Guild Wars 2

Terravos.4059:

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.

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

its also our only good source for Condition Removal in terms of Empathetic Bond.

If Anet doubts how much of a hassle that is..

Watch this video

Faux ends up killing me the very first fight…

And then i switch to killing his pet, and I win every fight after that….Because the pet is that important to us for Condition removal.

Chrispy.5641:

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?

If anything sword or axe MH needs 1 interrupt/daze (wouldn’t mind a 1s daze on axe MH 3 from the pet myself)… OH axe has one so no need for the others really

BeardRex.6739:

Pets need an option for “dodge when I dodge”, which would require additional animation work too.

I agree that pets need something to negate one-shot mechanics (they are becoming quite common in LS after all). I would be more than happy with a trait that grants pet an aegis or blur whenever I dodge, though. No extra animation work to be done there. Also, if the pet would actually “dodge” an attack it would also lose valuable dps… I don’t want that. One of the few ranger’s strengths is that while you’re dodging around, your pet is still doing damage (at least it should be if it could keep up). It can be something very powerful to have, especially with bunkering builds.

As for the trait, I would suggest replacing Instinctual Bond with this:

• Companionship: Pet gains aegis for 2 seconds when you dodge roll.

Or alternatively, aegis could be simply added to already existing Companion’s Defense.

Chrispy.5641:

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?

Both of those are non offhand weapons, By opening up Warhorn onto those weapons, You give for example..Trap builds decent access to Moment of Clarity (since some surprisingly won’t use the GTAE trap trait cause they dislike the targetting of it) You also open up possibly using things like Axe/Horn or Sword/horn for builds.. which would be interesting.

AEFA.9035:

Terravos.4059:

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.

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

Pointing out most of our pets are god awful carbon copies with slightly different F2’s that mostly suck is unproductive?

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. Does that make sense?

I dunno, check a 1st ed AD&D rulebook, perhaps one of the earliest incarnations of the modern RPG ranger.

No pets.

There’s followers, but all classes in 1st edition got followers at a certain level, the ranger ones were just more nature oriented – but not necessarily animals (elves, brownies, halfings, etc).

Rangers as a dedicated pet class are a rather recent invention. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but don’t make it out like no pets means its not a ranger.

Like a lot of others have said, either the Pet is a real benefit to the class, not a hinderance that must be overcome, or remove it. Even just improving the pet’s stats, its movement, its attack range don’t add much in terms of enjoyment of playing – because the player themselves have little to do except occasionally mash F2 and hit the swap button. If Anet is going to keep pets, make them useful and make them fun to use – engaging to use, something you can rightly call skillful play rather than a buffed up AI.

Terravos.4059:

AEFA.9035:

Terravos.4059:

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.

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

Pointing out most of our pets are god awful carbon copies with slightly different F2’s that mostly suck is unproductive?

It is if the devs already know about it (which they should considering how much this community has mentioned pets suck)

SkiTz.4590:

Terravos.4059:

AEFA.9035:

Terravos.4059:

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.

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

Pointing out most of our pets are god awful carbon copies with slightly different F2’s that mostly suck is unproductive?

It is if the devs already know about it (which they should considering how much this community has mentioned pets suck)

Thing is, i don’t think they do know about it…i think they believe that having 5 different copies of a pet with 1 different ability of that pet is perfectly fine..

The problem is our pets AI….at least that’s from what I’ve seen…

You could change our Pet AI to hit every single time, and I bet ya people would still use the pets I primary listed because they in general have the best abilities….and decent damage.

Terravos.4059:

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..

Would be more fun if they did AOE damage… AOE poison, AOE bleed, AOE something… and we get to choose where the skill lands, then we can atleast guide/herd the enemy in the right direction, and it would also help us in general gameplay.

a way to distinguish pet F2 skills with AOE targeting from normal ones is to simply give it a yellow targeting circle instead of green.

We get more AOE, better control of skill and overall, better F2… i call that a win win win.

Prysin.8542:

Terravos.4059:

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..

Would be more fun if they did AOE damage… AOE poison, AOE bleed, AOE something… and we get to choose where the skill lands, then we can atleast guide/herd the enemy in the right direction, and it would also help us in general gameplay.

a way to distinguish pet F2 skills with AOE targeting from normal ones is to simply give it a yellow targeting circle instead of green.

We get more AOE, better control of skill and overall, better F2… i call that a win win win.

That’d be interesting, make it a Ranged AoE pet..

Would make it more useful.

Terravos.4059:

…snip…

Devourers – They have High toughness and are Ranged. They are not meant to deal high damage, which if that is your only concern (looks kind of obvious based on this post), then yes, they are worthless to you. Otherwise, they are great for drawing enemy aggro because of their high toughness, and skills like “Protect Me” tend to work better with a tougher pet around than a glassy cat or bird.

Moas – Fury, and also Protection, and also Harmonic Cry. The extra healing you get from having two Moas is quite substantial if you are good at timing the skills and switching them. Again, if your point is that they are useless because of the lack of damage, then you aren’t using them for their purpose (which definitely isn’t damage).

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

I do agree that the Alpine Wolf’s Icy Howl, the Polar Bears Icy Roar, and the White Moas’s Icy Screech could change, since a 2-3 second chill with that long of a cooldown is actually kind of useless.

