Guild Wars 2

i’ll use it like I use it today and like I use it since they changed healing spring to this trap thing.

Don’t feel like it’s really this hard :

https://youtu.be/p0FR-PrliXA?t=36m55s

The whole first part is all about bursting, all profession can phase him (except maybe the mesmer for whom shatters and phantasm are still useless in this fight)

The only thing that make Invigorating bond bad is it’s 20s internal cool down. remove it and it become somewhat ok.

I won’t argue on the rest, I still think that most of the community focus to much on the horrible spamable heal in celestial form skill#1 with the dream of camping celestial form and spaming it. At the moment, in wvw when a raid need to heal itself, you stack everybody, drop a water field and blast in it. From my point of view, the celestial form is the same thing, without the need to blast a waterfield. The sustain heal is done via the staff attacks but I don’t think it’s worth a soothing mist or a shared virtue of resolve + heal on auto attack. The druid will most likely be slightly better a burst heal and slightly under this 2 other professions at sustained heal.

Lily.1935:

Damage isn’t the necromancer’s problem People claim the damage of the mesmer is extremely low as well however they get into groups. The issue was never with the necromancer’s damage but their utility. Which the reaper actually provides through how reliable their vuln stacking is and how long their stacks last. Blood is power is cute, but its not phalanx. Corrosive poison cloud will be great, but its not wall of reflection or feedback. Vampiric aura is nice but it doesn’t really compare to banners. Transfusion is great but its not Battle Standard.

You have allot of situations where the necromancer is just being out classed while trying to provide the same type of support. And thats the issue. It never was damage. And it never will be damage. The necromancer has rather high damage. The issue with their damage has been a few things and I’ll list them for you to help you understand.

1. Many of their damaging skills create dark fields. Players don’t like having dark fields around because they might blast on the wrong field negating their might stacking while they’re sitting in a corner.
2. Dagger hits very few targets. The dagger only strikes 2 targets with the auto. The auto attack’s damage is quite sizable, but it struggles when trying to cleave down the foes while you’re stacking in a corner which makes even the mesmer’s sword more useful in that situation.
3. Necromancers have poor burst DPS. Although their sustained damage is extremely good, actually getting stronger as the fight goes longer, this isn’t wanted in groups who can just disable the boss for 5 seconds and have it dead with exploits before it even knew what happened.
4. Life blast doesn’t cleave. Another problem for your corner stacking. The necromancer’s life blast can pierce but not cleave. this makes it less valuable in corner stacking.
5. life blast is slow. Life blast’s damage is absolutely insane. it hits like a truck and keeps hitting again and again getting stronger and stronger each time it does thanks to spite. But because of this it tends to be a slow but strong projectile. While other people are doing 2-3 attacks in that same time and cleaving down the foes while you’ve maybe only got off a few blasts because you’re stacked in a corner.
6. People stack in corners. A lot of people like to pull mobs and stack in a corner, cleaving them down as quickly as possible before reacting. The necromancer isn’t favored in this situation because of their poor cleaving weapons. Although there is nothing wrong with the dagger as it is, it just doesn’t hit 5 targets…

Basically, get out of the corner and actually fight. I’ve run dungeons and fractals both ways and it is a million times more rewarding to fight the boss as they intended it and not exploiting bad AI…

It’s not always but I agree with you on all these point. I would maybe add that poison fields are hated as much as dark fields. Or minions… Well at least they are great for soloing…

Bryzy.2719:

Hahahaha, isn’t this just typical, though?

Rangers FINALLY get something good and everyone else QQs.

Hope the Devs don’t bow to the pressure of the other professions’ whining this time.

Historically:

1. Ranger gets something nice (maybe once every 2 years?)

2. Other professions are so used to Rangers not presenting a threat, they hate Rangers stepping up to their level so they QQ like mad

3. Other professions continue QQ and pressuring Devs until Ranger gets nerfed again.

Bryzzy, I wonder if you get the fact that this thread was all about Irony. If you were getting it, does that mean you don’t defend your admant point of view about the Druid? I can’t understand people that defend this celestial form creepy choice when the dev could have done something in the same line, totally viable and involving the ranger core mechanism. (Because yes! Druid is not a new class, druid is only a specialization of the ranger!)

Whatever, the Druid is a better necromancer than the necromancer, he got a shroud and at least when druid is moa’ed it’s pet ain’t destroyed.

NB.: I wonder if you won’t beg for buff instead after the next beta week end. All in all the druid spec is far from being as impressive as you think. Remember it, you won’t be able to camp the celestial form (that’s the most important thing to keep in mind).

nekretaal.6485:

Will zerker Druid be good?

Plays like zerker ranger, except now you’ve got extra self heals (not that important tbh) and an extra CC on your bar.

Dropping a traitline to get the new traitline will be really easy to to.

Probably.

People focus to much on the celestial form thinking that they will be able to camp in it, sit at a point and heal their allies from the rear. That is something that is unlikely to happen.

