Guild Wars 2

CandyHearts.6025:

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.

Totally agree, especially on the staff idle animation. It’s currently held like a hammer, which is kind of fugly for a staff imo.

Allright, just stopped with a very long druid session and I’d be happy to give some feedback to you guys. I played pretty much all gamemodes (PvE, Dungeons, WvW Zerg and Roaming, solo and small scale, PvP and 1v1s) so I guess my feedback will be about all those modes.

The first thing I noticed is the very high amount of heal effects that do not give you astral energy. Some of them are pretty clear as to why (Rune of Dolyak, Signet of the Wild…) but I was rather dissapointed with quite a few of them. I was really thinking applying regeneration ticks would load up your astral energy, since Ranger is pretty much the best class when it comes to stacking AoE regeneration. The effects of spirit of nature and water spirit both also don’t contribute to your energy, which makes it even more unlikely that these skills will find a use again.

Staff is a very interesting weapon, although I can’t say I’m in love with it. I generally like the auto attack, especially the piercing effect of it but must say that it’s really dissapointing damage wise. I was running full zerker gear with Air/Fire sigils and the staff auto attack still couldn’t hold any significant amount of pressure on my target, so I would say it needs a damage boost. I know some people are arguing a support weapon doesn’t need any damage, but in situations where we just want to kill a target I just feel really useless when I just switched on staff, the weapon really needs more to help with that.

Staff 2 is really weak, completely fire and forget. It has no real impact on fights, deals little to no pressure and has a weak heal. This needs some kinds of additional effect or a decent damage boost, preferably both. Something like a cripple nothing too powerful.

Staff 3 is on paper a good skill, but I had some annoyances with it. I don’t like how you are stuck in the transformation for a while if you use it on short distances, it should end the moment you reach your destination. The blast finisher is nice, although I think there should be an offensive effect included at your target. A good damage spike and a blind would be fitting in my opinion.

Staff 4 is allright. The animation is great and makes the effect easy to recognize. The effect generally fits well with druid and doesn’t need a buff at the moment in my opinion.

Staff 5 has a really cool concept, but I think the heal is too low for it to be considered to be used instead of reflection. Don’t forget that the skill is competing with one of the strongest offensive effects in the game, you generally can give this skill a lot of healing without it being overpowered. Don’t forget that firing in this stuff should be punishing, and decently healing your enemy is definitely something that you should not want to do.

The celestial avatar is fun to use at least some of the skills. The “auto attack” is pretty bad. The healing effect per second is pretty good of course but it’s really hard to hit your ally, which is something that I think a healing spec shouldn’t be required to fight with that much. Also the general lack of damage feel awkward, although I am not sure if the avatar needs the damage. Staff needs it more, and if Staff gets more damage I think avatar will be just fine.

The 2nd skill is better in terms of range. I don’t think I like the long delay, but this skill can in my opinion generally remain unchanged.

3rd skill is great. The blast finisher doesn’t work right now, but it doesn’t really hurt the skill if it gets fixed the skill will be in a really good place.

The 4th skill has a really long and obvious cast, and I don’t like how limited you are to self combo in it while you are channeling it. Also just spamming 1 in theory has higher HPS, so I think if celestial avatar skill one gets improved this one might become a bit redundant.

The 5th skill is really cool, but I somehow think that it should be WAY more punishing for enemies caught in it. Doesn’t have to be more damage (although that would contribute a bit) but with everything I saw the CC isn’t really more dangerous than entangle, when I think it should be more in the icebow 5 territory, considering the long and obvious channel.

Let’s talk about the glyphs! I like the concept and implementation of them. I personally found the non celestial avatar effects more useful, but I like having the option for the other one. I thought they might replace survival skills when traited due to their condition removal, but I’m afraid the delay in that is too high to be considered worthwhile for personal condition removal. It’s still a strong effect and I think in a good place.

Glyph of Rejuvenation: Seems not that great to me to be honest. The cooldown is a bit high compared to other ranger heals considering the lackluster healing effect. Conceptually it’s a very strong support skill and I guess you can use it in builds to have a very high healing burst on your allies but it really didn’t do much for me. I prefered using troll unguent to easily load up my celestial avatar between fights. I think this glyph needs a bit of a buff to the healing effect. I genuinely enjoy the super heal for allies, but it’s not useful that often so in the end I’d rather stick to other stuff.

Glyph of Alignment: Not that interesting to be honest. The non celestial effect is rather weak compared to the other glyphs, the celestial effect seems alright, but redundant considering celestial for has a 1 second cooldown AoE condition removal skill.

Glyph of Empowerment: The one glyph I was looking forward to for PvE, but the effect needs a straight up buff right now. Non celestial effect could be doubled in intensity or duration and it would still be perfectly fine. I think it could be made even stronger and it would still be perfectly in line. The celestial effect is interesting but I haven’t found a use for it yet. I really like the offensive effect and think giving it a good buff is literally everything druid needs to become welcome in dungeon parties. My suggestion would be a 15% damage boost over 10s.

Glyph of Equality: Strong skill, gives ranger access to an instant interupt and a very interesting aoe stunbreak. I think it needs no further adjustments, it’s strong as it is.

Glyph of the Tides: Good CC options and both effects on a pretty short cooldown. I like it and can totally see it finding play in WvW and PvP.

Gyph of Unity: The non celestial effect is basically a worse form of retaliation. Could use a large damage buff, since it’s basically a punishment skill for attacking us that doesn’t punish. The celestial effect is good. In general very short cooldown for an elite, but it works with the skill.

Allright, now to the new pets.

Smokescale seems really strong, although I personally don’t understand what the effect of the smoke field is, even after testing it a bit. Very strong burst, sadly couldn’t test in PvP only in WvW but many players had large problems dealing with it, although it didn’t seem too useful after that burst. Still some good utilities, especially the smoke field. The crit chance is surprisingly low, although due to a bug spotter and beastmastery don’t increase pet crit chances. After the recent nerf to the GS leap finisher I have problems comboing it with combo fields though, this one being the largest I encountered till now. Stealth access is cool, but in practice I ahve problems connecting the leap finisher. Giving back the double leap finisher on GS3 could be cool, considering engi gets something similar on hammer.

The wyverns are in my opinion both lacking in their non F2 skills. Cast times are too long damage is too low. The F2 skills are great though, both in effects and animations. I don’t like that the wyvern fire field combo part appears so late though.

Bristleback is cool. Really cute design, some good effects. The F2 seems a bit lackluster, but I see the large potential for AoE bleeding when comboed with it. A good pet that has some uses definitely.

I think that was basically my opinion on all the new stuff. I like druid and the options it opens. It needs some adjustments but the general concept is well made. Looking forward to playing it some more and seeing what the balance team will do with it until HoT launch.

Summary of problem skills after more playing:

Staff 2 needs something more.

Staff 4 is hard to hit for too little reward.

CA 1 is god awful. Such a pain to use, not rewarding or fun. Just a bad mechanic there.

CA 5 is too slow to cast. Very very hard to get off in a PvP environment.

Glyphs are generally underwhelming. Daze is the best one IMO.

Alrighty, I’m going to go ahead and start with pets since I think I’ve played around with them enough for some first impressions.

Overall, I want to note right off the bat that the pets don’t seem to play right with some traits. Like, they seem to get no effect at all from the Beastmastery trait which reduces attack cooldown. And they don’t seem to benefit from Wilting Strikes either. I’m betting there are plenty of other traits that don’t work on them either, for whatever reason.

Smokescale – No complaints. Very solid pet, both offensively and defensively. Don’t really understand why its AA has a bleed on it when its one of the pets with very low innate condition damage, but its not like even small extra damage hurts or anything. Maybe its just flavor since the thing has huge fangs and those tusks.

Tiger – Not much to say, since its just another cat variant. Only thing different is its F2, which is fantastic. Perma-AoE Fury and a decent damage burst as well? Yes please! It should be a Leap finisher, though. Right now its not for some reason (actually, lacking finishers of any sort is kind of a problem with all the new pets).

