Guild Wars 2

I made a engineer especially to play scrapper on. Loving it. Although having tried to level one before HoT I tried all the races but none other than human had any sort of appearance I preferred. While this image reflects my engi’s steampunk side, she’s not always in this sort of dress. And yes, I went Aethertech for this except for the hammer which is the Mecha Anchor hammer skin.

PierPiero.9142:

Is not better healing turret rather than medic gyro ?

I like medic gyro for the tool belt skill cause when commanders like myself call for water, we can blast our own water field or tell others “Water field on tag, blast it” and they blast it or go without. The protection boon it offers is nice too.

I only use healing turret when I’m doing something like Claw of Jormag fights where I’m going to be stationary and trying to heal others. Medic gyro isn’t the best for that. However, in WvW or even in dungeon fights, I rather medic gyro and bulwark than to rely on the healing turret cause the reflect from bulwark gyro and the protection/water field from medic gyro’s tool belt skills are super cool and often makes it where I can out last and not be limited to the place the turret is dropped. Example, Hammer 3 skill leaps you forward, with medic gyro’s tool belt skill it sends the water field along with you at each hop and gives additional healing and others can blast it for even more healing.

Dawdler.8521:

volpenvieh.3201:

I honestly don’t think that “night capping” needs to be fixed.

Fixing it doesnt mean stopping people playing or going after players, just balancing the score curves from PPT.

Or at least thats what I think, I know many people have more radical ideas.

I wouldn’t touch it at all then. Cause the score curves represent when your server is strongest and who is on at the time. Instead, I’d say leave as is and start trying to get your server’s WvW guilds to recruit people that are on in the times when the server isn’t very active. Especially commanders that don’t mind havoc’ing if not zerg’ing when the server is the least active.

You may like a bunker build for a scrapper too. Don’t go all nomad, its not worth it. But maybe try Soldiers gear as then you can tank a bit, and still hit hard. I’d post my build, but I’m still working it out for my play style which is more of the literal word beserker, not with berserker stats, but the fact that in mythology beserkers could tolerate extraordinary amounts of punishment while dishing it out too.

However, I’ll say this too. Every build out there has something that counters it, and same goes for anything you might like yourself. So just know that someone may be able to counter something you do, but don’t make it be like “Oh this class sucks” ‘cause Scrapper and Engi. in general don’t, they are very versatile and fun when you get use to it.

I just thought about what the original poster said, it would mess people up like me as Mishi mentioned since I play not on prime times for my server region. I play WvW on times that are generally where most are likely either sleeping or the bad players aren’t on. I mean, generally the ones that night cap that I’ve fought are better at PvP in WvW than some of the blob crowd are in the same small group situations. It makes it fun.

However, if you want a better solution to fix night cap, only two I can come up with is A) do away with servers and do some sort of megaserver non-sense or make it so that WvW is one or two maps only, so that way people are forced to be in one or the other map. This would still mean the lower tier servers (T8 especially) would need to get more people to come to that server tier than they currently have.

Straegen.2938:

Most of us know pure balance cannot exist but questioning if certain classes/builds skew too far outside the norms should be part of a larger healthy discussion about the game mode. Getting kitteny about questioning if a class or build is OP or not serves no purpose. Bringing up past examples of balance issues as justification for something (still not sure what) makes no sense at least to me. I still do not understand your basic counter point that the current meta is very bunker heavy.

Agreed, just cause something is nerfed of x-class like say Druid astral force generation, doesn’t make them any less powerful than before. Why? People learn to use that class in other ways that make it even more powerful or just as powerful as before. Same goes to nerfs done to Revs and their resistance to condi damage and their hammer 2 skill. You still see them using it and it still hurts a plenty. Yet, the nerfing of it didn’t make it any less a viable and powerful class, it made it so that those that QQ about it would stop playing it or leave it, but those that can tolerate it and learn to play it better found other ways of staying relevant as a powerful profession.

An example of this is a friend that started using staff and hammer, while using shiro and glint in an odd combination. Hay, it worked for them and they still main a rev. I don’t like it, but they still do good damage when we fight in small groups and even in zergs.

Because of that, balance will never truly happen. All the devs can do is mix things up and the few that push their mains hard enough will still find ways of making them OP or at least a major thorn in people’s sides. No pun intended.

Dawdler.8521:

Rudy.6184:

(rev can cast 5 sec reveal while using #3 of hammer it has 1200 range and engi has 900 radius on reveal).

Detection pulse is 600 radius btw.

Rev Detection range with Gaze of Darkness is 360, and Engi version is only 600… since Engi is further away from frontline fighters.

Rev Hammer 2 is still a bit OP, but hammer 3 isn’t, in fact it almost rarely hits as most dodge it easily. Hammer 5 is even slow and Hammer 4 is a useless block only, no return damage. So Rev isn’t really even OP unless you fight a bunker Rev that has lots of power added to their stats. I’ve seen a few like that and even engi’s like that, they hard to kill and hit hard, but they trade healing and for power, and often lose the 100% crit chance too cause of it.

Straegen.2938:

Builds should have to pick a lane: support, bunker, DPS, etc. They shouldn’t be able to do all the above.

BTW if the Berzerker ever gets flushed out Gunflame is going to be a lot worse.

