Guild Wars 2

UnitedChaos.8364:

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?

But it doesn’t?
If you’re looking for passive CA regeneration, you’re best bet would be a shoutbow build to grant regeneration to allies.

….your answer doesn’t make any sense to me. Did you mean “isn’t,” as in, is not available? That would make much more sense to me lol.

I asked because I’m gearing my WvW Druid right now and while there are a ton of other options and opinions on the subject of what build to run in WvW, I’ve been debating these two runesets, so I figured I’d ask the question, since the stats provided are nearly identical.

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?

UnitedChaos.8364:

Prior to the update 4/29 ranger was pretty good. What made it good was Search and Rescue was overpowered, but it’s been reduced to dust now, so you can’t run it in pvp. Along with mediocre damage, heals, and cc made it a pretty solid “meh”. Now that people can’t run as a resbot player, it’s kinda been ruined.

This isn’t the atmosphere I’m getting, at all. Most ESL teams are of the mindset that Necro/Reaper was basically dumpstered (comparative to the established balance equilibrium) and are working with the idea that most teams will be running a Ele/Engi/Ranger core, with Revenant and Mesmer being your big damage dealers.

This could definitely change when the teams start scrimming again, but Ranger is definitely still top tier/meta viable, you just take Search and Rescue and switch it with a different Glyph or Shout (Protect Me and Glyph of Tides being popular replacements).

It’s a very good writeup, but I honestly wouldn’t run your build. Not because it isn’t good, but because there are more efficient options.

For instance, you’re already specced into BM, all you would have to do is make sure you’re running We Heal As One and trait for shouts, and you’d get tons of mileage out of just that because you would have near perma swiftness so you could drop signet of the hunt entirely, on top of having more healing per second and astral force generation from regen from the trait.

I could continue tweaking the build, but it would end up being the exact setup I run, so it’s easier just to post that: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWnUqA9Ci1CCOsActglOBDelGT3pPtgQ1CzpvFAKcl480A-TFyDwAAM/dQJYz9H8oLIxlAowTAYnyvWq/AA-w

Rune choice would change based on utility I want. Scholar’s maxes damage as much as possible, Soldier’s for multiple small cleansing sources, or Dolyak for yet another unique source of healing to power Astral Force Regeneration (which in turn would give more cleansing and stunbreaks from traited Celestial Form).

Thankfully OP, you already have a nearly identical gear spread, if you wanted to try the two builds and make your own opinion (which is why I’m posting), you only have to make a few trait choices and maybe get a staff (it’s great utility and important for powering celestial form, but not necessarily a necessity).

Here’s another way of putting it, since we’re apparently so concerned about “protecting everybody’s gameplay experience.”

If I can’t retain my MMR from my ranked play or play in a ranked queue where I’m placed accordingly, I can’t report people intentionally ruining games for griefing, I can’t witchhunt those people in ANY outlet so that they can be punished in any sort of manner, and I can’t even avoid them on the forums when they come here and gloat that your current system is hurting my gameplay experience, then how exactly are you enhancing or protecting my gameplay experience?

Just some food for thought, Evan, along with my prior queue suggestion.

Evan Lesh.3295:

bloodpyrope.8630:

Evan Lesh.3295:

We can create a new MMR that is used during off season, but it’d have the same problems as unranked in that it is dormant 8 weeks at a time. If we continued to use ranked MMR, would that be a problem for when the new season begins? Would people try to tank their MMR in the off-season to try and get easier matches?

I mean, consider it as 3 separate modes with separate MMRs independent of each other. Unranked, Ranked, and Leagues.

During League seasons, disabled Ranked and freeze everyone’s MMR and start using Leagues matchmaking system. Replaced the "Ranked’ button with “Leagues”. After Leagues, re-enable “normal” Ranked queues with the frozen MMR from before.

It’d also give you data to compare the MMR of players who play ranked regularly and the MMR from Leagues.

It’s a fine idea, I’m just cautioning that the volatility in matchmaking that happens during off-season will still be there with a third off-season ranked arena. It just maintains the barrier to entry and split queues.

Matchmaking will perform better with more people, and only having one arena helps that. Is there anything that could create a shift in perception with unranked that would solve these problems?

What’s wrong with only having a single queue?

Keep custom arena, merge the queues into a singular queue entitled “competitive,” and then the MMR rating system stays consistent unless you manually decide to do resets.

The focus is always on the “highly competitive” players changing their attitudes/philosophies to accommodate casual play, but really, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of middle ground available in the game, not to mention that it’s counter intuitive to play a competitive PvP mode so casually as to not believe it should “feel” competitive.

Having this suggested setup allows for casual offseasons to give players (and your system) that break you feel is important, while maintaining their MMR to at least get equal skilled matches, but also illustrates that the nature of a PvP game is in fact, competitive, with the onseason being a result of that, and then there will still always be custom servers to accommodate the “play how you want” people on one front, while the MMR ranking system handles them on another.

If players didn’t want to be ranked, didn’t want to be measured, or didn’t want to be judged by either a system or their peers, then they wouldn’t PvP at all. Your system already avoids embarrassing them with no division regression during onseasons and no way to quantify MMR otherwise, how is that not enough to maintain a happy medium between all of the player types?

Cyanon.1928:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I feel like 24/7 ladder would create a lot of burnout.

Thats correct Evan, off season is very important because it give us time to learn new classes, diff builds, take breaks, mess around, play for fun (the ultimate purpose of any game). Competing all the time is not fun for all the people.

Additionally, many competitive players tend to bee too emotional for ranked and they start their insults rhetoric since first fight of the match is lost. Thus, destroying the community aspect of the game. This is something your metrics don’t show, but people are a lot nicer off-season in comparison to season.

I love the idea of having breaks between seasons. Am I actually enjoying the off season a lot because I’m playing many diff builds on several toons. Its very good experience!

You aren’t forced to compete at all, Unranked Queue is 100% available at all times, on and off season.

However, for the people that do want to be competitive and enjoy a high level of competition, their venue is now removed, and that exact behavior that you dislike and described is now forced to clash with a population of players with different “goals” for playing (if not playing a competitive game mode competitively can be considered a goal).

You aren’t EVER forced to queue into ranked, aka the more competitive setting, so it’s hard to understand why you’d want to take away the venue for players aiming to play more competitively, when with both queues are open, the player base can at least coexist.

Ellie.5913:

Ramoth.9064:

Evan Lesh.3295:

What about Ranked do you enjoy more than Unranked during off-season?

Is it that you prefer climbing a ladder all the time? Or are there other particular reasons.

People generally just give more of a kitten when rank is involved. I just finished a match where we were 200 ahead, and people started DnT (no, not death and taxes, i mean dueling and trashtalking). We ended up narrowing winning by 4 points.

At least you won, and it was a close match, sounds like success to me.

Close match =/= quality match. Even if the matchmaker matches MMR perfectly, it’s only a metric of skill, and not behavior, which only has correlations (a high MMR player can decide to afk, conga line around the map, duel, etc).

Ranked queues create an atmosphere in which people are actively dedicated to playing the objective of the gametype and winning, which is why people are asking for it back right now.

