What happened to druid alacrity generation?

[linnea.4968]

Am I not getting something or did the druid alacrity generation just get gutted in this patch? I have to spam celestial abilities nonstop, even if there isnt anything to heal, just to maintain a measly 3-4 seconds of alactricity. And I have 88% boon duration. Is this carpal tunnel ability spam truly the way to generate boons now? If so, it's a horrendous change.

[Mauti.3520]

Yes it is atrocious.
No, it is not your fault.

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Well yeah, anet has been all about e-sports APM for no gain since Untamed was released.  

Most of us called this too when they removed it off spirits; was stupid enough to have to spam spirits to get it, but at least it didn't require this amount of mechanical complexity for little gain.  

[linnea.4968]

For the love of god Anet raise alac and might durations

[Robbes.2317]

I was glad the spirit spam was over but now i have to spam the celestial healing skills even if i don't have to heal, and also spam the spirits. And i still can't keep up any of the boons.

So my druid feels trash now. I can't promise to be an alac giver if i can't keep it up, with full harrier rofl.

 

I assumed the changes would be good for us, but i rather spam the spirits than spam both celestial skills and spirits for nothing.

I also assumed the spirits would stay indefinitely and keep pulsing to stack boons.. no, they just say hi and go away. 

[shaz.8572]

I think that reducing the internal cool down for swapping into celestial avatar might make a difference to the feel and might alleviate the concern of NOT having access to celestial avatar when its really needed. 

Or they could change the trait that gives  alac to proc off something else, like combo finishers , say for example leaps and blast finishers? there is  a lot of those with in the class tool kit, you wouldnt have to just use the spirits  as blast finishers 

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Hopefully someone at ANET will take some kind of notice. 

[JDub.1530]

3/4s Alacrity is nuts. At first I thought someone just input the wrong value. With near 100% boon duration, I can stack about 15s of Alacrity by spamming the 1-skill, but it feels like you can hardly do anything else. It feels worse than the former Spirit spam.

My suggestion is drop Alacrity from the 1-skill, and greatly increase the duration on the other CA skills. Skill activation should be meaningful. That's what ANet says they want. But this is 1 skill spam.

[BonzaiPlatypus.7091]

Quote

My suggestion is drop Alacrity from the 1-skill, and greatly increase the duration on the other CA skills. Skill activation should be meaningful. That's what ANet says they want. But this is 1 skill spam.

At that point - to get away from spamming all of the other skills to generate alac, just put it on Rejuvenating Tides. A single skill that channels and lets you move around. 

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Thinking back to the preview stream, maybe it makes sense why they did not show case the CA skills in action. 

That stuck out as odd to me, as if they had spent time writing the code, why not show it off? 

[CETheLucid.3964]

It's good on paper. Feels meh in practice. It's a numbers thing. They're afraid of it being too good but the thing with CA is that it builds up over time and even with all the buffs to CA generation the numbers still make it not so good. They shouldn't be afraid of letting druid overcap alacrity a little bit since the mechanic is locked behind a lot of build up.

The foundation is solid though. It's a numbers tweak away from being good.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I just streamed a short demo of the problems here, it wraps up the explanation of what's wrong very quickly:

GW2 Druid PvE changes june 27 patch are really bad - Twitch

[CETheLucid.3964]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I just streamed a short demo of the problems here, it wraps up the explanation of what's wrong very quickly:

GW2 Druid PvE changes june 27 patch are really bad - Twitch

That's a fair assessment. Yeah. It's pretty bad at present.

[Pedro Sequeira.3198]

Ar this point they should make Grace of The Land trigger upon entering and learning CA, at least we wouldn't have to waste big heals for boon giving. Doesn't Bladesworn provide alac solely by activating Dragonslash?

[Venomstrike.3704]

Thought the whole idea was to make the alac uptime a lot less mash every button on cooldown like nutball, so the druid could be more viable to focus on other things like healing and providing actual group support.. I don't have much of an issue jumping into CA on cooldown and keeping alac on myself, as long as I'm going through 1-5 skills and quickly weapon swapping. However, when I have 4 other people that pretty much have to be stacked on me at all times to get 90%+ alac that's where things get messy. Especially on encounters such as Sabetha or Dhuum, where squads are expecting a druid to kite. I don't have a problem with people needing to do mechanics better, but how's taking spirits away and not increasing the range of alac on CA going to make things more simplified? Maybe I'm missing something, but if that's how this is going to be, how about taking away the alac and just giving us quickness and gutting the entire build. Squads are just going to push people to play something else. And I don't blame them, because I feel like I'll contribute more to the group by playing something else. And I fell like if I stay playing druid and get a kill, I'll still get called out by a squad leader for alac not being good, oh well not much I can do there. Seems like the change is causing more conflict with groups rather than solving a problem.

