Guild Wars 2

Not sure if ironic.

Nike.2631:

Come join the party .

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

still waiting for your reply on my latest reply post in ur thread

Aren’t WoW Druids the only ones that change form? And animal forms is a Norn thing. There’s no reason to step on their toes.

For those of you who do not know, Weh no Su was Canthan for “Closer to the Star” and this was Guild Wars 1 Faction’s method of “ascension”.

mrstealth.6701:

Healers have everything to do with what’s being discussed in this thread. If the Druid is a powerful enough healer that they are required to complete content, and cannot be viably subbed with other classes, then there is a major conflict with the game’s design philosophy.

Healers have nothing to do with the argument that I responded to, which was that ten thieves (or any other group comp using ten of the same profession) ‘must’ be able to complete a raid.

I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make there. It looks like you’re trying to say that taking two of the same profession automatically means a DPS loss, which makes no sense. If you’re dropping one profession (1 player, or mulitple?) for another profession, your gain/loss in DPS is going to depend on which professions/builds/roles those are. They all have different levels of DPS, support, and survivability.

What I am saying is that every time you exclude a profession from your raid group in favour of a different profession, you should end up losing out on something that you’re really going to miss, and ultimately, that almost invariably has to mean that one way or another, you lose a nice, fat chunk of your practical raid DPS.

Why?

Because the typical raid encounter can be reduced to a pretty simple question:

“Can you successfully deal with these mechanics while maintaining an average of at least x DPS for y time?”

If you can answer ‘yes’ to that question, you win. If you can’t, you wipe and will have to try again.

Everything about any fight that follows this formula ultimately boils down to either increasing your raid’s DPS or avoiding the loss of DPS.

The entire design philosophy of GW2 is for the profession to be balanced with each other so that any party composition is possible. That a certain profession or mix of professions is not required. That 10 of the same profession can complete any content, even if it’s not likely to be the best/fastest/easiest. In fact, that was a specific thing Anet was showing off before launch. Being able to complete dungeons of 5 of the same profession.

Whether you agree with it or not, or whether if fits your idea of what profession balance is, that is the intended design of GW2. Or at least it has been for the last 3 years.

It’s never really been the intended design to that degree — what they’ve promised is that you shouldn’t have to wait around for a member of one specific profession, and all signs point to that continuing to be the case.

But that doesn’t mean that full groups of ten of the same profession can or should be viable in all conceivable PvE content. That’s taking the original idea to an extreme.

It might be different for open-world, dungeons, and even fractals, but I would expect raids to be tuned in such a way that those comps aren’t viable, simply because of the practical DPS losses incurred by excluding all eight of the other professions.

I still can’t find at all the tie between druid and celestial avatar. And it’s even more true after reading the description on the front page:
“Welcome, friends, to the reveal of the ranger elite specialization, the druid! As a longtime ally of nature, the ranger can now channel the strength of Tyria itself after tapping into the primal forces of the Maguuma jungle.”.

Aye it’s not a Druid. I’m a player of table top RPGs, dnd, pathfinder etc and Druid is always one with nature, weather it be animals, plants or weather, it use aspects of them to fight with and thus that’s what a Druid is. This is more a pure healing based spec, you should of called it medic lol. It does almost no damage, which is not appealing to me, aye it may relieve so staff eles from their water fields but it will do almost nothing to else.

The pets sound awesome, otherwise it’s meh on my part.

This reminds of WoWs Druid healing spec, sun energy rather. Tbh I think the best name for the spec would of been Sun Cleric, Cleric, Holy something or rather lol.

The celestial bodies are the reason that we have things like solstices, equinoxes, seasons etc. Throughout human history the location and alignment of the stars has played a huge role in how we both view and experience nature. On a smaller scale think about how much the Earth changes with the location of the sun and moon in relation to the Earth.

Healing power scaling is so bad in this game I would never even use the stat on builds I’m trying to be supporty with.

