Guild Wars 2

There is more than enough healing feedback in the main thread so don’t worry. Irenio has enough to read and he is on top of things.

#believeinIrenio

Nice to see the rapid response for Revenant weapon skills…

what was I referencing when I used the word restriction?

:| you don’t get it

No, it’s just a silly restriction really.

The bleeding from the back and side restriction thing is one of the silliest weapon design choices ever.

We will get there with Irenio on our side! Stay positive folks!

That’s the price tag so either pay for it or don’t. There have been enough free updates to the game over the years so we all got our entertainment dollars worth many times over.

Some of you niggle over the silliest things honestly.

The ranger sword reminds me of this…

http://youtu.be/EQ3Xux-D3Lg

Those Revenant sword attacks are pretty cool y’all… Just saying

#firstworldproblems.

Just showing some appreciation and being positive here. Meant to be light hearted guys and gals. I’ve been skeptical too, but let’s not forget we have a ray of hope now. Go buy some gems and keep hope in your heart!

For all your hard work and communication!!! Fixing sword soon? You have become the brightest star in our gloomy celestial sky and show us that Ranger wishes really do come true!!! Maybe sword secondary someday? You are living proof that all is not vine err vain!!! Dual sword wielding offensive Celestial Avatar form that shoots energy beams at moderate range in the near future? You’re the best!!! Celestial shark and unicorn pets in the works? Thank you again!!!

Join me fellow Rangers and let’s buy some gems in honor of Irenio!!!

Mobile or immobile spirits + unavoidable damage in raids = waste of utility slot space

Spirits + pet = wasted healing on these targets in any game mode

AgitatedFox.5287:

Swagger.1459:

The more I read about Revenant, the less excited I am about Ranger and Druid.

It’s cool to have a bow and pet for aesthetic reasons, but everything Revenant seems to be far superior from what I’m reading. Along with the option to be a better sustained healer, Revenant also other goodies to support their team. I get the feeling that Revanant will completely outshine Ranger in every aspect and game mode.

Of course Revenant will be a better sustained healer. Druid isn’t a sustained healing spec. It’s burst.

Just saying that the complete package seems far superior from what I read. Sure, burst healing my be better, but what else does Ranger have to offer to be competitive? Doesn’t seem like much else besides the pretty flower and rainbow unicorn arrows on the screen and a couple neat pets… Idk, hope I’m wrong.

The more I read about Revenant, the less excited I am about Ranger and Druid.

It’s cool to have a bow and pet for aesthetic reasons, but everything Revenant seems to be far superior from what I’m reading. Along with the option to be a better sustained healer, Revenant also other goodies to support their team. I get the feeling that Revanant will completely outshine Ranger in every aspect and game mode.

jcbroe.4329:

Puck.9612:

Knighthonor.4061:

Honestly, i have to wonder, if many of the people here who are crying that Druid is useless outside of Raids, ever even played the Druid as a Healer at all.

because at the same time during the BWE3 as the Ranger forum was yelling about how bad and useless Druids are outside of Raids, people were on the PvP and WvW forum yelling about how strong Druids are.

lol. I played healer druid and it was awesome. Just need better self defense because as people figured it out, they started to do the “Target the Ranger” tactic which left me screwed since Toughness stat is pretty lacking on Cleric gear and the heals cant counter full target of the Druid from dps heavy enemies.

but the class was great. I left the beta with a nice memory in WvW when it was a three side zerg war ground in which I managed to heal my outnumbered team zerg and keep them alive far longer than they would without my heals. Was a great feeling of Support actually matters for once instead of it just being a byproduct of DPS zerker builds.

The only “druid OP” threads I saw were posted before the weekend. Everyone considered them a free bag after they played against them.
Damage mitigation>healing. Druids can’t out heal coordinated spikes, and it’s very easy to just target druid first and chain cc/burst him down.

