Guild Wars 2

OGDeadHead.8326:

I’d like to hear your opinions on going into a raid as a dps ranger, be it power or condi, and pick druid traitline over <that-other-traitline>, primarily to help boost your groups damage through grace of the land (CA #3 & #4 first of all) and glyph of empowerment and secondarily as a support healer, do you think you would sacrifice too much by not picking that other traitline you’d normally choose over druid? Also you get another blast finsiher that you may not normally have access to as a dps ranger (CA #3).

Can’t say for power because I haven’t run one. Power DPS is so outclassed I don’t see a point. I have however been the A/T condi ranger in the vale guard fight because we needed condi. In short it does work. Are you better served with a triple set of sinister engi? I don’t know.

What condi druid brings:

Good condition damage.
Spotter.
Sun Spirit.
Glyph of Empowerment (13%/3%).
Fire fields
Some healing.
GoL.

Obviously GoL is nice. CA generation is slower on condi because you have no staff, but you can still sometimes generate it fast enough to beat the cooldown if all you do is pop 4 in melee and then leave right away which gives a much better GoL uptime for other melee. I don’t think GoL uptime is nearly what many people think it is/make it out to be and there’s no way a single druid can maintain it all the time especially if they are running circles. Remember you need 5 stacks for the 15%/15%. CA 4 is the only effective way to stack it, and that’s a melee skill. CA 1 could be good but it is so kitten clumsy.

My main issues are with the red split. pet dmg is largely negated, and you also have very little CC (CA 3 is it unless you use entangle). when you’re on a condi team with 2 condi necros as i was… it hurts. You also have less people to buff.

This is why I wondered about running an apothecary druid that tanks, heals, and does dps at the same time. CA generation is slower for sure, but i feel like the healing portion of druid will be less necessary as time goes on, at least for vale guardian.

So the issue is really that anets broken AF mechanics pigeonhole druid into a pure staff healing build with no dps. The one day we had when natural healing and regen worked nicely would have enabled druid to run a dps build while also generating enough CA to heal properly. I know the dps is not needed, but it is frustrating that it isn’t even an option and completely exlcudes anything else from raids.

There are already groups clearing the vale guard without a healing druid. Not sure about the other bosses.

So i’m worried about the future of druid in raids. Seems right now only 1 ranger is needed and that’s the healing druid. Condi has decent dps but is outclassed by engi and power has crap dmg and might as well not exist. But it feels like healing druid might become less and less necessary as people get more familiar with mechanics. GoL is nice but once the healing is no longer needed what happens to the druid in raids? CA nerfs hurt non staff builds badly and staff is mediocre for anything but force generation.

Has anyone considered a condi tank druid with something like apothecary gear. You fill a triple role with good condi dps while also tanking and healing and providing buffs which frees up room for more dps players too. CA generation is slow though. Is it viable?

Do you think the future of druid secure? Will the current pure heal druid always have a place?

i fee like the same could be said for all classes -> having trouble surviving? Oh then run more defense… except nobody says that’s good for dps and i disagree that it is good for the healer too. Like i said, everyone else is glass and surviving, the druid can do it too.

TurtleDragon.3108:

vespers.1759:

every bit of dps helps and have zealot’s does not hurt your ability to heal. where’s the downside?

It cost’s a kitten ton of gold for very little gain and toughness helps with survivability.

that doesn’t make it worse… what a terrible argument. i don’t want to pay for it either but it doesn’t change the fact it is better.

every bit of dps helps and have zealot’s does not hurt your ability to heal. where’s the downside?

nacario.9417:

vespers.1759:

I hope i never get some of you in a raid. There is literally no reason for a druid to run nomad’s or clerics. Their DPS DOES help and if every other kitten class can run a glass build including condi ranger there’s no excuses for a druid to not do the same.

Running zealot’s in no way affects your ability to heal or give party buffs. You also contribute far far more by doing some dps while you heal.

As for alternatives, there aren’t any that are good. Everything else is just subpar. run cleric’s until you can get zealots and never touch nomad’s.

Except that druids r meant to camp staff and the damage it does is so low it doesnt matter.

No.

I hope i never get some of you in a raid. There is literally no reason for a druid to run nomad’s or clerics. Their DPS DOES help and if every other kitten class can run a glass build including condi ranger there’s no excuses for a druid to not do the same.

