Guild Wars 2

Sorry OP but, those of us in TS while watching the stream are stoked to play Druid.

Kirschsahne.2081:

A little bit of a Drama Queen aren’t we dear OP ??

These changes are insanely welcome by 99% of the fanbase.
Get used to it.
People will gladly play Druid or Tank

You sure like making up statistics don’t you?
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a fake account meant to give people the false impression that the community actually loves this change – especially given the fact that you post in EVERY thread on this topic and have started posting just yesterday.

People will gladly play Druid until that’s what all rangers will play or they’ll go home. Enjoy the enforcement of an even stricter – gear + role meta.

Cristobal.8640:

Your PVE whining fuels my joy, Druid is kittening awesome and it is going to make pvp very, very fun with the ranger.

It is not a “Healing spec”, its a traitline which grants a pretty neat form with powerful healing, you still have two other traitlines… Some of the Druid traits look amazing, 5 bleed and immob on a 10sec CD every time you hit someone CCed? Dazes and stuns, extra stealth? Cleaning 13 conditions on entering form? Man, I’m going to have a blast playing this.

It perplexes me how you people still want just bigger numbers so you can kill dumb AI, not even effectively (Every prof already does that) but fast enough so that you get your little boxes with more boxes inside. Seriously, if you want decent PVE. ask for that. Stop asking for classes to be high DPS worthless kitten just so it can be “viable”.

I’m pretty sure you’re that kind of player that for all that mighty talk, if I were to bring you to fractal 50 you’d likely be taking a dirtnap most of the time, slowing the group down.

Or maybe you’d just be one of those people camping autoattack from range and being generally useless for the group.

Oh, look people are once again complaining about their rangers. How utterly predictable.
Before today the complaints was that rangers are not very much desired class in instance content, now the complaints shifted on what? That now they will be too much desired class in instance content? That they will be “healbots”? I swear Anet can’t please some people no matter what they do.
They are giving us what many of us sorely wanted and needed. An elite spec that will make our favourite class a desired addition in instance content and huge team support. Again something rangers lacked and sorely needed.
To those of you who have concerns how Druid will get credit for events – Have you forgotten that you will still be able to retain two of your trait lines and different weapon set? Yes, that means that you can still use your Longbow with 2 trait lines dedicated on it, along with the staff for druid and the respective new elite spec trait line. Everything else is left to the player to make the build that works the best for him/her along with the gear.

Harper.4173:

Enjoy being a part of raids as a cookie-cutter build. The introduction of roles doesn’t change the fact that there will be a meta – and with a meta you won’t be playing much of anything but what the meta dictats for that content.

This will be so true lol. Smallest deviations from “healing meta” build can result in a party wipe. Elitism in pugs will reach new heights.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Why cant you do both dps and heal, like being a hyrbid?

Its not like you lost access to other weapons and traits. Even the Staff 1 was pumping out some decent damage.

^ This. I don’t think people realize yet how all of our new skills will do decent damage as well as most of the utilities too along with their effects. Were going to have tones of access to daze, imobilize and cripple(which will be useful for breaker bars) which means MoC and pred onslaught are going to be really strong with druid.

Math wise you could be a dedicated daze bot doing lots of damage AND have decent heals.

Knighthonor.4061:

Got an infraction. But I still stand by what I said. You dont like healer Druid, dont play it. I will play and enjoy it. Your loss.

If I wanted to play a stand there and fill a bar healer I would go to a game where you get credit for doing it and the healing mechanics are more interesting.

If I wanted to play a healer in Guild Wars 2 I would play as one of the other classes who can put out healing and actual support or even damage thus actually being useful to the team.

Shen Slayer.3058:

Zalladi.4652:

My concern with the healing though, is how would a Druid get credit for an event/kills/loot if they are solely focused on healing others?

This is especially crucial for WvW fights as an example – those on the Druid would receive significantly less credit for doing more work.

Yep….this is not going to work. Why would anybody want to be a healer when they can’t tag for loot. WTH was Anet smoking when they thought of this.

druid won’t have a lot of problems tagging, except maybe when zerged by enemies. At least a couple of the staff abilities do attacking and healing at the same time, including the autoattack.

xarallei.4279:

Cristobal.8640:

Your PVE whining fuels my joy, Druid is kittening awesome and it is going to make pvp very, very fun with the ranger.

