Guild Wars 2

I already did this with max size norns with the mustache. We all played PU and played in a tournament. All the names were like I i iI i Il l. There might be a vod of it somewhere :p

Grouchhh please consider adding +Power, +Precision, +vit/toughness and +Condi, +power, +vit/toughness as crossover amulets between Marauder/soldiers and carrion/rabid

They just changed this from the old formula which gave out far less top stats. I’ve had games where I’ve gotten like 8-10 top stats now lol. It used to be much lower

Let’s be honest: Glyphs are still gonna suck after this. They need cooldown reductions, and I don’t get poison on Alignment at all…what exactly is the theme of glyphs? Hell, what is a glyph? The elite glyph seems just like a crappy form of retal on exceedingly short range, why would I use this over any other elite?

The Celestial Avatar CD changes look ok, but if I understand correctly, the attack charging is going from .25% to .5% which is still really bad…and the healing percent is getting nerfed significantly…this looks bad. It would be far better to just give healing a 2% charge and damage a 1% charge. 50 hits of healing for a full bar or 100 hits of damage.

All the other changes seem pretty good, but really, at this point glyphs just look sloppily constructed. We will have to wait and see how Celestial Avatar charging feels, but I’m not that hopeful. To fully charge it now only requires 1 minute and 40 seconds of continuous shortbow autoattacking, so good luck with that.

And now I’m remembering how I felt about leaving Druid to the last beta weekend and how I knew it wouldn’t be changed significantly enough in time before launch.

With the upcoming HoT release, and leagues, and $400k tournaments, I think that in general we will have a greater interest in PvP for at least a few months.

With that said, what are some ideas for podcasts you guys would like to see? We’ve had podcast series in the past but most of them died out after a month or so.

I’d love to have podcasts which have well known players discuss individual class trait balance and theorycrafting ideas, suggesting changes and ways to create more synergy.

Podcasts where two good players duel on meta builds and then explain their strategies and the match up would be nice. Also discussions of the current meta and why it is the way it is from a group of 4-5 tournament players would be cool. This would be especially relevant once leagues are launched and people are looking to create new comps every few months.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, both engineer and elementalist have the highest skillcap, followed probably by mesmer, and then ranger (especially after druid).

From a reflexes standpoint, thief and mesmer.

From a “how actually be effective”, thief are probably the hardest to be effective on at high tier right now. Thief is pidgeonholed into shadow arts, so you have to be bursting and decapping frequently or you might as well be on a different class. Rangers also have a problem of getting very little done: doing very little cleave damage, giving out little to no healing or valuable boons, having projectiles negated by multiple reflects, pet not actually getting kitten done, etc. I guess you could call me biased, but my best numbers have come on mesmer/ele in games recently which i have many times less games on compared to my ranger/necro.

panda the chop chop.4712:

the point is an example do not take the actual numbers seriously lol

if you want to be taken seriously, suggest some actually relevant numbers, or people will think you don’t know what you are talking about. I’m not trying to be offensive, just many people will come into this thread think to themselves “LOL” and leave.

What if, instead of being tied to stats, the main stats on runes were removed (leaving just the 2,4,6 effects.

There are lots of runes that have decent effects, but aren’t taken because they have stats such as vitality or precision. It was the same way with trait lines when stats were still tied to them, many traitlines had stats that just didn’t synergize very well.

Now I realize that runes are one of the last bastions of stat customization thanks to the removal of traitline stats and jewels, so with this change I would suggest reimplementing the jewel mechanic to PvP weighted at 33-40% of total stats. It would be very nice to be able to mix soldiers/marauders, carrion/rabid, etc.

This would almost certainly lead to a greater variety of rune sets being used, as well as better stat customization.

Lol -33% passive physical damage + permanent protection we see from most classes. Sounds good

glaphen.5230:

Sombrero.9204:

Mantra mesmer ? That’s not a real option, that cleanse only one condi you can cleanse maximum 3 condis that way. Mesmer has MUCH better options to cleanse or even send back conditions, and using blindness-shatter trait is a good way to prevent condi spam to. Better avoiding to get condi than looking for a way to cure it in my opinion.

