Guild Wars 2

So, this trait has been brought up from time to time and with Irenio somewhat scouting the forums these days, I’d guess it is a good time to adress this trait again and perhaps keep the topic to the devs’ attention for a while. By that I mean my suggestion isn’t the definite solution to anything, to me its way more important to keep the devs aware about something I think most ranger players would like them to take a look at.

Some would probably argue that making it baseline would be to strong. That’s fair enough. To me the ranger already seem to be in a balanced state where this trait makes perfect sense as a baseline feature. It is a way better change for the ranger than the fiasco that was the WHaO buff and the subsuquent nerf, although at least they were on to something.

There is also the possibility to move it over to the Beastmastery specialization, which is arguably better than the current implementation, although I’d much rather see it made baseline.

As a replacement trait to Fortifying Bond, anything that enhances the support potential of this somewhat lacking traitline is fine in my book. On that note I wouldn’t mind something that makes the pet share its boon in a radius around it, but with obvious limitations to avoid a WHaO 2.0. It’s named Nature Magic, after all, perhaps make it feel like it aswell.

Share your thoughts and ideas and whatnot.

Agree, it should be baseline.

Then what about making Fortifying bond copy all the boons on the pet to allies in the area on F2 use? Using its current durations?

I feel like it’s a very strong incentive to take the Nature Magic tree, so whatever would replace it would need to be absolutely amazing.

Lome.8239:

I feel like it’s a very strong incentive to take the Nature Magic tree, so whatever would replace it would need to be absolutely amazing.

Yeah, i agree. The no#1 reason i pick Nature Magic is because of this trait. I’d love to have it baseline, but only if they dont nerf it becasue of that.

The 1st attempt to make it baseline was WHaO.

And what happened then? We had it dest Roy ed.
The problem with pets is that they are unreliable and they do not scale.
Which means we are fine until you get to an organized party. There it becomes a burden.

If it isn’t addressed by making FB baseline – it should be addressed by any other means necessary. Developers currently think Rangers are fine and Healing saved the class to be viable again. Without touching the core problems at all.

I don’t understand why don’t they just let pets scale by certain amount of certain stats. Like Power, Precition, Ferocity, Healing Power, Condition damage.
And coefficients could be reduced to match current amounts.
They would instantly scale with might, Fury, banners, blah blah blah and you wouldn’t feel bad for leaving your pet behind in DPS when upgrading your armor to ascended.

Lome.8239:

I feel like it’s a very strong incentive to take the Nature Magic tree, so whatever would replace it would need to be absolutely amazing.

Which is one of the reasons it should be baseline or moved to BM in the first place, it’s a minor stashed away in a specialization line that shouldn’t have pet buffing as its main incentive to pick that line, even when that buffing is through boons via our boon specialization.

It somewhat reminds of me Illusionary Persona and shatter mesmers having to pick the Ilusion line, except Fortifying Bond affects you no matter what build you’re running.

Nature Magic has other traits that could be “umped” up a bit to make it on par with other lines. Like making Evasive Purity aoe to cleanse allies, like fixing spirits so the spirit trait becomes relevant, like introducing an interesting replacement for FB etc.

My personal favorite approach to a baseline Fortifying Bond isn’t the fixed-duration boon-copying approach the actual trait uses, but a new system entirely for handling Ranger and pet boons. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’ve mentioned it myself in other topics. X)

Essentially, any boons applied to the Ranger or the pet goes to a pool that they both share. If the Ranger gets a boon, the pet gets exactly the same boon themselves, and if the pet gets a boon, it similarly goes to the Ranger. If both are caught in one boon application, it’s only applied once. Such an approach lets the Ranger send their pet into a boon-stacking group while staying back themselves if need be, or lets the pet stay back for whatever reason while the Ranger fights with the group.

Just seems like a much more straightforward and reliable system.

Toolbox.9375:

My personal favorite approach to a baseline Fortifying Bond isn’t the fixed-duration boon-copying approach the actual trait uses, but a new system entirely for handling Ranger and pet boons. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’ve mentioned it myself in other topics. X)

Essentially, any boons applied to the Ranger or the pet goes to a pool that they both share. If the Ranger gets a boon, the pet gets exactly the same boon themselves, and if the pet gets a boon, it similarly goes to the Ranger. If both are caught in one boon application, it’s only applied once. Such an approach lets the Ranger send their pet into a boon-stacking group while staying back themselves if need be, or lets the pet stay back for whatever reason while the Ranger fights with the group.

