Guild Wars 2

Very lengthy!

http://www.tentonhammer.com/preview/guild-wars-2-druid-hands-impressions

This is a very well written feedback that are mostly fair and reflect what Druid is lacking, being pigeon-holed, and designed for the raid. (Even then, I doubt it’d have a place in Raid after the nerf of base healing )

It’s like those last minute ideas, suddenly realize we need a raid support class, but all specialization are revealed, so Anet can only put them on this so-called Druid.

It is also unfair that Scrapper got more universal tools in other contents, even though they’re released at the same time as Druid, as well as designed by the same person. It give me an impression of how they treat ranger, as something that can easily replaced or shafted away because it’s a class they do not care.

Well written, and spot on.

I would especially be a bit concerned as a developer, when I read this:

“I also found that the party limitations on receiving healing resulted in me sometimes being unable to heal the individual who was taking aggro. On multiple occasions our tanking revenant died not as a result of my lack of output, but because my heals simply didn’t work on him.”

Now that’s a design flaw if there ever was one.

A major design flaw. Like, raid stopping design flaw. Why make 10 player instance if you can buff/heal the 9 others + pets/minions/etc

Irenio pls read pl0x

OGDeadHead.8326:

Well written, and spot on.

I would especially be a bit concerned as a developer, when I read this:

“I also found that the party limitations on receiving healing resulted in me sometimes being unable to heal the individual who was taking aggro. On multiple occasions our tanking revenant died not as a result of my lack of output, but because my heals simply didn’t work on him.”

Now that’s a design flaw if there ever was one.

Yes that is a major flaw.

It’s stuff like this reminds new me that this game could use a healthy dose of (dodgeable) targeted AoE skills instead of all these ad nauseam ground target skills. Would be nice to have options for all ground target skills like this. I honestly feel that I’m playing the UI more than the actual game at times with all the swapping, targeting, timers, bars and this and that. It’s just really annoying at times.

Aomine.5012:

This is a very well written feedback that are mostly fair and reflect what Druid is lacking, being pigeon-holed, and designed for the raid. (Even then, I doubt it’d have a place in Raid after the nerf of base healing )

It’s like those last minute ideas, suddenly realize we need a raid support class, but all specialization are revealed, so we Anet can only put them on this so-called Druid.

It is also unfair that Scrapper got more universal tools in other contents, even though they’re released at the same time as Druid, as well as designed by the same person. It give me an impression of how they treat ranger, as something that can easily replaced or shafted away because it’s a class they do not care.

Rushed and cobbled together last minute. Given that other classes can cover its healing, and do higher DPS – because that’s what these raids are going to need, monsterous DPS – then the Duid has no place. It’s worthless in the current game certainly, but will be equally worthless in the new content.

+1

Well written and pretty much agree with everything.

The key point that I agree with the most is the whole “heal bot” feature. I would rather have a “fun” specialization than just something added that makes our class needed. I dont want to mindlessly spam heals.

Lots of issues pertaining to healing in raids and in general (healing coefficents that actually make sense and is worthwhile to take, being unable to target players for heals, not knowing which targets to heal through visual cues, the vast majority of PvE content not requiring heals, etc) that doesn’t affect just Druids but revolve mainly around the fact that the game was built for 3 years without hardly anyone needing to spec for heals. There is no existing infrastructure to support it. Its like selling an electric vehicle without a network of charging stations to support it.

When Anet decided to market healing as an important feature of HoT, they should have known the can of worms they were opening and come up with a solid plan to address these basic issues. The fact that we are now weeks away from HoT without any knowledge of how they plan to address these issues (besides the mention that healing coefficients will be adjusted) is rather frustrating to say the least because its an indication that they may have no solid plan in place and are planning to tackle it in HoT.

It’s just weird because strong healing already exists in the game. They also say Druid is supposed to burst heal yet they give them a spammable one. This is all topped off with a core class that doesn’t have inspiring dps and the insistence of mandatory healing power.

