Guild Wars 2

Well, my biggest complaint about druid has been addressed. Druid before was like a wedge being jammed into a nice Ranger sphere, taking it had some synergy with the base profession, but astral force generation was impossible without specific skills. It certainly didn’t help that ranger skills that heal allies apply regen or are performed by the pet, which didn’t work with Druid’s astral force. Now that Astral Force synergises with all the heals the Ranger personally throws out the Druid is in a much better spot. Druid is more like an indent for our Ranger ball to roll neatly into now.

Spirits, invigorating bond, pet damage, not giving you AF? Well since we’re not the ones performing the healing, it makes sense we don’t get any astral force. Those spirits and pets we have helping us are entities we can heal though and that gives us astral force.

Instead of our elite spec requiring one weapon choice or one healing skill for its primary function, that list now includes a plethora of options with varying impacts on the AF bar which means a Druid has to consider the impact all these healing sources has on their AF and how reliably they can reach it. This balancing act of how often we want CAF and what build decisions we’re willing to spend on gaining AF is huge for players like myself who love theory crafting builds. Yet despite wanting all this healing, Ranger’s base healing isn’t bursty, which makes even the most selfish Druid want to access CAF when they get into trouble.

So yeah, good job dev team. Druid is now one of the best designed elite specs (if not the best). It isn’t simply Ranger+ like Tempest or Berserker, it’s a specialisation, like reaper or beastmastery, with a clear purpose that has actual synergy with other things.

Hell, here’s the basis of a build I’ll be trying to refine thanks the new changes.
Bunker Trapper Druid

and my biggest smh was people thinking druid and all the other elite specs were meant to be straight upgrades.

Well I guess its becoming more and more true.

Goes to show you our Feed back Is generaly More Realistic and we know when somthing is Overpowered because we have spent so long as the underdogs , we know what it looks like.

i really do like the fact you can now use Trappers expertise to Power CAF every 30seconds and maintain it with the regen provided , all you need after that is Cultivated Synergy or Verdant Etching .

before the Af changes it mainly forced you into both of those traits to be a effective Team support but now we can have a bit more Freedom in what druid traits or weapons we can use , Which i find was the thing Druid needed most.

not being able to choose a half way ground was ether full support and no personal Survival like being able to take Cultivated Synergy + natural stride ,so you can quickly Repostion that Staff AA without wasting the heal or movement port on asteral grace.

Asteral grace could of been needed to avoid a Raid bosses Large attack and as that is the only way to damage migrate on a staff without giving up too much Utilities like sun spirit or a glyph even taking one spike trap+Hs on a melee druid build.

such a simple change has Free us of Very limiting constraints when it came to weapon choices too.

i can honestly say Druid is nearing its Balance perfection.

the only thing now is to fix all those bugs and update Warhorn 4’s hunters call , atm maybe a few other things like off-hand training only effecting torch and dagger , why not warhorn .

I know windborne notes is a warhorn trait that grants regen but it does feel redundant out side of the Clarions bond+windborne combo and that combo is mostly used in a full power build due to marksmanship.

warhorn really does need its role More defined as Damage or support not just a single skill that applies 3 boons , atm its got no role apart from that 3 boons.
windborne notes is in nature magic because its been put on a support trait line though the warhorn gives very little support which is odd i think , its confused between power / condi or support and does quite poorly at all 3 without lots of additional traits.

So it isn’t a bug?

Aylpse.6280:

So it isn’t a bug?

Until it either shows up in the official notes or is confirmed not a bug by a red post it’s still up in the air.

Considering it effectively negates the need for the AF bar in the first place I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not “working as intended”.

Its testing fore sure, like they did with taunt. If they take it away you cant call nerfff as it basiclly a “fix”.

LughLongArm.5460:

Its testing fore sure, like they did with taunt. If they take it away you cant call nerfff as it basiclly a “fix”.

Let’s go with our well known term “Shortbow treatment”.
Everyone will understand perfectly without any explanation, ain’t that right?

Well, they decided to put druids into a Life Beta testing. More people, more feedback, more criticism, more disrespect and hate, more potential customers lost.

I mean, even they prefer to learn the hard way. It’s the most efficient one after all.
I just simply hope I won’t get disappointed once again as I already have countless of times.

If it IS a bug, I see no reason not to keep it

It’s hardly game breaking, just really opens up the class and lets us be diverse again, like we were in gw1. From what I’ve experienced of it, I do not feel OP at all, just that little bit more effective. Something the class has really needed. If you really felt it necessary to off-set this, add a slightly larger recharge time to skill 3.

slightly, anet, SLIGHTLY. We don’t need your 400% impact drill to blast its way through CA.