Guild Wars 2

So yeah, i love the graphic design of the druid, however all that buzz and the skills seems so lacklustre generally speaking. They do a lot of noise but no bang there. All rangers outside from raids think the Astral Form as an extra instead the specialization that it is really. Also they are all so plane, all are basically heals in different degrees, so boring i end up using always lunar impact and rejuvenating tides, not that you have time to do anything else thought….

If we are going to keep the weird Astral Force Thing we need more bang for the buck. Instead making the Astral form like a secondary self heal like we think the pets as a secondary damage source, Aney needs to apply more fun to the astral form. After all is our specialisation (not some extra).

• Cosmic Ray (main heal skill) It’s too slow to cast when the heal arrive the target is not there anymore.
  Can’t you make it like a continuous beam with autocast? The animation can be like a continuous beam from the sky, like the actual one but that stay in place until we choose another ground target. That way we cast it, and our friendlies can get inside the beam to get the heals. It can heal/pulse every 1/2 second like now. Can you make this one to scale much better with healing attribute so it can become our main heal? No more clickfest pls Aney.

• Seeds of Life (condition cleanse), Could you change the animation to look more like a seed or a flower blossoming instead the bursting pustule it looks right now? Also the flower once it’s open can stay for a couple of seconds, pulse cleanse every second, healing and blind at the beginning. Thus my teammates can benefit from the cleanses, right now they have to first see it and then be really close.

• Lunar Impact (Condition Control): We already have too many healing skills, can this one heal for less and be more about CC like 2 second stun also? could you add come confusion there? No real changes, you still are locked for only 2 seconds, but should do wonders for the defiance bar in PVE.

• Rejuvenating Tides (AoE heal skill) Would be good if it doesn’t lock you out of using another skills, so we can blast our own water field if we need that extra healing. This skill also should work as AoE sublime conversion. Any projectile that get inside is converted to healing.

Biggest Fail:

• Natural Convergence (Elite Condition Control) Amazing graphic art but this skill is really lacklustre. You get burst down in melee every time to cast it and the result is really meh. Bad design everywhere.
  -> Aney you need to add the effect from the Champion Grawl High Shaman that one that pulls you a little every second. This is needed to avoid being bursted down in melee every time you cast it not that will avoid targets getting out from the area with a simple dodge but at least they’ll have to burst us down at range.
  -> Also instead cripple needs to apply chilled, that has more to do with the coldness of the space.
  -> The small wormholes that are created in the last pulse has to damage every second and apply the immobilize every second. So even in case the target escapes from the skill has to be aware from where they are to avoid contact. The damage has to be significant (1000/pulse?) so it forces environmental awareness and smart play.
  Be aware the wormholes are only created if someone is trapped in the last blast, so this skill actually forces the druid to be really smart and need a lot of group support (to keep the targets in place) to get most of it.

Cosmic Ray sure is a way too slow to hit anything, but I have to disagree on the Natural Convergence being that bad. With the right setup Natural Convergence is quite amazing, and damage seems fine to me: “poor damage”

Of course if you are running celestial you can’t really expect the damage to be that great, but with zerker it deals some nice damage, so you can’t really buff the skill much.

Only 5K for a full glass zerker build?
Not to burst your bubble but i’m seeing here crits of 13K, base attack of the reaper is more than 5K.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWmzB1MnLE

And that’s not the only video, you can see a lot of classes doing more than 5K crits.
5K crit in a full glass Zerker build with an elite skill that you can cast only every 40 seconds is really crap.

Although i get your point and why every druid should go for Zerker/Zealot instead of condi.

Talking about PvE of course.

It is 2k + 2k + 5k = 9k. The last hit is just 5k, if you look at the golem health it drops from full to near zero in seconds. With that you almost kill a thief

And yes in PvE I can hit 200k crits on rabbits… my example was in PvP lobby. Anet has to balance skills PvP in mind as they don’t want to separate the gamemodes.

No idea how much it does in PvE, I have been running trap druid there

Blue Hare.8612:

It is 2k + 2k + 5k = 9k. The last hit is just 5k, if you look at the golem health it drops from full to near zero in seconds. With that you almost kill a thief

And yes in PvE I can hit 200k crits on rabbits… my example was in PvP lobby. Anet has to balance skills PvP in mind as they don’t want to separate the gamemodes.

