Guild Wars 2

@Fluffball
Druid is not a necessity but an improvement to raid sustain.
That’s the difference.

You still need a sustain of sort. Of course it can be Revenants, Engies and Eles – but it takes 3 people to do a thing that 1 could handle, while druid can buff 5 people’s DPS by 30%.
You can manage to beat a raid without a druid, but having one will help you bring it down much easier.

The point is that the design is wrong. You get the most of CAF (the best healing mechanic) if you have 0 healing power, don’t use any burst healing skill.

Which means that if you make people laugh from Regen, SotW, Natural Healing (BM), Rune of the Dolyak – you’ll get instant access to the good stuff (Which we all want).

If you, however, do your job as you are supposed to and bring people (yourself included) to full health – you are stuck with zero AF.

So as a druid you are forced to let people lose health, so you can tickle them with 120 heal per second for 10 seconds hoping they won’t die, because blowing a heal on 20 sec. CD is pointless – it would either delay their death by 3 seconds or would again ruin any AF gain you could have had if the heal was successful and healed the target to full.

You have to pretend to heal in order to gain access to heal for real. That is my biggest concern. It doesn’t matter how many healing power you invested. Unless you exploit regen and SotW with condition stats synergy (you don’t need staff) – you will never be a good druid.
Is that the design you guyz are so proud of?

Well, I’d normally ask for which content (WvW/PvE) … Or which build.

But I’ll just make a blind guess and point towards Eckse. Basically those.
Probably changing/adding the option of Energy towards Sigil of Water.

They won’t get in touch with any of the players who know what they are doing, what they are saying or why can they claim so.
DnT progressed / tested / debugged / checked the design … Well basically did all the kitteny duty for other players and not even a single person was able to suck up their pride and let them have the cookie for doing so (because frankly… They have been doing it for free).
Even after all their tests, DPS builds and efficient guides they made and gave to the community – they turned their backs on them.

ANet already abandoned them and confirmed they will not be testing anything ever again. With this experience in mind – do you really believe they will ever listen to any player out there?
Of course they won’t. They’d rather bury their game with them as they already did with ranger and their community.

Hammerguard.9834:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Clerics. The druid contributing damage isn’t important to the success of the raid.

This isn’t true. Having more DPS is always a good thing in raids. If a Druid can fulfill it’s role while also dishing out decent DPS then they should. Same with the raid’s tank.

The less time you deal damage by healing people the more damage healed people deal.
Druid’s DPS doesn’t matter. Unless it isn’t zero (which it will never be since pet), druid is not taken into a raid for self DPS. He is taken for the 30% bonus damage he helps others deal while allowing Zerkers deal damage for longer periods of time because they are not forced to back away from the battle to heal up often.

NemesiS.6749:

hunters started to suck in wow again? lol i played wow during burning crusade and core game where hunters were called kittens and there were like 2-3 like most that made it to 2k+ rating arena team, the class sucked. I always play bow character in games and pets, i like them but seem like they mostly lack. Then frozen throne or whatever came, i stopped playing but i heard hunters were buffed nicely, the class was better. Havent played since

I still play my ranger, i mean i do like it and is the class i know better but i feel really incapacitated if you can say it that way. Is like all of a sudden you lose your hands or legs, everything will change, the class just feel handicapped.

That was a statistic made on a random basis during … 1 or 2 months period after a big balance patch update. During Cataclysm. Hunters were bad back then, they became horrible in Cata.

After that, developers actually started listening, they implemented more than 80% of the ideas that a few of us gathered and they made Hunters viable once again. (If anyone played, the explo trap knockback, trap launcher toggle ability, glyphs to remove dots on trap and scatter shot, and I believe we proposed a few more but I don’t remember them all).

And regardless of which way I’m watching it – the history might just repeat itself. They are not trying to avoid any of the same mistakes. And I believe they make actually more of them by ignoring the solutions already given or explaining their actions.

This class now feels more than handicapped. It feels decapitated.

