Lazze.9870

> @"JorneMormel.9850" said: > > @"Soilder.3607" said: > > Revisiting this topic after having resumed playing support Druid in WvW again. > > 1. > > 2. > > 3... > > 4. Pets - Just get rid of them when playing druid and roll their traits into the ranger. Entering/exiting CA mode counts as pet swap for purpose of traits etc etc... > > Agreed wholeheartedly, but how would you go about the (Beastmastery) traitline(s) and skills/effects that affect the pet? The exact same way they handle soulbeast, but with number changes to not make the elite spec oppressing.

> @"Soilder.3607" said: > Coming from an old GW1 Ranger main (who would later switch to Ritualist), I never liked the pet being a forced mechanic. I'd be glad if all the elite specs dropped the pet entirely and compensated through other means. I don't get why anyone who played Ranger in GW1 would prefer pets being a forced mechanic, as it is in GW2. The freedom of how you could play ranger in GW1 would have made a much better platform to build a druid off of than what we have in GW2. Soulbeast has already provided a baseline for how skills and traits would act for a petless ranger, that is something they could expand on for petless rangers. Not just could, but _should_ expand on if they want to make interesting elite specs in the future. Being stuck with the pet on every damn elite spec is gonna limit what they can do. They can still incorperate it thematically and such, but having the physical AI pet there with its F1-F4 controls? Nope. And before anyone says that ranger is supposed to be the pet class in this game; I know. And I'd bet Anet regrets that decision.

I run it quite often actually, but that is mostly because I almost always run immob ranger in our guild run, and well.. sometimes the comp is shit, one party lacks a scrapper and there is a queue. Dudu support time. Druid's best role imo is as CC/Immob bot while acting as the third support after FB and scrapper. Immob Soulbeast is overall better if I get the choice. For druid to be viable as primary healer and cleanser (aka the role scrappers now have), Anet will have to do some major changes to Nature Magic, plus several refinements to druid itself. Anything from completely reworking useless traits like Invigorating Bond into something actually useable in large scale fights, to making Evasive Purity an AoE cleanse, would go a long way. If IB instead was something close to engie's overloaded Purity of Purpose trait, or something as simple as regen you apply cleanses a condition, you'd actually bring something usefull from the core class other than healing spring (and immobs). Using the player's healing power to scale IB would make it a lot better, but it wouldn't get druid any closer to usefulness in WvW. Druid itself needs refinement to staff, traits and skills. Lingering Light should give us increased outgoing healing all the time, with the bonus doubled in CA (it's way too one-sided as it is now). CA 1 was always shit. Staff 2 was always shit. Staff 5 could be larger. Glyph of Equality and Alignement are good, especially in CA. I think the Lesser Seed of Life from the glyph trait could be bumped up to two cleanses like it originally was. Glyph of Unity is still.. eh.. It heals a lot when you use it at the right time, but the non-CA version was always trash. Glyph of the Star is cool, but to get the most out of it in WvW it would have to work like scrapper wells (gyros) do. Glyph of the Tides doesn't really add anything, but I wouldn't touch it (maybe flip the two versions). All that being said, the two most glaring issues before talking about skills and buffs are imo that 1; support without CA feels lackluster. Support with CA feels mostly good, despite some awkward skills. Something needs to be done with the CA access. Both having a cooldown and being forced to reach 100 % is too restricting. Remove the latter, maybe make it more like the heat mechanic Holos have, or something akin to that. It would require more work down the road to balance stuff out, but for a WvW role, it would be a lot better. The alternative is obviously to make druid much more viable as a healer outside of CA. And 2; Pets are dead. Scratch that, they're dead-er with the stat penalties. Won't change unless they do drastic changes to druid as a whole (as in removing the pet ("permamerged", inspired by SB?), make it an invulnerable whisp, or whatever). Would screw over PvP druid and druid roaming, but I don't really care. Core and SB can roam and pvp just fine, I'm sure the next elite spec will too (I'm also sure the upcoming spec _won't_ give ranger a solid WvW squad role, considering they gave us one with pet merge and shared stances, one that heals, and yet none are particularly wanted in a squad - so why not make an existing elite a squad role).