Guild Wars 2

Why are you embracing the power creep? Don’t you realize your game feels incredibly spammy already? Why are you lowering CDs when you should be doing the exact opposite? You should have brought down all the elite specs to the level of core ones, there’s very little decision making or strategy anymore. Key skills and attacks don’t feel like they have any weight behind them, you use them on CD more often than not, and most importantly, dodge. Your dodge botton no longer feels like a strategic or even risky choice anymore, it’s always there to use it whenever needed; even top tier players often use it to gain a veeery slight movent speed increase, becouse it’s THAT spammable or because professions are now filled with a trillion passive and active defenses that it doesn’t matter that much anymore!
Why do most of the skills have a million side effects? Just two very small random examples: Head Butt-> Low CD, short charge, CC break, incredible damage, full adrenaline bar. Bandit’s Defense-> Low CD, Stun breaker, movable-all-directional-Block, strong CC. And I could go on forever, absolutely ridiculous. Do you remember how incredibly good and hard hitting once was the Warrior hammer? You are giving flat damage increases of up to +28% on some skills nowadays for kitten sakes!
Most classes don’t have any meaningful resource management to take care of, they’re locked behind CDs, and those classes that have one, ironically, feel even more spammy… I wont continue from here, you get the point.
Please! If you keep up with this trend it’s going to blow up in your faces sooner or later.

With that said… If, sadly, you’re going to go on with this…
…Guardian greatsword is still trash tier. But you’re looking into it, that’s GOOD!
Consider removing the speed penalty on Whirling Wrath, Increase Binding Blade leash range to 900, add 1.5s of immobilize on Symbol of Wrath upon cast and you’re good to go. The weapon either needs to have INCREDIBLY offensive potential or just add some defensive utility to some of the skills (proyectile hate on WW maybe?), currently, sword+any offhand significantly outperforms it at both cathegories.
You were trying to improve unused utility skills, yet not a single meaningful change to a Signet or Spirit weapon. BAD!

You significantly buffed condi mesmers and condi thieves in WvW as collateral damage. BAD! Just remove(replace, duh!) Dire gear and equivalent sets already!

Adrenal Health: The amount healed by this trait has been reduced by 10% in PvP only.
^That’s like less than 100hps, like, nothing, at all. This was done to skew player perception. Power Berzerkers are still going to be incredibly broken in WvW and top tier in sPvP with top notch sustain, condi and direct damage defense and ridiculous damage (like most elite specs that have it all).

Stop overbuffing Maul!

Not much else to say, CDs reductions and (significant) flat damage increases to, ya know, embrace the power creep this expansion created, that sadly took most of the fun away from the game.

kdaddy.5431:

Khenzy.9348:

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

figures this would be the thread when the only thing imbalanced is thief

Berzerker Warrior is right up there with Thief, any top tier and experienced player agrees.

It’s the endless DHs complaints I’m finding amusing.

1 you do know who that is right?

2nd i disagree, i find most high level players are not looking at warriors as OP.

This is why Anet needs to implement a badge/rating next to the persons name who posts in the PvP forum/ WvW level in the WvW forum.

1- I don’t give a crap who anyone is in here. Mine and anyone elses opinion matters just as much as his/hers.

2- Many competent players I personally know agree Warrior is a little too strong. Anecdotal evidence and yadda yadda, DEAL with it. Welcome to internet forums. You also have to take into consideration player perception as is clearly stated in these forums, even though I don’t agree in regards to DHs. You could also watch the Helseth and Sindrener tourney and listen to what they say, ya’ know.

3- Willing to turn this forum into a circlejerk of overentitled elitists from an already declining sPvP community, where OPINIONS are mostly only validated only if you’re the high top 0.0001% of high end PvP just shows you’re not that clever. Good luck with that.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

figures this would be the thread when the only thing imbalanced is thief

Berzerker Warrior is right up there with Thief, any top tier and experienced player agrees.

It’s the endless DHs complaints I’m finding amusing.

Some (many!) of you are going to be very dissapointed.

:/

Yeah, these are the three strongest soloq professions right now in my opinion.

Berzerker(Warriors) have been buffed to high heaven while all the others, with the exception of Daredevils, have been constantly nerfed.

Chronomancers still have a lot of OP crap while outputting a lot of damage.

