Guild Wars 2

do i have to draw this out for you guys? go zerker, marauder or whatever else. drop wilderness survival for druid, and go Druidic Clarity, Celestial Shadow and Ancient Seeds. use celestial avatar to heal up, daze, and slow. switch out to gain stealth. so good.

the celestial avatar is a cool mechanic that buffs the profession all around, and goes great with the theme of the druid.

am i disappointed we didn’t get aspects, and various pet buffs? yes. but in all fairness, aspects should go under the Beastmaster specialization, and a few condi pets will be useful.

wolfyrik.2017:

I’ve no idea what they based this elite on, but it sure aint druids. I think one of the devs spent too much time in the Mind, body, spirit section of a particularly bad, woo-shop.

i don’t agree. depending on what lore/history youre drawing from, druids aren’t just connected to the physical nature lol. they are also connected to the universe, and various natural energies and rhythms. the moon, tides and celestial bodies being a part of this.

it was unexpected, i love it and it makes sense to me. pets still need work, and aspects would still be amazing under BM, perhaps as a GM.

Stilgar.6437:

no it will not drop out of meta if these are the only changes. It even stays one category above the rest of meta. Burning is the same as before, mini-nerf on drake but buff on RoF. Might is still super high, you drop down couple stacks on average, barely noticeable.

If vigor nerf wasnt in the patch notes, you would have not noticed it was implemented, because ele still has 100% vigor uptime.

Burning is the same (even more burns in many situations now, slightly less in others), damage is basicly the same, same sustain, same mobility, same everything else, same meta (^2).

this basically. cowardly and overly conservative nerfs. now we wait 4 more months. unless there is more, lets see on Tuesday.

Readymade.1672:

While replying to a guy who ends every forum post with “Haters gonna hate” is a terrible idea. Let’s disperse some of your ignorance.

1.The nerf to vigor on crit is not a nerf to sustain. Cantrips are enough vigor, and d/d eles will just switch to the Arcane Precision trait for extra burn/blind on crit as well as additional condi covers.

Nerf to Vigor (10s cd instead of 5s) will mostly impact DPS Ele builds as they relied on this trait for their only source of vigor.

2. No competent d/d ele blows cantrips just for Might. D/D Ele’s might-stacking comes from other sources (fire fields and easy access to multiple blast finishers) and will not be affected at all by this nerf.

D/D eles will still have 25 might, perhaps it’ll take them 5 seconds longer to get it without access to might on cantrips.

3. Let’s pretend no one noticed that Dragon’s Breath used to be 2s per stack and was “unnerfed” in a recent patch. D/D ele was still meta with 2s of burn per stack.

It’s frankly just a great skill with amazing pressure to bait out dodges/punish those without condi clear, and it takes little to no ability to land.

this guy gets it.

rampage doesn’t need a nerf. all abilities are heavily telegraphed. yes you can get two-shot, but you can also leave, or pop defensive cd’s and kill it.

you don’t have to get ANY healing power, and you don’t need to heal anyone but yourself. just play any offensive build with the druid trait line, and profit. if you bothered to think, research or experiment for just 2 minutes, you would understand this.

Bryzy.2719:

Ltomato.8649:

I agree that Glyph of Empowerment needs a boost. I’d suggest an increase in damage to 20%, as well as affecting condition damage. Perhaps increase the duration slightly to 8 seconds but also increase the cooldown to 30 or 40.

That way it feels much more satisfying when you pop it and you can clearly and immediately see a burst from your team. 10% just isn’t enough.

Agreed, when I saw the 10% I thought “awww what?”, then I put my “what about balance?” head on, and having done both have come to the conclusion that a 20-25% boost would be more reasonable – entirely subjective of course

this is why most of the things written in this very thread so far cannot and will not be taken seriously. you guys are being silly. 20-25% damage boost on 5 players? do you have any idea how OP that is? 10% is great and makes a huge difference for a group’s damage output. there are glyphs in a much worse shape.

OLD STUFF (most of my concerns)

- spirits wont see any play whatsoever. they are useless, their boons are unimportant, their actives don’t make a difference, and they die in 2 hits in pvp. you guys need to do something about spirits…like, now. they’ve been useless for too long. just turn them into invulnerable wisps that orbit the player. the ranger can ground target and use up a wisp to create a field actively. passively, wisps can imbue weapons with different effects. some wisp actives should cleanse condies or stunbreak. buff Spirit of Nature (keep the big tree theme) by greatly reducing cooldown, OR by greatly increasing its passive and active effects and range.