Just seems like a much more straightforward and reliable system.

Sounds very reasonable to me. Simple, elegant and straightforward as you said. +1

OGDeadHead.8326:

Toolbox.9375:

My personal favorite approach to a baseline Fortifying Bond isn’t the fixed-duration boon-copying approach the actual trait uses, but a new system entirely for handling Ranger and pet boons. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’ve mentioned it myself in other topics. X)

Essentially, any boons applied to the Ranger or the pet goes to a pool that they both share. If the Ranger gets a boon, the pet gets exactly the same boon themselves, and if the pet gets a boon, it similarly goes to the Ranger. If both are caught in one boon application, it’s only applied once. Such an approach lets the Ranger send their pet into a boon-stacking group while staying back themselves if need be, or lets the pet stay back for whatever reason while the Ranger fights with the group.

Just seems like a much more straightforward and reliable system.

Sounds very reasonable to me. Simple, elegant and straightforward as you said. +1

I don’t really like the idea of pet giving Ranger Boons.
It pushes everyone else on ranged backwards. And it sounds really complicated.

Rangers already are the best Ranged DPS. Making it profit from 100% of melee stacking boons is wrong if we are talking about balance.
Just let the pet be the promised 30% DPS. That’s all we really need to be the DPS specialization. We already have the support options.

Simply making Fortifying Bond baseline solves the problems that excist, making it so that the pet shares boons back to the ranger is an unnecessary buff in my opinion.

Given the ranger trackrecord, I kinda doubt they would buff it further if they by any chance made the functionality baseline in the first place..

Tragic Positive.9356:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Toolbox.9375:

My personal favorite approach to a baseline Fortifying Bond isn’t the fixed-duration boon-copying approach the actual trait uses, but a new system entirely for handling Ranger and pet boons. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’ve mentioned it myself in other topics. X)

Essentially, any boons applied to the Ranger or the pet goes to a pool that they both share. If the Ranger gets a boon, the pet gets exactly the same boon themselves, and if the pet gets a boon, it similarly goes to the Ranger. If both are caught in one boon application, it’s only applied once. Such an approach lets the Ranger send their pet into a boon-stacking group while staying back themselves if need be, or lets the pet stay back for whatever reason while the Ranger fights with the group.

Just seems like a much more straightforward and reliable system.

Sounds very reasonable to me. Simple, elegant and straightforward as you said. +1

I don’t really like the idea of pet giving Ranger Boons.
It pushes everyone else on ranged backwards. And it sounds really complicated.

Rangers already are the best Ranged DPS. Making it profit from 100% of melee stacking boons is wrong if we are talking about balance.
Just let the pet be the promised 30% DPS. That’s all we really need to be the DPS specialization. We already have the support options.

I understand what you’re saying, but at the same time we’ve been told that we more or less have to be in melee range and stack, like everyone else, because if we don’t, we won’t get the buffs everyone else gets, and thereby, we’re not dealing optimal dps.

I say screw the melee stacking, it’s boring as hell. This is probably the only mmo I’ve played that forces everyone into melee, if they don’t they are not optimal to the group. There’s no need for ranged support – stack in melee, go full berzerk or get the hell out. That’s the name of the game.

And no, the game, when using stacking tactics, isn’t in any way harder than fighting from range. That is a myth.

Doesn’t make sense for it to be baseline. I think this goes for most baseline requests, though. If it really needs explaining, I don’t think it deserves to be baseline.

Longbow buff didn’t need explaining, just a change to the tooltip for range and boom-bam, that’s just how the weapon works and it makes sense. If your pets are receiving partial copies of your boons, then you need to tell the player why and it’s not really all that intuitive that a minion just gets your buffs (doesn’t happen for other classes.)

Those are my thoughts on baseline buffs.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Tragic Positive.9356:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Toolbox.9375:

My personal favorite approach to a baseline Fortifying Bond isn’t the fixed-duration boon-copying approach the actual trait uses, but a new system entirely for handling Ranger and pet boons. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I’ve mentioned it myself in other topics. X)

Essentially, any boons applied to the Ranger or the pet goes to a pool that they both share. If the Ranger gets a boon, the pet gets exactly the same boon themselves, and if the pet gets a boon, it similarly goes to the Ranger. If both are caught in one boon application, it’s only applied once. Such an approach lets the Ranger send their pet into a boon-stacking group while staying back themselves if need be, or lets the pet stay back for whatever reason while the Ranger fights with the group.

