Guild Wars 2

Hey guys and girls,

Thank you for taking your time to view my suggestions to get a better experience. Today riding home from uni I had several ideas to enhance the pet experience for rangers. My main is a Ranger and I ran into quite some small annoyances during play. In this post I will list my ideas and try to clarify them if I think it’s needed. I hope you like my ideas and would love to see your comments on them.

The first thing I noticed when charming my pets and renaming them was that the name doesn’t get saved. Since no pet is a 1-pet-fits-all, you would have to switch pets a lot according to the situation you are in. This is quite annoying and I don’t see the idea behind being able to rename it.
1. When you rename a pet, have the name saved until you rename it again. Or have a place where you pay a small price to rename your pet.

The second idea I had was a bit doubtful, because I don’t know if it’s hard to implement or if it would even work. (Enhance the play) I thought of a toggle button for attack/return, instead of having 2 seperate buttons. The rules when using which mode would go something like this. When you click on a mob and attack with you pet, or attack it yourself so your pet follows, you would use the attack-mode. When you have a mob locked and click the button again the pet returns. Though when you switch mobs, attack-mode is used instead of return-mode. This would be easier, because you have 1 smart-key instead of 2 seperate buttons.
2. Pet control buttons (attack/return) would be one toggle button

Another thing that was is very annoying mostly was the Pet Management-window. You get a popup-window to choose your pet, but you can’t select a pet to see it’s stats/skill. Instead you have to switch the pet in you slot which resets the other pert’s name. Also the way the Beast Mastery-trait correlates to the pet’s stats is fuzzy. When I started GW2 with my Ranger is tried several builds, but in none of them was it unclear if the pet would actually do some damage. The only time I saw it do some damage, and this only counts for my Arctodus(because it could pack-a-punch and stay a life longer than any other pet I used), was when it uses it’s F2 skill. Therefore I avoided the Beast Mastery-trait completely before. Yes, my pet micro-ing skills aren’t the world’s best and I am working on it.
3. Enhance the “Pet Management”-window so it is clearer and easier to see and compare pet stats, instead of having to switch pets to see this. And how your BM-trait affects the stats. Have a Base and Boon value for example.

Since I haven’t mastered my Ranger yet the following suggestions might not be valid, due to the fact that some might unbalance the Ranger.

Playing other games in the past where pets were involved I saw some skills to dual summon your pets. I know being able to have both pets out all of the time is a bit overkill, but taking into consideration my first idea, to make a toggle button, you would have the F3 button free and could place a Dual summon-skill which activates your second pet for like 10-15 seconds and also have the appropriate amount of recharge-time. I would say like 90-120 seconds?
4. Have a Dual Summon-skill in you profession skillbar. (In combination with suggestion 1, which would free 1 slot)

Or to add an alternative to the above mentioned suggestion. Why I never use my bird-pets, because they die very easily. Although they have a nice second skill which boosts you movement speed it is unavailable outside of combat. Which would be very useful.
5. Fill the free slot, which suggestion 1 creates, with another already present pet-skill. This would give you a bit more control over when you pet uses which skill instead of spamming everything when it’s off cooldown and losing the utility of the skill.

Read on please

And I saved the best 2 (new suggestions) for last. Also they complement eachother so it obvious they would be written after eachother.

A nice addition to being able to have pets in the first place would be to be able to make them evolve in a bigger version (bigger size, different skin, a little bit boosted stats according to evolution stage). I hear you thinking already, bad idea! Boosting pets would make it unbalanced for PvE, but more viable for Dungeons. Being able to go to lower levels areas as a level 80 character is unbalanced also. From my experience my stats are still higher than a character from that level, so it’s easy anyways to go there as any class. Having a slight increase in HP or Resistances to your pet, and maybe some damage output wouldn’t make such a difference.
6. Pet evolution, would be fun for Rangers gathering the required items/materials to evolve their pet and make it more viable for dungeons. Ofcourse a juvenile pet is weak and has little HP and Resistances, make it grow up like your character does. You can boost your character by getting better items and go to higher level areas, but your pet stays weak in comparison.

The last suggestion is quite cool in my opinion. This wouldn’t unbalance the game in any way, because it is derived from something a race already has. Now we get these little cute juvenile pets as Rangers, but when you would be able to evolve them or let them grow a bit as you level they would become big enough for you to be able to ride them. And I don’t mean buy or make a saddle for them I mean hope on their back and control their movement. This would increase you movement speed to the limit (or slightly higher) which the charr already have when sprinting. (Running on all 4 paws).
7. Be able to ride your pet (which would seem logical to ride) when it grows up and isn’t a juvenile animal anymore. Ofcourse you wouldn’t be able to attack when riding, but you would be able to jump and mount/dismount quickly (so you don’t have to wait to the amount of time it takes to mount a camel or elephant). An animation suggestion would be that your pet runs infront of you and you jump on or something.

