Guild Wars 2

I am getting really tired of seeing the comments of posters who think this resource is meant to be like warrior adrenaline.

Just because it was given decay doesn’t mean it is the same. It’s meant to be like death shroud. It’s basically the “healing form necromancer” and should work like that.

mistsim.2748:

Irenio has done some amazing work for the prof lately. the druid was really well designed, but needs a few more tweaks. he basically inherited a pile of poop of a profession that had no feel or direction to it. half of our utilities and weapons need to be redesigned from scratch more or less. the druid was a great step in the right direction.

Well, the problem is that all the signs for positive change were there…..and instead countless backwards steps were taken. Making the Astral Force decay out of combat, for example, was unexpected and disastrous.

People felt that the druid was ok, but unrefined. Now it is simply non-functional. It doesn’t heal well anymore and…..that was all it was ever good at anyhow. It really is in the situation of being good at nothing.

Its upsetting that it should actually have gotten worse after the single feedback session when it was already pretty rough as it was.

I haven’t been seeing many elite classes played, due to the heavy gating. I tried to get a functional dragonhunter and it was just too punishing, so went back to my ranger and just finished the main story on it.

With elite classes this rare, druids are going to be non-existent. This is doubly the case as the only people who liked druid are themselves turning away from it because its healing was made super gated and unreliable.

If its not good as a healer, then it really isn’t good at anything. With the way heart of thorns is, I needed heavy and constant firepower to get through the maps and story….druid traits would just have been a massive liability – though as it was I only unlocked half of them anyway.

Well, I, for one, levelled a guardian in the hope that dragonhunter was the ranged, archery based class I had hoped the ranger would become.

Having seen that the druid has been given new limitations like decay similar to warrior adrenaline, on its class form, I am feeling that I made the right choice.

It isn’t the choice I wanted to make though.

mistsim.2748:

chronometria.3708:

Druid came out in really bad shape.

no it didn’t, lol.

If you feel that, then by all means quote the sentence I wrote after the one you quoted and argue why you feel those things I mentioned are not the case.

Druid came out in really bad shape. Heavily reliant on one weapon, lacking in dps, buffs, and ability to protect itself from lockdown and spikes, poorly synergising with both pets and all other existing ranger specs.

This should be a priority and involving us should be a priority. We should know what is being done to fix all this, because at the moment, the druid just isn’t viable and is more like some sort of strange, poorly built class all of its own with one spec.

Very disappointing.

Official proof that melee staff is already forgotten.

Chokolata.1870:

Depends. The Ranger will probably be the better pick for speed runs in old dungeons.

Its like they heard you, considering they just killed dungeons.

Its a sad fact of the game that people were doing repetitive dungeon paths, over and over, for three years, because, frankly, it gave them some form of income.

We are now at the stage where they have moved from shutting down farms into just shutting down even the miserable cash grinds that the game offers.

Which is sad as trading post flippers are going to be rolling in money on a scale that dungeon runners could only dream of.

I`m really surprised at the way this is being done. It’s bad enough that dungeons were becoming obsolete, but to add a disincentive is tantamount to shutting them down.

I guess once they are empty enough, they will remove them entirely.

It is usually the case that the dye packs throw in older, pointless dyes into their random selection, meaning you could spend real money and end up with something that is basically worthless.

If they have changed that so that it always gives a special dye and that they have an integral rarity, then I think that would be great.

If they have kept the old system and just changed the way the newer dyes are picked out in it, then that would be a disaster. Lets hope its the more positive change.

xarallei.4279:

I get the feeling that most of the people hyped for druid are pvpers. Marks is certainly NOT useless in pve. If you pve then there is much less to be hyped about. Especially if you want to be full dps. Irenio out right said if you want to be full dps you don’t take druid. Period. It’s not really meant for that.

I don’t think anyone wants “full” dps from it, just the possibility to do decent damage if specced for it, with some side healing. No healer spot should handicap the party to the extent that they are effectively losing a whole player’s worth of damage.

