Guild Wars 2

Gaaroth.2567:

NapTooN.6283:

Shadelang.3012:

Varezenem.2813:

Shadelang.3012:

EditL: This is generally for PvE. PvP ventari has its own issues that need to be worked out.

Ventari’s healing is split into two parts which make it difficult to use reliably. The heal procs from the tablet itself. And the drops a ventari specced revenant can produce on use of the tablet. (One of the grandmaster traits)

You can control where the tablet heals. But you cant control where the shards themselves drop. Which makes it difficult to use them to support allies. Also to make the most of it your allies have to be looking FOR those shards.

Ventari’s sustained healing potential is high. As its capable of dropping those shards continuously. However the actual effectiveness is limited because theres no way to guarantee the people that get those shards are the ones that need them. And you can’t generate them fast enough to aid 10 people in a raid.

From what I can tell a support revenant is meant to work in two general parts. Mitigation and Recovery. Ill use vale guardian as an example as its the only boss I have used this setup on.

Jalis works very well for mitigating damage the grp takes in risky situations. You can use it to cover some of your people if you knwo your not going to make it to the aoe site in time. Also if people get low you can use jalis to lower teh damage they take for a bit to buy time for there healing to come off cooldown.

Once the dangerous moment has passed and its under control you can move back to ventari and help them all recover from the damage tehy have taken.

Its not a pure healing setup like druid. Its a bit more complicated than that. Infact I would argue that for the purposes of raid fighting it might be TOO complicated.

I would change the item drop grandmaster that instead of releasing a pickup on use. The tablet targets the lowest health ally nearby and instead pulses additional healing to that ally. The player would still need to be near the tablet to benefit. But there not looking at the ground searching for healing drops instead of looking at the bosses mechanics.

For healing many allies IMO this GM is useless you are better of getting the outgoing healing one. This trait is at its strongest for bubker builds specially in SPvP.

The issue is hte outgoing healing one doesn’t do enough either because of the range (low to high not skill range) of ventari’s base heals. Ventari CAN’T perform the kind of emergency heals a druid can with lunar impact. The bad part is in most runs your going to need that. My suggestion was more to repurpose that trait to provide the kind of emergency healing ventari is lacking.

Sustained healing is all well and good. But bosses are desgined with highs and lows. SOMEONE is going to get spiked.

Edit: Ventari does more than enough healing to sustain a group when its going well. And Ventari Jalis is good for keeping the damage the raid takes down. But it lacks the oh kitten heals for when things go wrong. Which in a well designed boss fight SHOULD happen. Or atleast the threat of something going wrong should always be there.

Edit 2I don’t want to just take up another post spot) What I meant by the above is that as long as the group only requires sustained healing then ventari is fine. Though in that case there are better heal options available. And your losing out on ALOT of damage youd be getting if that revenant went dps. So what your getting by taking a ventari healer in its current form may not be worth what your giving up when you could just take a druid that can also boost the raids dps.

If i compare the strongest heals of my Ventari to Druid, both in same gear Lunar Impact ended up around 4500 while Natural Harmony was around 3500 (on allies).

You can fire off 2 Lunar Impacts before Avatar goes into CD, 3 if you are fast and lucky.

That is 9000 Health in 10 Seconds, with another 10 Seconds CD. Natural Harmony has a delay of 2s and a CD of 2s. That is basically 3500 Health in 4 Seconds. That is 7000 Health after 10 Seconds, BUT there is no Cooldown of 10 Seconds before we can heal again. So we are looking at 9000 Health in 20s with (only) Lunar Impact compared to 17500 Health in 20s from Natural Harmony.

Another Thing Ventari has over the Druid in Raids is Energy Expulsion. It is a great Knockback against the Balls with basically no Cooldown.

Very true with energy expulsion, I sometimes brought ventari just for that job alone.
There’s a major flow in your calculation for Natural Harmony: you can’t fire 10 of them in a row…

Energy expulsion is indeed a very good point. But lunar impact and natural convergence are also very powerful BreakBar breakers. I also tried to take into account the amount of energy that the tablet consumes when it is moved and used.

However. He is correct that the gap between the tablet burst heal and the druid lunar impact aren’t as big as I had originally estimated (it took some time to test it) However the frequency at which you can use it drops the gap down significantly. As well as the lack of potential healing through water fields (but for the purpose of argument im going to assume 1v1 scenarios. Not group/combo/finisher scenarios because a druid becomes more bloated the larger the number of allies around there.) So on the aspect of his original topic which is the base healing in relevance to its scaling with healing power. He is infact correct. Though I don’t feel it overcomes the general differences between the two builds.

Retsuko.2035:

The problem of turning a druid into a burst healer is that it’s mostly not needed at all.

Two reasons.

- Every class has it’s own healing skill and most of them can be considered a burst heal. This makes another burst healer an overkill, but a sustain healer very welcome.

- Water fields (from ele’s and engineers) are the best resource for burst healing since multiple parties can make use of one waterfield, whereas druid only heals 5 people at a time.

In the end, a druid with only a spare amount of access to burst healing is going to fall out of any meta.

I’m quite sure now that arenanet devs do not play this game at all.

I do understand what your saying. I made my statement under the assumption that efforts are taken towards active mitigation by the raid. (Aoe protection Regen Well timed dodges and CC adds like seekers away or locking down external damage sources) in a situation like that a burst healer should be all you really need. As most members will be able to maintain high health. A sustained healer prevents the oh kitten situations by keeping people high enough that what gets through the active defense of the raid isn’t critically damaging. A burst healer though aids in recovery after or while the oh kitten situation happens.

two methods of obtaining the same the same goal.

Rym.1469:

Shadelang.3012:

Ocosh.5843:

I healed Vale Guardian as Ventari Rev both in BWE3 and now in live. Conclusion is the same. Ventari Rev has excellent sustained healing, and can constantly pump out enough to keep everyone alive — until something goes wrong. Rev has no burst healing and cannot correct for a mistake. If you fall behind, you’ve got a struggle ahead of you. Druid has burst healing in spades, allowing a raid to recover from a spike, plus enough regular healing that it renders Ventari Rev second-rate. If there is ever a call for two healing-oriented characters in a fight, Rev could play second fiddle, but that’s not likely to happen.

