Guild Wars 2

I’m on FA, don’t know if that matters or not, but all these people talking about no fights and ppl not fighting in eotm are spouting nonsense. Every single time I go there ppl are fighting plenty, and plenty of people are like me and go there to roam. Even the zergs fight each other whenever they meet. They don’t seek it out, but big battles happen all the time. But the same kind of commanders avoiding fights happened in “real wvw” too!

I remember before HoT when Alpine was still going strong, plenty of times, often actually, you’d see commanders avoiding enemy zergs in oder to capture objectives. I started going to EotM before HoT for that reason.

It’s no wonder Anet let wvw go to crap, look at who they are trying to cater to. The entire message of “REAL wvw” players is all about forcing ppl into doing stuff they don’t seem to do on their own. You can’t force people into something, you have to make it worth their while to do it.

“REAL wvw” players want to get rid of EotM to force more ppl into wvw. Yet back when ppl were in wvw, “REAL wvw” players spent all their time complaining about “rally bots” and casual players following their guild groups and in general whining non stop about all the non hard core unREAL wvw players mucking up their wvw.

EotM isn’t a “testing ground,” it’s just some content that got added as someone said, to give people something else to do. Anet said it is a testing ground or whatever, but they say a lot of stupid stuff that isn’t true. Name one thing that has been tested in EotM and been implemented in wvw. Nothing, because EotM has not changed at all in any significant way since it was released.

Most people want rewards and player vs player in a medium to large scale setting, they don’t want what REAL wvw players want and people need to accept that instead of trying to force others into player something that sucks, they will just quit.

Again, BL’s need to be fixed and made attractive to a large number of players. EotM needs to be left as it is, the only reliable place (besides EB when you can get in) to go do large scale open world type pvp.

Every now and then I still come back to see what’s up on the mesmer forums, and I see topics like this…

Lol nothing ever changes.

Random moron: “Nerf Mesmers”
Everyone: “Dude…”
Random Moron: “No for real”
Pyro: “Yur dumb, numbers+reasons”
Random Moron: “No you”
Thread derails into discussion by community of better ways to nerf mesmer so it will get stop getting nerfed.

The mesmer forum really is a special place.

Edit: Also the dude talking about defensive stats not being used in roaming and glass being standard made me check the date on the post, thought it was from a year ago or something.

There are lots of people in it because they find it worth their time to be there, and plenty enjoy it.

“People like eotm better than wvw, we should remove eotm so they have nowhere else to go but wvw, that way maps will be full and wvw will work.”

No, people will just quit the game, worst reasoning in a game setting ever.

You’re all trying to get rid of symptoms and ignoring the cause, which will never work:

The problem is wvw sucks because Anet ruined it. Ruining or removing other parts of the game will not fix anything. This is so blindingly obvious it’s honestly stunning that people keep suggesting it. This is a game, people have a choice to play this game or another, you think removing things they enjoy doing will “force” them into the mode you want? It won’t, they will just find a better game.

Edit: And if you honestly have such great disdain for the people who are in eotm, why not group up go there and kill them? That is one way you yourself could take action and make people stop going to EotM. In fact, this is what REAL wvw people should do, make an organized effort to shut down EotM on your own. I know myself and plenty of others who go to EotM just for fighting/ganking/etc. would be happy with that

STIHL.2489:

I said this on another topic, figure it’s fitting here as well.

STIHL.2489:

No one wants the Alpine back really. They got stale, but what people really want is:

• Swift Direct, Easy Travel, which the Alpine provided and the Deseret did not.

• They don’t want a map full of Gimmicks. WvW for most intents is more a War Zone not a Theme Park. There does not need to be any distractions there to keep us entertained. Thus the Alpine was simple and direct, the Desert is not.

• Distinct Wall Lines for the Buildings. The Alpine map made it easy to know exactly where the walls where, and the layout could be seen from the Mini-Map. The Desert has this convoluted set up where it’s not all walls, and you can’t see the distinct outline from the Mini-Map.

So it’s not that anyone wants the Alpine back, it’s that the Desert fails to preform so badly they would rather go back to the Alpine then continue to deal with the Desert.

Truth is, I would rather they fix the Desert, and learn how to do it right, so they can make more maps.

Yes, good idea, in the meantime while they figure out how to make new maps that are good, bring back alpine so people actually have a decent map to play on while new ones that aren’t terrible are being developed.

Kraljevo.2801:

That depends on how the map will be presented to us. If the waypoints are permanently closed and the HoT autoupgrade + gimmicks in place, I don’t see a reason to play there.

Pretty much. I’ll go back if it is as it was, but if it has banners etc. then no, just a slightly less annoying map on which to have a crap experience.

If they actually bring it back without banners and the other garbage, then definitely yes.

Scrapper gets my vote, that’s all they seem to do is knickknack/pull people and do zero dmg and never die.

What makes it awesome?

1) Fun: It is genuinely entertaining for a lot of people.
2) Consistent: You know what you are getting when you go there, and you get it every single time.
3) It Works: It is basically bug free and functional.

So many morons on here who are very reasonably dissatisfied with WvW keep making the incredibly unreasonable suggestion that the fix is to wreck/remove something else (EotM).

