MoXAriApph.3650

Kinda late response but the I believe the reasoning for this is because the devs are trying to align the elite specs back into the vision they originally had when HoT was released, but missed the mark. The devs originally wanted elite specs to simply be an “alternative play style” compared to what the base class offered, but ended up simply being a massive gain over anything the base class offered. Either you took your elite spec or you were fundamentally weaker without it. More recently as seen with the other elite spec changes, such as Daredevil swipe range being reduced, Druid pet damage nerf, Scrapper health reduction, berserker allowing standard burst abilities, etc, Anet is wanting to continue this trend into other elite specs. Soulbeast was notorious for being a 100% improvement over base ranger. If there is a base ranger build, there’s no reason not to through in the soulbeast line. While yes, there’s long cooldowns for swapping pets and re-merging, that’s not necessarily a trade off because it’s simply how the class works. The only really trade offs possible would have been to either be permanently merged with pets at all times but can still swap, or only have one pet at a time. With this changes you now need to make a choice of whether losing one of your pets is worth taking the soulbeast line. More than likely it will be, players will just need to find ways to compensate it such as using something like warthog for condi which has a headbutt ability when merged. While I do agree that it is unfortunate such substantial nerfs and changes are coming to elite specs, I can agree with the devs that reducing the power creep brought with elite specs is a good direction. So instead of buffing the core classes up, we're going to actually remove some classes identity in the name of equality? This is horrible design. At this point why even give the option for Soulbeasts to have two pets? It's backwards design and actually ends up being worse in the long run.Druid, sure, give it a lore reason so nobody can complain and slap a 10% nerf onto the pet damage, but seriously removing an entire pet from Soulbeast...?Literally just kitten nerf anything else we have, as this one makes next to 0 sense. I think one issue that can arise from buffing the core classes is that whenever a base class is buffed, so is the elite spec by extension. We can say “okay increase all Druid pet damage by 50%”, but then soulbeasts will also get this buff. I believe the devs are wanting to take a different approach where they bring down the ceiling by nerfing elite specs instead of raising the floor by buffing the base classes. This could be separated though by doing something like “if you have 3 base specs you equipped you get X bonus”, but that might go against the inference I listed above of not raising the floor where the devs want to reign in elite specs to be closer to the level that base classes play at opposed your the other way around. Removing a pet from soulbeast to focus more on the merging with a pet aspect is how they’re choosing to refocus that specs identity. While ranger itself may be focused on their pets, soulbeast will change that focus to instead be some “strong bond between the ranger and a single pet” kind of thing. The focus on ranger pets are still there, but now it’s a little different. While you did mention before that there is nothing innately broken about soulbeast compared to other classes, when comparing it to base ranger it is 100% better in any aspect. By that exact same logic, lets get rid of Ascended cooking. It's better than base cooking and nobody uses regular cooking anymore, it offers nothing Unique.Lets get rid of Masteries, it's better than playing the base game and is by the same logic, supposed to have "drawbacks" no? Base classes in literally any game have never been designed to be top tier, that was the whole point to bringing out Elite Specs, to be a different take on the same class, to mix it up and create something Unique.Rather than make a Base class compete with it's own Elite Specs, we're adding half-thought "drawbacks".Every Elite Spec offers something Unique. Why not make Core Specs Unique?They had the right idea by adding to Core Revenant, but haven't buffed or changed that idea since, and it hasn't been a viable option in the majority of cases because it hasn't been pushed up, whether this is due to the Elite Specs being "better" or not doesn't matter, the attempt was never even fully finished. Changing Soulbeast + Druid to bring them down offers nothing on the scale of the entire class hierarchy, you're bringing down a class that's already low, you're kicking a dead horse. This change looks like it was made by somebody who has never played the class/Spec or even payed attention to how it works, the "drawback" is already there, you not only have to wait on swapping pets, you have to wait on your merge timer as well, it's been there from the start, you have the 100% free option instead to just punish constant swapping, do something fun, not boring, make it a longer and longer cooldown the more you swap in combat, do something that makes sense.Go and make something Unique for base Ranger, let it do something wild, give it access to more pets in combat, buff it when you have the 3 base traitlines, let it tame an elder dragon or something, idk, it shouldn't be my job, anything, it's fairly quick to design and would come out infinitely better. Let's say we add these "drawbacks" yeah? Guess what, Elite Specs will still entirely still be better than base, the "drawback"s fail and they become literally nothing more than annoyances to everyone.The only option from there is to start nerfing again, and then buffing, and it'll repeat until base classes take over for a while or the Elite Specs take over.Anyone who invested in their Elite Spec stops playing due to the constant changes and the class not being what they came for, then there's no point to Elite Specs.It's the beginning of a cycle that's so predictable it shouldn't happen. Otherwise this is all literally pointless and you'll keep having the same issues, it won't end. Elite specs were never meant to be better than the core classes, they were, and are, meant to be specialized in one area(for example, spellbreaker ripping alot of boons and denying them).This was made very clear by anet several times. Just because core classes are not top tier in other games, does NOT mean gw2 has to be the same, why should it? They do indeed mix up how you play your class and give it something unique, that doesnt change with that soulbeast nerf. And having 2 pets to quickly choose from when out of combat does make sense, makes for more decision making. In pvp for example, you have to choose which pet suits you better to fight the warrior (or whoever sits there) on your close point, while in a team skirmish on mid you might take something different before you engage. Your "buff everything else" mentality is what brought us this insane level of powercreep.Have you played dungeons pre hot and post pof? Its ridiculous, you can ignore whole boss mechanics because you can burst/heal right through them. And your cooking and mastery analogy are not working here, because their purpose was indeed to be better than previous things, unlike especs. Are you still living in the Dungeon meta? We've progressed, time is fowards.The rewards for dungeons and the scaling are a joke, they made content like Raids and Fractals (however much you like it or not) to counteract the "power creep".Not to mention the "power creep" is the first argument players go to when they themselves do not know what they're talking about.The 10x damage difference (this number can be higher or lower, it'll never matter) between Veterans and New players is very established and will always be because Veterans have played long enough to make better decisions (not to say new players make bad decisions but wisdom and progression), in this case, Elite specs, whether you nerf them or not your imaginary "power creep" will always be there.Keeping the scale where it is and scaling content up is a massively more logical solution, people need to eventually learn the game, we've done everything except get people to learn how to play in the name of casual gameplay, it's why the veterans are leaving and content isn't challenging.Strikes are going to full on be hit or miss and time will tell but Raiders have to either see it as a replacement to Raids or a replacement to Raid training, neither of which currently are being achieved. This very much contributes to the issues with elite specs and balance. The thing you probably didn't notice is back when dungeons were meta, is everyone was on equal footing because the skill cap was fairly low, this isn't the case anymore.I'm not saying Core classes can't be top tier, I'm saying they shouldn't be bringing everything down to the core class power.Don't bring people down, teach the game and make it fair across the board by catching everyone up to where the veterans are at, because once we went up amazing things happened, PoF specs while hated by many for "power creep" redefined the meta and allowed them to bring down the "chrono druid meta garbage" (other peoples words not mine here) and introduced a vast amount of variety in gameplay.You're seeing specs and classes outside of a select few and it's largely due to how special the elite specs were designed, all beyond unique and so far comparable to HoT Elite Specs. The game is absolutely fantastic and the majority of people don't even realize how far it goes, it's a fantastic combat system plagued by the blissfully ignorant.

