Guild Wars 2

The Druid experience…

-Must do damage to generate AF.

-Damage draws aggo and red circles from adds, mobs and bosses.

-Adds, mobs and bosses have different ranged, aoe, area… attacks or they chase you around.

-Everbody, including myself, needs to constantly dodge and “bob and weave” to stay alive because that’s how gw2 was designed.

-Among the dodging, red circle, graphics blur from powers… madness, I notice those barely noticeable health bars going down and proceed to enter CA form to save my team…

-Players then fall one by one because everyone body is running outside of my little heal circles and I can’t catch them because I’m all over the place too getting chewed up by mobs and red ground damage. Alternatively, I can jump in the fray and get chewed up there while some of these animations are taking forever…

Conclusions…

GW2 lacks all the proper design and support mechanics for team healing.

This Druid design is only efficient and helpful when the team is standing still, stacked up tightly and you do not have any aggro on you.

The design of this healer spec has limited viability and effectiveness in any “harder” content.

I’m sure Druids will look like healing gods in Orr while teams are beating up lone champs for their bags, but the nature of “chaotic” combat and necessity to move, random aggo generation, lack of highly visible health bars, needing to aim a reticle while needing to keep myself from wiping… all make for a very unpleasant experience.

I have 15 seconds to make the difference to avoid party wipes, but I’m spending half of those measly 15 seconds dodging, getting knocked and missing heals because everybody needs to move. Most of the cast and effect times take way too long considering I’m forced to work within a timer in the first place.

Playing a serious healer will be infinitely worse in wvw. In spvp, opponents will quickly learn to focus fire Druids. GG healers…

Fixes…

“Real” taunt powers/traits/skills should be given to the heavy armor professions or put into all profession trait lines designed to make for a studier frontline fighter.

Increase radius of all ranged heal skills to 360. That means staff 2 and 3, and CA form 1 and 2.

Staff 5 should be a 360 radius DOME instead of a wall.

Preferred fix- Make CA form a “stance” that is maintained until downed (risk vs reward thing) and adjust timers appropriately.

If you refuse to make CA form a “stance”, then it needs to last 30 seconds at the very least. It also needs innate stability and damage reduction.

Cast times and animation speeds of CA form skills need to be sped up.

Add burning conditions to Druid staff attacks.

Add cold damage and slows to all CA form ranged heals.

Thanks

Also, Please fix up the sword. Allow for axe 5 to be mobile. Give dagger some love. Make short bow bleed from the front as well.

Thanks again

Edit- change vine surge to a 360 aoe so that Staff can be useful for wall combat in wvw.

Edit 2- For a(the) dev(s) reading this… I hate to make comparisons, but I use to play a highly mobile game called city of heroes for years, and their “professions”, power design, power customization, combat mechanics, condition/counter condition systems, stealth/counter stealth mechanics, roles and role diversity among “professions”, a ton of other stuff… were, and still are, far superior to what we have in this game. Those devs really dug deep to create a fun, fast paced, user friendly, sensible and “easy to play-difficult to master” experience all around. There are a lot of things you could learn from that game, a whole lot.

Edit 3- With all due respect to Irenio and the maker of the video, I have to say that this perfectly highlights the Druid healing mess in any zerg or pressure gameplay. A healer role (or any role) should be fun, user friendly to control and really fit into the combat design, but this is not it…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyWtN_9qj7Y

If the above video is what you are aiming for (pun intended), then you will have to make changes and this just reinforces my general/basic ideas of what should be done in addition to the above…

-staff changes as above.

-again, CA form 30 seconds or maintained until downed with skills and timers adjusted appropriately.

-movement friendly animation speed for seeds.

-reduce the self healing (from these powers only, not our regular heal) by 25% and up the healing to others by 25%.

-again, X% damage reduction and built in stability while in CA form.

-CA 1- keep this one a reticle aim heal, but increase radius to 360. This will be our 5 target ranged heal. Add in low damage dot chill damage and slow effect that affects 3 targets.

-CA 2- no aiming reticle. 360 radius pbaoe heal and condition removal seed that lingers for 10 seconds. This way the seed becomes like a timed Ventari tablet players can utilize for a bit of healing and condition removal.

CA 3- no aiming reticle. 360 pbaoe heal and daze. Add a 5 target low damage dot chill so if players break stun they a slowed for a couple seconds. Becomes a good set up for CA 5 if you keep it an immobile skill.

CA 4- 360 radius.

CA 5- I’d prefer it if this skill was mobile, but I’d be satisfied if you implemented a chill/slow to CA 3 if someone breaks stun or you can’t stun the “boss”.

By implementing these changes to staff and CA, it will be infinitely more fun to play and be a better support role. It will give the Druid improved backline support with staff and make CA a more suitable frontline support. This style also fits in thematically to the duality design and work better with the nifty glyphs you created.

So, Druid style gameplay becomes… Back support until needed up front. Ancestral grace to jump into the action when needed. Pop CA form and bunker up the frontline where there is more risk/reward gameplay… These changes purposefully encourage being in the mix more, provides better power design that matches combat designs, and will function more effectively in the chaos so the role of team support will be far more enjoyable to control and play for the end user.

Now onto an easy to follow video the gives a basic example of what I’m talking about with a ranged and frontline design. After watching this video you can then understand how the staff and CA form would function together, and how it gives the user much smoother and sensible control.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7lDETnhPs1o

I must agree with you on healing part,range is too small and to stationary.
One other thing that i dont like about druid,( this is offtopic here so i will high jack your post for this is),that druid trait line seams most limited of them all and not bringing up offence at all.

Just geting avatar form by attacking is 3 times longer than by heals. Other elite classes are not so restricted and druid is by far bigest disapointment of them all:(
Ill stick with my old pewpew build druid doesnt bring anything to me…

P.S.
i acctualy like narrowig trait lines for one purpose , but not if its only concerning one class/proffesion

Yeah, every time I go to heal I’m severely disappointed with this design.

They have a long way to go on game and profession mechanics. A long way.

Swagger.1459:

GW2 lacks all the proper design and support mechanics for team healing.

