Guild Wars 2

I played druid and its extremely powerful in pvp. I can stand 1v3 without a problem for minutes!!! More powerful then guardian. And when I was playing against it again I couldnt beat it easily. Practically your team need to zerg the druid or you cant ever get the point hes is camping
Really bad for pvp

Miyu.8137:

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.

Don’t forget all the useless utilities druids get. Glyphs are by far the worst sets of skills with minimal functions, minimal range, and long CD.

Guardians got lots of stunbreak, cleanse, protection/retaliation/aegis/quickness/invulnerable all in one build. Extremely long reflections uptime >> druid’s pitiful heal projectile block screen in WvW /PVE/pvp anyway.

Why need Druid, like at all?

Deity.5170:

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.

Can you provide more feedback, especially on that great burst dps build, so the 3 years ranger veterans could get an informed viewpoint?

Compiled a bit of info regarding astral force generation, see here

My only feedback on the druid is that there was nothing that told me how or what I needed to do to unlock, accomplish or earn it. I got two mastery points with no idea where they came from or why they ended up in the hang glider mastery.

Linking here for feedback two different threads that deal with an extremely important UI concern related to healing in GW2.

LughLongArm.5460:

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?

I do actually, but decided to leave it out because I’m not currently running it with full ascended berserker stats, so maybe it’ll be ok at that level.

We should also take into account that staff has more reliable sustained damage than longbow because it’s not affected by reflect and destroy and pierces by default.

However it does feel weak and boring as an offenive weapon because there is only really the auto-attack that deals damage. There is no burst skill like Rapid Fire or Maul for example. It would be cool if Astral Wisp would be more deadly and have a use offensively. Also Vine Surge could use an upgrade and Sublime Conversion is a dead skill in many situation.

Aomine.5012:

Don’t forget all the useless utilities druids get. Glyphs are by far the worst sets of skills with minimal functions, minimal range, and long CD.

Long cooldown? Glyphs have just about the shortest cooldowns in the game among utilities. When traited their cooldowns range from 16 seconds to 24 seconds. It really doesn’t get shorter than that.

Glyphs have short range (they really should be targeted), but their effects aren’t actually bad.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

• Natural Mender only helps healing focused builds, which is not the majority of them. It is a useless trait for the majority of builds.

Still of the opinion that natural mender is crap even if you are healing-focused, myself.

I said it two pages ago: if you want small heals to lead into big heals, you need to go about it differently. Healing isn’t about slinging green numbers around, because ultimately, anyone can sling numbers around. What is even the point of expecting healers in content design if all they are is just another kind of number-slinger? Healers shouldn’t even be considered if you can’t answer that question. Otherwise, you’re just regurgitating ancient MMO tropes, and we’re a lot better than that.

A proper healer might be able to get some benefit out of Natural Mender, but it has no effect whatsoever on what they do or how they play, since a proper healer should be focusing on getting the right heals out to the right people at the right time, not on just spamming green numbers.

Gilgalas.7860:

Linking here for feedback two different threads that deal with an extremely important UI concern related to healing in GW2.

This is definitely something that needs to be considered as well, yes. Perhaps the fix to natural mender could include a component that helps, like tethers to allies when they take damage or something?

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.

I understand some builds use shouts for swiftness and don’t need Natural Stride, or are used in PvE and don’t need to be faster. However, I do think it’s the best trait that’s useful to as many builds as possible, so it would make sense to make it a minor trait.

Another suggestion I had was this:
swap Verdant Etching with Cultivated Synergy
Since that seems to have the least negative impact on trait synergies while opening up the possibility for combining Verdant Etching with Natural Stride in a build. Would you prefer something like this or would you have yet another alternative?

It may be best to add your input to this topic from yesterday and come up with a better alternative:
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/ranger/Natural-Stride-and-Verdant-Etchings

Staff
1. Maybe add Burning on the last tick of the AA. Dmg/healing wise it’s fine.
2. I’d add something to the Wisp when it passes foes, like Weakness (target foe would not be Weakened). Also flight speed could be increased.
3. Fun skill and good for mobility, Pet synergy could be ’’pet’s next attack steals life’’ so it gets healing too (poison on pet attack could work too, but I think with Poison Master and Refined Toxins there’s enough of pet poison available).
4. 1s Immobilize feels lacking. Increase to 2s and add 3 bleeds. Could use a faster animation.
5. This is fine.

Glyphs
At least one should get a stunbreak out of CAF. And normalize the range to 360 like on Tides. I liked the suggestion to give Empowerment Quickness on top of the dmg increase. Unity’s tether is too easy to break.

Traits
See Heimskarl’s suggestions. As a QoL could we get a buff that shows when Ancient Seeds is off CD, just like on Clarion Bond

Celestial Avatar Form
1. Fine as it is
2. Add AoE poison when it blooms.
3. Tone down the Daze duration to avoid 6s Dazes on 5s CD with MoC.
4. It could turn in to a fire and forget skill like some have suggested. Currently that is doable by leaving CAF as soon as the channel starts so you can combo the field with GS leap or Staff blast. Offensive support could be AoE Weakness (if there is still plans on adding offensive support to the skill).
5. Either unroot us or add Stability to the skill. Deals good dmg and the Slow is really nice.

Astral Force
Generation should be less dependent on TU and Staff. Dealing dmg should give 1½% and healing 2½%. Or normalize it to 2% from both sources.

New Pets
Couldn’t test these in PvP
Smokescale is awesome from what I tested in PvE. Wyverns seem a bit slow but that needs to be tested in PvP to see if they can keep up.

I have sorta changed my mind on Druid in WvWand it turns out to have better burst healing than I thought. a couple of things:

1. give stability to druid in Avatar form. If you are going to paint a target on me in WvW at least give me some defence. Protection/Stability anything please… the new meta is Kill Druid First

2. aoe damage to the heals in avatar form to tag at least

3. larger radius to the Avatar 1 spam heal.. person in WvW are dodging and rolling around and they are hard to hit

4. if you nerf the new pets then up the damage on druid staff. Open world mat grinding the smokescale is doing 80% of the damage with a staff out. In fact just up the damage on staff because it is too reliant on pet to kill anything solo

5. I am not using any of the glyphs. The seed trait is too slow and we have better options. The staff is a 1200 range weapon and the glyphs are all pbaoe.

6. Don’t remove the waterfield on 5 or I am going to think badly of you and mutter under my breath

After more pondering, I come back with some more ideas.

1/ As many of us already said it, CA heals strongly lack diversity. One of the classical tool in the healer kitten nal is the “Greater heal”: long casting time, big heal. It is meant to help prepare and recover proficiently from a strong boss AoE you can predict (i.e. topping raid mates).
As a consequence, I suggest CA #4 be changed as follow: 3s casting time (not a ticking channel, a real cast), heals for 20% more than current CA #4 with all the healing coming at the end of the cast. Creates a 4s water field at the end of the cast. Increase recharge to 10s. To make it viable outside of PvE yet, add at the start of the cast 2-3 stacks of 3s stability to the druid. And to prevent druids from cast cancelling that skill to abuse it for free stability, make it go on full recharge if cancelled

2/ Currently, druid feel like a bland one dimensional healbot whose sole purpose is to rush astral force to spend as much time as possible spamming heals in CA. That is really not fun and many of us have suggested tweaks to CA skills, staff and astral force generation to make it more interesting. Here I come up with what I think is a new idea (well, to be honest I did not read all posts around).
To make the alternating between CA and NF (whether using staff or another ranger weapon), turn CA into a ressource management mechanic. I suggest the following changes:

• when exciting CA (whatever the mean), put it on a 10s recharge
• when cancelling CA early, keep remaining astral force
• do not add damage components to CA skills. Staying in CA should be made a choice. When there is no real choice when there is no tradeoff. Here we sacrifice damage for strong party healing
• astral force does not decay while staying in CA, players can stay iddle in CA as long as they enjoy BUT
• using CA skills drains astral force. Each skill has a distinct associated cost

Thanks to these changes, you can get players to actively manage their astral force, decide when to use it and when to build it. It as reminiscent of mana management yet with a strong active component instead of passively sparing and waiting like in other games.