Oh, and the tooltip doesn’t display a cooldown for the F2, so that needs to be added.

Bristleback – Nice to have another ranged option. Base damage on AA is a bit lower than spiders and hovers just around Devourers, but it makes up for it by having awesome special attacks.

That spike barrage is great, though it could stand to be a bit more accurate at max range (seems to shoot off-center and half the projectiles or more miss).

I’m really baffled by the lack of finishers on any of its skills. I mean, both spiders and devourers have Projectile Finishers on their auto-attacks, and they’re shooting liquid. And yet the Bristleback, which is shooting 100% solid spikes, has no projectile finisher at all? Should have a 20% Projectile Finisher on both its autoattack and the spike barrage. Would add flavor and help it utilize that high condition damage a bit better.

I’d also suggest lowering the cooldown on Sharpen Spines to maybe 20 seconds, since that’s its only way to apply conditions at range (outside of the aforementioned finishers it should have). And while you’re doing that, consider the same sort of buff for Spider venoms as well.

On a less balance-related and more aesthetic note… its animations are off on its auto-attack. Watching the animation loop, you can clearly see when the projectile is supposed to be launched (the pet recoils and the spike above its head disappears) but the actual projectile gets shot before the animation reaches that point. Which makes it look really sloppy and awkward. Needs some tweaks.

Wyverns – Hoo boy. Lets start with the good. Its nice to finally have a second option for a pet with cleave, and just the idea of having a pet dragon is awesome.

But my god are they bad in combat. Why are they so SLOW. That auto-attack chain literally takes like 3 seconds. I mean, it says 2 on the tooltip, and even that would be bad enough, but then there’s a solid extra second of after-cast as well. Their DPS is utter garbage because of it. From the little bit of testing I did, I’m pretty sure a freaking Moa can outdamage them, at least on auto-attacking alone. And Tail Lash certainly doesn’t help, its barely faster and gets outdamaged by the auto-attack (at least accounting for the double-hit). Wing Buffet is the only thing that boosts DPS at all, and its too high of a cooldown to matter.

I can’t even imagine how bad they are in PvP. People complain enough about pets that can’t hit anything when talking about normal pets with a >1 second attack speed, you can probably dodge these things by walking.

They need a serious, serious speed increase on their auto-attack string and Tail Lash. Like… double the speed. Hopefully that doesn’t screw up their animations too much, as I do really love their animations, but cool animations are worthless if the pet can’t do anything useful.

I’d also consider putting a Blast finisher on Wind Buffet. More pets with Blast finishers are always nice, and I definitely think it fits thematically.

As for the F2 skills… Fire Wyvern’s breath attack takes an eternity to finish, but since the pet is immune to damage for the duration… I’m OK with it. Certainly not the fastest way to get burning going, but the extra utility makes up for it. I think it could still use a slight speed shave, but nothing drastic. I would suggest cleaning up the fire field’s disappearance a bit, right now it just “poofs” after a while. I’d like to see it gradually diminish and then go out.

Electric Wyvern’s charge needs some serious work. Its terribly weak. Manages to be weaker than the auto-attack (counting the double-hit) unless you grind an enemy against a wall, and the brief CC isn’t worth having no damage attached to it. Also, the lightning field doing absolutely nothing besides being a lightning field feels boring and off. That stormcloud shooting lightning down really does nothing at all? I’d suggest upping the damage of the charge a bit, and also attaching a pulsing damage (and maybe vulnerability) aspect to the lightning field. Or maybe even a pulsing quickness buff. Something.

Oh, and make it a Leap finisher, since its very leap-like in functionality anyway.

On the aesthetic note again, the charge also feels lackluster in that regard. Particularly in terms of sound. The charge itself has no sound effect at all, the lightning field’s sound effect doesn’t start until well after the field is created… there’s just no “oomph” there. I also think it’d be really cool if the charge made the wyvern quickly swoop forward using its wings to fly rather than just hobbling along the ground.

Bug report: Staff skills not affected by Quick Draw (-66% cooldown on weapon swap GM trait in Skirmshing line)

MeanCoffeeBean.2073:

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!

Did not think about tagging in my long review, but this is effectely an issue also (in that sense, creating a dedicated healer spec is a non sense when the tagging system does not count healing done on allies that tagged the targets)

As a Guardian main, Druid felt more familiar territory for me. I enjoyed the Glyphs, and there were some good traits in the more healing centric role. Celestial was nice as a light version of Necro’s shroud, but the staff felt like “oh, geez, how much healing do you really need in this spec?” You heal, you heal, and you more heal. So, it feels very niche. I could see using the spec without the staff in a more “Guardian-ish” role while still doing some DPS. But if you’re not into the healer role, than I would probably be very frustrated right now.

Holland.9351:

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

I seem to like all your ideas(not sure about Natural Stride cahnge) , Dont you think staff also needs litle damage boost?

Celestial form skill one – Cosmic Ray – needs to be fixed.
I can only see it working in PvE where your allies are standing still stacked in a corner. As soon as the allies starts moving around in PvP/WvW it’s IMPOSSIBLE to hit the with the AoE.
Not only is the radius way too small (maybe 240 instead?) it also has a cast time instead of an after cast so your allies needs to move in straight predictable lines for you to even have a chance to hit the right spot with Cosmic Ray – and even then the radius still limits it.

Suggestion/Fix: Make Cosmic Ray 240 radius or more (instead of 120) with an after cast instead of cast time.

Not sure if it’s been reported yet but activating Signet of the Wild while in Celestial Avatar breaks the CA form.

My Smokescale pet can do 12k damage on a lone mob! Thanks, Anet…

About the Druid Staff’s auto, Solar Beam, I think it should be a ground-targeted ability. This way, it’d be in line with Celestial Avatar’s auto, and Druid players would be able to directly heal their allies with ground targeted AoEs. Even though the ground-targeted Solar Beam isn’t as strong as Cosmic Ray, it doesn’t require your party members having any knowledge of Solar [Ray] ‘s function. In Solar Beam’s current state, it is too clunky and difficult to use.

Sublime Conversion should has a water field, and it should convert 100% of the incoming damage into raw healing (not affected by Healing Power). Lastly, increase the cooldown to kitten .

Vine Surge should knock back foes instead of applying immobilize (gotta save my partner from being stomped!). Increase cooldown to 30 seconds.

Thanks for looking~

Staff 1, Pet positioning is a pain! Suggest adding a small healing AOE around target in addition to the beam path.

Staff 3, I’d like to see the blast finisher occur on start and finish, similar to Engi-Rifle-5. The reason is that it takes so long to reach the blast phase that the fields have expired.

Staff 5, Water field would be nice. The on screen graphic looks like you should be able to combo, but you really can’t? It’s confusing when compared to smoke screen or wall of reflection.

Sadly, one of the most effective means of filling my celestial energy bar is by waiting for one of my allies to die and rez’ing. This seems to defeat the point of being a healing class?

Weapon Swap needs to exit Celestial Form. Exiting Celestial early, if it empties the energy bar should yield some kind of payoff, OR remain in the bar.

Celestial Form in general – I don’t feel there is enough of a payoff entering this form, to warrant a gate energy bar, and losing most of my DPS. There’s no WOW factor. Nothing that makes me feel like I’ve turned the tide of battle more than I could of with a healing spring and a couple blast finishers. Maybe add some unique support buffs?

The Stealth on existing Celestial doesn’t seem useful.

Druid needs alot of help, not enough damage from staff 1 and 2, all staff does is build up for celeastial form, was hoping for ranger looking more like a a druid like in dugeoun and dragons, druids will be useless for raids or anything else because other classes can do better.

Thanks for taking the time to read our feedback, Irenio.

Edited for grammar.

The Wyvern pets need a lot of work, currently they are very bad at hitting anything that actually moves.

• Wing Swipe and Tail Lash need vastly shorter cast times and vastly bigger ranges so they are able to hit moving foes.
• Wing Buffet needs a vastly shorter cast time and change the 80 knockback to a 0 distance launch because the knockback is a troll.

