Guild Wars 2

I was thinking the other day it would be really awesome for Rangers to go on extended/large quests to be able to tame “legendary” pets, in the same vein that players can craft legendary weapons or ascended gear.

A legendary pet would be something beyond your typical animal. It would be a beast/being that is more fantastic/magical than your average bear or moa bird. Really, the stuff legends are made of – Unicorn, Phoenix, Kraken, etc (of course it’d have to be a small kraken lol).

Essentially a legendary pet would be a bit more powerful, but you would sacrifice the ability to swap between pets in battle (thus, when your legendary pet is equipped, it’s the only one you can ‘wield’). The idea, of course, would be that the legendary pet is strong enough to compensate.

As far as earning the “right” or ability to tame them, you’re going to have to jump through some hoops. Perhaps you need to collect materials and craft them a gift for them to decide to journey with you, or maybe you collect said materials to summon them altogether.

To start, you could have three legendaries, one representing a part of the MMO trinity (tank, dps, heals).

Unicorn could primarily heal/buff you, maybe even res you when you are dead similarly to how story NPCs do. Perhaps their pet skill is fully resurrecting you without penalties to hp/armor, though it has a long cool down (an hour or something, so it can’t be abused too much). Not entirely sure what other legendary pets there should be, but you get the picture!

Since this would be content for only one class, I figure it doesn’t have to be as in depth as legendary weapons, but I think legendary/mythological pets could be a really awesome idea! I’m sure the idea would need lots of fine tuning, but I thought I’d share.

If anything, legendary pets could be an elite skill to summon them for a limited amount of time (or no time limit, but having an extremely long cool down once they die).

OR you could use the idea as a second elite specialization for Rangers, if you ever decided to make more elite specializations in subsequent expansions. “Beastmaster” or “Legendary Tamer,” something along those lines!

I like the idea of adding unique or as you say “Legendary” pets. But only as an aesthetic, since pets are only used on rangers, their combat stats are balanced with the damage the ranger itself does. So adding higher stat pets will throw things out of whack.
I’m now thinking of all the unique/rarespawn pet skins in World of Warcraft I got before I quit. The spirit animals were amazing.

Haleydawn.3764:

I like the idea of adding unique or as you say “Legendary” pets. But only as an aesthetic, since pets are only used on rangers, their combat stats are balanced with the damage the ranger itself does. So adding higher stat pets will throw things out of whack.
I’m now thinking of all the unique/rarespawn pet skins in World of Warcraft I got before I quit. The spirit animals were amazing.

Yeah, I figure this idea might not exactly work with the current set up of the game, but you never know – the devs could find a balanced way to make the idea work. I simply love the idea!

In the end, even if we just get more exotic looking regular pets, I’ll be happy! I loved the HoTs pets because they looked so different compared to the core pets, so even more of that would be good.

And heck, why not take the idea of Legendary Pets and make them mounts that everyone can use?

I like the idea of special, unique pets we can find somewhere in the world but I agree there could be balance issues. Both with more powerful pets and with disabling pet swapping.

What if they were re-skins, like the Hall of Monuments pets? For example maybe we could find a full size version of the spirit tiger mini, or a mistfire wolf or something like that (they don’t all have to be shiny and transparent, that’s just the examples that came to mind).

They could be hidden in hard to reach parts of the world, like the existing pets but more so. Maybe at the end of a jumping puzzle or dungeon, or a spot you can only reach by gliding a long way. That would also be a nice throw-back to some of the Guild Wars 1 pets, like the phoenix which you could only get by finishing Factions.

The problem with rare pets with higher stats is that they would become mainstream with time: if they have higher stats, they have a chance to be the best pet. Why would anyone struggle by using a subpar pet when they can tame a legendary pet and get better stats? Everyone did that more than 10 years ago in WoW : some rare pets had higher stats. Why settle for the standard lion when you can get one that does 20% more damage? Sure, the situation was different in WoW: the hunter couldn’t swap pets in combat and most of them had no special ability, but I don’t even understand why someone would throw away higher dps unless they really needed their second pet ability.

Right now, this is what is happening:
- Some pets have incredibly useful or annoying abilities became mainstream in PvP (e.g. smokescale);
- Many pets are situationnal at best and aren’t used by most players;
- Some of them are totally useless and bring nothing that isn’t done better by another pet;
- Some works better in a power build and pack a lot of punch;
- Some are suited to condition damage (but the lynx one still has higher dps by a large margin).

Add a legendary pet that has higher stats and a unique (and let’s hope useful) ability and everyone would use them, even if it means sacrificing their pet swap: on my ranger, I rarelly use my second pet unless I need an emergency skill or unless my main is down. If a legendary pet has higher stats, he’s unlickely to die as often as standard pet, and really, unless I’m against a legendary mob or a couple of high AoE damaging ennemies, my pets rarely die.