This Druid design is only efficient and helpful when the team is standing still, stacked up tightly and you do not have any aggro on you.

I saw this problem coming before the expansion even got released, and people didn’t seem to believe me when I said it’d be an issue. :p

Just to play the devil’s advocate here, but this is pretty much how healing works in Wildstar, a very similar genre of MMO with twitchy combat mechanics and manual aiming elements.

As seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VWrRxgOKus

The “problem” is less to do with the functionality of the heals and more to do with the system used for telegraphing attacks and buffs.; arenanet is very fond of keeping telegraph visuals to an absolute minimum, it can be extremely hard to tell that an enemy is telegraphing an attack at all, let alone what sort of attack.

This leads to people having to be much twitchier in their dodging and evasion; trying to pre-empt what the enemy is about to do.

Clearer visuals for telegraphed attacks; and for the trajectory of heals, would resolve most these issues (The final issue to resolve of course the lack of proper interface support for a healer, like making people’s health bars readily visible), though it’d also interfere with Arenanet’s insistence on providing an “artisimal” (but deeply user unfriendly) interface.

These problems need to be addressed before you can really begin to tweak the balance of skills and trait lines.

I think the issue comes with the delay of the heal bombs.

• Verdant Etching and Grace of the Land (also CF#2) takes way too long to activate from the moment the “trap” is set and activation of the seed. By that time the party member is a mile away (or dead)

• CF#3 although it takes a while to drop, the radius is large enough that you can catch people in it. but the healing factor feels very weak considering the cooldown.

• Staff 2. kitten that thing takes a long time to reach the target, does minimal damage, and heals for the same amount as Staff1. (so whats the point of using it)

sadly you are both correct and incorrect. a Guardian can actually dole out substantial healing and boons as long as the team remains near her. While the actual heals per tick are not as much, the agis, protection, regen, and other boons supplied are actually more reliable for the game than sudden heals druid. interestingly enough running 5 spirits would do the same thing, except that spirits do not follow anymore, and so yu will have to wait for cooldown between fights, then launch your spirits durring the next fight. So realistically speaking. if you run 5 spirits AND staff, you may find yourself being more help to the party. had Anet not removed the movement for spirits none of you would have this complaint.

Even though I really like the druid, I fully agree with everything posted here. CF skills #1 and #2 desperately needs to be fixed. Even when I try my best to predict where a person will be running, it’s very, very hard to be able to land these skills – they are slow and the radius is way too small. Instant and bigger radius yes please.

Same thing with traited glyphs, due to Anets love for delay of everything when it comes to druids skills and traits, the condition cleansing of glyphs tend to miss a lot since people step out of it before the effect goes off.

Also, being able to tell in the first place who actually needs to be healed would be a pretty kitten big QoL improvement for a healing class. I can’t imagine the idea behind the druid is to randomly put out heals all over the place.

What ever happened to water fields? did they not heal enough for Anet?

I seriously could have been more clear about that last post.

What I mean to say is that druid was a completely unnecessary class class from the get go. Any water Field can be blasted for massive heals. Anyone can blast the field and everyone within the field gets healed. in addition, boons can be applied to an entire party by most classes. conditions can be removed from allies by most classes. The druid is just a specialization that tries to take those classes place. all of these facets of the game supported team play and worked well together. creating a dedicated healing specialization was pointless because if i wanted that i would make a water elementalist, or a boon share guardian. I would have run 5 spirits that follow me around and provide support to the party. Hell the necromancer staff 2 is on a ridiculously short cool down and i can pull conditions off my allies and convert them to conditions on the enemy.

What Anet had done with the druid is to cripple a class to the point of near uselessness and then pretend that they are doing us a favor by giving us something no one asked for and no one needed.

are their good Druid builds? sure. but they are only doing something that the ranger could already do, and they do it worse or at the very least less effective because they do not fit into the rest of the game.

Anet, hear me on this. if you want to fix Druid, scrap it and start from scratch. the class is in stark contrast to what this game actually needs.

The only difference between druid and Water fields is that you don’t see the “healing place”. If you are organized – Druid does just good.

It’s 90% useless in casuals because people are running away from you like morons, never gathering on you when you pop your astral form.
It’s hard to hand your heals. The healing potential is at a right place even for this game.

If #1 was instant or had larger radius – druid could have been awesome. I’m actually up for having #1 with instant effect after cast time.

Healing in GW2 is just not like healing in other games. And I’m okay with that.

Gw2 is not designed as a game where you heal others. Druid will never be 100% efective. Same as ranger with pet

@emkelly.2371

i think you mean staff #4 necro its 20s cd

devs announced druid as “heals you have never seen before” in gw2,then just few days later its called a bug

I dont think they will fix it or change any time soon

Avatar form has some realy nice skills but is so short and if you are not dedicated healer its usseless for you.
I think they were afraid of giving to much sustain to power builds and than messed it up for every one.

I really tought that they would make a game concept on fields and combos more ,shave the dmg heals and everything and promote coopertion in teams ,but they simply keep adding rng runes ,sigils, and one week nerf dmg then next buff it .

@deda.8302

no i meant staff 2. It is is a regen on a 4.34 second cool down. when traited correctly it’s 7 seconds of regen at over 1200 total healing. Endless HOTS. and yes staff 4 is also a blast finisher on a 20 second cooldown. not bad.

Thank goodness, I came here. I’m moaning and complaining in guild chat how pitiful druid is and now I know I’m not the only one who thinks so. My ranger is my first character in this game. I bought GW2 for the ranger and we just continue to get the Anet shaft. I have other 80s, but I really wanted to love my ranger again.

Swagger.1459:

-Players then fall one by one because everyone body is running outside of my little heal circles and I can’t catch them because I’m all over the place too getting chewed up by mobs and red ground damage. Alternatively, I can jump in the fray and get chewed up there while some of these animations are taking forever…

Fixes…

Increase radius of all ranged heal skills to 360. That means staff 2 and 3, and CA form 1 and 2.

Staff 5 should be a 360 radius DOME instead of a wall.

This yes.

Swagger.1459:

GW2 lacks all the proper design and support mechanics for team healing.

