Guild Wars 2

We really need something with an AoE for tagging in WvW. I love the healing I am bringing to the group, but there is pretty much zero tagging and credit happening here. Please… make the staff #1 attack have a damage in radius or something. It doesn’t have to be a lot of damage, but enough to tag the players we are fighting while we get busy with the heals. This is actually a pretty big issue for WvW players.

Asura staff is awkward at best. Please set the animations to match the staff use on the other professions for Asura. My Asura ele manages to wield a staff just fine. The Druid is a caster with ranged attacks. Holding the staff like a GS is just odd and looks weird.

I’d like to see healing scale better with healing gear. The difference between running celestial and clerics is laughably small. If we are going to be locked into a healing role, make those numbers pack a punch, else everyone will just want Revs instead of us.

Thanks!

I expected the Druid to be a healer, but man they went all in on it. I was hoping there would be options to make Druid builds that focused more on control and possibly some damage, but man it’s just not there. If you don’t wanna use the staff and be completely focused on healing than there’s no reason to take Druid. Maybe some of you will come up with a build that’s not 100% healbot. Oh well, I’ma be playin my Reaper when HoT drops anyway :P

New pets are awesome though.

Scourge Healing
“Whenever you heal an ally, you damage foes around that ally for 10% of the heal”

That’s how I’d do it

Maybe have a minor trait give aoe healing on all auto attacks (even if its really small healing) so we don’t feel forced to take staff to get celestial form.

RebornbyFire.7913:

Hey Irenio, I’ve got to get to bed, but I’ve just logged a few hours trying out Druid (have been a main Ranger since pre-original-launch), and I wanted to say a couple things:

THANK YOU!!! I cannot tell you just how awesome, stylish, and fun this is to play!! And the synergy — I could run an incredible build with almost any other combination of trait lines/weapons, and they’d all be different, but still potentially awesome.

Now, on to the constructive criticism/feedback. I’ll save my longer thoughts for later, but here are a couple things:

• I love the piercing/healing effect on staff 1; it fits the Ranger style (along with the piercing arrows) really well and make healing and damaging with it active and fun. The entire weapon, in fact, just feels awesome: Decent damage, packed with utility, and it fits the theme and still feels Rangery. Possible bug: Spamming staff 1 out of combat was filling Astral Force really fast, even though nothing was being hit or healed; my wife tried the same thing, and said it wasn’t doing it for her character. So… probably not intended, but I’m not sure how it glitched.

• Contrary to a couple other posts, I feel like an AoE king right now (although self-targeted); Running Staff/GS, Marksmanship longer daze duration trait, Ancient Seeds, and I just leap/Astral Grace into the middle of things and hit the daze glyph, aoe damage/weakness glyph, maul, f5, astral 3 —> astral 5 (maybe some more astral skills until I can hit 3 again), exit, and then spam whatever; I’m still in celestial gear (except weapons), but I basically can’t die and everything around me just get trashed, at least in Verdant Brink. The glyphs are fantastic, at least with the glyph trait and ancient seeds.

• Probably the daze on Lunar Impact is too long. If I run Marksmanship, I can more than maintain it while in Avatar Mode, and it’s basically spammable — the havoc this could cause in team fights in PvP is just…

• Ancient Seeds is an incredible trait (and possibly should have closer to a 15 sec. ICD, although I would love to leave it as-is). Most of the traits, really, are fantastic. The other two grandmasters feel pretty weak, though, and I agree with some others that some aoe on the staff would be nice. Also, Lingering Light feels a little silly, if the wisp doesn’t also heal you — What if Lingering Light also caused Wisps to damage/siphon health from enemies they pass through (or are attached to)?

• Some of the healing may need to be toned down, or at least have its base lowered and its scaling buffed, so that it is not quite so powerful on a full zerk (or otherwise non-healing-invested) build. In return, though, it really would be nice (for the sake of tagging/etc.) if there were some damage (or a way to trait for it) on some of the celestial skills — at least on the Auto-attack. Or burning, or something otherwise offensive.

• Bug: Right now, the reduced pet skill recharge bonuses from Beastmastery don’t seem to affect the Wyverns’ skills (I haven’t checked the others yet). The tooltip, at least, stays the same.

• Glyph of Tides would make a lot more sense, I think, if the functions were reversed: Pull on normal use, Push away in Celestial form. I am much more likely to want to extra room while I’m trying to heal, and much more likely to want the pull when I’m fighting. Also, the KB puts enemies out of range of the other glyphs, traps, melee attacks, and etc, which somewhat hurts its synergy with Ancient Seeds and general beatdown.

• Bug: Lunar Impact states it’s a blast finisher, but does not proc one when cast on a field (or at least does not give the visual indication of proccing one).

• It would be nice if there were a way to somewhat improve the amount of Astral Force generated through most heal skills and somewhat weaken the amount gained by Troll Unguent (which right now nearly fills the entire bar on one cast, once it’s pulses have finished). I would also approve of a trait that allowed regeneration and life-steal (from us or our pets) to fill the bar, particularly if something were changed to allow some amount of life-siphoning, like, say, pet attacks on enemies struck by staff 2 (while the wisp is orbiting them). Or maybe regen could fill it somewhat as baseline functionality, which would offer more diversity in our potential heal options (since HS already causes regen and traited WHaO does, too) and would even make other shouts potentially useful as bar-fillers.

• There were a few other things, but I’m too tired to remember them right now. Thanks again though, and please, while I know some things are definitely too strong right now, don’t let us lose this amazing feel and synergy. It rocks.

In general, this is the most fun I have had on any class in a long time, it looks and feels incredible, and in general, while I realize I’m probably vulnerable to heavy control builds, I feel ridiculously powerful, stylish, and generally awesome. And I love the effects (although I agree with a slightly larger, more sun-colored, including-on-hit-lens-flare-or-something-effect staff 1 upgrade)! My Ranger has now truly ascended and is indeed closer to the stars.

try playing more buddy you might change your mind after a day.

Troll Unguent removes auto attack when in celestial form.

Can this be addressed?

Thanks.

Mr Pin.6728:

Having now gone through a reset night on SoS I can say that druid is really the placebo effect. You see green numbers and think “Hey I’m being effective!” but honestly that’s not the case. I was really hoping that in a large group environment this is where the spec would really shine and pick up. A large number of my initial bad impressions still remain however.

What the druid needs is some sort of dps component. Despite the proclamation"zerk meta is dead" DPS is still king in this game. Without any way for the druid to actually force opponents to disengage you can heal all you want while the enemies merrily whack away at you and wear you down. All you are doing is ensuring you are one of the last to die. Nothing is really getting done. And with the spec so married to staff you really can’t even swap to a dps weapon set to try to pressure the engagement. Its further complicated by people’s natural reaction to roll out of the damage, this leaves druid exposed or largely out of position to be the most effective to the front line they need to carry them.

Water fields on Eles and even scrapper with their mobile blasting water field are far more desirable to a druid spec. They have the option to switch to heavy dps as well as sustain. This allows then to push or turn the engagement, something the druid is completely incapable of doing.

Glyphs are pretty useless, short in range, complicated alternating effects (Am I pulling in this form or pushing? I want to pull but now I’m in a form that cant do damage…) and no real damage component, no real group utility that others classes can’t bring to greater effect.

Unfortunately this late in the game there isn’t an opportunity to add any real functionality to the druid. The best we can hope for are numbers tweaks. Well unless healing is tweaked to God levels that can really sustain 20 people against 50. But that would be broken as all get out. Something this pigeon holed into a role probably shouldn’t have been one of the last to be revealed and openly tested. With such a narrow focus there are too many things that can derail that intended role.

All in all druid feels like a giant missed opportunity. 3/10

you can’t use the " Zerk is king of dps anymore " they have other options than just straight up damage, and that is not a Basis to Justify any feed back.

the whole point of this feed back is to say the Staff needs more Viable Damage , from what i’ve read from your feed back you didn’t play Druid Effectively and got confused by the Dual Effects on the glyphs and forced F5 every time it was Ready which you don’t need to.

in the streams i watched most of the players had the pet also on passive waiting for its KD or what its first move is instead of actively using the pet , so some of these so called Feedbacks are only using Half the builds Potential in terms of damage and are most likely not traiting the pet to make up for the Damage loss by not being able to use WK+MM+druid instead have to op for beastmastery .

but from what i see the Staff has No Syngergy with anything apart from Daze combos , its needs Condis on some attacks , Evade on 3 and make f5 a ready to press like Death shroud depending on how much energy is needed to Activate it , im not sure when f5 is ready to use but it should be at 50% energy Astral form is ready to use.

on top of that the Staff provides no boons , which makes the Heal sustain side of things nearly pointless due to no Resistance/protection/blinds ect , though again a lot of people have tested the druid without the input from the pet , has anyone tried Furn wolf+haO and druid with lyssa runes after that you could take any amulet or PvE gear set up you’d like though again if the pets on Passive all the time waiting for a skill to come off cooldown its a Wasted Mechanic and staff will feel weak.

so i Suggest to the Beta testers Make sure you Actively use the pet while testing combos not just do a Staff combo and leave the pet doing nothing.

overall, i like the spec…even though i don’t plan to use it as a dedicated healer. i think this is a good start (wish there were more betas to refine like the other classes had….). aside from creating a group healer role new to ranger, the strong cc/interrupt aspects mesh pretty well w/ other builds

astral force is easy enough to build fast w/ staff auto and/or troll ungent….but could use a slight boost on other weapons

ancient seeds is a great GM trait, but sometimes procs wonkey.