Mantra can actually remove 12 guaranteed pre battle if you the 5 point minor and the 3 uses trait, with healing and utility cleanse of course.

^

Chips.7968:

infantrydiv.1620:

Just try running:

-Celestial Signet Necro (if you are facing all condi teams, then run offhand dagger as well)
-Shadow Arts Thief
-Shoutbow Warrior
-D/D Ele (Diamond Skin, or auto Cleansing Fire + remove burn on Dodge)
-Mantra Mesmer (with mantra heal and power cleanse)

Thank me later

Oh, SHADOW ARTS – I never knew! If I had then conditions would never have been a problem.

Yes, that’s sarcasm. If you need it breaking down for you as to why it’s sarcastic then… well, i doubt you have played thief.

Magic Toker died about once in WTS playing Shadow Arts thief vs some of the best players in the world on such builds as Burn Guardian and D/D Fire Ele before the nerf… I think that attests the survivability SA thief both vs condis and burst.

Just try running:

-Celestial Signet Necro (if you are facing all condi teams, then run offhand dagger as well)
-Shadow Arts Thief
-Shoutbow Warrior
-D/D Ele (Diamond Skin, or auto Cleansing Fire + remove burn on Dodge)
-Mantra Mesmer (with mantra heal and power cleanse)

Thank me later.

EDIT: To clarify, we are not in a condi meta. In fact, this is the farthest we’ve ever been from a condition based meta with only 1 class out of 8 running a condi based amulet (and not even being seen much at the top). Yes, there are some celestial classes, but these are hybrids, and the bulk of their damage comes from power based attacks.

I started going through Ranger traits the other day and this list is surprisingly similar to the things I was noticing too.

I think that Opening Strike should be reworked as a might stacking mechanic rather than guaranteed crits (which really only works with GS/Offhand axe)

I also thought that the Soften the Fall trait could be made useful by adding in the old Sharpening Stone when enemies reach 75% health trait. This would at least synergize with the Wilderness Knowledge Survival skill trait.

For Poison Master, I think that the trait should be removed, and the 25% boost to poison damage added into Refined Toxins.

Honed Axes is really just an awful trait. I’d really like to see Empathic Bond moved to the Beastmastery line and have Honed Axes entirely reworked. Axes don’t even work well together, so the trait needs to have functionality which makes either Offhand or Mainhand much, much superior to how it works now if it is going to be at all viable.

Shortbow mandatory? More like one of the worst weapons in the entire game.

I feel you about longbow though

No. Just reduce the Stun on CA #3 to 2 seconds, or make it unaffected by MoC

Also, exactly what Aomine said. ^Don’t nerf MoC to incorporate Druid, just incorporate Druid into the main Ranger

Is this thread for real? What about Gear Shield? Most notorious stalling mechanism in the game…

Although I think Irenio is a good dev, and is doing a good job with Druid so far, the WHaO change and rapid nerf showed me that the devs dont really understand, or have a vision for, Ranger.

Justine.6351:

I got idea:
Whenever you suffer a CC, lose 50% endurance. When your endurance reaches 0 you are stunned for 10sec.

Lol, the worst trait in the history of GW2, excellent

So, now that we’ve all had a chance to play with the new HoT elite specs, what ideas do you guys have for the next batch of specializations from Anet? They have confirmed they’d like to continue expanding the number of specializations and weapons for each class.

For me, I’d really like to see a nature themed Scepter and Mantras on Ranger, with a focus on attuning to natural energies as a class mechanic (possible name Sage or Shaman).

For Necro I’d like to see either Mace or mainhand Sword as a condition melee weapon and Consecrations (possible name Desecrator).

It might not be a bug, but Staff 3 (Ancestral Grace) should really exit it’s form upon reaching the targeted destination, its very clunky at short range otherwise, and it feels like a bug to boot.

