Guild Wars 2

Just read a post that Druid will have the base healing reduced which is totally fine by me!

But I am curious if they will be reworking how healing power scales so that investing will be worth it if we so decide stat for it.

A lot of the time I notice there is barely a difference in not slotting for it unless you fully slot for it which then still isn’t that high of numbers.

“In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.” – Irenio

Ofir.2405:

“In general the Celestial Avatar form’s base heals feel a bit too high and heal coefficients didn’t feel rewarding enough to go with healpower stats. The heals themselves seemed to be working at decent values, so I’ll be tweaking the base heals down and coefficients up some in order to better reward selecting healing power stat combos as a druid.” – Irenio

Thank you…. >.> somehow I was ignorant and managed to not read it all fully. Maybe too excited about the animations being looked at. v_v

This is probably because Druids were running zerk in the parties that cleared the first raid boss in the beta.

Ahh! Yeah that makes tons of sense. I didn’t even try to NOT slot healing power. x.x

Eh? So We’re being forced into specific gear sets (healing) inorder to do ok healing, and thus sacrificing even more damage – if not CA form becomes extremely lacklustre – as heal is almost all it can do..

I hope there are some compensation tweaks of an offensive nature coming our way too so we can compete with rev/reaper/chrono and scrapper. So far the changes coming from Irenio sound very “Roy” influenced.

edit: probably just paranoid though right?

I would actually enjoy it more if our damage output was focused primarily on our Healing Power and Power stat combined =/

Sandzibar.5134:

Eh? So We’re being forced into specific gear sets (healing) inorder to do ok healing, and thus sacrificing even more damage – if not CA form becomes extremely lacklustre – as heal is almost all it can do..

I hope there are some compensation tweaks of an offensive nature coming our way too so we can compete with rev/reaper/chrono and scrapper. So far the changes coming from Irenio sound very “Roy” influenced.

edit: probably just paranoid though right?

no its just a General saying if you want to Heal effectively you have to Sacrifice some Damage by taking atleast 500-700 healing power. i really don’t want onther Full party of zerker only groups that would be very boring seeing Zerkers Healing better than someone thats traded points for extra healing power.

its not a roy thing at all , right now Anet don’t want Full teams of Zerker gear groups clearing Raids , its ment to challenge people into Taking More than the Bare minimum healing and support , so i can see the Difficulty of the raid going back to BwE2 levels.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Sandzibar.5134:

Eh? So We’re being forced into specific gear sets (healing) inorder to do ok healing, and thus sacrificing even more damage – if not CA form becomes extremely lacklustre – as heal is almost all it can do..

I hope there are some compensation tweaks of an offensive nature coming our way too so we can compete with rev/reaper/chrono and scrapper. So far the changes coming from Irenio sound very “Roy” influenced.

edit: probably just paranoid though right?

no its just a General saying if you want to Heal effectively you have to Sacrifice some Damage by taking atleast 500-700 healing power. i really don’t want onther Full party of zerker only groups that would be very boring seeing Zerkers Healing better than someone thats traded points for extra healing power.

its not a roy thing at all , right now Anet don’t want Full teams of Zerker gear groups clearing Raids , its ment to challenge people into Taking More than the Bare minimum healing and support , so i can see the Difficulty of the raid going back to BwE2 levels.

The problem is that the druid already sacrifices damage. This change is basically saying “your elite spec requires that you wear heal armour…otherwise it just doesn’t work” and that’s not fair.

This can potentially slaughter build diversity with a single blow. In PvP there are only static stats available and too much of a change will make any form of a DPS druid inefficient as its damage AND its healing will both be subpar. Not to mention even with a clerics amulet on druid does not have enough defense to support its healing to withstand other players. That means if there is a viable build there will probably only be one.

Hehe, everyone got what they were asking for. For better or worse.

Thank you for keeping us updated!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

Do any of the other specializations come with a ‘you probably shouldn’t play me’ label? It doesn’t seem right to force the Druid so heavily into a support/healing role and leave no other options for it to explore.

Is there no way you can split the load between staff and astral form so both at least compliment a condi build in some fashion or perhaps provide enough utility (immobs, blinds, cripples, etc) so a power build would consider the build? Not even the traits really help outside of healing or synergize with the other trait lines all that well (even when considering healing/regen).

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

You need to apply that particular mind-set to EVERY HEAL IN THE GAME.