REVERSE THE FUNCTION OF GLYPH OF TIDES – the current functionality makes zero sense. in celestial form (healer role) i want to push mobs away…outside celestial, i want to pull mobs to my weapon/glyph aoes.

also…..make glyphs ranged and ground targeted….makes no sense to have a ranged healer class have small radius pbaoe utilities.

would like at least celestial form auto to have a very small aoe dmg component……..so that healer druids can get event credit easier.

LOVE the mobility of staff 3, but adding a blast finisher to staff 3 would add a new dimension to druid support and the skill itself. especially w/ water field on staff 5.

staff 2 should spawn at target……this would also improve the very weak for a GM, lingering.

staff isn’t working w/ quickdraw, so that needs to be fixed.

wyvern pets are bad. way too slow to attack. the uncontrollable knockback is very bad, and fire ’s F2 takes so long to happen its unusable

love bristleback and smokeskale though.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Build I settled into for my playstyle for BWE3 Druid after a few hours of experimenting:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsXTnEqAlsgVsAuCCctgl9ADOumX/rL3uAwoj5CEwGBnMMTNB-TBSBABFp8jOzfXt/wNq/0qSQU03AwTAIvTBApAiYMA-e

Druid Feedback:
1) Astral Force gains too slow on damage
a. Please make it 1.5%

2) Wyvern knockback is extremely annoying
a. Please make it a knockdown
b. Attack speeds are way too slow
c. AOE was where it was at and not where it need to be (in melee range)

3) Nearly no damage done in Astral Form
a. Add damage

4) Quick Draw doesn’t work with the staff
a. Make it work

5) Natural Convergence radius too small
a. Needs 600 unit range

6) Can’t blast my own water field when in Astral Form. Meaning, when I hit 4 it takes so long to change by the time I hit three and the blast hits, the water field is already gone.
a. Make it so I can blast my own water field in Astral Form

7) Natural Convergence rooting… ain’t worth it for the risk
a. Please increase the damage

8) Staff damage on 1-5 is just pitiful
a. Increase it substantially

9) Healing Glyph on is bad
a. Can barely feel it

10) Glyphs in general aren’t worth taking
a. Add some additional effects (like stun break and stability aoe or offensive boons) and/or damage
b. Range needs to be 360 range default on all of them
c. Elite needs 600 range

11) Heal Scaling is still bad
a. Astral Form doesn’t burst heal for enough
b. Add better healing coefficients

12) Liked the Tiger and Smokescale pets
a. Didn’t use the Bristleback but that bug is annoying when it can block most of my screen

Pre-Edit: It takes too long to build astral force without healing… Pretty sure that was intended though.

I double this. If you’d do as this gentleman said Druid would be totally the best class ever made.

P.S. I just wanted to say A BIG THANK YOU for reallyreallyreally cool visuals for every new Elites (and Revenant). You’ve made a realy good job at this. A lot of ppl could say that visuals are not the main aspect of the game but for me its a big +.

Context: I’m a fairly new player that hasn’t even gotten a character to 80 yet, and I’ve only really done PVE / Questing / Exploring.

Quick note on pets:

• Love ’em. LOVE them. I really dig that three of the four have combo fields on their F2. I love comboing with my pet as a Ranger.
• The Electric Wyvern has a combo field on its F2, but that doesn’t show up in the tooltip; it should
• The Fire Wyvern’s F2 animation was incredible, but it was WAAAAAY too slow. I counted 14 seconds between pressing the button and getting field active. It’s pretty rare that anything in this game stays in one place and alive for that long. I don’t mind a little wind-up, but it’d probably feel better if the combo field showed up as soon as the lava animation did.

Given the context, maybe Druid isn’t really for me; I don’t really see a need for a dedicated healer the way I play the game. That said:

• I really liked the “3” skill. Dash + blast finisher is super fun if you can time it right (the timing is a little bit wonky because of the delay after the dash)
• 1 & 2 felt uninteresting. I tend toward melee weapons because 1&2 with most range weapons powers tend to feel like “1: shoot; 2: shoot a little harder with a CD” and the staff was no exception.
• I don’t … really … get the Celestial form thing. It seems like a nice “OH NOES” button for group play, but running around the world solo I can’t figure out when I would ever press it; I REALLY missed behing able to weapon swap while it was active.
• Found myself wishing the staff was a one-handed weapon so that I could mix in other ranger weapons. Rangers could really use another Main Hand weapon, especially a ranged one (the Axe auto pulls everything like it or not)
• In general I found the Druid skills to feel a bit stapled to Ranger; when I didn’t have the staff equipped I didn’t feel like a druid, and nothing in the druid specialization really synergizes with the other specializations. Maybe this is a bit of my naivette, but I felt a lot more like a dual-spec character in wow (like a Ret/Holy paladin) than I did a cohesive character.

xarallei.4279:

Does anyone actually like the glyph elite? Seems pretty useless…it has potential though but it doesn’t seem to work half the time.

I use it. Its where i get most of my damage from. Very good tool.

Comprehensive feedback FOR IRENIO from a veteran ranger’s sPVP perspective

staff

1. solar beam: The healing for this is quite low and should see a substantial increase, alternatively perhaps add an additional defensive component, e.g. short duration weakness on application or a short (1-2s regen application in an aoe around you)

2.astral wisp: This skill is not very helpful in PVP since unless your ally is literally inside the target they won’t be receiving much healing from it, it should see a radius increase. Overall the skill is lacking something, this would be a good place to introduce some pet synergy but this would have to also be in synergy with other traits, e.g. your pet’s next attack causes a 1s daze OR your pet’s F2 skill cooldown is slightly reduced.

3.ancestral grace: Love this skill, however maybe not for its particular intended function… this is a huge leap, it allows me to rotate between points and sometimes go for a quick decap and I’m back in the fight in no time, the healing on it is good and the blast finisher is good. people here have suggested to make this a short evade, i think that’s fair, but it is already quite powerful.

4.vine surge: clunky skill, this has great functionality but the mechanism is far from making it comfortable to use, you wont provide great support to your allies if they are immobilized around you and you can shoot a straight line to maybe help one of them, leaving the rest stranded, this should be a ground target AoE. offensively the 1 second immobilize is just too short and thus bad.

5_sublime conversion_: the principle design is alright, but could see some improvement. This skill acts as a water field but that is not listed in the tooltip. the healing on the projectiles could be increased by 50% to make it good, alternatively perhaps increase the duration of this field.

glyphs:

glyph of rejuvenation: the amount healed by this glyph is low compared to ‘we heal as one’ or troll unguent, the small radius does not justify the relatively small allied healing component. this does not make it a desirable healing skill.

glyph of alignment: 3s cripple and 3s weakness are frankly quite silly and in no way justify the utility slot for this skill, we have access to 4s weakness on short 5 sec CD F2 abilities from birds , or protective ward, why would anyone take this glyph ?. The celestial avatar form of this glyph is good- the healing is a decent amount and so is the condition removal- perhaps a radius increase is in order though.

glyph of equality: the 2s daze is ok, but this could use something more- perhaps make it a stunbreaker out of celestial form as well as in celestial form. there is no universally applicable stunbreaker glyph after all, and we need one. the celestial form version of it is decent, but once again could use a radius increase.

glyph of empowerment: I don’t see a situation where this would be worth a utility skill, it needs some % damage and duration increase to be viable, the radius is acceptable for its purpose. the celestial avatar form would have very niche uses in PVP, i don’t see a bunker guardian and a druid or two druids bunking a point happening and even then, 6s of increased outgoing healing is still only 6 seconds.

glyph of the tides: I like the knockback, but again this seems to be missing something. This is not a bad glyph but the celestial form is rather lacking, it seems that more thought went into making these two skill forms polar opposites but for what reason?

