Kitten – Zerker Ranger – http://gw2efficiency.com/c/Kitten
Kitty Smallpaw – Condi Ranger – http://gw2efficiency.com/c/Kitty%20Smallpaw
Yeesh…why do I subject myself to this place?
Zealot’s armor is a thing that exists, folks. Seriously. Not everything needs to be set up to perform optimally in Berserker gear. Poor healing coefficients hurts game diversity – if you want to play a pure-Berserker Druid, then accept that you should by all rights heal for less than someone in Zealot’s armor. Just like the Zealot’s guy needs to accept that he’s not going to hit as hard as the Berserker guy.
Telling the Zealot’s-wearing guy that he gets no return on his investment of Healing Power is kinda awful. If you go Berserker stats, you lose healing efficiency. That’s what you get for taking a support class and giving it zero supportive ability.
I agree the healing coefficient should go up the base shouldn’t. Why? Because then it would not be in balance with every other classes sustain.
Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.
In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.
No. PLEASE no. Don’t force Druid to be a healing power spec, it will be completely useless in 90% of the game. We already give up DPS for it, and ranger DPS is already underpowered. If you want to do this, fix the base class first, or at least allow us to stack might in order to open up celestial builds. Otherwise, you’re condemning Druid to uselessness.
The only major issue that I wanted to bring up was:
- Specializations should open new traits + new mechanics to you on Special abolities ( F1-F5)
- Specialization should not prevent you from using skills.
Yes you are specialized, but on long term this will make game very dull and boring, i want to combine more skills, I’ve already seen problems today, that i would want to run 1 or 2 glyphs, but i wouldn’t want to run druid trait line because it’s not what my play style looks for, and i think skills should be separated from restriction.
Please add a short duration burn to staff 1, similar to what was done with warrior’s longbow. As almost everyone has noted, the staff has pitiful damage, but rather than just increasing it’s direct damage, it’d be nice if staff synergized with both condi and power builds since it’s our only group support weapon.
Please add a short duration burn to staff 1, similar to what was done with warrior’s longbow. As almost everyone has noted, the staff has pitiful damage, but rather than just increasing it’s direct damage, it’d be nice if staff synergized with both condi and power builds since it’s our only group support weapon.
Issue is that traits don’t have good synergy with condi, if you go druid you will be giving up a lot of dps if you try condi.
I played Druid in PvE for about 3 hours on Friday, in Stronghold PvP for about 3 hours Saturday, and then another 2 hours on Sunday in Stronghold PvP.
My TLDR: is that while I didn’t mind the support role in general, Druid feels disjointed from the rest of the ranger class. It felt like playing two completely different classes at the same time.
There has been so much feedback in this thread about changes to traits and skills that I won’t go into great detail, but here are my highlights:
I agree – The CAF mechanic is odd in that you have to heal…in order to heal some more
I agree – Staff and CAF needed more variety in support options beyond just types of heals
I agree – Losing all of your CAF energy when leaving the form feels limiting
I agree – It’s too hard to build CAF energy when not using staff
I agree – Druid traits should provide more synergy with the pet and other ranger mechanics
I agree – That staff 4 needs a boost/longer duration
I agree – That staff 3 animation should end upon reaching the destination
Edit: Shiren’s post below could count as my own.
(edited by Spartyr.6795)
Yeesh…why do I subject myself to this place?
Zealot’s armor is a thing that exists, folks. Seriously. Not everything needs to be set up to perform optimally in Berserker gear. Poor healing coefficients hurts game diversity – if you want to play a pure-Berserker Druid, then accept that you should by all rights heal for less than someone in Zealot’s armor. Just like the Zealot’s guy needs to accept that he’s not going to hit as hard as the Berserker guy.
Telling the Zealot’s-wearing guy that he gets no return on his investment of Healing Power is kinda awful. If you go Berserker stats, you lose healing efficiency. That’s what you get for taking a support class and giving it zero supportive ability.
+1 thank goodness for the few people around here who make sense….
people, if you don’t like Druid don’t play Druid. there is nothing forcing you to take this trait line. DPS rangers will still be needed to DPS. the nerf to icebow makes frostspotter a valuable addition to any team.
Yeah, right. They’ll just take an engineer, which already has slightly better DPS than staff ele and more fields/blast finishers than a ranger. Until ranger damage and pet AI/interface are fixed, I don’t think that rangers will be used. And if we have to kitten our damage further in order to make Druid worth taking, then not even Druid will be used. They’ll just take a couple of Revenants with Ventari/X.
