Showing Highly Rated Posts By AnariiUK.7409:
Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly.
Wonder what the justification for this was? Druid’s in PvP generally run healing power so will likely be unaffected or even buffed. This will only really hurt the two interesting raid druid builds (Berserker and Viper) forcing players towards boring, uninvolved healing power sets. The healing on the two offensive sets was already extremely low, requiring much more awareness on the part of the player / group in order to be usable.
For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration.
I could understand this for PvP gametypes (WvW in particular) but I feel this will really hurt the revenants already weak position within a raid group. I really hope they will be getting some buffs to go alongside this.
For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration.
This is going to have very large implications on the entire raid squad set-up. The nerfs to SoI and facet of nature are looking really bad for revenant mainly, boon duration isn’t going to look so great with capped SoI shares.
Overall I get the feeling these nerfs are PvP/WvW targeted, for PvE you’re basically killing off the 2 fun druid builds and potentially removing an entire class from raid squads, can’t say I’m too optimistic.
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
Due to the volume of applications we’ve decided to close recruitment for the time being.
Immortal Kingdom [KING] – European fractal and raiding guild.
ABOUT US:
As a guild, our main aim is to achieve efficient clears within Fractals, Dungeons and Raids. We strive towards a mentality of pushing our boundaries while still having lots of fun in the process. Generally we’re not strict on speed-running, however we do expect every one of our members to aspire towards critical self-improvement. Overall we want to maintain a close-knit community of friendly, dependable players whom you can always count on when needed.
WHAT WE OFFER:
- Regular full raid clears – We now have a signup system alongside regular raids!
- Low-man / challenge runs – For both raids and fractals.
- Daily T4 fractal runs – We also love the level 100 challenge mote.
- Weekly guild missions – Fun times for all!
- A continuously expanding guild hall.
REQUIREMENTS:
- The ability to play either Druid or Chronomancer as a support role in raids.
- At least two fully geared, raid ready professions. (Including the Druid/Chrono)
- Proper consumables and the ability to switch between appropriate builds.
- Advanced knowledge of all current raid wings (1, 2, 3 and 4).
- Availability at our prime raiding times. (Raids generally start at 7PM server time)
- Detailed knowledge of all current fractals (150 AR is required).
- Ability to chat and communicate on Discord.
(Don’t worry if English isn’t your main language!)
THE TRIAL PROCESS:
Before you’re formally invited to the guild there will be a brief (20-30 minute) pre-trial with some of our council members. The aim of this is to give us a chance to check your ability as a player, while evaluating how you respond to general feedback and critique.
Following the pre-trial, if we feel that you’re a good fit for the guild then you’ll be invited as a trial member. While at this rank we’ll observe how you perform in live raids/fractals, and generally aim to offer as much feedback as we can. If we’re all still happy after a couple of weeks in the guild then you’ll be promoted to a full member of KING!
FAQ:
Q: Do you have any rep rules?
A: We ask that our members rep us 100% while doing PvE content.
Q: Do you have a mastery point requirement?
A: No, but aim to have the main raid related masteries unlocked! (inc. Ley line gliding)
Q: Are there any fixed raiding teams within KING?
A: Nope! Feel free to mingle within the guild and join whatever takes your fancy.
HOW TO APPLY:
If you’ve read this far, then hopefully you’re interested in applying to the guild.
Simply fill out our application form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can:
RECRUITMENT CLOSED FOR NOW
Current applicants waiting for a pre-trial: 5
If you have any questions feel free to whisper or mail any of the KING council:
- Bovan.9481 (Bovan)
- AnariiUK.7409 (Anarii)
- Snow.9862 (Authority)
- RuneMF.9342 (Rune)
- Punkcat.4031 (Punkcat)
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
The nerf to Pink Moa was understandable since 3×2s daze was extremely strong for a pet.
I don’t like how the Black Moa is currently the best pet for CC on small hitboxes though. Feels like I’m at a disadvantage if I don’t have the hall of monument points, those pets should be clones as intended.
