Guild Wars 2

Hey rangers, after the Druid reveal, the Balance Patch details, and the New pets,

how do you all feel now?

About the same as before, pets weren’t addressed, rangers still don’t fill a role in any core aspect of the game. Druids will be limited raids only and sporadic wvw uses.

I felt fine before and will be better after.

Have always loved my ranger and will continue to do so.

Disappointed. The Druid team missed every possible opportunity to really do something great with our elite spec. The amount of effort the community put into providing solutions to many of our problems just completely ignored. The elite spec completely ignores the “we want you to work with your pet” mantra that has been Anets excuse for not providing perma or timed limited in-combat stow has been shown to mean precisely nothing. This spec does nothing for working with the pet, and treats our class mechanic as an afterthought. It’s just something takes up f1-f4.

I take it back, they did give us one thing. We asked for more group utility. So they blew that out of proportion and made an elite that does little else besides healing. So they kind of asnwered one request, but unfortunately they chose to answer it with mocking sarcasm.

The aethetics and style of the druid are completely out of touch with the rest of the class. I honestly think that celestial form was originally designed for elementalist but was just thrown in the bin, where irenio found it and stuck it haphazard onto druid. Just like he did with MDG, the former necro trait Siphoned Power. Robert Gee binned it because it worthless, Irenio took it straight out the bin and celotaped it on to rangers back along with a sign which reads “kick me”.

I am pretty excited about the Druid and even more so about the change to HaO. I suppose people expected their builds to just be buffed and they simply fail to see the worth of the astral form.

Great weekend overall.

i wanted a lion as pet : /

overall im very happy, druid seems good and allows a new unique way of playing, but i think, that i will not play druid, becouse i actualy dislike playing a healer

Pets: Awesome.
Balance: Nice.
Druid: Meh.

I feel like I must be the only one not excited about the Druid and feel like it doesn’t fit with how I play the Ranger. Aside from the Reaper none of the specs are going to entice me to change my builds for them. I’m still undecided on the expansion, the one thing that got me excited were the pets. I was hoping for the Druid to be more of a control caster, that would have had far better synergy with how the Ranger is than a healer.

The elite is absolute crap imo… Lets just turn everything you do into heals. That just screams “lost interest”… There appears to be no other thought put into it other than replicating in various ways to heal people more. At least the pets are cool.

The pets looked nice and I’m excited for the long overdue balance of the main professions.

Druid though strikes me as overly focused on healing to the point that it’s essentially a gimmick spec. It also seems like it was designed exclusively to prop up the new raid content at the expense of other areas of play. This is worrisome given Anet’s track record of abandoning content like Dungeons and Fractals. Are we going to be stuck with the elite spec designed specifically for content that will likely be abandoned eighteen months down the road when something new and shiny catches Anet’s eye?

I didn’t want this and I don’t particularly care for it but I need time and testing to see if I can take what’s been dumped on us and try to salvage something workable from it. Which is a shame considering how little actual testing time has been allocated to us. Any way you cut it though, I didn’t make a Ranger to be a healer and I will never be anybody’s healbot.

I have two rangers, and I love them both despite the problems the profession faces in the current state of the game. This is not going to change that.

The druid reveal? I like it. I think it adds a long-awaited flavour to rangers that I was happy to play during gw1, and the lore finally catching up to us now? I’m good with it.

The balance patch details? I’m ambivalent. As an older gamer, balance patches come and go and the evolution of the game changes. This is nothing new to me. The only balance patch that ever blew up my skirt were the condition changes during the last big drop. Beyond that, no matter what we’ve been given its always been an up and down process. I see no reason to white knight the ranger, and I definitely never saw a reason to blather on about hurt feelings about when they suffer dry spots. To me, its all the same. Maybe it makes me jaded, but the important thing is my rangers are gunna survive, and be what they are for me as long as I have them.