Celestial avatar is already extremely risky to use in PvP during combat, given its slow animations and lack of stability and defensive mechanics (not to mention the fact that if you’re moving to avoid damage, it’s hard to even hit yourself with the auto). If the base healing numbers are reduced, Druid will be possibly useful in only a fraction of a percent of the original game, and likely only a small portion of the expansion as well.
Issue is that traits don’t have good synergy with condi, if you go druid you will be giving up a lot of dps if you try condi.
Well at the moment if you go druid you aren’t going to be doing much DPS, period – doesn’t matter if you’re condi or power. But Ancient Seeds has some syngergy with condi, although I think it’s too weak currently, since it can only affect one target every 10 seconds. But my suggestion wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive solution, it’s just one that I support.
To be clearer: please make sure staff works with both condi and power builds.
The animations for staff are getting looked at.
YES! Thank you, Irenio! Seriously, thank you so SO much! Happy days (hopefully) of holding the staff like a caster and the auto attack looking like… well… not so goofy (except on Asura – you all chose the right animation for them).
Issue is that traits don’t have good synergy with condi, if you go druid you will be giving up a lot of dps if you try condi.
Well at the moment if you go druid you aren’t going to be doing much DPS, period – doesn’t matter if you’re condi or power. But Ancient Seeds has some syngergy with condi, although I think it’s too weak currently, since it can only affect one target every 10 seconds. But my suggestion wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive solution, it’s just one that I support.
To be clearer: please make sure staff works with both condi and power builds.
You can still get MM and do somewhat comparable DPS to before…not that that is anything special, but it’s not a major drop or anything.
Weaker base heals and better scaling are needed imo. That said I hope all skills will get more dmg component, (maybe even better scaling as well). Like the wisp, and most of CA, even if just for tags. Also, add boons to lot of skills.
The way druid is wielding a staff is incorrect, and doesn’t fit its skills. A bugfix is welcome in this matter, as staves for druids are NOT a melee weapon.
Weaker base heals and better scaling are needed imo. That said I hope all skills will get more dmg component, (maybe even better scaling as well). Like the wisp, and most of CA, even if just for tags. Also, add boons to lot of skills.
They shouldn’t make the base heals much weaker. Forcing healing power is a sure way to reduce viability. Druid would be replaced by DPS specs (ele, engi) who can blast water fields, so that partywide DPS stays high.
In BWE3 you can heal with zerker set. If they’re going to reduce base healing they’ll force Druid to stay in healing set. Zealot is nice but expansive. Most ppl will end up with cleric set.
The problem is with GW2. Every spec makes damage and damage is always welcome. But nobody needs healing in base game. Druid will be usless outside HoT, WvW and PvP.
(edited by krzysiek.9061)
Why the f are we even concerned with animations when:
druid has so many important issues with minor traits being pointless, glyphs being underpowrred , staff has literally no damage potential neither condi nor power, and now suddenly our base healing is being nerfed in favor of leaving us to take heal stats, celestial form feel so weak and susceptible to any sort off cc pressure, and druid offers little to boost dps builds?
In BWE3 you can heal with zerker set. If they’re going to reduce base healing they’ll force Druid to stay in healing set. Zealot is nice but expansive. Most ppl will end up with cleric set.
The problem is with GW2. Every spec makes damage and damage is always welcome. But nobody needs healing in base game. Druid will be usless outside HoT, WvW and PvP.
If they force healing power, it probably won’t even be useful in most of PvP unless they allow rangers to stack might (the way engineers, elementalists, warriors, revenants, and necromancers can) so that we can use celestial stats to good effect. But apparently, given his reaction to WHaO, Roy doesn’t want that. I would love to see his reasoning for this, but he hasn’t given any.
@Zatoichi
THIS. Really ppl, it’s just holding staff animation.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned…
Why the f are we even concerned with animations when:
druid has so many important issues with minor traits being pointless, glyphs being underpowrred , staff has literally no damage potential neither condi nor power, and now suddenly our base healing is being nerfed in favor of leaving us to take heal stats, celestial form feel so weak and susceptible to any sort off cc pressure, and druid offers little to boost dps builds?
Solution: take out the useless minors and replace them with might stacking. That way, reducing base healing and increasing the ratio will open up cele druid as a potentially strong build path.
and now suddenly our base healing is being nerfed in favor of leaving us to take heal stats
What did I miss?
