While the concept of Druid is interesting, I am worried that it is too singly focused on healing to benefit Rangers even in challenging group content. Druid lacks the versatility required for top-tier gameplay due to: lack of damage modifiers (which are boring, but necessary), little damage mitigation/prevention, limited accessibility to boons/conditions, and few field/finisher skills. Druid also synergizes extremely poorly with the Ranger class mechanic, the Pet, and with existing Ranger weapon skills and utilities.
Why I’m worried about Druid’s place in raids:
Rangers have relatively low baseline DPS even with their most damage-focused builds—lower than the majority of other classes, and certainly lower than elementalists and guardians (our main competitors for healing at this moment, though revenant will likely be a strong healer as well). Unless Druid’s healing is 100% required to complete raids (unlikely, especially as a) ArenaNet prefers making content that does not require a dedicated healer, and b) raiding groups get more knowledgeable and skilled over time), Druids (and Rangers) are going to be once again shuffled to the side in favor of more versatile classes that can offer control, support, and damage in one neat bundle.
Druid as of now only offers (limited) support, with no damage and limited control. This means that Druid will be useless, barring significant changes, in 95% of the core game. Currently, DPS is king in core PvE , along with active damage prevention/mitigation. Druid gives no damage boosts to Ranger and has seriously limited damage mitigation. As a Ranger main, I was hoping that our elite specialization would be useful in existing content, and not just in one small aspect of the coming expansion. I also do not want to be relegated to “healerbot” should Druids be required for raids. In general, players did not make their Rangers for this purpose.
Overarching issues with Druid
Lack of versatility means that it is overshadowed by existing classes.
Lack of boon/condition application.
Lack of stunbreaks.
Lack of synergy with the pet, Ranger’s class mechanikitten
tle to no synergy with the Ranger base class. Celestial Avatar adds a new layer of complexity, but is entirely separate from the Pet. Because Celestial Avatar charges more on heals, Druids are encourage to camp Staff (the only healing weapon) rather than use traditional Ranger weapons. Celestial Avatar also interacts ONLY with the new utilities, Glyphs, reducing build options for Druids.
Lack of synergy within Druid. Staff is a long-range weapon, but Glyphs are point-blank AoEs.
Made to react to damage, not be proactive in preventing damage. This does not encourage skillful play and reduces Druid playstyle to “spam heals on allies”.
Taking the Druid line forces Rangers to give up significant damage and utility, but does little to nothing to negate this loss. Druid in its current state has no place in the vast majority of Guild Wars 2 PvE and will only have a small (or nonexistent) niche going forward.
Possible Solutions
Many good suggestions have been made in this thread, and I would like to add/emphasize a few.
Staff
Change the autoattack of the Druid staff. Because of the PBAoE nature of Glyphs, Druids will need to stay close to allies and enemies in order to utilize their full set of skills. Use the Guardian staff as a guide and make staff a short-range weapon that cleaves multiple enemies (and heals multiple allies) with its cone-shaped attack. This has the bonus of also fitting aesthetically with the Druid’s celestial theme. The short-range autoattack also synergizes well with Astral Wisp and Vine Surge. If the Druid needs to heal from a distance, he/she can use Astral Grace as an escape and switch to Celestial Avatar for long-range healing.
Astral Wisp: A very interesting concept. Usefulness will be determined by damage, healing, and duration.
Add evasion to Astral Grace. Because the healing is backloaded, the Druid is extremely vulnerable when using this skill.
Increase the radius of Vine Surge, possibly making it cone-shaped. This skill will be very difficult to land even in PvE due to enemy movement.
Sublime Conversion is another very interesting concept, but I worry about the effectiveness. It is outclassed in most PvE content by reflect skills, which both prevent damage and deal damage. I would encourage testing this skill as a “bubble” around the Druid, similar to Guardian shield 5 (which both protects from projectiles and heals as well).
Glyphs
The effectiveness of glyphs is almost entirely dependent on their final numbers. However, glyph radius NEEDS to be larger than 300 if you a) want to enable Druid to fight effectively out of melee range and b) want to discourage players from stacking. Glyphs should also be usable underwater.
