Guild Wars 2

I am just curious because, while I am very interested in using the avatar form and glyphs of the Druid, I am not very fond of the staff and it’s lack of offensive potential. Is there a way I could use different weapons in my build or do I have to use the staff and be effective and viable?

Of course, you can do anything you want and still be at least reasonably effective in any mode.

Condi rangers are meta in PvE, LB rangers/druids are excellent in PvP and WvW, and there are a few dozen other builds for any mode that don’t use staff. Staff is sort of garbage for PvE unless you’re doing raids, even.

Staff is a great weapon for healing and building AF, so if you need those things, you take staff.

Staff is quite mandatory in PvP. In other game modes, I don’t know. You CAN PvP with for example GS/LB but only in lower divisions you can use this effectively. Once you climb to higher divisions, people will start yelling at you not to die so often

Didn’t Shadelang or someone get to the top 20 or so not using staff? Staff is definitely amazing in PvP, but it’s not your only option.

Just saying condi ranger. You dont need staff to be effective, staff is best for healing though and has great mobility.

GS/LB Power druid was one of my favorite builds to play when HoT came out, haven’t touched my Ranger for a solid year though. It had decent amounts of stealth, a relatively low cd knockback, good damage and that annoying root proc that can be straight up lethal to some classes when applied at the right moment.

You can generally get away with any weapons as a Druid.

As a dedicated, pure healer, staff and warhorn are our only good weapons. Most dedicated healers run double staff, sword has decent DPS to go with that, but axe provides more might to your pet with Nature Magic and better DPS uptime thanks to the range.

SB+A/T is standard for condi and condi/heal hybrid druids, PvP/WvW players will often swap one for staff or axe for sword so they don’t die to reflects and have extra survivability. Sword/Offhand, Greatsword and Longbow are all good choices for power druids, the specifics vary based on game mode, staff is a solid weapon choice here as well and it deals much more respectable damage than in condi builds. Staff is an easy fix to astral force generation, but so long as you have enough ways of gaining astral force for when you need CAF, a staff isn’t necessary.