Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Although I totally agree that it needs tuning, if you just practice with it, you will get better and then it is pretty nice.
Here’s a playlist of short videos to get you started

But it still could be a lot better… Feeling rewarded for finding a way to play with uncomfortable mechanic that others can achieve with using arrow keys is …
Rewarding. But not really ideal.

I actually always liked the idea of Heals draining the astral resource rather then having it time gated.

And no, I don’t believe it would be OP for PvP at all. Simply make CC drain your Astral Bar in CAF, too (keeping the same counter-play as currently). If they adjust the resource drain according to the time gate we currently have. For example – spamming the heals would deplete your bar in 15 seconds and being hit by 10 forms of CC (1 ability = 1 CC. No multi-CC mechanics instaruining the form) the same.
That way you won’t have to “panic” everytime you enter the CAF but you’ll be able to micromanage and play around your new mechanic.

After all – you are completely useless in CAF if you’re not healing. One might call it a perma-self-daze if you don’t heal in your healer-only form.

Yes – I’d definitely love that mechanic. With all my dedication and Ranger heart.
+1

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

you’ll need some good mouse Handling regardless of what Auto , it just suffers more on the main hand sword but that leap is easy to access using the action cam so its a skill=reward thing not because the sword spams you all over , it only does that because the person using it is spamming.

It’s still toxic.
Just like it was before but with action camera even more so. If I wanted the through-combat leaping I simply deselected my target.
Now I leap through combat field even if I sneeze and have a target. Reward is the same. Skill-cap increased by a huge amount needlessly.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Sun Spirit is more DPS in longer fights and quickness is easy to get with DH’s/Chrono’s in your party.

This.

Quickness is better for Fractal runs where zerging does the job. When the fight lasts for longer than 20-30 seconds the Spirit becomes the DPS increasing choice.

Well, I haven’t really experienced, not even once, to be overcapped with quickness. The only time was when we could get 15 seconds of it via WHaO.

@kazi
I had that bleed bomb from Zephyr when I was on my shortbow. More condi bomb from #1 (that pierces in your case) and more sharpened egdes proc.

I guess it’s a matter of preference, though. CD 36 vs 48 is not a real difference when it comes to condi clear and Fury.

I was actually thinking the same.

Then I got fed up with it and specced back to full melee BM (remorseless). I never used action camera on my ranger since.

Doesn’t sound bad at all.
The question that goes for me is…
…
Why not take Zephyr in place of Sharpening Stone? Much more utility and potential damage than a mere 5K bleeding ability on a 36 sec CD (that can be evaded).
Otherwise it resembles a variation of my build I used to play. Back when Druid wasn’t live. It is powerful.

Scrimschaw.5784:

the pure offense/no defense meta was supposed to die with Heart of Thorns—but it’s just shifted to Condition damage instead of Power damage. Different stat set, but the same thing nonetheless.

I have been shocked by this announcement myself.
They decided to swap 3stat DPS into 1stat DPS with… close to the same efficiency. And they keep promoting it with more and more enemies with toughness that counter all 3 stats of Zerk and none of conditions.
Every sense of logic denies this. None of the PvE content offers Condition transfer/redirect/cleanse or immunity.

The only good thing that holds me cheerful is that Raids require much more Zerks since they scale better with all the AoE quickness and damage modifiers so we won’t die out.
At least the 1st boss of what we’ve seen.

@Scrimshaw

Yep, I’m aware it’s just a theory.
But I can see the effective use of it in competitive content. Like the mini-game you’d like to play with your teammates.
Naturally – if CAF #1 and #2 won’t get addressed – the use is waaaay too limited to be put into any practice. But if they do address that – this trait has the potential. Even being limited.

Scrimschaw.5784:

I really wanted power builds to be better for fractals, since I enjoy the LB + S/A rotation. But I have had my best luck just sticking with the standard T/A condition build (using Sinister stats, though Viper is better now). The healing that Druid offers is superfluous in a decent group (most higher level fractal groups) and taking the Druid line is a DPS loss, even with GotL. But man, did I want Druid to work out .

If you think about it – Zerks didn’t die. They are now just … Less wanted.
If you find a group where you’ll stay the Zerk Booster with others to be Conditioners. That’s perfectly fine I believe.