Glyph of Unity inherently flawed in pve

I was really excited for glyph of unity when I first saw the stream. It seemed to be a very nonlinear way of DPSing enemies in pve and pvp, and reward very aggressive, dangerous play.

but in practice it has been problematic. the core issue seems to be a negative synergy with pets, such that you will never get full mileage out of glyph of unity with a live pet. Enemies prefer to aggro the pet, which is normally a good thing…but it REALLY isn’t with Glyph of Unity. I haven’t tried this yet but the best way to get it to work seems to be a jaguar, since you can f3/f2 to have it go stealthpassive and drop aggro. But that’s a lot of work for a core ability!

I’m really not sure how to fix that without adding some dramatically powerful effects to glyph of unity, like a 1s taunt when not in Astral form.

Wait, WHat? Lingering light doesnt heal you? Only allies?
Was jsust playing with it and it seemds it I wasnt getting healed from that, bug?

Can staff 5 function like Field of the Mists (Rev hammer 4)?

Ok here is my feedback on the design (flaws) of the Druid. I have been a main raid healer for over a decade in several other MMOs, I take this seriously.

Preamble
Anet have always stated that they wanted “active” combat and not bar watching like other games. In raids though that’s exactly what healing is, bar watching. A party member’s health drops and you as a main healer, heal them. Simple enough but this goes against what the core game design has been and I believe it’s one of the reasons Druid Celestial Avatar isn’t a stance, as it should be.

GW2 has been very much a visual dress up game as stats between exotic and ascended were so close skins were the endgame, this is now changing with legendary gear, but stats likely will not be OP vs exotics. This visual endgame is likely a factor in not wanting Druids to be able to remain in CA (celestial avatar) permanently. With introduction of raids however, endgame is now raids, not skins.

Reasons CA should be on demand on/off

WvW – CA Druid form is a strong healer and competitively it should / will be a target for enemy players. As a thief for example, killing an enemy healer could shift the battle in your favor.

As a an ally of a Druid you will want to be near one when the kittens hit the fan, and CA is your only real clue someone you’re not grouped with is going healer.

Raids – A 10 man raid will likely use 2 Druids 1 per party or 2 on the tank party and healing is the priority. I know many have said the Druid’s CA needs damage, this isn’t necessary as healing forms need only cleanse and heal, other classes can provide buff /aegis. The reason the Druid needs a resource generated within CA to mimic mana and power the heals rather than generating it out of CA is simple, attuning to CA once heals are needed is likely too late. Anyone who has healed seriously knows the panic of keeping your silly raid menbers alive when they’ve made a mistake. As currently constructed, I as a healer, will be out of CA, doing inferior damage, I’ll see someone health bar drop, switch to CA and hopefully heal them in time. This is poor raid design. Druids don’t need to be in CA all the time and they can turn it off but when healing is needed that’s ALL a healer does. Anyone arguing this point hasn’t raided.

If the issue is that Anet don’t want the Celestial Avatar’s visual appearance to stop players buying / hunting skins then change the look of the form. Going CA in a 5 man party reduces damage done by the party by 20% which is good for balance. Please think of this from a raiding standpoint, if rangers are meant to be main healers, don’t lock away that new mechanic behind an arbitrary energy generation system that says we’re to DPS to enable healing, that’s backwards.

Also to those who would like to add all classes in GW2 can heal themselves negating the need for perma form, I will say this, self healing isn’t unique to GW2. Raid healing is a dedicated role and is new to this game but not a new concept, this system is inferior atm.

I don’t agree with adding damaging conditions to staff like burning. It should stay a power/healing power weapon. I don’t think a power/healing power/condition damage weapon would be good.

If it needs more damage, then just add more damage rather that conditions.

Non-damaging conditions are fine, like cripple, blind, weakness, vulnerability, etc, but just because those are support/utility conditions.

I loved being a healer !
I used a clerical build to test it, I simply loved seeing all thoe green number everywhere <3
Only two cons :
1 – the one ot the staff should be as the 1 of the staff of guardian, simply longer, and keeping the laser beam idea, so that we coul heal our team mate much easier (ask acarbine, they got a good feeling on arcanero in wildstar ;D)
2 – the astral avatar should work like the F1 of necromant : I mean keeping the level of the bar when you quit it, right now I’m afraid of going astar avatar because I’m afraid of wasting it … You could use it exactly when needed, and get back to a lighter healing with staff when not needed.

And I didn’t have the chance to test squads, but be able to see the life of everyone under the nickname would be very useful to know where our heal are more needed. Yes you know the life of each member, but not where they are =D

I’ve mained a mesmer for the duration of guild wars 2, and I mained a mesmer in guild wars 1. I tried monk in gw1, which was really awesome. I never completed any of the campaigns on monk, however, as healing NPC’s so they could clear my objectives simply weren’t fun, and it was difficult to find people who needed the same missions at any given time, although I did heal guildies on occassions.

Over to druid. I really enjoy this! I already have a Level 80 ranger, and is hyped about finding a use for it
I tested it for Verdant Brink pve, teamed with a revenant, and for pvp stronghold. I overall enjoy the healing role, but I feel that the healing is lacking, as well as damage. I started off on the generic celestial set for beta characters, and felt I was doing decent damage when not in CA and decent healing when in CA. I swapped over to full cleric, and the healing wasn’t good enough for me to justify the downgrade in damage. I also went full berserker, and felt that healing didn’t get downscaled enough compared to cleric/celestial to make these stats viable. I’m not really sure what skill I’m supposed to use to instantly heal up my allies, but I feel that the 3,5k heal on Lunar Impact isn’t strong enough for a burst heal, it feels more like Heaven’s Delight from guild wars 1 ( http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Heaven%27s_Delight ). A small partywide heal that isn’t spike healing. I would think this skill would be better for spike heals if it was more like Word of Healing ( http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Word_of_Healing ).

I like the staff 4 in CA (can’t remember the name), but I think for druid to be a viable healer it need to be stronger healing, at least for pve.

The idea about glyph of unity in CA is pretty good, but the range is so small that I have to leave my safe spot and get into the thick of battle, risking my own neck to provide the necessary healing to my team in order for this to be useful, and a dead healer is no use at all, so maybe the idea is to go full soldier to be able to do just that, but I’m not sure.

Outside of CA I think druid is pretty ok, some stronger healing (at least with +Healing Power gear) would be nice. I don’t go druid because I want to deal damage, I go druid because I want to be a useful healer. If anything I think the staff 1 base skill should apply 1 stack of burning, that would at least make a celestial set more useful due to condition damage as well as healing power.

