I have mixed feelings. To be honest when I heard our spec was called “druid” I was kind of expecting it to be very heal oriented, so this did not surprise me at all. However, It’s kind of disappointing. No improved AoE, no strong dps support except for that one glyph. Druid as it is would not be very useful in the current state of PVE. However, Anet seems to keep saying HoT is going to change things up. So I suppose we can’t really judge the druid until the actual expansion is out. It could be very interesting. I mean I used to be a feral/resto druid in WoW so having a role doing some healing support would be nice. It’s definitely worth trying.
But, I am concerned with the total lack of synergy of the druid traitline with the rest of the core ranger. There are no damage modifiers or anything that would help buff damage. Many of the other elite specs allow you to spec into the elite spec and still maintain some of your playstyle. For instance, you can still be a death shroud focused reaper if you want. Or you can still be a shatter based chronomancer or a phantasm based chrono. There are things in the elite spec lines that are still useful for those playstyles. That’s just not true of the ranger. If I want to be a sword/axe power ranger or a remorseless greatsword ranger there is literally nothing for me to really take in the druid traitline. I suppose I just won’t take druid at all if I want to be dps.
It just feels like you would only ever take druid if you wanted to be heal support in pve. Or for pvp, the spec does seem like it might have some nice things for wvw and spvp.
However, Irenio did say that he was watching the forums and was aware of a lot of issues we’re having with base class. Suppose we can look forward to that balance stream and hope that it addresses our problems.
And therein lies the crux of the issue. Our dps as rangers is very average / mundane, with a not-insignificant portion of it reliant on some very poor pet AI, and utility is severely lacking. Ranger, at least to me, conjures up the ranged dps archetype. It’s in the name *range*r itself — and at one point in the distant past at Anet, was certainly intended to be one of the top ranged dps classes.
I have no problem with the druid elite spec, it seems potentially very powerful as a direct healer based play style and a welcome option for those wanting to play a predominantly healing support role. I wonder about those of us who picked ranger to be a significant ranged dps class, while still bringing something to the table beyond just damage (which as noted is not great, in its current state). As it stands, having our pets a forgotten afterthought (particularly in WvW zerg craziness) in spite of being core to the class mechanic, and still unfixed after several years.. it is hard to have faith.
Again though, let’s see what the skill balance preview brings. Not everyone is going to want to play the elite specs all the time, and that applies across the board for all classes. I certainly appreciate the inherent complexities of trying to build and balance all the various styles and classes.