The absolutely awful healing power coefficients on every heal skill has been a huge leg holding up the stool that is the ‘Zerker meta and it’s needed to be kicked out from under that chair since launch. For most self-heals heal power is meaningless. And I don’t use that word lightly. Its worse than meaningless actually, because those points could be put somewhere — ANYWHERE — else and contribute more to your impact in play.

Reduce level contributions to heals slightly. -5% would be felt. -10% would be glorious. Increased heal power coefficients to replace that loss at some modest number and allow healing power focused builds to actually reap some sort of benefit. You’ve done it with conditions recently to punish people without any commitment to condition damage. Its a mystery why a similar pass hasn’t already been done for healing power…

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

I agree that a healing power investment should feel rewarding, not punishing, to those that wish to play more supportive and healy. However, I fear that right now other professions that also have too much base healing (Engi and Rev come to mind), will not have much changes to theirs and Druid will end up falling behind unless they make sacrifices, while these others don’t.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Let regen tics contribute towards AF gain. They have been our primary means of healing other people up to now, and suddenly they dont count for much.

Nike.2631:

Reduce level contributions to heals slightly. -5% would be felt. -10% would be glorious. Increased heal power coefficients to replace that loss at some modest number and allow healing power focused builds to actually reap some sort of benefit. You’ve done it with conditions recently to punish people without any commitment to condition damage. Its a mystery why a similar pass hasn’t already been done for healing power…

Give it 3 years and I’m sure they’ll do it!

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

Raven.9603:

Let regen tics contribute towards AF gain. They have been our primary means of healing other people up to now, and suddenly they dont count for much.

Yes. Any healing coming from us should count – that means traits, skills, sigils, runes, etc.

I like what I’m hearing. Then again…
I like big heals and I can not lie.

Nike.2631:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

You need to apply that particular mind-set to EVERY HEAL IN THE GAME.

The absolutely awful healing power coefficients on every heal skill has been a huge leg holding up the stool that is the ‘Zerker meta and it’s needed to be kicked out from under that chair since launch. For most self-heals heal power is meaningless. And I don’t use that word lightly. Its worse than meaningless actually, because those points could be put somewhere — ANYWHERE — else and contribute more to your impact in play.

Reduce level contributions to heals slightly. -5% would be felt. -10% would be glorious. Increased heal power coefficients to replace that loss at some modest number and allow healing power focused builds to actually reap some sort of benefit. You’ve done it with conditions recently to punish people without any commitment to condition damage. Its a mystery why a similar pass hasn’t already been done for healing power…

This! Most of the possible support does not require any stats, so at least make healing power valuable.

I think you’re in the right for wanting to make sure healing power building is rewarding, but at the same time, if there’s anything my past frustrating experiences of trying to play healer in this game has taught me:

Nobody appreciates infinitesimal butterfly-kiss heals, not even me while I’m doing them.

So, you know: “I agree….but please don’t go crazy.”
I don’t want to have to bust out a calculator and chant the math like a mantra to try and make myself feel good about what I’m doing.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

I am glad that Celestial Avatar is getting more damage, which may alleviate some of my following concerns, but I can’t stress enough how important it is that Celestial Avatar remains a valuable mechanic without any healing investment at all.

I fully understand and support the notion that to have the best healing you should have to invest in healing power. It’s only logical. However the fact Celestial Avatar is so completely devoted to healing means that if you lower the base healing of the skills too much the form will be outright useless to anyone without healing power on their gear. Celestial Avatar is a class mechanic and is not optional if you spec into druid. It would be a shame for it to only have value if you’re sporting healing power.

Like I said in my first paragraph, adding more damage to the Avatar State may alleviate some of my concerns as a more damage oriented build could compensate for lower healing in exchange for the ability to pressure people off them as they heal up more slowly. I just don’t want to see this mechanic make you weaker than base if you try to use it without the right stat spread.

No one should spec into druid for the glyphs, Ancient Seeds, or other abilities and find Celestial Avatar useless to their build.

a lot of this talk about ruining build diversity because the trait line is too healing oriented etc.. overly dramatic. It feels like people just wanna stay longbow/greatsword berserker forever and have more cool stuff to go with it. Condi ranger builds will most likely not go into marksmanship cause there is very little utility for a condi build in that trait line. It just so happens that power builds are now viable with all ranger trait lines, but this was not always the case.

