Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking- in Life Shroud/Celestial Aspect, ground targeted heals might be very clunky for the auto-attack. Just thinking back to ele healing fields and such- it’s super frustrating when your allies are moving around and trying to dodge enemy attacks and ending up moving out of your heals.

A really quick cast time (1/4 sec) might be appropriate, or, in a complete rework, a targeted tether to an ally that heals them and any allies that it passes through. Otherwise, it might be frustrating for druids (as it already is with water eles), trying to heal allies who need it.

This might be something to look at after the Beta though.

First impression balance change suggestions:

Sublime Conversion (Staff)

• the projectiles become unblockable

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

Glyph of Rejuvenation

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

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

Glyph of Empowerment

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

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

Cosmic Ray (Celestial form)

• 3 pulses

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

Lunar Impact (Celestial form)

• 3s daze decreased to 1s

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

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

Celestial Shadow (trait)

• 2s increased to 5s

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

Ancient Seeds (trait)

• add Knockback to tooltip

The tooltip only mentions Stun, Daze, Knockdown and Launch, but in the reveal video Knockback is mentioned muliple times, including Glyph of the Tides.

Staff dose not seem to fit with druid at all. Most of its heals are in the 300 ranges yet its wepon is on a 1,200 ranges. Why is there such a discontent with the class wepon and the utility / line.
Maybe making glyph for druid ground targeted on say 900-1,200 ranges would make druid sink up with its wepon better.

I’ll quote a couple of my posts from other threads that express why I think this is a bad spec.

This. Druid is too focused on just one thing and seems to have been designed with the idea that they want healers in raids (after we came to this game being told that we won’t need healers) and thats not even unique. What is druid going to provide outside of heals? Why won’t parties just bring a bunch of different classes who can all buff and heal each other and themselves, why would a Druid be needed? Why should it be taken over an ele placing down water feilds then blasting them with all their different blast finishers? Why should druids be pigeonhold into one mode?

Considering how focused Druid is on healing to the exclusion of everything else the only way it will be viable is if they force so much unavoidable damage on us in raids that a pure healer will be needed. If they don’t do this (and I’m sure we all hope they don’t because it throws out everything the combat system was based on) then the entire spec will be pointless.

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

This is made doubly funny as Staff and celestial form basically serve the same function (spamming out heals) so taking both compunds the lack of diversity in what Druid can offer.

Just like the zerk meta teams don’t actually bring the max dps spec of each class and instead sacrifices some dps for them to bring support to buff the dps of other classes, raid groups won’t bring a druid because it does nothing but heal. They will bring a chronomancer who can spam their well heal well while providing alacrity and quickness, they will bring a quardian who can throw out damage mitagating and condi cleanse while throwing out some passive heals, they will bring an ele who can take a break from massive boon generation and high dps to drop a water feild then start blasting it like crazy, they will bring a rev who can jump into ventari to heal then jump back to another legend to fill a different role, they will bring an engie who can do simalar with their kits. Hell if a Necro finds its way in somehow they can bring their life siphon aura just to add some extra few ticks and all this would add up.

This is one of the main problems with the extreme tunnel vision of this spec. Why are you going to bring in a druid who is spamming out heals when your party will will include plenty of classes providing multiple kinds of support.
You could have a Guardian thorwing out some passive heals while applying aegis, blinds, reflects and condi cleanse and stab while doing decent damage, a Chrono who can spam MoP and shatters with the heal traits and their aoe heal well while also providing reflects, condi cleanse party wide cooldown reduction and quickness as well as a rev who can sit in ventari for when the healing is needed then swap to Shiro or Glint for better damage and other types of support.
Those 3 will provide more then enough group healing that a druid will be pointless and all 3 will be providing other things to the group as well.
The point is that those other classes (and ele and Engie) can throw out some heals while doing what they need to do that got them into the party in the first place. Lost of small heals even without healing power and everybodies self heal will add up and keep people alive, all druid provides is healing.
Compare it to the zerk meta, most build composistions don’t actually take the classes highest dps build, they swap out some damage for support that helps buff up the damage of the other classes. In the teams that do raids they will do the same with healing, swapping it out for support and damage to make the overall group work better.
All druid can provide is healing, its actually less complicated and thought out then the much maligned zerk meta.

The Druid spec is the equivalant of buffing Predator’s Onslaught so that it increases your damage by 100% in PvE and then congratulating Rangers for now being in the dungeon Meta.
Its boring, passive, doesn’t add anything new or interesting, doesn’t fix any of the problems with the class and will still somehow get nerfed due to PvP.

And heres a link to a thread I made with some skill changes that I think could help Druid support other play styles

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/A-few-changes-to-Druid-that-I-think/first#post5536391

Eric.7813:

As I said in another post:
Hold on here, lets think about this logically. When HoT is released, and everyone has their elite specializations, what is going to happen?
Chances are, people will pick and choose skills/weapons and traits that make the most sense for what ever the are doing.
With that said, lets look at the druid.
Lets say one wants to be a healer, they can do that by simply using the druid elite mechanic. they don’t even need to use the glyphs. this leaves 5 utility skills and a another weapon and even two more trait lines to choose from….
hmmm doesn’t look so dedicated healer all of a sudden.

Uh, Yeah. It still looks like a dedicated healer because all of the sudden the last trait line (except for 2 traits) is all about healing.

Eric.7813:

this is true for all these elite specs… most people are going to pick and choose what they want for their builds..

No, what’s true for most of the elite specs is they can do multiple things. For the Druid, it’s healing. That is it’s thing. That’s it. People have DPS/Support/Control in the core classes. Irenio didn’t start out saying “This is Heavy Support” he said “HEAVY HEALING” so. Yeah, that’s the Druid thing. So you can have whatever you want in your Druid build as long as you want healing.

Eric.7813:

The druid is exactly what the ranger needed. It now has very viable options to mix a damage build while having an option of a strong defensive mode.