100% this. People weren’t making claims of effectiveness, they were upset it takes a few seconds longer to whack through a health bar being “extended” by healing, but every “Druid OP” post was either about our traits which have little to nothing to do outside of functionality, and our healing; meaning that at that point they were asking for nerfs to the only thing celestial form and to some extent the main feature of Druid could even do.

Celestial form was in desperate need of being support oriented and not just a healbot with exclusive usage in PvE content, and 9/10 times in PvP you’d be better off picking up the traitline and then not using celestial form ever except maybe to “flash” into it and drop 2 and 3 real quick and then immediately exit.

After watching a couple videos, I see the ranger stuck in the mediocre damage bunker build meta with better self healing and Druid based builds will be all about stacking with your team at a boss spamming stuff.

As it stands right now, I would never build my ranger for a team support oriented role because there are too many sacrifices needed to be made.

Well, I applaud Irenio for all the hard work on trying to make the Druid unique. Hope that some strong changes are made to improve the ranger profession, weapon sets and all things Druid sooner than later.

Yeah, unfortunately there is only a short time until release, but I think it would be a relatively easy change to make. I’m sure that they already done some experimenting with turning this into a stance and what cool downs and numbers would look like. Idk maybe I’m wrong, but I still feel it would be a lot more fun this way and greatly improve build and role diversity.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Well written, and spot on.

I would especially be a bit concerned as a developer, when I read this:

“I also found that the party limitations on receiving healing resulted in me sometimes being unable to heal the individual who was taking aggro. On multiple occasions our tanking revenant died not as a result of my lack of output, but because my heals simply didn’t work on him.”

Now that’s a design flaw if there ever was one.

Yes that is a major flaw.

It’s stuff like this reminds new me that this game could use a healthy dose of (dodgeable) targeted AoE skills instead of all these ad nauseam ground target skills. Would be nice to have options for all ground target skills like this. I honestly feel that I’m playing the UI more than the actual game at times with all the swapping, targeting, timers, bars and this and that. It’s just really annoying at times.

Would it be a conderation to change CA form into something that could be maintained until downed or out of combat?

I understand changes would have to be made to accommodate this, but it could be great for build and role diversity. Think of how interesting it would be to maintain that role during encounters. Also, a condition damage component could be added to these support/healing skills so players could contribute damage to fights and earn reward credit. I think that would be a fun approach instead of the current design of jumping in and out of the form.

Thoughts?

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ok here is my feedback on the design (flaws) of the Druid. I have been a main raid healer for over a decade in several other MMOs, I take this seriously.

Preamble
Anet have always stated that they wanted “active” combat and not bar watching like other games. In raids though that’s exactly what healing is, bar watching. A party member’s health drops and you as a main healer, heal them. Simple enough but this goes against what the core game design has been and I believe it’s one of the reasons Druid Celestial Avatar isn’t a stance, as it should be.

GW2 has been very much a visual dress up game as stats between exotic and ascended were so close skins were the endgame, this is now changing with legendary gear, but stats likely will not be OP vs exotics. This visual endgame is likely a factor in not wanting Druids to be able to remain in CA (celestial avatar) permanently. With introduction of raids however, endgame is now raids, not skins.

Reasons CA should be on demand on/off

WvW – CA Druid form is a strong healer and competitively it should / will be a target for enemy players. As a thief for example, killing an enemy healer could shift the battle in your favor.

As a an ally of a Druid you will want to be near one when the kittens hit the fan, and CA is your only real clue someone you’re not grouped with is going healer.

Raids – A 10 man raid will likely use 2 Druids 1 per party or 2 on the tank party and healing is the priority. I know many have said the Druid’s CA needs damage, this isn’t necessary as healing forms need only cleanse and heal, other classes can provide buff /aegis. The reason the Druid needs a resource generated within CA to mimic mana and power the heals rather than generating it out of CA is simple, attuning to CA once heals are needed is likely too late. Anyone who has healed seriously knows the panic of keeping your silly raid menbers alive when they’ve made a mistake. As currently constructed, I as a healer, will be out of CA, doing inferior damage, I’ll see someone health bar drop, switch to CA and hopefully heal them in time. This is poor raid design. Druids don’t need to be in CA all the time and they can turn it off but when healing is needed that’s ALL a healer does. Anyone arguing this point hasn’t raided.

