Guild Wars 2

Erzian.5218:

jcbroe.4329:

The air of the conversation is that Druid is some god tier, unbeatable class, and I’m informing people that balance isn’t out of whack

Although I think druid and rev could need minor nerfs, I agree on that balance is ok overall. I actually think it is the best state of balance that gw2 ever had.

jcbroe.4329:

that the matchup is being won because of player skill, and not because of poor balance.

At some point that message got lost between all of the people attacking me for suggesting that people are better and outplaying their opponents on Druid, as opposed to DHs lacking the capability to kill Druids, which they do not.

I disagree here, DH cannot kill druid (the meta bunker build), unless we are talking about sapphire players or something. Druid does not need to outplay dh in any way to survive and will eventually kill the dh. The exception is, if the dh is on mender but even then the dh has to play a lot better than the druid to stalemate the fight. (Druid has an easier time because their damage is more reliable and their sustain/healing is higher, so they can afford to “waste” more defensive cds without dying because of it)

You just said the DH cannot kill the Druid in a thread asking how to deal with DHs, you know that, right?

So @OP;

What you need to do is watch for key skills, and learn what they look like if you don’t know them already. Avoid getting hit by the Spear (F1), LB3, and the Daze from Traps. Good DHs will use these to try to interrupt your key sustain kills to give themselves the opportunity to kill you, and the only way they can kill you is by getting key interrupts.

Besides that, avoiding their main damage/pressure is also important. You can strafe LB autos easily, so True Shot (LB2) is the main damage skill you need to look to dodge damage wise. Don’t stand in symbols, and when a DH starts casting LB5, either interrupt, move out of the area, or count the first 2 hits and then dodge the 3rd.

If they are in their sword set, move away from sword 3 so you don’t get hit by the channel, and try to proc all of focus 5’s blocks so you don’t have to worry about getting hit with the “explosion” part of the skill, otherwise, you have to wait out the timer of how long the skill lasts and dodge the hit. Beyond that, again, don’t stand in symbols, and try not to let the 3rd chain of the autoattack hit you.

For offense, the 2 biggest things to win fights quickly and easily are to not trigger their heal trap, and to interrupt their F2 leap if possible. When you see them drop their heal trap and they don’t drop it in a way that instantly triggers it, F3 any melee pet so they don’t get kited through it, and range pressure the DH. They rely on that big heal for sustain, so denying them their healing can create an easy opportunity.

For the Mender’s build, it’s a tad bit more difficult to 1v1 against, but a lot of concepts are the same, don’t stand in symbols, kite the scepter autos, etc etc. The real difference is that you have to apply enough pressure to get the DH kiting out of their symbols as well as not getting triggering their trap heal and trying to interrupt the F2 if possible.

Personally, in order to do all of this, I’d recommend the GoE variant of the build that was being run in the most recent WTS. It makes duels and 1v1s much quicker and easier to win, and allows you to setup damage with Ancient Seeds much easier, and that’s on top of all the utility having an insta-cast interrupt has (using it to interrupt stomps without breaking the rez animation, for instance).

One of the biggest takeaways is to never let the DH dictate the pace of the fight or fight on their terms.

Erzian.5218:

Oh ok so pro league players do not have MMR when they play ranked. That’s new to me.
Sorry I am not familiar with NA players. Maybe he is not the mechanically best dh in the game, but nonetheless he is the only person who qualified for WTS and dared to bring a dh. I am pretty sure he is not entirely clueless and he does make some valid points.
Perhaps you should claim less bullkitten and get better on your druid instead, so you don’t have trouble staying alive vs Dhs anymore

The air of the conversation is that Druid is some god tier, unbeatable class, and I’m informing people that balance isn’t out of whack, and that the matchup is being won because of player skill, and not because of poor balance.

At some point that message got lost between all of the people attacking me for suggesting that people are better and outplaying their opponents on Druid, as opposed to DHs lacking the capability to kill Druids, which they do not.

If people really want to continue down the self-destructive path of calling themselves OP against a class that the general population and even the ESL population thinks needs nerfing, then be my guest, but I’ll be here calling every single person on it when they are all crying in the “why did ANet nerf Druid, we weren’t OP” thread.

Erzian.5218:

jcbroe.4329:

The only reason people think DH has zero kill potential is because its fotm and 99% of the ingame player base only knows how to blow all their cooldowns at one go regardless of who or what they are fighting.
.

Sorry I could not find any better DHs than pro league players, guess they are somewhere hidden in the low mmr

edit: I’ll just put this here.

m00’bs perspective on the topic:
The main issue with guard at top level is that it can’t kill bunkers (druid engi ele retri rev). A rule of thumb for guard is the longer the fight takes the worse it is for the guard.
[…]
Furthermore if you were going to group the invo rev and DH together it forces your team to basically RELY on that matchup to be won. We did this during worlds and we won our initial matchups until Denial decided to just let ROM run away from our 2v1 and not equalize with rotations. So basically when ROM saw rev+DH he just kited until one of them left, because the guard doesn’t have enough pressure to quickly kill something off node (or ever tbh).
[…]
-m00’bs

Its from a thread in the guardian subforum.

lol you think kitten is worth quoting. Paul “fun queues” on DH better. It would be like quoting Gladomer as a ranger expert.

NA ESL players aren’t vastly better than anybody queuing in Legendary/Diamond right now, the only difference between them and players in those brackets is VoIP and some decision making here and there.

So if you’re going to throw quotes at me, make sure you actually quote somebody who has a respectable opinion. But quoting ANYBODY from Never Lucky? You must be trying to kill me, because I almost laughed myself to death.

All of the “high MMR” guardians either left the game, play Revenant, or went mute a long time ago. Not sure what happened to Tage, and Arken might be one of the last respectable Guards on NA but last time I checked he went mute.

PS ESL players don’t have MMR, they have the ability to sign up as a team for ESLs. Literally anybody can do it

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I don’t see a DH killing a good druid. At best the DH can force a decap (generally druid is not the best at holding a point, because stealth and mobility are part of the druid’s defense). Imo rev is the only class with true kill potential against druid in 1vs1 (and it can still go either way, personally i can kill most revs, but those are not the best obviously). Some other classes like warrior or dh might be able to “win” by forcing the druid off point, but a good druid should be able to disengage/kite instead of just dieing. Overall it feels like i can take any 1vs1 as druid without being at a disadvantage, and if things go bad, because i f*** up or get outplayed, i can still run away and go somewhere else.

Killing versus kill potential are very different metrics though, and what you’re describing in general is a conquest tactic that separates good from bad players in general, regardless of what class they’re on

Like, to what I was originally stating, having the capacity to leave if things go south doesn’t classify Druid as an apex class that wins all its fights and has no bad matchups. Leaving a matchup because staying would result in a bad outcome for you doesn’t mean the Druid wins the fight, and is, as a matter of fact, the exact opposite of winning.

The only reason people think DH has zero kill potential is because its fotm and 99% of the ingame player base only knows how to blow all their cooldowns at one go regardless of who or what they are fighting.

Against a person who actually plays at a high level and knows the intricacies of their class as well as what they are fighting, a good DH players knows how to dodge Bristleback and Smokescale, baits out your Stability, and can then use LB3, F1, Traps to interrupt your heals.

