Guild Wars 2

I am currently running full cleric set with rune of the monk…

Staff skills

S1: I feel the damage output to be lower than it should be. A small increase in damage would be nice considering that S1 is the only skill dealing damage to foes.

S2, S4, and S5: These are nice skills on the druid.

S3: I feel it’s startup is a bit slow to use properly considering players are efficient at dodging. By the time I get there to heal them and use my other skills they’re already outside my range. Also, can we dodge using this? I have yet to fully test the Druid but S3 is my least used skill since I can practically heal at range while they stack in front of the enemy.

For the Glyphs, I too share the same sentiment as the others…

Glyph of Rejuvenation: It’s a bit mediocre compared to healing spring…I can just use Healing spring and blast it with 2 call of the wilds from warhorn and pet swap and that adds boons as well.

Glyph of the Tides: Please swap the effects…a pull on its standard state is more useful. It synergises with the other Glyphs in standard form. Also pvp wise… seeing a Druid in avatar state running towards a clash is a dead giveaway for a setup to pull everyone in.

Glyph of Empowerment: Range is a bit small…I can just use Frost spirit instead to constantly give everyone might with a wider range and do the healing at the same time…

I’ve played for a few hours so far on my druid. I play a zerk ranger most of the time in pve and was super disappointed to see a healing spec. But I tried it with my usual zerk gear.

I roamed around the new zone a bit and here are my thoughts.
Used zerk gear, trying out all the new signets and staff.

Damage is okay. Staff 3 needs an evade or something else. Right now it’s (for me) an annoyance like thief shortbow 3. It doesn’t do any damage at all. But it’s a blast finisher and that’s nice.

The staff overall feels really clunky, but this might be because I’m coming down with a cold and don’t feel great to begin with and everything feels weird.

Celestial form….only two of the skills do damage. For me, not worth teaching my fingers where F5 is to bother using it.

Glyphs….my world for a stun break and stability. I don’t care which ones. I need some stability & a stun break somewhere if I’m going to use glyphs.

I didn’t roll ranger to be a healer so this is my perspective from a purely I want to do damage and kill things perspective. This just might not be the elite spec for me.

The new pets however, amazing. Can I please keep my magnificent giant bristleback?

I hate how fast the new pets die though. Their health pool even on the bristleback & smokescale seem really low. And As I’m trying to figure out the new spec I keep forgetting to swap pets constantly to avoid the stupid 60 second recharge when the pet dies. It’s bad enough to get stuck with a dead pet in the middle of a fight, but then you finally get to swap to a new one but Whoops too bad it died because the first one died and your recharge was way too long.

Pros:

• Very fun to play when in large crowds such as zergs and blobs, especially for WvW (although you get very little loot as a Druid from healing so often)
• When focusing on healing, it is very easy to get straight back into Astral form and continue the incredible amount of healing when in large groups (not sure if it is too quick)
• New pets are awesome, although the Fire Wyvern F2 skill does take a veeerry long time to complete
• Traits seem solid, though haven’t had much time to look at all of them
• Astral Form: I didn’t expect to have so much fun spamming these skills around large crowds in WvW fights and world bosses; although the healing is very significant, perhaps a little too significant? However, it does also get tedious with all of the ground targeted skills being spammed over and over again

Cons:
1) Some glyphs don’t feel valuable:

• Rejuvenation: So far, so good
• Alignment: This one in its Astral form is very good at adding extra healing although it is a shadow in comparison to the healing from the main skills of Astral form. Its regular form is not very useful for PvE (PvP might see more use)
• Equality: 40s for a 5-target 2s daze, not good at all.
• Tides: Astral form should switch with regular form? The pull radius and/or range should be increased to 450, otherwise Mesmer pull is still the go-to pull skill.
• Empowerment: 10% damage increase for 6s is very weak compared to what other professions can give for longer (etc, Warrior strength banner + AoE might on critical hit trait). Astral form is very weak.
• Unity: Not quite sure how this one works yet, so can’t comment.

2) Staff skills lack damage output

• Skill #1 damage is very low, healing is fine (as it is not meant to be superior healing for an auto attack)
• Skill #2 is good, although I think the projectile moves a little too slowly
• Skill #3 is good as a heal (though, shouldn’t this be swapped with skill 5 in Astral form? then?) and the movement effect is nice to have
• Skill #4 is not good; too little damage and too short an immobilize for something too difficult to aim, and the condi cleanse is a little worthless when condi cleanse is so easily available in Astral form (and with one of the traits) – perhaps make this skill deal more damage?
• Skill #5 has a good concept, but is doesn’t have much use outside of WvW (I haven’t tried raids yet, so maybe it will have some use there?)

3) (Minor) Staff idle animation is for a melee staff, when we are using it as a caster, so shouldn’t it be changed to the caster idle animation?

4) (Minor) Astral Form: Skill #1 ground target response is a little slow, perhaps make its animation faster? It can be tricky to see where the ground-target is aimed at as the cursor does get lost often and the radius is quite small

5) (Minor) Astral Form: Skill #5 does too many things at too little strength

I might update this after playing through the beta a little more, but so far I have been happily surprised at how fun it is to play, but I only question the number of moments it will be needed.

(Edit: Format retired early)

Generally i really love the druid. My main concern with it that it doesnt have any Stability whatsoever and only 1 stunbreak (and which can be only achived in AC). Players kept CC’ing me to death before I even had the chance to heal my self. Also I think staff skill number 3 should have evade. The dazes druid have are really powerful and I love it (even though its REALLY rare to put them on the enemies since most of them have stabillity and everytime I used it they evaded, but when they do hit it almost game over for them).
Also, I think the healling glyph skill should have some boons on it since its useless compared to TU.

P.S : Can you pls enable the new pets in PVP? I really dont understand why they are disabled in pvp in the first place.

mistsim.2748:

Kailee.8790:

Using druid with full clerics…. dps is pretty terrible… 200-300 per tick on staff 1, healing on staff 1 is averaging 100 per tick.

are you talking about pvp? I wouldn’t recommend cleric’s for pvp, try celestial with heal runes. damage is not too bad, but the sustain is great.

Sustain isn’t quite the issue… Someone posted a thread informing the healing coefficient on druids…

With druid supposed to be a class hell bent on healing… everything scaling so low is just pitiful

For example, everything on staff heals for 5% or less of your healing power except staff 3 which is 100%

anyone try a lockdown/trapper condi build in wvw yet? can’t play for a while, but would be interested to know if it is better/worse/equal to current trapper builds (if trapper runes are available)? seems like it could be fun/effective…and has little to do with healing.

