Guild Wars 2

Thanks a lot for getting this up!
Thanks even more for change to staff 3!

Also, does quickdraw and staff work together now?
And will regeneration boon apply astral force?

Glyph of Unity – this doesn’t fix this pointless elite. It literally only does about 2k~3k damage unless you are being attacked by a lot of people at once in which case you are dead already. 600 leash VERY short. Get rid of this skill and redesign it.

Ancestral Grace – good change

Celestial Avatar Form – Why are we being hurt with this? Seriously? I don’t mind the charge changes the CD is just plan bad. Why do we retain half when necros retain full? Seriously Why do you hate rangers?

Celestial Avatar Form – 15~25% might not be bad, depending on what skills got hit with 25 and which ones with 15.

Lunar Impact – Saw this coming

Why don’t we have better access to stab? You nerf CA but don’t give us access to stab…

I still think the celestial skills should feel more distinct:

• reduce (or remove) the heal of “Seed of Life” to make it distinctly lower than “Cosmic Ray” (it was about the same if you had healing power, but since you increased the scaling, it will be even higher now). The number of condi cleanse can be increased in exchange.
• reduce or remove the heal from “Lunar Impact” to make it lower than “cosmic ray”.
• strongly increase the heal from “Rejuvenating Tides” (the same or higher coef than current “lunar impact”).

This way, each skill will feel different, and instead of just spamming 54321, one would use them when needed since they now have a purpose:

• 2 : condi cleanse
• 3 : daze + blast
• 4 : burst heal + water field
• 5 : CC

Also, I would keep the whole astral force when exiting the form. I really want the celestial avatar to be something one uses when needed and not spammed when available.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

I think this has the potential to be way too powerful. Before, Druids in raids seemed like a luxury item, providing lots of healing but at the cost of damage. They could be very useful in progression, as they allow players to make mistakes that could be healed up. The Druid feels good about healing because they were saving people, but there was an understanding that there was an intrinsic loss in damage as the trade-off for this benefit. Because of how much healing they provided, it was pretty debatable if Druids were or were not useful since Rangers could still potentially provide damage through Spotter, Spirits, etc. However, through this trait, the Druid can perhaps now both provide lots of healing and lots of damage.

Compare the Celestial Avatar form with the Ventari Legend: The Revenant gives up lots of damage since it is expending energy to heal players, and instead provides support and healing. The Druid might give up damage at the cost of support in healing, but it also provides powerful bonus to damage to actual damage dealers.

Why are you adding more unique group-based damage modifiers to the game? Would it not make more sense to just make this thing provide something that already exists, like Might? I am assuming that this buff can be stacked using Cosmic Ray, which has a half second cast. Not only can the trait can provide this buff to people outside of the Druid’s party, but it also can potentially provided to more than five players if the group is positioned well enough.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Reduced the cast damage by 66%.

sure

why not

Loving these changes!

Only other thing I would have liked to see was a change to CA #1 because that skill is NOT FUN to use.

Thx for the numbers and update, i wish we could test this out, it all looks ok on paper, but testing is the real measure where changes go ~ good/bad.

Wish we had 1 more beta.

How about existing core ranger traits, any changes on that? We have a few topics on that which could use a sneak peak for maybe some potential updates

Irenio, please poke Karl about the Tempest.

I am happy with the changes to the celestial energy gain, and I think the cooldown is fair. But I think having you lose half your energy by ending early, especially with the condition that you can only ENTER the form at 100% charge, is a little unfair. I’m trying to avoid comparing it to Shroud, because it’s different…but as it stands it seems like I’d feel like I needed to hoard my celestial form for only the most dire situations, instead of using it for constant support, as I assume is the intention.

All the other changes look excellent, although I agree that Glyph of Unity in offensive form is still underwhelming.

yay, and he comes through! good changes man.

Feedback:

kitten, those druid GM’s look so good now. so good.

thx for increasing Unity’s leash! needs more testing, but I think 600 should be enough. still not convinced of its offensive component.

Alignment – 3 stacks of poison, more weakness and cripple… I think I would actually slot it now. i can see it being devastating when cast at the right time, and changing outcome of battle.