Against the metabuild on metabattle, an equal skilled DH shouldn’t even be dying to it, even if they struggle killing it, but again, most DH are fotm, don’t understand their own class to understand how and when to use defensive cooldowns, and don’t understand what their up against well enough to know to play differently than “apply face to keyboard, complain about class I don’t kill like this on forum.”

Same exact concept applies to Warriors. Most warriors don’t even understand the concept of pressuring Druids into Celestial Form before unloading their big damage, let alone how and when and what to use to apply damage.

Comparing the metabuilds across all the classes, only Scrappers and Tempests really lack kill potential. Besides that, player skill is the main deciding factor, which is inherently balanced. Yes, it’s a “get good” argument, but even if people don’t like the argument, it’s applicable.

kdaddy.5431:

Ill end this, ranger/druid is the Apex atm. It beats rev because it lacks stability. It beats DH because you can send a pet in to destroy traps, it beats warrior because it has better sustain and it beats scrapper because is the exact same class without a pet.

….all of those classes on an equal skill level should be able to stalemate Druid at the bare minimum. Rev, DH, and warrior all have the tools to get the kill actually.

Playing poorly against a Druid doesn’t make Druids apex.

Okay, misconceptions. First and foremost; players make the meta, not devs. Also, WvW is all inclusive, ANet has no control over player interaction in that gamemode though, let alone on community sites and VoIP, but you are capable of joining and playing WvW on anything and do anything you want.

Time to educate.

Organized guild groups are all running a boon meta powered by Durability Runes and how insanely OP their AoE proc is alone, on top of what the stats are.

Here’s the bread and butter party composition:

• 2 Guardians
• Glint/Mallyx Herald
• Tempest
• X

Essentially, Heralds maintain F2 and camp Mallyx as much as possible spamming resistance as much as possible. Guardians boon support, cleanses, some heals. Tempest CC, heals, damage. Whole group moves as one with no real concept of a “backline” anymore.

What is X? Reapers, Berserkers, Scrappers, or in rare circumstance Chronomancers. X is looking to maximize damage and unique utility in their position. Reapers are perfect at this role; high damage, can push with group, boon strip. Berserkers are like the harder to kill, higher constant damage version of that role, but don’t bring the strips. Scrapper works very similarly to Berserker but brings much more group utility with AoE heal/cleanse, water fields, gyros, etc. Mesmer is boonshare with veil/portal utility.

Where/how does or would Druid work in this equation? The damage Druid brings is honestly inconsequential at the end of the day (not useless, don’t wet noodle). It ends up having the same fate as chronomancers do; 1 or 2 with the absolutely perfect build and ability can have some useful utility, but stacking more than that is wasting the opportunity value of X’s potential role in party/squad compositions. What you bring as a Druid are CC/Heals and Superspeed (only Tempests and Scrappers can even offer this to party members besides you, it’s important).

You will work your kitten off to earn that spot as X in a party composition, and are a liability if you are costing your group too much damage. A good Druid that can roll with the group can be a valuable asset that assists with tons of sustain and the ability to provide some setup for the rest of the group to dish out damage and possibly add some meaningful cleave every once in awhile (yes you should be staff/melee). A bad Druid thinks their damage is amazing and contributes little to nothing to the team/squad dynamic, which is 99% of the other Druids I come across.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with running damage or LB or whatever else the heart desires. But given what the metagame is, at most you’re ganking for the main squad while the main squad does their thing, and at worst, well, you’re fodder, and a waste of a squad slot for any commander looking to run an organized group and not a pug group (recognize this when you join on commanders, guild groups tend to be very demanding of pugs or unaccepting entirely).

PS as a long time Ranger/Druid main and forum community member, I adamantly insist to my guild leader that he kick all Rangers/Druids from squad. I absolutely partake in the criticisms the community places upon the class, because 99% of the representation the class gets from the ingame population is useless pew pew rallybots.

If you take issue with that, then do what I had to do to earn my place amongst the guild I am in and people I play the game with, accept that skepticism and opinion people have of you being on that class, then go above and beyond what they have come to expect from it and prove them wrong.

PPS I don’t like coming across bad players, but I especially don’t like coming across bad rangers/druids. We wouldn’t have the reputation that people give our class if people didn’t live up to that reputation on a widespread level. Whining and crying about it on the forums won’t change that perspective; playing better and being better will. In the time it takes you to whine that people don’t like what or how you’re playing even though they could definitely be justified in their opinion of your skillset as a player, you could have been improving that skillset, changing peoples opinions, and proving people wrong.

No lie, I just run Zealots, Zealots/Clerics, or Zealots/Celestial, depending on my mood. I “frontline” (we run a sustain comp so the concept of frontline/midline/backline is sort of lost, since we move as one group regardless) with my Druid. It’s primary priority is to heal/buff in a group setting, sure, but I use the gearing for roaming and 1v1ing, and I “tag and bag” just fine with my Druid, with caster sniping being fairly easy. Staff/LB or Staff/GS. I pick based on mood/preference. Though I think the staff/lb is better for 1v1 between the 2.

Great job, first and foremost! It reminds me of what Eurantien was doing before his life circumstances changed and pulled him away from GW2 (if I remember correctly).

If you’re looking for a marginal improvement to the build at all (it may affect some functionality you’ve gotten used to), you’d maximize damage output better by picking Scholar Runes. Just food for thought, it’s a different option, not a better option. Dolyak Runes could also be a thing purely because of their added Celestial Avatar availability, but for you particularly, I doubt that’s something you’d need at this point, and with condi not being something that’s stacked across multiple classes on a team anymore, you might not necessarily need Celestial Form for cleansing as much as last season, which is part of what makes Dolyak Runes a strong choice.

But yeah. If you’re comfortable with it, you could also try swapping out the energy sigil for a hydromancy sigil on the GS. You lose the endurance on swap but gain an immediate burst of damage from the hydro hit + leeching and then have that Maul ready to go and it be even easier to land.

Beyond that, congrats on the climb and reddit frontpage!

It’s been a very long time (pre-HoT) since I played Marauder ranger myself, at least, LB/GS. I swapped over to staff awhile ago, and play either staff/gs or staff/lb. It isn’t really the same, but staff ends up working out just fine, usually moreso in the case where I don’t take LB because I have staff. Not that I’d sell you on the playstyle at all, but besides the knockback and barrage, you lose almost nothing by running staff over lb. Especially with quickness. Also my 2c, but seeing as how you are doing just fine, it’s more to create a discussion that I say this, because I don’t believe any 1 way is the right way

“Feeling” is an arbitrary metric.

Druid is actually pretty perfectly balanced. It’s built around “all in” mechanics that have to be utilized appropriately, which actually creates a pretty extreme skillgap between good and bad Druid players.

Actually, every meta build can kill Druids easily right now without changing their build at all (meta builds as determined by the meta section of metabattle). Pressure into Celestial Form, heavy bomb/burst, wait out 3 seconds of stealth, finish the job. Power builds have it a tad bit rougher with the invulv, which might mean repeating the process, but Power Rev can just wait SoS out and press another one of their damage skills again and win.

If ANet keeps on nerfing support or bunker oriented specs, then we’ll just be playing a complicated FPS game at the end of the day. Using the “feel” metric, maybe, if the damage output from certain sources and classes was toned down to an acceptable level, the counter defensive options wouldn’t feel so extreme either, but right now, damage, healing, utility, everything has been dialed up to 1000% with powercreep, and individually hitting any of those without hitting the others just hurts the class, the population, and the game.