Ventari Rev has sustained healing but no recovery. Druid has both. I shelved the Rev and play a different role.

I currently have a thread in the ranger forums working to have druid further commited to its burst here role so it stops pushing aside sustained healers. The idea should be that they work together. Not be mutally exclusive.

Problem with current raid design is, you can hardly even spare 1 spot for healer. There’s simply too much DPS required and too little sustained raid-wide pressure to justify bringing another healer. So one has to cover is and probably tank/dps, too.

The thing is druids can more readily go hybrid between offense and defense gear. Or even pure offense gear and help heal when theres an emergency. Especially since grace of the land is still a dps increase to the raid. So it is possible to have both.

Edit: You are right though about current raid design making it hard to justify two spots like that. I made my assumption under a view of raiding that most people most likely don’t share. Ill attempt to rectify that in future statements on the subject.

On that note however. Even if they stay mutally exclusive it doesn’t really effect the rest of my statement on the subject.

Ocosh.5843:

I healed Vale Guardian as Ventari Rev both in BWE3 and now in live. Conclusion is the same. Ventari Rev has excellent sustained healing, and can constantly pump out enough to keep everyone alive — until something goes wrong. Rev has no burst healing and cannot correct for a mistake. If you fall behind, you’ve got a struggle ahead of you. Druid has burst healing in spades, allowing a raid to recover from a spike, plus enough regular healing that it renders Ventari Rev second-rate. If there is ever a call for two healing-oriented characters in a fight, Rev could play second fiddle, but that’s not likely to happen.

Ventari Rev has sustained healing but no recovery. Druid has both. I shelved the Rev and play a different role.

I currently have a thread in the ranger forums working to have druid further commited to its burst here role so it stops pushing aside sustained healers. The idea should be that they work together. Not be mutally exclusive.

OGDeadHead.8326:

I wonder if an energy system (gw1/revenant) would be better, with no restrictions going in/out of the form? Two of the druid traits would have to be reworked ofcourse.

The devs obvioulsy does not have a clear vision of how druid mechanics are going to work, and until they set that in stone, it will be impossible to balance the spec. Right now, they’re trying out different things to see how things will pan out.

Yeah, druid is still in beta stage, we’ll have to deal with that for the next few weeks/months it seems.

Thats primarily what I was going for with option B. A system of recovering energy that has to be used wisely or you risk being locked out of CA form.

Is there a different way you would prefer it implemented?

Id like to clarify on my Option B (which is the one I hope is taken)

B: Astral force stays as a mechanic but is generated over time instead of by player interaction. No cooldown on astral form.

My goal with this is to have celestial form used more intelligently. Druids go into astral form to use there heals as necessary while astral force degrades. The longer there in celestial form the longer it will be before they can get back into it. So camping it would be a bad idea as it you might not have it in time for the next emergency.

So druids committed to healing would go in. Heal those that are hurt back to full. Then hop out so there back at max astral force sooner. Traiting to have that increase faster would increase the frequency which they can do this. And would encourage the burst heal playstyle keeping druid distinct from other healing builds. It wouldn’t necessarily make astral form harder to get into. It would instead make it so that using it wisely is more rewarding than camping it for long periods of time. And would like I said in an above post. Encourage the use of astral form for specific tasks and not an all in one setup.

The question isn’t about making druid BETTER at its job. Its already really kittening good at what it does. Infact its so good at what it does its keeping most other healing builds out of compositions entirely.

The question is how do we have druid fulfill its intended roll as a burst healer without breaking it completely.

As it is. Its both a burst healer AND an incredible sustain healer. The game can’t afford for it to be both if were ever going to have build diversity in this roll.

But this is off topic. Lets keep it to the core discussion if we can. If you don’t agree with me thats fine. But offer suggestions instead of just saying “this won’t work” then what will work. We know anet wasn’t happy with how druid was. And past dev posts have given us a general idea of what they want druid to be and how they feel it should perform in comparison to other healing builds.

My goal with this thread is to find out a way to make that happen that works for both us and them.

If you have an idea feel free to post it. Well discuss it. Its what were here for after all.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Shadelang.3012:

Edit: In raids my team lets me know if there low and they can’t recover. They don’t expect me to heal them every single time they take damage. They just state it when its something they can’t handle. Same for when Im PvPing with a team. If there being locked down then I help them. But if they can handle it they let me know when they break free so I don’t waste astral force when I don’t need to. And it works MUCH better that way.

That’s good and all if you’re sitting in an organized group/team with voicecom. Now go out and try the same thing with a pug with no other ways of communicating than through ingame chat and trying to keep track of things visually only.

In a pug I do it on my own. Part of being a healer after all is observing your team mates. I watch where my allies are and how there doing. Its very possible to do so. And most pvpers learn to do that anyway eventually. If I see someones health jump up on the party window I know they just burned htere healskill and wont be able to recover for awhile so I watch them. If I see someone being attacked by more than 1 person I know they may need help so I can keep an eye on the situation while fighting. Ill try to knock a player off them with an arrow or stun someone with greatsword. If thats not enough and there going to die then I hop into CA and daze them and windup CA5.

Its our last resort. And is seemingly designed to be used when its needed not continuously. Thats part of being a burst healer.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Shadelang.3012:

A druid is supposed to seriously question whether or not to press f5. Not press it the second someone takes a bit of damage because they know they can get it back.

There’s a flaw in your thinking, and that is that in this game, you’re dead within a second if you don’t react to things NOW. You can’t sit around waiting to see if “maybe this guy will recover by himself or through the help of someone else, so I get to keep my heals for another time” – it doesn’t work that way.

Actually it does. Its why every player in the game has there own heal skill. And why coordination is so important. If you move to CA form and right as they use htere heal skill one of you wasted a cool down. And you lost something that should have been saved. Or atleast thats how it SHOULD have been. Your supposed to question whether or not to use it by paying attention to what your allies have and havnt done and what is and isn’t happening to them.

