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DH’s are hardcountered by long range pressure. so any kind of Lb or staff ranger/druid. probably a well-played rifle zerker. don’t walk into their cluster of traps, and it’s going to be ok.
are you talking about pve or pvp? druids are quite strong in pvp. there are a few builds that work, many that don’t.
the one adjustment that I necessary for the druid is increasing AF gain rate for condi weapons, like for the axe/dagger + sword/torch builds. druid remains more or less unappealing for condi builds because of that reason.
my feedback for staff 2 and 4 after BWE3 was:
- allow staff #2 wisp to pulse damage in an aoe, as it spins around the target; this would give staff some much needed aoe
- give staff 4 a 2s immob if keeping the same cast time
Irenio actually buffed staff 4 immob to 1.5s, which was a huge improvement. ive already made some good plays with it, and come to think of it, 2s might have been a bit much. but maybe not
solar beam is just fine the way it is. it does massive damage with the right build (you know the one), and it gives new instances of heals which proc Lingering Light all the time. adding burning to it would be extremely over the top for pvp.
I would just like staff 2 to do some more damage. its heal is really powerful though, with some healing power.
^you’re so, so, so tough with minstrel, all the blinds, heals, and dazes that you just don’t need SoS. at least from my experience. another stun breaker maybe, but not SoS. that being said, I did not test this one in a high mmr environment.
we need to put in our feedback that fire wyvern’s fire field animates way, way too slowly.
regarding the electric wyvern, I use it only for the on-demand knockdown, which is amazing by the way. my trapper likes it especially. my one tip is to line up the wyvern in the direction you want him to go, before hitting f2. ive tackled multiple players with it…it’s devastating and can turn the fight in your favour.
wing buffet is a nice bonus against careless players. it’s totally out of our control, but it’s nice when it happens…it can mess people up on the point.
It’s really funny, I melted every Dragonhunter I encountered with the 1st build, at least the more bunkerish builds don’t have enough damage to take you down.
yes. dragonhunters are totally kittening obnoxious right now, but this build pretty much hard counters them. there’s nothing they can do against the zap zaps. dodge the maw, don’t run into their traps, and youre good. True Shot can hit for 6k but that’s why we have AG and Sublime Conversion. there’s no way they can win the ranged battle.
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just wondering if this is being looked at. it’s an enormous annoyance in pvp. it’s drastically affecting performance in conquest, where I have to roam. using AG puts in at in-combat swiftness speed while I’m OOC, it’s dumb.
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loving my druid. playing 3 effective builds in pvp now…just got into a bit of pve as well, looks fun.
I’m only really disappointed about wvw. was hoping to see a resurgence of old players, but it’s a dead game mode.
spam staff, keep AF full all the time. pretty simple.
pvp isnt gonna be fun until herald, scrapper, chronomancer, dragonhunter, and reaper are nerfed.
.
that’s really funny as I’m destroying all of the above with my power druid. the only one giving me trouble sometimes being the scrapper.
that being said, kitten’s really hard for thieves now yes.
looks like this new map is the end of wvw. that makes me sad, I was hoping we’d see a resurgence of new and old players. looks like a dead game mode =(
I’m running this roaming trap bomber build with trapper runes (not indicated in editor).
and it’s strong if played alongside your team. you put out huge condi pressure and cc, and get out. it’s not a 1v1 build, but survivability and mobility are quite significant.
traps do need some minor buffs. such as stunbreak and a bit of additional utility like boons or boon stripping.
The first build reminds me of why the original WHaO change would’ve caused a situation.
it would have been more difficult. we would have been too dependent on fortifying bond to stack might.
Was talking about quickness.
ah yes, with the perma quickness. indeed. I ran the WHaO before the nerf and it was fun. with the first build, zephyr’s speed + QZ gives you so much quickness…I wouldn’t know what to do with more anyways.
First build is interesting. Will have to look into it.
you usually played traps. have you tried running with trapper runes? I found the condi pressure huge, and survivability more than decent with stealh/SS spam.