The right way to look at the celestial form is to look at it like a condimancer look at the Death shroud : a set of utility and a mean to survive. Do not let the first skill of the celestial form fool you, discard it, she isn’t friendly user at all. Instead focus your mind on the 4 other utilities which are great in any dire situation.

You will flash into the celestial form to use an utility skill (from your celestial skill set) and go back again in normal form. Your goal : not wasting Astral force. This way, the Druid spec, regardless of your stats, give you ton of sustain (up to 4 personal heal skills), control and escaping abilities. You just need to take a bunch of stun breaker and some stability as your regular utilities skill and “voila”, you can ignore your pet, you will do zerker damage with monstruous survivability.

So your answer is that you got to be better than the other players, otherwise you won’t get a spot? What if two players are on an equal level – the ranger will not get the spot because he/she is not good enough?

This is sad but whatever your profession can do you always have to consider the reputation of this profession community. And the ranger community have the reputation to be a selfish player wanting to range everything (staying out of buff range), to have poor controle over it’s pet and to brainlessly knockback foe out of the party range. In the end ranger or Druid, you will alway be judged over these 3 aspects.

In a way, while nobody have sufficiently grasped all the elite specialization, it’s time for the rangers/druids to prove that they can refrain themself from playing brainlessly. It’s a huge task that would need the whole ranger community to make a lot of effort because, let’s be honest, the Druids feature have a lot of potential for selfish gameplay and is arguably better at supporting a group than what other profession have.

Roy said it right in the revenant’s forum : “The druid is a burst healer”. Simply put, after some month of playing the druid, most of us won’t give a * about caring for allies and use the clestial form for personnal sustain/condicleanse. Honestly, it totally replace the pet as a mechanism.

Iris Ng.9845:

Because you pug?

You know you can learn a lot of things by puging. Playing with different players have draw back but have also some advantages. You tend to stagnate when playing everyday with the same players.

Honestly, back in the day that they announced the FGS nerf, we tried to do the job with the conjured hammer and it’s more than enough… Most likely this is what will happen. Frostbow meta will become Lightning hammer meta.

Maybe the group composition will be more like :
2 Ele : for lightning hammer
1 guard : fire field/utility
1 reaper : “chilled to the bone” (probably optional if they give breakbar to all existing boss)
1 X : anything else that grant something good/needed

It’s not like the Ele is only needed for Frostbow#4.

If I had to chose, i’d vote for :

5. Master of Corruption should not add a different condition but increase the duration of the one already inflicted.

Which would simply give more time to transfer these conditions.

You can’t design core profession skills around elite specialization which focus essentially on what they bring not on what is already existent.

No, the druid does not need healing gear. Do not focus on the celestial from skill, just look at the traits and think of the [F5] as an “Oh kitten” button that you will flash when you are in dire need.
- You’re overloaded with condition? Flash [F5] to cleanse them all! (Though we could ask for a breakstun on the [F5])
- You need to flee a dangerous situation? Flash [F5] to disapear and gain super speed
- You need a Flash heal and your heal skill is on CD? Flash [F5] and use lunar impact or Tidal force (Yeah you got 3 personal healing skills!)
- You need to gain time? Flash [F5] and use Natural convergence.

See? Welcome in the necromancer’s world.

While I can enjoy the work behind the “Druid” specialization there are a few point that seem out of place. My biggest complaint would be that this specialization is the only one that doesn’t give a feeling that let you say :
“They push the ranger mechanisms to it’s limits and they released something awesome that is coherent with this profession”

Staff :
The staff feel like a pretty good weapon with invaluable utilities. Seriously, as a heavily healing/control focused weapon you did a great job. The only bad point about this weapon is it’s lack of synergy with the pet. (we could argue that some of the healing goes to the pet but still, it does not give you the feeling that you work with your pet)

Glyph :
Glyph lack coherence with pet and the ranger profession. None of them feel like something you would find on a ranger specialization, they just feel like random spell that are out of place. Not that the effect aren’t nice some feature feel pretty interesting but it’s just does not fit.

Celestial form :
This thing is a big enygma.

Druid through GW lore : I can understand this “transform” choice if you restrain the GW Druid as a being that shed from it’s skin to attain a new existance plan. What does not fit is that at the same time Druid are basically lone being that care more about nature than sentient species that tend to destroy nature. Why is the druid transformation so focused on healing those puny guy that destroy our beloved nature while none of my skill care about the most natural aspect of my profession, my pet? Lore wise I don’t think a “GW druid” should be this altruistic it should be more of a neutral being (Guid wars 1 had spirits that were really fitting this mindset).