Also, as a person who queued to legendary last season (like so many other people, I’m not special, just sharing my experience), the matches were observably better in player attitude and player game type and mechanical skill as you climbed divisions. Actually, the quality declined in the legendary division, which is assumed to be due to people not taking the game as seriously at that point since they had achieved the major achievements for the season (grinding through legendary multiple times doesn’t have enough reward/prestige associated with it for people to take it seriously).

anduriell.6280:

StickerHappy.8052:

I do agree that you need cleanses, I heavily disagree that core ranger isn’t viable. Eura got to legendary using only Core Ranger.

you havent seen the review from wooden potatos i assume. anybody could get to leg just playing enough hours. Also premaids help, and obviously your skill against them.

core ranger is not viable because you are locked in survival for the cleanses. the runes of the trooper only cleanse one condition and are for tanky builds.

the day Anet moves the trait emphatic bond to BM will be a day ro rejoice. And if they improve it to cleanse 1 condi every 3 seconds maybe even push the ranger to have a chance.

Eura is only one person, so it isn’t as though he’s your average player, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t even use Survival and he performed very well.

Core ranger also has more cleansing than Revenant, and Rev is top tier, so it isn’t as though the issue is even survival, it’s impact.

Personally, if I was going to run core ranger:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA1Ci9rAOsActgBMhqX2BIA+boBqY/wXgHvEnnG-TpBFABNcIAY4IAAwDAQ8yAFt/ABXAAA

and if those pets aren’t allowed, swap to double birds and the BM trait to the Taunt.

Evan Lesh.3295:

What about Ranked do you enjoy more than Unranked during off-season?

Is it that you prefer climbing a ladder all the time? Or are there other particular reasons.

The impression* that players are matched closer for better quality matches, the impression* that ranked queues try to reduce class stacking, and the big one, player attitude.

People in ranked tend to take ranked seriously, people in unranked run around in the water area of Niflhel trying to get duels saying “lol it’s unranked, who cares about winning” to the degree that they should be banned for griefing/trolling.

*impression is being used where there is no quantifiable evidence to support that this is the case, but seems to be an observable comparison

mistsim.2748:

Wondrouswall.7169:

mistsim.2748:

literally nobody asked for a ground-targeted #4

I asked for it. xP

well the first thing we asked, or what we’ve been asking for 2 years, is that we lose the root on the #5. i just assumed that was priority. i guess im not sold on OH axe, even though #4 is a bit more interesting now.

you think sword/axe/staff might be interesting on some kind of offensive druid build? is WD actually usable for cleaving the downed? all i know after 3k hours on my ranger is that standing still for more than a split second with enemies around you will get you dunked. i last played in October, are things different now?

Not really, but the damage on Axe 5 is incredibly good. I’m not even specced for max damage, I just swapped in some zerker weapons onto my zealots armor/celestial trinket WvW setup, and was pulling 3-5k single hits of the axe, and 7-11k Whirling Defenses, using the generic NM/BM/Druid trait split you see on the PvP build.

It’s practicality is probably limited, but the lol factor is there when you melt somebody with a full combo (axe 4, axe 5, petswap while the animation goes into bristleback f2).

cafard.8953:

jcbroe.4329:

Now the sword is neither unique or effective, it’s just “easier.”

Easier? Half the complaints seem to be about the sword no longer magically sticking to targets, including stealthed ones.

Easier because in PvE I can hit autoattack, then sit back in my chair with my hand on the dodge button, just like every other class with a boring autoattack.

When you were “sticking” to targets, you were “animation locked,” so that you weren’t able to dodge to interrupt the animation.

ANet properly balanced risk/reward, so the only thing I can really do is blame the community and blame ANet for listening to a community of players that wanted a good weapon changed just so they could sleep at the keyboard.

Tragic Positive.9356:

FrownyClown.8402:

The strength of the sword auto was being able to stick to opponents and suprising them with a fast-hitting dps. I do not like the changes.

The only real gap closer was the 3rd attack of the chain.
If my enemy happened to be under swiftness he was usually able to run away from my kick. If he, however, ported or moved away when executing Pounce – that was a nice 2 jumps worth of 500 range.

But that was a roulette. Nope, I can clearly see the vast majority being happy with the changes. We have been asking for this ever since release. Yet once we finally get it done – people magically start hating it…
… I’m not really surprised since I knew it’s gonna be like this – but it’s a subject for having a thought.

On the other hand, people like me (the minority), loved the sword, never wanted it changed, and knew ANet wouldn’t change it the right way because the ways that it was strong would be removed/altered in some way, to compensate for a new ease of use autoattack.

Apparently though, people would rather have a game you can play one handed (in PvE) than a unique and effective weapon.

Now the sword is neither unique or effective, it’s just “easier.”

Then again, if ANet would just stop designing weapons around their autoattacks being their optimal DPS, then this would have been a nearly nonexistent issue to begin with.

Shorter seasons aren’t the solution to what you are asking for; a true MMR system is.

The division system doesn’t allow for enough regression, aka, you can’t lose Divisions. At the end of the day, it’s just another reward track, with the catch that only only progress if you win more than you lose.

What the game really needs is a true MMR ranking system for the competitive players with exclusive, non-advantageous rewarding for prestigious rating/tier achievements, with a secondary grind based reward system that provides the incentive it needs to in order to retain a casual community and any sort of semblance of player population (aka, you want people to keep playing, and new players to get into PvP, and encourage them to continue playing).

Of course, this is highly unlikely, and what ANet will end up doing is doubling down on their current system, which only gives pieces of what each segment of the player population wants; leaving everybody dissatisfied.

Generally, Reaper players trying to get all of their damage skills onto you from both of their weapon sets, then pop into Reaper Shroud and “wombo” through their damage skills after getting stability up (5→2→4→auto).

What this would look like for a reaper is to start in staff, land their bleed mark, poison/chill mark, and fear mark (which also chills because Reaper), get close enough to you to hit you with their weapon swap procs, swap weapons, use their AoE bleed and scepter 3 torment, then go into Reaper shroud, which will put some weakness and bleeding on you and corrupt one of your boons, and do their Reaper combo.

If they start in their Scepter set, the full combo would just sort of be the reverse of starting in staff.

So, scepter skills are difficult to dodge to some degree, but if you learn the animation for marks, you can start to negate damage you take by dodging the important marks (the fear mark and the poison/chill mark).

Besides that, you want to try to save your Celestial Form until the Reaper goes into shroud and uses some skills. You’ll get fully cleansed of most, if not all of their damage, then you can drop a few heals on yourself, leave astral form, and kite around pressuring them, waiting for their reaper shroud to drop until you unload a Bristleback burst on them.

That’s the gist of how a Reaper fight will usually play out, anyhow haha.

Wintersnight.3061:

thanks fellas! JC, did you mean to leave Paladins on your Menders build? Or do I need the Menders Amulet?

Shoot, I didn’t. The link should be fixed now

@Wintersnight;
I’ll try to answer in order, and thanks for asking!

How to Druid? This is sort of complicated to answer because everybody plays differently and you’ve probably worked some sort of muscle memory and mental timing, but me for example: I save my Celestial Form and use it in priority of condi clear>heal>stun break, with a situational interrupt only as necessary, with my teammates passively benefitting from the selfish use of celestial form. Pugging especially, your job is to best support yourself, and you can carry like that, benefit your teammates at the same time, and SnR/rez them as needed.

Classes to run from: in a 1v1, you shouldn’t really lose any ground against any class. A good ele is probably unkillable without interrupting their heal, and even then, that shouldn’t matter as because as long as you are defending a point you have, in a 1v1 the only true goal is to survive indefinitely and not get decapped. Specific threats to definitely look out for though are Revenants, with no toughness they just take chunks out of your health, so you want to either kite them or kill them, or pressure them off of you, and the other is Reapers, and basically, you want to be out of range of their reaper shroud skills and try to save your full cleanse for when they commit to a condi bomb because they blow all of their offense when they do so.