- there are a few shouts that are not being slotted by anyone…please REVAMP them: Search and Rescue, Sic ‘Em, and possibly guard (not sure how it will work with WHaO). utilities need to: stun break, condi cleanse, reliably increase damage, decrease damage to caster, and/or aoe buff/debuff. currently these 3 shouts don’t do any of these things.

- Muddy terrain is not being slotted by anyone because no one cares about cripple, and the initial immob is not a game-changer. this utility needs to do more. revamp it, buff it, or remove it. similarly, Sharpened Edges is not being slotted because it just doesn’t do much for us.

- weapons. many are bad. please revisit our weapons.
- sword: leave #1 as is, #2 should leave a field of wasps that pulses torment for 3s on first cast, and the second cast should be a piercing skill shot nuke (leap that pierces 3-5 targets and does 5k damage with marauder stats); #3 needs to do poison damage in a cone or aoe.
- warhorn and OH axe: both of these have ONE skill that is entirely useless. Hunter’s Call is terrible. it has no buff, debuff or utility, no condi component, and its power damage is downright PATHETIC; Whirling Defense is complete suicide…no one really cares about projectile reflects first of all, the damage is terrible, it roots us, and it’s just bad. OH axe and WH aren’t used by any good ranger for any reason ever in the world. please have a look at these two offhands, specifically the mentioned skills.

- Shortbow: please don’t make us rely on spamming autoattack. this game punishes AA spam hard, yet this weapon doesn’t offer enough outside of that. retal, reflects, frost aura…all ubiquitous and very punishing. give SB an interesting autoattack chain that is perhaps lower rate of fire, but has greater effect per arrow.

- useless pets: too many to list here. the new pets are cool and useful. there are at least two dozen that don’t see any play because a) they don’t do any damage, and/or b) their f2’s are bad. please have a look.

DRUID

- love the celestial form, as long as we can fill the green bar at a decent rate. we’ll wait and see. overall, great job on the druid…experienced players see the massive potential and synergy. personally i don’t have too many complaints.

- Glyphs: i feel a lot of them are quite underwhelming WITHOUT Verdant Etching. also none of them offer any stability or stun breaking. glyphs need to be solid on their own without traits, which theyre not right now. one of them needs to be a stunbreak, and somehow we need more stability

- Stability: rangers actually have POOR ACCESS to stability. this is mostly because both SotP and SoW have a cast time. one or both of these needs to be instant cast. if you want us to use glyph of unity, then we cant slot SotP. secondly, if stab can’t be used reactively, it is often useless (not always). warriors, eles, guards, reapers, revs, and i think even engies can use stability reactively. alternatively, allow one glyph to give us stab or come up with a trait that will allow glyph use to give stab. think about this.

cheers, hope this helps.

(source: i have about 4k hours on my ranger, all in pvp).

I disagree. the spec is well thought out with great animations

windbourne notes will be interesting with this.

Aomine.5012:

Screw the heal bot.

you don’t need to heal anyone but yourself. use celestial form for its utility and to heal yourself up. druid trait line enhances just about every offensive build.

Levetty.1279:

Looking at the tool tip Staff auto has a cast time of 1 and a quarter seconds. I don’t know where you are getting good damage from.

Irenio was doing about 2.5k damage with no stats, just with the AA.

how is it a mockery? guards and eles are the masters of boons. druids give no boons to anyone.

cakeonroof.7385:

But just going over that list, I don’t think the Druid will appeal to the annoying LB2 noobie types that pollute our matches.

I don’t think you understand what is happening. druid trait line will make LB power builds, and power builds in general, even stronger.

uh didn’t we get the spellcaster animation? definitely seemed like we did from the preview.

warhorn will be quite nice with the wyverns and smokescale.

Cristobal.8640:

I run double GS with valk, remorseless+quickdraw. GS Staff is going to be brutal, quickdraw on staff <3

And kittening dragons!

2400 range escape. immobs to setup mauls. take the smokescale pet, its f2 does 9k damage.