Druid through mechanism : The Druid is a specialization which is a part of the ranger’s specialization’s set. The ranger is meant to be a profession that is close to the nature and work with this nature through a deep complicity between him and it’s pet. It’s the pet that link the ranger with the nature. Looking at the celestial form, the only thing we can think is that : “What the hell the ranger gave up on it’s pet to become a necromancer”. It’s an issue, this form feel like the ranger disown it’s pet as it’s link with nature. It form a huge gap between the pet and the master while a specialization should bring a profession closer to it’s core mechanism.

Traits :
Most of the trait are OK, there is nothing to say about them. Still it feel like there is to much focus on support (not that it’s a bad thing) which reduce a lot the versatility of this specialization. Simply it feel like pigeonholed.

Questions :
I have a few question that probably only the game designer can answer and are related to this speicalization :

- Why did you chose to stray this far frome the ranger’s core mechanic?
- Did you felt that the core mechanic was lacking in some way to the point that it couldn’t be used in a specialization heavily focused on support?
- Were you trying to answer the ranger’s community hate for it’s pet by giving it something new that isn’t related? (is this specialization a community pleaser?)
- Do you think that the Druid will be enough to fix the way the community look at the ranger and why?

And most important question :
- What’s the future of the ranger pet? You should be well aware that it need a lot of work (UI, AI, reliability… etc.). Will we see some improvement (other than a few stat points. The condi damage point were really need though, thank you!) or will the pet stay in it’s sorry state?

coax.2951:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The druid trait line has very little to offer for anything else but healing. So as long as you choose it you run at 2/3 of your potential for damage. Other classes can trait three lines of choice and still off-heal perfectly fine.

They will do more damage, heal just as fine and are more flexible in their trait choices.

That was in response to the bolded part.
Your statement there is just blatantly wrong.

Also what would be the bigger dps loss? All the eles swapping to water for burst heals or replacing one of them with a druid and have them all stay in fire continuing to dps?

Thought the bolded part is totally right.

Ele staff auto attack heal for a lot in water, they also have a this wonderfull unique party buff soothing Mist that can heal for up to 400 hps without even doing anything. not to say that Ele don’t lack water field and blast finisher.

The guardian have virtue of resolve and ton of healing utility like heal on mace auto attack, healing symbole, their elite signet… etc.

Do you really think that the Druid who will have to manage it’s astral force, it’s pet and positioning will be able to outperform these 2 professions semi passive healing easily? Without a doubt, the druid will be good for panic situations with burst heal on small windows due to the fact that you won’t be able to maintain celestial form for the whole fight. But If you look objectively at the situation, ele and guardian are able to dish out permanent heal and very high heal spike with the tools they got and thus without having to bother with astral force management and most likely celestial form cool down.

I agree with the title.
Though, you may see your pet as a way to passively astral force through trait/skill. What trouble me the most is the detachment of the druid from it’s pet.

My opinion is that the whole [F5] thing is a bad design. They could have done a lot of thing very differents that would have involved the pet more. The only thing that I can think when I see this [F5] is :

“God… They expect that our pet will die instantly. They aren’t even trying to fix them… Pathetic…”

1- I don’t think any profession or specialization will be necessary

2- It’s not related to frostbow but if BWE mobs are representative of the HoT mobs, then I don’t think there will be a place for a full zerk meta in HoT. There are mobs that have high resilience to direct damage.

3- It will most likely depend of the behavior of the druid and not it’s overall gameplay. If the Ranger/Druid community build itself a good reputation in game then they will be wanted. On the other hand, if they do not care of what their pet (since yes they still got pet) do, continue to push mobs out of aoe and allie range, then the druid will most likely be discarded for more reliable profession like the Elementalist/tempest.

Understand that the “healing stuff” already exist in game. The Druid, while having some windows of burst heal won’t be able to keep the celestial form for a whole fight. A good management of their energy pool will be very important and they will have to keep in mind what their pet do at the same time.

We can say that the Druid spec is a second chance given to the ranger to prove that they can behave well in a party. In the end they will become meta only if the Druid’s players use their head and avoid hindering their party more than they help it. If they aren’t able to do that, understand that an ele or a guard will still be able to dish out amazing healing output with less effort.

or make direct healing incoming value heal the shroud when you are in shroud.

Things that I agree that goes against the druid is that:
1. It’s too much healing to the point where it makes it seem like all players are forced into being healers when using a druid specialization
2. It doesn’t form a union with ranger and pet
3. It doesn’t follow the GW1 lore of celestial beings and druids

Good thing that we agree on that because while the 3rd point is not really a issue, point 1 and 2 are mostly the reason why people rant. Simply, Druid in this form does not fit as a specialization for the ranger profession. It’s like a necromancer spec without shroud.

idontnoso.9850:

I actually said that support (to me) was minor heals and boons. That’s why I didn’t include mesmers, thieves, and warriors into the list. They do have roles in teams, but they aren’t known for their support (No where did I ever say they couldn’t). I’m not disregarding what you said they are capable of, but those classes just aren’t known for their support.

I included the necro there because they have leech share, condi cleans, and amazing abilities that help get downed players back up (they can’t necessarily heal all that well but they save a lot of downed allies).