Are they being CC locked? Odds are they wont get there heal off. Youd better heal them. But if they have disengaged from whatever is hurting them and are safe then tis okay to save your CA and let them recover themselves if they can. You can still use smaller healing like glyph heal or the staff 5+3 combo to help them recover without burning CA.

Infact this games combat makes that distinction even MORE vital than in other games. Where people CAN’T sustain themselves in combat.

Edit: In raids my team lets me know if there low and they can’t recover. They don’t expect me to heal them every single time they take damage. They just state it when its something they can’t handle. Same for when Im PvPing with a team. If there being locked down then I help them. But if they can handle it they let me know when they break free so I don’t waste astral force when I don’t need to. And it works MUCH better that way.

NemesiS.6749:

Shadelang.3012:

Photinous.4628:

So, in summary, Roy did it to us again.

Lets keep it constructive alright? Im fairly serious about coming up with ideas for this. I don’t want this to get derailed if I can avoid it.

what ideas? its been 3.5 years of the same. When have they taken an idea from the forums or even come here to answer some question and clarify everything. Thats it why no dev come and say why they change it, or just answer question and peoples worries.

I made a shout rework thread in the past where I brought up the fact that the shout Sic Em canceling made it very unreliable in any game mode. That was shortly before the release of HoT. That post recieved dev attention and Sic Em was fixed with the release of HoT.

I can’t be certain it was BECAUSE of that post. But it did show that Anet did indeed read the forums and were aware of the issues the ranger class has.

I am inclined to trust them at this point. And I am convinced that as long as we keep things constructive. Anet can work towards improving the class more effectively with ideas we generate in mind rather than doing it completley without the support of the community.

Also. kittening about it isn’t going to make anything happen faster. Generating ideas might. If you know for a fact that one method isn’t going to work. Theres no reason to keep trying it when the other still has the potential. Regardless of your personnel opinion on the matter.

Lethal Njection.8741:

Shadelang.3012:

Lethal Njection.8741:

Coming from someone who only pvp’s I thought druid was in the perfect place in terms of raw healing. It never felt OP and was finally a fun / accessible mechanic to use. i can’t imagine this was done because of pvp abuse because there are simply better options. You shouldn’t fix what isn’t broke.

It was definetly taking the spotlight in PvE. However in PvP as well Avatar could be used as a reset potentially 3 or even 4 times during a fight. It mostly was okay due to specific counter builds that appeared because of it. However it was strong enough and astral form was frequent enough than an entire amulet had to be removed from the game to counteract this.

If it is confined to a set time. Then that amulet cna probably be returned. as youl have 15-20-25 seconds to kill the druid before he can reenter it. Or to kill his friends and leave him solo against your team.

Edit: also it was brokenly OP in Stronghold.

I guess this is what happens when our entire elite spec is literally based on one thing only. Sigh

Aye haha. Its part of why Im hoping this change will help seperate druids into three types. Buffing. Healing. and control druids. So we aren’t purely reliant on one mechanic. And we can use Avatar form when it fits our current build/playstyle. Cause itl also effect HOW we use Avatar form and what priority we give to certain skills.

Control builds will focus probably on 3 and 5.

buffing on 1 and 4.

healing on 2 3 and 4.

Lethal Njection.8741:

Coming from someone who only pvp’s I thought druid was in the perfect place in terms of raw healing. It never felt OP and was finally a fun / accessible mechanic to use. i can’t imagine this was done because of pvp abuse because there are simply better options. You shouldn’t fix what isn’t broke.

It was definetly taking the spotlight in PvE. However in PvP as well Avatar could be used as a reset potentially 3 or even 4 times during a fight. It mostly was okay due to specific counter builds that appeared because of it. However it was strong enough and astral form was frequent enough than an entire amulet had to be removed from the game to counteract this.

If it is confined to a set time. Then that amulet cna probably be returned. as youl have 15-20-25 seconds to kill the druid before he can reenter it. Or to kill his friends and leave him solo against your team.

Edit: also it was brokenly OP in Stronghold.

randomly.6395:

I believe AF generation should be removed and the cooldown should be upped to 15-20 seconds. This most recent change has destroyed any possibility of going druid without a staff. No other elite spec is punished so harshly for not using their new weapon.

Well it method B was taken we could rework Lingering light to benefit it. Astral Force would still be a thing. Just players wouldn’t have to build specifically in order to generate it at all. It would simply generate over time.

Rym.1469:

Eh, the two problems with Ventari Revenant vs. Druid is that the second one heals AND bring unique damage modifiers for the whole group, which isn’t the case of Ventari Revenant.

As for the second reason, I would really, really, really, really love if new Minstrel’s gear did not have that stupid Toughness stat and had Power or even Condition damage instead. Herald is potentially the best candidate for this set as we benefit greatly from boon duration and we could be way more useful, but…

Minstrel’s gear has no offensive stat. Which means it’s useless in raids. kittening useless. And that Toughness makes us overaggro the boss.

So we wear Zealot’s gear. And in Zealot’s gear, Druid is more useful.

I reccomend trying Commanders Stat gear if your going purely for the buffing aspect. My ranger runs a self might build using it and I can promise the investment is worth it for boon duration. It won’t be a healing build obviously. But it will be a very good offensive support build.

Photinous.4628:

So, in summary, Roy did it to us again.

Lets keep it constructive alright? Im fairly serious about coming up with ideas for this. I don’t want this to get derailed if I can avoid it.

Nemitri.8172:

I was gonna post something similar, but yeah, Just scrap astral force generation, and make it either a static cooldown reduction, or heck, even let us go in to the form at will, but drastically reduce the healing values to compensate (although this would make staff kind of useless and redundant).

The reason I doubt they will go with the second half is that they most likely want to keep the different forms of healing distinct. With reduced values and no cooldown druid stops being a burst healer. Its just a third sustained healer. At that point most likely tempest will be the primary healer. As its capable of decent damage as well as good healing and mitigation.