It’s all about organization in higher content. If they don’t want more condi players – you won’t bring one. If they don’t want the Zerk – you won’t bring one. On that matter every build is equal.

If you say pretty please, I’ll do my best to do everything I can to find you a viable PvE druid build based on conditions when I have more time =)

@OP

I can’t really say. I’ve been having a really huge success with the build. I cannot determine if it’s the amount of time I’ve been maining ranger or playing in a different brackets… But either way:

My opinion on druid is that he is perfectly fine. Absolutely fine as he is.
He needs to manage his mechanics to survive. If he does – he’s the most sustaining entity you can find. Has a clear counter-play, though. CC focus.

That’s just something you lack and is a very fitting counter-option against you as a druid. Which means that you either need to be extra skillful or you are not self-sufficient for Team Fights and you want those teammates to protect you. Because if they will – you’ll bring them into success.

I find druid in a very good state. Powerful with obvious counters which is exactly the beauty of balance.

Scrimschaw.5784:

I would love if a little something extra was added to Smoke Field, but at this rate I think it would be nerfed in either duration or cooldown if it did anything extra.

Pure experience talking, eh?
That’s what I’ve been thinking for a very long time now. With lots of things. And I keep seeing stuff happen. Healing Spring treatment comes to mind.

Scrimschaw.5784:

Unfortunately, due to enemy toughness scaling in higher-level fractals, Berzerker builds lose a huge amount of their effectiveness on levels 60+. Condition builds are king on higher-level fractals. This build should be great for levels under 50, though!

Yea, you are definitely right.
But I thought like knowing of the build for potential use might be a great help to others. I sent my Sinister set to my Engie so I haven’t been able to test around the Sinister version of Druid. It looked much more difficult since you trade Flame Trap for the Glyph. Which is a huge waste of DPS.

But it does boost even Condition builds. Crits have synergy with every PvE condi class and Grace of the Land boosts condis too. But much lower since you are not using CAF often – only the seeds from glyphs would make it happen.

You made a great point, though. Thanks.

jewishjoyride.4693:

Lynx and Bristleback combo should be your highest dps pet combo.

Just use the smokescale for it’s F2 if your party is doing trash skips.

I’d fit Tiger for Bristle till he’s bugged.

Greetings, fellow Rangers.

As I’ve seen plenty of players saddened by druid not fitting the former meta saying how Healer is not needed… I felt like proving the game wrong. And I hope I was successful.
Every since their change to Grace of the Land a never known potential unlocked. One we have never seen before. And ever since I kept playing and perfecting it – I had every single pug providing feedback thanking me for a really potential build.
So without further ado:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAT8Xn0rC1silsAuqActgl9ADOueX3rL3uAwoj5CEwGBlMsUA-TZRBwARuAAP3fgcZAAHBgHPEAA

- The main idea is simple. It is the standard Zerker Frost Spotter
- Has that option to click CAF if the group is in a pinch (I personally use it 2-4 times per 1 fractal for example)
- Provides a straight 28%-31% raw DPS boost for the whole party <unique application>

For all the people who want to feel useful and haven’t yet thought of this build – you should definitely give it a try.
Cheers!

@Drayos

I … Party agree and party disagree.
Almost everyone was able to fit several roles. Yes, almost every single player out there. Yet Rangers were the only one who lacked reliable CC, reliable sustain, utility mechanics… And it’s not like we are forced to play the druid. It’s simply yet another option to play.

When it comes to DPS, we belong to the higher tier (especially when our pet now stays alive). What we lacked was… Exactly what we got.
And I’m not sure if you’ve been here through with us before HoT, but enormous amount of players asked exactly for being able to do this.
You can probably tell that a lot of players would shout out loud if we weren’t able to defensively support the group unlike everyone else in the game now.

So while I agree it feels thematically wrong – it feels very rewarding in practice and we are the strongest at burst-healing people in the game.
You are right. It doesn’t have synergy with plenty of things. It doesn’t include pet at all. But after all – players have been complaining about relying on pet for way too long and we asked for exactly what they offered us and I finally feel wanted, in the end.

It’s just an option that no one is forced down. Plus, you will be perfectly fine touching the traitline for DPS with this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAT8Xn0rC1silsAuqActgl9ADOueX3rL3uAwoj5CEwGBlMsUA-TZRBwARuAAP3fgcZAAHBgHPEAA
You’ll get the right idea after seeing it. You don’t need to heal people more than once every ~45 seconds. But if you do – they will be thankful.