Kinda late response but the I believe the reasoning for this is because the devs are trying to align the elite specs back into the vision they originally had when HoT was released, but missed the mark. The devs originally wanted elite specs to simply be an “alternative play style” compared to what the base class offered, but ended up simply being a massive gain over anything the base class offered. Either you took your elite spec or you were fundamentally weaker without it. More recently as seen with the other elite spec changes, such as Daredevil swipe range being reduced, Druid pet damage nerf, Scrapper health reduction, berserker allowing standard burst abilities, etc, Anet is wanting to continue this trend into other elite specs. Soulbeast was notorious for being a 100% improvement over base ranger. If there is a base ranger build, there’s no reason not to through in the soulbeast line. While yes, there’s long cooldowns for swapping pets and re-merging, that’s not necessarily a trade off because it’s simply how the class works. The only really trade offs possible would have been to either be permanently merged with pets at all times but can still swap, or only have one pet at a time. With this changes you now need to make a choice of whether losing one of your pets is worth taking the soulbeast line. More than likely it will be, players will just need to find ways to compensate it such as using something like warthog for condi which has a headbutt ability when merged. While I do agree that it is unfortunate such substantial nerfs and changes are coming to elite specs, I can agree with the devs that reducing the power creep brought with elite specs is a good direction. So instead of buffing the core classes up, we're going to actually remove some classes identity in the name of equality? This is horrible design. At this point why even give the option for Soulbeasts to have two pets? It's backwards design and actually ends up being worse in the long run.Druid, sure, give it a lore reason so nobody can complain and slap a 10% nerf onto the pet damage, but seriously removing an entire pet from Soulbeast...?Literally just kitten nerf anything else we have, as this one makes next to 0 sense. I think one issue that can arise from buffing the core classes is that whenever a base class is buffed, so is the elite spec by extension. We can say “okay increase all Druid pet damage by 50%”, but then soulbeasts will also get this buff. I believe the devs are wanting to take a different approach where they bring down the ceiling by nerfing elite specs instead of raising the floor by buffing the base classes. This could be separated though by doing something like “if you have 3 base specs you equipped you get X bonus”, but that might go against the inference I listed above of not raising the floor where the devs want to reign in elite specs to be closer to the level that base classes play at opposed your the other way around. Removing a pet from soulbeast to focus more on the merging with a pet aspect is how they’re choosing to refocus that specs identity. While ranger itself may be focused on their pets, soulbeast will change that focus to instead be some “strong bond between the ranger and a single pet” kind of thing. The focus on ranger pets are still there, but now it’s a little different. While you did mention before that there is nothing innately broken about soulbeast compared to other classes, when comparing it to base ranger it is 100% better in any aspect.By that exact same logic, lets get rid of Ascended cooking. It's better than base cooking and nobody uses regular cooking anymore, it offers nothing Unique.Lets get rid of Masteries, it's better than playing the base game and is by the same logic, supposed to have "drawbacks" no? Base classes in literally any game have never been designed to be top tier, that was the whole point to bringing out Elite Specs, to be a different take on the same class, to mix it up and create something Unique.Rather than make a Base class compete with it's own Elite Specs, we're adding half-thought "drawbacks".Every Elite Spec offers something Unique. Why not make Core Specs Unique?They had the right idea by adding to Core Revenant, but haven't buffed or changed that idea since, and it hasn't been a viable option in the majority of cases because it hasn't been pushed up, whether this is due to the Elite Specs being "better" or not doesn't matter, the attempt was never even fully finished. Changing Soulbeast + Druid to bring them down offers nothing on the scale of the entire class hierarchy, you're bringing down a class that's already low, you're kicking a dead horse. This change looks like it was made by somebody who has never played the class/Spec or even payed attention to how it works, the "drawback" is already there, you not only have to wait on swapping pets, you have to wait on your merge timer as well, it's been there from the start, you have the 100% free option instead to just punish constant swapping, do something fun, not boring, make it a longer and longer cooldown the more you swap in combat, do something that makes sense.Go and make something Unique for base Ranger, let it do something wild, give it access to more pets in combat, buff it when you have the 3 base traitlines, let it tame an elder dragon or something, idk, it shouldn't be my job, anything, it's fairly quick to design and would come out infinitely better. Let's say we add these "drawbacks" yeah? Guess what, Elite Specs will still entirely still be better than base, the "drawback"s fail and they become literally nothing more than annoyances to everyone.The only option from there is to start nerfing again, and then buffing, and it'll repeat until base classes take over for a while or the Elite Specs take over.Anyone who invested in their Elite Spec stops playing due to the constant changes and the class not being what they came for, then there's no point to Elite Specs.It's the beginning of a cycle that's so predictable it shouldn't happen. Otherwise this is all literally pointless and you'll keep having the same issues, it won't end.

