Guild Wars 2

I’d rather have them rework astral force generation (seems like they’ll do) and change shortbow auto-attack by removing that stupid positionment condition. If you’re afraid of the bleed stacking too quick, you can always make the weapon slower (while increasing raw damages accordingly) or making it a 2-3 chain attack with normal bleed at the end.

Rizo.9534:

Why you all think, that there are no spot for ranger in raids instead of DruidHealer?
Do you even know what DPS can output sinister ranger???
After pet Buff these will be much more than 20k dps in raid.
Do you know why Sinister ranger was not the part of Meta?
Because all encounters last for 12-30sec, and sinister Ranger start shine only after 10-14sec of battle. And last part, why sinister Ranger not the art of meta, because Sinister gear scale really bad with IcoBow and after iceBow was nerfed, SinisterRanger can become part of New Meta in HoT.

Sinister ranger is good if your target doesn’t move (Bonfire + Fire Trap). But you can now use shortbow efficiently and put down spirits (frost and sun) for more damages. And your pet won’t die as well.
Also Druid traitline could replace the BM one, Ancient Seed is a nice addition to condi. We’ll have to wait for what we’ll get at release and do some maths (since pet doesn’t take damages in raid, BM might might still be the best option).

I hope they’ll introduce more stat combos. I’d really like some Prec/Condi/H.Power.

I simply hope that they either rework Astral Force generation so that staff is not 100% needed or leave the Lifesteal+Lingering Light combo as it is.

Tomiyou.3790:

That is concerning, 10 ppl and not single elementalist in any raid group?? Yup, Anet, your idea of balance has to be tweaked it seems. I also don’t see a reason to take thief in raids, so get on that, the fact that 2 classes completely fall out is pretty bad.
Edit: Also I just saw a reddit thread of the people that first beat the Vale Guardian. 4 of them were in condi build, others full zerker and still managed to do it in 3 tries !!! (they are very good players tho) The fact that ele, necro, thief, ranger and guardian weren’t used tells a lot. Tho, I don’t see a reason not to pick guardians, but even their most hyped specs (reaper and druid) didn’t see play. In fact, druid wasn’t even needed, even tho they said that the raid would need soft trinity like this.

I’d like to see that because every post I saw had at least one Druid.

On topic: I had the exact same discussion with my guild today, we can’t find how Elementalists could fit into raids and even Guardians….

Tried a Magi’s condi build in raids using SB and A/T. With Vampiric Aura from necro and Lingering Light you can refill Astral Force quickly enough to have it available when needed.

A few things I didn’t like when healing:
Ancient Seed and Cosmic Ray are hard to land efficiently. Cosmic Ray especially could benefit from a larger circle (and some damage).
If you don’t have any form of lifesteal you’re pretty much forced to play on staff, meaning that you forfeit damages for heal. Druid could benefit quite a bit from damages here and there.
We’ll see in the future but I wonder which class could replace a Druid for the healing part. Druids can pretty much burst heal on demand, something I can’t really say from other classes.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Rutee.1058:

Er, aren’t you confusing ‘meta’ with ‘strong’? Maybe the NA servers are different, maybe I’m not looking often enough, but the meta seems unchanged from Guards, Eles, and Wars. I’ve not seen people ask for Rangers. I believe you when you say they’re good (I reserve such judgements for parses and similar, personally), but that doesn’t make them the meta, because the meta is determined by the community.

I’ve seen several groups (not many but still) ask directly for Frost Spotter rangers.

And the class has been recognized as MetaZerk by the community by metabattle (where, of course, the meta comes from) for the past few weeks even though we haven’t really been directly buffed in DPS ever since Trait Changes.

Plus, all the maths and experience say that Rangers provide better DPS than a warrior, can fill the party with perma fury and swiftness, 11 permanent might, and high amount of vulnerability.

The reason why people believe Rangers are not in meta is because people (rangers) suck. 9 out of 10 rangers you see are horrible. That’s just plain statistics. Dunno if you guyz have better luck but I don’t.
But that is nothing but human factor. A skilled Ranger is better contribution for the party than any other DPS fill-in (unless you need utility like skips or heavy reflects).
A bad ranger, on the other hand, is the worst nightmare you can probably get. That’s why people do not risk for the trade-off is not worth.

I’d like to see those maths, it may have been true before but I’m not sure that’s still the case after the traitlines update (from what I gathered, ranger is in 5th place).

Healing is not really needed in current PvE content so yeah druid will be as useful as ranger for current content (Druid traitline can replace BM for condi builds).
We have yet to see anything about fractal 50+ and raids. Healing might be needed, support might be needed even more, melee might be impossible most of the time (ranged meta doesn’t even exist).
Druid was probably created specifically for this content we can’t try so we can only gives feedback for PvP/WvW and open world PvE.