I think it would be cool if Solar Beam was a unique auto-attack with a charging mechanic where after some amount of hits it flipped into a new stronger attack.

That said, burning on it would definitely be nice, and help staff synergize with condition builds, while doing hardly any extra damage on power builds, since burns only do like 150 base damage now

Lol… Thief, the class that has been consistently meta since the game launched. Oh, how much pain you must go through. Oh how the devs have forsaken you.

I forgot that you should be able to win 1v1s on a class that brings extremely high mobility (including unparalleled vertical mobility), extremely high support in Shadow Refuge and extremely high damage potential, as well as the ability to never die when played properly on a Marauder build, such as Toker in WTS.

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really think that with Druid coming, that this trait should definitely be swapped. So 10% of Power becomes Healing Power. Then you could go more damage gear wise and still get a decent amount of Healing Power.

It is more helpful for all builds rather than healing power becoming power.

Won’t be nearly enough from the sounds of it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

We are on the road to having zerker druid be less useful than it already is. Not more unfortunately…

Yeah, if they add more damage maybe not. But either way, if the heals get dropped base and increase the healing power scaling then this change to IR would really help out. You would be able to run only zealots armor (15% crit damage drop) with zerk trinkets and still have 700 healing power. Which should be enough to heal reasonably well, plus you have the other support. Not only with Druid, but it helps roaming builds and all builds that use Nature Magic, in fact. All these traits should scale off a Primary stat.

My point is that they want the Druid to spec for healing. They clearly do not want a druid build to have the same offensive capability a vanilla ranger will while still maintaining a solid level of ally healing.

Expecting them to give it to you is a pipe dream at best.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If you want to focus on being the top offense then you probably shouldn’t be selecting the Druid specialization.

By the very nature of Druid’s Celestial Avatar, even if outside the form you had good damage potential, as soon as you go in, you are doing pure healing. Druid would only have top damage and healing output if they somehow put giant amounts of damage on the Druid skills, which we know isnt going to happen. And clearly, just by taking Druid you are giving up either Marksmanship, Skirmishing, or Beast Mastery, all of which would be required to do top DPS as a ranger…

What people do want is for Druid to be able to contribute offensively somewhat in PvP/WvW/PvE while still being able to heal well inside of the Celestial form.

^I’d love 2h Spear.

I’d also looooove a nature themed Scepter and Mantras, and a profession mechanic based around attuning to natural energy (Sage form or w/e)

ProtoMarcus.7649:

infantrydiv.1620:

It would have been very cool if the Druid form had had Solar/Lunar forms to choose from where Solar did damage and Lunar was healing. Maybe too much of a WoW copy of Boomkin, but still :P

Yeah some players suggested a weapon swap available when in Celestial Form, 1st Mode Support/Heal and 2nd Mode more Offensive oriented. The theme you suggeste could work real well.

Was gonna suggest solar would be heavy on burns and blinds… But guardian is all about burns and blinds ahaha

Yeah, i think that would have been amazing. Ohhh wellll :/ At least Irenio said they might be putting damage on the Druid form skills

Wondrouswall.7169:

Electro.4173:

I have the perfect way to fix this “bug”.

Change the trait so that it isn’t pet-based. I don’t want to screw my pet with CC anyway.

Yeah. Maybe if it was a trait that didn’t affect the pet and did something like hide the Ranger in plain sight.

I miss Hide in Plain Sight a lot such a better trait than Shared Anguish

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Substance E.4852:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really think that with Druid coming, that this trait should definitely be swapped. So 10% of Power becomes Healing Power. Then you could go more damage gear wise and still get a decent amount of Healing Power.

It is more helpful for all builds rather than healing power becoming power.

Won’t be nearly enough from the sounds of it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Celestial Avatar healing is the best available by a decent margin right now. One issue that came up is that the healing coefficients are so insignificant that running with healing stats yields very little reward.

The best healing in the game being available without using any healing power; this is not good for the game.

