Guild Wars 2

Aidenwolf.5964:

@Kitty also realize they aren’t tuned yet and heal scaling is far from right. I’d expect current healing output to be tuned to full heal gear with buffs at launch, making many think Druids were nerfed when in actuality they were tuned.

Honestly, any less healing then they do now in full clerics and it probably wouldn’t be worth taking them over another guardian.

cafard.8953:

Don’t you guys have the impression that the reaction around here is very much like the kneejerk people were ranting about for WHaO? The spec has barely been tried out for a couple of days, yet it’s already being branded broken, useless or OP, in its entirety or in details. It’ll take weeks at least for people to get the bigger picture after the meta adapts around the new specs.

personally I havent branded it as any of those things. Its certainly not useless though, that’s probably the least merited complaint. Secondly, it is not polished like everyone was hoping it would even though it took so long to release it. Lots of issues about identity I would say. The direction is clear; healing, but that’s not really an identity in GW2.

No one knows if it has a place yet cuz we have never needed healers, and some people are skeptical that anet can create content that requires it given the current system, so I understand the issues that people have in that regard.

I would say 90% of the criticism in this thread is highly constructive and certainly not knee-jerk, just observational, maybe mixed with a little unexpected uneasiness.

Druid is so bad i stopped playing the beta. I couldn’t even get to try another class.

I’ve only tried Druid in the demo story area, so I’m not sure if my first impression matters or not.

Celestial Avatar and skills: I don’t know what the skills are and how they function unless I actually go into the form. It would be nice to see what each one does. When I became a Celestial Avatar, I noticed all my glyphs changed and there’s no tooltip to explain what they do unless I hover my mouse over them.

I do like the electric wyvern very much and he’s cute!

I’m not sure if it’s just missing a tooltip, but Glyph of Equality is usuable when CC’d and I’d assume it’s a stunbreaker? Also, I feel the Glyph of Rejuvenation needs to be ground targeted, unless it’s suppose to synchronize with Ancestral Grace?

Anyways, my biggest issue is not having any tooltip to show what the Celestial Avatar skills are (as well as the other skills’ changes). Other than that, I like the Druid so far.

Zatoichi.1049:

cafard.8953:

Don’t you guys have the impression that the reaction around here is very much like the kneejerk people were ranting about for WHaO? The spec has barely been tried out for a couple of days, yet it’s already being branded broken, useless or OP, in its entirety or in details. It’ll take weeks at least for people to get the bigger picture after the meta adapts around the new specs.

personally I havent branded it as any of those things. Its certainly not useless though, that’s probably the least merited complaint. Secondly, it is not polished like everyone was hoping it would even though it took so long to release it. Lots of issues about identity I would say. The direction is clear; healing, but that’s not really an identity in GW2.

No one knows if it has a place yet cuz we have never needed healers, and some people are skeptical that anet can create content that requires it given the current system, so I understand the issues that people have in that regard.

I would say 90% of the criticism in this thread is highly constructive and certainly not knee-jerk, just observational, maybe mixed with a little unexpected uneasiness.

I agree with your statement Zatoichi. People are trying to remain open minded, and those that have been playing the class, and main the class, are also entitled to their opinion which should not be disregarded so easily.

This game still fly’s under a guild wars brand, and we expect it to keep the promises and vision that attracted us to invest in it from the beginning. If we want something more like WoW we’d go play WoW.

It is my hope that the class roles remain flexible and do not pigeon-hole one of them into playing a singular role. Such as healer, tank, or DPS.

If so, it would be back peddling on a core promise and vision established at its foundation.

Druid feedback.

!Obligatory warning for a large amount of text!

I have been playing the Druid in Beta in both the PvE and PvP environment and I wanted to take this opportunity to give my personal constructive feedback and general thoughts about the druid.

General Impression about the Druid

The druid feels new, but does not necessarily feel un-ranger-like. I consider this a good thing. The druid does not share the same amount of synergies that some of the other elite specialisations seem to have gotten but neither does it step too far away from the original Ranger, giving plenty of new possibilities to explore. Currently I mainly see; full heal-builds, celestial form enhancing builds, daze builds using the moment of clarity trait and other hybrid Ranger builds.

In the current form everything that the druid does heals allies in some way or another; this can be done through the staff skills, celestial form, glyphs (mainly in celestial form) and traits. Personally I feel giving away heals like candy through basically everything the Druid does makes healing an unflavorful secondary effect.
Therefore I advocate for the druid to get a more clear distinction between heal skills and ‘other’ skills. When this clear distinction exist I think that the Druid can better fill the multitude of roles that are probably necessary in Raids (bringing also damage or control besides continuous support) and gives more impact to the times that the Druid actively chooses to heal allies in Celestial Avatar form.

Furthermore I think that a few of the heal skills are not telegraphed enough. It is for both the druid and allies hard to coordinate healing (a side effect of “You play the game, not the UI philosophy”). This is mostly the case for the skills Staff #1 and Celestial form #1 and #2.

The Staff

The Staff feels quite good and probably needs nothing more than some general shavings and some number tweaking.
What bothers me the most about the staff above all is its dual nature. Swapping to staff when you have the trait Primal Echoes equipped (the daze on swap) feels really powerful (I thought it was a blast finisher at first ;-;) and the way the Druid holds his staff makes you think that it is a very solid powerful weapon too. Instead the weapon animations are all very elegant, e.g. letting your sear over the ground. I saw myself liking the current idle animation more as time went by, but I would like to see a change because of this.

• Staff #1: Solid skill and simple to understand. The one problem I have with this skill is its’ puny beam. Allies that might want to benefit from the healing capacities cannot see the line amid all the other effects leaving the Druid alone to make the decision where to rotate.

• Staff #2: Mostly feels unrewarding to use. I think this skills suffers from the heal-on-everything-syndrome, I would like to see that the wisp do something else instead of healing; Suggestions are converting conditions into boons or pressuring the afflicted more. Also I feel that the speed of the initial wisp is you send out is just a little bit too slow and does not reach your target before anything else, certainly at full range.

• Staff #3: This skills always takes 1 ¼ seconds to reach any destination, this causes at least two problems: If you try to use this skill in a team fight to help out your opponents it feels more of a 1 ¼ second ‘please kill me above all’ button and when trying to go the full distance of 1200 units the animation ends prematurely not bringing you, your blast and your heal the full way. Fighting flow wise it would make more sense for the animation to be time depended on the units travelled. Making the skill an evade, letting the skill remove immobilise on cast and/or giving our pets a short swiftness boon to keep up would also go a long way in making this skill better.
  Making the skill a teleport would probably be too much, but I would be soooooo nice.

• Staff #4: Unquestionable the coolest skill but it has a moderate high cooldown (even when traited), a big tell, a long casting time and a slow moving vine animation making it very easy for opponents to just strife out of harm’s way if they pay a minimum amount of attention. If Idiots do get hit by this attack the immobilise effect is almost unnoticeably short. Another thing I did notice is that the vines are hindered by small gaps in the terrain. Best PvP example: Standing on the ledge at forest on the mid point renders this attack useless. Could use some love tweaking wise. Also because of the long casting time it is possible to cure your own movement impending conditions, working as intended?

• Staff #5: Only has very limited situational use. The addition of a secret water field is nice but still doesn’t justify the casting time in combat situations. What I would like to see is one or two of the following: A blind upon initial creation, a bonus effect when you walk through it, like regen/protection/retaliation and maybe a flip-over option to end the barrier earlier for (another) blind if you wanted to. Think more alike Mesmer’s focus #4 temporal curtain.

Celestial Avatar

Some general comments: It is a little bit Paradoxical for the usage of Celestial Avatar that I should have healed others before I am allowed to be able to heal others. […]
IMHO regeneration should also contribute to generating astral force. Astral force gain in general is lacklustre and almost non-existent on other weapons than staff. Consequentially in a whole PvP match I can only generate enough astral force for one additional use of Celestial Avatar if I am not using staff at all.
Celestial Avatar misses internal synergy; you cannot even blast your own water field.
It feels weird that I can only enter Celestial Avatar form when I have got a full bar and that I lose everything if I end Celestial form early.
The duration of Celestial Avatar form of 20 seconds at maximum is long enough but can feel short because of some of the comments I made above.
BUG: somehow people seem to be able to pull me out of Celestial form when I’ve just activated it or during being in Celestial form, I haven’t found out yet how this is possible but it is very annoying to have Celestial form wasted like that. I had this happen to me multiple times during one match so I am certain it wasn’t because of a mistake from my part

• Cele form #1: In a game like Guild Wars 2 that has always punished player for standing still during a match it is really hard for the Druid to not miss with this skill. For one the radius is really small and for another the effect isn’t instant. Suffers heavily for not being a more telegraphed skill. The amount of healing that this skill does is well balanced but does not scale too well with healing power.

• Cele form #2: Much better telegraphed but suffers from being too slow to blow up. I would go as far as to suggest to leave it as it currently is but to make it a blast finisher. Making this skill a blast finisher instead of Celesstial form #3 would make it possible to blast your own water field on celestial form #4, addressing three or issues at once (this skill being slow, blast on 3 being redundant and not working, creating additional internal synergy and making cele #4 viable(-er)). Also would make taking glyphs a lot extra rewarding when traited.