Bears – Again, if your issue is damage, there are super glassy cats and birds right over there! I already talked about the Polar Bear. The Brown Bear is awesome for the condition removal. The Black bear’s F2 does 10 seconds of weakness to 5 surrrounding foes (15 traited). That is actually extremely powerful. The Murellow has a 7 second Poison Field, which is definitely useful with a few allied blast finishers for the weakness, and it inflicts poison anyways.

The Arctodus has almost the same F2 skill as the Lynx. It will also deal less damage because of the lack of precision compared to the Lynx. Its pointless to have a damaging skill on a pet whose purpose isn’t damage.

Eagle and Hawk – If you take the Companion’s Might trait, you can very easily keep 25 stacks of might on your pet. That equal to 875 condition damage. If you add Expertise training, the total becomes 1225, and having a constant, never-ending source of mid-level bleeding damage to compliment your build isn’t a bad thing.

Pigs -….yeah, their F2 needs to put the item in your hand, and give you the option of dropping it so allies can pick it up. And just like how Engineer skills were changed to always guarantee a certain effect, it needs to happen to Pig F2’s as well.

Drakes – For the Reef Drake, use the traits I told you about earlier, and you can throw on some pretty substantial damage from confusion. I guess I’m one of those idiots because I actually know how to use pets, huh? I’m not saying they are optimized though, because their F2 is kind of difficult to use unless you time it right, and also their inability to hit a moving target.

As far as their F2, since its a Channel skill, Dakes need to be programed just like any player’s Channel skill. It needs to track the enemy as they move around. There are some Aetherblade enemies that can already do this because the skill they use is the same as what a player has access to (Arc Lighting)

I will admit that the Salamander Drake is kind of not useful right now, because it doesn’t apply enough burning, as well as the issue I mentioned above.

We have pets that deal lots of damage (cats and birds), and we have pets with lots of cc (dogs and spiders). Please stop going on and on about other pets being useless just because Damage and CC is all you care about.

It’s funny because Mesmers’ pets work because they are easily replaceable and not there all the time (cough permastow cough).

Besides, Mesmers bring so much more to the table overall. Reflect, boon strip, condi management, stealth.

Nevertheless, Mesmers can still fill niche roles well. They are never meant to be there for the sake of raw DPS.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Flytrap.8075:

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

So those things should be fixed, rather than “omg pets don’t work, kill em off”. There has to be a way to fix it, and there has to be a way for it to get done without the massive upheaval they can’t really do.

Though, Allie? I’d really look into doing that overhaul of your behavior engine in the future, because it wouldn’t just benefit pets.

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.

Every single individual suffers in WvW when talking about the way WvW works. There’s no room in large-scale fights for the pet? There’s no room in large-scale fights for anyone not a warrior/guardian/elementalist.

xallever.1874:

Besides, Mesmers bring something else to the table boon strip, stealth, portal.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Fixed that top line for you.

In WvW, people refuse to believe ranger can do anything, therefore it “automatically” are outperformed by all professions. It is false information spread by a vocal minority that eventually turned into bandwagon “truth” effect as the ranger community and players did not rise up to prove anyone wrong.
The whole “others do it better” is really only a “until proven otherwise” scenario.

However others can do similar stuff with less effort, that is true, in certain scenarios.

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

Nope, but it is something I’d also like fixed.

Prysin.8542:

xallever.1874:

Besides, Mesmers bring something else to the table boon strip, stealth, portal.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Fixed that top line for you.

In WvW, people refuse to believe ranger can do anything, therefore it “automatically” are outperformed by all professions. It is false information spread by a vocal minority that eventually turned into bandwagon “truth” effect as the ranger community and players did not rise up to prove anyone wrong.
The whole “others do it better” is really only a “until proven otherwise” scenario.

However others can do similar stuff with less effort, that is true, in certain scenarios.

Please explain to me what a Ranger can provide his or her group that another profession cannot do better.

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…

This is relevant.

Terravos.4059:

Chrispy.5641:

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?

Both of those are non offhand weapons, By opening up Warhorn onto those weapons, You give for example..Trap builds decent access to Moment of Clarity (since some surprisingly won’t use the GTAE trap trait cause they dislike the targetting of it) You also open up possibly using things like Axe/Horn or Sword/horn for builds.. which would be interesting.

I already use Axe/Horn and Sword/Horn. Hunter’s Call as it is right now can apply a substantial amount of bleeding with the right trait, which combined with a Rabid gear trap build, can easily overwhelm just about anyone. It could also apply a substantial amount of might to your pet with the right trait, which combined with any high precision build increases your pet’s damage output in quite a dramatic way.

I don’t need that removed for yet another stun/daze (that will have the same disadvantages as Hunters Call does now), nor do I want Warhorn #5 to be nerfed just so we can have a daze put there.

Allie Murdock.8152:

PvX
General:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.

I’m disappointed at how many people participating in this forum would prefer to see spirits go. Making them non-targetable and automatically follow you should suffice. It seems like what half of the people here really want is for the ranger to be recast as a petless, medium-armored warrior. The profession should keep as much of its nature theme as possible IMO.

Prysin.8542:

xallever.1874:

Besides, Mesmers bring something else to the table boon strip, stealth, portal.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Fixed that top line for you.