My goal is to keep druids role distinct. But to lower its influence OUTSIDE of its role.

Hey all. Im sure everyone reading this knows about the most recent change to astral force generation.

I believe I know why this was done.

At one point during the BWEs a dev post was made in the Revenant forums on the subject of ventari healing. There it was stated that Ventari was meant to act as a sustained healing role. Where druids were designed around burst healing.

If you think of these changes in that terms it starts to make sense. That doesnt mean they were good for the class. But its understandable why they were attempted.

So whats the difference.

If anyone here has played other games there are typically 3 types of healers.

Sustained: Putting out steady amounts of healing continuously over the fight (think resto druid…ill be using wow as an example becuase most people know the terminology) There effects build up to greater healing. These typcially have the highest healing per second average. Great for raid wide healing.

Burst: These healers spend there resources in large bursts. Using heavy healing cooldowns immediately after the raid takes large damage in order to aid in recovery.
These excell as recovery healers for when things go wrong. (Holy Priest). HOWEVER they can’t heal haphazardly as there unlikely to be able to do it multiple times throughout the fight if they just burn through there abilities too quickly.

Preventative healer: These healers typically don’t have heavy healing on there own. Instead they mitigate the damage the raid/tank takes through shields..barriers..damage absorption. And other forms of mitigation. (discipline priests)

Currently we have Druids which from what a dev has stated are meant to work as burst healers.

And the other two primary healers I know of are Ventari healers and Tempest healers. These two healer types act as a combination between preventative and sustained healers. Each having mitigative effects when specced for it as well as a continuous stream.

Wit that out of the way. The rate at which a druid could burst heal was too high. It pretty much dominated the sustain healing role as well as the burst healing role regardless of fight type. A druid is supposed to seriously question whether or not to press f5. Not press it the second someone takes a bit of damage because they know they can get it back.

Which is why I have a suggestion

Either A: Increase the flat cooldown of Avatar form and remove astral force as a mechanic. This is more arbitrary but it will solve the issue as well as make it easier to buff or nerf druids capabilities later on. Because they wont have to come up with a different scenario for every possible ranger build. Shout rangers generate astril force at a different rate from glyph rangers for example.

Or B: have astral force BE the cooldown. The player can no longer in any way affect how fast or slow it generates. It does so automatically a trait can be reworked to increase the generation speed like say I don’t know LIGNERING LIGHT?

That will set the grandmasters into 3 primary parts as well.

1: Buffing druids will take Grace of the Land. They won’t get Celestial form as often but it will boost the raids damage when they do.

2: Healing druids will get Celestial form more often and be more dedicated to there role as healers.

3: Control druids won’t get Celestial Form as often but will gain better lockdown capabilties for CCing specific foes.

Thats my idea on the matter atleast. I believe this will properly set druids as a burst healer without having to be confined to specific build types or dealing with clunky astral force generation methods.

Edit: Fixed an eronious name on first grandmaster trait

@jcbroe gah. Your attitude there was rather offensive man. I get your frustrated. Alot of us are. But lets try to keep it calm and polite allright? And no passive aggressive doesn’t count.

On this change. I remembe reading before that druid was meant to be a burst healer NOT a sustain healer. Ventari revenants and things like aura tempests are the sustained healers.

If that is there plan. Then we should be making suggestions on how to make that a reality.

How do we make druid a burst healing class while still having ventari revenants and aura tempests be MORE effective as sustain healer. And no buffing those two through the roof isn’t the awnser.

CAF from what I understand is meant to be a rare thing. Something you use ONLY when things are going badly. When without it your team is guaranteed to die. Its supposed to be on the level of an elite skill.

Its effectiveness is certainly elite level. Nobody can deny that. The issue is certain builds have always been able to access this almost every single time they MIGHT need it. This is true in WvW PvP and PvE.

1: One way I see it giving it a longer flat cooldown might work. So that it really is something you cant use whenever you feel like but something that is an actual hard choice to commit to.

2: Get rid of all methods of astral force generation. Have it generate without any player involvement and have THAT be the cooldown for astral force. There can be a trait even that increases the generation rate that makes you choose how you wan’t your druid to be specialized.

Edit: Ill actually make another thread on this. As this one will probably be a bit too hostile for discussion

scerevisiae.1972:

Shadelang.3012:

Actually Astral force can no longer be generated on full targets. It hurts there generation alot more than people think.

still a net improvement compared to release.

Not really. Before you knew you would have it ready when kitten hit hte fan. Even if it was akward. Now however the only way to generate astral force is to actually play badly. I.E. your rewarded? for taking damage. Which means if you start a fight after using your astral force in a previous fight you now have to thread the needle on taking damage and healing it.

It also punsihes the use of your heal skill. As using your heal skill is much less efficient at generating astral force than allowing regeneration to passively tick. Healing yourself to full will actually hurt you in the long run as you wont have astral force when you need it.

All in all. Druids will now have low sustained healing. But high burst healing. Which is okay balance wise. Cause that leaves tempests and ventari revenants in the sustained healing roll.

However this is a pretty negative shift in gameplay quality for druids as they require other people to take damage and NOT heal themselves in order for druids to use there class mechanic.

So relatively speaking. Its polarized druids into the burst heal roll but made it akward for them at the same time. As they require people to take damage without a sustain healer being present.

It means that ventari revenant or a aura tempest and a druid are now mutually exclusive.

Actually Astral force can no longer be generated on full targets. It hurts there generation alot more than people think.

In other news druids astral force generation just got gutted making the gap between ventari and druid that much smaller….yay?

This is kinda akward. In order for us to use our class mechanic in a 1v1. We have to allow ourselves to take damage.

In team fights we won’t be able to perform emergency heals anymore unless the fight lasts long enough to build it up.

I actually feel like ill want to do as little healing as possible now. Just let regen tick. And try to thread the needle on my astral force gain through that instead of healing with say cultivated synergy which is less efficient.

Varezenem.2813:

Shadelang.3012:

EditL: This is generally for PvE. PvP ventari has its own issues that need to be worked out.

