Guild Wars 2

The druid has seen the most changes since HoT went live, I believe that this isn’t due to a lack of vision, or Roy for that matter, but that the Druid is faulted by design. Let me elaborate:

When the druid was first announced I was foremost disappointed to see that the Ranger, the class that was already known as ‘the one trick profession’ get something as ‘simple’ as the Druid. I wanted to see Arenanet give the Ranger so much more depth but instead I saw Irenio go over all the skills and say: “Do you know what this elite glyph does more? Guess what, it heals, (again)!” I was positive however and tested the Druid during his first and only Beta weekend. Despite countless of feedback that we as the community gave the Druid was brought into HoT with only minor changes crushing my personal hopes.

Having an elite specialisation rely on just one mechanic (the major ability to heal) is non-ideal because:

• There are only so many unique ways to make healing skills distinct, meaning all the heal skills have to be very well internally balanced in order to see use in the game over other skills (e.g. CA #1) in any situation.
• Over or under-tuning of this one major ability overall cannot be counterbalanced by other abilities the class or specialisation might offer (because there are practically none), making it hard to hit a perfect line of balance.
• All the skills are set to behave the same in PvE, Instanced PvE (raids specifically), PvP and WvW meaning that there isn’t a perfect line of balance but rather a broad spectrum making the class only viable in certain modes if certain balance is already achieved.
• It’s also simply put unflavorful.

What I described above is just the first part of the problem I am trying to bring to light. Somewhere in the design process of the Druid the designers made another choice and they created what we now know of as: Celestial Avatar (+ Astral force, more on this in a bit). They gated roughly 2/3 the healing potential behind this mechanic. This in itself was not a bad thing; In theory I even think I was a really clever solution to some points I made above. By balancing 2/3 of the new abilities through this one feature they could balance most of the Druid with adjusting this one feature only. But somewhere along the line they also made the paradoxical decision to generate Astral Force with healing. We have to heal people in order to be allowed to heal people! That doesn’t make any sense (I remarked on this already after the Beta but it only became a real urgent issue due to the lastest changes). Through this they tied back the remaining 1/3 of our healing potential back to Celestial Avatar.

This had the following effects:

• Vanilla Rangers could only really make use of Celestial Avatar if they also brought the staff as weapon (or troll unguent until Tuesday), ending many possibilities for Ranger/Druid synergetic combinations relying on other weapon combinations (e.g. condition ranger).
• Any change to Celestial Avatar now directly affected the whole new specialisation directly resulting in huge swings to how the class played. Which is evident in the changes that we have seen go live until now.

Saying the Druid can only offer healing is of course a little bit of an oversimplification but I feel safe to say that: “From the core up, the Druid is a package that is designed to only heal well and is gated/ balanced around Celestial Avatar and Astral Force generation.” It might just be crucial for us to understand this about the Druid is we try to further balance the game. Changing how Celestial Avatar and Astral Force works, messes enormously with the overall class.

As a final note: I have seen a lot of threads pop up with suggestions for new ways to generate Astral Force, I also think this is the way to go. The longer I think about it, the more I feel like we are still in Beta..

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes:

After a failed PUG attempt to kill the Vale Guardian I explored the first part of the new map a little bit.
I think I found most of the hidden clues lying around and thus tried to break the map, obviously..
So, there is actually a pocket of water in the most bottom right corner of the map where you can glide into, this doesn’t kick you back to the beginning for some reason. Because of this you can get stuck into this spot, and the only way to leave is to leave the instance entirely (because there is no wp on the map)..
It is not really an exploit or bug or anything but I suspect this is not a place intended for players to reach and get stuck into..

3 screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/tlj5X

Oh My God.8423:

Wolf: Big Bad Wolf

PvP
Wolf: The Big Bad [WOLF]
Owl: kittenittenong

PvE
Jaguar: Bagheera
Jungle Stalker: Sabor

Druid feedback.

!Obligatory warning for a large amount of text!

I have been playing the Druid in Beta in both the PvE and PvP environment and I wanted to take this opportunity to give my personal constructive feedback and general thoughts about the druid.