I have been waiting deliberately for my decision to support the company with a gem purchase ever since HoT. Because I really had faith.
I mean, I really love the story or the meta events… But if the price is having my main class destroyed after being a fan of the archetype for 11 years – 50€ was not worth it.
I really believed in Irenio. But I guess this is pretty much it.

I’m curious how long will it take them to realize how many people they’ve already lost to other games. I remember WoW had a time during cata where 93% of cancelled or “suddenly” inactive accounts were all hunter mains. I’m just thinking ANet is going to compete.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Simple: stop basing decisions on a PvE game around PvP actions and complaints.

But PvP tournaments = money.
I mean… That’s the whole purpose of the company.

The only problem is they are dumb enough to let 20% of their community slip to other games by destroying a single class.
And the danger of that happening has been obvious for more than just a few weeks. It has been years and it was only getting worse.

The only thing they needed to prevent it was to discuss or explain why the nerfs happened or were about to happen. Tweaking numbers is not as difficult as it seems. But they never take opinions of their core audience into consideration.

Like this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Suggestion-Celestial-Avatar-Mechanic/first#post5761103
It’s a broad remake, so I felt like directing it straight instead of flooding.
Basically making CAF more user friendly while giving more options and counter-play.

Well, since I gained a new experience today – we beat the 1st boss without a druid. We had 2 elementalists and 2 Engineers (none playing healing power).
And we were able to hold our ground just fine.

Druids are an improvement for raid mechanics. Not a necessity.
From my point of view.

Lamuness.3570:

Is it possible to get a decent DPS build with a decent amount of heals? Or do you have to specialize in one or the other?

With the latest update (intended or not) there is a way to play a hybrid way.
Celestial / Condi – these two fellas are amazing.

You just need a source of regeneration or healing (Healing Spring, Nature Magic + Warhorn trait, Beast Mastery of shouts or Natural healing) and the rest goes up to you.
Celestial might stacking is not half bad, but conditions (settler?) are probably better since you’ll have more of the important stats.

If we are talking about PvE well … I don’t know what to say. There are currently at least tens of those hybrid options. Even berserkers can dish out enough healing for casual content.

@EnderzShadow

I can clearly see why did you come ask us. And us especially.
From my personal experience, I can definitely offer you an Engineer or Mesmer (depending on whether you prefer more utility or mechanic oriented gameplay).

I don’t really know if my assumption is correct but if you decided to play a ranger – you don’t want easy high reward classes. Which leads me to either a utility (timing) skill capped profession (chronomancer) or a mechanically durable class with lots of options and hidden potential just as options to “fit the situation” with different combos (that would be the engineer).

But if it was me – I’d play around with druid with the changes we got. No one in the world can deny our rightful sustain and teamfight support potential. Even without staff post latest patch.
What you believe the ranger to be is finally no longer true. Rangers are useful. But well, no one can stop you from trying other classes, right?

LughLongArm.5460:

Its testing fore sure, like they did with taunt. If they take it away you cant call nerfff as it basiclly a “fix”.

Let’s go with our well known term “Shortbow treatment”.
Everyone will understand perfectly without any explanation, ain’t that right?

Well, they decided to put druids into a Life Beta testing. More people, more feedback, more criticism, more disrespect and hate, more potential customers lost.

I mean, even they prefer to learn the hard way. It’s the most efficient one after all.
I just simply hope I won’t get disappointed once again as I already have countless of times.

Truth be told, I find raids amazing when it comes to roles.

You need that 1 toughness guy (Knight PS warrior? Nomad guardian? Both work)
You need at least 1 dedicated healer (Druid? A Herald? Even though for slightly different purposes, both work. Moving the Tablet to Green Lightnings is a thing)
You need at least 2 condition dedicated people (Ranger? Necro? Engie? All work)
And that leaves space up to 4-5 Berserker people out of 10.

