Alacrity Druid GRACE OF THE LAND is anti-synergy.

[DeathPanel.8362]

The whole point of Celestial Avatar skills is that they are meant to be for support and healing bursts reactively.  The recent change made it so that those skills are the only source to generate ALAC via Grace of the Land. 

The problem is this forces you to spam those skills on cooldown which means you will be healing people when it's not needed and when it's needed Avatar is off and those heals are not there.  This makes your ALAC generation ANTI-SYNERGETIC with your healing and just plain feel bad.

The other way to build ALAC is to forego healing and focus on Condi DPS and treat Celestial Avatar as just a way to generate ALAC and do conditions but that brings us to the other problem: 

Eclipse, the GM trait that grants conditions to Celestial Avatar skills SHARES A TRAIT SLOT WITH GRACE OF THE LAND which means if you choose it for DPS purposes you won't be able to generate ALAC and if you generate ALAC you won't be able to do any DPS during Celestial Avatar and that nerfs your overall dps by a lot.

So in summary, if you choose to generate ALAC you will not be able to operate effectively as either a support or a dps.  The trait Grace of the Land is not a viable option at this point.  This patch has functionally killed ALAC druids as a viable build option.

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by DeathPanel.8362

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

The changes for Druid need to be re-thought. 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

They absolutely ruined Druid in both pve and pvp.

It'll still be effective in wvw due to cele stats and the nature of zerg vs. zerg, but Druid is dead in pve and pvp as it sits now.

[Infusion.7149]

It was not a well thought out change 

[DeathPanel.8362]

22 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

They absolutely ruined Druid in both pve and pvp.

It'll still be effective in wvw due to cele stats and the nature of zerg vs. zerg, but Druid is dead in pve and pvp as it sits now.

Basically, any effective build at this time can't be speccing Grace of the Land.  Grace of the Land is anti-synergetic with healing and dps.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Even though ancient seeds is gone, they still haven't even reduced the CD on CA in sPvP. 

With abilities now tied to CA, blood moon, eclipse and the rest, it is just a house of cards. 

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

It is making more sense to me now why they didn't show-case the CA skills in action in the preview stream. 

That stood out as odd to me that they didn't at-least give a quick live-stream preview of the skills in action. 

[DeathPanel.8362]

The only way I can see them salvaging Druid Alac build is one of the following:

*Making Grace of the Land triggered by regeneration provided by the druid instead.

*Making Grace of the Land modify Celestial Avatar abilities to provide a barrier at decreased effectiveness instead of healing.  This way even if you have to spam them to maintain Alac on rotation at least the barriers remain and have an impact rather than healing people that are already at 100% health which wastes it.  

[BonzaiPlatypus.7091]

Decent ideas.

I think it would also work well to make Grace of the Land trigger 1.5-1.75s alacrity per pulse on just Rejuvenating Tides. Yes, there would be some bit of waste healing, but it would tie a single skill to alacrity application that doesn't involve button mashing. That seems like a good one to do it on.

It's channeled, so you have to put a little thought into it so that you don't have to interrupt it with dodging. You can move while channeling. 

1.5s base duration would be about the bare minimum with medium concentration to allow a player to pop into CA, channel it, then pop out and have it last until the cooldown on CA expires. Suitable if your group needs alac but not additional healing. 1.75s would be a comfortable buffer. 

The other issue seems to be astral force generation - the better your group the harder it is to generate and the harder it is to keep alac. Maybe make it so boon application also generates AF?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

36 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

The only way I can see them salvaging Druid Alac build is one of the following:

*Making Grace of the Land triggered by regeneration provided by the druid instead.

*Making Grace of the Land modify Celestial Avatar abilities to provide a barrier at decreased effectiveness instead of healing.  This way even if you have to spam them to maintain Alac on rotation at least the barriers remain and have an impact rather than healing people that are already at 100% health which wastes it.  

That's actually a great idea because the barriers stick even when they have full health so it would be preemptive damage mitigation, which Druid does not have like Ele Auras & Guard Aegis.

Then if they could make barrier count for healing allies concerning interaction with associated traits.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Eildon.1950]

They butched druid and need to revert these changes ASAP! At least with spirits we could mantain 100% alac uptime. Sure we had to spam spirits every few seconds but still...

With these changes I can no longer confortably mantain 100% alac uptime AND I have to spam celestial avatar each time it's off cooldown (mashing my keyboard and clicking like crazy). This completely ruins the purpose of celestial avatar (burst healing) and turns it into an even worse spamfest.