Glyph of Rejuvenation: Improve the base heal amount for the Ranger. This skill is in direct competition with Healing Spring, which has a good base heal, grants Regeneration, clears conditions, and can be blasted for group healing. If you want to see this glyph used, it needs some tuning. Perhaps adding boons (protection, regeneration, resistance) on the base form and/or the Celestial form would help bring it up to the level of Ranger’s other available heals.
Glyph of Alignment: A good basic damage/control/mitigation skill—I like it quite a bit. The damage and condition durations may need tuning, but the idea is solid. The low cooldown helps mitigate some of the Druid’s poor damage, but does not make up for it. The heal and condition removal on its Celestial Avatar form seems like a very natural reversal.
Glyph of Equality: A niche skill, given its high cooldown. This could probably use some tuning, but I’m hesitant to say without testing it. Perhaps nixing the damage (which is negligible, given the high cooldown) and decreasing the cooldown would make this skill more useful. This would be an excellent skill to add a self-stunbreak on base form and/or stability (consider AoE stability on Celestial), especially if you nix the damage aspect.
Glyph of the Tides: I have seen this suggestion before, and I would like to second it: the base Glyph of the Tides should pull enemies toward the Druid, and the Celestial Avatar version should knockback. Knockback in general is a defensive skill and fits more appropriately with the defensive aspects of Celestial Avatar. This would also be a good skill to apply stability, especially on its Celestial form.
Glyph of Empowerment: While good at first glance, this skill is significantly weaker than Frost Spirit (as well as other classes’ utilities, such as Banners). Either increase the damage buff or increase the duration of the damage buff. The (very small) radius of this skill and its PBAoE nature encourages melee stacking. Consider adding boons on both base and Celestial forms. The Celestial form is somewhat weak—consider a base damage reduction of 10% (which can be applied proactively as well as reactively), rather than improving allied heals.
Glyph of Unity: Another very interesting idea, but it again is hampered by a very small effect radius in both forms.
Celestial Form
The lack of damage in this form is concerning. Adding a small amount of base damage to the autoattack would improve Druid’s viability by allowing Druid’s to both heal allies and tag enemies for loot. This is doubly important in WvW.
Please reconsider the ground targeting and incredibly tiny radius on Cosmic Ray. As Engineers can tell you, ground-targeted autoattacks are killer for wrist and hand health, and the tiny radius makes it impossible to heal allies who are moving.
Please also consider making the skills more versatile. While it’s great to have a theme, it would be nice if every skill wasn’t “heal heal heal” save for Natural Convergence. Perhaps focus on damage prevention and mitigation for some of the skills, rather than healing.
Traits
In general, traits need a bit of love to make Druid versatile enough to be competitive for placement in raids and general PvE.
Druid traits have little to no synergy with the pet.
The singular focus on healing with the minor traits is problematic. Perhaps the Minor traits should focus on improving the Druid mechanic, Celestial Avatar (such as by making Druidic Clarity baseline, but limiting condition removal to 1-3 conditions and/or removing a number of conditions per second (similar to necromancer shroud traits). Minor traits would also be more useful if they synergized with the pet, such as making “Cultivated Synergy” baseline. Make the “healing” traits optional, not required—otherwise you are shoehorning players into healing-based builds. Druid needs to have more options than healing if you want it to see use.
Adept, Master, and Grandmaster trait selection locks Druids into healing-centric builds and discourages build and playstyle diversity. Because Ranger has low base damage and damage modifiers are spread throughout different trait lines, there needs to be at least one damage modifier trait in the Druid line. This will help make up for the loss of a base Ranger trait line such as Marksmanship, Skirmishing, Beastmastery, or Nature Magic.
Add a damage-modifying trait to the Adept tier. This will give Druids a choice between healing/staff and damage, improving build variety.
Celestial Shadow is unnecessary, given the short durations of both stealth and superspeed. It is clumsy as an escape skill, since it requires building + entering + leaving Celestial Avatar and some serious coordination with teammates as well. This skill also does not fit terribly well thematically.
