Guild Wars 2

Druid Changes

Astral Force is now generated based on the percentage of damage or healing done:

• 1% per 500 healing
• 1% per 2000 damage

We disliked the inconsistency of AF generation between many skills which forced players to pick specific skills and thus limiting build variety. We also like to reward players running healing power with faster AF generation which was previously not the case.

Celestial Avatar now only loses 3% of AF per second (33s duration) when activated but CA skills have an AF cost attached to them:

• Cosmic Ray (#1): 3%
• Seed of Life (#2): 5%
• Lunar Impact (#3): 15%
• Rejuvenating Tides (#4): 5% per pulse (5 pulses total unless interrupted)
• Natural Convergence (#5): 30% (when the skill finishes succefully)

We felt that our glyphes didn’t really work out because players felt forced to spam Celestial Avatar skills because the whole thing was timegated. Players were basically punished for spending animation time on the alternative glyph effects which was not our intention when desinging glyphes.

I like the direction alot, but without some coffients for AF regen effectivness, it will un do some of desighn ideas they wanted to promote. For example, WHAO and and TU being almost the same AF regen wise. Dont forget WHAO got a huge buff to stand equal to TU insane AF regen. without modifications TU will not see play. Also staff heals will be less affective compared to LB damage in guilding AF(or the same) feels worng to me. Natrual healing trait that just found some play after a very long time, will return to being useless. Coffients could ofc solve all of this.

TU has its own benefits being a survival skill. I don’t think they should artificially use the druid elite spec to promote certain skills. Also TU still heals more than WHAO unless you look at multiple casts. In any build without beastmastery traited TU is a very viable option.

Dojo.1867:

TU has its own benefits being a survival skill. I don’t think they should artificially use the druid elite spec to promote certain skills. Also TU still heals more than WHAO unless you look at multiple casts. In any build without beastmastery traited TU is a very viable option.

TU even lost its survival edge now that condi removal is so much more acssesable(F5 condi removal) and WHAO can bring as much fury as TU(not that we’r short in fury uptime). Well its all “artificial” nothing is natural nor fluid with the AF mechanics. Its being played with so much for a reason. And I do think new mechanic are an opportunity to bring back undesired traits/skill/sigil/runes/ etc.. The same way heartstone trying to do with new cards, synergise with old, unplayed cards.

Dunno I still find survival condi removal superior in many situations. You have to stand in gylphes which makes them good for builds that fight on point.

You will never be able to rely on them in stuff like power ranger that has to stay very mobile and cannot wait 1 sec in a circle to clear 2 condis.

That being said, the way it is now you don’t really need TU anyway for AF. Regeneration does the same thing and already comes with WHAO.

Dojo.1867:

Dunno I still find survival condi removal superior in many situations. You have to stand in gylphes which makes them good for builds that fight on point.

You will never be able to rely on them in stuff like power ranger that has to stay very mobile and cannot wait 1 sec in a circle to clear 2 condis.

That being said, the way it is now you don’t really need TU anyway for AF. Regeneration does the same thing and already comes with WHAO.

Was talking about the druidic clarity trait, which is basicly a better SOR with 10 sec CD while in combat.

Keep in mind that we will see more elite specs than druid that you cannot combine with druid. Also the trait is linked to how fast you can actually generate AF. Right now you have it almost on the 10s cd but I actually think Anet isn’t too happy with that.

Imo the cooldown should be higher unless you have a deticated healing build with healing power to build it up very fast like I mentioned in the opening post. Let’s be real here. 10s cd all condi clear and stunbreak isn’t exactly balanced. I would HATE if they slap an ICD on that trait though. They need to get the balance right on how often you can activate Celestial Avatar and how much you have to invest into that with your build.

Personally I even think ending CA form should leave you with no AF but I know people would hate that so I dind’t put it into the opening post.

Honestly? I don’t even bother with avatar anymore. I’ve turned into a selfish healer. Number One in my book is me and my pet. If others get healing, indirectly, good for them.

My survivability and healing ability goes down, even in full cleric’s gear, if I switch to avatar form . . . and that’s beyond ridiculous.

The combination of Guard regeneration, Troll Unguent, Solar Beam, and Wisp does it better and more consistently.

Hope admitting that doesn’t get those abilities nerfed.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Honestly? I don’t even bother with avatar anymore. I’ve turned into a selfish healer. Number One in my book is me and my pet. If others get healing, indirectly, good for them.

My survivability and healing ability goes down, even in full cleric’s gear, if I switch to avatar form . . . and that’s beyond ridiculous.

The combination of Guard regeneration, Troll Unguent, Solar Beam, and Wisp does it better and more consistently.

Hope admitting that doesn’t get those abilities nerfed.

i rly do hope TU dont get nerfed or something hahaha. This is bad, i honestly dont know what to do with my ranger/druid. Either scrap druid completely and return to old builds or what.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Honestly? I don’t even bother with avatar anymore. I’ve turned into a selfish healer. Number One in my book is me and my pet. If others get healing, indirectly, good for them.

My survivability and healing ability goes down, even in full cleric’s gear, if I switch to avatar form . . . and that’s beyond ridiculous.

The combination of Guard regeneration, Troll Unguent, Solar Beam, and Wisp does it better and more consistently.

Hope admitting that doesn’t get those abilities nerfed.

Great, you said them out loud. Hotfix inbound.

Relying on healing to generate CAF is counterintuitive and rewards poor gameplay. Druids already sacrifice damage when they enter CAF—that is the tradeoff for entering the form. There is no need to make entering CAf even more restrictive and complicated, and there is no reason that CAF should not be equally accessible on different builds. Different builds should be rewarded by trait selection and scaling coefficients, not by access to the basic specialization mechanic.

