Guild Wars 2

YESSSSSSSS.

Damage 1: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWjEqQLLWyCOsAVLWyEM4ZaPdo6k4SANumkVA4AUy0OD-TZBFABiXGggHAwCHBgW2fAgLBAA

Damage 2: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRjEqQLLWyCOsAVLWyEM4ZaPdo6k4SANumkVA4AUy0OD-TpBFABiXGghDBABXAgFOCAts/AAPAAA

Cele: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8fjEqQLLWyCOsAVLWyEM4ZaPdo6k4SANumkVA4AUy0OD-TZRHwABeIACOCAAuAAk2f4YZAA

Looking good.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

It has been as low as 399 actually, but still pretty high.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/70477-berserkers-lightwards-battlestaff

I wonder if there are any effects on it.

I was using my own observational data lol. Low points that I never see are outliers.
Probably why I don’t even attempt to play the market either, I don’t have the patience for patience.

You’d end up with problems with population if there were 3 queues like some people are suggesting.

You’d really only want 2 queues, each with seperate leaderboards (solo, team), and the server list ability to join custom servers (like what exists currently).

And please please please strict dishonor punishment (or any really).

Is it though?

PvP consensus says otherwise: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Celestial_Avatar

Also hasn’t dropped lower than 550g on the TP since it first appeared on there lol. I like it though.

On my phone right now so I apologize for the lack of links/builder.

After the conversation, I really buckled down and worked on my builds FOR might stacking, and essentially ended up with what ROM runs but with LB over GS, which ended up feeling more “right” to me.

Cele NM/BM/Druid
312
312
123
LB blood/Air
Staff Energy/Air
WHaO
Tides
Equality (the daze/stunbreak?)
SoS
SotP
Bristleback/Smokescale

I don’t know what it is about Greatsword. I feel like my LB is doing more damage, has more utility, and more reliably sets up and procs Ancient Seed.
I feel I’ve tried up and down to make the GS work and outside if the initial swap into Swoop and/or Maul, the weaon does no damage when I use it. It could be very dependent on my playstyle too.

Outside of dueling a guild member who was running a reflect based chronomancer, I haven’t felt myself really wanting GS for anything but mobility. I have, however, found myself wanting LB on a Staff/GS build over GS quite a few times, thinking to myself that I didn’t bave the damage or pressure to push the kill.

With new light on all of that;
Regarding non-might stacking buids:

Marauders WS/NM/druid
232
312
133
Hoelbrak
LB Air/Blood
GS Energy/Air
Troll
LR
QS
SoS
Entangle

So yeah, I was to the marauders build again condi heavy teams now personally.

Jasher.6580:

All these nerfs… can’t wait for Overwatch.

Completely different games.

Halo 5 is where it’s at by the way, but maybe that’s just me.

Anyhow, on-topic:

One way, I get damage I can control and a smokefield I can’t control, and the other way, I get damage I can predict and therein control and a smokefield I can control.

I’ll take the control please.

Also, fun fact, Smokescale overall DPS increases by giving the control of the smokefield to you (because now it’s AI won’t stop to do a non-damaging action that is also difficult to take advantage of when it happens randomly, as opposed to Smoke Assault working exactly like the canine knockdown and being extremely capable of controlled).

Shadelang.3012:

jcbroe.4329:

You guys DO know that the smokefield being controlled by the AI lowered the overall DPS of the pet, and that the smoke assault is controllable just like the wolf knockdown, making it an incredible pet, right? Like, you have full control over a now more effective pet?

I think what Eura and others are trying to say is that you shouldn’t want to use training wheels and be less effective when you can be more effective without them.

Also try putting the pet on passive and learn to manually control it. You’ll see night and day improvements with how you can utilize your pets.

Im less annoyed at the swapping than the overall nerf of smoke assault. It wasn’t just damage they nerfed this time. They ALSO hurt the might stacking capabilities as well as its synergy with Sic Em. In general. 3/6 shouts got hurt by this change. For shout rangers that makes this pet…significantly less desirable. Its still better than the alternatives. But thats less because of the capabilties of the pet and more the fact that the other pets aren’t reliable enough to count on (Im looking at you wyverns with your kittening ridiculously slow attacks.)

Oh definitely. Without violating the cross-posting rule:

…
If you ever get around to it, the guard/passive feature is archaic. Pets should be placed in what is called passive mode permanently, and doing so would open up more UI space AND have the added benefit of a class mechanic that always feels interactive and educates players at an early stage in the game. Not to mention…

…getting around to turning the F1 and F3 into a single button toggle (F1 locks the target, toggles to return, which on use performs the current F3. No cooldown except whatever may be necessary to process server commands so it functions exactly the same). Performing the above change opens up UI space to add a second controllable pet skill.