If the issue is that Anet don’t want the Celestial Avatar’s visual appearance to stop players buying / hunting skins then change the look of the form. Going CA in a 5 man party reduces damage done by the party by 20% which is good for balance. Please think of this from a raiding standpoint, if rangers are meant to be main healers, don’t lock away that new mechanic behind an arbitrary energy generation system that says we’re to DPS to enable healing, that’s backwards.

Also to those who would like to add all classes in GW2 can heal themselves negating the need for perma form, I will say this, self healing isn’t unique to GW2. Raid healing is a dedicated role and is new to this game but not a new concept, this system is inferior atm.

I agree with this post.

Aidenwolf.5964:

The form feels underwhelming. There are too many heals not enough umph in the healing. If you’re gating the form like necro DS then the heals should be powerful. Why not make the form perma and CD the heals? I’d like a visual que that a player has gone full healer which is what that state is.

Also the pets have the same AI as always which isn’t good.

A “perma” form, with the appropriate adjustments, would be fun. Could be hold form until downed with similar build up mechanics.

Quick feedback until I can play Druid longer…

I’m not going over numbers, just my initial impression…

-Would be nice if celestial form lasted much much longer. Just add more recharge time and radius on skills to make it happen. Maybe keep the radius consistent to 360 across these skills.

-I feel like glyphs could use a bit more “umph”. Maybe radius increase would help with that feeling. 360 could be the magic number here too.

-I think if you separated the glyphs into individual glyphs it would be better.

-As of now I would never build my ranger/druid around celestial form or glyphs in mind.

-Staff #1 attack could have its beam “beefed” up to look “cooler”.

-Would be pretty sweet if staff #2 would “blast out” a solar wisp for moderate damage then do its thing.

-A damage component to staff #3 would be welcome.

Eotm is fun and fast paced so it’s appealing to some over wvw. It’s not going anywhere or being placed with limitations.

Auto loot will be part of a mastery track so we won’t have to spam f anymore.

WvW reward systems definitely need a revamp, but I think a quick first step would be to allow the purchase of wvw tourney tix with badges of honor so players can obtain mist forged weapons, extra crafting mats and stuff at a reasonable rate.

Thoughts?

Anyone else having log in issues? I get booted to the “incorrect account name or password” message. Go to recover account and it "stalls"out and won’t load.

Coulter.2315:

Swagger.1459:

Randulf.7614:

The point of laurels is to reward logging in regularly. Purchasing laurels with currency (none of which I’m hearing workable or viable options for yet), defeats that very objective.

What exact currency would use for purchasing?
What would replace laurels for logging in since that will become redundant.
Also, why do you want to buy laurels? It can’t be for t6 mats, since those are purchasable. Is it for the minis/LS1 rewards? Having additional ways to purchase laurels for these makes little sense. If anything having alternative acquistion methods would be preferable.

To be honest, I think the system works pretty well now. Short – medium term goals for inessential items, which you have to decide what you want rather than buy it all at once. Seems to be working exactly as it should

I am fully aware they are daily log in rewards.

Well, I just decked out my 3rd character in full ascended gear and thought to myself that it would be nice to have a feature for veteran players (I know I didn’t specify the veteran part in my op, but I will change it). Particularly when I would like to have a bunch of different builds to play and other alts I’d like to make. I’m tossing hundreds of dollars to buy gems and covert to gold so I can buy all the mats and stuff, and just thinking it would be great to have an additional laurel option.

I didn’t sit here and think about the costs why and hows, just thinking it would be a great feature to add in for us vets.