Verdant Etching looks great, but is highly dependent on changes made to Seed of Life.
Grace of the Land is redundant. Druid has plenty of access to condition cleanses, which negate condition damage entirely.
Lingering Light is somewhat redundant as well, adding healing on top of healing. Perhaps this should be changed to something like “cast Astral Wisp on enemies that strike you in melee combat”. This would be excellent for both offensive and defensive Druids. ICD should be per enemy if changed in this manner.
Ancient Seeds may prove an excellent trait for control/condition Druids, but may need some tuning—especially on the proc requirements.
I think Scrimschaw.5784 made some good adjustment here i am supporting for the adjustment that Scrimschaw.5784 suggested
Druid need damage modifier in the trait line since ranger trait line only MM provides damage modifier and as a druid we can also provide damage not only healing so let us make the choices either we want to support or damage rather than lock us down on supporting the team. Hopefully dont ruin our Halloween and dev please notice this.
i have a question is the nature magic worth taking it? change beastmastery to nature magic in pve content is it increase the dps?
i am curious about the Instinctive Reaction this trait seem spoiled
Health Threshold: 50%
Skills and actions are 50% faster. Quickness (3s) this look fine
Gain Power Based on a Percentage of Healing Power: 7% this is a little of weird we have 0 healing power and how we gain power? when we are not in healing gear meaning this trait is useless?
They should change Spirits into colored Wisps that orbit the Ranger.
Best idea ever!
this is the best idea ever, and ive been suggesting it for almost 3 years now. for some reason, it wasnt the best idea then as very few agreed with me. regardless, some guy made a thread about it, so people should support it.
Omg this is such a great idea if a spirit can orbit around the ranger then ranger got more support in group content YEAHHH
I think druid should be more offensive so that ranger can have more choices rather than druid only do heals which is a waste as an elite specialization. If player who wants to really do massive healing can go in celestial form for some player who want to do dps in druid can choose to not go in to celestial form.
Glyph of empowerment need to buff up for real 10% damage for 5second who is going to waste an utilities slot for that and in druid glyph of empowerment is party support skill if the skill buff up it will open up meta party available for druid rather than only healing I think glyph of empowerment should have increase damage modifier for 30% and last for 10 second and the cooldown for 15second
I think most of the druid want to choice between dps and heal.
In druid traits line all of them is only healing not even a damage modifier in it
It is kinda disappointing on the traits but the ideas for druid is good but still can be better
Seem like all druid traits is more toward support rather than offensive so I guess druid cannot be offensive healer
Noooo Dps for Druid only support =(
can anyone give me some idea on high latency im running at 300ping when i enter pvp.
I cant hit anyone in pvp due to high latency
anyone can help me?
Or anet can u open a server at Singapore?
Yeah I’m agree with Andrew after dodged I think we need about 5 to 7 second of empowerment or else it is not so good enough as a damage modifier I hope to see the change in this tratis
+1 i would like to see the animation of monkey king holding staff into daredevil and F1 Steal please get some new animation as well because all of the classes elite specialization have their own new animation of the F1 skill so i guess Steal GET A NEW ANIMATION PLEASEE
Disappointed on Staff AoE
Number of target only 3
even one handed sword can hit 3 target
staff is two handed only hit 3 target and from the developer it said (The staff is more of a cleaving AoE damage type of weapon.) with this statement i think should give daredevil hit 5 target when holding staff
Staff autoattack used up to 2 second to perform however guardian and warrior GS autoattack only 1.5 sec to perform. So, between 0.5 second daredevil loss a bit of DPS and in the tool tip the damage is slightly lower compare to warrior and guardian im not sure how in works tho about the damage need to try in beta
Dust Strike cost 4 initiative only for a simple blind? i think it is too many maybe 3 initiative is reasonable or dust strike should get a smoke field for 2sec or 3sec if it cost for 4 initiative
Animation of daredevil is so simple especially the way of holding the staff compare to others elite specialization such as reaper(holding a big scythe), berserk(Fire brust on most of skills) and dragonhunter (F1 chain the enemy, F2 wing leap)