glyph of the unity: low cooldown, that’s good, but the damage is really poor, also the healing in celestial form is kinda poor considering the 1-5 skills can keep your party quite healthy, overall, i don’t see this glyph being a good elite skill at all.

celestial avatar skills: I don’t have much to add here, this is exactly as you described in the druid POI, it turns the druid into a healing powerhouse, and does so with style. the additional daze, slow, condi clears, water field, blast finisher (that is currently not working as a blast finisher btw) are just what we needed, USEFUL TEAM UTILITY, the ability to contribute to our team with more than just putting some traps on a sidepoint and bursting into a dance of evasion til we drop or shooting people from far away until we have to turn around and disengage is just what we need.

druid trait line:

celestial avatar minor: overall good mechanic, something fresh that rangers needed in my opinion. I would opt for increasing the contribution of damage or condition damage towards building astral force, or instead, maybe taking damage could contribute too. increasing outgoing healing as you heal and healing yourself are good synergistic contributions.

druidic clarity/cultivated synergy/primal echoes: i think cultivated synergy is not a very competitive choice considering the amount of heals the druid has. primal echoes would be good IF staff skills 1,2,4 and 5 were improved a bit. the daze makes a nice addition for proccing ancient seeds, druidic clarity is good for an adept trait.

celestial shadow/seed of life/ natural stride: For celestial shadow, from a PVP perspective, if you and your allies are fighting for a point it might not be a good idea to grant them stealth (which prevents capture point contribution) every time you leave avatar, this makes it a less than optimal option for PVP. seed of life is great, as a trait, now, if only glyphs were worth using. Natural stride is a fantastic option, something rangers have needed for a long time.

grace of the land/cosmic wisp/ancient seeds: I think grace of the land wins the cup, its simply great. Cosmic wisp is not bad but not so great, the positioning requirement makes it a bit hard to make the most out of with your allies running around but this should see better use on side point fights. Ancient seeds- effectively entangle, maybe it should benefit from wilderness knowledge bonuses too ? this is a powerful trait, but the means to trigger it to keep in line with the low cooldown requires us to use a staff with primal echoes and glyph of equality or maybe a greatsword or a shortbow. but staff synergy with condition builds is not that great as it stands, and a large component of this trigger trait is bleeding. So overall, taking this trait imposes too many restrictions on us, and we can be of more help to our teammates with the other two.

synergy of the druid with other specializations:

Wilderness Survival: Wilderness survival and druid synergy is quite impressive, unfortunately we may be pigeonholed into this (as has been the case since the specializations patch) due to requiring utility skills with condition removal and a ‘low’ CD stunbreaker. troll unguent generates the most astral force out of all the healing skills and is on a low cooldown with the wilderness knowledge trait. it also heals for a large amount and cleanses conditions. Quickening Zephyr serves for quickness stomps, has good synergy with going into celestial avatar and it is also a stunbreaker. We lack a glyph with a reliable stunbreaker to give up lightning reflexes… and with a healing power oriented build it would seem that we need signet of stone and multiple stunbreakers to handle big bursts.

Marksmanship: call of the wild adds a support component that the druid might benefit from but the real deal here is moment of clarity, this synergy makes glyph of equality and lunar impact incredibly strong, but lets not rush into conclusions, We don’t have to Nerf As One just yet. Perhaps the increased amount of stability other professions are getting with their new specializations are perfectly good counterplay for this. also, celestial avatar form is not that easy to build up, as we know. But if this does get toned down, i would recommend moment of clarity to be toned down a bit rather than everything daze-related in druid across the board- this will not be productive to redefining the role of rangers in PVP at the current state.

Sincerely Yours,

Lupus/ General Allenby
Ranger/Engineer
EU

I think you were a bit confused about my post. I did role into beast mastery. I did actively use my pet. The problem right now with druid is that is JUST sustain through healing. In a game that focuses on active defense and large spike damage small chunks of healing may prolong a battle and may lead to a draw but they won’t win an engagement. I did understand the glyphs correctly, only the pull on glyph of tides, which is what I wanted to isolate a driver put me in a form that could not capitalize on the pull because that form had no attack component to it.

also,

glyph of empowerment needs its duration doubled (or dmg% doubled if you inteded this to be for coordinated spikes)) for it to be useful. as is now, it calcs out to a 3% dps boost…..

First and foremost, I’d like to thank ANet for all the work they are putting into the game as a whole. It’s really nice to see a game company interact with its community so much.

Now to get down to business; the Druid. Do I like it? Yes, I’ve been loving it. Are there issues with it? Of course there are. It’s basically brand new. I’m going to go through each aspect (traits, weapon, celestial form, utilities, pets) and give my personal feedback and potential changes for them. I’ve played the Druid in pve and pvp, thus my thoughts will be of both aspects of the game.

Traits

Overall, I find the traits quite nice. At first glance they may seem a tad lacking, but using them in combat makes you realize their value. Despite my liking of them, I’d like to see some small changes to them.

Celestial Being (Adept minor) – I’d say increase the amount of Astral Force (AF) from damage to at least .5%. It’s almost impossible to gain it from damage enough to make it worthwhile. On the other hand I’d lower the AF gain from healing. You can almost have it up 100% with a staff and a zerg. Perhaps drop it down to 2%.

Cultivated Synergy (Middle adept) – I really like this trait. Works with ANY heal skill. However, I think the scaling needs to be improved. Full clerics in pvp puts it from 1k to 1,240 with 1200 healing (clerics amulet in pvp). I’d say it should scale to perhaps 2k max with full clerics (pve), making pvp get to a potential 1.5k or so.

Primal Echos (Bottom adept) – I like the idea, but I feel it should become on ANY weapon slot rather than just for staff. Keep the 20% CD reduction for staff. This will give it more synergy with other weapons.

Verdant Etching (Middle master) – Interesting idea. One idea is that the Seed of Life could happen on dodge roll. (Other changes see Seed of Life below)

Grace of the Land (Top grandmaster) – I don’t know about this one. I don’t really see myself taking it over the other GM traits. Maybe add an extra little thing, or increase the radius to say 360-400.

Ancient Seeds (Bottom grandmaster) – Increase the CD to 15s. Great otherwise imo.

Staff skills

I like staff a lot. Pretty neat skills. However, the idle animation just begs to be that of a caster rather than a melee (hammer) idle. Think ANet got a little too much into their new animations. Funny enough the animation bugs me the most about it! Just looks so awkward.

Solar Beam – The damage and healing aspects could be increases quite a bit. Not asking for LB damage, but I want to hit harder than a wet piece of bread.

Astral Wisp – Love this skill. Looks awesome for one, and the damage isn’t too bad. However, it’s very slow moving, thus I’d like to see maybe a 50% increase in speed as well as making it unblockable. You want reliable support, so making it unblockable would help with that. Perhaps increase scaling with the heal as well here.

Ancestral Grace – Fix the bug of not going the full distance. Also makes you go into the full channel if you aim close to you. Make it cure one condition per affected target.

Vine Surge – Increase the damage on it. Haven’t tested but does it cure immobilize from yourself? If not, would like to see that. Increase the width of the effect.

Sublime Conversion – This skill feels…out of place a bit on the staff. The projectiles lose their momentum upon entry of the field, and the heal is so weak. Increase healing on it.

Celestial Form

I really like the form. In pvp I’ve been running an LB/GS marauder spec and having the backup heals for either you or your party is great. Certainly can make more of an impact in a team fight.

Cosmic Ray – I think it’s fine as is. Perhaps make it 180 radius. 120 is really small to hit a moving target.

Seed of Life – Nice concept, but it takes forever for it to explode. The radius is also way too small. Suggest 240 radius at the very least. Suffers from the same thing kittenterstone for ele, near impossible hitting anyone with it.

Lunar Impact – Reduce daze duration to 2s. Increase CD to 6s.

Tidal Surge – Make it also cure one condition per pulse.

Natural Convergence – Nice damage on the skill, but it roots you. Make it so you can move during the cast, otherwise the skill is great.

Utilities

I don’t have any ideas on how to change these other than to make them targetable. The staff is 1200 range, every glyph is 300 range, conflicting ranges. Make the radius 300 and the targetable area 1200 range. Would solve a lot of the issues with these.

