Guild Wars 2

overall, i like the spec…even though i don’t plan to use it as a dedicated healer. i think this is a good start (wish there were more betas to refine like the other classes had….). aside from creating a group healer role new to ranger, the strong cc/interrupt aspects mesh pretty well w/ other builds

astral force is easy enough to build fast w/ staff auto and/or troll ungent….but could use a slight boost on other weapons

ancient seeds is a great GM trait, but sometimes procs wonkey.

REVERSE THE FUNCTION OF GLYPH OF TIDES – the current functionality makes zero sense. in celestial form (healer role) i want to push mobs away…outside celestial, i want to pull mobs to my weapon/glyph aoes.

also…..make glyphs ranged and ground targeted….makes no sense to have a ranged healer class have small radius pbaoe utilities.

would like at least celestial form auto to have a very small aoe dmg component……..so that healer druids can get event credit easier.

LOVE the mobility of staff 3, but adding a blast finisher to staff 3 would add a new dimension to druid support and the skill itself. especially w/ water field on staff 5.

staff 2 should spawn at target……this would also improve the very weak for a GM, lingering.

staff isn’t working w/ quickdraw, so that needs to be fixed.

wyvern pets are bad. way too slow to attack. the uncontrollable knockback is very bad, and fire ’s F2 takes so long to happen its unusable

love bristleback and smokeskale though.

Knighthonor.4061:

Prophet.1584:

your going to get a lot of bias in this poll from people who just don’t want to play a healer type at all. then you’re going to get a lot of positive bias from us old time rangers who really want a space in the meta regardless of what that space might be. Druids decent, celestial form needs some damage on skill so your not losing credit. reworking the way credits given would be a way huger undertaking than just throwing some numbers on skills.

Druid damage is good as is. If it gets a large damage increase to staff and Celestial form, that would mean a counter nerf to Healing to balance. And Druid is meant to be played as Healer. Why nerf what its good at for what it was never meant for.

people that want DPS simply dont equip Druid or Staff.

there are other options for that. Dont get Druid nerfed simply because in some people mind, healing isnt a Role in GW2 and everything is about 1v1 DPS.

i like Druid being all about CC and Heals. Best Elite Specialization in the game.

giving the celestial form 1 & 3/ staff 3 a small amount of aoe damage will not require a nerf to healing……but it will help druids playing the healer role in pve get better event credit.

kiwituatara.6053:

I feel like playing staff druid with a classic pure healing mindset is not going to work. The specialization traitline is incredible for supplementary the current non-druid builds though.

same.
i like the dazing skills&traits w/ celestial form as needed.

works with quickdraw power or condi builds (although they need to fix bug where staff doesn’t work w/ quick draw). probably works well w/ trapper builds.

that said, i’m not sure where they fit in pve, unless healing becomes necessary in raids.

i think its pretty solid in wvw, though…and would be much better if glyghs became ranges GT.

idevourwater.3149:

Noticed that natural strides dont work… I dont feel any faster when traiting that

i tried it out and then ported to the asura town…started running, then hit a switfness skill…and it didn’t seem like a went any faster….once swiftness was over, its didn’t seem like i slowed down.

so it must work sometimes…..maybe its buggy you equip and unequip the trait in the same zone.

Justine.6351:

Relshdan.6854:

Justine.6351:

I was on the fence and after 15min decided druid wasn’t worth dumping beastmastery for. 10min later I got back on druid and did some playing around with stuff and realized it is worth it.

Ancient seeds + one of the 2 aoe dazes + barrage/bonfire alone is awesome ;-)
its like another entangle.

There is something wonky about some heals charging celestial form, some not. Ancestor’s Grace doesn’t but the AA does. Trolls Unguent does per tic.

does ancient seeds give the 5 bleeds stack or only 1 bleed?

its 5, but note that its like any other vine skill, it pulses its conditions.

awesome…thanks!
can’t wait to try druid trapper now. (or just condi/lockdown if no trapper runes).

Justine.6351:

I was on the fence and after 15min decided druid wasn’t worth dumping beastmastery for. 10min later I got back on druid and did some playing around with stuff and realized it is worth it.

