Guild Wars 2

As far as the whole ‘enchanting bullets’ things goes, think of glasses of water, I suppose.

The smaller the glass, the less water you can put into it before it overflows and gets everywhere (which, with magic, would be more dangerous than just getting everything wet). So with a bullet, you have something small, about the size of your thumb, or around there. An arrow on the other hand is about the length of your forearm, and has proportionally higher mass. The more mass it has, the more ‘water’ (magic) you can pour in safely. The more you can put magic into an item, the more you can enchant it, and the more you can enchant it, the more deadly it is.

In this way, arrows are generally superior to bullets because they can be enchanted much more than a bullet can. Conversely, however, the technology behind a bullet allows it to shoot harder in a single go, as it propels the projectile at much greater speeds. Additionally, bows can’t allow for much mechanical customization, as changes to the structure of the bow’s limbs either throw off its balance, weigh it down, or otherwise adversely affect its use; guns don’t suffer from that, which is why engineers can attach things like net launchers, flamethrowers, and alternate fire modes to guns.

In Tyria, neither one is more powerful than the other. the gun can’t be nearly as well enchanted as the bow, but it’s capable of having much more versatility of design.

But yeah, we’re all entitled to our opinions. I just personally despise the idea of medieval stasis, so I’m personally quite glad that the charr brought in technology to the game world.

Well Bast, do keep in mind comparisons here. Would you say a grenade or a fireball is more powerful? There’s no comparison we can make because the idea of both is to kill someone, but due to the overwhelmingly magical nature of Tyria, basic clothing is as good at countering things like bullets as well made but only lightly enchanted plate armor. One of the thief pistol skills is literally shooting someone in the head in a world where people often go without head protection and all it does is minor damage and a daze.

Additionally, bullets are much smaller than things like arrows or swords, and as such, can’t hold as much magic as said things; this means that while they have a higher level of base penetration, you can’t put as many enchantments into them. It’s why you see things like the heavy light guardian Trait for longbow but there’s nothing even remotely similar in rifle or pistol use. firearms are useful because they don’t have to be as heavily enchanted to keep up – that’s the idea, anyways.

As far as style goes, that’s your bag so I won’t challenge you on it, though I will point out that firearms have existed in one way or another since the 1300s.

Djahlat.9610:

I don’t want them for two reasons
1) we have already 3 weapons that are entirely reliant on projectiles, and it’s quite bothersome against the mass of reflects and projectile mitigation in-game
2) It doesn’t fit the thematic of the ranger as I know it. We are masters of archery, skirmishes, beastmastery, survival, and nature magic. I’ll leave the gunslinger role to thieves, engineers and warriors

1) I’m not really sure projectiles are an issue here. Projectile reflection/destruction skills tend to be very short lived outside of some edge cases, and if you have a rifle with a sniper setup (which appears to be the highest demand) you’d be rolling with a weapon that has a long space between attacks anyways, making it not mean much outside of high skill pvp. Which, admittedly, does matter for balance purposes, but it’s no different from what’s going on now and thus probably isn’t really a thing to worry about. Just look at pistol thieves.

2) Going to completely disagree here; the idea that “Archery” is the only ranged combat the class billed as the ranged combat master has is just wrong. Besides, we already have throwing axes. Additionally, why is the idea of guns contrary to nature magic? That really doesn’t make any sense. The only reason that “Technology” is contrasted to “Nature” in fiction is because of tolkien’s works, and he was heavily influenced in his work by the industrialization of the country he lived in while he was writing; it was horrible for a huge number of reasons, not just because it was “Unnatural”.

Furthermore, the idea of a hunter with a pet is not only interesting, but also based in reality. Ever heard of the dog breed called the Rhodesian Ridgeback? They were primarily used as a hunting companion; they’d distract things like lions and bears while the hunter would line up a shot. It’s a tactic called “baying” and would fit very well into the way Rangers operate. I imagine it’s a tactic used very, very often by Blood Legion warbeast tamers; can’t really worry about blocking the incoming sniper bullet while you have a Siege Devourer dancing on your face.

I’m looking forward to having a fire wyvern for that sweet sweet burning field on F2. Expertise training will make those burning stacks seriously dangerous.

Oh hey, this bug is back again?

It seems to cycle back in like every six months.