After a long wait, I am pleasantly surprised and happy that the druid is getting a healing spec. I know it’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of us who do enjoy doing that. With the reveal I now anticipate more exciting encounters in the dungeon, where my team won’t just be stacking and dpsing bosses down. I hope this change will implement strategy and mechanics to future raid and dungeon bosses. I can’t wait to utilize my new skills as a druid. I’ve been playing an elementalist as my main so far, but I will definitely be switching to my druid. My only regret is that they don’t get to turn into various animals. Good job A-net!

Aomine.5012:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Aomine.5012:

I’ll add some more info that people fail to see.

They fail to recognize Druid provides no might, no fury, no quickness, no stability, no protection, no Aegis, boons that any other heal classes have good access to that actually makes a difference.

They’d soon realize this truth and shaft Druid away and pick on another Ele which do everything Druid can do (heal, CC), while doing even more damage and provide all the useful boons I listed above. (Oh, they probably will bring another Mesmer too because it provides unique offensive buffs)

Keep up the delusion folks. Druid will probably be good only in PVP and WvW. (condition bulky druid probably)

’

Druid is essentially the water ele x 10, how many of those boons do you see Ele pumping out using water?

Ranger does those boons (except might) very easily and can perma all of them (except quickness and stability) on a party, so combined with the healing, its quite good.

Yeah, except might, quickness, protection, stability, Aegis…

Oh wait! That’s like 80% of the important boons!

I’m talking about the party-wide support, not the selfish one which every classes can do.

Druid can perma maintain fury, regen and swiftness to the party very easily (+ lots of runes can give bonus boons to allies), cleans conditions, reduce conditions, give stealth and super speed to your party, one of the new F2 is a smoke field, a huge fire field, you can pretty much maintain 10 %, even 20 % increase damage to your party if you want, with an entire set of new skill to heal for a good amount even without healing power, all in a single build. If the Druid is not supposed to do all the job alone, he can bring a lot. How can you fail that much to see the amount of possibilities ?

Some Druids must have prayed to the stars.

Zalavaaris.5329:

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.

Its not gw2 combat with unavoidable dmg.

Look at DnD druid for PnP, the druids get wild shape which is the ability to shape shift into animals. Pathfinder druid also gets the same ability. EQ2 druids have three different shape shift options also.

Suziana.3759:

After a long wait, I am pleasantly surprised and happy that the druid is getting a healing spec. I know it’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of us who do enjoy doing that. With the reveal I now anticipate more exciting encounters in the dungeon, where my team won’t just be stacking and dpsing bosses down. I hope this change will implement strategy and mechanics to future raid and dungeon bosses. I can’t wait to utilize my new skills as a druid. I’ve been playing an elementalist as my main so far, but I will definitely be switching to my druid. My only regret is that they don’t get to turn into various animals. Good job A-net!

Theyll be stacking and dpsing with one person healing?

It scales very well with regeneration though (of which you have an infinite amount as a ranger when traited correctly), so you COULD run a healing power build IF YOU WANT and be unkillable in fair duels (btw check out koroshis regen/condi ranger build on youtube, now imagine that with the druid)

Again, everything can be viable as a druid, now we just have to hope it isn’t clunky

Kodama.6453:

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.

It’s a comparison. The impetus for the mechanic is clearly Death-Shroud-driven. No other class has a build-up-and-activate-for-unique-benefits-during-the-duration class mechanic. For a Necromancer, the special benefits are a degenerating second health bar and special skills. For Ranger, it’s enhanced normal-health-bar regeneration skills. So, instead of a constantly draining pool of extra health with new skills and no access to utilities, you get extreme normal-health-bar healing abilities and other new skills, plus your utilities. Sorry, m8, but the two are more alike than you want to admit in your pedantic need to argue over semantics instead of mechanics. I’d end by saying “apples and oranges”, but you’d probably tell me they’re the same fruit.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

… For transformations!

