Guild Wars 2

I think it’s very good.

Been playing it since HoT launch, got it fully unlocked pretty fast, and am really loving it.

Saw a lot of posts about how bad druid is in general. I can say I don’t agree for WvW as a support character. Didn’t want to be too fast to state this, but I think it’s really good.

Most of the hate for Druid is because of its lack of tagging ability, little AoE, lack of synergy with Ranger traits and pets and because it does not provide a “targetable” healing ability. How do you think it fares with these points?

Good to discuss, yes. It’s just my humble oppinion.

Lack of synergy with ranger traits and pets: The synergy with ranger druid traits are good I think, for support, that’s healing and cleansing in this case. You can spec into BM and spec for more healing support via BM traits and synergy with your pet. I’ve been playing this way for a week now and I find that only bears and devourers can hold their own in zergfights, you have more pet families to choose from in small scale fights / roaming. Synergy with other traitlines are the same as before the launch of HoT. I’m not saying anything about pet AI in general, that’s the same as it has been from GW2 launch.

Little AoE: Being a celestial avatar, casting #4 Rejuvenating Tides, you have a waterfield that’s moving with you, and it’s not small. You can cast it twice under normal circumstances before the celestial avatar is back in cooldown. That’s a lot of blasts and healing. You can’t blast it yourself with your staff skills though. You have healing spring as another waterfield. Other AoE fields rely on your pets, fire wyvern for might for example, but isn’t ideal in gvg/zerg fights. You could use torch for another firefield if you’d like, but I prefer staff / axe warhorn.

Indeed you don’t have targetable healing. But did we ever had that? That’s nothing new right? As long as your party members are relatively closeby, your blasts and healing will heal them. In celestial avatar form, #1 cosmic ray is pretty targetable, as is normal staff skill #3.

Bast Bow.2958:

Good to discuss, yes. It’s just my humble oppinion.

Lack of synergy with ranger traits and pets: The synergy with ranger druid traits are good I think, for support, that’s healing and cleansing in this case. You can spec into BM and spec for more healing support via BM traits and synergy with your pet. I’ve been playing this way for a week now and I find that only bears and devourers can hold their own in zergfights, you have more pet families to choose from in small scale fights / roaming. Synergy with other traitlines are the same as before the launch of HoT. I’m not saying anything about pet AI in general, that’s the same as it has been from GW2 launch.

Little AoE: Being a celestial avatar, casting #4 Rejuvenating Tides, you have a waterfield that’s moving with you, and it’s not small. You can cast it twice under normal circumstances before the celestial avatar is back in cooldown. That’s a lot of blasts and healing. You can’t blast it yourself with your staff skills though. You have healing spring as another waterfield. Other AoE fields rely on your pets, fire wyvern for might for example, but isn’t ideal in gvg/zerg fights. You could use torch for another firefield if you’d like, but I prefer staff / axe warhorn.

Indeed you don’t have targetable healing. But did we ever had that? That’s nothing new right? As long as your party members are relatively closeby, your blasts and healing will heal them. In celestial avatar form, #1 cosmic ray is pretty targetable, as is normal staff skill #3.

What I meant by lack of synergy with Ranger traits and pets, is not that Druid does work with Ranger trait lines, but that the traits themselves do not have actual synergy with Ranger traits or skills. Synergy would be if a trait gave fury like Wilderness Knowledge, and that worked with Remorseless. Or how Two handed Training works with Remorseless, or how Resounding Timbre works with WHaO and SoTP. That is synergy. Druid brings nothing like that to the table. Also, Staff has no skills that interact with pets.

When referring to AoE, something Ranger is greatly missing, I meant damage, not a single healing skill on a gated form.

As for targetable healing, well, you cannot be an effective healer if you cannot actually target those that need healing.

Hm yes I now come to understand what you mean. And tbh, I’m not that advanced into traitlines knowledge. So I don’t have an oppinion here, but by understanding what you’re saying and looking at the druid trait line, you are right. There is none.
But I still think the druid is great at support.

Damage wise there is none or little when talking about druid I think. On the top of my head: 1 glyph that gives conditions to enemies, and astral avatar #5. But I don’t think the druid was designed for that purpose.

