PLS! Nerf Druids to the ground!

Ok, this is really bugging me lately. Every singel raid group in LFG seems to be looking for TWO Druids. On most encounters there is no logical reason to bring more then on Druid, but for some reason people seem to be under the impression that Druid is "the only viable healing class", which couldn't be further from the truth. So pleas, nerf Druid heal into oblivion, so people finally start looking at other Specs for a 2nd. healer. At least for one balance cycle (3 month). Spirits and Might gen will be more then enough to still bring one Druid, but this "2 Druids" thing has to stop already.

PS: Yes, i'd like some cheese to my whine, thank you.

Druid players shouldnt be punished for the decisions of raiders that wont think outside the box or adjust their comps to use 1 less druid in favor of say an elementalist, engineer, firebrand or necromancer. I like playing druid when I want a break from Soulbeast, and I do not raid. With grace of the land being 10 allies, there is no requirement to bring 2 druids. I see this as being more a problem of public opinion/group think of what raid comps should be rather than what would work since players seem to favor what is easy vs what is fun and could work. If it were me, rather than nerfing druid I would buff the healing capabilities of the other professions that might rival druid for the healer spot.

I could be wrong on this part, but I also believe that there was more flexibility prior to the change to Grace of the Land making it not only a good healer (even w/o full healing gear) but also the best might stacker. If I HAD to nerf something with Druid, it would be Grace of the Land and its might application. I like my spirits as they are.

Well, if you would nerf Grace of the Land again it would just be one more reason to bring a 2nd. druid and the thing with buffing other options is that, this is not needed for most of them are outclassing druid already, when it comes to just raw healing potential. But for some reason everyone locked in on druid. I think is might have something to with the fact that it got explicitly advertised as a "heal spec", way back when HoT released, and then the mindset of traditional MMOs carried over to have players belief this is THE healing class in GW2. All other healing options we have right now sort of just evelop over time and never had that kind of introduction. So sometimes you just have to force people to get out of there comfort zone and try something new. It doesn't have to remain that way, just long enough to open some players minds.

Funfact: now everybody wants 2 druids because they nerfed it.Give scourges the abbility to grant might on barrier and you get your boon support.Nerfing druid wouldn't help it a lot. The result of resent nerfs (so druid cannot be both healer and buffer) resultet in a healer AND a buffer druid (although this is quiet unnecessary because druids still heals decent) because they are solid in supporting just due to the abbility to use spirits and spotter. Ppl want them not only for the heals but for the might and buffs.

Scourges need buff support and scrapper could use some of that too.Firebrand can outheal a druid if played smart but lack a real heal weapon (staff needs a rework and mace some buffs) scourges can "only" provide barrier as support reliably (and high speed rezzing) which does not affect any runes or traits that work above health threshold so raw helsing is more beneficial.

Scourges are still nice as support but for many not optimal enough, but thats far from being a druid issue rather a lack of buffing options on all supports.

Tbh I would love for my WvW support firebrand to be useful in raids as a healer or tank.

But both rolls are better filled by other classes

@"Glott.7239" said:Well, if you would nerf Grace of the Land again it would just be one more reason to bring a 2nd. druid and the thing with buffing other options is that, this is not needed for most of them are outclassing druid already, when it comes to just raw healing potential. But for some reason everyone locked in on druid. I think is might have something to with the fact that it got explicitly advertised as a "heal spec", way back when HoT released, and then the mindset of traditional MMOs carried over to have players belief this is THE healing class in GW2. All other healing options we have right now sort of just evelop over time and never had that kind of introduction. So sometimes you just have to force people to get out of there comfort zone and try something new. It doesn't have to remain that way, just long enough to open some players minds.

Not really.... the healing aspect is the least important of what Druid is used for in Raid comp. It basically boiled down to Druid having the height number of unique offensive buffs. Grace of the Land used to be a buff instead of might boons, so thats 10% damage that only the Druid had. Then theres Glyph of power.... making it now 2 completely unique buffs. Core Ranger also has the Spirits (which are unique to the class) adding another 7% overall damage. The group would then get its Might from a PS warrior. Now because of the way Ranger traits are layed out, Condi Druid was considered the best option, since the Druid could add some DPS to the group total. The amount of healing it did without any investment into healing power was just a huge bonus that foregone the need for dedicated healing slots.

