Guild Wars 2

2 kitten years.

Still no cleaving on any pet besides drake.

Pet power hasn’t been scaled up to ascended item upgrade levels.

No AoE damage reduction.

Non-drakes having too low hp for the damage some bosses do with a simple autoattack.

Still that ridiculous 45 second cooldown death penalty in a format that seems tailor made to murder pets.

Silly cast times on pet skills like 3 second roar on a jungle stalker. What other class needs to cast for 3 seconds just to apply a boon to the group.

Do something to make pets not total garbage in PvE and WvW.

60 second cooldown death penalty…. if it was 45 seconds i’d be partying hard

Would you prefer to go back to the old way? And have to physically revive them like a downed player?

The pets do need some small changes to make them effective for PVE.

Cleave is something that should be on more pets just for flavor honestly. Aside from drakes, bears should definitely have cleave. They are freaking BEARS. They have huge arms and make wide, powerful swings that can rip through flesh and bone. Of all the animals on this list bears cleave IN REAL LIFE the most frequently! Porcines as well. At the very least boars and warthogs who are known to gore things in the wild through charges and wreck small groups of animals that get in their way. Devourers have two tails that shoot spikes so hitting multiple targets just makes sense. Rather than cleave though, they can have piercing shots for group damage.

This would give more pet options for cleave effects and maybe make devourers more viable as a ranged DPS option. Maybe improve their AI so they use the evade frames wisely or let the player control that ability and they’d be excellent for a dungeon run.

So we’d have a nice balance of AoE and single target pets.

AoE: Drakes, bears, porcines, and devourers.
Single Target: Birds, canines, felines, spiders, and moas.

Evade command ………

Sagat.3285:

Evade command ………

Evade command will do nothing in WvW where aoe is pretty much spammed.

And why should I have to not only worry about twitch dodging crap myself, but having to issue a command at the same type for my pet to do so as well?

dancingmonkey.4902:

Would you prefer to go back to the old way? And have to physically revive them like a downed player?

The old way also had greatsword rangers melting people in beta before they nerfed all ranger power spec weapons to hell.

There’s no trading to be done, pets are weak survivability wise and they need buffing on top of gear scaling and cleaving since those pets make up about 30%+ of our damage.

I agree pets should have X amount of damage reduction against AOE attacks only. I mean if anet doesn’t want to give them an evade feature then they should do something to increase their durability. And I agree, the cast times for F2’s are ridiculous. Too often do I see people dodging my wolf fear or immob because of a long cast time and obvious animation.

Zenith.7301:

Sagat.3285:

Evade command ………

Evade command will do nothing in WvW where aoe is pretty much spammed.

And why should I have to not only worry about twitch dodging crap myself, but having to issue a command at the same type for my pet to do so as well?

Wut ? It’s vs players and for pve mobs what about wvw the pet dies to aoe just like you would if I has to be out of combat to be useful use a support pet and LB . What’s wrong with more pet control every other class has to make proper usage of their mechanic shatter,steal……if you don’t want that maybe ranger is not for you we deserve the best controlled AI.

Zenith.7301:

Evade command will do nothing in WvW where aoe is pretty much spammed.

And why should I have to not only worry about twitch dodging crap myself, but having to issue a command at the same type for my pet to do so as well?

That’s like an elementalist saying “Why should I have to cycle through four attunements and use 20 skills to be as effective as a warrior who’s only using five?”

It’s just part of the skill requirement of playing that profession. Right now we have a pet that is difficult to control and dies far too frequently that is suppose to represent 30% of our damage output. Any change that would improve pet survivability is a positive change, even if it makes the game a little harder to play for us.

I’m certainly open to the idea of more pet control, but I’m with Zenith, having a key specifically to control your pet’s dodge is not ideal. Either make the pet gain evade frames while the Ranger evades or grant them something like aegis on Ranger evade.