Pets

I love the new pets. Just fantastic. The tiger is great for a high dps pet that gives aoe fury. The Smokescale is by far my favorite. A pet that doesn’t instantly die in aoes! The damage is decent on him, too. I will say I dislike the wyverns. Just not my thing I guess. Their damage seems low and slow (similar to moas). The Bristleback is amazing for a condi build. I’ve stacked up to 40 bleed stacks with him and a shortbow! (pve of course)

In closing, I can’t wait to have my regular character be a Druid. I main ranger and love to play healing specs in games, but Druid allows to be both a healer and full dps (if traited well). Needs some work, but it’s very solid thus far. Cheers~

glyph of equality, make it a stun break and maybe add the ability to throw the CC back to the foe

glyph of empowerment, while most skills are good, the CAF version of it seems absolutely useless to be ever used, for example in raids or wvw, we are responsible for healing, to give it to other classes, who the most are not capable to provide such intense healing for others, seems like a wasted cd
consider a dmg reduction, maybe a short prot uptime

is it intended that we can fill the bar outfight? sometimes i can gain AF just with AA without target, i guess AF is gained for heals on people who have already full hp, especially the pet

the CAF doesnt need high dmg, but atleast a bit, just #5 and daze on moon blast is too less, consider applying few seconds of poison (2-3s) to nearby foes with SoL

the AA needs a better animation, would be nice if u change the colour, but it needs to be more visible

oh and lingering light activates outfight too, when i use sometimes my AA without anyone around, just my pet running next to me

AG port does not travel the full distance, it stops mostly at the point where the green circle ends

I feel like I a misunderstanding. People say it hard to feel the astral bar alone, but I seem to fill it up quickly. My staff skill 1 fires off pretty quickly, dmg and healing myself if the enemy close or my pet as it fight. I can use my other skill, and sometimes I start with my long bow that does good dmg.
I not have trouble with druid and the heal pulseing keep my pet alive much longer without using the heal 6 skill a lot. So I am confused what other are saying this is bad. It might just be my experience with ranger but for the most part, I am enjoying the class, and when with a group, I notice the help i am with the close ranger attackers.

Though I never felt being a ranger before was bad too.

General
Healing as the only source of support is a terrible terrible idea in a game where everyone brings their own heals, not to mention in a game where the philosphy is “you don’t need a dedicated healer”. What’s the point of druid then? Either you lied and we needed this dedicated healing role or you didn’t lie and druid is pointless in pve. In spvp it just gets CCed and it has little ways to counter this, no stability at all, no way to block damage from happening etc. Not to mention, when using the staff you lose A LOT of your pressure on the enemy, you aren’t a real threat to enemies. This is even more true in the celestial avatar. The build also isn’t sure what it wants to be, some skills suggest you should stay at long ranger, other skills need you to be close.

Staff
Too little damage, too little healing, too little everything. Imo this weapon should have less focus on pure healing, leave the healing mainly for the Celestial Avatar. Add boons and some conditions to this weapon.

Solar beam: Remove the healing that the beam gives from passing through allies, instead make the final pulse of this skill “explode” in a small aoe around the target, dealing increased damage and healing allies.

Astral Wisp: This skill seems to always miss in pvp, increase the projectile vellocity to be up to par with other skills. Make it apply regen instead of just flat healing. Make the wisp do damage to it’s target for a second time when the duration ends.

Ancestral Grace: This skill needs to end straight away when targeting at less than max range. Possibly could do with a evade. Some damage could also be nice and possibly make the heal an aegis instead. You can trigger this in water if you need a heal, so no need for it to heal on it’s own.

Vine Surge: The casting time is too long. I would make this skill grow vines that stay for 4 seconds and pulses 2-3 times (like the revenant road skill). Each pulse could remove one affect from allies, and put 1 imob and 2 bleeds, it could keep it’s current damage even. on the target. I’d say torment, but thematicly it might not fit.

Sublime Conversion: I think this skill would function better as a ground targeted shelter of sorts, also it seems that the projectiles get converted into slow moving, arcing water ones that miss you all the time. Instead you could make each projectiles be turned into a shard that heals when it hits an ally, or stays on the ground if it misses and allies can walk over them to get a small heal. Maybe add a 1s vigor to each heal of this skill.

Celestial Avatar
Too much healing, too much channeling. Now, I know this form is supposed to be the main source of healing but you get interrupted so easily because there is no stability on this. You could put stabi on a trait or just give some when entering the form, or on one of the skills, but it needs to be present somewhere on druid if you ever want this form to be useable.

Cosmic Ray: This is so annoying to land because allies have no idea that it’ll even land somewhere, so they’re always moving around out of it etc. Not to mention, skill 2 should really be the main source of healing (I’ll explain once we get to that skill). This skill should be an orb of sorts you shoot at your enemies, dealing some damage and applying vulnerability for a short duration, this will prevent dmg from happening.

Seed of Life: Remove the CD from this, decrease condi cleanse to 1 to compensate. This heal, while delayed, is way easier to hit allies with. They see where it’s growing and know that if they wish to be healed, they should stay in it.

Lunar Impact: Add some damage to it, Add a boonstrip to it, less cast time (1/2 max), reduce the daze duration to 1.5 seconds, reduce the healing slightly because it has a blast zone anyway if you wish for more.

Rejuvenating Tides: Not much to say here, maybe add protection on this at the cost of some healing with each pulse, just so that we can prevent some more dmg from happening instead of just healing.

Natural Convergence: This skill makes you a sitting duck and is way, way too easy to interrupt. We should really be able to move, as most professions that got self-root skills got the root fact removed from the skills… yet ranger still suffers from several roots for no reason. People can so easily walk out of this. Possibly make it pulse pulse 2 stacks of stability at the start and end of the skill for allies.

Glyphs
Right now I have no idea why anyone would want to equip these glyphs most of the times. Again there is no boon and very few condis associated with these support skills, not to mention all are centered around the ranger. It would sure be a nice start if the skill would also happen around the ranger’s pet. It would immidiately make the druid’s lack of pet focus a lot less.

Glyph of rejuvenation: I can just use healing spring and blast it to get the same affect + regen boon + condi cleanse without the need for any trait. This skill is just kitten and needs a rework.

Glyph of Alignment: For the only glyph that actually says “damage” in it’s description, the damage isn’t really anything to write home about. Not to mention, the conditions are kinda short on it. Avatar version works I guess, but could do with apply boons to allies.

Glyph of Equality: Should always be a stunbreak on the ranger. should do something more than just daze. Glyph of tides and this one are too similar. Avatar version could give some brief quickness to allies.

Glyph of tides: Too similar in use to Equality, not to mention we already have enough ways without this one to push enemies and interrupt and the like. It could certainly do with chill on normal form and a boon on celestial form. Aegis or team stability maybe, dunno, but it needs something more.

Glyph of empowerment: BORING. Really really lazy work. Copy a skill that already exists on ranger and put it on a glyph? Sorry but this skill needs to change to be something different. We have frost spirit for this, don’t need more of the same. It stacks, sure, but it’s still boring and in it’s current state gives a pathetic 3% dmg boost if you cast it at all times. The healing version is also just stupid and not impactful. You could change this to empower allies for 10 seconds, each strike they do gives them might for 10 seconds, maybe 1s cd between each application. This would be able to work as an alternative to phalanx warriors or combo together with them possibly. The celestial version could give swiftness on each strike or possibly vulnerability, which would still add support to celestial form even if it’s not healy, which is alright and would help the avatar form to be less focused on one thing also!

Glyph of Unity: The tether range needs to be way more, right now they don’t even need to try to get out of it. Not to mention, in pve your pet gets attacked way more than you so it’s wasted there. Make the ranger do some increased dmg / apply some kinda condition (cripple maybe) to the enemy so they can keep them close while using this. Allied form could do with boon sharing, each boon placed on you is shared to tethered allies. Synergy with change to Empowerment I suggested and would increased the party support rangers can give greatly. Wouldn’t mind giving it a slightly longer, 30s CD if these changes were made.

Traits
Please give us traits that are good for more than just healing or cleansing condis.

Celestial being: Needs to charge better when not healing, needs to not charge when healing stuff that’s already on full health.

Druidic clarity: Stun break on this would be nice as well.

Cultivated Energy: Fine as it is, there needs to be somekinda healy trait.

Primal Echoes: The daze isn’t good. Ranged weapon with melee daze kinda blegh. Could change to “Enemies affected by staff skills are burned, allies affected gain vigor.” the duration doesn’t need to be long and you can slap a short CD to it, but make sure the CD is separate for each target.

Live Vicariously: Fair enough

Celestial Shadow: Garbage trait, nobody is ever going to take this. Stealth on druid seems so random to me. Perhaps make it so that you can blink by exiting the Celestial avatar earlier and give super speed to allies as you do so. Blink doesn’t need insane range.

Verdant Etching: It’s the healing trait for majors, I guess it’s fine enough.

Natural stride: On par with similar traits, it’s fine.

