Guild Wars 2

MirrorOfNature.4279:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Harper.4173:

Enjoy being a part of raids as a cookie-cutter build. The introduction of roles doesn’t change the fact that there will be a meta – and with a meta you won’t be playing much of anything but what the meta dictats for that content.

This will be so true lol. Smallest deviations from “healing meta” build can result in a party wipe. Elitism in pugs will reach new heights.

How very untrue. I know many players would like to think you need meta build to do specific content, but its not true, atleast from my experience. Not even once have i ran a meta build, since I started the game. Guess what? I never had any problems finding group to do any content in the game. I just purposefully avoid any groups in LFG who ask specifically for meta build.
Granted we still don’t know how things will go with the raids, but I don’t see meta builds becoming the only vaible way to run them.

If raids are truly as hard as to force the best of the best to bring more heal/tanks then yes – meta builds will be a requirement.

If not then we will zerk them to no end after we figure out how to do it.
If raids are to be difficult they must require a very small margin of error – which means builds must be very tight – and you have to match that with your execution of that build.

White Hunter.3416:

Ele’s water attunement on staff is healing too. Where is a 500+ posts of weeping about it?
No one forces ppl to use this spec. Just think: Tempest and Dragonhunter absolutly useless in current PvE.

This is so dumb, it’s not even funny. Ele water attunement healing comes from laying a water field that people blast and the ele just switches back to high damage fire attunement to continue possessing the highest dps and utility in the game.

The ele is flexible because he has the equivalent of four weapons worth of skills. You are stuck with a support staff while the ele staff is top dps, top support, and top CC all at the same time so the ele is never forced into a gimmick role because he can seamlessly switch through them.

Seems rushed and lacking ideas, really want to know what it was they were working on before this. It seems like “just add healing” to everything.

I’m currently at a love hate relation with the druid… parts of it I love, other parts I hate, and to make it short about what I hate, is basically just broken down, that anet messed up the ration between nature theme and astral theme for my taste..

Thie concept looks on paper like 80% astral and 20% nature.
The whole concept would work and come over for my opinion alot better, if the design of this Elite-Specialization would have been more like a 50/50 thing, balanced between both themes, so that the player can decide for his/herself, what kind of theme they like more…

Under the current design, this specissame as worse as like the Dragonhunter, just only that it has a good fitting name instead that is actually worth it to be called a profession, where Dragonhunter is nothing but a generic title that everyone wears and not a specialized profession…

I personally expected the design to be more biologically theme, more about true NATURE MAGIC, that fits to a jungle!!!
its in the design, yes, but as said for my taste way too much underrepresentated in comparison to the superior celestial part of the whole design.

I can accept astral powers based on the sun, moon and stars as being part of the nature in a higher concept, but from a lore perspective, this whole design screams just massively out loud FAIL, what wouldnt just be the case, if the design around this Spec would be more mixed in a 50/50 ratio.
It all comes down again like with the Dragonhunter due to the reason of ANte making terrible naming decicions (for trying hard to make everything look over unique) and trying to mix multiple themes into one spec, which seem to look like black and white with each other (Trapper + Witchhunter + Paragon + Dragon Design Elite to just justify the terible name as a cover for the sole reason of existance for this design being Brahams revenge for Eirs death being forced upon our throatsfor why he becomes a DH, where thank god the Druid is just story neutral like all other E-Specs except the DH…)

I would have expected persionally a kind of Astrologist E-Spec rather under the Mesmer as a kind of Visionary for the maybe next round of E-Specs, because it would fit them imo alot better, instead of that theme beign merged into tzhe nature part of the Druid (where it makes thematically sense yes, but as i would compare it with the DH, sometimes is simly less just more, less try hard over uniqueness would suit here just better to the whole game)

How that could look like will I post later in the ranger forums

I don’t understand it either… I love support classes and i think either in pvp or pve druid will be useful class. New pets are amazing so for example beastmaster + druid in pvp will be probably a good choice, especially in spvp.

Arahzor.1832:

I think there won’t be a case, we still got waterfields and blasts and such.

Why would Arena Net design a spec that will be REQUIRED in raids if Colin Johanson said more or less that “we dont want that in Guild Wars 2” earlier this year at PAX. I will quote EXACTLY what he said.

He also said that by the time a player reaches level 80, they should have best in slot gear. And then we got Ascended armor. His explanation (a few years later): “we changed our minds” (paraphrasing).

Ok guys, yesterday Irenio unveiled this digusting thing that they call the Druid. So what do we have here?

An [F5] mechanism :

Though an [F5] mechanism could have supported the ranger core profession in some way, it happen that the Druid [F5] mechanism simply ignore the core profession mechanism : the Pet.
Instead, the Druid get a poor addition of an “healing shroud” that wouldn’t even have been strange if it have been given to the Necromancer. This is the ranger elite spec, not the Necromancer elite spec. I can understand :

- The addition of an other shatter to the mesmer
- A whole new set of shroud skills for the Necromancer
- A slight change on the guardian virtue
- A new way to use adrenaline for the warrior
- A new legend for the revenant
- An emphasis over the use of endurance for the thief
- Some gadget for the Engineer

But a shroud on the ranger, a mechanism that simply leave the pet out of the mechanism, that is unimaginable. This is a slap in the face to the ranger’s core mechanism or a simple manifesto saying : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

Utilities and staff :

Again, while staff have some though behind it and seem to thematically fit an “healer Druid” archetype, there is simply no synergy between this weapon and the pet. Plus, the glyph does not even affect the pet in the slightest and excuse me but in all honesty, these glyph don’t have the slightest “nature” feeling in them. They would be a better fit for guardian even their name fit better with the guardian thematic.

This way to totally ignore the pet, again, this is like a manifesto shouting : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

The traits :

This is probably the most laughable part out there. Out of 12 traits, there is only 1 trait that affect the Druid’s pet and it’s only affecting it as being a part of your allies that are healed around you when you use a healing skill.