The monthly allotment of laurels would not be invalidated while having an extra “purchased in some way” method of obtaining them for vets.

You need laurels to purchase ascended trinkets and stuff, ascended recipes, infusions…

Its a time gated, log in every day for it, currency. Its literally designed to not be achieved instantly in bulk. You might have some patience issues if you’re buying gems to get extra ascended armours, I’d take a minute to think about what you’re doing.

Well, it’s my money and I’m sure anet likes it when players buy gems right?… You should take a minute to think about that…

It’s kinda silly that a veteran player can sit there and buy everything else for ascended gear with real cash, but then we have to wait for laurel hand outs.

I’m pretty sure there would be a lot of vets on board with this idea if it were implemented for them.

Randulf.7614:

The point of laurels is to reward logging in regularly. Purchasing laurels with currency (none of which I’m hearing workable or viable options for yet), defeats that very objective.

What exact currency would use for purchasing?
What would replace laurels for logging in since that will become redundant.
Also, why do you want to buy laurels? It can’t be for t6 mats, since those are purchasable. Is it for the minis/LS1 rewards? Having additional ways to purchase laurels for these makes little sense. If anything having alternative acquistion methods would be preferable.

To be honest, I think the system works pretty well now. Short – medium term goals for inessential items, which you have to decide what you want rather than buy it all at once. Seems to be working exactly as it should

I am fully aware they are daily log in rewards.

Well, I just decked out my 3rd character in full ascended gear and thought to myself that it would be nice to have a feature for veteran players (I know I didn’t specify the veteran part in my op, but I will change it). Particularly when I would like to have a bunch of different builds to play and other alts I’d like to make. I’m tossing hundreds of dollars to buy gems and covert to gold so I can buy all the mats and stuff, and just thinking it would be great to have an additional laurel option.

I didn’t sit here and think about the costs why and hows, just thinking it would be a great feature to add in for us vets.

The monthly allotment of laurels would not be invalidated while having an extra “purchased in some way” method of obtaining them for vets.

You need laurels to purchase ascended trinkets and stuff, ascended recipes, infusions…

Wanze.8410:

Swagger.1459:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

From whom, each other or an NPC? And for how much? Considering one laurel is worth 3 T6 mats or about one gold, it would need to start off there. If you log in daily and chose the laurel chest at the 28th day, you’ll get 55 laurels/28 days, almost 2/day.

from like the bltc or a vedor. I don’t really care how much, that’s not my concern right now. sure, starting at 1 gold seems like a good number to work with. I am fully aware of the monthly allotment.

What would never happen is them being made available for a fixed gold price from a vendor.

Because that would basically hard-cap the average price of t6 mats (and all the other tier mats). I dont think that would be desirable in a free economy.

then maybe gold and some skill pts/new “forge currency” or whatever. there are a bunch of workable options so just dropping the idea.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

From whom, each other or an NPC? And for how much? Considering one laurel is worth 3 T6 mats or about one gold, it would need to start off there. If you log in daily and chose the laurel chest at the 28th day, you’ll get 55 laurels/28 days, almost 2/day.

from like the bltc or a vedor. I don’t really care how much, that’s not my concern right now. sure, starting at 1 gold seems like a good number to work with. I am fully aware of the monthly allotment.

Fluffball.8307:

This technique is applicable to almost every profession, genius. Is mesmer staff a bad design because you can use staff 2 to move forward?

I’m not a genius, but thanks! So you are saying that this is not the only weapon that you need to play silly camera and targeting tricks with to move around and function better?

I think it would be a really really really great feature to allow veteran players to purchase laurels somehow.

you know a weapon is bad when you have to make a video on how to use it.

I’m sure instanced content, like dungeons and fractals, are on some table, but anet is focusing on maximizing open world content they already designed and adding reward tracks to keep preexisting content relevant. These designs are more cost effective because it allows them to use a lot of stuff they already built.

