Guild Wars 2

1.) signet of renewal now grants 6 seconds of resilience to the ranger and pet before pulling conditions.

-burning is really strong right now and ranger condition removal is lacking due to empathic bond and wilderness mastery being in the same tree, pidgeonong the ranger into a single specialization just to survive condi. empathic is bad in this meta because the transferred burning instakills the pet. This change may make SoR in combination with resounding timbre with trooper runes and shouts a viable option for condi defense outside of wilderness survival. This change makes SoR an attractive choice over Stone signet in most popular builds.

2.) range increase of offhand weapons from pre patch added back to Ambidexterity.

-Offhand mastery made torch and dagger competitive and needs to come back.

3.) Honed axes adds an added 150 ferocity when wielding and offhand axe. Whirling defense with this trait now grands stability.

-This trait is very weak for a grandmaster. This brings it in line with the warrior trait and makes whirling defense more than an interrupt death sentence when used.

4.) Protect Me now grants retal to you and your pet.

-durzillas idea. I had something else here but it was overly complex. This works.

5.) Swap protective ward and empathic bond. Empathic bond now transfers conditions to spirits instead of your pet.

Nature mastery needs some love. It’s crazy how both out grandmaster condi defense traits are in WS. Better to send spirits condis over the pet. They are meant to die and proc on death effects anyway. You can make this even cooler and have the spirits send condis they have back to enemies if they get hit by a spirit aoe.

+1
I would like to see Protect Me implemented that way… If only A-Net would read our comments that is…

1) Not a bad change. We do have a fair amount of condition removal already, but by adding Resistance (Assume that’s what you meant?) to it we get something really cool. IF we were also able to make this affect allies (just like the condition pull) you could even pull the the Resistance down to 3 seconds and we’d suddenly have something really cool we can do in groups.

2) The range increase needs to be baseline, honestly. Whirling Defense isn’t a bad skill, but it’s so selfish atm it adds nothing to our grouping potential. Baseline a radius increase for all of the off hand skills and suddenly they’re all very useful.

3) +150 ferocity while wield an axe, Chill is now AoE, Whirl now grants stability? Yeah, this could certainly work.

4) This is a pretty big overhaul, and while I like it I’m hesitant. Combining a bear with beast mastery and the Signet of the Wild makes something tanky enough; having it be a secondary pet that absorbs all incoming damage while the main pet and the Ranger just go to town seems a bit on the strong side. The only real downside is it’d jam your swap combinations, which can curt, but it far from the end of the world. Especially when combined with Signet of Stone. Perhaps, if we had the bugs fixed so the class operated properly and the first 3 changes implemented we could give this one a try?

I really like your first 3 suggestions, solid.

Nachyochez.9758:

1) Not a bad change. We do have a fair amount of condition removal already, but by adding Resistance (Assume that’s what you meant?) to it we get something really cool. IF we were also able to make this affect allies (just like the condition pull) you could even pull the the Resistance down to 3 seconds and we’d suddenly have something really cool we can do in groups.

2) The range increase needs to be baseline, honestly. Whirling Defense isn’t a bad skill, but it’s so selfish atm it adds nothing to our grouping potential. Baseline a radius increase for all of the off hand skills and suddenly they’re all very useful.

3) +150 ferocity while wield an axe, Chill is now AoE, Whirl now grants stability? Yeah, this could certainly work.

4) This is a pretty big overhaul, and while I like it I’m hesitant. Combining a bear with beast mastery and the Signet of the Wild makes something tanky enough; having it be a secondary pet that absorbs all incoming damage while the main pet and the Ranger just go to town seems a bit on the strong side. The only real downside is it’d jam your swap combinations, which can curt, but it far from the end of the world. Especially when combined with Signet of Stone. Perhaps, if we had the bugs fixed so the class operated properly and the first 3 changes implemented we could give this one a try?

For protect me to function this way, I think one risk would be having both of you pets being blown up when they are out at the same time. I don’t see running both SoS and this version of protect me as too much of an issue because you will be giving up a lot of utility and condition control to do so.

I do think a balancing mechanic needs to be put into play to prevent the Rangers from summoning a secondary pet for protect me to absorb damage them using pet swap right after to immediately after bring out that pet with full health.

I think an easy way to balance this is just to add 15 seconds to the pet swap recharge when protect me ends. This would account for the pet recovery time and balance the skill by making it so if you use protect me and your primary pet dies shortly after, you might find yourself with no pet and a swap recharge for a short time.

I think this is mechanically complex but would be really cool and add some defensive depth to ranger.

My pseudo code for this would be:

1.) on skill use, check if stowed pet is alive.
n=use old protect me
Y=spawn secondary pet in passive mode to follow ranger. Activate on swap effects. 6 seconds all damage goes to second pet. Lock ranger pet swap button for skill duration.

2.) during skill=
If secondary pet dies, ranger pet swap cd = 60 seconds. Skill ends. Unlock pet swap after cd ends.

