Guild Wars 2

If they only added directional arrows to Hornet Sting and Monarch’s Leap I would use Sword/Warhorn in a heart beat.

As a power variant (marauder’s mostly) roamer, the CA isn’t much of a hit for me… Anybody running power and roaming or small groups is using it for 2 things: super speed + invis and stun break and condi clear. The recharge is roughly the same in this aspect.

I can see the issue with HP variants in support rolls, looks like it was nerfed across the board even heavily investing into HP gear. Which sucks. If you heavily invest, you should get rewarded for it, not punished.

For the unblockable pet attacks, this won’t last long , and it will either be reverted or maybe reduced to 2 seconds or something. The crying from this alone will be immense. I’m calling it right now, it will be heavily adjusted. We all know what happened with taunt unblockable when it was introduced. This is that but with every attack , for 4 seconds. I’m thinking it will be straight up reverted.

Maul buff is odd, but helpful. I use GS as one of my weapons so it helps quite a bit.

Shortbow without the 1200 range, no matter what you do , will suck.

Question for those good with all professions:

From what I can gather, everyone is pretty grumpy about this patch. If everyone got slightly nerfed I’m happier with how things are going. Is that accurate?

I am sort of shocked adrenal health berserkers didn’t get toned down a bit though. Those things are ridiculously cheesey and annoying. They’re like a more passive version of gs/staff druid.

Fluffball.8307:

Question for those good with all professions:

From what I can gather, everyone is pretty grumpy about this patch. If everyone got slightly nerfed I’m happier with how things are going. Is that accurate?

I am sort of shocked adrenal health berserkers didn’t get toned down a bit though. Those things are ridiculously cheesey and annoying. They’re like a more passive version of gs/staff druid.

This seems about accurate with the exception of thief who I believe was mostly buffed, although not in anything that they already use (so opened up more options like our SB and WH buffs)

Durzlla.6295:

Fluffball.8307:

Question for those good with all professions:

From what I can gather, everyone is pretty grumpy about this patch. If everyone got slightly nerfed I’m happier with how things are going. Is that accurate?

I am sort of shocked adrenal health berserkers didn’t get toned down a bit though. Those things are ridiculously cheesey and annoying. They’re like a more passive version of gs/staff druid.

This seems about accurate with the exception of thief who I believe was mostly buffed, although not in anything that they already use (so opened up more options like our SB and WH buffs)

Elementalists seem to be quite happy with the buffs to dagger and that one Glyph too.
Plus after a little bit of testing, I’m not even that disappointed anymore, The unblockable buff to pets came in really handy quite a few times today (shredded condi mes and a axe/shield Berserker with Bristle f2 a few times today ).

So, I’ve seen some extreme statements around different outlets about how this patch “killed zerk/condi Druid in Raids.”

This is false. Actually, if you were playing those builds, and even for a single moment had the thought that your purpose was healing, and that this patch “ruined” your build; then you’ve been doing it wrong.

You aren’t there for healing in those builds, you are there for DPS buffs, and the rotation you use is to spend the LEAST amount of time in CF while squeezing out the MOST DPS buffs for your party/group that you possible can.

As a matter of fact, with the speedrun groups starting to believe that they will need to pick up another mesmer in their composition and run 5-5 comps since 4-4-2 was severely neutered by the Mesmer/Revenant nerfs, there is a possibility that in those groups zerk/condi Druid will become even more invaluable since those groups will be looking to squeeze out as much DPS as what gets lost from having to drop the Revenant for another Mesmer in kitten mirror comp.

Moving on from PvE to PvP:
These changes hurt. Not survivability or anything like that, but what they do is hurt the ability to support through CF because you end up feeling like you have to save CF for use as a stunbreaker, but much more importantly as a condi clear. These condi builds have RIDICULOUS output on such a low cooldown that before, where with all the CF generating sources you could just match the condi output and survive enough to try to run away, now, you have to blow cooldowns on cooldowns to avoid the constant cancer inbetween CF usage.

Why this hurts? It hurts our team role. Without being able to use CF as liberally as before and having to save entering form entirely for self utility, the ability to use it supportively has to basically be combined with running another support on the team to support you if you try to support to liberally.

It finally makes the state of the game frustrating enough to want to complain about as a Druid player. The amount of condi output, especially on focused targets, is absurd. And as usual, it seems like ANet hears the community with this complaint, and then nerfs the defense against the most consistently complained about aspect of PvP. Like, it’s to the degree where Revs aren’t even “muscling out” other power builds, it’s that classes own condi cancer builds are 1000x stronger than their power builds could hope to be.

Anyhow, mini rant aside, I haven’t personally noticed a drop in my ability to win fights, but in PvP specifically, there has absolutely been a drop in my ability to reliably support my team, and I think it’s time ANet addresses it indirectly, starting with how condi imbalance is running rampant in their game.

jcbroe.4329:

So, I’ve seen some extreme statements around different outlets about how this patch “killed zerk/condi Druid in Raids.”

This is false. Actually, if you were playing those builds, and even for a single moment had the thought that your purpose was healing, and that this patch “ruined” your build; then you’ve been doing it wrong.

You aren’t there for healing in those builds, you are there for DPS buffs, and the rotation you use is to spend the LEAST amount of time in CF while squeezing out the MOST DPS buffs for your party/group that you possible can.

As a matter of fact, with the speedrun groups starting to believe that they will need to pick up another mesmer in their composition and run 5-5 comps since 4-4-2 was severely neutered by the Mesmer/Revenant nerfs, there is a possibility that in those groups zerk/condi Druid will become even more invaluable since those groups will be looking to squeeze out as much DPS as what gets lost from having to drop the Revenant for another Mesmer in kitten mirror comp.

