Guild Wars 2

Settler/apothecary too strong

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I am not feeling the druid at all. I don’t what to be the designated healer. This may work for a wvw commander.

With that said he did an execellent job on the Druid. I have very high hopes for what he will do in the future with tweaks on the ranger as a whole.

Thanks Irenio for all of your hard work.

I don’t think Druid pigeonholes us into dedicated healers. I can think of countless builds to run now that don’t require staff, but can pump out damage, cc, and now support just with the addition of the Druid trait line and the introduction of celestial form.

Thanks man. He actually listened and gave the Ranger the one thing it needed the most: group utility.

SkiTz.4590:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Aomine.5012:

Rejoice for what? Being shafted to a healing class?

I really really HATE that type of play-style..

Extremely disappointed..
This is not the reason I play ranger…

don’t use staff then, simple.

Than whats the point of the druid spec line? no point in that spec line if you don’t want to be a healer…. that entire line, along with the celestial form and the staff is healing 80% healing based…..

Not true, it also gives some condi clear and cc options as well.

SkiTz.4590:

I was excited for celestialform…. but cmon… staff was plenty of healing and you focus EVEN MORE HEALING into the new form…. great…

we just got pidgeonholed into 1 great role (healing/support only)

you either take the red pill and stay with your medicore roles (condi, power, trapper, etc)…. or take the blue pill and become a healing/support god….

Yeah, but you don’t have to use staff though. So you can still have the healing from the celestial form.

Initial thoughts are that this spec will probably give the greatest boost to trapper alone. It will also just make every other spec we have infinitely better because of the sheer amount of sustain and utility we now have.

Wow just wow guise. kitten glad I got settlers recently.

The quaggan thing was comical for sure.

Per Twitch, Druid reveal is 11:20 am pst

tobascodagama.2961:

Eh, all of the elite specs are still under development, some more than others. I wouldn’t read too much into that.

I think the point is more of the fact that Irenio must deal with both Ranger and Engi at the same time. With so little time left before launch and with Engi and Ranger both making their beta debut at the same time, it doesn’t bode well and I feel bad for this poor man’s health and the stress he probably has rn.

How do we even know what time the Druid part will start?

Durzlla.6295:

Mcrocha.3891:

Durzlla.6295:

Mcrocha.3891:

I’m fairly certain it has been stated that Rangers are supposed to have the highest single target damage from range and be a skirmishing class based on sustained damage. Take that for what you will, but it sounds a lot like a class whose effectiveness decreases as group size increases.

Yeah, but at the same time it was stated that warriors drawbacks were supposed to be a lack of mobility, conditions, and their reliance on adrenaline.

Ye, I was just responding to the part of the OP about Anet needing to nail down what their vision for Ranger is.

And i was just replying with that bit saying that i don’t think they truly know where their profs are, let alone what ranger is supposed to be.

K cool

Durzlla.6295:

Mcrocha.3891:

I’m fairly certain it has been stated that Rangers are supposed to have the highest single target damage from range and be a skirmishing class based on sustained damage. Take that for what you will, but it sounds a lot like a class whose effectiveness decreases as group size increases.

Yeah, but at the same time it was stated that warriors drawbacks were supposed to be a lack of mobility, conditions, and their reliance on adrenaline.

Ye, I was just responding to the part of the OP about Anet needing to nail down what their vision for Ranger is.

I’m fairly certain it has been stated that Rangers are supposed to have the highest single target damage from range and be a skirmishing class based on sustained damage. Take that for what you will, but it sounds a lot like a class whose effectiveness decreases as group size increases.

It is unlikely that Druids will have traits that concern spirits unless they summon short duration spirits on the staff skills or something which is unlikely. I think it would be a first in the game to have weapon skills share the same typing as a utility?

Spirits need to have significant effects. The fact that they are stationary and killable, means that they should provide powerful buffs in compensation. A minor change that they could make to at least start the process would be to make the boons longer duration on natures vengeance so that they could at the very least be perma with enough boon duration.

Edit: phantasms/clones share utility and weapon skill type, maybe engi too? Not sure, not too familiar with them.

