Guild Wars 2

9/10

I love the 3d levels of the new maps, finally some ‘crazy cool’ sense of exploring. It’s more challenging, and to be honest, as a veteran player it was necessary.

Mastery ‘grind’. C’mon ppl, i already have mushroom jumping, gliding (and updraft) and almost poison master (Itzel). That in 5 days. I relogged to another profession, guess what, all that progress is saved. Fast players can get mastery in a matter of hours/days maxed. in about a month people will be bored to haven othing to do. Masteries is a good sense of progression. Gliding is cool, but working to unlock it/improve it, makes it feel even more rewarding. For all the people asking to nerf the grind of masteries, just no!!! EVen casual people can complete it, in about a month, wich is nothing in the livespan of an mmo.

Then about elite profession ‘hero points’. Sure i had to work quite a bit to unlock mine. But it isn’t that hard. And it’s a bit of challenge etc. There is no such thing as ‘everything is free’, but people expect it. I want it good, I want it now, and I want it big, or I quit the game. But those are the same people, that would complain if they get bored after a month, cause the content is repetive and not rewarding. A lot of these people, THINK it’s a grind, and complain to much. THey should just play the game and enjoy it (wich is perfectly possible in the current system).

Then about Druid: 0/10 for the Roy Cronacher nerf on druid and the smokescale F2 switch nerf (this is not about damage nerf, i’m ok with that). Druid was amazing in BWE and now it’s but a splinter of what it was then, very very very very weak, unrewarding, almost impossible to feel rewarded by the elite specs mechanic. Not thought very well. I really hope they stop focussing on ranger so fast to nerf.

Roy doesn’t play ranger, doesn’t like rangers, doesn’t know how to kill them on his revenant. That’s why druids got overnerfed. Cause Roy is not Impartial, neutral, objective. He knew kitten wel it’s an overnerf. I think Irenio’s sleep was bad the last nights, cause his hard work got shafted, by one higher up decision. Roy basically destroyed Irenio’s Druid, with a few number crunchings. I normally don’t judge people, but there’s about 99,99999999% probability, this is what happens, all the signs are there, since start of game. If one person, who clearly doesn’t play enough professions to have a balance grasp does this, then we have to speak up about it.

Mike O’brien, please set things straight. It’s not correct for one employee to take all the fun away from expansion content, that promised to look good in beta/twitch. Not that this is gonna happen but one can hope. Roy is on a hugely wrong, biased, unbalanced path. More then ever.

I don’t see precursor crafting getting cheaper then trade post precursor. One reason only: Daily gate on ascended mats. There’s way more ascendedm mats ever needed then normal. Like the legendary armor needs an item that COMBINES bolt of damask and elonian leather square. Deldrimor ingot has to be like 2-3g max, to get profitable for precursor crafting, and I simply don’t see it happening. And the alternative to grind is also nerfed. Only reselling left I guess? No wonder Wanze stays calm, ye’s master reseller probably already made 10 000gold this weekend. He has no (unbiased) say in this.

A clarification is necessary. Irenio is developper. All his work led to the BWE 3 Druid version. Roy (and Jon peters in lesser extend) is responsible for balance. We now have conclusive prove he doesn’t play ranger (or is totally a dud at it), and hates rangers. We had one good heal, and he put on twitter a few hours later ‘that is not intended, we will look at it’. Few hours later got overnerfed. This druid over the top nerf has his signature and ranger hate all over it. Roy is responsible, who is not the ranger developper. He’s purely responsible for revenant (and warrior to lesser extend).

What is it with you defending precursor crafting Cyninja? Fact is: there’s no reason to do even presurcor crafting now. Not for the hunt, nor for getting cheaper, nor for getting it in LESS time.

Buying it from tp is in EVERY single way (not just time and money) better. That is not what precursor crafting shoudl be. It should take longer, but be cheaper. The timer is correct now, price is not. You can agree to disagree.

All this will do is make me farm silverwaiste even more then in past. In secret Anet even made legendaries much more expensive. Cause with the gold deflation, and precursors costing same as pre-HoT, this is actually a price increase.

I played against reapers and thiefs, that have way more ‘overtuned’ stuff then the smokescale was. And now they double nerfed it. Nerfed it as about the only thing in the game, proving they hate ranger more then other specs, etc.

Nobody of ranger community that is serious, disagrees with the damage nerf. But the other nerf (and druid, who had 4 nerfs on celestial form, rendering it useless), and WhaO debacle, proved the devs hate rangers. Disclaimer I play all profession often and long. I have no bias against any prof. But the devs definitely do (Roy prefers revenant and hates rangers, everyone who reads forums often knows this).

Holy Nerfbats :O The CAF Decay out of combat already pushed me away to play ranger/druid at launch but this? C’mon Roy mindless Nerfbat. You totally don’t play rangers, and you hate them while playing revenant in pvp, that is clear from your actions here. I again strongly believe Irenio has no play in this. It’s Roy and maybe Jon peters a little bit, definitely mostly Roy.

Guess I definitely won’t play Druid before they ‘maybe’ fix it (and my guess is they will never fix it). kitten you Roy. Say we nerf all boon application of Herald with 50% and call it a day never to be spoken off again? How would you and revenants feel? (you clearly are biased to your own professions, so you belong in that player group as well). You would feel terribly mistreated. Oh wait that’s how rangers feel now. Oh wait but you don’t care, you’ve proven that in past. Really man? Don’t use the ‘greater good’ excuse. 50% damage nerf on smokescale burst skill could count as a change to greater good, but not the switch of smokefield away from F2. That is just another kneejerk reaction. It litterally speaks ‘ranger is not overpowered atm, even the not so good balance division knows that, but we gonna nerf anyaway, JUST BECAUSE’.

