Guild Wars 2

… do what?

Just curious to see what others plan on checking out first when HoT goes live since I’m planning on doing the personal story (i.e., boring route).

Feel free to list more than one if you can’t decide.

DPS meters are ultimately a divisive tool; a way for people to make snap judgments on strong vs weak players. (Not judging as I did this myself when I played WoW.) It also serves to extend the skill gap between good and bad players; good players will gain more of an advantage from things like DPS meters than a bad player will.

Most of the people (I’d wager close to 100%) in favor of a DPS meter on this thread are the ones that will do well on it so your viewpoints on the subject are naturally biased. (I.e, do you know how it feels to be on the lower part of the DPS meter?) I am personally torn on the subject because I am in favor of using a DPS meter but also know the harm it can do based on my experiences in other games. You can’t really separate the good from the evil as some have suggested.

Most of the arguments in favor of a DPS meter are moot anyways since these meters already exist for anyone truly interested in improving their gameplay. I’d wager that a good portion of the people in favor of an Anet supported DPS meter, wether they admit it or not, want one partly to wag their kittens with. (Again not judging, because I’ve been there and done that and regret doing so now that I’m older.)

I prefer condi for world map completion but play power almost exclusively for PVP. Every time I try out condi for PVP, I run into the same two problems:

1) My play style is to roam/plus 1 fights and condi just does not bring the burst to quickly turn the tide of battle that a power build is capable of. Condi is more of an attrition based style which doesn’t suit my play style.

2) Condi varies in effectiveness much more than a power build. As a condi, your DPS varies greatly depending on how much condi cleanse your opponents are running. As a power build, you can expect to bring the hurt regardless of what your opponent brings to the table.

“Systematic” does sound like its a change that will affect pets/minions across professions but we don’t know if the change will affect us since we don’t know if the devs classify phantasms/clones as pets/minions (as far as I know).

Yeah, BD is the only one that really doesn’t belong on this list as it competes with niche grandmasters (PU/Lockdown playstyles) so is often taken by people not running those particular builds.

I never would use Temporal Enchanter for the reason you stated but if the trait was tied to wells instead of glamours…. drools.

Belzebu.3912:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

As Belzebu calls out: You’ll have to check out the rest of the changes on the 23rd!

I … was joking … aww man.

Thanks Belzebub! :P

Justine.6351:

200 condi dmg, 25% ALL condi duration
175 condi dmg, 45% burn duration, aoe burn on heal & random quickness

Assuming dungeons,
If you are running:
Axe(yes)
2x Geomancy sigil(?)
spike trap (?prob not)
Entable (?)

id stick with your nightmare/trapper mix.
If you arnt running at minimal double geomancy sigil I would go balthazar.

Sorry I don’t got numbers. But the answer fairly obviously depends on how much focus you are putting in burn/bleed/balance.

This is the current build I use for fractals/dungeons:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAnPjMqQrK2uCUtYoQo+EIaDg+DG2Xgng29BqwJTA-TxxCABAcCAcW5HV7Dss6PhvwAyPAgxUCSIAFzBA-e

Metabattle also suggests taking sigil of geomancy? Is that a clear favorite over sigil of corruption, bursting, the plus 20% bleed duration sigils?

Also its 100 (not 200) condi, 25% all condi duration

How does a combo of 4 Nightmare/2 Trapper runes compare to full Nightmare? With the nightmare/trapper combo, you lose 75 condi damage but gain 10% condi duration.

Lome.8239:

You have +100 condi dmg and +25% duration from those, yes?

Balth is +175 Condi dmg and +45% Burn duration.

Yes, that is correct.

I’m running the typically Sinister A/T build, except I’m using 4 Nightmare/2 Trapper runes instead of 6 Balthazar runes. Can anyone confirm that DPS is higher going with 6 Balthazar runes before I make the change to it?

Chaos, I too played a healer in other mmos and thus had high hopes of playing a healing Druid in HoT but came away from this past beta feeling the same way you did.