This concludes my suggestions to improve the gameplay or add some new features to the Ranger profession.

Looking forward to reading your comments on these suggestions and some valid arguments or reasons why you think it is or isn’t good would be appropriate I guess.

Thank you for reading and see you in Tyria!

Could a Moderator or Admin please relocate this topic in the suggestions category? I thought I was posting it there and noticed it was wrong when I had already made the topic.

Thank you in advance!

I’ll start by saying it’s nice to see a suggestion for improving the Ranger that revolves around improving the pets rather than removing them entirely. It was also well written, rather than incoherant ramblings that usually happen.

1) This is an old one, and has needed to be addressed since day one. For some reason they have not felt the need to do anything about it. It seems to me that the easiest way to do it would be to make a file on the client computer that has all the names. When you switch the animal it checks the file then auto edits the name with the profered line in the file. Quick and easy, and nothing any number of other games haven’t successfully implemented before.

2) I see where you’re going with this, but it has some problems. The reason there are two buttons is to allow for on the fly control. If I’m attacking one thing and my pet was attacking another, and I wanted it to attack mine, your system would be fine. I hit F1 and it attacks, done.

If I’m attacking one thing, and it’s attacking another and I want it to come to me now I have to hit F1 twice, once to get it to attack my target and again to get it to stop. Maybe that doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but it’s still extra bother that isn’t necessary.

Now, I’m not attacking anything, I’m just running, and something hits my pet. The way it currently stands I can just hit F3. It will immediately stop its retaliation and come back to me, ignoring its attacker. This is how you keep from slowing down due to combat. But in your system, what happens? Do I have to target its attacker and his F1 to get it to stop? Does I have to target something else and hit F1 twice? What’s the design? With two buttons it’s straight forward, this does this, and that does that.

3) More information is always good. Having a pop up that treats the pet like a weapon would by nice. You are looking at this pet, you have this pet equipped, this is the difference between them. Some kind of mouse over for base and buffed for active stats would also be nice.

4) I don’t think this would be reasonable. I could see ways to do it, like the pet has some kind of buff, or whatever, and maybe in the Beast Master trait line there could be a power that is X happens your other pet appears and activtes that power then leave. But anything that actually puts both on the field together wouldn’t really work.

5) Having the option for more control over your pet would be nice, just not sure how to bring it out since I’m against the suggestion that would enable this.

6) My preference is suedo-XP. Basically as long as the pet is active and “alive” it gains XP from kills that allow it to age. It doesn’t have levels, it just have a handful of ages, Juvinile, Young, Mature, Adult… whatever. If you used the same pet from 1-80 you would probably have it at max growth in the 60s or 70s. Each growth level allows for some customization, but nothing too drastic, they do not get more powerful, because that would break them, but there is room for tweaking. Also they would get bigger so that it would actually seem like you raised them up to adults.

7) No mounts. Just no.

I like this & I agree with the rename option- everytime I switch my pets, I always have to rename one It’s super annoying.

@Kal Spiro, Thank you for your good reaction. I like your view on number 6 and yes number 2 had some issues also when I thought of it. Too bad you don’t like my 7th idea. Because it wouldn’t basically be a mount. Yes you can ride it, but it’s a more cosmetic use than a functional. The little mov spd boost you would get would be on par with the Charr, like I mentioned, when they sprint. I don’t think this would be of any bigger advantage than being a Charr would.
Also thank you for the complement

I like the suggestions. The pet names being saved has been a problem since day 1. Many have questioned why. I can’t recall if Anet, said they won’t can’t or just simply ignored the request.
Also button 3 when you are downed—-change it to an immediate rez from the pet—no waiting for the button to charge.

Is this post all about pets ?

I don’t want my pet, it can go away, it’s about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Chasind.3128:

I like this & I agree with the rename option- everytime I switch my pets, I always have to rename one It’s super annoying.

It’s why I rarely change my pet loadout because I don’t want to forget the ‘brilliant’ names I come up for them (my pink moa is lord prime minister :P)

Solid Gold.9310:

Is this post all about pets ?

I don’t want my pet, it can go away, it’s about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Yes, it’s all about pets and some tweaks to the Ranger profession. The fact that you don’t like your pets only means that a ranger is not for you, because Anet intended the Ranger class to have pets so I wouldn’t bet on them going to change that. For you it would be good to be able to stow your pets until you summon them again, instead of them spawning automatically when either you attack or get attacked.

