Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Also the ‘zerker cancer-meta’ is more thought out indepth and uses more of the games mechanics then stnd in the corner and spam heals.

Oh, so stand in the corner and spam damage?

Sure if you don’t know how pve works go do that.

Whether you like it or not, Anet are making a conscious effort to move away from the zerker meta in future updates. They have recognised a flaw in gameplay and so too have most others. Guess you’ll have to deal with it.

Ellye.9123:

The fact that you have a one spec focused on Healing doesn’t suddenly means that healing will be obligatory.

Considering how focused Druid is on healing to the exclusion of everything else the only way it will be viable is if they force so much un avoidable damage on us in raids that a pure healer will be needed. If they don’t do this (and I’m sure we all hope they don’t) then the entire spec will be pointless.

Its just an amazingly poorly designed spec.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Name 1 Druid trait that goes great with a Ranger trait.

Honed Axes/Path of Scars/Ancient Seeds.
Moment of Clarity/Primal Echoes.
Moment of Clarity/Lunar Impact, which can have 100% daze uptime (so long as you remain in Celestial Form).
Tidal Surge/Clarion Bond.
Predator’s Onslaught/Ancient Seeds.
Bark Skin/Cultivated Synergy/Lingering Light.

Uete.3805:

Druid does seem to go a different route, but then again we already can use a Sun spirit and Call of the Wild depicts a giant Moon when cast.

The spirits are linked to the Druids of GW1 lore. Which, prior to becoming spirits (again, a trait shared by most living beings of Tyria) were nature-magic-wielding magic-users. Nature magic here, means “earthen” nature.

Uete.3805:

To me it seems they are pushing it into that celestial direction, broading the sense of Natural magic to include the stars which are also part of Nature. The moon, the sun, any celestial body IS a part of the natural world, which turns out to be anything but chaotic in nature, or we’d have the planets colliding into each other.

The problem here, as I mentioned in my original post, is that these definitions of “natural” pertain to our world, not Tyria. In Tyria, when I say “nature”, what I am referencing is the specific magic that governs specific aspects of the game universe, that follow a particular theme, in this case – “earthen” magic. Their universe does not operate on our laws. Their universe is inexorably, intimately linked to magic and “professions” in lore represent the particular magical affinity.

Uete.3805:

Specially at the astronomical level, nature is anything but chaotic. And the mists (which depict a far more chaotic version/explanation for reality) belong to the Revy, so… not following you on that one either.

Again, you’re referencing our nature, not Tyria’s. Furthermore, the Mists is a dimension/domain within their universe, it does not belong to the Revenant. You bring up a good point through this comment though, as the Celestial aspects would suit a Revenant as well. (Point of interest – the Druid announcement page has a very clear GW1 “Celestial” theme, which were mist-born entities, similiar to the Human gods and Norn spirits.) In an attempt to clarify, astral/celestial mechanics were never associated with Rangers. More than that, they were quite specifically associated with Mesmers, Ritualists, and simple academics of Tyria. Mesmer magic has always been described as “chaos” magic. Chaos here, being used to mean “unbound to the other magical aspects”, implying that their magical affinity could somehow be pulled directly from the mists (sort of their convergence point of all dimensions). Revenants share quite a bit in common with Ritualists in the ability to see into the mists, which given the GW1 Celestial’s origins, would make sense for this magical talent to also fall within a Revenant’s magical domain. In the end, the most important distinction is simply that magical domains have been quite clearly defined for quite some time, and astral/celestial magic does not fall within the magical domain from which Rangers derive their non-martial abilities.

Question: Why the hell do we care about the animations ?

We didnt care about them in GW 1 and back then 80% of All animations were copy/pasted from the other 20%

lordkrall.7241:

^ That is true for CERTAIN enemies. The agro system is different based on which foe you are facing.

And testing shows that the large majority of bosses follow that rule. Enough to the point that those rare cases are not great enough to be differrent than the occaisonal enemy in other games that will ignore agro for a moment or have certain skills that target a specific role

The ultimate problem with Druid:

Healing Power still scales for crap.

I dont think that Druid is poorly designed, I mean, in fact it has one of the more competitive and well desgined skills and traits of all the specs. Also, staff skills have some relation with plants, they look like roots and mushrooms and stuff like this. It doesnt feel at all as this spec was rushed.

dsslive.8473:

Final point, the druid isn’t “almost entirely” based on astral stuff, there’s a pretty 50/50 split between pure plant/animal stuff (staff skills regular glyphs) and the astral part (the celestial form and the changes to the glyphs- which are quite minimal as they’re just changed into aoe heals/condi removals)

I would be more happy with the theme if it would be the case that all staff skills and glyphs are earth related, while celestial-form contains all celestial-body-themed skills. But the only plant related skills are staff 4 and celestial 2 (and even this is a weird out-of-this-world celestial pustule). Staff 1-3 skills are also astral-themed, staff 5 not classifiable, the glyphs being a middleground, more elementalist-esque than in line with rangers nature magic.

It just seems odd that suspected worshippers of Melandru which sacrified themselves to become Willowhearts and ultimately spirits of the woods as summoned by rangers and sylvari had a cultural twist to heavy skywatching (whats hardly possible in a jungle and also would need a bunch of mathematical equipment, whats also unlikely in the jungle) and worshipping celestial bodies (whats actually more a Dwayna thing). If they cared about nature in a sense of the whole greater system with the universe etc.pp. and not the jungle/earth/plantlife itself, why bothering with living within a highly hostile enviroment in which its hard to ever even get a glimpse of seeing the sky – and not on top of a mountain, where you have clear vision, or in nordic seas, where moon induced tides actually play a role.
Stars and the moon have absolutely no meaningful impact on the jungle, their chosen habitat, and interfere in no way with the spirits of the jungle or can be controlled in any way from the earth. The only thing what makes slight sense in what a GW1 druid as we would think of would probably want to get it hands on and learn is to control the sunlight, channeling the light from above the treetops down to bring it to the bottom layers of the jungle to help it grow and heal. But even that seems off since it contradicts the laws of nature/the jungle, helping things grow that are not supposed do grow, bringing imbalance to the system an so on.

