Guild Wars 2

For those living under a rock, the Druid grandmaster trait Grace of the Land will give allies healed by the Druid a stacking 3% dmg and condi dmg buff lasting 8 seconds, stacking up to 5 times for a total of 15%.

What I’m afraid of is that this trait alone will force raids to bring a Druid along. While a well crafted raid group could potentially bring enough healing to sustain themselves without resorting to a dedicated Druid/Tempest/Engineer healer, I no longer see a reason to do so with the GotL buff. Who wouldn’t want a 15% dmg buff on like 5-6 players (or more, depending on if each micro packet of healing procs GotL) while bringing healing and even some damage if the Druid decides to double up as a condi ranger wearing apothecary gear? 15% is huge on its own, but it’s a 15% multiplier that works off of might, banners, alacrity, quickness, auras and greedy profession specific damage modifiers.

What I’m bringing into question is this: is it ok for a single grandmaster trait to provide what is pretty much a passive increase in damage of that magnitude? If GotL provided 1 might stack for 8 seconds each time the Druid heals an ally, I think it’d be a well balanced grandmaster trait that may or may not be mandatory to bring along depending on your composition. But as it stands right now, it becomes mandatory to pick this trait up in PvE as the other traits are so underperforming compared to GotL that they aren’t even worth considering.

In any case, I’d like to see others’ opinions on this: is it ok for GotL to be the single best, mostly passive trait in the game that doesn’t rely on boon duration or wearing a particular type of gear? Is it ok for a single trait to have this much of an impact on the game? Should it be nerfed to provide might stacks or should it be nerfed to provide a more appropriate 5% total damage bonus?

Keep in mind that I’m not advocating a straight up nerfs to Druids and Rangers, nor am I advocating for the exclusion of Druids in raids. What I’m advocating is bringing back in line – what seems to me – a massive overpowered and overbudgeted trait so that Druids are brought to raids for their class abilities, utility skills, for the Ranger profession and for their trait lines, but NOT for a single overpowered trait. In other words, I wand a balanced elite spec, not an elite spec balanced around a trait.

Ty for posting on the ranger forums, welcome!
How about looking at warrior banners & PS first?

I personally don’t see a problem with it. After min/max’ers figure out the optimal strategy there won’t be as much of a need for healers so this trait is required in order to keep druids relevant.

I am pretty sure grace of the land only procs if you use celestial form heals based on the wiki anyway, which is a limited resources by itself so I highly doubt it will be as good as you think it will be.

As for might gen, that change will completely kill the trait. With PS warriors/Heralds/Eles, every group can very very easily sustain aoe 25 group might which renders grace of the land absolutely worthless.

not really since you have the negatives of having to go into AF in terms of damage lost while things like Ventari will never have to nerf their damage so much to heal. Not to mention when you look at other classes with support you see it isn’t unbalanced considering what you give up.

frost spirit gives 10% for the whole party (with 75% which is pretty high) and I dont see players being forced to take ranger (or even wanting one in their party) for fotm/dungeons..

Sina.9208:

Ty for posting on the ranger forums, welcome!
How about looking at warrior banners & PS first?

Haha! Made me legit laugh out loud.

Fluffball.8307:

Sina.9208:

Ty for posting on the ranger forums, welcome!
How about looking at warrior banners & PS first?

Haha! Made me legit laugh out loud.

my thoughts exactly…

This is really just a number tweaking thing. It is safe to let it play out.
If it indeeds proves to be too powerful, they can still reduce the number or buff other class’s counterpart.

Exciton.8942:

This is really just a number tweaking thing. It is safe to let it play out.
If it indeeds proves to be too powerful, they can still reduce the number or buff other class’s counterpart.

It potentially increases a single person’s DPS by 75%.
… That basically targets people with low health that are trying to avoid fighting the boss.

I find it perfectly Okay since the Druid doesn’t deal almost any DPS whatsoever. He can invest into Toughness and Healing power without feeling a burden of DPS.

It is a nice choice of being a DPS support that has a cooldown, is efficiency limited (due to priority targets of your heals) and sacrifices all your DPS for it while it required people to be perfectly stacked and organized if 5 people want to benefit from this trait. Not to mention you’ll be targeted by it most of the time as well.

The trait is mathematically balanced.

“How about looking at warrior banners & PS first?”

Banners require utility slots. PS requires a specific weapon, runes and a suboptimal playstyle to achieve maximum efficiency. GotL requires nothing like that.

“I personally don’t see a problem with it. After min/max’ers figure out the optimal strategy there won’t be as much of a need for healers so this trait is required in order to keep druids relevant.”

You’re assuming that the optimal strategy involves no unavoidable damage. Vale Guardian already disproves this to some extent. Looking at the best case scenario, a raid could be so competent and practiced that they can avoid all avoidable damage for a specific encounter; but what happens when that encounter still throws so much unavoidable damage that the raid as a whole requires more self healing than their healing skill provides? You start bringing healing utilities, blasting waterfields or you bring healers. While I don’t think every fight will go the route of the (rather boring) aura damage that Vale Guardian went, I’m fairly certain every encounter or nearly every encounter will have some sort of unavoidable damage to deal with that will be best handled by bringing healing utilities, blasting water fields or bringing a healer along. Besides, the hard part of raiding comes before farm status and the extra healing to cover for mistakes will be important there. After a raid boss is on farm status for a few months and everyone can play around every mechanic lazily because they’ve done in a few dozen times, it stops mattering who brings what, at least to some extent.

