Guild Wars 2

Come up with some ideas down below about how bad/underused traits and skills can be reworked to improve build options, add interesting mechanics, and bring additional utility to a fight.

+1 quotes of the suggestions you guys like so its easy to keep track

Thanks!

Replace Most Dangerous Game with Critical Eye.
Critical Eye:
Critical hits reduce all of your active cooldowns by 1/4 of a second.
Cooldown: 1 second

Empathic Bond:
3 conditions removed from both you and your pet every 10 seconds.

Ambidexterity:
Recharge Reduced: 20%
Range Increase: 300
Condition Damage: +150
Stalker’s Strike now immobilizes upon contact.
Duration: 2 seconds

Steady Focus:
Hitting a target applies a stacking buff that makes them take 1% more damage from all sources per stack.
Maximum Stacks: 3

Predator’s Instinct:
You deal 1% more damage to a target for every 10% of their health that is missing.
ie) 2% damage boost = 20% missing health

Replace Refined Toxins with Poison Master.
Poison Master:
Every stack of poison above 3 increases the healing reduction of poison by 1%.
ie) 5 stacks of poison = -35% heal effectiveness

Shared Anguish:
5% of damage done to you is transferred to your pet.
5% of damage done to your pet is transferred to you.

Invigorating Bond:
Every time your pet hits a target, it siphons 200 health to you.
Every time you hit a target, you siphon 250 health to your pet.
Cooldown: 1 second

Natural Healing:
You and your pet gain health regeneration and improved healing.
Health per Second: 150
Healing Power: +450

Strider’s Defense:
Remove conditions from you and your pet whenever you evade an attack.
Conditions Removed: 2
Cooldown: 2 seconds

Celestial Avatar:
Now can be entered and exited at-will.
Abilities 2-5 now consume Astral Force.
Astral Force is generated through healing with Cosmic Ray.
Cosmic Ray:
Project a beam of light, healing allies in the circle and damaging enemies every second.
Healing: 200
Damage: 200
Radius: 240
Seed of Life:
Now pops instantly at target location.
Conditions Removed: 2

Cultivated Synergy:
All healing around the player is increased.
Healing Increase: +15%
Radius: 600

Longbow:
Rename Barrage to Infected Barrage:
Infected Barrage:
Apply Bleed and Poison on hit.
Bleed: 1
Poison: 1

Glass Arrows:
Blocked arrows shatter, applying bleed in a radius.
Bleed: 2
Radius: 240

There are many traits for every class that simply go unused. For example, I’ve been playing ranger since release and have never used Predator’s Instinct.

Aside from this, many trait lines also have dominant traits that will always be picked over other options due to their strength. An example of this is Druidic Clarity.

In my opinion, the marksmanship trait line’s grandmasters are the most balanced. If you take a look at them, a longbow user would have to choose between Lead the Wind for cooldown and piercing, Remorseless for increased burst damage, or Predator’s Onslaught for synergy with Ancient Seeds.

They are called minor, major, and grandmaster for a reason. It would be nice if minors are cooldown reductions, majors are smaller passive effects, and grandmasters are more significant changes to skills that increase their power.

If this were to be put into effect, it would be interesting if a maximum of 3 traits could be selected per trait line, but without the restriction of 1 per tier. For example, 3 minors could be chosen, 1 minor and 2 majors, or 1 minor, 1 major, and 1 grandmaster.

This would allow someone to choose between cooldowns for multiple weapons/utilities, a cooldown and 2 passive effects, or a cooldown, passive effect, and larger effect.

Reserved.

critical eye : not sure it’s worth it.

empathic bond : probably to op in anet’s view.

ambidextry : unnecessary.

steady focus : I don’t think that the ranger need more reason to be taken into raids. This change also reduce the ranger’s potential personnal damage which would not be well received by all the player that think that the ranger’s damage is already abysmal.

predator instinct : +1

poison master : this trait already exist and is good as is. Refined toxin’s change would be probably to difficult to implement because it directly affect the foe not what you do.

shared anguish : this is a classic trait (useless but classic) I don’t think anet intend to change those kind of traits. Best bet would be to expect some additionnal effect like CC duration reduce on your pet by 50%.

invigorating bond : this is a trait that is supposed to be altruist. Well the main issue is the ICD which is here because pets’s F2 skills are not properly balanced in regard of cool down. For me this trait is just the very example that show the huge need for a serious balance on all pets skills.

Natural healing : that would be seriously to strong.

Strider’s defense : There is a need for a sword trait. Your suggestion also feel pretty op. If it was me, I’d ask them to give back the original attack speed of the sword and change the trait to break immob on sword’s movment skill use instead of the quickness buff.

celestial avatar/druids trait : nope.

Longbow : what?… No! just no!

Dadnir.5038:

poison master : this trait already exist and is good as is. Refined toxin’s change would be probably to difficult to implement because it directly affect the foe not what you do.

Please see Thief’s GM poison trait for GM poison trait done right.
Poison Master is currently outclassed by Wilderness Knowledge imo.
A poison duration increase could be added to this trait and still balanced.
Unless they’re saving that for the next espec.

And empathic bond does need a buff.
Change it to convert 3 conditions on the ranger to 3 boons on your pet. 10 icd.

Thanks for the input guys! I’ll admit I don’t know a thing about PvE so any suggestions I make are solely based off of my experience as a PvP/WvW/Dueler.

