Guild Wars 2

I have more Sylvari than all the other races combined. That and the HoT playthrough with Sylvari is great! Hearing Mordremoth talking and the slight story changes were well worth the price of admission.

But then again, I played Sylvan on Dark Age of Camelot years ago, so they’re a huge throwback to me on top of looking awesome with great armor choices.

And like above, a T2/T3 hodgepodge decked out Druid with Yggdrasil is a thing of beauty. I just added the Thief hood and It is definitely my best looking character.

I run solo, so I depend on myself about 95% of the time. My gear is Commanders armor, Wanderer weapons, a mix of Knight and Valk trinkets with the Zerk/Valk earrings.

~2400 atk, 3044 armor, 18k health, 35% crit, 40% boon duration, and Traveler runes.

LB/SwFoc weapons. I normally ran GS/SwFoc, but I’m liking the bow.

I’ve had traveler runes for over 2 years, I can’t get away from them. It’s the only way to fly. Unless you’re running with the Zerg or you have a group that can spit out perma swiftness, they’re almost a necessity for WvW.

edit: If you’re running a mediation build, you can drop some off the vitality and go more offensive if you like. I’ve switched to a double trap with 2 shouts build, so I went a little deeper in vitality for survivability. I’m running the signet heal, Fragments of Faith, Stand Your Ground, Procession of Blades, and Feel my Wrath.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWBnUqAdrgVsCctglFB7JKcCWdLXuAwgDeqmV/qlI9xA-TlCHABBcBAETXgSKx2V9H8UCSwTAAJlBOp0Qk9HA4QAEAAB4m3MbezA/8n/8n/8nN0hO0bO0hWKg+GDA-w

I’ve been running this for several months. It is a hybrid condi/power build with some healing. There is so much utility and comboing that you can do that it is never out of tricks. 2 gap closers/retreats, lightning/water/smoke/poison field, 2 blasts/a leap/projectile finisher, on demand stealth with weapon swap chill/criticals, 3 daze, a knockdown, knockback, a stun, a stun break, taunt on F2, and a 16sec cooldown heal for 7k+ regen.

It is very hard to take down. I’m not the greatest player, not a min/maxer by any chance, but I do very well with this build playing on a laptop and clicking my skills like an old schooler.

You can easily stack up 7-10 poison stacks, 10-15 bleeds, and it leaves an open spot for whatever your favorite skill is. You can swap around some to take signet of the wild for stability and go with Entangle instead of SoTP, but I enjoy the long duration stability and I take the glyph of alignment usually for added punishment.

Other options in WvW are:

Sic Em, 40% damage on smokescale + speed and reveals them for 6 seconds……. nothing like a 10k combo on a thief/mes thats trying to get away and you save your final skill to flat out demolish them.

Search and Rescue, haven’t used it since the ?nerf? but i’m sure it still has its uses

Sharpening Stone for more bleedz

Spike trap for another knockdown/bleed

Signet of Stone for burst negation

Signet of the Wild for regen and more damage burst

Signet of Renewal for another stun break and cleanse

For escape, you have perma 33% speed and swoop/ancestral grace. Not many things can catch you, if any.

I’ve fared very well against reapers and mesmers, but it can be tough. You have to know their burst and kite to avoid it. Reapers you just have to avoid the shroud and pressure them while they’re out.

EDIT: I’ll likely go with Viper armor and Celestial weapons eventually, try to keep a happy 2000 attack and 1000 condi damage with near 20k health in WvW

This would be the change

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqAdrgVsCGsCctglFBDeqmV/qPRhTwqb5yFAGclcs0A-TlCHAB2r+jSKxQSZgTKNI4JAAwhAIOdBBcBAEZ/B8UCuZQAYCJAbbb9/5XKg+GDA-w

Did you use the insta level 80 item that showed up in the shared inventory spot? Then you teleported to the silverwastes and used it again to accept the gear and items?

Can you select the Druid traitline in the bottom line? If not, It sounds like it initiated a bug when you used it and locked you out. Definitely report it as a bug and have someone check it out.

I would smile really big if we got a damage boost or damage component of some type. My current Sinister/Seed Druid does EXTREMELY well in WvW. I’ve won many more fights than I’ve lost and even some outnumbered ones.

I’ll be switching my armor to Viper’s to crank out even more conditions (Poison on weapon swap, Krait runes for mega condi’s on Elite activation, Ancient Seed bleeding procs, dazes galore, immobilize/root galore) And soon to be 30-40% longer durations!

In reality though, I would love to have a damage focused Avatar form instead of only using CAF to hit 3, 5, and then cancel it 90% of the time.

