Guild Wars 2

To be honest that buff seemed strange to me too. Boon share doesn’t fit on that shout thematically speaking and I didn’t find Heal as One to be especially weak at all. In fact I used it often in a fair few builds I run.

It’s made even stranger given they gave it this huge buff and then immediately nerfed it as if they had no idea it would let us stack boons the way it did. How could they not have caught that in the testing phase?

My guess is it was an attempt to create a PVE build that would let rangers use the longbow as a DPS option while keeping the pet in melee range and benefiting from the group’s boons, which would have been a fine buff to ranged builds and added some diversity to PVE content. Maybe they want ranged builds to be useful for raids.

If that was their goal I feel it could have been done better in the form of a trait. Nature Magic basically has an empty grandmaster trait slot (Invigorating Bond is pretty weak for a grandmaster and can’t win in competition with Protective Ward for sustain) that could have been used to expand on Fortifying Bond. Allow the ranger to benefit from boons applied to the pet by external sources. That way the pet passes all the group buffs it gets from allies to the ranger without opening the door for massive quickness duration builds. Make it so the ranger can’t benefit from the same application of a boon twice so ranger doesn’t get double buffed when near their pet. Done deal.

I am just waiting for the build calculators to be updated. I work better with visuals than lists.

All that healing will also increase your astral force so you can enter the avatar state more frequently.

I am interested to see how effective spirit druids are, especially with the recent buff. Sadly I don’t think I’ll be able to play this weekend as my computer is still quite dead, so others will have to test it.

Shadelang.3012:

Im semi back so ill go ahead and put my thoughts in. I agree guard should be area denial. It feels like that was the design. However at the same time the pet needs to be able to survive in order to deny that area. The idea of a cc while the pet is attacking of some kind. Or a damage boost to the pet while hes in that area. Is something.

How about when an enemy enters the area he gets a warning on his debuff bar called “Hunted” that reads: While in this area the creature hunting you deals increased damage. If the creature hits you from behind you are crippled for 5 seconds.

The damage increase would be 15-20%. This debuff with dissapear the second the player leaves the “guarded” area.

This would make guard a decent ambush skill. Enabling the pet to punish players that enter an area. While giving it a soft CC capability that would work well with predators onslaught.

That would be an interesting use. Especially if the pet remained stealthed while attacking similar to the panther’s F2 stealth. It’d make going into the protected area a real danger because you don’t know what kind of pet is waiting for you or where the attack will come from.

The duration would have to be more though. Make it like a trap that you lay down and wait for an enemy to step into it. Maybe let the pet remain perma stealthed (For up to five minutes like a trap) until an enemy enters the area. Stealth will go on a 6 second timer once the pet is in combat.

I still feel Guard should be an area denial skill. You don’t send your pet to guard an area to get boons. That doesn’t make thematic sense.

Having the pet run to the area and then perform a launch or knockback on an enemy in the area would make a lot more sense. Have the pet knock enemies off the point while the ranger captures it so a beastmaster shout build can fill the role of a decapper would be interesting.

I’ve always felt like ranger shouts should function like the GW1 Beastmastery skills where you command your pet to perform an attack, allowing the pet to perform control effects/interrupts.

Whatever is done to Guard it SHOULD NOT be used as a way to crank out protection. A utility skill deserves to have more interesting functionality than that, and we already have Stone Spirit to produce that boon in large quantity for us.

AgitatedFox.5287:

Ehecatl.9172:

Hopefully the might duration will be similar to fortifying bond so we can at least obtain a good duration of 25 might from mainhand axe then switch to longbow or greatsword for a good burst. I don’t care too much about the loss of a quickness gimmick build, but the ability to get high might on our own is pretty important to keep.

lol sorry. only 3 stacks now. GG again Anet, your win streak continues.

… Ouch. That nerf actually effected me on an emotional level. 3 stacks as a hard limit after we spend trait points, sigils, weapon slots etc to stack might on our pet and blow our heal to transfer the boons?

The heal may as well have not been buffed at all. Now we have this weird boon share attached to a shout that thematically has nothing to do with boon share and the durations are so short they are negligible.

Daniel Handler.4816:

How does the explanation they give on Guardian magic make any sense. The monks were conduits of the gods powers. The ritualist could practice preservation magic as the conduit of spirits.

This new thing that you just need faith in something seems beyond strange.

Yeah I can have faith in my warband but that doesn’t exactly have any power in it on the level of channeling gods/spirits.

The human gods have gone silent. It seems reasonable that they aren’t answering prayers in enough quantity for entire groups of monks to fuel their magic, which would explain why they started to rely on faith to fuel their spells rather than rely on the gods.

Though the existence of charr monks kind of made the “God conduit” thing weird to me since we know the Titans aren’t exactly the prayer answering sort. I imagine the non-human monks we met in the game relied on faith and when the human gods went silent humans started to rely on this method too. That’s just a theory though.

Daniel Handler.4816:

This should have occurred much sooner then. All sylvari are capable at summoning Druid spirits. Such knowledge would have been easily accessible for any of their Rangers. All sylvari can easily perform some “nature magics” at the level of a ranger.

