Guild Wars 2

There are some pets that could be a viable choice in PVP if they get some small tweaks. Giving pets condition damage was one of the bigger ones as a lot of pets had skills that did less power damage to compensate for applying conditions but no bite to said conditions. Taunt also isn’t as strong as it was before so it isn’t outright better than Zephyr’s Speed, so pets that benefit more from Quickness might be more appealing than pets with a low F2 cooldown.

Cats and spiders were already decent pets that saw some use. Now that their conditions do damage these pets basically got a straight damage boost and might be valuable enough to see more of. Cats have great DPS as is so they work well with Quickness, and spiders never benefited from taunt anyway and tended to be taken in non-Beastmaster builds.

Adding Healing Power would make moas and the sylvan hound more viable options, for example. The sylvan hound especially as right now it’s regeneration is weak and actually hinders those who gain it over regeneration applied by someone with healing power.

Drakes: Cut the cast time of their F2 in half and allow their breath attacks to track the target the way Rapid Fire works when the ranger isn’t moving. Drakes being able to land their F2 reliably would be a big damage spike that could see a lot of use in PVP. Their tankiness and base damage is already pretty solid. All they really need is the ability to connect with the F2.

Porcines: Have the F2 deliver the obtained item directly to the ranger’s hand. It still might not be super appealing because of the randomness factor, but you can get some strong effects from the forage skill which makes it pay off big. The main thing holding it back is that the enemy has an equal chance of picking up the foraged item, which is just dumb.

Devourers: Adding bleed to their auto attacks could help a lot. The tiny chance to apply poison isn’t really worth the low damage. Though now they are in direct competition with the Bristleback in the role of ranged condition application. Devourer could have a niche as a shorter range pet with more condition applications and more defensive options but with less power damage and less range than the Bristleback.

Bears: … I don’t even know. It looks like they were suppose to be the tank pet, but that doesn’t work well. I’d probably change the regen they apply to protection, give them cleave damage, and increase their power stat so they hit harder. That way at least the Brown Bear would make a good tanky, sustain damage pet with a condi cleanse attached to it’s F2 and maybe Black Bear could be useful for AoE Weakness application to hinder group bursts. I’d also want to add a taunt to it in some way. Maybe replace Defy Pain which is kind of useless when we can’t control when it’s used anyway. Just some way for it to grab aggro away from it’s master and tank the way it was designed. Put it on a lengthy cooldown so it doesn’t feel like you’re getting spammed with taunt.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

There’ll be more supportive damage for Celestial Avatar by launch… possibly from trait modifications or from skill changes.

An issue which should not be decoupled here is that Celestial Avatar felt gated behind staff use (and troll unguent), which left a ranger with one damage-focused weapon option and one support weapon. I’m making some changes to astral force rate gain to try to address this. Ideally it should be possible to build up your astral force without -needing- to run staff, but running staff should speed up the process by nature of the heals it provides. This would yield the option of running two non-staff weapons while still having Celestial Avatar available.

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

The berserker meta not be the only consideration requires that other stat combinations be rewarding.

Being able to run two more damage-focused weapons (if that’s your thing) and still have Celestial Avatar available should address some of your offensive concerns if you want to play a bit more offensively as a hybrid. If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

That’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now (though I will continue to read constructive feedback here and elsewhere) as there is plenty to be done in order to address these and other issues. /me ducks back to work on Scrapper and Druid.

I am glad that Celestial Avatar is getting more damage, which may alleviate some of my following concerns, but I can’t stress enough how important it is that Celestial Avatar remains a valuable mechanic without any healing investment at all.

I fully understand and support the notion that to have the best healing you should have to invest in healing power. It’s only logical. However the fact Celestial Avatar is so completely devoted to healing means that if you lower the base healing of the skills too much the form will be outright useless to anyone without healing power on their gear. Celestial Avatar is a class mechanic and is not optional if you spec into druid. It would be a shame for it to only have value if you’re sporting healing power.

