Guild Wars 2

mistsim.2748:

manage your cooldowns, don’t cast Smoke Assault if u don’t want the smoke field, which is cast right after SA. pretty simple. smoke field covering other fields is a non-issue.

It just shows how clueless you are lol. Smoke field casts without SA.

Without any control over it, auto-casted Smoke Cloud IS COVERING OTHER FIELDS. It MUST be the F2 no matter what people think.
#inb4 Smokescale won’t be allowed by groups in its current form

Bump, we need the swap ASAP.

Bump #teamsmokecloud

We only had a weekend of beta because of their marketing choices. They released class information and classes in beta step by step to create hype around the expansion. Good for their $$$ but bad for class balance as we didn’t have enough test on druid.

That’s their mistake. We pay for this. Why would people calm down?

cafard.8953:

kevvy.5081:

Smoke assault wasn’t even the best spike damage pre-nerf, Tiger’s Furious Pounce is. For your reference, that smoke assault link has pre-nerf damage. It is now around 800 at 24sec CD, while the Furious Pounce has 1689 damage at 10sec CD although it says 1.5 sec in the wiki.

Thanks for that bro. I’ve just had a look at the PvP forum in the future and look what you’ve done:
“Tiger OP”
“Nerf Tiger”
“Why are ranger pets so OP?”
“OMG nerf tigger already!”
“how did tiger get allowed??!”
“We need to talk about Furious Pounce”
“OP tiger needs nerf”
“Cele ele is just fine”
“Did you even test tiger?!!”
“Tiger F2 is iwin button”

Ahahah, made my day.

Nope, I haven’t recorded any WvW since HoT release. I might have hit the Shadowplay “record last 5 minutes” button once this week lol.

But you could go check yourself now that you have the pet

Holland.9351:

Earix.5684:

Holland.9351:

In what situation has smokescale covered an all-important field for you?

Well apparently you unlocked Smokescale a few hours ago (from another Thread). Play a few more hours with it in organized groups and you will experience a ton of these situations ;)

“organised groups” as in dungeons/fractals and stacking on top of a PvE boss? Maybe don’t use it in that situation.

Nope, Smokescale’s DPS is not the best in PvE. I don’t use it here. I use(d to use) it in WvW and PvP.

You will understand from yourself once you get a chance to actually play with it ;)

Holland.9351:

In what situation has smokescale covered an all-important field for you?

Well apparently you unlocked Smokescale a few hours ago (from another Thread). Play a few more hours with it in organized groups and you will experience a ton of these situations ;)

Holland.9351:

Smokescale was OP. Lingering Light was OP.
Can we at least agree on that?

Smokescale’s damage was OP yes, that’s not the issue. The F2 swap is.

Holland.9351:

Smokescale is still good.
Can we agree on that?

NO. It can still deal some damage (not the best choice for it) but Smokescale covers IMPORTANT fields and now, you have no control over it.

Zeres.8713:

Please keep the f2 how it is.. It makes the pet extremely good for hybrid specs in pvp (because you can decide when it bursts) The smoke field doesn’t do much for the player... and the pet is already pretty tanky.

Ps. The druid is great Irenio, people complaining just aren’t playing it right.

LOL, ye right, well you should read this :
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Smoke Field on auto-cast harms the game, it automatically covers IMPORTANT fields (water covered by your automatic smoke field, no thx). It NEEDS to be on F2.

In the new borderlands, while in the Fire Keep, the lava burns ranger pets where/when it shouldn’t:
- While you control the keep (doesn’t burn you but burns your pet)
- When your pet is moving on a platform above the lava (or pretty much anywhere near lava)

And then, they will remove the secondary active skill cause some rank 5 PvP player started a thread. Then they will nerf the new set of pets. Then randomly add cooldowns here and there, and maybe nerf most traits. Then they might revert some changes here and there, and call it a nice job at balancing.

Bump for revert.

