Guild Wars 2

jcbroe.4329:

FrouFrou.4958:

I started with marauders, then tried paladins amulet but I felt I couldn’t support my team well enough so I switched to menders, ended up sticking with it all the way to legendary. I ran staff/GS and played similarly as how Prophet descriped his playstyle. I didn’t find LB druids/rangers a threat at all :x

And the GS has been working for you with Menders?

Just asking because the visible consensus seems to be to run sword/dagger and staff (by visible I mean the players on the weekly streams), and while it may have a bit more survival, it just doesn’t seem to have as good of a “feel” as GS does, especially because the GS can win you 1v1s that would take an annoying long time to win otherwise, which is invaluable if you push/defend sidepoints.

I’ve been less open to experimenting with my builds as I climbed higher in the divisions, so I’d definitely appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.

With the amount of torment i’ve seen flooding PvP i would not touch Sword/Dagger with a 30ft poll as my defensive option. GS is very good at defense (i’d say better than S/D), and has done me well in both Menders and Clerics, and i can use it to throw people off of points/get onto points quicker/rotate quicker.

S/D in this meta is a “Lets make your 1-4 skills make you take significantly more damage just by using them!” and don’t give me nearly as much overall survivability, they just help against burst since you have more on demand evades, which as a druid doesn’t matter as much because we can vomit our health bar back in no time.

Rap Tiger.1257:

That’s what is happening with the game, you need a better balance, pets that could be more useful being abandoned as they stand, the attacks of pets bears and wyverns are very slow and weak compared to other pets, hyena has power lower only because of f2, which does not make sense to have a lower power …

The correct is to ArenaNet wants certain pets beating really slow, should give also higher damage because these pets almost or can never attack moving targets, even Wyvern the first attack is two strokes with wings lasts around 2s, hard catch the first attack when hitting with the wing, especially the second hit with the wing ..

The second skill (attack) lasts pet 1s and 1/2 to beat in walking distance too …. the third skill is more good could increase the range and f2 be a little smaller, Bristleback has a good attack and cd has 12 seconds in f2 if I’m not mistaken.

Ok firstly, hyenas got their power halved in beta since you can very easily maintain TWO hyenas simultaneously, which means the hyenas together deal the same damage as a normal canine, with twice the CC, the hyena was nerfed twice for two big reasons that made it more widely seen than the wolf or smoke scale, the most infamous one was when hyena was the equivalent of bringing 2 canines at the same time and they + the ranger would kill you instantly if you didn’t dodge the staggered knock down (2 dodges or die), the second was a nerf that hit very few players (I think me and like 5 others), who ran hyena in a bunker ranger build since hyenas wouldn’t des pawn. This allowed you to get a critical mass of hyenas as long as you kept fighting or if someone was within 1200 of you and was an enemy, so you could get more hyenas fighting for you than Scar in the lion king.

Secondly, bears do NOT have a slow attack, bears hit moving targets very reliably, they just deal very little auto damage, their regen attack however deals a very hefty spike of damage when they do use it, but they won’t use it unless they’re injured. Bears are fine as is because their damage is ludicrously consistent, and with the changes to protect me and guard the bear pets have a very good niche of being the tankiest mother kittenwrs we have, dealing decent damage, and being capable of soaking damage for us whether the enemy wants to kill the bear or not.

Please keep in mind that Moas, my favorite pet in GW1, are still completely trash because they have a absolutely worthless skill that does no damage, roots them for like 3s, and applied a whopping 2 vuln. Not to mention that there’s also pigs, who have the potential to be amazing, but are being held back big time.

Wyverns on the other hand work quite well in PvP, and have 0 issue on PvE. In PvP you would literally never take them for damage since they are a tankier pet to begin with, but you can get a fire/air field that can help create area denial, and their wing buffet attack has a 20s CD and a pretty big cone effect which makes it very easy to hit someone at least once or twice with a single buffet, or at the very least force a dodge roll. The cripple rarely misses and is nice too. The ONLY skill the wyverns bring that is absolutely awful is their auto since it’s a channel. They hit with the first attack, completely whiff the second one, and then rinse repeat. So in reality it’s the exact same as other pets.

urowell mooncrest.7425:

Skullface.7293:

Next time you try to share a build you should link the build in here.

