Guild Wars 2

These are … or rather … were supposed to be the core mechanic of a Marksmanship Ranger. However, apart from being able to recognize rangers playing this traitline they have no lasting value. Or any at all.

• Problems
  This trait is one of a bad design. Opening Strikes are a 1 time bonus of vulnerability that is easily capped and there’s no way to refresh it without investing into a grandmaster trait.
  It is currently the most useless minor trait setup in the whole game. I’d dare to say for the whole gaming industry, actually. All competitive PvE builds are 100% Crit Capped and 25 vuln Capped – making these traits utterly non-existent.

• Proposal
  1st minor: You and your pet have Opening Strikes
  2nd minor: Opening Strikes now refresh after killing an enemy
  3rd minor: Opening Strikes now refresh after receiving Fury
  Remorseless: Opening Strikes will now always Critically hit and deal 25% more damage.

• Outcome
  Former PvE builds would stay without being affected by this change since PvE content is constantly 25 might capped. And there’s no harm in having 2 Vuln-Stacking specializations apart from Engineers.
  Furthermore, Marksmanship has no real responsive value to play around. Everyone picks the line because of damage scaling that is passive. It feels boring and unrewarding to be picked. You really don’t see a difference having the spec or not.
  It would, however, promote the Marksmanship traitline for PvP since there currently is close to zero diversity and Marksmahsip traitline feels the most useless of all regardless of playing offensive or defensive setup.

Changes like these would be alright, not necessary. I take marks for clarion bond, steady focus, and read the wind

daniellepierce.9718:

Changes like these would be alright, not necessary. I take marks for clarion bond, steady focus, and read the wind

And Clarion Bond is not needed since everybody in PvE is might and Fury capped, and no one uses Lead the Wind.
Because camping Longbow is a bad habbit.

And I don’t think balance should be made around open world or solo content.
Changes like these are necessary, I’m afraid.
For those who care for the profession, at very least.

Well in regards to might cap, if the issue is that theres an excess of it, then classes such as rev who are pushing out all of it on their own then they need to be brought down a peg so that we need to depend on more individuals sharing buffs. As for camping longbow there are situations where thats the best option when going into melee is suicide. Myself i constant dip in and of of melee and ranged with Lb/SW in raids and highend fractals.

So let me ask you this:
… When was the last time you noticed you have Opening Strikes?

In Raids, I see them every time I’m out of combat. I’ve never heard of them in combat. Ever. Not once.
Your reply only proves my point. You picked MM for Lead the Wind. You never even took minors into account and that’s a wrong design and needs a change.

Im not in disagreement with you, it would be nice, but i know anet and these changes aint gonna happen anytime soon if ever. Since we get good fixes at an average of once every 3 years, we wont see a good set of fixes till fall of 2018. I am more keen on getting changes to sword AA, underwhelming pet intelligence and AAs, and a few other wonky mechanics, minors on Marks are of less concern to me.

Keeping Opening Strikes is still bad. Just change those to something straight-forward and normal with a few tweaks to some traits.

• 1st Minor: You and your pet have a % chance to apply 5s of Vulnerability on hit.
• 2nd Minor: Vulnerability you and your pet apply lasts % longer.
• 3rd Minor: Steady Focus.

• New Master Trait to fill in the slot Steady Focus was.
• Remorseless: Gain an “Attack of Opportunity” when you gain Fury or kill a foe. “Attack of Opportunity” always critically hits.

Then lower the bonus damage from Attack of Opportunity from 50% to 25%.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Keeping Opening Strikes is still bad. Just change those to something straight-forward and normal with a few tweaks to some traits.

• 1st Minor: You and your pet have a % chance to apply 5s of Vulnerability on hit.
• 2nd Minor: Vulnerability you and your pet apply lasts % longer.
• 3rd Minor: Steady Focus.

• New Master Trait to fill in the slot Steady Focus was.
• Remorseless: Gain an “Attack of Opportunity” when you gain Fury or kill a foe. “Attack of Opportunity” always critically hits.

Then lower the bonus damage from Attack of Opportunity from 50% to 25%.

I was all for this until you made it the attack of opportunity buff. Right now despite how flawed our minor traits are, those those two buffs; remorseless opening strike and attack of opportunity equate to a 87.5% damage increase when stacked on a single hit reducing that to 25% is a huge loss.

