Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet Team,

In a recent patch, you decreased base healing on our Avatar spells and increased our healing stat contribution. You made it clear that we would have to choose and gear up for healing to be effective at it. That’s fine and that’s the way it should have been from the beginning.

However, you also increased Avatar cooldown to 15 seconds while in WvW. As you may already know from your personal playtime, 15 seconds feels like ages in a large-scale WvW battle. For someone who choose to gear up for healing according to the latest patch, that’s 5 extra seconds waiting for a CD to be able to play his role.

The way I understand it, you mainly increased the cooldown to deal with two issues:
- Druidic Clarity (break stun and full condi clear on a possibly “short” cooldown)
- Celestial Shadow (stealth and superspeed on a possibly “short” cooldown)

I do agree that these traits could be abused, especially in a 1v1/small-scale environment. But the way you addressed it, you decreased the viability of a specialization/role which is already questioned in WvW squads (see the recent thread in the WvW subforum).

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

Thank you for your answer

Earix.5684:

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

I would tread lightly asking questions like these, because: 1) You will not receive a direct answer from the developers and 2) They would most likely read feedback such as this and implement it while retaining previous changes such as the increased cooldown on Celestial Avatar Form in certain modes.

To sprinkle a bit of optimism in the Profession Balance Design team, they were smart enough to place no or proper internal cooldowns with a mechanic so the flow of combat is smooth.

To point out examples, check out Necromancer’s Spiteful Spirit and Weakening Shroud where one has no ICD (which Necromancer players had to request multiple times) and the other has a 10s ICD that syncs up with their Shroud mechanic.

Even on Warrior where Berserker traits such as Always Angry, Bloody Roar, and Fatal Frenzy have no ICDs so the flow of combat when using a profession mechanic isn’t hindered by out-of-sync cooldowns.

So, even though ICDs have a place and can be useful when attached appropriately, let’s not ask for MORE ICD increases (or more ICDs) and instead ask and suggest how traits such as the ones you mentioned could be more finely tuned.

It was balanced long ago by forcing druids to build into CAF from zero when OOC so a 10sec CD was fine. But people cried and cried that they would have to build for it and then once changes were made people built for it.

The reason the didn’t/shouldn’t increase just the trait CD is because making them out of sync would be as annoying as it is with pet swap connected traits.

If they wernt just saying stuff to make people feel better, they are developing druid in a way for it to be possible to choose a role in druid that doesn’t make you feel you are sub optimal for not stacking healing power/ +% healing to allies.

Earix.5684:

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

Read answer below. Out of sync traits are horrible design, please don’t suggest this ever again tyvm.

Justine.6351:

The reason the didn’t/shouldn’t increase just the trait CD is because making them out of sync would be as annoying as it is with pet swap connected traits.

I think the main reason for increasing the cd of CA is because of druid clarity, much more than celestial shadow. I’ve suggested to change druid clarity to remove one condition/second spent i CA instead of all at once when you enter the form. This would encourage more time spent in the form, and would heavily reduce the ‘spammable’ way many players (ab)used the ability. You could even give druid clarity the ability to clear conditions on allies around you, removing 1 condition every x seconds in a radius around you, like Justine suggested some weeks ago, or that for each condition you clear with druid clarity, you heal allies around you x amount of health.

By encouraging spending more time in CA, you at the same time are encouraged to use your CA abilities to support your teammates more, which I thought was the main idea behind the druid specialization.
15 seconds cd feels too punishing for this role imho, 10 was perfect if they would just balance the two things that they apparently deemed too powerful with CA. (Hmm, I wouldn’t say 10 seconds was perfect, the whole mechanic probably needs a redsign. Still, way better of course with 10 seconds cd compared to the 15 seconds we’re at now)

And while you’re at it, Anet, implement these changes as well:

• All F2 abilities changed to be on a 15 second cd, balance accordingly

• Make pet swap 15 second baseline, remove “Your pet swap gains recharge reduction” from Loud Whistle (replace with something else perhaps)

• Clarion Bond trigger on every pet swap, balance the special Call of the Wild bound to this trait accordingly

• Invigorating Bond, remove ICD (see first point above) – yes it WOULD allow you to use two heals back to back by using F2, swap to your other pet and use F2 again

• Go for the Eyes, remove ICD (see first point above) – yes it WOULD allow you to blind two times quickly by using F2, swap to your other pet and use F2 again

• Beastly Warden, remove ICD (see first point above) – yes it WOULD allow you to taunt two times quickly by using F2, swap to your other pet and use F2 again, balance taunt accordingly (this is the toughest to balance with this system by far – reducing the duration of the single taunt to 1 second wouldn’t go well with the GM trait status, while on the other hand 4 seconds of taunt would probably be op, not quite sure how to solve that in the best possible way for both scenarios)

In order to discourage pet swapping (and thereby the possible “F2 trait spamming”), Anet could bring back a version of the old Master’s Bond trait. Merge it with Loud Whistle trait for example.
Do you try to keep that single pet up for as long as possible to grant it Master’s Bond stacks, or do you sacrifice the potential for the pet to deal more damage by swapping pets more often, triggering on swap traits and using more F2 skills/traits triggering on F2?