Lots of advice/feedback given by players but considering we are out of betas and the amount of work that still needs to be done on Druid, its probably going to be a long while before it gets to what I consider a fun/fluid/polished playstyle.

I guess only time will tell though.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

The first time “terrorists” was brought up in a forum post about DPS meters, I was going to let it slide but this is just silly. People, who shout out terrorist usually have no basis for an argument and thus pull out the “terrorist” card to incite people’s baser emotions.

I reread dlonie’s post and if you were to replace DPS meters with guns, it would be paraphrased as follows:

dlonie) We live in a society where guns are banned but I think they should be allowed
B) No, some people will use them to kill others
dlonie) Just because some people are bad and will shoot others, you’re going to let the terrorists win?

WTF?

The fact that Jerus not only agreed to this, but quoted it himself, just shows the kind of leaps in logic some of the people in this thread are employing.

deSade.9437:

Leodon.1564:

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

Hnggghh-ugh… gaaaaaah. Gllllgglglglgl.

That’s pretty much what I thought when I read this. It clearly is stated by anet themselves that “any random group of people can join together and beat content” in raids, right? That’s exactly what they said, right? how they hyped raids?
NO. YOU HEARD IT WRONG.

True, I was thinking more of the base game than on raids when I wrote my statement. However, you proved my point that there are all types of individuals that play this game. I would argue that the playerbase of this game is no different from any other game. There is just less reason for people to get excited/stressed/angry over things in this game compared to other games that causes people to just be more friendly.

Not having a DPS meter could be just one of the contributing factors to creating this type of environment that fosters a friendlier playerbase; players like my good friend deSade. Who is to know?

In regards to raids, how challenging it will be is relative to the tools currently available to us. Adding a DPS meter is a tool that players can use to increase efficiency and provide them with an edge, but that is a double edged sword because developers are then just going to design content to be more challenging to keep up with the increase in player efficiency, so that the relative challenge remains the same.

Blaeys.3102:

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

I’d agree with this also.

While I would want to have it mainly so I can tweak my own performance and build. I would also use it to see how others are performing and would form negative opinions about under performing individuals. Its human nature and thus serves as a divisive tool. Currently, if a group under performs you shrug it off since you can’t really pinpoint who the weak links are and in the end you benefit from it by having less stress.

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

So I actually have a final question: what kind of theoretical dps does an elementalist do in an optimal party under these conditions?

I don’t know about Ele but people are claiming condie Sinister Engie are the best damage dealers for Vale Guardian and are doing around 17k DPS theoretical damage. (Ele fell out of the top spot since they require mobs to stand still for them to reach their max potential and mobs move too much in Raids.)

13k theoretical DPS for condie mesmer is not bad and is more than I expected actually.

Brimstar.9036:

The people who are saying 5% difference is nothing but between 10 people its a 50% difference collectively but…that 1-2% extra damage (per person) can be 10-20% more damage effectively.

Before you decide to have a hernia over math, you should first make sure your math is correct.

Chokolata.1870:

The issue with any full on glass build is that it is very unreliable without stealth. While the Ranger/Druid can get some it is not in ample supply like it is with Mesmer or Thief. We also do not have teleports.

While its arguable that Rangers don’t have as much stealth as Mesmers/Thieves, its not as far off as you make it out to be.

Between LB#3, Druid trait, and pet smokescreen, you can pop in and out of stealth more frequently than Mesmers (due to shorter cooldowns) but can’t stack it as long (mesmers have better on demand stealth but the abilities are on longer cooldowns).

Coulter.2315:

Avster.1935:

Ascended gear would be a real pain for those who like multi-classing…

You gain +20 Primary Stat and +16 Secondary Stats from Ascended Armour – just skip it… It is EXTREMELY unlikely to be the difference between win and loss.

You will not need Ascended Armour.

I didn’t bother reading this humongo thread because this is what I basically thought as well. IIRC, ascended armor made like 1-3% difference for a power build and less than 1% for a condi build. If this is true, I have to wonder what the uproar is about.