Aither.2859:

Perhaps people should try out the class and the expansion before going into a tangent about how the Druid does no damage. If I recall the Monk was one of the most sought after classes in GW1 and it seems that the Druid will now be the healing meta that all parties will need. You hear that Rangers? Parties will actually want you to come along cause you will actually be useful now.

monkey’s paw folds down one finger

Leo G.4501:

So you’re pretty much guessing yet you’ll go to the extreme to call someone a liar despite your lack of evidence or first-hand knowledge?

The OP actually phrased it more as a question to open discussion on it. And it’s a question I think should be asked.

I’m not against the devs going against the perceived philosophy because the perceived philosophy is that, so long as you have enough aegis, blind, reflect and damage, the game won’t ask you to do anything more and you’ll be able to blast through content. If the game, at some point, asks you to sustain instead? Or to keep something alive? Or to control the foes? There is nothing wrong with that.

It’s not a perceived philosophy, it’s what Anet clearly stated and has continued stating for years. And it’s not about having enough aegis/blind/etc, it’s about never needing a specific class. Never having to wait around because your group’s healer had to work overtime. Anet made a very specific choice to not have a healing class in GW2, and used that choice as a key point of their core design philosophy and marketing.

Yet here we are with a dedicated healing spec announced. One that is claimed to be unlike anything we’ve seen in the game so far, and very powerful in raids. Along with saying new content will have unavoidable damage(implying outside healing is needed). To me, everything put together is heavily implying that druids will be nearly (if not absolutely) required.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Astralporing.1957:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

And this is a bad thing how exactly? …

Pretty much everyone asked for an actual challenging content.

To be precise, a small number of forum posters asked for it. For a large part of player community current content is already challenging enough, and many others do not care.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

They gave classes much more focused roles in order to provide something that requires thinking and finally get rid of the braindead zerker meta.

No point in removing one meta, if it’s done through introducing another, even more strict meta.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Also, who said that raids will be easy enough to be completed by pugs? You might never see stuff like that on chat once people realise that they need a team/guild in order to actually complete a raid.

Because within guilds there will not be situations where a leader needs to roll a dice to see which of the guildmembers will be forced to play the healer (because all the players that liked playing healer role left 2 years ago). Yeah, right.

Let’s be honest, healers are a bottleneck in other games, because this is a role that is unappealing to a large majority of players. And most players that found it appealing left GW2 long ago.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Last but not least, I’d rather have groups looking for healers rather than Ice Bow providers.

Don’t worry, you won’t see any icebow in action after the next Tuesday. It won’t lessen the desirability of eles in groups in the tiniest.

First of all, anyone who thinks that the game is currently challenging, is brain-damaged., or came to GW2 after 5 years of hack n’ slash games played on easy mode.

Also, it seems you are stuck in 2007 MMO gaming. Cause nowdays, even in super small population MMOs, healers are everywhere, and very easy to find. Games offer various roles for 1 class depending on how you trait. It’s not like you can only heal 24/7 being a X class.

And, yes, Ice bow WILL affect ele desirability. Once HoT launches, elite specs become playable and zerker meta goes bye bye, how many eles would you want for a 5 man group? If any…

I think you must play a healer, because i cant think of a single current gen mmo that doesnt take dps substantially longer to get groups without a healer friend.

What games are you talking about here? Both wow and ffxiv dps takes long to get groups

mrstealth.6701:

It means that something is very wrong because being able to do that is the core philosophy of the game. Being able to complete any content with whatever party composition you have. You take who you have, and don’t have to wait around because you lack a healer/etc.

Healers have nothing to do with it. Let’s go back over what I said:

1. Balance requires that dropping one profession in favour of two of a different profession results in a substantial DPS loss.
2. You shouldn’t be able to kitten your raid’s DPS substantially eight times over and still pass a tight DPS check or enrage timer, like the ones that will presumably feature in every single raid.

From those points, it follows that if ten thieves can even come within sight of completing a raid, then either the raid is tuned badly, or the game’s balance is off. Not because of healing or reflects or whatever, but because of DPS.

As for the game’s philosophy being about always being able to succeed with whatever you have to hand, a raid comp comprising ten of the same profession is pretty contrived. If you just grab ten people from your guild and tell all of them to play their favourite specs, you should usually end up with something diverse enough to work.

Of course, if you’re trying to set up a raiding static for OMFG or Favourable Winds, you’re probably going to be in trouble.

I envisioned some more nature themed utility skills with leaves and lightning or something more with the elements than we got.
However, my biggest disappointment is that the traits do nothing for/to the pet. I was really hoping for something to also do with the pet. Thus I don’t think I’ll even bother with druid since the traits don’t synergize with how I play. I honestly love my longbow too much to give it up for using staff most of the time.

I believe this is a valid discussion to have, and a point worth considering. About three years ago, the forums had a similar topic when ArenaNet announced the introduction of Ascended Equipment that raised much doubt and consternation that they were going back on their support of horizontal progression and putting in a vertical gear treadmill after the fact.

I and a good number of others expressed their doubts (others of course, spoke in favor of potential verticality— both sides being valid), but now, several years afterwards it turns out that our fears of GW2 going the traditional route were put to rest. The GW2 philosophy as it was stated was upheld.