So, do you really meant it that : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

Conclusion :

This elite spec simply ignore the glaring issue of the core profession that is the ranger. Giving a shroud like skill set and a life force pool like ressource to support this non sense is a slap in the face of this core mechanism. If raid are so harsh that you feel it’s better to give something that belong to the necromancer to the ranger instead of something that would actually resolve the pet’s glaring issues (that the ranger’s community is dead tired to point out) then, this mean that you gave up on the ranger’s pet.
What the ranger’s need is not the Druid elite spec (we can’t even say that this elite spec is related to the ranger, that’s laughable), what the ranger need is some intelligent work on the pet mechanic. Enough work to make it reliable at least and give it the bare minimum survivability that he should have.

NB.: I’d want to point out that this healing dedicated thing that is the druid is bound to become something toxic for the game. Healing numbers are bound to be brought down if you want a slight balance in pvp.
NB. (2): The druid specialization out heal totally the potential of one of the ranger’s grand master trait named Invigorating bound. If this trait was a threat for pvp balance without ICD, I can’t even imagine what the Druid elite spec will do in this environment.

A lot of players that have been asking for pure healers don’t do it because they want to play healers but because they can’t survive and need a babysitter. I’m sure good players and good teams will find a way to do the raids without “dedicated” healers, just everyone supporting each other and dropping the occasional heal, blasting water fields, applying regen/protection, and the usual blind/weakness etc

It’s not the end of the world.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

Kirschsahne.2081:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Zalladi.4652:

My concern with the healing though, is how would a Druid get credit for an event/kills/loot if they are solely focused on healing others?

This is especially crucial for WvW fights as an example – those on the Druid would receive significantly less credit for doing more work.

Yep….this is not going to work. Why would anybody want to be a healer when they can’t tag for loot. WTH was Anet smoking when they thought of this.

Don’t be dramatic here and insult A-Net.

People like me never played for loot. We actually played to enjoy a FANTASY game without any competition. This is called role play game for a reason.

If you wanna loot or rewards start a MMA or Football career.

You zerker kids have to get used to the fact now that there are stilld escent people out there who appreciate art and lore over any loot or violent zerking.

Enjoy being a part of raids as a cookie-cutter build. The introduction of roles doesn’t change the fact that there will be a meta – and with a meta you won’t be playing much of anything but what the meta dictates for that content.

I’m seriously sad that some classes will be reduced to their role and nothing else.
If Druid is going to be the strongest heal spec in the game – I look forward to seeing the people who asked for roles and trinity enjoy their rangers as anything but druid in raids. Which will probably never happen.

Yep. What’s really amazing is the crowing these people are doing about how now the zerker meta is over. We don’t even know if that will be true yet.

We haven’t seen a raid yet. We know very little. Two encounter types have been spoken of (that I’ve seen/heard). One where 1-2 players hold a boss’s attention while the rest do something else, and another where one person stands in melee absorbing hits while the rest stand back and apply condi. We also know bosses (all of them?) will enrage if not killed fast enough. In other words, parties will need to maximize damage by whatever means are necessary.

What’s most likely is 10 carrying full glass (direct and condi both), with 2-3 players also carrying bulky and/or heal gear. Enrage timers guarantee that people doing raids will want to kill as fast as possible, which means best gear and best spec. We’ll probably also see a requirement for full Ascended if the numbers are tight enough.

People forget what raiding was like in old WoW, before LFR. LFR opened up group content to more builds and play-styles by making raids easier. GW2 raids are supposed to be harder.

#preachingtochoir

Pretty much.
It’s very sad to see that such a huge portion of the community has been blinded by their “zerker hate” to realize that the changes that are coming with raids will do almost nothing to benefit them – and outside of raids the zerker meta still stands.

I have a very strong suspicion that the new “raid meta” will be hated even more than the old “zerker meta” because it will most likely be rooted in justified and necessary elitist and exclusionary behavior.

Up until this point being elitist did pay off ( faster and smoother runs) but it wasn’t anything big, or huge – or that mattered immensely. People cared because they wanted to – but you could let a lot of things slide.

With raids that whole picture changes – people have a HUGE goal of incredible relevance: Legendary Armor and with that will come exclusion like never before.

“PHIW” players are overjoyed at the “death of zerker” but at the end of the day zerker ( meta player) are fastest to adapt – they’ll switch gear and builds and be on their way.
It’s the casual “PHIW” crowd that is going to suffer most.

Zenith.7301:

White Hunter.3416:

Ele’s water attunement on staff is healing too. Where is a 500+ posts of weeping about it?
No one forces ppl to use this spec. Just think: Tempest and Dragonhunter absolutly useless in current PvE.

This is so dumb, it’s not even funny. Ele water attunement healing comes from laying a water field that people blast and the ele just switches back to high damage fire attunement to continue possessing the highest dps and utility in the game.

The ele is flexible because he has the equivalent of four weapons worth of skills. You are stuck with a support staff while the ele staff is top dps, top support, and top CC all at the same time so the ele is never forced into a gimmick role because he can seamlessly switch through them.

No one force you to camp cele avatar and/or staff. I saw a lot of eles camping water all the time. It is a same issue.
Ranger get’s a bit of flexibility, and that’s all.

Kirschsahne.2081:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

Kirschsahne.2081:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Zalladi.4652:

My concern with the healing though, is how would a Druid get credit for an event/kills/loot if they are solely focused on healing others?

This is especially crucial for WvW fights as an example – those on the Druid would receive significantly less credit for doing more work.

Yep….this is not going to work. Why would anybody want to be a healer when they can’t tag for loot. WTH was Anet smoking when they thought of this.

Don’t be dramatic here and insult A-Net.

People like me never played for loot. We actually played to enjoy a FANTASY game without any competition. This is called role play game for a reason.

If you wanna loot or rewards start a MMA or Football career.

You zerker kids have to get used to the fact now that there are stilld escent people out there who appreciate art and lore over any loot or violent zerking.

