Guild Wars 2

To start this topic off, I have to say that this is going to be an extensive topic the tries to address all of the problems I have with the classes trait system. I know these types of threads probably don’t see the light of day by the devs, but one of these days maybe they’ll accidentally open one of my topics and steal some of my ideas.

I’m going to avoid using numerical values for the sake of fine tune balancing issues. All changes take into account the upcoming patch preview.

So, let’s begin:

First, we’re going to merge and remove some traits:

Marksmanship
-Opening Strikes and Alpha Training, merged and left adept minor.
-Predators Instinct moved to Master Minor
-Spotter moved to Adept
-Remorseless and Precise Strike, merged and left grandmaster minor.
-Signet of the Beastmaster removed and it’s effect is now inherent to all signets.
-Eagle Eye merged with Quick Draw, increases the range of the shortbow (but not damage) on top of the current effects, and is moved to one of the open Grandmaster Tier Slots.

New Marksmanship line:
Minors:
-Opening Strikes: You and your pet cause vulnerability on the first strike when entering combat.
-Predators Instinct
-Precise Strikes: Regain Opening Strikes on kill or when entering stealth. Opening Strikes always crits.

Majors:
Adept:
-Steady Focus
-Malicious Training
-Keen Edge
-Signet Mastery
-Spotter
-Beastmasters Bond

Master:
-Vulnerable Strikes: Chance to apply vulnerability on crit
-Piercing Arrows
-Beastmasters Might
-Signet of Remedy: Activating a signet removes a condition

Grandmaster
-Eagle Eye: Increases Longbow, Shortbow, and Harpoon Gun range. Longbow and Shortbow cooldowns are decreased by 20%. Longbow and Harpoon Gun damage is increased.
-Signet Master: Activating a signet makes you and your pets next attack steal health.

Skirmishing
First, we’re going to merge and remove some traits:

-Agility Training: Removed
-Carnivorous Appetite: Removed
-Moment of Clarity: Daze and Stun duration merged with Hunter’s Tactics, Attack of Opportunity effect moved to a place that will be described in the Beastmastery Section.

New Skirmishing Line:
Minors:
-Tail Wind: Gain Swiftness when swapping weapons (9 second ICD, no longer requires in combat)
-Furious Grip
-Hunter’s Tactics: Deal more damage when flanking. Daze and Stun durations you inflict last longer

Majors:
Adept:
-Pet’s Prowess
-Sharpened Edges
-Trappers Defense
-Primal Reflexes
-Trapper’s Efficacy: Traps do 100% more damage on crit
-Companions Might: Your crits grant might to your pet, and your pets crits grant you might.

Master:
-Battle Cry: When your pet reaches the health threshold, you do more damage. When your health reaches the this threshold, your pet does more damage. Not active when both you and your pet are at the threshold simultaneously.
-Trappers Expertise
-Honed Axes: Deal more critical damage when wielding an axe in your main hand. Bounces inflict bleeding.
-Symbiotic Bond: When you critical hit, your pet has a chance to gain health. When your pet critical hits, you have a chance to gain health. Effect has ICD

-Grandmaster_
-Trap Potency
-Moment of Clarity: Interrupting a target transfers all conditions from you and your pet to that target

Wilderness Survival:
First, we’re going to merge and remove some traits:

-Natural Vigor: swaps places with Peak Strength
-Martial Mastery: merged with Two-Handed Training

New Wilderness Survival Line:
Minors:
-Companion’s Defense
-Peak Strength
-Natural Vigor: 50% endurance regeneration

Majors:
Adept:
-Soften the Fall
-Healers Celerity
-Shared Anguish
-Vigorous Renewal
-Expertise Training
-Wilderness Knowledge

Master:
-Offhand Training
-Oakheart Salve
-Hide in Plain Sight
-Wilderness Expert: Lightning Reflexes removes all movement impairing conditions including immobilize, Muddy Terrain is now instant, Quickening Zephyr no longer reduces healing, Sharpening Stone now applies 2 bleeds per attack.

Grandmaster:
-Empathic Bond
-Bark Skin

Nature Magic:
First, we’re going to merge and remove some traits:

-Rejuvenation: swapped with Fortifying Bond

New Nature Magic Line:
Minor:
-Fortifying Bond
-Rejuvenation
-Bountiful Hunter

Major:
Adept:
-Circle of Life
-Concentration Training: Boons applied by your pets and to your pets last longer.
-Nature’s Bounty
-Vigorous Spirits
-Strength of Spirit
-Natures Protection

Master:
-Spirits Unbound
-Evasive Purity: Dodging removes 2 conditions. 15 second ICD
-Two Handed Training: Greatsword, sword, and spear damage is increased. Cooldowns are reduced by 20%
-Enlargement

Grandmaster:
-Nature’s Vengeance
-Nature’s Voice

Beastmastery:
First, we’re going to merge and remove some traits:

-Instinctual Bond: Removed
-Loud Whistle: Moved to Adept minor
-Nature’s Wrath: Moved to Master minor
-Zephyr’s Speed: Moved to Grandmaster minor

new Beastmastery Trait Line:
Minors:
-Loud Whistle
-Nature’s Wrath
-Zephyr’s Speed

Majors:
Adept:
-Speed Training
-Beastmaster’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. Pets gain 5 stacks per kill.
-Shout Mastery
-Compassion Training
-Commanding Voice
-Mighty Swap

Master:
-Rending Attacks: Now applies to all pet types
-Stability Training: Now applies AoE stability on pet swap with ICD
-Intimidation Training: After using their F2 skills, pets next few attacks apply cripple with ICD.
-Vigorous Training

Grandmaster:
-Swap of Opportunity: You and your pet gain an attack of opportunity on pet swap with an ICD
-Natural Healing

This is my ideal trait setup for the ranger class.