Like I said in my first paragraph, adding more damage to the Avatar State may alleviate some of my concerns as a more damage oriented build could compensate for lower healing in exchange for the ability to pressure people off them as they heal up more slowly. I just don’t want to see this mechanic make you weaker than base if you try to use it without the right stat spread.

No one should spec into druid for the glyphs, Ancient Seeds, or other abilities and find Celestial Avatar useless to their build.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Haha! Mate, it just hit me too, I was outside doing some work and it dawned on me, so I came back in to post a Druid/Spirit thread.

You know why Spirits Unbound was removed? It’s nothing to do with thematics. Ok, put your tinfoil hats on fellas.

Because Herald had been designed. They realised that a Spirit Ranger could achieve the same utility and buffs, that it would exceed what Herald is right now, actually, and also have the Druid CAF for healing.

If we had Spirits Unbound back, we would be the best support in the game.

Those FIENDS! It is times like this I am glad I live in a shed with a tin roof. Take THAT Arena.Net… or should I say SKYNET.

But really, we could make immobile spirits work well with the druid if the spirit heals counted for astral force and spirits had larger HP pools. We’d be generating enough astral force between the spirits healing us and us healing the spirits that we’d have access to the Avatar State pretty much on demand to keep them alive.

Would make for a VERY thematically pleasing build at the very least. A druid tending to his little garden of spirits.

White Devil.3176:

What if the auto looked more like this?

SOLAR BEAM CANNON!!!!!!

I bet Goku wishes it healed allies like our solar beam does.

Ranger isn’t a pure DPS profession. It has support utilities and a support train line and traits that made another set of utilities provide support boons like regeneration and swiftness. In fact ranger is one of the best providers of regeneration in the game.

Just because you play Marksmanship/Skirmishing/Wilderness Survival exclusively doesn’t mean Nature Magic doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean spirits don’t exist. And it doesn’t mean ranger should NEVER get an addition to more support options just because you’re scared of having more to offer a team than raw damage numbers.

Druid adds healing potential to the ranger’s kit to expand on our meager support options to make a more viable support role.

Maybe if people actually bothered to check out what the skills they don’t use did there’d be less confusion. As for now this will be my last response in this thread. It’s getting too populated with ignorance for my taste.

Maikky.8526:

Them bias

Berzerker ? Totally not a condi based melee elite, no such thing as sword!

Reaper ? Totally not a power based melee elite, no such thing as dagger!

mah fanboyssss

I’ve not really paid much attention to what berzerker can do so I’ll skip that one.

But a necromancer’s dagger isn’t a cleaving weapon and it isn’t designed for high group sustain, and even with a dagger your shroud is still ranged. Reaper offers a fully melee playstyle for the necromancer they didn’t have before, as well as access to cleave damage and sustain that scales well in team fights.

Necromancers didn’t have a heavy melee team fighting specialist build. Now they do.

I would much prefer the caster staff animations. Having come from WoW three years ago I was ecstatic that my character held their staff like one would hold a staff.

Holding it like a hammer just goes back to how WoW casters hold their staff. It’s boring and doesn’t give me that “mystical” feel.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I paid for the Druid just like I paid for every aspect of HoT. I want the elite spec to at least be useful to me in dungeons and fractals. I want to get my money’s worth out of the elite spec that I looked forward to the most… Sadly, there’s just too much of a DPS loss taking the Druid spec for my tastes. Maybe if there was party wide offensive support it’d be worth it, but it’s not. I mean, I expected the Druid to be support, I just didn’t expect the utter lack of offensive support in the traitline.

It doesn’t really matter what you paid for. I paid for it too. We all did. It is impossible for the elite spec to cater to what everyone wanted. And dungeons/fractals are so overwhelmingly exclusive in terms of what is viable for speed running that there was a very good chance any sort of boon support druid might have brought wouldn’t have been wanted. Especially offensive boon support seeing as I doubt anyone can compete with the Herald in that regard without being blatantly overpowered.

