Guild Wars 2

worminator.5174:

PvP-View
Most of the time in avatar is wasted with knockbacks? Seriously use stabilty BEFORE you enter the avatar or use the avatar 5 right after you cast the avatar form to get
2 stability for a healburst and DONT waste your full 15 seconds in the avatar form.
You want to see a viable pvp build. Until now you could seen some viable druidbuilds in pvp, if you really want to learn something. But i think you dont want to learn, you just want to state that just your opinion is the one and only truth. Show that iam wrong and look at the esl matches. But some warning: you have to change your opinion after seeing these matches . I also offer you to show you my druidbuild and gameplay ingame. Just send me an ingame message and i add you and contact you if i see you ingame.

For Raids
I got no own experience in raids with druid (i did not try until now), but i have seen plenty of successful druid raidvideos. They prove that there must be a good and viable Raid-druid. If not raids would not take them.

For wvw
I even can share a proper wvw druidbuild, but nowadays roaming is not really funny. You walk across the map and see nobody.

It would be more helpful and educational if you made your own streams and recorded them to watch. I’d definitely love to see unedited videos of your team healing oriented builds in action in wvw, spvp and raids.

Raf.1078:

Megaserver vs megaserver is coming, I think. …eventually.

EotM was the test bed for that style of play.

Pretty popular it seems too…for all the wrong reasons.

I believe so too.

Yeah it’s popular. One of the reasons is because it’s fast paced, no sitting around on your laurels

It’s obviously healthy in there so that’s a big indicator of the right balance of fun, rewards, exp and combat pace. Yes, pvp combat happened a lot despite popular belief.

The one to Rule.2593:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

No, Legendary gives no added bonuses over ascended, if you don’t want to work for legendary then you are not any worse off than before. No support.

Legendary “stuff” does provide versatility so that is a boon to the gear rank. Your level of support for this doesn’t matter, something will change over time once the devs gather enough feedback and statistics. I guarantee they are questioning their current design choices as we type, so it will only be a matter of time. Also, a dev could swoop in here and tell me I’m wrong, but that will be temporary “heel digging” and won’t last long.

Edit- Games can offer challenging content, and none of what I said takes that away. You people also have to understand that casuals are the backbone to any video game so content designed to being tightly exclusive, along with a lack of options and qol features like I mentioned, are areas where developers always end up shooting themselves in the foot.

There is no added gear rank just because you can swap stats, it’s still not practical because you’ll still need to swap runes, Which if running strength runes like many do, is not going to be an option. No ones going to pay 100g every time they need to change out their runes. And quit honestly, i’ve only ever been in maybe 2 situations where i’ve needed to swap stats to anything from zerker. The issues with not being able to get it are simply learn to play issues.

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with exclusive content. Look at runescape, they have a variety of certain drops only dropped by certain high level boss monsters that are pretty difficult for anyone not in top end gear. Yet, no one there complains because they understand it’s something to strive for and that not everyone will have them.

If you can’t keep up with the endgame content then don’t do it until you can. Casuals are the backbone sure, but that doesn’t mean 100% of content needs to be tuned to them, at some point you need to think about the veterans and what they want.
Legendaries are simply skins with very limited added utility the stats are exactly the same as ascended and casuals can easily get ascended. If you don’t have ascended then There’s no way you’ll be going for legendary either regardless.

Of course legendaries are practicle… Runes are minor in comparison to the entire gear and food package. Soon enough we will be able to swap out runes and sigils, and we will eventually get ascended and legend dart runes and sigils as well.

The game is pusing toward roles for endgame content, you’ll make more than two builds eventually and legendary gear will be a blessing if you have it.

I’m glad that works for runescape, but it will need to be adjusted here.

What I want are options for all players, nothing of what I said takes that away…

I have weapons, never switched the stats once and I can’t even think of a situation where I would ever need to either. You are basing your statement off assumptions about being able to rune swap, and actually rune swapping is far more important because it costs far more, a set of exotic full zero armor is cheaper than a set of strength runes. You obviously don’t need to replace ascended/legendary armor if you want new runes, you just need to replace the runes.

Not once has anet confirmed rune swapping is going to be a thing.

