Guild Wars 2

Natural mender and live vicariously are tailored to work with staff (solar beam specifically), and if you do not use a staff you are effectively playing without minor traits. This is bad design because you can use the druid line just fine without staff, and besides no other elite spec is tied to its weapon.

So my suggestion is move these 2 to the staff trait (Primal Echoes) and remove the daze from it, because it is not possible to play around a cc on weapon swap and unavoidable cc is bad for the game, but this is beside the point.
This leaves room for 2 new minor traits, i would suggest something to do with the pet as druid lacks almost any synergy with the core ranger class mechanic.

Master minor trait: when you become a celestial avatar you remove 3 conditions from your pet and you gain vigor, when you exit celestial avatar your pet gains fury.
3 sec vigor and 3 sec fury

Grand master minor: You gain a stacking toughness buff while in celestial avatar form and your pet gains a stacking power buff. Thees buffs remain for 4 sec after leaving celestial avatar.
25 toughness for the player 25 power for the pet applied on a 1.5 sec interval, maximum stacks 4 (so you need to stay in avatar form for 6 sec to get the full buff of 100 toughness and power). The buffs start to fade as soon as you exit avatar and remain for a total of 4 sec (they do not fade as long as you are a celestial avatar).

Put your suggestions for 2 minor traits in the comments, i really believe the current ones belong on the staff trait.

Primal Echoes is onle of the only flavored interesting traits we have in druid.
Primal Echoes is not “unavoidable” , it can be blocked/evaded/ counter by stability. There are tons of instant cast CC in the game, Primal Echoes is not different on this regard. like 90+% will always prefer to take druidic clarity(even if they use staff). I understand your issue with the druid minor trairs, but your solutuions are very bad and boring. More passive defences more boon spamming(like we dont have enough of thouse).

Live Vicariously triggers whenever you heal your pet or anyone else (except from regen), with our without your staff. To say it doesn’t do anything outside the use of the staff is completely wrong. It adds sustain and astral force.

Lazze.9870:

Live Vicariously triggers whenever you heal your pet or anyone else (except from regen), with our without your staff. To say it doesn’t do anything outside the use of the staff is completely wrong. It adds sustain and astral force.

and what will you trigger it with? Once every 16 sec with whao? the only synergy it has is troll unguent and that heal is strictly worse that whao. Fact is to make use of this trait and its 1 sec cd you need rapid healing (not regeneration not signet of the wild and not natural healing as those do not work), which means auto attacking with staff through allies (pet). same with natural mender, you need consistent healing ticks (again none of the thing above work) which again means staff.

I want our minors to work without staff idc what they change them to just change them to something universally useful. Need i remind you that no other elite spec is tied to its weapon? the closest it comes is dh with pure of sight and that trait still works without a bow and it is 1 trait (so they have 50% of a trait if they forgo their elite weapon), our 2 minor traits give less than 15% effectiveness without a staff.

Hmm… there may be a small tweak to make the minors more non-staff friendly and raise the effectiveness of non-Druid traits and utilities.

Live Vicariously: When you heal or apply regeneration on an ally, you also heal.
Natural Mender: Increased outgoing healing when you heal or apply regeneration to an ally.

This could make things more flexible in cases like shouts & Resounding Timbre, Healing Spring, Windborne Notes with warhorn or Clarion Bond, among the others. Dare I say, even Water Spirit traited with Nature’s Vengeance could have some effectiveness retaining either bonuses.

Only on application of regeneration though, not the ticks. Just a thought.

foste.3098:

Lazze.9870:

Live Vicariously triggers whenever you heal your pet or anyone else (except from regen), with our without your staff. To say it doesn’t do anything outside the use of the staff is completely wrong. It adds sustain and astral force.

and what will you trigger it with? Once every 16 sec with whao? the only synergy it has is troll unguent and that heal is strictly worse that whao. Fact is to make use of this trait and its 1 sec cd you need rapid healing (not regeneration not signet of the wild and not natural healing as those do not work), which means auto attacking with staff through allies (pet). same with natural mender, you need consistent healing ticks (again none of the thing above work) which again means staff.

I want our minors to work without staff idc what they change them to just change them to something universally useful. Need i remind you that no other elite spec is tied to its weapon? the closest it comes is dh with pure of sight and that trait still works without a bow and it is 1 trait (so they have 50% of a trait if they forgo their elite weapon), our 2 minor traits give less than 15% effectiveness without a staff.

Live Vicariously is one of the reasons I got the celestial avatar up as often as I do when I play LB/GS zerker in pvp. And that’s mainly with Troll Unguent, yes. By pushing that into a minor that would have me choose it over the full condi cleanse would only hurt that specific build.

“Do I need to remind you..” No, you do not need to remind me anything at all, because I do just fine with those minors. You don’t. Live Vicariously is fine as it is. Natural Mender could be swapped for something like Natural Stride which is beyond all doubt a more universal trait, but people were already complaining about that at the launch of HoT with no response.

foste.3098:

Lazze.9870:

Live Vicariously triggers whenever you heal your pet or anyone else (except from regen), with our without your staff. To say it doesn’t do anything outside the use of the staff is completely wrong. It adds sustain and astral force.

and what will you trigger it with? Once every 16 sec with whao? the only synergy it has is troll unguent and that heal is strictly worse that whao. Fact is to make use of this trait and its 1 sec cd you need rapid healing (not regeneration not signet of the wild and not natural healing as those do not work), which means auto attacking with staff through allies (pet). same with natural mender, you need consistent healing ticks (again none of the thing above work) which again means staff.

I want our minors to work without staff idc what they change them to just change them to something universally useful. Need i remind you that no other elite spec is tied to its weapon? the closest it comes is dh with pure of sight and that trait still works without a bow and it is 1 trait (so they have 50% of a trait if they forgo their elite weapon), our 2 minor traits give less than 15% effectiveness without a staff.

Time to explore some options like “verdant etching”, “Cultivated Synergy”, “invigoratong bond” , sigil of renewal sigil of water, some runes , blast finish on water fields. Not sure about nature spirit, water spirit, pets heals(moans, fren). Also the traits work while in CA from, so while in CA, all druids are getting the full benefit out of thouse two traits.