Support chrono/druid/warrior is tuned enough, please start buffing firebrand/renegade etc.

Balancing isn't so relative that nerfing the meta improves the kits of near or non-viable supports. I'd rather have cohesive specs become the status quo, than others be lowered to inadequacy.

Disagree. Firebrand is fine currently and Renegade might even be slightly out of line. The problem wont simply be fixed by buffing these specs but by shaving down the unnecessarily overloaded kit of Chrono.

It seems to me that chrono is a pretty big problem. All of the community wants their spec to perform at that lvl of effectiveness in all game modes. (Reasonable considering Mesmer players pay the same as everyone else). But I think that if all classes became that effective it would brake the game; especially PvE. For one class to be that integral to every single organized group is faulty. IMO

@Nivik.2961 said:It seems to me that chrono is a pretty big problem. All of the community wants their spec to perform at that lvl of effectiveness in all game modes. (Reasonable considering Mesmer players pay the same as everyone else). But I think that if all classes became that effective it would brake the game; especially PvE. For one class to be that integral to every single organized group is faulty. IMO

Messers and Druids have become far too mandatory for Raids, I think.

Member when Anet thought the Trinity was bad?

Oh, I member.

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nivik.2961 said:It seems to me that chrono is a pretty big problem. All of the community wants their spec to perform at that lvl of effectiveness in all game modes. (Reasonable considering Mesmer players pay the same as everyone else). But I think that if all classes became that effective it would brake the game; especially PvE. For one class to be that integral to every single organized group is faulty. IMO

All supports are perfectly viable. But only chronomancers and druids are optimal right now. Mainly because of the broken chronomancer.

@TexZero.7910 said:Disagree. Firebrand is fine currently and Renegade might even be slightly out of line. The problem wont simply be fixed by buffing these specs but by shaving down the unnecessarily overloaded kit of Chrono.

Firebrand could use some buffs in Radiance regarding Signet sharing.Renegade needs a good pull option (could come from Energy Explosion which would pull in the center rather than knocking back), otherwise it's in a pretty good state regarding heal/boon sharing/offensive support, that being said they could improve the tablet movement by reducing the energy from 5 to 3.I'm cautious about bringing back Grace of the Land back to five members of the group, but it might be the only adjustment Druid needs to bring slightly more support diversity, on the other hand Druid has been hit pretty hard lately.Chronomancer needs to have reduced time on the boons it gives, by a lot as it has access to almost every boon in the game in a reliable way and applies them for a rather long time, it should come from overall skills nerfs but also through nerfs to Chaos, this way Chronomancer would be a great support to quickly enhance your allies for short period of time, great during burst phases.Tempest should get more boon sharing, and eventually a trait should grant additional effect for auras on allies.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All supports are perfectly viable. But only chronomancers and druids are optimal right now. Mainly because of the broken chronomancer.That will always be the case.

You can, of course, nerf chrono to the point it's no longer optimal (but, due to how that class is made up, ypou'd need to either completely redo it, or break the support ability to the point it won't be usable anymore, which would remove chrono from meta (because it has nothing to offer for high end game besides support). All that you will achieve that way is replacing it by another group setup, that will lock the meta even more (currently no single class can take that place, so you'd replace one locked slot for two locked ones), but at a lower level of effectiveness. Which, by the way, would be an indirect nerf to many other classes, that currently depend on the good boon setup to manage their rotations well.

What you need is to offer an alternative that will be close enough to chrono in effectiveness without being far more complex. If that mean giving alacrity to firebrand, and/or quickness to revenant (by, preferably, buffing/redoing underused herald, that was supposed to be a support spec after all), so be it.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:All supports are perfectly

viable

. But only chronomancers and druids are

optimal

right now. Mainly because of the broken chronomancer.That will always be the case.

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:All supports are perfectly

viable

. But only chronomancers and druids are

optimal

right now. Mainly because of the broken chronomancer.That will always be the case.

(yes, i suppose you could split quickness and alacrity between two classes. That will however just lock 2 more spots in the meta comp)

The best option i see now would be a rework of herald. Originally it was supposed to be what chrono is now - a support spec that offers multitude of boons to everyone around. It's just it never got the key ones. And due to WvW it got nerfed into the ground.