Skullface.7293:

I just feel like Smoke Cloud should really have some blinds in it since it’s an active skill which are generally strong ones. Just a smoke field with no blind is simply not strong enough personally.

Yep, even though I might find it a really amazing tanking ability. I haven’t yet tried it but as soon as I get some nice and willing people to test it with me – I’d definitely like to have it a tanking pet.

But you are right. Currently it’s not just like any other field we use. Not sure if we need it to be the same way as other fields but I can see why so many of us want it to feel more … Self-sufficient in combat.

What I thought is …
… It has the internal cooldown per person. So you can potentially just make 5 people run through your heal, apply the blind, get other 5 people with separate ICD to do the same and keep going on with only your Glyph and Verdant Etching synergy and CAF… That’s your limitation.
The other limit is the amount of people around.

And while it’s true that Elementalist can do the blinding role by himself – Druid has the potential to maximize much more blinding potential if organized.
So it’s naturally a trade off in skill-cap. If you have the skill-cap required – you will have much more reward than the Ele Blinding Ashes counterpart.
If you don’t – you’ll have less reward. That’s just how it goes and I’m perfectly fine with it.

I’m sorry for all the fellow players who want it buffed. But I am fine with it.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Ele has to press 1 button and 5 targets are on fire and blind. Each target has an 8s CD.

You can have 100 people running over your #1 spam and 100 blinds will be applied on a 12 second cooldown.

That’s what the balance is about.
You’ll usually have only 4 other people in party, but you’ll have 25 other people in WvW. That part of balance had to be taken into consideration making it only fair to be nerfed this way.
Powerful at masses, weaker at solo play. For solo play you’ll usually get Roots for more disruption anyways.

Methinks.

The description itself says it evades attacks and makes immune to conditions. Working as intended, I guess? I might have missed something in the discussion, though.

What I haven’t been able to test is:

If an ally is affected by Lingering Light will his next AoE attack blind all targets hit, or choose 1 only?

Because frankly… If it potentially affects all enemies hit – I see no reason for you guyz to find that nerf unfair.
Yes, I know should be banished for yet another one of these opinions but that’s just how balance goes. If you start comparing you’ll definitely realize it is justified in comparison to other similar mechanics.

If it affects 1 enemy from all AoE hit, then… Well it’s frankly a joke.
Can someone provide feedback?

Shadelang.3012:

So smoke assault really did end up getting nerfed. Irenio I have to say this hurts shout rangers quite a bit. I know there aren’t many of us but we do still exist haha.

I was one of them so far.
Actually, you might want to play around with Bristleback. Having it on passive (or as a secondary pet), coming into melee, F2 (taunting) hurts just as much and offers potential 15 might from SotP on the spot.

It feels really satisfying.
I actually like it much more than I liked SmokeScale (but it was simply more reliable). Now having it as a utility pet might just make me play the blinding hybrid that I always wanted for so long.

Just suck it up people, already.

There are other pets with burst for PvP. And for stable DPS – spiders are still dominant since they can hit moving targets. If you want a reaaaaaally reliable burst pet – ask for Bristleback fix.

SmokeScale is now much better utility PvE pet, as well. If you really wanted to use it for DPS – you must have been playing a wrong game this entire time.
And it definitely is a better solution since you now have an on demand damage mitigation ability and it doesn’t lower your DPS by stopping attacks for smoke field.
It really is sad how many people really intended to bring a tanking utility pet into content for DPS – and not even as DPS as much as the single burst ability traded for a while pet. That really is shocking if you ask me.

I called it a million times that there will always be some of you who’ll be displeased with the news. For plenty of people these news were good ones.
One of you just had to lose. Bear the reality and move on.

Kovu.7560:

The field does not blast via Clarion Bond, or any blast produced after pet swap while the field is still active.
Not sure if this is intentional.

~ Kovu

Hard to say.
If you change a pet – it’s fields disappear. Which makes sense in terms of your pet not being there. From game-play point of view it doesn’t make sense, though.

It has been working this way for Murellow for ages now. It might just as well be intentional.

Hammerguard.9834:

I think it should have a one-time blind application at the start. A blind field would be OP imo.

This doesn’t sound as a bad idea. No synergy overcap with BM risked, only longer blind duration. And more utility for the Ranger without any blind at all.