Spartacus.3192:

You have to absolutely be much higher skill level than everyone else to do well with Rev now with all the nerfs its had. Its simply not worth it unless you really love playing the class. It does better if you can duo with an Ele to help cleanse for you.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Ive seen so many odd buffs and nerfs that I dont even try making sense of or pushing for fixes anymore. Revenant is bad, but I’m fine with having to try harder.

What?

Power Rev is still pretty decent, it’s just not mandatory anymore.

All it needs is more mobility to be the perfect profession.

Completely agreed with CptCuddles, instead of balancing the Hot specs, they are fully embracing the powercreep and buffing the core specs by introducing autotrigger passive traits or significantly reducing CDs. They should be doing the opposite, they should be nerfing elite specs significantly.
Special mention to low CD skills with a million secondary effects.

Condi Chrono changes are nowhere near enough. Shield, Signet of Illusions, Portal and Moa are the main culprits. Could you please move portal to Elite status already? Increase Shield and SoI CDs significantly? Or maybe even touching chronophantasma and/or other overpowered traits? The profession would no longer be mandatory then.

Now that you took care of Heralds (which most likely wont be mandatory anymore, hopefully… the nerfs are not as serious as they sound), this is a good time to do it.
Also, nothing on Necros, Warriors and Rangers? Balance affects directly and indirectly every single profession, not doing anything to those is a mistake.

They are pushing a condi meta sooo hard.

Fresh Air eles will never be viable as long as power thieves/daredevils delete them with just a stare. The arcane Shield buff and the channeling and target nature of most scepter skills wont change such a hard counter.

You didn’t even touch what makes PvP unfun and annoying:

Stability and boon spam in general (worsened with HoT).
Block uptime (worsened with HoT).
AoE and single target blind spam.
Extremely low CD stun breakers (introduced with HoT).
Still too much sustain, dodge spam and invulnerability frames.
Autotrigger passive traits.
Extreme unbalance on mobility (combat and out of combat) among different classes.
You barely touched CC by nerfing Piercing Light, you still have loooong ways to go.

And the high risk high reward ratio with 90% of the HoT skills (it’s all kittened up).

Condi Chrono.
Power Herald.
Menders Druid.

Guardian’s gonna get it with the new elite spec.

Lahmia.2193:

The bonus unblockable on binding blade may be a bit much, considering Dragonhunter already has access to the most powerful (edit) unblockable pull in the game. But reduction is cooldown and cast time is a good idea. Maybe increase projectile speed as well?

You said it yourself, Guardians are the kings of blocking and anti-block. Let’s emphasize that, guardians lack mobility and cripples as a whole.
Is spite of all the improvements suggested, the greatsword would only have damage and a pitiful pull, it would still pale in comparision to Sword+anything.

From a PvP point of view, Greatsword is utter trash and has always been.

Suggestions:
Whirling Wrath: Cast time reduced to ¼s. Proyectiles removed, and damage from said proyectiles back to the melee whirl. It no longer slows the Guardian during the animation.
Leap of Faith: CD redudced to 12s base (9.6s traited).
Symbol of Wrath: CD reduced to 15s (12s). It now applies 1.5s of immobilize upon cast.
Binding Blade>Pull: CD reduced to 25s (20s). Cast time reduced to ¼s on both skills. Bonus (optional) A plus to weapon utility: Binding Blade proyectiles are now unblockable.

There, Greatsword is now PvP viable.

All these nerfs did is that they made druid significantly weaker against condition heavy specs on all professions. Now, they all have 5 more seconds to time a condi burst on the druid, which is huge.

Druid could always deal with power builds with ease, and still can, but slightly less so, which is fine. Druid was disgustingly broken, foolproof and mistake-friendly in small scale.

After the nerfs, you either run 1000+ healing power or 0. Otherwise you’re wasting stats. You could do fine with 500-600 before, not anymore.

Celestial is utter garbage with all the other 4 stat combos you have available nowadays, delete or change stats on that crap.

^You have a single melee weapon yet you want a fourth ranged weapon? How come? Rhetorical questions by the way, you don’t have to answer them.( ^0^)

Just bumping this kitten up.

A mirage themed melee Mesmer with a condi axe and blurr evasions sounds friken’ amazing, c’mon guys!

Chaith.8256:

Khenzy.9348:

The sPvP player-base is diminishing enough already, let’s discuss this with at least some impartial and constructive perspective.

My perspective isn’t non-constructive. I also don’t agree with your perspective that the outcry should always be catered to because clearly the game is always at fault if enough people are raging.

And there’s two big reasons why: Scrapper and Druid.

