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

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Uhh...

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

 

 

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!

I didn't say I had any gizmos nor do tourney comps affect me. That's my point. Why did YOU bring it up?

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

I didn't say I had any gizmos nor do tourney comps affect me. That's my point. Why did YOU bring it up?

 

8 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. 

tldr; this implies you have to have gizmos to care about tourney comps otherwise its pure speculation.  When we all know most people with gizmos bought them, but I digress 😂.

Anyway, to avoid going in circles, I don't like where Druid is at.  I mean yeah we all have to deal with it, and most of us can probably play around it, but the direction is sus at best.  

But I must say, with all the mechanical complexity for minor or mediocre gain, really does make you feel the NCSoft influence 😃.  

[wolfyrik.2017]

I mean, that just looks plain unpleasant to play, frankly. Hammering away on keys in the hope that you might get them to trigger just in time so that everything doesn't fall apart, in an extreme rotation, that takes away creativity and reponsiveness.....

Ummm no thanks. Kudos for making it work for you, though.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Some changes I would like to see for Druid;

1) Be able to use CA 5 whilst moving.

2) Vine surge, it can be hard to hit people with it, especially if target is highly mobile, increase radius and make it be able to track target, or make vines hit target like ancient seeds did. 

3) When we lost primal echoes, we lost the CD on staff, build the CD into the staff or trait it into blood moon. 

4) Rework Eclipse so it is not tied to CA and give us something that can properly immob others like ancient seeds. 

5) 6 cleanses instead of 3 on Druidic Clarity.

6) Glyphs need increased radius. 

7) Related also to Ranger generally, finally fix pet F2, because of the Mech changes, the F2 will not activate if another skill is being used. 

8 ) In sPvP finally restore access to CA on a 10 sec CD. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

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

1) Be able to use CA 5 whilst moving.

This needs to happen for competitive. Druid DPS in pvp and wvw could be good again if you could chase with CA 5 in an offensive way instead of being a sitting duck pulsing an attack that everyone can walk away from.

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

7) Related also to Ranger generally, finally fix pet F2, because of the Mech changes, the F2 will not activate if another skill is being used. 

It is particularly annoying. It does help if you just set the F2 to auto attack.

Like if you're just running Jacaranda for DPS in pve, just set it to auto.

[Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341]

Unfortunately I run Iboga and Turtle, and I play in competitive, so both of the F2 I need on a situational demand. 

Hopefully Anet will take some notice, because when seconds matter, having a reliable skill like F2 with those types of pets can make all the difference. 

I hope they don't leave Druid as it is whether on the PvE side or PvP side. 

[zeyeti.8347]

On 7/20/2023 at 3:34 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

You can and should anticipate it

a choice ... anticipate damage or work on alacrity uptime , Ham has the same choice to make i guess ? ahem....

On 7/20/2023 at 3:34 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

You are not supposed to react and heal in pve

Sorry sir , but what the hell are you talking about , you think every player is able to dodge every attack a raid/strike/fractal boss has ? by your statement we should then  remove the heal from CA and just let it pulse alacrity , "not supposed to react" , ofc as a healer i just watch people die and scream at them "heh pal you have two dodges " "heh pal you have a healing skill" "heh pal you have régénération , run circle around the boss 2 minutes to get yourself full hp".

On 7/20/2023 at 3:34 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Healers should get punished for mindlessly spaming their stuff

So when we enter CA to "spam mindlessly" our alacrity uptime we should get whipped i guess ? druid still runs spirits and still spam them , what was the point of this patch ? it's no fun whatsoever , boon/healing should be two separate things , why you think hfb and ham are the most played healers (oh sorry i ment booner)  across the board , CA was used for healing and was especially enjoyable for his long range , now try healing at long range a single target doing a mechanic and we'll have ppl like you complaining alacrity is only at 75% uptime... , the better uptime on CA's alacrity can help i guess , but i can't help myself starting a fight with spamming all my avatar skills like a robot while the whole squad is at 100% life ... 