Yes, I’m up for this idea.

Fluffball.8307:

Why do we have to be Eura fan boys if we agree with him? The pet is objectively better now, in every way you could want it to be. Better DPS and better utility.

I believe it was rather meant in larger picture.
Having Eura’s opinion as a word of god is wrong. Most of us already treasure him because his ideas are decent and supported with experience.
But there are plenty of those who follow his ideas because he is a good and quite famous player.

Yep, having the pet as a utility one now feels as good as ever. +1 to developers.

Eurantien.4632:

I could see like 2 or 3 blind ticks over the duration of it. Would this be too strong with 16 second CD (using BM)?

Using BM already blinds with using it. You’d most definitely only overwrite the 1st tick for longer duration since both the trait and field would potentially tick together.

I wouldn’t find having it on BM the issue. The thing is it might potentially cause an uproar from enemy players saying how broken it already is if you go for full disrupting build (with bursty pet). Having blind on it is not the problem. Risking an overkill of synergy is.

Morwath.9817:

I would rather see 10s Weakness every 10s instead of Blind triggering randomly on anything that has “long” CD.

However, we already have Weakness on Axe with such duration/CD.

I’d say we are overcapped with Weakness already.
Having blind is fine. The ICD is too long to be used efficiently.

I don’t think it’s supposed to keep blinding enemies. It’s an ability that a pet uses to keep alive. Not every ability needs the same functionality.
We have lots of Projectile finishers to make it a blinding utility.

It’s the smoke field with lowest CD for highest duration. You can’t have everything and I don’t want to have it nerfed just like everything else we asked to be buffed.

@Inoki

This might, however, go for more people now.
Zerk is a go-to for everyone but lots of people might need Knight’s or Viper’s (sinister) for situations. Just like a Ranger basically needs only the Zerker. Ele and Revenant can play healers, too.

Do you see the backfire of the Assault voters? Called it.

Anyways, this is exactly what deserves the attention.

1.) Don’t call so much attention to one skill/pet or you will end up getting it nerfed a lot. Still playable but barely right now. And FYI, the smoke field is now BUGGED. Doesn’t blind. So gg boys. Gg

2.). Stop being such Eurantien fanboys. His personal skill level is above average at best. I’ve dueled better Rangers. So what he says shouldn’t be the word of “God”. Nomsayin?

3.). The real issue at hand here isn’t the revert and changes to the pet’s F2 skill but rather...we should be able to micromanage ALL of the pet’s skills then this discussion wouldn’t even be happening. So anet needs to add more control over our pets. That simple. Why complicate it to swapping out the f2’s? Logic boys. Logic.

These are the words of wisdom. Especially the need for more control.

@Heim

Yep, for the 1st boss definitely. We still don’t know, yet, what other bosses will bring so it’s still to early to say for sure.

Plus I’m still a strong fan of Cleric oriented DPS boosting druid. With that extra toughness you can afford to take that extra hit in order to execute your heals in time. Plus you are not really “dealing zero damage” because your lack of damage will be compensated at comfortable healing (that allows other players to stand in AoE for longer) and boosting their DPS as a trade-off for your zero-DPS CAF use.

Zealot is a strong candidate for your Spirit Build if you intend to go for S/WH+LB. Lots of low hitting attacks to fill your bar the fastest from DPS Builds and strong heals.

I’m thinking of more Staff-support oriented gameplay. I’d definitely like to try aggro management via pet. That way I can literally deal zero damage because I can maximize 9 other people’s DPS (Tank and Healer role in one person).

Balasubramanian.6572:

How is this build on PVE ?? Is it good ?

In Party PvE content (fracs, dungs,…) this build is bad because you are constantly 25 might and fury capped from Fire Field blasts or PS warrior and you don’t deal as much damage as you need to (raids).

It might be fine for solo open world content or WvW, tho.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Please watch the videos in this thread. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/This-are-ranger-pets-PETS-TEST-2

Both Wyverns cannot hit moving targets at all and are one of the worst at it. Fire wyvern’s F2 covers red circles of death. The Bristleback cannot hit any target on even a slightly different vertical plane than it.

ANet still has a lot of work to do with these and other pets.

This. Double.

Swagger.1459:

This is exactly what I’m talking about with you.

