Guild Wars 2

So after taking a close look at the phrasing of this section of the patch notes, I was launched into wild speculation mode:

“After a period of observation, the balance team will be changing the druid specialization’s nature somewhat. In this iteration, we’ll now be making healing types more healing-power based. "

Is this implying that we will finally see some of the functionality of the druid specialization augmented, so as to accommodate some damage (sans #5) in CAF?

Thoughts?

I’m also quitting the game for now. While I can respect that they have a vision for how they want the game/classes to be, I no longer believe that the game will return to a state that I will personally enjoy.

This patch was a real let down for me.

I did some extensive testing with the Ancient Seeds trait and the reliability of its interaction with Daze. It turns out that it is completely broken.

If the target is moving forward (as opposed to back pedaling or strafing) while dazed, AS will spawn a vine but the target will not be stopped – they will simply walk right out of it. You can recreate this with 100% success rate and condition duration has no effect on helping to snare the target.

Please fix ;_;

Love,
A ranger with dreams.

This is something that has bugged me for a long while…

Personally, I would prefer to have the pull when I’m not in CAF and the knockback to distance enemies from me when I’m trying to use my healing skills.

How do other people feel about the way that it currently works?

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

In the next release, a 6th pip is being added to the provision master ability line that allows you to buy HoT recipes, sigils, and runes from the heroics notary vendor.

Seriously, this is a fantastic move. It will allow hardcore WvW players to continue going about their business, and will hopefully bring more people into the borderlands between meta events if they are in a rush to get those items .

Today I was thinking about why healing/support is less interesting to watch and can feel less rewarding to play, and it occurred to me that it doesn’t have an ‘impressive’ factor (druid especially).

Friendly health bars jump up and down with little in-combat notification of just how awesome your group heal was. Quite often your healing digits are hidden by particle effects or damage numbers. It would be really awesome to be able to see your healing towards other players via a clearer display. A simple option to increase the text size of your healing would be a very nice, simple touch to remedy this.

Food for thought!

Staff is currently prioritizing autoattack completion over new spells which is awful for the evade and skill-shot abilities.

Pls fix and look at what is constantly causing this to happen after patches.

Pls don’t give me a warning for making this same post over and over again this year.

Please fix the way the staff ques abilities. It is currently prioritizing the completion of the auto-attack cast over newer abilities. This is a huge issue as staff has vital evade and skill-shot abilities that need instant response.

This has broken on several patches since launch, only to be fixed then broken again.
Please, please fix this for the April 18th release.

Please fix the way the staff ques abilities. It is currently prioritizing the completion of the auto-attack cast over new abilities. This is a huge issue as staff has vital evade and skill-shot abilities that need instant response.

This has broken on several patches since launch, only to be fixed then broken again.

Please, please fix this for the April 18th release.

Search and Rescue (the Ranger shout ability) went under a fantastic rework a little while ago, making it a very attractive choice in all game modes as a support tool. However, it is wildly buggy. It suffers from serious terrain issues (some times it fails on flat ground, never mind slight elevation), bizarre self-resurrection problems, issues with your pet running in and out of max range (which isn’t even accurately displayed as it is really based off pet distance not player distance) causing odd teleportation of allies; the list goes on.

Please, PLEASE look into whatever coding is used for this ability because it is frequently unpredictable and frustrating as it is a significant fight changing tool. It feels seriously lame when you choose a skill for its potential to make awesome plays, attempt to use it, only for it to fail and end up being a complete waste of a 36/45s CD.

Here is my latest encounter with the mysterious S&R: https://youtu.be/WC5asCVBE9g

Mike O Brien.4613:

snip We’ll do it.

Mo

Thanks for taking the time to get back to us, Mike. It does really help when developers keep communication ongoing, especially regarding a game mode that is the sole reason many customers play the game (hence the ‘passion’).

1. Separate skill balancing for WvW. This is a HUGE problem atm, with Revenants being optimal in every role due to their superior buff support and massive ranged AOE damage. GW2 is the only MMO I can recall that has AOE attacks as some of the hardest hitting skills on a weapon set, which has lead to huge problems in the meta and certain classes being excluded from it. Target caps and damage dealt need to be re-balanced.