Kailee.8790:

mistsim.2748:

Kailee.8790:

Using druid with full clerics…. dps is pretty terrible… 200-300 per tick on staff 1, healing on staff 1 is averaging 100 per tick.

are you talking about pvp? I wouldn’t recommend cleric’s for pvp, try celestial with heal runes. damage is not too bad, but the sustain is great.

Sustain isn’t quite the issue… Someone posted a thread informing the healing coefficient on druids…

With druid supposed to be a class hell bent on healing… everything scaling so low is just pitiful

purposely undertuned like every elite on it’s first beta, good thing we have more betas for tweaking and testing…..oh, wait

Relshdan.6854:

Kailee.8790:

mistsim.2748:

Kailee.8790:

Using druid with full clerics…. dps is pretty terrible… 200-300 per tick on staff 1, healing on staff 1 is averaging 100 per tick.

are you talking about pvp? I wouldn’t recommend cleric’s for pvp, try celestial with heal runes. damage is not too bad, but the sustain is great.

Sustain isn’t quite the issue… Someone posted a thread informing the healing coefficient on druids…

With druid supposed to be a class hell bent on healing… everything scaling so low is just pitiful

purposely undertuned like every elite on it’s first beta, good thing we have more betas for tweaking and testing…..oh, wait

Exactly rels, its like I don’t see these other classes with a 1-5% scaling on power/toughness/vitality/condition dmg etc etc…

And why we don’t see things like that, because then their damage would be significantly lower values…

As a druid we already lack damage, and apparently the powerful heals.

My feedback on the druid. I really like it so far but on the staff.
The # 1 skill sound is really not something I like hearing over and over again on the auto attack. I am not sure what sound it could be but a thud thud sound is not a good one in my opinion. But that is a personal thing so whatever :P #4 skill on the staff- Might need to be targeted. I have many npc’s just move out of it so it really does not work for the immobilize. I could not imagine how bad it would be in pvp where people can move out of it or dodge very easily. I have not tried much for the cleansing part of it.

For the healing over all- I cannot see health bars out in open world even with names turned on unless I mouse over the person. So I cannot really effectively use the druid heal skills as effectively as they could be used. This may not be the case in raids and dungeons I don’t know, but it would be helpful to have health bars as an option to turn on.

Staff really needs more AoE damage. If we’re going to be so focused on healing then we need some way to tag enemies while we do it, and glyphs just aren’t up to the task.

Played for a couple of hours on Druid. Overall, I love it. But I do feel it needs a few tweaks.

Staff -
Solar Beam – Damage is ok. But perhaps some burning ticks on the last pulse wouldn’t hurt. Or a slight damage increase overall on the skill.
Ancestral Grace – It needs an evade added to the end of it and/or a little bit of damage.
Vine Surge – Could this be changed to ground target like necro wells do? The arrow pointer is bit cumbersome to use in the middle of a fight.

Glyphs –
As others have said, they seem to be lacking ‘oomph’. The effects on Glyph of Empowerment & Unity could stand to be a little stronger. And a stun break on one of them would be awesome.

Celestial Avatar -
Cosmic Ray – Needs a rework. It’s clunky to ground target.
Lunar Impact – Lower the activation time & perhaps decrease the stun time by half a second.
Natural Convergence – Increase the duration of the conditions it applies and maybe add some stability while it’s active.

The new pets are wonderful. Please don’t fix the godzilla-Bristleback bug.
But their health pools seem a tad on the low side. Maybe a vitality buff is in order.

And the way the staff is held really screams ‘melee’. Could that maybe be changed to more caster-like animations?

And lastly – Please don’t let Roy near this class again.

All in all the Druid feels quite unique, which is a good thing.
But it’s too focused on being a healer, which instead makes the whole class suffer. There’s no synergy between the Druid and the rest of the weapons, traits, skill and the pets. The staff and the astral form recommends you to play a ranged playstyle, but the glyphs seem to have been made for close combat.
I haven’t tried it yet, but it feels like if you want to play a hybrid healer, the best way to do so is a condition damage/healer hybrid. Because a power build with Druid specialization makes no sense as there’s no synergy whatsoever. It just feels clunky and boring.

But the Astral form needs to do damage in some way. It needs more Boomkin! As many, many players has stated before me; most rangers don’t want to be forced to play healer.

Honestly I don’t really see the point with energy to build up astral form. It already has a 10 second cooldown and in comparison to Death Shroud, this form doesn’t actually protect you. Probably better to add a timer in this form so it doesn’t become too spammy with heals. To balance things out.

Lastly the glyphs are terrible. Too short duration for damage/heal boost, one glyph cripples foes which sucks, another pushes foes away when it should knock them down and so on.
It feels like they were just copy+paste effects with aoe damage from skills we already have. Make something unique with them and change the graphics into something nature-like.

*The glyphs are only good in spvp.
*Bristleback and the Tiger are very good pets.
*Staff skills need to be used without a target.

I only jumped on to play it a bit in WvW since I though throwing green numbers at a zerg would be entertaining. I will say that it was (at least for me), but there are some obvious problems.

These may be a bit unrealistic and I’m not a min/max person so none of this is for values I’ll leave those to others, they’re more for overall class feel.

Staff: The main heal weapon feels like it requires too much “Enemy participation” to heal. If your allies aren’t near an enemy then you’ll only hit a few with skill 1 and none with skill 2, so you’re left with 3 if you want to toss someone some HP. Also as others have said druids hold staffs like they way 100 lbs I hope it’s changed.

Skill 1: could use a more impressive beam.

Skill 2: I’d personally like it better if the wisp just patrolled an area you cast it on hurting enemies and healing allies. It works on healing melee but again if people are at range you can’t use this to help them at all.

Skill 3: this is the only one you can use for people who aren’t in melee range of an enemy and that’s an issue. Also I’d like it if it ended when you got to the destination, if you try to use it to heal nearby ranged players you’ll sit there as an orb for the 1s cast unable to do anything.
Skill 4: I don’t have much to say for this one.

Skill 5: Again with enemy participation, if there aren’t any projectiles being exchanged this skill loses a ton of use. It’d be nice if it gave a medium size heal for allies that walk through it so you could place it down and have people help themselves by strafing through it.

Avatar: The energy was all over the place. Alone it takes forever to get up. When surrounded by damaged allies you can go from 0 to full in a second or two. The form itself ended somewhat fast in my opinion. Also is it only possible to enter the form with a full bar?

Skill 1: I’m in the camp that this should have at least a small amount of damage with it, unless events are going to change then you’re actually getting punished taking time off your dps to heal since you’ll tag less (less loot and less participation credit) with a low damage value at least you’d build up some credit passively. Also it has a delay that makes it so hitting someone who’s moving is pretty unlikely in my experience.

Skill 2: Delay once again makes it likely an ally is likely to move out of range before it heals, and the thing is ugly as sin would prefer it to be a bloom or something it looks like a fungus to me right now.