Classes to always beat: you should be able to beat everything except eles, and potentially other druids, depending on what they are running. Not that it’s impossible to win, it just isn’t worth the time it would take to win a 1v1, so you teamfight them or outrotate them instead.

Classes you have the potential to beat: any and all of them, but it would require perfect play in certain situations.

Job at beginning: I personally prefer home because I can gauge my teams ability to teamfight by watching the team UI of their health and such, I can 1v1 and win/sustain if I get pushed, and I can join the teamfight quicker than other classes due to the build’s high mobility, and potentially save the fight with a Strength of the Pack stomp or SnR rez.

Job mid match: your most basic job is to not die. Dying resets your current astral force to zero, and when you’re dead, that means less team heals and revive potential. If you see that you’re losing a teamfight, especially in a body count difference, just leave and regroup. Besides that, my general rule is to not unnecessarily push far, and depending on the map, if the teamfight is won at mid, I either rotate back to home or setup to watch the enemy respawn path to home, to see if I need to rotate and where. If my team overextends to far, I ALWAYS stay behind on a node we have, because in that situation, and enemy team that rotates better or wins that teamfight can snowball the whole match from there and win.

Positioning: I would say that I spend most of my time where I’m not the one contesting a node in “mid range.” Basically, you want to be out of melee range, pressuring the smart target (which in pugs isn’t always the called target, the best target is the one closest to death with the least defensive cooldowns, which isn’t always the priority target other people seem to call), and ready to swap to the bristleback for an F2 burst.

Far or follow pack: personally, I trust my own rotations better than my teams in pugs. I generally stay away from far unless we lose the teamfight at mid and far is uncontested, or the team commits to fighting far while home is also protected. You want to always try to make sure the fights that occur are even or overwhelming in your favor for your team, but beyond that, the best advice I can give about fat point is don’t lose map control of the other 2 points to push it if you have them, don’t fight for it while it’s being defended unless you made the smart rotation (you control mid, teammates feeding kills to home and losing, for instance), and never push far after winning a fight/teamfight, because the enemy can just respawn healthy, usually before you do anything substantial, and steamroll over you.

Besides all of that, Druid is very different from GS/LB in that you essentially are just sustained, moderate to low damage output with incredible support potential without your pets damage, and that doing damage is all about utilizing your pets to their full potential.

If I missed anything or need to elaborate, or if there’s anything else, let me know!

Fluffball.8307:

What is the point of farming to legendary though? In my view, the whole point of ranked is to see where you stand in relation to the best available opposition. If I’m not fighting ESL players and people on that level, I want nothing to do with legendary. I hope they figure out some sort of reasonable solution for season 3 because I have not been terribly impressed with the last 2 seasons.

Not to highjack the thread or anything.

It’s a fair question lol.

The main problem this season is that the matchmaker just doesn’t ever try to make sure the 2 teams are a good matchup against each other. So even during peak hours, you still get this fluctuating match quality, the only difference is the frequency of matches played and off hours reduces the available player pool, and you’re just gambling at that point that your MMR is above average. It could potentially just backfire in your face lol.

But yeah, for the legendary, but also because ANet is going to have to listen to what players say and what their statistics tell them.

In a perfect environment, we’d separate rewards from divisions and switch to a visible rating system with a PvP specific reward income that gets rewarded to everyone, win or lose, but at a higher rate with wins. This currency could then be used at a vendor to buy non-game-breaking items and skins. Divisions could then be tied to rating ranges, and they could add cosmetics to purchase based on your division to the vendor, where you have to be a certain division to be able to buy certain cosmetics.

Until then, it’s never going to be a competitive system that doesn’t punish casual players, or vice versa on who’s getting punished.

P.S. Yes, I’m suggesting that ANet basically reimplement the Glory currency/system now that there is something they can tie tiered unlocks to that isn’t rank.

So, you’ve seen the topics by everybody else, not with the purpose of bragging of self-promotion, but to share some general tips and builds from their experience.

First off is a basic tip; if you think/know you have middle/high MMR (which is how the system determines your teams), you can queue at off peak hours to skew the matches because the game this season is only assembling individual teams by similar MMR, not matching teams by it. So, you can either get a game where you get blown out (happens if you aren’t the highest MMR in the pip range), get even matches, or you end up being the team blowing the other team out. Queuing at off hours reduces the available population, so if you know you are going to queue with high quality teammates, you can basically gamble on having more wins than losses and climbing during that timeframe than during peak hours.

Anyhow, with that out of the way, 2 builds:
Paladins (I played this mostly up until Sapphire and then making my Mender’s v Paladins thread): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA9sg1CCOsActglOB7pFMAWYOBuAQhDelGT3plI9zA-TpBFABFt/ABXAAAeAAMcEAa4QA8fZAA

Mender’s (I played this from Sapphire until Legendary): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8YnUqA9sgVsCOsActglOBzpvFAKcPtgQ1CDelOT3plI9zA-TpBFABA8AAY4IAQwFAohDCQ/lBEZ/BA

I would personally consider the Mender’s build the better performing build, though it’s probable that it’s less “safe” with the lack of toughness, but it’s capabilities just ended up far out-competing anything else I tried.
Notes:

• On teams with only one necromancer and no other sources of “poison spam,” switch Evasive Purity to Vigorous Training for more dodge potential for you and your team, and more boons to fuel your, and more importantly, your pet’s damage with Bountiful Hunter.
• On the Mender’s build, the runes and Natural Healing both regenerate Astral Force, which is important because if your regen is getting corrupted, you might end up struggling to get Astral Force up every 10 seconds, and if you aren’t regaining Celestial Form on cooldown, then it leaves openings for the other team to take you and your teammates you without you being able to do much for them, and it leaves you susceptible to condi-bombs without Astral Force.
• Use Strength of the Pack intelligently, but also often. Particularly, safe rezzes and stomps can cause team fights to absolutely steam roll in your favor. Also, most necros in the game right now won’t be able to kill you without fearing you, which also applies to Dragonhunters, so 90% of the time, SotP is your “I win” button against these classes.
• Swap to Glyph of the Tides if you are going to play decap (don’t recommend doing this unless you know your rotations perfectly and can guarantee you’ll win 99-100% of all your duels). I’d also do this if you know you’re up against farpoint heroes and want to defend home indefinitely.

That’s all I can think of at this moment. Any comments or questions, I’ll be responding and interested to hear what you all have to say.

Eurantien.4632:

Just to chime in on the s/d vs gs discussion. After queuing on my core ranger and just LOVING greatsword, it is the one ranger weapon where I really feel I can outplay other players the most, I thought that if might be a superior option for me personally than s/d. I did some duels vs my teammates zeromis/supcutie, and although GS could often quickly win me the fight with good CC chains, when I swapped back to s/d It was clear how much more of an advantage I had.

@ Durzlla, I would argue that with all the torment you have seen I would say s/d is clearly the better option. If you avoid getting hit by the shatters altogether, you have no torment to worry about in the first place.

I went ahead and swapped to playing a Mender’s build with S/D myself for the last division climb I did to see what it was all about and I basically came to the same conclusion.

