Guild Wars 2

Probably been brought up but the quick search function didn’t come up with any finds…

Current PvP meta seems to have pigeon holed all three ranger traits to BM (because our pets aren’t good enough without it), Druid (team support, survivability), and NM. I think NM is largely brought due to the minor master Fortifying Bond. Has there been any discussion on baselining this trait so that it always occurs that pet shares boons with ranger? I know a lot of non-ranger mains might cry that this would be OP, but I don’t know if it would be.

If ANET baselined this trait, it would open up for more build diversity, I believe. NM not terrible, if you want a tankier build, you could still bring it. Before people start saying “oh you can play different builds”, yes, I’ve played multiple builds and had tons of fun with MM (remorseless) and condi builds with Skirmishing, but if you want to be taken seriously, you kind of need to bring NM.

I’ve heard that Mesmers used to have a grandmaster trait that made their toon count as an illusion when shattering, which got baselined. If they can get a grandmaster trait baselined, why can’t rangers have a master minor? (shhh I know rangers can’t have nice things). Considering the class mechanic is pet, why not? If people cry ranger OP because of this, then they need to learn how to fight rangers better and stop ignoring pets. It irks me when someone tells me in a match that I’m getting carried by my pet. Do mesmers get carried by clones? Do warriors get carried by adrenaline? Anyway, opening up for discussion.

Rangers have brought up the subject of making Fortifying Bond baseline many times, but as most suggestions taht are given to Anet, they are ignored. Regarding a Grandmaster becoming baseline, we have had the change, and thankfully we did; having to trait into a grandmaster to gain the actives of your signet was idiotic.

DoogySnowStalker.2069:

Rangers have brought up the subject of making Fortifying Bond baseline many times, but as most suggestions taht are given to Anet, they are ignored.

Indeed.

Thing is, if Anet ever make FB baseline, they won’t do it without nerfing it in some way, that’s one thing you can be sure of.

Yep basically that: FB should become baseline together with the increased pet speed and damage from BM.
Pet is something we are forced to use so at least you should not be forced to pick 2 trait lines to make the pet a minimal effective.

These traitlines are overused since the specialisation patch 2015. I really wish we could finally drop them without having much disadvantage. NM is already not that necessary for solo roaming in WvW.

Even if they make FB baseline there will still be diversity problems:

• Only WHAO ( shout heal) makes use of it = pick BM
• Pets are slow and don’t hit anything without BM
• In spvp we will still be using NM for fast ressing( this is actually fine )
• For quick access to regen, shouts + BM will still be your best pick ( Regen = fast celestial avatar)

So for more diversity you will have to baseline FB, pet moving speed and probably also heal skills( all of them should copy boons ).

Pretty sure this won’t make it into the game without nerfs, but that would be fine for me.

On the other hand I’m a bit pessimistic that they will ever make huge changes. There is a big thread with suggestions for ranger, but it got buried since people stopped bothering. Better nerf axe bounce again…

My heart could agree with it becoming baseline but not my mind. Making trait baseline is like opening the pandora box, especially when it come to the ranger pet. The fact is that other players will always be unsatsfied if they are killed by an AI (the pet) in PvP. It’s sure that making some pet’s trait baseline would tremendously help the ranger but, at the same time it would end up with tons of nerfs that would most likely be directed to the spec that are less reliant on pet.

What I think is that ranger do not need this trait to become baseline. Ranger need a rebalance/rework on the pet system. Ideally, this rework would make :

- The direct damage of the pet abysmal (a great way to shut up other player complains)
- Improve the reliability and responsivness of the pet’s utilities (at least when a skill have to land, make it land)
- Balance the pet’s utility skill (there is so much work to do on core pets that I understand that anet’s dev may be a bit kitteno start the work)
- Make the traits matter more than the pet itself. (If we want pets to do damage, make us trait for it! Don’t give us pet that are average at everything ending us nerfed due to that.)

This way, you transform the pet who is actually a badly designed jake-of-all-trade into a source of utilities that won’t kill an enemy but actively support the player. And at the same time, there is no more excuse to not bring the ranger’s weapon dps on par with other.

