Guild Wars 2

While i do agree Increasing the AI of summons may be impossible (and im more then satisfyed with the way my minion and pet behave its just like any AI and you cant expect computer to act like players) i think what is more important right now is to increase summon damage with power as the tooltip pretends to so to make summoning and pet speciality actualy viable for combat. While it would significantly increase the damage of all pet based unit you could just reduce the base damage of pet slightly in consequance to compensate the huge damage gain wich would weaken the damage of summoner entirely based on defense and promote a mix of offansive and defensive stats in the summoner specialisation. There are several application of power increase to pets build. Right now pets and summon gain increase from condition damage

—Minion master necromancer: this would make the profession viable damage wise at the cost of actualy wearing a power based gear and build

—Beast mastery ranger: the original reason for the reduction to pet damage was that pets would do the same dps reguardless of if the ranger was in a tanking gear maximising survivability or not, making pet scale with power would allow the ranger to effectively run a beast mastery damage build at the cost of using glassy armor style to maximise damage effectiveness unlike the old tanking ranger wich got both the damage and the survivability.

—Turret enginer: Turret only good point was the condition damage they actualy dealth wich scaled with enginer condition damage, now that turret no longuer deal condition damage (save from flame) turret basicaly have static damage wich is prety much harmless.

When i think of a turret user i think of a strategist placing his contraption on the ground to take a stand. Turret are easily destroyed even with the armor plating and the regeneration they should at least provide damage based on power so to actualy promote their use in an actual combat build wich isnt actualy aimed at just puting down stuff on the ground for the mobs to hit. A soldier based or a power based enginer should be able to actualy get some damage from his turret because they basicaly are the core of its build.

The other way around we could also scale summon toughtness so to make the summon more tied to the gear and build the player run rather then just another cooldown you may insert in any build with just the same result.

Right now i see tons of necromancer using flesh golem but is any of them actualy specialised for death magic to begin with? Of course not they just run flesh golem because its the most conveniant elite they could think about or just because they like the charge stun. By scaling toughness and power youd make control specialisation not only more appealing to all those glass cannon user but also effective in dungeon effectively distracting mobs longuer and giving a place to this form of control in parties.

What about condition damage/ pet hybrids? They will be useless with this type of build.

condition damage will still work on the pet wich actualy use them beside theres the possiblity to run Carrion wich gives both power and condition damage. Of course youl be lacking in critical if you run carrion and wanna run ranger so you might want to try a mix of carrion and rampager. Could also want to run pure power in wich case you will actualy run berserker or soldier

Curently the only pets wich runs a mix of condition damage and physical damage are necro jagged horrors and ranger pet with the ability to cause bleed or poison

you misunderstand. I mean you as the owner run a condition build and the pet deals normaldamage using the non-scaling stats of the pet. You will with this system crush these kind of builds.

Tim.6450:

you misunderstand. I mean you as the owner run a condition build and the pet deals normaldamage using the non-scaling stats of the pet. You will with this system crush these kind of builds.

Why would your pet deals maximum physical damage while you do condition damage or worse run a tanking set? Thats the reason why ranger pet was nerfed in the first place, they need to make it so pet are tied to their user stat as to give slight boost to people who actualy at least increase one of the pet main attack. I run a zerker build on my ranger with a wolf but my cat deals better damage then my wolf reguardless of how well i build if i actualy use a condition spec and will still hit like a pro even if i use pure tanking armor because its base damage isnt tied to my power? This is unexcusable.

By making pet scales with power and toughness you allow for a deeper pet customisation and a bigger diversity in pet build all around. Sure we loose the ability to make pet bunkers but we actualy gain on the longuer end.

By a condition build i assume you refer to a condition enginer well yea its possible you wont be on the winning end if you run condition build with the current state of the turret however i guess if they give back the condition to turret and base both damage and condition damage on the player youl be winning on either end of the stick long as you run a condition damage or a damage build

Tim.6450:

What about condition damage/ pet hybrids? They will be useless with this type of build.

Personally i think this outcome is actually desirable. Having the freedom to spec as tanky as possible while still regaining the same amount of pet dmg is no good balancing for me.

@ kyubi I run a necromancer with that kind of build. But I will concede that rangers pets should scale since you have no choice but to take a pet.

@ lavra yet nearly all the minion traits lie in a defensive trait line same for turrets and the pet trait line contains healing power. It must be a signal.

Minion user necromancer sure would have a slight increase in damage after all isnt one of our minion damage trait actualy in the power line? They could just reduce the minion base damage and allow it to increase in power effectively making the armor choice for necromancer using minion more important then to just pick the defensive one to run full pet with a staff or pick the full zerk one to run partial pet with soulreaping, wed actualy have to make a real choice wich would impact on the way we would use our minions rather it be meat shield or actual cannonball.

By definition even if Death magic is meant to be the toughness spec of necromancer a minion master focused on dealing damage is generaly also speced into spite and could be as squishy as his pet are strong, think of the general behind the army, you cut the head of the snake and the whole beast dies. In the current case the Minion master necromancer would be similar in regard to the phantasm mesmer who place his illusion on the field deals big damage and hide behind his army.

Bringing back this topic from the dead with the actual patch note its more then important for the dev to see this