General Impression about the Druid

The druid feels new, but does not necessarily feel un-ranger-like. I consider this a good thing. The druid does not share the same amount of synergies that some of the other elite specialisations seem to have gotten but neither does it step too far away from the original Ranger, giving plenty of new possibilities to explore. Currently I mainly see; full heal-builds, celestial form enhancing builds, daze builds using the moment of clarity trait and other hybrid Ranger builds.

In the current form everything that the druid does heals allies in some way or another; this can be done through the staff skills, celestial form, glyphs (mainly in celestial form) and traits. Personally I feel giving away heals like candy through basically everything the Druid does makes healing an unflavorful secondary effect.
Therefore I advocate for the druid to get a more clear distinction between heal skills and ‘other’ skills. When this clear distinction exist I think that the Druid can better fill the multitude of roles that are probably necessary in Raids (bringing also damage or control besides continuous support) and gives more impact to the times that the Druid actively chooses to heal allies in Celestial Avatar form.

Furthermore I think that a few of the heal skills are not telegraphed enough. It is for both the druid and allies hard to coordinate healing (a side effect of “You play the game, not the UI philosophy”). This is mostly the case for the skills Staff #1 and Celestial form #1 and #2.

The Staff

The Staff feels quite good and probably needs nothing more than some general shavings and some number tweaking.
What bothers me the most about the staff above all is its dual nature. Swapping to staff when you have the trait Primal Echoes equipped (the daze on swap) feels really powerful (I thought it was a blast finisher at first ;-;) and the way the Druid holds his staff makes you think that it is a very solid powerful weapon too. Instead the weapon animations are all very elegant, e.g. letting your sear over the ground. I saw myself liking the current idle animation more as time went by, but I would like to see a change because of this.

• Staff #1: Solid skill and simple to understand. The one problem I have with this skill is its’ puny beam. Allies that might want to benefit from the healing capacities cannot see the line amid all the other effects leaving the Druid alone to make the decision where to rotate.

• Staff #2: Mostly feels unrewarding to use. I think this skills suffers from the heal-on-everything-syndrome, I would like to see that the wisp do something else instead of healing; Suggestions are converting conditions into boons or pressuring the afflicted more. Also I feel that the speed of the initial wisp is you send out is just a little bit too slow and does not reach your target before anything else, certainly at full range.

• Staff #3: This skills always takes 1 ¼ seconds to reach any destination, this causes at least two problems: If you try to use this skill in a team fight to help out your opponents it feels more of a 1 ¼ second ‘please kill me above all’ button and when trying to go the full distance of 1200 units the animation ends prematurely not bringing you, your blast and your heal the full way. Fighting flow wise it would make more sense for the animation to be time depended on the units travelled. Making the skill an evade, letting the skill remove immobilise on cast and/or giving our pets a short swiftness boon to keep up would also go a long way in making this skill better.
  Making the skill a teleport would probably be too much, but I would be soooooo nice.

• Staff #4: Unquestionable the coolest skill but it has a moderate high cooldown (even when traited), a big tell, a long casting time and a slow moving vine animation making it very easy for opponents to just strife out of harm’s way if they pay a minimum amount of attention. If Idiots do get hit by this attack the immobilise effect is almost unnoticeably short. Another thing I did notice is that the vines are hindered by small gaps in the terrain. Best PvP example: Standing on the ledge at forest on the mid point renders this attack useless. Could use some love tweaking wise. Also because of the long casting time it is possible to cure your own movement impending conditions, working as intended?

• Staff #5: Only has very limited situational use. The addition of a secret water field is nice but still doesn’t justify the casting time in combat situations. What I would like to see is one or two of the following: A blind upon initial creation, a bonus effect when you walk through it, like regen/protection/retaliation and maybe a flip-over option to end the barrier earlier for (another) blind if you wanted to. Think more alike Mesmer’s focus #4 temporal curtain.