A healer elite should allow for “combat medic” play, whereby a dps character can switch into it for some support heals while primarily spending time dealing damage and getting stuck into the fight. Even a guardian can spec to break heads and still be a strong credit to their team via heals and boons.

Thankyou Ragnar and Ucasami for your feedback. I must admit, its a strange situation that the ranger and guardian have crossed over like this. Doubtless we both have found things in the other elite spec that we would enjoy having. If only the elite specs could be chosen regardless of the core class, but I guess that would have some balance issues.

I suppose it is easier to feel that the “grass is greener” on the other side, but Ragnar is right, I would be losing some things as well as gaining some. I guess I shall stick to ranger for now and will see how things pan out with druids, especially as while I may not like the heals so much, I do like the mobility that druid gives and I would definitely lose some mobility with dragonhunter.

I shall just have to regard dragonhunters as my more flashy equals!

That’s true. A lot of things depend on the next iteration of the druid also. I like the mobility the druid offers, but the dragonhunter talents are pretty awesome – a longbow with built in knockback is a very appealing idea.

Now that the I know about the druid, I`m left with a ranger character that is nice, but has only the bolt on option of some healing support. I`ve been scanning over the traits and abilities of the dragonhunter and initially I like what I see – for a WvW ranged character, lots of knockback and some interesting, yet damaging longbow abilities seem good.

I never really liked Guardian, because I much prefer to be a ranged fighter, so it would seem that things have changed to make the class a good one to roll and try.

Is it just me or are we at the stage where dragonhunter is a better and more interesting longbow user than the ranger? Is it actually possible to toss out most of the “guardian” aspects of the dragonhunter and to focus around the archery?

The elite specs should be able to work with several playstyles, with the talents tailoring them to whatever style your character works best with. The necro reaper, for example, can work for a condition based style, or a power based one, or even a hybrid of the two, allowing all sorts of necromancers to pick it up without having to change their specs too much.

The Druid is apparently only good for people who want to heal and heal super well. People simply want it to offer build diversity, so that people who are primarily dps can take it and, say, concentrate on the control aspect rather than the healing one. Or heck, give it an ability to do a little healing whenever it does damage and people would probably be ok with that.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Sandzibar.5134:

Eh? So We’re being forced into specific gear sets (healing) inorder to do ok healing, and thus sacrificing even more damage – if not CA form becomes extremely lacklustre – as heal is almost all it can do..

I hope there are some compensation tweaks of an offensive nature coming our way too so we can compete with rev/reaper/chrono and scrapper. So far the changes coming from Irenio sound very “Roy” influenced.

edit: probably just paranoid though right?

no its just a General saying if you want to Heal effectively you have to Sacrifice some Damage by taking atleast 500-700 healing power. i really don’t want onther Full party of zerker only groups that would be very boring seeing Zerkers Healing better than someone thats traded points for extra healing power.

its not a roy thing at all , right now Anet don’t want Full teams of Zerker gear groups clearing Raids , its ment to challenge people into Taking More than the Bare minimum healing and support , so i can see the Difficulty of the raid going back to BwE2 levels.

The problem is that the druid already sacrifices damage. This change is basically saying “your elite spec requires that you wear heal armour…otherwise it just doesn’t work” and that’s not fair.

When the druid came out of the gate, there was a big fuss made of it. It’s arrival supposedly hailed the end of the “Beserk Meta” and the need to prioritise damage over all other features of a character or party. That’s a very big deal – perhaps the biggest deal of the entire expansion, if such a change is to really happen.

I play several classes, including necro and ranger. I watched the development of the Reaper with great interest and followed the many issues it had, from the first time we saw it, to the current iteration we have in the beta now. A poster on these forums described the difference between early and current reaper as the different between night and day – which I feel was a perfect way to put it, considering the many changes the reaper underwent, based on intense and focused feedback from the necro community.

