Guild Wars 2

Hey there, like many of you I love the new druid elite specialization. Even though I think the druid was intended to have more than one aspect, for now all we got is our healing form.

While this sounds promising with the more difficult content we get in HoT – including raids – it will fail to help the ranger as a profession in the long run.

Sure, when everything is new and exciting and people do not know what to do, groups will take rangers as healers into the new content. They will excel at healing, noone will come close.

But this will only be for a short time frame. Soon, players will figure out the new content, and even if there is some unavoidable damage here and there, a pure healer will sooner or later be obsolete. Off-healers will shine, like classes that fill the primary role of a damage dealer with enough heals to keep a group alive.

As long as rangers damage stays mediocre, they will lose their spot in raiding on the mid to long run. Unless ANet manages to keep dishing out progressive raid content fast enough (which I do not believe, they said 6 wings a year, which means more or less two raids annualy) we will see groups looking for everything but rangers/druids again.

A solution could be a second aspect that would boost damage. Call it Avatar of the Wild or something and give the druid an option to spend the extra bar on something different than healing. Glyphs would change too, so this should be possible.

Maybe I am too pessimistic, but I fear that we soon enough have all those discussions about the PvE meta and how rangers are not part of it again.

why do you think a ranger could not be an off-healer?

zealots equipment exist, as does celestial.

staff/bow or staff/sword/x are totally plausible builds

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Shoe.5821:

why do you think a ranger could not be an off-healer?

zealots equipment exist, as does celestial.

staff/bow or staff/sword/x are totally plausible builds

Oh they can be. But other off-healers have higher DPS and group support. Why would you take a ranger/druid?

TJgalon.5012:

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Your mindset is honorable, but you will be in a thight spot.

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

TJgalon.5012:

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Your mindset is honorable, but you will be in a thight spot.

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

I am not worry about it, as i am sure I can easily find other player to play. more so it new, everyone going to ant to try it, and I will, win or lose. It learning.
Also we really no clue how raids will work, and I am willing to adjust, but I can’t see the “meta” being the only way.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

That depends entirely on how they tune it. I can easily play the way I want I want in WoW’s raid finder or FFXIV’s duty finder. In harder, progression content, I definitely want to min/max as much as possible to avoid wiping 250 times to stupid kitten.

TJgalon.5012:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

TJgalon.5012:

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Your mindset is honorable, but you will be in a thight spot.

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

I am not worry about it, as i am sure I can easily find other player to play. more so it new, everyone going to ant to try it, and I will, win or lose. It learning.
Also we really no clue how raids will work, and I am willing to adjust, but I can’t see the “meta” being the only way.

It is not about the meta “being the only way”.

You are in the meta or you are not. If you are not, people will always tell you you can still do all the stuff, if you find other mercyful people that drag you along.

I am personally tired of excuses. I’d clearly prefer to be and stay in the meta.

Could care less at this point. If Druid doesn’t make it into the Raid Meta Team, just like how Ranger isn’t in the current one (but listed as a substitute), then let it happen because it will.

In the interview they estimated about 6 wings a year for Raid content, but they also mentioned working closely with the design and profession balance teams bi-weekly for feedback and testing out new ideas.

Maybe it’s the small glimpse of hopefulness in me, but the interview was somewhat relieving to hear the raid team say that, because of the constant communication and work between the balance teams, the content designers are learning more about the professions and what they can do, making adjustments so all the professions will be able to handle it.

On the flip side, that explains why current PVE is garbage, because it leads to the speculation that they were just cranking out content with little to no knowledge of how classes worked when designing content. Instant-Kill AOEs that destroy Ranger pets with 0 chance to have the pets avoid the damage – I’m looking at you.

Carry on, though. Done with the rant.

one of the few things theyved explicitly shown off with raids is a fight where you’re trapped on a platform with a boss, you have to not die to it while killing a wall keeping you on the platform. healing will always be relevant in that.

apart from that you are pre judging druid pretty hard. remember its not just ‘druid rangers’ but the results that new druid utilities and elites will have on current ranger builds.

for example glyph of empowerment will probably fit into the zerk meta pretty easily as is and would be stackable with frost spirit

glyph of unity gives a ranger some very impressive zerker facetanking ability too and has a lot of synergy with healing (but limited synergy with mitigation)

The burst healing you get from your F5 is great, even without healing power at all.