I would say anyone can pick two roles, though most want to keep the berserker meta alive by running marauder or zerker gear… However, the best builds for WvW have to have sustained and power mixed in. Find the balance, and get the skills necessary to do the two roles, and you can’t easily be beaten. Few I’ve noticed take the time to learn how to do it though and are easily wrecked…

The reason I play GW2 is that I can literally be bunker/healer, bunker/dps, pure dps, or non-of-the-above (Celestial stats). So others should get away from the mentality that zerker is the best way to go when in reality, zerker is getting weak on the WvW front against fighting other players. Especially when I can have toughness and dps increased by the auras given by an objective.

If you like the lore aspect, Charr, but if you like having multiple outfits and armor skins look sexy, especially on a female form, then Human. Though this is personal preference really.

I don’t like Charr appearance personally so I made mine Human, and I don’t regret it cause I wanted something that I could draw my own manga images of my character to look like or when they eventually come out with better hair styles, make some of the anime characters I like from various anime shows. I can’t do that with Charr sadly.

saalle.4623:

this was not that much of problems with old borderlands cause they been allowing us (roamers) to ress fast and head to camps or wherever we want to solo encounter enemies.This new maps are (beside dead maps and no players) terrible for roaming cause of map design that force you to take paths that solo players just wont use.It makes you run for ages…..and that is not what players wanted.

The new maps are actually friendly for roaming… I mean in the past it was easy to cut roamers off cause SE camp, S camp and NE camp for instance on the Alpine map were really close to each other compared to this new map. However, I can take say SE camp and unless the person is near by they won’t get to me before I get S camp or NE camp or act like I’m not in the BL and go straight to N or NW camp from SE camp. You just have to learn all the different paths to get to the objectives. Its amazing how convoluted it can be to hunt down a solo havoc player or a small group of havoc flippers.

Aeolus.3615:

well it is easy to make high damage add the aoe spam to the recipe, and everyone needs to get defensive stats…. not that hard to notice.

Yeah especially when most blob fights have the ground looking like nothing but red blood rings all over the place. Bye bye being glassy, those folks get wrecked fast in all those rings Hello tanky, those folks survive for a few moments to run out of the red rings :\ Good if you’re the one that survives, bad if its the enemy that does

Rocknull.2986:

Just give us flipping weapon swap already. One weapon with tons of kits to supplement.Its an old idea and this is an entire different animal of a game then release. This will not overpower the engi.

Why? I mean I use flamethrower and mortar when I need ranger or uber close range attacks in addition to hammer. Just make it so we can swap out the weapon kits easier would be better or give us more weapon kits but yeah most would say it would make us too OP though…

In WvW sneak gyro is uber necessary, so to is bulwark and sort of for medic gyro. Medic’s water field, and bulwark shield tool belt skills are necessary for survival in a hard ranged fight and when water fields are needed. Same is true to the stealth reveal of sneak gyro, which makes it harder for mesmers and thieves, and other scrappers to sneak up on a blob or small group of players roaming.

I won’t say its OP, but it is highly necessary at times as most time people miss hitting me instead they hit the sneak gyro…

2 free transfers? Nah… Whats to stop someone from making repeated free accounts to do multiple servers WvW?

I just say make server transfers free permanently and leave it like it is… If a lot move to T1 and T2 servers, then block them with a paying amount for transfers to those servers. 1800 gems is nice, but seriously, have that as a block for very high pops, but any other level of pop for WvW, make it purely free.

Advantage of doing this, would be to allow commanders from lower pop servers like T8 servers, to see how larger fights are done and coordinated among multiple blob groups/zergs. The thing to remember too is that it helps all players gain experience and find a place they might would settle down and call their home server. I don’t know of many that have stayed on the same server since day 1 without testing 1 server at least. Free transfers would allow this and maybe make some get server loyalty too, to stay on that server for years to come.

Alloy.2839:

Thanks for the info, I was wondering about these relatively invulnerable enemies I had been seeing. Hopefully they are OP in PvP also, that way they might be fixed in the near future.

I know many people that changed their ascended armor over to nomad stats, not sure the ascended armor name for that right now. They run it when they know the servers they are going to be picking fights with are likely going to be blobbing.

Sadly I am seeing more and more going over to using uber-tank/super-tank armor stats and even giving up high damage abilities in favor of super healing abilities. I don’t mind the super-tank stats but uber healing from near 0% health to full health in a second is rather upsetting.

A few defenders I know on a server I use to be on, complained about the alpine maps having the spawn points and keep waypoints too close to the camps and that it was hard to defend against because of it. Like SW camp could flip and bay keep becomes contested within 30 to 40 seconds of each other.

On my server, we have a few small (5 to 15 people) groups that roam the DBL at times since HoT release. However, most rather go to EBG instead of caring about their home BL.

Yes players go there for leveling a character to 80 and some for leveling up there WvW ranks. Because of this, as a commander that sometimes tags up in EotM, I’ll start doing my leading as a k-train commander, but anytime there is a bit of resistance… not even a zerg, just a small group. You can see uplevels (no offense to anyone that levels in EotM) fall pretty quickly. If my group composition is about 40% to 60% uplevels, going into a fight against any group is like suicide for the people that are 80 because the uplevels will die fast and the enemy zerg rallies off the dead really fast. So, hopefully the changes to WvW will also occur in EotM to prevent this.

Most people that I know that do WvW around 75% of the time at least, avoid EotM unless they are leveling an alt or trying to get the proof of heroics quickly. You can actually in a K-Train level faster your WvW rank up than being in actual WvW borderlands or even in EBG. I mean seriously, you can go to EotM find a good K-train and get at around 50 heroic points in 1 to 2 hours than all the PvP in WvW blob verses blob fights grant.