You could probably remake scourge into a support spec too, since it obviously will never be a dps one. Firebrand is another good pick here.

So, open the meta by giving players several good choices, not by making all choices bad.

(basically, as i see it the main problem is not that the chrono is too good as a support spec. The problem is that chrono is the only good support spec)

This is old habits too. People want Chrono/druid because it's been 3 years they play with chrono/druid.FB can brings all boons, 10-20 mights, cleansing, anti-proj, very strong regen and heals ... except alacrity. And renegade can bring alicrity and some supports too, but with less duration than chrono and self DPS decrease, or renagde play Ventari too, which gives 2 healers ... suboptimal for 5 players.For raids, for 10 players, chrono druid seems to stand the optimal choice. But FB is a great mainstay in fractals, with some more utilities (proj, more stab, etc), it allows 4 DPS rather than chronoboon/druid; you don't have alacrity, spotter, blue spirit and GoE, but you have a 4th pure DPS.

ed* Yes, I think Herald should need a rework, facets are boring AF and not even helpfull in meta compo. The F2 facet should bring back the 50% duration, this can help druid and chrono to play without harrier/commander set, or a unique DPS buff like a GoE or a small Alacrity (+10% skill recharge +10% endurance recharge??) to be seductive given the points of upkeep.

Renegade with Ventari Legend is the only alternative to Chronomancer as far as Alacrity is concerned. One option would be to increase the output of Alacrity from that build so it can compete with Chronomancer.

Firebrand can provide Quickness, another option would be to make Firebrand better at Quickness application maybe? I'm not sure how Firebrand compares to Chronomancer in Quickness application.

Of course the big question then would be, even if Firebrand and Renegade are able to "replace" Chronomancer (for Alacrity + Quickness), why use 2 slots (4 for both sub-groups) instead of 1 (2 for both subgroups)?

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:This is old habits too. People want Chrono/druid because it's been 3 years they play with chrono/druid.FB can brings all boons, 10-20 mights, cleansing, anti-proj, very strong regen and heals ... except alacrity. And renegade can bring alicrity and some supports too, but with less duration than chrono and self DPS decrease, or renagde play Ventari too, which gives 2 healers ... suboptimal for 5 players.For raids, for 10 players, chrono druid seems to stand the optimal choice. But FB is a great mainstay in fractals, with some more utilities (proj, more stab, etc), it allows 4 DPS rather than chronoboon/druid; you don't have alacrity, spotter, blue spirit and GoE, but you have a 4th pure DPS.

ed* Yes, I think Herald should need a rework, facets are boring AF and not even helpfull in meta compo. The F2 facet should bring back the 50% duration, this can help druid and chrono to play without harrier/commander set, or a unique DPS buff like a GoE or a small Alacrity (+10% skill recharge +10% endurance recharge??) to be seductive given the points of upkeep.

It's not just habits, it's also that Chrono/Druid are indeed far more powerful. Chrono doesn't only bring Quickness and Alacrity in one, but also literally every other boon in its Chaos-build. Then it brings Aegis and several useful utilities. Druid then can bring Might and several unique buffs like Spotter and Spirits, plus additional useful utilities like Entangle. You also have to consider the reliability, especially the usability (range of buffs and healing; comfortable gameplay). In these regards, Chrono/Druid simply outshines Renegade/FB.

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:This is old habits too. People want Chrono/druid because it's been 3 years they play with chrono/druid.FB can brings all boons, 10-20 mights, cleansing, anti-proj, very strong regen and heals ... except alacrity. And renegade can bring alicrity and some supports too, but with less duration than chrono and self DPS decrease, or renagde play Ventari too, which gives 2 healers ... suboptimal for 5 players.For raids, for 10 players, chrono druid seems to stand the optimal choice. But FB is a great mainstay in fractals, with some more utilities (proj, more stab, etc), it allows 4 DPS rather than chronoboon/druid; you don't have alacrity, spotter, blue spirit and GoE, but you have a 4th pure DPS.

ed* Yes, I think Herald should need a rework, facets are boring AF and not even helpfull in meta compo. The F2 facet should bring back the 50% duration, this can help druid and chrono to play without harrier/commander set, or a unique DPS buff like a GoE or a small Alacrity (+10% skill recharge +10% endurance recharge??) to be seductive given the points of upkeep.