It is not a “Healing spec”, its a traitline which grants a pretty neat form with powerful healing, you still have two other traitlines… Some of the Druid traits look amazing, 5 bleed and immob on a 10sec CD every time you hit someone CCed? Dazes and stuns, extra stealth? Cleaning 13 conditions on entering form? Man, I’m going to have a blast playing this.

It perplexes me how you people still want just bigger numbers so you can kill dumb AI, not even effectively (Every prof already does that) but fast enough so that you get your little boxes with more boxes inside. Seriously, if you want decent PVE. ask for that. Stop asking for classes to be high DPS worthless kitten just so it can be “viable”.

Wow what an attitude to have. I am not a pvp player, but I never tell them to just shut up or say things like their complaints “fuel my joy.”

I do look forward to trying druid because I was a healer in WoW. But I also like to dps and will want to still do that from time to time. The new spec has no synergy if you want to be a dps spec in pve. If our core class was amazing, this wouldn’t be a problem. But our core class has issues. Now hopefully the new balance patch will fix this, but who knows…

Thing is, PVE is in a bad state. I admit our core class has issues, but they aren’t that bad, and they certainly aren’t what keeps ranger from being enjoyable in PVE for some people. If all you wan’t are the higher numbers, why not just play another class for the dungeon? If you don’t care about the highest numbers and want to have fun with a class you enjoy, why not do that? I used to play PVE, on a Dire necro, never even got kicked out of a group or anything, just had fun. Ok, you want to do “competitive” (lolwhat) damage in PvE, with the exact build and class you want to… In a perfect world, all classes would have access to all weapons, balance would be perfect and you could play anything anywhere on any role, with enough drawbacks to make it fun for everyone. Unfortunately, Anet doesn’t really balance their different game modes separately.

arnitheking.8427:

I was already maining ranger and i’ll definitely play druid being salty is ok and it can happen but hit a pillow instead of whining pls. The druid is really awesome, let’s hope it isn’t clunky

His post is more than just whining, and way more constructive than yours…

I share the same feeling with him.
I pick ranger because I like to be an offensive range force, not a healbot..
I could potentially pick Druid, but just for survival aspect of Druid and nothing else.
I’m not going to be anyone’s healbot because I hate that play-style.
I’ll stick with zerk and only pick Druid for mobility and condition removal.

The words “you can’t dodge everything” doesn’t mean “we’re hard-coding Trinity back into the game.”

It means you can no longer have an entire party of people wear exclusively Berserker (offensive) armor, slot exclusively offensive, +X% damage traits, and take exclusively offensive utilities, and expect to clear endgame content by pressing Dodge once every ten seconds. People wanted more challenging content – part of that is expanding the rest of the game beyond[ the extremely tired, worn out ZerkAss speed clear meta.

Will you need – as in be unable to complete without including – Druids to get through content? probably not. You may, however, be presented with the choice of taking a Druid or two, or baking some toughness – both the stat and the basic concept – into your characters. Take Iron-Blooded instead of HGH on your Engineers. Swap your trinkets for Knight’s instead of Berserker’s. Grab some extra block traits, or some extra Regen sources.

You can’t dodge absolutely 123% everything anymore, but you can still dodge the biggest, nastiest hits. Yes, after that you’ll need to deal with spillover damage and incidental, and that will take more than wearing Zerker armor with nothing but +X% traits and offensive utilities. You may need some defensive gear, or some defensive traits, or some defensive utilities. One, or maybe even two, of the three on a few characters.

Quit sobbing. All they’re doing is taking away your ability to heap scorn and derision on people in Knight’s or Zealot’s gear with a balanced trait spread and tell them they’re awful GW2 players who should uninstall, burn their computers and proceed to drown themselves in the toilet. Frankly, that’s needed to happen for…oh, ’bout three years now.

Isn’t there a problem with the Druid ? Maybe I’m missing something. But really my opinion is that it’s just poorly designed !
I’m going to tell you in details what bothers me. If anybody has an official explanation, tell me. I need to appease my soul after seeing that Druid revelation ! (no, i’m not happy with what I saw)

Disclaimer : It’s not a problem if they want it to be a healer, I’m ok with that. I just want the concept to be coherent ! I also want them to respect their own lore ! That’s what I’m going to discuss in this topic. Not gameplay or balance or roles or whatever, many of those things can be changed at any moment anyway, even after launch through balance patches (so please, if you’re the kind of person who thinks it doesn’t matter as long as gameplay is fine, just leave and go to another thread). The things I am going to talk about can only be changed now.