I know this is a stretch, take slow breaths and follow the simple logic step by step, if you try hard you can do it:

Two things. That are both good. Can both exist in the game. At the same time.
If one sucks. The answer is. Fix the one that sucks.
The answer is not. Make the other one suck too.
This will not fix the problem.

EotM is not the problem, it’s fine, leave it alone and focus on getting what is actually broken fixed. Quit making all these posts trying to get rid of something that plenty of people like and you don’t have to play if you don’t want to, futtbuckers.

bigo.9037:

DH is NOT better in any way than power ranger.
if you use druid, youre going to completely destroy dragon hunters.

Newish to druid/ranger, and this has been my experience also. These doofus DH’s get spanked every single time, even 1v2 DH just yesterday and they seem very outmatched against druid. They just have their blocks and traps and their dmg isn’t really that great, super easy to simply out sustain, but they totally can’t out sustain my dmg. Maybe if I ran glass this would be issue, but I don’t and no matter if they are tank or glass I win. The ones who actually pressure me at all seem to go melee in my face a lot more, then I actually have to kite some (mostly because I’m still not that good at kiting to begin with), but otherwise they seem weak against druid.

So, yeah there is a lot more to a build than dmg coefficients on skills.

Puck.9612:

…and bring back the alpine map without the HoT crap. Seriously… go read what everyone was actually requesting. We are tired of the stupid banners and terrible upgrade/wp changes.

EotM was supposed to be the testing ground for WvW changes, you can test out whatever you want there without disrupting WvW. That’s where the deserted bl belongs. Don’t make us keep waiting, we are tired of hearing things will be fixed “soon”.

NO! EotM map is hilariously awesome, Desert BL’s are just crap, delete them don’t use them to wreck something else.

Seriously worst idea, why would you suggest this over “get rid of desert BL altogether and bring back alpine.” Why try to wreck another part of the game?

These are all awesome answers, thank you all very much.

A few follow ups:

-Glyph of Tides of Glyph of Equality? (assuming you have another stun break e.g. Protect Me)
-If it were between drake hound and smoke scale, which would you pick in the context we are discussing?
-If not going WS, is entangle worth it over traited SotP in the above context?

Well what does it compete with in general? If you take survival, then probably QZ and LR right? Then you have one other, probably a shout or some kind of other defensive?

Maybe I should also ask: Is there anyone who uses this in a ranged build?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

MSFone.3026:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Furajir.3815:

I’ve played my ranger as melee regen since inception, sw/torc and axe/dagger. But I’m experimenting with staff/lb. It just feels a tad out of place. I feel a ranger should be a master kiter, making use of traps, immobs, cripples etc.

Played properly, you can kite extremely well with Ranger even without longbow…

I used to play a full trapper, Sw/T A/D, then moved to Survival, Sw/D SB, then moved to what I’m at now Staff/Longbow. I’ve tried many other builds as well those were just the 3 I played the most of. And I can tell you from personal experience, if you’re not spammy and you actually know what you’re fighting/how to fight it, people should hardly get near you for more than a second with a few exceptions like Thief.

With my set up right now using Staff and Longbow, I can’t tell you how frustrating it must feel for some people to never be able to touch me. I used to hate longbow personally but I’ve come to like it recently just because it’s fun to constantly keep people on a leash. The only things that ever get close to me are Thieves, Ele’s and good Warriors. Otherwise I can keep everything at a comfortable range and if I can’t, I can quite easily slip away from them. With 16k health and 0 armor or blocks, I feel totally content being absolute glass because I know unless I’m careless, I should be able to start and finish the majority of my fights without ever going below 50% health.

This sounds pretty awesome. Since I’m very new to the class, would you mind posting a sample build for this kind of play?

This is my current build.

97% critical chance with Fury, a little over 300 healing power while in staff, 4 ways to access immobilize to maximize kiting potential and lowered cooldown on staff for higher mobility uptime with Ancestral Grace.

Since most times people won’t get close enough to touch me, I rarely have to worry about conditions. Druidic Clarity is great and all but honestly with 4 Survival utilities I have plenty of condition removal and if I get nuked I wasn’t playing properly anyway.

As I’d said, the only things that manage to get close to me the majority of the time are Thieves, Ele’s and decent Warriors. But Warrior’s are extremely easy to kite if they’re full melee, often not getting close even once and Thieves I can 100 – 0 if I manage to negate their Backstab opener with a Hunter’s Shot then Point Blank Shot -> Quickening Zephyr -> Rapid Fire.

It takes a bit of patience to learn when you’ll need to swap to staff to go on the defensive, kiting away and regaining health, but generally it’s an easy build and difficult for people to pin down.

Also PS, keep in mind this is a personalized build so if you’re wanting to use it you might want to change some things around. Like foods, sigils, utility, etc. I’ve just found this the most comfortable to use.

Thanks! Looks cool, definitely something I’m going to explore.

I’ve seen a lot of staff/LB builds and people talking about kiting all hard core, but I never see anyone take muddy terrain. Being new to the class, seems like a solid utility to take in a build focused on staying at range, especially if traited.

What is the opinion on this skill? Is this a good utility to take in a kiting build? If not, why?

Thanks!

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Furajir.3815:

I’ve played my ranger as melee regen since inception, sw/torc and axe/dagger. But I’m experimenting with staff/lb. It just feels a tad out of place. I feel a ranger should be a master kiter, making use of traps, immobs, cripples etc.