Yeah that's why for 10players, 1druid 2chronos, on large hitbox and large board game, with kite, areas games,... is the reassuring choice. This is not necessarily true in all instances or compositions, even less in fractals.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:This is old habits too. People want Chrono/druid because it's been 3 years they play with chrono/druid.FB can brings all boons, 10-20 mights, cleansing, anti-proj, very strong regen and heals ... except alacrity. And renegade can bring alicrity and some supports too, but with less duration than chrono and self DPS decrease, or renagde play Ventari too, which gives 2 healers ... suboptimal for 5 players.For raids, for 10 players, chrono druid seems to stand the optimal choice. But FB is a great mainstay in fractals, with some more utilities (proj, more stab, etc), it allows 4 DPS rather than chronoboon/druid; you don't have alacrity, spotter, blue spirit and GoE, but you have a 4th pure DPS.

ed* Yes, I think Herald should need a rework, facets are boring AF and not even helpfull in meta compo. The F2 facet should bring back the 50% duration, this can help druid and chrono to play without harrier/commander set, or a unique DPS buff like a GoE or a small Alacrity (+10% skill recharge +10% endurance recharge??) to be seductive given the points of upkeep.

In fractals, you have even less spots to fill, making Chrono even more mandatory.

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Renegade with Ventari Legend is the only alternative to Chronomancer as far as Alacrity is concerned. One option would be to increase the output of Alacrity from that build so it can compete with Chronomancer.

Firebrand can provide Quickness, another option would be to make Firebrand better at Quickness application maybe? I'm not sure how Firebrand compares to Chronomancer in Quickness application.

Of course the big question then would be, even if Firebrand and Renegade are able to "replace" Chronomancer (for Alacrity + Quickness), why use 2 slots (4 for both sub-groups) instead of 1 (2 for both subgroups)?

FB quickness provision is almost fine, it just needs some more range and party priority instead of proximity priority. Your big question isn't really accurate, since FB and renegade replace chrono and druid. For groups that bring two healers anyway, that combo would make perfect sense for the second subgroup if the problems of the FB/ren combo were addressed.

As to the overall topic, I'd say we need both. The abomination that is chrono, especially the chaos variant, needs some of their boons removed. Being able to provide close to any boon in the game in a single spec is super bad design. At the same moment, FB and renegade need some rather small, but targeted improvements to make them competitive. FB quickness application has to become more reliable, while renegades need a proper damage/support stat combo and probably less clunky healing abilities. With such changes, we'd have two distinct supporter combos, both of which have their own strengths and weaknesses.

@CptAurellian.9537 said:[...], while renegades need a proper damage/support stat combo and probably less clunky healing abilities.

I really wish Plaguedoctor would be Healing Power/Concentration/Condition Damage/Expertise. That would be so awesome.

@Raizel.8175 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:[...], while renegades need a proper damage/support stat combo and probably less clunky healing abilities.

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:[...], while renegades need a proper damage/support stat combo and probably less clunky healing abilities.

Ah, well, yeah. I meant Healing Power and Condi Dmg as primary and the rest as secondary. Would be really awesome for Renegade, FB and also Scourge, maybe even for some Hybrid-druid-builds.

Others are already adequate as is It's different aspects that could need some changes

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Renegade with Ventari Legend is the only alternative to Chronomancer as far as Alacrity is concerned. One option would be to increase the output of Alacrity from that build so it can compete with Chronomancer.

Firebrand can provide Quickness, another option would be to make Firebrand better at Quickness application maybe? I'm not sure how Firebrand compares to Chronomancer in Quickness application.

Of course the big question then would be, even if Firebrand and Renegade are able to "replace" Chronomancer (for Alacrity + Quickness), why use 2 slots (4 for both sub-groups) instead of 1 (2 for both subgroups)?

Precisely. Either both of those builds would need to be able to affect 10 targets each (but then we'd be simply replacing double chrono with renegade + fb), or add the missing boon to one (or both) of those classes, thus creating real alternatives. In that case you'd have to pick 2 players out of a 3-class pool, but would be fine with any combination of those.Personally, i'm more in favour of the second option.

