Guild Wars 2

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

I do believe that you are understanding us incorrectly about the pet damage. We are aware that pets are suppose to be 30 percent of our damage and that is our class mechanic. What we are trying to explain to you is that no other class has to give up damage for their class mechanic. A warrior has 100 percent of his/her damage. When their class mechanic fills up they have 115% damage. They use their skill and they are back to 100 percent damage for a few seconds until their class mechanic (adrenaline) fills up again.

What we are asking for is for the ranger to have full control over their damage, 100%, just like the warrior. Let the pet do 15% damage. The time it takes for a pet to reach it’s target, stop, run animation, and begin it’s attack is the same amount of time it takes a warrior to fill it’s adrenaline bar. This puts us on even grounds with other classes. When a warrior uses his adrenaline it performs a special attack/move. when we hit our f2 the pet stops, runs an animation, performs the animation (whether it’s a heal, fear, call for a second hyena(or was it wolf? can’t remember now)) then it runs to the target, performs an animation again, then it attacks. During all of this, the warrior would have filled up his adrenaline bar already and continued doing his/her 15% extra damage. The pet is still doing damage, but now the ranger will have full control of their 100% instead of only 70% while an AI that doesn’t work does 30%, plus we lose out on damage because everyone’s class mechanic ADDS to their damage, not brings them up to 100%, their mechanic raises them above 100%

You see, this puts us on equal footing with other classes when it comes to damage. Telling us that we have to split our DPS with out class mechanic is the same as saying that warriors have to start off with a 30% reduction in damage until they fill up their adrenaline, once adrenaline is filled up then the warrior can do 100% of their damage. first bar being 10%, second bar 20% and third bar is 30%. Then warriors will only have 100% damage instead of the current 115% damage. Do you understand where we’re coming from now? Pets are still in, pets are still doing damage, at a lower percentage, if they ever hit, but ranger’s will not be handicapped when it comes to DPS. We will be on even footing with all other classes in this aspect.

Flytrap.8075:

urdriel.8496:

All other classes can choose, a mesmer can choose a phantasm build or not, a Necro can choose a minion build or not, we cant choose, we have an AI controlled pet that is a dps lost and we must bear with it each second we play GW2.

Ofc, we are frustrated, more than 1 year with a pet that is a debuff instead of a buff, the best fix that ranger class could have would be a “good pet” , but instead of that, Anet nerfed pet leash range,pet attack range and we have a severe damage handicap when we attack or defend a keep.

I agree.

No other class has to work around their class mechanic; it is always beneficial. Our pet is just a drawback and a huge drain on traits that could be utilized elsewhere.
[/quote]

You get to “choose” between massive amounts of pet types. Your pets are not limited to brown bear, jaguar, lynx, jungle stalker, wolf and hyena. It ranges way beyond that. Each pet has it’s own usage, its own function. Each pet family has its own role.

A mesmer can choose to go shatterer or phantasm. That is two choices, but one way or the other it got to chose one of two to remain competitive.
A necromancer can choose to use minions, build around DS or marks/wells, it has to choose one or two of three to remain competitive.
A warrior can choose its function through choosing the right weapons.
A thief can choose to build around stealing, stealth or not.

We can choose between a DPS power Pet (Jaguar, Raven) or a DPS condition pet (Lynx, Marsh Drake) or a tanky DPS power pet (Drakes), a support pet (moas, pigs) or a CC pet (dogs). We also got the same choices of roles in ranged pets, however this option is a whole lot more limited.
In short, depending on what you need, our mechanic has the greatest choice of build diversity avaliable. We can spec full damage player side, only go for self sustain, and still get a considerable amount of party support from pets alone, on the opposite end we can build around strong party support player side, and pure DPS from pets.

The pet mechanic, as it is now, is hindering us from fully utilizing this, if F2 “accuracy” is improved, pet hit ratio is improved and pet survivability is improved then it would be a big step in the right direction, allowing us to capitalize on our mechanic instead of keeping it alive with a whole lot of effort.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

We don’t want the pet to deal no damage. We want the pet to deal additional damage. Right now the main purpose of the pet is to deal damage. The advantages an AI could offer are (nearly) completely unused. The pet is just doing what we could do better: Dealing damage. Instead the pet could help you CCing the enemy, buffing the party or dealing with a second target.

Your example isn’t really helping. You’ve tried to build a skyscraper upon a foundation meant to carry a single-family home. Your example implies that the pet is just a small part of the ranger yet you define the ranger as pet-centric class and the ranger is forced to use his pet every time.

But think of it this way: If you have a child and a robot. Do you want the robot to take care of your child while you’re cleaning your house or do you want the robot to clean your house while you’re taking care of your child?

Ofcourse, that would mean you have to change many things. But most of those things would have to be changed anyways in order to be effective.
I’m sorry if you’ve expected to just tweak some numbers but that’s not how this gonna work.

Don’t get me wrong, this game is based on a wonderful concept, but there are some parts who didn’t turn out functioning. The pet, the whole pet at its current state, is one of those things. It works, yes, but it doesn’t work well. That’s the reason why the ranger gets hindered and he will be getting hindered if you can’t get rid of the definition of the pet as damagedealer. The pet, an AI, will never be as good at dealing damage as the ranger, the player is. That’s the reason why the ranger is worse than other classes. But the pet can so much more than just dealing mandatory damage. And that’s the direction I want the pet to be evolved.

Prysin.8542:

You get to “choose” between massive amounts of pet types. Your pets are not limited to brown bear, jaguar, lynx, jungle stalker, wolf and hyena. It ranges way beyond that. Each pet has it’s own usage, its own function. Each pet family has its own role.

A mesmer can choose to go shatterer or phantasm. That is two choices, but one way or the other it got to chose one of two to remain competitive.
A necromancer can choose to use minions, build around DS or marks/wells, it has to choose one or two of three to remain competitive.
A warrior can choose its function through choosing the right weapons.
A thief can choose to build around stealing, stealth or not.

