Guild Wars 2

It’s something that’s been building up in the back of my head for a while, but think about all the things the Ranger playerbase wants and what the Maguuma Druids’ magic did. The Reaper was an attempt to give the Necro some awesome stuff for PvE content, the Dragon Hunter was an attempt to give the Guardian justification its sore lack of a good long range weapon, the Druid will attempt solve the Ranger’s problem of being kinda weak in WvW zerg battles and having lackluster team support.

Profession Mechanic.
As much as I hate to say it, the Druid’s profession mechanic is likely going to be the biggest U-turn from the design team. The aspects idea that’s been thrown around? Probably going to happen. The Druid will be able to “stow” their companion instead of switching them to get bonuses for it as has been demanded a lot by the community. For the sake of it, my own take would be that we’d have one pet, swap ‘em out and gain access to their third and F2 skills ourselves. Any traits that affect the skills directly (like beastly warden) would apply to our versions, but we don’t get the training stat bonuses (450 ferocity on a minor trait is dumb). A few examples for you:
Brown Bear: Shake It Off and Defy Pain
Raven: Blinding Slash and Quickening Screech
Wolf: Terrifying Howl and Brutal Charge

This solves the issue of losing our profession mechanic to random things we don’t have the control to play around, like our cat walking into a death field. But we’re still punished for keeping our companion stowed all the time.

Weapon
It’s a staff, if it’s not an AoE weapon then Anet have screwed up. I’ve heard tales of it being a CC/support weapon, which would be beautiful. Whether it’s a condi or power weapon I can’t predict, but so long as it pairs nicely with a condi build or GS build I’m happy. The Ranger lacks the ability to properly fight an opponent they can’t target outside of melee, while the new spike trap is amazing for fighting backstabs (the real deal or a grenade barrage), it’s not a useful tool against PU Mesmers or massive Zergs where you can’t select the important targets in the cluster. Basically though, Ele Earth 4 and Ele water 3 and I’d probably be happy.

Utilities
Here’s the big one I haven’t seen much discussion on. We’d heard a long while back that the Druid is heavily based around using the staff and the utilities should support that. If the staff is an area affecting CC/Support weapon, then the utilities should be AoEs you want to keep your victims in. We already have traps, but an idea of mine is “terrains”, long lasting area effects. The Druids of Maguuma can change the terrain of the Jungle by growing plants and such, Rangers used to have Nature Rituals that could drastically change fights, by providing both sides a buff, like Frozen Soil or Favourable Winds. The Druid, I predict, will get utilities like these possibly labelled consecrations if we’re needing to reuse a skill type. One such idea:

Favourable Winds:
Cause winds to blow forwards in front of you that grant super speed to allies and boosts the speed of their projectiles moving with them while crippling enemies and reducing their projectiles’ speed moving against them.

The best case scenario would be attacking an opposing team head on as two balls, but this would result in wiser teams attacking as two groups from different directions to counterplay the skill. Controlling the opposition’s ability to move around and force them to fight against the winds would be critical, which brings us back to the staff being an AoE control weapon.

tl;dr fusion dance with our bear, area control like crazy and large area unique support effects. These are just one conclusion from evidence that combines to suggest we’ll be awesome teamfighters.

Devs confirmed months ago that the druid will retain the pet. Sorry.