I mean… that’s not half bad. Whichever way you look at it – I love their design. They made sure that every single role in the world is wanted, while Berserkers haven’t died out by doing so.
Don’t look at me like that. I find the design brilliant.

Whichever role you choose – you have a place. Come on! Am I the only one who is going to praise them for this?

Piedplat.3597:

still bugged and lost a pvp game because this bug. Ho wait, there a tournement coming…

Yea, Ranger nerfs incoming.

Scrimshaw, even though you are right, Raids have completely different Toughness values.
I was doing 3 times the damage of my normal everyday Maguuma numbers.
Scaling like a tiger with buffs further. Conditions just dropped miles behind, even more so because of mobile encounter.

I haven’t seen much of them but Raids basically work on berserker stat again. Conditions are needed because of the split phase (where red guardian is vulnerable to condis only), not because of DPS or efficiency.
Well, if there’s anyone who got further, he might share the knowledge.

Troll threads again.
And there will be more. Behold everybody. Nerfs are coming because… reasons.

Fluffball.8307:

Tragic Positive.9356:

HoT content > Straight Condi (or hybrids)

I don’t agree with that. HoT open world encourages you to use both melee and ranged, and condi doesn’t really have a ranged option (SB, meh, bleeds). Also many of the enemies are extremely mobile and torch/traps are a lot less effective in that case.

Point taken.
I had a blast with my Sinister engie and felt a real difference prior to Berserker Ranger. NPCs have lots of toughness but for casual roaming I guess Berserker might just do the job. I mean, if we think about Condi Ranger having few ranged Condi bombing options and plenty of DPS glued to Traps and Sun Spirit.

Long Story Short:

Raids – that’s up to you. Both are viable
HoT content > Straight Condi (or hybrids)
Fractals 50+ > Straight Condi
Fractals 10-30 > straight Berserker
Original content > straight berserker

That’s the efficiency scrambled in a second or two. HoT is the only real content where high toughness is held (if I haven’t overslept any changes). If the toughness is Low (like in Raids) then Zerker is better.

Glyphs are fine.
I just feel strange to chaos-cast them because I’m gonna run out of CAF in 3 seconds time you know.

The raid DPS matters.
If the other people make sure that the rest can DPS safely and easily and more frequently – the raw DPS can hide in the corner.

Everything you do or build around is to increase the damage, but keeping people alive (possibly healing the tank up so the fight is stationary) or what not increases the raid DPS by a long run.

Ronorra.1530:

I can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2ZHhJQn0B8#t=2356

From the devs themselves.

“A lot of concerns, issues…”
That may very likely be QoL changes a lot of us have been talking about that make it easier for everyone to use but do not hit the numerical potential of ranger.

And what is the proof again? The video you posted are developers reacting to people’s cries on forums (some of them might be justified, some of them not).
What does it have in common with any proof whatsoever? How can anyone search for any correctness in the video you posted? How does anyone know developers or players aren’t lying? You posted a video and suggest everyone would believe in what they said (while they haven’t said anything at all, except balance changes which they already addressed with numerous nerfs that deny your vision of useless ranger – even Developers themselves disagree with you)

Mr Greggles.5908:

I hope you realise that you’re comparing a ranger with ~20 continuous stacks of might (assuming that herald stuck around as you were doing quick dps checks) against an engi with no might in those pictures.

…

I hope you realize that I stopped my test sooner than 2 million (estimated damage damage from raids) because Revenant and 1 more player came stacking all the might around – which would ruin any value of the self-DPS test?
If I’m able to bring ranger to as high effectiveness as I can while all the rest of you are stuck with human factor – I’m just as well allowed to claim that Ranger is fine when I can prove he is. Can you prove it otherwise?
I’m afraid you couldn’t. Proof of contradiction wouldn’t allow you that. Which is exactly the method I used for my proof.

