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Druid Reenvisioned: My Manifesto of Suggested Changes


Za Shaloc.3908

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The new expac announcement has inspired me not to conceptualize a new elite spec, but to reconceptualize Druid, one of my favorite elite specs in the game that I feel has lost its way over the years. THERE IS A WHOLE LOT OF TEXT HERE SO THANKS IN ADVANCE IF YOU CAN GET THROUGH IT ALL! I tried to explain my thought processes throughout the post to better frame my ideas. Hope you enjoy : ).

PETS ARE NOW WISPS

Pets are replaced by wisps. Wisps are passive, untargetable entities that circle the Druid. Wisps have different F2 (renamed "Blessing" skills because why not?) effects that are determined by their archetype, using the Soulbeast's same classification system. You can have two wisps while in combat that you can swap between, but their F2 cooldown is shared (20-25s). Blessing skills are a 240 radius, 1200 range targetable AoE effect that create a combo field and pulse boons based on their archetype. In addition to the F2 abilities, wisp archetypes also determine additional effects from certain staff skills, taking inspiration from Revenant's trident. Wisps gain trait interaction and customization through the middle tier line. The goal is to remove the offensive capabilities from the Druid's pet mechanic in order to enable it to become a more fully-fledged support choice. While the offensiveness of the pet is removed, there is now the alternative option of creating an offensive-oriented (condition damage) spec through staff and the solar wisp. Due to the pet being removed and the wisp being unkillable, celestial force gain from self-healing would be increased due to no longer being able to gain it from healing the pet.

WISP BREAKDOWN AND TRAIT INTERACTION

WISP ARCHETYPEFIELD TYPEBOON GRANTEDNATURAL STRIDE EFFECTSGRACE OF THE LAND EFFECTS
Ferocious > SolarFire FIeldMight10% Condition Damage ReductionAdditional pulsing might
Deadly > LunarSmoke FieldSwiftness15% Endurance RecoveryPulsing superspeed
Versatile > AstralEthereal FieldVigor10% Boon DurationConverts X conditions to boons upon creation
Stout > TerrestrialPoison FieldProtection10% Damage ReductionPulsing stability
Supportive > TidalWater FieldRegeneration10% Outgoing HealingConverts projectiles to healing for X seconds


STAFF-WISP INTERACTIONS (See Staff changes for more detail)

WISP ARCHETYPEENCHANTED WISP EFFECTSANCESTRAL GRACE EFFECTS
SolarBurnAoE burn
LunarBlindAoE dark aura
AstralSlowAoE boon removal (1)
TerrestrialWeaknessAoE immobilize
TidalChillAdditional AoE heal


STAFF CHANGES

Staff is probably my biggest pain point with Druid. I find it awkward, unimpactful, and outdated. This more than anything needs the most notable changes. And by changes, yes I do mean buffs, even in the era of reducing powercreep.

  • Solar Beam: Now also heals allies in a 120-180 radius around the Druid.
  • Enchanted Wisp: Renamed due to wisp now having an "Astral" archetype. Now a 240 radius AoE pulsing heal that applies a condition upon creation based on the wisp you currently have active.
  • Ancestral Grace: No longer grants protection to the pet since we no longer have a pet. Instead, it gains unique effects if blasting within a Blessing field.
  • Vine Surge: Has a reduced cast time, faster travel time, and is now a conal effect.
  • Sublime Conversion: Has increased length and height so it can more reliably block projectiles from a higher angle. Not really sure if it would need changes after the other buffs to the kit.

CELESTIAL AVATAR CHANGES

I don't think the CA skills need a ton of changes if Druid as a whole sees overall general improvement. Biggest issues for the kit in my eyes are the difficulty in landing CA1/2. It is unfortunate to feel less of an impact in healing power investment, but I don't really know if any values need to be increased due to all of the other buffs I have suggested in addition to healing powercreep reduction being part of ANet's intended vision.

GENERAL: Reduce cooldown to 15s in PvP.