Or at least give us another tamable Smokescale with the F2 Smoke Cloud.

Even non-ranger players start feeling bad about constant druid nerfs since launch…

Some nerfs were required but most of them are more like “YOLO, let’s completely destroy this and see how it turns out”.
Druid needed a slight resource generation tuning: 10 sec CD, resource generation destroyed, new resource degen out of combat, reduced Celestial Avatar duration. Broken as kitten, let’s reverse at least the degen. Still half broken due to the CD and the lack of generation on non-staff weapons.
Smokescale… don’t get me started here… 90% of the rangers (poll data) don’t understand the F2 swap and want smoke cloud back. Irenio is “investigating” it.
Lingering Light needed a longer cooldown… Cooldown increased from 3 sec to 12 sec? What the kitten?

Give us a break.

princode.2750:

There is something very wrong about druid healing. Full Bunker druid can take on 3 or more player without hp going down below 50%. I think Anet should do something about druid healing. I myself don’t hate bunker and i always believe bunker is 1 of the most important role in pvp but if a druid can take on 3 player or more on point without going down its a serious problem.

I think it’s a “learn to play issue” here. Your three players are kitten if they can’t handle CC’in one player.

Healers are a thing now and you have to adapt. If with the removal of Minstrel’s Amulet, you still can’t kill a druid with 3 players… well…

kzar.3079:

But it is not just the fact that the on demand smoke field is usefull. Having the pet autocast the smokefield can be deterimental by overlapping more important fields during a battle. Having control over a field skill is essential for team coordination and for self combos.

This.

Pretty much the same.

For WvW, I currently play in ascended Nomad + Druid runes to test, I will most likely switch to Monk runes. Dunno yet.

I will also prepare a Zealot set if they end up fixing our resource generation.

Well, it’s a first step. I guess he will keep on analyzing and removing his nerfs step by step…

I hope that his next step will be a removal of the cooldown or at least a diminution (and yes I’m constantly hitting the cooldown on heavy healing fights).
And of course, smokescale’s F2 reversal…

Jim.4935:

I think it’s a good way to start improving Druid by letting us keep the energy out of combat even though it does not solve the in-combat problem which is not being able to heal your allies in need because your heals (since you can not auto attack allies to heal them directly) are gated behind 10 seconds cooldown and not having full energy to enter Celestial mode. I believe that these suggestions are necessary to bring Druid again at a decent level.

This. The 10 seconds cooldown is unnecessary (healing needs flexibility).

However, resource gating is needed. In my opinion, AF generation with staff is fine atm.

PS: bring smokescale’s F2 back… or add a second type of smokescale with smoke cloud F2.

The way they balanced druid is a joke…

- “Irenio, how should we balance Celestial Avatar?”
- “Well, we could add a cooldown to it, OR tune the resource generation, OR disable ooc generation, OR maybe reduce its duration?”
- “Hmm, yup, right, whatever… Let’s add everything you mentioned, I have more useful stuff to do. Guys, let’s talk about improving revenant now”.

+1 on this, great idea

I’m starting to think that the guy in charge of ranger’s balance must be bipolar…

Irenio, can you please provide some explanation?

The class was working almost fine during beta, you just managed to destroy it. It’s unplayable.

Every Druid enthusiast has been complaining since release. The only modification to ranger since this fiasco: switching smokescale’s F2 (wtf?).

Aomine.5012:

You yourself notice how abnormal rate of entering Avatar in a zerg fight right?
The general change already said it. “You will no longer get CA bar when you heal full health target”, meaning you cannot just spam 1 in a zerg and enter Avatar in 1 second. In return, you no longer exhaust your CA bar when exiting. In order to balance this CA bar reservation, an ICD is unavoidable. I make it 6, which is already shorter than Death Shroud. However, this change will still be more useful in other situations that’s not a zerg. (namely PVP)