There are just so many other professions that produce boons in mass. Druid taking on a healing focused approach is likely the only way it could fit into a future raid meta without being in direct competition with almost every other profession.

If you really want the offensive support of ranger improved you should look into getting spirits buffed. That’s where the boon/offensive support of the profession comes from. Maybe if Nature Magic had a damage multiplier in it, I dunno.

Changes look good. I’ve not used the auto attack yet but it being ground targeted feels like a pain. It’s part of why I don’t care much for engineer grenades. Daze might be a wee bit short. 2 seconds seem reasonable as that’d be 4 with Moment of Clarity, giving a 1 second grace period to dodge out of the control chain.

Seed of Life definitely needs to cure conditions instantly on use. Like I said in the druid feedback thread having the seed absorb conditions immediately on skill use and flower into a heal after the growth period thematically makes perfect sense, and would greatly improve this skill’s functionality. Especially since this skill is the main condi management tool for all glyph heavy builds.

When you need to get rid of a condition you need to do it now, not in a little while if you stick around in a single spot.

I like this trait set up. My only issue is there being two traits a condi user would want that compete with one another. But then I suppose a melee druid that doesn’t rely on control might want the one with burning and ranged druids might want the one with immobilize on it.

Turning your healing into damage is a great idea and would help a lot with damage issues on druid. Especially in the Avatar State.

Tigaseye.2047:

Ehecatl.9172:

Core ranger is…..still functional without the druid trait line.

It’s not for a lot of people, though.

That’s the problem.

It’s unintuitive and kind of sketchily designed and has all sorts of existing issues that never seem to be tackled.

Ranger players are also treated really, really badly, by other players.

Basically, because they (apparently) think we are idiots for choosing/sticking to what they consider to be a bad class!

Kind of like being treated badly, on the road, because you supposedly chose the wrong brand of car, or something.

It’s not something most adults would do, but many of the players of games will do all sorts of things most adults wouldn’t do, unfortunately…

So, the class needs to be solid, even if some people can cope with its foibles, just to convince other players that we’re not idiots for choosing it (if you see what I mean?).

This used to be the case in WoW, as well, when Hunters were more like the Rangers in this game.

Then they made some changes and the only people still saying that stuff, there, are imports from other games (this one maybe?) and/or people who haven’t played WoW for years and are still stuck in the past.

This game needs to look to what they did there, with Hunter in MoP, because GW2 Ranger is far too much like the clunky, old school, WoW Hunter.

My point was that druid is an addition to ranger, not a core aspect of it that you absolutely need to take to play it.

Core ranger still has problems, certainly. But the elite spec wasn’t going to be a straight upgrade that fixed core ranger’s problems. In fact it shouldn’t be. Ranger needs to be improved. It needs it’s traits and utilities improved as well as some tweaks to certain under performing weapons. Adding an elite spec that fills the same role core ranger fills would only serve to make core ranger worse by comparison.

In an ideal world ranger and druid would be taken in the same group for providing different benefits. Ranger would provide good DPS while druid provides healing support. To use your WoW comparison, ranger is feral druid while druid is resto. Both are viable but fill different roles in a raid and/or pvp team.

But if the elite spec was just a straight upgrade to ranger DPS there’d be no point in anyone ever using ranger, and that would be sad.

Now I want to play a revenant even more.

Ranger didn’t need an elite spec to specialize in DPS since ranger already focuses on DPS.

Elite specializations aren’t suppose to be an upgrade to the core, they are suppose to open up a new playstyle that wasn’t there before.

It’s not a childish response to tell you to simply not play the druid. Druid is a completely optional addition to the profession. Core ranger is still there and still functional without the druid trait line.