Pets reveal? I am one of the wierdos that actually doesn’t mind all the pets. They have their uses, like tools. And you can use the right tool for the right job. The more tools I have the better the craftsman I can be. Each of the pets have their good points and their bad, and the new pets are likely going to follow suit. The Bristleback kinda caught my eye, but we’ll see how that plays out.

The entire elite I’m going to add it to the list of things that are available to me, but are likely going to serve niche roles, like all the other builds. I find the term ‘elite’ spec is sort of ephemeral. Is it really elite? What’s so elite about it? Will it cost more than the regular specs? Why? Because after seeing what’s available the traits seem about as damp across the board as all the others. Has the elite specs widened the spectrum of possible builds? Maybe. Should it cost more than the others? I don’t think it should.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, that meta builds are sort of just another niche build. They work good in specific circumstances like all the others, but that one build that performs well against certain bosses well how many do they number? 3-4? 5+? Those mobs in those portions of the game represent a small faction of the whole. These elite specs I don’t think were meant to supplant all the other builds out there, and people who are flailing their arms crying about not wanting to be a healer? Well, you have a choice to not be. You can be the same ranger you always were. No one is forcing people to use these specs, and likely never should be.

What’s wrong with the specs is they are what they are, and they are going to change and evolve as the game progresses. They are not the problem. To my mind, its the thoroughly unhelpful vocal community that is the problem. There’s too much unrealistic expectation and ‘feels’, and not enough logical and critical discussion that is helpful to the community at large. Its true you have to dig through poop to find the gold, but if the unhelpfuls could stop kittenting all over everything, perhaps we can get to the meat of the issue a lot faster.

Bad players will always Cry, even if their class will be most OP in game.
For me – Ranger was really powerful class. After Druid reveal, there born few very powerful builds.

And balance patch buffed some trait lines and skills, and that’s only the beginning.
More of that, Pets condition damage was finally buffed, and as we know, some combination of pets can keep u to 23 bleed on target. with 1000+25might + trait it’s 3300 dps from pet bleed only, so in pve pet will do close to 5-6k dps These will affect pvp also.

I’m really excited! i’m w8ing for Tuesday.

Pretty great!

I already have an offensive druid support planned, and I’m really excited to fine tune and test it this coming weekend. Feel the wrath of nature, betches.

Its just beta, but i hope they will change a LOT

Kitty.1502:

About the same as before, pets weren’t addressed, rangers still don’t fill a role in any core aspect of the game. Druids will be limited raids only and sporadic wvw uses.

If you don’t see the potential the druid has for ranger pvp builds, then I can’t help you.

whaaaaat i main as Mesmer and after i saw how awesome druid will be i will roll ranger for sure…. greatsword/staff ranger with cleric

something like this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQFAxiUqgDLw1Ch/gaf9MIA+04HO6CWlA-TVhZgAtKB9V/xb/BAlfh6AIFgPCtA-w

+all the druid stuff might chance healing skill also not sure…

staff 4 was channel waterfield so only way to blast it urself is to get call of winds on pet swamp.. fury everywere beacose it will give you back opening strike whats 100% crit and applys 5 stack of vunrebility and soo on.. look how much regen will heal xDDDD omfg xD

Mesmer main here aswell and I am pretty excited to test the druid.
It seems rather versatile with nice CC options.
Also I like the visuals and cosmic theme.
It sounds promising.

Love the pets, excited for the balance changes, druid looks very boring but I see its value.

I think less than 10% of active rangers will have any desire to play healer for more than a day, and that the new spec will be used by people from other classes that want to build a Druid.

The constant destruction and reinvention of the ranger class within an mmo is basically like dark matter. You apparently can’t have a universe without it, but no one could tell you why.

I would have preferred the new specialization for rangers to be something else than babysitting.

I’m mostly liking the pets and the balance changes, druid is too heal focused for my taste. Btw, did anyone catch the specifics of tigers’ F2?