  • Cosmic Ray: Either speed up the skill a bit or give it a slightly increased radius, ultimately with the goal of making it easier to successfully land.
  • Seed of Life: Burst timer reduced by 0.25s while still maintaining the light field for the current duration.
  • Lunar Impact: No changes.
  • Rejuvenating Tides: No changes.
  • Natural Convergence: Cast time reduced by 0.25-0.5s. Stability duration decreased accordingly. No longer pulses immobilize, but instead casts one singular application of it (1.5-2s). Now grants protection to nearby allies (not self) upon successful channel.

GLYPH CHANGES

Glyphs are where the supplemental support and utility should lie assuming that spirit skills remain in the horrid state that they currently are. My changes are meant to push value for both versions of the glyphs in order to make them more flexible choices. Yes, this means more buffs.

  • Glyph of Rejuvenation: No changes.
  • Glyph of Alignment: Now is a 900-range targetable AoE effect. Glyph of Rejuvenation and Alignment are too similar while in CA and need further differentiation.-Non-CA: Reworked. Now removes 2 boons and applies poison and weakness to foes.-CA: No changes. Heal strength would possibly need to be reduced due to it now being a very potent ranged AoE heal.
  • Glyph of Equality:-Non-CA: No changes. Skill is solid.-CA: Radius increased to anywhere between 360 and 480. Should be more reliable like Eye of the Storm, which currently outpaces it and doesn't require CA gating.
  • Glyph of the Tides: Now a 600-range targetable AoE effect. Cooldown increased back to 25 seconds.-Non-CA: Now pulls foes together.-CA: Now pushes foes away.
  • Glyph of Unity: Cooldown reduced to 25s. Buffed a lot. Worst glyph IMO.-Non-CA: Now additionally decreases damage dealt by tethered foes by 15-20%.-CA: Now additionally increases incoming healing of tethered allies by 15-20%.
  • Glyph of the Stars: No changes. Can't help but love this skill, even though I know I am a minority. Fix the bug that prevents the non-CA version from providing a water field though.


MINOR TRAIT CHANGES

All remain unchanged. I don't particularly see Live Vicariously or Natural Mender being too weak, strong, or otherwise problematic. Live Vicariously is close in power to Rugged Growth with no healing power investment, which I think is a fair number gauge for reasonable sustain per second. Natural Mender got a nerf as well, but the nerf is not unique to the class and Lingering Light still remains fully intact as a very potent tool for outgoing healing.

MAJOR TRAIT CHANGES

Each row of Druid's traitline now follows a particular theme or mechanic:I. Enhances Celestial Avatar skillsII. Interacts with the Wisp, the new mechanic that replaces the petIII. Grants unique effects upon leaving Celestial Avatar

Additionally, each grandmaster trait will modify how additional celestial force is gained, allowing for a more reliable way of entering the kit depending upon the chosen playstyle.

ADEPT TRAITS

I. Druidic Clarity: Rejuvenating Tides removes conditions from allies every other pulse.A commonly suggested idea that bolsters Druid's group cleanse potential. While this undoubtedly is a significant nerf to the Druid's self-cleanse, the goal is to push it towards being a more solid team supporter. While every other cleanse may not sound significant, the skill pulses 5 times, so it would still cleanse for 3. There is simply too much synergy with the skill and Quickdraw; the trait would overinflate its group cleanse potential.

II. Cultivated Synergy: Heal around yourself when using a heal skill. Using a Blessing (Beast) ability performs a blast finisher around your wisp.While this does remove a heal from the pet's location, I would like to see the healing values increased on the heal since it would be brought down to a singular heal. The trait is not currently underperforming, but I would like to see more interactive play involving the Wisp. Giving a blast finisher that procs at the same time as the Wisp's field allows for some unique combo field/finisher plays.