Just think, we could have both Smoke Assault AND the smoke field on demand (and every other pet would get 2 controllable skills of course. Would love to control the Spider’s poison field, for example, or the birds swiftness, or the moas heal). The players would be happy, the mods would be happy because every other topic wouldn’t be this ridiculous tug of war over what skill should be controlled, and you would be happy because it would be one less highly requested and desperately needed feature off your checklist.
…

:)

You guys DO know that the smokefield being controlled by the AI lowered the overall DPS of the pet, and that the smoke assault is controllable just like the wolf knockdown, making it an incredible pet, right? Like, you have full control over a now more effective pet?

I think what Eura and others are trying to say is that you shouldn’t want to use training wheels and be less effective when you can be more effective without them.

Also try putting the pet on passive and learn to manually control it. You’ll see night and day improvements with how you can utilize your pets.

@Mistsim;

Oh I understand the playstyle, it’s been my roaming build in WvW since I got Druid day 1 of HoT lol.
I just think it’s a constructive conversation to be had since neither setup lacks viability. More so, it actually becomes pretty important to have the conversations because the majority of us just post threads like “I play this and this and it’s good and it works so use it” which we sort of have to do because if we take the time to explain, all of the information we share gets buried on the forum within a day or 2, so when any of us make those threads it ends up being a waste.

So, seeing as how I had you guys here, I figured we’d have these sorts of discussions before the conversation is forever lost, especially since it isn’t exactly like there are resources outside of the vocal players we can look to (metabattle is a source of observational data only and doesn’t streamline builds to their most effective state or alternatives for counterbuilding).

Wait…. people still use Guard mode and not Passive?

@Irenio;
If you ever get around to it, the guard/passive feature is archaic. Pets should be placed in what is called passive mode permanently, and doing so would open up more UI space AND have the added benefit of a class mechanic that always feels interactive and educates players at an early stage in the game. Not to mention…

…getting around to turning the F1 and F3 into a single button toggle (F1 locks the target, toggles to return, which on use performs the current F3. No cooldown except whatever may be necessary to process server commands so it functions exactly the same). Performing the above change opens up UI space to add a second controllable pet skill.

Just think, we could have both Smoke Assault AND the smoke field on demand (and every other pet would get 2 controllable skills of course. Would love to control the Spider’s poison field, for example, or the birds swiftness, or the moas heal). The players would be happy, the mods would be happy because every other topic wouldn’t be this ridiculous tug of war over what skill should be controlled, and you would be happy because it would be one less highly requested and desperately needed feature off your checklist.

I know that it might be difficult to get around to though, but if you ever have the time or the motivation, we’d all love it

Ozie.4176:

jcbroe.4329:

Eurantien.4632:

Doesn’t really matter to discuss this any further. All hail the reaper overlords.

Does Hoelbrak (or some other condition reduction rune) + Natural Stride + Survival Skills not do anything about this?
Or is the issue something different than what I’m thinking?

Instead of being chilled forever you get chilled almost forever.

All hail our reaper overlords.

It isn’t like this was a non-issue before today’s patch though…. The damage is just more over the top now.

It’s time to stop running boon-stacking builds though, that’s for sure. Less for Reapers to corrupt.

forum bug /15char

Eurantien.4632:

Doesn’t really matter to discuss this any further. All hail the reaper overlords.

Does Hoelbrak (or some other condition reduction rune) + Natural Stride + Survival Skills not do anything about this?
Or is the issue something different than what I’m thinking?

Besides mobility, is there really a point to running GS though? The burst is a bit more on demand but makes you sacrifice positioning, and almost all other things are equal, except that LB has more decap capability and works “better” with Ancient Seeds.

Nobody can deny the map roaming capability of GS/Staff is absurdly good, but doesn’t LB bring more pressure, reliability, and utility?

I find these are legitimate questions, because I’ve played pretty extensively so far with both weapon setups and haven’t really seen one weapon peak in a way that makes it a clear choice beyond another.

I’ve been running Rune of Aristocracy in PvP on my celestial build. It’s condition damage, 45% might duration, and 3 stacks of might on heal. Works really well on might stacking based builds.

mistsim.2748:

low HP druid definitely doesn’t work. ive gotten my best results running marauder with staff/x, and carrion traps.

cele druid is crushed by condi pressure, which i basically called in all the cele druid threads the moment they appeard. unless the druid runs some survival with WK instead of BM, and gives up might stacking. when people figure this out and actually start running some effective condi builds, I’m not sure how far the build will go.

the pressure might stacking cele puts out is nothing to laugh at, but it’s insignificant compared to might stacking marauder running WK/survival, which has the same if not more survivability. there are a lot of marauder builds that work right now.

Definitely.

Honestly, the best cele “might stacking” build I’ve come up with is WS/BM/Druid with Aristocracy Runes.
I either have to run Glyphs and Empathic Bond or Survival Skills (except WHaO) and WK.