Ventari’s healing is split into two parts which make it difficult to use reliably. The heal procs from the tablet itself. And the drops a ventari specced revenant can produce on use of the tablet. (One of the grandmaster traits)

You can control where the tablet heals. But you cant control where the shards themselves drop. Which makes it difficult to use them to support allies. Also to make the most of it your allies have to be looking FOR those shards.

Ventari’s sustained healing potential is high. As its capable of dropping those shards continuously. However the actual effectiveness is limited because theres no way to guarantee the people that get those shards are the ones that need them. And you can’t generate them fast enough to aid 10 people in a raid.

From what I can tell a support revenant is meant to work in two general parts. Mitigation and Recovery. Ill use vale guardian as an example as its the only boss I have used this setup on.

Jalis works very well for mitigating damage the grp takes in risky situations. You can use it to cover some of your people if you knwo your not going to make it to the aoe site in time. Also if people get low you can use jalis to lower teh damage they take for a bit to buy time for there healing to come off cooldown.

Once the dangerous moment has passed and its under control you can move back to ventari and help them all recover from the damage tehy have taken.

Its not a pure healing setup like druid. Its a bit more complicated than that. Infact I would argue that for the purposes of raid fighting it might be TOO complicated.

I would change the item drop grandmaster that instead of releasing a pickup on use. The tablet targets the lowest health ally nearby and instead pulses additional healing to that ally. The player would still need to be near the tablet to benefit. But there not looking at the ground searching for healing drops instead of looking at the bosses mechanics.

For healing many allies IMO this GM is useless you are better of getting the outgoing healing one. This trait is at its strongest for bubker builds specially in SPvP.

The issue is hte outgoing healing one doesn’t do enough either because of the range (low to high not skill range) of ventari’s base heals. Ventari CAN’T perform the kind of emergency heals a druid can with lunar impact. The bad part is in most runs your going to need that. My suggestion was more to repurpose that trait to provide the kind of emergency healing ventari is lacking.

Sustained healing is all well and good. But bosses are desgined with highs and lows. SOMEONE is going to get spiked.

Edit: Ventari does more than enough healing to sustain a group when its going well. And Ventari Jalis is good for keeping the damage the raid takes down. But it lacks the oh kitten heals for when things go wrong. Which in a well designed boss fight SHOULD happen. Or atleast the threat of something going wrong should always be there.

Edit 2I don’t want to just take up another post spot) What I meant by the above is that as long as the group only requires sustained healing then ventari is fine. Though in that case there are better heal options available. And your losing out on ALOT of damage youd be getting if that revenant went dps. So what your getting by taking a ventari healer in its current form may not be worth what your giving up when you could just take a druid that can also boost the raids dps.

EditL: This is generally for PvE. PvP ventari has its own issues that need to be worked out.

Ventari’s healing is split into two parts which make it difficult to use reliably. The heal procs from the tablet itself. And the drops a ventari specced revenant can produce on use of the tablet. (One of the grandmaster traits)

You can control where the tablet heals. But you cant control where the shards themselves drop. Which makes it difficult to use them to support allies. Also to make the most of it your allies have to be looking FOR those shards.

Ventari’s sustained healing potential is high. As its capable of dropping those shards continuously. However the actual effectiveness is limited because theres no way to guarantee the people that get those shards are the ones that need them. And you can’t generate them fast enough to aid 10 people in a raid.

From what I can tell a support revenant is meant to work in two general parts. Mitigation and Recovery. Ill use vale guardian as an example as its the only boss I have used this setup on.

Jalis works very well for mitigating damage the grp takes in risky situations. You can use it to cover some of your people if you knwo your not going to make it to the aoe site in time. Also if people get low you can use jalis to lower teh damage they take for a bit to buy time for there healing to come off cooldown.

Once the dangerous moment has passed and its under control you can move back to ventari and help them all recover from the damage tehy have taken.

Its not a pure healing setup like druid. Its a bit more complicated than that. Infact I would argue that for the purposes of raid fighting it might be TOO complicated.

I would change the item drop grandmaster that instead of releasing a pickup on use. The tablet targets the lowest health ally nearby and instead pulses additional healing to that ally. The player would still need to be near the tablet to benefit. But there not looking at the ground searching for healing drops instead of looking at the bosses mechanics.

I have to say. This fixed the problem I had with druid. Namely the over reliance on a few key mechanics to generate astral force.

Even if they take most of these away and make it so that its just regen it would make my playstyle fit the druid role alot more readily. I can only hope that was the intended part of this.

If this was a bug and the regen gets taken away in the morning. Im gonna be pretty sad haha.

Prophet.1584:

staff dps either needs to be increased or condis added to it to make condition druids more viable.

I think that’s my only complaint right now, CAF being so tied to Staff is fine as long as it’s a viable weapon for both condi and power builds. The quickdraw bonfire build would be a lot more useful with staff on swap if it could apply condi as well. This would also make it a better replacement for LB in a power build if it applied non damaging condis like vuln/cripple etc.

Ill be honest. I don’t want even MORE reason to run staff. I want some reasons to use other weapons relevant to the current metas. For druids staff works as either a direct replacement for GS or a replacement for longbow. It fills both roles decently well. it just doesn’t have burst damage is all but its sustain is pretty decent combined with all the utility it has. And it doesn’t have ANY of the flaws those two weapons have. (evade skill on one only performs at the end of the skill. Other weapon is hard countered by tempests)

sparc.3649:

Shadelang.3012:

sparc.3649:

:O

Are you kidding me? They’re going to “reset”? Why the doggie (tired of seeing kitten, but you can think of a word that starts with F!) wouldn’t they be like dungeons/fractals where you could run as many as you wish repetitively!?

/sigh – please tell me this is a bad dream!

Because all raids eventually end up on farm status in every game. No matter how difficult they are. Raids are meant to give significantly better rewards than other content. And i don’t think they want yet another source of raw gold being dumped repeatedly into the economy.

