Guild Wars 2

Vox Hollow.2736:

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.

I would like to second this sentiment! It’s great to see the ideas Irenio has for the class and I’m thrilled that he’s active on the forums

Zenith.7301:

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.

Self-inflicted problem, for believing the lie that GW2 was all DPS for PvE, and that it was somehow intended. ANet never told you that-you inferred it from the current available content.

If you absolutely loathe Healing Power, instead of telling him “what he should do” as if you really knew better, is to play your DPS characters, and not use any hybrids, condition, or healing specs. Direct Damage will still be relevant anyway, and other players will fill the roles you so much dislike

Actually love this reply from Irenio, as it shows great promise for the game and that they indeed know what they are doing (not to mention how he clearly stated that the Berserker Meta isn’t their only consideration, which is YOUR particular concern, and as quoted, not “healthy for the game.”)

Star Ace.5207:

Zenith.7301:

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.

Self-inflicted problem, for believing the lie that GW2 was all DPS for PvE, and that it was somehow intended. ANet never told you that-you inferred it from the current available content.

If you absolutely loathe Healing Power, instead of telling him “what he should do” as if you really knew better, is to play your DPS characters, and not use any hybrids, condition, or healing specs. Direct Damage will still be relevant anyway, and other players will fill the roles you so much dislike

Actually love this reply from Irenio, as it shows great promise for the game and that they indeed know what they are doing.

This comment has too much ignorance/incompetence to sift through, but I’ll just leave it there that every single Vale Guardian kill has been with 9-10 DPS geared toons (zerker and sinister).

Please go back to camping autoattacks on a ranged weapon in dynamic events or leeching loot bags in WvW zergs with your cleric staff guardian and leave the endgame to those of us who have actually done it. I’m starting to think you haven’t even done fractal 50 and if you have I pity those whose poor backs cringed under the weight of carrying your gimmick subpar builds.

This game has no endgame, and nothing for “pros” to prove. Second, evidently you don’t know anything about me as a player. Third, thanks for being a fair example of the “unhealthiness” ANet refers to when dealing with an strict Berserker’s meta.

To be fair, the true elite players that do play what they think is “endgame content” do not necessarily behave like you, and can be very nice and reasonable, without resorting to insults when their points of views are challenged. You thus do not set a good example for the community, nor the “top players” community for that matter.

To be succint, forget about the old meta, and embrace new GW2-you can still resort to older “zerk” meta tactics, which I have nothing against, for older content. Seems like all you are trying to do is fit old meta thinking for your own convenience, rather than for what is REALLY for the benefit of all, INCLUDING the very best players.

Its amazing how whenever somebody talks about the Druid and how its ‘going to destroy the Zerk meta’ its incredibly obvious that

1) They don’t know what the ‘Zerk meta’ is 2) don’t know why it is a problem 3) don’t know how or why it came about 4) don’t know what other classes, particulary elite specs, can do in their support builds 5) thus can’t comprehend how people are going to respond to the changes raids bring and how they are going to bring classes more useful and efficient then Druid and 5) are just repeating buzzwords they heard on reddit

Levetty.1279:

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.

You mean like how Dragon Hunter turned out to not mesh with Guardian at all?

It’s not the first and only spec to get something that didn’t add to how a lot of the players wanted to play. But there are still people who enjoy DH and enjoy Druid.

Levetty.1279:

Its amazing how whenever somebody talks about the Druid and how its ‘going to destroy the Zerk meta’ its incredibly obvious that

1) They don’t know what the ‘Zerk meta’ is 2) don’t know why it is a problem 3) don’t know how or why it came about 4) don’t know what other classes, particulary elite specs, can do in their support builds 5) thus can’t comprehend how people are going to respond to the changes raids bring and how they are going to bring classes more useful and efficient then Druid and 5) are just repeating buzzwords they heard on reddit

As for myself, I think the “zerk” meta will never die because the old content will always be there to be completed. There’s nothing wrong in people wanting to do speed records, etc. But all the same, ANet has stated that 10 players all geared for direct damage won’t do well in the expansion-that’s not the “destruction” of the Berserker’s meta, but making other playstyles way more attractive then they were (or are right now). Players who like DPS will always be able to stick to their favorite or improved DPS gear builds, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

If Druid ends up being outside the “Raid Meta” (which doesn’t exist, and all can currently do is speculate about), that will be fine too, but ANet seems to think otherwise, for now. I myself wouldn’t want people to ONLY want Druids as “healers”, because there are also other options.

didn’t they just beat that boss with like 90% zerker comp? I believe some people were saying the druid(s) weren’t even necessary.

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.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.

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.

Traslation:

Instead of buffing the scaling of healing power directly on top of base heal, you’re going to nerf the base healing and push Druid into even more inferior damage heal-bot by pigeon-holed them into healing power… Now 1000 Healing Power will have the same effectiveness of the current 0 healing power one, making Druid a utter piece of joke.

Duh, it’s ok, I’d play more selfishly if you do that. I’d only transform to cleanse and heal myself because I know my healing will be useless anyway. Also Guardian has on demand short CD Aegis, which equates to 10~15k damage immunity on tougher bosses, which is way superior than Druid’s so-called OP healing anyway. Guardian gets to keep all the offensive and defensive boons w/o sacrificing a thing. You’d push Druid into even more useless position after you nerf the base heal.

Time to reroll a Revenant then. Thanks Iren for driving us away even more. It can do everything better than Druid, and fulfill universal roles, while keeping all the dps.

mistsim.2748:

didn’t they just beat that boss with like 90% zerker comp? I believe some people were saying the druid(s) weren’t even necessary.

Ofc they’re not necessary.

