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Can someone please explain the reasoning behind nerfing Druid again?


Strider.7849

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I have no idea. Druid was one of the elites that already had a trade-off, sacrificing damage for support ability and CA never seemed over-powered as it has to be charged up and the cooldown was not insignificant. Removing Druid-specific buffs like Glyph of Empowerment so that they wouldn’t have a clear advantage over other support roles made sense. But the pet nerf was the worst both thematically and gameplay wise and everything else is just nails in the coffin. :disappointed:

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:It looks like one of those cases where it was changed with PvE in mind rather than WvW or especially PvP.

It's silly and laughable, but that pretty much sums up this whole upcoming balance patch really.

How was a Druid nerf needed in PvE??? That is where I played my Druid — fractals, raids, etc. — but no more since the pet nerf because I hate it thematically and all but the tankiest pets go down the moment an enemy sneezes at them. :anguished:

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@VDAC.2137 said:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:It looks like one of those cases where it was changed with PvE in mind rather than WvW or especially PvP.

It's silly and laughable, but that pretty much sums up this whole upcoming balance patch really.

How was a Druid nerf needed in PvE??? That is where I played my Druid — fractals, raids, etc. — but no more since the pet nerf because I hate it thematically and all but the tankiest pets go down the moment an enemy sneezes at them. :anguished:

I don't play much PvE stuffs, but I figure losing the evade frames doesn't matter as much as getting a reduced CD on the skill there.

In PvP where Druid was a really good side-noder in the distant past, you'll rarely if ever get the reduced CD, and now you've lost the evade frames as well.

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I play ranger but never liked Soulbeast. Gave it a try when it was over powered and still didn't like it. I think its safe to assume Druid is the "new" Elementalist where balance patches get release and they randomly nerf someone associated with Druid. . Those nerfs hurt Druid a lot.

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I don't think Arenanet hates druids in particular. I think Arenanet have never liked druids and scrappers as side noders specifically instead of team fight support. I think that's the philosophy why Ancestral Grace's cooldown went up as well as losing evade frames, but also have it receive a net cooldown shave when used to heal an ally instead of escape. This also explains the reasoning for things like Bulkwark Gyro.

I think Arenanet wants druids and scrappers to be dedicated team support the way Firebrands are with almost 0 Side Node duelist capacity.

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I'm under the suspicion the changes come from charts that are somewhat old, a month, 2, 3 even an year. They are mostly working with statistics and you can feel like they are doing that by the sharp mathematical changes. For one math is not fun and you can't measure fun with a chart. Most of the changes are made like that with no active involvement in the game, a lot of statements seem tone deaf , cause there aren't many boots on the ground just charts. I have to deal with people like that in my workplace, i can tell you developers are really intelligent people, they can solve programming and complex math issues with ease, but when they make some decisions in a lot of cases i wonder if they can tie their shoe laces by themselves.

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@pukish.5784 said:Where's Trevor? Tell us your thoughts please!

@sephiroth.4217 said:

@pukish.5784 said:Where's Trevor? Tell us your thoughts please!

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" you've been summoned ?

It was a nice hot summer day in Michigan, where I live. I had just got back home from a delicious family barbecue where many of my family members from the south had come for the outing. It was a good day as I had not seen many of them for quite some time. My aunt had given me a few micro brewed beers from the south to take home with me. They were interesting, something I had never had before.

