Guild Wars 2

Shadelang.3012:

On this change. I remembe reading before that druid was meant to be a burst healer NOT a sustain healer. Ventari revenants and things like aura tempests are the sustained healers.

If that is there plan. Then we should be making suggestions on how to make that a reality.

How do we make druid a burst healing class while still having ventari revenants and aura tempests be MORE effective as sustain healer. And no buffing those two through the roof isn’t the awnser.

CAF from what I understand is meant to be a rare thing. Something you use ONLY when things are going badly. When without it your team is guaranteed to die. Its supposed to be on the level of an elite skill.

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

Substance E.4852:

anduriell.6280:

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

…wut?

¯\(?)/¯

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

Shadowflare.2759:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

D/d cele eles can run diamond skin and be essentially invincible versus any build that relies entirely on condition damage. Diamond skin shouldn’t be in the game; they need to replace it with something reasonable. Other than that, eles are fine now in my opinion.

Diamond skin works only if the ele is above 90% health, which means that against a pure condition build that cannot outdamage their sustain, it is incredibly strong. However, against hybrid or power builds, it’s like the ele is playing with one less grandmaster trait.

I agree that diamond skin should be reworked to be less binary, but it’s not like it’s a ridiculously op trait anyways.

It’s far too hard a counter toward pure condition builds, but it’s still irritating even to pure power builds, because as long as the ele is above 90% health, they’ll have immunity to fear, cripple, immobilize, chill, etc. That makes it difficult to lock them down. Honestly, I think it should just be replaced. There are situations where it confers no benefit at all, and situations where it is literally unassailable.

nacario.9417:

What made me upset about the shiro herald rev is that its a good bruiser for 1v1 power builds, but u have little o shiii utilities making u an easy target to take down in group spvp fights. Hammer is also quite useless to dish out dmg with when focused, and being double melee swordshield staff also locks u out vs ranged. I guess i wanted it to be more of an advaned warr class, but it doesnt provide much options in how u wanna build it (and the 3 other legends really isnt up to par vs brain).

It is however a great pve class though

Are you joking? Riposting shadows, infuse light, unrelenting assault and crystal hibernation are all amazing skills for surviving team fights. Hell, if you’re being focused by multiple opponents, infuse is almost a guaranteed full heal! Heralds have amazing uptime on vigor, evade frames, blocking, and invulnerability.

Knighthonor.4061:

I really would like something better for Hammer 4. It feels bad in close combat like in SPvP point fights. Need to have a secondary effect and the activation need to be instant. It sucks at the moment unless all you do is auto attack and fighting outside of points for some reason.

would be cool if it did something to enemies that pass through it.

It’s already overpowered. 50% uptime on virtual immunity to projectiles, on a powerful ranged weapon, is insane.

oshilator.4681:

Give us back ground targeting please.

I don’t think that that’s a good idea. Better to buff the traps, give them a stunbreak, boon stripping, lower cooldowns, and make shortbow a good condi weapon at range. Dragonhunters would still have advantages that we wouldn’t, like the ability to pull enemies onto their traps and their virtues, which are essentially utility skills in their own right.

Ailment.8591:

- Hammer.. yes, it hits like a truck. Easiest way to counter it? If available, slopes. Slopes are a hammer’s biggest headache. Furthermore, you /can/ range pressure a hammer revenant, just remember what projectiles are actually projectiles. Don’t use those. Use things like Necromancer Scepter or any ranged attack that doesn’t have a travel time.

Thank you for the advice, but this part doesn’t really help too much…there are very few non-projectile long-ranged skills available to some professions. For example, to my knowledge engineers have none. Rangers have staff (which isn’t particularly good for damage) and barrage. I don’t like the design of the hammer rev as a projectile weapon that counters other projectile weapons. That’s terrible design, especially given its already heavy damage.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

EnderzShadow.2506:

My Sweet Lily.1952:

So you take into consideration Tempest and DragonHunter F-skill heals, but not the Druids F-skill heals…

So you compare 2 different classes base damages in a void…

So you compare 2 differently designed traps, ones that are condition oriented and ones that are power oriented…

If my traps were power oriented as a trap ranger… can you imagine?