I didn’t really crunch any numbers, but I did have combat log on. I didn’t do extensive testing with different traits and a wide variety of armors, but from my point of view the healing should be increased. On Lunar Impact I peaked at 3,8k healing (which is a lot for 5 targets), but isn’t particularly much if all 5 are at 10% hp when it hits. I didn’t get to test raids, because by the time I got home from work it was already taken down due to the enhanced Squad UI bug, but I’m guessing that encounters in raids will need the spike heals to be higher. If you need 4 druids to be able to spike heal the entire squad back to full health at critical points in raids, I think raids will be inaccessible for casual players. I also don’t know 3 other people who want to spec for pure healing, so finding a group might be difficult.

I didn’t test this with 5-man teams, and I didn’t test it together with another healer, but I’m assuming the idea is to have druid as the class for rapidly increasing the party’s hp, and say elementalist or guardian to keep it at high levels together with the base druid healing, until a spike is needed.

In pvp I noticed that the lack of stability is real. This might be due to balancing, interrupt the healer and gg, but for some skills, like staff 4 in CA or staff 5 in CA this would have been really useful, as for both of them to be useful I need to be up close and most likely running into a lot of conditon spamming AoE Fields. Also didn’t like the rooting on staff 5 in CA, felt like I was suiciding 99% of the time, unless I went to a downed opponent and channeled it while someone else went in for the kill. Would also be nice if at least one of the staff skills in CA gave myself resistance, most likely best on staff 5.

Final note: could have added more of the same, but this is basically what I remember from friday and last night

I just noticed that Natural Stride doesn’t apply to the pet. I suppose that’s fine and maybe that’s the main reason it’s an optional trait rather than a minor trait.

But maybe Pet’s Prowess should be increased from 30% to 33%.

Druid feedback:

1. The range of the heals is too little, it’s difficult to operate if the party is spread out.

2. In celestial avatar form skill 1-3 feel underwhelming, while 4-5 is okay.

3. If I want to use Glyph of the Tides to pull foes together (all guardian GS5 like) it just doesn’t work very well, because of how little the range on the skill is.

4. The druid trait tree is really boring, it’s basically all heal stuff with a few pvp only fillers, no real options for any build diversity.

5. Staff dmg is way too low. (it is really good for getting back to celestial form quickly though) Adding bleeds to the auto attack would go a long way.

6. Wyvern pets: it’s great that we finally have cleaving pets, but in my opinion it’s not great to have knockbacks on attacks we have no control over, even if its a really weak knockback. The f2 animation is way too slow on the fire attack & the f2 air attack feels weak..

7. Smokescale pet: I really like this one.

8. Tiger Pet: In nature no big cat likes water as much as tigers, why cannot this be amphibious? Other than that it’s a reasonable pet.

9. Bristleback: Initially I thought that if ranged dps would be useful in raids having a ranged dps pet would be awesome, unfortunately in it’s current form this isn’kitten The damage is underwhelming, it is tanky though, but I don’t see why we need this since all of our current ranged pets are essentially the same.

10. Elite Glyph: The damage mode feels really really bad. I would change it so that it tethers to allies in dmg mode & to enemies in CA mode. Tethered ally taking dmg would reflect back some & tethered enemy would heal some while dealing less dmg temporarily.

I agree with Zenith.7301 completely, especially his/her closing thoughts.

Rangers do damage, it’s always been that way in every game I have ever played.

I played druid the last two days just trying to find a trait combo that makes the druid worthwhile. I used Cleric’s and Settler’s gear and still had a hard time trying to get some effective healing laid down and maintain a bit of damage.When I finally had enough, I was bored out of my head.

I was also quite jealous of the skills the Dragon Hunter was laying down with a longbow and thinking “wait, that’s my area of expertise”. I really love the Dragon Hunter’s longbow skills.

Symbol of Energy would actually give a Ranger some fire damage, wow!

Hunter’s Ward may be much like barrage, but imagine if it did an AOE heal instead of damage.

Puncture Shot would be too much fun having an arrow bounce around in the fray. We might even be able to use it to hit targets around corners.

Shield of Courage would be an excellent skill for a Ranger to use as a “backliner” to add protection to the back line and also for moving forward to help out the “frontliners”. With Adaptive Armor, this one trick could really add to the Rangers value.

I play Ranger 80% of the time as my main, even in WVW knowing they don’t want me there. Not having an active role in a zerg makes one feel a bit like an outsider. But the Dragon Hunter skills in the hands of a Ranger combined with a trait from the Scrapper could very well give us a role. With a few tweaks.

Adaptive Armor the Scrapper has is a wonderful trait that could actually give the Ranger the much needed defensive boost we’ve been hoping to get for the last three years.

With the “Future of Spirits” topic I read, Rangers may even be able to offer some group support, rather than waste a utility slot on a spirit that dies from a glancing shot.

The new traps the Guardian has are also pretty decent. If the Ranger had a trap that could reveal like Light’s Judgement or a trait that allowed all traps to reveal would be helpful in WVW and PVP since Mesmer’s and Thieves are constantly targeting Rangers for the “easy” kill.

Give the Guardian the Druid role, the staff auto attack Solar Beam (with more damage)can add to the long range attack the Guardian needs for events like The Claw Of Jormag.

If balance is the key to making GW2 better in the eyes of the dev’s, then bringing the Ranger into WVW as a wanted class would add some balance.

I don’t feel Rangers need to have more weapons at their disposal, they have enough. It would be better to see new weapons in the game like a Great Axe (two handed).

A good fix in all around game play would be to eliminate the slowing effects on the Ranger when their pet’s are being attacked or give us the ability to stow our pets until we want them back. No more of the pet coming out of stow when you take damage. Running with a pet makes the trail awfully wide compared to other classes.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ok here is my feedback on the design (flaws) of the Druid. I have been a main raid healer for over a decade in several other MMOs, I take this seriously.

Preamble
Anet have always stated that they wanted “active” combat and not bar watching like other games. In raids though that’s exactly what healing is, bar watching. A party member’s health drops and you as a main healer, heal them. Simple enough but this goes against what the core game design has been and I believe it’s one of the reasons Druid Celestial Avatar isn’t a stance, as it should be.

GW2 has been very much a visual dress up game as stats between exotic and ascended were so close skins were the endgame, this is now changing with legendary gear, but stats likely will not be OP vs exotics. This visual endgame is likely a factor in not wanting Druids to be able to remain in CA (celestial avatar) permanently. With introduction of raids however, endgame is now raids, not skins.

Reasons CA should be on demand on/off

WvW – CA Druid form is a strong healer and competitively it should / will be a target for enemy players. As a thief for example, killing an enemy healer could shift the battle in your favor.

As a an ally of a Druid you will want to be near one when the kittens hit the fan, and CA is your only real clue someone you’re not grouped with is going healer.

Raids – A 10 man raid will likely use 2 Druids 1 per party or 2 on the tank party and healing is the priority. I know many have said the Druid’s CA needs damage, this isn’t necessary as healing forms need only cleanse and heal, other classes can provide buff /aegis. The reason the Druid needs a resource generated within CA to mimic mana and power the heals rather than generating it out of CA is simple, attuning to CA once heals are needed is likely too late. Anyone who has healed seriously knows the panic of keeping your silly raid menbers alive when they’ve made a mistake. As currently constructed, I as a healer, will be out of CA, doing inferior damage, I’ll see someone health bar drop, switch to CA and hopefully heal them in time. This is poor raid design. Druids don’t need to be in CA all the time and they can turn it off but when healing is needed that’s ALL a healer does. Anyone arguing this point hasn’t raided.