Something also needs to be done about WvW and all minions and pets. Especially for the Ranger class who is actually handicapped due to the pet mechanic they were given. They are literally 100% useless in any scenario involving more than 5 people because of AE alone. If you want to increase Ranger damage by 30% in WvW to compensate for a failed mechanic and 2 years of wasted time trying to fix it, I’m all game. I’m just as fine having a working mechanic though.

Zenith.7301:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Would you prefer to go back to the old way? And have to physically revive them like a downed player?

The old way also had greatsword rangers melting people in beta before they nerfed all ranger power spec weapons to hell.

There’s no trading to be done, pets are weak survivability wise and they need buffing on top of gear scaling and cleaving since those pets make up about 30%+ of our damage.

The old way of pet swapping upon death compared to having to revive pets had nothing to do with the greatsword, so I do not know what you hope to accomplish with your off topic tangent.

As well, pet buffing for the sec of massive numbers of players casting AoE’s is very poorly thought out. It would cause problems with every other situation.

I would like to see pet scaleable based on the rangers gear (rarity wise). for the life of me I don’t know why ranger complain about no pet aoe reduction. With Guard you get protection which is 33% damage reduction. If pet surviablity was so important to you would take it. It’s Like a Mesmer complaining about illiusions health and then they never use signet of illusions.

I mean do what you can and then if its still not enough complain. As it stand now if they did buff pets to aoe damage you still could use guard and get the protection on top of that, sound a bit broken to me.

They could do this and they could do that, but in the end your not using what you have. Builds are about choices.

They should fix the ai of all pets first. That also includes creatures such as minions, and other related pets. They stand around doing nothing way too often.

Ranger pets can be so worthless. Especially in parts of WvW.

The 60s cooldown on dead pets is the main reason.

A living pet has a 20s cooldown on switching. 60s is a 3x higher cooldown and it’s often not even within the player’s power to prevent a dead pet.

Also, the next pet has a much higher chance of dying as well, since it has to survive for 60s instead of 20s.

Nothing else in the game gets punished as hard as a Ranger pet dying. Even Ride the Lightning only gets a 2x higher cooldown if it doesn’t hit an enemy.

For getting them out of AoE, you could move around a bit more and use the “Return to me” button.

Tom.8029:

For getting them out of AoE, you could move around a bit more and use the “Return to me” button.

The pet is way too slow to respond. Giving the pet a dodge would likely have the same problem.

Tom.8029:

For getting them out of AoE, you could move around a bit more and use the “Return to me” button.

Assuming you never play anything but LB pewpew.

If you are meleeing and just opt to dodge the aoe like everyone else, “returning” the pet will do nothing.

Permanent stow and aspects! Never forget ranger CDI

dancingmonkey.4902:

Zenith.7301:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Would you prefer to go back to the old way? And have to physically revive them like a downed player?

The old way also had greatsword rangers melting people in beta before they nerfed all ranger power spec weapons to hell.

There’s no trading to be done, pets are weak survivability wise and they need buffing on top of gear scaling and cleaving since those pets make up about 30%+ of our damage.

The old way of pet swapping upon death compared to having to revive pets had nothing to do with the greatsword, so I do not know what you hope to accomplish with your off topic tangent.

You do realize you came into this thread with the false dichotomy where we have to choose between this crappy death penalty system or go back to reviving pets, right?

The whole point of that “off topic tangent” was telling you that if you’re going to propose reverting to an old state, I will gladly trade rezzing a useless pet if it means rangers can have their big damage back since at that point they didn’t even need the pet to kill things, because the greatsword was that good.

It’s a silly point because the obvious answer is that both pet implementations were WRONG.

Players in beta begged the developers to not make pets a mechanic for the class, the developers ignored that feedback, and what we have today is a halfbaked mechanic that has crippled the class in every aspect of the game except perhaps solo leveling (an aspect in the grand scheme of things that is unimportant).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

They should fix the ai of all pets first. That also includes creatures such as minions, and other related pets. They stand around doing nothing way too often.