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The first build reminds me of why the original WHaO change would’ve caused a situation.
it would have been more difficult. we would have been too dependent on fortifying bond to stack might.
the pet mechanic is fine. look at the new ones – theyre incredible, all of them.
electric wyvern has an instant charge that knocks people down. smokescale’s new f2 gives us more burst and might. bristleback with a bunch of might can take down a golem in one cast with its f2. fire wyvern does pretty decent condi damage, along with giving us a fire field to blast. and the tiger does some really good damage.
the new pets are responsive and all bring great utility to the ranger. as far as I’m concerns, the old pets (other than birds and canines) might as well not exist. now it would be nice if the old pets got the reworks they needed.
I admit I like the first build you posted. I haven’t got much time to test builds out yet, so I’ll definitely give it a try and see how it goes.
give it a shot. I think you’ll be able to take it places with your skill level.
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LB/Staff /// Staff/s/wh Might Stacking
The staff/s/wh variant has more survivability. overall, it’s the more balanced build. you have the second blast finisher, evades and the escape with sword. with this one, you would use staff as your primary damage dealer. staff/lb leaves you quite vulnerable to persistent melee harassment. there have been situations when I didn’t have avatar, I used up astral grace, QZ, and LR, and i just couldn’t get out. usually during the more drawn out fights.
since Lingering Light got gutted, it now makes the mots sense to run Grace of Land with staff/s/wh and perhaps Ancient Seeds with staff/lb.
regarding might stacking, without SoTP: open with CoTW, Smoke Assault and a few sword swings —> WHaO --> switch pets. this should get you 16-20 stacks reliably. with SoTP, it’s basically a lot easier. just casting Hunter’s Call will get you around 10, depending on if opponent blocks or dodge rolls.
BAH. I just cant keep up with the nerfs. trapper runes got gutted because of dragon hunters, and minstrel got removed. I’m keeping this discussion just about the marauder might stacking build from here on.
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Why do people keep saying I am supposed to take birds if I like to time my burst?
You are aware that bird f2 don’t really do any burst dps, right? They are about same dmg as just normal attacking.
Before the smokescale, birds (owl/raven) were the pets with the best (reliable) burst. And i think, they are now the best dps/burst pets again …
Bristleback does more than double the burst of owls and ravens almost 3times actually, of course that is a channeled attack so it’s abit like comparing rapid fire with maul but even so…
dude….I just brought out the bristle in the mists and put 25 stack of might on it. it took a heavy golem down to 10% HP by the end of the cast, lmfao. takes 1s with quickness. o.O
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The Beam requires an enemy target, meaning you cannot point at an Ally (like with Combat camera) and heal them, as there will be no beam with a target.
I think this needs to be changed.
This needs to be a thing. I feel like if Druid was in the first Beta Weekend it would be completely different by now and much more enjoyable. See how the Reaper or other Elite Sepcs were at the beginning and how they are now.
you could be right. but I’m actually loving my druid, even though it needs more improvements. I’m not by any means a fanboy, because I criticized the spec harshly after BWE3. but I think Irenio did a fantastic job incorporating our feedback:
- more offensive utility on avatar (blinds)
- more stab (NC)
- more stun breakers (equality, druidic clarity)
- Astral Grace Evade
- competitive and relevant GM’s
the AF decay to me feel fine honestly…I keep telling you guys to just keep a friendly target in your beam at all times, and you’re always gonna be full. but my fingers are getting tired of typing.
the one thing that needs improvement is rate of AF gain from other weapons, specifically axe, sword, torch, dagger, sb, etc. and a sliiiight decrease in AF decay.
I like to use the f2 to stack might with WHaO.
a player is down you switch to smoke scale and stealth him by using the pet f2 ability and blast from yourself or time it with a blast from team mates, guardian focus 5 could work for example.
this is completely unrealistic in a real pvp scenario. completely. the only use for this field is blasting it before the fight so the team doesn’t have to run a thief (they got deleted from pvp apparently, Karl has some ’splainin to do).