Oh, and for the record, organized teams are going to make much more use out of Mender’s/Magi’s DH builds than they are with Druids, it’s just going to take a little bit of time for peoples brains to get there.

The game isn’t balanced around 1v1s, and mechanically, WvW is an imbalanced gamemode meant for min/maxers to highlight their min/maxing ability with broken stat combinations and food combinations in whichever manner they see fit.

/thread

Move along people.

Eolh.5436:

jcbroe.4329:

Eolh.5436:

Hum. i’m trying just now full cleric healing bot in WvW. Real WvW, 50 vs 50 zerg fights. i can’t stay alive, maybe i use a bad skill rotation or positioning.
This is the build that i’m trying:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNMQNBmYD7keVoiVshFwkVgrFs0JYOBuAQh7Zxl4Ocwt0Z6NtEpPG-TlSDAB6pDQ+HAAAXAgLV/xhjAQcaGyS5XU7PIxBBwQlgkCwv9WA-w

I don’t think that druid can have a nice spot in WvW zerg fights. We are good to roam or pew pew down the enemy commander, but nothing more.

Druid is great in organized comps, I run it front/midline with my guild. You need to be in a stability party is part of it though, but you can run much less defensive the full clerics and still drop heals like crazy and unless you get picked/ganked out of position, you should really never die in a zerg situation unless your whole zerg is getting wiped.

Hum, i’ll try to praticise more. The build is okay?

Mhm, your gearing is fine, though my preference would be to run a water sigil on the staff as well, over the life sigil.

Also, you want to probably change your trait in the Druid traitline to the one that clears condis and stun breaks on entering Celestial Form. That’s a huge part of your survival.

The only other thing is that I’ve been running traited shouts instead of glyphs so I can heal over time with regen and enter Celestial Form on cooldown if needed, but I’m not necessarily saying that’s better, as I’ve gone back to testing glyph oriented builds myself since the glyph heal is so good for survival.

Just that one trait though makes a world of difference.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

jcbroe.4329:

-snip-

Watching this to me is like watching a trapper Thief. Yawn, shake your head and maybe enjoy listening to what ever music happens to be edited over the video.

You know all the counters but it’s a lot easier said than done when you’re actually fighting it, especially in WvW where you’re not confined to a small little circle.

I suppose I’ll stop talking though and congratulate the OP on accomplishing what I’ve seen dozens of times over the past few months from various different players. I just wish it weren’t yet another addition to the abysmal state of what roaming has become.

I agree, I’ve personally played WvW almost exclusively for numerous months now and have participated in (and even won) a few multi-guild 1v1 tournaments that have been organized by guilds on our server and friendly guilds on other servers though, and really just don’t like where the game has been headed and continues to go, for/from any gamemode perspective (though I’ve only done a few of the raid encounters, but I find them to be pure sleep DPS trials with difficulty scaling being the amount of BS/1shot mechanics per encounter).

All I really mean to say is, don’t hate the player, hate the game (hahaha).

Eolh.5436:

Hum. i’m trying just now full cleric healing bot in WvW. Real WvW, 50 vs 50 zerg fights. i can’t stay alive, maybe i use a bad skill rotation or positioning.
This is the build that i’m trying:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNMQNBmYD7keVoiVshFwkVgrFs0JYOBuAQh7Zxl4Ocwt0Z6NtEpPG-TlSDAB6pDQ+HAAAXAgLV/xhjAQcaGyS5XU7PIxBBwQlgkCwv9WA-w

I don’t think that druid can have a nice spot in WvW zerg fights. We are good to roam or pew pew down the enemy commander, but nothing more.

Druid is great in organized comps, I run it front/midline with my guild. You need to be in a stability party is part of it though, but you can run much less defensive the full clerics and still drop heals like crazy and unless you get picked/ganked out of position, you should really never die in a zerg situation unless your whole zerg is getting wiped.

I’ve said it every season but I’ll say it again; separate the rewards from the league system.

You could come up with this PvP exclusive currency, let’s call it Glory. As you complete matches in the PvP season, you would earn Glory based on the outcome of the match (with the participation checks and such and blah blah you get the point).

Then there would be a vendor where you could spend this currency on rewards.

Once you do that, you can then remove all of the safety nets and division/tier locks, and have a glicko system that actually places people where they should be placed.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

jcbroe.4329:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’m going to have to record a few Druids I know that are running a similar build to show how broken it is.

Just because you can counter/kill something doesn’t mean it’s balanced. To me this is about the same as the trapper Thief videos, minimal talent, mostly trolling. It would be more enjoyable to watch if OP had less of a “lul git gud” attitude about it but that’s the kind of mentality builds that carry you tend to give.

Name a working build from any class that’s accepted as the highest efficiency build, but isn’t a “carry” build.

Just because you (or anybody else) don’t agree with the way the game is balanced doesn’t mean that it lacks balance. The HoT specs are actually incredibly well balanced against each other.

Is the current game design disagreeable then? Definitely, but it is balanced against itself.

More importantly, WvW is impossible to implement any semblance of balance in. 1v1s are inherently imbalanced because the main balance goal is 5v5 PvP, and WvW has too many gearing variables and encounter variables to ever even remotely try to implement changes that don’t break on some scale.

In PvP, most “pro” players didn’t even consider Druid to be “top 5” worthy until just now after a team with a Druid wins some money, which should be very indicative of the actual intended balance point of the game, as opposed to an “unsupported gametype” where typically, the most malignant cancer build wins.

By that logic, nothing is easy.

The point I’m trying to make is that the build in the video and the one I see everywhere in WvW lately is minimal effort.

I don’t think WvW should be balanced around 1v1 nor do I think it ever has been. I’m saying that if you can coast through a fight half asleep and still win, it’s probably not something you should claim to play well. It’d be like if I said I’m good at riding a bike with training wheels. Sure I need to learn to pedal first, but how do I fail beyond that.

I’m with you on that sentiment, but really I think that’s just where the game is at right now.

Unfortunately, ANet has designed the game since launch where playing more complex or complicated builds or playstyles doesn’t have a high enough tradeoff to playing the more simple/easy/etc builds.

At least in PvP, they removed all of the meaningful dual defensive stat amulets and replaced them with amulets which, if they had dual defensive stats, both of them together barely add up to a single category of their prior values. In WvW though, the easy/efficient builds get exasperated by the ability to build for “broken” stat combinations.

This on top of ANets unwillingness to ever even attempt to balance boons correctly, or even remotely build any sort of counter for them, leaving the best counter to be the “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy, all add together at a core design level.

Then, we get to how inefficient it is to run any utilities on Druid other than Signets, Shouts, or Glyphs. So naturally, you pick trait lines the boost the abilities to use these utilities, which means immediately picking BM to go with Druid because you’re going to end up picking Heal as One as the heal since there is no signet heal and the glyph heal is widely considered bad outside of PvE raids (especially in solo setting). Then of course you’re going to either pick the Taunt GM or the Quickness GM, and most people immediately go quickness because of the synergy with the boons on shouts and then of course NM is the next most logical traitline because more boon share, more boons, more defense, but ofc, you can go more offensive with MM and get more boons and offense, or Skirmishing for double using certain skills if you want to “mix it up a little.”