Well, if you don’t use many builds you’d be able to get by without swapping runes and sigils right?

Don’t worry, it’s coming…

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Swagger.1459:

saturn.4810:

If legendary armor is not raid exclusive, what will the pro raiders have left to show off?

They can show off their exclusive “raid only” legendary armor(s).

There can be different armor designs for different parts of the game… Don’t be so short sighted.

if you have your legendary armor and no ppl to show it at? People are getting more and more negative over raiding, and the gating.

It will be nerfed. HF

You can show off your armor everywhere you play! You can even rub your raid exclusive legendary stuff in the faces of wvw and spvp players while they kill your character too!

Not nerfed, they will add difficulty, player and reward scaling so don’t worry buddy! You peeps will be able to set the difficulty so high that you top 1% of 1% players will spend 5x the amount of time, that you currently do now, looking for members, filling in replacements and trying to beat up the neeto boss and jumping to green circles over and over and over as over and over until you have to replace half of the 1% of the 1% again!!! :P

Thaddeus.4891:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

No, Legendary gives no added bonuses over ascended, if you don’t want to work for legendary then you are not any worse off than before. No support.

Legendary “stuff” does provide versatility so that is a boon to the gear rank. Your level of support for this doesn’t matter, something will change over time once the devs gather enough feedback and statistics. I guarantee they are questioning their current design choices as we type, so it will only be a matter of time. Also, a dev could swoop in here and tell me I’m wrong, but that will be temporary “heel digging” and won’t last long.

Edit- Games can offer challenging content, and none of what I said takes that away. You people also have to understand that casuals are the backbone to any video game so content designed to being tightly exclusive, along with a lack of options and qol features like I mentioned, are areas where developers always end up shooting themselves in the foot.

They give you quality of life, not an advantage. And really it’s not even a good quality of life. As long as legendary don’t allow you to swap sigil/runes, they are almost useless. Yes from time to time it can be usefull, but I have 5 legendary weapons and never changed the stats on them because it serve no purpose, and I’m not alone.

That said, I agree that Legendary Armor shouldn’t be locked behind Raid only. I’m good with a unique Legendary Skin behind raid, but not that raid are the only way to get legendary armor. We should be able to get a Legendary PvP armor, a Legendary Open World armor and a Legendary WvW armor. Even maybe a Legendary Fractal armor. That way, all type of content have one. Of couse each of those should be equally hard to get, but not lock behind a content that a part of the community just don’t like. This doesn’t really affect me because I love raid, but it’s good for the game in general. I think that they want to introduce a PvP Legendary armor with the leagues, but we didn’t hear much about that and only PvP and Raid isn’t enough, a big portion of the community don’t do either of those 2 content.

Of course I know that.

Yup, that’s the way it should be.

The one to Rule.2593:

Swagger.1459:

The one to Rule.2593:

No, Legendary gives no added bonuses over ascended, if you don’t want to work for legendary then you are not any worse off than before. No support.

Legendary “stuff” does provide versatility so that is a boon to the gear rank. Your level of support for this doesn’t matter, something will change over time once the devs gather enough feedback and statistics. I guarantee they are questioning their current design choices as we type, so it will only be a matter of time. Also, a dev could swoop in here and tell me I’m wrong, but that will be temporary “heel digging” and won’t last long.

Edit- Games can offer challenging content, and none of what I said takes that away. You people also have to understand that casuals are the backbone to any video game so content designed to being tightly exclusive, along with a lack of options and qol features like I mentioned, are areas where developers always end up shooting themselves in the foot.

There is no added gear rank just because you can swap stats, it’s still not practical because you’ll still need to swap runes, Which if running strength runes like many do, is not going to be an option. No ones going to pay 100g every time they need to change out their runes. And quit honestly, i’ve only ever been in maybe 2 situations where i’ve needed to swap stats to anything from zerker. The issues with not being able to get it are simply learn to play issues.

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with exclusive content. Look at runescape, they have a variety of certain drops only dropped by certain high level boss monsters that are pretty difficult for anyone not in top end gear. Yet, no one there complains because they understand it’s something to strive for and that not everyone will have them.