Scrapper and Druid over-perform in low tier PvP with minimal effort, and it’s the perfect answer to DH spam. The tools for equality and balance on all skill levels are all there, it’s not fixable by ArenaNet when players roll Thief, Mesmer, and Necro vs 3 Dragonhunters and throw their bodies back and forth over Tests of Faith. Little can be done about that.

I don’t object to reducing the strength of DH with minimal effort, ie: foolproofing things like Test of Faith as long as it’s not going to throw a wrench in the balance when interacting as intended – players on both sides know their buttons. I’d be interested in critiquing ideas like that.

Even better, I’ll just contribute a freaking amazing idea.

N00b proof Dragonhunter stacking, but not affect mid tier and above as much, change Test of Faith to where: A player can not be affected by Test of Faith’s threshold-crossing-punishment more than once every second.

This would make it so players being pulled, pushed, or idly walking through multiple Tests of Faith from 1-3 Dragonhunters wouldn’t just instantly die.

I was merely pointing out that we should make a shift in the discussion in a constructive way, not claiming what you said was not contructive, because it was, very different things.
I never said the outcries should always be catered to, they just show the overall perception of balance the current meta has, something that should be taken into account, but that’s it. I also think, personally, DHs are a clear issue right now, they require very low input to achive high effectiveness (specially in lower tiers) which contributes to their high population. Druid and Scrapper balance has been an issue for several seasons now, even if they can handle DHs, that does not make it acceptable in my opinion.

If according to you the issue is Thief, Mesmer, and Necro players throwing ‘their bodies back and forth over Tests of Faith’, you can’t fix people’s idiocy, this is not the point I was trying to make. I think we are discussing in different terms here. Also, just for the sake of pointing this out, not all casual or new players are necessarily noobs, let’s try to show them as much respect as we can, shall we?

I don’t think the issue is specifically Test of Faith at lower tiers (have you even seen people play, much less play yourself, at this tier?), your suggestion is definitely a good start though . I think it’s the amount of instant or near-instant CC (shield, spear, traps)+high spike heals that become a little too much to handle, specially when there’s more than one DH. Obviously this particular situation is the sum of many things (other classes’ nerfs, amulet removal and so on).

Chaith.8256:

-snip.

This is all fine. But, do you realize DHs are destroying low(er) tier PvP? Their effectiveness to effort ratio is clearly way off. That’s the issue. New, inexperienced and potentially (interested) long(er) term palyers are by far the most important player-base. It’s evident some of them are going to get turned off after getting destroyed by some DH with seemingly little effort.

I, personally, could care less about DH balance as I can handle them just fine on my Druid regardless of tier. Realistically though, I definetly see the point in some of the complaints, even if after some balance said DH ends up not being as effective in higher tier play. Something (anything!) needs to be done balance-wise as soon as possible.

There’s a feeling of frustration and discomfort in how this profession currently performs or else you wouldn’t see these numerous complaints in these forums and map chat in-game. The sPvP player-base is diminishing enough already, let’s discuss this with at least some impartial and constructive perspective.

Supreme.3164:

-around 2.1k power, 40%+ crit chance and 80% crit dmg

There lies (quite possibly) your issue. A properly geared and played power revenant is going to outsustain you every time. With those stats I’m pretty sure you’re overly tanky.
Druids have all the tools to counter a revenant/herald.

You need more damage.

It needs its cast time halved at the very least.

Jana.6831:

In my opinion it’s the balance…

It IS the balance, although in this case not the only reason, it’s always the balance. The class you play (or in this case, the game-mode too) dictates how you play and in that way it also influences what you have fun with within the game itself. It’s by far the most important factor that dictates fun gameplay.

From game balance a meta-game is derived and as such how the game mode is actually played. We have a dichotomy in which the game devs think a clever move is to maintain balance as equal as it can possibly be between all the different game-modes, which is, within the very roots of the idea, a clearly wrong move , or, by just listening to their arguments, more like a fallacy … as proven by the diminishing numbers.

Justine.6351:

I went through and made it more staff oriented.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQFAWjEqQNLWyCusAVLWMEMmAworBA3VHrp1m31JoFcSSLJN-TlRFAB9pEsKlftt/oDAgHAwhq/kwFAIAACwMnZAwMn5Mn5MnZhAUMHA-w

I avoided making it glass by using celestial trinkets.
I left the weapon swap set out. You can use,
Longbow
Axe or sword with, torch or axe

If you want it to be glass mix it sinister and rampager stats.