I am sure that everyone was expecting this elite spec to have a lot to do with nature, plants and animals. That was a perfectly legitimate expectation ! Unfortunately it’s not really the case (or not so much)
This is a major mistake when you consider what Druids were in GW1 and the fact that we’re going into the jungle, where the old Druids lived. You have to see the link between the spec and GW1 lore. In fact Colin Johanson talked about that when he announced the Druid in january.
Nature, plants and animals are a big part of what makes the Ranger. The jungle is also the perfect setting, and the ranger is the perfect profession to introduce a spec with such a theme. So this nature theme was just PERFECT. I don’t know why they chose to leave it behind !

This logical and coherent nature theme has been mostly replaced by a celestial/astonomical absurdity.
The ceslestial form should be a vegetal/spiritual form ! It would have been so much better to really make this link between the spec and the druids lore considering Druids transformed into natural spirits in GW1 !
Everything was SO PERFECT ! How did they missed that ?!?! I can’t understand ! It’s like they had the perfect plan but they decided not to follow it !

And don’t forget that the celestial theme already has a strong meaning in the Canthan lore that makes it even less compatible with the Druids !

The Ventari Revenant looks a lot more like an actual support Druid than the Druid himself !!
The Druid is using a lot of light and healing/support skills, and the celestial form has a lot of blue effects. It doesn’t remind you of anything ? No ? Really ?
That’s what the GUARDIAN is supposed to be ! Not only the Dragonhunter is a Ranger wannabe, but the Druid is now a Guardian wannabe ? Come on ! He just supports allies from distance with light ! This is nothing more than Arenanet’s description of the Dragonghunter ! (And the best part is the Dragonhunter is not even good at that LOL)
They made so much efforts to make the professions feel distinct visually and thematically, and now they’re just trampling on their own work !

It’s so stupid ! The Druid could stay exactly as it is, just changing some skills effects and names and it will be fine !
Again, giving a healer role to the Druid is okay, but just do that the Druid way (with a lot of plants, animals, and green effects) not the Guardian way !!!

One more thing :
Arenanet seems to have a pretty hard time designing good concepts already. So what will happen when they will run out of cool concepts after butchering them all ? Will we have a game full Dragonhunter-like specs ?
They’re making some strange hybrid concepts just for the sake of being original, but they’re killing good concepts at the same time.
Be aware of that : we will NEVER have a Druid spec that looks like what it should be, in other words a proper druid. Just like we will never have a cool sentinel Guardian with a bow or an Elementalist that actually summons tempests with a warhorn and shouts. All cool concepts, all poorly executed on different levels.
I also used to have a cool idea for a future spec that just got destroyed with the Druid. I was expecting to see the celestial theme used some day for an Astronomer (engi spec ?) or Astromancer (ele spec ?).
They just destroyed two concepts at once. One shot, two kills !

I don’t know what you think about that folks, but I think it needs some thematic rework.

EDIT :
People talking about roles, gameplay or mechanics only are OFF-TOPIC !
People discussing what Druids were or were not IRL are OFF-TOPIC somehow, since the Druids of Tyria have their own lore and this lore is quite different from what we know about real druids ! If they wanted something original and unique, then following the lore created for GW1 was a good solution actually !

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Harper.4173:

Enjoy being a part of raids as a cookie-cutter build. The introduction of roles doesn’t change the fact that there will be a meta – and with a meta you won’t be playing much of anything but what the meta dictats for that content.

This will be so true lol. Smallest deviations from “healing meta” build can result in a party wipe. Elitism in pugs will reach new heights.

How very untrue. I know many players would like to think you need meta build to do specific content, but its not true, atleast from my experience. Not even once have i ran a meta build, since I started the game. Guess what? I never had any problems finding group to do any content in the game. I just purposefully avoid any groups in LFG who ask specifically for meta build.
Granted we still don’t know how things will go with the raids, but I don’t see meta builds becoming the only vaible way to run them.