That is true, though the source of Sylvari magic is a bit questionable now that we know they are Modremoth’s creations. More than likely they are tapping into some similar power over nature he has and just using it in a non-evil way.

As for the druid spirits they summon, true. But calling one to fight isn’t quite the same as summoning one to teach you their skills. There are druids in Brisban but they seem very uninterested in interacting with us in any meaningful way.

Things will likely change now that Maguuma is in peril, though.

Daniel Handler.4816:

But from your own link some of the wardens were non magic professions. I have also said that not all rituals require magic. Or at least not all rituals require magic on the part of the person performing them, some produce magical effects as the result of what they summon. Alchemy is a clear indication that we should not call every magical effect magic.

Some but not all, or even most. Most of them had magical abilities. But my point is that there were definitely human druids before they transformed into Wardens/Spirits.

Show me a ritual that causes the soul to leave the body and transform into a spiritual being that didn’t need magic. Or transform the person physically into a creature like the Wardens.

Shadelang.3012:

If guard confined the pet to the aoe circle. Gave it pulsing protection and stealth while inside. Allowed the pet to function outside the leash range. AND either A: Reduced the damage it takes from hostile conditons while on point. or B: Dealt increased damage to any enemy within the circle. It would be useful in those circumstances.

I actually hate the stealth functionality of the skill as it doesn’t really make sense for what the skill is attempting to go. The pet is guarding the area so you’d expect it to make the pet keep enemies out of said area.

Now having the pet perform a launch on it’s next attack would do just that. Keep the enemy outside of the targeted area. Say a 300-600 range launch. Doesn’t sound too bad for a 15 second cooldown. Combine that with a longbow and you have a decent set up to keep enemies off point during skirmishes.

I feel the ranger shouts would’ve been more interesting if they were like physicals for the pet. Command the pet to attack in a certain way to provide hard control and team support through it. Instead we got a lot of seemingly random effects.

True, but I assume there’s an inherent difference in an avatar as a full time job like the Reapers or the other god’s avatars and the power to channel a beings power like the dervish avatars or, if there is a star spirit being drawn on, the celestial avatar.

It does, and I’m sure it will. We’re bound to meet the druids when we get deeper into the jungle. Their home is under attack after all, and we know from quests in the sylvari zones that the druid spirits aren’t all gone.

So far the lore of the elite specs seem to be that the professions gained new skills to adapt to the jungle. It’d make sense if we see the druid spirits passing on their knowledge to rangers to train new druids.

Hopefully the might duration will be similar to fortifying bond so we can at least obtain a good duration of 25 might from mainhand axe then switch to longbow or greatsword for a good burst. I don’t care too much about the loss of a quickness gimmick build, but the ability to get high might on our own is pretty important to keep.

Sic ‘Em REALLY needs to not cancel when we use F2. That is a huge problem with the skill. If we could activate it and then use F2 for a 40% damage boost to our pet’s primary burst that’d be amazing.

Guard needs a complete overhaul. It doesn’t do what it was meant to do. Maybe if the pet’s next attack after reaching the area was a launch to smacked the enemy off-point it’d see some use on it’s own merits.

Obsidian.1328:

Wait what?? Are you saying there were pre-spirit Druids? They were said to be simply human before becoming Druids, there’s no mention of some intermediary condition between that and spirits. And there’s no mention of the pre-Druid humans having any power above a normal human. Where do you get that from?

So you think the druids of Maguuma didn’t have ANY magic before they shed their mortal body and became spirits? How the heck do you think they did whatever ritual they did to become spirits in the first place?

Of course they had magic while still human. To think otherwise is silly.

The absence of information is no reason to just assume the humans that would go on to become druidic spirits were just normal humans with no magical abilities at all. Especially when magic is so common in Tyria.

But if you want to try to play that game check these guys out.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warden

Proof that not all druids were spirits. The Wardens were theorized to have been druids before merging with the spirits to become what we see in the game. HUMAN druids. Implying quite strongly that druids are humans before undergoing whatever ritual turned them into Wardens, which in turn would imply there were human druids in Maguuma before they became spirits.

Obsidian.1328:

Druid Jungle Guardians used ranger skills, and Druid Ravagers used necro skills. That really fits the “typical” fantasy druid ethos of embracing both life and death equally…especially when the Ravagers are using Grenth’s Balance. =D Not really implying GW1 Druids were druid-typical, only that some ancillary evidence is at work there.

Our PC Druid in GW2 isn’t a spirit at all…which again begs the question why are they called Druids??

The druids weren’t always spirits. At one point they were flesh and blood humans who revered nature. Our rangers will clearly be flesh and blood and be using the magic druids had before they gave up their bodies. It’s the easiest explanation.

