All depends on what they are doing. If they run around and don’t touch anything then I leave them. If they dare hit a yak…
Thinking of trying a SB/GS gimmick build for fun in WvW. Don’t think I have enough power to make GS worth it, but the mobility / stealth uptime would be hilarious.
Vipers gear and shouts are your friend. If you go shout can use heal as one to get swiftness. Get boon duration from NM and short bow 3 and you get permanent swiftness.
Well wilderness knowledge still works fine but empathic bond definitely needs to be updated.
The real problem with our condi removal is our class mechanic needs nature magic (fortifying bond) and BM to be fully effective. Makes it pretty tough to pick up wilderness survival.
Agree, unless you drop druid. EB isn’t horrible with HoT pets, I’ve been running it for a little while now and don’t have all that much trouble with conditions.
I have way more trouble with CC, especially considering half our useful skills are like 3/4 second cast.
Yep, WH is BAD for anything not using the CD trait. That is, the WH CDs are way too long to begin with.
Running MM also hurts because you have to leave behind NM most likely, and if you do that you lose boon share and overall survivability. MM/NM/BM is fine for bursts, but if anything with any conditions comes by whatsoever…
I do like how most saying Druid is fine in WvW are running trooper runes. So, when those get nerfed, then what? A condition clear every 15 sec (at best)?
Have fun surviving, because even as a condi Ranger (non-druid) I could load up way more condi damage then can be cleared with AF alone.
I KNOW a necro or mesmer could do a lot better in the condition department.
Meaning? Ranger still has one of the worst access to stability and condition clear in the game. Which is why the forums are filled with builds about how to get some stealth out of smoke field / LB or rely on a crutch like trooper runes.
And STILL people come to the forums and complain that Druid is ‘too hard to 1v1’. Really? Please, for academic interest, those crying OP post up some videos of you being dominated in WvW by OP Druids. I’m suspecting we will find a ‘learn2play’ issue.
Probably want to put PvP in the title, as thieves in WvW are a whole different story.
I’m not seeing how MH Axe is in any way a power weapon. Ferocity on trait does not make it a power weapon, it makes it a poor choice for the trait.
The purpose of Axe 1 is to boonshare might with the pet. Using it and resounding timbre / RaO you can have 25 stacks of might quite often (pretty much permanently in zergs).
Could axe use some work? I think so. Ricochet could be faster and splitblade as well. I agree with giving the extra bounce back also.
Wouldn’t mind seeing some kind of evade in there, or at least reworking our other offhands to have one. Dagger is the only one with an evade and it’s already been nerfed range-wise.
That is, taking SB + A/T sounds great in theory, until you get hit with hard cc or face a hammer anything in PvP. If you are on the A/T set you have two dodges then you are done.
So it’s almost necessary to run S/T + A/D in a PvP setting unless you like dying.
Little bit of everything for all other Legendaries? All other Legendaries 99.99% Pve and .01% WvW…… you don’t have to pvp to get Legendary weapons and used to not even WvW before the GoB change…
You were right up until reward tracks became a thing. Outside of map exploration I don’t have to pve at all to get the original set.
New set more pve gated, that’ll probably change when next expansion comes out.
Even so, making legendary armor raid exclusive is just like making legendary armor WvW exclusive.
The only prestige items that are sensible to be this way are money pvp items. Because that takes skill not everyone has. Just don’t call them legendary.
How was I wrong I said up until the GoB change you didn’t have to WvW since WvW map completion was removed vey shortly after launch. Before the GoB reward track you could get all legendary weapons by doing 100% PvE, now it takes 4.5-8 hrs max of WvW to get a GoB.
That’s just it, at launch you had to WvW to get badges of honor to get the gift of battle. As you mentioned there was also map completion in WvW.
The reason PvP wasn’t a thing as it had a separate wardrobe and everything, it exists ‘outside’ of everything else.
Also, when we say PvE, we have to take into account what that meant. It meant going out and doing karma related activities for obsidian, doing actual world completion and hearts, etc. etc. It wasn’t just tied to dungeons, fractals, or any ‘elite’ content.
I do agree with having prestige armor though. If there is prestige armor for raids, great. Have some for WvW, or whatever. In fact, dungeons did just this before they were erased from being relevant.
My main problem is calling this legendary armor when it is gated behind a very specific activity. It goes against what the word legendary has meant these past four years.