• Cele form #3: The cream of Celestial Avatar form. As many have already pointed out it has got a high daze application on a low cooldown, can be justified if this skills wasn’t also a blast finisher. BUG: the blast finisher does not even work.

• Cele form #4: The rooting effect on this skill is annoying and highly deadly. With only the additional water field, for just its casting duration also, I strongly feel that the heal aspect of the skill is under tuned for the risk you take activating this skill. Currently not worth it to use, also suffers from the heal-on-everything syndrome.

• Cele form #5: The butter of Celestial form. The Radius of this skill is just like the glyphs small but the effects sort of make up for that here. Rewarding to use although it is hard to land the 3rd pulse. Bookah’s should be punished MORE! Also as druid you have got no other way to hit them in Celestial form so if the third pulse does hit you leaves you not way to apply Ancient seeds :/ .

Glyphs

General comments: Glyphs need normal stunbreaks!! Of the four stun breaks the Ranger currently has two are instant pet kill buttons and the other two are our much beloved Survival skills. This makes it really hard for glyphs to breach the current survival skill meta to take a place on our skill bar.
In Celestial Form 4 of the 6 Glyphs heal allies once again. I already expressed my feeling towards not liking healing on everything and I will once again note that here. The glyph skills could benefit enormously from dishing out other effects giving them more individuality and different niche applications.
Also the range of some of the glyphs could benefit from a strait up buff to make them more useful, it isn’t bad design to have got different ranges on glyphs especially the shout like ones.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation: The idea for this skill isn’t bad, but this skill doesn’t heal our pets making the heal worse than WHAO has ever been (sorry not kidding, keeping our pet alive is really important). Could see use if buffed, mostly in PvP (and raids?).

• Glyph of alignment: Cannot really comment on this one, the condition duration seem a little bit low and the radius too small to be useful but I don’t like playing condition ranger so don’t take my word for it.

• Glyph of Equality: Very solid and very useful when you trait it with moment of clarity. Again could benefit from a radius increase. Thematically a stun break on the normal form would fit very well and helps the skill become very competitive with LR and QZ.

• Glyph of Tides: Very solid, I like this one very much. It isn’t necessary but I would like to see this one deal more damage. Good animations also.

• Glyph of Empowerment: Not really worth it currently, both forms. The main problem is that it is too similar to frost spirit, if you make this glyph stronger then frost spirit becomes redundant (and spirits are already in a very bad place). I think I can safely conclude that the skill needs a revamp. This just isn’t the right way giving the Ranger/Druid more access to damage modifiers.

• Glyph of Unity: Doesn’t feel like an elite and could be stronger, but is thematically sound. I think it is also worth noting that this skill has got weird synergy with the heal glyph in Celestial form. You would have to first leave Celestial form in order for the skill to become beneficial. Is this intentional?

Traits

I am going to be really short about the traits. I think the traits are good and mostly being held back by other parts of the Druid not yet being in on par with what they can potentially offer.
Only Lingering Light seems undertuned, but I haven’t used it because ancient seeds it just so much fun to use. In general the traits are in a good state and just need a little bit of minor shaving.

Pets

While the new pets aren’t exclusive for the Druid I want include them anyway. It was really unfortunate that we could not try them out in PvP. Also no new pet can be used underwater, if at least the tiger would be able to go with me visiting Steve that would be lovely.

• Smokescale: I’ll start with the best one first, smoke field on f2 is fantastic and having a pet that can finally reliably hit a moving target is even better! Amazing pet, can be left the way it is.

• Bristleback: Good ranged attacker and handy bleed applications for any condition Ranger. The best part of the pet remains it’s overgrown size, please don’t change it! Feels like a solid pet overall.

• Tiger: The fury on f2 is a nice addition for any remorseless build; the radius is really small however which holds his (or her?) usage back. Otherwise it is just another feline pet.

• Wyverns: The electric field (+ knockdown) and fire field are certainly useful, but the auto attack cannot seem to hit any moving target at all. The auto attack issue leaves the pets in a weak state; otherwise they could be very cool and strong.

That was all, it turned out to be a really long piece of feedback… O.O but oh well… I wish the Dev’s all the luck in the world with finetuning our beloved proffesion. You are doing a mythical job! Leg Godt

evilunderling.9265:

Aidenwolf.5964:

If this class as constituted is good enough to main heal raids then raids will fail. Many seem to want Druid to be a hybrid damage / healer but if you’re able to main heal a raid hybrid then raids were a waste of Anet’s resources.

What you’re saying here really strikes me as if you believe that the only ‘correct’ raids are ones that look like the ones you’ve already played, where healers apparently have to devote all of their time and/or mana to healing once they’re actually in a fight.

But it’s self-evidently true that there’s more than one way to make any given thing work, especially something as complex as a raid. While not following your demands might result in raids that aren’t to your taste, they won’t automatically end up any worse than that.

Healing itself doesn’t need to be a thing for raids to be adequately challenging. Healing is just one bullet point in a much longer list of things a group needs to get right in order to clear any given fight.

FFXIV’s healing meta usually calls for at least one healer to DPS, and sometimes even spend most of their time DPSing, and there are even raids that are virtually impossible to clear without healer DPS.

FFXIV’s raids are speed clears if Anet go that route I’ll continue raiding elsewhere. I despise that game’s mechanic.

What my experience means is simply that I know how to do it and this class feels thrown together last minute. Zero synergy with other lines, allows weapon swapping which will cause balancing issues easily avoided by going staff only, and a gimmicky mechanism to replace mana.

Fire Wyvern F2 skill, it should fly up to your target before using the attack, unless you have no target. I saw it created behind me several times, which is generally not useful. Also not sure why the combo field starts after the Wyvern finishes spreading the fire. It takes so long to do this attack that it may not be useful to be there when it finishes. It would be better if it were one of those growing combo fields instead.

It is difficult to build Celestial Force without using the Staff, while Staff builds it absurdly fast. Staff builds gauge very fast even if you have no target.

Overall, I’m not sure what to do as a Druid. I don’t really want to heal all the time, but I can’t build the gauge without the staff. Playing it as-is requires very careful management of the gauge, and you need to make sure you use the right version of the glyph skills for the situation. It feels overall the most difficult to manage of any character, though if the gauge were more consistent then I don’t think it would be as troublesome.

I think staff could use some condirions, like adding bleeds to vine surge. Other than its current power dmage, staff has more synergy with condi weapons than with longbow/greatsword/warhorn, as the long range and teleport makes uo for weaknesses in the current condi and hybrid weapon sets.

I would like the fire wyvern’s F2 fueld to leave a less black field, I think the vusual is overtuned and distracting/unpretty.

Just wanted to post a few of my thoughts on Druid. First off, thank you Irenio for all your hard work. I feel like the Druid is a very creative elite spec and feels very new, however I feel where it loses its way a bit is it doesn’t synergize as well as it could with base Ranger class.

STAFF:
1- I feel like Solar Beam either needs a little more damage or maybe a condition application (either through trait or baseline).
2- Astral Wisp is good but maybe could use an extra effect on enemy (A Blind maybe?).
3- I really like Ancestral Grace but sometimes the pathing is a little funny and it could use some evade frames. I was also thinking an AOE blind at target could be really good if it doesn’t wind up on Astral Wisp.
4- For Vine Surge immobilize needs to last a bit longer (2- 1/2-3 secs). I also think this would be a good skill to add an effect to pet. Staff is our only two handed weapon without one. (pets next 2 attacks cripple? Cause Weakness?)
5- Sublime Conversion is great.

Celestial Avatar Form:
1- OK. Target area is a little small but this may be intended.
2- Could we maybe add some damage to Seed of Life? A small AOE when it blossoms would go a long way towards adding some damage to CA (which it needs to not feel so one note.)
3- Longer CD or shorter Daze. Right now it feels a bit too strong. Heal is really nice. Would it be too greedy to ask for some damage? Also why cant we use Lunar impact with Tidal Surge for blast finisher? Is this a bug?
4- Tidal Surge is really strong. No changes.
5- Natural Convergence is really good. No changes.

Traits:
-Druidic Clarity should also break stun.
- Swap Natural Mender & Natural Stride. Healing is essential to druid buit it shouldnt be it’s sole focus and this swap would open up a lot more build diversity.
- Lingering Light- can we add some damage to enemies that pass through? What if our pet also got a wisp that circles it when trait procs. Would help feeling our core class mechanic (pet) was more involved with Druid spec.

Glyphs:
Feel a little weak and need some extra effects to help spice them up. Just some ideas:
Glyph of Rejuvenation- Boost burst heal. Right now WHAO heals for more.
Glyph of Alignment- Add a bleed maybe (gives condi -druid something good to pick that synergizes with their build). Slightly longer duration on cripple and weakness would also help make this feel like a stronger choice (6 secs sounds good to me).
Glyph of Empowerment- Needs a boost to 15-20%. 10% is just way too low to justify using utility slot. (& duration should be a bit longer too).
Glyph of Equality- Needs a Stun break (self) on base skill and maybe something like Stability or Protection on CA version. Druid doesnt have any stun breaks right now unless they are in CA form.
Glyph of Tides- Maybe we could add a short Water field to this skill (it is tides after all). If not how about a short duration chill or cripple.

