Druid is a real disappointment

[Mell.4873]

I think everyone has a the wrong idea, druid is just an extra healing trait line and should be treated as such. If you want damage basically don't use staff and stick to Longbow, Greatsword. Then use just use celestial avatar for the 5 skill Natural Convenience and glyph of the tide. 

Honestly I think the whole this is disappointing because Soulbeast exists and is still one of the top PvE burst dps. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Infinity.2876]

Its ok if your zerging in Wvw but not in spvp or ow 

It lacks the ability to share boons like quickness and alac  which everybody wants

It lacks en masse condi cleanse and it lacks an extra barrier coefficient.

To sum it up you should play soulbeast and grab some spirits and call that support 

[SeTect.5918]

2 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I think everyone has a the wrong idea, druid is just an extra healing trait line and should be treated as such. If you want damage basically don't use staff and stick to Longbow, Greatsword. Then use just use celestial avatar for the 5 skill Natural Convenience and glyph of the tide. 

Honestly I think the whole this is disappointing because Soulbeast exists and is still one of the top PvE burst dps. 

Even without staff druid deals poor dps.

All e specs with big heal potential also have dps builds.

Tempest, Firebrand, Scrapper, Mechanist, Specter, Catalyst. They all have great healing builds but also have dps builds in the same e spec.

However the only e spec that has a healing build but no dps builds is druid.

Druid is a PURE healer in pve. There is no other role for it. And its not even a very asked healer because it has no quickness and no alacrity.

Its not disappointing because soulbeast exists, its disappointing because Druid it big trash. It offers nothing but a healing build but this healing build isnt even one of the best ones.

You have 9 traits you can choose, but in PvE you will always use the same 3 ones because you can just play healer anyway if you want to be accepted.

The only e spec that comes close to the trash-level of Druid is Herald.

Its true that Soulbeast is far better than Druid.
And its true that Renegade is far better than Herald.
Yes Soulbeast and Renegade are very good e specs.
But even the new e specs (Untamed and Vindicator) are better than Druid and Herald.
And that means something, because even Untamed is trash.
Ofc thats just my opinion.

The disappointment doesnt come from that Soulbeast is so good.
The disappointment comes from that Druid is...simply trash.

Maybe alacrity or quickness would somewhat fix it.
Lets hope for something good for both Herald and Druid on June update.

[voltaicbore.8012]

  

22 hours ago, Mardane.8735 said:

I just wish I could play my favorite class fantasy druid with a staff all the time so I could play some overland and still be able to heal other players on the fly

You can - as others have suggested, run a condition build tweaked to do a bit of healing. You can do plenty of open-world healing on the fly if you learn how to use celestial avatar.

So again, as you pointed out elsewhere, your problem with druid is not really the inability to mix heals and damage. Your problem is not being able to do that while using a staff.

Overall druid is just in a pretty bad spot. I'm a ranger main and druid was my first elite spec, so it's not like I'm just trashing the spec to be edgy - I share your pain. Just let go of the D&D class fantasy (GW2 doesn't really adhere close enough to them anyways), get a soulbeast, and do everything (except healing) better than druid.

[Mardane.8735]

If the druid staff isn't even supposed to do damage and just heal, why did they even add it to the skills? Just remove it so everyone knows it's just a healbot item. I'm not saying it needs to be some  top tier leet damage dealer, I'd just like to be able to use a staff to clear overland mobs. This things so weak it can't even do that without having to backbar it and use a regular ranger weapon.

Staff skills

Solar Beam-Fire a concentrated beam of light, damaging the targeted foe and healing allies inside of the beam.

Astral Wisp- Also does damage

[Mardane.8735]

13 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

  

You can - as others have suggested, run a condition build tweaked to do a bit of healing. You can do plenty of open-world healing on the fly if you learn how to use celestial avatar.

So again, as you pointed out elsewhere, your problem with druid is not really the inability to mix heals and damage. Your problem is not being able to do that while using a staff.

Overall druid is just in a pretty bad spot. I'm a ranger main and druid was my first elite spec, so it's not like I'm just trashing the spec to be edgy - I share your pain. Just let go of the D&D class fantasy (GW2 doesn't really adhere close enough to them anyways), get a soulbeast, and do everything (except healing) better than druid.

You're correct. I feel the staff's a bit misleading when it has damage on a few of the skills. Knowing what I know now, they should just remove any mention of it. I think I just a bout have let go of the druid D&D class fantasy with this class. The staff ele scratches the itch decently right now.

[Shaogin.2679]

Play a Revenant. You can smack things with your staff and bring Ventari for some planty support skills.

