Guild Wars 2

The game is doomed? Seriously? Good lord, stop being such a drama queen.

Mincsk.6028:

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.

Radagast was not a druid, he was an istari, he never used plant magic or any of that either, he just had a good relationship with nature and had vast knowledge of the wild, including wild life (Able to communicate with animals but mostly because he was an istari and not a human or any race on middle earth per se) and flora. All istari’s magic is focused on light and repelling the darkness because their original purpose was to help Middle Earth against the forces of evil, Radagast just decided to live with nature but that is about it.

Looks kittening amazing! Just… wow.
Now hope it’s actually gnna be useful.

I’m not too worried about no damage, that’s what your weapon swap weapon is for I guess?
And I thought the staff auto attack was dealing decent damage as well.

Drlightningbolt.1754:

What in the heck did I just read

I couldn’t bring myself to actually read it, I just kept thinking of Regan saying “Tear down that wall!”

My ranger play is primarily variants of beast master. I run beast mastery and then either power line for longbow or critical strikes for short bow; power build or condition build respectively. I then use a heal or support line according to what I am doing for my third. With the druid, I see the this line as a potential support line to my original kill lines, but frankly, I will have to actually work with it to see if it is better. What the druid line does not have is a lot of pet support. It does address condition management and it is possible the avatar will work as a last ditch heal option like the necromancer’s F1 skill.

As to running full druid with staff, IT IS a full healer class. Run with the ranger’s nature and wilderness lines, it is in fact quite a powerful healer and support class. Now I know this is not what everyone wanted, but give the developers some credit. It is indeed a formidable healer beyond anything seen in game yet.

Personally, I am hoping the line does make for a viable alternative to the standard ‘ranging’ builds making them a little more friendly.

If a developer does happen to read this, the only change I would make to please players like me is to modify one of the minors to favour pet play.

Serromus Jakta.3987:

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

Devotees of Melandru that shed physical form. Not at all dissimilar to pretty much all humans at time of death/transcendence. Astral/celestial is not synonymous with spirit/ghost related in Guild Wars lore context. Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes Druidic magic (ie: the magic of Melandru, ie: the magic of rangers) astral/celestial, then every single profession/class should be given astral mechanics, because there’s a ton of spirits wandering the physical world, choosing to remain bound there for one reason or another. Druids as described are nothing more than nature liches in spirit-form.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

ShadowKain.9410:

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.

First i’d like to congratulate Irenio and say i was misjudged him, the Druid with the Reaper and the Herald seems to be the best and most fun specializations in game.
The concept is really cool, and an Celestial Druid theme is so cool in concept and has been so well portrayed in game.

But I think this has to be brought to the general attention. The Celestial Avatar seems to close for what the Tome of Courage from the Guardian was. And that Elite got scrapped because it lack of usefulness.

Having one form that only have heals with no damage (I know Cele#5 does damage but on long cast + Cd) i don’t think it’s interesting and feel underwhelming becasue how the rewards are being distributed.

We could popup in cele avatar heal and the leave the form but other the than i don’t see how this form would be useful other way. We need to be able to drop some damage as well somehow to have a reason to stay in that form.

My idea is within the AoE in Cosmic Ray deal damage to 1 random target inside. 1 target so the damage could be significant so we can get rewards, and random to avoid focused dps after all Cele Avatar is supposed to be mainly heal.
That way i could see Cele Avatar to be more of a use and not being completely underused like the tome.

Also, Didn’t the avatar form too short in duration? Wouldn’t be better if we could stay there for longer?

Actual druids in real life were a lot more interested in astronomy than plants.

So it fits.

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.

Well if that were truly the case game lore states that rangers can only wield bows and pets are optional, as per guild wars 1.

The game designers can change lore as they please. It is theirs, they make it. If they want it so that the druid is nature and celestial oriented, then it is. I don’t see anything wrong with that either. It fits thematically and, most importantly, what did the ranger lack most before HoT? Team support, group control. What are we getting with HoT? Team support and group control.

