Guild Wars 2

Okay, I was really disappointed when I saw the “new” predators instinct, which is still completely and utterly lackluster and won’t ever be used competetively, just like it never has been before. But I also think back to good old Crippling Shot Rangers from GW1 and I see a ton of potential for the trait to be amazing in teamfights and reward good play, awareness and positioning.

What the crippling shot ranger basically did in GW1 was two main things (in a GvG-Teamfight): He applied crippling and poison to multiple core targets, either to help out your backline to kite the opposing melee-DPS, or to help your melee-dps to more easily pressure the opposing backline AND he had to interrupt important skills.

This meant the ranger had to have perfect positioning (being able to interrupt the right targets and also apply cripple/poison to either the back- or frontline was not easy, since you had to often stand pretty close to interrupt certain sub-1 second skills). He had to know where which class stands that he will have to interrupt (mostly backline) and he had to decide and have the right positioning to either cripple the back- or frontline, depending on whether your teams needs more pressure, or needs to be relieved of pressure.

I’m already happy to see a buff to the interrupts, but I’d love to see sth. that feels similar to the crippling shot. You might say: “This isn’t GW1 and it’s just nostalgia”, but it was actually very fun and skill-intensive to play a CripShot-Ranger and theres a lack of things like that in teamfights currently.

Here’s my proposed change for Predators instinct:

New “New” Predators Instinct ^^’
Internal CD = 2 seconds
Health Threshhold = none
Crippling duration = 5 seconds (a longer duration is worthless in most 1v1’s and especially in teamfights cuz of massive AoE condition-cleanses)
+ add 5 seconds of weakness (I like that one cuz it can be used both defensively, to reduce dps, or offensively for pressure, cuz it affects endurance-reg)
+ The same target cannot be affected by predators instinct for 10 seconds (It simply would be too strong otherwise and wouldn’t force you to intelligently fire it on multiple targets)

The design would enable smart play, offer you a choice to use it offensively or defensively, encourage you to switch targets and not just spam it on one poor soul and just be IMHO fun to use and strong enough to get played.

thoughts?

I did have a nice build with Poison Master, Predators Instinct and Intimidation Training that I was using as a cripshot….

Yes, I think cripshot was awesome and needs a return, but you can use sigils for that too. Predator’s Instinct really needs a CD and duration reduction imo.