So after playing some WVW and some PVE, I compiled a list of changes I wouldn’t mind seeing in the druid. The class is ok to play but I would like to see more synergy from other trait lines. Finally damage doesn’t seem to fill the astral bar at all.
Celestial Avatar:
Cosmic Ray – Would like to see some damage going out from this skill.
Seed of Life – Wish it pulse regeneration as well to proc Oakheart Salve
Lunar Impact – This is fine since it can proc Ancient Seed.
Rejuvenating Tides –1 stability per pulse
Natural Convergence – Poison Please, The skill is ok but wish it had poison or an effect to stop enemy from healing effectively.

Staff :
Solar Bean – Increase Damage modifier / apply burning per thick
Astral Wisp – give allies a boon / Damage the target (similar to Hunter’s Call)
Ancestral grace – if you travelling a shorter distance you are still locked in the form for the same time as if you travelled max distant.
Vine Surge – Apply bleeding or increase immobilized duration, Pet next attack applies cripple
Sublime Conversion – This skill is ok.

Glyph:
Range increase to 360, and some additional effect like break stuns and stability would be nice.
Glyph of Unity – Would be nice if it has stability (Person run out of the range really easily especially with a stun or movement impaired skill)
In Avatar form:
Glyph of Equality, Glyph of Empowerment and Glyph of Alignment make them ground target.
Glyph of Unity 600 range increase.

Traits:
Natural Stride – does the movement speed only occur in combat? Feel really slow.
Druidic Clarity, Grace of the Land, Verdant Etching – seems like overkill on condition clear.
Lingering Lights – this trait don’t seem to be able to compete with the other gm

Hydrolysis.6810:

Traits:
Natural Stride – does the movement speed only occur in combat? Feel really slow.

It does. Basickly, it is switfness without the effect at your feet, which makes it seems slow. Quite a lackluster trait, just there to grant switfness to a spec that otherwise completely lacks it.

I see that we are many to formulate the same requests for druid changes.

Druid Feedback Post Beta Test

Cons:

1. No Support. Tons of healing is nice but without support it’s underwhelming. (There was a reason we ran 1 Heal / 1 Prot Monks in GW GvGs.)
2. Limited damage/tagging ability. (Healing my be fun but if you’re not getting a reward its going to get old fast.)
3. Radius of (some) skills too tight.
4. Limited synergy with Core Specialization.

Proposed changes:

• Solar Beam: Add burning on last pulse? High intensity low duration vulnerability? Might to pet if it intersects?

• Astral Wisp: Damages foes it touches. Cripples target for the duration. (This adds tagging abilities and a pulsing cripple could help it act as singling out a target?)

• Ancestral Grace: Blinds foes at beginning of skill and at end. (Maybe foes it crosses as well?)

• Cosmic Ray: Drastically increase radius. Add small damage component. (Adds a bit for tagging to Cele Form)

• Seed of Life: Grants stability to allies in radius. After a short time it explodes granting protection and converting 2 conditions into boons. (This makes the skill a defensive support skill giving it a different use than Cosmic Ray)

• Natural Convergence: Grants stability while casting.

• Glyph of Empowerment:
  Normal Form: AoE Stun Break. Grants Stability (3-5) to nearby allies.
  Celestial Form: Grants Stability (3-5) to nearby allies. Increases healing done to them.

• Glyph of Tides:
  Normal Form: AoE Pull.
  Celestial Form: AoE Knockback

• Glyph of Alignment: Add (4-5s) recharge reduction upon successful evade. (1s ICD)

• Glyph of Equality: Add recharge reduction based on # of foes/allies it hits. (Five Hits = Full Recharge, One Hit = 1/2 Recharge?)

• Verdant Etching: Remove Glyph recharge reduction. Add reduced recharge every time a seed blossoms. (So now it Plants a Seed on Glyph use and Seeds reduce glyph recharge. Fun active synergy instead of normal boring flat rate reduction.)

• Merge Live Vicariously & Lingering Light. Move to Master tier.

• Move Natural Mender to Minor Master.

• Move Natural Stride to Minor Grandmaster.

• Add new Grandmaster trait;
  * Druidic Fortitude: Healing an ally with Protection applies Regeneration (5s duration/5s ICD per target). Increases the effectiveness of Regeneration you apply. (Maybe even make this trait instead condense Regeneration by shortening durations but increasing the HPS?)

I could write paragraphs of information here but its not going to be read. Just look at the big picture.

I think other then the lack of DPS, and the lack of boons, i hate the fact that the lion’s share of our abilities are ground targeted.

I just wish they could have worked the skills to just go off on the target, but that would not work well with healing since we can’t really target other players very well.

Maybe having the heals work similar to how the #1 Axe skill works cept the heals go from player to player near the target ? Staff #1 could bounce to the closest player’s for the healing portion, add similar transference to the other skills that are ground targeted.

Got finished with another long day of PvP and need to reiterate something I alluded to in my previous feedback post:
Celestial Form is super disconnected with any sort of damage oriented build at all. Not that it’s ineffective, but it absolutely interrupts the flow of combat, and on top of it, in a form that took time to build and should feel strong, is weak at everything but healing.

Celestial Form in PvP essentially allows people to get right up in your face and wreck said face, and outside of dodging celestial form 5, they don’t have to worry about you at all.

The Daze is Strong, but 5 doesn’t put out its effects soon enough when you use it, and 2, 4, and even 1 (since its a semi skill shot) need to do damage or cause adverse effects for enemies.

It really can’t be stressed enough.

BUG with Ancient Seeds.

Sorry if this was already noted, but I didn’t see it when searching.

When using AOE skills while you have an enemy targeted, Ancient Seeds seems to only affect your target. However, if you don’t have a target, it will affect all targets in the radius.

For example, if you use Glyph of Equality to daze all nearby targets and then use Winter’s Bite with Honed Axes and you have an enemy targeted, only the targeted enemy will be affected by Ancient Seeds. However, if you use the above combination with no enemy targeted, all enemies within the radius will be affected by Ancient Seeds.

Edit: Testing this out further, some times this seems to work correctly and sometimes it doesn’t.

General thoughts… Celestial avatar needs to build from condition damage. In fact CA needs to build better from damage in general perhaps build from pet damage even. In PvE CA builds really fast when you get the ability to get off auto attacks through people in staff. If there was an alternative way to build CA staff might see reduced use if it is competitive.

In general PvE you feel useless and it is really hard to tag mobs. I wish there was an alternative to this or an easier way to have a secondary set and build. Right now having to have 2 entire sets is rough to say the least especially if you want them both to be ascended.

The one strange thing is that in good situations you instantly build up CA to full. This feels weird but understandable at the same time. Most of the healing is in CA after all but IDK… It doesn’t feel like you have to think about CA at all in PvE you just instantly build it back to full and all the CDs are really short.

Overall healing feels good. Staff feels kinda weak but as CA fuel it works great. Condi damage needs to build CA in some way. Buff CA 1 slightly. Glyph of Empowerment has potential to be really solid but it’s just off by some numbers. Small tweaks here and there. Overall pretty good spot in all modes already.

Don’t know if I’ll be heard with all of these pages of individuals expressing their thoughts (Amazing suggestions btw. I thoroughly agree with most!), but I just wanted to comment on the animations for the 1 skill on staff, the CA 5 skill for sylvari/human males, and the usability of Sublime conversion.

I like everything about the concept of Druid, but a lot of things feel off. Most people commented on them, but I didn’t catch anyone comment on how lackluster the animation is for solar beam. I feel the beam should be thicker and the radius of the heal wider. I just want it to feel more substantial for this elite spec. The enemy should burst with light more as well. Like when you’re downed as a guardian using your 1 skill. You needn’t be reserve with aesthetics of the 1 skill since the staff guardian 1 skill looks like a huge wave of healing, serene light.

