Guild Wars 2

Not being able to use your auto attack without a target of staff makes it the only weapon to require a target and the most awkward weapon of all honestly. Please change this back to how it was before, there was nothing wrong with it in the first place.

I simply can’t feel the weapon if I can’t spam my auto attacks out of combat!

Yeah this change honestly made no sense whatsoever. So many problems in this game right now and they put resources into changing this? Why?

+1

who makes these decisions?
I mean, if the problem is that druid charge up their AF to max out before combat starts the solution is not to disable auto attack!
the solution is to NOT generate AF if there is no target.
disabling auto attack is like saying
“oh its dangerous to open car doors while the car is moving fast, lets disable unlocking doors unless the car is turned off” instead of " oh its dangerous to open car doors while the car is moving fast, lets only allow doors to be able to be opened if the car is moving at 0m/s allowing multiple other functions like the radio and seat warmers to be available"

seriously these decisions are no longer common sense! they are dealing in absolutes! like there is no middle ground with them!
oh kitten this attack is OP, lets make it Obsolete! kitten guys?

I don’t get this. Did anything really change? As I remember, the auto attack didn’t have a beam when there was no target. No beam no heal, right?

Earlier, without a target, the auto had visuals but no effect, now it has no visuals and no effect. As I see it this is a “no smoke without fire” kinda thing.

Or was there some weird way you could use beam without a target before?

It would be nice to have a beam without a target tho…

Nope, it’s not. It’s just janky as all hell right now.

Blue Hare.8612:

I don’t get this. Did anything really change? As I remember, the auto attack didn’t have a beam when there was no target. No beam no heal, right?

Earlier, without a target, the auto had visuals but no effect, now it has no visuals and no effect. As I see it this is a “no smoke without fire” kinda thing.

Or was there some weird way you could use beam without a target before?

It would be nice to have a beam without a target tho…

You could still use it though it was harder to aim the beam so you would need to be pretty close to, almost clipping into, a target to use it.

I’ll add my voice to this. I’m already just minutes into the game after coming back to work, and I’m already seriously peeved by that.

1. I can’t machinaly trigger ¹, even just for an easy way of seeing my character hold the staff in combat stance.
2. “You must have an enemy targeted to use this skill” spam is seriously annoying. I’m used to the game autotargeting for me with ¹ skills and never seeing this, or seeing it just hit nothing.
3. The gains the Anet devs get from kittening me off with this are minimal. I have other ways to charge Astral Force. Heck, I usually didn’t even bother to charge up Astral Force out of combat anyways because the Celestial Avatar skills are generally just super-awkward to use.

I think I’ve just decided I’ve given Druid enough of a chance and will just go back to being a ranger. When you Devs have decided you actually want us to use Druid, you know what classes and elite specializations need more love.

Please change this back anet

Zoberraz.2694:

1. I can’t machinaly trigger ¹, even just for an easy way of seeing my character hold the staff in combat stance.

You can assign a hot key to equip/stow your current weapon/s.

Lol, this reminds me of the smokescale active skill change.

ANet really does know how to kitten off their playerbase.

They probably did it so that you can’t build AF outside of combat which is a glitch that works and helps prep your combat. I don’t see the problem in this.

Eternal Is Sektor.9034:

They probably did it so that you can’t build AF outside of combat which is a glitch that works and helps prep your combat. I don’t see the problem in this.

In the same patch they added regen as an AF source? Yeah, that argument doesn’t make sense.

Someone please think of the action camera!

Eternal Is Sektor.9034:

They probably did it so that you can’t build AF outside of combat which is a glitch that works and helps prep your combat. I don’t see the problem in this.

Make it so you can’t generate AF outside of combat. That would be the obvious solution.

Now it’s the only weapon in the game where you can’t spam your basic attack.

Edit: It’s clearly not even about AF generation because you generate it outside of combat much more quickly now with SotW, natural healing and regens.

I can’t be the only one who NEEDS to be able to spam my #1 just for the sake of spamming it…

Not to be stomping on the bandwagon, but it was obviously a bug.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Not to be stomping on the bandwagon, but it was obviously a bug.

It’s in the patch notes.

In all honesty, this was a pointless change. This was intended to prevent Druids from gaining Astral Force out of combat but there are a myriad of other ways to do it anyway, now including regen (Fern Hound/traited shouts).

I’m not one to give a crap about spamming auto-attacks, especially this one since they added an ugly submarine soundfx to it, but yeah.

PS: Give Fern Hound some kitten Healing Power.

Anet really really hate Ranger/Druid.

Staff auto being unusable w/o target makes it the ONLY WEAPON in the entire weapon that can’t try to spam Auto-attack out of combat, which is horrible.

If you worry about out-of-combat AF regen, TU already do this much better… Stop doing unnecessary changes..