The Smokescale is going to be delicious in pvp, particularly if you can get a good amount of might stacks going on it. I could easily see it doing about 15000 damage to a single target in one of its bursts.

Worth noting is that the fire wyvern is also going to be potent area denial – high might stacks plus burning? If you pick up expertise training, it has 1000 condi damage base and +20% condi duration, and is capable of more than covering most points in sPvP. Any might stacks applied are going to make the fire wyvern much more powerful in that respect. the Electric wyvern is largely going to fill the role the wolf does now (that of a CC beast that can constantly disrupt enemies) and is just as hard hitting as the fire wyvern. My real issue with the wyverns, though, is the slow rate of attack of their wing-bash thing, since it’s a two hit attack with something like a 1 second delay between strikes. That’s nasty, and not in a good way.

By the way Shadelang, we don’t get to control when the Smokescale gets its shadowsteps – we control when it spawns its smoke field. That of course means we can use it for stealth through leap and blast finishers, but we don’t have proper on-demand burst damage with the pet. Just random burst damage. Still, it’s an extra reason to take a sword or warhorn if we can manage to squeeze in a one-handed weapon for the mainhand. I’d personally go for the greatsword, though, because I operate with it better.

I think we’re going to be looking at a pretty potent combatant here, mostly due to attrition. Outside of spike damage (such as that delivered by super heavy conditions or backstab thieves) we’re going to be basically unkillable. If we also have Wilderness Survival for Bark Skin, though, we can easily survive everything except condi burst. Problem is, of course, that we want to amp up our pet, so we’d prefer Beast Mastery, Nature Magic, and Druid. Tough call.

How about the fact that druids can provide water fields? In addition to their direct healing abilities.

I could see double-wyvern being really decent in pvp, actually. If you have expertise training, the wyverns have 1000 condi damage (plus whatever might stacks you have up), so you can use the electric wyvern for CC effects and the fire wyvern for area denial, since the fire field it puts up can cover an entire point while the fire wyvern is unhitable in that animation. They’d combo quite well in a point holding setup.

Pretty much, yes. Even better, you can lock down enemies long enough for the lord to get off their gigantic spin attack. Fend off an attack with the Lord at a sliver of health? Druid stays nearby and makes sure that the next time they push, the lord is at full health. Possibly the guards, too.

it has pet synergy, though. If you’re casting from range, every time your beam passes through your pet, it gets a bit of HP back. the spinning wisp benefits every melee pet. The entangling vines cleanse conditions.

every support skill can be used on your pet. Just because it doesn’t specify the pet doesn’t mean it’s not useful to Beast Master setups.

Agreed regarding the wyverns.

and hey, that’s why there’s a beta weekend for it, right?

As far as the Smokescale goes, it appears to be extremely high damage and with activatable invuln frames. Amazing for pvp.

that’s correct, Shinzan. Presumably we can only tame them in the jungle, though, so only HoT players will have access to them outside of pvp.

Draeyon.4392:

Btw, does anyone know if the 5 pets revealed are the only pets being released in HoT?

I’m fairly certain they would have told us about any others they were adding, so we get five. A kitten good five, but just five.

One thing that concerns me about the Wyverns: Their attack speeds. I know they hit twice, a one-two punch combo, but just re-watching the footage, there’s quite a bit of delay between auto attacks on a stand-still golem.

Agreed there; I’m concerned about it being animation locked like has been a problem for so many pets. If that’s the case, It’ll be relegated to “near useless” in PvP rather than the awesome it should be, and that’s something nobody wants. It’s all good for PvE, though.

Smoke scale had taunt proc, so in the video it had BM.

thanks for poining that out; I was tired when watching the stream so didn’t see.

So, we’re getting new pets. Some of you may (but probably don’t) remember me from my rundown of the various pet types in the game. I’m not going to update that particular guide without first testing each of the new pets in their final form, but I’m curious what reactions to the mechanical side of the pets is thus far (and please, keep squealing to a minimum. I’m as excited for Wyverns as you, but that’s not what we’re here for :P)

This will be running under the assumption that the pets we saw in the reveal were not beast mastery specced, which fits for the stats shown here.

Tiger: We didn’t get to see its F2 ability, so I’m currently running under the assumption that it’s just a straight addition to the cat family. Which, realistically, is perfectly fine. Lots of people love the cats.

