**Is Druid Back?

[mistsim.2748]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:how hard does the final pulse of natural convergence hit with demolishers?

It's rarely worth using regardless of damage output. It's just too slow and it makes you a sitting duck.

what if the cripple was replaced with weakness? would that be enough damage reduction to make it safe enough?

Not even close. Weakness only works in this game with either two methods:

1. Repetitive reapplication like Elixir Gun spam, Thief spamming Cluster Bomb blast in Choke Gas field, or a Necro boon into condi conversion battering.
2. Or pinpoint precise application with a quick attack to be able to mitigate a single dangerous attack or two before someone cleanses.

Natural Convergence wouldn't be able to benefit either of these effects and the weak application would be rather useless.

At THIS point in the game's patching, Druid CA Kit has been seriously neglected in terms of keeping it on par with the kinds of things other classes are doing. Not only has it been neglected but it has been nerfed waaay too much. I mean really watch that video I posted and notice how ridiculously small the heals are from CA Kit even when I am blasting in water fields while wearing Avatar. Then consider how much other classes/builds are casually healing themselves constantly with nearly double or triple the heal value while not wearing heal stats at all.

For Natural Convergence to be useful in light of the types of things other classes can do, they'd need to do something like this:

1. Skill Rework - Natural Convergence should be like a well that is laid down with a 1/2s cast and then it finishes its pulse on its own. This would actually apply pressure to the opponents near the Druid and allow the Druid more ease to use its CA Kit without needing to kite away off node and position away from opponents so it isn't interrupted when trying to wield a full active skill use kit that barely heals anything at all.
2. Quick Fix - Natural Convergence should be only a 1s cast time.

And you know what? Even if one of those two fixes were to happen, I'd still never use the skill because it just isn't worth it. CA Kit really is good for nothing outside of the condi cleanse, go in and pop CA #3 on a water field, and leave to get stealth super speed disengage. I mean seriously any other option you have on your weapon skills or normal utility bar is twice as better or more than everything in the CA Kit. Truthfully Natural Convergence as an attack could use some seriously heavy buffs. Like it could afford to become 1s cast time, pulse stab to entire party, pull all opponents in from a 600 radius, and do a 2s normal immob "not roots" on everyone after it ends. <- Now something like that would be worth using and it would open doors for the Druid to be able to deal damage again, and also have a reason to actually go and wade into a team fight in the same way a Prot Holo or anything else would.

People who read this who may only play middle tier stuff probably already think "ha that's an absurd buff suggestion" but if they ever had tried to use Natural Convergence in the final round of an AT or an MAT in the middle of a bunch of high tier players, they'd realize the cast time is way way way too long for the absolutely flimsy effects that skill has. You'll never hit any of those high tier players with that skill and it puts you in this very high risk low reward position where you're just asking for all the Heralds and Thieves to immediately teleport to you and burst you down while trying to cast it, and that is exactly what happens in high tier games.

Whats your opinion on Avatar vs. Demolisher? I've been running Demolisher, it does lots of damage.

Are u slotting in Transference Sigils into the decap build?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:how hard does the final pulse of natural convergence hit with demolishers?

It's rarely worth using regardless of damage output. It's just too slow and it makes you a sitting duck.

what if the cripple was replaced with weakness? would that be enough damage reduction to make it safe enough?

Not even close. Weakness only works in this game with either two methods:

1. Repetitive reapplication like Elixir Gun spam, Thief spamming Cluster Bomb blast in Choke Gas field, or a Necro boon into condi conversion battering.
2. Or pinpoint precise application with a quick attack to be able to mitigate a single dangerous attack or two before someone cleanses.

Natural Convergence wouldn't be able to benefit either of these effects and the weak application would be rather useless.

At THIS point in the game's patching, Druid CA Kit has been seriously neglected in terms of keeping it on par with the kinds of things other classes are doing. Not only has it been neglected but it has been nerfed waaay too much. I mean really watch that video I posted and notice how ridiculously small the heals are from CA Kit even when I am blasting in water fields while wearing Avatar. Then consider how much other classes/builds are casually healing themselves constantly with nearly double or triple the heal value while not wearing heal stats at all.

For Natural Convergence to be useful in light of the types of things other classes can do, they'd need to do something like this:

1. Skill Rework - Natural Convergence should be like a well that is laid down with a 1/2s cast and then it finishes its pulse on its own. This would actually apply pressure to the opponents near the Druid and allow the Druid more ease to use its CA Kit without needing to kite away off node and position away from opponents so it isn't interrupted when trying to wield a full active skill use kit that barely heals anything at all.
2. Quick Fix - Natural Convergence should be only a 1s cast time.