Anyway these are just some of my thoughts, take them for what you will.

Once again thank you Irenio. Druid was a lot of fun to play this weekend and I’m sure that it will be even better by the time HOT releases in a few weeks.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

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?

Ah, yes, of course! My ranger had evolved into a dps beast over the course of playing GW2 so long. I ran Sword/WH and LB. Much of the build is up to personal preference but the absolute necessity in that weapon combo for me was Quickening Zephyr. Send in the pet, and with the quickness from that skill you could easily melt enemies with sword in hand (using warhorn might buff as well). Quickening Zephyr + Sword has long been a favorite of mine.

This being said, using the above doesn’t come without penalties. You are a ranger, after all, and have to take the proper precautions when going toe to toe with some of the more dangerous enemies. Enter the druid! Personally I opted to drop the LB completely and replace it with the staff. So, Staff and Sword/WH. This makes you very useful as a support due to the healing of the staff abilities and also the WH team buff. If you take Healing Spring you can also use the WH buff inside the circle for a water combo blast! Also, you’d notice the aoe heal while in celestial form stays around the druid so using a melee weapon keeps you in range of your guys ‘up front’ taking the damage. With all the healing you are capable of dishing out, it’s much more feasible to be in the thick of things using a sword. Love it!

About the burst dps, it’s the same as it’s always been but with an even better addition! So what was before Quickening Zephyr + Sword can be augmented by the druid’s Glyph of Empowerment. I’ve seen some people claim that the radius isn’t large enough, but this isn’t the case. The druid needs to be able to reposition to get into the middle of the fight at times to use this, the WH buff, and throw out some burst dps with the Sword! If it gets heavy, guess what? You’ve got a wisp ability that will take you right out of the fray.

This playstyle obviously isn’t for everyone, but I absolutely fell in love with it. Over years of play, I’ve found that I’m able to maximize ranger’s dps not by standing back in the corner someplace plinking arrows. It’s when you embrace the power of both weapon sets, which includes repositioning and using proper caution in certain battles, that you will have a complete understanding of the ranger. Druid is no exception, in fact I would argue that positioning and using the correct skills at the right times is more important than before. Anyways, hoping this helps give a solid review from the viewpoint of a long time ranger player! If you are interested in more details about building or traits I’d be happy to help, just find me in-game!

Lots of great feedback in this thread
My guildies pretty much had related impressions

Some of our brainstorm that dont seem reflected here:

About the new pets, can’t AOE F2 be ground targettable?

About the staff, against stealth mechanism, staff becomes useless. We find it is not good, especially seeing that staff is absolutely needed for the spe (celestial generation).

At least AA shouldn’t need target – or at least should be targettable on allies.

For the rest, what came to my hear was pretty much the same as stated here.
lackluster damages, pour scaling with armor, glyphs being close range and so on.

All in all, my guildies found it fun to play, despite it needing some adjustments.

Alright, so after a few more hours at the wheel of my Druid, its time for my full writeup on the class. Not including the new pets, since I already gave my impressions on them here.

Overall, I enjoy Druid. Some fun stuff there for sure. I do think you need to tweak the healing coeffecients to make healing gear a bit more enticing, however, but that’s more a change the entire game could use rather than just something for Druid specifically (even if Druid does necessitate it more through having more heals).

~ Celestial Avatar ~

I like it overall. Lots of healing (obviously), some cleanse, some utility… nice skillset. I’ve actually found myself jumping into Avatar form just to use the daze and Natural Convergence in those situations where I don’t necessarily need healing. I do think that Natural Convergence could use a bit more damage or maybe some conditions (bleeds / burns) to make it just a tad more dangerous and further justify it being a stationary skill, though. Oh, and the blast finisher on Lunar Impact doesn’t seem to work, so that should be fixed of course.

Now, getting it filled up so that you can enter it in the first place… that’s a different story. Staff fills the bar entirely too fast (we seriously shouldn’t be jumping into avatar form 3 seconds after it ends) while everything else fills it entirely too slow. Which creates a big problem where staff is too central to the elite spec, and you basically HAVE to use it (or certain very specific and equally restrictive builds) if you want to actually utilize Avatar form more than “on a rare occasion”. Which is a huge difference from all the other elite specs, which simply provide the weapon as an option. I’d definitely bump up the rate of celestial power build from damage. The rate certainly should still favor healing so I don’t think the damage ratio should be too high, maybe up to 1/2 or 3/4% per hit (its too bad we don’t have another beta so we could test different growth rates). But its clearly far too low now.

As for staff building it too fast, that seems like a problem that could be fixed by simply changing the auto-attack. If possible, then simply coding it so that you only get one healing “tick” pekittenr target would be ideal, but if that can’t be done then maybe change the beam so that it simply does one burst of healing instead of multiple small heals.

~ Staff ~

Like the concept. Like the visuals and sounds. But other than the ridiculous rate at which it builds celestial power, it seems extremely lackluster all around. The damage is outright awful. Which, yah, one can argue you should expect from a support / heal based weapon, but it seems a little TOO terrible to me. Also, it needs some sort of pet buff / effect somewhere, because right now its the only weapon in our kitten nal that doesn’t have one.

Solar Beam mainly just needs a damage increase. Not a huge one, but it needs to hit like a little more than a limp noodle.

Astral Wisp just seems lackluster. Again, its a cool concept, but it just doesn’t DO much. Heals once or twice on melee targets and… that’s it. You could boost the damage to give it a little more “oomph” but personally I’d favor a secondary effect of some sort. Pulsing vulnerability on the targeted enemy, a blind on the initial impact, buffs on allies who come into contact with the wisp, something. Give me a reason to use the skill other than “it looks nice”.

Ancestral Grace is mostly OK. The one change I think it really needs is to not get you “stuck” in the animation when you use it at short range, since that not only leaves you vulnerable to attacks but also makes it hard to nail the blast finisher on shorter fields. And although it doesn’t strictly NEED it, I do have a really cool idea for the skill, where if you teleport through an enemy said enemy takes a bit of damage and maybe gets a condition of some sort (blind?). The idea being that passing through the enemy in energy form is harmful to them in some way.

Vine Surge is pretty bad. A 1-second immobilize, really? So little reward for a skill that’s not all that easy to hit with. Sure, there’s the rare occasion where you nail an enemy twice and get a 2-second immobilize, but even that’s only barely passable. How about making it actually root enemies? Ya know, inflict them with the vine root from Entangle. Probably a weaker version of it, maybe a 3-second duration of Immobilize and Bleeds to match. Would give the skill a lot more use and flavor. Also, as mentioned above, staff needs a pet boon skill of some sort, and since a lot of them are on CC-related skills, I figure this would be a good place to put staff’s. I’m thinking something with a unique Druid flavor, so perhaps “Your pet’s next attack tethers it to the enemy” (same effect you get from Glyph of Unity). Though as described below, you’d need to buff up the tether effect to make that useful.

Sublime Conversion is fine. Could perhaps stand to last a couple seconds longer, and the water field needs to be noted in the tooltip, but other than that its solid.

~ Glyphs ~

Quite the mixed bag here. A few standouts, a few duds. Overall concept of switching forms when using Celestial Avatar is really cool. I know some people have complained about the limited range, but considering their AoE damage component I’m fine with that aspect. Also, the Glyph trait is really cool, its probably one of the major reasons I’ll use glyphs in the future. Feel like we need a stunbreak on one of the normal glyphs, though. I am wondering, on the aesthetics side of things, why only Glyph of Alignment displays a glyph in the air during the animation. Its something that all Elementalist glyphs do, and I think it adds a unique flavor to the skill type, so why only 1 of the 5 for Druid? Why not all of them? Is there a specific reason, or was it just overlooked, and can it be changed?

Glyph of Rejuvenation – Needs more power. Its pretty weak as it is. Also, it rather desperately needs to heal your pet outright for the same amount as it heals the player, since the base heal from the normal-form glyph is not nearly enough to keep your pet going, it requires you to be in melee range of your pet, plus the AoE limit means that sometimes your pet won’t get healed at all.

Oh, and a random bug… for some reason, Glyph of Rejuvenation blocks part of the effect from Runes of Altruism. With a full set of 6 Runes, I get the 3 Might from the heal but not the Fury. Tested with other heal skills and both bonuses work properly, so definitely seems like just an issue with the Glyph.

Celestial form is probably mostly fine as it is, though it does also need a pet heal built-in, and the pet heal should probably be the default amount and not the reduced heal the player gets.

Glyph of Alignment – The effect is good in theory, but 3 seconds is too low to be really useful. I’d bump it up to at least 5 seconds.