In WvW, people refuse to believe ranger can do anything, therefore it “automatically” are outperformed by all professions. It is false information spread by a vocal minority that eventually turned into bandwagon “truth” effect as the ranger community and players did not rise up to prove anyone wrong.
The whole “others do it better” is really only a “until proven otherwise” scenario.

However others can do similar stuff with less effort, that is true, in certain scenarios.

Is this where you tell us about your greatsword build that does absolutely nothing but act as an AE sponge that can’t die? Or how muddy terrain + spider + entangle + barrage is some kind of vast area denial that whole zergs tremble at the mere sight of?

It isn’t some grand conspiracy… the Ranger’s worth isn’t hidden in some dark corner only you’ve managed to find Prysin. The WvW community at large wants absolutely nothing to do with the Ranger class. Not because it has the largest number of terrible players or a mute community unwilling to defend it. They want nothing to do with it because the class is unremarkable in every way.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

So those things should be fixed, rather than “omg pets don’t work, kill em off”. There has to be a way to fix it, and there has to be a way for it to get done without the massive upheaval they can’t really do.

Who wants to kill the pet?

Taushullu.6180:

BeardRex.6739:

Pets need an option for “dodge when I dodge”, which would require additional animation work too.

I agree that pets need something to negate one-shot mechanics (they are becoming quite common in LS after all). I would be more than happy with a trait that grants pet an aegis or blur whenever I dodge, though. No extra animation work to be done there. Also, if the pet would actually “dodge” an attack it would also lose valuable dps… I don’t want that. One of the few ranger’s strengths is that while you’re dodging around, your pet is still doing damage (at least it should be if it could keep up). It can be something very powerful to have, especially with bunkering builds.

As for the trait, I would suggest replacing Instinctual Bond with this:

• Companionship: Pet gains aegis for 2 seconds when you dodge roll.

Or alternatively, aegis could be simply added to already existing Companion’s Defense.

Aegis is a bad idea, you often see multi-AoE circles on one spot and aegis will just supress one where a dodge can negate all. Blur is the way to go here and should be added as a core mechanism with no trait involved (or eventually an Adept trait).

Joiry.2504:

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. Does that make sense?

I dunno, check a 1st ed AD&D rulebook, perhaps one of the earliest incarnations of the modern RPG ranger.

No pets.

No, what they were was a watered down mix of fighter/druid throughout most of D&D’s life cycle. To the point it wasn’t really useful to have one when you could have either.

And then in D&D 3.0 it became a more fragile DPS-oriented fighter or in 3.5 a dedicated archer. And both times you didn’t need them, you needed a fighter to let mages/clerics survive until level 6-7 when they started getting the awesome spells. After level 12, most other classes were jokes if you were talking efficiency.

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

…snip…

Devourers – They have High toughness and are Ranged. They are not meant to deal high damage, which if that is your only concern (looks kind of obvious based on this post), then yes, they are worthless to you. Otherwise, they are great for drawing enemy aggro because of their high toughness, and skills like “Protect Me” tend to work better with a tougher pet around than a glassy cat or bird.

Skills like Protect Me is awful for a Devourer, in fact Protect Me is pretty much awful in general unless you’re using a Bear, If ya don’t believe me, Go out into pvp right now with your Devourer, and have someone hit you while having Protect Me up, watch it die in a bout 3 seconds flat.., Also you’re not getting why I’m pointing out there damage is crap, Its because they have ZERO UTILITY to make up for that damage loss

Moas – Fury, and also Protection, and also Harmonic Cry. The extra healing you get from having two Moas is quite substantial if you are good at timing the skills and switching them. Again, if your point is that they are useless because of the lack of damage, then you aren’t using them for their purpose (which definitely isn’t damage).

Protection from the Moa is crap, 4 seconds on a 30 second cooldown? That is not good….Not good by any standard, and Harmonic Cry isn’t good either. Again its a 2 second PBAE daze on a 30 second timer…Their Healing also isn’t great…Know why? Because you have no control over it… and again..Its PBAE… you basically have to be standing next to them when they try and use it

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone

Bears – Again, if your issue is damage, there are super glassy cats and birds right over there! I already talked about the Polar Bear. The Brown Bear is awesome for the condition removal. The Black bear’s F2 does 10 seconds of weakness to 5 surrrounding foes (15 traited). That is actually extremely powerful. The Murellow has a 7 second Poison Field, which is definitely useful with a few allied blast finishers for the weakness, and it inflicts poison anyways.

Black Bear has a 10 second Weakness on a 40 second cooldown, That’s not good… You can get a Poison Field as a base ability on Spiders pretty much, Not to mention Poison Field is incredibly common and often times you don’t want it anyway cause it will overwrite Water Fields

The Arctodus has almost the same F2 skill as the Lynx. It will also deal less damage because of the lack of precision compared to the Lynx. Its pointless to have a damaging skill on a pet whose purpose isn’t damage.

That Bleed is one of the worst Bleeds in the game….Do you know why? Because it has the most obvious animation in the game…If you get hit by that bleed..you’re afk

Eagle and Hawk – If you take the Companion’s Might trait, you can very easily keep 25 stacks of might on your pet. That equal to 875 condition damage. If you add Expertise training, the total becomes 1225, and having a constant, never-ending source of mid-level bleeding damage to compliment your build isn’t a bad thing.

