Guild Wars 2

The truth is in between, you need both, if you want to do some decent condition damage and add some poison and confusion while you’re at it.
Builds depend mainly if pve, pvp or wvw oriented.
In pve everything is lecit, you can even run naked with just speedy kit and invigorating speed dodging around.
For exemple, bomb kit can be very good in pve because mob are stupid and you can just put bomb under theyr feet and they won’t care; in s/tpvp bomb kit is also good in bunker build because your aim is to take control of a point and maintain it for the longer time you can, then most of fights will take place in restricted place, the ideal place for bombs, in wvw bombs are pretty terrible unless you’re crazy enough to jump in the middle of the enemies zerg to spam bomb until death comes and even in minor skirmish there’s a lot of movement and the delayed nature of bombs is nice if you’re followed by enemies but bad to follow them.
FT can be nice in pve but in pvp/wvw is used mostly for utility because #1 is not a targeted skill but aim at the middle of the monitor and may be tricky hitting target in moviment (unless it’s running straight forward in front of you).
And i know you like your rifle for the jump finisher and the net but if you want to go condition pistol is the way, p/p is better, but be sure to take some defensive skill if you’re going in pvp/wvw.

Burn damage is equivalent of 6 stack of bleed.
With sharpshooter(30% bleed for 3 sec)+ superior sigil of earth(66% bleed for 5 sec , 2 sec cd)+ #1 pistol(100% bleed for 2 sec) and an hypothetical 100% crit chance in 10 seconds you will have a costant 4 bleed from pistol + 2 hypothetical costant bleed from sharpshooter + 1-2 stack of bleed from sigil that’s 7-8 stack of bleed per second. That’s with 100% crit rate, with less crit chance you will still have the 4 bleed from pistol#1 but less bleed on proc; every time you use a skill is 1 less bleed from pistol #1 even if pisto #2 shoot 5 bullet in 1,75 second that will give you more chance to proc bleed(and apply poison that do double the damage of bleed) but still lose the #1 base bleed, and the aim of that skill is worse the farther your target is.
Incendiary powder(explosive V) have a 33% chance to burn for 2 sec(3 sec cd) that’s is worth 12 bleeding tic every 3 second that mean ~4 costant bleed and can proc with every attack and don’t exclude sharpshooter or the sigil of earth.
Cond damage boost both equally, i mean that the proportion 1:6 remain no matter how many cond damage you’ve got, the same apply to might because might give 35 power and cond damage x stack(of might).
Another thing bleed suffer from the 25 cap(that’s a problem only if you use the granade kit with shrapnel).
I used for some time a build using FT and condition damage + might, and was not that bad because i can reach easily 12+ stack of might and my burn tic for more than 700 each second(FT has 5 attack x second than have a good chance to proc condition on crit), ~100 each bleed and ~1500 over 2 second direct damage(depending on the armor of the target).

In my opinion blind in the current state is pretty weak, it’s a 100% miss chance for the next(1) attack, but it do nearly nothing against aoe and casted(channeled) spell like 100blades as it neutralize the first hit while other 9 hit, and it don’t really count as “protection” for other offensive condition when a condition remover is used.
My suggestion is transform the “100% miss chance on 1 hit” in a “~50% miss chance for all attack for 3 second, stack in duration”.
That way a blind can smoth casted burst skill and effectively count as an harmful condition that enemy want to get rid of.
The only profession that can stack blind alone are thief(black powder 4 second, static self-centered), engineer(smoke bomb, bomb kit, 3 second, static self-centered), necro(well of darkness, static self-centered if not traited, and plague mobile self-centered); black powder, smoke bomb and well of darkness are easy enough for a played watching the monitor to avoid the second pulse and then the stacking of the condition, run away from plague may be harder if you haven’t some speed cd ready but plague do just ~300 damage + poison tic + blind/bleed/cripple, then if you decide to blind you renounce to do dps for control.

- Guild Halls + GvG, it feels a lot less GUILD WARS without GvG.
- Guild capes, why should I give up on my chest skin for my guild logo when there’s the cape for that? I’d prefer change the skin of my backpack that I always hide than change the chest.
- Elite Hunting, but only for elite skill worth it, i mean, except for the mesmer I can’t really call the other skill elite, maybe “subparskillwitheternalcooldown”.
- Boss drop, I mean specific drop, not random exotic piece if you have stellar magic find.
- Interrupting.
- Old mesmer, the new one is cute but is not THE mesmer.
- Confusion is not Empathy-Backfire-Spiteful Spirit(and why necro have not confusion?).
- Old necro, many things of the old has were just better skill: SS, Mark of Pain, a viable minion master or minion bomber, Order of Vampire/pain expecially when you could use both, well are ok.
- Old assassin were fine without stealth, and was more then smash a single button until your finger bleed more than your target
- Ranger without pet…well they now have a…“nonthatcombatpet”, old barrage, trapper team.
- Secondary profession for fexibility…but I can live without.
- Free change of trait and save template, and possibility to change build anytime out of combat.
- UI customization.
- Level cap at 20, I think that a low level cap would have make questing through zone feel more like discovery and fun instead of rush to 80 and forgot about the world.
- Earn money running people through dungeon.
- Not really ANet fault but in GW1 things cost less and money were easyer to make.
- Huge elite zone like FoW and UW.
- Heroes Ascent
- Better pvp aside from massive and chaotic WvW

This is just for prophecies, in my head cantha and elona are GW2 expansion as it were for GW1, still waiting for the missing region like Crystal Desert, Maguuma Jungle and Fire Islands.