For my guild that does WvW raids with, we go to EotM to actually look for fights to test and improve our picking off of the EotM k-train zerg. I mean its sort of simple since they have so long of a tail at times.

But if you are going to EotM to look for fights, its rather depressing. My guild groups that go to EotM often get disappointed within 30 mins because there is no one that really wants to fight there. So it feels like we’re just being bullies and none of us like that.

TL;DR
Simply put, most EotM zergs are nothing more than up levels leveling to 80 or grinding for heroics. You can level faster on a k-train than you can player killing. There some guilds that go to EotM just to practice their movements and how to havoc a larger group of unskilled players. Yet, even these guilds often get disappointed because people avoid them a lot cause they know that all they are doing is PvP and not concerned about capturing or holding, etc. anything just to player kill.

Participation is low even on higher tier servers, but on higher tier servers you at least have a lot playing in EB at least, may not see many friendly allies in the BLs as they are rather not friendly to this sort of game play.

Also if you don’t have the expansion, and get it, you’ll be in PvE a lot more cause you’ll want to level your elite spec as well as to level your masteries to at least 50 or more. That’s a lot of PvE stuff… and at least get the mentor tag so if you have a Mesmer you can pop mentor tag for the zerg to see where you are to have you portal them into an objective. You don’t need it, but it helps especially when you aren’t in the squad of the commander.

If I had to do it again, I think I would likely not have gotten the expansion personally, but having it and well won’t be playing the story again likely wasn’t that great… more hype than great. and WvW didn’t really get anything HoT required added to it. You can go to the new BLs without having HoT… so why bother?

Heimlich.3065:

If an alliance system featured limits on alliance participation (guilds per alliance and wvw-participants per guild) of the sort leaked on Reddit, then I’d give up WvW.

Whether the limit is 3 guilds or 12 and whether the participating-player limit is 100 or 300, that will create a Procrustean Bed on which size guilds are allowed to participate.

Worse still, if my alliance is limited to N guilds, then I’ll have to constantly harangue players into participating so that our alliance doesn’t replace us with a guild who can field more players or field players for longer/better hours.

Yeah if that was how any new WvW play would be, yep… think I’d find another aspect to play of the game… Oh weight, I hate the story, I don’t like sPvP, and yet I loved WvW… Okays, so Fractals… lol…

But in all seriousness, if that was the case, I can see lots of smaller guilds just leaving this game in mass. I mean they are already wanting to with the new guild halls… I can see it becoming mandatory then with that sort of system. It be like saying, Z zerg has 80 people, Y zerg has 25 people from 10 different guilds, and X zerg has 50 people. Z zerg would focus on Y zerg finish them out and then have a nice 1 v 2 or more against X zerg. BORING!…

Zaxares.5419:

On a more general note, I don’t know what it’s like on other servers, but over on TC I have noticed that the new Borderlands always seem to be very quiet compared to EBG. Once in a while you’ll get guilds or commanders doing raid runs, but the other servers barely muster any sort of defense (if at all) and it’s generally just a k-train. Comments from other players suggest that while the new BL is very pretty (Really. I never fail to be astounded by how gloriously beautiful and spacious the Desert Borderlands is), it’s not very well liked by dedicated WvW’ers, although I don’t know why. Anybody care to shed some light on the issue?

Yeah agreed there, you know why though? It’s roamer friendly in that there multiple avenues to hide too large to traverse easily. The oasis event, is hard for some but is the biggest boring time at all in WvW. In the amount of time to take and do that even with 10 people doing it, you can take Air keep and be on lord if not taken Earth keep too. So what’s the point? and then the laser hits all places not owned by the winners, so you can easily be say some rival side waiting for blah blah server to finish the oasis event, have an scout watch where they head and take whatever they aren’t heading to… Oasis event then is pointless… just a way to save money

And then too, if you haven’t noticed, people now rarely sweep for mesmers in BLs why? Simple reason, too many hiding spots for them to be able to sweep all of them. Seriously, I can hide in Air keep, Earth keep, and Fire keep so easily that I don’t even need to run stealth skills then.

EBG (or EB to others) is the easiest and friendliest to zergs and organized groups of them all. Easy to get from point A to point B and simple to plan what to do and when. And no stupid barricades in the way or anything. Why bother doing anything but EB?

I just like to leave the roamers to clean up the BLs and if I’m willing to roam I’ll be in the BL, if not, then I’m in EB where at least 85% of the server’s WvW players hang at now.

(( OH and I do like 1 thing in the whole of the new borderlands, and that’s fire keep only… all the others to me are meh ))

1) this is from two guilds, WvW guild ( has about 167 people and only about 50 really do any WvW). PvE guild (has 77 people and only 4 WvW, with 1 of them not WvW for the last 2 months or more).

2) NO! Was like the biggest waste of time in the whole guild upgrade crap.

3) WvW guild at Level 31, and has like 6 or so different things, we don’t actually use them.

4) Obtaining them by spamming PvE areas, and spamming PvP matches for PvP pots… As for WvW specific, we don’t even hardly use the synthesizers, so we almost always just roam around maps farming in PvE or buy from trade broker.