There is no right to argue. Everything the ranger needed most, it is getting. The only part that falls short is pets, but the use of them as a mechanic in the first place is flawed and it seems that a-net is stepping away from them in general and giving more power and utility back to the ranger. Which is, to be honest, the best case scenario we could’ve asked for.

Enough whining and enough cynicism. You’re upset because you want to be upset. Remember, this is a game, nothing more.

glenndevis.8327:

Looks kittening amazing! Just… wow.
Now hope it’s actually gnna be useful.

I’m not too worried about no damage, that’s what your weapon swap weapon is for I guess?
And I thought the staff auto attack was dealing decent damage as well.

Actually we couldn’t see it but the staff do damage with almost all skills except the Staff#3 being for mobility and staff#5 for proyectiles.. Now if the damage is decent maybe i will have to stash my LB.. So good news!!!

I’m scared of the celestial avatar to became kitteneless skill like the tome though.

Why do I get the feeling that they announced Druids then the dev team for Revenant said, ‘You know? This class sucks.’ and so they stole the intended mechanics for Druid and gave them to the Ventari Revenant.

^^This, which is why it’s taken so long for new(read: borrowed from other classes) mechanics to be compiled and then excreted as the current version of the Druid which they’re presenting to us now.

I was under the impression we were going to get a staff with a melee autoattack with one or two buttons for healing/suport fields and then the last two for roots entangles which would have allowed us to have a semi-frontline healing/melee role that would synergise with our Beast Mastery and Nature Magic lines to make for a stronger Druid/pet melee combination.

Granted, it’s only my opinion, but what I see now is a watered down necro/water ele hybrid that has nothing to do with the Ranger underneath it.

If they were so hot to create an utterly new profession then they could have released the current ‘druid’ as the Celestial along with the Revenant and sold HoT as having not one but two new, out-of-the-whole-cloth professions. And having done that, then give us the Druid we should have been given.

All the gushing in our forums about the Druid comes across as a sort of quasi-Stockholm syndrome -where Anet’s held off and kept us in the dark for so long that half the Ranger community has gone around the bend and is so pathetically grateful to hear anything new that they’re taking even the drek squeezed out of the HoT dev process and treating it as gold.

The profession update should have been writing on the wall. Oh well. This might not be the Druid some of us wanted, but it’s the druid we’re getting and the druid we deserve for shoving money at and indulging these derivative hacks for so long.

The Druid is not a profession, it’s just an extra weapon + skills that, like all other skills for all other classes, are situational and serve some purposes better than others. I know it’s “new” and tempting to convince yourself that you will min-max your toon to be “100% Druid”, but that’s not going to be the case. As I main an engineer, I never go full out kits or elixirs because that does more harm to my build than good. Likewise for my Ranger, I’ll probably only equip the staff as a secondary weapon for range since I more often prefer to use swords and offhand weapons. The avatar is something I would take advantage of, like the Necro, when the situation calls for it. Specifically, the barrier that converts projectiles into healing missiles is a pretty neat game mechanic from Anet and serves as my contribution for lack of reflection. Other than that, I’ll still be doing the damage I’ve always been doing.

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

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

Devotees of Melandru that shed physical form. Not at all dissimilar to pretty much all humans at time of death/transcendence. Astral/celestial is not synonymous with spirit/ghost related in Guild Wars lore context. Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes Druidic magic (ie: the magic of Melandru, ie: the magic of rangers) astral/celestial, then every single profession/class should be given astral mechanics, because there’s a ton of spirits wandering the physical world, choosing to remain bound there for one reason or another. Druids as described are nothing more than nature liches in spirit-form.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

Ever played factions? i think you should, secondly, why would you assume that Astral/celestial doesn’t have anything to with death? you are making an assumption based on nothing practically, the wiki page has nothing to prove your point either and is not a main source for pinpointing deep lore about this game. the final point is that there is actually nothing about druids, how they lived before they became stewards of Maguuma, we don’t know what they practiced, their lives, their ceremonies, nada. We don’t even know if they worshipped Melandru “though this is only rumors” you should read well and realize that rumors are not fact.

