Druid heal buffs enough to join squads?

[senki.1046]

So with the new druid heal buffs, are there any chances, they are good enough as support in wvw squads? or still trash?

[RisenHowl.2419]

Play immob druid healer instead, apparently it's not a problem yet because the balance team has never heard of it?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

maybe. heals, immob, and their condi cleanse got a buff. it'll still be treated like rev healer tho, niche and non meta. that reworked druid elite was a good way to provide the class with something unique, which it needed.

[Arheundel.6451]

@"RisenHowl.2419" said:Play immob druid healer instead, apparently it's not a problem yet because the balance team has never heard of it?

This build is far easier and more productive/efficient

[mindcircus.1506]

No support is really desired in a WvW group based solely on it's heals. If that were the case all you would see is Tempests.In WvW group play, to not be a living meme you want to bring something else strong to the table.Scrapper brings heals Stealth, Superspeed and Condi Clear with Purity of Pupose.Shoutheal Warrior brings Condi Clear and Boon Strip and CC.The current meta for Tempest brings Heals, Condi Clear and CC.Firebrand brings... well pretty much everything.

If you think that the buff to the healing coefficient alone is going to make a ranger desired in a zerg you might as well just strap on a longbow and use Barrage from the top of walls to pretend you are helping like the rest of the awful low-effort zero-impact Rangers in WvW.

[zinkz.7045]

@mindcircus.1506 said:In WvW group play, to not be a living meme...

That is known as an oxymoron.

[Besetment.9187]

WvW squad play is dominated by selfless builds that share tonnes of buffs to allies and either remove or nullify those same buffs from enemies while moving. Mindcircus did a pretty good breakdown. Firebrand is meta because it shares stability and can provide a little bit of everything else (a little too well) - healing, resistance, projectile reflection, cleanse, boon conversion, block and can reliably share pretty much every boon in the game except alacrity.

Heal Tempest is a top healer but doesn't share offensive buffs like Rev and doesn't provide stability like Firebrand. It can cleanse but nowhere near the rate of Scrappers and every time a Scrapper cleanses, they convert those condis into boons so its just better. That scrappers also provide damage redirection, high superspeed uptime and stealth engage means it not even a contest really. I'm trying to think of what buffs or redesign Druid would have to get to replace a Firebrand, Scrapper or even Tempest, and I'm drawing a blank.

[Sovereign.1093]

:3 mmmm... Come to nsp and we will share a healing druid build for you for next week. (Price)

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The problem lies in most Ranger buffs being based on Spirits, which are amasing but also basically garbage since they removed the ability to move around. They tried to compensate by adding a teleport whenever you use the skill, but eh, Druid can't keep boons and unique buffs on the group because the group is always about 10,000 range ahead of the Spirits, which are also dead.

And Glyphs just don't cut it no matter how much the devs want them to. Competitive is mostly about boons and conditions and always will be, and with Glyph builds you can only handle the conditions part, and that's just removing them, not really inflicting.

Also good luck healing anything when CA is only available once in a celestial blue moon.

If you want to play Druid stick to PvE. :p

[DanAlcedo.3281]

No.

The core problem was not the healing of CA.

Its literally everything but.

Trash Weapons.Trash Utility skills.Trash healing outside CA.

If Druid could be in CA permanent, then we could start a debate.

[Bunny.9834]

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:No.

The core problem was not the healing of CA.

Its literally everything but.

Trash Weapons.Trash Utility skills.Trash healing outside CA.

If Druid could be in CA permanent, then we could start a debate.

All of this.

I dunno why the Devs refuse to rework this spec. It's been garbage outside of raiding.

The -20% nerf to pets is the laziest way to implement a trade off. I would rather they give us 1 pet that only the druid can use. Like a plant.OR: Make the grandmaster traits change the druid specific pet you get: One for boon stacking, One for Healing, One for Condi/Immobilize.

Staff is basically an escape weapon.

The glyphs are terrible. The elite glyph is so clunky I don't even use it in Open-World PvE. I've never seen it use in WvW or PvP.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

@DragonSlayer.1087 said:

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:No.

The core problem was not the healing of CA.

