Guild Wars 2

Uh, Eric, Ranger already had mad survivability when trained for it. That wasn’t something the Ranger was missing. When you trait for Druid and survivability you lose a enormous portion of your dps. What’s lacking in the Druid is the utter lack of offensive support. That 25% up time glyph damage buff is just sad. If it was even 60% up time I would be interested, but it isn’t. Minors are all healing therefore useless to me. Adepts are all useless to me since CAF is useless to me and I won’t be using the staff. If the Glyph of Empowerment gets CD reduction Verdint Etching might get picked, but GoE needs to be better than Frost Spirit. If not, then Natural Stride because, well, it just sucks less than the other options. And then there’s Ancient Seed, again, because it just sucks less than the other two, but not by much. There’s nothing in the traits, besides Verdint Etching (and that’s only because of the GoE) that’s offensive support, so nothing in that line that’s compels me to take it.

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.

I tend to fall asleep when I plays someone elses build.

While people might or might not like the new profession mechanics for the professions besides the druid, they all have three things in common:

- they have a damage component that can be adjusted
- the traits have synergy and offer support and damage
- they are all having a use in old world content

Druid on the other side:

- CA is all about healing, switching to it will ALWAYS be a loss damage wise unless they completely rework it, which makes it super situational
- the trait line is all about healing, so no use for it in PvE unless you want to heal
- CA has zero use in old-world content – running druid there actually hurts your group

The new druid mechanic and traits are just so incredibly narrow that all rangers who look any further than the release of HoT and has been playing GW2 before should ask themselves, how can this work.

Druid is useless in the old world. Druid might be useless in the new areas. The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

I don’t want to “wait and see”, I want to bring up obvious concerns before the release.

I clearly prefer things fixed before they go live, or at least they can start working earlier on the stuff and it might not take 3 years + to make the specialization worth traiting.

Maybe everything will just work fine, but for now, feedback may save us a lot of trouble later on.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Druid is useless in the old world. Druid might be useless in the new areas. The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do, and in case you missed it half the mechanics, nearly all the stats, and many, many skills and traits on every class, have been useless in the old world for the last 3 years, because the old world PvE has basically been terribly designed, it isn’t druid that needs fixing but the kitten poor one dimensional shallow PvE of the “old world”.

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do.

Read title, reevaluate your post.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do.

Read title, rethink your post.

I edited my post.

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do.

Read title, rethink your post.

I edited my post.

So your excuse it that old stuff has been bad so it is ok that the new stuff is bad too?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do.

Read title, rethink your post.

I edited my post.

So your excuse it that old stuff has been bad so it is ok that the new stuff is bad too?

You are one that thinks its bad, not me, as long as is of use in PvP, WvW and new PvE content that is all that matters, no point in trying to cater to the broken failed PvE of the “old world”.

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

zinkz.7045:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

You might not play PvP or WvW, but others do.

Read title, rethink your post.

I edited my post.

So your excuse it that old stuff has been bad so it is ok that the new stuff is bad too?

You are one that thinks its bad, not me, as long as is of use in PvP, WvW and new PvE content that is all that matters, no point in trying to cater to the broken failed PvE of the “old world”.

For what we know from the beta weekends before, the new open world will work perfectly fine without a healer spec.

How is the new world any better than the old one for rangers if healers are not needed.

Unless all you want in PvE is raids, but clearly you have games with better options if you want the trinity and raiding and being the healer. And we don’t even know how raids will work out for druids.

If this doesn’t look a bit grim for the ranger’s new specialization, than what does…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

While people might or might not like the new profession mechanics for the professions besides the druid, they all have three things in common:

- they have a damage component that can be adjusted
- the traits have synergy and offer support and damage
- they are all having a use in old world content

Druid on the other side:

- CA is all about healing, switching to it will ALWAYS be a loss damage wise unless they completely rework it, which makes it super situational
- the trait line is all about healing, so no use for it in PvE unless you want to heal
- CA has zero use in old-world content – running druid there actually hurts your group

The new druid mechanic and traits are just so incredibly narrow that all rangers who look any further than the release of HoT and has been playing GW2 before should ask themselves, how can this work.

Druid is useless in the old world. Druid might be useless in the new areas. The only place that druid might be usefull is raids and possibly only for a short amount of time.

I don’t want to “wait and see”, I want to bring up obvious concerns before the release.

I clearly prefer things fixed before they go live, or at least they can start working earlier on the stuff and it might not take 3 years + to make the specialization worth traiting.

Maybe everything will just work fine, but for now, feedback may save us a lot of trouble later on.