Running zealot’s in no way affects your ability to heal or give party buffs. You also contribute far far more by doing some dps while you heal.

As for alternatives, there aren’t any that are good. Everything else is just subpar. run cleric’s until you can get zealots and never touch nomad’s.

So hang on… i can’t generate astral force effectively until people need healing, at which point i say “hang on whilst i finish generating force with which to heal you!” and they all topple over at my feet dead before i can get it ready. Makes sense.

I feel like whoever did this fundamentally does not understand how heals in this game work… given the nature of combat that relies on dodges and high dmg attacks from bosses, when someone needs heals they need them NOW not in 15-20s because it’s already too late.

I enjoyed the 1 day natural healing and regeneration were good.

My favorite part was the boss that stands in the middle and shoots a beam of light at you that interrupts and knocks back…. over and over and over and does literally nothing else. Luckily i had a pet to do dmg for me while i ran around trying to get my heal off. That’s not a bug, just terrible design.

As for the updrafts… yeah those things are buggy as hell. Got downed twice because my glider never activated. luckily i had my pet to res me.

who says ranger pets aren’t useful?

Is anyone really surprised? I mean… this is the calibre of their leader after all.

I’m trying to think of a reason for the pet stowing and I can’t think of any real reason for this change.

Well that’s terrible news…

jewishjoyride.4693:

Now this may seem unbalanced, but I really don’t think it is.

I guess Anet disagreed… I’m not really surprised.

“Rejuvenating Tides: This skill now has the speed of its healing pulses affected by quickness and slow. The skill’s effects are now properly cancelled if the caster is interrupted.”

Does this change mean that rejuvenating tides no longer works as it did?

Sulfarius.1756:

Oh well, guess I should post it there instead. Feel free to delete this thread, Anet.

The mods left this place a long time ago.

Whenever i try to go to the ogre lane in TD the game essentially breaks. I go from smooth 60 fps or so to a sttuttering unplayable mess. The sound also bugs out. Not sure what it is about the specific area but it is complete garbage.

As for lag… Oftentimes when i volunteer to leave an empty map i get chucked into one with massive lag and skill delay.

Watch arenanet trip over themselves to fix this and leave everything else alone.

I REALLY don’t understand why people are so against DPS meters. if you’re worried about having terrible low DPS and getting kicked maybe you should IMPROVE instead of whining about it.

If you want to run your “any build” raids and fracts then go ahead, but don’t force yourself on the rest of us. You’re literally hurting everyone around you when you sneak into groups that want to have fast runs and that’s just selfish. call us elitists all you want, idgaf because you are a hindrance and you make the game worse for everyone around you.

We should have a way to avoid having these people in our groups.

Man i wish people were happy to see my druid, instead they all just run around as i try to heal them.

The healing design in this game is borked. Everything from health bars to heal radius discourages playing a healer. I understand why it is the way it is but it really doesn’t work except in the most organized of groups.

Interesting. I have not tried it myself but I would guess that it is becuase spike trap is a launch despite the tooltip saying it is a knockdown.

As a ranger I have been conditioned to hate balance patches.

I actually like that they aren’t knee jerking with the balance in favour of waiting for things to settle a bit… just kidding ranger has already had a kittenton of knee jerk nerfs.

Well they nerfed fractals and dungeons for a reason. At best I can see them returning the old asc drop rates and raising the gold amount to something less than it was before.

Fractal rewards were kitten poor even before the nerf, and I highly doubt this change will bring rewards equal to the old ones, let alone even higher ones.

We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully I’m wrong. If i’m right, i guess a solid kitten sandwich is better than a liquid kitten sandwich.

In soldier’s gear the longbow should not be htting very hard at all. Granted i haven’t played reaper or necromancer in a very long time, but I main ranger.

On my condi ranger which has no leaps, no reflects, no swiftness, no stability, and only dagger 5 for a ranged attack, power rangers are a free loot bag. Why? Because I simply run right through the RF. You don’t even need to dodge because the DPS is atrocious, although it helps. Just chill them or fear them with staff and run up.

Generally speaking power necro has a harder time with power ranger, but life blast will obliterate a power ranger. Conditions will also obliterate a power ranger. if all else fails you can pop insta win lich form and 2 shot them.