As for the Tyrian druids viewing life and death as a part of nature, that much was pretty clear by this bit:

“Darkness and light, good and evil…all are a part of nature. There is no regrowth without death…without decay. Such is the lesson that I can teach you, stripling.”
~ Dark Oak

Daniel Handler.4816:

Its not semantics if it is part of lore. Avatars have always been the physical embodiment of a higher being. The celestials themselves were avatars of specific stars. When you say celestial Avatar you are saying that you are becoming the physical embodiment of a star sprit. This is backed up by the fact that the form resembles the celestials from gw1. And the reveal refers to you as becoming closer to stars. As well as the fact that no avatars of general forces exists in the game.

Obviously we will have to wait till Gw2 but when they make the claim they are avatars of something they should explain what that something is. Right now I am just trying to guess why krytan humans had a canthan connection. But again it can wait. I just wanted to share my confusion because I thought that I wasn’t the only one confused (I wasn’t) and perhaps the lore masters at Anet would notice these discussions and adjust their in game lore from HoT so it answered some of these questions.

Not all avatars are exactly the same though, which does open up the possibility of someone becoming the avatar of a general force rather than a specific deity. Just because we’ve not seen one yet doesn’t mean it’s completely impossible.

The celestial avatar form also isn’t THAT similar to Celestials. Celestials look like constellations of animals while the celestial avatar looks more like an area of space with darkness making up most of it’s body and stars dotting the “background”. Which is what makes me think they are channeling celestial energy in general rather than a specific entity, as another thing most avatar skills have in common is they give you the features of whatever you’re channeling. Avatar of the Pale Tree being the exception.

It’s also worth mentioning that stars aren’t Canthan specific. There’s no reason to think celestial spirits or celestial power is limited to only one continent when the stars are in the sky all across Tyria. More than likely this is a case of convergent evolution. Where two unrelated groups develop similar attributes despite never coming into contact with one another.

After all, there IS evidence there were druids in Cantha as well as Tyria. The Wardens were hypothesized to have originally been either druids or monks, which implies Cantha had their own druids. Two groups of nature worshipers who have no prior connection that we know of that are both called druids. Is it so hard to believe more than one group of star spirits exist? Or that celestial magic is accessible to more people than just Canthans?

Obsidian.1328:

That’s not true for GW1 though, NPC’s used exactly the same skills PC’s did. The Maguuma Druids you see in GW1 were actually some of the few NPC exceptions that didn’t use combat skills like the PC did. Whoever at ANet created them simply chose not to give them a skill bar. I realize that in GW2 this isn’t the case. But the comparison is to a GW1 example.

Well yah, but in GW1 there was no druid profession to take their skills from.

Additionally druids in GW1 didn’t NEED to fight anymore. They had transcended mortality and became immortal spirits. Our PC druid in GW2 isn’t an immortal spirit, so he still has to defend himself.

We’ve never seen an enfleshed druid who has a need to fight. Thus we have no idea what sort of skills they would have used.

azyume.6321:

Not sure if was in this context OP mean it, but people have been asking for a long time now to make the ranger less dependable of the pet. A companion with limited commands with poor AI shouldn’t be adding an extra damage of 9k+. The pet need a nerf or a way better AI and the ranger baseline and traits a buff to make it more skill based.

What kind of logic is this? Nerf the pet because it’s bad so rangers, who are forced to bring it anyway, won’t rely on it?

No thanks. The pet has some pathing issues and can’t hit a moving target. Because of this it SHOULD be hitting hard when built for it. The ranger has to sustain a lot of hard and soft control on the enemy to let the pet hit them. It only makes sense that when the pet does land it’kittens they are punishing.

That is how you balance the pet. Make it unreliable when left alone but capable of delivering a solid burst/hard control/condi burst if the ranger takes the time to set it up.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Probably a bug.

The reason why you would need to be channelling a being is how the word avatar is used in gw1. There is a reason why death shroud is not death avatar. And now with the specs death shroud becomes similar enough that they are now called reapers. But still they are not referred to as avatars, for reaper avatars exist and you are not of them. So it is called reaper shroud.

So why is it then called a Celestial avatar and not a celestial shroud? The universe is not a being or so we thought.

So your argument is one of pure semantics?

There is an extremely small amount of information on what the avatars are in relation to their god. We only really know that Grenth’s avatars are his Reapers, who were mortal men he elevated. As far as I can tell there isn’t any lore that says the Reapers channel Grenth the same way dervishes do, and dervishes who use the Avatar of Grenth skill certainly don’t become Reapers.

Meanwhile skills that function identically to dervish avatars, like the spirit blessings you get from the norn and the norn transformations themselves, are not called avatars. Even though they are functionally the same power.

Then there’s the Avatar of the Pale Tree who is just a manifestation of her spirit in a physical form and not a person channeling her, which is completely unlike the avatars we’re familiar with.

Though even if you’re right and you’re channeling the avatar of some celestial spirit that still doesn’t mean you are cutting yourself off from other forms of nature magic. As the celestial skills show they are not incompatible with other forms of magic and indeed serve to provide enhanced abilities the core profession had access to.

BlackBeard.2873:

Lyssa runes synergize with the build incredibly well, especially if you can then double those boons. Maybe damage runes are better for what you are trying to do, but it seems like it would fit here.