Even then, losing out on Protective Ward hurts the “goal” of the build so much that it would be hard to say it’s worth it.

Sol.4310:

jcbroe.4329:

Fluffball.8307:

I seriously doubt that’s the build he’ll run in a tourney. Usually he plays crazy builds on streams and does the “real” build for the tourney. Knowing how he is, he’s running it purely for the fun of moving across the map in like .4 seconds. There is a lot to be said for that in solo queuing as well…

Yeah, it’s more of a general thing though. ROM and 4 other people ran Celestial Druid in the only ESL since HoT dropped, and it just seems like these boonstacking based builds in general are going to be extinct as Reaper becomes more popular.

It’s always fun watching ROM play ANYTHING though lol. He’s a very high action, mobile player, and Warrior/Ranger definitely suits him well. Definitely not going to BM him unless he starts claiming he’s some sort of Ranger/Druid expert, which he doesn’t and won’t as far as what I’ve seen from him. He’ll just keep drinking “milk” and having a good time.

Rabid or Wanderer’s Necro, beats Druid. I’ve tried so many different versions of Cele with max condition remove and still can’t overcome the condition pressure from the new builds. Half problem is you need to pressure Necro fast and hard and Cele boon stacking build loses its Might to often to keep pressure.

Marauder build seems to do alright vs Necros, with right positioning that is.

Yeah, I have been the most successful on Marauder builds myself. Still having trouble deciding whether or not I like LB/Staff or LB/GS. The issue I’ve had is that I’ve definitely lost fights by not having either one or the other. Particularly, I feel like GS is better against other Druids, but Staff is definitely better against DHs, and staff is probably the better weapon in general when building for teamplay.

If I was going to run cele…. yeah, I’m still working out that process. Will have to find a way to pick up condition removal without hurting the build too much, and possibly forego the boon stacking entirely (at which point, why run cele?).

Fluffball.8307:

I seriously doubt that’s the build he’ll run in a tourney. Usually he plays crazy builds on streams and does the “real” build for the tourney. Knowing how he is, he’s running it purely for the fun of moving across the map in like .4 seconds. There is a lot to be said for that in solo queuing as well…

Yeah, it’s more of a general thing though. ROM and 4 other people ran Celestial Druid in the only ESL since HoT dropped, and it just seems like these boonstacking based builds in general are going to be extinct as Reaper becomes more popular.

It’s always fun watching ROM play ANYTHING though lol. He’s a very high action, mobile player, and Warrior/Ranger definitely suits him well. Definitely not going to BM him unless he starts claiming he’s some sort of Ranger/Druid expert, which he doesn’t and won’t as far as what I’ve seen from him. He’ll just keep drinking “milk” and having a good time.

I’m not entirely certain what ROMs build from his most recent broadcast is because it isn’t loading for me, but if it was the build he was running on the 30th with Staff/GS, then yeah, I’m with Eura and Sol and I’m not really seeing the draw to his build.

Actually, in general, I’m not really seeing the draw to any celestial build at all (which is what I see the majority of people running and have tried multiple variations of myself), or as Reaper’s get more popular, ANY sort of boonstacking build for that matter.

The mobility of GS/Staff is incredibly fun though.

6 seconds would put it right around 600 healing per second base, which would be a good number for the base heal.

There’s only one weapon that reliably procs Lingering Light anyhow, and it shouldn’t be used as the base case for nerfs/buffs because of that (aka the blind output is only existent with one weapon, disregarding sigil interactions).

Something small, but I just realized, that with traited glyphs, you proc Grace of the Land with the bloom.

My reaction in a more appropriate thread:

Sigh, 12 second ICD.

And that’s not what the sigh is for, the sigh is that the base heal is 596, and only scales up to about 800.

A trait that provided 100+ healing per second now provides about 50 per second baseline, and only scales to 70 hps.

That means at best, it’s only slightly better than worst case Signet of the Wilds 62 base healing per seconds.

The blind should have been removed before this change was ever implemented. GJ ANet, another trait gutted, kneejerk style, with no attempt at even constructively iterating on it for it to retain its value without being broken.

Sigh, 12 second ICD.

And that’s not what the sigh is for, the sigh is that the base heal is 596, and only scales up to about 800.

A trait that provided 100+ healing per second now provides about 50 per second baseline, and only scales to 70 hps.

That means at best, it’s only slightly better than worst case Signet of the Wilds 62 base healing per seconds.

The blind should have been removed before this change was ever implemented. GJ ANet, another trait gutted, kneejerk style, with no attempt at even constructively iterating on it for it to retain its value without being broken.

glaphen.5230:

jcbroe.4329:

glaphen.5230:

You guys are so blinded by your class you can’t even see the how broken the blind is.

I offered a solution because of your (and many others) opinion. The reiteration of your opinion is unnecessary, especially when I haven’t even gotten around to grabbing my poncho or my umbrella yet.