Adding a bit of damages to all skills would be a good start, would help in groups at least.

Compiled a bit of info regarding astral force generation, see here

Celestial form:
Instant cast, has no ICD, lasts for 20s and reset your astral force once you get out of the form. Triggers weapon swap traits and sigils when you enter and exit it.

Astral force:
As you saw in the description, 2.5% generation per heal, 0.25% per hit, no ICD
It takes arround 3min25s of auto-attacks with shortbow to get a full bar
Probably too long as well with staff if it doesn’t heal anyone
8-9s with Staff auto if you heal 1 person (pet works), even faster with more people and wisp.

Healings that generate Astral Force, it works at full hp:
Direct heal
Lifesteal runes/sigils/necroVA (shortbow auto + necro’s Vampiric Aura = ~20s to refill the bar)
Water Spirit when it proc, only yours
Rezzing downed people
Monk Runes, Sigil of Water, Sigil of Renewal

What doesn’t generate Astral Force:
Regeneration
Dolyak Runes and health regen food
Signet of the Wild
Natural Healing trait (natural regen on pet)
Invigorating Bond (pet heals with F2)

Still need testing:
Lifesteal Food , finishers, necro’s Signet of Vampirism, thief’s venom leech (most likely works)
Moa’s healing (probably doesn’t work)
Runes and Sigils I didn’t mention above (excluding lifesteal ones)

Random things:
Life Vicariously (summon Cosmic Wisp): Trigger from any of the heals that generate Astral Force, meaning that you can passively heal your group as long as you can lifesteal.
Natural Healing: Same as Life Vicarously
Troll Unguent: 2.5% per tick + 5% (2.5% + 2.5% with Life Vicariously) per tick if your pet is alive. Total is 75%.

Kidel.2057:

Roy said that Druid is burst healing and Ventari is sustained, how when Celestial Avatar has no cooldown and can be loaded in less then 3 seconds? Druid makes healer Rev/Ele/Guardian something to laugh at. They’ll never be meta.

LegallyBinding.4937:

arkealia.2713:

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

This x100.

We really need some health bars!

Party UI and Squad UI (trololol) has bars. However Colin hates bars and so do I. You can just healspam non stop on Druid and if you are experienced you know when and where it’s needed.
Seripusly you can stay in cele avatar all the time and just spam everything. That skill has no cd and takes 3s to fully load.

If you don’t like bars, they can obviously make an option so you can toggle/disable it.

I really wish we could see allies HP without having to mouse over them, it would help a lot.

Gilgalas.7860:

I found an error: Staff5 (Natural Convergence): 0.025. Staff5 in normal formal is:
Staff5 (Sublime Conversion): 0.2

Fixed the name, but I’m still finding 2.5% (162 to 192 with +1200h.power).

Gwaihir.1745:

The Druid needs more damage output abilities, not op numbers but the solar beam should cause a 250 radius ape per pulse around the target.

Without some sort of way to tag mobs, people will rarely use Druid in open world after a while, unless it’s intended…. So yeah, damages are needed, even if not amazing.

For those who don’t want to do the testing and need some accurate values:
Healing Power Scaling:

Staff1 (Solar Beam): 0.02
Staff2 (Astral Wisp): 0.05
Staff3 (Ancestral Grace): 1.00
Staff5 (Sublime Conversion): 0.025

CF1 (Cosmic Ray): 0.2
CF2 (Seed of Life): 0.5
CF3 (Lunar Impact): 0.5
CF4 (Rejuvenating Tides): 0.15

Glyph of Rejuvenation (both effects): 1.00
Glyph of Rejuvenation in CF (both effects): 1.00
Glyph of Alignment (in CF): 1.00
Glyph of Unity (in CF): 0.05

Life Vicariously: 0.01
Cultivated Synergy: 0.2
Lingering Light => Cosmic Wisp (same as staff2): 0.05
Verdant Etching => Seed of Life (same as CF2): 0.5

Feel free to correct if I’m wrong.

I slotted them and now I can’t use any pet at all, the dream came true !!! (and it’s annnoying….).

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The underlying system of combat is built around area attacks. This is why the majority of base weapon attacks strike multiple targets in the affected area, unlike other games which strike one target – the one you have selected. Our system makes things like positioning and facing far more important and engaging; this also means that the concept of ‘AoE’ is not as easy to distinguish and thus handle in different ways.

That said, we are currently looking at systemic ways to help with player pet and minion survivability.

There’s a mistlock instability that reduce damages on untargeted foes. This could be a start and the technology exists.