If they actually calculated the Ranger trap damage when speccing into a condition build… You would see they do about the same damage. It’s just the Ranger trap does it over a long period of time as opposed to instantly.

And that means that they can be cleansed, which can reduce their damage by 50%+ easily. Oh, and they don’t give free boons to the ranger. And rangers don’t have multiple pulls to force enemies onto their traps. And ranger traps don’t all have daze in addition to whatever else they do, nor do they completely prevent movement (with a barrier that’s usually bugged and invisible, in fact). The fact is that dragonhunter traps can actually replace utilities to an extent, and they also have their virtues, which are utilities in their own right. If a ranger goes full trapper, they don’t get a stunbreak, blocking, stability, etc. Dragonhunters do.

Swagger.1459:

Yet another tip to the devs to look at a game like city of heroes when it comes to pets… Can’t believe gw2 can’t get a lot of mechanics right compared to what the devs of a 10 year old game, with inferior technology, were able to do. Sad.

And we will have “that guy” jump into the thread saying “ermagerd petsswordshortbowaxe5greatsword so gud!!!” And to “that guy”, don’t come here with your heart of the mists training dummy numbers like a fool. On the battlefield our pets suck, our weapon damage sucks and our healing numbers suck too.

I agree that the animations are a problem that should be easily solvable, but the pathing is not. Most of those previous games didn’t have a z-axis with which the AI must contend. GW1, for example, didn’t have serious pet pathing issues…the problem with pets there was that you used up half your skill bar to make them effective, and when they died it essentially hit the ranger with a GW2-style daze. Despite these problems, they were used regularly in PvE and PvP both. Now, however, we have a combat system based heavily on dodge rolling and attacking while strafing, and we’re forced to always use pets that can do neither.

I prefer the old circular saw blade icon. I also have noticed that they no longer use the new icon anywhere but the character select screen, making it harder sometimes to tell if other players are using an elite specialization or not.

Doon.2364:

SlayerSixx.5763:

^im no warrior main, but a moving 100b sounds terrifying.

You mean like Rapid fire?

Get behind a piece of rubble or a blade of grass and rapid fire does zero damage. Use reflect or projectile destruction, and rapid fire does zero damage. There are more counters to rapid fire than there would be to a moving hundred blades, and the latter does far more damage as well.

As for unrelenting assault, I consider the evade frames to be the problem. That, plus crystal hibernation and infuse light give a bursty build with an easy-to-land burst the ability to stall for ridiculous amounts of time without giving up offensive power.

D/d cele eles can run diamond skin and be essentially invincible versus any build that relies entirely on condition damage. Diamond skin shouldn’t be in the game; they need to replace it with something reasonable. Other than that, eles are fine now in my opinion.

The problem with that idea is that staff already has a cooldown reduction trait. Allowing two such traits to affect it would not be balanced.

OGDeadHead.8326:

You do realise you have to combo a smokefield to get blinds out of it, right? As in projectile or whirl finishers.

This is the only smoke field in the game that doesn’t passively tick blindness. Every other smoke field blinds without any finisher being used. Also, in BWE3 the field destroyed projectiles and ticked blinds passively, as I recall (I’m certain about destroying projectiles, almost certain about the blinds). Now it’s just the weakest smoke field in the game…of course, that’s still far better than our previous state, which was almost no finishers or fields under our direct control, apart from projectiles.

Good Tofu.9376:

So, you copied a “meta” build and that allowed you to go to from R5 to R30 within a day.

You gained 134,500 rank points (in other words, got 90 wins) in one day.

Please, share your secret with us. If everyone else is using these builds, how were you able to win so much?

My ballpark estimate for a minimum amount of time to get that much rank is 18 hours, unless you have a ridiculous win/loss ratio (I’m talking 90% plus), which I doubt.