Since my last post, I’ve now completed the story on 4 characters. My most recent attempt was on a DragonHunter traited for Radiance/Virtues/DH. Lots of Aegis and bonus damage to burning with Traited Courage Virtue for more stability for opening rifts.

I completed it without a single bug and on my first attempt. I don’t know if it was just a lucky run, or if some of the bugs have been fixed, but it was very pleasant and fun.

My best tips:

Ranged Damage/Weapons
traited control effects on attack/utilities
Cooldown reductions
damage mitigation

Pick Canach and Braham

break bars whenever you can and utilize the built in mechanics.

Kite the Blighted away from Mordy and knock them down to 25% to daze them, then run to the rift, pop stability, and open it.

During the updraft phase, run into the updrafts and wait until you peak and start falling down to open your glider. This will open your glider and launch you further up where you can glide around. Try to stay behind him and pick an updraft that is across the arena, that way you aren’t at the peak of flight all the time. One whack can cause critical fall damage from that high up. Try to stay low for the most part, but not low enough to hit the ground.

I’m guessing that you can’t go wrong with Ele or Mesmer. They can both be built for any occasion and the support they offer to the team is excellent. Celestial Druid could be an option also, Lots of utility and great healing potential.

Dry top and Silverwastes are components of the new Personal Story season, so they should be included.

This coming from someone who hasn’t spent an hour “farming” in either zone.

It would make it overly easy to max your mastery though, so it’s probably better off not being included.

I’ve completed it with 3 different classes. Druid, Herald, Dragonhunter. It is a very buggy fight with several different bugs to have to luck out of. I’m currently working on Reaper and Berserker will be next. It usually takes me 3-4 attempts to get a clean fight with no bugs. It’s a bummer, but makes for some extra “challenge”…. I guess.

It’s all about the skins! I’ve run through the personal story 3 times and completed the dragons stand meets once, so I have 4 pieces so far. I’m working on a few more runs through the story to get a few medium pieces…. Only really need shoulder/chest/gloves unless you want the full outfit. I have 3 pieces on my Dragonhunter and the rest filled in with ascended. It looks pretty good together. I’m just not a fan on head hear.

They’re strong, but you get a pretty easy “tell” that they’re aiming at you by having the crosshairs over your head. I target them first and strafe left/right to avoid their ground attack, then charge them and interrupt/dps. This doesn’t help if they have someone else targeted, but avoiding “clumping” together can help there also.

I’ve completed it 3 times thus far on my journey for a set of Leystone armor. I have encountered a lot of bugs and after a lot of frustration, have finished it successfully each time. My best results come from:

Ranged damage and kiting
Canach and Braham as your party

lots of luck that their two encounters don’t bug

In the event that you actually make it to Mordremoth:

More kiting and ranged damage. Stay close inside his “arena” and stay behind him. When the blighted companions spawn, kite them away from Mordremoth until they get to 25% (they become dazed hopefully, except Caithe, she’s an kitten most of the time). Cripple them and use stability on the rift. If he blasts you with his ground attack, strafe left or right and then do it again until it completes.

For the updraft phases, run to the updrafts and wait until you’re falling down before deploying your glider. Sometimes the game will deploy for you, and if you try to deploy yourself, you’ll put your glider away and fall back down to your death. Try to stay behind him to help prevent him from hitting you with rocks. You have to survive 3 of these phases.

++++SPOILER FOR THE FINAL PHASE IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN THAT FAR++++

For the final burn phase, it’s fairly simple. kill all of the mobs and then focus the rift to break his immunity, then burn him down.

SPOILER!

Definitely a Physical manifestation of Mordy’s mind in the dream. We’re attacking the mind while there are thousands (presumably) attacking his body. I enjoy the fight except for the bugs.

Caithe manifest will continue to attack after you’ve “dazed her” and try to open the rift. This interrupts your channel and you have to try again…… Only she continues to chase you…. I’ve tried it with stability and still manage to fail.

Some rifts appear out in space and you cannot get to them….. you have to jump off the edge and hope you don’t get revived so you can reset the fight.

Pale tree manifestation sometimes goes invulnerable mid fight and cannot be damaged. I ran around smacking her for 10 minutes and the buff never went away. Had to restart the instance.

Eir/Garm Sometimes Garm will pop right back up and you won’t get a phase to dps Eir… makes for a very long fight.

