Guild Wars 2

Gomes.5643:

Amraston.2846:

Staff 1-3 skills are also astral-themed, staff 5 not classifiable, the glyphs being a middleground, more elementalist-esque than in line with rangers nature magic.

Skill 1 is Solar Beam. Ok the Sun is something cosmic, but also the Source of all life – it would be really weird if someone who “worshippes” nature would ignore the sun.

Skill 2 is Astral Wisp. Even having “Astral” in name, an Wisp is an nature spirit. It do not come from the moon. Also Skill 3 says: " Become a wisp of natural energy "

Skill 3 is Ancestral Grace, see Skill 2 for that.

Also Skill 5 is an Barrier with pretty little Flowers on it – that is plant themed for me.

Astral is per definition everything related to stars (not moons) – maybe astral has in the english language in colloquial useage an other definition, dunno I’m not a native speaker.
The sun is a star, ergo are these skills clearly astral, since 1 is a beam of sunlight, 2 a small ball of sunenergy, 3 a big ball of sunenergy.
As I said, I’m kinda okay with the idea of druids want to get their hands on it, but that is what should’ve been the celestial form. Not weird cosmic-alien-moon-gravity-tide-stuff.

please don’t ditch the lunar/astral theme of our celestial f5 it is very nice

So what exactly was so surprising? Looked all pretty generic to me.

Halan.7931:

Bryzy.2719:

4. “Waahh it’s not nature-themed!”

It couldn’t be more nature-themed. Celestial (i.e. of planetary bodies – of which the Earth itself is one remember), heavens, spirits, influence on nature of the earth – it’s all interlinked thematically. It brings a brilliant, unique flavour to a nature-themed profession and it looks good too.

Since it’s fantasy, it depends on the setting. For example, in D&D stars and other planets are linked to the Far Realm that produces abominations, and are opposed to natural world.

…and this is the concept that the fan-boys can’t seem to understand. Our natural world is not theirs. In Tyria, astral/celestial themes were (in the very beginning) mostly undefined, and the realm of scholars and academics, with some implications that Mesmer magic, being chaotic and raw, was outside of the usual magical constraints and possibly mists-related (the mists being the closest approximation to another dimension/celestial mechanic at that time). Then, the ritualist was developed and their abilities were more mists focused, and the mists and their realms became more defined. “Celestials” were introduced in Factions, which were mist-born entities *similar to the Human gods and Norn spirits.

The word “nature” in the context of Guild Wars lore, has a specific meaning. A meaning that is different than the one it has when used to describe our world. To see the domain of nature magic in Guild Wars, check out Melandru.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

These are just some random complaints that you picked to answer, but they are not “Key” complaints. Maybe you can answer what’s the synergy between the staff and the other weapons or between the staff and the glyphs or how about a druid without glyphs, does it not kinda gimmick the spec when you cannot use the second form of the glyphs?

What you listed are examples of valid complaints. You are right though, I need to adjust it from “key” to “most common”.

Can you stop using full italic text in your posts? It’s painful to read this massive amount of text with that curve, really, why you do this? It’s not make you special, stop it.

But i agree about general troughs.
Revealed specialization is NOT Druid, not GW2 Druid, it’s Celestial-Astral spirit healer.
Utility skills is pure compensation for full heal skills from staff and celestial form.
No visible sinegry in traits. Sure, we can just add “Druid” traitline to every standart build and have access to nice addition heal with some triks, like additional disable, superspeed and invis and that’s it.
I will be more pleased, if they add this renamed “glyphs” to ranger as default, and switch Spirits to Druid and make it MORE viable.

Bryzy.2719:

Just because healing elements may be required in new group content, it does not mean that everyone is suddenly going to be a healer. We will still need 90% DPS-focussed team members to actually get us through the content, but they will now need that new, higher level of support the Druid can offer. You can’t have a party full of healing Druids in group content because nothing will get finished!

And there is the problem.

There are real synergy issues with the core profession. Druid is wonderful, if you want to be a healer. If you don’t and you want to be full dps, then you are stuck with the core profession which has many issues. Unless the new balance patch is absolutely amazing this is going to be a problem.

Bryzy I completely agree with pretty much EVERYTHING you said here

Ancestral Grace really needs to be a port, thats my number 1 change if we are stuck with this instead of giving it the redesign it needs. Of course most everything else needs some buffs/changes in some way as well.