As for your build, I do have to agree that there is just not enough condi removal especially if you are playing a melee build. The reason I would not use much condi removal when playing would be because I can kite, like Staff/Longbow gameplay. For a melee build I would definitely use abit more condi clear, replacing your Protect Me with Signet of Renewal for example when facing condi specs.

The Build does have condition removal while not enough. Most classes only try and pump out 1 or two types of conditions. The build is fine for going up against condition specs I just Switch out signet of stone for signet of renewal. It is about timing when to use the signet that is the big part. add that in with Druid Clarity with CA and just switching back to normal form real quick conditions can never stay on for long doing much harm (minus like a 1v3 and its all condi people X.x). If you are wanting the build’s address here(http://goo.gl/6AxrkU) Most people do not really like to take an extra step to go to another place to get the build any way. Which I can understand

I personally thought the amount of condi clear was fine, but as many on the forums know I have a habit of playing with significantly less condi clear than everyone else does. I find dodging the big condi spike skills to be more important.

It’s like you’re trying to support… but can’t figure out how you intend on doing that… and don’t realize that healing power may as well not exist when mesmer is involved…

Furajir.3815:

Durzlla.6295:

I personally run Heal as One, Guard, Protect Me, Search and Rescue, and RaO in PvP on my druid. So i’m not surprised that it works, and i’m actually kinda surprised everyone seems to think the build doesn’t work…

That’s not quite signet is it?

When you run a pocket bear, guard is something you can easily fire off in a team fight to soak up a good +31k damage for your team, and if your team has AoE retal it makes the enemy team take retal damage twice each time they hit anything since they are technically hitting the first target AND your pet. So it’s not quite as good for your own personal defense, but if you’re a druid in clerics gear you don’t really need a signet of stone, not to mention guard doesn’t prevent capture points.

That and Protect Me! is an AoE stunbreak so it ruins the popular Gravity Well choice, and can be used to save teammates from stuns.

Does Anet plan on implementing some of the PvP amulet stats, such as Mercenary and Sages into PvE? There’s several amulets that are in PvP that i would kill to have the stat combo for in PvE, but as far as i know they’ve been silent on this…

I have a love/hate relationship with Druid staff… I love the 3 skill, and i love the synergy between 3+5 for the blast of water, and the 4 skill can be really nice, but for the most part everything other than the 3 skill just FEELS lack luster. I love the theme of the weapon, but it’s just lack luster in the overall theme, granted it does fill its role better than any other we have.

I think it’d be pretty cool if our 2 made it so the target became a walking light field, and if our 1 skill had a burn/blind on it, and if our 4 removed like immob and 1 random condi, or applied poison, or moved faster, or was like…. idk, it’s cool, and it’s nice, but it just feels weak.

But most importantly, for the love of all that is holy make our staff stop being a submarine!! At the very least put an option in the in the sound section that lets me turn off the submarine noise… Why couldn’t we have kept the original sound where it just sounded like us pouring energy into the target?

I personally run Heal as One, Guard, Protect Me, Search and Rescue, and RaO in PvP on my druid. So i’m not surprised that it works, and i’m actually kinda surprised everyone seems to think the build doesn’t work…

Fluffball.8307:

Durzlla.6295:

I just slap on my Clerics and pray to god that my #2 skill in avatar state actually goes off so i can deal with condis (instead of me casting it, but no seed actually appearing like it has before). I’ve tried Menders, and i’ve tried paladin and both seemed very lacking to me, at least with how i play.

Does only 1 seed appear per “pustule pop” no matter how many you cast or something? I don’t use it that often except when I’m in the middle of 5 necros and it seems like it never works. I mostly stick to the last 3 skills.

