Sausaletus Rex

Nope, you're right, there are some new skills in Beastmastery (basically, anyone without an icon yet is new) bringing the number of Ranger skills to a staggering 84, 32 of which are in Beastmastery. Just one of the things we were able to gleen from the last weekend and all due credit to Juggulator for his work here.

As for other skills, there've been whispers and rumors but I don't think any of our intrepid alphas managed to spot any beyond the new pet skills.

As for those new pet skills, they're all in Beastmastery and they're all "Pet Attacks". Pet Attacks work much the way any attack skill for a Warrior or a Ranger would work, just using your pet instead of your character (And yes, Expertise works on such skills, too). Like a weapon attack the casting time is the time it takes your pet to attack which, of course, varies by pet. You use one and the next time your pet attacks it's some sort of special attack. The skills "Bestial Pounce" and "Feral Lunge" were in as of the March BWE but the others are brand spanking new.

Brutal Strike: 10en, 5recharge. +5~17 damage. If the attack strikes a foe below 50% health strikes for an additional +5~17 damage.

Disrupting Lunge: 5en, 5recharge. +1~10 damage. If the attack strikes a foe using a skill it's interrupted and disabled for 20 seconds.

Ferocious Strike: 5en, 8recharge. +5~17 damage. If the attack hits gain adrenaline and 1-8 energy. (Unknown just how much adren though it's likely 1 strike)

Maming Strike: 10en, 10recharge. +5~17 damage. If the attack hits a moving target they become Crippled for 3~13 seconds.

Melandru's Assault: 10en, 10recharge. +5~17 damage. If that attack strikes an enchanted foe that foe and all adjacent foes takes additional +5~17 damage. (The wording on this one's a bit weird. Looks like you do +5~17 damage regardless but if you hit someone with an enchantment you do AoE damage of 5~17.)

Predator's Pounce: 5en, 5recharge. +5~17 damage. If the attack hits your pet gains 5~41 health.

Scavenger Strike: 10en, 5recharge. +5~17 damage. If the attack strikes a target suffering a condition, that target takes an additional +1~12 damage.

The previous pet attacks were rebalanced, too.

Bestial Pounce: Now 5en, 15recharge, +5~17 damage. Formerly 10en, 10recharge, +2~20 damage.

Feral Lunge: Now 5en, +5~17. Formerly 10en, +2~20 damage.

Some interesting things, to be sure. I like Disrupting Lunge, for one, as it's a 5 energy, 5 second recycle Disrupting Chop. Highly spammable before you even take Expertise into account. Others, not so much, like Predator's Pounce. Which is 40odd health every 5 seconds for your pet (8HPS, roughly, depending on your pet's attack rate, and about 8HPE before Expertise) which is forgettable in the extreme. It does damage, sure, but I'd rather have any of the other attacks than that one.

Ah, I smell a Spotlight.

Anyhow, with the addition of these skills I think we're going to see a lot of the pet shouts go away, especially the more marginal ones. Beastmastery is bloated right now and there's some dead weight to cut, if you ask me.

__________________
In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.

Draken

Yeah, i have heard rummors of new mesmer skills in the works in another post but they only had the images nothing more.

I too noticed that disruptin lunge pet attack and thought about combining it with disrupting shot and call of disruption... move over mesmers rangers are the new disruption kings! (j/k they will both be good in their own ways)

HotSnack

Well I can agree with Saus, I'd imagine it'd be the 'supasave' skills that'll be thrown out first, i.e. Call of Protection.

Duality

some of those new skills have icons just like some of the calls listed under beastmastery. does that mean they've replaced calls with these new ones?

WNxTyphoon

I'll take ferocious strike

Weezer_Blue

I'm pretty sure Feral Lunge was there since the March beta... But the others are definatly new.

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Synthos

Now the pets will take up even more slots in our limited slot places. I guess the upside is now people can do pets as a main attack now. I think they need to start combining skills, or add functionality to charm animal. Gaile herself said that it takes up to many slots. Thanks for the update on the skills, where did you find theM?

