Guild Wars 2

2) Have a Ranger that does tons of direct damage.

Starting with the weapons again. It’s pretty well established that SB can outperform LB at dealing direct damage in PvE. Offhand could be whatever else really though Warhorn would be a great thing to have for the might and fury buff.

Moving on to traits first this time. Need to have Piercing Arrows to go with that SB, and Steady Focus is a great 10 point trait for direct damage. Can be without Zephyr’s Speed. I’m going to want high crit damage and critical damage modifiers are all pretty low so the +30% critical damage from Skirmishing is just too huge to pass up.

Well, I have the exact same distribution of points I had in my condition damage build before I put 5 in WS. 20/30/0/0/5 with 15 left over. I should probably take Natural Vigor for the endurance regen that synergizes so well with Steady Focus. Now it is exactly the same.

I still have no utilities selected though. Well I definitely want something to control enemies with. There’s Spike Trap, Frost Trap, and Muddy Terrain. Well Spike Trap is the worst without condition damage backing it. Frost Trap is only really great with the Trap Potency and I already have 30 in Skirmishing and the other 30 point trait does… something? It seems about as useful as Opening Strike (1% more damage IF it worked… wooo…). If I go Muddy Terrain it’s either stuck with a 30 second CD or invest more in WS which gives me condition damage(?).

Well I could invest 5 of my remaining 10 trait points and get Wilderness Knowledge will will give Muddy Terrain a shorter CD and let me take QZ with a 48 second CD and I’ll get 4 seconds of quickness every 48 seconds plus 4 seconds every 40 from pet swapping. Or, I could just invest 10 in BM and get 4 seconds every 32 seconds from pet swaps and have a pet that doesn’t suffer from complete disembowelment when a Risen Chicken farts in it’s general direction (exaggeration…ish). That would also make the non-trap related skills in Skirmishing potentially useful.

Oh wait, If I don’t take Wilderness Knowledge then Muddy Terrain and QZ are pretty long CDs. I might actually want to take Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise and run Frost Trap for the control and combo field. If I’m going to do that I should probably just take Viper’s Nest for the extra damage and source of poison. For the third slot I could run one of the other traps, SotH for mobility or QZ.

I could drop those 10 points in to Marksmanship and get the signet traits and run signet utilities, but that’s basically zero utility with huge CDs. But it’s an option.

In the end I find that my direct damage ranger and condition damage ranger vary by 10 trait points (maybe) and weapon/armor/jewelry stat distributions. Although the exact reason for taking Skirmishing was different.

Summary (not tl;dr because it’s still long)
Shortbow with Piercing Arrows and Zephyr’s Speed are too good/necessary for any ranger that it kills build options by 25 trait points immediately. This is more a problem with everything else than with those being ‘OP’. Piercing Arrows is a problem because even at 30 points it would still be too good to pass up no matter where it’s put in the trait line. Zephyr’s Speed is almost too good for 5 points but I don’t want it moved because it actually makes the pet mechanic always useful (though not for the pet).

Skirmishing and Wilderness Survival are just confused in my opinion. The stats provided by WS are perfect for a condition ranger but traps are just too important to a condition ranger for control while dots tick and additional dots. Traps require Skirmishing which when combined with the above leaves no room for anything else really. DD rangers want Skirmishing for stats but don’t really want the traits. The rest of Skirmishing is all about the pet really and without a 15-30 point investment in BM pets are not worth investing in.

(sorry that was long)

The point of this is illustrate some problems with the balance and distribution of the traits in the ranger itself. This isn’t about inter-profession balance. This is also concerning PvE exclusively. I imagine there is some overlap with WvW and sPvP but my lack experience in other areas limits what I can say..

I always start with a question when theory-crafting a build: What do I want to be able to do?

1) Have a ranger that does high condition damage.

The weapon choice is pretty obvious. Short Bow and Axe/Torch. I want to optimize the number of conditions I can apply and burning is an excellent and easy to apply condition for rangers. An argument can be made for Sword/Torch instead of Axe but realistically Axe wins in a pure condition build just because of Splitblade through a fire field at point blank range.

Next up is utilities. Traps are the fairly obvious choice. Flame Trap for more burning and Spike Trap (offensive option) or Frost Trap (defensive option). For the third utility I could take Signet of the Hunt, QZ, or another trap.

Now that I’ve got utilities I should look at traits. Well I have these traps I should really make them 50% larger, ground targeted, recharge 20% faster and conditions last twice as long. So that’s 30 in Skirmishing.

Piercing Arrows is a no brainer with a short bow as a weapon (seriously if you think Piercing Arrows is no big deal, try it again). That’s 20 in Marksmanship.

Zephyr’s Speed is an absolute requirement. Pets have problems and this makes the swapping so they don’t die more useful, and it’s only 5 trait points. Well 5 in beastmastery.

15 points left and so far none of my trait lines give me Condition Damage… well 5 points in Wilderness Survival gets me 50% increase in endurance regen. That’s good, but there isn’t a single low tier major trait in Wilderness Survival that helps me do condition damage. There’s Expertise Training but with the lack of Beastmastery my condition damage dealing pets will just die horribly. I’d need 15 or more in BM to make my condition/dps pets useable in 70-80 zones.

When all is said and done a Condition Damage Ranger will probably look something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMQQNAV3/C11xVoWCglCBDsLg9wQHf8LoENZF;TwAg0ynEOJdS9kyJKuMcJ4yWjjLJXA

The blanks are pretty optional, I prefer SotH to get around and last 10 trait points can go in a few places, I put them in BM for the faster swaps and more quickness.

In the end almost nothing is invested in the trait line that actually bumps condition damage on a condition damage ranger. The problem isn’t with the traits in Wilderness Survival so much as there are just too many ‘must have’ traits in other lines. Specifically, Piercing Arrows, Trapper’s Expertise, Trap Potency, and Zephyr’s Speed. I did get a nice bump in direct damage but that’s really not what I was trying to do.

The other problem is that traps don’t seem to scale well with power or crit (can they even crit?). So why am I forced to invest heavily in the critical damage/chance trait line to make my traps good?

First, you can still order your pet like normal when downed. I regularly hunt for the lowest HP enemy around and sick my cat on it, I even swap pets, use abilities, and call my pet back.

Otherwise, I tend to agree with you. 1 is just damage, very little damage. 2 seems to take longer than a stomp to go off and/or doesn’t seem to work that reliably. 3 works… most of the time though the heal it provides is low and the pet can still die and/or be interrupted.