Skill 3: I like this one.

Skill 4: I like this heal channel too would be nice if it applied regen if you channeled it all the way or something so that it gives a bit more extra healing if you don’t have to dodge out of something.

Skill 5: It’s okay, I had a hard time judging the range on this one but that may just be me.

Utilities: Not much I can say here either. The glyph radius felt a bit small, and the elite duration is a bit short for me. The heal form of the elite didn’t feel like it gave me much time to pump healing into them before it ended, it didn’t take long till I forgot to use it entirely.

Traits: Didn’t play around with different ones much, seemed okay.

Pets: Likes a lot about them.
Tiger: Can almost perma-fury nearby allies if you can keep it alive.
Smoke: Strong
Bristle: Long range I felt ranger needed more ranged pet options.
Wyverns: For both of them I feel they’re on the slow side. I used fire wyverns ability once to see it then never slotted the pet. It looks cool but takes along time to finish. Lightning I can’t say much on because I couldn’t keep track of it but it seemed like it was inferior to the other 2.

I like the complete change of gameplay this brings but since healing doesn’t count towards event participation and loot rolls I feel, even for a healing class, most skills should do at least a bit of damage so you can get your rewards and not be punished for going full support. Looks like it could easily be a blast in open world events and WvW stuff, if I don’t feel like bringing a dps build but I don’t want to lose my loot.

Can’t put on pets outside of sPvP. Had to remake ranger. Had Wyverns on before which are disabled there. might be the cause

have to say, very little I like about druid in pvp.

• Celestial form is too weak against cc and the mega burst classes, and makes u a target
• the heals aren’t substantial enough and you don’t feel powerful when your in celestial form.
• I don’t feel like a ranger, so much as a monk from gw1
• the glyphs are too small of radius and do only one small thing, elite is terrible.
• struggling to find where druid fits in with the offensive ranger, I don’t think it does *
• druid appears to need staff to be effective do to needing healing to build bar
• staff is neither power nor condi, just utility/heal
• its supposed to be a support class, but I don’t get nor give boons for being a druid
• does nothing to buff the pet, even though it takes up an entire trait line.
• and for the most part, I just find it boring..heal, heal, heal, daze, heal, daze, heal…
• Grand masters that looked strong on paper, in reality are not

Even though I was excited about it, I guess its just not for me, which is sad, cuz I feel like this is anets attempt to make a competitive pvp ranger, but im just not feeling it. I want a stronger base ranger, that feels more like a ranger not a beastmaster or a monk

I guess ill just hope more more base ranger changes, or wait until druid is tweked to pass judgment though

I’m really confused as to why the druid is holding the staff in a melee stance

The staff idle animation (just holding it) seems really just grabbed from warrior hammer :/ Doesnt make it feel like a staff at all, maybe use the ele one, or create something new? Just feels really lame holding my big hammer

Kraitan.8476:

The staff idle animation (just holding it) seems really just grabbed from warrior hammer :/ Doesnt make it feel like a staff at all, maybe use the ele one, or create something new? Just feels really lame holding my big hammer

Animation for staff holding is so cringe worthy

ancient seeds is only doing 1 bleed instead of the 5 listed in the tool tip, also there seems to be a little delay between the hit and the activation. Immobilze is a little short for a grandmaster

I’d like to shout-out to the artists who did the skill effect work. Amazing job.

Celestial Avatar in particular makes me look like a living legendary

panda the chop chop.4712:

FAIR, WELL BALANCED … RISK/REWARD (PVP FEEDBACK)

I’ll keep it short:

1. Increase normal mode healing by 8-10% healing effectiveness towards pet + 10% of base for loves

2. Increase charge (time it takes to build up force of celestial avatar by 2-2.5x longer! )

(should be a Rampage warrior effect feeling ) It will give *ALOT more risk/reward…and getting moa’ed or focused reall badly in cele should be a HUGE risk factor but being able to potentially turn the tides in that small moment should be the reward. sooo……………


3.*Increase healing in cele mode by 20-35%, then damage by 15-25%.

4. Decrease cele mode duration by 5%

5. decrease lunar impact daze from 3 seconds to 2.5 (seems a bit more fair for everyone)

*AFTER THAT OVER ALL.. WELL BALANCE COOL DOWNS, DURATIONS ECT!!..

GOING TO ADD ON TOP OF THE FACT OF MAKING THIS F5 MODE A (TARGET ON MY HEAD RISK/REWARD CONCEPT) WITH THE LESS DURATION & LOT MORE HEAL/DAMAGE…

ADD STABILITY CONCEPT; THE BIGGEST WAY TO HAVE COUNTER PLAY TO FROM A DRUID FROM ITS RISK/REWARD WORTH IT BUT ALSO A FACTOR TO BE COUNTERED BY THE (hey team druid poped celestial avatar focus it down) factor.

I am sure I will have more later, but you can’t go into Avatar form underwater? Huh?? You mean my entire elite spec is null and void if I get wet?

All our Glyphs are unusable underwater as well. And this also means 7 of the 9 traits do nothing underwater (Druidic Clarity, Primal Echoes, Celestial Shadow, Verdant Etching, Ancient Seeds, Grace of the Land, Lingering Light)

Also seems going underwater can bug out the icon for (CA) making the moon about 4 times bigger.

Could we just not figure out how to make the glyphs and (CA) work underwater? Or are we really just getting rid of all underwater play?

Constructive PVP Feedback

- all conquest, about 20 games I think
- celestial amulet with monk runes, s/wh/staff, NM/WS/druid
- me: 3k+ hours on ranger, all in conquest and wvw raids, top mmr bracket

General Impressions

- staff feels amazing, love the mobility and the combo fields. needs tweaks on two abilities
- I felt i had very good sustain, decent damage and good team support
- lack of on-demand stability is a big problem, especially against all the cc heavy elite specs
- celestial avatar energy gain seemed perfect to me. I always had it up, but often I didn’t quite want to use it because it needs improved damage output.
- it seems some weapons’ damage doesnt register on the celestial bar, at least in HOTM on the golems. couldn’t test it too well in pvp. mind having a look-see?

Staff

- #1: not bad. it’s simple and comprehensive. id like it so scale a lot better with healing power. widen the beam’s range. if not visually, at least in the code. it’s virtually impossible to heal people in pvp with this because it’s so thin

- #2: needs a lot of work. initially, I thought the wisp pulsed damage around the target, but this is not the case. its damage is so paltry that it might as well not be there. secondly, it scales so, so, so poorly with healing power. suggestion: as the wisp rotates, make it hit all opponents around the target; make it pulse damage x5. this works because the staff needs a bit of aoe damage. another option is to give it a condi component. greatly increase scaling. I wanna see minimum 500 hitpoints healed with, lets say, 1k healing power.

