Guild Wars 2

There are way more than enough drawbacks to CAF, it needs to be a stance maintainable until downed or manually exited. The AF mechanics need to be completely dropped as well. Ok sure, put a small timer on entering again, but that’s it. Nothing more needs to be done mechanic wise.

And before anyone complains, yes, all things Druid will need to be tweaked to make this happen so don’t start throwing “but this and this and this power, radius and number” at me. Things can be adjusted to make Druid function in a balanced way.

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in like lack of damage, no “oh crap” travel ability, no stability built in and that displays a big target on themselves naturally in wvw and spvp environments.

Agreed, it’s a good proposal. Druid is a healer class, he should heal and he can do it only in CAF, outside of CAF he’s useless(speaking about full support Druid, not dps oriented).

Another proposal is not a stance but possibility to use CAF at any moment if we have some AF available and CAF abilities should consume AF(resource auto generate itself outside of CAF, healing or dealing dmg increase resource generation speed).

Swagger.1459:

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in like lack of damage, no “oh crap” travel ability, no stability built in and that displays a big target on themselves naturally in wvw and spvp environments.

I agree to disagree. A stance will only make us at all points the same as ventari and ele.
Frankly they will always be better at stances because the rest of the traits are set up for it. So going the stance direction is just asking to be put in the guillotine for viability.

Druid needs the opposite of what your suggesting. We need shorter more impactful CF that is more frequently accessed. It would allow us a consistent and predictable burst heals for groups, something the other two healers cannot do as they are both sustained healers.

Eval.2371:

Swagger.1459:

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in like lack of damage, no “oh crap” travel ability, no stability built in and that displays a big target on themselves naturally in wvw and spvp environments.

I agree to disagree. A stance will only make us at all points the same as ventari and ele.
Frankly they will always be better at stances because the rest of the traits are set up for it. So going the stance direction is just asking to be put in the guillotine for viability.

Druid needs the opposite of what your suggesting. We need shorter more impactful CF that is more frequently accessed. It would allow us a consistent and predictable burst heals for groups, something the other two healers cannot do as they are both sustained healers.

What you ask is impossible to balance and you are seeing the results of trying that. They wanted a CAF that matters with easy access at the end they kept crapping all around the design.

CAF should became an instance that can be entered at will, limited by a cooldown.
The other classes in game are mostly fine like they are right now, it’s the druid who has to be brought in line.

I’m honestly ok with the 15sec duration and 10sec cooldown. I’d even be ok with 10sec duration as long as they keep the numbers where they are.
I just want them to rid the AF.

I’m not saying that stance is a bad idea, but it seems Anet wants Druid to be a bursty healer that goes in and out of burst healing mode.
Although the idea of Stance and a cooldown when out of it sounds nice, it’s probably not what Anet will go for. If they did, they would probably nerf the healing numbers to balance it being a ‘sustained healing role’ and then we’re left with a potentially washed up healer that is outperformed by ventari rev or ele, which it more or less currently already is.

But I won’t say no to a CA form stance if they do end up going that way and leave the healing numbers where they are It’s just nerfed healing numbers is what I’m afraid of.

anduriell.6280:

Eval.2371:

Swagger.1459:

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in like lack of damage, no “oh crap” travel ability, no stability built in and that displays a big target on themselves naturally in wvw and spvp environments.

I agree to disagree. A stance will only make us at all points the same as ventari and ele.
Frankly they will always be better at stances because the rest of the traits are set up for it. So going the stance direction is just asking to be put in the guillotine for viability.

Druid needs the opposite of what your suggesting. We need shorter more impactful CF that is more frequently accessed. It would allow us a consistent and predictable burst heals for groups, something the other two healers cannot do as they are both sustained healers.

What you ask is impossible to balance and you are seeing the results of trying that. They wanted a CAF that matters with easy access at the end they kept crapping all around the design.

CAF should became an instance that can be entered at will, limited by a cooldown.
The other classes in game are mostly fine like they are right now, it’s the druid who has to be brought in line.