Rangers might very well be wanted, even when the community figures out how to do these raids with a lot more offensive approach, since you could run a full dps build and dish out some burst heals with your F5 when needed.

Why wouldn’t you want something like that? Decent dps, offensive support with frost spirit & spotter, defensive support with your F5. Sounds like a good package to me.

coax.2951:

The burst healing you get from your F5 is great, even without healing power at all.

Rangers might very well be wanted, even when the community figures out how to do these raids with a lot more offensive approach, since you could run a full dps build and dish out some burst heals with your F5 when needed.

Why wouldn’t you want something like that? Decent dps, offensive support with frost spirit & spotter, defensive support with your F5. Sounds like a good package to me.

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

Rangers will have to kitten themselves for off-healing. Their damage will be even worse than now. If you do not specc into druid though, you offer as much as you do right now, and we all know how that went.

If I look at all the variables, it seems pretty grim on the long run with just healing as selling point for druids.

the druid traits are healing focused, but you could do a non healing build with them.

druidic clarity -> verdant etching -> ancient seeds

use the avatar to daze & cripple & slow then hop out of it.

you also don’t need to druid spec to use a staff

Shoe.5821:

you also don’t need to druid spec to use a staff

Of course you will need to spec into druid to use a staff.

oh right, you need the trait to wield the staff

nm on that last

Ranger functions as a great off-healer imo. With the amount of healing Druid gets, you don’t even need to invest in healing power to do your job effectively (Healing makes healing more effective, MMHH). Also, the changes to Frost Spirit mean that Ranger can function as a half decent might stacker now, and spamming Fury and Spotter has always been our thing as well. Sure, our direct damage might not be exceptional, but we’re by no means short on offensive party buffs anymore.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

Rangers will have to kitten themselves for off-healing. Their damage will be even worse than now. If you do not specc into druid though, you offer as much as you do right now, and we all know how that went.

If I look at all the variables, it seems pretty grim on the long run with just healing as selling point for druids.

So, which of the current meta builds for all classes has healing on par with the druid?
Oh right, none.
It’s a trade off, lose some damage (nowhere near the 33% you’re suggesting), gain a ton of support.
You can easily ditch Beastmastery for Druid in the A/T sinister build and the standard berserker builds. The damage loss will be a little more for power builds than it is for the condi build since you lose the quickness on pet swap, but that’s about it. A bit less ferocity on your pet, that’s not that big of a deal.

On the point of “other classes can heal just as well without sacrificing dps”.
That is utterly wrong.
What does ele have? Geyser, which heals for around 2.5k on a 20s cooldown and around 350 on water autoattack. Healing Rain has regeneration.
Guardian only has Virtue of Resolve, which heals for around 1.6k on a whopping 50s cooldown. You could also use the elite signet, which is a full heal, but either you or the ones you want to heal will probably be dead by the time you finished the 4s cast. If guard would switch to staff, his dps would be laughable.
So what else do we have? Revenants maybe. Exept Revenant dps will also go down by a lot simply because you have to slot ventari as one of your legends instead of Shiro/Mallyx.
Engineers healing abilities aren’t worth mentioning at the moment exept for Healing Turret.

So lets compare that to druid’s F5 skills (the numbers are baseline, without healing power at all):
Tidal Surge heals for 4850hp and is a water field.
Lunar Impact heals for 3k.
Autoattack heals for 800hp with a really fast cast time, you’ll probably get off around 1.5-2 of these per second.
Seed of life heals for 500 and removes conditions.

In a 10 second time window, you could get off 2 Tidal surges, 2 Lunar Impacts and a whole bunch of autoattacks. Even if nobody blasts your water fields, that’s a TON more than any of the above can dish out.