5) Well, first, was in a small guild of like 5 or 10 people max, we did WvW but once the new Guild system came out we ditched our guild setting it up as a private guild for guild bank only. We went on to join a larger guild and under the new guild system, even it is like all play PvE and PvP, no play WvW except for guild missions in WvW only. Which sucks.

Pre-HoT we had fun claiming objectives getting +5 easily and moving our little roaming guild group to towers and keeps and taking them or at least being a good nuisance. Now, Post-HoT its like zerg vs zerg, not many roamers… and then most go PvE to get mats for guild upgrades YAWNS! Many in one guild asked, why even play WvW anymore? I don’t have an answer except its the only game mode I enjoy in all of GW2.

6) Remove the new guild system in its entirety… Okays, so that’s not just one thing… okays make it friendlier for small guilds to do WvW stuff. I mean seriously. A small havoc group should be able to do +5 supply, get anything useful from guild auras… etc. And not be bound to play with larger guilds period.

Swagger.1459:

So bubi, how are you going to save wvw across the whole game while keeping the individual server model?

Good question, and yet as it stands, I can see WvW as a game that is on the back burner for the next year or so cause they want to keep the minority happy with individual servers versus, jumping off the cliff and seeing that the majority of people would come and do WvW more then.

(Seriously, most don’t EotM cause scared of falling and don’t understand it. WvW is much more understandable to most and is almost instinctive, but most have friends on all tiers of servers, and I will guarantee that most won’t transfer cause its way too expensive to go up to T1 and T2 servers… and way more cost effective to just PvE and dump the game once bored of the lack luster PvE in the game).

zinkz.7045:

atheria.2837:

Servers loyalty is something…

Is a joke when most WvW players (who have played since the start) are no longer on their original server.

Yeah, I know many that have left other servers for servers that are kitten T4 servers. They were on lower T7 and T8 servers and just got fed up with it when it came to defending and having coverage throughout the day.

atheria.2837:

Give us a chance for skill to be evident, not impossible.

Skill isn’t evident in WvW, that is the problem, it doesn’t take skill to get up at 4am and run round a borderland PvDooring when the other server is asleep to tick for 500+ and “win”.

The current system does not work, which is why the WvW population is at the state it is.

Yeah, many servers stay mostly inactive at the T6 and lower level, waiting for the rival server to sleep then going from there up to a 695 tick. I mean seriously, its bad then and holding that or a 600+ tick for at least an hour or two makes it nearly impossible for some servers to catch up and pass that during a week’s time. I was turned off by the 695 tick play when I was on the one server I know that when its against some servers gets a 695 tick easily It makes WvW boring… So why play it then as the winning side or even as the losing sides?

Bubi.5237:

Swagger.1459:

According to the devs, most wvwer accounts participate in pve where they enjoy the benefits of megaserver…

Who said that wvw players are enjoying it and not enduring? I couldn’t find any source for it, and I personally hate megaserver even in pve.

In PvE, I don’t mind it. I sort of like being guilds that have members spread out on other servers and yet still play together, I have too many friends on other servers that I wouldn’t be able to play with without Megaservers for PvE.

However, I do enjoy PvE as a past time, though I am in WvW a lot more than PvE cause I enjoy that area for offering unpredictable challenges. I mean example, I want to cap South west camp in a BL, I go and start, and here comes another’s servers’ player to either cap it or defend it, and then the fight just took on a whole different perspective cause its not like super easy to beat most good roamers.

I’d still likely embrace megaservers, but I’d be sure to run with friends then for roaming and not just go off and roam alone.

Yes, ANet could permanently leave open T1 and T2 servers and make it so that it doesn’t cost as much to jump around for those that want to do that. I have had server loyalty for a long time to a T7-ish NA server (Kaineng). Yes, we did WvW, and no we weren’t as good as say TC (T2 server) is, but it was fun.

The person that got me to play GW2, didn’t want me to play WvW on my first character, but once I was introduced to it, I was hooked negating most of personal story until HoT came out and wanted the mastery points from personal story.

WvW is the one place in the game that I loved on Kaineng running around solo capping camps and testing my skills out on solo capping towers, though almost always I’d see at least one enemy to fight and most times, yes I lost… That was back in the days of Fortified and Strength stacks (hated those, but miss them now).

WvW sucks too though, I mean I want to play with my friends on FA, SoS, TC, Kaineng, GoM, and DB, but EotM doesn’t do it. If we are in a party, TC is almost always green color that week, so I go to EotM and be on green side while my other friends are on their servers color side. You so can’t play EotM with friends like that. So my question is why EotM exists if it was to make it so that servers could play together with each other while still having server matters aspect.

In the end though, those WvW buffs that all players on that server get no matter if they play WvW or not, shouldn’t be getting those buffs if you don’t play WvW. and having a way we can play with our friends on other servers, would be nice no matter what color the server we on is that week. Yet, to make a megaserver WvW, I can see where that would be a major turn off for some cause some guilds could fill EB queue just by themselves on T1 and T2 servers. So megaserver would be the same way while guilds that focus on lower tier servers may not even have enough in their instance to help take their own BLs let alone the EB area.

Vieux P.1238:

Gaab.4257:

Sorry but no. WvW is so much more and better than open world PvP.

So explain me why most of the servers except for the 3-4 top ones is so desolated if it’s that good?

Okays, I’ve been on T8 servers and on T2 servers, WvW even on T8 servers isn’t barren. I mean I still found players doing their server’s strong time doing zergs, and other times doing roaming with friends if not solo roaming. On a T7 server, I preferred only doing WvW solo most times and zerging only when the zerg needed help.