I also hate the changes to spirits in general because I can also no longer mantain their buffs with decent uptime.

Druid was fine and didn't need changes (can't speak for Soulbeast or Untamed because I don't main those specs). But ANet needed to fix the "spam issue" of spirits by making us spam celestial avatar EVEN MORE to get LESS alac uptime than before. See the irony here?

I don't see the need to change it just for the sake of "changing". If it ain't broken don't fix it.

[Phage.9203]

Before the change you could just refill the Celestial Avatar resource bar by doing your rotation, even out of combat: healing your spirits would get you to full.
Now when playing the build solo you'll either have trouble getting your CA bar full or run out of alac before it gets off cooldown, as far as I can tell.

Perhaps it's a rotation issue but I preferred CA to be used reactive and not "mandatory" as well.
Could also be a scaling mistake, we went from 10 seconds of might from that trait to not even 2 seconds of alac I think.

I'm gonna start gearing up my Mechanist while we wait for a rebalance.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

5 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

They absolutely ruined Druid in both pve and pvp.

It'll still be effective in wvw due to cele stats and the nature of zerg vs. zerg, but Druid is dead in pve and pvp as it sits now.

Druid absolutely isn't ruined in PvE. It still works like it did before, but has an annoyingly lack of alacrity duration despite 100% boon duration.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

15 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Druid absolutely isn't ruined in PvE. It still works like it did before, but has an annoyingly lack of alacrity duration despite 100% boon duration.

No

It's normal spirit boons had their uptime ripped down to like 1/10th of what they were, so now you have way less protection, ect ect for the party than you did before.

But even that isn't the biggest problem ^ The biggest problem is that using that alacrity requires you to continuously blow CA Kit CD to spam what are supposed to be party heals, at times when they don't need to be healed. Then they'll get hit and need to be healed, and then you have no CA Kit to use to heal them because you're waiting for the CA energy to rebuild because you have to constantly blow it to maintain alacrity.

Then upon that problem, the trait that reduces the CD of CA Kit DOESN'T EVEN MATTER because when you blow all CA Kit energy to buff Alacrity, you'll be waiting 20s for the CA Kit energy to build before you can use it again anyway lol.

They seriously botched the Druid side of this patching my man. It's in a far worse dysfunctional state than it was before this. In fact, this is the worst state Druid has ever been in, in comparison to the other classes around it. At this point, It's almost advantageous to not run alacrity on it, which sets it completely out of viable pve meta.

The title of this thread already says it all: "alacrity druid grace of the land is anti-synergy"

Edited June 28, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Euthymias.7984]

I think they should just tie the Alacrity to skill healing or healing effects you apply (like water field blasting)
That way, things like
-pets healing allies when traited
-your staff skills (2, 3)
-Blasting Water Fields in general
-Warhorn's heal (traited)
And Celestial Avatar and Glyph Seeds of Life all trigger it

Edited June 28, 2023 by Euthymias.7984

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Just now, Euthymias.7984 said:

I think they should just tie the Alacrity to skill healing.
That way, things like
-pets healing allies when traited
-your staff skills (2, 3)
-Blasting Water Fields in general
-Warhorn's heal (traited)
And Celestial Avatar and Glyph Seeds of Life all trigger it

Eh, I dunno man.

It was a situation where they tried to change something that didn't need to be fixed.

Alacrity rolling off spirits worked fine, felt fine.

Arenanet somehow time & time again fails to understand the idea behind: "If it isn't broken, don't fix it.".

[BumboJumbo.1308]

5 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

But even that isn't the biggest problem ^ The biggest problem is that using that alacrity requires you to continuously blow CA Kit CD to spam what are supposed to be party heals, at times when they don't need to be healed. Then they'll get hit and need to be healed, and then you have no CA Kit to use to heal them because you're waiting for the CA energy to rebuild because you have to constantly blow it to maintain alacrity.

(PvE specifically) 

This is why I say they should up the duration of alacrity. I think alacrity should be 1.5 seconds baseline to then be 3 seconds with 100% boon duration. Using CA4 would get you 15 seconds of alacrity, which can then be increased with whatever other CA skill is used. 

(Druid has 3 ways to access high uptime of protection, btw)

The other part of your post seems to be more centred around pvp which I don't know much about.

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

12 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

This is why I say they should up the duration of alacrity.

Nah man, the mechanics are absolutely dysfunctional from the bottom up. They have to revert this.