Thieves are annoying, while Chronomancers are deadly. Condi Reapers are annoying (although they can kill you), but power Reapers are a more serious, immediate threat. You didn’t even mention the other strong contenders here, such as Dragonhunters with invisible, bugged traps; tough-as-nails Scrappers which can still hit pretty hard; and Heralds who expect to win using just Coalesce of Ruin and Unrelenting Assault, along with their assorted invulnerabilities and two healing skills. Heartseeker thieves aren’t even a drop in the bucket here. Before you complain about balance, you should probably play a little bit more (or a lot more, actually).

Ranger and Druid DPS longbow builds seem much stronger in Stronghold, where bunkering isn’t ideal and most players run high damage setups.

I think that they should just throw rangers a main-hand dagger as a power weapon which doesn’t animation lock you.

Atin.1237:

Just because an effective playstyle is well known doesn’t mean its OP. its just popular.
Now if I can figure out that rangers build that was hitting my Dh with 12-14k mauls back to back that would be neat.

I’m guessing that they have moment of clarity and interrupt you, pop signet of the hunt then use maul.

SolarDragon.7063:

Longbow is responsible for the second highest single hit I’ve ever seen done to me in sPvP-highest being a trap thief Vault. It also feels like the old power ranger except doesn’t require any of the utility skills to buff it.

Plus, you can dodge half of rapid fire’s damage even if you don’t see it coming. That doesn’t work with True Shot, which hits nearly as hard in total and has half the cooldown.

eleshazar.6902:

Clearly we needed another thread on this topic OP.

And you are complaining about 1v1 nature of the build. In case you haven’t noticed there aren’t any official duel servers for a reason; balance isn’t done around 1v1.

Also DODGE, DODGE, DODGE. It only takes one to evade all of the traps. They are static, they don’t move. Dodge into the guardian, simple. There are videos out there showing you how to do this and that it isn’t difficult.

Stop complaining with multiple threads.

There’s a trap that prevents dodging, and it appears to be bugged and invisible right now.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zoef.2761:

I’ve got a simple question: if this out of combat degeneration sucks, why was it implemented in the first place? Looks to me it’s the same old story: ranger class has something nice; can’t have that; let’s kitten it up in the name of “balance”.

Mate, look at it. They probably cut and pasted the code from Berserker, which is why the form only has a 15s duration and degenerates OOC now, exactly the same as it does on Berserker.

In that case, they could at least make it charge up half as quickly as Berserker does. And give us skills that specifically fill large chunks of the bar like Berserker has.

computer.4372:

Warrior’s rage should get the same treatment then

Not necessarily. Getting a full bar takes <10 seconds for a warrior, but >45 seconds for a druid. Plus, warriors have skills that give them full (or nearly full) bars instantly. There just isn’t a comparison.

Leodon.1564:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Serious design question, why is a time gated stance with abilities on cooldowns, required to generate AF at all?

10 sec cool down to re-enter the form
15 sec limit on remaining in the form
Abilities within the form on CD

Is it possible to simply 100% refill the AF bar upon entering CA and have the heals consume AF and then have healing/damage refill the bar while in the form?

It feels as though Celestial Avatar form is an afterthought currently and that’s a shame as I see a potentially fun Spec. I would love to see CA treated like an Elementalists attunement. The mechanics are already there.

Thanks for reading. (Tree form for reference).

I’ve thought of this myself and have come to the following conclusion:

1) Anet’s attempt to gate CAF turned out to be a massive fail in BWE3. Druids were entering CAF practically at will and were able to face-roll heal people without breaking a sweat.

2) Anet comes to the conclusion that they need to gate CAF better but they don’t have the time to come up with a solid plan/solution since HoT is being released just around the corner.

3) An OP healing Druid would be a nightmare to deal with in HoT, with all of the other things going on, so Anet’s solution is to make sure that Druid healing won’t be a problem by throwing every gating mechanic under the sun at it as a short-term fix.

4) After HoT has settled a bit, go back and work on Druid AF mechanics.