I absolutely love the Druid. My only gripe is the lack of pet synergy skill on staff. It’s a theme with weapon design that you always have a skill that affects the pet, no matter what weapon set you are using. Anet even stated the pet will be part of our E-specs always so it would be nice to see the same design stay.

Druid should have a skill which resurrect player who is dead i think it will be nicer if druid have that skill and is good to raid and wvw

xarallei.4279:

Bryzy.2719:

Just because healing elements may be required in new group content, it does not mean that everyone is suddenly going to be a healer. We will still need 90% DPS-focussed team members to actually get us through the content, but they will now need that new, higher level of support the Druid can offer. You can’t have a party full of healing Druids in group content because nothing will get finished!

And there is the problem.

There are real synergy issues with the core profession. Druid is wonderful, if you want to be a healer. If you don’t and you want to be full dps, then you are stuck with the core profession which has many issues. Unless the new balance patch is absolutely amazing this is going to be a problem.

Valid complaint.

In response I’d say that Irenio stated in the Druid reveal that many of the profession skills and traits are still under review and will be beefed-out and diversified.

No

dsslive.8473:

We know that druids were heavily in tune with nature, going so far to shed their human forms and live on in an ethereal form. But there is nothing that defines what exactly the nature they worship relates to. There is nothing saying that it’s solely plant-based.

We know for sure they shed not in ‘ethereal forms’, but in arboreal spirits, as summoned by sylvari (“Summon druid spirit”) after becoming treants. (>> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Druid_ ) Which is clearly a heavy plant-focus, indicating nothing nearly to moon-stuff. They would’ve shed themselves into permanent “astral wisps” or permanent celestial avatars when its so important to them and they are able to.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Bryzy.2719:

Levetty.1279:

Also the ‘zerker cancer-meta’ is more thought out indepth and uses more of the games mechanics then stnd in the corner and spam heals.

Oh, so stand in the corner and spam damage?

Zerker meta has been one of the best PvE experiences I encountered. Unlike “don’t stand in circles, bring DPS meter and tank nice” games, GW2 zerk meta had lots of things to pay attention to.

Simply because you had to use your head.
You had to take positioning, timing, animation awareness > dodge roll, evade mechanics, party support (offensive/defensive) Defiance stacks, interrupts (such as Icebow#5) and tunnel phases into consideration. Plus, aggro works differently in this game.

In Fractals lvl 50 there were moments where bosses didn’t just die in 6 seconds. Those were the moments where I loved the game. If anyone screwed and dodged early – they were punished but had the option to correct the mistake (downed state mechanic).

I definitely liked the Zerker Meta for constructive PvE, but not for casual Dungeons or Open World content. It was a brain-dead mode there.
I just hope they’d change some of the original content, too.

I take your point. It’s just a shame that the zerker meta forced everyone into that playstyle for too much content in the game. By all means I think zerker-based builds need to keep a place in the game – and they will – it’s just that all it’s been so far is the only place in the game.

During WoW’s WotLK era it would take you at least a solid week of playing 8+ hours a day to reach max level, another 1-2 weeks of serious commitment to become low tier raid ready, and weeks/months to gear out for the highest raid tier. In GW2 you can play casually and still reach max level in less than a week, and for 50 gold or less you can acquire all the exotic gear you’ll need to play almost any particular build (obviously there are exceptions, stuff like celestial, etc.).

Even if GW2 suddenly makes healers mandatory there’s no comparison between the (alleged) difficulty of finding a healer in trinity MMOs and GW2. In games like WoW you’re looking for someone who has made a months-long commitment to their particular healing class and build; in GW2 you could potentially just be looking for someone who has 50g to spare on a new set of gear. Not a big deal.

Last I checked WoW had servers. Lots of them. Doesn’t that cut the population in parts?

Even if I’m wrong since I havn’t checked the game in a long while, it’s a dying game. Most of its playerbase just logs in for X expansion, stays for a month and leaves for another year again.

In its heyday, you were drowned in players who wanted to join you no matter your role. Thats the case in GW2.

