Elite Speculation: The Warden

Overview: It is a perilous world of gods and monsters. While everyone is scrambling to fight or flight amidst the chaos, there are those who protect the vulnerable and defenseless that are not just civilians and refugees, but the world around them and the animals as well. One sees these defenders rushing into battle, ready to block incoming aggressors to protect the innocent and invoke nature's blessing to those around them. In many cases, the animals they protect will often rally to their side as well as their pets.

New Weapon: Shield

1. Griffin's Sweep: throw your shield and stun up to three foes.
2. Oakheart's embrace: raise your shield and protect yourself from incoming attacks. Each attack blocked restores health for you and your pets.

New Skills: Totem (functions similarly to both a signet and a minion ability of the necromancer. Totems grant passive stat boosts to you and your pets while activating the totems summons a random pet based on the totems respective category)

• Totem of Mending:
• Passive: increased healing power
• Active: summon an animal companion to heal nearby allies.
• Totem of Resilience:
• Passive: increased toughness and vitality
• Active: summon an animal companion that can tank.
• Totem of Aggression:
• Passive: increased precision and ferocity
• Active: summon an animal companion that is damage oriented.
• Totem of the Hunt:
• Passive: increased condition damage and movement speed
• Active: summon an animal companion that can inflict condition damage.
• Totem of Benevolence:
• Passive: generates a random boon every ten seconds
• Active: summon a support oriented animal companion.
• Totem of the Pack (Elite):
• Passive: boost all stats of you and your pets (+75)
• Active: All pets active, as well as yourself, receive quickness, fury, might, and regeneration for 10 seconds.

New mechanic:*Nature's Blessing (charged whenever an boon is applied to you and nearby allies. Press F5 to emit a healing pulse plus a removal of one condition every two seconds for 10 seconds)

*Rangers can now have two pets out at a time with F4 alternating between pets and F2 to use the special abilities of both pets at once. When activating totems, the animal selected is random. The animal can be recalled at anytime after summoned to revert back to totem, but there will be a cooldown.

Traits:Minor proficiency: you can now use the shield, totems, and Nature's blessing

Major adept: Pet skills now provide aegis to nearby allies.

Minor adept: Boons on you and your pets last 33% longer

Minor Adept: when you use griffon's sweep, allies also gain protection; shield recharge reduced.

Minor adept: Totems now provide boons to allies when activated.

Major master: Pet skills now provide stun nearby foes.

Minor adept: Totems keep their passive after activation and during cool down.

Minor adept: totems have a reduced recharge.

Minor adept: activate oakheart's embrace when your health is below the threshold.

Major grandmaster: pet skills now remove conditions.

Minor grandmaster: Nature's blessing's radius is doubled.

Minor Grandmaster: Totem activation will now set off the pet skill of the summoned companion.

Minor grandmaster: Nature's blessing now removes two conditions at a time and lasts longer.

Whats the point of totems? Rangers already have Nature Spirit.

@runeblade.7514 said:Whats the point of totems? Rangers already have Nature Spirit.

Totems are more about the stat boosts and summoning an animal companion of that specific pet group to come and fight along side you. Nature Spirits don't do anything except give buffs when commanded to. When you activate a totem, the stat boost you got passively will be taken (unless trained to remain active) and a pet will be summoned to help you, more like a necromancer minion. Also, the elite is for buffing you and every pet you have in the area. Since people really want something that buffs them and their pets, I thought this would be a great elite spec and elite skill.

While I'm not sure how I feel about the proposed class mechanic, I'm definitely a fan of the name. The name reminds me of the warden class in LotRO and fits GW's Ranger class really well, though I think it would have been a better name for the stance-based play of Soul Beast.

I like the basic concept but I am not so a fan of the multiple pet idea.

How about giving the "totems" (which I would count as sigils, because that is what they are) a unique twist where the passiv effect mostly empoweres the warden directly while the active effect turns the pet into a respective spiritual ghost thingy with massiv buffs and new abilities. Then also giving the skills kind of low cooldown might give you an interesting class where you constantly shift power between you and your pet.

The multiple pet idea I think should be a whole concept for itself - implemendend in a kind of beast master or pack master elite spec.