Celestial Avatar

Some general comments: It is a little bit Paradoxical for the usage of Celestial Avatar that I should have healed others before I am allowed to be able to heal others. […]
IMHO regeneration should also contribute to generating astral force. Astral force gain in general is lacklustre and almost non-existent on other weapons than staff. Consequentially in a whole PvP match I can only generate enough astral force for one additional use of Celestial Avatar if I am not using staff at all.
Celestial Avatar misses internal synergy; you cannot even blast your own water field.
It feels weird that I can only enter Celestial Avatar form when I have got a full bar and that I lose everything if I end Celestial form early.
The duration of Celestial Avatar form of 20 seconds at maximum is long enough but can feel short because of some of the comments I made above.
BUG: somehow people seem to be able to pull me out of Celestial form when I’ve just activated it or during being in Celestial form, I haven’t found out yet how this is possible but it is very annoying to have Celestial form wasted like that. I had this happen to me multiple times during one match so I am certain it wasn’t because of a mistake from my part

• Cele form #1: In a game like Guild Wars 2 that has always punished player for standing still during a match it is really hard for the Druid to not miss with this skill. For one the radius is really small and for another the effect isn’t instant. Suffers heavily for not being a more telegraphed skill. The amount of healing that this skill does is well balanced but does not scale too well with healing power.

• Cele form #2: Much better telegraphed but suffers from being too slow to blow up. I would go as far as to suggest to leave it as it currently is but to make it a blast finisher. Making this skill a blast finisher instead of Celesstial form #3 would make it possible to blast your own water field on celestial form #4, addressing three or issues at once (this skill being slow, blast on 3 being redundant and not working, creating additional internal synergy and making cele #4 viable(-er)). Also would make taking glyphs a lot extra rewarding when traited.

• Cele form #3: The cream of Celestial Avatar form. As many have already pointed out it has got a high daze application on a low cooldown, can be justified if this skills wasn’t also a blast finisher. BUG: the blast finisher does not even work.

• Cele form #4: The rooting effect on this skill is annoying and highly deadly. With only the additional water field, for just its casting duration also, I strongly feel that the heal aspect of the skill is under tuned for the risk you take activating this skill. Currently not worth it to use, also suffers from the heal-on-everything syndrome.

• Cele form #5: The butter of Celestial form. The Radius of this skill is just like the glyphs small but the effects sort of make up for that here. Rewarding to use although it is hard to land the 3rd pulse. Bookah’s should be punished MORE! Also as druid you have got no other way to hit them in Celestial form so if the third pulse does hit you leaves you not way to apply Ancient seeds :/ .

Glyphs

General comments: Glyphs need normal stunbreaks!! Of the four stun breaks the Ranger currently has two are instant pet kill buttons and the other two are our much beloved Survival skills. This makes it really hard for glyphs to breach the current survival skill meta to take a place on our skill bar.
In Celestial Form 4 of the 6 Glyphs heal allies once again. I already expressed my feeling towards not liking healing on everything and I will once again note that here. The glyph skills could benefit enormously from dishing out other effects giving them more individuality and different niche applications.
Also the range of some of the glyphs could benefit from a strait up buff to make them more useful, it isn’t bad design to have got different ranges on glyphs especially the shout like ones.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation: The idea for this skill isn’t bad, but this skill doesn’t heal our pets making the heal worse than WHAO has ever been (sorry not kidding, keeping our pet alive is really important). Could see use if buffed, mostly in PvP (and raids?).

• Glyph of alignment: Cannot really comment on this one, the condition duration seem a little bit low and the radius too small to be useful but I don’t like playing condition ranger so don’t take my word for it.

• Glyph of Equality: Very solid and very useful when you trait it with moment of clarity. Again could benefit from a radius increase. Thematically a stun break on the normal form would fit very well and helps the skill become very competitive with LR and QZ.

• Glyph of Tides: Very solid, I like this one very much. It isn’t necessary but I would like to see this one deal more damage. Good animations also.