I’m excited to see where it goes from here, but I’m not all that hopeful.

heals probably just need to target prioritize the lowest health player, especially when a player is in a squad rather than a party

I agree with everything said there. The lack of flexibility, the lack of synergy, animations on some of the skills, staff lacking anything but the abillity to build up celestial force, glyphs being substandard and offering nothing when in Celestial form, Celestial Avatar being bland, the state of core Ranger, whether Raids will actually need druids and why was the spec designed with just that one mode in mind. Everything is spot on.

The real question is: will the editor delete this article to appease arenanet, the same way they deleted that awesome op-ed on the lack of developer communication?

“existing Guild Wars 2 content doesn’t require a healer. In fact, I’d even question if the first raid boss does based on how little damage the Vale Guardian actually deals. Why, then, has an elite specialization been designed to the point where it can do little else but heal?”

Excellent question. What happens to druids when players figure out the fastest and most efficient way to get through these raids and druids end up not being needed at all?

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

Puck.9612:

“existing Guild Wars 2 content doesn’t require a healer. In fact, I’d even question if the first raid boss does based on how little damage the Vale Guardian actually deals. Why, then, has an elite specialization been designed to the point where it can do little else but heal?”

Excellent question. What happens to druids when players figure out the fastest and most efficient way to get through these raids and druids end up not being needed at all?

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

And Irene thought our “support with Druid” is top-notch right now, too good that we need a healing nerf and make our healing stat essential with our support, while other classes can keep on blasting their water field, getting all the best boons, best utitlities and offense without sacrificing a thing.

Puck.9612:

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

…PRobably because a full zerk ele and no-healing power water blasts aren’t sufficient to cover unavoidable raidwide damage being constantly output? What kind of a stupid question…

The much bigger problem is when people git gud and run a healing Guard and a Glint/Vent Rev because they don’t need insurance. At that point, your only real hope is for Druid to be capable of handling both their healing so the Rev can instead go like, Shiro or literally any more damaging stance, which is not where you want the design to be in general.

That said, the dark side of this “no we refuse to have targetted heals” didn’t occur to me. I hope they at least give targetted players priority or something. Were topped off players considered higher priority (Or did the others just constantly have like 3 HP missing?)

In principle, this is a problem that can be solved with positioning, but it’s such a basic one that ti’s probably not where you want to be.

Aomine.5012:

Puck.9612:

“existing Guild Wars 2 content doesn’t require a healer. In fact, I’d even question if the first raid boss does based on how little damage the Vale Guardian actually deals. Why, then, has an elite specialization been designed to the point where it can do little else but heal?”

Excellent question. What happens to druids when players figure out the fastest and most efficient way to get through these raids and druids end up not being needed at all?

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

And Irene thought our “support with Druid” is top-notch right now, too good that we need a healing nerf and make our healing stat essential with our support, while other classes can keep on blasting their water field, getting all the best boons, best utitlities and offense without sacrificing a thing.

Yeah that kills me. You know the cele form healing isn’t going to get stronger. The base heal will just be nerfed into the dirt so you have to spec full healing to reach the same stats, meanwhile you become even less useful at everything else.

Druid needs to be more than a 1 trick pony. They should increase the range of a lot of the skills and give them heavy cc ability’s, probably condi’s as well. Any future content they create should have a variety of enemies, bosses with tons of trash mobs that need to be cc’d, enemies invulnerable to direct damage but vulnerable to condi and vice versa. Maybe even some that need to be ranged.

CC and condi would be helpful in PvP/WvW as well, and condi’s allow you to do some damage without sacrificing too much healing power. Designing content that requires condi, ranged, and control, will truly break the zerk meta and might actually make PvE interesting.

Rutee.1058:

Puck.9612:

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

…PRobably because a full zerk ele and no-healing power water blasts aren’t sufficient to cover unavoidable raidwide damage being constantly output? What kind of a stupid question…

…… You do realize you can blast a water field more than once right? A coordinated group easily blasts everyone back up to full health.

Even if raids start off requiring a healer, which so far it doesn’t sound like they do, they won’t stay that way. Anet has preached the whole “no trinity, no waiting around for a healer, anyone can fill any role” pitch for too many years. The game itself is designed around that.

