Guild Wars 2

Because of the restricted, gated, limited use, timed… CA form and AF designs, you cannot heal when you need to heal sometimes. I know you have good intentions, but THAT is the main issue and THAT is not good design. No, staff does not cut it currently for healing I’m sorry.

Secondary to the above is the reticle healing shoved in there for “twitchy” reasons, but that is another poor design choice placed on an important role such as healer. .

When we run a Druid or hybrid Druid build for team related content, we should be able to heal on demand to fill the role expected of us properly. It is unfortunate that you did not see this prior to designing this elite, but it needs to change asap.

This link below will give you more general details and ideas, but the simplified thought process behind the healing aspect of Druid should be…

Staff- Sustained and average ranged healing. Yes, it still needs to be a better healing tool overall.

CA- Needs to be a “stance” (built with AF) that is held until downed. Doing this means the shift in risk vs reward becomes about dying vs surviving as it should be, not forced timers. You need to get rid of the reticle design and go with click/press pbaoe healing for this form. We have ranged stuff with staff already, so CA should completely function as our front line area healer. Yes, adjustments to “things” will need to be made.

AF- Having the Druid trait line in your build should mean you generate AF proportionately with all sources of damage and healing. Direct damage and direct heals build AF faster. Condition damage, regen ticks and heal over time skills build AF slower… Staff still remains the “go to” weapon because of the damage and healing components built in.

Currently the Druid is a hot mess (pun intended). Fix it like I’m suggesting and save the players, our teammates and yourself a lot of headache and frustration now and in the future. Doing this will also allow you to have a more stable and sensible platform to work on core ranger and future elites.

Read this if you have not and focus more on the “gist” of the things I’m trying to communicate.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Healing-design-real-talk-updated/first

Thanks

I’d say the crux issue with Druid is the continual knee-jerk nerf hammer that keeps giving us concussions.

They stated druid was intended to be “burst healer”, that mean, evaluate when a burst heal is to be the most needed. (Guards and Ventari rev. are meant to be the sustained healers)
I find staff heals (with almost no heal in my build) is correct. If it is not good with healing power, maybe they should look more closely at coefficients…

The headache would come if they would change Astral form to be almost permanent… already some people complain abour druid sustain. With permanent access to heals, what kind of complaints would arise? how could it be balanced? Heals would need to be nerfed, wich would not be a good thing – we would no more be burst healers, wich, imho, would be a loss…

About AF genereation, I can only agree that it should be a percentage of healing and damage dealt, and not a flat amount per healing or damage tick. Adjusting that would make it easier to balance druid, and would be a more intuitive approach for players

Or, y’know, if they’d split how skills work b/w pve & pvp.

That’s the logical and right thing to do, but they won’t do it sadly.