Guild Wars 2

More video proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qmKc6G828

Just another video demonstrating the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51qmKc6G828

Ancestral Grace now transforms the player rather than just changing the player model.
This has a huge impact on the way druid plays in both PvE and PvP- unfairly punishing players for using the skill.

I’m assuming this is a bug for a few reasons-

0.5: This change was not mentioned in the patch notes.

1: It removes old combos of using Ancestral Grace and then using utility skills. The player cannot use Utility Skills while transformed. This eliminates old combos that were in no way overpowered.

2: It allows Druids to double blast combo fields when in combat using the Clarion Bond trait. This is assumed to be a bug and not intended behavior, since this was possible at HoT launch, and was subsequently removed as a bug. (although that bug functioned differently- using ancestral grace would put the player in combat, thus spawning the pet and procing clarion bond.)

3: It despawns the pet and then respawns it at the end of the cast. This is the biggest issue with the transformation as it punishes Druids extremely hard for using Ancestral Grace.

Despawning the pet means that Ancestral Grace no longer shifts focus onto the pet as a side effect of the evade.

The pet also immediately loses all conditions, boons, and procs (such as Strength of the Pack).

Combined with the inactive pet bug, the pet is also inactive for a period of time after using Ancestral Grace.

Given these problems with the current state of Ancestral Grace, I hope that attention can be brought to this major bug, and that it can be fixed quickly.

Thank you.

Hey there!

I’ve compiled a few screenshots of current issues that affect the human female version of the armor at this moment.

1: Left shoulder floats significantly.

2: Skin clips through the fabric of the top when sheathing/unsheathing weapons. This is easily visible even with the legendary shoulders equipped.

3: The bodysuit is split between the top and the pants. This means that if they are both not dyed the same color, it looks very strange.

4: The bodysuit is the same dye channel as the cloth part of the top, but has a very different material lighting than anything else, making it very difficult to dye.

5: Tried out Asura female. Shoulders are ridiculously floaty, strange and obvious seam between top and pants.

This bug has been around since launch, and is one of the main reasons why pets can be annoying.

If you exit combat after telling your pet to return to you (default f3 skill), but then re-enter the range of the enemy (either because the enemy leashed and you leave combat due to the enemy no longer being hostile, or you force it as shown in the video), the pet re-enters combat and attacks on its own, without additional button presses.

This is one of the causes of the infamous “Rangers can’t control their pets” issue.

Is Ad Infinitum (the legendary fractal backpiece) coming in this update?

Hi!

I just spent a ton of effort and money and burning my in-game savings to make Astralaria, only to find that when used in the offhand, it does not have an unsheathe animation!

I’m really disappointed, since I was really excited for it and happy that I completed it, but now I only feel kinda sad.

If it drops then we have no way of knowing, because when you finish Unbound the asura in the lobby tells you to wait for future releases.

We do know there are 2 upgraded gifts you can create in Fractals, the Lessons in Metallurgy and Lessons in Arbology, but we don’t know if they are actually used for the legendary or not yet. They don’t go in the mystic forge at all, so it’s like they’re used in a preset recipe.

That’s disappointing. It would be nice to know what happened to the promised instability changes and updates that were promised on release as well.

For example, an instability that converted specific conditions on an enemy to boons will be replaced with one that prevents projectiles from being reflected.

To help you with these changes, we’ve also cleaned up the messaging on the instabilities so that the dangers you’ll face are easier to understand.

from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

Instead, we got enemies getting boons on crits with no internal cooldown.

Whatever happened there?

Hi!

I was wondering with all the updates on bugfixes and such recently, has there been any update on the status of the final step of the Fractal Legendary backpiece?

This was something that I expected to be in game at HoT launch, but here I am with Unbound and 74 extra research pages, and no idea when I’ll be able to progress further.

Would it be possible to get a status update on this? I understand that some part of it was supposed to be tied to Fractal Leaderboards, but at this point, two and a half months after HoT with no word (and fractal leaderboards being “on the table” for over a year now, even though we have no idea what they could possibly entail), I’d be more than satisfied having that part obtained through alternative means.