Ancient seeds + one of the 2 aoe dazes + barrage/bonfire alone is awesome ;-)
its like another entangle.

There is something wonky about some heals charging celestial form, some not. Ancestor’s Grace doesn’t but the AA does. Trolls Unguent does per tic.

does ancient seeds give the 5 bleeds stack or only 1 bleed?

Zatoichi.1049:

ancient seeds is only doing 1 bleed instead of the 5 listed in the tool tip, also there seems to be a little delay between the hit and the activation. Immobilze is a little short for a grandmaster

kitten…..that trait is the only thing that would make me try a druid trapper…figure.

again, good thing there’s no more betas to test this completely bugged out spec.

Kailee.8790:

mistsim.2748:

Kailee.8790:

Using druid with full clerics…. dps is pretty terrible… 200-300 per tick on staff 1, healing on staff 1 is averaging 100 per tick.

are you talking about pvp? I wouldn’t recommend cleric’s for pvp, try celestial with heal runes. damage is not too bad, but the sustain is great.

Sustain isn’t quite the issue… Someone posted a thread informing the healing coefficient on druids…

With druid supposed to be a class hell bent on healing… everything scaling so low is just pitiful

purposely undertuned like every elite on it’s first beta, good thing we have more betas for tweaking and testing…..oh, wait

anyone try a lockdown/trapper condi build in wvw yet? can’t play for a while, but would be interested to know if it is better/worse/equal to current trapper builds (if trapper runes are available)? seems like it could be fun/effective…and has little to do with healing.

haven’t had a change to play yet, but the difficulty nerfs are very disappointing if this isn’t an exaggeration.

before serving them to starving-dog classes….because taking them away less than a day later makes for a really salty dog.

normal balance patches are minimal: a few bug fixes, a few inconsequential number tweaks, a couple significant changes, and the rare game-changer. it’s amazing how quickly the “non-number tweaks” get taken back, without letting the external players work through them for a week or two (while other obviously OP changes remain for months).

it happens way too often for how rarely we get balance changes. how long are things internally tested? is it simply rushed?

if balance was iterated more often (6-8 times a year, instead of 3-4), this wouldn’t be nearly the issue it is.

pls test/iterate more.

Mcrocha.3891:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

snip

He has already stated that it will function like Fortifying Bond which is how it should have worked in the first place.

thanks for killing the only interesting ranger buff we’ll see until potentially thenext balance patch next year. can’t wait to see what you can ruin w/ another reactionary nerf thread, then.

BaconofPigs.1683:

laokoko.7403:

Dont’ even make sense, exotic and ascended stats difference is so minor.

If it require ascended. It’ll really require meta group composition.

No, it’s not the primary stat difference that makes the difference. It’s the weapons strength and base defense from the armor both are 10% flat from exotic that makes the difference. So someone is full ascended will have ~12% damage increase and +~12% survival rating than someone who doesn’t.

looking at the build calculator…its more like 5% weapon base damage and much less for armor rating (50-ish total armor difference is completely negligible).

honestly, ascended armor is a complete waste of time/money. only the weapons and trinkets are worth making/buying.

unless they’re putting agony in raids….or raising ascended stats significantly more above exotic, i can’t believe it will matter once groups figure out the most efficient paths to complete the raid. if they do add in things that will make it actually “required”, not suggested, that would be kind of lame (though not entirely unexpected for the supposed hardest content).

but at this point, who doesn’t have ascended jewelry?

4-6 months from now, you may see a few more minor changes to pistols……that’s how balance iteration goes for this game.

“we’re looking at the situation and plan more changes in the future” …..i so badly want to play P/P…….but it will never happen.

Bhawb.7408:

Relshdan.6854:

weak changes from a pve perspective. 900 range is okay i guess, but why not on all axe skills?