Now, whether this was a result of community backlash or was smartly planned all along is a mystery to me, but the two conclusions I can draw from that whole event is this:

1. For now, I trust that ArenaNet will be able to implement new content intelligently and in a way that benefits everyone, including casual players like myself who have shied away from more traditional MMOs. They may not get it on the first try, but as a work-in-progress I believe they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

2. If you have concerns, voice them. Like the OP, I would also not like content to be pigeonholed into a position where certain classes/builds/setups are required and everyone is expected to run like a well-oiled machine 100% of the time. The option should absolutely be there, as there are a number of folks who enjoy that, but there should also be other avenues of approach for everyone else to join the party and have a good time.

At this point though, it might be too premature to judge which direction ArenaNet is going. It’s a bold one, and it may have a few bumps along the road but I do have confidence that of all the companies on the market, they’re best equipped to implement this smartly.

Fortunately, BWE3 will feature raids/healers/engis/all that good stuff, so we’ll be able to see for ourselves a week from now and provide the appropriate feedback.

its either the holy trinity or pure zerker meta, theres really no in-between honestly from what i think at least. either holy trinity( where team coordination is really required) or jerker meta where everyone needs to learn how to survive themselves more or less(which i think is quite boring). so why not give this a try? i mean at least for once there will be some thinking and skill play involved instead of mindless stacking and might stacking and dpsdpsdps?

my 2 cents

Holland.9351:

This is the feedback thread:
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/ranger/Druid-Healer-Confirmed-Feedback-merged

I sincerely hope that will get abandoned. We need structure, not a random-info-dump-abyss.

FunnyCide.5426:

I envisioned some more nature themed utility skills with leaves and lightning or something more with the elements than we got.
However, my biggest disappointment is that the traits do nothing for/to the pet. I was really hoping for something to also do with the pet. Thus I don’t think I’ll even bother with druid since the traits don’t synergize with how I play. I honestly love my longbow too much to give it up for using staff most of the time.

Oh man I wish people would read. The Druid is not the Ranger. The Ranger’s mechanic is the pet. The Druid’s mechanic is the Astral Avatar. The Druid has no obligation to the pet. I’m not saying the pet doesn’t need fixing for the Ranger – because it really does, but it’s not a concern for the design of the Druid.

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Also the ‘zerker cancer-meta’ is more thought out indepth and uses more of the games mechanics then stnd in the corner and spam heals.

Oh, so stand in the corner and spam damage?

Sure if you don’t know how pve works go do that.

Whether you like it or not, Anet are making a conscious effort to move away from the zerker meta in future updates. They have recognised a flaw in gameplay and so too have most others. Guess you’ll have to deal with it.

Did you even read my post? I said the Zerker meta was more thought out and complex then this 1 note joke of a spec, I didn’t say ‘OMG PLS DON’T TAKE ZERK META AWAY’

Just like the zerk meta teams don’t actually bring the max dps spec of each class and instead sacrifices some dps for them to bring support to buff the dps of other classes, raid groups won’t bring a druid because it does nothing but heal. They will bring a chronomancer who can spam their well heal well while providing alacrity and quickness, they will bring a quardian who can throw out damage mitagating and condi cleanse while throwing out some passive heals, they will bring an ele who can take a break from massive boon generation and high dps to drop a water feild then start blasting it like crazy, they will bring a rev who can jump into ventari to heal then jump back to another legend to fill a different role, they will bring an engie who can do simalar with their kits. Hell if a Necro finds its way in somehow they can bring their life siphon aura just to add some extra few ticks and all this would add up.

Levetty.1279:

Ellye.9123:

The fact that you have a one spec focused on Healing doesn’t suddenly means that healing will be obligatory.

Considering how focused Druid is on healing to the exclusion of everything else the only way it will be viable is if they force so much un avoidable damage on us in raids that a pure healer will be needed. If they don’t do this (and I’m sure we all hope they don’t) then the entire spec will be pointless.

Its just an amazingly poorly designed spec.

It does have more than just healing tho. It has condi removal, projectile defense and overall control. They have knockback, immo’s, dazes as well as the ability to make their allies do higher damage and even an AoE stunbreak. But you can ignore that and focus just on the healing part ofc, that works.

Rauderi.8706:

Healing Power still scales for crap.

Better tell the metabattle admins that this build sucks then.

phys.7689:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Astralporing.1957:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

And this is a bad thing how exactly? …

Pretty much everyone asked for an actual challenging content.

To be precise, a small number of forum posters asked for it. For a large part of player community current content is already challenging enough, and many others do not care.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

They gave classes much more focused roles in order to provide something that requires thinking and finally get rid of the braindead zerker meta.

No point in removing one meta, if it’s done through introducing another, even more strict meta.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Also, who said that raids will be easy enough to be completed by pugs? You might never see stuff like that on chat once people realise that they need a team/guild in order to actually complete a raid.

Because within guilds there will not be situations where a leader needs to roll a dice to see which of the guildmembers will be forced to play the healer (because all the players that liked playing healer role left 2 years ago). Yeah, right.

Let’s be honest, healers are a bottleneck in other games, because this is a role that is unappealing to a large majority of players. And most players that found it appealing left GW2 long ago.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Last but not least, I’d rather have groups looking for healers rather than Ice Bow providers.

Don’t worry, you won’t see any icebow in action after the next Tuesday. It won’t lessen the desirability of eles in groups in the tiniest.

First of all, anyone who thinks that the game is currently challenging, is brain-damaged., or came to GW2 after 5 years of hack n’ slash games played on easy mode.

Also, it seems you are stuck in 2007 MMO gaming. Cause nowdays, even in super small population MMOs, healers are everywhere, and very easy to find. Games offer various roles for 1 class depending on how you trait. It’s not like you can only heal 24/7 being a X class.