No idea how much it does in PvE, I have been running trap druid there

No well, that hit’s are on fractal bosses and raid bosses so no rabbits involved.
In PvE/WvW the damage is really bad compared to any other class. Not that should matter with the druid, that should be focused in heal and CC. I run a condi druid myself mainly because i’m a sucker for the shortbow (why the damage done with that weapon is insultingly low i’ll never understand)
The problem is that natural convergence:

• You take a lof of risk of get burst down in any game mode. PvE also.
• The damage and effects (reward) are really meh for the long CD skill it is (you can only cast it once while Astral Form + the Astral Form CD) and the long channeling rooting cast it has.

So if that thing about risk vs reward is real, this skill should be more fun to play for itself. Right now i see it really lacking.

I thought in this fun mechanics of damaging + immobilize wormholes. The objects are already there so why not to use them?

TR:DR btw that video the guy all he talks is camping with the longbow, kittening. That’s is the most boring and braindead way to play with this class… really.
I hope ranger can shake up that stigma .

Yes, it is verry risky to use as you roots yourself, I don’t really use it that often because of that. It has so much risk and as a druid you don’t really have that much follow up to the immobilize anyway so I feel it is not worth using. I usually use it when the enemy is focusing an ally.

Camping longbow seems to be working fine for him tho. If interested take a look at this for example. He is pretty good at kiting with LB. At least it is not boring to watch as there is lot of movement.

Blue Hare.8612:

Yes, it is verry risky to use as you roots yourself, I don’t really use it that often because of that. It has so much risk and as a druid you don’t really have that much follow up to the immobilize anyway so I feel it is not worth using. I usually use it when the enemy is focusing an ally.

Camping longbow seems to be working fine for him tho. If interested take a look at this for example. He is pretty good at kiting with LB. At least it is not boring to watch as there is lot of movement.

You are right, camping longbow will work most of the times. The damage in glass zerk is ok, 2.5K by hit, 8K for the RF and from a 1500 (1800 actually) range is very easy to melt any other player before they can reach you.. Those aren’t new news..
With that you will win many fights, as long as the other is a baddy. Doesn’t work that good against experienced players thought.

In any case that build is not fun at all to play. Effective yes and sadly Aney is forcing us to play like that because any other choice is simply very bad.
Now i’m asking in this forum post for making the Astral Form fun to play with, not just something you use for heal with lunar impact..

Blue Hare.8612:

It is 2k + 2k + 5k = 9k. The last hit is just 5k, if you look at the golem health it drops from full to near zero in seconds. With that you almost kill a thief

I have to call this BS… Unless the other thief was a glass cannon baddy it’s impossible you could have pinned down a thief with entangle + Natural Convergence.
They have many ways to get out of that as i seen it many times. Shadowstep, cleanses on stealth or tricks… impossible to pin them down with this.

anduriell.6280:

Now i’m asking in this forum post for making the Astral Form fun to play with, not just something you use for heal with lunar impact..

Blue Hare.8612:

It is 2k + 2k + 5k = 9k. The last hit is just 5k, if you look at the golem health it drops from full to near zero in seconds. With that you almost kill a thief

I have to call this BS… Unless the other thief was a glass cannon baddy it’s impossible you could have pinned down a thief with entangle + Natural Convergence.
They have many ways to get out of that as i seen it many times. Shadowstep, cleanses on stealth or tricks… impossible to pin them down with this.

CAF surely is boring but it has some nice visuals. But really, transformations should be something to look forward to, now it’s more like “oh no, this again”. It just feels clunky to use, you don’t know if the game registered your click because the skills have so much delay, you just end up spamming the button and hope that something happens.

What I would like to see is some kind of a visual cue that a skill has activated. It could be an aoe circle that appears right after you activate a skill. Something like this orbital strike that has an insane delay but you know that the skill activated.

Other than that I don’t really know what could be done, I doubt Anet is going to rework CAF completely so it has room for something else than heals. But sure, we can dream that Anet some day implements a trait that makes CAF into a purely offensive form.

And about killing a teef, I was talking about the damage, that damage almost kills a teef if it hits. But yeah, Withdraw is what I usually run when thiefing and it cures immob.

I have an amazing suggestion for Natural Convergence.

> Damage and Slow stays the same.
> Cripple now gone
> Last tick also applies 2 more seconds of slow.
> This ability now refreshes Knockdown, Stun and Pull Effects present on the target.

Glyph of the Tides, Path of Scars synergy, anyone?

I have an amazing suggestion for Natural Convergence.

> Damage and Slow stays the same.
> Cripple now gone
> Last tick also applies 2 more seconds of slow.
> This ability now refreshes Knockdown, Stun and Pull Effects present on the target.

Glyph of the Tides, Path of Scars synergy, anyone?