2. Increase Stability stacks on skills in WvW, or revert to the old system (a single stack buff that can only be removed through strip/corruption). If there is no intention to nerf certain abilities such as Dragonhunter LB #5, players need more stability. Right now this ability alone is causing entire zergs to lose 10~ stacks of Stability, as the cages will surround any 5 players hit regardless of whether or not they are personally immune to CC at the time. This results in people running through multiple cages (being hit once by passing through and once by passing out) and can trigger from each individual cage placed. This is a specific example of an ability that goes beyond ‘play making’ and into the realms of absurdly overpowered. Simply put, there is way too much crowd control in the game right now for people to keep up with.

3. Look into the absurd amount of boons being thrown around (excluding stability). It used to be significant to have buffs on you to increase damage done and decrease damage taken. Buffs are now more or less permanent, mostly due to the addition of the Revenant class. This, combined with specialization changes has lead to a very noticeable power creep that has resulted in very irritating situations in WvW (getting 1-shot by a Gunflame or Coalessence of Ruin that wasn’t even aimed at you).

4. Fix terrain issues and skills with poor terrain pathing. Several skills are completely negated by terrain issues, such as blinks (no path to target) and some skills pass through instead of over elevations/inclines or float through the air on declines.

5. Stop hiding behind a veil (no pun intended). Talk openly with your community from the start instead of pretending that you know what’s best for the game mode and assuming that we’ll embrace whatever ‘surprise’ you throw at us. Stop investing massive amounts of development time before you give us access to betas which are, for the most part, past the point of significant alteration (like the new borderlands). Talk with us, discuss ideas with us and shape the game mode into something that you know people want. Hopefully this thread is the start of that process.

Mechanically he’s quite good, but he presses some things unnecessarily and occasionally to his disadvantage (not looking for reflect buffs before using LB #3 for example, but that can happen under pressure).

The thing is… it’s really hard to lose 1v1 with a build like that in WvW, in which winning is the only condition that needs to be met. It is SO forgiving and you can see it carrying him through fights several times. It is ideal in almost every aspect for ‘fair’ 1v1 combat on flat terrain with no obstructions.

As people said, the build doesn’t carry over to other areas of the game such as sPvP. Having a 1v1 in an open space, with no positional requirements and having access to full stat customization is a completely different experience compared to fighting on tightly restricted points, with significant positional requirements and very little customization.

TLDR; pretty good gameplay, OP 1v1 build, too much ego flying around on both sides.

Please, please, PLEASE fix the target tracking on this skill. On a stationary target, at anything but point blank range, a lot of the projectiles will miss their mark. If the target does so much as strafe, even at half range, the vast majority of the projectiles will miss. This is simply not acceptable, and is a huge contributor towards why sword is not currently a popular weapon for berserkers.

Pls.

Chokolata.1870:

SnR I have yet to test it and I am really confused with the 5 man cap. Does it teleport up to 5 people to you but the pet only starts resing 1? or all 5? or teleports 1 and reses 1?

It applies regen to 5 nearby targets and teleports the closest downed ally within 1200 radius towards you and starts the pet rez.

Huge fan of the new shouts. I didn’t like the old Protect Me at all, as it was too similar to SoS. The new version is a very nice, short CD stun break with a handy taunt. The new 50/50 split on Guard is seriously great if you don’t run with glass pets. The new Search and Rescue is beautiful on such a low CD… I cri.

While I don’t agree with a lot of the OP’s over-dramatization, I just wanted to add to HeadCrowned’s point. Roots/seeds becomes ineffective against any target running -33% debilitating condi traits (or slightly less reduction via. food/util). You can walk out of the first pulse.

Even as a non-mesmer, I can totally understand peoples feelings towards this change. This basically makes the well useless. Aegis is NOT a useful buff in real time PvP/WvW, especially with the amount unblockable attacks floating around.

Hilt Bash: This skill still does not hit targets anywhere near its tooltip range. It is supposed to hit targets up to 300 units, but barely manages to make 150.

Belzebu.3912:

I think it is intended, all classes that has a form of transformation (necro’s shroud and lich, warrior/eng berserker form, etc ) are removed if you get another transformation like mesmer/eng moa morph and in our case SotW enlargement.