And FYI I play every profession to large extend (now over 800 hours on each). There is no replication of a long term experience like this, that goes cross profession. None. Anet boys barely have 1000-2000 hours playtime. And mostly on ONE main. Lemme tell you when at start I played necro for instance a lot, every nerf felt ‘kneejerk’. But once I played other professions, i could relate in some of the nerf (definitely not all of them though). Looking again from same point of view: The smokescale ‘unrelenting assault’ could be understood, that it got nerfed a bit. The utility destruction of removing our only smokefield (making it not F2 is basically same as removing it), doesn’t make any sense. Not even from other profession point of view. A lot of professions are getting access to new stuff (for instance, engineer get even more stealth access, Guardian gets a longbow etc, Thief a staff for god sake, that are quite huge changes to the perception of what those professions can and should do. But this is good, cause it gives elite specs an identity). But you basically removed that more or less from Druid. The healing part of CAF is almost unreachable anymore, making heal ele/engineer/shout warrior, by defintion better. Healing identity crysis created. Then you overnerf a very usefull pet, and remove it’s utility also? (usefull is not the same as overpowered!!! Temporal curtain is also very usefull, is it op? I think not…)

Try to look at it more impartial, neutral, unbiased, objective please. This clearly is not how Roy is thinking it at the moment (or experiencing it for the matter, he definitely plays ranger to few, cause if he did, he wouldnt even think about switching a combo field to auto attack on a ranger). I don’t know what kind of pressure we can do these days to make these guys understand they are on the wrong path. They are as stubborn as a stonedonkey. (a Saying in my countries language wich symbolizes the most extreme form of stubborness). We need more collaborative progress. Such stonedonkey stubborness prevents that. Not a good company spirit.

Wvw. They ‘dumbed’ down the ‘infinite’ aka 1000 000 achievement things. You will probably have all but a few completed. That is what happened to me as well, and other ‘Ap hunters’.

I recommend fractals. You get completely free (they cost ’fractal currency – wich is rewarded by playing that mode, but the currency isnt worth money, so using it on this – usefull thing = free in my eyes) 20 slot bags.

Basically you do fractals. Get a few tokens, get them up to 150, boom done. Also the daily chest give a relic, wich can be trade for 15 tokens (so 10 days of lvl 1 fractal) should get you a bag (unless they overhauled it to much today).

Second best option is Halloween pail bag. Best way is pvp reward track, cause that one reward a completely free bag if finished. But since you are new, pvp can be a bit hard. Just farming halloween (mad kings labyrint), will give you lots of candy corn. Every 3000 = 20 slot bag

Crafting is the worst idea ever. Rune of holding cost 10g. This makes the price of 20 slot bags so high, that it’s for a year already cheaper to get them via the candy corn way.

If you are serious about the game (want to do everything in the end a bit), then I recommend fractals. Just a few of those and you’ll quickly get the 20 slot bags, and that with a minimal cost/effort. I now got about 15 characters with 7 (+1 the base backpack) 20 slot bags. 90% of the bags is from fractals, 8% from Halloween (candy corn option), and the last is a few crafted bags, and free 20 slot bags from living story/achievements.

3500mb, 2 hours (at noon EU, like 8 hours before now) I downloaded it.

No in BWE 3 Astral force did NOT DECAY OUT OF COMBAT. Aka Roy ultra nerf hammer strikes again.

What? Shorter CAF + 10 sec cooldown CAF + 40% nerf to healing progress of CAF + lower healing output, unless healing power is high enough; was enough of a nerf. But Roy strikes again, Jeezes! Roy mind as wel super nerf Herald then too (sarcasm).

This is like a 70-95% nerf. I used to be able to go in CAF burst heal, go out, get in quickly, heal again, get out again, rinse and repeat. While that was a bit strong, the current state is horrible. I don’t even need to playtest, to know how bad ‘out of combat loose Astral force is’. Typical ‘oh my precious warrior got adrenaline nuked, you too ranger, because my Name is Roy’. Jeeze man is it so hard to let peope have some fun (with absolutely not ovepowered builds)? Zerker meta is gone? my kitten . This super nerf to druid healing, makes other professions literaly better again.

I was ready to ditch my engineer/scrapper for ranger, had all my preparations set up, farmed like a kitten too, to get some final gear, and now this Arenanet. Really? And I know the CAF decay is not Irenio’s doing. No Developper would like to see his creation nuked so hard. It’s Roy all over again.

That indeed would go a long way. Lightning reflex, has a lot of downsides. Often you don’t wanna move, want to move forward (not back), or can’t move at all (cliffside fractal). If it wasnt for that amazing stunbreak. And perhaps correctly balanced because of that.

Frost trap would be great as trap. I don’t see why it shouldnt be stunbreaker.

With the recent updates, some professions have ‘good, usefull skill’ utilities that stunbreak every 20 sec, c’mon, ranger ones are way to long cooldown. Being only to reduce 1 stun every 40-60 sec is to few. 30 sec is minimum (higher cooldown is to high).

Ayrilana.1396:

MatthewMedina.5419:

There are some mastery-gates on certain chapters (certain skills are required for navigation in the story chapters, because of their locations in the maps), but those will be messaged both on the in-game UI and in the story journal.

Any possibility of being able to tell us exactly which masteries will be required and how far in to them we would need to be in order to play the story from beginning to end?

I’m sure many of us plan to tackle the story first and wouldn’t want to get locked out from continuing on in the story (until we train the mastery that we needed) because we invested in the wrong mastery or masteries.

Pretty simple and 99% it’s mushroom jumping, and gliding. They are a part of the map. And the new story is right in that map. So it’s basically almost a given it’s these two. I honestly doubt there’s another one needed, but forgive me if i see it wrong Btw I think both ‘first tier’ of these are enough to be able to get most of the map locations (you can get higher ranks in gliding/mushroom jumping, but those are for like really special places in the map.)

Chaos storm used to have a lovely sound, and now is very silent, subtle, and quickly boring to listen to. (Just my opinion). If possible, Colin, I would like to know if this is what you are gonna do with the new skills more or less.

Spatial surge second example. Here I get it more, cause it’s way more spammy (thus annoys faster). Still I think I slightly prefer old sound. But overall a change lik this ain’t to bad.

As for the Dreamer, the sound first was amazing, then it got bugged 6x in in 6 diffenent ways, and now the ‘magical projectile’ sound is gone (sounds like something a guardian could have had, like a ball of light healing ppl, that kind of sound it had, speculative/imaginative speaking). Only the horse (if you didnt know it’s unicorn you would only hear a horse shout) is left. It’s less suble, and more articulated. Imo best part was that ‘light healing magic’ sound, for lack of better term, and least interesting part is the unicorn. Why was this pushed, if I may ask? Was this one of the ‘optimize FX changes’? I really hope, this doesn’t nerf other legendaries as well.

The way John Smith talked about ‘certain items, having unintended Scarcity’, i’m kitten sure they add a way to get them. They will keep it rare (aka you have to work to get em) but they will get again available, 90% certain of that.