I agree. Regeneration is one of the ranger’s most populous boons. If it could build up astral force it would allow druids to build it without needing the staff, which would work better with core ranger builds.

lxghostxl.5097:

sorry to say this but I think you are one of those simple minded people. We the real ranger players does not like the IDEA of healing DRUID since we first chose this class for dps and not to be someone’s pet to heal them and be useless in pvp. you sir are like everyone who does not understand the fact that you bought a car and a net traded a shiny cart to replace it. that is how it is here, since I know you would not understand this so to make it easier. the Car is your current ranger and the cart is druid, get it?

I have no idea who you are. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you on the ranger forum. To declare yourself “a real ranger player” while insinuating that the rest of us aren’t real rangers is pretty laughable.

I have two rangers. One was made as a trapper condi ranger and another with a desire to be a support beastmaster using shouts and/or spirits. However the core ranger is severely lacking the group support role I wanted. The Nature Magic line just didn’t cut it.

Now there is the druid which gives rangers some much needed group support.

So no, you’re wrong. You do not speak for every ranger player. You speak for yourself and only yourself. Myself and a good chunk of ranger players have been asking for more group support options for a really, really long time. We did not want, nor did we need, our elite spec to give us even MORE DPS since, as you said, core ranger is already a DPS focused profession. Druid was what ranger needed to have more variety in what role we can play in a group.

Just gonna throw this out there. You cannot say something is a fact if you refuse to test your theories.

The Skill Editor is NOT an infallible source. If you aren’t willing to go into the game to check your facts you don’t really have a case.

SemiProBBQ.8946:

if you’re argument is alot of attacks are aoe so that’s too many attacks my pet takes less damage from i disagree, any class can kill my pet in a handful of attacks a better idea would be for my dead pet to not go on a 60s cd on swap and instead keep it at 20s, there’s no reason to have our class mechanic knocked out for a minute

It’s not a matter of balance but of sheer mechanics. There is no code that differentiates “AoE” damage from “Single target” damage. They can’t make an AoE damage reduction ability because there is no AoE damage. There is only damage.

Daniel Handler.4816:

True. But storms grow and dissipate in cycles. Nothing is lost. The concept of a black hole is that it cannot be undone. And that for the most part that which passes into it is lost forever.

The skull of a centaur will decompose.

But I think we do need more information. When we speak to the druids of Maguuma we should restart this discussion. Because right we just don’t know and are relying on gut feelings on how these creatures would lend their namesake.

Actually an acting theory is that black holes evaporate over time, giving off thermal energy called Hawking Radiation slowly over their life cycle until dissipating entirely. The smaller the black hole the quicker it evaporates. A black hole of the size the player creates would evaporate almost instantly, releasing that energy back into the universe.

Obviously the game doesn’t have a scientifically accurate depiction of a black hole, but a black hole isn’t necessarily a permanent source of infinite destruction.

More information on the druids is required. My stance has simply been that, with the information we have now, the current druid elite spec doesn’t inherently clash with existing lore. There just isn’t enough known facts about the druids to say they outright didn’t have a connection to celestial forces.

Maikky.8526:

“Rangers were already quite good at producing fury, swiftness” are you serious ?

Rangers are outclassed in boon production by nearly half the classes . Guard, War, Ele ect and even then we do sub-par dmg as compared to those classes as well

Your saying spirits like they are actually even usable .

Frost Spotter is officially part of the current PVE meta according to metabattles.com. Apparently some people can keep their spirits alive just fine.

I’m not a number cruncher but it seems you could just take that build and replace Beastmastery for Druid. Lose some pet DPS and some quickness but gain access to substantially more healing potential and another group damage buff (assuming it gets buffed). If you take Troll’s Unguent you don’t even need to bring the staff as it fills so much of your astral force, and you only need that form for emergency healing.

Storm Spirit could see some use with the easily sustainable vulnerability, but we’d have to wait for someone to math it out to decide if it’s worth giving up an existing utility slot or not. If the ranger/druid can let the team produce that much vulnerability consistently then other professions can take more damage over vulnerability skills.

But that is just for dungeons which don’t matter at all unless you’re trying to break a speed clear record. We don’t know what the raids will be like.