And, yes, Ice bow WILL affect ele desirability. Once HoT launches, elite specs become playable and zerker meta goes bye bye, how many eles would you want for a 5 man group? If any…

I think you must play a healer, because i cant think of a single current gen mmo that doesnt take dps substantially longer to get groups without a healer friend.

What games are you talking about here? Both wow and ffxiv dps takes long to get groups

Of course it takes longer to find healer or tank. Although finding dps and finding the right dps is not the same story.

Its much more difficult to play dps properly than to play healer properly. So yeah, since 80% of dps are n00bs (MMO rule #X) its kinda difficult to find geared dps with proper knowledge in order to kill things before they go enrange and HULK SMASH everyone.

About Q times, in a game with GW2 population, at peak times you wont wait a single bit no matter what role you play.

Levetty.1279:

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Also the ‘zerker cancer-meta’ is more thought out indepth and uses more of the games mechanics then stnd in the corner and spam heals.

Oh, so stand in the corner and spam damage?

Sure if you don’t know how pve works go do that.

Whether you like it or not, Anet are making a conscious effort to move away from the zerker meta in future updates. They have recognised a flaw in gameplay and so too have most others. Guess you’ll have to deal with it.

Did you even read my post? I said the Zerker meta was more thought out and complex then this 1 note joke of a spec, I didn’t say ‘OMG PLS DON’T TAKE ZERK META AWAY’

Just like the zerk meta teams don’t actually bring the max dps spec of each class and instead sacrifices some dps for them to bring support to buff the dps of other classes, raid groups won’t bring a druid because it does nothing but heal. They will bring a chronomancer who can spam their well heal well while providing alacrity and quickness, they will bring a quardian who can throw out damage mitagating and condi cleanse while throwing out some passive heals, they will bring an ele who can take a break from massive boon generation and high dps to drop a water feild then start blasting it like crazy, they will bring a rev who can jump into ventari to heal then jump back to another legend to fill a different role, they will bring an engie who can do simalar with their kits. Hell if a Necro finds its way in somehow they can bring their life siphon aura just to add some extra few ticks and all this would add up.

All of that won’t be much good if they’re all dead because the new content is too hard-hitting though, will it?

We’ll see. I’m not claiming to know outright that heavy-healing will definitely be needed in the new content – we can only say that because of what the Devs have been telling us.

I think it’s about time healing was finally given a better platform and buffed. If you are right about PvE – and it turns out we don’t need dedicated Druid healers – that’s fine, but you can’t deny that WvW and PvP will benefit heavily from it.

celestial might be the optimal way to go, still bringing a balance of good damage and healing to the encounter

Holland.9351:

This is the feedback thread:
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/ranger/Druid-Healer-Confirmed-Feedback-merged

I am going through that thread to find actual feedback to add to this thread’s 1st page in a structured way, but its not easy. I’m doing this so that the devs do not have to search through 2000 posts to find anything decent. It’s not like they have that time on their hands.

I think they waited with it because it is a major surprise and not because they expected people not to like it… Why would a team work kitten something they don’t believe in themselves? This topic belongs in the tinfoil hat section.

You could easily do a druid/BM/condition build with settler’s, torch and staff on swap. Honestly with three trait lines you could easily swap out one for duid and still maintain basically the same builds as before.

dsslive.8473:

Levetty.1279:

Ellye.9123:

The fact that you have a one spec focused on Healing doesn’t suddenly means that healing will be obligatory.

Considering how focused Druid is on healing to the exclusion of everything else the only way it will be viable is if they force so much un avoidable damage on us in raids that a pure healer will be needed. If they don’t do this (and I’m sure we all hope they don’t) then the entire spec will be pointless.

Its just an amazingly poorly designed spec.

It does have more than just healing tho. It has condi removal, projectile defense and overall control. They have knockback, immo’s, dazes as well as the ability to make their allies do higher damage and even an AoE stunbreak. But you can ignore that and focus just on the healing part ofc, that works.

Glyph of empowerment is way too short, even if people bring a druid they won’t want them wasting time with that utility.

All classes have condi removal and they don’t have to wait a few seconds for it to work either, partys will want reflects not to turn the projectiles into healing bolts. Stun breaks need to be on demand not hidden behind a form change. All classes can have CC woven into their support or dps specs and since its only use is to try and reduce a break bar its not really adding anything to the party when the party already has that covered.

CETheLucid.3964:

Nova Stiker.8396:

CETheLucid.3964:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Healing Spring, Pet heal, Spirit of Nature and…
That’s it. That is literally the only ally healing the ranger has outside of Druid traitline.

That’s incorrect.

You’re also missing information with regards to druid traits that synergize with and bolster these base healing skills you mention, which is another point of synergy beyond the one idea I already mentioned.

So, hey. Thanks for that.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Are people still struggling to see the problem with Druid? It has absolutely no synergy with the ranger. It might as well be it’s own class it’s so out there.

If you can’t find synergy with two trait lines or make the connection that I made for you with three in the druid, I can’t help you.

I doubt anyone else can for that matter.

I’m not going to think for you and I don’t have the patience nor the desire to convince you of something you’ve already decided for yourself.

MetaBattle will get you up to speed in time.

Alright Einstein, list me other ally healing abilities rangers have. Go on, list all of them, I wanna see the ally healing the ranger has. After all, Druid benefits from HEALING and healing allies, not boons. So might, protection, fury and what not will not help the Druid.

And please, list 1 Druid trait that goes great with a Ranger trait.
Keep in mind I said great, increasing the stun duration you get from swapping into staff is far from ‘great’.

---

Covering your incompetence by saying, “I don’t have time for you” will not save you from being terribly wrong.