Oh and I put provisioner food in it, that’s a wvw dispenser thing you can/should get.

What the h** is this? Please Demiroid.8574, don’t waste your gold on that mess.

Ranger/Druid is top tier in small scale fights.

It’s trash tier pretty much everywhere else.

DH is really strong right now. Give them more mobility on Symbol of Blades not requiring a target to move the player and you have a meta spec for seasons to come. DPS and defense wise, the class is fine.

Sidizen.9048:

Khenzy.9348:

Those are with just food buffs and bordelands bloodlust.

I haven’t been beaten 1v1 in months with this thing.

PS: I don’t 1v1 full dire condi daredevils. Nothing beats a decent one in 1v1 right now.

What’s your build and what’s this condi daredevil build you speak of?

My apologies for “necroing this thread up”.

I left the game even before I posted here my stats. I donno if you’re going to read this but my build is as follows: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV8YjUqQLLWyCOsAXLWyEM4ZaOdo+UDSVTsmkVA4AUi0PD-TFBFAA0FAoPCAwDAYPIAECo8YA-w

I’ve tried longbow very extensively and, even though it’s a decent wapon, for roaming specifically, shortbow ended up being the superior weapon against most match ups. Shortbow is just that much better for constant pressure and when a foe’s in melee range of you. S/D is just as defensive and mobile as GS but with way more constant damage with AA. GS also has its share number of unreliable skills.

Celestial Shadow and Ancient Seeds are absolute must haves (for roaming obvisously), don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The fist is the strongest roaming trait in the entire game. The second can get you wins against several classes, necromancers come to mind. You can also reliably set it up with shortbow 5.

As for the thief (daredevil) build, it should be something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAoYn8lCFmidmCOmCkmilviyLAaxibO4P+lv7kSxVE-TFAhAKPGA-w

Give or take some traits. Full dire gear. Your typical FotM condition rune and sigils.

Those are with just food buffs and bordelands bloodlust.

I haven’t been beaten 1v1 in months with this thing.

PS: I don’t 1v1 full dire condi daredevils. Nothing beats a decent one in 1v1 right now.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

all four stats are fine.
all four stats with both 560 vitality and toughness are fine.

the problem lies with the abundance of defensive abilities, not the stats from the amulets.

Stop. They are not going to do a balance pass that may affect all game modes. This is how they balance from now on. Get over it already.

And yes, ‘overbudgeted’ amulets need to go. You can’t just balance every single skill on every profession just because a single amulet is allowing builds such as signet necros, condi mesmers or burn zerkers have great damage and great defense at the same time and be the obvious go-to amulet above all others. You go the easy and safest way, just like they did.

ALL 4 stat amulets should go, not only mercenary, I agree there.

To the above poster, Dire stats should have never been a thing, it completely ruined WvW roaming forever.

Celestial Shadow+Druidic Clarity is the strongest trait combo in the game for roaming. You crazy lunatic!

This is just an issue of not having resource management. The two classes that have it, it fills to quickly for them to even be considered a concern.

GW2 once had a mana+potion system back in alpha, but it was scratched entirely. I wish it would have stayed, the game would have been so much more balaced (or ‘balanceable’ for that matter) with such a sytem in place.

D/P thief and condi engi are by far the strongest core specs. The above poster is wrong, no properly speced engi lacks sustain or defense.

Additional changes I’d make to shortbow:

Crossfire damage increased by 30%.
Reduced cone spread of Poison volley by around 20% to guarantee that at least 2 shots hit your target at maximun range.
Quick Shot now also removes Cripple, Chill and Immobilize.
Cripling Shot Cripple duration increased to 6s.
Concussion Shot now grants 2 seconds of Quickness if you successfully interrupt a cast.

It’s supposed to be your kiting weapon, it’s terrible at it.

The change I’d make to Sword:

Hornet Sting has its cast time reduced to ¼s.

Sword only needs that, otherwise it’s a fine weapon now.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Khenzy.9348:

First, they make a difference, they really do. PvP and WvW is all I do, and they definetly make a difference there. Saying the side-heals never make a difference ‘period’ is a blunt and meaningless statement if you don’t specify in what situation are these heals lacking.

Seeing numbers does not equal being useful.
How many times have you saved a person by auto-attacking with a staff?

Because you still don’t understand that you have to heal the same person for 10 seconds to give him 3000 HP back.
In a zerg where 40 different people run one through another making it impossible to focus on healing 1 person this is even less possible.