A bunch of guardians spamming Aegis = 15k damage mitigation on 5 people, which is better than this so-called heal-bot.

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.

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

Great news, thanks for the update.

Star Ace.5207:

This game has no endgame, and nothing for “pros” to prove. Second, evidently you don’t know anything about me as a player. Third, thanks for being a fair example of the “unhealthiness” ANet refers to when dealing with an strict Berserker’s meta.

To be fair, the true elite players that do play what they think is “endgame content” do not necessarily behave like you, and can be very nice and reasonable, without resorting to insults when their points of views are challenged. You thus do not set a good example for the community, nor the “top players” community for that matter.

To be succint, forget about the old meta, and embrace new GW2-you can still resort to older “zerk” meta tactics, which I have nothing against, for older content. Seems like all you are trying to do is fit old meta thinking for your own convenience, rather than for what is REALLY for the benefit of all, INCLUDING the very best players.

This from the guy who smugly tells people they have self inflicted problems and fail to understand the future of the game.

It’s also kind of precious what a glowing review you gave to developers and the content they’ve made when you have said the game has no endgame content or anything remotely challenging in it.

In the meantime I’ll just chuckle at the kind of crap that comes out of votekick fodder swearing that the game is about to not be made up of zerker/sinister raids with one guy wearing knights accessories to keep aggro. Which is exactly what has just happened with the first raid content released to us.

Aomine.5012:

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.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.

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.

Traslation:

Instead of buffing the scaling of healing power directly on top of base heal, you’re going to nerf the base healing and push Druid into even more inferior damage heal-bot by pigeon-holed them into healing power… Now 1000 Healing Power will have the same effectiveness of the current 0 healing power one, making Druid a utter piece of joke.

Duh, it’s ok, I’d play more selfishly if you do that. I’d only transform to cleanse and heal myself because I know my healing will be useless anyway. Also Guardian has on demand short CD Aegis, which equates to 10~15k damage immunity on tougher bosses, which is way superior than Druid’s so-called OP healing anyway. Guardian gets to keep all the offensive and defensive boons w/o sacrificing a thing. You’d push Druid into even more useless position after you nerf the base heal.

Time to reroll a Revenant then. Thanks Iren for driving us away even more. It can do everything better than Druid, and fulfill universal roles, while keeping all the dps.

And that’s probably a good choice for yourself, since you don’t like the supposed “heal-bot” Druid.

Can’t relate with the idea that, since everything else has up to this point been faster with Berserker’s, that the only gear that must count is Berserker’s, just because it’s convenient. Only thing mentioned is “I have to carry more gear”. Just don’t play healing specs, play something else (it’s evidently no fun to you). Someone else will pick up the slack.

Again, Berserker’s is currently the more efficient gear set for most builds, but it doesn’t need to be moving forward, and ANet DOES NOT WANT IT TO BE THAT WAY. It’s not bad to play Berserker’s, but they don’t want it to be “the ultimate GW2 PvE gear” for everything PvE, as many preached and still believe to this day (proof in this very thread.)

Druid is fine, because it fills a niche that, although still thought as “unneeded”, many players appreciate and has ANet’s official support. I assume many good players will try to prove how “easy” raids will be with all ten players with Berserker’s to make a point against this, but it might be counter-productive, since the developer’s seem to think that the definition of a good player must not be mastering all the game content’s with Berserker’s gear, moving forward. Hopefully the “most efficient comps” will be a mix of styles-including Berserker’s-rather than ten DPS-geared characters.

Star Ace.5207:

Aomine.5012:

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.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Thanks for the tremendous amount of feedback regarding the Druid. I’ll be modifying swaths of the druid (and scrapper) to fix bugs and account for your feedback this week and reviewing things like glyphs effectiveness, celestial avatar skill differentiation, astral force charging rates and some of the staff skills.

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.

Traslation:

Instead of buffing the scaling of healing power directly on top of base heal, you’re going to nerf the base healing and push Druid into even more inferior damage heal-bot by pigeon-holed them into healing power… Now 1000 Healing Power will have the same effectiveness of the current 0 healing power one, making Druid a utter piece of joke.

Duh, it’s ok, I’d play more selfishly if you do that. I’d only transform to cleanse and heal myself because I know my healing will be useless anyway. Also Guardian has on demand short CD Aegis, which equates to 10~15k damage immunity on tougher bosses, which is way superior than Druid’s so-called OP healing anyway. Guardian gets to keep all the offensive and defensive boons w/o sacrificing a thing. You’d push Druid into even more useless position after you nerf the base heal.

Time to reroll a Revenant then. Thanks Iren for driving us away even more. It can do everything better than Druid, and fulfill universal roles, while keeping all the dps.

And that’s probably a good choice for yourself, since you don’t like the supposed “heal-bot” Druid.

Can’t relate with the idea that, since everything else has up to this point been faster with Berserker’s, that the only gear that must count is Berserker’s, just because it’s convenient. Only thing mentioned is “I have to carry more gear”. Just don’t play healing specs, play something else (it’s evidently no fun to you). Someone else will pick up the slack.

Again, Berserker’s is currently the more efficient gear set for most builds, but it doesn’t need to be moving forward, and ANet DOES NOT WANT IT TO BE THAT WAY. It’s not bad to play Berserker’s, but they don’t want it to be “the ultimate GW2 PvE gear” for everything PvE, as many preached and still believe to this day (proof in this very thread.)