Weapons are arguably worth making but are easy enough to obtain.

Diet Plain.4513:

i like how we have a “meta” for something that isn’t even out yet.

+1

OP is just throwing out baseless assumptions and calls for nerfs/buffs when things were extremely out of whack this past BWE3 (at least for Druids). Druids were able to heal an entire 10 man raid while facerolling their keyboards because the class is very buggy/broken/raw at the moment which is why you saw Druids in most of the clear videos. There was no reason for any other class to step up healing wise when one druid made healing entirely trivial.

I don’t know enough about Scrapper to comment on them but it doesn’t surprise me that the two OP classes (condi scrapper/healing druid) in this past beta were the two classes that had the least amount of beta development time.

@Alpha

I thought condi single target DPS with clones was rather abysmally low (6k+ish) based on a FriFox video I saw recently on it.

I’m a bit confused though since you mentioned 12kish DPS and was wondering if you or FriFox could explain where the difference was coming from.

Didn’t read all of your changes because there was just too much to go through in one sitting but I thought your changes up to spirits were good. I wasn’t quite sure how Spirits worked though based on your description. (Could very well be just me as I was kind of tired while reading.)

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Unfortunately, sustained condi damage from shatters is already dramatically outperformed by sustained condi damage from phantasms/clones. Which is where the rest of mesmer kind is already, so condi isn’t very special in this regard, unfortunately.
The issue is, of course, that torment and confusion are terrible pve conditions. But our only sources of the real pve conditions (bleed, burn, poison) are from our clones and phantasms (except poison, we just don’t have a good source of that).

I have not tried this build but from what I gather it sounds like you want to shatter as often as possible for alacrity upkeep. So in this scenario, I was not trying to compare single target condi DPS through phantasms/clones but to compare the DPS difference between power and condi shatter. I’m going to assume condi shatter is better than power shatter but not sure of this or how much the difference is.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

So while yes, chrono will improve the condi’s output of confusion and torment, it will have little to no effect on our potential condition damage output, which itself wasn’t meta-worthy yet (and probably never will be, since they nerfed Duelist’s Discipline when they fixed it).

Actually, I’d be scared of the nerf bat if our DPS was anywhere near meta with the amount of alacrity/quickness we can upkeep. You can sort of justify the alacrity/quickness duration so long as our DPS remains near the bottom of the stack.

Mefiq.7039:

How about creating healthy mesmer build instead of cancer like Condi mesmer that is so extreame. There is 1 thing in this game i hate more than rangers and its Condi Mesmer build, it kittens totaly whole idea of playin pvp where you have to be active, attack to deal dmg, use stills to condi clear. When im forced to fight vs this pile of garbage it denies any movement (10++ torment) it denies any fight/cleansing(20+ conf) basicly renderig every melee class in 1v1 to nothing, i know this build is garbage in teamfghts but still, i would like more to get burned from noobguard than go fight with class that basicly need to drop all shatters/block/stealth/repeat, Atleast when im trying to cleanse burning i wont get punished with 1000+++ Conf tick.

TL:NR Condi Mesmer is not healthy for pvp so lets reduce it to the ground. Its insane only cuz of matchmaking system that wont balance team buildwise. If enemy got teamsupport u gonna suck, if they dont- god help them.

AND PLEASE! Dont try to deny that this build is totaly broken, I had arguments with burnguards that were saying “burnguard is just for fun and not rly effective(while stacking tons of burns)” they were so mad when i called thier trololo build broken and GUESS WHAT? Wheres medi guard? Not meta anymore? ooOooOoo Burnguard “so fun and not effective” build is meta now? They better kill this build before it grows.

AND YES im a Thief dont “burn” me

I don’t play condi for PVP but this post brought a smile to my face. (I also stopped reading after the first sentence but I get the gist of it.) Bonus points for it being a thief.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

frifox.5283:

Math can tell only so much. Granted, the more variables your math accounts for the clearer picture you will get but almost always it’s still just not enough. There are enough serious flaws with going condi that Power build is the only realistic option left…. for now.

