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

[Levetty.1279]

Alacrity should be tied to regen on Druid.

[Acheron.1580]

3 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I never said anything about how people shouldn't be complaining

On 7/18/2023 at 1:26 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Druid is fine after July 18th patch. Stop complaining about it

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Acheron.1580 You're a real wise guy.

I actually edited the OP post to say "Druid is fine after July 18th patch. Stop complaining about it" AFTER you insinuated that I said people shouldn't be complaining, and AFTER that quote you quoted of me where I said I never had mentioned that.

So don't take the timestamps out of context bud. By the way, are you hear to discuss Druid or are you now just hear to poke & start fights with me no matter it is that you can do that?

Kudos man.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Acheron.1580]

I am discussing it but you keep dismissing ALL of it because you get REALLY defensive when people point out that the druid is not in a good place. You also spend all your time defending the devs for making this mess so it really wasn't clear at any step that you didn't like the mechanical changes, since you basically talk at length about how great the druid is in your really small sample sizes where they thrive (which you again get defensive about when I was simply pointing out that it's a bad example).

I also noted you changed the title from Druid is SAVED. So yea, lots of editing in this post I'd say.

Not trying to be cute or attack you personally but you are defending terrible changes, and when people point out why they still aren't good you double down and try to redirect the conversation because the things we are bringing up that are legitimate concerns for the druid are straight up indefensible. Yes you demonstrated it can work, it doesn't mean it's fine when other classes can do it better, or the fact that it ~barely~ works when before the 27th patch it just simply worked.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I'd also like to point out that my initial OP post and video link was not only about Heal Alac, but also Condi DPS in pve, as well as pvp and wvw Druid builds. You guys are taking the statement "Druid is saved" in only a pve Heal Alac context, but that one build structure was only 1/4th of what my statement was referencing.

I gotta hit the big red 'among us' button on that--how is test golem DPS / survivability demo anywhere near competitive viability? Sounds like someone has been messing about in the vents...

Anyway, Druid in WvW right now is very trash.  I have to work twice as hard to lockdown and/or secure kills on my roamer now because of Ancient Seed removal (and Eclipse replacement is hot garbage), and support Alac is non-existent because they didn't buff duration there.  Ergo, I wouldn't be saying 'Druid is saved' at all in a competitive context right now.

1 hour ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Ranger in general feels A/S tier. Untamed, Druid, Soulbeast are all in a fantastic state. 

Based on literally what? Just sticking to the original purpose of this topic, we have many examples here of why PvE heal/alac is currently probably B/C tier right now compared to other options and still we get posts like this that anet will latch to for no other reason than its echo chamber for them.

With both Druid and Untamed we have a very lazy slapping of boons on class mechanics that weren't meant for that.  It's just not ok and there should be a lot of vitriol around it.  

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

I am discussing it but you keep dismissing ALL of it because you get REALLY defensive when people point out that the druid is not in a good place.

That's not what happened at all. What happened is people came in here and started posting straight misinformation vs. what I was relaying to them not only in the footage but also in text from running with several fractal groups now and a few strikes. They were acting as if I was lying, which I have no incentive to do. In fact, I never "dismissed" anything, but rather kept having to clear up what I was saying, because no one actually came in here with any in-game experience and any real statements to make, they just came in with general conjecture and general attacks vs. my statements, without making any statements of their own that held any room for discussion at all. Most of these posters clearly were making responses based off objective points of view reading patch notes instead direct subjective experience actually going in-game to run the build. As a person who has gone in and played the build for probably about 10 to 12 hours now post patch, as much was obvious. There was even random insults thrown at me about "how this is a stupid way to gain clout" which had nothing to do with my purpose in simply attempting to interact with the ranger subforum community, and certainly had nothing to do with the discussion about Druid in general. Thanks guys.

