Guild Wars 2

Let’s take a moment to discuss game design here.

People are calling Druidic Clarity and Celestial Shadow “too strong.” This is a metagame perception and opportunity cost evaluation that doesn’t take into consideration that if the metagame were different, these traits wouldn’t be strong.

Extreme example: suppose there were no conditions in the game to remove. Seems like Druidic clarity does a whole lot of nothing. Okay, now consider ANets original condition design philosophy, that conditions are applied gradually and build up. Well, Druidic Clarity would also be pretty balanced, since you would still eat a pretty consistent amount of damage, and bulk removal wouldn’t really mitigate all that much; you could probably afford to take other types of cleanses and pick a different trait.

But no. Because condi is now spiked onto targets, and the only way to survive in this metagame right now is to remove mass amounts of conditions, and the condition builds don’t exactly apply consistent damage anymore (barring scepter on necro), it creates this “oh, that’s so strong” perception, but really it’s only a symptom of a design paradigm shift.

In Druidic Clarity’s case; what you should actually be complaining about is the current state of condi application, and how it justifies the strong level of condition removal seen on every class worth using in the metagame (PvP specifically on this comment).

As far as Celestial Shadow goes; back in S1 PvP, it was largely considered a useless trait. CA2 also used to remove 2 conditions instead of just 1, which meant that Druids could actually afford to not have to use every resource available to them to mass remove condis (Signet of Renewal and Druidic clarity), and therefore people were running the glyphs trait and glyphs. Also, when chill was able to be traited to be a damaging effect, Natural Stride was seeing TONS of use. But with inhibiting conditions not being as threatening and the ability to maintain swiftness, Natural Strides use also died down.

Celestial Shadow is simply a case of “overused therefore overpowered,” but guaranteed if the competing traits were actually that; competitive, people would drop Celestial Shadow for other things. Not to mention it’s balanced around the concept you can’t hold a cap while stealthed in PvP.

Why do I mention PvP so often? It receives the most intrinsically detailed balance patches. Each gamemode; WvW, PvP, and PvE has a different balance. And in each game mode; per the objective of that mode, there is nothing “overpowered” about the Druid.

anduriell.6280:

OMNIBUS.2913:

Ty Ty ty for finally doing this. The first thing I’m doing when I log in is naming all my pets!

Like kitten seriously? Did you necro kitten post a post from 2 years ago?

Well it was his post to begin with!

• Consumables also apply to the pet.
• Tweak attribute ratios on pet families and a select few specific pets for greater competition in certain roles.
• Lower pet cooldowns slightly on the old pets or have BM reduce pet skill cooldowns by 33% instead of by 20%.
• Give pets base Ferocity and Healing Power (150, 300, 450, specifically) like how they did with Condition Damage to make some pets have a clearer focus.
• Keybinds for “Attack My Target” and “Return to Me” and F1 & F3 to be replaced with the other 2 pet skills (besides the auto-attack).

Anduriell… I spend 80% of my time dueling on 1v1 servers, also against GOOD thiefs and I can tell you one thing. We have the tools to really, really kitten them up. In the last 5 days, I didn’t lose a single duel against a thief (were about 120 duels against thiefs those last 5 days).

There are so many ways we can interrupt them in their playflow. Some examples: If someone uses shadow refugee hop in CAF, put a 3 into it, stand in the middle and pop 5. Taunt hits even if the enemy is stealthed, you can predict movement, mostly when they use the stolen item. Time important skills like LB 3 or 4 so that they hit at the end of a dodge/evade skill and don’t go into the void. Enable attacks to switch targets when you switch targets. You can lure them out of stealth by casting a rapid fire, when they come out of stealth simply target them and the rapid fire goes right into their face. Time your big CDs properly. Be aware where thieves port, pay attention from where they shadowstep – they can port back there. Move. Unless you know you can lure the thief into an attack, be on the move. Bristleback F2 + Taunt + RF or Hilt Bash and Maul downs almost every thief if done right, dont open up with it, wait for them to blow some of their defensive CDs. On GS for example, Quickdraw with GS4 is pretty much your best friend. Don’t fight thieves in melee inside of their blinding fields. I hope some of those tips help you out.

Yes, it is verry risky to use as you roots yourself, I don’t really use it that often because of that. It has so much risk and as a druid you don’t really have that much follow up to the immobilize anyway so I feel it is not worth using. I usually use it when the enemy is focusing an ally.