Now I`m looking at the druid and I see a repeat of this, but that’s not the point I want to make. The angle I am going with is that Arenanet cannot afford to have the druid in this state. Its different to the reaper, or any other class, this time they made an elite spec that was supposed to change the very way the game was played. The ranger community was issued with an incredibly heavy burden and that was to sacrifice their current class and playstyle for the good of the community and the game itself. Of all the classes, theirs was the least ready and capable of meeting this expectation and thus arenenet should have been prepared to go above and beyond in helping them to do so.

With no further test weekends and with the druid in such an inadequate state, I just do not feel this is what is taking place. The game has been booked for a heart transplant and in the final hours of its lifesaving operation, the overworked, underpaid animal doctor has been called in and given a bargain basement cutlery set with which to do the deed. The prognosis is not favourable, in these conditions.

So I say unto arenanet – if you do not go to some extreme lengths to fix the druid and to make up for the lost time – the beserker meta is going to wipe out your new raids and leave you looking all kinds of bad. Extra effort is needed, extra testing time must be arranged and communication needs to a whole lot better towards the ranger community. They will only be your saviours if you carry out your side of the bargain and give them the tools and consideration they need.

A lot of this depended on how the druid worked when it was revealed. Unfortunately, the druid simply doesn’t work and instead gives roughly the healing of the ele or revenant, at the cost of removing one damage dealer from the party.

It doesn’t do damage, so surely it should heal really well….and it doesn’t even manage that.

I`ll be going with my usual longbow build, so LB/Staff for me. As a power ranger, the third traitline was already weak, so it offers me a significant alternative playstyle that will be very hand in wvw especially. It turns me into a sort of combat medic, I guess.

Thankyou for the great responses so far. It’s interesting to see the variety of rangers people are clearly playing and it seems we are all at the stage of thinking – “It seems ok, but how can I make this work with what I already do”.

To a certain extent, I think this illustrates how unexpected the druid was and how non-synergetic it is with the usual ranger playstyle……whatever that happens to be for the individual player.

It will be very interesting to see the feedback from the coming beta weekend.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Feedback:

The Druid may be a strong healer, but he has no other functionality. If you spec for the Druid, you have to ge healer or go home. Limited synergy with the core Ranger, almost no synergy with the pet.

I second this. I would like more synergy with the dps side, namely longbow and extreme range.

I never use my off-hand and just stick with my longbow. So, druid means I can get rid of my weakest traitline and bolt on some healing as an off-spec. That works for me, though I would like it if I got a bit more in the traitline that was useful for my dps side. I`m not sure how much I can make the “ancient seed” actually work, but I guess that in WvW there is going to be a lot of daze, stun and such thrown around, so it will trigger now and then.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

put bluntly, we have no idea whether healing power will be useful or not yet.

It’s also worth pointing out that just because you play a druid doesn’t mean you have to heal, as far as we understand it so far. some of the traits and skills seems like they’d synergize well with builds we already have available to us.

That being said, I’m planning on converting my soldiers set to clerics, if BWE3 proves that to be a good decision. I’ve always been a healer at heart

I was thinking, would it be better to go down a vitality/ toughness kind of route then? With an aim towards staying alive while dishing the heals out? Perhaps we should be building for our own survival rather than concentrating on keeping others alive primarily. After all, we cant heal when we are ourselves taken out.

I`m currently longbow pretty much all the time. I`m going to toss out the skirmish line of traits and pick up the druid one….I never weapon change anyway and my only regret will be losing a little bleed and spotter.

I was looking at Zealots gear and thinking – with almost every ability of the druid having some kind of healing, do I actually need to bother with heal stats at all? Perhaps I can simply rely on quantity over quality.

It strikes me that +heal is only useful on the current type of healers, where their healing ability is minimal and requires a boost. The druid, if specced for +heal, is like to run into the problem of “overheal”, whereby the party does not have enough vitality to make truly massive heals worth the bother.

The way I`m looking at it, I can stat my ranger in its current manner and simply bolt on the staff and it should be sufficient. That way I can apply reasonable ranged dps, as the staff does seem to be quite a damage dealing weapon, albeit via pulse attacks.