The only thing I need to rightfully make my claim is to find 1 build/rotation/stats/game-play that fulfills the demands. The question is: “How can Ranger be useless if there is at least 1 person who plays him efficiently (up to meta level)?”
No. It’s not magic. It’s basically what my signature says.
People usually suck or refuse to get better and that makes Rangers awful and weak. It’s not the class. It always has been the people. Why do you think we are the only class with made-up name of “BearBow” ?

Nertal.7519:

Thank you, but this is a pvp build

It’s a PvE build linked in PvP editor because I didn’t feel like manually clicking and copying all the runes and upgrades, trinkets, rings, accessory for the 94th time since people cannot look it up in HeimSkarl’s thread or in thread I already posted…
…
And keep copy-pasting it for people who are too lazy to look it up.
So I’m sorry for my rudeness wanting you to realize which stats you need instead of manually clicking them one by one.

Sina.9208:

This is one the least important bugs in the game, I wouldn’t expect it fixed ever.

Maybe if he posted it in PvP or at least Warrior forums…

Oh so … My head hasn’t gone blond yet, right? Sun Spirit still goes off Ranger’s condi, right? Don’t scare me like that!

Hold on a second guyz.
…
When did they nerf Sun Spirit to scale from user’s condition damage instead of caster’s (Ranger). This hasn’t been this way when I started playing the game.

When did I miss the patch notes?

I have to agree with Lugh, here.

If you really want to have a DPS advantage as a healer – you should invest into Apothecary since you only need to cast abilities for the whole advantage of DPS. Also, Sun Spirit is just a clear winner when with that.
Zealot is a waste since you’d like to keep boosting all 9 people with +15% that increase raid DPS by a considerable about (more than your personal DPS). You do not deal Auto-Attack damage as a dedicated healer. 50% of your Raid game will be CAF. Not Sword.

DPS is a huge thing in Raids (at least was at 1st boss). You were constantly on the move, 4 people constantly stopped damaging to prevent wipe (Lightning blasts)…

And numerically you need 5100 damage per second throughout the whole fight including split phase, kiting and Lightning wipe prevention just to kill the boss before Enrage.
(that’s if you have 1 person dedicated to healing and none for Aggro management. If you have a tank in group – you need 5700 DPS per person).

And just for demonstration – standard MetaZerk Frost Spotter with ideal immobile rotation holds around 6100 DPS. Without any kiting or damage income (but without any party boosts such as banners, boons, food etc).
In my testing raid group I had – it was a huge difference when I kept increasing everyone’s DPS by 15%, allowing them to take more damage (so they didn’t have to retreat and stop DPSing) and prevented them from dying to unavoidable AoEs.

You are looking for this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsXTn0rC1siNrAuqActgl9ADOueX3rL3uAwoj5CEwGBlMlwA-TZRBwAROEAP3fgcZgHnBAAPAAA

Druid Improvement from MetaZerk ranger.
If you want to be really effective in 70+ fractals – you need to become either a dedicated healer or Condi.

My personal go-to stats are Cleric, tbh.

If I’m supposed to be that dedicated healer camping most of the time in my CAF, I don’t want to be forced to dodge roll every single attack. If I need to heal that bloody guy instantly, I can’t afford to bloody walk out of AoE.
That bonus toughness ends up giving me just the time to survive that extra attack so I can heal the guy up without worrying too much about going down myself.

If I’m forced to avoid attacks less and heal myself up less – I’m allowed to heal others more – which allows them to keep attacking for longer – increasing the overall DPS in the long run.

Justine.6351:

Fluffball.8307:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Hybrids never had a real place in any game or any content ever. They are just comfortable to be played.

If you were to list the top 5 PvP builds of all time, at least 2 would be cele.

;-)

Aren’t we talking about PvE the whole time?

Fluffball.8307:

…
… No one knows for sure, but this build is my best guess for what will be needed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Build-Druid-Dedicated-Support/first#post5760481

This

OGDeadHead.8326:

Tragic Positive.9356:

You won’t be able to heal everyone by yourself – forcing yet another player into defensive stats – making team DPS lower. And so on.

