Guild Wars 2

Invictus.1503:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Well, they should have never called it a Ranger in the first place. It should have been called Beastmaster, cause that is what it is… It’s our base class, so Anet Devs making a Specialization that replaces the mechanic completely (not just changing it) would be the easiest route to go. If they did that with a 2nd expansion pack, I’d preorder four within the first 10 minutes they are available.

The “original” RPG gave their Rangers pets. Check out Dungeons and Dragons, the pen and paper game that inspired in some way most of the fantasy games we play today.

Might want to review that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Yeah, like I said, depends on one’s own experience that colors what a Ranger should be to them. And to that end I don’t care what the “original” RPG said about their Rangers or not as it has no bearing on what I consider a Ranger or Beastmaster… but to give you an idea I consider the GW1 Ranger a Ranger and I consider the GW2 Ranger a Beastmaster.

lukejoe.1592:

I’m not sure why people who want to play a ranger without a pet are playing a ranger at all.

Because it’s a Ranger not a Hunter, and this isn’t WoW. How many pets did Strider have?

Strider had Bill the Pony, Sam and Frodo.

Snakes, monkeys(boon stealers) and crocodiles ftw

The main reason I can guess at why people want to get rid of the pets can easily be summed up in three statements:

1)The pets underperform* (effect to effort on ranger is not even close to a good place)
2) Anet know the problems exist, but proper solution take too much time/effort/work hours, so they will only bandaid fix at best,
3) The pets are completely out of sorts in the action/active defense based nature of the game (they current pet system would be better suited a a 10 year old stand and cast style RPG than the game they seem to want gw2 to be)

*This also leads to a problem of perception if the pet performs at a level that it need to be to be truly part of the 2 as 1 ideal that ranger seems to try to be, then it will be viewed and despised by much of the competitive player base (more so than it already is) as they view anything that isn’t in the players direct control is anathema to PvP and anymore most of the technical direction/focus of the game is centered around spvp and the dream of e-sports.

Ardid.7203:

I think it would be nice to have pets that don’t forget their names.

LOL Man they still haven’t fixed that yet?! What was that, Beta 1?

Yeah I think that we’ve seen as many pet request forum posts as they’d care to read frankly folks if they haven’t fixed that bug and they haven’t paid attention to the hobosack thing I wouldn’t hold my breath about seeing any new pets in any upcoming patch. Apparently they think people are only interested in new WvW maps and Hyleks.

As someone who has played ranger a lot I would just like to say that I don’t want them to make a specialization that completely does away with the pet because, like some people have said, that is kinda what makes ranger unique. On the other hand for those people saying that you could just play thief or warrior with a bow and not worry about the pet, you clearly have not played several of those classes very much.

Sure warriors can put out some good damage with a longbow, but a fully geared and appropriately specced warrior could never compare to the damage a fully geared and appropriately specced ranger can get. As for thief i’ll admit I haven’t played one very much, but its the same point as the ranger/warrior comparison. If i’m not mistaken if you play a thief and opt to not use melee weapons as your main source of damage your damage potential drops dramatically and so would your life expectancy.

Its not a fair comparison for any of the classes involved because their skills with bows are quite a bit different from rangers abilities. Yeah i know the warriors have a barrage skill very similar to ranger barrage but after that the similarities decline rapidly. I don’t remember all the skills so i could be forgetting some things, but i don’t think anything is going to change what i’ve said.

Back on topic though I just hate having a pet in dungeons. In open world pve a pet is kinda whatever for me. It can be annoying if my pet is on aggressive and just decides to attack an enemy because then i’m going to be in combat and moving super slow. If my pet is on passive, and then i start fighting thats only a problem if i’m facing multiple enemies or one more challenging enemy because i usually forget its on passive and then have to change it while fighting and thats just really inconvenient. If i’m in a dungeon I almost always keep my pet on passive. In a dungeon it can be a real problem if you forget to turn your pet back on passive after a fight or in some fights, when the pet is on aggressive the boss will aggro on the pet and then the pet will try to run away for some reason and that can make beating a boss much more challenging. In the end the pet usually just becomes more of a detriment than anything. Yeah people are right that part of the point of a ranger is to have a pet, but why does the ranger always have to have their pet out? I just want an option to hide my pet even while in combat.

Bran.7425:

The main reason I can guess at why people want to get rid of the pets can easily be summed up in three statements:

1)The pets underperform* (effect to effort on ranger is not even close to a good place)
2) Anet know the problems exist, but proper solution take too much time/effort/work hours, so they will only bandaid fix at best,
3) The pets are completely out of sorts in the action/active defense based nature of the game (they current pet system would be better suited a a 10 year old stand and cast style RPG than the game they seem to want gw2 to be)

*This also leads to a problem of perception if the pet performs at a level that it need to be to be truly part of the 2 as 1 ideal that ranger seems to try to be, then it will be viewed and despised by much of the competitive player base (more so than it already is) as they view anything that isn’t in the players direct control is anathema to PvP and anymore most of the technical direction/focus of the game is centered around spvp and the dream of e-sports.

More like anet don’t want to put the effort in to fixing…wait this isn’t a problem…it’s an unfinished mechanic!!!

Ok rephrase….more like anet don’t want to finish off the ranger class mechanic. In gw1 rangers had evolutions(stages) for their pets. Anet could take it a step further and allow pet customizability and put more effort into pet control by allowing us to utilize the whole pet bar without any automation (as one example).

Bear in mind the whole pet “evolution/breeding” (w/e you want to call it) idea can be easily expanded upon. But that’s if anet would care about doing it.

Ability to stow pets while in combat please >.< signed a trapped rune ranger

The Primary.6371:

More like anet don’t want to put the effort in to fixing…wait this isn’t a problem…it’s an unfinished mechanic!!!

Ok rephrase….more like anet don’t want to finish off the ranger class mechanic. In gw1 rangers had evolutions(stages) for their pets. Anet could take it a step further and allow pet customizability and put more effort into pet control by allowing us to utilize the whole pet bar without any automation (as one example).

Bear in mind the whole pet “evolution/breeding” (w/e you want to call it) idea can be easily expanded upon. But that’s if anet would care about doing it.

After some years playing first necro and then ranger i became to realize that the problem can’t be only the pet’s AI.
I think the real problem Anet has with the mobs in general is the algoritm they use for the pathing.
They should first fix that and then they will be able to actually make the enemies smarter, and with that our pets and necro’s minions.
But if the pet can’t calculate the way to attack an enemy it reverts to its prior state, same if you call it back (that assuming, i’m not involved in any case with Anet) .
Then it shouldn’t be really difficult to improve the pet to became smarter than a rock

They just need to fix the pet and this all goes away. Not to bring WoW into this but their PET AI system works out well enough to avoid as much hate as this game gets on their PET buddy. Hopefully they figure this out but judging on history so far … it’s not in their favor.

I acknowledge they’re better then they used to be. But given the number of years so far it’s not flattering.

Hey last time I played as an engineer my net turrets fired exclusively on stationary objects! I’ve never really thought that ranger pets were that bugged.