Is it high time for Rangers to receive a support class as an e-spec for them to be valuable in WvW zerging?

[PrinceValentine.9320]

I have high hopes for the remaining medium classes for a firebrand-caliber support spec. If they are not gonna come up with another support spec and there's no reason for us support mains to buy the xpac. 

[LetoII.3782]

Mor bow plox

[kash.9213]

How much of the rangers signature aspects are you willing to scrap to balance into a full support Elite? How long would you actually stick with it void of what brought and held you to the Ranger profession? 

Quote

I have to assume people picked thief profession for it's aesthetic and stayed with it for it's fluid movement for the most part. I don't know if people asking for a caster/support/whatever Elite would also want possible tradeoffs that might come with something that, like maybe having to be far more tethered to the group and possibly more vulnerable alone. I suppose that's fair for people who want that kind of Elite, but then why thief and will that kind of Elite even get any action after the novelty wears off if it's not passable mobility or positioning? They're not about to let us be Uncle Boon Bags or rolling in with all the buffs and then let us bounce like we can right now. 

The part in bold is where I think a lot of thieves asking for a full support Elite might not rather just play another profession if the Elite hit a certain threshold where that tangible gameplay and movement of the thief can't be left to be problematic on what would likely be potent sustain. Still, ranger has the pet game play that would lend itself more to a full support Elite.

Edited September 23, 2021 by kash.9213

[Zikory.6871]

Just what the roaming rangers wants, a meta build they must run or be ostracized. 

[Xenesis.6389]

But duirds have healz?

[Infusion.7149]

People on rangers won't even run stanceshare soulbeast when mechanically it is most similar to PVE meta.

What makes you think that a support spec will be run? Druid is already a support spec, it just hasn't been rebalanced for Feb 2020 in terms of astral force generation and people don't stow pet.

If it's a pet based specialization the pet better have better positioning control or ability to stow/stealth on demand. Otherwise it's not going to be attractive for comped groups.

If you're talking about medium classes it is more likely there is a support thief with EoD since it's supposedly going to have scepter.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Kovu.7560]

I still feel they need to retool Druid to make it more viable as a support spec rather than a condi bruiser roamer (that's outclassed by Soulbeast apart from one trait.) That was what it was designed to do, but at no point has it been relevant in that role in large scale wvw. But while I say "retool" what I mean is complete overhaul. Having your primary healing gated behind a cooldown and an energy bar, the healing itself outclassed by other healers and with providing little else apart from maybe some might generation -- its just never the correct pick. 

They need to ditch the pet that dies in two hits and give the spec more bells and whistles so that like guardian, engi and even compared to support ele and rev it can compete for a spot in that 5-man sub-squad. Maybe make the glyphs actually useful? Synergize Druid with spirits? (Maybe Druids can trait so that their spirits move again?)

I'm not going to go into too further detail because at this point I'm just theory crafting (and you can get a ton of that in the ranger subforum) but that is the direction I'd like to see Druid go. I'm tired of it being an immobot that doesn't even care about its specialization's primary mechanic or utilities.

And then do something completely different for the new ranger spec. Hammer doesn't scream support to me.

~ Kovu

[Ausar.9542]

Druid was that before the nerf early in HoT. I never really touched Druid like that since. Was my first elite spec fully unlocked and all. Smh

[subversiontwo.7501]

Like others have already hinted at, Druid was that spec to begin with. It saw play among the GvG guilds towards the end of 2016 and later began to inch its way a little bit into pickups before it disappeared. The problem was that its traits and glyphs got completely gutted around that time. It is a tale as old as time for the WvW players: It began to become overly popular in PvE by combining its traits and glyphs with spirits. The devs opted to gut the traits and glyphs rather than reworking the spirits.

Some time later came the first few healing-output nerfs, but in all fairness, those have mostly been good and roaming Druid still plays in similar ways even if it doesn't benefit from high base figures on heal-less gear it had before. When healing at larger scale the issue was always the size of healing mechanics (things like Staff 1 and Celestial 1 are too precise for larger scale), not necessarily the figures.