There are only 3 axe skills, and 2 of them are now 900. Unholy Feast being 900 range is completely unnecessary, it’d be one of (if not the) largest AoE in the game.

i would only use axe if i absolutely needed the 900 range (and the damage wasn’t terrible)….so the 600 PBAoE is a wasted skill. make it a ground target 900 range w/ a smaller appropriate radius to compensate. now you have an aoe cripple to help you take advantage of your range /tag mobs away from you.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Note: all feedback is related to PvE. This is a raiding game now, time to balance it as such.

unfortunately, devs have made it clear they will never balance anything with pve in mind, if it might upset pvp in the slightest.
this is only reinforced by the very small/safe changes made to balance 2 or 3 times a year.

weak changes from a pve perspective. 900 range is okay i guess, but why not on all axe skills? and 10% damage added to nothing is still nothing. it was an incredibly weak single target weapon, and it remains one. power reaper will need more dmg buffs in melee, to compensate for having literally no decent range weapon to use.

guess we can wait another 6 months for the next tiny tweak. fun.

Taldren.7523:

Relshdan.6854:

Starfall.6425:

Xillllix.3485:

It’s not strong, anyone with the least of skill can just dodge out. This is strickly a PvE nerf done without regards to PvP or WvW. Killshot, Backstab and Shatter are strong because they almost insta-kill people. Ice bow was good to kill blobs of PvE creatures, that’s about it.

If the skill can just be dodged does it matter if it deals 50% or 100%? oô
Did you really use Icebow in pvp?

this,

its a pve skill, that still works well for the purposes it was used for: on large groups of mobs or large-hitbox bosses

No, it was also a PvP ability that we used in builds that weren’t the cookie cutter D/D Cele build. I use it quite often in my S/x air/earth marauder builds. I don’t want to hear a PvE bunny telling us what we use and don’t use in PvP, thanks.

and i don’t want to hear one of the dozens of PvP players (if there are even that many) whine about a balance nerf that finally hurt them instead of us bunnies.

Starfall.6425:

Xillllix.3485:

It’s not strong, anyone with the least of skill can just dodge out. This is strickly a PvE nerf done without regards to PvP or WvW. Killshot, Backstab and Shatter are strong because they almost insta-kill people. Ice bow was good to kill blobs of PvE creatures, that’s about it.

If the skill can just be dodged does it matter if it deals 50% or 100%? oô
Did you really use Icebow in pvp?

this,

its a pve skill, that still works well for the purposes it was used for: on large groups of mobs or large-hitbox bosses

hope not……..it’s the trait that has me most excited to play the spec as a lockdown specialist.

don’t give a kitten about the GW1 druid lore or the semantics of defining what nature encompasses.

i see a lockdown/interrupt beast that rivals mesmer, that can work efffectively as a power or condi (or hybrid) spec……..synergizes w/ most traitlines (especially marksmanship and skirmishing)…and has celestial form as a panic button (super speed/stealth/condi dmg reduction and/or cleanse)

i don’t even care about the heals (although there are plenty of people who do).

i think its a well designed class in terms of new or improved roles/ playstyles.

that said……it made more sense to be the guardian’s elite.

love this…..i’m surprised so many are blinded by the druid’s heal potential, that they missed the sick lockdown/interrupt potential.

its still a strong skill….just not obscenely broken now.

it really is insane that the 3 GM dodge traits aren’t rolled into the DrD mechanic as F toggles…or at very least combine them into 1 GM trait.

but just rolling them into the base class mechanic isn’t unreasonable seeing what other specs get.

with the above and if the animations get fixed, it could at least be a fun spec to play.

Aomine.5012:

Relshdan.6854:

Aomine.5012:

Excellent utilities as to more and more and MORE healing and nothing else?

It got one cleanse, 1 projectile absorption, great, but there’s very limited offensive buffs or boons.. There’s not even that many defensive buffs or boons either..

Just healing, and occasionally some cleanse…

and group super speed….and group stealth…and a party-wide 10% dmg boost (38% uptime, if traited)….and group-wide 33% condi dmg reduction.

also, a ton of daze/immobs/cc’s…..will be a beast breaking defiance bars

its not great in terms of boon sharing or might stacking, but that’s what herald/ ele will bring.

can’t say how useful druid support will be beyond healing, but it certainly as more group support than just heals and condi cleanse

None traited Glyph has a 25% uptime (5 sec/ 20 CD), netting a 2.5% damage boost over 20 secs.

This is way worse than Frost Spirit…

so trait it, and take frost (or sun) spirit too.

can’t disagree more.

quite excited to try this out. all those dazes + MoC+ancient seeds = sick lockdown/interrupt potential

Aomine.5012:

Excellent utilities as to more and more and MORE healing and nothing else?