IDK, about the same?

I like the idea of being able to heal, if I feel like it, but I have no idea how well it will work, or how much it will be needed.

Also, while the option to heal is nice, I still want my class to function as a Ranger; not just as a Druid.

Also, personally, I would have incorporated healing into Ranger via a healbow.

So, healing arrows etc., rather than staff stuff.

Would have felt more in tune with the class.

If the pets were more reliable/longer-lived, I would have had them involved with the healing, as well.

I have nothing against staves and they are definitely in tune with Druids; just not so sure they’re in tune with Rangers?

The pets look great (love the tiger!), but it remains to be seen how long they will live and how well they will function.

The Smokescale stealth looks good, except I play ranged, not melee.

So, I doubt it will work for me.

At this point, looks like I will be sticking with Mesmer and/or moving on sooner, or later, entirely.

Loxias.2375:

I think less than 10% of active rangers will have any desire to play healer for more than a day, and that the new spec will be used by people from other classes that want to build a Druid.

The constant destruction and reinvention of the ranger class within an mmo is basically like dark matter. You apparently can’t have a universe without it, but no one could tell you why.

I can tell you why.

Because newer players are drawn to the pet and/or the bow and people who play Hunter, in WoW, are generally very attached to it.

Get rid of Ranger and fewer new players will start playing, or stay playing.

Part of the reason I think this game is less popular than it should be is because Ranger is disappointing and ranged, in general, is sub-par.

Lazze.9870:

Kitty.1502:

About the same as before, pets weren’t addressed, rangers still don’t fill a role in any core aspect of the game. Druids will be limited raids only and sporadic wvw uses.

If you don’t see the potential the druid has for ranger pvp builds, then I can’t help you.

Most of the druid abilities aren’t self healing so it won’t be as good as a point bunker, instead it would need to stay with the main spvp group assuming your pug group is sticking together in a good split. There is also enough poison to limit the healing and huge spike damage can knock the druid out, or make them kite taking them out of the fight either way. It might see more use in pre-made spvp groups but then again, its still limited.

When I created Ranger , I did not envision their strongest role would become a healbot….

Spin it how you want, thats how I see it.

Ppl who love to play healing/support based roles will love druids.

I personally am more of a DPS/highrisk-highreward playstyle guy , in that aspect druid did little to nothing so i’m disappointed that after all this wait…..

Anet completely focused on one thing with ranger elite spec – support/heals, completely giving DPS the cold shoulder.

That ain’t cool but expected…. anet can’t balance ranger at all (especially pets) so might as well just make ranger into one amazing role and leave it subpar to mediocre at every other role.

I never use my off-hand and just stick with my longbow. So, druid means I can get rid of my weakest traitline and bolt on some healing as an off-spec. That works for me, though I would like it if I got a bit more in the traitline that was useful for my dps side. I`m not sure how much I can make the “ancient seed” actually work, but I guess that in WvW there is going to be a lot of daze, stun and such thrown around, so it will trigger now and then.

Happy

Wyvern pet!!!!

That is all.

I think the developer has truly out done himself with the Druid spec. Irenio you are godsend for the ranger class. Yay you! I love the druid. I cant wait to be one.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Wyvern pet!!!!

That is all.

Wyvern pet is pretty amazing. Wonder if they will have a splishy splash one too!

I’m looking forward to trying Druid this weekend. Staff is looking great. Some Traits are also looking great. Not too excited about the utility skills, but they might have their moments. The new F5 mode is… different… but can’t really go wrong with it in combination with some traits.

I feel hyped ^^

So far, so good. Waiting until tomorrow to see if I’ll feel better. At the moment, I’m enjoying that Irenio is doing some actual changes around here and it seems (to me) like he can finally “let loose” on his creativity.

Now, if we can only get access to our other pet skills…

Relieved that I did not prepurchase HoT.

it wasn’t what some people were expecting, and I can empathize with those who are unhappy, feel worse or about the same as they did prior.