[Rashagar.8349]

Staff Mallyx is actually one of my favourite things to just have random overworld fun with, could potentially feel a little shadow druid-y for you when combined with Ventari, so yeah, I approve this message.

[Mardane.8735]

I think that's about the only class I've never tried. Thanks Shaogin & Rashagar. I'll check it out.

[Mell.4873]

6 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Even without staff druid deals poor dps.

All e specs with big heal potential also have dps builds.

Tempest, Firebrand, Scrapper, Mechanist, Specter, Catalyst. They all have great healing builds but also have dps builds in the same e spec.

However the only e spec that has a healing build but no dps builds is druid.

Druid is a PURE healer in pve. There is no other role for it. And its not even a very asked healer because it has no quickness and no alacrity.

Its not disappointing because soulbeast exists, its disappointing because Druid it big trash. It offers nothing but a healing build but this healing build isnt even one of the best ones.

You have 9 traits you can choose, but in PvE you will always use the same 3 ones because you can just play healer anyway if you want to be accepted.

The only e spec that comes close to the trash-level of Druid is Herald.

Its true that Soulbeast is far better than Druid.
And its true that Renegade is far better than Herald.
Yes Soulbeast and Renegade are very good e specs.
But even the new e specs (Untamed and Vindicator) are better than Druid and Herald.
And that means something, because even Untamed is trash.
Ofc thats just my opinion.

The disappointment doesnt come from that Soulbeast is so good.
The disappointment comes from that Druid is...simply trash.

Maybe alacrity or quickness would somewhat fix it.
Lets hope for something good for both Herald and Druid on June update.

Nice response, it was more a comment what other have said as to why they didn't like druid over other Elites for Ranger.

I mean the problem is shared by Untamed. 

Druid will get quickness when the Spirit reword goes through and they will pulse quickness. Right now Druid does a really good job keeping spirits alive with its healing but the unique buff is a bit useless. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Tseison.4659]

Question; since pet damage is reduced from what I read in this elite spec; why couldn't they just do away with the pet for druid and just have the focus be on the astral form?

[Lazze.9870]

On 4/5/2022 at 9:55 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

This was ANet's first effort at making an actual support. They overdid it. Sad that it hasn't been reworked.

The only thing they overdid was the restrictions on how to play it and the access to the avatar.

Everything else wrong with it is either bad design or bad balance.

[Lazze.9870]

11 hours ago, Tseison.4659 said:

Question; since pet damage is reduced from what I read in this elite spec; why couldn't they just do away with the pet for druid and just have the focus be on the astral form?

They should.

But Anet won't do it and people would also cry about how it would be too similar to soulbeast because "no pet". 

[Tseison.4659]

1 hour ago, Lazze.9870 said:

They should.

But Anet won't do it and people would also cry about how it would be too similar to soulbeast because "no pet". 

I mean; it just seems more reasonable to untether professions to certain mechanics to “evolve” them? 🤷‍♂️ It just makes more sense to just have no pet at all if it’s damage is reduced and either transform it into some form of wisp with beneficial F1-F4 skills that follows/hovers around the Druid. 
 

I can also say the same about the Untamed because I thought they would’ve gotten some kind of “Warden/Juggernaut” (inspired from GW1) form. Oh well 🤷‍♂️

[Lazze.9870]

23 hours ago, Tseison.4659 said:

mean; it just seems more reasonable to untether professions to certain mechanics to “evolve” them? 🤷‍♂️ It just makes more sense to just have no pet at all if it’s damage is reduced and either transform it into some form of wisp with beneficial F1-F4 skills that follows/hovers around the Druid.

That's one of several ways I have proposed druid could work.

If Anet had any foresight about elite specs, the current core mechanic could have been an elite on its own similarly to the mechanist. Then druid would probably be more like you're suggesting, and so would untamed, while the pet spec could be good enough in its own right without muddying the water for the other specs. Core ranger would have a simpler mechanic with a set of F skills that all the others can derive from. More emphasis on making themes unique rather than the actual mechanic, then flesh out more intersting mechanics for the elites. That's one of the reasons why guardian, necro and engineers are such good professions across the board and easy to make elite specs for. Hell, drawing parallels to GW1, that's what made ranger so versatile in that game. A simple, but good class attribute with beastmastery only as an option.

But nah, Anet keeps the pet mechanic essentially the same on all specs only to squeeze an additional mechanic next to it... Druid and Untamed can't perform their roles optimally compared to other professions because of that. Soulbeast works as a pure dps because the merge mechanic allows it to forgo the pet completely and get more stats and modifiers in return.

We're in too deep now anyway. I don't imagine a druid rework is gonna happen, let alone any refinement to it all. They're content as long as druid is still relevant for PvE endgame and little else.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Lazze.9870