“As for might gen, that change will completely kill the trait. With PS warriors/Heralds/Eles, every group can very very easily sustain aoe 25 group might which renders grace of the land absolutely worthless.”

And what’s wrong with having a trait that overlaps and competes with what other professions bring? What if the Druid, with GotL giving might stacks, becomes the new PS Warrior and Warriors/Berserkers actually get to do damage in HoT instead of being solely brought for banners and PS?

“not really since you have the negatives of having to go into AF in terms of damage lost while things like Ventari will never have to nerf their damage so much to heal. Not to mention when you look at other classes with support you see it isn’t unbalanced considering what you give up.”

The following is based on napkin math, and I consider myself to be a world leading expert on napkin math, so take up your grain of salt but don’t pick up a large one.

Guardians, Elementalists, Druids, Engineers and Revenants have traits, utilities and weapon skills based around healing. Out of all of these, only Druids and Engineers can bring both healing and damage output: Druids through that damage glyph that I can’t be bothered to look up the name for and GotL, Engineers through HGH might stacking. So with all other things being equal, you’d want to bring whichever profession brings the most healing, the most personal DPS and the most group DPS. The Druid can bring a decent amount of personal DPS while out of celestial form with apothecary gear, but they don’t do any meaningful amount of damage while healing; however they bring a ridiculous amount of group DPS through Spotter, Frost/Sun Spirits, the damage glyph and GotL. The Engineer probably won’t bring as much personal DPS as the Druid, but he can fill the tanking role while healing and providing some DPS, the best part being that nearly all of his healing is fire and forget or part of his normal rotation; he also brings a good amount of might stacks to the group, up to 25 might stacks if he can blast his own firefields (IF, it would require some serious organization to pull that off reliably in a raid, I’d think). I’d say those two are tied in terms of DPS, group DPS and healing when you look at the whole package. The other 3 professions with healing potential must give up all their DPS to do their healing and provide no significant group wide DPS buffs while doing it, so they can safely be discarded.

Sure, there are negatives involved with Druid healing, but I think the positives massively outweigh said negatives due to GotL/other group buffs and due to the fact that they’d probably be able to maintain some DPS while doing their healing rotation. If you’re going to bring a healer, you should be bringing the best for the job and Druids seem to fit the role (along with Engineers).

I just want something nice for once, please don’t take it away v_v

Tragic Positive.9356:

Exciton.8942:

This is really just a number tweaking thing. It is safe to let it play out.
If it indeeds proves to be too powerful, they can still reduce the number or buff other class’s counterpart.

It potentially increases a single person’s DPS by 75%.
… That basically targets people with low health that are trying to avoid fighting the boss.

I find it perfectly Okay since the Druid doesn’t deal almost any DPS whatsoever. He can invest into Toughness and Healing power without feeling a burden of DPS.

It is a nice choice of being a DPS support that has a cooldown, is efficiency limited (due to priority targets of your heals) and sacrifices all your DPS for it while it required people to be perfectly stacked and organized if 5 people want to benefit from this trait. Not to mention you’ll be targeted by it most of the time as well.

The trait is mathematically balanced.

What math are you using to say it increases a single person’s dps by 75%… its only 3% per stack to a total of 5 stacks.

Umm. Do you want the buff to your raid team or not? Be glad it’s strong. Enjoy the buff. Or are you saying you’d rather the druid be worthless and not viable?

Let’s first wait and see if Druid is going to be wanted in any content at all.

Just a few more days till HoT releases. There is going to be added a whole heap of new content that needs time to settle and for people to figure out.

Maybe come back in a month from now before giving your feedback, since you really come off as a troll. We’ve had a lot of those lately.

Holland.9351:

Let’s first wait and see if Druid is going to be wanted in any content at all.

Just a few more days till HoT releases. There is going to be added a whole heap of new content that needs time to settle and for people to figure out.

Maybe come back in a month from now before giving your feedback, since you really come off as a troll. We’ve had a lot of those lately.

“Pls nerf druid even though no one has ever actually used it yet.”

Brace yourselves, laddies, we’re going to be getting a LOT of ranger hate on this forum if druid is in any way viable.

Fluffball.8307:

Holland.9351:

Let’s first wait and see if Druid is going to be wanted in any content at all.

Just a few more days till HoT releases. There is going to be added a whole heap of new content that needs time to settle and for people to figure out.

Maybe come back in a month from now before giving your feedback, since you really come off as a troll. We’ve had a lot of those lately.

“Pls nerf druid even though no one has ever actually used it yet.”

Brace yourselves, laddies, we’re going to be getting a LOT of ranger hate on this forum if druid is in any way viable.