It got one cleanse, 1 projectile absorption, great, but there’s very limited offensive buffs or boons.. There’s not even that many defensive buffs or boons either..

Just healing, and occasionally some cleanse…

and group super speed….and group stealth…and a party-wide 10% dmg boost (38% uptime, if traited)….and group-wide 33% condi dmg reduction.

also, a ton of daze/immobs/cc’s…..will be a beast breaking defiance bars

its not great in terms of boon sharing or might stacking, but that’s what herald/ ele will bring.

can’t say how useful druid support will be beyond healing, but it certainly as more group support than just heals and condi cleanse

Silverkey.2078:

That is amazing! This was extremely clumsy to use. For example, I recently played some PvP with signet of inspiration and focus and it was hard to sync the swiftness at the beginning of the match to help my team AND myself (the signet procs right at the beginning of the match after the 10s countdown so I could not benefit from the curtain I put on the ground for my allies…)

exactly…..it was very frustrating when that small SoI swift would pop before i got to my curtain.

Robert Gee.9246:

tobascodagama.2961:

Silverkey.2078:

Do they mean the focus now stacks swiftness?

Not quite. I think they mean that it’ll always set your Swiftness to exactly 12s?

It means that Temporal Curtain will always apply it’s full swiftness duration (12s) the first time you pass through it. Previously if you had swiftness from another source it would not apply. There are a few other details but I’ll leave those until Tuesday.

better late than never. very happy.

i think people are sleeping on the immense lockdown potential of druid.

maybe in raids, only if chill has a major advantage in the events that happen inside the raid instances….

so not likely. boons dominate debuffs….this will not change in the new content. defiance bar destroys reaper usefulness….everyone has soft cc, so why bring a reaper if chill only damages the defiance bar like a random cripple from another class that brings boons?

will rival/surpass ele in terms of group support in pve….

Karl McLain.5604:

We added two things to overloads today:
Overload Air will imbue allies with electricity, giving them the Static Charge buff. An ally with this buff will deliver a Lightning Jolt to the first enemy they strike.

Overload Earth will now leave behind a dust-nado (name ongoing) at the tempest’s location when complete, which delivers the same effects that occur while overloading (cripple, bleed, protection). Increased bleed duration to 9 seconds per strike.

Dust Storm – warhorn: Increased the velocity that each storm appears by 33%.

really like this change to air overload.

keep this up…..its getting there.

Karl McLain.5604:

Following up on the Stunbreak conversation: This is something we’ve talked about in the past and felt like it might just be way too strong. However, it still sounds like way too much fun to not try it out… so I’m going to change them over and we’ll see what that plays like in BWE3.
Please keep in mind that this will be a test and we may have to compensate for or remove it at some point in the future, if it’s too strong.

-Karl

GREAT change….at least to try out. thanks!

based on how enjoyable it was to play so far (did not play Berzerker yet):

1) Chronomancer (amazing class mechanic and trait line that mixes well with the other lines/playstyles…so much fun)
2) Reaper (great theme that is really fun to play and close to being realized effectively)
3) Herald (amazing utilities…can fit into any/many roles at once effectively).

big gap

4) Tempest (potentially fun, if you don’t mind camping attunements, but overloads remain too weak to justify not just staying base ele staff if you do like camping attunements)
5) Dragon Hunter (bland…can do this better on my ranger….but new changes are promising)

big gap

6) Daredevil (so much potential, but animated so poorly it is unplayable)

as posted above, traps in theory make perfect sense w/ longbow as a means to punish gap closers.

that said, the trap has to be punishing, so replacing bleed on trait, w/ daze, stinks. if you are going to kill condi traps, at least replace the bleeds w/ an immobilize or stun, so we can keep the enemy in the trap longer.

otherwise, i like most of the changes/reworks for this upcoming beta.

Khalic.3561:

coax.2951:

No, it’s too powerful in its current form. You can stack crazy amounts of low duration boons (e.g. quickness/resistance) for your party in seconds. It’s crazy OP currently.