Mavander.3208:

The question I have for Irenio is: What if I want to be a dps druid?

all offensive ranger builds are getting huge buffs with the druid. take 0/0/6/6/6 for example. drop BM, keep marauder stats, LB/GS. everything is the same, except you have more sustain, stealth, and utility. hell, you can even drop Wilderness Survival as we don’t really need WK any longer. get Remorseless, Quickdraw or BW instead.

take a tanky Remorseless build with druid and any other line. take the condi bunker build, and instead of BM use with druid. there are just way too many offensive possibility.

hey I thought of another one. how about traps? staff gives us a ton of survivability, celestial form gives us condi cleanses. go full condi with 3 traps, staff, and glyph of unity.

in summary, druid enhances just about every ranger build. it gives us more sustain, survivability and utility, which is what we’ve been missing. Irenio (and other involved devs) did a fantastic job with this one.

celestial form can be traited to cleanse all condis. then you can cleanse a bunch more with Seed of Life. you definitely wont need Wilderness Knowledge + survival utilities any longer. even SoR we should be able to drop.

this means we can play around with Quickdraw and Remorseless a little more. MoC will be pretty intense.

the options are looking pretty interesting. I’m excited about staff/GS personally. staff gives us a lot of survivability and mobility while its AA hits pretty hard from a long distance. GS is solid all around, and we wont have to use solely as a utility/defensive weapon.

since taunt wont be nearly as effective once the bug is fixed next Tuesday, I foresee a lot of rangers dropping the BM line entirely for the druid. I feel BW should be able to work through blocks, due to the insane amount of block spam out there right now. it shouldn’t work through dodging.

the druid line brings some serious utility and sustain. it can work very nicely both with the condi bunker, as well as several power variants.

the new pets are very strong on their own. the smokescale’s f2 did 9k damage on that heavy golem. not sure if these numbers are final o.O

I don’t think the ele nerf was nearly sufficient. damage nerf was…significant, but the dps is still over the top given how tanky it still is. d/d cele must be a bunker spec if anything, not a jack of all trades.

celestial form is beautiful. thank you for giving me my Moonkin back.

staff animations are very lackluster. I don’t like the wisp, and the AA beam is so tiny.

I’m actually very surprised druid didn’t get access to Resistance boon.

I’m concerned about lack of stability as well. SoW is such a bad utility, and going for SotP will prevent us from using glyph of unity =(

didn’t look too bad. it’s less when youre just doing damage, and even then it was filling up at a decent rate.

you get quite a bit more when you heal others, so imagine healing 3-4 people around you. it will fill up quick.

Gotejjeken.1267:

mistsim.2748:

Mcrocha.3891:

mistsim.2748:

Gotejjeken.1267:

I think we’re missing the Taunt change in here. Didn’t they say it is now undodgeable and unblockable?

i don’t think he said that correctly. I understood that it was bugged, and therefore went through dodges and blocks. this is now getting fixed, so it’s going to be a huge nerf. not because of the dodge part, but because a couple of professions can actually spam blocks. taunt wont be hitting much once the change goes live.

From what I heard, he said that it was not working as intended that Taunt was going through dodges and blocks, therefore it is now no longer able to do so.

correct.

Ah. I use zephyr’s speed, but that is a horrible change then. Makes the skill kinda useless against a lot of the professions.

yes, I’ll most likely be dropping BM altogether in favour of the druid + 2 other lines. taunt was absolutely fine going through blocks, but you can thank all the esport kiddies for this. they raised a lot of noise after getting killed by rangers a whole bunch. I find this quite funny: it wasn’t ok for a 2s cc to go through blocks, but it’s perfectly fine to spam blocks on the engie, guard, ele, and Mesmer.

I’m glad that Irenio is in charge of the ranger now. that’s the good news. the bad news is he has a lot of work to do, and the druid was just a start.

also, glad to have my Moonkin back. know what I’m sayin?

Mcrocha.3891:

mistsim.2748:

Gotejjeken.1267:

I think we’re missing the Taunt change in here. Didn’t they say it is now undodgeable and unblockable?

i don’t think he said that correctly. I understood that it was bugged, and therefore went through dodges and blocks. this is now getting fixed, so it’s going to be a huge nerf. not because of the dodge part, but because a couple of professions can actually spam blocks. taunt wont be hitting much once the change goes live.

From what I heard, he said that it was not working as intended that Taunt was going through dodges and blocks, therefore it is now no longer able to do so.

correct.

Gotejjeken.1267:

I think we’re missing the Taunt change in here. Didn’t they say it is now undodgeable and unblockable?

i don’t think he said that correctly. I understood that it was bugged, and therefore went through dodges and blocks. this is now getting fixed, so it’s going to be a huge nerf. not because of the dodge part, but because a couple of professions can actually spam blocks. taunt wont be hitting much once the change goes live.

hell yes, offensive druid is possible. I thought about staff/GS synergy only a few minutes into the reveal. the great thing about the druid is that it actually gives us SUSTAIN, which we’ve never had before. so now we can actually use our best melee weapon offensively. not to mention that it will make for a sick frontline build.