I would much rather have them devote resources to making REALLYBIGHUGEAWESOME improvements to professions and profession related stuff at this point than instanced content, but to each their own.

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Umm why would I look up NCSoft’s public financial records if I want to find out what ANET is making? You really have no idea, do you?

No need to split hairs here. The company earns many millions for ncsoft per year, these companies are not hurting for money or reinvestment resources. look it up yourself and stop being lazy and stop derailing this thread unnecessarily.

anabasis.7346:

Thanks for your answers guys but none of your posts address mine. A solution it’s not needed because the zerker meta it’s not a problem.

I agree. There are trade offs with zerker gear just like every other set of gear.

Vesuvius.9874:

Swagger.1459:

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I have no doubt that ANET is fully capable of developing stuff given their talented staff, but that stuff doesn’t come for free. You have to throw money at it first. You claim they make “millions of dollars per month”. Can you cite any sources for this?

Look up ncsoft’s public financial records that can be found on their site for yourself..

Also, think about this… For almost three years there have been complaints about how the ranger sword functions poorly. I guarantee if the developers datamined how many regular sword users and builds were being used that number would be tremendously low in comparison to other weapons and builds… 3 years and they can’t improve sword functionality for a better end user experience?

Anet has a headquarters filled with a ton of talented staff and makes millions of dollars per month, don’t you think they are capable of doing a better and more meaningful job with professions?

I know you guys can try to justify the whys, whens and hows… There are also other factors to account for… Those are the fun factors and variety factors. This is not a card game or moba with preset stuff, this is an mmo and the mmo style characters that we play are vital to the experience. You guys can niggle about this and that but this is a company that makes a lot of money, and honestly professions seem unfinished in many ways. Also, we only have 5 skills per weapon, some 3 and some just 2… You don’t think this group of talented developers can creat interesting weapon sets and skills if that put their mind to it? It seems after launch that the profession development department runs on low resources because it it’s creeping up in three years now and it’s still mostly about traits, traits and more traits that run numbers in the background. I get that hot is coming with new stuff, but profession improvements and reevaluations are at a snail pace here…

I have not looked at each professions access to weapons, but I just noticed that the warrior has access to 11 different weapon sets while a class like thief has only 6…

Is this some oversight? Will disparities like these be fixed?

Something as simple as this reaffirms my conclusion that profession still need a lot of work and that there are many other poor design decisions and flaws, so I sincerely hope the developers start treating professions, weapons, skills, combat mechanics, balancing… seriously and as the most important aspects of this game, and stop treating profession development as something secondary like they have been doing up to this point. Hopefully HoT will be the catalyst for these improvements and the devs finally start treating profession improvements with some sense of urgency going forward.

Zietlogik.6208:

This was something I encountered today, it was annoying, but pretty minor.

A thief can simply stack stealth, run condi, and dodge roll in the path of door breakers and basically kill them without much chance of stopping the thief.

#JustStrongholdThings

Better get use to it because Josh already anticipates seeing a lot of perma stealth builds for SH, which means they are not going to do anything about this poor design mechanic.

Vieux P.1238:

Swagger.1459

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…
[/quote]

I know.

But you mentioned balance. & when we talk about balance, we start with the 1v1’s.
Obvious no?

[/quote]

the only obvious thing it that you are making assumptions. “balancing” starts with many other factors before you even get into 1v1 or 100v100. also, I said “poor balancing efforts” which implies many things related to “balance”.

Vieux P.1238:

Swagger.1459:

Honestly, Stronghold seems to me like anet is injecting wvw elements into an pvp game mode so it distracts players from the extremely poor balancing efforts, some extremely poor profession and combat mechanics and some extremely poor weapon designs that they can’t bother using resources to improve.

There will never be a 1v1 well balanced element into the game. Mathematically impossible. Not in WoW, not Archage, not in any mmo that uses a stat system. So stop hoping. Only group balance exist. I think Arena Net is in the right direction to implement more pvp maps into the game. But the choices of it is what needs to be adressed.