[shaz.8572]

18 hours ago, Venomstrike.3704 said:

Thought the whole idea was to make the alac uptime a lot less mash every button on cooldown like nutball, so the druid could be more viable to focus on other things like healing and providing actual group support.. I don't have much of an issue jumping into CA on cooldown and keeping alac on myself, as long as I'm going through 1-5 skills and quickly weapon swapping. However, when I have 4 other people that pretty much have to be stacked on me at all times to get 90%+ alac that's where things get messy. Especially on encounters such as Sabetha or Dhuum, where squads are expecting a druid to kite. I don't have a problem with people needing to do mechanics better, but how's taking spirits away and not increasing the range of alac on CA going to make things more simplified? Maybe I'm missing something, but if that's how this is going to be, how about taking away the alac and just giving us quickness and gutting the entire build. Squads are just going to push people to play something else. And I don't blame them, because I feel like I'll contribute more to the group by playing something else. And I fell like if I stay playing druid and get a kill, I'll still get called out by a squad leader for alac not being good, oh well not much I can do there. Seems like the change is causing more conflict with groups rather than solving a problem.

I say follow what they implemented for scrapper, allow alac to apply on blast and leap finishers 
we have a lot of them apparently, and they are already baked into the class kit with out too much changes. 

Example 

using staff, a main hand and warhorn, you would have at least 2 -4 leap or blast finishers. one blast finisher in celestial avatar and  with spirits ALSO allowing blast finishers, this  might be a viable solution on the HOW to apply alac, while also allowing people to remain flexible on their play style. Heck just applying it on blast finishers would be a change if they dont want to allow leaps. 

 

Any one have any ideas on negative aspects on this type of change to how the alac would be applied? 

 

[Venomstrike.3704]

3 hours ago, shaz.8572 said:

I say follow what they implemented for scrapper, allow alac to apply on blast and leap finishers 
we have a lot of them apparently, and they are already baked into the class kit with out too much changes. 

These changes should have been beta tested by the players prior to release. I agree other things should be explored, but I doubt scrappers are enjoying these changes as well. So we're supposed to be jumping around like crazy in order to do our kite mechanics and provide a group with alac and provide boons? It's a design issue.

[Baby Goth.4983]

Druid Healer Alac   is no more  

Some groups don't even accept you to provide alac or as a healer ,   Switch to Engineer  until they fix the druid 

[guille.4921]

Giving alac in druid is horrible now as this only works that class as a healer and that's it

[Joncal.9623]

I’m feeling lost now. Druid alacrity healer in fractals is the only game mode I play, casually,  and it has become utterly stressful to do so now.

I have nothing else to fall back on, nor any interest to abandon my beloved main. :c
 

I’m currently stuck waiting out this butchery and couldn’t be less salty. :c

[angryangel.8541]

Honestly, it's probably all my fault. Whenever I really enjoy any class in the game, you can count on Anet to come and ruin it. Druid feels useless now, and it just makes me sad. I don't understand the point of this change because druid certainly wasn't OP. 

[Mell.4873]

2 hours ago, angryangel.8541 said:

Honestly, it's probably all my fault. Whenever I really enjoy any class in the game, you can count on Anet to come and ruin it. Druid feels useless now, and it just makes me sad. I don't understand the point of this change because druid certainly wasn't OP. 

They were worried about making OP so this time around they made it super weak and then buff it. Rather than pulling an Engineer Rifle on us and making it to strong that they needed to nerf it. 

Kinda sucks though if you actually were using it though. They should have beta tested it first but hey, so much is on the way. 

[Peter.3901]

I wish anet could start thinking outside the box instead of just spamming alac, quickness and might on everything.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Peter.3901

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

• ANET (Jun 27 preview notes): Improving the feeling of moment-to-moment gameplay for many boon support builds. We want these builds to have more flexibility in their utility skill choice and not be required to activate a particular utility type on cooldown to provide quickness or alacrity.
• ANET1: "For Druid, hmmm...let's have them generate alac by spamming skills in CA"
• ANET2: "But doesn't that go against what we said we wanted to avoid?"
• ANET1: "Nah, CA isn't a utility, it's a class-mechanic, so its all good." 
• ANET2: "Oh yea, ok, cool."

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 6/28/2023 at 12:02 AM, linnea.4968 said:

Am I not getting something or did the druid alacrity generation just get gutted in this patch? I have to spam celestial abilities nonstop, even if there isnt anything to heal, just to maintain a measly 3-4 seconds of alactricity. And I have 88% boon duration. Is this carpal tunnel ability spam truly the way to generate boons now? If so, it's a horrendous change.

It scales not only with BD, but also with quickness. Quickness does more then double the output off alac right now. That means it does punish a non-perfect set-up.

The coming buff of 0.25 will increase alac application in a perfect set up by almost 1.5 alac per second in CA, which is a lot. Without quickness and 80% Boon duration it will increase the alac per second in CA by less then 0.9. Reliance on quickness to provide alac is a design flaw.

Edited July 4, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138