Guild Wars 2

Celestial Avatar Form is entered by generating Astral Force, you get this by healing and also attacking.

Currently, you need to strike 130 times, so AA for a whole minute, or heal 66 times, so you MUST use a staff, to generate enough Astral Force to enter CAF.

The Astral Force behaves exactly the same as Adrenaline, ie, you cannot generate it out of combat and it degenerates immediately when OOC.

Another issue is that the form only lasts 15s now. It looks like they just cut and pasted the Berserker adrenaline code to Druid. CAF lasted 20s previously.

CAF is also gated behind a 10s CD.

For PvP it is essentially impossible to use the form.

Why was this change made? No other class is gated so much, nor is it required to use their optional weapon to interact with their mechanic.

Ranger still broken, What a surprise.

I imagine Devs felt it was too strong during BWE3 and will be watching how it performs in the live game rather than on paper, with tuning to follow.

I don’t see it as a disaster that the Astral Power starts fresh on each fight — it makes it a tool for long fights and not for casual smashy.

Nike.2631:

I imagine Devs felt it was too strong during BWE3 and will be watching how it performs in the live game rather than on paper, with tuning to follow.

I don’t see it as a disaster that the Astral Power starts fresh on each fight — it makes it a tool for long fights and not for casual smashy.

I haven’t tried it yet, so can’t really comment. I was having so much fun with core Ranger this morning, I didn’t have time to try it. However, if it really is like so many are saying, I’ll say it is only useful if you live long enough to use it, which sounds like a feat in itself. This must be a mistake?

Druid was too strong during the Beta3, was able to heal like a fully equipped healing power elementalist or guardian while having Zerker gear.

Right now if you set him with healing power you will be able to heal like during the beta weekend or even surpass it.

Druids were hard countered by CC which is disturbingly easy to come by. Even back in BWE3 they were extremely well balanced. Anet honestly destroyed a completely viable and fun specialization.

Beta Druids wouldn’t have even taken a guards role simply cause of how easy it was to counter them.

Don’t worry OP. Maybe Jon Peters will look at the Ranger … after 2 years.

Baclavaman.9054:

Druid was too strong during the Beta3, was able to heal like a fully equipped healing power elementalist or guardian while having Zerker gear.

Right now if you set him with healing power you will be able to heal like during the beta weekend or even surpass it.

Yeah, I agree with both your points, but you missed mine. Which is, even if you fully trait and build around healing, you can only very rarely use the CAF.

Imagine if the Ele had to attack 130 times or heal people 66 times before it could actually swap to water attunement and heal people some more.

Not only that, but since healing is twice as effective as damage to generate AF, you are essentially gated to staff as well, because its the only way to heal outside of the CAF, to be able to generate the AF to enter CAF.

Add to that the fact that CAF only lasts 15s, also has a 10s ICD and that AF disappears after 5s when you get ooc and you have a situation where the E-spec mechanic has like 20% uptime. It’s simply not worth using.

It’s just absurd.