Wisps are still nature spirits, its never said that they are in anyway related to the sun. Not everything that shines is sunenergy. When thats the case also the original druids are just oak hearts made out of sunenergy. And then the theme would fit even more

Ok maybe skill 1 is astral. But you get the point that it is logical for a nature worshipper to have at least one sunrelated skill? Also all 3 skills have nothing to do with the ascending theme the astral form has.

Where did I put my tin foil hat…and who took my meds?!

To add on to your point about not doing anything to address the core mechanic of the pet, that is not really true. Healing and sustaining the pet does not count? We can more easily keep pets up now, which is in itself addressing some problems with the pet mechanic.

I mean, it obviously has a lot of “healing abilities” but it also has alot of condition removal, bleed and immob. application , dazes, apparently some good base dmg, high range, good mobility, an explo finisher, great traits (srsly), ways to increase party damage (glyph), a projectile blocker…

With this in mind, please consider that you will easily be able to run a druid without even having any healing power.. You don’t NEED to be a healer there’s so much more to it! You will still heal though, but not as a “HEALER” (I hope you know what I mean)

The BASE healing on your celestial form seems strong too, so you could run f.e. a berserker/soldier longbow/staff druid and cc chain your opponent + heal yourself with your f5 when low health despite using a power spec..

I’m just throwing that out there… hope maybe some of you agree.
There are a LOT of builds I can think of that would benefit from the druid spec (really)

have a wonderful day

Coldtart.4785:

Rauderi.8706:

Healing Power still scales for crap.

Better tell the metabattle admins that this build sucks then.

1. Corner case is not proof.
2. Healing Power, as it scales, is garbage. Guardian works as a bunker because it has several simultaneous sources of healing. Other classes don’t get that.

Guyz, keep in mind that druid is not forced to play with the staff at all.

Take it this way.
You’ll be playing a standard Survival Power build. You simply change the 3rd utility skill (usually used for Zephyr) for the Glyph of the Tides.
You suddenly gained access to another full-cleanse, CC, sustain… And you didn’t even take the Staff. You’ll still be able to play the LB/GS but now with a completely new store of useful mechanics.

It will be the different play-style but will definitely boost the current offensive Zerk builds.

Mcrocha.3891:

To add on to your point about not doing anything to address the core mechanic of the pet, that is not really true. Healing and sustaining the pet does not count? We can more easily keep pets up now, which is in itself addressing some problems with the pet mechanic.

To be fair I didn’t say nothing had been done, I was just making the point that the pet is the mechanic of the Ranger rather than the Druid.

You’re right though, that is a positive step forward, and as mentioned in another thread I can’t wait to see people experiment with beastmaster/Druid builds whereby they send their pet to do all the attacking/tanking while the Druid provides the healing and support to the pet from afar. Not sure how viable this would be for anything other than boss solos but we’ll see!

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Last I checked WoW had servers. Lots of them. Doesn’t that cut the population in parts?

Even if I’m wrong since I havn’t checked the game in a long while, it’s a dying game. Most of its playerbase just logs in for X expansion, stays for a month and leaves for another year again.

In its heyday, you were drowned in players who wanted to join you no matter your role. Thats the case in GW2.

Ffxiv is the up and coming trinity powerhouse and Group finder pulls from every server and you still have to wait long on dps.

I believe wow is also using cross realm for group finder.

So yeah servers dont matter.

The key is its not about how many healers there are its about how many healers there are in comparison to everytging else.

Based on these games i would say less than 10% of players want to heal, or else the group finders would fill quickly.

Darrio.6098:

Can you stop using full italic text in your posts? It’s painful to read this massive amount of text with that curve, really, why you do this? It’s not make you special, stop it.

You ask why I do it, and then outright imply that I am doing it to be special. Which is it? Do you not know or are you resolved to thinking I do it for attention or to be special despite having absolutely no basis to state that as fact? I explained why I use italics for my font in an earlier post, but will do it again here: I use italicized font because it pleases me. I customize my font for the same reason others customize theirs when the option is presented on forums; Customizing font type, size, color, layout, signature, etc. are all part of a forum-user tailoring their text to suit their preference. As for you not liking it, I really don’t care. Reading terrible grammar is an eyesore for me but I feel no need to mention it when I see it unless it’s coming from someone going out of their way to tell me to change my text to suit their needs.

Kirschsahne.2081:

A little bit of a Drama Queen aren’t we dear OP ??

