Deadvillager.1956

There is just a lot of people in here that want to have a fun AND viable spec coming february

Although I like what the spec wants to be, I have some issues with the traitlines and utility skills. All the comments and suggestions are coming from a PvE power spec background. - F2 and red utility spells feel unrewarding and free of impact - Major adept traits dont offer any choice because they all sound bad - Major master traitline feels excessive to only offer three variants of the same thing - only the bottom grandmaster trait feels good to use, although the middle one still kinda works. The top grandmaster trait makes the class feel clunky with its 4 second airtime and doesnt even offer any real upside. 15% damage bonus is not as big of a deal in the specs current state as you make it out to be. - no breakbar damage/hard cc In general, the spec seems stuck in its hybrid design. You gave us damage and support options but dont give us the traits to fully commit to one of them. Right now there is no reason to even slot the alliance legend or even equip the elite spec if you want to do damage. Aside from numbers bumps, we need trait options that let us empower the damage utility slots. I would suggest to swap the master traitline to adept and design new traits for the master tier where we can choose which of the two legends we want to be good in. It would also be a shame to give us this fun new dodge mechanic and force us out of it as much as possible like the top grandmaster trait does. At the very least, all dodges should give us only 1 second airtime independent of eventual cost penalties. The longer dodges just feel clunky and counterintuitive with a class that needs to be at its target to get damage done.

I did not know how much I need this. This is literally the only way to make me care for stat infusions other than give them ridiculous power levels like +20.

I feel very sorry for you OP that you have to put up with the worst outliers of the raid community apparently all the time. The current balance should allow you to play almost any DPS at any boss as long as you respect their limitations (as in play condi DPS on strict condi bosses and vice versa). Reaper even becomes more valid every time! There will always be some rotten people but I just cant believe you have never had a good experience PUGing. For me personally I might run into bad squads/commanders maybe somewhere between 5-10% and then I just leave or block the toxic parts.

Dunno man... you are probably right to some extend but I get the feeling that the majority of the MMO audience have a problem to stay engaged to a game without vertical progression. There is a recent video of a WoW streamer watching a GW2 summary video (wont post it, its everywhere anyways) and he likes everything about the game EXCEPT the lack of vertical progression. And that alone seems to be reason enough to not even try the game because you "cant feel better than others" without an item level to grind out. WoW itself even reintroduced PvP gear because players over there feel like their time investment should count beyond the acquired skill and practice. It just blows my mind how much people can refuse to try new things and cling to old (fashioned) concepts.

You could also just buy the insignia for 25 LI, thats half of the crafting costs of most ascended armor pieces. And it lets you choose stats on top of it. LI surely could use some more purpose though. Like maybe let us buy bufffood or utility crates. Or at the very least let us buy the raid shards with it. RE: Deadvillagerli for asc gear is a waste. I have two characters full of asc boxes. and everytime I get asc weapon from raid I salved them immediately. there is no more space to put asc grear. if you raid a lot, you get a lot of shards, those shards already can be used to purchase asc grear .. asc grear easily farmed.mystic coins on the other hand is not. it will be nice for 2-5 li to 1 mystic coin. My very limited bank space agrees with you that you probably have enough magnetite and random chest drops by the time your LI overabundance becomes annoying but mystic coin conversion sounds too lucrative to me. Raids already give you tons of liquid gold, exotics, ascendeds and infusions. Adding mystic coins via LI trade-in option sounds like too much to me.

Its not really an off hand choice if you ask me. You can decide if you have a better WH skin or Focus skin for your outfit since you wont use anything of either in DPS phases. I brought a Focus to the last Dhuum raid for Focus5 but other than that I believe it doesnt really matter which one you bring.