Kirschsahne.2081:

Bringing roles back into role playing isn’t coming early enough.
And people like me will fight for he right to be a healer or tank.

Can we have Role Play added as a necessary feature of this Role Playing Game too?

At the moment we don’t even have official RP servers.

Kirschsahne.2081:

People like me never played for loot. We actually played to enjoy a FANTASY game without any competition. This is called role play game for a reason.

and yet I don’t see them saying anything about forcing people to pick lore friendly roleplaying names instead of things like Charrmander, or Hexual Illusions.

Role playing is in no way the norm, and forcing people into speaking in depth about out of character mechanics in order to complete content isn’t going to change that.

Aomine.5012:

arnitheking.8427:

I was already maining ranger and i’ll definitely play druid being salty is ok and it can happen but hit a pillow instead of whining pls. The druid is really awesome, let’s hope it isn’t clunky

His post is more than just whining, and way more constructive than yours…

I share the same feeling with him.
I pick ranger because I like to be an offensive range force, not a healbot..
I could potentially pick Druid, but just for survival aspect of Druid and nothing else.
I’m not going to be anyone’s healbot because I hate that play-style.
I’ll stick with zerk and only pick Druid for mobility and condition removal.

But…we are already the one and only ranged damage class – you already have what you want?

The rest of us wanted a legitimate support spec, and now we have it. I fail to see how this is not win/win.

The cycles of the moon and stars is a common theme in druidic or other natural systems of magic. Lunar/celestial effects show up all the time. C’mon, man. Chillax. Could be worse – they could’ve been shapeshifters. That would’ve been a real disaster.

A lot of people were hoping for great dps support, not healing. But this healing is supposed to be useful in the new HoT content at least. We shall see…

iKeostuKen.2738:

jaif.3518:

Dradiin.8935:

iKeostuKen.2738:

Why cant you do both dps and heal, like being a hyrbid?

Its not like you lost access to other weapons and traits. Even the Staff 1 was pumping out some decent damage.

Have you seen how garbage your damage is with healer runes/sigils/accessories ? If you want to even remotely deal decent damage you dress for success.

I think all of you who are celebrating the new Druid revelation do not seriously main as a ranger.

If i was interested in main healing i seriously doubted i would have made a ranger 3 years ago. I more than likely would have expected my Guardian to be the main heals.

Agreed with all you said. Also want to point out that if they do allow druid to do decent DPS and main heal at the same time then druids will be vastly overpowered.

Maybe that’s what we’ll see, 5 druids crushing all the content.

Color me very dissapointed, first ventari now druid. Trinity or bust!

-Jeff

The thing is, Ranger already deals some pretty decent damage ontop of having some very amazing range. Im sure a lot more people would hate it if all they got for a elite spec was more damage, but atleast now there is another role that rangers can fulfil in the game, a more team based role in which they were severly lacking before.

Nobody is forcing you to be a druid, and if they are, just leave there group and make your own.

In the end, you gained a new playstyle, very interesting mechanics, a very good looking spot in team play and also got some new pets that are able to stick in combat a bit more. Be happy and stop brooding over stuff you already had that wasnt even bad.

Ranger’s damage is way behind thief and ele

Slightly behind engi and warrior (both give way more offensive utilities)

Ranked 5th in dps role. How is that good dps?

Just to make the last part a little bit clearer…

I am complaining about the Druid here, but it’s just one of the symptoms of a bigger problem in my opinion : Arenanet struggles (and occasionally fails) at making good and coherent specialization concepts !
No need to talk about the sadly famous Guardian elite spec (that I can’t even dare name once more), there’s a giant thread about this one in which we all said what we think about him.
Oh and what about the Tempest ? One of the most underwhelming specs that barely has any relation with actual tempests ? In other words, that barely has any relation with its name ?
Some elite specs are fine or even really good although they’re not perfect so you can forget about little mistakes here and there. But when the mistakes are too big they just destroy the character.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

The cycles of the moon and stars is a common theme in druidic or other natural systems of magic. Lunar/celestial effects show up all the time. C’mon, man. Chillax. Could be worse – they could’ve been shapeshifters. That would’ve been a real disaster.

Not in GW. It has never been like that. They can’t just ignore the lore and recreate based on IRL facts that don’t apply to Tyria. Doesn’t fit to the Ranger either.
Not to mention the problem of the professions becoming similar when they used to have their own identity.