And if you didn't notice my good observant bro, I've been agreeing with everything you've been saying. I have quite seriously posted & quoted myself agreeing with you like 3x now. Are you reading anything in this thread? The only difference in opinion we have, is that you are saying you are still upset about it, whereas I am saying this is just how it is so here is a method that works. If you REREAD what I've been saying, I've been agreeing with you this entire time, about everything, the mechanics being bad, all of it. I was just trying to toss a positive vibe to the Druid community to explain how you can still make it work, so get off me.

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

You also spend all your time defending the devs for making this mess so it really wasn't clear at any step that you didn't like the mechanical changes

Come on dude are you reading anything? I directly stated like 6x in this thread now, that the dynamic feel and mechanics were messy and felt bad as compared to before. Get off of it. You need to pay attention to what's going. I know you want to defend yourself right now but seriously man. You are like reading into things in an odd way here, and creating arguments where there are none. I have been agreeing with you. The only difference here is that you are salty about it which you have the right to be, but I was trying to be positive and explain how it works now. Get off of it.

And yeah, I am defending the devs on this one. This situation with Heal Alac Druid is not nearly as bad as people are cooking it up to be. Most of the people who are still in here super pissed off picking fights with me, are the ones who have spent barely any time if any time at all, actually going in-game to adapt to how these builds play now. As much is obvious.

I mean let me ask you this honestly, and don't lie to me. Have you even gone in and reconfigured your Druid to any of these new setups and went in-game to adapt to the play style yet?

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

you basically talk at length about how great the druid is in your really small sample sizes where they thrive

Do you read or listen to anything? That video you watched was about Condi Druid in pve, Support Druid in pvp and wvw, DPS Druid in pvp and wvw, and also Heal Alac Druid. I praised the overall state of Druid amongst all game modes. I DID NOT hard focus any of those comments towards just Heal Alac. YOU GUYS came in here with that pve mindset that only pve exists and somehow completely ignored the elongated part the video that discussed competitive aspects and all the builds there-in.

Then when you all specifically pointed out and focused Heal Alac, I then made several comments saying the same thing over and over and over and over, which was: "It fdels overly sweaty and messy to play now. I don't prefer the new feel. However, when you get used to it, it is healing A LOT more than it ever did, and the alacrity output is fine." <- This is what I said, go reread it.

But then everyone kept wanting to look for reasons to argue and misrepresent my statements, example being taking the statement "Druid is fine" and applying that only to Heal Alac, when the initial post was obviously about Druid in general across all game modes. And despite my specific comments about Heal Alac that 95% agrees with your own opinions, they kept wanting to look for reasons to argue with me. What they're really pissed off about, is the patch in general, and that's ok. But don't go into threads where someone is just trying to give a positive shoutout to explain what works and what doesn't, and act like that person is white knighting for Arenanet and defending some kind bad patchings. That's ridiculous, get off of it.

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

I also noted you changed the title from Druid is SAVED. So yea, lots of editing in this post I'd say.

Well yeah, after you try to do something kind and are met with a bunch of demonization, you kind of start thinking things like "What did I do wrong? Maybe if I word it different, people will see the purpose of the post, rather than attack it with assumptions".

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

Not trying to be cute or attack you personally but you are defending terrible changes

If you say so bud.

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

and when people point out why they still aren't good you double down and try to redirect the conversation because the things we are bringing up that are legitimate concerns for the druid are straight up indefensible.

AND I AGREED WITH EVERYONE that mechanically it feels bad now. But I did truthfully point out the pros numerically that came with the build, particularly the enhanced heal output.

I didn't defend anything dude. I just tried to be neutral in pointing out what the patch did and how to work with it. Get off of it man. I didn't defend **** but myself. No one in this thread, not even yourself, is actually tossing any real discussion about Druid so get off of it. All you guys are doing is pointing at what I said and going: "YOU YOU YOU! YOU YOU YOU!" OK enough of it. Get off of it. If you want to discuss Druid, start discussing Druid mechanics with numbers and values. Let's talk about what could have been done better. Hell, even I made a post and said "If it were up to me" and explained what I would do if it were up to me. But the rest of you are just all like "NO NO! YOU YOU!" and don't actually say anything. So start holding actual discussions or get off of it man.