Did people not hear in the druid reveal that the guy playing that druid had no amulet, that guy was cranking out those heals with literally no stats. Unless of course they lied about the ammy, which I’ll be honest is something they might do

coax.2951:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

Rangers will have to kitten themselves for off-healing. Their damage will be even worse than now. If you do not specc into druid though, you offer as much as you do right now, and we all know how that went.

If I look at all the variables, it seems pretty grim on the long run with just healing as selling point for druids.

So, which of the current meta builds for all classes has healing on par with the druid?
Oh right, none.
It’s a trade off, lose some damage (nowhere near the 33% you’re suggesting), gain a ton of support.
You can easily ditch Beastmastery for Druid in the A/T sinister build and the standard berserker builds. The damage loss will be a little more for power builds than it is for the condi build since you lose the quickness on pet swap, but that’s about it. A bit less ferocity on your pet, that’s not that big of a deal.

On the point of “other classes can heal just as well without sacrificing dps”.
That is utterly wrong.
What does ele have? Geyser, which heals for around 2.5k on a 20s cooldown and around 350 on water autoattack. Healing Rain has regeneration.
Guardian only has Virtue of Resolve, which heals for around 1.6k on a whopping 50s cooldown. You could also use the elite signet, which is a full heal, but either you or the ones you want to heal will probably be dead by the time you finished the 4s cast. If guard would switch to staff, his dps would be laughable.
So what else do we have? Revenants maybe. Exept Revenant dps will also go down by a lot simply because you have to slot ventari as one of your legends instead of Shiro/Mallyx.
Engineers healing abilities aren’t worth mentioning at the moment exept for Healing Turret.

So lets compare that to druid’s F5 skills (the numbers are baseline, without healing power at all):
Tidal Surge heals for 4850hp and is a water field.
Lunar Impact heals for 3k.
Autoattack heals for 800hp with a really fast cast time, you’ll probably get off around 1.5-2 of these per second.
Seed of life heals for 500 and removes conditions.

In a 10 second time window, you could get off 2 Tidal surges, 2 Lunar Impacts and a whole bunch of autoattacks. Even if nobody blasts your water fields, that’s a TON more than any of the above can dish out.

You totally missed the point, go read the first post and find the premise.

This is not about how good druids can heal vs. others.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

That was in response to the bolded part.
Your statement there is just blatantly wrong.

Also what would be the bigger dps loss? All the eles swapping to water for burst heals or replacing one of them with a druid and have them all stay in fire continuing to dps?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

1. Your specialisations don’t represent a third of your parse each, that would be absurd.
2. Your individual parse doesn’t matter, all that matters is the difference you make to the group’s collective DPS.
3. Glyph of the Tides (which teleports enemies to you) and Glyph of Empowerment both directly improve your group’s DPS.
4. Healers have always been an accepted part of the dungeon/fractal meta — it’s just that historically they’ve had a very different playstyle to most other MMOs, concentrating on pre-emptively mitigating and negating damage rather than patching people up after the fact.

Seems like it has a reasonable shot at being credible. And that’s even before bringing up the most important point:

All future content must now be designed to take the druid’s capabilities into account.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

This is not about how good druids can heal vs. others.

Don’t try pulling that on people. You expressly stated in a post supporting your claim that other professions can heal just as well without sacrificing as much.

Its not just the Druid that’s incoming you have the Revenant and Mesmer, ele, warriors, engi with their elite specs. In the grand scheme of thing when compare to all the protection and stability plus the dps that these classes will have Ranger/druid will not be in the top 6 profession for raids.

Druid gives us a new way to play and some of us will find it fun. Druid isn’t just heals and there are a lot of nice things in it, but 80% of the specialization is and that’s the problem.

just remember we dont really know exactly where they will take raiding, for example they may make encounters that pretty much need you to have good ranged dps and at that, the ranger is unrivaled.

they will also likely require more dedicated supporters to do well.

but you know what they say: if you dont like elitism then make your own groups, its not all that difficult to do after all

Elitism will spill over to the casual raiding.

People will try to copy whatever they see on youtube, and if a profession is missing, it will have a hard time to get into raid groups for that reason.

We will see, but I am sure that all raid encounters are designed to work without a druid. They might be easier with one in the beginning, but as soon as they have been beaten, the ranger/druid will drop out of the meta again.