Critical Eye essentially reduces all of your active cooldowns by a 1/4 if you hit a critical every second. This applies to both weapon skills and utilities (including heal and elite). It takes up a spot in Grandmaster for Skirmishing which competes with Quickdraw and Light on Your Feet. I find this worthy of a Grandmaster Trait because of its interesting mechanic to encourage high critical chance but still having competition with the other traits in the same tier.

Ambidexterity’s main change is the range increase. This allows for additional movement back to previous values before the nerf and would help dagger become a little more smooth. Stalker’s Strike used to be a movement skill. Currently, it can’t really close a gap or create one like it used to.

Good point about Poison Master.

No ones uses Shared Anguish or Invigorating Bond. I feel like these changes would actually improve their viability so they’d be taken in some builds over other traits in the same tier.

I feel like every traitline should have some form of condi clear. A sword trait is needed, I just haven’t had the time to add it in (which I’ll get to later). This is a good condi clear which would give it some use in builds. Nearly every build atm in PvP and WvW is Nature Magic, Beastmaster, and Druid because the other traitlines don’t offer any/as much sustain.

I like the CA changes, they would allow for a more fluid healer role rather than small condition clears and a burst heal every 15 seconds. Astral Force generation would need to be balanced so that it allows for a similar use of skills as before.

Longbow is probably fine. Barrage could be more interesting though.

Glass Arrows is a cool trait imo. GW1 had it and it has a niche use in fights.

Natural Healing also used to affect the player as well until anet fixed it. It was in the game for over a year and was actually the meta build for a while. Albeit it had lower values at the time for the player (healing for 44 health per second), but to put it into perspective, warriors get around 400 health per second from Adrenal Health when they use a burst skill in Berserker mode.

What I said wasn’t there wasn’t a need for improvement, it was that the suggestions asked for way to much.

Because thieves poison trait is op doesn’t mean that ranger’s have to be op… Wilderness knowledge serve a different purpose than poison master, it’s better to compare it to something comparable : empathic bond.

If you add : reduce condition duration applied on pet to empathic bond, you keep the thematic. And if you change the trait to :" take one condition from you every 3 second", it become hundred time better.

Poison master would just need a change like : poison last longer, all pets attack poison foe for 3 seconds.

As for refined toxine, the trait itself is underwhelming and show again how much anet overestimate ranger’s pet. Putting the improved poison damage here would fit the name of the trait, as for the extra effect, well whether they keep it or not won’t break the game.

I like the CA changes, they would allow for a more fluid healer role rather than small condition clears and a burst heal every 15 seconds. Astral Force generation would need to be balanced so that it allows for a similar use of skills as before.

I said no to the druids change for one and only one reason : At this point I think that any hope for a drastic mechanism change like yours is unrealistic. It’s to different from the actual.

Glass arrow as a trait (you didn’t said it before) would have been interesting.

I gotcha.

I like talking about this stuff so any input is much appreciated.

I quit this game about a year ago because the gameplay and build variety got very stale. It was boring to fight the same builds every time. Since I’ve been playing since release, even if I changed my build, I’ve already played every variation in the past.

These changes would breathe more life into the ranger class in my opinion and make combat a lot more interesting and engaging as a whole.

Every class has useless traits and abilities as well, and it would be very helpful to the game if other people had discussions like this in the other profession forums and voted on which changes would make it into the game.

Anet needs to take what the community says into account. They kinda just do their own thing without really caring what the playerbase has expressed feelings towards in the past (legendary medium armor trenchcoat).

By redoing a lot (or all) of the useless build options in the game, I believe that a lot of people who quit would return.

No one hates this game, it’s just gotten very boring over the years.

As for Strider’s Defense, my change was loosely based off of Daredevil’s condition clear on dodge as well. Then I realized that a Daredevil could clear 10 conditions every 10 seconds which far outclasses our Empathic Bond which doesn’t even clear, but rather transfers 3 conditions every 10 seconds to our pet. Maybe 1 condition removed from you and your pet every time you evade with a 3 second cooldown would be more balanced.

Also, any suggestions you guys have as well about traits/utilities/weapon skills that you have concerns with personally would be great to hear!

Dadnir.5038:

I said no to the druids change for one and only one reason : At this point I think that any hope for a drastic mechanism change like yours is unrealistic. It’s to different from the actual.

I understand how drastic the changes are, but frankly, it would make druid a much more reliable support class and again, not only improve gameplay, but breath new life into the class.

Thanks again for the input!

To breath new life into the ranger is probably a very difficult objective to achieve outside of introducing new e-spec. However, I think that a few things are necessary :

- Balance pets F2 skills so that they all got the same cool down. It might seem like nothing but it would make the ICD on invigorating bond unnecessary and thus allow this trait to gain it’s much needed new breath.

- Allow us to prevent our pets from using some of their utility skills. Some of the skills that our pets use are unneeded and often hinder our gameplay more than anything. Just giving us the ability to block the ability of our pet to use those skills would be a huge QoL change.

- most dangerous game : I said it somewhere before but I’d like to see the might stacks replaced by fury, so that the trait synergize with remorseless.

- empathic bond : like said previously, make the trait reduce condition duration on pet by 50% with what the trait already do. This would add some much needed survivability to our pet in competitive environment.

- predator’s instinct : the issue is more the ICD (again) than anything. Reduce ICD to 15s and cripple duration to 5 seconds.

- strider defense : sword need to recover it’s attack speed (baseline). The best would be to change the quickness thing of trait by a “remove impairing movement conditions on use of sword’s movement skills”. That’s a bit greedy but we talk about ranger’s sword here…

- Shared anguish : in addition to what it does actually, grant stability (1 stack for 5 seconds every 10 seconds) to your pet while in combat.