Yes and you and pretty much every other person in this thread thinks it’s somehow fine.

Notice how the solution I posted restricts the blind effect behind the barrier of celestial form as opposed to the solution of just increasing the ICD?

Passive procs are bad for the competitive health of any game, but I’m not going to be the one that argues for my class AND ONLY my class to be made an example of in the “war” against RNG driven gameplay.

ANet will NEVER remove passive procs from the game though, and the trait itself is only really “bad” with staff, which heals on autoattacks (passive procs that can occur on autoattacks are especially toxic for ANY game).

So the conversation we should be having is whether or not gating the blind effect specifically behind the heals in Celestial Form would be enough.

I only responded curtly because this doesn’t need to be yet another 300 post thread complaining about something in the game; we definitely have enough of those.

glaphen.5230:

You guys are so blinded by your class you can’t even see the how broken the blind is.

I offered a solution because of your (and many others) opinion. The reiteration of your opinion is unnecessary, especially when I haven’t even gotten around to grabbing my poncho or my umbrella yet.

jcbroe.4329:

nearlight.3064:

jcbroe.4329:

Somebody posted up a celestial glyph build to metabattle recently: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Celestial_Avatar

I guess that would be my starting point as well, but I don’t agree with all of the choices.

What would you change in that build? I’ve been running a very similar version of this build (differing with sigils and one trait) and I like it a lot, but I’m not entirely sure that the mightstacking is worth it when you could make your build slightly more healing and control focused. In general I miss the taunt the most, but the extra might seems to necessary. I also feel like I have trouble dealing high damage even with a lot of might, unless I’m catching people in the torch fire field, but the pet makes up for that. I totally need to test out more variations, by I’m interested to see how you’d want to change it.

My minor tweak is to replace the energy sigil with doom on staff, and maybe replace the bristleback pet with tiger.

My major tweak is the choice of sword, but it would need some testing. I can see all of the positives of choosing sword, but I think that Axe might be the way to go for killing power. Those are just thoughts right now though, I’d have to confirm whether or not axe is actually more damage (both in total and against meta builds).

The other thing I’m potentially thinking, with the sword set in particular, would be to drop Nature Magic for Skirmishing (bleed on crit, bleed does more damage, quickdraw). You’d lose some boon copying potential from the loss of fortifying bond, but you’d pick up some condition application and damage (remember, celestial shortbow was a thing with bleed on crits, same concept with staff) and more importantly, the ability to have 2 uses of things like staff 3, sword 3, torch skills, etc.

All of that outside of the first tidbit would require testing though; it’s mostly theorycraft that I haven’t gotten to try in game yet.

Update: Not sure picking up the extra damage is worth it from testing. It might be best to just stick with Protective Ward and win through attrition.

I definitely appreciated having more damage at times though.

Shirk.6421:

Just compare it to other classes elite GM traits like Chronophantasma or Adaptive Armour and and then tell me LL is OP.

It isn’t, but the community baddie tears are flowing and the thread is an attempt at being the “foot in the door” solution to preemptively address a kneejerk nerf into uselessness.

Dojo.1867:

Imo raising the trait cd slightly would work. Procing every 3 sec is a bit silly. 5 sec seems fine.

Also saying again that I liked the inital trait of adding the astral wisp to allies or self on heal but I don’t think staff 2 in a vacuum does enough considering the effect that it is basically the same thing the autoattack does already. Like there is literally no consequence between casting staff 2 or just keep autoattacking.

It would make the base healing significantly lower HPS.

The heal would need to be increased to compensate.

Tofu.1978:

Is lingering light triggered on multiple allies if a heal hits multiple targets at the same time (like ancient seeds hits multiple enemies if you use an aoe damage)? Or does it only hit trigger on one ally per 3 second icd?

Multiple (sorry that I used the language of global cooldown to express this, but I realize now that not everybody is educated on programming jargon).

The ICD is local, meaning that it is “per person affected” instead of “per timeframe.”

Changing that destroys the intent of the GM, even the original beta intent (a GM that supports allies by healing, since the other 2 GMs are damage and CC).

Happy to clarify

Forum bug.

/message15chars

nearlight.3064:

jcbroe.4329:

Somebody posted up a celestial glyph build to metabattle recently: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Celestial_Avatar

I guess that would be my starting point as well, but I don’t agree with all of the choices.

What would you change in that build? I’ve been running a very similar version of this build (differing with sigils and one trait) and I like it a lot, but I’m not entirely sure that the mightstacking is worth it when you could make your build slightly more healing and control focused. In general I miss the taunt the most, but the extra might seems to necessary. I also feel like I have trouble dealing high damage even with a lot of might, unless I’m catching people in the torch fire field, but the pet makes up for that. I totally need to test out more variations, by I’m interested to see how you’d want to change it.

