Guild Wars 2

Yes it’s pretty clear that the core focus of the specialisation is support but the whole ‘Druid is a healer, it sucks’ is damaging.

im not claiming the Druid is what I dreamt, and I get that people are instantly turned of by healer play styles if that not their thing. But the Druid is what we have got let’s look at the positives. I for one didn’t struggle to find them.

Firstly lets look at the gw2 system – you take 3 lines, and it is the combination of these with utilities, weapons and runes/sigils which dictate your build. There is no reason you have to spec into Druid as the spine of your build, it is a common feature of builds in the game to have a trait line for sustain. I can think of multiple examples of current builds where you can take the Druid as the third trait line for some substantial selfish sustain.

Secondly let’s look at the staff. There are many weapons in the game which are not viable because they lack the utility. This. cannot be said for staff. Whether you want or not all the skills have heal/cleanse which makes it instantly unique, we then have the cc, unique projectile mitigation and the crazy port skill. Can’t comment on the damage yet but looked okay. As did the heals, and this was with no stats. As long as the damage is well tuned the weapon instantly has viability in a number of game modes.

Even more importantly I think we need to wait until Tuesday to see if the upcoming balance gives anymore synergy. The WHaO change has already made waves and that was just one change.

I tried looking for positives but didn’t find any in the trait lines or the druid mechanic.

seriously you didn’t find any positives in the traitline?..The traits are ridiculously strong for the most part.. are we even talking about the same game? druid mechanic remains to be tested (BWE) but the traits are great. I guess some of them (last minor for example) revolve around healing but most of them are really cool

Guess it depends on how you look at it. If looking at old PVE content like Dungeons, Druid isn’t necessarily great. PVP/WVW it has a lot of potential to shine. Nothing really can be said about new PVE content like Raids, but this BWE3 is the first chance for people see how a Druid might be able to fit in.

Sure they’re strong only for healing. I strongly disagree any are “cool”. They’re just not worth taking unless you want to do anything other than, again, heal. That’s it. That’s the Druid’s thing is healing just like Irenio said, “HEAVY HEALING”. So yeah, if you want healing the most you will think it’s strong. I don’t. I think it’s a massive wasteland of a trait line outside of wanting to heal.

It’s fine you finally get to play your healer, anri. Happy for you bruh, just sad that it was at the sacrifice of my Ranger’s first elite spec.

And if you think this will make Rangers wanted for content 6 months after release, I have some really really nice ocean from property in Utah to sell you.

Im more interested to see all the control builds that use druids abundance of dazes + MoC.

OP, the Druid is a traitline like our other 5 traitlines.

Asking to “tone down the healer tunnel vision” on the Druid traitline is like asking to “tone down the power tunnel vision” on Marksmanship, or “tone down the pet-focussed tunnel vision on beastmastery”.

It’s called a specialisation for a reason. You don’t have to take it, but if you do you at least know what it brings to the table. It also enhances other builds if you don’t want to be a dedicated healer.

The Druid trait line can be threaded to avoid heavy emphasis on healing and deliver amazing tools for kiting (perma-swiftness in combat? Su-weet!) and vicious immobilize and bleed while leveraging the two aggressive glyphs.

The Mad-Seed is not a healer. Its a watch them bleed out and die while stung up on brambles CC machine.

Yeah, Nike, looks great for PVP but pretty crap for PVE…. especially fractals.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Guess it depends on how you look at it. If looking at old PVE content like Dungeons, Druid isn’t necessarily great. PVP/WVW it has a lot of potential to shine. Nothing really can be said about new PVE content like Raids, but this BWE3 is the first chance for people see how a Druid might be able to fit in.

Agreed. If Arenanet can pull this off, Raids might be on a whole different level than dungeons in that you can’t just stack on a safe spot and smash every key you have. It’ll probably be like fighting a world boss with just 10 people. :P

I think it will make settlers/crusaders/clerics druid builds a force to be reckoned with in spvp.

Ancient Seeds on a settlers build has already got my all hot and bothered with how cancerous it could be.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Sure they’re strong only for healing. I strongly disagree any are “cool”. They’re just not worth taking unless you want to do anything other than, again, heal. That’s it. That’s the Druid’s thing is healing just like Irenio said, “HEAVY HEALING”. So yeah, if you want healing the most you will think it’s strong. I don’t. I think it’s a massive wasteland of a trait line outside of wanting to heal.

It’s fine you finally get to play your healer, anri. Happy for you bruh, just sad that it was at the sacrifice of my Ranger’s first elite spec.

And if you think this will make Rangers wanted for content 6 months after release, I have some really really nice ocean from property in Utah to sell you.

Did you not even read what the traits are? Yes, you can spec to enhance only healing. But it also provides pretty big bonuses to mobility and control. Ancient Seeds adds an immobilize to all our control skills making a lockdown druid a very real possibility, and it synergizes really well with existing power and condi builds. On top of that the druid line provides enough condi management that it can replace Wilderness Survival so you’re not even giving up much to get it.