This is what happens when your elite spec is last minute.

Druids in BWE3 were less effective in sPvP than Reapers, Heralds, and Chronomancers; did you see any of them get nerfed?

Tipper.6973:

The Warrior Berserker spec has the same problem – thoughts on that?

False. Warriors are perfectly capable of charging up and using their burst skill multiple times over the course of a single fight. Druids can’t even do that with CAF over the course of an entire match.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

I’m looking into the combat degen resulting in too heavy a gating of Celestial Avatar in PvE situations; from what I saw over the weekend it seemed overly restrictive in open world battles. If this continues it then the degeneration when out of combat is likely to be removed.

It’s too heavily gated in PvP as well. When A Druid can’t use CAF more than once or twice over the course of an entire PvP match, something is seriously wrong.

Druid was stealth gutted.

Relshdan.6854:

Hammerguard.9834:

Not only that but “Smoke Assault: This skill has switched places with Smoke Cloud so that it will now be the F2 skill for this pet” is a huge mistake.

We need to smoke field on demand for invis. Wtf is Anet thinking.

wouldn’t want ranger to infringe on thief/ mesmer territory and be useful in a new way…..i genuinely dislike the devs in charge of balance.

their vision for ranger stinks.

What vision? All evidence points to flailing in the dark at this point. They launched HoT with CAF in a blatantly unusable state, and haven’t even bothered to discuss it with the playerbase. Instead, they throw heavy-handed nerfs while we’re already down.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Kitty.1502:

Gail why do the devs dislike ranger? Is there a way we can get a dev to have more interaction with the community so that we can get this class fixed?

Kitty — you can’t believe that! If there’s a dev who provably “hates” Rangers, I’ll hunt him down and TP his desk! I’ll put Honey Nut Cheerios in his burrito! I’ll wreak havoc every way from Sunday!

I have talked to Irenio a lot, and I’ll continue to talk to him. And I’ll talk to, wave my hands in the air, and natter with any other dev who wants to get the feedback of a not-very-good-but-absolutely-passionate Ranger.

I’m sorry to dredge this up like this, but I can’t help but comment on it. I want to believe this. The problem is that the Druid, in its HoT launch state, is a crushing disappointment. I have yet to be able to use the Celestial Avatar Form even twice during a single PvP match. Not only is the Druid’s performance far below its BWE3 level (which was already far below such heavy hitters as the Reaper, Chronomancer, and Herald), our best new pet is being gutted. Not nerfed, gutted. 50% damage reduction is bad, too heavy handed in fact, but I can see the point. Removing our control of its smoke field is appalling. That is already one of the major issues with the ranger: we have little control over our own fields, finishers, and cc. All of this came without a discussion, and without an explanation. Not to sound like a broken record, but Roy keeps his Revenant players appraised of changes to the profession, and has ensured that the profession itself is strong (overpowered, if we’re being frank). Meanwhile, the Druid’s entire mechanic has become all but useless in 95% of the game, and is both nearly inaccessible and underperforming (due to the lack of stability which was brought up repeatedly over Beta Weekend) in sPvP.

Basically, we really, really need an explanation and a constructive discussion about how to salvage this train wreck.

vespers.1759:

Toolbox.9375:

vespers.1759:

You know what? This is YOUR fault. I made a post about this on the general forums that was quickly deleted and I got a ban but I’ll repeat it again.

preordering never ever ever benefits the consumer. If you were smart you would have waited for release and actual reviews. Game companies screwing over their players is hardly a new thing in the industry. You preorderers are kittening us all over with your desperation to throw money at game companies. If we all refused to do it maybe we’d get some quality.

So whatever, I’ve heard this sob story too many times. You bought into the hype, gambled, and lost. Cry me a river.

How do they benefit from pulling a bait-and-switch on Ranger players? I highly doubt it’s some sort of scam versus plain ol’ developer detachment.