I think you can get 2 seeds going at once, but the way the CDs work i normally throw the 2 down and then 3 into the seed aura to give aoe retal + a daze to help mitigate damage and punish attackers. Not to mention i run Guard, so i can make the enemy team take 2x the retal damage per target by forcing them to hit my meat shield of a bear too.

I just slap on my Clerics and pray to god that my #2 skill in avatar state actually goes off so i can deal with condis (instead of me casting it, but no seed actually appearing like it has before). I’ve tried Menders, and i’ve tried paladin and both seemed very lacking to me, at least with how i play.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Shirk.6421:

If you suck, you get matched with people who should suck as well. Now you’re 5 people who suck – perfectly fine.

^this is the kind of player ANet wants to keep happy.

I would rather stomp the enemy team, then be stuck in what is literally hell because i keep getting paired with horrible players that can’t win a game.

That being said, I’m not sure how said bad players are going to be able to learn and move onwards when all they are getting paired with is equally bad players as partners and being put up against potentially extremely good players who need to move up. But i guess that’s why anets goal is to make the win ratio 50/50.

My druid is by far not a dueling build, and im actually amazed that people think it may be bad in PvP, i just park my fat kitten on a point and block it off from the enemy team, been working very well.

kiwituatara.6053:

Durzlla.6295:

Anything that says interrupt only is YOU interrupting, and technically beastly warden and protect me is your pet interrupting, not you, so it wont trigger anything that requires YOU to interrupt the target (like every sigil and rune).

Cheers. So the taunt from Protect Me is from the pet? But I think the taunt duration is affected by your condition duration, so shouldn’t it be from you instead?

EDIT: Yea both Protect Me and Beastly Warden are affected by condition duration from the ranger and not the pet… unless the tooltip is wrong.

I have not done enough testing on protect me to know if it’s actually based on you or not, but it’s wording is the same as multiple other skills that make our pet perform the action and not us, so i’m assuming it’s the pet.

Also, our tooltips have been doing calculations based on our stats for our pets since launch, it’s annoying, but not new.

Anything that says interrupt only is YOU interrupting, and technically beastly warden and protect me is your pet interrupting, not you, so it wont trigger anything that requires YOU to interrupt the target (like every sigil and rune).

I like hyena, taunt, knock down, knock down, cripple cripple

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

jewishjoyride.4693:

geekilo.8512:

Remove 2 conditions just comes with the skill
But the RNG condition cleanse proc is so unreliable. Projectiles have 20% to proc a combo field.
If Seed of Life is a water field
You can use GS#3, Sword#2 to proc for extra heal instead of some useless light aura.
You can do CAF #2 + #3 for AOE heal instead of some passive gameplay light aura.
You don’t have to rely on others for water field whenever you’re in CAF.
The water field doesn’t last for very long (between 1s to 2s- please correct me if i’m wrong), you can be CC and the water field will go away before your CAF #3 comes in.

Actually many projectile finishers are 100% chance. Other projectile finishers that are 20% chance have multiple chances to proc. See Rapid Fire or Splitblade.

Keeping Seed of Life as a light field spreads out the utility that Druid has. It keeps the spec from being one dimensional. This skill could use some changes, but turning it in to a water field is not one of them.

The players that need cleanses still have to be within melee range of the mob which got hit by the projectile. Quite unreliable and hard to use in the middle of the mess.

they actually have to be within melee range of the projectile, so you could always throw a projectile at your allies instead of the enemy, or you could use a whirl finisher to throw the bolts all over the place, but that’s just putting RNG on RNG unless they’re near your target.

The damage is a cool idea in theory, but it’s far too low to really be useful on any build.

A CC (of any sort) would be AWESOME for LR, I personally would prefer a daze or stun for the MoC synergy, but a root or cripple would also be very much appreciated.

you realize how much healing i can get for myself just by healing other people with heals that are still hitting me? An absolute ludicrous amount, even if it was all base, you add on ~1300 healing power ontop of that with a decent heal on live vicariously and it’s going to get broken real fast.

Not to mention Live Vicariously procs when you heal your pet too.