I think that what ranger pets need is a way to customize their look, but that would require a lot of work.

Legendary Pet may just really be the same pet stats but with a special skin. I mean Legendary weapons are just ascended stats with a more special skin after all.

Personally, I’d also say add “Ghost Cow” to that list of legendary pets. That story always makes me smile/laugh.

Would be a lot of developer resources for something only one class can take advantage of.

I want a colocal as a pet for my ranger. They could put a juvenile one in the cave where the queen appears in Dry Top.

At the very least they could just allow our pets to grow up and become veterans. Veteran Bristleback anyone?

I like the idea, but as long as they stay only “pretty” and don’t have a stat advantage for 2 reasons :
1) if you equip a legendary pet with higher stats, and that makes it so you can’t switch between pets, then it conflicts with base ranger traits that trigger effects on petswap.
2) they will make the other non legendary pets obsolete faster than the HoT pets did. After all, it’s more than easy to go hours without swapping your regular pet if you don’t need to, so a legendary one would be unfair competition

Danikat.8537:

What if they were re-skins, like the Hall of Monuments pets? For example maybe we could find a full size version of the spirit tiger mini, or a mistfire wolf or something like that (they don’t all have to be shiny and transparent, that’s just the examples that came to mind).

They could be hidden in hard to reach parts of the world, like the existing pets but more so. Maybe at the end of a jumping puzzle or dungeon, or a spot you can only reach by gliding a long way. That would also be a nice throw-back to some of the Guild Wars 1 pets, like the phoenix which you could only get by finishing Factions.

That’s actually a really great idea! Add some obstacles or otherwise make us search for some rarer looking pets. Or unlock them through achievements!

I suppose mainly I was hoping to think of a new feature/mechanic for the Ranger class, but honestly all I want at the core are some more unique or magical looking pets.

Tekoneiric.6817:

I want a colocal as a pet for my ranger. They could put a juvenile one in the cave where the queen appears in Dry Top.

At the very least they could just allow our pets to grow up and become veterans. Veteran Bristleback anyone?

I would LOVE some kind of evolutionary stage for pets, even if it’s just one. From juvenile to adult or something. Maybe they get a little bigger and their skin changes slightly, but other stay mostly the same stat-wise.

Haleydawn.3764:

I like the idea of adding unique or as you say “Legendary” pets. But only as an aesthetic, since pets are only used on rangers, their combat stats are balanced with the damage the ranger itself does. So adding higher stat pets will throw things out of whack.
I’m now thinking of all the unique/rarespawn pet skins in World of Warcraft I got before I quit. The spirit animals were amazing.

WoW solved this by literally making all pets equal DPS, and I honestly wish that ANet would do the same thing. It’s vaguely frustrating to try and balance out the power/condi/tanking nature of pets along with their utility.

It also means that I mostly use a small set of “good” pets for their purpose, and the rest are neglected. Unlike WoW, where I could just use a Sporebat if I wanted, or I could swap to whatever random pet, provided I didn’t much care about the utility slot they filled.

Unlike GW2, where I avoid various pets because they are overall less “min/max” than others, so even if I like the aesthetic more of, say, dogs, cat’s gonna win.

Skins/Aesthetics? Sure, whatever. Any amount of bonus power or capability? Absolutely not.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Haleydawn.3764:

I like the idea of adding unique or as you say “Legendary” pets. But only as an aesthetic, since pets are only used on rangers, their combat stats are balanced with the damage the ranger itself does. So adding higher stat pets will throw things out of whack.
I’m now thinking of all the unique/rarespawn pet skins in World of Warcraft I got before I quit. The spirit animals were amazing.

WoW solved this by literally making all pets equal DPS, and I honestly wish that ANet would do the same thing. It’s vaguely frustrating to try and balance out the power/condi/tanking nature of pets along with their utility.

It also means that I mostly use a small set of “good” pets for their purpose, and the rest are neglected. Unlike WoW, where I could just use a Sporebat if I wanted, or I could swap to whatever random pet, provided I didn’t much care about the utility slot they filled.

Unlike GW2, where I avoid various pets because they are overall less “min/max” than others, so even if I like the aesthetic more of, say, dogs, cat’s gonna win.

Most pets aren’t taken for stats but their abilities.

It would be nice if there were some special pets that are only cosmetic but show off an achievement. The black widow spider from GW1 was very special because you had to do a difficult mission in underworld with a team to get one. IIRC it was the only spider type pet you could tame in the game.