They benefit by getting your money. preorder bonuses to get you to give them your money before you get to see the final product… Events to let you try the builds before they are finalized… The goal is to put out false advertising to move units and it is happening like never before in gaming. Look at all the major game companies, they’re all doing it because they have zero respect for their customers and I don’t blame them because the gaming community has brought it on themselves.

That still doesn’t explain why they’ve been doing it to rangers in particular. Necromancers, mesmers, elementalists, guardians, and other professions all benefited heavily from the expansion, while rangers really didn’t (and the one thing that as actually impressive, the smokescale, has now been extensively nerfed for no real reason and with no explanation). If they were just being jerks in general, I would have expected some of the other professions to have been hit in similar fashion (because said professions are actually considered powerful in PvP). But, no. they throw nerfs at the weakest profession for no reason, without the decency to give an explanation when they do so. For three years.

vespers.1759:

You know what? This is YOUR fault. I made a post about this on the general forums that was quickly deleted and I got a ban but I’ll repeat it again.

preordering never ever ever benefits the consumer. If you were smart you would have waited for release and actual reviews. Game companies screwing over their players is hardly a new thing in the industry. You preorderers are kittening us all over with your desperation to throw money at game companies. If we all refused to do it maybe we’d get some quality.

So whatever, I’ve heard this sob story too many times. You bought into the hype, gambled, and lost. Cry me a river.

The problem was that they actually did deliver…for Reapers, Chronomancers, Heralds, Dragonhunters, Tempests, etc. They delivered a form of Druid in BWE3 that just needed some polishing to become extremely useful, even strong. Instead of fixing it, they gutted it, then destroyed the best aspects of the best HoT pet just for good measure. At this point, it’s one step forward (the most recent WHaO change, which allows might/stability stacking) followed immediately by five steps backward. They need to respond to these posts, because HoT’s release state is a slap in the face to rangers, and they’re following it up with more godkitten nerfs. It’s getting old. Scratch that, it’s been old, it’s getting infuriating.

HotHit.6783:

Making it so your AF build up doesn’t matter by allowing you to use it without max AF is not the correct choice. Neither does gating it behind a cooldown only, as that would make it just as useable by non-dedicated healers. AF should be kept when you leave combat and maybe if you’re downed. That would make CAF in its current form far more useful in PvP.

Long story short. CAF is a big moment skill. That moment is a declaration that for the next few seconds, nobody dies. If you’re in combat long enough to reach that moment, most of the time nobody was going to die anyway.

It should be usable by non-dedicated healers. No other elite spec is shoehorned into a specific role that they have to play, yet you’re asking for this to be the case for druids? Foul!

Thuggernaut.1250:

Now you all know how Warriors feel.

Hah! Warriors actually get their adrenaline full before the fight is over. In fact, sometimes they can fill their adrenaline bar more than once in a single fight. On the other hand, a druid without a staff might get CAF once or twice in an entire PvP match.

Aomine.5012:

Seeing this thread, I almost feel sad I got an infraction in other post saying Druid is very bad in PVP after Irene posted his changes post BWE3 in top thread.

People were flaming me so hard for saying Druid would be somewhat useless in PVP.
Now see what’s coming to you guys.

On to my Revenant (Btw, these guys are really proven to be RIDICULOUSLY STRONG. Insanely high dps and very wide range UA, and also very bunky)

Druid as it was in BWE3 was somewhat promising. Then, in typical ANet fashion, they took what allowed rangers to be only slightly suboptimal, and completely stealth gutted it without a word. Gee, thanks.

Sol.4310:

Yes and No, I do feel CAF generates bit too slow and runs out way too fast for how long it takes to build the CAF needed.

They just need to improve how you generate AF and remove or make it degenerate slower. I use Staff with my build but I only use CAF 1-2 times a game and never at right times due to how long takes to generate the fight is normally over win or loss.

If you’re using the staff, the king of AF generation, and are still having that much difficulty even using CAF once or twice in a game…yeah, things have gone horribly wrong for the Druid. It would be nice if we had a response here.

