Opinions on druid support in WvW?

[Arheundel.6451]

-DISCLAIMER : being hard carried by other specs doesn't make for a solid and viable option and read title....this got nothing to do with RAIDS or fractal!

Very low active defense...average condi clear and mobility, easily surpassed by other professions in similar role, the complete lack of active defense is the major drawback, add to this the pitiful pet mechanic and you have a C-tier supportish build at best that may see play in some try hard GvG team. Before Anet tries to give a support spec to a class...they need to add active defenses first and ranger got none outside the block on GS. To give an idea of what a support should look like :

Druid - https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Support_Druid

VS

Vindicator https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Vindicator_-_Support_Vindicator

Support druid was bad before...and now it is even worst with the removal of the 13 condi clear trait:

1) no blocks , no damage reduction, average mobility 

2) Pet mechanic still sucks and we still use the same 2-3 pets like always

3) Nobody cares how much you can heal...if you die the second you get focused for more than 10s...this is like playing a worst version of core guardian in PvP

Overall support druid in WvW is overhyped, semi useless and highly situational, with all the ranged/melee CC being flowned around....massive mobility creep, permasupespeed, instant condi bomcs...etc ect etc...the idea of ranged healing in wvw is simply absurd:

Firebrand -8

Tempest/Catalyst - 7

Scrapper - 6

Vindicator -6

Specter - 5

Druid -2

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Arheundel.6451

[Beddo.1907]

This post is painful to read due to the text editing.
Druid is playable (just barely a bare minimum to be playable), but has A LOT of flaws:
-Low boons variety, too low uptime on major boons like stab.
-Pets do practically nothing useful, disrupt stealth and when it dies, ranger loses raw numbers.
-The most important parts of the kit are locked behind CA.
-Staff 4 and 5 is quite lacking.
-Aiming CA skills is problematic while in the middle of a fight.
-You don't have good effects like auras or superspeed.
-Only one "free out of jail card" (staff 3).

The only things it has that save it are:
-High uptime on low heal.
-Good condi clear if you can land all of it. (if)

TL;DR
Druid has limited kit, that barely makes is. Firebrand, Tempest and Scrapper do a better job.

[Mell.4873]

Don't play it if you don't like it.

Druid in reality has access to crazy Burst healing which does amazing in Zerg clashes. It also has great mobility with access group Superspeed and Stealth which can really make a difference when escorting.

The real advantage to using Druid is what you personally bring to the table. There are many ways to play since you are so tanky so just figure it out. I personally like the permanent Root builds along with high Bleed damage.

[Soilder.3607]

So, of the four main healers (Druid, Tempest, Vindi, Scrapper) Druid probably has the lowest amount of utility. But it isn't a bad amount of utility by any means. The meta Druid build offers high healing and high condition cleansing, big water fields, projectile denial, group hard stab and group prot, group fury, blast finishers, an option of 25 might for group (at the cost of ~15-20% healing), smoke field for blasting stealth (if chosen), group stun break, and group revive. That's a good bit of utility, although some of it is watered down due to the mechanics of how some of these skills work. Like the group resurrection from Glyph of the Stars is not an instant resurrection, so it can't resurrect someone who is taking too much damage, whereas instant resurrections from a warrior Banner or firebrand Signet are guaranteed. That's obviously a notable downside.

 

Druid is in a great spot though because it has the highest combined healing and condition cleansing of the four healers. Yes that is correct. A vindictator may be able to, when counting their healing + barrier output, match a Druids healing, but they will never approach anywhere close to how much condition cleansing a Druid can do. In the same regard, a well played Tempest can match a Druid on condition cleansing, but the Druid will heal significantly more than the Tempest due to their abundance of powerful healing skills.

 

The only problem with Druid is that it's harder to play than the other healers. With Druid you have to learn to balance Astral Force and use Celestial Avatar Mode at the most opportune moment. You don't really have an equivalent to that when playing Tempest, Scrapper, or Vindictator because all your support skills are more or less always available (though it should be mentioned that the Vindictator, which uses an energy system, cannot always freely use their skills and must take into consideration their energy pool). Druid also has ally targeted skills like Solar Beam and Astral Whisp, which adds a new dynamic to it that the other healers don't have. But the consequence of Druid having a locked support system is that the abilities behind it are extremely powerful. Everytime you enter Celestial Avatar Mode you are capable of outputting enormous amounts of healing and condition cleansing. This is where the Druid draws it's strength from, and in the intervening years Arenanet has buffed staff skills and glyph skills to improve Druids support while outside Celestial Avatar Mode, which lessens the impact of its downtime.