We are on the road to having zerker druid be less useful than it already is. Not more unfortunately…

Yeah, if they add more damage maybe not. But either way, if the heals get dropped base and increase the healing power scaling then this change to IR would really help out. You would be able to run only zealots armor (15% crit damage drop) with zerk trinkets and still have 700 healing power. Which should be enough to heal reasonably well, plus you have the other support. Not only with Druid, but it helps roaming builds and all builds that use Nature Magic, in fact. All these traits should scale off a Primary stat.

It would have been very cool if the Druid form had had Solar/Lunar forms to choose from where Solar did damage and Lunar was healing. Maybe too much of a WoW copy of Boomkin, but still :P

Regardless of the traitline this ends up in, the Healing Power converted to Power should be 14% not 7% since there is no base Healing Power…

This sounds good Irenio, but PLEASE do not make the healing for Druids who don’t take healing power much worse than it is right now. Druid, and any Zerker/Marauder Ranger is very easy to focus down as it is right now, and reducing the healing by a lot on Druid would force yet another class down the Celestial amulet path for PvP. I’m all for the changes you suggested, and Druid healing should definitely scale better with Healing Power, let’s just not overdo it.

Please look into giving Celestial Avatar an ICD and making it so you dont lose all your built up Astral Force if you exit early. This would make the mechanic feel much, much smoother.

Leodon.1564:

I disagree with the general sentiment in this thread that regen/healing should be the way to fill astral force as it leads to situations where you have to take certain weapons (in this case Staff only) or certain traits/heals (e.g., TU and WS) to be able to use Druid effectively. This is horrible for build diversity if you want to play Druid.

DPS should be the main factor in generating astral force and healing should fill it to a lesser degree (opposite of how it currently is) so that you are not tied into using Staff. You should be encouraged to use Staff (through increased astral generation) but not forced to take it.

I am not sure why the dev team decided to make healing be the primary generator of astral force but my guess is that its for balancing reasons. (i.e., they wanted to balance around the fact that users would only use staff which is much easier to do than trying to balance around a variable combination of different weapon sets.) If this is the reason, its a poor reason and highlights to me that Druid was a rush job.

Rym.1469:

Astral Force generation…it has to be looked at. It’s generation even through multiple-hit skills like Warhorn #4 is so low that it’s barely noticeable.

And then you have Staff #1 and jesus beam through any ally. It refreshes whole bar within 4-5 sevonds with one ally and in teamfight it’s practically instant. And Celestial has no ICD.

But I agree that Regeneration should count somehow.

This is an example of what I mean in staff being OP or really being necessary for Druid. Being able to fill your bar so easily by spamming skill 1 while other weapons generate astral force pitifully slow is not good for build diversity.

Personally i wouldn’t mind if say, both Healing and Damage did 1% per tick, and also regen counted, either on application or per tick. I also don’t really mind Healing having a slight advantage in terms of charging the form, since the spec is highly healing focused.

Looks good to me.

Relshdan.6854:

infantrydiv.1620:

Believe it or not but it’s entirely possibly to run Druid with Marksmanship/Skirmishing and do high damage while being able to go into healing form whenever necessary. I understand lots of people don’t like math but it’s easy to tell Druid’s healing hardly scales with healing power.

agree (although healer druid will likely have a place in stronghold and maybe raids, simply due to having so many).
not to mention the insane daze/cc/interrupts that you can add to a maul or bonfire quickdraw build, or to a trapper build

I agree that there probably will be a place for a dedicated healer druid running clerics or whatnot, but it just seems like many people don’t understand that it would be entirely possible to play druid as a hybrid and only go into the form for 5-10 seconds to use the 3/4 skills once or twice on your party and then go back to DPS focus. This would be even more possible if changes are made to up the Astral Force gain from damaging skills and regen, then a Druid could play BM/Skirmishing with the standard condi stacking rotation while being tanky and being able to do heals on demand.

