The main issue with berserker is that is very limited how core warrior is limited. For any sort of PvP play you need fast hands and thus you need discipline. Furthermore, PvP mandates defensive options, especially on a melee class thus you need Defense.
In the end you give up a lot of potential build options because you need to go into Discipline and Defense. All because of fast hands.
Fast hands need to be made baseline for berserker to have any chance of a condition build possible.
I support this change. The trait is all but mandatory in most situations.
The Druid is an amazing elite with a shaky foundation, that foundation being the Core Ranger. But I have faith that Irenio and others on the team, given their recent changes and enthusiasm, will rise up to the challenge.
Quite honestly the ranger pet is more important then both mesmer illusions or necromancer minions. If an illusion does it cast once it has already done its job. And minions are utility skills, they can be reused.
They will nerf it 100%
Druids are great at healing but have no boon production. They CC and they heal. This is their niche.
Guardian and Ele are worse at healing but they are boon factories.
By design, for better or worse, the Thief is a +1 and a decap class.
I have given this much thought and what I came to realize is that we do not need our pets to be immune or take reduced damage by default, but options to keep them alive like we can keep ourselves alive. And a clean way to do this is through some weapon abilities, traits and utility skills. The Pet + Ranger need to be treated as a whole when it comes to positives and not just negatives.
What can be done is thus:
- Translate PvE pet HP total into WvW. Leave PvP out of it at first because its small scale combat and other pet survival options will make them solod by default
- Wilderness mastery skills condition removal and fury application will affect both Ranger and pet.
- Every evasion frame from dodging and weapon skills need to be implemented onto the pet as a blur effect in the same duration. This includes: Dodge, hornets sting, Vipers strike, Swoop, GS auto attack 3, Stalkers strike, Evasive shot.
- Natural healing trait pet passive regeneration increased from 125/s to 200/s. Addition functionality added: Pets take 25-50% increased healing from all sources.
- Invigorating bond nature magic grand master trait changed. Considering we have the Druid as a healing spec this trait is obsolete in its current incarnation.
Thus: If the pet is downed healing utility skills will resurrect it with the HP total of the heal. If the pet is not dead the heal will heal the pet for an additional 50%. 2 seconds of invulnerability on pet after the heal.
- Pet downed penalty reduced from 60 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Emphatic bond will convert 3 conditions into boons for the pet instead of just moving conditions.
- Signet of Renewal changed from moving conditions to dispelling conditions from Ranger and pet
I know that this might seem a bit over the top, but considering that the pet is an essential part of the ranger it does require options to keep it alive other then swapping and there needs to be some interaction when its downed. Furthermore I believe that almost every line should have options that can prolong the pets life.
So in the end we would end up:
- pet is tougher naturally in WvW which is needed
- MM would support the pet with options to trait SoS and SoR up time
- Skirmishing would enable survivability through interaction with ranger weapon skills or the HS water field
- WS will give the 5% reduced damage taken from Oakheart and the 50% damage reduction from the minor IF the Ranger is above 90%. Also protection on dodge and more blur frames from dodges.
- NM will allow you to resurrect the pet or apply boons to it
- BM will make the pet much better through raw stats
- Druid can heal it or remove conditions from it
So in the end you have options, you are adding meaningful interactions through weapon skills and you are using worthless traits to give them a purpose. You really cant take everything and you can choose your style.
I think this is good design.
It is perfectly fine if Core Ranger is better then Druid in old Tyria dungeons.
In WvW it will obviously serve a purpose, but pets will still need to be addressed to not die to AoE instantly. It had quite solid CC and sustain.
In PvP the druid is pretty good. It might not be OP as Revenant/Herald or Chronomancer are, but its in a spot thats above Daredevil, Berserker, Dragon hunter and pretty equal to Reaper.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
Well one of the things we can do is to remove/change pet killing traits and abilities and make so that Rangers self cleanse also cleanses the pet. Rangers evasion frames also need to be added to the pet, both from dodge and weapon skills.
Also, there is a pretty big difference between PvE and PvP,WvW when it comes to pet HPs. While I agree that perhaps, a HP buff in PvP would be OTT, WvW absolutely needs to have the same pet HP values as PvP.
So as far as pet survivability goes I would:
- use PvE pet HP values for WvW
- change Emphatic bond to have a positive effect for the pet. Instead of transfering let it convert 3 conditions on the ranger into 3 boons on the pet.
- change protect me to not kill the pet
- add a 1 second blurr effect when the Ranger dodges
- add blurr effects on the pet for every weapon and utility based effect the Ranger has, with the same duration.