Preferred fix- Make CA form a “stance” that is maintained until downed (risk vs reward thing) and adjust timers appropriately.

This no. Prob is class skills, not the game. Make heals like CA require targeting a friendly player, or give it a big, bright animation so people know where the heal is and that will fix it.

Making CA a stance just no. No.

Swagger.1459:

Edit 2- For a(the) dev(s) reading this…

Devs reading the forums, lol.

I don’t feel like Druid is a healer at all. CA is very gated behind several gates and only lasts for a very short time. There are also no health bars visible anywhere for me to know who could even use a heal or not.

If Druid is supposed to be a healer, CA has to be allowed to be switched to permanently and not force kick you out of it under any condition. Allied health bars should also be allowed to be toggled on in the game settings.

The only reason I play Druid is because I can get it to work on a non-healer build.

There is one huge difference that people don’t understand.

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can. If you can’t adapt to that – that’s nobody’s else fault. Druid is supposed to bring sustain and utility. Not to mean unstoppable 4K healing per second cleansing nonsense.

This game doesn’t work on a triangle Tank>Dmg>Heal setup and never will. Druid in a party/raid doesn’t mean a Healing Power, Healing Power and Healing Power build. It means a Support that helps the raid recover from mistakes and damage that can’t be mitigated. And that he does. Druid is a good specialization that fits into GW2.
If your party keeps making mistakes more often than once every 10 seconds – your party is cursed to fail any content you are in.

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Because your goal in party is not to heal. Your goal as a druid in party is the same as everybody’s else. To defeat the content. If your healing is not needed – don’t use healing traits from druid and go the full booster that is incredibly powerful.

Tragic Positive.9356:

There is one huge difference that people don’t understand.

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can. If you can’t adapt to that – that’s nobody’s else fault. Druid is supposed to bring sustain and utility. Not to mean unstoppable 4K healing per second cleansing nonsense.

If your party keeps making mistakes more often than once every 10 seconds – your party is cursed to fail any content you are in.

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Because your goal in party is not to heal. Your goal as a druid in party is the same as everybody’s else. To defeat the content. If your healing is not needed – don’t use healing traits from druid and go the full booster that is incredibly powerful.

while what you said is true the druid really doesn’t accomplish these goals. In order to provide boons you must use up utility slots and a GM trait. In order to provide a damage buff you must be able to get into CAF often and spam heals to proc GoL. You must also use a utility slot. The heals themselves so far have been decidedly underwhelming. The boons and buffs can be provided by a core ranger other than GoL.

What would be the purpose of bringing a druid in raids as opposed to bringing a core ranger? The only thing you would lose is the GoL buff but you would gain substantially more dps, that ranger wouldn’t be forced into staff so could bring a LB for dps and s/wh for team buffs and blasts. i’m sure someone will do the math but to me it makes less sense to bring a druid for GoL than it would to take a sinister druid with GoE slotted along with frost spirit, spotter and flame trap/sun spirit.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can. If you can’t adapt to that – that’s nobody’s else fault. Druid is supposed to bring sustain and utility. Not to mean unstoppable 4K healing per second cleansing nonsense.

This game doesn’t work on a triangle Tank>Dmg>Heal setup and never will. Druid in a party/raid doesn’t mean a Healing Power, Healing Power and Healing Power build. It means a Support that helps the raid recover from mistakes and damage that can’t be mitigated. And that he does. Druid is a good specialization that fits into GW2.
If your party keeps making mistakes more often than once every 10 seconds – your party is cursed to fail any content you are in.

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Because your goal in party is not to heal. Your goal as a druid in party is the same as everybody’s else. To defeat the content. If your healing is not needed – don’t use healing traits from druid and go the full booster that is incredibly powerful.

If the unavoidable damage is high enough that a druid is needed to assist in healing then the Druid heals need to be much higher. if not then a few blasts of a water field would do all that a druid could to sustain the party with a lower party wide dps loss.

Druid’s goal should be to party heal as well as provide some sort of utility or dps. condition damage on the staff would have gone a long way towards this, power builds need power/prec and ferocity to function well. condition builds just need condition damage. Even a hybrid staff setup would have helped! CAF needs to do more than just heal if the heals aren’t going to be game changing. it needs to apply boons or not give up all damage completely. if we can buff the party through more than GoL or if GoL duration is increased then maybe it would be worth it to go into CAF at all.

Tragic Positive.9356:

There is one huge difference that people don’t understand.

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can. If you can’t adapt to that – that’s nobody’s else fault. Druid is supposed to bring sustain and utility. Not to mean unstoppable 4K healing per second cleansing nonsense.

This game doesn’t work on a triangle Tank>Dmg>Heal setup and never will. Druid in a party/raid doesn’t mean a Healing Power, Healing Power and Healing Power build. It means a Support that helps the raid recover from mistakes and damage that can’t be mitigated. And that he does. Druid is a good specialization that fits into GW2.
If your party keeps making mistakes more often than once every 10 seconds – your party is cursed to fail any content you are in.

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Because your goal in party is not to heal. Your goal as a druid in party is the same as everybody’s else. To defeat the content. If your healing is not needed – don’t use healing traits from druid and go the full booster that is incredibly powerful.

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

Swagger.1459:

Tragic Positive.9356:

There is one huge difference that people don’t understand.

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can.

…

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

I’d suggest you the same but I know you won’t.
Just for information, people need to have straight 5500 dps per person (devided from 55 000 per 10 people) throughout the whole fight, on the move, counting in the split phases and kiting.

Nope, you are not getting 2 healers, 2 tanks, 2 condis, 2 hybrid and 2 zerks. You are getting as much DPS people as you can and a druid will be there just to allow the Zerks DPS a bit more even if standing in AoE or taking damage or only the damage that people can’t cover with their personal healing depending on how much healing power a druid gets. My guess is having 1 Nomad for aggro management and 1 Healer at best. Rest is debatable (we don’t know further content) or unnecessary.

I have been testing them and almost cleared the 1st boss. If there is anyone who needs to read about raids – that wouldn’t be me.

