Guild Wars 2

Yes, just another thread on this topic but I want more of the Dev’s focus into this because unlike the smokescale debacle, this is just unworkable and worse in all regards. This has to change.

Your new iteration of the recent patch for Druid’s AF regen method is too harsh and is an unnecessary gating to a profession’s Elite spec. I can’t heal when I need to because I need to charge it up first by healing minuscule amounts on dying party members and that is just unproductive. A burst healing mode should be readily available when the Druid actually needs it. Maybe not in such a spammable way like it was before this last patch, but certainly not like now where it’s way too hard and downright impossible in certain scenarios.

I’m not asking you to change it back though. Please just revise it. Like get rid of AF completely and lock the CA form behind a cool down or get rid of the cool down and play with the idea of AF generating automatically.

I get that you wanted to promote an elite spec where it ‘builds up’ some kind of energy through active play and ‘unleash it’ through this CA form. But all kinds of iterations regarding Astral Force is just not working. It just isn’t, Anet. So scrap it. The Rangers are already choosing the Druid elite spec so that alone should be the investment that requires from us to use the CA form. If you think we were given too much access to it before the last patch, then increase the cool down, not the method of which we get the AF through silly jumping hoop-like conditions.

This auto-regen of AF or just a simple cool down method can also be seen as a some form of ‘energy build up’ as well, if the idea of passive AF generating is deemed too unexplainable for you.
" By spec’ing into Druid, the Ranger gains the ability to slowly generate an AF energy that allows the use of CA form after a certain period etc. "
Not really lore-driven or even a bit too silly game mechanic wise, but it works.

It doesn’t promote active game play to gain this energy but maybe that’s OK. Because all your iterations? They haven’t worked. Some were too powerful that made it look very cheesy. Some, like now, it’s too hard/impossible to generate them.

So I would like to propose that you not try to improve upon it, but just revise it in a simpler way that you can also balance more easily in the future by changing the mechanic into a simple cool down gated feature. Like Occam’s Razor… The simplest answer is usually correct and all.