Companion’s Might won’t let ya keep 25 Stacks of Might on your pet easily, i don’t know where you got that at, You might be able to get 10 stacks…. but 25 from Companions might…No..Just no..

Drakes – For the Reef Drake, use the traits I told you about earlier, and you can throw on some pretty substantial damage from confusion. I guess I’m one of those idiots because I actually know how to use pets, huh? I’m not saying they are optimized though, because their F2 is kind of difficult to use unless you time it right, and also their inability to hit a moving target.

We have pets that deal lots of damage (cats and birds), and we have pets with lots of cc (dogs and spiders). Please stop going on and on about other pets being useless just because Damage and CC is all you care about.

If a pet doesn’t have damage, it better have utility, that seems to be a pretty simple concept, and yes using a Reef drake is stupid

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

So those things should be fixed, rather than “omg pets don’t work, kill em off”. There has to be a way to fix it, and there has to be a way for it to get done without the massive upheaval they can’t really do.

Who wants to kill the pet?

raises hand

This is profession is called Ranger…not beast master

After 1.5 years of useless pets, you honestly believe I’m going to be fooled into believing that anet can magically make it all work?
I have witnessed the devs fail at making pets viable since release, I have absolutely no reason to believe all of a sudden they know how to fix it.

Its a core issue that needs an overhaul. Right now unless the devs say so otherwise, I don’t believe they are up to the task of a pet overhaul.

There are people in this forum that believe anet will fix it.. that’s fine and dandy, I’m just not one of them.

As of right now, I have no reason to believe anet WILL make pets viable (basing this assumption off their track record)

I’ll glady eat some crow if anet does somehow manage to fix our class mechanic but until I see actual results, I’m dead set on believing anet can’t fix pets

A lot of the pet suggestions I’ve read here are great and would definetely make them viable… but it’s not upto me, its up to anet, and given their past record, I don’t believe they will do whats necessary to fix this. Call me pessmestic if you want to, but realistically speaking, they have yet to prove they know how to fix pets.

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

Chrispy.5641:

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?

Both of those are non offhand weapons, By opening up Warhorn onto those weapons, You give for example..Trap builds decent access to Moment of Clarity (since some surprisingly won’t use the GTAE trap trait cause they dislike the targetting of it) You also open up possibly using things like Axe/Horn or Sword/horn for builds.. which would be interesting.

I already use Axe/Horn and Sword/Horn. Hunter’s Call as it is right now can apply a substantial amount of bleeding with the right trait, which combined with a Rabid gear trap build, can easily overwhelm just about anyone. It could also apply a substantial amount of might to your pet with the right trait, which combined with any high precision build increases your pet’s damage output in quite a dramatic way.

I don’t need that removed for yet another stun/daze (that will have the same disadvantages as Hunters Call does now), nor do I want Warhorn #5 to be nerfed just so we can have a daze put there.

You wouldn’t remove the multiple hits from the Hunter’s Call, it simply apply a 2 second Daze period (not per hit)

and I know it applies a lot of bleeding.

In addition, the Shatter burst from Mesmers hit much more reliably and it’s AoE. Let’s not compare AoE vs single damage as it’s not apple to apple.

But perhaps the reliability of it has something to do with the fact that it is AoE (cough cleave for pet cough).

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. Does that make sense?

That’s a pretty funny statement… because our pet is quite often taken away (by dying or standing by our side doing nothing in order to avoid dying), and quite often does no damage.

So we already aren’t a ranger?

Maybe we’re asking the wrong way for what we want. We should just be asking for a 15-20% damage boost for ranger. Don’t mention anything about the pet. The pet takes care of itself by running slowly behind a moving target and dying almost instantly in any group encounter. No need to modify them at all.

Sort of kidding, but only because Allie’s statement struck me funny due to the current reality of the profession.

Prysin.8542:

Terravos.4059:

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..

Would be more fun if they did AOE damage… AOE poison, AOE bleed, AOE something… and we get to choose where the skill lands, then we can atleast guide/herd the enemy in the right direction, and it would also help us in general gameplay.

a way to distinguish pet F2 skills with AOE targeting from normal ones is to simply give it a yellow targeting circle instead of green.

We get more AOE, better control of skill and overall, better F2… i call that a win win win.

Me and Vox posted on this about 300 posts ago on this very thing. If we were allowed to manually target pet f2 aoe based attacks, it would be a good way to create some decent depth for the ranger especially in pvp/wvw. I think these ideas are something that could reasonably be done if rangers could get behind this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/40#post3723087

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/41#post3723283

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.

the problem is your 2×4 will never work in WvW. we need a 2×3 and the original broke because its not fit

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone
—————————————————-

I went back and checked this again, Mainly because I knew Snow leopards chill was like 11-12 seconds long.. and looking at the tooltip you wouldn’t think that it was.

So i was curious why it was this way.

Snow owl hits twice..But applies only 1 “stack” of chill

Meaning, 3 seconds Base on its chill, It’ll automatically apply 6 seconds, then 3 more seconds if you have malicious for 9 seconds total on its chill.