We can choose between a DPS power Pet (Jaguar, Raven) or a DPS condition pet (Lynx, Marsh Drake) or a tanky DPS power pet (Drakes), a support pet (moas, pigs) or a CC pet (dogs). We also got the same choices of roles in ranged pets, however this option is a whole lot more limited.
In short, depending on what you need, our mechanic has the greatest choice of build diversity avaliable. We can spec full damage player side, only go for self sustain, and still get a considerable amount of party support from pets alone, on the opposite end we can build around strong party support player side, and pure DPS from pets.

The pet mechanic, as it is now, is hindering us from fully utilizing this, if F2 “accuracy” is improved, pet hit ratio is improved and pet survivability is improved then it would be a big step in the right direction, allowing us to capitalize on our mechanic instead of keeping it alive with a whole lot of effort.

And no matter what pet I pick, it’s still going to be hindered by terrible AI, sluggish timing, and poor survivability.

Why is Ranger the only class that has to make such a sacrifice? The longer I think about the 70:30 damage split, the more I’m against it. ANet would have to make significant improvements to the pet AI for it to be justified in my eyes, and even then, pets would still suffer in WvW.

Allie Murdock.8152:

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

I totally agree on this, but at the same time, what we need from your end is some assurance that these issues WILL get fixed within the near future. To say “Rangers wouldn’t be Rangers without their pets, and we know pets don’t work right, but we won’t be able to fix that any time soon, so tough luck.” Is not a satisfactory answer. We need to get something to the effect of either:

A: Pets are vital to the Ranger class, and we know they aren’t working right right now, but we have plans in place to fix that within the next few months so it’ll be ok.

OR

B: Pets are vital to the Ranger class, but we can’t make them work right any time soon, so we’re going to offer some other effects in the meantime to bring Rangers up to snuff without even factoring in the pets, and we’ll make pets mandatory again once we’ve figured out how to make them work right.

There definitely needs to be a change made for the game that either A: makes pets far less likely to die when meleeing in large zerg/boss situations, or B: makes them just as useful while “dead” as while alive.

Atherakhia.4086:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

You’re right… 1.5 years of no progress has caused the playerbase to wave the white flag of defeat and wants the pets removed.

They can’t hit moving targets.
The F2 skills aren’t responsive.
The F2 skills aren’t good.
The F2 skills have too long of a cast time and the pet can’t move while using them.
Pets don’t scale with gear so we’ve seen no increase with ascended stats.
Pets simply don’t work AT ALL in WvW.
Players can’t control the secondary attacks.

That’s a lot to be fixed considering nothing has been fixed in 1.5 years despite complaining about them nonstop since beta. This is the reason half this thread is filled with suggestions to either remove the pet outright or make it such a nonfactor we don’t care what happens to it. Can you assure us any of this will be resolved within a reasonable time frame? Because if not… 1.5 years is long enough for even ANet to wave the white flag I think…

And this is just the pets… we haven’t even gotten to the problems related to why NO ONE wants anything to do with the class in WvW, how boring the class is to play, or how ineffective it is at nearly everything it does.

Can’t +1 this post enough….

Sorry but the house analogy was completely invalid when you mentioned the term effecient… anet has not a single thing that was effecient with this ranger class from the get go

Everything Ather just mentioned is completely valid
I can’t stand the fact Anet wants to take the lazy way around this again.

You are forcing us into making amends with pets, which is the terrible. I don’t want my condi cleansing tied into a silly pet swapping mechanic. Do other classes rely on class mechanics for dealing with condi’s? no I don’t think so.
Sorry but the pet should never have such a massive impact on my character.
Right now soo many things are tied into such a faulty and broken mechanic

Also, to the house analogy, the ranger (house) is basically already a broken like it’s been hit by hurrican katrina. I don’t think you understand the fact that theres dozens of 2×4′s that need to be replaced here…..

So yea, the efficient and right thing to do is build a new house.
The foundation is not stable at all, period. Stop trying to tape it up because it is not going to hold up, we have seen this for a fact the past 1.5 years, yet some how devs thinks this can still be mended with bandaids

misterdevious.6482:

Questions:

1. If a 5-target AoE hits a bear instead of an elementalist… is that considered support?
2. If you stand behind a devourer and it blocks projectiles aimed at you… is that considered survivability?
3. If you swap between moas and they provide 8k aoe healing (1340×3pulsesx2moas) on a 40s cooldown, isn’t that equivalent to a second healing skill?
4. If a malicious spider hits with a web and a paralyzing venom followed by a pet swap and another web and the target is immobilized for a full 13.5 seconds… is that any good?
5. If you know the tricks that let you use your pet on demand to knockdown (dogs), blast (drakes), swiftness (birds), fear (shark), or heal (moas)… isn’t that useful?

I like having an interesting toolbox and finding ways to work with it. Other people just seem to want numbers they can see.

Answers:

1. It is called collateral damage.
2. 2 ways to be able to do this, your enemy is stupid and dont move while attack at you, or you use guard in a point where your pet cant attack, we have a nice wall of flesh and lost 30% of our damage.
3. so, you lost 30% of YOUR damage to heal for 8k aoe?? any aoe burst skill will delete these 8k heal,btw you lost 30% of your damage and have 20sec cd, ?are you happy¿
4. Stop attacking training dummies.
5. It is cool when your pet need 4-5-6 secs. to perform f2 skill. not always ofc.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

This is closer to a cracked foundation I think.

Flytrap.8075:

And no matter what pet I pick, it’s still going to be hindered by terrible AI, sluggish timing, and poor survivability.

Why is Ranger the only class that has to make such a sacrifice? The longer I think about the 70:30 damage split, the more I’m against it. ANet would have to make significant improvements to the pet AI for it to be justified in my eyes, and even then, pets would still suffer in WvW.

I think this is the real point. Every class is balanced around their mechanic, but our balancing is around a mechanic that is mostly not producing its estimated DPS. Thus our realized DPS is almost always lower than what we’re balanced around, especially when compared to other classes.

