Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer : these are only guesses And they does not really suit my taste but maybe some would like it. Most of this is based on patern shown in other elite specs and hint leaked on reddit

So the Druid :

The druid specificity come from aspect that work like stance for pets and may be activated by using [F2]. All 4 base pet skills are used automatically by your pet. There are 3 aspect tied to your traitline.

Staff :
The staff is a wise blend of hybrid skills designed to controle the flow of the fight. Expect loads of poison/bleed/cripple and a snare skill. Most likely there will be an “evade” skill as well.

Glyph :
Heal :
Glyph of growth : Cast a glyph on your pet that initially heal you and your pet. For X second, everytime your pet hit a foe he will also heal allie in radius for a small amount.

Utility :
Glyph of thorn : Cast a glyph on the ground, summoning a liana that will immobilize foes in it’s reach. Active skill of the summoned liana : Knockback foes in radius, dealing heavy damage.

Glyph of summer : Cast a glyph on your pet, allowing him to grant might to nearby allies for X seconds each time he hit a foe. Buff duration : X seconds.

Glyph of bark : Cast a glyph on your pet reducing damage taken by 50% for X seconds.

Glyph of winter : Cast a glyph on your pet, allowing him to chill foes that he hit. Buff duration : X seconds.

Elite :
Glyph of unity : Cast a glyph on yourself, merging yourself with the earth for a short duration to protect your allies from all incoming damage in radius.

Traits :
Minor :
Legacy of the druids : give you access to staff and glyphs. Your [F2] allow you now to grant an aspect to your pet.

Strong presence : Grant protection when activating an aspect.

Refreshing presence : allies affected by an aspect periodically gain life.

Adept :
Ursine instinct : Cast brown bear’s Shake it off whenever you’ve got 3 or more condition on you. CD 25s.

Briar child : Staff skill recharge 20% faster.

Quickening winds : you move 25% faster.

Master :
Ursine resilience : whenever you are disabled cast Ursine’s defy pain. ICD kitten .

Canine’s leap : Leap that you perform may additionally knockdown your foe. ICD 40s.

Exhalted inscriptions : Aspect swap are faster. Glyph CD recharge for each target affected by your aspect.

Grandmaster :
Aspect of the bear : For 5s your pet share it’s toughness with allies around him -> grant : 500 toughness. Enemies affected are weakened -> reduce damage from affected ennemies by 10%.

Aspect of the Wolf : For 5s your pet share it’s power with allies around him -> grant : 250 power). Enemies affected are crippled -> reduced ennemies movement speed by 10%.

Aspect of the Eagle : For 5s your pet share it’s precision with allies around him -> grant : 500). Ennemies affected are vulnerable -> Ennemies take 10% more damage.

NB.: Out of the grandmasters traits most of them are placeholder. (Note that it felt right to give to the druid some of the skills used by pet through trait.) On second though, it felt interesting to see that you could create anoter specialization with a very similar partern but centered around other kind of pets.

Yeah…. If your guess’s are close to being right I’ll just wait for the next Ranger elite spec… I mean, I won’t be waiting for it really. I’ll be busy playing the Rev, Daredevil, Ele, Warrior, and Guard.

I have to say I really like some of your ideas.
I also guess that staff will be hybrid short-mid range control/buff weapon.
However, I don’t like your grandmaster traits – it would mean that we could use only 1 aspect at a time – I find it boring.

I hope they don’t involve the pet this heavily. That would just be disgusting.

I do think it’s interesting that you would pick Aspect with the grandmaster trait, like how Thief decides how his dodge is changed though grandmaster traits. However, the datamining seemed to suggest that you would be able to switch between aspects.

Holland.9351:

I hope they don’t involve the pet this heavily. That would just be disgusting.

Like I said, the idea this guess is not really to my liking. But I dare to say that right now what the ranger need are means that would force them to aknowledge the very existence of their unique mechanism : their pet.

In the end it probably mean that they will have to do things like what I guess. If you look at ranger’s skills you got : Shout (directly affecting), signet (affecting pets), spirits (wide range buff), trap (DD skill) and survival skill (which are very random skills without a solid thematic). In the elite spec utilities Anet tend to take each profession existing stuff and transform it into something that look alike but triggered by an other mechanism. That’s merely what I’ve done with the glyph.