Ancestral Grace – daaaamn son, u made this an evade? wont complain, but yeah.

good avatar changes. that’s actually a buff to offensive druids, as we get to keep half the energy. i also see celestial ammy being a very strong choice now, and clerics will be outputting insane level heals..

LI change – ok saw it coming.

Missed Opportunities for Later

• the huge problem you missed with the avatar is its #1. in BWE3, there was no point in casting it. i’d channel #4, then cast LI, spam a seed or two and cast NC…followed maybe by another LI. #1 cannot hit a moving ally, period. the cast time is too long, radius too small.*

• Seed of Life still needs to explode a little bit earlier, or have a much larger radius. it’s very clumsy to use outside of pve.*

• hope you guys are still working on staff #2 and #4 changes. staff feels unfinished with 2 nearly useless abilities.*

katubug.6378:

But I think having you lose half your energy by ending early, especially with the condition that you can only ENTER the form at 100% charge, is a little unfair..

what? before we lost ALL the energy.

Hey Irenio,

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

I like the changes to Celestial Avatar Form. Is it still going to be required to have full astral force to enter the form? Unless the changes to how it is gain are more effective than I think, the 10s CD seems like enough of gate to keep druids from constantly swapping.

(It might also be interesting where you can enter Celestial Avatar Form as long as you have 50%+ of your astral force, which would play a bit off of the retain half your current astral force if leaving early.)

Iirc, with the Necro Death Shroud running out of life force does not cause the CD to trigger. Will this also be the case where staying in Celestial Avatar Form until all astral force has spent will not incur its 10s CD?

Bonus: Yay!

I wonder if the blind from lingering light counts as the ranger applying it or the ally. It could be pretty strong paired up with mesmer with ineptitude trait if it is ally and there is not an icd. Icd on ineptitude is only on the blind on block not the confusion from blind.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ineptitude

These are great changes, but they don’t address the major issue with druid- that is long cast times and static aoes.

Landing the healing from celestial form on a moving ally is almost impossible- these changes don’t solve the issue that the most effective rotation is just staff-spam-celestial 4-staff spam.

Glad to see some of the glyph issues being addressed too, but as long as they have that 1/2 second cast time, they’re still going to be very hard to use.

At first look, these seem like decent changes in general. However, please make CA #1 heal AoE and not ground targeted. In WvW it’s going to be a pain to land heals on my constantly moving allies otherwise.

Wow, Ancestral Grace is now so vastly superior compared to ele’s RTL.

I actually liked the distinction between Celestial Form and Necro Shroud. I came to like that we had no cooldown but lose all Astral Force upon leaving the transform. There really was no reason to change this. It’s less about balance and more about an interesting gameplay mechanic and it was much more interesting previously.

Edit: So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet. Even if you wanted to lock players out of Astral Force for longer you only needed to balance more around the original gate and adjust how much Astral Force is obtained from healing and attacking. Adding a cooldown is just clunky and pointless.

Edit: And, instead of giving us more options while in Celestial Form to incentivize us to stay in it since Astral Force would deplete completely after leaving, they leave Celestial Form just as linear but let us keep half our Astral Force. Another bad decision.

Solid changes all around, but as long as Glyph’s don’t have a single stun break I will never use them. And no, the stunbreak while in celestial avatar form only does not count.

I don’t understand why the two good grandmaster traits have been reworked, but the one that is 90% useless (as it has a 10s ICD) gets no changes? Thats literally the only one I saw that REALLY needed to be fixed. It is the only thing that have any synergy with a condi build (Apothecary is nice to use instead of clerics for a change) and it is stuck on a 10s ICD period, which makes it completely useless in a multi-target fight, not to mention the fact that in a one on one fight its hardly useful and would force you to space out your CC as long as possible to actually get any use from it.

Hammerguard.9834:

So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet. Even if you wanted to lock players out of Astral Force for longer you only needed to balance more around the original gate and adjust how much Astral Force is obtained from healing and attacking. Adding a cooldown is just clunky and pointless.

It works exactly how lifeforce/shroud works now. I don’t see a problem with this at all, I do think the 10s change when they do let us keep 1/2 our remaining bar left a bit off, but eh.

