Mauti.3520

Normal / Heroic / Mythic ! Let's go!

I'd say In Instanced Endgame PvE it's pretty bad (in comparison): It isn't bad or unviable on it's own it's just decisivly worse than pretty much any other pick you can make. It has cumbersome class mechanics, worst PvE group utility, bad reactive adaption, horrible gatekept CC, inherent squishness and hybrid-hybrid Weapons that sit between all chairs just providing numbers but don't shine in their roles even slightly. The only spec -to me- that feels somewhat okay and rewarding in Endgame PvE is Tempest. It's boon builds are pretty functional, deliver value, aren't jank to play and Tempest has at least some reactive Utility to shine, handle mechanics or fill gaps. It also features a very accessible potent Condition build now that, unlike many other Ele DPS Builds, isn't all that squish. Weaver and Catalyst in contrast just feel like borderline griefing yourself and your team. They have numbers that are theoretically on par, that's it. Rest of the kit is inferior to 80-90% of other E-Specs you can choose, be it staying power, CC, Range, Utility, gap filling, handling mechanics eca. They suffer greatly when not played relatively optimal by yourself AND if your party/raid doesn't play very good too. The story of "I started on Ele but rerolled XYZ and it's so much better now" I experience and hear about frequently is way more prevalent than with any other class. "Average Andy" drops this class like hot coals after stepping into Instanced Content the first few times. In PvP and WvW it's a somewhat different story. In WvW the zerg builds could maybe need a smidge help, but they are still pretty great at what they do. Roaming is great to typically cele-broken while the PvP builds on this class are also right up there too. Open World can also be good to great. Edit: Personally I think it's a great and fun class to play, I do so frequently in any sort of content, and have my Eles as my "beloved seconds" behind Ranger. But since PvE is the majority's interest and endgame performance serves as some kind of "percieved benchmark" to the state of a class, Ele is seen, somewhat deserved, as not to be in a great shape, no matter how many Catalysts completely melt faces in PvP and I still hope Anet someday can fix or at least mend that a bit.

Traits are fine for Alacrity DPS Druid. No swap/change needed. It deals comparable DPS to other Alacrity Specs without Eclipse. The biggest gatekeeper to the existence of Alacrity DPS Druid however is and stays Celestial Avatar itself and in particular Astral Force as it makes the entire gearing, rotation and boon uptime incredibly volatile and unreliable. Celestial Avatar and Astral Force where designed for a pure Healer in mind only, and before Barrier as a mechanic even existed. Thus, it is cumbersome for a DPS and particular Boon DPS to consistently utilize Celestial Avatar in a coherent rotation, since they naturally don't have Regeneration ticks on their party and don't spam Staff and Healing Skills around. It's really hard to sit at 100 Astral Force once it's Cooldown is done if not playing a full or hybrid healer in a party without perma barrier or lack of damage pressure. The only way to consistently achieve that for non Heal Druids is by running Wilderness Survival, having Protection and getting non stop Damage ticks so Rugged Growth heals you and generates Astral Force. Thus Celestial Avatar already is a culprit to Condition DPS Druid but an almost straight up No-Go for an Alacrity DPS Build. It makes the boon access incredibly unreliable and finicky. Tweaks to how Astral Force is generated (a certain trait like Blood Moon could increase gains through damaging attacks greatly, while removing the healing aspect) or Celestial Avatar is tweaked as a whole (Like Necro/Specter don't need 100% Life Force to enter theirs) are likely to create way better results. Being able to consistently hop into Avatar every ~8-9 seconds, fire a few skills, generating Alacrity, and hop out again - similar as Alac Specter's rotation -, IMHO would improve the situation much more than giving Alac Druids access to Eclipse.

Love to see Might with no Opportunity Cost for Quicktamed. We can bring fair Might now without anything or heavy Might with Sun Spirit + Jungle Prowler. Great boost. Also welcome back(?) greatsword and probably Arrow Cart Build.