I second that. Is our healing getting nerfed? Like skills?
Only base (without stats, traits etc.) healing in avatar form. They’ll do this to make healing stat more rewarding. I won’t surprised if we would end up with the same healing like in BWE3 but only in healing set.
@EDIT:
Check red posts at the page 13..
I think a lot of people are worried about heal changes because it’s a very real possibility that they’ll tune it in a way where you need a dumb amount to break even. Getting some healing power in a build isn’t an issue, but devoting yourself to using it as a main stat -greatly- diminishes our dps capability, which is what the core class is all about.
Back to the waiting game for now)
Well foo. Seems to decouple the trait line even more from a base dps ranger. Ah well, I’ll wait to see what they do with the astral force generation and staff before making any judgements.
Just remove healing skills from every class and everyone (except Druid) will be unhappy.
Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.
In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.
Hopefully once the changes to the base heals and healing power coefficients get finished, you can start looking at adding some additional combat effects to some of the celestial skills?
Any sort of physical hit on a skill besides 5 would be nice by the way, in order to proc Ancient Seeds. Just a QoL thing.
Besides that, I hope it’s been heard loud and clear that staff skills need some more damage/effects, particularly and especially with the 2 skill, because the 2 skill also by extension makes the GM as weak (or as strong, if fixed) as it.
(edited by jcbroe.4329)
Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.
In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.
If your taking away some base healing, should probably add dmg on most of CA and Staff so people can actually choose to spec into Healing Gear / Traits to increase their healing or pick Druid to add some variety of dmg to base Ranger
ATM Druid is just a power-clash while all other classes get to add something on top of their base classes, Druid is trying to mash two classes into one .
Healing/Support or Support with Heals
Rebalancing the healing to be more affected by gear is what I anticipated and I back the decision but why then is CA not a stance? We’ve had one weekend to see the class and it has potential but Anet what is your vision of Druid?
Is it a healer?
Is it a support class?
Is it just a hybrid?
If Celestial Avatar was a stance then being a heal geared Druid would make a lot of sense, but the Ranger is not a healer there is no synergy with Druid in the Ranger lines. Healing gear on a class whose only real healing comes from healing spring and an elite spirit long forgotten seems backwards. If CA were a stance, I could see it but unless on hit healing was added to traits… I don’t even know what Druids are.
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.
My reasoning is mostly that since we have raids starting up now, and only one specialization that is healing focused, you basically HAVE to use a druid or you are useless, due to the ridiculous healing disparity between a druid and literally any other class that wants to focus on healing. I bring up the engineer because that kit removes literally all damage that you do and turns you into a 100% healer, and its literally useless. It needs a rework, and that is not the only healing focused build possible that is sincerely not balanced.
EDIT: Not to mention how unbalanced the healing power stat in everything is, especially druid with how much base it pulses and how useless it is to invest in healing power, this is a fact across the board, not just with druid. The Healing Power stat needs to go up and base (non-selfish) heals need to go down. Self Heals (#6) are typically fine where they are but AoE skills do not stack for kitten with healing power making being a healer almost useless.
(edited by Nova Pint Kiosk.7085)
Support is more then healing. It is also boon/effect production.
I simply hope that they either rework Astral Force generation so that staff is not 100% needed or leave the Lifesteal+Lingering Light combo as it is.
and now suddenly our base healing is being nerfed in favor of leaving us to take heal stats
What did I miss?
irenio says base healing too high, so to compensate for lowering it, he watns to “reward” people for taking healing stats so they scale better
to translate: Healing too good, must nerf, but if you want it back, add healing power gear…
sounds like a sugar coated nerf to me…only possiblilty is its prpose is to give druid damage to compensate
(edited by Zatoichi.1049)
Dear Irenio, please don’t nerf healing.
This is what makes druid so unique. If I wanted to an elementalist, I would go play an elementalist.
and now suddenly our base healing is being nerfed in favor of leaving us to take heal stats
What did I miss?
irenio says base healing too high, so to compensate for lowering it, he watns to “reward” people for taking healing stats so they scale better
to translate: Healing too good, must nerf, but if you want it back, add healing power gear…
sounds like a sugar coated nerf to me…only possiblilty is its prpose is to give druid damage to compensate
Some low damage sources that scale well with power would be good. So you can choose. All druids have CF, not just those with healing power.
In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.
Nerf that, and compensate the nerf with… ?