I am going go after druid because people have been saying it is reasonably balanced and that chrono is now the real problematic support spec. Druid isn't too bad in the sense that staff glyphs and the druid traitline aren't overpowered aside from glyph of empowerment (same prolem as frost spirit just a smaller multiplier on average) and grace of the land (shouldn't be 10 targets as it overshadows alternative sources of might heavily). The biggest problems are the core ranger utilities sun spirit and frost spirit which allow druid to add far too much dps to a group while building as a full healer which no other healer can possibly compete with.

Frost spirit and to a slightly lesser extent glyph of empowerment needs to be changed to simply providing common boons. It is pretty much impossible to balance unique group damage modifiers in a way that they are not overbearingly strong unless the modifier is incredibly tiny. For a power comp if we assume that the 9 other players in a squad do 10,000 dps each on average for a total group dps of 90,000, when adding a healer if that healer is a druid with frost spirit that brings the 9 other players in that group up to about 10,750 dps for an average group dps of 96,750 a difference of 6,750 . This single utility is now causes the addition of 67.5% of an entire average player's dps just by existing which is absolutely absurd amount of power for a single utility. For other healers to conceivably compete against it they will need to bring 67.5% of the dps of an average player + whatever the dps that the druid is capable of + able to compete with the disgusting amount of utility that druid brings + have enough healing to be able to solo heal a raid squad at any boss and do all of that all at the same time. Sure a dps ranger can bring the frost spirit instead of a druid, that doesn't change how ridiculously high the amount of dps this utility skill adds compared to any other utility aside from warrior banners (another major problem). Bring all spirits back to 5 targets and change frost spirit to just pulse a certain amount of might, when traited it also pulses fury, this leaves it still potentially useful but optional as there are other ways to stack might and fury.

And then we have sun spirit. Sun spirit is actually sort of balance able since it isn't actually a multiplier and instead adds a calculable amount of burning on average, it is just massively over tuned compared to other utilities. At a baseline sun spirit applies 2 stacks of 2.5sec burning every 8 seconds * 10 players for an average of 6.25 stacks of burning on average while it is active and the downtime is very low. For reference signet of fire which is another utility skill with the main purpose of stacking burning only maintains an average of 1.6 stacks of burning on average, there simply aren't any skills utility or weapon that can stack close to that amount of damaging conditions with only a 1 second cast every 80 seconds. Even if we take into account the small amount of downtime between sun spirits dying and being re-summoned the amount of burning that it deals is far too high. The other issue with sun spirit is that the burning does not scale off of the summoning ranger's condition damage but the condition damage of allies. This means a full healing druid without any condition damage can be the cause of a huge amount of burning damage when it is paired with some condition builds, which is a part of the main problem, druid it just adds a massive amount of extra damage to a raid group compared to what any other healer can reasonably do. Make sun spirit scale off of the ranger's condition damage/expertise akin to thief venoms and razorclaw's rage, then increase the cooldown significantly and reduce the spirit duration so that the damage is brought in line with other condi damage focused utilities.

These changes will leave druid in a place where it doesn't have as much raw healing as firebrand, ventari rev, or tempest however it is still a strong choice of healer due to having a tremendous amount of adaptable utility. Entange, pushes, a pull, projectile defense, group stealth, group stun break, condi cleanse, spirit res, search and rescue, great cc, might, fury, protection, etc. allows druid to easily stay competitive even without it's massively imbalanced unique buffs just by having a tool for any situation. And when it comes to healers as long as one of them contributing way more damage than all the others then they should all be reasonably competitive with each other.

@"ArthurDent.9538" said:I am going go after druid because people have been saying it is reasonably balanced and that chrono is now the real problematic support spec. Druid isn't too bad in the sense that staff glyphs and the druid traitline aren't overpowered aside from glyph of empowerment (same prolem as frost spirit just a smaller multiplier on average) and grace of the land (shouldn't be 10 targets as it overshadows alternative sources of might heavily). The biggest problems are the core ranger utilities sun spirit and frost spirit which allow druid to add far too much dps to a group while building as a full healer which no other healer can possibly compete with.