I’m not covering up my incompetence, I freely confess it to you.

You’ve made up your mind about this. You’re wrong mind you, but I’m almost certain I can’t convince you of that. I don’t have that kind of people/social skill.

I don’t know you. You’re certainly hostile at this point to that any sense I’m making will be blinded by a desire not to seem stupid in your assessment.

So.. I dunno. Go stand over there and be wrong? Post more wrongness? Attack my person or sexuality as is customary of these penial exchanges?

Makes no difference to me. I’m done. I’ve made my point. See you around.

No point wasting your words with people like this, mate. Personally I stopped taking serious anything this guy say when he called Chronomancer – Shatterspike 2.0. In several druid topics i may add, which makes it even more hilarious.

Some initial thoughts about the druid as a ranger specialization (from notepad):

Overall feelings: Mixed

Positive:

• It gives ranger(druid) a role as a healer. Question: Do we need a healer in GW2?
  • No challenging content in core game (dungeons, fractals, overworld)
    -> not needed
  • guess: Not needed for HOT overworld content
  • maybe needed for raids?
  • useful in WvW
  • might see use in PvP?

Negative:

• Glyphs in general seem lackluster, Glyph of the Tides seems fine
  • Suggestion: Remove Glyph of Empowerment. Move the 10% damage bonus for nearby allies to Signet of the Hunt activated effect and buff either duration, radius or intensity.

• Dismisses pet which was supposedly ranger core mechanic.
  • I thought specializations were meant to enhance or otherwise change the profession mechanic? Druid does absolutely nothing for the pet.
    Note: I don’t like the pet, I use it but don’t really want it or need it, but i believe Anet should figure out what they pet to be for the ranger and give us a clear message. Is pet the core mechanic or what?

Questions that I hope will be answered in beta:

• Is healer all druid can be? Poor synergy with rest of the profession?
• Can Celestial Avatar form be useful without healing gear? Should it be?
• Can enough astral force be gathered just from combat to have enough Celestial Avatar uptime? Is healing from staff a requirement to have enough astral force?
  • Suggestion for Celestial Being: Astral force should also be gathered from pet attacks.

BrandyBiscuits.2873:

its either the holy trinity or pure zerker meta, theres really no in-between honestly from what i think at least. either holy trinity( where team coordination is really required) or jerker meta where everyone needs to learn how to survive themselves more or less(which i think is quite boring). so why not give this a try? i mean at least for once there will be some thinking and skill play involved instead of mindless stacking and might stacking and dpsdpsdps?

my 2 cents

There is no depth to guaranteed dmg and heals. When i play a trinity game i have no idea how much the healer is healing. I just avoid the avoidable attacks.

When i tank i just mitigate and try to hold agro.

There is no great strategy and depth in the healer mechanic.
Its there as a relic to a time when all dmg has to be unavoidable due to networking.

And in offline rpgs where you controlled all charachters which is closer to the current gw2 philosopy where you mist consider your dps your damage and how you recovwr from mistakes

Bryzy.2719:

All of that won’t be much good if they’re all dead because the new content is too hard-hitting though, will it?

So a set of classes mitagating damage, cleansing condis and healing each other while actaully killing the things attacking you will die but a Ranger with nothing but heal spam won’t?

Amraston.2846:

Staff 1-3 skills are also astral-themed, staff 5 not classifiable, the glyphs being a middleground, more elementalist-esque than in line with rangers nature magic.

Thats not true. As you can read here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Druid , non of the Staff skills is in any way related to astral magic.

Skill 1 is Solar Beam. Ok the Sun is something cosmic, but also the Source of all life – it would be really weird if someone who “worshippes” nature would ignore the sun.

Skill 2 is Astral Wisp. Even having “Astral” in name, an Wisp is an nature spirit. It do not come from the moon. Also Skill 3 says: " Become a wisp of natural energy "

Skill 3 is Ancestral Grace, see Skill 2 for that.

Also Skill 5 is an Barrier with pretty little Flowers on it – that is plant themed for me.

Also keep in mind that the understanding of nature for the old druids is more than plants. They had in deep connection to the water in the jungle, so its not far-fetched that also the sea and the earth were important to them. So if you put everything together you have one ascended “astral” theme (as they manage to ascend in their ways and were also deep worshippers of melandru, so some divine tone should be there), an nature-plant theme(obviously), an nature-earth/sea etc theme (as said above) and to some kind an nature spirit theme (deep connection to the jungle and everything that life in it), that all has to be part of the druid.

Therefore I think the balance is quite nice. An Druid who would just be some kind of “Plant mage” would not really fit into what Druids in Guild Wars 1 were.

A bit worried about the trinity concept myself…I like that an ele can do damage and switch over to water, if the team seems to be going under. However, if your build is not made for heal, you don’t get much healing. I think we need some new stats available on gear. If there are going to be so many new changes in the game, and so many more requirements made to be able to complete bosses in raids, then we need to be less limited in what we can offer. For instance…ARMOR WITH 4 STATS…instead of the standard 3. If we have to switch back and forth, give us the ability to do so. If the druid can do that much healing (which scares me for the direction the game may be taking) then give us the ability to dps well, and then switch over to staff heal if needed. Arnet, give us healing on some of the stats as well as 3 dps type options. Then switching to it won’t hurt so much when we want to also do damage. And i am very glad the zerker meta will not be the main in HoT. I get tired of the “requirements” some put on others about that. And the elitist attitude.