Nike.2631:

Ancient Seeds and shortbow #5 is pretty much auto-tangles. You can build a whole interlocking nest of awful around SB and off-hand dagger. You should have predator’s onslaught up continuously.

the synergy is interesting, and I’ll look for any excuse to love SB. but I still feel the weapon is far too weak, and that we have better options.

very minor changes, most useless. MDG and spirits still wont be seeing any play whatsoever.

WHaO change is cool, and condi damage on pets is great.

still so many useless weapons, utilities and pets. but it’s a start I suppose?

is it me or did d/d ele not get nerfed nearly enough?

tomorrow I decide if I reinstall gdub and buy HoT, or leave for good (not that anyone cares). /popcorn. impress me ANet.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Thieves/Engis can’t attack or defend points while they are in stealth/invulnerable. Ranger can do those things, while using SoS or evades. So, what did you want to say with this contradictory statement?

uh conquest is won with team fights. id leave decapping/holding to thieves and dedicated bunkers (currently d/d eles and some guards). we’re mostly concerned about killing, resetting fights, and sustaining here.

I don’t think Remorseless has an ICD, unless they stealth nerfed it. get as many fury procs as you can, and it will come.

for PU mesmers, I beat them easily with my celestial condi bunker build in the sig. I don’t bother fighting them 1v1 on any power build.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Unfortunately, both topics from each side have opinions stating that an enlarged health pool solves nothing, when each OP is proposing reasons as to why their class should get the highest health pool of the medium armored professions over the other – never once proposing it to be a solution, but a minor buff.

well, to me the choice is very simple. thieves have the stealth mechanic, and good engie builds use 3-4 invulns/blocks, or even stealth. we’re talking complete damage avoidance here. other than SoS, rangers don’t have anything else that is viable. sword, dagger and evasion spamming are generally not used because defending without attacking or leaving the area is totally unproductive and inevitably leads to death.

to me, the ranger is the only attrition prof of the 3. the other two have multiple damage avoidance tools. as do all the other profs except necro. I think we can all agree that the ranger is the most incomplete and non-sensical prof from a design perspective in the game. giving it some extra HP would make it an “evasive warrior” which is what it feels like right now anyway.

I suggested this a year or two ago. I also suggested a selection screen like in any moba, so players could counter each others’ picks. one issue is the amulets, the other is prof stacking. both should have been addressed two years ago.

the current way of matchmaking is a joke and unbecoming of any pvp game. we’ve been plagued by this celestial garbage for over a year now, and any team without enough celestial builds (or d/d eles as is the case currently) would be at a huge disadvantage. I’m hoping to see some sort of build manager advertised tomorrow for HoT, so we can at least swap builds on the fly.

mesmers have more to work with, and people are simply getting better. the interrupt build has a very low skill ceiling, which is why youre seeing a lot of it. but it’s still doable. make sure youre running the correct build though, try any of the 3 in my sig.

you’ll need taunt. you’ll need to know how to time your dodge rolls to avoid the interrupt, and GS #4 block. i don’t like primarily using the LB to fight good mesmers. try using your pet and GS, and finish off with LB.

it would be. that’s always been a Blizzard thing though, and id love to see the druid in the next D3 expansion. the ranger is a mess in GW2 and doesn’t feel like anything tbh.

my plan B is leaving. tomorrow I’m expecting to see significant pvp balancing. I’m more concerned about the ranger as a whole, and I couldn’t care less for the druid. if things look like theyre moving in the right direction, I might buy the xpac. if certain builds aren’t significantly toned down, i’ll be spending most of my time in Overwatch when the beta hits soon. tomorrow is literally the last chance I’m giving to gdub before I move on for a long while at least.

Archon.6480:

This is a strange thread. Please see the Heim’s 50 build list thread. Settler is arguably one of the best amulets for PvP Rangers now. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 or 2v2 with it, and I queue Ranked every day.

Rangers have no evasion? I don’t understand. Maybe you should elaborate?

sure let me explain. we play the game at completely different levels. at my level, I am not able to make low HP amulets work, and no other ranger is. any build with less than 20K HP will get you instagibbed. when my queue pops after 7-10mins, I play against/with the top players in the game. at least this was the case a month ago when I last logged in. I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not bragging, but this is where I’m coming from. I’m not interested in arguing about hotjoin builds and low MMR antics.

settler build(s) were gutted on June 23rd. we lost about 2k HP from NM, so at 16k HP and 3k armor, the ranger can almost get one-shot by a good Mesmer. also with 16K HP, youre shredded by condis. a few stray burn stacks, and youre done. competitively, settler, knights, cavalier and any other ammies without vit are completely useless. in WvW, this is less of an issue as you can mix stats. only marauder, and to a lesser extent valk and celestial, are viable stat choices for spvp.

increasing ranger’s base HP would open up a lot of builds, and make the current marauder builds competitive (which they aren’t currently, despite the best rangers in the game using them). of course, this is assuming our bad weapons stay bad. I doubt we will see any revamps for HoT as they’ve got their hands full. so I’m not taking weapon buffs into consideration.