You’re complaining that there are more premades?? Oh lord save this community! We’re supposed to ENCOURAGE party play. Sheesh how else is this supposed to get more competitive.
Agreed, teamwork and communication are such a large aspect of PvP in this game. If a larger proportion of the playerbase is starting to form pre-made groups then that’s fantastic news.
Also, I’d wager that most premades are not PvP teams. Rather they are guildies that are just doing some daily PvP together with or without TS. I personally queue 5-man with my guild once we’re tired of running dungeons and we’re very often matched with other full guild groups, so the system appears to at least try to match based on group size.
I consider it an exploit and really hope it’s fixed soon.
It completely trivialises the entire encounter, thanks to the way the mechanics have been designed to work together. I agree that the orbs should just pierce through allied pets/minions without dropping the gravity well.
If we account for regen priority, the maximum healing output over time (Most likely in the entire game) is with a Minstrels Druid.
It’s challenging to quantify sustained healing over time since much of a druid’s play is reactionary. In that you only press big heals when people are in danger. That said, a regular minstrels druid rotation will take 8 (Staff time) + 15 (CA time) = 23 seconds and be roughly:
(1873 healing power assumed)
Staff
1x Ancestral Grace = 4,985 HP
8x Staff auto = 4,620 HP
1x Water sigil = 976 HP
CA
2x Rejuvenating tides = 23,798 HP
2x Lunar Impact = 14,974 HP
~18x Cosmic ray = 42,786 HP
Other
23 seconds of regen = 12,558 HP
23 seconds of nature renewal = 10,879 HP
_
Total (Per player) = 115,576 HP/ 23 seconds
= 301,502 HP/minute
Total for a party of 5 = 1,407,009 HP/minute.
This doesn’t even account for dropping glyphs, cultivated synergy, live vicariously or advanced rotations such as blasting staff #5 or alternating #1 and #2 in CA.
Interestingly enough, a single Minstrel’s druid can very easily keep 5 players who are standing in Slothasors poison alive, even without being able to use staff #1/2. To my knowledge, no other healer can do that.
This is something that I’d love to see implemented with some measure of control.
Raids differ from fractals and dungeons in that there is a baseline average group DPS that must be met in order to have any chance at success. For the Vale Guardian this appears to be reasonably low at around 5-6k DPS (Accounting for phase changes). However for the later bosses the required DPS seems to have risen considerably.
Now if I’m leading a raid, and notice that it’s taking too long for us to reach the second phase (For Vale Guardian I expect phase 1 to be over at around 6:00-6:30 on the timer) then I’m put in the awkward spot of trying to establish exactly where the problem lies.
Having a DPS meter that’s visible to the raid leader, that perhaps only shows members of the same guild would be hugely beneficial as it would allow me to discuss individually with the person and decide how best for them to improve. If they aren’t willing to improve or don’t want to change how they play then I will feel no guilt in politely asking them to step down from the group.
Right now I’m having to make the same difficult decisions, but based on pure conjecture and my own bias instead of actual data which leaves me and the person involved feeling horrible about the whole thing.
Kind of a strange perk to the class but I absolutely love how much CC rangers have access to. Since they fixed slick shoes on Engineer, no other class can even come close to the sheer amount of break bar damage we can do. Especially with the Electric wyvern and Pink Moa pets.
It’s so satisfying being able to solo-break the Legendary wyverns in VB or taking down more than half of the shatterer’s break bar when he’s going to fly. Same for the champion tier bosses in Dragon’s stand.
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
Condi ranger should be perfectly fine in fractals, it’s solid respectable damage. People who want healing in fractals need to stop. It’s a crutch and it wasn’t there pre-HoT when fractals were more challenging, you don’t need it now.
The Meta ruins this though, and ruins classes. I hate being expected to heal.
Condition damage druid is meta for high-level fractals. Healing would be considered off-meta.