EDIT: I forgot about the updraft/glider phase…… Sometimes the glider opens on its own, sometimes you have to manually trigger it. If it opens and you try to manually trigger it… you close it up and fall back down to die. Best workaround I found is to wait until you are falling back down to trigger it manually, that way the game has time to trigger it if it’s going to.

I’ve bug reported many things in the final fight. I’ve currently played through it with 3 different classes trying to get my full set of Leystone armor. Currently working on Reaper and then Berserker for the last 2.

I like the idea, but it’s too much to give a class. Cut it down to 3 forms with a specialized niche and you’d be better suited. Bird/condi dps, wolf physical dps, bear/tanky sustain. Wipe out all your utility skills and just give those 3 forms a new set of abilities.

Bird: Bleeds/blinds/cripples/torment and castable swiftness/quickness buff
Wolf: Physical/knockdown/immobilize/fear with castable fury/might
Bear: Condi cleanses/regen/sustain damage and castable protection/stability/resistance buff

3 new skins, 15 new abilities that are already in the game(ish). Just pick a handful and give them some new animations.

I’ve been playing my Druid pretty heavily since launch, but I also finished up Herald. There are a lot of similarities between them and I really enjoy both playstyles. I run an Ascended Knight’s/Zerk/Soldier build as Herald and really enjoy my near 100% crit chance with Fury and 2400 attack. Hammer and S/S. Nothing like catching people between two CoR hits and smashing them for 8-10k damage and still having 20k health and 3300+ Toughness. Once we iron out the location of Commander Insignia’s……. It’s going to be interesting. Perma Fury that lasts a long time into Shiro S/S swap with 100% crit chance is going to be intense! Not to mention that Herald has probably the best heal in the game.

Herald does have some rough edges, but I think the majority of the nerfs have already hit.

Druid on the other hand, I’m having a lot of fun with. Staff/GS Ancient Seed/Sinister build Beastmaster. Tons of survivability, can do physical or condi DPS, decent crit chance, and daze for days! I’ve taken out a few Elite Specs in WvW, but I’m kinda back burnered for a bit trying to collect all of the Leystone armor from the Personal Story…. 4/6 pieces so far, such a cool armor set.

I’ll echo the previous comment, play both some!

Finally got my tiger and electric wyvern. Guested to Blackgate and took part in the entire event. We smashed the towers with 40 minutes to go I think. Downed the next phase rather easily. First step was updrafting to the chest, then glide down to the hero point, wait for respawn…….. Half a dozen other Rangers waiting to get them also.

Then waypoint to northern advance camp, run south, turn west toward the vista. Go south from the vista and bingo, tigers.

Had both with 9 minutes remaining (started with 13 or so).

Thanks for all the help here! My collection is complete once again.

I’m enjoying my selfish Staff/GS Seed Druid.

I’m not enjoying seeing a Ranger/Druid nerf every new patch, though.

Let the selfish condi Druids unite! Until the next update when the next round of nerfs hit.

F2’s should be about utility. Fields, heals, cleanses, buffs, etc. All of those should be manually controllable by the Ranger/Druid so that they can use them offensively/defensively based on their build and needs.

I really liked the Smoke field on F2, and I really enjoy Smoke Assault on F2 also. The frequency that the pet uses Smoke assault when it was an auto attack is trivial, it used it almost immediately after initiating combat and almost on cooldown otherwise.

The way it is now, you randomly get smoke fields in the middle of combat which makes the playstyle wonky and leaves very little opportunity for the Ranger/Druid to take advantage of it.

I originally had the idea for Staff/GS with smoke field on F2. In this, I could engage, smoke assault would fire, I pop wisp and vines and then ancestral grace into the F2 smoke field for stealth where I could swap to GS and get a crit Maul (Intelligence/Hydromancy) with very quick cooldown that would apply chill and damage as soon as I swapped. This made a follow up Maul (Quick Draw) much easier to land if you could maintain control of the engagement. This made for a very powerful combination (against low skill opponents). You could also pop the F2 and Ancestral Grace into it for a little heal/stealth to buy you some time if the engagement was not going in your favor then follow with a GS swap for chill/damage and double leap away (GS Swoop/Swoop with Quick Draw).

I would be a fan of the extra utility, but I would hate to see Smoke Assault be nerfed even more if it needed to be brought down to a lesser power. The drakes get the breath attacks on their F2’s, but their tail/whirl does much more damage, for comparison.

Before, 7/10. Required masteries for the personal story were a bummer and pets that are gated behind huge grinds are even worse. Being stuck at 46% Druid unlocked after completing the whole story and needing another 225 hero points was a bummer too. I get that it’s new content, but they kinda went against their “play how you want” motto. No way to unlock elite specs through SPVP was also a bummer as it took me two days to download HoT. It was Playable after 8 hours, but the content for the personal story was not downloaded, so I was relegated to PvE zones or SPVP for a day and a half.