Perhaps, but having your only reliable condi clear be on a 45 second cooldown is still pretty bad for condi management.

And then you end up needing to use your elite skill to survive any level of condi burst while having your heal, pet swap, and stunbreak on cooldown. Options are getting pretty slim defensively.

Nova Stiker.8396:

If you are a ranger and not abusing the instant 25 stacks of might and 15+ seconds of quickness you are officially a terrible ranger.

Or a ranger who doesn’t want to dedicate their entire build to a gimmick set up that leaves you with almost no condition cleanses and puts your stunbreak, pet swap, and heal on cooldown.

A necromancer casts corrupt boon and you die instantly. You simply don’t have anywhere near the condi clear to save yourself. One skill will shut down the entire build every time.

Trahearne didn’t steal anyone’s glory. The PC is still one of the most powerful and influential figures in all of Tyria and someone Trahearne himself looks to for guidance. It seems kind of silly to me that Trahearne is treated as if he purposely phased out the PC’s accomplishments and made everyone think he was the one who performed all the hero’s tasks.

If anything our name and role is too major. Future installments in the franchise will have to tip toe around our character’s name just like this installment needs to be careful not to give any information on the hero that repeatedly saved the world in GW1.

As for the topic, it looks like Rytlock will be the Trahearne of this story. He will be the one leading the charge while our character does all the impossible feats of heroism to make the end goal come to fruition.

Archon.6480:

:) You got hit by a Drake Chomp, who had 25 stacks of might and Momemt of Clarity active. Yep, that hits hard. Be glad it wasn’t the tail swipe. It would have been worse. You have to evade after being stunned or dazed by a Ranger.

Exactly this. The Tail Swipe would’ve been 12-15K.

This is how a beastmaster ranger SHOULD have worked all along. Carefully calculating the invisible cooldowns of your pet skills so you know when the pet is ready, then hitting the enemy with a control skill before double bursting the enemy down with a joint attack with the pet.

There is definitely skill involved. The pet should hit hard when built for it.

Daniel Handler.4816:

You should check what an avatar meant in gw1 and question why it seems to change in gw2 for only one skill, but remain constant for all the other avatar skills in the game.

And channeling heavenly powers to make yourself closer to nature conflicts with the celestial skills of gw1. Your concept of the cosmos requires some sort of in game lore to back it up. And you should define what you mean by heavens. You are treating it like eternal alchemy. There needs to be some justification why you must channel the power of a celestial spirit to become closer to a plant spirit.

I can accept that Rangers probably had their ability to use magic strengthened in the same way as ritualists. And that most likely as more magic returns to the world Rangers can further channel spiritual powers without ritual.

I can accept that becoming an avatar is probably the highest form if spirit magic as it allows direct use of spirit powers, rather than indirect invocation.

What is weird is why druids would choose celestial as their source of power. In the dense jungles of magguma they would not even see the stars

Um, why did you respond to me twice with two different posts? Forum mess up or something?

Anyway. I don’t see what separates the Celestial Avatar from normal Avatars beyond the idea that the Celestial Avatar is channeling energy from the universe and not a specific entity.

Interesting you bring up celestial skills.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Celestial_Storm
This one deals fire, ice, earth, and lightning damage simultaneously. Elemental attacks from a celestial source.

In fact all the celestial skills seem to be powerful extensions of what the profession normally does. Rangers got an empowered stance as in GW1 time they were more martial than magical, Ritualists summoned the spirits of the men who killed Shiro originally, and… The necromancer skill summons a celestial horror that looks like a flesh golem.

Going by what we see from these skills channeling celestial powers enhances your own skills. So a ranger, who can already summon plant life via Entangle and Vine Surge, being able to summon the Seed of Life fits perfectly. Entering the Celestial Avatar form enhances their ability to use nature magic to a new level.

According to Ogden Stonehealer Eternal Alchemy is just another expression of The All, and according to GW2 season 2 The All seems to be an accurate interpretation of the universe.

Again, you aren’t necessarily channeling a celestial SPIRIT. Just the celestial forces of the universe. You’re treating your spirit theory as a fact and judging my theory from that position when in reality there is no lore that outright supports either side. I’m sure a lot of this will be explained when we enter Maguuma and speak to the druids again come HoT.

As for your statement about druids not being able to see the stars.

“The spirit beholds the truths that the eye cannot see.”
~ Ancient Druid Spirit

Obsidian.1328:

The lore is quite scant, true. I guess what I’m getting at is that we actually got to see and interact with druids in GW1 and that based on that they hardly fit with what the GW2 druid is all about. They were more harmless but wizened sages, not celestial battle shamans. The Warden would have been a better pick for a Ranger specialization…the only problem was they were only found in Cantha.

To be fair, the Guild Wars 2 PC is entirely combat focused no matter what NPCs of the same profession lean to. NPC mesmers don’t produce constant clones and teleport around to fight the way a PC mesmer does because the PC specializes in war magic. Same for elementalist NPCs not cycling through the elements spamming attacks of different elemental aspects.