I would love this change. Druid is clearly meant to be a highly mobile support character that relies heavily on good positioning. Having Natural Stride by a minor trait would let every druid build benefit from the mobility aspect of the druid.

Another important thing to consider is that with burning being applied by solar beam we’ll occasionally get the “burn to death” animation from kills.

Who doesn’t want to go around setting people on fire with beams of sunlight? Druid will be like a ant-hater with a magnifying glass!

Only concern would be the increased cooldown some of these would need. I doubt Glyph of Tides would keep it’s short cooldown if it was also a stunbreak.

Aside from that I like these effects.

Maikky, druid isn’t 100% of the build. Rangers were already quite good at producing fury, swiftness, and regen plus group precision and damage buffs that are unique to ranger. If the damage buff glyph is improved, which is likely will as no one wants it in it’s current state, then that’s a third party wide damage boost the druid gets to bring. And since Storm Spirit got buffed a lone druid can allow the team to maintain 15 vulnerability stacks on a boss from one skill.

Druid isn’t as good at boon support as Ventari/GLINT true. But Ventari/Shiro? It’s debatable.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@ehecatl. They said to tread lightly. He wasn’t constantly telling you kill things. A singular case vs constant mimicing or causing death.

Except that was still one of two times we saw the druids do any sort of magic. That’s 50% of what we know about their rituals. They sometimes require sacrifice.

There is no difference between doing this and summoning a storm, but that’s often considered a natural part of druidism in the lore of most settings. The formation of a black hole is nothing but a storm on a larger scale, and harnessing that dark, destructive power is completely in line with the Tyrian druid’s view of good and evil.

Know what else is awesome about this build?

Switch to Soften the Fall and Natural Stride and it instantly becomes an incredibly good open world exploration build. High out of combat mobility and fall damage reduction without sacrificing too much to cripple the build.

The one thing rangers should’ve been best at since the beginning. Ranging.

Tipper.6973:

Maybe one day there will be a Ritualist elite spec for the Revenant. I think it’d be sweet. Summon a bunch of chained up spirits, cast some lightning magic…

Legendary Summoner: Master Togo.

I really hope building astral force outside of combat is intentional. I’d like to be able to enter the Avatar State in cities and such for roleplay purposes.

Though I have a feeling they’ll remove it. If necromancers can’t start with full life force I can’t imagine them letting us begin with full astral force.

Yah, I could tell Remorseless was more for occasional bonus damage than the core of the build like it is for Remorseless Ranger. Still, having a source of fury attached to something that isn’t your heal, pet swap, stunbreak, or elite certainly can’t hurt!

I’m most interested in the wyvern’s charge followed by Swoop for a free daze. Yet another way to potentially proc Ancient Seeds. The control aspects of the druid are what I’m most interested in. There’s so much synergy with the Ancient Seeds trait it’s kind of hard for me to understand why so many people are focusing entirely on the heals.

It’s too bad you don’t have time for a video. I can’t play right now because my computer is down, but I’d love to see this build in action.

The Solar Beam Druid. I like it.

Seems like you could take the tiger for more damage and another fury proc for Remorseless. Set up a really nasty One→Two punch combo with the tiger followed by a remorseless maul.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Ultimate cop out. If something is part of nature that does not mean a druid will actively engage in it. Fire is part of nature, you use no fire in this spec. All the fields except for ethereal are arguably part of nature. From your quote the druid could be using necromancy because it is part of nature.

And the druids were not all about destruction. As they said

“Tread lightly. The damage you do today compounds with time.”

“I sense no fear in your heart. That is good, for there is no reason to fear me. I am but an aspect of nature, just as decay and death are part of the natural cycle. I already know the question you wish to ask, and yes, I can consult certain…powers to obtain and answer, though it may not be to your liking. The powers I would consult require sacrifices. If you wish me to consult with them, you must seek out the mighty Centaur lord called Drogo Greatmane. Bring me this centaur’s heart, and you shall have the answers you seek.”
~ Dark Oak

He literally sends you to murder a centaur, rip out it’s heart, and bring it to him so he can use it as a sacrifice to see into the future. This is one of two rituals we see the druids do. The other was a spiritual cleansing ritual involving water.