That’s because atm you can charge CA while healing players who are already at full HP (or even your pet if you are solo). This BUG is going to be fixed (as you noticed yourself in the general changes). The CA bar won’t be filled so easily. I would rather be limited by my lack of activity (resulting in less resource generation) than be locked by some lazy cooldown addition. If celestial bar generation is well tuned, you WON’T need a CD.
All they have to do is tune our resource generation. No need to fix an issue TWICE ;)

Aomine.5012:

Cosmic Ray is an redundant skill, and does not fit the “burst heal” nature of Anet’s claim. It also makes you have no dps in CA form, which is bad for PVP in general. For WvW you lose all tagging ability when in CA too. Also, by applying AOE vulnerabilities, it’d help in the offensive support aspect of Druid.

Tagging doesn’t define a class skill bar. The celestial bar won’t be so easy to fill, you will spend more time outside of Celestial Avatar and actually use your weapon to tag. Whenever you switch to Celestial Avatar, it’s because YOU HAVE to burst heal. I would rather keep a #1 GTAoE heal with a shorter delay between the cast and the actual heal than pew-pew-tag for crappy damage.

Aomine.5012:

For Rejuvication Tide, I thought about it alot. I do aware how much it heals in a GROUP FIGHT. But this is exactly the problem here. It makes Druid such a spammy heal class that doesn’t require too much thinking, and just click heal skills on CD. Do you aware the base healing number I attached to this skill? This number is very similar to the entire 2.5 secs channel total healing amount, but now it’s 1200 range, scales so well if you have Healing Power (if you have 1200 healing, you’d heal 8600), and grants protection. This is so much more useful in many situations other than zerg, such as in raid and in PVP, and fit the “burst healing” theme of Druid very well.

Single target healing is a good idea even if I don’t see it being implemented in this game (technical limitations). However losing Rejuvication Tide would really hurt druid in WvW. This skill is one of our best skills : HoT (less overhealing) and a moving water field (= burst heal potential).

Think about it ;)

Aomine.5012:

4. Astray transformation has a CD of 6 seconds after exit. (This is to prevent spamming the traits related to entering Astray and encourage skillful usage of Astray)

I guess you mostly play PvE. This change would be such a bad idea for WvW players in so many ways.

Aomine.5012:

5. Sublime Conversion: Acts as a water field.

It’s already a water field

Aomine.5012:

1. Cosmic Ray: Removes the healing entirely. Now this skill does damage to target area. (Serves as the auto-attack for Astray to actually help tagging foes).

Removing healing to be able to tag foe? No thanks. Your single target healing idea belongs here imo.

Aomine.5012:

4. Rejuvenating Tides: Change this skill completely because currently this skill is redundant to Lunar Impact.

A BIG NO here! NO, NO, NO!
Rejuvenating Tides is one of the best druid skills and as absolutely no redundancy to Lunar Impact. It’s a moving water field pulsing healing in addition. Why would you remove it from the game?

Aomine.5012:

Glyph of Equality: Again, this skill is way too weak in non-Astray form.
Increases the daze duration to 3 secs. (Can be affected by MoC). This skill is now a stun-breaker even in non-Astray form. Radius increased to 480.

Glyph of Equality (Astray): In addition to stun-break on allies, now this skill grants 6 seconds / 3 stacks of stability on allies. Radius increased to 480.

Great idea. We need a glyph with a stun-breaker component in non-Astray form. The stability would also be great.

Hard to tell right now. Irenio is changing the amount of healing power required to perform well as a druid (change is supposed to be released with HoT).

Depending on what they end up changing, my guess would be:
- Zealot for PvE content (raids)
- A mix between Cleric and Magi for pure WvW zerg healing (or maybe even a zealot/nomad mix)

Wait and see

Fuzzion.2504:

Btw how were druids during raids,gvg and zerging. Found the heal factor a little too high.

Druid was great during WvW zerging. Healing feels high on some skills but with a cooldown so that’s fine. It brings something refreshing to WvW and helped a lot against focus on our commanders.

