Guild Wars 2

Bristleback attacks at like 1 ranged atk per 1.5/2 seconds, how is that op passive damage? What lol… Cat / Bird families do much more passively with auto attacks.

I think you meant to say the f2 , which is an ACTIVE skill activated by the ranger does a lot of damage, in which case, no, it doesn’t.. It is a cast , and the bristleback has an obvious animation when he does it. Also, let’s not forget it’s been nerfed probably 4 times since HoT release?

Translation:

They nerfed my broken rev class so I’m bored now

Don’t think you could do a worthy guide involving rotations .. I mean strict super basics sure but really rotations aren’t based on a static set of rules. It’s a matter of quick reaction and team adaptation on how your enemy decides it’s play and comps especially when talking about top teams with good thieves.

jcbroe.4329:

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.

+1 Pretty much this

alemfi.5107:

blitzkrieg.2451:

LughLongArm.5460:

SOTW should not give Unblockable, kinda liked the design they went with that Unblockable for ranger is only on pet. SOTW should be instant cast and stun break, that’s it.

It shouldn’t , but it really doesn’t matter even if it does. It’s not gamebreaking because you lose so much to even have it as it’s such a bad trait / signet to begin with.

That’s the point to be made there. That’s just how bad it is, that even with that unblockable bug , it’s STILL not appealing. I agree with you though.

Judging by your tone, these words are probably a wasted effort, but regardless I’ll still reply. Before you dismiss a skill, you should consider its applications. With the passive of SoTW you can run more damaging weapon sets and/or rune sets because you get two procs of astral force generation. Add in the fact that a signifcant portion of classes use blocks for survival (guardian f3, warrior shield 5, mesmer shield 4, scrapper hammer 2 & 4 + gyro utility, etc.), you can either trigger their other survival passives sooner than they were expecting, or flat out kill them at critical moments with the 8 seconds of unblockable.

Btw, ROM runs signet of the wild while queuing ranked. If you don’t know who that is, or if you’d like to pretend that that has no significance to it, go ahead.

Because ROM runs a skill that means it’s automatically good? I’m confused by your logic. Also, he runs Stone more than Wild, and while signet of the wild is MASSIVELY situational it’s still not as good as stone and won’t be. Before you try to say because someone runs a skill that it’s good, you should begin to also know that the very person you’re referring barely runs wild and usually runs stone (for obvious reasons that you shouldn’t even need someone to tell you).

There’s not an amount of micro-managing of skill you can tell me or try and sale me to tell me wild is a great option, it will never discount the fact that it is massively situational and overall worse than other options better suited to meta druid play. Sorry, but that is the reality no matter how much you try to defend it.

Also , if you want try to force defensive cooldowns with burst rotations, I probably wouldn’t play druid as it’s role is entirely different than what you’re trying to accomplish in this meta and there are numerous classes than can do this much better , but again, play how you want.

LughLongArm.5460:

SOTW should not give Unblockable, kinda liked the design they went with that Unblockable for ranger is only on pet. SOTW should be instant cast and stun break, that’s it.

It shouldn’t , but it really doesn’t matter even if it does. It’s not gamebreaking because you lose so much to even have it as it’s such a bad trait / signet to begin with.

That’s the point to be made there. That’s just how bad it is, that even with that unblockable bug , it’s STILL not appealing. I agree with you though.

Kovu.7560:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Druid Clarity should be an easy fix. Rework it to remove one condition every second instead of all at once (been suggested before), or grant resistance while in CA and clear one condition every third second. Keep the stunbreak.

This, though I’d prefer the straight condition removal tick (a nerf for bunker roaming but a buff in group fights) over resistance. Personally I feel resistance should apply to the pet upon activation of the Renewal Signet (which they also need to get rid of the range limitation on).

~ Kovu

This is not a good idea, for one major reason and that is because you can already hard counter CA by throwing conditions on top of them as they enter it right after the clear takes effect.

This would make it easier to stack even more conditions on them because they now have to stay completely in CA and I can just continually throw more conditions on you even faster than your auto clearing is taking place and basically it becomes 100% useless.

Smart players already hard counter CA this way as it’s very easy to do. This is the reason why even suggesting a nerf is pointless, because good teams already know how to hard counter in PvP and it doing this in PvE would serve no purpose which leaves your change only for zergs (which would make it less viable) and that would leave you with solo roaming and small fights, which again would essentially make it completely useless unless you’re fighting a full power class with no condition cover attached to their build.