So again. Sacrifice and death are just as prevalent in GW1 druid lore as renewal and growth. A druid’s spell done in GW1 requires death to be performed.

There is zero reason to think mimicking the destruction of a star is against their way of doing things when they were willing to kill a living, breathing, sapient being in order to see into the future.

Love these changes. Especially love the Vine Surge change as it helps with condi management for the group. Burning on Solar Beam is also a great idea so we can benefit from condi damage.

I mean come on, it’s almost wrong to NOT run a celestial amulet with this celestial avatar spec.

mistsim.2748:

i just wanted to add one more thing:

Verdant Etching

this trait is actually kinda useless in pvp, as is the Seed #2 in avatar. look at competitive pvp. if you stand still while waiting for the seed to pop, youre dead. the radius is way too small and it takes too long to go off. so this requires major iteration.

They could move the condition cleanse on the use of the skill and heal on burst. Thematically the seed would be taking away the impurities from you to grow and then bursts into life giving energy.

From what I’ve read the trolls heal works.

I suppose it makes sense that you’d need staff though. Way back during the Chronomancer release it was said druid was designed around the staff unlike the later elite specs.

“Darkness and light, good and evil…all are a part of nature. There is no regrowth without death…without decay. Such is the lesson that I can teach you, stripling.”

Quote from a druid in GW1.

They viewed death, decay, and evil as all facets of nature. Using their magic to mimic the death of a star is well in line with their belief structure that destruction is a necessary part of life.

It really does feel like you’re just fishing for reasons that the new elite spec breaks lore.

Edit: Actually I just remembered what quest that NPC was from. He asks you to go out and bring him the heart of a centaur warlord and bring it back so he can use divination for you. Pretty dark.

Elorna.5329:

It’s not the f2. F2 is a smoke field that deals no damage but makes the pet immune to conds and evade everything while in it. That’s the last skill of those he activates on his own. I think the cooldown is 25 or 30 seconds. It’s pretty much like the revenant sword skill 3, just on a longer cooldown. It’s great when you’re the only target of it since all of the multihits end up on you, but kinda weak if it hits multiple targets.

Ah, I see. That makes it along the same lines as the drake Tail Swipe in that it hits like a truck but is hard to control.

Shockwave.1230:

As an added note, signet of the wild, dolyak rune, and regeneration boon do not cause AF gain.

Also Water spirit totem heals do not cause AF gain, though the ground pound heal on water spirit does.

Spirit of nature does not trigger AF gain either.

Well that is disappointing. Would’ve made some incredible synergy between druids and spirits for a full support role.

Unrelenting Assault is that pet’s F2. That damage doesn’t seem too excessive given it’s on a 30+ second cooldown.

It wasn’t the auto attack chain if that’s what you’re worried about.

Interesting. Having a water field on staff will offer some neat combos between staff, our pets, and other weapons.

A druid with the fire wyvern and Healing Spring could already be packing a fire field and two water fields. Add in a torch off hand and that’s two fire fields. Sword is gonna have a lot of fields to play in.

Obsidian.1328:

“They may have once been human, perhaps powerful druids or holy men…”

Not only is the player guide guessing at the Warden class origin, it’s also guessing at their race. As such, it’s still a wiki theory as to where or who they came from.

As for the rest, you’re right. I apologize. Druids were tribes of humans at first, and later taking on spectral form.

Technically calling it a wiki theory implies the wiki editors invented and subscribe to the theory, which is what I thought you meant.

I’d call this more of an in-universe theory.

I accept your apology.

OGDeadHead.8326:

No support for the idea “Using spirit active teleports the spirit your location, using their active there”?

