Guild Wars 2

I think this will be the new mechanic for druid. Basically we saw with Chronomancer, Dragonhunter and Reaper that the first minor trait in the specialization line modifies your class mechanic by either adding (chrono), upgrading (dh) or replacing (reaper) stuff.

For druid I think the ability to cast a specific pet ability (f2) will be replaced by the ability to fuse with your pet for a certain amount of time or potentially until you decide to defuse again (toggle ability). This will give you the following:

• huge stat increase since 2 units become 1, might actually add a percentage of the ranger stats on top of the natural pet stats
• new skills left to the health bar which are represented by pet skill 1-4 and the pets former f2, arenanet will rework a lot of pets and their skills to balance this out and make it fun to play
• some particle effects similiar to reaper which make the pet look intimidating and indicate that it is fused with the druid
• skills right to the health bar stay the same and can be used in pet mode

Personal comment. If done right this could be awesome but it stands and falls how fun the pet skillsets are to actively play. This would require rework but there are actually quite a few fun to use skills already. Also there might to be really fast swapping in and out possible creating an engineer kit like experience. Also the playstyle depends how close you have to be to the pet to fuse, it effectively creates ways for ranger to teleport (into the pet).

What do you think? No haterino pls.

I haterino…

What do you think? No haterino pls.

nevermind

It sounds like it could be pretty good. If not druid then I hope we get a spec like that at some point.

The problem is that in the Chrono reveal they specifically mentioned the Druid being designed with the Staff in mind so I doubt the mechanic will be about letting us replace our weapon skills like this. Wouldn’t mind if I am wrong though.

yeah i’m 100% sure they won’t give you a way to not use a pet. i could see taking on aspects of your active pet, but the pet itself is not going away.

Seeing our current traits, there’s no way they’ll remove the active part of the pet (Empathic Bond for exemple).

First Kaio-Ken in the form of Rampage As One now we’re doing the Fusion Dance with our pet?

Aylpse.6280:

First Kaio-Ken in the form of Rampage As One now we’re doing the Fusion Dance with our pet?

Would be a much better version of rampage as one. Activate it once and you fuse with your pet gaining a unique F2 skill and stats, persists until you deactivate it.

It should give a theoretical reduction of damage where you gain half of the damage your pet would do so it would still be preferable to have a pet, but at least we have zerg mode now.

Pet must do the fusion dance as well.

Ha! Funny, I was actually thinking the same for the Druid spec. It kinda seems perfect for a Druid…

I think Ranger class mechanic might not be changed at all.

[video]
“Hey this is really cool, we should do this for all the professions: try and change their F1 skills if possible”
“That’s why the Dragon Hunter and Chronomancer have turned out the way they have.”
“Some of the ones you guys haven’t seen yet are really really cool”

I might be reading too much into it though.

The only real change I can see them do to F1 skills:
F1: unchanged
F2: unchanged
F3: unchanged
F4: instant full heal pet (20s cooldown) / instant revive pet (60s cooldown)
You can only choose 1 pet.

Holland.9351:

I think Ranger class mechanic might not be changed at all.

I was thinking the same thing, with ranger having the trickiest profession mechanic to change up. It seems too obvious that if one profession gets left out on all this mechanic change love, it will be the ranger. Not only because of the pet itself, but because of all the traits tied up to pet swap and pet F2 skills. These traits still need to function with a new mechanic.

To be honest though, I would rather keep the current mechanic and get some awesome traits and utitilites to weigh up for that than having some shape shift stuff that doesn’t appeal to me at all.

If they don’t end up changing the class mechanic at all, they might talk about new pets coming in HoT, if there are any. Which sort of changes the class mechanic… in a different way. I’m still missing a pet with AoE swiftness for example.

Or otherwise simply a minor trait that gives a pet Swiftness on F1 and Protection on F3 or something similar. So just a straight buff to the F1 skills, but it would still cost a trait, so that’s fair I guess.

Holland.9351:

I’m still missing a pet with AoE swiftness for example.

All the birds have AoE swiftness. Not as an F2, but they will use it as soon as you swap to them in-combat.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Holland.9351:

I’m still missing a pet with AoE swiftness for example.

All the birds have AoE swiftness. Not as an F2, but they will use it as soon as you swap to them in-combat.

I’m missing on-demand swiftness outside of combat. I was more thinking along the lines of:
Green Moa 15s Swiftness 25s cooldown
This pet + warhorn = permament AoE swiftness. Which doesn’t require Guard + Nature’s Voice + Shout Mastery.

It’s mostly just for WvW roaming and giving swiftness to dolyaks.

But I think we’re going offtopic here.