Bristleback: This is interesting, because it does double-hits with decent damage. It’s one of the two we got stats on though; and looking at it? It’s literally a direct upgrade from devourer. Same stats as the little scorpion things except for +500 power and what appears to be better damage coefficients, alongside 1000 condition damage and the ability to deal 12 stacks of bleeding. If you’re on land, this is THE ranged pet, no question about it, but it’s Terrestial so you can’t take it into the water.

Wyverns: The stats for wyverns are interesting to me. you know how drakes, if specced properly, can tank in mid-high level fractals? This is similar. The wyverns lose out slightly on HP pool in exchange for an upgrade to toughness, which as many will tell you is a direct upgrade against anything but condition damage. The fire wyvern has an unfortunate animation lock (and a long one at that) as part of its F2 ability, but this is eased by making it so that it’s immune to damage while activating it. The electric wyvern on the other hand has no immunity or locked frames, but still deals decent damage. They don’t have the cleaving of drakes on their auto-attacks, but the Wing Buffet ability is crazy good if you can get your wyvern to land it, as it’ll stunlock a person for a good four seconds. All in all, a very solid choice. Worth noting is that the electric drake’s headbut is a control effect, meaning it could well replace the wolf for supremacy in PvP.

Smokescale: Oh boy, what do I say about this? Smokescales are almost guaranteed to have their damage nerfed – which is largely fine, as they’re currently the PvP pet supereme, as the one on stream (that wasn’t specced into beast mastery, I might add, and had no boons to speak of) did 9500 damage to a single target with the shadowstepping nonsense. Having a pet that can cut the health of an opponent in half in pvp is going to be hilariously strong in duels, and absolutely terrible if you’re fighting multiple opponents. In PvE, the smoke field can make them immune to damage too, so you can get your tank on without needing a tanky pet. Gonna need some balance work.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this as well, but those are mine.

EDIT: It was pointed out the smokescale got a Taunt proc when it activated its mist field. Looks like the pets were done up with BM active.

Imagine this – Staff #4 to immob target, swap to greatsword, maul for big damage. Then use your smokescale to taunt with the mist field (which is hilarious by the way) to set up for a quick-draw maul. Since you’re hitting them while they’re under a CC effect, that one Grandmaster trait procs and he’s suddenly got another 5 seconds of immob and five stacks of bleeding, and is being chewed up by the Smokescale.

I’d say we’ll be able to DPS just fine. It’s just that Druid gives us a LOT of sustain.

Ryou.2398:

One last question what story choice should I go for to fit closer to rangers and should I choose the weather device?

Many (myself included) feel the Infinity Ball story is more compelling.

As far as college goes, I personally went with Statics, as my asura uses directed application of growth magic to make her pets large and powerful

Rashagar.8349:

I’m surprised to hear that it’s the 3rd least played profession, they seem to be everywhere in wvw sometimes (mostly late at night)

WvW is where Ranger excels at the moment, particularly at roaming and solo camp-flipping. No surprise people go where they’re most effective.

The bows aren’t bad, to be honest. The issue is that they tend to be used by people who don’t know what they’re doing, and thus carry a stigma.

Do they require any decent skill to play?
Not to play, but to actually use well? yes. You have to micromanage your pet quite a bit and know the most effective loadout to get the best effect. If you’re just standing back and plinking away with a bow, you’re doing something wrong.

Are they liked or disliked by the community and for what reasons? Bad players?
Ranger’s have had a stigma against them from day 1 as the “noob” class because there’s a large number of players that hop on ranger without learning it and assume the pet will save them. Particularly egregious in the case of those who let a bear carry them to level 80, and then don’t know how to play their class in a dungeon environment, which is largely where the stigma comes from. It’s a good class if you know what you’re doing.

What can they offer in groups?
As others have said, not much at the moment. the Druid elite specialization looks to be a support setup, though, so we could be seeing that aspect change.
As someone else said, though, Rangers are incredibly self-sufficient, and there’s been times where I’ve ended up taking the last chunk of health off a boss by myself because my team went down, and in certain situations I can even use my pet to body-block projectiles for the party. It’s about understanding what you can and can’t do.

Do you tame pets or do you just get class choice pets?
You get a free one at the start (I personally recommend drakes, which are available to 3/5 races) but tame them afterwards.

What race has the coolest ranger animations? No asura please weapons are to small.
Human and sylvari animations feel the best, with the large races being awkwardly shunted into the human timing for animations and asura feeling very floaty in melee. they’re all good for ranged combat, though.

