Impressions:
Mechanic
I am aware that this is a beta, but is the mechanic even finished and will it be ready for launch by October 23rd? The cast times on the pet mechanic are much too long to justify some (most) of the skill effects. Also, the pathing and general responsiveness is horrendous. The mechanic seems almost like starter area AI (in the base game) was tacked on to a class at the last second and then changed to an ally at the very last second.
Hopefully though, because this was just a beta, either this is just a temporary mechanic, or there will be a ton of changes and iterations to the AI and skill responsiveness and effects of the mechanic.
Traits:
Quite a few of these traits are served the injustice of being tied to these unfinished feeling utilities (more on that later). Additionally, certain traits, like giving a random chance to destroy projectiles to sword or making axe’s chill AoE, are incredibly basic, beta level traits that need some serious up-tuning in order to ever justify their slots. Also, there seems to be a whole ton of damage modifiers missing, especially when compared to every other class, and the class itself doesn’t exactly stack boons on itself or anything either. That is definitely something that needs to be looked at before the live version of the game.
Utilities:
So, there are Survival utilities, Signets, maybe a spirit or two for exclusively PvE, and then just garbage utilities, pure garbage. Traps will never make ranger compete against something like engineer who just facerolls out the same sort of conditions at a higher rate and intensity than ranger can ever hope to, and Dhuumfire Reaper is a nightmare of a condition spec, along with mesmer and really anything else with heavy condition oriented combat. Spirits are immobile and for some reason have active PBAoE effects which makes them terrible by design, and the passives aren’t worth the slot the skills take up. Shouts…. Just wow.
Good thing all of these utilities are still in beta, because ANet, you definitely need this time to make these utilities worthwhile.
Weapons:
- Longbow-Good weapon, ANet, you managed to get one right for this BWE. Don’t change a thing.
- Greatsword-The autoattack chain is awful, but the rest of the weapon kit is pretty decent, although hilt bash only reaches about 200 of the 300 range it lists. Fix this bug before Druid goes live.
- Axe-What is this weapon trying to be? It has range but can’t do anything at range, it has no conditions on autoattack even though the damage of this weapon is clearly favoring conditions, and the secondary effect on the axe is only as reliable as the mechanic, so aka, not reliable.
- Sword-This is a great weapon, outside of the ridiculous autoattack chain animation binding you. Does this weapon even need this sort of treatment? It makes it very clunky and hard to use, even after you get used to it, because you have to use it either situationally or all in.
- Shortbow- Horrible weapon. Outside of the autoattack and 5, the rest of the skills are boring, don’t really work well or add much to the ability of the weapon to do anything (shortbow 4 and the bleeds are so weak, this is just a beta issue right?). Good thing this is still beta, because this weapon needs a total overhaul.
- Torch – another thing done right. Don’t touch this weapon.
- Dagger – the third thing done right so far. Leave it as is.
- Warhorn – Warhorn 5 skill is strong, though its effects don’t justify its cooldown. Warhorn 4 is extremely subpar. Single target, long-ish cooldown, poor damage, no additional effects. Since this is beta, the numbers or something on this skill is getting tweaked right? It could at least be AoE (like mad king rune effect 6) and dodgeable to compensate (delayed animation to where the birds meet, dodging the first hit negates the whole attack).
- Offhand Axe – Axe 4 is perfectly fine, although it bugs out on terrain WAY too often, halving its potential or worse, since the pull effect is usually the part that fails on the second half of the skill. Axe 5 is one of the longest channels if not the longest channel in the game, and is plagued by rooting you during the whole cast, dealing lackluster damage, and only being functional as a reflect, which compared to all of the commonly used reflect skills, make it a poor choice to ever even activate since you root yourself and lose the ability to do any other action during that time period.
Overall, my beta impressions of the Druid were not pleasant (sorry that I keep using Ranger and Druid interchangeably). Everything was clunky and seemed fairly duct taped together, especially the mechanic, without any sort of design goal or effort to make the skills functional and effective.
Hopefully, these things improve for Druid by the next BWE or by expansion, because they are otherwise pretty awful and should never make it to a live game in their current condition.
Jroh | Former SOAC Ranger Podcaster | Platinum Division Top 100 Player
www.twitch.tv/itsJROH For stream, stream schedule, other streamers, builds, etc
https://www.youtube.com/user/JRoeboat 