Kinda late response but the I believe the reasoning for this is because the devs are trying to align the elite specs back into the vision they originally had when HoT was released, but missed the mark. The devs originally wanted elite specs to simply be an “alternative play style” compared to what the base class offered, but ended up simply being a massive gain over anything the base class offered. Either you took your elite spec or you were fundamentally weaker without it. More recently as seen with the other elite spec changes, such as Daredevil swipe range being reduced, Druid pet damage nerf, Scrapper health reduction, berserker allowing standard burst abilities, etc, Anet is wanting to continue this trend into other elite specs. Soulbeast was notorious for being a 100% improvement over base ranger. If there is a base ranger build, there’s no reason not to through in the soulbeast line. While yes, there’s long cooldowns for swapping pets and re-merging, that’s not necessarily a trade off because it’s simply how the class works. The only really trade offs possible would have been to either be permanently merged with pets at all times but can still swap, or only have one pet at a time. With this changes you now need to make a choice of whether losing one of your pets is worth taking the soulbeast line. More than likely it will be, players will just need to find ways to compensate it such as using something like warthog for condi which has a headbutt ability when merged. While I do agree that it is unfortunate such substantial nerfs and changes are coming to elite specs, I can agree with the devs that reducing the power creep brought with elite specs is a good direction. So instead of buffing the core classes up, we're going to actually remove some classes identity in the name of equality? This is horrible design. At this point why even give the option for Soulbeasts to have two pets? It's backwards design and actually ends up being worse in the long run.Druid, sure, give it a lore reason so nobody can complain and slap a 10% nerf onto the pet damage, but seriously removing an entire pet from Soulbeast...?Literally just kitten nerf anything else we have, as this one makes next to 0 sense.

Is there any update on fixing the numerous issues with Revenant or the other bullet point from the post? Edit:Also with this implementation, can we expect there to be a toggle set up in settings so that when you swap templates, the one with "Revert" will Revert automatically?

