Guild Wars 2

This is by far the most significantly changing specialization of all the professions. This definitely made the ranger feel like a completely new class to play. It made for an entire play style shift on every level. From positioning, to preferred pets, to weapons used; this changed it all for me.

• Healing: It is strong, quite noticeably for me at least. It was enjoyable to see so many green numbers! I had very little trouble putting out enough heals to keep my allies up, and with the right traits reviving an ally was really easy. The variety of ways I can heal those around me is just great. I can use the pet F2, warhorn 5, staff skills, glyphs, dodges, the trap heal, and even pet swap! More options are always a plus. I went with Cleric stats so that I can at least TRY to do enough damage to tag creatures while still providing strong heals. The damage is understandably low. I could see the druid greatly benefit from a new stat that majored in healing with a minor in power and either precision or ferocity. Hint hint wink wink.

• Staff: The staff feels quite at home with this spec. The skills feel appropriate, but I must say that skill 5 was hard to figure out. Does it just do healing to allies that are in the small field while enemy projectiles fly through it? Or does it convert enemy projectiles to small healing bolts? I couldn’t figure out how to use it properly. Maybe I’m just dumb, but I did not understand how the skill is supposed to be used.

• Celestial Form and Glyphs: I found this approach interesting. Dual-purposed glyphs, depending on the toggle of the celestial form, can make for some decent utility variety. Do I want to pull or push foes? Do I want to heal myself a lot or heal my allies more than myself? I like options! I would like to see the celestial form skills viewable in the Hero panel outside of being in the form. It’s a little annoying to have to kill things to gather ‘energy’, then activate, THEN be able to read what my skills do.

• Traits: I can’t say too much on this, except options options options! I love it! I am very glad to see Natural Stride make a return from GW1, and it functions in basically the same thematic manner! You get nostalgia points for that. The traits do a fair job of lending themselves to the variety of ways to provide heals and support.

I’ve never been much of a healer in this game or even in GW1. I was always a damage guy, so my perspective is a little skewed, but I can’t really think of ways to improve on what you have now, and I can’t really tell if something is over/under-powered. But I did hear that druids made for a lot of Q_Q in PvP and W3. I took the druid for a little spin in W3 and it felt really good and fun to play. At one point someone used a smoke grenade (the artillery barrage) on our catapult users. I got in there and spammed my heals and significantly mitigated the health loss (healing spring was so good at that moment). They still took a lot of damage, but I prevented anyone from going down. I like to think I wasn’t the only druid there, though. If it really was just me… then maaaaaaaybe a slight reduction in healing is in order. When one player can do that much health loss mitigation to a large group of players in a scenario where they are supposed to take a lot of damage, you might have a problem. We’ll see how things go in the first month or so after release.

Overall I really like the druid. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn the game into a “Always kill the druid first!” type of game. I don’t think anyone wants that.

I’ll keep this one short. I noticed that the traits in the DH line go one of three ways: the top row for traps, the middle for the bow, and the bottom row for the virtues. You kind of have to pick one of the three and go in a straight line. It doesn’t feel like they lend themselves very well with the original specializations or to each other. I mean you can make it work, but it feels a little forced at that point. Mixing and matching feels a little like a hard compromise. You can make your bow a little better or your traps a little better, but it’s hard to improve both well enough to be happy. One trait adds knockback every 10 seconds, one adds vulnerability on cripple, and one adds crippling on knockback. You kind of need all 3 for any sensible synergy. As I said before in prior weekend feedback and about the other elite specializations, options are good, and the options feel limited for the dragonhunter trait line.

I’ll keep this one short as well. Thank you for the increased attack speed in berserk and thanks for the reduced cooldown on primal bursts. I went from barely being able to do 3 bursts to at least 4. At one point I think I hit 5 (weapon swap helps a lot). Arcing Sear (primal greatsword) is improved from what it was before, but unless I misread the skill, it is now simply arcing slice without granting fury. It said in the skill description that there is a fire field, but there was no fire field that I could see or interact with. Did I miss something? Maybe it was bugged, I’m not sure. I did not play berserker much at all this time around. I was way too curious to see how much of a game changer the druid was going to be. I got the gist of it in the prior weekend beta, and I already gave plenty on feedback on it. Like the druid’s celestial skills, I would like to see the primal bursts in the hero panel so I don’t have to enter berserk just to see what my skills do.

I had a lot of fun with this one. This is another one that actually fits in with the other trait lines.

• Hammer: Yes, yes, yes. The skills on this thing are great damage wise. Rocket charge just felt a little bit clunky. If you have no target selected you go in a somewhat straight line, but if you have a target selected you bounce around a target, but nowhere near as effectively as you can with the revenant’s relentless assault. That skill is much more chaotic than rocket charge, yet it has so much more control with keeping on target(s). The second hit on rocket charge almost always missed for me. Other than that I like the hammer. I like it both thematically and functionally.

• Gyros: While they are very interesting and can make for some fun situations, they feel very squishy. The mesmer’s clones and phantasms seemed much more durable (but then again most foes hit like a truck). The function gyro is great, though! I love being able to revive an ally or finish a foe from a distance while I keep on fighting, as long as it isn’t quickly destroyed, of course. The variety of gyros feels ok, and the fact that they do something different as a tool belt skill makes it doubly so. Variety is good!

• Traits: The traits in this line are also fun to mess with. This one feels pretty good as far as different combinations go. Each one is obviously a trade off, but none of the trade offs really felt like a ‘loss’ to me. The only one that felt a little odd to me was Impact Savant, the third minor trait. It feels like it should be combined with Expert Examination, but maybe it’s just me.