The only major differences between then and now is that Grace of the Land generates might, so Harriers gear was taken to max out Boon duration and Astral Force generation. The healing was just a side effect of the spec having that built into every skill. Even when they forced a split between healing and GotL, Druid still heals for a significant amount without Lingering Light, but would be pretty much not be worth taking if not for Grace of the Land having freed up the Warrior for pure DPS. A Condi Ranger or Soul Beast build could still bring Spirits, and a cPS warrior could be slotted back in to generate group might (or may had been replaced in the ranking for it). That results in the net loss of ONE 10% power damage buff..... but that could be argued thats less important now given the number of condi builds, and the Devs are intent on bringing down Power Ele's damage.

Looking at Snowcrows benchmarks, it looks like Deadeye is topping the charts in raw damage.

Honestly what needs to be done is allow druids to become a meta dps spec as well and then we there will be more options for healers as long as they buff the other healing classes to an extent.

People ask for 2 druids because Druid already nerfed to the ground. Have you asked your self why people ask for two druids? I don’t know why people ask for ranger aspect nerfs all the time please grow up

The problem is not druid, it's a combination of the raid community, raid design, and chronomancers being absurd. Every healing spec brings healing, and some other support, for tempest it's auras and boon share (which effectively just boils down to the most healing output in the game + a 10% damage reduction, vigor, regen, and prot), scourge brings barrier instead of healing, which is the same thing if not better when paired with an actual healer, and also is the fucking king of boon destruction and condi cleanse, revenants bring i believe the second highest sustained healing in the game, as well as bringing perma alacrity, firebrands bring an assortment of defensive boons depending on the book they use, as perma quickness up time, and then you have druid which brings healing and might, yes it brings spirits, and yes it brings spotter, but any damage focused ranger build will also be capable of bringing at least one spirit and spotter since the personal dps loss is a drop in the bucket to the raid dps gained.

The problem is that all the buffs the other support specs bring is invalidated by how the raid fights are designed and how absurdly overtuned chronomancers support is, chronomancers are not only able to easily tank, they are also able to bring permanent alacrity, permanent quickness, ridiculous amount of breakbar damage, AND have the ability to share boons out to the raid group. This alone completely invalidates the support that both a revenant, firebrand, and a tempest running warhorn bring since each one of those only brings one of those aspects (alacrity, quickness and boonshare respectively), and hell if the chronomancer really wanted to they could even bring healing ontop of all of that if they wanted to completely throw away their pitiful damage potential to begin with and go for minstrels. And if they weren't a tank they could probably just slot in harriers and outclass druids too since all you need to do is get the chrono up to 25 might stacks (easily done across 9 other people) and then they can just share it out.

Now for scourge, it's support is absolutely ludicrously good in every other aspect of the game because it's sheer amount of boon corruption and condi removal is amazing, if you've stepped foot into WvW and PvP you'd realize immediately just how much the community "loves" scourge and all of the utility it brings. The problem is, that in raids you almost never need boon removal, and if you do it can be handled quite easily and effortlessly by a mesmer (chronomancer) using sword auto attack, and additionally condi cleanse is typically not needed as much either, but in the fights it is the meta strategy is to just bring like 7 scourges, 2 druids, and a chronomancer to completely trivialize the fight. Support engi/scrapper suffers in the same way since with the recent changes it can do healing when it needs to, but it's main support is that it can cleanse condis like a madman, and not just cleanse them but convert them into boons. Which again, in PvP it does this to amazing results, but in PvE where condis aren't as prolific, and are actually absurdly rare, this support is absolutely useless so you'll never see a scrapper replace chrono as a tank because the support it brings is just not going to be used.

I can tell you right now that the second chronomancer gets nerfed to the shadow realm where it needs to choose to either apply alacrity, OR apply quickness, OR boonshare that druid is probably going to be the healer that's taking the backseat and we're going to be in for a world of revenant/firebrands being the top dog, and just put the banner slave warrior back onto might duty and probably end up with a spirit slave ranger who, like in the olden days, only purpose was to provide spirit buffs, spotter, and to stay alive so those sweet sweet buffs didn't go away.

