Guild Wars 2

…that will never happen.

I’m not all that attached to ranger. I’ve tried it here and there over GW2’s life but always inevitably deleted for something else. But hearing about druid brought me back. I love playing healer and support in other games and now we were going to have a class dedicated to just that. Maybe I could avoid the zerker zerg and try something else for a change.

Now, I don’t think everything about druid is some total disaster in terms of what sort of numbers it puts out. It does okay in situations where a big group of people are wailing away on a giant bad guy and they need someone to occasionally float some big green numbers over their heads. But it’s just not very fun or fluid to use.

First off, staff is boring. Man, is that thing ever boring…

Solar Beam: An auto-attack that pulses low damage and low healing. It requires you to clumsily and artificially shuffle about if you want to catch people, your pet, and extra enemies in the beam. And you almost always have to do this if you want to build up into Celestial Avatar for any real healing.

Astral Wisp: More low healing. Between the cast time, the slow projectile, and then waiting for the wisp to circle about and heal people, I’m not sure it’s worth using all that often. Either the enemy will be dead before it does much or you could have just auto-attacked your way to Avatar form by then.

Ancestral Grace: Most fun thing on staff. I enjoy this one. It evades, it heals for a decent little bit, and it blasts for more healing and team support. I wish everything on the staff was like this in terms of creating multiple positive effects at once. My only problem with it is that it puts you in combat for a few seconds if you’re just trying to just teleport around.

Vine Surge: Meh. Immobilize is too short, it’s annoying to aim, everything else that I’m sure everyone has already said about this ability. Meh.

Sublime Conversion: It’s okay, I guess. I like the water field on it. I can’t imagine it getting much use against projectiles. Raids will just plan for a reflect for the most part, I assume. Maybe it will see action in WvW when two zerg blobs are staring at each other and hurling a few ranged attacks.

I’m going to assume various changes I suggest will have already been brought up by others and promptly ignored. Also, this is turning into the sort of long rant that I would just skim. But this is MY rant darn it, so I’m going to keep going.

Solar Beam: Increase the damage slightly by adding a short burn onto the last pulse. Free extra damage for everyone and a decent boost if you have condition damage stats. Make the beam not cleave, so that it just does decent single target damage. On each pulse, have the druid heal itself and nearby allies in a small radius instead of it being people inside the beam. That way the druid stays with and protects a group at all ranges instead of having to shuffle.

Astral Wisp: Instead of healing each time it passes, have it grant short duration protection or regeneration. Have it inflict short duration poison when it expires. Maybe allow the entire effect to be cleared like it’s a condition? It would need some sort of counter play.

Ancestral Grace: Remain the same except for maybe not putting the druid into combat.

Vine Surge: Make it a line that you place like Unsteady Ground for elementalist or Line of Warding for guardian. Have it immobilize on creation and then pulse cripple and bleed on enemies that remain or cross. Remove the cleansing on allies.

Sublime Conversion: Keep the water field and converting projectiles to healing, but make the effect a radius around the druid. I feel like it will get in the way of ally reflects less while still helping in those times when you need projectile immunity like raising a downed ally.

Further, make conditions you inflict and regeneration (like from warhorn, shouts, healing spring, etc.) granted to allies generate astral force at a moderate rate. Cut the duration of Celestial Avatar in half but only require half as much astral force to enter. Celestial Avatar will feel more active and interesting if it didn’t take this longish period to build up and was a short but very effective boon to allies. I can usually have the necessary astral force built up between cool-downs, but it doesn’t feel like I have much control. I’m always dying (sometimes literally) to have it back and immediately triggering it, but then I’m often getting out half way to save it for next round.

Rant over. Again, druid right now is not the end of the world, but it’s just so boring and one-note and needs to fill a larger space than it currently seems to do.

Tl;DR Give staff some conditions and easier ally healing. Druid doesn’t have to do severe damage or anything, but it needs a less clumsy support role where it can contribute steady damage and healing outside of the bursts of healing in Celestial Avatar.

i agree on everything

Additional ranting about Celestial Avatar:

Cosmic Ray: I don’t really use this. The healing really isn’t that great and everyone is running around everywhere so it’s difficult to aim. I’m pretty much out of Avatar form by the time I would use this anyway. Have to save that precious astral force for later.

Seed of Life: See above.

Lunar Impact: Fantastic. Big daze, big heal, and bigger radius to catch those who for some reason have to perpetually sprint every which way while attacking.

Rejuvenating Tides: Fantastic times two. Chase after people and repeatedly heal them. Turn all ally finishers into more healing wherever you go. (Unless they don’t want this, in which case too bad for them, they’re getting it anyway.)

Natural Convergence: Meh. Seriously meh. Meh damage, meh conditions. My current use for it right now is tagging mobs in Halloween labyrinth doors after healing people. And that’s just sad.

So we have two good healing skills and two not so good ones that are just filler. You worked hard to build up into Avatar, you healed your allies like a good teammate with those two excellent skills, and now… okay back to building up astral force to do it again. The filler stuff can probably stand to become offensive in nature, giving the druid either a reason to not drop out of Avatar immediately upon healing or a nice offensive option.

Cosmic Ray: Rain down fire, inflicting a burn on enemies and granting vigor to allies.

Seed of Life: Have it pulse poison in addition to current effects.

Natural Convergence: Pulse protection and stability to the druid and nearby allies. You can drop the other damage effects. I don’t see them ever mattering.

TL;DR Conditions that line up with previously suggested staff skills, a better variety of boons for allies so the druid is not stuck providing nothing but healing 24/7.

