Guild Wars 2

This is a serious question, and is asked from a PvE-only perspective (and no, I don’t count raiding as PvE for this purpose).

My best character used to be my ranger, hands-down. But, all of the other professions were dramatically upscaled by their elite specializations. Rangers seem to have been destroyed (for PvE) by an inability to use their elite spec except in organized groups. They seem to have to give up most of their power in order to play the spec.

My ranger has the Druid completed. She’s a condition-based (Rabid) ranger now, although I would entertain changing that.

Can anybody describe things that I could do to actually play a druid, and be able to succeed?

Thanks!

Druid excells even in fractals/dungeons/open world PvE. The sheer amount of group healing it can provide even in a glass/condi build is difficult to ignore. The personnel survivability it offers as well as the CC it provides is also significant. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that druid has pretty much replaced ranger as far as the communities viewpoint goes in nearly all game modes (There’s a reason nearly every ranger is refereed to as a “Druid” regardless of what build hes actually running aside from WvW, Where our position is still that “eh you woulda been better as a tempest”)

Adding druid to your build will probably be OVERALL a net gain. However you do lose some personal damage. And you risk losing a chunk of your play style.

Its up to you in the end what you value more.

I originally stated in this post that it was unfortunate. But the fact is thought I don’t like how the elite spec plays it is what keeps ranger relevant in the current game.

Its mostly for emergency sustain/spamming GotL’s bonus to your party, along with a few small things like Natural Stride for movement and Ancient Seeds for extra CC. If you can live without it, you can live without slotting Druid.

Your party might not like that, though, since they will likely expect you give them GotL with Frost Spirit/Spotter.

Playing the druid as Condi is probably the most preferable way you can play. It is not as efficient in Dungeon speed runs but it’s amazing for fractals and HoT content.

What you provide for party is Frost Spotter (as usual) and now you can buff the DPS further by glyphs such as Empowerment and others through GotL.
But that’s not all. Your magic comes through negation of a huge lots of damage (Verdant Etching procs blind, too, then you have the Daze in CAF on emergency) and you are amazing at destroying Break Bars. The emergency CAF is just an icing on the cake.

Bc we are teh bestest

Tried druid, played druid, hate druid. For me it’s POS. Went back to my Ranger and it still owns. Getting really tire of the DEV hate for the Ranger and how they go out of their way to nerf and ignore the profession.

That would have been very different if the devs made astral force something different than a drugged death shroud. I like druid but it is neither for dps nor for best pve for my taste.

Druid’s are kitten. I love playing in huge zergs in Dragon stand with my druid. Tossing vines everywhere, CCing left and right, then quick swapping pets and longbow and bursting down mobs with my piercing arrows left and right. Then swapping back to staff and laying down more vines and heals everywhere. I have a bunch of 80s, and for me, Druid is by far my favorite, nothing is even close.

I only play Druid for Nimbus 2001. Otherwise, I wouldn’t.

I often feel like I’m handicapping myself if I am soloing open world content on anything but my druid. The pet is a life saver and the amount of healing you have on top of decent damage output makes you very hard to kill. You also have perma swiftness from a druid trait so you don’t need to waste utilities building for mobility.

Agree with above.

I’m sorry to hear you don’t “feel” your Druid, I agree, it’s totally different game style and a very steep learning curve. At first I too was not a fan but I pushed through and 2 months later I’m an AOE beast!

Of course Druid is a healer and dungeons raids love some healing support but personally I think Druid shines brightest in PvE.
Where ranger was always single target, Druid is multi, If you can line up Auto 1 to go through multiple enemies which takes time to learn, granted, and vine surge! Awesome.
Including our best pets BB and Smokescale which hit so hard you don’t need as much dps.
I run all traps in my utilities, flame, spike, vipers, so once I’ve run through a mob, rounded up 5 or 6 I drop them and watch their health bars melt.

Staff 1 doesn’t loose power inside a certain range either! Of course it’s not strong but with the right rotation Druids are hugely powerful and I melt most things in almost the same time as anyone else, even on a healing spec.
The old ranger was LB 1, 2, 1, wait for 2….. But Druid is so much more complex and interesting because of it.

