Guild Wars 2

Silverkey.2078:

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Silverkey.2078:

Is her whole album mesmer-themed? :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7L0OQiN78

I’d say no.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sf6LD2B_kDQ

I wonder if this contradicts the point or proves it further? :p

Got some elementalist stuff too. OooooOoooOoOOOo!!! Someone do this competition but with that song in the ele forums!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Your constructive feedback has been really awesome so far and I trust will continue to be. I understand your concerns with not enough being communicated and I’m looking into getting more information out on some of the more solid changes we have.

You. Are. Frikkin. Amaze.

How about this Friday you give us Rangers and the Engineers a list of changes so far and what you’re still working on, and going to be working on in the week leading up to launch? We seriously need to see these changes to make preparations and discuss them. A week for that seems fair.

Seeing as how we only got the one beta weekend to test the Scrapper and the Druid I was expecting that the forums would be alive with almost weekly updates so that we could provide more feedback. Having only a single chance to get our opinions out there, and then not getting to see how and if our worries have been resolved is… disheartening.

Please clue us in.

Casts “Sic ’Em” on Druid changes to reveal them, but they’re already stealthed so I can’t target them. Oops. Can someone with a sneak Gyro sort this out?!??

Well of Respite – 120s recharge, Cast time: instant

Create a well that anchors allies to this world. While within the well allies gain stability and are prevented from falling below 10% of their maximum health until they leave the well or until it expires naturally. Allies already below 10% simply cannot have their health lowered any further. Affected allies can still be hit, healed, have conditions applied to them, and boons removed. They will be vulnerable to any effects other than death.

Duration – 5 seconds
Pulses – 6
Stability – 1s x 2 stacks
Allies affected – 5
Combo field – dark

Just an idea here. This well would be used when you know the fight could be won easily, if only your team wasn’t pretty much dead. In such a case you would drop this well. Allies within can still be brought to the brink of death, so don’t waste it when it won’t prevent anything! While protected you can focus on wearing the enemy down to your level, or lower. A way for your entire party to cheat death and turn the tides on the enemy. Counterplay would be to simply see that the well is being dropped and not waste important skills. If you have a load of CC or a coordinated team you could attempt to move a foe out of it and root them there long enough to kill. The continual application of stability should make this difficult though. If this well is cast pre-emptively you can always make sure to injure foes inside as much as possible so that they’re easy picking when the well runs out.

Owlite.9456:

Hi i recently started leveling a mesmer and i just wanna ask a few things maybe someone can help

Is staff support mesmer viable in dungeons and fractals or is it more for pvp? I love playing support characters in pve but ive heard mixed things about gw2 dungeons being like zerker or gtfo essentially and it makes me nervous

Also hows chronomancer? Will it do well as support? Which main hand is good with shield

Ty for any help

I’m no metahead, but I’ll do my best.

Staff is largely for condition damage builds and is not entirely a support weapon. The boons it provides are nice and numerous, but not reliable. Random boons are random. Still, it’s the most supportive two handed weapon mesmers have right now. Main hands are both not too supportive, but in this case I would say sword wins with its high vulnerability application, boon strip, short cripple and immobilize.

As for off hands:

Sword & pistol = not too much. just a little cc.
Focus = pull (very useful), cripple, swiftness, whirl finisher, light field, projectile block
Torch = aoe blind, blast finisher, fury from phantasm
Shield = projectile block, stun, ethereal combo field, slow uptime on foes, quickness and alacrity for allies.

Note that one of these took up more than one line

Chronomancer is pretty amazing for support. Wells are godly and provide a ton of group utility and can be traited for alacrity for your group. You have a few ways of helping your group keep Quickness on them too, which is a blessing. The best part is you can do everything twice with the new shatter!

Yeah, dungeons are pretty Zerkery right now. Not all groups are like that though. With the addition of heart of thorns it’s hoped that more roles will become viable and wanted in the new more difficult content. In the existing content, as long as you’re still useful and don’t join a group in LFG specifying Zerker and/or experienced only, you should be ok. Just make sure you’re useful.

If you want to play a support mesmer, chronomancer is the way to go!

What kind of support do you want to play though? Chaos line will give you a lot of boon support, Inspiration will help with a bit of healing, condi removal, and glamour skill improvements. Chronomancer pretty much just gives you wells and alacrity, which are both reasons enough to want it.

Here’s a link to a build maker that I find useful. Hopefully it’ll prove useful to you in your theory crafting. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Here’s something I threw together very quickly to showcase chronomancer support:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseWncfC9fi1fCuqBUrhlej6cDKhQwMAugMqeUb1XF-e

Demented Yak.6105:

I don’t understand why you’re using the hammer. The staff gives far superior survivability. The condition cleanse + heal, healing orbs, weakness application, daze and the block really distinguish it as THE weapon for surviving.