Snow Leopard hits 2x, But applies 2 Stacks of Chill on each hit, Those stacks are 2 seconds each. So the Base duration of a Snow Leopard Chill Leap is 8 seconds, 12 if you have Malicious Training.

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.

I’m pretty sure at this point it should be clear that nothing short of complete rebalance is going to help.

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. Does that make sense?

It wouldn’t be the same Ranger as GW2 staff has envisioned, that i agree. Unfortunately, that class exists only as a concept. What we have in reality differs significantly from the original idea – because that idea turned out to be unworkable.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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.

1.5 years of fixing AI didn’t improve the situation. Perhaps it is the time to admit that continuing on this path is not going to help in a foreseeable future either, and thus other options have to be considered.

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?

It’s not a 2×4. it’s part of the foundations (the core class mechanic) that are cracking and causing walls to collapse.

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.

Yes, i do like pets, and i don’t have problems with Rangers using them. That doesn’t mean i like the fact that the whole class is built around them. Maybe it’s because I have never considered pets to be a trademark of the ranger – or maybe it’s because i’d prefer the core mechanism to be centered about the player’s skill, not the npc ai.

As a side note, i’m pretty sure that by the time pet AI becomes good enough to make them a workable and dependable element of the class, it will also become good enough to turn pets into a balance nightmare.

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.

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.

I don’t understand why ‘integral’ has to be interpreted in a way that the pet is ever present. Mesmers’ clones are integral to their gameplay without them being there all the time.

Supposing the permastow can be done in combat with CD when you want to summon it back to prevent abuse, how will this necessarily mean that Rangers will no longer be a pet class?

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?

Which would be a fabulous analogy if we were talking about 1 Trait, or maybe a single broken weapon . Pets aren’t a 2×4, they are the FOUNDATION of the profession. There are pet-based traits and effects wound through every single trait line. Core capabilities hinge on a working pet at every turn. And they don’t work.

Sure it looked great back when it was just a blueprint, but then the house got built and along came the rains of real gameplay. The foundation sagged and now there’s not a single square corner or level floor anywhere in the entire building. You have two options: get in, jack up the pilings, and true the frame or tear it down and build on a new foundation that won’t buckle.

We’d all rather you fixed the pilings – when we say ‘tear it down’ it’s because to date you’ve proven either unwilling or unable to do that. The abject failure of pet AI is a real problem, and it’s going to take real work to fix it. Every time we hear assurances that its not a big problem — “a mere 2×4” — we end up jaws agape that the magnitude of the issue still hasn’t sunk in yet. Please stop sending out a guy with a board, a hammer, and can of paint telling us “I’ve got this!”

They dismissed permastow. Just forget it Xallever. Its not gonna happen.

Terravos.4059:

Skills like Protect Me is awful for a Devourer, in fact Protect Me is pretty much awful in general unless you’re using a Bear, If ya don’t believe me, Go out into pvp right now with your Devourer, and have someone hit you while having Protect Me up, watch it die in a bout 3 seconds flat.., Also you’re not getting why I’m pointing out there damage is crap, Its because they have ZERO UTILITY to make up for that damage loss

Aside from Drawing Aggro from enemies, because they have more Toughness than your combined Armor does? Not every pet can be super useful and awesome in every game mode. Devourers just so happen to be better in PvE than other game modes. That doesn’t make them useless.

Terravos.4059:

Protection from the Moa is crap, 4 seconds on a 30 second cooldown? That is not good….Not good by any standard, and Harmonic Cry isn’t good either. Again its a 2 second PBAE daze on a 30 second timer…Their Healing also isn’t great…Know why? Because you have no control over it… and again..Its PBAE…

6 Seconds on a 30 Second cooldown to you and allies when traited. Combine that with Companion’s Defense, and an Earth Spirit, and you can have near permanent Protection Uptime. Also, Harmonic Cry is the Healing Skill, not a Daze. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Did you even click on the link? That comment just made you lose some credibility!

Aside from that, you don’t need the healing 90% of the time if you are seperate from your pet because you are at range, mostly because the enemy aggro will be on your pet. in Melee, with your pet, the healing is very powerful when you have 2 moas.

Terravos.4059:

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone

after checking,….Owl’s skill still recharges faster, meaning you can apply more chill.

Terravos.4059:

Black Bear has a 10 second Weakness on a 40 second cooldown, That’s not good… You can get a Poison Field as a base ability on Spiders pretty much, Not to mention Poison Field is incredibly common and often times you don’t want it anyway cause it will overwrite Water Fields

The Spider’s Poison field is weak, and doesn’t last long enough to get any combo effects (which you don’t have control over, anymore than the Moa’s Heal skill). You can with the Murellow’s combo field though. 10 seconds of weakness of 5 surrounding enemies is good, because that is damage mitigation, with a 25% uptime (38% uptime traited) Great in PvE and WvW. Also, if you need to have a water field up 100% of the time so no other field can be put down, you aren’t a good player[/quote]

Terravos.4059:

That Bleed is one of the worst Bleeds in the game….Do you know why? Because it has the most obvious animation in the game…If you get hit by that bleed..you’re afk

Wrong. I’ve actually landed Rending Pounce on other Players, plenty of times because the Lynx will do a homing leap attack on whoever you tell it to hit. It is a very powerful attack, and is the same attack (with a different effect) as the Snow Leopard you kept advertising as being so good. I already said that the Arctodus’s was useless.