- invigorating bond : the trait become viable without ICD if pet’s change are done.

- nature’s vengeance : change name into nature’s boon…

- natural healing : also give you half healing value given to your pet (which is somehow in line with what the trait was doing before)

- celestial avatar : just remove the need to be full of astral force to enter the avatar. I feel like this is a pointless restriction.

ICD shortening.
Synergy. → within a line and cross synergy.
Traits that do not punish player nor pet if used.

Thats all we want.
(i bring my suggestions later on)

The reason why the majority of people don’t take Marksmanship and/or Skirmishing is because the same amount of damage could be gained through taking Nature Magic for the boonsharing.

Even though they all offer significant amounts of damage, Nature Magic also provides a lot of defense and support.

It’s like picking between damage or damage, tankiness, and support. It would make sense to pick the latter.

Although the changes I suggested are more drastic, they also provide interesting mechanics that would encourage the use of the underused traitlines in order to benefit from them.

For example, reducing the cooldown of Predator’s Instinct to 15 seconds and the duration of the cripple to 5, would still be a bad choice over Clarion Bond. The reason being that there are so many ways to avoid movement impairing conditions nowadays, a lot of condi removal is being thrown around, and Clarion Bond provides 15 seconds of fury, might, and swiftness to 5 targets as well as a blast finisher on a 30 second cooldown.

15 seconds of fury, might, and swiftness to 5 people + blast finisher on a 30 second cooldown beats out 5 seconds of cripple every 15 seconds any day of the week.

I start with Marksmanship:

Alpha Training→move into opening strike.

Furious Strike →replaces Alpha Training:
Whenever you gain fury you get opening strike.

Clarion Bond:
Change ICD to 20s, so it is streamlined with Petswap. Decrease boonduration of these applied boons 33% to compensate.

Enlargement:
Replace with Hardening, swap position with brutish seals.
Hardening: Similar effect but with signet of stone and an appropriate ICD.

Predators instinct: Keep effect but halve ICD and halve duration to compensate.

Brutish Seals: add fury same duration as the might. <- synergy with opening strike traits
swap brutish seals with Enlargement/hardening.

Steady Focus: Every crit in succession increases your dmg and condi dmg 1% up to 15%. Only in combat.

Moment of Clarity: I split this one up.
Attack of oportunity went into remorseless. The stun duration went into predators onslaught.

New Master Trait:
Ferocious Persistance:
Gain unblockable when you interuppt/stun an enemy with an appropriate ICD.

Predators onslaught:
Add knockback to the effected conditions. Add the increased stunduration from moment of clarity.

Remorseless: Gain an attack of oportunity after you struck with an opening strike. Opening strike deals more dmg.

Lead the wind:
Longbow skills pierce.
Skills recharge faster while under the effect of quickness <- this could be interesting but its maybe difficult to balance. maybe something like 17% to hit the halve CD reduction with alacrity.

Skirmishing:

Hunters tactics:
Gain increased critically hit chance when under the effect of swiftness.

Sharpened edges:
Add the increased bleeding duration of hidden barbs.

Trappers Expertise:
Traps are throwable again, decrease CD. no other effect.

Primal reflexes: Gain swiftness when you evade a attack.

Hidden barbs: When you apply cripple to an enemy you activate minor sharpening stone with 5 charges of sharpening stone (ICD 15s).
This skill synergizes with the survival trait line and with predators instinct.

Light on your feet: Gain the condi dmg and duration bonus if yo have either quickness, swiftness or vigor.
SB skills always behave like you where flanking.

Most dangerous game:
Gain fury and might when evading an attack. Gain an evade frame when you got hit at certain health threshold. ICD on the evade frame.

Most of these trait are huge power creep in the wrong way. I also don’t think CA should be completely reworked. Like if CA can be entered at will, how do you balance DC and CS for entering/exiting CA? It also even breaks PvE balance in that keeping gotl stacks up with be too easy for how strong of a buff it is as well as making Druid the best raw healer in the game on top of the best buffer.

Part of the diversity problem is that druid is such better sustain than ranger that it’s “required”. In order to build up CA, regen/signet of the wild/dolyak runes etc are “required.” Basically, druid is balanced around those constant tiny heals in order to build up CA. This doesn NOT mean any of these need nerfs/changes. It’s just that this both limits diversity in both utilities/traits picked but also druid being picked in general. Best way to boost base ranger survivability without breaking druid sustain is to give base ranger skills nice burst heals that are mutually exclusive with the small constant heals that charge CA well.

Relevant rune/trait to what I’m about to propose:
Rune of the tempest #6: AOE Heals for 1.1 (1.0) on stunbreak
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Tempest
Monks Focus: Self heal for 1960 (0.4) and gain fury when meditations are cast.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Monk%27s_Focus
Proposed new rune:
Rune of survival #6: Survival skills heal 1.8k (0.5)

I picked survival skills and a rune to buff it for a few reasons. The survival trait already gives fury and clears two conditions. It would be crazy power creep to also give the trait a heal. Making it a rune means any future elite spec with survival skills has access to it. Also with a new expansion, if a new elite spec gets survival utilities, there will likely be a rune that buffs survival skills. So practically, I think this rune can happen. It also means no dolyak runes. Having full survival utilities on a rangers bar means no signet of the wild/shouts for regen. You would obviously want to bring wilderness survival which is mutually exclusive with the current meta Druid build. This in no way nerfs Druid which I think is roughly fine where it is as a pet buffing/support sustain build in the meta. However, it opens up a lot of diversity as it gives base rangers a different kind of burst sustain that isn’t OP. It’s safe to say it isn’t OP because guards already have this in trait form and it’s not broken healing. They have to choose between offense and defense when casting their meditations. Likewise, the ranger weigh the options of offensively proccing fury, remorseless, bleeds and quickness vs the 2 conditions cleared, heal and stunbreaks.