Are you gonna shout “Stand still for 10 seconds! I’m gonna heal you!”? Well I don’t think so. The healing you are so proud of is useless because in order to be noticeable – a person has to be away from damage for a looooong time. In which he can literally just step out of combat and get back again being healed to full.
And by talking about Zerg, I wonder how noticeable is healing random people for 400 HP in a 30 second interval where people die in 5 seconds if they step their foot in a wrong place.

You said I didn’t specify the situation? I’ll correct myself, then.
The side-heals from staff are useless in every situation and environment. Better now?
I’m sorry, but there hasn’t been a single input about Auto-Attack saving anyone from dying. PvE,PvP or WvW. I know you feel good about seeing lots of green numbers – but they have no real value.

I didn’t praise in any of my posts the AA of the staff as a decent healing source for others, I don’t really know where you’re coming from, in fact, I came to this very thread to undermine the staff, becouse it’s an overrated weapon. All I said was that with the proper setup it can be a decent selfsustain weapon, that’s it. Also, I never claimed the staff to be good in zergs, all the healing that matters in zergs (as far as I know) are blasting waterfields (which it gives you one btw) leaving all other sources of healing besides your nº6 skill, well, pretty overshadowed. It’s a pretty decent weapon for roaming (something you think to deliberately omit) and small group organized squads where you can place a very valuable water field for you and your team mates to blast, again, that’s it.
All your poor argumentation comes out of nowhere, filled with anecdotal evidence fallacies.

I never said the “side-heals of the staff”, I just said the side-heals from staff and from your CA, which again, provide pretty decent healing in spite of what you say. Rangers are awesome ressers, side supporters and point campers in sPvP and the healing is pretty noticeable.

" I know you feel good about seeing lots of green numbers – but they have no real value." That’s just the cherry on top. Thank you.

Jesus, surprinsingly (or maybe not), there are people that actually support you and all the bullkitten you spout out in your druid hate circlejerk just because it’s not the class you imagined it to be. The Druid is a very good spec, sub-spec or whatever, for what it is and for what it does if you compare it to other specs and professions, also, you’re not going to get a straight up direct healing skill on the staff AA. Deal with it.

Swagger.1459:

Khenzy.9348:

Swagger.1459:

Khenzy.9348:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Khenzy.9348:

Well, that’s just a different choise of words. Maybe it’s the content you play that does not encourage such a playstyle, but the side heals I can toss out from time to time are just fine with the way (and where) I play.

I play every content except WvW and none encourages the playstyle.
The side heals are never really gonna make a difference. Period.
The green numbers you see from Staff or Regen have no lasting value besides making you feel good about yourself. However, it doesn’t work on analytical type of people who always check results before making a statement.

Plus you missed the point. You still can’t heal when it is needed. You can heal people when you finished the silly mini-game of running behind peoples’ backs long enough.
And you’re gonna miss the heal if the target isn’t stationary anyway.

Druid gave us a lot of nice things.
But what I keep repeating all over and over again is that those nice things have horrible QoL issues as well as awful unfriendly design.

First, they make a difference, they really do. PvP and WvW is all I do, and they definetly make a difference there. Saying the side-heals never make a difference ‘period’ is a blunt and meaningless statement if you don’t specify in what situation are these heals lacking.

Second, I never talked about the staff in terms of healing, which, by the way, proved to be a great selfsustain weapon: with Live Vicarously you secure yourself 200hps alone with the AA, that plus high regen uptime with shouts you’re at around 330hps, you then can have things such as Sigil of blood, SIgnet of the Wild and so on which puts you above 400hps, that’s higher than Warrior’s Healing Signet, then you have your staff 3+staff 5, which puts you waaaay beyond that. The AA does pretty decent damage with Air+fire sigils while retaining all that sustain. Staff 3+5 can also do some decent burst healing to allies, which is all what the druid is about.

Third, I didn’t miss any point because I didn’t state one in the first place. The only bad CA skill is the nº 1, which is a sustained heal in a CA form designed to do burst healing, so you heal more with CA 3 and 4. But that’s it.

Druid is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. It’s NOT your classic MMORPG WoW copy cat healer, this game’s desing doesn’t have that and does not support it.

From twitchcon stream…

“Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raids and WvW. Can sustain a zerg train of 20-30 players in WvW.”

Nobody is disputing the improved self sustaining build of Ranger/Druid. Most of them are all the same builds running in wvw now.