I've hinted at it a couple of times before, but the best way to play a Ranger (Druid or Beast) supportively is still to play it as a backline-support class, looking to provide utilities valuable to classes like Eles and Revs. The issues that makes it rather rare in such a role has more to do with the players than the game: It requires taking somewhat of a leadership role, that fits poorly into recent norms of fewer tags, leading more players with less help or that fewer players organise into smaller guilds and do things like havoc around a tag. So it isn't that it isn't useful in a larger scale setting  but rather that it isn't an easy-to-follow tag thing. Though it should also be noted that even if you play it purposely, it doesn't stack well, so slots for it are limited anyway.

Whatever the new spec is will be interesting to see, however, if the other new specs are anything to go by it is rather that those specs face similar issues that the existing Ranger elite specs already have: That they can already fill relatively mobile roles with limited support. It is just that people do not play to use them, that the support may just be a tad underwhelming for mass appeal or that the potential is simply untapped.

Edited September 25, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Coldtart.4785]

I think the biggest obstacle to ranger as a support build in zergs is that scrapper is unreasonably good at the same things druid wants to do.

[subversiontwo.7501]

3 hours ago, Coldtart.4785 said:

I think the biggest obstacle to ranger as a support build in zergs is that scrapper is unreasonably good at the same things druid wants to do.

No, it really isn't. The Druid is better at other things, things generally not valued in a "just stack on tag" scenario.

In fact, if we talk norms, meta and the easiest way to comp: It is not just the Scrapper that's in the way of the Druid if they vie for what is commonly referred to as the "secondary support" role. There are plenty of other things both in off-meta or not in any meta at all that are all better than the Druid for that specific role. You'd rather stack Tempests, Breakers, double-up on Firebrands or even supportive Necro, Mesmer or Revenant builds in that specific role before you'd even begin to consider Druid for it.

Druids, as support and more specifically as healers, have the advantage of being fast and ranged with snappy cooldowns. If you ever want to play a Druid you should start trying to play to what it is rather than trying to shoehorn into something it isn't.

Edited September 25, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Xenesis.6389]

They made scrappers extremely good, you're not going to get a spec to compete with it, heals, cleanse, conversion, stealth, superspeed, stability, barriers, shield. You could make specs with parts of those but you would still take scrapper instead because it's all of those, the only other class you can't do without is guards and because of their group stability.

 

It's one of the greatest mistakes they've made for the game, all support should have been about healing, boons, cleansing, but in different ways, so that druids(aoe or pulsing) and tempest(aura) could be viable not niche options, superspeed and barrier should have been left to other support classes, group stealth should have been left on mesmers or thieves.

 

There is no point to making any more support specs, you have the two that provides everything you will ever need, there's no point in them nerfing them and kittening off people over it. Ask them to improve druids if you want, because why would you want two useless support specs on a ranger...

[Infusion.7149]

Well as stated many times in the ranger section if they want druids specifically to be usable in WVW (outside of trolling people low on cleanses with Ancient Seeds or "roaming on full tanky condi builds") the astral force generation should be re-balanced and the pet should have a permastow option. WVW druids have it easy stat-wise compared to PVP druids, at least you have more targets for astral force generation  as well as PVE gear.

There's no real reason to take druid over tempest because you provide more or less the same boons , this isn't PVE where you will have spirits and spotter and people /gg-ing for astral force. Unlike druid you also get aura share on tempest as well as reliable healing : if  you don't have astral force there isn't much you can do to counter burst damage. If you don't have the ability to drop CA due to lack of astral force your only source of superspeed/stealth is unusable too.