I don’t understand the Eye for an Eye trait. Sure it gives some nice protection and a lovely taunt but on a 45 second cooldown, it does do THAT much for you. I prefer the weakness trait. The pretty consistent weakness should do a lot more for you.

I ‘m not sure about Jalis. It has a good heal, the hammers are decent and the elite is useful occasionally but ultimately I think ventari might be a better choice. A case could certainly be made for Jalis but forced engagement and the stability road are pretty mediocre. We’d have to test out both of the combinations to be sure.

I also don’t understand the armour. If the number one priority objective is just to not die then the power, precision and ferocity stats don’t make sense. It looks like you’re trying to compromise between being relevant in a fight and not dying. The berserker weapons are especially confusing. Given that revenant has a weakness to conditions, your lack of vitality is also very disturbing.

I do not understand your choice of sigils at all. None of them give you any more potential for tanking or healing or anything. All of them are completely damaged focused apart from the sigil of ice which is just not as appropriate as lots of other sigils.

The following would be my take on a revenant mega-tank:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsemnnN2gSyJvQRRlbospyPUYT5IKIs8EllZlhNmb+RNgEewe6r/G-ThyHABK/IAYV9nT2fYVNBuq8LVzf1eCAUVPAvKBB4IAAA-e

Obviously with this build, you’ll barely be able to kill a mere skritt in under an hour (maybe a slight exaggeration) but this is a much more tanky build which retains many elements of your original build. Other options include using the salvation traits, Jalis and even Shiro for the dodging, stun and impossible odds disengage (nobody can catch you if you have enough energy).

I like yours too! It’s honestly way better for being a pure tank. To be honest I’m actually planning on using my build on one of my Revenants so I wanted it do be able to do worthwhile damage. I like the idea of using staff over hammer and I see why it’s better for tanking, It’s just that I’m already going for a Ventari/Shiro half support, half damage build on my base Revenant so I wanted this to have a different purpose. That’s why I used Jalis and hammer instead of Ventari and staff. Having some damage from range and the projectile block is nice too.

I like eye for an eye a bit better than battle training. With the amount of toughness I have I think it’s important that I take the blows over more squishy allies, and the taunt and protection should help with that. The weakness is nice on battle training, but it’s only on one target every ten seconds. Other players can probably be able to keep weakness up better. Taunt, however is quite uncommon. Yeah, I really don’t have much vitality or condi removal. In PvE that shouldn’t be too troubling though with the runes and Jalis’s hammers making condis pretty limp and the build’s sustained mini heals adding effective health.

I really like your build and if the situation ever called for someone truly unkillable, yours would be the way to go. I just wanted to be a very hardy character that’ll be useful to any team I’m in. Thanks for the feedback!

I’m no meta head, but I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be wanted by any group wanting to clear content fast. I know it’s not meta, so pls don’t go off about how bad it is. It’s just for fun guys! Wanted to make a build for the Revenant that basically can’t be killed. Could probably used as a bunker build somewhere, but anyways, if you want tanky here ya go.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAseinXN2gSqJvQR/kbosgyPU4Q5IKYr8EllZlhNmb+RNgCewe6r/G-ThCBwAVOBA8U/R4+DLV+B4BAQRJYK9BTOEABOCAtN/BA-e

Any thoughts on how to modify traits to make this build a bit more hilariously tanky?
(Yes I know ascended gear would help. I’m being real with myself though.)

Well of Eternity has a picture of the Ouroboros in the shape of the symbol for infinity.
I get it. Very artsy.

Gravity well has an image of some planets and such. Understandable.

Precognition has an eye. Yup. Makes sense.

But what’s with the other 3? Calamity has a beetle on it. How does that tie in with disaster? Is it a deathwatch beetle? Action has chains, so I have no clue. Does Recall even have anything going on with it? What memory related thing could go there?

Silverkey.2078:

Is her whole album mesmer-themed? :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7L0OQiN78

I’d say no.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sf6LD2B_kDQ

Druid is supposed to be major burst healing.

Ventari is supposed to be more sustain oriented.

However, some are already saying that they feel the opposite is true.

REVENANT
Salvation has a ton of outgoing healing modifiers and big, chunky, aoe heals from Ventari. Of course they have energy restrictions. This means they can get off MAHOOSIVE heals, but only every so often if they’re spamming to try to get people healed up from nothing to full. Ventari feels more urgent to me anyways. Like he wants to get in there and save rumps like a pro, and heal up fast like a centaur.

Potential for massive individual heals + restrictions on availability + my own opinion of how Ventari feels = suited for burst healing.

DRUID
Druid has, like, a million different heals. The staff auto attack provides a constant HoT. Astral Wisp is a HoT. Regeneration (a very common Ranger boon) is a HoT. Natural Mender encourages many instances of healing. Ca 1 and 2 are spammable heals to the point of being HoTs, and 4 is just a very strong HoT. That and Druid seems to match a bit more with the idea of steady regrowth.