Also, is Unbound supposed to be floppy or stiff? Which physics is the bug- it being floppy on other players’ screens, or it being stiff on your screen? Was that ever answered?

This is most definitely game breaking. if it hits at the wrong time, dead druid.

Yep. This issue is much much worse since the Dec 1st Patch.

It’s gamebreaking, since it pretty much guarantees a dead druid since you can’t dodge out of it.

And it’s happening very very often- I’d suggest reverting the change to the skill, because occasionally getting in combat is much much preferable to this.

From just using Ancestral Grace off cooldown to run around in Lion’s arch, it looks like it’s happening on average once every 3 or 4 uses. Sometimes you can get a double stuck chain where you ancestral grace from being stuck and get stuck again.

Longest chain i’ve had was 3 in a row!

Oh, that’s worse than I thought. A single Ranger could potentially troll everything by just bringing 4 spirits.

Really needs to be fixed fast.

Bumping this because this is a huge problem- Spirits are essentially useless in certain team comps as they are. They buff Mesmer Illusions, Engi Turrets, and each other-

Taking 2 spirits lowers the effectiveness of both- Frost, lightnign and stone Spirits aren’t worth taking at all if there’s a mesmer, reaper, engineer, or another ranger.

Sun Spirit is only okay because burns are burns and they stack in magnitude.

This honestly cannot in any way be intentional.

If a mesmer has 3 illusions up, they all get spirit buffs before players. That means if you have 2 spirits up, and the illusions, with a pet, no players will receive buffs.

It’s a bug, plain and simple, although arguably a worse bug than even when they made Frost Spirit only activate once every ten seconds- taking multiple spirits is actively harmful, Frost, Lightning, and Stone Spirits are actually useless depending on your comp, and Sun Spirit is barely usable (pets have high condi damage stat, so they can use the burn decently).

Just bringing it up so that people are aware and don’t bring double spirits to raids or fractals when they could be bringing more useful skills.

Posted this in the bugs forum, but this should be noted here- spirits currently prioritize minions and pets and turrets and even other spirits over players.

If you use both Frost and Sun Spirit, your spirits will at max buff 2 other players, 3 including you, instead of 5 players.

If your Engi summons a gyro or turret, it will receive buff priority over players.

If your Reaper uses “Rise”, the bone minions receive priority over players.

Etc.

As a result, Sun Spirit is still okay, because burns are burns (apart from the occasional non-attacking gyro or turret receiving the buff), but Frost Spirit is currently almost useless.

Ranger spirit buffs prioritize buffing minions and pets and turrets, and even each other, over players.

To replicate, get 5 minions of any kind, pets, turrets, summons, spirits, etc.
Summon Spirits.

The players do not get the spirit buffs.

This is a very big bug for ranger spirits, because it makes them arbitrarily useless depending on how many summons your team has. Spirits buffing each other is pointless.

The attached picture shows a random person’s pet receiving spirit buff priority over both me and and a person in my party-

Notice how neither of us have the frost/sun spirit buffs on our bars, while the pet of the random person has both.

The problem with nerfing Astral Force generation is that it hits all aspects of Druid’s strengths- not just healing.

Celestial Avatar is Druid’s go-to for Healing, CC, and burst Buffing.

By making it so that your allies must take damage for Druid healing to increase the Astral Force bar, the Druid is rewarded for having allies with poor play.

Moreover, the amount of healing, cc, and buffing that Druid has outside of Celestial Avatar truly is very low (compare with an aura sharing tempest, who can literally just pump out consistent healing/buffing when needed).

The changes just seem very far out of left field. I’m not even sure I understand the purpose of them.

Were they to prevent Astral Force generation out of combat? If so, they’ve impacted in-combat Astral Force generation in a huge way- and then there’s no reason for Solar Beam to still be target locked.

Is it to make Celestial Avatar more tactical and have a lower uptime? If so, there are many more direct and obvious ways to nerf it that don’t reward bad play or counterintuitive builds.

The thing is, so many of Druid’s tools are locked behind Celestial Avatar- our burst CC, our burst Heal, our burst buffing- by popping CA to use one of these tools, we already sacrifice our access to the other 2 for at least 8 seconds.

