Guild Wars 2

The ranger’s traits have to be their largest issue next to pet reliability. Many are too fragmented, weak, and generally don’t make sense given the design of the class. Furthermore, some of the rangers base weapons, utilities, and abilities are too weak on their own, requiring heavy trait investment for capabilities they should have by default.

The purpose of this thread is to highlight those problematic traits and the issues with them.

The opening strike mechanic consisting of:

- Opening strike – Your next attack will cause 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds. Only reapplies outside of combat.
- Alpha training – Your pet gains the opening strike effect.
- Precise strike – Opening strike is always a critical hit.
- Remorseless – Regain opening strike when you stealth or kill a foe.

• The general concept doesn’t fit in with the ranger. It is all about burst damage upon first entering combat, but the ranger doesn’t have the capabilities to make effective use of this, being mostly about sustained damage.

• It is weak for the amount of trait investment. You’re looking at 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds and a guaranteed critical for 3 traits, which only applies once per fight unless you have remorseless.

• With remorseless you are looking at an investment of 2 grandmaster, 1 master, and 1 adept trait for a relatively weak effect that only the longbow can make use of.

Pet focused traits consisting of:

- Speed training – 10% reduced cool-down on pet skills.
- Malicious Training – 50% increased condition duration for pets.
- Pet’s Prowess – 30% increased critical damage for pets.
- Agility Training – Pets move 30% faster.
- Carnivorous Appetite – Pets heal on critical hits.
- Expertise Training – Pets gain 350 condition damage.
- Concentration Training – Boons applied by the pet last 50% longer.
- Master’s Bond – Pets gain a stack of this buff (max 25) that increases all their stats by 8(200 at 25). This is lost on pet swap or death.
- Compassion Training – Pets gain 350 healing power.
- Stability training – Bears, pigs, and armor fish gain 3 seconds of stability when disabled.
- Intimidation training – F2 abilities of dogs and spiders cause 5 seconds of cripple.
- Instinctual bond – When you are downed your pet gains 5 seconds of quickness.

The issues with these fall into 3 categories:

• Require extremely specialized pets to get any function at all out of. Even then, you’re looking at maybe 1-2 of your pets skills getting any function out of this, making them generally not competitive.

• Not viable due to the limited capabilities and strength of pets. When you’re looking at the pets being such a low portion of your damage, of which has very low condition and boon application, that 10% reduced cool-down, 30% critical damage, 30% movement speed, 350 healing power, ect, you give to your pet, cannot compete with character effecting traits.

• Too weak statistically or difficult to use. Giving a bear or pig 3 seconds of stability when they get hit by a control effect? Don’t make me laugh. 10% reduced cool-down on pets, which only affects 2 skills of a pet which has weak skills to begin with, doesn’t do much and pales in comparison with the 20% recharge + other effect that recharge reducing traits typically get. Masters bond is too difficult to stack up because of how often your pet needs to be swapped out.

Longbow, signet, and trap traits consisting of:

- Piercing Arrows – Longbow and shortbow arrows piece enemies.
- Eagle Eye –5% damage increase and range increased by 300 for longbow and harpoon gun.
- Quick Draw – Reduces longbow and shortbow cool-down by 20%.
- Read the Wind – Longbow and harpoon gun projectile velocity is doubled.
- Signet Mastery – Reduces signet cool-down by 20%.
- Beastmaster’s might – Activating a signet grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
- Signet of the beastmaster – Activating a signet also affects you, not just your pet.
- Trappers expertise – Traps use ground targeting and are 50% larger
- Trap potency – Conditions caused by traps last 100% longer and reduced recharge by 20%.

• These traits are too fragmented and should be merged with other traits, weak and should be given additional effects, and/or are seen as something which the respective weapon/utility should have by default.

Other traits that should be changed for individual reasons:

• Beastmaster’s bond – gain fury and might when your pet reaches 50% health.
  Why are we encouraged to let the pet get killed to buff ourselves? It would make much more sense if this activated on something like a pet swap.

• Honed Axes – 10% increased critical damage while wielding an axe in the main hand.
  The main hand axe is a lousy power based weapon so critical damage doesn’t do it much good. It should be given a condition based effect, possibly a condition duration increase.

• Moment of Clarity – Stun and Daze durations are increased by 100%. Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupt.
  The ranger has low access to stuns and dazes and doesn’t have access to a true interrupting or crowd control weapon. The attack of opportunity effect gives 50% damage to your next attack which is difficult for the ranger to make full use of, being a sustained damage class. While this trait does see some use in specialized builds, because of the above reasons it doesn’t fit the ranger class all that well, and should be reworked into something that would better fit the profession.

• Evasive Purity – Remove blind and poison on a dodge roll.
  This trait could use a buff to its condition removal; Just removing blind and poison isn’t very useful.