This new ways to farm stuff seems reasonable. But i’m scared that the ‘map farm’ will take 2 days ‘per map’ to just get that one Item you need from that one map, in enough quantity. That’s just way to grindy. I really hope it’s not like that, But it hink it will. The Megaserver system nerfs map farming (events almost always done), wich in essence slows down map reward farm.

Secondly, the way they are going with fractals seems crazy grindy, don’t see how it will be less/equal as grindy as now, wich ‘more of the same but harder, rewards lowered, and more items then ever needed from it’.

PS i say this as veteran player. I just surpassed 10 000 hours playtime (some afk, ofc, but still).

The least grindy thing atm about guild wars (to me) is Silverwaistes. The map has many different things to do (events, vinewrath, lab, champions, defend, escort, jumping puzzle, chest farm etc). And rewards a common currency, that if you focus enough on it, actually goes up plenty fast. No grind there to me. Queensdale is a nice map. When doing it for map completion I like it. But having to repeat it EVEN more to get map completion reward for legendary? Maybe 1-2 hours, but if more, no thanks. It will feel way to repetive, something the map isnt made for.

Being less grindy (or feeling less grindy), a map needs a lot of possible things to do, to get the same reward. Dry top/silverwaiste, dungeons to lesser extend, current fractals (not new planned ones) to even lesser extend do this. Farming mad kings labyrint over and over does not do this. It’s nice cause it’s only every year. But if that map was permanent available, nobody would play it (to boring, single perspective playstyle focused). That makes it more grindy or at least feel more so.

That’s trying to explain why i think fractals (wich we already know and played a lot) and ‘map reward’ are not a good thing.

Also i worked hard for getting a lot of achievements. But Anet has silently Nerfed it. It only works on mob kills, while being below lvl 80 now (used to work always). That means they don’t want it to work for masteries. So you do all this work for some bonus Exp, and now they NERF it, double grind feeling to me. This is what truly gives me the feeling Anet intends to slow us like turtles.

A physical copy bought in shop CAN get you pre-purchase char slot, but it has to be a shop listen on the ‘verified retailer for pre-purchase’ on Anet site here somewhere. For instance, in Netherlands, one of them is www.bol.com, wich I purchased it from. Took about a week to get my ‘free’ character slot.

I’ve been practising old mode since launch. And I got quit a bit of energy in my hands. I don’t need this new option at all, except maybe wvw, to quickly track, super fast moving enemies.

I tried Celestial during the Beta. Works very well imo. Ok power damage, (but nothing to write home about), good, to very good (but not excellent) condition damage. Don’t forget we got flame trap, and others. I used spike/flame trap + axe+dagger (and staff). If i wanted i could do 3-4k condi spike (flame trap, axe 2, and the rest of em skills). Not bad imo. And meanwhile keep good healing etc. Since healing will be lower BUT healing power will scale now druid skills, i think celestial, will feel even better (compared to other stats). But that may be just me

While i won’t claim that our effort was amazing, our third time, we managed to survive, and almost always get on the thing to prevent aoe in time. I was full zerker necro reaper (wich does kitten nice damage). Some others were too, we had revenant and druids too. When the timer almost ended, boss was 60% hp.

So indeed this screams ‘zerker or go home’. And I can’t agree with that. It’s already basically saying druid (kind of builds) will be useless… Not the way to go Anet.

Druid is basically made like a monk now, if we forget about pets, trap, and offhand weapon. It heals more then anything else, but deals less damage then anything else. To get what you want (damage spec viable choices within druid), the heals have to be nerfed from 900-4000 to 400-1800. And when you do that, guardian/elementalist are way to close in playstyle imo, but that’s me. You have to keep ranger (and druid) unique. Would I sign up for a Druid V2.0 (not erasing, but addition to current version) with more damage focus? Absolutely. But that Druid V2.0 zerker build focus, should not rewrite the nice fun/niche/Unique/different spec that the druid 1.0 is now. That is my beef with all these requests.

Nothing comes free. Asking a buff one side, gives a nerf elsewhere. And it’s that (healing) nerf, that I know will make druid healing subpar in the meta.

I haven’t tested reaper yet until last 3 hours. Someone else bragged really hard about it, And I thought why skip it! I must say i’m amazed. Animations are great, it brings new tools to the necro, and more importantly good continous dps is within reach now for necro (dagger/X + greatsword). What I love the most is reaper nr 2. That leap + damage is amazing. Necro finally has a usefull leap. Omg that has been one of my biggest gripes with the profession. Now I can leap all around, even out of combat (ty critters). Nr 4 is also amazing, especially bringing a whirl finisher to necro.

Perhaps the thing i miss the most (when playing reaper) is the 600 range aoe’s, especially life transfer. Reaper aoe’s are also big (imroved already i read somewhere), but not as crazy. But it’s no big deal tbh.

Reaper nr 3 is brillant way to add both fear and stability in one skill. And timing is more important then ever with that skill, promoting skillfull play.

So yeah, just mostly a short but positive post about reaper (I haven’t played necro in over 2 years, and I now definitely will. I think that says enough)

It seems more ‘melee power over the top zerker wannabee builders’ are mostly looking at the minus moving impaired effects of the trait.

Tbh I could care less about that. I survive in wvw without rune of melandru, lemangrass poultry soup. Just like you don’t care about rune of centaur.

But to the point if that is the only reason you are so ‘must be baseline’ about this trait, then split the swiftness and less movement impairing condition into to traits. Works for me. You get your -impairing effect minor trait, and swiftness becomes choice, no prob for me there.

Well I can revert it also, one of your topics says ‘should I quit the game’?

I hate dumbing down a game, (especially one with already good controls, layouts etc). If Anet dumbs the game even more down (see New player experience), should I quit the game as well? What works for one doesn’t work for the other.

For someone so hardcore busy with ranger builds i’m amazed, that is important for you. I mean, typing this wall of texts hurts my fingers more then pressing 1 in game (this is not a joke). But we are both doing it nonetheless. Are we gonna ask Microsoft or another company to fix keayboard, typing right now, so our fingers don’t hurt anymore?

Asking for QoL improvement is no problem. But once it goes, that you dumb down (remove advanced gameplay) to only get the ‘easy way’ implemented, then that’s for players like me a bridge to far.