Last point: you are right. But this game has never been able to target heal, so why say it’s bad for the druid now? I still think druids are very good at healing/support.
Target healing is another discussion I think, so is the holy trinity

CAF #1 needs to be larger radius and instant. At the moment i never bother using it because it never lands.
When i go celestial form i usually drop #3 run in with #4 hit #3 again then leave and ancestral grace my way outa there.
We have a base to work on with the druid spec and there is plenty of room for improvement with staff skills, CAF and traits. I just can’t help but feel we would be in a much better place if we had all 3 beta weekends. The desire for feedback/improvement/balance seems to have died out since HoT launch.

Bast Bow.2958:

Last point: you are right. But this game has never been able to target heal, so why say it’s bad for the druid now? I still think druids are very good at healing/support.
Target healing is another discussion I think, so is the holy trinity

We’ve never had targeted heals before. All the others are AoE, direction oriented, or auto-targeting. Or at least the majority, someone correct me if there is a targeted heal hidden away somewhere.

Bast Bow.2958:

snip

Actually besides that condition glyph, the other glyphs also do damage. In a power build I have gotten glyph hits over 4000. The tooltips show over 1000 base damage for me with no might. So while druid isn’t all about the damage, it does give some PbAoE which is something most rangers lacked prior.

Yes, the druid has more ways to deal damage, or add damage buff to allies (glyph of empowerment).

Heimskarl Ashfriend was asking about a AoE one, and glyph of aligment does that.
Just checked wiki: all the glyphs do AoE dmg in a radius of 300 btw.

Frigoris.7853:

CAF #1 needs to be larger radius and instant. At the moment i never bother using it because it never lands.

Agreed on instant. Now I have to sort of ‘guess’ where my allies are running to in order to land CAF #1. When in large zerg/fights or big PvE boss battles if you just try and land them in a big pile of allies it will be ok, but it’s hard to land it on someone particular.

Also, CAF #1 cancels if you buttonsmash 1 too rapidly, you also won’t hear the distinctive sound. Though it depends on your settings I guess.

druid is bad at healing because healing in staff scales pretty bad.
because although the staff is a weapon and only target enemies it is designed to heal allies…
because the staff is a very weak weapon that we are forced to use to be qble to use the extremely gated specialisation.

CAF is a disaster. the only skills i use are 3 & 4 because the other ones are really bad designed.

the traits are really weak and the fact that you have to waste one trait line to get the mobility that the core ranger is supposed to have just drive me mad. that and the fact that anet\irenio keep breaking the class patch after patch with no improvements on sight.

Druid staff skill 2 is quite terrible, vine surge takes a millenia to cast and since staff 1(Solar Beam) has to finish its 3 hits before you can use other skills, it makes it incredibly hard to smoothly transition between skills. I think using any other skills should immediately break the cast time of Solar Beam because I often find myself mowed down and still casting solar beam and instantly having my other skills on a 3s cooldown due to its failed cast.

These are my prime concerns but other than that I’m quite enjoying playing cleric druid in WvW.

Why is druid skill 2 terrible?

Agreed vine surge takes (too) long.
I don’t know about the other thing you said, don’t really understand what you say.

So in conclusion, in my oppinion, with all the other comments:
I agree with most of the points you guys made. Some points are a whole other discussion (target healing for example) which isn’t specifically a bummer for the druid alone.

Agreed on:

- Vine surge can be quicker
- Solar beam could be instant
- Lack of Ranger synergy with traits. I agree, but I don’t feel a bad support character because of this.
- Lack of AoE damage. I don’t think this is true, the glyphs have AoE dmg, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think the primary role of the druid is damage.

But even though I agree with all former points, I still feel I’m a strong support character with druid. I’m really enjoying it and those big green numbers, combined with +150 ferocity, 2 water fields, enormous amount of cleansing with traited glyphs, warhorn #5 (traited), an extra blast in CAF, etc etc, I really don’t think it’s all that bad.

Now I’m making my statement weaker by saying this but have to be honest:

I don’t know how other support/healing characters fare in zergfights in WvW, like a guardian or water ele. Maybe if you would compare druid with those support characters, you can say those characters have more synergy in traits, or they have instant cast from certain skills which we don’t have as a druid.

I’m hearing tons of ranger/druid bashing again in forums, while I’m really enjoying it. Am I really that naïve? I certainly hope not lol.
I have been enjoying Ranger since headstart, if that means anything. I found myself more challenged then other professions at times in WvW, and pet AI…
But oh well. I like challenges I guess.