And then apply that situation across every class in the game.

A lot of us had this discussion when HoT was first announced; if ANet doesn’t go back and balance the core specs first, aka, bringing all of the utilities up to par in some way, and then introduces new stuff on top of it, it will create apex predator build options where you end up forced into 2-3 traitlines and families and nothing will ever compete with them. We begged them to address the core balance issues first, but look at where we are, nothing happened, everything played out like we predicted, and now we’re waiting on another expansion to see any sort of significant change to build diversity, which won’t be due to the ability to use older options, but the necessity to use new options and combine them with the least worst old options.

Attempting to take the ignorance is bliss route though; I like the OP’s video for what it is. In general, anybody still creating content with quality content (aka working builds and an attempt to show off any sort of exciting content) should be encouraged to do so.

I tried streaming/recording once and I found it just wasn’t worth my time, but I like to see others do so and do well enough with it

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’m going to have to record a few Druids I know that are running a similar build to show how broken it is.

Just because you can counter/kill something doesn’t mean it’s balanced. To me this is about the same as the trapper Thief videos, minimal talent, mostly trolling. It would be more enjoyable to watch if OP had less of a “lul git gud” attitude about it but that’s the kind of mentality builds that carry you tend to give.

Name a working build from any class that’s accepted as the highest efficiency build, but isn’t a “carry” build.

Just because you (or anybody else) don’t agree with the way the game is balanced doesn’t mean that it lacks balance. The HoT specs are actually incredibly well balanced against each other.

Is the current game design disagreeable then? Definitely, but it is balanced against itself.

More importantly, WvW is impossible to implement any semblance of balance in. 1v1s are inherently imbalanced because the main balance goal is 5v5 PvP, and WvW has too many gearing variables and encounter variables to ever even remotely try to implement changes that don’t break on some scale.

In PvP, most “pro” players didn’t even consider Druid to be “top 5” worthy until just now after a team with a Druid wins some money, which should be very indicative of the actual intended balance point of the game, as opposed to an “unsupported gametype” where typically, the most malignant cancer build wins.

Zealots Armor/Weapons, Durability Runes, Clerics, Celestial, or Zealot’s trinkets.

Great Video!

Just wanted to mention to the people complaining; the only real reason why you guys can’t beat Druids is because you don’t understand how Druid works. Learn the big skills to dodge (GS skills, LB skills on the common build variant, smokescale rush, bristleback pew pew), learn the animation for WHaO so you can interrupt it, and learn to watch for Celestial Form for unloading condi bombs/CC. There isn’t a single common roaming build that lacks the tools to deal with Druids, and Druids really don’t have a very versatile kit for dealing with more versatile enemies, they just rely on a few niche mechanics and big heals to cover mistakes that core ranger players used to have to know better than to make (meant as truth, not as insult ofc).

So yeah, it really is a learn to play issue if you can’t kill a Druid, minus some highly specialized Druid troll builds, but that isn’t the sort of build that should be able to kill you anyhow, and it isn’t a concept that’s unique to Druid.

Chuckles.8153:

Additionally, how come people don’t use gear sets like apothecary, or ones that add vit/cond/healing?

It seems like this would still make you very tanky with a lot of sustain, but also give you decent condition damage output.

Any ideas?

It’s essentially the same reason why condi Druid becomes less desired in certain raid encounters; that full damage efficiency requires an immobile target, and against mobile targets, power DPS is same/greater than condi.

Besides that, ranger condi builds don’t really have the same sort of unmitigated burst potential other classes can put out for their condis. Generally speaking, once a smart opponent realizes you’re condi, they’ll just kite and ignore you and focus something else.

@Tragic;

So essentially, what happened was that ANet made the right, as in not correct, but precise defensive shaves without touching offensive output so that Tempest isn’t enough as a solo support to carry a team.

Engis got nerfed down to the point where they have to go glass (not paladins) to actually have more impact on a meaningful scale than Druid, and when competing for the same team composition role, teams worth their theorycrafting salt realized that its worth losing the engis damage in order to get the druids support, because essentially, perfect play from the Druid and Tempest means the game gets decided by the better damage dealers and more map aware players.

Long story short, meta builds can’t kill druid 1v1 on an equal skill tier, and Druid offers more to a team than running anything else that would compete for that team slot.

This has been my personalized build lately: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA1Ci9rAOsActglOBz5vFAKcwr0YaO9pFEqWYl480A-TVCFQBsb/BCcBA0k6PZUJIm0FAgHAgUU+1gDBwCOCAAA-w

Depending on the situation/how I’m feeling, I’ll swap out GS for LB, and when I do that, Lingering Light is swapped for Ancient Seeds.

Either variant also works for group play, just make sure you run Lingering Light if you’re focusing on staying on the group, and swap to a Staff with Water/Transference Sigils.

Conceptually, the build is modeled after the stat split that Mender’s Amulet gives in PvP (but toughness focused because with Durability Runes alone, you have enough of a vitality buffer for your condi clear to be more than adequate), which is a very strong, well rounded amulet for power druid.

In a 1v1 scenario, the only thing you’d struggle with is Tempests really, and not that they would be threatening to you in any way, they are just obnoxious to take down when they are competent. Condi Berserker is probably the biggest threat, but in open field, there is no way they can keep up with you to do their damage reliably.

While I absolutely agree that once you get to legendary tier, there is zero reason to continue to queue, I do have to ask:

To all of the people complaining about queue times, you do know we’re only 2 weeks into an 8 week season? Given that you probably started in Sapphire, you already queued up against a low population compared to the total population, so being in Diamond/Legendary right now puts you at maybe within 5-10% of the active population of PvP players.

So, really, it’s time to take a break. The longer the queue time goes, the more the pip range expands (to the maximum of 15) and MMR expands to try to find you a match, so if you aren’t finding any matches, it’s because there aren’t enough people currently online and in range to make a match. Congrats, you’ve binged the season and come out victorious, but you really don’t have the right to complain since the system is stated in black and white to the degree where you know this is going to happen if you log in and play more than just doing your 3 dailies.

This is a great condensing of information relative to Rangers/Druids.

Can I just put out there that the metabattle build currently listed works perfectly well (in an informative way not meant to imply anything, and only to present the information)? I personally started the season wanting to load up on condi removal myself, but as I learned the new condition build that was nonexistent last season (Berserker), I realized that you can beat it the same way you beat condi mesmer, by just evading and outhealing any passive pressure.

Mileage may vary of course, but the warriors kill potential is all loaded into a single gimmick, and learning to dodge it and any of their CC they use to land it renders them nearly ineffective. Same with mesmers, but they are worse because they are more capable of spamming their output, and then of course, necros, and necros you sort of just have to outplay their Reaper shroud and make sure they don’t CC you so that you eat their big condi stacks instead of cleansing them.

I mean, take the metabattle build, swap in Verdant Etching and Trooper Runes and you have all of the defensive you need to survive every meta build unless you’re focused (and any focused target should die with competent play).