Little bit of everything for all other Legendaries? All other Legendaries 99.99% Pve and .01% WvW…… you don’t have to pvp to get Legendary weapons and used to not even WvW before the GoB change…
You were right up until reward tracks became a thing. Outside of map exploration I don’t have to pve at all to get the original set.
New set more pve gated, that’ll probably change when next expansion comes out.
Even so, making legendary armor raid exclusive is just like making legendary armor WvW exclusive.
The only prestige items that are sensible to be this way are money pvp items. Because that takes skill not everyone has. Just don’t call them legendary.
Ah, ok. So I’ll just wait a year then until that changes. Like original legendary not being tradeable, or able to be wardrobe skins. Or when you actually had to run dungeons to get the items, etc.
It’s amazing how far from the original vision this game has gotten.
I’m all for raiding being one element in the recipie, but the entire thing is laughable.
Please tell me there will be more ways to obtain legendary armor than strictly raiding?
I’d hope it’s like weapons where it requires a little bit of everything to get. If raiding is needed then preferably a reward track or something like happened to dungeons.
Otherwise it would be best called raid armor or elite armor as it has nothing to do with the definition of legendary in GW2 terms.
Wait…people seriously cap a sentry and afk? That like 20 participation points a tick lol.
As others have said, do the wvw daily or follow a blob. Even casual roaming for me can fill a track two or three times a week with boosters.
I do love this topic. Pve players, you are aware that your mastery tracks are infinitely more grindy, right?
That’s the thing, you won’t be able to sustain that 0 HP now. Base heals got nerfed by 30-50%, I wouldn’t call that ‘fine’.
I mean, with 0HP, why run druid? Condi clear is nice I guess, but can already do that a bunch of different ways with Ranger, same with stealth. Ancient seeds is decent but not the best elite out there. The rest of the druid traits are….meh.
Heals that got nerfed are in CA. So my CA regenaration will be the same, taking the same time to fill up. I barely use the heals in CA as roamer. If i take my time to heal in CA i get more damage than heals, unless i am fighting someone with no gap closer or no ranged weapon. Most thing i use in CA is #3 > #5.
Right, so why take druid at all? You’d be better off with almost anything else if you are using CA only for a condi clear / quick stealth.
Which is pretty much what anet wants. Druid isn’t supposed to replace the core ranger, just augment it. The annoying part is core ranger is so bad everyone thinks they have to run druid even if its not doing anything for them.
That’s the sad part…our pets WERE good. Until they got leash range reduction…damage reduction…etc. etc.
At one point the devs legitimately thought pets could break dungeons.
If they buffed Smokescale any then PvP would cry so bad Anet would delete all pets from the game besides the Pig.
If only it didn’t come with massive nerfs I’d be happy right now. Even more sad when you consider the sheer amount of projectile hate in the game right now.
I mean bleed on auto is great, but don’t know if that’s enough to take over something like S/D (or now S/W).
I imagine this is the patch that is going to kill off a lot of player interest, and not just Ranger.
As far as Ranger goes, I know we’ve had some really bad ones but this one seems to be all bad news with only the SB changes to give some hope. Most of those are to flanking and…yeah, we all know how flanking goes.
I don’t get how they take historically the weakest class in any game mode and make it weaker.
That’s the thing, you won’t be able to sustain that 0 HP now. Base heals got nerfed by 30-50%, I wouldn’t call that ‘fine’.
I mean, with 0HP, why run druid? Condi clear is nice I guess, but can already do that a bunch of different ways with Ranger, same with stealth. Ancient seeds is decent but not the best elite out there. The rest of the druid traits are….meh.
Ah, yeah your right. I wasn’t considering casting it right when you get in the form.
8 × 2 = 16
Not mathematically possible to use it twice in one CAF now.
So theory crafting on how to use the new SB and CoTW changes. Seems have to take BM at minimum. Now you could take MM for the swap or SK for the SB cool downs.
If you take MM it frees up the WH slot for another offhand.
Where does that leave surviving though? Seems either Druid has to go for WS or you become super vulnerable to conditions unless I’m missing something.
With the healing nerf and CA nerf is it really wise to take druid on a roaming capacity anymore? Sure CA clears conditions but it’s also 15 sec gated now assuming max AF generation.
