The revenant is so over tuned at the moment, it is absurdly over powered. Expect heavy nerfs come release. This is especially evident with Shiro and Glint trait lines and utility bars. Everything else seems silly weak in comparison.
Hammer down those two before you do anything to up the other 3 lines.
What is this fixation that the Druid must always be built as a healer? Jesus, there are traits that align themselves with power, bunker or healer builds be it ranged or melee, or pure damage or CC.
MM has good synergy with Lunar impact, Staff trait, glyph of equality
Skirmishing can go a long way into making a GS/Staff druid extremely mobile in WvW
WS is always great to have, and a WS druid was something that a lot of people have ran in the BWE 3. Especially in a DPS variant.
So on and so forth.
And on the topic of trait choices. All three adepts are amazing. All 3 masters are amazing and all 3 grand masters are amazing. The first proper minor is ok and Natural mender is kind of meh.
Seriously people, stop complaining.
Druid and that new legendary raven staff. wee
I have more of a problem with the boon stacking celestial elixir build. 2 kits, etc… that one is a tough cookie.
Just wanted to ask a simple question. Are old legendary recipes staying the same? I am in the middle of crafting a legendary and have all the gifts made. I am just waiting for the scavanger hunt to get my precursor. Will I be able to complete it after HoT or will things change?
Ty.
Quite honestly, I do not know who came up with this, but with this rationale, in my former university this person would not pass one of the monthly tests let alone the final exam. I am an economist by the way.
This is essentially a targeted way to remove dungeon running as an integral part of the game. A well developed part of the game at that. Why would any developer do this? No idea.
I really do not understand their logic for removing dungeon rewards. It is a very well developed and popular part of the game. There is absolutely no need to pigeonhole people into Raids or Fractals. They do not even have to touch dungeons and just have it as casual instanced content.
Mind sharing the link? I am horribly uninformed.
NVM, I have found it. Wow, that was the biggest crock of…. ugh that I have ever read. And I am an economist.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
How did they kill dungeons?
If the Ranger is your main you probably need to have a power and a condition set. Now with the Druid I suppose zealots will be the norm. Possibly with Monk runes.
Depends. The Ranger will probably be the better pick for speed runs in old dungeons.
Or we can just copy the executioner. The Ranger needs more damage modifiers. We have the least in the game. And we have no % of primary converted into secondary attribute. We only have that crap % of healing into power which is pointless. If it was % of power into healing then it might be ok.
So the Ranger who was stacking the boons was getting them for free? I suppose it was a gift sent from heaven.
With the scrapper, you know what the Engi has to do to get the boons? Equip two traits and turn on flame thrower. Or just auto attack. Or mindlessly use elixirs who also clear conditions.
Noone here is arguing that the boon copy needed to be put in check duration wise, but saying that the Ranger did not have to invest anything is just…
You needed to take shouts. You needed to trait them. You needed to get Nature magic. Thats your utility bar and 2 out of 3 lines.
I stopped reading when: …. carrying a longbow and shortbow
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
this is a good place to start as any..
Engineer has a very easy time in stacking 25 might and all boons and maintaining them. Yet I see no one nerfing it…
They should have just copied fortifying bond boon durations.
It was doing that damage if you activated sick em and sig of the wild.
Well, people forget that Ventari, or each legend for that matter, is only half of the Revenants utility bar. Thats why some of the skills seem sub par, but that is because you have a whole other utility line that you can swap to. Versatility needs to come at a price.
As for the DPS Revenant. Shiro + Glint is broken. It is OP in both PvE and PvP.
As far as the Druid goes, sure they over tuned the base heals and they will reduce those. It is a no brainer, and I am talking as a 3000+ hours Ranger main. However, do not expect them to completely nuke the base heals, as some skills have really poor base values to begin with. The most obvious candidates for a nerf are Lunar impact and Healing tides. The no1 skill is about a 1000 heals but it is very hard to hit anything with it. The no2 is a condition cleanse and a very small heal. The no5 is a CC/debuff ability.
Oh, on the notion of the Shadow Scale… It is the same ability as the Revenant sword 3 but on a twice as long CD, lower base power, lower ferocity values. No fury and far less might stacks on activation. If this is OP, then just imagine how the Revenants sword 3 is… And do not get me started on staff 5… Jesus
Druid is/was hardly OP….