The Celestial form is completely pointless and redundant. Who looked at the Avatar form and said “Gee, ya know what we need? Another basic heal”. Needs a complete overhaul. I’d suggest keeping it debuff-based (since Druid has precious few debuffs), but just swapping what debuffs the enemy gets. Since the normal version gives you Weakness and Cripple, a more defensive / CC set of debuffs, perhaps the Celestial version should give Vulnerability and Poison (or Torment), a more offensive set. Or perhaps you could make it strip a few boons off enemies, if you want to instead go for the action-based opposite (normal applies, celestial removes).

Glyph of Equality – Brilliant. Needs nothing changed.

Celestial form is… alright. Nowhere near as universally awesome as the normal version, but situationally handy. Shouldn’t be our only glyph stunbreak, though.

Glyph of Empowerment – The theory is sound. Burst DPS boost. Its hugely underpowered, though. 10% is negligible as a damage boost, particularly one limited to 5 seconds. When Frost Spirit, meant to be a sustained damage boost, nearly outperforms your burst damage boost, that’s a problem. Should be 20% at the very least, and I’d honestly consider 25% even.

Celestial form seems pretty bad, to me. I know it was mentioned during the livestream that the purpose is to allow other players to heal themselves in case the Druid is out of “heal juice”, but… you’re in Celestial form if you have access to this. Your entire purpose at that point is to heal, and you have a 0-cooldown heal and a 1-second cooldown heal at your disposal. How can you be “out” at that point? Which means its only purpose really is to boost your own healing, but that doesn’t really seem necessary (and you already have Glyph of Unity to do that much more interestingly anyway). I’d do away with the boosted healing aspect and perhaps make it a damage reduction (not Protection, mind you, but just a 15-20% resistance to all direct damage for 5 seconds), which would work perfectly as an opposite effect. However, if the heal boost is kept, it needs to be raised to at least 20% just like the normal form.

Glyph of the Tides – Good radial CC. No real complaints about either version, although the pull distance on the Celestial version could stand to be increased some, since it feels like kind of a weak pull. I know that some people have advocated for reversing the effects (normal = pull, celestial = knockback) and I’d have no problem with that change if it happened, but I don’t really feel as though its required.

Glyph of Unity – Weak. So very, very weak. Its basically a weaker version of Retaliation, but with a target limit, a very strict range limit, and not a buff so it can’t benefit from boon duration (it also can’t be stripped, which I guess is a plus, but considering how easy it is to break anyway… not much of one). The easiest change would be to simply jack up the damage, but even then I’m not sure it’d be up to snuff. Rather, I’d personally go ahead and make the link go both ways (so damage is dealt not only when you take damage from the enemy, but also when you do damage). And apply a condition to enemies upon breaking the chain by moving out of range / activating stealth, perhaps a big burst of vulnerability (10 stacks for 10 seconds) to make breaking the link more of a choice and less of a given.

Celestial version is a lot better. Allies are a lot more likely to stick around for the full effect, and more healing (particularly with how many pulse heals the Druid can pump out) can come in handy. I’d still consider buffing the effect a bit, though.

~ Traits ~

Most of them are good overall. Don’t feel like there’s a whole lot that needs changing, but one or two could use a bit.

Celestial Shadow – I feel like this should happen when you enter Avatar form, rather than when you exit it. Happening on entering would let you use Avatar as an “oh crap” button via stealth, and the super speed would allow you to reposition yourself for maximum healing efficiency more quickly. For example, getting into range to use Rejuvenating Tides. A range increase to 300 or 360 would be nice as well, its a bit small right now I think.

Lingering Light – It should have a second trigger besides healing, so that it gives you a way of putting out a little healing without using a heal / avatar skill (or staff skill), since its a Grandmaster trait and all. Having a bit of healing in situations when you normally would have none is more interesting than just healing more when you’re already healing. Perhaps it could trigger on the use of any finisher. I’d also like to see it trigger a wisp around your pet when you activate your pet’s F2, just for a little more pet play in Druid traits, since there’s not much there right now besides Cultivated Healing. The two would share a cooldown, so no doubling up or anything.

Ancient Seeds – Seems a bit slow to activate, and sometimes doesn’t seem to activate at all. Could use some functionality tweaking.

Vamp Rook.7835:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Welcome to post new pet feedback here as well.

New pets don’t work…

Not much of anything on this “new” traitline “works” since healing wasn’t the direction that Ranger needed to go to make us a viable and welcome team member.

We will still be shunned.

We will still not bring anything “better” to the table – and I have been told that so much even after this beta weekend that true or not, the players believe it is true so I will come to pass regardless of the “intent” of the new traits.

What a waste.

Addressing Druid’s Support Role

The Druid is meant to fulfill a support role, but is lacking much of what players value in this role. Its main focus is healing when that is already sufficient in many group compositions, and doesn’t have many ways to increase its allies damage or decrease the damage they take, both of which are very important.

The druid needs to branch out its support capability. Its primary role should be a healer, but with the ability to support allies with offensive boons while doing so, as well as some form of on-demand defense, such as a group aegis, to help against damage spikes.

For instance:

• Staff #1 (Solar Beam): Gives might (5s) to allies the beam touches.
• Staff #3 (Ansestral Grace): Shares your boons (at predefined durations, similar to WHaO) with allies.
• CA #1 (Cosmic Ray): Gives retaliation (1s) to allies.
• Seeds of life grant quickness (1s) to allies.
• Wisps give a random offensive boon to allies they heal.
• Upon entering Celestial Avatar you and nearby allies gain Aegis.
• Modify some trait so it activates Glyph of Empowerment. This would add some nice damage support to the druid.

With changes like these the druid would have a better spot in the game. Rather than just being viewed as a healer, players would also consider them for the buffs they apply to the group, which could make them valuable even if there wasn’t a strong need for a healer.

After playing the raid content I can confidently say staff as a healing weapon is entirely unneeded. During the run I was able to keep Celestial Avatar form up 95% of the time, using staff 2 or TU to refill my resource when required. Is CA fun… absolutely. Is having a redundant weapon which also heals fun…. No.

Please reassess the staff functionality and make CA a stance. You will make many people happy and druid will remain an effective healer.

The pet should also get the effects of Natural Stride trait IMO. Praying for the day they add Strike as One from GW1 (Shadow step pet to enemy) to eliminate some of its stupid ai, bad pathing and slowness.

I would also prefer if Druidic Clarity trait gave stability on entering CAF, even if it meant less condi removal (remove 5 conditions, gain 3 stacks of stability for 5 seconds maybe?)

Back again for concluding thoughts on the druid during the beta weekend. While I’ve stuck to power build for most of my testing, I have druid some more supportive way too. Atm it just doesn’t seem worth to go full out support. All aspects of the druid could use a little bit extra that isn’t just heal or daze! I’ll try to keep it as short as possible this time and won’t go in too much details anymore as I’ve done that before.

Pros:

• When equipping Natural Stride it feels nice to run around maps, roam about in pvp and get to where you need to be fast.

• While not a great amount, the synergy that there is between druid and other ranger skills feels nice. Ancients seeds is fun to use, so is Cultivated Synergy.

• Celestial avatar can be used more offensively in a fun way, even if it could be a bit better. (more down bellow)

Cons:

• Support aspect needs some love, as right now it lacks in depth because there’s only heals and nothing else.

• Staff is lacking in both damage and support alike.

• Glyphs are lacking something, conditions or boons, something is just missing here.

• Astral Force generation is a mess

• Celestial avatar is too healy, so much so that it’s just pointless as you sometimes have to choose between casting skill A or B that will have the same affect anyway, just a different animation.

• Too much channeled stuff, too long cast times for an elite spec that gains no access to extra stability, the old tricks to get it only help so much.

• Celestial skill 5 roots you in place, with it’s current radius it’s easy to avoid.

Suggestions:
Just some quick notes again on what could be improved now that I have tested it a bit more.

Staff

• Solar Beam only does nice damage if all 3 pulses crit. Cast time could be improved to remedy this or perhaps it could just not pulse at all, cast a single beam after a shorter cast time so that the damage isn’t super RNG, this way a burn could be added.

• Astral wisp could use some help. Make it pulse healing out of the target instead and make the wisp deal damage for a second time when the affect ends.

• Ancestral Grace CD should be equal to Swoop, let it loose 100 range if it must.

• Vine Surge would be better if it was a 3 pulse field, right now you can hit a target twice but it’s impossible without luck. 3 pulse field (initial hit + every 2 sec, field lasts 4 sec) would give the skill more of a pressence, allies will maybe want to move in it and enemies will want to leave it.

• Sublime conversion would be better as a dome I think and it would be more interesting if it converts projectiles into pickups that heal when they land on an ally or when they move over them.

Glyphs:

• Healing Glyph is rather pointless, the heal is too small and in celestial avatar you can just use other heals instead, not to mention healing spring outperforms this heal in every single way.

• Glyph of unity needs a radius increase and the avatar effect should share boons that are applied to you, to tethered allies.

• Empowerment is boring and steps onto frost spirit’s shoes, they stack yes, but still. Giving allies might on each attack while affected by Empowerment would be nice, perhaps make them pulse small heals around them when cast in avatar form, or make them apply a condition on foes.

• Alignment needs more “ooomf”, right now it does too little to be worth taking. Maybe making it a blast field would help greatly with that.