Blah blah something decapitate, bsomethong something vault. Oh wait, condi is broken?
God forbid we have decent access to stability.
Yeah don’t expect horn buff to last long either. We all know what happened when taunt was unblockable.
So changes I see getting partially reverted are SB1 and CoTW.
Guessing SOTP and WHAO nerfs are due to SB changes. Don’t expect that bleed to stay for very long.
Nerfs outweigh the buffs on this one.
SB buffs are mostly to behind target….when are you EVER behind the target? They alter crossfire to work from front because…oh yeah, because it was useless from the back!
gg
We’re going to be very, VERY fortunate if they don’t touch the HoT pets. You know, the ones that can actually hit things.
Also, who is a druid a problem for besides other druids? Ele and Engi? I mean, Necro and Mes can just condi bomb (Mes with stealth) and War, Thief, DH, and Rev can just straight up do insane direct damage.
Literally it boils down to this (anet’s logic):
- We’re revising CA because it made raids too easy, despite this being the spec specifically designed for raids
- We really don’t care about PvP or WvW druids, in fact they were pretty bunker anyway…so no loss no gain!
If anyone thinks otherwise, go back in history and look. Look at the 30-40% damage decrease to pets, the HaO nerf (because it could boonshare! sound familiar?), pet leash range nerf, etc. etc.
About the leather, I used to be drowning in hardened, and now I hardly ever get them. This is with a mystic kit salvaging everything that comes out of the WvW tracks and champ bags.
Nothing but mithril and thick leather.
Don’t delete your characters, you will regret it later.
THIS. Gifts are by character age NOT account age.
Ah yeah, I’m not running full traps, only 2. Running that with shout bunker…and a LOT of things die.
Really the traps are just for stealth condi bombing, but I’ve seen more than a few people dance around in flame trap long enough to feel it.
You win by playing better
It’s good for disengaging, and roaming in general. At 2500+ condition damage traps hurt…whether you want to see that or not.
What else would you take to roam…Druid? Maybe if you want a 20 minute stalemate where you can’t kill anyone, sure.
Ranys since when is condi meta in wvw zerg/blob fighting? I haven’t wvw’d much in a year but those fights used to have more then enough cleanses for condi to be viable. Raw dmg was always the way to go?
I believe the trapper did good in WvW.
It was also stated as a popular build on metabattle. I’ve never been a WvW player but that’s what I heard.Trapper is terrible in wvw, even more so in zerg fights. Traps were decent when you could still throw them but since they were nerfed they have become useless. Without a point to fight over there is no reason for anyone to stand in them.
@Bast bow, condi is strong for small zerg/large havoc against unorganized pug zergs because epi bombs can melt a group. This tactic doesn’t work against organized zergs because of resistance boon share.
Stealth trapper is actually still pretty good in WvW. I’d never use traps without those runes though.
The problem as I see it is this…Druid is a full out support line. Core ranger never had enough damage lines to begin with the compensate for this. They don’t look to be compensating for the Druid changes either.
Which is baffling. Either you play Druid and 100% accept you are backline support or not play Druid and defeat a portion of buying HoT.
What Druid SHOULD be is like Smite Monk from GW1. Give some damage in addition to the healing to make taking the line worthwhile.
We can’t have that because Guardian exists.
Well yeah, this is the same balance team that nuked SB to promote ‘build diversity’.
I REALLY don’t know what build diversity even exists for Druid, as most of the traits (especially GM ones) are just…meh. I mean most Druids I run into in WvW are taking condi-clear on enter form, shadow on exit, and ancient seeds. Druid line doesn’t seem to synergize that well with marksmanship or skirmishing, so most builds I am seeing revolve around NM and either WS or BM.
Also, how do you have build diversity when only two pets really ‘work’, pigeonholed into staff if Druid, and other than that only really have LB as a competitive weapon?
I’ll continue using my hipster stealth trapper core ranger though. It might lose to almost all meta builds, but it’s fun.
I’d like axe 1 to be faster as well. Or leave it slow and give it a small chance to strip a boon.
ANet won’t balance it. If they balanced core vs. elite then there would be no incentive, however tacit, to buy HoT. If you’ve bought HoT, there is very little incentive to stay with core classes.
Just WP after death like you used to before HoT, but a little more often, and don’t let it get to you.