So it makes sense that the PC, upon learning the powers of the ancient druids, would take a more combat oriented approach to it than the largely pacifist Maguuma Druids did.

Druid will be strong in the offensive lane too. Staff lets the druid heal the doorbreakers while fighting the enemy with the right positioning, and since you’ll have a group of doorbreakers to heal you’ll build up astral force super fast. Enemy gets your doorbreakers too low? Pop Celestial Avatar and full heal them. 20 seconds of burst healing should be long enough for 4-5 doorbreakers to take down a gate.

This is what breaks your suspension of disbelief? We already have drakes that can shoot lightning from it’s mouth. Some of our pets are clearly magical in nature.

The wyverns especially can also breath fire and lightning. Obviously magical.

You aren’t literally becoming a star spirit. You’re channeling the power of the heavens to amplify your connection to nature. Which would include plants.

The sun spirit doesn’t freeze things, but the ranger can. The ranger can throw an axe imbued with chilling magic before setting the ground on fire with a magically enhanced torch. The ranger can also summon the sun and frost spirits together and benefit from both of their powers simultaneously. The individual spirits represent a single part of the whole that is nature. Celestial Avatar form is the whole.

Nature Spirit could also be a big astral force builder if it works. Combining that with Water Spirit would provide a lot of passive astral force build up in groups, meaning the down time between being able to use Celestial Avatar would be minimal. Especially if spirits count as allies when they are hit by Solar Beam.

Theoretically a spirit druid could use the spirits to build astral force quickly while getting the boon coverage the spec doesn’t normally provide.

Druid lore is fine as is. We just need to wait until HoT launches as I’m sure there will be quests where we meet the druids again and see more of what they can do.

You are too obsessed with viewing everything as separate. Celestial Avatars can manipulate plant magic because the celestial branch and the plant branch are all the same power: Nature Magic. Just like the ranger can access both the power of fire from the Sun Spirit and ice from the Frost Spirit. Two complete opposite forces still fall under the same category that is nature magic. Similarly the separation of heaven and earth, stars and plants, is just a separation your own mind is placing on this form of magic.

The Tyrian moon isn’t a star but it exists as a heavenly body among the stars. It’s a celestial entity. So is the sun. The moon has a direct effect on the tides. This is common knowledge. As for summoning water… Rangers could do that already. Healing Spring is exactly that. Again it’s ALL nature magic.

The modern druid accepts a larger vision of what constitutes nature. Just as the ancient Maguuma Druids understood it. They released their physical shells and became astral beings. Spirits that were not bound to the earth as the plants and animals they cared for were.

Speaking as a roleplayer I’d love to be able to just exist in that form without worrying about my astral energy depleting just from me standing around.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Then to avoid making the discussion stale, lets return to the topic of Mordremoth. Jormag, Kralkatorrik, and Primordius are all awake. They have all been consuming magic for some time now. Why does it seem like Mordremoth is so much stronger, even at a just waking stage?

Modremoth isn’t necessarily stronger, just backed into a corner.

We aren’t actively going after the other dragons yet. Jormag only has the norn to deal with and the Sons of Svanir seem sufficient to keep the norn at bay. Kraalkatorrik’s Brand is enough to keep the Iron legion busy with the addition of ghosts and the Flame Legion. Plus we don’t know exactly where he is anymore. Primordus and Bubbles are both inaccessible to us at this time.

With Modremoth however we knew exactly where he was and wanted to go after him before he had a chance to entrench himself the way Zhaitan did. Modremoth is likely aware we killed Zhaitan and knows what we’re capable of. So unlike Zhaitan who didn’t consider us enough of a threat to go all out on right out the gate, Modremoth came at us with everything he had.

Like Kraalkatorrik he went after his former champion right off the bat by attacking the Pale Tree. He then started systematically destroying our fortresses and attacking our waypoints and did a lot of damage very quickly.

He knew we’d go for an aerial attack, possibly info taken from Scarlet or Aerin, and so set up an anti-air defense. We flew right into his trap and now a chunk of the PACT fleet, if not the entire PACT fleet, is destroyed. Modremoth managed to neutralize the main force that brought down Zhaitan by learning from Zhaitan’s mistakes.

So basically we’re not necessarily facing a dragon that is stronger than the rest. We’re facing a dragon that is taking us seriously and not pulling his punches.

As a long time fan of the druid/nature mage archetype I was already planning on making one of my two rangers a druid for story purposes.

Now it looks like I’ll be making two druids, one for the story and another for the raw mechanical benefits the druid line offers some of my favorite builds.

Druid is an excellently designed elite specialization and I look forward to playing it.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I didn’t say it was completely useless… as long as you want to heal, and again, yes, I read over the dulfy page QUITE A FEW TIMES because I couldn’t actually watch the reveal. I just said it will be useless when we all learn the content and minimize the healing needed. It’ll be just like dungeons when GW2 was first released…

Sure, it’ll be a new playstyle, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be useful.