Somebody tell me the secret of these mystical godlike druid builds.

Things have gotten a little out of hand with the addition of the elite specs… There’s just an unbelievable amount of reflects and blocks now. projectiles in general are much less effective than they used to be. the revenant projectile block is especially ridiculous with the CD it has.

I never much cared for longbow ranger, but now there’s really no point since everyone can just use anti-projectile and get into your face instantly. DH, rev, chrono, tempest, warrior, DD, and scrapper can all mitigate ranged projectiles like crazy.

Daredevil is a complete hardcounter to power ranger. If you thought things were bad with thieves before… just you wait lol.

I guess reaper and ranger are really the only ones that don’t have some form of crazy projectile mitigation.

Dolt.2731:

Bristleback can land it’s f2 and it devastates glassier classes. You have to help it though, through our plentiful immob’s/ dazes/ knockdowns.

It’s all about lining up your burst. It is far from useless.

You’ll have to explain how CC helps it land the skill since the issue is terrain based.

Nansen.4631:

Even if you already did a hero point (one that doesnt req. just channeling) you can get 26k xp + random loot daily from it. In a way they already took care of people being rewarded for doing them again or helping people with it.

This is good information. So it’s every 24h like dungeon reset? I’m at mastery 4 and i’m already burnt out on the endless zerg k-trains. Why do i even want masteries? so i can get around a map i’ve already seen 90% of more easily? So i can get hero points I can’t use? So I can get mastery points I don’t have the exp to use?

Anyway idgaf if people spider farm, and I too would like to see event exp increased significantly.

Lynx/Wolf is still the best combo for most situations imo.

Lynx has the best DPS and cats as a whole are the best DPS since they land the most hits. They work well with beastmastery too. I could see tiger being good, but since i usually run survival on both condi and power builds it is kind of redundant. I do run stalker in groups as a might bot. The cat leaps are also nice since they don’t need to be inside the enemy character model for F2s to land.

Wolf has 3 CCs with beastmastery and is one of the few interrupts we have that works semi-well for interrupting revives, getting thieves out of SR etc. especially in a condition build.

Smokescale 81% dmg nerf… just lol.

Bristleback can’t hit anything which makes what might have been a decent pet useless.

I also ran the poison drake (marsh?) on my troll trap build to stack up poison and that worked quite well. It also blasted my fire fields with decent regularity which was a nice surprise. I think that’s the only drake worth using though because it has an F2 that can actually land.

Jheuloh.4109:

vespers.1759:

My sarcasm is apparently too advanced.

By making a statement (in this case, your first post in this thread) without any cues for the reader to pick up that it was, in fact, intended to be sarcasm, it looks more like backtracking to try and make yourself look smarter than the responder by saying “It was sarcasm! It’s just advanced for you peasants!” It wasn’t even a true statement for a reader to work with anyway – the design of a wolf or drake & its abilities, yes, that is thematic, but the AI entity and associated traits & mechanics are not, no questions asked.

I think you’re just dumb srs

Nightchill.4603:

vespers.1759:

Pets are meant to be thematic, not useful.

What…..? And no, it’s not even rhetorical.

What’s not to understand? Pets have been useless for over 3 years and there has been no effort to improve them.

Thus one can conclude that pets are intended to be a thematic addition to the class, and not a useful one.

My sarcasm is apparently too advanced. I agree with the OP but Anet clearly thinks pets are fine.

Guhracie.3419:

vespers.1759:

Since so many are so dead set against seeing any “swears”, I’ll stop using profanity when people can explain why profanity is bad.

So far nobody has ever been able to give me a good reason. It’s always “they just are!” and “iI’m offended because i was taught to be offended!”.

Think about it, and maybe you’ll realize profanity isn’t even worth discussing. Not talking about directed and targeted abuse here either, but the words themselves.

Profanity is bad because it’s against the Terms of Service you agreed to when you signed up to play in ANET’s playground. What you do in your own time is your business, and I honestly couldn’t care less if you communicate solely via a complex organization exclusively comprised of profanity. What you do in GW2 is ANET’s business.

I don’t understand this idea that words don’t have power. The words we use absolutely have power. In many ways, language shapes how we perceive the world. “The pen (kitten not needed) is mightier than the sword” is meaningful for a reason. If you even did a cursory study of linguistics, or even basic communication classes, you’d know that words have power.

