AlexndrTheGreat.8310

For open world PvE yes this game can easily be played solo. Obviously since it’s an MMO you will usually be around other people most of the time, but it’s pretty easy to be able to do your own things without needing to rely on working with other people. Even in those cases in the open world, it’s usually just ungrouped people completing events. For the larger meta events that take place across entire maps (Dragon Stand, Drizzlewood, Tangled Depths, Auric Basin, etc), those usually involve partially organized groups (at least be in a squad and follow the tag around). People mention about things like hero points or other difficult events being solo-unfriendly (such as events that end with needing to kill a champion level mob, for example), which while it is usually easier killing it in a group there are builds for all the classes that let you have extreme amounts of soloing capabilities to let you beat those events by yourself. Various places such as build sites or YouTube have build guides for people who do that type of content. A YouTuber called Lord Hizen is someone who has such videos for ~7 of the classes right now. Using these types of builds give a real “Monster Hunter” type vibe of people soloing large difficult champions that are typically done as a group, such as Legendary Bounties. For things like instances PvE (Fractals, Strikes, Raids) and PvP and WvW, being in a group is mandatory to complete that type of content. The only exception would be in WvW doing solo roaming which is possible to do by yourself, but will still involve other people in some way (enemy and friendly players).

I’ve kinda been leaning toward a similar idea of totems being a new mechanic in place of pets, something between what exists with Scourge Shades and Ventari Tablet. Although in my view of it it would replace the pets instead of acting alongside them. Something such as you have two totems you can summon that are either: 1) Invulnerable, but on a timer like Shades 2) Indefinite, but have health pools such as we have with Ranger pets. I guess the play style behind them would be again like Shades or Ventari where you have some moveable AoE presence that emanates from the totem (Damage, CC, Condi’s, Healing, Cleansing, etc...) which for my personal goal would be to allow Rangers to have presence and a role within WvW zergs. Maybe something in the supportive side that is not necessarily something that Druid already covers? Or maybe an AoE debuff/condi focused role, although I’m worried that it might overlap too heavily with Scourge. The totems can be based off either the specific pet (brown bear, black bear, etc...) or the pet family (Bear, Avian, Canine, etc...). The groundwork for ideas for totem skills can be inspired by what we have with Soulbeast abilities where they have abilities specific to its family (Canine Leap and Bite, Bear Invuln and Bite, etc...) or on an Anet defined role (Power damage, Condi damage, Healing, etc...). Just looking at the past ideas for Ranger elite mechanics, we have 1) Ranger, two pets we swap between 2) Druid, shift focus from pets to a new form (Celestial Avatar) 3) Soulbeast, focus on one pet with merge and un-merge with. From what I can see, the two most obvious ideas left would be: 1) Two pets at once, maybe slightly weaker but still a net gain, or can’t interact with the secondary pet, etc 2) Have something based on a companion / pet that is not how it is currently (this example being summonable totems Regardless, I think it’s a really interesting idea and exists in a space that may not necessarily already be filled by the currently existing roles.