I do think it’s interesting that you would pick Aspect with the grandmaster trait, like how Thief decides how his dodge is changed though grandmaster traits. However, the datamining seemed to suggest that you would be able to switch between aspects.

First of all, I will just say that the same datamining (datamined at the same time than the trait that let us think there will be a switch between different aspect) also said that Berserker would have Sacrificial skills. (And we all know that instead they obtain physi… … hum, sorry… Rage skills)

The mechanism I suggest in this guess suppose that the aspect work like aura/stance with a duration, a cool down and obviously cast time (since they seem to hate instant skill). I am then guessing that the wording (Your attunement swap are faster) mean that the cast time of this mechanism is reduced. I choose this for 5 reasons :
- First I am utterly skeptical that, by any mean possible, they will choose to remove the pet (even for an instant). This would be a huge waste of traits in the base profession traitline.
- Second, a F5 skill would be a pure addition that wouldn’t give any depth to the ranger/druid. Just a new feature with no synergy with existing traits.
- Third, putting aspect on F2 give it huge synergy with existing traits to the point that it would be totally broken (Yeah, I admit). (If you look closely at it, you can see that my guess for the Druid spec would become beyond OP supportwise if these aspect looked like attunment)
- Forth, Herald also have aspect. They are designed as skills that “fit” their own mechanisms but they aren’t mean to be permanent. I think this “pet stance” like mechanism fit the ranger mechanism in the same way Herald’s aspect fit the revenant mechanism. It take advantage of it without being a burden for the whole profession.
- Fifth, I felt it would be funny to give the ranger a trait patern that even the thief don’t like (while they certainly have one hell of a spec with the daredevil)

Now, I’d prefer to be wrong because even if I come up with this, it’s disturbing and it hurt a lot my hopes for an hypothetical rework of the spirit skills.

Dadnir.5038:

But I dare to say that right now what the ranger need are means that would force them to aknowledge the very existence of their unique mechanism : their pet.

That’s already the case. I think most want less pet, not more pet. We are already too much handicapped by pets (by a dead pet anyway).

Making us more reliant on pets and forcing us to acknowledge them even more would be disgusting.

But if you can come up with this stuff then I’m sure ANet might have beaten you to it. That would be so disappointing I didn’t even consider it a possibility.

I said from the start I don’t understand aspects and switching between them because we have a ton of pet traits and skills and weapons buffing pets that it would be a big mistake to remove pets.

I don’t consider it impossible that we don’t get aspects/glyphs.

But please, not pets, anything but pets.

im just hopen the synergies will be well balanced and not pet – druid – nature magic being the only viable combo

But please, not pets, anything but pets.

I know your pain. The core mechanism of the ranger, the pet, is, in the actual state of the game, a huge issue. I don’t think that the concept is bad in itself (In fact I’m perfectly fine with the ranger being the “pet class”), but I do think that the implementation have to many flaw… Well… I won’t bore everybody with my long list of rant about the pet’s UI, skill design, AI… etc. (I can’t refrain myself to still ask the dev to at least give us the possibility to prevent our pet from using some of their utility skill. I hate you quickening screech! I hate youuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!)

On the other hand, the pet is still the core mechanism of the ranger. Something that you can’t get rid off. Actually (due to the dumb design off the pet) most ranger hate their core mechanism or, at best, try to ignore it. This is why I think the pet need help. The ranger and it’s pet need something that will reconcile them. And the obvious way to do that at the moment will pass, without a doubt, by specializations that should make the pet shine. (You won’t reconcile the ranger with it’s core mechanic by doing something that does not improve their relationship)

We could also imagine specializations that seclude themselves from the pet but, let’s admit it, when you look at the base profession, it would be bad design.

Again, we could imagine specialization that introduce a mechanism that somewhat work at the sideline of the pet, without real interaction. But this would just be a buff, like Anet admiting that the pet don’t work as a core mechanism.

I believe that the dev want, with the elite specialization, to give new height to the core mechanisms of each profession. And I highly doubt that they will overlook the ranger’s pet.

NB.: I want so bad a way to prevent these kitten pet to use some of their own utilities skill… Please Anet, pretty please is this this hard to give us this much? We were able to do it in GW1, why not on GW2?