DId you notice my sig? Yeah, I’m not talking about pvp or wvw. It might be useful for those modes, I wouldn’t know since I don’t play them. I’m talking from a strictly PVE point of view.

Complaining about it’s role in PVE is pointless since we don’t know what the raids will be like yet.

Even then nothing is stopping the druid from using sword/axe, grabbing Spotter, and taking Frost Spirit. It even brings Glyph of Empowerment as a third raw group damage boost. It’s a little weak right now but will probably be buffed via beta feedback like the other undertuned aspects of the elite specializations have been.

Doomslay.3504:

Your are taking that definition a bit too literally as it said in the page “in the broadest sense”, if we were to take it that literally then any physical thing could be considered as part of nature, including the things we currently consider the complete opposite of nature: the artificial

The difference, as pointed out in the wiki page, is that the artificial was manufactured by man. That’s really the only specification for something to not be natural. Even then it’s just a man made specification. Humans like to label things for the sake of labeling them. My argument is simply that there’s no reason to not consider naturally occuring objects like stars and planets as a part of the natural world.

I did not say only life was nature, in fact I was quoting you when you said Nature is where life exists, which like I said I completely agree. I’ll also add to it that life is part of nature, life cannot exist without nature and nature is not truly nature without life involved.

I think I see what your standard of nature is. You need life to be present. But life only isn’t present in the larger universe if you decide that Earth is somehow separate from it, which it’s not. We also don’t strictly know if there is life in other places in the universe or not, though statistically there probably is. I suppose my question to you is how far away from life does something have to be before it stops being nature to you?

ronpierce.2760:

That’s exactly it, I love the idea of the vines, overall the Druid just screams conditions to me, or at least, condition compatibility, but not all parts totally support it yet, but there is still time. The staff should definitely be a bit more universal, and could be without throwing it’s balance out of whack.

Similarly, and another note, Irenio mentioned wanting to add some damaging capabilities to the blossom (#2 Astral skill, and traited glyph proc), to differentiate from the #1 heal. And to that, I suggest increasing the abysmal radius of 180 to 240 and adding a poison AOE burst to it. It’s essentially a mushroom or some other weird looking plant that swells up and explodes, it’s such a beautiful place to add a bit more condition damage for the Druid while accomplishing intended goals, adding utility to the Druid, and playing well with the Ranger’s niche of being one of the poison masters.

Just some thoughts.

That would be amazing. The poison burst makes sense thematically because of the flower explosion but also mechanically as you’d be providing healing and condi cleanse to allies while denying healing and applying a condition to enemies. I really enjoy skills that have a dual effect like that.

A good combo would be to open with Vine Surge and hit with the auto to proc Ancient Seeds, then activate the Avatar State and use Seed of Life on the target. Then start channeling Natural Convergence to cover your poison and bleeds and maybe ending with more immobilize to set up a burst with another weapon set.

Doomslay.3504:

I clearly said in my post the sun is the center of our solar system, what you didnt get was the point that I was trying to make, which is about the semantics

I don’t really see a semantics argument either. The sun is both the things you listed, not two separate concepts. But I feel we should avoid semantics entirely.

Again just because something is important to life doesnt make it part of nature, and the flaw in your previous argument is that you said celestial bodies are part of nature yet you only describe why the sun and the moon in specific are essential to life(and thus part of nature, according to you)

The definition of nature is, as per your own wiki link, "The natural, physical, or material world or universe. “Nature” can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general."

The sun, stars, planets, and other forces in space are absolutely a part of the physical universe.

So nature exists where life does, I totaly agree with that. Then why would celestial bodies be considered part of nature if they haven’t been proven to contain any life?

It is a very narrow definition to only include life itself as nature. The link you left clearly shows that the ocean, weather, and geology are all a part of nature. Water and geological and atmospheric phenomena are not unique to Earth. Most works of fantasy include weather control under the domain of “nature magic” because the weather is considered a force of nature.

Where in any of my posts did I say only plants and animals are nature? A planet having nature in it doesnt make it nature? Earth isnt nature, it HAS nature in it. And saying other planets are nature because they have nature in it doesnt make sense, nature is a part of the planet.

I don’t understand where you’re going with this. I’m not trying to be offensive or anything but I legitimately can’t understand what you’re trying to say.

It certainly is, however, what you would be doing in this case would be appreciating the beauty of the night sky, the bright moon and starts opposed to the blank dark vast space, appreciating its natural beauty (at least its what I assume you would be doing)
You re probably not thinking “what an awesome celestial body the moon is, with it’s rotational speed and effect over ocean tides”

Its about the semantics, you can call the sun (and the moon) part of nature, when you are talking about the effect they have on our environment, but you cant say they are part of nature just because they have elements similar to our own nature.

Actually when I’m looking at the stars I’m usually boggling my mind at the idea that I’m actually looking back tens of thousands if not millions or billions of years into the past due to the time it takes for light to traverse the distance between us and the stars and how light makes up our entire visual range. But then again I’m kind of a weird guy.