Terravos.4059:

Companion’s Might won’t let ya keep 25 Stacks of Might on your pet easily, i don’t know where you got that at, You might be able to get 10 stacks…. but 25 from Companions might…No..Just no..

Yeah, it will. Take a high precision build, and use Warhorn/Sword. If you have over 100% crit chance, then Hunters Call will apply 17 stacks of might on your pet if all attacks hit. Then there is the might gained from just landing crits. You will always have 25 might on your pet. How about you go try it for yourself.

Terravos.4059:

If a pet doesn’t have damage, it better have utility, that seems to be a pretty simple concept, and yes using a Reef drake is stupid

I’m sorry you don’t know how to use Reef Drake properly, but that doesn’t make it stupid. Stupid looking…yes, but not stupid in concept.

And Utility is more than just CC. Its also healing, drawing Aggro off of you, removing conditions, applying conditions, etc._

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?

The pet seems more like the foundation than just a simple 2X4. And at this point the house is built and has been leased. With a crumbling foundation that the owner only patches instead of rebuilds.

Nike.2631:

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?

Which would be a fabulous analogy if we were talking about 1 Trait, or maybe a single broken weapon . Pets aren’t a 2×4, they are the FOUNDATION of the profession. There are pet-based traits and effects wound through every single trait line. Core capabilities hinge on a working pet at every turn. And they don’t work.

Sure it looked great back when it was just a blueprint, but then the house got built and along came the rains of real gameplay. The foundation sagged and now there’s not a single square corner or level floor anywhere in the entire building. You have two options: get in, jack up the pilings, and true the frame or tear it down and build on a new foundation that won’t buckle.

We’d all rather you fixed the pilings – when we say ‘tear it down’ it’s because to date you’ve proven either unwilling or unable to do that. The abject failure of pet AI is a real problem, and it’s going to take real work to fix it. Every time we hear assurances that its not a big problem — “a mere 2×4” — we end up jaws agape that the magnitude of the issue still hasn’t sunk in yet. Please stop sending out a guy with a board, a hammer, and can of paint telling us “I’ve got this!”

Her statement left me puzzled too.
This was my reply, for anyone who cares.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,
STUFF

Reading it over, I really like what you’re discussing in the office/lab/workshop/whatever. The only nitpicks I’d have are:

-the removal of spirits, but that’s more nostalgia than anything-I won’t be sobbing or grabbing pitchforks if they go.

-Combining Rending Attacks, Intimidation Training and Stability training
It’s definitely a good thing, however I reccomend you consider going even further, and restore the first public beta effects which were more specialised (For those of you who didn’t play it, pets had a permanent passive bonus depending on your trait; spiders did greater poison damage, bears had permanent stability, ect) because part of the problem is a single stack of bleed on a cirtical hit for a drake, or a bit longer cripple… isn’t really worth bothering with usually.

-Make Sword II a gap closer
I personally have reservations about that, but I can also see why you’d want it that way so whatever.

Outside that I really like what I read there. Hope it makes it in.

Bran.7425:

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?

The pet seems more like the foundation than just a simple 2X4. And at this point the house is built and has been leased. With a crumbling foundation that the owner only patches instead of rebuilds.

I’m honestly aghast at how dismissive the whole analogy is.

If 90% of the people asked thinks Rangers need attention and the problem is just a single 2×4, then imagine how awesome all the other professions must be? I guess the elementalist has a porch light that’s not screwed all the way in (not even burnt out, just loose) and the worst the Warrior can claim is someone forgot to water the lawn this week. I mean really, why would anyone be fretting over a 2×4? Why would NINETY PERCENT OF YOU be worried about a 2×4? It’s nothing. All’s just dandy with the Ranger. Move along, move along.

I’m sorry, there’s almost 50 pages of people taking it seriously.

Can we focus on specific and tangible problems here? If there’s an issue with the suggestions Allie compiled, point it out, say why it’s an issue, and what you would do to fix it. Bickering over house metaphors and getting emotional isn’t going to fix the ranger profession. Furthermore, remember that it’s a privilege to have this conversation with the developers. Try to make this experience enjoyable for them, and maybe they’ll do it more often.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Nike.2631:

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?

Which would be a fabulous analogy if we were talking about 1 Trait, or maybe a single broken weapon . Pets aren’t a 2×4, they are the FOUNDATION of the profession. There are pet-based traits and effects wound through every single trait line. Core capabilities hinge on a working pet at every turn. And they don’t work.

Sure it looked great back when it was just a blueprint, but then the house got built and along came the rains of real gameplay. The foundation sagged and now there’s not a single square corner or level floor anywhere in the entire building. You have two options: get in, jack up the pilings, and true the frame or tear it down and build on a new foundation that won’t buckle.

We’d all rather you fixed the pilings – when we say ‘tear it down’ it’s because to date you’ve proven either unwilling or unable to do that. The abject failure of pet AI is a real problem, and it’s going to take real work to fix it. Every time we hear assurances that its not a big problem — “a mere 2×4” — we end up jaws agape that the magnitude of the issue still hasn’t sunk in yet. Please stop sending out a guy with a board, a hammer, and can of paint telling us “I’ve got this!”