Tragic, on what do you base this? The chosen skills? The chosen traits? The amount of healing power? Or anything else?

Mostly the healing power amount and overall direction of your build.
For example – if you have people on the move, don’t expect to heal them up with druid without Glyph of Unity. That just can’t be done with your amount of healing power.

You went for a mix, which means that once your team needs a dedicated healer or dedicated DPS – you’re out. Of course, you can get 2 hybrids to fill each other but that’s just more unnecessary coordination you might get used to.

Most of what I’m saying is for raids from BWE. You can literally run fractals in full Zerk (even though everything is capped at toughness) instead of condi and still clear lvl 100 without any noticeable trouble (if your party members are experienced).

I’m just pointing this our because you might be forced to get another set of armor or respec later on when Raids hit. Hybrids never had a real place in any game or any content ever. They are just comfortable to be played.

Since you intend to play a hybrid, I’d say this beforehand.
That concept is not needed in dedicated content. Because you can’t really do anything. The only thing you’ll achieve is helping others.

You won’t be able to heal everyone by yourself – forcing yet another player into defensive stats – making team DPS lower. And so on.

If the build is for only casual runs, Fractals or Open World. Yes, I’d say this build makes sense and might just work well. It has no hard-counter by toughness, it can help party survive, it can adapt to every situation and brings all the support tools PvE expects you to….

Yes, this build is nice. My suggestions would be definitely changing Spike Trap for Glyph of the Tides (for CAF pull + #5 combo) and you might consider taking Axe instead of Sword. Just because it’s a hybrid weapon, helps you with might in that unorganized content (which is most probably your goal anyways) and might end up outDPSing sword in the end. Also: It can be used for tagging mobs with more ease.

Archon.6480:

To be very clear, if you twist a person’s words in your response, or subsequent questioning, you are a liar. This is a form of deception and is what liars do. It tends to make people angry, and suspicious of you.

You mean… Quoting person’s words makes me a liar. I don’t even…

Archon.6480:

As if it were impossible to use Marksmanship and/or Nature Magic and Druid…

Which only means you need other lines for damage. Druid has nothing in common with the damage itself.

Archon.6480:

And how are you going to prove that? This is obviously meaningless dribble. Who are people, what calculations? If I don’t demonstrate, explain, etc, etc doesn’t make my claim any less true, just unsubstantiated at worst. Unsubstantiated claims are many times true.

If you don’t feel like doing it (being asked 1st), why should I? I’m going to hold the same ground as you. I was referring to people who I’m frequently talking to and playing with (you can’t possibly want me to mention people who you are familiar with and I have no idea about their opinions. That would make me a liar)
I meant my or other people’s calculations that every single person in the world can reproduce and check their value of correctness.

Archon.6480:

The control provided by the Druid trait line, glyphs, and CA form, provide a large number of opportunities to line up hard hitting attacks that would otherwise be lost. This, added to the fact that Druids staff cannot be reflected increases the damage dealt by the Druid, in comparison to core Ranger.

So when it all plays out, Druid is more dangerous than Core Ranger, and will deal more damage over time, in a PvP setting, than core ranger. Even if the numbers happen to end up being lower. Because they will be more consistent, more likely to hit, and more devastating.

Yes. CC is a form of both offensive and defensive support and not “damage” as you are trying to make it sound.
CCing a player means everybody can land their attacks. Not just you. That makes it a support. You pick druid line to be useful (which literally contradicts the OP of the thread), not to deal more damage.

And that’s what druid should be about. That’s what I keep saying all over and over again. For Damaging purposes we have plenty of other builds and trait-lines. Druid is exactly what makes us useful at very long last.
But people expect it to be yet another hammering bursty Damage specialization. But we don’t need that.

That’s what I am trying to explain here the whole time.