• Glyph of Empowerment: Not really worth it currently, both forms. The main problem is that it is too similar to frost spirit, if you make this glyph stronger then frost spirit becomes redundant (and spirits are already in a very bad place). I think I can safely conclude that the skill needs a revamp. This just isn’t the right way giving the Ranger/Druid more access to damage modifiers.

• Glyph of Unity: Doesn’t feel like an elite and could be stronger, but is thematically sound. I think it is also worth noting that this skill has got weird synergy with the heal glyph in Celestial form. You would have to first leave Celestial form in order for the skill to become beneficial. Is this intentional?

Traits

I am going to be really short about the traits. I think the traits are good and mostly being held back by other parts of the Druid not yet being in on par with what they can potentially offer.
Only Lingering Light seems undertuned, but I haven’t used it because ancient seeds it just so much fun to use. In general the traits are in a good state and just need a little bit of minor shaving.

Pets

While the new pets aren’t exclusive for the Druid I want include them anyway. It was really unfortunate that we could not try them out in PvP. Also no new pet can be used underwater, if at least the tiger would be able to go with me visiting Steve that would be lovely.

• Smokescale: I’ll start with the best one first, smoke field on f2 is fantastic and having a pet that can finally reliably hit a moving target is even better! Amazing pet, can be left the way it is.

• Bristleback: Good ranged attacker and handy bleed applications for any condition Ranger. The best part of the pet remains it’s overgrown size, please don’t change it! Feels like a solid pet overall.

• Tiger: The fury on f2 is a nice addition for any remorseless build; the radius is really small however which holds his (or her?) usage back. Otherwise it is just another feline pet.

• Wyverns: The electric field (+ knockdown) and fire field are certainly useful, but the auto attack cannot seem to hit any moving target at all. The auto attack issue leaves the pets in a weak state; otherwise they could be very cool and strong.

That was all, it turned out to be a really long piece of feedback… O.O but oh well… I wish the Dev’s all the luck in the world with finetuning our beloved proffesion. You are doing a mythical job! Leg Godt

Holland.9351:

Once a pet is dead the next pet will also likely die since it has to survive for 60 seconds instead of 20. So it quickly feels like the pet is completely worthless and dead the whole time.

^^This

Not even the removal of the rooting effect on Axe #5?
That is also a real big one if you would ask me..

You are right, these changes dont change the core problems with the pets but it’s definitely is a step in the right direction. Pets are to complex and flawed to be fixed with such a simple suggestion unfortunately..

anduriell.6280:

Rinse.6094:

There are only 1 + 4 questions, and they already exist hardcoded into the game.

Just wondering, What do you mean with this?

I suggest a system in which you can cater you pets combat behavior by answering the questions in my OP. For mode A you have to answer 5 (4 + 1) questions that set how a pet should react in combat and if this preset should change with your pet swap. At this moment you only have got 2 choices:

• Avoid combat, the pet has a leach of 3000 range (right?), and the pet always uses his fourth skill when swapped into combat.
• Guard, "" "" "".

I just want some more control over how my pets react as 2 modes for the entire game (instanced PvE, non instanced PvE, sPvP, WvW, GvG) just doesn’t cut it..

I had not yet read your previous post but what you are suggesting is acctually achievable in the system I am suggesting (although different in execution).
I shall give an example:

Should the pet attack when I get attacked

• No
  Should the pet attack when I attack
• Yes

This script now does the same as your suggestion for your ‘Attack’.
Answer the first question with Yes and the second question with No and you have the same script for your ‘Protect’ suggestion. Answer both with Yes and you get ‘Offensive’ etc.

And also, I completely agree with you about the AI changes, those should already have been implemented IMHO.

Alchimist.4738:

TL ; DR - Shouts on Ranger have a unique application, they don’t have a lot interaction with other players, allies or enemies, and are all about interaction with your Pet. However the current state of shouts makes this synergy/symbiosis between a Ranger and his/her Pet close to impossible.
I recommended few changes, reworks, in order to make the shouts more interesting for group support, for fight engagement, and to have a better synergy.