It’s more like a somewhat nature-flavoured monk than what a druid typically is, in my opinion.

Absolutely ridiculous. Most of the other profession forums are complaining about how amazing Druids are compared to the other elite specs while a large portion of the ranger community is complaining about how the druid isn’t what they signed up for. You are right. You signed up to play a ranger, not a druid. And guess what? YOU CAN STILL PLAY A RANGER!!! The elite spec is optional, providing something that the base ranger is lacking. Are people really questioning the entire expansion on the Druid elite spec?

To start off I don’t think druid is bad by any means, but it gives me and a few others I’ve heard from some concern. That concern being that it brings back the Holy Trinity (DPS, tank, healer) which arena net specifically tried to avoid. What that could mean is that every group will be asking for a druid in their party for everything and could be left waiting an eternity for one.

The druid has access to some pretty kitten good heals, mostly via sacrificing your heal glyph in astral form to heal allies allowing you to keep your party alive for a long time. If the healing is too strong, the party is going to be invincible and can take on normally challenging content with ease. If its too weak no ones going to want a druid or to use celestial avatar cause its just wasting time. Not many of the skills do a whole lot other than heal. One does a daze, one does a condi removal and that’s about it for astral form. The staff also provides some heals but nothing too substantial and is on par with a guardian staff.

Comparing it to other healing classes (guardian and Revenant) is when I got the issues. Guardians have a lot of heals they can blow off all the time but the main difference is that they are smaller heals (than druid) and do an additional ability (give boons, remove conditions, block, ect). Druid on the other hand just heals and to a greater extent. What its comparable to is a ventari revenant, which does most of the same things. Revenants heal allies with their tablet which costs a lot of energy and management to do so, but the revenant can still attack and do damage and control while doing so. Again the druid sacrifices that damage for heals, giving it more capability to do so.

Where it may be okay is that most healing done is through the celestial avatar which provides no self defence, stun stoppers and needs to be charged up. I’m not sure how rangers build it up or how fast it gets built up and used but this is crucial to preventing monks returning. It also lacks a lot of revival abilities. Ranger holds some great ones already but are already in game and fine in my opinion (due to their tremendous cooldowns).

I know druids trying to kill the zerker meta but its only an issue due to easy dungeons and bosses not doing heavy conditions. Of course we’ll need to see how this all plays out during bwe3 but I can’t say I’m not worried if this is done wrong.

PS: glyph of unity scares me. A mesmer or a thief could kill his own team in PvP against it and its CD is tiny.

In what universe is Druid ever solely a healer? This is so disappointing.

I absolutely love Druid, I think it’s worth my time and guess what? If I get bored of healing I Could always…wait for it … wait for it….
DROP THAT TRAIT LINE FOR ANOTHER!!!!!

But I doubt ill get bored of being supportive

BurrTheKing.8571:

I’m confused as to what some of you wanted. Did you want top teir DPS when there’s already plenty of offensive options available? Where would be the balance in that? It would also be boring, there’s plenty of DPS in the game already. Would you rather be in the situation Warrior is in where the spec basically offers nothing really new in terms of role and is basically just side grade and probably won’t see much serrious use?

At least Druid is giving you access to a new role that will be useful in almost all areas of the game. Hopefully ANet will someday go back and make the old PvE content hard like in the betas and then teams will always be happy to have the healing and support.

I can’t think of anything that Ranger actually needed offensively, it’s just that the current options are a bit weak or tied to lackluster pets AI. Hopefully they’ll fix that in the balance teaser later.

Wait, healing is needed in “almost all aspect of game”?
Are we playing the same game?

In PVE no-one wants healing power, and everyone can keep themselves healthy!
PVP may differ, but PVE is like 95% of the game’s aspect and population.

Frankly, if you always have a problem finding people for a role, make friends with people who enjoy those roles. Yes, this might just mean you spend time pubbing (gasp!) I know right?! What a concept!
This might just mean you don’t yell at people who can’t do/don’t know the shortcuts in dungeons. You might have to actually…KILL TRASH MOBS?! Oh the horror!

