Guild Wars 2

I posted this in the CDI but got no feedback or discussion due to the pretty crazy flooding of some other topics. Would like some feedback to refine this further.

Would like you to note ICD’s are missing on some traits. Please feel free to make suggestions.

Class Adjustments:
- Signet effects by default apply to the player (Remove Signet of the Beastmaster).
- Pets scale off of both player level and stats.
- Improve/Increase pet attack hitbox size/improve AI.
- Ordering a pet cancels its idle animation to proceed with the orders given to it.
- Pets’ base mobility increased by 25%
- Peaceful/Aggressive Toggle on F4.
- Switch pet toggle on F5.
- “Guard” utility skill removed. Placed on F6. Range: 2000
- “Relentless” ability added: Pets may be stowed permanently. The ranger receives a non-removable boon which grants him a 30% increase to damage to his attacks. Pets cannot be stowed or summoned while in combat.
- Pet F2 base skill cooldowns reduced by 20%.
- Increase base projectile speed for longbow attacks by 50%.
- Combine spirit effects with pets. Spirit skills renamed after various animals.
- -Beastmastery trait ranks increase pet stats more than currently.

TRAIT PROGRESSION CHANGES

Marksmanship:
Adept: Opening Strike: You and your pets have Opening Strike (Combined with Alpha Training (Master Marksmanship)).
Master: FREE FOR SUGGESTIONS.
Grandmaster: Stance of Storms: You and your pet gain swiftness and fury (5s) when applying Opening Strike. Apply Opening Strike while attacking from stealth. Remove Remorseless (Marksmanship XII).

Skirmishing:
Adept: Precise Strike: Opening Strike Always critical hits (Moved from Grandmaster Marksmanship).
Master: Hunter’s Tactics: Replace Furious Grip with Hunter’s Tactics (Grandmaster Skirmishing)
Grandmaster: Peak Strength: Increase damage by 10% when health is above 90% (Wilderness Survival Grandmaster).

Wilderness Survival:
Adept: Natural Vigor (Unchanged)
Master: Companion’s Defense (Unchanged)
Grandmaster: Tranquility: Upon killing a foe, gain 20 endurance.

Nature Magic:
Adept: Medicinal Herbs: When your pet reaches 20% health, cure all conditions and apply regeneration (5s).
Master: Rejuvenating Bond: Gain regeneration (5s) when your health drops below the threshold (75%). All boons and trait bonuses you obtain are shared with your pet (stat bonuses excluded) (Combination/Rework of Adept and Master Nature Magic traits).
Grandmaster: Bountiful Hunter (Unchanged)

Beastmastery:
Adept: Loud Whistle: Reduce the recharge on pet swapping by 20%.
Master: Honed Fangs: You and your pet gain power equal to 10% of healing power. Your pet heals itself (.1) when it attacks (Rework/Combine Nature’s Wrath and Carnivorous Appetite)
Grandmster: Beast’s Promise: If your pet dies and you cannot swap pets, your other pet is swapped to and revived at 50% health.

TRAIT CHANGES:

^= New skill designed to replace skill holes.

Marksmanship:
-^True Strike (Marksmanship X): Your Opening Strikes ignore Aegis.
-Removal of Beastmaster’s Bond and Signet Mastery.
-^Eagle Eye (Marksmanship IV): Eagle Eye moved from Marksmanship X to Marksmanship IV).
-^Pin Down (Marksmanship IX): Your Open Strikes apply 2s of Immobilize.
-^Marksmanship XI (Mighty Signets, credit to Nike): Activating a Signet grants 3 Stacks of Might and Signet recharge rates are reduced by 20%).
-^Tight-Quarter Bow-master (Marksmanship XII): Range increment penalties on Longbows are reversed and reduced by 75% at the appropriate stages. 10% increase in damage dealt to targets within 150 range using longbows (damage falls off at increased range, reduced the penalty at [now] long range compared to [current] close range.).

Skirmishing:
-Agility Training (Skirmishing VI): You and your pet move 25% faster. Toned down from 30% for pets only, stacks with initial bonus pet move speed to 50%.
-Trap Potency moved to Skirmishing VII.
-^Fleet of Foot (Skirmishing XI): Cripple’s duration on you is reduced by 30%.
Wilderness Survival:
-^Antivenin (Wilderness Survival XI): Cure two conditions once every 10 seconds.

Nature Magic:
-^Longevity (Nature Magic IV): While under the effect of a Spirit spell, your pet takes 50% less damage.
-^Animal Aspects (Nature Magic VII): You also radiate the effects of Spirits.
-Nature’s Vengeance applies spirit pet effects when the pet dies.

Beastmastery:
-Speed Training recharge rate reduction increased to 20%.
-Master’s Bond: Your pet’s attributes are increased further (Apply current maximum at all times).

DeceiverX.8361:

Master: Primal Protection: You and your pet gain Aegis (2s) and Protection (2s) when you dodge roll.

Aegis on dodge is off the charts OP for any sort of competitive play. Dodge, you’re invulnerable, stop dodging, you’re still invulnerable, use one of any number of weapon evades, you’re still invulnerable.