I never mentioned or implied “1v1”…

Honestly, Stronghold seems to me like anet is injecting wvw elements into an pvp game mode so it distracts players from the extremely poor balancing efforts, some extremely poor profession and combat mechanics and some extremely poor weapon designs that they can’t bother using resources to improve.

pets, minions, clones… whatever, need work if they are going to be such a vital aspect to profession make up and design. until then, i’ll keep learning to play my thief and loving my new best pet… stealth, which is infinitely more useful in any situation.

Sebrent.3625:

@Swagger:
What is the thread about? The issues with Ranger pets.

Have some people made claims that a problem is that pet damage is 70% worse than before? Yes, they have.

Is there patch note history that shows that this 70% is horribly incorrect? Yes, there is.

Did someone try to then say that a 50% reduction would be even more of a reduction than 50%? Yes, they did.

Is that assertion about 50% reduction reducing it by more than 50% Incorrect? Yes, it is.

What part of this flow is difficult to follow?

this thread was not about “maths”, but for some reason you feel the need to make it about that unnecessarily and miss the larger topics. keep going if that really makes you feel better.

Sebrent.3625:

@Aomine.5012
I figured that you weren’t going to look up the posts to try to support your claims … because people like you never do … so I went and wasted my own time digging through the patch notes.

Here is the first instance of pet damage changes I found going backwards from most recent to least recent game updates.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/June_2013

June 2013 Pet Damage Changes

hide spoiler

Pets

Armor Fish: Bite: Reduced the damage by 50%.
Bird: Slash: Increased the damage by 15%.
Eagle: Lacerating Slash: Reduced the damage by 50%.
Raven: Blinding Slash: Reduced the damage by 34%.
Canine: Bite: Reduced the damage by 27%.
Devourer: Twin Darts: Reduced the damage by 20%.
Drake: Bite: Reduced the damage by 27%.
Insect Swarm: This skill can no longer fire behind the drake.
Drake: Lightning Breath: Reduced the damage by 17%.
Feline: Maul: Reduced the damage by 50%.
Jaguar: Stalking: Critical chance increase while in stealth reduced to 25%.
Jellyfish: Tentacle Slash: Increased the damage by 50%.
Jellyfish Blue: Chilling Whirl: Decreased the damage by 33%.
Moa: Peck: Reduced the damage by 7%.
Pig: Jab: Reduced the damage by 25%.
Shark: Bite: Increased the damage by 10%.
Spider: Spit: Increased the damage by 10%.

The worst decreases were 50% to [Armor Fish: Bite], [Eagle: Lacerating Slash], Feline: Maul.

• Bite is an auto-attack
• Lacerating Slash is not their auto-attack but a specific Bird’s (Eagle) F2 ability.
• Maul is not their auto-attack but an uncontrollable (by the player) non-auto with a 20 second cooldown.

Now, here are some facts … pointing that out since what a fact is seems unclear…

• Nothing was as high as 70%.
• None of these constitutes a 70% damage decrease for pets.
• Not all pets were affected.
• Even the 50% damage reductions are not a 50% overall damage reduction as they are for single skills, not all attack skills for those given pets.
• Some pets had some of their attack damages increased.

Anyone else want to pull some number out of their butt and not back it up? It really does make you look like a champ, let me tell you…

---

As an aside … all those people that say “Ranger never gets any love” are fooling their selves. If you just browse through the patch notes, you’ll see all sorts of buffs for us for all sorts of traits, abilities, etc. throughout the years.

---

@Tragic Positive:
I’d say you summed up the state of pets fairly nicely.

I 90+% agree … I withhold the 10% as it depends on what you’d say if you elaborated on any of the points … because I’m “that guy” :-D

I don’t know why you feel the need to niggle about “maths” and derail this thread…

It will happen, mark my words!