If the issue is that Anet don’t want the Celestial Avatar’s visual appearance to stop players buying / hunting skins then change the look of the form. Going CA in a 5 man party reduces damage done by the party by 20% which is good for balance. Please think of this from a raiding standpoint, if rangers are meant to be main healers, don’t lock away that new mechanic behind an arbitrary energy generation system that says we’re to DPS to enable healing, that’s backwards.

Also to those who would like to add all classes in GW2 can heal themselves negating the need for perma form, I will say this, self healing isn’t unique to GW2. Raid healing is a dedicated role and is new to this game but not a new concept, this system is inferior atm.

I agree with this post.

First I want to say that I absolutely love the Druid. I really like its design and that it is focused on a healing support role. It’s almost exactly what I always wanted to play in GW2. Well, one of the things I always wanted to play, anyway.

And before I get to my feedback: a bug prevents Quick Draw from working with any Staff skills, this needs to be fixed.

But now to my personal Druid feedback. (By the way, I don’t really go into possible combos with all the skills and specializations and their traits, because I don’t think that the time we have to play Druid during this weekend is enough to thoroughly test those. My initial impression, however, is that the Druid does indeed lack synergy with Ranger bace specializations. )

First off some general impressions and notes:

• An option to always see all your allies health, regardless of wheter they are in a group with you or not, would be really nice for this specialisazion. So would the ability to target allies.
• The Druid would really profit from the ability to apply some boons to allies, healing is nice and all, and I really like the healing playstyle, but healing alone just doesn’t seem to be useful enough. A few offensive boons would really help in that regard and, at least in my opinions, greatly improve the viability of the Druid in PvE where most adequate players can keep themselves alive just fine. In PvP it actually seems to be in a pretty good spot for its first time in the game. Although that might also increase when Bosses get breakbars and all the Druid’s dazes become useful in PvE. But as it stands now it seems to me that you could always take a Guard or a Herald with Glint and Ventari Legends instead of the Druid to add both healing and far more utility to your group than Druid offers.
• This specialization als seems to rely pretty heavily on stability, at least in Celestial Avatar Form, as every spell in that form is channeled, but the Druid doesn’t come with any way to gain stability. But the base Ranger has those, so this isn’t really all that huge a problem. Some stability would of course always be nice, though.
• The Healing Power scaling on the Druid’s skills sadly isn’t all that great, but that might be a good thing, as it means that you don’t have to use healing power equipment to be effective, as the base healing is overall quite good (please, for the love of all the Spirits, don’t nerf the base healing values, they are okay the way they are [maybe a bittle to low, even, <wink wink, nudge, nudge>]).
  
  Now to the Staff:
  In general I really like the animations and the feeling of this weapon, but it seems a bit too heavily focused on healing, as it barely does anything else, which I personally like, but I can understand that many people might want a bit more from their weapons.
  It also is the only weapon that allows you to effectively charge Astral Force, but that is a problem I will get to later.

• #1 Solar Beam
  The auto attack of the Staff would seem pretty solid, if it did any notceable damage. Where this skill really shines is as a way to charge Astral Force and not much else. You can get from zero to full really quickly, which allows you to use Celestial Avatar a lot, which is a ton of fun. Unfortunately this might be due to a bug, as there seems to be a bug that allows you to charge Celestial Avatar by simply pressing 1 and whacking your pet over the head with the staff. That should probably be fixed. It basically counts every pass through an ally as a heal, even when they have full HP.

• #2 Astral Wisp
  The second skill is also rather nice, although it could use a damage or maybe condition component, not a lot of damage, but maye a little something to tag mobs in PvE or single one enemy out a bit in PvP. Or just to increase the pressure the druid can create. It jsut seems a bit lackluster as the fire and forget skill it is right now. You basically just put it on an enemy that mostly fights in melee range and hope that it helps whomever that enemy attacks (or your melee range allies). The radius of the Wisp should probably also be slightly increased, it’s really tiny right now. The actual hit with the wisp also does far too little damage.

• #3 Ancestral Grace
  Another Skill I really like, but you really shouldn’t have to channel it for its full casttime even if you don’t cast it on full range. That’s just annoying. Nothing more to say here, really, it’s just a really nice mobility skill with good healing attached and a blast finisher. Good skill.

• #4 Vine Surge
  Number four is the only staff skill I don’t like all that much. For a skill shot the immobilize duration is just far too low, barely useful at all, really.

• #5 Sublime Conversion
  Nothing much to say here, really useful projectile destruct with a nice bonus, healing could maybe be a bit higher, but not too shabby, especially if you catch a good number of projectiles. And it’s also a water field, which is really cool (and should not be changed).
  
  And from the staff to the Celestial Avatar:
  This mechanic is abkittenely amazing, I like its design and its healing is pretty awesome, too.

• #1 Cosmic Ray
  This skill’s radius could be a bit larger as it is a bit too hard and awkward to hit moving allies and you really shouldn’t have to aim a simple heal skill, imho. Could also really, really, reeeaaaallllly use a bit of damage to enemies.

• #2 Seed of Life
  Great anti condi skill that nicely complements all the heals, but also a bit clunky too use, although here it is more the time before the seed blooms than the radius that is the problem.

• #3 Lunar Impact
  All around awesome, really nice pressure thanks to the dace, good against rezzes/stomps, nice radius, pretty great. (Sadly this will probably have to be nerfed in some way due to Moment of Clarity as 6 seconds of AoE daze on a CD of 5 seconds with a cast time of one second, so all in all almost permanent [the animation prevents it from actually being permanent] daze while you are in Celestial Avatar is pretty kitten broken. Which is truly unfortunate. )

• #4 Rejuvenating Tides
  Another great heal with the addition of a mobile water field for, of course, more heal. Heal all the things!

• #5 Natural Convergence
  Finally not a heal! This skill is a bit of a double edged sword. It’s effect is quite good, pulsing cripple, pulsing slow, a bit of damage, but it roots you in place and I don’t know whether that’s worth it. Personally I’d say yes, mostly because of the slow, but other’s might see that differently.
  
  Now to the Glyphs:
  The Glyphs feel pretty lacking overall. They seem bland and uninspired and their Celestial Avatar counterparts rarely seem worth using, considering that you could use more of the Celestial Avatar weapon skills instead. It’s weird that they’re all point blank AoEs, as the rest of the druid seems more suited to fighting/healing at range. Their radii are almost all too small, especially the elite Glyph’s one. The only really nice thing about them are their low cooldowns.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation
  For a specialization with that much healing, the actual heal should maybe do a tad bit more. Especially the non Celestial Avatar verion seems pretty weak, as the self heal isn’t anything to write home about and the AoE heal is… okay-ish. The Celestial Avatar version seems a bit better, as the sum of all possible healing done is greater.

• Glyph of Alignment
  Weakness and cripple are in my opinion simply not good enough to warrant a utility slot (seriously, 3s cripple and 3s weakness on an utility skill?) and the damage is meh. The Celestial Avatar form is, again, better but maybe yet again not quite good enough to be used over an Avatar Skill in the limited time you have as a Celestial Avatar.

• Glyph of the Tides
  Pretty good, has an okay radius. I feel like the knockback should maybe be on the Celestial Avatar version and the pull on the normal one, as the knockback is a bit more defensive and thus fits the pure support form a bit more. Although, now that I think about it, the pull has some nice synergy with Celestial Avatar #3. Nevermind, then, maybe this skill simply is awesome, especially with it’s low CD. Really rocks in PvP.