I feel like, while I did lose damage potential and kill ability from losing the CC particularly, I gained a lot of sustain, in teamfights especially, that I just didn’t have before. S/D has definitely allowed me to survive situations I was getting focused and reset, and coupled with Mender’s, I’ve definitely clutched fights with a lot less effort by just dropping a single CF3 into CF5 combo and outright winning those situations.

Forum bug 15/char

FrouFrou.4958:

I started with marauders, then tried paladins amulet but I felt I couldn’t support my team well enough so I switched to menders, ended up sticking with it all the way to legendary. I ran staff/GS and played similarly as how Prophet descriped his playstyle. I didn’t find LB druids/rangers a threat at all :x

And the GS has been working for you with Menders?

Just asking because the visible consensus seems to be to run sword/dagger and staff (by visible I mean the players on the weekly streams), and while it may have a bit more survival, it just doesn’t seem to have as good of a “feel” as GS does, especially because the GS can win you 1v1s that would take an annoying long time to win otherwise, which is invaluable if you push/defend sidepoints.

I’ve been less open to experimenting with my builds as I climbed higher in the divisions, so I’d definitely appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.

MaJoBooOM.4851:

Thank you for the answers. Many people here and on reddit said that its easier and better to run magi armor, but I am thinking if somebody even wanted a magi druid only for heal for fractal? Because I would like to do both contents raid and fractal, of course I could buy 2 sets, but the problem is the price + the bag slots.

@Prophet which runes are u running? Some people said that healing yourself with zealot gear is hard + thinking about the group.

Don’t know about Prophet, but this would be my raid healing setup, and the gear itself is all purpose (it was crafted specifically for WvW but has other applications), which is Zealots Weapons/Armor and Celestial Trinkets/Back.

No, it isn’t the maximum amount of healing power you can build for by far, but it has 50% outgoing healing stacked on it, which makes your big heals easily go above 5k, and for really crazy moments, you pop the elite glyph while in celestial form and within the range you need to be in before you drop your heals, it adds all of the healing you do to yourself directly to your allies (so essentially doubling the healing outputs).

A druid alone isn’t going to carry a team through the raid though, the group still needs to play the mechanics and encounters correctly, and while I’m sure there are groups that would welcome a fully invested healing Druid as necessary, the majority of the players in the game probably fall in between needing full heals to advance or not needing and healing invested players at all.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8Xn0rC1sitqAOrAEtiFGBzZ0FsaawP1qaWlJc9tCAlMszA-TFCGABnfBAoUXAAHBALV/ZgHCgUK/Ma/B9UCKKA/C-w

Honestly, you got better responses to this on reddit.

Some general ideas though:

• Unless you are playing with a group that wants you to optimize your DPS through a condition build, most groups are going to find that the damage buffs and healing you bring to a group are the most important part
• Don’t stack toughness too high, or at all, because toughness draws aggro and you don’t want the aggro as a Druid
• Staff and sword/axe is the commonly accepted weapon combination, but the reality is that most groups will notice you only for good/effective staff play, and that only you yourself will even notice if you swap weapons or not; not that it isn’t important, but groups tend to only notice things that value/affect the group, and in the grand scheme of things, your DPS is not one of those things

I mean, a lot of other people have responded to you on reddit, and combined here and some of the “usage/rotation” of skill descriptions on metabattle, you should be pretty good to go.

Here’s a general priority though: Buffs>healing>damage. Frost Spirit and/or Sun Spirit, Grace of the Land, and the damage glyph take top priority at all times. Every class can self heal, and tempests crap out healing, but the thing that makes you the most irreplaceable is your damage buffs. The healing happens on half of those things anyhow, and staff is constantly pumping out some semblance of healing, so really, the main time healing is concerned is learning when you want to drop big heals versus just the regular passive heals and grace of the land output, which is more of a “learn the encounters” thing combined with how your group handles those encounters.

Ideally, in the most perfect, optimal situation, you’d want to maximize your DPS, but nobody is taking a Druid for its personal DPS specifically, and those “perfect, optimal” groups aren’t exactly groups that you just happen into, so the main concern for starting should be to learn the encounters and your main role (damage buffs primarily, healing secondary) regardless of which build you use.

anduriell.6280:

Just one question: How do you get the ascended ZEALOT trinkets? because i don’t see those stats in the laurel vendor neither i can find history mode to get them same as the Sinister.

Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you can only get them through the raid.

Personally for my Zealots setup, I use Ascended Celestial for trinkets/back, and armor/weapons are Zealots.

Eurantien.4632:

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

Someone said it earlier. If you are healing you aren’t doing damage. That’s why menders is better. Less time healing because you get back to safe health pools easier.

You’re a bit out of context with the comment you’re referencing Eura lol.

The comment was made in regards to why Paladins would be better than Menders; because in Paladins the damage mitigation is passively handled by stats which means less time taken to have to actively heal to mitigate damage done to you, where Menders you’d take more damage and spend more time having to heal because of it.

The way I see it is that regardless of the amulet, you are still taking some damage. That 500 toughness really doesn’t mitigate a whole lot of damage. Sure it passively reduces your damage but since you probably have regen, the healing power is also passively healing you. That’s not my point though. The point is that you will take damage and get to a point where you will want to heal back to a comfortable health pool. Since you have to do that with both amulets then you actually end up spending more time healing in Paladins than in Menders because you don’t have healing power in the former. For example, you take 4K damage in Menders to get back to full hp you go into CF. lunar blast them and yourself, then you leave and you are at full hp. If you have Paladins and let’s say that toughness makes that 4K hit a 3k hit (overestimation on the effectiveness of toughness) and you go into CF and lunar blast, you don’t heal up that hp difference, you end up a few hundred under max, so you Cf 4 to get a tick or two before you leave CF.t That means you just spent more time healing because of less healing power.

Sorry that you typed all of this out (though for people that needed the explanation this is welcomed, I’m sure).

I was literally just trying to point out what was taken out of context and semi-summarize it lol.

The build you ran on stream (and its 99% similar variation available to view on metabattle) is really just completely different from what I expected to see. Mender’s, especially at high level, organized VoIP games makes lots of sense, and I guess with the stat split, the Sw/D set ends up becoming the overall most logical choice. The vigor on pet swap over Evasive Purity eludes me though.

At the end of the day I’d probably end up with the meta tagged build on metabattle, but with Evasive Purity and GS being swapped in every other match instead of sw/d after I miss the chain CC and bristleback burst setups too much.

Eurantien.4632:

Someone said it earlier. If you are healing you aren’t doing damage. That’s why menders is better. Less time healing because you get back to safe health pools easier.

You’re a bit out of context with the comment you’re referencing Eura lol.

The comment was made in regards to why Paladins would be better than Menders; because in Paladins the damage mitigation is passively handled by stats which means less time taken to have to actively heal to mitigate damage done to you, where Menders you’d take more damage and spend more time having to heal because of it.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Archon.6480:

Yeah, I run mercenaries build with Sw/t sometimes. It’s not Meta by a longshot but has really high damage output when healing is not really needed (there is a tempest and engie)

This.

If healing is not needed – Condi build will crush any Power Oriented one in it’s efficiency of pressure.

Evaluating it from the players output alone, then definitely.

The strength of power based builds isn’t really the players damage though, its the ability to setup CC for pet damage, and having played both Mercenary and Paladin based builds, I think that they just play entirely different from each other.

