Guild Wars 2

Personally I didn’t get to play in the raid at all this weekend so my perception of the druid is based solely off pvp, wvw and general pve play. I think a lot of people ended up like me and didn’t get to go through the raids at all or very often. Brazil and Mighty Teapot posted videos on raids. Brazil is actually playing a Druid through the raid encounter and their impressions are pretty helpful to me in how i’m seeing the Druids role in future content. They also go into the fact that current content bosses and trash simply don’t have enough health to make encounters difficult. If these bosses where hugely buffed, like 10 times their current health, Druids may also be useful in current content as they are.

Brazil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6m3XcpJopA

Mighty Teapot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hinVBfLkCb8

Druids are going to be important in raids – This NA guild beat the vale guardian and said druid was extremely helpful (VoD below from druid POV)

It was definitely needed , as I watched the whole vod and that druid did amazing keeping up the heals (without a working UI for healthbars no less).
I will say this – druid is absolutely useless for damage , he literally didn’t focus on doing ANY damage at all outside spamming a few skills off CD when needed.

He put out more healing numbers than damage numbers, that is for sure.

Now outside of raids – ehhh , debatable on their usefulness lol.
I personally don’t like the fact druid spec’d healer has to pretty much rely on other ppl… its pretty kitten poor for ANY kind of damage, but its expected.

Clearly they will be useful in raids. I’m waiting to see how useful they will be outside of Raids thou….as of right now, I don’t think they are needed (possibly needed in frac 51-100??)

I think Anet’s going to have to boost the HP on all the bosses for Druid to see any use in old content. also the mechanics in most of the old content is too simplistic to really require constant healing, if the Druid did more dps on staff and burst healing in celestial form it wouldn’t be so bad.

Prophet.1584:

I think Anet’s going to have to boost the HP on all the bosses for Druid to see any use in old content. also the mechanics in most of the old content is too simplistic to really require constant healing, if the Druid did more dps on staff and burst healing in celestial form it wouldn’t be so bad.

well you know anet seems to have an allergy when it comes to tuning old content…

I fully expect future content to have some tuning that requires a bit more support/healing but for all these past events? not a chance they spend time and resources tuning old stuff when its the future they care about.. not the past.

Prophet.1584:

I think Anet’s going to have to boost the HP on all the bosses for Druid to see any use in old content. also the mechanics in most of the old content is too simplistic to really require constant healing, if the Druid did more dps on staff and burst healing in celestial form it wouldn’t be so bad.

Fully Agree with this,

aside that the healing #’s need better scaling with healing power… 2.5% scaling is pretty meaningless

Kailee.8790:

Prophet.1584:

I think Anet’s going to have to boost the HP on all the bosses for Druid to see any use in old content. also the mechanics in most of the old content is too simplistic to really require constant healing, if the Druid did more dps on staff and burst healing in celestial form it wouldn’t be so bad.

Fully Agree with this,

aside that the healing #’s need better scaling with healing power… 2.5% scaling is pretty meaningless

Fully agree, for what amounts to a dedicated healer our heals individually are pretty weak. I think we should also have some amount of passive healing per second within aoe range if they aren’t going to give us a pretty good buff to healing. Right now it wouldn’t make much of a difference in bringing a druid, heal spec ele, revenant or healing guardian as far as heals go. those three classes, even specced as healers will probably bring more overall dps.

Prophet.1584:

I think Anet’s going to have to boost the HP on all the bosses for Druid to see any use in old content. also the mechanics in most of the old content is too simplistic to really require constant healing, if the Druid did more dps on staff and burst healing in celestial form it wouldn’t be so bad.

Boosting HP won’t change anything. Fights will last longer but still without druids.

I’d say even a Ele that is healing/support spec’d is about as good if not better than druid right now for Raids…

for one, aura/shoutshare is something druid lacks and is a big welcome to a big raid party like this…

2, ele’s healing (when spec’d) is pretty darn good as well. By the looks of it, we don’t need THAT big of a focus on 100% healing anyways…

The other VOD I watched of the raid clear was with a full zerker druid lol…healing obviously still useful, but DPS is not something to skip out on….

Taking the Ele’s DPS/Utility compared to druids weak dps but superior healing is definitely debatable… I’m more inclined on Ele being the better role to take if healing takes a much lower priority than expected…