Frost spirit and to a slightly lesser extent glyph of empowerment needs to be changed to simply providing common boons. It is pretty much impossible to balance unique group damage modifiers in a way that they are not overbearingly strong unless the modifier is incredibly tiny. For a power comp if we assume that the 9 other players in a squad do 10,000 dps each on average for a total group dps of 90,000, when adding a healer if that healer is a druid with frost spirit that brings the 9 other players in that group up to about 10,750 dps for an average group dps of 96,750 a difference of 6,750 . This single utility is now causes the addition of 67.5% of an entire average player's dps just by existing which is absolutely absurd amount of power for a single utility. For other healers to conceivably compete against it they will need to bring 67.5% of the dps of an average player + whatever the dps that the druid is capable of + able to compete with the disgusting amount of utility that druid brings + have enough healing to be able to solo heal a raid squad at any boss and do all of that all at the same time. Sure a dps ranger can bring the frost spirit instead of a druid, that doesn't change how ridiculously high the amount of dps this utility skill adds compared to any other utility aside from warrior banners (another major problem). Bring all spirits back to 5 targets and change frost spirit to just pulse a certain amount of might, when traited it also pulses fury, this leaves it still potentially useful but optional as there are other ways to stack might and fury.

And then we have sun spirit. Sun spirit is actually sort of balance able since it isn't actually a multiplier and instead adds a calculable amount of burning on average, it is just massively over tuned compared to other utilities. At a baseline sun spirit applies 2 stacks of 2.5sec burning every 8 seconds * 10 players for an average of 6.25 stacks of burning on average while it is active and the downtime is very low. For reference signet of fire which is another utility skill with the main purpose of stacking burning only maintains an average of 1.6 stacks of burning on average, there simply aren't any skills utility or weapon that can stack close to that amount of damaging conditions with only a 1 second cast every 80 seconds. Even if we take into account the small amount of downtime between sun spirits dying and being re-summoned the amount of burning that it deals is far too high. The other issue with sun spirit is that the burning does not scale off of the summoning ranger's condition damage but the condition damage of allies. This means a full healing druid without any condition damage can be the cause of a huge amount of burning damage when it is paired with some condition builds, which is a part of the main problem, druid it just adds a massive amount of extra damage to a raid group compared to what any other healer can reasonably do. Make sun spirit scale off of the ranger's condition damage/expertise akin to thief venoms and razorclaw's rage, then increase the cooldown significantly and reduce the spirit duration so that the damage is brought in line with other condi damage focused utilities.

These changes will leave druid in a place where it doesn't have as much raw healing as firebrand, ventari rev, or tempest however it is still a strong choice of healer due to having a tremendous amount of adaptable utility. Entange, pushes, a pull, projectile defense, group stealth, group stun break, condi cleanse, spirit res, search and rescue, great cc, might, fury, protection, etc. allows druid to easily stay competitive even without it's massively imbalanced unique buffs just by having a tool for any situation. And when it comes to healers as long as one of them contributing way more damage than all the others then they should all be reasonably competitive with each other.

I'm curious if the damage multiplier itself or if its the fact that it's a unique buff offered nowhere else. Bringing spirits back to 5 targets would simply force the 2 existing druids to run frost spirit and we're still back at square one. I think the issue is that these buffs are unique and even if they were nerfed down to 3% from 5%, people would still take them because it raises the dps ceiling. That on top of spotter being so important because crit chance is such a key stat to cap for power classes that even if spotter only gave 25 precision, people would probably still take the class since it lets them take 1 less piece of assassin's gear.

On the other hand I'd actually like to see a more creative change for spirits to give a buff upon meeting a special condition. For example, instead of giving a persistent X% damage buff, what if it gave you significant damage on chill application or gave you a 10% damage buff for 5 seconds each time you applied chill. We would all of a sudden see a shift in how rotations are done and which classes are desirable due their ability to access chill in their rotation. Power reaper for example would be super desirable all of a sudden since they chill on auto and can generate a billion chilling bolts. People would then choose the supports they want depending if they have chill appliers or non-chill appliers. If you want to really go out into left field with ideas, what if sun spirit gave you +25% condition damage for 5 seconds whenever you are afflicted with the burning condition. Would we see people getting hit on purpose during sloth to get their sun spirit? Who knows but it sure as hell would be a lot more interesting than the flat non interactive stationary dps totems we have right now.