Except my point is that I seem to be the only one who has done any math on condi mes at all since the June patch, and what I did do was surprisingly suggestive. And yet, everyone and their dog jumps on the power train every kitten time, when I guarantee almost none of them could point you to any math or practical testing to show that they are right.
Worse, Chronomancer changes everything, and there’s no way anyone has done all the math or testing required to count condi out on this.

I’m not counting condi out but I think what Fri is saying, is that Ascended gear makes very little difference when it comes to condi damage; to the point where its practically negligible.

Embolism.8106:

frifox.5283:

With HoT, my bet it on ascended power gear. Your condi gear can be left exotic simply because power benefits from ascended better than condi would – asc weapon strength (5% more dmg) applies only to direct dmg and has no effect on condi dmg. By leaving your condi gear exotic, you now can easily craft both Rabid and Sinister and keep them in your inv and use depending on your mood.

That’s some good advice right there, if you’re not rich enough to craft multiple ascended sets for every character.

Forgot about how little condi benefited from Ascended gear. Good advice and I’ll go with Berserker. Thanks guys.

Kidel.2057:

But, just to be clear, Druid was in every single group that beat the first raid boss.
That’s a fact. This is not “being relevant”, this is “being mandatory”.
It was the only healer of choice. No other healer could have done the same. If Druid is nerfed then we are screwed. So please just buff other healers and put a cd on Cele Avatar, otherwise the class is just immune to conditions (lol) and it’s “sustained burst” instead of “burst” as intended.

There is a HUGE difference between “in a good spot” and “mandatory”.

Druid will be nerfed/adjusted.

There is a bug in the way astral force is generated through staff that allowed Druids to change into Astral Form practically at will (took 2 to 5 seconds to generate enough astral force) in this past beta. Astral force generation is going to be adjusted and normalized across all weapons per the Ranger dev.

Which condi armor set is the best all around set for PVE? I’m leaning towards making a Rabid armor set since you can’t really go wrong with the stat combo it provides but Sinister is a strong contender as well.

With HoT/Chronomancer/Raids in mind, which armor would you recommend crafting?

Am thinking of trying Rev once HoT releases but wanted to get other people’s opinion on just how fun and well designed the class feels. I’m not interested in how powerful the class is compared to other classes; just purely how it feels to play for others.

So how does it rate compared to other classes you’ve played?

Has anyone tried a condi version of this build?

I’m thinking of trying a something along the lines of the following:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWncfCtfilfC+fCUrhlejyMAugMqeUb1XF916oZD-ThxCABAcIAYW9HnV+t3+DI/EA9BjpEkUAQM3C-e

1) I’m going to assume that in situations where you are shattering over and over again, that condi is going to outdamage power builds. Anyone know how DPS compares?

2) How does this build fare in situations where a herald is not present for the 50% boon duration?

Jerus.4350:

Healing, well lets be honest, druid’s going to get nerfed, this was the first beta pass.

Agreed.

Don’t factor Druid into any of this as its too raw and unpolished at the moment. It was rushed out at 50% of where it should be so its far away from being in a state where you can accurately judge its capabilities.

xev.9476:

“At no time did I ever feel that I had to consciously choose when to manage my skills – quite the opposite. It took so little thought to keep the heals flowing and my team alive that it instantly made me wonder whether I’d want to do it long term: this is from a player who has, for over a decade, played hybrid healers.”

This is worth emphasizing. For the past decade I’ve also only played healers, and it was only upon witnessing the Druid reveal that I even considered pre-purchasing HoT (I did). I just like to play healers, and GW2’s all-in-one approach has left me unsatisfied for a long while. Although trinity healing is often demonized as a “reactive whack-a-mole spam” mechanic in GW2 quarters, good healers know that healing often requires finesse, adaptability, and excellent split-second thinking: do I have time to cast my big 4 second AoE heal, or do I just keep my group afloat with smaller and individual 1 second heals? etc.