Ironwill.5389:

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?

Have you actually played support ele in wvw? the difference in loot between that and a staff spamming guardian is crazy. One hit from my aoe staff on a guardian tags the enemy, whereas on a ranger or ele I frequently get no credit for damage unless it hits that target 2-3 times (happens a lot on meteor shower), and bear in mind I’m spending a lot of my time in water or using other skills that aren’t constantly throwing out damage.

Pets anywhere near a zerg in wvw are pretty much dead meat, so kiss goodbye to that damage.

Switching weapons might not be an option, that weapon switch cooldown is quite a long time in a battle for a ranger.

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

I agree that the specialization feels very rushed, unfinished and doesn’t really fit the ranger or druid theme.

However I still think the trait line and cele form will actually be very good for the class.
Now if we could just swap that stupid staff to a main hand dagger with bleed on auto attack, and do something to make those glyphs worthwhile, we will be in business.

That condi cleanse is going to be ridiculous for Conquest team fights.

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.

Mandatory is not good if it removes the choice to not be a healbot. The crux of the post, and it could have had a better title and less salt on my part, was that:

1. This will DEFINITELY get us into raids and zergs (a plus)
2. Groups will DEFINITELY be kittened if we DONT want to be healbots (a huge, huge negative). This is really rough because a lot of us played this class to be rangers with group support options and not “strictly the healer.” There are better archtypes in game already for heals.
3. Celestial Avatar, thematically, is so far away from any nature-based medieval or DnD archtype of a Druid that only Balance moonkins from WoW bear any resemblance.
4. The lack of synergy with existing items, more of a glyph and staff issue than a trait issue.

I could’ve been a lot more constructive, but sometimes you just need to vent and give your feedback while its raw.

What I hope to see:

1. Staff made into a hybrid support weapon. Damage skills and Healing skills, so that the player can do moderate of one or the other instead of ONLY healing is far, far more palatable that “every single thing on this stick heals and therefore damage on every single thing on this stick is awful”. More offensive caster druids should be a thing.

2. An overhaul on the coloring, the current color pallet undermines our identity. Bright blue is for guardians and space lasers are not Nature. Lets get some greens and yellows, some animal effects (every weapon except dagger and torch have at least one animal animation), and leaves and suns, and maybe a little less dark side of the moon, at the very least while out of celestial avatar. Staff auto looks real bad.

3. Symbols that make us want to use them in other builds. Glyph of empowerment is basically “Frost Spirit is out for the next 5 seconds”. Glyph of tides and Glyph of equality seem to fulfill the same purpose (knockback is still an interrupt). Rejuvination could use a more useful radius. Alignment could use a 4 stacks of one type of damaging condition so that condi specs consider it over a trap.

I love what they are trying to do with the druid.. but I think its got way too much healing. I would like to see a little less healing and a little more support in other categories.

Don’t get me wrong, I like what they are trying to do, but I think there is such thing as too much of one thing.

Holland.9351:

This is the feedback thread:
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/ranger/Druid-Healer-Confirmed-Feedback-merged

So, I went though that entire thread and included the feedback left there. Not a single entry until I had read up to page 9. Even then, there are only a couple of posters leaving actual feedback, mostly its “Druid is awesome” or “Druid is rubbish” type posts. Anyway, updated now and I will keep it that way.

in my opinon as amain ranger druid looks awsome .
yeha i was hoping for shapshifting but i actully really like what they have done with the druid since the class major problomes are in pve and druid kind of answering to those demands.
and the new pets looks really good in my opinon

Darrio.6098:

ShadowKain.9410:

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.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Your not customizing text, you make it totally unreadable for regular user. Bold, italic is support fonts that are required to indicate stress or emphasis. Communicating is dialogue, understandable for both sides. And English is not my native language, so i make up for it in short sentences, which carry a maximum sense.
You can easily understand my message, even with grammatical errors, even ignore it totally and don’t answer, but i can hardly read this blurred text, no matter how much meaning did he have.
Forum format text is not for “pleasing” one side, it’s support instruments for understanding for another.