Until pet AI is significantly improved, or pets are changed such that it’s no longer an issue (aspects yummy) we really need to either have a larger portion of the damage on the ranger or global base damage buffs to be competitive with other classes.

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

OMG, are you saying than Warrior Axe AA have less damage than other skills??
Warrior Axe AA autoattack is probably the best dps in this game for an AA, and eviscerate is a “if your opponent have 50% hp or less press f1 to win”.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Allow pets to retain nicknames on hard-swap

Goal of Proposal
The myriad of pets at a ranger’s disposal can be and has been compared to a toolbox. However, needing to re-label every tool after you take it out or put it back is a very un-fun chore.

As with most chores, people tend to (subconsciously) avoid doing them! So we end up not using all of the tools in our box, despite them being there- instead, we use our favorites, rarely swapping for others. We end up using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail and determine that yes, screwdrivers are bad at hammering nails.

By retaining nicknames, that chore is eliminated almost completely, allowing for more open access to all of our pets!

Proposal Functionality
Have pets retain their nicknames even after being stored. “Mr. Snugglekins” the Juvenile Jungle Stalker should remain “Mr. Snugglekins” even if he’s been stored in favor of “Caesar” the Salad Dog Juvenile Fern Hound.

Associated Risks
There are certainly people out there who don’t care what their pets are named, and still only use their two favorites.

There are also people out there who are already using all of their pets despite the chore, and they have legitimate concerns about the state of pets in general.

However, I believe that if this proposal is implemented, we will see a much wider variety of pets being used for various situations- leading to opening up gameplay possibilities with existing pet mechanics. (regardless of if they need a bit of tweaking in general or not).

Ltomato.8649:

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Allow pets to retain nicknames on hard-swap

Goal of Proposal
The myriad of pets at a ranger’s disposal can be and has been compared to a toolbox. However, needing to re-label every tool after you take it out or put it back is a very un-fun chore.

As with most chores, people tend to (subconsciously) avoid doing them! So we end up not using all of the tools in our box, despite them being there- instead, we use our favorites, rarely swapping for others. We end up using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail and determine that yes, screwdrivers are bad at hammering nails.

By retaining nicknames, that chore is eliminated almost completely, allowing for more open access to all of our pets!

Proposal Functionality
Have pets retain their nicknames even after being stored. “Mr. Snugglekins” the Juvenile Jungle Stalker should remain “Mr. Snugglekins” even if he’s been stored in favor of “Caesar” the Salad Dog Juvenile Fern Hound.

Associated Risks
There are certainly people out there who don’t care what their pets are named, and still only use a their two favorites.

There are also people out there who are already using all of their pets despite the chore, and they have legitimate concerns about the state of pets in general.

However, I believe that if this proposal is implemented, we will see a much wider variety of pets being used for various situations- leading to opening up gameplay possibilities with existing pet mechanics. (regardless of if they need a bit of tweaking in general or not).

I pray this is a joke and devs don’t even bother looking at this

Name of a pet has absolutely no impact on gameplay what so ever.

You honest to god believe people will use more pets if the nicknaming system was revamped? dear lord

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

The point still stands: If the warrior ignores his F skills, including traits and passives, he will still turn out as good damagedealer.
If the ranger ignores his F skills, he will turn out losing 30% of his damage.
Furthermore, if the warrior utilizing his F skills, he will deal very high damage.
If the ranger wants to utilize his F skills, he is not necessarily getting his 30% damage back. there are so much things that could go wrong.
The ranger is on a disadvantage because his pet isn’t reliable.
If the warrior hits F1, he will get the effect he expected to get. If a ranger hits F1, the pet can still be kited, killed, blocked, or is simply not able to attack.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

Thanks for the replies Allie. I’m not sure why the same people who keep harping on you about giving the ranger back their 100% damage arguments won’t concur. Keep in mind a few of them have admitted not stepping foot in PVP aspects of the game. Over on the Ranger forum, I can’t guarantee 90%+ of them want the pet to stay along with there mechanics, just on an improved AI level, which is what you stated a few pages back. The discussions should be about ideas on making this happen, rather than bringing up this stow pet 100% damage idea.

SkiTz.4590:

I pray this is a joke and devs don’t even bother looking at this

Name of a pet has absolutely no impact on gameplay what so ever.

You honest to god believe people will use more pets if the nicknaming system was revamped? dear lord

Please, this is the Ranger CDI, regarding all aspects of the ranger.
I do agree that there are more important things to discuss but this doesn’t mean his idea is stupid or should be ignored.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Thanks for the replies Allie. I’m not sure why the same people who keep harping on you about giving the ranger back their 100% damage arguments won’t concur. Keep in mind a few of them have admitted not stepping foot in PVP aspects of the game. Over on the Ranger forum, I can’t guarantee 90%+ of them want the pet to stay along with there mechanics, just on an improved AI level, which is what you stated a few pages back. The discussions should be about ideas on making this happen, rather than bringing up this stow pet 100% damage idea.

So you are saying just because I’ve never played PvP, I shouldn’t be heard?
Man you’re weird. Stop these disgusting attempts to proof other players not beeing as equivalent as the “elitists”.

Khalic.3561:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

This is closer to a cracked foundation I think.

in that case, it is easier to chop off a portion of the cracked foundation that took the most damage and pour a new piece (what devs are doing) then chopping up the entire foundation and re-pouring that.
(FYI i work in construction, trust me, chopping up a full foundation is a major job way way way way way way bigger then fixing the part that is damaged)

SkiTz.4590:

I pray this is a joke and devs don’t even bother looking at this

Name of a pet has absolutely no impact on gameplay what so ever.

You honest to god believe people will use more pets if the nicknaming system was revamped? dear lord

I do. I know I would.

I already need to swap out my traits, utilities, and weapons to best match different encounters.

Pets are tied directly to our characters. My guildmates can recognize when I’m around when they see Zappy the River Drake wandering around, even if they don’t see me.