InsaneQR.7412:

Trappers Expertise:
Traps are throwable again, decrease CD. no other effect.

Man, if they make Traps throw-able again, I’m becoming full time condi ranger.

Most useless trait in Ranger is probably Most Dangerous Game. Just remove it and make something new at this point. Nobody will use it over Quickdraw or LoyF.

WIlderness Survival:

Natural Vigor:
Gain vigor after a dodgeroll. Basically keeps its function. It is no longer possible to stack endurance regeneration with this plus vigor but it increases synergy with my other changes.

Soften the fall:
This should get into the wilderness knowledge trait. Some replacement would be needed. I am still figuring on this one.

Expertise Training: You and your pet have increased Condi dmg and duration. You and your pet apply more burn and poison stacks. 2 stacks per weapon/pet skill. Swap places with refined toxins.

Ambidexterity: Increase crit chance when wielding an Offhand weapon. Offhand skills recharge faster.

Shared anguish: As someone suggested above. Your pet gains 5 seconds stability every 10ish seconds while in combat. Plus the old effect.
swapped places with empathic bond.

Empathic Bond:
Clear 2 conditions when swapping pets. Pet has decreased condi duration on itself.
better control over clearence and better accessible.

Poison Master: Create a Poison field (about 3s and pulses 1 stack every second) on your location and on the location of the pet when swapping pets. Poison duration is increased.
->The fields can stack so you could apply 6 stacks of poison plus the combostacks from the field.

Old ranger sword attack speed and animations would be nice (not talking about the rooting effect)

Nature Magic:

Bountiful Hunter:
The effect also increases condi dmg.

Instinctive reaction. Move the healing power to power converter to vigorous training.

Vigorous Training:
Get the healing power to power converter from Instinctive reaction. Gets the heal on pet command from invigorating bond. swappes places with invigorating Bond and is new GM trait.

Invigorating Bond:
Dmg you deal heals your pet for a percentage and vice versa.
(This isnt much for the ranger, but it synergizes well with druid and it keeps your pet better alive).

Natures Vengeance:
Trigger effect on death. Bigger AoE and more life gets baseline.
Moving Spirits should either get baseline or the AoE get ground targeted baseline.
Stone spirit should give stability and nature spirit resistance.

Beastmastery:

Go for the eyes: Pet gains expertise instead of toughness. F2 also applies some bleeds.

Companions Might:
This trait is now the new axe trait. Keep old effect plus axe MH CD reduction (OH reduction is in the new ambidexterity trait). Wintersbite AoE is now baseline.

Loud whistle: The dmg buff is vice versa. So the rangers get benefits of keeping the pet alive.

Wilting Strike: Add some vulnerability.

Two handed training: Increase fury duration up to 5s instead of 3s.

Natural Healing: Also increases the rangers healingpower.

Beastly Warden: Pet gets increased toughness if it is under the effect of protection. Pet taunts enemies on activation and gets protection.

Zephyrs speed: This trait activates Quickening Zephyre on pet swap instead of just plain quickness. This synergizes with survival trait and breaks stun.

Feral Combat: You give your pet a stacking toughness buff and yourself a stacking precision buff. And vice versa.
This emphasizes on pet ranger synergy and if one does dmg it increases dmg of himself and survivability of the other.

InsaneQR.7412:

Zephyrs speed: This trait gets a 30s ICD (2 pet swaps) and activates Quickening Zephyre on pet swap instead of just plain quickness. This synergizes with survival trait and breaks stun.

I like the idea of Quickening Zephyr activating on pet swap a lot. The problem with a 30 second cooldown is that only 1 pet would ever really get the quickness. The 15 second cooldown synergizes with our current pet swap cooldown and it feels smooth because of this.

If I had to choose between Quickening Zephyr on a 30 second cooldown or our current Zephyr’s Speed, I’d choose our current one unless they made Quickening Zephyr on a 15 second cooldown with 3 seconds of quickness, super speed, and break stun to match the duration on the current values.

shadowpass.4236:

InsaneQR.7412:

Zephyrs speed: This trait gets a 30s ICD (2 pet swaps) and activates Quickening Zephyre on pet swap instead of just plain quickness. This synergizes with survival trait and breaks stun.

I like the idea of Quickening Zephyr activating on pet swap a lot. The problem with a 30 second cooldown is that only 1 pet would ever really get the quickness. The 15 second cooldown synergizes with our current pet swap cooldown and it feels smooth because of this.

If I had to choose between Quickening Zephyr on a 30 second cooldown or our current Zephyr’s Speed, I’d choose our current one unless they made Quickening Zephyr on a 15 second cooldown with 3 seconds of quickness, super speed, and break stun to match the duration on the current values.

I thought it could be kinda OP but if you consider the kitten short stunbreaks on rev legend swap plus the fury and the condi cleanse they can get from this in one traitline i thought this would be fine with 15s^^

I also changed the axe trait and put it together with vanilla companions might. I added a new trait called feral combat that emphasizes on duality.

InsaneQR.7412:

I thought it could be kinda OP but if you consider the kitten short stunbreaks on rev legend swap plus the fury and the condi cleanse they can get from this in one traitline i thought this would be fine with 15s^^

Not to mention warrior’s 10 second cooldown Outrage and thieves’ 15 second cooldown Bandit’s Defense.

