Guild Wars 2

Pure Longbow traits in Marksmanship:
Eagle Eye (Master)
Piercing Arrows (Master)
Remorseless (Grandmaster)
Read the Wind (Grandmaster)

Other useful traits for Longbow in Marksmanship:
Spotter (Master)
Signet of the Beastmaster (Grandmaster)

So, a total of 6 useful Longbow traits, but only 2 slots to put them in. Rework this or you won’t be making any progress by adding Read the Wind. 5 traits are already competing for 2 slots, now you’re adding a 6th.

On a side-note,
useful Longbow traits in Skirmishing:
Quick Draw (Master)

That’s a total of 1 useful skill competing for 2 slots.

First of all, yes, they need to combine or move some traits.
But they also have to make the traits work for both bows.

My Suggestion: Make Read the Wind standard, make Piercing Arrows standard, and merge Eagle Eye and Spotter. Then, replace Read the Wind with Close Quarters: your Longbow auto attack always hits for maximum range co-efficient. Make Remorseless a Master Trait, and replace it with a new Grandmaster trait.

Holland.9351:

Pure Longbow traits in Marksmanship:
Eagle Eye (Master)
Piercing Arrows (Master)
Remorseless (Grandmaster)
Read the Wind (Grandmaster)

Other useful traits for Longbow in Marksmanship:
Spotter (Master)
Signet of the Beastmaster (Grandmaster)

So, a total of 6 useful Longbow traits, but only 2 slots to put them in. Rework this or you won’t be making any progress by adding Read the Wind. 5 traits are already competing for 2 slots, now you’re adding a 6th.

To really fix this for bow Rangers they need to add Piercing Arrows to Quick Draw (like it is for Warriors and rifles), move Read the Wind to Skirmishing, and move Spotter down to Adept.

Agreed. We are too overloaded with bow traits, while we need them to even make bows viable. Also, shortbow love.

Holland.9351:

Pure Longbow traits in Marksmanship:
Eagle Eye (Master)
Piercing Arrows (Master)
Remorseless (Grandmaster)
Read the Wind (Grandmaster)

Other useful traits for Longbow in Marksmanship:
Spotter (Master)
Signet of the Beastmaster (Grandmaster)

So, a total of 6 useful Longbow traits, but only 2 slots to put them in. Rework this or you won’t be making any progress by adding Read the Wind. 5 traits are already competing for 2 slots, now you’re adding a 6th.

On a side-note,
useful Longbow traits in Skirmishing:
Quick Draw (Master)

That’s a total of 1 useful skill competing for 2 slots.

Combine Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye, move spotter to Adept. That’s all that would be needed to fix this. Then the only difficult choice will be which GM to take, as it should be.

And thats not even incuding the 2 other Signet traits you really want if you have opted to take SoB as your GM.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Holland.9351:

Pure Longbow traits in Marksmanship:
Eagle Eye (Master)
Piercing Arrows (Master)
Remorseless (Grandmaster)
Read the Wind (Grandmaster)

Other useful traits for Longbow in Marksmanship:
Spotter (Master)
Signet of the Beastmaster (Grandmaster)

So, a total of 6 useful Longbow traits, but only 2 slots to put them in. Rework this or you won’t be making any progress by adding Read the Wind. 5 traits are already competing for 2 slots, now you’re adding a 6th.

On a side-note,
useful Longbow traits in Skirmishing:
Quick Draw (Master)

That’s a total of 1 useful skill competing for 2 slots.

Combine Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye, move spotter to Adept. That’s all that would be needed to fix this. Then the only difficult choice will be which GM to take, as it should be.

I fully agree with this.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Holland.9351:

Pure Longbow traits in Marksmanship:
Eagle Eye (Master)
Piercing Arrows (Master)
Remorseless (Grandmaster)
Read the Wind (Grandmaster)

Other useful traits for Longbow in Marksmanship:
Spotter (Master)
Signet of the Beastmaster (Grandmaster)

So, a total of 6 useful Longbow traits, but only 2 slots to put them in. Rework this or you won’t be making any progress by adding Read the Wind. 5 traits are already competing for 2 slots, now you’re adding a 6th.

On a side-note,
useful Longbow traits in Skirmishing:
Quick Draw (Master)

That’s a total of 1 useful skill competing for 2 slots.

Combine Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye, move spotter to Adept. That’s all that would be needed to fix this. Then the only difficult choice will be which GM to take, as it should be.

This seems reasonable because at least this way there’s still internal synergy between signet of the beastmaster and your choice to take Signet Mastery with it. This then allows you an acceptable level of choice when it comes to choosing your traits.

Now as for quick draw, I’m personally up in the air on this. Quick Draw + Eagle Eye + Piercing Arrows is too much. What if they made quick draw also reduce the cooldown on weapon swap by 50% if you had a bow equipped in either hand? Would it then justify its place in skirmishing?

Quick draw and piercing should be merged and moved down to skirmishing. There’s no question about the balance as there’s already a trait in place that’s identical in function and placement on the warrior.

RtW should replace piercing on the master slot. Make a new GM trait that’s worthy of that slot.

Holland.9351:

…

Listing all traits which benefit one weapon or playstyle is a bit moot. Every class can do that. It doesn’t matter that they are all in one slot or scattered across several traitlines. You are not supposed to get all of them.

The traits aren’t weak or underhwelming. The Longbow itself is. It would be way more important to improve the baseline performance of the Longbow than reorganizing traits. This way picking the traits would be tactical and not motivated by the impression that the weapon is worseless without them.

However, people really need to detach themselves from the vision of a pure Archer or Sniper because the combat system in GW2 will never allow a ranged weapon to deal the same damage as a melee weapon. And that probably is the real issue for many Ranger players.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Combine Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye, move spotter to Adept. That’s all that would be needed to fix this. Then the only difficult choice will be which GM to take, as it should be.

Combining Piercing Arrow and Eagle Eye indeed feels reasonable. However, moving Spotter down a tier will most likely result in a nerf of the amount of Precision. That’s actually quite bad for every group scenario.

[Edit] Those German words slipping into my sentences…

Normally, I’d say options like that are good. A Good trait line will have many things you want, take thief SA trait line for example. Bunch of good traits, and you can only pick 3. It’s what adds build variety.

However, in the ranger’s case they need restructure and buffs. Something I havn’t seen so far in the mentioned proposals for them. It’s one of those things a lot of professions struggle with, where traits are spread out and don’t make sense being alone. I don’t see how 2X projectile speed is GM worthy on its own. So you can’t strafe and evade ranger bow anymore…. GG?

I think the ranger needs more basic help with the bow to make it reach minimally viable status as opposed to not just buffing (but making playable) the bows thru traits.

Some basic functionality should be added to the bow WITHOUT traiting.