Guild Wars 2

The idea how to make CAF more user-friendly is plain and simple:

Seed of Life (#2): Effect takes place instantly, cleanses 2 conditions. Cooldown removed. Blind removed.
Cosmic Ray (#1): No longer heals. Now deals damage to 5 targets, applies blind. AoE increased to match Seed of Life.

I’m aware it’s an indirect nerf to Verdant Etching but I’d be willing to trade it for this. I could use CAF to it’s fullest and I would feel that every ability has a purpose.
Right now it doesn’t matter which one of them you use. They feel literally the same.

Anet has been steadfast in making blinds less effective in the past year or so, even increasing the cooldown on Lingering Light because players thought it was too much blind-spam. Now, you want re-introduce more blind-spam and possibly more hate towards Druid?

Wondrouswall.7169:

Anet has been steadfast in making blinds less effective in the past year or so, even increasing the cooldown on Lingering Light because players thought it was too much blind-spam. Now, you want re-introduce more blind-spam and possibly more hate towards Druid?

How would that be true?
For blinds to be applied you’ll have to sacrifice any healing you’d be able to pull off. In the current state – you have been doing the very same thing but with #2. Difference? 0,5 cast against 1 sec CD while trading heals for it.

But what happens is that passive blinds from Verdant Etching would disappear. Which is an overall reduction of Blind Spamming.

At least that’s what I think.

Thinking it the wrong way. Currently, if a player takes Verdant Etchings, the blinds are extended to Glyphs that have moderate cooldowns. With the delay of Seeds of Life, it’s easy for people to avoid.

Where your change makes it a blind-spam is Cosmic Ray. The only thing players and Anet will focus on is, “You can potentially blind up to 5 targets every half-second for 15s while Druid is in CA form.” That’s where the focus will lie.

It doesn’t matter if what we sacrifice in the end: it will be a blind-spam to people. One that will be viewed as more erratic than any Glyph & Seeds of Life in CA option we currently have.

Hmmh…

Point taken. That, indeed, makes sense.

I guess the CD could be thrown onto it. You know, just swapping the CD and blind from Seeds onto Cosmic Ray.
For as selfish as it may sound – I find the lack of tagging options from CAF just wrong. A lot of CAF feels wrong and I’m just trying to think about ways how to improve this situation.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Hmmh…

Point taken. That, indeed, makes sense.

I guess the CD could be thrown onto it. You know, just swapping the CD and blind from Seeds onto Cosmic Ray.
For as selfish as it may sound – I find the lack of tagging options from CAF just wrong. A lot of CAF feels wrong and I’m just trying to think about ways how to improve this situation.

You might not know this but you are perfectly capable of tagging while in CA. All it requires is you doing any amount of damage beforehand and actually healing others. You can even tag better than you normally would.

This was add with the Jan 26 patch.

Varezenem.2813:

You might not know this but you are perfectly capable of tagging while in CA. All it requires is you doing any amount of damage beforehand and actually healing others. You can even tag better than you normally would.

This was add with the Jan 26 patch.

I do know this but if I’m in WvW or in a plain open world PvE I have to leave CAF to tag stuff because I there’s literally no way for me to do it while I’m in CAF.

you must still be actively attacking targets to receive rewards from them.

- this was made to prevent Revenants from AFK farming with auras.

I like the idea, but not the blind spam. Think some more about #1, and I’m sure you would be able to come up with something a bit more balanced, while still useful. Maybe put a debuff on affected target, that which will allow #1 to deal increasingly higher damage for each following hit from #1 or something.

OGDeadHead.8326:

I like the idea, but not the blind spam. Think some more about #1, and I’m sure you would be able to come up with something a bit more balanced, while still useful. Maybe put a debuff on affected target, that which will allow #1 to deal increasingly higher damage for each following hit from #1 or something.

I had some, naturally.
I was just too sad to let go of the blind. I really find the 1sec CD on #2 strange. But I know removing the CD would make it ridiculously strong.

I was also thinking that #1 could apply minor damage but remove boons. I don’t think it would be that OP considering you’d have to sacrifice healing and it is quite difficult to hit with the ability.

I like the idea, but blind may be a bit too strong, could always make it a damaging condition or AoE Weakness.

Reduction in damage as opposed to nullifying the next attack with weakness or it could be torment or confusion for something different for us.

• Cosmic Ray
  - Remove the cast time, but add a 0.5s Cooldown
  - Apply 2 stacks of 5s vulnerability to enemies and a small damaging component

• Seed of Life
  - Heal on Spawn + 1 condi cleanse on spawn, and then blind on burst and the 2nd condi cleanse on burst

• Lunar Impact
  - Lower the cast time to 0.5s

• Rejuvenating Tides
  - Grant 2s of vigor per pulse (self and allies)
  - Let the water field be active even if you perform other actions or cancel the skill until the skill duration expires

• Natural Convergence
  - The damage values are different in PvP and PvE, make them the same
  - Make it a dark field