-#3: best ranger ability ever designed. initially I thought we’d need an evade on it, but it’s not necessary. the wisp takes off so fast that it doesn’t even matter. my one complaint is that the ranger needs to exist the wisp mode as soon as he reaches the destination. for example, if I choose to only go 600, I want to instantly transform back instead of sitting there waiting for the animation to complete. this would be huge.

-#4: it’s a lot of fun to use, but it has a few problems. if you keep the CD and function, then you must increase the immob to 2s. due to its cast animation, it’s almost impossible to hit a moving target. if you want to keep the 1s immob, then make it instacast.

-#5: perfect, don’t touch it! it’s missing the “water field” in the tooltip. keep it as a water field. if you take it away, the ability will be extremely subpar.

Glyphs

- general: these need a slight damage and range increase; some need secondary functions

- Equality: this is one of the only glyphs I use. I wouldn’t mind a slight range increase. not sure if it was bugging out on me, but it just didn’t seem to hit very often. maybe I was blinded, maybe the target had stability…but in any case it’s worth a look if you can.

- Alignment: give me a stunbreaker on this and I might slot it. in its current form, I would never use it. I have protective ward and other ways to weaken enemies.

- Empowerment: bah I really want to use this one but it just doesn’t do enough. if you gave it another function on top of the 10% increase damage, id slot it. or simply increase its duration to at least 7-8 seconds. the secondary function seems good, just haven’t had an opportunity to use it

- Tides: its secondary function is great. its damage is weak. the astral version looks beautiful. um I love that it instantly procs ancient seeds. this is amazing. hope that’s intended. I think this glyph needs to do a bit more damage because it’s very offensive, but not quite there yet.

- Unity: oh god…the biggest disappointment! I wanted to love this glyph so bad. here is the main problem: I cant connect to anyone. I’m either blinded, cc’d, people are blocking, or the tether is breaking. damage is paltry against opponents who don’t attack rapidly (reapers, scrappers, some revs). my suggestion is simple: make it unblockable and increase the tether range to at least 900 before it snaps (it should connect at 300, that’s fine). and the tether shouldn’t break when I get cc’d. conceptually, great glyph. in practice, wont even be slotted.

- Rejuvenation: I l-l-love this glyph . it scales very nicely, cd is pretty low, and its secondary is amazing

Celestial Avatar

- it needs more functions. I often had it available, but usually didn’t want to use it. it needs another damage component

- Cosmic Ray: either double the aoe radius, or make it instacast. virtually impossible to land on moving teammates

- Seed: decent, scales pretty well. decrease the time to explosion by at least 0.25s., OR increase its range by 30%

- Lunar Impact: perfect on paper. but it often doesn’t hit…maybe because everyone has blocks and stability up all the time? in any case, this is a general issue with the game itself.

- Tide: not much to say, works great.

- NC: beautiful ability, well designed. but again, the problem is our lack of stab. range on this (360) is very, very nice. all glyphs need to have 360 range

Traits

- honestly, excellent job on these. I only have beef with the two GM’s: Cosmic Wisp and the range of Grace of Land. CW seems very lackluster. GoL looks great, if not situational, but you need to at least double the range.

- Ancient Seeds is class A1 trait. extremely potent and useful. well done designing this one!

Conclusion

- Glyphs: range and function. buff them =) Equality and Rejuvenation are basically good to go; Empowerment and Tides are almost there; Alignment and Unity are far from usable. at the very least, buff their range to 360.

- We need stability. Not sure how youre gonna solve this, but druids are basically worse than the core necro, without the huge damage output. we have no access to on-demand (i.e. instacast) stab. getting locked down is rough. maybe you can solve this by making SoW and/or SotP instacast? that would be the best solution imo.

- increase damage output of avatar. I think you mentioned this. just healing doesn’t quite cut it for an offensive/hybrid druid.

- druid is gonna be a hella fun prof. it’s well designed, intuitive, there is a flow to it. but you’ll need to tweak the things we suggested, and continue improving the core profession hard (Hunter’s Call, axes, SB, shouts, old pets and spirits)

Zatoichi.1049:

have to say, very little I like about druid in pvp.

• Celestial form is too weak against cc and the mega burst classes, and makes u a target
• the heals aren’t substantial enough and you don’t feel powerful when your in celestial form.
• the glyphs are too small of radius and do only one small thing, elite is terrible.
• struggling to find where druid fits in with the offensive ranger, I don’t think it does *
• druid appears to need staff to be effective do to needing healing to build bar
• staff is neither power nor condi, just utility/heal
• its supposed to be a support class, but I don’t get nor give boons for being a druid
• does nothing to buff the pet, even though it takes up an entire trait line.

I agree with you with the parts i left in the quote, espically the one regarding weakness againts CC. Also, I think Druid has more of a healer role than a supoort one, but i still think it should have more boons and condition application.

All in all i’m really pleased by druid, it’s quite a versatile class and i can’t wait to see the potential in HoT raid (you said you’re gonna revert the berserker meta, crossed fingers) and the more in wvw. Sure it’s not perfect, but i still think other classes are in way worse position. The idea of making glyphs ground targeted could be good, even with lower range like 600 instead of 1200, just to synergize better with the ranged play.

One thing really makes me cringe: please change staff stance and auto attack animation… It’s one of the worst and clunkiest movements i’ve ever seen (and the head of my toon often becomes creepy…)!

can you please fix the pet stow bug

Become a wisp of natural energy traversing to the target location – untill that moment you realise you are vulnerable AF while ’’traversing’’ as a wisp. There really should be an evade/invulnerability while you fly through the air to the target location. Also, whenever you use the staff 3 Ancestral Grace while running and stop moving after using it, your pet expects you to keep going? sothe pet will run on miles on front of you before realizing you have stopped moving and return to the player.

if I could take verdant etching and natural stride together I would be much happier taking Druid as a power ranger. PLz consider switching them around a bit

So far this is what I have to say (talking from a spvp standpoint).

Live vicariously trait doesn’t trigger on regeneration, signet of the wild or natural healing trait.

Lingering light trait seems to trigger on more than just healing.

Cultivated synergy doesn’t appear in the combat log.

Overall when using druid I feel forced into using the staff and going heavy towards healing just so I can make use of the celestial form.

It doesn’t seem to bring enough to the profession, I find myself thinking I’d be better off with a different specialisation line most the time, this has to do with how useful beastmastery is (almost feel forced to take it just to make the pet even slightly useful). I would rather have my condi removal from wilderness survival, I would rather have nature magic for support and I would rather have beastmastery over everything (to make beastmastery less needed I think 30% increased movement speed should be baseline for pet).