Sorry for going off topic!

Earix.5684:

Dear ANet Team,

In a recent patch, you decreased base healing on our Avatar spells and increased our healing stat contribution. You made it clear that we would have to choose and gear up for healing to be effective at it. That’s fine and that’s the way it should have been from the beginning.

However, you also increased Avatar cooldown to 15 seconds while in WvW. As you may already know from your personal playtime, 15 seconds feels like ages in a large-scale WvW battle. For someone who choose to gear up for healing according to the latest patch, that’s 5 extra seconds waiting for a CD to be able to play his role.

The way I understand it, you mainly increased the cooldown to deal with two issues:
- Druidic Clarity (break stun and full condi clear on a possibly “short” cooldown)
- Celestial Shadow (stealth and superspeed on a possibly “short” cooldown)

I do agree that these traits could be abused, especially in a 1v1/small-scale environment. But the way you addressed it, you decreased the viability of a specialization/role which is already questioned in WvW squads (see the recent thread in the WvW subforum).

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

Thank you for your answer

I agree that the cool down was heavy handed, but I’m not going to sugar coat the next comment. This applies to you or anyone else making the “easy to abuse” comments…

There were not any issues with Druid skills or traits, the issue is that players do not use counters in their build. You also cannot build to counter all the different meta builds at the same time either. Most complaints were from whiny and noncompetitive 1v1 dueler crybabies who don’t adapt or change or learn… They complain on the boards for the devs to hold their hands to win instead of improving. STOP feeding into the low skilled player QQ…

OGDeadHead.8326:

• Go for the Eyes, remove ICD […]

• Beastly Warden, remove ICD […]

You can’t remove the ICD from those traits without without changing how they proc instantly on F2 activation and not at the end of the cast , which would be a pretty huge nerf, because otherwise you could spam them by cancelling the F2 ability.

I like your suggestion about DC though.

OGDeadHead.8326:

• Go for the Eyes, remove ICD […]
• Beastly Warden, remove ICD […]

Beastly Warden is one of those traits that would require an ICD unless the Hawk and Eagle F2s are changed. A 2s Taunt every 4¾s would be, well… something else.

As for Go For The Eyes, that can be deleted for all I care. Rangers were fine before without it, and are still fine after it was nerfed. I’d take the return of the Master’s Bond trait you mentioned to replace it.

Wondrouswall.7169:

As for Go For The Eyes, that can be deleted for all I care. Rangers were fine before without it, and are still fine after it was nerfed. I’d take the return of the Master’s Bond trait you mentioned to replace it.

A relic from before hot and shout revamp. It was pretty good once apon a time.

Yes, I know that it would be out of sync and I do agree that out of sync ICD are counter-intuitive BUT 15 sec CD on avatar is way too much for anyone who plays support/heal in large-scale WvW.

The initial “community” whines were about Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow. Were they justified? I don’t think so…
However Druids who choose to heal in WvW/GvG shouldn’t have to suffer from these 1v1 whines. WvW shouldn’t be balanced around 1v1. And a whole class mechanic shouldn’t have to suffer from it.

And yes, an explaination from ANet would be nice.

Swagger.1459:

Earix.5684:

Dear ANet Team,

In a recent patch, you decreased base healing on our Avatar spells and increased our healing stat contribution. You made it clear that we would have to choose and gear up for healing to be effective at it. That’s fine and that’s the way it should have been from the beginning.

However, you also increased Avatar cooldown to 15 seconds while in WvW. As you may already know from your personal playtime, 15 seconds feels like ages in a large-scale WvW battle. For someone who choose to gear up for healing according to the latest patch, that’s 5 extra seconds waiting for a CD to be able to play his role.

The way I understand it, you mainly increased the cooldown to deal with two issues:
- Druidic Clarity (break stun and full condi clear on a possibly “short” cooldown)
- Celestial Shadow (stealth and superspeed on a possibly “short” cooldown)

I do agree that these traits could be abused, especially in a 1v1/small-scale environment. But the way you addressed it, you decreased the viability of a specialization/role which is already questioned in WvW squads (see the recent thread in the WvW subforum).

Main question:
If Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow were the issue, why wouldn’t you add a 25/30 sec cooldown on these traits instead of on our main specialization mechanic?

Thank you for your answer

I agree that the cool down was heavy handed, but I’m not going to sugar coat the next comment. This applies to you or anyone else making the “easy to abuse” comments…

There were not any issues with Druid skills or traits, the issue is that players do not use counters in their build. You also cannot build to counter all the different meta builds at the same time either. Most complaints were from whiny and noncompetitive 1v1 dueler crybabies who don’t adapt or change or learn… They complain on the boards for the devs to hold their hands to win instead of improving. STOP feeding into the low skilled player QQ…

Most people run “meta” builds, and most “meta” builds didn’t counter it, therefore most people couldn’t counter it. From all of the meta builds I fought against, 1 may have countered me, but I had to learn his rotations and made a change or 2 (1 which I kept) to beat him afterward.

