Guild Wars 2

Lewis Burnell.2493:

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.

Yes, it’s a major, gamebreaking flaw due to lack of attention from the devs. Hopefully they’ll realise their mistake and fix it, but currently the game system itself doesn’t really support the role of a healer, that’s for sure. Of course since it was the elite spec given to rangers, it was to be expected.

jcbroe.4329:

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.

After watching a couple videos, I see the ranger stuck in the mediocre damage bunker build meta with better self healing and Druid based builds will be all about stacking with your team at a boss spamming stuff.

As it stands right now, I would never build my ranger for a team support oriented role because there are too many sacrifices needed to be made.

xev.9476:

“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.

+++1

Having played a healing class for 5 years in WoW, I came away from this BWE feeling the exact same way. Having 3 or 4 heal spells that you cast on cooldown is no different than having one healing button that you mash over an over. Where is the skill and thought process in that?

Druid needs to be about Hybrid damage and healing. that being said they can’t make dps too over the top or we slide right back into the zerk meta, which they have said is bad for the game. The heals on druid need to be far more valuable than the blasts on a water field, or even multiple blasts. If they want Druids to be raid healers then they need to go all in on healing. let our CA skills have a much greater strength with healing power.

the staff skills should keep their current dps, it wasn’t all bad, but at the same time provide better healing and also apply conditions like a true hybrid weapon. If Druid is going to be tied to staff so completely then it needs to be capable of filling the role as a hybrid DAMAGE weapon.

CA skills need to display our raw healing power, if i’m in a group that’s failing the raid and people are dying I should be able to swap in to avatar form and turn the tide. Right now that isn’t possible. If Druid is going to have synergy with spirits for support and boons then 1. spirits need much higher health since they cannot move and 2. they need to not die when activated. For the investment of my elite slot and one utility slot i can provide 3 stacks of might and rez the downed but on a long cooldown. this also requires an investment into the NM trait-line. for all these investments the use-ability should be better than a warrior banner that can be taken without a trait investment and function the same.

Irenio, you may have been given a fairly broken class to begin with but i certainly have hopes that you have a plan for the Ranger/Druid going forward.

Prophet.1584:

Druid needs to be about Hybrid damage and healing. that being said they can’t make dps too over the top or we slide right back into the zerk meta, which they have said is bad for the game. The heals on druid need to be far more valuable than the blasts on a water field, or even multiple blasts. If they want Druids to be raid healers then they need to go all in on healing. let our CA skills have a much greater strength with healing power.

In all honesty I think it’s too late in development to change anything on the druid besides minor skill functionality such as tweaking healing numbers or adding a boon or two

jcbroe.4329:

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.

basically. pure healbots will never work in pvp. when youre not doing damage, peeling, and killing people, youre wasting time and getting killed yourself. spike damage is fairly nasty in live currently. some of the elite specs take this to the next level in HoT.

I made a sturdy druid using celestial amulet and grove runes, so perma prot. had some stab, wasn’t really dying. problem was, with about 750 healing power, I wasn’t able to keep players up. my top plays were LI + natural convergence combos on a point when people weren’t paying attention to me. it really had nothing to do with my heals. in a game where we’re spiking each other for 12-15k damage, mitigation is king.

now the only interesting thing about the druid in BWE3 were the offensive builds with marauder stats. lb/gs, staff/lb, and to an extent gs/staff all worked very nicely. we could roam, 1v1, support the team, hold points briefly. I was excited about the possibilities. offensive/hybrid druid rocked. I could count on 1 hand how many druids played this way, i.e. properly, during the beta, and we were hella strong.

the worst thing that can happen now is some sort of nerf to base healing of the druid to force people to wear healing stats. given our low base HP, cleric wont work in conquest because mesmers can spike for 15k on 3k armor. celestial stats don’t heal enough and tickle people.

the best thing would be to allow druids to excel at HYBRID builds that can do damage and support the team. leave the scaling . instead improve our avatar skills, weapons and a few traits. druid needs nothing but buffs to healing AND damage.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

In all honesty I think it’s too late in development to change anything on the druid besides minor skill functionality such as tweaking healing numbers or adding a boon or two

it was already implemented in BWE3. in conquest, hybrid/offensive was the best way to play the druid hands down. the builds were there and a few of us made it work. the worst thing that could happen now would be to nerf this playstyle by pandering to pve zealots and a mass of inexperienced pvp’ers who don’t understand the profession in any way.