Signet of inspiration has the same CD, range, and function as heat sync. And the signet can be cast twice through a trait or four times on a chronomancer.

this.
full boon share is one of the only reasons you’d even use warhorn.

shocked at the heavy nerfs to a poorly received and generally weak elite spec.

a high dmg fire overload is vital for this spec to even be used in pve.
removed our overload CD 20% reduction?
losing boon share on heatsync is brutal enough…the other nerfs were unnecessary. why would i use this offhand at all?

outside of putting stability on a trait (which should be baseline anyway), this is incredibly disappointing.

wow….great changes/refinements to one of my favorite elites. can’t wait to use the shield now in pve…..and wells look pretty great, too. BWE3 can’t come soon enough.

great job!

ZDragon.3046:

ODB.6891:

Zenith.7301:

Since there’s no indication of buffing reaper shroud auto to not be a DPS loss over just autoattacking with greatsword let alone Gravedigger spam <50% health, the only PvE changes of note here are Soul Eater, which can now happily take the place of Reaper’s Onslaught since reaper shroud damage is bad in PvE.

The shouts will not be used in PvE, and developers seem happy with this outcome. I won’t bother since it’s clear by now we’re being told this set of utilities are not being balanced around PvE concerns.

The minors are still pretty terrible. Shivers of Dread are borderline useless in PvE, with the low availability of fear on power reaper to begin with, and 3 seconds of chill on fear being a mediocre effect, especially since bosses and champs are immune to Chill.

The change to Augury of Death will do nothing for PvE. I don’t understand how a 150 hp life steal is going to help against 10k+ damage from sniper shots in PvE. It follows a tradition of undertuned life steals in PvE. And since shouts are pretty much useless in PvE and will NOT be taken over Wells, we can move on to the last PvE relevant change.

Chilling Nova. A 50% damage increase on a 103 damage tooltip increase will still make for inconsequential damage on a 10 sec ICD in PvE. It will remain less damage than a single autoattack from any of our weapons, and the target count of the nova does nothing on PvE content where bosses are single targets.

And once again, we have no appropriate adepts to choose from in PvE. Augury of Death is useless because shouts are useless. Relentless Pursuit is useless in PvE content — the guardians and eles will be aoe removing conditions all the time in a group.

So we’re stuck with Chilling Nova, which still does a mediocre damage effect, and centers around a condition that any of the enemies of note, be they bosses or champs, are IMMUNE TO IN PVE.

Disappointing changes to be honest, especially with no buffs to reaper shroud autoattacks for PvE. We are balanced around PvP and will be stuck with a class mechanic that is a DPS loss, and by default Reaper’s Onslaught will be unattractive because of it.

None of these changes are particularly meaningful for PvE, the game format the class needs the most help with.

100% agree.

I partly agree with this only partly because if they start building to pve then pvp and wvw becomes a steaming pile Thus you still end up unhappy, for the most part it seems your concerns from these changes are a minority compared to the majority which feels that there is not a big issue with how the traits sit.

i’m sure the dozens of pvp players would be really upset if pve necro got some love (i ignore wvw because you can’t and don’t balance around wvw).

Zenith.7301:

Since there’s no indication of buffing reaper shroud auto to not be a DPS loss over just autoattacking with greatsword let alone Gravedigger spam <50% health, the only PvE changes of note here are Soul Eater, which can now happily take the place of Reaper’s Onslaught since reaper shroud damage is bad in PvE.

The shouts will not be used in PvE, and developers seem happy with this outcome. I won’t bother since it’s clear by now we’re being told this set of utilities are not being balanced around PvE concerns.

The minors are still pretty terrible. Shivers of Dread are borderline useless in PvE, with the low availability of fear on power reaper to begin with, and 3 seconds of chill on fear being a mediocre effect, especially since bosses and champs are immune to Chill.

The change to Augury of Death will do nothing for PvE. I don’t understand how a 150 hp life steal is going to help against 10k+ damage from sniper shots in PvE. It follows a tradition of undertuned life steals in PvE. And since shouts are pretty much useless in PvE and will NOT be taken over Wells, we can move on to the last PvE relevant change.