Natural Mender: I do not like this trait. Make it 1% but apply to damage as well.

Grace of the land: I guess it’s fine but there’s a lot of condi cleanse on the druid already, making this trait a bit blegh. Still, it prevents damage from happening so I suppose it is fine in some situations.

Cosmic wisp: Seems a bit weak, this wisp could heal for a bit more or apply a boon to allies.

Ancient seeds: Fine trait, possibly make it applicable to foes that have just been pushed back or pulled if that’s possible, or perhaps on crippled foes too, but still, fine as it is as well.

That’s all I have right now, thank you for reading

I have been playing clerics and apothecary builds for a few months now on multiple classes, mesmer, guard, and necro. The first two have meh scaling with healing power. Now the necros death shroud 4 scales like crazy with healing power. With healing power food, full benevolence stacks, and full ascended clerics my death shroud 4 heals for 9k. Now im not saying any skill in particular for the druid needs that massive scaling , but the issue is that healing power primary gear and non healing power gear makes very little difference in the amount each heal does. This bugs me because the druids will just continue to use zerkers and still heal pretty much the same. I suggest the base heal value be decreased and the scaling for each ability be increased so that having healing power primary is an absolute must to be a good healer. Otherwise this is gonna zerker healers and thats sounds kittening stupid. Please change this.

My only complaints are that cascade of vines needs to be longer than 1 second immobilize and no cast time. Staff 3 wisp form needs to be an evade. The glyphs are good but could do with maybe a 2 second CD reduction on each. Glyph of empowerment should maybe be a 15% increase to justify taking it. Also, we MUST GET A STUN BREAK ON A GLYPH OR MAYBE 2

smalls.2463:

With healing power food, full benevolence stacks, and full ascended clerics my death shroud 4 heals for 9k.

On a class/spec that is not intended solely for healing and with 1-2 only forms of dps…

Anet… either kill the necro’s healing by SIGNIFICANT amounts… Or prove to us you wanted us to be healers..

Kailee.8790:

smalls.2463:

With healing power food, full benevolence stacks, and full ascended clerics my death shroud 4 heals for 9k.

On a class/spec that is not intended solely for healing and with 1-2 only forms of dps…

Anet… either kill the necro’s healing by SIGNIFICANT amounts… Or prove to us you wanted us to be healers..

Thats only one skill though and it requires a trait. Tidal Surge is almost as effective and on much shorter cd + is a mobile water field.

Swapping to Celestial Avatar procs Quick Draw, but none of the skills will trigger it, so you never get the cooldown reduction.

It then goes on cooldown so you often cant proc it when you return to normal form.

Very annoying. Not sure why it needs a cooldown as its tied to wep swap cooldowns anyway.

arkealia.2713:

Gilgalas.7860:

I found an error: Staff5 (Natural Convergence): 0.025. Staff5 in normal formal is:
Staff5 (Sublime Conversion): 0.2

Fixed the name, but I’m still finding 2.5% (162 to 192 with +1200h.power).

Yes you are write for the number, I think I read a wrong line in my table when I corrected you.

Justine.6351:

SemiProBBQ.8946:

Please make the tiger’s pounce fury effect 600 radius like the jungle stalkers roar, this is a screen of me using it on a husk and i dont get the fury unless im literally standing on him, 240 radius is just too small.

In that pic not even 600 would give you fury.

This pet already stepping on red moa toes, maybe quickness or boon removal shouts!

It was a bad angle, look at the minimap though, if im standing in that range my stalker is giving me might, which is a 600 radius

I didn’t read full thread, but I have question for those who tried the druid.. Would some sort of LB+Staff build for open world/PvE content?

TJgalon.5012:

I feel like I a misunderstanding. People say it hard to feel the astral bar alone, but I seem to fill it up quickly. My staff skill 1 fires off pretty quickly, dmg and healing myself if the enemy close or my pet as it fight. I can use my other skill, and sometimes I start with my long bow that does good dmg.
I not have trouble with druid and the heal pulseing keep my pet alive much longer without using the heal 6 skill a lot. So I am confused what other are saying this is bad. It might just be my experience with ranger but for the most part, I am enjoying the class, and when with a group, I notice the help i am with the close ranger attackers.

Though I never felt being a ranger before was bad too.

You didn’t read what people said correctly.

They said the Astral bar heals too slow WITHOUT staff, which makes Druid synergy with other weapons bad.

I think Cosmic Ray from CA should do half of the actual healing, and convert the other half into damage, so even if CA its highly focused on healing, it can still do some symbolic damage while reducing a little bit the heal spam of the AA, making the other 2-5 skills even more important

General
The overall feeling of the druid specialization is pretty good. It is definitely fun to play and visually appealing. I like that by properly utilizing the traits it is possible to build astral force in a reasonable time even without locking you into staff. However, with the sole exception of Moment of Clarity increasing the duration of all the dazes there is no synergy with any of the other ranger traits at all. I am not sure what can be done about this, but currently druid adds nothing to either direct damage or condition damage builds. Unless we get some synergy with the core specializations I don’t really see druid getting much use which is a shame for how fun it is.

Astral Force
Generating this is way too easy when surrounded by a lot of allies and way too hard when playing alone. One way to solve this would be to increase the amount generated when casting a skill that heals an ally, but only apply the heal once per skill. This could also fix the problem with Troll Unguent basically generating the full bar.
Generation with staff is probably a little bit too strong. If not using staff, Verdant Etching and Cultivated Synergy generate at an acceptable rate, but trying to generate astral force purely from damage is much too slow.
Losing all astral force when getting downed is annoying since right after rallying is the time where you need healing the most.

Staff

• Weapon identity: The staff is to use, but a bit under-tuned. The feeling of a position based weapon has been captured pretty well and lining up the auto attack to get the most out of it is fun. Quick Draw not working needs to be fixed.
• Solar Beam: This skill is mostly fine. The heal isn’t too big, but it charges up astral force really quickly which is fine. The damage is a little bit on the low side for the main damage source on this weapon. The beam has some functionality issues with obstruction. An example is the urban battleground fractal, after defeating siegemaster dulfy I was unable to hit the gate with the staff at all.
• Astral Wisp: Incredibly unreliable against moving targets which makes it frustrating to use. If you cast it on an enemy in pvp they can just make a small sidestep whenever the wisp is close to you and it is nearly impossible to “catch” it for the healing. Either increase the speed at which it rotates, increase the radius of the wisp to make it easier to touch, or consider having two wisps spinning simultaneously (while still keeping the 1 second interval between healing).
• Ancestral Grace: Fun skill, I really like this one, but it feels like it is missing something. The healing amount is fine and the distance traveled is good. Some damage when you land would help with the staffs very low damage, but it might make the skill too strong. I would be fine with a bit lower heal as a trade-off for some damage. One functionality I would love to see on this skill is to allow it to go up ledges, essentially turning you into an Infiltrator’s Arrow. Also, the skill currently locks you in animation if you use it at short range.
• Vine Surge: Currently the worst part of the staff. It is really hard to land against anything that moves which would be fair enough if the reward for landing it would justify it. The immobilize has a too short duration and the damage is too low. Perhaps make the damage scale in the same way based on distance that revenant Coalescence of Ruin does.
• Sublime Conversion: At first I didn’t understand why the skill doesn’t convert the raw damage number into healing to make it work kind of like a reverse reflection, but then I noticed that the skill is actually also a water field. If the water field part is intentional then I think the skill is alright, otherwise I would like to see the healing scale based on the damage of the projectile it eats.

Celestial Avatar

• Cosmic Ray: The healing is fine, but it is way too hard to land on anything that moves. Either allow the skill to automatically cast on a targeted ally or increase the radius.
• Seed of Life: The healing and condition removal are fine, but the time for the seed to pop is a bit too high.
• Lunar Impact: The daze is too strong. With Moment of Clarity it is a 6 second daze that is fairly spammable. The daze duration needs to be reduced to 2-2.5 seconds base. It feels really weird that you call down an impact that still affects enemies, yet doesn’t do any damage. I would like to see a small damage scaling on it, probably something in strength to the glyphs.
• Rejuvenating Tides: Amazing skill and fun to use.
• Natural Convergence: This skill feels so bad to use due to being locked in place. I would like to be able to move while casting this. As compensation for the buff maybe the slow should be added to the final hit instead of applying on every pulse.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Rejuvenation: This skill is fine in normal form. However, the Celestial Avatar version of this skill punishes you for using it along with Glyph of Unity as you do less healing to yourself and therefore less to your ally. It is weird for the skill to do overall less healing like this.
• Glyph of Alignment: The normal mode of this skill is fine. The Celestial version is really lackluster. There is already a ton of condition removal available in from both Celestial Avatar and glyphs in general with Verdant Etching. The skill would feel a lot better if it applied boons to allies instead of removing conditions.
• Glyph of Equality: Great skill.
• Glyph of the Tides: Once again the normal form is fine, but for pve it will be taken for the pull not the push. The pull on the Celestial version has a much too short radius; if anything is without the range to actually be pulled you can already hit them with AoEs. Increase the radius to 450-600 to make is similar to Temporal Curtain / Binding Blade.
• Glyph of Empowerment: The effect is fine, but why is this the only glyph to not have any immediate effect? Make the normal version do the same damage as all the other glyphs and the Celestial version apply the same healing.
• Glyph of Unity: Very fun skill and highly unique. Makes for some interesting decision making when fighting against this skill. However, why is the instant damage lower than all the other glyphs? Increase the damage to be on par with the non-elite glyphs.