I think that this article, while lengthy, is exceptionally accurate at expressing exactly what my impressions were and what some good and much needed changes could be.

Druid needs to be more than just a healbot.

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

If this game needed healers, it’d need Druids. Do you think that’s what Anet wants? No, they want players to play what they want. Druids may not be mandatory but they’re a fun and different way to play just like 80% of the builds in this game. Anet can make Druids more desirable but they’re never going to make them a requirement so stop thinking that’s what they’re suppose to be.

Varezenem.2813:

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

Sadly, even in a squad it still failed multiple times to acknowledge the one person who needed healing.

Hammerguard.9834:

If this game needed healers, it’d need Druids. Do you think that’s what Anet wants? No, they want players to play what they want. Druids may not be mandatory but they’re a fun and different way to play just like 80% of the builds in this game. Anet can make Druids more desirable but they’re never going to make them a requirement so stop thinking that’s what they’re suppose to be.

I don’t think the majority of druid players want our healing to be mandatory. Quite the opposite. They want the druid to have flexibility based on which armor you have or which playstyle you prefer.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

…I don’t think the majority of druid players want our healing to be mandatory. Quite the opposite. They want the druid to have flexibility based on which armor you have or which playstyle you prefer.

Very much so. I think in order to do that, they need to re-shuffle the minor traits to other effects (like removing the daze on Primal Echoes and replacing it with Natural Mender, then place the Daze on any weapon swap as GM minor) that are more generic and can be used with any build.

I don’t think anyone expects to be able to do the best healing in the game as well as have top offense, but I would like to be able to play offense, use Druid for additional CC and not have my minor traits wasted on healing that I’ll not do with a non-healer build.

Anet can’t fit a whole WoW class into one traitline and 15 skills. Druids are good at control and healing. To expect more is ridiculous. It can offer a few more offensive options through Celestial form to give it meaning when healing isn’t necessary at that moment, which has been Irenio’s intention since before the Druid preview at Twitchcon, but that’s it.

As i wrote, Druid isn’ t viable.

Ten ton hammer wrote basicly the same.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend man you are totally on wrong on every words you wrote.

Darkness.9732:

As i wrote, Druid isn’ t viable.

Ten ton hammer wrote basicly the same.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend man you are totally on wrong on every words you wrote.

Use a dictionary, you do not know what viable means. There should be one under that bridge, whence you came.

Excellent review Lewis. As my all time favorite class in any MMO is also the Druid (you know the one from that popular MMO) I would love to see the GW2 Druid take lessons from that class to build this one.

Celestial Avatar (tree form or boomkin) is a stance. Simplify the mechanic so they can work on what needs fixing, namely the nature of the specialization. If CA is a pure healing stance then we need a 2nd stance for damage (boomkin). We’re never getting shape shifting but the healing and caster damage of the other Druid makes that class useful in many game modes and based on last weekend’s experience we’re not far from having that here. If Anet are serious about rangers at all, be bold and get it done.

I’d guess many who enjoy this Druid never played the other because this one’s not in the same league.

People are looking for Core Ranger fixes through the Druid. This is wrong. We should look for Core Ranger fixes to the Core Ranger. Plenty of traits, utilities and weapons are subpar for PvE content.

The Druid in itself is fine. The trait line is fine. The staff is fine. The first iteration of Avatar is ok and will get more work done on it. But the foundation is shaky and hence everything suffers because of it.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

I don’t think the majority of druid players want our healing to be mandatory. Quite the opposite. They want the druid to have flexibility based on which armor you have or which playstyle you prefer.

The problem with this thinking is that people are treating the Druid like some sub-class that will be great in all modes. It’s unreasonable and people need to stop holding it up to the Chrono and Reaper as though they’re the norm. They’re not and if Anet does their job, they will be toned back so their not just a direct buff to their classes.

It’s simply a new trait line that opens up new play for the class. Druid being resigned to healbot is no different than Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic having 0 purpose in current PvE over Marksmanship, Skirmishing, and Beastmastery because they house mostly survival and durability traits.

