6/27 Druid Changes Discussion - Come to find out, it's not QUITE as bad as we thought

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

I have 1 massive critique of the pve druid build- it's using Beastmastery for the intended to be lost effect of 20% command CDR. That's it.

This is because it needs the regeneration for the party that comes off commands. It makes the pet hit harder which is a large benefit on an already low damage Heal Druid, and the weakness/taunt applications on pet F2 is also good. There simply aren't better options right now. Skirmishing is no longer an option with how they nerfed the boon applications.

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

There is a significantly more simple solution that also allows alac dps druid (dps druid is very potent right now) to exist as well- just increase the alac duration. While they're add it, add more might to CA4/5. It's a bit of a struggle to upkeep some of these important boons right now, or you burn a bunch of skills for 1 of them (namely prot).

Yes but this isn't the case right now.

The build is designed the way it is to accommodate how things are right now in the current patching.

[draxynnic.3719]

Regarding Ancient Seeds:

The reason people hated it was because a druid could knock an enemy off a point and then entangle them through Ancient Seeds off-point. The immobilise is then hard to get out of without resistance or burning a movement skill because the entangling roots would just re-apply it. Druids could then build as a bunker that doesn't need to do damage to take a contested point in a duel because sooner or later they'll pull off that combo enough times to flip the point.

Druid being as weak as it is in sPvP is largely because of Ancient Seeds - the trick was so good that it had to be basically the only thing they could do effectively or druids would go back to just dominating in sidepoint fights. Now that it's gone, they might be able buff it so that it's competitive without being carried by Ancient Seeds.

[JDub.1530]

11 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Ok boys, here are a few key videos with some statements & findings that I wanted to share:

1. The crux of the problem: GW2 Druid PvE changes june 27 patch few problems - Twitch
2. How it has effected WvW & PvP: GW2 Druid WvW PvP discussion post june 27th patch - Twitch
3. A new direction for PvE Druid: GW2 New Heal Druid Method post june 27 patch - Twitch

For those upset about how Heal/Alac Druid has been changed, I really wanted to share the 3rd short video. Keep in mind that method is avoiding the problem of CA Kit being cycled for Alacrity and not being saved for burst heal, by creating a rotation that is actually 100% constant burst heal that doesn't end.

~ Enjoy

Funny that you said it's more important to maintain Alac on yourself than your party in order to provide group Alac 😆

But this doesn't feel promising, because on top of being super sweaty and rigid, it has zero fault tolerance. You regretted demonstrating this build/rotation with the CC golems, but I think it was perfect, because it shows how fragile it is. Your rotation got interrupted, and you let things just completely fall off waiting for your CDs to come around again. That seems worse than just using a less sweaty build that has sub-100% uptime.

[Evenaardez.7913]

They should turn ancient seeds into a glyph, like replace the stupid Glyph of Unity. That way we still have that rooting effect, and this way perhaps it can be a skill shot instead or a defined projectile with counter play.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, JDub.1530 said:

Funny that you said it's more important to maintain Alac on yourself than your party in order to provide group Alac 😆

But this doesn't feel promising, because on top of being super sweaty and rigid, it has zero fault tolerance. You regretted demonstrating this build/rotation with the CC golems, but I think it was perfect, because it shows how fragile it is. Your rotation got interrupted, and you let things just completely fall off waiting for your CDs to come around again. That seems worse than just using a less sweaty build that has sub-100% uptime.

But there isn't one. That's the issue Druid players are facing right now after these changes. The build you're looking at that I demo'd is the most functional Heal/Alac Druid that I could discover.

Unless they buff the Alac uptime or make some kind of serious alterations, that type of method is what we'll be looking at moving into the future with Heal/Alac Druids.

I agree, it feels awful and it is in no way as smooth or accurate to play as it was before the 6/27 patch, but this is what we're working with as of now. Its skill cycling feels similar to Ele Attunement play, which I don't favor.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[JDub.1530]

32 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Unless they buff the Alac uptime or make some kind of serious alterations, that type of method is what we'll be looking at moving into the future with Heal/Alac Druids.