I agree with your statement tho, 3 years ago this wouldn’t have been as big of an issue as more people actually thoerycrafted their builds instead of metabattling it. That’s how I learned to counter things and also a reason why I don’t typically use meta.

For all those saying DC is the problem…how? DC isn’t enough to get us out of WK or BM + Trooper Runes. A condi clear every 15 seconds is fine, but you’d be long dead without some other form of clear as well.

I think the CD increase was to stop bunker druids from being able to stalemate an enemy for like 5 minutes at a time. Could have accomplished that with just the healing decrease IMO.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

OGDeadHead.8326:

• Go for the Eyes, remove ICD […]

• Beastly Warden, remove ICD […]

You can’t remove the ICD from those traits without without changing how they proc instantly on F2 activation and not at the end of the cast , which would be a pretty huge nerf, because otherwise you could spam them by cancelling the F2 ability.

I like your suggestion about DC though.

Yeah, that’s an issue. All pet F2 skills should probably be normalized when it comes to cast times, thereby removing the ability to cancel F2 skills in the first place. The actual skill could/should be instant to cast, whereas the actual animation to finish could differ in some cases (even though quite a few of the animations needs to be sped up a lot).

Wondrouswall.7169:

Beastly Warden is one of those traits that would require an ICD unless the Hawk and Eagle F2s are changed. A 2s Taunt every 4¾s would be, well… something else.

OGDeadHead.8326:

• All F2 abilities changed to be on a 15 second cd, balance accordingly

Read my post above please.

Whoops, my bad. xD

Gotejjeken.1267:

For all those saying DC is the problem…how? DC isn’t enough to get us out of WK or BM + Trooper Runes. A condi clear every 15 seconds is fine, but you’d be long dead without some other form of clear as well.

I think the CD increase was to stop bunker druids from being able to stalemate an enemy for like 5 minutes at a time. Could have accomplished that with just the healing decrease IMO.

I don’t think DC is a problem but that’s what the Avatar CD nerf was about imo.
Now the new 15 sec Avatar CD is a problem if you play heal/support in large scale WvW and that’s what this thread is about.

Regarding bunker druids, it may be an issue in 1v1 or small scale if people are too weak to adapt. But in Eternal Battleground for each server, you will find 5 guys dueling around Stonemist, maybe 10 guys roaming around the map and 50+ guys following the current commander tag.
Do you really think that WvW should be balanced with these 5/15 guys in mind instead of the 50+ guys fighting the other 50+ enemies?

15 sec CD in sPvP might be ok. 15 sec CD in WvW is wrong.

I like many of you also dont like the 15 sec CD. And not even for balance reasons. It’s obvious they put it there, as a lazy bandage to cover for cluncky AF system.

However, I do belive the traits DC and CS are big part of the problem. I think that thouse traits are not only the source for some of the the druid/ranger recent nerfs, they are also preventing us to get buffs in meny lacking areas of the druid/ranger.
I dont think BTW, the the condi clear is what making DC so strong, it’s actually the stun break part. The combination of stun break+condi creal+plus CA heal+stealth and superspeed, are making the druid the ultimate kyte machine. If they’ll jsut remove the stun break part and the superspeed part, thouse traits will still be great but much more managble to counter(as they should). OFC such nerfs should be compensated with buffst to underpower parts of the druid ranger(glyphs for example).

We still QQing over this it was a good nerf and made a lot of sense. I loved ranger since gw1 and I don’t like nerfs either but man that 10 CD get out of jail free card was broke as kitten (ofc I used and abused it too cuz why not) and just as annoying as a pu mesmer, Nike warrior, celestial ele and ghost teef
Hell15secs isn’t even that bad hell I’ve barely noticed a difference when I take druid. Hell this last patch actually encouraged me to roll base ranger mm for the unlockable pet and the sexy sexy synergy when you pull of a MofC with a maul and opening strike.

Things like the mushrooms clearing only 1 Condi on delay is stuff people should be upset about about.

Things like pets other than 2 being slow as hell and unable to hit there target.

Things like glyph of unity and alignment being almost completely usless.

Thank you anet this last patch was a good balance choice I hope y’all continue to work on other traitlines and this year was a fantastic year for ranger. We’re actually meta for a year

Eleazar.9478:

man that 10 CD get out of jail free card was broke as kitten

FYI your Avatar CD is even more than a break stun! If you keep it long enough you will notice there are also 5 skills. And some druids actually use those skills to heal in a squad group. 5 extra seconds on this CD hurt them real hard.
Seriously, the druid specialization is more than a free break stun / condi clean / stealth / superspeed / extra CC.

Eleazar.9478:

Things like glyph of unity and alignment being almost completely usless.

Unity can be good for WvW healers if you know how to play with it, alignment is a good burst heal on allies, but you would have to stay long enough in Avatar to see it

Eleazar.9478:

We’re actually meta for a year

oO