I use pretty much River Drake and Marsh Drake exclusively as they are the mutlitools of the pet toolbox. If I can swap them for Mr. Snugglekins to provide might or KFC to provide fury without having to worry about renaming everything, then I would be much more inclined to do so.

Everything has an effect on gameplay, from the color of your armor dyes to the size of your UI.

Then again, maybe that’s why the “Guard” shout takes 1 second to cast. “Juvenile Lashtail Devourer! Guard!”

But seriously, excuse me if I have offended you by suggesting that being able to name something in an RPG has an effect on gameplay.

urdriel.8496:

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

OMG, are you saying than Warrior Axe AA have less damage than other skills??
Warrior Axe AA autoattack is probably the best dps in this game for an AA, and eviscerate is a “if your opponent have 50% hp or less press f1 to win”.

You are either being ignorant on pourpose or simply misreading what he is saying. I’ll put it in lazy man terms:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Thanks for the replies Allie. I’m not sure why the same people who keep harping on you about giving the ranger back their 100% damage arguments won’t concur. Keep in mind a few of them have admitted not stepping foot in PVP aspects of the game. Over on the Ranger forum, I can’t guarantee 90%+ of them want the pet to stay along with there mechanics, just on an improved AI level, which is what you stated a few pages back. The discussions should be about ideas on making this happen, rather than bringing up this stow pet 100% damage idea.

I think most people are fine with the pet staying, but especially in pvp where they’re kited just in normal play it’s awful being balanced around the pet doing so much of our damage. In pvp they can’t hit spit, so our dps is consistently lower.

There are two versions of people who want the pet to go – those who just want to play ranger without a pet, and those who just want to realize our damage by not relying on the busted pet AI (which we’ve been told won’t be fixed any time soon). The first is thematic and up for debate, but ANet has said they don’t agree with it. The second is a real problem with a real solution, at least until AI is fixed.

And no, I don’t PVP at all. None. No WVW or PVP. And I still want to opt out of the pet for PVE and Dungeons. If the dam Ranger wasn’t so fun to play I wouldn’t say anything and wouldn’t care if the class continues to remain handicapped by the band-aided class mechanic. So yeah, I’d like to use it for more than a mule again but since the Devs are so suck on their failed “Ranger” COUGHBEASTMASTERCOUGH concept doesn’t look like it’ll ever happen

Flytrap.8075:

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore.

Maybe that’s the point.

So few words and such meaning. 100% agree… besides, we never did have a Ranger. It was and always has been a Beastmaster purely because we HAVE to HAVE a beast with us ALL THE TIME. I said long ago they could have avoided a lot of confusion had they named this class Beastmaster instead of Ranger… a Skirmishing Beastmaster. Get rid of the beast and then maybe we could have an awesome Ranger.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Thanks for the replies Allie. I’m not sure why the same people who keep harping on you about giving the ranger back their 100% damage arguments won’t concur. Keep in mind a few of them have admitted not stepping foot in PVP aspects of the game. Over on the Ranger forum, I can’t guarantee 90%+ of them want the pet to stay along with there mechanics, just on an improved AI level, which is what you stated a few pages back. The discussions should be about ideas on making this happen, rather than bringing up this stow pet 100% damage idea.

So you are saying just because I’ve never played PvP, I shouldn’t be heard?
Man you’re weird. Stop these disgusting attempts to proof other players not beeing as equivalent as the “elitists”.

Don’t put words in my mouth. Everyone’s opinions are welcomed. It’s hard to accept an idea knowing that in other aspects of the game they simply wouldn’t work, especially since Anet said they aren’t going to do it anyways.

ItIsFinished.9462:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

This list is weird and false.

ItIsFinished.9462:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

So your saying that if everyone’s class mechanic died, we would be one of the best damage dealers? A warrior doesn’t need his class mechanic to deal his 100% of his damage, he uses his class mechanic to get a boost to his overall damage. What your saying above is like saying that warriors start off doing 35% less damage then what they are suppose to do. hmmm, and Elementalist starts off by doing 65% less damage then they are suppose to do, WOW, I’d hate to see what they do at 100% because when I start a fight with one, they come out strong and hit hard!

Angela Ranna.5638:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Thanks for the replies Allie. I’m not sure why the same people who keep harping on you about giving the ranger back their 100% damage arguments won’t concur. Keep in mind a few of them have admitted not stepping foot in PVP aspects of the game. Over on the Ranger forum, I can’t guarantee 90%+ of them want the pet to stay along with there mechanics, just on an improved AI level, which is what you stated a few pages back. The discussions should be about ideas on making this happen, rather than bringing up this stow pet 100% damage idea.

I think most people are fine with the pet staying, but especially in pvp where they’re kited just in normal play it’s awful being balanced around the pet doing so much of our damage. In pvp they can’t hit spit, so our dps is consistently lower.

There are two versions of people who want the pet to go – those who just want to play ranger without a pet, and those who just want to realize our damage by not relying on the busted pet AI (which we’ve been told won’t be fixed any time soon). The first is thematic and up for debate, but ANet has said they don’t agree with it. The second is a real problem with a real solution, at least until AI is fixed.

Can you imagine every new player starting GW2 for the first time picking a new class, they go through their options, “Oooh, clones! Wait, Stealth mechanic?? Attunements and summoned weapons!! Huh whats this, Ranger, wait whats its specialty/class mechanic?” Hops on ranger forums and asks community what makes it special, gets the answer of “5 people wanted there mechanic gone to do more damage”…..

I know poorly written, its lunch time…

ItIsFinished.9462:

urdriel.8496:

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

OMG, are you saying than Warrior Axe AA have less damage than other skills??
Warrior Axe AA autoattack is probably the best dps in this game for an AA, and eviscerate is a “if your opponent have 50% hp or less press f1 to win”.

You are either being ignorant on pourpose or simply misreading what he is saying. I’ll put it in lazy man terms:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

Those numbers are hilarious.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

ItIsFinished.9462:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

This list is weird and false.