If you can’t keep up with the endgame content then don’t do it until you can. Casuals are the backbone sure, but that doesn’t mean 100% of content needs to be tuned to them, at some point you need to think about the veterans and what they want.
Legendaries are simply skins with very limited added utility the stats are exactly the same as ascended and casuals can easily get ascended. If you don’t have ascended then There’s no way you’ll be going for legendary either regardless.

Of course legendaries are practicle… Runes are minor in comparison to the entire gear and food package. Soon enough we will be able to swap out runes and sigils, and we will eventually get ascended and legend dart runes and sigils as well.

The game is pusing toward roles for endgame content, you’ll make more than two builds eventually and legendary gear will be a blessing if you have it.

I’m glad that works for runescape, but it will need to be adjusted here.

What I want are options for all players, nothing of what I said takes that away…

I swear sometimes we are not playing the same game… At times, half of those 15 seconds is spent dodging, moving, being knocked back, targeted and taking damage, and waiting for a couple longish animations and effects to take place… We are not all just stacking in scripted dungeons and fractals or able to freecast in every area of the game. Some of you peeps don’t think beyond the stand still-stack-burn mentality and what actually occurs during pressure healing and combat situations.

Eval, we have had a rodeo before, so I challenge you to stream and record your viable wvw, spvp and raid healing skills with Druid and come back to prove any of my suggestions to be incorrect. Also, I’d love to see what you can realistically accomplish with the current 15 seconds you are alloted and show us how 8 seconds is an improvement (even with potentially higher heal numbers).

The one to Rule.2593:

No, Legendary gives no added bonuses over ascended, if you don’t want to work for legendary then you are not any worse off than before. No support.

Legendary “stuff” does provide versatility so that is a boon to the gear rank. Your level of support for this doesn’t matter, something will change over time once the devs gather enough feedback and statistics. I guarantee they are questioning their current design choices as we type, so it will only be a matter of time. Also, a dev could swoop in here and tell me I’m wrong, but that will be temporary “heel digging” and won’t last long.

Edit- Games can offer challenging content, and none of what I said takes that away. You people also have to understand that casuals are the backbone to any video game so content designed to being tightly exclusive, along with a lack of options and qol features like I mentioned, are areas where developers always end up shooting themselves in the foot.

saturn.4810:

If legendary armor is not raid exclusive, what will the pro raiders have left to show off?

They can show off their exclusive “raid only” legendary armor(s).

There can be different armor designs for different parts of the game… Don’t be so short sighted.

I’d like to start the topic with this…

http://massivelyop.com/2015/10/22/massively-overthinking-wildstar-guild-wars-2-and-mmo-raiding-in-2015/

I personally don’t mind raids, to a degree, but if it is so exclusive then that’s a problem. As is, players are dropping like flies and bailing on the raid left and right, and this endgame content has only been out for almost 2 weeks. Instead of having the main theme to raiding about having “fun” and wanting players to play raids regularly, most try a couple times and then just don’t care. There should be difficulty and group scaling with matching rewards in raids (fractals and dungeons too) if you plan to have an active raid community in the future. Allowing players to challenge themselves at their pace and comfort level is always better than just cutting customers out of experiencing the game fully. Also, you lack a lot of qol features and options to support raiding. Where are the build templates for newish players and inexperienced raiders? Build savers? Option to toggle large health bars on players so healers can focus on the screen? Personal dps and healing meters to evaluate your characters performance and rotations? I’m sure there are more but you peeps get the gist…

City of heroes did a great job with scaling options. It was well received and quite enjoyable to “baby step” into certain content to learn the mechanics, test builds and improve skill levels while earning rewards in the process. This way players didn’t feel like they were wasting time or excluded from experiencing content at all. Players then became good enough to up challenge levels while enjoying it, and that’s what your vision and goal should be with raids, dungeons and fractals.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety

About this legendary armor gate exclusive to raids only… If you (devs) do not plan to provide scaling options and wish to carry the wild star “double down” mentality with raids (to your detriment), then I suggest you should offer legendary armor rewards to another area of the game as well.

Remember folks, you want more referrals, gem store sales and players playing your content sooooo…. more options and more inclusive content are always better than less. Also, I guarantee your stats will lead you to these same conclusion, so don’t leave a bitter taste in players mouths for too long.