@Levetty

Go 6 months back. Use ctrl+F, search around. Just because you haven’t been using forums it doesn’t mean I have to be the same way. You probably shouldn’t attack people’s awareness if you can’t afford it.
Plenty of people here can second that there were people who wanted to play healers even before HoT was announced and were shut down by most of us.
There was also a topic suggesting druids becoming healers but most of us didn’t like it because we were skeptical about the healing being too weak while ZerkMeta dominates every PvE content (which druids seems to deny because healing is decent).

I’m saying Druids are useful because they are a desired PvP aspect and people in PvE love me every single run I’m in in higher fractals (which are the current end-content).
Just as I love a druid coming in my fractals when I can play straight DPS without worrying about wiping.

I’m the guy who sees a druid is useful based on experience, calculations, tests and observation.
You would be the one who can’t do that and decides to complain on forums about developers who did not knock on your door and fulfill your dreams for you.
Again, if you suck at playing druid – don’t blame the specialization.
If you don’t want to play “druid” – don’t play one. I hate people who blame developers for giving us options. You already have X+1 ways to play a hybrid, Condi, Longbow, Zerk, Full melee, all of them viable – and you can’t suck up the fact that Druid FINALLY offers something different (and everything we lacked at that…)?
Your expectations do not meat reality. That’s the whole problem. You want druid to be something completely different. Exactly like blaming a cookie for not being cake. And I’m not the only person seeing a problem with that attitude.

If you want to blame druid, pick a topic you can prove.

Eurantien.4632:

You’re just gonna get PvP nerfed…

Yep, I see it coming too.
One more reason to hate the company. Oh well.

Justine.6351:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Zorpi.5904:

Observe-> Learn-> Adapt and keep pushing forward. No easy way out if you play ranger.

That saying sounds familiar
v

Sayings, builds, ideas to improve rangers

you seem to have come up with it all first. maybe you can tell us how it all ends…

As it usually does.
I can tell you my guess but I’d rather refrain from going way off-topic.

Reflects are just one of the many numerically unbalanced mechanics that go against Rangers. It just hasn’t been addressed because there is a way to go around reflects.

wolfyrik.2017:

Interesting ideas, I like your suggestion for the depletion by skill in CAF. I have to ask, tho why nerf access to the form for non-healer builds? Part of the problem and one of the major complaints is that non-staff users have lower access to CAF…

This is a very good question and I’m glad you asked.

The reason why I decided so is the reason of balance. If non-staff builds were given the Druid sustain treatment with easy access – it would make it slightly toxic since no one would play Staff if you just had access to the full druid potential without it. So, I naturally made Staff appealing for healers, allowed every single build to use CAF without risking any potential abuse of the mechanic.

This way every single build gets easy access to CAF fast. Every single one.
BUT: unless you decide to play a role of dedicated healer – you won’t be able to exploit Zerk Healing idea. You will still have easy access to it and you will have no problems filling the Astral Bar (which is the current Zerk problem), but once you decide to leave it early – Zerks will be considerably punished by doing so.

However, even Zerks have plenty of interesting synergy with CAF. Glyph of Tides > Natural Convergence (CAF #5) is an incredible nuke that forces enemies into completely different reactions and is definitely rewarding for good execution. QuickDraw synergy is amazing here, too.

tl;dr it basically differs builds from Zerks with infinite sustain to builds dedicated to healing.

Levetty.1279:

I didn’t see anybody asking for the ranger to be turned into a healer

Than you haven’t been here for longer than I have. Because before the reveal, there was plenty of that on the forums. Some people did want druid to become a healer.
Just like complaints about pet being useless and countless topics about how rangers do not want pets at all (even though I don’t agree with that. I like having a pet. I don’t like having him unreliable).
If you think that community wanted druid to be glued to pet than you’ve been visiting a wrong forum for quiiiiiiite a long time.

Archon.6480:

Druid out-damages and completely out-classes core ranger in PvP.

Edit: Also, please reread my post. You sound ignorant when your response includes topics not mentioned in the post you are responding to. Nowhere does the phrase “I out damage others” or anything close to that appear.