First of all, Anet does realize spamming auto attacks to build up Astral force, even out of combat, is a problem. However this wasn’t a smart fix on there part, more of a temporary one from what I can see. Make it so you’re not able to build up Astral force, by spamming staff 1 out of combat. However keep it so you can still use the auto attack. as currently, the weapon itself feels clunky.

Other basically said it. Auto attack on druid staff is now the ONLY auto attack in game that can’t be used without a target.

There was no reason for this change as other pointed out, as there are still other ways to regen astral force out of combat… If you felt that the astral force regen on staff out of combat was out of place (which it really wasn’t, it was practical-instead of spamming troll unguent constantly, we had an alternative). If anything, you should have changed that the proper way, not with LAZY PROGRAMMING.

If the reason for the change was the kittened auto attack sound, this still doesn’t warrant the change, as you had a perfect-non annoying sound effect on staff 1 in the one and only beta weekend for druid already. Oh wait, druid is still going through beta phases with such kittened changes! /s

After the AF degen out of combat into the smoke scale fiasco, it feels like you guys want to throw some kittened kitten at us each month now. I am getting seriously angry/sad. Druid now feels like a kittening cripple (no offence to cripples), not being able to cast the AA whenever I want.

I am generally a super calm person, but this is just way too much. We don’t want to deal with kittened changes each month-I would much rather spend my energy playing the actual game. kitten you ANET and look at the “No offence…” post again pleas, while you are at it put it on replay, thanks.

Makes things in WvW/sPvP a bit difficult if you are stuck on staff in certain situations. Lets say, you weapon swap to staff, someone goes down next to you and gets stealthed. Normally at this point you would try to do damage around that area and try stop the ressers from ressing and the downed guy from getting up but.. With staff you can’t really do anything at all in that situation. #1 and #2 won’t work without a target, #3 doesn’t do damage, #4 rarely works if you are on uneven terrain and #5 doesn’t do damage either. You have to wait for weapon swap and meanwhile the downed guy is up again and the momentum is lost.

At zero energy left for avatar, and out of combat, my Signet of the Wild regenerated the bar back to full in or around five seconds. In combat? Even less time.

My apologies, but the sky is definitely not falling in this instance.

Blue Hare.8612:

I don’t get this. Did anything really change? As I remember, the auto attack didn’t have a beam when there was no target. No beam no heal, right?

Earlier, without a target, the auto had visuals but no effect, now it has no visuals and no effect. As I see it this is a “no smoke without fire” kinda thing.

Or was there some weird way you could use beam without a target before?

It would be nice to have a beam without a target tho…

You’re absolutely right.

Solar Beam could never fire a beam without a target. It did the animation, but did not fire a beam. Now it doesn’t do the animation anymore, which is kind of an improvement.

However, it’s sad it requires a target in the first place.

Another vote for changing it back. Like others have said, if generating AF outside battle was the reason for this change, then you should prevent things like TU/regen generating AF outside battle too. No? Then why limit the staff? Makes no sense what so ever. Let us have Staff AA available again outside battle because now I feel like I’m holding a super kitten handicapped weapon that has a heavy deincentivizing feel to it. It’s annoying to see that red text saying I don’t have a target to use this skill. Seriously what the smeg?

Kind of messes with the feel of the weapon. Solar Beam is already one of the clunkiest auto attacks in the game, imo. It requires you to target enemies that are behind other enemies to get the most out of it, whereas other weapons with piercing mechanics work off of the front target.

I don’t think it needed this done to it on top of everything, even if the devs felt like the out of combat AF generation was an issue.

If they thought the Astral Force gain was too much with the staff auto out of combat, then they simply need to tone down how much we gain from regen, natural healing trait, Signet of the Wild and Troll Unguent.

Skullface.7293:

If they thought the Astral Force gain was too much with the staff auto out of combat, then they simply need to tone down how much we gain from regen, natural healing trait, Signet of the Wild and Troll Unguent.

Last patch Regen and signet of the wild did not increase your astral force at all. That’s the undocumented change that doesn’t feel right. It’s WAAAAAY to much astral force gain.

Troll Unguent was higher than the other heals last patch as it filled 1/3 to 1/2 your bar/cast out of combat (which felt off). But that still took 60 sec or so to do. Now you just need SotW and some light healing/dps and it’s completely full before the CD on celestial avatar is back up.

Aomine.5012:

Anet really really hate Ranger/Druid.

Staff auto being unusable w/o target makes it the ONLY WEAPON in the entire weapon that can’t try to spam Auto-attack out of combat, which is horrible.

If you worry about out-of-combat AF regen, TU already do this much better… Stop doing unnecessary changes..

Hate? I mean this patch was an overwhelming buff to druids… especially druids that don’t use staff. You can spend all your astral force and have a full bar by the time the internal CD is over now if you take SotW and do some light damage/healing.