Traits

• Celestial Being: Nothing much to say about this, it unlocks the new mechanics.
• Cultivated Synergy: Great trait.
• Druidic Clarity: This trait feels a bit bland with all the condition removal already available. I think adding a stun break on casting Celestial Avatar with an internal cooldown would make it able to compete with Cultivated Synergy.
• Primal Echoes: The trait is fine, but it currently suffers from the staff being underwhelming. On a side note, I love the 8 second internal cooldown to make it work on every weapon swap if you are using Rune of the Warrior, I would love to see this on the Skirmishing weapon swap traits as well.
• Live Vicariously: Fine minor trait, but the healing power scaling is a bit too low. Currently, even if you spam one heal on five allies every second while tethering with Glyph of Unity in Celestial Avatar (best case scenario) it is still weaker than regeneration, both based on base number and scaling.
• Celestial Shadow: Fun trait, not very useful in pve, but in pvp it has potential. Take this trait and the Scrapper and Reaper on your team will love you.
• Natural Stride: Good for open world pve, not much else. I think that is fine.
• Verdant Etching: Really nice trait, this trait is the sole reason why I don’t feel locked into staff in order to generate astral force. Like Seed of Life the blooming time of the seed needs to be lowered though.
• Natural Mender: Fine trait, I like that the stacking mechanic, but I don’t like that it is only outgoing healing. It would be nice if the trait also increased healing you did to yourself – especially since we are encouraged to heal ourselves to heal our allies with Glyph of Unity.
• Ancient Seeds: Fun and strong trait, but possibly a little bit too strong with how easily available dazes are. Increasing the internal cooldown to 15-20 seconds would probably make it feel less un-fun to play against.
• Grace of the Land: I haven’t actually tried this trait, but I like the idea of protection against conditions. Ties well with Druidic Clarity to ensure that you can focus on helping your allies with conditions when under heavy pressure.
• Lingering Light: This trait has the same problem as Astral Wisp. Also, I don’t like having a grandmaster trait that literally does nothing when playing alone. I would like to see the wisp heal yourself at a reduced rate to make up for the fact that you don’t have to be touched by it.

smalls.2463:

This bugs me because the druids will just continue to use zerkers and still heal pretty much the same. I suggest the base heal value be decreased and the scaling for each ability be increased so that having healing power primary is an absolute must to be a good healer. Otherwise this is gonna zerker healers and thats sounds kittening stupid. Please change this.

Please don’t.

It is not ‘kittening stupid’ for a healer to want to gear to improve their DPS. Damage-dealing is part of what all good healers do, because if they didn’t, they’d end up spending whole swathes of their time standing around looking like pratts.

This would just waste a load of ecto, and it would actively harm both build diversity and the viability of druids.

Sojurner.8234:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Kailee.8790:

Ok after testing, healing druid is completely worthless in pvp.

Secondly, even with the movespeed bonus from traited druid skill, in addition to the signet for 25% more speed…. Reapers are outrunning you easily

What the hell…

First comment, completly worthless feedback.

Second comment – First of all, movement speed bonus don’t stack. Secondly, if you’re at swiftness speed, how the heck can reapers outrun you??

1. reapers outrun druid- its a fact

2. not worthless feedback, its actually completely accurate feedback

Reapers being able to outrun a druid is a good thing. The reaper is a melee spec that needs to close the gap. Use crowd control.

Please make the Seed of Life skill look a little more like a “blossom” and a little less like a zit. Every time I use a glyph it’s like, “Eeeeww.”

True that its a good thing for Reapers to out run a druid, its also good since druid is a healer and needs to stay back from the fight mostly.

And there is a problem. If I’m to be on the back line, then staff should have 1,500 range too like long bow. Why? Because Elementalists, Necros, and Mesmers should be at the 1,200 range and I should be healing them in addition to the lead tanks like the heavy armors in a WvW zerg for instance. Just an example.

And is it me, or is the staff holding like a hammer really starting to look dull? Why can’t we hold it like everyone else holds a staff?

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Please make the Seed of Life skill look a little more like a “blossom” and a little less like a zit. Every time I use a glyph it’s like, “Eeeeww.”

I did lol just now

Avatar healing skill #1 is slow my allies are usually out of the way by the time it hits.
My only downside and worry is event credit.

Staff #2 (and grandmaster Cosmic Wisp): Maybe the Wisp that flies around the target should damage enemies it passes through as well and heal allies .Or tack this ability onto the Grandmaster for a bit more of a multiuse ability.

The new pets feel pretty great.

Aomine.5012:

Revenant is the new OP class.

Sword 3 can easily do 9k damage with enough mights.
Not to mention Revenant can self stack around 20 stacks of might without doing anything lol…

Only problem is the lack of cleanse w/o Ventari, which is actually a big issue XD…
So Revenant will be quite OP in PVE that’s for sure.

Hammer is doing more dps than LB too lol..

I’m really sick of the OP talk. Revenant is fine. There are plenty of classes that have abilities that do 9k damage in pve so I don’t see what the problem is. Sword 3 is the main Rev burst skill it SHOULD do a lot of damage. Every class has a weakness and rev is very weak to condis. Seriously people need to get to know classes first before crying OP. People are doing this to druid too unfortunately.

In the limited time I’ve tried druid in WvW, it’s been pretty pleasing if not a little over the top with the healing theme. While I enjoy the play style of the druid, there are a few things I would like to give my feedback on.

- That glyph range has got to be bigger. I find most of them not worth taking in either form because the 300 range seems so limiting. 600 would be great, but I think 450 would be more reasonable.
- Do we really need to lose all our astral energy (is that what it’s called?) when we leave cele form? I was kinda hoping that it would function more like death shroud where we could enter before it was full, leave without losing all the energy, and possibly sustain a little of it while in the form similar to the DS #4 skill when we heal.
- It seems next to impossible to build up astral energy when using any weapon other than staff unless I use Troll Unguent. Intended? If so, that’s fine in my opinion. Just more of an observation.
- Is it possible to add inconsequential damage to a couple of the heal skills in cele form simply for the purpose of event tagging?
- Props for the bristleback and the smokescale. They are so much fun.

I played all of yesterday on a pure healing druid (minus pets). In otherwords my weapons and gear were magis while trinkets were clerics. I was able to get golds on just about every event I ran in while running a pure healing spec and it was because of the way the druid heals it’s allies through attacking the target while outside of the avatar.

Did play pure healing, like I said, meaning I was even speced for it. My pet would heal on f2 and have it’s own health kept up. I ran: Nature Magic, Beastmastery, and Druid, to try and pump out as much healing as I could and keep my pet up for as long as I could.

My experience on healing: I’ve mained healers since I first started playing MMOs at the age of 10. That is thirteen years of experience on healers now. I played Druid in WoW and Sorc in The Old Republic as well as Monk in the original GW and so on. I love healing. It get the most fun out of a game when I know I just helped through healing my ally back up to full health even if I am playing whack-a-mole with health bars. GW2’s form of healing I didn’t like. I disliked guardians (only healing class that was “viable” for a long time) but now I love it on the druid and even on the herald.