It’s a minor trait, it’s still very noticeable and very cool in theme, they can’t do much to it without making it either have to be a GM trait that competes directly with our others, or nerfing druids elsewhere (not something i’d recommend).

It was needed, but then they added in the change that prevented us from gaining astral force for healing people full health and the change to staff auto no longer is needed and should be reverted.

This skill just needs SOMETHING added onto it, it’s just weak beyond belief right now.

Your pet either wasn’t in range or didn’t have health missing, because I know the spirit will apply the buff to the pet and the pet will activate it through its attacks, I used spirits very often up until HoT and it definitely worked then.

So if it doesn’t work now it’s a new bug with HoT (which is possible)

You have to defeat the boss at the end of the dragon stand meta, then you’ll be able to buy from an NPC right next to the chest.

Good tips, and I still see very large amounts of people in the new maps, especially Auric Basin and Dragon Strand.

I fully agree with this, this is by far my favorite map of the expansion, if not the entire game. I love all the secrets hidden away in this map, as well as how seemlessly you travel between the four layers of the map to get from point A to point B, not to mention all the adventures, and meta are just extremely fun and no matter how many times I play through the events I never get tired of doing them!

Thanks for this masterpiece of a map Anet!

I actually love Sword with action camera because I’m able to fly around the battle field like a kittening monkey, that and I have action combat set to toggle, so if I REALLY need to focus fire someone that’s not hard to do

Photinous.4628:

I noticed that this skill now breaks stun when you are not in celestial avatar form. Was it always like this and I am just noticing it now?

Yeah I just noticed this two days ago too, it’s such a beautiful change

The only issue I’ve found on this meta was getting enough people to show up, most people can’t even figure out how to navigate the map, let alone figure out the mechanics of the fight once they finally stumble in disoriented and confused.

Hammerguard.9834:

I more annoyed by the random radar sound effect they added to it since the beta. It used to be soft and atmospheric. Now it’s just obnoxious.

omg, this, so much of this

Am I missing something? I don’t see anything wrong with the stance as a Male Sylvari.

I’m 100% cool with them costing a lot, only downside I see is that it costs so many ascended (time gated) materials, I’d rather trade a large chunk of those materials for something else, like the PvP and WvW currency for example

So, does anyone have any advice on how to level up and use Scribe? I’ve been attempting it and it’s definitely confusing, it seems like there’s nothing for me to discover, and everything i craft is already known.

That, or i’m doing something horribly wrong…

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Going to be investigating this. It may require some change to Smoke Assault, since the active skills are intended to be a little stronger than the passive skills.

Nerf smoke assault as much as you need to.

Celestial would absolutely deal more damage than clerics, but would have a lot less healing, if you want to be healing as much as physically possible as a Druid (which is a LOT) you’ll want Clerics, and if you go into Nature Magic and pick up the Healing Power gives you Power trait you’ll actually gain a pretty good chunk of damage too.

Clerics is also far easier to get than celestial since there’s 1) no time hating and 2) the matts for cleric aren’t account bound.

Essentially, go cleric if you want more healing, go celestial if you want more damage.

I can honestly care less about the damage nerf, hell they could have flat out removed the skill and I would’ve been fine with it if they kept the smoke field, since that’s the #1 reason I brought the pet anyway, the damage is just a small perk. They really need to swap this back, never have I wanted to control an uncontrollable pet skill this much…

The elite is probably my favorite skill in the whole game, I love to scream “Break yourselves upon my body!” In TS/Skype as I cast it and then run into as much AoE and fast hitting things (flame throwers) as possible to murder everything

Essentially Avatar State in 1v1s is nearly impossible to get, in large scale environments you have more than you can use.

It really should be based off the damage/healing quality rather than quantity.

My ONLY complaint about our avatar state is that in any 1v1 my celestial force isn’t built up until the fight is over. Now in team scenarios I don’t have this problem, AT ALL.

I don’t mind there being a CD and the force being difficult to generate, because I never have the trouble of being able to enter the form while I both have force AND it’s ok CD.