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Unpopular opinion here but are you aware that the smokefield does not blind? All it does was enable stealth combos and from playing ranger with this pet the last few days I found this VERY situational.
Being able to control the burst on the other side seems like a mayor improvement. I am sure it can be used a lot more frequently now aswell.
So unless they would also change the smokefield to actually pulse blind I MUCH prefer the new installment. You can hate me now.
Except the burst damage are gutted into half, that it’s can barely be called a burst?
Around 4k damage is like auto-attack twice with your main character.
try 8k with 25 stacks of might, which is super easy to achieve.
I agree that having that burst on f2 is effective. my preference as well. i’ll bet you anything that 90% of the people complaining about this haven’t used the smoke field once effectively in pvp. not once.
a few of the esports rangers raise some noise because, apparently, them being on some team all depended on this bloody smoke field. lmao. yeah, right. then the entire forum loses its freaking mind because now their “teams” cant blast finish the smoke to open up on the opposing team.
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haven’t you enough to complain about? the beam is totally fine. it’s kind of skill-based. you’ll build AF as long as u have your pet or a teammate within the beam. rotate around your target and skim through the friendlies. it’s super simple.
What if you need to heal and there is no target?
and what situation would that be in pvp?
When someone has to peel off, as in they really need the healing, they are in front of you with no target in front of them and you do not have AF charged, or CAF is on CD.
Anytime you want to heal someone that is not standing between you and a target. Like, you are coming into a node to assist someone and they are on the far side fighting the target on the near side. You are helpless to assist with healing until you run around behind them and shoot through them.
Imo, its just terrible design.
but if your AF isn’t charged by then, then you cant help that person with just heals. the first 15-20 seconds of a fight, I don’t really fight. I just charge up my avatar by positioning properly. what u can do outside of avatar is Sublime Conversion + AG + CotW which can heal someone for almost 5k without healing power, closer to 7-8k if you got minstrel. the other thing you can do, and sometimes the best thing, is to help them by proccing LL as much as you can. blinds, and small heals.
I’m so happy now that my PvP team is trying to convince me to play DragonHunter thanks to this f2 swap!
browsed your twitch a bit, and you seem lost regarding the druid. youre gonna have to spend more time tweaking your build…it’s not about the smokescale. you had the right idea with shouts though.
first off, we need like 3 stun breakers now. and at least 3 different condi wipes. secondly, u wanna stack might (and give it to your pet) so u can pressure targets with staff. fourthly, you’ll want quickness. it’s simply not possible to run an effective power build without QZ. lastly, get used to using the warhorn. torch is only viable on dedicated condi builds. in fact there’s only one condi build right now that might be viable.
this is really hard to pin down and it does mad damage. it was so OP that I basically stopped playing it to explore other builds. there is a really strong trap bomber build that plays like a roamer/disabler. and minstrel with glyphs for bunking, heals and support but I’m not sure how viable that is in a team environment.
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haven’t you enough to complain about? the beam is totally fine. it’s kind of skill-based. you’ll build AF as long as u have your pet or a teammate within the beam. rotate around your target and skim through the friendlies. it’s super simple.
What if you need to heal and there is no target?
and what situation would that be in pvp?
haven’t you enough to complain about? the beam is totally fine. it’s kind of skill-based. you’ll build AF as long as u have your pet or a teammate within the beam. rotate around your target and skim through the friendlies. it’s super simple.
so run a build that will allow you to build AF quickly. always position yourself so you have a teammate or pet in front of the beam. don’t engage until your bar is full, keep distance. It takes me about 15 seconds to fill it up, you can do it as well.
we need a lot of work still, but the ranger is far from ignored.
it also doesn’t work with spike trap
yep, the amount of cc’s in this game has never been more insane. it’s probably getting knocked around a lot, but it should still return to continue rezzing.