The whole healing idea I feel doesn’t work. There is just TOO much damage getting thrown about for it to be a viable choice. Guardian will still be a better bunker because of all its blocks, blinds and invulns, it doesn’t need the ridiculous healing we get cause it’s not taking the damage in the first place.

That’s my initial thoughts on Druid.

EDIT: It’s also very susceptible to cc, a stun break on a glyph would be nice.

My Feedback

Staff – Animation should resemble a cast more so than the melee. See Ele/necro/mes/guard….

Solar Beam – 15% dmg increase 10% heal increase. Animation needs
polishing. One hand casting animation would look more fluid.

Astral Wisp – great skill i think the radius should be increased
to around 180.
Ancestral Grace- add an evade frame.
Vine surge – great add bleeding to it?
Sublime Conversion – Make it stand out more see wall of
reflection. make a solar wall of reflect yellow coloring?

Celestial Form : increase the pool or buff the weapon
generation.
Cosmic Ray – rough to land , increase radius to 180. maybe the
rumored target ground targeting will fix this?
Seed of Life – decent skill.
Lunar Impact – great skill
Tidal Surge – great skill.
Natural Convergence – make it ranged ? id like to hear other
people thoughts.

Traits:
Druidic Clarity – Good
Cultivated Synergy – OK i guess.
Primal Echoes – Decent

Celestial Shadow – Ok
Verdant Etching – OK
Natural Stride – good

Grace of the Land – good
Lingering Light – Good but see Astral wisp for radius thought.
Ancient Seeds – ok

Glyphs: Make them 600-900 ranged?

Glyph of Rejuvenation – is decent i do find myself using springs

more though. Cele Version : Good add a short regen though.
Glyph of Alignment- add bleed or burn to it. Cele : Add 3 sec
protection.
Glyph of Equality – Fine as is. Cele : add 2 seconds stability?
Glyph of Tides – swap the effects. The pull would be more
usefull outside of Cele form.
Glyph of Empowerment – add 3 stacks of might. Cele : add a 800
heal.
Glyph of Unity – increase dmg to 320. increase heal to 320.

These are just first impressions, as I haven’t really played through in depth yet. So far I agree with a lot of what others have said. Also it’s worth noting that I almost exclusively PvE, so I can’t speak to how things will work in PvP or WvW.

One of the things I loved about Guild Wars 2 from launch was the absence of a dedicated healer. I loved that each profession had its own ways to contribute to healing, damage, and control. It was a huge part of what made Guild Wars 2 unique among MMOs. Druid seems to be changing that, which is dramatically decreasing the overall quality of the game for me. It’s becoming more and more like every other MMO, and not in a good way.

On a more personal level, I really enjoyed the class identity of the ranger that carried over from Guild Wars 1. As others have expressed, I main ranger for a reason, and it’s certainly not to be a dedicated healer. The big reveal about druids being necessary healers for raids feels very much like “surprise! you are the new monks!” and that sucks. I wouldn’t mind an option to run druid as a dedicated healer if there were other interesting ways to build druids, but as others have pointed out, the druid so far is an incredibly monotone specialization. There is very little synergy with existing builds and/or trait lines. For example, even the suggestion from the livestream of running signet of stone with gylph of unity is largely impractical because the recharge time on the two is so different, and in general glyph of unity is fairly useless on a primarily ranged build since it affects the area around your character rather than the area around your target. Running glyph of empowerment seems moderately interesting, but, as others have pointed out, there are other skills that are far better, and don’t require you drop a specialization in order to run druid. Traiting glyphs for condition removal is interesting, but nowhere near as strong as traiting survival skills, with their faster activation and generally better utility. If glyphs were on par with survival skills, I’d be extremely tempted to run glyphs and signets, but glyphs lack a stun break, and the heal is tremendously weak compared to core heals. Ultimately it doesn’t seem worth it to run druid for a balanced PvE build, because it simply isn’t stronger than what any of the core specializations offer.

Perhaps raids will be the exception, which is the next bit of content I plan to test out. I am on the fence with regard to what others have said about healing. On the one hand, if you’re going to make druids the new healers, you might as well make them good at it. On the other hand, I’d really rather not have a dedicated healer at all, so generally speaking I’d rather the healing stay where it is and add better utility to staff skills and druid traits.

If you have your heart set on making druids strong raid healers, then it would be nice if you’d re-balance core rangers a bit to keep non-druid builds viable as well. Right now druid is so monotone, it’s going to end up dramatically decreasing build variety if it really does end up being absolutely necessary for raid success. You risk replacing one monolithic meta with another.

TL;DR: The existing core specializations and skills are stronger overall and have better synergy with each other. Druid feels like a one trick pony, and I didn’t even want a pony when I started.

Was pretty disappointed with how Druid played:

1) Astral Force generation should be tied to damage and with a lesser degree to healing (basically the opposite of how it works now) so that other weapons can be used besides just staff for Druid. You should be encouraged to use Staff (through increased astral force generation) but not forced into using it to have any hope of sufficient astral force generation.

2) Celestial form was underwhelming. Didn’t have the oomph in terms of burst healing I was expecting since 4 out of the 5 abilities were just heals that healed for small to moderate amounts. Having Avatar skill#4 be a fire and forget healing/mobile water field that can be comboed with skill #3 would help create that burst healing feel. Skill#1 and #2 seemed too hard/clunky to use and not worth using for the small benefits they provided. Changing/adding something to skill#1 (damage reduction for example) and increasing radius (the current 120 radius is insanely hard to target on anything that’s moving) or making it an AOE cone skill in front of you, would go a long ways towards people actually using this skill. Currently, celestial form felt like icebow where people only use skill#4 and drop the weapon. Also celestial form skills currently suffers from long casting times without any access to stability. Adding stability to skill 2 would help with issue.

3) Healing coefficients suck (based on tests already performed) and should have been a major concern for the devs when coming up with a pure healing build. This definitely needs to be looked at and made more consistent across all Druid/Avatar skills.

4) Staff with some tweaks can be good but skills#3-5 are all situational and #2 is underwhelming which leaves you with spamming skill#1 for astral generation so you can turn into an underwhelming avatar form. LTomato on page 2 and others have already brought up the issues with this weapon. Having Staff#5 remain a water field (even though its not on the tooltip) would encourage more use out of skills #3 and 5.

I realize the devs are trying to limit healing so as not to have it be overpowered for PVP but the current implementation is half-measured. There needs to be discussion between the Devs and the playerbase so that we can create a Druid spec that is both fun/powerful to play with but also balanced for PVP.

I’d just like to echo what many others are saying:

PLEASE CHANGE STAFF STANCE AND ATTACK ANIMATION.