My minor tweak is to replace the energy sigil with doom on staff, and maybe replace the bristleback pet with tiger.

My major tweak is the choice of sword, but it would need some testing. I can see all of the positives of choosing sword, but I think that Axe might be the way to go for killing power. Those are just thoughts right now though, I’d have to confirm whether or not axe is actually more damage (both in total and against meta builds).

The other thing I’m potentially thinking, with the sword set in particular, would be to drop Nature Magic for Skirmishing (bleed on crit, bleed does more damage, quickdraw). You’d lose some boon copying potential from the loss of fortifying bond, but you’d pick up some condition application and damage (remember, celestial shortbow was a thing with bleed on crits, same concept with staff) and more importantly, the ability to have 2 uses of things like staff 3, sword 3, torch skills, etc.

All of that outside of the first tidbit would require testing though; it’s mostly theorycraft that I haven’t gotten to try in game yet.

Somebody posted up a celestial glyph build to metabattle recently: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Celestial_Avatar

I guess that would be my starting point as well, but I don’t agree with all of the choices.

So, one week in and the call for nerfs has already started. I’ve already seen this topic numerous time, so I want to address it now.

Please note, my own stance is that Lingering Light is fine.

However, lots of people think it needs to be nerfed, and I’m seeing calls for the removal of blind, increased cooldowns, etc.

First, let’s discuss some of those options. Increasing the ICD lowers the healing potential of the skill, making the healing abysmal, and the trait hard to balance (naturally it would need a new base heal value as compensation).

Removing the blind is removing the strength of the GM entirely. This should not occur whatsoever, the trait is working as intended.

Addressing the classic ANet solution in the past; do not make the cooldown global. The entire potential of the skill not only gets ruined, but relegated to RNG with little to no control.

So then; what is an acceptable change?

Well, if ANet decides to cater to the crying of the kneejerk pro-nerf crowd that wants the game to adapt to them instead of for them to adapt to the game, then the only solution is to leave the functionality of the trait as is but make the conditions more restrictive.

The only way I could create a trait that worked like this and would work with a variety of builds is to make the blind trigger only when the healing source is a celestial avatar form.

Description Form: “Healing allies causes their next attack to heal them. Allies healed by Celestial Avatar Form skills will also blind with their next attack.”

Again, I am not calling or advocating for ANY sort of change to the trait. I am only making this thread because I’m nervous that ANet will cater to the call of kneejerk reactions and iterate upon the trait in a way that ruins the intention of the trait.

Yeah, I guess especially with sacrificing my Protective Ward crutch (I’d run it over WS if the glyph trait provided more on demand cleanse, would also really help on a might build with how WHaO works), Staff brings the needed utility and the might stacking helps carry the loss of the initial GS burst damage.

Thanks for the quick response, it’s been bugging me for a few days now lol.

Hmmmmm, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to swap to a mightstacking build myself in order to deal enough competitive damage. Is staff really a good offswap for LB? The two builds I’ve been playing around with are LB/GS for damage roaming or Staff/GS for teamfighting presence (lingering light is amazing) and backcapping mobility (Marauder of course, been running WS/NM/Druid before realizing I need the might stacking).

Is staff a great choice over Greatsword (I know the original build was Sword/Warhorn)? I suppose a ton of sustain is lost by not taking staff, but isn’t a ton of damage lost by not taking GS?

I would swap blood sigil into the first build over fire by the way. I’d test it on a golem.

Also been seeing a lot of players (that I don’t recognize) praise Celestial Druid up and down, and I’m just not feeling it. It just seems like a worse Scrapper to me, unless anybody has a positive experience otherwise.

I love the idea, I’ve seen it circulated numerous times over the years, and I have no idea why it isn’t a thing beyond it being “tricky” to program.

Example, since guarded/passive pet would still exist, does the toggle automatically swap when the pet engages the enemy? And how does that work when you target swap with a Guarded pet? Same sort of concept with the Guard shout.

Not that it’s impossible at all, it just brings up another thing that should be addressed; Guard mode needs to be removed (the mode toggle in general; this is also where the new F3 skill slot would be placed), just as the Guard shout functionality needs to be reworked entirely.

If these things haven’t already received any sort of thought or attention though, we’re in for a long wait….. :/ (optimistically assuming that it’s on ANets radar).

mistsim.2748:

the staff, the pets, the new runes, lingering light…are all amazing. everything but the avatar itself lol. I flash in and out of my avatar for its offensive capability, and celestial shadow. otherwise it’s useless.

I’m more worried that Lingering Light will get nerfed before the Druid ever sees the changes it needs as an elite spec (you know, the changes that had 3 BWEs and long intensive feedback periods to redesign and bugfix before official expac launch for nearly everything else currently sitting on peoples “that’s top tier” radar).

Aidenwolf.5964:

jcbroe.4329:

I’ll go ahead and start off by saying, while I feel the Druid is well designed and functions well, I’m still left feeling underwhelmed.

