Guild Wars 2

I appreciate the ranger changes overall, but I’m worried about the intended GM traits for WS.

Currently, rangers have several methods of getting adequate condition removal.

• Run healing spring and signet of renewal
• Run empathic bond
• run survival of the fittest
• Some combo of the above

Currently, the different methods all see some use due to the other traits available in the lines and the ability of specs to take advantage of either more toughness in WS or more vitality in NM.

Moving Empathic bond and poison master into the WS tree will probably result in them seeing almost zero use, however.

With Wilderness knowledge you get both offensive and defensive benefits. Running the fairly standard troll unguent, lightning reflexes, and entangle you will get 6 on demand condi clears (assuming TU becomes a survival). You also get reduced cooldowns on those skills and an additional cleanse + fury from the SS proc. There are no drawbacks here, just a huge boost to offense and defense if you take 2 or more survival skills.

Now with empathic bond you get more condi removal than WK in a perfect scenario, but this trait is mired with situational problems. For one, you can’t see the internal timer. This means that you will frequently end up cleansing useless condis like single vulnerability stacks, cleansing conditions that could have been removed with evasive purity, or getting stuck with a heavy bleed stack for 9 seconds because you didn’t notice that the trait just procced. Further, the caveat that you need to keep the pet alive to transfer them is directly conflicted with handing said damaging conditions to the pet. This trait really isn’t worthy of a grandmaster spot tbh, and it completely pales in comparison to WK.

Also poison master. Taking this trait would be used in 2 situations. 1). You’re a power build with no access to poison that wants some application. But you can fulfill that by taking sword mainhand, spiders, or doom sigils. 2). You’re a condi or hybrid build that has enough condi clear and wants more pressure. But if you have to choose between either of our condi clear methods and this trait I can’t see that condition ever being met, so when would this trait ever be justified.

Some alternatives:

• Move empathic bond down to master level, either in WS or beastmastery where it may fit better thematically
• Remove the “gives conditions to pet” part of empathic bond and instead make it remove 3 conditions from both you and your pet.
• Change something on poison master to make it more appealing, open to suggestions.

This is my biggest issue with the cahnges, i love most of them. Its not even about balance, its about build diversity. Puting EB and WK on same trait line as GM traits is just wrong.
They can do alot of things with EB, like emarge it with IB as a GM trait in NM. make the pet take conditions on F2 togather with the heal – it makes the skill more interesting and not stuped passive(double the CD so not imba). Some even suggested it shoud turn condies to boons -synergise well with NM theme trait line.

So what do we do with the extra palce at WS ? – They took away core ability whcih used to function in lots of builds – our old bark skin. GM trait- regain bark skin at 25% threshold – you can add to that somthnig like “hide in plain sight” or even better -activate Signet of Renewal. The logic here is to keep the old bark skin builds and to synergise with -enlargment, Beastmaster’s Might and Most Dangerous Game. IT will be the might stacking Signet build.