With the amount of pets and different skills there are on pets and minions, don’t bet on it.

They barely have the resources and time to push out a balance patch every 5 months for the classes themselves, you don’t want to see what it would turn into if they had to balance all the minions too.

Best WvW change for pets was the change to spiders, but ranged pets still suffer the 900 range handicap and they can’t successuflly path and shoot from keep walls and their projectiles get bodyblocked unlike some classes whose projectiles cleave or pierce.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I would like to see pet scaleable based on the rangers gear (rarity wise). for the life of me I don’t know why ranger complain about no pet aoe reduction. With Guard you get protection which is 33% damage reduction. If pet surviablity was so important to you would take it. It’s Like a Mesmer complaining about illiusions health and then they never use signet of illusions.

I mean do what you can and then if its still not enough complain. As it stand now if they did buff pets to aoe damage you still could use guard and get the protection on top of that, sound a bit broken to me.

They could do this and they could do that, but in the end your not using what you have. Builds are about choices.

Pretty much this. About 35% or more of Ranger/Pet’s traits affect the pet half of the duality. Dumping 6 into Marksman AND Skirmishing so you can roleplay an ‘archer with all the deeps!!’, and then complaining your pet gets melted is silly and futile.

If pet had 100% uptime with cleaves (with no investment) and you could still spec 6/6/x, then that would be completely unbalanced.

The few issues I’d like to see resolved with pet is ‘auto unstow’: I get hit by a stray projectile/spell/etc and now I’m in combat with a pet, dragging kitten behind me, taking damage and keeping me in combat. Anyone who wants to chase down the highly mobile Ranger (yes I said it) needs only to hit the Ranger once and then apply a long bleed to the pet and Ranger is completely janked. The other would be taking the ridiculous (yes I admit) cast times/delays on pet skills (especially F2s) and shortening some of them and letting the Pet attack while moving. That would completely change two of the major, inherent problems with the Ranger/Pet.

How about – just make them as good as pets are in other games? They are already close to useless in the current game, with even more cleave being added (thief and necro daggers, classes that are already hard for ranger), this is only going to make them worse.

My preferred option would be to have the option to ditch them entirely or grant them a blanket 50% reduction of AOE damage.

Ditching them entirely will never happen. It’s a Ranger/Pet. That’s why you choose one at character creation.

A blanket damage reduction would make many Pets/traits completely negligible for low-medium skilled Ranger/Pets. If you’re above that 60%+ threshold, then there wouldn’t be any complaints anyway.

There is a reason Ranger is despised and most of it has to do with the players. ‘Bear bow’ didn’t become a nickname for the Ranger/Pet because some guy saw it on Spongebob and thought it’d be funny. This is, literally, the mindset of the vast majority of people who roll the Ranger/Pet.

Zenith.7301:

And why should I have to not only worry about twitch dodging crap myself, but having to issue a command at the same type for my pet to do so as well?

It’s one of two basic types of pet-implementation for controlled single “real” pets:

1. Fully automatic, living DoT. This puts a pet into the category of temporary pets and non-controllables, and is generally slightly easier to balance but also ofc feels less like a “proper” pet class (thinking of a controlled pet vs a horde of uncontrollable ones). Key features are AE-damage-reductions, immunity from certain 1-shot kills and ignoring many skills relying on direct player interaction, not being counted for 1-per-target attacks and such.
2. Fully manual, the-pet-is-your-power. The Necro in DAoC was an extreme but really well-done example of this, not actually having skills besides to summon the next pet and lots and lots of commands to give it. The idea here is to make you constantly manually control the pet, in return the pet can do everything a player can do. This comes close to a puppet-character in a fighting game in that if you were physically able to control both characters really well you’d be significantly stronger than a single player, only… no one can truly do that, leading to an extremely high manual dexterity skill cap.