I just tried to run Druid in the new fractal and let me tell ya, against any boss that is moderately difficult, these mechanics with the alacrity being tied to CA Kit usage are so anti-synergetic and unintuitive to the point that it feels "punishing".

The CA Kit needs to be there for when the party needs healing. The way its mechanics are, it just needs to be used johnny on the spot when it's needed. It DOES NOT WORK OUT WELL when they are trying to make these mechanics function in some kind of a cycle like a FB Kit. It's a much worse feel for the class and plainly a downgrade to the Druid dynamic.

Alacrity on spirits wasn't broken, they shouldn't have tried to fix it. I've said this several times in the past about other things they've changed that no one complained about or asked for. It's a real simple concept: "If what you are changing isn't going to make the class FEEL better to play, do not change it." Very simple.

 

But if what you say is what they are going to do, they need to massively increase the duration of Alacrity being pumped out from those CA Kit skills. And they need to massively enhance the durations of the boons coming off the spirits. Because at this point, there is no reason to play a Druid for heal/alac/other boons, when set next to things like Firebrand & Renegade, or any other class that spits out heal/quick/alac. Absolutely no reason at all. The Druid is now an incredibly weak support compared to these other classes.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[DeathPanel.8362]

16 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

This is why I say they should up the duration of alacrity. I think alacrity should be 1.5 seconds baseline to then be 3 seconds with 100% boon duration. Using CA4 would get you 15 seconds of alacrity, which can then be increased with whatever other CA skill is used. 

The duration of ALAC isn't the main problem.  The main problem is the mechanics.  Celestial Avatar skills are designed to be reactive in nature.  By linking ALAC to Celestial Avatar skills they're forcing them to be used like rotation skills which is anti-synergetic with the reactive nature of the Celestial Avatar skills.

You end up with situations where you use up your Celestial Avatar skills in order to keep ALAC up when your team doesn't need the healing but end up having Celestial Avatar on CD when your team is in trouble and needs the heals.

I understand they are trying to make it so that there are trade-offs in order to build ALAC, but making a trait that specifically is anti-synergetic with your specialization's mechanics just feels bad to play and is unfun. 

[BumboJumbo.1308]

13 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I just tried to run Druid in the new fractal and let me tell ya, against any boss that is moderately difficult, these mechanics with the alacrity being tied to CA Kit usage are so anti-synergetic and unintuitive to the point that it feels "punishing".

I guess we just have a disagreement with this. I think the alac on CA kit is fine, but just needs to have a higher base duration. 

This may not be an entire 1 to 1 comparison but when grace of the land had might not many people complained about that being anti-synergetic despite having to spam the skills (yes I understand that druid has access to might in other ways than CA kit). 

CA kit 1,2, and 3 are where most of the heals come from, whereas, 4 and 5 were mostly used for might duration. So your healing isn't going to suffer in CA with grace of the land with might or alac.

26 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

And they need to massively enhance the durations of the boons coming off the spirits. Because at this point, there is no reason to play a Druid for heal/alac/other boons, when set next to things like Firebrand & Renegade, or any other class that spits out heal/quick/alac. Absolutely no reason at all. The Druid is now an incredibly weak support compared to these other classes.

The boons on every single spirit are perfectly fine with 100% boon duration. It might not be as specialised as firebrand or renegade in regards to specific boons such as resolution, resistance, or vigor but spirits do offer good boon duration on those never before shareable boons on ranger (other than vigor) despite not being up 100% of the time.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

56 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

This may not be an entire 1 to 1 comparison but when grace of the land had might not many people complained about that being anti-synergetic despite having to spam the skills (yes I understand that druid has access to might in other ways than CA kit). 

CA kit 1,2, and 3 are where most of the heals come from, whereas, 4 and 5 were mostly used for might duration. So your healing isn't going to suffer in CA with grace of the land with might or alac.

Let me clear this up, Might coming from CA Kit was never a problem for these reasons:

1. The might stacks and duration were much larger and much longer duration than the alac.
2. There are also other sources of might coming off various places from the Druid, including other players, so the Druid wasn't concerned with stacking 25 might with CA Kit. IT was concerned with needing to lay down maybe 5 to 10 at most.
3. When the Druid went into CA Kit, it was generally when casting Staff #5 to set the water field, use Staff #3 on the water field, go into CA Kit and blast #3 on the water field, channel #4 and leave CA Kit. Lingering in it any longer than that was too much of a burn on CA Energy. That quick simple combo landed enough heal to keep players alive, and enough additional might in conjunction with all the other sources of might, to keep 25 stacks easily.