Indeed, I think there needs to be this interaction component between your pet and the Ranger with these shouts. (Think rune of the Trooper/Soldier in PvP)

For “guard” I have read some very interesting suggestions where you are able to teleport back to your pet after you have placed them. This gives the skill this interaction, it would reinvent kiting for the Ranger in PvP and could be used really interesting in WvW situations (it would not break anything with the current mesmer portal meta..)

Ai, it was not meant to be complicated at all.
There are only 1 + 4 questions, and they already exist hardcoded into the game.
This system would just allow Rangers to have a little bit more control.

I think your suggestion is also a great one pivoting around the same idea: more control. Disabling certain attacks on certain pets should indeed go a long way making certain pets more viable but it does not address some more general problems with pet behavior.

I see what you mean, you make good arguments and it is evident that you thought the skills through very well.

But, I still think the survival skills are in a pretty solid place, some of them maybe just need some CD adjustments. (for example I used Muddy terrain in WvW pretty often, works like a charm cutting through zergs)

And regarding Longbow skills, I do agree with you on longbow 5, but stealth on longbow 3 is already quite strong (although, swiftness for the Ranger also wouldnt hurt..)

I see some people making suggestions for shouts that I think should be a baseline functionality of the ranger. I made a different thread to discuss my ideas for a pet training panel that i think is relevant to this discussion.

Shouts should not try to fix the class mechanic, they should be an enhancement of our class mechanic.

This a possible idea on how Arenanet might be able to make the current Ranger pets ‘better’/less of a liability and more of a welcomed class mechanic. I decided to make this thread with light on the current shout discussions. I see some people that try to improve the class and pet (micro-) management through the shouts while I think that some suggested changes should be baseline functionality on which shouts should further expand. Link to the shout discussion thread.

Basically this theoretical system would allow you to make some more choices about your pets’ behaviour in combat by enhancing the current options: “Guard” and “Avoid Combat”.

Pet Training: Allows for more control over Pets in combat situations.
Ideally would be situated in a second tab on the “Pet Management [K]” panel.

Miscellaneous

((Swap modes ‘A’ and ‘B’ when you swap pets?))

• Yes
• No

Mode A (By default “Guard”)

((What should the pet do when the Ranger is being attacked))

• The pet defends the Ranger, the pet becomes active.
• Nothing, the pet stays passive.

((What should the pet do when the Ranger attacks a target))

• The pet also attacks the target, the pet becomes active.
• Nothing, the pet stays passive.

((In combat the pet should always stay within [???] range of the Ranger))

• [choose number between 180-3000]
  NOTE: Does not apply when using the utility skill “Guard”!

((When engaged (the start of a fight or after pet swap) the pets first attack in combat should be: ))

• Option 1: his auto-attack.
• Option 2: His second attack
• Option 3: His third attack
• Option 4: His fourth attack

Mode B (By default “Avoid Combat”) – copy of above -

((What should the pet do when the Ranger is being attacked))

• The pet defends the Ranger, the pet becomes active.
• Nothing, the pet stays passive.

((What should the pet do when the Ranger attacks a target))

• The pet also attacks the target, the pet becomes active.
• Nothing, the pet stays passive.

((In combat the pet should always stay within [???] range of the Ranger))

• [choose number between 180-3000]
  NOTE: Does not apply when using the utility skill “Guard”!

((When engaged (the start of a fight or after pet swap) the pets first attack in combat should be: ))

• Option 1: his auto-attack.
• Option 2: His second attack
• Option 3: His third attack
• Option 4: His fourth attack

This simple setup allows for among other:

• Being able to assigning different simple behaviours for thematically very diverse pets (ranged pets vs. melee pets etc.)
• A new mode in which the pet will only attack when I also attack a target. A single mode Invaluable in non-instanced PvE where currently all rangers are either always pressing F1 when engaging or F3 when disengaging because the current modes are both the opposite extremes. 1)
• A pet that doesn’t destroy the stack in dungeons.
• A pet that in pvp doesn’t follow a target that runs out of range of, for example, longbow.
• A first step in the right direction to a world in which rangers are able to reliably get access to certain key attacks that some pets offer without having to rely on RNG in a fight.