Staff 1, 4, send in pet, trap 1, 2, 3, SotP, rinse and repeat. So much fun.
Huge CC in this with GS 5 and Smokescale knockdown.

I wish you luck with yours, stick with it, it can take a while to grasp/like but totally worth it.

1.3k hours on ranger here.

Yes, our damage sucks in contrast to any other profession that is not Mesmer. The benefit though, is that we have a lot of damage modifiers that we can share with others, as well as emergency group heals.

If you are soloing in open world, yes, a ranger won’t be able to slaughter the trash mobs as fast as other professions. If you want to solo champions, just roll viper necro. Power ranger has a lot of upfront damage, but quickly falls off after. Condi ranger is alright, but it has a big caveat. That is, the enemy has to be stationary for you to do your thing.

This seems pretty contradictory to what most people picked up a ranger for pre-HoT(except for some unique snowflakes), I too never expected this kind of elite spec, and if I had known, I would have never invested so much time in this profession pre-HoT ;_; .

FriendlyInvader.3126:

If you are soloing in open world, yes, a ranger won’t be able to slaughter the trash mobs as fast as other professions. If you want to solo champions, just roll viper necro. Power ranger has a lot of upfront damage, but quickly falls off after.

I may not have 1k+ hours on my Druid (in fact he’s only a week old) but as a Powershout Druid, I’ve been rolling on pretty much everything ez, even champions.

I love Druid.

Druid is Nature. Druid is LIFE.

FriendlyInvader.3126:

This seems pretty contradictory to what most people picked up a ranger for pre-HoT(except for some unique snowflakes), I too never expected this kind of elite spec, and if I had known, I would have never invested so much time in this profession pre-HoT ;_; .

I guess because I’ve played a lot of rpgs I’m not surprised by druid being our elite spec. It fits perfectly with our class thematically. Ranger and Druid are the archetypal nature-based classes in so many games (console/PC/tabletop/etc) I don’t see how anyone who has been a gamer for a long time (25 years for me) was caught off-guard by this.

Druid allows a wide range of playstyles. I have heard alot of people complain that druid is a healbot. Well if you play it that way, sure, but that’s not the only way to go with it. It is also in every solid condi damage build we have, and some people use it for power builds as well. It adds a class mechanic w/o taking away from any other class mechanic, and most of the builds I’ve seen don’t even having healing power in their gear, unless they want to be healbots!

@bearshaman

This is just my personal opinion but…
… How in the world does a traveling skirmisher trusting only his pet connect to the outer space, black holes, solar magic and spiritual world of wisps?

Druid has been the most viable thing we ever experienced. But the worst designed idea I have seen in the whole gaming industry. It doesn’t match the story, doesn’t make sense, does not match the archetype, it wasn’t explained at all, it just plain sucks. Whichever way you look at it.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@bearshaman

This is just my personal opinion but…
… How in the world does a traveling skirmisher trusting only his pet connect to the outer space, black holes, solar magic and spiritual world of wisps?

A traveling skirmisher that frequently calls on the power of animal spirits to enhance his physical strikes, calls upon the elemental power of lightning to enhance his reflexes, can create a literal whirlwind to reflect projectiles, can summon masses of thorned vines from the earth to ensnare his enemies, and who can commune with and summon elemental spirits to magically aid him and his allies, one of which is a spirit of the sun.

Rangers already have a strong spiritual connection to the realm where wisps likely come from. They could already call upon the spirit of the sun and water, which explains the solar and water based magic they have access to. Is it really so much of a jump from the sun and the ocean to stars and the moon? To me a druid is just a ranger who has attuned so highly to the spiritual and elemental world that he has achieved a form of enlightenment, and can harness celestial forces far beyond merely summoning a spirit of the sun and earthly powers.

Though I do agree with you on the second part. We really did need more druid lore to flesh out the specialization from a story perspective. But then the same is true for ALL the elite specializations. I really don’t see why they couldn’t have added a lone druid spirit from GW1 who has special dialogue with ranger players explaining the source of their newfound druidic power.

Really that is my main gripe with HoT. Not enough lore. But that’s an entirely different discussion.