A very nice change to mention would be reducing the cooldown of Lightning Reflexes to 15 or 20 seconds when traited to better compare with other similar skills.

Also it might be worth noting that using Trap utilities really cuts down on the player’s survivability. What do you guys think of a “Trapper Kit” that has Spike Trap, Flame Trap, Viper’s Nest, Frost Trap, and Smoke Trap? This would allow for additional utilities whilst not sacrificing damage.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Marksmanship

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Predator’s Instinct
Gain Predator’s Instinct (5s) when you apply or strike a foe with cripple, chill, or immobilize. Buff effect: +2% attack speed per stack. Stacks up to 5 times.

Steady Focus
Deal +10% more damage when your Endurance is full or while under the effects of stability.

Read the Wind
Longbow and Harpoon skills pierce, recharge 20% faster and deal +10% more damage. Barrage inflicts immobilize (2s) on the first strike.

Skirmishing

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Strider’s Defense
Add +10% damage modifier while wielding a sword.

Most Dangerous Game
Gain pulsing might (3 stacks, 3s) and fury (3s) every second while you have quickness.

Light On Your Feet
Deal +10% damage and condition damage while you have vigor. Shortbow arrows explode (120 radius) and recharge 20% faster.

Wilderness Survival

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Refined Toxins
Poison you apply deals +25% more damage. When you or your Pet poisons a foe, also apply vulnerability (5s).

Poison Master
Corrupt 2 boons when you poison a foe inflicted with poison that matches or exceeds the threshold. Stack threshold: 5. ICD: 10s.

Empathic Bond replaced with Edge of Extinction
Transfer 1 condition to your Pet every 3-seconds. Your Pet consumes conditions on itself with [F2] commands and release a miasma that poisons (6s) surrounding foes. Poison stacks increase with each unique condition your Pet consumes. Radius: 300. ICD: 20s.

Nature Magic

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Instinctive Reaction
Change stat conversion to 7% of Vitality is converted into Healing Power.

Windborne Notes
Warhorn skills recharge 20% faster and have additional effects. Hunter’s Call reveals (4s) a foe and Call of the Wild applies regeneration (10s) to affected allies.

Nature’s Vengeance
Spirits’ passive range is also increased by 50%.

Beastmastery

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Resounding Timbre
Shouts recharge 20% faster and grant boons to affected allies.
Heal as One: Regeneration (5s), Protect Me: Vigor (4s), Guard: Retaliation (3s), Sic ’Em: Fury (6s), Search and Rescue: Protection (4s), Strength of the Pack: Quickness (5s)

Go For The Eyes replaced with Wilting Strike
Feral Aggression added as a new Master trait in Beastmastery
When your Pet taunts a foe, cast “Sic ’Em!” on that foe. ICD: 40s.

Two-Handed Training
Gain fury (3s) when you stun, daze, knockdown, or knockback a foe with a weapon skill. Greatsword and Spear skills recharge 20% faster and deal +10% more damage.

Honed Axes
Axe skills recharge 20% faster. Winter’s Bite explodes on impact (240 radius) and Path of Scars cripples (3s) foes on the outgoing strike. You gain +10 Precision for each stack of might you have. Your Pet gains +10 Precision for each stack of might it has.

Druid

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Celestial Being
Gain access to Celestial Form, wield a staff, and gain Astral Force.
Astral Force on Hit: ¼%. Extra Astral Force on Hit per 1000 Power: ¼%
Astral Force on Heal: 1%. Extra Astral Force on Heal per 500 Healing Power: ½%

Lingering Light
Celestial Form recharges 20% faster. Summon an Astral Wisp that orbits around you when you heal an ally. Astral Wisps that pass through foes also blinds (2s) them. ICD: 8s. (Cooldown reduced with Primal Echoes)

I like your feral aggression trait and the improvement of two handed training.
I am.not a fan if the wilderness survival trait changes though.
The idea of the poisonfield and the boon corrupt could be incorporated into poison master trait. Empathic bond emphasizes on condi clear something very prominent in tgis traitline. What if you clear a condition every time you evade an attack (not just dodgeroll) and you deal more dmg and condi dmg if you havent any condition on you?

Nah. Boon corruption is a powerful tool. Rangers have been asking for access to a boon removal without external means (sigils) for a long time. Since Thieves are kings of poison, shifting the poison damage modifier as Refined Toxins and altering the way we are Poison Masters, in competition with Wilderness Knowledge, is a finer fit.

As for your Empathic Bond suggestion, I’m not keen on that idea at all. It’s plain, uninteresting, less pet interaction, and reminds me of 3 Daredevil traits combined. The stipulation for the buffs is worse than Light on Your Feet since not having a condition will rarely happen in competitive modes and will have a low uptime in PVE.

Edge of Extinction suggestion retains the passive condition cleanse, adds a way for the pet to cleanse all conditions on itself, a way to prevent it from being a ticking time-bomb with an Epidemic, and creates an additional niche with Signet of Renewal’s active. Worthy of being a Grandmaster trait in so many ways.

The problem with Poison Master is that it competes with Empathic Bond and Wilderness Knowledge. The other two will always have preference over PM because of the utility and defense they offer against conditions.

Aside from this, a measly 2 stacks of poison every 16-20 seconds and a 25% buff to poison damage is not worth a Grandmaster trait regardless.

A good change would be to move Poison Master to the Grandmaster Minor trait and instead make Bark Skin the grandmaster in its place.