Okay, then make it “daily” just like dungeon “rewards”. Of course you could “do” a dungeon more than once per day, but you only got ONE chest with the “daily reward” for doing it. Example, 1g55s for AC. So of course you could run more than one dungeon per day even, but you wouldn’t/coudln’t get your fancy chest with your golds (so ofc most people wouldn’t do more than one per day because the loots themselves just weren’t/aren’t worth it). So I’d be fine with raid’s being “daily”. NOT weekly, unless it was offset properly. Example, the reward was 100-200 (168g is a decent number) gold for the “week” (for doing your one raid for the week). If it’s going to be “so hard” this shouldn’t be a problem. However I still don’t “see” this happening, especially after their (which I am also kittened off about because I wasn’t a “gold farmer”) dungeon nerfs. Yes, I’m actually mad about that, not because I was one, but because of the unfairness that so many people were allowed to do it and for so long, and now even if I wanted to I couldn’t. Call it buthurt if you want, but it’s plain and simply NOT fair!

So if they’re not going to make it “daily” (@ about~24g), or they’re not going to reward something to the likes of 168g for doing one (for the “week”/“weekly”) then it’s not even going to be worth it! If the drops themselves are typical ANET account bound or soulbound, then they’ll make it even more worthless (no way for me to turn my efforts into moneyz if that’s what I so happen to want to do)!

I can understand if they want to minimize/control the “raw gold” going into the market, but by robbing people of the opportunity to make big money like others have already done, is simply not fair – period FULL STOP. If they want to control the “raw gold” by not giving good gold rewards, but rather make GOOD drops that will be worth tons of money, that would actually be a perfect solution that would keep them AND me happy! This way people who have tons of gold (prior dungeon gold farmers) can spend their money on my drops! Then less ‘raw gold" enters the economy, yet I can make tons (if I chose to sell my drops). The key is not only having “good loots”, but assuring they’re NOT account or soul bound!

All short of one of the two above, it simply wont be fair. And if they’re not fair about it – I’m gone for good!

Whether its worth doing or not isn’t the purpose of raids. People don’t do raids to farm gold. If thats why your doing them than you missed out on what there supposed to be about.

Raids should be profitable yes. But in the sense that they give you more than you lose when you do them. And you have a CHANCE for something rare.

Raids are there for the challenge. And to PROVE your good enough to do them. The rewards you get are such that you can SHOW people that you were good enough to do them. Titles. Unqiue weapons and armor skins. These have always been the primary rewards of raids.

When I was raiding in WoW and I put on my top tier armor. No one asked me if I knew the fight anymore. No one questioned whether or not I was good enough. Because I was SHOWING people that I was. Thats one of the big rewards of raiding.

The second is the feeling of overcoming a challenge. That adrenaline rush that hits you as you get the boss at 3% and he hits his enrage timer. And your desperately bursting through that last bit of health in order to kill it while your friends start dieing around you. And you succeed. That is arguably far more important than even the skins.

I don’t feel that raids should be this heavy gold burst into the economy. I feel it should have the potential to give very good rewards (Though it shouldnt be guaranteed). But those rewards don’t have to be gold.

As for gold. If you do raids alot your going to max out on ascended armor and weapons. Eventually you won’t need anymore. Which means you can sell them. Last I checked ascended weapons sell for a gold each. If the drop rate is high enough thats another gold you get per boss kill ontop of the kill reward itself.

Your suggestion to turn it into a daily makes it the exact same thing we had with dungeons. When people find the easiest way to do it. And they find they can do that repeatedly for profit each day. It stops being about fighting the boss. Frankly. Id say that was what killed the REAL dungeon community more than anything else. And left an army of farmers in its place.

It should be profitable enough to be worth doing. I.E. if you succeed it should pay you back the investment you spent. (foods/oils/sigils/runes etc…). But it should NEVER become the most profitable thing in this game. Or they run the risk of not being raids anymore.

sparc.3649:

:O

Are you kidding me? They’re going to “reset”? Why the doggie (tired of seeing kitten, but you can think of a word that starts with F!) wouldn’t they be like dungeons/fractals where you could run as many as you wish repetitively!?

/sigh – please tell me this is a bad dream!

Because all raids eventually end up on farm status in every game. No matter how difficult they are. Raids are meant to give significantly better rewards than other content. And i don’t think they want yet another source of raw gold being dumped repeatedly into the economy.

Ficanek.4698:

Why can’t we have a button for taking minions ooc, same like ranger ? That HoT changes for minions are really great and i like going with minion master everywhere, but in dungeons ppl hate me for minions agro.

Minions should no longer draw agro. They only attack what you attack I believe. If your running through an area you can easily despawn them before running through and ressumon them at the fight.

Also. Rangers have a bit more control over there pet because its a class mechanic. They don’t have the choice of taking it off. Also ranger pets have a full threat table attached to them. So they really can agro if there not controlled. (most rangers keep there pets on passive)

I agree necros getting some kind of agro management tool for there pets would be nice. But I fully understand why we don’t have them as well. Though I do think were going to need it eventually and I am hoping anet keeps the concept on the table.

Eggyokeo.9705:

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm. My biggest issue with ranger is that your build is pretty much decided for you.

I may be wrong as i don’t play other classes much, but don’t all classes suffer from this?

Haha yes. Its not a single classes flaw. I should probably have stated “My biggest issue with GW2”

Its actually another reason I wish we had dmg meters. In other games it didn’t matter what build I ran as long as I out damaged/healed/tanked my competition. Here though theres no real way to prove what your doing is actually helping more than an alternative. Only the potential can be measured. Not the reality.

Back on topic though. Yes the PvE community in this game is pretty self confining. Were all so worried about POTENTIAL that we don’t allow for any variation. Only what is potentially most useful can be taken. And your own playstyle be kitten ed.

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in this games community The best player in the game can be running a suboptimal build because it fits his playstyle and people will immediately ignore his skill in the game. In the case of a ranger if you don’t have frost spirit sun spirit and spotter it doesn’t matter how good you are at the game in the communities eyes, your worthless.

Edit: Holy mother of grammar that was bad. I prob missed a bit but its better than it was.