Raven.9603:

Mcrocha.3891:

Signet of stone, protect me aren’t invulns.

If you are going to narrow-mindedly consider only things like mistform and distortion as “invulns” then there is no use arguing. Endure Pain is widely considered an invuln despite condition damage technicalities and likewise so is SoS and Protect Me. You are more interested in semantics than actually contributing to the discussion.

The point was:

No, rangers dont need more HP, we have good HPS, good access to evades, and good access to invulns (^physical invulnerability only. “Invuln” is not available in CT, MA or California. Trolls and Conditions may apply**).

Well semantics are actually important in this case. I didn’t know it was narrow-minded to consider Mist Form and Distortion invulnerabilities because they actually are invulnerabilities. To say that SoS and Protect Me are invulnerabilities is false because they are not.

The POINT of my statement sir was that it is false to say that Rangers have 18s of invulnerability in the form of SoS and Protect Me. It is factually incorrect and spreads misinformation to the uninformed. You could say that Rangers have plenty of damage mitigation in the form of blocks, evades, physical immunity etc, but that still doesn’t include invulnerability. Nice job failing to make a joke and instead flaming me by calling me a troll.

Signet of stone, protect me aren’t invulns.

Durzlla.6295:

Amineo.8951:

Mcrocha.3891:

Amineo.8951:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

In b4 “druid is so bad I’m quitting”

…can I have your stuff?

Nothing can be as bad as Dragon Hunter folks, absolutely nothing…

I think Dragon Hunter is cool. It might not be great, but I think the concept is nice.

It should have been Sentinel instead of Dragon Hunter, that would’ve fit the class more, with wells instead of traps that give buffs to allies and condis to ennemies, improved virtues and CC Longbow skills…

Yeah, maybe if it was a sentinel, but it’s not, this is a sort of inquisitor version of guardian. This isn’t the guy who protects everyone, this is the guy who hunts down evil and puts an end to it, it’s selfish and it’s there to put an end to the target, not to help allies.

Yeah see, that lore/concept is cool to me. Guardians are like the light and virtuous and are hunting down and slaying the evil or unrighteous.

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lazze.9870:

Tragic Positive.9356:

If the trait provided the benefits according to your pet’s HP (dead pet included), well yes. I would consider it. DPS increase when my pet get’s low would be triggered often, wouldn’t endanger Ranger himself and would provide an option to compete with Quick Draw.

I would honestly never run it. Counterproductive to the profession mechanic.

You mean even more than it currently is?

Yes. The current version isn’t all that counterproductive, it’s just lackluster with poor trait synergy. Balancing our pet health around the death treshhold on the other hand is counterproductive to our mechanic and our pet swap trait. Keeping it dead is even worse. The old Beastmaster’s Bond trait that functioned simulairly was poor aswell.

I agree, promoting dead pets or bad management of them isn’t good. Second suggestion that I already mentioned would be:
-25% crit chance increase within 600 range
-The current might stacking to be moved up to 75% health threshold
-25% crit chance when below 50% and 10-15% damage increase

Or another suggestion is to make it have a mechanic that behaves with traps somehow.
-When the Ranger evades an attack, a spike trap is dropped at feet.
-When the Ranger blocks an attack, a frost trap is dropped at feet.
-When the Ranger swaps weapons, a vipers nest is dropped at feet.
Maybe one or two of the effects, maybe all of them idk. Granted this trait would probably break the guardian forums, but whatever.

Edit: formatting

I guess a decent tip if you dont know about it for general pvp knowledge is that for stomping wars and engis you can use your pet to bodyblock them so they can’t interrupt the stomp.

There’s a reason it is the meta build haha.

Amineo.8951:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

In b4 “druid is so bad I’m quitting”

…can I have your stuff?

Nothing can be as bad as Dragon Hunter folks, absolutely nothing…

I think Dragon Hunter is cool. It might not be great, but I think the concept is nice.

It’s not that cringeworthy. The two problems I see are that your sustain won’t be that great because your healing power is low, so it makes the regen on shouts kind of meh. You could change soldier to cleric but be advised that your personal damage won’t be that great with soldier or cleric and you will rely on pet damage for the most part.