If you want to solo roam in a game mode that is nearly dead, then the entire class mechanic shouldn’t be nerfed because it may excel there. That’s like asking for nerfs because you lost a duel.

This change would essentially make it literally no point to run condition clear on CA.

Who cares lol, running that signet or even traiting in one of the most horrible trait lines possible besides skirmishing … That could be 15 seconds unblockable and it would still not be worth taking over the meta, but yea they’ll fix soon.

MidoriMarch.8067:

Really?

I recently made druid and its op asf.

15 sec of celestial avatar doesnt even feel like its nerf gives me super speed + stealth so often i can kite and heal for days.

25 solo might stacks , massive regen and heal , good mobility , great kiting , great pet damage , easy access to stability , good amount of soft cc’s stealth and yet u expect more buffs on druid lol not even funny

“I recently made druid and its op asf”

Duel?

maybe a 20% reduction on CA trait addition tied with something to allow for both options in the druid tree somewhere. otherwise i don’t see them reverting this at all, in fact, it most likely will be changed to something of 20 seconds WITH a 20% trait reduction because kids still cry about it. you will also most likely see the conditions removed on it from all to about 5-6, again, since people cry about it.

people seem to not realize also, the longer you are in CA , the more susceptible to condi you are, you have very little reliable condi removal outside of CA. its easy to poison someone while they’re in CA dwindling ALOT of the already nerfed healing even further, which is something i do quite a bit when fighting other druids. the longer you are in ca, you will just get pegged with condis then forced to clear with skills once you leave it.

Crinn.7864:

CA does not need a nerf.

Druid’s access to stealth needs a nerf. Seriously they have better stealth access than thieves and mesmers put together.

What… Thief with 5 → 2 with initiative use , utilities and BP , etc etc ..

Mesmer I can understand because the way you trait for the meta build currently has almost no stealth (but has invulns, blocks, portal, moa, essentially a ton of more useful utility so the trade-off is worth) , but it can achieve far greater stealth than ranger when traited but thief on the other hand you’re absolutely wrong and has way more mobility AND stealth as that is it’s role in conquest, and way more burst and decap potential , again, it’s purpose in the game → forcing enemy team rotations and off-capping points and +1’ing situationals. Thief is strong right now , and with the amount of evasion uptime, stealth has become less of a necessity. Mesmer is essentially strong in utility and in duo situations , of course, is a strong defender as well in point position play since stealth was trade for other methods of defensives.

Please note: ranger TRAITS and uses a specific pet for that along with a weaponset specifically for that stealth too. Also, again, yawn, stealth allows decapping so fighting on the point with that stealth does no help in holding it, so essentially you just want them to lose stealth for no reason whatsoever which essentially leads me to believe you lost in a duel arena 1on1 to a ranger that was good at managing stealth uptime and simply want it nerfed, again, for no viable reason outside of that. It’s the only way you could be asking for that.

Your thought process is silly, and I hope you’re trolling

Or you can just be smart and condi bomb them after they enter CA? It’s such an obvious and consistent way to wreck druid since druid has little to no condi clear outside of CA. (1 per shout , cool with a pigeonholed rune set cool) (2 w/ leadership on elite use with a pigeonholed rune set cool) (2 per WS skill , need specific skills to use so you are again pigeonholed to specific skill sets , etc etc

Even just soft-ccing them will hurt them a lot after entering CA , chill/immob especially and you force them to use their staff to remove or even worse they’ll use a long cooldown shout / WS skill to remove, re-apply afterwards -> wreck.

Druid is an easy class to manipulate once you know the weaknesses. Especially in team fights, condi pressure will absolutely wreck them.

Good ranger play, Stawker is one of the better rangers I’ve had a chance to play with really and taught me a lot as well

DH nerfed the most since HoT?

Dude, our 2 pets ALONE have been nerfed more than the entire DH class itself since HoT, just the pets.

Crowley.8761:

Hirasaki.6208:

Now I can just go play my newly buffed Daredevil, DH, Ele….. o wait I can just not play this game lol. Bye! I’ll be in Black Desert Online playing my Kuniochi. Have fun Tryharding out there Rev’s.

Haha I just came from BDO, have amazing fun on your kuno lol! Enjoy the weakest class ingame)) Oh and please give my regards to the “balanced” combat and the 500+ hours and 200+ dollars you’ll be spending when you finally give up and reroll!

Oh and give kzarka my regards too!

Lol are you Krowley the wizard?

