Guild Wars 2

I spent years fighting for the ranger acceptance in WvW/PvP teams. Was not easy to convince the commander to take a ranger, especially when other classes could offer a lot more things, so basically, for years, I was “forced” to play other classes in wvw raids.
Many rangers will understand me.
After three years I was finally able to get a spot in WVW raids thanks to the support that the druid was able to provide. I’ve spent a lot of time and golds to find a build that could be recognized as useful from my team. With my healing build I was able to keep alive my allies, stealth them, remove conditions, make aoe cc’s, and so on: I finally had a role as ranger
The 18 October patch has literally killed the role of the support druid.
I can understand the base healing nerf, especially for those roaming builds that don’t run healing power at all. That was a good nerf. I can also understand the WhAO nerf, sometimes is spammed too much for boons.
But the nerf of the celestial avatar is not acceptable, especially when it comes to an increase in the cooldown by 50%. YAY, FIFTY PERCENT. This means not only less survival for us, but especially less heals and support for our allies. Entering in CA every 10 seconds was essential to cover our role of supporter in the group. What if necromancers could enter in DS after 15 seconds instead of 10? That will be a death sentence. This is what is happened to druid, sadly

Summary: Now we are forced AGAIN to play other classes that can support better (talking about wvw raids) and in pvp we will probably be replaced by elementalists since our survability is very much worse than before, especially under focus.

I would suggest a reduction of celestial avatar cooldown to 12 seconds in pvp/wvw since all CA abilities got nerfed hard already. But 15 seconds are really so much.

Thanks all for reading but this patch has disappointed me a lot

They nerfed it for the sake of 1vs1 balance apparently. I hate the cd nerf.

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining… meanwhile making videos highlighting how “cool” other professions are in combat.

You complained about “CA abuse with heals and stealth”, yet as rev, you have access to poison heal debuff, aoe skills, reveal… and the burst to back it up… let’s not forget about heavy armor, high hp, double heals, high damage, passive boons, teleport skills to apply melee pressure…

Won’t even talk about the low skill daredevils on the forums whining about Druid immobilize lol, while running continuous stealth use builds built for super crit or condi… or those in spvp complaining that their tank couldn’t kill a Druid, and vice versa, but Druid is obviously op…

I read the forums and see a plethora of noncompetive players who probably graduated from FPS shooter games and can’t handle pvp in an mmo. These same players want the devs to hold their hands instead of improving or changing themselves.

Unfortunately, druid pre-patch was hard to justify in a zerg. Most pugmanders would accept healing druids when they reached the squad limit. Very few WvW guilds would accept healing druids; most wanted only healing ele’s.

This patch reduced the overall healing output of the druid significantly because of the CA recharge increase. Druid will still be good in roaming and havoc squads, but I don’t believe it will have any place left in zergs when the ele can simply do almost everything better at this point.

High tier play (ESL, top teams, etc) -> Druid is balanced in what it offers as a capable role in a PvP oriented team, it’s not broken, it’s not ridiculous, it was solid and also wasn’t braindeads like spirits. It still is like this despite the nerf to CA.

In any level of play below that -> You will have people crying that it’s broken beyond belief , that it is godlike.

This is primarily because people in that tier don’t know counters, positioning. They don’t like learning other classes and figuring out weaknesses. They don’t want to do that work, it’s easier to come to a forum and complain about it. Obviously, most of those people aren’t the people in the 1st group I mentioned above. They’re the people who lost in a Solo que or ranked match with a bad team comp or most commonly, lost in a 1v1 so they come here to complain – because the game is centered around 1v1s obviously.

Unfortunately, the balance team listens more to those people than actually studying metas and slightly adjusting things, which is sad.

This isn’t just the case for the druid class but many classes over the years have had builds with intricate playstyles (whether they were op or not is not the question here) nerfed into the ground. I personally don’t think Druid was completely gutted, but I’m making a point on balance by Anet in this game over the metas.

A lot of builds , that may have been op in the past across all classes have been completely gutted and destroyed because they make massive changes without any thought of power creep instead of making slight adjustments and seeing how metas shift. This has hurt them more than help them and hurt many builds in the same process.