Nothing was implied. Don’t assume. Improve your reading comprehension.

Write less and read more.

Thanks

That’s fine by me… But you were the 1st to imply that I’m out of touch when I said that Ranger is not supposed to be the healer as in other MMOs (which you agree on… ?). Then you misinterpreted an expression I then explained. Then you felt offended.

Anyways:
As you already said. Druid is supposed to be the burst and best healer which he now already is. Quality of Life changes for CAF #1 and #2 are only thing and exactly what we need. (4th time I’m saying this already?)

Not sure about staff#5 being a dome, we already have Axe for dome-like reflect. But I’d definitely improve it for higher healing for a set amount of projectile damage converted, though. Having it a pure Astral Bar filler feels extremely wrong.

@OP

It is an idea how to address some of the issues. But I agree with Fire on this. It would literally force players into shouts which I find user-unfriendly.

But if that idea goes by – it is a partial solution. Maybe too complicated to work around cooldowns and pet synergy, but bearable.

@Gote
There were several amazing suggestions for complete shout rework.
Since we already have Signet of Stone, protect me would be understandable:

Protect Me: Your Pet aggressively taunts enemies that hit you for 2 seconds (3 sec ICD). 60 second cooldown. (stun- breaker)
Search & Rescue: Your Pet pulls nearby downed ally to you and start reviving him. 60 second cooldown.
Guard: Your Pet aggressively defends an area and will blink to the 1st enemy that enters the guarded area applying condition(s) briefly (root/cripple/slow/vulnerability/weakness – any of those). 15 sec CD.
Sick’Em: Your pet gains 40% bonus damage, reveals the target and will stick to the target for 6 seconds (similar to Shadow Assault but can be damaged or hard-CCed)

Heal as One and Strength of the Pack are fine. They weren’t designed as shouts in the 1st place.

Those changes are in my opinion well thought over. Really go with the Ranger and Beast Mastery archetype and offer benefits those a Ranger should have.

Oh, also, there was a non-remake suggestion for Protect Me by Heimskarl (combined with others). Adding Retaliation to both Ranger and the Pet to punish enemies who attack you.

Dojo.1867:

The thing is that they wont give ranger like 7 f-keys (we have 5 right now on druid and there are 2 pet skills we cannot control yet). Actually I hardly believe they will ever make more than one ability controllable on core ranger (it might happen on a new elite spec) because that is part of their design decision for ranger. They don’t want to overwhelm new players too much and there are supposed to be “go to” profession for bad players.

Ahum… Overwhelm them with what? With having useful abilities instead of bad-designed control? Much could be improved if they simply took some of the suggestions from forums and implemented them.
It doesn’t make the game any harder if you can control your pet with 2 buttons and have other 2 for it’s abilities, instead of controlling it with 3 buttons and having 1 controllable ability and being forced to use 2nd ability with the mentioned 3 control keys. Current form is 10 times more difficult to control than the proposed.

Also, I believed Warrior was the go-to profession for bad players, was it not? Successful, yet easy. There’s no real complex rotation or awareness you need.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Reasons why Smoke Field:
- ooc use
- synergy with Signet of Renewal and Empathic Bond
- active tanking mitigation game-style
- utility use for highly organized PvP game-style

Reposting for better visibility and bumps.

Swagger.1459:

Umm where did I mention I wanted a traditional healer or tank for that matter?

I think both you and tragic need to reread everything because both of you are just mindlessly posting stuff.

It implied from what you said.
You said druid is supposed to have the best healing and best burst healing.
And he already has both.

Plus plenty of other people suggested much longer durations of CAF etc. Which basically implies they want druid to be a healer of that kind.

If nothing of that is true – we are misunderstanding each other.

Swagger.1459:

Ummm, yeah, I don’t need an explaination of the process of playing “roles”, but thank you very much…

Thanks for agreeing that roles will be needed…

You clearly did when you obviously misinterpreted roles for builds but you are welcome.

@Firelysm

I believe watching the topic from developer’s side of view is as important as matter of balance. As a developer of the game, you want to make changes that are both logical and social-friendly.
If you argument the change with “I want the ability swapped because I want others to use their preferred ability in a clunky way, not myself” – that’s nowhere near solid.
If that is your only ground of defense the ability might never be swapped back. Simply because as a developer – swapping it back might mean pleasing you and displeasing others – which makes it an unnecessary change that will cause yet another backfire of people who wanted the other option – which will make you drop the idea as a developer. Why? Because people that hated you for the change will not thank you back and only new ones will appear.