Shadelang.3012:

I feel spirits should really be fleshed out to be our party support option. Frost/Sun/Earth/and even air spirits are actually quite decent at increasing party dps and survivability now. They just need to be shifted so that there capable of functioning in large scale engagements without being instantly smashed by accidental aoe or left behind by gw2s naturally fast paced combat.
But that should be in another topic.

I think its fine if shouts are a bit selfish on the ranger. I feel there meant to be about the bond between the ranger and the pet. Not the pet and random busybody # 3159.

Of course my perspective is colored from years of playing pet classes. Generally pet classes in other games assist allies by having a prescence in places players can’t go. Which is a role shouts can fulfill. They just aren’t given the tools they need yet.

Someone suggested that spirits could be turned to wisps and it looked like a good idea. Something like a trait turning spirits into wisp, greatly reducing the effective range (people would need to be close to the ranger to get the Xs buff) in exchange for mobility/invincibility.

anduriell.6280:

Actually do we know how often can we cast Avatar state? and how long will it last?

Anyway: Increase the CD to 6 seconds decrease the Daze to 2 seconds.
4 seconds daze in 6 seconds Cd i think is balanced.

Seems like it has a 10s CD. I’m gonna test all forms of healing to see what regens the celestial energy, in theory Troll Unguent should regen 75% (2.5% x 10 for you + 10 for pet + 10 for Life Vicarously if pet is considered an ally) of that bar.

I used search and rescue quite a bit when you could still rez dead people (not downed, dead). Since the changes I have yet to use it, same with healing spring.

The very fact that it made it into the game without restriction is like screaming “we don’t play ranger so we didn’t expect this”.

Also when will we get food, potions, sigils, runes and party buffs (when in full group = banners, spotter…) affecting the pet as well?

RevanCorana.8942:

Anyone arguing HaO is OP because you can theorically have about 50% quickness uptime is wrong. (at least until superspeed becomes a boon)
Because whatever amount of quickness you have, if you need to pass on the taunt it’s not worth it.
And for PVE Zephyr Speed works in a way that leaves very little synergy for boon stacking on pet because of rotational pet swap meaning you won’t get the 25 might.

Yea people (salty eles duh) should think just a little bit before crying.

That’s it, while it looks good on paper most applications are probably undoable in real combat situations except eventually in PvE (rangers needed a bit of help for dungeons). I would at least wait for constructive feedback with the Druid spec before claiming it’s OP.

Kain Francois.4328:

Keep in mind this puts your Heal on cooldown. It’s incredibly fragile.

Shouldn’t be much of a problem on Druid if it lasts till it’s out.

Could you move the timer to a bit earlier in the morning? All of europe will get the reset too late to be able to start anything on Monday night expect eventually for those at the most western part.

Spartyr.6795:

I thought the Druid overall was pretty cool. I really liked the 1200 yard mist teleport skill with the blast finisher. I thought the new Celestial Avatar mechanic was fine. Druid thematically fits the ranger class so even if the mechanic is different, I don’t see a problem with that.

My biggest concern is that Druid healing won’t have a role. I accept and understand that you may not want to choose Druid for soloing world content, but in PvP or Raids…if healing doesn’t play a big role there, then I’m not sure what else Druid brings.

In PvP it’d be nice, but do you want to sacrifice one person on a 5 man team to just do team support? I’m just not convinced yet that this will be the case.

So…either I guess I’d like to see Druid more diversified or to please explain a little more about how content is changing so that healing and mitigation will play a more active role.

Thanks!

You probably didn’t look enough at those CC and immobilize options.

xev.9476:

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

“Beastly Warden, the taunt from it can now be evaded or blocked.”

Might be in tomorrow’s patch

The class looks very good skillwise/traitwise, Irenio really did a good job on this as well as Scrapper, but I have a few concerns:
-With the amount of support being added to the game over many specializations, wouldn’t it be about time to allow more ways of tagging mobs? Curently you absolutely have to do damages to get credit for loots and not even all classes can do it with the same efficiency. Allowing credits for supporting those who do damages would be a great addition.
-Celestial Avatar didn’t make much sense for Druids to me (and a lot of people it seems). I know that celestial bodies are part of nature but it doesn’t really fit the basic vision everyone has of druids, let alone tyria druids.
-Also a few animations feel out of place, especially the way the Druid hold a staff like a melee weapon (same as daredevil or revenant). We’ll develop more about this after next BWE.
-The new pets look awesome but since you added an evade componant to F2 skills for smokescale and fire wyvern (which will be great for boss fights and dungeons), I fear that core rangers will feel nerfed just by not owning HoT. One core pet (or even a new core pet) could also benefit from this.