Hmm. My biggest issue with ranger is that your build is pretty much decided for you. You will be taking spotter. And you WILL be taking frost and sun spirit.
Sadly. Anyone that wants to run anything else probably isn’t even going to be considered. Why would you ever bring any other ranger for example.

Its one of the reason I HATE this games group buff design. I wish the UNIQUE buff mechanics were tied to the class mechanics. Not to trait lines or utility skills. Because once there tied to traits/skills your going to be taking them…always…forever…with absolutely zero deviation if you want to be even slightly competitive. In a game where one of the biggest draws for me was creating a build to fit your playstyle. That’s depressing as kitten.

Edit: Corrected for accuracy

As far as the ventari utility skills. Im of the mind that all 5 of ventari’s skills should be usable while stunned.

I.E. Ventari doesn’t get stunbreaks But instead can continue to function even while stunned. By moving and utilizing the tome to respond threats.

Your being stunlocked? Move the tablet to you and detonate it to buy you time to get away. Or use it to burst heal you or cleanse condis off you. Or even to stop the arrows of that ranger pew pewing you while your stunned. Thats the kind of gameplay I REALLY want to see from revenant.

It will take more skill than your typical stunbreak. But it leaves the option there and gives you further methods of mitigating effects without simply copying every other pattern out there.

Are you kidding Kaos? THIS is the one you think is broken? did you not see the entire one that makes having any precision whatsoever a bad idea? I found myself in the mai trin version of that one STANDING in ehr cleave so I would get weakness so I would stop critting.

The last laugh one is fun. It makes you spread out just a tiny bit more so the fight as little less face rolly.

Kodiak.3281:

Black Box.9312:

Yeah, I agree. I do think that CoR damage is kind of crazy, but there’s no way that it would hit for 12k against a target with 3k armor unless there was a very unique set of circumstances.

The only way this happens is if it’s boosted through the moon such as with Cruel Repercussions and even then I’d be very skeptical of a 12k hit on 3k armor. Boasting inaccurate numbers just isn’t going to do anyone any favors.

CRepercussions goes off a lot because of Guardian’s Aegis. It’s almost impossible not to see at least one block with CORuin which if you run untargeted (so an auto attack doesn’t get it) means you can fire off the second one a few seconds later for MUCH higher damage.

As for “git gud” to be honest there’s no get good part of the skill in WvW. There’s enough ground targeted things you are going to get hit by this. It’s just how it is. Same goes for most ground targeted stuff in large scale (read 20 v 20 or more) you’re just not going to avoid it because often times it’s on you before you can see it through all the visual noise (Friendly and enemy looks identical).

The more logical counter is simply kill the Revenants. If you are rocking maximum DPS gear you don’t have any armor let alone a large health pool. We are very vulnerable to CC without a Guardian group similar to Necros.

I agree revenants are vulnerable to CC. But the hammer revenants defensive skills AREN’T affected by CC. So once you burn through the cooldowns there VERY easy to kill. Its just getting through those cooldowns in the first place that can take awhile. Most builds burst phases last 6-10 seconds. A decent revenant (doesnt take alot of skill to pull it off) can stay alive that long going through UA,Shield 5,Trait Shield 5, Glint heal) and have a fight thats in there favor afterwords if the enemy used all there cooldowns. So taking a revenant atleast in small scale usually takes a bit of time as you have to save cooldowns yet simultaneously force there procs to occur without burning yours.

Aye. Generally from what I can tell Each of the elder dragons we have killed were heavily distracted by pact forces until the absolute last second. Zhaitan was trying to control thousands of minions fighting the pact army. dozens if not hundreds of dragon champions. All while trying to fight massive kittening lasers in the sky. He got overwhelmed to death.

With mordremoth I believe the living story instance kill is supposed to happen at the exact same time as the meta event kill. So while the (pact army/players) are killing one of his largest concentrations of power. We basically stick a giant kitten probe into his brain and start poking around.

Imagine trying to fight a swarm of wasps with one really nasty wasp literally digging into your ear and eating your brain from the inside out.

Edit: When you think about it. Were kind of kittens about the whole killing thing.

Hexalot.8194:

Eh… when Rapid fire was buffed the QQ was epic and consumed the forums to the point where everyone and their mother thought a nerf was on the way. But guess what… the damage boost stood and people eventually learned counter play. Same thing could very well happen here.

Well to be fair. Rapid fire could be body blocked or even destroyed/reflected. I think a big part of the issue with CoR is that it ignores the most common forms of mitigation against ranged attacks. And the frequency of which it can be used.

Lets be honest. If rapid fire couldn’t be blocked or reflected most people here woudlnt be saying “just dodge out of the way” Theyd be screaming there heads off for massive nerfs to the skill. The two skills have similar functions (highly telegraphed ranged dps that occurs moderately regularly and is capable of chewing active defense). But CoR is superior largely because theres less overall counterplay involved in heavy team fights. (If your fighting a reaper and trying to deal with corrupts. There is often LITTERALLY nothing you can do against COR. Your out of stamina. Chilled. And probably bleeding to death already)

Edit: Also on a solid crit CoR does the same damage as a full Rapid fire (assuming every arrow hit and most of the arrows crit) It has the potential of delivering that every 2 seconds. Making it superior from a damage aspect as well. Can you imagine the shear amount of tears if rapid fire had a 2 second cooldown?

At around the same time the signet of vampirism corruption bug going through walls/dodges/blocks and having infinite range does. As soon as chronomancers having massive uptimes in immunity gets does. As soon as Druid SELF sustain and CC lock capabilities with a condi build does.

Theres alot of kitten in the game right now thats messed up. DH traps aren’t even at the top of my list. Infact. Id rather fight 5 dragonhunters than 5 tempests. Atleast I can deal reliable dmg to DH.

Im assuming your referring purely to the boon without any other factors. On its own no its not possible for regen to be OP. However when combined with other methods its relative strength increases.

In a fight thats over in 4 or 5 seconds its not worth very much. But if the fight is over the course of 30-40 seconds or a minute or two it can be pretty kitten nice. I have had very long lord room fights in stronghold where I was able to use regen in place of burning my heal skill. But that involved ALOT of kiting/dodgeing/blocking.