Enjoy being a part of raids as a cookie-cutter build. The introduction of roles doesn’t change the fact that there will be a meta – and with a meta you won’t be playing much of anything but what the meta dictates for that content.

I’m seriously sad that some classes will be reduced to their role and nothing else.
If Druid is going to be the strongest heal spec in the game – I look forward to seeing the people who asked for roles and trinity enjoy their rangers as anything but druid in raids. Which will probably never happen.

Yep. What’s really amazing is the crowing these people are doing about how now the zerker meta is over. We don’t even know if that will be true yet.

I guess when A-Net developer say in a presentation that zerker is bad for the game and they designed it so every zerker can put their build into the garbage bin, i think it’s legit.

I honestly doubt that’s a direct quote. What was the direct quote?
I’m very aware of the fact Anet’s devs are very disconnected from the game as it is – I’m pretty sure people will find ways to do raids the devs never thought of.

Kirschsahne.2081:

Jonbon.5126:

Kakapo.5230:

I don’t like where this is going. Required healers means that forming groups will be harder, and more people will be excluded. Several classes have no viable group healing options, and this brings me back to the days when I played WoW, when pure DPS classes were stuck in one overpopulated niche no one wanted when forming groups.

Not to mention if you are a ranger people will cry and moan that your not a healer. I don’t understand why a ranger becomes a healer anyways. I mean seriously, did you roll a ranger to dps or heal?

You are not a ranger anymore you are a Druid.
If you turn it off and go back to Ranger you can play the DPS build.
I don’t see your problem

And what if you want to play a ranger but people will only take you if you’re a druid. What happens then?

Orpheal.8263:

I’m currently at a love hate relation with the druid… parts of it I love, other parts I hate, and to make it short about what I hate, is basically just broken down, that anet messed up the ration between nature theme and astral theme for my taste..

Thie concept looks on paper like 80% astral and 20% nature.
The whole concept would work and come over for my opinion alot better, if the design of this Elite-Specialization would have been more like a 50/50 thing, balanced between both themes, so that the player can decide for his/herself, what kind of theme they like more…

Under the current design, this specissame as worse as like the Dragonhunter, just only that it has a good fitting name instead that is actually worth it to be called a profession, where Dragonhunter is nothing but a generic title that everyone wears and not a specialized profession…

I personally expected the design to be more biologically theme, more about true NATURE MAGIC, that fits to a jungle!!!
its in the design, yes, but as said for my taste way too much underrepresentated in comparison to the superior celestial part of the whole design.

I can accept astral powers based on the sun, moon and stars as being part of the nature in a higher concept, but from a lore perspective, this whole design screams just massively out loud FAIL, what wouldnt just be the case, if the design around this Spec would be more mixed in a 50/50 ratio.
It all comes down again like with the Dragonhunter due to the reason of ANte making terrible naming decicions (for trying hard to make everything look over unique) and trying to mix multiple themes into one spec, which seem to look like black and white with each other (Trapper + Witchhunter + Paragon + Dragon Design Elite to just justify the terible name as a cover for the sole reason of existance for this design being Brahams revenge for Eirs death being forced upon our throatsfor why he becomes a DH, where thank god the Druid is just story neutral like all other E-Specs except the DH…)

I would have expected persionally a kind of Astrologist E-Spec rather under the Mesmer as a kind of Visionary for the maybe next round of E-Specs, because it would fit them imo alot better, instead of that theme beign merged into tzhe nature part of the Druid (where it makes thematically sense yes, but as i would compare it with the DH, sometimes is simly less just more, less try hard over uniqueness would suit here just better to the whole game)

How that could look like will I post later in the ranger forums

+1

Substance E.4852:

Halan.7931:

It may be amazing, but it’s not what I expected. Those shoulders with animals and staff created some expectations about either plant-magic (like Entangle), or some animal forms/aspects/claw kits, but not about being a shiny transparent fairy. My ranger is Norn female, but now I’m thinking maybe I should make a sylvari… but I have a sylvari guardian.

Since I’ve done my share of healing in another game, I’m not opposed to healing, only to visual theme. At least it’s not clicking on green rectangles.

The leaked trait that referenced Aspects makes me think they ended up redoing the whole thing at the last moment and went with what fit the heal spam theme.

The shoulder pads and tree staff definitely do not match the celestial theme.

i have the same impression that what they were going for initially didnt work thats why they reworked a lot – that would also explain why the animations are mostly very “simplistic”.

Harper.4173:

And what if you want to play a ranger but people will only take you if you’re a druid. What happens then?

Then dont join that group? just as people who don’t like zerker playstyle join other groups/make their own.

Zalladi.4652:

My concern with the healing though, is how would a Druid get credit for an event/kills/loot if they are solely focused on healing others?

This is especially crucial for WvW fights as an example – those on the Druid would receive significantly less credit for doing more work.

No change from now, where playing guard or even warrior nets you 10 times as many bags as playing support ele does- yet I prefer (lag permitting) playing support ele. Anet don’t design things around wvw (or even tagging for loot, it seems) and it’s probably not even been mentioned in any planning meetings when designing it.

I’m sure when he first said no healers that was when Druid wasn’t going to be a healer.

EdwinLi.1284

Healer does exist in GW2, it is just few bother to use the Healer builds or just never bothered noticing the existance of healer builds.

Current heal specs are builds that focus more on healing and support than others, but aren’t dedicated to it nearly as much as the Druid. No other class has all of their weapon skills being used for healing. I think mace/shield guardian is the closest to that, and that’s hardly fully focused on healing.

Leo G.4501

Op, you don’t find it rude to accuse someone of lying? Have you ever considered you have a bias that imposed a certain viewpoint of the game’s situation and balance? And would it be a bad thing to take in the perspectives of other players in regards to balance, previous, current and future?