49 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

Yes you demonstrated it can work, it doesn't mean it's fine when other classes can do it better

I never said it was better, I said it worked and tried to show people how to do it.

Just get off of it man. No one is happy with the way it feels, we all agreed on that. But it is true that it works, and that's all I was trying to show.

So enough with the demonization and misrepresentation of my statements.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

21 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Anyway, Druid in WvW right now is very trash.

DPS is struggling after removal of Ancient Seeds. Druid Support on the other hand is stronger now than it's ever been.

What I've been doing, is just use Lingering Light and deviate away from solo roam, and more towards small skirmish with at least 1-2 partners to roam with. If you do this, you can really put to work Lingering Light with all the methods to enhance your CA energy gain in wvw and the already 10s CD on CA Kit. If you have people with you, Druid is strong, and Lingering Light does make up for loss of Ancient Seeds when we are talking small team fights.

But solo roam it defnitely got hurt bad with the removal of Ancient Seeds.

Btw, thanks for contributing discussion with actual numbers & values & actual statements that indicate you actually play the game and know what you're saying. There are a lot of people throwing posts in this thread that could better learn how to conduct a discussion from your example.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Drag You Down.2615]

50 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Based on literally what? Just sticking to the original purpose of this topic, we have many examples here of why PvE heal/alac is currently probably B/C tier right now compared to other options and still we get posts like this that anet will latch to for no other reason than its echo chamber for them.

I would rate it D tier-ish in pve as a boon healer.

To my taste, the pve S tier healer should be FB, Scourge (although people don't like it, but it is really good in pve now),

A tier should be Mech, Specter, Renegade

B tier Scrapper, Herald,

C tier Tempest, Chrono,

In pve, Druid has no way to compete against any of them above, not even Chrono healer.

[Drag You Down.2615]

Oh wait, Herald is also not that bad now, they changed it yesterday.

[Nephalem.8921]

2 hours ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

I would rate it D tier-ish in pve as a boon healer.

To my taste, the pve S tier healer should be FB, Scourge (although people don't like it, but it is really good in pve now),

A tier should be Mech, Specter, Renegade

B tier Scrapper, Herald,

C tier Tempest, Chrono,

In pve, Druid has no way to compete against any of them above, not even Chrono healer.

You did barely any raids, no cm fractals, no cm strikes. Please...

Druid is easily S tier in pve again. It only needed some help with might and some higher alac generation. It still has that ridiculous stun mod in marksmanship which makes it S tier on its own. Can be used together with para sigil for ridiculous cc output. What can compete with druid in that area? Rev staff does not unless you can guarantee all hits which requires a lagswitch or sak in fractals.

Herald B tier? For real? Renegade still struggles with might generation and you put it in A.

Do people in this thread understand how the game works and what makes healers strong? On demand CA healing isnt part of it if anyone is wondering.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Nephalem.8921

[Acheron.1580]

I read through ALL of this thread before my last post, and REREAD it now to just make sure and honestly I stand by what I said. Assuming you don't go edit crazy I think other people will see it too. Yes I toyed with the new changes, as skint as they were, as I mentioned before with how obvious it is that they provide a plethora of boons. And I mentioned again as well that it doesn't matter if they barely BARELY touched up alac time because they refuse to admit the spec as a whole plays like complete trash now and isn't fun. If YOU read instead of immediately jumping down my throat about "heckling" you when I was simply pointing that out, you would have seen that it wasn't an attack on you, or your videos.

[Drag You Down.2615]

43 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Druid is easily S tier in pve again. It only needed some help with might and some higher alac generation. It still has that ridiculous stun mod in marksmanship which makes it S tier on its own. Can be used together with para sigil for ridiculous cc output. What can compete with druid in that area? Rev staff does not unless you can guarantee all hits which requires a lagswitch or sak in fractals.

Possibly, I never play fractal, so I don't know what is in there.

It sounds like Druid can be really good, as a STUNNER I think, not sth called healer. What is heal? No one cares about heal right? 😆

[rotten.9753]

43 minutes ago, Drag You Down.2615 said:

Possibly, I never play fractal, so I don't know what is in there.