• Equality never feels satisfying to use. You always regret using it for dazing because then you get CCed, if you stunbreak then suddenly you wish you had a quick daze ready. Stunbreak should not be tied to avatar form, combine the two forms and make it do something different in celestial avatar. Also, feels too samey to tides imo.

• Tides needs some extra affect after it’s used, a chill of sorts maybe, right now I’ll just take lightning reflexes instead because that gives me stunbreak, vigor and a way to get distance with enemies.

Celestial Avatar

BUG Natural Convergence does more damage in Spvp than PvE even though I have more power in PvE? I was also using the same sigils and everything.

• Comsic ray I feel is the one heal that is too much, it could easily be changed to something that affects enemies in a way that feels supporty.

• Seed of Life I feel should be the main heal. You could remove the CD of this, make the condi cleanse 1 if you must. Allies can see this heal coming. Also please make it look more appealing, right now it feels like you summon a mutated plant.

• Lunar Impact is a good skill overall, but together with moment of clarity the daze duration might be a little bit too much. Maybe add some damage to this too!

• Rejuvinating tides could do with pulsing a short stability, one would be able to use this before impacting and Natural Converging

• Natural Convergence fix the bug where dmg in pve is less than pvp for no reason (scaling issue?), also please make us able to move when channeling this! The radius is waaaaay to short for us to be rooted like this.

Pet talk

Since I’ve mostly done spvp I sadly cannot talk much about the pets, though I have certainly tried them out.

Bristleback
Seems nice, 1200 range is certainly cool to have. Just ponder if perhaps spider and devourer range should be buffed to be the same, as I see little reason for this little fella to have the prestige of 1200 range.

Smokescale
Awesome pet, nice to have a smokefield. Odd that it has a bleed on auto attack but has rather low condi dmg for pets. Rev teleport ability seemed to maybe too a little bit too much damage, needs to be looked at!

Fire Wyvren
The animations are really really clunky, they are probably the worst animations of any pet for the exception of the flying. I do not think they’ll ever hit anything right now. I thought by now it was commonly known that slow animations that require pets to stand still just don’t work well. Damage seemed very weak too. Nice to have a fire field on a pet tho!

Lightning Wyvren
Same problem as it’s fire counterpart except it’s worse, F2 skill seems to never actually hit the enemy with the lightning, even if they stand in the field.

Tiger
Cool pounce skill with fury, but perhaps it could always give the fury to the ranger so that people using bows or staffs aren’t left out.

CONCLUSION
Did I like Druid? At first no, but I learned to appreciate the potential it could unlock and it seemed more complicated to play than standard ranger, which I always like. I believe with the right amount of care and love the druid could bring a nice amount of supportive options to the ranger, however, if it won’t gain access to boons and the ability to be more offensive, guardians and eles will always outperform the Druid.

Ranger have Torch and Flame Trap for Might blasting anyway. I have been running a A/T burning sinister Ranger for a few months already. I can stack Might quite easily, particular with a Drake around.

I would love to have some condition damage in Staff; perhaps some burning in Solar Beam (“Solar” = fire = burning…?). But other than that, apart from some more tuning on Staff and Glyph, I do not think Druid should have more offensive conditions.

That being said, I would strongly recommend having some defensive boons built into, at least, Celestial Avatar form. May be group Protection, Aegis or Stability. Or perhaps Retaliation. At least in that case, Druid is not merely a heal-bot in Celestial Avatar form; it can do more by way of boons support instead of compensating the losing of health by massive healing.

I originally popped into the beta just to check out the new baby dargons (adolescent wyverns) but ended up playing for most of the weekend because I ended up having a lot of fun
Druid feel great and the new pets make me incredibly happy.
That said, I think there are a few constructive criticisms and notes I can throw out there.

Solar Beam: People have been complaining about lack of damage, but I felt the opposite. Against most enemies, this skill was doing as much, if not more than greatsword auto-attacks. If you walk up to an npc or party member out of combat, this skill will fill the astral bar (not sure if this is intended).

Astral Wisp: This skill is really fun to watch, but the healing is a little underwhelming considering just how much astral form skills heal for.

Ancestral Grace: This was the skill I had the most mixed feelings about. It’s great for mobility and has a pretty nice heal at the end, but being unable to dodge or redirect the trajectory during the skill seems a bit awkward. Perhaps have the skill heal for a bit while you are moving?

Vine Surge: Incredible reach, nice damage, fair immobilize.

Sublime Conversion: I think this skill is in a good place. It is a neat take on traditional reflects and the low cooldown makes it a very appealing skill.

Astral Form: The form feels absolutely great for support and healing, however, the resource generation seems a bit off. The gauge fills incredibly fast and lasts for ages. I really hate to say this, but it seems just a little too accessible. This is a minor thing, but the stance your character takes within the form is a bit wonky.

Cosmic ray: This is the druid skill I feel has the most room for improvement. I hardly ever found myself using it because the radius was very small (people moved away from the landing location constantly) and it was easier and more effective to use the other healing skills.

Seed of life: Simple and clean skill. People can easily see when they need to be close to it and it offers nice healing and condition removal.

Lunar impact: Fun to use and effective skill. The added interrupt feels great to land and the skill really does have “impact.”

Rejuvenating Tides: This skills is crazy effective. While running around in large groups, the numbers this skill offered seems just a bit too much and the low cooldown meant a couple of druids could heal off a huge attack from an enemy in a matter of seconds.

Celestial Avatar: I think people underestimate how good this skill is. Being able to pulse out slow and cripple is very strong when facing enemies and well worth the root. However, the skill is rather difficult to use in pvp situations.

Glyphs: I honestly avoided using the glyphs. Not that the effects aren’t strong, but they just seemed a bit lackluster or flavor lacking.

Overall though, very happy with the class and had a ton of fun this weekend.
Also the baby dragons make me so very happy and can’t wait to have one at launch ^^

Edit:
Coming back to this post after experiencing the Vale raid content

I had stated that I thought the astral form was too accessible, I was wrong.
It felt great pumping out heal after heal, but I could still hardly keep up with the constant damage that gets dealt by the raid bosses.
I can see why things are set up the way they are currently and really, it’s pretty great. There really is reason to have support in groups now and cele gear made for a solid experience.

Please look into giving Celestial Avatar an ICD and making it so you dont lose all your built up Astral Force if you exit early. This would make the mechanic feel much, much smoother.

infantrydiv.1620:

Please look into giving Celestial Avatar an ICD and making it so you dont lose all your built up Astral Force if you exit early. This would make the mechanic feel much, much smoother.

Oh! I have an idea!

Give group Boons on early exit. The number (and/or duration) of Boons depend on how much celestial energy left in the metre. A slightly different version of Celestial Shadow, I suppose.

So now Celestial Avatar serves two purposes: heal support and boon support. A Druid can either stay in Celestial Avatar for the whole duration and heal the group up, or pop in and out quickly and offer the group some other support, or a mixture of the two without wasting any of the celestial energy.

General

• Great looking visuals – staff auto-attack beam could be more obvious though
• Generally poor scaling with healing power stat for all skills
• Could use more conditions/boons (mainly on staff) – this puts more focus on the Celestial Avatar as the main healing source
• Good to have more supportive options on ranger

Staff

1. Could use a slight damage boost – maybe some minor burn application
2. Possibly add a small support condition to this such as vulnerability on the target
3. Nice skill – just needs some slight fixes (feels kinda clunky sometimes)
4. Effect is too small for a skill with such a big activation time and obvious animations – would suggest a 2 sec immobilize and/or some bleed
5. Great idea but the heal feels kinda low

Traits
IMO the best part of the spec currently – would probably use the trait line as it is even if not using the staff
Would be nice if Ancient Seeds worked with spike trap though (guessing this is just a bug)

Avatar

• Charging energy feels kinda clunky and strange right now
• Skills are generally good and look amazing (just need better scaling with healing and some minor tweaks)
• Small aoe and cast delay on Cosmic Ray makes the skill awkward to land on moving allies
• Lunar Impact daze is a bit too strong on such a low recharge
• Natural Convergence feels a bit weak for an ability that roots you

Pets
Love the new pets – Wyvern actives seem a bit slow and hard to hit but otherwise these are great

Bug notes:

Signet of the wild removes you from CA. Other signets appear to work.

Once or twice I have swapped into CA and I get the visual look but the abilities do not appear.

I’m not sure if it’s been said but, I would like to see some pbaoe damage added to Solar Beam with the target being the origin point of the pbaoe. The enemy is being hit by light and, by nature, light reflects off the objects it hits. This could also help with tagging mobs for credit. The light would reflect in all directions, not bounce to another enemy. Not unless we were shooting light at a mirror.

This thread is too long to be read but anyway there we go:
Druid should get a minor that heal on hit with any weapon, same fashion as sigil of water.
Maybe less healing more in line of Staff AA but more frecuent like 75-100%

Would make the staff more relevant (not for much should be around 80HP) and if you play with other weapons you don’t lose the healer theme.
Also most of the traits are healing oriented so you don’t lose almost everything when swap weapons.