But you said it in your own post. The natural beauty of the sky. Natural. The stars, sun, moon, and planets are not man made. They exist independent of us and have been a natural part of the universe since long before we existed. Like a mountain overlooking a vast forest can be considered nature, so to can the stars that will one day come to their own end and thus release the star dust needed to form new planets that may one day accumulate it’s own life.

The universe is ultimately just a larger ecosystem of mostly non-organic substances. It has natural events that recycle matter and energy endlessly in a cycle very similar to our own circle of life.

I agree with Ronpierce about adding some conditions to staff. Ideally staff should be a hybrid weapon that can be used in either power or condition builds since it is so well tuned for support.

Conditions would be especially helpful since the best offensive grandmaster trait, Ancient Seeds, is just begging to be used with a condition set up.

Bringing in an example of evil stars from another work of fantasy is irrelevant. Especially when we were discussing space objects in our universe and their relation to the term “nature”.

In Tyria the stars are associated with spirits and the divine, which are both things the Tyrian druids talk about when you speak to them in GW1. The Celestials, mortals who ascended beyond mortality upon death, became animals composed of stars similar to living constellations, and were involved in Weh no Su which was the Canthan rite of Ascension. Weh no Su translating to Closer to the Stars.

The druids similarly transcended their mortal bodies and became spiritual beings. They spoke about the passage of time not being linear but a matter of perspective and about seeing things with the spirit that eyes could not. This all lines up very well with the druids having a connection to the celestial aspects of the world and not being strictly tied to plants and animals.

Greatsword/Staff looks interesting. Very defensive with good burst. Plus druid traits go well with any weapon with dazes, stuns, or knockdowns of which the greatsword has all three.

I… What? Are you saying that the Sun isn’t the center of our solar system? I’m very confused.

The Sun is a star in the center of our solar system that provides light, warmth, and energy that is absolutely vital to the survival of all life on Earth. It is doubtful that Tyria operates differently somehow, especially since we know photosynthesis exists in the world.

Not just the Sun however. The Moon is important too. It has an effect on the tides and illuminates the night so that living creatures can see and hunt. Last I checked the ocean was considered a part of nature.

Stars are too far away to have a direct effect on life on our planet, but they may effect life on others. Nature isn’t limited to one planet but rather exists wherever life does.

Even then rock and soil are considered parts of nature. Earth isn’t the only planet that is composed of mineral materials. It’s not even the only planet that has water on it.

To consider ONLY plants and animals as a part of nature is pretty narrow minded.

And I don’t know about you, but I consider laying under the night sky watching the stars or watching the sun rise or set to be nature oriented activities.

I am curious how you suppose nature would exist without the Sun. The celestial bodies are as much a part of nature as water, which is similarly not alive but vital to the existence of life.

Spirits weren’t nerfed. They lost the ability to move but had the trait that improved the proc chance made baseline, which was a sizable buff. Then we got a new grandmaster trait that, while lackluster, is an improvement on what we had before. It’s just undertuned currently, and getting a buff in the upcoming patch.

The change to spirits was unrelated to druid. Anet is just trying to make them into what they were originally: Immobile boon machines.

@Ojyh

Did you ever actually speak to those druids? Their dialogue in GW1 very heavily emphasizes that they weren’t solely manipulators of plants and animals. Their main chant is “All that exists is all that must be”.

“Time moves neither forward or back. Time is the lens of perception.”
This doesn’t sound like it relates purely to animals. Time is a complex concept to grasp, and the druids speak as if they understand it quite well. They do not believe in a linear interpretation of time that someone that views the universe from the perspective of one planet might.

“It is not often that we allow mortals to witness our rituals, but we see in you the seeds of the divine. To be divine is to realize that we are all one. That the self is an illusion. Through this do you understand your own immortality. Through this are you freed from the illusions of the flesh.”

Remember that druids are ultimately people who removed themselves from their earthly bodies. If you look at the druid’s words it’s clear they use a very esoteric view of the universe. There is a lack of separation between individuals and places. All things are one. In similar philosophies the planet is similarly not detached from the greater cosmos, which lines up perfectly with druids being attuned to the celestial bodies in addition to plants and animals.

You keep talking as if the elite spec is breaking the lore, but it isn’t. There is no lore about what kind of magic the druids used before they separated from their bodies. However the very act of removing themselves from their bodies, removing their earthly tether, to transcend mortality and become beings of spirit is very much compatible with the astral themes we see in the specialization.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Sure they’re strong only for healing. I strongly disagree any are “cool”. They’re just not worth taking unless you want to do anything other than, again, heal. That’s it. That’s the Druid’s thing is healing just like Irenio said, “HEAVY HEALING”. So yeah, if you want healing the most you will think it’s strong. I don’t. I think it’s a massive wasteland of a trait line outside of wanting to heal.

It’s fine you finally get to play your healer, anri. Happy for you bruh, just sad that it was at the sacrifice of my Ranger’s first elite spec.

And if you think this will make Rangers wanted for content 6 months after release, I have some really really nice ocean from property in Utah to sell you.