These changes are insanely welcome by 99% of the fanbase.

You know what 99% of players in this game wish? O.o

wow anet should hire you

Just curious if i missed it (I assume its just hyperbole), but was anything stated about druid abilities working on more than 5 targets at once? Itd be really weird if it did

If not there is no reason why other classes couldnt heal in place of druids. If druids are slightly better at it, “meta” groups will only take druids, sure, but right now they will only take eles for dps, so its not like the dps role has a lot of diversity either.

Obtena.7952:

The issue isn’t with the Druid itself … it’s with the way it’s healing is extreme compared to other classes.

Put it another way … if the amount that a Druid heals are going to be the normal, necessary amount for raiding or doing HoT content, then this will be the first must-have CLASS this game has ever had to do content. That’s a massive departure from the concept that exists now and frankly, a huge disappointment for me.

If other classes exhibited the same ability to heal as much as Druid does, there wouldn’t be a problem here. I’m not sure they do, unless of course you SPECIFICALLY trait/gear for healing, which means you don’t compete well with Druid. I’ve made some assumptions in saying these things but I don’t think I’m all that far off.

I expect that the heals that come off of Druid’s nigh-constant healing skills will be very small per activation. So basically, Druid will be a small-area regen that doesn’t conflict with the Regen boon, similar to how a healing guardian works.

Bryzy.2719:

I take your point. It’s just a shame that the zerker meta forced everyone into that playstyle for too much content in the game. By all means I think zerker-based builds need to keep a place in the game – and they will – it’s just that all it’s been so far is the only place in the game.

I believe there will be places in Raids where people will get blamed for playing full Zerkers. Irenio leaked an info about the content, remember?

“AoE abilities that cannot be dodged or blocked”

I wouldn’t find it surprising if those were some insta-gib abilities. You’d immediately realize who’s going to occupy your group with constant revive demand and you might eventually try to shun those people.

I still believe that thieves, mesmers (and probably Rangers thanks to their longbow?) will be able to play Full Zerk thanks to their mobility and other useful mechanics.

Rabe.2456:

So what exactly was so surprising? Looked all pretty generic to me.

A dedicated healing class in a hack n’ slash game

If classes are being changed maybe I should wait to play at all, leveling is part of the fun for me and I would really be excited for changes to classes like the ranger.

I agree that the druid does feel rushed.

This Druids celestial shroud does not fit the theme of Guild Wars 1 Druids but is more akin to Guild Wars 1 Factions Closer to the Stars. Are Druids and being Weh no Su the same ? Following the Scrappers inconsistency with Charr lore, I am starting to question if the development team at Anet knows the lore of Guild Wars. To quote Ruby Mayer from Point of Interest, the developments teams main source of lore information is Woodenpotatoes.

Also considering how Anet refuses to get rid of rangers pets as it is part of their core mechanic, they could have done something really interesting with said pets (for example have a set of staff or profession skills that would have interacted with pets differently from shouts) instead they added a simple healer shroud. Aren’t shrouds supposed to be the unique profession mechanic of necromancers ?

The theme and the mechanic seem incoherent hence I question if Anet didn’t rush the Druid to meet release date.

Freyah.8912:

My main is a zerker (because I like that gear on her) ranger and I look forward to this (assuming that current speculation is even true).
Not because I’ll play as a healbot or anything but because people that have missed that there are a whole gaggle of mmos out and about that do implement the trinity can chill and do their thing in GW2 too.

My dear friends, I ask you, have you ever gone into the LFG tool and started a group with the description: “Px/lvlx/we, chill run, stressed or mean players need not apply, we learn as we go”? Just an example mind you.
Because that sucker will fill up fast. And then when all are inside dungeon/fractal/what ever you ask “so who’s new and who’s done this before?”
I garanpuppytee you I never had so much fun clearing content as I have in these groups. On one memorable occasion we ran the aetherpath completely blind and had to take pauses from laughing so much.

Let the elitists (and I don’t use that word as a slur here) frolic about with their pings and api links.
If you, like me, been there done that create your own fun with likeminded players.
They’re out there and they want to be your friend. =)

My friend and I have been running groups of new players through dungeons as of late, fighting everything, and never mentioning corner stacking to them. It’s actually really fun, and… weirdly, they actually die less than a good number of level 80s I saw that were on their backs the moment the boss had a chance to fight back.