Lettuce.2945:

No offense but you didn’t play healing druid properly. The cele state tether elite heals allies when you heal yourself. You kept using the tether outside of cele state. Just one example of the various mistakes you made. I wouldn’t use that video as an example of optimal druid play but it does demonstrate skills, I suppose (druid skills).

No offense at all At first, I recorded to spot my own mistakes (there are a lot of them, I mention it in the video description) but I thought it would be nice to share it anyway.

Back to point, WvW is a good way to learn healing

You should try some World versus World with your druid. Healing is much needed here.

Open your “B” panel, join a map (Eternal Battleground as an exemple). Then, join the commander tag, follow him and try keep your targets/group/squad healed. That’s a good way to learn.

If you want to get a preview of healing as a druid in WvW, you can check my beta video in signature. Keep in mind that it will be easier at release because you will be able to see the nameplates (health bars over the heads) of your squad (big group of up to 50 players). This feature was bugged during the beta weekend :/

anduriell.6280:

I mean i must agree that CAF is the best healing in game. But except some very extreme situations i don’t think that much healing is really needed.

You should try some WvW to understand how much this burst healing is needed ;)

Thank you for this specialization Irenio!

Your class design surpassed everything I have been hoping for. It’s innovative and truly refreshing. I hope it won’t change too much between this beta weekend and release.

I had a blast in WvW, playing a true healer changes everything (video in signature).

Now I want to play this class so bad that waiting for the 23rd is a torture

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

I hope you won’t change the healing component of Celestial Avatar’s spells. The four first spells are great as they are (maybe #1 could use less delay between cast and effect – or get a bigger radius). Adding a little damage would be good but, please, don’t do it by nerfing healing too much or fundamentally changing the spells.

Kitten Kitten Kitten

Increase in WvW participation? That’s not the kind of metric they will get from my server.

Maps are empty on our side, there is no queue at all even on EB. Basically, my whole server gave up for this week on day 1. I can understand why when I see how many of our enemies are exploiting the golem buff (hey Riverside [DE]).

Thank you ArenaNet for kittening up your own game for a week.

- One of your players who plays WvW ONLY.

lordhelmos.7623:

Tether enemy to a destroyable object. Or tether 2 enemies together to cause an effect when they go too far apart.

Entangle

Yep, spiders are ok in PvP. What I would love to see: more pets with ranged attacks.

For me, the ideal pet for a bow ranger should be:
- Ranged attacks (with the same range you have on your current weapon)
- Sticks to you and can cast/fire on the move (just like you do as a ranger)
- Evading when you evade is also required

Less AI involved in the positioning, profit.

Ahah Aomine, you made my day ^^

Of course, they can’t program that kind of AI lol. The point is:
Ranger’s damage = x% player + y% pet with basic AI. The level of control we have over the pets is laughable. In PvP (PvE is irrelevant to me), its uptime on the targets is REAL BAD. In the worst case scenario, that’s y% damage we loose.

A pretty accurate list, I would say.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I would never believe I would be brought to a position to quote … Myself …
Reading through thread helps you answer your questions. Even those you do not need, I am aware, but there are even those you search for.

But to sum things up:
*AI is fine. By any means necessary.
*Their damage is fine.
*Their survivability is not fine
*Their tracking for attacks is not fine
*Their cast times need to be adjusted.

That’s all there is to our pets.

Do you have any proof by calculation that “AI is fine” and “Damage is fine”?
Ahah joking

That’s your opinion. From a PvP perspective, I disagree. Their damage is fine on a steady target (aka PvE). In PvP, that’s a (huge/medium/small?) damage loss.

Most pets can’t hit s**t in PvP. Rangers hit for less damage because their pet is supposed to provide this additional DPS. Therefor a part of the class DPS is lost due to some poor design. I don’t see anything wrong with what the OP is saying. No need for any Excel spreadsheet to state the obvious.

What’s NOT wrong about the ranger’s pet?