Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

It’s not your fault – if someone dies because they stowed their pet, they need to start using their brain. You don’t need to code it so that every time we change from land to underwater combat (and vice versa) our stowed pets come out. You don’t need to code it so that if we take a single point of falling damage our pets come out. The option to stow our pets is a very nice idea and I would love to complete a city zone such as Lion’s Arch without having to re-stow my pet over a dozen times. It’s hard enough to see around my Norn to begin with…

If you’re truly unwilling to change your code and let morons die because they forgot to un-stow their pets, could you at least give us the option to have pets stowed in city zones as a default?

Personally I would love to challenge myself in combat against certain mobs without my pet, so the option to stow a pet through battle would be quite nice. Then I don’t have to wait for it to die and chase me around looking for a rez when I’m interested in making the game tougher to play.

In short, I just think your current system needs to be re-thought since it’s simply annoying in it’s present state. Thanks for your time.

Pets just need some serious reworking period. It’s not that they can’t be good right now, but that there are so many bugs and things with them and a serious lack of synergy at times that they really need some serious thought put into and redesigning.

It would be nice though to be able to stow pets without having them poping out again when we do even the tiniest little action. I mean in battles such as the Jade Maw in Fractals of the Mists they just waste time, because they just get targeted and either die because they don’t do anything (or rather can’t do anything) or you have to swap them every time. This isn’t so bad, as we should be managing our pets to bring out the full potential as they are our classes mechanic, but when they can’t do really anything to help in an event/battle… it’s just irritating to see them being useless and idle.

Being able to toggle pet stowing so they don’t come out unless we want them to would be nice, if at least for events and battles such as the mentioned Jade Maw.

One way they could achieve this is just have a way to choose ‘no pet’ in your pet choices – if you have no pet chosen, the obviously it can’t come out and be annoying.

IIRC, characters start that way (but typically get a pet pretty quickly), so it is not like this would be something unsupported – just a way to get back to that state.

Having the pet always pop back up when taking damage is pretty annoying in the jumping puzzles.

I think Solvar.7953 idea would solve the problem.

Solvar.7953:

One way they could achieve this is just have a way to choose ‘no pet’ in your pet choices – if you have no pet chosen, the obviously it can’t come out and be annoying.

IIRC, characters start that way (but typically get a pet pretty quickly), so it is not like this would be something unsupported – just a way to get back to that state.

Having the pet always pop back up when taking damage is pretty annoying in the jumping puzzles.

Pets are supposed to be our “resource” mechanic. Here is what they need to do:

• Pet storing toggle-able; this would allow for players to store them during events and mechanic based battles where they just get in the way (In the Jade Maw fight they don’t do anything of real value at all, seeing as how they can’t charge crystals to help kill the Maw).
• Pets need dodging to some extent; having to run to the other side of Tyria and back just to get them to follow you out of that AOE is just not cool. Either give them the ability to recognize skills to some extent and allow their AI to choose to move out of the way, or at least set it so that when players press the f3 “Return to me” button they will avoid/dodge attacks.
• Pet pathing for attacks: having pets miss all the time just because they have to stop to attack is really, really annoying (especially with such high cool downs on some of their abilities). Just make them teleport to some extent if you have to as a temporary measure…
• Pet Synergy: enough with this dumping conditions onto your pet. They should be our resource mechanic, we should be able to draw strength from having them around. It just feels like… we have to choose one or the other; use our class’s resource mechanic or abandon it completely… seems kind of pointless to even have a resource mechanic on rangers at this point seeing as how few people actual feel their pet being reliable in anything but small scale open world skirmishes.

A game I previously played had a here command, which would make your pet come right to your feet. That command was complimented by being able to set a pet to stay, effectively transforming a ranged pet into a stationary “turret” which would not run around and aggro mobs.

Both would be a very welcomed addition to GW2 pets, along with the already mentioned stow away and do not come back out until I say so option.

To help with the constant AOE damage the pets tend to attract, a stay near me option would be nice, which would make your pet follow you with an absolute minimum leash length. That way a ranged pet could shoot your target while being in range, and still stay out of the AOE damage areas (as long as you stay out of them yourself).

Like a above response said, pets just need a general overhaul.

A suggestion I read last week had a perfectly awesome idea.

Make pets into spirits, make them more like Guardians’ Spirit weapons (invincible with secondary utility skills), and buff up Ranger weapon DPS to compensate.

Then we can stop caring about all that pathing, AI control, and pet survivability BS.

I totally agree that the pet logic needs to be improved.

But I was just suggesting what should be a fairly simple (and easy) mechanic they could do right now to permanently stow pets. I would certainly prefer the logic was such that pets were smart enough so that I generally would not need to stow them.

why are you people even rangers if you dont want your pets? theres other classes that can use bows. granted different skills but this is something i never would have asked for. but im in no way opposed to it being implemented . weird.

It’s not so much that we dont want our pets as rangers, we just want them to be a it more functional. Often times they tend to get in the way, for instance when you trying to complete a jumping puzzle or climb up to a vista, the pet can block your veiw so naturally you’d want to put it away. Thing is when you make the next leap or fall off a ledge the pet is back out in the field again. There is no way to permanantly keep your pet from being under foot. Pets also have wierd pathing issues sometimes, I’ve seen them get stuck , run off into a different direction and drag other creatures and pets dont take short cuts like player characters, they will take the long route to reach your target. So if you jump off a ledge or over a boulder they wont follow directly. This takes up time and can get a player killed if your not careful. It’s not really game breaking but it’s like a rogue with shotty stealth or warriors and line of sight issues. All we rangers want are a few tweeks.

i wish they can be stowed even if u take dmg = sometimes in wvw come across 5 ppl vs me so im like yeaa ima run take 1 hit and my pet gimps me why i keep running wile the time I run would be the range to get the out of combat movement speed back but no my pet is still back there attacking or getting hit so i’m slowed any other class in the same exact situation would have been able to get away but i die cause of this

poe lyfe.5879:

why are you people even rangers if you dont want your pets? theres other classes that can use bows. granted different skills but this is something i never would have asked for. but im in no way opposed to it being implemented . weird.

Because the Ranger’s bow skills are the most similar to that of a standard “archer” class.

DUH.

Why is there always someone like you who doesn’t get this? It’s so pathetically obvious.

We don’t want to be shooting fire arrows, or cluster bombs.
WE WANT ROBIN-HOOD-STYLE ARROW ACTION.

Need a key bind option for Stow, period. Who the heck wants to have to mouse click the tiny icon on the LEFT side of the interface while moving?

Seriously should have been in game at release. This is beyond just quality of life, it is a necessary function to Stow via keybind.