Camping longbow seems to be working fine for him tho. If interested take a look at this for example. He is pretty good at kiting with LB. At least it is not boring to watch as there is lot of movement.

Welcome to the new and improved free to play business model; toxic behavior goes hand in hand with f2p like cookies and cream. Plus the release of HoT and all it’s attached elitism has turned what I once considered the most friendly MMO community into another typical cess pit. I think you can firmly put the blame for this change all on Anet’s shoulders so feel free to thank em for that.

OP, you can use Axe and just auto attack and blind.

anduriell.6280:

you just put yourself in the middle and hit 7 to 9.

sounds like a supporter^^

anduriell.6280:

Eurantien.4632:

My last game: 420k damage dealt. 470k recieved. 180k healing to allies. The build posted must be more tanky/healer oriented to get those heal numbers, such low damage numbers, and clearly the other team knew and didn’t want to hit him because of it haha

Could you share the screenshot? I mean just for prove your statement.

I uh… don’t know how haha. But I do have this screen shot!

Have u run dungeons w/ Druid? I have all day, and yes AC as well, and the heals were not strong enough to help us threw the hairy parts, and its not like the dps helped make up for the lack of heals. As a main ranger for almost two yrs to turn it into a healing class is kinda silly. I have found the only ones that are excited about this are the part time rangers, ones who only play ranger when they have a build worth playing, but from over a dozen main rangers after a day of playing druid they are upset w/ what was done to them.

And then there’s the Tempest…

Just watched one outperform a Druid and deliver decent DPS.

I see what you mean, you make good arguments and it is evident that you thought the skills through very well.

But, I still think the survival skills are in a pretty solid place, some of them maybe just need some CD adjustments. (for example I used Muddy terrain in WvW pretty often, works like a charm cutting through zergs)

And regarding Longbow skills, I do agree with you on longbow 5, but stealth on longbow 3 is already quite strong (although, swiftness for the Ranger also wouldnt hurt..)

I think you make some very good suggestions that both do not require a total overhaul of most of the current skills and are not overpowered but indeed improvements.

I think your best suggestion is the initial gap closer on the sword auto attack chain.
In contrast to that, I don’t think longbow and Survival skills need any further improvements currently, they already define the current ranger profession in all game modes. We should focus on the other abilities first.

Keep up the good work

anduriell.6280:

Personally i don’t find the piercing wrong. Actually piercing is always better than AoE, it requires you to be aware of what you are hitting and which angle. Perfect for the ranger.
If you have trouble to hit some targets with the piercing you are doing it the other way around. You target the general to be sure you hit it, then play with the angles to hit as many as you can on the way (this is my 2 cents ).

I think the speed attack could be improved, the downside of the Longbow it’s the lack of damage to close targets. This trait should get the speed to 1/2 sec at least, the trait need to reduce the aftercast animation that makes the actual attack to be every second or so.. Right now it’s not noticeable the benefit of this trait in attack speed wise..

It’s definitely personal preference. I was also thinking about the aoe dmg not scaling to the range, so if you were to stand close to the target or at range, the dmg aoe would damage the same. So it would be more viable to shoot at close but you’d probably be better of switching weapons.

Ryou.2398:

Usually in mmorpgs there is something to offset the weaknesses of a class, so the ranger just offers nothing for having the worst dps?

It’s not that black and white. All the professions have massively complex interactions of active and passive defenses, crowd control effects, condition and direct damage, area or single target damage, sustain, group support capabilities, the ability to do multiple things at the same time, etc. etc. It’s kind of like trying to balance the races in Star Craft; you can’t directly compare anything. Only the professions are a hundred times more complex than SC races.

Understanding all that: ranger players and most of the GW playerbase feels Anet got the balance wrong. It’s not off a lot, but it’s off enough that rangers are — and always have been — ostracized.

The reason most of us main ranger is because we all feel the gameplay is the most fun, and there are certain things ranger does extremely well. If you like doing the things ranger does well, obviously you’d want to play ranger even if the profession is subpar.