Its literally everything but.

Trash Weapons.Trash Utility skills.Trash healing outside CA.

If Druid could be in CA permanent, then we could start a debate.

All of this.

I dunno why the Devs refuse to rework this spec. It's been garbage outside of raiding.

The -20% nerf to pets is the laziest way to implement a trade off. I would rather they give us 1 pet that only the druid can use. Like a plant.OR: Make the grandmaster traits change the druid specific pet you get: One for boon stacking, One for Healing, One for Condi/Immobilize.

Staff is basically an escape weapon.

The glyphs are terrible. The elite glyph is so clunky I don't even use it in Open-World PvE. I've never seen it use in WvW or PvP.

About the elite glyph.

Standing still for 1 second because of imob is a death sentence in most zerg fights.

Who thought that standing still for 7 seconds is a good idea?

[steki.1478]

Not related to OP, but I see many people state that tempest is the best healer, which is false. Ventari herald's healing output is unmatched and has been like that pretty much all the time.

Which means that even if every druid heal would heal people for 50% of their healthbar, it would still be useless, because numbers aren't its issue, it's utility it lacks, reliability of those heals and generally support from weapon skills, which is non existent.

[mindcircus.1506]

@steki.1478 said:Not related to OP, but I see many people state that tempest is the best healer, which is false. Ventari herald's healing output is unmatched and has been like that pretty much all the time.

Which means that even if every druid heal would heal people for 50% of their healthbar, it would still be useless, because numbers aren't its issue, it's utility it lacks, reliability of those heals and generally support from weapon skills, which is non existent.While Ventari Rev does have the biggest heal numbers, it's cumbersome tablet mechanic makes it borderline unusable in wvw zerging.It also offers really strong Condi Cleanse, huge CC, on demand Alactrity and strong projectile hate, but having to move both yourself and the tablet makes the spec unattractive and honestly borderline unviable in an environment where correct movement is so important.Until there is some kind of change to the basic mechanics of Ventari the only time you're going to really see it is to buff siege.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"mindcircus.1506" said:While Ventari Rev does have the biggest heal numbers, it's cumbersome tablet mechanic makes it borderline unusable in wvw zerging.Had a funny discussion a long time ago where revs kept going "look how much better at healing we are than any other class!" shows clip of healing 1 player 10%->100% while 5+ players are dying around him because they get no heals

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:While Ventari Rev does have the biggest heal numbers, it's cumbersome tablet mechanic makes it borderline unusable in wvw zerging.Had a funny discussion a long time ago where revs kept going "look how much better at healing we are than any other class!"

shows clip of healing 1 player 10%->100% while 5+ players are dying around him because they get no heals

That seems rather odd, given how most Ventari skills has "number of targets: 5". Instead, I would say that Mindcircus was dead on and you shat on his post needlessly. The one thing that I have experienced that Revenant healing has against itself is that it has this paradox of a combinbation of being boring and taxing at the same time. To play it effectively you essentially do both healing and damage at once so you may do something with the tablet and then with the weapon. The mechanics are rather simple push-for-effect but it is also taxing because you do those things simultainously and the cooldowns make them all rather spammable.

For the topic at large, I would say that Mindcircus is right about the overall roles of healing classes as well. They all rely on additional things that shapes their role and while healing may be most of their volume pushed out it is rather the other things that make them into what they are because they can all heal enough. Druids have one thing it excels at there, its only that it used to be much more obvious what that thing was. It has been nerfed so many times or gets clouded by the meta that few people see it and how many times you point it out to people it still takes them a long time to see or understand.

What do Druids have that they excel at? They have the shortest cooldown on a group-stealth utility (among healers, if you just want stealth there's the Thief), they have the most bursty group-damage utilities and they can perform most of their role from range. If you build tactics around that they can still be somewhat useful even if nerfs have chipped at that over time but if you stick them in a role with tactics where another class excel, when then yes, the other class will excel.

[Dawdler.8521]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:Instead, I would say that Mindcircus was dead on and you kitten on his post needlessly.What? I agree that its borderline unusable in zergs. Theres a reason rev healer isnt meta. Not sure what my post has to with kittening on his post as I did nothing of the sort.