It sounds like Druid can be really good, as a STUNNER I think, not sth called healer. What is heal? No one cares about heal right? 😆

Maybe because healers in this game are not supposed to focus on healing because it's not really needed. In other MMOs, healers have to constantly heal a tank, do you constantly need to heal people? The main job of healers is to give boons.

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

.mBased on literally what? Just sticking to the original purpose of this topic, we have many examples here of why PvE heal/alac is currently probably B/C tier right now compared to other options and still we get posts like this that anet will latch to for no other reason than its echo chamber for them.

With both Druid and Untamed we have a very lazy slapping of boons on class mechanics that weren't meant for that.  It's just not ok and there should be a lot of vitriol around it.  

I think there's a divide in what we're actually talking about. Trevor Boyer as well as myself are avid sPvPers which is where a lot of our praise comes from. Ranger is quite literally one of the best PvP classes in the game ATM. 

In regards to your complaints about PvE, I have 0 insight to druids performance, so I have no bases for discussion. 

[pengefinchess.8452]

I prefered the prepatch spirits that pulsed boons and alac to this… but im sortof warming to it. Those who remember, this is very similar to how we gave might out way back - we regularly went into CA and used the skills not necarsarily for healing, but to generate might stacks.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

In regards to your complaints about PvE, I have 0 insight to druids performance, so I have no bases for discussion. 

Then why are you in a PvE oriented topic?

As for your sPvP forum post history, everything is apparently strong and perfect there according to it so that point is moot.  We all know Rangers won't be dominating tournaments anytime soon and skill level is at an alltime low anyway there so it's mostly irrelevant.

[Levetty.1279]

2 hours ago, pengefinchess.8452 said:

how we gave might out way back

It is how we gave Might before the spirit changes too.

[pengefinchess.8452]

11 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

It is how we gave Might before the spirit changes too.

Heh yup by way back i meant b4 the spirit changes 😉

[draxynnic.3719]

I do wonder if ArenaNet has gone from leaning too much on utilities to too much on traits and elite specialisation mechanics. There's no risk of druid becoming a dual quickness and alacrity supplier, so perhaps one of the glyphs needs to have alacrity in order to allow a bit of leeway on CA.

[Kaizz.7306]

I get what they're trying to do. Playing multiple different healer archetypes in this and many other mmos, I see it. It feels like they want more evenly sustained healing for Druid vs burst healing periods. Been messing with it in fractals, and honestly.... yes it's more spammy, but I don't HATE it. It just doesn't feel as good having to dip into CA so much for alac, but at the same time, there's such a huge overlap with the alac gen, in some cases, I've been able to hold onto CA a bit longer. A lot of caveats, though. I haven't actively played Druid in PvE content specifically in years, like before IBS release, so I'm relearning a lot, and am not doing everything perfectly. I mainly run my druid for wvw, and it's very very different in there. This was also in fractals, not CM's, where I already knew mechanics, and a few strikes. That said, there's just so much more APM needed than I remember  before, and it's not overwhelming, it just doesn't feel nearly as good as others. I have always felt CA should be a bigger "oh kitten" form, but I can see how ANet may want it to be more of a natural thing to flow in and out of over the course of a fight. So it does what it needs to do, just.... I really don't like how spammy it is, even if it does work.

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

12 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Then why are you in a PvE oriented topic?

As for your sPvP forum post history, everything is apparently strong and perfect there according to it so that point is moot.  We all know Rangers won't be dominating tournaments anytime soon and skill level is at an alltime low anyway there so it's mostly irrelevant.

This is the ranger forums, not the PvE forums. Approximately half of Trevor's initial post is about PvP, so why is it not appropriate to talk about PvP?

Yes, most of my forum posts are positive about the game because that's how I feel. Try dropping the doomer mentality. 

