Guild Wars 2

I really hope its plays more like a guard(active defense) and the pr guy is just being your “clueless guy know nothing of the combat meachnis” PR BSter ;x

Healers. Healers everywhere. I think not. We will equip all our power, all our precision and all our ferocity and kill absolutely everything faster than it kills us . . . or die trying.

Heavy Healing confirmed! :^)

I save my thought for until I see both the new and reworked encounters. I like what Calmon-Huang does with the Engineer so far. His ideas are bold and unusual with a direct concern to the active combat. At a glance, the healing from Druid seems to be the strongest out of the conventional means. I think it has flavor and potential.

Meh, if they do change it to require tanks and healers Anet got the last of my money when I bought this expansion. I got other hobbies I can use to feed my addiction.

I hate it. I wanted my ranger to bring group utility, not be a healbot in Settler gear.

Virtually all the traits are “heal” and “remove a condition” with the odd daze/immobilize in there.

This is gonna be Cleric staff guardian 2.0

Zenith.7301:

This is gonna be Cleric staff guardian 2.0

Well at least rangers are already used to getting kicked on sight anyways x)

I feel that water field blasting and cleric guardian will still offer better healz than druid

#clericguardhype

Lampshade.7569:

Zenith.7301:

This is gonna be Cleric staff guardian 2.0

Well at least rangers are already used to getting kicked on sight anyways x)

Just believe in the LB/Staff ranger to carry you through raids :>

Enaretos.8079:

Just believe in the LB/Staff ranger to carry you through raids :>

And if he doesn’t, we’ll just yell at the druid for not being enough of a druid.

I find it highly unlikely that we will get dedicated healers for raids.
Much more likely that every so often we need to stack up to split high damaging hits from bosses and pull our best healing before splitting up doing the encounter again.

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

And the new pets looks good also.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:
Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

yes they will

Amineo.8951:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

And the new pets looks good also.

Indeed. Smoke-field on demand with a low cooldown, FINALLY a 1.2k ranged pet!, a fire breathing wyvern with the best animation in game (lol) and a tiger that I think gives fury/swiftness on one of its attacks.

Ropechef.6192:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:
Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

yes they will

okay, bye!

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Ropechef.6192:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:
Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

yes they will

okay, bye!

cya

I expect the new druid to yell at people: stop dying!

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

This.

After thinking about it more carefully and discussing it with some guildies, I also think that it might get useful for raids. Heck, i hope Yelloweyedemonvis right!

Photinous.4628:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

This.

If you’re using weapons other than staff most of your druid traitline traits are obsolete, as all of them are tied to healing and no weapons other than staff heal. You would rely on celestial form to proc them, which as said already in the streams takes time and is temporary.

And celestial form does zero DPS.

If you go druid, you will kitten your damage and have no synergy whatsoever with your weapons as the staff complements none of your weapons. Staff will compete with longbow as a ranged weapon, and longbow is the dps weapon while the staff is, well, yet another hybrid weapon.

Keep living in LaLa Land though, you people with your love of hybrids are probably those bringing in rabid mesmers and rangers to groups that don’t want the dead weight.

Zenith.7301:

Photinous.4628:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Everyone just think Druids are only good for healing…

People WAKE UP!

There are 2 other traitlines the ranger can pick, its old utilities and another weapon (if staff is actually needed in the first place).

What is stopping the druid to run spotter, frost spirit, maybe glyph of empowerment too, and S/A or warhorn as a second weapon set? Have that with ballanced armor stats, and you have a strong healing class with insane group support…

Just because the druid line and staff is all about healing, it does not mean that druids will just stand there spam heals…

This.

If you’re using weapons other than staff most of your druid traitline traits are obsolete, as all of them are tied to healing and no weapons other than staff heal. You would rely on celestial form to proc them, which as said already in the streams takes time and is temporary.

And celestial form does zero DPS.

If you go druid, you will kitten your damage and have no synergy whatsoever with your weapons as the staff complements none of your weapons. Staff will compete with longbow as a ranged weapon, and longbow is the dps weapon while the staff is, well, yet another hybrid weapon.

Keep living in LaLa Land though, you people with your love of hybrids are probably those bringing in rabid mesmers and rangers to groups that don’t want the dead weight.

Because swapping from staff to another weapon when everyone is healed on full so you can contribute to some dps or blast something with warhorn is too mainstream….

And of course, you know exactly how HoT content will be, so you can comment on whether or not you need pure healing build or hybrid healing build.

People, I’m serious when I’m saying that the zerker meta turned your minds into salad…

Good thing I’ve been a salad since headstart.

I find Druid to be akin to Ventari for Revenant : an off tool you can choose to use at will when skritt happens.
For now the only way to apply constant reliable regen with ranger was a bit clunky through resounding timbre.
In fact you could just spec Druid without having a staff ( staff is only one adept trait of the spec) and just use Avatar when some heal is needed, just the same a Rev may want to switch to Ventari only when healing is required (and you can just play Shiro/Ventari with Sword/sword//mace/sword).

In fact depending on the power of Celestial Avatar’s heals you may also play a berserker Druid because you won’t need to boost the heals more than their base value since you have so many of them. It will depend on your group and on the encounter. Sure, during Avatar you won’t do any damage but it will be in the way of playing, not the way you gear your toon.
I don’t think (hope) a full dedicated healer will be needed in HoT, just some form of group sustain and it will be up to the player to choose if they want one guy to handle this or spread it on everyone in the group though traits and water fields explosions.

It is like actual Meta : you normally wouldn’t require a PS war, just act in a coordinated manner to maximize might for the group. But putting the task on one single character makes the role more reliable and let other people to focus on something else (DPS or group defence).

I think the biggest conflict of interests is in Astral Form. You charge it very slowly with damage, and much quicker with heals. The problem with this is that it encourages staying in Staff to charge it up and then burst the big skills in Astral Form.

I will say that bringing FS/Spotter in addition to Druid will be mandatory for a Ranger, but it lacks aoe protection (stone spirit is abysmal), it lacks aoe stability, it lacks other aoe boons. I seriously can’t see this actively competing with a Guardian or an Assassin’s Presence Ventari/Glint Revenant if the content is hard enough.

Who knows, though. We’ll all get to try it come next weekend, and then we can give more solid feedback on the matter. I do plan to compile some serious feedback on raids/druid/scrapper for my next report post BWE3, so make sure to post what you think in the next BWE.