Guild Wars 2 has some of the smoothest fighting combat gameplay I’ve played, and I have played a ton of MMOs in my time dating all the way back to EQ1. The balance? Some of the worst I’ve seen in an MMO.

It would have been great to invest in an actual test server both PvE and PvP with proper splits so users could copy a character over and test changes accordingly before massive balance patches were put in place but they opted out of this route, in doing that they make tons of a changes without consequence or thought of what might happen, mostly riddled with bugs that takes months to fix (hilt bash is just now getting fixed in the next balance patch , it took how long? many things still broken , this is the case for many classes, if not all) and end up with people just getting fed up and leaving entirely.

blitzkrieg, +1

Pretty much spot on. Thing is, rangers been nerfed harder throughout this games history than any other class, and it continues down the same path. When it comes to rangers, it’s not some small adjustments in the patches, they always bring the hammer and the axe and more or less slaughter us.

blitzkrieg.2451:

High tier play (ESL, top teams, etc) -> Druid is balanced in what it offers as a capable role in a PvP oriented team, it’s not broken, it’s not ridiculous, it was solid and also wasn’t braindeads like spirits. It still is like this despite the nerf to CA.

In any level of play below that -> You will have people crying that it’s broken beyond belief , that it is godlike.

This is primarily because people in that tier don’t know counters, positioning. They don’t like learning other classes and figuring out weaknesses. They don’t want to do that work, it’s easier to come to a forum and complain about it. Obviously, most of those people aren’t the people in the 1st group I mentioned above. They’re the people who lost in a Solo que or ranked match with a bad team comp or most commonly, lost in a 1v1 so they come here to complain – because the game is centered around 1v1s obviously.

Unfortunately, the balance team listens more to those people than actually studying metas and slightly adjusting things, which is sad.

This isn’t just the case for the druid class but many classes over the years have had builds with intricate playstyles (whether they were op or not is not the question here) nerfed into the ground. I personally don’t think Druid was completely gutted, but I’m making a point on balance by Anet in this game over the metas.

A lot of builds , that may have been op in the past across all classes have been completely gutted and destroyed because they make massive changes without any thought of power creep instead of making slight adjustments and seeing how metas shift. This has hurt them more than help them and hurt many builds in the same process.

Guild Wars 2 has some of the smoothest fighting combat gameplay I’ve played, and I have played a ton of MMOs in my time dating all the way back to EQ1. The balance? Some of the worst I’ve seen in an MMO.

It would have been great to invest in an actual test server both PvE and PvP with proper splits so users could copy a character over and test changes accordingly before massive balance patches were put in place but they opted out of this route, in doing that they make tons of a changes without consequence or thought of what might happen, mostly riddled with bugs that takes months to fix (hilt bash is just now getting fixed in the next balance patch , it took how long? many things still broken , this is the case for many classes, if not all) and end up with people just getting fed up and leaving entirely.

I’ll +1 this too.

Sadly there are too many low skill whiners and a dev team who, despite have a mostly great combat system, doesn’t devote the resources and time to improve the most important aspects of the game… and those are the professions we play.

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining…

ya that totally me. I don’t at all solo roam on druid and therefore do not know how to counter them.

Justine.6351:

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining…

ya that totally me. I don’t at all solo roam on druid and therefore do not know how to counter them.

I like the selective quoting…

I’m fully aware you play Druid, but your complaints show you are only 1 step up from players with 7-8k staff auto claims… I can pull a number of quotes to dissect them, but you clearly had issues against skilled players on Druid despite the fact you play one…

Justine.6351:

I used to think it was player skill being the problem but I fought one this weekend where there was no doubt he was full celestial and knew how to abuse celestial avatar. It was like fighting a bunker scrapper before they got nerfed. The bs needs to die or something cause it’s moronic.

Your recent posts on Druid clearly show your overall inexperience with competitive pvp play. I suggest learning the tools to counter things you have difficulty fighting, it will make you a better player.

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining…

ya that totally me. I don’t at all solo roam on druid and therefore do not know how to counter them.

I like the selective quoting…

I’m fully aware you play Druid, but your complaints show you are only 1 step up from players with 7-8k staff auto claims… I can pull a number of quotes to dissect them, but you clearly had issues against skilled players on Druid despite the fact you play one…

Justine.6351:

I used to think it was player skill being the problem but I fought one this weekend where there was no doubt he was full celestial and knew how to abuse celestial avatar. It was like fighting a bunker scrapper before they got nerfed. The bs needs to die or something cause it’s moronic.

