Showing Posts For Revydan.3506:
First I want to say that I absolutely love the Druid. I really like its design and that it is focused on a healing support role. It’s almost exactly what I always wanted to play in GW2. Well, one of the things I always wanted to play, anyway.
And before I get to my feedback: a bug prevents Quick Draw from working with any Staff skills, this needs to be fixed.
But now to my personal Druid feedback. (By the way, I don’t really go into possible combos with all the skills and specializations and their traits, because I don’t think that the time we have to play Druid during this weekend is enough to thoroughly test those. My initial impression, however, is that the Druid does indeed lack synergy with Ranger bace specializations. )
First off some general impressions and notes:
- An option to always see all your allies health, regardless of wheter they are in a group with you or not, would be really nice for this specialisazion. So would the ability to target allies.
- The Druid would really profit from the ability to apply some boons to allies, healing is nice and all, and I really like the healing playstyle, but healing alone just doesn’t seem to be useful enough. A few offensive boons would really help in that regard and, at least in my opinions, greatly improve the viability of the Druid in PvE where most adequate players can keep themselves alive just fine. In PvP it actually seems to be in a pretty good spot for its first time in the game. Although that might also increase when Bosses get breakbars and all the Druid’s dazes become useful in PvE. But as it stands now it seems to me that you could always take a Guard or a Herald with Glint and Ventari Legends instead of the Druid to add both healing and far more utility to your group than Druid offers.
- This specialization als seems to rely pretty heavily on stability, at least in Celestial Avatar Form, as every spell in that form is channeled, but the Druid doesn’t come with any way to gain stability. But the base Ranger has those, so this isn’t really all that huge a problem. Some stability would of course always be nice, though.
- The Healing Power scaling on the Druid’s skills sadly isn’t all that great, but that might be a good thing, as it means that you don’t have to use healing power equipment to be effective, as the base healing is overall quite good (please, for the love of all the Spirits, don’t nerf the base healing values, they are okay the way they are [maybe a bittle to low, even, <wink wink, nudge, nudge>]).
Now to the Staff:
In general I really like the animations and the feeling of this weapon, but it seems a bit too heavily focused on healing, as it barely does anything else, which I personally like, but I can understand that many people might want a bit more from their weapons.
It also is the only weapon that allows you to effectively charge Astral Force, but that is a problem I will get to later.
- #1 Solar Beam
The auto attack of the Staff would seem pretty solid, if it did any notceable damage. Where this skill really shines is as a way to charge Astral Force and not much else. You can get from zero to full really quickly, which allows you to use Celestial Avatar a lot, which is a ton of fun. Unfortunately this might be due to a bug, as there seems to be a bug that allows you to charge Celestial Avatar by simply pressing 1 and whacking your pet over the head with the staff. That should probably be fixed. It basically counts every pass through an ally as a heal, even when they have full HP.
- #2 Astral Wisp
The second skill is also rather nice, although it could use a damage or maybe condition component, not a lot of damage, but maye a little something to tag mobs in PvE or single one enemy out a bit in PvP. Or just to increase the pressure the druid can create. It jsut seems a bit lackluster as the fire and forget skill it is right now. You basically just put it on an enemy that mostly fights in melee range and hope that it helps whomever that enemy attacks (or your melee range allies). The radius of the Wisp should probably also be slightly increased, it’s really tiny right now. The actual hit with the wisp also does far too little damage.
- #3 Ancestral Grace
Another Skill I really like, but you really shouldn’t have to channel it for its full casttime even if you don’t cast it on full range. That’s just annoying. Nothing more to say here, really, it’s just a really nice mobility skill with good healing attached and a blast finisher. Good skill.
- #4 Vine Surge
Number four is the only staff skill I don’t like all that much. For a skill shot the immobilize duration is just far too low, barely useful at all, really.
- #5 Sublime Conversion
Nothing much to say here, really useful projectile destruct with a nice bonus, healing could maybe be a bit higher, but not too shabby, especially if you catch a good number of projectiles. And it’s also a water field, which is really cool (and should not be changed).