StickerHappy.8052:

Elegant Avenger.8042:

After playing a healing druid build in sPvP for a few hours, I think it is safe to say that most of the posts on the forums were an overreaction. I’m having just as much fun if not MORE with Druid than BWE3. (I can’t say anything for people trying hybrid builds though, because I’ve only used staff/gs.)

Astral Force is NOT as bad as people are saying. I almost always have it charged when I need it. No, you don’t get to open up fights with it, but it is very easy to build, and it feels way less spammy now. I actually like what they have done with it.

The only thing I wish Anet had done is put a permanent stun break on one of the sigils (by that i mean stun breaks regardless of if you’re in CAF or not.) I would love to be able to make use of the CC given by the glyphs, but giving up some of the other skills is too much of a downgrade. I’m a firm believer that druid needs two stun breaks because for healing druid, you’re always in the thick of the battle.

Bottom line is, Druid is VERY much viable in sPvP, and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If anything, I think the skill cap is higher now which is a good thing. CAF feels way less like a permanent upgrade that you can go in and out of whenever you want. You have to use it way more situationally and wisely.

AF itself is not the problem.

The problem is Anet Is pigeonholing us to use staff in order to generate Astral Force FASTER and MORE RELIABLE

No, the problem is that you need to use staff in order to use CAF in PvP at all, ever. It’s slow, clumsy and inefficient even then. In BWE3, the spec was clumsy but usable. Now, it is completely worthless. And for all this ridiculous gating, the one time that I actually manage to get it in a PvP match, I get chain cced because he couldn’t be bothered to put some stability on it to make it actually worth activating if by some miracle you generate the AF.

We need Irenio to respond to this. This is not what we were promised.

Elegant Avenger.8042:

After playing a healing druid build in sPvP for a few hours, I think it is safe to say that most of the posts on the forums were an overreaction. I’m having just as much fun if not MORE with Druid than BWE3. (I can’t say anything for people trying hybrid builds though, because I’ve only used staff/gs.)

Astral Force is NOT as bad as people are saying. I almost always have it charged when I need it. No, you don’t get to open up fights with it, but it is very easy to build, and it feels way less spammy now. I actually like what they have done with it.

The only thing I wish Anet had done is put a permanent stun break on one of the sigils (by that i mean stun breaks regardless of if you’re in CAF or not.) I would love to be able to make use of the CC given by the glyphs, but giving up some of the other skills is too much of a downgrade. I’m a firm believer that druid needs two stun breaks because for healing druid, you’re always in the thick of the battle.

Bottom line is, Druid is VERY much viable in sPvP, and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If anything, I think the skill cap is higher now which is a good thing. CAF feels way less like a permanent upgrade that you can go in and out of whenever you want. You have to use it way more situationally and wisely.

Without using the staff, you never get to use it. Ever. I don’t want to be forced to use a weak weapon just to have access to my profession mechanic, thanks.

Justine.6351:

Mcrocha.3891:

Justine.6351:

Mcrocha.3891:

Justine.6351:

Ok I made a quick vid of me soloing and also randoms attacking the spvp isle “lordroom” npcs. I just kinda go crazy and button smash and am generating 100% AF in ~17-27 sec if I math right.

(its 1080 but probs processing)
https://youtu.be/62xEZ_eM3_o

Will someone with pvp skill be able to achieve similar or better results in an actual pvp match? We wont know if people cry druid is trash and wont attempt to make something of it.

Wow 25secs to generate it without allies and getting the multiple hits from barrage on multiple targets. 25 seconds. Too strong. Cant believe people don’t think that is sufficient generation.

Solo you don’t need CF more then once every 30sec. There is just so little to do in CF that requires you to be in it frequently or for a long duration. Watch where I am forced to cast TU while in celestial form. There just isn’t enough pressure/defensive skills to merit being in it while solo and the npcs arnt dying any faster.

Lol ok yeah only needing it once every 30s. k bye.