Good luck

Here are the best features… Alpine maps. They can give em a nice visual makeover to make them look better.

Minis are slow, can you adjust them to keep pace with our character?

There are way more than enough drawbacks to CAF, it needs to be a stance maintainable until downed or manually exited. The AF mechanics need to be completely dropped as well. Ok sure, put a small timer on entering again, but that’s it. Nothing more needs to be done mechanic wise.

And before anyone complains, yes, all things Druid will need to be tweaked to make this happen so don’t start throwing “but this and this and this power, radius and number” at me. Things can be adjusted to make Druid function in a balanced way.

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in like lack of damage, no “oh crap” travel ability, no stability built in and that displays a big target on themselves naturally in wvw and spvp environments.

There are way more than enough drawbacks to CAF, it needs to be a stance maintainable until downed or manually exited. The AF mechanics need to be completely dropped as well.

And before anyone complains, yes, Druid will need to be tweaked to make this happen so don’t start throwing “but this and this and this power, radius and number” at me. Things can be adjusted to make Druid function in a balanced way.

If you disagree then I’m sorry, but you can’t have a healer who can’t heal sometimes because of some artificial restriction. It’s bad design to gate an important role that already has tons of weaknesses built in.

How about some crafting stations too?

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

The waiting is always there. Even when I play with my 9 friends you still have to wait a lot, take breaks very often. Cause out of 10 people someone will always have to go do something at some time. And this will always be an issue, unless you find 9 people to raid with you who have no life and only play the game without any interruptions.

Then that’s a raid design problem ultimately, not a player created problem.

That’s been my experience too. Also, the waiting to fill in “roles” because of people dropping like flies. Fun times in raids…

Let’s not forget peeps, a dev has stated that most wvwers pve. Something like this could make total sense and restart the heart of wvw…

Substance E.4852:

Swagger.1459:

Substance E.4852:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Shadelang.3012:

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.

The problem with making CAF a rare, burst heal is that they want to force us to use healing power. Outside of CAF, healing power is worthless. We sabotage our own build 90% of the time to get more out of the other 10%. This is not good design.

Substance E.4852:

anduriell.6280:

the penalty is already there and if you play druid you already should know this: Our heal skills do not directly heal us. The only one that heal us is the CAF#4.

…wut?

¯\(?)/¯

You can’t heal yourself very well if you’re being focused and trying to heal a teammate. But, in all honesty, lack of stability is already pretty crippling to CAF. There is no need for all of this, especially when we have reapers using shroud constantly, which gives them obscenely high effective health and stability. I never have half the problems with druids that I have with reapers and heralds.

Just to be clear, I don’t personally think that simple 15s in and 10s out Avatar actually needs a penalty.

The point I’m trying to get across is that Anet thinks it does. The fact that they take no more than 24-48 hours to nerf anything that lets people effectively ignore the AF bar is plenty telling of this.

If we are going to get rid of Astral Force, something else will end up having to take it’s place mechanically.

There are already big drawbacks to being in CAF… Damage and no access to “oh crap I need to move” ability… It’s easy to force a player out of CAF form.

Again, I realize that it wouldn’t be over powered to remove AF. It’s Anet that thinks this.

I’m sorry, I did I speed read while distracted.

Substance E.4852:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Shadelang.3012:

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.

The problem with making CAF a rare, burst heal is that they want to force us to use healing power. Outside of CAF, healing power is worthless. We sabotage our own build 90% of the time to get more out of the other 10%. This is not good design.

Substance E.4852:

anduriell.6280:

the penalty is already there and if you play druid you already should know this: Our heal skills do not directly heal us. The only one that heal us is the CAF#4.

…wut?

¯\(?)/¯

You can’t heal yourself very well if you’re being focused and trying to heal a teammate. But, in all honesty, lack of stability is already pretty crippling to CAF. There is no need for all of this, especially when we have reapers using shroud constantly, which gives them obscenely high effective health and stability. I never have half the problems with druids that I have with reapers and heralds.

Just to be clear, I don’t personally think that simple 15s in and 10s out Avatar actually needs a penalty.