Druid is fine, because it fills a niche that, although still thought as “unneeded”, many players appreciate and has ANet’s official support. I assume many good players will try to prove how “easy” raids will be with all ten players with Berserker’s to make a point against this, but it might be counter-productive, since the developer’s seem to think that the definition of a good player must not be mastering all the game content’s with Berserker’s gear, moving forward. Hopefully the “most efficient comps” will be a mix of styles-including Berserker’s-rather than ten DPS-geared characters.

Point being in current stage with this so-called “max healing in the game”, I still find it lackluster heals to begin with lol… Druid relies on that currently OP 3rd Astray skill . which clearly will be nerfed to the ground, to function. Druid currently works not because their heals are great, and not because glyphs are good too. (In fact no-one use them since they’re too trashy)

Making it worse to the degree of them being non-existent if not using healing power gears? Haha, might as well ignore that whole Astroy and Druid thing then.

Also you still haven’t rebut my stand of classes relying on defensive support to work does not need to sacrifice their dps by choosing healing gears. (Guardian can spam Aegis as much as ever post shield buff). Guardian will still use Zerker gears (with some vitality maybe), while keeping all the useful things, while Druid will be shaft away because they need healing power to work now.

if u nerf base healing make it scale like 1200 healing power to be the same healing like it was in the beta … cele avatar skill3 was healing for like 6k with food and such … and skill 4 was doing 1500…. if u nerf that u saying beserker meta will not die

It all depends on how big of a reduction we are looking at. If its too big then the Druid and its astral form will be pretty bad for anything but healing builds.

Also, another important thing to consider is that even if the Druid has massive healing, it has poor support otherwise. While guardian or elementalist have worse healing, they are far better at providing boons, auras and other unique effects. The Ranger is pretty bad at those things for party wide production. We have Spotter and Frost spirit… thats it.

Do not get me wrong, I am all for making a difference between a HP and a non HP druid but if the non HP druid is like only 50% healing of what it is now, then it will be pretty bad. In Celestial form you lose all damage.

Furthermore, the Druid can never be a bunker because it is missing key features which are: allied condition removal, plenty of invulnerability and AoE blocks/mitigation and stability. Simply healing is not going to cut it. If Druid is going to enter the meta the healing needs to be significantly higher then when playing a supportive Ele or Guardian.

Irenio, I think you’re making a mistake if you nerf the base healing of the druid by too much, thereby forcing players to go for healing power to make decent/good use of the new traitline (which is more or less what you’re saying by “If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization”).

Players already sacrificed offense by going druid in the first place. Making the specialization more or less useless unless taking loads of healing power doesn’t seem right to me.

If you want healing power to be a factor needed for good healing, then it should apply across the board, on all classes, on all skills.

I’m not sure if other classes specializations more or less require you to focus on a special attribute to be useful like I get the feeling will be the case for druid.
I think you should be very careful with the planned nerfs to base healing unless you are fine with giving rangers the short end of the stick yet again.

I’m ok with the heals base being reduced and them scaling well with healing power, because that makes the Druid less healing centered. As long as the healing minor traits are also placed into Primal Echoes and the minors can be something generic that works with any build, for example daze on weapon swap could be the GM minor.

Also, if the heals are going to have to require a lot of healing power to be as effective as they are now, then the skills need to also scale FAR better with power to do more damage. Having skills that do no damage and or do not scale well with power is also not good for the game.

If the heals in CAF require more healing power to be effective, and the minor traits are not reshuffled, its basically saying that Druid requires Zealots or Cleric armor and a staff and it has no other playstyle other than healing. Bad. Not good for the game or Ranger. It would leave Ranger in a worse spot.

If that is the case, you may as well delete all the traits that have nothing to do with healing because they will never be used.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I’m ok with the heals base being reduced and them scaling well with healing power, because that makes the Druid less healing centered. As long as the healing minor traits are also placed into Primal Echoes and the minors can be something generic that works with any build, for example daze on weapon swap could be the GM minor.

Also, if the heals are going to have to require a lot of healing power to be as effective as they are now, then the skills need to also scale FAR better with power to do more damage. Having skills that do no damage and or do not scale well with power is also not good for the game.

If the heals in CAF require more healing power to be effective, and the minor traits are not reshuffled, its basically saying that Druid requires Zealots or Cleric armor and a staff and it has no other playstyle other than healing. Bad. Not good for the game or Ranger. It would leave Ranger in a worse spot.

If that is the case, you may as well delete all the traits that have nothing to do with healing because they will never be used.

agree 100%……putting the on swap daze on all weapons (and improving glyphs) would open up some nice druid lockdown variants to current “core” ranger builds

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

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

Yes! Med Kit needs this too, especially since scaling is the only niche Healing Turret lacks. Please spread this thought process around the office, many classes would benefit.

Given how druid gains HUGE number of control abilities from glyph and staff skills, (though they should be improved of course), and the control ability from core ranger – ranger can inflic cripple and immobilize very easily and I would argue that it is one of the best, plus the pet taunts and other control ability like wolf’s fear howl, druid already have a strong position in the control side.

The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

Hello Irenio. I really like your idea with healing power scaling. As other people mentioned, going for healing power isn’t really good choice so hopefully this can change a litle bit so such builds are viable.

I have an idea how to improve staff skill #2 and make it more useful. The idea is: Change Glyph of Empowerment to do something else and add the effect of 10% dmg boost (or even more) to allies that are affected by floating whisp, add this for staff skill #2 as a baseline or attach this to trait Lingering Light. This would increase party dps, dont put there long cooldown maybe 5 seconds, so druid can upkeep that damage bonus to the party.