Random edit: I also wouldn’t care if staff range got dropped down to 900, 600, whatever. The point is druid needs to be able to get in the fray with allies and keep them alive with boons and healing while providing at least a sliver of the overall damage. Right now it’s just the healing. If that’s all there ever will be going for the druid then I imagine a lot of content will be completed with just dodges, water fields, etc. and the druid will never even need to be considered.

But, but… Druid is a healbot ! Why would you go Druid if you wanted to do damage ? /s.

Me too, I agree with everything.

1) Lackluster, but fine.

2) Slow casting, slow projectile, bad damage. Did you try to cast it from bottom to top or top to bottom ? IT DOESN’T WORK. It follows the ground like Phantasmal Warlock. Our only projectile and it doesn’t fly or arc like a projectile !

3) Good and yes it puts you in combat (lol)

4) Slow casting, small AoE (Why can’t they do it like Revenant Hammer 2?)

5) Situational at best and the projectiles NEVER hit you. Then do an arcing spell and it goes in every direction.

Having damage on CA 1 could give some usefulness at it.

Krispera.5087:

But, but… Druid is a healbot ! Why would you go Druid if you wanted to do damage ? /s.

I would be (mostly) okay with druid if it was just a healbot. But right now it’s a bit clumsy and not so fun. I can never shake the feeling in GW2 that most character builds need to have some basic filler damage or support or whatever in between their “peak usefulness” stages, which would be Avatar for druid. Otherwise, you’re dead weight a lot of the time. We already can see that in this sea of dead traits, weapons, skills, etc. that no one will ever use on every class.

That in between stage for druid is just shuffling around with that darn beam hoping to build up for the next avatar; it is no immediate help to the fight.

I guess my problem with ever trying to defend using the beam to heal and build up astral force is that that is its sole purpose. Yes, yes, we all get it, it’s not that hard mechanically to do the shuffle and build up astral force. But you’re not doing any actual healing with the beam. Damage in GW2 amounts to huge spikes that need to be avoided or made up for with equally large healing. These double digit, low triple numbers on staff aren’t doing anything but preparing for Avatar.

You could just as easily change staff 1 to say: Cast a beam that does no damage (except for sigils or something) and no healing. If you keep up the beam for several seconds, you get to transform into an Avatar that actually does something.

Because right now, that’s how it feels. Heck, you could probably make it so druid is just rooted in place and doesn’t need a target to channel the no damage, no heal beam and it would be an improvement for just getting into Avatar.

TL;DR We know, we know, astral force isn’t really that hard to generate. But it’s boring and not fun and clumsy and blah.

I want to feel like I’m harnessing the raw forces of nature to curse and condemn my enemies. I want to be a sheltering and guiding light for allies. But instead my “Solar Beam” involves making sonar sounds for several seconds in preparation for actual healing.

Apparently the raw forces of nature make really bizarre sounds and amount to a mild sunburn.

Further rantings on staff.

Having ditched staff entirely for the usual greatsword/longbow and survival skills in PvP, but still keeping druid, I feel like Celestial Avatar is sort of overpowered in other contexts. It’s relatively easy to get into it using only Troll Unguent, thus getting an additional big spike of healing and dazes and interrupts. Take a raven and Lingering Light and suddenly you’re also blinding everyone way too often.

Solutions to everything? No idea. I get the feeling the meta for a good long while will be anything that lets you passively keep boons up for so long and with so little effort that they might as well be baseline, like we’re seeing currently in a wide range of classes. Druid in itself lacks this, so it feels more like extra self-healing for flavor rather than an entirely new build.

I don’t believe making the staff a decent support weapon with conditions will be overly appealing unless you’re dying to make the druid aspects your focus. Right now its main best use seems to be a rapid delivery system for on-critical sigils after buffing might with “Strength of the pack!” and “We heal as one!”. My opinion on those sigils’ existence has never exactly been high, so… this isn’t overly fun to me.

Everyone would hate it, but I’d prefer staff to truly be needed to get into Avatar. I think you should have to give up a weapon slot for the healing. Make staff a more usable condition damage and support weapon. Generate charges for Avatar on staff 1 instead of the current percentage system. Make Avatar generate boons for allies and have some offensive options.

Solar Beam: Charges up for an attack and goes through a cycle. Pulses three times like it does now, but each pulse is different.

Pulse 1 gives minor healing (but hopefully more noticeable healing than it currently does) to the druid and a few allies in a small radius.
Pulse 2 grants a charge that can be used to power an Avatar ability.
Pulse 3 does all of the current damage but in just one pulse and causes a short burn.

This way staff is used as support, steady damage, and for Avatar. It can’t be used for continuous fast attacks in the hope of sigils going off. Avatar would be on a relatively short cool-down, say 7 or 8 seconds. Each ability would require a certain number of charges to cast. You can stay in Avatar until you run out of charges.

But I highly doubt we’ll ever see a big mechanic change at this stage of the game. So… moving on to classes that are less boring!

Agree with most things in the first two comments, wanted to share similiar ideas. But I don’t see they implement any of this, the only reason I’m bumping it is because I have a slight hope that Druid (and Scrapper, I guess) get(s) some extra attention the next few weeks due to only one beta weekend.

Don’t agree with your last comment. Weapons and profession mechanics should never be dependent on eachother. The druid line got three minors dedicated to healing, and most of the major traits contributes to that aswell. Your investement for having heals is already there.

Lazze.9870:

Don’t agree with your last comment. Weapons and profession mechanics should never be dependent on eachother. The druid line got three minors dedicated to healing, and most of the major traits contributes to that aswell. Your investement for having heals is already there.

It was just an idea. I thought getting an extra spike of healing through nothing but Troll Unguent was a bit too much, at least in PvP scenarios. It felt like getting an additional life on my usual longbow build.

I guess I don’t like the idea of so passively getting into Avatar. Maybe different rates of charge could build for different weapons like with necromancers and Death Shroud.