Druid Is Fine After July 18th Patch - Shout Out To Druid Community

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

This is how I feel about the state of Druid between all game modes:

GW2 Druid is saved as of july 18th patch - its good now - Twitch

 

Edited July 20, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Easy to watch short clip of Heal Alac: Heal Alac Druid post July 18th patch - extreme damage pulse - only console buff is quickness - Twitch

It's honestly strong as hell now.

That is extreme damage pulse in raid room, with only console buff being quickness. The druid is generating everything else by itself.

[Beddo.1907]

There is still an issue of alac wasting CA, but other than that, I think everything else is good enough to play.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

2 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

There is still an issue of alac wasting CA, but other than that, I think everything else is good enough to play.

It's perfectly fine on CA. You want to be entering CA frequently and now you can easily overcap.

 

If you're holding CA on druid, you're probably playing druid wrong.

[Mauti.3520]

1 Second baseline is still a bit stingy but it's noteably better. Very much so.
Buffs to Spirits and also Spirited Arrival add to that very well.

[vrauns.3215]

Wasn't saved, not sure what you are talking about.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

There is still an issue of alac wasting CA, but other than that, I think everything else is good enough to play.

 

48 minutes ago, Mauti.3520 said:

1 Second baseline is still a bit stingy but it's noteably better. Very much so.
Buffs to Spirits and also Spirited Arrival add to that very well.

You guys need to watch at least the little clip that I posted. Heal Alac Druid is actually amazingly strong now, if you can adapt to the new way it should be played. It can cycle heals that never stop, as shown in the short clip, that can keep a party alive through the most heated pressure, outside of true one shot boss mechanics that cannot be healed through.

That perma heal cycle is under extreme environmental damage and the only console buff turned on is quickness. The Heal Alac Druid is generating ALL the other boons you see by itself, including the large alacrity stack. If they raised the base alac to 1.5 or 2.0, you'd be able to rebuff like 60 seconds of alac off a single CA Kit use bottoming it out, it would be busted. 1.0 is right on the money and where it should be, with the way they designed it into CA Kit.

My purpose in posting this stuff was as a shoutout to the pissed off Druid community that, even though the build doesn't feel quite the same, it's actually a lot stronger now.

 

 

[Mauti.3520]

Yes and I kinda agree with you - My comment was not to say the build is bad. Just a bit stingy on some parts. ^^

[Beddo.1907]

4 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

 

You guys need to watch at least the little clip that I posted. Heal Alac Druid is actually amazingly strong now, if you can adapt to the new way it should be played. It can cycle heals that never stop, as shown in the short clip, that can keep a party alive through the most heated pressure, outside of true one shot boss mechanics that cannot be healed through.

That perma heal cycle is under extreme environmental damage and the only console buff turned on is quickness. The Heal Alac Druid is generating ALL the other boons you see by itself, including the large alacrity stack. If they raised the base alac to 1.5 or 2.0, you'd be able to rebuff like 60 seconds of alac off a single CA Kit use bottoming it out, it would be busted. 1.0 is right on the money and where it should be, with the way they designed it into CA Kit.

My purpose in posting this stuff was as a shoutout to the pissed off Druid community that, even though the build doesn't feel quite the same, it's actually a lot stronger now.

 

 

The thing is, can you do this cycle for 5 min+ outside of golem, without any errors that would cause downtimes?
Tried it out for a bit and it's pretty punishing in practice, resulting is heal uptime going down.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

3 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The thing is, can you do this cycle for 5 min+ outside of golem, without any errors that would cause downtimes?
Tried it out for a bit and it's pretty punishing in practice, resulting is heal uptime going down.

Yup, you get the hang of it after awhile. Just take a night of assisting different groups in fractals for a few hours, it becomes intuitive after awhile.

The biggest thing is knowing mechanics in the content you're in, and making sure to use your stability and stun break wisely as to not have your cycles interrupted.

You know what, maybe I'll skip the daily reset AT tonight and run fractals with it instead, to demo some realistic footage.

About 6 minutes to reset here.

[Mewsha.3561]

Thank you. Alacrity purely on CA and nothing else is still awkward, but I'll take what I can get.