Crito

Why can't they just give the pets their own special skills and be done with it.

EntropiaCub

hmm, it seems there's another some new skills, specially into the Mesmer profession... I've seen @ GW Norden, the sweden fansite which has hosted the 39th itw, this...

and I think they're the one to show them...maybe it's directly linked to their last BWE, which they've the exclusivity...
there is the news:

Quote:

Originally Posted by GW Norden Combust Phantasm. http://gwnorden.no-ip.org/gwn/images/mesmer/combust.jpg Confusion. http://gwnorden.no-ip.org/gwn/images/mesmer/confuse.jpg Disappear. http://gwnorden.no-ip.org/gwn/images.../dissapear.jpg Mimic. http://gwnorden.no-ip.org/gwn/images/mesmer/mimic.jpg Signet of Illusion. http://gwnorden.no-ip.org/gwn/images...erillusion.jpg

ps: here is my first post int this nice place, glad to "meet" you.
pps: the [ img ] balise didn't work fine, i've put too many..

HotSnack

Nice to meet you Entrope, I'll have to say the pic they used for Panic is just too damn funny.

Edit: and btw, I'm all in favour of the inclusion of these new pounces. Pets shouldn't just be a 2nd rate Warrior (which it was when all you had to go on was the Calls), instead they should be having some form of synergy with the current skills of the Ranger, which it now has.

But yes, taking Charm AND a pet res is quite demanding, I hope they'll just bundle a res with Charm, and just offer a penalty such as an 8 sec skill lock on use or something in that fashion.

Scuba

Hi EntropiaCub, welcome. This is a nice site to hang on or just read stuff.

About the 'new' skills at GWNorden. It says this in the skill descriptions for those skills:

Quote:

Originally Posted by GWNorden Det verkar som denna spell inte längre finns med i spelet.

In english that means something like "It appears that this spell isn't in the game anymore."

The translation isn't perfect since Swedish is my third language but the point remains. So those skills might have been on planning desk but then scrapped.

Skizzle the Curado

are all proffessions going to have the same amount of skills avaliable?

HotSnack

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skizzle the Curado are all proffessions going to have the same amount of skills avaliable?

Roughly it seems, which is just as well. As I don't want superflous skills being made up just so everyhting appears 'even'.

Sausaletus Rex

Quote:

Originally Posted by EntropiaCub hmm, it seems there's another some new skills, specially into the Mesmer profession... I've seen @ GW Norden, the sweden fansite which has hosted the 39th itw, this

Those skills were already noted here. The general concensus is that they were once in the game but have since been taken out, renamed, or replaced with newer images. Those pictures are from the fansite kit and the skill icons in the fansite kit haven't been updated in a while. For example, I believe they still list "Flare" as "Burst" and then there's the issue of all the shifting elite skills meaning that some elite icons are available while others aren't. I don't remember those skills ever being in but they certainly weren't available last beta weekend or, reportedly, in the Scandanavian BWE.

No, the change with Mesmers has to do with Mantras. At least one's shifted from a stance to an enchantment spell. There's possibly another but I haven't heard exactly which one it is with any certainty. But Mantra of Recall is definitely a spell now. As a stance it had an instant casting time but now, of course, it's no longer instant and has a 1 second activation time with that .75 aftercast.

Also, Flourish has been linked to Strength. You'll gain 1~6 energy for each skill you recharge as opposed to a flat 5.