We have a new tool to play with – a healing spec, now we have to start thinking about a third option to add to the old condi or power duo, and a whole bunch of other combinations that could make a healing build better, that looks like more diversity to me, not less. Instead of thinking only about how this new trait line complements your specific playstyle and how you can diversify IT, think how it’s going to complement the class and the game as a whole.

the heals are already big.. to see a 5-10% increase with 900 healing power is silly, this was clearly going to be changed eventually.

Most important druid change:

Make ally health bars visible!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

Well, that answers that question then. I had said that it felt that if you wanted to go full dps you would just never take druid and it looks like I was right and that that was the intention. Which I also said was perfectly fine….if you fix the core ranger class. Shouts, spirits, pet survivability all need to be addressed. If druid is all about healing, then ranger needs to have more offensive group support.

Though I am hopeful from this post that healing power will be made more useful for those who want to be healing focused. It’s disheartening for it to not have much impact. Though I like the idea from the poster below to merge healing power with boon duration. That makes it something more people would be willing to go for.

Anyway, thanks for all your hard work Irenio.

LegallyBinding.4937:

Most important druid change:

Make ally health bars visible!

omg, this. Please. Please make this something you can toggle on and off. That way support folks can see people’s health bars without hovering over people with their mouse.

Sulfarius.1756:

Nike.2631:

Reduce level contributions to heals slightly. -5% would be felt. -10% would be glorious. Increased heal power coefficients to replace that loss at some modest number and allow healing power focused builds to actually reap some sort of benefit. You’ve done it with conditions recently to punish people without any commitment to condition damage. Its a mystery why a similar pass hasn’t already been done for healing power…

Give it 3 years and I’m sure they’ll do it!

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

I don’t get this position.

The problem is that healing power sucks for a variety of reasons

Healing Power as a stat comes at a great offensive cost, which means you are sacrificing any ability to do solo content or play an offensive role for the sole ability to have stronger heals.

By pushing the druid into Celestial/Settler/Zealot gear, you are making them healbots for raids, but crippled in overworld PvE, dungeons, story instances, and fractals where the role of a healbot simply isn’t needed.

What you should do is merge healing power with vitality and boon duration with toughness. Healing Power is too niche a benefit to truly ever feel attractive without being penalized

What scares me more about your proposed nerfs to baseline healing is that you remove any purpose of the Druid from offensive players wanting to run zerker/valkyrie/knights.

To you it seems fine to pick traitlines other than druid for offense, BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE OTHER OFFENSIVE OPTIONS ARE SUBPAR AND UNWANTED IN META COMPS.

Vanilla offensive ranger is NOT competitive with the top offensive specs. 1h sword still isn’t fixed and is our only remotely viable DPS weapon that locks us out of dodges.

Moreover, while the other specializations somehow fit into a variety of stat options and playstyles, the druid is pigeonholed into a healbot. Why? Why is the new toy for rangers so limited and restrictive?

By making Druid THE healing spec of the game, you force rangers into a corner:

a) Druid heals will be required in raids, and as an effect all rangers who want to raid will be forced to play druid healbot.

b) Druid heals are not required. In which case the one dimensional druid spec becomes obsolete and unwanted as it loses the group considerable DPS when your raid bosses so far display strict DPS enrage timers.

Since non-druid rangers have no competitive DPS builds with the other classes, all types of rangers will not be desired in current content just as the current meta excludes them.

From a personal stance, I also DESPISE being forced into a cleric stat set, because no other of my 7 other classes wants to use cleric anywhere. That means I have to have a full ascended set of berzerker, a full ascended set of sinisters, and a full ascended set of clerics just for the ranger. This translates in cost to roughly two precursors worth of gold and immense time investment. This is what introducing ascended as opposed to keeping exotics caused for players.

LegallyBinding.4937:

Most important druid change:

Make ally health bars visible!

omg, this. Please. Please make this something you can toggle on and off. That way support folks can see people’s health bars without hovering over people with their mouse.

You know, you could just straight-up make that a feature of the Celestial Avatar State, so you’d be privy to that information when it’s most relevant.

…Asymmetrical information is such a neat thing, and so very underutilized in this game.

xarallei.4279:

Sulfarius.1756:

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Gearing for a couple hundred points of heal power is not “lugging a healer around with you.”