The druid is exactly what people who want to play healers needed. Nothing more, nothing less. We already had viable options, but none of which were optimal for group content.

Eric.7813:

do you see the whole picture? the ranger can finally compete with all the other OP classes now. yay. we should all be happy.
Druid and the celestial avatar is Amazing.

I think you don’t understand what makes something OP in PVE. I really don’t.
I’m glad you’re happy with the Druid spec, but don’t sit here and pretend it’s roses for everybody. Just like I don’t pretend that people are all displeased as I am with it. I think you’re just sorely blinded by your happiness you have a healer (finally) to play that those rose colored glasses don’t allow you to see it any other way.

So where to start.
I have to say that I am a fan of druid but some of the things I’m concerned about.

• Druid revealed some choices that are never going to be considered because of the competing choices are vastly inferior
  ~ Celestial Shadow provides very short duration. We don’t know how often do we get to activate this trait but it doesn’t achieve anything worth mentioning.
  ~ Pets presented are all complete versions of what community asked for. Reliable utilities or pets that do not die in PvE. While we are thankful for these amazing pets – they simply wave goodbye to any and every single pet out there.
  They present amazing potential but that idea needs to be implemented baseline to all pets.
  The same goes for mentioned balance change to “We Heal as One”. The idea for the heal is amazing but you need to realize that no other heal is ever going to be used again.

Staff
Solar Beam has a flaw in design. It’s a Mesmer GS-like auto-cast that that heals people. So if you play Healing Power (even though we don’t know the numbers) you have to pick an enemy target (it’s not a projectile so you need a target, right? Doesn’t work with 1st Person).
If you use it as a 2nd DPS utility item – the heal is way too low to be even considered.

The biggest concern of all
Healing, reviving or cleansing allies strips you of event completion bonuses such as XP, Loot, Karma and Items.
Druid doesn’t have enough DPS (obviously) which means Mechanic to calculate Healing as a part of Event Completion is inevitably required

Looking at the Glyph family I see that there is no stun breaker. Perhaps the Equality one could be made into one.

My proposal for the Glyphs:

-Increase all radii to 360 up from 300, the standard AoE

-Glyph of the Tide also becomes a blast finisher. Makes sense because it is an explosion of waves that pushes foes.

-Glyph of Empowerment. As I have mentioned earlier in the topic, 20% up from 10% extra damage for 5s when activated, 20% reduced damage taken in its inverse form

-Glyph of Equality is made into a stun break. Perhaps a bit lower CD.

-Rejuvenation and Alignment seem fine and with a clear purpose.

On a side note, I have a question for the Live Vicariously minor trait interaction with the Regeneration boon and other heals :
- How does it interact? Is it only with the initial application of the boon or is it with every tick?
- Does it proc once per second or can it proc from all allies affected like altruistic healing does?
- Are the pet and the ranger counted in the ally pool? I suppose they are, I would just like some confirmation.

Ty

Things I’m unsure about:

Cosmic Wisp (GM trait) & Astral Wisp (Staff)
How useful is this wisp? It doesn’t look nor sound very useful. I doubt it’s worth a GM trait. Luckily the skill deals damage on staff to make up for it.

Ancestrial Grace (Staff)
Does this skill evade/immune? I think evade for the duration would be very fitting. You’re either trying to use it to escape or to reach allies in need.

Glyph of Equality
Similar Glyphs have a 20s and 25s cooldown, but this one has a whooping 40s cooldown. Seems too much of a difference.

Imagine a class with minimal offensive/defensive buffs and damage, but only healing.
It’d be needed in raid, and only raid, and not needed in the other 95% of the game contents.

That’s why I refuse to be healbot.

The fact that druid has minimal group offensive/defensive supports sadden me.
(Before you say anything, the damage bonus Glyph gives you an average of 2.5% damage increase only, way worse than Frost Spirit. What a joke. The other 300 self range glyphs all look extremely useless against pve mobs. Range too small, not much damage, no group buffs, no stun-break. Basically NOTHING useful)

Funny how engi complains about how useless their Gyro is, while not noticing Glyphs are way worse. (Except the Elite glyph maybe)

first of all – excellent specialisation, my favorite. But i would like to see some tweaks:

In general – too much of it is just heal allies and gain more healing to heal again to trigger another heal that heals allies and increses next heal that heals your pet who heals allies Needs more variety. Throw some dmg, condis, small boons etc in there. Focused on healing is good, fully dedicated to nothing but straight up heal is not.
Some stability would be nice, druid will be a target.

Pet synergy – i get that druid isnt primarily about pets, but pets are ranger mechanic, all ranger weapons and traitlines have some pet synergy. Add a buff/condi application for pet here and there. Doesnt have to be massive, but one skill on staff and one skill on avatar need this. I would go with offensive synergy since druid is support. Reverse bear-bow i tank/heal pet does dmg. Same with traits, add a little something for the pet. The word pet (and druid is still a ranger) does not appear at all in entire spec

Staff: make sure it still does dmg so it can work on more offensive setups. Gotta wait to try out how it scales with gear, before going into detail. I would like to see some condi application on it – burn on 3 or bleed on 1 or torment on 2. With condi rework all condi dmg comes from gear, power/healing/tank builds gain no benefit from condis, so no concerns there but allows synergy with popular ranger condi/hybrid style. Staff should have at least 1 combo finisher, every 2-hander in the game has at least one.

Avatar: too many " just heal your allies" skills, give it some variety. Seems kinda boring. Avatar severely lacks dmg, its a problem. Im not asking for a DPS machine but at least token dmg on AA so its possible to get loot/event credit. I would like a hard-hitter on 3 (less then maul but strong) plus burning maybe. Again, would be nice to throw out a condition here and there on 2-4 for more build variety.

Druid gets CC, but lacks something to follow it up with, gotta have a hard hitter somewhere in there (relative terms, i know its support oriented).