I rather have an option open all inventory loot bags. Clicking mouse hurts more (and is mechanicly more fragile then keyboard). This would not dumb the game down, help everyone, and help your mouse. Without any dumbing down at all. With such suggestion I would give them a warm welcome. But once you talk about killing (weither small or not) features, to implement something (here it is flexibilty of where to use the heal). Your suggestion would also cause other issues. If skill 3-5 (pretty good to use skills) are off cooldown, how do you ‘end’ this channel at nr 1? It will require different method then currently in the game, and one thing Anet has said they want is as uniform as possible game, so that people faster learn the game. (like why they dont nerf different in different game mode. They want it that if you are used to 5k damage on clusterbomb in pvp, that you will see same amount in pve.)

I know it’s not cool to have someone oppose your ‘brilliant’ idea, but for me the current status (minus the landing of the heal) is brillant, and your change is less brilliant, so i gotta speak my opinion/mind. It’s still up to the devs to decide.

Fun fact: I got a mechanic disorder in my fingers. Takes more time to learn for me then other players. But in the end I seem to have less issues then other players here.

Look i kinda wanna agree with you, and turn druid into an all over the place hybrid weapon. But that brings a lot of problems:

It would turn druid into a revenant/engineer/elementalist (mostly the last one, staff skills ones). Do we need an almost exact copy of elementalist? no.

Druid is unique in that, we keep pet (bugged or not, it’s advantage), we keep one (at least) weapon that already existed to us, we keep access to stuff like quick draw (once it’s fixed it’s druid synergy). Also druid is the only prof (apart from guardian elite) that can do 4k heal just with 1 skill to allies. Warrior needs 2 shouts (and not use other good utilities insstead), guardian can do this but only in selfish form (meditations).

Having played with it yesterday mainly in Verdant brink against some very nasty mobs (good test ground for raids me thinks): Druid plays like a healer, but not like a monk in gw1. For instance I took flame trap and spike trap, axe and dagger (+ staff). Celestial staff but condition food/runes. I managed to spike up to 5k condition dps (not counting power damage, wich is also nice with this build). I could easely swap from (not top of the line but very good) damage into a pure but heavy healer archtype.

If i wanted a spec, that can spam damage and healing non stop, without swapping weapons/roles/forms, then elementalist already does this. Revenant does this already (ventari), shout warrior already does.

What makes druid unique (and so thus fun for me) is that is goes beyond the normal healing but sacrafices some damage and support for this. What some people want here is only natural, but with how the specialization system seems to ‘evolve’, I think that’s not the way to go.

But i did ask for some (not high, otherwise overpowered) extra damage applications in my druid feedback post. I think that will go a long way. Also make staff auto attack somehow work without target.

It’s like asking greatsword+longbow work in condi build. If you work crazy hard you can make a mediocre condi build with them, maybe good, but not more. To make it a condi build viable weapon set, you would have to nerf power damage. For druid it would be a heal nerf.

If Druid would go the way you ask, then I probably play elementalist (and this as someone who has a boon for rangers).

Don’t forget (especially now with pets having condi damage): you can choose any pet in the game, from healing (fern hound), power pet, to ranged pet, to condi pet. While relative small (and buggy – but that’s another topic) part of the ranger, it’s a part of us that can independently chosen, and gives that hybrid flexibility more then you think (imo).

But I understand your point. I hate builds that are to onesided. Hence I don’t play warrior much (mostly melee damage, and not much more to do with the profession).

The mesmer trait that makes EVERY single greatsword skill apply cripple, will make toast of the druid trait. They just dont realize it yet. Use gs, cast sime clones, use shatter. If the druid does spam dodge hes death. Wait he’s out of endurance? repeat even more death. This is such meaningless complaints from a mesmer.

Agree with all the math comparisons. They are correct.

Either you get 25%+ bonus
Or 33% without bonus (we could call swiftness trait like this)
Or 33% + bonus but with a huge downside

2+2-1 = 3 (natural stride)
2+1 = 3 (mecha legs, times goes on)

That is basically in math what’s happening here.

Well in another topic it is about it. HeimsKarl is asking two different things, about the same trait (natural mending). Either this suggestion, or the natural stride suggestion.

Only one can be implemented. So my post still has merrit. Being against the natural stride baseline, basically also softly suggest i’m more open to this idea of him.

Then again: Heimskarl seems to forget one thing; Specializations bring a certain playstyle to a player. Druid by definition is mostly healer. He seems to try to twist this fact into that he cant fully dps spec a druid trait line. If he want a full dps over the top warrior like build, he should wait for the next specialization (sorry to say so, but that’s the way it is). The dazes, immobalizes, etc are nice though. But choosing Druid for those alone is a niche.

Druid is healing. It has some bonusses. But taking druid for anything BUT healing, is a wrong choice. Heimsfield karl want to make a build that ignoreds 90% of druid (healing) and uses that last 10%. Good for him. But in the end, the minor works on every druid build (every build heals well, and good, and now more). Natural stride competes with rune of traveller, speed, Signet of the hunt, Rune of the centaur, warhorn (trait focused) build, resounding timbre. In other builds say ‘robotic legs engineer trait’. It’s swappable at any time. Other ones are very limited (air attunement, only 25% of ele skils have the 25% move speed). By implementing Karl’s idea, all the above mentioned skills, runes, skill/Trait setups, become a bad choice.

To me it seems the op wants to combine ultra over the top dps, not sacrafice anything, keep rune of scholar, because well dps, etc, and just use druid for thosse little extra (the move speed here). Every build has to sacrafice something. This seems like a call to prevent that.

And last point: This trait (move speed) doenst work when you are move speed impaired. This makes is super usefull in some area’s (like dungeons without cripple), and very afwull in others (fractals i recall has a lot of cripple). By forcing this trait as minor to every druid, you prevent the flexibility that traits try to offer. For instance, in Citadel of flame you use the trait, cause it works well there, in Fractals you disable it (choose another). Flexibility as it should be.

The reason natural mender is a good minor is that, even the more dps selfish and healing ignoring player will, (or has the possibility to), use the avatar form to heal. When that happens you are almost certainly gonna heal other targets (especially your pet). That means even for nice builds trying to ignore the healing of druid (wich is already very hard), that even for them this trait has merrit (like it or not). That makes it not an issue that you cannot choice/replace the trait. It has permanent synergy with the any build. Natural stride would not have it.

I’m sorry for stepping on your toes other players (especially Heimskarl as i agree with almost all other things he says), but asking for this to be baseline is a little more problematic then people think.