I would say that any Druid taking MM is borderline insane. You lose all defense to take it and the Druid as a spec does not have any defensive options other then heals. Or if you take WS you lose out on BM. And quite honestly I would rather have a reliable pet and Taunt then a 6s daze.
Sword 3, Glint Heal, Staff 5 are all pretty much OP. Furthermore, Revenants innate sustain is kind of OTT.
I also feel that we will either be the healer or the condition dps. I do not think that our highest dps weapon, the sword, will be usable in raids. Axe/torch with QD however…. and the new condition damage on pets….
Quite honestly I really dont think that Roy is the sole person to blame for the change. He just had poor judgement in announcing it over Twitter. Besides, Irenio was the one who announced the absolute destruction of the PvE Icebow. Was he to blame? Probably not.
In the end, this being handled very poorly and as a kneejerk change, was very harsh on new Ranger innovation. For the first time I had a reason to think about using the Jungle stalker. Even with Fortifying Bond boon duration, one could theorycraft a might stacking build.
Alas, this ship has sailed…
I am so excited to see a preview for the balance changes. Come on Irenio, toss us a bone!
Nike, I do not think that anyone here is arguing about the boon duration copy on quickness, protection, swiftness etc. Most people have an issue with the 3 might cap and the fact that the whole thing was handled very poorly.
A developer who is known for making Rangers a laughing stalk on every stream and always joking about bearbows, announced a kneejerk change on Twitter less then 2 days after the patch, all the while letting things like Ele dominate the PvP and PvE scenes for more then a year.
This is why people took offense.
The lack of a holy trinity has led to the DPS DPS DPS! meta. And at this point I really cant say which is worse. I want the Druid to be needed. Hell I want the Ranger to be needed in anything other then the almost mandatory No rangers !! on LFG.
Mist, I have tried that and version with skirmishing, NM or BM. It is not a stable build as in you will just die to a coordinated spike. Also, you will simply be out pressured by a Revenant or Scrapper. Hell, Even Eles pose a problem.
The issue with any full on glass build is that it is very unreliable without stealth. While the Ranger/Druid can get some it is not in ample supply like it is with Mesmer or Thief. We also do not have teleports.
Second part is, BM is such a huge upgrade for the pet, especially for melee ones, that its simply a bad choice not to take it. If I opted for spiders I would take NM instead of BM. But this is the build i was running by the end of the weekend:
They did slightly buff Natures vengeance boon application and they have changed the Storm spirit effect to vulnerability.
I have spent the entire weekend PvPing and WvWing with the druid. I tried all sorts of combinations. That famed 6 seconds daze build is totally worthless because you really have no defensive capability and you lose out on the ever useful BM or NM line.
I have settled on a WS, BM/NM and Druid trait distribution with the marauders amulet. But it has been mentioned too many times already so I will not repeat the build.
I would be ok with a tone down on basic healing for Avatar form, but if they gut it….. then I think we really wont be seeing the Druid in PvP.
Positive outlook ends when, even after 3 years, you still get kicked out of a group when you want to to something as trivial as Sorrows Embrace or Citadel of Flame for being a Ranger.
NM is a great line. Well, it has one amazing trait on each level…. and the minors are pretty good. Better then MM
If you watched Wooden potatoes this morning you will realize that most of the things that make healing irrelevant in current dungeons are made obsolete in the raid. Things such as reflects, fully avoidable damage, spike vulnerability stacking, etc. Also, glass high dps specs like staff Elementalist simply do not work due to the boss constantly moving.
The druid can push out reliable AoE high level heals while providing Spotter, Frost spirit and either Glyph of Empowerment or Stone spirit. I have watched some raid videos so that is what people were using.
Sure, in the end, perhaps the best thing to be would be to run 10 Heralds, but at this point no one knows.
In the end, if they gut the Druid and the Ranger remains worthless for HoT in either Core or Druid storm I will be the first one to start a shtt storm on the forums and I feel that many will join in. But so far, I am liking what I am seeing.
I was playing Survival, Beastmaster Druid all weekend after the initial first tries of Marksman daze which was too fragile. The combination with WS worked wonders.