As for the animations for Celestial Avatar 5 skill on Sylvari/Human males….. When I watched twitchcon, I was so happy and inspired by the concepts expressed by the druid and I deleted my low level ranger and recreated him as a male sylvari. In the stream, the female sylvari was floating and pulsating out this beautiful wave with swirling planets….. but when I finally saw the animations on a male sylvari I saw that they squat AGAIN (similar to 4 skill staff guardian) like they’re taking a Jupiter sized crap. It doesn’t even make sense for what I’m looking at. Please change this. You’re a celestial avatar. I want to feel meditative and enlightened, and I feel all the races/genders should. Not like I’m getting hyped for a party. Just saying I was really turned off by the reuse of this kind of animation just for being male. Make them float in fetal position, stand while raising their left hand slowly, or let them open their arms ,while looking into the sky, without bending their back like the females do.

Also as a little side note, it might be nice if you increase the size of the Sublime Conversion. Such a beautiful name and yet the skill seems a lot more mundane than sublime. It might be better if it were and an AoE field like Ventari’s Protective Solace! Instead of it destroying projectiles it would convert them. I imagine this would be great for PvE and Raids!

Okay, I am going to make this as short as possible, but I have tested extensively. I feel others have gone over this but I am not wasting time reading all nine pages of this thread. So I apologize ahead of time if I am repeating anything.

Healing In General
I am addressing this first because I feel it is the most important. Healing power scaling is ~1%, this is a huge issue. Anet said Druid would bring about the end of the Zerker Meta, with such low healing power scaling I found clerics useless. On paper, Clerics hops on Druid and they dance around in the forest being the class I have always wanted. The “I heal you with nature also I have a godkitten dragon” class.

However, with the low healing power scaling Druid might as well go Zerk or a Zerk/Knight or Zerk/Valk set. This is not right, my solution is to greatly increase the heal scaling and nerf the base healing power of Celestial avatar.

The Staff on the other hand, needs its base heal to match or surpasses Water Staff Ele’s, I am not even able to get a 100hp heal off the AA, Wisp is nice but a little more heals on it would go a long way. Three is fine, its actually really good. Four needs a larger radius or stronger effect, It is difficult to land and has minimal payoff. A 2sec Root would be nice. As for the Five… It either needs a bigger heal or a rework in general.

In short, No reason to take Healing Power. Most will go DPS.

Conditions or Stuns
This is next on my list. Even traited, Druid cannot handle any conditions. Considering its a healer it should be able to cleanse better. I feel this makes more sense then my secondary suggestion as nature has many ways to cure sickness. I’m not saying Druid needs to be unkillable via condi, but it has no tools to deal with it, especially with Glyphs. In PvP, this is what will make Druid unplayable.

My second suggestion is keep Druid weak to conditions and give it Stability in CA. Being weak to both in PvP is going to make it unplayable outside an organized team. (Where it current shines) Solo players should not be punished for wanting to play healer.

Glyphs
Range is very short, they are very wonky and almost useless. The only one I see used is the daze. I do not know what will fix the others, the lack of stunbreak or condiclears makes them almost unwanted. I know about the Seed trait but they take so long to pop and end up being mediocre. The Elite is interesting, but I feel it should give Retail on top of its current effect and have a longer CD. (40s?) It could punish Thief/Mesmer/FT Engie and buy the Druid some time.

Celestial Avatar
It is very difficult to heal people, because they are constantly running away and seem to think the AoE heals are hostile. Making the heals easier to land would be amazing, but this may be a git-gud situation. Hence why it is last.

Staff
- Skill 1 could use more interesting SFX and animation.
- Skill 2 has a long cast time , a slow travel time, and low damage. One or two of these needs to be buffed.
- Skill 3 has bugs. Doesn’t travel it’s full distance, keeps players trapped in it’s animation if they use it to go smaller distances, and if canceled with weapon swap steals effects from Ride the Lightning.
- Skill 4 could benefit from a damage boost.
- Skill 5 could use an additional effect (knowing it’s a water field).

Celestial Form
- Skill 1 is a hassle to use. Small radius with a delay and heavily spammable makes for a really annoying skill to get the most potential out of. Really takes a lot of the fun away from Celestial form.
- Skill 2 is also annoying but less so than skill 1.
- Skill 3 is boss.
- Skill 4 is boss.
- Skill 5 is ok. First tick should be on cast rather than a second after cast.

• Celestial Form in general really needs a more offensive side to it. Being that a player is encouraged to stay in Celestial form due to the fact that all astral force is depleted upon leaving it, it really needs to have more options for players when healing isn’t necessary.

Glyphs
- Rejuvenation is ok.
- Alignment – N/A
- Empowerment is boring as sin.
- Equality – non celestial form is much better than celestial form. Celestial form could use a buff. Maybe add stability. Non celestial form could also be a blast finisher.
- Tides – both forms could use an additional effect. Maybe cripple.
- Unity needs an extended leash. Maybe 600 before it breaks.

Traits

• I’m not going to go over all the traits but I do feel that the traits needs to help with power builds as trying to include healing power into a build weakens power builds much more than condi builds. A trait that allows daze to deal damage sounds cool. Similar to necro’s Terror trait but scaled off power.

Additional: Druid is pretty fun but…
- Let me use weapon swap to leave Celestial Form. ‘F5’ isn’t such an easy button to press (even if rebound, generally a players new ‘F5’ is going to be harder to press than their new ‘F1’).
- My staff isn’t a hammer. :P
- Can Celestial form skill 1 become toggleable? If you use skill 1 it will automatically use skill 1 over and over at the mouses current position. If pressed again or another skill is used the autocast is disabled.

Played a good pvp session so thought I’d share some more feedback, can never hurt!

My setup for this was Longbow + Greatsword for weapons, TU for heal, Lightning Reflexes + Zephyr + signet of stone and SoTP as elite. Trait setup was Marksman + Wilderness + Druid ( Link to build ). Maurader amulet + pack runes (more cus of lack of inspiration at the time), sigil of air – fire in bow and intel + air in the GS.

While I am still disapointed with the support aspect of the druid, as I still think it needs more boons and conditions that help with soaking up dmg and still think the glyphs aren’t too great (Glyph of tides was considered but ultimately went for the better traits in wilderness survi instead), the druid does add a nice twist to the standard ranger setup, and in fact I enjoy using it more. The constant 33% movement speed felt really nice imo, condi cleanse on celestial avatar 2 combined with wilderness knowledge was good enough and the instant heal affect on TU added by Cultivated Synergy all felt really nice, it’s nice to have to think about your pet’s position and swapping it just before the heal hits so you can double up on the affect. I like this synergy between ranger and pet, and this again makes me wish Glyphs also happened around your pet (where applicable atleast).

Cannine pets and LB benefitted GREATLY from ancient seeds, knocking back a foe and then shooting them with rapid fire and snaring them at the same time? Feels quite nice, tho the CD is perhaps slightly too small on this trait, 15s CD would put it on par with taunt which I think would be more than fair and less frustrating for others to face. Greatsword also benefited from this ofcourse by dazing then following up with an attack to keep them in place before mauling (or you maul straight away, I did both.) Ancient seeds is just a great trait really.

Celestial avatar was able to heal some people, but the main use I had for it was skill 3 + skill 5. Together with SoTP you can actually manage to pull it off, and with ancient seeds people will sometimes not be able to escape which is nice. However, the daze duration combined with Moment of Clarity is just absurd and needs to be looked at. 6 seconds daze on a 5 seconds CD ability is kind of insane, not to mention it’s not really fun to play against for those classes that have little stability, or if you’re out of stunbreaks. I would say 4s would be more than enough and give you time to finish casting Natural Convergence. Still, it was fun to use celestial avatar in a less support focused build, bringing some condi cleanse to allies and quite decent healing with skill 4 actually.

I like the druid quite a bit more after playing this session but not as a pure support, support is really just an after thought in this build and often you help more out by just killing something fast, but the option to bring healing to the table is certainly nice. I still think staff / glyphs / support aspect of Celestial avatar needs another look. While I do like the boldness of making such a healer focused elite spec, I’m sure some heals could be replaced with other utility affects that will serve the same purpose, but in a different way. (Aegis, vigor, weakness, regen, etc.) I am certainly looking forward to what is in store for the druid after this BWE!

