Guild Wars 2

I level’d a ranger so I could be a kitten archer. I certainly didn’t sign up to be a healer, but atm it’s my main and it’s at lvl 42. I’m not sure if I should continue to lvl my ranger. Or start anew. If I were to raid at 80 everyone would expect me to be a healer…

So what should I roll for HoT? I’m thinking guardian, eventhough their elite is a ranger, will they still be useful frontliners kinda like tanks?

Mesmer might be an option or necro.

Any input would be nice, what should i roll or should i continue with ranger?

ty

The Druid is a healer specialization. But you do not have to pigeon hole yourself into it as you can build it as a support or damage dealer. It just gives you an option for sustain. You can use it for self or for others.

I have played a DPS druid the whole BWE3 in both pvp and wvw and it worked fine. You can look at Celestial avatar as an oh crapp button and a secondary heal.

Chokolata.1870:

The Druid is a healer specialization. But you do not have to pigeon hole yourself into it as you can build it as a support or damage dealer. It just gives you an option for sustain. You can use it for self or for others.

I have played a DPS druid the whole BWE3 in both pvp and wvw and it worked fine. You can look at Celestial avatar as an oh crapp button and a secondary heal.

how is the dps? does it compare to other dps specs?

Depends on what game mode you are looking at. If you are looking at PvE you have two options.

In old dungeon content and low level dungeons the Ranger is meta. We do not know yet how the Druid will do there. The content is easy and everything is about stacking and using berserker stats.
Compared to the Druid my educated guess is that Core Ranger will be better simply because of damage modifiers. However, there are other classes that are simply better at this and this is why the Ranger is usually not present in dungeons. Mesmer and Necromancer too.

Now, speaking of Druid, you will probably take Skirmishing, Beastmastery and Druid lines in PvE, irrelevant of armor stats taken, you will be a support class. This is not the same as a healing bot mind you. What makes the Druid unique as a support is high innate healing and a lot of unique damage modifiers. You will end up with spotter, frost spirit, glyph of empowerment and grace of the land.

As far as PvP or WvW go, DPS is not as important as the opportunity to deliver said DPS. This is why even DPS builds go with defensive trait lines. There are plenty of possible combinations to run there and you should not look at Avatar form in a one dimensional way. I used it as a pretty big panic button. Also the staff offers a lot of mobility and sustain.