Druid's staff

* Solar Beam heal scaling: 30+0.03* healing power ---> 75 base heal with 1500 healing power
*  Astral Wisp heal scaling: 322 +0.1*healing power ---> 472 base heal with1500 healing power
* Ancestral Grace 1450+0.5* healing power ---> 2200 base heal with 1500 healing power
* Sublime Conversion 162+0.025*healing power ---> ~200 per projectile which is useless vs melee balls

Healing skill, Glyph of Rejuvenation (radius 300) for allies 2535+1.0*healing power --> ~4K @ 1500 healing power

Core utility skill, "Protect Me" (which you can use on soulbeast) 3973+0.24* healing power barrier  ---> healing power is extremely poor investment so why not just run soulbeast with Protect Me + Bear Stance (condi clear) + Dolyak stance (stability) + Muddy Terrain/Signet of the Wild?

Elite skill, Glyph of the Stars takes 7 seconds... 293+0.105*healing power per pulse ---> ~450 heal with 1500 healing power per pulse

Verdant Etching when used with glyphs is ~900 heal at 1500 healing power

...

There is simply no comparison to scrapper with quickness that also buffs your DPS and outgoing scrappers' heals while also providing superior mobility and better battlefield plays with on demand stealth.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Xenesis.6389]

Astral force was a terribad mechanic from day one, you had to build up energy to activate druid and then it's on a run down timer, meanwhile engineer presses their heal button at any time and flips on their medkit. Woohoo.. balanced.. 🙄

Maybe they should let you flip druid on whenever without needing the force, and use the force for bonus healing on the druid heal skills, put the druid activation on a 10s cooldown like shroud if you need to. Anet only cares about scrappers. 😒

Edited September 25, 2021 by Xenesis.6389

[Coldtart.4785]

Having limitations on how often you can use a healing mode isn't the problem. The problem is that med kit has no limitations.

[God.2708]

19 hours ago, Coldtart.4785 said:

Having limitations on how often you can use a healing mode isn't the problem. The problem is that med kit has no limitations.

Yeah, I'd emphasize this TBH. Every other heal on auto attack aside from staff ele has some sort of quirk that makes it inconsistent at best. Even staff ele is fairly small in AoE and gets thrown to the wind if you target any enemies or swap attunements. Then you get medkit 1 which is 2x stronger than any other heal, in a fairly sizeable cone, with absolutely no set backs beyond not healing for quite as much if your allies don't have boons.

But I think trying to get druid to be scrapper 2.0 is a waste of time and just devolves things into power creep. Druid just needs some small buffs to emphasize its strengths that @subversiontwo.7501 already outlined. It is fantastic at holding targets in place at ranged while healing things that don't sit still a lot. It really just needs its condi clears to not be so antithetical to that idea. CA2 and things like healing spring really hurt the dance.

Edited September 26, 2021 by God.2708

[lockhart.6048]

I think they should rework the AA staff beam and have it function similarly the old loot stick wave - very light damage on enemies but this time make it so it heals allies that get hit by the wave. Right now, druid has no easy access for consistent&constant heals when they have 0 astral energy. Scrappers have med kit #1 and Aura share tempests constantly heal with fire auras, soothing water and water overload.

 

Next, they should rework astral form itself. Idk do something about it so that it doesn't feel awful in squad play. Make it so you can enter at will but keep the energy mechanic, but have the pet vanish as long as you're in celestial form. Like i said, idk but something has to be done to both the pet and celestial avatar for druid to be a functional heal support in WvW

[corwin.8356]

Rangers are fine. Sure they don't work in the current 2support/3dps party comp as there are better classes for dps, but they can be very good. A single Immobeast can help out a ton, especially against melee heavy comps.

 

Our guild used to run theme nights and when we ran "ranger night" and had 40+ person called-spike Barrages we devastated other teams easily. It's a one trick pony, but was fun for that night. But it speaks to the limitation in theory-crafting and strategy/tactics in the current game state.

 

Honestly, anything can be good if you work it, and meta is only meta until something breaks it.

[subversiontwo.7501]

4 hours ago, corwin.8356 said:

Rangers are fine. Sure they don't work in the current 2support/3dps party comp as there are better classes for dps, but they can be very good. A single Immobeast can help out a ton, especially against melee heavy comps.