Irenio has done some amazing work for the prof lately. the druid was really well designed, but needs a few more tweaks. he basically inherited a pile of poop of a profession that had no feel or direction to it. half of our utilities and weapons need to be redesigned from scratch more or less. the druid was a great step in the right direction.
ive been using allies’ aid with smokescale and wyvern. has worked every time so far.
that’s fair. I feel druids bring more than enough utility to the table already. but we desperately need more offensive power. have Smoke Assault on the f2 works better in that function.
reverting the smokescale f2’s WITH its large damage nerf would be a big mistake. we’ll essentially have an average nuke that is no longer on-demand. we need improvements, I know. but I hope the devs stand their ground on this one.
I find the smokescale burst easily controllable without using F2 as it will use it as its first skill. An on-demand smoke field is more important than the burst I reckon.
yeah I didn’t have too many problems with this either. either way, I like both.
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reverting the smokescale f2’s WITH its large damage nerf would be a big mistake. we’ll essentially have an average nuke that is no longer on-demand. we need improvements, I know. but I hope the devs stand their ground on this one.
im trying this new thing where I try not to call anything OP without understanding it first.
could you tell me a little about the scrapper? what ive seen: he hits mega hard, has a lot of blocks, and has an absurd amount of might (25 stacks that just never decay).
mostly im interested what amulet are you guys achieving this with.
and doing so means you’ll need pet on passive at all times .
do you know how to animation cancel? would this be too difficult for you to learn?
come on you guys, you are turning in to a bunch of divas. 90% of you honestly haven’t a clue about what exactly youre complaining. Eura wanted to use this for his team comp in competitive pvp, and hes basically throwing a fit about it. for the rest if you, it doesn’t matter one bit. youre just getting on board the negativity train, because it’s cool to complain about the ranger. youre getting so caught up in it that youre failing to see what we do have.
ive said everything I needed to say on the smokescale. /exists thread and never comes back.
Anything as strong (or inconvenient) as a smoke field must have better control than might stacking. You can’t just use smoke fields all willy nilly and get good results
Even if they use it most of the time after such and such skill, I’m tired of trying to plan around the AI decisions.
the smoke field is controllable, that’s what I’m telling u guys. it comes right after the Smoke Assault. test it out for yourself. if you don’t want the smoke field there and then, don’t cast Smoke Assault. it’s very easy for people to pick up on this as they start seeing more smokescales in pvp.
the change is overall better for the profession. .
An uncontrolled smoke field is not better than a controlled one.
id rather be hitting hard with the smokescale when I want, and getting 7 stacks of might when i want, than having an on-demand smoke field. the field is good for the team, sure. but there are thieves for that. and we still get the smoke field, just not as instantly. but it does very little for the ranger. you can blast it twice, and leap through it once before it expires, which is like 4s of stealth. but I can get this with Celestial Avatar and traps if I really want stealth for myself.
there are both sides to the argument, I get it, and no one is really on my side. I’m just expressing my opinion and preference
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personally, id prefer to have the on-demand might stacks and extra burst. I know u wanted the smoke field for your opener, but try to see the bright side – good for might-stacking (theyre practically giving us easy access to 25 stacks), and for on-demand burst. if your smokescale has 25 stacks (very easy), he hits for 8k. that’s easy for me to argue though, because I don’t have a team depending on me for the smoke field. I prefer the extra offense over the tactical.
we can still use the smoke tactically when the pet drops it. almost always, he’ll drop it right after u cast Smoke Assault. so it’s still kind of on-demand. I tested this about 10 times in the mists just now.
again I know ure highly biased because u wanted to have it for your “team’s” opener, but you’ll just have to use the thief. or maybe this change is wrecking your guys’ comp? i feel the change is overall better for the profession.
again, I’m asking the devs (voting) to leave the smokescale as it is now. I will say that you also have to be a little bit more sensitive toward the ranger community. you keep taking things away from people, without buffing other aspecs and fixing our bugs. this is making for a ton of extremely unhappy customers…so just be careful here.