 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCKPfeHqepOFy7VE3UrHQl0w/videos

 

Anyhow, this is where I post videos of my Druid, Tempest, and Vindictator all of which are playing as healers. In the videos I have real time data recording the amount of condition cleansing and healing I do. The condition cleansing of other allies is also recorded during each fight, while other allies' healing is only recorded if they are using a specific addon. These videos will give you a good example of what each class is capable of in terms of cleansing and healing (Vindi videos are a bit outdated though, I should do some new ones). Other aspects of these classes, like boon support and unique abilities (such as auras in the case of tempests) are hard to track solely through videos.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Soilder.3607

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 hours ago, Soilder.3607 said:

So, of the four main healers (Druid, Tempest, Vindi, Scrapper) Druid probably has the lowest amount of utility. But it isn't a bad amount of utility by any means. The meta Druid build offers high healing and high condition cleansing, big water fields, projectile denial, group hard stab and group prot, group fury, blast finishers, an option of 25 might for group (at the cost of ~15-20% healing), smoke field for blasting stealth (if chosen), group stun break, and group revive. That's a good bit of utility, although some of it is watered down due to the mechanics of how some of these skills work. Like the group resurrection from Glyph of the Stars is not an instant resurrection, so it can't resurrect someone who is taking too much damage, whereas instant resurrections from a warrior Banner or firebrand Signet are guaranteed. That's obviously a notable downside.

 

Druid is in a great spot though because it has the highest combined healing and condition cleansing of the four healers. Yes that is correct. A vindictator may be able to, when counting their healing + barrier output, match a Druids healing, but they will never approach anywhere close to how much condition cleansing a Druid can do. In the same regard, a well played Tempest can match a Druid on condition cleansing, but the Druid will heal significantly more than the Tempest due to their abundance of powerful healing skills.

 

The only problem with Druid is that it's harder to play than the other healers. With Druid you have to learn to balance Astral Force and use Celestial Avatar Mode at the most opportune moment. You don't really have an equivalent to that when playing Tempest, Scrapper, or Vindictator because all your support skills are more or less always available (though it should be mentioned that the Vindictator, which uses an energy system, cannot always freely use their skills and must take into consideration their energy pool). Druid also has ally targeted skills like Solar Beam and Astral Whisp, which adds a new dynamic to it that the other healers don't have. But the consequence of Druid having a locked support system is that the abilities behind it are extremely powerful. Everytime you enter Celestial Avatar Mode you are capable of outputting enormous amounts of healing and condition cleansing. This is where the Druid draws it's strength from, and in the intervening years Arenanet has buffed staff skills and glyph skills to improve Druids support while outside Celestial Avatar Mode, which lessens the impact of its downtime.

 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCKPfeHqepOFy7VE3UrHQl0w/videos

 

Anyhow, this is where I post videos of my Druid, Tempest, and Vindictator all of which are playing as healers. In the videos I have real time data recording the amount of condition cleansing and healing I do. The condition cleansing of other allies is also recorded during each fight, while other allies' healing is only recorded if they are using a specific addon. These videos will give you a good example of what each class is capable of in terms of cleansing and healing (Vindi videos are a bit outdated though, I should do some new ones). Other aspects of these classes, like boon support and unique abilities (such as auras in the case of tempests) are hard to track solely through videos.

 

Decent vids, but the Druid ones really point out how much of a liability the pet is (as its either contributing nothing or dead in your videos) and how easily you can get locked down if you are near the zerg tail not head.  

[Mauti.3520]

Pointing out that I am not a WvW Large Scale Legend, but no Rookie either, I would like to disagree that Druid is a bad support in WvW, quite heavily.

I think it's not meta (none of the Cleanse Healers kinda is? They all have their pros and cons right now compared to being overshadowed by one prior to October patch - and Vindi is just busted and gets like reworked every 3 minutes).
One could say about Druid: It might not be fully there yet.
Is it bad? Imho: No

 

 I think the boon variety on Druid is not only pretty good but even pretty convenient.

You bring lots of Regen, Swiftness, Fury, Prot and Big Might to the table with optional pulsing Stability

Regen is covered from a traited Warhorn, Staff 5, Healing Spring (a single tick = 10 seconds on 100%BD with Trapper's Expertise),

Swiftness from Warhorn

Fury from Warhorn and lots of passive Fury from Spotter (note that Scrappers and Tempest don't provide fury)

Prot from Siege Turtle Hunker Down (you can still use this if the Pet is dead!) and Verdant Inscriptions on Glyphs.