People mention that other professions can apply protection, aegis so they can mitigate dmg so healing is not really needed, because they lose DPS. Then maybe it’s worth to add for glyphs in celestial form such effects as glyph of empowerment does, but for example, decrease taken dmg by 15 or 20% that can be applied often but it’s independent of protection boon, make party immune to all CC for 5 second and while this effect lasts CCs doesn’t steal your stability stacks (so independent buff of stability). I know it sounds like doubling effects on different boons, but I think that it’s good that it can provide additional support and it’s not redundant. If you add boons that can be easily applicable by all professions to druid skills then still despite healing there is no reason to pick druid over other profession and healing is not very needed, people will always go for dps. Then consider adding some tools to druid that it can independently increase party dps and provide other support mechanics like glyph of empowerment, an unique buff that can be a nice addition. Maybe also flat buff to increase crit chance like precision. Increase change for crit by 50% for 10 seconds, but long cooldown (60 seconds for example).

I hope the suggestion may be helpful. Thank you for working kitten druid and good luck with making it even better!

EDIT: One additional idea. To make healing power build viable, maybe make the buffs/skills I mentioned that last longer/are stronger with more healing power we have, so suggested staff skill #2 that would give 10% dmg boost would last without healing power for 3 seconds maybe, but with full healing power grear it would last 9 seconds and increase dmg by 15 or 20% for example. These numbers are given for example. So in short give druids idependent useful boons that can scale it’s power and duration with healing power. That could be interesting.

Even with full clerics and monk runes healing power for the Druid left much to be desired.

You should nerf the coefficient for zerkers as you’ve said, but you should also boost the healing ability of those who choose to build as dedicated healers/supporters.

JKLeetro.6935:

…The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

Ranger does not lack support, when you include Druid traits and Staff with S/WH it has the best support in the game, very little is needed from other players to totally max out all boons and effects. 14 Might stacks, Quickness and Warrior Banners are all that is required to cap everything. So you can take a Druid, DPS Chrono, DPS (no PS) Warrior with banners, a DPS Auramancer Tempest and another pure DPS build (like a revenant with Assassins Presence) and its about as balanced and good as you can get.

Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that Ranger and Druid have poor support, its just absurd and uninformed.

For the love of GOD Irenio, take over the Thief development process — we’re tired of being an invisible potato.

Sincerely,

-All Thieves

Ehecatl.9172

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.

If I was able to express myself as well in English as Ehecatl, my words on the matter would be pretty much the same as his-please do don’t make celestial avatar healing meaningless without healing power.

1387 healing power (compared to below 40 healing power)
ancestral grace (staff 3): 3130 – 80% more
Cosmic ray (celestial 1): 1130 33% more
Lunar impact (celestial 3): 3700 – 22% more
Rej. tides (staff 4): 1225×5 – 20% more
Troll:1057 – 19% more
Water blast: 1661 20% more

30% more healing on allies is not counted in: 20% from Natural Mender and 10% from monk runes-both need allies to work.

40 healing power:
ancestral grace (staff 3): 1736
Cosmic ray (celestial 1): 852
Lunar impact (celestial 3) 3039
Rej. tides: 1016×5
Troll:889
Water blast: 1382

20% more healing on allies is not counted in: 20% from Natural Mender-needs allies to work.

All testing above was done on myself that’s why natural mender/monk runes are not counted in.

If you strictly look at the numbers, the base healing is not so much out of the line. Don’t forget that Celestial Avatar doesen’t provide the druid any additional survival utilities in the form of stability, slows, evades, gap closes, other defensive boons, thus making the druid really vulnurable in this state-if the enemies know what they are doing! (speaking about pvp ofcourse)

Decreasing the base healing by 10% or so and increasing the scaling by 30% or so would make the healing power scaling meaningful, same as it is already for Ancestral grace. We are basically concerned that Celestial Avatar, without any aditional healing power, will not be similarly meaningful as now.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

Ranger does not lack support, when you include Druid traits and Staff with S/WH it has the best support in the game, very little is needed from other players to totally max out all boons and effects. 14 Might stacks, Quickness and Warrior Banners are all that is required to cap everything. So you can take a Druid, DPS Chrono, DPS (no PS) Warrior with banners, a DPS Auramancer Tempest and another pure DPS build (like a revenant with Assassins Presence) and its about as balanced and good as you can get.

Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that Ranger and Druid have poor support, its just absurd and uninformed.

I used “lack” in relative term. However I seem to have given a wrong idea on what I was saying.

So I know ranger has frost spirit (gives out might for 3) and spotter.
I also know that call of the wild gives 3 mights, fury and swiftness with regen with trait plus the blast.
Traps give their respective fields except for the spike trap.
Survival skills are selfish skill with muddy terain and entangle as exception.
Shout give regen and swiftness with trait but other than that, it is only Search and Rescue that has groupd support.
Stalker gives 5 mights and tiger and red moa giving fury, bear cleansing condition, fern hound healing and lastly blue moa giving protection. Other pets apply different damage, CC or other conditions.

Which are good of course, but I’m not sure I understand fully on ‘maxing out the boons’. If you meant us getting all the boons that exist in-game, then it probably is true. However wasn’t support all about group support?

As far as damage is concerned, sword is often mentioned that it deals larger damage then others with longbow and great sword being mentioned just as frequently. Also with staff (I’ll exclude heals because I implied that druid has good healing) we do have one blast and a water field. So with the setup you mentioned, Sword gives might to the pet and pet only. Warhorn I mentioned and is probably one of the best support weapons ranger has. Staff has heals which are nice, blast finisher, aoe pursing immob + soft CC cleansing and water field.

So as you can see, most of our support is healing centric. Celestial Avatar is basically all about healing except daze+blast from number 3 and only damaging skill number 5.

These are what I think we both can agree on. However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

If you’re going to do this, then please work on healing power as a stat. Thank you!