Lets face it, no one wants rangers to be useful in any way. The Devs. Other Players. Most of All. Rangers.

“Umm. Do you want the buff to your raid team or not? Be glad it’s strong. Enjoy the buff. Or are you saying you’d rather the druid be worthless and not viable?”

I’m saying that I don’t want Druids to be the new PS Warriors: only brought along because of one trait. I want Druids to stand on their own in groups without having to rely on something as strong as GotL.

“Maybe come back in a month from now before giving your feedback, since you really come off as a troll.”

Doesn’t take a month to come to the conclusion that 10% dmg on a 16 (10ish with alacrity) for 6 seconds plus 10% with a 75% proc rate plus burn damage on a 75% proc rate plus 15% up for most of the time might be too much.

Let me rephrase my argument: do you want to end up being the PS Warrior of HoT? Do you really want to be locked into having Glyph of Empowerment + Frost Spirit + Sun Spirit for 3 years or however long it takes until the next expansion hits? Do you really want to get kicked out of dungeon/fractal/raid groups because you’re not running the buff kitten spec? Because GotL as it is right now is going to lock you into that role whether you like it or not. It’s just too kitten good as it is. Sometimes, being too strong at something is a disadvantage.

I also realize how easy it is to call someone a troll when they challenge your established world view without taking the time to understand the reasoning behind the post. Someone you disagree with isn’t necessarily a troll.

It only buffs when you heal when in CAF. It is much more active then something like PS or banners. GotL will force you to be more involved and mindful of positioning and cds in order to keep the buff up. I don’t see anything wrong with it especially considering that CAF won’t be 100% uptime.

I don’t see the part where raid teams will be forced to bring Druids so they get GotL, GoE, etc. Unless you already know as a fact that no one will be able to beat a raid without a Druid, you’re just blowing smoke.

It’s one trait. you don’t even need to adjust your items or skills to use GotL. Lingering light and the entangle are both pretty great but honestly probably have limited utility on boss fights anyway….

OP seems to cry wolf for attention, just go about your businesses. Uses laughable untested theory crafted napkin method for his/her basis yet tells other’s napkin method is too variable and furthermore :

I also realize how easy it is to call someone a troll when they challenge your established world view without taking the time to understand the reasoning behind the post. Someone you disagree with isn’t necessarily a troll.

is all you need to know about the OP’s mentality. I had a good laugh though so thanks

Kitty.1502:

Fluffball.8307:

Holland.9351:

Let’s first wait and see if Druid is going to be wanted in any content at all.

Just a few more days till HoT releases. There is going to be added a whole heap of new content that needs time to settle and for people to figure out.

Maybe come back in a month from now before giving your feedback, since you really come off as a troll. We’ve had a lot of those lately.

“Pls nerf druid even though no one has ever actually used it yet.”

Brace yourselves, laddies, we’re going to be getting a LOT of ranger hate on this forum if druid is in any way viable.

Lets face it, no one wants rangers to be useful in any way. The Devs. Other Players. Most of All. Rangers.

It’s always upsetting when the lootbag fights back and might even manage to kill you!

Zaroua.2714:

I’m saying that I don’t want Druids to be the new PS Warriors: only brought along because of one trait. I want Druids to stand on their own in groups without having to rely on something as strong as GotL.

LOL. There is no such thing. You are living in a dream. No one is well rounded in meta. Everyone is brought because of some specific thing they do better. If you can’t do something better than everyone else, you are being carried by people that pity you.

• warriors are brought because banners are what spirits should be, and because they have might.
• druids, sadly, will only be brought if they have some must-have buff OR are the best healers IF healing is really needed (nothing suggests that its needed yet).
• Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.
• Revenants will likely be brought because every mouth breather will play one, sword will likely provide the 2nd highest single target dps when inevitably there arent enough people willing to put up with the engi’s stupid @#$ rotation making it too much of a burden to stack engi’s. Also because the buff uptime provided for more rare buffs like fury or prot.
• ele’s will be brought because they are the highest aoe dps.
• either A guardian or A mesmer, for quickness.
• maybe a thief or reaper, IF a boss has an execution phase.

thats it. no one gets invited unless they are a special butterfly who does something mandatory better than everyone else. WOW coped with this by having class specific buffs that were so strong that class AND spec variety was mandatory. Anet, who have rarely ever designed a dungeon that can’t be cheesed, dont want you to be “forced” to wait for a specific class or spec so they ashew the buff model, which just leads to stacking the most optimal classes. well rounded people need not apply.

“I don’t see the part where raid teams will be forced to bring Druids so they get GotL, GoE, etc. Unless you already know as a fact that no one will be able to beat a raid without a Druid, you’re just blowing smoke.”