Again, mileage may vary haha. I’ve been wanting to experiment with builds myself but the NM/BM/Druid combo is just so potent.

wolfyrik.2017:

Fluffball.8307:

CA5 is the cat’s pajamas, what are you even talking about wolfy? It does pretty much everything you could want a skill to do, damage, hard CC, soft CC, AoE, stab…

Does it not still root and require channeling for a pitiful 360 range? The only thing a player has to do to negate all of the skill’s effects and melt the caster, is stand slightly further away. Even within it’s AoE the damage is poor enough to ignore and your attacks, while slowed still eventually hit for full damage while the druid can do nothing. Clearly though I should give it another go.

CA3 into CA5 allows you to AoE proc Ancient Seeds. It’s incredibly strong utility in PvP, the pulsing stability can save you, and if you get the full channel off, you do strong damage.

But yeah, it isn’t something you can just use on cooldown, it has risk.

The biggest general idea that I don’t understand is why ANet keeps buffing condi application and nerfing condi removal.

Condi is already the most complained about, most requested nerf in the game, and the main culprits of it can literally just bash their keyboard with their face and apply every condi in the game.

People ask for the CC and the Condi output to be toned down, and instead, ANet nerfs the direct defenses against the things people want nerfed, after recently buffing the cancer that nobody wanted buffed.

The balance team needs to be replaced, not that it’s anything new.

With the new PvP season, I just don’t feel like BM is a worthwhile investment for trait anymore.

I’ve had much more success dropping BM entirely and picking up Skirmishing for a traited Healing Spring, Spotter, and Quickdraw, which has been helping mitigate the sustain nerf it feels like we experienced.

Crapgame.6519:

Jcbroe – sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything negative in your response. It was actually in line with an other poster and I honestly had no idea. You provided it and I sort of went off from there – lol.

My apologies.

You’re fine haha, tensions are running justifiably high.

I’m just tired is all. I don’t have it in me to keep giving ANet my time and energy.

Crapgame.6519:

jcbroe.4329:

Crapgame.6519:

Only way this would ever get reverted is if people stop playing the class. That just isn’t going to happen.

I don’t know the answer but was Druid even represented in any recent sPvP tournament or whatever we call these things here?

Yeah, it’s either the 3rd or 4th most represented class, even moreso than usual with the recent Scrapper changes.

Regardless, any dev worth their salt would know that overused =/= overpowered. We use the pets because we have to since they are the only pets worth a kitten , not because we want to, although this patch reminds me of the old “death of the BM” patch where every pet worth using got a 25+% damage reduction.

I guess ANet logic: make every pet useless, and then they’re all balanced.

3rd or 4th?

Did the 1st or 2nd get adjusted? I mean numerically speaking there are what, only 9 classes (um, revenant, warrior, guardian, engineer, ranger, thief, elementalist, Mesmer, and necromancer)? Did I leave any off?

Following this logic they should buff the bottom three classes, leave the middle tier alone since they are balanced, and adjust / nerf the top three merging top and bottom to the middle. Then next season see who is in what position and start again. Yeah, I’m over simplifying but who really cares what position or rank the classes end up.

If it was easy street then there would be a higher number represented but what I’m hearing we are 3rd or 4th out of 9! And for crying out loud this is just a small percentage of the population (i.e. a limited sample we call esport/tournament). How is the druid represented out of the current player base…

Yeah, I’m not saying I disagree, was just providing the information.

The representation is something like Rev/Mes/Ele/Ranger/Necro/Engi/Thief/Warrior/Guard.

Unranked population is pretty much the reverse order of this list, based solely on my anecdotal evidence.

Crapgame.6519:

Only way this would ever get reverted is if people stop playing the class. That just isn’t going to happen.

I don’t know the answer but was Druid even represented in any recent sPvP tournament or whatever we call these things here?

Yeah, it’s either the 3rd or 4th most represented class, even moreso than usual with the recent Scrapper changes.

Regardless, any dev worth their salt would know that overused =/= overpowered. We use the pets because we have to since they are the only pets worth a kitten , not because we want to, although this patch reminds me of the old “death of the BM” patch where every pet worth using got a 25+% damage reduction.

I guess ANet logic: make every pet useless, and then they’re all balanced.

Knoptix.5712:

Glad you guys got nerfed!

We know wbo’s starting the PvP season in Amber…

Shout builds aren’t the only option, they are just the best and the easiest option.

With Staff and traited Glyphs, you can still generate astral force enough to get it back on cooldown.

Same with Survival skills.

BM/NM lets you maintain 9 might stacks and swiftness. That alone is more utility than most builds have. BM/MM does more damage on bursts. Sk/NM is probably the best overall support setup between ally and self support, though Sk/WS or NM/WS would be close.

The thing is, especially when it comes to PvP, there is just so much defense against rangers best weaponsets, that it shoehorns us into supporting and poking while passively building up our pets for pressure/bursts. Sidepoint denial Druid is arguably one of the better builds in PvP, but nobody runs it because it doesn’t carry teams.

Really, the current state of Druid has the potential for almost any combination of traitlines to be effective, it’s more that the current state of PvP forces Druid into what is considered the optimal build because it is the best performing build against the other metabuilds, but if those builds changed, it would actually allow for some breathing room for other builds that are more offense oriented to step up.

Silverkey.2078:

Eurantien.4632:

On paper I would agree with you. In practice nerfing this trait would be wrong. No skilled players has trouble with this trait. Despite how OP it seems, it is a minor annoyance at best.

Balance is not only for skilled player. This trait is actually very strong, especially because not all builds have the necessarily cleave to get rid of those vines. This trait adds to the long list of excessive CC that the druid specialization brought.

Ummmm, balance and skill are not synonymous.

Balance is achieved separately from skill, and then differing levels of skill creates the perception of imbalance, which is then offset by an ease of use factor, which is a process called balancing for skill.

So I guess you’re sort of right, except that balance has nothing to do with players at all, and therefore that argument works against its purpose, that just as you don’t believe the game should be balanced around top level players, it also shouldn’t be balanced around how bad players can be.

Also against your point is that balance decisions made by developers are actually very intended to directly influence the perceived balance of high skill gameplay, because at higher levels and skill levels, there are the most likely cases of perfect play and usage, where even the slightest of differences are much more pronounced than lower tiers.

You never balance a game so that bad players can feel good about themselves, that’s called coddling and it destroys your competitive player population.

Wait what? What are you even basing this off of?

Ancient Seeds has a heavy precondition that makes the trait only able to be proc’d against currently CC’d enemies.

Maybe that trait isn’t the problem, maybe it’s the amount of CC currently available in matches, or that people aren’t dodging.

Also, if you are 1v1ing (for whatever reason) a Druid and they are proc’ing this on you (a person, not targeting anybody specific) for what you would consider “on cooldown,” then you’re honestly getting outplayed because even without the trait, you would still be eating CCs and more than likely losing because of it, the trait itself just makes the CCs Druids have access to worth something.

Question; are you going for looks or for functionality (the free stat swaps)?

Ideally, you’d want to make the one that you use across the most game modes and that you would use with the largest variety of gear, unless you don’t care about functionality at all, in which case, we can’t really answer for you because we don’t know what your personal taste is in what a well designed or good looking weapon would be.

Mightybird.6034:

I wonder if TDM would work best with fewer numbers though? 3v3 or 4v4.

One of the main reasons courtyard failed was because people were too lazy to switch to a TDM build. So the team with more TDM or more flexible builds (or ppl who switched) would destroy the other team.