Care to join in derailing the thread over any other pedantic, petty nonsense? I’ll dress my text up in MLA format when formatting a business document, not when I am carrying on casual text conversations with petty, pedantic peasants.

Before anyone’s brain explodes, that last bit was done purely for the [insert gasp here] desire to make an alliterative quip.

What I write and how I write within the context of a forum is done purely for my own enjoyment (perhaps you should educate yourself on the roots of the word forum). Why I write is something I occasionally question, particularly in situations such as these, but generally the why is to convey my thoughts to those interested in hearing them. I generally assume those uninterested will bugger off, but the internet has a way of bringing out the true hypocrisy of the human race.

Staff #1 Solar Beam – I think this skill has very strange animation. I like that beam but druid holds staff in a really kittened way… It seems like recycled mesmer GS #1 animation with slightly different hands animation.
What I propose is to use guardian staff #1 animation but with a more subtle way (so you will not swing your staff like a flyyswatter)

Seems the theme is people who want to remain in a dps role are feeling left out that they haven’t gotten any new candy to play with. You have gotten some new stuff, namely new pets and some balance changes coming to make your existing specs balanced out with other classes to make it more desirable to for group play. That being said I would have liked druid to bring something to the table in passive support more than something restrictive like pure healing. I think the ranger community would have been more happy with means to push out more offensive boons, snares or stuns. Perhaps with the balance changes they will be making our existing support mechanics, i.e. our pets and spirits more viable. Superior pet AI, making our spirits less squishy? Perhaps making it so that they don’t take damage unless they are the target of an attack, this programming already exists in on of the mistlock instabilities where your enemies will only take full damage it they are your active target. Maybe this sort of mechanic could make our pets survive through all the cleaves and red rings in dungeons, fractals and upcoming raids.

Keep in mind everyone that they are still actively working on druid, if you keep active on the forums and actually provide intelligent feedback on how you feel about druid mechanics and how you think it could have been better implemented for your playstyle while still remain viable as a healer for those who are happy about it then maybe the devs will listen to you and make changes to help you out.

The main reason of the lack of usefulness of the tome of courage was the ability cd rather than the heals/buffs.
The support provided by the tome was excelent in determined situations (Talking about WvW & sPvP).

The actual Druid spec may introduce a new role into the game. The main issue here may lay on the ability from the devs developing new PvE encounters where dodge is not enough and you need actual healing for surviving.

The druid has an amazing new mechanic. I feel that the celestial form fits very well with the theme of traditional/historical Celtic druids. this whole thing about turning into an animal is merely a WOW interpretation. A real druid was similar to a priest, even comparable to a east Asian monk. having a higher state of being is perfectly illustrated with the celestial theme

I am really HAPPY how the druid turned out. It is truely unique and probably one of the better representations of what a real druid would thematically be like.

All this shape shifting into an animal crap would have been very disappointing. Transforming into a higher being is awesome.

Serromus Jakta.3987:

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

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

Devotees of Melandru that shed physical form. Not at all dissimilar to pretty much all humans at time of death/transcendence. Astral/celestial is not synonymous with spirit/ghost related in Guild Wars lore context. Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes Druidic magic (ie: the magic of Melandru, ie: the magic of rangers) astral/celestial, then every single profession/class should be given astral mechanics, because there’s a ton of spirits wandering the physical world, choosing to remain bound there for one reason or another. Druids as described are nothing more than nature liches in spirit-form.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

Ever played factions? i think you should, secondly, why would you assume that Astral/celestial doesn’t have anything to with death? you are making an assumption based on nothing practically, the wiki page has nothing to prove your point either and is not a main source for pinpointing deep lore about this game. the final point is that there is actually nothing about druids, how they lived before they became stewards of Maguuma, we don’t know what they practiced, their lives, their ceremonies, nada.

