Guild Wars 2

Minor Traits- The Opening Strikes line is problematic as it stands currently. It won’t apply at high ranges, such as with a longbow. Additionally, the guaranteed crit mechanic is mediocre at best, since most burst builds will have at least 25% crit rate if not more. I would suggest the following, plus allowing it to apply up to a range of 1500 so it works with any weapon:

5- Gain Opening Strike- Your first attack in combat is an Attack of Opportunity. It also applies 3 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds.
15- Your pet also gains Opening Strike
25- Opening Strike now applies 6 stacks of vulnerability

Tier 2: Eagle Eye- This trait would be nice, except that the Longbow and Harpoon Gun fail to auto-attack at 1500 range. If that could be fixed, this trait would not be a problem at all. Additionally, consider increasing the bonus to 10% damage- the Longbow’s damage is somewhat low, and the Harpoon Gun’s direct damage isn’t going to be very high regardless of traits.

Beastmaster’s Might- The concept for this trait is good, but the execution is off. It grants 1 stack of might for 5 seconds, which is incredibly lackluster for a Major trait. It would be more likely to be picked if it granted, say, 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. As of now, there is no reason to pick this over spotter even for a full signet build.

Tier 3: Remorseless- This is far too situational for a tier 3 trait, being terrible in sPvP and any other fights where deaths don’t happen often. A valid change would make the trait read:

“Gain Opening Strikes on kill. Gain Opening Strikes every 45 seconds in combat. You cannot regain Opening Strikes more often than once every 25 seconds.”

With this mechanic, the trait has a powerful effect in all types of fights, including PvP. It is still better when you can get kills, but it isn’t totally useless in a fight against a single enemy. This change would work with or without the other suggested changes to Opening Strikes above.

Signet of the Beastmaster- This trait is probably just fine, but it would be nice if it granted some additional effect to Signet of Renewal- maybe it could increase the pet’s pull radius for conditions?

In general, it’s kind of odd to have the Trapping traits in the Crit/Crit Damage tree. It would make more sense to have them in Wilderness Survival or to swap the stats so that Skirmishing is Precision/Condition Damage and Wilderness Survival is Toughness/Critical Damage, but that might be too big of a change at this point.

Tier 1: Sharpened Edges- The bleed from this trait only lasts 1 second, which just isn’t enough to be useful. 2 or 3 seconds would provide a more valid source of bleed for non-shortbow weapons that want to splash some condition damage into their build (eg MH axe, Greatsword).

Trapper’s Defense- This could probably be combined with Healer’s Celerity in the Survival line and replaced with something else here. Both traits by themselves are fairly weak and not really worth taking over the alternatives, but together they would be a solid support trait.

Companion’s Might- This is another example of a good trait with bad numbers. 1 second of Might simply isn’t going to do anything of value for your pet, since many of them don’t even hit more often than once a second. If the Might lasted 5 to 10 seconds, this would be a small but noticeable buff to your pet, and make Skirmishing a good line to invest in to increase pet offense for all pet types (Pet’s Prowess for pet types with high precision, and Might for types with lower precision).

Tier 2: There would need to be a solid Major trait here to replace Trapper’s Expertise if we moved it to another line- perhaps another trait based on pet offense? I’m not sure what I would place here.

Tier 3: Again, if you DID move the trapping traits to another line, a potential trait for this slot would be:

“Opportunistic- Decrease the cooldown of weapon swapping by 3 seconds. Your first attack after swapping Cripples for 3 seconds and deals 10% increased damage.”

This keeps with the weapon swapping feel of the tree and adds a small amount of DPS (via increased uptime on Fury from Minor Traits and the 10% damage), and some utility (increased Swiftness uptime and Cripple).

-Moment of Clarity- I like the use of Attacks of Opportunity here, since interrupts are present on 3 of our weapons. I would suggest allowing pet interrupts to also gain Attacks, giving this trait more synergy with pets that can apply Daze, for example. Attacks of Opportunity would probably be better with a system of a stacking buff that is consumed with each attack made (at the moment it just overwrites itself, so that Hilt Bash only gives your pet one Attack when you interrupt, even though Hilt Bash gives one and the interrupt with the trait gives one).