Unfortunately in this past BWE there was practically no need for nail-biting, split-second decisions on a Druid because all you did was spam heals that often weren’t even needed – that was literally all you could do. What I liked about healing in most MMOs was that it didn’t often require a set rotation like DPS builds, which I always found thoughtless and boring. But in raids this past weekend, I definitely had a pretty set rotation – that just removes the excitement of healing for me.

I’m sure everyone has their own idea of what “skillful” means, but for me spamming abilities in a set rotation without need for some foresight is the epitome of unskillful, and I desperately hope that future raid encounters (and Irenio’s changes/updates) allow for skillful Druid healing in PvE.

+++1

Having played a healing class for 5 years in WoW, I came away from this BWE feeling the exact same way. Having 3 or 4 heal spells that you cast on cooldown is no different than having one healing button that you mash over an over. Where is the skill and thought process in that?

Haptic.6239:

Played primarily druid during the BWE and had a lot of fun with it, although I can see where others are coming from in regards to certain aspects, such as the lack of any reliable damage.

One thought I just had that I haven’t seen thrown around before is… what if they added damage to the staff and/or avatar skills, but the strength scaled off of your healing power rather than the standard power statistic? This would make Cleric’s armor and the like more valuable for the Druid, and is a nice mix-up when it comes to gearing, I think.

I apologize if this has been suggested before. I don’t post here often and don’t really know how to do any searching.

This seems like a good idea to me and was curious myself why none of the base Druid traits included at least a healing power to damage modifier or something more exciting along those lines.

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

As much as I’d love for them to fix it, it’s risky. They could blow up PvP balance changing how some of the poorly scaling skills work, and I think they’re trying to be gentle with it at the moment. Healing is a troublesome issue in GW2 because I think there is a genuine risk of it becoming far too overpowered.

I think thats a concern had by both Anet and players.

For the most part, we were both willing to let sleeping lions lie because there was really no need for healing and because the base healing we had was sufficient for 95% of the game.

I’m willing to bet that most heal spell coefficients never saw any type of balancing and are in a complete shambles since no one cared enough about them to make a stink. Now that Druid is out and Anet is hyping healing as an important part of the expansion, I’d like to see how they address healing power, if at all, considering the amount of work that needs to be done.

Vendetta.1958:

> Due to the 10 second weapon swamp, you can’t have a pure healing weapon since you can’t switch on the fly between when you need damage or healing.

That is the worst argument I have ever heard.

You should use some skill and read the situation in which you are in.

1) You always need/desire DPS; its never a bad thing to have.

2) You don’t always need healing; its only needed when there is someone that needs heals. (Seems obvious right?)

Example scenario where having a pure healing weapon with a 10 second weapon swap wont work: You switch to staff because your party needed some heals but then another party member heals up the group to full and your heals are no longer needed. You now have to wait 10 seconds healing away in a situation where your heals may completely be going to waste until you can switch back to your DPS weapon to contribute more meaningfully to the fight.

TLDR: You don’t want to be caught with your pants down for up to 10 seconds at a time.

Lots of issues pertaining to healing in raids and in general (healing coefficents that actually make sense and is worthwhile to take, being unable to target players for heals, not knowing which targets to heal through visual cues, the vast majority of PvE content not requiring heals, etc) that doesn’t affect just Druids but revolve mainly around the fact that the game was built for 3 years without hardly anyone needing to spec for heals. There is no existing infrastructure to support it. Its like selling an electric vehicle without a network of charging stations to support it.

When Anet decided to market healing as an important feature of HoT, they should have known the can of worms they were opening and come up with a solid plan to address these basic issues. The fact that we are now weeks away from HoT without any knowledge of how they plan to address these issues (besides the mention that healing coefficients will be adjusted) is rather frustrating to say the least because its an indication that they may have no solid plan in place and are planning to tackle it in HoT.