I didn’t forget what we were talking about. I was trying to explain things (that do include the topic) to you from other perspective than yours and without success because you didn’t even listen and took everything as an attack. And I believe you still think I want to keep the Smoke Assault. Just as you keep missing my message the whole time.

Since others already provided much appreciated support – it doesn’t really matter anymore. It shows that vast majority, veteran players included, want to have it swapped back and even the list of pros dominated the list of cons.

I just wanted to try one last time to make you understand what part of the discussion you didn’t understand despite my issues as you called it.

GW2 System

Welcome to the community, dear fellow Espy. Currently the game works around having as much DPS as you can. So by building full Berserker (Power>Precision-Ferocity) you can never go wrong.
That is the stats most of us would suggest going for. You can even play Berserker Druid that has that situational CAF (that builds… Once every 30 seconds or so?) to help your party with difficult phases but focuses solely on Personal and Team DPS. I’ll throw you a whole build if you need it.

Customization

After you get a feeling of the game as such – then you can think for yourself which role do you want to play. Healing Druid or Condition ranger are both viable options but only for some of the environments – and you need to learn why mostly by yourself.
At the end of the day – being a Healer means nothing else but more Dmg by your party (they can attack for more since they don’t have to disengage and stop dealing damage). If your party doesn’t need the healing because of skilled game-play or easy content – playing a healer is only a burden and you might become an anchor of your party.

Conclusion

You should most definitely start with playing Berserker. That is a role that will always be needed regardless of what environment are you in.
Once you see the content for yourself in 1st person and feel like you hate being a Zerk – you should try Viper (Sinister) Ranger that deals mostly condition damage.
A dedicated healer is most probably required only at high-end content (Raids, Fractals 70+), which you might not meet in several months time. And if you get there – people you’ll be playing with will ask for it and that might be the 1st time you’ll need to consider getting other stats for your gear. When that time comes – feel free to show up again.
After all, even we don’t know what becomes meta for Raids or such.

Firelysm.4967:

“If he’s that person, he’s probably right..”
Most stupid kitten you can read on forum.

Being in a majority doesn’t make you right, either.
Galileo comes to mind.
So where’s the “truth”?

You might as well stop “assaulting” people for their opinions. It doesn’t lead the thread anywhere. It only derails the thread with useless information that no one is interested in.

Even I – who you believe that wants the assault which isn’t even true – used better arguments why having smoke field makes more sense than you. So please, calm down already. No one is interested.

The damage it deals is incredibly high. I kind of approve the mini-game of you and your enemies who are forced to dance as you sing.
And if you succeed in landing it all (like Eura already mentioned), your enemy is punished much more than he ever wanted. Risk/Reward at it’s finest

The Z axys issue just needs to be fixed. That’s pretty clear.

This is an amazing template of ZerkBow ranger.
Even though this one’s not really hybrid. It’s just improved Power one. Hybrid usually implies both Raw and Condi damage. Not Offense/Defense.

I would personally take more CC than this. I’m a fan of CD mastery rather than “safe zoning” (watching enemy’s CDs, CCing him, countering his chains instead of Signet of Stone)
But yep, there are lots of Zerking LB fans who’d love you for this build.

Segnal.2530:

Interesting idea, but i’m afraid, this wont happen.

It won’t. We already had like a dozen of amazing ideas how to fix every single issue with pets. This idea will kindly join all of them and remain seated.

I was really thinking of putting that Glyph into action but I got sucked up by all the beautiful events and Farming Halloween.

I was thinking of having a Real Tanky/CC ranger that would be hard-to focus. I went briefly over it during BWE and forgot to tweak it further.

Heim is right, it doesn’t fit to almost any of the Ranger’s Game-styles. In PvE there’s no use simply because of slow hard hitting attacks.
But if I make that glyph heapen, I’ll definitely appear here again to share the build and ask for your opinions. You can probably already guess that it might not have what it takes to compete with other options.

It is a good way to heal moving targets, though. You keep throwing CAF#1 in front of yourself (since you know where you’re going to be in 1 sec) and it heals people around you.
Which only implies how bad CAF#1 is in the 1st place.