Are the melee skills cool to?
… eh, yes and no. There’s a bit of contention around the way the sword auto-locks you, but that’s solved by going with a geatsword. All-in-all, the class feels very fluid outside of the sword auto-attack, which can be very clunky.

And do all arrows look like wooden stick or can they look like elemental arrows when
you use an elemental bow for example?
Wooden sticks, yes, but the legendary bows have different effects. here’s Kudzu, the legendary Longbow.

How popular are they? I do not care for using over populated classes
Despite what some may think, Ranger is actually the third least played class in the game, beaten only by Mesmer in second place and engineer in first. Mesmer and Engineer are justified, as they’re odd for the genre and are mechanically kinda finicky. Ranger though? Ranger is perceived as sucking, and the vast majority of players prefer to swap over to something else for power and support.

The problem I hold with “Seasons” is that it follows the same issue that you yourself pointed out; cycling is extremely clunky in a twitch gameplay setting like we have here. We’ve also had no indication that the Maguuma druids, who we’d be learning this from, even have much concept of season – the saurians in the jungle suggest that the place is hot (and possibly wet) all year round, so it wouldn’t fit traditional concepts. Otherwise, I agree, that could be cool.

I find the idea of choosing between two of the three aspects much more agreeable, though. working it much like Revenant legends would probably be for the best. Either way though, I just don’t see seasonal cycling as likely.

So, from two different Datamined bits over on Reddit ( can’t find one of them, but we have the other here where you can see all the Glyph icons) we have a pretty good idea that Druids get glyphs as their Heal/utility/elite skill type. Glyphs are an elementalist skill type and interact directly with the way the elementalist profession works – specifically, they change in some way based on which element the ele is currently attuned to.

What’s interesting about this is that rangers already have a pet swap, but it’s unfeasible to expect that our “swap” mechanic will be based on what pets we can currently swap between. The reason for this is because there’s ten different pet families (including fish) and that means that just for the glyphs, they’d have to design and balance 50 different skill effects, which is quite a bit beyond what should be there. The datamined skill icons, though, show three variations of every glyph; that suggests three different aspects.

I’d like to draw your attention to this image. It’s the datamined druid background, and interestingly it has three different animals on it, which I’m thinking are the druid’s aspects. Taking from their pet family counterparts, the Bear aspect would be about defensive abilities, being able to take damage and keep fighting, possibly with some healing in the mix; this’d potentially allow you to create defensive areas with your glyphs, providing protection, stability, a healing area, that sort of thing. Canines (and thus wolves) are control focused; we’d be looking at dazes, stuns, maybe a fenced in area similar to what guardians get with their Hammer #5. And finally, what appears to be a hawk or eagle. The bird pet family is all about pure damage and blinds, suggesting that the bird aspect would rely on, maybe with some condition damage mixed in.

As many have pointed out, though, we can’t really get rid of pets, even as part of an elite spec. Every weapon except torch has some level of interaction with the pet, there’s a trait-line devoted to pets, there’s many traits outside of beast mastery that deal with the pet… for good or ill, we rangers are bound to an animal friend. This doesn’t mean we can’t change the way the profession mechanic works however, and to that end I propose eliminating the second pet slot.

The Idea here is simple, once you get past the preamble. If you only have one pet to run with, you can make it so that instead of swapping pets, F4 cycles through the aspects. Bear -> Wolf -> Bird -> Bear -> Wolf and so on. I have said before, though, that they can’t remove the second pet without providing a buff to the pet, and aspects actually solve that rather nicely; specifically, when you swap to an aspect it heals your pet applies an aspect based buff to it, same as above – bear for tanking, wolf for control, bird for damage. It’d go a long way to making every pet type viable in more situations.

OGDeadHead.8326:

That’s really not the point here, don’t you think?

I dunno. I think it’s a relevant opinion – OP is basically going “make it easy!” while the other guy is going “L2P”

Which basically fits the concept of the thread, even if it’s inane.

Focused speculation says that pets will be getting the advanced AI of the mobs we’ve been seeing in Verdant Brink during the betas – this means they’ll be more intelligent about their combat movement and the locations of their attacks.

This does not mean, however, that ledges cease to be the bane of their existence.

nacario.9417:

One can only hope HoT brings a few different pet types, preferably some bigger looking ones with useful and reliable f2.

