Guild Wars 2

Druid was presented as the answer to breaking the pattern of loading up on berserker gear to outdamage mobs in an encounter. However, what has been created is a part of the trinity that GW2 has avoided so well up until now.

In order to truly encourage players to branch out into more healing based gear specs, it would be more beneficial to increase the conversion rates of how “Healing” stats affect related skills.

I like the druid in concept. The staff and glyphs are generally realistic for a support role. But the celestial transformation creates a pure healer role. The thought of spamming Cosmic Ray brings back terrible memories of my BC Pally. IMO, we don’t need a pure healer based specialization. Keep it on par with the other spces with healing.

Thoughts?

Throfin.5932:

Druid was presented as the answer to breaking the pattern of loading up on berserker gear to outdamage mobs in an encounter.

That’s not actually true. While they did say that berserker gear wouldn’t cut it in the druid stream, it wasn’t said that druids were the reason why berserker gear wouldn’t cut it.

In order to truly encourage players to branch out into more healing based gear specs, it would be more beneficial to increase the conversion rates of how “Healing” stats affect related skills.

No. What is needed is content which is harder and different from current content. The problem is not with player abilities and player stats but in what those abilities and stats are used against.

I like the druid in concept. The staff and glyphs are generally realistic for a support role. But the celestial transformation creates a pure healer role. The thought of spamming Cosmic Ray brings back terrible memories of my BC Pally. IMO, we don’t need a pure healer based specialization. Keep it on par with the other spces with healing.

You act like only druids can be pure support characters. Ventari revenants, water/tempest elementalists and others however show something different.

I had this concern as well, Throfin. If there’s a focus on healing, then Healing Power needs to step up somehow. It’s been discussed in other threads before, and there’s some good ideas that came of it.

Perhaps most notable and applicable to raids are:

• Healing Power contributes more to outgoing healing, but not to self-healing. Either as a percentage (1% per 100) or by making sure other-healing skills and regen applications have a higher coefficient.
• Healing Power contributes to incoming healing, not just self-heals. This allows for more ‘tanky’ characters and rewards the party for bringing that little bit of extra healing power, even if they’re relying on a heal-spec’d character.
• Healing Power adds to boon duration. A repeatedly favorite idea. It gives Healing Power dual applications in offense and defense by extending all boons, from Might and Fury to Protection and Regen. It would mean adjusting Giver’s, but no one uses that anyway.

Diovid – Ok, I didn’t phrase that very well. Druid was presented as the raid healer. I’m not saying there aren’t other professions that can’t focus on support/heal. I’m saying the druid appears to be less like those and more like the classic pure healer of other games.

One of the things I appreciate about GW2 is the lack of the trinity. I enjoy playing a support/heal role. The druid is too much in that direction though.

Rauderi – Interesting ideas. I like it. Exactly what I was talking about: a change in healing power valuation = less focus on berserker. Not a profession with spam heals.

Throfin.5932:

However, what has been created is a part of the trinity that GW2 has avoided so well up until now.

Technically, damage-dealer classes are also “part of the trinity”.

Stop being so allergic to over-used phrases and trying to put single sentences out of context; instead, wait and see how the design decisions play in action.

There’s no mention, and thus no reason to suggest, that any profession will become a “spam healing” class.

Until healing power gets bumped, Druid or any other class will only be theories.

It’s like doing body work on a car with no engine.

Water ele’s dodge rolling is nice and all, but it looks like we’ll need more soon.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Until healing power gets bumped, Druid or any other class will only be theories.

With the shoddy Healing Power ratios, we can expect Druid’s constant healing to use less than 10% of the invested Healing Power. Regular healing skills (Slot 6) offer 15-22%, thereabouts. Regeneration uses 12.5%

It generally equates to a sparse few hundred HP difference (3 digits) when the HP pools themselves are 11-30k (5 digits), and the base healing is exceeds the Healing Power contribution by a factor of 10.

Basically, full cleric’s gear gives maybe a 20% boost in overall output. Maybe.
Compared to investing in any of the Zerk stats, and damage capacity spikes significantly more.