It’s not just one person’s viewpoint, it’s what the devs outright stated years ago (and have continued stating through present day). That there would be no waiting for a healer to complete your party, that you could take whoever you had complete any content. We can’t say for certain whether or not that core philosophy is being abandoned, but given today’s info I think it’s reasonable to question it.

It’s unique for GW2 because this game wasn’t supposed to have a trinity. It will now.

C’mon look at the necro changes aswell, i bet healing will be a thing for raids at least.

Orpheal.8263:

I’m currently at a love hate relation with the druid… parts of it I love, other parts I hate, and to make it short about what I hate, is basically just broken down, that anet messed up the ration between nature theme and astral theme for my taste..

Thie concept looks on paper like 80% astral and 20% nature.
The whole concept would work and come over for my opinion alot better, if the design of this Elite-Specialization would have been more like a 50/50 thing, balanced between both themes, so that the player can decide for his/herself, what kind of theme they like more…

Under the current design, this specissame as worse as like the Dragonhunter, just only that it has a good fitting name instead that is actually worth it to be called a profession, where Dragonhunter is nothing but a generic title that everyone wears and not a specialized profession…

I personally expected the design to be more biologically theme, more about true NATURE MAGIC, that fits to a jungle!!!
its in the design, yes, but as said for my taste way too much underrepresentated in comparison to the superior celestial part of the whole design.

I can accept astral powers based on the sun, moon and stars as being part of the nature in a higher concept, but from a lore perspective, this whole design screams just massively out loud FAIL, what wouldnt just be the case, if the design around this Spec would be more mixed in a 50/50 ratio.
It all comes down again like with the Dragonhunter due to the reason of ANte making terrible naming decicions (for trying hard to make everything look over unique) and trying to mix multiple themes into one spec, which seem to look like black and white with each other (Trapper + Witchhunter + Paragon + Dragon Design Elite to just justify the terible name as a cover for the sole reason of existance for this design being Brahams revenge for Eirs death being forced upon our throatsfor why he becomes a DH, where thank god the Druid is just story neutral like all other E-Specs except the DH…)

I would have expected persionally a kind of Astrologist E-Spec rather under the Mesmer as a kind of Visionary for the maybe next round of E-Specs, because it would fit them imo alot better, instead of that theme beign merged into tzhe nature part of the Druid (where it makes thematically sense yes, but as i would compare it with the DH, sometimes is simly less just more, less try hard over uniqueness would suit here just better to the whole game)

How that could look like will I post later in the ranger forums

I just said it differently, but basically we have the same opinion.

Just forgot to talk about the fact that glyphs feel a lot like elementalist spells !

Having finally had a chance to see the Druid reveal on Twitch, a few things have been made quite apparent:

1.) The Druid shown was not the Druid developed.

2.) The Druid shown is incomplete, unfinished work.

3.) The Druid shown is poorly designed.

4.) The Druid needs more development time.

Since in the end, we all know your company, as a whole, will never actually listen to your customers and will instead listen to the metrics well after the customers have spoken and warned; Look back on your metrics and notice the dive when players realized your initial promises were not going to be met. Notice the dive when players realized that the majority of content assured was conspicuously absent from the game, and that the manifesto is now a laughable comedy to watch. Look back and notice the dive when your team of amateur fanfic-inspired writers butchered the game’s lore and you had to scramble to try and patch it up as best you could. Your game is gaining short-term followers and you are alienating the long-term ones with every single development decision you make.

See the forest and the trees, ArenaNet. The forest may be growing, but your trees are developing root rot exponentially. We both know that by now, you can see the boundaries of your potential growth and that rot will catch up and consume the forest if you do not take the time to fix it as a priority.

As a suggestion, which I have have brought up in the past and will do so again here, despite the fact that this thread will most likely never be read by a developer: Re-implement the rating and comments box used during beta.

During the beta, whenever a player would complete a piece of content (and occasionally simply while out in the open world), they would be presented with a pop-up window in the upper left, offering them the opportunity to rate the content they had just experienced, as well as leave any additional comments in a text-box comments section provided in the window as well.

This allowed ALL players the ability to speak up about their experience without having to invest time into the forums which represent a tiny fraction of the playerbase. Providing a rating system allowed the fast-paced players to provide input without slowing them down, and the provided comment box allowed the more in-depth players to write at length, giving even more information, suggestions, etc.

Having this box presented in-game meant you never had to break away from the game if you did not want to, and meant that you didn’t have to invest in the forums, or suffer the toxicity of online communities for speaking your mind, which is a huge factor for many players/customers.

Provide this as an opt-in/opt-out toggle in the options menu. Toggle it on by default, but allow the option for it to be disabled, with a clear warning/explanation that by turning it off, they will be unable to provide quick, easy suggestions and feedback.

Whoever designed these changes has been playing waaay to much DotA 2. But they look amazing, maybe even enough to make me come back and play :O

I had absolutely zero desire to be a dedicated healer and I don’t know of any other Ranger main who did. That being said, some of the Druid traits looked okay and the bulk of the healing focus is on the staff skills. I may just spec into Druid and discard the staff completely. Even without the staff you can offer some group support from Reverse Death Shroud form.

Watching the start of the reveal felt a bit like being punched in the gut but it got mildly better as it continued. The new pets were definitely the high point for me. They all look nice. Some of the glyphs could also be useful in regular play. I’m still not really sure what to make of Druid. It’s not even close to anything I could possibly have wanted but I’ll wait until next week’s BWE to see if I can do anything with it.

Mitch.4781:

kiwituatara.6053:

Yea the Druid was nothing I had hoped for, but its not bad. Rangers still not gonna be picked up for dungeon/fractals, but I think we’ll see it used more often in WvW and PvP and maybe Raids depending how its designed

I have never EVER not been booted from a dungeon or fractal for being a ranger. I think this urban myth should just die already

I have never been to Idaho. Does that make it an urban myth?

Things are split, yes. I wasn’t expecting a heavy-oriented healer with the Druid. As someone that mostly does PVE, the changes kind of interests me, but more about what is going to change in the new areas.