Believe it or not but it’s entirely possibly to run Druid with Marksmanship/Skirmishing and do high damage while being able to go into healing form whenever necessary. I understand lots of people don’t like math but it’s easy to tell Druid’s healing hardly scales with healing power.

Photinous.4628:

Agreed. But not only regen should be counted, anything that does healing should count towards AF generation including our signet of the wild.

I’m unsure whether Signet of the wild really should, since it works alll the time. I could see it being the same as a dps tick for the Astral Force, but much more and it would auto charge the force in about 20 seconds of combat

It’s super unfortunate that the Elite Spirit is bugged right now and doesnt have a heal tick because I was looking forward to testing how it synergized with Druid…

Bug report: Staff skills not affected by Quick Draw (-66% cooldown on weapon swap GM trait in Skirmshing line)

I’m making a new topic about this because I think it deserves a discussion all by itself.

Ranger has long had good access to regeneration through skills such as Healing Spring, Fern Hound, and now Shouts, Water Spirit, and traited Warhorn. Really, Regen has become a defining thematic boon for the Ranger.

Currently, Regeneration is not counted towards healing charging for Druid’s Celestial Avatar form. If it was, we could charge the form with a variety of Shout builds, Trap Builds and even by using traited Warhorn 5 efficiently. It would really open up Druid build variety and still give preference to builds bringing a focus upon healing and Healing Power

The amount of charging from Regen doesn’t have to be as high as it is from straight healing, but at least some amount would create much more synergy between Druid and Ranger’s preexisting traitlines.

What are people’s thoughts about this? I can’t really see how it’s a bad idea, and it would make a characteristically weak boon much stronger in the Ranger’s hands.

After experimenting some more:

Druid seems to be carried mostly by Celestial Avatar form #3/4, as well as Staff 1/2/3, and is pretty much required to use a staff or Troll Unguent, or both, to build up the form fast enough. Staff 4 is incredibly unrewarding and hard to actually land. Staff 5 will be good, as long as the water field remains on the skill.

The glyphs need a very large buff, the developers have always overestimated the usefulness of damaging utilities like Traps (on thief/ranger/guard). Utilities actually taken for PvP and WvW usually always provide excellent survivability in the form of mobility, healing, boons, or invulnerable states. If Arenanet wants to make utilities like Glyphs and things like Dragonhunter traps work, they need to be fast to use, with short cooldowns and good effects.

Glyph of Rejuvenation should have a base cooldown of 18 seconds, and apply an effect to affected allies which increases outgoing heals to them by 10%. This would make it actually worth to take over other heals.

Glyph of Alignment base CD should be brought down to 12 seconds. It really just isn’t that great. Weakness and cripple for short duration? 2 conditions removed from allies and small healing? 20 seconds is way too long.

Glyph of Equality should have a 15 or 20 second cooldown. Again, it’s really not very good. In fact, good luck seeing anyone take it in its current form.

Glyph of the Tides: Again needs a huge cooldown reduction to 20 or 15 seconds.

Glyph of Empowerment: More of a PvE skill and I’m a PvPer. For this to be good, it would need a 10 second CD. Heck, it could even be shorter and I still probably wouldn’t take it.

I’m not sure whether Staff being required to charge Celestial Avatar is a design choice at this point, but it really would be nice to see the Damage charge numbers brought up significantly. Otherwise, we will see condition builds shut out of becoming Druids, and also any type of melee power build.

Staff 4 I would suggest a 2 second immob, double the cone size and reduce the cast time by 1/4 second.

Celestial Avatar:

The auto attack is fine, but I think the #2 seed attack is be far the weakest. Since it’s not immediate condi clear, it’s very hard to use effectively.

Traits:

Druidic Clarity: I’d add 3 stacks of stability for 5 seconds when entering Celestial Avatar. The full condi clear seems on the face like its very good, but entering celestial avatar doesnt happen that much

Celestial Shadow: Underwhelming.