Staff itself is a great utility weapon. Druids as a whole were lacking a support weapon aside from one skill on warhorn, so getting one is a huge benefit to the profession. On top of that the staff also provides projectile management, great mobility, baked in condi management (which none of our weapons had before), and hard control. It’s an excellent all around weapon that also brings healing support. Pair it with a longbow for raw ranged damage or sword/axe for raw DPS and you have a pretty good spread of skills you can use.

Not to mention the Avatar State which lets you go full tilt with a high mobility greatsword/sword+axe melee damage/control build and STILL have access to a full support set up for team fights. Core ranger is an amazing duelist and WvWvW roamer but has always had a big weakness in team fights. Now we can role with a heavily tuned dueling build and always have access to heavy support skills when the time arises.

Druid gave rangers a new playstyle and access to something we desperately needed, and did it in a way that didn’t overlap with existing support builds. To say it’s completely useless is flat out wrong.

Can you really blame anyone for the heal " tunnel vision", when 4 out of the 5 staff skills literally contain the words heal or healing, 3 out of the 5 glyphs have heal on them, and every minor trait is directed toward healing, while the major traits are just augmentations of both the staff and glyphs, for the most part.

People really need to stop sugar coating this specc, the reason why its so focused on supporting and pretty much ignores our class mechanic is just because our class mechanic is broken, and rather than giving us a specc that would improve it in some way or another they just went as far away from it as possible, why? Because they cant fix it.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I tried looking for positives but didn’t find any in the trait lines or the druid mechanic.

Trait line for druid was Amazing.

What ranger lacks in PVE:

Party-wide OFFENSIVE and DEFENSIVE supports. (Only fury/ frost spirit/ regen)

Dps (yes, ranger’s dps is only ranked 5th in PVE. Quite low for a supposedly dps class)

AOE (we have some of the worst AOE damage in this game. That’s why we’re not needed in WvW and dungeon)

What we get from Druid:
Healing
Mobility
Cleanse
Self range small AOE???
More CC
Projectile absorption

Seems like we get the tools for PVP and that’s about it. PVE-wise we’re still worthless because we get none of what we truly need to shine in PVE.

Ranger also lacked party wide support/healing/ projectile mitigation which we did get. There is no way to fix evertything with one elite specialisation, they are not designed as upgrades, rather as additions. I think it is important to note that the ranger already has the framework for more damage and offensive support this just isn’t tune properly and is more an issue of balance than one to be fixed by adding a new specialisation.

Eric.7813:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I tried looking for positives but didn’t find any in the trait lines or the druid mechanic.

Trait line for druid was Amazing.

Opinions… you know what they say about ’em…

Ehecatl.9172:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Sure they’re strong only for healing. I strongly disagree any are “cool”. They’re just not worth taking unless you want to do anything other than, again, heal. That’s it. That’s the Druid’s thing is healing just like Irenio said, “HEAVY HEALING”. So yeah, if you want healing the most you will think it’s strong. I don’t. I think it’s a massive wasteland of a trait line outside of wanting to heal.

It’s fine you finally get to play your healer, anri. Happy for you bruh, just sad that it was at the sacrifice of my Ranger’s first elite spec.

And if you think this will make Rangers wanted for content 6 months after release, I have some really really nice ocean from property in Utah to sell you.

Did you not even read what the traits are? Yes, you can spec to enhance only healing. But it also provides pretty big bonuses to mobility and control. Ancient Seeds adds an immobilize to all our control skills making a lockdown druid a very real possibility, and it synergizes really well with existing power and condi builds. On top of that the druid line provides enough condi management that it can replace Wilderness Survival so you’re not even giving up much to get it.

Staff itself is a great utility weapon. Druids as a whole were lacking a support weapon aside from one skill on warhorn, so getting one is a huge benefit to the profession. On top of that the staff also provides projectile management, great mobility, baked in condi management (which none of our weapons had before), and hard control. It’s an excellent all around weapon that also brings healing support. Pair it with a longbow for raw ranged damage or sword/axe for raw DPS and you have a pretty good spread of skills you can use.

Not to mention the Avatar State which lets you go full tilt with a high mobility greatsword/sword+axe melee damage/control build and STILL have access to a full support set up for team fights. Core ranger is an amazing duelist and WvWvW roamer but has always had a big weakness in team fights. Now we can role with a heavily tuned dueling build and always have access to heavy support skills when the time arises.

Druid gave rangers a new playstyle and access to something we desperately needed, and did it in a way that didn’t overlap with existing support builds. To say it’s completely useless is flat out wrong.

I didn’t say it was completely useless… as long as you want to heal, and again, yes, I read over the dulfy page QUITE A FEW TIMES because I couldn’t actually watch the reveal. I just said it will be useless when we all learn the content and minimize the healing needed. It’ll be just like dungeons when GW2 was first released…

Sure, it’ll be a new playstyle, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be useful.