:(

This is something I’ve suggested before and, combined with the larger passive range, would allow rangers to place their spirits in a safe location, fight a little under their influence, then call the spirit to explode in the enemy’s face at a tactical time.

Storm Spirit especially would be substantially better as it has some control and decent damage on self destruct.

Shadelang.3012:

I feel spirits should really be fleshed out to be our party support option. Frost/Sun/Earth/and even air spirits are actually quite decent at increasing party dps and survivability now. They just need to be shifted so that there capable of functioning in large scale engagements without being instantly smashed by accidental aoe or left behind by gw2s naturally fast paced combat.

I think its fine if shouts are a bit selfish on the ranger. I feel there meant to be about the bond between the ranger and the pet. Not the pet and random busybody # 3159.

Of course my perspective is colored from years of playing pet classes. Generally pet classes in other games assist allies by having a prescence in places players can’t go. Which is a role shouts can fulfill. They just aren’t given the tools they need yet.

I agree with all this. Spirits are obviously meant to be our support option and are starting to become quite strong. We need a way to keep them alive, which for me would be as simple as increasing their effective range to 2,000 instead of 1,000 so we can roam away from them. WvWvW might be a problem but a short 5 second grace period where the spirits are indestructible might be sufficient. The bonus lasts a good 10-15 seconds after the spirit dies, so that’d be 20ish seconds of benefiting from the buff followed by 5 seconds without the buff before they can be summoned again.

But yes. Shouts are about our interaction with the pet. They should be about improving the functionality of the pet when used to give us more control over what the pet does and provide more ways for us to use the the pet to bolster our own abilities. Shouts are a utility set for Beastmasters who need more interaction with their pet, not for marksmen who want to buff random people nearby.

Survival = General purpose defensive skills that improve the ranger’s survival.
Spirits = Strong group buffing support skills to improve the party.
Shouts = Pet utilities that improve pet functionality and give more pet options.
Signets = Largely selfish offensive and defensive skills to give the ranger an edge.

As Heimskarl said mobile spirits aren’t any better off than stationary when it comes to survival. Worse off really, because then the enemy can just focus you and kill your pets with cleave. It also makes it much harder to hold a point that’s being bombarded with AoE, forcing the spirit ranger off-point to keep their spirits alive.

Stationary spirits with a 2,000 range can be placed off point where they aren’t in danger of cleave and can still apply their boons and benefits to the ranger on point who is in the fray. The enemy then has to either take their focus off the ranger to destroy the spirits at range or leave the point completely to melee them down. Either way the ranger gets the advantage.

The passive effect of spirits also persist for something like 10 seconds after the spirit dies, which means even after they are gone you’re still benefiting from their effects for a while. After the effect fades you only have 10 seconds more until you can summon a new batch.

Increasing the range is the best option to give the ranger more maneuverability without stepping too far away from the spirits. It would also be nice if placing the spirits was ground targeted and had, say, 600 range so we can place them off-point without leaving the point.

Increasing their health pool also wouldn’t be a terrible idea, but I’d like to see how effective they are with the increased range first.

This thread is almost a perfect mirror of the longbow ranger threads from a few months ago only with thieves instead of rangers.

If shouts didn’t cancel on F2 and Guard got the damage modifier being talked about a shout build would have two different damage modifier skills on their bar that also provide swiftness and regen and can cure a condition.

Say you have a drake. Open with Guard and while it’s invisible it’ll have an easier time landing Tail Swipe with Opening Strike and the Guard bonus damage. Just gotta lead the enemy into it and maybe open with Hilt Bash. Then chain to Sic ’Em for another damage boost and hit F2 for a 20%+40% bonus damage Lightning Breath. That guy is gonna be in a bad place.

Glyph of Equality makes the most sense for a stunbreak since it already does that in Celestial form. It already has a lengthy cooldown for it.