@Vendetta

Just stop with the nonsense please. We know its a support weapon but that doesn’t mean it should only heal. (If this were true, staff on Rev would only heal also.)

Due to the 10 second weapon swamp, you can’t have a pure healing weapon since you can’t switch on the fly between when you need damage or healing.

Anet really opened up a can of worms introducing a pure healer spec like Druid. Now they are going to be forced to address healing power coefficients so that it actually starts to make sense but you can’t address it for Druid alone since its a stat that affects all professions.

This thread should be closed.

Misquoting others, especially an Anet employee, invalidates any argument you may have had.

Fluffball.8307:

People aren’t learning from history. I don’t know why people think he’s going to single handedly save the profession. The past week or two this forum has been completely swamped in dozens of threads with that assumption. He’s the public face of druid is pretty much all we know, he’s not the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Arena Net®.

Many of us have learned to not wait around for a ranger fix. We’ve been here for several years. It sometimes gets better, it sometimes get worse, but we’re literally never, ever, ever going to be a top profession.

If you can’t play ranger as it is, and aren’t a masochist like the rest of us, definitely make a new main.

As you mentioned, you learn from history instead of hoping for something different, and was planning on playing a Revenant instead of Ranger for PVE once HoT released. Druid reveal got me excited enough though that I canceled my plans on switching PVE mains.

Unfortunately, history has repeated itself and the Ranger class got the least amount of attention and the Druid shows it imo as it feels only about 50-60% as polished as some of the other elites. (Chronomancer for example feels about 90% polished and really about the best Mesmers could have asked for.)

The reality is that even if Druid gets more attention beyond HoT, it will take months if not years for it to get to the polished state that I’m looking for now that betas are over, so will probably make the switch to try out Rev and keep Ranger on the backburner once HoT releases.

DarkWasp.7291:

One of the reasons condi isn’t great with Druid right now is the fact that it doesn’t seem to charge the Celestial Avatar like physical damage does.

I wondered why Staff was made into a power weapon as it didn’t make sense to me from a practical and thematic standpoint, and I suspected it was because power was the easiest to code/balance for; not because it made the most sense.

While the Druid has potential, it was rushed out to meet a deadline, judging from this and other design choices. It needs a lot of fundamental work done on it imo before it feels polished and well thought out compared to other elites.

I only play Mesmer and Ranger, and Chronomancer is far and away more polished than Druid is. So much so, that I doubt Druid will ever be able to get up to par now that betas are over.

kiwituatara.6053:

The real question is do we want staff to be a condition weapon or a power weapon? I really don’t want another half-a weapons like mainhand axe.

Mainhand axe was traditionally not used mainly because it didn’t fit in with the max dps meta (wether it be condi or power) we currently play in and not because there was anything necessarily wrong with it. (Its used now though in A/T Sinisiter builds because of the damage the build can put out.)

Druid is about losing some DPS for increased support capabilities so to play one, you are already of the accepting mindset that your damage is not going to be top-notch. Wether the weapon is power or condi is not as important in this frame of mind, and its better to have the weapon be a hybrid to support more builds imo.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Vendetta.1958:

> Should solar beam cause burn?

No, staff should be a pure healing weapon.

What is the point of that? CAF is pure healing, why would you think having more of the same is a good thing? Insane logic.

In terms of logic, it would go hybrid > condi > power > …………………………… healing only (yes, leave it to the forums for someone to even mention this).

Yes!

1) Staff should have been a hybrid weapon since we already have a power and condi range weapon.
2) Min/max DPS builds won’t take staff so it makes even more sense to not pigeonhole this staff into either condi or power but to make it a hybrid for greater build diversity instead.
3) Staff being a pure power/direct damage weapon currently does not make sense thematically with a Druid imo; vines is what I picture so to add condi to the weapon makes perfect sense to me.
4) Having skill#1 be a burn already ties into the name (Solar beam) and works nicely for boss fights where we will use this skill the most to generate astral force. Having condi for bosses where the damage can ramp up is a win/win situation for generating astral force and doing decent dps on sustained fights.