The biggest hurdle in my eyes is that players need to be aware of that they can be healed. If they are’t they will constantly run away from the healing.

Swagger.1459:

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

Currently, Druid is not.

I’ve looked many raids video and none needed healers for first raid boss.

Like Tragic Positive said, it’s all about DPS.

So far, Druid healer is needed nowhere.

Krispera.5087:

Swagger.1459:

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

Currently, Druid is not.

I’ve looked many raids video and none needed healers for first raid boss.

Like Tragic Positive said, it’s all about DPS.

So far, Druid healer is needed nowhere.

no wrong again , its all about Correct Application of Dps and Support healing without the support the Dps would not be able to do the role effectively or even stay alive long enough to deal dps, end up dying by the time phase two turns up .

without a form of Health support , be it Guardain , mesmer boon support/which does its damage from long duration dps condis with sinister / healer gear.

or even a Druid with Vipers/healer gear ect .

yes its still about dps but its correct applications of damage/control/support and now the Damage portion of that Can not Be out of control , it must be managed.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Krispera.5087:

Swagger.1459:

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

Currently, Druid is not.

I’ve looked many raids video and none needed healers for first raid boss.

Like Tragic Positive said, it’s all about DPS.

So far, Druid healer is needed nowhere.

no wrong again , its all about Correct Application of Dps and Support healing without the support the Dps would not be able to do the role effectively or even stay alive long enough to deal dps, end up dying by the time phase two turns up .

without a form of Health support , be it Guardain , mesmer boon support/which does its damage from long duration dps condis with sinister / healer gear.

or even a Druid with Vipers/healer gear ect .

yes its still about dps but its correct applications of damage/control/support and now the Damage portion of that Can not Be out of control , it must be managed.

I didn’t say otherwise, notice I said healer and not support.

Again, this kind of support (water fields) can be given by eles and engineers. They also give something the ranger/druid doesn’t, boons. While the ele can buff, def, might stack and can go in Water Attunement anytime (cooldown), the Druid have to spam 1 to generate its CA and also has a cooldown.

Krispera.5087:

…Again, this kind of support (water fields) can be given by eles and engineers. They also give something the ranger/druid doesn’t, boons. While the ele can buff, def, might stack and can go in Water Attunement anytime (cooldown), the Druid have to spam 1 to generate its CA and also has a cooldown.

So sick of hearing this. It’s simply not true, please stop perpetuating this garbage.

Here is a build I put up a few days ago, take a look. http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Raid_Spirit_Support

So many unique damage modifiers and buffs, it will be highly desirable for raids. If less healing is required, you can swap out some/all of the trinkets for zerker.

Swagger.1459:

The Druid experience…

-Must do damage to generate AF.

-Damage draws aggo and red circles from adds, mobs and bosses.

-Adds, mobs and bosses have different ranged, aoe, area… attacks or they chase you around.

-Everbody, including myself, needs to constantly dodge and “bob and weave” to stay alive because that’s how gw2 was designed.

-Among the dodging, red circle, graphics blur from powers… madness, I notice those barely noticeable health bars going down and proceed to enter CA form to save my team…

-Players then fall one by one because everyone body is running outside of my little heal circles and I can’t catch them because I’m all over the place too getting chewed up by mobs and red ground damage. Alternatively, I can jump in the fray and get chewed up there while some of these animations are taking forever…

Conclusions…

GW2 lacks all the proper design and support mechanics for team healing.

This Druid design is only efficient and helpful when the team is standing still, stacked up tightly and you do not have any aggro on you.

The design of this healer spec has limited viability and effectiveness in any “harder” content.

I’m sure Druids will look like healing gods in Orr while teams are beating up lone champs for their bags, but the nature of “chaotic” combat and necessity to move, random aggo generation, lack of highly visible health bars, needing to aim a reticle while needing to keep myself from wiping… all make for a very unpleasant experience.

I have 15 seconds to make the difference to avoid party wipes, but I’m spending half of those measly 15 seconds dodging, getting knocked and missing heals because everybody needs to move. Most of the cast and effect times take way too long considering I’m forced to work within a timer in the first place.

Playing a serious healer will be infinitely worse in wvw. In spvp, opponents will quickly learn to focus fire Druids. GG healers…

Fixes…

“Real” taunt powers/traits/skills should be given to the heavy armor professions or put into all profession trait lines designed to make for a studier frontline fighter.

Increase radius of all ranged heal skills to 360. That means staff 2 and 3, and CA form 1 and 2.

Staff 5 should be a 360 radius DOME instead of a wall.

Preferred fix- Make CA form a “stance” that is maintained until downed (risk vs reward thing) and adjust timers appropriately.

If you refuse to make CA form a “stance”, then it needs to last 30 seconds at the very least. It also needs innate stability and damage reduction.

Cast times and animation speeds of CA form skills need to be sped up.

Add burning conditions to Druid staff attacks.

Add cold damage and slows to all CA form ranged heals.

Thanks

Also, Please fix up the sword. Allow for axe 5 to be mobile. Give dagger some love. Make short bow bleed from the front as well.

Thanks again

Edit- change vine surge to a 360 aoe so that Staff can be useful for wall combat in wvw.

Edit 2- For a(the) dev(s) reading this… I hate to make comparisons, but I use to play a highly mobile game called city of heroes for years, and their “professions”, power design, power customization, combat mechanics, condition/counter condition systems, stealth/counter stealth mechanics, roles and role diversity among “professions”, a ton of other stuff… were, and still are, far superior to what we have in this game. Those devs really dug deep to create a fun, fast paced, user friendly, sensible and “easy to play-difficult to master” experience all around. There are a lot of things you could learn from that game, a whole lot.

This!

I def agree with staff 5 being a DOME WITH A 360 Radius! The staff 5 right now is way to small!

CA form should last 30 secs. Not feeling the stance idea. As it’s a form like death shroud or reapers shroud. So it should remain a Form, and not a stance. Anyways I def agree with you on it lasting 30 secs and adding slow or chill condi on heals. Omfg and skill 1 and 2 need a 360 radius for sure. That 120 radius on skill 1 in CA form is wayyyyy to small. And casting it crates a delay on moving targets. No good

@Purecura
I don’t think 30 sec CAF is a good idea.
It only gives players the idea to do nothing but heal. Which isn’t a goal of GW2, neither fits it’s gaming mechanics.