DId you notice my sig? Yeah, I’m not talking about pvp or wvw. It might be useful for those modes, I wouldn’t know since I don’t play them. I’m talking from a strictly PVE point of view.

The Druid trait line is fine guys… It brings a little bit of everything and i love it.
The main concern i see is with the design of the skills, too focused in healing while dropping any other kind of support or damage.

For the AoE radius they bring i think Glyphs would be better to be used as the old ranger traps, ground targeted and Ally/foe activated.
300 is ridiculously small unless your team is stacking on you you will not be able to use it efficiently. They have an small radius because they bring a lot of hard CC and that can be difficult to balance. We don’t need the perma-daze AoE druid 2.0

Avatar state has 10 heals. It’s like playing warrior but with heals: spam 1 to 0 and repeat. I love the healing concept but i think the druid would need more support to give than that. As soon as the raids are know there will not be a need for a druid; ele, engi or rev can pull enough heal but also do a bunch of more things.

The avatar should bring more support than just heals. And also keep doing damage to keep tagging otherwise Avatar will become F5 – Avatar#5 – Drop avatar . Same as happed to the Tome of Courage (that almost seems the same) . It’s a temporary state that we have to build up, it should be it should be something rewarding to use and feel powerfull.

I would like to have more aspects than just healing, just like there was a tome of wrath so when you see a druid you don’t know if he will bring a massive group support or open the gates of hell.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I didn’t say it was completely useless… as long as you want to heal, and again, yes, I read over the dulfy page QUITE A FEW TIMES because I couldn’t actually watch the reveal. I just said it will be useless when we all learn the content and minimize the healing needed. It’ll be just like dungeons when GW2 was first released…

Sure, it’ll be a new playstyle, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be useful.

DId you notice my sig? Yeah, I’m not talking about pvp or wvw. It might be useful for those modes, I wouldn’t know since I don’t play them. I’m talking from a strictly PVE point of view.

Complaining about it’s role in PVE is pointless since we don’t know what the raids will be like yet.

Even then nothing is stopping the druid from using sword/axe, grabbing Spotter, and taking Frost Spirit. It even brings Glyph of Empowerment as a third raw group damage boost. It’s a little weak right now but will probably be buffed via beta feedback like the other undertuned aspects of the elite specializations have been.

Honestly, as I say, I like the idea of “heavy healing” as an option, in theory and who knows, maybe they will be needed in HoT raids?

The problem is, that (even if they are) the class is still broken/awkward/unfinished-feeling, at least to an extent, as a DPS class.

Most people, who are new to the game, will inevitably see Ranger and either think “Hunter from WoW”, or will be drawn to the pet and/or the bow(s).

So, IMO, getting those things to function properly (and equally, in the case of ranged weaps), plus making the class not so much of a sitting duck in PVP/WvW, should be the priorities.

So, you make sure you put all that right, before saying (or appearing to say); “Scrap DPS Ranger – it’s just not working. Go play Druid healer, or some other DPS class, from now on.”.

Otherwise, people will tend to assume that you’ve just given up on the main identity of the class, entirely and will obviously feel misled/let down.

arnitheking.8427:

seriously you didn’t find any positives in the traitline?..The traits are ridiculously strong for the most part.. are we even talking about the same game? druid mechanic remains to be tested (BWE) but the traits are great. I guess some of them (last minor for example) revolve around healing but most of them are really cool

I think what you’re missing, from a psychological perspective, is that it doesn’t really matter, to someone who doesn’t carry a handbag, or like handbags, how exquisite a particular handbag they are given is.

Especially when they wanted a pair of shoes.

They just didn’t want to be given a handbag, period.

A Druid is simply not a Ranger, to many (most?) people and healing is not what they wanted to do, or chose to do, when picking the class.

So, they basically feel that their preferences have been left out of the equation, when it comes to the new spec for their particular class.

Yes, they have been given a spec, but it is not (in their eyes) a Ranger spec.

I mean, if nothing else, Druid brings a TON of control potential, and then, of course, party support in the form of condition cleanses and healing. It’s also got a couple of extra blast finishers, and, honestly, I don’t see any real reason why you couldn’t run it with an otherwise mostly damage-based set-up, make use of Celestial Form and those blasts on Healing Spring (or on Fire fields, if you’d prefer the might stacking), and still do plenty of damage in even current PvE content while also being able to absolutely crush break bars on bosses and sustain yourself and your buddies to a greater degree than is currently possible.

I would love to see some damage (or at least a condition? Burning, maybe?) on some Celestial Avatar skills (other than just 5), maybe on skill 1, even if a trait is required to get it, but really, even if all you got out of the E-Spec was 5 seconds of auto-entangle every 10 seconds and several bonus interrupts/immobilizes, along with projectile defense, you’d still be getting an awful lot. And it’s not even finished yet; we’ve still got a Beta to test it and offer feedback.

Indirectly, it offers a potential buff to a number of different builds and Ranger playstyles, even if just from the functionality of a couple of the traits and glyphs.