Edit: I thought this was another natural stride topic (since natural mending is the thing you wanna replace it with and is the topic title). It seems it wasn’t. But in that very way of switching those two, my opinion above here stands. A different approach could work for me, but I need more testing time/playtime to draw a conclusion abouve that.

My logitech keyboard is 7 years old (cleaned the internals twice). It survived 1700 hours from grenade abuse, 2500 hours from elementalist (also quite a button spammer). No issues at all.

Same with celestial form. How would you play cleave warrior then? Selecting a target makes him choose a direction wich makes it harder to land on 3 target.

Longbow auto attack doenst connect with near the end of the ranger. That means you gotta spam 1. So hard for you now? Don’t think so.

I’m fine with how it is, really not hard to use. The cast time makes sure you have time to recover mustles of finger.

Also the way you guys suggest promotes afk builds. Lazy builds. ‘ok lemme install my macro, here goes, healing bot ready’. Not intended gameplay. You gotta move the cursor. There were times I healed near me first, at range, then me again and several times at differnet locations to top of hp. Guess what, what you guys suggest would kill that. It would basically be a nerf, for convenience. I can’t really support such Idea.

Let me start off by saying that playing druid in challenging condition (new itzel champion hits like a truck, 22k damage on 1200 range versus 2870 armor), is very interesting and… fun! Keep it that way please. It also takes some getting used to. Certain combo’s, celestial form setups, i only learned AFTER 6 hours of playing druid straight. So don’t draw to quickly a conclusion about good/Bad druid (players).

Feedback:

Staff 1 is ok, but doenst work without target, that serious hampering how viable it is. Like some people said, stealth currently is to strong against staff druid ranger because of this. Having auto attack apply some very short bleeds (to not make it overpowered, say 1-2 sec, and maybe not on all hits) would make it hybrid build viable.

Staff 2: In ‘zergs’ (20-50 people) it heals a large amount, and is a nice skill. The cleanse also is nice. But in small groups, most ppl stand to close or to far from the monster to get the whisp to touch them. This skill also feels like it casts pretty slowly

Staff 3. Very nice skill, is even a mobility skill (moves you faster to spot). The annoying after cast when using a distance closer then 1200 range should be fixed. Another great tweak would be to let it work like blinks and warrior greatsword skilll 5. Currently if your cursor is ‘to far’ out it fails, but to move maximum distance, you gotta keep testing cursor range before you are there. Now blinks (if hold cursor to far) just teleport you the max range. It would be great if this skill does same. for the rest: don’t change this skill it’s amazing. I used it a lot with healing sprint (blast finisher heal) and flame trap (aoe might blast).

Staff 4: The idea and animation is great. In practise it’s to slow and to low duration. Here some bleeding damage would be great (and not overpowered or out of place in my opinion). It would also give druid that much needed ‘little bit damage’ to tag events/loot. I played druid with celestial (staff + axe/dagger). The a/d combo was able to push 3-5k condi damage just with celestial gear (correct condi runes though, condi food, flame and spike trap also). I think druid really is fit very well to give ranger some more condition applications for settler, rabid, celestial etc builds.

Staff 5 Water field is nice (synergy with warhorn and staff 3). Currently the heals are way to low. Remember a reflection field, copies the full damage, and turns it around. While a heal would be more powerfull then that, i say 50% of damage = heal would make it equally good. 100-200 per ‘long range shot’ (3000 damage normally) is not enough reward imo.

Avatar form

Number 1: Great skill, but needs some tweaks. The global cast (before and after cast) and healing numbers (except for scaling on healing power) are great. Now what needs fixing is, that either the heal procs immediately apon cursor and skill click (and then executes after cast, or you cast the skill like now, but instead of healing original spot, it heals at where your cursor is at the end of the animation. This is really necessary cause the ‘move or die’ way of playing gw2 won’t die on a whimp. That means skills gotta be viable while being on the move. This holds druid potential a little bit back, (if people stacked on champ boss, it was lovely though, no issues landing it, keeping the melee thanks alive).

Nr 2: Nice skill and animation. But it could use something more. Perhaps 1s burning ticks on the enemy it’s tagged to per sec? Pre-casting this skill before Avatar form ends is a good way to build avatar force when it ends. Cause it just procs it nicely.

Nr 3 the cream! Please don’t nerf. If you nerf this skill (healing part), then you might as well play staff ele (with more damage), shout warrior etc. The skill has the same issues as nr 1 skill (it casts on the start of channel, the end location of your cursor is not taken into account). Someone said the blast finisher doesn’t work, for me it did, with flame trap. Perhaps the issue is that the next skill cannot be combined with this one (see next paragraph). The daze is nice (perhaps gotta be made 2 s ec, for the moment of clarity, and stun spam prevention. I rather not have a cooldown increase. This skill barely can be used twice, maybe 3x but very hard within the avatar form. A cd increase would make that worse.

Avatar form nr 4. An on the move water field! lovely. A few issues. While i get you cannot make stuff overpowered (and hence probably the cast time for full duration of the skill), it makes blasting that field on your own hard (perhaps drake pet usefull for this). It’s also a nice trigger if you cast it just before AF ends. Then you get your form up pretty quick. Some really low power damage (see thief shortbow nr 4 skill poison field) per tick would be amazing. It would give druid that tagging capability, and more importantly not be overpowered (full zerker thief only does 600-800 damage per poison field, it would be less if not zerker wich is a likely way to go for druid). If not pure damage, perhaps torment, bleed or burn as condition (a multiple ticking poison field is a bit to close to other skills in the game i think).

Avatar form 5: Amazing skill. Even does some nice damage too (druids really needs this). Animation is great. The slow is a really great new tool for druids. A champ itzelf was using his ‘mobility charge’ skill. I came up to the idea to slow him. Man that was great. His skill barely went forward and was way more telegraphed: result instead of 6 downed people, nobody was downed. Just an example of why this skill is so good.

Celestial form energy build up:

For power build (especially single target builds) a little low, but on the other hand I think it can’t be high or that would kill the purpose/lore/ of druid. Aoe builds, do pretty nice (still slow, but no true complaint about that one, like trap aoe+barrage, piercing arrows etc).

Healing skill use build is is nice. I think troll urgent builds up to fast (I know ppl gonna hate me for saying it, since it makes powerbuilds viable), but having 1 skill automaticly fill the celestial bar is, well strong. For instance, healing spring alone doesn’t fill the bar. But executing blast finisher does. Perhaps greatswor 3 and sword 2 leaps also give you enough to fill the bar. I think healing spring is great synergy with druid.