I never found myself in CAF for more than 5 seconds. I go in – I daze enemies and burst-heal allies – I go out. If you are staying in CAF for whole 15 seconds in current PvE content – you are doing something extremely wrong.

As it was already said – now the only real problem is the #1 (probably #2) delay or radius. If we have better options of targeting with these skills, Druid will be much appreciated by players who run it. Currently we hate ourselves since even people who are noted to come to you when low on health will run in circles like morons so you can’t hit a single ability except #3.
And even the organized parties want to run away from the source of damage when they need your healing. Which makes a necessity of stacking with LoW HP a bad design.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Swagger.1459:

Tragic Positive.9356:

There is one huge difference that people don’t understand.

Druid is not supposed to be the healer. He is supposed to be a healing support. And that part he fits as good as he can.

…

If you can’t understand that people are responsible for their own HP and “healers” are only meant to cover mistakes and damage that simply can’t be avoided (out of energy when people already dodged some of the attacks or pulsing dmg aura from raids) – than it implies that you just might have a wrong idea about this game.

Druid is supposed to be the burst healer and the best healer.

Yes they are making “roles” because raids will require them.

Your post is out of touch with what’s going on.

I suggest you read up about raids so you’re in the loop…

I’d suggest you the same but I know you won’t.
Just for information, people need to have straight 5500 dps per person (devided from 55 000 per 10 people) throughout the whole fight, on the move, counting in the split phases and kiting.

Nope, you are not getting 2 healers, 2 tanks, 2 condis, 2 hybrid and 2 zerks. You are getting as much DPS people as you can and a druid will be there just to allow the Zerks DPS a bit more even if standing in AoE or taking damage or only the damage that people can’t cover with their personal healing depending on how much healing power a druid gets. My guess is having 1 Nomad for aggro management and 1 Healer at best. Rest is debatable (we don’t know further content) or unnecessary.

I have been testing them and almost cleared the 1st boss. If there is anyone who needs to read about raids – that wouldn’t be me.

I suggest you start paying more attention…

“Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight.”

“Some encounters are going to push you to try different weapons you rarely use, some are going to challenge you to select traits you haven’t considered equipping before, and some encounters may even require a member of your group to dust off that toughness gear to bulk up and tank some heavy hits to protect the condition-build players in the back. This is just a tiny sample of the types of build roles we want to push as a core part of Guild Wars 2 dynamic combat.

Play roles are something that each player will face on an individual level. It’s all about execution here. Some encounters will require the entire raid party to perform a specific task to succeed. This could be something like gliding off the boss platform and catching an updraft to avoid a devastating attack. Other encounters will offer tasks that rely on the expertise of a few select players. This could be a specific creature that needs to be kited away from the rest of the group, otherwise exploding and dealing massive damage.

And if you fail to fill these roles? You’re going to have a bad time. But don’t worry, as we’re leaving you a repair anvil at the entrance. You know—to collect your tears on."

And Irenio on Druid spec… “Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raid and WvW. Upcoming content will have stuff that you can’t just dodge to survive.”

And raids are still in testing for reasons… One of those reasons is because they are evaluating profession and roles to overcome these raids and future raids…

And “The skill and balance guys are already testing the raids and can find out overpowered specs etc”… I bolded “etc” because “etc” also means underpowered specs, underperforming specs and finding what specs need to create better and clearer tanking, cc, support, healing, dps… roles…

And sure, dps is required, but so will “tanking” and healing… Hence the above bolded quotes…

And The devs want to diminish the zerker meta and that has been made very clear and mentioned multiple times… Here is another Irenio quote… “Berserker meta is going away”.

Forests and trees ya know…

Swagger.1459:

I suggest you start paying more attention…

I am, are you?

“Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight.”

No. That’s called a build. Role is your objective. Your objective of survival can be done via Aegis and protection pulsing machine than has completely nothing in common with your item stats. Staying alive can be done via damage mitigation or recovery. If your “role” is to keep others alive – you can go with both.
Same goes for DPS. It doesn’t matter if you deal 5K raw DPS or 5K condi DPS. It still does the same but you need completely different runes,stats,weapons,utilities etc.
But the role is the same. “Start paying attention”.

Swagger.1459:

Play roles are something that each player will face on an individual level. It’s all about execution here. Some encounters will require the entire raid party to perform a specific task to succeed. This could be something like gliding off the boss platform and catching an updraft to avoid a devastating attack. Other encounters will offer tasks that rely on the expertise of a few select players. This could be a specific creature that needs to be kited away from the rest of the group, otherwise exploding and dealing massive damage.

Again, this only demonstrates that you are not paying attention. Roles are described as “missions”. If your duty (objective) is to catch an updraft – you don’t need a weapon for that. Neither you do for kiting.
“It’s all about execution”. Not the way you do it.

Swagger.1459:

And Irenio on Druid spec… “Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raid and WvW. Upcoming content will have stuff that you can’t just dodge to survive.”

Yes, this I keep explaining the whole time. Again… Are you paying attention?

Swagger.1459:

And sure, dps is required, but so will “tanking” and healing… Hence the above bolded quotes…

Yes… Just like I said it will and you didn’t pay attention.

Swagger.1459:

And The devs want to diminish the zerker meta and that has been made very clear and mentioned multiple times… Here is another Irenio quote… “Berserker meta is going away”.

And they are succeeding.
You’ll have content that will force you away from so-called ZerkMeta. Because you will need that aggro management (High Toughness target). You will need that someone who will help the party recover from pulsing damage (druid) and you will need DPS oriented people of 2 types who break through high toughness (or raw dmg immune = condi) enemies. Just like you’ll want those people to have a bit of CC to destroy the Break Bars.