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Hi guys,
it’s really neat that youre keeping on top of the OP ranger stuff, like the smokescale.
but can you please now fix the Astral Grace bug that’s putting us in combat in spvp? i.e. upon the blast finish when we’re out of combat, it puts us into combat. and then we have to waddle over to our destination for like 5 seconds.
this is perfectly fine. in fact, I like it better. 50% is still 5.5k damage without crits, on-demand. while I thought the on-demand smoke field would be amazing, it turned out to be impractical and useless to me. id rather have a bit of on-demand burst.
I was gonna suggest a 30% damage nerf, but 50% + on-demand status of the skill is fair. also now, you can just grab the 7 stacks of might the smokescale gets with WHaO because you know exactly when the pet has it. this in itself makes might stacking on the ranger absolutely trivial. I’m talking 25 might here, whenever.
when the smokescale has 25 stacks of might (very easy to achieve), this hits for ~8k.
this is still my favourite offensive pet.
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Try doing this with a moving target/players and tell me how successful you are and how skillful you felt doing it. (My argument is that any success you have is based largely on luck rather than on skill.) Does the mechanics feel good to you play that way?
playing spvp for over 12 hours now, feels fine. as long as youre moving around your target and someone is up there with it. either the pet or another teammate. the beam will graze friendlies occasionally, and thats all i needed.
honestly, AF generation with staff feels perfect to me. id only like it if the decay was slightly slower so that I could make it from one fight to the other with at least 80% AF.
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IMO I have no problem gating CAF behind staff.
I do. There is no reason to force one profession to use a specific weapon just to have access to their mechanic. That is TERRIBLE design, and no other profession in the game is so constrained. If they do that, then they’d kitten ed well better make Chronomancer f5 only work when shield is out, and Reaper Shroud only available when greatsword is used, etc.
Don’t be silly. Anet actually tried with those. That’s why they are so kitten good.
Holy kittene tho, I got #rekt trying to mess around with Druid by some chronos and reapers. The cc and active defenses on chrono are insane and reaper is hard as hell to kite.
it can suck getting caught offguard by a chrono or reaper, but 1v1 it shouldn’t be a problem. for example, i roll with 3 condi wipes, 3 stun breakers. SoS and SoTP. haven’t had too many issues with any single spec so far.
snip
This has been known since the last beta.
apparently not. everyone today is complaining about staff not generating enough AF, i.e. taking 45 seconds to fill up the bar therefore not being able to access avatar before it’s too late. this thread is to address those people.
Problem 1) Its extremely hard to get your pet to position itself in front of you for Staff#1 healing;
it’s extremely easy. position your pet/teammates ahead of you, and move around your target. your beam will cut through the friendly targets.
yes, staff is mandatory if u wanna use the avatar. a bunch of us asked Irenio after BWE3 to balance this a little better to include the core weapons. it happened and it sucks, they will probably adjust it somehow. but i think they really want us healing people to fill that energy bar up. rangers don’t have many group heals outside of staff/druid, so that kinda blows for those not wanting to use staff.
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now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.
They are separate, and important issues. I’m not “changing my tune”. And AGAIN, no other Elite Spec requires the weapon to achieve functionality.
I’m just offering a solution for those complaining about STAFF not generating enough AF. it’s explicitly stated in the OP. if u wanna vent about build diversity, do it in the other threads.
And they claim to try and promote build diversity???? I mean it makes no sense. Unless they give the ranger a complete overhaul, that celestial form aint gonna work at all.
also a discussion for another thread. this is about staff AF generation.
Am I wrong? Am I way off base?
I would really like to be wrong. At this point, I’ll just wait and see.