Tman.6349:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I would like to see pet scaleable based on the rangers gear (rarity wise). for the life of me I don’t know why ranger complain about no pet aoe reduction. With Guard you get protection which is 33% damage reduction. If pet surviablity was so important to you would take it. It’s Like a Mesmer complaining about illiusions health and then they never use signet of illusions.

I mean do what you can and then if its still not enough complain. As it stand now if they did buff pets to aoe damage you still could use guard and get the protection on top of that, sound a bit broken to me.

They could do this and they could do that, but in the end your not using what you have. Builds are about choices.

Pretty much this. About 35% or more of Ranger/Pet’s traits affect the pet half of the duality. Dumping 6 into Marksman AND Skirmishing so you can roleplay an ‘archer with all the deeps!!’, and then complaining your pet gets melted is silly and futile.

If pet had 100% uptime with cleaves (with no investment) and you could still spec 6/6/x, then that would be completely unbalanced.

Lulwut? You do realize the ranger is balanced with 100% pet up-time assumed for the purposes of determining weapon attack damage right? That’s why our attacks all hit for less than average. A 6/6/0/0/0 with a pet that hits reliably isn’t going to beat other classes in glass power.

A perfectly performing pet + ranger only equals other classes in dps capability. This has been a fact since launch.

Zenith.7301:

With the amount of pets and different skills there are on pets and minions, don’t bet on it.

They barely have the resources and time to push out a balance patch every 5 months for the classes themselves, you don’t want to see what it would turn into if they had to balance all the minions too.

It’s not a matter of balancing. They just need to fix the overall ai that all these creatures share. Currently they all have a nasty habit of standing around, and not attacking anything. This has nothing to do with their skills, it’s an ai problem.

Something that might help the zerging ranger would be another mode you can keep your pet on. Between passive and aggressive have a protective mode where the pet will only attack if an enemy comes within a certain, fairly short, range of the player and won’t chase the enemy outside a slightly larger radius.

This would let a ranger keep the pet at their side as they do ranged damage from the back lines. It’d also let the pet automatically respond to things like thieves trying to pick off the back line of the zerg, so at least they are serving some sort of purpose. A hound throwing out a knockdown on a thief trying to line up a backstab could be a life saver. Plus in a large zerg we can’t always react with the perfect timing, but the AI could. It’s better than them being on passive and ignoring the threat to it’s master’s life.

I would remove the stretch Natural Healing, and in its place a trait that reduce by 50% the damage of AoE for pet. In addition, it would reduce to 5sec Swap pet.

Sorry, google translator.

I guess what they say about T1 servers doing nothin but PvD and spamming 1 is true.

The water field is the longest, sure. It’s also stationairy. Ele’s are far more valuable because they can provide multiple water fields at range while also providing other meaningful utility to the group. So useless? No. But useful? Hardly.

Survivability is a joke. Rangers are trained down in seconds. This is why no GvG will take them. This is why they’re outside of the GWEN.

And spectacular skill sets for defending and assaulting? You mean a ranged weapon?

Come on dude… show me those T1 tactics.

Atherakhia.4086:

I guess what they say about T1 servers doing nothin but PvD and spamming 1 is true.

Yup, you found us out.

Atherakhia.4086:

The water field is the longest, sure. It’s also stationairy.

Umm, riiight. So can you link me to the mobile water fields?

Atherakhia.4086:

Survivability is a joke. Rangers are trained down in seconds. This is why no GvG will take them. This is why they’re outside of the GWEN.

You like to talk a lot about matter that you know nothing about don’t you? The organized gw2 GvG site has roster for many of the top GvG groups. 3 of the top 5 have rangers. Where do you get your information?

What difference does GWEN make when all we do is PVdoors and every other urban legend you claim the top tiers adhere too?

Atherakhia.4086:

And spectacular skill sets for defending and assaulting? You mean a ranged weapon?

Nope. The fact that you do not know the answer to this explains a lot about your post.

If you continue having difficulty, PM me in game. I would gladly hang out with you for a while and give you some pointers.