Tree trunk load of healing instances + HoTs out the wazoo + minors that encourage continuous healing + regrowth theme = suited for sustain healing.

What do you think? Do you prefer it the other way around?

I mean… Every Armor group got a DPS, support, and control/tankish elite spec.
We got Tempest and Reaper, so we’re definitely the control spec. Traits, wells, and shield skills confirm this. I mean come on, we got a shield. The thing is, we didn’t really get much in the way of tankiness through traits. DH got some on block traits, one of which has to do with condi removal and damage reduction, an on CC trait, and the augment for Shield of Courage. Scrapper has loads of defense through hammer and a ton of stability and survivability related traits. Chronomancers have the slow line, so there’s some control traits right there. Nothing else really screams a defensive spec. I mean, I love chronomancer, but what do you think? Should they give the line a bit more of a tanky edge?

Maybe something on one of the slow traits that reduces the damage you take from Slowed foes? Gain alacrity on block? Stability or bonus toughness while under the effects of Quickness or Alacrity?

It’s a cool idea, but Chronomancer’s already too good for them to add more functionality to. Meh.

Aomine.5012:

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Glyph of Rejuvenation does need a bit more oomph.

The changes to Alignment make it a tad overloaded, but it is lacklustre in its current state. Make the stunbreak on the normal version of this skill instead of the CA form. Glyph of Equality already has the stunbreak for CA.

Equality could daze for a bit longer, agree there. It can be cast while disabled to counter disable, so the stun breaker here isn’t too important. The CA version cleanses condis as well, seeing as how CA Alignment already does this I would definitely take the Stability over the condi removal, but it shouldn’t have both.

I agree with swapping the effects for Tides, but I think you have an addiction to stun breaks. Add slow or something to enemies it hits in normal form and protection to allies in CA cuz yeah, it’s a pretty plain skill.

Nothing to say about the changes to normal Empowerment, but keep the healing buff for allies as well in CA. It’s very unique and being able to being able to make your team capable to heal everyone up to max without a water field is nice.

Glyph of Unity needs changes. Yup. Weird skill.

Umm. I do not have an addiction to stun-break.

It is actually essential if they want to make glyphs useful in PVP.
Otherwise some of the “utility glyphs” face direct competition with signets and survival skills. Adding this extra stun-break makes the skill that much usable.
For Equality in CA, I know there’s stunbreak, but it should do more than just that. It grants stability, making it more in line with Guardian’s shout.

Yeah, I liked the stability for Equality in CA, but I just don’t think it should stunbreak in normal when it does in CA.

Tides is definitely a skill that would make a good defensive or offensive stunbreak, but I just think it’s a bit too good to have 3 of the 4 utility glyphs have a stunbreak on them.
That’s what I was getting at. I would honestly rather have it here than on Alignment like I said earlier.

Aomine.5012:

For CF generation on attacks, what I meant by immensely, is ofc not exceeding the CF gained from healing. But currently it generates next to NO CF at all through any attacks other than staff. That’s why it need to be boasted immensely as compare to now.

For Seed of Life, I do consider the cleansing ability, and make the CD abit longer to balance it. Maybe cleanse 3 instead of 5, while shorten the delay of blossom, and keeping the 5 CD then?

Natural Convergence is like pulsing immobilize, making people who try to get near you harder to reach you, and help allies to catch the foe more easily. I do not meant to “self root” yourself, but actually the other way round :P. This skill pulses 5 times, so 5 one-second immobilize while able to move yourself sounds reasonable :P

Thanks for the Feedback again~

I saw the version if Seed of Life you made, and it does seem balanced for the recharge, but the problem is that Versant Etchings spawns one of these when you use a glyph with no ICD. It has to be balanced around being able to cast 5 back to back so long as the Glyph trait makes one whenever you cast a glyph without a recharge.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t complaining about Natural Convergence immobilizing yourself. I was saying it shouldn’t immobilize enemies with every pulse. The idea behind this skill is to disable your foes and give them warning bursts to RUN THE HELL AWAY before they take the final, very painful hit and get immobilized for days. Adding immobilize to enemies on every pulse while allowing yourself to move while channeling makes it too hard to get away from this skill’s end effect. I think you should stay rooted while channeling it, and simply keep it’s current effect, but make it far more punishing for people who don’t get to safety. Adding a lot of Vulnerability application while increasing the final Immobilization duration a bit would do that. In a group scenario those caught by the skill should be an easy kill.

No problem for the feedback, I love seeing peoples’ ideas for changes. It gets me excited about the future possibilities of the spec!

Glyph of Rejuvenation does need a bit more oomph.

The changes to Alignment make it a tad overloaded, but it is lacklustre in its current state. Make the stunbreak on the normal version of this skill instead of the CA form. Glyph of Equality already has the stunbreak for CA.