With fewer people, such as a 3v3, builds need to be modified much less.

That’s not entirely true, though it’s part of the problem.

The main problem with the game mode is that with GW2 being as teamfight snowball oriented as it is (aka it’s nearly impossible to win a 1v2 against equal skill players), the way that respawning in courtyard was meant that 1 kill would snowball the entire game.

TDM in a game like this should be round based and only have players have 1 life per round (so when you’re stomped, you’re done until the next round). Each round should have a low timer that counts down to the end of the round, and whoever has more people alive, or wipes the enemy team, wins the round, and the gametype would be a number of rounds to win (best 2 of 3, for instance).

brannigan.9831:

They have worked a ton on the matchmaking believe it or not and I don’t see any magic bullets coming in that direction. I am sure they can improve it some but there will no magical revelations from heaven imo. I bad mouth these guys a lot but they are actually pretty smart people and have been working on this for quite awhile now. The answer to me is stuff like allowing people to lose divisions. They need to decide whether they want leagues to actually be really competitive and a reflection of skill or not. The problem is there are a lot of people that think advancement in a league should be mostly grindable and it a significant number and A-net doesn’t want to kitten them off. As long as there are competiting interests its not going to be a good system. A-net needs to decide whether the goal is to make this as competitive and accurate as possible or allow the greatest ammount of people feel like they can advance to ruby and beyond.

It’s pretty simple, the reward system needs to be separated from the Division system. Then, we can remove the pips, insert the MMR and rating system that a true competitive game should have, and have a competitive reward track active, and then ANet can get really cheeky and add a renewing “achievement” that increments for every reward track completion (like the new dungeon achievement) and gives out respectable rewards for completion.

Or, they could go back to the old glory system in place of the aforementioned reward track system, where playing matches rewards you with a PvP specific currency that can be used at the vendor, and then split the rating thresholds into brackets and give people exclusive rewards from higher brackets using the new currency (with a general inventory for the currency ofc).

The class tiering makes perfect sense in the higher tiers when you discuss the amount of utility and tools each commonly accepted meta build bring.

Mesmer literally has a perfect kit, and the build doesn’t sacrifice anything to gain anything else. Revenant is in a very similar boat, except what they lack in utility variety, they make up for with copious amounts of evasion and sustain tools.

The next tier down, Eles basically only have a single viable build, and they have to give up EVERYTHING other than survival tools. They’re the old bunker guards; wet noodle damage, great team support, but one good ele won’t carry a game because all they can do is not die, and keep other people from dying, and if their team can’t take advantage of that, it’s just a losing war of attrition.

Similarly, Druids are in the same spot as eles, except that they have damage while they lack the self defensive tools they need to survive against any person who knows how and when to use their CCs. They wouldn’t be used without healing power, and choosing either healing power high amulet leaves them vulnerable to the other type of damage, and Mender’s at least provides the hybrid role so that coupled with the pet, having an ele and druid on the same team doesn’t leave the burden of damage on the other 3 teammates.

I don’t have an opinion on the classes that have been out of the metagame, though my initial reaction is that thief can make a comeback with the specific goal of dealing with mesmers, and a good thief with the right build is probably interchangeable with engineers to some extent, and engineers are probably still A tier as well, with the B tier choice being a little too kneejerk, and Necros haven’t taken the time to properly explore their remaining toolkit against the current meta to really have an accurate placement, so that is a kneejerk placement as well.

All in all though, the Mesmer being S tier has nothing to do with being “too strong,” and has everything to do with having the largest impact, which, with Mesmers toolkit, a single highly skilled mesmer can carry entire matches based on the amount of plays they can make and teamfights they can swing. None of that is a bad thing.

If the mesmer needs any rebalancing at all, it would be a Moa duration (which needed to happen long, long before HoT ever came out), and potentially an increase to Portals coodown, not to remove either from play, but to bring them in line with how much impact they have in a game, especially at high levels. My opinion is that anybody asking for more nerfs than that is wanting to hurt the class, and not push for an actual balance equilibrium, because what the mesmer really needs is a pass over the other weapons they have so that when a mesmer builds from the metabuild, it actually feels like they are having to make a hard decision (EVERY class needs this pass), versus running a power shatter build, for instance.

Darknicrofia.2604:

jcbroe.4329:

Chase.2798:

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Druid is still a very top tier pick as a side-node fighter and an off-support, beating out Scrappers in sustain and utility and being able to cap Chronos 1v1. Playing druids as resbots last season was extremely weak and really underdeveloped as a one trick pony (see Alkores appearance for Vermillion, I think in week 1 or 2)

Not really sure where you heard that it’ll be ele/druid/engi core. More like Ele/Druid/Chrono. The other 2 slots are still up in the air. A lot of teams are trying different things (Rev/Thief or Rev/War or Rev/Necro, Rev most often is still part of the meta comp though, at least for now)

I would say all esl teams will be running ele, druid, chrono, and rev with most choosing warrior thief or engi…im interested to the abjured’s team comp…i heard nos was playing druid and im sure chaith will stick to engi

They’ll probably run without an ele, like they have been doing.

um what? PZ is the one that runs without an ele, not Abjured

My fault, you’re right, I sort of forgot their team comp since it isn’t worthwhile to watch them anymore on stream. I just remember phanta plays mesmer now, chaith is forever engi, toker is rev, and Nos is trying out Druid but more than likely will return to necro.

Their fifth is Wakkey still right? I guess that would mean ele or engi, and since you can’t class stack, ele.

It probably sounds bad but I always forget about Wakkey lol.

Chase.2798:

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Druid is still a very top tier pick as a side-node fighter and an off-support, beating out Scrappers in sustain and utility and being able to cap Chronos 1v1. Playing druids as resbots last season was extremely weak and really underdeveloped as a one trick pony (see Alkores appearance for Vermillion, I think in week 1 or 2)

Not really sure where you heard that it’ll be ele/druid/engi core. More like Ele/Druid/Chrono. The other 2 slots are still up in the air. A lot of teams are trying different things (Rev/Thief or Rev/War or Rev/Necro, Rev most often is still part of the meta comp though, at least for now)

I would say all esl teams will be running ele, druid, chrono, and rev with most choosing warrior thief or engi…im interested to the abjured’s team comp…i heard nos was playing druid and im sure chaith will stick to engi

They’ll probably run without an ele, like they have been doing.

Eagelseye.6312:

jcbroe.4329:

Eagelseye.6312:

Ubik.8315:

Eagelseye.6312:

Therefore, you need to remove solo queue. Players who wish to play PvP have to enter in a team of five as premades. You may keep entering in team of two and three but then the matchmaking needs to be that such teams don’t meet a full premade.

If this happened, RIP PvP population.

Certainly not, rather it would make PvP actual a team game which it should be in true sense

False, every other team game in the world allows you to enter as a solo player.

What you mean to be asking for is in-game, automated tournaments, because you need a system that supports the entire population, not just the 30-40 people that are online and have the time to make and coordinate a team.

The idea is to remove barriers of entry and increase the accuracy of sorting and ranking algorithms, not increase the barrier of entry to the point where it effectively kills off 99% of the population of players while dissuading new players for entering.