Her statement left me puzzled too.
This was my reply, for anyone who cares.

All of the above…AND:

The idea “the Ranger sans pet is no Ranger at all” betrays the attitude I mentioned several pages back. Clinging ardently to a pre-beta vision for the class will destroy any hope of actually fixing the class.

Pets don’t work. Period. You can buff their move speed. You can jack up their HP. You can replace them with Chuck Norris. But in the present state of the game and the present state of the Ranger, it’ll be like replacing a single two-by when you’ve got termites. As above—they need a complete over-haul.

If anything, the single point I’d be ecstatic if the Dev teams walked away from this CDI with is simple:

Be willing to change your vision for the class.

You don’t have to get rid of the whole vision. Just be flexible enough to recognize what portions of the vision cannot work in the game y’all’ve created.

afoot.6932:

Can we focus on specific and tangible problems here? If there’s an issue with the suggestions Allie compiled, point it out, say why it’s an issue, and what you would do to fix it. Bickering over house metaphors isn’t going to fix the ranger profession.

Pretending they don’t have a serious problem isn’t going to fix it either.

Quite the opposite.

Want a quick fix for F2? Make them insta cast, like Jaguar one.

Phenn.5167:

Pets don’t work. Period. You can buff their move speed. You can jack up their HP. You can replace them with Chuck Norris.

If not not even Chuck Norris can fix the rangers, than man, shi.et must be bad.

Guys, can you hear me out my solution to benefit both pro-pets and anti-pets solution?

Proposal
Ranger Aspect balancing and pet swap removal.

Goal

• Make Unstowed and stowed pets a huge part of Ranger gameplay to satisfy both pro-pets and anti-pets.
• I also really hate pet swap because it doesn’t make sense on a ranger.

Functionality

Defining Ranger aspect: The ability to stow so that ranger can get passive benefits or unstow to get a pet.

If Ranger Aspect is implemented, I would like pet swap to be removed. Then the f4 skill will be the stow and unstow option.

If pets are out, Rangers will get a better dps + utility. However, when pets are stowed, rangers can get a passive. In other words, pets become a signet.

If a pet dies, a ranger can stow it and get the passive benefits. Then he can unstow it when the recharge time is up and use it again.

Conclusion
The anti-pets do not have to use pets ever. Pro-pets do not have to stow pets without being in a overwhelming disadvantage either, even if the pet is dead then the ranger can wait till the recharge is up to use it again, while reaping the passive benefits.

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?

Nike.2631:

Bran.7425:

The pet seems more like the foundation than just a simple 2X4. And at this point the house is built and has been leased. With a crumbling foundation that the owner only patches instead of rebuilds.

I’m honestly aghast at how dismissive the whole analogy is.

If 90% of the people asked thinks Rangers need attention and the problem is just a single 2×4, then imagine how awesome all the other professions must be? I guess the elementalist has a porch light that’s not screwed all the way in (not even burnt out, just loose) and the worst the Warrior can claim is someone forgot to water the lawn this week. I mean really, why would anyone be fretting over a 2×4? Why would NINETY PERCENT OF YOU be worried about a 2×4? It’s nothing. All’s just dandy with the Ranger. Move along, move along.

I’m sorry, there’s almost 50 pages of people taking it seriously.

How about a better one then?

If Rangers were like an airplane, then Pets are the Wings. Wings are really Finicky when designing an Airplane, because you have to take into account a hundred different factors. In Order for the Wings to provide lift, you need to account for weight, drag, lift, thrust, aerodynamics, angle of attack,…all sorts of things. They all have to be spot on, or, it doesn’t work properly.

When the Wings work, The Plane will fly perfectly. When the Wing doesn’t work properly, the plane will still fly, but it will be a scary flight, and you run serious risk of crashing the plane and killing everyone on board.

…

Pets work exactly like that for a Ranger, there are a hundred different factors that must be taken into account when designing and balancing them, such as damage, the health, armor, movement, AI programming, utility, etc. It needs to be spot on, or the Ranger will be less than optimal.

When the Pet works, the Ranger is Perfect. When the Pet doesn’t work, The Ranger him/herself runs the risk of not working, and has the serious risk of failing without a trusty, working pet.

Chrispy.5641:

Aside from Drawing Aggro from enemies, because they have more Toughness than your combined Armor does? Not every pet can be super useful and awesome in every game mode. Devourers just so happen to be better in PvE than other game modes. That doesn’t make them useless.

Oh yes It does make them useless, They have no utility, and you’re better off running a Brown Bear if you want something that can draw aggression..There is nothing remotely useful about them in PvE.

6 Seconds on a 30 Second cooldown to you and allies when traited. Combine that with Companion’s Defense, and an Earth Spirit, and you can have near permanent Protection Uptime. Also, Harmonic Cry is the Healing Skill, not a Daze. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Did you even click on the link? That comment just made you lose some credibility!