I’ve played more of that game then you, that is for certain. It’s also irrelevant, so can we stick to the pertinent points, please? Perhaps you didn’t read quite carefully enough, so I shall re-post to re-educate:

“Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes…”

Not the word if. I was speaking hypothetically, using your claim/view. Even if ascending to spirithood is magically astral/celestial, there are a number of spirits eternally bound to Tyria for reasons not related to nature magic, thus meaning that either all of them, or none of them are connected to astral/celestial magic. You’re pointing to one case of a spirit and claiming that that particular spirit conveniently validates the Druid specialization’s celestial theme, ignoring the countless other spirits that would *in*validate it.

The nature magic aspect may fit a Ranger, but this is a Druid, different idea. As much as I can tell we don’t have a basis for a Druid in this game. In other games, druids are very nature-centered, ie Diablo 2, Everquest, etc. but in reality Druids are very celestial-oriented. The solstice celebrations are pagan/Druid celebrations all revolving around the locations of the earth/sun/moon, all celestial bodies, and the most mainstream famous Druid structure is Stonehenge, again, believed at this point to be very celestial focused. I think a celestial theme fits Druids very well.

Rangers are a base, focused on nature. If Druids are sort of advanced, or ascended Rangers, then it makes sense to me that they expand beyond the immediate nature of their surroundings and focus on the larger nature of the universe.

Just a thought

I disagree and I for one welcome a heavy healer in the new expansion, and can’t wait to be useful in the new PvE, WvW, PvP and Raids content.

gavyne.6847:

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.

The problem with your argument is that, while melee DPS has been the dominant (most desirable) setup in all areas of the game for three years, dedicated healer has never been anything other than trash-tier. So, right from the start, we know that healbot Druid will be utterly useless in all non-HoT PvE. It’s not just that Rangers don’t want to be healers, it’s also “no dedicated healer has ever been useful for high-end anything in the history of this game”.

That being said, using DPS traitlines with Druid in PvP might be worthwhile, for Stronghold in particular because it has more frequent team fights, where the support will be useful, and the healing might be excellent for keeping the lord alive. For PvE, though, I don’t see it catching on unless enormous changes cause Druid to be mandatory…but this would go against the design philosophy of the entire game.

In conclusion: promising for PvP, huge question mark everywhere else, but at least they don’t get stuck with gyros.

phys.7689:

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.

You’re right, it’s an evolution to gw2 combat. Making unavoidable damage will break the all dps all the time mentality and provide a more healthy environment. Not having it would be bad for the game.

JoJo.8132:

The nature magic aspect may fit a Ranger, but this is a Druid, different idea. As much as I can tell we don’t have a basis for a Druid in this game. In other games, druids are very nature-centered, ie Diablo 2, Everquest, etc. but in reality Druids are very celestial-oriented. The solstice celebrations are pagan/Druid celebrations all revolving around the locations of the earth/sun/moon, all celestial bodies, and the most mainstream famous Druid structure is Stonehenge, again, believed at this point to be very celestial focused. I think a celestial theme fits Druids very well.

Rangers are a base, focused on nature. If Druids are sort of advanced, or ascended Rangers, then it makes sense to me that they expand beyond the immediate nature of their surroundings and focus on the larger nature of the universe.

Just a thought

This is an elite Ranger traitline (colloquially referred to as a “specialization”) that happens to be named “druid”. Even if “Druid” was a class in Guild Wars 2, how that class plays would be entirely dependent solely on the development of Guild Wars 2, not on other games.

Regarding real-world lore, none of it is relevant, even in the slightest, when discussing Tyrian lore.

Notsoperky.4291:

Have you actually played support ele in wvw? the difference in loot between that and a staff spamming guardian is crazy. One hit from my aoe staff on a guardian tags the enemy, whereas on a ranger or ele I frequently get no credit for damage unless it hits that target 2-3 times (happens a lot on meteor shower), and bear in mind I’m spending a lot of my time in water or using other skills that aren’t constantly throwing out damage.

