Guild Wars 2

If the Ranger’s pet couldn’t become a handicap, noone would care so much about its issues.

There are too many situations where the pet can not deliver on its promise and therefore leaves the Ranger handicapped.

Handicap:
- Ranger has less power scaling (because it has a pet to make up for it)

Situations where it’s not worth the handicap:
- PvE areas that use a lot of AoE damage (most new content)
- WvW walls preventing the pet from pathing to the target
- WvW zergs killing pets before they get anywhere
- Any area with pathing issues. Harpy fractal for example.

The handicap has to go. It has to be changed. We’ve played a year with this power scaling reduction and it’s not the proper solution. Something else needs to be done instead.

Noone would be bothered with the pet issues, if it could never handicap the player. It would just be a class mechanic: Sometimes useful, sometimes not useful.

But as it stands, the AI is expected to deliver in any situation, because the reduction in power scaling is also happening in any situation.

Bump. I would greatly appreciate it if Arena Net gave some indication that they care about this issue…

isn’t it normal that walls prevent the pet to reach a target? or maybe i just misunderstood.
i truly don’t feel handicapped by my pet and most of all other rangers they don’t feel handicapped when they attack me in pvp or wvwvw. but you really have to keep control of it, sometimes passive pet may be needed. and some utility also…

i suggest you to move to a class with no pet and than notice the difference…. because i do but maybe that works just for me.

damage wise i’m not used to big numbers and i don’t care for overkill when i play, and usually in content where the pet is most likely to die the difference in number with other classes doesn’t really make a difference.

@Amadan
It sounds like you are missing the point.

The Ranger has less power scaling on all its weapon skills than all the other classes, because he has a pet that has to make up for it.

So any and all situations where the pet can’t do anything makes the Ranger handicapped. And there are many of those situations in the game.

If the Ranger didn’t have reduced power scaling, noone would really care if the pet died or was unable to reach its target or had other AI issues. It would simply be a class mechanic that isn’t useful in all situations.

The pet is just a class mechanic that doesn’t work 90% of the time.

Anet messed up, but won’t admit it insisting we keep the broken pet thing.

It will never be fixed.

I’d like it if, when i turn my pet off, it would stay off until i called it, instead of automatically coming as soon as i’m damaged (even falling damage makes it show up).

Even tripping over a matchstick makes the pet pop out again, annoying in jumping puzzles.

Same with town clothes, not allowed to wear them and hold any weapon, not allowed to attack anything in town clothes, and take the smallest amount of falling damage and poof out pops the pet and away goes the town clothes.

Pretty much Anet wants to do things for us, I don’t like it.

i didn’t miss the point, you say you have damage downgraded with no pet i say you have damage upgraded with pet… you see it as an handicap i see it as a bonus.
i guess is a matter of point of view at least for me. my guardian doesn’t do any damage unless i’m directly attacking, while my ranger with a living pet can do it while i ress or just whatch my pretty shoes… of course it is no dps alone, but it sustains my damage when i cannot do it directly for some reason.
if as you see it, the ranger would do hell damage plus a pet it would be an imbalanced class and already is in pvp if you ask me (no wonder there are always rangers with all spirits around and minion masters necros in pvp).
also if are asking for a ranger with a choice to have no pet but more damage if he choses so, well it sounds legitimate and i can even agree.
but apparently the class concept is very different than just a bowman.

edit: on the other hand i completely understand how the pet can be annoying in certain situations and how a “you pop up when i say so” would be a useful feature

I can’t say I find it that noticeable, to be honest. I run a high damage spec and I will hit for 9-10k on a full rapidfire (that is, all arrows hit). YES it is a channeled ability, not burst damage, but the damage is still there. My build has 4k attack (without might), 22k hp, 2.1k armor, ~70% crit dmg and 27% critchance. (I don’t want to haggle with ppl about more crit-chance, its my personal build. Higher attack + critdmg results in bigger crits, just less often.) 10k dmg every 8s is pretty kitten big, considering you can be safe in stealth for 3 seconds out of every 9s.

In all honesty I don’t even rely on my pet to do damage at all. I use them for their active abilities, and thats about it. If I want some boons, I’ll take either Fern hound or Jungle Stalker, I want some cc? Krytan hound, wolf, or spider. I’ll swap them when they get low (most pets will survive for 20s in most situations — though definitely NOT in the rampant AoE you see in a lot of the new content, you are definitely right there.) but I don’t feel like I’m losing anything other than the use of the active ability if my pet dies.

I will agree that there are several situations where the pet is useless or, at most, a very weak class mechanic, but even with this ‘handicap’ I find I still out damage many other players/classes in PvE scenarios. In 1v1 fights in WvW I more than hold my own (except against thieves and some mesmers, I’m terrible fighting stealthers T_T) and contribute in small group WvW. Other players in WvW have a thing for targeting rangers first; but if a similarly built/specc’d class was focused, they would have a similar survival rate with 4+ ppl bursting them.

TL;DR:
Basically, I agree that the pet needs some tweaks to its mechanics (not just stat shuffling) to make it decent (I would LOVE if pets got a flat 30% damage reduction from AoE effects, even if it was just in PvE, or if bird-pets could attack ppl on walls again), but I can’t say that the imposed ‘handicaps’ are of any consequence to me.

Holland.9351:

If the Ranger’s pet couldn’t become a handicap, noone would care so much about its issues.

There are too many situations where the pet can not deliver on its promise and therefore leaves the Ranger handicapped.

Handicap:
- Ranger has less power scaling (because it has a pet to make up for it)

Situations where it’s not worth the handicap:
- PvE areas that use a lot of AoE damage (most new content)
- WvW walls preventing the pet from pathing to the target
- WvW zergs killing pets before they get anywhere
- Any area with pathing issues. Harpy fractal for example.

The handicap has to go. It has to be changed. We’ve played a year with this power scaling reduction and it’s not the proper solution. Something else needs to be done instead.

Noone would be bothered with the pet issues, if it could never handicap the player. It would just be a class mechanic: Sometimes useful, sometimes not useful.

But as it stands, the AI is expected to deliver in any situation, because the reduction in power scaling is also happening in any situation.

While I agree the pet needs to be looked into (mostly pathing/ability to keep your pet on passive until YOU decide for it to attack), the “WvW walls preventing the pet from pathing to the target” issue isn’t something that needs to be fixed (well, actually, they need to fix the bug they reintroduced). Pets SHOULDN’T be able to attack players on top of walls or inside a tower with it’s walls up (same with illusions imo but that’s another matter). Unless you are talking about pets getting stuck at a broken wall, in which case that does need to get fixed (again pathing issues that I mentioned at the start).