In before 50% healing nerf and scaling with HP to current levels. God I hope not..

This is great to hear.

Now lets also discuss some of the needed changes. Staff 4 is hard to use. Can we get a cast time reduction?

Also a small radius increase on daze Glyph and the Elite?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

Ranger does not lack support, when you include Druid traits and Staff with S/WH it has the best support in the game, very little is needed from other players to totally max out all boons and effects. 14 Might stacks, Quickness and Warrior Banners are all that is required to cap everything. So you can take a Druid, DPS Chrono, DPS (no PS) Warrior with banners, a DPS Auramancer Tempest and another pure DPS build (like a revenant with Assassins Presence) and its about as balanced and good as you can get.

Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that Ranger and Druid have poor support, its just absurd and uninformed.

Why do you need a druid to max boons? There’s not a single skill that gives a boon unless you count the blast finishers. What am i missing that you’re seeing?

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.

I don’t think this can be emphasized enough… I appreciate the balance idea that healing power should be required for powerful heals, but right now, every single class including base ranger has some very serious healing skills/traits that work with 0 healing, and that’s before even taking water fields into account.

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.

Here’s my question then,

If this purity of theme exists for Druid, what about other elite specs? For sake of easy comparison, let’s just take the other two dedicated support elite specs for a second: Herald and Tempest.
Herald’s shield is all about healing and blocking—which does the exact same role as staff, doesn’kitten Herald brings onto the table boonshare, except regeneration steps over Ventari stance, while the protection feels more like a Jallis thing. AoE fury seems to step over Invocation’s “fury on swap,” leaving swiftness (which Revs lack sorely) and might as the most unique boons. Taking it a step further, how do the actives actually fit in with the theme? Your heal skill heals on you taking damage, but isn’t this innately a tank skill? Why does this have no correlation with healing power? Why does the swiftnekittenesult in applying conditions and the might one result in attacking the enemy in front of you? It feels like Herald tried to have something to fit with everything, making it seem like a mishmash of everything rather than a more unique experience (i.e. heal facet granting vigor instead of regeneration was a good example presented: that way regeneration can really be a “Ventari” thing)>
Don’t you think the boon-sharing Herald should have a weapon that amplifies that power even more—a warhorn? Except it was Tempest that got it. I won’t try to kitten about this like certain elementalists. However, I’m seeing the same problem on Tempest that I see with druid. Currently, swapping into water and dodge rolling with water/arcana grants about a 3500~ish heal with no healing power, including regen and soothing mist. This is approximately the slightly lower than water overload. Except for the fact this combo has nearly a 3.0 healing power coeffecient versus water overload being about 1.0, meaning if you’re stacking healing power, it is better to swap into water, dodgeroll, and swap out and repeat twice than it is to swap in, dodgeroll, and then overload and be locked out for 20 seconds afterwards. Wash the Pain Away is at a similar problem where it has a base heal of 6000~ and a healing coeffecient of-I kitten you not-0.6. Why does water overload have such a low healing power coef, along with WoPA? 2 Zerk eles can all run WoPA and heal a party 5 after a Rebound to near max HP for everyone. Why not focus on purity on Tempest as well? For example, if Heat Sync no longer spreads all boons but might, why not add a Fire Aura and make it copy Auras to allies instead (and while you’re at it, Sand Squall extends Aura duration on Allies by 2 seconds instead of boons). If Auras are what you want to achieve on Tempest, drive it down that path.

However, Herald and Tempest have the same issue as Druid: Their heal skills don’t care about your healing power, Tempest especially. Their ability to heal is about the same regardless of healing power, while Base ele almost twofolds healing power to their advantage (Swapping into water and dodgerolling in water combined has a coeffecient of 2.0).

Purity of theme. Pick one or two or however many themes you want to be able to drive through this elite spec, but ensure you have at least one. Tempest is in a situation where it’s kinda boon duration (no more boonsharing except might in a bit though), except it focuses on auras which doesn’t benefit at all from boon duration and Air/Water Overload don’t even rely on boons to begin with while aura traits are scattered in literally every trait line.

When it comes to druid, if raw healing is the goal, make sure that it gets focus: why exactly is there a -33% condition duration trait while in the form that has the highest condition removal in the game? I would of genuinely preferred to see a trait that simply offers healing outside of staff, fixing the issue of Astral Shroud Force collection.

Shiren.9532:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

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

It doesn’t matter what I want to be when it comes to end-game PvE and I play a ranger/druid. It matters what the game is balanced and designed for and what other players, who are now very competitive to complete raids first, or at all. They will be scrambling to squeeze out every advantage they can to beat raids, I want the ranger/druid to be on the right side of the line that will be drawn.

If raids are so fine-tuned that in order to beat enrage timers my party will need top offense, they are only going to bring a druid if they absolutely need the healing (if you pigeon hole the druid as healer). If my party finds it easier to blast water fields for their healing without sacrificing as much DPS as a cleric/zealot/apothecary druid, then they won’t bring the druid and honestly, as much as I want to play my ranger, I don’t want my party to bring an inferior option that is going to hold us back.

The bizarre thing about GW2 balance and meta is that the most popular builds are often not the best offense. The core meta build Phalanx Strength warriors is not the highest DPS spec they have (but it does use zerker armour) but it is central to group PvE (and judging from the people who beat the raid encounter, this remains true for raids). PS’s strength comes from their support – Might stacks and banners. Other popular builds use support in the form of reflects (which double as DPS skills – most obvious at Lupicus). Worst part of all those support builds which are core to the PvE meta – they have been completely stat independent since launch. Druid is probably the first fully committed support build that will require stat dependence to be effective at what it does, those other support builds sacrifice no stats to remain top tier.

