Well, the changes/nerfs to CA healing will not diversify us on their own. If you go with this, and only this, I can promise you, any non healer build will die.
This is gonna be pretty ranty, but it will touch on a lot of things. Short form down below!
PvP:
If this will be applied in PvP too, any build without HealPow will fall off the radar even more than they already have. You will have even more Bunker Druid players, because this is already good, and will now be the only good choice, because all other builds will loose out on survivability. They will keep using Solider rune/ Resounding Timbre and a bunch of shouts.
Raids(and maybe Fractals/Dungeons)
Even though I don’t run Raids myself yet, I have friends who taught me a little about how druids are used in Raids. Right now they use about 1200 HealPow, the rest of stats are used for damage, because more damage is good.
Now, depending on how you will balance this, we might actually see a bit more diversity in raids. If our scaling gets better in a way that we need less that 1200 HealPow, we can use the “left over” stats for other things. If we still need the same HealPow, nothing will change. If we need more, we will either be a pure healer class, or we will become useless, replaces by Ele healers or something like that.
And with a quick look at fractals: Our condi damage build was relevant T4 fractals, but that already changed with the recent fractal scaling change. If anything, Condi builds are maybe on par with power builds. And our power builds are already underwhelming.
WvW:
I play a lot of WvW, and right now we druids function just as a healer/cc dealer + fury/regen bot there. There are some niche builds for zerkfighting, like usic Sic’em and Berserker stats + longbow + ancient seeds to pick of all the thieves that wanna sneak around on the sides, but even killing them is not quite easy.
The projectile hate makes Longbow not very useful for the rest of zerkfights. Many times you can use LB5 and then throw it away.
Shortbow/Axe mainhand suffer from this too.
Condimeta forces us to pick some condi clear. So Druidic Clarity is almost a must. As already mentioned in the PvP section, many use Trooper Runes(read Soldier for PvP) for condi clear with shouts. This is a rather small condi clear, but it’s quite reliable anyway, also it’s AoE for 5 people. So that’s all fine.
There are 3 other options for condi clear:
1. Signet of Renewal: The problem here is that it’s a very long cooldown. Also the pet has to be within 600 range and alive. In zerkfights this is quite unreliable, chances are both pets are dead and switch is on cooldown, well, you’re kittened! Oh? You clicked it anyway, because you paniced? Well, it’s on a minute cooldown now! Even though it did nothing! Common, this is an annoying concept Anet. There has to be a better way for this! Even if the pet is alive, if we are in a zerkfight and it draws condis from a few allies(Is there even a cap? I bet it’s 5), that’s basically an instant death for the pet
2.Wilderness knowledge + Survival Abilities: Good condi clear, but the Troll Unguent is a very risky heal ability, for sharpening stones we would need good condi builds and who even uses muddy terrain?
3. Verdant Etching + Glyphs. So yea, for WvW this one is irrelevant. The seed of live only casts after our Glyph casting time is over and then it takes another second for the seed to explode and actually clear the condi and heal us and for that we need to stay in that small field around the seed? Need to doge something or run away from something or anything else that keeps you from standing still in the field? Okay! Your verdant etching is useless! Even if you buffed it, like for example: “Verdant Etching – One Condi is removed from you and your pet when you start casting a glyph” Or set the radius to 450 or make the seed explode faster. Also, Lightfield? Yes! We definitely don’t have enough lightfields on the battlefield!
Even then, the glyphs are still just kinda bad. Tiny radius, no boons, Glyph of Unity is more useless than Mistfire Wolf. Glyph of alignment is underwhelming in Normal form, If I’ll take it, I’d use it for the CA form, but even that it only has a ranger of 300 again.
Glyphs, as they are now, are just totally useless for WvW (Cept glyph of equality. Everyone loves equality)
BTW, why does Seed of Life have half a second Cast Time if I just wanna normally place it in CA? That means it takes 1.5 seconds for it to fully take effect! I will NEVER ever hit my allies with this! I never cast it. It’s no use. Allies are just too good at dodging such a small thing. Even I myself am too good at dodging it!