Bark Skin:
Reduce the duration of all conditions on you.
You and your pet take less damage as long as you have none of these conditions.
Bleed
Poison
Burning
Duration Decreased: 33%

or it could have a more interesting effect to fit the name:

Bark Skin:
Immune to damaging conditions.
When a condition is applied to you, take 200 damage

shadowpass.4236:

The problem with Poison Master is that it competes with Empathic Bond and Wilderness Knowledge. The other two will always have preference over PM because of the utility and defense they offer against conditions.

Aside from this, a measly 2 stacks of poison every 16-20 seconds and a 25% buff to poison damage is not worth a Grandmaster trait regardless.

A good change would be to move Poison Master to the Grandmaster Minor trait and instead make Bark Skin the grandmaster in its place.

Bark Skin:
Reduce the duration of all conditions on you.
You and your pet take less damage as long as you have none of these conditions.
Bleed
Poison
Burning
Duration Decreased: 33%

or it could have a more interesting effect to fit the name:

Bark Skin:
Immune to damaging conditions.
When a condition is applied to you, take 200 damage

I like the idea of the GM barkskin but i would swap empathic bond with barkskin.
I would improve poison master to poisonfields generation and boon steal on petswap.

For barkskin i would suggest: Everytime you get a dmg condition you get some seconds of resistance on some reasonable ICD. You take less dmg while under the effect of resistance.

Traits that function under 50% health all need reworking as they are contradictory to the runes people run most. (Ex. Scholar ^damage while >90%)

Every class fall trait (Soften the Fall) should all be reworked to something skill based like “66% less fall damage if dodge roll within .5 seconds of falling”

Obvious traits like Predator’s Instinct, Invigorating Bond, and Brutish Seals all need reworking because of how severely underpowered they are.

Pet’s still need a lot of work.

The list can go on.

Replace Most Dangerous Game with Critical Eye.
Critical Eye:
At 100% crit change and perfect timing this would be a 25% cooldown reduction. Really like the concept, but would buff it slightly to 33% CDR or even 50% CDR. Example: Reduce active cooldowns on critical hits by 1 sec, ICD 2-3 seconds.

Empathic Bond:
Rather would want this trait to have a more reactive component, like removes conditions on a condition threshold or when disabled.

Ambidexterity:
Just add the immobilize effect to the current trait, that should make it more interesting.

Steady Focus:
Does this effect stack with multiple rangers? Either way feel like the 3% damage increase would be to powerful for large scale PvE events. Maybe increase pet attack speed by 5% on each hit with a max of 5 stacks?

Predator’s Instinct:
In place of what trait? Either way +1.

Replace Refined Toxins with Poison Master.
Poison Master:
Think the trait is good as it is.

Shared Anguish:
Maybe buff to 10%? Either way +1.

Invigorating Bond:
Numbers seem a bit high since signet of the wild regen is less than 100 each second, maybe heal allies around pet each time it attacks (note doesn’t need to hit). ICD 1, heal 100 (*0,1 of your Healing Power).

Natural Healing:
A flat +450 Healing Power would be way to powerful, reduce to 150, maybe 200. And maybe give the health regen a range to trigger, like 600 between you and your pet. This would promote staying close to one another.

Strider’s Defense:
Personally I like the quickness because of the extra damage, maybe change the name to Strider’s Offence/retaliation though.

Celestial Avatar:
Like it the way it is, including current skills.

Cultivated Synergy:
Properly to powerful, would rather have the AoE of the celestial avatar skills increased by 200/300?

Longbow:
Rename Barrage to Infected Barrage:
Infected Barrage:
I like barrage the way it is.

Glass Arrows:
Sounds like a good trait, +1

Thanks for the feedback Barry,

I think Critical Eye is a really cool trait as well. Though I think that a 33% or 50% cdr on all skills would be a bit too strong.

As for Ambidexterity, I believe the range increase for offhand weapons is very important and would help make Wilderness Survival traitline see more use.

Shared Anguish might be too strong at 10%. We currently have foods that grant the player 10% damage reduction. If both were selected, 1/5 of all physical damage would be mitigated.

The change I proposed to Invigorating Bond doesn’t scale with healing power. Keep in mind that pets still have to track targets and it’s not a rapid amount of healing. Smokescale’s Smoke Assault for example would only heal us for 1000 health.

Swapping Natural Healing with Honed Axes and reducing the additional healing power to 250 might be better balanced.

A radius increase on Cultivated Synergy would be interesting, but it doesn’t really fit the name. I like this idea nonetheless.

One change I would really like to see is Lightning Reflexes on a much shorter cooldown. while reducing the vigor duration. It used to be a staple in nearly every ranger build pre-HoT but we have much better options now with more utility. Reducing the base cooldown to 12 seconds while reducing the vigor duration to 4 seconds would help it see more use.

Another interesting change would be to remove the vigor on lightning reflexes and have it apply 2 seconds of quickness instead.

Barry Moonfang.6897:

Strider’s Defense:
Personally I like the quickness because of the extra damage, maybe change the name to Strider’s Offence/retaliation though.

shadowpass.4236:

Another interesting change would be to remove the vigor on lightning reflexes and have it apply 2 seconds of quickness instead.

Coming at this from more of a PvE concern but I don’t like quickness. It’s the same reason that Shiro for Rev is bad in raids. Chronos already have that covered. Self quickness wouldn’t help power rangers there.

Strider’s Defense
Sword CDR 20%. When you evade an attack, you deal riposte damage in an aoe (5 targets). ~0.8 Power coeff. 2 second ICD.