I see a lot of great core ranger changes or tools which help in this aspect (Clarion Bond for boons and a blast, Spotter and Frost Spirit have been popular for a while, Storm’s recent change and maybe soon Sun with the rise of condi) but most of the druid’s tool kit lacks the kind of support that is highly demanded by PvE across the game.

This sums up everything.

Other classes got everything, superior support , both defensive and offensive, without sacrifice anything. Aegis equates to 15k damage immunity on 5 people without stat investment. Protection keeps -33% damage reduction w/o stat investment. Guardian keeps 40 secs reflection up without stat investment. They become great support to the whole party while KEEP ALL THE DPS.

Why do you want to make Druid an exception? If you want to scale down healing, fine, add offensive and defensive boons on all of Druid’s skills to compensate it.
Add group stability, protections, aegis, as well as long duration reflection (not just staff), so Druid can play without healing stats, and become a true support class to differentiate themselves from the healing Druid.

Currently there’s no such option on Druid whatsoever. If you scale down the healing, it’d just be an inferior class with inferior support and damage.

Rangers elite spec should be scrapped and reworked. If you wanted players to heal, bring back the Monk, stop pigeon holing a class just for one piece of content.

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

Razor.9872:

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

In 3 years. (chuckle)
History is really good to study.

I’m not even sure this game will survive until next expansion = next specialization come out. Not being mean or anything, just feeling like their Korean boss are getting upset about the revenue and stuff.

Anyway, if I have to wait another 3 years for ranger to become better than a pigeon-holed class (the only support class that need stat investment or it becomes trash), I’d probably go main Revenant instead.

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

In 3 years. (chuckle)
History is really good to study.

I’m not even sure this game will survive until next expansion = next specialization come out. Not being mean or anything, just feeling like their Korean boss are getting upset about the revenue and stuff.

Anyway, if I have to wait another 3 years for ranger to become better than a pigeon-holed class (the only support class that need stat investment or it becomes trash), I’d probably go main Revenant instead.

That is a rather pessimistic/negative outlook :\

You have to look at the bigger picture. The reason it took 3 years for this expansion, is because A-net was still unsure about their planned development and release model. Coupled with them still getting their base game/structure together, they had little room for the concept of an expansion. However, now that these types of releases are on the table, I would say that another expansion is, at the most, 2 years away. But really, I’m thinking that a year away is just as likely.

Not sure where you’re getting that stuff about A-net sucking up to NCsoft? Really, the relationship between the two has been distant and healthy for the past several months. (Notice the lack of the NCsoft trademark on recent releases/announcements)

Finally, that is a mighty extreme accusation about the druid being trash without Heal.P. We don’t know any numbers yet, but you are already jumping to conclusions? Maybe you should roll a revanent. Clearly you don’t enjoy what the Ranger (and by impied extention, the Druid) has to offer.

Not to say history isn’t important (it is), but I’d take critical thinking over history any day.

JKLeetro.6935:

…However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Why do you need a druid to max boons? There’s not a single skill that gives a boon unless you count the blast finishers. What am i missing that you’re seeing?

Ranger can keep up 11 Might, Fury, Protection, Regeneration and Swiftness, with high uptimes of Stability and Vigor for the whole party. The Spotter & Frost Spirit. How is that selfish or lacking in boon generation? When you put in the Druid line, adding the healing, its as much support as any party needs. Like I said you just need warrior banners and a chrono for quickness and everything is covered, the other might will come from Tempest and blasting fields.

I have linked the build to do this several times in the last few days, I think you guys need to go to the build editor and do some theory craft because you are too closed minded to see what Druid is really capable of. Everyone else in a party can focus on DPS and not sacrifice for support because the Druid can do 80% of what’s needed and the other 20% is incidental, ie it happens anyway.

I would like to stress out the importance of Druid catering to multiple build styles and not just raw healing. And for the most part this is true.

The druid line can be used primarily as a control build with MoC and long dazes, be it melee or ranged ( staff + GS + MoC anyone).

You can, with proper tuning, play it without the staff ( Irenio has said that he is looking into force generation).

You can build it as a survivalist/escapist and use the Astral form to clear conditions ( druidic clarity), burst heal yourself and run away ( celestial shadow ).

There are also raw tanking utilities and traits like the condition reduction trait, the glyph elite…etc… If you want to heal up your party without HP go into Avatar form pop the tether and use TU. All the while spamming form skills.

Plenty of other skills out there too. Help sustain a shout build? the +1000 healing on both pet and ranger in an AoE on a 16s WHaO. Longbow synergy? Ancient seeds!

We need to see how big the healing change is, but I really do not think that he will hit every skill and that he will gut them ( Irenio I mean). Most likely we are looking at a 30% reduction on some and then making them more effective with HP above the current levels.

But the core issue remains though. The Druid is fine, the issue is with the Core Ranger. The foundation is shaky and it translates into everything. We need more support options and damage modifiers at our core. We need better pet survival options. Our damage needs to be competitive and it is not!!

Razor.9872:

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

In 3 years. (chuckle)
History is really good to study.

I’m not even sure this game will survive until next expansion = next specialization come out. Not being mean or anything, just feeling like their Korean boss are getting upset about the revenue and stuff.

Anyway, if I have to wait another 3 years for ranger to become better than a pigeon-holed class (the only support class that need stat investment or it becomes trash), I’d probably go main Revenant instead.

That is a rather pessimistic/negative outlook :\

You have to look at the bigger picture. The reason it took 3 years for this expansion, is because A-net was still unsure about their planned development and release model. Coupled with them still getting their base game/structure together, they had little room for the concept of an expansion. However, now that these types of releases are on the table, I would say that another expansion is, at the most, 2 years away. But really, I’m thinking that a year away is just as likely.