Bri.8354:

Addressing Druid’s Support Role
The druid needs to branch out its support capability. Its primary role should be a healer, but with the ability to support allies with offensive boons while doing so, as well as some form of on-demand defense, such as a group aegis, to help against damage spikes.

For instance:

• Staff #1 (Solar Beam): Gives might (5s) to allies the beam touches.
• Staff #3 (Ansestral Grace): Shares your boons (at predefined durations, similar to WHaO) with allies.
• CA #1 (Cosmic Ray): Gives retaliation (1s) to allies.
• Seeds of life grant quickness (1s) to allies.
• Wisps give a random offensive boon to allies they heal.
• Upon entering Celestial Avatar you and nearby allies gain Aegis.
• Modify some trait so it activates Glyph of Empowerment. This would add some nice damage support to the druid.

With changes like these the druid would have a better spot in the game. Rather than just being viewed as a healer, players would also consider them for the buffs they apply to the group, which could make them valuable even if there wasn’t a strong need for a healer.

Sounds like you want to turn the Druid into a Guardian…

The Druid has a pet that allows for several support options. You also have different ways to go with the 2nd weapon set. Can go Axe/Warhorn for more boons and an extra blast. Can go Axe/torch for healer/condi spec. I actually was keeping enemies constantly rooted or knocked down with one of my builds.

So yes staff is pretty much all healing (#5 is great mitigation and #4 decent CC) but with pets, traits and 2nd weapon set the Druid has a lot of other ways to support a group.

Here’s some feedback about usability of the druid.

I think the avatar mechanic should behave more like the necromancer’s death shroud (but without the second health bar and keep the unique bar filling mechanic).

I had some issues where I accidentally press it twice to activate leaving me empty handed because it instantly deactivated and emptied the whole bar. A short 1 second cooldown when activated would fix this issue.

Also when leaving avatar with some force left, can it be done so it doesn’t empty the bar?

I encountered a terrible problem with avatar skill 1. Because of some delay it’s impossible to hit allies who are moving/kiting around. This ended up to be my personal or heal the pet skill! Maybe you could also add some damage to this skill so you can contribute to the fight?

Some weird interactions with the druid. Avatar meter can be charged with staff when targeting anything allied. It even appeared to raise it with no target, but I wondered if it was targeting a wall.
Wisps often spawned with me when resurrecting at a waypoint when traited.
Without the staff, avatar is slow to charge.
Often felt after running 4 and 5 in avatar state, there wasn’t anything left to do with it.
Feel most druidic using wilderness survival skills than glyphs.
Felt the wyverns seemed to bound around their target as opposed to attacking it.

Bandit.8279:

Sounds like you want to turn the Druid into a Guardian…

The Druid has a pet that allows for several support options. You also have different ways to go with the 2nd weapon set. Can go Axe/Warhorn for more boons and an extra blast. Can go Axe/torch for healer/condi spec. I actually was keeping enemies constantly rooted or knocked down with one of my builds.

So yes staff is pretty much all healing (#5 is great mitigation and #4 decent CC) but with pets, traits and 2nd weapon set the Druid has a lot of other ways to support a group.

The druid and guardian would have distinct differences. Guardian is largely focused on mitigation with a moderate amount of healing, offensive support, and personal DPS.

Druid on the other hand would be largely focused on healing with a moderate amount of offensive support while being on the low end of personal DPS and damage mitigation.

Also keep in mind I’m speaking about this from a group based PvE perspective, in which the ranger lacks strong support options. Fury and swiftness are already plentiful, spirits and pet support in general are pathetic, and the only strong support they have outside of druid is frost spirit, spotter, healing spring, and spirit of nature in rare cases.

So when playing a support druid, its strong aspects are healing, frost spirit, spotter, and glyph of empowerment.

The point I’m trying to get at, is it could use more than this. Outside of its healing it doesn’t offer anything spectacular, which some damage support through boons and a slight bit more damage mitigation would help address.

The druid beta has showed me one thing: Healing Power & Healing needs a MAJOR rework across all classes.

Compare Engineer Medkit #1, which forces you to actively follow someone to heal them, and give up 100% of your damage for the entire time. This healing does about the same hp/s as regen does. You give up 100% of your damage to do something a herald can do with their healing skill. while still doing anything else they want. Hell, if you’re both full healing power builds the revenants regeneration would outheal your medkit, thanks to the bonus healing % a revenant gets.

Nova Pint Kiosk.7085:

The druid beta has showed me one thing: Healing Power & Healing needs a MAJOR rework across all classes.

Compare Engineer Medkit #1, which forces you to actively follow someone to heal them, and give up 100% of your damage for the entire time. This healing does about the same hp/s as regen does. You give up 100% of your damage to do something a herald can do with their healing skill. while still doing anything else they want. Hell, if you’re both full healing power builds the revenants regeneration would outheal your medkit, thanks to the bonus healing % a revenant gets.

Off topic, but…

I don’t see why healing needs a MAJOR rework. Obviously, Engineer is not supposed to be as healing support oriented as a Revenant who is not as healing support oriented as a Druid. What’s the issue? You want homogenous classes where everyone can do the same thing?

Also off topic… but…
I don’t see the big deal with Herald, Ranger core can already do 90% of what it does. Although, you do have the Legend swapping.

The Druid is an amazing elite with a shaky foundation, that foundation being the Core Ranger. But I have faith that Irenio and others on the team, given their recent changes and enthusiasm, will rise up to the challenge.

I did 1 spvp match and some dueling as MM/BM/Druid longbow/staff with marauder amu. I found some great synergies between the trait that adds daze on staff swap with moment of clarity, and the grandmaster druid trait that roots target when after it’s cced, which is good after a longbow kd (though it could use some more responsiveness, the root applies to slow).

Overall pleasantly surprised that healing is quite strong on staff/CA form when on a marauder amu (Power). One can put up some crazy cc chains with the daze traits. It certainly adds a little more survivability for those o snap scenarios, where you can withdraw and recover in CA, to return to the fight. This was with utilities lightning reflexes, the daze glyph, the knocback glyph, and the stab elite. Stab elite was cruicial for the CA form since otherwise you get easily cced in it. The troll heal is still quite strong even without trait.

Staff 4 is a bit wonky to land in a 1v1, and its reward root is to short. Smokescale may be the New wolf, but overall the pets werent as responsive/better than what we currently have. Still would probl prefer Wolf/bird.

For all of the people wanting druid healing to scale better with healing power, be careful what you wish for – knowing Anets track record, they probably would go ahead and nerf the basic healing to make healing power ‘more attractive’ (remember nerf to shortbow range…)

I was running around as a Staff focused Druid in full Scholar Berserker

Staff Skills

Staff Skill 1 – Really fun to use – Damage is a tad bit low in full DPS gear – Negligible Healing

Staff Skill 2 – Decent healing – Didn’t really notice the damage – Used mainly to heal allies

Staff Skill 3 – Really fun – Should stop where you target as opposed to waiting for the duration to run out – Decent ally healing – Places you in danger (3s Self Regen would be great for this instead of the flat self heal) – Hilarious suicides trying to reach places in WvW since it retains falling damage before usage.

Staff Skill 4 – Fun, and awesome – Leave as is (Range seemed further than 900 though?)

Staff Skill 5 – Weaker version of Guardians Wall of Reflection due to shorter duration and no field (And people prefer reflects to heals) – Maybe increase the duration and width to compensate for lack of a field?

Glyphs

Alignment – Didn’t test
Equality – So so – Would rather use Muddy Terrain
Tides – Annoying – Should pull towards in both modes
Empowerment – Worse than Frost Spirit (Short Duration and small AoE)

Celestial Avatar

Celestial Avatar recharges WAY too fast (Spam Staff 1 around allies for a near instant recharge) – Perhaps double the recharge duration, and slightly increase usage duration.

Skill 1 – Fun – Seems to cast in the wrong spot if cursor is moving
Skill 2 – Useful
Skill 3 – Used more for the Daze than the heal
Skill 4 – Awesome healing!
Skill 5 – Awesome immobilize!

Summary

Far more fun than I initially expected. Damage is a little low, but it is mainly a healing / support thing.

For all of the people wanting druid healing to scale better with healing power, be careful what you wish for – knowing Anets track record, they probably would go ahead and nerf the basic healing to make healing power ‘more attractive’ (remember nerf to shortbow range…)

i wouldn’t have a problem with that. The amount of healing you can have without any healingpower is pretty kitten good, especially on classes with water fields.

I’d like to add one last thing before I head off to bed.

• Could we have a graphics change on the Fire Wyvern’s F2?

After doing the Raid, the fire animation on the ground completely covers up any and all enemy and ally AOE circles. It’s immensely negative how it impacts others. I know it’s done to look cool, but it’s detrimental in a group environment. The Wyverns were already bad (performance-wise) and this makes the Fire Wyvern worse.

Wondrouswall.7169:

I’d like to add one last thing before I head off to bed.

• Could we have a graphics change on the Fire Wyvern’s F2?