You pulled these numbers out of the air mate. How can a ranger lose 30% dps when their pet isnt surviving during a fight anyway?

In regard to the class mechanic utilization and its effectiveness across classes, I think the explanation is as follows:

If Class Mechanic is used correctly in a perfect scenario the DPS potential is:
Guardian – 100% DPS
Warrior – 100% DPS
Engineer – 100% DPS
Ranger – 100% DPS
Thief – 100% DPS
Elementalist – 100% DPS
Mesmer – 100% DPS
Necromancer – 100% DPS

If the Class Mechanic is completely ignored, the DPS potential becomes:
Guardian – 85% DPS
Warrior – 85% DPS
Engineer – 85% DPS
Ranger – 70% DPS
Thief – 85% DPS
Elementalist – 85% DPS
Mesmer – 85% DPS
Necromancer – 85% DPS

Now, we have to then look at the scenarios that are not optimal and the probability of the scenario being not optimal (this section is approximated based on my opinion and numbers do not reflect any type of measured value):

Guardian – 100% DPS (really doesn’t have a non-optimal situation since the class mechanic is a combination of invincibility, healing, and fire damage. Immune to burning enemies/objects would be the only limiting factor)

Warrior – 100% DPS (as adrenaline builds regardless of what you are hitting, DPS potential is never lost while in combat).

Engineer – ??% DPS (I don’t have a lot of experience with Engineer, but I have noticed that some F# abilities do not function when kits are equipped so that would be a limiting factor).

Ranger – 70% DPS (When you pet is dead or cannot attack your target because of the target type/location/etc.)

Thief – 85% DPS (can’t steal against some target types)

Elementalist – 100% DPS (can always change attunements)

Mesmer – 90% DPS (I’m not super experienced with Mesmers either, but with the ease at which clones/illusions are created the only limiting factor I can think of would be enemies that the clones/illusions cannot reach and since shattering is only part of the mechanic, I’ve given them a 90%)

Necromancer – 100% DPS (Life Force can always be generated).

Akisame.9508:

ItIsFinished.9462:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

So your saying that if everyone’s class mechanic died, we would be one of the best damage dealers? A warrior doesn’t need his class mechanic to deal his 100% of his damage, he uses his class mechanic to get a boost to his overall damage. What your saying above is like saying that warriors start off doing 35% less damage then what they are suppose to do. hmmm, and Elementalist starts off by doing 65% less damage then they are suppose to do, WOW, I’d hate to see what they do at 100% because when I start a fight with one, they come out strong and hit hard!

First off, I’m referring to all aspects of gameplay, be it PvE, WvW, sPvP. If a warrior couldn’t use his Adrenaline, he would lose out on 300Hp per second regen, 3 condi clear every 5-10 seconds, and burst damage. Thats just a few things, so yeah I put him at about 35% effectiveness.

As for elementalist, they have 4 attunements, fire, water, air, earth. If they were stuck on one attunement, then yes 65% is reasonable estimation.

mtpelion.4562:

In regard to the class mechanic utilization and its effectiveness across classes, I think the explanation is as follows:

If Class Mechanic is used correctly in a perfect scenario the DPS potential is:
Guardian – 100% DPS
Warrior – 100% DPS
Engineer – 100% DPS
Ranger – 100% DPS
Thief – 100% DPS
Elementalist – 100% DPS
Mesmer – 100% DPS
Necromancer – 100% DPS

If the Class Mechanic is completely ignored, the DPS potential becomes:
Guardian – 85% DPS
Warrior – 85% DPS
Engineer – 85% DPS
Ranger – 70% DPS
Thief – 85% DPS
Elementalist – 85% DPS
Mesmer – 85% DPS
Necromancer – 85% DPS

Now, we have to then look at the scenarios that are not optimal and the probability of the scenario being not optimal (this section is approximated based on my opinion and numbers do not reflect any type of measured value):

Guardian – 100% DPS (really doesn’t have a non-optimal situation since the class mechanic is a combination of invincibility, healing, and fire damage. Immune to burning enemies/objects would be the only limiting factor)

Warrior – 100% DPS (as adrenaline builds regardless of what you are hitting, DPS potential is never lost while in combat).

Engineer – ??% DPS (I don’t have a lot of experience with Engineer, but I have noticed that some F# abilities do not function when kits are equipped so that would be a limiting factor).

Ranger – 70% DPS (When you pet is dead or cannot attack your target because of the target type/location/etc.)

Thief – 85% DPS (can’t steal against some target types)

Elementalist – 100% DPS (can always change attunements)

Mesmer – 90% DPS (I’m not super experienced with Mesmers either, but with the ease at which clones/illusions are created the only limiting factor I can think of would be enemies that the clones/illusions cannot reach and since shattering is only part of the mechanic, I’ve given them a 90%)

Necromancer – 100% DPS (Life Force can always be generated).

You explained it better than I did, also, you are referring to just DPS situations, I was referring to all aspects of the game, including PvP.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Can you imagine every new player starting GW2 for the first time picking a new class, they go through their options, “Oooh, clones! Wait, Stealth mechanic?? Attunements and summoned weapons!! Huh whats this, Ranger, wait whats its specialty/class mechanic?” Hops on ranger forums and asks community what makes it special, gets the answer of “5 people wanted there mechanic gone to do more damage”…..

I know poorly written, its lunch time…

Unfortunately I can imagine it. It’s an unfortunate effect of two years (including betas) of unfulfilled promises to fix the pet AI. I too would love to just have an improved AI, but Chris Whiteside said it was too big a project to handle in the near future. So until they can finally get around to fixing it, I’d like to see rangers do competitive amounts of damage by shifting dps balance away from the pet.

If something else was done with pets, like the aspects idea, that would work, too.

Allie one of the biggest problems with Rangers right now is the fact we have a lot of redundant and crappy pets that serve no purpose.