We don’t even know what the full raid will entail and people are already opening doors to the Druid being toned down for more damage. Anet’s track record with the Ranger means we could very well end up losing out to the Tempest or Revenant after people learn the encounters enough to not need so much direct healing.

Chokolata.1870:

People are looking for Core Ranger fixes through the Druid. This is wrong. We should look for Core Ranger fixes to the Core Ranger. Plenty of traits, utilities and weapons are subpar for PvE content.

The Druid in itself is fine. The trait line is fine. The staff is fine. The first iteration of Avatar is ok and will get more work done on it. But the foundation is shaky and hence everything suffers because of it.

I would say the opposite for some aspect.

For example, glyphs are very situational, and rarely useful in any aspect of the game.
Most rangers will still stick with old utilities (Spirits for PVE, survival for WvW/PVP, signets for universal use, traps for PVP) than picking up those useless glyphs.

As for trait, it seems to be abit too focus on one aspect. Usually 3 options of each slot allow a different spec to work, whether offensive, defensive or utility, but for Druid, it all seemed to be defensive and utility. But overall the design is kinda ok.

As for Astray, it actually limits your play-style more than giving you diversity.
Really hope at least they give a decent Auto on first skill for Druid (remove the healing entirely, since the burst heal come from 3 and 4 already. AA being heal serves no purpose)

Substance E.4852:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

I don’t think the majority of druid players want our healing to be mandatory. Quite the opposite. They want the druid to have flexibility based on which armor you have or which playstyle you prefer.

The problem with this thinking is that people are treating the Druid like some sub-class that will be great in all modes. It’s unreasonable and people need to stop holding it up to the Chrono and Reaper as though they’re the norm. They’re not and if Anet does their job, they will be toned back so their not just a direct buff to their classes.

It’s simply a new trait line that opens up new play for the class. Druid being resigned to healbot is no different than Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic having 0 purpose in current PvE over Marksmanship, Skirmishing, and Beastmastery because they house mostly survival and durability traits.

We don’t even know what the full raid will entail and people are already opening doors to the Druid being toned down for more damage. Anet’s track record with the Ranger means we could very well end up losing out to the Tempest or Revenant after people learn the encounters enough to not need so much direct healing.

Imagine the QQ if they dare tone down Reaper, Chronomencer or Revenant They’re upgrades, and people already accept Specialization is suppose to be an upgrade.

Aomine.5012:

For example, glyphs are very situational, and rarely useful in any aspect of the game.
Most rangers will still stick with old utilities (Spirits for PVE, survival for WvW/PVP, signets for universal use, traps for PVP) than picking up those useless glyphs.

lol then you’re missing the point of the Druid and are a great example of the problem.

The glyphs were great in large scale fights where they allowed for condition cleansing and healing in an aoe with very short cooldowns as well as spreading out and dazing enemies. Ya know, providing the healing support Druid is there for.

Verdant Etching was amazing for support. Not slotting it was one’s own choice and a silly one given the other options.

If you’re not in a situation that calls for dedicated ally supporting, then why are you slotting Druid?

Aomine.5012:

Imagine the QQ if they dare tone down Reaper, Chronomencer or Revenant They’re upgrades, and people already accept Specialization is suppose to be an upgrade.

People can internalize whatever asinine logic they want. Specializations are meant as horizontal progression, not power creep.

Well, actually, at the moment some of the elite specs are just flat out better then the core. This applies to the Herald, Chronomancer, Reaper and Scrapper.

If they don’t tone them down (reaper/chrono/herald/scrapper) then this game will never be able to have another expansion without perpetuating a never ending power creep cycle.

The base classes will just fall further and further behind.

Maybe that’s the idea though, now the base game is free2play. From a marketing perspective they need to drive sales on the new content, and new stuff being superior to old is the age old way of doing it.

Also, not changing the 5 man limit on heals in a 10 man Raid might be by design?

A sort of position / skill check if you will, so you cant just rely on a healer to blanket heal the entire raid no matter where you are.