With rewarding healing stats.
/jk
I’m sure they won’t left us only with healing…
Right?
With rewarding healing stats.
/jk
I’m sure they won’t left us only with healing…Right?
You expect too much from them lol..
If they do anything, they’d actually nerf that healing and CC first and compensate you with nothing. (Looking at Roy right now)
With rewarding healing stats.
/jk
I’m sure they won’t left us only with healing…Right?
funny thing is, I wont be surprised if the “reward” end result healing (with healing stats) is no different than what it is now base. So all an all it could just be a straight up nerf to healing (if it forces you to respec, loosing damage, just to get the same value, well, you know…)
Tried it out in WvW, seems alright, decent heals, switched between Staff and LB and mixed Zerker and celestial for DPS, doubt clerics will be viable or needed as it is due to lack of DPS, I couldn’t find zealots available at least as far as I know.
I just didn’t have enough time to try it fully though and theorycraft , it does seem quite polished in terms of what role they want Druid to be at least, unlike DareDevil which seems, to be nothing that new.
@Aiden read it, I don’t agree that druids should be forced to use healing power primary gear, other classes can get away with it fine.
(edited by CrimsonNeonite.1048)
So you want to make it so that druid is only worth taking with healer stat gear?
I dont think thats a good idea Irenio. No no no.
Tried it out in WvW, seems alright, decent heals, switched between Staff and LB and mixed Zerker and celestial for DPS, doubt clerics will be viable or needed as it is, so that seemed better off without zealots gear.
Just didn’t have enough time to try it fully though and theorycraft , it does seem quite polished at least.
Someone hasn’t seen page 13 yet.
Go back one page in this thread and have a look.
Well, if the idea is to lower the base and increase the coefficients so that full healing gear brings us to the current numbers, that’s a serious downer…
So I’ve been playing druid in pvp, fractal 50, Virdent Brink, and the raid. At first I didn’t like it much, and I didn’t “get” it. In Fractals I kept feeling like my zerker water ele was far more helpful than whatever I could put on my druid. Ele’s access to damage, blinds, tons of water blasting and group condi removal made it a clear victor in stacking content where a missed dodge downs you. With druid, I don’t do the appropriate damage to rally my teammates, and I can’t outheal the incoming damage.
When I tried pvp though, I started to get it. While druids don’t have access to blinds like an ele, they do have a good number of interrupts and stuns. It was fun locking down enemies and preventing them from ressing allies or completing stomps! Overall, pretty fun.
But when I tried the raid last night, all the skills on the ranger’s bar made sense, and it felt like the druid was crafted specifically for that fight. The mobility, the stuns, and the healing all came together and it finally clicked for me. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty cool.
So to go onto the more specifics:
General:
- Staff and druid are very tied together. You can’t really play one without the other.
- I also personally found that no other weapon goes well with Druid. So I camp staff. Being locked out of staff for 15 seconds is almost never worth it.
Staff:
- #2 feels like the cast time is very long. I always seem to interrupt it, and I can’t tell if I let it finish or not.
- #3 reeeeally feels like it should be swapped (placement wise) with #5. It’s so confusing and doesn’t line up with other classes. It’s a little buggy too, but not terribly.
- #4 Difficult to land on moving targets and the cast time also feels a little long.
- #5 It feels like the poor man’s wall of reflect. I’d love to see the duration upped on it. I like the skill, but a few more seconds added to it would be awesome.
Celestial form:
- General: Leaving cele form and losing all your cele energy feels weird. I like popping into it, using a couple skills, and then popping out. But it’s pretty easy to rebuild that bar, particularly in group content. There’s also some amazing traits with going into cele form that would need some ICDs if this change were to happen, and ICDs are typically pretty annoying since they’re difficult to predict. So would I want this changed? I don’t really know. It does discourage me from entering and leaving cele form, and from using glyphs while in cele. But it’s also pretty sweet to easily give allies stealth and super speed.
- General (again): The cast times in Cele feel pretty long. That’s not a problem, but the problem is that I’m pretty used to spamming skills to cast them. This might be a bug, but spamming things like Cosmic Ray interrupts it, meaning I haven’t cast a single thing.
- #1 Hard to land on allies that are running around!
- #2 Same problem.
Glyphs:
- General: I would so love one of these glyphs to pulse AoE blindness. Just a request.
- GoA: I haven’t really used it. It doesn’t seem very interesting.
