Celeste.9135

From my toying with the shortbow if it is to stay with this design frame and not recieve any mechanical changes at the very least, the range of the AOEs needs to increase dramatically, more or all skills need to be finishers and fields, perhaps there should be an effect on dropping each arrow and in general the bow needs to provide more, particularly more valuable boons for a support, otherwise I do not see myself swapping to it ever outside of maybe while flak kiting Sabetha and then returning to mace/shield for every other raid encounter. If we wanted to open up the weapon to hybridise or be played in other roles I'd love to see some kind of mechanic where depending on which detonation is used on the cannisters of essence the weapon could fit other roles. For example with each explosion, one could give extra healing and/or barrier, another could provide multiple boons with each detonation, another could result in power explosions and of course another could cause conditions per explosion. I hope something is done at the very least because by a very very large margin this is the worst weapon added with this proficiency update.

This. A million times. The numbers and efficacy of a class that has been made unfun to play are irrelevant to most people. I’ve mained Druid among other classes since HOT and this ultimately has been the worst I’ve ever felt playing it. If I wanted to play something that felt like HAT then I’d be maining Tempest and not Druid. Personally I’d much rather shout out to the Druid community advocating for the class to be more enjoyable to play rather than those willing to accept this… lesser version just because it is technically playable.

These traits do work with Fern Hound it was the first pet I tried. Out of all of them the only pet who did not apply the boons was the turtle. (edit) They are seemingly lower duration on Fern Hound than other pets now I have double checked so I guess it's bugged there too differently.

Trying to test out different pet options in the aerodrome I found that the baby turtle's "Hunker Down" does not proc the traits that effect all other pet F2 skills. These traits are "Rejuvenation" and "Invigorating Bond" in the Nature Magic line, which add important boons and healing to Beast skills (except for the turtle's). This bug means that the ranger cannot access the aoe Regen, Vigor and Prot from these traits while using this pet which is especially relevant as this is one of the only ways Ranger can access projectile destruction. Please fix this bugged trait interaction.

Incompetence and stubborn refusal to admit that they were wrong. Guild Wars 2 balance team in a nutshell. Change the job description to making the game less fun I guess, my hopes for SOTO are practically non existant at this point.

Adding another + that the shadestep revive was one of the main reasons that I loved playing heal Specter and I’m so disappointed about its removal. Just another loss of unique and fun gameplay from this most recent “balance” pass. Please give it back in some capacity.

This is nowhere near good enough. These changes do not begin to adequately fix the mistakes you have made in the most recent patch. For scourge there is a simple fix that you seem too stubborn to consider despite much of the feedback begging you to. Revert the changes made to shade duration and PUT. ALACRITY. ON. SAND. SAVANT. In regards to druid this does nothing to address the toxic elements of gameplay that have been introduced to it, particularly on relying on pet f2s in order to meet protection uptime. This not only means that Druid cannot reactively heal with CA as it must be used strictly for alacrity we also cannot reliably use our pet F2s either reactively or for planned mechanics without dropping another important boon. Stop doubling down on your bad design and move onto actually fixing the problems you created to classes that functioned fine before the 27th.

This has been an issue in my eyes ever since the Tempest alacrity update with the Elemental Bastion trait being essentially dead in PVE meanwhile Alacrity on overload is a restrictive design overall. Since a healer that doesn't provide alacrity or quickness doesn't fit meta compositions having a healing trait compete with an alacrity trait is nonsensical, no one can choose this trait. Forcing players to use their supportive resources to provide boons is no better than forcing us to fill up on utilities to spam it just shifts the problem elsewhere. How is this balance team so incompetent to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again? Why does Druid which was mostly fine outside of a few tedious/buggy interactions with spirits now feel absolutely awful to play and barely function? Why do I have to keep dreading what new fresh abomination is going to come with every "balance" patch? Do better.

Druid has been one of my mains since HOT, so disappointed with this ruined version in the patch today. Every part of the notes that worried me is actually somehow even worse in how it feels to play. I cannot believe that a real human being made these changes and tested them in actual content and thought, this is fine, this is fun, this is balanced and shipped it. Like I've said about Scourge if the follow up patch in 3 weeks does not adequately address the issues and mistakes introduced with this patch it is likely that I will not purchase the upcoming expansion and be done with GW2.

The incompetence on display here truly is shameful, so disapointed but I feel like I should be used to this balance team breaking things only to have to waste even more time and resources later to fix their mistakes. I will not be buying the upcoming expansion at this rate, if scourge isn't fixed this could be the end of gw2 for me.