• Glyph of Equality
  Nice skill, the daze is useful, AoE stunbreak is also not bad, although it’s not easy to judge when your allies actually need it, but that’s probably more due to GW2 UI, which is severly lacking in some aspects. I think Glyph of the Tides is a bit better, but this is a close second.

• Glyph of Empowerment
  The Damage boost is far too small, barely useful at all. The boost to outgoing healing is not horrible, but its actual usefulnes is somewhat questionable. Haven’t tested that, though as this skill, once again, doesn’t seem to be worth a slot.

• Glyph of Unity
  This one actually makes me a bit sad. The Idea is really, really good, but first off, the radius is just laughable. Absolutely ridiculously tiny for the effect. Everyone who isn’t stunned or immobilized will just walk away, and you will be hard pressed to keep more than one target in range, at least for the normal version and that one’s damage per received hit is so low that you would have to facetank an entire rapid fire or something like it to do significant damage. And the Celestial Avatar version can’t save this skill, either. The radius is once again far too small to be useful, as your allies probably shouldn’t be that close to you if you receive enough hits to get some healing oput of it. So it might only be useful as a small, gloryfied damage mitigation that severly limits the movement of everyone who wants to profit from it. Ireally had some high hopes for this one, because its concept seemed so cool, but the way it is now it simply is too weak.
  
  And finally on to the Traits:
  The traits in general aren’t bad, but being able to choose traits that give boons to your healing or something like that would probably go a long way to add some utility to the druid that goes beyond healing. I don’t really know what would be most useful in that regard myself, but as nice as all the healing is it just doesn’t feel like it’s quite enough. At least not when you compare it to, for example, a guard who can dish out a bit of healing, a significant number of blocks, and good uptime on many useful boons beyond that., which, all things considered seems to be a bit more useful than pure healing.
  
  
  Adept Traits:
• Celestial Being (minor)
  The Astral Force generation of this trait is pretty problematic because of the way it works. Staff alone has enough healing skills to charge Astral Force from zero too one hundred percent very quickly, often in just a few seconds (although that is most likely due to the fact that Solar Beam is bugged and gives you Astral Force even when it just passes through an ally without actually healing him due to im having full health). This is amazingly fun, although also maybe a little bit OP (without the bug probably not, though). With every weapon other than staff, however, you take freaking forever to build up one hundred percent Astral Force, so you are pretty much forced to use staff when you play Druid. So there are two possibilities now, either you simply buff the Astral Force gained per damage hit (to 1% or maybe 1.5%), and maybe, just maybe, nerf the Astral force gained through heals a tiny bit (although that really shouldn’t be neccessary after a fix to Solar beam), or you change this mechanic so that a percentage of your damage or healing gets converted to Astral Force and then balance that. Although that might jsut open another can of worms.

• Druidic Clarity
  Good against condi burst, not realy much more to say here.

• Cultivated Synergy
  Well, it’s more healing. Maybe change it to give a boon instead of healing, or just add a boon to the heal.

• Primal Echoes
  The staff trait. More daze is always nice to have. Solid trait I guess, wouldn’t know anything to add to this.

Master Traits:

• Live Vicariously (minor)
  Nice trait, adds a bit more self sustain, especially when you concentrate on healing others.

• Celestial Shadow
  This trait’s usefulness might be a bit limited. In PvP it might not be wise to use it, as stealth prevents capture point contirbution and I don’t really see its usefulness in PvE, eihter. But I like that it adds something more than healing. Maybe just change the Stealth to some other buff or boon?

• Verdant Etching
  The Glyph trait. A lot like Primal Echoes. It’s nice that it adds condi removal to Glyphs, I don’t think that it should be changed.

• Natural Stride.
  Good trait. Should probably just be left the way it is.

Grandmaster Traits:

• Natural Mender (minor)
  I like this one. It makes your healing stronger the more you heal and I don’t see a problem with that. Just means that if you do a good job you get to do it even better.

• Grace of the Land
  Nice to have against high condi pressure, another good trait.

• Lingering Light
  I fell like this trait is actually a bit better than the skill it uses, as the wisp circles around you, so you get to decide where it is and you have more control over who gets the heal.

• Ancient Seed.
  This one seems to be the odd one out. It’s the only trait that applies conditions, and the only way to apply damaging conditions that comes with the Druid specialization. The immobilize is certainly nive and I won’t complain about the bleed, either, but it seems a bit weird that there is nothing besides this one trait in the entire specialization that would allow the Druid to do some condi damage. Of course, the base Ranger specializations can help with that, so it might not really a problem, but it does seem weird.
  
  In conclusiopn I would say that I absolutely love the Druid, although it does have it’s problems. One of these is that it doesn’t bring much else than healing in the way of group utility, which seems a bit bland. Another one is that every Druid is pretty much forced to use a staff, unless he doesn’t ever want to use the new mechanic and that really should not be the case.

Edit:
After playing some more PvP I realized that the Staff pretty much sucks. Doesn’t do any damage, the heals aren’t useful in actual combat (at least not in PvP) and you don’t have any presence in fights at all. So you are left with a good movement skill and a projectile destruction. Very disappointing for a weapon. The Celestial Avatar is pretty nice, but I don’t really see a use for staff, at least in PvP. Just ditch that weapon and use Troll Unguent to charge Celestial Avatar.

I played Druid for 3 hours in total, all in Verdant Brink. Ranger is my main class. My findings:

• Staff has very weak damage
• Staff skill 2 is nice if you have a pet that tanks (or at least is in melee range)
• I used staff skill 4 a lot, 3 and 5 not so much
• I have to play more with Glyphs to really get a feeling for them. Maybe I am going to use them, as I am not that impressed by most of the utility skills of the Ranger. I use a Sylvari-only utility so that will tell you enough :-)
• Celestial Avatar didn’t really worked for me. If you don’t use Glyphs it is very weak in my opinion.
• In spite of all the previous points I had a lot of fun playing with Staff (and Druid in general).

Druid is another example of a very situational elite specialization. The fact that I have to dedicate one trait line for it makes it less useful for me. That said, I hope Druid will give me more options in more difficult content, like high level fractals and probably raids. Or in an organised Tequatl or 3 Headed Wurm.

Hmm… How’s this for a Glyph of Unity 2.0?

“A web of astral energy connects allies and enemies together within the area. Whenever damage or healing is attempted by those within the web, a portion of that damage or healing propagates throughout the web as a surge of energy, damaging enemies or healing allies.”

The effect would be triggered by activating a damaging or healing skill within a radius of the druid (this could just be ground-targeted, but that limits counter-counter-play in PvP).

The actual damage or heal amount caused by the glyph could be calculated by simulating the damage or healing the skill used would cause to a single hypothetical target, so in addition to granting a clear, cool substantial damage buff to allies (this does have to compete with “Feel my Wrath!” and Time Warp, after all), this would bypass armour and add some extra up-front damage to conditions.

Presumably, the final output of the glyph is exclusively either damage or healing, depending on which form you’re in. Regardless of form, both damage and healing should still be valid inputs, however.

I ran a full cleric Druid traited for Healing. I ran in Verdant Brink and Cursed Shores. I got good dps on the staff autoattack. Ancestral Grace proved to be cumbersome and I struggled with using it. When I was with a party I didn’t really need it when we were close. Might come in handy if I were trying to catch a fast moving party. No dps so I never used it at all.

As for moving with a fast party, in Cursed Shores, running with a farming group, I found that at times a high dps party killed enemy before I could cast many of the skills. However, I was told by other players that the heals were much better than a Cleric Guard using Shout heals.

Celestral Avatar worked well.