There is only 1 major flaw with the pet mechanic.

Pet swap is on a 20s cooldown, which is fine.
But a dead pet is on a 60s cooldown, which is ridiculous.

The chances of a dead pet causing the death of the other pet is huge. It ends up in an infinite cycle of 60s cooldowns.

So periods where several traits, utility skills and even weapon skills become either worthless or lose their value.

A dead pet should have a 20s pet swap cooldown. 30s tops for a dead pet. So a 50% increase, not a 200% increase.

Well, that’s a matter of point of view but for me. I don’t mind at all this 60s CD simply because I don’t plan to let my pet die but there are things that really hinder me :

- Lack of control on pet utility : Not being able to prevent some skills to be used can break you depending on your gamemode. Mainly skill like Quickening screech which is a burden that every bird share, Devourer retreat that can simply break all the positionning work you could do and Hard CC skills in general that usually need to be wisely used instead of on CD.

- The huge health pool of the pet : Which is not that hard to get rid of but extra difficult to sustain. They should have given the pet a damage reduction instead of these ******* health point!

- The horrendous design of some pet skills : Forage is the perfect example.

- The fact that pet move slower In combat while mobs aren’t affected. Totally illogical.

- The cast time on pet’s shout. Seriously the pet is slow enough without having to stop them when the cast a shout that ain’t even strong enough to be used.

- The inability of the pet to jump which make it inapt to reach some zone which are easy to reach as a ranger (Pathing issue)

- Linear pathing hindered by small pixel bug. (Pathing issue #2)

- Inability of the pet to perform a dodge. (would it be an heresy to give 1s blur buff to the pet whenever the ranger dodge? Come on don’t tell me it would be hard to do.)

- Why do Fortifying bound apply vigor on the pet?

- Food not affecting pet (They are supposed to be our weapon, they should at least benefit from it. It’s already a pain that our pet need to be overloaded with might to be a tiny bit effective)

- Pet interaction with spirit : spirit’s buff is hard caped to 5 I wouldn’t mind if the pet also received the buff from me but that’s not the case. And since the priority goes to player, the pet is always forgotten.

- The fact that shout work like command to the pet and that one command delete another. Which mean that you lose the benefit of sick’em by simply using F1.

… etc.

I can go on forever. Simply put, the pet is unreliable and frail in it’s current form. And this is all due to a bad design. It’s not a matter of core mechanism rework, it’s just QoL need. The ranger badly need to have more control over it’s pet and it would be hundred time better that it happen for the core profession and not occasionnally in elite spec.

NB.: In all honesty, I can say that the state of the ranger’s pet was better 2 years and a half ago, before the base damage nerf and the vit/toughness change.

The less of a burden the pet is, the less people care how bad it is. It’s our enormous dependance on the pet that makes it bad. It’s designed closer to a handicap than a strength.

We have less strength on the Ranger, because the pet also gets something.
We have traits, even grandmaster traits that completely stop working without a living pet.
We have utility skills that require a living pet or they stop working completely.

Thats why people have been asking to play without a pet. If it was just something fun and extra like thief steal or warrior burst or guardian virtues, it would have been fine. But Rangers are handicapped by it. That’s not a pet class.

No other class has to depend on their class mechanic for their traits to work.
No other class has class mechanic traits everywhere.
No other class has utility skills that require their class mechanic.
No other class can lose their class mechanic.
No other class has to give something up because they have a class mechanic.

They should have made pets fun. Focussed on support, boons, healing, conditions, control, AoE, etc. Not on damage and handicap.

A dead pet causing the swap cooldown to be 300% of what it usually is screams handicap and punishment, which can’t even always be blamed on the player.

So more dependance on the pet would be disgusting and the polar opposite of what everyone wants.

What would possibly have worked is if… well, the pet AI was written by someone who thought they were going to play the GW2 equivalent of RoboCup with this thing. Try to make it guess what the player is doing and what they need, how to best keep themselves and the player alive given the enemies they’re currently facing, all that kind of stuff.

Yes, it would probably end up playing the game better than about half its owners. So?
(Okay, one concession – give it a leash so it won’t AFK farm for you.)

At least we do agree on the state of the pet

But while your answer to it is : “Less pet things please!”
My answer is : “Work on this screwed pet so that we finally like it please!”