Regeneration doesnt give celestial form energy. I think it should. However, dont make it overpowered. It should be just an inch more then what damage application does. I also think perhaps not every tick should give energy, but the start application of the regeneration. Oakheart salve, the warhorn giving regen trait. Give those a pre-set energy amount (less then true healing but more then power damage, perhaps in the middle of it.

What about fernhound? Or moa’s (they have a skill you cannot control but heals a good amount). Should those give (perhaps a smaller amount then your own) energy as well for building some synergy? I don’t know.

Traits are mostly very good. As a lot of people suggest to move natural stride, i gotta be the opposer here. There is almost no trait that gives permanent swiftness or 25% move speed, that is a minor trait. The ones that are are limited (like only in air attunement), or when using dagger/melee weapon. Making this baseline (minor trait) would bring some problems. It would make any druid build choosine traveller rune/signet of the hunt a stupid choice. It also makes that you would have to completely erase your trait line to move slower (handy in some jumping puzzles). Also this trait has a condition. For some builds/environments that will not work well. Traits are there to be flexible choice for wathever the situation is. In this case, Natural stride almost screams that it needs this flexibility.

I get that this will make some ppl angry they can’t take the other traits. But get this: just choosing signet of the wild (a lot of ppl complain glyphs are not good enough so why not), lets you choose the other traits. Just taking traveller runes (by far not as kittenome ppl think these days, since celestial druid is quite viable), solves this. Or make a resounding timbre or warhorn focused build (permanent swiftness). Hell if you want to keep your power damage, perhaps use rune of centaur. So much choice to be honest. Making that trait baseline would compete to much. Look at robotic legs. You take it or not, but no competition. On the other hand Natural mender works in every druid build, every single one of them. You are a healer after all, so you synergize automaticly with it, weither you intend to be power focussed or not. That’s why it was a good choice to make minor.

Celestial shadow feels a bit to short of an effect. Most celestial forms will take 5-15 sec to build up and 15-20 sec to use. That means a 30-40 sec rotation window. To make it usefull i think it should be 4-5 seconds.

I played around with a few glyphs, mostly unity. It feels a bit weak. Some champs one shot you and barely get a scratch from this skill.

Quick draw doesn’t work with staff, probably an oversight.

I disagree completely. While it sounds good on paper, you forget one thing. Having or not having swiftness, speed signet or similar trait is everywhere else a CHOICE (and traveller runes). Now you would force it down on us. To be honest I experimented with traveller runes and natural stride. I prefer rune of traveler: It support celestial big time (wich is a great stat for druid), it support boon duration, condi duration (again fits my condi/druid hybrid), and you don’t have anything to do for move speed (other then to choose the runs). The trait however, will not perma boost you (one cripple on you and it’s useless. wich means in wvw it’s most likely useless (cripple/chill spam). For that reason alone it should be a swappable trait. This trait is to much depending on circomstance. However, natural mender is like super normal for druid. Any druid, will for some reason try to burst heal. Even avatar only druids. Spam 1 or so. That will in the end give more healing and hence your choice to go druid will reward more. Healing is the reason to go druid and having a minor boosting that = most normal thing of world. There is no question it will work in any build, it’s not depending on anything since the first minor unlocks celestial form wich alone benefits enough from Natural mending.

For one time (doesn’t happen often) I disagree with Heimskarl. I played druid several times this evening, and for damage spec it just is not made for that. It does what is does: lots of healng. Damage specs can make use of that of course, but in the end you take druid, to get more healing (for your own or team).

Secondly we ‘kinda’ already have a robotic legs (cause that is what this is about) trait: Resounding Trimbre. Or warhorn cd reduce + quick draw. Enough ways to get it. The thing is, if you made any ‘speed’ trait fully baseline, then by definition traveller rune and rune of speed are absolete, no build will ever use them. Same goes for Signet of the hunt. This is just bad idea. Or perhaps wishing to much. Have you ever heart engies asking for robotic legs (combat shoes in past) to become almost baseline (aka minor trait)? No is the answer.

Take water from ele for instance. Soothing mist: Is some form of healing. Healing ripple: some form of healing. Then 1% damage for every boon on you. Elementalist automaticly uses lots of boons, thus this trait always have a purpose. Even a full condi spec has (very low but still has) use of a 1-8% damage boost.

Mark is a cool person. He never answer specifly, very short, is the fastest person to lock a thread, and so far we have not seen much of him on twitch.

This is by no means offence, but Mark is the last person you have to ask this.

If i have to score Mark and Gail from ‘warm’ (being 10) to extreme cool (0), then i would say this:

Mark: 2
Gaile: 10

Everyone can improve on the job, hence there’s ‘functioning hearing’ every year for working people in my country. This post is not meant to flame, personal attack or anything. But it’s a big stand out, that this person could improve in being less cold.

This post is a suggestion for how to improve (Mark surely has his good sides, like that Magic card he printed).

I agree with most people here.

It was a Knee Jerk reaction (to fast, to big nerf).

Twitter (on a ’nerf this plox thread of all) was wrong way to communicate.

Roy who made warrior in year 1 of gw2 op, and now revenant very powerfull (not truly op, but within the real of celestial ele, warrior etc). He of all people (who has had no impact almost at all on ranger design), calls for the nerf. Not logical. Weither this was spoken about internally before decision or not. It seems Roy took the lead in the ‘nerf argument’ side here. In his own revenant threads he often says ‘lets first play more with it before we draw conclucions, for instance, the energy drain and or cooldown, might be bigger punishment then players think now’. This is how WHaO should have been handled. It wasn’t. The biggest problem: Roy and Jon Peters seem to be the lead profession designers (they are boss of balance sort off). They both don’t play ranger (not enough at least). Some players hotjoined 8 hours here with ranger and still honestly admit it was to few to make a conclusion. I would be very surprised if Roy/Jon play ranger more then 8 hours per month… That is so out of wack and a source to the ranger problem. It’s part of why the ‘absolutely not satisfied’-tone has overtaken this forum. Dig the rev for 3 months after launch, only play ele, thief ranger necro (all have some very weak trait/buids – that need to be playtested to form a objective conclusion about what needs a boost/nerf and how).

