Gotejjeken.1267

I think I might be one of five roaming druids left in the game at this point but here goes... What is the purpose of Blood Moon? It works two different ways: For things that root, the bleed is applied during the duration of the root (Jacranda Embrace, Entangle) For immob/CC, the bleed is applied once at same time immob/CC is applied I really hope it is supposed to work the first way and this is a bug they fix sometime between now and the expansion. Because if it is intended to work the second way, who over at anet greenlit 1 bleed (2! in PvE)? I can't tell because of the nonsensical ICD it has. If the ICD is on the daze---why? CA form is 10/15s, so an 8s ICD does little--guess if you had mad alac you could get it down before 8s? I don't think you can regen enough AF though, unless there is some specific conditions I'm missing here (full alac and hitting a boss or something that isn't moving?). Regardless, why wasn't it just set to 10s/15s to match avatar entry? If the ICD is on the daze AND bleed, then it means that it is bugged and it should work the second way. Can we lay off the water and just have this changed to pulsing while any immob is applied and a slightly stronger (2-3 bleeds) on CC/daze? Then just remove the ICD (or set it to 10/15s), as no one is going to intentionally keep burning CA entry for a daze when Druid has about 5+ other was that are better (sb #5, hilt bash, warhorn #5, glyph, lunar impact, gazelle, etc.). Can also soon add Hammer to the daze list.

I wouldn't ignore the pet in competitive irrespective of what spec you use (even core). Usable competitive pets carry one huge attribute and that's CC ability. Even with soulbeast, staying perma-merged is a bad idea. As for OP, you can run LB/LB 'arrow cart' ranger if you truly want to be perma glued to safety. It's probably helpful to learn melee range though, as pretty much anything has a million ways to get in melee range and then you are in big trouble. Untamed is what I'd recommend, as you have full pet control and access to all of the ranged weapons ranger has. Just pick one you like and learn how to position your pet--helps to have ones with gap closers like Smokescale, Rock Gazelle, etc. Ranged pets are frustrating on Untamed so I'd ignore them unless they also have melee component (Iboga, Jacranda).

Was a straight nerf. I could actually see using Natural Stride with the new offensive Druid traits, but they replaced it with Natural Balance which is just trash. Celestial Shadow is powerful, but is actually quite a hinderance when you are sidenoding or defending points in general because you can't contest while stealthed. They should have at least retained the movement speed component for Natural Balance, because the dmg reduction component would then have replaced the condi duration reduction component Natural Stride had.

Celestial Shadow = Eclipse; you know the skill and icon named by the person who originally designed Druid and wasn't on a massive Twilight fanfic bend. Eclipse and Blood Moon though? Evokes way more vampire than the actual celestial events imply. Hell, on a Blood Moon IRL there are people who believe that's when the supernatural come out. At the rate Anet balances they should just apply the condis to the Druid for increased damage, so we can be worse Harbingers.

No, it's exactly as bad as we thought. I get the intent, but topics worded like this do not help fix matters--they need to know the changes are unequivocally bad or we will continue getting terrible balancing.

Which is fine but doesn't cover the combo issue. One such combo is Unleashed Pet #3 to Unleashed Ranger #2; you can assign these statically but then you will lose access to the blind that Unleashed Ranger #3 gives. So, to me it is useless because you are literally losing half your skills on any spec that isn't Untamed. Again, you can assign them but cannot change them in mid-combat like Untamed can, so you lose access to them. Which is why I said illusion of choice. They could have just combined the hammer skills into one set to match all other Ranger weapons, because Hammer is the only one with a dual state. This would make it work across all specs without losing any skills. The other example is Staff ambush, they could just apply that baseline to Staff #2 instead of locking it behind an Unleashed Ambush. The last is not weapon related, but they could make full pet control across all specs--because that is the most impactful of the changes due to how bad the pet AI is and how powerful being able to command them at will is. First reply really summed it the best: Fix what's broken before breaking things further is generally a good practice.

I don't care about PvE, from longtime competitive standpoint: As I've mentioned a bunch of times, hammer is useless without the untamed synergy as it was designed as a combo weapon with itself. Staff did not magically become better because you can use it on other specs. It's still a kiting only weapon, and always has been the best one we have. Will be an option to get away from GS on power builds, but you lose all damage while doing that. Mobility is also the same as on GS, but you lose the block and damage GS brings. The unleashed ambushes look fine, but the staff one could have just been baseline for the useless #2 skill all this time. Overall, illusion of choice over benefit. Also, same bugs we've always had, just multiplied by a lot.

It's s also not as simple as damage vs CC. Hammer is specifically setup to use both states and has dedicated combos by switching between them. If they do the obvious and just have the damaging version be the version non-untamed gets, then it will be a useless weapon as you quite literally have no defenses. The meat and usability in hammer IS the CC and also the ambush, so they'd need to have the entire thing reworked. I highly doubt that but this beta will be interesting...

