Guild Wars 2

IIRC, The Druid spec was the first elite specialization ANet revealed (On April 23rd possibly before). Why is it that it’s still broken/unplayable and won’t be shown in the next Beta Weekend Event right next to all of the other class e-specs that will be available?

I get the reason why the Engineer e-spec won’t be available (for one, it’s not even been revealed yet). But the Druid was literally the first e-spec that you revealed and… well it’s a little disappointing that priorities were elsewhere, despite having more time to work on it.

Looking over the older documents, maybe the Druid class hasn’t actually been announced/revealed yet, I haven’t been able to actually find an article on it (other than mentions), there’s definitely not been a ‘meet the druid’ yet, though I seem to recall this for whatever reason.

There hasn’t been a Druid info release yet; they just teased the name and such back when they first started talking about the elite specializations.

Not sure if it will answers your concern but, here is what we know :
Ranger : Druid-staff.
Engineer : Hammer-drone.

I say that these 2 are pretty even in what we know about them. I also think that :

- Due to the fact that the ranger’s specific mechanism, the pet, rely heavily on AI, it’s also the profession that is the most endangered by change. Since almost everything can break the way pet work. We certainly all recall the days after the trait system revamp where rangers lost control on there pets.

- Engineers have a pretty heavy profession mechanism. The Tool belt is basically a 2nd set of utilities. If we imagine some change on this mechanism it could amount to a scary number of new skills or program link to check to make everything work smoothly.

I’m not saying that it’s fair that this 2 are last, but they certainly are the 2 that need the most work to not release a broken work.

Look, it’s not ready, it’s that simple.

I’ll try to put this as simply as I can.

Just because the Druid was used as the example of what a specialization is does not mean that they were working on it the longest, or that they are having trouble with it, or that it is in worse shape than the other specializations.

It COULD be that: they feel most confident with it, and therefor don’t think it needs as much player testing as the other specializations. Or that it was actually one of the last one’s chosen, and since they were excited about their newest decision they decided to use it as the example. Afterall, it was only concept stuff that they revealed. Or maybe they thought that the initial reveal of it was good enough to hold rangers over, and are revealing other specializations first since that is NEW information and not just a more in depth look at an already known specialization.

There are PLENTY of reasons why they could be holding off on “officially” revealing the Druid other than it’s in terrible shape right now. When they release a batch of specializations, they do it at one a week. Well, they have to choose one. If the Necro hadn’t been chosen by now, they’d be yelling “Necro is in trouble! Why no reveal yet?”

So just sit tight. It’ll be alright.

I do recall a dev commenting (I think in a video interview not long after the HoT announcement) on the skill we see the Druid use in the trailer, with the vines going out along the ground, as “one of the more boring visuals for the Druid.” They could have all sorts of jazz-it-up work to do.

They have to bring both classes to a sought after state for all game modes, there is a difference between being playable and being requested, in WvW they are both playable but no one really requests them. They require the most work, and as stated I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pet AI for Druid is part of the reason it is taking longer.

I don’t think it’s not that they aren’t ready it’s that they haven’t been revealed so they are waiting. I mean it has to be ready, right? HoT releases in October.