Hammerguard.9834:

So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet.

no, this was completely necessary, random player. i had my celestial energy bar full at all time sduring BWE3. with no cooldown, i was almost perma avatar form, which made the “form” of it a completely pointless concept.

Grace of the Land – Interesting change.

Lingering Light – I kind of liked the old version simply because it allowed you to build more astral force in melee range of multiple players. But I suppose the new version might do the same (if the heal is counted as coming from you, which it may be since it uses your healing power) and the Blind is neat. Interesting change. Hopefully it getting changed also means that Astral Wisp is getting some love and would perhaps be too powerful if this trait stayed the same, though that may be wishful thinking (but hopefully not).

Glyph of Unity – Hopefully its getting more than just a range increase. The range is one big problem, but its certainly not the only one.

Glyph of Empowerment – See above.

Glyph of Alignment – More condition duration is great. Definitely one of the changes the skill needed, IMO. Not sure I like the drop of burst damage, though. I suppose maybe the poison will make up the difference, but it will still make the skill worse for tagging.

Ancestral Grace – Being an evade wasn’t really necessary IMO, but I’ll take it. Getting the skill to drop you out as soon as you hit your destination definitely WAS necessary, though, so heck yes.

Avatar changes – Definitely liking the boost to direct damage power growth. Not sure about the reduction for healing, though. Especially with the new cooldown that’s been added, I don’t really think getting into it too fast from healing was a real problem, basically only from Staff 1 (which I think should have been adjusted individually to fix that). The cooldown itself is a fine change. Actually think keeping half your bar was completely unnecessary, but OK.

Lunar Impact fix is appreciated. Nerf was expected since it was almost perma-daze with Moment of Clarity.

Bristleback F2 being Spike Barrage is neat. Being able to trigger it at an opportune time will be handy. No mention of fixes / improvements to the aim on said skill is disheartening, but I’ll just keep hoping its coming anyway.

There’s some nice changes here to be sure, but hopefully there’s more to it than this. Which I assume there will be, since your earlier comments said that you’d try to get some of the more concrete changes outlined for us.

Like wyvern attack speed. Don’t keep mah dragons useless ;.;

EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the prompt response Irenio. I know you said you’d try to get some more info earlier on, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it so soon, I was thinking it’d come later in the week. Cheers.

D… Does the Bristleback still evolve in to Godzilla with Signet Of The Wild? (:

Would love to have an attack skill in CA form, probably making #1 an autoattack. It doesn’t have to hit hard (like staff #1). But there are times when you enter CA and done with healing in a very short time, you will have zero output and have to leave the CA form, which immediately depletes half of your CA energy. Having an attack skill would make staying at CA form more valuable.

No changes to staff, no changes to traitline synergy with other traitlines and offensive weapons since no other weapon besides staff heals.

No changes to traits or skills to do something besides “this skill hea,s this other one also heals, and this one heals and removes conditions”.

You actually nerfed glyph of alignment.

Poison on a glyph on a class that has a weapon that is power based. Nerfing direct damage by 66% in exchange for 3 pitiful stacks of poison that do nothing in PvE.

At least we know Druid isn’t balanced with endgame PvE in mind. Thanks for making the class decisions easier as those of us who rolled ranger for DPS can now know with certainty that you’ve dashed all hopes of offensive druids/rangers being a thing in raids since all raids will now require druids for the 15% damage boost so no ranger will have the option of not picking the druid line since core ranger is trash tier in PvE.

Irenio,

These are great changes.

The astral force changes combined with the retaining of astral force have incredible synergy with traits that previously were hard to justify using during the BWE (remove conditions upon entering CF, superspeed and stealth upon leaving CF). Beyond trait synergy, these types of things enhance the ability for more damage oriented Druids to take advantage of not only these traits, but the ability to “flash” into CF, drop an important skill or two, and then “flash” out and not have as troublesome of a time regaining astral force nor as difficult of a time leaving CF and wasting remaining resource which was a double down on punishing effects in a lot of situations.

I have no criticism of these changes at all. They are pure quality changes that enhance accessibly as well as provide new playstyles that don’t jeopardize the original intent of the elite specialization.

Can’t wait to see more in the future, especially regarding those staff 2 and 4 skills.

Thanks for sharing and for quality work (you and your team).

