Guild Wars 2

So this question I have is how closely are traits related to skills? I didn’t ask this in the ranger forum because I wanted to see if its profession specific or a broader situation among many professions. For those not interested in example of my question please skip down 5 paragraphs for conclusion statement.
As a ranger I look at my Marksmanship tree and see only weapon that gets a bonus is longbow. Fantastic! makes sense since longbows need extra damage so the power boost is great, but the other is increased condition length which doesn’t make any sense to me since longbow for lacks conditions. I am guessing most rangers take this trait line for teh 6 sec invulnerability and extra range in longbow for WvW.
Next trait line is Skirmishing. It is a Precision/Critical Damage trait line. In it is Traps, Shortbow/Longbow cooldown reducer, main hand axe crit bonus, and bunch of pet bonuses. This mainly confusing because Traps, Shortbow, main hand axe are all seen as condition type weapons not crit weapons. Longbow fits here well with pets as Longbow needs more damage which it gets from crits and longbow gives pets a job as body tank. So precision is full of range weapons bonuses which makes the extra 10% flank bonus hilarious because when usually using range weapons people are charging at you or facing you so not likely to get flank bonus.
Next line is Wilderness Survival It is toughness/condition damage. Yay a tanky damage build so you take damage with toughness while your conditions do damage.
we have martial mastery which is good cooldown on melee weapons Off hand training better cooldowns for offhand. So if we look at weapons Greatsword has the better defensive skills between it and sword ,but the sword has more condition attacks. In my opinion neither fits. A “defensive greatsword build that does no condition damage because Maul blows” or an "defensive sword build that blows cause doesn’t have any defensive skills(no free evade,counter strike knockdown,daze). Off hand is great if you use dagger/torch for extra condition damage, but not the warhorn which is more commonly chosen.
Next line is nature magic Vitality and Boon duration. In it is one weapon and spirits
Greatsword doesn’t have any boons so lets look at spirits. This one actually fits! Too bad for the most part tryin to get a boon from these guys is hard. Fire spirit does extra condition damage, Frozen does condition damage, Spirit of Nature does healing/rez and condition removal. Then we have last two Earth which gives protection and Storm which gives swiftness.
Last but not least we have our Healing beast trait line. First of all I find it a bit funny as most rangers don’t care if pets die and just use this line for the quickness buff, but lets say they were gonna go Beastmastery what do they get? Shouts! and pet abilities which makes sense since instead of normal weapons we use pet as weapon. Shouts as most rangers will tell you are near useless unless in pve where enemies just stand there.
Now here is a question to my fellow rangers do any of you use the pet specific traits besides the one that gives felines extra bleeds? As for healing there is no regen bonus like in vitality(or at least not for you as pets get a regen for 30 pts) no spirit of nature/Heal skill bonuses.
First of all. This might seem like a QQ for a ranger. If you think it is don’t respond. I dont want to see comments like cry more ,etc… I just want feed back from fellow players either saying “hey yeah this doesn’t make sense” or “yeah my class trait lines are like that” and then maybe a solution you have come up with in your play style to use the fact most weapons don’t match their trait lines to your advantage.

cry moar.

just kidding.

i dont think you are the only one feeling like that, there are some that dont make sense, for example, in the Honor trait line for guardians, we have a minor trait that gives us vigor when we critically hit, cool right?, then the last minor trait gives us a boost to damage as long as our endurance is low, soooo, we need to have a build that has little critical chance? lolwut

while i cant give you a detailed answer analisis like your post, i can tell you i dont really pay much attention to the minor traits nor the boosted stats, those come secondary to what major traits i want, and the stats are a bonus addition, of course i only keep in mind the condition vs power trait lines, as i’ve of yet delve into them, so i mostly focus on power since i have a lack of condition inflicting (as a guardian)

May I ask that you space out your post a bit more? It was really difficult to read.

Something you seem to completely ignore though is the fact that you can switch weapons. Having high condition line that gives bonuses to a non-condition weapon also gives bonuses to your condition weapon on your other set.

First tree is Power and Condition Duration = This doesn’t only help long bows honestly. Vulnerability and opening strike are affected, piercing arrows can be killer for any bow, and in general, the traits are good for any bow type if you want to spec in to that.

Second, I can kind of agree, but again, it isn’t specifically just to those weapons. Quick Draw applies to both long and short bows and Trap Potency is good with a crit build.

Third line… I don’t see your argument. The skills for your thing are pretty arguably fine. The 20% faster on off hand weapons is killer, so sword works well for that build. Greatsword not so much, but eh, you can work it.

For the forth line, Spiritual knowledge helps a lot with the entire not proccing bit of spirits, and if you combine it with Unbound, Vigorous or Vengeance, you have some pretty nifty little meat tanks following you around.

The fifth line is the weakest unless you really build around your pets, but that’s the entire point. I don’t feel like it’s really lacking though. The shouts -are- kinda useless though, at least from what I’ve found. Of course, that’s from me not knowing how to really use the properly and not having the want to learn, so that’s my issue, not an issue with the game.

I dunno, I’ve always like the ranger trees and found no real issues with it.

I run a BM hybrid that uses two kitties and with traited bleed buffs, but I do it with a shortbow, not a longbow. You can make a really decent PvE condition build with it, but that’s about it. Unfortunately, condition builds lose a lot of their effectiveness late in the game where so much content is made for group farming, but for leveling, it’s ace.

I’ve attempted to create longbow builds but I never really found one that I thought was very good. This is primarily due to the fact that the longbow is altogether pretty weak and it’s achilles heel is the range damage debuffs. Outside of WvW (which I’m not counting in terms of profession effectiveness), many fights take place within medium or short range, no matter what you do, which immediately kittens the LB’s effectiveness. Traiting in additional range is a total waste.

But really, I don’t particularly find the traits that bad. It’s the weapons themselves that are a pain and not very useful. Sorry I don’t have details, but that’s been my impression of Rangers since BWE1 and having played a Ranger since launch and all the way through Orr. There’s a lot of neat builds you can come up with, but they rely and poorly designed weapon effects, which means the end result is less than great.

EDIT:
Oh yeah — shouts are useless. I’d never make a shout build they way they are now.