Opening Strike
Indeed. Opening Strike is a flawed mechanic – a one-time burst-oriented mechanic on a dps profession. It quickly becomes irrelevant against bosses and requires a grandmaster major trait to be relevant in open world PvE. It is the main reason why Marksmanship sucks.
Um, it’s a minor trait. Who cares?
As a minor trait, it’s not horrible although it’s not really relevant to a long fight which is good. If it were better, then you might as well remove it from traits and just add it as a secondary type of effect like steal and initiative is for thief and adrenaline and burst is for warrior.
I think he was talking about the trait which causes it to refresh after every kill, the grandmaster trait Remorseless. Personally I find it to be a pretty underwhelming for a grandmaster trait, but I could be wrong. I personally don’t even notice opening strike most of the time. Only five sacks of vulnerability for five seconds (I have a permanent 10% damage boost when flanking, 5% from having a pet with Rune of the Ranger, 10% for having full endurance, 5% for having a boon or 5% for being above 90% health). When there are so many other traits which give flat damage boosts which are usually in effect for more of the time (admittedly they are not in the power trait line nor do they boost everyone’s damage against the target like vulnerability does) it’s hard for me to think 5% damage for 5 seconds is worth much, never mind a grandmaster trait selection.
Fortunately for Remorseless its competition is Signet of the Beastmaster and most rangers won’t be bringing that because it involves running a signet build.
If I was looking at tweaking ranger traits, the marksmanship grandmaster traits might be a good place to start.
(edited by Shiren.9532)