Yeah, this was my thinking too until I found out that you could use SotW and then CAF and retain the bonuses from SotW.

So, is this on the radar? We’ve had no clarification as to why this issue exists, only speculation.

For those unaware – triggering SotW’s active ability causes you to be kicked out of CAF form, regardless of whether it is triggered by the Enlargement trait or done manually.

We can assume at this point that SotW’s active is also classed as a transformation and so it overwrites the CAF form (in the same way that Moa does). It is, however, possible to use SotW and then enter CAF. This means that it has to be classed as a bug and not ‘working as intended’.

This is a big problem for people trying to add some more stability to their druid builds. It’d be really great to get a dev response for this.

Knighthonor.4061:

I started having trouble in SPvP on my Druid.

Dragon Hunter burst and CC just far outdoes any burst healing I can dish. and the heals get interrupted.

Same for Chronomancer/Mesmer. a simple Poly, or GW, does it all as well.

Reapers are slight trouble when DHs are nearby.

But when every game has DH and Chrono, this is getting tough.

IMO CF and some glyphs should offer up some more stability or something.

and the core trees need some better defensive elements.

Glyph of Unity needs some added elements for survival. Because its not a threat at all to DH’s burst, DD burst, or any of the other high burst specs currently on the meta list.

In both fights you have to use your evades (dodges/wep skills) and SoS invuln tactically to shut down their burst windows. A big mistake people make when fighting these classes is that they try to turtle in CAF. You need to utilize the offensive nature of some CAF skills (Daze/dmg+immob) while topping yourself up, never letting them get the upper hand.

Whilst fighting a DH on point you need to make sure you keep an eye out for Trueshot, ToF and Maw. Trueshot can be easily evaded as the DH has to stop moving and do a fairly obvious animation, and try to save your SoS for the trap bomb.

Whilst fighting a Chrono in any situation you need to make sure that your pet game in strong. Always make sure your pet is sent back in if you have it on passive, or set it to guard when you fight Chronos/Thieves. If you can learn to reliably avoid Mirror Blade then you should be golden. Also, try to save your Lightning Reflexes or SoS for Gravity Well, as it is otherwise very difficult to avoid the damage.

For real. I do my fair share of QQ, but this is actually a very reasonable change.

People are just feeling victimized because we’re constantly getting nerfs to something or other, while numerous other blatantly OP things make it through patch after patch.

Thanks for your support all! I’m reluctant to post this in other sub-forums as they are not directly relevant and so will attract the wrong crowd. I urge you to head to the reddit thread and give it an upvote/comment there if you would like to keep it on the radar.

(https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v4x4h/coalescence_of_ruin_is_sending_destructive/)

Shen Slayer.3058:

Prophet.1584:

so don’t slot druid? wtf…

Then he will get kick…please know your role. You guys are healer only now. Besides from that, expect to get kicked.

If guilds/groups are forcing you into full support then they are really misguided, especially in WvW. Hybrid power/full damage druid is an excellent choice in that game mode.

Despite the fact that ArenaNet have now stated that there will be no more balance passes until early 2016, I am compelled to at least share the thoughts of many dedicated WvW players – and try to explain why exactly this is such a big issue.

Since release, there have always been ‘mandatory’ professions/specs. The GWEN meta was established quite early as each profession showed true value and we all more-or-less accepted it; this sort of thing is inevitable in any ‘competitive’ game, as people will always figure out the most effective way to play. Fast forward 3 years and the Revenant class was introduced with the HoT expansion, promising very strong party support through boon sharing and boon extension. It had a rocky journey through the betas, with developers trying to make the class feel good to play, the result being largely well received by all aspects of the GW2 game mode trinity (PvE/sPvP/WvW). It could grab a fair spot in any game mode because it had the tools necessary to be competitive, which was fantastic… until people discovered just how strong it could be in WvW. Despite having some terrain bugs (as many skills currently do, still) people discovered the unparalleled damage pressure of Coalescence of Ruin (hammer skill #2) and how quickly it could turn a fight, especially if stacked. This is not to say that skill becomes irrelevant, it just becomes less relevant. Even at the top levels of GvG, people have accepted that the team with the most Revenants has a very clear advantage (again, not taking skill into account) and have begun stacking them for that very reason.