III. Primal Echoes: Staff skills gain reduced recharge. Gain increased recharge reduction while in celestial avatar. Cast Enchanted Wisp (Staff 2) at your location upon leaving celestial avatar after a [0.5s] delay.Primal Echoes has never really been a particularly popular trait, but in my eyes that is due to two reasons: Druidic Clarity massively outshining it, and staff being an overall lackluster weapon. With staff seeing significant buffs with my ideas, I believe this trait would increase significantly in value. Additionally, an instant-cast daze is a mechanic that it appears ANet is trying to move away from. I agree with this vision. Ultimately, I would like for this trait to bolster staff into becoming a standalone support weapon while outside of CA, rather than just a strong kiting weapon that provides mediocre support and clunky weapon skills.
MASTER TRAITS

I. Verdant Etching: Glyphs gain reduced recharge and cast Lesser Seed of Life. Seeds of Life gain increased radius (240).This change is rather straightforward: simply enhancing the effectiveness and reliability of Seeds of Life (both normal and lesser). Between the radius increase from this and the 0.25s bloom duration reduction, Seeds could easily become a very reliable means of cleansing allies.II. Natural Stride: Gain increased movement speed (25-33%). You gain a passive bonus based on your currently active wisp.As far as I understand, this trait doesn't see much play at all. The core class has ample access to swiftness and the utility from the other traits currently outshine this one. Admittedly I don't know if this would really bolster the trait enough to have it see use competitively.III. Celestial Shadow: Grant superspeed and stealth to nearby allies when leaving celestial avatar.An iconic Druid trait, I did not change this one at all. With that said, this trait errs on the cheesy side and I could see it becoming problematic. Although I did not change this one, a way of perhaps reducing its potency would be to grant stealth duration (0.5s) based on the number of allies affected.
GRANDMASTER TRAITS

I. Ancient Seeds: Immobilize inflicts damage over time. Natural Convergence can now be channeled while moving. Gain celestial force when inflicting conditions on foes.I admit that the desire to change this trait is partially due to my own frustrations with fighting against it. I have always personally found Ancient Seeds to be the epitome of toxic unskillful trait design. With that said, immobilization is an important component to Ranger's and Druid's identity, so the change to Ancient Seeds was made to push for a more active playstyle. Does this go against their whole vision of CC ≠ damage? Possibly, yes. I could see it being problematic, so I am not particularly confident in this idea. But still, I would like to see building deep into immobilization being a viable option for an offensive-oriented Druid, without the passiveness of the current Ancient Seeds proc.II. Grace of the Land: Your Blessing (Beast) abilities gain increased radius and duration and grant additional effects. Gain celestial force when granting boons to allies.This trait has seen a major rework, completely changing its functionality. While this may be a controversial change to the PvE crowd, I wanted to still maintain its potential as a might-bot trait through using the solar archetype wisp while also allowing for a better diversity in playstyle approaches depending upon the wisp chosen. This is the go-to utility trait and also the one that favors boon generation to help fuel celestial force. Note that duration increase would be field-specific as there are varying power levels (wouldn't want huge smoke field uptime for example) III. Lingering Light: Gain increased outgoing healing while in celestial avatar. Leaving celestial avatar casts Lesser Glyph of Unity (CA, 2s). Gain additional celestial force when healing allies.This trait will remain the go-to healing potency trait and a now more significant sacrifice for utility. Its current blind effect is rather clunky and unfitting for the role that this trait fulfills; adding lesser Glyph of Unity helps bridge the gap between healing while in and out of CA. As it is the healing trait, it naturally makes sense to have healing grant increased celestial force.

POTENTIAL ISSUES

There is of course the concern of me including far too many buffs. Hey, that's valid, but like I said in the beginning, the point of this was to push the spec in a different direction. It's impossible to conceptualize a perfectly balanced spec.

Other issue is that I would hate to have it eclipse Soulbeast in terms of offensive and skirmishing capabilties. Sic 'Em brings up the biggest issue for me, but frankly I'd rather see this skill reworked to become more akin to "On My Mark" while still preserving a damage bonus while in PvE. The solar wisp and Ancient Seeds would allow for a burn-oriented variant to arise, but ideally I would not like it to have any sort of threatening DPS in comparison to Soulbeast.

My hope is that the Grace of the Land change would not affect Druid's mightbot capabilities as I would like it to still allow for perma 25 stacks, and have the target cap at 10 instead of 5 in PvE. I originally wanted GotL's astral wisp to offer alacrity, but I did not want to disturb the PvE meta too much as it is admittedly not my game mode of experience.