Devourers, There is zero reason to run with these zero..now I know someone is going to pop in and say “Well you see, i run PVE and I like using it so it won’t die cause its ranged” completely ignoring the fact you can run a lot of other pets, That will probably die in a fight, and they’ll still probably do more damage then Devourers who stay alive the whole time. The only time a Devourer is good is when you’re underwater, Because it actually has a very good Stun ability.. That is the only time.

Moa’s Again, are pretty much redundant….You basically have one that’s used for its fury, and nothing else…..There is no reason to run any of them.

Pretty much every single pet that has a Howl or a Screech that applies a Chill..Completely worthless as an ability… ..The only good pet that’s good with Chill is the Snow Leopard, because that bloody chill is like 7 or 8 seconds long, and 11 with the dang Malicious Training.

Bears in General, There is really zero reason to run any bear other then Brown Bear if you’re going to run them…You have a bunch of crappy F2’s basically.

Eagle and its cousin the hawk, There is no reason to run these birds….Some will say “But they have a good F2 with a bleed” ….The Bleed is worthless, and it basically hits less then the auto attack they do..No reason to use them.

Pigs in general are awful, You get some pretty good abilities if you bother wasting time picking up the environmental items they summon (and that’s a whole other annoyance) but then you have to deal with a Pet that does awful damage, and has a Knockdown that in general is awful…. Some will say “But its a 3 second cone knockdown” and my reply is, Its a 3 second Cast time Knockdown that has 300 range…Meaning that person has to stand in the same spot as the Pig basically for 3 bloody seconds without moving for your pig to come close to landing its Knockdown…You basically have to hope the pig randomly gets lucky…That’s basically what it comes down to. Its complete luck if you land it….There is no counter play or skill involved, its simply luck..

Drakes…Do you know why people primarily use the river and marsh drakes with a few idiots using the Reef Drake (why people still use that Drake i’ll never understand)

Its because they’re the only drakes that have a chance in hell of actually hitting something that’s not standing still, and is afk. Even then..It takes them so bloody long to cast their ability, you have to actually hope your Drake isn’t near the target when it starts to cast..Because chances are, they’ll probably run through it and waste the cast.

What pets are actually good?

Most of the Dogs, because they have reliable CC
Cats, Because they DPS..but since they’ve been nerfed, there really isn’t a reason to use them over Dogs in PvP.
and Spiders…Because they’re actually our only good PvP pet now….mainly cause they have a bloody 4 second Immobilize.

Core problem, for me, is the lack of control and knowledge.

Control :

• I want to be able to give directions to my pet,
• I want my pet to jump with me, instead of going all the way around,
• I want it to know there are dangers around and stay at my heals instead of wandering around me (when on passive),
• I want a get out of there and go there command (that is not a 15 sec CD shout that has other effects, but a built-in feature).
• I want to not have to kill it to save myself (moslty because no other class has a 30% stat decrease on their survival skills)
• I want it to be reliable (if I set it on a target, I expect it to hit that target; if I trigger F2, I expect it to launch it)
• I expect that an aggressive pet will stay on the target I set for it, instead of running to my target.
• I expect the pet to not make it’s combo finisher when there are no combos
• I want to be able to kind of load pre-set instructions for the pet, like
  * (for heavy melee situation) attack set target/if target gets at more than x from first attack positon, disengage/if taking heavy hits, disengage/if disengage, come back to heals OR / if disengage, go back to target’s initial contact area / if area is dangerous, come back to heals.
  * (for solo roaming) attack set target/if taking heavy hits, disengage/if targets gets out of leash range, disengage/if disengage, come back to me
  (problem with AI is that such player’s personnalisation of their pet pathing is too advanced for casual gameplay, but only one “thought process” from an Ai can’t address all situations. With the exception of “if taking heavy hits”, I guess that the current ruleset for the pet is like the second one. but the second one don’t work in heavy melee, and a pathing process that would work in heavy melee is not gonna work in skirmishes.
  Thus, it’s easier to “get rid of the pet”

Knowledge
I want to know

• what my pet is doing
• where it is / where it is going, to be able to quickly, in the heart of the fight, to change its instructions
• what are the buffs/alterations that it has

Other :

• I don’t understand the dead pet CD penalty. I’d love it to either go away OR give me some rage buff until I can call a new pet.
• I don’t understand that the pet needs to be in combat for many traits to apply. It stops me form contributing to pre-fight buff phase. I usually just stand on the side (not getting buffs myself)

Some are mere UI changes (putting an arrow over the pet, that players can turn on/off, adding a buff bar for the pet) , other demands an overhaul.

I’m not specifically asking for a “get rid of the pet”, but for a “make the pet work” and a “make the pet not be a limitation to rangers”.
Now, a way I see to do this is to make the pet be a good option (the best option) for skirmishes, and give a “stowed pet buff” for heavy melee where it dies in two seconds (ok, I’m exagerating, it’s more like 5 seconds :p ).
An other way someone mentioned, that I liked, was to make the pet scale like the PvE mobs scale, so it wouldn’t matter if it goes in heavy melee fight.

One way or the other, I guess, all we want is a working mechanic that is not a limitation. IF the AI can be reworked for the pet to be “brighter”, and on which we can have control (though that demands more than F1-F4 shortkeys) without having to give up our own utility, I’d love it.
If it’s something that can’t/won’t be done, then give me another option than a pet unable to land a hit or to know that it’s gonna die if it stays where it is…

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

Oh NO, oh God Allie …. while I agree with you wholly…. I wish you hadn’t of posted that, because the thread had just recovered a bit from the “pet is 100% broken useless crowd”, and was becoming more constructive. Your post will simply launch the same set of folks into their endless mantra of “pets sux, we need more dps, pets sux, we need more dps, pets sux, we need more dps ….”

;-)

Anyway thanks for your excellent post. And good luck to you … you’re going to need it!

PLEASE, do NOT remove spirits.

They are visually an iconic part of the class.

Rework them so they can’t be targeted and work like flags with no health pool, and this will remove the issue of bodyblocking that people complain about.