Played properly, you can kite extremely well with Ranger even without longbow…

I used to play a full trapper, Sw/T A/D, then moved to Survival, Sw/D SB, then moved to what I’m at now Staff/Longbow. I’ve tried many other builds as well those were just the 3 I played the most of. And I can tell you from personal experience, if you’re not spammy and you actually know what you’re fighting/how to fight it, people should hardly get near you for more than a second with a few exceptions like Thief.

With my set up right now using Staff and Longbow, I can’t tell you how frustrating it must feel for some people to never be able to touch me. I used to hate longbow personally but I’ve come to like it recently just because it’s fun to constantly keep people on a leash. The only things that ever get close to me are Thieves, Ele’s and good Warriors. Otherwise I can keep everything at a comfortable range and if I can’t, I can quite easily slip away from them. With 16k health and 0 armor or blocks, I feel totally content being absolute glass because I know unless I’m careless, I should be able to start and finish the majority of my fights without ever going below 50% health.

This sounds pretty awesome. Since I’m very new to the class, would you mind posting a sample build for this kind of play?

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lettuce.2945:

Pretty sure you’re not qualified to give feedbacks especially with your sig. The most nerfed classes at the moment is warr/thief. Ranger is definitely top 3 in regards to 1 v 1 potential. L2P.

Incorrect.

Ranger is the most nerfed class in the game. For so many years of unreliable and unfriendly design we have been receiving nothing but nerfs unlike other classes.
And being nerfed over and over again while getting no buffs in return is kind of a definition to what the most nerfed means.

Sort of off topic, but can’t resist: I think Mesmer has eaten the most and hardest nerfs by far. Mesmer beats ranger in your definition of most nerfed, hands down. Yes they have this condi build now, and it is literally the only build that is remotely viable and most mesmers don’t even like running it. Speaking from experience, it is a pretty lame build to play, and people play it just because they want to keep playing mesmer. There are no power builds that can compete with condi now, which is hard evidence of the insane nerfage to the class. Power shatter and interrupt cannot compete anymore, it’s sad. Coming to ranger/druid from mesmer I can tell you the amount of bugged/useless abilities/traits etc. on mesmer is larger than ranger. Same with AI/pet issues, worse on mesmer by far.

As for beating them, I think best advice is as above: let pet chew on them and don’t spam stuff too much. Be smart with you condi clear, try to use glyphs/regen/heal, save CA as your oh kitten button. Not moving/spamming too much is important; as torment and confusion are their dmg you can seriously cut their dmg output to you by just keeping that in mind.

Edit: I wrote “beating them,” what I actually mean is not dying to them. If the mesmer isn’t dumb you aren’t going to kill them unless maybe you are condi (most condi variants are very weak to condi). Best thing usually for you is probably a stalemate, or just walk away as they cannot chase at all (e.g. wvw).

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Even as a dom mesmer main since gw1 (I was THAT guy), I find it really hard to play GW2 these days. I loved playing the game before the dumbfire and June trait revamp patches. Ever since then it has gone progressively worse. After HOT, which severely reduced the skill of all classes and increased the power creep to 11, I lost motivation to play my mesmer. I only play now just to see if the game is worth coming back to (Which it isnt for me atm). A real shame considering what this game could have been.

I really miss the old days of 20/20/30 CI mesmer. It was so much fun to play that spec, especially with my way of playing it

Well if I hadn’t left already, this post would have made me. Sad to see pretty much a legend retire. All things come and go, the good times in mmo’s maybe more so.

The only issue here is masteries. Yes you just need to run around the zone to get your gliding, jumping shroom, and if you want to your updraft. With those three masteries you can get all the HP’s you want.

Speaking from experience: I already had the above three masteries from another character (they are account wide!) and made a new ranger last month. I leveled him to 80 with tomes only, and bought cheap green gear off AH. Took him straight into HoT with just the pet I had from when I made him. With the above masteries I got 9/11 HP in verdant brink pretty easily (it was actually fun) and same story in auric basin (next zone). The only pain for me was getting the last two HP’s I needed from tangled depths, simply because I’m not that familiar with the zone.

So, masteries aside, what you are describing is actually super easy and fun, there are no issues about ranger that make this hard. The only annoying thing is needing those three masteries, and getting those just involves some time (too much imo) running around verdant brink just doing events over and over until you unlock them. Once those are unlocked you are good to go.

vesica tempestas.1563:

a goal that takes a long time is not a ‘gate’ for a casual player, its simply a long term goal for those that are not obsessed with having gear on day 1. Those that want gear on day 1 are equally not ‘gated’ from fast tracking that process with time and gold.

Yes. A “gate” doesn’t hurt a casual because by definition a casual is fine taking their time to work towards something, casually.

All these people complaining about being “casual” players and also wanting the best gear as fast as everyone else has it need a different word. I won’t suggest any, just saying that having things take a little time is not a big deal to someone who actually approaches the game in a casual way. All the complainers here are basically people who have the stress and obsession of a hard core player, but aren’t willing to actually play like a hard core player. Pretty weak imo.

I play this game casually and guess what, I enjoy that it takes some time to work towards some goals, I enjoy it a lot. It gives me a fun little project to work on and gives some structure to my time in game. I don’t stress if I get schooled by someone with better gear or whatever, that’s the whole point of approaching the game from a mellow perspective.