I liked the Pets and tested out the combo fields with a guardian and a elementalist and they worked well with stacking might. Of course I loved the bristleback and making it growth gigantic.

Over all I really loved the Druid and will most like run that build in HoT.

Celestial Avatar time limit
I dislike that there is a time limit. The bar should reduce to zero only when Celestial Avatar skills are used. Why? Because while timing changing into C.A. may be an L2P issue, I feel ‘pressure’ after changing, when I wish I was feeling ‘freely empowered’, instead.

Electrical Wyvern
The electrical effect is underwhelming—particularly when compared to the fire effect of the Fire Wyvern. I think a path of electricity across the ground not unlike the Druid staff ‘4’ skill would be an improvement.

Ranger staff animations
Need some love—the idle stance doesn’t feel ‘druid’, and a mere recycle of existing animations for other attacks, while understandably practical, is underwhelming.
(Particularly compared with the Revenant’s awesome animations)

My first character was ranger, which I dropped and mained mesmer for a long time. When I raided in past life I had 2 classes hunter and healer I raided on, so decided to try Druid as it combines both. I am in love with this class, though have only tried it in Verdant Brink.

I agree with a lot of the feedback on Glyphs and improvements on skills, but really loved the play style. I just healed on the Legendary Wyvern, which I had only tried on Chronomancer before.

I was using Ancestral Grace to get into melee pop some glyphs, dodge out go into CA pop heals where I logically thought people would need healing, pop out use sublime conversion when he breathes fire for regen field and so on. I was moving around a lot dodging attacks to get to where it felt like I was needed putting down seeds in spots that looked like they would need support. Obviously in raids, etc this will be more focused and will learn where we need to be.

I’ve tried various second weapons like GS, LB and SB so far. I personally didn’t like GS. LB was nice for when I needed extra dps. Tried SB thinking maybe condi might be nice, but hard to say in open world with any of these. I found for easy trash type mobs I stuck to damage weapon and in harder champions and legendary I stuck to staff. Will try axe and the offhands too.

I was in full celestial gear and got gold for all events I was in. I’m not a theory crafter so my feedback is more to give a thumbs up for the play style and I’m sure with some obvious improvements it will hopefully only get better.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but neither pets nor spirits took AoE damage inside the raid instance. After we noticed this, a guardian also tested spirit weapons, which were similarly immune to AoE. Is this a bug, or should I be thanking someone for a wonderful decision?

mistsim.2748:

Arahzor.1832:

• Glyphs – I say they need a buff. increase the radius on them to 600 at least, and buff the damage on those that have damage.
  .

I don’t think u understand how large 600 radius is. 360 is the range of natural convergence and it’s perfect. glyphs should go up from 300 to 360 and we’d be good.

360 range might be good enough. It’s very easy to miss someone in your party with a 300 range skill, especially if this is world vs world or any content to be honest. 600 might be a bit too strong there i can agree on that note.

360 might just do it!

mazut.4296:

I played druid and its extremely powerful in pvp. I can stand 1v3 without a problem for minutes!!! More powerful then guardian. And when I was playing against it again I couldnt beat it easily. Practically your team need to zerg the druid or you cant ever get the point hes is camping
Really bad for pvp

How? Druid has no stability, all you need to do is CC and you outright kill him/her.

How? Druid has no stability, all you need to do is CC and you outright kill him/her.

Druids have exactly as much stability as other rangers

found a bug:

ancient seeds doesn’t seem to work with spike trap.

Other than that, I quite like the Druid, it’s really fun! I wish the stuff would scale a bit more with healing power though.

DRUID required changes.

Celestial Avatar requires some damage and should only have 1 skill for healing or add entirely different skill set for different weapons that are offensive too since staff is just supportive just for more options.

Glyphs are ok but they cannot replace what most of us really need to survive so change some of them to a different use. like make Glyph of Sunlight and Glyph of Midnight (light or dark since its nature based)
Glyph of Sunlight or Day that adds aura when activated have chance to take out a boon for the next 5 attack and add a trait that will give 3 sec immunity to condition damage when activated. Glyph of Darkness or Night that adds an aura to your team when activated have a chance to add random Condition for the team and when traited 3 sec protection added.

Cons with this?: well now we have a valuable class for dungeons and pvp that can make condi damage users play differently and smarter on when to use their combo and Zerkers also play differently will have to play smarter too and this makes the play style more complicated but challenging and fun, will also help in Dungeons or Raids. add a special unique mob that have buff so that debuffer skills can be used for a fun and challenging mechanic.

these is the easy fix change that can be made. let us not make the game too easy because we now have a healer now and keep the tradition of no healer requires just common sense and having fun.

A suggestion a lot of people will be against because it’s essentially nerfing the class somewhat. Nerf A LOT of the base healing and provide more Healing Power scaling. People who want to heal should feel rewarded for building Healing Power. Those who don’t build it, shouldn’t expect outrageous amounts of healing to the point where they can go full zerker, and still top people off 0-100. Although I don’t know the ratios, numbers, they just seem skewed and not very rewarding for building towards a certain path. Although I do love having a specilization that prioritizes healing, it shouldn’t be provided naturally.

TL;DR Bases too high, nerf them and make Healing Power feel more rewarding.

PowerBottom.5796:

found a bug:

ancient seeds doesn’t seem to work with spike trap.

Other than that, I quite like the Druid, it’s really fun! I wish the stuff would scale a bit more with healing power though.

Perhaps it is because the trap deals the damage before the KD, did you deal damage with an attack while they were knocked down?

Druid is weak, staff 1 and 2 lack damage, healing is decent, but having been a dugeoun and dragons player, and having played the ranger and the druid class, this specialization for the ranger does not work, if you wanted a druid you should created a whole new class like you did with the revenant, ranger were not meant to use solar power, you are trying to combine actually 3 classes into one, becuse druids are not monks, thry do have healing abilities , tied to nature, rangers are stuck, the only thing good for us is farming solo with pet, look at thiefs, they do alot of damge they have weak armor, but they can stay invisible forever, partys don’t want us, when we try to get in groups for dugeouns we are frown apawn by the the so called meta zerkers, right now, if your not a warrio, guardian, ele or mesmer or thief, they don’t want you and now revenant class will if give the guardian a run for his money, guardian might be joining the rangers and the necros as useless, not good, sorry I love my Ranger , i have 2 of them, there my main class, played a ranger thru out guild wars 1 since beta, and i got to say i am disapointed.

After playing the Druid in PvE and WvW over this BWE, I feel pretty confident in saying that my initial impressions during the livestream were correct. I’m going to copy-paste some of my feedback from that thread with some additional feedback based on my experience in the BWE, and add my thoughts on pets in my next post. Irenio, thank you for reading the feedback threads and please let us know what suggestions are helpful/doable and which ones are not. Druid is beautiful, unique, and has a lot of potential, and I want to see that potential come to fruition.

While the concept of Druid is interesting, I am worried that it is too singly focused on healing to benefit Rangers even in challenging group content. Druid lacks the versatility required for top-tier gameplay due to: lack of damage modifiers (which are boring, but necessary), little damage mitigation/prevention/stunbreaks, limited accessibility to boons/conditions, and few field/finisher skills. Druid also synergizes extremely poorly with the Ranger class mechanic, the Pet, and with existing Ranger weapon skills and utilities.