3.) if skill ends and secondary pet is alive, pet swap cd = 15s. Unlock pet swap after cd ends. Secondary pet health = 100%

I’m not certain about the Protect Me change.
I believe that pulling a pet out of the stable just to have it killed… Is a bad idea. I often use the ability just for the Stun Breaker,Swiftness and Regen. And I expect my next pet to have fully functional Taunt ready because I don’t think I’ll have 48 seconds of life.

And this way I can use the pet swap and plan the use. Keeping a tanky pet in the stable just to get it killed hand in hand with your active pet is horrible.

If I were to implement a change for “Protect me” – I’d definitely make it:
- Sends your pet to aggressively protect you from harm, taunting enemies that hit you for 1 second (3 sec. internal cooldown) for 5 seconds.
~Stun Breaker
~Shout
~45 second cooldown.

We already have lots of ways to kill our pet, and for damage mitigation we have Signet of Stone. I don’t think we need 2 mechanics of the same kind. Protect me would be a nice place to add more flavor into our PvP possibilities.
Elementalist already has a superior version of this.

I want 1-3 without a doubt, the 4th one is kinda weird and I’d like them to just give the ranger and pet retal instead (it makes it so they take 2x the retal damage if they hit the ranger), which eould at LEAST give some incentive to NOT punch me in the face

Considering Signet of Renewal’s CD and requirement to have a living pet, it could be a straight condi clear. It is very similar to “Save Yourselves!”, and not getting 7 boons from it would be the offset for SoR being a clear instead of a pull.

Durzlla.6295:

I want 1-3 without a doubt, the 4th one is kinda weird and I’d like them to just give the ranger and pet retal instead (it makes it so they take 2x the retal damage if they hit the ranger), which eould at LEAST give some incentive to NOT punch me in the face

Yeah, Retaliation on both Ranger and pet with Protect Me would be great, I would use it over SoS all the time then.

I’m down for some retaliaton instead of my more complex mechanic. After all the thread is titled simple fixes :p

Made some changes. Simpler and better.

i’d suggest to Anet to reverse Instinctive reactions.

50% hp quickness as current
gain 7% healing power based on Power stat.

that will give power builds a kick for extra healing and survival than the silly gain 7% power from healing stat , its not even worth the trade off , even in my New Zealots gear its not worth it im sitting at 580 healing power with 4 pieces of zealots and one Accessory of Magi using food for PvE+WvW.

that 580 healing power gives me 46 power , i’d rather gain more healing power from my power stats..

in nature Reactions are what keep things alive and out of danger so gaining extra healing power is worth more than the current trait set up.

lets say you have 2.4k power as a full glass.
240 healing power is 10%
7% is 168 its enough for a boost if you mix gear or in Spvp for those Amulets that support 3rd slot healing power good example is Crusader Amulet.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

i’d suggest to Anet to reverse Instinctive reactions.

50% hp quickness as current
gain 7% healing power based on Power stat.

that will give power builds a kick for extra healing and survival than the silly gain 7% power from healing stat , its not even worth the trade off , even in my New Zealots gear its not worth it im sitting at 580 healing power with 4 pieces of zealots and one Accessory of Magi using food for PvE+WvW.

that 580 healing power gives me 46 power , i’d rather gain more healing power from my power stats..

in nature Reactions are what keep things alive and out of danger so gaining extra healing power is worth more than the current trait set up.

lets say you have 2.4k power as a full glass.
240 healing power is 10%
7% is 168 its enough for a boost if you mix gear or in Spvp for those Amulets that support 3rd slot healing power good example is Crusader Amulet.

I made the same suggestion, imo it should be 10%. It would be a usable trait for any build then and provide a minimum of 100 healing power. When used with Marauder, would provide 220 healing power, not bad additional sustain and far better than 0 power with a majority of builds.

I have, however, thought that 7% of Power to Ferocity would be a better choice for us.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

i’d suggest to Anet to reverse Instinctive reactions.

50% hp quickness as current
gain 7% healing power based on Power stat.

that will give power builds a kick for extra healing and survival than the silly gain 7% power from healing stat , its not even worth the trade off , even in my New Zealots gear its not worth it im sitting at 580 healing power with 4 pieces of zealots and one Accessory of Magi using food for PvE+WvW.

that 580 healing power gives me 46 power , i’d rather gain more healing power from my power stats..

in nature Reactions are what keep things alive and out of danger so gaining extra healing power is worth more than the current trait set up.

lets say you have 2.4k power as a full glass.
240 healing power is 10%
7% is 168 its enough for a boost if you mix gear or in Spvp for those Amulets that support 3rd slot healing power good example is Crusader Amulet.

I made the same suggestion, imo it should be 10%. It would be a usable trait for any build then and provide a minimum of 100 healing power. When used with Marauder, would provide 220 healing power, not bad additional sustain and far better than 0 power with a majority of builds.

I have, however, thought that 7% of Power to Ferocity would be a better choice for us.

mmm ya extra ferocity 220 would be 10.5% critical damage for a adept trait most things that give 10% critcal damage are normaly master or grandmaster .

anything would do as long as its not healing power converted.

So make it 5% then.