I know, its a very tenuous assumption.. but you never know what goes on in the minds of the Anet design team.

Sandzibar.5134:

Maybe that’s the idea though, now the base game is free2play. From a marketing perspective they need to drive sales on the new content, and new stuff being superior to old is the age old way of doing it.

If they are doing it to fuel box sales, then they wont stay as they are for long.

Marching powercreep isn’t sustainable and Anet knows this full well.

6 months from now people will be begging for new specializations and if they’re another set of direct upgrades, the game will eventually implode on itself.

Anet won’t be able to keep pve content inline with the player power (bigger numbers only works for so long) and spvp will fall apart as things become harder and harder to balance till no one bothers playing it out of frustration.

Sandzibar.5134:

Also, not changing the 5 man limit on heals in a 10 man Raid might be by design?

I think they were hoping to keep the door for 2 healers per squad open. This may even be needed in later rooms.

Sandzibar.5134:

If they don’t tone them down (reaper/chrono/herald/scrapper) then this game will never be able to have another expansion without perpetuating a never ending power creep cycle.

The base classes will just fall further and further behind.

Maybe that’s the idea though, now the base game is free2play. From a marketing perspective they need to drive sales on the new content, and new stuff being superior to old is the age old way of doing it.

I do agree, but I also know that if they tone them down, there would be riots. It’s a bad situation to be in and in all honesty, undermines all elite specializations as a concept. I believe ArenaNet should have just improved on what we have and implemented a new weapon set and skills for each profession and left it at that.

Honestly, i have to wonder, if many of the people here who are crying that Druid is useless outside of Raids, ever even played the Druid as a Healer at all.

because at the same time during the BWE3 as the Ranger forum was yelling about how bad and useless Druids are outside of Raids, people were on the PvP and WvW forum yelling about how strong Druids are.

lol. I played healer druid and it was awesome. Just need better self defense because as people figured it out, they started to do the “Target the Ranger” tactic which left me screwed since Toughness stat is pretty lacking on Cleric gear and the heals cant counter full target of the Druid from dps heavy enemies.

but the class was great. I left the beta with a nice memory in WvW when it was a three side zerg war ground in which I managed to heal my outnumbered team zerg and keep them alive far longer than they would without my heals. Was a great feeling of Support actually matters for once instead of it just being a byproduct of DPS zerker builds.

Knighthonor.4061:

“Target the Ranger” tactic

Been a tactic for as long as I can remember, I’ve played WvW a hell of a lot and the entire raid would shout “free kill”, looks like nothing has changed.

Knighthonor.4061:

Honestly, i have to wonder, if many of the people here who are crying that Druid is useless outside of Raids, ever even played the Druid as a Healer at all.

because at the same time during the BWE3 as the Ranger forum was yelling about how bad and useless Druids are outside of Raids, people were on the PvP and WvW forum yelling about how strong Druids are.

lol. I played healer druid and it was awesome. Just need better self defense because as people figured it out, they started to do the “Target the Ranger” tactic which left me screwed since Toughness stat is pretty lacking on Cleric gear and the heals cant counter full target of the Druid from dps heavy enemies.

but the class was great. I left the beta with a nice memory in WvW when it was a three side zerg war ground in which I managed to heal my outnumbered team zerg and keep them alive far longer than they would without my heals. Was a great feeling of Support actually matters for once instead of it just being a byproduct of DPS zerker builds.

Unfortunately no one is currently questioning the heal values of the druid. That isn’t the issue here ~:)

I don’t agree with everything he said, but there are some good points in there. I think most of it has been brought up in the feedback thread anyway.

We have to give Irenio time and not expect him to fix everything instantly. He’s the only dev that has to balance 2 elite spects which will only have had 1 BWE. I assume he didn’t ask for that either. On top of that, HoT releases in only 3 weeks time.

Now we just have to hope ANet gives Irenio more time and not put him on other stuff until everything is working smoothly.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

Sadly, even in a squad it still failed multiple times to acknowledge the one person who needed healing.