Secondly your condi removal is not great which is a problem because something like a burn guardian will destroy you no matter how much toughness, healing power, or vitality you have. The best way to add condi removal is in Wilderness Survival unfortunately which you would probably want to exchange with marksmanship. This leaves you with a build pretty close to our one, kind of not really “meta” build, either running survival skills or shouts I guess like you have.

Edit: Also you could consider changing runes from traveler to trooper for extra condi cleanse. The 25% movement speed on traveler is marginal because you should have near perma swiftness from shouts. You can also consider changing bountiful hunter to allies aid in the nature magic line to help with ressing downed allies, and getting an additional shout if you decide to change runes, is somewhat useful as well.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Mcrocha.3891:

If you remove the health threshold requirement then the trait doesn’t make sense. The point of the trait is that “the hunted becomes the hunter”. If one were to remove the health threshold, then the trait would need to be renamed and function differently because it wouldn’t be the same concept anymore.

The hunted doesn’t even have to be wounded to become the hunter as the tides can turn so as long as any situation lends an advantage to the “hunted.” Think a bit outside of that box so the removal of the health threshold can make sense.

That’s why 25% crit chance in 600 range. Forget the health threshold stuff for a second. The crit works well with every single weapon, as Ranger is built around low range skirmishing. It could help all builds on the bunker-zerker spectrum as well as being useful in both condi and power builds. The crit chance synergies well with other traits in the line, opening up diversity with melee and ranged weapons as well.

Again the health threshold benefits are just extra that make the ranger more able to turn the tides of an engagement. I would easily take this proposed trait and the opportunity cost of giving up QuickDraw to do so is significant on both ends.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Mcrocha.3891:

The point is what would be the change required to this trait to make it competitive with QuickDraw.

The change required to make this trait competitive is to first remove the health threshold stipulation. It’s been said many times and I’ll say it again here: Under health thresholds are adept tier material.

If people want it to be competitive with one of the best Ranger traits, and arguably one of the best traits in the game, then ditch the idea of revolving around the health pool threshold.

Basically, it needs to be redone, not polished.

If you remove the health threshold requirement then the trait doesn’t make sense. The point of the trait is that “the hunted becomes the hunter”. If one were to remove the health threshold, then the trait would need to be renamed and function differently because it wouldn’t be the same concept anymore.

I would take a trait that gives 2 stacks of might every second while below 75% health and 25% crit chance within 600 range for sure even if I had to give up Quickdraw. The below 50% bonuses are just gravy. The proposed changes to the trait make it conducive to being in the Skirmishing line as well as it is more of a pvp trait.

Wondrouswall.7169:

No. I would consider just remove the trait entirely for something else.

Well I mean yeah it would be best to replace it but that’s not the point. The point is what would be the change required to this trait to make it competitive with QuickDraw.

What if it gave might every second when below 75% health, 25% crit chance when within 600 range always, and then 25% crit chance and 15% damage increase when below 50% health.

In order to distract from Druid hype I was looking at poorly designed traits and Most Dangerous Game is quite possibly the worst one in the game.

Would people consider taking it if the might stacking was increased by 1 per interval and it gave the Ranger and pet 100% crit chance while under the health threshold?

Justine.6351:

We got tons of evades, mild stealth, damage invulnerability, tons of condi cleanse, taunt/blind/weakness and on and on and on.

I cant believe people think rangers don’t have enough hp.

All the evades are on both of the melee weapons making them almost mandatory for devensive purposes. One skill on lb that requires you to actually hit an enemy is mild stealth? Rangers have zero sources of invulnerability, very little condition cleanse actually, and taunt/blind/weakness is ok yeah because beastmastery is pretty strong.

I don’t think rangers have too little hp though because I personally think it is the most balanced class in the game, simply because everything about it is average.

jcbroe.4329:

At this point, why are we letting ourselves even debate what it could be?