Equality could daze for a bit longer, agree there. It can be cast while disabled to counter disable, so the stun breaker here isn’t too important. The CA version cleanses condis as well, seeing as how CA Alignment already does this I would definitely take the Stability over the condi removal, but it shouldn’t have both.

I agree with swapping the effects for Tides, but I think you have an addiction to stun breaks. Add slow or something to enemies it hits in normal form and protection to allies in CA cuz yeah, it’s a pretty plain skill.

Nothing to say about the changes to normal Empowerment, but keep the healing buff for allies as well in CA. It’s very unique and being able to being able to make your team capable to heal everyone up to max without a water field is nice.

Glyph of Unity needs changes. Yup. Weird skill.

When you say that you want the CF generation from attacks to be increased “Immensely” I hope you don’t mean you want it to be better that healing. Healing needs to be better because we only have one specialized weapon that’s good at it, and all weapons have numerous ways of generating multiple hits. Increasing the generation from attacks does need to be increased to a noticeable point, but I wouldn’t say “immensely.”

I like the changes to astral wisp. Seeing as how it does damage on arrival, it would be cool if it could heal on arrival if you targeted an ally. While the aoe damage is nice, I don’t think it adds too much flavour to the skill. Right now this is very fire and forget, I don’t think your change would make it too much more skill based. I would take some beneficial effect on allies it passed through or like a condi cleanse or a disabling effect such as a daze on the first enemy it hits over aoe damage. That can just be added in some other place.

Ancestral Grace changes look nice, but with the condi removal this would become a better version of Rev Staff 4. It would do the same thing, but with an enormous dash first. Seeing as we already do a fair bit more healing than them, I don’t think this would go well. Perhaps an aoe blind on arrival or some boon like vigor would work and it would synergize with Nature Magic a bit.

Buffing the immobilize on Vine Surge and adding some condis on hit is a good idea, although I wouldn’t make it a lower recharge, higher target cap Entangle just as a skillshot instead of an pbaoe. Other people have been suggesting a short duration cripple field in its wake. Getting rid of the condi removal is a smart choice I feel. It seems really weird here.

Cosmic Ray could just keep its healing and do a bit of damage to boot… Vulnerability could be put on a different skill.

Seed of Life, like that you didn’t remove the heal. I wouldn’t get rid of the delay entirely, just reduce it. The seed needs to grow after all. It shouldn’t remove that many condis. Keep in mind with full glyphs you can have 5 of these available back to back. Maybe keep it at 2 conditions removed, but have to apply a few seconds of resistance. Not so much a strong cleanse tool but a small one and sustainable relief if you cast it back to back.

Please don’t do that to Rejuvenating Tides. I love it as a very strong aoe heal over time and water field. It does need some other aspect though. For one thing, you shouldn’t have to channel the entire thing. You should activate it with a shirt cast time, and them be free to use skills for the next few seconds while it heals. Adding pulsing stability would be nice and work especially well for Natural Convergence.

Natural Convergence shouldn’t immobilize on every pulse, that’s what the final pulse is for. Immob throughout the channel makes the payoff not as satisfying. Perhaps it should stack a fair bit of Vulnerability to enemies that suffer all hits to add to the set up skill for big damage they portrayed this skill as. Movement makes this skill a bit too strong IMO, with some small buffs and my stability change to Tides you’d be safe to sit in this field and get heals and stability while channeling 5 so it wouldn’t be too punishing to stay still.

Why not make one called
“Gates of Well” that applies a metric butt load of burning, torment, and cripple or weakness? I mean, ya got your healing well, boon hate well, condi hate well, mitigation well, and your power damage well. A condi damage well would be a nice addition.

Skaazi.8264:

Why is there no progress bar to indicate when Continuum Shift is going to end? We get a buff icon which you have to mouseover to see how long the duration is, but it’s really hard to judge anything from it, especially since I’m trying to cast mostly ground targetted skills. I really wish that we could see some sort of progress bar similar to how Druid has one for Celestial form.

As cool as Continuum Split is conceptually, visually it’s super boring.

It might just be graphics settings, but for me there was a pretty cool butterfly effect on my character while split. There was also an hourglass above my head that ticked down, but it was quite hard to see clearly.

Just an open world PvE perspective on this trait. Would definitely work fine in other modes. Pretty much just asking for the blind duration to be bumped to 4 or 5 seconds to accommodate trash mobs that attack infrequently. For instance, with risen brutes the blind wears off just a split second before they hit their next basic attack.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Post your build link. It’s easier to give you advice based on the full picture. For example, if you have a number of interrupt traits, a traited sword would also benefit from more frequent sword 4’s. On the otherhand, if you had confusion on blind for some reason then… well no brainer.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRn0nB1ohtfC+fCUrhlVjqMCGhAoOZj2pFd6OjqA-TRwMAAw+DAA-e

Here it is. Left out stat choices and sigils as they’re the variables, but I’m thinking some combination of knights, cavalier’s, valkyrie’s, and soldiers. Not entirely sure about the Centaur Runes, but perma swiftness with the healing mantra and near cripple immunity is nice.