Spirits are one of the few things that add visual flair to the ranger as his arrow animations on the longbow are utterly plain, as are his melee weapons.

I will be greatly peeved if spirits are removed when guardians get to keep their blue fire and necromancers their minion zoo, which clutters a lot more.

Rangers in gw2 are druidic and deeply tied to nature magic. If you remove the spirits, you remove that magical aspect.

Seriously? When you go into WvW, elementalist are ONLY using one attunement. FIRE. Why do you think in every fort capture/defense, zerg fights, etc, all you see is meteor shower’s all over the place? The damage amounts coming from one meteor shower is HUGE, and your telling me that’s with a 65% nerf because he’s only using one attunement? Can’t you see that your only proving my case? He doesn’t need to change attunements in order to do 100% of his damage since Fire is their best DPS element.

Thief starts off at 100% damage, their class mechanic is stealth. If they use their class mechanic, stealth, then attack from stealth (backstab) they get a burst on top of their DPS. What your saying is that Thief’s only do 60% of their damage while visible and in order for them to do their true 100% damage they have to do it from Invisible/backstab. Your incorrect, because they used their class mechanic they got an increase to their damage, not that they where given their true damage value.

I don’t have a necro, but i’m sure that necro’s are not being balanced around their pets, and I have seen them call forth an army of pets to their side. of course they are not called pets but they have them. But they are not balanced around them I’m sure because your not being forced to use them. The conjured pets are ‘added’ damage to their 100% damage.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

The core problems are that professions and the UI are overly limited in design. I understand you wanted to avoid balancing nightmares, and to stay away from the WoW UI clutter, but you went to the extreme and shot yourselves in the foot in the process. GW1 had a great amount of build options while having a limited UI, and that seemed to work out better, but I’d argue that if you were to design professions, power/ability options and a UI similar to what City of Heroes offered, it would put professions and combat in a much better place overall. Not only would you be able offer players a ton more build options, but you would tremendously increase content replay value.

In addition to the above, profession controls and mechanics are not streamlined so it does not feel familiar or easy to pick up and play any profession. For example, compare warrior controls and mechanics vs an elementalist. One is designed to be straight forward, while the other is all about being a twitch and swap pro. Fundamentally, that is a problem because it alienates players from certain professions. Profession choice should be more about taste as opposed to preferred or easier controls.

While we can argue about what classes should or could look like, and how to work on things like conditions, burst, stealth, counter stealth, pets…, I believe the first step to improving professions and combat are by creating more skills, abilities, weapons… and to have more options up front on the UI as opposed to hidden behind swaps and long cool downs.

Anyway, I’m trying to condense my thoughts for your sanity and because I’m typing from a phone so I hope I made myself clear enough and understandable. Also, if you are not familiar with City of Heroes, I’d suggest you visit the wiki and download mid’s hero designer so you can gain a much better insight on far superior profession systems, combat mechanics and UI.

I don’t think rangers need 100% damage split, but it for sure needs more than 70:30…

At least an 80:20 split has to be on the table with the devs otherwise this is a lost cause….

Pets will remain deadweight in WvW regardless of what they change (unless all you do is solo and hunt for 1v1s…not sure what the point of this is though, seems rather dull and boring)

WvW is one of the few endgame content in GW2 so its already completely useless here
High level fractals – can’t tank anything here, mobs do insane damage. Deadweight here as well. Sure they give a few might stacks and fury uptime… but thats already in the party since every other class can apply might stacks/fury easily
sPvP, completely ignored by opposing team. Outside of a few seconds of immob on 1 target, I don’t even bother micro managing them (unless i am 1v1ing someone)

Pets are absolutely fine if this game was revolving around 1v1s lol

Right now, too much is focused on the pet and its a serious handicap to rangers.
1.5 years have shown me anet is clueless on this broken mechanic.

This is probably their last chance with this class. If they can’t satisfy most of the community here, this class will be completely dead outside of a few really dedicated rangers

Terravos is pretty much spot on. The entire F2 system for the pets needs an overhaul.

But you know what’s depressing about all the issues he lists? They aren’t even the most pressing problems with pets. Even if every single one of the F2 abilities were worth using, pets still wouldn’t be functional in WvW, be able to hit moving targets reliably, and the F2 skills themselves still don’t go off reliably.

If you’re going to make a change to Hunter Call from the Warhorn line, Give it a Daze…as this would give offhand using Rangers an actual Daze to work with when ya consider Moment of Clarity.

Ision.3207:

Oh NO, oh God Allie …. while I agree with you wholly…. I wish you hadn’t of posted that, because the thread had just recovered a bit from the “pet is 100% broken useless crowd”, and was becoming more constructive. Your post will simply launch the same set of folks into their endless mantra of “pets sux, we need more dps, pets sux, we need more dps, pets sux, we need more dps ….”

;-)

Anyway thanks for your excellent post. And good luck to you … you’re going to need it!

I mean, pets are kind of an important part of the ranger, so it’s valid that it would take up so much discussion time. But yeah, we know it’s busted and it’d be nice to talk about something else.

I’d still like to push the conversation towards more new ideas of cool mechanics or themes for the ranger. Aspects and poison traits were the best two that I noticed. We have plenty of discussion hashing over what’s broken and potential solutions, let’s make some crazy ideas about cool ranger mechanics.

Like how about giving rangers a charm utility? How cool would it be to make a temporary ally out of trash mobs.

pets need to cleave. Ranged pets with projectile need aoe so they can complement the ranger.

Increase the range of ranged pets to 1200 so they can shoot down from walls plz.

ItIsFinished.9462:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

I kinda agree with the numbers.
The problem is, from that list, ranger is the only class where the mechanic can die/be disabled.
Can you disable the warrior adrenaline? Can you disable mesmer shatters? Can you disable necro DS? Can you disable thief steal / iniciative?

In a high damage environment it is easy to have both pets dead, in that case our class mechanic is disabled for 1 minute, if you dodge a mesmer phanton then block its shatter the mesmer mechanic will be totally disabled for 1 minute?