I disagree with this. The specialization is poorly designed and they’ve made it unplayable since the one beta we got to use it in. I don’t like building force I hate watching it vanish out of combat, and I don’t see the point of locking the form behind resource generation in the first place.

I completely agree in the context of this new fiasco with losing Astral Force out of combat. We’re already gated by resource management and have an added cooldown management factor on top of it, so by furter limiting us through limiting how we can manage the resource combined with the slow generation of the resource kills all of the potential the Elite Spec has

I should’ve distinguished between designed well and implemented well haha.

So there will be countless threads about all sorts of specific things, but I figured we should start a thread for overall impressions and evaluation of the Druid class.

I’ll go ahead and start off by saying, while I feel the Druid is well designed and functions well, I’m still left feeling underwhelmed. Yes, Ranger has a new way to play and a new bar choc’d full of heals to basically just faceroll through at our leisure, but the issue is a bit more fundamental than that. It’s like, every other class received an upgrade, for example, as Helseth so aptly put it, Chronmancer can be played kittenter Mesmer 2.0.

Druid on the other hand is more like, Ranger…. About a 1.5 maybe? It just isn’t really sewn together as well as some other elite specializations. Like, it’s ranger, with some of the quality traits every other class but Ranger has had, and a new skillbar that tacs on another combat role.

Now, that’s totally fine, but Druid barely works to bring anything to boost the base ranger class to a new functionality platform in an environment of 2.0 specializations. Where every other classes elite specialization works to bring significant improvements to the base of the class they are built on, Druid is kind of just built on top of a class without trying to synergize or improve the class is was built upon in any way, and kind of just exists outside of the ranger class, desynchronized from the core spec.

The short version is that my experience with Druid leaves me feeling like every so often, I’ve relogged onto something else instead of playing my main in a version 2.0 environment, and I’m left wishing the elite spec had done something to bring ranger to the ranger 2.0 platform it deserves, and not leave the core spec behind while adding features that lack synergy with the class and leave ranger players feeling like they are playing their way through purgatory.

This is just my impression though, I’d love to see what other people think.

The traitline itself is great, but Avatar has been reduced to me going “oh hey, I finally have Celestial Form” and then getting to actually utilize it maybe only a handful of times in a PvP match.

So, as the title implies, the patch is live, and a new “feature” has been added that wasn’t mentioned at all right up until we went live, where, just like adrenaline with warriors, Astral Force when leaving combat very quickly evaporates into thin air.

If this is intended, then this is a horrible change, and needs to be reverted ASAP. It severely limits the application of Celestial Form and it eliminates skillful play through resource management.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

jcbroe.4329:

…(Reaper, Chrono) are beautiful, amazing, well designed, well balanced, highly effective and strong classes…

If you aren’t having fun, you aren’t gaming the right way

Scrapper is like that too, though.

Agree on the 2nd point, which is why meta should not matter to vast majority of players, yet it does for some reason.

You’re a GW1 vet, you remember when metagame was just that; an observation of commonly found builds? And how builds existed outside of those meta builds that were better than the given meta builds because the meta builds were made to counter the meta, and better team comps than the meta team comp existed as well.

I guess the players are more likely to evolve the metagame themselves in a game like GW1 with hundreds of skills per profession though. Not to mention mechanics (Expertise, Mysticism, ahhh, the list goes on).

Still, it is pretty lacking in the fun department to be given a whole new traitline and be able to immediately determine your own personal ranking of best in slot trait options per different build without even logging in to the game.

Crapgame.6519:

jcbroe.4329:

Outside of raids though? Highly doubtful Healing Power will ever be a necessity ever unless people want to chug whiskey bottles while playing one-handed in Nomads gear in WvW blobs and not feel totally useless.

Yes, I was talking more about raids although I am assuming, maybe incorrectly, that it will carry over to WvW. Guardians and Cleric gear had a solid run for over a year if not more with certain builds.

Guess we will find out over the next two weeks. Not sure how I side tracked the thread, my apologies.

Yeah, my fault too, it was a good discussion lol. My last thought on it is that I think the really “mathy” people will come up with some sort of breaking point or golden ratio for healing power investment to maximize damage potential while hitting certain thresholds of healing (which would involve creating an optimized heal skill rotation as well) per time spent for coordinated group heal (aka 3 second reset over here, Druid should put out at least this heal, any more is overhealing, any less under, etc).

Back to the on topic discussion!

To add to my prior comment; I would say that people should really just try the classes they would like out in PvP first with them requiring so much investment, since to the best of my knowledge, PvP doesn’t gate anything behind unlocks like hero points and such in order to create a fair playing field (which will change shortly to the “haves” vs the “have nots” but that’s a common marketing strategy). That way, people can really solidify if they are unsure on Druid if they want to put in the time investment and end up not enjoying it, or if it is really worth it to them.