Everyone complaining about PvE builds is a product of its toxic player base. Everything must be 100% optimal or all of you think it's trash. People run suboptimal builds for the sake of fun all the time in PvP.  You don't NEED 100% alacrity uptime. If how you want to play Druid is by saving CA for burst heals, then do it! Why aren't Lingering Light healing builds used in PvE? Because the community deemed it suboptimal?

"We all know Rangers won't be dominating tournaments" this is purely speculation. You don't know until the next mAT. Also, how many gizmos do you have? If it's 0, then why do you care about mAT comps? Tournament comps matter to like 25 people tops between NA and EU. 

[Acheron.1580]

1 minute ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

You don't NEED 100% alacrity uptime.

Man I've been in enough groups to know that this isn't true, people get really kicky. And if you can't provide 100% alac uptime, they will find a class that will, why would any raid or strike group be like "nah man, we are cool taking the dps loss" when druid doesn't even really bring anything special to the table, and now has to provide boons by jumping through 3x as many hoops. Why lingering light isn't used is the same reason people weren't bringing heal scourges; if you don't bring the 2 meta boons as a healer you aren't valuable, that's Anet's fault more than anything else.

[Dahkeus.8243]

On 7/19/2023 at 8:37 AM, 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.

Gonna disagree with this, but I don't mean it in a way that's a hit at you or any of your gameplay.  Your gameplay was solid and the completion of the CM is testament to that, but because you were focusing primarily on using CA when it was needed for healing primarily and keeping up other boons, there was a lot of downtime on the alac and I say that purely from watching how much Alac *you* had, so it's not even counting how much your group may have missed out on alac because of being out of range and such.

 

Compare this to something like an alac renegade and you'll see much, much better alac time, even with the player focusing more on mechanics than their rotation.  Why? Because it's just easier to provide the alac without consequences to gameplay.  You just hit the alac button on cooldown and the only other consideration that gets in the way is you're camping another legend like Jalis because you're the primary provider of stability, which is a bit of an edge case.

 

Druid is a solid class as a healer and can do great with groups, but I think your gameplay clip is really good proof of why the design of alac on CA is bad.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Everyone complaining about PvE builds is a product of its toxic player base. Everything must be 100% optimal or all of you think it's trash. People run suboptimal builds for the sake of fun all the time in PvP.  You don't NEED 100% alacrity uptime. If how you want to play Druid is by saving CA for burst heals, then do it! Why aren't Lingering Light healing builds used in PvE? Because the community deemed it suboptimal?

 

16 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

In regards to your complaints about PvE, I have 0 insight to druids performance, so I have no bases for discussion. 

Uhh...

Also not gonna ask you how many gizmos you have but...

2 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

"We all know Rangers won't be dominating tournaments" this is purely speculation. You don't know until the next mAT. Also, how many gizmos do you have? If it's 0, then why do you care about mAT comps? Tournament comps matter to like 25 people tops between NA and EU. 

 

21 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Nah we're gonna see multiple specters and warriors next AT. 

 

17 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Power mirage is strong as kitten rn. Probably won't see it in mAT though. 

Seems I'm not the only one speculating on AT.  If you are the Top 25 you speak of, mind dropping the Twitch?

As at this point, I'm guessing that I am likely debating an alt account--but glad you are happy with the state of the game!

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

16 minutes ago, Dahkeus.8243 said:

Druid is a solid class as a healer and can do great with groups, but I think your gameplay clip is really good proof of why the design of alac on CA is bad.

I completely agree with you.

Again, I never stated in this thread that it was great. All I did was point out that Druid still worked and that it now has double or the more the heal potential on these new builds than its ever had, which is actually a different kind of boost.

But for some reason, all these people in this thread seem to be focusing on is some marginally small difference in Alacrity uptime & ease of application between say a Druid and a Mech, and they are reading into and seeing what they want out of my statements, regardless of what my statements have literally said. For whatever reason, all of these people in here seem to think I am claiming that "Druid is amazing and OP in every aspect. Praise Arenanet developers!", which is nothing like what I've actually said in this thread at all.

But yeah, I get your point nonetheless.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524