About the Ranger/Druid…love the sound of some of the new skills, but seems its a dedicated healer…not what i expected. The new Pets are awesome! that part is the only one that really excites me. I just hope they can stay alive longer then most do now and do more damage then what we have now. If we STILL have limited damage we can do as Rangers..which has always been a problem, then at least buff the pets more for damage and viability. This is still the problem….we don’t seem to be balanced with other classes in damage, then the pet dies and we are busy switching to a live one trying to stay alive ourselves while doing so. (there should be no cool down on switching pets) I really like the cat family, however, they are more for show then anything else. I have to switch to bear or lizard type to keep them alive longer enough to actually do any good in the fight. Then they seem to be more like a gnat that annoys the enemy. The birds actually do a lot more damage, but don’t last long either. Cats die extremely fast as well as the wolves. I know it was said they will all have bleed now…how much remains to be seen. Will it make a difference? So i am hopeful about these new pets, but we will see.

Krysard.1364:

I dont think that Druid is poorly designed, I mean, in fact it has one of the more competitive and well desgined skills and traits of all the specs. Also, staff skills have some relation with plants, they look like roots and mushrooms and stuff like this. It doesnt feel at all as this spec was rushed.

I’m glad you enjoy it. The problem for me is that only three of the Druid’s skills are nature-based (nature here being defined as “earthen” nature, which was always the magical affinity from which Rangers derived their non-martial powers).

The vine skill, which needs some work, as the “chunks” of vine being created and sinking into the earth looks terrible (which is a qualitative assessment based on subjective opinion). It looks, to me, like plastic toy vines popping up out of the ground, static, and sinking back in again shortly after. They do not feel natural, or alive to me. They took the animation that generates rock spikes in the line progressing outwards, and simply converted the jagged rocks into vines. Well, the animation works for rock spikes, but vines erupting from the earth are a cohesive entity. Look up the attack of the trees from Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian or the attack of the vines from Maleficent. Or just hop into Mordremoth territory or use Ranger’s “Entangle” or a Sylvari’s racial root, and see the natural eruption of vines that then wrap around their target, or move like a living entity. To have little vine segments that do not move or operate in relation to the other segments pop up like pieces to a toy set, as part of a skill animation looks absolutely terrible to me.

The jagged vines/wood/bark skill, which is just the Earth Elementalist’s eruption skill, which actually looks alright, but it’s a shame that it’s nothing more than a very obvious reskin.

And finally, the exploding seed skill. This one actually looks amazing to me, and I am glad the Druid got this skill. You see, these three skills represent what the Druid, from a lore perspective, should be. An elite specialization built around this “earthen” nature theme, with similar magical abilities based on plants. That’s what nature magic is in Guild Wars. Melandru is the human god representing nature magic, and she is, essentially, a treant/dryad. Very tree and plant magic, with a natural connection to animals (which the Ranger has through the pet system). That “nature” magic was clearly seperate from, say, the “earth” magic of an elementalist. An elementalist could manipulate raw “earth” itself, not the living things of the world, which was Melandru’s (ie: nature magic’s) domain.

The sudden thrust of astral/celestial magic onto ranger doesn’t make sense. Astral/celestial magic was never part of that magical domain. The Celestials, a GW1 entity, were entities hailing from the mists, similar to the human gods and the Norn Spirits. Magic tied to the Mists was generally associated with Mesmers the most, and then Ritualists when they were developed. The first human to force his way into the mists was a Mesmer. Their brand of unbound magic, magic not tethered to any of the other magical aspects, tended to have connotations with the mists, which is the domain of the astral/celestial.

Ancestral Grace ~ Pre-Beta I think this skill might need an evade attached to it, at least from a PvP perspective. You want to get to your allies fast with this skill and heal them. I feel this might get interrupted a lot by stuns and interrupts and other CC, so an evade might help keep this skill useful in all situations.

Will update thoughts post-Beta.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

phys.7689:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Astralporing.1957:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

And this is a bad thing how exactly? …

Pretty much everyone asked for an actual challenging content.

To be precise, a small number of forum posters asked for it. For a large part of player community current content is already challenging enough, and many others do not care.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

They gave classes much more focused roles in order to provide something that requires thinking and finally get rid of the braindead zerker meta.

No point in removing one meta, if it’s done through introducing another, even more strict meta.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Also, who said that raids will be easy enough to be completed by pugs? You might never see stuff like that on chat once people realise that they need a team/guild in order to actually complete a raid.

Because within guilds there will not be situations where a leader needs to roll a dice to see which of the guildmembers will be forced to play the healer (because all the players that liked playing healer role left 2 years ago). Yeah, right.

Let’s be honest, healers are a bottleneck in other games, because this is a role that is unappealing to a large majority of players. And most players that found it appealing left GW2 long ago.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Last but not least, I’d rather have groups looking for healers rather than Ice Bow providers.

Don’t worry, you won’t see any icebow in action after the next Tuesday. It won’t lessen the desirability of eles in groups in the tiniest.

First of all, anyone who thinks that the game is currently challenging, is brain-damaged., or came to GW2 after 5 years of hack n’ slash games played on easy mode.

Also, it seems you are stuck in 2007 MMO gaming. Cause nowdays, even in super small population MMOs, healers are everywhere, and very easy to find. Games offer various roles for 1 class depending on how you trait. It’s not like you can only heal 24/7 being a X class.

And, yes, Ice bow WILL affect ele desirability. Once HoT launches, elite specs become playable and zerker meta goes bye bye, how many eles would you want for a 5 man group? If any…

I think you must play a healer, because i cant think of a single current gen mmo that doesnt take dps substantially longer to get groups without a healer friend.

What games are you talking about here? Both wow and ffxiv dps takes long to get groups

Of course it takes longer to find healer or tank. Although finding dps and finding the right dps is not the same story.

Its much more difficult to play dps properly than to play healer properly. So yeah, since 80% of dps are n00bs (MMO rule #X) its kinda difficult to find geared dps with proper knowledge in order to kill things before they go enrange and HULK SMASH everyone.