Glyphs – good design-wise but a bit on the weak-side. Why you hate stunbreaks Irenio? – so good that you avoid all CC? rest of us are mortals. one glyph should have it in normal form. 300 range might be a bit too small for some of them, 400-450 seems more reasonable

- heal glyph is weak, straight up weaker then ranger heals i think
- alignment needs more conditions (damaging)
- equality – CD is too much, should be 20-25 like the others
- tides – good
- empowerment – good idea but waaay to weak, that bonus is pretty much nothing (10% for 5s), all the passives like spotter/empower allies etc. are much stronger, as are banners, frost spirit and such. Needs to be 20% at least or 10-15% but grants quickness/strong might/fury/aegis/pulse blinds/stability (some combination of those). You cant justify a utility slot for such a small boost
- unity – love it

Pets: very cool but really really worried about wyverns. All pets struggle to hit anything that moves, and that double-swipe AA looks sooooo slow and roots the pet. Looks like almost 0 dps pet in pvp, but i guess in pve it could hit something.
Burning animation is so cool though im still gonna use it at start

Traits: master line seems a bit weak. lingering light – that wisp should deal dmg/apply conditions

TL;DR – just make skills more interesting with varying effects, not just heal, heal, heal. Dont forget dmg (power and condi) on staff/avatar/traits, so its not relegated to being full healer only. Astral form must do at least minimal damage on AA to earn event credit/loot, buff glyphs. Some self-might somewhere would be nice for a possible celestial (the gear prefix ) build.

About Animations/appearances…. will the Bifrost staff have a fully rainbow beam with the auto attack or no?

Can we give our elite skill “Spirit of Nature” a 1000 effect range so it can be like all the other spirts? Right now its at 240 and thats just sad for an Immobile ELITE skill.

Girion.5483:

I’m afraid I’m one of those who’re not too thrilled about the Druid.

I really wish they’d have improved on the pet mechanic, instead of adding this celestial form or at the very least ditched the pet in favor of the celestial avatar, if it’s a must. Why would a druid bring a pet? There’s no synergy, except for this one adept trait.

Secondly, I’m absolutely not happy with the druid’s intended role as a field medic. Too much emphasis on healing. Why can’t I play a druid that is supportive in a different way, besides healing? To me, being the healbot of the party is not a fun way to play and to my understanding it also contradicts the core concepts of GW2 in regards to the holy trinity.

The glyphs I’d like to give a try, but since the minor traits of the druid line only favor heavy healing specs, I don’t see how I could make a druid variant work, that’s a little less focused on healing. There’s not enough variation. Don’t force every druid to be a healer! Provide this option through selectable traits and the staff, but also put something into this traitline for druids who want to be more selfish or supportive in a different way.

Last but not least …

Solar Beam: Improve the visual effect (sun ray!) and allow it to hit up to 3 adjacent targets, like the fireball on ele staff. Maybe even add an effect that applies blind under certain conditions. I mean, it’s a concentrated ray of sunlight afterall.

TLDR: Didn’t pick Ranger to play a Monk :\

I’ve said this before, now you may or may not agree with me here but -

You don’t have to be a dedicated healer. The Druid traitline opens up some great inter-build dynamics between current builds and weapons, as well as adding some brilliant self-sustain for the more squishy builds like LB power. You also do not have to wield a staff to be a Druid.

I think the point of the Druid is that it has the potential to be the best healer in the game – or a full on “healbot” if you will – for situations (whether Raid, PvP, PvE or WvW) that call for it. This is particularly true of heavy-damage scenarios that require burst heals – Roy C. mentioned this is more of the focus in CA form in response to a Ventari question in the Revenant forums. But nothing is forcing you into playing this role. As with every other build in the game it’s an option, and the Druid traitline has created new options for existing builds. As with every other elite spec, not everyone who mains that profession is going to like or agree with the direction their Espec has taken, but as with Druid they all create new build diversity. It’s called a specialisation for a reason. You don’t have to take it, but if you do you at least know what it brings to the table, just as you do with all the other traitlines you choose to take. Except – the best thing about the Druid traitline is that it has solid direction. This is something Rangers have been crying for since day 1, and now we finally have it as an option there are some people complaining. I can’t help but see a little hypocrisy in all this.

Bristleback Rain of Spikes
This skill has a radius of 600 and a range of 600. Make sure this doesn’t cause the pet to run within 600 range of the target before usiing it. This pet has to stay at 1200 range like its other skills.

Spiders are ruined by their slow casting AoE that always misses moving targets, I don’t want to see Bristeback go to waste as well.

Maybe include an option to disable certain pet skills in the pet menu

For the next beta weekend unlock all Ranger pets. Both the old and the new. Just for beta characters of course.

Eric.7813:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I think you don’t understand what makes something OP in PVE. I really don’t.
I’m glad you’re happy with the Druid spec, but don’t sit here and pretend it’s roses for everybody. Just like I don’t pretend that people are all displeased as I am with it. I think you’re just sorely blinded by your happiness you have a healer (finally) to play that those rose colored glasses don’t allow you to see it any other way.

ranger got a new play style. ranger already has dps and it’d seem wasteful to give ranger more of the same when it is already one of the least versatile professions in the game.
druid is thinking outside the box.

I never said i wanted a healer. but I appreciate the druid, it will bring new build options to the ranger.

[/quote]

Ranger is the 5th dps position in this game. We DO NOT have enough dps.

Ranger lacks party-wide buffs such as might, quickness, stability, protection.

Ranger lacks AOE vulnerability applications.

And then all we get is healing. No offensive/defensive buffs for the party, even LESS damage, minimal vulnerability application, very unreliable debuff conditions. (300 self range, is that a joke? It’s worse than traps)

Holland.9351:

Bristleback Rain of Spikes
This skill has a radius of 600 and a range of 600. Make sure this doesn’t cause the pet to run within 600 range of the target before usiing it. This pet has to stay at 1200 range like its other skills.