On a side note, this guy is really leaving a game to go to another game with even more class inbalance and some of the worst built PvP out of the 2 because he doesn’t want to try other builds because he got used to face rolling with Sotm. Got it

Ranger lacks depth compared to most classes, sorry but it’s the truth. With this lack of depth comes a lack of skill ceiling in both active utility and trait line setups coupled with an AI pet. These 3 things all tied into one make the class itself either heavily reliant on passives (spirits, BM, only 2 pets with good F2’s) to succeed.

Low barrier of entry to play ranger half effectively, absolutely , we all know this with longbow and ancient seeds combo but we also know how easy this is to avoid in higher tiers of gameplay.

I’m referring to top-tier pvp , literally the only tier that matters if anybody in here is going to be arguing class balance in regards to pvp. Yes, I said it, and yes, it’s the truth.

While PvP is a joke in it’s current state, the best players are in top tier PvP still to this day. I’m not talking about the best duelers (who are also for the most part, majority in PvP), im talking about the best mechanical multi-classing players who are on a higher tier than most.

You will never balance ranger/druid around 1on1s in WvW, at the same time you will never balance it around GvG battles. This is what WvW is essentially therefore any PvP discussion regarding it is null and void. We can always talk about splits though, which I think in some cases is necessary.

With that said…

When you have a pet, that at the same time has some decent utility, it’s a bot, with very horrible AI and pathing. The reliance of this is actually more of a hindrance than it is a help.

I know people think their smoke field + blast combo is great, or their CC chain to bristleback combo is awesome. But in reality, against good players, truly good players, these combos are seen a mile away and easily avoidable.

The difference between say a class like thief or mesmer for example is the rate at which a battle can be turned is immense. The quality of ACTIVE skills for the most part are insanely good and entirely built around full player immersion and control.

I’m not entirely for removing the pet, however, you have to ask yourself is having a pet going to help you get a higher skill ceiling out of the class or effectiveness per say, or is buffing the mechanics of the ranger itself? I would go with buffing the weapon mechanics and traits of the ranger itself any time of the day.

Greatsword , fun … Shortbow? Not so much is it, because it’s heavily reliant on attack #1. Spamming is not fun , active skills are and immense utility is. This is the difference between guardian (even though traps brought that down a bit, id refer more to medi) , thief, mesmer etc are all very effective.

I know people love their pet, but it is also a major reason (not all) for it’s very very low skill ceiling and true class potential.

I’ve played ranger in top tier PvP, dueled some of the best players in NA , learned alot from other solid rangers and know an immense amount about other classes.

This will ultimately be the ranger’s issue.

Very straight forward skills and an AI pet.

Is it fun? Yes, I wouldn’t play the class for so many years otherwise but if the class were more built around character active immersion in utilization of EFFECTIVE ACTIVE skill components and not setting up a few combos to succeed that are horribly telegraphed then you’d have a lot more fun.

Ironically, I think axe/dagger sword/torch has some of the best weapon immersion besides greatsword but i think it’s because of the active use of evasion concept of the sets , they synergize well. If only you could have a good power component with cc on top of it with a weapon set idea like that.

1. Adding a GvG environment that really supports that sort of play ALONE will bring back a lot of guilds and players to WvW.

2. Get rid of Desert BL , do you need a poll to really see that this was a horrible idea? Statistics alone from the time it was implemented should be enough to tell you it was a disaster.

3. Bonuses for roaming parties to encourage roaming again and small scale fights

InsaneQR.7412:

Make axe Mainhand total Condi:
AA is ok animation is a little weird but works.

1. do something like sword #3 of guardian, throwing a lot of projectiles doing damage and bleed (moving possible)
2. AoE default + Explo finisher

Trait:
Axe CD
Do more damage against Bleeding foes, cripple (5s) bleeding foes when hit (some short icd like 10s)

And axe MH is useful in pvp and pve.

That trait with incapacitation sigil would be broken

Cufufalating.8479:

Just came back to the game after year and a bit away, and I have to say this build makes me very tempted to finally buy HoT

Can see a few changes I’d make to suit myself better, but it does look a lot of fun, mostly because of the Quickness up time lol.

The quickness up time will definitely be nerfed unfortunately. People already complaining about it in PvP.

High tier play (ESL, top teams, etc) -> Druid is balanced in what it offers as a capable role in a PvP oriented team, it’s not broken, it’s not ridiculous, it was solid and also wasn’t braindeads like spirits. It still is like this despite the nerf to CA.