And you know what? Even if one of those two fixes were to happen, I'd still never use the skill because it just isn't worth it. CA Kit really is good for nothing outside of the condi cleanse, go in and pop CA #3 on a water field, and leave to get stealth super speed disengage. I mean seriously any other option you have on your weapon skills or normal utility bar is twice as better or more than everything in the CA Kit. Truthfully Natural Convergence as an attack could use some seriously heavy buffs. Like it could afford to become 1s cast time, pulse stab to entire party, pull all opponents in from a 600 radius, and do a 2s normal immob "not roots" on everyone after it ends. <- Now something like that would be worth using and it would open doors for the Druid to be able to deal damage again, and also have a reason to actually go and wade into a team fight in the same way a Prot Holo or anything else would.

People who read this who may only play middle tier stuff probably already think "ha that's an absurd buff suggestion" but if they ever had tried to use Natural Convergence in the final round of an AT or an MAT in the middle of a bunch of high tier players, they'd realize the cast time is way way way too long for the absolutely flimsy effects that skill has. You'll never hit any of those high tier players with that skill and it puts you in this very high risk low reward position where you're just asking for all the Heralds and Thieves to immediately teleport to you and burst you down while trying to cast it, and that is exactly what happens in high tier games.

Whats your opinion on Avatar vs. Demolisher? I've been running Demolisher, it does lots of damage.

Are u slotting in Transference Sigils into the decap build?

Oh there is no doubt about it, the +500 toughness is mitigating more damage than the +500 heal adds healing.

I went in game to run a quick numbers test here, for the sake of this post:

• Healing on Lunar Impact with Demo = 1215 and Healing on Ancestral Grace with Demo = 1450
• Healing on Lunar Impact with Avatar = 1715 and Healing on Ancestral Grace with Avatar = 1700 "AG's coefficient scale sucks"
• Between these two setups, the Avatar gains only +750 whole number over Demo, when evaluating just these two skills.
• When evaluating the gains on things like Troll Unguent or Rugged Growth, the gains are much smaller from Demo to Avatar. Troll would go from 1061 to 1112, and Rugged Growth from 155 to 216. So a full 8s Demo Troll would be 8488 vs. a full 8s Avatar Troll at 8896. Then a 2s Demo Rugged would be 310 vs. a 2s Avatar Rugged that would be 432.

Now when letting the Chief hit me with Avatar vs. Demo, this was the difference:

• Chief vs. Avatar = Kick 3670, Slash 1835, Slash 2753, Slash 1835, Slash 1835, Slash 1835.
• Chief vs. Demo = Kick 3021, Slash 1510, Slash 2266, Slash 1510, Slash 1510, Slash 1510.

At first glance I looked at these numbers and thought "Hrm seems like a balanced trade off, so why does demolisher feel so much stronger?" Then I realized it's because the bulk of your healing gained from Avatar is all within skills that have a 20s CD like LI, AG, Troll, and you are only benefitting those small heal boosts once per 20s, but Demolisher is benefitting that decrease in damage taken all of the time. When something like a Power Herald is riding you, he is dishing out very consistent damage strikes & strings of numbers that are very comparable to that Chief test up there, which is happening 100% of the time he is engaging the Druid. And for this reason, Demolisher +500 toughness is subtracting much more damage that you are actually taking over the course of a 60s 1v1 than the Avatar can subtract from you with healing when the important heal skills are on 20s CDs.

Then since Druid doesn't care about condi damage, Avatar vs. Demo is a negligent argument. Usually as Druids we are concerned with vs. power damage, and even condi builds still deal power damage which Demo helps to cull quite a bit. At this point I find that Demo is stronger vs. condi than Avatar for that reason. The heal coefficients are too small for that +500 heal to be impactful, even vs. condi. But yeah you nailed it, Demo is just the way to go in our current patching for all of these reasons.

And no, I don't use Transference. Even during 5 man discord, it's just too difficult to coordinate Druid support plays so I still stack for side node 1v1s.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@RedAvenged.5217 said:The real question isn’t going to be is this demo druid going to be good the question is will it be better than other ranger stuff? I could just play demo dolyack on soulbeast with 1v1 traits. Would it be worth playing over builds like that, that is the question you need to ask before you know if druid is back

It just depends on how condi heavy the side node meta is for when Druid actually useful. The one thing Druid does better than Ranger and Soulbeast, is that it is virtually immune to condition damage no matter what build it runs. In the event of a PD Thief and Condi Mirage meta as example, Druid ends up being a lot stronger on side nodes than Ranger or Soulbeast.