Sorry, I mispoke. I meant PBAE water fields.

But if your tactics are miles above what I’ve seen outside of T1 then feel free to explain what role you guys have your rangers fill. Speaking honestly, I’d love to hear it.

Big servers just blob stack, there is no strategy other than who can gather the biggest blob and overwhelm everyone. Blob on all the areas so much that nobody can stop it. Rangers aren’t useless in wvw.. their pets are.

Sunshine.4680:

Big servers just blob stack, there is no strategy other than who can gather the biggest blob and overwhelm everyone. Blob on all the areas so much that nobody can stop it. Rangers aren’t useless in wvw.. their pets are.

Thread title:

“Fix ranger pets in PvE already.”

I am guilty too. I got into someones off topic WvW tangent. Lets keep it on topic.

They’re useless pve they need..

1. cleave
2. better activates
3. better hp/evade mechanics and not this crappy LOL just switch nonsense
4. elimination of family types, all pets get same base stats and you can stat they as you want, ie zerker/cleric etc
5. Pets can use any skills currently for pets
6. ooc phase, pets cannot attack but take no damage therefore letting you travel without picking up added mobs
7. pets gain defensive abilities based on your proximity, away from your pet grants a dodge bonus to all attacks, near your pet it gains toughness.
8. ascended scaling
9. pve aoe damage reduction
10. buffs pets give have bigger aoe and can be activated.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Sunshine.4680:

Big servers just blob stack, there is no strategy other than who can gather the biggest blob and overwhelm everyone. Blob on all the areas so much that nobody can stop it. Rangers aren’t useless in wvw.. their pets are.

Thread title:

“Fix ranger pets in PvE already.”

I am guilty too. I got into someones off topic WvW tangent. Lets keep it on topic.

WvW is part of PvE progression and endgame. It’s specifically a hybrid and part of the reason why the PvE ruleset applies to it instead of the spvp ruleset.

The issues for pets in PvE are the same issues as in WvW. You have a game with damage designed around being avoided rather than facetanked, and pets are only capable of facetanking unless your definition of avoidance is have pets sitting beside you cutting your DPS by 30%.

Pets don’t cleave like a warrior or guardian, with just a 3 target limit wimpy autoattack on the drake, pets need to be traited to benefit from boons you gain, otherwise they can’t reliably gain stuff like stability to not be pinballed all over the place.

And the fact that our damage delivery is delayed by virtue of having pets and the resulting AI, we are also the one class without competitive, on demand instant burst so our power specs suffer on top of the class being dead in a group engagement once signet of stone is blown.

Spirits for some reason can be attacked, while banners are invulnerable and provide more powerful effects.

The strongest classes in PvE and WvW are those that can cleave well and stack boons on the group while having effective ways of mitigating/avoiding damage for the froup. The ranger doesn’t have any of those in which he isn’t outdone by another class.

Rangers and Necromancers are on the same boat. Poor cleaving, little boons to provide for the group, and their minions don’t cleave either on top of having all the limitations of a pet.

Sunshine.4680:

Big servers just blob stack, there is no strategy other than who can gather the biggest blob and overwhelm everyone. Blob on all the areas so much that nobody can stop it. Rangers aren’t useless in wvw.. their pets are.

I’m sorry but that’s just not true. People stack guardians, warriors, and elementalists for a reason.

Warriors, guardians, and elementalists all provide the most amount of uptime of boons in the game, have amazing cleaving and crowd control capacity, and have group survival skills that far outshine any other class.

And to top it off, all of those stack well with each other. Having more of one guardian or elementalist or warrior never becomes redundant.

Zenith.7301:

WvW is part of PvE

You sir have quit the imagination.

Sunshine.4680:

They’re useless pve they need..

They are by no means perfect, but they sure are not useless. What is so funny about folks such as yourself who use definitive statements is that the counter argument is simply “no they are not”

Random inspiration; what if Rangers got “I Will Avenge You!” as a new shout that gives you massive bonuses if your pet is dead?

dancingmonkey.4902:

Like the logest lasting water field in the game? AoE condition removal? Survivability? Spectacular skill sets that are perfect for defending or assaulting keeps?