@ Ehecatl

If it’s okay to continue with the topic – Rangers had no connection to magic. Whatsoever. They are much more like using the power of beasts they learned in the wilderness (I guess I read that somewhere, not sure if it’s canon but I believe so).
Reflecting projectiles with the skill of weapons sounds logical. We are in Fantasy world. Creating a healing spring is connected to the wilds. And when it comes to spirits – ranger just calls them, summons them. He doesn’t control the magic they offered. Everything that ranger did was connected to the wilds and nature.

What druid is pretending to be is not a protector of forests, nature and whatnot. It’s a sci-fi action movie. From where did rangers actually learned how to use magic themselves? Druids are able to disturb the time and space continuum, for love of god. That’s not nature anymore and has nothing to do with it.

Other classes at least make sense. Thieves didn’t dress up to plated armor wearing 2 handed hammers and stuff, either. Other elites were like “a new way to fight”. Our was a “well, we can’t really explain how it works but it will become our selling point”

Blude.6812:

Tried druid, played druid, hate druid. For me it’s POS. Went back to my Ranger and it still owns. Getting really tire of the DEV hate for the Ranger and how they go out of their way to nerf and ignore the profession.

Not sure why you hate Druid. I’d like to hear your reasons.

I fell in love with Druid for its mobility and healing.

But the most ruthless change from Anet was the healing mechanic where now we can’t heal in WvW unless we are out of combat for more than 15 seconds – that’s a slap in the face – but other than that, Druid is much more fun than Ranger was and does just as much damage in most situations.

@Tragic Positive

I don’t wanna get too far off topic, but basically we’re both right on this.

Anet has a tendency to leave the method used to perform out skills as rather vague and open to interpretation. If you go into the lore page of this forum you’ll see a Q&A with red posts where the developers were answering some of our lore questions. One of the questions was about warriors and whether or not they use magic, since a lot of their skills are blatantly superhuman and some don’t really make sense as an exercise of sheer might. The response was basically “Some warriors use magic, some don’t. It’s up to you to decide how your warrior uses the skills.”

The same can be applied to the ranger. You see a character with no magical ability at all who merely borrows the power from the land. Personally I see a survivalist with a strong enough connection to the land to control it with some innate magical skill. Not a true mage, but someone with a strong enough spiritual connection that he can tap into these primal forces and the spirit world and harness their power.

So from my perspective on the ranger and their skills the druid is a natural progression of that. Someone who went from merely being a strong spiritual person with a deep connection to nature to having studied magic and harnessed that formerly blunt use of magic into a fine edge. A ranger who has specialized in nature magic.

I also disagree that the stars and Moon don’t fit the nature theme. The sun gives life to plants and the moon controls the tide. Stars give light to the night sky so creatures can see. These forces are far away from the earth, but they still are a part of the overall ecosystem. Judging by the glyph names druids are very much about balance and unity, and historically the druids of Maguuma have been VERY into the whole “We are a part of the greater whole and all things are one” concept.

When my druid enters Celestial Avatar form I see it as him tapping into the cosmic forces of nature that he was previously only able to scratch as a ranger. A state of enlightenment where all aspects of nature respond to him in his time of need.

From my point of view the ranger is the rugged survivalist who has developed a close, supernatural bond with nature and can call on it in his time of need with some instinctual understanding of magic. The druid is the old sage who has grown so close to nature that he can fully understand the scope of the world he lives in and uses it to defend himself.

It really would have been nice to have something in, like, The Falls in Auric Basin where an ancient druid spirit is tutoring a group of young rangers and explaining his philosophy about how the earth and the stars are all one. I honestly can’t fathom why Anet completely cut the druids out of Heart of Thorns. I was so psyched to see the druids again, as they were the most interesting part of Prophecies for me by far.

OK, so I was mostly correct: druid is most useful in groups. I do spend half my time playing fractals these days, but that’s mostly because my ranger was nerfed so badly. Perhaps I’ll try her in fractals.

The other half of my time I run solo in PvE. So, I would like to know some builds where a druid can do well soloing PvE. She’s currently running rabid, which was hideously expensive to create. So, I would prefer not having to swap out all my gear. Still, if she became playable again, I would consider it.

The only thing I won’t play is berserker or something similar, unless the druid stuff makes up for the abysmal hit points and armor. I hate glass cannons, and I sure don’t want to be one.

coz i have 3000 hours invested in this ranger, i have a cuople of sets of ascended weapons and armor for this class, the bags slots and all the character bound stuff i’ve been adding to it along this years.