I can see potential for Druid in WVW and PVP, but there’s still room for doubt. A healthy dose of it, mind you, as I will have to try it out before making a final judgment. I’d rather not be completely against it, or in love with it without a test run.

New pets look cool though, and I have already voiced my concerns on them. They have an apparent downside that people overlooked due to fancy F2 skills, but no doubt, there is room (still, hopefully) for improvement.

A logical deduction of this thread is that they should completely rework every single elite specialization…
…Hand in hand with every class and probably even the content of the very game.

I’m not sure if you realize but all the skills are copy-paste animations. That’s exactly it. This game never had unique stuff for every action alone.

Moreover, from what I read, you are simply dissatisfied that your expectations didn’t meet reality. Just like another couple of thousands of players. ANet is not forced to fulfill your expectations. Their job is to create a concept that people might fall in love with. You don’t have to. There’s 8 other classes around.

You haven’t mentioned anything about viability. You said “Elite Specializations bring no synergy because they were created for PvP”. You also mentioned that Druid doesn’t use nature magic. That he doesn’t spawn plants.
And almost none of it is true. From my perspective, this thread is holding a vast emotional affection from someplace different than druid itself. Almost everything you say he lacks – he doesn’t.

I, however, agree on the in-game feedback option you mentioned. That is an amazing idea to have. But then I was thinking whether the feedback should be just like this thread and I cut the idea in half.
Reading how people want me to re-create everything I worked on for several months “just because of personal feelings without a single rational explanation of balance or logical context”… No, I wouldn’t really need that.

Hear the argument about people who rolled ranger not wanting to be a healer a lot. I’m sure most who rolled a necromancer never did so to be a melee class. But yet Reaper is a melee class and changes how a necro plays completely. Even more surprisingly, a lot of necros ended up liking it after a couple of beta weekends.

If you really don’t want to be a healer, then stick with the ranger. Just as there are necros not wanting to take on the Reaper, as they prefer to be ranged caster instead. But you should give it a try before tossing the idea out of the window. You may be surprised.

Key thing here is Druids provide you with options and a completely new playstyle. Be glad you are now among the few classes that actually got elite specs that provided all new gameplay options. Choices is a good thing. And early speculation puts Druids right into the meta in all 3 game modes. That imo, is huge.

All I’m saying is give it a try before saying no. I hated GS on the necro during BWE1, but by BWE2, I loved it. Just make sure you provide plenty of feedback during the next beta weekend so devs can make proper tweaks and adjustments. My ranger has been on the shelf since forever, but this Druid elite spec is going to get me to dust him off and likely make this my primary alt I play.

I think Celestial form weapon skills could be much more interesting in my opinion. Something I noticed about Druid in general is that they don’t have much that combos with itself. Celestial weapon skills for example, a heal, a heal and condi cleanse, a heal and daze, a heal and water field, massive damage and CC while rooted. Even skill 3 with a blast finisher can’t be used with skill 4’s water field. There is no order you could use any two or more skills to cause them to become more effective. Same is true of staff. One thing I can think of is using the AoE pull from a glyph utility into skill 5 of celestial form but like, what else?

EDIT: Maybe taking the blast finisher off skill 3 and putting it on skill 2? More could be, however.

Ariete.6509:

you’re obvisouly a “glass half empty” kind of person.

So rest assure that NOTHING would suffice to you.

Nope. I’m someone that think that discarding the ranger class mechanism to give a necromancer class mechanism is incridibly and stupidly bad design.

There is nothing like “glass half empty” in me and if you had read what I’ve wrote you would have understand this much.

First impression balance change suggestions (this is all I could come up with, everything else looks good):

Sublime Conversion (Staff)

• the projectiles become unblockable

Just make sure these converted healing projectiles can’t be reflected back to heal the foes that fired them.

Glyph of Rejuvenation

• reduce cast time from 1s to 1/2s
• radius increased from 300 to 600
• Celestial Form version heals self for full amount as well

The heal seems very weak compared to existing heals (from a selfish point of view). If it had a short cast time it might be able to compete.
300 radius is too small for a party buff. Spirits have 1000 radius. Shouts have 600 radius. Glyphs shouldn’t only have 300 radius.
The Celestial Form version seems odd. If the party needs a heal, then so does the Druid. The Druid also won’t have his own heal skill while the rest of the party still has theirs.

Glyph of Empowerment

• +10% changed to +20%
• Radius increased from 300 to 600

10% damage with 25% uptime sounds very weak. Either increase the damage or the duration.
Again, 300 radius is too small for a party buff. Spirits have 1000 radius. Shouts have 600 radius. Glyphs shouldn’t only have 300 radius.

Cosmic Ray (celestial form)

• 3 pulses

It looks like this skill has to be constantly used to be effective. It’s annoying to have to constantly press 1 while aiming with your mouse and moving at the same time.

Lunar Impact (celestial form)

• 3s daze decreased to 1s

3s daze can be increased to 6s with Moment of Clarity trait. With 5s cooldown this skill would easily be able to permanently daze on its own. Depends on how long you can stay in celestial form of course and if this is by design.

• Alternative: change +100% daze from Moment of Clarity into +1s daze and make Ranger daze skills stronger baseline (1.5s to 2s on Hilt Bash, 1.5s to 2s on Concussion Shot).

Celestial Shadow (trait)

• 2s increased to 5s

2s of stealth and 2s of super speed sounds extremely short and not worth the trait compared to the other 2 choices. Depends on how often you can enter/exit celestial form of course.