These wyverns need work desperately. They are so slow and half the time I target something and hit F2 they end up doing their AoE where ever they happen to be standing instead of at the target. All my other pets run to the target and attack. Please fix this.

I haven’t had much time to play today, but here are my first thoughts:

Staff AA needs a way to more effectively heal allies, like a non-targeted beam.

Attack animations for staff look really weird, like someone is carrying a laser rocket gun.

Astral Form attacks should be listed under Weapon Skills for slow reading processors like me

If you leave Astral Form early, it would be great if it kept your current energy level, like Spectral Form does for Necromancers.

Radius and functionality on glyphs is too small. I tried using the 10% damage buff, but because movement is so crucial other players were far out of range by the time it fired. The other glyphs didn’t have enough functionality to even warrant use.

The pets are awesome and I love them.

I was on the fence and after 15min decided druid wasn’t worth dumping beastmastery for. 10min later I got back on druid and did some playing around with stuff and realized it is worth it.

Ancient seeds + one of the 2 aoe dazes + barrage/bonfire alone is awesome ;-)
its like another entangle.

There is something wonky about some heals charging celestial form, some not. Ancestor’s Grace doesn’t but the AA does. Trolls Unguent does per tic.

I think if you leave Celestial Avatar early, it shouldn’t drain the rest of you bar. I would love to see staff skill 3 to evade as well. Many times have i used this skill to get over to someone to try and rez them to only be knocked around and couldn’t make it in time.

Zatoichi.1049:

ancient seeds is only doing 1 bleed instead of the 5 listed in the tool tip, also there seems to be a little delay between the hit and the activation. Immobilze is a little short for a grandmaster

kitten…..that trait is the only thing that would make me try a druid trapper…figure.

again, good thing there’s no more betas to test this completely bugged out spec.

Justine.6351:

I was on the fence and after 15min decided druid wasn’t worth dumping beastmastery for. 10min later I got back on druid and did some playing around with stuff and realized it is worth it.

Ancient seeds + one of the 2 aoe dazes + barrage/bonfire alone is awesome ;-)
its like another entangle.

There is something wonky about some heals charging celestial form, some not. Ancestor’s Grace doesn’t but the AA does. Trolls Unguent does per tic.

does ancient seeds give the 5 bleeds stack or only 1 bleed?

I just tried out Druid tonight, it was one hell of a fun run, almost as good as a Norn Owlbear transformation.

Works great in the open world and super good in dungeons too.

Edit: Please keep the Bristleback’s super size mode

At the moment druid feels really weird in spvp as if he wants to be bunker and stand on point supporting allies around ,but at the same time stand somewhere far away and heal them from distance.

And, yes it needs fewer ,but more ‘burst’ healing skills … plus more pew pew.

Positive:
- Pretty animations, with the exception of the staff 1 attack.
- Pets look good too.

Negative :
- Damage is very low with staff, even for a healer, I kept using longbow for everything.
- Healing is low.

Staff needs to do some meaningful damage, this game is still about damage, can’t change much there when there are no clear roles in groups.

Guys I like this concept, hope you can make it work. But in this state it’s not much fun.

Staff 1 should do more dmg, staff 2 should be a long dot, right now it’s extremely underwhelming, I laughed when I seen it first time. Staff 4 longer duration immobilize. 3 and 5 are good.

Knock back should have more range.

I’m excited about the druid but do the numbers right and we’re in business.

Do guardians numbers, that kind of damage and healing.

It’s still a completely different class and mechanic.

I’m waiting to see what you do, thx.

DISCLAIMER: I am writing this between 2 and 5 AM because I want to get the feedback posted while everything is still fresh in my mind. [Yes it took me that long to type and edit everything!] This means that despite my attempts to avoid inconsistencies in the naming of everything, there are likely still many mistakes and oddities in my post. I’ll read it again tomorrow and edit it to remove any glaring mistakes. I am also not a native English speaker so I apologize for any odd choice of words or mistakes that might be present.

I’ll detail my observations of the druid focusing on each aspect of the Elite Specialization. It might sound overly pessimistic or negative but it is not, I simply try to provide as detailed feedback as I can. I am absolutely in love with the theme of the Druid and the potential of Hybrid builds coming with HoT. I spent 200 gold on a Zealot’s set just to be ready for this beta!

Quick note before anything else – the druid looks and sounds absolutely stunning! I am especially attached to the sound effects – crisp, distinct and very powerful.

Now, onto the feedback!

Staff observations:

General

- Idle animation needs to be swapped to the default caster staff idle animation. The transition between the “hammer idle animation” and then auto attack is very awkward. The same transition exists for casters, skill 2 on Air Attunement transitions from the idle, or the auto to the cast then back to auto or idle. Skill 4 on the staff [on druid] looks like the auto attack of Elementalists on Staff which would also transition more smoothly from the default staff idle;
- The staff feels slow in a bad, clunky kind of way. Aftercasts feel very long, I seem to be stuck doing nothing despite spamming skills;
- Staff doesn’t work with Quick Draw;
- The weapon has no way of tagging or doing any damage. It has no AoE other then 4 and the rather wonky 1.
- More Bifrost effects please! O_O

• The projectile on 2 flies rather slowly;
• I am not sure how 1 decides what to hit, what to heal and what to pierce through. I’d rather this do high damage and pierce properly then it healing as well. Gives more control to the player that way;
• I think 2 should do damage while circling; (Should apply to the Grandmaster trait as well);
• I also think 3 should do damage on impact;
• 3 doesn’t give control of the character immediately upon reaching the target destination. This makes its use rather clunky in general. Also doesn’t seem to travel the full 1200 distance;
  * Tying the Staff cooldown trait to a trait that does CC is not pleasant for general PvE, especially a CC with this large of a radius, they should be split somehow;
• 5 is fine but needs to be labeled as a Water field (if this is intended functionality). Seems to block (convert?) some projectiles that players usually can’t interact with. Is this intended? Example: Old Tom’s poison spin; Seems like a great concept, I love the fact that the resulting healing bolts produce Bifrost projectiles if you have the staff equipped;
• EDIT – To add to the Staff Cooldown trait point – the Daze is almost unusable as such. You would rather simply weapon swap for the actual weapon (or maybe your Celestial bar ran out), this makes the daze unusable as such since you have no real way of timing it. You can’t prolong Celestial form while in it, and you can’t hold off swapping weapons just for that Daze. Make it so that 4 also dazes + the base functionality (or just make it a stun without all the added conditions) when the trait is picked. That would resolve the issue below with 4 feeling rather unrewarding, although it does tinker with the theme, roots well… root, they don’t stun. I really don’t know what to suggest in regards to a fix, I just know that the Daze when swapping is misplaced in a major way, since you can never reliably or intentionally use it as a Daze and it applies defiance in general PvE;
• EDIT – Staff 4 seems to be very unrewarding for how difficult it is to hit. It’s rather slow in it’s travel time and even if you hit it the effect is underwhelming. If the difficulty to hit stays (it should) then the effects should be increased. Immobilize should go up, base damage should probably go up as well. Cleanse is fine as is I believe.

