Zyreva.1078

Don't think there is automatic animation culling. But "effect lod" turns quite a few animations invisible, even from high impact skills and regardless of number of players or effects on your screen. Typical zergling issue. Turn effect lod off and you can't see stuff because of too much animation spam. Turn effect lod on and you can't see stuff because it's invisible. Probably a not insignificant contributor to unjustified "balance" complaints.

Yes, because that blob is irrelevant. It isn't impacted by any sort of "outnumbered" buff anyway nor does the blob matter to anyone not inside that blob. It doesn't require a blob to proc outnumbered for someone and the outnumbered buff isn't guaranteed for whoever gets run over by said blob. I don't care whether the outnumbered buff is there or not, as long it basically does nothing (which is the case right now and which is also why a removal wouldn't change anything about rampaging boon blobs).

But it's not up to the 3 to decide what the blobbers do, so why punish them? All you do is force those 3 to join the blob in oder to take advantage of their numbers on the map (or quit the game, because they don't like blobbing). It's unfair always and for everyone and for small scale players in particular, because they are most likely to get outnumberd, regardless of whether the map is outnumbered or not. There is no guarantee that those 10 defenders get outnumbered buff vs 50, because the 3rd server might only have 9 on the map (that then get to pvdoor or gank with perma stab or whatever buff they "deserve"). Plus, perma stab/cc immunity would make no difference for those 10 randoms vs 50 anyway (but it would make a possible 3vs10 win impossible). There is almost always one server that gets outnumbered on a map, unless everyone is queued, regarddless of total population (yes, even servers with the highest pop will often have outnumbered somewhere) and any combat buff would make any fair fight against that server impossible and basically force players to outnumber them even harder instead of splitting up and giving them at least some opportunity for fights, ot just avoid them completely, if numbers aren't there to overcome the outnumbered buff. I can only think of problems, but basically no realistic situation where a "free" combat buff of any significance for one side would make the game better, and that's regardless of potential player toxicity. Like i said, if you want perma cc immunity, get organised and run good builds - it doesn't require large numbers for perma stab.

"Outnumbered players should get help so they can defeat larger numbers" and "3 shouldn't be able to fight/defeat 10". Looks pretty contradicting to me. But i guess you just want to punish the remaining few that dare to not stack with their blob, after all boon blobbing is the only intended playstyle in WvW ... That's by far not the only issue that would arise. It would often be very unfair, frustrating (because of the unfairness and because you have no control over it) and extremely detrimental for any sort of small scale. Large blobs would be the ones that care the least.

I do not agree with nerfing boon effects. Keeps the ridiculous and boring spam, just makes buttons less impactful and therefore makes proper timing and skilful play also less relevant. What needs desperate nerfs is boon uptime. Boons should be powerful, but not something that can be kept up permanently (except maybe swiftness), so players have to actually think when to use what boon, instead of spamming everything on cd, while ignoring important combat mechanics (mainly soft and hard cc). It's how it used to be and boons were mostly fine pre HoT.

Doesn't change anything about the issues a map wide combat buff, that only updates once every 5 min, would cause, so no. If you want to have perma cc immunity, get organised and stack a couple boon spam supports and then even a small grp can be perma cc immune and you would not have to rely on a random uncontrollable buff that might or might not be there when you want it.

No, would be terrible. Just like any combat buff tied to a map wide "outnumbered buff".

Most other rez skills have an even longer cast time (2s) and yet are considered some of the strongest and most impactful skills in PvP/WvW. And if timed properly, Spirit of Nature can be just as useful. I have used it a couple of times in small scale and while i don't always get the rez off, mostly because i get interruped (outnumbered and without an entire zerg to protcet me after all) or because my ally mistforms right when i want to rez them, it has also turned arround a lost fight more than once. I even used it to self rez in solo fights a few times.

1. Like i said, you should be able to get cele gear for free. 2. Cele is much better than many people give it credit and most likely the optimal "support" gear for more content and players than any other stat. People that make these guides often assume very specific content, grp compositions and experience levels and forgot that those assumptions don't apply to the majority of players. Harrier is great if you have experienced players and want to focus on speedrunning raids. That's pretty much it. Cele is a lot more flexible and safe, while still providing more than enough raw support for 99% of this games content. There is not much you can do wrong with cele gear, especially when considering that you can get it for free. In raids you might have to make sure, toughness/tanking isn't an issue, which can be avoided with some communication, everywhere else players won't even notice nor care about the difference between cele and harrier. I have healed through pug strikes and t4 fractals on cele druid and nobody ever questioned my build/gear choice.

Do you really expect a wall ranger to step outside its natural enviroment voluntarily? It's like asking a goldfish to hop outside the pond ...

Technically you can use a lvl 80 boost (that comes for "free" with expansions) and hop into instancd content right away. Not recommendable for new players tho, because it doesn't teach you anything about the game, and also because you'd still have to unlock elite specs for a somewhat decent build which requires either some open world or WvW. But either way, you aren't forced into "power dps gear" or grinding a lot of open world pve, but some sort of dmg is recommended, in oder to not be completely reliant on others. In the end, gear is not what's holding you back ... Your problem is that you have seen a guide, that portrays a certain stat type as "THE" healer gear and now you think that's exactly what you have to get in oder to play a proper healer, when in reality what's the optimal gear for a support depends a lot on the content, class/build and even the players themself and there is no optimal healer gear for every situation. In fact, harrier's gear is one of the more niche and situational healer sets and neither optimal nor required for much of the content, including instanced stuff, and expecially for unexperienced players. Harrier gear has offensive stats on it, just saying ...There is gear that doesn't and it is used sometimes for support. Whether a healer is expected to deal dmg mostly depends on the grp. Most casual grps - which is the vast majority - will be totally ok with a healer dealing zero dmg (and also don't care what gear you use as long it gets's the job done). More "tryhard"/speedrunning grps might expect some dmg from their healer (or don't even run a dedicated one) but again, heavily depends on the content. Is there a single game out there that is not "centered around damage" in some way? I mean, you can't heal stuff to death and killing mobs is a central focus of games like this, so i don't know what made you think you could get away without dealing any dmg. That's only ever going to work in you bring some friends ...

Spirit of Nature does not need a shorter cd. What could be improved is the delay and short range, but even now it is already a viable skill and certainly better than SotP in most cases (pretty much always when you are not alone).

You should have at least one lvl 80 boost - which you could use to get a complete set of lvl 80 exotic celestial gear for free (it's characterbound on aquire, but the boost can be used on chars that are already lvl 80). Celestial gear grants you enough healing power and boon duration for playing a support/healer in most content, defensive stats that will greatly increase your own suvivability (much more than that little bit of extra healing from harrier) and also offensive stats , so you can actually kill stuff on your own and aren't fully reliant on other's. This will allow you to play through all of open world and story content and also a lot of instanced content as a "self sufficient" healer, which seems to be exactly what you are looking for. Forget about those healer guides for now, they aren't aimed at beginner players.

Yea, stab surely helps a lot against a spec that just corrupts it into fear and against a spec that usually doesn't use a lot of cc and just kills you anyway ... Harb and WB should not be an issue for druid. Generally, if you want ranger to be better, you should ask for less stab across the board, not more, since ranger is a fairly cc heavy and cc reliant class and suffers quite a bit from how much stab and resistance is out there. Less boon spam is what we need, not more of it.

Hu, i'm seeing way more sword necros and staff warriors than any other of the new weapons (and also not that many dagger mesmers) ...