You sound ignorant to reality and I didn’t feel like pointing that out. I asked you to demonstrate what part of druid outdamages other specs. How does druid provide more than Marksmanship (20% flat)? How does it provide more than Nature Magic (up to 12% per boon plus much more damage from pet thanks to might sharing).
Druid brings only 3,75% AoE from Glyph and Grace of the Land that increases your damage when you deal none.

I’m fine with you saying it deals more damage. But if you don’t demonstrate, explain, or provide data in terms of DPS Screenshots or Video records – your answer is nothing but a vague will to argue with people who obviously gave it more effort by calculations, TESTS and what not while you only have your feelings to support you up.

EDIT: My offtopic replies to this thread are quite on topic. Because clearly people who say druid is useless have no idea about the game or the class. Which makes the topic less relevant all in all. But that goes for both sides. For example: Druid doesn’t deal more damage. Druid provides more offensive support than core Ranger, but doesn’t deal more damage.

These suggestion make a solution to current “bad design” of CAF that everybody is complaining about. They’ll address all possible contents.

• Astral Force:
  ~ Increase cooldown of CAF to 25 seconds
  ~ Increase Astral Force generation from attacks and healing to 5%
  ~ Limit the gain from AoE to 1 target only (bounces and sequence attacks like PoS or Warhorn #4 count as unique attacks, not AoE).
  ~ Outgoing Healing reduces the recharge of Astral Form by 66% for 3 seconds (ICD 3 sec) seconds; Regeneration and Spirit of Nature do not contribute)
• Astral Energy drain mechanic redesigned to deplete by casting abilities, not passively
  ~ #1 Free
  ~ #2 5%
  ~ #3 10%
  ~ #4 20%
  ~ #5 20%
  ~ Astral Energy drained when interrupted in CAF (25%; none if not casting)

• What will be achieved?
  Astral Force will be built much easier and the mechanic will be made much more user-friendly. Any build at any content will have easy time building up the Astral Force but non-healing builds will be directly nerfed by increased Cooldown.
  Staff-oriented build will remain roughly the same (#1 spamming 1 will fill the bar below in 9 seconds, sooner with Wisp since #1 is Multi-Target ability and Wisp is a “bounce” of sort).
  Last but not least: Glyphs usage in CAF will become viable and comfortable.

Shortbow, Axe and Warhorn will have easier time generating Astral Force while dealing 100% DPS in melee to have synergy with Astral Wisp while Longbow would suffer in DPS from potential melee-wisp game-play.
Pure DPS builds can only benefit from 66% recharge by Water Field leaping or Blasts (which is all melee oriented) pushing Longbow further back in CD recharge Rate.
Also – synergy with Invigorating Bond.

I’m fully aware a huge overhaul like this would probably never happen but it makes a clear solution to probably all the problems a druid is exposed to. I’m presenting these ideas as possible template for developers in case they decide to improve their bad design and horrible quality of life mechanic we were put to struggle with.

It opens a whole new world to synergy among lots of places and promotes awareness just as well PvP counter-play of CC against the Druid. It also makes “healing” builds better in potential since the weak heals do not drain (or only a little of) the Astral Force and druid can choose between sacrificing DPS for weak sustained healing or cooldown management of disruption and burst Heals.

Also, in case the non-druid cooldown on CAF is too short, I’ll suggest reducing the base healing by roughly 10-15% and increasing the scaling by the same amount to differ Zerk CAF use for more disrupting uses from Healing Staff-druid uses.

All your feedback on these ideas is appreciated. Keep in mind that the numbers I used were calculated very quickly to hopefully match current “chaos” rotations we are forced to hold (due to timer). Judge them as placeholders. The idea matters.

Levetty.1279:

Justine.6351:

Yep, yet another person reinforcing the idea that the elite specs are mandatory upgrades.

Every other class got an elite spec that made the class better, gave them QoL changes, added new interesting, useful and varied roles and gave them fun new twists on their mechanics.

Ranger got a broken mechanic stuck on top of their broken base mechanic with zero synergy and zero use anywhere with only one very niche build in mind.