Celestial Avatar observations:

General

• Biggest gripe is the complete lack of damage. What happens in practice right now is this:
  - You go into Celestial Avatar to heal;
  - You use 3 since it’s quick and it’s a huge chunk of health;
  - [3 appears to be off cooldown due to some strange delay in the bar/casting/animation, it casts only once];
  - You [try to] use 3 again because of Quick Draw, another huge chunk of health
  - You use 4 to top off everyone else;
  - Everyone is full health and you still have over half of your Celestial bar to use, with nothing to use it on. There is no damage, leaving Celestial form depletes your entire bar, and you simply have nothing to use it on if your group is full health due to the shear amount of healing available;

• 1 needs to do damage on each hit, not high damage, just moderate damage, could also be faster. I find that I miss it a lot with the constant mobility of my team mates. Same deal as with Staff 1, I’d rather have it not heal at all and instead simply do damage. There is plenty of healing elsewhere, especially if Quick Draw is fixed;
• 2 needs to have some “token damage” as well for tagging purposes, also needs a bit less delay i feel, seems to also miss if anyone is in motion;
• 3 on the other hand needs a bit of a delay so you can combo it with 4, or 4 needs to be an activate-able ability rather then a channel. You should be able to use the blast on 3 to blast into your own water field, it makes thematic sense and it provides synergy. Having 4 as a channel severely limits your options;
• 5 feels a bit underwhelming in its effects for some reason. Damage numbers seem to be low, the effects seem a bit lack luster… Some combination between the Glyph that pulls enemies in and this would be great, as it stands you channel it in Astral Form because you have nothing else to do if your allies are full health and that is disappointing in every way;
• Quick Draw doesn’t work with Celestial Avatar (the buff appears, no cooldowns get decreased, I imagine this is a bug. If not this severely limits the options of a Ranger when choosing Specializations and Traits. Quick Draw is there to be used, and it’s fun for the player to use, it simply should work with both Staff and Celestial Avatar);

• On a more positive note, 4 seems wonderful. It feels like it’s just the right amount of healing, and even though I can’t blast it myself other then with a pet swap my allies regularly used the field itself to either leap through or blast for extra healing;

Glyph observations:

General
- It’s great that we have a Glyph cooldown trait with an extra effect, but as it stands that extra effect is 1) not needed and 2) thematically inconsistent. I wish there was something more interesting here;
- Celestial form takes long to build up with damage, Celestial bar is fully depleted upon exiting the form and the Glyphs sharing cooldown between Celestial and non-Celestial versions means ALL of the Celestial versions of the Glyphs are absolutely unusable. They seem to be designed to be used reflexively. Either a quick condi cleanse or a quick stun break for my allies as rough examples. The way the form works right now those can almost never be used in that way. This seems to be the biggest flaw in the way they are designed. Simple split of the cooldowns will fix this issue to some extent;
- Tooltips seem unfinished, upon mousing over them only rough descriptions of the two glyphs appear, upon equipping them and mousing over them only the non-Celestial description appears and you need to be in Celestial form to see the proper tooltip;
- Using/triggering of Glyphs seems to be incredibly slow. I’m not sure if the reason is long aftercasts of other skills or what exactly, but I find myself having to repeatedly mash my Glyph key so that it finally casts and gives the AoE damage modifier to my allies;

• Glyph of Rejuvenation should have a pet heal component regardless of where the pet is, akin to the other heals that the Ranger has access to;
• Glyph of Alignment feels as if it has a delay in the non-Celestial form and no delay in the Celestial form, should be without a delay in both forms, maybe it’s just the animation that makes me feel like it’s delayed. Maybe it’s aftercasts…? It’s alright, not sure why I’d ever use it over survival skills in PvP and WvW or in PvE not sure why I’d use it over the various other damaging or utility-based utilities I have;
• Glyph of Equality feels as if it’s only made to be used with the interrupt Moment of Clarity build. As I said above it literally never sees use as an AoE stun break and the AoE daze, while nice, doesn’t serve much purpose other then for that one specific build;
• Glyph of Empowerment is great [in the non-Celestial form]. On demand damage modifier for you and your team mates is great for all PvE, and is awesome for setting up bursts in PvP or WvW. That said it’s literally never, ever, up in Celestial form due to how useful it is in non-Celestial. A cooldown split can resolve this issue;
• Glyph of Tides should be reversed. You want people closer in Druid form and you want people away when you’re in Celestial preparing to heal others. I can see how you’d want to setup the AoE daze but with it being as large as it is and with it being as long range as it is I’d rather have this function opposite to what it does now. Pull in non-Celestial form, push in Celestial form. Personal opinion, not sure which is better;
• Glyph of Unity I simply do not understand. I was unable to make it work once for me. It feels absolutely and utterly useless. In raids/high level fractals I am either not taking enough damage for it to do anything or I’m taking too much damage and I’m downed/dead. The Celestial version feels even less useful then this. I already have a ton of healing, making it so that healing myself heals my allies is redundant. The elite as it stands feels redundant. If a stronger version of the Empowerment glyph was the Elite and this was a utility I’d still advocate against having it at all, it’s just mechanically useless in my mind;

Traits

General
- The trait line feels pretty solid in general but there are a few pretty major (in my eyes) downsides;
- As it stands the trait line barely has anything to do with pets. Rangers are still a pet class, this feels rather strange;

• Live Vicariously is boring, bland and uninteresting. It also has no interesting impact on gameplay. I think adding some sort of daze/stun resistance as a minor is a good way to enhance the trait line while making it still more interesting and thematic. Or maybe some equivalent of Fortifying Bond…? I just wish there was something pet related in the trait line;
• Ancient Seeds feels completely out of place. It’s a Power/Healing/Interrupt trait line, why is there Bleeding and Immobilize there? I see that you want the Daze build to work, I just don’t think that’s the right way to do it. Maybe incorporate some resistance to dazes/stuns in the minor? Maybe add a damage modifier to Stunned/Dazed foes as the new Grandmaster? Anything along those lines would be more useful, more interesting, and more thematically accurate;
• As mentioned earlier the added effect of Verdant Etching is not really needed and it’s rather boring. I know it’s great for condi cleanse but I feel it could have been something more interesting/cool;
• If the wisp that Staff 2 summons starts doing damage, the wisp that Lingering Light summons should also do damage. Provides some much needed AoE damage to the Ranger while also staying true to the theme;

• The Celestial form traits all seem alright, I feel like the range is way too low for them to be useful though. A bump to 600 would be the best outcome I feel, if that is not achievable due to balance reasons at least 360 would be far better then the mere 300 it is right now. That said I don’t think I’ll ever really run the Celestial Avatar traits, the others just seem more useful and fun;
• In the same vein Cultivated Synergy is too low of a radius for it to be any useful at all, especially with the limited control we have over our pet’s position;

• Natural Stride is pretty awesome, maybe it should have some effect to signify WHY exactly is that Druid so much faster then almost anything else when out of combat and without those conditions? I still wish movement speed was reworked somehow so different sources stacked but alas, probably will never happen due to balance reasons. Trait is fun, I like it!