The point I’m trying to get across is that Anet thinks it does. The fact that they take no more than 24-48 hours to nerf anything that lets people effectively ignore the AF bar is plenty telling of this.

If we are going to get rid of Astral Force, something else will end up having to take it’s place mechanically.

Edit- There does not need to be any new mechanics in place of AF. The built in drawbacks to CAF are big enough “mechanics”. Lack of damage and no access to any “oh crap I need to move” ability… It’s easy to force a player out of CAF form and that’s the balancing factor.

Substance E.4852:

anduriell.6280:

Still don’t see what’s the problem here deleting the AF generation piece of crap.

When the druid is in CAF does not do any damage, only heal and CC. There is no AF, just a cooldown like now.

True, but evidently being able to go into CA for 15s every 10s is producing too many bunker builds that are crapping all over Anet’s Esportz pipe dream or overheal regen would still be a thing since it basically bypassed the AF ar anyway.

AF is Anet’s hamfisted way of slowing down our use of CA heals and literally everything they do to make it “balanced” in pvp cascades through the rest of the game in terrible ways.

About the only way I can see AF getting removed is if they replace it with some kind of penalty to being in CA mode.

Something that actively incentivizes jumping in, throwing out a lunar impact and then hopping out to avoid lingering for too long.

The problem with this idea is there isn’t much you can do that will prevent bunker abuse in pvp but maintain raid viability.

Anet created a sub-class that can only really ever exist in 1 game mode at a time and probably only ever will since they have absolutely dug their heels in on splitting pvp/pve functionality in most cases.

The “bunker” stuff is what I predicted/felt in one of my threads. The reticle aim Druid heal spec is bad except to make a super self-healing build (as we can see happened and is quickly being killed off) and stationary team healing at pve bosses feet.

The ultimate problem is not in AF, it’s a lot of other stuff. Look at my thread for better/more balanced ways to fix up Druid for all types of gameplay. There are possible options to do Druid justice for every game mode and I believe my general ideas would help accomplish that.

Guys and gals, these are only my predictions, but I could be spot on. Ya never know

See all that HoT stuff? See how eotm goes in timed cycles and with 3 sided megaservers? Well, combine the two and you have the future of wvw!

-Day/Night (timed) events and meta events.

-Rewards based off of participation level, land owned and event completions.

-“Keys” of honor to unlock magically appearing "lockboxes"of honor.

-Exclusive crafting mats and rewards.

-EB map will get changed to a “humongouslyginormous” floating mist castle map that will be a cross between verdant brink, auric basin and tangled depths designs. Yeah, one big kitten crazy flying castle filled with underground mazes and jumping puzzles too!

-Gliding!

-“Pad” bouncing!

-Agony areas requiring agony resistance!

-New currency that will be called "something"of honor, and will be used to buy ascended runes and sigils.

-Mastery tracks will be…

*Siege++ and supply++ related.

*Guild related.

*Get better loot drops, more “keys” of honor, “something” of honor currency and badges of honor along with the highly asked for auto loot function (first track).

*Legendary rune and sigil crafting.

*Gliding, “pad” bouncing and angony resistance (all in one mastery track).

-Server vs server vs server will be a thing of the past, and it will be megaserver red vs blue vs green with an emphasis on guild advancement and ascended and legendary rune and sigil acquisition.

-Tournaments (that we rarely have had) as you know it will be a thing of the (scarce in occurance) past, and winning “stuffz” for yourself and guild will be based off of monthly “HoT style” participation percentage points (PPP). The devs will tally up the daily PPP for the entire month and average them out to decide who the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place megaservers are. All wvw rewards will be handed out on the first day of each new month by a cool looking “tournament of honor” chest that will pop up and wiggle on the bottom right corner of your screen where the other chests pop up and wiggle. Not by game mailbox.

-The wvw meta event will start 1 hour before the end of the 4 hour match, and all players will get transported to the revamped EB. Once there, each megaserver side will have to battle their individual megaeserver “champion of the mist” for exclusive guild rewards, mist currency and mist lockboxes.

