So, following BWE3, the overwhelming response was that AF generation was very high (pleasantly so) with staff and/or Troll Unguent, but unnecessarily gated behind those two things while being utterly inaccessible to anyone not running one or both of them. Even weapon-swap felt useless while running Druid, because as soon as one swapped away from staff, AF generation became so abysmally low as to be almost unnoticeable.
In response, on launch day, when I was ridiculously excited (from the other announced changes) to get in-game and start rocking on my Druid, I found out that not only had AF gain from non-staff sources NOT been improved to any meaningful level, but CAF itself had been essentially nerfed into the ground by the addition of every gate (downside) from every other class mechanic — all without any increase to the actual power of CAF itself or any addition of damage for the sake of pressuring opponents or even tagging mobs. I was very much crushed by how horribly inaccessible my otherwise fun new class mechanic has suddenly become.
Celestial Avatar Mode now:
- Requires AF generation (like Necro life force and Warrior Adrenaline, but much slower and less generally accessible)
- Requires the use of staff and/or Troll Unguent (Unique to Druid, to have new mechanic gated behind using a particular weapon)
- Requires Max AF before entering the form (Unique to Druid)
- Removes half of remaining AF if left early (Unique to Druid)
- Is unusable outside of combat (Unique to Druid)
- Degenerates outside of combat (like Warrior’s Adrenaline, only much faster)
- Cannot be generated outside of combat (like Adrenaline)
- Degenerates (much more quickly than it did in BWE3) while being used
- Has a cooldown (like most other class mechanics — not that you can generate AF fast enough for this to even matter, as it currently stands)
That’s at least nine gates to its use, and I feel like I’m still forgetting some. Plus, it has no synergy with pets at all and is not generated by them. Further, it still does no damage (therefore no tagging or pressure) and does not give the player an extra health bar (like Necro death shroud). Honestly, we had enough unique gates already (and some of those — like requiring staff and TU — were ridiculous and unfair, and needed to be removed); why in the world were we given the downsides of both Shroud and Adrenaline, with none of their unique bonuses?
By far the worst issue is its degeneration out of combat. That sucks. It’s absolutely awful. It’s possibly the very worst thing you could have done to CAF other than removing the form entirely. If I have to do the work to build the resource up over an extended fight (which I do, because currently it does not generate quickly), then I absolutely should be able to keep ALL of it, all the time that I’m running around, and I should be able to arrive at the next fight — or any random fight — and immediately start saving people — without first needing to enter combat. If you’re worried about Druids managing to heal from so far away that they’re still themselves out of combat (although I don’t see how that could realistically happen), then just put a tiny bit of damage on each of the CAF skills, and BAM — healing someone will put us in combat. But this locking and insta-resetting every time I leave a fight is absolutely horrible to play with.
As far as I know, Regeneration ticks can’t count towards building AF, because other players’ regen will overwrite ours — but you could make condi damage ticks count; you could up the amount that actual damage fills the bar; and you could absolutely (I think) make the application of boons contribute to the bar.
OR You could just get rid of the AF idea entirely, since it’s almost certainly never going to be properly balanced unless you go through every Ranger weapon and utility and put AF generation on them at various places like Necros have for their LF, and gate the form behind nothing other than a simple cooldown, like most other class mechanics.
Please: Druid actually has a lot of neat stuff they can do, and they can be really fun, but CAF is horrible to play with right now and almost impossible to properly use.