Ultimately, I stopped playing Mercenary builds because of the sheer volume of necros making playing a condi build more work with their passive and active transfers, not to mention how ineffective personal condi output feels against engis and eles. Maybe if I didn’t have to memorize tons of cooldown timers, both active and passive, but when the other build only makes you count dodges and defensive skills before you unload your damage, you just end up feeling less exhausted at the end of each match, which to me is a deal breaker lol.

Skullface.7293:

jcbroe.4329:

That absolutely makes sense to me logically, I’m just having trouble quantifying the actual benefit of the healing power investment, not because it isn’t valuable, but because you can definitely be overinvested and be overhealing, which makes a lot of that stat investment a waste.

It comes back to my raid comparison, where the best groups in the game realized they didn’t need a healing invested Druid to survive at all. Theoretically to me, that translates to PvP as well, where the less “carried” a team needs to be, the more beneficial running an alternate amulet would be.

I mean, I could have the wrong perspective definitely lol, I’d just like know that.

The only reason I’m not personally running Maurader/Zerk is because it’s no longer necessary to run in order to kill people, which freed up the stat selection.

In the end of the day it just depends if your team can support themselves well enough with or without your druid. If you see 2 eles in your team then running Paladin would make perfect sense. It’s also a good choice if you want to survive better versus thieves and dragonhunters for example.

I’m a very aggressive player, so Paladin might be a good amulet for me I guess. I still need to try stuff out since I haven’t played the game for so long haha.

I definitely haven’t been playing dedicatedly either lol. I’ve been enjoying Blade and Soul much more than GW2, as well as playing The Division a lot.

It seems to be just like Fluffball mentioned; the amulets share 3 of the same stats and play so similarly its hard to establish optimal usage situations without in game quantifiers (dps meters).

99% of the time, I don’t think I even notice if I’m running one amulet over the other.

Skullface.7293:

I played with Mender’s since I came back a couple days ago. If you kite well and know what you are doing, I don’t feel like Paladin is needed. If I know I am perfectly capable of staying alive and contribute more in terms of healing, then I’ll gladly do it.

Then again I’m not yet at Legend division, but I know Eura plays with Mender aswell.

That absolutely makes sense to me logically, I’m just having trouble quantifying the actual benefit of the healing power investment, not because it isn’t valuable, but because you can definitely be overinvested and be overhealing, which makes a lot of that stat investment a waste.

It comes back to my raid comparison, where the best groups in the game realized they didn’t need a healing invested Druid to survive at all. Theoretically to me, that translates to PvP as well, where the less “carried” a team needs to be, the more beneficial running an alternate amulet would be.

I mean, I could have the wrong perspective definitely lol, I’d just like know that.

The only reason I’m not personally running Maurader/Zerk is because it’s no longer necessary to run in order to kill people, which freed up the stat selection.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

My gut tells me that Paladins is more of a generalist choice,

I guess we could list:

• Surviving against power
• Surviving against condi
• Supporting Healing team
• Doing damage

Paladin’s and mender’s split that 50/50. That’s probably why 3/5 of the people who have posted in this thread mentioned swapping amulets regularly (and a 4th didn’t state one way or the other.)

They are … different. To pick one as just say “I’m using this” I think is the wrong answer, and the best answer is probably just to use what you think will be useful in this match.

Oh definitely. I only made the topic because I got extra irritated with metabattle when I saw 3 different builds that are nearly identical but are running different amulets with no explanation as to why the amulet was chosen.

Was it preference, was it team support, was it self sustain? I mean, maybe I’m crazy to think that amulets are build defining in some ways and there should be an explanation saying why one was chosen over others, especially over potentially viable others.

Also, the one “lol worthy” point neither of us mentioned is that using paladins means lesser heals, which means more potential astral force gain haha.

Gonna quote myself from the other thread that’s already derailing in order to answer Evan Lesh since it also answers his question or responds to his remark here:

jcbroe.4329:

Evan Lesh.3295:

-snip-

Should average players stay in the middle divisions because that’s where they belong at their skill level? This retains prestige and only improving skill will allow climbing, but rewards and progression stop at some point through the season.

Is there an incentive that could be added to league games for players who have reached their appropriate division and can no longer climb?

Here’s a question; why are the reward system and the division system the same system?

What essentially happens is that you entice people to play PvP to earn rewards, but then when their MMR settles, they can no longer climb, and no longer receive rewards, and it creates a limbo for players where they lack any sort of incentive to play because they can’t climb divisions and are now receiving no reward for continuing to play.

The PvP currency system, which was once Glory and is now tickets or whatever you want to call it, should be able to be earned regardless of the division (aka winning within the division or bracket), so that people have an incentive to continue to play and can continue to receive rewards for playing. They would then use their currency at the existing vendor or a new vendor in transaction for rewards (cosmetics, tonics, crafting materials maybe, weapon/armor boxes, loot bags, etc etc etc).

Then, the divisions will be just for the prestige.

If you want to reward players with additional rewards beyond the prestige of showing of their division, you then create items (cosmetic only, NOT LEGENDARIES, Legendaries are part of GW2s casual audience appeal that are a time investment rather than a skill tier and you can make awesome cosmetic items without calling them legendary) that can only be purchased with the PvP currency and only if you are within a certain division or higher.

Now, you’ll have your MMR and league system working, you’ll have players who still want to play because they aren’t being punished for not being good enough (or not having friends, since we’ll apparently never see solo queue again) and they still have an incentive to do so, and you’ll have your top tier players able to show off their prestigious status and possibly even double reward them with exclusive cosmetic items that are exclusive but not part of the casual incentive (the legendary) for playing.

Dojo.1867:

I think Menders is better due to condi meta and the fact that good burst classes (thief/rev) can kill you in Paladins anyway. Also you all just talked about self defense but Menders actually means the survivability of your whole team goes up.

I don’t necessarily think it’s an argument of avoiding death; since in a perfect world the only time you should die using ANY Druid build is if you are in an outnumbered fight or you are focused down (aka you shouldn’t be dying in 1v1s).

Actually, you just gave me an interesting way of looking at it. Paladins allows you to make more mistakes, but won’t necessarily help your team as much as a Menders build would; where a Menders build would require you to play with a lot less mistakes on your own end, but it would do more for a team.

Hmmmm. I just end up really wishing we could quantify builds better. Clearly, Paladins will have a higher damage output and a more inherent survivability, but how much? Clearly, Menders has stronger (I chose the word stronger specifically because “more” implies a larger quantity, where as that would not be the case) support, but how much, and how often would it be important/significant (just like how in the raids, people started with healing power druids and discovered that the more perfectly a group can play, the less the healing power is needed so that it can be specced for other things)?

Even though I have a preference, I don’t honestly know that one is better than the other, and I play with both. I just legitimately never have any moments where I go “if I had paladins right now, this would or wouldn’t have happened” or like with Menders, I’ve never gone “darn, if I had that healing power right now, this wouldn’t have happened.”

My gut tells me that Paladins is more of a generalist choice, and that’s really the only reason I go with it, but that’s exactly why I want to have this conversation; having this thought/opinion doesn’t make it right lol.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

In theory, Menders could be equal to if not better than Paladins at sustaining, by instead of reducing the incoming damage, countering the incoming damage by outhealing it.

Probably, but paladin is my default for several reasons.

• Healing means you’re not doing damage; paladin’s is passive defense.
• Paladin’s has 2 major offensive stats vs 1 for mender’s and also triggers more on-crit procs.
• I use lb/staff and only hop on point if it’s crucial to the team fight (which is often, granted, but it’s not the #1 choice for where I am.) So sustain is less important than damage. And this combos with
• Lb/staff damage is not that exciting, and we come with sustain whether we want it or not.

