist, for example, but the aesthetic design space has fantastic opportunity to work with here. Light green dragon wings, paws, claws, tails, horns, etc.
I have never played ranger and i wasnt really excited to see this one at first, but when i tried it on the Beta. Well I think i know now wich class to play at release :P
dont care so much about elite specs as they arnt forever. care about the class as a whole. 2 years elite spec wont be current ( we dont fully know how well elite specs will work with gen1 and with each other still mid way tho PoF)
ALL those pets and they still don't allow you to hide the nameplate of your pet? I for one hate seeing it constantly turned on and in all these years and a million forum posts they still don't have that ONE option.
25:39 I love this
34:20 They should just all-caps it and put an exclamation mark on the end.
i think its mostly because of the pets i mean for each pet type bear, bird, spider, so on each has one of the new soul best skill so if you wanted bear skills but you wanted more cc with a pull they have that. or a spider with that a heal skill yeah got that too. i feel that they did that because there so man ways to build ranger now you can't really pin them down with one right and wrong builds with other classes i feel like soul best true strongest build is the fact there so flexible or even a little bit of a jack of all trades build to help where your group might be lacking.
Hell yeah i was waiting for the soulbeast (ranger main here)
Does anyone know if you're able to activate two stances at the same time and have both of their abilities work for the full duration? Or as soon as you activate a new stance you lose the abilities of the previous stands?
I think in testing I saw you could have both.
You can have multiple activated at a time and the profession mechanic icons will all pop up on your boon bar. As far as I know, they only end once they time out and cannot be overwritten by another stance. Thus, in theory yes you can have them all at once.
I think one of the concepts that just confuses me the most is condition damage. Unlike power dmg which is upfront in your'e face damage which has a million ways of being blocked or mitigated, conditional damage doesn't really seem to have a way to be mitigated. Sure, there are cleanses, but you use that ability, and before u know it bleed, poison, etc stacks are back on top of u and you're cleanse isn't up and when I try to play condi dmg I just don't see it as effective. In my experience I am specifically talking about ranger shortbow condi vs longbow power. Longbow I like so much more because of barrage and rapid fire. Rapid fire just feels so nice and can really take a huge chunk out of an enemy. Shortbow condi not only brings me closer to an enemy but i don't get the same chunking feeling as I do when i play power. Condi feels less satisfying to me and I don't like it, but seems to be a major part of pvp, wvw builds and tbh kind of turns me off of playing either.
Daym those stances can be actually quite powerfull in WvW. Finally other class that can give AoE Stbaility on 30s cooldown? Hll yea. And that Moa Stance? Holy moly thats insane.
For some reason I find the idea of a ranger running around biting mobs to be pretty funny. Could be rather unpleasant with undead or slimes though...
either this.. (well my main is druid..) or guardian.. well i got the chosen pre from the event boss chest.. what a shame.. but its a legend :D
But what happens when you go down in beast mode? if you don't have the trait that kicks your pet out and heals you on death, will it stay inside you when your on the floor? what about down state skills like lick wounds?
Hello , how do you think this work in the world? i dont think dagger dagger is the best they could of given soulbeast .Not sure how these daggers will help you against mobs like in HOT. It is a jack of all trade, but i feel like they were a bit sloppy in the final execution. i like the stances more but it was very nice when you did dagger and warhorn :) i do enjoy the stances:) but any idea on a good weapon and gear set for this :) im a ranger and ele main and love these classes. The pets are awesome
This ended up slightly missing the mark in the end as you generally end up just dipping in and out of the pets rather than camping one way or the other. So that idea of playing a ranger that doesn’t have a pet never really materialised. I think a grandmaster that encourages not getting the pet pet out would have gone a long way. Similar to the engineer juggernaught trait where you stack boons whilst in beast form.
i'd take torch, coz with dagger just being able to target 2 mobs, you need some aoe clear (at least in pve)
Just waiting here rather interested on your thoughts on Mirage. Probably isnt going to be longer than 15 min since there isnt really much to talk about that elite spec but nonetheless hopefully you can make me feel better about that spec than I do right now.
Edit: Also lol at that wiggling with the auto attack at 4:50. Seems to be ingrained in all of us.
So the passive pet traits like the one giving passive health regeneration and toughness will apply to you once you enter beast mode or they are still exclusively for them?
so last time we rangers became total support with druid and this time it is made for heavy damage, whetehr it be condi or power?
Hey WP, I just wanted to disagree with you a bit about your ongoing opinion that all elite specs should be a certain niche. I think it's fine that some of them are, but I don't think every one should be. I have a few reasons.
1. It punishes people that like to do a bit of everything and like a certain play style more. Like if Spellbreaker was only ever "good" in pvp like it seems it might be, the. Anyone who really likes the skills and the play style of having a dagger will be worse off doing it in other areas of the game if there is something better.
2. The devs have said before that they do not want to be predictable. They said it for this expansion, they didn't want us to kill another dragon and have it be one after the next and so predictable. This time we have to save one it seems, so we never know what's going to happen. If they make an elite spec for each class for each little niche, it's completely predictable. If they make an elite spec for pvp, one for support, one for condi dmg, one for power....it is limiting. It would force the devs to do things in an order. This way, if they make some of them a bit more general, it can damage and support and maybe a bit of tank, all depending on your build, then it frees them to make an elite spec however they want. It will provide people with way more choices. That is their motto of these new specs, "it's another way to play your character." In the future you might be able to say whether you want to be a healer with this spec or this one. Maybe this one is better at providing barrier, while the other one can also pump a good amount of damage. So having options isn't a bad thing.
