Guild Wars 2

Since these two traits now compete against eachother, I think its time Empathetic Bond received an overhaul. For one, any trait/skill which harms the pet should be changed to not do so. It was never a smart idea, but overlookable at launch since the game had just come out and the dust surrounding needed balancing was settling.

SotF outclasses EB. It doesn’t kill the pet, has the potential for 10 cd cures on your bar, and reduces the recharge of a number of skills which have good use, including a healing and elite skill. EB had once been good, but the amount of condition damage coming out now almost always results in the death of the pet against a dedicated condition spec, with or without the trait active. And this is without taking into account the fact that pets have to deal with direct damage as well as crowd control that they cannot evade.

I don’t want to throw out suggestions, because mine usually turn out biased. However, this trait needs to be changed. An idea that floats around my head is if conditions that are transferred to the pet are converted to boons with the same durations as the ones from fortifying bond. I think this would gives EB a noticeable advantage over SotF as it now potentially increases the sustainability of your pets, in addition to curing cd’s.

Either way, please change this trait into something different. Doing so is a sensible balance change.

Combine EB and IB on nature magic.

Soilder.3607:

…Empathetic Bond…

Exactly

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Soilder.3607:

…Empathetic Bond…

Exactly

It’s ok, they can change the name to transfer conditions to pet then boons bond.

They could add an additional trait effect somewhere like “Pet F2 abilities remove conditions from allies” and rework spirits, primarily the elite spirit to be a beacon of condition removal every now and then in addition to its hps. Oh and fix the healing spring to its former glory.