The ranger will be as popular as it is now after the raids are on “farm”.

If every ranger has to start his own raid groups to actually get there, than this is not a very satisfying solution, sorry Stalima.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

We will see, but I am sure that all raid encounters are designed to work without a druid. They might be easier with one in the beginning, but as soon as they have been beaten, the ranger/druid will drop out of the meta again.

What I said is that all future content should be designed in a way that takes the druid into account, not that all future content should require a druid. There’s a difference.

Ultimately, however, healers are an accepted part of the current metagame for dungeons and fractals. The druid fulfils the same role with a different emphasis and playstyle. Sometimes it will be preferred over chrono and guard (both of which emphasise pre-empting and mitigating or negating hits over fixing people back up once they’ve landed), sometimes it won’t. How content is tuned will decide this. If it works well enough, then beastmastery will be a small price to pay.

Just as with the other healers in GW2 (and, to a lesser extent, going right back to Prophecies), there are plenty of self-heals and self-defence skills out there so that groups that want to run without a healer have at least a shot at succeeding.

Look, this is not rocket science.

The druid trait line is a one-trick-pony. Strong healing is all it has to offer. If you don’t want to go for healing, there is literally no reason to spec into it unless you want to be less efficient in what else you want to do.

1. Rangers don’t offer anything special
-> they are not popular in groups

2. Druids offer strong healing,
-> if strong healing is needed they will be popular in groups
-> else they are not popular in groups as they do not offer anything more useful than the basic ranger

3. Conclusion: If strong healing is not needed, neither classic rangers nor druids will be a popular choice.

I want to see how ANet is going to ship around that simple conclusion with their raids. Knowing ANet for quite some time now, I don’t expect this to happen.

Just a note.

Rangers are officially MetaZerk class. People who kick them out are usually arrogant meta-heads who I don’t even bother playing with. It’s just not enjoyable even if the run is fast.

If you know how to play a ranger – you have a free ticket into the groups you mentioned we struggle with. I have even seen f50 4/5 looking for Frost Spotters lately.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line is a one-trick-pony. Strong healing is all it has to offer. If you don’t want to go for healing, there is literally no reason to spec into it unless you want to be less efficient in what else you want to do.

• Glyph of Empowerment, at least once it gets buffed. Nice, unique damage boost on top of spotter and frost spirit.
• Glyph of the Tides: nice utility for trash — and, of course, adds. And druid does get a handful of extra AoE damage skills.
• Glyph of Unity: it might be niche, but people will be combining this with illusion of defence and protection to kick major kitten .

Rangers currently have credible damage and the druid will still have credible damage. A good ranger will justify their slot far better than a merely-decent member of any other profession, even if other professions “do more damage” on paper.

That’s assuming you can still melee bosses 100% of the time while stacking might and applying vulnerability.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

TJgalon.5012:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

TJgalon.5012:

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Your mindset is honorable, but you will be in a thight spot.

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

I am not worry about it, as i am sure I can easily find other player to play. more so it new, everyone going to ant to try it, and I will, win or lose. It learning.
Also we really no clue how raids will work, and I am willing to adjust, but I can’t see the “meta” being the only way.

It is not about the meta “being the only way”.

You are in the meta or you are not. If you are not, people will always tell you you can still do all the stuff, if you find other mercyful people that drag you along.

I am personally tired of excuses. I’d clearly prefer to be and stay in the meta.

If yer playing a ranger, yer not in the Meta to begin with, so i am not sure why you think this is even salient to Rangers.

Face it, Druid or no Druid, Rangers will more than likely not be Meta when it comes tot he elitist players who refuse to look outside the box of… faster faster faster, number numbers numbers.

I have meta characters, i tend to play them once in awhile and play on my “Subpar” characters helping other players learn the ropes and enjoy the game. Meta = work for me, buts that is just my opinion.

People normally only whine about Rangers, for some reason.

Rangers often do better damage than, say, Mesmers and Mesmers can also knockback, but have you noticed that the Rangers in a group always get blamed and the Mesmers never do, if a knockback occurs?