Good job the Druid traitline isn’t designed for old world content then

Bryzy.2719:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

snip

Good job the Druid traitline isn’t designed for old world content then

That’s right, As Irenio pointed out Druid is for Raids and only for that. You will not need that many healing skills anywhere else not even wvw.
The is no place for the holy trinity in this game.

Bryzy.2719:

Good job the Druid traitline isn’t designed for old world content then

Sorry, but this view is extremly naive.

Let’s analyze the situation with a case study:

Case 1: A main healer is needed.

Case 2: Content is easier with a main healer.

Let’s go with Case 1:

If a mainhealer is needed for any PvE content, the ranger/druid might have a chance to be involved. Unfortunately, ANet pointed out that the philosophy is “Bring the player, not the class!” and therefore we have to accept, that other professions will bring enough healing to keep the raid alive.

What does the ranger/druid offer:

Healing, minor condi cleanse, spotter, frost spirit.

What does the other possible healing classes offer:

Mesmer/chronomancer: Healing, boon sharing, alacrity, double time-warp, reflects.
Guardian/dragon hunter: Healing, aegis, all kinds of usefull boons, reflects
Elementalist/tempest: Well you get the picture
Revenant/herald: I won’t even start

So ranger/druid will be sub-par in any healing scenario, unless you want to be proud of super over-healing, because the profession simply doesn’t offer much useful stuff.

Now Case 2:

If healing is sort of optional, raids will be a learn2play issue and the druid will be the worst of all new specializations and worse than any vanilla profession. It will be useless beyond help.

Do you get the picture, this is why rangers should be worried.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Bryzy.2719:

Good job the Druid traitline isn’t designed for old world content then

Sorry, but this view is extremly naive.

Let’s analyze the situation with a case study:

Case 1: A main healer is needed.

Case 2: Content is easier with a main healer.

Let’s go with Case 1:

If a mainhealer is needed for any PvE content, the ranger/druid might have a chance to be involved. Unfortunately, ANet pointed out that the philosophy is “Bring the player, not the class!” and therefore we have to accept, that other professions will bring enough healing to keep the raid alive.

What does the ranger/druid offer:

Healing, minor condi cleanse, spotter, frost spirit.

What does the other possible healing classes offer:

Mesmer/chronomancer: Healing, boon sharing, alacrity, double time-warp, reflects.
Guardian/dragon hunter: Healing, aegis, all kinds of usefull boons, reflects
Elementalist/tempest: Well you get the picture
Revenant/herald: I won’t even start

So ranger/druid will be sub-par in any healing scenario, unless you want to be proud of super over-healing, because the profession simply doesn’t offer much useful stuff.

Now Case 2:

If healing is sort of optional, raids will be a learn2play issue and the druid will be the worst of all new specializations and worse than any vanilla profession. It will be useless beyond help.

Do you get the picture, this is why rangers should be worried.

Well, I think you’re a bit pessimist here…
It’s more like :

Case 2 : The Druid can still put it’s healing weight when the raid is in dire need. (This assuming that the ranger is not far far away pewpewing without benefiting of it’s teammate support because it’s safer)

Rangers have always been able to bring more than healing/condicleanse/spotter and frost spirit. Afterall, ranger always had access to fire fields and some blast. The real issue come from the fact that rangers (players) want to play at range.

Now, as a druid, you’ll got 3-4 blast finisher to use in whatever field you prefer (Fire/water/poison/Ice?/electric). It give a lot of possibilities to answer any situation, but that’s if you play with your party and not somewhere afar with a mindless knockback every 8-12 second. The dev said it, positioning for the druid will be especially important (not that it wasn’t before but since ranger’s will be “druid” maybe they will forgot a bit the “range” in “ranger”)

I don’t need to argue anymore. We have a spec that can be a healer, most of us have what we want: http://strawpoll.me/5609519/r , QQers will have to wait their turn for the next Espec.

Yup! You get to wait three years for an elite spec you want, scukers!!!

Hey let’s see if within the next decade we can have the ranger profession that is not a disappointment.

Meanwhile the druid forests are burning and there is a lot of green to burn…

Eric.7813:

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.

I’ll keep that in mind for the next expansion when Anet adds another set of elite specs, a couple of years and another $50 from now.

Bryzy.2719:

I don’t need to argue anymore. We have a spec that can be a healer, most of us have what we want: http://strawpoll.me/5609519/r , QQers will have to wait their turn for the next Espec.

56 votes by now, this looks totally valid.

Wow, best joke in strawpoll history ever.

But there is a grain of truth in there, ANet loves the Metrix™. Maybe the Metrix™ told ANet that raids need dedicated healers and that it did not know what else to do with the broken ranger.

Now ranger is still as broken as before and has one more thing to offer that is niche before the expansion goes live. Great, looks like everything is fixed.