Anet has struck a really good balance. The best possible gear is not that big a difference to matter to anyone who is remotely relaxed about the game (i.e. not hard core), and someone can still easily obtain that gear at a very relaxed pace if they want to.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Main’d a druid at launch of HoT, sort of enjoyed it. But in the end, the druid is as much of a mess as the chronomancer.

ANet has no idea what to do with the specialization and it suffers from many bugs/flaws from the main profession.

Really, nothing but nerfs for druids and chronomancers.

I pretty much quit, didn’t touch the game in forever.

Lot’s of nerfs yes, but in terms of basic functionality and being reduced to an almost unplayable state, I just don’t think anything comes close to mesmer. That changed briefly, slightly, with Chrono, but it soon became obvious that Chrono was an error on Anet’s part as they got right back to nerfing things into oblivion; in the end they succeeded not in removing the problem build they thought they had (chrono bunker), but in removing all other builds except that one. Classic.

Look at druid, you can play it bunker or zerker and do pretty well in either, you can also play it condi if you want. Then there is melee or ranged. Multiple different builds that all basically work on a level that most mesmer builds just do not. Look at mesmer: condi chrono is whats left.

There just is not an equivalence between the two, and I think making one seriously understates the kitten job Anet has done with the mesmer class.

I played mesmer and only mesmer since GW1, I only played GW2 to play mesmer, but finally, sadly, the treatment of the class by Anet was too much and I decided to make a new main. 50% nerf to alacrity. Just seeing that after everything else, I don’t care if it was justified (it wasn’t), that was just the last straw. I chose druid, the new healing element seemed very fun.

I have to say, I wish I had rolled druid as soon as HoT released. What an amazing experience, to have my abilities just work, to be able to do decent dmg, and aoe dmg on top of that, without tons of effort and timing. Yes I still have to deal with pet AI, but at least my pet is just there doing dmg and basically functioning without disappearing when an enemy dies etc.

I’m now playing a class where everything just basically works. I don’t feel OP or UP, it seems pretty solid against any other class I run into roaming. I’ve gotten beat, and I’ve won, and each time it felt fair. The whole experience is in such stark contrast to mesmer. I haven’t looked back really, but looking back now the crap I had to deal with as mesmer was mind blowing. The nerfs, endless and mindless nerfs. The bugs, so many bugs never getting fixed, or better yet, new bugs being created!

When I work hard to do well on my druid, it actually pays off and I excel. When I worked hard on mesmer, I was able to sorta compete against some classes. If I worked really hard I could put up a decent fight against our counters (whichever those happened to be at the time…). Also nice is not feeling super OP, as we all felt during those rare few minutes before we were instanerfed back into oblivion. The trying, the trying so hard and knowing I’m outplaying the other guy by miles, and watching myself get stomped by mechanics. Seriously, you all know how it feels, to lose because another class hard counters you so bad that at absolute best you have a 50-50 chance if you are on the ball and they suck. I have not felt that once on druid, not once. God I hate that feeling, beat by balance, it is so dumb.

Making this post now is kinda bringing it all back, fresh and frustrating as ever. I’m sorry that I couldn’t hang in there with you my former fellow mesmers, I just can’t punish myself any more. It is kinda fun now to laugh at the rare power mesmer as I easily out sustain the dmg they are trying so hard to putout, or just dance and walk away from the mesmer who thinks going condi will solve anything (hint: reroll reaper to play condi). I’m sorry it’s just sad. You don’t need to pay a company to abuse you to have fun. Mesmer could have been awesome, but to this day I think everyone still basically agrees that GW1 mesmer was better than GW2 mesmer, and a lot would agree it was better by far. I think that says it all. At least I don’t remember druid being a million times better than what I’m playing now.

I will say this: the mesmer community was cool to be a part of, as is to be expected; communal suffering binds people together. Good luck and fare well brave mesmers, hope the next buff up to functionality lasts longer than usual.

Recently rolled up a druid as new main and went through HoT again to unlock etc. so I thought it was a good time to give feedback, having just gone through it again on a new character.

I am a causal player. As before, I love this expansion and game overall right now. The pve is super exciting. I just did dragon’s stand meta last night and I loved it, so fun and epic. Our map struggled on the south lane, so I took my druid there and helped with the boss as the zerg went around the outside (I think it was 2nd base on way to final, not sure). Especially on my druid, healing and helping where I could, that whole meta was just an amazing experience. Yes the last fight against the actual dragon could have been a tiny bit harder, but still what an amazingly epic event, so fun to look at and just watch like a movie as a I played. It helped that I taxid into a full map and that we won, or course.

I still think it takes a tiny bit too many HP to fully unlock the elite, that was a little annoying. That is my only complaint.

Exploring the zones is awesome, if you aren’t careful you will die, which makes it epic and fun. The meta events are super epic, the HP’s and group events are all fun, the whole thing is just awesome and epic and I love playing it.

Some people complain this isn’t casual friendly, which blows my mind. I am a hard core casual in that I refuse to grind anything because I don’t have the time (stressful job, children, etc.). I never have to on GW2, because nothing feels like a grind. I just get on and play and it works out. If I need some gear, I earn decent money at work and I can buy gold when I need it (which is actually rare) and I do; the cost is a tad annoyingly high, but still cheaper than a monthly subscription. I got a full set of runes of durability just enjoying Auric Basin, which is easy because the meta is epic and awesome, and the zone is incredibly beautiful to look at.

