Guild Wars 2

Is this build a thing? If so can anyone direct me to a good source on the build or can someone give me their two cents on it and how effective they are?

You still go for nature magic/beast mastery/druid but you can use longbow with it.

It is pretty good for solo queue. You trade a bit of personal survivability for more ranged damage.

However, it is definitely not as good in coordinated teamplay. Because enemy team can bring scrapper+tempest to negate your ranged pressure and you will be very vulnerable to focus fire.

Toad.9146:

Is this build a thing? If so can anyone direct me to a good source on the build or can someone give me their two cents on it and how effective they are?

Its def a thing, if u c the druid offensive trais they are perfect. The last gm roots target on cc, and u have a trait that reduces movement cc and increases passive move by 33%, and the first trais u pick urself, either remove all condis on druid forum.

I’ve been using this with LB instead of sword:
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Bunker_Druid

Longbow Druid (https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Shoutbow) works suprisingly well in SoloQ I find, at least at lower tiers. I also tried the meta bunker build, but I don’t like the playstyle of the sword/dagger weaponset. I feel too defensive and helpless with it.

As others have said, longbow gives you better offensive options in an uncoordinated team. You have some burst together with your smokescale, while still maintaining some sustain, mobility and the team support. It also is very useful to chase pressured thieves and mesmers.

I had little experience (~ 50 games) on Druid in PvP before but placed immediately into Gold 2 with it, which is at the high end of what I got with classes I have several hundred games with in previous seasons.

But yeah, as soon as you have well played/coordinated support with an Ele or Engi or hard focus from the enemy team you get far less effective with the bow.