Your primary job is to buff allies while doing respectable condition damage. You can daze trash mobs and contribute to break bars with Pink Moa’s F2 / Lunar impact / Glyph of Equality.
Toadheart made a really comprehensive gearing guide for Druid’s which might be of interest.
Most relevant to your question she suggests a Shaman’s hybrid healer build which offers slightly higher damage than power based heal sets (Magi’s/Zealot’s). Unfortunately you’re stuck with the extra Vitality as there’s not an ideal stat set out there currently for condition healers.
Overall, the main disadvantage of going for a condition based healer set over a power based one is that you lose the +10% Outgoing healing modifiers from your rice balls food and monk runes on the armour (You can still take transference on a staff). You’ll still be able to heal fine, but it might be tricky if you’re the solo druid in an inexperienced group.
Are you guys holding down f5 for a short period when transforming? That seems to be instantly cancelling the transform for me.
More of a problem than a solution.
Go in with guildies/player you know. Ask them what their dps is.
The problem is; very few players actually know their true DPS.
I estimate my damage using champion risen giants / bosses in Arah which I know the HP values of. However I can almost assure you that my DPS against the Vale Guardian is lower due to environmental reasons. It’s difficult to maintain a good Viper’s Engineer rotation with AOE’s everywhere.
Is it just me or is the shortbow “crossfire” buff bugged out at the moment?
Seems like it’s applying the short 1.5s bleed regardless of if you’re flanking or not.
I agree that Take Root needs to be changed. A racial skill this strong just forces everyone to that specific race.
The problem is, if you simply nerf Take Root, then Sylvari will still be taken due to their Summon Sylvan Hound skill. If that gets nerfed then everyone will just reroll to Charr to make use of Shrapnel Mine.
A better option might be to disable racial skills altogether in raids, which would be a shame as they do bring some unique identity to each class. Another option is to buff our other options so they aren’t quite as terrible. Glyph of unity in particular is absolutely worthless as a skill right now due to its hidden 1 second ICD, it’s only somewhat functional thanks to the Verdant Etching trait. Or how about a condition focused elite trap, which would fill that awkward gap in our skill set?
The other classes which make use of take root: Mesmer and Necro, have similarly terrible elite skills. Perhaps that’s the main problem.
I’d just treat gearing up as a priority system. If you’re raiding or doing fractals you’ll likely get more ascended boxes than you can possibly use, so just slowly gear up with the rarer sets.
I’d recommend every Druid eventually has the following:
- Magi’s (Should be top priority if raiding)
- Viper’s (Top priority if fractals or open world are your thing)
- Minstrel’s (Super good for experienced raiding)
- Berserker’s (Great for open world, but lacks in other places).
Niche sets:
- Apothecary’s (For low man raids – condihealer setup).
- Commander’s (I believe this is a thing for power based WvW builds).
- Trailblazers (Cheesy but fun for condi based WvW builds).
There are a ton of viable sets, but the top two are really all you need for most PvE content.
I’m sure the developers have detailed metrics which they can use to evaluate how the playerbase as a whole is responding to the current encounters. I think the most important thing will be getting reliable feedback from a spectrum of players, all at different skill levels. Properly balanced, encounters can be fun for both newer and veteran players (VG is a perfect example in my opinion). Issues start to arise when high DPS makes fights extremely easy (Such as Cairn and Mursaat overseer which are both < 2 minute fights). The difference between high and low DPS is likely only getting bigger, so I feel CM’s are a fantastic method of balancing fights around both extremes.
Personally, I’d love to see more encounters balanced around the difficulty of Matthias, Sabetha, Xera and Deimos but with repeatable CM’s which add mechanical difficulty and balance around a higher base DPS. Just a small incentive like an extra roll on the loot table each week would hopefully encourage more players to go for the CM’s.
Hopefully there’s an opportunity to provide feedback after the changes go live.