If Anet gives me the tools to move my extra bags slots to another char and allows me to savage the ascended amor sets into their crafting materials so i can craft the new height set and transfer the unlocked map way points,crafting and all the stuff linked to that character then most probably will reroll.

Now it’s just feel like a chore to have to redo all the grinding to get a new char to the same level. And still ill have to use the old one to craft some stuff like ascended mats and such.

@Ehecatl
Yes, I think I can fully understand your point of view now. It kiiiiind of makes sense but I’d much rather appreciate some connection to the story. It was the main reason why I fell in love with GW2. Anyway, nice talk.

@Daddicus
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/PvE-WvW-Bleed-druid/
This is a build that has been shared a lot across the forums and a lot of players offered a very positive feedback about it. And I’m pretty much sure it uses your choice of armor (it can naturally be adjusted later on).
But for solo content – this is one of the most fun things while being very efficient at the same time. Give it a go.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@Ehecatl
Yes, I think I can fully understand your point of view now. It kiiiiind of makes sense but I’d much rather appreciate some connection to the story. It was the main reason why I fell in love with GW2. Anyway, nice talk.

@Daddicus
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/PvE-WvW-Bleed-druid/
This is a build that has been shared a lot across the forums and a lot of players offered a very positive feedback about it. And I’m pretty much sure it uses your choice of armor (it can naturally be adjusted later on).
But for solo content – this is one of the most fun things while being very efficient at the same time. Give it a go.

On the topic of magic:

One of the content leads answered some questions over on the Lore forums. If you want to read it, it’s the Lore Q&A thread. But in any case…

In one of his posts, he made it clear that EVERYONE in Tyira uses magic. It’s a skill that you learn much like cooking. Your parents teach you some of the basics, and depending on what you do in life you may learn more based on personal preferences. He even sighted examples of it using engineer, the most technological of all the classes.

So that particular point has been ruled on by Anet. Everyone uses magic.

Ehecatl.9172:

I often feel like I’m handicapping myself if I am soloing open world content on anything but my druid. The pet is a life saver and the amount of healing you have on top of decent damage output makes you very hard to kill. You also have perma swiftness from a druid trait so you don’t need to waste utilities building for mobility.

I echo that sentiment.

I also like all the tools to help break the bazillion break bars that every mob in HoT has when you’re out in the open world.

I never truly appreciated that until I hit Auric Basin!

@ OP,

Are you planning to stick with the condi build or would you consider a LB/GS power build? I use a power build for my druid and quite frankly, PvE is kind of a joke with how easy it is and the amount of damage my druid is able to dish out.

Starbreaker.6507:

Ehecatl.9172:

I often feel like I’m handicapping myself if I am soloing open world content on anything but my druid. The pet is a life saver and the amount of healing you have on top of decent damage output makes you very hard to kill. You also have perma swiftness from a druid trait so you don’t need to waste utilities building for mobility.

I echo that sentiment.

I also like all the tools to help break the bazillion break bars that every mob in HoT has when you’re out in the open world.

I never truly appreciated that until I hit Auric Basin!

I’ve swapped to tempest for open world stuff, and I find it pretty laughable that I can out perform my ranger, a profession that I’ve put over 1k hours into, by a profession I’ve only put less than 30% of the time into.

Survivability is not a valid reason either, learn to use your active defenses on other professions. And again, for the sake of outing the problems with this profession, the damage is NOT decent. Buff the damage output of all our weapons by 50%, and we would barely be mid tier in the DPS department.

On the contrary, I feel like I’ve been handicapping myself with the druid.

FriendlyInvader.3126:

I’ve swapped to tempest for open world stuff, and I find it pretty laughable that I can out perform my ranger, a profession that I’ve put over 1k hours into, by a profession I’ve only put less than 30% of the time into.

Survivability is not a valid reason either, learn to use your active defenses on other professions. And again, for the sake of outing the problems with this profession, the damage is NOT decent. Buff the damage output of all our weapons by 50%, and we would barely be mid tier in the DPS department.

On the contrary, I feel like I’ve been handicapping myself with the druid.