Now, 9/10. Druid fully unlocked and geared in all the ascended stuff I had set back for him. Been in WvW having a blast, right where I wanted to be. I’m kicking rear and very hard to kill. My last 2 pets are still gated behind a big PvE grind in Dragon’s Stand. Instead of just having one elite unlocked by the end of the year, now I might have a few and can have all the fun I want in WvW instead of grinding hero points.

There aren’t many options otherwise for nature themed stuff.

Sylvari cultural armor
T3 Sylvari cultural weps
of Dreams weapons
Twilight Arbor weps/armor
Druid shoulders
Druid staff

There is a great looking couple pieces in the Norn cultural armor also

Currently using TA chest, T3 Sylvari legs/boots/gloves, Thief hood, Druid staff, Druid shoulders, Belladonna greatsword, Mawdrey backpiece.

Eager to see the Nevermore precursor/Legendary, I might have to actually craft my first one!

EDIT – This pic was before I maxed Druid and got the shoulders, using more Sylvari cultural shoulders then.

I solo’d it all on my Ranger, took a long time, but was rather easy.

I ran into a couple problems, finished it on my 4th attempt. Blighted pale tree would randomly go Defiant and immune to damage. Blighted Eir and Blighted Canach are the easiest combo.

One thing I found was that it was easiest to stay very close to this boss. Too far back and you’d get whacked by about every attack. Staying close and strafing in circles was very easy to complete.

Sinister/soldier with on crit condi sigils on both Longbow and staff. When one of the blighted spawn, walk backwards in a big circle around the arena. Save your dodges for the bigger attacks. Once you get a rift open, your teammate can tank on the boss while you run interference and survive while awaiting the next blighted. The flight phases were buggy for me, unreliable deployment of the glider. After the third flight phase, you won’t have to do them anymore. The last 50% is a repeating rift/burn phase that is pretty simple.

I just happened upon this bug

Sylvari Male Druid

I did the defend quest, ran to the overlook and glidered down to the platform. It instantly flipped to the next part of the quest, but I could not talk to the NPC. I tried all of the aforementioned tricks, no avail.

What DID work.

I waypointed to Silverwaste, Logged out to character select, logged back in, waypointed back, and used the glider to get back down to him. The magical mystical cursor changed and I could progress.

I can also confirm the Smokescale in the Chak/Nuhoch area. I sat for nearly an hour slaying Chak while reading others experiences. I decided to jump in and do the dynamic events about feeding the beetles and training them. As soon as you kill the big Chak (2 or 3 mini events in there before it comes out), run back outside of the cave and head due south. There should be some smokescales spawned there around the tree. On the back side of the tree was a juvenile that I Ancestral Graced my way to after popping every swiftness I could find. Now I have him!

Woke up at 3am to start the download process, saw 100k+ files remaining and went back to sleep. Woke up at 6am with 86k files remaining and download speeds in the single digits.

Still crawling along at 0-30kb/sec… Very rarely it bumps to 180 for a second and drops back to double digits and slowly drops to 0.

Gonna be a long day.

Sinister SB/GS and also doing bonus damage to impaired foes. Moas have a daze, drakehound/wolf/elec wyvern/Smokescale knockdowns. Glyph daze, CA daze, spike trap.

Add in ancient seeds and on-swap condi sigils and you’d just torture them until they melt.

Of course, stability negates the cc effects…. But the condis work!

The past several months I’ve been fielding my Ranger again. I’ve been running a shout/survival GS/LB build built around crits and permanent Regen/mitigation. Taunt on the pet and signet of stone can be a crucial lifesaver to buy you a bit of time to heal back up. Traited shouts and WHaO gives you a decent heal+regen every 16 seconds. The defensive capabilities of GS and the knockback on LB have very low cooldowns and can make you a very tough kill.

Come HoT, I’ll be fielding an Ancient Seed Druid build with Ascended Sinister gear and a mix of Soldier/Dire-Rabid/Cleric ascended accessories and weapons. 2100 attack, 30% crit, 1000 condi damage and about 5 different ways to invoke a stun/daze/knockdown/etc. Staff/GS will be the weapons. Smokescale field with wisp/blast will give a nice stealth and then weapon swap to GS for quickdraw Maulx2 out of stealth (plus on-swap doom sigil to cripple their heals) and then another stun/daze/block as needed.