About Q times, in a game with GW2 population, at peak times you wont wait a single bit no matter what role you play.

Gw2 has less population than wow and ffxiv right now, so i doubt it.

And yeah great dps might be less likely, but so are great tanks and healers.

Except there are a lot less of them to begin with.

The total population isnt important, whats important is the ratio of people who want to heal to people who dont want to heal

I disagree with almost everything you say OP. Reading, and re-reading your post, I feel as though you had this response canned regardless of what the Druid turned out to be. Since most of your statements are VERY inaccurate, I am actually convinced of this. I appreciate the time you took to state your points however.

The druid is all I hoped it would be and then some. There are a few things I would like adjusted — Such as: I do not think that alone the Druid would be able to kill anything. But then again, I truly believe that that is NOT their role.

No development company can please ALL of its player base. However, with the druid, I think Anet comes really close.

Thanks Anet. I think that this was: Well developed, well designed, and some thought was put into making the Ranger line become something that is needed. Maybe needs a little tweaking, but this will always be the case with every single class.

I will be excited to finally be in a position where EVERYONE needs me.

Play on…

ShadowKain.9410:

snip

Okay.

I like the astral concept. In the future we’re gonna see more elite Specializations and i’m sure they’ll wrap up the Ranger theme for you very well.
I also hope the professions who got “less fortunate specializations” this time (guardian, elementalist) will get awsome specializations next time!

Thanks for all the feedback guys! Appreciate it!

angan.6572:

I don’t like it. It feels like there is not synergy with the other trait lines.

The new druid skills offer zero damage output. Go full healing bot = good group sustain but zero damage output thus dragging the fights longer. HoT has no new dungeons and the existing ones can still be done fast and smooth without a healer so i see no point in dragging along a druid in fractals / dungeons.

I feel Druid will only be needed to raid contents, since in the rest of the open world content is pretty much unnecessary to have one.

This is not how i imagined my beloved ranger to be. When i rolled ranger as main when i started GW2 i was intrigued by the the whole hunter / trapper aspect using pets as companions. I felt Guardian / Elementalist were best suited for the “healing” part of the game. I would be more than happy if they just fixed the pets AI and offered some minor changes to fix the so many problems of the class, not being forced to be a healing bot.

I guess people who really wanted a dedicated healing class are pretty exited about it, and i get the feeling the people celebrating in this forum have never played ranger before. They just saw “OMG DRUID HEALER SO COOL” and just flood the forums, but for me the whole hunter theme is gone now.

I guess the whole events thing need to be revamp now for people that opt to go full healing bots…. else they’ll stack in seeing bronze for the rest of their lives.

tl;dr Dissapointed by the Druid line.

Its one spec however its not like there are 3 healing specs, and I am sure there is some way to work damage specs with the druid, or atleast able to use the staff as a dps spec. They also said they will be looking into balancing ranger. If anything we gotta stop jumping to assumptions and wait and see, I get what your saying really, a ranger should be able to be a ranger and I think we will still be able to but all we can do is wait.

These are just some random complaints that you picked to answer, but they are not “Key” complaints. Maybe you can answer what’s the synergy between the staff and the other weapons or between the staff and the glyphs or how about a druid without glyphs, does it not kinda gimmick the spec when you cannot use the second form of the glyphs?

Amraston.2846:

-snip-

The druids in gw universe are such a huge mystery of which we know so little, that you cannot simply say “these things have no relation to them” I’m not saying there is an overflow of evidence to suggest they have a connection, but there is nothing that excludes it from the druids. We know that druids were heavily in tune with nature, going so far to shed their human forms and live on in an ethereal form. But there is nothing that defines what exactly the nature they worship relates to. There is nothing saying that it’s solely plant-based.

Why go to the jungle? i dont know, and that’s my point,we know so incredibly little about the druids. Even the “worshipped melandru” was a very much uncomfirmed rumor that , with every interaction we had with them did not even come up.

People are talking as if druids are this very clearcut thing, they are nature spirits that got intune with plants and stuff, when there is so much mystery around them. All we know for sure is that they worshipped (lack of better word) nature, and nature does encompass way more than just plants.

As to the skills, they are all quite clearly nature/earthy/planty themed with the exceptions of the skills (well most, n2 is plant themed) we get in celestial form. As was explained by the poster above me.

evilunderling.9265:

mrstealth.6701:

It means that something is very wrong because being able to do that is the core philosophy of the game. Being able to complete any content with whatever party composition you have. You take who you have, and don’t have to wait around because you lack a healer/etc.

Healers have nothing to do with it. Let’s go back over what I said:

1. Balance requires that dropping one profession in favour of two of a different profession results in a substantial DPS loss.
2. You shouldn’t be able to kitten your raid’s DPS substantially eight times over and still pass a tight DPS check or enrage timer, like the ones that will presumably feature in every single raid.

From those points, it follows that if ten thieves can even come within sight of completing a raid, then either the raid is tuned badly, or the game’s balance is off. Not because of healing or reflects or whatever, but because of DPS.

As for the game’s philosophy being about always being able to succeed with whatever you have to hand, a raid comp comprising ten of the same profession is pretty contrived. If you just grab ten people from your guild and tell all of them to play their favourite specs, you should usually end up with something diverse enough to work.

Of course, if you’re trying to set up a raiding static for OMFG or Favourable Winds, you’re probably going to be in trouble.

Healers have everything to do with what’s being discussed in this thread. If the Druid is a powerful enough healer that they are required to complete content, and cannot be viably subbed with other classes, then there is a major conflict with the game’s design philosophy.

Balance requires that dropping one profession in favour of two of a different profession results in a substantial DPS loss.