Wednesday/Thursday blogs should drop, and Friday is the reveal. Time to buy a ton of alcohol to drink in either celebration or to forget an awful reveal, or make a drinking game and take a drink (not a shot, you might die) every time the devs look displeased to be talking about ranger, sigh, or have no idea what they are talking about in regards to Ranger (“most dangerous game looks really strong, it will definitely need toning down, hue hue hue”).

Agreed, everybody just calm down and wait for Wednesday since we at least know that Ranger wasn’t removed from the game LOL. Last prediction: Aspects will be seasonal and Druids will be walking Nature Rituals that pulse effects/environmental changes in a ~1200 range, which would very easily change the “pvp landscape”.

Silverkey.2078:

It’s a bit difficult to read through those… There are 18 of them, which would fit with 3 aspects for each glyph (good bye season swap). 3 aspects correspond to the 3 animals we see in the artwork (bear wolf eagle). Also, mot of the glyphs are the same pattern but with 3 different colors.

The problem are the 2 outliers: the second to last category has 4 colors, the last category has only 2…
Those are possibly only placeholders so maybe we should not try to interpret much from them…

The ones that don’t have 3 could be the heal and elite skills. Heal would probably be the one with 2, and elite with 4. For instance, the elite could summon a companion or something(1 image), and then casting it again could cause different effects based on the Aspect(3 images).

The heal could just be a two part heal or perhaps it could be one heal if not channeling aspects and a different heal if one is channeling aspects(assuming one is not always channeling an Aspect).

Edit: Also based on the first 4 images I think the Aspects will be seasonal based. Looks like Frozen Soil- Winter, Fertile Season- Spring/Summer, and Favorable Winds-Autumn. I think the other image with the pet and Feral Aggression placeholder has to do with the pet. Maybe activating the pet skill, maybe acting as attack/return and Ranger will only have one pet in exchange for the Aspects, therefore no pet swap.

Really? Which map is it? Every map I played on was Conquest. Is the map not in hotjoin?

Belzebu.3912:

Belzebu.3912:

Let’s see:
I’ll guess 3 sec per trait (read the name + mouse over to allow people to screen shot), so (3*12) 36 seconds total
About 10 seconds per skill, (10*10) 1:40 minutes
An introduction explaining druids overall and jokes about the delay, I’ll guess about 1 minute.
So I’m guessing an presentation of 3:16 minutes and with some delays maybe 4 minutes.

I may not be that far:
September 25 3:00 PM – 3:15 PM
They will show the new HoT trailer, talk about it, also talk about the future of the new Anet show that will take place of the PoI and the druid presentation all in 15 minutes.

That’s not necessarily true, just heresay. They will be at the convention for 2 whole days, which means that they might do the Druid reveal at their booth or whatever, but not in their stage presentation. Nobody knows.

Sube Dai.8496:

Were that mad because you were doing well or because you were doing bad?

FYI PvP is more about where you are and when than it is about builds.

They were mad about losing 1v1s. But yeah in general that’s why I focus more on WvW roaming because it’s more about the fighting whereas I think pvp is more about map presence and cycling to create advantages in matchups. I can understand the appeal of that, but I really think that there should at least be a straight up 5v5 death match map in the rotation.

The only thing I don’t like about having a single button to swap through Aspects is that is makes the cycle linear. For instance, one could not hypothetically go from Aspect A→C, but rather would have to go From A→B→C. This is a problem considering that swapping appears to have a cast time and likely a cool down as well.

Fluffball.8307:

Hot join is a disaster area, you should give unranked a try. And probably play with map chat turned off. PvP in any game is notorious for attracting horrible whiners. Cleric’s survival sounds totally reasonable to me.

Yeah I mean I’m used to people whining in wvw and stuff, I was just appalled at how mad people were getting. I literally just wanted to try a build out and thought it would be a chill environment. I was just curious if there was like some unwritten rules about not using certain builds in hotjoin or something, but alright thanks for the replies.

Disclaimer: I have only really played WvW for three years, dabbled a little in pvp way back when, around the time that the game first came out and SB pewpew was a thing.

I decided to mess around in pvp for the first time in ~2 years. Picked a build that I wanted to test the efficacy of in order to see if I would want to transfer it into WvW for roaming. Cleric based with survival skills, and I got flamed super hard. Are most people in hotjoin really salty for some reason or what’s the deal with that? Just wondering bc it made me log off and not even want to play anymore after several people decided to throw shade at me for my build choice.