Lingering Light: Underwhelming compared to the other two GMs

Overall, parts of Druid seem very good. The mobility that the spec brings is great and sorely needed. Celestial Avatar adds much needed complexity. I feel like the art team did a great job and Irenio designed the spec with thought and passion put into it. I also think that its actually quite balanced compared to some other specs out there currently.

TL;DR

Glyphs need BIG BUFFS, Staff 4 BUFF, Celestial Avatar #2 BUFF, everything else is pretty good.

So we’ve discovered that Staff #5 is a secret water field, please make this part of the intended staff mechanics (tool tip) because otherwise the fifth skill isn’t so great.

Since the 4th skill is so hard to land in 1v1s, it really could use extra damage and a longer immob

That would actually make staff quite a bit better. Hope it stays.

So far my feedback:

1. Glyphs aren’t very good, especially the heal one (it just doesnt do enough healing compared to the other heals, Healing Spring is a straight up better heal in a team fight). I’d suggest some cooldown reductions in general

2. I think Ranger generally has a lot of synergy with regen in multiple traitlines, it would be really great if you would make Regen count towards charging celestial form. It shouldn’t be 2.5%, maybe just the same as damage or .5% or so, that way skills like traited warhorn 5, shouts, and healing spring would all synergize better with Druid.

3. An AoE blind placed on Staff 3 would be really good for Staff imo. Vine Surge (Staff 4) needs a slightly large cone radius or else it is extremely hard to land on targets.

4. Was Celestial Form completely draining upon canceling it intended behavior? I was under the impression it would function like Necro death shroud and save whatever percentage wasnt used.

Bran.7425:

The pet system (more lack of system) was rushed and due to the “low hanging fruit” focus of fixing things has seen nothing but band-aid fixes along with a lack of transparency on what exactly they (the designers) want ranger to do/be.

This is true, the designers lack of vision on how the Ranger should work in PvP is a huge part of the reason why we’ve gotten very little useful support skills as well: their “vision” was Ranger was “a skirmishing/dueling class, so it shouldn’t have useful support or utility…” which is silly, because every viable build we’ve seen in PvP has brought some type of support or utility while maintaining a role apart from that, such as roaming, bunkering or cleaving, etc.

I hear what you guys are saying, but at this point…good luck getting a comprehensive pet overhaul, which is why I suggested giving most of the pets damage back to the Ranger on weapon skills other than longbow

yes, its amazing we dont have this at this point

Shadelang.3012:

On the topic of Search and Rescue. What if it was reworked to be a ground targted ability that hte pet would run into an area and pulse out aoe healing. That healing would have a similar affect to a weaker version of transfusion on the downed. But it would also affect those still standing.

That sounds good.

Throwing in such a weird wild card type buff like what they did to WHaO just goes to show that the devs are oblivious of ranger mechanics….any Ranger who had been playing for longer than a few months could have told them it would result in quickness/might/protection stackings.

Shortbow is now one of the worst weapons in the game, attacking with shortbow in a team fight, you might as well not even be there, and you are almost guaranteed to take more damage than you deal (lmao).

1. Slow down the Shortbow auto , but give it a guaranteed bleed, increased power scaling AND torment if hitting from 180 degrees behind target, this would make it way better in team fights, in 1v1s it wouldn’t be that much better since the target can usually face you.

2. This skill is fine as is in my opinion

3. Make this a leap finisher.

4. Change the bleeds from pet into torment

5. Add conditional confusion to this, also reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.

Another possible change is to take the axe auto attack and give it to shortbow with bleeds on it, then give axe a real condition melee chain.

What Base Ranger needs: An Overview

The goal of these changes is to bring up the power level of all Ranger weapons other than Longbow, increase Pet survivability and utility while reducing their yolo damage potential, smooth out the Ranger traitlines by buffing the worst traits, and give Rangers more condi clear.