My former build ran a mix of Knights and Valkyrie with Soldier weps. Something around 2300 attack, 30% crit, 2900 armor.

Mine seemed to trigger on swap back to staff from avatar form. I was running a crazy dazer build and would CA3, CA5, end CA, swap to staff for daze, then hit em with Staff 4 (occasional multiple hits to trigger more Ancient Seed action)

EDIT
I don’t recall any swap effects when going into CA form.

The initial 60 point investment will unlock the elite line and give you your minor which will allow you to use the new mechanics. The rest will be up to you to earn/spend more points on. If it follows a similar pattern to the other lines, you’ll need ~40 points to unlock the utilities, ~10 for the elite skill, ~10 for the heal skill, ~60 in trait abilities. Since these are ELITE specializations, you can guess that the points are ramped up (hence the HoT content awarding x10 hero points).

I’d guess
~100 for the traits,
~100 for the utilities/elite/heal,
60 for the initial unlock,
40 for the rune,
50 for the weapon skin,
50 for the armor skin

That would put us right at the 400 mark.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Chaba.5410:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Unless I am mistaken just to unlock half of the training line, we need 212 hero points?

It’s 400 points total to unlock everything in an elite spec training line – I just can’t remember off hand how many points folks have currently if they have done all the existing ones, but it’s right around 200. The rest you’ll need to earn in jungle to unlock the deeper skills/traits/etc. in the training line.

You only need 60 hero points to begin using your elite spec, the points you spend after that continue to unlock more skills, traits, skins, etc.

Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.

A Portrait of the Player as a WvW Regular

- Two accounts (actually I have three but only purchased HoT for these two).
- Twelve level 80s
- Two above 60 hero points
- Only one with 100% map completion
- 75% of toons under 20% map completion
- 5904 combined total gaming hours
- No Legendary
- No full sets of ascended gear
- Purchaser of gems with real cash
- 1892 combined WXP rank (677 and 1215 respectively)

How can you help me? Can I hire you to get the hero points for my toons?

THIS!!!! SO MUCH THISSSSSS!!!! This is EXACTLY how EVERY WvW regular feels right now…

I’m right there with you!

2 Guardians at 80, 1 of each other class at 80, highest map completion is 62%, no legendaries, never a precursor, two sets of ascended gear (heavy knights and medium sinister), enough trinkets for one character to be fully ascended and one accessory away from a second set of trinkets. ~1900 hours played, here since the jump start 3+ years ago, 7 of 9 characters have less than 5% map completion. Very casual player (maybe 5 hours/week). Married, 2 year old, school part time and work 40+ a week, teach first aid on the side. I’ll be lucky to have any elite spec unlocked by the end of the year, the changes to WvW hero points will help, but I’ll quickly be outpaced by the hardcore people, no matter how much “prepping” I do.

EDIT
Doing some math, I may be able to be about 120 points invested into the Druid line (in addition to unlocking it)

It may not be bad, we’ll find out in a couple days!

WvW roamer, all classes at 80 with 2 guardians

Druid initially (Sinister/Soldier-Control/bleed/poison)

Herald(Glint/Shiro-Ham/SwSw Knight/Soldier-Burst) next if I can without too much work.

I doubt I take DragonHunter on my Guardian, but I might for the Virtue changes. I wasn’t overly impressed with them during the beta, but I did have some fun with the reveal trap/Hammer ring for mega vuln/burst.

If I ever played my Necro, I would likely go Reaper because they’re ridiculously good

Engi – never play, no interest

Ele – never play, no interest

Warrior – Happy with my Settler/roaming Condi bomb

Mesmer – Happy with my bursty GS/SwFo Keep hider-iner

Thief – never play, no interest in Daredevil

I really like this idea, it would really fix a glaring hole in the hybrid build I would like to run.

I don’t think daze on all weapon swap would be good though, way too many powerful synergies with burst weapons on top of when you leave Avatar form. If they changed it to all weapon swap, it would have to have a big cooldown or it would easily become overpowered. I’d rather keep it the way it is specific to staff.

But then again, hydromancy/geomancy and hydromancy/DOOM on a double staff hybrid would be fun! And then you get to do it again when you leave Avatar….. Pending the 9 second cooldown on swap sigils

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNUQJARWnEqAlrgVsCOsAUtglFBDeqmV/qLXuAwgj5Ak5GAnMtx1C-TlCHABE8IAA4CAokyidV/xJlY4pEMgjAASKFEZ/Bx0FEAAB4m3MbezADdoDdoDdodzhO0bO0hWKg+GDA-w

This is a more offensive variation I ran during BWE3…… If you stay in control and are good at dodging, it is pretty evil. I roam solo in WvW primarily, so it was a blast to play with. There a few really powerful synergies between traits/sigils that make it fun!