So, before you go out and buy a potentially expensive set of new gear, I would say to consider just how much of the awesome healing can actually be applied to those meagre health pools the party actually has. Maybe we are actually better off boosting the dps side as the healing side is already greater than it needs to be.

All thoughts welcome.

I`m disappointed with the lack of synergy with the rest of the class. I can accept having a healing option, but I want something there which opens up new options for using the longbow as ranged dps.

Its odd, as I could take the healing trait line of any other class and still find something for a dps in some way. As a necro I could take the minion traitline and even if I didn’t use minions, I could still justify it for its toughness/ defence options.

Where is the option to let the new celestial form deal some damage for example? Or to boost its charge rate for damage so you don’t have to rely on healing to get it ready?

Many rangers will still want to be pinging away with their bow most of the time, because without that we just don’t have any pressure or anything to bring to a fight. Range is about the one thing that makes us unique and now, its being sidelined for some completely alien and non synergistic healing add on.

This all started with the horrible pre-event set up for the triple trouble worm and now we are at the point where the concept of reward has completely broken down.

Giving us loot, xp and some materials is actually the aim of the game, not some sort of crime. Why, at this point, do we even have magic find if we can never actually use it?

Nightmare court make use of the dream, with the intent on altering so as to give sylvari free will. They are a strong willed, active and independent group who are likely to be the last to fall to mordremoth’s influence. If anything, I`d probably trust them over the pale tree herself.

CandyHearts.6025:

Me too. Treehearn is obnoxious. I really hope he turns. Then that sword will finally be mine!

And you would not deserve it.

I`m rather disturbed by how this article has been silenced. Does Ten Ton Hammer have no backbone? Free speech clearly not important to them apparently.

Its a nice outfit, looks good on female characters without leaving holes and is free – triple win.

Also asuran ear and foot holes.

I`m quite pleased with the model being used and the way this is being done. It’s good for the game and getting people into it.

One quick way to get a fair return on karma is to buy orrian temple armour and to throw it into the mystic forge in groups of 4. The chances of pulling out valuable runes or armour items is reasonably good and its very quick, unlike all the messing about with cloth salvage.

This one puzzles me. In my upper right I get my story quests and daily quests….but once they are done it is blank. Maybe its a setting I have never used.

Well, I looked into it, being on piken myself and sure enough, when I got there, I saw a human thief running around, farming raptors.

Its an impressive farming spot. I tried to kill as many raptors as I could and even with both of us going at it, there was no down time. On top of this, the raptors spawn a young version in linked squads of 5 that roam about and they all have a chance of dropping the very valuable poultry meat (ten silver each no less). Other items that dropped from them were also quite valuable.

So, after an hour or so of this, I`d made several gold, which was impressive enough. As to the potential bot, it was quite interesting to watch. Reactions far quicker than human as, on occasion, I tagged raptor and knocked it back, only to see the other avatar adjust to its new position instantly. If it is a bot, which is almost certainly is, its using some sort of radar, because it wouldn’t go to areas that I had cleared of raptors and knew the moment one had appeared.

I reported it once I had grown bored or raptor blasting. I wonder if the “diminishing returns” would affect such a farm.

Pleased to see feedback being acted on to make these much needed changes.

The Asura ones are lovely.

Seeing as the current likely wedding couple is going to be Kasmeer and Marjory…which one of them is going to wear the male outfit?

You make a fair point about magic find. I did the start of “triple trouble” wurm a few days ago and remembered how none of the initial mobs drop any loot at all.

So many events now have no dropped loot its no surprise that they are having to alter the map events so that we can actually get tier 6 mats and so on.

The villain from “oliver Twist”, Bill Sykes, would be a good norn thief. He stole things, got drunk, womanised and, most importantly, everyone knew who he was and was rightly terrified of him and impressed by his thievery in equal measure.

So long as you can boast about the things you have stolen and the daring or skill you needed to do it, then Norns would approve. Being a norn is not about good or evil, it is about building one’s legend and notoriety.

Why is everyone telling him to be patient? By the time they tell him the details, the expansion will effectively be out.