So, a few questions I have pertaining these changes.

1) Lingering Light

• Does this trait retain its 6-second internal cooldown or has it been changed?
• Will Lingering Light activate from the Live Vicariously minor trait?
• What is the target cap for allies that can be affected by this trait?
• What is the Blind duration currently set to?

2) Glyph of Unity

• What was the decision to have the active tethering range 200 units shorter than the leash range?

I ask this because uniforming both the active and leash range of the tether to 600 units would be an overall QoL adjustment. Could this be looked into further?

3) Bristleback

• Will there be more tweaking to the Bristleback?
• What happened to the auto attack hitting twice as shown in the Druid reveal at TwitchCon?

The first question concerning the Bristleback is because it has a high initial condition damage value (1000) and only 1 of 3 damage moves applies bleeding. The bleeding is a brief 5-seconds on Rain of Spikes and the same brief duration is on Sharpened Spines.

Was wondering if another glance could be given to this pet so he can have some bleeds spread out on his move set and possibly have the bleed duration on Sharpened Spines increased or the cooldown decreased so the Bristleback can take an advantage more of the high condition damage.

The second question speaks for itself. I was looking forward to the Bristleback hitting twice. Could we have some insight as to why it was changed to a single attack during BWE3 and if it will remain as a single target attack when Heart of Thorns goes live?

Still no DPS or any form of tagging in CF RIP

Let me heal you but not get anything out of it

Still going to be only good in raiding (iffy) and not really good in any of the other content

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

I noticed you didn’t mention resetting the Bristleback Size when used with Signet of the Wild. Does this mean maybe we still get Godzilla ?

Nova Pint Kiosk.7085:

Hammerguard.9834:

So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet. Even if you wanted to lock players out of Astral Force for longer you only needed to balance more around the original gate and adjust how much Astral Force is obtained from healing and attacking. Adding a cooldown is just clunky and pointless.

It works exactly how lifeforce/shroud works now. I don’t see a problem with this at all, I do think the 10s change when they do let us keep 1/2 our remaining bar left a bit off, but eh.

This is not a good thing. We want a distinct transform from Necromancers. Not a crapper healer version. Keep homogenizing and you might as well be playing the better version, Reaper shroud.

mistsim.2748:

Hammerguard.9834:

So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet.

no, this was completely necessary, random player. i had my celestial energy bar full at all time sduring BWE3. with no cooldown, i was almost perma avatar form, which made the “form” of it a completely pointless concept.

Hammerguard.9834:

So now, we have to go through a cooldown and reach max Astral Force to use our transform. Two gates is completely unnecessary, Anet. Even if you wanted to lock players out of Astral Force for longer you only needed to balance more around the original gate and adjust how much Astral Force is obtained from healing and attacking.

Learn how to read, mistsim.

Some good and expected changes. Not sure if not just mentioned or if it’s been completely overlooked, but signet of the wild when used in celestial avatar form in order to get stability, made you lose the form. I hope that gets fixed.

There’s been some real issues mentioned like the lack of stun breaks, but one thing that amazes me that no one has really mentioned is the lack of boons and boon share in general. You just cannot be a supportive enough without at least some boon share.

Don’t think druid is viable in PvP, if it would play a role it would definitely be a supportive and no boon share, lack of stun breaks and the time required to actually heal makes it too clunky for that. Druid would need more stuff like healing on dodge roll when in celestial avatar form, similar to d/d elly where you can mitigate the damage, even next to the targeted player while healing.

Also the skill 2 in celestial avatar is still horrible, even if you wanted to cleanse just yourself you would burn to death before that blossom pops to actually cleanse you.. And the wait just makes it even far worse when trying to cleanse allies, cause they will be miles away already when that thing goes off.

WvW wise, I could basically sit in celestial avatar and carry entire 15 man zerg with my heals, so that 10 seconds cool down sounds fair, double gating it sounds bad. Make it so that you don’t have to reach the max cap, and maybe even let you keep 100% of the remaining astral force, and gate it with the 10 seconds cool down. You cannot effectively out heal anyone’s dps nor get any “extra health” (similar to necromancers) so why not?