One of the things that make Druids iconic is the ability to turn into animals, I had really been expecting something similar to…

F5: Shapeshift into a copy of your pet

Don’t get me wrong, I loved what’s been revealed so far, but if Druid elite doesn’t transform into animals.. It doesn’t seem likely any will!

I think that this may have been the direction that they went with in the beginning considering the data mined stuff about Aspects, but something wasn’t right about it so they scrapped it and went with the Celestial stuff.

evilunderling.9265:

mrstealth.6701:

Healers have everything to do with what’s being discussed in this thread. If the Druid is a powerful enough healer that they are required to complete content, and cannot be viably subbed with other classes, then there is a major conflict with the game’s design philosophy.

Healers have nothing to do with the argument that I responded to, which was that ten thieves (or any other group comp using ten of the same profession) ‘must’ be able to complete a raid.

I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make there. It looks like you’re trying to say that taking two of the same profession automatically means a DPS loss, which makes no sense. If you’re dropping one profession (1 player, or mulitple?) for another profession, your gain/loss in DPS is going to depend on which professions/builds/roles those are. They all have different levels of DPS, support, and survivability.

What I am saying is that every time you exclude a profession from your raid group in favour of a different profession, you should end up losing out on something that you’re really going to miss, and ultimately, that almost invariably has to mean that one way or another, you lose a nice, fat chunk of your practical raid DPS.

Why?

Because the typical raid encounter can be reduced to a pretty simple question:

“Can you successfully deal with these mechanics while maintaining an average of at least x DPS for y time?”

If you can answer ‘yes’ to that question, you win. If you can’t, you wipe and will have to try again.

Everything about any fight that follows this formula ultimately boils down to either increasing your raid’s DPS or avoiding the loss of DPS.

The entire design philosophy of GW2 is for the profession to be balanced with each other so that any party composition is possible. That a certain profession or mix of professions is not required. That 10 of the same profession can complete any content, even if it’s not likely to be the best/fastest/easiest. In fact, that was a specific thing Anet was showing off before launch. Being able to complete dungeons of 5 of the same profession.

Whether you agree with it or not, or whether if fits your idea of what profession balance is, that is the intended design of GW2. Or at least it has been for the last 3 years.

It’s never really been the intended design to that degree — what they’ve promised is that you shouldn’t have to wait around for a member of one specific profession, and all signs point to that continuing to be the case.

But that doesn’t mean that full groups of ten of the same profession can or should be viable in all conceivable PvE content. That’s taking the original idea to an extreme.

It might be different for open-world, dungeons, and even fractals, but I would expect raids to be tuned in such a way that those comps aren’t viable, simply because of the practical DPS losses incurred by excluding all eight of the other professions.

Its not about profession its about waiting for a healer.

Which looks like will be whats going to happen

I tend to agree with OP, especially about the root animation on staff. Looked so out of place and I can’t imagine why or how it could have gotten so bad? The devs have plenty of experience drawing root attacks, this should have been no problem.

I also agree that Astral stuff is completely out of place, it’s completely wrong for the GW druid and fantasy druid in general, this should have been earthen, plant-based magic and weather effects. It’s what was described in the beginning, it’s how druids appear in the lore.

The celestial avatar couldn’t possibly be further away from the druid theme. It looks like a duct-taped on last minute rush idea. The pet is bscially an after thought for this spec and it shows. A better, more thematic, more useful and more lore-friendly approach would have been to have the pc join with the pet to create a pseudo-oakheart form. This would be amore suitable form for burst healing ala the lore around oakhearts and healing that already exists in GW2. ie taking the power of the land, of plants and sunlight and water to create healing magic, as we’ve seen throughout both games.

Heck, another choice would have been to have the nature and mechanics of the pet change as a baseline part of druid.

This whole affair is a massive missed opportunity and frankly OP is right. It looks like a rushed effort. You just have to look at Astral #2 a blooming plant (and one of what, 3, plant based skills out of 15?) that they haven’t actually worked out what it’s going to do yet. Merely weeks away from the only BWE Space-Ranger gets and they haven’t even figured out what the skills are going to do on this class, even though it was the first announced?

