This article is talking all about the leaked Ranger Elite Specialization that is coming out with expansion 2. It is all purely speculation based on observations and discussions seen across the internet. If you don’t want to have any of it spoiled for you then I suggest you do not continue reading past this picture of one of my pretty Rangers.

Really now, final warning.

Right! I’m now going to assume that if you’re still reading you want to see spoilers, see what the current theories are and are passengers on the high-speed hype train, destination; Vabbi.

Because we don’t have the traditional speculations we would expect from WoodenPotatoes, I thought I would try to fill his boots and do a little bit of exploration of the leaks. While I totally respect his reasons for not doing the speculation videos, I don’t entirely agree with him. It is my view that these leaks only gave us a small taste and there is still a TON of room for crafting theories about what the Soulbeast might be. I also totally respect anyone who is sticking their fingers in their ears and singing as loudly as they can to avoid any spoilers. But, for those of us who DO want to talk about it…well here we go.

The Name

Soulbeast as a name doesn’t really give anything away. It could be saying that we’ll be expanding on the nature spirits Rangers already have. Maybe all our new pets will be ghosts? After the supposed Elementalist leak that came a little bit too late and turned out to be mentioned on the official forums, I thought I would have a look to see if Soulbeast turned up. It didn’t.

If we break it down into the two words, we have ‘soul’ and ‘beast’. Beast is pretty straightforward, I think. It’s just simply referring to animals, which for a Ranger is pretty important. The Soul part though could mean a few different things. Currently, in-game, the things that use the word soul tend to revolve around Necromancers. I don’t think there’s any connection there at all. So, maybe we should be looking at the different definitions of the word.

1. The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.

This is the pretty standard definition of soul and leaves us exactly where we were before. Maybe we’re working with the souls of animals? If we are, how are we doing that? Are they spirit pets? Or maybe it’s something similar to another fantasy MMORPG; Rift, in which you are given three different souls and that’s how you create your character’s abilities.

2. Emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance.

I will be totally honest, I don’t see how it could possibly be this definition. If you can think of a way leave a comment.

3. The essence or embodiment of a specified quality.

How does this work into the Ranger? Instead of the soul being an actual thing maybe you take on aspects and traits of certain animals. Stealth of a skelk, toughness of a lion…that sort of stuff. In this way, you could almost make Soulbeast something like an Elementalist. Instead of having weapon swap, make it so you change what animal you’re channeling. While that does sound really cool I just don’t see them going quite that far. That would basically be creating several different specializations but only for one class.

So basically this has left us with two possibilities; actual souls or the embodiment of animals.

Maybe we’ll be able to shed some more light on it by looking at the leaked wheel itself.

The Wheel

So, to start with we’ve got an adorable Sylvari with a giant glowy plant dog which in my mind at least gives some credence to the idea of actual animal spirits. Are they Norn Spirits of the Wild? Did Rytlock adopt an army of pets while he was in the mists and forgot to mention it? Are we going to be facing another “Later, Cub” type of situation where we aren’t really given any information about where they come from? I don’t really see the theory of embodiment in the picture in the center.

Of course, there is more to the wheel than just the center. I’m going to skip the weapon for right now and take a look at the skill wheel itself. One thing I see right away is that there a couple mentions of plants and plant-like creatures. I’m specifically looking at the fifth and ninth ones. The fifth quite obviously being a tree while the ninth reminds me of the loading screen for Brisbane Wildlands with the Sylvari reaching up to comfort the treant. Though looking closer it may actually be a very big winged creature standing behind a man.

1 – Weapon unlock.

2 – Skill Mechanic.

3 – Major Trait. Bunny! Often associated with speed in GW2.

4 – Minor Trait. Bear/Wolf yelling. Could be just about anything.

5 – Major Trait. Tree. This stands out simply because it is a plant instead of an animal. Of course, we know plant-animals are a thing too.

6 – Minor Trait. A man with an animal climbing him? This is my interpretation of the picture, yours might be different.

7 – Major Trait. Bird/Harpy. Certainly something with wings.

At this point, it should be noted that it seems the specialization line is being done differently. Alternating Major and Minor traits suggests that you are unlocking across instead of up and down. So before you even have your healing skill you’ve already got one line of traits laid out. This will mean that at the beginning, all Soulbeasts will play the same.

What it really means is that if you want to just play with the weapon you don’t HAVE to finish the wheel before you have traits. You’ll have a straight line of traits so you aren’t gimped. But, if you want that variety or any of the utility skills you will have to keep going. This makes the Elite spec a whole lot more appealing to take your time unlocking the wheel rather than racing to get it all done as quickly as possible so you aren’t gimped by not having access to the full number of traits that you would have if you weren’t using the spec.

This is an absolutely ingenious move for Elite Specializations and I applaud whoever came up with the idea in Arenanet. I would love to see Arenanet go back and change the first Elite Specializations to match this, I just don’t know if they will.

8 – Healing Skill. A man and his bear holding the same stance. To me, this suggests that the heal will be for both of us.

9 – Utility Skill. A man and his creature. The size of the creature is throwing me off a bit since we haven’t seen any pets that big since the Heart of Thorns beta gave us Bristleback Park. Maybe Arenanet will be giving us huge pets to go after in the expansion? Or maybe they realized how popular the massive Bristlebacks were and they’ve made it so your pets get huge. Either way, I don’t think this actually is a Treant like I was saying earlier, I think this is actually a Wyvern and is symbolizing toughness or armor in some way.