Staff suggestion:

Since the current damage from staff is not that great, why not add some condition dmg to compensate it. make it hybrid weapon.

Skill#1: Make it cause 1 sec burning condition per pulse. Make the impact radius larger and hit up to 5 targets.

Skill#2: Traveling speed of wisp is slow. improve travel speed of wisp. Make the wisp blind the foes who touch it (can’t be blinded more that once) and do moderate damage to foe who touch it.

Skill#3: Leave the wisp form and do blast finisher upon target area (right now, it will stay in wisp form at target area if target area is shorter than max distance). Add evade during wisp form.

Skill#4: Lower the cast time. Additional effect: The vine remain at place for 2 sec. Any foe touching it becomes immobile for 1 sec and 2 stacks of bleed/poison (or both) for 2 sec.

Skill#5: Keep the water-field effect. Additional effect: grant ally who touch it resistance for 2.75 sec.

Two more suggestions on Celestial Avatar:

1. Make the number 1 skill a cone in front of the player instead of ground-targeted; similar to one of the old Tome of Courage skills.

2. Celestial Avatar does not need dps BUT it would be like to offer (defensive) boon support like Aegis or Protection etc.

At first I thought doing zerk druid (with marks and skirmishing) was somewhat decent. Then I decided to drop the druid and just go back to my usual ranger. Yeah, no. DPS druid feels very far behind normal ranger. Now again, I realize the focus of the druid traitline is healing so this isn’t surprising in the least. If they aren’t going to create more synergy with a full dps build then I really do hope we get those fixes for core ranger that they were looking into. Otherwise I don’t see dps rangers being taken to raids.

- Maybe exchange 1 or 2 heal skills for more damage oriented skills on the staff? healing is nice – but some of the skills are too similar imo….

- I’d really like too see condi damage added to staff and potentially one or so more glyphs…there is a good post around where someone reworked traits and staff skills – i think he did a good job…for exmple:
- add burning damage to solar beam
- add bleeding damage to the vines skill
This would also make sense cause the druid is well suited for a condi build…

- Regarding the traits i’d like to see some more synergies with the existing trait lines that open the druid up for more varied builds….its a bit lacking in that department imo…this synergy issue transfers to the pet as well since there is hardly any interpaly

- and last but not least – animations…i think the vine skill which was shown first also in the footage looks very good…the other stuff looks very meh at best…i really looks rather like placeholder graphics than actual animations. The ranger has really cool references to animals with all his skills – why doesnt the druid?

here is the staff redux thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Staff-redux/first#post5567145

Regarding the pets
I do like them for what they are….I agree however that
- knockdown is preferable to knock back on wyvern
- remove the bleed from the smokescale – its not a condi pet and it doesnt make sense imo…if you want to add something, use vulnerability…

PVP player here to discuss some improvements that I think could be made for the druid!

• Most people on the forums and in game agree that the idle staff animation is silly. Druid is a caster! Why are they holding it like a hammer? Please just make it the typical caster animation

• Druid has very little synergy with the ranger class mechanic, the pet

• The staff needs a little bit of a damage buff. I know that’s not the point of the staff, but right now it’s really doing next to nothing against enemy players (I’m looking at you, staff skill 1). Some conditions would be awesome and some fit the theme perfectly (I’m looking at you, poison)

• My biggest issue with the druid in PvP is its own survivability. For a specialization that focuses (basically with tunnel vision) on healing, I find it extremely strange that it doesn’t have a designated self-heal. I understand druid is supposed to be more of a support role, but in 5v5 matches you are bound to encounter solo encounters occasionally. The druid really doesn’t have much in the form of self-sustainability in this type of circumstance. I firmly believe that the druid needs one (or a combination) of three things: a self-heal, much better control options, or increased damage. Since the current damage on the staff seems to suggest you don’t want it to be a DPS option, either or both of the other two would do fine.

• As someone here previously stated, celestial avatar is kind of a joke in PVP matches. It doesn’t provide much self-sustanability and it’s basically just painting yourself a beautiful starry color to let the opposing team know to kill you so you can’t heal anyone else. It really needs something more to make it worth building up

• It’s tough to heal allies when you can’t actually see how much health they have. If you’re really introducing designated healing specializations into the game, this needs to be addressed

Druid is a cool concept and I’m totally on board with the healing idea, but it definitely needs tweaking. The specialization is just weak in PVP (with the exception of courtyard), especially in 1v1 situations.

Ok so in general, after I found a build I liked, I was ok with druid. However, there was one thing in particular that really bugged me. I’m in a small man roaming guild and we like to fight outnumbered. So we move and dodge a lot. Healing my guild members with Celestial Avatar is nearly impossible because the skills are either ground targeted or root you.

Please, please, please change this for better mobility, or else healing won’t see any use in WvW, where mobility is key. If I use Lunar Impact, it’s not going to heal anyone if they’ve already walked out by the time it lands. I think it would be better if the healing affected a certain area around the druid, while allowing you to move. This would be a big QoL change. I don’t just want to camp my staff, I want to make full use of the elite mechanic as well.

The only thing I will say about staff, is that the #4 is a bit slow to cast. The #5 feels kind of meh and with niche uses aside from a water field and the #3 should have an invulnerable.

I did get a lot of use out of the smokescale, so great job on that. Really hope to see it stay as is. Will probably become my second pet alongside wolf in WvW.

Bug report : Staff #5 Sublime Conversion acts as an unlisted waterfield. My friend created the field in a stronghold game and I, by force of habit, blasted it with my Engineer Flamethrower #2. To my surprise I got a waterfield blast combo! We did it again and confirmed it.

Also, during that stronghold game, we tested the Druid’s ability to keep the lord alive. My friend was able to keep the lord alive against a ranger and a reaper by himself : he also kept himself and the lord at full health.

Tried Druid mainly in WvW.
Used S/Wh + LB Power build for most of it but played around with Staff as well.

Bug: Quick Draw seems to proc when you swap to Staff or CA while in combat but it will not affect any skills used so there is no CD reduction from the trait when you swap to staff or CA.

Staff:
1. Add a 1s Burn to the Autoattack please
2. Either a pulsing damage or damage to enemies that the wisp hits would be good.
3. Add an evade or invuln to this skill please. Alternatively, convert it to a teleport.
4. Add 3 stacks of bleed to this skill.
5. Seems fine. Maybe make the Wall slightly bigger.

Didn’t really test the glyphs yet so no comments.

CA:
NO CA UNDERWATER??? (is this intended?)
1. Increase the radius please.
2. Seems fine.
3. Blast finisher not currently working. Once that gets fixed, skill seems fine
4. Seems fine
5. Since this is the only damage skill in CA, could the final damage be upped? Currently with 2600 power, it hits for 1231, could it be increased to by 30-40%?

Traits:
Natural Stride: Move to GM minor
Natural Mendor: Move to Master major. Also it would be nice if the duration on this trait got bumped from 6s to 10s though its not a huge deal.
Celestial Shadow: Could you increase the stealth and superspeed by 1 second?

Pets:

Tiger: Currently does not work underwater like other feline pets. Could the fury be swapped to stability, retaliation or resistance instead? Ranger already has a plethora of fury gain and currently no pet gives any of those boons which would be a great addition. Also increase the radius on this skill. The actual leap will take it outside the 240 range.

Fire Wyvern: Both Wyverns attacks seem slow and easily avoidable. Others have suggested ways to improve I believe.

Electric Wyvern: The static field from Lightning Assault doesnt seem to do anything apart from being a combo field. Could a CC or damage/vuln stacks be added to it?

Bristleback: Health too high. Has lower vitality than other pets but a higher Health Pool. Apart from that, seems fine.

Shadowscale: I don’t see the damage from this pet as a problem (others may disagree). Smoke Assault is what people are talking about if they say this is overpowered. I strongly recommend that if you do change its damage, please shave it off and not nerf it to the ground.