Moving on from PvE to PvP:
These changes hurt. Not survivability or anything like that, but what they do is hurt the ability to support through CF because you end up feeling like you have to save CF for use as a stunbreaker, but much more importantly as a condi clear. These condi builds have RIDICULOUS output on such a low cooldown that before, where with all the CF generating sources you could just match the condi output and survive enough to try to run away, now, you have to blow cooldowns on cooldowns to avoid the constant cancer inbetween CF usage.

Why this hurts? It hurts our team role. Without being able to use CF as liberally as before and having to save entering form entirely for self utility, the ability to use it supportively has to basically be combined with running another support on the team to support you if you try to support to liberally.

It finally makes the state of the game frustrating enough to want to complain about as a Druid player. The amount of condi output, especially on focused targets, is absurd. And as usual, it seems like ANet hears the community with this complaint, and then nerfs the defense against the most consistently complained about aspect of PvP. Like, it’s to the degree where Revs aren’t even “muscling out” other power builds, it’s that classes own condi cancer builds are 1000x stronger than their power builds could hope to be.

Anyhow, mini rant aside, I haven’t personally noticed a drop in my ability to win fights, but in PvP specifically, there has absolutely been a drop in my ability to reliably support my team, and I think it’s time ANet addresses it indirectly, starting with how condi imbalance is running rampant in their game.

all this exactly! to really get the benefit of these changes you need to invest very heavily in healing power for PvE and there is no set that has healing power primary with damaging stats. Magi and Clerics are both basically tank gear, HP tank or toughness tank. mixing a dps set with one of these sets still leaves you at or near our old no investment healing level. I believe the cut off point was found to be about 1250 Healing power to heal the same as the previous 0 healing power build. If anet wanted to make this change fine, whatever, but at least put out a set that can be useful for us in a fight.

The changes really hurt in PvP, 1v1 and some 2v1’s are still winnable for me but survivability is way down and group fights are getting tougher to survive. There are too many condi’s floating around with too many high dps power builds and you just can’t protect yourself against it all.

If there was a HP/Power/Precision set (or maybe even HP/Power/Ferocity), that would be ideal.

Knowing my luck, something like that will be introduced only after I respec all my gear to Magi.

Razor.9872:

If there was a HP/Power/Precision set (or maybe even HP/Power/Ferocity), that would be ideal.

Knowing my luck, something like that will be introduced only after I respec all my gear to Magi.

I don’t raid, but I’m trying to decide similar. Magi or Minstrels. I need to swap from Celestial Ascended. I really don’t want to make two sets (lazy and farming nevermore )

Minstrel in WvW is a bit OP (solo/scout)

Razor.9872:

If there was a HP/Power/Precision set (or maybe even HP/Power/Ferocity), that would be ideal.

Knowing my luck, something like that will be introduced only after I respec all my gear to Magi.

Full Zealot’s with Runes of the Druid would get you want. You’d lose the 10% healing from Monk runes but as long as you’re chaining glyphs properly, you’d only by down maybe ~200 healing power and that 10% bonus and you’d be doing something like 60-70% more damage than Magis (on a scale of Magis to Zerk where Zerk is 100% damage).

It wouldn’t necessarily be a more optimized or better option than either full on magis or damage or crossing your fingers and waiting for Menders stats in PvE, but you as an individual might enjoy the playstyle better lol.

Also @Prophet;

Yeah I’m finding it’s a total playstyle shift from pointholding back to heavy kiting waiting on CCs. It isn’t necessarily that I feel like I’m losing fights more, but I feel like the point gets neutralized much quicker than prepatch, which makes it overall harder to carry games by myself, even though I can win all of my 1v1 fights. It makes it so that if a team can’t be carried in teamfights, you can’t just win the game alone by outrotating and forcing the enemy team to rotate 2+ to you because you just don’t have the sustain to make that meaningful now if your team isn’t skilled enough to capitalize on that extra time you buy them.

That’s probably balanced, but when I get queued with people who aren’t up to snuff in the MMR tier or aren’t actually playing to win, the overall impact you bring feels much less meaningful, which just isn’t a great feeling when you can play a flawless game with perfect execution and not carry it because johnny-what’s-a-dodge and his band of misfits keep dying to a single person.

jcbroe.4329:

Also @Prophet;

Yeah I’m finding it’s a total playstyle shift from pointholding back to heavy kiting waiting on CCs. It isn’t necessarily that I feel like I’m losing fights more, but I feel like the point gets neutralized much quicker than prepatch, which makes it overall harder to carry games by myself, even though I can win all of my 1v1 fights. It makes it so that if a team can’t be carried in teamfights, you can’t just win the game alone by outrotating and forcing the enemy team to rotate 2+ to you because you just don’t have the sustain to make that meaningful now if your team isn’t skilled enough to capitalize on that extra time you buy them.

That’s probably balanced, but when I get queued with people who aren’t up to snuff in the MMR tier or aren’t actually playing to win, the overall impact you bring feels much less meaningful, which just isn’t a great feeling when you can play a flawless game with perfect execution and not carry it because johnny-what’s-a-dodge and his band of misfits keep dying to a single person.

I’d say that given the current nerfs to Druid’s sustain in pvp, maybe it’s time for Anet to revert some of the initial changes they made to Celestial Avatar?

I’m thinking specifically of having Seed of Life cleanse 2 conditions again, and maybe, fingers crossed, but probably never gonna happen, the original daze duration on Lunar Impact.

As a side note Druid definitely feels harder to play in pvp…….But that kind of makes it feel much more rewarding as well. Season 5 should be very engaging.