- GoT: At first I wanted to flip this… after pvping and the raid, it’s perfect the way it is! Please don’t swap it.
- GoE: As other have said, the tether is buggy or very short ranged. Maybe that’s the price though of such a low CD elite.
I don’t have anything to say about the traits. I love them.
If anything can be added to improve the druid, in my opinion, it would be access to blinds, and a unique option to deal with downed allies. Even beefing up our elite spirit to be as reliable and fast as warrior banner would be amazing.
With rewarding healing stats.
/jk
I’m sure they won’t left us only with healing…Right?
funny thing is, I wont be surprised if the “reward” end result healing (with healing stats) is no different than what it is now base. So all an all it could just be a straight up nerf to healing (if it forces you to respec, loosing damage, just to get the same value, well, you know…)
Speculation:
I think healing will be nerfed in the range of -25% to -40% base, and with max healing stats buffed by 10% to 20%, compared to now.
In short, unless you want to go full healer, there will be very little reason to go druid at all.
With rewarding healing stats.
/jk
I’m sure they won’t left us only with healing…Right?
funny thing is, I wont be surprised if the “reward” end result healing (with healing stats) is no different than what it is now base. So all an all it could just be a straight up nerf to healing (if it forces you to respec, loosing damage, just to get the same value, well, you know…)
Speculation:
I think healing will be nerfed in the range of -25% to -40% base, and with max healing stats buffed by 10% to 20%, compared to now.
In short, unless you want to go full healer, there will be very little reason to go druid at all.
That would be absolutely terrible. Does reaper force you to go power over condi, or condi over power, or offensive stats over defensive stats (or vice versa)? NO. Neither should druid force you to use healing power, especially on a profession that can’t stack might.
So now that I have tried raiding (we got the Vale Guardian down to 50%) I feel I should mention a few things that changed my opinion:
1. I still think the celestial avatar charge should be normalized, but it’s not as hard to charge as I thought. It seems to me like condis and the healing glyph do almost nothing for it. Running Zerker with Healing Spring was a much smoother experience charging that bar.
2. Not really a Druid exclusive thing, but thanks to Vale I found myself using Point Blank Shot on cooldown in PvE and people actually liked me for it.
3. I can see the value of bringing staff as a Zerker (for now) as my secondary melee weapon was almost never used in this fight. However, I still hold to the idea that staff is not the best idea in all non-raid PvE content.
4. While I still think Ranger and Druid could benefit from more interconnection and synergy, I now see it as viable to use as a physical damage dealer ranger. It’s a matter of getting that timing down with the Celestial Form. I still would like to see more balance toward Apostate Condi+Healer stat builds.
Celestial Form Skill 1
1. Needs a much larger radius
2. Needs to activate quicker
Both. not 1 or 2. Both.
Allies are far too quick to move out of the way, and in skirmishes and other damage-intensive environments you simply cannot afford the time to run around playing whack-a-mole with this skill. This feels like it was designed to be the main burst heal skill of the Celestial Avatar, but I didn’t use it at all in the BWE apart from one time I was solo-PVEing and could more easily spam it on myself, and even then smashing the 1 key too quickly seemed to cancel out the skill cast. Otherwise the bulk of my time during Celestial Avatar form was spent waiting for Lunar Impact (skill 3) to come off cooldown and just generally flicking between skills 3 and 4.
When the elite glyph is just a kittenter version of retaliation on a class that doesn’t want to get hit, you know there is something wrong .
Natural Convergence has much weaker base-dmg stats in PVE then in PVP. Is that intended?
I’ll just make clear what i mean by shoving the base-dmg numbers with zerker gear. For comparison i’ll use Rapid Fire.
PVE: Rapid Fire: 3,8k; Natural Convergence: 450 per Pukse 1,2k Final Pulse
PVP: Rapid Fire: 3,3k; Natural Convergence: 700 per Pulse 1,8k Final Pulse.
Verdant Etching Seed of Life takes a very long time to clear conditions, which makes it a bad alternative to Wilderness Knowledge.
Maybe have it clear 2 conditions at the start and heal at the end.
When the elite glyph is just a kittenter version of retaliation on a class that doesn’t want to get hit, you know there is something wrong .
It could potentially be better than Retaliation since it deals damage to all tethered rather than only return damage to the one that caused it.
I think it’s very much a WvW trait where you wisp into a zerg and pop this together with signet of stone and some other Glyphs.
I’m not sure how effective it is, but it should work on paper.
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