Guild Wars 2

I’ve talked about this with people in my guild, and I’m not the only one who didn’t buy the last training book. The Grandmaster tier traits for Ranger are underwhelming at best.

The most egregious are:

Remorseless: Regain opening strike when you get a kill. Worthless in pvp and not too great in pve, especially when opening strike doesn’t work at more than 900 range. Certainly not worth getting even if OS worked correctly.

Natural Healing: Your pets have natural health regeneration. Decent for pve, but terrible in pvp and incredibly weak for a final trait.

Evasive Purity: Removes blind and poison on dodge roll (10 sec CD). Change this to remove a condition on dodge roll, and lower the CD and maybe we’ll talk.

Anyone else not putting 30 points into a line because the GM tier traits aren’t desirable?

The most confusing grandmaster traits in my opinion is the wilderness survival, makes absolutely no sense.

However I generally agree with you, it feels like the later parts of the trait lines have been decided upon fast without any discussion, the effects and synergies between these traits and other traits or skills are random at best.

I’ve read this on several other forums as well. Ranger GM traits are pretty lackluster. The only reason to go all the way down to 30 is maybe for the extra stat points? Even then, you might be able to make that up with stats off of gear.

Agreed, I can not really find any viable reason at this time to put 30 points into any of the ranger trait lines as none of them are all that good to warrent the cost. In fact some of the 20 point ones also makes me wonder why bother.

I agree that are grandmaster traits are weak =\

Skirmishing -Trap Potency is a must for trap-condition builds.

Marksmanship – Signet of the Beastmaster is awesome for anybody that uses at least two signets (aka me, got 30 points in MM for PvP.)

Nature Magic – Spirits Unbound is a MUST for Spirit builds.

If you ain’t running a spirit build, trap build, or have 2+ signets, then they’re passable.

Signet of the Beastmaster is the only reason I went to 30 in MM, and I hated doing it. It makes no sense to me that in order for a signet build to even be -viable- we need a 30 point investment. Everyone else gets their signet actives for free, and pretty much just specs to reduce the CD.

I think Signet of the Beastmaster, particularly when combined with Signet of Stone for 6 seconds of damage immunity, is pretty great and makes a good grandmaster-tier trait. However, I’m not sure why it’s in the Marksmanship trait line since none of our signets have anything to do with marksmanship.

Trap Potency is good if you’re using a trap build. Trap builds are rarely used (at least from what I’ve observed) but they are fairly viable and this is a good trait to support them.

I wouldn’t bother to take any of our other grandmaster traits.

Ranger traits in general are underwhelming to me. I find myself using a lot of boring traits that just reduce cooldowns on my skills because there’s not much compelling to get. I think the most exciting trait I have, the one that most dramatically impacts my playstyle, is the adept minor trait from Wilderness Survival (+50% endurance regeneration) that’s been available to me since level 15.

It does make a good grandmaster-tier trait, but Warriors get the same sort of 6 second invulnerability without needing a 30 points investment.

I don’t think we really should be comparing single abilities between two separate professions. Warriors can access that effect more easily than rangers can because it is, or is at least intended to be, balanced by the hundreds of other differences between the two.

On the other side of that coin, rangers get +50% endurance regeneration as an Adept minor trait in one of our lines but that same effect is a Grandmaster major trait for engineers. I don’t think that necessarily represents a balance problem either because, once again, there are an enormous number of other differences between the two professions that mitigate any one thing.

Nonetheless, when the time comes for a tuning pass on the ranger profession, I hope Arenanet takes a close look at our Grandmaster traits (and utility skills, but that’s a separate can of worms.)

Trap Potency
Empathic Bond
Bark Skin
Spirits Unbound
Evasive Purity(PvP)

I agree with @Arrowstorm and Pikafan

Pikafan.3792:

Trap Potency
Empathic Bond
Bark Skin
Spirits Unbound
Evasive Purity(PvP)

Natural Instincts (the quickness while downed) has saved mykitten in PvP and PvE so many times it’s ridiculous…

The passive heal for pets in BM is also quite good due to it giving my pet like 300 health per second…

Evasive Purity, i imagine would be a life saver in PVE in orr where everything applies poison which rapes your healing abilities…

As said above, Beastmasters Bond or we that signet one seems great.

Moment of Clarity i have no idea what it does, it seems useless to me… The relentless assault, seems useless especially in PVP, i -guess- it’d be better to be in the major trait area or make it proc on crits or something who knows…

For the most part though i feel like our grandmaster traits are pretty awesome, we only have like 2 maybe 3 that are pretty garbage…

NOTE: Person i quoted that wasn’t directed at you i was just adding onto your post

I was also underwhelmed by their traits. I can’t wait to max out my Thief’s traits, but I just can’t get interested in the Ranger traits, especially the peak ones.

I went 30 into MM both for the power bonus, and because i wanted 2 master perks. Being Longbow focused, Eagle Eye is a must have, but the less noticed i think is Piercing Arrows which works quite wonderful in PvE or PvP. In PvE for example, your fighting a ranged mob, and a melee gets in your face. With Piercing Arrows you just ignore the melee, line him up with the ranged and keep hitting the ranged guy, melee mob will take 100% damage. In PvP, i believe players can block your shots, like an Elementalist standing behind an aware Warrior or Guardian, with Piercing Arrows there is no one you can hide behind. Im sure ive got a few kills because people thought they could escape into the crowd.

Id like to see more variety added to the skills, and i think we will with time. The ones that are there now are good, for special builds. As the game matures we will likely see new options that open new doors for interesting new builds, or better serving current builds.