Why I’m worried about Druid’s place in the game:

• Rangers have relatively low baseline DPS even with their most damage-focused builds—lower than the majority of other classes (using calculations from the well-known guild DnT), and certainly lower than elementalists and guardians (our main competitors for healing at this moment, though revenant will likely be a strong healer as well). Unless Druid’s healing is 100% required to complete raids (it isn’t required in the raid from this BWE), Druids (and Rangers) are going to be once again shuffled to the side in favor of more versatile classes that can offer control, support, and damage in one neat bundle.

• Druid as of now only offers (limited) support, with no damage and limited control. This means that Druid will be useless, barring significant changes, in 95% of the core game. Currently, DPS is king in core PvE , along with active damage prevention/mitigation. Druid gives no damage boosts to Ranger and has seriously limited damage mitigation. As a Ranger main, I was hoping that our elite specialization would be useful in existing content, and not just in one small aspect of the coming expansion. I also do not want to be relegated to “healerbot” should Druids be required for future raids. In general, players did not make their Rangers for this purpose.

Overarching issues with Druid

1. Lack of versatility means that it is overshadowed by existing classes. This lack of versatility is compounded by the poor implementation of Celestial Avatar form, which is extremely clumsy to use and useless in most situations.
2. Lack of boon/condition application. Boons and conditions also do not fill the Celestial Avatar bar.
3. Lack of stunbreaks. This is especially important for new mobs and bosses that use heavy CC.
4. Lack of synergy with the pet, Ranger’s class mechanikitten
5. tle to no synergy with the Ranger base class. Celestial Avatar adds a new layer of complexity, but is entirely separate from the Pet. Because Celestial Avatar charges more on heals, Druids are encourage to camp Staff (the only healing weapon) rather than use traditional Ranger weapons. Celestial Avatar also interacts ONLY with the new utilities, Glyphs, reducing build options for Druids.
6. Lack of synergy within Druid. Staff is a long-range weapon, but Glyphs are point-blank AoEs.
7. Made to react to damage, not be proactive in preventing damage. This does not encourage skillful play and reduces Druid playstyle to “spam heals on allies”. However, we can’t even do this well, since many of our heals have extremely limited AoEs out of which that allies frequently run before the skill is even cast. This is noticeable ESPECIALLY in difficult content, where heals are most needed, when allies are running/dodging/kiting. Stacking for heals would result in a group wipe in many situations.
8. Taking the Druid line forces Rangers to give up significant damage and utility, but does little to nothing to negate this loss. Druid in its current state has no place in the vast majority of Guild Wars 2 PvE and will only have a small (or nonexistent) niche going forward.

Possible Solutions

Many good suggestions have been made in this thread and others, and I would like to add/emphasize a few.

Staff

I like the concept of the staff as a strong support weapon, and because of this I am okay with the limited DPS. However, it needs to provide stronger group support than it currently does. It also needs to work with condition builds, since it is the ONLY support weapon that Rangers have. Additionally, though this is incredibly nitpicky, the Staff skill icons do not fit with other Ranger weapons thematically.

1. Change the autoattack of the Druid staff. Because of the PBAoE nature of Glyphs, Druids will need to stay close to allies and enemies in order to utilize their full set of skills. Use the Guardian staff as a guide and make staff a short-range weapon that cleaves multiple enemies (and heals multiple allies) with its cone-shaped attack. This has the bonus of also fitting aesthetically with the Druid’s celestial theme. The short-range autoattack also synergizes well with Astral Wisp and Vine Surge. If the Druid needs to heal from a distance, he/she can use Astral Grace as an escape and switch to Celestial Avatar for long-range healing. Apply a short 1s burn on enemies and possibly a 1s boon (such as regeneration) on allies.
2. Astral Wisp: I like this skill a great deal, but wisp should deal damage to enemies and heal allies as it travels. Currently not useful for condition builds—perhaps applying a short damaging condition on enemies would not be remiss.
3. Add evasion to Astral Grace. Because the healing is backloaded, the Druid is extremely vulnerable when using this skill. It does not work as an escape or a charge because of this. Additionally, it is bugged so that the Druid remains in the form for the duration of the skill, regardless of the distance travelled.
4. Increase the radius of Vine Surge, possibly making it cone-shaped. This skill is very difficult to land even in PvE due to enemy movement and slow speed.
5. Sublime Conversion is another very interesting concept, but its effectiveness is hampered by its very small size and poor scaling with healing power. It is outclassed in most PvE content by reflect skills, which both prevent damage and deal damage. I would encourage testing this skill as a “bubble” around the Druid, similar to Guardian shield 5 (which both protects from projectiles and heals as well).

Glyphs

Right now, glyphs are ineffective. They have a lot of potential for Druid, however, due to their low cooldowns and AoE nature. To be useful, glyph radius NEEDS to be larger than 300 if you a) want to enable Druid to fight effectively out of melee range and b) want to discourage players from stacking. If you want to keep the damage low, consider making them instant-cast to improve their utility. Consider making one or more of them blast finishers—Glyph of Alignment (regular and CAF) and Glyph of the Tides (knockback form) are natural fits for blast finishers. Glyphs should also be usable underwater. Currently, glyph use is bugged and I was forced to spam my glyph commands to trigger the cast.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation: Improve the base heal amount for the Ranger. This skill is in direct competition with Healing Spring, which has a good base heal, grants Regeneration, clears conditions, and can be blasted for self/group healing. If you want to see this glyph used, it needs some tuning. Perhaps adding boons (protection, regeneration, resistance), condition removal, and/or condition-to-boon conversion on the base form AND Celestial form would help bring it up to the level of Ranger’s other available heals. It currently does not heal the pet for the full amount, only the allied. This needs to be changed. Change the radius to 600—allies need be able to dodge and move around during a fight, and should not be required to stack for healing.

• Glyph of Alignment: Lackluster. Could be a good basic damage/control/mitigation skill if the condition durations were increased to ~6+ seconds. The low cooldown helps mitigate some of the Druid’s poor damage, but does not make up for it. The heal and condition removal on its Celestial Avatar form seems like a very natural reversal. Change the radius to 450.

• Glyph of Equality: A nice skill, but it needs more utility given its higher cooldown. Add a stunbreak in regular form and add stability in CAF. Increase radius to 450.

• Glyph of the Tides: I have seen this suggestion before, and I would like to second it: the base Glyph of the Tides should pull enemies toward the Druid, and the Celestial Avatar version should knockback. Knockback in general is a defensive skill and fits more appropriately with the defensive aspects of Celestial Avatar. This would also be a good skill to apply stability, especially on its Celestial form. Increase radius to 450.

• Glyph of Empowerment: While good at first glance, this skill is significantly weaker than Frost Spirit (as well as other classes’ utilities, such as Banners). Either increase the damage buff or increase the duration of the damage buff. The (very small) radius of this skill and its PBAoE nature encourages melee stacking. Consider adding boons on both base and Celestial forms. The Celestial form is somewhat weak—consider a base damage reduction of 10% (which can be applied proactively as well as reactively), rather than improving allied heals. Increase radius to 600.

• Glyph of Unity: Another very interesting idea, but it again is hampered by a very small effect radius in both forms. Increase radius to 600 or more, and add stability since it competes with our best stability-granting skill, “Strength of the Pack!”.

Celestial Avatar

In my opinion, Celestial Avatar form should not charge through either damage or healing. Instead, it should recharge at a base amount (like endurance, initiative, and energy) and NOT drain fully upon exit. This creates a “timer” for CAF based upon usage (like Revenant’s energy, or Thief’s initiative) that rewards skillful and versatile play, but still disallows camping CAF (which is made possible by CAF’s current setup).

