Guild Wars 2

WE saw a few druids during the TOL, but the two finalists (eu) didn’t use a druid, and it was said that chrono/scrapper/necro/rev/ele was the new meta with some thief/guardian inclusions but it seems druid and warr are now the least favourite classes for high tier competitive pvp

arnitheking.8427:

WE saw a few druids during the TOL, but the two finalists (eu) didn’t use a druid, and it was said that chrono/scrapper/necro/rev/ele was the new meta with some thief/guardian inclusions but it seems druid and warr are now the least favourite classes for high tier competitive pvp

Yay for low skilled “Druid op” 1v1 qqers who don’t know what counters are…

The awful team support Druid design was made even worse last patch so it’s better to bring more damage, or whatever, instead.

That’s not really true. Alot of the esports meta you end up seing is down to individual preference too.

Zan is an engi player, so are argi and thijsken. Why would they offclass to play druid in a tournament that doesn’t even offer monetary rewards? They won’t.

Druid was brought down from a must have in a team comp. It is still strong and can still fulfill the same role it did before. You won’t find out what’s ‘optimal’ though until the next pro league comes around (and optimal for the same reason as stated above may be completely different for each team)

ToL wasn’t taken seriously by any of the top teams. It isn’t a good measure of what teams are going to be using in their comps.

Yeah, the nerfs to CAF and healing have gutted the one viable build Druid has.

Good stability uptime? Nope. Not with 75s cooldown on RaO.
Good defense against direct damage? Nope. Only usable amulet has 0 toughness.
Good condi removal? Nope. Not with 15s gate on CAF.
Good mobility? Not as good as thief and Mesmer, the latter of which can also win 1v1.

Good target? You bet. Low damage and crappy escape, especially in opening battle with uncharged AF.

Best way to win match, just go after Druid whenever you see it. It has to run from you.

I feel like a potential 15s cooldown on a skill that cleanses all conditions and stun breaks is more than fair. Its base ranger condition removal that needs to be looked at. The signet and other traitlines. Not Druid.

I do agree with most other points, though.

~ Kovu

Archon.6480:

Yeah, the nerfs to CAF and healing have gutted the one viable build Druid has.

Good stability uptime? Nope. Not with 75s cooldown on RaO.
Good defense against direct damage? Nope. Only usable amulet has 0 toughness.
Good condi removal? Nope. Not with 15s gate on CAF.
Good mobility? Not as good as thief and Mesmer, the latter of which can also win 1v1.

Good target? You bet. Low damage and crappy escape, especially in opening battle with uncharged AF.

Best way to win match, just go after Druid whenever you see it. It has to run from you.

Most of your points are very very questionable.

If your running shouts with trooper or ws skills with leader ship runes that’s plenty Condi cleanse with the druid trait line

Druids have tons of damage reduction and high protection uptime, you shouldn’t be getting destroyed by direct damage,

And you shouldn’t be loosing 1v1s except for maybe a against a good Condi warrior, and it’s a toss up against Condi mesmer,

Druid has plenty of mobility and good stun breaks I fail to see how you can’t escape fights

I can under stand your point about the the burst damage (however gs is pretty kitten now) stab other than that I really haven’t noticed much of a nerf you just have to time your stuff now. If I’m playing bunker druid I usually have time to pop RaO twice,

Lately I’ve been running seekers amulet, while it makes me more glassy against condis (even so I still win most encounters against condi classes , I have my high protection uptime to carry me against direct damage not to mention damage reduction and stone is still really nice)

No, the meta is in flux right now, and the ToL isn’t any indicator of what an actual metagame will look like, which will be derived from high level teams playing against each other for a competitive goal. So, more than likely, that will be when S5 starts and the return of the sponsored weekly tournament returns, which will probably not occur until ANOTHER balance patch (3 month patch schedule, Nov/Dec patch).

Besides that, the patch really didn’t effect Druid. If you were going into Celestial Form as it came off cooldown before, you were playing inefficiently.

It’s really too early to tell what is and isn’t “meta.” As others have mentioned the ToL wasn’t really viewed as serious competition by pro teams. Rewards were guaranteed out to 25th place I think? Point is they were playing for fun.

Paul, Team PZ’s Druid commented that using the meta build he was still able to “run around and do Druid things,” in the tournament.

Looking forward in regards to competitive we don’t know when the next season is going to drop. We don’t know when the next round of professional competition is going to start up. Pro players keep alluding to Anet’s future plans on stream. All of them seem excited for it, though NDA’s keep them from revealing any details. The only reason I bring this up is because while there isn’t currently a pvp season or pro league, pro teams are most likely continuing to practice, skrim and theory craft behind the scenes in preparation

It’s entirely possible we’ll see team comps using the current meta build unchanged. Then there may be teams that tweak it a bit one way or another. Heck it’s entirely possible we’ll see team comps with base Power Ranger builds.

In the meantime for current ranked and unranked queuing the range of what works is pretty wide and very inclusive. Play your meta Druid or mace/bow Zerker and have fun.

Lol you’re talking about team pz but they lost the first round. Lol I’ve played some of their players. They are so far from expert, it’s laughable that you bring them up in a conversation pertaining to expertise lmao

It’s really kind of comical.

1. To be competitive, you must run elite spec, which is Druid.
2. For Druid to heal nicely you must invest heavily in Healing (at the expense all else)
3. There is only one amulet that has enough healing now…
4. Druid skills are tied heavily to healing, so you can’t run anything non healing…
5. They nerfed overall healing and condition removal by around 50% from what it was.
6. They also nerfed damage output by adding 25% increase on WHaO (less boons)

Ha ha. I wonder. Do they know the wrecked it?

What goes in sPvP also goes in WvW. Rangers are having a hard time everywhere outside of PvE.