The blunt is they removed the identity from sword. When I read a lot of replies, I kind of wonder who has been around long enough to remember what that identity was. Let's go way back...to the OG sword: This is by far my favorite iteration. It made perfect sense, and everything worked fluidly. The auto meant you could be aggressive, can evade in two different directions with 2, and serpent strike was crazy useful for flanking. They then progressively ruined that with this forward leap insistence. The sword isn't about forward leaps, it's about kiting. You simply do not kite the same way with two identical linear leaps as what you see in the video above--in fact you can't. It's not about being able to turn the camera either; it's a direct hinderance to have to leap in, about face, and leap out. Prior you had a skill that would just send you backward and if you wanted to keep going you about face and use the leap, otherwise you re-engage. Removing the flanking animation from serpent strike may be the most egregious change though. Positioning is everything in competitive, and even with two leaps you are still leaping. It's literally the blandest possible change they can do, and it accomplishes nothing. Why not just give Pounce two charges and keep serpent strike the same? Seriously, in what world is putting two identical leaps (aside from slight range and debuff differences) on two different keys even remotely good design?

Yes to both. What they did was took how immob Druid was played (while simultaneously laughting it off as an edge case meme build) and expanded it to the entire kit. Meaning, you would use CA for immob / roamer Druid in exactly this way--go in, hit 3-2 for cleanse, sometimes hit 4 but most likely just hit 5 and out if your opponent didn't facetank it. Druid though was designed as support--for you to stay in the avatar--and actual support Druids would. The reason I say they modeled Eclipse / Grace of Land after roamer is they didn't go with a passive 'stay in the avatar and support' they went with an active 'spam all the CA skills' approach. Which is why this patch feels so bad, as they made changes supposedly to make Druid more support minded and have DPS option, but made every change with roamer in mind--yet none of them are useful to a roamer.

This? Your pet will not use their first and second skill automatically, you will have to command them to use it manually through F1 and F3. If so, I think that's just a badly worded explanation of how the actual unleash pet skills work--because you can set F1-F3 to auto now on the 'leashed' version. That, or whoever updated the wiki never updated the Untamed page to mention auto-attack, probably because that's a baseline feature like full pet control should be. As in, the fact you can control F1-F3 is more of a 'happy accident' around Untamed design because it'd be super jarring to have unleashed control then leash the pet and only be able to use F2. I really don't think they planned that one out. Anyway, my comment was more of a one-off around my personal thoughts about flexibility and don't want to derail the topic too much with it.

I agree, but in terms of universal CD reduction they have stuff like alacrity in the game with wildly different ways to access it. Through that lens they don't seem particularly concerned about how hard something is to play. They just seem to add that boon randomly to things and go from there. To me, it made more sense to modify FF to make it only affect cantrips and then improve the cantrips. Essentially what they did on Bladesworn for Tactical Reload only affecting bladesworn abilities so you can't faeroll using shouts (as much). Really though I believe the consensus is that they have a serious problem with balancing mechanical complexity. Since for a while there we had Untamed and Mechanist, one with mega-high APM for mediocre gain and the other just hitting one button to 1-shot everything. Sure, they've smoothed that out a little, but the core problem remains here, they have little idea how to balance risk vs. reward and just cover the gaps with boon spam.

It has been cast to purgatory with Ancient Seeds for being so OP that no one can actually explain why. I still don't get why ambush just doesn't reset on weapon swap baseline. Also, why it isn't just a skill you use like steal instead of being timed and tied to your auto-attack for extra annoyance points.

It's a mace on a ranger, there really isn't much more that needs to be said here. The only way they get worse is a rifle or a pistol on the ranger because it clashes so hard thematically it isn't even funny. EDIT: And yes, I realize that park rangers shoot people who start forest fires and Walker Texas Ranger also uses guns, but GW2 rangers are not park rangers nor throw roundhouse kicks, they are essentially shaman who don't use firearms. The sane options were scepter and shield, that's not hard. Possibly focus but that's a little too magical IMO. They really, really shouldn't be aiming to put every weapon on every spec as some choices are just outlandishly stupid. Greatsword on ranger has always been sus, and Hammer on untamed was even iffy but at least had some shadow of 'bunny thumper' meme to sell it---but mace?

Yeah, I brought it up previously somewhere but they basically took spirits and made them worse totems. That's a really low bar actually. As for Druid, it was obvious to any of us that played Druid that locking alac to the CA skills was the worst design possible. Even if you are of the opinion that locking alac to Druid itself makes sense, there really is no way binding the generation to the skill use makes sense. The only way it works is if they made it pulse alac while you were in avatar form. Then you could at least support how you need and just get the alac since they are so intent on keeping it in the game. Still utterly hate the idea and think they should have left spirits alone and just fixed it so they can't be damaged.