Hello! The biggest issue for Alacrity DPS Druid rn is not the trade-off between GotL and Eclipse - it does comparable damage without Eclipse as other Alacrity DPS - but the major inconsistency that is Astral Force generation and Celestial Avatar Alacrity generation to be used in a standardized, reliable dps rotation that also maintains the boon at all times everywhere. RN you can play Alacrity DPS Druid - you basically put on the Condi Quick Untamed gear but change the Weapons and Traits - but it requires knowledge of the kit and the encounter like short but frequent Avatar loops vs. longer and more stacking Avatar loops and so on. Extra BD on some fights vs lower on others. The fact that raids have ticking Arena damage, Strikes do not and the Barrier mechanic can gatekeep the healing generation of Astral Force, makes the issue even worse to be destilled down into an always applicable build and rotation for "the average player" that can keep Alacrity up reliably without having a lot of experience and forethought. In the end that's a lot to ask for a completely viable but not top tier Alacrity DPS and since there's a lot of angles and problems approaching such a spec, it just happened to not have an accessible, available build+rotation featured on many prominent build sites. Imho swapping Eclipse with Natural Balance won't fix that, as both traits are not the real issue here. Taking a look at Astral Force generation in general (I feel it's outdated in Barrier Spam PvE, especially when Revs will also do it) and the Alacrity Application from GotL could yield better results at making the Alac DPS Spec more approachable. Druid traits have been reworked to not be heal-centric, but the Spec's ressource to utilize it's class mechanic and Alacrity wasn't touched.

I am excited for the pet changes. - Only Takedown should be renamed to Letdown. It's a bit sad.

Just why nerf Untamed in WvW.

tbh, I feel like with the infestation that Heal Scourge is about to become and Power Reaper/Power Scourge being as popular as usual it's just a kitten show sometimes. It felt okay when only Reaper's had it as part of their utility that Scourge had not but with Necro GS now core and Necro being even more a blight to WvW it's just too much. 900 Range,.5 Targets lmao. Why strips/corrupts when you can just melt stab anyway. Guard basically drops Stab for 1-2 secs and the pull ping pong fiesta starts. Roll the dice who get's caught. Not that much fun. Not talking about randoms getting snacked off a wall, bc whatever. - It's ArenaNets part to decide whether they like the idea of walls being more like death traps and noob bait than actual defenses nowadays.

May I genuinely ask what is so great about a resource generation become kitten as soon as your group contains scourges? It's bad, and the class gets progressively and measureable worse the more barrier it has in group. The dps build is below average rn and the alac dps is a pile of trash since it's inception. only heal druid is good.

What is this trend of giving them blunt names of trees (male) or flowers (female)? Is there a catch about it I just seem to miss or overlook? So far I have found only 'Healer Wren' bearing a name that roughly fits typical Sylvari names stemming from insular celtic languages. The names I have found so far are: Narcisse (f) Hortensia (f) Oakly (m) Daisy (f) Begonia (f) Cedar (m) Wren (f) Idk? What's up with that?

My take is: Because Cata could trigger it's stupid Vicious Empowerment trait and thus it's attribute stacks several times with it per target. Internal CD is only 1/4s The CC of any WH build is grief tier now and Ele was consistently slacking in CC across the board already before. Well played.

It becomes more and more apparent that the way Astral Force is generated and Celestial Avatar is used is the lynchpin in PvE Druid's design, playability and viability. One thing that is especially staggering is the big Anti-Synergy the system has with barrier. Druid hates it, Druid doesn't want that yellow layer, Druid needs them and their allies to constantly recieve red damage to generate Astral Force. It's manageable on the heal build, it's incredibly obnoxious on the DPS build and a straight up deal breaker for the Alac DPS build (which is kitten to have good Alac Uptime+DPS with even without any barrier in the group). The way Astral Force is generated no longer fits the way Guild Wars 2 is played in 2023 imho.

I noticed that on Storm Spirit too. It's oddly inconsistent Water Spirit Slam: 3k Heal on 5p 2nd Slam 3k Heal on 5p Storm Spirit Slam: Full Damage - 200 Defiance/2secs Daze 2nd Slam: 50% Damage - 200 Defiance/2secs Daze Sun Spirit Slam: 3x6s Burn 2nd Slam 3x6s Burn Stone Spirit Slam: Crippled, Weakness 2nd Slam: Crippled, Weakness Frost Spirit Slam: 3xCleanse on 5p 2nd Slam: 3xCleanse on 5p Nature not tested.

Spirited Arrival should be on Pet Ability not swap in my opinion. The boons on it are debateable, though I would keep Might. I really like Nature's Vengeance and Invigorating Bond and Regen coming from Beast Abilities and possibly Healing Skill. CD on Invigorating Bond is debateable. Overall I like the direction we are going in. It's becoming a better support traitline overall.