Please clarify the reasoning behind these changes, because at the moment, they seem very shortsighted and reactionary to something that the community cannot see.

Bumping this because it’s seriously messed up. I ended up just CoF farming for 2 hours to finish out my masteries.

I was getting 2.1k-2.2k exp per monster in CoF (with boosters and food, which only affect exp from kills and not from events). That means every 2 monsters was more rewarding exp-wise than one entire event in Silverwastes toward the end of the meta event.

That’s absolutely insane. I can’t imagine how long it would have taken me to grind them out during regular play. Months, probably.

Reduced exp like that is bad design then. It shouldn’t be possible in normal play to even hit anti-farming/anti-botting mechanisms, much less see them hammer down that hard.

It creates a very powerful sense of cognitive dissonance- the player wants to complete the meta event for rewards and to help other players, but they’re better off just farming monsters since those don’t give reduced exp.

It actually enforces grinding rather than prevents.

Last time I played was last night, and I did the two daily fractals.

At the start of the event, I was getting normal exp, defending forts, escorting yaks, tossing rubble. That exp just decreased over time to what you see in the pictures.

I literally hadn’t touched SW in days.

I don’t want to grind CoF for mastery exp, but at the moment, it’s looking like the only choice.

Diminishing returns hit before meta events are even close to ending- and toward the end, result in minimal rewards.

This has got to be a bug, right?

Why am I hitting minimal experience and karma rewards from events before the meta event even finishes?

This makes absolutely no sense that I’m getting punished for sticking with a map and helping it complete a meta event.

I started out with 18k exp per event, and as I played, I noticed the exp and karma gained from events was steadily dropped until, well….

Picture proof below.
The 1st picture is of right after vinewrath, running to the champions.
In the text box, you can see my exp reward from Vinewrath. 4.6k exp.

It was my first Vinewrath of the day- I hadn’t been farming silverwastes like a madman or anything like that. Literally logged on, hopped over to silverwastes, found a decent map, and started doing events.

2nd picture:
And the meta event isn’t even over! There’s still the labyrinth maze.
Along the way, I ran across a couple more events. I got even less experience and karma for these.

3rd picture:
Reward for tier 1 labyrinth gold. Pitiful. Also about to get nommed by an angry lurcher :c

This is a bug with the system, right? It makes no sense that I could be hitting max diminishing returns within the normal play of a meta event.

EDIT: I’ve not only noticed this on Silverwastes- it happens in Dragon’s Stand, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, Verdant Brink, everywhere.

Fractal Master is at 15/19 despite having gotten all the skins unlocked in the wardrobe. :c

help help i’m stuck in pvp and i can’t get out

These are great changes, but they don’t address the major issue with druid- that is long cast times and static aoes.

Landing the healing from celestial form on a moving ally is almost impossible- these changes don’t solve the issue that the most effective rotation is just staff-spam-celestial 4-staff spam.

Glad to see some of the glyph issues being addressed too, but as long as they have that 1/2 second cast time, they’re still going to be very hard to use.

I posted this in the ranger bug thread in the bug forums, but thought I’d post it here to raise awareness.

If your pet is hidden, if you enter combat, the pet will not have opening strike when it first pops out. (seems as if it checks if the player is in combat rather than the pet when assigning it opening strike maybe?)

If you just take it out before entering combat, you still have to wait 5-10 seconds before opening strike shows up on the pet’s bar.

So yeah. If you’re counting on that vuln, don’t hide your pet. :c

If your pet is hidden when you enter combat, it will not proc Opening Strike when it pops out. Moreover, there is a long delay before Opening Strike’s buff is applied to the pet when you manually unhide it.

That means in most cases when running around and the pet is hidden, ranger pets lose out on the 5 vuln and autocrit.

This also means if you have the pet hidden to proc clarion bond at the start of a fight, you lose the opening strike proc. Anti synergy in the same trait line. :c

Teq is kind of not on the map and immune to all damage after each phase. Vale Guardian splits into different parts. Saying that that reduces condi damage doesn’t makes sense. It makes all effective damage 0. Condi or direct. That doesn’t make sense to say that it’s a condition cleanse. They literally go invulnerable to all damage.