Revenant, Elementalist, Warrior, Necromancer, Engineer all (to a normal or crazy extend) can buff might to themself AND allies. Why in hell would it be wrong for ranger to do this? Ranger is still behind other professions in dungeon dps. For pvp most of dps is not utilized (pet rarely connects to enemy). Necromancer is just blood is power, revenant has the energy drain punishment (wich is especially heavy on protection). This makes it an ok balance (so far). Warrior and Elementalist however, are questionable in the current tone of ‘rangers cannot have 25 might stacks, that are even not shared on top of all downsides’, since they can do 25 might (and fury) to all party members, permanent. Ele can add, swiftness, protection, regen on top of it! C’mon Anet.

This is not a call to arms for huge boost/nerfs. I know Ele has downsides. I have 9955 hours playtime… It’s split amongst all professions (not evenly but still xd). I know some bigger nerfs would make ele getting shelved probably. But at the same time, currently it’s so strong in heal, boon support, mobility, Cc applicaiton, condi, power, armor aspects, that it’s simply to overpowered. Especially effort wise to what is gained.

Ranger has in most circomstance to work double (or triple) as hard to get similar (sometimes still not same effect due to weaker skills/traits) effect. Now when we finally overcome some of the dps weakness, in a not all that overpowered way and with serious limitations (the build, timings, healing skill, cleansing, utility slots all make big sacrafices to get there, unlike elementalist), it’s op? I know to expect a nerf, just to get it a bit in line, but this is a joke. You nerfed it to ‘non existant’ status. 1 sec cast time removes 1 sec of all existing boons on you. On top of it, after it you only get +2 sec on the most important ones, really?

Like some people have posted, Thanks Gaile for good commnications effort, staying calm, and remaining positive in a dissapointed discussion. Not many people are as ‘warm hearthed’ as her. Kuddos to her. I really hope she never leaves Anet, cause she is a blessing for us players. And even more blessing she plays ranger herself (like it or not, even the super kind Gaile is slightly biased! Good for us, she probably more likely will push her collegues to work on ranger). But i remain realistic, the ball is in Roy/Jon’s camp. Irenio btw, thanks a lot of trying. Your intentions were great, creative and a fun end result. Don’t let the big dissapointment come to your heart, I think most people will agree with me, that you take no blame at all in this (on the contrary).

Another worry note: Please don’t nerf Druid. May sound QQ/childish, but really. The intention of druid is clear: some CC on a very long cooldown (you must build up avatar energy), some huge burst heal on a very long cd, some heavy condi cleanse on a VERY LONG CD, I can repeat, but very long cd is emphasis. Also, while staff skills are great, if we don’t have access to the Avatar CC/heal burst, it will feel to weak, and incomplete. So any WHaO-nerf threatment on it is wrong. Also HoT is by definition harder. Harder means, support, healing, etc will be more important. Wether Jon/Roy love pvp so hard they almost explode from it or not (just a figure of speech), that cannot be the only goal when looking upon Druid balance. It has to remain HoT pve, dungeon, Raid, wvw viable. Pvp is of lesser importance here. If anything, this might be first time ever were a split in skills (pvp part heals 50% as effective) is truly necessary, not even needed or welcome, NECESSARY a 100%. So to end: the ranger communinity does not wish a super Druid nerf. We can already now see this is not the way to go.

What is the ranger role? Irenio has a kitten good idea i think, but what about Roy/Jon who supercede his decision? An important question that needs answering before doing anything else, can be done about Druid/ranger. Also please Roy, leave that Bias to your subconscience. Year 1 anet definitely showed warrior Bias. It has about a year ago finally slowed down to normal levels, presumably once you started HoT design. Revenant seems ok so far, but at same time, was boosted a lot (not just a little bit) to make that ’it’s so slow and hits like a wet noodle’ feeling away. But by ‘improving’ Rev so much (with new technology i might say), other professions feels lacking something. Like not modernized enough to have the same fun/viability. Is it powerpowered? I’d say no, not at all, Energy management, fixed utilities, Hero swap cooldown, weapon swap cooldown, etc make it a ‘hard to master’ profession. And that alone seems like a good enough trade off so far for it. If you ask me, would you nerf revenant in the current meta? Crazy hard question. I would say yes. But that yes, is for the wrong reasons. It’s for the reasons, guardian will be less played, ranger lacks so much behind, Necromancer still has some problems, etc. Not because revenant as a stand alone feels over tuned. The issue again lies in that some professions simply are not ‘upgraded’ enough to modern hearth of thorns style. Give the ranger sword auto attack versus revenant. Both are cute, fun, and have merrit. But in the end, revenant is way better, because you are fully at control as player how to use it, a ranger (no matter how clever and trained at sword using) will often lose control over it. All i’m saying is, nerfing takes wisdom to do correctly. You need objective overall conclusions. So far some big mistakes in this area have been made (like the way WHaO was handled).

Quickness nerf I agree. I haven’t tested it, cause i don’t like sacraficing utility slot to quickness. Might is not op by long shot. Ele holds perma 25 stacks longer, can share it (very important, ranger can’t), and with trait also permanent fury… Vigor and protection are within reach of permanent application. Also Ele doesn’t have to sacrafice utility slot OR healing skill for it. In fact they still have extra heals and cleanses via traits and weapon skills over ranger. I don’t think Ele is hugely overpowered (except D/D cele in tpvp, conquest), but the issue here is ranger being looked opon as not deserving this stuff.

But I have a feeling i know why. They think 25 might stacks on ranger should be ‘very hard to get’, because ranger is a ‘double entity’. Might (especially 25 stacks, 675 power, condition damage), can turn weak, or good dps into very good, to crazy dps. But because we have a pet (with a lot of limitation, and pvp limiting bugs – wich Roy seems to forget), they think a second entity with this huge dps boost is op. They think ranger is basically balanced ok without might, but once we use might, they think cause we are double entity, that our might ‘achieving’, results in double effectiveness (aka 50 might stacks or 1350 power/condition damage boost).

While it has some merrit, in practise it’s not true.

And I have to Admit, permanent swiftnes, (single) Might, Fury (that can be extra effective with trait), on Rev, that Is AOE on top of it, and heavy armor to boot, sounds op. I played rev and didnt feel op (actually underpowered without herald, sword and shiro), but if we just will do the ‘theory about what is op’-talk, then that is way more op Roy. Perhaps you tested it enough in practise to know it’s not OP. Thing is: test ranger too before drawing conclusions like ‘double entity 25 might stack is op’. Roy love warriors like hell, but that seems to have slowed down since Rev. My guess is he almost never played ranger (he also doesn’t seem the type of person to like ranger). That’s all fair and ok. But without playing ranger, you can’t objectively make a conclusion. And here lies the problem.