In short we’d lose our ability to burst with greatsword, in some cases longbow, pets and a few other weapons. We would need some kind of compensation across the MM for that large of a loss.

Meh. That lost is minor, especially considering the combo is flawed itself for how the class and weapons were designed.

ANet has an issue with Minor Trait design across the board. Either they are great and really emphasize what picking that traitline should help with or be about, or just be generally useful.

And then on the other hand, you have traits literally so bad that calling them minor oversells them.

ANet doesn’t seem too keen on redesigns either. You won’t hear any disagreement out of me over the necessity of one though.

At this point I’m surprised ANet hasn’t let the balance team go in favor of more gem store artists to put on the payroll, since the game has seemed more and more like a cash grab every time I log in.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Meh. That lost is minor, especially considering the combo is flawed itself for how the class and weapons were designed.

It’s a major loss for that kind of playstyle, even if the ranger has flawed weapon designs that limits it to one weapon. Keep in mind that it applies to the pet aswell, I’ve had wolfs one-shotting unaware eles with AoO+Remorseless brutal charges. I’d rather have them introduce better burst options for our weapons.

The most simple, straightforward and perhaps most likely change (because you know, it’s Anet) they can do is to merge the minor that gives pets opening strike with the adept minor, and create a minor trait that doesn’t devalue the entire mechanic after your first strike.

They should also add back opening strike refresh to the signet trait, it’s a pretty lackluster trait already considered our signets have pretty hefty cooldowns (as a sidenote, but not entirely off (burst)topic, Signet of the Hunt needs a CD reduction). Furthermore, Predator’s Instinct is trash and should be merged with Predator’s Onslaught, which leaves an open slot for something opening strike related (or just a simple damage modifier against vulnerable foes).

Eval.2371:

I was all for this until you made it the attack of opportunity buff. Right now despite how flawed our minor traits are, those those two buffs; remorseless opening strike and attack of opportunity equate to a 87.5% damage increase when stacked on a single hit reducing that to 25% is a huge loss.

In short we’d lose our ability to burst with greatsword, in some cases longbow, pets and a few other weapons. We would need some kind of compensation across the MM for that large of a loss.

I have to agree. Ranger now has only 1 way how to burst the enemy with GS and this would ruin even this one.

I say let it be ruined. I agree there should be compensation, but not through MM traits solely. But that gets into all the other past topics of low weapon coeffs and bad design. Ranger was never a burst class to begin with. I’d rather see the burst nerfed and see a higher emphasis in sustained damage, thus, why Steady Focus is a minor trait in my suggestion.

1. minor trait shouldn’t be on fury gain, but ya maybe weapon swap.

I’ve often found it strange that Marksmanship seems focused around benefiting a single large attack (Moment of Clarity, Remorseless, Opening Strike minors) when our actual bows both rely heavily on multiple hits to dish out damage.

You’re actually better off taking Marksmanship if you don’t intend to use a bow at all.

I always feel weird knowing my character is specialized in Marksmanship to improve his skill with the greatsword. But I guess a major trait overhaul that makes Marksmanship focus on long ranged strikes and kiting tactics and Skirmishing our control based melee line isn’t going to happen.

This thread +1 – the logic, or lack thereof, shown in this traitline is pretty remarkable.

After thinking about others posts I think the minor traits for MM would be better off as:

Minor 1: Same as it currently is, but pets also gain it.
Minor 2: Opening strike is refreshed on weapon swap.
Minor 3: Opening does additional damage per stack of vulnerability on target. Capped at 5% for 25 stacks.

Remorseless as is. Thoughts?

Eval.2371:

After thinking about others posts I think the minor traits for MM would be better off as:

Minor 1: Same as it currently is, but pets also gain it.
Minor 2: Opening strike is refreshed on weapon swap.
Minor 3: Opening does additional damage per stack of vulnerability on target. Capped at 5% for 25 stacks.

Remorseless as is. Thoughts?

Nope for me.
One of the things we have is Synergy with Skirmishing which already does Opening Strikes on weapon swap. Which means any PvE build (especially the efficient Remorseless GS) would be indirectly nerfed.
But if we just forget about the Vuln applying and get that damage modifier from vulnerability – I’d be fine with it as well.