Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow rangers. I just had a cool idea and wanted to share it with you and hear your thoughts on it.

So, at the moment it seems that no-one is really using glyphs in celestial form because its duration is so verry short (not that glyphs have long cast times but they are not ground targetted so positioning takes time). Due to the short duration you don’t want to waste time using glyphs and just end up spamming the heals. To me that sounds like quite stressful and not fun at all.

Another problem is that AF generation based on ticks leads to use of fast hitting weapons and greatsword is the least optimal, this restricts build variety. I realize that it is hard to balance because you can’t generate AF based on damage either because then dps build would be the best and that is not what druid is about.

This led me to think how I would like to play the druid. One way to make it less stressful is to make celestial form like elementalist attunement that you can activate at any time. This way you don’t have to worry about running out of time and you can actually use the glyphs. Of course the heals would have to be tuned down massively and it would kill that burst healing potential everyone has been talking about.

So if Anets vision of druid is a burst healer, then this would not suffice. But I have answer for this too and it is astral force that generates trough celestial avatar heals. Once you have filled the bar you have access to massive burst heals. These heals would drain AF and after it’s empty you have to fill it again. This way AF would become a recourse rather than a condition to enter CAF.

So this would be totally OP in pvp right? Unkillable bunker druid doesn’t sound fun. well I have thought of that too. What if you just can’t capture point while in CAF? There are many skills that prevent pointcapture in this game and those skills usually include invulnerability and endless CAF would be pretty much that.

Another way to prevent abuse with self healing is to make heals scale with time. When you enter CAF, at first heals are modest but the longer you remain in the form the better they get. This way you can’t just pop CAF, heal up and continue fighting. But then again, now heals couldn’t respond to spikedamage in dungeons/fractals/raids so to these situations I would implement scaling with the number of people around you. The more ppl around the more effective healing.

With these changes would make druid more fun and less stressful to play while solving other problems (and possibly creating new ones, you never know). I thing this version of druid could work, it’s just matter of tweaking the numbers to a level that is not unreasonable.

I feel that the current druid has to much wasted potential and is held down due to pvp balance. Hmm… I just got another great idea. What if Anet created an experimental pvp arena that uses new balance changes before they are implemented to the core game. This way Anet could test out different things more efficiently without having to worry about creating something completely broken.

And lastly because someone is bound to bring this up. I’m not expert with ranger nor Guild Wars in general. I mostly do pve and occasional spvp. I know that I’m inexperienced and don’t know everything. I have not completely unlocked druid (mostly because it’s current state doesn’t inspire me to do so). I know that this version of druid may not suit someone’s playstyle. I understand this would be a massive undertaking on Anets part. I do not demand these changes and these are just my opinion of how I would like to play the druid.

And at the moment I’m leveling my new ranger, the guardian. (sorry)

I actually always liked the idea of Heals draining the astral resource rather then having it time gated.

And no, I don’t believe it would be OP for PvP at all. Simply make CC drain your Astral Bar in CAF, too (keeping the same counter-play as currently). If they adjust the resource drain according to the time gate we currently have. For example – spamming the heals would deplete your bar in 15 seconds and being hit by 10 forms of CC (1 ability = 1 CC. No multi-CC mechanics instaruining the form) the same.
That way you won’t have to “panic” everytime you enter the CAF but you’ll be able to micromanage and play around your new mechanic.

After all – you are completely useless in CAF if you’re not healing. One might call it a perma-self-daze if you don’t heal in your healer-only form.

Yes – I’d definitely love that mechanic. With all my dedication and Ranger heart.
+1

Tragic Positive.9356:

I actually always liked the idea of Heals draining the astral resource rather then having it time gated.

And no, I don’t believe it would be OP for PvP at all. Simply make CC drain your Astral Bar in CAF, too (keeping the same counter-play as currently). If they adjust the resource drain according to the time gate we currently have. For example – spamming the heals would deplete your bar in 15 seconds and being hit by 10 forms of CC (1 ability = 1 CC. No multi-CC mechanics instaruining the form) the same.
That way you won’t have to “panic” everytime you enter the CAF but you’ll be able to micromanage and play around your new mechanic.

After all – you are completely useless in CAF if you’re not healing. One might call it a perma-self-daze if you don’t heal in your healer-only form.

Yes – I’d definitely love that mechanic. With all my dedication and Ranger heart.
+1

Indeed, giving druid unlimited time but limited resources means that you can decide how to use that recourse rather than spamming skills. And as you stated, it also balances itself nicely if you just sit in CAF and do nothing.

This would also be easy to implement, or at least not as hard as my celestial attunement idea.

+1, it would make CAF much more useful than it is now if you could actually plan out the use of glyphs/heals while in CAF rather than just mash buttons before time runs out.

The skills draining astral force would feel about 50 times more intuitive. :P

To elaborate, I feel like this form’s design is such that you should plan when to use it, given its power, but it feels very weird to pop it and then just spam as much as you possibly can instead of actually use things tactically. Healing tends to work a bit differently from dealing damage that way. You more often look for specific conditions to happen or -respond- to things, whether preemptively or not.

In the current state, what happens to me is that I enter CA to burst heal, fire off 4/3 and then exit form as soon as possible. On rare occasion I’ll enter CA and cleanse, and then exit.

The reason? The longer I’m in healing mode, the more I’m impacting group DPS, the less time I have to prepare for the next burst heal, and the longer it will take to charge up. Tactically speaking, I’m avoiding being in CAF as much as possible because the benefits have diminishing returns over time. Spamming heals is a waste of time and energy.

Incidentally, this mentality renders the Druid GM1 damage trait and alternate glyphs completely useless.

Astral Force punishes you for burst healing by making you lose 50% Astral Force just from leaving it.

I say if they remove that penalty, fix #5, and make it slightly easier to generate, it’d be in a better spot.