Now on T2 servers, you’d think servers up there have more interesting fights, right? blog v blog v smaller blog. Yawns… that’s about as fun as watching grass grow. Literally. Yet what is more fun about that is you will at least have some defenders helping to defend objectives. Smaller servers rarely defend objectives, instead flipping them back before the tick hits.

Now as to your post on Open World PvP… If you ask around to those in game that rarely if ever even read the forums and even to many that came to GW2 once F2P happened, you’ll find that the vast majority would not play GW2 if they were forced to PvP. GW2 would become another AION or Lineage II then cause many learned that AION back in 2009 was the hots… and then that it forced PvP, complained on forums and left the game to never return. Not saying I’m one of those, I just quit the game as it got old and old, over and over the same darn thing. But, if GW2 had open world PvE area PvP, good bye community … Only the diehards would remain.

WvW is nice and matches with the theme of the mists. Yes, if you want PvP, go to sPvP or to one of the arenas. However, WvW is meant to be more of RTS with MMO perspective, and it matches that. As a commander, I have to decide do I want to assault SMC or do I want to push one side or another or take the zerg to another BL. The grunts/followers, its rather simple, toss supply here, kill xyz guards, and stop players before fighting the lord. This gives you the fun of open world PvE with some open world PvP.

Now if you feeling adventurous which most aren’t on T2 servers, but many were on T6, T7 and T8 servers, challenge yourself by cutting the tail of a zerg, or solo capping a keep or tower by yourself or with a small group and fending off the enemies that come to stop you.

REWARDS…

If anything, the only thing I’d change about WvW, make the Borderland maps back to being friendly to everyone, not just small group of roamers. Beyond that, I would ask for better rewards from WvW, like maybe a badge that says you’re a WvW player like PvP players get in ranked divisions now… Bring back WvW tournaments too and provide incentives for top tier kitten servers to lose some players to lower tier servers so that lower tier servers can see what blog vs blog vs blog feels like.

TL;DR…

Basically, WvW is RTS combined with old war games… its fun and be it a T2 server or a T8 server, you can challenge yourself either in small groups or solo by cutting tails of zergs and capping things like Keeps and towers. Yes, even a small group can on a lower tier server cap SMC. Adding better rewards would get most to play it more, like rewards that impact the guild halls. The only reason most lower tier servers lost population of WvW is because of the guild halls requiring most of their components to come from pure PvE. I think this was the biggest mistake of all ANet did, but if they could be better rewards and things for guild halls coming from both PvE and WvW in equal number, then people would likely stop grinding DS, SW and other PvE places for mats, and even PvP for PvP potions, and would come back to grinding WvW on mass.

Burtnik.5218:

Mallyx works well due to high uptime resistance (condi meta), boonstrip spam which puts load of confu and most important double stab on dodge. Take that off and Mallyx will become potato to cc 100-0 the moment you swap to it. Not to mention that useless elite and the poor last minute desing.

I still laugh at these peeps who been taking shield trait over double stab. People finally realized how good it is.

Yeah, I had some that wanted me to run that shield thinking it heals great when it pops instead of the double stab. I rather double stab as I dodge and get stability and its doubled and that way I can run through more red circles than some herald/rev without it.

Speaking of Mallyx, I like how its tanky in that regard with resistance kept up for as long as I’m using and/or spamming Mallyx skills, it even nullifies the effects of torment while with resistance up. However, when I need condi cleansing, its Janis or rely on Glint’s temp heal to heal the damage from infused light, or go to Mallyx and just resist.

I would like Mallyx to have a way to send conditions to others, or have it so that it could consume the conditions for health like Necros can with their self heal. However, resistance when traited for it can keep that condi cleanse from needing to be used.

Yeah forums login is up… but game seems to be still broken

Thanks I’ll try that next time I’m with the group that need a healer (was looking for Ele or Druid, but no one wanted to play either of them in healer role). At least now I know I can kinda help out in that role… just hate having to have two sets of gear to cover everything

I’m a bit new to this, but I already have a power based Rev build I’m using though I want to make a support healer oriented one too. Anyone know what I should be focusing on for that support healer role? traits, specs, item stats, etc.?

I mainly play in WvW, with lately forced to do PvE to help out for some guilds I play with to get items to upgrade the guild hall with. So this support healer would need to be able to do both group WvW and group PvE support healing.

Thanks

Not sure what I’d change, but changes to certain things and Astral Force definitely.

AF either remove or make gen faster
I liked it when AF was super easy to generate, especially since it was super easy to lose it all too in less than 10s. I mean spam number 4, number 3 and maybe 2 shots of number 1 and it be gone by the end of that cycle. I would make it easy to generate AF again or make it so that AF is not needed for CA at all.

CA as stance
If you didn’t use AF for CA, then you could make it so that CA could stay in that form longer for better support options in group, and make it as a stance like a revenant’s ventari stance for group healing… and another stance for solo concentration on self healing/damage output… and then it would open up the door to more viability with the use of stances allowing to make damage of druids a thing. Where as right now any druid that uses staff is not really doing that much damage to any target.

Pets (remove or make smart pets)
I like ranger and druid for pets. On most of all the games I played, I always make one minion master class and on this I made two, but having a living pet be no smarter than blood fiend or flesh golem minions, is ridiculous. Especially when they are suppose to help the ranger/druid.