In any level of play below that -> You will have people crying that it’s broken beyond belief , that it is godlike.

This is primarily because people in that tier don’t know counters, positioning. They don’t like learning other classes and figuring out weaknesses. They don’t want to do that work, it’s easier to come to a forum and complain about it. Obviously, most of those people aren’t the people in the 1st group I mentioned above. They’re the people who lost in a Solo que or ranked match with a bad team comp or most commonly, lost in a 1v1 so they come here to complain – because the game is centered around 1v1s obviously.

Unfortunately, the balance team listens more to those people than actually studying metas and slightly adjusting things, which is sad.

This isn’t just the case for the druid class but many classes over the years have had builds with intricate playstyles (whether they were op or not is not the question here) nerfed into the ground. I personally don’t think Druid was completely gutted, but I’m making a point on balance by Anet in this game over the metas.

A lot of builds , that may have been op in the past across all classes have been completely gutted and destroyed because they make massive changes without any thought of power creep instead of making slight adjustments and seeing how metas shift. This has hurt them more than help them and hurt many builds in the same process.

Guild Wars 2 has some of the smoothest fighting combat gameplay I’ve played, and I have played a ton of MMOs in my time dating all the way back to EQ1. The balance? Some of the worst I’ve seen in an MMO.

It would have been great to invest in an actual test server both PvE and PvP with proper splits so users could copy a character over and test changes accordingly before massive balance patches were put in place but they opted out of this route, in doing that they make tons of a changes without consequence or thought of what might happen, mostly riddled with bugs that takes months to fix (hilt bash is just now getting fixed in the next balance patch , it took how long? many things still broken , this is the case for many classes, if not all) and end up with people just getting fed up and leaving entirely.

Chokolata.1870:

They need to make sharpened edges and hidden barbs Skirmishing minor traits. It is quite silly that they conflict with other condition traits like Trap mastery or Striders defense/Spotter.

Agreed

That is a strong statement to say , running a zerker/marauder you’re not necessarily RELYING on the heals to begin with, I mean yea they’re great, but the real utility is the Stun break + full condi clear, super speed + invis (AoE) , and the ancient seeds … I mean healing is great, but if you were relying entirely on healing as a burst ranger to begin with, you’re using the powers of druid all wrong.

Ericio.3124:

I noticed most druids run a mix of soldiers/berserker for roaming but I was wondering if a healing/power build would also be viable?

Go full marauder’s with some cavalier jewelry mixed in and defender runes

get the furious sharpening stone w/ 10% dmg while moving food

beastmastery , wilderness survival and druid

Longbow/Greatsword

It’s not bad , on the glassier side of course but if you use your utility right from CA w/ smokescale f2 you can get good invis uptimes along with decent healing from runeset on top of it.

This is what I’m currently running in WvW and it’s pretty good for roaming and dueling. Zerg play probably not that great, but for roaming and duels I like the playstyle it brings.

I say this because healing/power builds are boring , this would allow you to get some healing up time but also be able to be aggressive and play , but if you like healing power builds then maybe something like a crusader’s mix would be good? not sure

kiwituatara.6053:

Spartacus.3192:

I made a base power ranger last night to test with LB Sw/WH and holy sh8t, perma fury, regen, swiftness, 25 might stacks and even protection. And now unblockable pet damage. It looks good. I gotta figure out how to fight this when im on my DH. Any tips would be appreciated because that burst damage being unblockable is just intense.

I’m gonna assume its the typical shout ranger.

Burst their pet down. Shuts down their shout skills (WHaO, guard, and partially SotP, protect me). After that, it is an easy win since they’ve lost a lot of sustain and DPS.

Pretty much this

Fair enough, I apologize Justine

OGDeadHead.8326:

Justine.6351:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Noone seems to remember that the cd isnt a set 15 seconds like many ppl claims. CA has a dynamic cd with 15 seconds in a best case scenario. Since the traits and the elite form is balanced with that in mind, they should get rid of the need to actually build astral force. Make it a set cooldown and be done with it – then the whole thing will be so much easier to balance.

Lmao, guy…
I suggested that 4 days ago and you called it “trash pure and simple”.

You suggested a whole lot more than that, so yeah, still trash (like decay out of combat for example).

I’m sure Justine is pretty bad at the ranger class in general with no true insight on high level play (except maybe PvE). No need to really give much thought into what he/she says.