New pets

General
- ABSOLUTELY FREAKING ADORABLE!
- They seem to have strange stats and inconsistencies as pointed out in the thread already;
- I think the Bristleback gets a tiny bit too big with Signet of the Wild…

• Why are all of our ranged pets condi based? Can’t we have a power based Ranged pet? Even with that said I still absolutely adore the Bristleback! [really, though, can’t it just be a power based pet? ;(]
• Smokescale definitely feels a bit strong. It’s as tanky as a bear and almost as damaging as a cat; [I’m exaggerating a bit]
• Tiger is cool, I’m happy we have a cat to apply Fury now, makes the Moa a bit redundant, though. I guess easier to keep Fury up 100% of the time that way if you run both. Looks awesome, it’s useful, I like it;
• The Wyverns I don’t like as much as the other 3. The F2 on the Fire Wyvern feels very unresponsive and sort of casts where it wants. If it casts where I need it to it’s alright. The lightning one I can see being useful in PvP but I haven’t dabbled too much into that just yet;
  * EDIT – I seem to have completely lost my pet somehow? I only have pets (and the pet panel) active in PvP. If I go in PvE my pet is permanently stowed and I can’t get it to show in any way. Pet panel (default K) also doesn’t work. I know people love shouting that they’d love Rangers without pets but I am quite the opposite. Can anyone provide a bandaid fix for this issue during the beta? - Going underwater and requipping land pets resolves the issue. The new pets are inactive in PvP so if you try to leave PvP with them set they just get cleared from your pet panel and there’s no pet for you to switch to. Go underwater [in PvE], open pet panel, reequip land pets (including the new ones) and continue testing your Druid happily!

I think that’s all that comes to mind so far. I apologize for any possible mistakes or inconsistencies there are in the post. I’ll re-read it tomorrow morning and edit anything that’s wrong. I hope my feedback is of some use!

I love almost everything, i REALLY dislike solar beam. looks and feels really clunky. not at all fluid like the rest of the combat system. i would be totally OK with reworking it altogether, even if its just visually. staff #3 needs to be an evade and i need to be able to combo the blast and water field in celestial form.

Relshdan.6854:

Justine.6351:

I was on the fence and after 15min decided druid wasn’t worth dumping beastmastery for. 10min later I got back on druid and did some playing around with stuff and realized it is worth it.

Ancient seeds + one of the 2 aoe dazes + barrage/bonfire alone is awesome ;-)
its like another entangle.

There is something wonky about some heals charging celestial form, some not. Ancestor’s Grace doesn’t but the AA does. Trolls Unguent does per tic.

does ancient seeds give the 5 bleeds stack or only 1 bleed?

its 5, but note that its like any other vine skill, it pulses its conditions.

Fast impressions:

• Staff is good, but in a support role, it feels weird to have a skill that is mainly single target.
• glyphs: they didn’t seem good enough to persuade me to use them
• building up celestial: as many said: way too easy with staff, a bit too hard without. It rewards healing too much compared to damage.

celestial form:

• it feels that I am just going through all the skills to get max healing and then go back to normal. Most of the skills don’t feel “situational” enough that I want to think about when using them (except that I want to blast after I put the field essentially). I would like if each skill had more personality and maybe not be a healing increase compared to AA.
• the above points is reinforced by the fact that we cannot use a skill and leave the avatar to come back to it later (the celestial energy goes to 0). So we do not switch to it for one situational skill, we switch to it to go through the whole thing. I know changing that will make it too similar to death shroud, but I think it would help.

As a casual player, i LOVED how easy it was to get into. My only experience with healing was with Guardians, which I don’t like to play. Druid makes it really fun!

Pros:
Pets! I love the new pets. I haven’t used anything but the Smokescale and the Fire Wevyrn, (I used the Bristleback in Lion’s Arch for the Signet bug) They AA much better then some other pets, and the wing animation in particular on the Wevryn’s is adorable (and effective!)

Hitting and healing with the staff was nice, and it was easy to switch between LB and S depending on what I needed.

The Astral Form is very pretty and the healing is great!

Healing is so fun! and awesome looking! Plus it helped A LOT with the Leg Wevryn fight and I can already see how helpful it will be in SW.

Cons:
I do wish there was some more condition damage for the Staff 1 attack. While I love bringing the healer it does feel like the Druid is a little redundant outside raids/SW.

The Fire Wevryn doesn’t attack at the target most of the time, but somewhere near/on me instead. If the initial fire blast could follow the target if it moves, that would be better.

Switching weapons should automatically take you out of Astral Form. Also, outside of a group there again doesn’t seem to be a big reason to use Astral Form at all unless you use the most selfish traits (which I did and loved). I’m going to try a dungeon tomorrow and see how well that does.

OVERALL I love this class and I love what it did to the Ranger. I think with a few tweaks it could be amazing and I’ll be happily waiting until the 23rd to jump into the jungle

After playing around a bit on druid i feel the following

• The damage on staff is way too low, and only three skills that can do damage, i can nearly not even do a full quick DPS rotation on staff before the 11111111 spam begins – and then i’m still rendered useless. This has to be buffed

• Solar Beam – It is an AoE but the way it’s aoeing is by piercing other mobs as in having mobs in a line and pick the one in the far back. I find this kinda sad to be honest, some fights can be very annoying if someone goes full “rouge” and starts repositioning and then mobs are running all over the place. *make this bounce like elementalist staff air 1 or like a normal aoe skill like elementalist staff fire 1 to mention a few imo.

This is a major problem already for rangers, their lack of having a decent aoe dps and focused on single target damage mainly, even with piercing arrows a ranger will not be effective aoe wise – so why would this one be if it is designed the same way?

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

• Pets are very nice, at least they do decent damage now and they are now usefull. Hence the Smokescale is nearly more use in a dungeon then the druid itself overall.

I know this spec is focusing on healing, but every now and then damage is the best defence – There for i suggest moar direct dps – NOT condition damage – raw damage.

Spam poison the druid and it will be nothing without proper numbers.

Arahzor.1832:

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

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