- Make it so WS skills cleanse both the Ranger and the pet.
Even if some of these happen the Pet reliability will skyrocket!!
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
Easier said then done. Oh did I mention self maintained 15+ might stacks?
You do not really need it considering you can fill up the Astral energy before you even get to combat. If you get ganked pop Avatar and just heal back up all the while dazing him, slowing, immobilizing and taunting him.
On the notion of Greatsword. Yes I am thinking about it. Staff/GS will make for some insane mobility. However, the Longbow makes you a great roamer. Its a tough choice for me.
I am running the WS,BM, Druid Marauder/Traveler Staff/Longbow variant.
It is a pretty kitten good roamer build.
Taking the WS line and survival skill seems the best way to play druid… sadly.
There are three main concerns I have with the Druid.
1) Avatar form related stuff
- The Avatar form is very restricting in how you use it. You have to fill the bar up fully to enter it and you lose all energy on exit. While this might seem a hard restriction to reign in some of the more insane healing the Druid can pump out, I feel it is very limiting to high level play and possible combinations with other traits, skills, pets or allies.
Furthermore, I feel it is very limiting to on enter/exit trait procs like the condition cleanse traits Druidic clarity or the stealth Celestial shadow.
I feel as if this kind of restriction is not necessary and we would be better off with having a shroud like resource management where you can enter or exit irrelevant on how full your bar is as long as you have a minimal required amount which can be anywhere between 10-20%.
Of course in this case, the Avatar form CD and ICDs for the Clarity and Shadow traits needs to be looked at.
- Second part of my concern for the Avatar form is how you fill the bar. Weapon skill generation is heavily skewed towards the staff. While this makes sense, taking any other weapon combo other then Staff/XXXX is heavily punishing if you are a druid.
Also, regeneration does not fill the bar, and some of the traits do not either. The glyph traited blossoms do not heal you.
I feel as if a pass needs to be made on every skill, heal and tooltip facts need to be added.
Healing skills need to be standardized in how much they fill up the bar, otherwise you end up with things like Healing spring which loads 10% of your bar and Troll unguent which fills it by more then 50%. And the standard could be 25%!!
2) No condition builds synergy
- While the druid can cover some weaknesses of builds that are not used because of them, seeing how the sub-class is reliant on staff to fill up the Avatar energy bar and the staff has no conditions on it, and that the traits do not proc anything other then the GM entangle trait, this is a major cause for concern for me.
There have been some pretty solid suggestions out there of giving the Staff auto attack some burning. Perhaps 1 second of 2 burning stacks would work?? Another good candidate for more condition based damage would be the skill 4. Perhaps add 4-5 bleeds as well??
3) Glyphs
- The glyphs are very interesting for me, and while some people will claim that the Druid is a long range support spec, I do not see it as such. It is versatile and position based. Having said that, I feel as if there are some key parts that need to be addressed.
We need a reliable non Avatar stun breaker on the glyphs!! And we need some damaging conditions on some of them, to push synergy with condition builds.
So my list would be:
- allowing more play with the Avatar state through more freedom in entering and exiting it
- standardizing the energy bar fill rate and giving skill facts that describe the percentages
- Promoting synergy with alternative builds styles be it condition or power based
- Pushing glyph utility otherwise we will be back to using the wilderness line.
Wow… I am kittened since this morning….. I made a druid last night, played with it… Deleted it due to the bug and made a new one. And i forgot all about the pets. Ty
Hey guys I have a question: Can you tame new Juvenile pets with a beta character in the open world? I cant seem to do it…
I have eaten a 14k Condolesence of ruin back to back with a 9k Unrelenting assault.
Yes I have. I could not unstow it in PvE or WvW. I could in PvP. Was very weird.
Staff 3 is fine but it needs an evade.
Well, that is why a CD exists. I mean, don’t get me wrong the fill up is pretty fast. I just feel that it is a bit limiting. Ah well.
Staff skills do not work with Quick Draw!!
First thing I noticed after making my Druid is that one cannot enter the Avatar state at will with random amounts of celestial force. It has to fully fill up.
Necromancer shroud allows you to enter it as soon as you have a sliver of life force but it will degenerate and take damage, but it will allow you to proc some of the effects when entering/exiting it. There is a CD associated with it of course.
My suggestion would be to allow the player to enter it when they have at least some astral force. Also when exiting the Avatar mode, let us keep the remaining celestial force. The way you made it limits play considerably. It guts possible high level plays and combos.
