Guild Wars 2

Marksmanship

Signet Mastery – Merge with Beastmaster’s Might
Adept Trait: Activating a Signet grants you 3 stacks of Might (10s). Reduces Signet Recharge rate by 20%.

Remorseless – Moved from a Grandmaster Major trait to a Grandmaster Minor trait.
Grandmaster trait: Regain Opening Strike when you kill an enemy or gain stealth.

Precise Strike – Moved from a Grandmaster Minor trait to a Master Major Trait.
Master trait: Opening Strike always critically hits.

New: Vengeful Hunter
Grandmaster Major trait: Deal 10% more damage and take 10% less damage while your pet is defeated.

Skirmishing

Pet’s prowess – Merged with Carnivorous Appetite and moved to a Master Major Trait.
Master trait: Your pet deals 30% more critical damage and gains health on critical hits.

Honed Axes – Moved from a Master Major trait to an Adept Major trait.
Adept trait: You deal an extra 10% critical damage while wielding an Axe in your main hand.

New: Swift Fangs
Master Major trait: Your Pet gains 1s of Evasion on Critical hits. Can only occur once every 6 seconds.

Wilderness Survival

Healer’s Celerity – Removed
Adept trait: Grants Swiftness to you and your ally when reviving someone. Increases revive speed by 10%.

Oakheart Salve – Moved from a Master major trait to an Adept major trait, now also triggers on Torment.
Adept trait: Grants Regeneration for 5 seconds when you suffer from Bleeding, Burning, Torment or Poison. Can only occur once every 20 seconds.

Martial Mastery – Merged with Two-handed strength. Remains in Wilderness Survival.
Master trait: Damage with Greatswords, Swords and Spears is increased by 5% and Cooldown is decreased by 20%.

New: Primal Retaliation
Master Major trait: Your pet gains Protection (5s), Regeneration (10s) and Stability (5s) when taking damage equal to or more than 10% of its Max Health in a single strike. Can only trigger once every 20 seconds.

Nature Magic

New: Circle of Life – Reworked entirely
(Former) Adept trait: Create a Healing Spring on death.
(Changed) Adept trait: Rally your Pet when you kill an enemy.

Two-handed Training – Moved to Wilderness Survival and merged with Martial Mastery

New: Merciful Invigoration
Master Major trait: Whenever you gain Regeneration, you also gain Vigor (5s). This cannot trigger more than once every 5 seconds.

Beastmastery

Instinctual Bond – Removed
Adept Minor trait: When you are downed, your pet gains Quickness for 5 seconds. 50 seconds cooldown.

New: Primal Defiance
Adept Minor trait: Your pet takes 25% less damage from Area of Effect attacks, and further 25% less damage if they’re not the target of an attack.

So, the basic idea behind these trait changes was to make the pet a viable addition to -any- kind of ranger build, rather than forcing them into one trait-line if they wanted anything else than a messy lump of stupid to follow behind them. Here, no matter what traitline you decide to focus into, there’s always the option of bolstering your pet’s prowess to make it a more helpful companion in-game.

EDIT: Changed Primal Defiance Suggestion to be an Adept minor trait, seeing as it should be avilable rather cheap to all Rangers. Also cut the resistance part in 2, one part coming active if they’re not the target of an attack which means they won’t suffer as much under Bosses who Cleave with their attacks (I.e hits more than one enemy in front of them)

Got one for you for skrimishing:

Beast Fusion: Permenately stow pet and gain 40% more damage.

Bam. My world instantly changed. You can put it 30 pts deep. I don’t care. I’ll take it.

Some really nice and well thought out changes, I’d love to see these done.

thefantasticg.3984:

Got one for you for skrimishing:

Beast Fusion: Permenately stow pet and gain 40% more damage.

Bam. My world instantly changed. You can put it 30 pts deep. I don’t care. I’ll take it.

dude… you need to let it go.

OP, these are great suggestions. A small change I’d like to see would be making the master BM traits not be restricted to certain species

Nope. Don’t think so. I’ll hold out hope that one day common sense will break through to the Devs.

As far as OP goes:
Martial Mastery – Merged with Two-handed strength. Remains in Wilderness Survival.
Master trait: Damage with Greatswords, Swords and Spears is increased by 5% and Cooldown is decreased by 20%.

I like that one. Idea of putting 30 pts into BM for something that should be standard, though… Man. No.

Changed the OP after some Consideration, just a minor relocation to BM trait suggestions.

thefantasticg.3984:

Nope. Don’t think so. I’ll hold out hope that one day common sense will break through to the Devs.

As far as OP goes:
Martial Mastery – Merged with Two-handed strength. Remains in Wilderness Survival.
Master trait: Damage with Greatswords, Swords and Spears is increased by 5% and Cooldown is decreased by 20%.

I like that one. Idea of putting 30 pts into BM for something that should be standard, though… Man. No.

well you’re in for a bad time, JP said recently that they are buffing pet abilities in an effort to make them more desirable to the ranger/group so I doubt they’re going away anytime soon. You might enjoy a longbow/rifle warrior more, rangers are a pet class

Dumb that they are buffing the pets as the abilities are useless while they are down and that’s if they can get them off with the incredibly LONG animations. Hideously long animations…. And no, they are going to make them more desirable. Not to the dozens of people I know that play. Which is why I have my Guardian to main now… Although there’s just nothing to complain about on that character. Everything I use on my Guardian works as intended. You can roll that piece of poop that pets are in glitter or dip it in gold, it’s still going to be poop. Glad they are trying but, obviously they aren’t trying hard enough. And you’re right. They are a pet class. They should be called Beastmaster. I wouldn’t have started the toon in the first place if that was the name of the profession.

I have a lvl’d 80 warrior, guardian, mes, and theif in addition to the ranger. Just sucks I enjoy playing the ranger so much more than the others. I’m learning to like my Guardian a lot, though… Eventually I’ll like it just as much as my Ranger.