Did you not even read what the traits are? Yes, you can spec to enhance only healing. But it also provides pretty big bonuses to mobility and control. Ancient Seeds adds an immobilize to all our control skills making a lockdown druid a very real possibility, and it synergizes really well with existing power and condi builds. On top of that the druid line provides enough condi management that it can replace Wilderness Survival so you’re not even giving up much to get it.

Staff itself is a great utility weapon. Druids as a whole were lacking a support weapon aside from one skill on warhorn, so getting one is a huge benefit to the profession. On top of that the staff also provides projectile management, great mobility, baked in condi management (which none of our weapons had before), and hard control. It’s an excellent all around weapon that also brings healing support. Pair it with a longbow for raw ranged damage or sword/axe for raw DPS and you have a pretty good spread of skills you can use.

Not to mention the Avatar State which lets you go full tilt with a high mobility greatsword/sword+axe melee damage/control build and STILL have access to a full support set up for team fights. Core ranger is an amazing duelist and WvWvW roamer but has always had a big weakness in team fights. Now we can role with a heavily tuned dueling build and always have access to heavy support skills when the time arises.

Druid gave rangers a new playstyle and access to something we desperately needed, and did it in a way that didn’t overlap with existing support builds. To say it’s completely useless is flat out wrong.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Your second point is completely wrong

“Celestials are the physical embodiment of the spirits of the stars. They are made of the starlight that shines down on the world. As such, celestials are not fleshy creatures. " The upon death ascended yes, but what they ascended into was start spirits.

And I am listening, but I don’t want to accept a premise that doesn’t make sense.
Your argument is that instead of becoming an avatar of a druid, you essentially become a druid, complete with moon power nonsense. Why you would learn from spirit krytan humans how to take the form of a canthan supernatural entity is beyond me.

The way you phrased it made it sound like you thought Celestials were star spirits and only star spirits. That’s why I pointed out that they were ascended humans. Exactly like druids. Druids and celestials are both humans who lost their physical body and transcended flesh to become spirits.

My argument isn’t that we become celestials but that celestials and druids share a magical theme. We don’t become celestials or druid spirits because we would need to die to do that based on the evidence we have. The Astral Avatar form is us tapping into a cosmic power and channeling it similar to how necromancers tap into the power of death to gain a death shroud. They don’t actually become an Avatar of Grenth. We are connecting to the greater natural energy of the universe. All is one. That is the core philosophy of Tyrian druids. We become the all, so to speak. Or at least borrow from it.

Nothing in lore says druids only used plant magic. It’s really just your personal view that is stopping you from accepting what the new lore is trying to tell us.

Seems like a reasonable divide between the two. Druid heals also seem more focused as you have to aim them while revenant heals are area effects around the revenant.

Druids worshiped Melandru, who was the patron goddess of rangers. Rangers already tap into the power of nature spirits and are the only profession that might be able to summon the druid spirits forth to communicate with them. And unlike elementalists who bend the natural world to their will through magical manipulation, rangers have a deep reverence for nature and seek to live in harmony with it, not dominate it.

Suns and stars are the same thing. The only difference is that sun is the term we use for stars that have planets orbiting them. So making a distinction between the two seems arbitrary to me.

Secondly Celestials were not spirits of stars. They were mortal humans that, upon death, transcended mortality and became spirit beings. This is almost identical to what the Maguuma Druids did. They left their fleshy bodies to become spirits of a higher order. The two may not be perfectly identical but it’s clear there are similarities.

As for why they have a Celestial form, you’re not listening. Druids very well could have, and judging by the elite spec probably did, utilize magic relating to celestial bodies. Given there is no lore about what druids could do prior to becoming spirits and based on their life philosophy we learned in GW1 it’s entirely likely that astral and celestial spells were in their repertoire and that the spirits of the ancient druids have taught us said skills.

Really druid is the only elite spec that makes perfect sense to me. We’re learning the forgotten art of the druids from them when we enter Maguuma.

Edit: Why is kitten nal censored? Does Anet just hate stashes of weapons?

Raven.9603:

When i think of druid, i think of plants and animals because the base class is a homage to DnD Rangers. When they announced druid, people expected a DnD druid, at one with nature and plants and animals.

What they got was someone at one with the cosmos, basically a Moonkin from WoW when we thought we were getting Feral or Resto. Sure, the universe is “nature” in a very zen everything-is-nothing-and-nothing-is-everything kind of way, but its not what people typically associate with a druid archetype. Its also a pretty blatant rip off of guardian tomes and the guardians core role.

Allow me to introduce you to the druids of Tyria.

“It is not often that we allow mortals to witness our rituals, but we see in you the seeds of the divine. To be divine is to realize that we are all one. That the self is an illusion. Through this do you understand your own immortality. Through this are you freed from the illusions of the flesh.”

So… Yah. Tyrian druids were very much “zen everything-is-nothing-and-nothing-is-everything” kind of people. Viewing the cosmos as a part of nature is very much in line with what little we know about their views.