I would like to add that the current iteration completely devalues the effect on entry/exit traits, high skill play and possible combos.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
Every family of skills should have at least one stun breaker. This goes for all classes. And for the most part they do.
Ah, its not active yet. Thought that it was and that my client is buggy. Thank you!
One of the questions still stands though: Can you play with an existing character or do you have to make a new beta character?
hey guys, stupid question.
How does one play the beta? I have preordered and have beta character slots opened but i cant seem to create a new character. Can I play with an existing character? This is my first BWE so I am at a loss here. I am on the EU server.
Thank you in advance!
Spirits are solid in PvE. In PvP or WvW I would stay away from them for the time being.
This is are some of the thoughts I have had ever since they reduced the range of the SB:
1) increase the range to 1050
It makes it a longer range then an axe, but short enough to be still considered a short bow. It would mimic thief pistol range.
2) remove the flanking requirement on auto attack bleeds *
This one is something that is self evident considering there has been a pretty big power creep in relation to auto attack application. See necro scepter for reference.
3) Increase the back track range for Evasive shot *
This skill is quite funny. It is supposed to be a retreat sort of skill but all it does is move you one or two steps backwards.
4) Instead of a 3 second cripple give Crippling shot a 1.5 second immobilize
This skill is about Ranger-Pet synergy yet if fails at it simply due to the fact that the pet cant reliably deliver the hit. This will also make the Trap- SB Skirmishing line make far more sense as a whole. More synergy and all that jazz…
5) Simply reduce the CD of the Concussive shot from 25 seconds to 20 seconds
The skill is fine other then the pretty long CD.
So, as you guys can see, my suggestions are not as drastic as adding new conditions or overloading the SB with obscene damage. It is simply increasing the quality of some skills, skill 1 and 3, and pushing some pet-ranger-trap synergy.
Use the signet. It is much better and far more reliable. And it does not kill the pet.
1) a targeting marker when summoning spirits similar to the warrior banner one
2) rework of the shout family: Guard, SnR, Protect me and Sick em
3) pet PvE hitpoints translated into WvW and possibly PvP
Yes a comanded AoE area heal steroid could be very interesting.
Maybe that can be a common theme for guard and SnR? One is damage mitigation and one is a heal/downed ally support. And Sick em is a very good candidate for boon hate, something which the ranger is sorely missing.
Protect me is something that is poorly designed because it kills your class mechanic. What the shout utility line is missing is a condition clear or resistance. As I have mentioned in a previous post it can be a 4 second stability/resistance/protection utility for ranger and pet, that can be enhanced by 2 seconds through WHaO giving synergy and keeping the boon theme. Perhaps a shorter CD.
So my latest iteration of the non changed shouts would be:
- Protect me – gives 4 seconds of stability, resistance and protection to ranger and pet. Remains a stun breaker. CD reduced from 60 to 50 seconds.
- Search and Rescue – targeted AOE ability that pulses heals to allies and percentage based heals to downed enemies, similar to the Engineer elixir. The pet gains 2-3 stacks of stability BUT can be interrupted!!
- Guard – added an additional functionality – allies in the protected radius receive 15% reduced damage.
- Sick em – instead of the unique buff that disappears when issued another command, the pet receives supper speed for 10 seconds and the target is stripped of 2 boons. CD reduced to 35 seconds. While this might overlap somewhat with QZ, the pet needs a lot of help with catching up to targets.
Well, if you are running the now standard WS, NM and BM build, you have enough passive procs of regeneration from oakheart salve and the NM minor. SO the 440ish HP/s, 2 condi clears and fury are stronger then the simple WHaO.
It came down to a choice between TU and HS. TU as a selfish reliable heal over time that is very resilient to poison and HS as a condition clear, that can even be self sufficient sometimes, and team utility.
I like the approach for WHaO an its aim to reinforce boons and a positive relationship with the pet. Just increase or remove the 3 might cap.
(edited by Chokolata.1870)
See most people have assumed that I am either new at the game or completely oblivious to how Mesmer works. Neither is the case. I have quite a lot of games played. The issue is that the build can pump up so many conditions that I can’t keep up and simply run out of CDs to burn.
I am constantly being pressured by 6-7+ stacks of both torment and bleeding cleanse after cleanse alongside poison, burning and other fluff you mentioned. In the last game I played I was on my Ranger with the survival power build, which has as good condition removal as one can get on a Ranger, and after burning all my CDs to condi cleanse I was left exposed and my HP dropped from 100% to 20% within 3-4 seconds. I simply ran out of CDs. And I did not use my CDs to burn fluff as you have said.