And if it isn’t then he will have waited almost a year since the expac was initially announced. As it is, there are people who have pre-paid real money and that was a month ago at least.

The best we got for a release date was “definitely this year” and that doesn’t bode well for anyone, especially after money has already been taken.

Why are people saying his dailies give him laurels? He just gets those from logging in….all the dailies give him is some paltry loot and some AP’s.

And with the way ap’s are set up, almost nobody is ever going to complete their armour sets and the rest is meh.

I`ll be hyped once I know what all the elite specs are. Then I have something to look forward to and can do some theorycrafting or purchasing of skins etc.

People have paid for this expansion and yet we still know next to nothing about it.

I never upgrade my bank slots on new characters. My original one has them all unlocked and that’s no use to me anymore.

Its way too costly, for too little benefit and I can live without it. If it was a bit less, then I would unlock them.

I don’t know why people are so keen to shoot down the OP and their request. If someone hasn’t bothered to log in for three years, then they aren’t being a benefit to the game you are all playing and sending them a wake up call of “log in or lose your name” may actually get some to resume their activity.

It isn’t the OP demanding to be a “special snowflake”, its the people who bagged a name and then vanished.

As to the commitment to never reset names….I seem to remember a whole lot of other commitments that changed as time passed. Please see “living world”, “no grind” and “no expansion” for details.

Sylent.3165:

In pve is a necro bad? The answer is no.

But any other class can easily have better sustained dps. Can offer more support. And is generally just more wanted.

But if your necro is the only 80 you have, you wouldn’t notice the awful dps as you haven’t compared. But one thing I will add is that necro is very very fun to play. So stick with it

So, what would make it bad? Is being worse than all other classes and being unwanted in groups not sufficient? Why are people jumping through hoops to not admit the necro is terrible when even they say and define just how terrible it is.

lordhelmos.7623:

Revenant was designed for one purpose. To be worse than necro so necros can stop complaining. Effectiveness is over 9000.

I must admit, it is somewhat delicious to see others brought into the struggles that necros are facing daily. They are like “omg this is terrible, how can this be!??!”

They’re in our world now.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well now you know what necros have had to deal with for 3 years… get used to it.

My necromancer is one of my favorite toons…. and it is and always has been 100% playable because it is nowhere near as broken as a class whose claim to fame is a failed execution of manipulating conditions.

In the case of Necromancers, a couple stacks of bleed, vulnerability, or poison applied to yourself for a powerful offensive output is a more than acceptable tradeoff. Even worst case scenario…. you are running plague signet and are pulling condis off of allies…. the condi pulling only has an uptime while the signet is not on cooldown, and if the signet is not on cooldown and you have too many condis, just use the signet to get rid of them.

On revenant… using your elite skill only to have it deal more damage to you than it does to the enemy is broken.

On revenant… using a skill that transfers conditions from allies onto yourself in exchange for a resistance buff that doesn’t even work is a ticket for the fast track into downed state.

You lost me at “powerful offensive output”.

Presumably, arenanet wants money from gemstore sales. This means that spreading weapons over all the classes is a better plan, as otherwise we just unlock a staff skin and use the wardrobe to duplicate it as needed.

With rifle warriors being in the dust – its a wonder anyone buys rifles at all and all that work the art team do to design them and make their new sounds is wasted.

Thief having rifle would be good for their sales, would promote the use of an underused weapon and would give a new dimension to thieves that may attract players to the class who prefer ranged heavy combat.

The problem is that what little info has been released is useless for sustaining interest. Guildhalls – well, ok, all I can do is go “that’s nice” and then I am back to waiting.

Whereas the elite spec reveals let us actually do things that will keep us occupied, such as farming some nice skins, or theorycrafting new builds.

Take thief, for example. Now, I don’t play one, but I do have a rifle warrior I haven’t touched for ages. If thieves are getting rifle, then I will spend a long time looking into it and may even have incentive to level a thief in readiness. I will have things to do now and things to be excited for.

Its the same for others who are still waiting for the elite specs to be released.