Tier 1: Healer’s Celerity is not very strong (as mentioned above). Merge it with Trapper’s Defense and put it here to give Rangers a powerful support option in this line.

Vigorous Renewal- Consider making this apply different amount of Vigor based on the heal used. Troll Unguent could apply vigor for 5 sec (since it’s already our strongest “selfish” heal), Healing Spring could grant 4 sec each tick (since it is immobile), and Heal as One could give a flat 10 seconds (granting it the highest uptime unless you manage to sit in a Spring for the whole duration). This would make the trait most useful on our weakest heal, giving Heal as One something to differentiate it.

Tier 1: Circle of Life- This trait occurs on downed, not on death. This is fine, just change the tooltip!

Nature’s Protection- The condition for this trait (20% of max health in a single hit!) is really restrictive given the 30 second cooldown. 10 or 15% would be more appropriate values and make this a more viable choice compared to your other options in this tier.

Tier 2: Spiritual Knowledge- The increased chance is somewhat pointless given the internal cooldowns on most of the spirits. I would either have this trait reduce the ICD much lower (say to 4 seconds), or I would have this trait also provide 2 seconds of Regeneration on spirit proc (with an ICD of 10 seconds across all of a Ranger’s spirits, so that stacking multiple spirits doesn’t provide perma-regen).

Nature’s Vengeance- This trait is probably fine, but could be boosted by reducing the cooldown of spirits by 10-20% to keep it competitive with Spiritual Knowledge.

Tier 3: Evasive Purity- Blind and poison just aren’t very common, and I would never dodge roll to remove Blind- if I have the time to do either, why would I waste a valuable dodge to remove blind when I could just attack once? This trait could probably just remove one condition on dodge on a 10 second cooldown, since rangers could use another source of condition removal. An interesting alternative to this would be to make dodge remove all Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize on yourself and nearby allies, on a 20-30 sec cooldown. Either one would be a powerful ability and make me consider going 30 points into Nature Magic even without a Spirit build.

Minor Traits- Zephyr’s Speed is amazing and almost feels mandatory for Rangers. This could be problematic if every ranger feels obligated to take it- mandatory traits don’t seem like an interesting design. Consider baking this in to pet swap without the trait, or consider moving it farther up in the tree to make it less of a no-brainer (although moving it up farther without any other compensation would lead to many Ranger tears…).

Tier 1: Commanding Voice and Speed Training overlap in role and could probably be safely combined (20% on F2, 10% on the other abilities).

Tier 2: Stability Training doesn’t have much use- Bears, Porcines, and Armor Fish are all fairly low-damage, beefy pets with maybe 1 CC ability. What are they going to do with 3 seconds of stability? Be tanky at them? A number of options could replace this, such as granting the pet and yourself Retaliation on F2 use, stunning in a small aoe when disabled, etc. On a related note, the pet training abilities are flavorful but feel oddly limiting when selecting a pet- if only one pet benefits from the trait, it feels like a wasted slot. Perhaps we could consider making each Training apply to a wider number of pet families (or even to all families) for greater customization?

Tier 3: Instinctual Bond- Having a Tier 3 trait that only activates when you go down seems very awkward and too situational. Tier 3 traits are supposed to be empowering! Perhaps this trait could be moved down to Tier 2 or removed entirely? Pets don’t revive very fast even with the Quickness, and their revival skill doesn’t work very reliably. A replacement trait might deal with Shouts- for example:

“Command: Shouts have an additional effect-
-Sic ‘Em- Applies 10 stacks of Vulnerability for 10 seconds to target.
-Guard- You and your pet take 10% less damage while standing in the guard radius.
-Protect Me- Grants 1 charge of Aegis to all nearby allies on use.
-Search and Rescue- Pet and revived ally gain Regeneration and 3 stacks of Might for 10 seconds on successful revive.”

(This might be far too strong and/or wordy, it’s just here as an example of how you might make Shouts a more interesting choice for a Beastmastery-heavy Ranger.)