This one sounds like healthy gameplay. You need enough time to react to an engagement and to utilize your skill and knowledge while you also need clear purposes for bunkers and glass cannons. Oneshot builds with long range or out of invisibility only serve the purpose of killing freshly interested players in unranked.

warhorn is a core ranger weapon, boost by nature magic, that is also core ranger. Nothing boost warhorn in druid and has nothing that trigger for it. It's like saying scourges are great because epidemic (just an example, I don't know how epidemic do now :) )Because the core class has something, make the elite specialization worse... seems logic Okay let me rephrase then: Scourge has about as much or even less boon support than a traited core ranger spell. It is just not intended to do those things and has other strengths like temporary health and boon corrupt (admittedly similar to core necro).

You could also just buy the insignia for 25 LI, thats half of the crafting costs of most ascended armor pieces. And it lets you choose stats on top of it. LI surely could use some more purpose though. Like maybe let us buy bufffood or utility crates. Or at the very least let us buy the raid shards with it.

1)No one is taking druid to be the number one DPS on a raid party. Players want to do enough DPS to at least be compatible and dangerous in PvP.2)Players like the concept of druid from a fantasy stand of view and want feel capable and have options with their favored spec(build diversity).3)Since when support specs ca't do massive damage if they are build for it, look at firebrand and scourge, both doing arguably better job at team support with better defenses and much better damage. 1) You are far more compatible and dangerous with a soulbeast or core ranger. Druid is probably the most defensive support you could pick and is all about sustain and disruptive CC. If you find yourself dueling a spellbreaker on point your teammates are either bad, dead or underway. There have to be limitations to what one build is capable of doing.2) Build diversity is a huge point but it still doesnt mean everyone should be able to do everything. The only real problem I found in this thread was that pets dont tank for you anymore because of their lack of toughness. This is probably unintended and should be fixed, as that truly defeats the pets purpose.3) I agree with firebrand, it has an insane boon output even when traited offensively. IMO that means that it needs more drawbacks though. As a necro main, I know the feel of too strong base kits and too weak traits. Although I would argue that especially scourge does not support groups as much as you say it does. You can trait strong rezz and passive life reg + barriers but you dont have any other boons to share than some might and a drop of regen. A single ranger warhorn 5 has more boons than that. The scourges strength lie in messing up the defense of the enemy.

I dont really understand why you would take the druid spec for damage. If you are too "lazy" to swap your specs all the time depending on whatever content you are currently playing, I can totally understand. Why you would pick druid with the intend to ignore its core mechanic and do damage with a wet noodle weapon instead is beyond me though. Not saying that the 20% stat squish on pets was needed but thematically speaking, Anet could also have reduced your offensive stats or total damage output instead. You got away pretty good with the pet nerf.

You forgot the obviously correct option of Asuri.

This is not supposed to be a simple patch bashing thread, please don't stop reading >.< I actually like the (potential) ideas behind the changes to these two skills. Making WH5 a melee AoE lifesteal enforces the close range/teamfight sustain theme of the warhorn, completed by the area daze on WH4. The rework of Focus 4 was desperately needed to give it a more reliable nature. The original skill was sadly never a good option because you lose damage whenever that damn scythe rolls to an ally and does whatever it did (I never bothered finding out). The new focus snipe sounds really fun and boosts the single target theme of the focus.Now why is everyone mad then?They both do essentially the same now. Both are lifesteal skills instead of actual damage. Both are sustain skills, only for different situations. Neither of them can crit.I believe it would be pretty simple to make most necros happy: Make the Focus a direct damage spell and remove its lifesteal. I have plenty of other ideas how the skill could be reworked (shooting a shadow orb similar to tempest airhorn, a 3-sec darknessbeam, summoning a mini fleshwurm turret, whatever) but just not have it be a lifesteal would be the fastest and easiest solution IMO. Thanks for reading!

They are fine as is, as long as they are playable. The one thing that always annoys the hell out of me is condi immune essential objects. This isnt even about clear speed any more. It just renders a huge set of builds pretty much unusable in some dungeon paths.What I would rather like to see instead of a complete rework is new dungeons introduced with expansions. Give us one dungeon per expac release and one dungeon per LW season. This would already warm my PvE-corrupted heart.