That is as far as PvE is concerned. The world of HoT and the pve experience is just amazing and epic, I love it.

WvW, well, yeah not so much. I only play eotm now, which I enjoy a lot and that’s good, but yeah the new BL are horrible I’d say, kinda the opposite of HoT above. I stopped pvping really, not enough time and I enjoy open world and wvw (eotm) more.

The class balancing, bug fixing and general class maintenance could be better, as everyone knows. That is kind of an understatement. HoT content is great and amazing, but bugs and class mechanics issues are ignored or left waiting to be dealt with for way too long. But that isn’t HoT specific.

So overal, from a casual, I absolutely love HoT. The zones are epic and challenging and awesome, rewards are good, everything is awesome in open world pve. WvW needs attention, one good map besides eotm or EB would be nice. PvP is basically 100% dependent on state of class balance and polish, which is not good. But again, as far as the basic pve game is concerned, I love HoT.

I cannot disagree more. I’m a super casual (super stressful job, children, etc.) player without a ton of time, and I absolutely love things as they are. I love the challenging group content. I can jump on and go find an event and within a minute be in some insane group fight that is not mindless or boring. The content is exciting and fun. It is epic all the time, I love it.

PLEASE DO NOT NERF THE CONTENT!

This probably isn’t going to be a popular post, but I thought I should give my feedback.

I mained a mesmer since GW1 and barely touched another class, I played GW2 to play mesmer. Recently though, I just couldn’t take what they’d done to the class, again and again, the recent nerf to alacrity was the last straw and I’d loved druid like classes in other games so I decided to roll a druid. I’m definitely a casual player, though I don’t think I’m clueless or bad, especially roaming I think I handle myself okay.

I love my druid so much, it is so fun. I run a tank build in wvw (= eotm now) and whatever in pve, both power based no condi. I love the style of sustain the druid has, and I love healing others in meta events etc. (even if it doesn’t make a huge difference, it’s super fun). Everything seems to work very well, abilities do what they should, I like the effectiveness of my pets, it is just an awesome experience overall.

I know some of you are reading this and your eyes are bugging out, based on other posts I’ve read, but I’m sorry to say in terms of abilities being worthless or not working, pet woes, damage woes, nerfs, or really any kind of woes, druid has nothing on mesmer. Mesmer is an absolute train wreck of a class right now, and I know people have a hard time fighting them, especially the condi variety, but really the class is a buggy piece of garbage at this point. Druid does not come close to the level of bugs and unplayable design of mesmer. I don’t have to work so hard on druid just to barely compete with other players, in fact I feel like every fight is a fair fight on my druid. I never get roflstomped and feel like no matter what I did I would have gotten roflstomped. Even against Anet’s chosen children (DH etc) I feel like I have a fair shot. This is in stark contrast to mesmer.

There have been times in the past where mesmer did feel OP, before it was almost instanerfed into nothing again, but so far the druid feels about right. Not OP, not weak, just in a pretty solid place. It is very nice to play.

As of right now I just can’t really complain about much, aside from very minor QoL things, like seeing buffs on my pet for example above it’s health bar.

So, there is some druid feedback from a new player to the class. Obviously very contextual coming from mesmer main.

So, I sincerely hope we don’t see any super nerfs to the spec, love the druid.

I’m new; can you please explain how this is a hard counter? Is CAF and melandru runes enough condi clear/mitigation? Or is the large healthpool and perm regen enough to counter them? I think I get how it works, just want to be sure. Thanks

Wow, well that is pretty awesome (coming from mesmer main :P).

Here’s another if anyone is still interested: In a power setup for wvw (where e.g. you can get boon duration from food/gear), is there ever a reason to take NM over BM if you are not using warhorn? Looking at the two trees, I just can’t see how NM is superior, almost due to resounding timbre giving almost as much sustain by itself. Or does NM compete more with WS? Even there, I can’t see how NM would be taken over WS, again without using warhorn also. Any comments appreciated

This has been a ton of help getting the basic lay of the land for druid play, thanks a lot.

Is it true that pet dmg and stats are independent of yours? As in no matter how I gear the pet will do the same dmg?

Tragic Positive.9356:

MSFone.3026:

A few questions remaining:

1)Are glyphs considered “bad”?
2)Is running LB as a druid dumb because you can’t build for both sustain and LB? In particular would staff/LB be bad?
3)Is primal echoes (staff trait) ever taken over Druidic Clarity, or does DC provide such condi cleanse it’s too good to pass up?
4)In wvw, what do people do in terms of movement speed? Take Natural Stride?

Thanks again.

1. They aren’t. They are, however, almost always picked for melee combat. That’s why I didn’t include them for this build. They are of a great use in other builds.
2. It’s not. However, druid becomes much more utility oriented since you’ll have to sacrifice most of Healing Power for offense. Therefore only interesting CAF abilities for you are #3 and #5 and potentially leaving the form for Celestial Shadow
3. Not in PvP. We lack condition cleanse plus DC is a stun breaker. There’s no reason not to pick this trait.
4. They either go for Beast Mastery for perma swiftness and in most other builds – they use Natural Stride. I use NS for Open World PvE all the time. I haven’t been to WvW for almost a year now, though.

