Guild Wars 2

Does anyone else think you should be able to have both Natural Stride and Verdant Etchings traits in your build?

So I propose to swap Verdant Etchings with Cultivated Synergy. I think this way it would least impact trait synergies.

Let me know if you agree or disagree and why it would be a good or a bad thing and if you have a better alternative.

Edit:
Other suggestions:
Swap Natural Stride with Natural Mender

yes yes yes, I hate having to predict when i’m going into combat in wvw for example and having to re-adjust my traits to replace natural stride with verdant etchings.

Yeah, I agree fully mate. But I would go a different way with it. I don’t think every druid should be pidgeon-holed into healing status, so I would swap Natural Stride with Natural Mender, so that it is the GM minor. Then you are not wasting the GM minor if you want to run a DPS build, but can still select the healing ability if you need it.

Having Natural Stride as a GM minor would be truly magnificent
My $0.02

Natural Stride should be a minor. It would simultaneously solve the problem of wasting minor traits if you’re not a healbot.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I would swap Natural Stride with Natural Mender, so that it is the GM minor. Then you are not wasting the GM minor if you want to run a DPS build, but can still select the healing ability if you need it.

I completely agree. I think this would be a better way.

Lazze.9870:

Natural Stride should be a minor. It would simultaneously solve the problem of wasting minor traits if you’re not a healbot.

I can’t +1 this hard enough.

I would love this change. Druid is clearly meant to be a highly mobile support character that relies heavily on good positioning. Having Natural Stride by a minor trait would let every druid build benefit from the mobility aspect of the druid.

I disagree completely. While it sounds good on paper, you forget one thing. Having or not having swiftness, speed signet or similar trait is everywhere else a CHOICE (and traveller runes). Now you would force it down on us. To be honest I experimented with traveller runes and natural stride. I prefer rune of traveler: It support celestial big time (wich is a great stat for druid), it support boon duration, condi duration (again fits my condi/druid hybrid), and you don’t have anything to do for move speed (other then to choose the runs). The trait however, will not perma boost you (one cripple on you and it’s useless. wich means in wvw it’s most likely useless (cripple/chill spam). For that reason alone it should be a swappable trait. This trait is to much depending on circomstance. However, natural mender is like super normal for druid. Any druid, will for some reason try to burst heal. Even avatar only druids. Spam 1 or so. That will in the end give more healing and hence your choice to go druid will reward more. Healing is the reason to go druid and having a minor boosting that = most normal thing of world. There is no question it will work in any build, it’s not depending on anything since the first minor unlocks celestial form wich alone benefits enough from Natural mending.

For one time (doesn’t happen often) I disagree with Heimskarl. I played druid several times this evening, and for damage spec it just is not made for that. It does what is does: lots of healng. Damage specs can make use of that of course, but in the end you take druid, to get more healing (for your own or team).

Secondly we ‘kinda’ already have a robotic legs (cause that is what this is about) trait: Resounding Trimbre. Or warhorn cd reduce + quick draw. Enough ways to get it. The thing is, if you made any ‘speed’ trait fully baseline, then by definition traveller rune and rune of speed are absolete, no build will ever use them. Same goes for Signet of the hunt. This is just bad idea. Or perhaps wishing to much. Have you ever heart engies asking for robotic legs (combat shoes in past) to become almost baseline (aka minor trait)? No is the answer.

Take water from ele for instance. Soothing mist: Is some form of healing. Healing ripple: some form of healing. Then 1% damage for every boon on you. Elementalist automaticly uses lots of boons, thus this trait always have a purpose. Even a full condi spec has (very low but still has) use of a 1-8% damage boost.

Not every build needs natural stride, I disagree abour making it a minor teair. I do like the original suggestion though, swapping place of verdant etchings and cultivated synergy.

edit: Adding some reasoning: natural stride as minor would make druid have antisynergy with shouts – not a good thing.

Elsewhere speed traits are a slotted choice… Elementalist and Chronomancers would say otherwise. They aren’t Rangers, anyway, so they shouldn’t have to choose.

Also, read up on your Elementalist. Bountiful Power minor was moved from the Water traitline to Arcane as a Grandmaster major. Lastly, please don’t say Resounding Timbre is like our Mecha Legs, they aren’t even in the same league as Engineers don’t have to slot garbage like “Guard!” or use their heal to run.

Cheers, though.

If natural stride became a minor, it’d be changed to 25% movement speed like Chronomancer’s Time marches on…

Yeah I’ve a feeling they’d have to make Natural Stride weaker if they moved it to the GM minor slot to keep it in line with Chronomancer. I also can’t really see anyone taking Natural Mender in it’s current form if it was in the Major slot.

As to the original suggestion, I’m not sure I like the staff cd reduction trait clashing with the glyph cd reduction trait.

i fully agree, I want this trait so badly, but just flat out can’t take it because i like to run glyphs and if you’re running all glyphs you’re stupid to not take the glyph trait.

Rashagar.8349:

Yeah I’ve a feeling they’d have to make Natural Stride weaker if they moved it to the GM minor slot to keep it in line with Chronomancer. I also can’t really see anyone taking Natural Mender in it’s current form if it was in the Major slot.