Had hopes for Druid but its too unpolished at the moment for me to want to play it in HoT; just look at the amount of feedback given already. Adjustments to astral force generation, staff/avatar skills, traits/glyphs, base healing and healing coefficients, pets, ui/animation visuals, etc. will need to go through several iterations before the Druid feels polished and not so gimmicky as it does to me at the moment.

That is a long list of things that need to be worked on and Anet already probably knows it judging from their silent treatment on these core issues. The easiest thing for Anet to do at this point is to say, “Sorry, we tried our best to making a viable healer spec but now that HoT is live, we’ll be making small changes to Druid as with all the other classes but will need to focus our attention on other aspects of the game such as bugs, raids, and other new features in HoT.”

This means that one of the more challenging elites to balance/refine is going to suffer from core issues that will plague the class for months/years to come.

I have nothing to back this up but my speculation is that Anet released Druid last during twitchcon because 1) it wasn’t ready before then 2) would help with marketing for twitchcon/HoT 3) they could sweep Druid under the rug upon HoT release since it proved too difficult for them to properly address a healing elite spec with balance in mind. A win for Anet but a loss for Rangers.

This is major concern of mine as well.

Druid is imo only 50% as polished as some of the other elites that got multiple feedback/revision cycles through betas. How is Anet going to address this considering Druid arguably needed the most betas (since it was tackling uncharted territories in trying to balance healing with DPS) to get to a polished state?

Anet’s response will probably be something along the lines of “all classes will continue to go through changes” but Druid really needs more focused attention than the rest of the classes beyond HoT.

At OP, all skills need to have a strong focus and compelling reason to use them so that they actually get used or your going to have situations like icebow where only one or two skills are used and then dropped by the player. Since cooldowns on our main heals #3 and #4 are short (5 and 8 seconds respectively), there is not much time to get any use out of skill 1 since it hardly does much and you’re probably just better off ignoring it completely to use skills 2-5 on cooldown. That is why I moved condi cleanse to that skill along with a small damage component to give it a compelling reason to be used and to free up skill# 2 slot for stability instead.

Stability is important/strong enough that it can go on its own skill slot and by doing so, you make it more flexible to use with all of our other abilities (e.g., maybe you would rather use stability in conjunction with skill#5 instead or a utility/elite), rather than restricting its use to just skill 4 which is already a strong ability.

I believe the devs are hesitant to give us any sort of defensive buff (e.g., prot/regen/aegis) with Druid because the focus of the elite is on raw healing. They can’t give us access to large raw heals while also giving us access to other buffs or else we eliminate the need for other professions.

Stability is the one defensive buff I think we must push to have because it is crucial to have in order for us to perform in the role of a healing avatar. By adding weakness to the skill, we have three distinct ways of healing; skill#2 through damage reduction, skill#3 for burst healing/cc, skill#3 for a short duration super heal over time (that stacks with normal regen).

Going to copy and paste what I posted in the mega feedback thread here:

Comments/suggestions on Celestial Avatar skills only

Skill#1 – Change to frontal cone heal/cleanse one condi/small damage added
Reason for change: Frontal cone change would make this skill easier to use while keeping positioning important but not too restrictive. (Current ground target with 120 radius is insanely hard to use besides being clunky to use for what should be our spammable 1 skill.) Add cleanse since it ties synergistically with a small heal; generally you need to heal up after a condi cleanse.

Skill#2 – Change to PBAOE skill that gives stability to self and weakness to enemies around you.
Reason for change: Having good heals is useless if you can’t get your heals off due to not having stability (which the Druid currently has no access to). Add to the fact that our most potent abilities are long casting means we desperately need some sort of anti-cc. Adding weakness works synergistically with stability since you generally need stability when under heavy pressure and is also synergistic with Glyph of Unity (e.g., pop GoU in Druid mode, switch to Avatar, use skill#3 to reduce the damage you take). Having weakness be a secondary effect gives good reason for a player to use this ability even when stability is not needed since the damage reduction is a way for this ability to differentiate itself from the other heals spells while staying true to the theme of Avatar mode.

