Guild Wars 2

go ahead and test this in the mists…

fire at a golem (doesn’t matter how much power/condi, etc you have) with your staff #1 with your pet at your side. observe how long it takes to fill up the bar…i think it’s 30+ seconds.

now have the pet attack the target and aim the beam through it. observe the AF rate double (roughly).

so this is why our core weapons stink (other than maybe LB’s barrage, which is AOE and does a ton of damage) – they don’t heal. they want us to heal AND do damage. doing both will generate AF most efficiently.

when youre aiming the beam to the target through your teammates, it will fill up extremely quickly. in a realistic scenario with them attacking the target, the bar will fill without much effort. even if it’s just and your pet in a 1v1, you will do fine.

this is also why Lingering Light is virtually spammable by you, the caster.

hope that helps some of you.

Sure. Yet I dont want to be a druid stuck on carrying a staff. I want synergy with the ranger base class.

None of the other Elite Specs have to use their optional weapon in order to be effective. Neither should Druid.

now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.

mistsim.2748:

now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.

They are separate, and important issues. I’m not “changing my tune”. And AGAIN, no other Elite Spec requires the weapon to achieve functionality.

mistsim.2748:

now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.

And they claim to try and promote build diversity???? I mean it makes no sense. Unless they give the ranger a complete overhaul, that celestial form aint gonna work at all.

infantrydiv.1620:

mistsim.2748:

now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.

They are separate, and important issues. I’m not “changing my tune”. And AGAIN, no other Elite Spec requires the weapon to achieve functionality.

I’m just offering a solution for those complaining about STAFF not generating enough AF. it’s explicitly stated in the OP. if u wanna vent about build diversity, do it in the other threads.

Klonko.8341:

And they claim to try and promote build diversity???? I mean it makes no sense. Unless they give the ranger a complete overhaul, that celestial form aint gonna work at all.

also a discussion for another thread. this is about staff AF generation.

I’m not really using Celestial Form that much. I am loving Condi staff though.

mistsim.2748:

snip

This has been known since the last beta.

If AF generation is tied mainly to healing, there will be problems with this setup.

Problem 1) Its extremely hard to get your pet to position itself in front of you for Staff#1 healing; its more or less based on luck if it happens or not. Bad game design and bad for trying to balance AF generation.

Problem 2) Stacked raids (or any place you can pierce several people with Staff#1) will generate extreme amounts of AF generation. It makes Staff mandatory if you can generate AF 10-20 times faster than you can with any other weapon. I don’t see other weapons being able to compete so long as AF generation is tied mainly to healing. Again, this is bad for trying to balance AF generation.

Leodon.1564:

mistsim.2748:

snip

This has been known since the last beta.

apparently not. everyone today is complaining about staff not generating enough AF, i.e. taking 45 seconds to fill up the bar therefore not being able to access avatar before it’s too late. this thread is to address those people.

Leodon.1564:

Problem 1) Its extremely hard to get your pet to position itself in front of you for Staff#1 healing;

it’s extremely easy. position your pet/teammates ahead of you, and move around your target. your beam will cut through the friendly targets.

yes, staff is mandatory if u wanna use the avatar. a bunch of us asked Irenio after BWE3 to balance this a little better to include the core weapons. it happened and it sucks, they will probably adjust it somehow. but i think they really want us healing people to fill that energy bar up. rangers don’t have many group heals outside of staff/druid, so that kinda blows for those not wanting to use staff.

this was discovered last beta. one of the issues the dev said he would adddress was our inability to enter form through other weapons. this is why he highlighted the 240% increase on attacks (considering how small the oiriginal was, this “buff” was clearly ineffective).

so to do an about face and then say “nevermind, you’ll use staff and TU and like it”, seems pretty lame.

balancing in general is this game’s weakest link.

Somehow I don’t think position and easy would work well in the fast pace zerg warfare we call WvW…

mistsim.2748:

Leodon.1564:

This has been known since the last beta.

apparently not. everyone today is complaining about staff not generating enough AF, i.e. taking 45 seconds to fill up the bar therefore not being able to access avatar before it’s too late. this thread is to address those people.

According to the patch notes, AF generation from healing was reduced by 40% and increased by 200% for DPS. Since AF generation is tied overwhelmingly more to healing (10:1 previously), this change is a net reduction in our ability to generate AF with Staff.

Also, iirc there was supposedly a bug with some healing trait/ability where you effectively got double AF generation from a single heal in the previous beta. I didn’t test/confirm this though so maybe someone else can comment if they recall.

mistsim.2748:

Leodon.1564:

Problem 1) Its extremely hard to get your pet to position itself in front of you for Staff#1 healing

it’s extremely easy. position your pet/teammates ahead of you, and move around your target. your beam will cut through the friendly targets.

Try doing this with a moving target/players and tell me how successful you are and how skillful you felt doing it. (My argument is that any success you have is based largely on luck rather than on skill which is a bad foundation to try and balance AF generation.) Does the mechanics feel good to you play that way?

Crapgame.6519:

Somehow I don’t think position and easy would work well in the fast pace zerg warfare we call WvW…

Doesn’t matter much since they gutted Lingering Light which gave more than enough juice to keep AF up.

Druid went from awesome in wvw to “better than a vanilla Ranger at least”.

All they need to do is make regeneration generate AF and we have much more versail elite spec. And redo staff 1(cant use it whit action camera).

Leodon.1564:

Try doing this with a moving target/players and tell me how successful you are and how skillful you felt doing it. (My argument is that any success you have is based largely on luck rather than on skill.) Does the mechanics feel good to you play that way?

playing spvp for over 12 hours now, feels fine. as long as youre moving around your target and someone is up there with it. either the pet or another teammate. the beam will graze friendlies occasionally, and thats all i needed.

honestly, AF generation with staff feels perfect to me. id only like it if the decay was slightly slower so that I could make it from one fight to the other with at least 80% AF.

mistsim.2748:

Leodon.1564:

Try doing this with a moving target/players and tell me how successful you are and how skillful you felt doing it. (My argument is that any success you have is based largely on luck rather than on skill.) Does the mechanics feel good to you play that way?

playing spvp for over 12 hours now, feels fine. as long as youre moving around your target and someone is up there with it. either the pet or another teammate. the beam will graze friendlies occasionally, and thats all i needed.

honestly, AF generation with staff feels perfect to me. id only like it if the decay was slightly slower so that I could make it from one fight to the other with at least 80% AF.

Decay is really bad, and AF generation should work decently outside of Staff. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy staff it’s great weapon even with burst builds problem is you’re not going to sit in staff mode for long, you weapon swap and this is where the problem starts by leaving staff your AF generates rather slow, sure if you sit in staff mode until you have AF but that’s pigeonhole you into same tactics and into using staff.

To get decent usage out of CAF there needs to be improvements and this why we voice what we believe are problems and hope for improvements now I don’t believe its major problem, require less decay and better generation maybe improve the %.

Since when have work-arounds become solutions.

It is a band-aid for if you really want to get enough AF to somehow use your new profession mechanic, but it is not a fix to make the mechanic worthwhile.

Druid is the worst one-trick-pony of an elite specialization in game. And when you really need to do that one trick, chances are high, that it is on cooldown or not available because you do not have enough AF.

What is a healer good for if he/she can’t heal.