We are talking about the healing role. Go spec for healer and go “sustain a zerg train of 20-30 players in WvW” with that “heavy healing unlike anything you have seen before in GW2”… You could take that healing build and go to spvp too.

Stream and record how good the healing side of Druid is and get back to us so we can have a discussion of healing design mechanics and roles and viability and build diversity.

That’s just marketing fluff. Read and interpret the mechanics to make a more informed opinion. The spec is obviously not what that description says but it has its niche.

Note: I could care less about PvE and Raids. Those places are not the ones you should be having a discussion with me. Well, I’m not even playing this game anymore to be honest, I’ve got tired of terrible balance, false promises, empty and shallow ideas, and lack of content.

I’m talking abut wvw and spvp… I made zero mention of pve or raids personally. That was just in the full quote from the dev.

Then don’t defend poor designs just because they made an improved self sustaining bunker that can move better in wvw…

“They made an improved self sustaining bunker that can move better in wvw.” That’s quite the narrow definition you have there but I take it.
The devs made a poor job at selling the spec with a predetermined descriptive vision of what it is(was) according to them, got it. Besides that, and with what we currently have right now, what’s wrong with giving (zerker) Rangers ridiculous selfsustain, amazing condi cleansing, stupid strong CC, and situational AoE burst healing in WvW? Or a completely viable bunkery/bruiser supportive role, while being undisputable kings in 1v1 with lots of good (meta) match ups in sPvP?

Swagger.1459:

Khenzy.9348:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Khenzy.9348:

Well, that’s just a different choise of words. Maybe it’s the content you play that does not encourage such a playstyle, but the side heals I can toss out from time to time are just fine with the way (and where) I play.

I play every content except WvW and none encourages the playstyle.
The side heals are never really gonna make a difference. Period.
The green numbers you see from Staff or Regen have no lasting value besides making you feel good about yourself. However, it doesn’t work on analytical type of people who always check results before making a statement.

Plus you missed the point. You still can’t heal when it is needed. You can heal people when you finished the silly mini-game of running behind peoples’ backs long enough.
And you’re gonna miss the heal if the target isn’t stationary anyway.

Druid gave us a lot of nice things.
But what I keep repeating all over and over again is that those nice things have horrible QoL issues as well as awful unfriendly design.

First, they make a difference, they really do. PvP and WvW is all I do, and they definetly make a difference there. Saying the side-heals never make a difference ‘period’ is a blunt and meaningless statement if you don’t specify in what situation are these heals lacking.

Second, I never talked about the staff in terms of healing, which, by the way, proved to be a great selfsustain weapon: with Live Vicarously you secure yourself 200hps alone with the AA, that plus high regen uptime with shouts you’re at around 330hps, you then can have things such as Sigil of blood, SIgnet of the Wild and so on which puts you above 400hps, that’s higher than Warrior’s Healing Signet, then you have your staff 3+staff 5, which puts you waaaay beyond that. The AA does pretty decent damage with Air+fire sigils while retaining all that sustain. Staff 3+5 can also do some decent burst healing to allies, which is all what the druid is about.

Third, I didn’t miss any point because I didn’t state one in the first place. The only bad CA skill is the nº 1, which is a sustained heal in a CA form designed to do burst healing, so you heal more with CA 3 and 4. But that’s it.

Druid is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. It’s NOT your classic MMORPG WoW copy cat healer, this game’s desing doesn’t have that and does not support it.

From twitchcon stream…

“Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raids and WvW. Can sustain a zerg train of 20-30 players in WvW.”

Nobody is disputing the improved self sustaining build of Ranger/Druid. Most of them are all the same builds running in wvw now.

We are talking about the healing role. Go spec for healer and go “sustain a zerg train of 20-30 players in WvW” with that “heavy healing unlike anything you have seen before in GW2”… You could take that healing build and go to spvp too.

Stream and record how good the healing side of Druid is and get back to us so we can have a discussion of healing design mechanics and roles and viability and build diversity.

That’s just marketing fluff. Read and interpret the mechanics to make a more informed opinion. The spec is obviously not what that description says but it has its niche.

Note: I could care less about PvE and Raids. Those places are not the ones you should be having a discussion with me. Well, I’m not even playing this game anymore to be honest, I’ve got tired of terrible balance, false promises, empty and shallow ideas, and lack of content.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Khenzy.9348:

Well, that’s just a different choise of words. Maybe it’s the content you play that does not encourage such a playstyle, but the side heals I can toss out from time to time are just fine with the way (and where) I play.