Well your point is certainly valid where Anet’s PvP development team certainly needs to work on improving the algorithms of sorting and ranking, but at the same time, they have to work towards the direction where a game mode is being played as it should be as such. If soloQ is removed, it will better the entire community of true PvPers actually. Because see, there is a very simple example, a player can be kicked from a Dungeon party if he/she is not doing well or a player can leave a party if that party is bad etc. But the same is not possible in PvP as its a competitive mode and people will end of losing pips/tiers etc. and remain in a win/lose cycle because they are bound/forced to play with players who wants to do what they want rather than what the team wants! That is not what a 5v5 or 10v10 game mode should be, isnt it?

Having said, that Anet can think of developing different modes where people can just simply 1v1 or max 2v2 and be happy and no bothering playing in teams.

Every MOBA, all of the new shooters, and every objective based shooter, and really every game with a competitive multiplayer work to disprove what you are arguing though.

GW2 doesn’t fail at making a competitive atmosphere because the game isn’t competitive, it’s because the infrastructure doesn’t, and has NEVER supported it.

When the game first launched, TONS of GW1 pros were forming up and trying to make the game a competitive esport. But the game lacked spectator modes, custom arenas for community tournaments, and balance.

Leaderboards were bad and failed, balance has never been correctly adjusted for competitive play, and the league system is just a fancier reward track with a few more bells and whistles.

The things that a community of competitive players want the most are a game balanced for skill, and an infrastructure that allows them to win their way to the top of an actual MMR and rating based system, and then be additionally rewarded for being the best, and a way to show all of this off as bragging rights.

ANet, on the other hand, coddles their players with safety nets during the competitive PvP season, which artificially inflates their division tier over time, making it a meaningless tool to the community of competitive players.

But, that isn’t to say that I don’t agree with the core of your sentiment; that the MMR system doesn’t account for the size of the party or the performance of the individual player, and only uses a win/loss as input to their MMR system, which is wrong.

What we should be asking for is a more advanced MMR system that gathers metrics from the game data and uses them to rate each individual player on their performance in a match and adjust their MMR appropriately, with a true MMR matchmaking that doesn’t disallow regression (aka no safety nets) and a reward system that gives more rewards the higher they are rated and winning at that rating. Many of the types of games I mentioned do this in their competitive queue modes, which is why their competitive community is larger and more successful than GW2 is and more than likely ever will be.

Eagelseye.6312:

Ubik.8315:

Eagelseye.6312:

Therefore, you need to remove solo queue. Players who wish to play PvP have to enter in a team of five as premades. You may keep entering in team of two and three but then the matchmaking needs to be that such teams don’t meet a full premade.

If this happened, RIP PvP population.

Certainly not, rather it would make PvP actual a team game which it should be in true sense

False, every other team game in the world allows you to enter as a solo player.

What you mean to be asking for is in-game, automated tournaments, because you need a system that supports the entire population, not just the 30-40 people that are online and have the time to make and coordinate a team.

The idea is to remove barriers of entry and increase the accuracy of sorting and ranking algorithms, not increase the barrier of entry to the point where it effectively kills off 99% of the population of players while dissuading new players for entering.

Eurantien.4632:

The plan is to make more elite specs, not make the elite spec on par with core.

This is the philosophy I agree with, design wise.

Vicky.4563:

jcbroe.4329:

Vicky.4563:

Protective Ward never made any sense to me. Just passively gain protection and granting weakness just by getting hit? Sure, it has an ICD, but it’s just so lame.

At least give it some sort of requirement. Maybe it kicks in at x% of health. Or after you successfully block or evade an attack. Or something.

Please don’t, boring doesn’t mean bad, and any of these changes doesn’t even make it GM worthy.

It falls in line with almost every other passive damage reduction any other class has, but because it’s a GM, it’s a protection proc trait instead of a constant passive bonus, and as such, already has better counterplay than any number of those other traits.

True. At least it’s a boon that can be corrupted or stripped and not something scrappers unique boon.

But you realize since druid is becoming meta, it’s going to be a prime target for the next round of nerf batting right? I’d rather try to find something marginal we can nerf than wait for Anet to come up with one.

It was introduced with core ranger buffs, and it’s one of those things that while it might be strong on Druid, it isn’t as strong on core ranger. If anything, it gave core ranger, at the time, just enough of a tool to finally poke it’s head into viability because it didn’t die when it was looked at or as hard countered by thieves.

Blanket nerfs to the whole class like that are never good, because even if they affect the power build, they drive all other builds that are just viable or on the brink of being viable out of their positions and skew the whole equilibrium, underpowering the class.

If Druid is what we’re discussing as being too strong (or any other elite spec), then nerfs should only target the weapons, traits, and skills introduced by the elite spec since the idea is to close the margin between the core class and the elite specs with the balancing, and hitting things like core traits or like shouts doesn’t do anything to reduce the margin, it just hurts the whole class overall.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I’d assume off-season ranked would use unranked/pre-league matchmaking. There we be no pips or division matchmaking at all.

If we used the same mmr, we would know for sure if people’s rating are borked if they change drastically during the off-season.
If we used a different mmr, we could start fresh (bad matches for a while) or copy over the current ranked mmr and let it deviate from there.

Edit: missed the part where you said copy over the ranked MMR and let it deviate from there. Do that.

Vicky.4563:

Protective Ward never made any sense to me. Just passively gain protection and granting weakness just by getting hit? Sure, it has an ICD, but it’s just so lame.

At least give it some sort of requirement. Maybe it kicks in at x% of health. Or after you successfully block or evade an attack. Or something.

Please don’t, boring doesn’t mean bad, and any of these changes doesn’t even make it GM worthy.

It falls in line with almost every other passive damage reduction any other class has, but because it’s a GM, it’s a protection proc trait instead of a constant passive bonus, and as such, already has better counterplay than any number of those other traits.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This —>||<-- close to having this thread closed for going off topic.

The core desire behind wanting ranked back sounds like expected player behavior is different in the two arenas. If we enabled ranked in the off-season, would players expect to have a separate mmr from league seasons, or the same?

The same MMR from the league season should carry over into the off season (note: this should also be an interesting way to see how the system would place people without the division safety nets, it may provide some useful metrics).

Ideally, you’d have a system that only manually resets MMR at the start of a new season, and then you’d have placement matches at the beginning of the season to establish an MMR starting point, but with the divisions limiting the portion of the population you can queue against by pip range, and the safety net system not offering any regression, it might just be an unnecessary perceived convenience until a true ranking system is developed (or if).

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

jcbroe.4329:

StickerHappy.8052:

jcbroe.4329:

StickerHappy.8052:

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

UnitedChaos.8364:

Can confirm.
NEITHER
Signet of the Wild or Rune of the Dolyak triggers the minor Druid trait Live Vigorously.

This is correct ^^.

My bad y’all.

Just curious, if Rune of Durability was still available in PvP; do you think it would be a better choice over Dolyak?

2 Different sets and 2 Different pros:

If you take traited shouts naturally durability will be better because of the boon duration.

It is also good when you have fortifying bond traited so more boons for your pets via the number 4 proc, and ultimately giving you 40% boon duration. Another important thing is that you get the resistance which rangers do not naturally have. Resistance will be around 1.5 seconds with NM.

Dolyak Imo is better building builds lacking Astral force generators like SotW or Traited shouts. Since you free up a utility slot. Also Dolyak is not like regen that can be stripped or corrupted.