I did not include issues related to the core class because that is a topic for another day. There are certain traits and skills that I believe could definitely be improved upon. I already have enough to digest here though.

THAT'S ALL

Thanks for reading : ).

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What about:

  • all those weapon skills that affect pets attacks like Winter's Bite, Maul, Call of the Wild, etc;
  • all those skills like "Guard!", "Search and Rescue", "Sic em", Signet of Renewal, etc;
  • all those traits like "Fortifying Bond", all the minors in the Beastmastery traitline, "Natural Healing", etc;
  • the #3 skill in downed state.

I really like your concept but i think it kinda misses a lot of the interactions with the core class, which can be problematic for an hypothetical rework of the spec.

In my opinion "Spirit pets" can be the solution. You will still have your pet (maybe just with a translucent look), your F2, and ALL the interactions with skills and traits that involve a pet BUT instead of having 2 pets druids could have access to only 1 pet and Pet Swap (F4) transform your pet into a wisp that affect an area the way you already listed. F5 still Celestial Avatar of course.

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Thanks everybody for the replies :). Nice to hear that people like the ideas.

@"kappa.2036" said:What about:

  • all those weapon skills that affect pets attacks like Winter's Bite, Maul, Call of the Wild, etc;
  • all those skills like "Guard!", "Search and Rescue", "Sic em", Signet of Renewal, etc;
  • all those traits like "Fortifying Bond", all the minors in the Beastmastery traitline, "Natural Healing", etc;
  • the #3 skill in downed state.

I really like your concept but i think it kinda misses a lot of the interactions with the core class, which can be problematic for an hypothetical rework of the spec.

In my opinion "Spirit pets" can be the solution. You will still have your pet (maybe just with a translucent look), your F2, and ALL the interactions with skills and traits that involve a pet BUT instead of having 2 pets druids could have access to only 1 pet and Pet Swap (F4) transform your pet into a wisp that affect an area the way you already listed. F5 still Celestial Avatar of course.

Yeah, the point you bring up is totally valid. It was definitely one of my bigger concerns when thinking of replacing the pet. Eventually what I figured is that it would share those parallels with Soulbeast. Admittedly this is a bit awkward and unideal, because particularly for Beastmastery, it means a Druid would reap those same benefits as Soulbeast. That is what I was referencing in the bottom of my post about Sic 'Em. I do worry that there would be too much overlap between the specs--especially with the nerfs Soulbeasts have been receiving--and I would hate to see the spec become Soulbeast 2.0 with an additional CA kit. Originally the Natural Stride passive effect I was thinking of was increased damage and condition damage for the solar wisp to maintain an offensive option there, but I ended up scrapping the idea because of the potential overlap and eclipsing of Soulbeast. Sic 'Em is still of course the thing I would fear the most, which is why I suggested it be partially reworked in general and be more aggressively split for competitive modes to preserve the spec's reliance on it for DPS in PvE.

Getting back to your question, I do think that is just one of the unfortunate flaws of my idea. There are things that would still be different from Soulbeast's interactions, such as pet-swap traits triggering from wisp swap, but otherwise there would be that same overlap and odd, unpolished interaction that Soulbeast has with the core class. Empathic Bond being one of the worst (best?) examples of this, having no interaction while merged. It would be nice if ANet took the time to polish some of this stuff up, as well as polish core/underused pets and merged skills to better incentivize taking Soulbeast since petswap is removed.

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The obvious and only solution is to make those effect work like SB does. And it should be like that for any elite spec that removes, merges or whatever with the pets.

The only thing to make sure of is that those specs don't overlap with Soulbeast in the damage potential department or playstyle. The playstyle presented here is already different enough and as far as damage potential goes... Well, that's easy: give druid support abilities and nothing else. Don't bother with offensive options. Hell, keep the current malice idea of reduced pet stats and instead apply them to the druid. Something like effects and skills normaly affecting your pet are less effective when affecting you. At that point you can individually balance each effect in the same vain they are doing with SB.