I play every content except WvW and none encourages the playstyle.
The side heals are never really gonna make a difference. Period.
The green numbers you see from Staff or Regen have no lasting value besides making you feel good about yourself. However, it doesn’t work on analytical type of people who always check results before making a statement.

Plus you missed the point. You still can’t heal when it is needed. You can heal people when you finished the silly mini-game of running behind peoples’ backs long enough.
And you’re gonna miss the heal if the target isn’t stationary anyway.

Druid gave us a lot of nice things.
But what I keep repeating all over and over again is that those nice things have horrible QoL issues as well as awful unfriendly design.

First, they make a difference, they really do. PvP and WvW is all I do, and they definetly make a difference there. Saying the side-heals never make a difference ‘period’ is a blunt and meaningless statement if you don’t specify in what situation are these heals lacking.

Second, I never talked about the staff in terms of healing, which, by the way, proved to be a great selfsustain weapon: with Live Vicarously you secure yourself 200hps alone with the AA, that plus high regen uptime with shouts you’re at around 330hps, you then can have things such as Sigil of blood, SIgnet of the Wild and so on which puts you above 400hps, that’s higher than Warrior’s Healing Signet, then you have your staff 3+staff 5, which puts you waaaay beyond that. The AA does pretty decent damage with Air+fire sigils while retaining all that sustain. Staff 3+5 can also do some decent burst healing to allies, which is all what the druid is about.

Third, I didn’t miss any point because I didn’t state one in the first place. The only bad CA skill is the nº 1, which is a sustained heal in a CA form designed to do burst healing, so you heal more with CA 3 and 4. But that’s it.

Druid is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. It’s NOT your classic MMORPG WoW copy cat healer, this game’s desing doesn’t have that and does not support it.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Khenzy.9348:

Druid is the best thing that EVER happened to rangers.

No, druid is the most viable thing that ever happened to rangers.
It is the worst designed specialization in the whole gaming industry as far as I can tell.

Which other game has a healer that has to avoid healing people to full HP, could you tell?

Well, that’s just a different choise of words. Maybe it’s the content you play that does not encourage such a playstyle, but the side heals I can toss out from time to time are just fine with the way (and where) I play.

atheria.2837:

runeblade.7514:

Fluffball.8307:

EvilZombie.6801:

staff = pew pew pew v2.0

Can you explain this sentiment? I feel like the “pew pew” meme nonsense is based on people thinking LB is an OP damage weapon , but staff is one of the least damaging weapons in the entire game.

It is the weapon that gets me a lot of kills. It is far far superior than Longbow.

• It tracks players. You can not side step away from staff attack.
• It is instant. The moment you press the button is the moment the player gets damaged.
• Staff 3 is one of the best mobility skill in the game. Combine with GS, enemies can never escape you or chase you.

It is impossible to escape Staff pewpewpew. At least with longbow, I can see the arrow coming and dodge it when I see it near me. I can get out of range because Longbow doesn’t have a mobility skill.

I win more fight with staff than I ever did with Longbow or any other weapon.

Now, if I can just figure out how to survive when I switch to any other weapon – but it isn’t happening.

Funny thing is while playing WvW as of late, running an 80% or so zerker Druid (while solo roaming) wiht Longbow+Greatsword, my longbow proved 10 times more affective at killing people, I pulled 2v1s and 3v1s much more often than with the staff and I could disengage just as well if not better.
Point Blank Shot+Ancient Seeds proved to be stupidly strong, you also have like twice the pressure and burst, while with a staff, your enemy actually has to engage in a long drowned out fight of attrition becouse you don’t have any burst whatsoever, if you fight an even slightly tanky foe, you’re not going to kill it in a reasonable amount of time, if at all. The staff’s mobility is great, but stealth just proved to me again that it’s the strongest disengage tool in the game, by far. And with Hunter’s Shot and Celestial shadow, you have tons of it.
With Point Blank Shot+Ancient Seeds you can even land a full Barrage on someone, so not even that skill is wasted in 1v1s.
The Staff also has two wasted skills (which the Longbow doesn’t): Astral Wisp, which is not worth casting, like, ever; and Vine Surge, with its long cast time which makes it a stupidly unreliable skill.

I say this as someone who tested countless hours (in PvP and WvW) all the different combos. In WvW, Longbow+Greatsword zerker Druid with Defender Runes was by far the most effective combo while roaming that I could find.

Druid is the best thing that EVER happened to rangers.