Spiders are ruined by their slow casting AoE that always misses moving targets, I don’t want to see Bristeback go to waste as well.

defo increase range to atleast 800 yards so it doesn’;t have to run so far to start casting , it takes too long for it to postion>cast by then the targets moved.

Halan.7931:

Could effects in normal non-transformed form be changed to green (staff 2 and 3), or golden-yellow (staff 1)? Use more rangery colors like green, yellow, golden, brown, not the guardian ones (white and blue).

And make seed of life look less disgusting. Currently it looks like "It’s something dangerous that’s going to explode, run away).

I second this. I know it’s a somewhat petty criticism in the grand scheme of things, but the Druid does seem to lose a bit of it’s identity to the Guardian in the way some of the skills appear. The deep-blue is fine for the Celestial form, but I would expect to see more green or sunlight yellow in the non-Celestial skills (Staff-skill 1 should totally be yellow). Also, I agree that Seed of Life does look like it could be a bit confusing to players.

I’m loving the Druid so far, but personally I think the whole space/blue/celestial theme should stay local to the new mechanic, and everything else should have more of an earthy/green feel. Just my thoughts.

Finally going to add my thoughts:

I think for me, all of this reveal came as good news because I already play a lockdown condi/support/bunker ranger. And to the poster who said no one uses muddy terrain? I do, both for the cripple lockdown AND for the condi cleanse from the survival skill trait.

I play with Axe/torch and Axe/WH, mainly Sinister gear, with a little bit of Dire mixed in for added survivability. Between entangle (with poison/torment from Krait runes), AoE chill traited axe 3, and muddy terrain I do pretty well at keeping a group of mobs (mordrem for example) locked down tight in my fire field from bonfire and they ultimately melt away. I realize this is a vastly different play style than what most rangers utilize. I’m already highly depending on positioning both to get the most out of splitblade (line ‘em up, please), and grabbing aggro to steer the mobs into a blob to lock down/melt them. My only regret is being unable to do something more for my party’s health than keep permi-regen on them!

Because of the way I already utilize my ranger, I can honestly see how the addition of staff is going to fit right in. Maybe I won’t need to spend so much of my time picking up downed Zerkers, since 90% of the time I’m usually the last Norn standing. I’m already lining up foes to give splitblade the bang for the buck, which will work great with staff 1. If my party doesn’t need healing? I’ll be in the axe/torch rotation. The aspect I don’t see myself using as much are the glyphs, rather than the staff, simply because it would mean removing some of my lockdown methods.

I’ve kind of never understood the argument that rangers can’t buff a party. With a combo of Torch 5/WH 5, I can lay down 19 1/2 seconds of 3 stacks of might/fury/swiftness and now the additional regen from Windborn Notes, plus more regen/swiftness from shout traited Guard. As long as there is a blast finisher somewhere on the staff… And I DO feel that staff absolutely NEEDS a blast finisher… I’ll be able to maintain this style of buffing even taking the druid spec, while also being able to continue to DPS via conditions AND heal, which I’ve wanted to be able to do for quite some time, so for my money, Druid is looking like a great addition!

For those worried about event credit… The staff auto also does damage as well as heal, and as others have pointed out, there is still the other weapon swap as well! I realize I use LB maybe 1% of the time, but it does leave me wondering if a significant amount of the hue and cry is related to the fact that perhaps rethinking how you play the ‘ranger’ side of the weapon swap (IE: LB), from a zerker stat mindset, is what is leaving folks so unsettled about this shift in direction? Make no mistake, there’s no way the way I am playing ranger at this point in time is DPS focused and yet in all this time I have yet to have problems getting gold level event wins in just about any event I get myself involved with.

Well since it is the official thread now I guess I’ll give the structured post on initial thoughts.

General
- I think the spec is designed very well. It looks cool, it fills a clear niche, and it opens up a lot of builds with the sheer amount of utility it provides.
- Thanks much for the hard work on it.

Staff Skills
- I honestly have zero complaints with any of the skills as my first impression without being able to test numbers and whatnot. I think the kit provides a great mix of defensive utility/healing/support. I know a lot of people are interested in the mechanic on Ancestral Grace. Are there evade frames? Is it a blast finisher as was mentioned in the stream despite the tooltip?

Glyphs
Rejuvenation- Looks like a pretty strong heal especially when paired with Verdant Etchings. A minor concern is that it may be difficult to heal the pet with this skill especially if it used to support allies or if the Ranger is at range. But also has the potential for great synergy with Cultivated Synergy.
Tides- No problems, looks good on both sides.
Equality- Damage might need to be lower with the instacast. Furthermore, the potential for a 6s daze with Moment of Clarity is great, but maybe too good? Maybe slight daze duration reduction.
Alignment- Very solid on both sides and will probably be a staple in glyph centric builds.
Empowerment- Another solid glyph that should see good use probably in Raids and to aid burst in other parts of the game. Effect in CAF is unclear? It increases outgoing healing of allies? Maybe should decrease damage taken by 10% instead.
Unity- Don’t have much to say until I can mess around with it. Very cool concept! Can see great synergy with this one and the class as a whole.

CAF skills
Cosmic Ray- Like the concept, but it seems kind of clunky.
Seed of Life- Solid
Lunar Impact- Very similar skill to Cosmic Ray maybe one of them should change. Again the 3s daze could be abused with MoC(perma daze)even with the 1s cast time. Maybe decrease daze duration and shorten cast time?
Tidal Surge- Wow just wow. Amazing.
Natural Convergence- I don’t know how it functions, but it could be a great skill from stealth and if the cripple and slow come on the first two pulses with the immob on the final pulse.

Traits- Surprisingly I have no problems with the traits. They are all well thought out and has synergy with the spec and opens up some interesting build options for the overall class. They all seem competitive amongst the tiers which is great. Nice job.

Red in the ranger forum, tis an exciting time indeed.

Mentioned earlier but I think having solar beam bounce between enemy targets so you could potentially form a lazer beam healing array would be cool. Some people mentioned having it able to target allies, it’s our basic attack so should function primarily as an attack.