Feel free to discuss any of the things I’m suggesting.

Some really nice ideas!

Here are some comments on your suggestions:

-Signet Master: Activating a signet makes your next attack steal health.
Suggestion: Activating a signet makes your and your pets next attack steal health.

-Symbiotic Bond: When you critical hit, your pet has a chance to gain health. When your pet critical hits, you have a chance to gain health. Effect has ICD
Really like this idea!

-Wilderness Expert & Empathic Bond
Swap positions

-Beastmaster’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated or deactivated, the bond is reset. Pet swapping no longer resets Beastmaster’s Bond.
Might be too powerful. Another idea I had for this trait would be to reduce the number of stacks required in order to get max benefit from 25 down to ~5

-Swap of Opportunity: You and your pet gain an attack of opportunity on pet swap with an ICD
Skip the ICD, 20 seconds (15 traited) would be enough, anything higher than that would make it rather useless imho

The problem with removing SoB is that “Protect Me” shout is just….even more crappy considering SoS. It has 20 sec less cooldown but typical Power spec doesn’t go for shout recharge reduction, but cd reduction for signets, including SoS is likely to pick as first Major in MM, so with only 4 second longer cd…“Protect Me!” would have to be removed or revmaped totally

@OGDeadHead;

Good point on Signet Master and Beastmasters Bond, I’ll make those changes.

For Swap of Opportunity, I was thinking mainly an ICD of 20 seconds. I figured being able to get an attack of Opportunity for both you and your pet every 15 seconds would be a little too strong, but any longer than the inherent 20 seconds and it becomes too weak for its own good. Also, the ICD is to prevent any out of combat bugs/abuses. It just nips it in the bud before it has a chance to be broken lol.

For Empathic Bond, the reason why I didn’t drop it down was because it could essentially overpower condition removal rangers. Rangers are already extremely evasive, and the build I think would be overpowered if I dropped Empathic to a Masters slot with my suggestion would be a 0/30/20/20/0 with my suggested Moment of Clarity, Empathic Bond, and Evasive Purity. A settler’s/apothecary build would be virtually unkillable with the right traits (would need vigor traits) and weapon sets. I can see how strong Wilderness Expert looks, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it looks pretty in line with traits like Elementalist’s Soothing Wave and Burning Fire, that take a list of related traits and give them an overall boost in effectiveness, without having to be specced into a grandmaster slot.

You can always convince me otherwise haha I just wanted to explain my reasoning first.

@Rym;

Totally agreed. I would have done a utility rework along side this but I haven’t thought through them enough as there are a wide range of things our utilities could be updated to do, and I would have had to consider them along side all of my trait suggestions, which would be a lot of time and effort for essentially just a suggestion thread.

That being said, my version of Protect Me would change to “for the next x seconds, your pet becomes passive and all incoming conditions are halved in duration and applied to both you and your pet.”

Having a complete condition immunity on top of all of my condition specific trait changes would be too much, but this would give rangers another utility option that doesn’t depend on traits to be able to deal with conditions if they still decided to go full glass traits with no condition removal.

Ideally, in taking my version of Protect Me on a defensive build, the other utility options would actually have to be so competitive for that build that it would actually be sacrificing something.

Not bumping this without a purpose, I want to ask, is everybody okay with my leaving Empathic Bond as is?

Because the other option I’ve been contemplating would be: “your pet removed 3 conditions from you on pet swap.”

Any thoughts? Make the change, or leave Empathic Bond at its current function?

As long it truly removes condis rather than transfer them to pet, I’m all for any changes to EB. That’s pretty much my main gripe with the trait, along with Signet of Renewal active, because the design is just so kitten.

I mean, it transfers condis to pet, and we consider it to be condition REMOVAL?!

Sarision.6347:

As long it truly removes condis rather than transfer them to pet, I’m all for any changes to EB. That’s pretty much my main gripe with the trait, along with Signet of Renewal active, because the design is just so kitten.

I mean, it transfers condis to pet, and we consider it to be condition REMOVAL?!

That’s exactly what I want to change.

Right now, from a balance standpoint, it makes sense that there is a drawback for removing 3 conditions every 10 seconds, because it is passive and requires no active investment in the function other than traiting it.

By making conditions be removed on pet swap, I think the fact that you have to swap your pet out, interrupting whatever they are doing at that time and relieving the enemy of the pressure you were putting on them, on top of not necessarily being the pet you want out at that time, but needing to swap to survive, is drawback enough.

So the literal programming functionality I’m suggesting is this: you activate the pet swap. In that time frame, the current pet, before deactivating, transfers 3 of your conditions to itself. Then, a new pet is activated, and no more conditions.

Also, for anybody reading, that means the default timeframe for being able to do this is 20 seconds, 15 seconds with loud whistle, which is a nerf to how often conditions are removed, in favor of a more on demand option.

So, pros and cons really.

I like the changes to the opening strike/remorsless traits. that sounds awesome. Also id like to add; Possibly remove the “regain opening strike on stealth” keep the regain on kill, and maybe add “regain opening strike on player on weapon swap” and “regain opening strike on pet on pet swap”. Maybe have this as a seperate trait? in master or grandmaster? that would make remorsless a lot more useful and available in longer fights, instead of just having them at the beginning of a fight. It would also synergise very well with all of the other opening strike traits in that line and make it a bit more viable.

what do you guys think?

oh i completely skipped over the part that had vulnerability on crit. that would also make me happy, either one :P just need more vuln