Staff: Outside of the avatar, the skills are meant for sustain healing and small amounts of damage.
1. Solar Beam – While I do see why some people don’t like the beam and how it only heals those who are in the path of it, I find it adds a little of a skill cap to it and makes it so that you have to watch where you are standing in relation to your party. It wasn’t too hard for me to move to heal two of my guildies while in story with this and when there were ranged allies who needed healing, the 1200 range on the staff allowed for me to move in behind them or stack ontop of them to continue healing. The heal was small, but fast especially when combined with Quickening Zephyr. The numbers where close to 80-100 heals per second.
2. Astral Wisp – This one was a lot of fun. Not only was it an aoe attack but it also would keep my party topped off while in melee. Combined with the trait Lingering Light and it meant that I was healing not only those in melee but those in ranged close to me as well.
3. Ancestral Grace – Nice burst heal for the sustain part of the healing on the Druid. While it doesn’t do damage, this skill is great to use as an escape or just to hit someone in the zerg or group who are starting to get low on heal. The skill takes some getting used to while in smaller groups than a zerg because of positioning, but once you are able to see where someone is running you can time it, even without talking to the person, to hit them. It doesn’t always hit and it you do have to watch where the form it placing you. I did go down a few times when I exited it and was hit by the bosses.
4. Vine Surge – Omg, I loved just using the skill to watch the animation, but that’s not useful. What was the most useful for this skill was the stun break (of course, does nothing if you’re dazed) but I found I was using it a lot in the SW during the instance to get into the Brink. Later I used it to help a few party members out, but it was harder to use in zergs because I couldn’t tell if someone was stunned or not if they weren’t in my party.
5. Sublime Conversion – a hard skill to get used to, but once I started getting it down it was easier to use against the ranged enemies. Worst thing zerging while trying to use this is when someone knocks the enemy away after you just placed the wall, thus making the wall useless. But the best experience I got with this was in Arah path 2 when we were fighting Lupi. During the second stag I placed the wall into his bubble and it healed all those who were caught in it back up to full health rather than killing them.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Rejuvenation – The one thing about ranger I always wanted was to be able to heal allies more than just using healing spring and Fern Hound.
1. Normal heal – this is a 6k heal for yours and a 2k for allies around. Even in the open world, I was able to get in and heal up allies during events with just this skill. It felt stronger and more satisfying than Healing Spring ever has.
2. Avatar – The switch of the other where it is more heals to allies than to yourself. This was great when I wasn’t in the Avatar and aiming for bursting up the health of my allies. I loved running in, popping Empowerment and Unity (when Unity actually worked), Rejuvenating Tides and then Rejuvenation and just watching my allies health skyrocket back up and stay full until Rejuvenating Tides ended.

Glyph of Alignment – I didn’t play around with skill a lot. Since I was full healing gear it was harder to deal damage and thus the glyph was near useless outside in the open world where I camped out of the Avatar most of the time. I did give it a whirl though. The damage is underwhelming to the point I would rather run Quickening Zephyr for the speed boost on spamming auto than this glyph. While in the avatar, I found that there was never enough time to always use it and there were heals I would rather burst out faster than worry about this one.

Glyph of Equality – Another underwhelming skill. The daze is nice for tight spots where I needed to escape faster, but we already have a great stun break on staff outside of the avatar. With the avatar only lasting seconds as it is I found that one, it was too hard to see who needed to be stun broken outside of the party, and two it was a waste to use it when there is so much stun break in the game as it is. It felt like an “no kitten” button while in the avatar. And while not, being in melee range is the last thing I want to do outside of the avatar form. The staff is ranged heals and where most of your healing comes from when not in the form so it was more useful to have another ability in the place of this one than to use this one. It is very, very situational.

Glyph of Tides – Hurray another knock back… wait, another knock back? Ugh, it is bad enough when people misused the fourth skill on long bow. This one was annoying. Yes, a nice skill to have if you are caught between too many enemies with both your pets down, but that is very situational and it is easy to escape when using staff and greatsword 3. As for the avatar part, will be nice in fractals if you don’t have a guardian or Mesmer with you, but again this is very situational and I don’t see this skill seeing a lot of use outside of those situations.

Glyph of Empowerment – This one I loved running! The increase to damage at 10% basically replaces the need to have the Frost Spirit which died a lot. While not as long lasting a boost it is a 100% chance to get that 10% to damage. While I did have to move into range of my pet or allies to use it, it was worth it to see my pet devouring the enemies in flames or other abilities. The avatar form this was also really nice to burst out those heals. After using it, I could get 6k heals while in the avatar and it was more than worth it to watch the health bars fly back up.

Elite:
Glyph of Unity – I have a lot of problems with this elite. It wasn’t always working despite standing in range of the enemy. I wouldn’t be tethered to them at all after using the elite and even when I was my pet was always tanking, thus I took no damage. The elite is highly situation and feels underwhelming to use. When I actually was taking damage it was because I did something which placed me right into the attack of an enemy. Going into the skill I was excited about it, now, I am sad that it doesn’t work all of the time and when it does I am not taking damage. It worked the best against trash mobs (below vet rank) and that just feels so disappointing when I could have “Strength of the Pack” and my pet could deal more damage with that than I was with this glyph. Now the avatar form this: again it wasn’t always tethering me despite standing right in the middle of the zerg or between my party members. When it did, this had a bigger pay off than the other form did. I could heal for more and think I managed to heal them through spamming Cosmic Ray and Lunar Impact on myself. But it didn’t always work and if I wanted to heal and be useful with that I would rather take Spirit of Nature and have him up for the short time to heal allies then rez if downed.

Celestial Avatar – This was a lot of fun to use after I got used to it. While, at first, the time felt too short in the form I noticed that amount of healing I was pumping out verse the time was a lot and the recharge if in a good zerg or party was so fast that the time was good. Anymore on it and the skill would be over powered.

Staff in Celestial Avatar: The one big complaint (I do have more) with this is that it forces a Druid to camp in staff if they want to heal and only heal. So I was running staff all the time and thus ended up feeling like I was trapped into having to use it.
1. Cosmic Ray – Heal spam skill for the end of the form before being kicked from it or to spam heal an ally back to full. It’s a good 1k heal.
2. Seed of Life – Meh, sort of underwhelming of a heal but most of the time I was using this in a zerg and couldn’t see the cleansing on it. With the cleanse, what it heals for is good, but I wish I had been able to see the cleansing or know if it had worked.
3. Lunar Impact – 3-6k heal anyone? I adored this ability. I was running around with a guildie watching the numbers coming up as I healed him and others in the small zerg at night and nearly shouted his ear off when I was the 6k heal fly up. As a long time healer from other mmos this was extremely exciting for me. I love seeing the large green numbers and knowing that it is just good, if not better, than others. Granted to get the 6k I had to also have Glyph of Empowerment up and I don’t think I had full stacks of any sigils on at that time. But I wasn’t paying attention to that then just the numbers I was seeing. This made this skill by far one of my favorites on the Druid if not in the game.
4. Rejuvenating Tides – 1-2k constant healing around you, yes please. I love running into the middle of a zerg during one of those boss fights and watching the green just go crazy on my screen. The skill last just long enough hit my Empowerment and Lunar Impact and just watch the healing.
5. Natural Convergence – this skill has a high skill cap on it. I can’t tell you how many times I hit it and then hit w to move by mistake and broke the channel. I ended up having to force myself focus on it when I wanted to use the skill. The time it takes to run is precious time I could be healing. This is not a skill to use when your allies are needing the health, it is a skill to use when your Celestial is full and your team needs that tiny bit more of dps you can (very tiny). As well as slow, cripple, and immobilizing the enemy (if you pull it off). I get why it is this way and the skill would be overpowered if you could cancel it by mistake that doesn’t mean I didn’t find myself wishing I could stuck while channeling it.

The Pets:
Wyvern:
1. Electric – meh, cute as can be but the knock back is annoying. I tend to try to run as few as I can because it makes it harder for teams and zergs to kill enemies faster and people get annoyed if you are always knocking enemies from the aoe they just placed (dungeon runs, fractals, and so on). Only time I use knock backs in one fractal otherwise I avoid it.
2. Fire – Love this guy. I ended up using him the most. The fire field was what was allowing me to get golds on events in the open world as well as kill the healers in AC story during my half solo run before my guildies asked me to help on Arah path 2. His dps output was amazing.
3. Smokescale – These guys are annoying in the open world. I didn’t much like the f2 skill being the invulnerability over the equal to rev sword skill 3, but I suppose it would be over powered if we had those switched.
4. Bristleback – best ranged pet ever! I used him during the noble’s final event chain and he was able to put out a lot of dps without dying since he didn’t run into the fire fields like the smokescale and wyvern were.
5. Tiger – meh, yeah we finally got a tiger. Yeah, I wanted a tiger since launch. No, I don’t see myself running this. Crit doesn’t affect healing. Fury is useless and a constant when you have a herald in your party or just about any other class. Sure I would run him in my old build with the stalker. Fury + might, yes please.

xarallei.4279:

Aomine.5012:

Revenant is the new OP class.