Dolyak + Staff is more than enough to generate AF, now you have so much flexibility in the traits and utility slots

Well the big thing in WvW that I’m noticing is that you aren’t really short on Astral Force ever (this is my most offensive build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA1CiVsCOsActglOB7pFEqWYwr0Y6N1pvFAKclMtzA-TVyGABkfBAmU9HDOEARqLAgHAwdKBLf/hCOCALp8DA-w ), but the Durability Runes can provide you nearly permanent Protection between procs of Protective Ward, the runes, and Protect Me.

At least, I think that’s their selling point, but I can’t tell if the benefit is too marginal compared to the guarantee-able and constant Dolyak benefits.

Your build looks great, but I mean this is just me but, you have clerics gear and have perma prot too, yes that would make you super tanky but I would just get a different gear since the perma prot will still cover your defences.

Also why healing power gear?

I run exclusively with my guild group, and while I have the full damage gear and play a pretty decent gank character, in the grand scheme of things, my single target damage is much less important than doing something like keeping the frontline/backline up, so the healing power lets me drop multiple big heals on multiple people, and with just one or two other druids, it lets our group run more offensive oriented gear.

At least, that’s the theory/logic to it. I also don’t have any problem oneshotting people with a GS/pet combo, just like in PvP, so I don’t miss out on much.

Actually, if you look at the gear values, you’ll see I’ve essentially recreated the Mender’s Amulet from PvP, but with toughness over vitality.

I revised your build Jcbro
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8XnUqA1CiVsCmsCctglOBDelOTvpO9tAQh7pFEqWYlMtzA-TlyGQBO7gA8LlQTS9H8oEkcXBgIpboc7PsElNEUpAAeAABAQAu5NzmtZwQ/5P/5PHa38m38m38mlC4bpWA-w

its tougher/more Vit/ more condi clears / higher healing stat + longer durations for only slightly less power but that won’t make much of a difference since your running in a guild group longer sustain is much better and those blinds / pulls into a WD pumping out Retaliation+vun as a bonus % damage you can Heal and CC at the same time with the Whirling bolts on the waterfields plus reflect any incomming projeciles.

yes the root on Off-hand axe might be situations but if you trust your team mates to dive when they say and make a good push you can , Staff 3 in heal+blast>CA>trigger seeds of life buff up Grace of land then pull as many as you can using reverse glyph of tides and then trigger weaponswap PoS pull a called target then WD into a waterfield planted by the secondary healer ect its Rampantly Flexible in what the situation has to offer.

with the blinds and higher tankiness you can live without Signet of stone on this type of druid build , you have 2 stunbreakers inside CA form and 2 outside of CA form plus one on use of CA form and a AoE push to get out of chokes or tight spaces which also adds buffs+ increases the mender stacks for more Outgoing healing and 15seceonds at 4k + 30% outgoing its a extra 1.2k over 15seconds extra 80hps persecond totaling a ovrall hps of 346 per second ontop of staff AA ect this generaly means after all natural mender stacks, you can tick 1k per second when combined with Staff AA (so you won’t have to stay AA’ing for long to heal up and the Seeds of life from the glyphs will also heal for 1.491k up from 1147hp per glyph after the 30% boost.

hope this helps

Kelfar_Zenos.

Thanks! I knew there was a gearing setup that was more optimized than what I was running.

I alter everything else like you described just based on the mood I’m in and the encounters we’re in lol, but having a second opinion on it definitely helps me to default a setup better, so yeah, I really appreciate it

StickerHappy.8052:

jcbroe.4329:

StickerHappy.8052:

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

UnitedChaos.8364:

Can confirm.
NEITHER
Signet of the Wild or Rune of the Dolyak triggers the minor Druid trait Live Vigorously.

This is correct ^^.

My bad y’all.

Just curious, if Rune of Durability was still available in PvP; do you think it would be a better choice over Dolyak?

2 Different sets and 2 Different pros:

If you take traited shouts naturally durability will be better because of the boon duration.

It is also good when you have fortifying bond traited so more boons for your pets via the number 4 proc, and ultimately giving you 40% boon duration. Another important thing is that you get the resistance which rangers do not naturally have. Resistance will be around 1.5 seconds with NM.

Dolyak Imo is better building builds lacking Astral force generators like SotW or Traited shouts. Since you free up a utility slot. Also Dolyak is not like regen that can be stripped or corrupted.

Dolyak + Staff is more than enough to generate AF, now you have so much flexibility in the traits and utility slots

Well the big thing in WvW that I’m noticing is that you aren’t really short on Astral Force ever (this is my most offensive build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA1CiVsCOsActglOB7pFEqWYwr0Y6N1pvFAKclMtzA-TVyGABkfBAmU9HDOEARqLAgHAwdKBLf/hCOCALp8DA-w ), but the Durability Runes can provide you nearly permanent Protection between procs of Protective Ward, the runes, and Protect Me.

At least, I think that’s their selling point, but I can’t tell if the benefit is too marginal compared to the guarantee-able and constant Dolyak benefits.

Your build looks great, but I mean this is just me but, you have clerics gear and have perma prot too, yes that would make you super tanky but I would just get a different gear since the perma prot will still cover your defences.

Also why healing power gear?

I run exclusively with my guild group, and while I have the full damage gear and play a pretty decent gank character, in the grand scheme of things, my single target damage is much less important than doing something like keeping the frontline/backline up, so the healing power lets me drop multiple big heals on multiple people, and with just one or two other druids, it lets our group run more offensive oriented gear.

At least, that’s the theory/logic to it. I also don’t have any problem oneshotting people with a GS/pet combo, just like in PvP, so I don’t miss out on much.

Actually, if you look at the gear values, you’ll see I’ve essentially recreated the Mender’s Amulet from PvP, but with toughness over vitality.

StickerHappy.8052:

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

UnitedChaos.8364:

Can confirm.
NEITHER
Signet of the Wild or Rune of the Dolyak triggers the minor Druid trait Live Vigorously.

This is correct ^^.

My bad y’all.

Just curious, if Rune of Durability was still available in PvP; do you think it would be a better choice over Dolyak?

2 Different sets and 2 Different pros:

If you take traited shouts naturally durability will be better because of the boon duration.

It is also good when you have fortifying bond traited so more boons for your pets via the number 4 proc, and ultimately giving you 40% boon duration. Another important thing is that you get the resistance which rangers do not naturally have. Resistance will be around 1.5 seconds with NM.

Dolyak Imo is better building builds lacking Astral force generators like SotW or Traited shouts. Since you free up a utility slot. Also Dolyak is not like regen that can be stripped or corrupted.

Dolyak + Staff is more than enough to generate AF, now you have so much flexibility in the traits and utility slots

Well the big thing in WvW that I’m noticing is that you aren’t really short on Astral Force ever (this is my most offensive build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA1CiVsCOsActglOB7pFEqWYwr0Y6N1pvFAKclMtzA-TVyGABkfBAmU9HDOEARqLAgHAwdKBLf/hCOCALp8DA-w ), but the Durability Runes can provide you nearly permanent Protection between procs of Protective Ward, the runes, and Protect Me.

At least, I think that’s their selling point, but I can’t tell if the benefit is too marginal compared to the guarantee-able and constant Dolyak benefits.