10 – Major Trait. Pet house. Activate this when you’re in the doghouse with the Mrs. for a minor debuff. Joking aside, there isn’t much you can get from this. Though I would point out that the only place we set pet houses are in Ogre areas. Ogres are of course most famously known for being amazing beastmasters. Will Rangers be learning the secret of the Ogres? That would be so cool.

11 – Major Trait. An eye. Too vague to really get anything from it.

12 – Major Trait. A hand reaching for a paw. It reminds me a little bit of the painting The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo. I’m not sure that’s what the devs were going for with it, that’s just what I see when I look at it.

13 – Utility Skill. Once again it looks like we’ve got a giant pet standing behind a man. Maybe it’s just symbolic?

14 – Utility Skill. Moa. It looks like the moa might be running towards something. Or it might be a burst of speed.

15 – Major Trait. A collar with a heart on it. Could symbolize the bond between you and your pet.

16 – Major Trait. Eyes, that look like they’re hiding in a bush. My thoughts immediately go towards some sort of stealth but I’m not entirely sure how it would work, especially as we’re talking about a trait.

17 – Major Trait. Teeth. Might cause bleeding?

18 – Utility Skill. I’m really having trouble interpreting this icon. It looks like it might be a big creature leaping or up on its hind legs about to hit something. But then there are some other things in the image too that I can’t quite make out. It’s all kind of a mess. What is this?

19 – Elite Skill. Wolf with a scar across its face. One of the things that really stands out to me here is the hard line between the dark side of the face and the light. I’m not sure it really means anything but that’s what stands out. The whole thing kind of makes me think about Kylo Ren. You’ve got the light side, you’ve got the dark side, and you’ve got a nasty face scar from that time you offered to help a pretty lady and she wanted nothing to do with you. Obviously, I don’t think that’s where the devs were going with this but that’s just what I see.

Weapon

So then, now that we’ve finished the wheel lets take a look at the weapon. With the image in the middle of the wheel, it’s a little bit hard to tell what weapon it is she’s holding. To be perfectly honest it looks like a pickaxe to me. That’s why we have to go and look at the first thing on the wheel. That tells us exactly what we’re looking at. We’re looking at a dagger. We can tell this because ArenaNet likes to use certain symbols in certain ways to represent things. At first glance, it could be either a sword or a dagger. It doesn’t have the right shape to be a greatsword so it isn’t that. The blade is also a little bit too short to be a sword, but what really gives it away is the direction the weapon is pointed. Pointed up, it would be a sword, but because it’s pointed downwards it’s a dagger.

Rangers already have dagger offhand so logically this will be a main hand weapon. This suggests to me that this is very much a melee-based specialization. We may be taking a page out of the Necromancer book where dagger/dagger is a badass slicey melee build.

The Theories

Before we get into what I think this specialization is all about I want to take a brief look at the theories that I’ve seen.

Petless

There seemed to be a bit of speculation that this is a petless specialization. I don’t really see how they came to this conclusion with absolutely all the icons seemingly pointing towards pets. Maybe they’re looking at the image of the Fern Hound and interpreting it as a spirit animal instead of a real one? I don’t think this is the case at all. While I do like the idea of a petless Ranger I don’t think Arenanet will ever go that route. The pets are a core part of the Ranger’s identity.

Kits and Transformation

These two ideas are kind of different approaches to the same idea. In this idea, the utility skills are like Engineer toolkits or like Norn transformations that change your skills giving you quite a few different options. I don’t think this is the case simply because there are so many different types of pets. The idea that you somehow absorb your pet’s abilities or take on aspects of them in a way that changes you sounds really interesting. But it’s also a TON of work for the developers. Even if we removed the underwater options and looked just at families we’re talking about 12 types of animals. There clearly aren’t that many on the wheel and I don’t think Arenanet would only introduce a few.

My Theory

So we’re finally at the part where I get to tell my theory. At first, I was really on board with the idea of taking on aspects of animals. But it doesn’t really work for me anymore. Last night my husband, who is also a GW2 fan, suggested that it seemed to him like we would be getting a closer bond to our pets. That we’re linked and we’re fighting side by side in the action. At first, it sounded a bit lame to me. Ok, so we’re basically super Rangers, woo. But, if you combine that with the Ogre theory I mentioned up when we were looking at the wheel it suddenly makes sense.

What if we have managed to impress the Ogres enough for them to teach us their ways? That would explain us having a deeper connection with our pets. Maybe so deep that our souls are intertwined even? Suddenly this meh idea sounds really damn amazing!

And, if it is Ogres then this might give us a hint about a new pet. There is one creature in the world that Ogres can tame that players cannot. That is the raptor. What if one of the pets we can now tame in the expansion is a raptor? How cool would that be? This is something that could potentially even be put in place around the world to give us a bunch of different types of raptors. I don’t think that will happen only because they like to keep things secluded to their areas. Imagine how frustrated a F2Per would be if they saw a Juvenile Raptor and they couldn’t tame it? That’d be bad for the game. It’s far more likely that there will be a raptor or two in the new zones for us to tame.

So, I hope you enjoyed my first speculation article. I’d love some feedback on the article in the comments. Also, let me know what you think of my theory! Please keep in mind that I don’t have any insider information. I’ve not seen anything more than you have. I’ve just used the power of observation and a little bit of imagination to come up with everything I’ve said. Along with the theories that I’ve seen on Reddit, in Facebook groups, and in-game. Barring any major announcements or events that I simply can’t pass up next week, I’ll take a look at another Elite Specialization. Do you have a preference? Let me know!

Related: ArenaNet