The megaserver side with the most points will earn the right to battle the “supermegaepicboss” for even more exclusive guild rewards, mist currency, mist lockboxes and… legendary mist armor pieces!

-The “supermegaepicboss” of the mists in EB will be none other than… a marionette sized Revenant Scarlet!

-Scarlet’s marionettes will be the individual borderland champions.

So, what cha peeps think?

Good luck peeps, the next year of patch notes will focus on AF tweaking and tool tips while all the other ranger and real problems with Druid are ignored.

Merrex.5384:

I seam to recall the Dev’s stating that healing power was under powered in the game so much so that no one really even considers it when building a character.
And they said that was bad for the game ! ( I am guessing because they want all stats to be important and worth taking )

But I have yet to see a positive change in healing power at all. did they simply forget about it sense no one uses it anyway ????

Or maybe I am wrong.

They said healing gear stats didn’t scale well, that was the issue.

They also said the zerker meta was unhealthy for the game.

Don’t worry peeps, the game won’t implode if we gain access to more laurels.

The point is that raids are requiring a more diversified gear portfolio, and for players who use stuff the laurels are too gated. There are enough gates to gear honestly.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Laurel drought? Has the Daily Log-in Rewards changed with the last patch?

How many sets of light, medium, and heavy armor do you have?

Out of those armor sets, what stat sets are they?

How many ascended weapons do you have?

Out of those ascended weapons, how many different stat seats do you have?

Ascended amulets, rings and trinkets…?

Infusion in your ascended gear?

It adds up, and now that raids are upon us, the devs want us to fill roles. Roles require gear and such… Not everyone just sits on their laurels ya know…

Well certain players use them as opposed to save them…

@linken- gotcha, thanks. There are bigger issues with it so winter daily won’t resolve it for the long run.

Now that raids are here, can you devs please do something about this? There are enough gates to ascended gear already and I’m sure you could easily put in a currency exchange of some sort.

Thanks.

But then you are forced into that particular color theme.

That is a long standing issue, but the frustration is growing with having gear, weapons, back pieces, skins, and such…. having mismatched colors. Do you devs realize how difficult you make it to build a unified color and asthetically similar theme to our characters most of the time? It is problematic only being able to dye armor and this is something that should be addresses. Here, I’ll start with this example because I brought it up before…

Nightfury- bats grey scale.

Chiroptophobia greatsword skin- bats black and grey weapon.

Bat wings glider- brown colors and tones.

Whispers back pieces have a red, black and gold color scheme.

Whispers weapons have a gold and metal theme.

I have to build around those colors if I want some uniformity and that sucks.

Ghostly infusion aura whispy black and light blue.

Only thing that matches the aura are the dreamthistle weapons that have green shafts.

Cobalt greatsword and jormag’s breath sword are next closest matches with the light blue flames, but those are flames and that style only comes with those two weapons, nothing else.

You have corrupted weapons, but that is a frosty aura…

Ascolonian weapons are an ok, but only match up at night and the designs are kinda meh.

I could go on and on about stuff, but for a game that prides itself on aestecics, something needs to change. Either start coming out with complete color themed sets of weapons, back pieces, wings, auras… and/or make things dyeable. I’m sure the time investment would pay off because the market for all these items and dyes would boom if you took all your unique exotic, ascended and legendary weapons, all back pieces, black lion skins… and work on them so the could happen.

Do something guys and gals, this is 2015 and you have the tech and (wo)man power to do it.

You can see my response above

Valky.2574:

Swagger.1459:

ChrizZcE.5981:

Don´t have full ascended gear and I´m a scrapper/hammer engi.

No group wants to have you if you are not the right class and don´t have fully ascended gear.

This game is no different than WoW now.

Then level up crafting, make ascended gear, buy trinkets with laurels and adjust your traits once in a while like everyone else…

I have gripes about raids, but finally ascended has content designed around it and we are seeing roles being developed.

First of all ascended already has content designed around it or did you miss that infusion slot / agony infusion

Second Raids are for exotic – ascended might be better but raid are made with exotics in mind as in can be done in them

And legendary – full set back piece 2 weapons and full armor will be the armor Designed around raids sure the first raid will be the place to go from exotic to ascended -well was but the community already made it ascended only-then the next is for legendary armor after that all raider/elits will pretty much require you to have a full set of legendarys so you can change stats per raid boss
it’s the new gear grind

Welcome to Wow i mean gw2

Yeah, I always forget about fractals.