- Ritualist: but playing as an engineer i think that as the game is now it whould be just terrible for the same reason engi don’t use turret, they just die immediatly. I hope engineer is not a replacement for the ritualist in a modern world.

You list a lots of good things, other things I’d like to see are:
-Turrets: need some passive aoe damage reduction, something like -50% damage from aoe skill(and not just turret, even necromancer minion and ranger pets), it would be even better if there would be a trait, maybe in the invention line that increase that resistance to 65-75%. Also something like “if you pick up turret you’ll have a reduced cd while if it is destroyed or you make it explode you’ll have the full cd”, it may be even a trait.
-Healing turret: I’d like a more realiable water field when turret is not out, I mean, even some kind of texture on the ground because i never know if it is still there and use my blast finisher to make it heal or not, and maybe a longer duration of the water field, something like 5 sec to have time to set some finisher.(the mist on the ground is pretty confusing, it isn’t the water field anymore because you have the field only the istant you cast it for something like 1-2 seconds, I don’t know if it work as intended or whatelse but is not that good as it is now)
-Flamethrower: good points of the op, but just remember the miss problem with #1 on inanimate objects; yesterday I noticed that often, not always but just often, if I’m standing still and until I don’t move, it hit object on my “z level”; I don’t know if it’s a bug in the bug(for sure it will not help much in pvp/WvWvW) but maybe can help the fix.
-Pistol #1: it scale poorly with power, ok it’s a cond damage wapon, then make it be, 2.5 seconds of bleed is just low, I mean, I know it has some kind of aoe, but unless you have a guardian with GS#5 to grip many people/mob in a single spot you will rarely hit more than 1-2 target, making coated bullet a lower tier trait could be a compromise.

I have a doubt, what is our current power main kit? ‘nades#1 has been nerfed and now maybe perform better with condition than with power. FT#1 scale poorly with power and as it is now running a condition based may not be a bad idea because spreading burn 600+ per tic each second + bleed probably do more damage than a pure power build. Elixir Gun sure scale better than pistol with power, but it’s ok as a condition kit. Bombs probably with a larger radius(as pointed from OP) would be good, maybe Elixir infused bomb healing a little more and be in explosive or in alchemy line would help, but there are still a lots of boss(in pve) that are melee unfriendly. Tool Kit, as op said, is slow no other complain, the damage is not bad even if it’s melee. Rifle, I don’t know, is not totally bad, it could be better, it could be worst, but fore sure a power ranged weapon/kit with ranged skill would be nice.

At the moment I’m using http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqal0pSYX3SrF1LJyoCdGoHAGedXiKkffUwWPIA;ToAAzCpoyxkjIHbOuck5MqYKC
6 rune of altruism, sigil of earth+battle, rabid gear, but can be carrion or knight (I need precision in my cond damage build to have more bleed/burn proc from trait/sigil).
The idea is using medi kit once every 10 seconds to stack might (3 from rune of altruism to all party, 3 from sigil of battle, 3 from enhance performance (explosive X)) fury (altruism aoe + medi kit #5), vigor (alchemy I) and swiftness (tools VI).

In my experience the problem with thief is not the stealth itself, but heartseeker been a leap.
If a thief open on me with steal they use their 45 second shadowstep to come close to me and it’s perfectly fine, and if I’m good enough i can dodge it to avoid the real opening when i see the black shape near me, and i can dodge again, and after that i can use quickshot (shortbow) /point blank shot (long bow) to take some distance, the problem is that they’ll be back in no time ‘cause their spammable main dps skill is a leap and i waste my endurance and a cd for nothing because if the thief eventually finish the initiative before I’m dead he just have to stealth again to let the initiative restore while following me without movement penality to reopen on me again with that kitten leap.
Another point I’d like a separation between mesmer stealth and the thief one, I can understand a mesmer, master of illusion granting plain invisibility. But i see no meaning in the thief in have an invisibility, they’re master of furtivity; the difference: in every game (videogame or paper GDR game) stealth has movement reduction, and can be seen without particular skill if the thief don’t come close carefully. Even if it would make easyer to fight I can leave alone the proximity detection, but I think the movement reduction ( and possibly the remove of the leap propriety from heartseeker) would make it more nice to fight against, sure the thief need a more discrete use of steal because it will become their only gapcloser (well there’s shadow shot from the pistol offhand but it’s a projectile and can be dodged/reflected/blocked while a leap even if dodged the gapcloser happen).
BTW I don’t really want an elite that reveal stealthers, kitten in many games scout classes are stealther themselves.
If I have to take some skill from GW1 that I misss on ranger i would pick:
- dust trap (and like the trap in gw1 make it blind every second for 5 second, sort of smoke bomb of engineer or well of darkness of necro nothing new, it would be better with a smoke field).
- some skill 75% dodge/block + various effect, I really love some kind of Whirling Defense, that may become block + retaliation.
- Disrupting Accuracy may be a little op(dazing on crit) but maybe a preparation like sharpening stone that apply confusion would be nice.

The interruper role from GW1 is lost, but another strong aspect of ranger in GW1 was the trapper build, dust trap+some other trap+defensive cd like whirling defense can make ranger become a decent bunker, probably with rabid gear.