You are trying to say everything I already said but for some reason you cannot see that it already works that way.
Druid is working the way he needs to. He helps people stay alive, it’s balanced in PvP and definitely fulfills the role of “heavy healing that we have never seen before”. Because while in CAF – your healing outperforms anyone. Having it close to permanent (mentioned 30 sec duration vs 10 sec CD means 75% uptime) sounds clearly broken for PvP and makes game less fun for your enemies.

The only thing a Druid might need are quality of life changes that were proposed as larger radius on #1#2 or having them instant (or with shorter delay).
Because currently it’s pain for everyone – for the druid, for low-HP players, enemies have no idea and don’t care and it’s simply a bad design.

Druid fills his promised role, he does it well but requires unnecessary attention and prediction from both the druid and his allies. That’s quality of life changes, not numbers to be addressed.

@swagger

The thing you need to understand is that you need both “tank” and a “healer” only to support up the DPS of your raid.
If you – as a druid – can manage healing up 5 players standing in AoE damage (so they don’t have to walk ranged doing 0 damage) – that’s not to heal people up. At the end of the day it’s to improve your Raid’s DPS.

The same goes for the “tank”. If you can turn away the boss or kite away the Elite just so 8-9 other people can stop worrying about it and maximize their DPS – that’s to help the DPS. Not to “tank” the boss.

Everything in GW2 is about damage. So far it has been time efficiency, in raids it’s Enrage mechanic. You “Tank” and “Heal” only to improve the DPS of others. That’s how GW2 works.

But as developers said:
“It’s all about execution.”
It doesn’t have to be the druid. It can be 1 water field and 5 people blasting – which reduces raid’s DPS and requires much more raid organization. It’s just way more comfortable to have a druid.

Also, tanking can be managed by a skillful Ranger with Tanking Pet. Or a Knight’s Guardian that still does that damage but becomes no.1 target of Boss/Elites which means he can mitigate most damage by blocks and still deal as much DPS as his situation offers. It doesn’t have to be Nomad.

“Execution” is the key word.
Not stats.

Anet really needs to look into CAF #1 and #2. I never use it, unless I make a brain fart and accidentally press them because of my ‘press 1 or 2 to win’ mentality.
I go in CAF, #3 4sec daze, #5 for further breakbar decrease and damage followed by another #3(thanks to Quick draw) and a #4 if I need to heal me or someone else in the general area. If someone needs more healing, I still don’t use #1 or #2. Maybe #2 if I really need a condition clear but even then I hate aiming it’s small aoe anywhere. #4 is the go to heal if I need something healed because of it’s big healing pulse and ease of use. This skill is working very well, and therefore so should #1 and #2 follow suit of #4(barring any other better methods).
If #1 and #2 were like #4 in that it was a pulsing aoe around me without having to aim it’s small aoe that most of the time never hits the allies I want to, that would be so great and I would definitely use them more.
At the current time their aoe is way too small. If Anet made a counter in their servers to count how many times Druids use #1 and #2 skills in CAF, I guesstimate that it would be abysmally small.

My suggestion would be to either :
- make #1 and #2 a pulsing heal or even just a once off heal around me in a big aoe like #4
- increase their aoe size and maybe decrease the healing if that requires balancing.
- change #1 to a wave skill in that you aim towards a place and it heals allies in that path like the way staff #4 works. I could work with that. Change #2 to pulse aoe, healing smaller and cleansing 1 cond each tick.

I get that using the lock ground target option is what Anet had in mind to be effectively used with CAF skills, but in the heat of the battle, trying to click on that ally is very hard and sometimes impossible to click in mass groups. This really needs looking at, Irenio.

Their aoe size currently is just too small and I can’t effectively aim at allies even if they are standing still.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Swagger.1459:

I suggest you start paying more attention…

I am, are you?

“Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight.”

No. That’s called a build. Role is your objective. Your objective of survival can be done via Aegis and protection pulsing machine than has completely nothing in common with your item stats. Staying alive can be done via damage mitigation or recovery. If your “role” is to keep others alive – you can go with both.
Same goes for DPS. It doesn’t matter if you deal 5K raw DPS or 5K condi DPS. It still does the same but you need completely different runes,stats,weapons,utilities etc.
But the role is the same. “Start paying attention”.

Swagger.1459:

Play roles are something that each player will face on an individual level. It’s all about execution here. Some encounters will require the entire raid party to perform a specific task to succeed. This could be something like gliding off the boss platform and catching an updraft to avoid a devastating attack. Other encounters will offer tasks that rely on the expertise of a few select players. This could be a specific creature that needs to be kited away from the rest of the group, otherwise exploding and dealing massive damage.

Again, this only demonstrates that you are not paying attention. Roles are described as “missions”. If your duty (objective) is to catch an updraft – you don’t need a weapon for that. Neither you do for kiting.
“It’s all about execution”. Not the way you do it.

Swagger.1459:

And Irenio on Druid spec… “Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raid and WvW. Upcoming content will have stuff that you can’t just dodge to survive.”

Yes, this I keep explaining the whole time. Again… Are you paying attention?

Swagger.1459:

And sure, dps is required, but so will “tanking” and healing… Hence the above bolded quotes…

Yes… Just like I said it will and you didn’t pay attention.

Swagger.1459:

And The devs want to diminish the zerker meta and that has been made very clear and mentioned multiple times… Here is another Irenio quote… “Berserker meta is going away”.

And they are succeeding.
You’ll have content that will force you away from so-called ZerkMeta. Because you will need that aggro management (High Toughness target). You will need that someone who will help the party recover from pulsing damage (druid) and you will need DPS oriented people of 2 types who break through high toughness (or raw dmg immune = condi) enemies. Just like you’ll want those people to have a bit of CC to destroy the Break Bars.

You are trying to say everything I already said but for some reason you cannot see that it already works that way.
Druid is working the way he needs to. He helps people stay alive, it’s balanced in PvP and definitely fulfills the role of “heavy healing that we have never seen before”. Because while in CAF – your healing outperforms anyone. Having it close to permanent (mentioned 30 sec duration vs 10 sec CD means 75% uptime) sounds clearly broken for PvP and makes game less fun for your enemies.