Your recent posts on Druid clearly show your overall inexperience with competitive pvp play. I suggest learning the tools to counter things you have difficulty fighting, it will make you a better player.

Link me some of your leetness pvp play then. Not that I care about pvp but maybe I can see something I can use.

Justine.6351:

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining…

ya that totally me. I don’t at all solo roam on druid and therefore do not know how to counter them.

I like the selective quoting…

I’m fully aware you play Druid, but your complaints show you are only 1 step up from players with 7-8k staff auto claims… I can pull a number of quotes to dissect them, but you clearly had issues against skilled players on Druid despite the fact you play one…

Justine.6351:

I used to think it was player skill being the problem but I fought one this weekend where there was no doubt he was full celestial and knew how to abuse celestial avatar. It was like fighting a bunker scrapper before they got nerfed. The bs needs to die or something cause it’s moronic.

Your recent posts on Druid clearly show your overall inexperience with competitive pvp play. I suggest learning the tools to counter things you have difficulty fighting, it will make you a better player.

Link me some of your leetness pvp play then. Not that I care about pvp but maybe I can see something I can use.

You’re clearly not addressing the key points.

Competitive player vs player… players against other players in competitive player vs player modes such as wvw/rvr/open world pvp/arena/gvg…

Hi, @Swagger, I dont know why go so hard on Justine, he’s a legit druid player and his opinion is valid. I think that the main problem with the new CA cd is not even about balance. Giving CA such a long CD makes CF regen almost an “out of palce mechanic” when it was 10 sec i could justify it’s there just to deny an “end scenario” that only very spesific builds can abuse. at 15 sec thouse 2 mechanics just overlap on big array of druid builds. A.net chose the easy way, I also agree with @Justine that the source of druid’s over the top survivebility is not the CA abilities, but rather, the DC and CS traits, thouse 2 are over powerful in the most cheesy way, auto include in all druid builds. IF you ask me, i would remove the stun break from DC and make CS only 2 sec stealth without the super speed. to balance this nerf i would make SOTW instant and stun break(enlargemnt as well), like warrior’s last stand. I would also would make VE trait to make all glyphs instant cast and give the elite glyph stunbreak. Another thing a.net can to play with the CA mechainc is to make CF regen scale with HP and remove the CD alltogather. Even if heavy HP builds with lots of regen ticks will be able to CA alot, the abuse will not be so great due to the "DC and CS " nerf. Druid weakness should be poison and stun lock. this is just a sample of a much bigger scale of changes i think that should be done to all clasess. I think breserker trait SI should be stunbreak only and not condi remove(condis should be warrior weakness).

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves.

Lol! Yeah right! Please elaborate that exact statement, I’m eagerly awaiting your response!

OGDeadHead.8326:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves.

Lol! Yeah right! Please elaborate that exact statement, I’m eagerly awaiting your response!

No AF decay ooc,
50% savings on CA exit
regen contributes to AFG

druids begged for this crying that the only way to AFG reliably was to build around it. And what happened when those 3 things got patched in? People built specifically around anything that would AFG effectively making the only gate on CA a 10sec CD.

I did address this already in a recent post reviewing how we got from HoT release till today,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ty-Druids-who-been-here-since-HoT/first#post6364596

I like how your name is on one of those threads doing what you seem to do best on my posts, talking down on me.

Justine.6351:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves.

Lol! Yeah right! Please elaborate that exact statement, I’m eagerly awaiting your response!

No AF decay ooc,
50% savings on CA exit
regen contributes to AFG

druids begged for this crying that the only way to AFG reliably was to build around it. And what happened when those 3 things got patched in? People built specifically around anything that would AFG effectively making the only gate on CA a 10sec CD.

I did address this already in a recent post reviewing how we got from HoT release till today,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ty-Druids-who-been-here-since-HoT/first#post6364596

I like how your name is on one of those threads doing what you seem to do best on my posts, talking down on me.