The thing I want changed is create skills that are situationally good, not universally good. 99% of the time you're playing druid you're never going to say "Oh...Frost spirit is bad here." or "oh spotter is bad here" and I think that's the problem that should be fixed.

@TexZero.7910 said:Disagree. Firebrand is fine currently and Renegade might even be slightly out of line. The problem wont simply be fixed by buffing these specs but by shaving down the unnecessarily overloaded kit of Chrono.

Slightly out of line? You realize we are taking about the support build right?

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@ArthurDent.9538 said:I am going go after druid because people have been saying it is reasonably balanced and that chrono is now the real problematic support spec. Druid isn't too bad in the sense that staff glyphs and the druid traitline aren't overpowered aside from glyph of empowerment (same prolem as frost spirit just a smaller multiplier on average) and grace of the land (shouldn't be 10 targets as it overshadows alternative sources of might heavily). The biggest problems are the core ranger utilities sun spirit and frost spirit which allow druid to add far too much dps to a group while building as a full healer which no other healer can possibly compete with.

Frost spirit and to a slightly lesser extent glyph of empowerment needs to be changed to simply providing common boons. It is pretty much impossible to balance unique group damage modifiers in a way that they are not overbearingly strong unless the modifier is incredibly tiny. For a power comp if we assume that the 9 other players in a squad do 10,000 dps each on average for a total group dps of 90,000, when adding a healer if that healer is a druid with frost spirit that brings the 9 other players in that group up to about 10,750 dps for an average group dps of 96,750 a difference of 6,750 . This single utility is now causes the addition of 67.5% of an entire average player's dps just by existing which is absolutely absurd amount of power for a single utility. For other healers to conceivably compete against it they will need to bring 67.5% of the dps of an average player + whatever the dps that the druid is capable of + able to compete with the disgusting amount of utility that druid brings + have enough healing to be able to solo heal a raid squad at any boss and do all of that all at the same time. Sure a dps ranger can bring the frost spirit instead of a druid, that doesn't change how ridiculously high the amount of dps this utility skill adds compared to any other utility aside from warrior banners (another major problem). Bring all spirits back to 5 targets and change frost spirit to just pulse a certain amount of might, when traited it also pulses fury, this leaves it still potentially useful but optional as there are other ways to stack might and fury.

And then we have sun spirit. Sun spirit is actually sort of balance able since it isn't actually a multiplier and instead adds a calculable amount of burning on average, it is just massively over tuned compared to other utilities. At a baseline sun spirit applies 2 stacks of 2.5sec burning every 8 seconds * 10 players for an average of 6.25 stacks of burning on average while it is active and the downtime is very low. For reference signet of fire which is another utility skill with the main purpose of stacking burning only maintains an average of 1.6 stacks of burning on average, there simply aren't any skills utility or weapon that can stack close to that amount of damaging conditions with only a 1 second cast every 80 seconds. Even if we take into account the small amount of downtime between sun spirits dying and being re-summoned the amount of burning that it deals is far too high. The other issue with sun spirit is that the burning does not scale off of the summoning ranger's condition damage but the condition damage of allies. This means a full healing druid without any condition damage can be the cause of a huge amount of burning damage when it is paired with some condition builds, which is a part of the main problem, druid it just adds a massive amount of extra damage to a raid group compared to what any other healer can reasonably do. Make sun spirit scale off of the ranger's condition damage/expertise akin to thief venoms and razorclaw's rage, then increase the cooldown significantly and reduce the spirit duration so that the damage is brought in line with other condi damage focused utilities.

These changes will leave druid in a place where it doesn't have as much raw healing as firebrand, ventari rev, or tempest however it is still a strong choice of healer due to having a tremendous amount of adaptable utility. Entange, pushes, a pull, projectile defense, group stealth, group stun break, condi cleanse, spirit res, search and rescue, great cc, might, fury, protection, etc. allows druid to easily stay competitive even without it's massively imbalanced unique buffs just by having a tool for any situation. And when it comes to healers as long as one of them contributing way more damage than all the others then they should all be reasonably competitive with each other.