I totally agree with you that they are poking around the design and choosing the wrong variables to adjust. CAF already lasts to long which is why they are struggling to gate it properly. The issue is the longer CAF lasts the less it matters; after 10 secs your not contributing anything, your party already has the dmg boost and should be full health. At that point its bad play to stay in CAF. Making it last longer will only be a noobtrap and will only make anet want to gate us from it longer and lower our heals overall because it will make us sustained for too long. Which ultimately makes us useless the in the long run because the majority of time you wont get into CAF and it wont be impactful when you do; which we already feel right now.

The burst idea can work. It just has to be tuned right, I think the numbers them selves are fine healing wise.The issue is how were not forced to make choices and our gating.It’s not impossible but it is time consuming to balance.

For example if we were to say reduce CAF long enough to cast two skills(roughly 8 seconds) and they allowed us in it every 12 seconds via gating mechanics, we would be able to top up more often and have to make impactful choices about what two skills we would like to combo together.

Which honestly is the current usefulness of our CAF kit. Your either Lunar impacting and 5’ing to break breakbars, your lunar impacting and spaming 1 for single target, or your combo-ing seeds with lunar. What ever quick combo your doing to get grace of the land and heals out you should be exiting CAF I have already gone over why. Additionally they could bring back our 4 skills sustained waterfield so that it could be blasted by lunar making for a more team oriented heal combo. Having CAF limited like this to two skills would allow the player clear paths to heal, heal group, clear condi, and breakbar destroy. It would promote healthy skilled gameplay and allow us to make choices more frequently.

I swear sometimes we are not playing the same game… At times, half of those 15 seconds is spent dodging, moving, being knocked back, targeted and taking damage, and waiting for a couple longish animations and effects to take place… We are not all just stacking in scripted dungeons and fractals or able to freecast in every area of the game. Some of you peeps don’t think beyond the stand still-stack-burn mentality and what actually occurs during pressure healing and combat situations.

Eval, we have had a rodeo before, so I challenge you to stream and record your viable wvw, spvp and raid healing skills with Druid and come back to prove any of my suggestions to be incorrect. Also, I’d love to see what you can realistically accomplish with the current 15 seconds you are alloted and show us how 8 seconds is an improvement (even with potentially higher heal numbers).

PvP-View
Most of the time in avatar is wasted with knockbacks? Seriously use stabilty BEFORE you enter the avatar or use the avatar 5 right after you cast the avatar form to get
2 stability for a healburst and DONT waste your full 15 seconds in the avatar form.
You want to see a viable pvp build. Until now you could seen some viable druidbuilds in pvp, if you really want to learn something. But i think you dont want to learn, you just want to state that just your opinion is the one and only truth. Show that iam wrong and look at the esl matches. But some warning: you have to change your opinion after seeing these matches . I also offer you to show you my druidbuild and gameplay ingame. Just send me an ingame message and i add you and contact you if i see you ingame.

For Raids
I got no own experience in raids with druid (i did not try until now), but i have seen plenty of successful druid raidvideos. They prove that there must be a good and viable Raid-druid. If not raids would not take them.

For wvw
I even can share a proper wvw druidbuild, but nowadays roaming is not really funny. You walk across the map and see nobody.

worminator.5174:

PvP-View
Most of the time in avatar is wasted with knockbacks? Seriously use stabilty BEFORE you enter the avatar or use the avatar 5 right after you cast the avatar form to get
2 stability for a healburst and DONT waste your full 15 seconds in the avatar form.
You want to see a viable pvp build. Until now you could seen some viable druidbuilds in pvp, if you really want to learn something. But i think you dont want to learn, you just want to state that just your opinion is the one and only truth. Show that iam wrong and look at the esl matches. But some warning: you have to change your opinion after seeing these matches . I also offer you to show you my druidbuild and gameplay ingame. Just send me an ingame message and i add you and contact you if i see you ingame.

For Raids
I got no own experience in raids with druid (i did not try until now), but i have seen plenty of successful druid raidvideos. They prove that there must be a good and viable Raid-druid. If not raids would not take them.

For wvw
I even can share a proper wvw druidbuild, but nowadays roaming is not really funny. You walk across the map and see nobody.

It would be more helpful and educational if you made your own streams and recorded them to watch. I’d definitely love to see unedited videos of your team healing oriented builds in action in wvw, spvp and raids.