I have spent the entire weekend PvPing and WvWing with the druid. I tried all sorts of combinations. That famed 6 seconds daze build is totally worthless because you really have no defensive capability and you lose out on the ever useful BM or NM line.

I have settled on a WS, BM/NM and Druid trait distribution with the marauders amulet. But it has been mentioned too many times already so I will not repeat the build.

I would be ok with a tone down on basic healing for Avatar form, but if they gut it….. then I think we really wont be seeing the Druid in PvP.

Chokolata.1870:

I have spent the entire weekend PvPing and WvWing with the druid. I tried all sorts of combinations. That famed 6 seconds daze build is totally worthless because you really have no defensive capability and you lose out on the ever useful BM or NM line.

I have settled on a WS, BM/NM and Druid trait distribution with the marauders amulet. But it has been mentioned too many times already so I will not repeat the build.

I would be ok with a tone down on basic healing for Avatar form, but if they gut it….. then I think we really wont be seeing the Druid in PvP.

I think the daze on swap was bugged or something, it didn’t activate nearly as often as it should have.

On the topic of elite specs on other classes being too strong, you are wrong.

Chronomancer and Reaper aren’t direct buff to their classes They are actually doing what the elite specs were supposed to do and expanding the class with more roles. Chronomancer finally provides Mesmer with some actual support builds for PvE/WvW and a bunker build in PvP. It doesn’t buff up its dps, which was already the lowest of all the classes anyway, and Dom, Duel and either Illusions or Chaos are still better options for burst builds. Wheres the power creep?

The answer isn’t to nerf the elite specs that are actually doing their job, the answer is to tweak Druid so it actually provides something useful.

mistsim.2748:

jcbroe.4329:

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.

basically. pure healbots will never work in pvp. when youre not doing damage, peeling, and killing people, youre wasting time and getting killed yourself. spike damage is fairly nasty in live currently. some of the elite specs take this to the next level in HoT.

I made a sturdy druid using celestial amulet and grove runes, so perma prot. had some stab, wasn’t really dying. problem was, with about 750 healing power, I wasn’t able to keep players up. my top plays were LI + natural convergence combos on a point when people weren’t paying attention to me. it really had nothing to do with my heals. in a game where we’re spiking each other for 12-15k damage, mitigation is king.

now the only interesting thing about the druid in BWE3 were the offensive builds with marauder stats. lb/gs, staff/lb, and to an extent gs/staff all worked very nicely. we could roam, 1v1, support the team, hold points briefly. I was excited about the possibilities. offensive/hybrid druid rocked. I could count on 1 hand how many druids played this way, i.e. properly, during the beta, and we were hella strong.

the worst thing that can happen now is some sort of nerf to base healing of the druid to force people to wear healing stats. given our low base HP, cleric wont work in conquest because mesmers can spike for 15k on 3k armor. celestial stats don’t heal enough and tickle people.

the best thing would be to allow druids to excel at HYBRID builds that can do damage and support the team. leave the scaling . instead improve our avatar skills, weapons and a few traits. druid needs nothing but buffs to healing AND damage.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

In all honesty I think it’s too late in development to change anything on the druid besides minor skill functionality such as tweaking healing numbers or adding a boon or two

Yeah, I had a ton of fun playing marauder LB/GS druid with WS/BM/Druid and it worked very well. I know the nerf is justified to keep the sustain on glass builds from being a little too great (although its honestly worse on herald) but I’m just dismayed at the complete lack of amulet choices that provide a combination of power, precision, and healing power. The only power build amulet with healing power that has the potential to actually do damage is crusaders, which is completely held back by its lack of precision. I mean we can run marksmanship for remorseless and Moment of Clarity, but I honestly don’t think thats enough. PvP needs a zealot amulet so badly, not just for druid, but for a lot of warrior, tempest/ele, and guardian builds to truly open up.