The only thing a Druid might need are quality of life changes that were proposed as larger radius on #1#2 or having them instant (or with shorter delay).
Because currently it’s pain for everyone – for the druid, for low-HP players, enemies have no idea and don’t care and it’s simply a bad design.

Druid fills his promised role, he does it well but requires unnecessary attention and prediction from both the druid and his allies. That’s quality of life changes, not numbers to be addressed.

You talk in circles just like the “math” thing…

You bring up things that we were not even talking about…

You talk just to talk and most of the stuff you don’t know what you’re talking about…

I’m not going to let your lack of understanding the “big picture” hijack this thread.

GLHF!

Tragic Positive.9356:

@swagger

The thing you need to understand is that you need both “tank” and a “healer” only to support up the DPS of your raid.
If you – as a druid – can manage healing up 5 players standing in AoE damage (so they don’t have to walk ranged doing 0 damage) – that’s not to heal people up. At the end of the day it’s to improve your Raid’s DPS.

The same goes for the “tank”. If you can turn away the boss or kite away the Elite just so 8-9 other people can stop worrying about it and maximize their DPS – that’s to help the DPS. Not to “tank” the boss.

Everything in GW2 is about damage. So far it has been time efficiency, in raids it’s Enrage mechanic. You “Tank” and “Heal” only to improve the DPS of others. That’s how GW2 works.

But as developers said:
“It’s all about execution.”
It doesn’t have to be the druid. It can be 1 water field and 5 people blasting – which reduces raid’s DPS and requires much more raid organization. It’s just way more comfortable to have a druid.

Also, tanking can be managed by a skillful Ranger with Tanking Pet. Or a Knight’s Guardian that still does that damage but becomes no.1 target of Boss/Elites which means he can mitigate most damage by blocks and still deal as much DPS as his situation offers. It doesn’t have to be Nomad.

“Execution” is the key word.
Not stats.

Ummm, yeah, I don’t need an explaination of the process of playing “roles”, but thank you very much…

Thanks for agreeing that roles will be needed…

I agree with Tragic Positive.

To me, the issue isn’t with the druid not being able to read people’s health and to focus their heals like in other MMOs. Anet won’t bring “whackamole” to this game.

The onus is on the OTHER players to keep themselves healed, by availing themselves of the druid. The onus is not on the druid to keep other players healed. Everything the druid does puts out some sort of heal. He farts, he heals. I think people need to train themselves to hug a druid if they’re taking a bit of damage they can’t handle. And then the druid just needs to make sure he and his heals are available. If people don’t wanna use them, well, not his fault.

Bottom line, if you’re looking at this healer as part of the traditional MMO trinity, you’re doing it wrong. That wasn’kittens design.

Swagger.1459:

Ummm, yeah, I don’t need an explaination of the process of playing “roles”, but thank you very much…

Thanks for agreeing that roles will be needed…

You clearly did when you obviously misinterpreted roles for builds but you are welcome.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Swagger.1459:

Ummm, yeah, I don’t need an explaination of the process of playing “roles”, but thank you very much…

Thanks for agreeing that roles will be needed…

You clearly did when you obviously misinterpreted roles for builds but you are welcome.

There ya go again.. Thanks for teaching me buddy

Slartibartfast.5416:

I agree with Tragic Positive.

To me, the issue isn’t with the druid not being able to read people’s health and to focus their heals like in other MMOs. Anet won’t bring “whackamole” to this game.

The onus is on the OTHER players to keep themselves healed, by availing themselves of the druid. The onus is not on the druid to keep other players healed. Everything the druid does puts out some sort of heal. He farts, he heals. I think people need to train themselves to hug a druid if they’re taking a bit of damage they can’t handle. And then the druid just needs to make sure he and his heals are available. If people don’t wanna use them, well, not his fault.

Bottom line, if you’re looking at this healer as part of the traditional MMO trinity, you’re doing it wrong. That wasn’kittens design.

Umm where did I mention I wanted a traditional healer or tank for that matter?

I think both you and tragic need to reread everything because both of you are just mindlessly posting stuff.

Swagger.1459:

Umm where did I mention I wanted a traditional healer or tank for that matter?

I think both you and tragic need to reread everything because both of you are just mindlessly posting stuff.

It implied from what you said.
You said druid is supposed to have the best healing and best burst healing.
And he already has both.

Plus plenty of other people suggested much longer durations of CAF etc. Which basically implies they want druid to be a healer of that kind.

If nothing of that is true – we are misunderstanding each other.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Swagger.1459:

Umm where did I mention I wanted a traditional healer or tank for that matter?

I think both you and tragic need to reread everything because both of you are just mindlessly posting stuff.

It implied from what you said.
You said druid is supposed to have the best healing and best burst healing.
And he already has both.

Plus plenty of other people suggested much longer durations of CAF etc. Which basically implies they want druid to be a healer of that kind.

If nothing of that is true – we are misunderstanding each other.

This is exactly what I’m talking about with you.

Nothing was implied. Don’t assume. Improve your reading comprehension.

Write less and read more.

Thanks

Edit- If I wanted to say Druid should be more of a traditional healer I would have. You don’t read. You assume. You don’t pay attention. You go off topic. You have zero clue. You run off in tangents and add all sorts of stuff that we are not even talking about.

Seriously pay attention if you are going to be posting again or you’ll just continue to come off as clueless like you did with your simple math equation that you couldn’t figure out.

Swagger.1459:

This is exactly what I’m talking about with you.

Nothing was implied. Don’t assume. Improve your reading comprehension.

Write less and read more.

Thanks

That’s fine by me… But you were the 1st to imply that I’m out of touch when I said that Ranger is not supposed to be the healer as in other MMOs (which you agree on… ?). Then you misinterpreted an expression I then explained. Then you felt offended.

Anyways:
As you already said. Druid is supposed to be the burst and best healer which he now already is. Quality of Life changes for CAF #1 and #2 are only thing and exactly what we need. (4th time I’m saying this already?)

Not sure about staff#5 being a dome, we already have Axe for dome-like reflect. But I’d definitely improve it for higher healing for a set amount of projectile damage converted, though. Having it a pure Astral Bar filler feels extremely wrong.