I know, they won’t fix that likely. So give rangers and druids the option to give up pets and concentrate on themselves entirely. This would make it so that the Druid would go from being a druid to a more of a priest/priestess like cleric character. That would open up a whole world for RP as well as open up the ability for better builds that could do high damage and give better rewards than relying on a pet to occupy the unskilled players while the ranger pew pews with long bow from range. As well as open up a whole new world of play too since you could have a healer that does okay to good dps and be tanky without having to search for find and learn to work with the pets.

Sorry for the rant, but pets hold the potential for ranger and druid both back.

What else?
Well if ANet did say the Pet one making them either smarter or giving us the option to not run them at all, and/or make stances instead of CA a charge up skill, then I could see where Druid would be a lot more versatile, and likely more wanted for other content in the game. As it stands, I really think the current iteration of staff skills, glyphs and broken AF, makes Druid less likely to be a preferred to play class/profession by many.

Yasi.9065:

Leaves 10% dmg glyph and grace of lands.
For a tank, druid just doesnt have enough CC, blocks, invuln… but on the other hand… keeping up AF is easiest done at boss.

This is true, with how the patch did AF generation, you are better at the boss where you and most people will likely be taking “some” damage… Well, I did “some” because people are getting better at evading and dodging damaging attacks even in raids.

However, I wouldn’t think of druid as a tank to fill the role of main tank. That I’d still give to guardians and maybe skillful revenants. However, if the group doesn’t have any coordination, and the heavies can’t get off there rocker with zerker gear or whatever and tank, then druid can do it but you’ll be relying on others to heal themselves and on them to help you break the break bars down too.

So it is possible to do both roles, but if you are doing both roles at the same time in the raid/party/squad (any aspect of the game played with other people), I would really question the viability of the group then. The adage “Jack of all trades, master of none” fits in that situation, because you’ll not be tanking well and/or you’ll not be healing others well.

Zalani.9827:

Zerg blockers on demand.

LOL…

“Hay druid, Bristleback large… NOW!”

anduriell.6280:

KayCee.4653:

I laughed at that Mercurias … its pretty much what people are trying to say about this

Sadly mercurias is right.
But here sould be the reason, i share his opinion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Druid-we-re-being-trolled-right/5566874

I’m sorry but after the balance patch and how the druid is designed, that we only had this weekend to test it, and the lack of communication from the devs this arise my trust issues. I think more customers that main a ranger share our concerns.

Spoken (well, read) like that, I understand your point of view… however not all that main a ranger will see it that way… Yes, I rather have had two weekends or even a full week to test Druid, I have my own issues with it, but I’m glad they made a healer too…

My issues are mostly with the druid traits and how the glyph of empowerment sucks compared to mights from my pet (cause of a trait) or a guardian using the staff… Also some other druid trait issues too like the glyphs radius too small means I need to be both front liner, middle liner, and back liner… and that the traits all don’t make sense since you can get better results using the original 5 specializations. I’m hoping that it will be fixed, yes… but as far as staff having healing skills and little damage I like that, though I am one of the few that often played a healer as a dps and healed at the same time in other games.

But ultimately, I agree with you… the lack of communication from the devs, the recent balancing patch before we all got use to the balanced, then releasing this beta weekend seems like they are rushing the game out the door. I’m not liking that myself, so in that regard as well we agree.

Zalani.9827:

anduriell.6280:

KayCee.4653:

I’m not sure what server you on, but on mine Ranger is actually sought after for havoc’ing in particular since two rangers can duo or trio even the castle. Granted, you’ll generally want more for it, but its possible. I’m only up to solo’ing towers. Keeps and castle are still too hard for me to take…

Also depending on your server, most servers I play on don’t care what profession you play on for WvW. Granted, sometimes we need tanks more so than healers and elementalists… but if you can take and tank on any profession like GW2 does allow, then you can be helpful to most WvW zerg parties and havoc groups.

Yeah right, let me guess you play bearbow.
You kitten the supervisor with the LB while your bear tanks for you.
And you pray no other enemy player comes around.
Not a solution not the point

Gotta love insinuating, fun stuff.

Yeah funny… Its probably someone I met in WvW that thought cause I had a long bow that they could take me, when in WvW I roam with the longbow out but I never use my long bow unless I need stealth. I use GS for everything, funny… I wreck many people that are dumb enough to think GS is slow, It hits hard and traited and using the speed boost from quickening and pack, its fast.

So, I’m not worried, just someone that is hurt cause they wanted some company to do what they wanted and not what is ultimately good for the community as a whole.

Count me in to that don’t fix bristleback, its the only new monster pet I like. Especially when it gets huge…

I laughed at that Mercurias … its pretty much what people are trying to say about this

You must don’t have it set up for a good build for a healer, cause I out healed the damage Lani gave to my party and out healed the damage that ranger boss at the end gave on Honor of the Waves. AC when I run it, few people I’ve ran it with got hurt, so I went to using long bow/greatsword when it was needed and not worrying about healing anyone unless they absolutely needed it. And no one really did need it for that dungeon run.

On my main, I trait it for healing and my zerker spec I rarely use unless its to solo a dungeon. Yes, solo dungeons, its fun but hard… I generally run even on my main a healer build that does way less healing than druid and hits really weak. Yet, I end up helping a lot of people with that especially the close range fighters since my pet I have active is generally the Fern (well back then it was, about a few days ago started using spiders instead). Fern hound heals for like 1,450 + 2,500 something in regen… that combined with their self heals of the party’s close range fighters often keep them standing until Fern hound gets hurt to where I have to switch out for either tank pets like the bears or for dps like the ice drake.

