Guild Wars 2

I have hit a brick wall on the diversity for trap rangers, and the main cause of this has been the traits themselves. These opinions are for the PvP side of the game as that is where I spend most of my time. The problems that trap rangers have (only trait ones not the teleporting trap problem) are mainly with the distribution of bonus stats in the trait lines, as well as how trap potency is laid out.

Firstly, The trait line issue that affect build diversity for trap rangers is the fact that the trap line is contained in a line that only rewards power style builds. There are traps that do well not going condition (such as frost trap, which only really benifits form condi duration, or poison in which the damage is minor but the heal debuff is what is important), and due to this it should only be something that is minorly changed. I think the least “horrible” change would be to trade the position of the marksmanships condition duration with the Skirmishing critical damage, this would allow more options for condition (attrition style players) to become more “tankish” or “condition” heavy. Currently the 30 locked down points in skirmishing would lead to either diminishing condi damage in favor of more condi duration or vice versa while closing off nature magic or further than 5 ventures into beastmastery.

The second issue which always hit me sourly was trap potency, the trap cooldown is not the part I feel bad about, it is conditions caused by traps that last twice as long. I would have prefered this to double the conditions on the traps as this would make spike trap much more effective (6 bleeds for 7 seconds better than 3 bleeds for 14 b/c of condition cleansing) It would not diminish the trap when used out of a trap build, but would make the ability much stronger than a non-traited trap. This will also not affect the duration of the other traps/abilities due to the way in which they stack in duration.

Anyway I would like to hear what fellow rangers think (condition or power) of these ideas. I would like to hear about power’s thoughts on how the first change idea would affect their builds. I would also like to hear if you think I am an idiot and if I should feel bad.