Yes, I think this can not be overstated enough. The big perspective dominates small issues much more than people assume or give credit. Allow me to nerd out about it a bit.

Anet are both at fault and not here. While there may be some issues with class design and balance, there are plenty of things in this game that works well in the right hands even if we limit the discussion to larger-scale WvW content. Most of these things in the game are designed and balanced on a basis of 5. Conversely, most issues we have derive from the lack of attention and that attention has been put elsewhere on things that do not operate on a basis of 5.

Going into a bit of a theoretical plunge here:

Spoiler

 

I'm not saying that the introduction of squads was a bad thing or that there isn't value in specs having a more casual join-into-content appeal. I'm just saying that you can not necessarily fault the class designers for designing things that works quite well for a more creative unit of 5 players. You can however fault the company for causing a situation where that normative unit has become rare. For causing a norm where 49 expects 1 to organise and lead them or for causing a situation through neglect that have driven players  who understood the balance of 5 out or driven them to be more casually self-centered themselves.

It is a bit of a slippery slope to point at other players and simply tell them that they are not doing things right or try hard enough but I think it is very fair to point out that there are so many things that work very well and has potential from a class-design and balance perspective that just are not played and, again, that is not the designers' fault. Those things work as intended.

This is also why I am holding out some hope for things like Alliances to impact the balance discourse, because even if it is a bit of a stretch in logic or hard to understand, they can possibly balance out the norms of how players group, organise and create to better highlight the potential in certain builds and classes, mending the gap between design and norms, to restore some of the unit of 5.

What I think most people do not know is that most metas are generally based around one class or one role which is then augmented and supplemented by other classes and roles forming meta parties. For example, it could be argued that the vanilla meta was built around the Warrior. People talk about the "GWEN" acronym but the W was the center of it all for a melee party while the G, E and N was the augmentation and supplement. By the late vanilla meta this had expanded to involve most classes from a unit-of-5 perspective (melee parties, ranged parties and focus parties). The E was its own center piece and there was also a T center piece (almost unheard of today). The vanilla meta was largely based around that the majority of groups had not yet mastered the stab-to-rip balance. Only relatively good groups covered stab well enough or used Necros effectively to counter that. The Necro supplemented the Warrior. The Guard augmented it. The HoT meta saw Necros becomming more important because that balance changed and more groups reached that level of play. The PoF meta has seen Scourge as that center piece for most of its existance.

Alot of discussion about balance at large-scale WvW have two conflicting perspectives of the 1 wanting in on the 49 or the 1 expected to lead the 49. That conflict can also be taken down a notch by informing people about the 5-basis design. This is where eg., people come in with jealousy of, say, Firebrands, suggesting they are too good, while they mostly augment whatever is a center piece and are often given attention because a 1 leading 49 often do not get enough of them. For a 1 looking to get into the 49 it was an issue this spring when power Guards made it into the meta. They found it unfair that Guards went from a norm of 10/squad to 15-20/squad. For the 1 expected to lead the 49 it was a blessing because he had reserve support and his squad did not collapse when the 10/squad fell down towards 5/squad. However, it could also be argued that you only ever need 5-10 by not comping every party the same or throwing outlier classes in as 5th in a party or dump.

So the question is similar to most other topics of importance on these forums:

Do you build the game for the creators or the consumers of content? Maybe a bit of both, but when driven to a choice between the two how does your decision impact your product?

Can you build the game to take the edge off that conflict by simply encouraging more players to become creators, encouraging more diverse content or help take part in the creations?

How would 5x1 ideals fit into the latter or a larger vision of rebuilding diversity between the 1x1 versus 5x10 extremes and conflicts within your community?

What I'm getting at with all of this is that a "meta" norm is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. What is bad is that collapse of the vanilla party-meta as well as players' understanding of the whole thing. Every party you build has that center piece whether it is "meta" or not. The vanilla meta helped inform that. The 1-49 norms do not really pass on that knowledge and the lack of ambition we have often stops players from thinking from a perspective of party or trying to build it for themselves.