@"Durzlla.6295" said:The problem is not druid, it's a combination of the raid community, raid design, and chronomancers being absurd. Every healing spec brings healing, and some other support, for tempest it's auras and boon share (which effectively just boils down to the most healing output in the game + a 10% damage reduction, vigor, regen, and prot), scourge brings barrier instead of healing, which is the same thing if not better when paired with an actual healer, and also is the kitten king of boon destruction and condi cleanse, revenants bring i believe the second highest sustained healing in the game, as well as bringing perma alacrity, firebrands bring an assortment of defensive boons depending on the book they use, as perma quickness up time, and then you have druid which brings healing and might, yes it brings spirits, and yes it brings spotter, but any damage focused ranger build will also be capable of bringing at least one spirit and spotter since the personal dps loss is a drop in the bucket to the raid dps gained.

The problem is that all the buffs the other support specs bring is invalidated by how the raid fights are designed and how absurdly overtuned chronomancers support is, chronomancers are not only able to easily tank, they are also able to bring permanent alacrity, permanent quickness, ridiculous amount of breakbar damage, AND have the ability to share boons out to the raid group. This alone completely invalidates the support that both a revenant, firebrand, and a tempest running warhorn bring since each one of those only brings one of those aspects (alacrity, quickness and boonshare respectively), and hell if the chronomancer really wanted to they could even bring healing ontop of all of that if they wanted to completely throw away their pitiful damage potential to begin with and go for minstrels. And if they weren't a tank they could probably just slot in harriers and outclass druids too since all you need to do is get the chrono up to 25 might stacks (easily done across 9 other people) and then they can just share it out.

Now for scourge, it's support is absolutely ludicrously good in every other aspect of the game because it's sheer amount of boon corruption and condi removal is amazing, if you've stepped foot into WvW and PvP you'd realize immediately just how much the community "loves" scourge and all of the utility it brings. The problem is, that in raids you almost never need boon removal, and if you do it can be handled quite easily and effortlessly by a mesmer (chronomancer) using sword auto attack, and additionally condi cleanse is typically not needed as much either, but in the fights it is the meta strategy is to just bring like 7 scourges, 2 druids, and a chronomancer to completely trivialize the fight. Support engi/scrapper suffers in the same way since with the recent changes it can do healing when it needs to, but it's main support is that it can cleanse condis like a madman, and not just cleanse them but convert them into boons. Which again, in PvP it does this to amazing results, but in PvE where condis aren't as prolific, and are actually absurdly rare, this support is absolutely useless so you'll never see a scrapper replace chrono as a tank because the support it brings is just not going to be used.

I can tell you right now that the second chronomancer gets nerfed to the shadow realm where it needs to choose to either apply alacrity, OR apply quickness, OR boonshare that druid is probably going to be the healer that's taking the backseat and we're going to be in for a world of revenant/firebrands being the top dog, and just put the banner slave warrior back onto might duty and probably end up with a spirit slave ranger who, like in the olden days, only purpose was to provide spirit buffs, spotter, and to stay alive so those sweet sweet buffs didn't go away.

Pretts much nailed it. Chrono is just bonkers and cutting its jack of all trades abilities into specific roles like: alacrity, quickness or healing.Boon share should be just tuned down to a specific number and duration. Boonshare nerf is kinda problematic to accomplish though.Giving it to herald or tempest too would make it probably more diverse and would work against the chrono monopol.

@"Glott.7239" said:Ok, this is really bugging me lately. Every singel raid group in LFG seems to be looking for TWO Druids. On most encounters there is no logical reason to bring more then on Druid, but for some reason people seem to be under the impression that Druid is "the only viable healing class", which couldn't be further from the truth. So pleas, nerf Druid heal into oblivion, so people finally start looking at other Specs for a 2nd. healer. At least for one balance cycle (3 month). Spirits and Might gen will be more then enough to still bring one Druid, but this "2 Druids" thing has to stop already.

PS: Yes, i'd like some cheese to my whine, thank you.

It's honestly an awful idea to nerf one class into oblivion to make others viable, what they should do is buff the others, for instance Signet sharing on the Radiance trait line for Guardians, which would be an indirect buff to Firebrand, besides healing on Druid has nothing to do with their popularity, they could divided it by two and it would still be picked for GotL, Spirits, Fury, and Glyphs.