As far as downstate goes, being that the wisp is tied to archtype, just make it so that the two swapable archtypes are chosen by picking two corresponding pets. Those two pets are the ones summoned while in downstate.

I have said mulitple times before that the pet needs to be "removed" in some way or another if druid is to ever be a competent support spec, and I stand by that. If you play ranger because of the pet (I have no idea why that would be your main reason to do so) core ranger is your best option anyways until a pet focused elite spec, that doesn't involve merging like SB does, shows up.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:Getting back to your question, I do think that is just one of the unfortunate flaws of my idea. There are things that would still be different from Soulbeast's interactions, such as pet-swap traits triggering from wisp swap, but otherwise there would be that same overlap and odd, unpolished interaction that Soulbeast has with the core class. Empathic Bond being one of the worst (best?) examples of this, having no interaction while merged. It would be nice if ANet took the time to polish some of this stuff up, as well as polish core/underused pets and merged skills to better incentivize taking Soulbeast since petswap is removed.

Empathic Bond is one of those traits that should be completely reworked anyway. If they make it into something the druid can take advantage of in a support setting, that's even better. All other elite specs which are used as support in competetive modes have at least a few core traits that works in tandem with the elite spec. Ranger has nothing except personal sustain, which apart from being an important source to fill up CA, is just that.

I feel like Anet did several changes to core ranger that benefited Soulbeast. Like merging the traits that gave you and your pet an opening strike into one trait, so that it wouldn't be a completely dead trait in beastmode, or simply buffing traits that had synergy with SB, or reworkin them until they had some synergy. They barely did anything like that for druid.

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@Lazze.9870 said:I'd take this over what we have today eleven out of ten times, that's for sure.

Have to agree here. I used to love druid and main it, but after all the nerfs it's only extremely boring to play in PvE (the spirits change really hurt it as well - not to mention only druid can sustain the things). At this point I'm willing to just let go and say rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. It can't get much worse than it already is.

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@Strider.7849 said:

@Lazze.9870 said:I'd take this over what we have today eleven out of ten times, that's for sure.

Have to agree here. I used to love druid and main it, but after all the nerfs it's only extremely boring to play in PvE (the spirits change really hurt it as well - not to mention only druid can sustain the things). At this point I'm willing to just let go and say rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. It can't get much worse than it already is.

In a support role I never really liked it as it has always been on the clunkier side. But it still had fun builds back when HoT launched. Now Anet seems to be content with it as long is it has that one spirit bot role in PvE.

At that point I say scrap it, rebuild it, focus on pure support so that it can actually perform as a support in all modes. I'd rather have that than these meme immobilize builds that show up in competetive modes every now and then.

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@Lazze.9870 said:

@Lazze.9870 said:I'd take this over what we have today eleven out of ten times, that's for sure.

Have to agree here. I used to love druid and main it, but after all the nerfs it's only extremely boring to play in PvE (the spirits change really hurt it as well - not to mention only druid can sustain the things). At this point I'm willing to just let go and say rebuild the whole thing from the ground up. It can't get much worse than it already is.

In a support role I never really liked it as it has always been on the clunkier side. But it still had fun builds back when HoT launched. Now Anet seems to be content with it as long is it has that one spirit bot role in PvE.

At that point I say scrap it, rebuild it, focus on pure support so that it can actually perform as a support in all modes. I'd rather have that than these meme immobilize builds that shows up in competetive modes every now and then.

Preaching to the choir. Yeah, I'm kind of sick of the constant nerfing to druid and the current state it's in.

The point it's at right now is that if you don't use ancient seeds in a competitive environment there's no reason to bring druid - and I really don't want the whole class to revolve around that on boring trait - the other two options are "meh" as the might needs boon duration investment to be worth anything and the random blind/heal is more spam then a controlled effect. Without ancient seeds, I feel that even chronomancer is in a better spot competitively than druid (speaking as someone who has played a Mesmer since release as well and it's my alt-main).

The heals are unreliable because of the requirement to access celestial avatar, the class specific weapon is not very good (same goes for soulbeast by the way), it has very little access to stability/stunbreaks, mediocre damage with low/irrelevant heals OR high heals (with limited access) and low damage, a pet that can't survive.. the list goes on.