Agreed there. I honestly thought it was a mistake when I saw 3/4s of Alacrity (with zero boon duration). And honestly from my brief experiments, the whole CA kit is irrelevant, as spamming the 1-skill seemed to stack Alacrity better than any of the other skills. Which is why I feel removing Alac from the 1-skill and greatly increasing the duration for the rest might be a way of making it better while avoiding overstacking issues (with 1-skill spam).

[BonzaiPlatypus.7091]

7 minutes ago, JDub.1530 said:

I honestly thought it was a mistake when I saw 3/4s of Alacrity (with zero boon duration).

I even had a brief moment where I thought something was bugged with boon duration when I had kitten near 100% duration and saw the alac was only 1.5s. Something being bugged with boon duration seemed more likely in the moment than less than 1s base alac.

[JDub.1530]

33 minutes ago, BonzaiPlatypus.7091 said:

I even had a brief moment where I thought something was bugged with boon duration when I had kitten near 100% duration and saw the alac was only 1.5s. Something being bugged with boon duration seemed more likely in the moment than less than 1s base alac.

I was expecting one of those follow up patches saying they fixed the Alac duration for GotL. Probably not terribly hard to accidentally type in a wrong number.

[BonzaiPlatypus.7091]

Imagine if this entire fiasco was all because they forgot to type a 1 in 1.75. 1.75 wouldn't fix some of the core critiques people have had about the design alacrity generation but kitten that would be a nice comfortable buffer instead of having to spam everything regardless of what else is does.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, BonzaiPlatypus.7091 said:

Imagine if this entire fiasco was all because they forgot to type a 1 in 1.75. 1.75 wouldn't fix some of the core critiques people have had about the design alacrity generation but kitten that would be a nice comfortable buffer instead of having to spam everything regardless of what else is does.

The recent upcoming July 18th patch notes say otherwise. Currently sitting at 1s.

[BonzaiPlatypus.7091]

2 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

The recent upcoming July 18th patch notes say otherwise. Currently sitting at 1s.

Yeah that was mostly a quip. It's insane that they'd let the issues linger that long and still it feels like they are being too conservative. They should bump it up to 1s immediately and then work it out more from there.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

No, it's exactly as bad as we thought.  

I get the intent, but topics worded like this do not help fix matters--they need to know the changes are unequivocally bad or we will continue getting terrible balancing.  

[shaz.8572]

6 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

But there isn't one. That's the issue Druid players are facing right now after these changes. The build you're looking at that I demo'd is the most functional Heal/Alac Druid that I could discover.

Unless they buff the Alac uptime or make some kind of serious alterations, that type of method is what we'll be looking at moving into the future with Heal/Alac Druids.

I agree, it feels awful and it is in no way as smooth or accurate to play as it was before the 6/27 patch, but this is what we're working with as of now. Its skill cycling feels similar to Ele Attunement play, which I don't favor.

I have a proposal on how to change the trait Grace of the land. 

Right now it only applies alac with celestial abilities, my suggestion is to take a look at how scrapper applies alac currently and make a similar adjustment to druid. 

The scrapper trait currently applies alac by combo'ing blast or leap finishers. 

considering that there are multiple methods to apply blast or leap finishers with in the druid weapon and utility tool kits, this might make a smart move in order to move away from the current method that relies on burning celestial avatar abilities in order to provide alac and also steer back to a more flexible way to apply alac by using available options already present with in the class. 

From a pve group perspective the only thing i have found negative is the lack of fluidity on how the class applies alac. 

We know they have found a solution, we just need to make them realize and see if this will feel better overall in this specific situation. 

I hope im not totally off base but right now the current implementation feel bad. 

 

[Peter.3901]

I'm just migrating to guardian, less headache, more effective, no tendinitis.

Anet can keep their weird fetish in destroying rangers, i'm done.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Peter.3901

[Mic.1897]

18 hours ago, Aveneo.2068 said:

Sorry, but I see little celestial meaning behind an eclipse (moon moving in front of the sun).