There are other class which use bows also, have you tried one of them?

here’s the way the pet names work:

when you have pets up, you have two active — primary and secondary. these two pets have names saved to those SLOTS, not to the pets themselves. therefore, if you have, say, a pink moa and a polar bear up, and you come across a wolf and choose to charm it, accepting it to replace one of your currently active pets, that wolf will take the name of the pet it replaces.

again, their names for pets are saved in one of the two slots, not to the pets themselves. would it be wonderful for them to change that? you betcha. do i think it’s beyond their ability to change it? c’mon. wow could do it. so yes, anet can also do it.

will they? that’s a whole ’nother issue.

Isende.2607:

here’s the way the pet names work:

when you have pets up, you have two active — primary and secondary. these two pets have names saved to those SLOTS, not to the pets themselves. therefore, if you have, say, a pink moa and a polar bear up, and you come across a wolf and choose to charm it, accepting it to replace one of your currently active pets, that wolf will take the name of the pet it replaces.

again, their names for pets are saved in one of the two slots, not to the pets themselves. would it be wonderful for them to change that? you betcha. do i think it’s beyond their ability to change it? c’mon. wow could do it. so yes, anet can also do it.

will they? that’s a whole ’nother issue.

I think most people know how the petnaming works or better said how it does not work.

And I suppose it would be pretty dumb not to change such a small thing which takes away a pretty big annoyance. Either implement this or delete the naming function, because it is useless in this state.

Thank you for you input.

MangoMonkey.7582:

@Kal Spiro, Thank you for your good reaction. I like your view on number 6 and yes number 2 had some issues also when I thought of it. Too bad you don’t like my 7th idea. Because it wouldn’t basically be a mount. Yes you can ride it, but it’s a more cosmetic use than a functional. The little mov spd boost you would get would be on par with the Charr, like I mentioned, when they sprint. I don’t think this would be of any bigger advantage than being a Charr would.
Also thank you for the complement

Charr don’t gain a movement speed increase when running on all fours. It’s just their default running animation.

Though I do like some of the other suggestions, like pet evolution and saving pet names.

JustCurious.3457:

MangoMonkey.7582:

@Kal Spiro, Thank you for your good reaction. I like your view on number 6 and yes number 2 had some issues also when I thought of it. Too bad you don’t like my 7th idea. Because it wouldn’t basically be a mount. Yes you can ride it, but it’s a more cosmetic use than a functional. The little mov spd boost you would get would be on par with the Charr, like I mentioned, when they sprint. I don’t think this would be of any bigger advantage than being a Charr would.
Also thank you for the complement

Charr don’t gain a movement speed increase when running on all fours. It’s just their default running animation.

Though I do like some of the other suggestions, like pet evolution and saving pet names.

Ok, I must have seen wrong by accident. Always saw Charr run faster than my ranger. xD Thanks for the support

@mangomonkey

That’s the problem with pets at the moment. There are situations you stow your pet for a reason and you want it to stay stowed because all it does is die and slow you down. It’s all about those situations where it’s indeed as useless as a chocolate fireguard but you cannot do anything about it.

They simply dont work as they should. The ai is simply to slow or to stupid to control them for the moment.

They had it right in GW1 why did they screw up from the start with GW2.

Oh Anet, just give everyone the classic D&D Ranger like they thought they were going to get back in beta anyway.

In beta, people had all kinds of ideas about how to use Ranger, especially in WvW. It was assumed that after release, they would be the best roaming/scouting class in the game; everyone was wrong about that of course.

The other assumption that many people made was to simply see the name of the class and go "Oh sweet, a Ranger! I can basically just roll one of these and be Aragorn for the rest of the game!?
Nope.

Although there are several good players who’ve made ranger work for them and have gotten very good at using the class, for most players they are still just a Pet with a Bow attached to it. Very good for gold farming (it seemed early in the game that 99% of gold-farming bots were Rangers), but in WvW they’re generally viewed as free bags, which is not always accurate, but there’s a reason for this stereotype. It’s really too bad the pets aren’t optional, or couldn’t have been designed as a “summons” like Necro minions or something, so the Ranger class could’ve been built and balanced without pets, and then simply call out their pets when they need them. As it is right now the pets are inconsequential in most PvP scenarios, but Rangers seem designed to be balanced based on the fact that they have these pets.

Also, I think we can all agree that the current naming system, as pointed out by the OP, makes no sense. This should obviously be changed.

biggest problem with mount idea is how does a norn ride a dog? an asura could ride a dog but not a norn, so this would get difficult as you would have to have race specific for which pets are mountable