Glyph of tides would also make sense but the cooldown is on the low side for a stunbreak and I don’t want the cooldown increased.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I made a thread just to avoid searching for build suggestions scattered over 20 other threads for upcoming testing.

Just to find out it didn’t make any difference at all.
<sigh> I volunteered to do it but you guyz are not helping at all.

A single thread would help a lot. I already posted a couple in the other thread only to see more people posting here.

Maybe we can get the moderators to merge these threads? THAT would actually be beneficial so all the builds are in one place.

Obsidian.1328:

No, I’m saying they weren’t Druids until they became spirits. Before that they were just humans like any other, with whatever magical abilities any creature had. Where did I say they didn’t have magic?

Wardens aren’t druids. The theory they were previously druids is one of many from the wiki.

Do you have any proof to support that? Because it’s a pretty strange statement. Druids are not a type of spirit, they are a group of religious humans. Sometimes with nature powers.

And no, that isn’t a wiki theory. What you read was a quote from the Guild Wars: Factions Manuscript. A player guide. Therefore it is official lore that Wardens were either human druids or monks before they transformed. Therefore druids were, in fact, humans before undergoing their transformations. Canthan druids became Wardens and Tyrian druids became spirits.

Unless you have lore that proves this outright wrong.

Even then let’s look at your argument. One of phrasing.

“The Druids were a group of Krytan humans that long ago moved to the Maguuma Jungle in order to live with nature. It is said that they are devout followers of Melandru, though this is only rumors. According to the History of Tyria, they were forced out of jungles in the long distant past by other humans. They were last seen by others sometime before 982 AE and mysteriously vanished decades before 1072 AE. Although generally believed to have been killed off by the jungle’s predatory plants and animals, the Druids actually shed their physical bodies to become one with nature. The Druids now exist as spirits, appearing similar to Oakhearts.”

From the wiki. Reading this it seems pretty clear that the word druid refers to the group of humans that moved to Maguuma. Not ONLY to the form they took after they became spirits. Even the use of past tense makes it quite clear they were druids before the act of becoming spirits.

Do you have any lore that contradicts this explicitly?

I agree. It’s not always possible to see how much health your spirit has left and even if you do the slow cast on the active skill means the pet could die without it triggering at all.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsfWjMqQ7K2tCmrAVLWYEM4m6Vtr2EB6cJNmCwlLAcyziGM-TZRFwAt3fAwTAIxJAIaZAEHCAA

Trapper Druid. Lots of bleeds, decent condi clear that leaves Poison Master open to take. Britlseback bumped up to 1,300 condi damage so it’s bleeds are actually stronger than the druid’s. Good sustain through heals and the potential for a couple different condi bursts. Resistant to slow effects but vulnerable to hard stuns.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAVWn8ICtqgNrA+qAEtglEBDeq2VHrOpuUwN4JAE7ednMhcBD-TZRFwAYLD0e/BAPBAIXAAEHCAA

Spirit Druid. Lots of protection and might for the team, tons of might for the pet plus taunt. Moa can taunt an enemy into it’s daze to set up Ancient Seeds for a 5 second immobilize and bleeds. Decent vigor and stability up time from the spirits to help with defense. Lots of heals. Healing from Water and Nature Spirit plus staff heals to heal the spirits which also heal you from Live Vicariously. Potentially very high astral force generation to do a full condi clear every 10-15 seconds plus burst heals. Steady condi pressure plus pet bursts to down enemies.
Playstyle: You are the shepherd and the spirits are your flock. Stay near them and protect them as they give you boons.

You could just double their health pool. Traited that would be about 28,000 health. Enough to take a while to put down unless you focus them specifically but not so huge as to make them impossible to destroy.

Then add more damage to their active effects so that approaching them in melee is a sizable risk. That way they are less likely to go down to random cleave. Still vulnerable to ranged attacks, which can be countered by intelligent positioning of the spirits to begin with.

And add a larger effective range for their passive effects so they can cover a whole team fight without being in the fray. That way they can be safely positioned without being in direct line of sight.