Might from Warhorn (potential for Quickdraw) and Grace of the Land, which provides 3 Stacks per Tick on Avatar 4+5 and 3 per hit on 1+2+3

Stability on Glyph of the Stars no matter if Avatar or not. Just the fact this can be a rez doesn't mean you cannot use it as a hallowed ground if you need to.

Pets:
Druid has never made much use out of their pet besides their small little utility from F2 anyway. Also note, you can still use some of the defensive oriented F2 no matter if the pet is alive or not. As I already said, the excellent 'Hunker Down' ability from the Juvenile Siege Turtle is available no matter the Pet is alive or not. Ironically, the fact Druid doesn't need their pets to succeed at their role in any game mode is actually a good thing, although one might not call it the best designed fact.

The only really annyoing thing about pets to me is how wobbly they are. For a convenient use of the Hunker Down ability the Pet would need to be stickier as the bubble is only 240' radius but the pet itself tends to float around in ~360 radius around the Ranger when following passively. They could adjust that. Right now you have to double check where your turtle is unlike a Scrapper, Mesmer or Firebrand who just drop their bubble via groundtargeting wherever they want.

Apart from that: Hunker Down on Siege Turtle is pretty good, Cleanse on Bearbow Bear too, there is some niche but valuable use from the Smoke Scale utilizing it's Smoke Field (The basic Druid kit already offers 3 Blast Finishers in Warhorn 5, Staff 3, Avatar 3). There are some nice things there, good enough to be considered, not good enough to make the build dysfunctional once the pet dies, which is a good thing (Unlike Mech who becomes utterly useless with a dead pet)

Also you should remember to stow your pet if you do stealth movement.

Healing and Cleansing and Movement.

The Healing and Cleansing on Druid is excellent, the only really downside of things I agree on is
a) It's a bit clunk to fiddle with staff 2, all those ground targeted Avatar skills and the split effect of Glyphs
b) The value seems to fall of quite a bit with heavy erratic sticky movement, though it never becomes really bad, yet the value in a more static encounter or with fewer predictable movement patterns is noticeable.

Druid has quite some moving parts many players are unfamiliar with (even in PvE because it was is the meta spirit, boons and encounter mechanic slave to this day and not many actually know what these Glyphs actually do, I might guess)

Utility is a bit on the lower side, mostly heals, cleanses and stunbreaks, but that's kinda what it's there for? So uhm, not actually that bad. Also you bring two instances of light projectile hate in the form of Siege Turtle and Staff 5, can opt in for some pretty good immob spikes like any Ranger and can decide between a mass ranged rez or a Hallowed ground in Glyph of the Stars.
In terms of active defenses: is it really that far off from Scrapper and Tempest? Both of them rely heavily on their group in particular the guards for their stab and aren't exactly cracked on blocks, I-frames and mobility either with the kit they run in Large Scale.

I don't know man, I think Druid is actually pretty good and fun as the HealCleanse of the subgroup. And it's cool to see Rangers getting something of a Large Scale WvW Builds after 10 years of being the street child together with thief. I can understand why there is a bit hype, it rightfully is and it's great to see.

A bit of further de-clunk, some tweaks to Glyphs, Traits, Pets and it's really up there, it even is right now from my PoV but I am already very thankful how much the last patch already improved it and I don't think Scrappers and Tempest really outshine it Large Scale.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Mauti.3520

[Dithnir.4593]

Isn't the problem with it the situational nature of some of its capabilities?

Our zerg leader calls a push and wants superspeed. He gets it from other classes, but to give it as druid, I have to come be in CA and come out, meaning its on cd when we hit the enemy.

I can cleanse conditions when I go into CA, but surely that means I ought to be ready for hitting CA on our way in?

The pet dies, and that dilutes our capability so invigorating bond isn't that much use.

CA being on a timer means the glyph benefits while in that mode are only available if you get your timing right. Be nice if your glyphs recharged upon entering CA so those skills were available. CA 4 and 5 you have to stand still, CA1 is a very small radius and your stabs are short even with Minstrels.

 

I appreciate I'm a noob at this, too, that skill is required, but my guild at least sets up squads of 5 and a Healbrand goes into each one meaning 4 other slots, usually a Tempest cleanse and 3 dps. There's no room for druids on a busy server, the zerg leader wants an optimum setup and why shouldn't they?

 

To add insult to injury I asked about Power SLB to join zerg and that too got a laugh from pretty much everyone on our discord.