1. Ele water fields work at range making ranger water fields redundant at best.
2. Once every 48-60 seconds is hardly note worthy when zergs that have no rangers have no problem controlling conditions.
3. More survivable than a warrior/guardian while also bring the same damage/support/control? I think not.
4. I can’t hear you over the sound of my arrows being obstructed by the lip of the wall, my pet’s inability to hit someone on the wall or someone on the ground from the wall, and barrage hitting like a feather over the power of necro marks and meteor shower when it comes to hazing walls.

Which guild did you say you commanded for again?

Zaxares.5419:

Random inspiration; what if Rangers got “I Will Avenge You!” as a new shout that gives you massive bonuses if your pet is dead?

Reincarnating IWAY?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc

I still think adding a short dodge on Return to Me would help pets greatly in PVE. Along with a temporary speed boost. We need them to be decently protected while they begin their walk back to the ranger, since the AI is so slow to respond. A second or two of immediate dodge frames would negate the bulk of that initial damage the pet needs to survive before they can make their way out of the red circle.

That, along with cleave on bears and porcines, and piercing on devourers, which will give our tankier pets better damage output against trash mobs to help us clear faster, will be a large improvement in dungeon performance.

In WvWvW I had an idea. What if Anet adds a special pet food in the Mists specifically for that game mode. You can buy it for like, 10 badges or something trivial.

The basic idea is that this special food gives your pet a buff. For one hour or however long it should last the pet gets 50 toughness and vitality for each enemy in the vicinity. Maybe also an increase of 5% incoming healing per enemy to make sure the pet keeps their larger health pool up. In small scale combat it won’t amount to much. If you’re in a 10v10 the pet will only get 500 added to toughness and vitality, but if you’re in a 50v50 zerg battle it’d increase to 2,500 toughness and vitality, a huge increase.

The numbers can be adjusted accordingly, but this is the only way I could think to make sure the pet’s resistance scales with the amount of AoE you can expect in WvW without making the pet super resistant to AoE, which could make it overpowered in small scale pvp and other gamemodes.

Ehecatl.9172:

I still think adding a short dodge on Return to Me would help pets greatly in PVE. Along with a temporary speed boost. We need them to be decently protected while they begin their walk back to the ranger, since the AI is so slow to respond. A second or two of immediate dodge frames would negate the bulk of that initial damage the pet needs to survive before they can make their way out of the red circle.

That, along with cleave on bears and porcines, and piercing on devourers, which will give our tankier pets better damage output against trash mobs to help us clear faster, will be a large improvement in dungeon performance.

In WvWvW I had an idea. What if Anet adds a special pet food in the Mists specifically for that game mode. You can buy it for like, 10 badges or something trivial.

The basic idea is that this special food gives your pet a buff. For one hour or however long it should last the pet gets 50 toughness and vitality for each enemy in the vicinity. Maybe also an increase of 5% incoming healing per enemy to make sure the pet keeps their larger health pool up. In small scale combat it won’t amount to much. If you’re in a 10v10 the pet will only get 500 added to toughness and vitality, but if you’re in a 50v50 zerg battle it’d increase to 2,500 toughness and vitality, a huge increase.

The numbers can be adjusted accordingly, but this is the only way I could think to make sure the pet’s resistance scales with the amount of AoE you can expect in WvW without making the pet super resistant to AoE, which could make it overpowered in small scale pvp and other gamemodes.

This is actually a perfect solution if you make it an inherent feature of pets.

Pet usefulness drops dramatically with the amount of enemies in an area to the point that they need this to work at all. Making it scale based on foes in a radius means that a roamer wouldn’t benefit from it but a zergling has a pet that can at least survive as long as a keep lord. (still not very long but long enough to actually do something.)