And no. Most bosses in instanced PvE don’t cleanse conditions currently. I’d notice if all the vuln was gone for example. Or in certain bosses, if immobilize or cripple was removed. Just because when I play I don’t usually like to play condition builds doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to their bars.

Like, I’ll go through the bosses.

AC- none of the bosses cleanse conditions.
CM- none of the bosses cleanse conditions- some projectile destruction, some invuln to all, some retaliation.
SE- no condi cleanses. Some invuln, but that’s to all damage.
TA- no condi cleanses.
CoF- Nope. Although the end structure in P2 isn’t affected by condis i think?
CoE- Subject Alpha cleanses condis.
Arah- Nope. Lupicus becomes immune to all damage when he phase changes.

Fractals- Mai Trin is immune to condis until 5 stacks of shield or lower.

Can you name a specific instanced PvE boss that cleanses condis that isn’t just a phase change where they become immune to ALL damage?

That’s still getting away from the main point though. Even if all classes had viable sinister builds, it would just end up being a sinister meta where toughness becomes an irrelevant stat.

What are all these bosses that cleanse or are immune to condis other than Subject Alpha and Mai Trin?

Also, with the downfall of Ice bow burst (totally needed, and a good change), the time between condi build up > physical burst is much earlier now.

It’s also fact that condi builds are more sustained damage. That’s very clear and obvious, even when not using sinister- i.e. using rabid. For example, condi ranger and guard are stronger based purely on conditions.

There is a huge balance disaster looming over the horizon, and that is the prevalence of condition damage builds.

What is the problem with them?

There are extremely few viable condition damage builds compared to power based builds due to burning being the most important damaging condition.

Moreover, the few builds mean that only a few professions can actually utilize it well.

As a result, any content that requires condition damage is class locked.

For example, it was mentioned in a stream a while back that it was planned to have monsters in Fractals scale their toughness with level. This would naturally cause more direct damage builds to fall out of favor for condition builds.

But when the only really viable condition builds are from engineers, rangers, and guardians, with engineers far, far surpassing the other two, you go from a direct OR condition damage meta to a condition damage ONLY meta- and since condi engi outstrips anything else available at the moment, it shifts to a condi engi only meta (with support slots for other professions). That is much worse than what currently exists- where you can go condi or direct damage.

Condition damage has 1 passive defense- HP.
Direct damage has 2 passive defensese- Armor, and HP.

Yet for some reason it’s balanced so that conditions do more damage despite having fewer passive defenses.

You could argue that enemies could cleanse conditions, or utilize the new boon, resistance. But very few do, while there are many examples of enemies with high armor that conditions are much superior for.

Now you could say “Oh, but Anet can always balance it out. Give classes more condition damage options, boost other classes to be stronger.”

But that still leaves the problem that it’s (what’s currently) a double stat meta being shifted for a single stat meta. Except what’s being shifted to is much less developed.

Please reconsider toughness scaling and direct damage immune mechanics in instanced PvE. Please put more emphasis on diversifying condition damage options. And please remember not to neglect direct damage options as well. Conditions need to be addressed sooner than later.

tl;dr: too few viable condition builds/classes + condi good at everything = even narrower PvE meta than currently exists.

I agree- right now the problem is that mechanically, the raid is rather straightforward, but the challenge seems to come mostly from the enrage timer- which means that only certain classes and builds are usable.

This is the opposite of what was expected- i.e. high skill, but class composition is less important.

Instead it’s medium skill, heavy emphasis on class composition.

That said it’s still fun, but it got frustrating when we just throw ourselves at it with a subpar class comp and can’t beat it just because the classes we’re using don’t have enough dps period.

Ele elementals and other summons work as well, but they’re a bit harder to use since you can’t really control them.

Racial summon skills such as Sylvari seed turret/healing seed, Asura golems and powersuit all count toward the body count for absorbing the burst AoE from the boss/blue.

Ranger pets and spirits and Engineer turrets count as well.

This means that those classes can easily +1 or even solo the AoEs, allowing the rest of the team to dps freely.