While I understand it looks pretty powerful on paper, it does only negate four attacks at best. Dodge the first attack, aegis the other, dodge the next, aegis the fourth. Protection might be a little bit crazy, however I don’t think the aegis bit is. It’s no different from Guardian’s Virtue of Courage Passive + Active on Dodging and has a much shorter duration thus making it less reliable to get off all the aegis but more reliable in that it has no real cooldown.

Keep in mind mesmer also has clone on dodge, and thief dodge is pretty crazy when you consider the capability of getting four dodges + 4 or 5 consecutive shortbow evades and then another dodge all while gaining around 2k range from your starting location.

Just bear in mind this isn’t on evade, too. It only applies to dodging.

The most broken use of this I could think of would be to utilize cleaving effects in a zerg to get endurance on kill to keep dodging, but that requires a lot of kills, and I think would be more applicable to trash mobs in PvE or megazerg WvW (doesn’t proc on downs, either).

Edit: I think I’ll remove the protection.

With Sigil of Energy and vigor up, you are already invulnerable 1.5 out of every 7.5 seconds. Now you’d have 4 seconds out of 7.5 seconds would have Aegis up unless you got hit.

If you’re swapping between greatsword and sword/dagger, that would just be a PItA to fight against.

Rangers have enough evasion as is.
Guard is a awesome tool, probably one of the more practical shouts we have, when traited.
Perma Pet Stow – No thanks. Not in any shape or form.

Ignore Aegis on OS is interesting, but Ignore protection entirely is OP.

Fluffball.8307:

With Sigil of Energy and vigor up, you are already invulnerable 1.5 out of every 7.5 seconds. Now you’d have 4 seconds out of 7.5 seconds would have Aegis up unless you got hit.

If you’re swapping between greatsword and sword/dagger, that would just be a PItA to fight against.

Ah didn’t consider the sigils. Could be a bit of an issue then. Switch aegis with protection then?

Kal Spiro.9745:

Ignore Aegis on OS is interesting, but Ignore protection entirely is OP.

Hmmm. I suppose this would be the case for melee rangers, as for ranged ones it would be a mighty sacrifice to use this trait. Any ideas?

Prysin.8542:

Rangers have enough evasion as is.
Guard is a awesome tool, probably one of the more practical shouts we have, when traited.
Perma Pet Stow – No thanks. Not in any shape or form.

So you support guard? Unfortunately an overwhelming population of rangers supports permastow. Keep it in mind that a 30% increase in damage throughput isn’t enough to compensate. Ranger + pet still gets higher DPS even with the 30% increase, as currently pets account for 30% of our overall damage.

So of 100 damage dealt, the ranger does 70.
A 30% increase would yield 91, with no support effects or other decent abilities. It just makes the damage a little more consistent and gives players more choices on how to play. I think dealing less damage this way is a fair trade-off.

DeceiverX.8361:

While I understand it looks pretty powerful on paper, it does only negate four attacks at best. Dodge the first attack, aegis the other, dodge the next, aegis the fourth. Protection might be a little bit crazy, however I don’t think the aegis bit is. It’s no different from Guardian’s Virtue of Courage Passive + Active on Dodging and has a much shorter duration thus making it less reliable to get off all the aegis but more reliable in that it has no real cooldown.

Keep in mind mesmer also has clone on dodge, and thief dodge is pretty crazy when you consider the capability of getting four dodges + 4 or 5 consecutive shortbow evades and then another dodge all while gaining around 2k range from your starting location.

Just bear in mind this isn’t on evade, too. It only applies to dodging.

The most broken use of this I could think of would be to utilize cleaving effects in a zerg to get endurance on kill to keep dodging, but that requires a lot of kills, and I think would be more applicable to trash mobs in PvE or megazerg WvW (doesn’t proc on downs, either).

Edit: I think I’ll remove the protection.

Protection reducing incoming damage by 33% for 2 seconds is better than Aegis negating 100% of just one attack.

Chrispy.5641:

Protection reducing incoming damage by 33% for 2 seconds is better than Aegis negating 100% of just one attack.

Possibly. If you’re in the middle of a zerg the protection is way better (although you may already have it from guardians). If you’re on your own the aegis might be better. For example an ele will only be able to attack once with a scepter fire autoattack in those two seconds, and will be starting a second attack. That’s a bit of an extreme example, but you would have prevented 100% of the damage during the 2 second period rather than 33%.

It’s not totally unrealistic even for fast attacking weapons, as two players in melee will often position themselves to not be able to hit each other (leaping around, or dodge rolling through each other and having to move back in to position, etc.), and in that case aegis wins again.

It also depends on what type of attack it is. Since it’s a controllable on-demand aegis, you could use it on things like a backstab.

Regardless, it’s hella overpowered to have a new aegis once every less than 4 seconds IMO.

Cant’ find the post, but seems to me I read something about them not willing to give us more than 4 F keys…
So anything we propose must hold in 4 keys.