This is honestly of no comparison to what is happening right now ^

The only way to adequately compare that to this problem with Alacrity, would be if no one else was able to make might in the party, and the Druid could only make might through the CA Kit. <- If this were the case, people would have been complaining about the same thing, if they would have been forced to cycle CA Kit at weird times when heal isn't needed, to upkeep 25 might.

56 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

The boons on every single spirit are perfectly fine with 100% boon duration.

No, they most certainly are not. Have you logged in to play Druid yet my dude?

Please allow me to demonstrate this for you on stream so you can be keenly aware of what has happened to Druid:

~~ edit

Apparently the link wasn't loading the video. Here's a new link:

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

Let me know if this link is for some reason not loading.

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Euthymias.7984]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Eh, I dunno man.

It was a situation where they tried to change something that didn't need to be fixed.

Alacrity rolling off spirits worked fine, felt fine.

Arenanet somehow time & time again fails to understand the idea behind: "If it isn't broken, don't fix it.".

Even so, if this is what its going to be like going forward, then I'd like them to do that suggestion because it seems to work already with Scrapper and their quickness to some degree. Baking in the alacrity with what you're already doing (healing) in a similar vein makes sense. It allows your weapon and traits to trigger it (or at least help maintain it) when you dont need CA, taking pressure off of needing to go into it for upkeep

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 minutes ago, Euthymias.7984 said:

Baking in the alacrity with what you're already doing (healing) in a similar vein makes sense.

On paper yes, in application no.

When you are actually a Druid player who goes into a CM Fractal/Strike/Raid, these new mechanics are immediately noticeably god awful. Even when spending a day to "try and get used to it", you just further notice more and more reasons why these mechanics were a huge mistake.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 hours ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

The whole point of Celestial Avatar skills is that they are meant to be for support and healing bursts reactively.  The recent change made it so that those skills are the only source to generate ALAC via Grace of the Land. 

The problem is this forces you to spam those skills on cooldown which means you will be healing people when it's not needed and when it's needed Avatar is off and those heals are not there.  This makes your ALAC generation ANTI-SYNERGETIC with your healing and just plain feel bad.

The other way to build ALAC is to forego healing and focus on Condi DPS and treat Celestial Avatar as just a way to generate ALAC and do conditions but that brings us to the other problem: 

Eclipse, the GM trait that grants conditions to Celestial Avatar skills SHARES A TRAIT SLOT WITH GRACE OF THE LAND which means if you choose it for DPS purposes you won't be able to generate ALAC and if you generate ALAC you won't be able to do any DPS during Celestial Avatar and that nerfs your overall dps by a lot.

So in summary, if you choose to generate ALAC you will not be able to operate effectively as either a support or a dps.  The trait Grace of the Land is not a viable option at this point.  This patch has functionally killed ALAC druids as a viable build option.

 

Yes to both.  

What they did was took how immob Druid was played (while simultaneously laughting it off as an edge case meme build) and expanded it to the entire kit.

Meaning, you would use CA for immob / roamer Druid in exactly this way--go in, hit 3-2 for cleanse, sometimes hit 4 but most likely just hit 5 and out if your opponent didn't facetank it. 

Druid though was designed as support--for you to stay in the avatar--and actual support Druids would.  The reason I say they modeled Eclipse / Grace of Land after roamer is they didn't go with a passive 'stay in the avatar and support' they went with an active 'spam all the CA skills' approach.  

Which is why this patch feels so bad, as they made changes supposedly to make Druid more support minded and have DPS option, but made every change with roamer in mind--yet none of them are useful to a roamer.  

[DeathPanel.8362]

5 minutes ago, Euthymias.7984 said:

Baking in the alacrity with what you're already doing (healing) in a similar vein makes sense.

The nature of heals, cleanses, and CC from Celestial Avatar is that they're REACTIVE.  Making ALAC triggered based on CA skills means it has to be used like a ROTATION skill.  

Applying a heal to someone at 100% life is a complete waste. 

Applying a cleanse to someone with no conditions is a complete waste.

Applying CC when the mob's break bar isn't up is a complete waste.

Yet you're forced to use those skills on rotation in order to get ALAC up.

Worst of all when you do need to heal, cleanse, or CC your Celestial Avatar might be on Cooldown because you had to use it on rotation.

Grace Of The Land is directly anti-synergetic with the main mechanics of a Druid.