The vine surge animation could stay in place for a while crippling and bleeding? anyone who walks through it, acting as a short term soft barrier.

Glyphs feel wierd being all melee range when the staff has high range.
New pets are fantastic except for the slow attacks that have a higher chance of missing. I’d take weaker faster attacks from the pets any day.

I’ll need to take another proper look at the druid info for more.

Amazing work Irenio.

I think everyone needs to accept its role as a healer/play it before going off on how mad you are, if you want to be dps.. don’t take druid lol.

Also for people who are complaining about staff 2/the grand master that does the similar thing: You have to realize these both are meant for sustaining avatar energy(which theyll both be very strong for)

Frigoris.7853:

Red in the ranger forum, tis an exciting time indeed.

Mentioned earlier but I think having solar beam bounce between enemy targets so you could potentially form a lazer beam healing array would be cool. Some people mentioned having it able to target allies, it’s our basic attack so should function primarily as an attack.

The vine surge animation could stay in place for a while crippling and bleeding? anyone who walks through it, acting as a short term soft barrier.

Glyphs feel wierd being all melee range when the staff has high range.
New pets are fantastic except for the slow attacks that have a higher chance of missing. I’d take weaker faster attacks from the pets any day.

I’ll need to take another proper look at the druid info for more.

I agree – the solar beam may need a tweak. What distracts me the most is that it shares the same name as Pokemon move :P

I like your “array” idea. If Solar Beam was changed so that upon impact with the target enemy there were, say, 3 strands of light that bounced off that enemy and hit 3 other enemies in its vicinity (IDK, say 240 -300 radius?) it would be a nice touch. Those additional three strands of light might add random conditions instead of damage perhaps? Or both?

ORRRR – the additional light array may not hit enemies, but instead hit 3-5 allies surrounding your target enemy, providing random boons like vigor, protection, resistance and regen. You could then re-name Solar Beam as “Solar Array” or “Solar Dispersion” and escape looking as though you’ve copied pokemon :P

Yes I like this… so, so much potential.

Been looking at the the spec to see if there was anything interesting far as traits.

the Two traits that I like are Natural Stride (This is very useful in my opinion) and Ancient Seeds

Ancient Seeds depends on what it means by striking… If its just hitting something while dazed you can setup up some interesting combos with that.

Adept Traits..While I think the Staff Swap one mine be interesting..I’m not sure using Staff over Axe/Torch Or Sword/Dagger would be worth it…..

The Celestial Condition removal one could be interesting as that’s a lot of Condition and depending on how quickly ya build up that form it could be useful for an Ocrap button.

Pets we get access to some interesting ones… Not sure how they’ll compete with Birds tough…

Skill wise we get a second heal..That’s always nice to have…

I’ve watched the Range video 3 times and have been taking notes:

First of all, Irenio, you are the man! You have a vision for Ranger that I believe will bring us to the top and align us with the other classes.

Second thing I noticed, at 6:21 of the Ranger livestream video, Irenio mentions “the Druid is also going to have multiple forms now…an additional form.” Was this a slip up? Is it possible our /other/next forms will be DPS based or condi based kind of like Revenent stances? Either way, keep doing what you are doing, Irenio

On to the meat. I noticed a couple things with the livestream video:

• Glyph of Rejuvination
  The pet in the video was only getting the Allied healing procc’ed rather than the Self healing and Allied healing procc’s. Not sure if this is intentional or not but all of our other healing skills heal our pet for the same amount that it heals ourselves.

• Smokescale Pet
  I noticed that it was still taking damage while inside the smokescreen/F2 ability. Just a simple bug.

• Seed of Life
  You mentioned adding an additional functionality to it. Why not make it a Light Field? Works in an Astral sense. It also represents the skills name: Seed of Life? You can also make it proc aoe Light Aura to either you and your pet or up to 5 allies.

• Tidal Surge
  You also mentioned of adding somekind of “damage support”, Only thing I can think of that fits the theme of Tidal Surge would either be Weakness or Slow condition. Its a tough call on that one. Also, the animation…not a huge deal but it would be cool to see the Ranger rise up like Natural Convergence’s animation. Except have the Ranger twirl/spin in a quick rotation 360 degrees/1 time while casting Tidal Surge. Just a small touch – it is Astral form.

Posted this in another thread here but I think it fits best here.

Its regarding the Electric Wyvern

The elecrtic Wyvern, it is a flying/winged beast that doesn’t do a single flying attack. Thats just sad. It looks clumpsy when it does ALL the attacking on/from the ground. The Fire one has one flying attack that is really cool.

Suggestion: Give the Electric Wyvern a flying attack. Make the electric attack a flying one similar tothe one the Dragon finisher uses in PvP, or the Griffons swoop. Maybe a bit of a swooping movement where it flies up to come down, breathe the electricity and then hit the enemy with the tail instead of the headbut.

Also… more synergy where the traitline effect the pet as well.

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

Maybe taking the blast finisher off skill 3 and putting it on skill 2? Or adding a combo field to skill 2 to combo with skill 3? More should be done, however.

Staff 5 is also too situational in my opinion. Should be given a few more effects.

Edit: I know I’m going to want this as well. A radius increase on staff 1’s beam and staff 2’s wisp.

Long story short – i was hoping for a nature mage specialization, with powerful aoe zone control, boon application and boon strip abilities.
What i hoped for were skills like vine walls blocking passage for enemies, plant turrets/traps, auto attacking near enemies with some nasty conditions, or ripping boons of them. Generally lot of control as expected from mage that is one with nature so basically the whole map is his weapon.

Instead we got ventari mkII…

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Long story short – i was hoping for a nature mage specialization, with powerful aoe zone control, boon application and boon strip abilities.
What i hoped for were skills like vine walls blocking passage for enemies, plant turrets/traps, auto attacking near enemies with some nasty conditions, or ripping boons of them. Generally lot of control as expected from mage that is one with nature so basically the whole map is his weapon.