P.S. Skyhammer is a terribad map imo.

If you want to complain about Engi hammer you should compare it to Ranger gs instead of guardian gs, and be awed at the similarities.

But in relation to guardian gs vs engi hammer: You can’t really compare the autos yet until it is tested in game with attack speed and coefficients etc, the whirls are the only skills on the weapons that are somewhat comparable, and the other skills in the weapon kits aren’t really that similar.

Nice thread. I liked the part where you thinly veiled your suggestion to Rangers to L2P. Such good advice.

For the elite skill in the kit I would like it to be something like Strike as One, where you and your pet teleport to your target area causing a short knockdown, making your attacks unblockable for a short period, and giving the ranger immunity to movement impairing conditions for a short period.

Lahmia.2193:

Mcrocha.3891:

Rizo.9534:

Half of skills based on 4+ cnditions and you can apply only ONE in these build.
It’s will be Worst Elite, because it have NO Synergy in it self!

Will be fail 100%

Not necessarily, the trait lines could assist in the condi application, but 4 does seem a bit high. Would rather the skills work off enemy boons since ranger could use some boon hate.

That would make it almost exclusively a pvp weapon, which would be a bad idea. The 4 Condi thing would work well in a party, dungeon or otherwise.

Condi doesn’t make sense on a presumable power weapon. Who says the trigger has to be something like 2 or more boons, it could be 2 or less. Then it could work in pve and could be countered in pvp by stacking boons to avoid kd.

Rizo.9534:

Half of skills based on 4+ cnditions and you can apply only ONE in these build.
It’s will be Worst Elite, because it have NO Synergy in it self!

Will be fail 100%

Not necessarily, the trait lines could assist in the condi application, but 4 does seem a bit high. Would rather the skills work off enemy boons since ranger could use some boon hate.

Most Dangerous Game would have been a great trait with the old iteration of bark skin, but now it is just bad. Why would someone camp at 50% health to easily get spiked down just so they can get 1 stack of might pulses. Furthermore, it is completely outclassed by Quickdraw simply because quickdraw is the best trait we have ever had.

I don’t really know what to think. On one hand it’s pretty lame that Ranger doesn’t get its own POI specifically to itself like every other class, but on the other there’s really only two explanations for it being bundled at this convention: 1) it is meh and being swept together with hype stuff to lessen the blow or 2) it is very interesting/good so that it is a focal point of their presentation during the event.

All of the skills are almost exactly the same as ranger gs.

Wowzers bruh, just wow.

Make the thread ahead of time. All caps: [OFFICIAL DRUID FEEDBACK THREAD].
Outline structure people should post that is easy to read/not too long. Ask people to limit responses in length and use headings/subheadings to label whether feedback is about traits, staff, utilities, etc.

I have a dream that one day this class will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all professions are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day down in the land of the Jade Maw, the ghosts of former pets and their descendants will be able to sit down together in revelry.

I have a dream that one day in WvW, a land sweltering with the heat of inadequate group support, sweltering with the heat of class imbalance, will one day be an oasis of balance and class diversity.

I have a dream that one day my Ranger will be judged not by the species of pet that I use, but by the content of my character’s ability.

I have a dream today.

Riot Inducer.8964:

Penguin.5197:

Imo too much stealth can ruin an otherwise fun game. Gw1 had a perfect amount of stealth, but Gw2 went a little overboard with it.

So yes, please no more stealth.

GW1 had no stealth mechanics, only blocks & evades, you could never hide from enemy targeting.

Maybe that was the joke. Perfect amount, aka 0.

snow.8097:

okay that means a stun break skill with 1/2s cast time or a trap without cast time
both can not work well pvp or balance wise

No it doesn’t. I said that the stun break occurs at the beginning of the laying of the trap, ergo the skill is activated and the stun is broken and the character then proceeds to lay the trap.

The skill remains useable when stunned, when you activate the trap to lay it down the stun is broken. Pretty simple.