Ah, ok thanks. That leads into another question I had: I’m guessing from your response to 2) that CAF is pretty dependent on healing power, how true is this of druid in general? Do the abilities scale in a way that makes not stacking healing dumb?

Also following up on 2), if one wanted to run LB, is marksmanship mandatory? Or is it only a difference in stat allocation?

For any roamers, what kind of stats are you looking at if you are not running glass? Or is glass the way to go even if you want to run healer with a partner? How important is healing power in wvw for druids?

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense, really appreciate all the responses. Looking forward to trying out the build, Tragic, thanks. I can see the choice between NM and BM being pretty open, I’m looking forward to trying both.

A few questions remaining:

1)Are glyphs considered “bad”?
2)Is running LB as a druid dumb because you can’t build for both sustain and LB? In particular would staff/LB be bad?
3)Is primal echoes (staff trait) ever taken over Druidic Clarity, or does DC provide such condi cleanse it’s too good to pass up?
4)In wvw, what do people do in terms of movement speed? Take Natural Stride?

Thanks again.

Ah ok so “Guard” keeps pet alive, which is your dmg, and staff and sw/wh are for heals and keeping you alive. Thanks.

Is that how it goes with most sustain druid builds, main source of dmg is pet?

How does BM and WHaO give better condi cleanse than what he had before?

Thanks a lot! I think I get the idea, the survival skills giving condi removal, and the warhorn for extra survivability (I think). I’m hoping to really play as ranged, I don’t really want to melee when avoidable; where does the dmg come from in this setup? Pet, or MH sword, or? Also (forgive me) what is the point in “Guard!”, is it to keep the pet alive if they start to focus it (do people do that?)?

NM and WS both seem good. Does anyone use glyphs, or are they bad? For roaming, does anyone take Natural Stride, or do we get mobility from other sources?

Thanks a ton for the help, not a ton of time to play so info from here helps a lot!

Hello Ranger Forum,

I’ve never played a ranger and have decided to make a druid to be my new main. I’ve always really liked nature-ey healing type classes/builds and am hoping the druid is as awesome as I’ve seen it look. I’m casual in terms of pve, primarily just open world and seeing what content I can 2-man with my friend. I like both pvp and roaming, with a preference for roaming.

What I’d like to do is have good sustain, I don’t really care about bursting people down (I can go play shatter mes etc. if I want to do that), what I really want is crazy heals for myself and friend and to be able to outlast. I don’t mind stalemating against tanks. I also really like the kiting play style, which of course means ranged. Heal and kite is something I used to love playing. So, goals are

1)rely on sustain rather than burst to win fights

2)heal friend in addition to myself

3)be able to kite very well (not in that order of importance).

I’ve seen videos where people do this, having crazy healing and good enough sustained dmg to win a fight. So basically I’d really appreciate some build advice. One question in particular is re. weapons: I see people play with GS a lot, either GS/LB or GS/staff. I’d like to play staff I think, but LB looks really awesome too; is LB/staff a horrible idea? Any comments to help give me some basic understanding in terms of weapon choice for the above bunker/healer/kiter type build would be great.

Thanks a lot rangers/druids, looking forward to joining your community!

Why do incompetent people/organizations do stupid stuff? Nobody knows, but it happens every day

If something else (EOTM) is pulling players away from WvW, the solution is to bring WvW make WvW better to compete with EOTM, not make EOTM worse by removing it. Forcing people to do something they don’t want to do will never succeed in a game. You need to attract people to WvW by adding to it and making it better, not by removing all other options.

You’re basically saying “the problem with WvW is that there are other things people can do that are more fun; remove those things and they will have to wvw, which is good.”

The reality is, people do other things because wvw sucks in a lot of ways, just make it better and players will come. Is this hard to understand, that you have to make things good to attract people?

Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender have 25-50% longer cast times of weapon skill phantasms; why? God forbid we be able to use these skills in a reasonable way. 1.5 sec is way too long and should be brought down to at least 1 sec, better would be .75 sec like iberzerker.

In particular Disenchanter: this is a combination skill producing a phantasm and also serving, sorta, as a condi clear and boon removal. This would be a really cool skill if it didn’t have such a horrendously long cast time. Counter play? Same as all our other “resource” skills, just spam aoe and it goes away almost instantly. Because it dies very fast, iDiscenchanter is not at all some OP ability requiring a giant “interrupt me!” cast time. 1.5 sec is just too long, you’re almost guaranteed to face tank during the cast, it’s horrible.

Please reduce the cast time on at least iDisenchanter to .75 sec, at most 1sec.

Windwalker.7421:

Hmm maybe, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that nerfing something by 50% is generally not the way you achieve balance. It basically says that either original designers of the skill were incompetent, or those people rebalancing it now are. In the rarest of instances will that ever yield balance.

In fact, this is the epitome of how not to balance a game. In fact I could swear Anet has often claimed to be in favor of smaller incremental adjustments, rather than using the nuclear option? lol

I don’t think you’d see any outcry over a ~25% adjustment to Alacrity at all. Most reasonable Mesmers were expecting something like that, because that would be a legitimate attempt to balance rather than destroy an ability. By the looks of it, they’re not interested in carefully adjusting here, but are out only to nerf something new and profession-defining into the ground.