Not sure where you’re getting that stuff about A-net sucking up to NCsoft? Really, the relationship between the two has been distant and healthy for the past several months. (Notice the lack of the NCsoft trademark on recent releases/announcements)

Finally, that is a mighty extreme accusation about the druid being trash without Heal.P. We don’t know any numbers yet, but you are already jumping to conclusions? Maybe you should roll a revanent. Clearly you don’t enjoy what the Ranger (and by impied extention, the Druid) has to offer.

Not to say history isn’t important (it is), but I’d take critical thinking over history any day.

I enjoyed ranger’s style of playing, that’s why I played ranger.
I also enjoyed the new pet

However, Druid is Druid, and I do not like the direction they’re going to make Druid be.
The lack of defensive boons and the reliance of staff is troubling too. Furthermore, Irene’s direction of nerfing non-healing stat is like cutting all diversity on Druid. If all the good stuffs of Druids are going to be taken away, while all the bad stuffs (Staff, Glyphs, Astral meter mechanic) is going to remain the same, then yes, it is a class I would not be enjoying and like to move on.

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.

pretty cool, thx!

This addresses all the things I was concerned about with the Druid!

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

In 3 years. (chuckle)
History is really good to study.

I’m not even sure this game will survive until next expansion = next specialization come out. Not being mean or anything, just feeling like their Korean boss are getting upset about the revenue and stuff.

Anyway, if I have to wait another 3 years for ranger to become better than a pigeon-holed class (the only support class that need stat investment or it becomes trash), I’d probably go main Revenant instead.

That is a rather pessimistic/negative outlook :\

You have to look at the bigger picture. The reason it took 3 years for this expansion, is because A-net was still unsure about their planned development and release model. Coupled with them still getting their base game/structure together, they had little room for the concept of an expansion. However, now that these types of releases are on the table, I would say that another expansion is, at the most, 2 years away. But really, I’m thinking that a year away is just as likely.

Not sure where you’re getting that stuff about A-net sucking up to NCsoft? Really, the relationship between the two has been distant and healthy for the past several months. (Notice the lack of the NCsoft trademark on recent releases/announcements)

Finally, that is a mighty extreme accusation about the druid being trash without Heal.P. We don’t know any numbers yet, but you are already jumping to conclusions? Maybe you should roll a revanent. Clearly you don’t enjoy what the Ranger (and by impied extention, the Druid) has to offer.

Not to say history isn’t important (it is), but I’d take critical thinking over history any day.

I enjoyed ranger’s style of playing, that’s why I played ranger.
I also enjoyed the new pet

However, Druid is Druid, and I do not like the direction they’re going to make Druid be.
The lack of defensive boons and the reliance of staff is troubling too. Furthermore, Irene’s direction of nerfing non-healing stat is like cutting all diversity on Druid. If all the good stuffs of Druids are going to be taken away, while all the bad stuffs (Staff, Glyphs, Astral meter mechanic) is going to remain the same, then yes, it is a class I would not be enjoying and like to move on.

Ireno said he is going to try to make the staff less of a necessity, and more of a suggestion. Again, we can’t jump to conclusions. Who knows? Maybe the addition of better healing power scaling will make our current heals scale even past what they are currently?

You say that you are thinking that you are going to move on from the Druid class…but Druid isn’t a class — it’s a single specialization of a profession. Isn’t that a tad bit dramatic?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Why do you need a druid to max boons? There’s not a single skill that gives a boon unless you count the blast finishers. What am i missing that you’re seeing?

Ranger can keep up 11 Might, Fury, Protection, Regeneration and Swiftness, with high uptimes of Stability and Vigor for the whole party. The Spotter & Frost Spirit. How is that selfish or lacking in boon generation? When you put in the Druid line, adding the healing, its as much support as any party needs. Like I said you just need warrior banners and a chrono for quickness and everything is covered, the other might will come from Tempest and blasting fields.

I have linked the build to do this several times in the last few days, I think you guys need to go to the build editor and do some theory craft because you are too closed minded to see what Druid is really capable of. Everyone else in a party can focus on DPS and not sacrifice for support because the Druid can do 80% of what’s needed and the other 20% is incidental, ie it happens anyway.

Thank you master. You have opened my eyes!! _

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Why do you need a druid to max boons? There’s not a single skill that gives a boon unless you count the blast finishers. What am i missing that you’re seeing?

Ranger can keep up 11 Might, Fury, Protection, Regeneration and Swiftness, with high uptimes of Stability and Vigor for the whole party. The Spotter & Frost Spirit. How is that selfish or lacking in boon generation? When you put in the Druid line, adding the healing, its as much support as any party needs. Like I said you just need warrior banners and a chrono for quickness and everything is covered, the other might will come from Tempest and blasting fields.

I have linked the build to do this several times in the last few days, I think you guys need to go to the build editor and do some theory craft because you are too closed minded to see what Druid is really capable of. Everyone else in a party can focus on DPS and not sacrifice for support because the Druid can do 80% of what’s needed and the other 20% is incidental, ie it happens anyway.

I know that the core profession can do it. I was just wondering what’s the druid bringing in the boon department. Also i’ll keep my judgement until i see the rest of the raid. So far there was no need for a fully support oriented char in the raid. In PvP the druid is pretty strong unless you’re playing against organized party that can focus him. In WvW in the current range meta it looks strong, in mele trains it falls off because its defence is weak.