And Traps seem to have been rebalanced as well. The AoE of their effect - the blast, not the trigger - seems to have gone down as has the damage, although I don't have solid figures yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Typhoon I'll take ferocious strike

That's another good one. At Beastmastery 12 you'll be gaining 8 energy roughly every 8 seconds, depending on your pet's attack rate. That's nearly doubling your Ranger's regeneration (Depends on your Expertise, of course. At 5 energy, spamming it is the equivalent of about 2 pips of degeneration. But at 2 energy it's less than a pip of degen and you'll rake in energy hand over fist). The adrenaline makes it nice for Ran/War or War/Ran, too. But I still think the pick of the litter, so to speak, is Disrupting because it's a skill you can use unlinked. You'll give up two slots because you'll need Charm Animal and Disrupting Lunge at the very least, but the skill locking effect isn't tied to anything and you'd just be getting cruddy damage anyway. But, even at Beastmastery 0 you can lock a skill for 20 seconds every 5 seconds, if you can time it right. It's the quickest interrupt in the game and it's a lot more impressive than Distracting Blow or Shot, for example. Only Disrupting Chop comes close but that's 6 adrenaline now meaning it's, at best, about 6 seconds to charge AND you can't use it on demand. Most Rangers and Warriors won't want to get into Beastmastery much more than it takes to get Tiger's Fury working so skills that work at low levels of Beastmastery have serious potential.

Still, the problem with pet attacks is that, well, pets still suck. They're no where near as effective as a monster at the equivallent level. They're hard to control and they do damage that's an annoyance at best unless you give up a lot of your slots to the calls and attack skills to improve them. But that's just making something poor into something decent. Even at their best they're not going to compete with Warrior or Ranger weapons in terms of damage. The attack skills are nice and all but if your pets only doing 10~15 damage a hit to a caster to start with, you're not really making anyone quiver with fear, exactly. Granted, that's damage on top of what your character can do themselves but using an effective pet means you've given up some of your ability to do anything else by giving up some of your skill bar to making your pet function. And you'll have spent your attributes points making those pet skills that much better further limiting the ability of your character to do something as there's really not much in Beastmastery's 30 odd skills beyond those pet skills. There's Tiger's Fury but not much else to make your Ranger and not your pet shine. You're already goign to be investing heavily in Expertise so that doesn't leave much else for you - you can take a secondary line like an Elementalist's line or Marksmanship for a bow, maybe, otherwise you're just standing around and watching your pet - so rather than having two characters for the price of one when you bring along a pet you're really getting two suboptimal characters with a limited selection of skills.

Of course, if pets by themselves were effective then being able to buff them up could lead to some problems, too, as they might become *too* strong. Still, Warriors and bow Rangers can buff themselves and get to insane heights, I'd think that limiting your character by giving up some of that skill bar and, perhaps, linking pet damage to Beastmastery the way bow damage is linked to Marksmanship you're ensuring that pets aren't going to be overwhelming just up to par with what else a Ranger can already do.

__________________
In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.

Rellok

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex Also, Flourish has been linked to Strength. You'll gain 1~6 energy for each skill you recharge as opposed to a flat 5.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!! I never got to play the R/W expertise flourish skill spammer

Oh well,
Matt

Mumblyfish

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex Also, Flourish has been linked to Strength. You'll gain 1~6 energy for each skill you recharge as opposed to a flat 5.

Oh, balls. That was my favourite build, last beta. I wonder how much use Flourish would have, sans the energy? I suppose it'd still serve a Ranger/Warrior Swordmaster well, what with the instant recharge of attack skills. Or would Serpent's Quickness be the better route to go down, this time? It'd open up an Elite slot, at the very least.

Sodding Arena. Not letting us non-Warriors have any nice melee things...

Cain

I have the new ranger pet attack images if you want them. They are 64x64. I grabbed them for my program duing the Scandinavian BWE.

__________________
Cain Zeidon - R/Me

WNxTyphoon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex Linking pet damage to Beastmastery the way bow damage is linked to Marksmanship

That's a good idea.

Maybe armor as well? I would really like to see pets become at least a semi viable option in PvP instead of just being something that occasionally gets in your way.

Insomnia

Quote:

Originally Posted by HotSnack Roughly it seems, which is just as well. As I don't want superflous skills being made up just so everyhting appears 'even'.

Are there 'expectations' for new skills in other professions?