So, my question from start is:
- Since Anet is very heavy handed in nerfing obnoxious spam builds, why does this exist where someone can just keep dodging, stealthing and spamming conditions at an insane amount.
I feel like this is a proper question to ask. And before you attack me that I need to learn to play, I actually know the build and what it does.
My question is, since Anet is very heavy handed in nerfing builds that are bad for the game, why is Mesmer allowed to constantly stealth and just dodge all the while pumping out insane amounts of conditions that, even if you fully go for condition removal, are simply impossible to cleanse.
This is from a Ranger and Warrior perspective.
Not it was not good after shout buff. It was usable. TU or HS were vastly superior in every way. It had a supposed niche of providing swiftness and regeneration but Ranger has those coming out of the whazoo.
It was the blandest, poorest designed heal in the entire game. Even Water spirit has some design to it even if it is completely useless at the moment due to very low numbers and spirits being pointless in general.
It required something, and even in its nerfed buffed state it is far better then it was. Heal per second means nothing anyway.
Why is TU good:
- 2 condition clears
- highest HPS in the game on a skill that works as a special effect regeneration which is very good in a sustained fight.
- It works well will bark skin and protection allowing more 90% + HP up time.
- It is in a very good skill group of survival skills so its a natural pick if you take those, and most of the time you will if you are any kind of damage dealer
Healing spring:
- water field
- very good team condition clearing on point
- healing goes up exponentially with the number of people present and coordinated burst spikes
WHaO:
- it gave swiftness and regen
- do you really think that was enough?? When you have heals like Withdraw, Healing turret
It is quite simple yet very complicated. They need to redo at least 3 out of the 6 shouts.
WHaO:
- just remove or increase the might copy cap. Boon duration is fine
Guard:
- allies in the AOE take 15% reduced damage, like the name Guard would suggest
Sick em:
- reduced CD from 40s to 30s. Instead of the unique buff, the pet gains super speed and it hits remove a boon per hit for the duration.
Protect me:
- instead of sacrificing the pet, the shout will give you and your pet 4s of protection, stability and resistance. Reduced CD to 50s.
Search and rescue:
- it will either rally an ally or stomp a foe
Keep the duration, remove the 3 might cap.
Is WHaO now affected by boon duration? And if it is, how is it affected?
Just the remove the might sharing cap and we are golden. Alternatively increase it.
Why was it buffed? Because Ranger desperately needs positive interaction with the pet. At the moment there are more ways to kill the pet yourself then to actually get a ball running between the two.
While I agree that 2 minutes of quickness or protection was hilarious, the change to WHaO is a push in the right direction. I hope we get more of this from the other shouts.
I really doubt that they hate Rangers. When compared to the previous version of HaO, and i mean before the shout classification this version is vastly superior.
While I agree with using the FB boon template, especially considering that Quickness is not supposed to be readily available and is usually tied to Elites, short duration traits or long CD utilities like QZ, Berserk stance, etc.. , I disagree with the 3 might limit considering that it is not a duration stacking boon.
The problem with WaO was that it could stack long duration boons that were really powerful like protection and quickness.
The issue was not with might stacking. The might limit of 3 was a knee jerk overnerf that was not necessary. They should have just used the fortifying bond template of boon duration and the might stacks would have fallen off within 10 seconds with a maximum of 17.5 seconds if someone used might runes.
However, as with everything, they completely over reacted.
For WHaO boon copy they should have used Fortifying bond boon durations and not cap the might stack duration. Jesus, the skill is again worthless. Sadly, such heavy handed approach is not something i support and I will not participate in a discussion that will not be heard or listened to.
GL guys, I hope you make something happen.
Wow, they butchered WhaO. Why would they butcher the might copy? Jesus. The issue was with permanent protection and quickness. Back to never using it again i suppose….
They will probably preview the changes before they go live. They will probably nerf protection and quickness copies.
I use the same WS and NM trait distribution but in BM i take timbre, GS and zephyr. Play with HaO, QZ, LR, SoS and Ent.
Start off with wolf and tag an enemy and swap to stalker right away. F2, QZ, HaO and thats 21 might for the ranger. GS is better when you are outnumbered or running away.
Actually that build has pretty bad condition removal xD You are also very weak on defense and mobility because you sacrificed GS for sword/horn.
Yep, especially since the spirits passive remains for a few seconds after the active use, so you can actually summon it and use it right away, and the spirit will still proc its passive
So you would rather they nerf 10 things at once and ruin the spec. I agree that the class has been very OP and that it is now still OP quite possibly. But its an iterative process.