Chokolata.1870:

I have spent the entire weekend PvPing and WvWing with the druid. I tried all sorts of combinations. That famed 6 seconds daze build is totally worthless because you really have no defensive capability and you lose out on the ever useful BM or NM line.

that hasn’t been my experience at all. it’s very effective in team fights and 1v1’s. I played gs/staff and just roamed all day without ever dying. landing a 6s Lunar Impact can net your team several kills. I ran this daze build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARWnEqAVsilsAOsActgl/AD+s2WvrLFhMQAopfVD2BFc5A-TpBFABCcEAe4CAIeZga2fYhHAAAHCAA

and did very well. you just have to know when to pop avatar. sometimes u just flash it for the stealth to get out and reset. my energy bar was always full spamming staff. it was virtually impossible to die with celestial shadow. you could try the same build with LTW staff/LB.

alternatively, you can drop the glyph and MoC, and just go BM/WS/druid. because of our reactive resets (staff 3, celestial shadow), you really shouldn’t need protective ward.

mind you, I did run a celestial stat build with NM/WS/druid and grove runes, and I was just facetanking everything.

Mist, I have tried that and version with skirmishing, NM or BM. It is not a stable build as in you will just die to a coordinated spike. Also, you will simply be out pressured by a Revenant or Scrapper. Hell, Even Eles pose a problem.

The issue with any full on glass build is that it is very unreliable without stealth. While the Ranger/Druid can get some it is not in ample supply like it is with Mesmer or Thief. We also do not have teleports.

Second part is, BM is such a huge upgrade for the pet, especially for melee ones, that its simply a bad choice not to take it. If I opted for spiders I would take NM instead of BM. But this is the build i was running by the end of the weekend:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWjEqQLLWyCOsAVLWyEM4ZaOdo+M5icPumkVA4AUwjK-TZBFABiXGQu9HI4BAswhAAgrAAA

Chokolata.1870:

Mist, I have tried that and version with skirmishing, NM or BM. It is not a stable build as in you will just die to a coordinated spike. Also, you will simply be out pressured by a Revenant or Scrapper. Hell, Even Eles pose a problem.

The issue with any full on glass build is that it is very unreliable without stealth. While the Ranger/Druid can get some it is not in ample supply like it is with Mesmer or Thief. We also do not have teleports.

it’s cool that you tried it, I appreciate that, but again that hasn’t been my experience.

because avatar doesnt have a cooldown, I had more than enough stealth. while it’s only 2s, we also get SS which allows you to reposition anywhere. maybe staff energy gain will get nerfed a bit, who knows.

I ran GS/staff, so I could traverse 2400 range in two seconds.

Chokolata.1870:

The issue with any full on glass build is that it is very unreliable without stealth. While the Ranger/Druid can get some it is not in ample supply like it is with Mesmer or Thief. We also do not have teleports.

While its arguable that Rangers don’t have as much stealth as Mesmers/Thieves, its not as far off as you make it out to be.

Between LB#3, Druid trait, and pet smokescreen, you can pop in and out of stealth more frequently than Mesmers (due to shorter cooldowns) but can’t stack it as long (mesmers have better on demand stealth but the abilities are on longer cooldowns).

Rutee.1058:

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.

so without breaking this up even further into subquotes…

Herald is not just an upgrade for Revenant, its borderline mandatory. One of the most frequent complaints on the revenant boards since its announcement is that too much of the Revenants power was concentrated inside Herald. I’m happy to provide links if needed. Reaper as a traitline is balanced but it syngerizes SO well that the class itself becomes way overtuned. Gravedigger spam on a class with tremendous access to weakness and chill is insane.

PvE was boring as sin, as you say, but while you dont mind waiting for a healer that is a big deal to a lot of us, and was literally one of the principals that this game was founded on. Arenanet can easily demand more support style specs from players by using boss mechanics without demanding a pure healer. Pure healer only re-enforces the zerker meta, because now instead of taking multiple supports and toughness classes to deal with the damage, now we’re going to be min/maxing by going full zerker with 1-2 druids.