[Mauti.3520]

Phew, putting down Druids and Scrappers for a Tempest as a principle and by default for the Heal Cleanse Slot just sounds incredibly dumb and toxic. That's basically the spot Tempest sat in for the last years "You are great, but you are not Scrapper" doh...

But shittalking classes (even if the respective build is pretty good but not meta) and even players for "just wanting to do their dailies before being off to PvE again" sadly has a long tradition among some in WvW, as far as I can say.

But it's a big problem in this horizontal progression MMO. Even if it doesn't matter, as long as a critical mass thinks it matters and isn't optimal now matter how niche it kinda becomes that way because people drive/blackmail/pressure others into this situation as well. Not much leverage the balance department has in that regard without making every class the literal same. Let's see how this develops.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Mauti.3520

[Soilder.3607]

4 hours ago, Dithnir.4593 said:

Isn't the problem with it the situational nature of some of its capabilities?

Our zerg leader calls a push and wants superspeed. He gets it from other classes, but to give it as druid, I have to come be in CA and come out, meaning its on cd when we hit the enemy.

I can cleanse conditions when I go into CA, but surely that means I ought to be ready for hitting CA on our way in?

The pet dies, and that dilutes our capability so invigorating bond isn't that much use.

CA being on a timer means the glyph benefits while in that mode are only available if you get your timing right. Be nice if your glyphs recharged upon entering CA so those skills were available. CA 4 and 5 you have to stand still, CA1 is a very small radius and your stabs are short even with Minstrels.

 

I appreciate I'm a noob at this, too, that skill is required, but my guild at least sets up squads of 5 and a Healbrand goes into each one meaning 4 other slots, usually a Tempest cleanse and 3 dps. There's no room for druids on a busy server, the zerg leader wants an optimum setup and why shouldn't they?

 

To add insult to injury I asked about Power SLB to join zerg and that too got a laugh from pretty much everyone on our discord.

 

It used to be problematic, but Anet more or less solved the issue of CA mode uptime with changes to passive astral force generation (first introduced on Lingering Light in the June 28th update, now given to Natural Mender), buffs to glyphs and buffs to staff skills. This basically means that A. It's a lot easier to get into CA Mode now that it passively recharges, so when you have downtime between fights it can and often does fully recharge itself in the meantime B. The Druid support kit is a lot better outside of CA Mode now that things like Ancestral Grace (more healing), Astral Whisp (ally targeting and massive radius increase makes it actually usable), and Glyphs got buffed (more healing on Glyph of Rejuvenation, Glyph of the Stars became way better with Stab and a reduced cast time). You still have healing and cleansing when CA Mode is down (Healing Spring, Glyph of the Stars, and Vine Surge are all cleanses that work outside CA Mode). But as I alluded to earlier, Druid is a lot harder to play. When I feel like having an easy time I hop on my Tempest or my Vindicator.

 

Don't ever take Celestial Shadows when playing in zergs. It's nonsensical that the two major WvW build websites use that trait in their Heal Druid builds because it takes only a few minutes of playing in a comped zerg to realize that it is unviable. As you mentioned, you have to enter and exit CA mode to give stealth and superspeed with the trait. This means that A. If you give it on an initial push into an enemy zerg, you now have a cooldown on you CA mode and you have to regenerate it, so you cannot heal and cleanse as well as you could've been, which is especially bad on an initial bomb. B. When you are in the middle of a fight, you need to be going into CA mode off cooldown. You cannot hold CA mode in reserve in order to enter then quickly exit it to give stealth and SS. So, during any extended fight, when you commander calls for superspeed, you may not be able to give it. If your source of superspeed is not 100% available to give when the commander asks for it, then it is unviable. The trait Druids should be using over Celestial Shadow is Verdant Etching for group protection. 

 

You don't have to stand still when you use CA 4, and the AoE follows you so it's pretty good in a zerg. CA 5 has a long cast time and roots you, so you should never ever use it except to cast it and then quickly cancel the animation to give yourself some stability (its 2 stacks for 3 seconds on ministrels gear so it is a good source of minor self stab).

 

Getting laughed out of a discord channel because you asked about power Soulbeast? I wouldn't play with those people; that's just immature.

[Dithnir.4593]

Thanks for the clarifications. Don't know what made me think CA 4 meant you had to keep still.

I'm coming to terms with WvW zerg mechanics generally, and play varioud druid specs in pve, hadn't appreciated the wvw specific trait adjustments. Still, as you say, if it's just harder to play, it feels a bit wrong. I just got a Vindi spec but haven't played it yet, so will be interesting to see.