Imagine a team full of sylvari who can just seed turret the AoE and ignore it!

If your pet is hidden when you enter combat, it does not get Opening Strike when it comes out automatically upon entering combat.

It seems as though the opening strike application checks if the player is in combat rather than the pet.

Feedback time!

Staff:
Generally: Healing Power coefficients seem way too low. switching from Berserker stat armor to Cleric stat armor does not provide a sizable increase in healing to any skills other than Ancestral Grace. For a weapon/spec that focuses mostly on healing, this is very underwhelming.

1- Solar Beam- Feels really slow/clunky when swapping targets due to the long channel time. It should have a quicker cast time, maybe down to 3/4 seconds per 3 ticks. This would make it more responsive as well as feel more powerful.

2-Astral Wisp- Again, the cast time is very long for the effect. Moreso because the projectile launched is slow and has a travel time as well. I’d lower this to at least 1/2 second if not lower.

3- Ancestral Grace- This skill needs some tweaking. currently, the cast time is the same regardless of distance traveled. Which means if you cast it at your feet, you’re just sitting in place unable to do anything for a whole second. It definitely feels like it could use an evade for its duration- otherwise it’s very easy to get killed in the middle of casting.

4- Vine Surge- Similar to Astral Wisp, the cast time on this is just too long. Too many times i find myself accidentally canceling the skill right after casting. Considering the travel time of the skill, it would make sense for it to have a quicker cast time.

5- Sublime Conversion- This could totally be a combo field of some sort! Water, or Light!

Celestial Form:
Generally: As has been mentioned, losing all force as well as not being able to enter until you’re at full astral force is very strange. Not having stability at all in Astral Form makes things difficult as well under any CC pressure considering the long channel times. As with staff, Celestial also suffers from long cast times. Also along with staff, it suffers from very poor Healing Power scaling. there is little benefit from a healing power based set compared to other stats.

1- Cosmic Ray- This is literally impossible to hit on moving allies. It needs to be instant cast, or it will be essentially useless.

2- Seed of Life- Same issue as Cosmic Ray. Impossible to land on allies in combat.

3- Lunar Impact- Again, cast time is too long. the skill is too difficult/time consuming to land on allies. Perhaps an instant channel followed by a delay before impact would work better – similar to engineer orbital strike. This would allow Druid to combo it with the next skill’s water field.

4- Rejuvenating Tides- this skill also need to be cast and forget.

5- Natural Convergence- Given the short range and lack of much stability, being able to move while channeling this skill would make it much more useful/feasible. Otherwise, it’s extremely difficult to land or even find an appropriate time to use it.

Glyphs:
Generally: Glyphs feel very poor. The radius of them is extremely small, and the benefit provided is much too little for the combination of the cast time, damage, and effects. They need another effect attached, whether it is a blast finisher, condi clear, or buff. A radius increase would be beneficial as well.

These would honestly work better as cantrips- not interrupting your other skills when casted.

Glyph of Empowerment-
This was mentioned a lot in feedback after the stream, but this REALLY needs a buff to its effect. It’s pretty much unnoticeable, even on heavy hitters like Reaper.

Traits:
Generally: Pretty strong, just need some tweaks.

Primal Echoes- Should cast a mini-glyph of equality on staff swap (on a shorter cooldown, lower daze duration, and damage) in order to synergize with glyph traits.

Celestial Shadow and Grace of the Land- What’s with Druid and 300 range? These support traits need 600 range minimum, or else they become too situational- only useful when the team is stacking on each other.

Yeah, traiting and skilling for full heal as one optimization leaves the ranger extremely vulnerable to a lot of counters. Might be interesting for open world with perma swift/fury, but it still means you essentially don’t have a on-demand heal, which is actually really scary.

Predator’s Onslaught’s tooltip doesn’t include Slow or Blind in the list of conditions that count as “Disabled or movement-impaired”

Those would make sense to be included, right? Basically, any condition or effect that would reduce a breakbar would allow PO to proc.