Ancestral Grace is still the only good skill in the entire weapon (staff), Astral Wisp being somewhat useful. Hope the other ones gets some reworking, for example Vine Surge could last for 2-3 seconds, pulsing the 1 second immobilize 2-3 times. And Sublime Conversion giving you 4 seconds of protection and 10 seconds of swiftness when passed through.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks so much for getting these up. If you’re still around I would love to know if the new Lingering Light has a visual effect to allow you and allies to see that it’s active. Also, do you have an ICD for this trait to give? It has to have an ICD. Perhaps 8 seconds per target? Anyways… everything looks pretty sexy. Except for Seed of Life, I mean. It still looks like a pimple. Speaking of which, does the seed from Verdant Etchings proc the new Grace of the Land trait since it’s technically a CF skill? Cuz that would be amazing synergy.

I -think- I like what I see so far. Still really looking forward to some of those numbers, specially on staff.

Only thing that’s still a bit of a let down is CF#1. It’s too redundant. A radius increase and damage component would be great filler for the form. Something as simple as a 50/50 split b/w damage and healing with mediocre scaling on each to reflect the duality would be enough.

Maybe I’m just not reading this correctly but does the 10 sec cooldown on Celestial Form start when you enter the form or wen you leave. If you can’t get back into Celestial Form for 10 sec I’d be sad.

Excellent changes! GoL 15%, Frost Spirit 7%, GoE10%!!! Glad to see rangers getting unique party support without resorting to heals and boons!

Things I’m still concerned about:
-Lack of stunbreaks/stability
-Glyph of Unity still seems weak
-Natural Convergence. When do I use this skill? The skill roots you down and the cast time is so long.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

-snip-

Good Job on the changes. Keep up the good work, as well as with future tweaks and improvements! ^.^

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

This buff will pulse per second while in CA, right?
Sounds like a great improve, awesome.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

With the new Grace of the Land and current Ancient Seeds, this GM trait needs a decent CD time to be worthwhile, I suggest something like around 10~15 sec CD?

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

Sounds good, I would also rise the effect time for an extra 2 seconds and have a 40% uptime of that skill.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Empowerment: The radius for this skill has been increased to 600.

Hopefully all glyph will have a radius of 600, good change.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

The poison is awesome, the raw damage is fair, good job.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

Couldn’t be better 10/10 would cast again.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

Sounds good, hope that you also add the Death Shroud mechanic where you lock the regular skills for a fraction of seconds when you leave the form so you don’t cast skills accidentally, specially Staff #3.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

Nice.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• (Celestial Avatar) Lunar Impact: Reduced the daze on this skill from 3s to 2s. This skill is now ground targeted and will blast finish correctly.

We all knew it was coming, still a good skill though.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

Awesome.
About pets:
Make the fire field from the Fire Wyvern not block the other fire fields visuals and do not touch Smokescale.

Solid changes.

Grace of Land is now a very desirable trait for PVE, likely mandatory for any druid build, and Lingering Light is actually really strong and can potentially compete with Ancient Seeds for some PVP builds. Ancestral Grace may be the strongest non-teleport movement skill in the game now.

I like the Celestial Avatar changes. The heal loss for base healing isn’t so severe that it will make entering the form a waste of time on damage builds and the healing scaling will make a heal focused druid easily the strongest burst healer in the game as was intended.

The cool down on Celestial Avatar will also make sure it functions as a burst healer and not a toggle-able form like it was before. The astral force generation for damage was also very much needed so you aren’t forced to use the staff unless you want to.

Good changes so far. Can’t wait to see what other changes are coming.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

I dislike this.

I feel that this will make cleric druids way more tanky than it already is. I had a hard time killing druids already in beta. Instead, I would like to see Druids being healers instead of tanks. How about buff Natural Mender’s healing coefficient instead? It would give Druids a healer role instead of a unkillable bunker role.

Sounds good!

But please please please please please tell me that Lingering Light has an internal cooldown per ally rather than a single global cooldown!

I feel like you should at least add some some sort of a damage component to the skills in Celestial Form…

Sounds good but I have no idea how to gear this. Full celestial? You probably want to pick up at least 500 healing power.

Do something with CA 1 if you can (larger radius, faster cast) just because people won’t stand still in WvW to get healed.

Sweet Changes!