Why would you need CF more then once every 30sec solo. Under what circumstance would that be useful? To have an extra skill bar of ultra low CD you can pop in spam and jump out ever 10sec? That’s how it would be used solo. Rangers would be the next d/d ele.

Most PvP fights are over in less than 30 seconds, unless they involve a bunker or cele ele/necro. Even then, it’s often better to retreat and try a different point if it’s taking that long. CAF is essentially useless in PvP.

Mcrocha.3891:

oshilator.4681:

Mcrocha.3891:

oshilator.4681:

Substance E.4852:

oshilator.4681:

Thanks for killing our spec on Day One, Roy.

The ranger community thanks you.

Now, can we get Irenio to fix it?

lol the hero worship is real…

What makes you people think it wasn’t Irenio that messed up Druid? He was the one in charge.

Points you towards the massive hammering nerf that was given to WHaO a few weeks ago

Roy.

And unless I’m imagining it, Irenio said he wanted us to keep half the AF we’d built up if we left CF early.

Does today’s change sound like anything he planned?

We do keep half of the AF now. So I guess it does sound like he planned the other changes too?

Until you’re out of combat. Then it quickly evaporates.

Which…..is the crux of the issue.

So what was your original point? There is no evidence that Roy was involved in the changes we are unhappy with, but there is evidence that Irenio planned the changes, as you pointed out.

Well, Irenio gave lists of changes and proposed changes, and this wasn’t on any of them. Something is fishy here.

Reavan.8753:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Substance E.4852:

oshilator.4681:

Thanks for killing our spec on Day One, Roy.

The ranger community thanks you.

Now, can we get Irenio to fix it?

lol the hero worship is real…

What makes you people think it wasn’t Irenio that messed up Druid? He was the one in charge.

Usually when something that rangers have gets gutted like this, it’s because Roy overrode Irenio. At least, that’s what appears to have happened for every example that comes readily to mind.

Why though?
Some internal politics to say look i did a better job than you because more people play herald than druid?

Seems utterly lame to kitten around customers like that.

Who knows? When he made the WHaO change, Roy announced it via his kitten ed Twitter account; not once did he appear on the Ranger forums to explain/defend/discuss the change, despite the fact that he does just that for Revenants on a near-daily basis. I commend Irenio for saving the most important aspects of the skill (stacking might and stability in a meaningful way, as a near-equivalent to the strong might/boon stacking of elementalists, necromancers, warriors, guardians, revenants, and engineers), but the whole mess gives a strong impression that Roy just doesn’t care about making rangers actually competitive in this game, nor about communicating with a player base that isn’t ‘his’ (i.e. Revenant players).

It is supremely frustrating to see every minor nerf or fine tuning of the Revenant’s kit to be discussed in detail in advance on the Revenant forum, yet not find out that the Druid has been stealth gutted (has anyone actually been able to use CAF more than once in an entire PvP match?) until the actual release.

Electro.4173:

Did you unlock Druid in the PvP lobby? I’ve heard various reports of people not getting their weapons when doing so.

I’ve also seen mention that some of those people who didn’t get it because of that were able to get it by unlocking another step in the elite spec outside the PvP lobby.

That might be it. Time to get more points, I suppose. Of course, with AF screwed up so badly, I doubt that I’ll be following through on my plan to main Druid. They can’t make rangers meta-viable if their life depended on it, apparently. Extremely frustrating situation on the whole.

Substance E.4852:

oshilator.4681:

Thanks for killing our spec on Day One, Roy.

The ranger community thanks you.

Now, can we get Irenio to fix it?

lol the hero worship is real…

What makes you people think it wasn’t Irenio that messed up Druid? He was the one in charge.

Usually when something that rangers have gets gutted like this, it’s because Roy overrode Irenio. At least, that’s what appears to have happened for every example that comes readily to mind.

In PvP, fights never last that long. You quite literally never get to use CAF at all. This is a serious problem.

Knighthonor.4061:

whose decision was this change?