The dungeons are always WAY more fun when everyone is built to help each other and you fight the way it was designed to be fought. It is far more interesting that way. Sure, it takes longer but who cares? It is FUN. The current zerker meta is boring and it amazes me how it has turned grouping into a fest full of angry bitter individuals when before dungeons were changed (the no respawning while anyone is in combat thing) people were very welcoming of any build so long as you didn’t die non-stop.

Druid looks really interesting and is a completely new playstyle rangers had no access to before. I am excited for it. Love the new pets too, will definitely be using them.

And they said GW2 would do away with the need for a healer in the party.

Nuff said.

Druids and Chronomancers need design revamps. Good concepts, bad executions. Chronomancer is shatterspike 2.0 and Druids are basically healbots.

You know ArenaNet you can aid allies in other ways outside of raw healing, it’s called boons.

The issue I have is how poorly staff adds to ranger. Not once while playing ranger did I think, “Dang, you know what ranger needs? Healing it’s allies!”
It is a complete 180 of the ranger play style. It would be taking the chronomancer and designing it to be a melee tank.

The druid is what I’d expect for a guardian spec, not the freaking ranger. What the hell ArenaNet?

Also, why the Staff and not Trident? Design wise it would make a lot more sense. Shiva uses the Trident to ward evil, Poseidon uses it to control the water and ravage the earth. Taoist rituals, a trident bell is used to invite the presence of deities and summon spirits. So… yeah, Druid with a Trident is more than qualified than a staff.
Or are you secretly wishing underwater never exists?

Druid is one of the first elite specs to be reveal and now I see why, it is clearly the worst designed of them all. Rushed out. Kind how the Chronomancer feels.

Regardless, where is the creativity in the design team?!!

Going to assume none of you paid attention to the various elite spec skills…specifically the Herald can taunt that I know of for sure. Or could last BWE.

So atleast then there was a way to very limitedly taunt enemies away from others. ‘VERY’ limited, but it was there.

Fashion Mage.3712:

It’s more like a somewhat nature-flavoured monk than what a druid typically is, in my opinion.

Ironically, actual druids – as in historical druids, not the horrific abortion D&D has made of the term – were, in fact, mostly nature-flavored monks :P

Element.4319:

Raven.9603:

What the heck does “celestial avatar” have to do with druids? Ugh. This whole thing. Gross. I feel like this should’ve been the guardian elite spec.

“The Druids were a group of Krytan humans that long ago moved to the Maguuma Jungle in order to live with nature. The Druids now exist as spirits, appearing similar to Oakhearts.”

Ancient Druid Spirit: http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5b/Melandru%27s_Watcher.jpg

Throwin’ a bit of GW1 lore knowledge to those who are still fathomed by why the ranger’s druid class is how it is right now – so yes, Druid is done RIGHT. /end

Oh yeah man you droppin dat lore. There is nothing Oakheart about this. Its 100% space-owl, complete with moonfire spam.

Druid is like the Oprah of healing in gw2 at the moment.

“And you get a heal! And you get a heal! And you get a heal! EVERYONE HERE GETS HEALS!”

Absolutely love it, thank you Irenio.
Definately everything I wanted out of Druid and cant wait to play it in raids and WvW

Sube Dai.8496:

Aomine.5012:

arnitheking.8427:

I was already maining ranger and i’ll definitely play druid being salty is ok and it can happen but hit a pillow instead of whining pls. The druid is really awesome, let’s hope it isn’t clunky

His post is more than just whining, and way more constructive than yours…

I share the same feeling with him.
I pick ranger because I like to be an offensive range force, not a healbot..
I could potentially pick Druid, but just for survival aspect of Druid and nothing else.
I’m not going to be anyone’s healbot because I hate that play-style.
I’ll stick with zerk and only pick Druid for mobility and condition removal.

But…we are already the one and only ranged damage class – you already have what you want?

The rest of us wanted a legitimate support spec, and now we have it. I fail to see how this is not win/win.

One and only? Speak for yourself, pvp guy.

A staff ele is a far superior ranged damage class in WvW and PvE.

There are ways to support, they don’t need to be the same as a healbot/staff guardian.

Wolfey.3407:

I absolutely love Druid, I think it’s worth my time and guess what? If I get bored of healing I Could always…wait for it … wait for it….
DROP THAT TRAIT LINE FOR ANOTHER!!!!!