Let me just stress this point in its own paragraph:

The team with the most Revenants has an advantage due to one single weapon skill. Not a mechanic, but a weapon skill.

CoR is hands-down the most effective damage ability in WvW/GvG. It has 1200~ range, very high base AOE damage and coefficients, intense trait synergy with damage modifiers/perks, and a short enough cast/animation time that it can’t be dodged effectively in large scale (not to mention texture bugs that cause it to not show at all and LOD trimming which makes it nearly impossible to see coming anyway) – all on a 2s cooldown; 2 whole seconds. It also still bugs occasionally, triggering a double-tag hit. On top of all of this it is not static and can not be reflected. Anyone who is investing in organized WvW play will understand just how important these last two points are as they are crucial aspects of counterplay.

So we have a new king in town, what’s the big deal, right? Well here’s the thing… balance is very delicate in large scale combat. One of the main things keeping GvG style combat competitive was that the main sources of damage were ground targeted, static AOE spells. This meant that a good team could make judgments about when to attack and when to retreat. In order to secure kills, you frequently needed to combine these attacks with crowd control in order to land enough damage to down a target. These abilities were also on long CDs (30-60s~), meaning that there were periods of time during which a team could tactically engage in melee combat without fear of constant, massive AOE counter spikes.

So how have things changed? There is no longer a safe time to make tactical plays. CoR can do all of, if not more damage than these previous damage spikes – all upfront and on a 2s CD. Regardless of what you do, you will be bombarded with (occasionally unblock-able, +50% damage) 6-15k CoR crits every 1 or 2s. Depending on how many Revenants are on the field on either side, this is instant death if you are caught by 1, 2 or 3 (depends on your current and total health) at the same time, or in rapid succession. Several classes can not achieve safe EHP values to survive even one of these (without neutering themselves), as the chances of being at 100% health in a fight are very low and short lived. This has resulted in a worst-case scenario… Rally Wars 2. All you have to do is look at any of the top level guild streams, and you will see that people are going down left and right – the winner being crowned because they finished off downed targets the fastest, rallying all of their downed teammates (provided they got a tag on the target). Granted, this has always been a thing but not to the horrendous degree it is now. It doesn’t matter what you do, there is always a risk that every 2s you will die instantly because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is usually entirely out of your control due to the directional nature of the ability.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why this is so bad for the game mode, and I’m sure everyone has experienced it to varying degrees by now. We know that the hammer doesn’t get any action in PvE and sPvP metas, and it is only in WvW that this is a problem – but it is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. It is worth noting that it has always been the case that certain weapons see more action in specific areas of the game, and right now Hammer is dominating WvW largely due to this ability, but is underused in PvE and sPvP metas. While this is problematic for those who enjoy the hammer and wish to shoe-horn it into other game modes, this is a reality that every class faces. I urge you (devs) to take a very serious look at Coalescence of Ruin during the next three months and consider a solution that will keep the game mode fun and competitive without destroying the weapon set. The Revenant is a fantastic addition to all game modes, and does not need this one over-tuned ability to be viable, especially when it is having such a dramatic effect on a specific part of the community.

In closing, I would like to share with you some of the ideas being thrown around on the related reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v4x4h/coalescence_of_ruin_is_sending_destructive/). I do not claim personal credit for these suggestions, and would like to thank everyone who chimed in on the discussion and contributed various points of interest. I am not personally advocating any of these as concrete solutions, nor am I claiming that all of these should be implemented in bulk, I am simply providing the more reasonable feedback from the community related specifically to WvW.

- Address the traited damage mods on traits such as Cruel Repercussion and the impact they have on CoR. This specific trait alone is a huge problem when combined with CoR in WvW where blocks are frequent, resulting in (un)lucky potshots or completely unpredictable damage bursts. It is currently very easy to stack multiple high +damage mods.

- Switch the damage pulses so that the higher damage is in close range (where it is less likely to do massive amounts of damage) and the damage tails off on targets farther away. This is not a completely alien concept for ranged weapons in GW2 (e.g. Mesmer GS #2, Mirror Blade). This means that you must take a risk to reap the rewards of such a powerful attack instead of sitting back and casually downing back-line with a huge damage pulse that may more may not have been intentional.