Moreover Druid is clearly not the worst offender regarding the stale support meta, it's Chronomancer which offers way too many options, particularly a long uptime of the two most useful boons in raids, meaning Quickness and Alacrity, completely limiting other support that only have access to one of them, Firebrand for Quickness and Healing Renegade for Alacrity, and insane utility such as pull, CCs, and reflect.

Furthermore I agree that the secondary Druid is useless in PUGs, and should be replaced with a stronger healer such as Tempest, mainly because PUGs, particularly low/mid level groups, shouldn't care about min/maxing the DPS, they should care about surviving and doing the mechanics, and in that regard a Tempest is way more useful than a Druid. Therefore this is an issue regarding the community that's obsessed with the meta compositions used by hardcore guilds, but kind of lack the understanding of the game to really try something else.

Why do you want to nerf Druid? Druid can’t give quick ness or alacrity like fb and renegade. Nerf chrono not Druid.

I just say two words: "Chronomancer" and "Druid"...

@"InsaneQR.7412" said:Funfact: now everybody wants 2 druids because they nerfed it.Give scourges the abbility to grant might on barrier and you get your boon support.Nerfing druid wouldn't help it a lot. The result of resent nerfs (so druid cannot be both healer and buffer) resultet in a healer AND a buffer druid (although this is quiet unnecessary because druids still heals decent) because they are solid in supporting just due to the abbility to use spirits and spotter. Ppl want them not only for the heals but for the might and buffs.

Scourges need buff support and scrapper could use some of that too.Firebrand can outheal a druid if played smart but lack a real heal weapon (staff needs a rework and mace some buffs) scourges can "only" provide barrier as support reliably (and high speed rezzing) which does not affect any runes or traits that work above health threshold so raw helsing is more beneficial.

Scourges are still nice as support but for many not optimal enough, but thats far from being a druid issue rather a lack of buffing options on all supports.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, just wanted to point out that scourge does have might on barrier.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Abrasive_Grit

That aside, it could afford to be buffed since it applies much slower than druid's grace of the land does which i think is the biggest problem. I would like for druids and scourges both have to have a support role in raids.

@Khailyn.6248 said:

@"InsaneQR.7412" said:Funfact: now everybody wants 2 druids because they nerfed it.Give scourges the abbility to grant might on barrier and you get your boon support.Nerfing druid wouldn't help it a lot. The result of resent nerfs (so druid cannot be both healer and buffer) resultet in a healer AND a buffer druid (although this is quiet unnecessary because druids still heals decent) because they are solid in supporting just due to the abbility to use spirits and spotter. Ppl want them not only for the heals but for the might and buffs.

Scourges need buff support and scrapper could use some of that too.Firebrand can outheal a druid if played smart but lack a real heal weapon (staff needs a rework and mace some buffs) scourges can "only" provide barrier as support reliably (and high speed rezzing) which does not affect any runes or traits that work above health threshold so raw helsing is more beneficial.

Scourges are still nice as support but for many not optimal enough, but thats far from being a druid issue rather a lack of buffing options on all supports.

Ouu yeah i didnt knew that i do not often play necro nor scourge specifically, but yeah buffing this trait in PvE would be veneficial for scourges.

Ofc there is still the chrono monopol that needs to be solved. I think scrapper would be a nice boonshare tank if balanced right.

@"Glott.7239" said:Ok, this is really bugging me lately. Every singel raid group in LFG seems to be looking for TWO Druids. On most encounters there is no logical reason to bring more then on Druid, but for some reason people seem to be under the impression that Druid is "the only viable healing class", which couldn't be further from the truth. So pleas, nerf Druid heal into oblivion, so people finally start looking at other Specs for a 2nd. healer. At least for one balance cycle (3 month). Spirits and Might gen will be more then enough to still bring one Druid, but this "2 Druids" thing has to stop already.

PS: Yes, i'd like some cheese to my whine, thank you.

So your solution to the player base not understanding roles is to have a class nerfed? I have an idea, how about you be part of the solution and make some educational Youtube videos showing the options. Maybe the community will catch on, assuming it is as you say.