Any thoughts?

1). This was in the game as a bug/unintended behavior of “Avoid Combat” about half a year ago, I would really like to get this functionality back..

I think you make some very good suggestions that both do not require a total overhaul of most of the current skills and are not overpowered but indeed improvements.

I think your best suggestion is the initial gap closer on the sword auto attack chain.
In contrast to that, I don’t think longbow and Survival skills need any further improvements currently, they already define the current ranger profession in all game modes. We should focus on the other abilities first.

Keep up the good work

I really like this thread, there are some good suggestions in here. Personally I really like the idea of the shouts becoming more boon based, creating the possibility for internal synergy with the new “We heal as One”.

One thing that really bothers me however is that by default all Ranger shouts are selfish, only affection ourselves and our pets. The only rune that currently enhances shouts is Rune of the Trooper —> remove conditions from affected allies. I can only conclude that Rangers get the shorter end of the stick if we wanted to use this rune to its fullest potential because of this selfish nature.

It gets interesting however: when we look at our traits, resounding trimble DOES, in fact, affect our allies but DOESN’T currently proc the rune.
So, while we are here reviewing the shouts, I for one would like to see this functionality added/looked at. It would also be an awesome extra tool for especially druid that I see using a tanky healing build for which this rune would be perfect.

Possible new utility skills #1: Meditations

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#2

Inspired by and for the not yet fully announced druid profession. Meditations are the type of skill I like the most of all the Guardian utilities because they are creative and unique. I think they suit the Druid theme well and they inspire fun new ways to interact with your pet.

• ((Calming Presence)). Your pet is your mandatory companion and gives you comfort; therefore I think it is logical that you could heal more the more health your pet still has. Basically it punishes your enemies for ignoring your pet, promotes swapping pets and skilful play but is also obviously less useful in big WvW fights.
• ((companion switch)) This is the first skill that I came up with and the one skill I want to see the most that rangers get. Promotes that you actively manage your pet. The skill is similar to Guardians Judges intervention in a way but much harder to pull of successfully. (and because of this I hope that more impactful effects are justified)
• ((contemplation of …)) Finally a good condition removal skill. After thinking about this skill some more I think that I made the skill too complex to understand easily. Instead the skill would be much more fun if it would cross convert conditions into boons: Your pet gets the Rangers converted conditions as boons and vice versa.
• ((Mark of the prey)) If it is justified that any profession gets more access to stealth besides thief and mesmers I think it would be the Ranger.
• ((Inner focus)) I designed this skill to serve as a sort of reset button reserved for when you are utterly unhappy with the tide of the battle. The skill is potentially really powerful and should have a very high cooldown (~180 seconds). Currently the Ranger does not have really powerful high cooldown elite skill and that is why I think the skill could be a real asset to the Rangers abilities. The skill also has a good synergy with the heal skill. Maybe the block should be a stability buff? or even invulnerability or prevent point-capture?

Possible new utility skills #2: Glyphs

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#3

Possibly I am the most excited about these skills conceptually. Glyphs can give a lot of additional impact to your pet-choice and they could have a killer profession mechanic tied to them. Potentially this system could be used to give more meaning to underused pets, just like the toolbelt skills of the engineer somewhat even out his main utility skills. Playing and swapping with different pets out would drastically change the way you play the Ranger as your skills adapt.

• ((Glyph of restoration)). I think the best example of how play style could change is displayed in this heal skill, there is one common element for every heal but still every animal family gets a way to drastically alter the possible use.
• The other skills remain a little bit ordinary, but give some more ideas about how this could play out.

Just imagine all the possibilities that could be tied to the elite if the designers where to go full out on this one. One pet could possibly give more stealth, the other a push back, a pull, what about invulnerability or Party wide quickness, or a really powerful condition burst? That would just be awesome!