Do you honestly run Concentration Training? I’m trying to figure out this build you’re running cause you keep saying “If you only spec into it” because I can’t think of any point where I said to myself..Ya know I should pickup that Moa and spec Concentration Training to provide the group with 6 seconds of Protection every 30 seconds in PVE, and I sure as hell wouldn’t do it in PVP, and no i didn’t click the link because i assumed it was that crappy daze that is just god awful. I suppose it does cost me some credibility though of not knowing the name of that crappy Daze..I mean, Its not like I have countless videos of me playing the Ranger

Aside from that, you don’t need the healing 90% of the time if you are seperate from your pet because you are at range, mostly because the enemy aggro will be on your pet. in Melee, with your pet, the healing is very powerful when you have 2 moas.

if your Moa has aggression in PvE on anything that would require it to heal, Its probably dead anyway

The Spider’s Poison field is weak, and doesn’t last long enough to get any combo effects (which you don’t have control over, anymore than the Moa’s Heal skill). You can with the Murellow’s combo field though. 10 seconds of weakness of 5 surrounding enemies is good, because that is damage mitigation, with a 25% uptime (38% uptime traited) Great in PvE and WvW. Also, if you need to have a water field up 100% of the time so no other field can be put down, you aren’t a good player

The spider poison field isn’kittens F2, Its just a random ability it does…Meaning its far better then Murellows F2, since the Spiders have much better F2’s in general. And no… 10 seconds of weakness is not good with that Cooldown, No one thinks that’s good. If you use a Black Bear in PvP thinking thats good, then I pity people you run with. Also in Large Fights (which is what i’m assuming you’re doing, Since you’d never run a Murellow in a Small Man or Solo Fight i hope) you pretty much want Water Field up as much as possible during the actual fights…There are far better ways to apply Weakness to the enemy then Wasting countless Condition Removals and Healing done from Water Fields.

Chrispy.5641:

How about a better one then?

If Rangers were like an airplane, then Pets are the Wings. Wings are really Finicky when designing an Airplane, because you have to take into account a hundred different factors. In Order for the Wings to provide lift, you need to account for weight, drag, lift, thrust, aerodynamics, angle of attack,…all sorts of things. They all have to be spot on, or, it doesn’t work properly.

When the Wings work, The Plane will fly perfectly. When the Wing doesn’t work properly, the plane will still fly, but it will be a scary flight, and you run serious risk of crashing the plane and killing everyone on board.

…

Pets work exactly like that for a Ranger, there are a hundred different factors that must be taken into account when designing and balancing them, such as damage, the health, armor, movement, AI programming, utility, etc. It needs to be spot on, or the Ranger will be less than optimal.

When the Pet works, the Ranger is Perfect. When the Pet doesn’t work, The Ranger him/herself runs the risk of not working, and has the serious risk of failing without a trusty, working pet.

Works for me. Because it show respect for the subject.

This entire thread exists because people were shockingly uniform in their concerns. It’s like taking a time machine back to the beginning of the Living Story CDI where it took a few days to finally get the Devs to open up to the possibility that their current path might not be working. And from there Bobby and his team went on to make miraculous improvements to how the Living Story is both executed and received by players. I’m sorry the opening days of each CDI seems to always call for a bit of rough handling, but if everything were fine or near to it with the Ranger, there would be some other class up first to bat. We’ll get there with this discussion, I hope.

Chrispy.5641:

Wrong. I’ve actually landed Rending Pounce on other Players, plenty of times because the Lynx will do a homing leap attack on whoever you tell it to hit. It is a very powerful attack, and is the same attack (with a different effect) as the Snow Leopard you kept advertising as being so good. I already said that the Arctodus’s was useless.

I was actually referring to Arctodus Bleed, not the Lynx Bleed, The Lynx Bleed is somewhat reliable because its a Pounce, while Arcotdus of course is awful

Yeah, it will. Take a high precision build, and use Warhorn/Sword. If you have over 100% crit chance, then Hunters Call will apply 17 stacks of might on your pet if all attacks hit. Then there is the might gained from just landing crits. You will always have 25 might on your pet. How about you go try it for yourself.

I took a full Rabid Build, with Fury up, which is 75% Crit Chance, Most I could get using Warhorn + Axe (splitblade is 5x hits) was around 20, I suppose there might be some way to get 100% crit chance all the time (i’m guessing Assassins + the Precision Trait in Marksman, with a bunch of Precision type sigils and runes + Fury) and then using Warhorn to apply 17 stacks of Might for 5 seconds before it drops away, and you wait for the cooldown to pop up on Hunter Call. But ya know what is actually fairly easy to do in fights? Just Popping Rampage as one and then Hunter’s Call…You don’t need even need Companions Might or a lot of Crit Chance Or a 100% crit chance build.

I’m sorry you don’t know how to use Reef Drake properly, but that doesn’t make it stupid. Stupid looking yes, but not stupid in concept.

And Utility is more than just CC. Its also healing, drawing Aggro off of you, removing conditions, applying conditions, etc._

I know how to use the Reef Drake Properly, Its not hard..Its just its that awful… This is why the only thing you’re going to land it is on is PVE Mobs, where confusion isn’t exactly all that amazing

Healing – None of the pets are useful for healing, Not even Moa’s, Aggro..I suppose that could be utility, but then again if you want that, you have the Brown Bear, which cures conditions and can draw aggression, and is tanky. Applying conditions…In pve Generally no its not that useful..Because you have countless other options in this game to apply conditions.. in PvP again No The example pets cited are all awful compared to Spiders.