This is how it should have released. Shame it took us weeks to get to this point. I have been playing Heal Alacrity Druid for the past few weeks and I don't blame people who were angry and changed builds, but I hope people give it a chance again.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

The thing is, can you do this cycle for 5 min+ outside of golem, without any errors that would cause downtimes?
Tried it out for a bit and it's pretty punishing in practice, resulting is heal uptime going down.

Did a quick highlight of 99CM 2nd phase just to demo the build under pressure in fractals.

I feel like it runs fine -> Short Heal Alac Druid demo in 99 CM - Twitch

[Gotejjeken.1267]

The rotation show in the OP is nowhere near what's ran in the 'demo', showing exactly how punishing it is when not against a test golem.  

Also probably want to mark this topic with [PvE].  

Finally, would be good to show it in a raid and/or challenge strike as primary healer and disprove the main gripe of alac being tied to CA wastes the actual purpose of support Druid---healing.  

[Thron Stal.9367]

What about the scrapper?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

The rotation show in the OP is nowhere near what's ran in the 'demo', showing exactly how punishing it is when not against a test golem.  

Also probably want to mark this topic with [PvE].  

Finally, would be good to show it in a raid and/or challenge strike as primary healer and disprove the main gripe of alac being tied to CA wastes the actual purpose of support Druid---healing.  

Bro that's because the test golem was pushing out A LOT more pressure than 99CM. That extreme damage pulse in raid room is no joke. And of course in 99CM you have to move around constantly, which is probably the hardest fractal for Druid aimed heals tbh. The other bosses allow you to stand still and more accurately use the rotations I showed in the demo. What you see in 99CM is like worst case scenario but the Druid still works, which is why I demo'd it.

I don't record raids/strikes because other streamers oversaturate GW2 streaming with stuff from those modes. Plenty of people in the next week are going to shove out plenty of footage of raids after the patch, which will show plenty of Heal Alac Druids I'm sure. My goal was to demo Heal Alac Druid in the mode that it is unpopular in, which is fractals.

About disproving that Alac wastes healing: If people can't clearly see that the new versions of this build are pumping out 100% pure never-ending heal cycles after watching that extreme pulse test, I don't know what other type of footage to show them. I've explained it many times on stream now: The Heal Alac Druid no longer only has heal in CA Kit. It now has a constant steady heal cycle that never really ends due to blast finishers on spirits, weapons, and amongst 3x different water fields. CA Kit is simply a part of the rotation, the part that gives Alacrity. Heal Alac Druid plays more like Ele attunement cycling now. That's just the way it is, whether we like that or not.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Beddo.1907]

9 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Did a quick highlight of 99CM 2nd phase just to demo the build under pressure in fractals.

I feel like it runs fine -> Short Heal Alac Druid demo in 99 CM - Twitch

I'm just gonna be annoying and say the alac uptime was low.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

I'm just gonna be annoying and say the alac uptime was low.

There are always downtimes on Alac with any Alac class when you're in a boss fight that requires constant disposition & movement due to mechanics. Even something like a Renegade will end up out of position at say the "jump to get orbs phase" and have to wait to recast Alac for when the party regroups into a stack. That's what you're seeing in the video and it's an unfair assessment to call it out like that. Me being able to maintain 85%-90% Alacrity uptime in 99CM is actually a very high Alacrity uptime for that boss fight.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Acheron.1580]

Let me just get this straight. You picked scenarios were the damage output is a constant thrum, thereby enabling you to enter CA regularly and pointed at it saying "see, it works now", but what about fights were the damage isn't constant? What about scenarios where your group is actively avoiding damage, or fights were there are dead damage spots? I'm asking what happens when you can't do constant heal throughput and suddenly you can't go into CA form often. This is a really biased test.

That aside, is it fun? Did they make it enjoyable to play again? Are you just spamming 1 and 2 in CA just to keep alac up and calling that dynamic play? I'm impressed they managed to make pets EVEN WORSE for the druid because now I don't even care what they bring to the table, being originally a CC and aegis, or turtle bubble occasionally, because I gotta spam these swaps and beast abilities on cooldown, so why even bother?