The way gw2 is made, all classes can help a team, but others do it better. The way I see it, mesmer are loved for stealth and reflects while having access to minor boon share and cleanses. Warriors are loved for might share and heavy dps. Thieves are loved for stealth and heavy dps. They can be geared for support but other classes can still do it better.

Well let’s review these minor heal and buff for each profession then (not taking into account rez skill sinca all profession have some and blast finisher except for Engi which have a dedicated trait) :

heavy profession :

Revenant/herald : easy access to regeneration. Most efficient way to heal come from ventari by dragging behind you a healing stone. No passive way to heal out of the boon regeneration. Minor access to party heal via staff and shield.

Guardian/dragonhunter : perma access to a passive way to heal around him via virtue of resolve. Party heal via mace auto attack. Good access to regeneration. Symbole heal. Elite signet passively heal every 10s (active heal to 100% allies). Aegis heal.

Warrior/Berserker : Shout heal, banner grant regeneration, one of the banner skill heal. (I get that it’s not impressive but actually that’s already a pretty impressive output).

Medium armor :

Ranger/Druid : ranger staff heal allies, Whar horn give regeneration, celestal form (that’s for the weapon set). Moa can heal/regen, Invigorating bound. Healing glyph, healing spring and water spirit. Shout are supposed to grant regen to allies.

Thief/daredevil : steal skill healing seed because that’s something you steal to mordrem. Venom share and leaching venom (most efficient way to leech life IG). Shadow refuge.

Engineer/scrapper : good access to regen. heal on blast. Elixir gun and mortar. healing gyro. (well that’s most of it, pretty poor indeed)

light armor

Elementalist/tempest : Water and water overload with soothing mist. good access to regen. Heal on staff water auto attack + 2 healing water field. heal on dagger(MH and OH)/scepter. heal on frostbow auto attack. heal when you apply an aura. Healing shout.

Mesmer/chronomancer : easy access to perma regen. Well of eternity. restorative mantra (3k+ heal every 4 second). Healing prism.

Necromancer/Reaper : easy access to regeneration. Well of blood. Vampiric aura, life for death and transfusion. Signet of vampirism and Blood bond.

All in all pretty much all of them can output interesting healing support. (Though some are clunkyer than other). But in all honesty mesmer’s restorative mantra ain’t far from the revenant draging it’s stone with him.

Terra.8571:

I don’t main ranger but the idea of a druid healer intrigues me that I’m going to give it a try next BWE/ maybe at HoT. Glancing at the pet list though, only the moa’s and fern hounds have any access to healing (and the former isn’t an f2 skill so is kinda random).

Looking at the new pets, wyverns are dps (fire = condi), smokescreen = evasion tank/ dps, brissle back = condi dps and I guess tigers will be felines so again dps.

Just wondering if fern hounds are the only option for healer speced druids or will there be other pets or have I missed something?

Personally I’d love a healing based wyvern… what? one can dream

In one word : Moa.

I have a feeling that it will become a very very very long thread.

P.S. I’d put Mesmer as Support Class of the light armor

That’s one point, and it’s not like the mesmer can actually do 3k+ aoe heal every 4 second… Oh! wait! he can! Maybe mesmer can’t aoe cleanse it’s allies… Oh dang he is good at that to… Maybe he can’t support via boons… Oh… well he can…

I wonder for warrior, I mean a warrior only do damage… It’s not like he could heal it’s allies via shout or banner. It’s not like he could grant 25 might stack in a few second. It’s not like he could support it’s team via soft condition. No no a warrior only do direct damage.

… well… whatever…

Please elaborate?
While I understand that all classes provide some sort of support, others do it better than another. I’m assuming you don’t like the order in which I placed things, but regardless of that each armor class does have a class that can focus on heavy healing.

I won’t list every way each profession can suport it’s team mate. In a way, the 2 profession that are laging behind the other profession in this is the necromancer that you dare to put into the light armored support and the thief which still have it’s invaluable stealth feature.

My though on the druid are pretty negative so I won’t criticize your IRL research on what it mean to be a druid IRL. But honnestly this :

Finally, each armor group has a healing based class:
It seems that most people haven’t noticed Anet has given each armor group (heavy, medium, and light armor) a class that specializes in healing and a class that specializes in support (minor healing and buffs).

Heavy:
Healing Class: Revenant
Support Class: Guardian

Medium:
Healing Class: Ranger (druid)
Support Class: Engineer

Light:
Healing Class: Elementalist
Support Class: Necro/Elementalist

End of Lesson

This show how bad is your understanding of the different profession in game.

(sarcasm)
At this point… I’m pretty sure they can make the druid heal our life force while in shroud.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: Duration decrease from 12s to 8s. It will now destroy all projectiles that pass through it. It will also now pulse every 2 seconds instead of every 3s.