Instead we got ventari mkII…

While that is understandable try to keep feedback like that in another thread. This one should be more balance oriented. No amount of chirping is going to completely change the Druid spec now, what can be influenced though is minor tweaks to stuff for better functionality or QoL.

Frostfang.5109:

Posted this in another thread here but I think it fits best here.

Its regarding the Electric Wyvern

The elecrtic Wyvern, it is a flying/winged beast that doesn’t do a single flying attack. Thats just sad. It looks clumpsy when it does ALL the attacking on/from the ground. The Fire one has one flying attack that is really cool.

Suggestion: Give the Electric Wyvern a flying attack. Make the electric attack a flying one similar tothe one the Dragon finisher uses in PvP, or the Griffons swoop. Maybe a bit of a swooping movement where it flies up to come down, breathe the electricity and then hit the enemy with the tail instead of the headbut.

+1

Mcrocha.3891:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Long story short – i was hoping for a nature mage specialization, with powerful aoe zone control, boon application and boon strip abilities.
What i hoped for were skills like vine walls blocking passage for enemies, plant turrets/traps, auto attacking near enemies with some nasty conditions, or ripping boons of them. Generally lot of control as expected from mage that is one with nature so basically the whole map is his weapon.

Instead we got ventari mkII…

While that is understandable try to keep feedback like that in another thread. This one should be more balance oriented. No amount of chirping is going to completely change the Druid spec now, what can be influenced though is minor tweaks to stuff for better functionality or QoL.

Exactly this ^

Irenio mentioned in the stream he wanted to add some more damaging functionality to a couple of the skills…..now’s your time to suggest some of those additions instead of whining.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Long story short – i was hoping for a nature mage specialization, with powerful aoe zone control, boon application and boon strip abilities.
What i hoped for were skills like vine walls blocking passage for enemies, plant turrets/traps, auto attacking near enemies with some nasty conditions, or ripping boons of them. Generally lot of control as expected from mage that is one with nature so basically the whole map is his weapon.

Instead we got ventari mkII…

I was expecting this too..

A SUPPORT class, with skill that buff allies and cripple enemies through boon corruptions/ conditions/plants.

Instead we get a freaking healer who can heal and nothing else…

Also I was expecting a more nature/ animal theme Druid, not a spiritual, holy, monk type of Druid…

Druid isn’t quite what I was expecting which I guess can be said for everyone here pretty much, but it seems like a neat concept. I’ve never played a healer class before, but I am intrigued by the staff skills for the most part though I kinda wonder if a druid can play well on their own as well as a group in PvE.

Overall I guess you can say that I’m happy with it, but I need to test it out myself to really find out for myself. I do like the pets that were shown off at twitchcon especially the wyverns and smokescale. Im kinda hoping that Anet wasn’t kidding when they said there were more pets out in HoT than just those five. My one complaint about the pets and this is probably just me is that they seem a little too small (especially the bristleback). But that’s about it for right now.

Animation wise I wasn’t too impressed with the druid, but I did enjoy the look of the celestial avatar form with all the stars reflecting in the veil of the character’s body and what not. But animations are forgivable to me.

I think I’d agree with others that perhaps adding some buff/boon supports to the druid skills would help , but again I haven’t tested druid, so I don’t know 100%. Maybe some conditions like bleeding with vine surge, or something.

All in all Im pretty excited to see what I can do with a druid and see if it can be a powerful class on its own and in a group. On a funny note I can’t help, but think of genie from Disney’s Aladdin when I think of a druid being this spellcaster that taps into the cosmic power of the universe/multiverse/nature as well as the botanical and anamalistic side of it. PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS!!!

Initially my idea for the druid was this sorceror type that could buff allies and summon birds and bees as well as their pets and had a mastery of spirits, the plants and creatures all around them (more so than the ranger). And potentially perhaps being able to merge and control their pets, and, granted I was grasping at straws, a mount system like the NPC’s will have :P.

EDIT: But seriously great job with the druid, Anet/Irenio thumbs up. Looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

EDIT 2: I do have this one nagging thought though – can anything be done to make celestial avatar useful when we’re alone? From what I saw all of its skills were solely group based.

EDIT 3: The solar beam skill dealing burning damage would be pretty neat as well. As for an animation for the attacks maybe for something like solar beam how about the sun aspect beam that the zephyrites use, if you can’t create new animations or something. Really my concerns are revolving around whether or not the druid can be a good class for groups and solo outside of the testing zones that Anet uses. It’s one thing to test it, it’s another to see it on the field.

The class looks very good skillwise/traitwise, Irenio really did a good job on this as well as Scrapper, but I have a few concerns:
-With the amount of support being added to the game over many specializations, wouldn’t it be about time to allow more ways of tagging mobs? Curently you absolutely have to do damages to get credit for loots and not even all classes can do it with the same efficiency. Allowing credits for supporting those who do damages would be a great addition.
-Celestial Avatar didn’t make much sense for Druids to me (and a lot of people it seems). I know that celestial bodies are part of nature but it doesn’t really fit the basic vision everyone has of druids, let alone tyria druids.
-Also a few animations feel out of place, especially the way the Druid hold a staff like a melee weapon (same as daredevil or revenant). We’ll develop more about this after next BWE.
-The new pets look awesome but since you added an evade componant to F2 skills for smokescale and fire wyvern (which will be great for boss fights and dungeons), I fear that core rangers will feel nerfed just by not owning HoT. One core pet (or even a new core pet) could also benefit from this.

Solar Beam should apply burning. Or blind. You are shooting sun beams at a dude. Also the laser pointer beam is kind of lackluster.

