Guild Wars 2

Some people might disagree, some might be against any additions, but I for one – and from what I have seen on the forums and ingame – many others feel like the way that druid is centered around healing is probably hurting the ranger as profession more than helping it on the long run.

The problem, with only three weeks till the launch of the expansion, time is the fire in which we burn. There is only so much you, Irenio, can do before the druid goes live. To be honest, I have been going through a lot of feedback on this forum, but I could harldy read it all, so my idea might have been brought up before (even several times). This would only proof my point though, there is a fix, which is realizable in the short amount of time left.

Here we go:

1) Staff: Leave staff alone, besides some minor adjustments it seems perfectly fine for the role it was inteded to fill. Play a bit with the numbers, but overall just leave it the way it is.

2) Traits: They are OK, they are good enough for launch. Same as staff, fool around with some numbers if you need to.

The exceptions to 1) and 2):

Here we go, something has to happen after all.
- Lower the amount of astral force gained from healing to 1.5, raise the amount of astral force gained by damage to 1.5. Nature is all about balance, be it life and death, day and night and healing and damage. Make astral force a thing for every ranger player (stay with me if you don’t want to heal all the time in this matter).
- Wisps are pure light, as many have suggested before, they should cause damage to foes as they do cause healing to allies – nature is about balance, you remember. Give them some burning condition on hit, that should do the trick.

3) Avatar: Now things get interesting. Keep you healing avatar as is, BUT, add weapon switch to it. It would work like a regular weapon switch (with cooldown) which would give you the option to switch only once while in avatar form (will need some minor adjustments to astral force consumption).
When you weapon switch in avatar, you will recieve a different set of weapon skills, which will be focused around damage (on the level of sword) with boons that are related to nature for your allies. This would include, but is not limited to vigor, protection and quickness.

While the damage in your second avatar line won’t be any higher than normal (it offers some burst though) you will offer group utility, which will be very welcome in groups. As a trade off, make all the attacks melee based (with one gap closer), risk vs. reward so to say.

This would also correlate with the former design of the druid of having more than one aspect. Call the second one “Aspect of the Wild” give it a shiny green glow and tadaa, the druid specialization got some more complexity, something for people that don’t even like healing and feel even more druid than what it is now.

Things to considerate:

4) Glyphs: I am not very happy with the design of the glyphs in general. Aspect of the Wild could get new effects on the glyphs, but as it is for now, I see harldy any use for them anyway. They need a fair amount of rework after launch, maybe then a third functionality will be realizable.

5) New skills: We need five new skills for Avatar of the Wild, melee with boons, one gap closer. Better than adding all the damage to the existing avatar, as it would be hard to balance, better than to start from the scratch. If you need inspiration, I may be able to help you.

6) Balancing: This is an ongoing process anyway.

I am fairly sure, this would work. It won’t limit the existing concept and actually adding a controllable second layer for players that don’t like it.

Some problems with your fixes.

1). When a wisp applies burn and it’s cleansed off of the enemy, does the wisp disappear or re-apply burning?

2). You suggest weapon swapping in Celestial form, but as it stands now, they do NOT have the time to make another 40+ weapon skills for Celestial form. It’s meant to run full support/cc and I think it’s at a fine state.

3). While I agree with glyphs, they each offer clear situational use and work well in those situations. They aren’t versatile and while I see some people dislike that, they work well.

4). Again, you keep pressuring them to make new skills. They just don’t realistically have the time to shell out a new set of skills that are polished with animations, balanced, and are enjoyable to use.

5). You should post this to the feedback thread. The devs actively read it, no need to create a new thread.

All it needs is five new skills.

Optionally some new effects for glyphs.

They can simply recycle some Norn shapeshifting animations if they need to for the animation. Most people wouldn’t even know, how often do you see shapeshifted Norns anyway.

i think staff skills need to be overhauled and some condi added… astral force generation i agree with you, but i also wished there were more synergies in the traitline with existing traits and with the pet…

I think you should post in the Druid Feedback thread.

Can people please stop pretending that they are game developers?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Make astral force a thing for every ranger player (stay with me if you don’t want to heal all the time in this matter).

I didn’t play the Beta.

If I could have just copied an existing character, I probably would have, but I couldn’t be bothered to make a new char to test their game for them, for free.

So, I can’t really comment on all the details; but, I will say that I don’t think adding Astral Force to core Ranger would sit well.

Rangers are supposed to be earthy and real.

They’re not supposed to be a strongly magic class, in theme.

They may have some magical aspects to their attacks and abilities but, thematically, they are not supposed to be powered by magic.

For the players who already struggle to understand the odd blend of Ranger and Druid, here, I think that would be more than a step too far.

.

Tigaseye.2047:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Make astral force a thing for every ranger player (stay with me if you don’t want to heal all the time in this matter).

I didn’t play the Beta.

If I could have just copied an existing character, I probably would have, but I couldn’t be bothered to make a new char to test their game for them, for free.

Your new char that you create is max lvl with max gear so how is that more hassle than copying your own character? It wont fill up the slots of your existing characters, because there are beta slots.

You could just make a char with random looks and you were ready to go and try out stuff.

Druid is already better in condi builds than in power builds. They don’t need to push it even further into condi.

Tigaseye.2047:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Make astral force a thing for every ranger player (stay with me if you don’t want to heal all the time in this matter).

I didn’t play the Beta.

If I could have just copied an existing character, I probably would have, but I couldn’t be bothered to make a new char to test their game for them, for free.

So, I can’t really comment on all the details; but, I will say that I don’t think adding Astral Force to core Ranger would sit well.

Rangers are supposed to be earthy and real.

They’re not supposed to be a strongly magic class, in theme.

They may have some magical aspects to their attacks and abilities but, thematically, they are not supposed to be powered by magic.

For the players who already struggle to understand the odd blend of Ranger and Druid, here, I think that would be more than a step too far.

.

What I mean is to make astral force something for every playstyle. It would be exclusive to the druid specialization, but work for both – players that like support and players that like to do damage.

I do not intend to put the mechanic on the core players, what I intend is to make the mechanic useful for people who didn’t create a ranger for becoming a healer.