But I doubt ill get bored of being supportive

And if Chronomancer got bored of being an alacrity/quickness providing support spec it could…change a few traits around and be a burst Chronomancer or an interupt Chronomancer or a control well Chronomancer or a party stealth spamming Chronomancer or a heal spec Chronomancer because Chronomancer is a fully fleshed out trait line with interesting new tools.

Now, the best question to ask yourself: which gear will be the best for Druids? Celestial armor + ascended nomad’s jewelry from the first part of the living story S2?

Myself personally, I welcome the increase to more dedicated healing routes.. I suspect that over time more classes will see this added to their repertoire of elite specs.

We don’t see the whole picture, I for one will await patiently

Fashion Mage.3712:

It’s more like a somewhat nature-flavoured monk than what a druid typically is, in my opinion.

I don’t need you to tell me that, I can see it by myself :p
The problem is that this fact is exactly what bothers me !

I for one am looking forward to the added utility that druids will bring to this game

I’d just like to say:

I absolutely love the druid mechanic and skills. I really appreciate the space theme with the celestial avatar too. It is the coolest thing that I’ve seen so far. I finally feel like the ranger and druid can compete with the rest of the professions.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Druids and Chronomancers need design revamps. Good concepts, bad executions. Chronomancer is shatterspike 2.0 and Druids are basically healbots.

You know ArenaNet you can aid allies in other ways outside of raw healing, it’s called boons.

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Also, why the Staff and not Trident? Design wise it would make a lot more sense. Shiva uses the Trident to ward evil, Poseidon uses it to control the water and ravage the earth. Taoist rituals, a trident bell is used to invite the presence of deities and summon spirits. So… yeah, Druid with a Trident is more than qualified than a staff.
Or are you secretly wishing underwater never exists?

Druid is one of the first elite specs to be reveal and now I see why, it is clearly the worst designed of them all. Rushed out. Kind how the Chronomancer feels.

Regardless, where is the creativity in the design team?!!

What is funny is you say boons are good way to support your team, yet you say Chronomancer is poorly designed spec. Have you even played it?
All of the wells provide boons to your allies, while applying conditions on enemies.
Better luck next time.
I don’t know how you can say 2 of best designed elite specs needs design revamp.

RevanCorana.8942:

Did you miss the part when he said AOE stunbreak
Druid is gonna be a new bunker probably viable in certain maps of tpvp as an alternative to Shout Guardian.
In teamfights it’s gonna be glorious.
It’s not faceroll broken easymode like ele in water at.

I don’t see how on earth you can say this with the little info we have ATM.

Eles have been water bots for years, I think it’s nice that other classes can do it now.

Wolfey.3407:

I absolutely love Druid, I think it’s worth my time and guess what? If I get bored of healing I Could always…wait for it … wait for it….
DROP THAT TRAIT LINE FOR ANOTHER!!!!!

But I doubt ill get bored of being supportive

So go full heal or stay old and lame? Yeah… I heard more convincing arguments before.

Glenstorm.4059:

INB4: GLF Druid!

Seriously, this is what I’m afraid of. GW2 was supposed to avoid the situation where you’re stuck waiting for a healer. I liked that a lot.

I hope that doesn’t happen now.

I don’t think it will. Besides, if you want to heal someone to full health, it looks like you have to exhaust all of your abilities and energy. It looks powerful, and maybe it is for a short snap-shot of time in combat, otherwise, its really a good support option for ranger. the last thing ranger needed was more dps, using ranger skills correctly with the pet provides some pretty consistent damage.

Lévis.5489:

Now, the best question to ask yourself: which gear will be the best for Druids? Celestial armor + ascended nomad’s jewelry from the first part of the living story S2?

I’ll stick with zerker and use Druid only as a tool to help surviving. (Cleanse and minor heal and stuffs)
Probably could replace WS for Druid.

I refuse to be anyone’s healbot.

morrolan.9608:

In what universe is Druid ever a healer? This is so disappointing.

Erm lots of “universes” such as in Dungeons and Dragons which is where MMORPGs stem from.

I am definitely going to pre-order. just because of the druid. Nature magic pushed to the extreme —-→ the universe and black holes? celestial avatar? that is the most amazing thing…. anet did a great job on the druid.

In real life Druids killed animals.

I wouldn’t bring this up but people seem more then happy to bring up real world rangers when people talk about our bows.