Flaws in Glyphs:

Glyph of Empowerment
This ability won’t see any use whatsoever. Developers said it’s supposed to be the “Everybody, be alarmed, I’m going to pop this so use everything you got”

With all due respect. With 10% damage increase it’s mathematically incorrect to use it over any of our self-DPS boosts.
If it is supposed to be an active DPS buff (like mentioned) for a short amount of time, the damage has to be at least 20%.
I would personally prefer it to be an ability (let’s say … 40 sec CD?) that would boost all damage by 35% for 5 seconds (5 players).
Let’s be real. Time to Compare: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Feel_My_Wrath!%22

Another is Glyph of Alignment.
It is a good glyph, make no mistake. But it doesn’t feel to impact anything without Astral Form. We already have high access to weakness and cripple from various sources. It either should become a solid source of conditions, synergy or purpose because otherwise it won’t meet any use whatsoever.

A few questions about the druid spec:

Will healing/damage from ranger pets count towards celestial resource generation? If so, will we be seeing more pet healing? As is we only have 2-3 pets that heal in some fashion, and on land, only one that we can really control said healing (fern hound).

As mentioned on the reveal, druid is a spec requiring positioning to be fully effective. Perhaps an additional movement ability similar to the staff #3 could make up for the limited range on glyphs?

Just my 2¢.

Since this is the official feedback thread…

During the stream they said the new Shadow* pet that creates a smoke screen evades all attacks while inside the smoke field… However, if you watched the stream the pet clearly takes damage while the smoke screen is active… Takes damage 2×.

https://youtu.be/K2ZHhJQn0B8?t=27m50s

i think the one problem i have with the druid is that it’s a bit too focused on healing, especially celestial form. i do think some skills there could benefit with a mild damage component for the sake of tagging (similar to how thief’s shortbow 4 deals damage just to force them out of stealth when they land it), and a bit more of boon and utility support, rather than going all out on the green DoTs. otherwise the druid is a bit too limited, and will be sacrificing too much in the name of keeping the heals up, in the few scenarios where you’d even want someone pumping out heals like that.

otherwise, it seems like a really fun spec. i personally like the idea of how narrowed down the trait line is, because it allows me to keep running a mostly functional “regular” build while still bringing out druid’s full potential. what i want to see now is the druid’s full potential branch out a bit more from “puts lots of green numbers on the screen if he mashes all the skills on cooldown”. a blast finisher on the healing seed would be cool, for example, even if the cooldown increased a bit.

Mavander.3208:

Solar Beam should apply burning. Or blind. You are shooting sun beams at a dude. Also the laser pointer beam is kind of lackluster.

i agree that it’s a bit too tiny for even allies to notice, not to mention the style points :P. maybe make it like a recolored mesmer GS auto?

as for another effect, i think it should keep its purpose as a more healing-oriented auto. i don’t know if ~120hp per second is good enough though.

arkealia.2713:

-Celestial Avatar didn’t make much sense for Druids to me (and a lot of people it seems). I know that celestial bodies are part of nature but it doesn’t really fit the basic vision everyone has of druids, let alone tyria druids.

eh, i like it. moon magic, celtic druids dancing to the full moon, and all that stuff.

Another concern with the druid is:

What else can a Druid do when there’s no one to be healed?
~ The answer is, sadly, nothing.
PvE has burn, retreat, kiting, zerg and recuperation phases. The problem with the druid is that it helps only at recuperation. Nothing else.

Druid provides no damage mitigation. No real damage boost for burn phases (Glyph of Empowerment is weak – Maths), no boon support to get ready for next phase…
Nothing.

• Druids need a little bit of something more. Something to do when your allies are at full HP (of course they will be at full HP often).
  Your main goal is supposed to be healing, not dealing damage. But when there’s no one to be healed, the druid needs a tool to feel useful via reducing enemy’s damage output, boosting his allies or preparing for next phase (boons).

One of the solutions how to make Druid useful is to make Glyph of Alignment a 5 second channeled skill but gaining much more power. (same cooldown)
~ Thematically focusing the nature energy and distributing it to your allies.
At a cost of “stunning yourself” for 5 seconds you could either provide them with a heal and cleanse burst, or more importantly, boost your allies’ damage (direct and condi) by 50%

It could become a risk/reward tool that would make druids useful, make them wanted and would have counter-play (kill him or simply interrupt him).
To elaborate the usefulness – your DPS stops completely, so if there are 2 people nearby – you didn’t get any DPS boost at all.
But if 4 people are nearby – the DPS would increase as of 1 bonus person in the party (not really that scary, considering it’s 5 seconds only).

Tragic Positive.9356:

Flaws in Glyphs:

Glyph of Empowerment
This ability won’t see any use whatsoever. Developers said it’s supposed to be the “Everybody, be alarmed, I’m going to pop this so use everything you got”

With all due respect. With 10% damage increase it’s mathematically incorrect to use it over any of our self-DPS boosts.
If it is supposed to be an active DPS buff (like mentioned) for a short amount of time, the damage has to be at least 20%.
I would personally prefer it to be an ability (let’s say … 40 sec CD?) that would boost all damage by 35% for 5 seconds (5 players).
Let’s be real. Time to Compare: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Feel_My_Wrath!%22

Empowerment will never be 20% buff. Much less 35% that is ridiculous and would be completely broken in pvp. Feel My Wrath isn’t really comparable because quickness doesn’t buff damage by a flat percentage, but is much more variable. Try to suggest something more realistic like giving it a small might application or something.

Eric.7813:

Lyger.5429:

My feedback:

Druid just needs to make up it’s mind do you want to be a celestial healer or a half-ranger.

I also think they should have put more effort in reworking celestial avatar to working as a substitute for the pet traits. Just as they did with reaper shroud.

It’s nice to have a trait line that isn’t inflated with pet traits. There were some really cool traits to choose from in the druid line.

Keep in mind, you can simply use the celestial avatar mechanic without using all the glyphs. this leave two trait lines, a weapon and 5 utility skills to choose from. The pet will see plenty of play and i’m glad we got a different mechanic that isn’t pet related. Ranger needed more viable options.