Raids were not designed with exotics in mind… There are devs quotes saying that basically. They said that players can “get by with some exotics and a good team” in reference to the first wing. Beyond that is for ascended. I’m tired so I’m not going to find the Twitter quote, but feel free to look and pm a raid dev if you wish to on this matter.

Sure, you can get by with exotics to a degree and for now, but this is only step one. Players will need full ascended for this going forward and most teams will want players with ascended. It’s pretty easy to ask to ping gear too, so our friend who wants to do raids should start working on it now. This raid is an intro, a test of the waters, but the devs want ascended to be the standard. Yes, legendary will be a factor much much later down the road.

Legendary gear is part of the game so I don’t blame them. Gated behind raids entirely, ehh, that’s the only part I don’t agree with. As for wow, never played, but I hear the grind and gating was much worse.

Btw… It was fun being on my (well designed for raid and HoT content) Revenant and enjoying the gameplay, actually watching the gameplay not the ability and astral force bars, squad UI, aiming reticles… while the Druid was asking the team to stack up so (s)he could heal properly…

I both laughed and felt bad knowing that players need to move all around, jump constantly to green circles, are scattering to avoid orbs and being ported around while the “mostly useless staff healing and part-time reticle aim healer” was trying to do their job.

And yes, I ran it on Druid as well before and received a compliment on my healing… when stacked up lol. It’s unfortunate how poorly thought out Druid was considering the nature of movement in this game…

If you guys just want to keep niggling about and adjusting astral force then you are horribly failing this elite. Time to change how Druid functions to something more inline with my suggestions.

When are build savers coming now that we have gear and “role” requirements?

ChrizZcE.5981:

Don´t have full ascended gear and I´m a scrapper/hammer engi.

No group wants to have you if you are not the right class and don´t have fully ascended gear.

This game is no different than WoW now.

Then level up crafting, make ascended gear, buy trinkets with laurels and adjust your traits once in a while like everyone else…

I have gripes about raids, but finally ascended has content designed around it and we are seeing roles being developed.

I guarantee it is because the reticle aim heal design is not good or fun, and most players used CA form to make self sufficient super bunker and max dps/self heal builds instead of using group heal support builds.

So instead of taking certain suggestions… won’t name names here… to improve Druid overall, the devs are going the “use less resources” route and fudge with astral force instead. It’s sad because they are just screwing over both team oriented and personal use builds…

Honestly the devs don’t know what they are doing with regard to healing and tanking in this game, that’s pretty clear.

Transvestosaurus.2381:

I just want to see health bars for everyone around me without grouping. Not too mad about anything else.

Either health bars for everyone or a better way of seeing player characters. If I’m supposed to watch the combat and respond to big hits, supposed to be able to tell when players are damaged without health bars, then please give me a better way of tracking players.

Having a dozen or so ‘Longname McRunsallovertheplace the Entitled Titler of Titles’ jiggling everywhere really isn’t helpful but having player names turned on is the best way I’ve found to track people.

Maybe a little green circle under their feet or something? Y’know… like all the other games?

Yup, we need stuff like that. Sadly, though, things like it were not given the attention or resources before HoT.

That’s the logical and right thing to do, but they won’t do it sadly.

setdog.1592:

dps meters are toxic.

There are more benefits to personal use dps and healing meters, than there are the drawbacks of the occasional " they didn’t let me play in the sand box with them today" forum post…

Ascended gear is expensive overall and they will be required going forward in raids. Anet cannot just keep players guessing with numbers considering they want “roles”, maximum character efficiency in said “role(s)” and max effort from players.

Sorry, but “screening” of players is already happening in raids and top spvp teams so find a different team, make your own or don’t do said content or activity if it is that much of an issue with you.

Meters also allow players to help others take the costly guesswork out of improving their characters build and potential by trial and error… Number bugs could be found more easily because of transparency… Also, there is nothing wrong with knowing the numbers to things, and I guarantee that even people like you would use it, on some level, to build your character if meters were available.