Please read my comment again I said sub-squad you guys probab!ly were in a single sub-squad with all squad members.

Knighthonor.4061:

Honestly, i have to wonder, if many of the people here who are crying that Druid is useless outside of Raids, ever even played the Druid as a Healer at all.

because at the same time during the BWE3 as the Ranger forum was yelling about how bad and useless Druids are outside of Raids, people were on the PvP and WvW forum yelling about how strong Druids are.

lol. I played healer druid and it was awesome. Just need better self defense because as people figured it out, they started to do the “Target the Ranger” tactic which left me screwed since Toughness stat is pretty lacking on Cleric gear and the heals cant counter full target of the Druid from dps heavy enemies.

but the class was great. I left the beta with a nice memory in WvW when it was a three side zerg war ground in which I managed to heal my outnumbered team zerg and keep them alive far longer than they would without my heals. Was a great feeling of Support actually matters for once instead of it just being a byproduct of DPS zerker builds.

The only “druid OP” threads I saw were posted before the weekend. Everyone considered them a free bag after they played against them.
Damage mitigation>healing. Druids can’t out heal coordinated spikes, and it’s very easy to just target druid first and chain cc/burst him down.

Aomine.5012:

Imagine the QQ if they dare tone down Reaper, Chronomencer or Revenant They’re upgrades, and people already accept Specialization is suppose to be an upgrade.

From what I’ve been seeing, Reaper isn’t an upgrade – it gives them new tools to play with in different situations. Not all builds would want GS/REaper traitline, but some do, and new builds popped up around it. That’s about where you want to be. This caviling is because some folks are scared of green numbers. Herald is pretty explicitly not a Revenant upgrade. It does something the other stances don’t do – just like every other stance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it genuinely was amazingly better, but that’d be because force multipliers trump selfish dps (Hey, you wanna refer to the necros? Ask ’em how they feel about still relying on selfish deepz!)

Puck.9612:

…… You do realize you can blast a water field more than once right? A coordinated group easily blasts everyone back up to full health.

If everyone stacks, you will die like a dog to cleaves. It’s the NPCs who are taking 0 damage when not directly targeted, not the humans. Well, it might be fine if everyone’s tanky, but wouldn’t it have been more dps to keep some dps and get a bloody healer?

Even if raids start off requiring a healer, which so far it doesn’t sound like they do, they won’t stay that way. Anet has preached the whole “no trinity, no waiting around for a healer, anyone can fill any role” pitch for too many years. The game itself is designed around that.

And the PvE was boring as sin and generally felt like 5 people whacking the same monster at the same time – often, in the same location! It was honestly worse than Monster Hunter in that regard, and Monster Hunter has fairly minimal direct team support. I don’t know if they needed to add healers (trinity requires tanks, but it seems like if you’ve built tanky you will hold aggro in the raids), but they needed to do something.

And no, I never cared about the ‘no trinity, no waiting around for a healer’ thing. I’m an old hag, that hasn’t motivated me to buy a game in ever.

“At no time did I ever feel that I had to consciously choose when to manage my skills – quite the opposite. It took so little thought to keep the heals flowing and my team alive that it instantly made me wonder whether I’d want to do it long term: this is from a player who has, for over a decade, played hybrid healers.”

This is worth emphasizing. For the past decade I’ve also only played healers, and it was only upon witnessing the Druid reveal that I even considered pre-purchasing HoT (I did). I just like to play healers, and GW2’s all-in-one approach has left me unsatisfied for a long while. Although trinity healing is often demonized as a “reactive whack-a-mole spam” mechanic in GW2 quarters, good healers know that healing often requires finesse, adaptability, and excellent split-second thinking: do I have time to cast my big 4 second AoE heal, or do I just keep my group afloat with smaller and individual 1 second heals? etc.

Unfortunately in this past BWE there was practically no need for nail-biting, split-second decisions on a Druid because all you did was spam heals that often weren’t even needed – that was literally all you could do. What I liked about healing in most MMOs was that it didn’t often require a set rotation like DPS builds, which I always found thoughtless and boring. But in raids this past weekend, I definitely had a pretty set rotation – that just removes the excitement of healing for me.