() are the base power coeff of each skill. Evades with sword 2 (0.8) or 3 (0.8), GS 1 (0.75) and 3 (1.0), dagger 4 (0.2), staff 3, shortbow 3 (0.5), lightning reflexes (1.0) or just dodge could all proc it. So 0.8 is fairly strong buff to certain skills.

I don’t trust the ICD to be per target since Anet is super inconsistant about that but rangers, especially in wvw, need some cleave. A 5 target 2 sec ICD generically buffs aoe for rangers in zergs on something that isn’t a projectile and helps most weapons. It stacks with quickness in raids (Druid takes spotter, dps power ranger could take this). For PvP, I think it’s balanced. Longbow or GS spike don’t involve evades so you aren’t proccing them on the bursts. This would be more for the sustained 1v1 and if the damage is too much… they can just back off for a sec. It also requires taking skirmishing that doesn’t have any other defense traits besides buffing vigor/evades. Side note, I think LoyF should be changed to 10% bonus damage/condi duration on EVADE not dodge.

Most Dangerous Game deal 10% extra damage to nearby foes, receive 5% extra damage.

shadowpass.4236:

Replace Most Dangerous Game with Critical Eye.
Critical Eye:
Critical hits reduce all of your active cooldowns by 1/4 of a second.
Cooldown: 1 second

Empathic Bond:
3 conditions removed from both you and your pet every 10 seconds.

Ambidexterity:
Recharge Reduced: 20%
Range Increase: 300
Condition Damage: +150
Stalker’s Strike now immobilizes upon contact.
Duration: 2 seconds

Steady Focus:
Hitting a target applies a stacking buff that makes them take 1% more damage from all sources per stack.
Maximum Stacks: 3

Predator’s Instinct:
You deal 1% more damage to a target for every 10% of their health that is missing.
ie) 2% damage boost = 20% missing health

Replace Refined Toxins with Poison Master.
Poison Master:
Every stack of poison above 3 increases the healing reduction of poison by 1%.
ie) 5 stacks of poison = -35% heal effectiveness

Shared Anguish:
5% of damage done to you is transferred to your pet.
5% of damage done to your pet is transferred to you.

Invigorating Bond:
Every time your pet hits a target, it siphons 200 health to you.
Every time you hit a target, you siphon 250 health to your pet.
Cooldown: 1 second

Natural Healing:
You and your pet gain health regeneration and improved healing.
Health per Second: 150
Healing Power: +450

Strider’s Defense:
Remove conditions from you and your pet whenever you evade an attack.
Conditions Removed: 2
Cooldown: 2 seconds

Celestial Avatar:
Now can be entered and exited at-will.
Abilities 2-5 now consume Astral Force.
Astral Force is generated through healing with Cosmic Ray.
Cosmic Ray:
Project a beam of light, healing allies in the circle and damaging enemies every second.
Healing: 200
Damage: 200
Radius: 240
Seed of Life:
Now pops instantly at target location.
Conditions Removed: 2

Cultivated Synergy:
All healing around the player is increased.
Healing Increase: +15%
Radius: 600

Longbow:
Rename Barrage to Infected Barrage:
Infected Barrage:
Apply Bleed and Poison on hit.
Bleed: 1
Poison: 1

Glass Arrows:
Blocked arrows shatter, applying bleed in a radius.
Bleed: 2
Radius: 240

I am assuming this pvp.

One reason for movement impairing damage boosting traits for being problematic is this:

A lot of the classes have Innate -% condi impairing reduction traits, which are all part of the meta builds. Golemancer’s freedom, dogged march, Chrono GM minor, Engie mecha legs + ON TOP OF A LOT OF CONDITION REMOVAL and CONDI IMMUNE TRAITS OR UTILITIES.

That’s why they should just change it, Like predator’s onlsaught even just for pvp.

1st Problem

Survival of the fittest competes with Emphatic bond. I would honestly move this to another tier or a minor or even a different tree.

• Shared anguish is a great idea. I can imagine Glyph of unity combo with this one.

• Invigorating bond is a good idea although I would take it even further since it is located in a support tree. I would add "Every critical hit your pet makes, heals 200 * Healing power around it AoE. If it only affects you, then it wouldn’t be a good GM choice to be honest.

• Infected Barrage is a good idea, Maybe change bleed to weakness? also, I would make it unblockable for node denial.

• You should change steady focus to be honest, It would be a waste traiting it since vuln is easier to apply, with no cap. 3% increased situational damage is mediocre at best

• Critical Eye is meh for me too. So with this change, is there any reason to trait in Quickdraw? They compete with each other with very similar uses.

StickerHappy.8052:

I am assuming this pvp.

One reason for movement impairing damage boosting traits for being problematic is this:

A lot of the classes have Innate -% condi impairing reduction traits, which are all part of the meta builds. Golemancer’s freedom, dogged march, Chrono GM minor, Engie mecha legs + ON TOP OF A LOT OF CONDITION REMOVAL and CONDI IMMUNE TRAITS OR UTILITIES.

That’s why they should just change it, Like predator’s onlsaught even just for pvp.

1st Problem

Survival of the fittest competes with Emphatic bond. I would honestly move this to another tier or a minor or even a different tree.

• Shared anguish is a great idea. I can imagine Glyph of unity combo with this one.

• Invigorating bond is a good idea although I would take it even further since it is located in a support tree. I would add "Every critical hit your pet makes, heals 200 * Healing power around it AoE. If it only affects you, then it wouldn’t be a good GM choice to be honest.