I am starting to see the Cosmic ray doesn’t work well as a ground target skill.

Lunar impact works well though, the larger radius makes it more reasonable.

Skill 4 and 5 in celestial form feel as if the cast time is to long considering the duration of 20 seconds.

Interesting note.
-A single heal skill will pretty much fill up the AF meter.
-I have yet to be able to fill the meter with any other weapon except staff.
-And the staff animation is seriously getting on my nerves. It makes me not want to use it. which is a shame because it has good skills.

Comments/suggestions on Celestial Avatar skills only

Skill#1 – Change to frontal cone heal/cleanse one condi/small damage added
Reason for change: Frontal cone change would make this skill easier to use while keeping positioning important but not too restrictive. (Current ground target with 120 radius is insanely hard to use besides being clunky to use for what should be our spammable 1 skill.) Add cleanse since it ties synergistically with a small heal; generally you need to heal up after a condi cleanse.

Skill#2 – Change to PBAOE skill that gives stability to self and weakness to enemies around you.
Reason for change: Having good heals is useless if you can’t get your heals off due to not having stability (which the Druid currently has no access to). Add to the fact that our most potent abilities are long casting means we desperately need some sort of anti-cc. Adding weakness works synergistically with stability since you generally need stability when under heavy pressure and is also synergistic with Glyph of Unity (e.g., pop GoU in Druid mode, switch to Avatar, use skill#3 to reduce the damage you take). Having weakness be a secondary effect gives good reason for a player to use this ability even when stability is not needed.

Skill#3 is a good skill as is except the daze duration is too long for such a low cooldown ability. With Moment of Clarify, you can potentially have perma daze which is just broken if it actually pans out (I have not tested). Currently this spell can be cast 3 times in celestial form. Should consider increasing CD if skill#4 is made into a fire and forget ability to compensate for the increased healing you would get from the change to skill#4.

Skill#4 is a good spell but needs to change to a fire and forget ability (keeping the mobile water field) so that it can be comboed with skill#3 for that extra burst healing while also making the skill more fun to use strategically (e.g. do I try to get this spell off before using skill#3 for more healing or do I forgo the extra healing because I need the burst healing/cc from skill#3 right now instead). Being a channeled ability currently, it doesn’t really differentiate itself from the other heals and feels clunky/not fun to use since your basically just standing there.

Skill#5 – No changes.

After some further play and a couple PvP matches (in which I failed utterly to really rotate and combo my skills anywhere near optimally), it seems like things that sounded overpowered on paper and felt that way against NPCs are not (at least, so far) such against players (due largely to stability access, dodging, increased movement, etc.). I rescind my earlier comments on the need for a shorter daze on Lunar Impact and a longer ICD on Ancient Seeds. Leave them alone; I love them. :-P

In other news, here are a couple more suggestions:

STAFF

• The staff skills need some pet synergy, as several have suggested. How about:
  Staff 2: Pet attacks against this foe inflict poison (while the wisp is present) (or inflict burning, or steal health, or something). Or even, “Your pet’s next attack inflicts poison.”
  Staff 3: Your pet evades for the duration of this skill and activates a blast finisher at the end (or, “and is healed at the end”).
  Staff 4: Your pet’s next attack causes blindness.

• I still love the mechanics on staff 1. Also, I’m still hoping for a slightly larger and more sunny-colored beam, with some on-hit effects for both enemies and allies, so we can see more clearly just who is being affected.

• The wisp on staff 2 should deal damage to enemies it passes through. If this cannot be baseline for power reasons, then could we at least add it to the Lingering Light GM trait?

• I would love to see staff 4 have a shorter cast time. At the moment, I almost need my enemy to already be immobilized in order to reliably hit with it. Then again, maybe I just need to L2P better. It would be great to see some bleeding on this, as well.

• Also, what are the chances of having some evade on staff 3? Or, alternatively, at least having it grant some stability for its duration, and end immediately upon reaching its destination, rather than hanging around for a while as a wisp if we don’t move far?

• Staff 5 — please let us keep the (secret) water field; it’s awesome! Otherwise, good stuff. Wouldn’t mind the suggestion of another player that walking through it could: cleanse a condition, or grant stability, or something for allies, and/or rip a boon from enemies. Either way, it’s a good skill. I actually really like the staff’s kit.

GLYPHS

• It’d be great if one of these could offer stability.

• The cripple/weakness one could use some damaging conditions. Some bleeds, maybe some poison… Otherwise I’d be much, much better off (for the most part) with a traited Flame Trap, or something more utility-oriented. Also, the condition cleanse on it in Celestial form is really pretty redundant; maybe in CA mode it could grant protection or stability? Or, alternatively, it could damage in a different way: “Burn foes around nearby allies.”

• Still would love for Tides to pull on normal use, push on Celestial.

• The healing glyph is super weak. Sure, it offers some healing to allies, but I’ve already got so much of that (and already had easy access to perma-regen for the party, as well, if I wanted it) that it just seems redundant. All of my other healing options are far superior, and Troll Unguent is obviously loads better for filling up my AF bar. Maybe it could cause my and my pet’s next several attacks (or attacks over the next several seconds) to heal us (and apply a lesser healing in a small AoE around us); this would be pretty fun and interesting, and it would synergize well with filling up the AF bar and would also offer an attractive option for running non-staff weapon sets. The celestial version could apply the effect to nearby allies, instead.

• The elite glyph sounds awesome but has two problems: If I run it, I lose out on my best stability skill, and, moreover, it doesn’t have nearly enough range. It could also use a slightly longer duration — maybe like 7 seconds. It’s fine if I need to be almost on top of someone to cast it (I suppose), but the tether, at least, needs a longer range. And it’d be nice if it pulsed some stability on me when I use it normally, and on my and allies when I use it in Celestial.

CELESTIAL AVATAR

• CA 1 is really difficult to hit a moving target with. But I love the graphic FX from the bottom of my heart; please don’t change that at all. Could we have a lowered cast time, though, or possibly a sped-up animation, or even just a slightly larger aoe?

• CA 4 (the channeled water field) is interesting, but it needs something — and what it needs is stability. If we have it nowhere else (and I do understand the need for a class with this much healing and control to be somewhat weak, in turn, to enemy CC), this skill, at least, should definitely pulse at least 2 stacks of stability a second, each second, to the caster and anyone in the aoe. Otherwise, with all of the other healing in CA form, it’s really just mostly redundant and silly. With stability, though (and it’d be really great if it also broke stun, especially since there’s no way to cancel the skill once you’ve started it, so you couldn’t spam it and go right into…. anything), it becomes our one difficult-to-interrupt powerful heal (with the potential for allies to blast more heals) that we can channel to save allies in the midst of heavy/potential CC storms — and also it would suddenly have great synergy with the Elite Glyph. Otherwise, I may as well stay at 1200 range and spam 1, 2, and 3. Wouldn’t hurt for it to also poison enemies in it.
  TRAITS
• I support the idea of a minor that does something along the lines of: “when you heal an ally, deal damage to foes around them equal to 10% of the healing.” A target limit of around 3, or so, for this would be sufficient, I would think.

• I also love the idea of Natural Stride becoming our GM Minor trait, and having the stacking healing buff take its place as a Master Major.

• Grandmasters: We already have healing. Tons of healing. Loads and bags and carts and barrels of healing. We have so much healing we don’t even know what to do with all of it. With the Grandmaster traits, let us choose our offense:

Let the condition-damage reduction one also cause CA skills (or at least CA1) to burn (or cause other damaging conditions). [CA damage] Alternatively, if it can’t be a minor, then let this be where we are offered aoe damage of some kind around targets we heal.

Let Lingering Light also cause wisps to siphon health, or pulse damage, or poison, or burn in an area around them. [Staff Damage/AoE].

Leave Ancient Seeds the way it is. [Control/condition Damage].

• I wouldn’t mind having “Entering CA mode gives stability for x seconds” as a bonus on a trait somewhere.