Mcrocha.3891:

The argument is from a pvp perspective. Think about it this way: lets say Maul hits for 5000 damage. An Empowered Maul with a 20% increase as suggested would hit for 6000. Let’s say that if you had quickness you hit with Maul so you do 5000 and then auto attack once with the extra action speed gained from quickness. However, we can assume that the mauls hit in both situations, but there is no guarantee that the extra attack will hit because the actions of the opposing player may prevent it from hitting. In this scenario, Empowered Maul hit for an extra 1000 that quickness Maul did not. I hope that demonstrates how they are different.

The reason why I do not think 20% buff is appropriate is because it would make bursting too strong in pvp. Too much reward for too little cost(only 16s cd and possible heals+condi cleanse as well), not to mention that the reverse effect of 20% heal effectiveness would be very strong as well.

That’s true offensively regarding quickness vs empowerment, but quickness also provides a bonus defensively as well in that you can get off other skills quicker, right?

Also, just because your maul hits at 20% bonus damage doesn’t mean that the next attack will either- if your opponent reacts fast enough to a quickness’d auto after maul, then you’ll have forced a reaction that you can take advantage of, same as if you just had the 20% bonus damage. You’re also giving up a utility for it, that would likely provide extra control or mobility or defense.

Also consider that you’d have to trait very specifically into certain traits to get the reduced cooldown, heals and condi cleanse. I also suggested increasing the cooldown of the skill along with the damage increase to make it higher risk.

EDIT: I just checked again and it looks like the trait drops Seed of Life which isn’t an instant condi clear/heal either (although it is a small aoe), so it’s less defensively useful than say, traited survivals. so you do give up defense for the offense.

Also consider all of the new options that other specs are getting in terms of mobility, damage, and damage mitigation. Landing and timing the big hits to fall within the short duration is going to be harder than it sounds, I think, especially when contending with other taunts, invulns, and heals, and damage mitigation.

Oh. Glitch in the matrix. I could have SWORN Glyph of Empowerment tethered to allies…

OH! I rewatched the videos- empowerment was sandwitched in between unity and irenio mispoke and said “tethers to allies” when referencing unity instead of enemies which must be where I got that from. Hmm. Maybe it should tether allies

In that case, I don’t understand your argument that it’s any different from a quickness skill. The duration of it is short- which makes sense since it’s meant to be a burst skill, but it’s still less effective than say, a banner of disc/strength or revenant assassin’s presence. It’s just 10% more damage compared to quickness’s 50% more EVERYTHING.

Most quickness skills have a larger radius as well.

I’m not sure what your argument is against increasing the effect of the skill.

Mcrocha.3891:

Ltomato.8649:

Except the low range means that if you even dodge, the damage from GoE is lost. It’s not a cast and forget skill at all- if anything, it’s much more limited than quickness- which is why it would make sense to increase the effect.

The buff is applied to allies not enemies so it can’t be dodged.

The range on the tether is 300. Dodge roll is 300 range. If the tether is applied to an ally, and the ally dodges away or the druid dodges away, the tether is broken and the buff is completely lost.

Mcrocha.3891:

Quickness gives the potential to do more damage over a specific time frame, but only if all of the extra actions allowed by the action speed increase connect with the target. This is a very important distinction when considering an environment like pvp where one cannot assume that all of the extra actions would produce damage on a target. Hence why, Quickness and a flat damage modifier such as GoE are not comparable. PvP-wise the overall effect of Quickness is difficult to track and relies on a number of unpredictable events, while a flat damage increase is a more realistic and predictable effect.

Except the low range means that if you even dodge, the damage from GoE is lost. It’s not a cast and forget skill at all- if anything, it’s much more limited than quickness- which is why it would make sense to increase the effect.

I’ve been thinking- in Life Shroud/Celestial Aspect, ground targeted heals might be very clunky for the auto-attack. Just thinking back to ele healing fields and such- it’s super frustrating when your allies are moving around and trying to dodge enemy attacks and ending up moving out of your heals.

A really quick cast time (1/4 sec) might be appropriate, or, in a complete rework, a targeted tether to an ally that heals them and any allies that it passes through. Otherwise, it might be frustrating for druids (as it already is with water eles), trying to heal allies who need it.

This might be something to look at after the Beta though.