I’m not saying that there aren’t instances where people are over-sensitive. I’m just saying that it’s wrong to perpetuate this idea that you can say whatever the kitten you want and it doesn’t effect people. It does. Own up to that.

EDIT: A wild kitten appeared in my quote about pens and swords!

My point is not that words do not have power, because they absolutely do, but rather that most people can’t explain why they find curse words offensive at all. They literally have no idea what exactly makes a swear word a swear word and thus I find it ridiculous that people get “offended” by them. Most people have literally just been conditioned to respond negatively to profanity but have never bothered to think about why those words are supposedly so bad. Imo if you can’t explain why a curse word is bad you lose the right to be offended by it. A word only has power if you choose to allow it to have power after all.

If someone is targeting and harrassing you that’s a different thing entirely, because the intent is to cause harm and the issue isn’t the words at all. I absolutely cannot stand the carebears that see a swear word in the chat that is not directed at them and get “offended” and report people. They have no right to be offended.

There’s a swear filter for a reason and i find it completely ridiculous that people can disable it and then report people for using profanity, and that Anet actually BANS people for it. I mean come on why is the filter even there? I can see banning for intentional abuse of a specific person, and even if for avoiding the filter so people have to see curses even with the filter enabled, but i do not agree with reporting people simply for using curse words.

block them if you simply cannot stand seeing a curse word, but for the love of god do NOT report people using profanity if it is not explicitly directed at you with the intent to cause harm.

Nephziel.6053:

vespers.1759:

Yeesh i hope not. I expect them to look something like the radiant/hellfire sets.

Also why the heck did they lock those sets behind so many kitten APs? Nobody is ever going to unlock them.

36 people have crossed the 30k achievement mark on American and Eu regions combined.

Which means 36 people already have 1 of the 2 achievement sets complete.

36 people in every region combined 3 years after release is not exactly a lot. I suppose this number will grow, but it seems that right now only the most hardcore that have worked on AP since the very beginning have a prayer. The average player will never see these.

Impossible was an exaggeration of course, but it is pretty crazy how few people have these and how hard they are to get in comparison to the supposed “legendaries”.

Since so many are so dead set against seeing any “swears”, I’ll stop using profanity when people can explain why profanity is bad.

So far nobody has ever been able to give me a good reason. It’s always “they just are!” and “iI’m offended because i was taught to be offended!”.

Think about it, and maybe you’ll realize profanity isn’t even worth discussing. Not talking about directed and targeted abuse here either, but the words themselves.

no sorry that money is going to the $400,000 prize for E-SPORTS! E-SPORTS! E-SPORTS!

Obviously it is more important to give money to the two competitive teams than it is to make a playable experience for the mass playerbase.

Yeesh i hope not. I expect them to look something like the radiant/hellfire sets.

Also why the heck did they lock those sets behind so many kitten APs? Nobody is ever going to unlock them.

Pets are meant to be thematic, not useful.

Inoki.6048:

As a paying customer I did not pay for a hostile environment overfilled with immature dorks.

While there is a profanity filter option in settings, many have it disabled simply because they don’t mind the occasional f* words, but the level of cussing some people demonstrate is getting out of control and requires heavy moderation.

Turns off profanity filter… complains about seeing profanity! Will wonders never cease?!

Also you have insulted us by calling immature dorks which is strike one for you buddy. You should be infracted for your insulting attitude.

triggerhappy.3871:

Thieves are so desperate to protect a broken class mechanic
that regard everyone in this match as bad players.

Here is condi version example:
https://youtu.be/qbZwzep673o

I bet thieves will say these people are bad players also.
You can say so again and again.
How handy?
Let’s see how many people you can make bad players.

kittening lol

Not for the reasons you think. I absolutely cannot stand shadowstep’s ability to teleport up terrain that is otherwise impassable.

Example: Thief teleporting around the ruins outside the Blue keep in EB. Every other class has to run around and up the stairs… They are unkillable in there because they can teleport up levels and nobody can follow.

Example: Cliffs outside of Green keep/ Along SMC west wall in EB. Every other class has to run around and up… thieves just teleport up instantly.

Example: Middle tower of Khylo… thieves can teleport up and in instantly.