ItIsFinished.9462:

urdriel.8496:

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

OMG, are you saying than Warrior Axe AA have less damage than other skills??
Warrior Axe AA autoattack is probably the best dps in this game for an AA, and eviscerate is a “if your opponent have 50% hp or less press f1 to win”.

You are either being ignorant on pourpose or simply misreading what he is saying. I’ll put it in lazy man terms:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

Oen your eyes.

• Engineer 30% <- kit mechanic, instant change, nice utilities, INSTANT.
• Gaurdian 20% <- Guardian mechanic have lest than 10% of his damage perhaps, f1 to f4 INSTANT-
• Warrior 35% <- Adrenaline bar, nice SYNERGY with traits, IMBA burst f1 INSTANT skills.
• Elementalist 65% <- they have 20 skills to use, and nice SYNERGY traits when changing attunements
  *Mesmer 25% <- Phantasm and clones are better than pet, and you CAN CHOOSE, sometimes it is amazing the pathfinding of phantasm, really…..
• Thief 40% <- Most op Mechanic of the whole game (stealth + initiative), no cd skills.
  *Necro 20% <-you can CHOOSE minions or not.

6/8 dont rely in AI controlled npc.
mesmer phantasm build have a nice generation of phantasm/clones.

We have a pet , that die easily and is totally random.

ItIsFinished.9462:

mtpelion.4562:

In regard to the class mechanic utilization and its effectiveness across classes, I think the explanation is as follows:

If Class Mechanic is used correctly in a perfect scenario the DPS potential is:
Guardian – 100% DPS
Warrior – 100% DPS
Engineer – 100% DPS
Ranger – 100% DPS
Thief – 100% DPS
Elementalist – 100% DPS
Mesmer – 100% DPS
Necromancer – 100% DPS

If the Class Mechanic is completely ignored, the DPS potential becomes:
Guardian – 85% DPS
Warrior – 85% DPS
Engineer – 85% DPS
Ranger – 70% DPS
Thief – 85% DPS
Elementalist – 85% DPS
Mesmer – 85% DPS
Necromancer – 85% DPS

Now, we have to then look at the scenarios that are not optimal and the probability of the scenario being not optimal (this section is approximated based on my opinion and numbers do not reflect any type of measured value):

Guardian – 100% DPS (really doesn’t have a non-optimal situation since the class mechanic is a combination of invincibility, healing, and fire damage. Immune to burning enemies/objects would be the only limiting factor)

Warrior – 100% DPS (as adrenaline builds regardless of what you are hitting, DPS potential is never lost while in combat).

Engineer – ??% DPS (I don’t have a lot of experience with Engineer, but I have noticed that some F# abilities do not function when kits are equipped so that would be a limiting factor).

Ranger – 70% DPS (When you pet is dead or cannot attack your target because of the target type/location/etc.)

Thief – 85% DPS (can’t steal against some target types)

Elementalist – 100% DPS (can always change attunements)

Mesmer – 90% DPS (I’m not super experienced with Mesmers either, but with the ease at which clones/illusions are created the only limiting factor I can think of would be enemies that the clones/illusions cannot reach and since shattering is only part of the mechanic, I’ve given them a 90%)

Necromancer – 100% DPS (Life Force can always be generated).

You explained it better than I did, also, you are referring to just DPS situations, I was referring to all aspects of the game, including PvP.

If you are agreeing with him, then you are agreeing with me. you are contradicting yourself.

“Warrior – 100% DPS (as adrenaline builds regardless of what you are hitting, DPS potential is never lost while in combat).”

Warriors deal 100% damage, as adrenaline builds regardless of what you are hitting, DPS potential is NEVER lost while in combat, However, with three bar’s of adrenaline, you are given a DPS Boost of 15%. So at full adrenaline you are now sitting on 115%. Using the adrenaline you are not at a dps lost, because you will be back to 100%.

Ranger’s are always at 70%, all I want is for my ranger to be at 100% DPS if my pet attacks (adrenaline for warriors) it’s 15% boost. When I use f2, I return to 100% damage because pet is doing animations and crap, taking it’s time to perform f2, which is all the time a warrior would need to regain adrenaline back to three bars.

Prysin.8542:

Khalic.3561:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

This is closer to a cracked foundation I think.

in that case, it is easier to chop off a portion of the cracked foundation that took the most damage and pour a new piece (what devs are doing) then chopping up the entire foundation and re-pouring that.
(FYI i work in construction, trust me, chopping up a full foundation is a major job way way way way way way bigger then fixing the part that is damaged)

Fair enough. Still, it seems like more changes need to be made than a simple patch job. Maybe not to the extent of tearing everything down and starting from scratch, but a major rework none the less.

Devourers are an easy fix.

change the F2’s to something else that don’t suck… (you have a channel bleed, which people just dodge, a bloody copy of the Shortbow 2 ability, only its harder to land, and a Poison Field that takes forever to fire off and by the time it lands, the person has already moved) Give them something else….My Suggestion Would be CC oriented, That stun for example that the underwater one gets..You could remove every single Devourer and just have that one, and it’d probably get used some..

But anyway…increase Devourer range to 1500 ….Like longbow, Give it a 20% chance to do a Stack of Torment per hit….It’d actually be a decent pet then..

Actually the pet carries more then a DPS loss for the ranger. its also an utility loss and more importantly it reduces the effectiveness of traits because you are either buffing yourself, the 70% of the character, or the pet, the 30% of the character.

So in essence:
-DPS is split
-utility effectiveness is reduced
-trait effectiveness is reduced

Terravos.4059:

If you’re going to make a change to Hunter Call from the Warhorn line, Give it a Daze…as this would give offhand using Rangers an actual Daze to work with when ya consider Moment of Clarity.

Why? We have Greatsword and Shortbow that already inflict stun and daze. You can already maximize the Moment of Clarity trait by using those two weapons. If you can’t already maximize the trait using those two weapons, what is the point of putting a daze on Warhorn?