Guild Wars 2

Remove conditions (2 at once) and gain fury whenever you use a survival skill. Seems great, right? I might finally be able to ditch Empathic Bond for a useful grandmaster trait…except Survival of the Fittest was placed in Nature Magic (trait line focusing on spirits, shouts, and boons), and not in Wilderness Survival, where it would fit perfectly, seeing as that trait line has one for reducing recharge on survival skills.

Am i the only one who thinks this? Perhaps other thoughts will help.

Not really. just because it’s titled Survival of the Fittest doesn’t necessarily mean it should be in the WS line. I know what you mean, but then we’d have to choose between empathetic bond, bark skin, poison master OR SotF. I like it being in Nature Magic so we can have both Empathetic Bond AND SotF

The traits in nature magic are nothing to scoff at. More power for the vitality you have synergies with the long bow rather then more condition dmg the WS traitline gives.

Remove poison and block (1st is useful often and the 2nd is to help against thieves) and finally Survival of the fittest which actually let’s us use offensive utilities rather then purely supportive.

We also get some free regen while fighting, our pets get our buffs and we (ranger and pet) get a 5% boost to dmg.

All while giving us more hp to work with and 30% boon duration. All of which fits an offensive playstyle more.

I’m not complaining.

CMstorm.8679:

Not really. just because it’s titled Survival of the Fittest doesn’t necessarily mean it should be in the WS line. I know what you mean, but then we’d have to choose between empathetic bond, bark skin, poison master OR SotF. I like it being in Nature Magic so we can have both Empathetic Bond AND SotF

Bark Skin seems pointless, at only 25% HP any hard hitting attacks/conditions will still down you easily. Poison Master seems interesting, but the damage increase doesn’t seem high enough to make it worthwhile. And I’d like to have good condition removal while keeping points in Marksmanship for the longbow to still be good, as well as the survival/off-hand skill recharge reduction traits in Wilderness Survival. I could spec fully into both Nature Magic and Wilderness Survival, but then forget longbow being useful…or me doing any real damage at that.

Besides…even if I had to choose between Empathic Bond or Survival of the Fittest, the latter would win easily. Active condition removal beats passive any time.

The point of the trait was to finally give us some condi removal outside of emphatic bond so that we didn’t all have to go 30 into WS. It was also to try and help out power rangers at last and NM has some nice traits to help with that outside of SotF, much better then WS at least. The fury also goes nice with the boon duration you get.

Sucks that the cooldown reduction is in another line but its not the end of the world to spend those 10 points even if I would like to put them other places.

Also for the bunker rangers out there, you can have bark skin and sotf. Has great synergy.

I think the trait is perfectly placed, if it where in WS then we will still be stuck in condi builds, because there would be little condi removal out side of of WS.

puting it in a Vit/boon trait line means that we get to use it and then choose weather we go power, condi or beast master. and there are some great traits along the way as well such as:

Nature’s Bounty: handy for regen bunker builds
Strength of Spirit: MOAR power
Nature’s Protection: anti gank trait (i used to go 10 in to NM just for this trait)
Evasive Purity: makes rangers the best class for countering condi Poison rangers
Two-Handed: Training: great sword any one
And the minors are some of our best epically Fortifying Bond (makes your pet hit like a truck)

it has opened up so many build opportunities.

^Let’s not forget Bountiful Hunter. 5% may not look much, but any boon will trigger it.