…

I mean how can you be so ignorant to your customers feelings, as to announce a 50% nerf of a very popular class-defining ability…

I think this is a really good point. This kind of erratic behavior screams incompetence, either of the original designers who implemented these things that are apparently so OP one of them is getting (essentially) removed and the other having its effectiveness cut in half, or on the part of the management (I don’t know if there is a dedicated team for balancing issues) for overreacting to something they signed off on with HoT. Has anyone heard of beta testing? If it was done properly, we wouldn’t be here.

For those of us who actually have jobs and are held accountable, and depend on others to hold themselves accountable, it’s hard to imagine pulling this kind of stuff and not getting my kitten chewed off about it and/or feeling like a complete kittening idiot.

On a personal experience note, since HoT I’ve actually been able to pve on my mesmer and not find it one of the worst experiences in gaming ever. In fact, I actually like it a lot. I get to, you know, use my skills with reasonable regularity, instead of standing there struggling to produce my “resource” which disappears when my target dies and use skills dependent on that resource. I mean seriously, alacrity and the cd reduction it allows make mesmer tolerable in open world, as having your clones/phants die when one out of the 5-8 mobs you are fighting dies is just a horrible experience. Alacrity and HoT fixed that.

It’s about quality of experience, and there are a ton of other ways to nerf mesmer if, for some reason, it is needed. I mean you want to remove precog, fine, whatever, and removing the tank amulets pretty much takes care of bunker mes I think. Nerfing alacrity though is a straight nerf to mesmer enjoyment in all game modes, it’s just ridiculous to introduce something so great for the class, and then gut it like this.

Raids: Okay I mean unless Anet is hiring people in their first year of undergrad, I really don’t think it’s that hard to code a reduction in the effectiveness of alacrity on your party without kitten it’s effectiveness on the mesmer.

It’s just so crazy incompetent, yet again, just mind boggling. What a disorganized “team” they have there at Anet, where one group develops content for HoT and then, at best, someone else comes in an removes it; at worst it was the same people who implemented it in the first place, meaning they were so ignorant of their own product that they released something without enough testing to understand it, and later removed it themselves.

Is it super hard to get hired at Anet, or is like really some network thing? Did these guys like meet on WoW or something or at college? How can this actually be how a company functions?

Very casual player and since the hp change I have been and am still having a great time. I used to pvp almost exclusively, but I love pve now, it’s actually challenging and engaging! Thank you Anet! And please do not nerf the zones down to a mindless time sink.

No do not nerf them or any other mobs. I enjoy engaging pve fights, and these guys in particular are really fun.

With the change to 250 HP I’m back to saying GW2 is the best mmorpg I’ve ever played, and HoT is the best GW2 has been by miles. I can now say I love everything about this expansion, great work and thanks!

Also, please do not nerf the pve difficulty, it’s amazingly fun as it is now that I get to play my chronomancer. Best game, love it.

10 all the way /15char

After playing it, I love every single aspect of this expansion, except the way new specs are unlocked. Everything is seriously amazing except for that single, pretty glaring bummer. Despite how great everything else is, the one issue with the spec unlocking is a serious drawback and a disappointment to many, myself included.

This is my suggestion: Keeping the points required to unlock the same as right now, let people choose which skills they unlock as they progress linearly left to right through the new spec tree.

For example, it costs 60 to open up the new spec. From then on players can choose to unlock any utilities or their heal, or traits from the trait line, but not the elite skill. Players progress linearly through the trait tree left to right. If they choose to spend 15 pts to learn the first (farthest left) static trait in their line, they unlock the ability to learn the first three choosable traits (next to the right). Once they learn one of those traits for 15 pts the next static trait unlocks and the can choose to learn that next, or learn another choosable trait at the current tier they have unlocked. Whenever they want to bank up the 25 pts for a utility or heal, they can learn those in any order. Once they have everything in the line learned, they can learn the elite skill (elite skill is still learned last).

This keeps the current progression to unlocking the elite specs for those that find that important, but also let’s people “play how they want” by allowing them to learn the exact traits and abilities they want as they progress. This way for players who already have a basic build they are aiming for, it will take them 60 pts to unlock, plus 15*6=90 pts, for a total of 150 pts to have a basic build without any heals, elite skill or utilities unlocked. This is far from being handed everything up front, and to get the spec completely unlocked still requires 400 pts. However this way players can much more quickly get to the point where they have a working build they are comfortable with, and still get a sense of progress by planning out what skill/trait to learn next as they worth through HoT.

This would be easy to implement: Just refund all hero points spent on elite traits to the player, then let them spend those points according to the above system.

I’m fairly certain this would alleviate much of the frustration of a lot of players, and it’s still a compromise.

If you like this suggestion leave a reply and click the +1 to the right of the post, and please don’t derail

Eirdyne.9843:

Really, I think the vast majority of complaints about this come down to having to play together with other players.