If your goal is to stand on point, I’d probably go with mender’s (or maybe clerics, I haven’t thought about it that much.)

You know I agree with you haha, I’m really hoping somebody has actually chosen primarily to play with Menders and has thought through this topic though (my main reason for posting) so that they can counter reason with you (us).

I mean….. I see 2 builds on Metabuild rated as great and having Menders as the default, and I honestly have no idea if people are actually thinking through which amulet would give them more performance mileage, so I thought it’d be interesting to have this discussion in a public forum, since the metabattle pages don’t say anything about why Menders is defaulted (typically a defaulted amulet should be the one that’s optimal in the most situations, and I don’t think that Menders is that amulet).

Fluffball.8307:

Paladin’s is default, I use mender’s when the enemy condi users are 4 or 5 (VERY common), and marauder’s or even berserker’s if I’m against something like 2 druids and a tempest.

Adjusting for my own comp as well, of course.

Oh definitely, adjusting builds to counterplay as well as to work with your own team composition is the most important.

The debate between Menders and Paladins is actually a very intensive theory debate imo.

In theory, Menders could be equal to if not better than Paladins at sustaining, by instead of reducing the incoming damage, countering the incoming damage by outhealing it.

However, because it isn’t a case of “haves and have-nots” with healing power, aka, you still have healing if you don’t spec for it, it seems to me that on the personal level, Paladins nets you a better ratio of reduction and recovery than Menders. BUT, that is only factoring in playing at an individual level. When other people get involved, the recovery provided by Menders multiplies by every person it affects, and while again, it isn’t as though Paladins would lack recovery, in a multiple person scenario, it becomes a lot more difficult to evaluate Menders vs Paladins by their marginal benefit in this way, especially without proper in game meters to be able to gain metrics to show exactly how much more beneficial you are being for your team by running Menders to evaluate it against Paladins.

So because all of that and because of the mentioned lack of metrics, we have to do the next best thing and just evaluate community opinion and have a discussion about it lol.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Getting ‘stuck’ in ruby is a very important topic regarding how best league should operate. We changed matchmaking to make the ladder more prestigious and so far it has done that. Divisions are aligning with skill level much better than season 1. The product of this change is that the bulk of players who hover around the middle of the mmr curve should stay in sapphire and ruby. Win rate will level out at 50% because there are plentiful players of similar mmr in the same division.

Should average players be able to climb out of the middle divisions by grinding? This removes prestige and can make matchmaking worse within a division, but always allows a sense of progression.

Should average players stay in the middle divisions because that’s where they belong at their skill level? This retains prestige and only improving skill will allow climbing, but rewards and progression stop at some point through the season.

Is there an incentive that could be added to league games for players who have reached their appropriate division and can no longer climb?

Here’s a question; why are the reward system and the division system the same system?

What essentially happens is that you entice people to play PvP to earn rewards, but then when their MMR settles, they can no longer climb, and no longer receive rewards, and it creates a limbo for players where they lack any sort of incentive to play because they can’t climb divisions and are now receiving no reward for continuing to play.

The PvP currency system, which was once Glory and is now tickets or whatever you want to call it, should be able to be earned regardless of the division (aka winning within the division or bracket), so that people have an incentive to continue to play and can continue to receive rewards for playing. They would then use their currency at the existing vendor or a new vendor in transaction for rewards (cosmetics, tonics, crafting materials maybe, weapon/armor boxes, loot bags, etc etc etc).

Then, the divisions will be just for the prestige.

If you want to reward players with additional rewards beyond the prestige of showing of their division, you then create items (cosmetic only, NOT LEGENDARIES, Legendaries are part of GW2s casual audience appeal that are a time investment rather than a skill tier and you can make awesome cosmetic items without calling them legendary) that can only be purchased with the PvP currency and only if you are within a certain division or higher.

Now, you’ll have your MMR and league system working, you’ll have players who still want to play because they aren’t being punished for not being good enough (or not having friends, since we’ll apparently never see solo queue again) and they still have an incentive to do so, and you’ll have your top tier players able to show off their prestigious status and possibly even double reward them with exclusive cosmetic items that are exclusive but not part of the casual incentive (the legendary) for playing.

So there hasn’t been much to talk about recently PvP wise; until I noticed that there are now 3 builds listed on metabattle with a great tag for conquest.

Disregarding that they are all variations of the same basic core selection of build options, I haven’t really seen the discussion over amulets, and there hasn’t really been a discussion as to why which build is using which amulet.

So I’m curious, what do people actually think Menders versus Paladins on these builds.

Personally I play Paladins; I find that against the power based meta builds, the moment a smart/skilled player realizes that you’re in Menders gear, the match becomes infinitely more difficult since you begin to get focused, but at the same time, I definitely miss the healing power when I run Paladins.

Paladins I find to be my choice just geared towards surviving the meta builds better so that I can deal better damage than the Menders build, and only really lose out in the heal category, though if we talk about marginal benefits, you are benefiting more often from investing in the other stats than in healing power since healing power affects less skills (relative to the investment, only a few skills are even worth mentioning with healing power scaling) in less situations.

But that’s just my personal opinion and reasoning on my selection; I’d really like to hear what other people have to say about it, and I think this is a good and informative discussion to be had.

Thoughts?

anduriell.6280:

jcbroe.4329:

I’m not really sure I understand your comment. Are you saying Ranger/Druid isn’t in a good spot?

Having functional builds at the top of every game mode doesn’t put us in a good spot?

Like, I legitimately don’t understand how people can think Ranger/Druid is not in a good spot. If there’s stuff you don’t like and that doesn’t sit well with how you would have preferred the elite spec to have been that hurts your gameplay experience, then that’s understandable, but say that instead of spreading misinformation.

you dont understand because you are disconnected from the reality.
druid is not even required for raids anymore, they arent asked for.
in ESL there is only 2 rangers from 80 players i’ve heard.

so no druid is not in a good spot and never was. we had an artificially induced boom because of the raids but as i predicted we arent needed anymore.
now stop the lie.

1) NO SPECIFIC CLASS IS NECESSARY TO BEAT THE RAID. It’s 100% about playing the mechanics of the raid. Besides that, there are 2 builds that people readily accept on Ranger players, Rangers aren’t kicked from parties anymore, and they are even gasp invited to groups.
2) ESL players aren’t an accurate statistical representation of the whole community. The vast majority of the players are playing their mains, of which there have never been many Ranger players, and have never switched, and the only exception to that is Revenant players, none of them originally being ranger players, and regardless, by this time, they may as well be Revenant mains. Usage statistics NEVER directly correlate with where things fall on the balance spectrum, tons of other variables influence usage statistics. Also, Fact: without class stacking, there would be a Druid on EVERY team. That doesn’t make druid weak or in a spot where in needs buffs, it makes the classes that stack so well that they beat out building for versatility since they are so versatile on their own that stacking them compounds the issue too strong.

“Good spot” doesn’t imply “most demanded class in every gamemode.” Typically speaking, the classes in the highest demand, especially in PvE, perform above the threshold for what you would consider balanced, and the same goes for PvP.

Lying to people is to tell them that Druid doesn’t have all of the tools it needs and that it doesn’t perform exceptionally well at every gamemode.

So yes, Druid is in a great spot.