Either have CAF function as a flat CD (raise it to 15 seconds to match Berzerk, if necessary, to address concerns about traits—and give a CD reduction trait) or have it function like Revenant’s energy (can enter CAF freely (i.e. not 100% full) when the lowest-cost skill can be cast, does not degenerate in form, each CAF skill has an associated energy cost/CD, and rework associated traits). While these solutions would not address all concerns, they are at least simpler to balance and rework.

There is no need for CAF to be a special snowflake. We have working mechanisms in-game already that function smoothly and intuitively. Use those as a baseline.

That would make Druids a tiny bit more useful.

I disagree with these changes.

AF percentages ticks need to be more linked with healing power. Builds with high Healing Power should be rewarded with bigger ticks of AF generation when using heals, and should get to CA faster than non healing power builds, regardless of how much heals, heal for.

Zatoichi.1049:

AF percentages ticks need to be more linked with healing power. Builds with high Healing Power should be rewarded with bigger ticks of AF generation when using heals, and should get to CA faster than non healing power builds, regardless of how much heals, heal for.

This is counterintuitive in PvE and promotes bunkering in PvP. Considering all the complaints about Druid being too powerful as a bunker (and thus the numerous nerfs), I cannot (and do not want to) see CAF being balanced around a single playstyle that is actively discouraged in competitive formats. If CAF is most accessible to healing bunkers, then it is going to be nerfed even further—and other builds and playstyles will be harmed even more.

Keeping CAF generation standard regardless of build is easier to balance and opens up a wider variety of playstyles.

AF generation should have ALWAYS been tied to how much you heal by, not by how many times you heal, hence why TU/Staff/Regen are good AF production because they tick often. But now we’re gated again by not being able to generate it ooc so we won’t have it moving into a team fight etc, this is basically a small step up from the degen but a massive step down from where it was.

And yes, a healing based spec should be rewarded for having healing power, so they should generate more AF because they sacrificed a stat to improve healing. Not that healing power needs to be reworked…..

I hate the fact that they tried to blanket AF generation by % per tick as opposed to % of healing/damage done, it’s a poor design.

Necro has numerous ways of generating LF ooc, so why can’t we? I know they’re not 100% the same but they share that similar element.

Scrimschaw.5784:

Zatoichi.1049:

AF percentages ticks need to be more linked with healing power. Builds with high Healing Power should be rewarded with bigger ticks of AF generation when using heals, and should get to CA faster than non healing power builds, regardless of how much heals, heal for.

This is counterintuitive in PvE and promotes bunkering in PvP. Considering all the complaints about Druid being too powerful as a bunker (and thus the numerous nerfs), I cannot (and do not want to) see CAF being balanced around a single playstyle that is actively discouraged in competitive formats. If CAF is most accessible to healing bunkers, then it is going to be nerfed even further—and other builds and playstyles will be harmed even more.

Keeping CAF generation standard regardless of build is easier to balance and opens up a wider variety of playstyles.

right now full glass cannon with no healing power generates AF as frequently as a healing support build, but spends less time at full health and therefore gets more ticks, thus generating af bar at a better rate. that is not good. Especially, considering anet stance on healing coefficients, healing power has less than stellar impact on how well the celestial avatar abilities heal, in addition to all other healing skills, and doesn’t scale to the extent that, for example, power and ferocity do. So why would anyone choose healing stats when you can support your team better by going zerk (or almost zerk), doing great damage, and generating AF more frequently therefore proccing grace of the land, dazing, clearing all your condis, and group healing, only to leave CA full health, no condis, and able to unload massive damage on a mob?

making af generation standard does not open up more builds, it does the opposite, it promotes taking exclusively damage stats, that old zerk meta mentality, because by taking healing power, you are often making a significant sacrifice. It sounds to me like maybe you want to play a power ranger and get the same access and benefits from CA as other builds that sacrifice damage to better access it.

LughLongArm.5460:

I like the direction alot, but without some coffients for AF regen effectivness, it will un do some of desighn ideas they wanted to promote. For example, WHAO and and TU being almost the same AF regen wise. Dont forget WHAO got a huge buff to stand equal to TU insane AF regen. without modifications TU will not see play. Also staff heals will be less affective compared to LB damage in guilding AF(or the same) feels worng to me. Natrual healing trait that just found some play after a very long time, will return to being useless. Coffients could ofc solve all of this.

You’re buying into Anet’s crap. WHaO and TU should never have been balanced around the idea that they would have different AF generation values. You are setting yourself up for a balancing nightmare which is what we are going through right now and will continue to go through indefinitely.

You don’t tweak individual weapon/ability/traits for AF generation because there is no point to it and because it is so wildly inefficient/ineffective.

Zatoichi.1049:

making af generation standard does not open up more builds, it does the opposite, it promotes taking exclusively damage stats, that old zerk meta mentality, because by taking healing power, you are often making a significant sacrifice. It sounds to me like maybe you want to play a power ranger and get the same access and benefits from CA as other builds that sacrifice damage to better access it.

Making CAF generation standard does not promote any one build. (Glass cannon builds are encouraged by gameplay itself, and the abundance of active defenses, rather than build superiority.) In fact, locking CAF behind healing puts Druid players in a worse position if they want to heal—because all of their best heals are locked behind CAF. Using mediocre healing in order to access your best healing is a flawed concept.

If Healing Power increased CAF duration (if it stays as a set duration) or improved CAF skills’ effectiveness (it already does), or reduced energy costs (if implemented), these are good rewards for Healing Power builds—but CAF should be accessible to all builds, since it is the foundation of the elite specialization.

If you’re looking for a glass cannon elitist, sorry. I’m not one. I just want Druid to be effective for more builds and playstyles than…one.