Maybe they will make quick changes.
i just don’t see the core ranger as viable. i think there are some neat trapper builds, but traps are just a novelty and they aren’t too versatile in practice (still no stunbreaker on them). all my successful builds today have been with the druid, offensive and bunker. even some condi builds have been good.
the elite specs (druid included) have left the core ranger absolutely in the dust.
now some of you guys are changing your tune. most of the complaints had to do with not generating enough AF for the avatar. being dependent on the staff is an entirely different issue. perhaps they want us to be.
go ahead and test this in the mists…
fire at a golem (doesn’t matter how much power/condi, etc you have) with your staff #1 with your pet at your side. observe how long it takes to fill up the bar…i think it’s 30+ seconds.
now have the pet attack the target and aim the beam through it. observe the AF rate double (roughly).
so this is why our core weapons stink (other than maybe LB’s barrage, which is AOE and does a ton of damage) – they don’t heal. they want us to heal AND do damage. doing both will generate AF most efficiently.
when youre aiming the beam to the target through your teammates, it will fill up extremely quickly. in a realistic scenario with them attacking the target, the bar will fill without much effort. even if it’s just and your pet in a 1v1, you will do fine.
this is also why Lingering Light is virtually spammable by you, the caster.
hope that helps some of you.
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I ran a couple of builds, and my impressions are mostly positive. i wasn’t expecting AF decay this morning, but i found it ok because i ran staff in all the builds.
staff is a really cool weapon. it synergizes beautifully with Lingering Light in offensive and defensive builds. #2 is a really big heal (~800/tick) with some healing power, AG is our best skill, #5 is always good for blasting, and i noticed they slightly increased #4’s immob duration so i found it slightly more effective compared to BWE3. if timed well, it can get you some kills.
my favourite amulets were marauder with my might stacking build, minstrel for bunking/supporting, and carrion for condi builds. i think celestial will work as well, just haven’t had the time to test it. i still cant make the low HP ammies work for me (rabid, settler, cleric, etc.)…there is just too much burst + condis. with carrion, i could at least withstand the stray burns.
the support build WILL work very nicely with good teams. it provides a ton of CC, debuffs, and heals. it’s hardcountered by lots of focused CC, especially chronos. in pubs, it’s only as effective as the randoms youre stuck with. like any other bunker/support build, you need something to work with. it’s not as resilient as the staff ele, but it does a lot more for your team if the team is competent.
with the additions of stun break into druidic clarity and equality glyph, you can now forget about Wilderness, signets, survival, healing spring, etc. a much needed change. it really opens up the build variety. i haven’t even scratched the surface of experimenting with runes, but i ran with Hoelbrak, Trapper and Grove sets.
i think druid is gonna be super interesting and while it’s too soon to tell, i just know that it’s strong enough to compete. my marauder build felt very strong (especially with smokescale the way it is now =P). the next priorities for the devs should be:
- decreasing rate of AF decay
- improving core weapons to generate AF faster (staff is fine as is)
- continuing to improve our core weapons and pets; for example, while i enjoy warhorn now, it still has a subpar ability, Hunter’s Call; shortbow needs more work, offhand axe, etc.
i finally wanna say thanks for the new pets. theyre responsive, effective, and interesting. I’ve only used the smokescale and electric wyvern for the cc and damage. i feel all of our pets should be viable in this way.
anyway, that’s been my experience.
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I’m finding it easy to fill up my bar as both full support minstrel stats, and offensive maurader stats. both builds use staff. I’m always full in combat, it just takes about 15s.
my preference would be to slightly lower decay rate, and increase AF gain rate of non-staff weapons.
I know I’m the only one on these forums, but I think there should be decay. otherwise building AF simply isn’t rewarding or needed
But honestly, this spec is RIDICULOUSLY healing focused.
not really, not in pvp. with the right build.
Celestial Avatar may as well not exist in PvP. The other aspects of Druid can be useful, but CAF is almost never available.
I agree that it’s probably not available for builds that don’t use staff. staff builds AF more than quickly enough.
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I just wanna say thanks to the devs for giving us stun breaks on equality glyph and druidic clarity. it fixes so, so much. now we don’t have to spec into survival to get our stun breaks. we can more or less consider this discussion closed.