Druid would be a lot easier in that regard and is.

I made my ranger for healing, and solo’ing. I modified it for support. My old main, a necro was decked out to heal in Death shroud and it could do 5k heals in death shroud for up to 5 allies. Granted I couldn’t stay in death shroud long. Yet in dungeons it was helpful for the really bad groups. Druid would be the same too.

The way I see it, this game needed a healer a true healer all along. I love healing classes in other games, and all (well almost all) of my characters can in some way heal others and heal them half as good as druid can. I mean I am near always running around like that.

Now I do understand, not everyone want to be a healer, you don’t have to be. Just use the glyphs and not use the Druid specialization. But most people that try druid will like it especially if they played any healers on other games and were sought after cause of it.

Aomine.5012:

Just saying, ranger is never a desirable class in ANY content.

There’re always classes that do better in all game-mode than this base-class ranger.

In dungeon: Ele >> Guardian > Warrior = Thief > Mesmer > The rest.

In WvW: Ele = Guardian = Warrior = Necro >Mesmer >>> rest of the classes.

PVP: Ele = Mesmer > Guardian > The rest.

I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.

If Druid doesn’t change any of that, I doubt it’s even worth implanting. We’ll wait and see how it goes.

I’m not sure what server you on, but on mine Ranger is actually sought after for havoc’ing in particular since two rangers can duo or trio even the castle. Granted, you’ll generally want more for it, but its possible. I’m only up to solo’ing towers. Keeps and castle are still too hard for me to take…

Also depending on your server, most servers I play on don’t care what profession you play on for WvW. Granted, sometimes we need tanks more so than healers and elementalists… but if you can take and tank on any profession like GW2 does allow, then you can be helpful to most WvW zerg parties and havoc groups.

I guess the orginial post didn’t know about the fact that raids are usually two groups… 2 tanks (one guardian like, one maybe warrior or someone else), two healers (a active heal all like Druid, and an off healer), and the rest are dps purely. This is the usual trinity that all raids eventually lead to. Its why I’m not too happy with raids being added to GW2, but at least it should make being 80 with all the PvE content done to be a bit less boring.

However, to say that druid won’t have any place in a raid is rather narrow minded, no offense.

Example I got near my original all zerker dps back on my druid and still heal.

The build I’m using is using the old hard hitting pets, and Beastmastery, and Marksmenship with Druid specialization. the traits are what cause the boost in dps yes… but the boost also comes from the fact I do it like I do all my characters when I initially get 80, I carry around two or more sets of armor… but in this case I didn’t I jumped head long all clerics, but changed the sigils and runes to help boost precision and ferocity instead of focusing on power, or vitality and toughness.

I don’t have a lot of health, but I don’t need it now. Druid I heal both myself and others using the two wisps one that does damage to the target and heals (number 2 skill on staff) and a traited wisp that circles me to heal me a little too when I heal someone else or heal my pet. I also notice when I need my dps back, go to using my either zerker greatsword or zerker longbow and thanks to the boost in damage from both leading the wind and that greatsword/spear trait, I can get near 70% to 75% of my overall DPS back especially if I use the glyph of empowerment and the quickening zypher utility skills.

The numbers are still lower than before since I’ve seen on full zerker 10k most times on 80 level mobs, but using this method I get from 6k to 8k being the highest I’ve seen yet. Yes, that means I’m using the long bow or greatsword base entirely on what is needed for that fight, while leaving the staff on for healing.

Druids deserve to be in a party any party, especially when people get beaten in dungeons like AC paths 1, 2 and even in all paths of Twilight Arbor, just remembered had a story run one time recently where all but 3 people died constantly.

Rutee.1058:

anduriell.6280:

I like the support thing. SUPPORT not only mild heal.

CLERIC/MAGI still 80 heal in staff AA. The druid does not give any support and does not have the wow that’s amazing healing.

WvW the healing is not enough to change anything. If i get into CAF i should be able at least once to heal everybody really fast like Irenio pointed out in the preview.
In PvE there is no point to have that, because the druid need an enemy target to be able to heal.

Ventari heal just moving the tablet around.
IF heal is mandatory in raids, the revenant will the be the one, not druid

Revenants appear to be complaining about their lower numbers. Healing IS ultimately support, but yes, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that druids simply don’t do enough to justify a slot. I don’t know (Or honestly, really care much, as such. IT’d sure be unfortunate, though)! But I won’t pre-emptively declare the entire concept to be null and void because ‘we have iFrames here’

Btw… druid doesn’t need an enemy target if the bar is already full. Its just like with Necromancer, if you got a full bar for celestial, go to it and you can heal anyone with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 skills practically… most definitely with number 4 skill. I was roaming and saw some getting hurt in PvE and went over to heal them that way…

This in turn to me would justify a slot especially when groups I’ve been in on guardian, necro and thief always have people dying when doing Twilight Arbor paths up, forward and aether… There is never a group unless I specifically ask my friends to do the group that doesn’t have at least one person fall in that dungeon in explorable mode.

I primarily PvE, but I do help my server and friends out on WvW. If you looking to solo camps or small group camps and towers as a druid, you going to hurt the overall damage output of your friends and the glyph that empowers is not even helpful to them generally.