Look at it this way: from the start anet has showed that there is unavoidable damage involved in raids, so it stands to reason that between unavoidable damage and avoidable damage taken because of mistakes, players wouldn’t have enough self healing in a normal build to be able to sustain the damage intake for long. Enter healing from utilities, blasting water fields and dedicated healers. Healing from utilities and water fields is a DPS loss, but an acceptable one if it means bringing 10 DPS instead of 9 DPS + 1 full time healer. Now you look at Druids who can heal, dish out damage between healing mode activations and buff the hell out of the raid. With the buff to GotL, why wouldn’t you bring a Druid to heal when the can provide nearly enough group DPS to be worth 80-90% of a DPS slot in your raid while also healing and doing some damage when out of healing mode? It seems over the top in terms of group DPS, considering they’re already filling an entire healing role on their own.

Of course I’m speculating on the unavoidable raid damage part, but if every raid boss except Vale Guardian has 100% avoidable damage, then survivability in raids becomes a non issue once you get good enough at the fight, which is a huge, huge design flaw if anet decides to go that route.

Zaroua.2714:

“I don’t see the part where raid teams will be forced to bring Druids so they get GotL, GoE, etc. Unless you already know as a fact that no one will be able to beat a raid without a Druid, you’re just blowing smoke.”

Look at it this way: from the start anet has showed that there is unavoidable damage involved in raids, so it stands to reason that between unavoidable damage and avoidable damage taken because of mistakes, players wouldn’t have enough self healing in a normal build to be able to sustain the damage intake for long. Enter healing from utilities, blasting water fields and dedicated healers. Healing from utilities and water fields is a DPS loss, but an acceptable one if it means bringing 10 DPS instead of 9 DPS + 1 full time healer. Now you look at Druids who can heal, dish out damage between healing mode activations and buff the hell out of the raid. With the buff to GotL, why wouldn’t you bring a Druid to heal when the can provide nearly enough group DPS to be worth 80-90% of a DPS slot in your raid while also healing and doing some damage when out of healing mode? It seems over the top in terms of group DPS, considering they’re already filling an entire healing role on their own.

Of course I’m speculating on the unavoidable raid damage part, but if every raid boss except Vale Guardian has 100% avoidable damage, then survivability in raids becomes a non issue once you get good enough at the fight, which is a huge, huge design flaw if anet decides to go that route.

You’re just speculating about unknowns. The only thing we do know is that GotL requires you to heal in CAF to buff allies. This buff lasts for 8s and is inherently limited by the ability to heal allies that may be spread out 5 separate times and also the gates on entering CAF which are full AF as well as a 10s cd.

You can keep speculating about unknowns if you want, but I’m going to wait until the game is actually out before I go asking for potential nerfs to a trait.

Raven.9603:

LOL. There is no such thing. You are living in a dream. No one is well rounded in meta. Everyone is brought because of some specific thing they do better. If you can’t do something better than everyone else, you are being carried by people that pity you.

• warriors are brought because banners are what spirits should be, and because they have might.
• druids, sadly, will only be brought if they have some must-have buff OR are the best healers IF healing is really needed (nothing suggests that its needed yet).
• Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.
• Revenants will likely be brought because every mouth breather will play one, sword will likely provide the 2nd highest single target dps when inevitably there arent enough people willing to put up with the engi’s stupid @#$ rotation making it too much of a burden to stack engi’s. Also because the buff uptime provided for more rare buffs like fury or prot.
• ele’s will be brought because they are the highest aoe dps.
• either A guardian or A mesmer, for quickness.
• maybe a thief or reaper, IF a boss has an execution phase.

thats it. no one gets invited unless they are a special butterfly who does something mandatory better than everyone else. WOW coped with this by having class specific buffs that were so strong that class AND spec variety was mandatory. Anet, who have rarely ever designed a dungeon that can’t be cheesed, dont want you to be “forced” to wait for a specific class or spec so they ashew the buff model, which just leads to stacking the most optimal classes. well rounded people need not apply.

Despite the anger, I like this post.

“No one is well rounded in meta.”

No one is well rounded in the CURRENT meta. But it’s not hard to see how things will shift around once HoT launches.

“Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.”

Engineers are thought to be the highest single target DPS profession. Doesn’t mean that they are. It’s not because someone has “done the math” that the math is accurate nor does it mean that the math is being interpreted correctly nor does it mean that all the variables used are correct and accounted for. What am I talking about? All these flashy DPS numbers don’t take Alacrity and Quickness into account. Mesmers can give out ridiculous amounts of both of these to others: nearly 100% uptime on Alacrity and a very high amount on Quickness. Hell, achieving a higher Quickness uptime for the group might even be worth sacrificing more personal DPS for the Mesmer – I’ve argued on the “might be” part in the past and I continue to think that the effects of high Quickness uptime along with Alacrity are severely underestimated by the GW2 theorycrafters.

“Revenants will likely be brought because every mouth breather will play one, sword will likely provide the 2nd highest single target dps when inevitably there arent enough people willing to put up with the engi’s stupid @#$ rotation making it too much of a burden to stack engi’s. Also because the buff uptime provided for more rare buffs like fury or prot.”

I’m glad we agree that Revenants are stupid, have a poorly designed optimal rotation and provide too much DPS and utility for how easy they are too play.

“ele’s will be brought because they are the highest aoe dps.”