😒

Have you considered looking up the definition of celestial

[Aveneo.2068]

41 minutes ago, Mic.1897 said:

Have you considered looking up the definition of celestial

Have you considered looking up the definition of druid

Seriously though, I simply find it a very lazy attempt at naming something while the effects also make no sense. How many times do people suffer from damaging effects when there's an eclipse? The whole premise makes no sense.

I really hope they will at least change the icon; or did they also fire the entire art department back then and will just pretend that an ancient seed is now an eclipse? 😉

[Mic.1897]

24 minutes ago, Aveneo.2068 said:

Have you considered looking up the definition of druid

Seriously though, I simply find it a very lazy attempt at naming something while the effects also make no sense. How many times do people suffer from damaging effects when there's an eclipse? The whole premise makes no sense.

I really hope they will at least change the icon; or did they also fire the entire art department back then and will just pretend that an ancient seed is now an eclipse? 😉

Druids studied astronomy heavily and a (solar) eclipse can cause permanent eye damage

Edited June 30, 2023 by Mic.1897

[Aveneo.2068]

3 minutes ago, Mic.1897 said:

Druids studied astronomy heavily and a (solar) eclipse can cause permanent eye damage

That's awesome but these condis aren't applied to the druid but to random people. Additionally you'd have to be looking at an eclipse for quite a while before getting eye damage.

Besides, this is all a terribly pointless discussion and I'm also going to disable email notifications now. I've been here since launch back in 2012 and just no longer care about this game. It just annoyed me that once again ANet is messing up the one character that I liked to play. Out of the 18 lvl80 characters I have I only really enjoyed Ranger and Guardian.

So whatever. Just give me my effing eclipse icon and move on. I doubt that ANet even looks at these forums anymore so it's all pointless to discuss these things anyway.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

1 hour ago, Aveneo.2068 said:

That's awesome but these condis aren't applied to the druid but to random people. Additionally you'd have to be looking at an eclipse for quite a while before getting eye damage.

Besides, this is all a terribly pointless discussion and I'm also going to disable email notifications now. I've been here since launch back in 2012 and just no longer care about this game. It just annoyed me that once again ANet is messing up the one character that I liked to play. Out of the 18 lvl80 characters I have I only really enjoyed Ranger and Guardian.

So whatever. Just give me my effing eclipse icon and move on. I doubt that ANet even looks at these forums anymore so it's all pointless to discuss these things anyway.

You become the solar eclipse... hence why you deal damage in celestial avatar (and vice versa).

[Joncal.9623]

5 hours ago, Peter.3901 said:

I'm just migrating to guardian, less headache, more effective, no tendinitis.

Anet can keep their weird fetish in destroying rangers, i'm done.

I don't have a guardian to fall back on, but I do have a specter (and a HAM I hate playin) and so far they feel amazing with the new changes in fractals, as heals (gotta drag him to raids and strikes yet). However I'm not knowledgeable enough with specter enough to pinpoint a END ALL BE ALL build yet. :c

Edited June 30, 2023 by Joncal.9623

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Mic.1897 said:

Have you considered looking up the definition of celestial

Celestial Shadow = Eclipse; you know the skill and icon named by the person who originally designed Druid and wasn't on a massive Twilight fanfic bend.

Eclipse and Blood Moon though? Evokes way more vampire than the actual celestial events imply.  Hell, on a Blood Moon IRL there are people who believe that's when the supernatural come out.  

3 hours ago, Aveneo.2068 said:

That's awesome but these condis aren't applied to the druid but to random people. Additionally you'd have to be looking at an eclipse for quite a while before getting eye damage.

At the rate Anet balances they should just apply the condis to the Druid for increased damage, so we can be worse Harbingers.  

[pengefinchess.8452]

On 6/29/2023 at 11:25 PM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

No, it's exactly as bad as we thought.  

I get the intent, but topics worded like this do not help fix matters--they need to know the changes are unequivocally bad or we will continue getting terrible balancing.  

yep i agree - hes still spamming CA skills to get alac uptime 😞