It is putting a boot on the Zerker’ metas neck and pressing down.

Nike.2631:

xarallei.4279:

Sulfarius.1756:

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Gearing for a couple hundred points of heal power is not “lugging a healer around with you.”

It is putting a boot on the Zerker’ metas neck and pressing down.

It is putting a neck on ZERKER RANGER’s neck. All the other classes will still be running zerkers. Engineers can run sinister because they’re the supreme condi spec far above others.

This change will strictly punish offensive rangers who want to make use of their elite spec.

The whole idea of druid just being a healing spec is what’s so thoroughly offensive to me. Why? I’m really wondering why rangers, who have kept asking for improved damage and offensive support, were given in turn a healbot spec as a tongue in cheek answer to lack of team support.

No other class has their elite spec so thoroughly focused on a niche. Chronomancer, reaper, and scrapper can build for DPS, bunker, or support. The druid is the only spec where you are told “you heal, that’s it. If you try to be offensive, you’ll be a crappy hybrid”.

Healing Power as a stat is generally meaningless, this is not simply a Druid/Ranger issue but more a ubiquitous problem within the game. If you can get Healing Power as kind of an added bonus onto your other stats like celestial armour then sure. But outside this actively speccing for it is kind of meh.

There has been many suggestions put forward about addressing this by the community. Such as adding healing 2% per 100 points of invested healing power, or maybe boon duration 2% per 100 points invested into healing power.

Therefore you have a class whose primary stat in Healing Power is kind of meh with the return it provides on investment. So why wouldnt you just spec zerker meta style? You still have access to the avatar whose base heals have nice pop with 0 investment in healing.

chronometria.3708:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Sandzibar.5134:

Eh? So We’re being forced into specific gear sets (healing) inorder to do ok healing, and thus sacrificing even more damage – if not CA form becomes extremely lacklustre – as heal is almost all it can do..

I hope there are some compensation tweaks of an offensive nature coming our way too so we can compete with rev/reaper/chrono and scrapper. So far the changes coming from Irenio sound very “Roy” influenced.

edit: probably just paranoid though right?

no its just a General saying if you want to Heal effectively you have to Sacrifice some Damage by taking atleast 500-700 healing power. i really don’t want onther Full party of zerker only groups that would be very boring seeing Zerkers Healing better than someone thats traded points for extra healing power.

its not a roy thing at all , right now Anet don’t want Full teams of Zerker gear groups clearing Raids , its ment to challenge people into Taking More than the Bare minimum healing and support , so i can see the Difficulty of the raid going back to BwE2 levels.

The problem is that the druid already sacrifices damage. This change is basically saying “your elite spec requires that you wear heal armour…otherwise it just doesn’t work” and that’s not fair.

easly fixed , this is a Beta after all people have voiced it already doesn’t do enough damage and it will be compensated though something but what does more damage a person with 700healing power and about 2k power + a mix of Valk trinkets or a fully geared healing power stats, id say the one with 700 healing power that is high enough to be effective without giving up damage because you’d give up a lot more Power than if you speced for full heals.

“your elite spec requires that you wear heal armour…otherwise it just doesn’t work” and that’s not fair." so this isn’t a Requirement if the Scaling of healing power is done correctly and Balanced well enough to not trade out too much power.

i wouldn’t worry too much , if the damage is too low the Devs will increase it to reward support roles , it won’t be max dps damage but it should be higher than current and enough of us have spoken up about it already , so theres no need to keep Repeating what hundreds of other have already told the Devs.

the first step is to get the Healing power scaling done correctly , then you won’t need as much healer gear , and because you’ve based your opinion on the current Staff set up where it only has Access to healing and low damage doesn’t mean it won’t change , i wouldn’t Base any assumptions or judgement just yet by saying its Requires healer gear because this game was not Desgined around Dedicated roles but a balance of Damage/control/support spread over 5 or 10man partys as long as there is enough damage in the total group there will be no need for dedicated roles at all.

i’d stop worrying and just enjoy the ride , untill then theres no point in Quoting Requires healer gear because Anet know such a pigeon holed role goes against their philosophy of variety no restrictive roles/jobs/classed desgined to the old MMO system which they will never do , if anything starts to Resemble the holy trinity they will change it because its not somthing they want.

and i have Faith that they will solve the druid problem to avoid this Dedicated healer role , because its realy only a playstyle you choose not a role or a job or a class.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

Warning for essay

Irenio, I appreciate your dedication to balance and your vision for Druid, but making Druid a one-trick pony means that all the time and effort that went into developing Druid will be wasted. Few people will play a pure healing specialization, especially when it is linked to the Ranger base class and has all the downsides of base Ranger. Like Necromancer, Ranger suffers from low base DPS (especially when considering the ineffectiveness of most pets, to which from 20-30% of our DPS is linked) and poor group utility. We cannot even self-buff to the extent of other classes. This is why we are generally considered lower-tier in higher-level PvE, WvW, and to some extent, PvP.