Tl;dr

I just really want ((Donkey tricks)), ((companion switch)) and Glyphs to be added to the current class to give the profession more depth. (Aka more high skill for higher rewards alá Mesmer instead of being the current one trick proffesion)

My apologies for the long vent/post but If a Dev reads thought this post and I manage to even get just one of my ideas across I would be ecstatic! Fellow rangers please discuss!

Hello fellow Rangers and hopefully some Dev’s,
As the title would suggest this (rather long) post will be a personal vent to display a few of my personal thoughts and Ideas on how to possibly develop the ranger profession further with Specialisations (and hopefully give the Ranger some much needed depth).

The skill and trait tooltips have been created with that_shaman’s tooltip creator. I tried, with help of the GW2-wiki, to balance the skills as realistically as possible; the numbers are somewhat comparable with similar in-game skills and the effects not too overpowered (hopefully).

• I designed the weapon skills and the traits with the intent to fill a few gaps of the current ‘vanilla’ profession as creative as possible while remaining in the general Ranger theme.
• I designed (most of) the utility skills to try and redefine the Rangers relationship with his pets, what should be the distinct main-class-mechanic.

The pictures are hosted on Imgur but below I also want to give personal feedback on every skill:

A possible new weapon: Main hand Dagger

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#0

Surely not the most original but probably the most logical weapon for a Ranger specialisation (Ranger is currently the only ‘dagger-wielding’ profession that cannot use this weapon in his main hand). The gap I am trying to fill with the main hand dagger is the current absence of a ‘reliable auto-attack possessing main hand power based ‘weapon (looking at your sword!).

• ((dagger thrust)) & ((bee stings)) With the auto attack I wanted to create an auto attack that, for example just like engi grenade kit semi-auto attack, gives a lot of multi target pressure and cleave in a small area. Thematically I think the skill ((bee stings)) is quite fitting with the energetic nature of the class. It differs with the Thief’s massive one hit kill attacks and is potentially different then a Warrior dagger wielding profession that I would see wielding the dagger using lots of force.
• ((Upper’cut’ )) A ‘ straight up’ interrupt skill, always useful! At the moment in mechanics it is the exact opposite of the shortbows concussion shot 5 skill and therefor it is bit overpowered as the 2 skill, but I just really like the puns.
• ((Aqua Jet)) Totally not fully inspired by a Pokémon attack /s. Could give the Ranger another cool animation and serves as a possible more stable gap closer: Great sword freezes you mid –slope during the leap and sword first sends you flying backwards. Also includes the almost mandatory evade, which is something I really like to use in fights as a Ranger.

A possible new Trait line

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#1

• ((revenge)) In my opinion a simple but really strong thematic trait. Really, the more I think of it, the more I am surprised that an equivalent trait doesn’t exists.
• ((Home advantage)) Ever noticed that the boons silhouettes resemble little houses? I did. Another thematic strong trait (I think) with a lot of nice synergies (clarion bond etc). Should possibly be tied down with an internal cool down of 20 second or something. Overall I like this trait.
• (Turtle reflexes)) A skill to give Rangers a little bit of an extra edge when being burst down or when fighting in a huge blob in WvW. Has synergies with all the other traits that trigger upon reaching certain health-thresholds.
• ((improved medicine)) It is my general opinion that regeneration as a boon feels underpowered. But I am not sure if this trait is the best way to quick fix such a ‘problem’. At the very least it gives having regeneration an additional benefit of extra healing power. Arguable not the best trait.
• ((Dashing Apperance)) Because Blast finishers! and signets, they deserve some love too. Arguably not a really good trait, but we can dream, right?
• ((Outnumbered)) A damage modifier. Strong in the current Dungeons, WvW zergbusting and in the general PvE environment but this trait could really shine in PvP as it promotes and rewards active and skilful gameplay and punishes stacking on enemies.
• ((donkey tricks)) Good synergy with the evade traits Ranger already has, mostly I really want to see this trait in the current game as it gives us an skill-promoting counter against all the retaliation that a lot of classes get to use (and will get, Dragonhunter and Revenant). The name btw is a Dutch joke and ties in with the thematic of the trait and the Ranger. For more information on the name here, the relevant part is the 4th expression.