I do have confusion on blind, but this is not a condi build and could easily be swapped for master of fragmentation. However that extra, somewhat useless condi could bait some cleanses and reduces the chance of the more important control condis of this build being cleansed. It also procs on evade, so a lower recharge on Blurred a Frenzy also works with it, not just the blind trait. The only problem with the blind trait is that although I do intend to double shatter when under heavy pressure to refresh shield 4, I won’t be spamming shatters simply for that trait. I intend to keep the phantasms around cuz I really want to be spreading some sweet alacrity that way since I didn’t take the well trait. Meant to be a bruiser kind of thing with some supportive control and buffs (Phantasmal haste + Illusionary avengers and well of recall for Alacrity and ToT and Time Warp for group Quickness). Mostly just tried to make an easy to play chronomancer build. My other one relied almost entirely on interrupts and wasn’t too reliable.

I didn’t really do a lot of Chronomancer testing last BWE (Druid is bae), but has this issue(?), bug(?)… interaction been acted upon? I’m talking about how Mantras just don’t work with Continuum Split/Shift. As far as I can tell if you were to channel a mantra while split and used all the charges before resetting you could recast it, but as long as you have charges and not the actual channel on your bar when you split/shift it just keeps you at your current charges. Should this be fixed? I think it’s a shame that these skills are too unique to play nicely with Chronomancer.

I’m going for a kind of tanky, shatter spam, phantasm, control Chronomancer and I need some help with a trait choice. I can’t decide between the sword trait and the blind on shatter trait in Dueling. One gives me a little bit more damage through harder crits and the lower recharge on blurred frenzy means more dps and personal survivability. I don’t have very high clone generation at all since I’m not taking DE (pls stop stabbing me in your mind right now) so the higher clone generation, mobility, and control is appreciated. On the other hand, low shatter recharges with a lot of alacrity can help me churn out blinds like a thief with the alternate option, helping out my entire team’s survivability. Do you suggest I take one or the other? Maybe I should just swap them out depending on the situation…

Disliked >Action, Precognition, Calamity, Eternity, Gravity, Recall< Loved

Is Blind consumed when an entity affected by it hits (or tries to hit) another entity currently blocking or evading? Evading would probably count as a miss by itself, and so would not consume Blind, but what about a block though? It’s still a hit, but it’s just negated. Does that mean that if you were blinded and attacked a guardian using, say, Shelter you would consume the blind even though it wouldn’t do anything? Please clarify how this works! <3

Here’s just an iteration of the Druid trait line that specifically moves around some of the healing in order to make room for more traits and to make it a bit more satisfactory.

Minor 1: unchanged.

Adept 1: Still the condi wipe.

Adept 2: Now a blank slot. Add a new trait in

Adept 3: Lingering light moved here. It’s really not all that good. The minor trait that used to be here healed for more.

Minor 2: unchanged.

Master 1: still the stealtherspeed, even though I think it’s thematically unfitting as all hell.

Master 2: still the glyph trait.

Master 3: moved primal echoes here, took daze off of primal echoes, and merged natural mender with it. As the weapon that actually heals a lot it makes sense.

Minor 3: moved natural stride here.

Grandmaster 1: still flat condi damage reduction, even though it’s boring.

Grandmaster 2: New trait that procs the old Cultivated synergy effect and an aoe daze upon using a healing skill.

Grandmaster 3: still the roots.

Gav.1425:

I can read. I’m saying it’s not balanced.

Rangers can easily get perma swiftness anyways, and better because it doesn’t go away when you get crippled. The only problem I see with it over others is that this is better out of combat, but it’s pretty much on par with others in combat if you consider that it won’t even be active a lot of the time. Maybe make it go away about 10s after being out of combat? That way you have to use skills to get perma swiftness.

Other ones give you 25% permanently; thus making any slowing effects less effective. This one gives you a lot more movement speed, but deactivates if you receive one of these conditions, only making you faster sometimes. The only problem is how awesome it makes you at roaming, but seeing as how other professions seem to have a 4 second recharge half-way-across-the-world leap, I think it’s ok.

Anet. If I ever needed you to do ONE thing this is it. When you’re gliding in HoT with a flying pet equipped, have it fly with you.

Pretty much agree with the way the staff should be held and with the auto. Wider yellow part and some sort of splash effect on enemies you hit would be nice.

Wisp is great.

Grace is great

Vine surge is pretty much great. The vines are a bit spaced apart leaving awkward gaps if you look from the side, but almost perfect.