Btw you say we "should anticipate healing" , then come with "you are not supposed to react and heal in pve" , anticipating is kinda of a reaction and not reacting to healing needed is not anticipating , so better pull it together and make a choice , cause you are freaking confusing to read and blend up a whole nonsense.

And switching pet's like a numb**** is very intuitive and clever gameplay too i guess ? At some state i wish anet get rid off alacrity and quickness , those two boons are the cornerstone of pve endgame and ruined everything for me.

Edited July 21, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

7 hours ago, Arrow Blade of El Elyon.9341 said:

Unfortunately I run Iboga and Turtle, and I play in competitive, so both of the F2 I need on a situational demand. 

Hopefully Anet will take some notice, because when seconds matter, having a reliable skill like F2 with those types of pets can make all the difference. 

I hope they don't leave Druid as it is whether on the PvE side or PvP side. 

Yeah, in competitive I run Ibolga for the pull.

It's very obnoxious when you need to use the F2 pull at a very precision moment to make the difference in being death burst or dealing the burst, but your Ibolga is like "nah, try again in 1-2 seconds".

They really do need to fix that.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

7 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

Sorry sir , but what the hell are you talking about , you think every player is able to dodge every attack a raid/strike/fractal boss has ? by your statement we should then  remove the heal from CA and just let it pulse alacrity , "not supposed to react" , ofc as a healer i just watch people die and scream at them "heh pal you have two dodges " "heh pal you have a healing skill" "heh pal you have régénération , run circle around the boss 2 minutes to get yourself full hp".

He's talking about as the Druid player.

The way it works now, just allow yourself take a bit of damage when you know it isn't a oneshot.

This is how to keep the Alacrity cycle flowing.

[Strider.7849]

10 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

He's talking about as the Druid player.

The way it works now, just allow yourself take a bit of damage when you know it isn't a oneshot.

This is how to keep the Alacrity cycle flowing.

I think you're a good voice for the ranger community, especially in terms of druid. At first I didn't like the changes to druid as a whole. After testing it extensively with the time I am able to, I'd have say it is better than before, I'm actually starting to love my druid again.

I don't run your beast master version, I actually still prefer skirmishing over it and I prefer using glyphs and only stone spirit over using sun spirit. I'm glad we're able to have flexibility in our kit now, rather than being hard locked into a full bar of spirits. One of the big things I didn't notice: glyph of Equality was reversed. It now gives stability outside of CA. That was a huge change in allowing it to function much better. I run turtle and white tiger as well. I'm having a blast on druid again.

[zeyeti.8347]

23 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

He's talking about as the Druid player.

The way it works now, just allow yourself take a bit of damage when you know it isn't a oneshot.

This is how to keep the Alacrity cycle flowing.

thats my point , at some state you will be forced to go in CA only for the alacrity uptime and maybe next after your Ca the squad kittens up , someone forgot a dhuum bomb , ppl stay with agony on cairn and whatsoever ,  bad timing <> bad luck .

 

12 hours ago, Strider.7849 said:

rather than being hard locked into a full bar of spirits

You still run with 2 spirits and spam them of cooldown , and you can take water spirit instead of the glyph , not a huge difference .

My main problem with that is that they are healers who's healing burst arent locked behind a key boon (hfb for example) and druid with that looses all his flavour , spamming your spirits ? or spamming your CA , skills , it's still spamming without thinking , but at least with spirit you could rest for a while.

It's my point of vew , if you fellas enjoy it like that , i am happy for you , but for me now even Hat is becoming better than druid (and god know how i despite the Hat).

[AreohGee.7592]

So what is the WvW Druid build now?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

18 minutes ago, AreohGee.7592 said:

So what is the WvW Druid build now?

Druid roaming is kind of dead after removal of Ancient Seeds.

Druid Support for zergs on the other hand, is very strong right now.