• The lack of damage in this form is concerning. Adding a small amount of base damage to the autoattack would improve Druid’s viability by allowing Druid’s to both heal allies and tag enemies for loot. This is doubly important in WvW. Consider adding burning or other condition damage as well.

• Please reconsider the ground targeting and incredibly tiny radius on Cosmic Ray. As Engineers can tell you, ground-targeted autoattacks are killer for wrist and hand health, and the tiny radius makes it impossible to heal allies who are moving.

• Please also consider making the skills more versatile. While it’s great to have a theme, it would be nice if every skill wasn’t “heal heal heal” save for Natural Convergence. Perhaps focus on damage prevention and mitigation for some of the skills—including granting boons—rather than healing.

• The radius on Seed of Life is far too small given its activation time. Reduce the activation time and increase the radius to 300 or more to account for player movement. This also improves the trait Verdant Etching, which is extremely lackluster right now. Consider making either the heal and/or the condition cleanse instant. Please also consider making the appearance of Seed of Life less…pustule-like.

Traits

In general, traits need a bit of love to make Druid versatile enough to be competitive for placement in raids and general PvE.

• Druid traits have little to no synergy with the pet.

• The singular focus on healing with the minor traits is problematic. Perhaps the Minor traits should focus on improving the Druid mechanic, Celestial Avatar (such as by making Druidic Clarity baseline, but limiting condition removal to 1-3 conditions and/or removing a number of conditions per second (similar to necromancer shroud traits). Minor traits would also be more useful if they synergized with the pet, such as making “Cultivated Synergy” baseline. Make the “healing” traits optional, not required—otherwise you are shoehorning players into healing-based builds, which are generally not needed. Druid needs to have more options than healing if you want it to see use. Several other players suggested making Natural Stride a minor trait. I second this suggestion.

• Adept, Master, and Grandmaster trait selection locks Druids into healing-centric builds and discourages build and playstyle diversity. Because Ranger has low base damage and damage modifiers are spread throughout different trait lines, there needs to be at least one damage modifier trait in the Druid line. This will help make up for the loss of a base Ranger trait line such as Marksmanship, Skirmishing, Beastmastery, or Nature Magic. Heimskarl Ashfiend has some excellent suggestions in Druid Traits Redux. Mainly, I would like to see traits reward Druid healing with increased damage. This can be accomplished in a few ways I can think of: a stacking buff (such as Natural Mender, which could grant increased power/condition damage per heal as well as improved healing effectiveness) or by damaging opponents in an AoE around healed allies.

• Add a damage-modifying trait to the Adept tier. This will give Druids a choice between healing/staff and damage, improving build variety.

• Celestial Shadow is unnecessary, given the short durations of both stealth and superspeed. It is clumsy as an escape skill, since it requires building + entering + leaving Celestial Avatar and some serious coordination with teammates as well. This skill also does not fit terribly well thematically.

• Verdant Etching looks great, but is highly dependent on changes made to Seed of Life.
  Currently, it is sub-par since the healing and condition cleanse are generally wasted due to the low radius and activation time of Seed of Life.

• Grace of the Land is redundant. Druid has plenty of access to condition cleanses, which negate condition damage entirely.

• Lingering Light is somewhat redundant as well, adding healing on top of healing. Perhaps this should be changed to something like “cast Astral Wisp on enemies that strike you in melee combat”. This would be excellent for both offensive and defensive Druids. ICD should be per enemy if changed in this manner.

• Ancient Seeds may prove an excellent trait for control/condition Druids, but may need some tuning—especially on the proc requirements. Consider having it proc instantly on use of the CCs listed, rather than the hit after, since many Ranger CCs are low-duration.

some posts in this thread are waaaay too long. Put yourself in Irenios shoes before you write an entire essay.

I’d like to be proven wrong, but I do not think that the amount of work needed for this spec to really work is actually feasible before the expansion launches. The problems with it are just too big and too fundamental.

Honestly, I think it might be worth holding the druid back until after launch, just so that the first ‘official’ outing of the spec doesn’t sour everyone’s opinions towards it.

Hopefully, my other posts in this thread show why I’m so pessimistic about this. Ultimately, the spec is struggling with the burden of having to be a good healer, a good fit for a game that has been traditionally designed around eschewing healers, and a good Guild Wars 2 design. It might be really cool in some game modes, but this really doesn’t seem to cut it.

Pets

The new pets are fun and have some pretty interesting mechanics, but they suffer from many of the problems that hamper the old pets.

• Wyverns have an incredibly slow autoattack speed, rendering their DPS almost nonexistent. Their non-controllable knockback is incredibly frustrating. Improve their attack speed and change the knockback to a knockdown.

• The Fire Wyvern’s f2 does not center around the targeted enemy. I do not know if this is intended, but please change this. Currently, the f2 misses a good chunk of the time despite its large radius.

• The Bristleback’s f2 skill and its barrage-style skill should be swapped. Consider changing all attack ranges to 1200.

• The tiger’s f2 ability steps on the toes of the Red Moa. Consider having the tiger grant quickness, rather than Fury, especially if you plan to keep the small skill radius. Also make the tiger useable underwater.

• The smokescale is in a good spot right now. Smoke Assault and Smoke Cloud help temper the extreme damage that traditional pets take in heavy cleave/AoE fights.

i agree with evilunderling, theres no way to fix it in time for launch.

this is more of a core issue, but Runes of the Mesmer +33% daze durations do not update daze durations a the skills tooltips, and after testing, nor do they seem work in actuall application. Tests are done with and without Moment of clarity added.

i realy hope the glyphe get party stabbi this is something the could really use in wvw to make it an interesting proffesion to use in wvw and overall. and plz plz a stun break.

wvw related and pve. plz plz since lauch i am begging; praying to the gods make pets survive and useful in big encounters. or let at least let the ranger use pet spirit so we can use the f2 skill in their stead.

fun fact i was bugged yesterday and had no pet i felt lonely.

i am so disapointed with the ranger, that i went back to just playing normal WWW with my backline wells necro, because i would be wasting my time trying to do the beta testing

Evermore.5649:

Druid is kinda worthless outside any kind of group content. Only staff 1 does (single target) damage, with staff 4 also doing some on a long-ish cooldown

Still no AoE damage spell, which has been a bane of rangers for 3 years now.

Simply put: WAAAAAAY too many healing spells, some of them are basically identical with different animations. Not needed. Druids need more damage abilities (preferably a spammable aoe PLEASE) and less heals.
Especially in Astral Form… 2 (aoe heal + cleanse) 3 (aoe heal) 4 (aoe heal)… 1 (spammable aoe heal) we really really don’t need this many. It’s pointless.

Glyphs are worthless. I wouldn’t want to use any of them EVEN IF they had zero cooldown. Seriously, they’re horrible.

To sum things up:
- too many identical healing spells
- not enough damage spells
- no aoe damage spell
- glyphs are worthless
- astral form spells need to be a bit more varied

Basically.

A pure healer is pure garbage in this game. Blasts and fields readily available, ok; powerful but situational aoe heal, ok; an entire bar full of heal spells and no way to use those 5 skills if you don’t heal… no. No, it’s not ok.
Druid has 0 synergy with anything that isn’t a staff. Glyphs are disgustingly bad. It’s so weak and useless compared to a cele guard or blasting water fields…
… and it’s gonna stay this way. ‘cause it’s ranger and people are gonna play it anyway. Perhaps in 3 years they gonna buff the heal skill and the pets’ healing power… only to nerf the day after.