Some Glyph utilities are incredibly good.

It’s a DPS and support increase in PvE.

From a PvP perspective: On demand 10s CD stealth+super speed, that cleanses ALL conditions AND breaks stuns which also allows you to reset a fight with incredible selfhealing potential with 0 healing power.

Or a 12s CD ranged Entangle with a Longbow.

Or ridicoulously broken mobility with Greatsword+Staff.

All of this made rangers the undiputable gods of 1v1.

Get real people.

/signed. Ranger player.

Woah, this nerf seems minor, but it’s actually huge. :/

Pretty much what everyone else says.

- Reaper’s minor chill damage nerf (this one is sorely needed right now, and it should be significant).
- Partial revert on Thief AA damage buff.
- Some minor nerfs to power Herald.
- Some minor (should be huge) nerfs to Scrapper survivability.
- Ranger’s Bristtleback bug fix. From 20 projectiles to 15.

… to get an ascended amulet with crusader stats?

If so, how?

Thanks for reading!

Rune of the Defender has incredible sinergy with your build. Good choice!

PowerBottom.5796:

philheat.3956:

Is it so difficult move the pet damage to ranger and use f2 for utility only?

It really isn’t – and it would actually give the ranger some choices which pet they wanna pick. Right now, you can either pick bristle and smokescale, or sth. bad.

Just make Sword AA useful and not this weird thing it is now (just a normal AA-chain plz, like anyone else), give Staff and GS a bit more dps on AA and give Shortbow an overhaul, like guaranteed bleed on AA.

Then just tone down dmg of smoke and bristle by at least 20% and voilà!

These sound reasonable. The problem is that Anet is terrible at gathering feedback and even worse at the implementation of said suggestions. I just gave up, and trust me, I’ve made my fair share of ’em.

hint: They directly ask Pro-ESL players for feedback regarding balance. They only take our feedback from a ‘general player’s perception of what’s OP’. They don’t really actually take our suggestions into account.
_
Back on topic. We all have to consider that Pets are the main Ranger’s mechanic. It’s the only profession that can have its core mechanic disabled for a long period of time. It also usually works terribly the more people you have in a teamfight.

It’s not a matter of just nerfing the damage from pets, because then you remove druids from meta as they can’t really bunker a point even with the (now deleted) most tanky amulets. You can’t really nerf them without compensation in this case. But knowing Anet, I don’t have any hopes, hell, I don’t play anymore… I’ll come back when I percieve this game’s balance reaches what I’d consider a healthier state.

shion.2084:

Khenzy.9348:

Scrappers have more sustain, durability, utility, damage and CC than the old cele D/D ele meta… with MARAUDER amulet. You know something is seriously wrong when something like this happens. I don’t know how they’ve been avoiding the nerf bat this long.

Power Heralds have comparable sustain on marauder’s as well. Oh well.

Can you provide substansive evidence of this, that an engineer will outperform in all of those categories simultaneously?

Are you being deliberately idiotic or are you kittening kidding me?

Scrappers have more sustain, durability, utility, damage and CC than the old cele D/D ele meta… with MARAUDER amulet. You know something is seriously wrong when something like this happens. I don’t know how they’ve been avoiding the nerf bat this long.

Power Heralds have comparable sustain on marauder’s as well. Oh well.

I don’t usually complain on forums or anywhere else for that matter, but reaper’s current state is almost irrational, the damage pressure they can put out is beyond absurd, noone within his/her right mind would have let this hit live, ever. The pletora of corrupts may be the couse, other classes nerfs and/or amulet changes, I don’t really know, but this should not really stay like this for long if you have any morals and appreciation for your current player base.
I tried a 4 glyph druid with nature spirit, empathetic bond, purity and generosity sigils and evasive purity for the sake of it. I still exploded. Any sort of boon is a liability against them and you can’t even prevent getting a boon most of the time, counter-play just doesn’t exist here.

This is not balance, this is not shaking up the meta, this is turning it upside down, from one OP side to another.

Also, thief AA damage is too rewarding. Removing tanky amulets would have been enough.
Power heralds with invocation (which reapers don’t really counter all that much) are extremely strong and survivable.
All these 3 professions are going to be meta really soon.

I’ve been a faithful customer for long now (since GW1), but this is too much, with your balance decisions is like if you’re mocking us. That is something I wont tolerate.

I can confirm. Thief/daredevil damage is absolutely disgusting right now. If thieves reign supreme on this meta I’ll just leave this game for good.