Skill#3 is a good skill as is except the daze duration is too long for such a low cooldown ability. With Moment of Clarify, you can potentially have perma daze which is just broken if it actually pans out (I have not tested). Currently this spell can be cast 3 times in celestial form. Should consider increasing CD if skill#4 is made into a fire and forget ability to compensate for the increased healing you would get from this proposed change to skill#4.

Skill#4 is a good spell but needs to change to a fire and forget ability (while keeping the mobile water field) so that it can be comboed with skill#3 for that extra burst healing while also making the skill more fun to use strategically (e.g. do I try to get this spell off before using skill#3 for more healing or do I forgo the extra healing because I need the burst healing/cc from skill#3 right now instead). Being a channeled ability currently, it doesn’t really differentiate itself from the other heals and feels clunky/not fun to use since your basically just standing there.

Skill#5 – No changes.

Comments/suggestions on Celestial Avatar skills only

Skill#1 – Change to frontal cone heal/cleanse one condi/small damage added
Reason for change: Frontal cone change would make this skill easier to use while keeping positioning important but not too restrictive. (Current ground target with 120 radius is insanely hard to use besides being clunky to use for what should be our spammable 1 skill.) Add cleanse since it ties synergistically with a small heal; generally you need to heal up after a condi cleanse.

Skill#2 – Change to PBAOE skill that gives stability to self and weakness to enemies around you.
Reason for change: Having good heals is useless if you can’t get your heals off due to not having stability (which the Druid currently has no access to). Add to the fact that our most potent abilities are long casting means we desperately need some sort of anti-cc. Adding weakness works synergistically with stability since you generally need stability when under heavy pressure and is also synergistic with Glyph of Unity (e.g., pop GoU in Druid mode, switch to Avatar, use skill#3 to reduce the damage you take). Having weakness be a secondary effect gives good reason for a player to use this ability even when stability is not needed.

Skill#3 is a good skill as is except the daze duration is too long for such a low cooldown ability. With Moment of Clarify, you can potentially have perma daze which is just broken if it actually pans out (I have not tested). Currently this spell can be cast 3 times in celestial form. Should consider increasing CD if skill#4 is made into a fire and forget ability to compensate for the increased healing you would get from the change to skill#4.

Skill#4 is a good spell but needs to change to a fire and forget ability (keeping the mobile water field) so that it can be comboed with skill#3 for that extra burst healing while also making the skill more fun to use strategically (e.g. do I try to get this spell off before using skill#3 for more healing or do I forgo the extra healing because I need the burst healing/cc from skill#3 right now instead). Being a channeled ability currently, it doesn’t really differentiate itself from the other heals and feels clunky/not fun to use since your basically just standing there.

Skill#5 – No changes.

I like that the OP made staff#1 skill more about condi and skill#2 more about direct damage. This makes sense to me in that you can use skill#2 for aoe tagging of mobs while using skill#1 as your main source of DPS on single targets where ramp up occurs such as on bosses.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Healing and DPS should just be equally beneficial, to cater for all playstyles and builds.

If Regeneration actually counted, you could play shout builds and it would be gold, or WH with WN on a DPS setup, even a Fern Hound would become miles better (and pet regen and healing should affect it).

My reason for wanting DPS be the primary generator is that DPS is something that you always do regardless of what build/gametype you play and opens you up to being able to take a wider range of skills, weapons, traits. Yes, you can take shout builds but what if you don’t want to play one? You shouldn’t be totally kitten in astral force generation if you decide not to take “x” traits/utilities/weapons, etc. There is a balance and right now it heavily favors using a niche group of traits/weapons/skills because astral force generation is overwhelmingly tied to healing abilities.