Full pet control isn't a profession mechanic, Unleashed Power is: Unleashed Power - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Nothing there mentions full pet control; reason I consider it half kitten is because if they are touting flexibility with this update then there is no greater than being able to actually control your pet regardless of spec. Locking that to Untamed was always the stupid part, and now insanely stupid if you can use the literal e-spec weapon everywhere. So, I'm fine with profession mechanics staying on the actual e-spec, until they truly go for singularity and just start trying to combine e-spec functionality like some eldritch version of GW1.

Well yeah, anet has been all about e-sports APM for no gain since Untamed was released. Most of us called this too when they removed it off spirits; was stupid enough to have to spam spirits to get it, but at least it didn't require this amount of mechanical complexity for little gain.

Apparently, there's no lock on weapons anymore, so you can use any weapon your class can use with any elite (or core). Now the numerous reasons this is a horrible balance nightmare are probably apparent, but I guess every game has to end sometime. They should at the very least keep it out of sPvP because there is no possible way they rebalance all skills not to tie to e-spec in a month. Meaning for me, as a ranger main, there is zero chance they revamp hammer to something meaningful that doesn't rely on Untamed specific items like the ambush and the flip skills. They will also most likely half kitten it so that pets control isn't opened up to all specs even though the weapons are...

I'm not the confused reaction but am actually a little confused at that link. There are 10 games played, and you have 10 placement matches each season... EDIT: To clarify, there is no proof there you stayed anywhere near plat on support Druid. Or that you actually played support Druid... Yeah, this might be the first time on the forums I agree with that confused reaction's intended purpose of being confused and not as a disagreement / trolling mechanism.

Basically this. At least in SoloQ--support is tough there in general because people don't listen, but trying to support uncoordinated moving targets with CA is not fun. It's better to just switch to immob Druid and 'support' via CC than it is to try to actually heal people. And I've tried. Best results I got were a Sw/Torch + Staff hybrid support / condition damage build that ran Glyph of Stars and the usual Sk/Ws/Druid. Didn't really need the immob with it because staff + sword has insane mobility in sPvP so could run Lingering Light. Like I said, it worked somewhat, but only because half the build was condition damage carry through burning and poison, which is about as off meta as it gets for competitive but is effective even to g2-g3 when people aren't expecting it.

Druid got nerfed, there is no real way to spin that. Blood Moon dmg output cannot match Ancient Seeds and we obviously lose the immob there. Even if it retains the Daze, still bad because now have to blow potentially two defensive mechanisms (swap to staff for kiting then CA for daze) instead of just swapping. Also lose the staff CD reduction which is inexcusable. Eclipse is just a bad skill all around, ranger NEVER builds into burning dmg, only builds poison for select PvE builds and only builds bleeding for competitive, which that doesn't help. Alacrity on CA seems great until you realize it hard locked alac to Druid. The compensation on spirits doesn't seem to be enough, they seem to be where banners are right now. What they really did was buff Nature Magic and so there will most likely be some core builds running around that got way better. Quickness on Untamed is fine, probably will see the current super speed builds in competitive integrate it and become better since the other two GMs are pretty trash.

That's the same Untamed build that has been in sPvP for 8 months to over a year now--it just traded out UT because of the animation nerf. From my estimation and experience playing against it when teleburst was a thing (Jan-Feb this year), it wasn't great and relied way too much on the teleburst. Outside of that it was just kiting around with LB, and that's more cheesing range advantage and opponents that only know 'stand on point and die' than it is anything special with the build. When I wasn't playing immob Druid, I had way more success on Axe/Wh + GS Untamed and don't expect that to change with the upcoming patch.

I accidentally read that as 'no thanks to burning at night'--with the recent naming changes was about to post 'please don't give them ideas' then had to re-read it 😂.

Sadly, it's not uncommon. From my estimation half the reason the server system has never worked is because a mix of no-lifers PPT'ing and bots running into walls.

Yes, but Eclipse would be the place to put that IMO. Get Eclipse off of CA, put it entirely onto staff. Have two options to retain condi DPS: Can give the Ancient Seeds component, but only off player/pet generated CC's and while using the staff. In addition, you get the staff CDs. - Or - Keep the condition DPS component but apply it only to staff and again add the staff CDs. Quick example I can think of: Staff 1 = Vuln every so often, increase power coefficient slightly to add some DPS Staff 2 = Chill around target it attaches to Staff 3 = X stacks of burning on whatever it hits Staff 4 = Immob but faster activation time Staff 5 = Placeable bubble that will cripple / slow enemies If going this route, can practically take the healing off of staff and just make it all DPS if you take the trait. This allows interaction with Celestial Shadow / Blood Moon for actual condi DPS and you can still take another condi DPS minded weapon set like shortbow, axe / torch, sword / dagger, etc. Took me as a player 5 minutes to come up with this; it shouldn't be hard for devs that worked on this game for 10 years.