I’m pretty sure that if this was done, most of the grief involving the pet in PvP and most of the complaint of the ranger’s community about the fact that they are underperforming in regard of sheer dps would disappear. It could even add some more build diversity on the ranger.

Fortify bond basiline topic No. 237

But yeah we all know and agree.

Dont like the idea of Fortify bond being basiline. It’s a massive unnecessary power crip and if anything this trait should be toned down togather with all the boon abuse tools across the board.

It would be too much of a power creep if they made the current version of fb baseline, i mean the pet would have 25 might all the time. The game needs less boon spamming in general as it is.
The only reasonable way to make fb baseline without breaking things is if it changes to ‘boons you apply to yourself are shared with your pet’ so that it is self contained so if you make a build about self stacking might or fury your pet inherits that quirk, and having a ele or rev next to you would not make things stupid.

‘If’ Fortifying Bond become baseline, I would like the trait to be further improved from its current design. We are able to share boons consistently with out pet, if we take Nature Magic that is, but they still lose out on buffs such as Banners, stat boosts from class traits, spirits, and food buffs. In group settings, the buffs will for banners, spirits, and traits will be limited to and only towards player entities because over the prioritization it has on players over NPC’s due to the current cap of 5 people for the trait; same thing for raids if you were to double up on the trait, still will prioritize players of NPC’s. Being able to share food buffs would help with many things for pets; boon duration for more supportive roles (70% max boon duration on pet with NM), condi duration to help lengthen the condis for pets (would like to see the potential of Smokescale with longer bleeds on auto), and precision to shorten the gap for crit chance due to pet scaling with precision being different towards player scaling. Maybe healing power for Sylven Hound and Moas’?

There would obviously have to be changes with just boon sharing with the pet, but even so, Ranger’s have suffered from this since launch due to the pet being such a strong part of us, whether we like it or not.

LughLongArm.5460:

Dont like the idea of Fortify bond being basiline. It’s a massive unnecessary power crip and if anything this trait should be toned down togather with all the boon abuse tools across the board.

If the bolded part becomes a reality, then sure, but I’m afraid rangers will yet again be the ones suffering the most if they were to nerf boon (ab)use across the board.

foste.3098:

It would be too much of a power creep if they made the current version of fb baseline, i mean the pet would have 25 might all the time. The game needs less boon spamming in general as it is.
The only reasonable way to make fb baseline without breaking things is if it changes to ‘boons you apply to yourself are shared with your pet’ so that it is self contained so if you make a build about self stacking might or fury your pet inherits that quirk, and having a ele or rev next to you would not make things stupid.

That would be quite the nerf I think, so in that case I rather leave it as is.

beatthedown.2651:

• Pets are slow and don’t hit anything without BM

They aren’t that much better off with BM in that regard tbh. Perma swiftness on pets is something they could implement baseline tomorrow (without needing BM), and it would be more of a QoL thing i PvE than any significant boost to non BM users in pvp/wvw.

Yeah, BM is a bit overrated. With pet swap / ranged pets / ancient seeds pets don’t need to be really fast. I’d say if the pet is chasing someone on circles and not on swap cool down you are doing it wrong.

I do agree with baseline boon share. It’s in fact what rampage as one has always done.

I can see the logic of making FB baseline in terms of opening up builds (I myself run NM almost entirely for FB, while often just picking other traits in NM just because and not because I want them bad enough to take NM), but its also such an incredibly powerful trait that just making it innate would be way too much. And I don’t want to see it nerfed into the ground in order to make it reasonable as a baseline ability. I’d rather take NM and have it good than have it baseline and neutered.

Maybe they could make a “lesser” version baseline, but then keep Fortifying Bond as-is with its current power level in-tact.

Stat combos really hold ranger back in spvp. No good way to set up hybrid longbow, and no good bunker stats. There’s also limited space. A lot of what makes druid good in open WvW doesn’t apply to spvp.

It wont happen because it would make pets stronger/more reliable and people hate having to consider them as a threat regardless of what the master’s doing. It would also have some ill effect on WHaO boonstacking that will be deemed as OP and cause much frustration and QQ.