Guild Wars 2

Sir,

As a long time ranger player (been playing since the 2nd month of the original release of GWs), I have seen the class go through many different iterations.

Since GW2, I have made it abundantly clear that I don’t feel the class was developed well conceptually, iterated upon appropriately, or balanced to the degree it has needed to be to be competitive.

However, I saw something back in the Spring of this year that made me start to change my mind. The first core specialization reveal with Most Dangerous Game as an adept, Strider’s Defense with a sword damage modifier, and Signets refreshing Remorseless was a breath of life into the ranger class, which ultimately turned into disappointment when those changes were gutted when the actual patch dropped.

However, I learned in that time that you, sir, were the driving force behind these concepts.

Now, you have finally been able to appear on a livestream and talk about the Druid and Ranger class. There is no doubt you’ve done a great job with Druid, but this isn’t about that, as much as a thank you for being passionate about the class and its development. Not only did you do well on the Druid, but you went ahead with the upcoming balance patch and pushed for what you originally intended Most Dangerous Game to be.

I sincerely hope that you read this and know that as long as you are this passionate and will continue to push for the changes that we need, that we appreciate your work. It is the first time the ranger community is really able to publicly acknowledge and thank a dev, and after witnessing your livestream and your investment in the ranger class and elite spec branches, there is really no possible way we could lack appreciation.

I apologize if our stress as a community has caused you any negativity or pessism. We are all very passionate about the class, and for whatever reason, the workplace rules and culture has kept the community and the developers from building a communication venue, leading to less than positive opinions about each other.

I hope that the workplace culture and rules change for you in a way that lets you interact with us more, or us with you and the developers, especially at times like this, when even if we are lacking any sort of feedback, we want to send a message through saying “keep it up.”

So please; I know that the community is split on Druid because of what they wanted it to be or how unhappy they are for what it is, but don’t let a single community member make you feel like you haven’t done an excellent and quality job, and don’t let any person dissuade you.

I can’t wait to see what you bring to the development table for ranger in the future.

Sincerely,
An optimistic and very close to being satisfied player

Was waiting for your post :P

Just gonna copy/paste my 2 cents from the thread that got merged into the abyss with everything else:

Let’s put this into context:

Irenio – not only have you created a desirable role in a limited amount of time, but you’ve done so while creating an awesome new mechanic, attractive gameplay, useful (and incredibly cool) pets, arguably the best new traitline of all elite specs, detracted minimal value from other professions, created new build opportunities for non-staff/non-support Druids, single handedly (aside the raid designers of course) created a medium used to bypass the zerker cancer meta, and finally and most importantly listened and recognised base Ranger concerns.

Regardless of whether a healer/support role was what you were looking for, you can’t deny the positives that have come from this. Fantastic news for Rangers and Druids alike. We are the most deserving profession of a change like this. Huge pat on the back to this guy.

I come from the land of the Engineers, and I must say that I like what you have done thus far Irenio! I just recently made a ranger after seeing the Druid reveal. Because I now play both these classes that you worked on so hard I can see lots of synergy from these two classes working together and for that cross class gameplay I thank you. You are doing a great job, let the haters hate, let the educated rise up and present factual dialogue and let’s see where we can go with Rangers! I hope we see more of you in the future Irenio!

I can not even begin to describe how happy I am to have Irenio as “our dev”, everything he’s done so far has been completely amazing. I could not be any happier with how Druid is designed conceptually, and gameplay wise, and the new ranger changes are looking amazing.

I can not wait to see where the profession goes now, where before I was always worried something would happen to make a turn for the worse both balance, and gameplay wise.

Thank you Irenio and everyone else helping you from the shadows!

Another optimistic player here. The direction Irenio has been taking the Ranger is definitely positive. I can honestly say I did expect Druid to be something like Aquaman-patch v.2 but you proved me wrong and I’m so glad you did. The upcoming changes shed light for a brighter future.