Soulbeast probably your better bet for roaming atm, but if you insist on Druid Small Skirm/Roam, I'd suggest all cele gear with axe/axe & staff -- use turtle. You'll have triple antiprojectile fields and be able to survive 1vX while kiting to remain safe relatively easily unless you get super ran over. The only prob is you may as well take Lingering LIght with it for when you group sometimes, now that Seeds is gone. The other two traits are useless in competitive for Roam, even with cele boon duration. Loss of Ancient Seeds really hurt Druid's ability in competitive to lock down and kill things in 1v1.

[Mell.4873]

My god this thread goes around and around in circles

@Acheron.1580

Is the main complaint is the Alacrity it so short.... would 2 second per Celestial Avatar skill be better?

 

I mean essentially everyone is complaining to Trevor with no real solution. Making Celestial Avatar easier to use or excluding Alacrity from it is not a solution.
The entire problem with Druid is the Celestial Avatar was useless except for mass healing. It's essentially the Resurrection Bot Scourge all over again.

Now Celestial Avatar has 3 district forms, Alacrity, Healing or Conditions.

[Acheron.1580]

I think Ive said it multiple times (even in this thread) but to reiterate (from the perspective of PvE, not WvW which I feel like has different options now)

- tying alac to CA is fine as a concept but because CA is reliant on a resource that is dependent on damage/healing you do, it is unreliable when you have fights or scenarios where all damage to your group stops, thereby preventing you from generating resource to go back into CA. Would a longer alac duration help this? Sure. It could also be solved by making it standardized instead of generated dependent on healing (since in cases were there is no damage, overheal doesn't count). The duration wasn't well considered on the July 27 patch and the very small duration increase doesn't fix the underlying problems it has, or the boon support problem as a whole.

- Grace of the land's alacrity implementation is really really lazy. It gives 1 second duration on skill activation, any skill. That means if you use CA 4 or 5 you are actually losing alacrity duration because the cast times are longer than the boon duration they apply, but you still want to use 4 and 5 for the other things it offers. Instead you basically settle on spamming 1 and 2 over and over and ignoring the rest of the kit which again just strips away autonomy for garbage spamming. They should have 4 and 5 pulse extra alacrity while casting, or having an extra burst of it at the end.

- druid used to be fairly LI, only needing to use spirit activation on cooldown and had freedom to use CA to perform healing as needed, maintaining buffs was maybe too passive but fairly easy. Now it requires non-stop spamming of skills to barely (and I do mean barely, there's very little wiggle room which makes high mobility fights kind of a nightmare) maintain prot which you now do by spamming pet swaps and pet abilities, basically removing the effectiveness of pet abilities like tiger or turtle which had fairly good situational use. It was alleviated slightly by increasing some boon durations and reducing spirit cooldowns but the crux of it is the buffs were to the trait that forced this game play so there isn't a lot of options to do anything else. It's actually more restrictive than before july 27 patch. You also STILL need to use and spam spirits so the shift from spirits having alac to CA having it feels redundant. The entirety of the spec went from being LI to one of the most intense APM supports in the game. You'd need to give more options to the druid to provide boons that wasn't tied to traits, or at the very least not tied to pet swapping and beast abilities. Druid used to just work. Now it barely works and it's so intensive that you end up being less able to spend time actually watching fights and more time watching cooldowns, and you also get less autonomy for when to use beast abilities.

-  MY complaints have nothing to do with condition druid which is good (other than it cost druids Ancient Seeds), Lingering Light though is effectively a non option because you lose Alac. I assume Lingering Light is fairly potent in WvW and PvP, but for PvE a healer not bringing a major boon (alac or quick) is basically frowned upon, hence why there weren't any main healer scourges, just niche secondary healer spots for them. The class doesn't provide anything particularly special that warrants the harsh playstyle, there are simply other alac healers that do it better with a lot more room for error and a lot less buttons (HaM).