I am not nearly as dedicated as some Ranger players, but nearly a thousand of my 3000 hours in this game over the past two and a half years have been spent playing Ranger. The Ranger CDI came and went, and other classes were improved in many ways (including many improvements that were requested in the Ranger CDI), but Ranger in general has stagnated or been nerfed (see: shortbow, spirits, traps, pets). We’ve had some nice buffs, but in competitive and high-tier gameplay, Ranger only rarely sees use. This won’t change without some serious alterations to base Ranger. Given Ranger’s history, other Rangers and I don’t have a lot of hope for this. This is why we have placed a great deal of pressure on Druid’s implementation. For once, we want to see Ranger (with the Druid specialization) be part of optimal high-tier group composition—especially now that raids have 10 open positions.

As someone who enjoys high-level content, I don’t want to drag my lovely guildies down by bringing a class that ultimately hinders our effectiveness as a group. If Druid keeps its sole focus on reactive healing (which is far less effective than PROactive damage prevention/mitigation, especially with the abundance of oneshot AoEs and the inability to target allies for healing), it will eventually be relegated to the back burner in favor of other classes that can offer good DPS and utility in addition to healing, such as Elementalist, Engineer, and Revenant. This is doubly important because raid bosses have enrage timers—poor DPS is not an option, especially as raids get more difficult! The compositions of successful raid groups this weekend have only reinforced this point for me.

While I only could play Druid for ten or so hours this weekend, I tested it in open-world PvE, WvW, fractals, and raids. Even in raids (which I expect will be more difficult in the future), even with the base Druid healing scaled as high as it was, I was completely unnecessary. Groups who completed the raid seconded this sentiment. Compared to the other elite specializations I tested—Reaper, Herald, Daredevil, Dragonhunter, and even aura-sharing Tempest, Druid was …lacking.

Tankier classes, like Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, and Necromancer, didn’t need my healing, while “squishier” classes like Thief and Elementalist could either support themselves by mobility/damage mitigation/damage prevention or were downed before I even had time to react. My Druid felt significantly squishier than my base Ranger, since there are no personal defenses in the Druid traitline or utilities (the lack of stunbreak/stability hurt badly), did less damage than my base Ranger, and my group utility was limited, at best, due to how (player-)untargeted, reactive healing in this game clashes with its fast-paced, mobile combat.

TL;DR

Please ensure that Druid has a place in high-level group content by balancing Druid against other classes and elite specializations, rather than balancing it according to concept. Druid must be able to do decent healing (as much as blasting a water field, at least) with 0 healing power—otherwise groups will just use water fields for healing. (Using water fields also does not cut down on party DPS like a druid entering Celestial Avatar Form does.) Players should be rewarded for using healing power gear, not punished for using non-healing power gear. Druid DPS outside of Celestial Avatar Form needs to be comparable to other classes—this is especially important due to raid boss enrage timers, where every second counts. I love ranger, and I badly want Druid to be useful in high-level content (but not REQUIRED, like healers in other games). With harder raids coming up, Druid needs to be more than a single-faceted healing class in order to earn a place in raid squads.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

Alot of people aren’t going to like this but honestly, I love it. These specializations shouldn’t be capable of being the best at every role.

Nike.2631:

xarallei.4279:

Sulfarius.1756:

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Gearing for a couple hundred points of heal power is not “lugging a healer around with you.”

It is putting a boot on the Zerker’ metas neck and pressing down.

Getting rid of a full zerker meta groups does not mean getting rid of zerker. Nor should it ever. And zerker should most definitely still be a good option for the rest of the game. Hell, it should still be a good option in raiding even, just not have the entire raid be zerker.

Irenio posts and this turns into a complaining fest.