@ArthurDent.9538 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@ArthurDent.9538 said:I am going go after druid because people have been saying it is reasonably balanced and that chrono is now the real problematic support spec. Druid isn't too bad in the sense that staff glyphs and the druid traitline aren't overpowered aside from glyph of empowerment (same prolem as frost spirit just a smaller multiplier on average) and grace of the land (shouldn't be 10 targets as it overshadows alternative sources of might heavily). The biggest problems are the core ranger utilities sun spirit and frost spirit which allow druid to add far too much dps to a group while building as a full healer which no other healer can possibly compete with.

Frost spirit and to a slightly lesser extent glyph of empowerment needs to be changed to simply providing common boons. It is pretty much impossible to balance unique group damage modifiers in a way that they are not overbearingly strong unless the modifier is incredibly tiny. For a power comp if we assume that the 9 other players in a squad do 10,000 dps each on average for a total group dps of 90,000, when adding a healer if that healer is a druid with frost spirit that brings the 9 other players in that group up to about 10,750 dps for an average group dps of 96,750 a difference of 6,750 . This single utility is now causes the addition of 67.5% of an entire average player's dps just by existing which is absolutely absurd amount of power for a single utility. For other healers to conceivably compete against it they will need to bring 67.5% of the dps of an average player + whatever the dps that the druid is capable of + able to compete with the disgusting amount of utility that druid brings + have enough healing to be able to solo heal a raid squad at any boss and do all of that all at the same time. Sure a dps ranger can bring the frost spirit instead of a druid, that doesn't change how ridiculously high the amount of dps this utility skill adds compared to any other utility aside from warrior banners (another major problem). Bring all spirits back to 5 targets and change frost spirit to just pulse a certain amount of might, when traited it also pulses fury, this leaves it still potentially useful but optional as there are other ways to stack might and fury.

And then we have sun spirit. Sun spirit is actually sort of balance able since it isn't actually a multiplier and instead adds a calculable amount of burning on average, it is just massively over tuned compared to other utilities. At a baseline sun spirit applies 2 stacks of 2.5sec burning every 8 seconds * 10 players for an average of 6.25 stacks of burning on average while it is active and the downtime is very low. For reference signet of fire which is another utility skill with the main purpose of stacking burning only maintains an average of 1.6 stacks of burning on average, there simply aren't any skills utility or weapon that can stack close to that amount of damaging conditions with only a 1 second cast every 80 seconds. Even if we take into account the small amount of downtime between sun spirits dying and being re-summoned the amount of burning that it deals is far too high. The other issue with sun spirit is that the burning does not scale off of the summoning ranger's condition damage but the condition damage of allies. This means a full healing druid without any condition damage can be the cause of a huge amount of burning damage when it is paired with some condition builds, which is a part of the main problem, druid it just adds a massive amount of extra damage to a raid group compared to what any other healer can reasonably do. Make sun spirit scale off of the ranger's condition damage/expertise akin to thief venoms and razorclaw's rage, then increase the cooldown significantly and reduce the spirit duration so that the damage is brought in line with other condi damage focused utilities.

These changes will leave druid in a place where it doesn't have as much raw healing as firebrand, ventari rev, or tempest however it is still a strong choice of healer due to having a tremendous amount of adaptable utility. Entange, pushes, a pull, projectile defense, group stealth, group stun break, condi cleanse, spirit res, search and rescue, great cc, might, fury, protection, etc. allows druid to easily stay competitive even without it's massively imbalanced unique buffs just by having a tool for any situation. And when it comes to healers as long as one of them contributing way more damage than all the others then they should all be reasonably competitive with each other.

I actually don't mind the other stat buff traits. It's specifically spotter that I have an issue with because landing crits is so important to dps. Not critting on a power build for any particular hit essentially negates the significant stat investment you've made into precision and ferocity in that moment which is like 3,000 stat points just doing nothing.

While this is not solving the problem at all, if we swapped AP with Spotter on ranger/rev would we start seeing dps rev be taken as a mandatory slot or would we see people shift to more assassin pieces?