I agree with the OP. Thank you Irenio for all your hard work and i hope it will all turn out to where you want to get the ranger/druid.

lifts ale jug a big cheers to Irenio!

Not only did he provide precisely what we as a profession require – an avenue for team support that isn’t a joke, he did so in such a way that completely revolutionizes our potential build diversity.

I hope we get to keep him!

I’m not a fan of the elite spec in the very slightest. Not one bit. Nor does Irenio share my playstyle in the game. And, it’s most likely after this BW3, I’ll be waiting another 3 years for the next ranger elite spec to hopefully be something I want to play…

That being said, I can appreciate Irenio sticking to his guns about making the Druid the healbot. At least it has theme and a sense of direction this what it’s supposed to be (read: identity). That’s something the Ranger has lacked and now has. It’s obvious he’s excited about the Druid/Ranger class as a whole, and maybe some of that will bleed over in a good way, I don’t know, but at least we know the direction the Ranger will be moving forward in. So, good job, Irenio, as you did make quite a few people happy with the Druid e-spec, and that much I can respect.

Personally I have waited to pre-purchase HoT. I was waiting to find out about guild content, “challenging content” and the one character I have spent the majority of almost 3 years playing. I am VERY happy with the Druid reveal and looking forward to testing it in the next BWE. I’m not sure about anyone else but Irenio it was your work that got my purchase.

Thank you Irenio for this amazing druid elite spec! Let’s hope it’s actually going to work well in pve! (I have 0 doubts for wvw and pvp usefulness)

Namaste peeps and Irenio . First of all big thanks to jcbroe for making this post so that we can share this positive vibe towards our dev to charge him up ty . Now to Irenio , you my friend you are amazing , what you did with druid is awesome and i think it is a big step in the right direction and it was what i imagined it to be and even better you supprised me with the new mechanic you added which thematicaly is increadible. I never really liked healer type of classes in any game ever well guess what i love it and will play it . I thank you and all the people that helped you creating this new spec great job !

Glad to see so many people sharing the sentiments!

Don’t get me wrong everyone, the design of Druid is definitely not my own “cup of tea” either, but I definitely think the quality of its design deserves credit where credit is due.

I also think the traitline itself does wonders for build versatility, and I see signs of a throwback to GW1 interrupt rangers that it making a Moment of Clarity shutdown build seem very exciting.

Also, the staff finally alleviates a lot of builds dependence on sword or greatsword for mobility which opens up a whole new array of options and combinations, not to mention if the damage and healing values on all of the tooltips were without stats, people looking for damage builds won’t be too disappointed.

Overall I’m very pleased, even though I myself would prefer more of the oldschool ranged interrupt playstyle from GW1. The Druid seems very unique and definitely helps make the ranger class specialize in a way it previously didn’t. I’m very excited to see how a bunker/team support ranger will work in PvP, because the self sustain potential looks insane combined with the team support a Druid seems like it will bring.

Bunker guardians should be very afraid of their team comp slots right now, as should really any DPS oriented build who currently only bring damage and mobility to their teams, whereas Druid can retain its damage AND self support AND team support even with no Healing Power investment AND have some gained mobility between natural stride and staff for rotating. Not to mention the potential a healing Druid has in stronghold (GW1 Fort Aspenwood veterans should know and be afraid).

But, don’t let me derail my own thread, I just really wanted to thank Irenio, especially after all the flak I generated with that locked thread against the devs haha. He definitely deserves the gratitude

Excited for the BWE now.

I have to agree with this. the druid is beautifully designed and enhances the prof in many ways (seriously guys, we don’t have to stack healing power to use the druid). not to mention how well designed the new pets are.

the only time I saw this level of creativity and clarity for this profession was the beastmastery spec cleanup and Beastly Warden. and also perhaps the implementation of Remorseless. I hope we see more of this kind of work on the ranger.

yes, my two characters are engineer and ranger. I just don’t like the other classes..so it’s been difficult to get some content done, but now there’s a bit of hope. I think engineer needs some tweaking and fixing, but druid looks great.