I could go on and on all day.

I don’t give a rat’s kitten if thieves teleport around on flat ground, but this is just stupid. This is fun for precisely nobody but the thieves themselves and is a uniquely bullkitten mechanic.

Rauderi.8706:

vespers.1759:

Maybe it’s because Anet is managing to flawlessly add items to the gemstore while game breaking bugs are ignored and many of the hyped features of the expansion are flat out not in the game?

Female monk outfit disagrees.

They kittened that up too. :P

Well at least they’re consistent then…

I don’t think the evade on vault should start at the beginning because it all but ensures the attack will land. I don’t think a high damage spammable skill should have an evade like that baked in.

Either you interrupt it before it happens, which is just luck, or you avoid it and it gets spammed again, or you eat it.

The forums are far more fun than the game for me, and have been for quite some time. However the mods kill a lot of the fun as they ban for every little thing and it sucks to have to wait as long as i do between posts.

As a solo roamer, I honestly don’t even mind the new maps as all i want to do is fight people. Couldn’t care less about the objectives and i rarely cap anything so the new scenery was a plus. I never particularly liked the BLs either, as EB offered way more fights thanks to the more tightly clustered objectives.

That being said I have no reason to go to the new maps as there’s nobody there. At least the apline BLs had people playing them.

Maybe it’s because Anet is managing to flawlessly add items to the gemstore while game breaking bugs are ignored and many of the hyped features of the expansion are flat out not in the game?

I’ve always found regen to be extremely lackluster. You’re far better off investing in more health/toughness than healing power.

Why punish those of us on higher pop servers by making us play the new maps?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

vespers.1759:

I already have to deal with email verification. I absolutely refuse to give them my phone number. Anet is likely already selling my data, i’d rather not give them more.

I would like an option to never see this prompt again.

They said they would never sell. If you think they are then you also think they lied to your face. Why would you play a game where you believe they are outright lying to you? Shows lack of common sense to stay in a game where you believe they are lying.

lol

I already have to deal with email verification. I absolutely refuse to give them my phone number. Anet is likely already selling my data, i’d rather not give them more.

I would like an option to never see this prompt again.

You know it’s funny because BLC rewards actually got buffed to what they are now. It would be fun to see what the sales numbers for them look like. Bet it’s super low.

What the hell is happening to this game… chill does damage now? Confusion has damage ticks?

remember when conditions were unique?

ShelBlackblood.7826:

vespers.1759:

ShelBlackblood.7826:

vespers.1759:

Maybe they do it because people like you are willing to spend 200 euros on it anyway.

Don’t “people like you”-me please ;o

I didn’t buy HoT. Those 200 euros where spend for the main game and the things I loved about it (2nd acc, charslots, afterwards buying all GW1 expansions + 3 hero slots).

How should have I known a year ago how this game would be today? x_X seems like I got taught better now, the hard way though

Sorry i assumed you bought HoT. My apologies. At this point the only thing we can do is wait. If we buy they have no incentive to change. I’m going to wait and see how raids and content releases go and decide then.

Don’t worry about it. Sorry if I was a bit edgy before! Actually, I’ve observed quite alot of things about HoT and changes to the core game that were released as well. From the 25+ posts a day I read, I only reply to 1-2 of them, but I DO read alot. It just seems to me that the more we get the know about the “current” Guild Wars 2 (nerfs everywhere, zero responses to many bug-related threads, gold/grind-gating, unfinshed content, narrowing non-HoT players, preferring reddit over their own forum,…), the more I don’t feel like I “want” to buy the expansion anymore. Before I knew all that, my thoughts were like “Let’s wait and see how much content we actually get on release, then buy it” and “How does my favourite game magazine rate the game?”. The first one got answered many times before in the forum and on various blogs (and I don’t like the answers…) and the second one is simply: The magazine’s MMO tester doesn’t want to play HoT -as well-

I will keep on reading the forums. But again, I don’t like most of things I read so far.

I agree 100% with everything you said. Feels like they’ve given up and shifted to autopilot as the game steadily declines. Minus the art department because they are killing it as always (seems to happen in most MMOs). Even IGN noticed it in their review which is saying something.

It feels like the effort is simply not there and it shows in player population. The majority of my friend’s list came for launch and are already beginning to drift off.