I personally am happy, surprised, intrigued, but not in any extreme way.

Drunk

10charrs

how do i feel?

ummm.... >.> <.< >.>

i made a 4th ranger.

Mostly disappointed. No reason for me to take the Druid as it hinders my play style.

Ranger was my main since GW1, alot of diversity in builds and yes, some staff builds i used as Ritualist secondary was hell of a lot of fun. However, staff always felt a bit clunky and i’ve shelved my spirit ranger and her legendary in GW2 since the nerf.
I also played a Monk profession in GW1 and enjoyed it immensely, so it’s not something i’m unfamiliar with.
On one hand the Druid spec seems to me an afterthought of adding a new monk/heal profession and ditched that idea so they slapped it on the ranger.
That being said, I will dust her off and respec for Druid to give it a try, but i’m still skeptical since Ranger hasn’t been a main focus for the devs in quite awhile. Hence, no red dialogue in the ranger forums for multiple pages and the last spec to drop for the new xpac.
Once again, I am somewhat disappointed but i’ve worked too kitten my GWAMM ranger getting her a legendary and ascended gear to let her die on my char screen.
My vote: undecided

Shafted yet again. I wanted an elite spec that added and expanded the ranger not some gimmick to try and appeal to WoW players.

I am interested to see how the rest of the GW2 accepts the Druid into WvW and raids. It will be very interesting once everything settles down. I was hoping for a little more offense from it.

I still am looking for a pet moose

you can build the druid offensively. celestial avatar has a lot of CC, self heal, and burst damage. it’s gonna be great, you’ll see when you test it.

The balance changes are really nice, and definitely a step in the right direction.

The druid feels like they read my mind as to what I wanted from it when I first heard about elite specializations. The only thing that could have made me happier is teleports, boon stripping, and/or more boon applications (like might). Of course, those can always come in later specializations, and druid is simple outstanding as is

mistsim.2748:

you can build the druid offensively. celestial avatar has a lot of CC, self heal, and burst damage. it’s gonna be great, you’ll see when you test it.

Burst damage? I thought the only celestial skill that dealt any damage was the 5th skill and that was a 2-3 second channel. Wouldn’t exactly call that a burst.

it does 11k damage minimum on heavy armor, without any buffs, 1.6s channel with quickness. the final tick crits for at least 5.5k, not sure what the stats were in the stream. you can set it up with Lunar Impact aoe daze. opponents will either have to blow a bunch of cooldowns or dodge rolls to get away, or eat it.

it’s basically a combination of Life Transfer and Undead Shackles on a zerker necro in one skill, plus it also pulses aoe Slow and does a lot more dps. we can use it twice per avatar transform.

Ramethzero.3785:

I have two rangers, and I love them both despite the problems the profession faces in the current state of the game. This is not going to change that.

The druid reveal? I like it. I think it adds a long-awaited flavour to rangers that I was happy to play during gw1, and the lore finally catching up to us now? I’m good with it.

The balance patch details? I’m ambivalent. As an older gamer, balance patches come and go and the evolution of the game changes. This is nothing new to me. The only balance patch that ever blew up my skirt were the condition changes during the last big drop. Beyond that, no matter what we’ve been given its always been an up and down process. I see no reason to white knight the ranger, and I definitely never saw a reason to blather on about hurt feelings about when they suffer dry spots. To me, its all the same. Maybe it makes me jaded, but the important thing is my rangers are gunna survive, and be what they are for me as long as I have them.

Pets reveal? I am one of the wierdos that actually doesn’t mind all the pets. They have their uses, like tools. And you can use the right tool for the right job. The more tools I have the better the craftsman I can be. Each of the pets have their good points and their bad, and the new pets are likely going to follow suit. The Bristleback kinda caught my eye, but we’ll see how that plays out.