And from the staff to the Celestial Avatar:
This mechanic is abkittenely amazing, I like its design and its healing is pretty awesome, too.
- #1 Cosmic Ray
This skill’s radius could be a bit larger as it is a bit too hard and awkward to hit moving allies and you really shouldn’t have to aim a simple heal skill, imho. Could also really, really, reeeaaaallllly use a bit of damage to enemies.
- #2 Seed of Life
Great anti condi skill that nicely complements all the heals, but also a bit clunky too use, although here it is more the time before the seed blooms than the radius that is the problem.
- #3 Lunar Impact
All around awesome, really nice pressure thanks to the dace, good against rezzes/stomps, nice radius, pretty great. (Sadly this will probably have to be nerfed in some way due to Moment of Clarity as 6 seconds of AoE daze on a CD of 5 seconds with a cast time of one second, so all in all almost permanent [the animation prevents it from actually being permanent] daze while you are in Celestial Avatar is pretty kitten broken. Which is truly unfortunate. )
- #4 Rejuvenating Tides
Another great heal with the addition of a mobile water field for, of course, more heal. Heal all the things!
- #5 Natural Convergence
Finally not a heal! This skill is a bit of a double edged sword. It’s effect is quite good, pulsing cripple, pulsing slow, a bit of damage, but it roots you in place and I don’t know whether that’s worth it. Personally I’d say yes, mostly because of the slow, but other’s might see that differently.
Now to the Glyphs:
The Glyphs feel pretty lacking overall. They seem bland and uninspired and their Celestial Avatar counterparts rarely seem worth using, considering that you could use more of the Celestial Avatar weapon skills instead. It’s weird that they’re all point blank AoEs, as the rest of the druid seems more suited to fighting/healing at range. Their radii are almost all too small, especially the elite Glyph’s one. The only really nice thing about them are their low cooldowns.
- Glyph of Rejuvenation
For a specialization with that much healing, the actual heal should maybe do a tad bit more. Especially the non Celestial Avatar verion seems pretty weak, as the self heal isn’t anything to write home about and the AoE heal is… okay-ish. The Celestial Avatar version seems a bit better, as the sum of all possible healing done is greater.
- Glyph of Alignment
Weakness and cripple are in my opinion simply not good enough to warrant a utility slot (seriously, 3s cripple and 3s weakness on an utility skill?) and the damage is meh. The Celestial Avatar form is, again, better but maybe yet again not quite good enough to be used over an Avatar Skill in the limited time you have as a Celestial Avatar.
- Glyph of the Tides
Pretty good, has an okay radius. I feel like the knockback should maybe be on the Celestial Avatar version and the pull on the normal one, as the knockback is a bit more defensive and thus fits the pure support form a bit more. Although, now that I think about it, the pull has some nice synergy with Celestial Avatar #3. Nevermind, then, maybe this skill simply is awesome, especially with it’s low CD. Really rocks in PvP.
- Glyph of Equality
Nice skill, the daze is useful, AoE stunbreak is also not bad, although it’s not easy to judge when your allies actually need it, but that’s probably more due to GW2 UI, which is severly lacking in some aspects. I think Glyph of the Tides is a bit better, but this is a close second.
- Glyph of Empowerment
The Damage boost is far too small, barely useful at all. The boost to outgoing healing is not horrible, but its actual usefulnes is somewhat questionable. Haven’t tested that, though as this skill, once again, doesn’t seem to be worth a slot.
- Glyph of Unity
This one actually makes me a bit sad. The Idea is really, really good, but first off, the radius is just laughable. Absolutely ridiculously tiny for the effect. Everyone who isn’t stunned or immobilized will just walk away, and you will be hard pressed to keep more than one target in range, at least for the normal version and that one’s damage per received hit is so low that you would have to facetank an entire rapid fire or something like it to do significant damage. And the Celestial Avatar version can’t save this skill, either. The radius is once again far too small to be useful, as your allies probably shouldn’t be that close to you if you receive enough hits to get some healing oput of it. So it might only be useful as a small, gloryfied damage mitigation that severly limits the movement of everyone who wants to profit from it. Ireally had some high hopes for this one, because its concept seemed so cool, but the way it is now it simply is too weak.