Sword 3 can easily do 9k damage with enough mights.
Not to mention Revenant can self stack around 20 stacks of might without doing anything lol…

Only problem is the lack of cleanse w/o Ventari, which is actually a big issue XD…
So Revenant will be quite OP in PVE that’s for sure.

Hammer is doing more dps than LB too lol..

I’m really sick of the OP talk. Revenant is fine. There are plenty of classes that have abilities that do 9k damage in pve so I don’t see what the problem is. Sword 3 is the main Rev burst skill it SHOULD do a lot of damage. Every class has a weakness and rev is very weak to condis. Seriously people need to get to know classes first before crying OP. People are doing this to druid too unfortunately.

9K in PVP Maurader Amulet.

In PVE, with foods, consumables, and Ascended, it can easily does way more damage “by himself” (And unlike 100B, this skill has way larger range.)

But I did point of the lack of cleanse is detrimental in PVP.

I play a Druid mostly in WvW large fight.
The ability of condition cleanse from glyph with trait is pretty weak (on paper, it sounds good) compared to wildness survival condition cleanse trait. It’s because unlike Wilderness Knowledge which remove condition immediately, Verdant Etching’s condition removal effect takes time and player needs to be in that small circle.

Since the glyph effective range is small, so the way I play druid is frontline style, going into the enemies’ large group. That’s where a lot of aoe effect/condition will be. If we want to cleanse the condition by using glyph skill, we have to stay in that small circle (Seed of Life) with a lot of large red circle, ie, we will die if we stay there. So we have to constantly moving. That means we have to move away from Seed of Life circle, and we can’t benefit the effect of Verdant Etching.

Suggestion: make the condition removal effect immediate

I was planning on posting some feedback after testing the Druid in raids, but since they have been disabled for the duration of the beta weekend my feedback has to be on how they function in the rest of the PvE environment.

The druid is a very niche specialization that has no place in the core game, nor any of the available beta content. Maybe this will change with raids, but as it stands the Druid and healer role in general does not fit into PvE.

Its just too one-dimensional; it focuses too much on healing and not enough on other types of support that are generally more important. Why not branch out its support to include more damage mitigation, boons, and damage increases to allies? For instance, allies caught in your solar beam could get retaliation. When wisps heal an ally it could give them a 10% damage increase for a few seconds.

At this point, 3+ years on, I feel the whole class needs to be completely gutted and rebuilt from the ground up. Sure, every now and then we make a step forward, but every other class has made 2 or 3 in the same time. Druid has not solved this problem. It’s a shame.

Lunar Impact seems to be bugged, it doesn’t heal at the targeted area.

Scott.7163:

At this point, 3+ years on, I feel the whole class needs to be completely gutted and rebuilt from the ground up. Sure, every now and then we make a step forward, but every other class has made 2 or 3 in the same time. Druid has not solved this problem. It’s a shame.

a Colossal waste of Dev time , to revamp everything when its already been Revamped focus on Druid Synergy with the current Traits and skills because those do work to a Extent but because of the Lack of Effects the Staff gives that causes that synergy to be broken , no boons, no conditions its got nothing to work with in other trait lines.

so its druid + mostly Staff that needs a quite a lot of Buffs/alterations and that is why they ask for Constructive feedback , Compaired to before this is much much better and is a very strong concept for addition to the Ranger core traits but that staff lacks synergy so it does not work with Core Ranger no bleeds, usless Hidden barbs , no Sharpening edges no increased damage lack variety for traits that work with the druid trait line because Staff at its Core is not Finished.

Further thoughts, now that I’ve had a chance to play more thoroughly.

I’m still underwhelmed by glyphs. Glyph of Empowerment would be great if the range were just a bit bigger and the duration longer. I like the idea of it as a party-wide DPS boost to replace signet of the wild, but positioning makes it impractical with such a short range and duration. The other glyphs don’t offer enough to make me want to equip them. The elite glyph is ok, and I’d equip it in certain situations, but that’s the best I can say about it. Condition removal from wilderness survival still solidly beats condition removal from glyphs, partly because the heal glyph is so weak, partly because survival skills are generally better, largely because the activation is faster and moves with you, whereas the seeds stick in one spot and you have to wait for them to activate. I dislike the idea of seeds in general. Both ranger and druid are all about mobility and positioning, yet druid condition removal basically requires that you stay in one spot and watch the grass grow. This makes no sense.

Avatar mode reminds me of the elite guardian book that was removed from the game. I never get around to using glyphs in celestial form because I’m too focused on skill use before time runs out. Perhaps that will change with practice. Right now it feels very uninteresting, but I can see how I might change my mind in a raid or a high level fractal.

Staff seems like it has great potential as a support weapon, but the damage is terrible. I still feel that it needs to either drive home the healing thing and improve the heals, or keep the heals as they are and add something else to make it more interesting. Someone suggested condition damage, and I think that’s a really neat idea. Staff/shortbow would be lots of fun if the staff had better synergy with condition damage builds. An apothecary druid might be neat. Also, I will echo what others have said about staff animations. Eew.

The pets are alright, I suppose. There are so many issues with ranger pets, I guess these pets feel like they fit right in with the issues they have. I think it would be better if the wyverns would activate their skills on their targets rather than at their location. Pet location is too finicky with the AI as it is now, and the fields often end up in a spot that is not very useful.

The one trait I really like is Live Vicariously, since it works with any heal I choose to equip. Ancient Seeds is another great trait, but I like it less because it narrows your build. Lingering Light is so weak by comparison, it’s just silly, and Grace of the Land is narrowly situational. Even though Live Vicariously is only a minor trait and weaker than Ancient Seeds, I like it better than the whole set of grandmaster traits because it better supports build variety.

The more I play the more I can see the potential for very strong druid builds, and I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I do want the druid specialization to be strong enough to be worth running. On the other hand, I don’t want it to be so strong that you have to run it to have a viable build. We’ve been promised some improvements to the core specializations, and I think that’s key in keeping the profession balanced as a whole. I’d like the option to run high level fractals as a Ranger, and the option to run high level fractals as a Druid, depending on what I feel like playing. As long as that balance can be achieved, I’ll be a happy camper.

Played Druid for over a day now. . . and I must say it’s a lot of fun!

Some things to think about. The heals on staff 1 with full clerics isn’t that good. I’m getting very low numbers. The damage with decent amount of power is not that good either. I would like to see one or the other improved so it doesn’t feel so weak. Preferably damage to be honest seeing as we sacrifice a lot of DPS going into CF and taking staff as well.

Wisp could really use some damage placed on it.

Glyphs could really use a radius increase. I find myself not using them what so ever because the range isn’t feasible in a lot of situations.

My biggest complaint is actually – how ugly we hold the staff + the animation for the autoattack. It’s plain, and thin. Similar to Mesmer’s Greatsword but at least the greatsword auto had some special effects around the actual beam. This is very plain looking and I really actually just . . . don’t enjoy it.

The rest of the animations are BEAUTIFUL! This autoattack + how you hold and wield the staff has to go. It will look much more polished and complete.

New pets are great and I don’t really have anything on them minus the build up for the attacks on the Wyverns. It’s a bit too long of a “cast time” imo.

Regardless of everything though this is a very fun spin on Druid and I am really enjoying myself. I find myself very happy and enthused with how I can manage my pet now. I feel like a beast master with synergy with how my pet works. Pet protects me, I protect them with healing. It works wonderful with Spirits as well. I can keep them healed while they in return heal or buff me. I feel like this has a lot of interesting play incoming and I appreciate the work that was put into the Druid!

Hey u Should check Celestial avatar works perfect by f5 but if u clik the skill with the mouse it looks like it enter to the avatar mode and go out from it instantly so u get the aparence of being on avatar mode but u wont get the skills (it may be since the f5 dosnt have any cooldown that u enter the form and go out inmidiatly, maybe using a 1 sec cooldown or 2 sec will help)

it would be awesome if staff where a condi weapon with low dps and the same amount of heals on attacks. once swapped over to celestial the healing would increase and instead of conditions it could provide boons.

forum bug

/15 char

patch notes I wish to see:

Staff changes:

Solar Beam

• changed sound effect (no longer sounds like grape stomping)

Astral Wisp

• unblockable
• causes 5s blind to foes it passes through and on attaching.

Ancestral Grace

• will now try to find a valid path, but only when there is no line of sight.
• fixed an issue where Ranger sometimes stops moving at the end of the cast.
• immune to control effects for the duration.

Vine Surge

• increased immobilize from 1s to 2s
• reduced cast time to 1/4

Sublime Conversion

• foes passing through it lose 1 boon
• unblockable

Trait changes:

• Natural Stride and Natural Mender swapped places.

• Lingering Light
• causes 5s blind to foes it passes through.
• unblockable