I play both ranger and elementalist actually. Elementalist was my main first, and I have over a thousand hours on him alone. And yet when it came time to farm HPs it was a brutal, difficult experience that I otherwise breezed through on my ranger, and there were a few HPs I could solo only on my ranger.

Tempest isn’t as good at dealing with breakbars as a druid is, which is a big part of it. Less natural defense so you need to spend more time dodging and dedicate more utilities to defense. Druid’s pet can tank for you to remove the necessity of dodging at all if you time your pet swaps right. Druid’s self healing is just as good as the tempest’s healing with 0 Healing Power. Tempest’s main advantage is raw damage of course, but the sheer ease of surviving as a druid makes up for it in my opinion. I still kill things plenty fast.

I also have two different druids with different builds. Both were able to clear PVE content significantly easier than my tempest even after everything was unlocked. One druid is a power longbow build (though I often go sword/axe for cleave) and the other is a condi trapper druid.

Starbreaker.6507:

I also like all the tools to help break the bazillion break bars that every mob in HoT has when you’re out in the open world.

I never truly appreciated that until I hit Auric Basin!

Can you explain further? One of the big reasons it has taken me so long to get where I am in HoT is the prevalence of interrupt bars. They’re bad enough on regular bosses, but putting them on veterans is really hard. Soloing with any character (mine, anyhow), it is absolutely impossible to break those bars.

Abracadabra.3296:

@ OP,

Are you planning to stick with the condi build or would you consider a LB/GS power build? I use a power build for my druid and quite frankly, PvE is kind of a joke with how easy it is and the amount of damage my druid is able to dish out.

I’ll entertain anything, provided it’s not too expensive. I already spent a fortune only to have ANet nerf it into the ground. I’m a little gunshy about that.

FriendlyInvader.3126:

On the contrary, I feel like I’ve been handicapping myself with the druid.

That’s what I feel. And, it’s why I started this thread. ANet isn’t the kind of company to purposely nerf a class so badly that they can’t compete any more. But, they ARE the kind of company that would do it because they didn’t think it through, and refuse to fix it once discovered.

Daddicus.6128:

Can you explain further? One of the big reasons it has taken me so long to get where I am in HoT is the prevalence of interrupt bars. They’re bad enough on regular bosses, but putting them on veterans is really hard. Soloing with any character (mine, anyhow), it is absolutely impossible to break those bars.

A wyvern’s wing buffet can almost take out most breakbars on it’s own. Or a jungle spider’s double immobilize combo. Add that to things like Path of Scars or Point Blank Shot and it’s pretty easy to smash basic break bars. Want to break more bars? Run Glyph of Equality and Glyph of Tides. Want to break even MORE bars? Bestial Warden gives your pet’s F2 a taunt. Don’t feel like using glyphs? Spike Trap is pretty effective too. Especially combined with Ancient Seeds which turns every knockdown into an immobilize for extra bar breaking goodness.

Druid is lousy with control effects. I can pretty much shatter a breakbar solo every time the breakbar turns blue again.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@ Ehecatl

If it’s okay to continue with the topic – Rangers had no connection to magic. Whatsoever. They are much more like using the power of beasts they learned in the wilderness (I guess I read that somewhere, not sure if it’s canon but I believe so).
Reflecting projectiles with the skill of weapons sounds logical. We are in Fantasy world. Creating a healing spring is connected to the wilds. And when it comes to spirits – ranger just calls them, summons them. He doesn’t control the magic they offered. Everything that ranger did was connected to the wilds and nature.

What druid is pretending to be is not a protector of forests, nature and whatnot. It’s a sci-fi action movie. From where did rangers actually learned how to use magic themselves? Druids are able to disturb the time and space continuum, for love of god. That’s not nature anymore and has nothing to do with it.

Other classes at least make sense. Thieves didn’t dress up to plated armor wearing 2 handed hammers and stuff, either. Other elites were like “a new way to fight”. Our was a “well, we can’t really explain how it works but it will become our selling point”

Ok I can tell you don’t know much about teal life druidism but it has to do with not only nature but the universe as well they studied astrology and othet areas as well. They bekieved in the connection of the universe not just nature. Also fantasy does dive into like you say space and time in certain druid lore, the druids from the shannarah series cor example is more related to a mix of real druidism and a battlemage.