I think that’s about all for now. It really is looking and feeling great so far.

I tested out two builds, a Settler Trap build (staff/S/D) and a LB/GS power survival BM build, and I thought that the power build worked much better for spvp.

The biggest thing that needs to be rebalanced is AF generation. You don’t have enough generation unless you run one of either (or both) of staff or troll unugent. I think to help with this, direct damage should generate 1/2% up from 1/4% while healing should be scaled back from 2 1/2% to just 2%, so you still get the healer based concept, but viable build diversity can be increased.

Basically, I feel as though the staff isn’t very good in conquest, and I don’t think thats a problem. A bunker build can still use it to some effect, I just think it should do slightly more damage, a bit more healing, especially on the auto, and I think it should have some access to bleed or poison or burn to make it more attractive to condi builds. The glyphs also all seemed fairly weak.

I did like the traits and the cele-avatar skills a lot. I think there healing power scaling is perfect for spvp, I just think that it would be nice to move with natural convergence, and it could use some more damage attached to it if the self-root is kept. For the traits, Druidic Clarity, Natural Stride, and Ancient Seeds seem to be the overall best pvp traits (for a marauder build per se) but I’m also considering running Celestial Shadow to help with disengages, even though Natural Stride is a huge boost in mobility.

My suggestion

• Celestial Autoattack- Please add a green colored field like the orange AoE field from bosses when I am using the Celestial autoattack. This is so that players will know that I am trying to heal them.
• Let me see the HP bars from allies. It is so clunky trying to be a healer druid.
• Staff 4: This skill is clunky to use. I am okay with it being clunky to use, but I need more than 1 second immobilize then.
• Staff 5: Don’t forget to put in the tooltip that it is a water field.
• Celestial Skill 3 has too long of a daze. 3 second daze for every 5 seconds.
• Celestial skill 5- Please make this mobile and then remove the Immobilize. I am fine with being just a cripple + slow channeled skill.
• Glyphs- I am fine with theses.
• Celestial Utility glyphs- They are weak. If celestial form can be switched on demand, then I would be okay with them. The problem with them is that they aren’t. I need condi removal at a moment notice. I need my stun break at a moment notice. They’re worthless if I can’t do that.
• Celestial elite glyph- I can’t heal players when I am at full health. This would solve all the hard to heal other players problems.

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

I had a great time with the druid specialization personally. I have played a Berserker ranger since headstart and the additional build options felt great.

In this thread I see a lot of un-informed viewpoints (for lack of a better word). The ranger currently fulfills a dps role, and it fulfills it optimally. If a skillful player uses a ranger now, they can pull major dps. For example, as a solo ranger I can absolutely always get tags in events on all my targets and gold on world boss events. No group required to succeed 100% of the time.

What druid has brought to the table for me, though, is something I have wanted for a very long time: versatility. This beta weekend has been the most fun I’ve had in GW2 in a long time, due to the thrill of building something new. Unlike most of the posts here, I found the druid to be in a good place as it is and was also able to come up with some great builds that would fulfill healing and great burst dps. Thanks ANet! Been a blast!

I did have to agree on one thing people brought up: The druid holding the staff like a hammer was pretty silly. Changing those poses to suit a caster would be ideal.

arkealia.2713:

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

This x100.

We really need some health bars!

Roy said that Druid is burst healing and Ventari is sustained, how when Celestial Avatar has no cooldown and can be loaded in less then 3 seconds? Druid makes healer Rev/Ele/Guardian something to laugh at. They’ll never be meta.

LegallyBinding.4937:

arkealia.2713:

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

This x100.

We really need some health bars!

Party UI and Squad UI (trololol) has bars. However Colin hates bars and so do I. You can just healspam non stop on Druid and if you are experienced you know when and where it’s needed.
Seripusly you can stay in cele avatar all the time and just spam everything. That skill has no cd and takes 3s to fully load.

First of all let’s call things real name, druid is pure healer since it does nothing else but healing. I personally think, that ranger already bring enough healing and perma regen for allies, you come with even more healing. Hmm, at first look it might be really cool since no other proffession has such role, so shall druid be finally usefull in something? Let’s predict it in each ascect of the game.

PvE:
Hardly usefull, ppl tend to do stuff as fast as possible, they barely look for supporter for what would they use pure healer? Also who cares about dying? Just respawn and come back again, just do as much dmg as you can. That’s the mentality of current PvE, so healer is mostlikely doomed.

PvP:
Could be good, but after few games I realized that support guardian can fulfill the role a bit better with less healing but more support skills and boons to allies which are simply better overall. The Avatar should offer more then just healing. Less healing and more support skills – protection, rezistance, stability.

WvW:
The most potencial it could have for WvW. But then again, with no other support boons specially stability I am afraid it can’t replace guardian in any way. Also staff nr1 skill should be aoe.

So in general good idea, but doomed by the game absolutely not needing pure healer. Maybe HoT will change it, but I honnestly doubt so.

Holland.9351:

patch notes I wish to see:

• Natural Stride and Natural Mender swapped places.

woo bud disagree there.

I like having heal bonus and glyph cool down reduction. Also making it a Minor ruins builds that dont use them, since its would be a useless trait for them.

Kidel.2057:

Roy said that Druid is burst healing and Ventari is sustained, how when Celestial Avatar has no cooldown and can be loaded in less then 3 seconds? Druid makes healer Rev/Ele/Guardian something to laugh at. They’ll never be meta.

LegallyBinding.4937:

arkealia.2713:

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

This x100.

We really need some health bars!

Party UI and Squad UI (trololol) has bars. However Colin hates bars and so do I. You can just healspam non stop on Druid and if you are experienced you know when and where it’s needed.
Seripusly you can stay in cele avatar all the time and just spam everything. That skill has no cd and takes 3s to fully load.

If you don’t like bars, they can obviously make an option so you can toggle/disable it.

Feedback time! I have to be honest, when the Druid was first announced to be a healing spec I was not thrilled at all. But I’m a Ranger main and felt like I had to give the Druid a chance and man has it given me a pleasant surprise. I just got back after playing Druid in PvP for hours and having a blast. My thoughts -

Staff:
Solar Beam – I really like this skill so far! The only thing I would suggest for it is to increase the base damage just a smidge.

Astral Wisp – This skill is hard to land in PvP because the orb is so slow moving. And once it does land it doesn’t feel very rewarding, in fact I rarely notice it. My suggestion would be to make it damage enemies around it when it circles the targeted enemy as well as heal allies and to slightly increase the travel speed. I don’t think the damage should be much, maybe 150 base damage. This would give the staff a little bit of AoE and help with its “tagging” issues.

Ancestral Grace – Generally a pretty great skill but it does have its issues. If you try to go shorter than its full range you become trapped as a ball of light unable to do anything while the whole skill duration plays out. This has gotten me killed countless times in PvP where I misclick with it and get burst down while there’s nothing I can do about. This skill definitely needs to stop once you’ve reached the place you casted it OR needs some sort of evade frame while you are the ball of light. This skill would also be drastically improved if some damage was put along with the healing when you get to the target location. It feels odd when you pop up in your enemy’s face and nothing really happens.

Vine Surge – Landing this is incredibly hard and needs a much better reward if you do. I would suggest increasing the immobilize to 2 or 2 1/2 seconds because if it lands it should be very punishing to whoever wasn’t paying attention to the very obvious tell.

Sublime Conversion – I think this one is in a pretty good place, I only recommend updating the tooltip to say that it is a water combo field.

Celestial Form:
Cosmic Ray – This skill really needs some tuning because it is one of the main things that makes Celestial Form feel clunky. If I’m running and trying to blast myself with it it almost always hits behind me even if I try to cast it in front of myself. This is also the case for allies, I’ve tried chasing down my teammates with this skill and just absolutely cannot hit them when they’re moving. Also, Cosmic Ray should have some damage added to it, not much but enough to make it feel more useful. I’m thinking somewhere around the 100 to 150 base damage range. It especially just feels weird when this giant pillar of blue light comes crashing down and nothing happens to your enemies.