It’s my personal hope that we can get a Stonehead as a tank style pet. you know one of the dinosaurs? It’d have to be scaled down somewhat, certainly, but it’d be awesome either way. Give it a similar charge to the necromancer’s flesh golem charge and I’d be sold.

Ehecatl.9172:

Calanthe.3857:

Yes, to the previously mentioned Behemoths, Raptors. I think Wind Riders and Colocals would feel wrong in flavor, because they’re magical/mythical creatures, unlike current Wildlife pets.

also Barracuda that summons allies like the Hyena underwater, Giant Beetle or Giant Spotted Beetle, Vampire Bat that drains life, Sea Scorpion, Electric Fish, Triop.

And please please give pets baseline condition damage.

I don’t quite understand how behemoths are not considered magical while colocals are. Or even the drakes we can tame now who shoot elemental attacks from their mouths.

They are animals. As are griffons, raptors, and similar things. The reason they can do blatantly magical effects is because of how Tyria works, so “magical animal” is in no way something that can disqualify an animal as available to Rangers.

Meaning it’s just sloppy that we don’t have access to these things.

Hot kitten , those damage numbers. I’m definitely going to have to try something like this. thanks for sharing!

I particularly love drakes, myself; confusion makes people panic, so taking a reef drake into a pvp situation tends to be a good idea.

Lick Wounds has, right from launch, been bugged underwater. It works as normal but even if the pet dies it’ll still be able to heal you, making it impossible for enemy PvPers to actually kill you (since you can’t stomp underwater)

It was a contributing factor to why Raid on the Capricorn got tossed.

That_Shaman over on reddit datamined some shoulders that look to be made of moss and vines a while back, so that’s likely our winner.

LughLongArm.5460:

He says this idea came up in a CDI discussion, were you part of this discussion?

I was not, no. this isn’t exactly an exclusive idea, though. Besides, this thread is based off datamining, rather than my own ideas or the CDI

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Oh, OP, a straight DPS increase via 1 aspect won’t be putting Ranger into the PVE Meta. There’s a reason Staff Ele is in the PVE Meta and DPS is only part of it.

I’m quite aware, otherwise lich form necromancers would be in higher demand. There’s a lot else to the idea though, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t ignoring the obvious other parts of the subject. I’m addressing a small part and presenting ideas for that part, not covering every skill possible like Wooden Potatoes might.

I get that, yeah, but keep in mind if the aspects do replace our second pet, we’re looking at having given up something as well. Namely, an added level of versatility.

Look at the first minor trait in Beast Mastery. Adds +150 to power, precision, toughness, and vitality of your pet.

So, a while back someone datamined This Image as the background image for the Druid specialization.

With the new information that Druids will be getting aspects, I figure it’s time to speculate; these three animals are the aspects we can swap between. We need look no further than Ranger pets to see how they’d work, too.

1. Bears are focused on naught but taking damage really really well. An aspect that adds protection or otherwise reduces incoming damage?
2. Wolves are extremely focused on CC effects. Perhaps it adds a chance of knockdown to our attacks, or makes it so that when we use a control skill it strips two stacks of defiance/stability/a lot of the defiance bar. Fear the PBS Ranger.
3. Eagles and other birds are focused on sheer DPS, mainly with a specialization on burst. A flat Damage modifier would help give Druids a place in the meta for basically anything.

There’s a couple ways I can see this going. The first is that Druids gain a new F5 skill, and what it does is it cycles through the three aspects, adding their abilities to you in turn. Second choice is that we get a selection of aspects; the current ones I’m certain of fall into the pet families, after all, so who’s to say we wouldn’t get an aspect for every one? in that case we’d just swap between two that we picked out of the bunch.

The second way would be easily explained by getting rid of our second pet; instead of two, we get one that’s healed with F4 and the second slot is then two aspects that we can swap between at will, much like how a Revenant can swap between legends.

Before anybody says “oh, we get rid of pets” I’d like to point out that that obviates literally an entire trait line in Beastmastery, and further many of us are Rangers because we want to be pet masters, making this kind of change very unlikely. Anet devs have also said in the past that Rangers will never drop the pet.

Darkness.9732:

Since ranger is the worst class in gw2, druid will be the worst spec in gw2. So for me you shouldn’ t go druid..you should change class

Some would argue that Necromancer is the worst class, but the Reaper is awash with awesome; even perennial gripers on the necro forum love Reaper.