In short. Regen alone isn’t OP even with max healing power. But when combined with other factors (passive/active mitigation and time) its usefulness increases.

The builds that get the most out of regen will be those that can maintain it and have it actually healing for long periods of time and are actively in combat for that period of time.

Photinous.4628:

vespers.1759:

I guess reaper and ranger are really the only ones that don’t have some form of crazy projectile mitigation.

Staff 5 is a hard counter to projectiles so it’s really just reapers.

RS2 is a thing. Which is both an projectile destroyer and a gap closer. Making it BOTH things that projectile users hate.

Every elite spec has either a hard counter for projectiles. Or HEAVY access to soft counters.

Longbow/shortbow/axe ranger won’t be really viable in PvP for a VERY long time.

Edited for accuracy

Exedore.6320:

It’s pretty simple: Casual players like Stronghold because it’s simple. Competitive players will play conquest because it has far more strategic depth.

Id say they have around the same level of depth. And not everyone that doesn’t enjoy capture and hold is a casual. They just might honestly not enjoy conquest. It has nothing to do with there dedication or skill.

bLind.6278:

Warriors are buff bots with decent dps. If you wanted to play a dps class you should’ve picked ranger or something.

Err not really. Rangers picked for frost spirit and spotter not its dps. Don’t get me wrong our dps isn’t terrible. But if it wasn’t for those two things theyd just slot another revenant.

In all honesty? Alactrity is so incredibly powerful im not sure I want it available to more classes. And I DEFINITELY don’t want it affected by boon duration. The sheer potential power of this mechanic is so high that making it more common in any way is going to affect the balance in all 3 game modes in a pretty kitten significant way. At least as long as its still midly rare it doesn’t have a universal impact.

Honestly? Its giving me a place where my build is still viable. In the current conquest meta my playstyle and class simply don’t….do anything. In stronghold though I can still have a significant impact on the course of the match.

If I could of I would have had cosmic ray basically be a purely healing but supercharged version of the staff one. it would be directed at mob your fighting and you would position yourself to heal anyone inbetween you and it.

Of course. That would also be VERY strong in pve. So I can see why they went with the way they did.

neville.3420:

Treat bunker druids like you would PU mesmers. Just walk away.

You may not be able to kill them, but If you die to them then you’re just bad.

Haha thats true. Except in PvP the old PU mesmer couldnt hold a point or heal the lord. In this case they can. When there actually inbetween you and the objective you need to win. That becomes an issue.

Honestly. The current..annoyance (I won’t say strength really) of a druid is rather scary for me haha. Ive said it before. But I am worried the base ranger specializations will be toned down to account for the druid. Because a part of me believes they won’t want to nuke the healing in any way shape or form (For good reason in a way. Its the theoretical purpose of the druid)

Seeing as how the core ranger class is on about the same level as base thief and warrior (in how well they work against the new specs). Im not sure if itl survive that kind of shift.

I will say that as a ranger. Fighting a druid is one of the single most depressing things you can do. You generally spend 40-50 seconds fighting something but never being able to kill it. And watching your health fall just barely faster than you can heal/mitigate. The only thing more annoying are tempests and there kitten ed projectile hate.

Edit: Deleted because of salt.

No worries man. Longbow rangers are in the grave with ya u.u

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Just clarifying, if you’re stacking together would you, Ranger+Pet unit, be granting 2 stacks of might total? Either way, it makes decent synergy with guard on a shout build to place a range bet with backliners while playing melee.

Im afraid this wouldn’t work due to how guard functions. If your attacking something your pet will actually ingore the movement order given by “guard” and run to attack your target. Even with a ranged pet you would be able to set it up ahead of time but the moment you attacked it would move in range. And it would ignore any further placement orders. Even if you took it out of combat and attempted to use guard it would simply set it to aggressive and it would start attacking without actually moving.

So using this concept to buff ranged players is nice and all. But it would involve the ranged players stacking on the pet. Not you moving the pet with the ranged players. I can already see people desperately NOT doing that.

Ive been using this skill for a few years now and I can state with certainty that this skill does NOT fit the description. I believe it was designed with the massive leash range we had previously (in a time long ago) in mind. And wasn’t repaired when the leash range was shortened. ATM this skill simply doesn’t function as a placement option when engaging in combat for either melee or ranged pets. The most you can do is trick a melee pet into moving behind something so it stops getting hit (no longer even necessary)

To address a point both of you made. You both attempted to imply that revenants somehow lack significant defenses. I felt I should address that seperately.

While a glass revenant may lack the natural tankiness of a frontline. It should be compared to those classes that attempt to fulfill a similar role.

On that note the revenant is actually top tier utility wise both in the buff AND the defense departments.

A sword shield/hammer rev has potentially 2 weapon evade skills.
An on weapon block skill that lasts for a significant amount of time and also heals for a large amount.
A weapon skill that heals as well as applying protection. A complete damage transfer heal skill from glint.
A SECOND heal skill from shiro.
A stun break that is also an evade with cleanses movement imparing conditions. Projectile destruction on hammer.
Multiple forms of soft CC. 3 forms of aoe hard CC. INCREDIBLE boon application. Aoe reveal that does not require a target… only proximity.
Access to quickness and superspeed.
A second emergency block on damage taken that heals the revenant and also buys more than enough time to pop the glint heal ability before exiting. Almost guaranteeing a full heal buying time to move to shiro and break free.

If you compare all of that to other similar roles. Youl see that the revenant is actually one of the tankiest forms backline in the game. If not THE tankiest. Especially when played well.

Edit: Not I am not saying that its utility makes it overpowered. When taking in the energy cost and cooldown juggling im inclined to say its fairly well balanced. Im just putting for that this build isn’t really as squishy as other backline setups.

Edit 2: It is true that the POPULAR revenant build lacks condi cleanse. However it is more than capable of breaking CC based condis and using its mobility to escape continued pressure. Though that is up to the skill of the player.