Marksmanship:

1. Predator’s Instinct: Added 3 stacks of torment in addition to the cripple, reduced ICD to 20 seconds.
2. Predator’s Onslaught: Added functionality: Your damaging conditions last 33% longer on foes affected by disabling conditions or stuns.
3. Remorseless: Interrupting a foe also recharges Opening strike

I try here to give Marksmanship some benefits of use as a condi build while buffing the rarely used Predator’s traits

Skirmishing:

1. Trapper’s Expertise: Traps now also remove boons when triggered
2. Strider’s Defense: Additional functionality: Evading an attack while wielding a sword grants you and your pet Might, 1 stack for 8 seconds
3. Hidden Barbs: Bleeding damage increased by 33%
4. Light on your Feet: Now also increases Shortbow range to 1200
5. Most Dangerous Game: Now drops a Spike trap when your health falls below 50% in addition to the might stacking, 45 second ICD on spike trap

These changes attempt to address Shortbow being outclassed by Longbow, Traps being horrendous compared to things like Necro Marks, Engineer Grenades/bombs, the additional functional to MDG would be very fun imo

Wilderness Survival:

1. Soften the Fall: Name changes to “Survivalist”: Added back in the old Sharpening Stone at 75% health trait in addition to the fall damage muddy terrain bonus. This trait is one of the worst in the game at the moment
2. Expertise Training: Duration increase of Pet condis was randomly reduced by 60%, let’s bring it back up to 33%.
3. Empathic Bond: Your pet removes 1 condition from you and nearby allies every 4 seconds. Moved into the Beastmastery tier/swapped with Honed Axes.
4. Poison Master: Poison damage increased by 33% instead of 25%

Empathic bond is moved to a traitline to where it belongs, and now the pet removes conditions instead of being destroyed by them, the new Survivalist trait becomes actually worth taking in a Survival condi build while still having the falling damage functionality that Arenanet loves

Nature Magic:

1. Bountiful Hunter: You and your pet deal more damage per boon that is on you AND your foe.
2. Instinctive Reaction: Increased power gained based on Healing power to 14% from 7% since healing power has no base stat.
3. Windborne Notes: Call of the Wild now also removes 2 conditions from affected allies.
4. Invigorating Bond: Now scales with the Ranger’s healing power and radius increased to 450.

Just some buffs to increase lesser used traits and give Ranger more support potential

Beastmastery:

1. Natural Healing: You and your pet gain health regeneration depending on how close you are to each other: <300 range: 150 healing, >300 range: 100 healing, >600 range: 50 healing
2. Honed Axes: Gain condition damage when wielding a Mainhand Axe and Power damage when wielding an Offhand Axe. Axe skills recharge 33% faster. Move 25% faster when wielding an Axe.

Tried to fix the abysmal Axe trait and make it worthwhile as a general mobility and cooldown reduction, since axes are rarely used together, I suggest splitting the bonus effects between offhand/mainhand, Natural Healing is now a positional play trait which would help melee rangers be tankier and fight along side their pets
Weaponset issues:

Shortbow:

1. Autoattack now attacks at 60% previous speed but with guaranteed bleeds and torment if attacking from 180 degree radius behind target (current it’s like a 270 or 300 radius for bleed application)
2. Shortbow #3 becomes a Leap finisher, for use with things like Healing Spring or Pet based combo fields
4. Shortbow 5 now applies 3 stacks of confusion

Axe Mainhand:

Auto attack reworked into a condition chain doing Bleed, Torment, then Chill on final hit

Axe Offhand:

Axe #5 now is mobile while channeling and does 50% more damage

Warhorn Offhand:

Warhorn 4 now is a multitarget attack which summons a bird for each enemy within a 600 radius causing Blind and 5 stacks of vulnerability (only hits once on each enemy, up to 5). Name is changed to “Call the Crows” or something similar

Torch:

Torch 4 now applies 3 stacks of burn for 5 seconds
Bonfire now applies two stacks of burn per hit.

Sword:
Sword autoattack no long roots the ranger in place and also no longer tracks targets.
Sword 3 now applies 3 stacks of vulnerability
Sword 2 stuns the target for 1 second on the second half of the chain.