Lastly, as you mentioned it being a spirit bot, this change to spirits was supposed to make the druid feel more active. It has NOT had that effect and in fact it feels like it's done the opposite. You literally spam them off cooldown in any environment other than raids just to keep them up with a group. The effects/cast are so slow it actually feels tedious to play. In a raid, at best the only active engagement you have with them is saving the active skill for a CC or to reposition the idiots from getting blown up by aoe. It's legit frustrating as to why they didn't just nerf/change the class but dumbed it down and in my opinion killed it.

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@Strider.7849 said:Lastly, as you mentioned it being a spirit bot, this change to spirits was supposed to make the druid feel more active. It has NOT had that effect and in fact it feels like it's done the opposite. You literally spam them off cooldown in any environment other than raids just to keep them up with a group. The effects/cast are so slow it actually feels tedious to play. In a raid, at best the only active engagement you have with them is saving the active skill for a CC or to reposition the idiots from getting blown up by aoe. It's legit frustrating as to why they didn't just nerf/change the class but dumbed it down and in my opinion killed it.

Haven't done much PvE lately, but I did some strike missions playing druid and that was my exact thought aswell. Spirits don't promote a very active playstyle to begin with, it wasn't in GW1 either. And I honstely think that's fine if the build only brought one, maybe two depending on the fight.

But when your entire skill bar is filled with spirits? Eh... I mean, the fact that Anet think druid is fine because of spirits, and also made spirits dependent on druid is bad enough. It is almost as if we have to remind them that druid came with glyphs, several of which could need some work, not the core ranger spirits

The fact that I don't think we will ever see anything like OP is suggesting, just makes talking about it borderline upsetting.

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@InsaneQR.7412 said:This is the best druid rework I have ever seen and ever dreamed off.

I want that.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

Could you please have a look at this.Just as a sprinkle of inspiration. Just a 2min read.

Thanks.

Glad you like it! I watched a bit of cmc on Teatime yesterday and what I gathered is that they don't seem to attempt to design things with the intention of altering the meta, which I think is fair given how unpredictable that sort of thing can be. I don't really know if any of my ideas here would have the power to truly bring it into the meta in competitive modes, but I'd like to think it would at least make it a more desirable choice. I don't need to be Firebrand 2.0 when playing WvW, but I would like to be something that competes with Scrapper and Tempest.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:

@InsaneQR.7412 said:This is the best druid rework I have ever seen and ever dreamed off.

I want that.

Could you please have a look at this.Just as a sprinkle of inspiration. Just a 2min read.

Thanks.

Glad you like it! I watched a bit of cmc on Teatime yesterday and what I gathered is that they don't seem to attempt to design things with the intention of altering the meta, which I think is fair given how unpredictable that sort of thing can be. I don't really know if any of my ideas here would have the power to truly bring it into the meta in competitive modes, but I'd like to think it would at least make it a more desirable choice. I don't need to be Firebrand 2.0 when playing WvW, but I would like to be something that competes with Scrapper and Tempest.

It just feels more streamlined and the pets less neglected. It gives more options in all game modes and the CA feels less tagged on and more part of the profession.It removes the damage part of the druid but keeps the utility value of the pet alive.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:they don't seem to attempt to design things with the intention of altering the meta

Well.... They certianitly altered druid's position in the competetive pvp meta from being a "viable" pick or at least a part of the discussion to being completetly guttered and nowhere near that meta. I never like its sidenoder role, but still.

And they certainly gave warrior a support role in wvw with their tactics rework some months ago, a role it didn't have prior to the changes.

I find it down right unfair if they have just decided that druid will never be a part of that discussion.

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@"Pterikdactyl.7630"

Some of your suggestions are good but others would bury the class competitively and render it no longer functional in competitive modes.

As a person who plays Druid competitively, I had recently wrote this thread -> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/102587/druid-proposed-competitive-changes-defining-what-is-wrong-with-druid and it explains my opinions on some more simple suggestions to make Druid a viable competitive team support role. But more importantly, it explains what should not be changed on Druid and why.