Anyway, that's my thoughts. Happy to hear what you think.
Im about to get back to the game (i have no expansions, bought the game at launch), the idea of a ranger class who can go greatsword aswell sounds cool. Do you recommend this to me?
Ranger can use a greatsword anyway.
I would've much preferred this spec to be all about damage honestly, we already have a very support heavy elite spec in druid.
Jack of all traits specs will always be a bit weaker than pure dps for instance.
Still, I am very excited about Soulbeast, but I do hope they fix alot of the little fixes and possibly some balancing, things just feel abit undertuned (not counting the Gazelle, which is probably bugged)
Sorta interesting. Kinda wish they went for bestial character animations and make your character snarl and roar than just a twiggy particle effect and generic animations, but I understand new animations are a lot more work.
That's what I was wishing too kind if like a shape shifter in a way taking on bestial forms
i dont understand why they didn't make the dagger main hand a throwable weapon
At the end of the day, everyone is still going to demand ranger to play druid in group instances.
Specs8i Well yeah. Running druid is quite important. What this spec means is that there can be more options for rangers. Remember, the meta won't change instantly.
I'd agree that it COULD be a jack of all trades. However I do not believe it could ever truly reach that until they add more options for pets with absorbable ranged abilities. Currently only Spiders, Bristleback, the Jacanda and the Ibloo (sp?) have usable ranged abilities. As a player who enjoys my ranger to actually use bows/axe+horn and stay at range, I do not have many options. Those options all but cease to exist if I do not want to be forced into a Condi build. I know pets take a while to design, but I feel that this was a huge oversight on the devs part. Even if I COULD use the Jacanda for its single Ranged Lightning strike (which is extremely unusable since unless I imob first then they would easily run out of the AoE) that is a single pet. The only REAL pet that is usable for a ranged/bow focused Soulbeast would be the Bristleback, which has one PBAOE and a new version of Sharpened Stones. But even that would lean towards Condi.
we need around jack of all trades... Eng is doing so well... >.>
I don't understand how people playing Rangers, or even people NOT playing Rangers view the Soulbeast as a Specialization without their pet. It's not a /core/ feature, of the class, but the pet is still there. You're not meant to stick in Soulbeast-mode all of the time but to swap back and forth. And in-between the swapping your pet does not disappear, it is still with you by your side. If it were truly a petless Ranger, the pets would be non-existant.
What are your key bindings? How come ur abilities are dots :// ?
Do I HAVE TO play a condi build?....would it be bad to play berserker with main hand dagger?
loving these, Mirage next please.
I disagree with your statement regarding ranger being the only class with a pet, almost every class has a pet of sorts. Ele has the elementals, engi has the turrets, necro has the undead stuff, theif has the elite that summons some buddies... granted none of them (minus the necro's pets) have as much permanancy or choice... but ranger is not the only one that can have a pet.
temp pets dont count as real pets.... only 2 pet classes in game really are ranger n nero.... IE if theirs a time limt how long they are be out. its not a real pet
If you don't feel like the utilities are worth using without having the grandmaster to share them, then it just feels like they are horribly undertuned
Soulbeast feels like Udyr from LoL :P
Where, in the game, was this video shot? I don't recognize the area.
Mister Mule PvP arena, they changed and remodeled the old one
TYVM
the PoF elite specs change the class alot and the HoT elite specs are more simple changes
I really wish that the ranger stances had the ammunition mechanic on them. After seeing ammo on weaver stances that seem better than soulbeast stances already, it made the soulbeast stances feel even less underwhelming to me.
WP they made dagger Condi because ranger has no melee mainhand Condi. Only axe and shortbow which are susceptible to reflects.
disappoinment with the cover , nothing about the kitten animation of the dagger
Aw, I could have sworn I saw Sand Shark as a pet, would have been cool :(
Yes it would have!
I hope we at least get a sand shark mini. They're beautiful.
Yaks to droknars forge, good times!
What's a good dagger pvp build for ranger
If the pet dies in combat, can you merge before reviving it?
I haven't tested it, but I would assume no
I actually like pets that's why I play ranger, nevertheless this is great condi spec it seems. :)
I havent gotten the xpan yet but i love my pets can i still have them?
Of course
Ranger will need fingers...
that is 990 concentration btw.
which do you personally think is better; soulbeast or Druid?
liane cheung they are meant for two different roles, so you can't really say one is better than the other. Need to have a more specific question.
itsJoshV for a power ranger in fractals or raids
I would assume Soulbeast for a power build in PvE. It's more meant to be a DPS with some support where the Druid is meant to primarily be support.
thank you so much.
2 differnt roles. whats better a support or dmg?..... what role u wanting to do....lol...
i think its for pvp than pve, right?
Drimz I think it's Vice versa. They did this so your pet wouldn't agro the enemies in raids or fractals. It wouldn't be in the way of all the aoe's as well. Still viable for pvp though.
ZombiePoptard i have another question why ranger hard to have party in dungeon when they use long bow as main weapon?
Drimz It's hard to tell what pets can do and how to control them from making mistakes when you have to micro manage. They should make a parasitic pet that latches on to the ranger. It would some how have a turret and would only attack when you do.
720p ?
IS THAT A BLOODFIEND PET what
nice video!
I'm just sad it's not a shapeshifter. Otherwise it's really cool!
I fear we will never get one after already having a class that can merge with his pets.
That's not the problem, the problem is the lack of consideration to racial skills in design and readressing how they can be viewed in buildcraft. In truth the game has always had shapeshifters at it's core - the Norn - and if the developers played their cards right people looking for that would have been satisfied a long time ago.