Guild Wars 2

Looking at the update history of other elite specs, the feedback after every beta was immensely important to get them on a good level. I think very very few people would argue that druid doesn’t need a few fixes at this point and a lot of the skills need a rework. This is nothing new.

However, what if the changes after one beta are still not enough to get them in an actually good and polished spot? If Druid at HoT release is still clunky and has core problems, can we expect to see fixes at the same ground level that other elite specs got in between beta weekends? I like the core gameplay of druid, but this is at the moment my greatest worry about the class. I think having only one BWE might have doomed the elite spec from the get go.

lack of betas/iteration will make them weaker than other specs that have had 2 or 3 betas to tweak, but i don’t think druid started out as kittenome of the other ones, so you can hope one more pass before Hot will be enough to at least make them solid at their intended role, and mesh better with existing core traitlines.

We can expect that Druid will need more work for a while to come after launch. When they see that it probably will not even be required for the raids with all the other healing that exists, they may change things.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

When they see that it probably will not even be required for the raids with all the other healing that exists, they may change things.

3 years of “P1 Zerk Only, no rangers” and “Guild recruiting for WvW, lights and heavies only” says otherwise to be honest.

After playing with the druid I believe it will find a lot of spots within various different druid builds BUT with every class getting access to a lot of sustain and/or high dps threshholds you are going to see just how poorly designed the rangers are. As is right now the ranger cannot deal enough dps to beat certain berzerker builds sustain… This is a serious issue.

Eirh.1439:

Looking at the update history of other elite specs, the feedback after every beta was immensely important to get them on a good level. I think very very few people would argue that druid doesn’t need a few fixes at this point and a lot of the skills need a rework. This is nothing new.

However, what if the changes after one beta are still not enough to get them in an actually good and polished spot? If Druid at HoT release is still clunky and has core problems, can we expect to see fixes at the same ground level that other elite specs got in between beta weekends? I like the core gameplay of druid, but this is at the moment my greatest worry about the class. I think having only one BWE might have doomed the elite spec from the get go.

Ya I think they will fix is just as they always fix rangers… NOT!!! lol don’t expect any good fix for Druids. the only fix they will do for Druid is make our experience with it worst than ever and keep us. if you have been a Ranger player for a while then you should know already that they only take away good things from rangers..

if? The way Druid has been developed – i.e rushed and cobbled together – tells me how much they don’t care about Rangers.

With 3 weeks until live they are already finalizing and compiling code. If you are expecting radical substantive changes to the class before HoT goes live, don’t. Really you may see tweaks to the numbers at best but you’ll probably end up with what we have in this beta weekend. DO however continue to post bugs, concerns and suggestions. I haven’t fully bought into the whole “Anet hates rangers” argument and I do believe our input is valuable if not always immediately enacted. After all why would they single out rangers for hate, we buy gems too.

The only downside is once the code goes live what they can or will change is going to be far more restricted. Its why I was always concerned if we weren’t playable by beta weekend 2. Expectations may have to be moderated a bit.

This is my concern also.

Druid has potential but is very raw at the moment and should have been one of the first elite specs to be released since its tackling a rough subject in trying to balance healing with DPS/support. It needed more time to get to a polished state relative to other specs but got the least.

While I hope that the Druid continues to get more attention once HoT goes live, I realize that common sense does not rule a business model. As others pointed out its much harder to get changes done past beta testing as that is the focus of the company as a whole. The Druid dev team continuing to push for changes once HoT goes live is an uphill battle unless its supported by the company.

Drawing on experience, Mesmer was the last profession to be done and was revealed shortly before the release of the game. The class felt rushed and many people saw core issues with the class but these concerns were never addressed by Anet since their focus had shifted onto other things. Fast forward to three years later, and Mesmers are finally getting some attention to solving some of these core issues in HoT.