Water wall is nice, but the thing looks so flat. I also feel like the ripple effect of the wall should pulsate a bit faster. The flowers and the bush underneath it look kinda plasticy. You know the mushroom visuals you get from the celestial form of Glyph of Alignment? That. Underneath. In a line. Please. While I’m on it, there’s a SFX bug with it that makes it cut off before the animation fully goes away. It just cuts out.

Arken.3725:

I like his build, excellent choice of traits

Based on the other feedback I’ve received I’m inclined to take this as sarcasm.

Isarii.2804:

Wow, that build might literally be the worst build I’ve ever seen.

Merci <3 What should I do then? I like it, but if it’s basically the build equivalent to diarrhea what needs to go? It works for what I wanted it to be at least, tanky, ranged, and continuous cripple. Other stuff like runes and sigils I just picked cuz they seemed to have alright synergy. I could easily see getting rid of the frailty one for force but I’m sticking with my runes! Pls tell me what’s so foul about it oh wise one :’(

Keksmuffin.1450:

Did you try to create the worst build possible?

Might not be meta, but it’s fun as hell for PvE I assure you!

Ancestral Grace (to ally in trouble) —> Glyph of Equality —> Glyph of the Tides

Before this BWE DH was my LEAST favourite elite spec. It had very little synergy with base guardian, and itself. Traps were only meh. I only got interested because I liked the longbow skills and higher skill cap virtues. After the changes specifically improving the base virtues to offset the higher skill requirement, and the middle ‘cripple line,’ DH is in my top three now! Still like Chrono and Druid just a bit more, but DH is so much fun for me now. I REALLY hope Zealot’s Aggression doesn’t lose its cripple on Justice proc, because, to be honest, that’s what does it for me. I love being a kiting machine.
Speaking of which, this is the build I was using. It really has ridiculous synergy and I found it to work well for my purposes.

Its intention is to kite a foe around to whittle them down and then chunk that last little bit in one three-step combo. Even if they do get into range, you have decent toughnes and melee capability plus the ability to MAKE range. On top of that you can stack Vulnerability like noone’s business. I don’t think this build is too OP, but if it does get nerfed I will most likely cry and eat a tub of lard.

Ignore my horrible choice of sigils. Rune choice is meh but does help with the lack of condi removal. The block on signet activation is good for general defense and proccing defender’s dogma.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATSn8cCVChNCBedC0Ehl4BrKA8AqXy9vCYC0KEcvSBA-TBzAABtfEAOSJGAPAgeU/BJlHGcBAmQJ4KaCE5QAoiOgu3fwNzfAA-e

The main combo I’m talking about is Immobilizing and burning a target with Spear of Justice, dropping a symbol of energy under them, and then firing true shot into their face. They’ll likely have a bit of vulnerability and cripple on them. The burning DMG modifier and the symbol modifier help to make that true shot especially painful. For kiting you have a lot of access to cripple on every 5th hit and an immobilize every so often, but that’s best not to use unless you have to. A quick spinning death trap is sure to proc Zealot’s Aggression a couple times. Remember to immobilize people in your traps and symbols as well, they’re pretty punishing. Signet of courage helps you steadily recover from any hits they do get on you so that if you must fight up close you’re still in ok shape. Longbow has it’s 5th skill that you should save and use when you have enough distance between you and your target to get it off cleanly. If they do get up in your face it’s time to swap to hammer and use the immobilize and banish to make em move the way you want while crippling them and applying a fair bit of vuln to set them up. If you want to stay in melee, Zeal works excellently with the hammer AA and the Ring of Warding can force people to stand in your traps or symbols. Ring of warding is also a knock back, meaning more cripple and Vuln.

Really like what you’ve done with the place. Keep it up!

Please make the Seed of Life skill look a little more like a “blossom” and a little less like a zit. Every time I use a glyph it’s like, “Eeeeww.”

Anyone notice how when these guys are sitting their wings are ridiculously long to the point of clipping with the ground and each other?

Well don’t judge yet. Druid probably won’t be all that good this beta weekend. Wait until they announce the changes after the BWE and keep an eye on the forums. I guess you’ll have to be the one who decides when it’s worth it to you.

Anyone know for sure how many hero points it’ll take? I know that you have to be level 80 to unlock it, but do you also have to have every core spec and utility line complete first?

Wondrouswall.7169:

Interesting. I’d possibly like this alternative. It’s more guaranteed and does benefit others when some allies may be at full health.

I’ll give a +1 to this.

Thanks!

I know the idea of regular projectiles being converted to healing projectiles is cool, but from the stream it appears to have a few issues that make the skill a bit less amazing as it could be.

On the stream it looked like a few of the projectiles missed simply because the character was moving. I imagine you’d also miss out if you dodged. There’s a way to fix this that I think could work out well, and that’s the Revenant staff auto trick.