After doing the Raid, the fire animation on the ground completely covers up any and all enemy and ally AOE circles. It’s immensely negative how it impacts others. I know it’s done to look cool, but it’s detrimental in a group environment. The Wyverns were already bad (performance-wise) and this makes the Fire Wyvern worse.

Better suggestion: Make that skill destroy other, hostile fields (fight fire with fire), and make it destroy any new hostile fields that happens to land in the fire!
Would make for an interesting mechanic.

Yes, yes. Make it destroy other hostile fields. Meanwhile, Roy makes all bosses in raids, dungeons, and world bosses have unblockable fields and AOEs. Great… At least it works on those centaurs in Queensdale!!

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yes, yes. Make it destroy other hostile fields. Meanwhile, Roy makes all bosses in raids, dungeons, and world bosses have unblockable fields and AOEs. Great… At least it works on those centaurs in Queensdale!!

Hehe well one can dream, right?

;)

In general Druid does not synergyse with Ranger. You can put Druid to any other Profession – with same effect. (Druid has nothing to do with pet – with is Half of the ranger )

Glyphs Basically useless:
#0. Doesn’t heal my pet(only as an ally in 300 radius), and heals me[~5.5k] with no additional benefits with 20s CD (Healing me worse than any other skills)
( like? “We heal as One” [~7k] me and pet + 11s regeneration[2k] + 11s swiftness + boon exchange with a pet, 16s CD )
( like? “Troll Unguent” [~9.2k in 10s] me and pet + Fury 7s + 2 Condi cleans, 20s CD)
( like? “Healing Spring” [~5.5k] me and pet +*8s regeneration for allies [up to 10k]* + 1 Condi cleans every 2 sec + water BLAST finisher, 24s CD]

#1. 650dmg+ 3s Cripple and Weakness
Any trap is WAY better with same casting speed + more condi + 3s stealth with runes(for condi builds).

#2. 2s Daze + 640 dmg with 30s CD only ?
Black Moa does better ? 2s Daze + 875 dmg with 24s CD.
(this is only useful with “Ancient Seed” – which is only one great trait Druid has, and its feels like it going to be nerfed )

#3. 6s 10% dmg increase for allies radius 300, seriously, isn’t staff is a range weapon???
Frost Spirit ? 75% chance to increase outgoing dmg for 10% + 3 stack of Might for 1MIN + 1000 radius

#4. Basically Same as #2

#5. 238 dmg every time you get hit by >1K? what kind unity is that ?
Retaliation works way better (and for more than 5ppl)
Would be way more useful with reflection of same incoming dmg .

Basically I’m OP with Any other build against Glyphs.

And as a Druid, what a point to heal and not be able to REVIVE quickly (like Necro) ?!

Druid need condi cleans!!! only thing it has, is just 1OP trait for Celestial Avatar, but you cant use it until you full, and if you use it it’s all gone and need full recharge again(which is very slow with anything else but stuff). please make Celestial Avatar same as Death Shroud mechanics !!

PS:
Someone said that he likes how Druid holds staff (like a hammer) – shows the power – I think it is totally wrong, there are no physical power in a stuff, Druid and Celestial Avatar is about Live and Universe, so its more like meditation form of power, creational one.

Alarih.5279:

Someone said that he likes how Druid holds staff (like a hummer)

Now THAT is an awesome idea. Bring on the jungle, my druid and his mount are ready!

Natural Mender needs a buff for selfish builds. Maybe make it increase all healing rather than just outgoing healing.

Not many people would pick this trait if it was a choice rather than a minor trait that comes with every single druid build.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

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?

Of course I did. ^^’

My opinions on Druid:
Staff 1: bump up the damage by a little/possibly add short burn as suggested before.
Staff 2: really lacking, definitely needs much faster travel speed and more damage/healing/adding something like a cripple. Should be a threat-currently there is only nuber 4 that needs to be looked out for, and even that skill is lacking.
Staff 3: great skill, adding a evade for the duration would be really great though. Also it needs some polishing-the cast ends at 90% and
many times you get stuck for a short duration at the end of the cast. Also if cast to a short location,
the cast time takes full duration.
Staff 4: lacking a little bit-cast time seems a little long and travel time a little short for the effect (1 second immob duration is pretty weak)
Staff 5: it has a water field built in but the field radius is really small(radius of 240 would be nice), also increasing the cast range to 1200
would make this a really nice combo field for staff 3 (cast 5 max range into number 3 at 1200 range, that would be epic).

Avatar 1: Seems OK the way it is-some pre hit indication where the heal will land would help though
Avatar 2: The healing should be same or more as number 1, animation seems kinda kitten as some others mentioned
Avatar 3: Great skill, but it is bugged as people mentioned – doesn’t blast and doesn’t seem to land where it is supposed to,
daze duration reduced would also make sense
Avatar 4: Again a great and useful skill
Avatar 5: Really situational-seems to lack something.

Smokescale is great-finally a pet with some damage, and not totally squishy! The smoke field it has is also really useful, but it seems to lack something-a pulsing blind! That way it would be more useful than just a blast field in pvp.
Bristle back is pretty great too, especially its looks. His active ability is quite lacking, changing the current active ability with spike barrage would be great!
Also spike barrage the way it is now has ALOT of problems hitting moving targets-need faster projectile speed.
Electric wyvern is also pretty great, it just seems to lack a bit of damage compared to the other two pets above. Overall some nice new pets.

Overall I am impressed with what you guys have done, keep up the great work!

Holland.9351:

Not many people would pick this trait if it was a choice rather than a minor trait that comes with every single druid build.

If it must exist in the form it’s in, it can’t not be a minor trait, because there is no playstyle change you can realistically make to take advantage of it. But my preferred answer would be to invent something else.

Let me start off by saying that playing druid in challenging condition (new itzel champion hits like a truck, 22k damage on 1200 range versus 2870 armor), is very interesting and… fun! Keep it that way please. It also takes some getting used to. Certain combo’s, celestial form setups, i only learned AFTER 6 hours of playing druid straight. So don’t draw to quickly a conclusion about good/Bad druid (players).

Feedback:

Staff 1 is ok, but doenst work without target, that serious hampering how viable it is. Like some people said, stealth currently is to strong against staff druid ranger because of this. Having auto attack apply some very short bleeds (to not make it overpowered, say 1-2 sec, and maybe not on all hits) would make it hybrid build viable.

Staff 2: In ‘zergs’ (20-50 people) it heals a large amount, and is a nice skill. The cleanse also is nice. But in small groups, most ppl stand to close or to far from the monster to get the whisp to touch them. This skill also feels like it casts pretty slowly

Staff 3. Very nice skill, is even a mobility skill (moves you faster to spot). The annoying after cast when using a distance closer then 1200 range should be fixed. Another great tweak would be to let it work like blinks and warrior greatsword skilll 5. Currently if your cursor is ‘to far’ out it fails, but to move maximum distance, you gotta keep testing cursor range before you are there. Now blinks (if hold cursor to far) just teleport you the max range. It would be great if this skill does same. for the rest: don’t change this skill it’s amazing. I used it a lot with healing sprint (blast finisher heal) and flame trap (aoe might blast).

Staff 4: The idea and animation is great. In practise it’s to slow and to low duration. Here some bleeding damage would be great (and not overpowered or out of place in my opinion). It would also give druid that much needed ‘little bit damage’ to tag events/loot. I played druid with celestial (staff + axe/dagger). The a/d combo was able to push 3-5k condi damage just with celestial gear (correct condi runes though, condi food, flame and spike trap also). I think druid really is fit very well to give ranger some more condition applications for settler, rabid, celestial etc builds.

Staff 5 Water field is nice (synergy with warhorn and staff 3). Currently the heals are way to low. Remember a reflection field, copies the full damage, and turns it around. While a heal would be more powerfull then that, i say 50% of damage = heal would make it equally good. 100-200 per ‘long range shot’ (3000 damage normally) is not enough reward imo.

Avatar form

Number 1: Great skill, but needs some tweaks. The global cast (before and after cast) and healing numbers (except for scaling on healing power) are great. Now what needs fixing is, that either the heal procs immediately apon cursor and skill click (and then executes after cast, or you cast the skill like now, but instead of healing original spot, it heals at where your cursor is at the end of the animation. This is really necessary cause the ‘move or die’ way of playing gw2 won’t die on a whimp. That means skills gotta be viable while being on the move. This holds druid potential a little bit back, (if people stacked on champ boss, it was lovely though, no issues landing it, keeping the melee thanks alive).

Nr 2: Nice skill and animation. But it could use something more. Perhaps 1s burning ticks on the enemy it’s tagged to per sec? Pre-casting this skill before Avatar form ends is a good way to build avatar force when it ends. Cause it just procs it nicely.

Nr 3 the cream! Please don’t nerf. If you nerf this skill (healing part), then you might as well play staff ele (with more damage), shout warrior etc. The skill has the same issues as nr 1 skill (it casts on the start of channel, the end location of your cursor is not taken into account). Someone said the blast finisher doesn’t work, for me it did, with flame trap. Perhaps the issue is that the next skill cannot be combined with this one (see next paragraph). The daze is nice (perhaps gotta be made 2 s ec, for the moment of clarity, and stun spam prevention. I rather not have a cooldown increase. This skill barely can be used twice, maybe 3x but very hard within the avatar form. A cd increase would make that worse.