When I got home, I cracked open one of those beers and loaded up the Guild Wars 2 Forums for my daily read & response. I had noticed that people were talking about some balance patch prerelease notes, so I went to read them myself. I was looking through everything kind of thinking "whatever nothing new in terms of the types of weird changes". Then I got to Scrapper and thought "wow what? whatever, guess we'll see what happens". Read through everything with the same kind of whatever attitude. Then I got to Thief and thought "why? just why?". Then I got to Ranger. I fully expected to see Sic Em nerfs in some form, as even I had suggested that Sic Em needed a nerf. I also had fully expected to see some kind of buff, albeit maybe slight, to Druid. You see the Druid specialization has quite seriously undergone 100% nerfing since its release. Not a single buff has been given to this specialization since release, only weird alterations or very hard nerfs. When I say hard nerfs, I'm talking "get neutered" kind of nerfing. After all of the great power creep that other specializations have benefited within recent years, I figured that it must be time for some kind of a buff for Druid. This patch has to be it. Considering that the representation of Druid in ranked play is 1 person past a plat+ level, I figured someone would have noticed this, and tossed some love towards the Druid. But then I read this: Ancestral Grace: This skill no longer evades attacks. Increased recharge from 18 seconds to 20 seconds. If at least 1 ally other than yourself is healed, the recharge is reduced by 5 seconds. After reading it once, I thought no no no, I had to have read something wrong, so I read it a second time. After reading it a second time, I said aloud to myself: "What in the %^&*!?" as I sat in silent fury while thinking over all of the reasons why this single change would be THE nail in the coffin that completely ends the viability of Druid in spvp. That evade on AG is an absolutely necessary function for a Druid to be able to do what it does. I was absolutely furious that the balance team would make a decision like this. It was as if they did not play their own game, and did not understand the practical mechanics of how things work.

As I sat there sweltering in my rage, all of a sudden I was picked up directly out of my gaming chair and thrown on the floor by an invisible attacker. It began stomping me in the gut and kicking me in the face until I was knocked out. When I woke up, I looked at my wall and it had spray painted this really big calling card or message to me. It looked like this:

tdjnPoy.png

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@pukish.5784 said:Where's Trevor? Tell us your thoughts please!

@pukish.5784 said:Where's Trevor? Tell us your thoughts please!

@Trevor Boyer.6524 you've been summoned ?

It was a nice hot summer day in Michigan, where I live. I had just got back home from a delicious family barbecue where many of my family members from the south had come for the outing. It was a good day as I had not seen many of them for quite some time. My aunt had given me a few micro brewed beers from the south to take home with me. They were interesting, something I had never had before.

When I got home, I cracked open one of those beers and loaded up the Guild Wars 2 Forums for my daily read & response. I had noticed that people were talking about some balance patch prerelease notes, so I went to read them myself. I was looking through everything kind of thinking "whatever nothing new in terms of the types of weird changes". Then I got to Scrapper and thought "wow what? whatever, guess we'll see what happens". Read through everything with the same kind of whatever attitude. Then I got to Thief and thought "why? just why?". Then I got to Ranger. I fully expected to see Sic Em nerfs in some form, as even I had suggested that Sic Em needed a nerf. I also had fully expected to see some kind of buff, albeit maybe slight, to Druid. You see the Druid specialization has quite seriously undergone 100% nerfing since its release. Not a single buff has been given to this specialization since release, only weird alterations or very hard nerfs. When I say hard nerfs, I'm talking "get neutered" kind of nerfing. After all of the great power creep that other specializations have benefited within recent years, I figured that it must be time for some kind of a buff for Druid. This patch has to be it. Considering that the representation of Druid in ranked play is 1 person past a plat+ level, I figured someone would have noticed this, and tossed some love towards the Druid. But then I read this:
Ancestral Grace: This skill no longer evades attacks. Increased recharge from 18 seconds to 20 seconds. If at least 1 ally other than yourself is healed, the recharge is reduced by 5 seconds.
After reading it once, I thought no no no, I had to have read something wrong, so I read it a second time. After reading it a second time, I said aloud to myself: "What in the %^&*!?" as I sat in silent fury while thinking over all of the reasons why this single change would be THE nail in the coffin that completely ends the viability of Druid in spvp. That evade on AG is an absolutely necessary function for a Druid to be able to do what it does. I was absolutely furious that the balance team would make a decision like this. It was as if they did not play their own game, and did not understand the practical mechanics of how things work.

As I sat there sweltering in my rage, all of a sudden I was picked up directly out of my gaming chair and thrown on the floor by an invisible attacker. It began stomping me in the gut and kicking me in the face until I was knocked out. When I woke up, I looked at my wall and it had spray painted this really big calling card or message to me. It looked like this:

tdjnPoy.png

How do I choose this as the best answer? My work is done here. Goodbye Druid, thank you all for the responses. I quit.

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