Also, from what I have seen, some of the better Ranger players were running Survival, Nature magic and Druid lines.
In a PvP scenario the Avatar button is your panic button for a massive condition clear, spike heal and escape. Like I have already said, I seriously doubt they will completely nerf all druid heals. They will probably tweak the 1, 3 and 4 abilities to start off worse and scale better.
Jesus, relax people.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
Even if we are looking up to a 50% healing base nerf on some skills, and not all mind you because some of them have pretty low healing, this is still quite a lot of sustain for a berserker spec. I will be very surprised if a flat nerf to all skills happens. I think they will do a skill by skill pass.
Stop throwing fits on the reduction of base healing when we really do not even know how big of a reduction we are looking at.
Well, actually, at the moment some of the elite specs are just flat out better then the core. This applies to the Herald, Chronomancer, Reaper and Scrapper.
People are looking for Core Ranger fixes through the Druid. This is wrong. We should look for Core Ranger fixes to the Core Ranger. Plenty of traits, utilities and weapons are subpar for PvE content.
The Druid in itself is fine. The trait line is fine. The staff is fine. The first iteration of Avatar is ok and will get more work done on it. But the foundation is shaky and hence everything suffers because of it.
So, if you dont mind me asking. What would the preferred classes/builds be then?
I just wanted to ask the guys who played the raids, seeing how there is a need for condition builds, if the condition ranger build is viable in this content?
Ty
Everything Irenio has said is true. However, it needs to be applied across all classes.
What the helll….. Srsly??? Jesus….
Its not the damage, its the stacks some of the skills apply.
I would like to stress out the importance of Druid catering to multiple build styles and not just raw healing. And for the most part this is true.
The druid line can be used primarily as a control build with MoC and long dazes, be it melee or ranged ( staff + GS + MoC anyone).
You can, with proper tuning, play it without the staff ( Irenio has said that he is looking into force generation).
You can build it as a survivalist/escapist and use the Astral form to clear conditions ( druidic clarity), burst heal yourself and run away ( celestial shadow ).
There are also raw tanking utilities and traits like the condition reduction trait, the glyph elite…etc… If you want to heal up your party without HP go into Avatar form pop the tether and use TU. All the while spamming form skills.
Plenty of other skills out there too. Help sustain a shout build? the +1000 healing on both pet and ranger in an AoE on a 16s WHaO. Longbow synergy? Ancient seeds!
We need to see how big the healing change is, but I really do not think that he will hit every skill and that he will gut them ( Irenio I mean). Most likely we are looking at a 30% reduction on some and then making them more effective with HP above the current levels.
But the core issue remains though. The Druid is fine, the issue is with the Core Ranger. The foundation is shaky and it translates into everything. We need more support options and damage modifiers at our core. We need better pet survival options. Our damage needs to be competitive and it is not!!
Marksman/Sharpshooter spec. Rifle
Pet mechanic replaced with preparations.
In before 50% healing nerf and scaling with HP to current levels. God I hope not..
It all depends on how big of a reduction we are looking at. If its too big then the Druid and its astral form will be pretty bad for anything but healing builds.
Also, another important thing to consider is that even if the Druid has massive healing, it has poor support otherwise. While guardian or elementalist have worse healing, they are far better at providing boons, auras and other unique effects. The Ranger is pretty bad at those things for party wide production. We have Spotter and Frost spirit… thats it.
Do not get me wrong, I am all for making a difference between a HP and a non HP druid but if the non HP druid is like only 50% healing of what it is now, then it will be pretty bad. In Celestial form you lose all damage.
Furthermore, the Druid can never be a bunker because it is missing key features which are: allied condition removal, plenty of invulnerability and AoE blocks/mitigation and stability. Simply healing is not going to cut it. If Druid is going to enter the meta the healing needs to be significantly higher then when playing a supportive Ele or Guardian.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
Support is more then healing. It is also boon/effect production.
The pet has its own movement steroid trait as a GM minor in BM.
This simply is not true. A lot of the pets were very good before the massive pet damage nerf patch. Pretty much every spike ability got reduced by 50% damage, cat maul, birds f2 and so on and so forth.
This will probably get the same treatment