Nemesis.6938:

I am not sure about the druid…i dont think it is “bad” regarding efficiency, i rather think it it is “bad” regarding the whole class focus and mechanics because

1) healing, some more healing, a bit healing on top of that followed by more healing – okay we get it…could have put a few more things in there

2) Since the druid is so heavily focused on healing, this means it is either not necessary and useless in pve or EVERY group will have to have a druid…going away from zerker meta to “you have to have a druid” meta which…

3) brings us to point 3 – making the guardian or other heal classes incredibly pale and useless in comparison – congratz u made a class useful at the cost of another

4) I dont see any synergies with the pet… if this is still a pet class and you want it to have and use a pet and BUILD SYNERGIES IN

5) Moreover, i dont see a lot of synergies with existing traitlines…

I dont know, looking at the scrapper it fits into the engi and the existing stuff wonderfully….looking at the druid it feels like a completly new class instead of an elite and like one that doesnt fit into the existing game mechanics at all…

AND – yes, the animations are REALLY bad…the skills which the roots that was shown in the first trails looks good…pretty much everything else looks horrible – especially the transformation (is that a joke?)…. we have wonderful norn shapeshifting animations and than you come with that cheap kitten transformation? GW2 has always been the game with some of the best animations in the mmo space – but this?

The class really feels to me that what they wanted to make didnt work so they had to scrap something together very hastely…shame

I totally agree with everything You’ve written here. You’ve pointed out the very point that make this elite spec problematic.

Sarrs.4831:

This is kinda what specializations are for.

They’re really not. At least some aren’t, and the ones that are shouldn’t be. You may have heard the “offense, defense, mixed” philosophy. It is an idea that the elite specialization should have different kinds of traits/utilities that will synergize with different styles of play. You see it on the reaper, the daredevil, the chronomancer, the herald, the scrapper, the tempest, and somewhat on the guardian and the berserker.

But the druid doesn’kittens all heals and cleanses. I think there was maybe one offensive trait in the whole bunch.

I’m sort of delighted. The majority of people seemed to want nature magic, group support, a staff, and nothing to do with the pet. They got pretty much all of that at once with the spec. And though that wasn’t my thing, i’m still looking forward to the green numbers i can push out. Wondering how absurdly one can push out a Nomad BearStaff build.

But since all this has been covered at once, now there’s room for the next expansion to take us into a different direction with another spec, whether it’s down the warrior path as a rifle/pet hunter or down the yeoman thief path in Robin Hood style. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but i’ve got plenty of time.

And we still got new pets to play with until then. <3

Ok, I didn’t read everything but for what I understood, lots of players are unhappy with the druid design.

druid name
Personnaly I find it surprising but not wrong. In GW lore druids where connected to plants indeed. But the celestial lore always was very important in GW too. I agree a bit more “planty” would have been nice, but I really find the celestial form cool.
Ofc those who discover druids with wow are disapointed, but this is gw and this druid desing isn’t wrong when it comes to gw lore.
But I think another name would have better suit this spec indeed, but druid isn’t the only one in that situation^^.

druid gameplay
elite spec are here to give another gameplay to each class so druid is fine. Personnaly it is the first time that I want to play ranger. I have a lvl80 ranger but I have no fun at all playing it and druid might change that. But I have to admit I’m a bit surprised that anet release a healer spec (but ele rev guard can be really good healer too)

Tragic Positive.9356:

A logical deduction of this thread is that they should completely rework every single elite specialization…
…Hand in hand with every class and probably even the content of the very game.

A hasty deduction which is inaccurate and based upon speculation beyond what I have written, and therefore not logical.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I’m not sure if you realize but all the skills are copy-paste animations. That’s exactly it. This game never had unique stuff for every action alone.

In regards to the first sentence, no they are not. Some are, some are not. Those that are, are actions that are inherently identical (ie: using a variable, but limited set of hand flourishes for staff casting that are the same across any class using a staff in a magical, ranged fashion). However, when designing new content, the content itself should be inherently new. Re-using old assets is fine, but there is a line between sensibly re-using assets such as in the example provided, and over-using them to the point of it being a shortcut to “develop” content faster.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Moreover, from what I read, you are simply dissatisfied that your expectations didn’t meet reality. Just like another couple of thousands of players. ANet is not forced to fulfill your expectations. Their job is to create a concept that people might fall in love with. You don’t have to. There’s 8 other classes around.

They are a company designing a product. Their job is to satisfy/fulfill customer expectations, that is the way business works. Do they have to? No, certainly not, but it is poor business not to satisfy customers. I am one person in a sea of many, many others but simply because mine is only one perspective, does not invalidate it as a perspective worth being presented.

You wanted to mention logic earlier, this is the classic gaming version of the either-or fallacy – effectively saying “If you don’t like it, do something else” – whilst simultaneously appealing to authority. Simply because ArenaNet is the game developer does not mean that all of their choices are the right ones. Likewise, just because I have a complaint does not mean my complaint is simply “right”. They are a company and I am a customer – we are both involved, just in different ways. I’m a human being engaged in opinionated dialogue, of course there is going to be inherent bias.

Tragic Positive.9356:

You haven’t mentioned anything about viability. You said “Elite Specializations bring no synergy because they were created for PvP”. You also mentioned that Druid doesn’t use nature magic. That he doesn’t spawn plants.
And almost none of it is true. From my perspective, this thread is holding a vast emotional affection from someplace different than druid itself. Almost everything you say he lacks – he doesn’t.

If you want to quote me, quote me. Do not lazy-quote, ripping away actual word usage and context.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I, however, agree on the in-game feedback option you mentioned. That is an amazing idea to have. But then I was thinking whether the feedback should be just like this thread and I cut the idea in half.
Reading how people want me to re-create everything I worked on for several months “just because of personal feelings without a single rational explanation of balance or logical context”… No, I wouldn’t really need that.

The last part of this section is precisely why you most likely do not, and most certainly should never work in any profession that involves you receiving criticism. Game development simply is a business where criticism is necessary, hence why ArenaNet is bothering with beta tests at all. You critique my offering a suggestion, but go on to insert your anecdotal, personal preference regarding a hypothetical as a reason for not implementing the suggestion. Sound familiar? Because it should.

I am sure it’s been revealed last because they had to rework it. It should have been revealed between the Reaper and the Tempest, but they had to rework it.