Personally I’m terrified that all druids will be forced into running either Zealot’s or Magi’s in raids, camping CA for maximum GoTL uptime. The balance between pushing personal DPS and focusing entirely on camping CA for raid-wide buffs is already extremely delicate. It’s already hard enough to justify bringing an offensive set in the hope that I can squeeze out a tiny bit of extra damage.
This won’t make raiding any harder for teams that currently use offensive druids, it will only make the game easier, more boring and restrictive for the druids.
To directly answer your question, Magi’s/Clerics is the best gear in the game for pure healing, but I’d argue that it’s very wasteful.
Overall I agree with Justine, percentage modifiers are far more important than stacking healing power.
For the sake of argument we can compare Zealot’s with Magi’s with normal % modifiers in place:
Monk runes = 10%
Transference sigil = 10%
Rice balls = 10%
Natural Mender = 20%
Zealots = 439 Power, 315 Precision, 315 Healing power + 175 Healing power from runes.
Magis = 315 Vitality, 315 Precision, 439 Healing power + 175 Healing power from runes.
Under these conditions, one pulse of your main healing skill (Rejuvenating tides) will heal allies for:
Zealots = (810 + (0.35 * 490)) * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1568 HP
Magis = (810 + (0.35 * 614)) * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1637 HP
A difference of only ~4%
So the question is, are you willing to give up 439 power for such a minor increase in healing? The vitality is also a factor to consider as it can be useful while learning the bosses.
Please correct me if my math is wrong! It’s a topic I’m really interested in discussing.
I have a feeling it will be much easier for them to simply copy the functionalty of “We Heal As One!” since that functions much more closely to SoI than sand squall.
If that’s the case then boon duration will likely still have an effect.
This bug is caused by interrupting a celestial avatar skill as you exit the transform. Quickdraw is consumed on the skill that was interrupted.
In both examples, you interrupt the cast of Seed of Life (The #2 skill) causing quickdraw to be wasted. As a temporary work around until it’s properly fixed, I’d suggest exiting the transform manually between skills. Alternatively you can avoid using any of the 2-5 skills in CA when your energy is running low.
Hopefully that helps in the meantime!
Wondrouswall did some testing which might help, found here.
Jaguar seems to be the best from the pets tested, but Lynx wasn’t tested with a power set-up. It should be fairly close either way.
As others have already mentioned, Magi’s is chosen simply to maximise outgoing healing potential. It’s extremely wasteful in terms of stat point allocation, but that’s not relevant if you’re only concerned with healing.
Zealot’s gear is better for damage if you’re looking to run power. Condition healing builds are fantastic and indeed make better use of the offensive stats, currently Shaman’s gear makes for a pretty decent healer with moderate condition damage. Unfortunately the build isn’t utilized too much due to staff being a mainly power focused weapon.
Overall your goal might be to eventually drop the training wheels and move towards fully offensive druid gear sets (Berserker’s or Viper’s) which make very good use of all stat points. The healing is more than good enough, even at the hardest bosses providing you’re experienced and know when to heal and when to DPS.
Q: Allies you heal with celestial avatar abilities gain increased damage (Grace of the land)
So, if they don’t get healed (if already at max health), they don’t get the buff, right?
Grace of the land is applied separately to the heals, so you can still give the buff to players that are at full HP. You can also give the grace of the land stacks to entirely different players than those that are being healed, due to the heals overflowing.
I believe all good druids should carry three sets with them, namely a power set, condi set and healing set. The healing set is a good one to start with as it will get you more confident with druid mechanics. You can then work towards the other sets if you enjoy the class.
That said, I’d recommend Zealot’s stats with monk runes for your healing armour as it offers a very good balance between personal DPS and healing potential. You can then take full berserker weapons / trinkets with the usual runes. One additional option might be a Zealot’s staff with a sigil of transference if you feel you need extra healing.
There’s an argument to be made for Magi’s stats, but I personally feel it boils down to giving up your personal DPS for extra survivability. Which is unnecessary in all of the current raid boss fights.