That’s something I was against but well… that’s free buff…

Axe skills (Rending Claws/Ghastly Claws) going up to 900 radius.

Pointless.

Scepter – Scepter 1 and 2 skill bleed duration going down from 5s to kitten . Scepter 3 get a poison duration increase to 6s and kitten bleed.

I wonder what to say… It feel like no change at all.

Feast of Corruption – It apply a base 2 stack of Torment and a max of 5 more stacks of Torment, one for every condition for the target.

I really hope this doesn’t come with a damage nerf.

Lingering Curse – Condition duration effect is now 50% instead of 100%

Make this unattractive trait even less attarctive.

Lich and Plague forms will no longer destroy your minions. Other transforms (i..e Moa) will still destroy them.

Again, pointless.

Nemesis.6938:

I am not sure about the druid…i dont think it is “bad” regarding efficiency, i rather think it it is “bad” regarding the whole class focus and mechanics because

1) healing, some more healing, a bit healing on top of that followed by more healing – okay we get it…could have put a few more things in there

2) Since the druid is so heavily focused on healing, this means it is either not necessary and useless in pve or EVERY group will have to have a druid…going away from zerker meta to “you have to have a druid” meta which…

3) brings us to point 3 – making the guardian or other heal classes incredibly pale and useless in comparison – congratz u made a class useful at the cost of another

4) I dont see any synergies with the pet… if this is still a pet class and you want it to have and use a pet and BUILD SYNERGIES IN

5) Moreover, i dont see a lot of synergies with existing traitlines…

I dont know, looking at the scrapper it fits into the engi and the existing stuff wonderfully….looking at the druid it feels like a completly new class instead of an elite and like one that doesnt fit into the existing game mechanics at all…

AND – yes, the animations are REALLY bad…the skills which the roots that was shown in the first trails looks good…pretty much everything else looks horrible – especially the transformation (is that a joke?)…. we have wonderful norn shapeshifting animations and than you come with that cheap kitten transformation? GW2 has always been the game with some of the best animations in the mmo space – but this?

The class really feels to me that what they wanted to make didnt work so they had to scrap something together very hastely…shame

I totally agree with everything You’ve written here. You’ve pointed out the very point that make this elite spec problematic.

Ariete.6509:

you’re obvisouly a “glass half empty” kind of person.

So rest assure that NOTHING would suffice to you.

Nope. I’m someone that think that discarding the ranger class mechanism to give a necromancer class mechanism is incridibly and stupidly bad design.

There is nothing like “glass half empty” in me and if you had read what I’ve wrote you would have understand this much.

Ok guys, yesterday Irenio unveiled this digusting thing that they call the Druid. So what do we have here?

An [F5] mechanism :

Though an [F5] mechanism could have supported the ranger core profession in some way, it happen that the Druid [F5] mechanism simply ignore the core profession mechanism : the Pet.
Instead, the Druid get a poor addition of an “healing shroud” that wouldn’t even have been strange if it have been given to the Necromancer. This is the ranger elite spec, not the Necromancer elite spec. I can understand :

- The addition of an other shatter to the mesmer
- A whole new set of shroud skills for the Necromancer
- A slight change on the guardian virtue
- A new way to use adrenaline for the warrior
- A new legend for the revenant
- An emphasis over the use of endurance for the thief
- Some gadget for the Engineer

But a shroud on the ranger, a mechanism that simply leave the pet out of the mechanism, that is unimaginable. This is a slap in the face to the ranger’s core mechanism or a simple manifesto saying : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

Utilities and staff :

Again, while staff have some though behind it and seem to thematically fit an “healer Druid” archetype, there is simply no synergy between this weapon and the pet. Plus, the glyph does not even affect the pet in the slightest and excuse me but in all honesty, these glyph don’t have the slightest “nature” feeling in them. They would be a better fit for guardian even their name fit better with the guardian thematic.

This way to totally ignore the pet, again, this is like a manifesto shouting : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

The traits :

This is probably the most laughable part out there. Out of 12 traits, there is only 1 trait that affect the Druid’s pet and it’s only affecting it as being a part of your allies that are healed around you when you use a healing skill.

So, do you really meant it that : “We give up on the ranger’s pet, this thing is just trash!”

Conclusion :

This elite spec simply ignore the glaring issue of the core profession that is the ranger. Giving a shroud like skill set and a life force pool like ressource to support this non sense is a slap in the face of this core mechanism. If raid are so harsh that you feel it’s better to give something that belong to the necromancer to the ranger instead of something that would actually resolve the pet’s glaring issues (that the ranger’s community is dead tired to point out) then, this mean that you gave up on the ranger’s pet.
What the ranger’s need is not the Druid elite spec (we can’t even say that this elite spec is related to the ranger, that’s laughable), what the ranger need is some intelligent work on the pet mechanic. Enough work to make it reliable at least and give it the bare minimum survivability that he should have.