Not to mention that, as a ranged player, pull abilities are often annoying, as the mob will often be pulled behind you and yet, how often does a ranged player complain about that?

I’ve, literally, never seen it happen.

Whereas, pretty much every time there is a knockback, there is a “noob rangers” comment.

This is not a trinity game, with a tank, so how come melee randomly pulling things behind ranged is considered OK, but knockbacks aren’t?

Also, how do we tolerate ranged doing less damage, in general?

It’s terrible design and leads to comments like “too many noob ranged”.

If melee players tend to take more damage, you give them a little more passive healing and/or passive toughness and/or passive vitality, that proc with their melee attacks, in accordance with their class’s existing resilience (due to armour type).

In other words, you would give a light armour class more of those defensive procs, with their melee attacks, than you would a medium armour class.

Then, in turn, you would give heavy armour classes the least, but still more than a heavy ranged.

You don’t nerf ranged damage, because then you just reduce it to the sub-optimal choice, in most situations.

Also, you don’t encourage stack-fests, via your design decisions, you discourage them.

Not only is stacking dull, gameplay-wise, but it means that those who do the most damage and/or take the least damage in the stack (i.e. melee) always “win”.

It’s all a bit of a joke, frankly.

Lovely, pretty, atmospheric game, but so many glaring holes in fundamental game design, leading to/exacerbating the prejudices of the players.

…and yes, you’re right.

Once the instances are doable without a healer, we will be right back to square one.

That’s why we need far more than just a healing spec (interesting as that is).

coax.2951:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

That was in response to the bolded part.
Your statement there is just blatantly wrong.

Also what would be the bigger dps loss? All the eles swapping to water for burst heals or replacing one of them with a druid and have them all stay in fire continuing to dps?

Thought the bolded part is totally right.

Ele staff auto attack heal for a lot in water, they also have a this wonderfull unique party buff soothing Mist that can heal for up to 400 hps without even doing anything. not to say that Ele don’t lack water field and blast finisher.

The guardian have virtue of resolve and ton of healing utility like heal on mace auto attack, healing symbole, their elite signet… etc.

Do you really think that the Druid who will have to manage it’s astral force, it’s pet and positioning will be able to outperform these 2 professions semi passive healing easily? Without a doubt, the druid will be good for panic situations with burst heal on small windows due to the fact that you won’t be able to maintain celestial form for the whole fight. But If you look objectively at the situation, ele and guardian are able to dish out permanent heal and very high heal spike with the tools they got and thus without having to bother with astral force management and most likely celestial form cool down.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

TJgalon.5012:

As someone who always partner with a ranger, and played it some before, They do damage pretty well. Just because some player believe one way is better then the other, does not mean it always like that.
Step 1 don’t listen to the meta, is how I play. I may check it out for dea, but in the end, I have to play my way, or I wont be playing well. I still manage to pull my weight and f that means it takes an extra minute to take down a champion then so e it.

Your mindset is honorable, but you will be in a thight spot.

ANet opened the can of worms know as “raids”. If you think “play the way you want” is a thing there you might be in for a surprise.

Actually, MO (or was it Colin?) said during that 2015 PAX thing that you wouldn’t be pigeonhold into builds for Raids. That all you need is coordination. So… either they don’t know what’s going on in the Raids or they lied. One of the two.

evilunderling.9265:

A good ranger will justify their slot far better than a merely-decent member of any other profession, even if other professions “do more damage” on paper.

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

Dradiin.8935:

If yer playing a ranger, yer not in the Meta to begin with, so i am not sure why you think this is even salient to Rangers.

Face it, Druid or no Druid, Rangers will more than likely not be Meta when it comes tot he elitist players who refuse to look outside the box of… faster faster faster, number numbers numbers.

And you say rangers have not been in the meta, so it is ok that druids are not in the meta either?

What kind of discussion is that? Rangers should just accept their fate to be subpar and get used to be ignored unless they are better than anyone else?

C’mon, that makes no sense…

In a PuG, I wouldn’t care much if a ranger would be in my party. So long as he is comfy with the class he plays, that’s what matters?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot?