As to the original suggestion, I’m not sure I like the staff cd reduction trait clashing with the glyph cd reduction trait.

So move the staff CD reduction trait to master instead of cultivated synergy?

bloodpyrope.8630:

If natural stride became a minor, it’d be changed to 25% movement speed like Chronomancer’s Time marches on…

Why do you say that? Natural Stride has a downside, if you have a movement impeding condition, you do not move faster. Mesmer’s always moves 25% faster.

This is why Swiftness and SoTH are still useful with Natural Stride. The difference being that you do not need to keep casting it to get the effect. Running around with Swiftness means having to take a skill that provides it, Tail Wind which only works in combat or Resounding Timbre which also means you need shouts. SoTP is elite.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Not every build needs natural stride, I disagree abour making it a minor teair. I do like the original suggestion though, swapping place of verdant etchings and cultivated synergy.

edit: Adding some reasoning: natural stride as minor would make druid have antisynergy with shouts – not a good thing.

Druid with a minor Natural Stride is not anti-synergy with Shouts. As I said before, you have to continually cast the shout to get the boon and you don’t get the movement speed if you have a movement impeding condition, this means they actually work together perfectly, always covering you for +33% run speed without having to continually cast shouts to get a benefit. I really like running WHaO with SoTP and 3 survival skills, meaning I need to keep using my heal skill to get 10/17s swiftness, this is not a good situation really. Natural Stride is perfect in that it always covers me for the speed increase, while WHaO is off CD and when I do not need to heal.

Natural Mender is just a pointless trait for a vast majority of Druid builds. The only time it is useful is when you are playing healer in a raid or PvP/WvW. It does nothing for SB/St MoC Druid, GS/St MoC Remorseless Druid, Trap Druid, Mad Seed Druid, LB/St Druid, Point Holder Druid… Almost every build I have seen made for Druid, including my own are not using this trait in any meaningful way, there is pretty much only one healer build that does and its pretty much dead weight the rest of the time.

If people want to make a healing build, its a good choice for them to add in, but for every one else that is not playing healing, its useless.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

bloodpyrope.8630:

If natural stride became a minor, it’d be changed to 25% movement speed like Chronomancer’s Time marches on…

Why do you say that? Natural Stride has a downside, if you have a movement impeding condition, you do not move faster. Mesmer’s always moves 25% faster.

Oh interesting. I didn’t realize the mesmer’s speed boost wasn’t affected by conditions. In that cause, I guess Natural Stride could be swapped as a minor. I don’t like how the minor’s keep pushing us to be healers and I’d love to be able to take Celestial Shadow too.

I support any changes in the Druid line that doesn’t force us to be healbots.

Ya, one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that with Natural Stride as is, if you get hit by ANY movement CC it actually hits you harder than usual because it effectively strips your “passive swiftness” ontop of making you slower.

Btw, make sure you post this in the Druid Feedback thread since they’ve guaranteed that one will be read.

I’ve changed my view. I think Natural Stride should stay optional. Because:

• It cannot affect the pet.

Let that sink in for a bit. Pets are easy to kite and take longer to reach their target unless you also pick up swiftness in your build (or Signet of the Hunt, or Pet’s Prowess).

So this is a very selfish trait to pick and at the cost of the pet. I’m personally fine with it, I think it’s a fair trade off, but not everyone will agree and might not like it forced on them if it was a minor trait.

So, I’m going back to my original suggestion:

• swap Verdant Etchings with Cultivated Synergy

Holland.9351:

Does anyone else think you should be able to have both Natural Stride and Verdant Etchings traits in your build?

So I propose to swap Verdant Etchings with Cultivated Synergy. I think this way it would least impact trait synergies.

Let me know if you agree or disagree and why it would be a good or a bad thing and if you have a better alternative.

Edit:
Other suggestions:
Swap Natural Stride with Natural Mender

I think noone would ever take natural mender if it wouldn’t be minor.

The pet has its own movement steroid trait as a GM minor in BM.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Any druid, will for some reason try to burst heal. Even avatar only druids. Spam 1 or so. That will in the end give more healing and hence your choice to go druid will reward more. Healing is the reason to go druid and having a minor boosting that = most normal thing of world. There is no question it will work in any build, it’s not depending on anything since the first minor unlocks celestial form wich alone benefits enough from Natural mending.

I don’t think that’s true, unless I am wrong, but outgoing healing does not affect healing to yourself. It does not affect your heal skill for example. I’m not sure if it affects 1 on Celestial Form if you hit yourself with it.

So, it does not affect every build. Just those builds that want to heal allies. Also, not every druid is going into Celestial Form. I spent the fast majority of my time this weekend without it and not feeling like I should have. So to me Natural Mendor was a dead trait 99.9% of the time.

I don’t know what should take his place. Natural Stride looks obvious, but also that trait does not affect all builds since it doesn’t affect the pet.

So maybe it’s fine to keep Natural Mender as minor, in the end, it affects Celestial Form and all druids have access to it. Maybe it should give +% to healing, rather than just outgoing healing or have something selfish added to it.

I’m going to make a thread about Natural Mender.