Shortbow would be a good power option if you had 1200 range , but you don’t , so you can’t effectively kite properly with it.

I used to play old trapper back in the day and it synergized well with this playstyle. Of course, a lot has changed in metas since then of course.

There should be a 1200 range added onto the master shortbow trait or just make it baseline but I’m sure this has already been suggested 1000 times over.

Buran.3796:

Azukas.1426:

Sorry but Revs will be a must pick on all pro teams for PvP. You will see great representation in the ranked season as well due to the insane damage output combined with the inherent survivability of the class.

It won’t. Now that they lack access to stability on demand classes with instant interrupts like Mesmers will eat them alive, specially against classes that can interrupt from stealth. You will waste breakstuns doing nothing but trying to stand on foot while them whack you like a ragdoll.

This really shows how clueless you are of high skill PvP play in general.

You’ll be waiting a long time, maybe in the next elite spec.. But you’ll most likely only see very small enhancements to try and bring weapons not used as much in line with what is used the most to compensate for patch notes.

Other than that, I highly doubt you’ll see what you’re looking for.

As a power variant (marauder’s mostly) roamer, the CA isn’t much of a hit for me… Anybody running power and roaming or small groups is using it for 2 things: super speed + invis and stun break and condi clear. The recharge is roughly the same in this aspect.

I can see the issue with HP variants in support rolls, looks like it was nerfed across the board even heavily investing into HP gear. Which sucks. If you heavily invest, you should get rewarded for it, not punished.

For the unblockable pet attacks, this won’t last long , and it will either be reverted or maybe reduced to 2 seconds or something. The crying from this alone will be immense. I’m calling it right now, it will be heavily adjusted. We all know what happened with taunt unblockable when it was introduced. This is that but with every attack , for 4 seconds. I’m thinking it will be straight up reverted.

Maul buff is odd, but helpful. I use GS as one of my weapons so it helps quite a bit.

Shortbow without the 1200 range, no matter what you do , will suck.

Enjoy it while it lasts, it will be reverted or the very least nerfed to 1-2 seconds of unblockability. The crying will be immense, especially if this works with the trait on pet swap.

We all know what happened with an unblockable taunt, this is the same thing but with every pet skill.

Like I said, enjoy it while it lasts, because it won’t be long.

Any roamer, especially power based would be using CA to get the invis + super speed and the condi clear and stun break from the druid line… The heals are just icing on the cake. It is literally the reason I even consider the Druid trait line that extra active survivability is much needed and ancient seeds is really good with bow / gs , my main weapon.

It looks like celestial druid might have taken a hit ? Maybe , not sure.

Hey man,

I understand where you’re coming from to a degree

Maybe a suggestion though is to stay until the next elite spec is announced atleast , then make this decision. It might be good, who knows.

I imagine though you can do this without playing too, haha

Either way man, good luck

HeadCrowned.6834:

Aomine.5012:

Ghotistyx.6942:

This is a good change. I’ve always been a proponent fit lowering base and increasing scaling to make specialization more important. There now will be distinct differences between healing druids and non-healing druids.

The difference is like 2 times or more already lol…

95% pvp and raid druid use healing power because without it, your heal is insufficient.

Not true. For a dps build (lets say Marauder for example), the healing capabilities are very good.

Lol, it was decent , and besides…. Marauder rangers only use the CA to get the condi clear / stun break and invis + super speed, the healing is just icing on the cake, and still will be icing on the cake.

Lynnie.7213:

We are going to be fine. As solo roamer and 0 healing power i usually took 12~15 sec to fill up CA on a 1v1 and about 9~10 sec to fill in outnumbered fights. So its almost the same.

It really is the same

Interesting notes for sure

Gonna test with CA and see how they did with it

Raiole.4267:

That could be a pretty funny video to watch though, top 5 revives of the week lol

It would be 8 seconds long and be all chronobunkers.

Ross Biddle.2367:

When on Thief-

So long as my team can follow instructions, take and hold home/mid, then I can do my support/decap role and we’ll win.

When my team can’t babysit a point and/or dies loosing mid etc, it’s a road harder traveled -_-u

So basically, if the other team can’t do the most common tasks in conquest mode then you can’t play thief. I think that’s with any class on a team without any ability to play conquest correctly. You can’t carry bads, no matter what class not even rev.

Yep, i like Gw2 in many ways , but balance and direction of the game in both PvP and direction of the ranger class itself has really just turned me off of the game in general.