Anyway. My only question now will be if you fully invest in Healing (Clerics) will you see no difference in the healing amounts (basically how beta went this time)?

I can’t wait to find out.

And please Irenio don’t lose your vision of Druid just because of a few forum posters not enjoying it. There were PLENTY in game who loved it!

xarallei.4279:

Nike.2631:

xarallei.4279:

Sulfarius.1756:

On a more serious note I do agree that at times it feels like across the board base heals might be a bit too much but I also feel like it’s harder to balance while keeping the philosophy of “you don’t really need a healer to do stuff”… even tho raids look like you do in fact need a healer, but we’ll see!

-10% heals across the board might sound small, but I think it would have a huge impact. For better or for worse.

If they want to do this exclusively for raids I might be ok with this. But outside of that? No. Because the rest of the game you are supposed to not have to lug a healer around to do content.

Gearing for a couple hundred points of heal power is not “lugging a healer around with you.”

It is putting a boot on the Zerker’ metas neck and pressing down.

Getting rid of a full zerker meta groups does not mean getting rid of zerker. Nor should it ever. And zerker should most definitely still be a good option for the rest of the game. Hell, it should still be a good option in raiding even, just not have the entire raid be zerker.

Which they effectively did. You need to bring some condition specs and at least 1 healer to beat the first boss.

Zerk was never going to stop being top dps gear for physical damage and Anet can’t force people to slot knights or soldiers gear and still keep encounter timers.

It may end up that a zerk healer could have made the cut after enough time but it would still be a role based on keeping others alive rather than killing the enemy and that was the ultimate point in the end anyway.

I really hope they will add condi dmg on the staff and or celestial avatar form

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Ranger

Thank you for the feedback but felt that there was room for greater accuracy in that statement.

CandyHearts.6025:

Irenio posts and this turns into a complaining fest.

Anyway. My only question now will be if you fully invest in Healing (Clerics) will you see no difference in the healing amounts (basically how beta went this time)?

I can’t wait to find out.

And please Irenio don’t lose your vision of Druid just because of a few forum posters not enjoying it. There were PLENTY in game who loved it!

I would love to see the answer to this question as well

And despite my criticisms of Druid, I loved a lot about it, too—that’s why I waste my time writing out essays on my thoughts Like I said earlier, I would really love to be able to play Druid without feeling like I could be helping my group more by playing another class.

I still think that staff need a damage increase. You could go full berserker and still do almost nothing to a trash mob.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

Running a Druid with full Clerics and Cleric ascended trinkets, the problem I encountered was basically no healing increase. I was disappointed to see the 80 heal per heal of ally only healing for about 86 with 1500+ healing power.

Maybe add in some healing power to power conversions like that found in Nature Magic. The current one is 7% healing power to power, which is very weak since you give up so much damage to run healing. On the other hand, since Nature Magic already has a % healing power to power conversion, maybe add % healing power to precision or something to make on crit sigils viable in clerics gear? Also, I believe CAF #3 was supposed to have a blast finisher, but it didn’t work.

Thanks in advance!

I’m no buisness man but I am not sure it makes amazing buisness sense to tell Rangers that if they want to keep doing Ranger type things then HoT has nothing to offer them and they don’t need to buy it. Especially when the other classes are getting lots of new toys for a large variety of builds.

Hammerguard.9834:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

Alot of people aren’t going to like this but honestly, I love it. These specializations shouldn’t be capable of being the best at every role.

You can’t be best at every role, but you can allow different roles though the exact same traits, reshuffled, for less focus on healing through the minors.

See this one change below I would make that would improve diversity immensely.

Currently the Druid allows only for healing as a role due to its minor traits, a reshuffle would allow for CC to be a main build and conditions also.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Hammerguard.9834:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

Alot of people aren’t going to like this but honestly, I love it. These specializations shouldn’t be capable of being the best at every role.

You can’t be best at every role, but you can allow different roles though the exact same traits, reshuffled, for less focus on healing through the minors.

See this one change below I would make that would improve diversity immensely.

Currently the Druid allows only for healing as a role due to its minor traits, a reshuffle would allow for CC to be a main build and conditions also.

That’s a solid change. Scary, but solid.