No problem with being cynical.

There’s a reason why I have a geared 80 of every class, and that will extend to Revenants on HoT launch. There’s no problem with being excited by other things and not by the current class you main.

Besides, its Q3/Q4 videogame season anyhow, so you don’t even have to stick with GW2 if you aren’t feeling it anymore.

Personally, and no disrespect to Irenio because his involvement in the Ranger class has been the highpoint of ranger development so far, but the classes Robert Gee was lead on (Reaper, Chrono) are beautiful, amazing, well designed, well balanced, highly effective and strong classes. Between those 2 and the Revenant, it’s hard to hold other classes up to their design in my opinion.

If you aren’t having fun, you aren’t gaming the right way

Crapgame.6519:

jcbroe.4329:

Crapgame.6519:

jcbroe.4329:

Why are you playing Druid if you don’t like Ranger? Druid is ranger with extra heals and an underwhelming weapon and set of utilities. So really, it’s ranger. Same pet mechanic, weapons, traits, and everything.

So yes, if people really want to throw on full healing gear and convince thenselves by RPing a healer that a trinity exists and they are effective, then they should be progress gated before they create the same stigma for Druids that base rangers have had and still have.

According to the developers, Druids are just that – they are that trinity. It exists as they see it and I’m pretty sure if you raid you will have one if not more in your party.

According to the developers, or according to your interpretation? Eles, Guardians, and Engis have always been able to heal their allies too, therefore trinity right?

Druid is an option for healing support just like Ele or Guardian or any other healing options in the game, Druid just has more of them than other classes.

You aren’t pigeonholed into healing power or anything at all actually. You run full damage, and then have some extra self and AoE sustain options through healing.

That is not a trinity.

Right, it isn’t traditional MMO healing trinity – but notice I didn’t say that. I said that is what the developers are saying or leaning to. Thus, according.

Maybe you should go check out the live streams or data on GW2 official site. This isn’t an interpretation thing. It is what has been said. Also changes happened since BW3 with regards to the Druid and healing. Healing stats will be required.

Been here the whole time. Maximum base healing reduction was 25%, predictably on the biggest heals from the BWE; so things like Lunar Impact. That’s still an amazing heal on any build lacking healing power, on top of Druids equally amazing (compared to ranger traitlines) traits.

The changes also reinforce the ability, an ability that didn’t really exist viably during the BWE, to flash in and out of Celestial Form; barring the 10 second cooldown. That means that offensively, you can flash into Celestial Form and remove all conditions, drop a Lunar Impact, get a minimum of 2.1-2.2k heal, flash out of it, gain superspeed and stealth, and quickly follow up and hit the dazed person (or people) and root them with Ancient Seeds.

If we’re only talking raids though, I get what your point is. Clearly the playstyle will be Grace of the Land DPS stacking and heal dropping for the team. It’s extremely pigeonholed into the playstyle.
However, I fail to see, given with what raid mechanics and profession mechanics I’ve witnessed, where Healing Power will be mandatory. With the numbers taking a maximum hit of 25% reduced base healing across the board in the current most extreme circumstance, you should still arguably be running damage gear, especially since things like Well of Precognition, DH Virtue 3, and everybody having their own self heal (along with regen being thrown around like its candy) exist. You’ll more than likely be overhealing anyhow trying to maintain Grace of the Land, even in damage gear.

Will people probably want healing druids as safety nets? Probably, until people learn the mechanics of encounters in PvE. That being said, it’s highly doubtful groups will continue to want Druids to sacrifice chunks of group damage for stronger heals unless its absolutely mandatory (yet to be determined by the mechanics).

Outside of raids though? Highly doubtful Healing Power will ever be a necessity ever unless people want to chug whiskey bottles while playing one-handed in Nomads gear in WvW blobs and not feel totally useless.

Crapgame.6519:

jcbroe.4329:

Why are you playing Druid if you don’t like Ranger? Druid is ranger with extra heals and an underwhelming weapon and set of utilities. So really, it’s ranger. Same pet mechanic, weapons, traits, and everything.

So yes, if people really want to throw on full healing gear and convince thenselves by RPing a healer that a trinity exists and they are effective, then they should be progress gated before they create the same stigma for Druids that base rangers have had and still have.

According to the developers, Druids are just that – they are that trinity. It exists as they see it and I’m pretty sure if you raid you will have one if not more in your party.

According to the developers, or according to your interpretation? Eles, Guardians, and Engis have always been able to heal their allies too, therefore trinity right?

Druid is an option for healing support just like Ele or Guardian or any other healing options in the game, Druid just has more of them than other classes.

You aren’t pigeonholed into healing power or anything at all actually. You run full damage, and then have some extra self and AoE sustain options through healing.

That is not a trinity.