Cap quickness (may protection to only 3/5 s) and the rest is +12 secs adding (healing skill is on short cd, this seems ok)

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Especially the ‘divine magic’ for lack of better term sound, is now gone (pure unicorn, not a magical glowing projectile) anymore. .

What do you mean by pure unicorn vs. glowing projectile?

There were two sounds in the past, unicorn ‘shouting’, and a magical wave (the arrow moving, was like a ball of light wave in mmo terms of magic sounds). That one is gone, and i liked it a lot. I don’t care to much about the unicorn sound (wich one) that is used.

+1 fully agree. I’m even sad now i made the dreamer. Especially the ‘divine magic’ for lack of better term sound, is now gone (pure unicorn, not a magical glowing projectile) anymore. That was the best part of it, it’s gone now. It also is much faster annoying now. I’d categorize dreamer now as annoying almost as quip, wich is not good.

Please fix.

All condies stack now, and not with a 25 stack cap (it’s 500 now i think? to much for about any zerg to succeed maxing out).

So you can do multiple burn/poison etc stacks now, and all of them will tick per second, rather then prolong in duration. That is the change (and it’s live now for some time).

The ‘build’ list by ‘heimfield’ of wathever his name is, is up to date. He did a very good job compiling that list (found some very very nice builds in it). There’s actually a lot of builds that are ok to very good in dungeons now for ranger imo.

I’m using a celeestial build, that’s quite tanky, doens’t give up much damage, but survives like hell.

I tried it in dungeons and was not overly impressed.

To get perma protection you need to sacrafice a skill slot to guard. You also need to ‘pre-emptive’ cast your WHaO, loosing the heal it yield (protection useless, if you dont get hit, so you cast before getting hit).

You already get permanent regen/swiftness easy, so those boons, getting longer has not much impact (trait: Resounding Timbre).

It prolongs Strength of the pack, that’s it. But you still wont have permanent might (not without might runes for sure, and even then). But to open burst like this, leave you very very vulnerable.

You loose a skill slot to flame trap (or any skill, like frost spirit, etc). Flame trap damage is kitten nice, now that burning stacks. I didn’t feel the extra might stacks, out damaged the flame trap + clever play of a (better balanced) skill setup.

Pet swap quickness is to short to waste WHaO on. Doenst improve gameplay that much.

Overall, I prefer actually other builds in dungeons, pve and wvw. Will test in pvp later, but I assume it’s similar.

This builds allows crazy opening burst. But the moment the enemy outsmarts you, survives it and fights back, you are more then death. A balanced build is better imo.

Guard and strength of pack (imo) are the niches of this skill. Otherwise i don’t see that much use in it (and both have downsides if you engage the combo).

Well it should be fixed now. Let’s hope that ends this bug

It’s way worse then this. Even home instance is reset. Not gonna farm it, (clearly exploit). At first I thought it’s graphical bug (all the nodes still alive, but not farmable), tested on one and it is. This should be hotfixed.

Hi Anet

The bonus experience you accumulate through achievements (26% for me), no longer works on mobs, and nodes. This was similar on the live experience in beta. It seems you are trying to merge beta code with live code. Food and stuff like maintenance oil, still works (boost experience gain). Having worked kitten achievements, it would sadden me if this is the intention (nerfing mastery experience gain). It’s one of the motivations to keep farming achievements.

Thanks in advance (if you fix it)

I’m mostly positive about the pets getting condition damage. I think people underestimated the impact of this.

For instance devourer pet will finally be a good choice (not best of course, but still). Birds and drakes have quite a bit of condi applications, so boosting it is very nice. Spiders getting 1000, i like it Their poison aoe might have to be dodged now.

WHaO amazing, even more utility, even if copied duration is capped.

Quick draw was already good, now just better, so no complaints there (one of my favorite traits).

Makes people Jealous

3 hours from now is the earliest patch ever applied to EU (+1 gmt common EU time). The latest patch ever was applied 12-14 hours from now.

The most common launch time is 4-5 hours from now, if they are good on schedule (20-30% of time), and 6-8 hours if a little later, but still on schedule (20-30% also).

Hope that is clear enough, haha.

Guys learn math.

Pre patch:

3 sec stealth (prestige, decoy) became 4 sec. Veil 2+1 = 3 sec.

Mass invisibility was 5+1 sec = 6 secs (to short imo for elite, and that c ast time).

After the ultra boost patch:

Veil = 2*2 = 4 sec
Prestige/decoy = 3*2 = 6 secs. Even thief doenst have such longer triggers (except shadow refuge but pulses multiple times). Here is where the overpoweredness lies.
Mass invisibilty 5*2= 10 sec (to be honest, this was the best part of the boost, an elite with a long, but cool windup, finally feeling a bit viable.

Now with new balance update:

Veil= 2+1 sec = 3 sec
Decoy/Prestige: 3+1,5 sec = 4,5 sec (this is where all the ‘omg nerfed to oblivion’ people are so wrong). It’s STILL better then the earliest iteration. 0,5 seconds to be exact.

Mass invisibility: 5+2,5 seconds = 7,5 seconds. Ok (not that relative short 6s from launch, but not crazy either, i’m sure a lot of ppl will no longer use this elite now wich is a bit sad.

There you have the ‘facts’, unless Anet made a mistake on twitchcon.

Agree with Fay to increase base of veil and mass invis. The others are ok. The trait has to feel like it makes a diff (other then boons) and the 1,5 sec is a something grandmaster worthy on prestige/decoy.

Lhos.1643:

This thread will go places.

Not good places, but places.

Had me laugh very hard. Good one. +1

I kinda Agree. I have a bank access contract, to fix this somewhat (all my potions are in bank, but I can access them anywhere). It’s still a little awkward though, especially since you cant open bank on the move, slowing you a bit down. But realistically a bank contract is not a solution for everyone, so yours sound good.

Sound nothing but logical Wolfey, I agree. I tried it on thief, and it didn’t bother me. However, if ele would have that animation it would bother me. While ranger may be a ‘melee-ish’ class (so far they did not use artificers – the mage class – weapons), Druid definitely is. It’s caster subtype now.