Staff 3 into smoke field then swap to GS for double crit maul out of stealth is a great little tool.

Conversely, you can swoop in, daze/stun, maul and then staff swap for daze/chill/damage/poison/immobilize/bleed….. Hopefully this was set up by a spike trap knockdown or an Entangle…..

I toyed around with Glyph of Unity, I really like the 20s cooldown and Krait runes on 30s recharge. If you can time it for exactly 10s after it comes off cooldown, you get a proc of Krait runes again. As opposed to every 2 entangles.

The mobility side is great also, on top of the Natural Stride speed, you can Ancestral Grace to max range, swap to GS and double Swoop away from baddies. As long as you’re in combat and need to bail that is.

I still manage close to 3000 armor and almost 400 healing power on top of 900+ Condi and 2000+ attack.

I really wish there was some type of Stability I could take in this build, but I can’t find a reliable source. And Condi removal is the next problem. It is tied to Avatar form. The third problem is the stun break is also tied to Avatar.

Realistically, For the final version, I’ll likely incorporate either Strength of the pack or Signet of the wild along with Lightning Reflexes. I just haven’t played around with it enough to decide where I can change things. I may even go Glyph of Unity/Signet of the Wild…. I’ll find out in 9 days!

Let the offensive druids UNITE!

Kalan.9705:

I did mention I went underwater and tried multiple things in wvw and pve with the pets there but that had zero effect on sPvP pets being broken.

Sorry, must have overlooked the part about you trying the water trick.

That’s interesting for sure. I had it happen to me during the beta and had it fixed in just a few seconds. I ported into WvW and ran out of the garrison and jumped into the water there. My underwater pets were automatically equipped and I was able to open my pet window and select pets for the land. Once I came out, they were back.

I’d definitely send a bug report!

Poor “Search and Rescue”. I was excited about a pet build until I tried to use it once. . .

That was 3 years ago. . . .

Since then I have moved on to Guardian, but Druid has me excited to play my ranger again!

I’ve been running a melee/crit shout build in WvW the last few weeks and have been doing surprisingly well. I run “Sic Em” and use it regularly with very good success. Just save it until you have the advantage and they are preparing to go on the defensive. Pop it after using a CC on your pet or a cripple to guarantee you can close the gap. Once you get used to the mechanic and know you can seal the deal, it’s a near guaranteed win. It’s also great for guaranteeing kills on sneaky mesmers that try to hide in keeps.

If it’s the same bug that cropped up during the last beta, I was able to fix it by going underwater. When you go underwater, it forces a pet swap to your underwater pets. While underwater, you can reselect your land pets and then come out of the water. They’ll force swap back to the land pets and you’ll be golden.

I’m pretty sure there will be other aspects, it was hinted at and stumbled over during the twitch con Druid section. Irenio specifically states “multiple forms they can go into”. Then he corrected himself and says " an additional form ".

As a nature buff and lover of all critters…. I may have to craft my first legendary after playing since the head start if this thing comes into existence. That staff is fabulous! My Druid must own one.

Unless you’re buying boosts out of the gem store that give you +damage and weapons/armor that give you a stat increase that nobody else has, then it is not P2W.

Buy to play, play how you want. If you think that the elite specs are going to be the wildcard that everyone has to have, I can say that is wrong also. They are just new and we haven’t learned how to counterplay them yet. Once everything gets balanced and brought down to earth (that’s why we’re in beta stages), everything will be fine again. I’m sure some things will go through and be overpowered for a while, but that’s the nature of the game. (Burning, d/d Elementalists, PU/condi mes, perplexity/condi thief)

The ones I encountered while playing a selfish Ancient Seed/Skirm/Marks build were as follows:

Ancestral Grace would cancel autorun and you would become immobile with the movement keys. The only fix was to dodgeroll and continue forward movement. This wasn’t a regular occurence, but was definitely common to encounter.

Staff skills were not affected by Quick Draw

Pets would randomly be removed from your active slot and be unable to be summoned. This happened after switching game modes to SPVP and going back to open world/WvW. The only fix I found was to jump in the water where it would force equip your water pets and then you could reselect the ground ones and rename them, then come out of the water to equip them.