Instead of this skill making healing projectiles, could it fart out a little healing pick-up on the ground where the projectile hit? Maybe make ‘em last a good 4 seconds? This way there’s a much greater chance that the healing from this skill won’t be wasted. If you’re full health and just use this to stop yourself from taking heavy fire, a wounded ally could run over an pick up these health packs even though YOU were the target. This way dodging or moving won’t waste the potential healing as well, and there’s potentially more support through the donation trick I mentioned, and more strategic play possible through using this to block a projectile while you’re at max health, maybe take some damage, and them run over to pick it up.

Thoughts?

Edit: Also, a few questions about how this skill functions. Do the healing projectiles still count as hostile for the purposes of projectile blocks/reflects? Or do they count as friendly projectiles that can be blocked by a hostile projectile block or reflect? Do they even count as projectiles?

Just making a note that the reason Invigorating Bond had an ICD is because with the Beastmastery line and a hawk or eagle you could pump out 2.5k heals every 4 3/4 ish seconds. Some pet skill recharges are just too low for that not to have an ICD.

DavyMcB.1603:

Now that activating spirits will kill them anyway, please make it so that they auto activate when they die. We don’t have any real timer and it’s super clunky to gauge when we have to kill them to make the most use out of spirits.

Surely this can be implemented right away.

Isn’t there a trait for this?

Actually going for a mix of Cleric and Berserker. Still have over 1k Healing Power, so I think I’ll be k.

Eh. Keep em at a very strong level of healing, but tone it down if you must to give em enough damage to get by. There is a necessity for all weapons in this game to do enough damage to be able to play by yourself, but I definitely don’t think the unique strength of the Druid (healing and healing and healing) should be taken away in favour of making it just another Zerker head class.

Zatoichi.1049:

theres no reason why spirits should not be invulnerable. They Are Spirits for pete’s sake! They should have a set duration of life

The argument is that they will become too much like banners if you do that. No, they wont. Have them do different things, different kinds of buffs. Banners you can pick up and move, and blast and dash with them. Spirits have activated attacks. they are different enough in those regards

I don’t want to be that guy, but I hope they can make spirits usable without making them invulnerable. One of the fun synergies between Druid and Spirits right now is that you can heal your spirits, and by doing so generate a massive amount of Live Vicariously procs to sustain yourself. My build would be a lot less fun if they became outright invulnerable, but I do think they need to take significantly reduced damage from AOE damage so long as they aren’t the only one affected by it. Making them mobile would help a bit as well I suppose, and that would be a respectable trade off. Unlike warrior banners, these have health bars, but as compensation they can move freely by themselves.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Spirit-Sustain-Druid/first#post5552892

Versatile sustain Druid.

Instead of an on hit buff, it pulses heals. Shouldn’t it get an on hit that allows youth remove conditions or something? The actual active is nice for condi wiping but you’d have to sacrifice it. A condi cleanse on hit could give some nice sustained removal and make it a bit better. Also, shouldn’t the pulsing heal scale with healing power?

While we’re on spirits I just wanna say that you should make them look like wisps as per many requests. When they die, shouldn’t they just return to nature instead? Like. Nature ain’t gonna have many spirits left soon with all of these fantastical embodiments of the earth dropping like flies. Make em seem a bit immortal I guess.

It’s really early and my communication skills may not be on par, but here’s my best explanation for how this build works.

Water spirit pulses aoe regen to sustain you, your pet, your Frost Spirit, and your Nature Spirit and will occasionally proc a heal for your pet and any other allies you have. Your Nature Spirit does the same, but with actual pulse healing which stacks with the regen and procs Live Vicariously. With one other ally around to cap the targets this’ll lead to a fair amount of passive healing.

Actively you will be healing your pet, spirits, and any other a allies you have around to help keep them healthy and give yourself back even more health with the heals themselves and Live Vicariously Procs.

The top line of Beastmastery plus a Hawk or an Eagle makes a for a hard hitting ally that provides a lot of mitigation with spammable blind and weakness and an occasional taunt. Due to how Frost Spirit’s might application applies twice to your pet if you also get the might thanks to Fortifying Bond, your pet can have up to 15 stacks of might on at all times with just this spirit. If it crits – which is very likely – with all that might and maybe a frost spirit proc it’ll mean a fair amount of hurt. You yourself won’t be doing too much DPS with the staff, but with your pet on roids and you with a passive 3 might and an occasional Frost Spirit proc you should do alright.

Anyways, there you go.

Edit: I think I’ll be taking Glyph of Tides and the Glyph of Equality in my other two slots. Mostly if I’m playing it as a bunker build or a lockdown-ish one. With Ancient seeds you can chain Equality into Tides to Daze, knock people out of a capture point, and thanks to Tides hitting a Dazed target, force those hit to sit on the sidelines for up to 5 seconds with Ancient Seeds.