As far as rangers being connected to nature magic that is actually true in alloy of fantasy even one of the first mmorpgs everquest in 1999 had a ranger they could do light nature magic.

Ryou.2398:

Ok I can tell you don’t know much about teal life druidism but it has to do with not only nature but the universe as well they studied astrology and othet areas as well. They bekieved in the connection of the universe not just nature. Also fantasy does dive into like you say space and time in certain druid lore, the druids from the shannarah series cor example is more related to a mix of real druidism and a battlemage.

As far as rangers being connected to nature magic that is actually true in alloy of fantasy even one of the first mmorpgs everquest in 1999 had a ranger they could do light nature magic.

I was actually interested in druidism and shamanism at one point, so I do know some stuff about it (and what RL druids did has very little connection to any fantasy druid we have, actually). My point was that no such thing as this has been mentioned in GW2 lore. And their teaser as well as their statements promised a nature themed “florist” who would shoot vines, spawn seeds and heal people.

Just like you have N different types of Elf language, so you have different types of druidism in games, depending on who is the author.

And from what we were told a druid would be, very little actually matched and even less was explained.

As much as I was keen on playing a druid for it’s story and “theme”, I actually kept playing it because … I decided it would be my main. And nothing else. Plus it finally became viable. Unfriendly has hell, but viable.

Thematically-I always liked playing druids and “nature themed” classes in different fantesy setup games(That’s why i started playing ranger in GW2 in the first place).
Regarding the direction they went with the druid, the moon/sun thing was already been done by blizzard(wow) before, so its not somthing new, and there is some bone to it if they inspire from sites like the stone circles. So for me it wasn’t such a hard pill to sollow.

Mechanically – I think they came up with a good mechanic, creating a healing spec that can be played also very offensivly, overall i think they have donr good work with the druid.

Regarding lore is GW2 – Atleast we’r doing better than scrappers/DH and most of the other elite specializations.

Downside- Evidences showed that the druid was supposed to be much more that it turned up to be, and the last version of the druid was a makeover in the last 2 nounths or so before HOT released. I remember leaks of several aspects(3 i think) which were highly tied with the glyphs utilities.

I call upon the noblest of Rangers to post their builds! I’ve been trying to settle on a good, versatile open world PvE build for a while now. I’d prefer a power build mostly, but I think it is highly important to be able to support fellow players during events any way I can. Lately I’ve been running Marks/NM/Dr with stun glyph, heal glyph, and empower glyph. I also run frost spirit and elite spirit. Also have been using LB/Staff. Too tired to think of actual skill names today…

Nicknobreak.7543:

I call upon the noblest of Rangers to post their builds! I’ve been trying to settle on a good, versatile open world PvE build for a while now. I’d prefer a power build mostly, but I think it is highly important to be able to support fellow players during events any way I can. Lately I’ve been running Marks/NM/Dr with stun glyph, heal glyph, and empower glyph. I also run frost spirit and elite spirit. Also have been using LB/Staff. Too tired to think of actual skill names today…

Spirits are nice when the battle doesn’t move. I would consider Sun Spirit in place of the stun glyph as an overall dps increase for group stuff. Also I’m a fan of GS over staff unless you plan on sitting back and just healing alot.

I have just came back to this game after a long hiatus. I love my ranger and have been running with longbow and greatsword. With my friends out of the game, I am looking to solo pve for quite a long while before going to dungeons or fotm (is it still called that? :P). With that in mind, is the new ranger/druid with LB/GS still usable as a solo pver? Or am I better off with other ranger build? I didn’t quite enjoy condi ranger back then and I have invested too much on LB/GS weapons.

Lightning.9108:

I have just came back to this game after a long hiatus. I love my ranger and have been running with longbow and greatsword. With my friends out of the game, I am looking to solo pve for quite a long while before going to dungeons or fotm (is it still called that? :P). With that in mind, is the new ranger/druid with LB/GS still usable as a solo pver? Or am I better off with other ranger build? I didn’t quite enjoy condi ranger back then and I have invested too much on LB/GS weapons.

This is what I’m running when I’m open world PVE-ing: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjUqQJL2qC+rAXLG2DKegD4R4jjj4p3bPAG9SG2YA

Power build on gear. Definitely works for your solo needs.