I thought they would come with something super innovative, they had to take time to make something new that takes a lot of efforts, with unique mechanics, improving the pets etc…
But no. Obviously they just didn’t know what they wanted to do with that spec, that’s why it took them so long. In the end we have a spec that has nothing really innovative machanically, they just added healing healing healing on everything, they completely missed the nature, plants and animals theme…

It has clearly been rushed. If it hasn’t been rushed, then it’s even worse because it means they put a lot of efforts into something they didn’t manage to make good !

@Daniel Handler.4816
Only in the fantasy lores, not in actual driidis (druids) and created by people who live in different cultures. That is also why I stated it, that it has nothing to do with any kind of lore in the beginning of my message.

Druids are more related with Lyra than any moon… Its from my civilization and I know druids… So I dont disagree that druids are celestial. They did the right thing. Our symbols is the SUN, we never use moons.

:)

ps: even Asterix and Obelix cartoon is driidis (they possess ancient knowledge and they live in nature), its the roman edition of druids. And my point writing this, is not to confuse magic with druids, its a different story.

And think about it, simple logic. Nature/plants/trees/animals, etc needs the SUN in order to live and grow and eat… what makes druids so gothic, if moons are related with them. Witches and wizards actually relate with the moon.

And this is a bad thing how exactly? …

Pretty much everyone asked for an actual challenging content. They gave classes much more focused roles in order to provide something that requires thinking and finally get rid of the braindead zerker meta.

It’s not like only Druid can heal… Ventari/Guard/Mesmer, even Ele can heal as well.

Also, who said that raids will be easy enough to be completed by pugs? You might never see stuff like that on chat once people realise that they need a team/guild in order to actually complete a raid.

Last but not least, I’d rather have groups looking for healers rather than Ice Bow providers.

Ojyh.9842:

I am sure it’s been revealed last because they had to rework it. It should have been revealed between the Reaper and the Tempest, but they had to rework it.

I thought they would come with something super innovative, they had to take time to make something new that takes a lot of efforts, with unique mechanics, improving the pets etc…
But no. Obviously they just didn’t know what they wanted to do with that spec, that’s why it took them so long. In the end we have a spec that has nothing really innovative machanically, they just added healing healing healing on everything, they completely missed the nature, plants and animals theme…

It has clearly been rushed. If it hasn’t been rushed, then it’s even worse because it means they put a lot of efforts into something they didn’t manage to make good !

How does it feel rushed when it makes the class greatelly desirable?

Druid is by far the best healer in game. Only ventari can compete and that only in sustain healing maybe, still not a better healer than druid. Raids will require druid(s). WvW will require druids. PvP will require Druid. Even in open world pve/fractals/dungs druids will be of great help, might even be needed (healers not druids in general, but you get the picture) if they make the game actually challenging by updating the current dungs/fracts.

I didn’t think they’d make druids solid healers, but I’d rather have it as it is now, than have it as a shapeshifting damage dealer that would be all show and nothing actual useful to the table.

Stop complaining. Rangers just got a VIP ticket straight to the top of the meta. First class and all.

neurosis.6350:

Okay, guys. I see your point of view.
Despite of our different imagination of what natural spells are (I still think that Solar\Lunar spells are kinda astral spells :P) all I want is possibility to damage in Celestial form. You know, I’ve been playing Ranger from the very beginning and I’d like to see another damage skills since I play most of the time alone. I would realy appreciate that my Ranger would get another skill set with another weapon and visuals just to do story\exploring alone. Why do I want to damage in Celestial form? Because I don’t want to just pass through such cool spell (despite even that it not meets my expectations of more natural tree-leafy-spirit-whatever form). Since my druid have it why can’t I just use it to dps to?
Make it just a li’l bit more powerfull than staff. I’m OK with that I won’t play as DPS in Raids as druid. But I’m think that it’s unfair to take our opportunity to deal damage in Celestial form.
It’s like to have a big candy but you HAVE to eat it with wrapper

Check out the druid forum. There are a few threads talking about offense oriented druids with both power and condi builds.

Celestial form is a REALLY strong sustain set up that we get for free just by speccing druid. That’s what is so great about it. You can build your druid to focus on damage and control while still having the celestial form to fall back on to heal back up or whip out some strong group support in team fights. Rangers have always been weak in team situations and now we have an option to bring team support in addition to what we normally bring without giving up all that much.

Know how every ranger has to spec into Wilderness Survival for the condi cleanse? You can drop that and take Druid. Take Druidic Clarity and now entering Celestial Form cures ALL conditions on you when activated. Which itself has it’s own condi cleanse skill. Still worried about conditions? Take Verdant Etching to cure even more by using Glyphs. Or, if you feel you can handle condis without it, take Natural Stride and get perma swiftness movement speed without using a single skill to maintain it. Like Longbow 4? Good. Because with the grandmaster trait Ancient Seeds you can lead with the knockdown and then strike your target with Rapid Fire to immobilize them. Pretty much forces them to eat that Rapid Fire.

Druid doesn’t have to be a healbot unless you make it so.

cafard.8953:

[…] And though that wasn’t my thing, i’m still looking forward to the green numbers i can push out. Wondering how absurdly one can push out a Nomad BearStaff build. […]

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Healbot.

Take it as a challenge and go full healer with Nomad, the staff and a Fern Hound pet. Then activate Oprah mode, “You get a heal! You get a heal! Everybody gets a heal! Nobody goes home dead today!”

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

And this is a bad thing how exactly? …

Pretty much everyone asked for an actual challenging content.

To be precise, a small number of forum posters asked for it. For a large part of player community current content is already challenging enough, and many others do not care.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

They gave classes much more focused roles in order to provide something that requires thinking and finally get rid of the braindead zerker meta.

No point in removing one meta, if it’s done through introducing another, even more strict meta.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Also, who said that raids will be easy enough to be completed by pugs? You might never see stuff like that on chat once people realise that they need a team/guild in order to actually complete a raid.