I don’t talk down on you, I’ve supported ideas you laid out as well, like for example taunt on guard (now we got it on protect me, but whatever). I also supported your ideas about reworking DC into a more group support oriented trait just the other day, remember?
Speaking of DC, my suggestion to that trait were to change it to a condi clear that removes one condition each second spent in CA instead of all conditions at once. Combine that with your idea of a more group oriented trait would not only remove the spammable nature of how CA used to work previously with DC and CS, but would also encourage the support nature of druids.

As for my original qoute here from your post, when you say druids did this to themselves, it sounds like druid players were cheating or something, when all we did were using the mechanics given to us. So, players shouldn’t have used these abilities to their max, and maybe then Anet wouldn’t have nerfed us, is that what you’re saying?

*

I’m NOT on a mission to jump on every post you make and downtalk it just for the sake of it. I will however post when I don’t agree with what you’re saying, and I’ll also post when I do agree with good ideas.

/Shrug I like the nerf but then again I don’t zerg. Druid is still great for smaller scale team fights, great cc and burst healing. I think it was a good nerf now if they just gave rangers some more unlockable stuff or cleanse with base ranger I’d be happy

Yep OP, you are right. For too long rangers were unwanted in many areas. And we tried too hard to prove ourselves for commanders, pvp teams etc. Even if we played perfect for one week, our one tiny mistake counted as = oh ranger again…

Healing reduction was ok. WHaO was ok. But CA was already a stupid idea, and nerfing it was way more idiotic than anything they did for rangers. Now again rangers are “meh”. We are not useless, but we are “meh”. All professions can do everything slightly better (without sacrificing many things).

But in the latest patch notes I have seen the part where they talked about “changing the nature of the elite spec.” so I still have some hope about Druids/rangers, if they do not wait for another 3 months.

Nerfing a specialization mechanic in a mode intended for group play because of 1v1 issues is such a dumb move in so many ways.

Totally agree with the OP.

Someone from ANet should play a support druid in a WvW zerg from times to times. A 15 seconds cooldown is way too much in the current meta. 10 was fine, 12 could have been fine, 15 is a big fail.

Let’s face it, Druidic Clarity and Celestial Avatar were the main targets here. Then why wouldn’t they add a 15 sec internal cooldown to both these traits in WvW instead of nerfing the whole mechanic?

Swagger.1459:

Justine.6351:

Druids did this to themselves. Until they change or nerf AFG that cooldown will probably stay regardless how much it will hurt a support druid built to support.

Actually, it’s players, like you, who don’t use counters in your build and come to the forum complaining… meanwhile making videos highlighting how “cool” other professions are in combat.

You complained about “CA abuse with heals and stealth”, yet as rev, you have access to poison heal debuff, aoe skills, reveal… and the burst to back it up… let’s not forget about heavy armor, high hp, double heals, high damage, passive boons, teleport skills to apply melee pressure…

Won’t even talk about the low skill daredevils on the forums whining about Druid immobilize lol, while running continuous stealth use builds built for super crit or condi… or those in spvp complaining that their tank couldn’t kill a Druid, and vice versa, but Druid is obviously op…

I read the forums and see a plethora of noncompetive players who probably graduated from FPS shooter games and can’t handle pvp in an mmo. These same players want the devs to hold their hands instead of improving or changing themselves.

Druid was broken af in pvp, and the patch fixed that. Dunno the state of ranger in wvw now, proly bad except for some lame roam builds, but trying to protect spvp druid prenerf is dumb

Earix.5684:

Let’s face it, Druidic Clarity and Celestial Avatar were the main targets here. Then why wouldn’t they add a 15 sec internal cooldown to both these traits in WvW instead of nerfing the whole mechanic?

That would be an even more stupid move. Traits with their own, out of sync icds are really bad, so thank god they didn’t go that route.

The cooldown increase isn’t all that bad. Druid’s been nerfed a lot since release, but I’m hoping the other elite specs eat more nerfs, too.

I personally liked Druid, as well as all of the other elite specs, during the beta testing phases, as they were definitely side-grades compared to the now almost-mandatory power creeps.

That’s just me though, as I’m sure others would disagree, but we can at least agree to disagree. Just don’t nerf the Pets anymore.

All the elites will get nerfed further as we get closer to the next expansion… I’m just glad they didn’t touch PVP. Anet gets kudos for me for splitting more skills between the 3 modes.