Necros are the highest AoE DPS actually. Nothing beats Epidemic when a group is formed around it. Not that there’s currently any available content where that’s relevant.

“either A guardian or A mesmer, for quickness.”

Two mesmers if your raid group can stay stacked up for the majority of the fight, one mesmer otherwise. Alacrity and Quickness provide so much group DPS that there’s no reason to not try to maximize both of their uptime on as many players as possible. Chronomancer is probably the most OP elite spec in PvE due to Alacrity and Quickness alone.

“maybe a thief or reaper, IF a boss has an execution phase.”

Thieves provide nothing to a group besides mobility and maybe evasion tanking if that ever is needed. If there’s a fight where the entire difficulty of it resides in a sub 50% burn, then yes these professions would be good in that particular scenario. At least Reapers have a strong condi spec with obnoxious AoE damage potential and the ability to tank without losing too much DPS as both direct damage and condi specs.

I’m not entirely certain you understand what constitutes something being OP. Rather, it seems like a biased targeting of a particular class in order to keep them from having nice things because of an alarmist reaction causing you to spout opinionated nonsense instead of trying to even remotely mathematically prove your opinion.

But that’s okay, let’s discuss this completely kneejerk reaction about a mechanic not even available for testing.

A ranger player without Druid has about 15k DPS and Spotter and Spirits. With Druid, a DPS tratline gets sacrificed, either Marksmanship or Beastmastery since we still want Spotter in Skirmishing, and the traitline that gets sacrificed will be highly dependent on average amount of time spent in Celestial Form, but will guesstimatedly cost about 20% of that total DPS, give or take from traits alone, not factoring in time spent in Celestial Form lowering DPS beyond that.

Celestial Form has a limit approaching zero amount of DPS, meaning you effectively do no damage while in form meaning you are costing your group about 15k DPS to even use Celestial Form.

Given that spotter and frost spirit are constants, the Druid while in Celestial Form has to have some way of returning the 15k damage the group misses out on to remain competitive. Other classes damages range from 18-22k or so, though I’m not sure what effect Ice Bow had on certain numbers. 18k would be the safer number to estimate with, but at 20%, Grace of the Land in an optimal use scenario returns almost exactly the DPS lost to the group when Celestial form is used.

That creates a zero balance between ranger and druid builds and their contributions and penalties to groups, which is considered balanced.

Feel free to respond, but for all purposes, this is basically /thread unless somebody can mathematically show how Druid when using Celestial Form with Grace of the Land has a net gain in group DPS contribution over regular ranger.

I’m referencing Brazil and DnTs numbers by the way.

Zaroua I’m sorry but I cannot take anything you are saying seriously. Your math is wrong, your assumptions are bad, and quite frankly your dogmatic attitude has gotten on even my nerves.

Grace Of The Land will ONLY effect an ally healed by a Celestial Avatar form skill and gives 3% damage for 8s.
Yes? Okay good we’re on the same page there.

Now, there are 4 very huge limits to this trait. They are;

1. Speed at which you can build stacks.
2. Number of targets you can build stacks on.
3. How often you can apply the stacks.
4. The more stacks you apply in general means lower self DPS.

So lets take a step back and look at this…

• Speed stacking on multiple targets (#’s 1&2) is countered by 2 things in general.
  Positioning and Cast time. Positioning breaks down into two factors; Skill Radius & Team Positioning. Celestial Avatar skills have a small radius or are PBAoE. Stacking multiple/max stacks on multiple allies that are not tightly bunched up will be next to impossible. On top of this although spammable Celestial Avatar skills do have cast times which means time will be consumed even just trying to first build up stacks.

• The rate at which you can even begin to apply these stacks is already separated by a 10s Celestial Avatar form CD.
  This means that even if you were able to keep the maximum number of stacks on allies it would still not be permanent.

• In addition to this point while you are healing in Celestial Avatar form you CANNOT DPS.
  Therefore the more you focus on building the stacks the lower your own DPS will be. Since Druid heals in general are being made less effective without an investment in Healing Power that means one stat is already dedicated to support limiting self DPS.

Sorry I got so lazy in the explanation but the more I thought of it the the more funny the idea of this trait being broken strong got to me. As I said, I really can’t take this thread seriously anymore. The ONLY thing this trait will be good for is helping offset the large DPS loss from having a temporary dedicated healer(Celestial Avatar), something this game is built around NOT having in the first place.

Fluffball.8307:

Raven.9603:

LOL. There is no such thing. You are living in a dream. No one is well rounded in meta. Everyone is brought because of some specific thing they do better. If you can’t do something better than everyone else, you are being carried by people that pity you.