Seed of Life – I like this skill right where it is although I would suggest adding some damage when the seed pops. It needs more damage than the Cosmic Ray, probably around the 200 to 250 range base damage. Low damage but the Celestial Form really needs any damage it can get to feel more effective.

Lunar Impact – Another skill that I think doesn’t need any changes. I know that some people say this skill needs to be nerfed and I can kind of see that. If I were to nerf it I’d be okay with the daze duration going down to 2 seconds. There is one glaring problem though: the way it interacts with the #4 skill.

Tidal Surge – This is an incredibly powerful and useful skill in Celestial Form but it really needs some touching up to make it actually viable. In PvP I found myself often panicking when my health got low and switching to Celestial Form to get it back up. This should automatically be the first skill you use in this situation but sadly it got me killed quite often. That’s because the aftercast is way too long and after that initial healing burst I’m trapped while casting it. Another major problem is how it works with skill #3, a blast finisher. These 2 skills should have perfect synergy with each other, make a water field and then immediately blast it. But the aftercast is so long on Tidal Surge that by the time I’m released from it so I can use skill #3 its way too late.

Natural Convergence – As much as I love this skill, it’s another troublemaker in PvP. A lot of people are complaining about the root which I agree is annoying but could prove to be too OP if removed. I don’t think it should have an invuln. frame either while you’re rooted but maybe something to help with damage mitigation like protection while casting it? Another thing is that I feel like it should be much more punishing for the enemies that don’t turn and run in the opposite direction or try to interrupt you when they see you casting the skill. Compared to Entangle it only gives a half a second longer immobilize after a very long, rooted cast time where with Entangle I can move and the cast is incredibly short. Natural Convergence is incredibly risky to use and the payoff should be worth that risk. I suggest increasing the immobilize time to 2 or 3 seconds (seriously if you didn’t get out of the way of that EXTREMELY obvious and slow tell it’s your own fault and you have to pay the consequences).

Glyphs:
Glyphs themselves are pretty cool new utility skills that I can see being used and having them change in Celestial Form is all the more reason to consider putting some in your utility slots. However the range on the glyphs is lacking and should be increased. I don’t think that should even be up for debate. 300 range is pretty bad and it forced the Druid to be in melee range which doesn’t really make sense when the Druid is likely going to be using a staff which is a long range weapon. The range should be increased to at the very least 360.

Glyph of Rejuvenation – Simply put: this heal skill absolutely does not heal enough to be worth taking over any of the other heals. Increase its effectiveness and then it could become an interesting and useful heal that benefits you and others the way a support spec should.

Glyph of Alignment – This glyph isn’t too bad. I can see it in dungeons and raids and that’s about it. The inverse in Celestial Form is nice but it just seems bland. In fact this whole glyph feels a little bland like it needs something else.

Glyph of Equality – My favorite glyph! It’s super useful in both regular and Celestial Form and I wouldn’t change anything other than its range.

Glyph of the Tides – Yet another useful glyph in both regular and Celestial Form. This is another one I wouldn’t change but the range increase would improve it.

Glyph of Empowerment – This glyph is probably the most useful in dungeons, raids, and world bosses. It is also a skill that I am very conflicted on. On one hand I think the regular version of it is great and will see use, yet on the other hand the Celestial version of it is awful. Why do I care about making everyone heal better? It is very unlikely that anyone who is not a Ventari Revenant or a Druid is giving out healing. I think the Celestial version of this glyph needs to be seriously considered for reworking, maybe make it something like reduce damage (direct and condition) to you and your allies by 15%.

Glyph of Unity – At the moment I think this glyph must be a little bugged. Sometimes I’m standing right on top of an enemy, use the skill, and nothing happens. In general this glyph just seems a bit wonky and unreliable to use, for example I’ve had moments of standing in a group of enemies and popping this glyph only to have half of them tethered to me. And sometimes it’s not even the closest to me! I’ll have one person right on top of me un-tethered but a person on the edge of the 300 range tethered. This glyph is in serious need of a range increase (which might also help the tethering issues?) and some way to keep enemies tethered. Right now even if I tethered someone to me they only have to take a couple of steps away to break it, therefore I think there needs to be some sort of punishment for breaking it. My idea was a reverse of Necromancer’s Tainted Shackles where breaking the tether would actually give a little burst of healing to the Druid and allies around the Druid.

Traits:
Minors-

Celestial Being – Bump up the Astral Force percentages, they feel a little low right now.

Live Vicariously – This should be healing your pet too! Anything to help boost pet’s lackluster survivability.

Natural Mender – I think trait is fine as it is but I saw others above mention switching it with Natural Stride and I have to second that! Natural Stride is a very useful trait but it honestly feels like something that defines the flavor of the Druid more than something you need to specifically trait for whereas Natural Mender seems more like I should pick for specific builds. I say switch it and give it a little buff to be more appealing to take.

Adepts-
Druidic Clarity – It just makes sense to be cleansed when switching to your healing state. Wouldn’t change this trait.

Cultivated Synergy – At the moment it just seems a bit weak like it’s missing something extra. Maybe it should also apply a boon to yourself, your pet, and allies?

Primal Echoes – Another good trait that is incredibly useful for PvP lockdown builds. Wouldn’t change much on it. And I also wouldn’t nerf it until its obviously something problematic. In fact I would even consider making the daze 1 1/2 seconds.

Masters-
Celestial Shadow – A very cool trait that creates flavor for specific builds. I haven’t really tried it out yet but the synergy it must have with running a trapper build in WvW with Trapper runes makes me super excited to give a go! Wouldn’t change this one.

Verdant Etching – This trait is in a pretty good spot I think. Probably doesn’t need to be changed much.

Natural Stride – I mentioned before that this is a great trait that could be a minor.

Grandmasters-
Grace of the Land – This is a nice grandmaster, wouldn’t change it.

Lingering Light – Of the grandmasters this is probably the weakest. However! If damage is added to the orbiting light like I mentioned above suddenly this trait becomes way more interesting and useful. As it stands though I’m not tempted to take it over the other 2 grandmasters.

Ancient Seeds – Oh ho yes this trait. I like this trait. I like it a lot. In fact I think I’m in love with this trait. I would not change anything about it.

Pets:
I don’t have much to say about pets so far because I’m mostly speaking from a PvP standpoint and uh well they aren’t available in PvP right now. Honestly that kind of scares me, I think it’s super important that we test the new pets in PvP now before HoT goes live. Why? Because I can see people after launch screaming “NERF THEM!” as a kneejerk reaction and the developers responding just as quickly as they did with the We Heal as One change. And maybe they are kind of OP? Who knows? We haven’t really been able to test it. The Wyverns make me a little nervous, however, with their knockback. Er, yikes. Rangers already get in a lot of trouble for knockbacks and then having one on a pet with no control of when it uses it? That could definitely get ugly in the future. But at the same time I don’t want them to not have a CC skill. I’m not sure how to solve this one and make everyone happy, maybe change it to a knockdown? Other than that I haven’t played with the new pets enough to give any in-depth feedback about them.

Bugs:
Quick Draw doesn’t work with the staff! Needs to be fixed pronto.

Sometimes I can fill the Astral Force Bar by running forward and spamming staff #1. That just doesn’t sound quite right but hey I’m not complaining if it doesn’t get fixed.

Shouldn’t two handed training trait go for staffa’s also now?!
Right now it doesn’t

Knighthonor.4061:

Holland.9351:

patch notes I wish to see:

• Natural Stride and Natural Mender swapped places.

woo bud disagree there.

I like having heal bonus and glyph cool down reduction. Also making it a Minor ruins builds that dont use them, since its would be a useless trait for them.

3 Points:

• Natural Stride would help every single build.
• Natural Mender only helps healing focused builds, which is not the majority of them. It is a useless trait for the majority of builds.
• Glyphs do no need the trait if you are using a healing build based around the CAF, you don’t need the condi removal and they do not really synergise all that well with a healing build when out of the form anyway.