This is the build I was running last night and I was nearly impossible to kill. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAnf8YnMqAlrgVsCWsAUtgFGBDupeV7qNjraVGgpAc5CAlsizA-TJhHABPVGg2nAAAnEgM2fAA

The downsides of the healing spring trap (high CD, low health) are completely removed by having celestial avatar available to back up heal + it’s 13 condition cleanse and stun break (traited). What you’re left with is a water field, AoE condition removal and AoE regeneration application. It’s disgusting how well these work together now.

You still have spike trap + ancient seeds + entangle +bonfire + axe throws + daze + ancient seeds to completely control a fight while putting heavy condition pressure on someone.

I no longer have to sacrifice damage to be a bunker/guard type – I can build much more offensively while having just as much if not more defensive as last patch.

I disagree with nerfing other astral force regen in order to give us a pointless out of combat autoattack back. If I were to chose between staff autoattack or heal/regen for ooc astral force regen, I’d choose heal/regen. Maybe Anet wanted players to sacrifice a cooldown at the very least when generating astral force which staff autoattack doesn’t need to do.

Also this whole thing is being turned into a much bigger deal than it is. “So clunky… The only weapon that can’t autoattack.” Blah blah blah. Nothing really changed, calm yourself.

If you want to talk about clunky, it’s the fact that staff AA could be used to regen AF OOC. To use a Druid to its max potential a player was forced to make use of this mechanic. So yeah, I’d rather just use a heal than have to aim my staff at my pet for a 50% chance at some AF regen.

Hammerguard.9834:

If you want to talk about clunky, it’s the fact that staff AA could be used to regen AF OOC. To use a Druid to its max potential a player was forced to make use of this mechanic. So yeah, I’d rather just use a heal than have to aim my staff at my pet for a 50% chance at some AF regen.

Or, ya know, we could have both and the game wouldn’t explode.

Why you people keep pretending like this was some switch flip and we can only have one option is beyond me.

Cause ppl were suggesting it. Try reading the thread before breathing… I mean posting.

Hammerguard.9834:

Cause ppl were suggesting it. Try reading the thread before breathing… I mean posting.

People are questioning the logic of preventing OOC generation by nerfing staff one while then turning around and making it so that every regen source fills it effectivly generating more than the staff spam ever could OOC.

The only person even discussing it is you in a post that seems to be arguing a position never even presented aside from one person suggesting that the new regen generation is “WAAAAAY to much astral force gain”

Hammerguard.9834:

I disagree with nerfing other astral force regen in order to give us a pointless out of combat autoattack back. If I were to chose between staff autoattack or heal/regen for ooc astral force regen, I’d choose heal/regen.

This stupid nerf just shows yet again that ranger dev team is a bunch of losers with 0 imagination. Could you please nerf all the ranged weapons AA in game, the same way you did to ranger staff. I am sure you will find reason to do it for each class. W cant let other classes to brake game with uncheck and op AAs.

ps. New border www map sucks badly, again 0 imagination.

Afaik, this was never an intended mechanic at all. If I’m right in that, crying about nerfing an exploit feels more than silly, especially since druids got an incredible boost to AF regen this last patch.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if they go ahead and change this so that it would actually be possible to target allies with the beam .

OGDeadHead.8326:

Afaik, this was never an intended mechanic at all. If I’m right in that, crying about nerfing an exploit feels more than silly, especially since druids got an incredible boost to AF regen this last patch.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if they go ahead and change this so that it would actually be possible to target allies with the beam .

The main problem is that they removed the ability to cast the AA whenever you want. They removed the “freedom” that every other weapon in the game enjoys. Reminds me of some old school MMOs where you couldn’t cast your AA without a target.

They obviously did that to remove the OOC astral force regen, which doesn’t make any sense as they introduced more OOC astral force regen elsewhere.

The saddest thing of all is that instead of doing some proper programming, they resorted to the laziest fix ever, by simply locking out the auto attack.

Medozorz.5920:

The saddest thing of all is that instead of doing some proper programming, they resorted to the laziest fix ever, by simply locking out the auto attack.

That I won’t argue against.

These so called fixes really scream out the fact that Anet/Irenio have no idea what to do with druid. Shelving my druid untill we actually see positive changes instead of knee jerk nerfing and empty promises made by Irenio… just effing delete the class if you really cannot be bothered.

Voice of reality here: Not having any problem using the staff. It doesn’t feel clunky, in fact it feels like it barely changed. If you had the time in your life to stand OOC in PvE (because you definitely don’t in PvP) to recharge your AF before heading into battle, I must question it is what you do in life. It doesn’t take long to build up AF in combat, and you would be mad to enter combat with CA on. I’ve found that by the time you’ve built it up, you’re just about ready to use it. It works well.

Dont forget that Ele flame burst also cannot be used without a target. I’m aware that isn’t their staff AA, but it shows that this isn’t just a sole treatment for Ranger.

I do agree however that the Devs certainly seem lazy in the way they “fix” things. The whole HoT expansion is a joke really.