Is there anyone on the balance team who can explain why Soulbeast can't swap pets mid-fight in this next update? We're this late into the game and this is an inane change. If you're looking to add drawbacks, there already is one by swapping pets, there's a LARGE cooldown upon unmerging/swapping/merging back, and it doesn't make sense in a PvE perspective. There's nothing innately broken about Soulbeast in general when it comes to swapping pets, it's a direct nerf to Condi Soulbeasts already VERY lacking CC, and a very annoying change to anyone who plays the Power Variant.This change seems like an absolute joke. Auto-ignoring anyone responding with the same gibberish "nerf meta' attitude, genuinely looking for an answer from the devs on this one.

So we're gunning for two months of feedback with no responses or tangible updates? Seriously Anet?The most we could get is basically:"We see you guys care."And they dip out.

"want complex things? pay for it."We literally can't. There's a limit of 6 templates for equipment and builds.

I think my main concern is the fact that any and all upsides to the idea of templates have been turned upside-down in this implementation. Features expected of templates:Build templates should promote freedom in building your character.This is currently the main issue everyone has, you have a limit to build templates and it's so arbitrarily low that it's ridiculous.There shouldn't be a limit on how many templates a person can have. The price should also be lowered to match the unlimited templates.If Arenanet/NCSoft is looking for monetization, this is a full on win win for both parties, the data for a template/build is relatively nothing compared to a full new character and data storage is unbelievably cheap. This just seems like the most inane and archaic way to go about this system. Edit: I'm coming back to this one because each time I open the game I find something even worse about this system. You literally gave us 3 build templates and 2 equipment templates.This is also actually predatory, as you're making people buy more equipment slots to make up for the 1 less.I'm absolutely baffled at this point as to how any of you sat down in a room and thought any of these ideas were even remotely coherent or alright. Templates will SAVE a build, not BE your build.Traits are saved to the template, rather than your build, this isn't how it should be designed whatsoever.It defeats the purpose entirely and makes swapping less convenient for small trait swaps. Game modes should be split.You guys dropped the ball on this one the most.Just the other day you dropped two new teams for PvP and WvW, that way you could coordinate and design properly, but in build templates you actively go against that design philosophy.By making it so that templates are not split across game-modes, you make people have to buy an entirely new character or manually swap literally everything. Example:Player X likes playing PvE, he has 2 builds on one character. This is entirely fine for normal gameplay.Player Y likes playing Raids and WvW, she has 3 builds for raid and 3 builds for WvW on one character. This is also fine for normal gameplay. Lets Assume Player Y has a Guardian.PvE has Healbrand, Condi Quickbrand and Tankbrand as viable options, but Player Y doesn't use Power Quickbrand or DH in Raids, due to her own reasons, doesn't matter.Player Y in WvW uses Healbrand, TankHealbrand, and uses the last slot for a DH roaming/dueling meme/fun build. Overall this is 6 builds, none of them are excessive and the traits/gear are massively different between each iteration. What if Player Y wants to play PvP? Thats an entirely new build/gear template that is entirely different than the 6 builds mentioned beforehand.Why is Player Y being punished suddenly for actively enjoying and purchasing slots? Legendary Armor should have upsides compared to Normal Gear.Templates currently turn this idea around, you're punished for using legendaries on multiple characters and in some cases on the same character. Monetization should make sense and be productive for both the consumer and provider.As it stands right now, buying build storage is absolutely useless, notepad will literally store your build for you.This makes absolutely no sense from any standpoint, you're actively preying on people who will just press buy because it's an option and they don't know better. Gear Storage is not a polished featureYou guys treat every release like it has to be the pinnacle of polished content, but this one is the absolute worst.I absolutely adore being able to have inventory space, but the amount of problems caused by this feature alone speaks to how you designed it.Swapping gear is garbage for anyone with Legendary gear.It devalues anyone who has made Legendary Gear, you're better off with Ascended sets to prevent swapping manually even more.Duplication and Item Deletion were not properly tested in the slightest.The value of Gear Storage is absolutely backwards, as nobody with Legendary gear will have the same value as White or Blue. Overall I'm glad that build templates are finally in-game, i'm not glad that it came in such a messed up and backwards way.This is genuinely a letdown for any hardcore / semi hardcore player, which, by the way, are the communities who will use this the most.Count me out for promoting or liking this system, it has so many flaws I'm just turned off by it entirely at this point. Leading me to my last point, you guys have consistently in the past year been shooting yourselves in the foot.If you want to genuinely understand what the community wants, actually ask them and be transparent, this is ridiculous.Stop pretending you understand your players and stop sitting in a bubble, because it only goes downhill from here, you're not immune to backlash because you've survived it so many times before. This is entirely reflected by any comment saying: Give us arc templates back.It's player-made for players because players know what players want.All you have to do to get that system going is ask and actually listen