You bring the player, never the class. That is how it always has been done since long before even Prophecies was released; that is how it is done now; and that is how it always will be done long after this game shuts down.

The ranger isn’t garbage tier as a DD, and the druid shouldn’t be garbage tier as a defensive support. Damage-dealing and defensive support are both useful roles, so if you play ranger well in either or both of those roles, any good group will consider you as a ranger.

If you lose your raid spot, it’s because you don’t deal enough damage or provide good enough support. Not because the ranger is somehow incapable of such things.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

evilunderling.9265:

A good ranger will justify their slot far better than a merely-decent member of any other profession, even if other professions “do more damage” on paper.

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

Dradiin.8935:

If yer playing a ranger, yer not in the Meta to begin with, so i am not sure why you think this is even salient to Rangers.

Face it, Druid or no Druid, Rangers will more than likely not be Meta when it comes tot he elitist players who refuse to look outside the box of… faster faster faster, number numbers numbers.

And you say rangers have not been in the meta, so it is ok that druids are not in the meta either?

What kind of discussion is that? Rangers should just accept their fate to be subpar and get used to be ignored unless they are better than anyone else?

C’mon, that makes no sense…

I said what i said because it needs to be CHANGED, not left in the crap state that it is now. Should go back and read all of what i said.

evilunderling.9265:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line is a one-trick-pony. Strong healing is all it has to offer. If you don’t want to go for healing, there is literally no reason to spec into it unless you want to be less efficient in what else you want to do.

• Glyph of Empowerment, at least once it gets buffed. Nice, unique damage boost on top of spotter and frost spirit.
• Glyph of the Tides: nice utility for trash — and, of course, adds. And druid does get a handful of extra AoE damage skills.
• Glyph of Unity: it might be niche, but people will be combining this with illusion of defence and protection to kick major kitten .

Rangers currently have credible damage and the druid will still have credible damage. A good ranger will justify their slot far better than a merely-decent member of any other profession, even if other professions “do more damage” on paper.

Ranger has sub-par damage (5th)and subpar offensive and defensive support.

Bring in Druid doesn’t change any of that.

Aomine.5012:

Ranger has sub-par damage (5th)and subpar offensive and defensive support.

I specifically addressed that in the post you just quoted. It doesn’t affect my point.

Bring in Druid doesn’t change any of that.

None of the playtesting by theorycrafters etc. that you’d need to justify that claim has happened yet.

evilunderling.9265:

Aomine.5012:

Ranger has sub-par damage (5th)and subpar offensive and defensive support.

I specifically addressed that in the post you just quoted. It doesn’t affect my point.

Bring in Druid doesn’t change any of that.

None of the playtesting by theorycrafters etc. that you’d need to justify that claim has happened yet.

There will not be much beta testing neither so better try to get it right from the beginning. If Irenio listen i hope the modify the Avatar to become more of a group support and hard CC like the druid is.
Also i hope the somehow fix the glyphs design.

Another Aspect to choose from would be nice also.

evilunderling.9265:

Aomine.5012:

Ranger has sub-par damage (5th)and subpar offensive and defensive support.

I specifically addressed that in the post you just quoted. It doesn’t affect my point.

Bring in Druid doesn’t change any of that.

None of the playtesting by theorycrafters etc. that you’d need to justify that claim has happened yet.

It’s theory-crafting yes, but base on what everything the developers has revealed, it does indeed address none of the issue I mentioned.

All I see is some weak Glyphs that do little damage and heal heal heal.
I did watch all the info we got already.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Soon, players will figure out the new content, and even if there is some unavoidable damage here and there, a pure healer will sooner or later be obsolete. Off-healers will shine, like classes that fill the primary role of a damage dealer with enough heals to keep a group alive.

Firstly who says it has to be pure healer, you have two other trait lines, three util slots, another weapon, pet choice and gear of your choice, it could be hybrid fine, including the things ranger already brings like spotter.

Secondly if the content is actually well designed then figuring it out should have less impact, in most MMOs it simply isn’t just a case of people “figuring out”, it is also that you start acquiring more powerful gear from completing the raid, often considerably more powerful, that isn’t an issue in GW2.