NB.: I’d want to point out that this healing dedicated thing that is the druid is bound to become something toxic for the game. Healing numbers are bound to be brought down if you want a slight balance in pvp.
NB. (2): The druid specialization out heal totally the potential of one of the ranger’s grand master trait named Invigorating bound. If this trait was a threat for pvp balance without ICD, I can’t even imagine what the Druid elite spec will do in this environment.

What they’ve done is so awesomly bad… I can’t even imagine it’s not an april fools joke…
I mean… 0 synergy with ranger mechanic, It give nothing but heal and bad controle, more knockback (if rangers weren’t already hated for knockback…), 0 damage…

Druid is depressive and disappointing…

When I’ve read this first I’ve thought :
“Does he mean that he is starting to do the Druid spec just now? That’s a bit late man…”

Seriously, at this point they should have all elite spec well rounded and almost ready to go. I really hope it’s not something they came up with during the week.

I think a lot of people are fed up of minions that die in second as soon as there is a tiniy aoe. Beside, Renger already have it’s share of minion with their core mechanism (the pet) and Spirits.

I believe that the Druid is more suceptible to get a bunch of Glyph (Skill type that doesn’t exclude invocation), a mean to “attune” himself (mainly what we refere as aspect) and a traitline that would give a feeling of Arcane spec from elementalists.

Probably something like that :

A druid have a deeper bond with his pet. While a ranger affect his pet, the druid is also affected by it’s pet.

New mechanism :

The druid obtain a passive attunment named aspect that maybe influenced by certain pet.
Base attunment is the Flesh aspect and is granted if the druid use one of the base pet of the ranger.

New exclusive pets :

Rock dog : The rock dog have the basic skill of all canine’s pet. Their command [F2] is the aspect of earth passively granting 20% damage reduction to the pet as well as attuning the druid in earth aspect. (Active effect is the same as elementalist SoE)

Ice Imp : The Ice imp is a range caster pet firing Ice bolt on it’s target. Their command [F2] is the aspect of water passively giving health to the pet as well as attuning the druid in water aspect. (active skill have the same effect as elementalist’s SoW)

Oakheart : The oakheart is a treant pet which skills mainly focus on controling foes around him. Their command [F2] is the thorn aspect granting condition damage to the pet as well as attuning the druid in the Plant aspect. (active do damage and poison you foe)

aspect :

The aspects will mainly affect side effect of the Druid’s glyph.
- Flesh aspect add direct damage bonus (might/vulnerability) component to the glyph effect.
- Earth aspect add damage mitigation (protection/weakness) component to the glyph effect.
- Water aspect add soft mobility component (swiftness/chill) to the glyph skill effect.
- Plant aspect add health management component (regeneration/poison) to the glyph skill effect.

Weapon : Staff :
AA : hopefully it will be a non projectile range attack that summon a root on your foe feets to damage and bleed it.
utility skills :
- a root line that block projectile and do damage to foe that cross it
- a targeted aoe that enlarge itself every second doing damage.
- a blow that knockdown foe in front of you
- a summoned root that entangle your foe and bleed it.

Glyph :
Heal : Glyph of symbiose : take root at your current location disabling all incoming damage for 3s and healing you and your allie periodically

utility :
Glyph of natural power : For 30s your pet’s attack have a chance to grant boon to it’s surronding allies depending on your aspect. Number of target 5. Range 600. ICD 5s.
- Flesh Aspect : grant 3 might stacks 10s.
- Rock Aspect : grant protection 3s.
- Ice Aspect : grant fury 3s.
- Plant Aspect : grant regeneration 5s.

Glyph of natural wrath : set a trap spell based on your aspect.
- Flesh aspect : damage and inflict vulnerability
- Earth aspect : damage and weaken foe
- Ice aspect : Damage and chill foes
- Plant aspect : Poison and torment foes.

Glyph of natural power : for 30s your attack have a chance to inflict a condition based on your aspect.

Glyph of lesser natural spirit : summon a wild spirit based on your aspect.

elite :
Glyph of greater natural spirit : summon a wild spirit based on your aspect.

Traitline :
minor :
Druid path : give you access to staff and glyph. You are now under the effect of an aspect.
Symbiotic life : aspect also have an effect on you. reduced efficacity by 50%.
Lingering aspect : Using the command [F2] no longer let you lose the passive effect of your aspect.

Grand master :
Natural breeze : Allie around you are also affected by your aspect effect.
Symbiose : You gain the full passive effect of your aspect.
Animal vow : While under the effect of flesh aspect your pet do 10% more damage and you do 5% more damage.

NapTooN.6283:

• Specifics on the second one? Which race are we talking about?
  .

He/she should be refering to LS2 Chapter Seed of truth, 2nd seed. (Just keeping spoilers out of the thread)

Yeah it’s highly unlikely that Druid will be the only elite spec with a trait affecting core profession skills.