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@Lazze.9870 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@"Pterikdactyl.7630"

Some of your suggestions are good but others would bury the class competitively and render it no longer functional in competitive modes.

None of these suggestions renders it "not functional" in wvw.

Sometimes it feels like a lot of you guys here in this ranger forum aren't so strongly understanding competitive aspects of ranger/druid/soulbeast.

For example, just the removal of evade frame from Staff #3 AG, was a detrimental change that removed Druid's ability to survive being ran over by a zerg, as example. But post after post I keep seeing people insist on these weird changes in strange places to make "Druid good in pvp or wvw" and it just isn't going to work while removing all of these key aspects that are very seriously required for any level of disengage/escape at all, or even enough sudden sustain when needed.

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:Sometimes it feels like a lot of you guys here in this ranger forum aren't so strongly understanding competitive aspects of ranger/druid/soulbeast.

For example, just the removal of evade frame from Staff #3 AG, was a detrimental change that removed Druid's ability to survive being ran over by a zerg, as example. But post after post I keep seeing people insist on these weird changes in strange places to make "Druid good in pvp or wvw" and it just isn't going to work while removing all of these key aspects that are very seriously required for any level of disengage/escape at all, or even enough sudden sustain when needed.

Cut the patronizing act. I'm well aware of how detrimental the removal of that evade was from the perspective of PvP player or a WvW roamer. I also play as the sole druid in a WvW skrim/zerg guild currently playing in T1-T2 EU - I doubt you do.

You're talking from the perspective of a druid that isn't playing in an organized squad to begin with. And yeah, sure, a solo roaming druid likely dies when ran over by a zerg because it no longer has that evade, whereas it might have escaped or sustained itself before. But that doesn't mean druid can't have a "functional role" in WvW without it.

From a hypothetical perspective where druid provides support tools good enough for proper squad play, replacing/competing with a scrapper or a tempest, the existence of that evade is not nearly as important (don't get me wrong, it would still be really nice to have). Neither is the stun break from Druidic Clarity. The movement of an organized squad doesn't rely on each individual's weapon evades.

I have read several of your comments on the PvP forums. I agree with a lot of your points. But I do not agree with the sentiment that these suggestions render it "not functional" in WvW. From the perspective of a WvW raider, most of OP's suggestions are miles better than what druid offers today.

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Overall, I really like your concept and approach to the Druid.

Food for thought:

  • Some effects might be overtuned or do too much at once (e.g. GMs)
  • I feel that Whisps should NOT provide Boons by themselves. That's just too much baseline Ranger Spirit territory.
  • I'm not a fan of Whisps affecting (solely) Staff. Didn't work well for Holos either. Maybe link it to Cosmic Ray instead.

@Lazze.9870 said:

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:Getting back to your question, I do think that is just one of the unfortunate flaws of my idea. There are things that would still be different from Soulbeast's interactions, such as pet-swap traits triggering from wisp swap, but otherwise there would be that same overlap and odd, unpolished interaction that Soulbeast has with the core class. Empathic Bond being one of the worst (best?) examples of this, having no interaction while merged. It would be nice if ANet took the time to polish some of this stuff up, as well as polish core/underused pets and merged skills to better incentivize taking Soulbeast since petswap is removed.

Empathic Bond is one of those traits that should be completely reworked anyway. If they make it into something the druid can take advantage of in a support setting, that's even better. All other elite specs which are used as support in competetive modes have at least a few core traits that works in tandem with the elite spec. Ranger has nothing except personal sustain, which apart from being an important source to fill up CA, is just that.

I feel like Anet did several changes to core ranger that benefited Soulbeast. Like merging the traits that gave you and your pet an opening strike into one trait, so that it wouldn't be a completely dead trait in beastmode, or simply buffing traits that had synergy with SB, or reworkin them until they had some synergy. They barely did anything like that for druid.

If Whisps were attackable, they could work like Phantasms and temporarily be summoned through F2. This way most pet traits should remain somewhat functional. Of course, they'd be weaker than with a normal permanent pets. But maybe this could at the same time serve as a reasonable trade-off to baseline Ranger?

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