That said, after trying Druid in WvW, I’m hesitant to take it to PvP cause I feel like it would be the very reason the team I’m on loses.

You’re thoughts?

True that its a good thing for Reapers to out run a druid, its also good since druid is a healer and needs to stay back from the fight mostly.

And there is a problem. If I’m to be on the back line, then staff should have 1,500 range too like long bow. Why? Because Elementalists, Necros, and Mesmers should be at the 1,200 range and I should be healing them in addition to the lead tanks like the heavy armors in a WvW zerg for instance. Just an example.

And is it me, or is the staff holding like a hammer really starting to look dull? Why can’t we hold it like everyone else holds a staff?

New pets DPS is a bit low and takes too long for the Fire Wyvern to makes its fire field. So a bit useless in most fights…

The old pets seem more useful but then, it may be because we have used them a lot more …

However with that said Bristleback and Tiger seem to be the most useful new pets though. THough this is likely my own observation.

Levetty.1279:

Do you not understand we don’t want that? It throws the basics of the games combat out the window and half heartadly slapping tank and spank mechanics into a game not designed for it is lazy design. Nobody rolled Ranger to play some half designed healer role because up untill recently we didn’t know they were scrweing up the pve so bad.

Actually Levetty, I’s one of those that rolled Ranger for two reasons… One I wanted to have pets like my Mystic has on TERA. Two, I wanted to solo things with relative ease… When I heard of druid being a healer, I made sure to get all decked out in gear and waiting to play it as my main. And yes just for Druid, not for any other specialization did I do this for.

Yeah, if its like the current beta druid, then I’ll end up switching out of druid spec a lot for PvP and WvW. But I highly doubt I would for PvE. And I’m almost certain I wouldn’t for raids.

Paranoia.8276:

Offensive support? OFFENSIVE SUPPORT? You must be referring to the stacking in the corner and cleaving everything to death with 25 stacks of might. Yeah, we don’t want that braindead gameplay anymore, thank you.

LOL, yeah makes TA up path, kinda dull… Stack in the corner might up and cleave down… OH if you die you’ll be rallied by blah blah enemy on its death

Druid actually is fun, it makes you think and work with others instead of like rangers have always been, not really needed in groups. Druid feels needed up to the point of a LFG that wants to do something fast with all zerker gear and cleave in the corner.

Paranoia.8276:

Do people not understand that there will be unavoidable damage in raids? You can’t aegis unavoidable damage, people. You can’t dodge roll unavoidable. YOU WON’T STACK AND WATER FIELD BLAST UNAVOIDABLE PEOPLE

Healer is a necessity in raids. PvP? If you want. Old dungeons? Nope. Single player? If you don’t like killing things. This is the way of GW2 now. Don’t like it? Don’t play it.

Agreed, its been the case with fractals and in other games when Raids came, too… And if you look at that Wyvern Legendary boss fight, there is a lot of AOE that kills people a lot of the time with and without aegis and protection.

At least if you dodge out of it, you can get a druid to heal you up more than your self heal can heal you.

I don’t know if I’d say Druid is 100% healing, its mostly healing yes, but I found on my druid that in a dungeon like Honor of the Waves, healing was helpful especially to glass cannons like thieves and the few elementalists and other professions that rarely use healing skills especially on that Lani fight.

Problem is that unlike Reaper and other specializations which shine in WvW and PvP as well as in PvE, Druid is more of a strict PvE oriented specialization. This is okays, cause I don’t mind switching out specializations to gain back my marksmenship or beast mastery… but it sucks when you take it to WvW and think that since you could solo a camp or tower on a reaper that you can do the same on druid. Then you are in for a royal awakening cause it won’t happen. Well, if it does its only cause you outlasted and no one came to check on the camp or tower you were taking.

I on all my characters have some aspect of group healing, often with Ranger it was pet healing others and my healing spring, until the update that made shout heal better. The same applies to my other classes/professions. I like to have some support capability and not be like a thief or Mesmer is traditionally played where technically they are all damage oriented.

If you come at druid with the mentality of wanting to support others and not really caring if you get the highest numbers in the battle, well… Druid is a nice version of that.

Then there is the problem… Druid literally can’t PvP with that mind set. Yes you can heal people but just like in other games like TERA for instance that is a strict Tank, DPS, Healer role game… Healer is the one that is targeted first. And often the one that dies first in PvP situations unless tank and DPS protect the healer while being healed by said healer. So A.Net, please make Druid more viable in PvP and WvW yes.

I’d add one last thing, can’t Druid hold the staff like everyone else?

This is my two cents on it all…

I would like another class to be a healer than elementalist (staff users). I’ve out healed on Necro using Death Shroud number 4 skill than most necros. I’ve out healed on guardian using the signet of courage than any class I’ve played up to this point. It may not be practical for the current dungeons and fractals we do now, but in EotM and WvW Druids will be a god send for those large zerg versus zerg fights.

However, with that said, I like that Druid depending on how you spec it can be healer, or DPS and we are already tanky if you learn to dodge things right. However, we still need more reliable skills that are practical in PvP, but meh we’ll see how it goes from there.

Oh and by the way in all other games MMOs I’ve played, I prefer healing over dps and tanking. I love the challenge you get from doing all that, so for me I’m looking forward to it.

it seems fixed now, but only tested with spider, eagle, bear, and lynx.