- (BUG) Acknowledge and fix the AOE multi-pulse and double-tagging that has been present since beta.

- Increase the CD or energy cost so there is a bigger gap between its use, or doing massive damage spikes comes at a significant resource cost.

- Make CoR reflectable/stoppable by projectile blockers in the same way that some other ground trail attacks are (e.g. staff Elementalist earth #5, Shock Wave). This alone opens up significant counter-play options.

- Give it a much clearer animation/texture so that it is more visible over spell noise and look into how effect LOD prioritizes spells, as running with it off is not an option for many people due to the immense performance cost.

“We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

Did… did I finally manage to travel through time?

Hilarious. The only explanation I have for how these get through QA is that there isn’t any.

No. There are so many painfully obvious problems with this.

Hey all! Patch is out and there doesn’t seem to be any balance changes, only a few little ‘fixes’.

Let’s put our heads together and compile anything that hasn’t been listed so we’re all on the same page (bugs and all)!

Your ‘Enlargement’ trait was triggered by dropping below 50%. Any active use of SotW will kick you out of CAF for no real reason. Unfortunately, it is a bug that has been in the game since the BWE.

Staff abilities have gone back to the old que system, prioritizing the auto-attack over all newly used abilities.

Please fix this again, as it makes the weapon horrible to use tactically if you are also trying to do any damage with it.

Daharahj.1325:

Unnacceptable. Their silence has already made me stop playing. snip

I feel you, homay. I’m on an indefinite break until they start making some serious fixes and balance changes.

10/10 would hire to clean up my messes

We are absolutely still in BETA. I think we’re looking at 1-2 months before Druid becomes stable (as in not balanced, just in a place that they feel they can leave it).

Adding a ‘heal’ focused spec to the game was a huge mistake. GW2 is not equipped to deal with it and so they have created a half-baked trinity (which they refuse to acknowledge) to make PvE raids work. The repercussions of this are being felt by all aspects of community, as they struggle to balance a healing class in a game that previously relied mostly on self-sufficiency.

Instead of looking at the deeper issues, they are choosing to test band-aid solutions in a LIVE environment, which basically just makes the community really, really unhappy.

Seriously ANet, please stop winging it on your own; it clearly is not working and you are angering a lot of people who will inevitably vote with their wallets.

At this point I think it’s fairly obvious that they do whatever they want and do not consult the community unless there is absolute outrage (Smokescale, AF degen OOC).

Substance E.4852:

Scrimschaw.5784:

While I would like to think that Druid wasn’t nerfed BECAUSE of its strong place in PvP, (and the many PvP forum complaints) it most likely was. It was too strong of a bunker, and Arenanet is actively nerfing bunker builds right now because they are less exciting for viewers to watch. I prefer playing a bunker in PvP (old Bunker Guard here), but as a whole, PvPers and viewers seem to want fast, exciting action and not skillful support/defense.

2 Simple silver bullet solution to the problem:

A: Change Celestial Avatar heals so they either no longer affect the caster or severely reduce their heals.

B: Create a massive penalty to being in CA mode such as taking double damage or double duration of hard CC’s.

Either would effectively remove the concept of a solo bunker while preserving the team heals aspect of the class. These would probably need to be pvp only effects to preserve the viability of Druids in raids but it would work.

Just in case this isn’t a troll post, I’m sorry, but it really wouldn’t work. Either of those changes would completely destroy Druid against even vaguely coordinated teams.

I’m okay with this change ONLY if we become able to enter CAF at any point in the AF. It took just over 1 minute to charge enough AF on a single dummy target, spamming staff >_<.

The poorly chosen requirements that need to be met are astounding…

- You can only generate AF in combat.
- You must heal yourself/targets lower than 100% with inconsequential heals (aside from Staff water combo) to generate the AF necessary to actual heal them effectively.
- You must have 100% AF charged in order to use CAF.
- Your regen must be the one currently healing a target in order to gain AF (if someone else puts regen on a target after you then you have to wait for their duration to run out and for yours to kick back in).

This means in order to be effective people need to first take damage (healing is supposed to be reactive, so this is ridiculous) or you need to make sure you’re taking some damage to give you a better chance at being able to support your allies in their time of need. You need to ask your group to not run anything that gives regen (a problem for tempests especially) so that you can generate enough AF to use CAF when it is needed.