You’re wrong. Most of the complaints are coming from people who want the exact experience you outlined above, except they just want to have that experience playing their new elite spec. Pretty simple really.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Thank you ArenaNet! This proves what I have been saying, that you are a company that listens and considers the issues the community raises. The next big one I hope you will address is the Elite Specialization unlock path. I know the argument is tired, but please consider the community’s point. As implemented you have made it so for most characters coming into HoT (including the main character for a good number of us) the Elite Specializations will be a reward for us completing Heart of Thorns. Our trait line uplock only near complete and able to make a viable build right before the end of the game. Did you design the Elite Specializations for us to earn as end-game regard or did you design the Elite Specializations for us to play HoT with them? We were led to believe we were going to be able to play HoT with our Elite Specializations so I hope you can understand why we disapointed you have taken the most exciting part of the game that is core to play mechanic changes and made it an end game award. We just want someone from ArenaNet to properly addresss the question about unlocks from this perspective.

We understand your business model. We understand the company depends on money from the gem store and if we had a gem store option to buy a scroll and unlock a random map hero point, well at least then those of us with really busy schedules would have an option other than grinding though map competition in the core game to enjoy our Elite Spec in HoT. I don’t think anyone wants full Elite Specialization unlock coming into Vertam Brink, but by time we’re done with that first map we should have the full trait line unlocked and be able to at least equipted the weapon and have a viable build going into the last two maps of the game.

We just want the option to play though Heart of Thorns with our Elite Specializations without having to go back to the core game and grind map competition. Is this unreasonable? Is there any middle ground?

Well put +1

same here. Instead of playing the game I’m here on forums

I was hoping I was wrong, like there had to be some way to actually get a build without all this, but it looks like you have to go linearly through the entire thing, unlocking every trait before you get to the end. This is just ridiculous. At least it would be less crazy if you could pick a trait from each tier and at least get a build with ~60 pts. But you actually have to pick up all the wells etc. it seems like, there is not quick way to get a playable elite build.

This is just kittening kittened and I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking this is bull kitten. Maybe Anet will rethink this crap.

Zind.3659:

Welp. After about 5 hours of playing I think it’s entirely possible that I’ll have uninstalled the game before ever unlocking my elite spec. I want to like this game so much, and I tend to have some fun when I play with my guild, but since I had to switch back to grenade spec because my gimpy unfinished elite spec wasn’t good enough to actually contribute to claiming our guild hall, I just have 0 interest in logging back in to go try and find more hero points.

Maybe I’ve just outgrown MMOs, but I am sick of games that are designed to make me do a bunch of boring stuff before I can have fun. (I already have to do a bunch of boring stuff before I can have fun, and that’s called my job.)

I bought the expansion because it sounded like it was going to make Engineer fresh and fun to play, and add in a whole new area in which to figure it out. Then, I fire it up, and find out that I can’t play my fresh new main until I’ve already finished the whole new area. Not only does that mean that combat will be boring all through the whole area, but the experience will be marred because I will be moving through the area with the motive of unlocking the thing I want to do, rather than a desire to follow the story or explore the map.

All in all it’s just a major disappointment. I preordered against my better judgement due to hype from guild members, and I’m now wishing I hadn’t. Had I known I would have to grind for the elite spec, I probably wouldn’t have bought in until that got changed.

I am sick of games that are designed to make me do a bunch of boring stuff before I can have fun.

Well said.

Finding time to actually enjoy myself quietly playing a good game is actually hard, sorry you may not understand. Yes having to spend 4 hours grinding kitten just to play a game I already “grinded” for at work earning money to pay for it is kittening dumb. That’s half a day of work, spent in a game, a game that is supposed to be a fun way to spend free time while not at work.

Yes, dropping $50 on this kitten and having to grind for any amount is actually horrible. But hey that’s great you are all about mindlessly “working” at this “game” in your free time. I guess Anet calculated there are more of you than me.

I’m looking into a refund.

I have a full time job and a family and probably the sole reason I play gw instead of some other mmo’s is the almost complete lack of a grind. I left some months ago to take a break, which of course I always can do without having to worry about falling behind in some stupid grind.

So I come back for HoT to get a fresh experience on my mesmer playing a new spec, only to find there is a grind to unlock it. Spending many hours (anything over 4 is many imo) to actually play the spec I bought HoT to play is horrible.

Taking time to work for ascended gear is great, grinding for professions to craft cool looking stuff is great. Grinding for core functionality that was probably the biggest selling point for many is kittening kittened. If it takes 16h of play that is literally weeks for me. Moreover is kittening insulting and childish of Anet to make it this way. Just let people unlock the elites with gold or whatever so I can go through the content at my own extremely slow pace enjoying the new spec along the way.

So here I am the day after release thinking about getting a refund, or at least waiting till they fix this. One thing is for sure: I’m not kittening grinding in a game that is all about “play how you want” and no grinding.

A significant portion of the playerbase in gw2 is actually very opposed to being forced into things; we don’t need to be given “things to work for,” I already have enough of those, you know, like the kittening money I worked for to blow on this kittened expac.

Anet made it years without a single mandatory grind comparable at all to this. Fix this kitten.

I read somewhere that GS auto counts for 3 hits towards the 40, is that not so?

Hey Dude(s/ettes),

Returning after a break (life etc.) and coming back a little before HoT. Attempting to solo/duo some fractals and had a question:

When the imbued Shaman boss puts up his shield at 75%, 50% and 25%, it takes 40 “hits” to bring it down. My question is do clone attacks count toward this total? Do Phantasm attacks count?

Thanks for the info.