Just seems like a much more straightforward and reliable system.

Sounds very reasonable to me. Simple, elegant and straightforward as you said. +1

I don’t really like the idea of pet giving Ranger Boons.
It pushes everyone else on ranged backwards. And it sounds really complicated.

Rangers already are the best Ranged DPS. Making it profit from 100% of melee stacking boons is wrong if we are talking about balance.
Just let the pet be the promised 30% DPS. That’s all we really need to be the DPS specialization. We already have the support options.

I understand what you’re saying, but at the same time we’ve been told that we more or less have to be in melee range and stack, like everyone else, because if we don’t, we won’t get the buffs everyone else gets, and thereby, we’re not dealing optimal dps.

I say screw the melee stacking, it’s boring as hell. This is probably the only mmo I’ve played that forces everyone into melee, if they don’t they are not optimal to the group. There’s no need for ranged support – stack in melee, go full berzerk or get the hell out. That’s the name of the game.

And no, the game, when using stacking tactics, isn’t in any way harder than fighting from range. That is a myth.

You are dealing optimal DPS. No one stops you from using Sword.
Furthermore, you don’t suffer from damage at Range. You do at melee.

The ZerkMeta tactics work thanks to Guardian that pops Aegis and helps people heal back up – so that you can deal much more damage in way less time than on ranged.

In 50FoTM Pugs? Yes, everyone starts at melee to burst cooldowns with the highest efficiency then proceeds to range the boss down because everyone dies in 1 hit.
The fact that melee bosses don’t deal damage from range is not a myth. If we are talking about farming dungeons – that has and had nothing to do with lvl50 Fractals (former competitive PvE). People were able to ZerkMeta those because of mechanics, skill and time efficiency. Not comfort.

I have a very big problem with how the devs see pets in this game. In my opinion, pets shouldn’t be able to recieve boons, but every boon granted to the ranger should be copied 1 to 1 to the pet. This way, pets can’t “consume” boons. If you WH 5 in your whole group, the pet shouldn’t need to steal the boons from one member, but instead just being granted it anyway because I get the boons. Same goes for resounding timbre. The range is so small, that when your pet is a bit away, it isn’t granted the swiftness/regen – where the hell is the logic in this?

Shirk.6421:

I have a very big problem with how the devs see pets in this game. In my opinion, pets shouldn’t be able to recieve boons, but every boon granted to the ranger should be copied 1 to 1 to the pet. This way, pets can’t “consume” boons. If you WH 5 in your whole group, the pet shouldn’t need to steal the boons from one member, but instead just being granted it anyway because I get the boons. Same goes for resounding timbre. The range is so small, that when your pet is a bit away, it isn’t granted the swiftness/regen – where the hell is the logic in this?

This I have been repeating over and over again. That’s exactly it.

I think I’ll bump all of my Pet Solutions in a few days’ time.

Sevans.4619:

Doesn’t make sense for it to be baseline. I think this goes for most baseline requests, though. If it really needs explaining, I don’t think it deserves to be baseline.

Longbow buff didn’t need explaining, just a change to the tooltip for range and boom-bam, that’s just how the weapon works and it makes sense. If your pets are receiving partial copies of your boons, then you need to tell the player why and it’s not really all that intuitive that a minion just gets your buffs (doesn’t happen for other classes.)

Those are my thoughts on baseline buffs.

The explaining can be done via updating the pet UI, which sorely needs an update anyway, and by making the boons simply copy one by one and ditch the set durations from the trait completely. It’s rather easy to make this change “make sense” from an UI standpoint. And as far as class balance goes, it makes perfect sense aswell.

Secondly, the pet is a class mechanic first and foremost, not a “minion”. Anet shouldn’t treat the pet class of the game as if the mechanic was a mere minion, enough with the self-defeating mentality.

Shirk.6421:

I have a very big problem with how the devs see pets in this game. In my opinion, pets shouldn’t be able to recieve boons, but every boon granted to the ranger should be copied 1 to 1 to the pet. This way, pets can’t “consume” boons. If you WH 5 in your whole group, the pet shouldn’t need to steal the boons from one member, but instead just being granted it anyway because I get the boons. Same goes for resounding timbre. The range is so small, that when your pet is a bit away, it isn’t granted the swiftness/regen – where the hell is the logic in this?

This is basically what I would have wanted if they were to go further than the road than simply making FB baseline.