So while there is some value in design and balance that make the 1 appealing to the 49 there is alot of value and potential in trying to restore playing to the unit of 5 because that is still how classes are designed and balanced at their core. Ultimately, both of these things are important for discussing the Ranger or other classses.

Edited September 28, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[nerva.7940]

I think we will get a zerging spec. It's the only spec ranger is missing, so unless they've been living under a rock, we'll get a large scale combat spec. Can't wait to see what they do with hammer...imo, it's hard to get this wrong. 

You can play a minstrel immob Druid, but the Scrapper simply embarrasses it. Immobeast is fine imo, but niche. A zerg ball with many Scrappers will easily shrug off the immob spam from a single Immobeast.

The only thing I badly wish for is a Druid redesign. It was gutted because of its overtuned perfomance in spvp, beaten down, and left to rot. Outside of raids, it's a clunky, bad e-spec to this day. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by nerva.7940

[nerva.7940]

23 hours ago, corwin.8356 said:

A single Immobeast can help out a ton, especially against melee heavy comps.

Immobeast doesn't work outside of 15v15. A good 20+ player ball with lots of Scrappers completely nullifies all conditions. 

[Zikory.6871]

What are people's opinions on holo and Berserker damage in zergs? Soulbeast can do the same damage. 

 

Bad immob sbs are bad in large groups. Scrappers aren't some magic class that can cleanse the whole battle field, spread the group out, immob to secure stragglers that are behind. Don't blow your immobs in the bomb when both teams are spamming skills. 

 

Immob rangers are great at securing a couple downs to put pressure on the other group. Immob a couple in the tail, they have to turn to support or lose a couple people. Not every thing is about killing 20+ people at one time. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Zikory.6871

[Xenesis.6389]

2 hours ago, nerva.7940 said:

I think we will get a zerging spec. It's the only spec ranger is missing, so unless they've been living under a rock, we'll get a large scale combat spec. Can't wait to see what they do with hammer...imo, it's hard to get this wrong. 

You can play a minstrel immob Druid, but the Scrapper simply embarrasses it. Immobeast is fine imo, but niche. A zerg ball with many Scrappers will easily shrug off the immob spam from a single Immobeast.

The only thing I badly wish for is a Druid redesign. It was gutted because of its overtuned perfomance in spvp, beaten down, and left to rot. Outside of raids, it's a clunky, bad e-spec to this day. 

 

Have a feeling the hammer will be a melee aoe weapon for rangers, they're breaking rules on all the other specs so far, they honestly don't need another single target cc weapon, they have roaming covered easily with core druid and soulbeast taking on power or condi. Would the aoe damage compete with rev hammer? ehhhhh probably not.

 

As bad as druids are for support... I really don't want to see more "good" support for wvw, unless they finally decide to spread the support tools around instead of dumping it on two specs, which won't happen.

[nerva.7940]

7 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

Have a feeling the hammer will be a melee aoe weapon for rangers, they're breaking rules on all the other specs so far, they honestly don't need another single target cc weapon, they have roaming covered easily with core druid and soulbeast taking on power or condi. Would the aoe damage compete with rev hammer? ehhhhh probably not.

 

As bad as druids are for support... I really don't want to see more "good" support for wvw, unless they finally decide to spread the support tools around instead of dumping it on two specs, which won't happen.

Scrapper is entirely busted. If it's toned down significantly, Druids and Ventari would be used more. There are enough supports, just one of them is too busted OP. 

Edited September 30, 2021 by nerva.7940

[MedievalThings.5417]

Go play, or watch a video of, chloromancers in Rift.  You can tell this is where the got the idea for druid, and then basically made it crap in comparison.  They didn't want the trinity in the game, cause "everyone can do everything (despite not being able to)", and then they made raid content that required primary healers.  Honestly, I would rather they just delete the current druid, and take the design they stole from Rift.