So you want in fact loot from ALL mobs without tagging a single one just through
spamming heals all the time even if nobody need heals ? Just run around with
healing spring as autoattack and don’t ever push any other button because
i’m a healer .. i will nerver use any of those nasty damage skills.

If you want more loot you may better ask for each class gets a ranged auto attack
that hits 3 targets .. since that is the only difference from what guardian staff has,
however then also be prepared for lowest single target damage and also a very
low range.

You can still DPS, you can just also CC more now too. You don’t need to take any of the healing traits (except Natural Mender) or staff.

wolfyrik.2017:

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

Nature is universal, it is not only Earth related, nature is the representation of the physical universe, to say that nature is only earth related is just like saying that there is only life on earth on the universe. Druids had rituals concerning the sky and celestial bodies, ever heard of stonehenge? the druid you are speaking about is the conventional Post D&D druid which has nothing to do with the actual Druid in our history and even so, the druids that we come to know, the real ones we don’t know much either only vague details because the information about the druids are based on accounts of some reports writen by Julius Caesar when he started to conquer the northern isles and even so the romans back then tended to exaggerate a lot when conquering new regions and people.

Glyph of Empowerment needs to be buffed
10% damage across 5 seconds is not a big or very noticeable burst, especially given the amount of damage support that other classes can provide. Also, from the tooltip from the stream, it doesn’t appear that this affects condition damage at all.

I would increase the damage buff to at least 20% and have it affect condition damage. This would be appropriate due to the relatively short range and duration of the skill. It makes sense that it should have a high reward for good positioning.

Druid gives balance a chance to actually work….

people never talk about how over powered conditions are in general… When a necro can eat through 20,000 health in a mere few seconds… yeah thats balanced. No profession has a niche to provide base healing support. the supportive healing skills thus far have not made an noticeable impact in combat. healing in this game is broken, and even though people are concerned about the druid being a monk, there has to be some class that can spit out some noticeable healing… otherwise gw2 will remain unbalanced forever. Druid is not going to be the new monk, its going to be an effective role that will be nice to have around.
Looking at the live stream, It looked pretty obvious that healing allies to full health required the druid to exhaust all their energy in celestial form and use all the glyphs.. thats quite the sacrifice.

Serromus Jakta.3987:

wolfyrik.2017:

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

Nature is universal, it is not only Earth related, nature is the representation of the physical universe, to say that nature is only earth related is just like saying that there is only life on earth on the universe. Druids had rituals concerning the sky and celestial bodies, ever heard of stonehenge? the druid you are speaking about is the conventional Post D&D druid which has nothing to do with the actual Druid in our history and even so, the druids that we come to know, the real ones we don’t know much either only vague details because the information about the druids are based on accounts of some reports writen by Julius Caesar when he started to conquer the northern isles and even so the romans back then tended to exaggerate a lot when conquering new regions and people.

…and I think you will find that we’re not discussing Terran Druids, we are discussing Guild Wars, Tyrian druids, so bury the constant earth-lore in the ground with the rest of the relics. We’re discussing Tyria, not Terra.

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

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

Devotees of Melandru that shed physical form. Not at all dissimilar to pretty much all humans at time of death/transcendence. Astral/celestial is not synonymous with spirit/ghost related in Guild Wars lore context. Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes Druidic magic (ie: the magic of Melandru, ie: the magic of rangers) astral/celestial, then every single profession/class should be given astral mechanics, because there’s a ton of spirits wandering the physical world, choosing to remain bound there for one reason or another. Druids as described are nothing more than nature liches in spirit-form.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

Ever played factions? i think you should, secondly, why would you assume that Astral/celestial doesn’t have anything to with death? you are making an assumption based on nothing practically, the wiki page has nothing to prove your point either and is not a main source for pinpointing deep lore about this game. the final point is that there is actually nothing about druids, how they lived before they became stewards of Maguuma, we don’t know what they practiced, their lives, their ceremonies, nada.