I will miss the old Lingering Light and Grace of the Land though, but happy with the tweaks

I understand Grace of the Land is on the line of CA-specific traits (top line), but I’d love to see some additional effect not purely tied to it, such as….

• Gain stability whenever you heal an ally (1 stack, 3 seconds stability, 3s cooldown, not dependent on CA form) – Think juggernaut trait for engies, its tied to the flamethrower, in this case, tied to the Staff, but also heals from rezzing, etc. Would make you a super dedicated rezzer

Levetty.1279:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Reduced the cast damage by 66%.

sure

why not

Actually just caught that. I’m hoping thats a typo and that he meant cast time. Don’t know what “cast damage” is :P

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the third beta weekend there’s been a lot of great feedback – thanks!

Below are some of the more solid changes to the Druid since the beta weekend that were made to address some concerns regarding net damage loss in a raid, celestial avatar form feeling gated by staff and glyph reward scaling.

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

• Glyph of Empowerment: The radius for this skill has been increased to 600.

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

• (Celestial Avatar) Lunar Impact: Reduced the daze on this skill from 3s to 2s. This skill is now ground targeted and will blast finish correctly.

Well wishes,
~Irenio

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

big thanks to getting these out for us to preview!

ancestral grace revision is really nice

grace of the land rework is GREAT…but needs 600 radius. this will help make druids more wanted in group play that doesn’t need healers

glyph changes are extremely weak…..they still have no use in pve. not that they all have to, but at least glyph of empowerment……the dps bonus to a group is less than 3%., so who cares about its range? it stinks. also glyph of tides still has the same illogical normal/celestial functions…..why won’t you reverse them?

the rest seams fair.

can’t wait to test it out MoC style

THANKS!

Love to test it now…

I am sure there will be more changes in the pipeline. Look forward to seeing them soon.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

Good, I think it could last a bit longer though especially as its not as easy to get in and out of CA now. Hopefully this works on yourself and your pet as well.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

Hopefully a decently low ICD per target.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

This pretty much kills the one use this skill has, tagging in events. Could be good if you plan on throwing a lot more condies around on Druid skills (e.g. burn on Staff auto, poison or torment on CA #2, torment or bleeds on Staff 4).

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

Goes from a good to a great skill. Still the only skill worth using on Staff though. Hopefully the other 4 skills get massive reworks to make it a good weapon, especially with that new legendary staff they have revealed.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

If you’re making it harder to get in and out of CA then make the stealth and superspeed from the trait last longer.

Good start but needs lots more.

CA skill 1 needs to be a damaging aoe auto attack. Some condies or a bit of damage on skill 2. Skill 5 needs to be faster, do more daamge and or let us move while using it.

Staff needs an entire rework, needs more damage, more aoe and more support. Auto attack could burn enemies and ‘refract’ off to nearby enemies. Skill 2 could do pulsing damage to enemies in the area while giving fury to nearby allies. Skill 4 could be a dark field that applies conditions to enemies that run over it. Staff 5 needs to reflect projectiles otherwise people are going to be angry, when you use it, for getting in the way of Mesmers and Gaurdians. As I said 3 is a good skill, just needs to be tied to a better weapon.

Glyphs are still bad. Needs a stun break outside of CA, revert damage nerf and hopefully you change the CA form glyphs to something more useful and less bland then a bunch of aoe heals which CA is already providing.

Grandmaster minor needs changing to something actually useful for the Ranger.

Good changes to the Celestial Avatar, the 10s CD and the half AF on early end. Good tweaks on AF generation. CAF weapon skills could still use some more ‘offensive’ support effects -

Cosmic Ray

• Small damage component
• 2s Vulnerability (AoE)

Seed of Life

• Small damage component on burst
• 2s AoE Weakness on burst

Lunar Impact

• Stun weakened foes (instead of daze, but of course keep daze, synergy with Seed of Life)

Rejuvenating Tides

• 2s vigor per pulse to allies

Natural Convergence

• Blind on final pulse
• Make it a Dark Field

Will Grace of the Land and Lingering Light apply to pets as well?

Also, yes, I think those two Grandmaster Traits need to last a bit longer since Celestial Avatar is on a 10 second cooldown now.