I highly doubt that there will be Nomad’s tanks getting around for raids, the bosses will simply have too much health for one player to deal no damage to tank and another deal no damage to heal him. Knights will be the go-to gear imo for the tanks, a PS warrior can run that and hit 4k armor with close to 20k health as well as deal good damage and buff the melee team with might. Druid will need to deal good damage as well, which is why Zealots will be BiS, imo.

Voice communication will be key for healing as a Druid, like the melee team calling for heals on the boss. That and when people get used to the staff beam, the mid/backline can just move into the beam for heals when they need a top up. If they are in dire need, they should move away from the boss anyway and come to the Druid for health.

@Heim

Yep, for the 1st boss definitely. We still don’t know, yet, what other bosses will bring so it’s still to early to say for sure.

Plus I’m still a strong fan of Cleric oriented DPS boosting druid. With that extra toughness you can afford to take that extra hit in order to execute your heals in time. Plus you are not really “dealing zero damage” because your lack of damage will be compensated at comfortable healing (that allows other players to stand in AoE for longer) and boosting their DPS as a trade-off for your zero-DPS CAF use.

Zealot is a strong candidate for your Spirit Build if you intend to go for S/WH+LB. Lots of low hitting attacks to fill your bar the fastest from DPS Builds and strong heals.

I’m thinking of more Staff-support oriented gameplay. I’d definitely like to try aggro management via pet. That way I can literally deal zero damage because I can maximize 9 other people’s DPS (Tank and Healer role in one person).

If you’re with a group and you attack to regain AF and the mob aggroes you it seems you do more damage than your comrades, which is a tad sad given that you might be in a party with several warriors

Also, how other than by attacking do you exactly expect to regain AF? Thin air?

On the other hand, I still think, that if they wanted to make a proper healer they should’ve modded the guardian to full healer instead. It would, of course, be a force to be reckoned with, but that’s how I see it, because now they added a Ranger trait that doesn’t synergize with the rest at all. I have to wear two armours and two sets of weapons and swap between them incl. traits, something I’d describe as an unholy mess.

But I agree with everything said about targeted healing.

@Inoki

This might, however, go for more people now.
Zerk is a go-to for everyone but lots of people might need Knight’s or Viper’s (sinister) for situations. Just like a Ranger basically needs only the Zerker. Ele and Revenant can play healers, too.

And things are going to keep changing…

The issue with the druid is Simply.

They put it on a Proffession which was already mechanically faulty, they should have played it Safer when building the Elite for the ranger, cause it already has so many problems in the base proffession.

If Druid was on ANY other proffession it’d be 300x stronger, it was going to be a obvious slight mess, Not only is the trinity of 0 existance, so putting this randomly into the game was going to cause problems, the Pet AI Causes the Ranger problems also.. these combined with the problem that the Ranger simply has No traitlines to Support this sudden change in any form forces it down what Elementalist was… 1 build and thats it.

They’ve introduced like 7 Mechanical Failures into a ALREADY failing mechanic, and this will either end with Arena net having to Revamp things like Wilderness Survival and Nature magic to Force them to synergize with becoming a full out healer or a Revamp of Druid.

Rangers NEEDED utility skill sets, they needed a More supportive weapon yes, but the introduction of the start of Trinity really was not something the ranger should have been chosen for, at the end of the day, i dont think Anet can balance this.. or make this work properly… Let alone give it any form of Option of Wriggle in its Static behavior.

Nothing against Anet, but this was too far fetched to Ever see itself as a major use for the ranger, anyone who wants Damage instantly wont touch the traitline in any form and it has 0 synergy with anything outside Supportive play.

Its not a Ridiculously bad traitline, but its Just a very rigid one.

@Drayos

I … Party agree and party disagree.
Almost everyone was able to fit several roles. Yes, almost every single player out there. Yet Rangers were the only one who lacked reliable CC, reliable sustain, utility mechanics… And it’s not like we are forced to play the druid. It’s simply yet another option to play.

When it comes to DPS, we belong to the higher tier (especially when our pet now stays alive). What we lacked was… Exactly what we got.
And I’m not sure if you’ve been here through with us before HoT, but enormous amount of players asked exactly for being able to do this.
You can probably tell that a lot of players would shout out loud if we weren’t able to defensively support the group unlike everyone else in the game now.

So while I agree it feels thematically wrong – it feels very rewarding in practice and we are the strongest at burst-healing people in the game.
You are right. It doesn’t have synergy with plenty of things. It doesn’t include pet at all. But after all – players have been complaining about relying on pet for way too long and we asked for exactly what they offered us and I finally feel wanted, in the end.

It’s just an option that no one is forced down. Plus, you will be perfectly fine touching the traitline for DPS with this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAT8Xn0rC1silsAuqActgl9ADOueX3rL3uAwoj5CEwGBlMsUA-TZRBwARuAAP3fgcZAAHBgHPEAA
You’ll get the right idea after seeing it. You don’t need to heal people more than once every ~45 seconds. But if you do – they will be thankful.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Not sure about staff#5 being a dome, we already have Axe for dome-like reflect. But I’d definitely improve it for higher healing for a set amount of projectile damage converted, though. Having it a pure Astral Bar filler feels extremely wrong.

I think people are thinking a dome like a static Guardian Shield 5 (which is also a projectile destruct + heal with a low (possibly lower?) CD). IMO, that would be fantastic. I’m also not too thrilled about having yet another Staff skill be more useful as a CAF filler than an actual utility.

Tragic Positive.9356:

…Zealot is a strong candidate for your Spirit Build if you intend to go for S/WH+LB. Lots of low hitting attacks to fill your bar the fastest from DPS Builds and strong heals.

I’m thinking of more Staff-support oriented gameplay. I’d definitely like to try aggro management via pet. That way I can literally deal zero damage because I can maximize 9 other people’s DPS (Tank and Healer role in one person).

I actually have the Staff in that build with S/WH, it’s healing is too great to leave it out imo, plus the mobility and water field too. Solar Beam does 80% of the damage if a max range LRS, so the DPS is not amazing, but its not terrible either. Sharpened Edges and Might should help a lot.