I don’t buy that even for a second. Somewhere down the line, this got kittened up and we got lumped with astro-boy mode.

Agree with op on this.

It doesnt match with GW lore

ShadowKain.9410:

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.

I am sorry I don’t remember the exact episode but at the time I was quite surprised to hear this from Ruby. I would have thought that Anet would have used in house lore writers to inform themselves. I am really worried.

MashMash.1645:

Linken.6345:

Monk Tank.5897:

There is no grind in GW2.

correction there is no required grind only optional

correction there is grind, but it’s just well disguised, when all but one of the options are terrible

Really? Such as?

That’s a legitimate question !

I’m not sure there’s any link.
On one hand i’d like to see it being a thing, so it could bring a little bit of sense to this very odd astral theme they chose instead of nature theme. But on the other hand I think it would be a very far-fetched link between very different civilisations that probably never had any contact. Also, I can’t see why a Ranger would have the right to suddenly become Weh no Su, when everybody is supposed to be able to do that if they perform the right ritual (which is currently unaccessible to us).

Would have been a cool concept for an entirely different spec…

So yeah, I just think it’s just a pretty random choice made by people who are not precise and exigent enough because they thought it looked cool.

phys.7689:

The total population isnt important, whats important is the ratio of people who want to heal to people who dont want to heal

Support has always been a major part of the game, and druids don’t break from the way other supports work — they also have fair damage and ways to support a team offensively.

Having professions and specs that are expected to support their groups by literally filling up bars shouldn’t really be a big deal.

Some of the things they said in the manifesto were, quite frankly, horsecrap, and I’m glad to see that they’re starting to realise this.

phys.7689:

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

At least in FFXIV, it’s tanks that are the problem, not healers. It’s not even unusual for healers to see half-hour queues, even on the weekends for expert roulette, while tank queues are instant.

The recent census claims that 19% of players level 30 or higher play healers, but we have no way of telling how they figured that out.

The reason why this post is so ridiculous is because the druid is going to be mandatory for so many things. Rangers are going from being lol get out of here to wow please join me, and people are complaining. REALLY? youre NOT going to be top DPS; not every class can be top dps. Dont you want to be more helpful, rather than just doing knockbacks and kicked? Youre going from bearbow to healer/bow or healer/friggen dragon tamer.

wow. we are all very happy you didnt preorder, trust.

Lets hope the pet controls will be fixed. We cannot send our pets away, the way it is now. They go away for a few seconds and they resummon themselves… And improve their AI, sometimes they dont attack specific targets.

Imagine a raid with druid healers and we try to send our pets away, not to agro things… but we cannot. I have no problem with healing, I always played as healer in other mmos… but I wish to have more alternative paths, thats the truth. I wanted to be like robin hood inside jungle, not with a dress and tutus…

I also think, I was in luck with chest farming. I got a ZINTL ascended chest and its shaman stats… Druid heal needs shaman stats? I havent used it yet… Also those who invested in ferocity and power ascended items.. Now they have to start over

imsoenthused.1634:

The point is, the tagging rarely gets you more than bronze participation due to the decreased/negligible damage of such builds. This obviously needs to be re-considered to make it viable outside of raids.

Then don’t heal outside of raids. Equip longbow and press 4 so that all those
melees don’t tag that mob
Oh .. and didn’t there even was a new AoE knockback in the new skills .. so even
more fun ^^

The biggest issue with going, “No, you see; if you look at it this way and think about these gaps in what we knew, it can fit without contradicting anything!” is that it still leaves the concept as something that must be justified rather than just feeling obvious or natural.

After non-storm-themed Tempests and Chronomancers with skills that are basically whatever with, “But, it’s because TIME!!! Wibbly-wobbly grumble, grumble” flavour text, its not a surprise, but I’d still rather they pick a singular concept and build around that.