• Infected Barrage is a good idea, Maybe change bleed to weakness? also, I would make it unblockable for node denial.

• You should change steady focus to be honest, It would be a waste traiting it since vuln is easier to apply, with no cap. 3% increased situational damage is mediocre at best

• Critical Eye is meh for me too. So with this change, is there any reason to trait in Quickdraw? They compete with each other with very similar uses.

Thanks for your input!

• Good point about Steady Focus. I completely forgot about how it compares to vulnerability. When thinking about the idea behind the rework, I was considering the new PvP sigils and the 5% damage buffs they gave to the player. I figured 3% from all sources would be somewhat in line with the sigils, but I may have been mistaken.

• Maybe Quick Draw could be reworked into Critical Eye. I happen to really love this trait idea. In Neverwinter, I played a Hunter Ranger with a feat similar to critical eye. Basically, as you used your abilities, your other abilities would have their cooldowns reduced. This introduced very interesting gameplay mechanics. Although I do agree, Critical Eye does function similarly to Quick Draw. The difference however is that it offers a potential 25% cooldown reduction on weapon, healing, utility, and elite skills all in one grandmaster trait as opposed to 66% on one skill.

M A R K S M A N S H I P

Predator’s Instinct

• Cast ’Sic’em!’ to foes you hit while they are below the health threshold.
• Health Threshold: 50%
  Cooldown is the same as the shout so traitable (40s/32s)

Brutish Seals

• Same as it is +
• Refresh Opening Strike on Signet use

Steady Focus

• Damage is increased when endurance is full or when you have stability

AEFA.9035:

Most Dangerous Game deal 10% extra damage to nearby foes, receive 5% extra damage.

No offense but nobody would pick this trait.
Its a flat dmg increase but it has to compete with Quickdraw and light on your feet.
Loyf is not a real conpetitor atm but quickdraw outperforms this trait automatically.
The dmg increase is not significant and the traidoff is bad.

What i would suggest is: Get 1 stack of might when you get struck or evade an attack.
Gain fury at 50% health.

This way it would emphasize in melee combat and standing in enemies range for more power. The evasive aspect would keep it “a game” and it would be an interesting addition for evasive builds.

Nobody would pick that trait either. If it has anything to do with the player being under 50% health – it doesn’t need to be a grandmaster trait competing with Quickdraw.

Now, if it was something like: “Gain 5 Might (3s) when you strike a foe below 50% health – 1s ICD. Gain Fury (3s) every 3 seconds while you have 15 or more stacks of Might.”

Then, people might consider using that since it brings back Remorseless synergy, throws away that crappy health threshold on the player and shifts it to the enemy, and can be useful with the current “Strength of the Pack!”.

Might on a 1s ICD and only when striking a foe means the player must be on the offensive and obvious counterplay (which is good to have) is boon-strip and removal of Might to prevent pulsing fury for that sweet Remorseless synergy.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Nobody would pick that trait either. If it has anything to do with the player being under 50% health – it doesn’t need to be a grandmaster trait competing with Quickdraw.

Now, if it was something like: “Gain 5 Might (3s) when you strike a foe below 50% health – 1s ICD. Gain Fury (3s) every 3 seconds while you have 15 or more stacks of Might.”

Then, people might consider using that since it brings back Remorseless synergy, throws away that crappy health threshold on the player and shifts it to the enemy, and can be useful with the current “Strength of the Pack!”.

Might on a 1s ICD and only when striking a foe means the player must be on the offensive and obvious counterplay (which is good to have) is boon-strip and removal of Might to prevent pulsing fury for that sweet Remorseless synergy.

1. i thought about the might gain eitherway, not depending on health.
2. i think most dangerous game is or rather should have been designed to be a more defensive trait / a trait that is more useful the longer you life not the more you hit.
3. i like your idea of getting fury due to might stacks.

How about: get 2 stacks of might when you get struck or evade an attack, pet included (no threshhold as i mentioned before, 1s ICD). Gain fury if you hit 10 stacks of might (insert ICD here).

This way it could be a very useful trait for more tanky builds and it would buff the pet too. If you constantly keep the might up you constantly can get fury and thus remorseless procs.

Not a fan of having “when struck” on there, let alone it being designed as a defensive trait for living longer. Striking a foe benefits with lesser used traitlines such as Marksmanship while when-struck conditions favor the current, defensive lines.

I’d rather have it designed to promote MM/SK, especially since it will be a different take and provide Rangers a “finish them off” trait that can work well with either our burst trait (Remorseless) or sustain trait (Predator’s Onslaught).

Opponent health threshold should remain so initial might stacks can be high. Gaining a pulsing fury past 15 might seems more than reasonable, considering “We Heal as One!” and other might-generating sources.

Remorseless synergy is the main focus, and being a trait that could pulse fury, unlike the previous version of SotP that was on a 75s/60s cooldown, should have a higher might threshold to keep it in check.

InsaneQR.7412:

2. i think most dangerous game is or rather should have been designed to be a more defensive trait / a trait that is more useful the longer you life not the more you hit.

To me, the name “Most Dangerous Game” doesn’t feel defensive at all. Looking a the other traits in the Skirmishing traitline I would categorize Quick Draw as utility, Light on your Feet as damage. Maybe something like could fill the gap:

Most Dangerous Game
While your pet is down you deal … (20%?) bonus damage, and heal your pet for the amount of damage dealt.

This would give rangers compensation for the damage lost then you lose your pet. Also it would enable you to revive your pet without petswapping (to do this something needs to be done about the extra health pets get when they are down).