I also want to clarify I’m talking about health pool, not healing power or heals per second (HPS). I thought this would be obvious.

Zodryn.4216:

TL;DR enemy reveals are basically a “nope” button against thieves. We need counterplay.

stealth has no counterplay currently. thieves will need to learn their multiple teleports and evades to leave the area when “reveal” utility is used. simple as that.

HPS is completely useless without healing power. currently, rangers using stats with HP, other than celestial, are instagibbed. this is exactly why this change would be so good. we’d be able to use cleric and settler once again, which we currently cannot. at 16k HP and 3k armor, rangers are practically two-shot by any good Mesmer.

Sigfodr.9576:

mistsim.2748:

Justine.6351:

We got tons of evades, damage invulnerability,

no, we do not.

my ranger do… 1 block, 5 evades and 1 LONG invuln.. not even counting traits or normal dodges or anything

yet you are still rallybait. interesting.

Justine.6351:

We got tons of evades, damage invulnerability,

no, we do not.

this would open up a lot of new builds in spvp, and probably in WvW. knights, cavalier, settler and zerker stats would be used quite a bit.

currently, we dont have a high HP medium armor prof. there is no reason for this to not happen for the ranger. thieves have stealth and spammable evades, engies have a ton of invuln and blocks…these guys don’t need it.

ranger would become interesting if HoT brings a pet revamp, i.e. better f2’s on many pets, another active pet skill, and 90% aoe damage reduction in WvW/PVE

doesn’t look like it. there will be a massive balance patch probably just before launch. yes, it’s sad. when it fails to do what we need it to do after weeks/months of poor internal testing and QA, we will have to wait another 4-6 months. I’m not hating, but this has literally been the pattern over the last 3 years.

Justine.6351:

mistsim.2748:

put the bird on them, taunt, and stack some condis. dodge/kill illusions from distance. I guarantee they will reappear from stealth with half their health missing. birds hit light armor for like 5k minimum. but you really need to run a build that has plenty of evades, decent condi damage, and high vit (like my cele build).

I can review my 4 fights some more but I think they were running mantras, likely condi removal spam. ;-(

Review* ;-)

they could run mantras, I wouldn’t care. a/d, s/t condi ouput is constant and if youre running tanky with plenty of condi removal, you can make them blow their mantra reasonably quickly through constant pressure. when I reinstall, i’ll clock some more time on my cele build, but I’m certain it was very strong against Mesmer cheese earlier this summer.

Puck.9612:

Put a bird on it!

that’s basically been my slogan since June 23. birds are stronk and I keep telling people not to duel them but no1 listens.

put the bird on them, taunt, and stack some condis. dodge/kill illusions from distance. I guarantee they will reappear from stealth with half their health missing. birds hit light armor for like 5k minimum. but you really need to run a build that has plenty of evades, decent condi damage, and high vit (like my cele build). this was about 2 months ago, but I crushed Countless in under 25 seconds 1v1. not sure if people are running stronger condi builds now, but I’m sure it would be fine. don’t expect to kill a good condi Mesmer with a goofy, situational build.

this just hit me…why are the devs so afraid of making this GM interesting?

increase its damage bonus to 50% so that it’s doing significantly more dps than bleeds, and healing debuff to -50%. it’s in Wilderness, and we have to give up condi cleanse for it. make it good. also we have to equip weak weapons to get enough poison stacks, decreasing our overall effectiveness, and dps from other condis like bleeds and burning (for example: s/d, SB and the serpent trap instead of torch, axe, flame trap).

buff this, make the poison ranger and SB interesting and relevant (yes, stealth SB whine).

engineer and guard burns have absolutely nothing to do with it. in fact, top players use bunker guards and marauder engies. the signet necro works because it’s the only decent counter to d/d eles and other bunkers.

thanks for the reddit thread JC, I enjoyed that. my main concern when they announced elite specs was that they would tunnel vision development using new tech, and leave the old stuff in the dust. I think Johanson said in a few interviews this would not be the case, theyd be going back and filling in all the gaps with the spec revamp. turns out, this wasn’t the case, not for the ranger anyway. and like you implied in your thread, the elite specs wont make me come back, or purchase HoT. but the correcting the vanilla game’s foundations will.