I had an idea some months ago that was based on changing the ranger’s mechanic and still having the pet.
The main change to the pets would have been that they are not as permanent, but are there when you fight and are more by themselves.
The four F button would be changed into Stances
Each stance gives a bonus either on expiration, activation or both.
Each stance activation adds a few seconds CD to other stances and a fixed CD to itself (which is same for every stance)
When a stance expires or activates, a pet is spawned for the duration of the same stance’s CD.
The pet menu would be revamped so that you can config 4 pets for each stance.
Persistent effects for stances can be in the sorts of:
Gaining damage reduction, gaining camouflage when standing still, faster fire rate, faster movement speed, bonus to pets etc…
Activation effects besides spawning pet can be in the sorts of:
Gain stealth, health, fury or other boons. Condition removal or condition transform, next hit does something, next something amount of damage is reflected etc
Expiration effects and conditions besides spawning pet can be in the sorts of:
Use a skill – next hit stuns, explodes, pierces, steals health, applies condition or is a critical
Get hit – gain swiftness, might, fury or other boons.
Since Rangers are all about adapting, the effects of Activations, Expiration and Persistencies can all depends on what kind of stats the ranger has which would contribute to many different playstyles because the ranger can mix stats so that two stats’ superiority depends on the weapon.
E.g. I have greatsword which causes my toughness to be above the other stat and an activation or expiration of a stance gives me something protective. I can then swap to my other weapon which causes the other stance to give me swiftness.
The stances can be made so that they have different effects out of combat and in combat. This already contributes to 2 playstyles; One where the player uses the stances and puts them on CD to prepare for a fight to deliver a strong blow and one where the player uses stances depending on the situation while fighting.
Now, placing points in different traitlines will have different effects on the stances. Everyone will have a small part of beastmastery but everyone can be a beastmaster but putting points in the BM traitline and therefore upgrading the pets because the bestmaster part of the stances are being upgraded.
The BM traitline can then be changed a lot, with traits that transform you into one of your pets when you have 3 pets summoned or sharing your stats with your pets (makes you weaker, them stronger) or using pets as decoys that give you bonuses when they get hit.
The fixed traits in BM would be generally useful for each type of beastmastery but the free traits would specialize into one type at the Adept level. The type can then be enhanced in different ways at the Master level and will gain a huge bonus at the Master level.
Basically, BM can be divided into two types: Defensive and Offensive = Decoys (deals no damage) and Real (deals normal damage). Those can, since there are 4 master traits, be divided into two types each. Offensive Decoy/Real or Defensive Decoy/Real
Examples:
Real Offensive leads to you sharing your offensive stats with them
Real Defensive leads to you sharing damage (or defensive stats) with the pets.
Decoy Offensive leads to your pets giving you offensive boons when they get damaged
Decoy Defensive leads to your pets giving you defensive boons when they get damaged (This doesn’t mean they will give you hundreds of boons, don’t be stupid)
That’s all I could come up with in 10 minutes without thinking much.
Pets would require huge amounts of rebalancing, same goes for traits and skill coefficients.
Also, all the above stated effects of stances are only examples. These can freely be changed to anything.
This idea was not inspired by anything, I just got the idea all of a sudden.
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