Now, I believe that the druid will have a skill which effect will be really close to what does a spirit. If I’m assuming that the druid end up with Glyphs and something that behave like attunment called aspect then, it’s super easy to come up with a skill that does something like that :

Glyph of natural power : For 30s your pet’s attack have a chance to grant boon to it’s surronding allies depending on your aspect. Number of target 5. Range 600. ICD 5s.
- Flesh Aspect : grant 3 might stacks 10s.
- Rock Aspect : grant protection 3s.
- Ice Aspect : grant fury 3s.
- Plant Aspect : grant regeneration 5s.

I wouldn’t even suggest anything if Shadow Arts wasn’t the best defensive option for Thief. Look at Acro, going for Critical Strikes is probably way better than taking Acro because you could take Invigorating Precision…
As soon as Anet is making Acro viable again I’ll stop using SA and jump on Acro S/D, the problem atm is though that its just outshined by… well everything basically

This is exactly my point. You won’t fix the issue by “buffing” something that’s absolutely unrelated. Honestly, Acro need work (I mean a lot of work) while stealth need to stay as it is right now. Introducing a new feature revolving around stealth because Acro can’t do it’s job is a nonsense. (There is barely any trait on the whole Acro traitline that don’t need work… It’s sad but it’s the reality).

I’m tolerant.
Would you say that you’re anti asura because of enquest? No
Would you say you’re anti norn because of svanir? No
Would you say you’re anti charr because of Baelfire? No
Would you say you’re anti human because of Caudecus politic? No
I won’t be anti sylvari because of mordremoth. The sylvaris are the victim here.

Well, everything need a counter play, even stealth. And reveal is the counter play to steath. Your idea are not bad but maybe, it’s just a guess, Anet would like that thieve use every spec instead of locking them in shadow art.

I don’t think what you want is needed. In fact what you propose would force thieves even more into one traitline because “it’s the best one”. For me, this is a bad solution to your issues.

Feel like you use 4 specialization in your ideal scenario…
Fire for one with fire
Air for lightning rod / zephyr boon
Water for powerful aura
Tempest for elemental bastion and shouts.

Don’t be afraid OP, they will only introduce another optional traitline for something named elite specialization (druid).

They won’t change the whole pet system, they won’t buff your weapon damage nor will they improve your resilience to damage. They will just introduce some new optional stuff on the ranger that will be restricted to the druid traitline.

So as long as you keep playing the core ranger, nothing will change for you (Though, druid shouldn’t give to much on it’s own. It’s not like the dev will remove the pet mechanism when you select the druid spec and trade it with a flat 30% more damage.

Usually pistol OH is the best option… Torch is handy for trouble skip.

DoogySnowStalker.2069:

Dadnir.5038:

You know, I have the weird feeling that some of the Druid utility skill will feel like spirit 2.0.

Wouldn’t be surprised, Dare Devil ended up being Acrobatics 2.0

And Berserker rage skills are Physical 2.0

ZudetGambeous.9573:

BobbyT.7192:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Is that still true after a group skips all the trash mobs?

I am 99.9% certain that raids will be more like traditional MMO’s instead of GW2 dungeons.

In every other MMO i’ve ever played the trash mobs can’t be skipped, they auto aggro and never lose aggro until you kill them or wipe.

Additionally they specifically said that GW2 raids will be made up of part boss fights and part dynamic events. It could be that 50% of the “boss” fights are actually dynamic events where you need to hold an area from some crazy strong waves of “trash” mobs. These situations greatly benefit from weakness and chill since even if you have a bunch of stuns, you can’t keep everything stunned.

Trash mobs are actually somewhere that necros can shine since we can AOE weakness and chill. If the mobs don’t die in <10s then you can’t just burst them down.

I remember in wildstar dungeons some of the trash mob encounters took more skill and practice than the bosses did. I hope we see things like that in GW2 raids.

Well, there is barely any mob that are skipable in TA Etherlame and guess what? It doesn’t make the necromancer more wanted.

Trash are trash, not being able to skip them don’t give more meaning to any profession but if a profession allow you to skip them then it give more meaning to this profession (thief, there you are!).

The necromancer have this weird design that say that he “want to be hit” while in this game PvE, you absolutely don’t want to be hit. Now, if they design encounter where you actually want to be hitten by a boss in a contest of sustain against high health pool, then yes the necromancer will have an advantage over other profession. Otherwise, the shortcomings of the necromancer will always show themselve and the resulting meta will not be different than the current one.

You know, I have the weird feeling that some of the Druid utility skill will feel like spirit 2.0.

Well, what you say might be right for PvP. That’s all!

1. Burn
What they did to this condition was needed. Some profession were overly awfull when it come to condibuild and this change to some of the condition was needed. The real issue is the huge number of way to apply this condition. They need to tune down these number of way and perhaps the durations not bringing back the old system. Well, anyway that’s some balance that will take some time.