Hold your horses until we actually see what the Druid does.

I personally find consecrations to be more likely, but given Wards are almost the same as consecrations, that’s a semantics thing.

Maybe it’s based on perception, or maybe we just didn’t use builds that were very good for our choices; I was cleaning house with a reaper, but had a lot of trouble with the others.

As far as it goes, I played in the Beta and the only class that got a direct upgrade from going into an elite spec was Necro → Reaper. Guardian only got a small utility buff, mesmer player decently but about the same level of power as the base class, and ele is kinda lower powered by taking shouts and warhorn except in zerg situations.

if things follow the pattern, Druid will be a different playstyle, but not one that’s truly better than the base ranger.

I haven’t played much power ranger in pvp lately (been having too much fun with traps) but I took my power ranger build out into Verdant Brink over the weekend and it was actually more effective than any other build I played over the weekend. My power build is also still totally viable in the dungeons that I do, so there’s that too.

Tyloric.7520:

The Eye of the North is now in the heart of Jormag’s domain, right? Is there any explanation why the structure is still standing at all? The dragons consume magic and magical artifacts to survive, and the Eye definitely qualifies.

Keep in mind that when it was discovered quite a long time before GW1, it was pristine. When the player gets to it in EotN, it’s still pristine.

But when we get to it in GW2? It’s a wreck. The roof and walls are collapsing. the scrying pool has plants growing in it. I’m willing to bet you that Jormag did in fact eat the magic there, and that included the spells that kept it from falling apart. there was no need to dismantle it afterwards, because the utility it had for the Icebrood was done.

okay, i’m gonna stop you there on the traps thing – A trap ranger can’t bust into a tea party and murder everybody like some builds can, but they’re far from ineffective in team fights. the number of times I’ve saved someone with my traps is huge.

I ran through Verdant Brink on three characters

The first was a Minion Master Reaper. Reapers are LUDICROUSLY tough when their minions have access to lifesteal, and all the mobs in VB that are immune to damage in some way have lifesteal get through that, manking it a surprisingly effective choice. And smokescales, at that point, are completely laughable because their damage is so spread out.

then I ran it woth a ranger. This was because I felt that VB needed a test with something that’s already in game, to see how comparable it is. In a weird way, I feel my ranger (power signets and beast mastery build) is much more powerful there than in Core Tyria. It also mitigates smokescale alpha strikes by having a second body on the field, and due to the lower health (but higher damage) of enemy creatures, it feels quite powerful. I really like it. Buggy events keep causing problems, though; I kept trying to get pact soldiers to rally points and they’d consistently run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. I imagine that’s a quirk of the new combat AI, which is meant for actual combat, interacting oddly with the “Carrier” AI. Best look at that.

Revenant I had a considerable amount less fun on for some reason. I tried both Zerker/Shiro with a hammer and Rabid/Mallyx with Mace and Axe. It felt good, but just not as good as the other two characters. Can’t really say why.

On the whole, the map is beautiful, and is great for people gliding. Kudos to the sound and music teams.

The GS block has a few key things to keep in mind:

1. If something is within striking distance when you block an attack from it, you’ll drop your block and kick them
2. That means that this skill is at it’s most effective when either your opponent doesn’t have stability/defiance, or when you’re blocking to close the gap.
3. Like any blocking skill, there’s a fair number of things that are unblockable.

Why don’t you tell us what exactly you’ve been hit by?

I ran a DH earlier today; testing it a bit in WvW, PvP, and PvE. Sluggish, hard to use, and while it did decent damage I actually found myself often needing to swap out the traps and longbow for something that simply worked better. I died a lot.

Meanwhile, pvping 1v2 on my ranger and winning. So, while Dragonhunter sounds like Power Ranger+, it’s just not.

Sounds good to me. I’m personally in favor of consecration skills, though, since they would add AoE support rather than selfish options for the purpose of helping out allies, which is something that rangers classically lack.

Regarding pets, I posted a while ago with an idea on how pet changes could enhance their usability; if a ranger becomes a support caster in regards to playstyle, they could change the F4 from a “pet swap” mechanic to a “heal your pet” mechanic. The reason this would work is it’d let them roll a percentage of the second pet’s stats into the first one, eliminating the “it’s squishy” problem so many players who choose to run cats and birds run into and increasing their damage to make up for the Ranger’s loss of DPS and the pet being kinda clunky. that combined with the AI advancements in HoT would make pets honestly effective.