I’m sure everyone has their own idea of what “skillful” means, but for me spamming abilities in a set rotation without need for some foresight is the epitome of unskillful, and I desperately hope that future raid encounters (and Irenio’s changes/updates) allow for skillful Druid healing in PvE.

Varezenem.2813:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

Sadly, even in a squad it still failed multiple times to acknowledge the one person who needed healing.

Please read my comment again I said sub-squad you guys probab!ly were in a single sub-squad with all squad members.

And I’m referring to being in a sub-squad. We split our raid party in 3 squads, with me in squad 1 with our “tank”. It still didn’t register.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

Sadly, even in a squad it still failed multiple times to acknowledge the one person who needed healing.

Please read my comment again I said sub-squad you guys probab!ly were in a single sub-squad with all squad members.

And I’m referring to being in a sub-squad. We split our raid party in 3 squads, with me in squad 1 with our “tank”. It still didn’t register.

Then it’s a bug =p.

I am very disappointed how the druid turn out. It seem to me that Arenanet still have figout what they really want to do with the ranger class. Even druid specialization have nothing to offer our pets in anyway or form. why couldn’t they have putting traits that favor pets and spirits, but nevertheless i will trying out the druid all the same just because i have hope they will get it right one of this days. I really wish they can have balance game play like Aion ranger and WoW hunter class for the ranger class.

Puck.9612:

Knighthonor.4061:

Honestly, i have to wonder, if many of the people here who are crying that Druid is useless outside of Raids, ever even played the Druid as a Healer at all.

because at the same time during the BWE3 as the Ranger forum was yelling about how bad and useless Druids are outside of Raids, people were on the PvP and WvW forum yelling about how strong Druids are.

lol. I played healer druid and it was awesome. Just need better self defense because as people figured it out, they started to do the “Target the Ranger” tactic which left me screwed since Toughness stat is pretty lacking on Cleric gear and the heals cant counter full target of the Druid from dps heavy enemies.

but the class was great. I left the beta with a nice memory in WvW when it was a three side zerg war ground in which I managed to heal my outnumbered team zerg and keep them alive far longer than they would without my heals. Was a great feeling of Support actually matters for once instead of it just being a byproduct of DPS zerker builds.

The only “druid OP” threads I saw were posted before the weekend. Everyone considered them a free bag after they played against them.
Damage mitigation>healing. Druids can’t out heal coordinated spikes, and it’s very easy to just target druid first and chain cc/burst him down.

100% this. People weren’t making claims of effectiveness, they were upset it takes a few seconds longer to whack through a health bar being “extended” by healing, but every “Druid OP” post was either about our traits which have little to nothing to do outside of functionality, and our healing; meaning that at that point they were asking for nerfs to the only thing celestial form and to some extent the main feature of Druid could even do.

Celestial form was in desperate need of being support oriented and not just a healbot with exclusive usage in PvE content, and 9/10 times in PvP you’d be better off picking up the traitline and then not using celestial form ever except maybe to “flash” into it and drop 2 and 3 real quick and then immediately exit.

Varezenem.2813:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Varezenem.2813:

You can influence who gets healed by being placed in the same sub-squad as your priority target.

Sadly, even in a squad it still failed multiple times to acknowledge the one person who needed healing.

Please read my comment again I said sub-squad you guys probab!ly were in a single sub-squad with all squad members.

And I’m referring to being in a sub-squad. We split our raid party in 3 squads, with me in squad 1 with our “tank”. It still didn’t register.

Then it’s a bug =p.

Unfortunately it’s a wider issue than that. A single Druid is incapable of reliably healing specific targets, especially those who fight in melee, because the game – in its current form – has a strange way of targeting. The inability to directly select and heal an individual on low health leaves you with no choice but to hope your AOE attacks on the individual heals them. Sadly it often doesn’t and unless you play a dedicated healer in each party, there will always be moments when someone dies as a result of the heal priority and restriction to 5.