Fluffball.8307:

Justine.6351:

Yeah I was wondering why NS over celestial shadow when you got huge swiftness.
Another why is the sharpened edges over primal reflexes.

I just don’t often want to dodge when I can’t between the quickdraw of staff or LB 3 if things get desperate. Basically I wasn’t sure what else to take there and cover bleeds seemed like a good idea. I’m not 100% sure they’re doing anything, but what the heck.

NS just because of this garbage (edit, I also don’t want to decap my own points with CS):

If you see that, swap the LB to GS, and if you feel you need to, even swap your most interchangeable traitline to WS for Empathic Bond, and then out rotate them all match.

At least, that’s my advice haha. Reaper heavy teams sacrifice so much mobility that you can usually maintain a 2 cap by just rotating, and if you manage to win a teamfight, the game snowballs so heavily in your favor that it becomes your team’s game to lose. That’s my experience so far anyhow.

SqualZell.7813:

Fluffball.8307:

We’re talking about WvW, not PvE, there is no black and white “better”. If you want to run your mouth at least duel the guy.

Honestly i don’t need to duel the guy.

if he is having fun who cares. just dont advertise that the ranger is in a good spot

I’m not really sure I understand your comment. Are you saying Ranger/Druid isn’t in a good spot?

Having functional builds at the top of every game mode doesn’t put us in a good spot?

Like, I legitimately don’t understand how people can think Ranger/Druid is not in a good spot. If there’s stuff you don’t like and that doesn’t sit well with how you would have preferred the elite spec to have been that hurts your gameplay experience, then that’s understandable, but say that instead of spreading misinformation.

Just for the record, if you want to have some fun, you can “recapture” the old Crusader builds features with the Cavalier Amulet.

It’s definitely not optimal, but when the other team doesn’t have condi, it works really well, not to mention 6k+ Mauls on tanky players (you would 1 shot a thief, I’ve done it a few times), and that’s just the Maul without factoring in a full Bristleback combo.

For WvW guild groups, I basically just use my Zealots/Clerics gear. Not that Zealots is a necessity, it’s personal preference, but the build is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNEQJAWRn0rCFsiVsCOsActgFGBzZ0NCOdMhrvVAAupWVzql480A-TVyGABA8AAiUXwkq/skyPyvAA4pE0gDBQBHBgh2fAA-w

On my damage build, I’ve been using this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNEQJAWRjEqQLLWyCOsAXLWyEM4ZaO9n2ksCAHAnEXCoxVy0OD-TFCFABIt/o8rQ1fA4CAQwDAohDBwVKBZ4IAkmuAA-w
I’d swap to Ancient Seeds if I was alone, though Grace of the Land is never bad, and Allies Aid to Bountiful Hunter. This same advice would apply to the build I’m thinking of gearing towards now that shouts have been reworked:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNEQJAWRnUqA9Ci1CCOsActglOB7pFMAWYOBuAQhDelGTvplMtzA-TVCFABFt/ABPAAkU+dlSwGOEAMcEAKU9n00FAwFAAA-w

I probably don’t need to change the runeset, but then the build would lack cleansing and favor pure damage.

My personal preference is to run glass, and I’ve never had any issues with WvW and only die in situations where, really, anybody else geared any other way would die as well. The builds are “handcrafted” to fit my own personal playstyle though.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

I’m still skeptical of using Celestial Shadow, not because it isn’t valuable, but because at times you have to be incredibly mindful of how you use it in PvP, especially if you are skirmishing sidepoints in a close game, but still, it’s disengage/safety net is so strong, and it really helps avoid common anti-druid strategies since most organized teams or smart players know to focus you down when you go into celestial form or when you drop out of it, but celestial form allows for a quick positioning reset and target drop, which is super helpful in high pressure situations.

That’s one of the reason I prefer LB over GS. Both are great builds, but a quickdraw’d hunter’s shot goes a long way towards making people call a new target, and it doesn’t cost you the cap (kitten scrappers be careful with your stealth gyros!)

Never thought I’d be advocating LB in PvP…

I mean this so sincerely when I say that literally the only reason I don’t run Longbow is because I solo queue. I find the GS a little more self sufficient, especially if you have to be the person that makes up for bad rotations coming from the rest of your team, and the high mobility lets you play the map a little more aggressively.

If I had a dedicated team with VoIP though, the LB all the way for the easier and more on demand damage, utility, and CC tools.

By the way, for those interested, I’ve totally 180’d as I ended up casually queuing (as in I’ve played only about 3 days of the new league so far and solo only) to sapphire (not that it’s a big deal, I definitely don’t think so, leagues still =/= skill) and I’ve completely changed my stance to be using an entirely shout oriented build.

My initial worry with the prevalence of Reapers wasn’t helped by running a glyph build, and as I mentioned earlier on with calling this the “Stability Meta,” the glyph’s functions are negated so often that I really ended up only using them for their traited effect (and the stunbreak of course), and honestly, Guard is just so kitten good in itself that I feel obligated to run it on every utility bar now, so I ended up with just running this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA9Ci1CCOsActglOBDelGT3pPtgBwCzJwFAKclMtzA-TpBFABMcEAI4BAAwFA4/yAFt/QDHCAA

I’m still skeptical of using Celestial Shadow, not because it isn’t valuable, but because at times you have to be incredibly mindful of how you use it in PvP, especially if you are skirmishing sidepoints in a close game, but still, it’s disengage/safety net is so strong, and it really helps avoid common anti-druid strategies since most organized teams or smart players know to focus you down when you go into celestial form or when you drop out of it, but celestial form allows for a quick positioning reset and target drop, which is super helpful in high pressure situations.

Sorry about the full 180 guys lol, I haven’t really been invested in playing and testing all these things in the preseason, but this right here will more than likely be the build that I personally stick with, and I’d imagine that a shout based build will be gravitated towards by other players, with maybe only Glyph of Equality being subbed in for Protect Me or SoS because I know people really like it (it’s hard dropping it myself, but the damage reductions and utility from that combination of shouts and SoS is ultra strong).

Tarhana.3561:

jcbroe.4329:

You’re going to have to remove the crusader build from the PvP section, it was confirmed by a red post that the Crusader amulet will be hotfixed out this week (along with the Vigilant amulet).

Personally for this PvP season, I’d run:
Paladin GS: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqAlsiVsCOsActglOBDelOT3pOBuAQh7pFMAWYlMtzA-TZBGABBt/w+lBA4BAgwRAIhLBAA
Paladin LB: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqAlsiVsCOsActglOBzJwFAKcPtgQ1CDelOT3plMtzA-TJBGABA8EA2vMQQ7PkwlAAA
Mercenary Sword/Torch: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8fnUqAFsiVsCOsActglOB7pFEqWYOBuAQhDelOT3pl480A-TJRHAB1XGgn9HC4JAAwFBAA

Mender is too squishy, SoS can be replaced with a shout (SnR, Guard, Protect Me) for utility over tanking, and in general, I’d be surprised if anything else really gets all that popular this PvP season that isn’t just a variation of one of these builds.

Do you mind telling more about the LB rotation , especially on 1 vs 1 ?

There’s no real set rotation, the LB is mostly for using Rapid Fire to burst down targets and Point Blank Shot to knock people off of points, followed up with another hit to root them off of points for decaps.

So ideally, you swap to Longbow and depending on the situation, either lay down a barrage where the fight is happening or Point Blank Shot a person off point and root them (in 1v1s this can get you a decap), and you want to Rapid Fire them whenever you can guarantee damage (count dodges, watch for defensive abilities to be used, etc).