Celestial could have been a decent Canthan-themed specialization down the road, but now this feels like that’s out. :-(

At this point, I expect a Bard that fights by miming and breakdancing (anti-sound is still sound focused, and breakdancing is still performance!) in the next batch.

No, i don’t agree with you op, not at all, some people here expected a dps elite spec out of a well known support type in the fantasy genre, some people here expected “Stealth/Ports” which do not fit with Druid, not even the ranger, maybe stealth but not ports. Some other people expected a Ranger 2.0 out of the druid when Arenanet clearly explained that Elite specs are not upgrades to the core professions rather than something different. As for animations, this is just minor complaining, every mmo copy/paste skill animations from time to time. You don’t like druid, cool, i understand, everyone has their own opinions and perspectives but if you don’t like something don’t try it, no one is forcing you to play it, besides there is a balance patch coming in tuesday for the core ranger.

About the Druid being rushed off, i think the glyphs may need just a little tweaking in base form but that’s about it, there is a reason why this spec was moved to last, it was going to be after the Reaper spec but they moved it to the last reveal because they knew it was kind of rushed back then so they decided to have more time working on it.

I for one welcome our new shadowy priesty overlords… (I miss my shadowpriest sometimes)

I do find it sad that the only way they could pull rangers into the game is to make them OP healers… it’s a clever solution to the problem/complaint that without your pet you’re a sitting duck… now you can just heal through the damage till you can get your pet back… it also widens the split (damage is the pet, druid is the support).

A guardian/druid duel would be interesting to see… for the first hour or so…

Azure.8670:

The reason why this post is so ridiculous is because the druid is going to be mandatory for so many things. Rangers are going from being lol get out of here to wow please join me, and people are complaining. REALLY? youre NOT going to be top DPS; not every class can be top dps. Dont you want to be more helpful, rather than just doing knockbacks and kicked? Youre going from bearbow to healer/bow or healer/friggen dragon tamer.

wow. we are all very happy you didnt preorder, trust.

Not everyone is irrational when it comes to another having a different opinion, I am just saying not everyone cares as much as you do about people not preordering.

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

The form looks like astral boomkin in WoW or D3 wizard. I’m not feeling good about the druid at all.

Mcrocha.3891:

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

As I have mentioned multiple times already to others equally incapable of reading before posting, you’re describing our nature, not Tyrian nature. Astral, celestial, and nature are all words that have different definitions in the context of Guild Wars lore. Stop describing our world to justify poor game decisions, as it is just as ludicrous as describing a game world to justify poor life choices.

Mcrocha.3891:

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

This ^ very true, some people need to read on Druid history and realize that they had rituals concerning the moon, the sun, the harvest, etc etc

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

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.

Nothing makes it particularly desirable to me.
The best healer ? What’s the point if we don’t need it ? We can already get a lot of heals without any healer specialized character, and even more effective active defensive skills, boons etc.
Arenanet will make sure we’re not obliged to have one specific profession or specialization to complete content anyway. But I do admit he might be useful anyway.

It doesn’t change the fact that nothing in this spec is particularly new, fun or creative, and I don’t like the astral theme they went for.

Serromus Jakta.3987:

Mcrocha.3891:

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

This ^ very true, some people need to read on Druid history and realize that they had rituals concerning the moon, the sun, the harvest, etc etc

Some other people need to read Tyrian history and realize that this is a discussion about game lore, not Earth lore.

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

Mcrocha.3891:

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

This ^ very true, some people need to read on Druid history and realize that they had rituals concerning the moon, the sun, the harvest, etc etc

Some other people need to read Tyrian history and realize that this is a discussion about game lore, not Earth lore.

Actually Kain, there is no actual detailed lore about the druids in Guild Wars actually, we know that they became one with nature but we don’t know what they were before that, read this please. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Druid-is-a-lore-mess/5528239

Celestial Avatar looks amazing. Have you seen the amount of detail that spec has? for example how the skill bar changes with the left to right curtain? Amazing!