And finally on to the Traits:
The traits in general aren’t bad, but being able to choose traits that give boons to your healing or something like that would probably go a long way to add some utility to the druid that goes beyond healing. I don’t really know what would be most useful in that regard myself, but as nice as all the healing is it just doesn’t feel like it’s quite enough. At least not when you compare it to, for example, a guard who can dish out a bit of healing, a significant number of blocks, and good uptime on many useful boons beyond that., which, all things considered seems to be a bit more useful than pure healing.
Adept Traits: - Celestial Being (minor)
The Astral Force generation of this trait is pretty problematic because of the way it works. Staff alone has enough healing skills to charge Astral Force from zero too one hundred percent very quickly, often in just a few seconds (although that is most likely due to the fact that Solar Beam is bugged and gives you Astral Force even when it just passes through an ally without actually healing him due to im having full health). This is amazingly fun, although also maybe a little bit OP (without the bug probably not, though). With every weapon other than staff, however, you take freaking forever to build up one hundred percent Astral Force, so you are pretty much forced to use staff when you play Druid. So there are two possibilities now, either you simply buff the Astral Force gained per damage hit (to 1% or maybe 1.5%), and maybe, just maybe, nerf the Astral force gained through heals a tiny bit (although that really shouldn’t be neccessary after a fix to Solar beam), or you change this mechanic so that a percentage of your damage or healing gets converted to Astral Force and then balance that. Although that might jsut open another can of worms.
- Druidic Clarity
Good against condi burst, not realy much more to say here.
- Cultivated Synergy
Well, it’s more healing. Maybe change it to give a boon instead of healing, or just add a boon to the heal.
- Primal Echoes
The staff trait. More daze is always nice to have. Solid trait I guess, wouldn’t know anything to add to this.
Master Traits:
- Live Vicariously (minor)
Nice trait, adds a bit more self sustain, especially when you concentrate on healing others.
- Celestial Shadow
This trait’s usefulness might be a bit limited. In PvP it might not be wise to use it, as stealth prevents capture point contirbution and I don’t really see its usefulness in PvE, eihter. But I like that it adds something more than healing. Maybe just change the Stealth to some other buff or boon?
- Verdant Etching
The Glyph trait. A lot like Primal Echoes. It’s nice that it adds condi removal to Glyphs, I don’t think that it should be changed.
- Natural Stride.
Good trait. Should probably just be left the way it is.
Grandmaster Traits:
- Natural Mender (minor)
I like this one. It makes your healing stronger the more you heal and I don’t see a problem with that. Just means that if you do a good job you get to do it even better.
- Grace of the Land
Nice to have against high condi pressure, another good trait.
- Lingering Light
I fell like this trait is actually a bit better than the skill it uses, as the wisp circles around you, so you get to decide where it is and you have more control over who gets the heal.
- Ancient Seed.
This one seems to be the odd one out. It’s the only trait that applies conditions, and the only way to apply damaging conditions that comes with the Druid specialization. The immobilize is certainly nive and I won’t complain about the bleed, either, but it seems a bit weird that there is nothing besides this one trait in the entire specialization that would allow the Druid to do some condi damage. Of course, the base Ranger specializations can help with that, so it might not really a problem, but it does seem weird.
In conclusiopn I would say that I absolutely love the Druid, although it does have it’s problems. One of these is that it doesn’t bring much else than healing in the way of group utility, which seems a bit bland. Another one is that every Druid is pretty much forced to use a staff, unless he doesn’t ever want to use the new mechanic and that really should not be the case.
Edit:
After playing some more PvP I realized that the Staff pretty much sucks. Doesn’t do any damage, the heals aren’t useful in actual combat (at least not in PvP) and you don’t have any presence in fights at all. So you are left with a good movement skill and a projectile destruction. Very disappointing for a weapon. The Celestial Avatar is pretty nice, but I don’t really see a use for staff, at least in PvP. Just ditch that weapon and use Troll Unguent to charge Celestial Avatar.
(edited by Revydan.3506)