The one thing you want to try not to be doing is camping Longbow autoattacking, because regardless of any of the discussions you may see happening on the forum, the staff autoattack actually does more damage (especially with more hits occurring while using proc sigils) than the LB autoattack, meaning that much like the way the GS builds work, you want to swap to the LB only when you are looking to use its utility or put some damage on something (for instance, you can just poke a person at 100% health with staff and pet attacks until they burn cooldowns, and then swap to LB to do some real burst damage).

Ultimately though, the biggest damage source comes from the Bristleback, so the perfect combo would be Point Blank Shot into autoattack to proc the root, use Heal as One and pet swap to Bristleback during the cast, then F2 and Rapid Fire. This only ever works when the enemy doesn’t have any defensive cooldowns, but really, you’re always trying to setup bristleback bursts.

rummy.4102:

jcbroe.4329:

Actually, I’d have to say that while it’s a broad category, the meta is already well defined as a Stability meta, where the vast majority of the builds are maximizing their sources of stability, and the most picked classes (Reaper, Revenant, Scrapper, Tempest) all have multiple sources of stability and can access it easily, with Reaper maybe being the most outlying of the group, but they just pump out so much damage and corrupt so many boons and are so obnoxious to fight and kill that every team comp will have a Reaper.

But yeah, I guess theoretically, we should also be trying to maximize our stability sources/uptime, but it won’t nearly be the same as what a Scrapper/Revenant/Tempest can do.

But how do we max stability when everyone already runs sotp? I suppose sig of the wild could be useful but at the cost of a stunbreaker, or a great utility like SnR.

Yeah, that’s the problem. You could pick up the passive Enlargement trait by dropping NM for MM, but you lose a tad bit of boonstacking and duration, not to mention defensive traits, and while Signet of the Wild could semi-negate the boon aspect of it, the Enlargement trait will cancel out Astral Form, and thats all before getting to the utility bar.

Hmmmmm, maybe since we lack stability source, loading up on stunbreaks would be the better option? I’m honestly not sure myself, it’s something that requires theorycrafting and testing.

Actually, I’d have to say that while it’s a broad category, the meta is already well defined as a Stability meta, where the vast majority of the builds are maximizing their sources of stability, and the most picked classes (Reaper, Revenant, Scrapper, Tempest) all have multiple sources of stability and can access it easily, with Reaper maybe being the most outlying of the group, but they just pump out so much damage and corrupt so many boons and are so obnoxious to fight and kill that every team comp will have a Reaper.

But yeah, I guess theoretically, we should also be trying to maximize our stability sources/uptime, but it won’t nearly be the same as what a Scrapper/Revenant/Tempest can do.

Eurantien.4632:

Fluffball.8307:

The broadcast PvP does highlight problems though, for example the pro league match where someone rage quit over the bunker meta. It’s a kind of chicken or egg thing, pro league highlights chronobunker, everyone emulates it and it becomes this massive problem, but pro league doesn’t dictate balance.

I don’t recall running into a single chronobunker before Helseth ran that in a broadcast match, although I’d heard people theorycrafting about it. Next week, you had 6 per match.

That’s a good point. Case and point, all of ROM’s druid builds last season. So many people copied them yet they were not the best options. Granted I think a big thing to do with it is how metabattle copies these builds and then a lot of people copy metabattle.

That being said there is still a disparity. For me the nerfs this week has taken me from Druid kinda works to its just not worth it anymore for Pro league play. For solo queue it works but I know if I go against other pro league players or any good player that I will have to 1v1 I shouldn’t win. Yet I know that at lower tiers of skill Druid seems unkillable god mode. Yet balance is designed around the casual in my eyes which has lead to poor game balance for a lot of players as a consequence.

Offtopic but Eura, you should give Blade and Soul a shot if you haven’t already. Once you make it past the Korean MMO PvE aspects, the PvP is so kitten good that coming back and playing GW2 feels like night and day.

Anyhow, GW2 isn’t balanced and never will be, and that’s because of the combination of not splitting balance between game modes, refusing to prioritize balance in one versus the other (because of the community backlash it would have to give the game any sort of specific identity although we all know it’s a PvE first game by now), and the refusal to balance at the highest skill tier of player, which is something that any person looking into balance theory will see immediately that you should be doing.

This is all on top of the issues that the game format brings. It’s a team gamemode, but the lack of specific roles and functional class identity (classes play differently stylistically but perform the same thing realistically) make balancing it with a proper system of checks and balances too difficult (3 years of evidence), not to mention if they even tried to put in a properly checks/balances system to support the team gamemode, there would be community outrage over lack of diversity and ultimately self-sufficiency because “x class can’t beat y” class, even though its a team game mode, so as always, ANet also tried to cater to the class vs class balance perspective, and what we end up with is GW2; a mashup of tons of good ideas into one kitten game mode because ultimately, the game is being led and designed for its market appeal, but at the end of the day, that means ANet will drive away their competitive community because the game is designed for casual play with no sense of motivation to drive competition (balance is a factor of competition) to a level that people that enjoy competitive PvP will want to invest time in.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

jcbroe.4329:

StickerHappy.8052:

ChocolateBlaze.7840:

To all the people saying “no other profession starts off with a full bar,” you’re ignoring the fact that the other professions don’t have to wait for a full bar to use their skill. It takes a lot of time to fill the AF bar.

Berserk Mode requires a full bar of adrenaline for you to use it.

Don’t forget that they have a 1 button push -> full adrenaline elite now though.

Not that it’s really relevant to discussion Druid.

Having some time to mull over it for awhile now, I find it incredibly odd that the Druid resource mechanic is the only “fill the bar” resource mechanic that only has quantity scaling (how many things you affect). Every other mechanic also has added quality scaling (increased shroud gains on particular skills or in specific situations, etc etc with the other resource mechanics).

the AF mechanic is Truely unquie is it not , i am amazed sometimes when people compair this to other Bar mechanics which as you mentioned in my words doesn’t require a Team or players nearby to charge up this just makes the Druid role a Team player not one of those Decap roles (a generic Ranger Battlecry with gs+s-axe/LB + quickdraw is enough and does a better Decap job than a focused druid build as it does give up its potential for building AF with less allies around.

a great tip for druids trying to build AF in pvp is also to use Leeching sigils builds hp sustain+AF each weapon swap and Steals hp which is a type of damage , starting with no AF shouldn’t be a problem if the role is used correctly anyway.

I wasn’t providing an opinion on it, I was just drawing comparisons lol.

I personally don’t mind, it hasn’t really affected my gameplay outside of making a more cautious opening push.

Tragic Positive.9356:

jcbroe.4329:

Snipped

With the shouts you have to know why did you pick them. You need to pick utilities for a reason. If the reason is “they counter Power” that’s good enough.
But that’s not a role – that’s why you don’t sense any of it.
Being a Disruptor of CC is a role. That’s why the difference.

Shouts’ role would mostly be:
Protect Me = Skirmishing 1v1 advantage (really weak in TF)
Guard =Anti-power (most efficient on Healing Power builds)
S&R = Counters TF cleave (most efficient on Ranged Builds)

Well Guard on my linked build is a lot like Engis running Bulwark Gyro on their meta build, or so I would assume. Actually, out of all of the shouts, I think Guard is probably the least replaceable the more I play around with it.

I might try it on my glyph build over SoS at some point.