• warriors are brought because banners are what spirits should be, and because they have might.
• druids, sadly, will only be brought if they have some must-have buff OR are the best healers IF healing is really needed (nothing suggests that its needed yet).
• Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.
• Revenants will likely be brought because every mouth breather will play one, sword will likely provide the 2nd highest single target dps when inevitably there arent enough people willing to put up with the engi’s stupid @#$ rotation making it too much of a burden to stack engi’s. Also because the buff uptime provided for more rare buffs like fury or prot.
• ele’s will be brought because they are the highest aoe dps.
• either A guardian or A mesmer, for quickness.
• maybe a thief or reaper, IF a boss has an execution phase.

thats it. no one gets invited unless they are a special butterfly who does something mandatory better than everyone else. WOW coped with this by having class specific buffs that were so strong that class AND spec variety was mandatory. Anet, who have rarely ever designed a dungeon that can’t be cheesed, dont want you to be “forced” to wait for a specific class or spec so they ashew the buff model, which just leads to stacking the most optimal classes. well rounded people need not apply.

Despite the anger, I like this post.

Yeah it pretty much epitomizes every game ever;

“If you can’t do one desired thing better than anyone else you’ll be left in the dust.”

Wait…. rangers are getting something that might make them viable in 1 game mode!?

“That creates a zero balance between ranger and druid builds and their contributions and penalties to groups, which is considered balanced.”

This is exactly what the problem is though. While the Druid is netting all group damage, that, as you pointed out, more or less equals what a condi ranger outputs, he’s a full fledged healer. The Druid basically doubles up as both a healer AND a DPS slot. That’s my problem with it. It’s just way too strong to be able to fulfill to roles at once. It’s just too much group damage.

“Your math is wrong, your assumptions are bad, and quite frankly your dogmatic attitude has gotten on even my nerves.”

I haven’t posted any math in this thread. The last time I actually broke out my calculator for more than a few minutes of adding and multiplying to get some rough numbers was during WoW’s Cataclysm. I managed to prove that the entire concept upon which the Warlock Demonology spreadsheet was based on was actually deeply flawed and ended up showing through both mathematics and practical tests that Demo Warlocks had the potential to output the most DPS out of any class during burst damage phases, during normal DPS phases and during execute phases. Of course it was near impossible to properly execute the proper prioritization, but when you got close, the results were staggering. Just another reason why my guild’s logs were always private.

Next, my assumptions are:
Raids will have unavoidable damage that, when coupled with avoidable damage and a 95-99% success rate, will result in a health deficit for players who only rely on their healing skill for healing.
The length and difficulty of a fight will force raid groups to either bring utility healing like Wash the Pain Away and Elixir Shell -OR- coordinate water field blasting -OR- bring a dedicated healer.
The best healers to bring will be the ones that give group utility on top of personal DPS and the healing they do.
Raids will allow a certain numbers of players to stack in melee range at nearly all times.
GotL provides more group DPS than is adequate while in a raid setting, at least for a single trait that isn’t the sole focus of the Druid elite spec.

“Speed stacking on multiple targets (#’s 1&2) is countered by 2 things in general.
Positioning and Cast time. Positioning breaks down into two factors; Skill Radius & Team Positioning. Celestial Avatar skills have a small radius or are PBAoE. Stacking multiple/max stacks on multiple allies that are not tightly bunched up will be next to impossible. On top of this although spammable Celestial Avatar skills do have cast times which means time will be consumed even just trying to first build up stacks.”

There are also other factors to consider such as the healing being spread to players who aren’t topped off and whether Glyph of Unity and Live Vicariously will synergize with each other to provide a great number of GotL stacks to players.

“The rate at which you can even begin to apply these stacks is already separated by a 10s Celestial Avatar form CD.
This means that even if you were able to keep the maximum number of stacks on allies it would still not be permanent.”

Much less than 10 seconds if you have a Chronomancer, and I’ve stated above, there’s no reason not to have a Chronomancer buffing a pile of players because their damage buffs are just way, way too strong to pass up. In the event that everyone is spread out and only 1 target can be healed/buffed at a time outside of using spirits, banners and shouts, then things obviously differ greatly. But it’d be odd not to have a melee ball bouncing around to kill stuff as it’s just too optimal to keep as many players bunched up as possible and it’d make no sense if every fight constantly forced players to be spread out, especially the melee which would end up being extremely punishing for melee heavy group comps.

“In addition to this point while you are healing in Celestial Avatar form you CANNOT DPS.
Therefore the more you focus on building the stacks the lower your own DPS will be. Since Druid heals in general are being made less effective without an investment in Healing Power that means one stat is already dedicated to support limiting self DPS.”

That’s not very relevant since the Druid will be giving out large amounts of buffs that increase group damage, which will let him heal while still providing DPS to the group.

“something this game is built around NOT having in the first place.”

To nitpick, the game WAS not build around it. But things are changing with HoT around the corner and dedicated healers may become a common thing, if not downright required. I just feel it’d be sad if Druids and Rangers were solidly locked into using GotL because “the meta” calls for it.

I heard they are nerfing greatsword and chill, better get back over to the necro forums and stay there to keep an eye on things

Zaroua.2714:

“That creates a zero balance between ranger and druid builds and their contributions and penalties to groups, which is considered balanced.”

This is exactly what the problem is though. While the Druid is netting all group damage, that, as you pointed out, more or less equals what a condi ranger outputs, he’s a full fledged healer. The Druid basically doubles up as both a healer AND a DPS slot. That’s my problem with it. It’s just way too strong to be able to fulfill to roles at once. It’s just too much group damage.