I don’t think its unfair to ask that Ranger gets a good upgrade like everybody else.

Are we talking about the same Elite Spec that has made core ZerkMeta ranger better, made us one of those king of the Hill specs in PvP and gave us literally everything rangers asked for ever since I can remember such as not forcing us down the pet path or being viable just like Remorseless is the only way you can make use of opening strikes?

Yes, Druid doesn’t feel good. I get it. But it’s absolutely viable and made Rangers more powerful than before. And you can’t deny that.
If your argument is going to be: “But I see druids suck” or “I suck as a druid” that means absolutely nothing. There will always be people who won’t even be able to play PS warrior properly. But claiming that Druid sucks because of players is absurd.

The mechanics we are offered are amazing and potentially powerful. The things we need are quality of life changes. The Build/Drain/CD gates on CAF need changes, synergy with other weapons than Staff …
… But that’s pretty much it. While all of you who complain about druid are so trying to make it sound – you haven’t really specified a single domain of the topic. What part of druid is wrong? No synergy with pets that no one wanted or asked for? No synergy with specifically Remorseless? MoC synergy is not a synergy?
If so… Is there a way to improve it without making it one-sided change (good for both rangers and their enemies)?

There are some ideas on how to improve the druid. But a lot of you just sound like you are mad about getting a cookie while wanting a cake.

Zorpi.5904:

Observe-> Learn-> Adapt and keep pushing forward. No easy way out if you play ranger.

That saying sounds familiar
v

@Archon

You outdamage others by what? Pets that everyone else has or Might Stacking that Hitzer buried flat with his version of Celestial Ranger?

If so – what does it have in common with Druid, again?

@mistsim

I believe I did explain why it makes sense.
The potential of the trait is balanced. You just don’t really feel the mechanic since you are not the one applying it in practice.

It’s a trait that serves the purpose in teamfights and large-scale fights.

Kain Francois.4328:

What’s Ancient Seeds? Wiki didn’t tell me nothing.

That’s the GrandMaster tier Trait that makes your attacks Root (Bleed + Immobilize) enemies if they were stunned, dazed, knocked down or launched or whichever more of it there is.

I’d rather have DH’s traps with delay just like we do.

The traps serve 2 completely different purposes but should have the same mechanic. Because they are Traps. They shouldn’t be nukes or whichever expression serves the current DH Trap use.

Daharahj.1325:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Irenio confirmed he’s been reading through forums and he has some changes in mind. Druid needs a lot of changes if it’s supposed to please more users than it currently does

Confirmed where? How do you know this?

One of the videos updated. Someone even linked the exact time in the video with him saying this in another topic but I can’t remember which one it was.
If I remember or find it I’ll direct you to it.

EDIT: This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2ZHhJQn0B8#t=2356

We haven’t really gotten any core neither Druid concerning changes (except awful nerfs). So I suppose it’s still up to date (I hope).

snow.8097:

The druid will be nerfed, thats for sure, maybe less healing for the druid itself and more for the allies

It will most definitely be tweaked.

From all you can see – druid has not been thought over. At all. It was scrapped together in few night’s time without proper testing. 2 out of 3 GrandMaster tier traits COMPLETELY REDESIGNED in the 1st balance update, anyone?

That being said – they decided to put us into “mass BWE” position where they decided to put the “beta” version of druid to live servers. They were exposed to much larger amount of feedback that way.

Irenio confirmed he’s been reading through forums and he has some changes in mind. Druid needs a lot of changes if it’s supposed to please more users than it currently does (even if it’s balanced).
Currently the heals are best in the field but are so restricted that even if you get to CAF it doesn’t feel rewarding. If specced into healing you’ll go to full HP in 3 seconds and you wasted your effort. If specced into hybrid or DPS you won’t get to CAF ever to make it a “sustain” mechanic.

All in all – we can assume it’s going to be changed. How – we’ll have to wait and see.