Ancient Seeds seems like a great skill for being a Grandmaster tier, but in reality it was only applying a very short immobilize that you could continue to stack 2-3 times as long as they were still dazed, but the bleeds were not really effective. I would recommend increasing the bleed stacks to 3-5 per hit. The one other change that could help this situation would be to leave the bleed at 1 and allow the vines to hit multiple times (tooltip says 7 hits, but they don’t stack on a single character, they pass through). If you could daze, swap to staff and use vines for a multi-hit attack, it could stack multiple stacks of bleed instead of 1s immob and 1 8s bleed.

Staff could use a condition component. I would like to see a poison or bleed on the vines and maybe a short duration burn on the auto attack. Taking Ancient Seeds and building around control/condition/daze and not being able to use the Elite Specialization’s new Weapon effectively other than when swapping back to it for a daze doesn’t really give it much synergy.

When using Ancestral Grace from a high area to a lower area, you would take the full fall damage instead of only the damage from the end of the wisp form. I’m not sure if this was intended, but it would be nice to have a little damage mitigation built in and only count the fall damage from the end of the wisp form.

Celestial Avatar could use a damage effect on the spammable 1, just to give it some synergy. Or, increase the healing on 1 and change 2 to a spammable damage spell. There seems to be a lot of skills that heal and it doesn’t leave much room for hybrid builds or someone that wants to play a selfish/control druid.

As it stands, the only realistic thing you can do is swap to Avatar, #3 for the daze, #5 for the pulsing condi/damage and then swap out. It would be great to be able to add some punishment until the Avatar ends. (I guess I miss my Tome of Wrath and spamming a nuke. . . Avatar feels like my tome all over again)

I play mainly on a laptop and the majority of my time in game is while I’m at work or in the middle of doing other things, so I rarely group and I’m more of a roamer/havoc WvW player. The classes and builds I typically run are always self sustaining and are bulky/speed so I can run around without wasting time in travel. Permanent speed has always been a priority. I run Traveler runes on everyone unless there is a trait in place that allows me permanent speed (Warrior 25% speed with melee weapons, etc.). When looking for a new main, I was really interested when I saw the new classes. Permanent swiftness on Herald would free up all of my runes and I could build around something new! Druid, with permanent swiftness/speed when not movement impaired was also very tempting.

In BWE2, I played the Herald/Shiro DPS/Tank roaming in WvW. It was a fabulous class and was very fun to play. It has a ton of utility and support and can flip-mode to a facetank DPS monster in the blink of an eye. I had highly regarded it as my new main once HoT goes live. It has about everything I would look for.

Fast forward to BWE3

I created a Druid because I like the archetype from other games. I didn’t go the healer route, but went for a selfish control/condi/power build. It was a ton of fun to the point that I’m highly considering going Druid in HoT. It had permanent speed, bulky pets, dazes galore, and tons of bleed/immobilize. Not to mention I can Staff wisp away and swap to greatsword and double leap away to gain my permanent swiftness. Very very great travel class. I’m really looking forward to un-retiring my Ranger.

I fought against many Reapers and I will say that they absolutely dominated people, even when outnumbered. There are some ridiculous sustain/bulky builds out there that can utterly destroy stuff. Getting hit with a Gravedigger for 10-12k is very hard to take, not to mention it recharges instantly if you are low on health and get hit. The new Shroud has some great abilities and hits hard! I created a Reaper just to play around a bit (only tried for 20-30 minutes maybe) and it was a very fun class. I can see there being Reapers in abundance once people see what they are capable of.

It all comes down to what kind of a character you like to play and what kind of abilities/perks you are looking for.

Ancestral Grace to foe – Spike Trap – Glyph of Equality – Vine Surge (multiple hits while dazed) – Entangle (Krait runes). Long duration control/daze/immob/bleed with added pain from Krait, typically about 12-15 stacks and can be repeated every 1m.

I’ve been running it with Glyph of Unity and Signet of Stone, just in case they try to burst you while they’re melting. Elite on 20s cooldown with Krait runes and a close range condi build is fun! I’ve also been doing staff/staff for the on swap dazes.

Because Rangers are the black sheep and they want everyone to play Druid so they don’t have to fix the problems.

Sukrin.1280:

For BWE3, does anyone know when the account copy thing will be applied to the beta characters? And I also saw something that That_Shaman datamined that said something along the lines of ascended stat-selectable gear, do you think we will get those item boxes for this beta that have ascended in them rather than exotic? Or maybe its for the raid rewards?

I’m sure that the “stat selectable” ascended gear will just be like the exotic gear we get throughout the game. It will just be ascended in quality and you can pick the stats (think Mawdrey and a few of the Ascended book backpieces).