That’s assuming you can still melee bosses 100% of the time while stacking might and applying vulnerability.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

This is what line casting does for a skill. Ruin a skill because 5% take advantage of a glitch they were too lazy to fix.

Or maybe they wanted to prevent a 5 ele requirement for raids just because of icebow?

Imagine running this with a lockdown Mesmer or Scrapper…

As someone said earlier in another thread, the animations feel like the class was rushed and giving some shroud with a bit of twilight texture effect was probably the only thing they had enough time to make hence “Celestial Avatar” “Astral Form” “Super Power Ranger”
Also there are those on the front page:

Welcome, friends, to the reveal of the ranger elite specialization, the druid! As a longtime ally of nature, the ranger can now channel the strength of Tyria itself after tapping into the primal forces of the Maguuma jungle.

And Closer to the Stars which is a direct reference to the Canthan version of the Ascension (Weh no Su).

Let’s hope there’s an actual tie in the jungle.

Smokescale and fire wyvern also comes with evade skills which is a great addition while making core pets less desirable at the same time….

cafard.8953:

Bran.7425:

Also see if the fernhound’s skill Regenerate (the F2) counts toward the refill.

And the Moa healing shouts.

Overall, anything coming from the pet (there’s also heal on F2 with trait)

A few things to test in next BWE:
Regeneration
Signet of the Wild
Natural Healing trait in BM line
Lifesteal runes/sigils/food
Lifesteal with a necro
Health regen food/runes
Water Spirit
Troll Unguent
Healing coming from the pet (Moa, Fern Hound, etc…)
And things I’m probably forgetting

Depending on what works, there is potentital for the gauge to fill very fast.
Troll Unguent (10 ticks on you + pet)+ Live Vicariously (10 ticks on you) might be 75% refill….

Mcrocha.3891:

The celestial bodies are the reason that we have things like solstices, equinoxes, seasons etc. Throughout human history the location and alignment of the stars has played a huge role in how we both view and experience nature. On a smaller scale think about how much the Earth changes with the location of the sun and moon in relation to the Earth.

In tyrian lore I’m not sure how it fits and in human lore, celestial bodies are not the first that come to mind when I hear “Druid”.

I still can’t find at all the tie between druid and celestial avatar. And it’s even more true after reading the description on the front page:
“Welcome, friends, to the reveal of the ranger elite specialization, the druid! As a longtime ally of nature, the ranger can now channel the strength of Tyria itself after tapping into the primal forces of the Maguuma jungle.”.

We’ll have one BWE to give feedback on this

Was probably needed to avoid the “must have 5 eles” on raids.

Giving evade frames to F2 skills was a great addition, I can see smokescale becoming meta in dungeons (and those damages…).

Ventari has a 20s projectile block.

We already had Geesus but this one is way above °°

Makes sense since now people can bot for free and this could be used to transfer money. Hopefully I haven’t encountered any bot yet.

For a start they could open the last beta to everyone.

Nothing much was said about rewards except that we’ll be able to build legendary armor precursors with raids.
Will raid rewards be time-gated? weekly? daily?

Cynz.9437:

oh btw from what i understand the guy responsible for thief spec was also responsible for tempest and dragonhunter…. you can imagine how crappy thief spec will be

Dragonhunter and Tempest offer different gameplays whereas Berserker, Reaper and Chronomancer look like straight upgrades.
So we can expect something that will play differently instead of an upgrade.

I really hope Robert is working on Druid as well, so far Reaper Chronomancer and Berserker look amazing.

Zypher.7609:

People came on the forums everyday posting about how the game needs an expansion. Posting about how they are quiting because there is no expansion. How the game is horrible without an expansion. This is what happens when games get expansions, there is a large gap between releases. LS3 + two week updates will most likely pick up once the expansion is released, but there may even be a gap between those. If we would have went without an expansion they could have released all of “stuff” in an expansion just in two week intervals. Rather then developing and testing large additions to the game they moderately add in small new features. I do not understand why people could not see that you will get all of the same stuff as an expansion it just happens slowly rather than all at once.

This is why I was against the expansion method, but a large portion of the forum base was for it. So now we wait months for this to come out, we could have already been on LS3 with parts of VB and some specializations released. Just take a break from the game and come back when the expansion comes out.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect it would take that long to get an expansion and that Anet would allocate all their people to it (except for the gemstore team), bringing no further content for nearly one year.

What if overload recharged all weapon skills in the current attunement?

I’ll relink what I posted on Reddit:
Guild Wars 2 Ready Up – Episode 3

I’ll add one more question to that list, does legend swap still trigger weapon’s sigils?