Why are you playing Druid if you don’t like Ranger? Druid is ranger with extra heals and an underwhelming weapon and set of utilities. So really, it’s ranger. Same pet mechanic, weapons, traits, and everything.

So yes, if people really want to throw on full healing gear and convince thenselves by RPing a healer that a trinity exists and they are effective, then they should be progress gated before they create the same stigma for Druids that base rangers have had and still have.

I’m not entirely certain you understand what constitutes something being OP. Rather, it seems like a biased targeting of a particular class in order to keep them from having nice things because of an alarmist reaction causing you to spout opinionated nonsense instead of trying to even remotely mathematically prove your opinion.

But that’s okay, let’s discuss this completely kneejerk reaction about a mechanic not even available for testing.

A ranger player without Druid has about 15k DPS and Spotter and Spirits. With Druid, a DPS tratline gets sacrificed, either Marksmanship or Beastmastery since we still want Spotter in Skirmishing, and the traitline that gets sacrificed will be highly dependent on average amount of time spent in Celestial Form, but will guesstimatedly cost about 20% of that total DPS, give or take from traits alone, not factoring in time spent in Celestial Form lowering DPS beyond that.

Celestial Form has a limit approaching zero amount of DPS, meaning you effectively do no damage while in form meaning you are costing your group about 15k DPS to even use Celestial Form.

Given that spotter and frost spirit are constants, the Druid while in Celestial Form has to have some way of returning the 15k damage the group misses out on to remain competitive. Other classes damages range from 18-22k or so, though I’m not sure what effect Ice Bow had on certain numbers. 18k would be the safer number to estimate with, but at 20%, Grace of the Land in an optimal use scenario returns almost exactly the DPS lost to the group when Celestial form is used.

That creates a zero balance between ranger and druid builds and their contributions and penalties to groups, which is considered balanced.

Feel free to respond, but for all purposes, this is basically /thread unless somebody can mathematically show how Druid when using Celestial Form with Grace of the Land has a net gain in group DPS contribution over regular ranger.

I’m referencing Brazil and DnTs numbers by the way.

Exciton.8942:

Lord Snow.3257:

Exciton.8942:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I’m honestly praying to Melandru that Staff gets a burn on AA. It just needs something. As is, its pretty bad, even with the excellent change to Ancestral Grace.

Sorry I don’t agree about staff 1 getting burn.

Staff 1 actually does pretty decent power damage. It has a damage modifier of 0.3 and pulses 3 times. That is basically a combined modifier of 0.9 of 1.5 seconds.

To put it into perspective. mesmser gs1, a very similar skill, has a combined modifier of 0.945 at 900+ range, 0.54 at less than 300 range. Channel time is also 1.5 seconds(mesmer can abuse stow though).

The damage really doesn’t look any worse on druid staff. You can also confirm that by looking at that initial druid introduction video at twitchcon. The high damage number confirms it(pretty sure they are using berserker amulet).

Why are you comparing the damage of the staff auto to mesmer GS? The reason the GS is strong is due to its abilities’ insane damage and the utility it offers, you do not run around spamming the autoattack to kill people, it’s damage is laughable, and druid staff is actually a bit weaker, if your numbers are correct. The damage on staff is so laughable, no matter how much power you have, that you cripple yourself by using it over GS/LB. The staff is terrible for anything that isn’t a bunker build, or useless healer for pve if you want (when people figure out raids, staff will most likely not be needed for druid, maybe druid won’t be needed at all).

The staff is a pathetic weapon.

You are so wrong. Mesmers spam GS1 a lot. It does decent damage at long distance and good at triggering on crit sigils. It’s already probably the second strongest long-range autoattack after ranger longbow. Mesmer’s GS is also a damage focused weapon. 4 damage skills and 1 utility skill.

Back to ranger’s staff. It is a utility-heavy weapon. 3 and 5 are among the best utility on any weapon set. 1 and 2 do decent power damage + some healing. I would say this is pretty good already. You can’t blame a weapon just because it is not damage-focused. Guardian’s staff is also damage-lacking. But it is still a very strong weapon due to its utility.

From design point of view, I think weapon skills are not meant to do too many different stuff at the same time. Do we really have a weapon autoattack that can do good power damage, good condie damage and also healing at the same time?

I wouldn’t call staff 2 decent power damage ever. Pretty sure it’s a DPS loss to even use it, factoring in travel time (it’s slow) and interrupting the autoattack.

Still, at 2375 power, we’re talking about a cooldown skill that only peaks at 743 damage. That’s less than a lot of autoattacks in this game (including the weapons own 2 hit autoattack).

Regarding what I responded with earlier, either this damage needs increasing, the healing power scale for the skill needs to be upped to a minimum of .5, or the base heal on the skill needs to be doing more than 322 base.

The 3 and the 5 skills, you’re right, great skills. The 2 and 4 skills? They are in desperate need of tuning.