The entire elite I’m going to add it to the list of things that are available to me, but are likely going to serve niche roles, like all the other builds. I find the term ‘elite’ spec is sort of ephemeral. Is it really elite? What’s so elite about it? Will it cost more than the regular specs? Why? Because after seeing what’s available the traits seem about as damp across the board as all the others. Has the elite specs widened the spectrum of possible builds? Maybe. Should it cost more than the others? I don’t think it should.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, that meta builds are sort of just another niche build. They work good in specific circumstances like all the others, but that one build that performs well against certain bosses well how many do they number? 3-4? 5+? Those mobs in those portions of the game represent a small faction of the whole. These elite specs I don’t think were meant to supplant all the other builds out there, and people who are flailing their arms crying about not wanting to be a healer? Well, you have a choice to not be. You can be the same ranger you always were. No one is forcing people to use these specs, and likely never should be.

What’s wrong with the specs is they are what they are, and they are going to change and evolve as the game progresses. They are not the problem. To my mind, its the thoroughly unhelpful vocal community that is the problem. There’s too much unrealistic expectation and ‘feels’, and not enough logical and critical discussion that is helpful to the community at large. Its true you have to dig through poop to find the gold, but if the unhelpfuls could stop kittenting all over everything, perhaps we can get to the meat of the issue a lot faster.

I do not think I have seen anyone type this better, this is a very constructive and reasonable opinion.

Cautiously Optimistic?

I can’t really pass judgement on something without playing it first, but I can see alot of sound reasoning and creativity.

I feel gloomy that now we become a healer, my least favourite playing style…
Why Anet makes Guardian into Ranger and Ranger into Guardian is beyond me…

I don’t really care about whether it’s strong or not, just hate the style and the theme..
It’s not like Necro -> Reaper / Mesmer -> Chrono / Engi → Scrapper / Thief → Daredevil, that each of them look like improved version of the original classes.
It’s a complete overhaul of turning ranger into something entirely different, something that has NOTHING to do with ranger, something that’s so different that it no longer suits my play-style and preference.

Also feel depressed that Anet address none of the Ranger’s REAL issue, which is the lack of dps, lack of AOE, and lack of OFFENSIVE buffs.

Rizo.9534:

Bad players will always Cry, even if their class will be most OP in game.
For me – Ranger was really powerful class. After Druid reveal, there born few very powerful builds.

And balance patch buffed some trait lines and skills, and that’s only the beginning.
More of that, Pets condition damage was finally buffed, and as we know, some combination of pets can keep u to 23 bleed on target. with 1000+25might + trait it’s 3300 dps from pet bleed only, so in pve pet will do close to 5-6k dps These will affect pvp also.

I’m really excited! i’m w8ing for Tuesday.

I love ranger because it’s ranger, not because it’s OP or not
Druid has nothing to do with ranger whatsoever, so I hate it very much.

There’s nothing about druid that resemble ranger a single bit.

Necro keeps his Shroud mechanic as Reaper
Mesmer keeps his shatter theme as Chrono
Thief keeps his evasive nature as daredevil
Warrior keeps his Adrenaline mechanic as Berserker
Ele keeps his attunements as Tempest

Druid’s entire design, focus, playstyle, emphasis, theme, none of them resemble ranger a single bit. (Before you say pet, there’s nothing about Druid that improves pet’s mechanic. Pet’s enhancement are universal to ranger, so it has nothing to do with Druid.)

Staff theme is more like Guardian’s holy theme. Glyph looks like some random ideas come out of nowhere, that has little synergy with ranger, and many of them looks subpar, and the animation is underwhelming. Traits are fine I guess. Celestial form is awful, no damage, no tagging, no AOE, no offensive/ defensive buffs, just healing and cleansing. Also, the entire design has nothing to do with ranger.

For some random other professions who play their classes only because they want to be the most OP class, they may like Druid because it excels in certain role.
However, as a ranger lover, not someone who play ranger only in hope of him being OP, I’m truly depressed, disappointed, and frustrated.