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

This is sad but whatever your profession can do you always have to consider the reputation of this profession community. And the ranger community have the reputation to be a selfish player wanting to range everything (staying out of buff range), to have poor controle over it’s pet and to brainlessly knockback foe out of the party range. In the end ranger or Druid, you will alway be judged over these 3 aspects.

In a way, while nobody have sufficiently grasped all the elite specialization, it’s time for the rangers/druids to prove that they can refrain themself from playing brainlessly. It’s a huge task that would need the whole ranger community to make a lot of effort because, let’s be honest, the Druids feature have a lot of potential for selfish gameplay and is arguably better at supporting a group than what other profession have.

Roy said it right in the revenant’s forum : “The druid is a burst healer”. Simply put, after some month of playing the druid, most of us won’t give a * about caring for allies and use the clestial form for personnal sustain/condicleanse. Honestly, it totally replace the pet as a mechanism.

Another clickbait title.

You can’t assert that no Druids will be wanted in PvE content until we’ve seen it. You can instead ask the question “will Druids be wanted in PvE content?” and get some opinionated responses.

As for facts… well all we know so far is what we can take from the word of the Devs (specifically Irenio, Rubi and the Raid designers). Irenio and Rubi discussed briefly that the direction that HoT PvE is taking is more challenging and current zerker meta parties will not be able to survive with current tactics. More support-focussed builds will be needed to help the zerkers push through the content. This is what the Druid traitline is latching onto – perhaps this extent of physical heal support will be needed in the new content?

We can’t say for certain until we play it; we can’t say for certain that everyone else will just be able to build tankier with more self-sustain and get through the content that way, without the need for a dedicated healer.

What we can say for certain is that the healing power the Druid has been given reflects what Anet plan for the new wave of PvE content.

Dadnir.5038:

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

This is sad but whatever your profession can do you always have to consider the reputation of this profession community. And the ranger community have the reputation to be a selfish player wanting to range everything (staying out of buff range), to have poor controle over it’s pet and to brainlessly knockback foe out of the party range. In the end ranger or Druid, you will alway be judged over these 3 aspects.

In a way, while nobody have sufficiently grasped all the elite specialization, it’s time for the rangers/druids to prove that they can refrain themself from playing brainlessly. It’s a huge task that would need the whole ranger community to make a lot of effort because, let’s be honest, the Druids feature have a lot of potential for selfish gameplay and is arguably better at supporting a group than what other profession have.

Roy said it right in the revenant’s forum : “The druid is a burst healer”. Simply put, after some month of playing the druid, most of us won’t give a * about caring for allies and use the clestial form for personnal sustain/condicleanse. Honestly, it totally replace the pet as a mechanism.

It’s not selfish to want to play ranged.

It should be a viable option.

The problem lies with the poor design of a game that, apparently, promotes choice, but actually gives none, in group PVE environments.

This really needs to change, ASAP.

No amount of elite specs is going to save group PVE, in the longer run, if it doesn’t.

Also, Mesmers can knockback, as well, but in a group containing both classes, everyone blames the Ranger(s) and no one, ever, blames the Mesmer(s).

Not to mention that melee pulls can be equally irritating to ranged players, but no ranged ever dares to complain about them.

Despite this, supposedly, being a tank-free game!

The fundamental game design is a mess.

They really need to take this opportunity to change it, before it’s too late.

Make buffs group-wide, NOT stack-narrow and make ranged and melee do equal damage, for a start…

I don’t even participate in group PVE, in this game, despite having done a lot of PVE and some raiding in WoW.

There is good reason for that.

Shoe.5821:

why do you think a ranger could not be an off-healer?

zealots equipment exist, as does celestial.

staff/bow or staff/sword/x are totally plausible builds

Staff is flat out not useful in 90% of the PvE scenarios…..

The DPS is awful, there is no kind of group utility (other than the stop projectiles on staff 5 and cleanse condi on staff 4).
Cleansing condi is absolutely worthless in PvE. Other classes can actually reflect , thus send back damage/CC to enemy so druid staff 5 is extremly subpar compared to other classes reflect skill…..