I don’t think you understood what I meant. I was saying they could, in theory, replace pet with celestial form completely and then bring allow all the pet related traits to affect cele form. For example zephyr’s speed (quickness on pet swap) could be changed to quickness on entering cele form.

Just like what they did with necromancer, they allowed death shroud traits to affect reaper shroud.

Mcrocha.3891:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Flaws in Glyphs:

Glyph of Empowerment
This ability won’t see any use whatsoever. Developers said it’s supposed to be the “Everybody, be alarmed, I’m going to pop this so use everything you got”

With all due respect. With 10% damage increase it’s mathematically incorrect to use it over any of our self-DPS boosts.
If it is supposed to be an active DPS buff (like mentioned) for a short amount of time, the damage has to be at least 20%.
I would personally prefer it to be an ability (let’s say … 40 sec CD?) that would boost all damage by 35% for 5 seconds (5 players).
Let’s be real. Time to Compare: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Feel_My_Wrath!%22

Empowerment will never be 20% buff. Much less 35% that is ridiculous and would be completely broken in pvp. Feel My Wrath isn’t really comparable because quickness doesn’t buff damage by a flat percentage, but is much more variable. Try to suggest something more realistic like giving it a small might application or something.

Speaks for yourself..

Quickness effectively increase the “DPS” by 45~50%.
DPS is a more accurate measure than Damage.

20% is not too much for merely 5 secs every 20 secs.

Otherwise makes it has at least 75% up time. (15 secs / 20 CD)

Irenio mentioned in the stream he wanted to add some more damaging functionality to a couple of the skills…..now’s your time to suggest some of those additions instead of whining.

For specificity’s sake, those were:

Celestial Form → Seed of Life: “Add another bit of functionality…Feeling juicy, needs a little more something to differentiate it from the first skill.” (which is ground targeted healing).

Celestial Form → Tidal Surge: “Differentiate it so it’s not just healing. A damaging component to support.” (add damage to support the skill and make it better, or damaging-based boons to support others? not clear which.)

Small concerns:

Glyph of Empowerment
Duration is almost right for coordinated bursting. Could we have that extended with other buffs slightly? Perhaps 6s or 8s? Preferably 8s so it can have a 50% uptime when traited with Verdant Etchings.

Celestial Shadow
As mentioned earlier, splitting it into 2 parts feels as though it would be nicer. Giving everyone stealth upon entry, and super speed upon exiting. However, the duration for stealth and super speed are a tad low. Seriously, it would be perfect if those could be bumped to 3s.

Glyph of Empowerment:

I would buff the base skill for another 5% and nerf its celestial counterpart for 5%. I would also make its radius 600 instead of 300.

Just a quick repost to official feedback thread.
__________________________________________________________________

Some initial thoughts about the druid as a ranger specialization (from notepad):

Overall feelings: Mixed

Positive:

• It gives ranger(druid) a role as a healer. Question: Do we need a healer in GW2?
  • No challenging content in core game (dungeons, overworld, fractals?)
    -> not needed
  • guess: not needed for HOT overworld content
  • maybe needed for raids?
  • useful in WvW
  • might see use in PvP?

Negative:

• Glyphs in general seem lackluster, Glyph of the Tides seems fine
  • Suggestion: Remove Glyph of Empowerment. Move the 10% damage bonus for nearby allies to Signet of the Hunt activated effect and buff either duration, radius or intensity.
• Dismisses pet which was supposedly ranger core mechanic.
  • I thought specializations were meant to enhance or otherwise change the profession mechanic? Druid does absolutely nothing for the pet.
    Note: I don’t like the pet, I use it but don’t really want it or need it, but i believe Anet should figure out what they pet to be for the ranger and give us a clear message. Is pet the core mechanic or what?

Questions that I hope will be answered in beta:

• Is healer all druid can be? Poor synergy with rest of the profession?
• Can Celestial Avatar form be useful without healing gear? Should it be?
• Can enough astral force be gathered just from combat to have enough Celestial Avatar uptime? Is healing from staff a requirement to have enough astral force?
  • Suggestion for Celestial Being: Astral force should also be gathered from pet attacks.

Some thoughts about traits

• Grace of the Land:
  • Cleansing=100% damage reduction > 33% damage reduction from this trait
  • Cleansing is already potent with Seed of Life in Celestial Avatar form
• Natural Stride:
  • Competes against swiftness which isn’t a rare boon.
  • Makes swiftness feel useless when not movement-impaired.
  • Useful for solo roaming or overworld travel.
  • Useless around other people.
  • Suggestion: Grant vigor (2s) to nearby allies when receiving swiftness. OR Do something with the pet.
• Ancient Seeds:
  • Very strong but will not be fun to play against

1) I like the idea of Celestial form that transforms all Glyph utilities to new sets of Glyph skill. Can you make it works for other utilities as well? It would be awesome. For example,
- Sun Spirit: Instead of summon a sun spirit, you grant nearby allies a chance to inflict burning
- Signet of Stone: When activate, Your allies (not you nor your pet) take no damage from attack.
- Search and Rescue: Your pet will seek out and finish a downed foe.

2) Pet should get synergy some how while Druid is in Celestial Form to compensate the lack of damage. Maybe increase pet’s damage and health by 100% or may pet’s stats are added by druid’s stats while in Celestial Form.

3) Make Glyph some how works with long-ranged weapon as well. Damage and buff done by Glyph only is limited to 600 radius around Druid which is kind of useless for longbow spec or even staff skill 1. What about have a trait that allows Glyph to activate at around pet instead Druid or maybe increase radius to 900.

4) “(Minor) Celestial Being: You can equip staves and gain access to glyphs. You can become a celestial avatar once you gain enough astral force. Generate astral force by healing allies and damaging foes.” …….I don’t like this. It force players who want to use a staff or Glyph to activate with this trait line. Seriously, when players purchase Gw2 HoT, they should be able to access all new weapon and utility skills directly.