Deleted my reply. Realized this was a necro thread.

lol necro’d thread alert

Lightning.9108:

I have just came back to this game after a long hiatus. I love my ranger and have been running with longbow and greatsword. With my friends out of the game, I am looking to solo pve for quite a long while before going to dungeons or fotm (is it still called that? :P). With that in mind, is the new ranger/druid with LB/GS still usable as a solo pver? Or am I better off with other ranger build? I didn’t quite enjoy condi ranger back then and I have invested too much on LB/GS weapons.

Thread necro notwithstanding, I’m a recently returned player too and use a modified version of this build. I use A/W LB, so the traits are not the same, but the three trait lines are what you are after.

I’m returning too, my ranger was my first character ever in GW2 since beta, and was the first I finished the game with. I’ve since hung her up for my Thief, but after so long I feel like ANet made Thieves a PvP / WvW only class. I’m picking up my Ranger again, but I’m lost where to start. I am currently using LB / S/A on Druid, but I feel like I’m still playing Ranger. Can I use staff and be useful for PvE? I heard they nerfed staff recently.

Im curious too’ should we change to Druid for endgame content like Raiding or WvW ? or we can go Ranger ( Condi Ranger build with Viper armor set )

Druid is in demand when playing raids yes, ranger not so much, there are rare cases ranger can be played in raids but druid is far more popular in case you would have to choose. WvW, roaming or zerg, I don’t know since I haven’t played that for some time now.

As for staff in PvE. Yes that can be viable. But imo every weapon is viable in PvE. PvE is rather general though, if you mean HoT meta events you can play just about anything, if you mean raids and/or high tier fractals, staff should definitely be one of your options.
As for the feeling, you should really go for staff because it feels different then classic ranger. It’s developped around healing, but you can make it lean towards either condi dmg (viper’s) or raw dmg (zerker) by playing around with runes, sigils, traits and utilities.

Boogzillaz.8417:

Im curious too’ should we change to Druid for endgame content like Raiding or WvW ? or we can go Ranger ( Condi Ranger build with Viper armor set )

For WvW, either is a good option, though you will likely want celestial gear there just for survivability.

For Raiding, Druid, but that’s vague. There’s more than one way to play it. Admittedly, if you are going for the healbot which is what people will likely expect, your gear will be a mix of Ministrel, Cleric, and Magi (depending on who’s tanking). You will be more support and healing with that build, but that’s what druids look like in raids.

Fractals, either will be welcome, even at higher levels. Same for dungeons, though there the condi ranger will be the better choice, as not as much healing is needed unless you have a bad group.

HoT, Silverwastes, etc. Go with whatever you enjoy and feel comfortable and effective at playing.

Tbh, with the exception of Raids, that advice holds true just about everywhere. You could go and play a meta build, but if you suck at it and aren’t comfortable, what’s the point?

bearshaman.3421:

Boogzillaz.8417:

Im curious too’ should we change to Druid for endgame content like Raiding or WvW ? or we can go Ranger ( Condi Ranger build with Viper armor set )

For WvW, either is a good option, though you will likely want celestial gear there just for survivability.

For Raiding, Druid, but that’s vague. There’s more than one way to play it. Admittedly, if you are going for the healbot which is what people will likely expect, your gear will be a mix of Ministrel, Cleric, and Magi (depending on who’s tanking). You will be more support and healing with that build, but that’s what druids look like in raids.

Fractals, either will be welcome, even at higher levels. Same for dungeons, though there the condi ranger will be the better choice, as not as much healing is needed unless you have a bad group.

HoT, Silverwastes, etc. Go with whatever you enjoy and feel comfortable and effective at playing.

Tbh, with the exception of Raids, that advice holds true just about everywhere. You could go and play a meta build, but if you suck at it and aren’t comfortable, what’s the point?

Whoa thank you for the information xD~! Yes if i aren’t comfortable i cannot enjoy to play, but if it must then i should learn it hahahah ( plebs here play for a 3 weeks )

Anyone have a good druid guide they can link? (with recommended armor/weapons/utilities/etc.?)

dulfy.net has class guides for everything except revenant, and they seem to do a decent job keeping them up to date with the patches. I think that’s your best bet tbh…