Edit: And a little more specifically, playing a damage necro has huge compensations. You don’t have any blocks, you don’t have any evades, you don’t have any stealths, you don’t have any reflects, you don’t have any damage immunities, you don’t have any invulnerabilties, you have the lowest mobility in the game by a million miles, and so on. Every profession has it’s own flavor and you can’t just compare them head to head in a meaningful way other than “gut feeling of effectiveness”.

I said in another thread, it’s very difficult to balance things if the status quo has been active for a very long time. People like their toys, some even run specific classes just because they’re the best. Take them away? Make them less useful? BALANCE the game?

Those at the top of the pack are going to be some unhappy campers!

anduriell.6280:

very nice video.
I have a couple of questions though. Have you tried with rune of speed? you don’t loose much power and you gain the movement speed.
Are minions ok for PvP and WvW? Is it convenient having them hanging around all the time or should them be cast when in battle?

Thanks, mate.
I haven’t tried rune of speed, tbh. I really enjoy the pirateer runes because of the AoE buffs and the extra “minion”.
Minions are awesome in Spvp. WvW not so much, they die easily to aoe’s and wvw area is so big, that in a fight minions won’t be optimal.
Have them around all the time. Except the flesh wurm if you choose to take this. Only place it when you know a fight is about to happen. And place it on a position that it still contributes to the fight but in a nice direction for an escape.

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

Its called hunter’s tactics. I did indeed list that which takes from ~90% to ~100%.

Its wvw, I have more hp through guard stacks.

I use condi extender cause my conditions are short already. Extending short conditions is better then making them do a little more dmg. And also its easier to add +50% all conditions, +100 condi dmg and life steal. The food is the correct choice.

Amn ok. But those stacks are gone when you die and do somehow give the wrong impression about the viability of the build.

Don’t die, also I did note that if you cant protect your sigil stack you should be using sigils of strength/battle instead.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAT8fjEqQNL2sCusAVLGMEqP3v9av3gUvF4AY0bgCWVA-TVyCAB1pbpRlgAcQBs4IFc3+DK8AEiU9nqU+N9FAIAACwO3Z6sOjO351re1re1re25O35O35OLFwdLrA-w

I filled out the editor. Note that’s ideal what I will run. I still got 1 ascended zerker earring, celestial ascended backpiece atm, and lols no I don’t got Omni infusions on armor, working on those but they expensive ;-(

Thank you very much!!
Now i can see the value you say. Ofc i don’t need to see video, this is theory crafting after all.

Although i still think it’s very glassy and that means you most probably will die a lot. In my server is very difficult to don’t get ganged up by a zerg every time you try to do something, usually we are with the boon of outnumbered. Thus from there i’ve gotten the idea of not to like any kind of stacking sigil/buff.

About strength/battle: Wouldn’t be better fire/air instead? Don’t they do more damage overall?

I’m hod so we fight nsp/ebay and then face sbi/mag if we win too much and get hammered back into nsp/ebay. Its easy to get wolf packed running solo but really it doesn’t matter what build you run at that rate. Its kinda why I run so glass. When I get into a 1v1 I don’t want it to last to the point bob calls his guild group to run me down.

sigil of fire sucks unless you are power main on all gear and can might stack some. I considered keeping air on lb but I wanted another cover condi.

When I say strength/battle I mean strength on lb and battle on sword. I tested strength on spvp isle against golems and was only bumping 3-4 might stacks. I was hoping for atleast 5 so I’m thinking unless you run NM for +20% boon duration and the minor trait fortified bond (boons you get share to pet) its not worth it.

Do note that in the vid I was running without food/stacks at times and it could still burst somewhat. While I believe sigil of corruption is the best option it certainly is not the only one. I put a list up in main OP for possibly good alternatives.

If you put up an LFG saying you only want to do lvl 1 swamp (you can get one of the two daily fractal achievements for completing only a SINGLE map out of the four), I’m pretty sure people won’t mind you bringing a useless class in selfish gear. Running the orbs and killing mossy takes literally just 5 minutes even with a terrible group, there’s nothing to complain about regarding this daily. Unless you prefer whining to actually doing something and trying to adapt to the game.

Overall I liked this line.

I have one simple suggestion: Please make it so blocking someone hides their Mentor tag, in addition to hiding them from chat. It’s an instant way to stop trolling, and preserve the value of the non-troll mentor tags to new players.

I don’t know if the implementation is simple, but from a new user perspective it’s readily understandable since /ignore is such a common MMO feature.