Guild Wars 2

Share any Druid Mechanics ideas you have

What if Druids instead of having control over the pet, would have a mechanic that allows them to shapeshift I to the Same Pet Family as the pet that is currently equipped.
Or shapeshift by pet family of choice rather than current pet equipped.

Each Animal Family form would have have unique abilities to their pet counterparts.

Another idea is for Druid to shapeshift into Plant creatures to fight and gain new abilities when your pet generates enough nature rage from attacks. Sort of like a Ranger/Necromancer dual class

New downstate: Possession.

Upon entering downstate, player takes immediate control of pet, getting all of the pets skills and adding Lick Wounds for the 5th skill. AI Ranger now spams self rez off cool down. Continues until the pet is downed or the ranger killed. (Quickness on down not seeming as much of a waste?)

Man, suggestion thread again… These are 99.99999% bad…

Anyway, how are you going to make suggestions when we know 0.1% about how the Druid subclass works?

Regardless, at least wait until more intricit info is available about the Druid spec before trying to make “suggestions.”

I hope to see some shape shifting from our utility, and elite slots for zerg play. It would be nice if we do shapeshift that our pet will stay active to fight along side us.

“the Druids actually shed their physical bodies to become one with nature. The Druids now exist as spirits, appearing similar to Oakhearts.”

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

Whips pl0x.,.. Need!

I dont expect to see actual shapeshifting, but a very druidic slant would be to allow us to temporarily absorb the essence of the pet, taking on empowered versions of their base abilities as our F1, F2, F3, F4 skills.

Given there are a finite number of pet families, I think this would be doable – possibly with some minor cosmetic changes based on the pet family (growing claws if absorb a cat, growing in size with bears, etc). It could even affect weapon skills.

PCG: Another thing you announced was profession specialisations. The one you revealed was the Druid. That the Ranger was getting a staff weapon. Beyond having a different weapon, how different will the druid specialisation be from a ‘standard’ Ranger?

Colin: We’re really trying to make it feel like it’s almost a sub-profession or a secondary profession if you will, and not just a new set of a couple of skills. It’s not just opening up the capacity to use a staff. When a ranger becomes a druid, they have an entire new set of skills and traits that come available to them. And their profession mechanic changes as well. That’s true with all the specialisations. You actually play the profession differently, not just in skills and traits, but in the core mechanics of those professions. Some of them will change an existing profession, some of them might give them entirely new profession abilities and remove other ones. It really varies specialisation to specialisation, but it really should feel like you are playing a new version of your old profession. And players can actually mix and match a little bit. If you are playing as a Druid you will be able to use a lot of the Ranger’s skills, and you can actually slot them in to make a lot of creative builds. But a Ranger can not use any of the stuff a Druid has unless they become a Druid.

I prefer to summon pets. One pet at each F-Key. Bird, Wolf, Baer and Spider.
All F-keys get a recharge after using one. After that you can summon another pet. The pets are weaker than the ranger pets and only temporarily. But you can have up to two pets at same time. Maybe three with Druid Trait.

Perhaps the druid will be more in tune with their pets and the mechanic is they move and attack as one.

The way this works is that the pet doesn’t passively attack and use AI. Each of the weapon skills is both a weapon skill and a command to the pet. This means if you’re not attacking your pet is always running at your side. Skills 2-5 will trigger pet specific skills and cooldowns on current weapons will be adjusted accordingly. Dodging causes both you and your pet to dodge. Autoattack is a one to one. If you aren’t using number 1, your pet is not attacking but staying at your side.

Then replace the f keys with 3 pets to swap between on f1-f3, with f4 as stow pet.

To balance with the current ranger, remove the longbow and possibly shortbow as options and rebalance some weapon skills to longer cooldowns. This would give druid more active options and more survivability to the pet, but less range and less passive damage from pet.