Leto – My point on spamming heals is based in fact on the 1 skill of Celestial Avatar having no cooldown and a 0.5 second cast time. It provides no damage, just healing. I’m just saying it is very reminiscent of the old WoW BC Pally staring at health bars hitting the same button over and over again.

I can appreciate that you have to build up the celestial bar in order to get into the healing mode, but the skills just feels on paper to be unimaginative.

What might be more engaging is for the heal to be the third part of the 1 skill. For example, stage 1 of the skill could do damage and give allies 2 seconds of might. Stage 2 could give 2 seconds of fury. Then stage 3 is your AoE heal.

My point is, it does not seem on paper to be very revolutionary. It feels like we are taking a step back instead of reinventing how healing works.

Rauderi – Exactly!

Healing Power does scale horrendously with some skills.

eg. Mesmer Mantra Healing goes from 2600 → 2900(ish) with MAXIMUM Healing Power.

I will say this.

I played this game in beta and at launch for a bit and then left.

I saw the info on the Druid on Reddit when it popped up and not only did it make me reinstall the game and come back, but also convinced me to buy the xpack and a gem card.

The reason why I left is simply b/c I play healers. I tried Guardian as a healer and I had some fun, but it was hard to get a group and everyone just ran zerker gear and zerged things. No fun for me at all.

I am glad to finally have a chance to fully heal in the game. You could heal in the original GW and that is what I did. I am a MMO healer. It is a playstyle that I like and I am glad they are adding it.

You can have heals with out spank and tank trinity. If anything it will just add another layer of skill to the games playstyle and to builds. People will actually have to think about balancing stats instead of just going dmg and crit.

@Coulter – Agreed! I would even venture to say “most” skills : )

@aydos – Welcome back! One of my biggest fears is that druid will become mandatory for groups/raids because of the pure heal focus. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m ringing the warning bells too early. It’s just my feeling based on past experiences and what we know of the druid on paper.

@Throfin Thank you for the warm welcome. I could see some form of heals becoming mandatory from all of the changes I have read, but I do not see that as a bad thing.

For every party you should be able to find 1 person who likes to heal. There are still more dps slots than support.

In PvP it would turn into a protect or our healer while killing theirs scenario.

I know I am biased, because healing is my playstyle, but it really does add another level of strategy to fights. Also, you can always tell the good healers from the bad ones.

It just sucks that they originally alienated any entire playerbase by not making healing a real thing.

I have always played healers in several MMOs. I was a beta tester and early adopter for the original Guild Wars and bought every campaign pack and the expansion. I worked my butt off to unlock as many Hall of Monument things as I could for GWs and then when I got into GW2 Beta I saw that the playstyle I had played in their previous game was just gone. It kinda sucked.

I know there are those that do not want to have to play this style and like the game being all DPS, but don’t forget there are other players wanting to heal. Plus side you get longer fights now in PvP

Eh. Keep em at a very strong level of healing, but tone it down if you must to give em enough damage to get by. There is a necessity for all weapons in this game to do enough damage to be able to play by yourself, but I definitely don’t think the unique strength of the Druid (healing and healing and healing) should be taken away in favour of making it just another Zerker head class.

I think that a soft trinity is a good thing. We do have other classes that could become dedicated healers (see ele, engineers, rev, necro, guard, and mesmer) so being able to make it through content without a druid will more than likely be possible.

I will agree with diovid druid doesnt create a need for healing or change meta from zerker its the content it’s self which the devs are aiming to be really hard for HoT content; specifically raids having unavoidable damage.

I think you and many others are hung up on druid only being a healing based line. A lot of people may not realize this, but our class will have tones of access to cc via daze. Which will allow us to break down those breaker bars AND amp our damage via MoC. Additionally there are some pretty interesting condi options available with druid. To say our line is only healing is very short sighted.

Lastly, compared to other classes we already have an interesting use for healing power via instinctive reaction which converts 7% of our healing power to power.