I’ve played more of that game then you, that is for certain. It’s also irrelevant, so can we stick to the pertinent points, please? Perhaps you didn’t read quite carefully enough, so I shall re-post to re-educate:

“Furthermore, if a Druid ascending to spirit form to eternally exist within the natural world makes…”

Not the word if. I was speaking hypothetically, using your claim/view. Even if ascending to spirithood is magically astral/celestial, there are a number of spirits eternally bound to Tyria for reasons not related to nature magic, thus meaning that either all of them, or none of them are connected to astral/celestial magic. You’re pointing to one case of a spirit and claiming that that particular spirit conveniently validates the Druid specialization’s celestial theme, ignoring the countless other spirits that would *in*validate it.

How do you know you’ve played this game longer than me? you are being subjective and personal, thanks for derailing and avoiding a coherent response to your irrelevant argument.

Mizhas.8536:

The main reason of the lack of usefulness of the tome of courage was the ability cd rather than the heals/buffs.
The support provided by the tome was excelent in determined situations (Talking about WvW & sPvP).

The actual Druid spec may introduce a new role into the game. The main issue here may lay on the ability from the devs developing new PvE encounters where dodge is not enough and you need actual healing for surviving.

Then you deal with the “Group looking for healer” problem.

@OP I agree that their should be a little damage thrown in for tagging purposes. Personally I’d like to see that ground target auto attack strike up to 5 players (considering how clunky it will be to use) and then add some more CC to the other non damaging skills. Seed of Life could add chill, and Tidal Surge should get a knockdown/launch for synergy with ancient seeds.

ShadowKain.9410:

Serromus Jakta.3987:

wolfyrik.2017:

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

Nature is universal, it is not only Earth related, nature is the representation of the physical universe, to say that nature is only earth related is just like saying that there is only life on earth on the universe. Druids had rituals concerning the sky and celestial bodies, ever heard of stonehenge? the druid you are speaking about is the conventional Post D&D druid which has nothing to do with the actual Druid in our history and even so, the druids that we come to know, the real ones we don’t know much either only vague details because the information about the druids are based on accounts of some reports writen by Julius Caesar when he started to conquer the northern isles and even so the romans back then tended to exaggerate a lot when conquering new regions and people.

…and I think you will find that we’re not discussing Terran Druids, we are discussing Guild Wars, Tyrian druids, so bury the constant earth-lore in the ground with the rest of the relics. We’re discussing Tyria, not Terra.

I already did, but you just ignored the facts and started to make up lore that does not exist and tried to invalidate my response, so i will not waste my time with you.

So are Druids going to be given the ability to blood sacrifice a party member, or a baby even, for a short duration boon during combat?

Say, a five-eight second channeled elite skill(after the fashion of the old guardian tomes) that summons an altar upon which any friendly player or NPC within range has a stone knife thrust into its chest by the Druid in order to create a field in the form of a slowly spreading pool of blood around them. Players standing in the pool receive the boon.

I’d be all for that -naysayers be kitten ed- you know… Seeing as we’re all so obsessed with verisimilitude here.

Notsoperky.4291:

Have you actually played support ele in wvw? the difference in loot between that and a staff spamming guardian is crazy.

that would be because one person is playing a build to support his zerg, and the other is playing with his loot stick…

Are you saying both builds should get the same loot? (I don’t necessarily disagree, personally I think all support roles in wvw are under rewarded, but that’s not a problem with the druid… it’s a problem with wvw)

If your goal is to tags mobs for loot.. why would you bring a support build? I’ve actually done one worse than elementalist (support engineer). If loot was a primary concern you shouldn’t be doing wvw anyhow.. (it’s nice, but PVE has way more lucrative options)

dsslive.8473:

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.