I’ve been planning on trying out a Druid build that makes use of the Water, Frost, and Nature spirits as well as a couple of Glyphs. If you look closely, all spirits have synergy with the Druid line, ESPECIALLY Water and Nature. After the Nature’s vengeance buff, the regen and might applied by Water and Frost is actually decent, so I thought I’d give them a chance in making a thematic Druid build. After toying with it a bit, I’m thinking Live Vicariously and healing in general is going to make this build pretty fun.

Spirits are squishy, even with the trait, but Water will be healing the other two (and me) with regeneration and Nature will just pulse aoe heals which will also keep my spirit buddies and I ok for longer. Even though I’ll only get heals from LV with the pulsing Nature Spirit heal and the on hit Water spirit heal, it should add up to a fair bit since it’ll be on top of Regen and Nature spirit. Of course, I have to be in a group for the Water Spirit procs to count for anything but my pet. Additionally, I will be able to sustain my spirits and my pet through the use of Staff and Celestial Transform mode, proccing LV like mad hopefully.

So obviously I’ve taken Nature Magic and Druid, but what’s the other line? I’m thinking Beastmastery, all top line. With a Hawk or an Eagle my pet can be putting out decent DPS while having a 4-ish second cooldown aoe blind and single target weakness spike. Mitigation is cool! Fact. All of the bonus stats (especially crit damage and toughness) will really help my pet be a strong ally, which I will be healing constantly due to its value in this concept. The aoe taunt will also be pretty nice for getting any trash away from my spirits or me. One final thing. Fortifying Bond, Nature’s Vengeance, and Frost Spirit can equate to 15 stacks of might for my pet so long as we both stay in range of the spirit. It’ll get three, I’ll get three, and it’ll get a bonus three because of Fortifying Bond. Tested this a while ago and it leads to a pretty strong pet, even though it’s tough as hell to keep you both in range. While I mostly tend to my spirits and my pet, he should hopefully be hitting like a truck to make up for me at least a little. Don’t think this little trick really needs to be nerfed due to how hard it is to make happen, and how counterable it is (run away from spirit or kill it).

Anyways, just a concept I found fun. Definitely not too viable, but I suppose it could be alright as a bunker build. No? Ok.

Kodama.6453:

Treetoptrickster.4205:

You guys have better lockdown, trust me.

Druid is able to have a total time of aoe daze for 16 seconds. Requirement? Moment of clarity, Druid traitline, storm spirit and glyphe of equality. Druid just needs 2 utility slots for 16 seconds of daze. Scrapper isn’t even close to that if he is using his whole utility bar.

We have more sources for daze that’s right. But the ranger daze has a duration which is 6 times longer. That’s what makes him simply better at lockdown. I think there won’t be many defiance bars in this game which won’t be broken by a single 6s daze.

That’s a trait’s fault, not the Druid’s. Even us Rangers are saying that’s gonna need to be nerfed with the addition of the Druid. My point is, the Druid itself isn’t as CC heavy as the Scrapper. Also, aren’t defiance bars/stacks taken down by application of CCs and not duration? I know that defiance stacks are, so Scrappers will be good at that at least in existing content.

Killyox.3950:

And here I thought Engie was supposed to be about lockdown? Why does druid has so much daze, aoe daze and so on?

Besides that it seems OP as hell and surely get nerfed but I am kinda disappointed druid what what scrapper was supposed to be about.

Disappointed. same dev on druid and engie and such a big difference.

Funtion gyro vs astral form :P

Whatchu talkin bout? Druid’s can trait to get 1 daze and an immobilize that can be killed, have 1 daze from Glyphs, 1 daze from Astral Form, and a 1.5s immobilize from astral form. All this astral form stuff takes a while to build up first too.

Forge has the potential for an aoe stun and three Dazes just on the hammer, every gyro they have equipped does an aoe daze upon death and can be traited for a lightning field, shredder gyro grants a tool belt skill that’s an aoe stun and a lightning field. Oh, and tack on that trait that grants 25% stun and daze duration even though it’s probably going to be gone soon.

You guys have better lockdown, trust me.

The only place I’ll agree with you is on Function Gyro vs Astral Form. You got a bit booted there. Everywhere else Druid and Scrapper seem to be almost at balance. Gyros aren’t too good, and ranger’s don’t like the glyphs either. Most of your traits are fine and have good synergy with the base profession while Druid’s have pretty good traits that have almost no direct synergy. He probably only mentioned the Druid more because he feels he needs to improve on the traits and because it’s the one with the absolute least feedback time.

Don’t worry, we’ll all turn out fine. Everyone (not just you) needs to stop getting offended when anything else even approaches the same levels as something you have. If it exceeds it then you’re likely good at something else if you look closely. They’ll tune over the next few weeks. Everyone will still be alive.