Guild Wars 2

Ancestral Grace now transforms the player rather than just changing the player model.
This has a huge impact on the way druid plays in both PvE and PvP- unfairly punishing players for using the skill.

I’m assuming this is a bug for a few reasons-

0.5: This change was not mentioned in the patch notes.

1: It removes old combos of using Ancestral Grace and then using utility skills. The player cannot use Utility Skills while transformed. This eliminates old combos that were in no way overpowered.

2: It allows Druids to double blast combo fields when in combat using the Clarion Bond trait. This is assumed to be a bug and not intended behavior, since this was possible at HoT launch, and was subsequently removed as a bug. (although that bug functioned differently- using ancestral grace would put the player in combat, thus spawning the pet and procing clarion bond.)

3: It despawns the pet and then respawns it at the end of the cast. This is the biggest issue with the transformation as it punishes Druids extremely hard for using Ancestral Grace.

Despawning the pet means that Ancestral Grace no longer shifts focus onto the pet as a side effect of the evade.

The pet also immediately loses all conditions, boons, and procs (such as Strength of the Pack).

Combined with the inactive pet bug, the pet is also inactive for a period of time after using Ancestral Grace.

Given these problems with the current state of Ancestral Grace, I hope that attention can be brought to this major bug, and that it can be fixed quickly.

Thank you.