I don't think so. It sounds neat, useful and tempting as a but ultimately baseline. 5 player Quickness on a Core Skill is not a good idea. 1. It would give an Alac Heal, Alac DPS and DPS builds access to 5 player Quickness for barely any downside (Storm Spirit is only little behind in damage compared to Trap/Spores - It is stricly better when running Nature Magic AND Nature's Vengeance). And we see how problematic that is (Catalyst, Bladesworn, Chrono). None of them ever could maintain quickness alone in a party when playing DPS. But they well could when stacked. With a base duration of 5 that would also mean an Alacrity Heal Druid could have ~50%+ of Quickness uptime on it's party as well. There is no way that is going to happen. 2. Ultimately it would add to the Power Budget and would have to be balanced accordingly. The problem with "backup boon" utilities for Quickness/Alacrity is that rotations and gear setup would be built around strictly including them - If they are worth it dps wise and Storm Spirit clearly is - so in the end the Quickness Build wouldnt gain much except some bit of dps at the cost of a permanent Utility slot. I can understand where you are coming from, but it is indeed too much and not a good idea. Storm Spirit rn is already pretty good.

Pretty much, why not. Actually when looking at Wallow, it being a porcine, and they pretty much clearly "sabotaged" it for Soulbeast by making it Supportive (We already have Supportive Porcine, only Ferocious is missing) and not giving Soulbeast access to Maul when merged (while the regular pet version has Maul) would make it imaginable that they did the very same to a Moa back in the day. I personally see no issue at first glance for a Supportive Moa.

No, just no. Please. No. Alacrity on CA is fine, maybe a little bit too stingy still (Wouldnt go over 1.25 secs baseline though) and the radius a bit too small (360 as on Tempest please?). Camping staff would make the Alacrity application, uptime and gameplay so much worse and would kill any form of Alacrity DPS Druid right away. Jeeez, you barely have any leeway to ever swap to an offhand weapon set with 100 BD ever, just camp staff. The proposed buffs to Grace of the Land and Celestial Avatar are ludicrous. What's the point? Making Druid so disgustingly overpowered every other Healing Spec quits? Lmao 12 seconds baseline Resistance with 0 Boon Duration on Avatar 5 (It pulses 4 times btw, not 3 times) Barrier has anti synergy with gaining Astral Force btw. So the last thing you want is a barrier topped off party once you leave it. Pets are fine as a source of boons. One could debate about the boons on pet swap though. pet swap should be reserved for bringing an actual 2nd utility pet or even revive the pet (Yes, they can still die pretty easily some times). Using the Ability of your first pet for boons is good. It's the class mechanic and boons have to come from somwhere. Spirits are fine. Druid is fine. It's better everywhere in the game except at afking. There could and should be some nudges, some tweaks, bit qol that's it. And please don't get me started on Mukluk. I like him. But that man has discovered that playing the most broken force multiplier and utility compressed role in the entire game (Heal+Boon) needs trade-offs in it's design and power budget. And they don't seem to like that and prefer running a completely reactive Healer instead. WHICH IS FINE. The game absolutely completely SUPPORTS this way of squad building. You don't need to role compress Alacrity or Quickness and tons of boons into your healer, that is OPTIONAL! Always has been. But if you WANT to do that you have to use and give up something. Every boon dps and boon heal in the game has to do that. Boon DPS sacrifice a good amount of Damage and or potential Utility while Healers have to give up a good amount of Heals and decide between Utility. We can't have it all.

Yes, more buttons to press to do good unga bunga. Feels the same on Weaver where you go full glass and see measly hits left and right. Must push buttons.

The Frost Spirit is an option for WvW Heal Druid as it's a convenient AoE Cleanse for 3 conditions for 5 players that isn't gated behind Celestial Avatar. A second time if you run Nature's Vengeance and happen to stay in the same spot 3 seconds later. For roaming I don't know. For PvE they see more use to provide boons rather than for their active effects. The damage+daze on Storm Spirit is very nice though and fits particularly well into a Quickness Untamed. Water Spirit a nice AoE Heal with some Vigour attached and the Stone one for it's Aegis. Sun Spirit is convenient Might+Burn. lso the Nature Spirit is a glorious and convenient big rez utility now that unlike Glyph of the Stars isn't gated behind Druid.

Druid is doing great. There is your zerg build. Some WvWers appear to do their best to besmear the spec, because Ranger is bad in zergs is what they have been told already by their great grandfathers hailing from the Eternal Battlegrounds. And seem dedicated to die on that hill for real.

It's a mystery to me quite frankly. And it clearly shows in the best (as flawed as it is) source that we have in Wingman. People - or shall I say the sample size - appear to massively prefer it over Melee.