@swagger

The thing you need to understand is that you need both “tank” and a “healer” only to support up the DPS of your raid.
If you – as a druid – can manage healing up 5 players standing in AoE damage (so they don’t have to walk ranged doing 0 damage) – that’s not to heal people up. At the end of the day it’s to improve your Raid’s DPS.

The same goes for the “tank”. If you can turn away the boss or kite away the Elite just so 8-9 other people can stop worrying about it and maximize their DPS – that’s to help the DPS. Not to “tank” the boss.

Everything in GW2 is about damage. So far it has been time efficiency, in raids it’s Enrage mechanic. You “Tank” and “Heal” only to improve the DPS of others. That’s how GW2 works.

But as developers said:
“It’s all about execution.”
It doesn’t have to be the druid. It can be 1 water field and 5 people blasting – which reduces raid’s DPS and requires much more raid organization. It’s just way more comfortable to have a druid.

Also, tanking can be managed by a skillful Ranger with Tanking Pet. Or a Knight’s Guardian that still does that damage but becomes no.1 target of Boss/Elites which means he can mitigate most damage by blocks and still deal as much DPS as his situation offers. It doesn’t have to be Nomad.

“Execution” is the key word.
Not stats.

Swagger.1459:

I suggest you start paying more attention…

I am, are you?

“Build roles are what you do at a character level. Things like what weapons, utility skills, traits, and even armor you choose to bring to a fight.”

No. That’s called a build. Role is your objective. Your objective of survival can be done via Aegis and protection pulsing machine than has completely nothing in common with your item stats. Staying alive can be done via damage mitigation or recovery. If your “role” is to keep others alive – you can go with both.
Same goes for DPS. It doesn’t matter if you deal 5K raw DPS or 5K condi DPS. It still does the same but you need completely different runes,stats,weapons,utilities etc.
But the role is the same. “Start paying attention”.

Swagger.1459:

Play roles are something that each player will face on an individual level. It’s all about execution here. Some encounters will require the entire raid party to perform a specific task to succeed. This could be something like gliding off the boss platform and catching an updraft to avoid a devastating attack. Other encounters will offer tasks that rely on the expertise of a few select players. This could be a specific creature that needs to be kited away from the rest of the group, otherwise exploding and dealing massive damage.

Again, this only demonstrates that you are not paying attention. Roles are described as “missions”. If your duty (objective) is to catch an updraft – you don’t need a weapon for that. Neither you do for kiting.
“It’s all about execution”. Not the way you do it.

Swagger.1459:

And Irenio on Druid spec… “Bringing heavy healing to GW2, unlike anything you have seen before. Strong support, very powerful in upcoming raid and WvW. Upcoming content will have stuff that you can’t just dodge to survive.”

Yes, this I keep explaining the whole time. Again… Are you paying attention?

Swagger.1459:

And sure, dps is required, but so will “tanking” and healing… Hence the above bolded quotes…

Yes… Just like I said it will and you didn’t pay attention.

Swagger.1459:

And The devs want to diminish the zerker meta and that has been made very clear and mentioned multiple times… Here is another Irenio quote… “Berserker meta is going away”.

And they are succeeding.
You’ll have content that will force you away from so-called ZerkMeta. Because you will need that aggro management (High Toughness target). You will need that someone who will help the party recover from pulsing damage (druid) and you will need DPS oriented people of 2 types who break through high toughness (or raw dmg immune = condi) enemies. Just like you’ll want those people to have a bit of CC to destroy the Break Bars.

You are trying to say everything I already said but for some reason you cannot see that it already works that way.
Druid is working the way he needs to. He helps people stay alive, it’s balanced in PvP and definitely fulfills the role of “heavy healing that we have never seen before”. Because while in CAF – your healing outperforms anyone. Having it close to permanent (mentioned 30 sec duration vs 10 sec CD means 75% uptime) sounds clearly broken for PvP and makes game less fun for your enemies.

The only thing a Druid might need are quality of life changes that were proposed as larger radius on #1#2 or having them instant (or with shorter delay).
Because currently it’s pain for everyone – for the druid, for low-HP players, enemies have no idea and don’t care and it’s simply a bad design.

Druid fills his promised role, he does it well but requires unnecessary attention and prediction from both the druid and his allies. That’s quality of life changes, not numbers to be addressed.