[Faenar.8036]

I would suggest you to consider a druid as something like "general combat support" , not exclusively as "healing-only" support. Something which can be described like healing here, condi-cleansing there, immob this, damage that. This would be imho better for your squad effectivity, than the option dependant solely only on healing numbers.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Dawdler.8521 said:I did nothing of the sort.Perhaps I misread your post. The argument was that Revs do have the highest burst-heal volume (ie., combination of burst and sustain in a relevant way) and what keeps them out of meta is rather how they play or that both the Rev and other classes bring other things to the table. The Rev is far from borderline unusable as a healer, it is actually very potent in that role. It's just boring, hurts your fingers and have other things going for it that are easily as good to have so no one will ever fault you for playing the more common roles on it. If the Rev's envelope was as small as the Ranger's we'd likely see far more healing Revs than we do Druids :p .

[mindcircus.1506]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:would say that Mindcircus was dead on and you kitten on his post needlessly.Didn't see it that way at all. In fact I hit Thumbs up on his response.Relax man.

[Aeolus.3615]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:I did nothing of the sort.Perhaps I misread your post. The argument was that Revs do have the highest burst-heal volume (ie., combination of burst and sustain in a relevant way) and what keeps them out of meta is rather how they play or that both the Rev and other classes bring other things to the table. The Rev is far from borderline unusable as a healer, it is actually very potent in that role. It's just boring, hurts your fingers and have other things going for it that are easily as good to have so no one will ever fault you for playing the more common roles on it. If the Rev's envelope was as small as the Ranger's we'd likely see far more healing Revs than we do Druids :p .

Actually has some one who has been playing heal herald/ventari with 2.2k healing power for some years now, there are moements when we need better sustain if we want to tank, we have more scourges(go figure why this lamers class can carry when stacked) and druids since they can output rev heal heavy heal for some time, rev has a healer is strong bur isnt a steady(spam healer), evenb in some situation can output more heal than rev big heals.

In small 5-10, mayto till 15ish,, scale gameplay it works, and its a strong class.On omniblob gameplay its just some one who is being carried due the amount of scrapper, fb and scourges mostly.

[God.2708]

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:

About the elite glyph.

Standing still for 1 second because of imob is a death sentence in most zerg fights.

Who thought that standing still for 7 seconds is a good idea?

This probably speaks to a lot of things, but you do not actually have to stand still in order to channel it. It's a moving channel akin to warriors winds of disenchantment, except on an unmoving location.

Quite honestly it is one of the strongest skills in WvW all things considered, Huge Radius, Huge Range, Absurd effects (Seriously, look at what it does both in CA and Out), on 10 Targets. It not being enough to make druids playable says a lot about what sort of position druids are in.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

@God.2708 said:

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:

About the elite glyph.

Standing still for 1 second because of imob is a death sentence in most zerg fights.

Who thought that standing still for 7 seconds is a good idea?

This probably speaks to a lot of things, but you do not actually have to stand still in order to channel it. It's a moving channel akin to warriors winds of disenchantment, except on an unmoving location.

Quite honestly it is one of the strongest skills in WvW all things considered, Huge Radius, Huge Range, Absurd effects (Seriously, look at what it does both in CA and Out), on 10 Targets. It not being enough to make druids playable says a lot about what sort of position druids are in.

Are you sure you can walk while channeling?.

Pretty sure you cant but i will test it when i get home.

[Sovereign.1093]

There are moments when you can stand still and not die but only in cases where the enemy does not bomb at the same time but simply spams their skills not at the same time.

You can test this with 15 or 20 minstrel fb. You'll have a blast.

Or if you want turtle capacity fb/tempest/scrap /spell br/ and herald

[Solanum.6983]

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:No.

The core problem was not the healing of CA.

Its literally everything but.

Trash Weapons.Trash Utility skills.Trash healing outside CA.

If Druid could be in CA permanent, then we could start a debate.

Now this would bring me back to Druid, I hate the mechanics behind CA form. You have to spend time to build it only for it to last 15 seconds, I wish they'd rework it.