They did ranger so well in BDO though , after playing one to 40 and PvPing with it alot I realize just how good a ranger themed class can be. I mean yea, NA BDO has some issues , but it’s in beta and the things I have issues with are noted as to be fixed in the near future mainly the lag and not having an NA physically based server in the states, which they are working on I think they said it would be placed in Dallas or maybe California somewhere, not sure but they’re working on that.

Agreed, camelot unchained I hope will be very good, and they have a large class set to choose from with alot of them having very cool and unique things they do. DaoC has always been an innovator so I’m sure they have alot of good kitten in the works. I just hope they can balance properly with that many classes, something like 30-40 classes I think but they really look good.

The ranger class was designed probably in my eyes the best out of any game I played in Black Desert Online. Any die hard ranger fans really need to try to get into CBT2 and check it out, it’s really insane how well they made the class , and yea, no pet either. Imagine that.

Sorry folks, but as soon as BDO comes out , I will be playing the ranger there as it is exactly what I’d ever hoped for , I know some will probably disagree but I know most of the rangers here will most likely enjoy the gameplay the ranger in BDO provides. I played BDO CBT1 at max level and PvP’d in arenas with it. Was very fun.

Hey guys, protection stacking is too strong so the answer is to let thief prioritize it to get massive protection uptime as well!

No, just remove protection stacking from other classes so you can burst classes easier. But the answer isn’t so much the protection uptime as it is the block and evasion uptime on new kitten with elite specs and revenant.

Funny how they don’t mind small nerfing us into oblivion within that 8 week period, then we’ll get one minor buff to something and they’ll say “see , we made our promise!”.

Krispera.5087:

Eric.7813:

But am I the only one who finds no use for staff skill 5?

Clarion Bond + Ancestral Grace + Water Field (Healing Spring or Sublime Conversion) : 2 healing blast.

Can always use Lunar Impact or Drakes for more blasts.

Insanely unrealistic though, timing pet swaps especially with a 30 sec ICD on clarion bond isn’t reliable at all and the drake blast is a random attack , not even an f2 so it’s completely unreliable and in no way able to be setup properly, you have to basically stand still in it hoping your drake does his skill in which case if you’re talking about PvP is never going to happen and you’ll just die standing still and probably take more damage than 1k-2k heal it would provide anyway rendering it pointless. The ancestral grace is more reliable than them though so that’s not bad.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Read his words a few times though. It’s strongly implied.

“There are loads of reasons why HoT was considered for us the first big balance update (and the month that followed it) for this PvP League and we couldn’t do any more balance updates before this one, but the reality is none of them really matter since they are just words. What you all care about is action.”

That’s almost an apology for how bad the balance is.

The subtext of his comments are “we know there are things that need further balance… can’t do it before end of this season… sorry you’ll have to buy HoT and pay attention to the meta builds if you want to win matches” (drops microphone and runs away)

Humm

More like..

+1

Please bring this back

Aidenwolf.5964:

This one hurts my Ranger a lot. I used birds solely because of this in PVE and now it’s over. I know this was 100% a fix for PVP and I completely understand why it was need FOR PVP but kitten why don’t you split your wanna be e-sport builds from PvE again?

Druid needs to be balanced for PVP so it can’t be a heal spammer in PvE which is what it’s for. Fix your kitten.

This is actually really important and a great point, because of druid’s style of play. If it was any other way it wouldn’t matter as much but for the druid’s purpose of team/group support and healing sustain.

If you nerf these aspects more than they already have been, then you ruin it’s use in PvE as well.

This is why as they move closer to a “trinity” based class environment without truly being a trinity , you’ll only run into this issue more and more and it will only get worse.

They could have made it on like 6sec icd with the eagle and for the rest of the pets have something like a 12 sec ICD and it would be perfect, they just do things across the board without thinking of individual scenarios.

I understand why they did it , just the way they did it was not great.

Also higher dmg/burst dmg output puts people on the defensive easier which helps make up for sustain at times in fights too.

Llethander.3972:

Substance E.4852:

You can CC someone for days and it won’t matter if they are a few degrees lower or higher than the pet. The skill is effectively useless on a target that isn’t on a level plane with the pet.

Case in point: https://youtu.be/W4fmgBG1oeU

Pretty much this

It needs to physically stick to the target sort of like axe 3 does , otherwise it’s quite useless especially given how buggy terrain is in this game like with the longbow itself you can get obstructed with an enemy simply in front of you at times, it’s weird as hell.