Before the expansion we were told by John Smith that salvaging was going to be reduced in his “economy gonna go crazy, but we are watching” post.

He even kindly did a Q&A thread as well, that may answer other questions you might have.

You need healing meters too…

I asked about it in the API section, but it was a “not on the table at this time” answer. Hopefully they get to work on releasing the stuff needed so players can make something official.

I think they should hand out a free set of ascended armor and trinkets with each “silly” update.

Tomoyo.3482:

Swagger.1459:

Go farm events, you get more exp and stuff…

when you can get 2-3k a kill from spider over and over again it adds up a lot faster then any map meta in HoT.

You don’t have a clue.

Because of the restricted, gated, limited use, timed… CA form and AF designs, you cannot heal when you need to heal sometimes. I know you have good intentions, but THAT is the main issue and THAT is not good design. No, staff does not cut it currently for healing I’m sorry.

Secondary to the above is the reticle healing shoved in there for “twitchy” reasons, but that is another poor design choice placed on an important role such as healer. .

When we run a Druid or hybrid Druid build for team related content, we should be able to heal on demand to fill the role expected of us properly. It is unfortunate that you did not see this prior to designing this elite, but it needs to change asap.

This link below will give you more general details and ideas, but the simplified thought process behind the healing aspect of Druid should be…

Staff- Sustained and average ranged healing. Yes, it still needs to be a better healing tool overall.

CA- Needs to be a “stance” (built with AF) that is held until downed. Doing this means the shift in risk vs reward becomes about dying vs surviving as it should be, not forced timers. You need to get rid of the reticle design and go with click/press pbaoe healing for this form. We have ranged stuff with staff already, so CA should completely function as our front line area healer. Yes, adjustments to “things” will need to be made.

AF- Having the Druid trait line in your build should mean you generate AF proportionately with all sources of damage and healing. Direct damage and direct heals build AF faster. Condition damage, regen ticks and heal over time skills build AF slower… Staff still remains the “go to” weapon because of the damage and healing components built in.

Currently the Druid is a hot mess (pun intended). Fix it like I’m suggesting and save the players, our teammates and yourself a lot of headache and frustration now and in the future. Doing this will also allow you to have a more stable and sensible platform to work on core ranger and future elites.

Read this if you have not and focus more on the “gist” of the things I’m trying to communicate.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Healing-design-real-talk-updated/first

Thanks

I am convinced CA form needs to be a stance held until downed. This would require some changes, but this is the best way to go.

AF generation should be spread equally among all things when the Druid trait line is in the build.

Less gimmicks Irenio, and more quality gameplay. Also, read this if you haven’t for more general ideas…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Healing-design-real-talk-updated/first

Thanks!

Please start paying attention devs. It’s apparent that you guys are trying to fit in a healing role and not doing a great job at it. Start putting some trust in people like me who have played support roles for over a decade.

You peeps need help and there are many good voices here, so please step away from those spread sheets and training dummy numbers and spend time listening to us more.

They won’t change a thing. Right now they are scrambling to throw something in to try to get people back there. Colin and the “suits” are hard at work cracking the whip on the devs so they don’t have to backtrack.

Exotrax.4207:

So , I’m trying hard to grind xps doing events but since the raids came out , maps (even VB) are quite empty.
Yesterday I ran around VB trying to find a small group to do events and we were 3 people (from 8pm till 11pm).
Normally when I find no people in maps I go do some crafting ….come back after 1/2hour and than map is full again……but really lately no one doing events , so how I’m supposed to level up my mastery ?
Another thing I disagree with HoT is that now became almost impossible play solo and the only way to do meta-events and gain some good amount of xps , is to play with big group of player …..I really miss the old quest system , at least you can play solo and progress anyway.

Don’t get me wrong , I still love the game and the map design is great , is just that Anet seems more focus only to make a game for players that only play in groups and not for casual players.

Maybe I’m wrong….what’s your opinion ?

I do not believe raids are that popular to detract from maps. I believe that most players got what they wanted from these maps and events so you have stragglers, alts and newbies going through now. Lots of plates are in DS and doing other stuff, not wvw though lol.