This is a train wreck. Yes, it will still work, but in the most irritating, awkward way I currently care to imagine.

I have no words for this one.

I’m sure this is not necessarily any particular individuals fault, but we really need better communication between the ANet team and whoever puts out the patch notes, resulting in better information being provided to the community.

This is the second patch in a row where certain things have been changed significantly and the ranger community has been left largely in the dark, scrambling to compile all of the things that have been altered and wondering if something is unintended or not.

I’m sure there are many people in the same boat, basically checking every core mechanic to see what hasn’t been put in the patch notes ‘this time’. I’m a pretty chill dude, yet I get anxious every time there’s a patch because I actually don’t know how it affects my class until the community comes to the rescue. Trying to not be overly dramatic, but it’s getting quite annoying.

Pls :’(

If you really wanna cheese it, or you don’t wanna run any of those traits/skills then mango pie, rejuv boosters and the relatively useless dolyak runes all work (the former 2 only being available in PvE/WvW)

Morwath.9817:

aB EXT.1287:

Regen (on anyone you put it on) now charges AF. If you use WHaO /w BM trait it’s a full bar for 1 heal if you catch 1/2 allies with it.

or Healing Spring, but HS has nearly twice as long CD as traited WHaO.

Fern Hound new meta

Regen (on anyone you put it on) now charges AF. If you use WHaO /w BM trait it’s a full bar for 1 heal if you catch 1/2 allies with it.

OGDeadHead.8326:

aB EXT.1287:

This is my biggest issue. They probably wanted to make Staff less important by removing its ability to generate AF out of combat, but all they have done is made TU even more crucial.

Depending on build, AF is not an issue now. It charges up so fast, with a bit of regen and possibly other sources, the only thing you’ll be waiting for is the 10 second cd. Enjoy it while it lasts. Druid Clarity and Celestial Shadow says hi…

In combat it is fine, yeah. I was referring specifically to OOC, not sure if that was clear enough.

Arguably, using the staff to generate AF OOC was an exploit, so that much is understandable. However, due to the fact that TU still generates superior amounts of AF… I feel even more inclined to use it to make sure I always have CAF ready for every fight.

EDIT: Just tested and it turns out you now gain AF from every regen tick, including regen you put on other players. It’s almost an instant AF bar. SoTW also generates AF constantly.

This is my biggest issue. They probably wanted to make Staff less important by removing its ability to generate AF out of combat, but all they have done is made TU even more crucial.

Wondrouswall.7169:

They probably added it to hinder AF generation while OOC.

This. As if we weren’t having enough trouble getting into CAF though >.<…

Bast Bow.2958:

Ranger
Solar Beam: This skill can no longer be activated without a target.

I would be okay with this IF we could target allies. This is going to be annoying.

+1

Having a UI buff icon like Clarion Bond would be a great QoL change, especially in WvW/group fights. I don’t think having a countdown timer is necessary, it would just be nice to know when it’s ready. As has already been said, your internal clock can get messed up when the trait procs on targets you didn’t CC yourself.

Making UA cleave would make it ludicrously overpowered in PvP environments, unfortunately.

CoR is absolutely not fine in its current state. Yes, it has some elevation issues and can be dodged, but there are only so many times you can dodge an attack on a 2s CD, especially with the popularity of Sword as a secondary weapon which you need to save defensive abilities for.

I had what would have been a fantastic duel against a skilled Revenant the other day in WvW. We were both playing tactically, successfully dodging/mitigating each others big attacks… until I ran out of dodges/evades 10s in and ate an 11k unblockable CoR. Not cool :’(.

Edit: Seeing references to Rapid Fire here, which is interesting. Let’s keep in mind that Rapid Fire has a long cast duration (allowing you to avoid/mitigate a considerable amount of the damage) and can be reflected/blocked by special fields/auras. While CoR doesn’t hit targets at max range instantly, it does not lock you into a long cast and can not be mitigated/punished in the same way. Once it hits it instantly does the full damage of the attack depending on which pulse tags the target. The only thing RF has going for it at this point in the game is extra range.