- I can't believe I have to reiterate this again, I was not complaining AT Trevor or attacking him, I was pointing out the flaws of the druid, which I mean I really feel like you just skimmed rather than read anything I posted before you @'d me because all of this is already said in this thread. Also how is making CA easier to use or detaching alac from it NOT a solution, as least to maintaining alac? In the long run I agree it doesn't fix how much spamming you do just to maintain other buffs so it isn't a final solution. As for how you could standardize CA, it already has a cooldown, and that already is affected by Lingering Light. You could simply have the druid activate CA on the fixed cooldown which would THEN give the druid their full resource, then have the same costs and drain for skills in CA form (thereby preventing a permanent CA state), when you leave CA the resource doesn't exist and isn't a factor for when you go back into CA form. Lingering Light still serves the exact same purpose, but you have more control over alac.

TL;DR

They require max boon duration, a fully non-stop button spam cycle, and have their alacrity that is tied to a mechanic that is non-standardized as far as resource management goes, and it makes them just worse as a support than any other support in the game which can get by with ~60% boon duration and a really simple rotation. A class that is forced into 100% boon uptime should NOT be having this level of difficultly maintaining boons. Trevor has pointed out that their healing is exceptional, as well as the quantity of boons they provide, but even in this thread he says the mechanics of it isn't fun. If you didn't catch all of that before, read the thread a lot more carefully.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Acheron.1580

[Khenzy.9348]

3 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Druid roaming is kind of dead after removal of Ancient Seeds.

 

In regards to WvW, I disagree.

In fact, condi Druid and Cele Druid are both incredibly strong right now, both with Eclipse. They are among the strongest iterations of druid right below its release state.

All you need to lock someone down is CA 3 into sword 3 and then you gain instant momentum.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Khenzy.9348

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Is the main complaint is the Alacrity it so short.... would 2 second per Celestial Avatar skill be better?

It's not even that complex. They don't like how alac on CA instead of spirits feels.

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I mean essentially everyone is complaining to Trevor with no real solution.

I'm actually the only person that stated anything remotely close to a solution lol.

Everyone else is just saying the same complaint over and over and directing their grief at me because I didn't punish Arenanet for this patch.

This is what I said:

On 7/21/2023 at 5:40 AM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Honestly if it were up to me, I'd put Alacrity back on the spirits, keep the new spirit mechanic & trait change, and make sure the Alacrity occurs on the slam. This way we could use 3x spirits with the new trait for double slams, and if the base Alacrity on the slams were around 3 seconds, this would go to 6s per slam with conc/boon duration. With double slams on each spirit it would be like 12s of Alacrity on each spirit. This would be enough to moderate the use of 3x spirits between 20 and 30 second CDs, to juggle a 36s Alacrity cycle. And the mechanics would feel smooth and good again, concerning CA kit use.

This would be awesome because they could then change Ancestral Grace back into a Might stack or potentially something new. You could also still choose Lingering Light or even Eclipse so the Druid has some actual DPS to contribute.

 

[zeyeti.8347]

Also there is a bug (i already reported it , but i say it twice so maybe anet get a glimpse) but invigorating bound , who give your allies prot and vigor + healing on pet skill use doesnt work on new pets like turtle or white tiger , who is really annoying , especially for those two , a free aegis and a bubble who pulse prot. is not to get rid off , it has nothing to do with alac , but as heal druid use it , i thought i should mention .

After testing finally the druid , the alacrity goes far enough , but same feeling : burning Ca only for alac and perhaps/not for healing is really a weird concept , imagine if firebrand had to use tome healing skills to put some quickness or Hat only pulsing alac on water overload , thats pretty much the same , while i admit CA is more available than those two. Anet wanted us to less spam skills and use it "cleverly" , CA 5 pulses some stab , but you use it for pulsing alac , same spam stupid mechanic than spirits off cd , n ow instead of 3 spirits i use 2 , great change ...

Edited July 25, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[zeyeti.8347]

5 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This would be awesome because they could then change Ancestral Grace back into a Might stack or potentially something new. You could also still choose Lingering Light or even Eclipse so the Druid has some actual DPS to contribute.

Completely agree , we had choices at least , now it's only alac.