Avatar form nr 4. An on the move water field! lovely. A few issues. While i get you cannot make stuff overpowered (and hence probably the cast time for full duration of the skill), it makes blasting that field on your own hard (perhaps drake pet usefull for this). It’s also a nice trigger if you cast it just before AF ends. Then you get your form up pretty quick. Some really low power damage (see thief shortbow nr 4 skill poison field) per tick would be amazing. It would give druid that tagging capability, and more importantly not be overpowered (full zerker thief only does 600-800 damage per poison field, it would be less if not zerker wich is a likely way to go for druid). If not pure damage, perhaps torment, bleed or burn as condition (a multiple ticking poison field is a bit to close to other skills in the game i think).

Avatar form 5: Amazing skill. Even does some nice damage too (druids really needs this). Animation is great. The slow is a really great new tool for druids. A champ itzelf was using his ‘mobility charge’ skill. I came up to the idea to slow him. Man that was great. His skill barely went forward and was way more telegraphed: result instead of 6 downed people, nobody was downed. Just an example of why this skill is so good.

Celestial form energy build up:

For power build (especially single target builds) a little low, but on the other hand I think it can’t be high or that would kill the purpose/lore/ of druid. Aoe builds, do pretty nice (still slow, but no true complaint about that one, like trap aoe+barrage, piercing arrows etc).

Healing skill use build is is nice. I think troll urgent builds up to fast (I know ppl gonna hate me for saying it, since it makes powerbuilds viable), but having 1 skill automaticly fill the celestial bar is, well strong. For instance, healing spring alone doesn’t fill the bar. But executing blast finisher does. Perhaps greatswor 3 and sword 2 leaps also give you enough to fill the bar. I think healing spring is great synergy with druid.

Regeneration doesnt give celestial form energy. I think it should. However, dont make it overpowered. It should be just an inch more then what damage application does. I also think perhaps not every tick should give energy, but the start application of the regeneration. Oakheart salve, the warhorn giving regen trait. Give those a pre-set energy amount (less then true healing but more then power damage, perhaps in the middle of it.

What about fernhound? Or moa’s (they have a skill you cannot control but heals a good amount). Should those give (perhaps a smaller amount then your own) energy as well for building some synergy? I don’t know.

Traits are mostly very good. As a lot of people suggest to move natural stride, i gotta be the opposer here. There is almost no trait that gives permanent swiftness or 25% move speed, that is a minor trait. The ones that are are limited (like only in air attunement), or when using dagger/melee weapon. Making this baseline (minor trait) would bring some problems. It would make any druid build choosine traveller rune/signet of the hunt a stupid choice. It also makes that you would have to completely erase your trait line to move slower (handy in some jumping puzzles). Also this trait has a condition. For some builds/environments that will not work well. Traits are there to be flexible choice for wathever the situation is. In this case, Natural stride almost screams that it needs this flexibility.

I get that this will make some ppl angry they can’t take the other traits. But get this: just choosing signet of the wild (a lot of ppl complain glyphs are not good enough so why not), lets you choose the other traits. Just taking traveller runes (by far not as kittenome ppl think these days, since celestial druid is quite viable), solves this. Or make a resounding timbre or warhorn focused build (permanent swiftness). Hell if you want to keep your power damage, perhaps use rune of centaur. So much choice to be honest. Making that trait baseline would compete to much. Look at robotic legs. You take it or not, but no competition. On the other hand Natural mender works in every druid build, every single one of them. You are a healer after all, so you synergize automaticly with it, weither you intend to be power focussed or not. That’s why it was a good choice to make minor.

Celestial shadow feels a bit to short of an effect. Most celestial forms will take 5-15 sec to build up and 15-20 sec to use. That means a 30-40 sec rotation window. To make it usefull i think it should be 4-5 seconds.

I played around with a few glyphs, mostly unity. It feels a bit weak. Some champs one shot you and barely get a scratch from this skill.

Quick draw doesn’t work with staff, probably an oversight.

Holland.9351:

Natural Mender needs a buff for selfish builds. Maybe make it increase all healing rather than just outgoing healing.

Not many people would pick this trait if it was a choice rather than a minor trait that comes with every single druid build.

My thoughts on that and the simple fix.

mistsim.2748:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Chokolata.1870:

Staff 3 is fine but it needs an evade.

I don’t have beta but just from the style of the skill 3 , it does need Evade for defence on the staff , watching the twich feed atm and using it just gets you hurt if you have to move through AoEs to escape and the only way to safely use it is to go the opposite direction of the incomming damage , its counter intuitive to the skills design of allowing mobility when having no evade on the skill means you have less Route to move to.

needs the evade , with how fast the movement it the evade frames won’t be long.

staff 3 must be an evade or invuln. imo, shorten the cast time, i.e. make the wisp traverse faster. so instead of a 2s channel or whatever it is now, make it 1.5. during this time, ranger needs to be invulnerable. you cant hurt wisps with physical attacks, theyre made of energy. thought this was obvious =\

the other problem with #3 is that when the ranger reaches the destination, if it’s shorter than 1200, he just hovers there as a wisp until the cast is complete. he should exit the wisp once he lands.

I agree with the second paragraph. You shouldn’t be hovering there waiting for the cast-time to elapse, it should end when you arrive at the target. I think the wisp is reasonably fast, so you don’t need invulnerability or evasion.

Thoughts on Staff 3
I feel it should do more than it is currently doing. Discussions regarding the effectiveness of healing power and healing coefficients aside, I feel that as an escape (or chase?) tool, it should immobilise, cripple, chill, or just something, to people you wisp through, to really make it effective at creating a range gap that lasts longer than it takes for them to walk in your direction.

Thoughts on staff in general
The damage needs to be higher, or lower with better coefficients, the healing coefficients on the auto attack should be higher, as full investment in healing power (at the expense of another stat) should actually be rewarding, even if a 10-15% reduction in base heal is made to compensate.

Thoughts on Staff 4 and 5
The 4 skill on the staff should cure more than just mobility conditions, and a 1 second immobilize is nice but it doesn’t really last long enough for us to do anything. Maybe 1.5-2.5 seconds would be more impactful.
The 5 skill is a poor alternative to reflection, it either needs more healing per bolt, or the bolts should give like 1 second of protection, or resistance, to make it a viable alternative to straight up reflection (I can see mesmers and guardians getting frustrated if a healing wall intercepted projectiles that could have been used to do several thousand points of damage).

Thoughts on glyphs
While the staff motivates druids to stay at range, so they can position most effectively to heal their allies, and while certain glyphs (the daze, for example), are good panic buttons for when distance to enemies is lost, I feel that the 300~ range on the glyphs should either be larger (360? more if necessary) or, some of them should be ground targeted (600 cast range?). It seems counter intuitive to have a ranged healer gain access to melee range utility skills exclusively. The tether in particular needs a significantly higher range, otherwise you literally need the entire enemy group on your tiny-healer face to really benefit from it.

The traited blossom is also peculiar. It gives the druid, as a ranged healer specialisation, a solid bonus heal and condition cleanse, but only if they are standing next to their allies, changing at least some of the glyphs (Glyph of Tides, and the one that cripples enemies, most notably) to have a ranged cast (600~?) would allow the druid to drop that condition cleanse and healing on their allies, rather than on their own person.

Thoughts on Ranger – Spirits
The loss of mobile spirits, and the loss of on-death effects, combined with the small range on the activated skills means outside of PVE content that allows us to stand in one spot for an extended duration (such as in boss arenas), they don’t serve a purpose, and when you do summon them, they die faster than you can activate their kamikaze-skill

My thoughts would be to make them appear similar to the staff wisps, but with identifiable features. Given their similarity to banners (passive aura bonuses to allies), it would make more sense to have them untargetable, and they don’t actively attack enemies, so aside from avoiding them when the active skill is used, they don’t pose a direct threat like phantasms, gyros, minions or elementals. Obviously the storm spirit daze duration would need to be decreased, and the cooldown may need to be increased to make them less spammable, but it would give the druid more options for support with auras, and make the active skills more accessible as they’d be centered on the ranger.

Thoughts on Ranger – Traps
The ability to lob them was great, it made them far more useful for ranged rangers (as a ranged DPS class, a melee centric skill is less useful). Even just a 360-throw range would be fantastic, especially considering the usefulness they would have for ranged druids in supplying the team with combo fields and the healing spring regen and condi cleanse.

The same should be applied to the dragon hunter, in my view. As a ranged control class, even a 360-range throw on their traps would make it easier to place them between you and your opponents to help maintain that 600-range percentage damage bonus.

Thoughts in general
The druid is good in theory, some of the skills are not as useful as they should be, or are not functioning as they probably should to stay true to what the druid is trying to be. And I feel like between spirits and traps, there is a lot of potential for the druid to provide support to their team outside of just healing with a light-beam, or dazing their own melee enemies, but it would need some reworks to create proper synergy betweem the available support utilities. Also healing coefficients.