Staff maybe useful in raids but as of right now, staff in PvE looks like trash tier since its not a good DPS at ALL. You are gimping yourself and your party for bringing staff .

Kaiyanwan.8521:

evilunderling.9265:

A good ranger will justify their slot far better than a merely-decent member of any other profession, even if other professions “do more damage” on paper.

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

Dradiin.8935:

If yer playing a ranger, yer not in the Meta to begin with, so i am not sure why you think this is even salient to Rangers.

Face it, Druid or no Druid, Rangers will more than likely not be Meta when it comes tot he elitist players who refuse to look outside the box of… faster faster faster, number numbers numbers.

And you say rangers have not been in the meta, so it is ok that druids are not in the meta either?

What kind of discussion is that? Rangers should just accept their fate to be subpar and get used to be ignored unless they are better than anyone else?

C’mon, that makes no sense…

Did you not get hugged enough as a kid?

In my experience, meta builds take a lot of skill and timing to play, and that means a whole lot of full server teams which hilariously wipe because someone went online and got a glass cannon build before they learned how to handle the content normally.

Rangers have plenty of strengths, and the Druid setup just gives them an extra variable to use in all levels of content. Are they stronger in PvP due to their tendency to be self contained? Probably. Are they meta? Who cares what the meta is until the content is plotted out to face roll levels? I’d take a good player over a meta build any day.

Settle down and quit calling doom and gloom. Jeez.

As someone who has played with rangers (experienced and non-experienced alike) in high-end fractals and dungeons, they actually are amazing when played right.

Even though the name implies otherwise, sometimes the longbow can be used within short range to gain any might stacks etc. With the condi changes, a trap ranger can dish out more damage than my engineer can with sinister’s gear. Especially with the new Fire Wyvern pet inbound, ranger’s have access to more burns than most if not all professions- torch skills, traps, pets- all of which have low cooldowns too. Loads of poisons and bleeds. When raids come, there might be some encounters where having that 1500 range longbow at it’s maximum distance can be a godsend.

It’s a matter of skill with the profession. I’d take a ranger anyday in my party- dungeon, fractal, or raid.

I think the druid is excellent for long term ranger. It provides a viable defensive option.

you literally don’t even need to bring all the glyphs. This leaves 2 trait lines, two weapons and 5 utility skills. It is the perfect set up to make a DPS build while bringing along the celestial mechanic for defensive use.

if you want to go full on heal you can do that. but this specialization has a lot to offer.
Skill four and skill five in celestial avatar do more than just heal. daze, and immobilize for 5 seconds! ranger has long needed a more decent way to survive. not to mention, entering celestial form gets ride of all pre-existing conditions, thats crazy useful.

druid will see a lot of interesting builds.

keep in mind, and i’m sure, Anet probably has a whole list of elite specs that they plan to release. every profession will probably get a damage focuses spec, a support focused, and what ever else people categorize. this time around, the ranger got a defensive build. reaper for an offensive build. It will all work out. until then, appreciate the druid! it is much needed for us.

SkiTz.4590:

Shoe.5821:

why do you think a ranger could not be an off-healer?

zealots equipment exist, as does celestial.

staff/bow or staff/sword/x are totally plausible builds

Staff is flat out not useful in 90% of the PvE scenarios…..

The DPS is awful, there is no kind of group utility (other than the stop projectiles on staff 5 and cleanse condi on staff 4).
Cleansing condi is absolutely worthless in PvE. Other classes can actually reflect , thus send back damage/CC to enemy so druid staff 5 is extremly subpar compared to other classes reflect skill…..

Staff maybe useful in raids but as of right now, staff in PvE looks like trash tier since its not a good DPS at ALL. You are gimping yourself and your party for bringing staff .

Some professions got support based, other got offense based specs. druid is not suppose to be dps. and will not ever be. I am sure anet has a whole list of elite specs to release eventually. ranger will get there offensive turn. until then, the ranger WAS ALSO in need of survive-ability. Ranger already has decent dps if traited right, although it could be buffed a little. but thats not what the purpose of the elite spec is.