Agreed to a certain extent. I believe the abilities should have been changed more or even entirely. I also think staff abilities should get the same treatment. My issue with this addition to Druid is how half baked it seems as is to the point where I am questioning why it's even being added. How would a trait that a healing build would never take changing skills effect the healing build? That is if the build having a low amount of healing would even be problematic which I do not believe. I don't need to do anything of the sort. Firebrand axe is used for both DPS builds and fury generation alongside TRAITED healing in heal builds. Scourge does in fact use Torch on both DPS builds for DPS and also on heal for the Might generation while both benefit from the CC. Mechanist Mace is another weapon that functions for both damage and healing builds, as do a few Elementalist weapons, not to mention Specter's Scepter. From a thematic perspective the Druid having no magical weapon and only using mundane bows and axes doesn't cut it for me. It's just boring. They can trait change certain staff skills just like Guardian Symbols, or Necromancer Scepter. Traits like Dhuumfire allow shroud to function more in a condition space rather than power, while Transfusion (RIP) allows shrouds to heal and support through ressing. In fact already one staff skill has this in the coming patch through the new Blood Moon trait allowing staff 4 to bleed enemies. Eclipse further adding burns to the 1, 2 and/or 3 skills would be an interesting addition to possibly allow the staff to pivot roles much like other weapons and mechanics often do in GW2. Specter is one example. Scourge, Firebrand, Tempest, Alac Mech and other builds all have baseline support with healing and barrier while speccing into DPS. In the next patch Druid without any changes to staff will be another build just like these. PvE or PvP balance makes no difference in this discussion. Base heal values and Heal Power scaling exist so unless you end up seeing Druids with 0 heal power dominating both endgame PvE and PvP because of their healing this is pretty irrelevent. Further more split balance between game modes change both numbers and functionality so even if in theory PvP was overly influenced by 0 healing power DPS druids healing their teams then that can be adjusted for without hurting PvE and vice versa. You have not proposed a single reason that would justify the exclusion of staff in the new build to me, especially since your problem ultimately is Druid getting any DPS build at all which is a seperate discussion entirely and not one I entirely disagree with you on but the traits are coming anyway so whatever I'd rather it be done better. I likely won't see any reason to reply again if that's all you've got.

This is the crux of the issue. It's the problem of shoehorning alac and quickness into builds that were never designed with them in mind in the first place. Firebrand and Renegade in their height got to press their designated quckness and alac buttons while being free to do other things, where Tempest is forced to hit every single overload (except water don't do that) and not be able to reactively attunement swap in order to provide alacrity. Now Druid will share the same bad design with Astral in a way I do not believe will be similar to might on GOTL considering anet's history with these 2 boons. You've hit another point that is far more widespread an issue across the whole patch as well. The proposal was in my understanding, to improve boon provider gameplay by removing the spam utility skill gameplay loop. However all this patch seems to do is trade one spam for another, across every single class that has been touched. Specter and Druid both relying on their transforms to do so which in my opinion will be far more problematic than spamming utilities, unless sufficient duration of alac is given which as I've said I doubt will be the case. If all we're doing is trading spam x for spam y, then what is the point of this change? We gain utiltiy skill freedom while losing profession mechanic freedom? Surely there is a better way. Another example of this issue would be the change to Invigorating Bond possibly being responsible for Protection uptime (without knowing exactly if a spirit will be able to offset this and the similar previous badly designed rework to Verdant Etching having the same effect on Glyphs). If our pet skills need to be spammed to keep Prot on the sub group then Druid loses access to on demand CC that helps it compete with Mechanist. We may be be spamming our utility skills for boons still instead of using them for their actual mechanical effects with new Spirits ultimately changing nothing and having even less freedom in our gameplay loop. Obviously it may not be this bad but without the numbers it's impossible to know and I cannot help but worry. Anyway this is coming from someone who enjoyed Ritualist gameplay from GW1 and I actually liked babysitting my Spirits on Druid so who knows maybe it'll be better but my fear is that the class will be even more spammier with the new design. Whatever way efficacy ends up being, it feels like this balance team keeps falling into the same mistakes time and time again without understanding the actual issues players have.

Using the same weapons for condi ranger that we've had for over 10 years on a new build is just boring. The elite spec weapon abilities changing on a trait like CA is doing too with Eclypse would have allowed the Druid to retain more of the identity of a magical caster while also having more of its gameplay distinct from condi core, slb and untamed. Either you are not understanding the discussion here at all or you are being disingenous. The topic is a trait changing the effects of the weapon skills, for a DPS build that anet is creating. It's in the patch notes. If you have an issue with DPS druid existing at all then that's an entirely seperate conversation that I don't think is going to matter ultimately, I doubt these new traits are going to be deleted. I personally wasn't asking for this build to be made but if they're going to do it I would prefer it to be done adequately. Why is "removing the healing playstyle" an issue for a DPS build? It would be a safe assumption that those changes could include reduced or removed healing (if that is even necesssary) that would obviously not impact the untraited version for heal druid. Also like they said Specter currently exists in this design space of simultaneously healing and DPSing. I can agree with this somewhat but like I said before, Specter. I also haven't seen a good reason why the same logic either way cannot be extended to staff. A trait that adds conditions to the weapon would allow the build to be more unique among condition ranger builds, removing, reducing or keeping the healing I honestly don't care that's down to the balance team. Even keeping it I am highly doubtful of damage Druid becoming meta defining or a balance issue though.

Begging anet that if alac scourge is going to be a thing please just put it on Sand Savant and revert the uptime nerf to shades.

This isn't just an issue of downstate = no alac although that is a valid concern. It's also an issue where if the alac uptime is too stingy then Druid will struggle to ever use CA reactively for actual healing which is something I'm worried about. With alac on spirits and might generation so widespread across the party this wasn't ever usually an issue lately with the old GOTL, I'm worried that new alac GOTL will have a "need to spam on cooldown" playstyle much like tempest overloads currently that leads to an unpleasant gameplay loop.