Dear ArenaNet:
Please let us rangers control the ratio of character to pet stats or character to pet damage. Ie. If the setup is currently 60-75% ranger damage to 25-40% pet damage, I want to create a ratio for myself more along the lines of 95% ranger damage to 5% pet damage and utilize the pet for its stun or heal utilities instead. I think it’s time that both the developer’s ideas of the pet being something the ranger always has, and the ranger’s reality of the pet’s massive inefficiencies at hitting moving targets in competitive player vs player environments need to meet in the middle somewhere.
Why would these be a good change? Well, here’s from my experience, as a highly skilled solo roaming melee ranger who’s practiced his art for approximately 4-5 months:
Out of all rangers, I am probably one of the very, very few % who has a build that synergizes very well with the pet, utilizing guard shouts to buff it with permanent protection and regen and stealth every 12 seconds, boosting its regen further with signet of the wild, sharing all my buffs with it and providing it with retaliation with my axe number 5 among other wonderful perks including a full melee setup with dual hydromancy sigils almost always used in melee range to further debilitate my foes, pulling them into it with number 4, good stun timing. Because I’m melee (gs/sa) I have an advantage with both melee and ranged pets that many ranger’s don’t; minimal travel time between pet and ranger and pet and enemy, since these are often at the same location. What else of my portfolio? I’ve built up my skill and timings in reactions and combination of techniques to a level where they are instinctual, and not something I have to literally count out in my head. My use of pet stealth with guard frequently aiming the f2s to fire from behind my opponents back while they are busy with me in the front is attested by many of my foes to be on a different level of pet control from any ranger they’ve faced. I’m not going to say I am THE best, but I believe I am very good. In these past months, I’ve only lost to one GoM ranger in one on one combat(there have been some draws) because I understand the weaknesses of the class so very well.
So what’s the issue? That despite all the above, it is still more often than not the pet holding me back with its low ratio of landing hits against strafing and kiting targets. It never ceases to amaze me how chilled, crippled targets still manage to side-step so many of its attacks and so few of my ranger’s attacks in high-skill duels. And if it holds me back, I guarantee you it holds back more ranger builds and players than you can imagine. Just read through the pages of ranger complaints about the pet in the ranger forums to see just how viciously this issue has been pointed out over the past months.
So, please do yourselves a favor and listen to your ranger community. Don’t just answer with a “speed up the pet f2”. “We’ll fix the pet’s ability to hit its enemy’s… in about a year.” The pet should SUPPORT the ranger as much as the ranger supports the pet. Currently, my ranger only supports the pet and it rarely supports me. So, I want a damage ratio reflective of that fact. It can be strategically utilized in engaging multiple foes and single enemies with useful skills like “guard”. I’d like to keep my pet, because having a companion is nice and the f2 utilities can be useful. I daresay it’d be more useful if you not only changed it this ranger to pet relationship to what I’ve suggested but gave rangers the option of having full control of their pet’s other 2 skills and when they use them. (Leave the auto attack on pet AI so it can contribute in its own, small ways.) I’m not asking you to get rid of the pet, but we’re asking you to put the control of the course of our fights completely back in the hands of the inherently intelligent player (the ranger) and out of the hands of the unsatisfactory, incompetent AI. (pet). It’d be nothing revolutionary or game breaking. Bears could still be used as meatshields, cats could still be used as squishy high damage AI wannabe-assassins.
You wouldn’t break beast mastery builds either as you could enable them to reach even higher ratios of pet reliance with different stat distributions being able to be chosen by the ranger. For all I care someone could go with a 25% ranger damage to 75% pet damage ratio build. It would certainly at more variety and make killing some ranger’s pets more critical.
So, you would infact enable new and currently unexisting builds where healing power could pooled into pets to turn them into larger healing asset, or high-crit drake burst builds for new AoE builds, and countless other things.
So please, just give it a try.
Ferguson’s Crossing server.
(edited by Detharos.3157)