Because within guilds there will not be situations where a leader needs to roll a dice to see which of the guildmembers will be forced to play the healer (because all the players that liked playing healer role left 2 years ago). Yeah, right.

Let’s be honest, healers are a bottleneck in other games, because this is a role that is unappealing to a large majority of players. And most players that found it appealing left GW2 long ago.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Last but not least, I’d rather have groups looking for healers rather than Ice Bow providers.

Don’t worry, you won’t see any icebow in action after the next Tuesday. It won’t lessen the desirability of eles in groups in the tiniest.

Guild Wars 2 is all over the place at the moment. It can’t decide what it wants to be. It’s a hot mess.

Linken.6345:

Monk Tank.5897:

There is no grind in GW2.

correction there is no required grind only optional

Of course. This is a definition – after all playing the game is optional, so everything within is optional as well by extension.

xadine.7069:

Ok, I didn’t read everything but for what I understood, lots of players are unhappy with the druid design.

druid name
Personnaly I find it surprising but not wrong. In GW lore druids where connected to plants indeed. But the celestial lore always was very important in GW too. I agree a bit more “planty” would have been nice, but I really find the celestial form cool.
Ofc those who discover druids with wow are disapointed, but this is gw and this druid desing isn’t wrong when it comes to gw lore.
But I think another name would have better suit this spec indeed, but druid isn’t the only one in that situation^^.

Well you should have read a little bit more :p
I said (maybe others too) that there is no lore behind this. We don’t know if Druids have anything related to the stars or celestial objetcs, but we know they have a strong link with biological part of the nature. So why would you design a Druid spec almost entirely on the astral aspect ?
The original Druids were suspected to be worshipers of Melandru, and this goddes is all about nature in the sense of plants, animals, earth, seasons… All those things we find in the Ranger actually. Not stars and astrology.
The name itself is not a problem, I think everybody is fine with this one. It’s just that the character itself is not reflecting the image of what a Druid is in the lore of GW.

Until a dev comes here to specifically tell us that now the Druids have an important link with the stars, it will stay wrong to consider them this way.
And even if a dev does that, it will stay a bad choice to have supplanted the original lore by this, because it made a lot more sense for a Ranger and for the jungle.

I was skeptical at first ‘cos I’d never seen him interact with the Ranger forum. But perhaps he was just the Dark Knight, watching….waiting in the shadows for his chance to make the Ranger a desired profession ;__;

So hyped to play this and test out the healing capabilities in big group content.

Druid isn’t all bad there are some nice skills. I didn’t expect a damage spec. I figured that Druid would be support and there is nothing wrong with support.

The problem is it focuses to much on healing. Gw2 has always been about being pro-active not retro-active. Even if HOT changes this aspect, it is far more beneficial to spec into toughness. Now HOT may have a lot of conditions and toughness does nothing against condition healing isn’t to much better. I’m all for the condition clear the focus on healing is just a bad direction choice.

This is just too much healing. The healing is in the way of all the things we could of gained.

Pets

While Druid doesn’t specifically fix pets the new pets are great. Adding condition damage was a great move.

The smokescale pet addresses the problem with pets dying to easy in condi spam. (maybe have to see how it actually works).

The bristleback has a 1200 range this should allow the pet to stay out of range of bosses that one shot. (ai maybe be an issue but guard for positioning maybe a work around (really wish guard was a f-skill)).

In the grand scheme of things the druid has no place. Even if healing becomes needed why take a druid over a Revenant or ele (pve).

The Druid as a complete class doesn’t work. what I mean is people will pick and choose traits and skill they like. Condi healing torch wielding ranger maybe ,but a power based staff wielding glyph spamming healing druid isn’t going to be good. Power rangers require so much to work (being part of the damage come from the pet).
With out a trait that give Druid 25% or 50% damage will wielding a staff or while in astral form I don’t see who a power based druid hopes to compete.

I do however see Druid as being viable in wvw at least for a ranger commanders where its more important they stay alive than doing damage.

Druid isn’t all bad I just feel its more of the same and nothing is dong to change as other classes have gotten a lot better for the most part and at the very least a real effective change.

mrstealth.6701:

Leo G.4501

Op, you don’t find it rude to accuse someone of lying? Have you ever considered you have a bias that imposed a certain viewpoint of the game’s situation and balance? And would it be a bad thing to take in the perspectives of other players in regards to balance, previous, current and future?

It’s not just one person’s viewpoint, it’s what the devs outright stated years ago (and have continued stating through present day). That there would be no waiting for a healer to complete your party, that you could take whoever you had complete any content. We can’t say for certain whether or not that core philosophy is being abandoned, but given today’s info I think it’s reasonable to question it.

So you’re pretty much guessing yet you’ll go to the extreme to call someone a liar despite your lack of evidence or first-hand knowledge?

I wouldn’t call the devs liars for introducing healing options to the game but that’s because from my perspective, they never said an encounter wouldn’t require specific conditions be met, they said you wouldn’t have to wait for a specific profession to complete those conditions. To me, what that means is if you have a Warrior, Thief, Necromancer and Mesmer, and you needed some sort of anchor-guy or healer-guy for a battle, you wouldn’t have to wait for a Guardian or Elementalist (or Druid in this instance) to invite but just take whatever is available and change someone’s build to the desired anchor-guy or healer-guy because all professions can manage the roles in their own style.

I’m not against the devs going against the perceived philosophy because the perceived philosophy is that, so long as you have enough aegis, blind, reflect and damage, the game won’t ask you to do anything more and you’ll be able to blast through content. If the game, at some point, asks you to sustain instead? Or to keep something alive? Or to control the foes? There is nothing wrong with that.

Mogget.2104:

They never promised that you would never have a healer role, only all classes would be able to fill each role in their own way.

Actually, they specifically said once that you won’t find a healer role in this game, and that players will not be able to depend on others with healing, but would need to take care of it themselves. It was a large part of the original combat design.

Seems, that (as many other things once considered important) it got changed.