I still don’t support forcing specialised roles.

Are Druids and Weh no Su the same ?

I agree, base heal on druid is very good as it is even with no healing power even if i think a bit of Healing power wouldn’t hurt (something between 600 and 900).

The only thing I don’t think is going to work is the combination of longbow and staff… first of all these are both ranged weapons and duble ranged is almost never the way to go. On the other hand something like staff paired with GS or Sword Dagger/Wh could work better in my opinion; or even longbow with whatever other than Staff and druid trait line with offensive stats like zerk/valkyre/knight ecc ecc. A zerker druid with Lb and no staff seems pretty legit on paper but my hopes are higher for hybrid builds like Celestial/Crusader or a mix of condi-healing power or even power/healing power: this because Ranger has never had good team support potential but very good skirmish capability (1v1s, 2v2s) and the druid will provide good support for teammates as well as good sustain and damage needed in smaller scale fights.

Amraston.2846:

dsslive.8473:

We know that druids were heavily in tune with nature, going so far to shed their human forms and live on in an ethereal form. But there is nothing that defines what exactly the nature they worship relates to. There is nothing saying that it’s solely plant-based.

We know for sure they shed not in ‘ethereal forms’, but in arboreal spirits, as summoned by sylvari (“Summon druid spirit”) after becoming treants. (>> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Druid_ ) Which is clearly a heavy plant-focus, indicating nothing nearly to moon-stuff. They would’ve shed themselves into permanent “astral wisps” or permanent celestial avatars when its so important to them and they are able to.

The druid lore is still very little, i never said druids weren’t mainly plant focused. They are said to attune to nature, which encompasses more than just plants. Just because we’ve seen druids more intune with plant aspect of nature doesn’t mean there is nothing of the celestial aspect of nature in druids. With the little information we have we can’t just say "druids have nothing to do with x aspect of nature because we haven’t seen it so far.Also, i never said the celestial aspect is more important to druids, but that it is an aspect of nature, which is exaclty what druids felt so closely tied to. They are all different aspects of nature, just because so far we’ve seen the druids with plant aspects, does not exclude the possibilities of druids also having a relation to the celestial aspect, and i’m talking about them as a group, not per individual. Neither one aspect is more important, they’re both aspects of nature still though, and as such not a contradiction to lore.

In my opinion the druid spec might be the downfall of players who like to play as a ranger. what will happen to a ranger that like to join a raid and refuse to spec to druid?
How many will be kicked from parties for that?
Another aspect might be that the dedicated healing aspect of the druid will make the zerker meta stronger because the game will give them better crutches, a class that will be there to heal them and remove condition while they will focus them self on stacking and damage.
I cant see how this elite spec will prevent zerker meta.

I agree, no thought was put into this, the entire design process seems to be ‘meh just make this skill aoe heal too’ no synergy with the base class, no real synergy with the different parts of the spec, nothing done with the pets, no diversity it what it can bring to a group.

It clearly IS sunenergy/related to the sun when its called “ASTRAL wisp” and has the same color-scheme as sunbeam o.ô The word ‘wisp’ also means ‘small peace’/shred of something, in this case a small shred of sun-/starenergy, circling something and heal stuff by passing through it – its not implicitly a mythological playful/wicked, intelligent will-o’-the-wisp as you have in Warcraft. It doesn’t behave as one either.
And again, I give them the sunstuff thematicly, but not the other things which just seem totally off.

xarallei.4279:

Ryou.2398:

xarallei.4279:

zinkz.7045:

xarallei.4279:

Particularly if you want to go dps in pve.

LOL, and there we have the truth, some people are QQing basically because they want to DPS in PvE which Druid is not going to help, so it doesn’t fit your personal playstyle in your specific bit of the game so it is “kitten”.

Way to ignore everything I said and take stuff out of context. Nowhere did I say it was “kitten.” In fact I said I look forward to trying it out. I already explained, MULTIPLE times that the big problem arises when you don’t want to be a healer in pve. Druid is great for support, but is unusable for pve dps because of the lack of synergy. Now if the core profession was in great shape, then this wouldn’t be a problem. That’s not the case. Ranger has issues. Now the balance patch stream is coming up, maybe it will address these problems, who knows.