Aomine.5012:

Rizo.9534:

Bad players will always Cry, even if their class will be most OP in game.
For me – Ranger was really powerful class. After Druid reveal, there born few very powerful builds. And it does not resemble the holy theme at all, and guardians are not holy lol.

And balance patch buffed some trait lines and skills, and that’s only the beginning.
More of that, Pets condition damage was finally buffed, and as we know, some combination of pets can keep u to 23 bleed on target. with 1000+25might + trait it’s 3300 dps from pet bleed only, so in pve pet will do close to 5-6k dps These will affect pvp also.

I’m really excited! i’m w8ing for Tuesday.

I love ranger because it’s ranger, not because it’s OP or not
Druid has nothing to do with ranger whatsoever, so I hate it very much.

There’s nothing about druid that resemble ranger a single bit.

Necro keeps his Shroud mechanic as Reaper
Mesmer keeps his shatter theme as Chrono
Thief keeps his evasive nature as daredevil
Warrior keeps his Adrenaline mechanic as Berserker
Ele keeps his attunements as Tempest

Druid’s entire design, focus, playstyle, emphasis, theme, none of them resemble ranger a single bit. (Before you say pet, there’s nothing about Druid that improves pet’s mechanic. Pet’s enhancement are universal to ranger, so it has nothing to do with Druid.)

Staff theme is more like Guardian’s holy theme. Glyph looks like some random ideas come out of nowhere, that has little synergy with ranger, and many of them looks subpar, and the animation is underwhelming. Traits are fine I guess. Celestial form is awful, no damage, no tagging, no AOE, no offensive/ defensive buffs, just healing and cleansing. Also, the entire design has nothing to do with ranger.

Some random other professions who play their classes only because they want to be the most OP class, they may like Druid because it excels in certain role.
However, as a ranger lover like me, not someone who play ranger only in hope of him being OP, I’m truly depressed, disappointed, and frustrated.

I think you may be exaggerating, it does not look that different then some of the spirits if you ask, I love the magic aspect of it, now instead of just shooting the same looking arrows for ranged I have another option for ranged. To be honest I only use shortbow anyways because lb is just boring to me.

Aomine.5012:

Druid has nothing to do with ranger whatsoever, so I hate it very much.

There’s nothing about druid that resemble ranger a single bit.

I can beat this argument in two words:

“Nature Magic”

hmm it totally was not existing ranger specialisation tree nor gw1 ranger attribute….

[actually it is gw1 ranger attribute and gw2 core ranger specialisation tree – and druid as overal is expanding this part of ranger because primarily that perk tree was meant for supporting stuff (but then people cried about nature spirits being op) – by picking up druid you specialise into group support part of ranger even more – that part that was always there but after some cries was just nerfed out of being viable option]

and also small hint to all guys crying and whining here

these small forum subsection is not visited by most dedicated rangers
its only visited by you – and those who have enought patience to withstand your shameless WHINING ABOUT EVERY SINGLE KITTEN THING for more than a day.

and that is thank to YOUR shameless WHINING ABOUT EVERY SINGLE THING for about 3 YEARS NOW

and even now when you finally got decent group support I’ve seen YOU CRYING FOR for at least half of a year now you don’t even read it all and starts whining about how healer is not suitable for ranger while in every single post prooving that you haven’t even read all skill descriptions and in many cases – proving that you certainly never watched the reveal stream and by thus – not really knowing what is that specialisation about.

[and also not knowing why before that stream there was no red posts in ranger forum for a long time]

“So rangers, How do you all feel now?”

Disappointed…………………

I think that people might be painting with too brad of strokes when defining nature magic. After all…

Iron is a natural element.
Sentient inventiveness is natural part of a species.
Ergo, creating tanks, machineguns, turrets, etc should be possible with nature magic.