“Your math is wrong, your assumptions are bad, and quite frankly your dogmatic attitude has gotten on even my nerves.”

I haven’t posted any math in this thread. The last time I actually broke out my calculator for more than a few minutes of adding and multiplying to get some rough numbers was during WoW’s Cataclysm. I managed to prove that the entire concept upon which the Warlock Demonology spreadsheet was based on was actually deeply flawed and ended up showing through both mathematics and practical tests that Demo Warlocks had the potential to output the most DPS out of any class during burst damage phases, during normal DPS phases and during execute phases. Of course it was near impossible to properly execute the proper prioritization, but when you got close, the results were staggering. Just another reason why my guild’s logs were always private.

Next, my assumptions are:
Raids will have unavoidable damage that, when coupled with avoidable damage and a 95-99% success rate, will result in a health deficit for players who only rely on their healing skill for healing.
The length and difficulty of a fight will force raid groups to either bring utility healing like Wash the Pain Away and Elixir Shell -OR- coordinate water field blasting -OR- bring a dedicated healer.
The best healers to bring will be the ones that give group utility on top of personal DPS and the healing they do.
Raids will allow a certain numbers of players to stack in melee range at nearly all times.
GotL provides more group DPS than is adequate while in a raid setting, at least for a single trait that isn’t the sole focus of the Druid elite spec.

“Speed stacking on multiple targets (#’s 1&2) is countered by 2 things in general.
Positioning and Cast time. Positioning breaks down into two factors; Skill Radius & Team Positioning. Celestial Avatar skills have a small radius or are PBAoE. Stacking multiple/max stacks on multiple allies that are not tightly bunched up will be next to impossible. On top of this although spammable Celestial Avatar skills do have cast times which means time will be consumed even just trying to first build up stacks.”

There are also other factors to consider such as the healing being spread to players who aren’t topped off and whether Glyph of Unity and Live Vicariously will synergize with each other to provide a great number of GotL stacks to players.

“The rate at which you can even begin to apply these stacks is already separated by a 10s Celestial Avatar form CD.
This means that even if you were able to keep the maximum number of stacks on allies it would still not be permanent.”

Much less than 10 seconds if you have a Chronomancer, and I’ve stated above, there’s no reason not to have a Chronomancer buffing a pile of players because their damage buffs are just way, way too strong to pass up. In the event that everyone is spread out and only 1 target can be healed/buffed at a time outside of using spirits, banners and shouts, then things obviously differ greatly. But it’d be odd not to have a melee ball bouncing around to kill stuff as it’s just too optimal to keep as many players bunched up as possible and it’d make no sense if every fight constantly forced players to be spread out, especially the melee which would end up being extremely punishing for melee heavy group comps.

“In addition to this point while you are healing in Celestial Avatar form you CANNOT DPS.
Therefore the more you focus on building the stacks the lower your own DPS will be. Since Druid heals in general are being made less effective without an investment in Healing Power that means one stat is already dedicated to support limiting self DPS.”

That’s not very relevant since the Druid will be giving out large amounts of buffs that increase group damage, which will let him heal while still providing DPS to the group.

“something this game is built around NOT having in the first place.”

To nitpick, the game WAS not build around it. But things are changing with HoT around the corner and dedicated healers may become a common thing, if not downright required. I just feel it’d be sad if Druids and Rangers were solidly locked into using GotL because “the meta” calls for it.

you are only just Scratching the Surface of what these Special specs can do as these are the first of a few to come.

yes it can double up roles , but this game is not about roles/classes/jobs ect its about making the charater how you want it and play it how you want it.

for the dps QQ , yes the druid will add 15% to the group on a 15% per player if they all stack together (which is a no ) in a raid 10players will never stack in one place long enough for 10 players to gain maximum Stacks from grace and if they did it would require Two Druids , Giving up the Dps role while in AF form and recovering damage using Grace and other buffs.

the whole Reason is to be a Party Buff/heal support while during heal/buff rotations in the down time , should apply decent dps as Standard.

if you are QQ’ing the fact the druid switches between forms to apply heal/buff then Dps you are just enforcing the druid become a Retro Monk that can only heal again.

you are only touching the iceing ontop of a cake and picking flakes off for no real reason at all.

the most i;d see Grace giving is the 15% to 6 raid memebers mostly those that use medium ranged weapons due to the Staff and AF’s skill ranges they won;t be melee combat so it won’t start to Push into PS territory (which is a Melee Buff for nearby allies) which the other half of the raid will be still at medium range to effectively counter the Raid Mechanics ( again onther Limitation to grace) just as PS is Limited to Melee buffs.

I love it how its always one lone complainant against the rest of us.

Seriously, it will be difficult to maintain this buff on the maximum amount of people at once. Raid boss fights look to be quite spread out.