Your statement will be correct if kicking will require more then two players, all you need is two party members who want someone that will heal them, remove condition and help to max their DPS (babysitter). Rangers are in a bad state already, this elite spec will push them a way from the meta players.

I don’t think there is a grind in the game, people grind heavily if they like to gain the best weapon/armor, something that is not required in the game (most of my gear is exotic and i in many cases i am the last to stand). For now the game is more about player skill then stats.

wolfyrik.2017:

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

I didn’t know that the sun and moon weren’t celestial bodies.

Mcrocha.3891:

wolfyrik.2017:

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.

That’s just plain wrong on two accounts. Firstly the “celestial bodies” have precisely no effect on the Earth whatosever, only the sun and moon affect us.

Secondly, just because planets and stars are natural, doesn’t mean they are part of nature. That’s equivocation at best. The usual definition of nature, the one that’s being used to describe druid and the one that people mean when they describe nature religions in the real world, is the natural world of the Earth specifically. Wildlife; flora, fauna, weather patterns. This is the same definition being used for druid in GW2 since the fantasy druid is a romantic fiction based on real-world nature religions.

To say that the planets and stars fit in to theme is to say that engineers should be able to build cars to ride around Tyria. It’s equivocation. As I’ve said in a previous thread, if Druid has space-mage mode then elementalists should have Atomic bomb mode because uranium is an element.

I didn’t know that the sun and moon weren’t celestial bodies.

^

It is a class that heals but it doesn’t have to FOCUS on that, you can build something hyper offensive with the druid and heal while using your abilities, not to heal but.. well, as a “collateral healing” when use your abilities But it IS true there is ALOT of healing obviously, I personally like this, but I guess people who wanted some kind of hardcore DPS spec will be disappointed

Serromus Jakta.3987:

Nature is universal, it is not only Earth related, nature is the representation of the physical universe, to say that nature is only earth related is just like saying that there is only life on earth on the universe. Druids had rituals concerning the sky and celestial bodies, ever heard of stonehenge? the druid you are speaking about is the conventional Post D&D druid which has nothing to do with the actual Druid in our history and even so, the druids that we come to know, the real ones we don’t know much either only vague details because the information about the druids are based on accounts of some reports writen by Julius Caesar when he started to conquer the northern isles and even so the romans back then tended to exaggerate a lot when conquering new regions and people.

You’re arguing a point I never made, go back and read this time please. You’re relying on the same equivocation I was challenging.

As for your sarcasm about stone henge, no one knows what it was for, to try to claim it as proof that druids were into stars in absurd in the extremes, which you know because you even brough it up

“the druid you are speaking about is the conventional Post D&D druid which has nothing to do with the actual Druid in our history and even so, the druids that we come to know, the real ones we don’t know much either only vague details because the information about the druids are based on accounts of some reports writen by Julius Caesar”

You completely contradicted yourself in order to insult me and support your own equivocation over the word nature. I wouldn’t mind but I explained this already in the post you quoted.

The only druid we have any lore for and the only ones that matter here are the GW2 and fantasy versions of druids. The ones that use nature-magic which means, by definition, Flora, Fauna, weather, water and to some degree, spirits of those things. We even have ranger utilities which support this; Spirit of Nature, Spirit of frost, Spirit of Stone.

The only thing in the entirity of what we’ve seen so far that even remotely supports teh celestial nonsense is Spirit of Sun and that’s still a tree form which is channelling the heat of the sun. I’d argue that the ranger spirits alone disprove claims that celestial form is in anyway fitting for the established theme.

This is an elite Ranger traitline (colloquially referred to as a “specialization”) that happens to be named “druid”. Even if “Druid” was a class in Guild Wars 2, how that class plays would be entirely dependent solely on the development of Guild Wars 2, not on other games.[/quote]

Agreed. However you are basing your definition of a Druid on other games or lore since there is no basis for a Druid in this game. As such, the developers have the freedom to create new lore, which it seems they drew influence from our understanding of this world, ie, the one the developers live in.

As for saying it is a ranger specialization, that was addressed in my post already