I'll admit the gambit of boons the druid provides is pretty impressive, I could see that without testing and just looking over what options were available to me. It just doesn't feel anything like it used to, and yea I used to pop into CA on cooldown before the changes too but now my pet feels like baggage and if there's a reason I would want to save CA for what I know is coming (or if I suddenly want to be able to use the rez part of the glyph) well too f'n bad for everyone I guess.

[BatelGeuce.3591]

This is not how you get clout or viewers. It's a pathetic attempt.

Also people like you and Turtle make me wanna commit seppuku cause every time I thought I saw it all, someone worse pops up.

[zeyeti.8347]

16 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

Let me just get this straight. You picked scenarios were the damage output is a constant thrum, thereby enabling you to enter CA regularly and pointed at it saying "see, it works now", but what about fights were the damage isn't constant? What about scenarios where your group is actively avoiding damage, or fights were there are dead damage spots? I'm asking what happens when you can't do constant heal throughput and suddenly you can't go into CA form often. This is a really biased test.

That aside, is it fun? Did they make it enjoyable to play again? Are you just spamming 1 and 2 in CA just to keep alac up and calling that dynamic play? I'm impressed they managed to make pets EVEN WORSE for the druid because now I don't even care what they bring to the table, being originally a CC and aegis, or turtle bubble occasionally, because I gotta spam these swaps and beast abilities on cooldown, so why even bother?

I'll admit the gambit of boons the druid provides is pretty impressive, I could see that without testing and just looking over what options were available to me. It just doesn't feel anything like it used to, and yea I used to pop into CA on cooldown before the changes too but now my pet feels like baggage and if there's a reason I would want to save CA for what I know is coming (or if I suddenly want to be able to use the rez part of the glyph) well too f'n bad for everyone I guess.

Same thoughts in a nutshell , i use my CA only for healing , might was done for me trough warhorn 5 + rapid fire and frost spirit , i didn't care much about CA for might generation , now i have to pull my CA at the start of a fight and use all my healing skills just to pulse alacrity while the group is full hp , thats stupid ! and to generate might i have to switch my pets constantly off cd .... great gameplay , i agree spirits were boring to play but at least you could spam 3-4 of them , get alacrity up to a 25-30 sec and care about the healing.

Best example would be OLC CM were damage come into huge spikes sometimes , i used my CA on pull and push mechanic , while also being able to heal people afar from the group , now i'll have to use my CA to get alacrity , and in scenarios were your group avoid any damage your CA is a burden to load up , for me it's a freaking bad idea to have alacrity there , but anet was focused on "get all quickness and alacrity out of utility skills" , think they forgot Firebrand , oops ... plz don't ruin FB , i already see quickness coming with tomes skills ... yuuukkkk.

Edited July 19, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Beddo.1907]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

There are always downtimes on Alac with any Alac class when you're in a boss fight that requires constant disposition & movement due to mechanics. Even something like a Renegade will end up out of position at say the "jump to get orbs phase" and have to wait to recast Alac for when the party regroups into a stack. That's what you're seeing in the video and it's an unfair assessment to call it out like that. Me being able to maintain 85%-90% Alacrity uptime in 99CM is actually a very high Alacrity uptime for that boss fight.

Or I can play mechanist and have 100% uptime as long as we stack up within 20s.

[Beddo.1907]

11 minutes ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

i agree spirits were boring to play but at least you could spam 3-4 of them

(You still need to spam them, except it's just easier.)

[Acheron.1580]

Ideally you can set up to have enough prot where you maybe don't need to spam stone to make use of that sweet sweet aegis but in general yea still a spam fest, they just can't die on you now.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

I don't know about 'saved'.

PVE might see some benefit, but alac is still tied to CA.

Condi Druid, on the other hand, is ultimately a weaker condi Druid post patch. 

No wonder they didn't show CA in action in the live-stream preview. 

[Acheron.1580]

6 minutes ago, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

Condi Druid, on the other hand, is ultimately a weaker condi Druid post patch. 

Is it? I saw nothing in the balance patch that would cause that. I'm not saying you are wrong, Anet loves to just conveniently leave changes out with zero communication. What's different?