I love the spec for what i saw, although i have to actually test it to see if it’s actually good in everyday content and not only raid because the must healer.

I hope the devs give more damage to the avatar, because now seems too close to the Tome of Courage from the guardian and that didn’t work well because it lacked some form of damage. Damage to 1 random target inside the AoE of cosmic ray would be an interesting mechanic to play…

phys.7689:

Its not about profession its about waiting for a healer.

The post I originally responded to was arguing that ten thieves should be able to do any raid.

Which looks like will be whats going to happen

Played well, a healer is like any other kind of support, and true supports are already in the game and commonly used. From this, it follows that enough people will be willing to play healers to easily fill up any groups that end up needing them.

Ojyh.9842:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

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.

Nothing makes it particularly desirable to me.
The best healer ? What’s the point if we don’t need it ? We can already get a lot of heals without any healer specialized character, and even more effective active defensive skills, boons etc.
Arenanet will make sure we’re not obliged to have one specific profession or specialization to complete content anyway. But I do admit he might be useful anyway.

It doesn’t change the fact that nothing in this spec is particularly new, fun or creative, and I don’t like the astral theme they went for.

We don’t need it providing the game stays as it is at the moment. Think they made sure it won’t happen once HoT launches.

In a challenging content you will need heals (or so they say) so yeah, druid will blend in perfectly. Plus its not just healing class. Huge dps buffs as well (frost spirit, Spotter, Glyph of empowerment), team cc breaker, smoke field, fire field etcetcetc…

I strongly disagree with op.

I was thinking before that a lot of Rangers might dislike Druid. And a lot of non-Rangers will probably love it. (Unless you’re a narrow minded metazerk kind of elitist.)

As someone who hasn’t really played Ranger much before and hasn’t been hyped for Druid at all, i’m really loving what they’ve made of it.

Design looks just amazing. If “healer/support” would be come an actual meta thing in GW2, Druid looks like the most fun kind of healer/support i’ve seen in any game.

I’m really liking the astral/celestial theme as well.

How useful Druid will actually be in the game, I have no idea. But it sure as hell looks like a lot of fun, well designed and a step in the right direction to get rid of the unhealthy zerker meta.

Now we can only hope Anet actually gets rid of the zerker meta.

God forbid your class be needed. For once.

Mcrocha.3891:

Nature is directly influenced by the positions and alignments of celestial bodies, sorry to rain on your qq parade, but it does make sense. The celestial bodies give us things like the solstices and seasons, sunlight/moonlight, tides, etc. A lot of those things are represented with the Druid. The Druid has plenty of skills that are plant influenced and they are all nature oriented.

Channeling stars and planets is lore destroying for me. If the druid channeled on microscopic life bacteria, fungi I would have been happy. My vision of druid is more like the brown sorcerer from The Hobbit.

You people seem to be arguing the fact that space and celestial objects aren’t part of nature, and that the water and earth elementalist attunements aren’t actually a thing. Do you even human lore?

Disagree 100% with the OP. The more I look through the Druid’s traits and abilities and discover how it synergizes with the rest of the ranger (because it does), the more I come to the conclusion that this is exactly what the ranger profession needed.

ShadowKain.9410:

Your constant attempts to claim “logical deduction” and “your perspective is illogical” in situations that – at no point – ever called for them, whilst basing your statements on fallacious reasoning comes off as nothing more than someone trying far too hard to sound more intellectual than they are.[/i]

You are full of jokes today.

Dark Saviour.9410:

The biggest issue with going, “No, you see; if you look at it this way and think about these gaps in what we knew, it can fit without contradicting anything!” is that it still leaves the concept as something that must be justified rather than just feeling obvious or natural.

Exactly !

pretty sure you still have a pet,

and a weapon switch..

also pretty sure the dungeons as they are now don’t need uber heals .. maybe raids/wvw/high fractals/pvp (which is something the ranger has a hard time with right now)

how is having a high healing/support role something that needs compensation again?