Holland.9351:

I want anything but transformation skills, even if it suits the idea of druids in general.

That’s the thing, though – Transformations do not suit druids, at least in Tyria, for several reasons, both meta and in character.

Druids in Tyria are plant mages. they were a group of krytan humans that went out in the Maguuma to be closer to nature, and eventually transcended their human bodies to become oakhearts in addition to their phenomenal power. then, they eventually grew out of those and became protector spirits for the jungle. Frankly, they were more likely to have been earth elementalists than rangers, but for the druid armor you could get for rangers in GW1. Three different setups (Rangers, elementalists, and what we know about the druids in lore) and not a single one of them has ever transformed into an animal.

OOC, Anet has gone out of its way in the past to avoid being too similar to its competitors. Instead of rogues, we had thieves and assassins. Monks instead of priests. Elementalists in place of mages or shamans. Hell, the Dervish and Paragon were in place of what would normally be paladins. If the pattern holds, ArenaNet would hate for their druid to be a knockoff of DnD or WoW, and would try for something unique. A plant mage, which fits the lore, completely evades the problem of homogenization.

On a Meta level, Transformation skills often suck. Lich form is powerful but unusable if your enemies know anything about how to fight them. All the norn forms are half-useless. The ranger elite to transform into an oakheart is near useless. Tornado form for elementalists doesn’t see any sort of competitive use; whenever you see it, it was just an engineer that had been hoping for rampage. Rampage is an exception, I’ll admit, but that’s because it got super buffed with the June 23rd patch; it has classically been a very weak skill to take.

On another meta level, what would transformation skills even be called? Physical Skills? Rampage set the precedent for physical skills being able to t ransform you, but it’d eliminate your pet (important) and disable the use of your staff (where Anet has gone on record saying that Specs that wield a two-hander are going to be focused more heavily on the use of that weapon). Kits? Once again, eliminates your weapon, and signs are pointing thieves getting them as part of some kind of ninja setup. Stances? That I could see, taking on animal aspects, but stances are instant-cast non-transformative skills.

Taking it even further, transformations are the Norn thing. if they wanted to give us those, they’d hold off until we went after Jormag, as that expansion would give us a much better story focus on the Norn.

That was more a general bug than anything – happened a lot to my healing skills mainly, and I know at least one warrior was complaining about her burst skills in that regard.

Now you’re just being bitter, Quark.

So, in another thread, someone mentioned the idea of druids, rather than swapping between pets having a single primary pet that F4 heals instead of swaps out, and you pull up the secondary pet’s HP to add to the first. What happens to your second slot? It becomes an aspect.

I’ve said a few times in these boards that if the druid is a support-caster, it makes sense for the focus of damage to be shifted away from the ranger to the pet, mainly by buffing up its ability to dole out damage and take hits. This creates the dynamic of, even when solo, supporting the damage dealer in your party.

People have asked for pet stat allocation in the past, and the way I see it, this idea is a good concept to run with that – basically, you take a certain amount of the stats of the secondary pet (somewhere between 30% and 50%, I think) and add them to your primary pet, creating a powerhouse that, in theory can tank tank for you and make up for your lost damage while you’re focused on keeping people standing. Interestingly, this was how beast masters in GW1 operated, though they mainly just focused on keeping their pet standing.

There’d have to be some balancing done, obviously, otherwise we’d have some people going Cat/Bird and having it churn out absolutely stupid damage, but this idea works for things like Drake/Bird. Along with some AI enhancements and tuning the player for healing and boon duration over damage to go with some AoE support abilities (consecrations, anybody?), this could theoretically be very workable.

Chokolata.1870:

Probably a single pet and that we can control the second ability. The pet would probably be beefed up in HP though.

That’d actually be really cool – Roll maybe half the stats of the second pet into the first one, and F4 heals the primary pet rather than swapping. It’d let you choose a tank pet as your primary, and then give it damage.

Gav.1425:

Druid will be a shape shifter. There will be no pet. It has been foretold!

Bull. The druid in the announcement trailer had an alpine wolf with him, and “shapeshifter” is too WoW for Anet to go for. Besides, Tyrian druids are plant mages, not animal mages.