To keep it on topic – some buff to HP scalling was needed, just don’t make the druid useless without healing power.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Druid needs some boons too, but defensive, not offensive, the Ranger already has enough of those. There was no point adding more of those to Druid, but its definitely missing stability and retaliation.

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Aomine.5012:

Razor.9872:

Ehecatl.9172:

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.

If you are playing the Ranger profession for damage, you should not spec into Druid. That’s like saying you’re trying to get warmer, so you take your clothes off.

True, Druid will be the only elite specialization avaliable to Rangers at the start, but we will get more down the road.

In 3 years. (chuckle)
History is really good to study.

I’m not even sure this game will survive until next expansion = next specialization come out. Not being mean or anything, just feeling like their Korean boss are getting upset about the revenue and stuff.

Anyway, if I have to wait another 3 years for ranger to become better than a pigeon-holed class (the only support class that need stat investment or it becomes trash), I’d probably go main Revenant instead.

That is a rather pessimistic/negative outlook :\

You have to look at the bigger picture. The reason it took 3 years for this expansion, is because A-net was still unsure about their planned development and release model. Coupled with them still getting their base game/structure together, they had little room for the concept of an expansion. However, now that these types of releases are on the table, I would say that another expansion is, at the most, 2 years away. But really, I’m thinking that a year away is just as likely.

Not sure where you’re getting that stuff about A-net sucking up to NCsoft? Really, the relationship between the two has been distant and healthy for the past several months. (Notice the lack of the NCsoft trademark on recent releases/announcements)

Finally, that is a mighty extreme accusation about the druid being trash without Heal.P. We don’t know any numbers yet, but you are already jumping to conclusions? Maybe you should roll a revanent. Clearly you don’t enjoy what the Ranger (and by impied extention, the Druid) has to offer.

Not to say history isn’t important (it is), but I’d take critical thinking over history any day.

I enjoyed ranger’s style of playing, that’s why I played ranger.
I also enjoyed the new pet

However, Druid is Druid, and I do not like the direction they’re going to make Druid be.
The lack of defensive boons and the reliance of staff is troubling too. Furthermore, Irene’s direction of nerfing non-healing stat is like cutting all diversity on Druid. If all the good stuffs of Druids are going to be taken away, while all the bad stuffs (Staff, Glyphs, Astral meter mechanic) is going to remain the same, then yes, it is a class I would not be enjoying and like to move on.

Think about what you stated-how is it going to cut diversity? If all you want is an offensive Druid, that’s WAY less diverse compared to what we have now. In short, there are too many things you are ignoring, in favor of your own bias, which is understandable, but I fear instead of a reasonable reply I will be attacked for stating an opinion different than yours.

And you have stated MANY times (paraphrased) “I’ll go Revenant if you don’t please me, Irenio!” You know what I would do if I was him with that kind of feedback? Ignore you. Find better ways to express yourselves other than those kind of empty threats that threaten no one. Besides, if Revenant will be more fun for you, why not play it? So many other better ways to go DPS, and you just bash one of the few valid non-DPS options, as if your bias is all that mattered for 100% of players in this game?

IMHO, Druid is a team player, so the few things it lacks will be provided by other teammates. You can “normal Ranger” the game when you don’t need Druid, and I am sure that by the time of release they will find ways to a bit more of oomph to non healing Druid specs-just don’t expect tons of DPS on Staff Druid, because that’s not what it’s meant to do?

If you are going to respond aggressively, please just ignore my post and feel free to just disagree on this matter.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

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

Awesome.

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.

That’s mostly just an issue with all healing in the game. Healing power yields little reward. Druid has Natural Mender to deal with this. Up to 20% more healing on all outgoing healing is pretty great. It’s just a shame that it’s a forced trait and only affects allies, since not every Druid is surrounded by allies all the time.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

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

If Healing Power yielding little reward is an issue, it needs to be resolved for the whole game. It would have a huge effect, since essentially you’d be removing stats from the game or nerfing the effect of healing for those that don’t have healing power. But beware, Celestial gear might enter a new era of overpoweredness (other gear only allows 3 stats). Also, by nerfing healing, people will die quicker to condition damage and power and precision, which might only make those stats even stronger. Personally I think it’s best to let it be for now and maybe have an internal discussion on the topic for the whole game.

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.

I think I’d rather see staff get a bit more offensive than Celestial Form. Maybe let staff scale with power a bit more. Astral Wisp (and Cosmic Wisp) have great potential to be something impactful offensively if they just did something that affects foes and became unblockable. Now the wisps are mostly just adding a theme rather than a use or a threat. Becoming a wisp with Ancestrial Grace could also share this effect when passing through foes.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

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.

Druid has been great overal. It’ll be in good hands with you.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

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

This scares me. Raids are meant to be for top players, right?
then why anybody is going to take a druid? If there are other clasess that will kill better… there is no point for taking a druid.

That he is the best healer? Oh nice. Just evade and res, like a top player would do. Dont need “the best healer” in a party.
And specially in pvp.

What a ranger needs in the game and in the community it is to be needed, to be wanted. I would love to see people in guilds or lfg asking for rangers and druids instead of asking them not to join…
Rangers are not bad per se, but any class is better than them in any espectre thats why meta players avoid them.

With druid they will be “The top healer” in a party. And that is not needed or wanted, sorry.

You should to give more damage to the druid and make them desirable for meta parties.

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 will be content with this if the core specializations also get the boost they need (and were promised). Its already hard enough for Rangers to find teams for tougher content. My concern is that if core Rangers can’t keep up with other professions, we’ll be instantly kicked from team unless we run Druid. I don’t mind having Druid be a specifically healing class (although I still think apothecary Druid would be awesome), but please give core Rangers a viable role in post-expansion gameplay.