Also, I’ve found that LB, Sword/WH, and Axe/Axe generate plenty of astral force on their own, it’s not as much as staff, but it shouldn’t be, staff needs some sort of incentive to be taken, because it’s sure as kitten not the damage or the healing it does on its own.

I would imagine that we’d have some sort of bonus to casting glyphs tied to the rune since the reason anet gave for giving us existing skill types was to enable runes that worked with them. However, i do like your take on it too, a lot actually.

Or you could move out of the area, and just go back into it right as the 3s “cast” is about to finish and receive the benefit without having to stand still for 3s…

I like that staff is healing focused, but since this is GW2 and not another MMO, even a healing focused weapon needs to have some form of offensive capability, and our staff just feels extremely weak in terms of damage. Like i may as well not even be attacking so weak.

Personally i think we need to have condis on the 1 skill (probably on the third pulse), the 2 skill, and the 4 skill. There’s not enough damage on the weapon to begin with so they wouldn’t really need to subtract anything, and the damage staff brings isn’t any better than the healing guardian staff brings, and that still has a lot of damage potential just through the 1 and 4 skill alone.

Cats are better than birds in damage by A LOT now, however birds are capable of sticking to the target better. The gap between damage on cats and birds vs a moving target is a lot smaller now that cats deal more condi damage, and can take full advantage of the 2 oncrit bleed traits for pets, but birds still win out vs moving targets.

The only times i’d really take a cat over a bird is if you have a lot of slow and immob in your build (IE lock them down for the cat), you have the two on crit = bleed traits for your pet (one in skirmishing, one in BM), and/or you’re in PvE where the target is almost guaranteed to be stationary most of the time.

I highly doubt Druid will get more than one form, and the “a lot of people don’t want to support” excuse is a kittenty one, since the whole point of Druid as a spec is support.

Druid isn’t s new class, it’s a variation of a class, it’s highly specified, and you’ll sooner see another elite spec before they add more things to a current elite spec

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

StickerHappy.8052:

Durzlla.6295:

vespers.1759:

agree they should deliver it to you. also the only one with a good item is the siamoth. I’d like to have the things they find revamped too. they could change them to things we actually want like the mesmer ecto etc.

that being said it won’t happen because anet wants us to buy the expansion but jokes on them because I’m still not going to.

Uh… have you USED the other pigs? All the items are great (especially the skull if it didn’t have a kittening 2 minute CD). In fact, i’d say the siamoth is probably the one with the worst items.

Uh, the siamoth has the ecto tho.

Siamoth is the best Support items , though a lot of team mates in pvp wise are totaly in the tunnel vison to even relise the feathers or the plasma .

i have to regularly tell my guild mates to pick up and use the plasma/feathers when i use the f2 in a safe location.

i really do love it when a thief eats a Egg from the Pig and does a Back stab combo picks up and eats followed by onther set of damage combos it even gives the thief a huge boost in INT to SB away or quickly repostion for a second attack/ kill attempt.

which i find odd again , A lot of thiefs don’t even know what the Egg does.

thought i disagree with us Reciving the item like a Steal it can take away from group use like i mentioned above .

it should just be a
" the opposing team Can’t see the name tag of the item or pick it up " then update the pigs to reflect the HoT changes because 1 bleed is lame , that should really be 3 bleeds.

This, all of this, and it’s technically 2 bleed since that ability hits twice (does not say so in tooltip), but even then it could be a lot higher, or at least change their auto to a double hit and up their crit chance.

vespers.1759:

agree they should deliver it to you. also the only one with a good item is the siamoth. I’d like to have the things they find revamped too. they could change them to things we actually want like the mesmer ecto etc.

that being said it won’t happen because anet wants us to buy the expansion but jokes on them because I’m still not going to.

Uh… have you USED the other pigs? All the items are great (especially the skull if it didn’t have a kittening 2 minute CD). In fact, i’d say the siamoth is probably the one with the worst items.