Im Ever so Greatfull to Irenio , most of us knew the class lacked Team Support in some form but this is just Amazing , there are so many ways to utilize the astral form away from Healing stats .

in my eyes this is what Ranger Needed but not what it wanted , atm im Zealot/Sinister testing out a core spec ready for the swap , No condi clear with 2k regens , its based on the premise it will be Destruction in its Ranger form and Clarity in its astral form. (if you get what i mean) but it will heavy rely on the astral form to Rebirth itself as its reliant on astrals condi clears and heals and only sustaints hp in its Destruction form.

well thats the idea xd .

Thank you MR. Irenio its made my dream build a possibility Can’t wait now to get into HoT..

Jeeze, everything in here sounds like a day one review to a hundred+ hour, giving judgement before anyone could have possibly played all hundred hours. I smell lots of disappointment in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to be one of the only semi-negative posts in this thread….

Irenio, I will jump on the bandwagon and give you my thanks after I play the Druid on the next beta weekend. All those pretty skill demonstration videos look great and the skill descriptions sound great on paper, but will they hold up when thousands of us are trying them out with every possible combination? We’ll see….

As a long time fan of the druid/nature mage archetype I was already planning on making one of my two rangers a druid for story purposes.

Now it looks like I’ll be making two druids, one for the story and another for the raw mechanical benefits the druid line offers some of my favorite builds.

Druid is an excellently designed elite specialization and I look forward to playing it.

Chrispy.5641:

Jeeze, everything in here sounds like a day one review to a hundred+ hour, giving judgement before anyone could have possibly played all hundred hours. I smell lots of disappointment in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to be one of the only semi-negative posts in this thread….

Irenio, I will jump on the bandwagon and give you my thanks after I play the Druid on the next beta weekend. All those pretty skill demonstration videos look great and the skill descriptions sound great on paper, but will they hold up when thousands of us are trying them out with every possible combination? We’ll see….

Druid will be great in WvW and possibly GvG’s just by virtue of the shear healing it can put out. Blasting Ele water fields has nothing on Lunar Impact, Cosmic Ray, and Ancestral Grace.

Where we’ll really be tested is whether the new Raids and future PvE content values dedicated healing builds enough to make slotting Druid and bringing a staff worthwhile.

I have no problem with Druid being the same as Nature Magic and Wilderness in that they never see play outside of PvP but it would be a terrible waste.

Substance E.4852:

Druid will be great in WvW and possibly GvG’s just by virtue of the shear healing it can put out. .

in addition to cc, debuffs and burst damage (if geared properly). hard to tell what will happen with all the new specs and which ones will be broken/OP, but I strongly believe druids will be required for gvg’s and raids.

To paraphrase all that other stuff up there, thanks for the hard work on Druid. It looks way awesome and we can’t wait to use it and, for some of us, complain about it so bitterly that you’ll wonder if we’ve ever had a single moment of joy in our entire lives.

I understand what you mean Chrispy, and definitely the opinion is still out on Druid until we play it.

I’m personally not even trying to make this about Druid specifically, as much as how Irenio has conceptually developed Druid and made additions to the ranger class in the past (he was the designer for the core specialization patch, and while a lot of his initial things were gutted and all of the damage modifiers disappeared, we still received Quickdraw and Beastly Warden, among other notable additions) and how he carries himself when he speaks about ranger/druid.

You can tell that Irenio is a person who understands the ranger class and has a design vision for it that hasn’t been reached, and is passionate about making the changes needed for the class to get there, and we can see nothing but quality concepts and development intentions at this point.

So yeah, it isn’t even as much of a “thank you for druid” as it is a “thank you for quality development and the reassurance that the ranger class will be developed to have niches and fight for team composition slots while you’re running it.”

For the BWE, my biggest things will be looking at damage and heal scaling, and looking at how reliable generating and maintaining celestial form is. There is lots of potential for skill combinations and rotations, but everything is contigent on this sort of information for me.