Please stop being so rude, everyone is allowed to have an opinion on there view of a ranger, honestly I do not see the other classes with such a big change, personally I think this is a good thing but at the same time I can understand why people will not think it is appealing considering rangers in dnd are more inclined of not using staffs. But a variety of weapons however ranger also means versatility allot so it can make sense for a ranger to use all forms of weapons which includes a staff and since rangers are closer to druidism in guild wars it does actually make sense.

Anyways it is not constructive to insult anyone here so everyone just needs to stop and instead try to help others see how it might actually be fun for them and they did they if you watched the entire video they said they will be looking into balancing the ranger.

I’m not sure why you are quoting my post. The person I was quoting was the rude one calling people “QQers” and taking things completely out of context. Nowhere did I insult that person.

Sorry it was meant for the other person and the rest being that way, my apologies.

Come join the party .

The Druid also makes a lovely CC/bleed mass-murderer.

One key to rangers and Druids should be their pets. I hope one day they have the ability to get new pets. I was even thinking a new expansion would bring new pets. Oh well.

Rhinala.1739:

In my opinion the druid spec might be the downfall of players who like to play as a ranger. what will happen to a ranger that like to join a raid and refuse to spec to druid?

what happens to people who don’t go zerker? they make their own groups/join groups that dont require that person to change to druid.

Pants Are Dangerous.2079:

I agree that the druid does feel rushed.

This Druids celestial shroud does not fit the theme of Guild Wars 1 Druids but is more akin to Guild Wars 1 Factions Closer to the Stars. Are Druids and being Weh no Su the same ? Following the Scrappers inconsistency with Charr lore, I am starting to question if the development team at Anet knows the lore of Guild Wars. To quote Ruby Mayer from Point of Interest, the developments teams main source of lore information is Woodenpotatoes.

Also considering how Anet refuses to get rid of rangers pets as it is part of their core mechanic, they could have done something really interesting with said pets (for example have a set of staff or profession skills that would have interacted with pets differently from shouts) instead they added a simple healer shroud. Aren’t shrouds supposed to be the unique profession mechanic of necromancers ?

The theme and the mechanic seem incoherent hence I question if Anet didn’t rush the Druid to meet release date.

I don’t usually watch Points of Interest. Do you happen to know which episode it was that Ruby said this? If true, that news is extremely depressing. I don’t mean to slight or insult WoodenPotatoes, as he does run a neat channel, but there are far more lore-savvy community members, and relying on just one person for your facts – even when that person is an expert – is a horrible, dangerous idea.

I think that’s a huge barrier between people like you, me and a few others, and the rest of this toxic forum. There are some of us that know the lore intimately, and with that knowledge we can say from knowledge and experience that these skills simply do not fit with the magical affinity that Rangers have in lore. Put simply: They should not, and could not possibly wield this kind of magic.

Trinity isn’t bad and wow has some of the best raiding ever created. I welcome having a wow style raid with healers but with gw2 combat. It isnt the style of raids and the format that makes me dislike wow. It’s the aweful combat system compared to gw2.

Pants Are Dangerous.2079:

I agree that the druid does feel rushed.
Also considering how Anet refuses to get rid of rangers pets as it is part of their core mechanic, they could have done something really interesting with said pets (for example have a set of staff or profession skills that would have interacted with pets differently from shouts) instead they added a simple healer shroud. Aren’t shrouds supposed to be the unique profession mechanic of necromancers ?

The theme and the mechanic seem incoherent hence I question if Anet didn’t rush the Druid to meet release date.

Maybe you didn’t notice, but celestial form is TOTALLY different from necromancers shroud. The resource bar doesn’t work as a second health bar. It seems like you are not able to go in celestial as long as you have some resource, you need to have the full bar. You can still use your utility skills.

Just because you are transforming into another state doesn’t make this a shroud.

octagon.6504:

One key to rangers and Druids should be their pets. I hope one day they have the ability to get new pets. I was even thinking a new expansion would bring new pets. Oh well.

um, they are getting new pets…

Tiger, smokescale, 2 types of wyvern and the bristleback to be exact.

They get new pets cO. I dont really get your point.

Honestly I know some people wanted “green” effects, but the celestial form skills and the form “aura” look amazing! props to the guys in charge of the visual effects