Besides if you’re still playing core Ranger, a little pervasiveness must have built up in you as player over the lifetime of your character. Why else would you do it?
Not sure I agree, for Ranger at least. I don’t run druid in any story content or in roaming wvw. Not enough damage and the traitline doesn’t give me enough in return.
For raids and zerging I can see running druid as the support is obviously way better than core has (for healing at least).
The only thing hot gives you is smokescale which is undoubtedly the best pet in the game.
I for one wish traps were still throwable. I know this is a WvW thing mainly, but trapper runes were SO much better when you could throw them. With how it is now, you ‘set’ them and the enemy runs right through them so no invis time.
I don’t see how Druid helps all that much over ‘core’ Ranger. I personally can’t find a WvW build I want to run Druid with as almost all effective Druid builds seem to require staff, which is support to me.
This is coming from a roaming perspective. From a zerg perspective, I definitely see Druid being more useful because there you literally are playing support.
This is a repost from a few moths ago…
But yeah grinding out gold is fun. Been playing since Beta and I still don’t have ascended armor, because crafting it is just SO easy and cheap!
That depends on your priorities, if you wanted Ascended Armor you would have saved up mats and made it. TBH there is little reason beyond raids and fractals to bother much with ascended armor.
Some people have 10 sets or more. Same with legendary weapons.
I don’t disagree, my point was that it isn’t like the stuff is falling out of the sky like TC says.
Go back to vendor regulated pricing. If the vendor starts undercutting then can’t spike the price.
Lol at linking silk and thick leather. Try other types of leather, or t4 t5 mats at 5s each.
Ecto dropped thanks to AB, nothing else is really out of whack. Could get 2g a day super easy prior to the daily, so that didn’t shift things all that much.
But yeah grinding out gold is fun. Been playing since Beta and I still don’t have ascended armor, because crafting it is just SO easy and cheap!
I second leveling naturally. I get why the free boost exists (so you can play HoT areas), but it really, REALLY kills the experience of the game.
There has yet to be anything like stepping out into Queensdale for the first time and feeding some cows. I know probably no one does that event anymore, but it just defined the game for me.
So…which one is more worth it? I’m not too keen on grinding out Core masteries, however I have enough for one or the other (21 points total).
One one hand, auto-loot sounds nice. On the other, when I finally do get around to crafting my legendary, I really don’t want to be locked out of getting it should I like one of the new ones.
What jumping puzzles do you think should give you a title? If it isn’t 2012 Clocktower levels of hard I don’t think a title is merited. Especially if you can port to the end like you can with 90% of JPs.
Yes, I think AA as a pressure mechanic is stupid. Other classes pressure through burst or conditions, which have the advantage of being able to be timed.
I’m not going to AA with my bow until I see confusion, retaliation, reflect, etc. pop up because then it is too late. LB it’s far easier to turn the auto off and know I’m not going to fire extra shots. Same with MH axe.
The only weapon AA is critical on is also our worst….SB.
All this applies to the old MH sword. Super fast 3 chain attacks until you needed to stop, then you stop and dodge.
That’s the point, AA is not beneficial at all outside if pve due to the amount of counter conditions thrown around. Like, when I say skill I don’t mean pve.
That said for other modes what we have now is a vastly inferior weapon to what we had before. All in the name of AA prevented dodging when good players weren’t using it to begin with.
So yes, I’d like my dps and tracking back as I know when to stop attacking.
The old auto attack’s closedown abilty was vastly overrated. Also you shouldn’t be throwing around accusations about people’s skill levels if you needed the old auto to keep on your target.
While I do prefer the animations of the old attack (though I do like the new ones even if they are a bit weird), the other 2 attacks still need some tweeking and the dps drop is inexcusable when Ranger weapons need a buff across the board the Sword is in a much better state now.
In a perfect world we would have had Sword and Dagger with the two different auto attacks with skills that complemented them but what are you going to do.
No one runs AA with LB because it’d make hunter’s shot pretty pointless. I don’t really see anyone complaining that LB is badly designed either.
What are you talking about? Nobody disables auto on Longbow and it doesn’t interfere with hunter’s shot.
Flip side to your argument is we shouldn’t be talking about skill if you couldn’t dodge in time using the old animation.
Also about LB maybe I just assumed everyone had AA off, at least in pvp. As reflects / confusion wreck bow users so hard it isn’t even funny.