Guess I have to leave this here as well then:

Any sort of physical hit on a skill besides 5 would be nice by the way, in order to proc Ancient Seeds. Just a QoL thing.
1 As is, should do some sort of damage (any sort of hit at all really) since it’s essentially a skill shot already to heal allies that aren’t afk, so may as well do some damage too.
2 Should apply an AoE weakness and cripple to enemies when it detonates, and needs to detonate a tad faster. Short duration of each to compensate for short cooldown, but helps with managing enemy damage and to kite because you’re a sitting duck in Celestial Form
4 Definitely should pulse AoE stability to yourself and allies in the radius. Maybe also do some damage and cripple/chill per pulse to enemies in the radius (wanted to have a knockback or pull but would overlap too much with the glyph). The damage would/could be noteable/respectable, but not as high as the 5 skill.
5 Doesn’t start pulsing its effects on use and gives enemies ample time to walk away from it anyhow, may as well let us move while using it.
Besides that, I hope it’s been heard loud and clear that staff skills need some more damage/effects, particularly and especially with the 2 skill, because the 2 skill also by extension makes the GM as weak (or as strong, if fixed) as it.

Agreed that Druid shouldn’t be top DPS and should be focused on supporting allies, but supporting allies is done through more than just a bar of 5 different ways to heal those allies, and celestial form needs a way to feel significant, so making it more significant at supporting while also reaping self benefits is the best way to do so (because right now Celestial Form screams “come and kill me right now while I can literally do nothing to you unless I allow you to easily pressure me out of celestial form and waste all of the astral force I’ve taken the time and effort to build with nothing to show for it”).

It’s also been mentioned an uncountable amount of times, but adding more damage to staff 2 and 4 in some way is a necessity for the quality of the weapon as well. Perhaps through a poison on 2 and a bleed on 4 (or just by power scaling)? The wisp itself should definitely hit enemies for the same effect the initial hit causes on the target as well.

Anyhow, none of these suggestions even remotely make Druid begin to encroach on the role of DPS and still let Druid retain its designed role of healer and support, it would just have a higher quality of play in a PvP competitive atmosphere.

Not that this wasn’t mentioned or alluded to, but its always worth reiterating seeing as how we aren’t going to get another BWE to give feedback.

Oh, this is probably worth adding to my already sizeable amount of chatter on this thread:

I did want to thank you for engaging us, Mr. Calmon-Huang

You posted at what would be the end of a typical work day and implied you’ll be soldiering on, so you’re probably taking some time out of Crunch to write to us. I do appreciate the clear effort you’re making, here.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

This is good. not trait modifications though because, well, we need certain ones to be effective. druidic clarity, celestial shadow and ancient seeds are essential for any offensive/hybrid build. my suggestion is that you add the damage to one of the avatar skills.

also bear in mind that avatar #1 is not usable on mobile teammates in pvp due to the cast time and tiny range. #2 is also extremely ineffective, because amidst aoe chaos, people wont huddle by the seed waiting for their condi cleanse. it needs to explode much faster, and/or have a greater range.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

this worries me a little bit. at the very least, druid should be a viable hybrid option. a bunch of us are doing it with marauder stats, it’s not OP and it’s only reasonably effective.

it also worries me because CORE rangers will have no viable offensive options in HoT due to the power creep of the elite specs. not with 4 of our core profession’s weapons being entirely useless is power builds. the one power build that I was able to use effectively even in the current meta, the valk remorseless GS spec, will become non-viable due to how insanely strong scrapper, reaper, rev and chrono are in melee range. the condi bunker ranger, also melee, will be eaten for breakfast. not that it’s viable now.

in short, the powercreep of the elite specs will push power builds even further toward LB use. but remember, you guys added all those reflects in the game. ranger condi builds will remain non-viable. and the few viable power melee (ish) builds that work now will become food.

so what would you like to do with us?

p.s. in case you missed the feedback in the main thread, staff #2 requires a lot of tweaking and hopefully a much buffed damage component and better scaling with HP. staff #4 is very difficult to land, and when it does, the immob is insignificant. slightly reduce cast time and increase the immob to 2s.

Good luck man, and great job so far.

This sounds good Irenio, but PLEASE do not make the healing for Druids who don’t take healing power much worse than it is right now. Druid, and any Zerker/Marauder Ranger is very easy to focus down as it is right now, and reducing the healing by a lot on Druid would force yet another class down the Celestial amulet path for PvP. I’m all for the changes you suggested, and Druid healing should definitely scale better with Healing Power, let’s just not overdo it.