General pet changes:

Pet damage is reduced (by something like 40-50%) and substantially increased power scaling is added to Greatsword, Sword, Mainhand Axe, Shortbow, Offhand Dagger. Note the lack of longbow damage scaling increases, please.

Overall pet survivability is doubled in return for the large pet damage nerfs. Pets now do far less damage and are used more for their utility skills rather than untelegraphed burst.
Devourer’s receive a large base damage buff.
Dog cooldowns other than Wolf and Drakehound are reduced substantially.
Bears with physical f2 attacks receive a very hefty damage buff.
Spiders other than Jungle Spider/Black Widow receive f2 cooldown reductions
Pig f2s now function like Thief steal: the item found is slotted in the F2 space.
Cats receive F2 cooldown reductions.
Moas receive increased damage and F2 buffs

General Utility changes:

Spirits now are indestructible, providing their passive buffs at target location until their active is used, destroying the spirit. (Spirits still die after 60 seconds if no active is used) OR Spirits can move again but still have health.

Protect Me: Your and your pet gain 4 seconds of protection and resistance, breaks stun, and your pet takes 50% of the damage you would take for the next 6 seconds.

Guard: Your pet patrols the target area, revealing stealthed targets.

Sic Em: Now still works if Pet is commanded to use F2 skill during the duration (a bug fix which has been needed for literally years.

Shadelang.3012:

I feel we have some decent ideas on protect me. But what about guard. Usually this is considered the most in need of rework. Or atleast tied with search and rescue.

Protos suggestion isn’t bad. But what if it gave resistance to the pet instead of protection? Namely. What if guard became a method of sustaining the pet through condition pressure. It promotes synergy with the wilderness survival grandmaster empathic bond. As well as the signet of renewal. And those conditions can be steadily cleansed off through trooper runes. It also gives heal as one limited anti immoblock capability. Which shouts in general DON’T HAVE AT ALL >.>. If you could copy a couple seconds of resistance over. That can be the difference of being locked down or “swooping” to safety.

Edit: This would also be a MASSIVE step towards making hte pet useable in wvw for zerg fights. As what usually happens is the pet is crippled/immobd in a field of aoes and it can’t get out.. resistance would enable the pet to actually leave the death zone.

In its current state, Guard is just kind of silly… Yeah the pet gets stealth and protection, but why would you need this skill? What if Guard revealed stealthed enemies in the area, I mean that’s what a guard dog is supposed to do right? This would be AMAZING on shadow refuge’d downed bodies and could actually be used somewhat well in wvw roaming as well.

Shadelang.3012:

infantrydiv.1620:

Both WHaO and RaO are in a good place (with or without the WHaO buff, it’s still an excellent heal that’s good vs burst damage).

Guard needs a different functionality. Protect Me in this meta of things like burn guards and burst comps is just a big red sign saying “Kill my pet and kill me 5 seconds after”. If arenanet wants to focus on Shouts now, please first look at Guard and Protect Me.

Shouts should be pet/ranger oriented, so RaO is a perfect example of that. It powers up both the pet and Ranger.

“Guard” in my opinion should just be entirely reworked: It’s totally outdated and the functionality is minimal. Just give us a new skill.

Protect Me: There are lots of options for this skill now. What I would opt for is both Ranger and pet gain Protection and Resistance. Pet could also have a short taunt added to it.

My biggest wish for protect me would be that it no longer prevented the pet from contributing. Also that orders could be given to the pet without canceling it.

In a dream world for me personally. Protect me would look as follows.

Protect Me: Causes the pet to aggressively defend you. Taking 50% of the damage that you would otherwise have taken.

Stun Breaks you and the pet.

You gain protection.

The pet gains resistance. (to facilitate the pet actually defending you. Doesn’t mean anything if its bogged down by condis)

Your suggestion would be fine by me as well. I just don’t like the way the current skill works (preventing capture node contribution AND your pet usually gets destroyed).