The thing about Life Shroud is that it’s a one trick pony- healing only. I think that’s fine, given teh extreme amounts of healing that it can put out. Through traits, we also get strong control as well. Some condi clears or resistance for allies (outside of traits) could be interesting to play with somewhere on the kit. Resistance would be cool because it would allow counterplay against Druid from boon stripping.

I like the short range on the glyphs- they’re low cooldown, and the short range means you really need to be in the right place at the right time, which is a big part of the ranger playstyle already, albeit offensively vs defensively. It does feel like they are lacking some aspect, however, either boons or combo finishers, for example.

I’ve stated my views on Glyph of Empowerment a lot above already- More damage boost, longer cooldown. High risk, high reward, depends highly on communication and positioning to be effective.

Glyph of Unity is a really strange thing to me, though. It seems counter intuitive mechanically to the rest of the kit- instead of supporting the team, the glyph is self based. I would suggest lowering the damage returned, but have the glyph return damage based on allies within a range. It would work with the kit much better and clearly, as you would pop the glyph and work on healing through the damage your allies are taking/returning. It also has the low range aspect, so I don’t think that scaling off of allies would be too powerful given that the damage returned was reduced.

I also agree with previous posts that life shroud glyphs could use some different mechanics, but it seems difficult to find a place for them without shifting the focus of Druid or making it too powerful.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I don’t think we should be saying “let’s make this more brainless”, we should be saying “why do we allow these other things to be so brainless”?

That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m not calling for a larger range on the glyph. I think that the range is a genuinely interesting challenge. However, I believe the reward should be on par with the challenge required. i.e. “This isn’t brainless, why is it weaker than things that are brainless”

An interesting combo you could try that would require some positioning is using the smoke field, the greatsword 3 to leap through, allowing you to get a stealth maul. That could have some potential.

If you put it on passive or no target, the smokescale probably could be close enough to put the field in reasonable range.

EDIT: I know I’m sounding like a broken record over this, but it can’t be emphasized enough- 300 range is the base DODGE range. If you pop GoE, if you or your allies even dodge, you lose the bonus. Surely it should have a larger effect to make up for that.

Yep. People who are saying that the glyph of empowerment is super strong with 10% are forgetting about it having one of the smallest buff ranges in the game.

A ranger will not be able to longbow with this skill unless it’s with a platoon of ranged attackers, easy to AoE down. In melee range, again, easy to AoE down a group of dudes in 300 range, and many mobility skills will send allies out of range.

It’s so much of an “all-in” ability mechanically, but doesn’t provide enough of a benefit to counter the risk and strategy involved in setting it up and using it.

How long will that stealth effect last?

Rangers have 2 on demand blasts as of Druid, so it would last 6 seconds if you’re solo roaming. If you’re with a group though, you can easily get max stealth stacks off of one smoke field. i.e. thief pistol 5.
EDIT: You could theoretically get 6 more seconds with sword/greatsword leaps, but sword leap takes a while to get to, and greatsword leap is insane to aim now.

@Tigaseye
We’re getting the smokescale pet, which can create a smokefield that we (and allies) can blast for stealth

Don’t forget the positioning aspect of the skill as well. Frost Spirit (1000 range), Spotter (600), and banners (600) all have over twice the range of GoE (300 range, only affects those who are in it when it is activated and don’t leave the range).

The argument here is that given the relatively short range of the skill, and the positioning required to activate it, a 10% party wide damage buff for 5 seconds isn’t rewarding enough. A Revenant with Assassin’s Presence provides a 10% damage buff to crits just by being in a 600 radius, for example. Banner of Dsicipline too, has a 600 radius and stronger, longer, effect.

Also compare to say, Quickness, which is essentially a 50% damage boost/action boost. Many skills that provide quickness also provide it in a much larger area.

Compared to skills/traits of similar effect, GoE is quite subpar, and is not rewarding enough for its mechanics.

I also suggested increasing the cooldown along with increasing the damage provided. Doing so would give the skill higher risk, but also higher reward, adding depth.

it definitely is, since the warhorn version’s tooltip has the correct amount, but applies the wrong. I was clarifying the issue.