Chilling Nova. A 50% damage increase on a 103 damage tooltip increase will still make for inconsequential damage on a 10 sec ICD in PvE. It will remain less damage than a single autoattack from any of our weapons, and the target count of the nova does nothing on PvE content where bosses are single targets.

And once again, we have no appropriate adepts to choose from in PvE. Augury of Death is useless because shouts are useless. Relentless Pursuit is useless in PvE content — the guardians and eles will be aoe removing conditions all the time in a group.

So we’re stuck with Chilling Nova, which still does a mediocre damage effect, and centers around a condition that any of the enemies of note, be they bosses or champs, are IMMUNE TO IN PVE.

Disappointing changes to be honest, especially with no buffs to reaper shroud autoattacks for PvE. We are balanced around PvP and will be stuck with a class mechanic that is a DPS loss, and by default Reaper’s Onslaught will be unattractive because of it.

None of these changes are particularly meaningful for PvE, the game format the class needs the most help with.

agree……seeing as i mostly play pve, these are pretty disappointing. seems this will remain a fun to play, but ineffective pve class.

spirit weapons for engineers…..lol

on MM, i wont use Reaper(spite/blood/death is unbreakable)….but i will on everything else.

Silmar Alech.4305:

kimeekat.2548:

I don’t understand why people keep falling all over themselves to link this to HoT content when this event is way closer to a S1 living story update than a permanent map-driven event chain/area event. They’re totally different beasts.

I definitely link this failed event to HoT content, because from my point of view as customer/consumer it is some kind of spoiler or trailer content to the upcoming events in HoT. A part of the upcoming content is shown here to motivate more players to want and buy HoT. From a marketing point of view, this makes absolutely sense.

Hey, this is the first new content after how many months? 8 months? After 8 months of waiting and HoT to be released in only one more month, I expected that we get a nice carefully designed and balanced living-story-like introduction or transition to the soon-to-be-happen events in HoT. In such a trailer, spoiler or demo I expect to see some part or concept of the future content. And you say now this is not like HoT will be? I almost cannot believe it.

you are simply wrong.

playing the beta would let you know the content is not like this terrible invasion event at all.

GoldenTruth.2853:

….. (though I’m guessing this was side project made by some less experienced dev, while the good devs actually design fun stuff for the expansion).

i hope this is correct.

i had all the high end rewards….so because there is no loot from mobs, there is literally no reason to play this event for me. it would cost me far too much in wp costs. i can do these same type of events in other maps and make money.

this is why the halloween labyrinth works better…….mobs dropped loot aside from the “currency” used to earn vendor rewards…and even then the candycorn has other uses.

original post covers most of it……but WOW are the rewards undertuned.

you lose money playing the event, only to get some random number of blooms every 30 minutes…………..then you set the number of blooms for rewards at a ratio that would require a massive time sink just to get a reward with your blooms (and more money).

sorry….no thanks.

Headcase.4618:

So I’m trying to come up with a burning build that can be used for Dragon Hunters and this is what I have come up with so far:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAsfTn0ABNChFdCWkittendiF/hSO8T/43KAqgHILCrwLE-TxiAAB+pJA9jAAAPAg1UCSxJAQgDBAYK/UVLCrq/snOCv2fgUA+p1C-e

Any constructive criticism you have would be appriciated

i’m no expert…but really odd gear stat spread that doesn’t do anything well. power is low for having no condi dmg and almost no condi/burn duration outside of traits…pretty low precision for investing so much in ferocity……to be nice, i don’t get anything about the build from trait choices to skills to gear. trying to do too much.

i would suggest scouring the forums for builds/guides on burning builds as a start (many good ones)……..try them out and then tweak to your preference to work w/ DH (probably virtues and radiance). but in general….you want much stronger burns than you’re showing, and more applications to build higher stack bursts and/or consistant “tack on” damage….so more burn/condi duration and much higher condi damage in your gear. (if this is for pve…duration counts even more since mobs don’t cleanse). will also probably want to decide how “hybrid” your power/condi ratio is and if you want to focus on burns or invest some in traps ( if traps too, some power and decent precision will help w/ sigil procs more so than if you focus strictly on max burns)…and will likely want more vit by trading some tough.

agree…brilliant idea. would purchase.