I doubt they’ll give us ascended gear for the beta, especially since we only get one wing of the raid. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, that we could get a single piece of stat-selectable gear for completing the raid once HoT goes live.

As far as when does the bank copy, For BWE2 I loaded all of my other characters and banked all of the ascended gear and then created a beta character and the bank was generated with all of the gear I had just put in. I think it’s safe to say that if you bank it anytime prior to creating a beta character, that it should generate the bank then.

Personally, I’m going to bank everything Thursday evening when I finish for the night and then create a beta character Friday once the beta starts.

This is a chop job of a screenshot from my laptop. You get the idea. Entropy as the Hammer and Mawdrey backpiece. Haven’t decided on swords yet, but I was using dual Crystalline blades during the beta.

I took some screenshots of my character builder so I can recreate this guy on October 23!

I’ll update when I get a real picture of him.

#Sylvari4Life

Level 30 scroll, 50 tomes, full ascended set of Knight’s armor, 2 Zerker, 2 celestial, 2 soldiers trinkets (also have a couple rabid+dire and a couple clerics and a few random others). Soldiers ascended hammer, 2 soldiers acended swords, 18 transmutation charges, sigils set (air/purity, fire/purity, runes selected for now (Melandru for WvW roaming).

2245 attack, 2167 toughness, 3438 armor, 19,222 HP, 38% crit chance (boosts to 78% in combat/fury), 185% crit damage.

This is pending no crazy changes to my build. I haven’t checked with the new patch yet. My build was very fun during BWE2. Shiro mobility and in your face style with Herald and ranged damage with hammer/buffs.

25 days to go!

I play on a laptop and the majority of my playtime is at work where I may have to get up and go any second (Paramedic).

Therefore,

I solo roam and scout a lot, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am looking for 1v1/1vX fights. I do it for the pure enjoyment of being an asset to the server and helping while I can. I can backcap camps/towers by myself without being a cheese Mes/Thief/Ele, I can even duo a Keep with very little support. I have been tweaking and changing my build to allow me a lot of flexibility, survivability, and damage potential. There are occasions where I find that 1v1 or 1v2 and prevail, and there are a number of times that I do not.

I enjoy doing my part!

There are those of us out there that continue to fight the good fight and not deplete resources from the other groups/blobs when we can do the same thing without interrupting their objectives.

Needs damage Aspect

Could be cooler

Everyone’s personal healbot

WvW condi roamer

Never be LFG

New content connoisseur

Druid saves lives

I think it would be safe to log in anytime prior to the start of the beta and load up your bank. Then log in once the beta starts and your bank should be built. That seems to be how it worked during BWE2.

You can toggle any attack that you want to auto attack. CTRL + Click the icon and you will see arrows appear on it. Now, whenever you click that button, that skill will execute as soon as it’s timer is up. On 1 skills, that’s where you see the auto attack chain. on skills that don’t chain, say Mighty Blow on Guardian Hammer, you will leap at your target and smash the ground every 6 seconds (I think?) until you cancel it.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Jephiroth.3197:

If someone chooses to slot the same racial on both bars, why not just make it share the same cooldown on swap? If they use it and swap, the cooldown would continue from the previous legend. It wouldn’t make them any more powerful, and if someone would slot it on both bars it would just waste space if it was used. It adds some customizability and flavor to a class that has very limited changeability. It’s not like any of the skills are really game breaking. But it is a fun piece to have.

It’s not just the cooldowns they are concerned about though, racials currently won’t use energy, and if you slotted a healing racial (#6) on some legends, you would negate all of your other utilities. All of these could be fixed if they wanted to though, and like I said, plenty of good ideas have already been thrown out. I’ve accepted they don’t have the resources for it right now and rev won’t ship with them, I just wish they didn’t close the book on them completely and consider revisiting them in the future. I too agree it adds a lot of flavor and personal touch to builds and would take a lot away from the game.

Racial abilities are just that, “Racial”. They shouldn’t have anything to do with Revenant mechanics. They should have an activation and a cooldown, just like they do on every other class. They don’t need an energy cost, they are an ability of that particular character’s race. If someone would choose to slot a healing ability over a Revenant ability, then so be it. They are going to miss out on all of the potential synergies and effects of the Revenant specific heals.

For the most part, they are just weaker versions of spells that already exist. I know that for fun, I will slot all racial abilities (as much as I can anyways) and play PvE and WvW as a pure-ish Sylvari or Human (The only races that I play) with no particular class mechanics other than weapon abilities and racials.

It’ll be a sad time if they don’t include them, I really have fun with them and it gives you something to do when you want a little change.