Scrimschaw.5784:

ProtoMarcus.7649:

I’d really love to see this glyph have a damage effect per second, as many foes in PVE have slow attacks

Something like X damage every second to tethered foes, and of course the damage dealt when struck by such foes.

Same for the celestial version, I’d love to see a pulsing healing every second in addition to the heal tethered allies when healing self

The pulsing damage/heal would be minor, but it’d at least give a little something so you don’t ‘waste’ the skill if no enemies strike you for the duration.

I think that would be a fantastic idea—as I recall they changed the Confusion condition to have a similar effect for the same reason, since PvE mobs generally don’t attack fast enough to make use of attack-punishing skills.

I’d like this change too, however I don’t think it should be the focus, or even contribute a ton, just be something to make it not useless vs things not attacking you (granted this ability works even if non shackled targets hit you)

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Can’t wait to try this out against the Flame Legion Shaman, maybe I mean igniters… The ones with flamethrowers in CoF, cast this, then WD, watch em kill themselves hah. Or for farming mobs for T6.

@ ProtoMarcus
That celestial version is miles better than Spirit of Nature.

I did something similar to 2 Engis and 3 tempests in PvP during the beta, I’ve never won a 1v5 so fast in my life lol.

Justine.6351:

Scrimschaw.5784:

It would have been nice if there was something like a 10% damage reduction baked into Glyph of Unity, resistance, lifesteal, or an immunity to critical hits, etc. to help prevent the Druid from being spiked down when he/she tries to use it—especially given that the Druid needs to stay well within cleaving and PBAoE range if he/she wants to maintain the links. I do hope it keeps the low cooldown, regardless of changes—it’s nice to finally have low-cooldown skills on Ranger that promote active gameplay, even if they could use some serious tuning.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Unity_
if the note section is to be believed.

It’s wrong from all of my experiences, hell i knock back shot something i tethered and it broke.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Does anyone know how it works? Do you actually need to take damage for the Glyph to deal damage back? I know it states whenever you take damage, but I have a sneeking suspicion about it…. Could someone do me a favour and test it in the mists?

Test 1: Use GoU and then “Protect Me!” and see if the target still takes damage when hitting you.

Test 2: Use GoU and then Signet of Stone and see if the target still takes damage when hitting you.

Test 3: Do the damage packets from GoU count as strikes for Sharpened Edges procs?

I’d test this myself but I’m a long way from home…

Edit: Doh! Forgot the beta is over…. Maybe a dev can tell us?

Well, it’s a good thing I did the first two tests…

1 and 2 are both yes, as long as you’re being “hit” it will work, however if you’re under the effects of Elixir of Heroes (via pig) which makes you “invuln” it does not trigger.

I would imagine test 3 would count as strikes, however I didn’t test for that one specifically, but i’m almost positive i saw it proccing bleeds.

EDIT: I would be very upset if they made this ability Ranged and on a target, and if they made it from critting on every hit (at least it’s showing up like that) to never critting. Druid isn’t that much of a ranged healer anyway, they heal for far more when they’re right next to their pet in the thick of things than standing at max range with the staff. I feel like Glyph of Unity should get something a little more added to it, but making it a ground targeted ability is not what it needs, or should get. If anything it should grant prot (and/or retal) that has longer duration per people, or just give blanket damage reduction. Or better yet, a damage taken increase on enemies, and damage reduction to allies (depending on the version you cast)

PolarLights.4825:

It would be logical to add Invulnerability to the Druids skill set.

Guardians, Elementalists, and Mesmers are the other ‘magical’ professions.

Being magical tends to mean two things:
1. Weapon auto-attacks can not be reflected
2. Ability to become invulnerable.

Really do not want this game mechanic to be overlooked.
Invulnerability is a baseline mechanic for the games ‘magical’ professions.
If invulnerability is not added now; will in all probability be years before this is rectified!

We have 2 direct damage invulns already (and a true invuln through pig), and druid not only makes it so we can dampen condi effects, but that we can purge ourselves of every condi in the game by ascending to our astral form, and then kitten out condi removal in that form… i think we’re fine.