Plus…

• The Druid will need to build AF enough to enter CAF.
• The Druid will need to spam CAF skills that hit 5 people every second.
• The buff will take 5 seconds to reach the 15% buff, which would then last for 15s.
• The Druid drops out of CAF and begins building AF again.
• The buff would then taper off by 3% each second for 5 seconds.
• There would be no buff at all for at least 6s.
• If the Druid has enough AF, he can enter CAF again and begin the buff building.

It makes us one of the better buffers in the game and something we very much needed.

I, for one, welcome our new GotL overlord.

The problem I had when i played druid in a raid was it was difficult to see if my heals were helping or not, given that everyone can heal themselves anyways. Also, you couldn;t directly target a name and heal them if u needed an emergency heal.

1. You have to stick in Celestial 24/7 to keep up this so-called 15% damage, which is basically equivalent to one banner from Warrior

2. You can’t upkeep Avator 100% of time because there’s a 10 second CD after you exit it.

3. While you’re in Avator, you give up every possilbe DPS/utility/ support, and can only heal your party no end, despite they might not need healing atm. But in order to upkeep the damage modifier, you have to heal non-stop and do nothing else.

So how’s it OP then? It’d ONLY be optimal in raid, which you can afford not to do any damage. In any 5-man contents, this trait is barely useful at all.

Zaroua.2714:

“Engi’s will be brought because they are the highest single target dps and there WILL be mandatory condi phases.”

Engineers are thought to be the highest single target DPS profession. Doesn’t mean that they are. It’s not because someone has “done the math” that the math is accurate nor does it mean that the math is being interpreted correctly nor does it mean that all the variables used are correct and accounted for. What am I talking about? All these flashy DPS numbers don’t take Alacrity and Quickness into account. Mesmers can give out ridiculous amounts of both of these to others: nearly 100% uptime on Alacrity and a very high amount on Quickness. Hell, achieving a higher Quickness uptime for the group might even be worth sacrificing more personal DPS for the Mesmer – I’ve argued on the “might be” part in the past and I continue to think that the effects of high Quickness uptime along with Alacrity are severely underestimated by the GW2 theorycrafters.

I don’t really know what to say… do you even read your own posts? Just because you think GotL is to strong, doesn’t mean that it is. And it seems to me that nobody else posting in this thread thinks it’s an issue either. I don’t know what your problem is with Ranger, maybe you think that whatever class you currently play is about to be replaced. Maybe the problem is not the class, maybe your just not very good.

It’s not really that strong compared to the godly warrior banners.

it’s always fun when other profession mains pay us a visit -.-

why are these visits always calls for nerfs….

I don’t get this thread. Are you upset that druid might see play?

In any case atleast wait a daamn month and judge then. Asked too much?

Reapers are far too strong, they need the nerf stick

They changed “grace of the land”? When did this happend? More new stuff I should know about?

LughLongArm.5460:

They changed “grace of the land”? When did this happend? More new stuff I should know about?

Druid changes for launch are in a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Post-BWE3-Druid-Changes/first

Mcrocha.3891:

LughLongArm.5460:

They changed “grace of the land”? When did this happend? More new stuff I should know about?

Druid changes for launch are in a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Post-BWE3-Druid-Changes/first

Thanx alot.

Kitty.1502:

What math are you using to say it increases a single person’s dps by 75%… its only 3% per stack to a total of 5 stacks.

Approximation to generalize all people’s DPS as potentially the same. Then multiplying 15% per person to 5 targets.
To calculate the number without having 5 people keep DPSing like idiots, you can measure yours and nicely claim that if others have close to same DPS as you do – you increased the DPS exactly this way.

For approximated math results, it doesn’t matter whether you increased single person’s DPS by 75% or 5 people’s DPS by 15%.
Numbers will stay the same.

I love it how whenever a class like necro or ranger gets something half decent, we have people screaming to nerf it just so they can feel secure in their spot for meta team comps.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Kitty.1502:

What math are you using to say it increases a single person’s dps by 75%… its only 3% per stack to a total of 5 stacks.

Approximation to generalize all people’s DPS as potentially the same. Then multiplying 15% per person to 5 targets.
To calculate the number without having 5 people keep DPSing like idiots, you can measure yours and nicely claim that if others have close to same DPS as you do – you increased the DPS exactly this way.

For approximated math results, it doesn’t matter whether you increased single person’s DPS by 75% or 5 people’s DPS by 15%.
Numbers will stay the same.

There is a big difference between single person buffing 75% dps or 5 people dps, mostly because how what role the class is doing. A dps class like sinister engineer will see much more benefit from a 15% dps buff than say a support guardian. So the buff isn’t the same as giving a single person a 75% dps buff.

15% = 15%

75% = 75%

Maths

5% speed buff x 5 targets = 5% speed buff

…and here’s another one of the nerf threads popping up in the ranger forums, even before the release of HoT.

Seriously, are there a bunch of people out there, getting together as lobbyists trying their very best to keep this class grounded, or what the heck’s the problem?
There are too many threads like this, sometimes in this section of the forum, sometimes “hidden” in other parts of the forum, all crying for nerfs all over the place?

If I weren’t such a nice person, I would probably say something like GTFO.