Some proposals were as follow
F1 trigger attack(agressive) / come back (passive)
-someone proposed holding F1 to place pet, but I don’t see it working with keyboard binds. hard to hold a button and fight
F2, special
F3 either
- placement (target space to tell pet to go there) or
- another pet ability, or
- a quick stow (to get it out of harm)(would work in fight)
- seems to me I saw others… but don,t remember
F4 – change pet

- removing guard? no.. and certainly not to put it on keybind. A simple no CD positioning tool would d the job. Guard ha it’s problem, but putting it there would destroy a build that is a very viable roaming build;

-Pet F2 base skill cooldowns reduced by 20%.
why?

- increase longbow speed
What would be the trade off? less damage? lower Rate of fire? increased CD? then no…

(too tired as of nw to look at skills… but remember that everything must have trade off or possible counter. LB deals great damage at distance because it’s easy to avoid;
but traits should not be so strong that Anet feels that the base item needs a nerf, which was a problem with ranger (eg, untraited traps are underwhelming, while traited ones are really strong… should be traps are good, traited are better, but not over the top)

Putting weapons specific traits (Eagle Eye) on a minor trait is a no-no.

Now, if you wanted to put Spotter there, I can see the reputation of Rangers immediately improving game-wide…

DeceiverX.8361:

Unfortunately an overwhelming population of rangers supports permastow.

Where do you make up your statistics, I’d like to work with those people.

i never understand where you guys get this:

“rangers deal great damage”, “safe at a range”, “good cc”

it’s almost like none of you play this class, or you only fight terrible people

Nike.2631:

Putting weapons specific traits (Eagle Eye) on a minor trait is a no-no.

Now, if you wanted to put Spotter there, I can see the reputation of Rangers immediately improving game-wide…

This is a good point.

From myself: Adding F5, F6 goes pretty much around the concept of “less to click” concept (Although Engineers with multiple kits do the same but… Devs like them ^^)
and would not be accepted in any form. When I like the idea of allowing us to bind pet stances as optional, I’m pretty okay with how it works currently. One click to do isn’t that much. And most of the Rangers I know keep pet on passive to have better management of pet.

As for “Opening Strike” – I’ve never liked that idea. First attack for you and your pet should be just a flat crit from this minor trait. That’s all, end of the story. Messing up with a single minor effect across multiple minors is not the best idea. Especially if you place them in other trait trees.

One of the quick changes for Skirmishing and MM trees should be swapping condition duration gained from traits with critical damage. Should go well with Traps and idea of “Critical Opening”

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone.

Updates:
- Reverted Primal Protection to Companion’s Defense.

- Adjusted Tight-quarter Bowmaster from ignoring range increment penalties to reversing range increment penalties and reducing the effects of range increment penalties by 75%. 10% more damage to targets within 150 range.

- Eagle Eye removed from MM Master slot. Calm of battle removed. Eagle Eye moved to MM IV.

Nike.2631:

Putting weapons specific traits (Eagle Eye) on a minor trait is a no-no.

Now, if you wanted to put Spotter there, I can see the reputation of Rangers immediately improving game-wide…

Spotter would be too OP for a master default trait in the power line. As you noticed, I removed Calm of Battle and moved it there. Looking for suggestions for the master 15 MM trait now.

Rym.1469:

Nike.2631:

Putting weapons specific traits (Eagle Eye) on a minor trait is a no-no.

Now, if you wanted to put Spotter there, I can see the reputation of Rangers immediately improving game-wide…

This is a good point.

From myself: Adding F5, F6 goes pretty much around the concept of “less to click” concept (Although Engineers with multiple kits do the same but… Devs like them ^^)
and would not be accepted in any form. When I like the idea of allowing us to bind pet stances as optional, I’m pretty okay with how it works currently. One click to do isn’t that much. And most of the Rangers I know keep pet on passive to have better management of pet.

As for “Opening Strike” – I’ve never liked that idea. First attack for you and your pet should be just a flat crit from this minor trait. That’s all, end of the story. Messing up with a single minor effect across multiple minors is not the best idea. Especially if you place them in other trait trees.

One of the quick changes for Skirmishing and MM trees should be swapping condition duration gained from traits with critical damage. Should go well with Traps and idea of “Critical Opening”

Regarding the 6 pet action keys, I agree it’s a little cluttered, but it does grant players much better access to controlling their pets more precisely and using them tactically. The other two options aren’t really necessary unless you’re planning to use the pet in a more precise/planned-out way, and due to their setups, they shouldn’t be as heavily-spammed. The biggest adjustment would likely be for players needing to get used to pressing a different key for swapping. It also allows for combinations such as passive guard/offensive guard. It doesn’t remove any current features from this and I think simply adding two more buttons is a LOT less confusing than adding press + hold mechanics or other less-elegant solutions.

Regarding cross-line skills, it’s iffy. I understand there needs to be a degree of independence between trait lines, however allowing for some meshing does allow for some better synergy options, which can allow for traits and builds to be more elaborate while pushing new players into more effective and synergistic builds.

Opening Strike is a cool mechanic idea – reminds me quite a bit of getting a surprise round in D&D, which is very useful for ranged characters, and it’s definitely something unique to the ranger class and can be used to open a lot of doors to make the class feel a lot more unique. A powerful opening attack followed by good sustained damage keeps the opponent at a health disadvantage.