A good (or bad) thing about druid is that there’s not a “one size fits all” option for everything. I would recommend having your first ascended set be condition based (Viper’s) as that’s arguably the best for fractals, and you’ll need it ascended in order to slot agony resistance for that game mode. As a general guideline I recommend the following:
Dungeons
- Full power damage is nearly always best here (Berserker’s). You can easily make do with the exotic set that you already have for now.
Fractals
- I’d recommend condition damage builds here as they bring superior damage for large HP pool bosses, which you find often in fractals.
- Remember that your gear needs to be ascended quality in order to reach the high fractal levels due to the required agony resistance.
Raids
- A simple and effective set to get would just be exotic Magi’s for the raid healing role. You can pretty much use this at every boss however experienced groups may want you to switch to something with more damage.
- Condi, power and healing builds all find their use within raids. Ideally you’ll want all three sets eventually, but condi would be a good one to start with since power/healing can easily be exotic quality.
Hope that helps!
Quickness does help tremendously, and is nearly always assumed for raids. That said it should still be doable without quickness.
Barrage will not always be off cooldown when you switch to your longbow. In those cases there’s plenty of time to jump into CA form between your rapid fires.
For a “buffing” rotation you’d normally quick draw rapid fire, barrage, enter CA form and cast rejuvenating tides followed by a seed of life then exit the transform as quickly as possible. Your weapon swap should come off cooldown just as you’re firing the second rapid fire.
For cases where you want to heal, I’d actually recommend consuming quickdraw on barrage, then using rapid fire before entering your CA form. You can then stay in CA form a little longer to use a healing rotation (Something like #3,#4,#2 etc) then cast barrage a second time upon exiting the form.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to enter CA form on your sword/axe set. It’s not a rule set in stone and the healing is often much more important to prioritise. After all if we want pure DPS we’d be much better off bringing the condition set instead.
You can’t equip two different glyphs into the same slot. But each glyph has two forms, celestial and non-celestial. The wiki has the icons for Empowerment (Celestial) and Tides (Celestial) mixed up so that explains the confusion.
(edited by AnariiUK.7409)
Coming from games like WoW and FFXIV… you barely have rotation in GW2. Why the heck do you need a dps meter?
It’s very class & build specific, but certain builds are incredibly reliant on good rotations in order to keep up the damage.
FFXIV was awesome in that it highlights a good option for you to combo into, with very little that can go wrong if you simply follow which buttons light up. GW2 feels a little less intuitive as mostly every skill on your bar is a DPS loss, and the next best skill for you to use may not even be visible (It might be on your other weapon/kit/attunement) so you have to keep something of a mental note about when the skill will be off cooldown. There’s loads of room for error basically.
I normally would switch to a power druid for aquatic fractal, but condi druid can be very effective. The main issue is getting access to your avatar, since your AoE healing skills don’t work underwater.
I usually run Nature Magic (1,2,1), Skirmishing (1,1,1) and druid (2,2,1). You can then take water spirit (AoE regen gets you back into avatar on cooldown). Since you’re unable to use glyphs I generally just take a full spirit build (Stone, Sun, Frost, Nature) as it makes the last boss an absolute cakewalk. Quickening Zephyr or Sharpening stone are also strong choices depending on your party comp.
Water spirit is a little buggy underwater too, so you can keep spamming the active which is nice!
In terms of weapons I use a viper’s harpoon gun and mostly autoattack, weaving in skill #2 if you can get some slight distance from the boss. Skill #3 is decent if you need avatar very quickly, it also synergises with SoTP and We heal as one! for a very quick might burst if your party is lacking there.
I briefly mentioned it on the qT DPS benchmarks thread on reddit. Pretty much using the above build (I use full viper’s with Geomancy / Earth sigils) using traps on cooldown and quickdrawing the appropriate skills. You can reach ~34k DPS with full condi-infusions.
Even condi-druid is extremely powerful, you can explode the red-guardian on VG together with an Engineer. 25-might + 5 GoTL and that guy dies extremely quickly.