I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make there. It looks like you’re trying to say that taking two of the same profession automatically means a DPS loss, which makes no sense. If you’re dropping one profession (1 player, or mulitple?) for another profession, your gain/loss in DPS is going to depend on which professions/builds/roles those are. They all have different levels of DPS, support, and survivability.

If you drop a Reaper for a second Warrior, you’re maybe losing a higher DPS player, but you’re gaining one that still has good DPS and can help buff others to increase their DPS. I’m not saying that every professions balanced perfectly, because that’s not really ever going to happen in any game. But they are balanced in such a way that you’re not gimping yourself by taking two of one profession, instead of two different ones.

You shouldn’t be able to kitten your raid’s DPS substantially eight times over and still pass a tight DPS check or enrage timer, like the ones that will presumably feature in every single raid.

That goes without saying. You’re going to need enough DPS to beat that timer. But that has nothing to do with taking a mixed party or one made entirely of a single profession. Having a 2nd guardian instead of a warrior doesn’t (and shouldn’t) mean you can’t beat that timer.

The entire design philosophy of GW2 is for the profession to be balanced with each other so that any party composition is possible. That a certain profession or mix of professions is not required. That 10 of the same profession can complete any content, even if it’s not likely to be the best/fastest/easiest. In fact, that was a specific thing Anet was showing off before launch. Being able to complete dungeons of 5 of the same profession.

Whether you agree with it or not, or whether if fits your idea of what profession balance is, that is the intended design of GW2. Or at least it has been for the last 3 years.

Just because the Druid is healing focused doesn’t mean rangers running druid will be healbots. They still have 2 other traitlines and can still use two weapons. You could easily go for a zealots Druid with staff/X weapons that still deal a good amount of dmg but can swap to heal when needed. Gw2 is still a very dynamic game.

Random.4691:

No they did not.

Your interpretation of what they promise is not the interpretation of everyone.

ArenaNet has said: “Instead, support will be ‘proactive’. ‘Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating,’ Peters explained in his piece on the Guild Wars 2 website. ‘Other kinds of support include buffs, active defence, and cross-profession combinations’.”

Number of Druid staff skills that heal: 4 out of 5
Number of Druid staff skills that offer buffs: 0 out of 5

The only staff skill available for Druids that do something other than healing is one that removes conditions, which, just like healing, is a reactive measure, not “proactive”.

You can assume that there are multiple interpretations for what ArenaNet has said. Your mistake lies in assuming that all those interpretations are correct.

Ryou.2398:

xarallei.4279:

zinkz.7045:

xarallei.4279:

Particularly if you want to go dps in pve.

LOL, and there we have the truth, some people are QQing basically because they want to DPS in PvE which Druid is not going to help, so it doesn’t fit your personal playstyle in your specific bit of the game so it is “kitten”.

Way to ignore everything I said and take stuff out of context. Nowhere did I say it was “kitten.” In fact I said I look forward to trying it out. I already explained, MULTIPLE times that the big problem arises when you don’t want to be a healer in pve. Druid is great for support, but is unusable for pve dps because of the lack of synergy. Now if the core profession was in great shape, then this wouldn’t be a problem. That’s not the case. Ranger has issues. Now the balance patch stream is coming up, maybe it will address these problems, who knows.

Please stop being so rude, everyone is allowed to have an opinion on there view of a ranger, honestly I do not see the other classes with such a big change, personally I think this is a good thing but at the same time I can understand why people will not think it is appealing considering rangers in dnd are more inclined of not using staffs. But a variety of weapons however ranger also means versatility allot so it can make sense for a ranger to use all forms of weapons which includes a staff and since rangers are closer to druidism in guild wars it does actually make sense.

Anyways it is not constructive to insult anyone here so everyone just needs to stop and instead try to help others see how it might actually be fun for them and they did they if you watched the entire video they said they will be looking into balancing the ranger.

I’m not sure why you are quoting my post. The person I was quoting was the rude one calling people “QQers” and taking things completely out of context. Nowhere did I insult that person.

I cannot find anything to not like about the Druid. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating…

The issue isn’t with the Druid itself … it’s with the way it’s healing is extreme compared to other classes.

Put it another way … if the amount that a Druid heals are going to be the normal, necessary amount for raiding or doing HoT content, then this will be the first must-have CLASS this game has ever had to do content. That’s a massive departure from the concept that exists now and frankly, a huge disappointment for me.

If other classes exhibited the same ability to heal as much as Druid does, there wouldn’t be a problem here. I’m not sure they do, unless of course you SPECIFICALLY trait/gear for healing, which means you don’t compete well with Druid. I’ve made some assumptions in saying these things but I don’t think I’m all that far off.

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Also the ‘zerker cancer-meta’ is more thought out indepth and uses more of the games mechanics then stnd in the corner and spam heals.

Oh, so stand in the corner and spam damage?

Zerker meta has been one of the best PvE experiences I encountered. Unlike “don’t stand in circles, bring DPS meter and tank nice” games, GW2 zerk meta had lots of things to pay attention to.

Simply because you had to use your head.
You had to take positioning, timing, animation awareness > dodge roll, evade mechanics, party support (offensive/defensive) Defiance stacks, interrupts (such as Icebow#5) and tunnel phases into consideration. Plus, aggro works differently in this game.

In Fractals lvl 50 there were moments where bosses didn’t just die in 6 seconds. Those were the moments where I loved the game. If anyone screwed and dodged early – they were punished but had the option to correct the mistake (downed state mechanic).

I definitely liked the Zerker Meta for constructive PvE, but not for casual Dungeons or Open World content. It was a brain-dead mode there.
I just hope they’d change some of the original content, too.