2. Conjure weapon
These weapon are more or less a set of utility that you can share. In a way, how they perform atm is OK. There main issue is more that these utility set are often not needed to the point that some finaly think of them as an hindrance more than enything else.
Also from the point of view of the meta ele, which is designed to swap attunment a lot, they are totally unfitting skill set. Now if it happen that there Anet try to give the elementlist more reason to stay in an attunment with maybe a skill that can be used to reward the fact that you stay longer in an attunment… (Oh wait… It feel like something I’ve seen recently…) then these utility pack would probably more usefull.

3. Glyph
When it come to glyph I’m from the minority. I almost alway use them. Why?
- First of all, when trait, glyphs mean perma swiftness/perma regen/good amount of self might and descent protection uptime.
- Glyph of storm is a multifonction high damage aoe that is really usefull for offense as well as defense.
- I don’t think you can achieve the maximum damage output (out of the Frostbow burst) of an elementlist without a staff and the Glyphs of elemental (lesser and greater).
- Glyph of elemental power may be the only glyph really lacking. Simply put this glyph is horribly nerfed in it’s actual shape and while you should want to max your glyph uptime they put a stunbreak on it which simply kill the purpose of this glyph. They should really get rid of the 25% chance effect trigger, since there is already an ICD this %age have absolutely no meaning.

Dahkeus.8243:

Taking some inspiration from this post: that said Scrapper had better lightning animations than eles, lol.

“Look at the druid from the trailer…because the staff animation in that screenshot is 10x more impressive then what an ele could ever dream of doing. He can barely do a wave of the staff…but the druid? He’s kitteng Gandalf and Sauron in 1 character.”

lol, love this one to!

Again, I’m in great shape right now to some heavy post!

“You gotta kidding Anet! How could you give these new pets to the ranger! Look at this :
- the Skelk is a better thief than a thief with it’s 10 man 30s CD stealth!
- the Minotaur is a better warrior than a warrior with tons of CC!
- the Ooze can even swap alone it’s attunment and totally outclass any ele!
- how could you gave them Logan as a pet!!? Wanna get rid of all the guardians?
- the wind riders behave like a PU mesmer! Do you really want us to all ragequit?
- even the harpy one shoting at 1500 range outclass his own master!
This is the end of PvP their will be Druids everywhere!”

If you don’t believe me then wait for my post part II and you will see how wrong you are.

That’s one killer move here I can’t stop laughing!

Probably the disappointed kind of druid.

Holland.9351:

Dadnir.5038:

Well, the thing is that the HoT video lead us to think that they at least keep their base pet. That’s mostly why I restrain myself to 3 new pet each tainting the flesh attunment in something else due to their [F2] skill passive effect.

I’ve also kept myself into the boundary of existing content.

Yeah you’re right, good point

Note that this spec would be absolutely pointless for underwater content… Though it seems that’s it’s not something they are really concerned with. (still, while undewater the rock dog could be replaced by an armored fish, the Ice Imp by a Dolphin and… screw you Oakheart!)

Well it took 2 year and a half for them to remove this kind of trait from the spite traitline of the necromancer…

Well, the thing is that the HoT video lead us to think that they at least keep their base pet. That’s mostly why I restrain myself to 3 new pet each tainting the flesh attunment in something else due to their [F2] skill passive effect.

I’ve also kept myself into the boundary of existing content.

A druid have a deeper bond with his pet. While a ranger affect his pet, the druid is also affected by it’s pet.

New mechanism :

The druid obtain a passive attunment named aspect that maybe influenced by certain pet.
Base attunment is the Flesh aspect and is granted if the druid use one of the base pet of the ranger.

New exclusive pets :

Rock dog : The rock dog have the basic skill of all canine’s pet. Their command [F2] is the aspect of earth passively granting 180 toughnes to the pet as well as attuning the druid in earth aspect. (Active effect is the same as elementalist SoE)

Ice Imp : The Ice imp is a range caster pet firing Ice bolt on it’s target. Their command [F2] is the aspect of water passively removing condition to the pet as well as attuning the druid in water aspect. (active skill have the same effect as elementalist’s SoW)

Oakheart : The oakheart is a treant pet which skills mainly focus on controling foes around him. Their command [F2] is the thorn aspect granting condition damage to the pet as well as attuning the druid in the Plant aspect. (active do damage and poison you foe)

aspect :

The aspects will mainly affect side effect of the Druid’s glyph.
- Flesh aspect add direct damage bonus (might/vulnerability) component to the glyph effect.
- Earth aspect add damage mitigation (protection/weakness) component to the glyph effect.
- Water aspect add soft mobility component (swiftness/chill) to the glyph skill effect.
- Plant aspect add health management component (regeneration/poison) to the glyph skill effect.

3. the twofers: Thief, Engineer and probably Ranger. These have their old profession mechanic and on top of that a new one. A third dodge in the thief’s case and the function gyro for the engi. I suspect Druid will fall in this category.

It’s also my guess. I’m pretty sure we will see some pets that are specific to the druid.