I've mained the profession since mid HoT and probably never enjoyed and played it as much as I do now. Though I was VERY unhappy for a while the months following EoD release. I am a certified Fervent Force and Spirit Herder Gameplay hater. I play many Ranger PvE Builds frequently in Instanced and OW (Power Untamed, Condi Druid, 3x Soulbeast, Quicktamed, Heal Alacrity Druid) and hope Condi Alacrity Druid will wholly join the pack soon. Also always enjoyed it for some PvP/ WvW Roaming and started to like the WvW Zerg Druid as well. My "2nd" classes are mainly Elementalist and Guardian. Though I technically have "every build" and play and enjoy a good amount of them. Some Mirage, a bit Specter, a tiny bit of Spellbreaker, Reaper and so on. My Elementalist also sees a very broad amount of PvE content as well, be it for DPS as Condi/Power Weaver or Alacrity DPS or Heal Tempest. Guardian I play mainly in PvE when I need or want to play Quickness Heal. Not much else. I really enjoy Willbender though. To give a rough overview about what I play in PvE: - OW? - Anything I feel rn. - DPS? - Pick one of the various and great Ranger or Elementalist builds and maybe some Willbender. - Alacrity? - I mainly go for Tempest, when Healing it's about equal between Druid/Tempest. Some Specter/Mirage/Mech if it's useful and maybe some Willbender soon. - Quickness? - Untamed for qDPS, QFB as a backup if their stab/util is really helpful and not just a greed feature for monkeys. HFB for Quick Heal. Always good ol' HFB. In terms of WvW Elementalist and Guardian own the lion's share of my WvW playtime these days. They are a complete package for it. - Essential Zerg Support Build - Great Zerg DPS Build - A wide selection of strong and flexible roaming /smallscale builds. I would say WvW remains the only slightly somewhat Achilles' Heel of the Ranger kit in general. We have our roaming and we have an excellent Zerg Build in Heal Cleanse Druid now - I am really grateful we have WvW Druid - but still on the DPS side of things in zergs and organized play it looks a bit grim.

Shouldn't the 60% Bleeding duration increase from Trapper's Expertise for a Spike Trap that's 25 seconds CD now be pretty strong? Not completely competitive with Sharpened Edges but for a build that runs less crit chance it should be pretty good? Maybe someone with too much time rn can take comparison.

Yes currently Ranger in PvE is more melee than ever. slb dagger and Untamed Hammer going core will even add to that. Like others I though wonder why you compared a Quickness DPS to a DPS. But then you where already asked. To broaden the picture: DPS Untamed ~40k and DPS Soulbeast ~40k+ are pretty much interchangeable rn with some slight different strengths and dos and donts. Also both are really easy to play and a good pick in many situations with: Slb able to Stance Share Dolyak or Moa for it's group while Untamed sports constant boon strips, free Aegis on demand and a rez/entangle Compared to that Let Loose is a bit more demanding, that's right. I personally wouldn't say it's to mechanically complex: It's basically press F skills ~every 9 with F5 being the first and last, Ambush, Swap and Ambush. The rest is pretty standard in "Push stuff on cooldown but don't interrupt auto attack chain for it." If one gets confused or out of sync, there never really is a screw up moment as the next ambush and swap is never that far away and able to get back into maintaining quickness 100% from then on just fine. The only annyoing hoop the build imo has to jump through still is to cancel Hammer Ambush in Hammer loop immediately, which is sad because Ambushes should be really good. But sadly, the long casting time of Hammer Ambush doesn't add much dps to the build while either increasing the Ambush Cooldown. Eats too much into Quickness Uptime that you would need to counter with additional boon duration gear that in turn would net you less dps than simply running lower values and canceling it. Personally though I really like this build for PvE. Imho it's one of the better retrofittings of Quick/Alac into a build compared to quite some others. And a radius of 480 for Quickness Application is really convenient. It feels very nice to play with Ambushes as focus point of the rotation and it is pretty unique compared to any other ranger build. In fact it gives me a bit "Staff Mirage that isn't limited to Staff" vibes. When the addon releases and we get our hands on Soulbeast Dagger even Condi Quickness is on the horizon. Especially should they ever change the Shortbow Ambush which is really bad. I think Ambushes might need more work than the Build or Trait itself. They are not really consistently designed and feel pretty random at what they do, how they do it and how useful they are in the end. Nonetheless I like them.

People are about my class X has worse than class Y in PvE since the launch of the game. Spike Damage and Might+Fury Access on release, also Mobility, later Quickness/Alac, then Unique Modifiers, breakbar potential, Utility to cheese and carry encounters, Stability/Aegis. List goes on and on and on and on. I personally think the idea of removing Quickness/Alac and things will come back in order is nothing but a tempting illusion. It will just move the focus of balance complaints and also invalidate a lot of specs straight up again (Herald, Scrapper eca.)