Maybe someone should check Roy’s Twitter account…

Ofir.2405:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Ofir.2405:

+1 I would really appreciate a list of the druid changes post BWE3.

They gave a list of improvements to Celestial Form. They left out a minor detail, though: you can’t actually get into it anymore!

Their list included only part of the changes , that felt solid for them at that time. I dont think its reasonable we need to find what has changed with the druid. Instead they can easily give us a list of ALL the changes of the druid post BWE3 , just like every other elite spec had.

I really hope that they didn’t actually test it with the AF changes before release. If someone tested it in this state and actually approved it, that would pretty much kill any remaining faith I have in their ability to balance the game.

It’s so rare to get into CAF now that I have no idea. Even if it stacks phenomenally well, it isn’t worth using because of the gutted AF mechanic.

Ofir.2405:

+1 I would really appreciate a list of the druid changes post BWE3.

They gave a list of improvements to Celestial Form. They left out a minor detail, though: you can’t actually get into it anymore!

Terrible, and still no dev comment about it.

mistsim.2748:

I’m finding it easy to fill up my bar as both full support minstrel stats, and offensive maurader stats. both builds use staff. I’m always full in combat, it just takes about 15s.

my preference would be to slightly lower decay rate, and increase AF gain rate of non-staff weapons.

It’s taking 45 seconds or more without the staff. Fights usually don’t last even that long. This is completely ridiculous.

Wuselknusel.4082:

I don’t think the Druid is a good specialization, not because the Druid itself is bad (or was in BWE3), but because I really can’t see the Ranger benefitting from it. The Ranger and the Druid are just two completely different playstyles for me. The only build I could see working is a beastmaster/druid/tank combination. Everything else the Ranger can do does not benefit from the Druid.

While Mesmers, Thieves, Revenants and Engineers get upgrades to their base profession, the Warrior and Elementalist geting different playstyles that do have synergy with the base profession and the Guardian being weird, the Ranger even gets a completely new mechanic, which doesn’t interact with the old one at all.

While this is somewhat accurate, it’s worth noting that Druid itself is bad (or at least, Avatar Form gating is). Irenio put all of his eggs into CAF, then made it nearly impossible to access in any realistic situation.

Hammerguard.9834:

Well they basically threw in warrior/necro form mechanics and expected it to balance things (10 second cooldown/degen out of combat). It’s just horribly designed now as oppose to before where were given freedom and versatility in when we wanted to use it.

It’s hilarious how bad it is now. We’re even incentivized to use it after a fight is over or teammates hardly need healing because if you don’t it’ll degen all astral force and be unusable. Just one example of its terrible design.

They threw in the drawbacks of both, with the benefits of neither. AF decays like adrenaline, but takes 10 times as long to build. CAF has a cooldown like Death/Reaper Shroud, but can’t be used without full AF, and DS doesn’t decay out of combat!

darkace.8925:

It’s been about seven months or so since I played, so I’m just skimming over some of the various changes that have been made since I quit paying attention to the game. It appears that rifle and/or gadget builds for Engineers have been effectively sent the way of the dodo.

Sitting Duck, Scope, Speedy Gadgets, and Incendiary Powder and Modified Ammunition synergy (IIRC, it used to be possible to run both of these at once) are all gone. What’s a rifle-toting, mine-laying Engineer to do now? And whose idea was Gadgeteer? Getting hit five times in order to gain a CD reduction on ONE gadget is hardly what I’d consider a worth slotting.

My poor Engineer seems forever fated to be a doormat, it seems.

Rifle is still fine, just combine it with grenade kit, soldier’s or marauder’s amulet in PvP and berzerker/sinister in PvE.

Hammerguard.9834:

One of the most important things about BWE3 Druid to me was that it’s transform was completely unique from any of the other professions. Please don’t just throw other class transform mechanics into it for the sake of “balance.”

They didn’t. They made it far harder to access than any other profession’s mechanic, and made any progress toward accessing it disappear within seconds of leaving combat. If they had made it like Death/Reaper Shroud, it would actually be usable.