Guild Wars 2

Chrispy.5641:

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.

That’s the problem… Pets should never have been in a position to be considered the “wings”

Right now, do other classes consider their mechanic to play such a pivotal role in their overall class viability? I don’t think so

Theive’s steal. That class mechanic isn’t going to exactly be a deciding factor in how successful the thief is going to perform lol

Ele’s attunement. not speccing into attunement isn’t going go crush the ele’s viablity.
Warriors adrenline doesn’t hamper their abilities
Guards virtues don’t hurt them nor stop them from performing well

The other class mechanics are like just the small parts that improve the ride of the airplane (kind of like more comfortable seats, more leg room, etc) but they will always fly regardless of class mechanic, where as rangers, our class mechanics determine if we can even fly or not.

Right now, we can’t even safely get the plane on the runway

Hey. I dont mean to offend anyone here. But since most of you are arguing and have a good topic, as i was reading about pets and their sucky skills. Might as well do something productive and make a lists of broken traits that the devs should change. what i dont like is when people argue and push on problems that rangers know instead of creating a solution to the problem.

You dont like something? Pile them up and propose a solution since most of you are at it arguing about pet family skills, drakes cone shape inaccurate shrieks, moa cone shrieks etc. Propose a solution, bigger problem are as follow, not sure if its been solved:

1. Traps moving to another trait. Allie mentioned this is on the menu. Question is where to put them

2. Ranger pets in WvW

3. Someone mentioned Shouts before offering different boons to allies when traited 30 deep in NM. This is the bread and butter IMO that could open up team support as ranger in wvw than spirits.

Ex: protect me traited gives allies and pet protection for 6 secs in a 600 radius

4. Pet family and skill. Youre all at it, might as well theory craft or revised the whole pet skills per family. I dont see why not.

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry on demand if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Edit: When in melee range, if the moa is injured the heal is one of the skills it uses but it seems kinda random when it decides to use it.

Specific Game Mode
PvP (PvX recommended)

Proposal Overview
Reduce all aspects of Rampage as One to allow for more calculated usage.

Goal of Proposal
Currently with the long cooldown and its slow ramp up time for offense and strippable boons for defense (Stability) it’s simply a all in card that causes very little strategy. With reduce duration and cooldown you have more control allowing you to use it more based on the situation be it to avoid cc, complete a stomp (something rangers have a lot of difficulty with), or burst.

Proposal Functionality
Reduce the the CD to 60 seconds and all buffs to 10 secs.
Not necessary but a good QoL aspect would be a reduction to cast time. It’s nothing massively debilitating or harmful at first so the red glowing aura is enough of a telegraph. Not to mention it’s our only source of stability and very much a necessity these days.

Associated Risks
Allows for the rather unbalanced usage of Lyssa’s Runes similiar to Thieves and Warriors due to low cooldown. Might stacks may not get as high because of reduced RaO duration.

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

AEFA.9035:

Hey. I dont mean to offend anyone here. But since most of you are arguing and have a good topic, as i was reading about pets and their sucky skills. Might as well do something productive and make a lists of broken traits that the devs should change. what i dont like is when people argue and push on problems that rangers know instead of creating a solution to the problem.

You dont like something? Pile them up and propose a solution since most of you are at it arguing about pet family skills, drakes cone shape inaccurate shrieks, moa cone shrieks etc. Propose a solution, bigger problem are as follow, not sure if its been solved:

1. Traps moving to another trait. Allie mentioned this is on the menu. Question is where to put them

2. Ranger pets in WvW

3. Someone mentioned Shouts before offering different boons to allies when traited 30 deep in NM. This is the bread and butter IMO that could open up team support as ranger in wvw than spirits.

Ex: protect me traited gives allies and pet protection for 6 secs in a 600 radius

4. Pet family and skill. Youre all at it, might as well theory craft or revised the whole pet skills per family. I dont see why not.

We have tried since release to create solutions… anet can’t do it, when will you get that?

the last 1.5 years have been nothing in terms of making rangers and their pets viable
What makes you think anet will all of a sudden make it work now

Theres almost 50 pages worth of solutions in this thread alone
Want more? the devs can read the ranger forums for even more specific ones

The solutions are already out there
Community has given their ideas and feedback, its up to anet now to make something of it.

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.

Please propose these questions to the Devs:

1. How often should a pet land a hit on a pvp target?

2. Should the number of landed hits be affected by how deeply you spec into BM?

3. How do you propose to have a coherent framework of factoring avg pet damage for this class (and balance the weapon damage accordingly) when some pets hit way harder than another and you can’t predict what pets will be used and how deeply one will spec into BM? (e.g. 30BM Jag vs 0 BM Brown Bear)

I suspect when you get them to answer those questions truthfully, you’ll realize that part of the house never called for a 2×4 but rather really needed some concrete walls.

Phenn.5167:

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.

So very well said. My thoughts exactly.

Some flexibility is in order if this is going to work, and rangers are going to improve. I’m sure Allie is regretting her choice of analogy at this point…no need to beat that into the ground any more…but hopefully the devs are thinking seriously about what’s being said. We all really want this to work.

AEFA.9035:

Hey. I dont mean to offend anyone here. But since most of you are arguing and have a good topic, as i was reading about pets and their sucky skills. Might as well do something productive and make a lists of broken traits that the devs should change. what i dont like is when people argue and push on problems that rangers know instead of creating a solution to the problem.

You dont like something? Pile them up and propose a solution since most of you are at it arguing about pet family skills, drakes cone shape inaccurate shrieks, moa cone shrieks etc. Propose a solution, bigger problem are as follow, not sure if its been solved:

1. Traps moving to another trait. Allie mentioned this is on the menu. Question is where to put them

2. Ranger pets in WvW

3. Someone mentioned Shouts before offering different boons to allies when traited 30 deep in NM. This is the bread and butter IMO that could open up team support as ranger in wvw than spirits.

Ex: protect me traited gives allies and pet protection for 6 secs in a 600 radius

4. Pet family and skill. Youre all at it, might as well theory craft or revised the whole pet skills per family. I dont see why not.

1.) Why not just leave traps where they are and make them do upfront power based damage? The amount of damage can be debated by others, but if you turn traps into semi burst skills and still allow them to maintain their current functionality, they’d work in their current tree.

2.) This is never going to be resolved. They can’t increase pet health because of sPvP and the fact that Rangers need to remain balanced when roaming as well. They could give them a blanket AE damage reduction, but it would need to be near 100% for the pet to ever have any functional use in a real zerg on zerg fight. Better to just allow them to take 0 damage when set to passive, allow them to return to passive if they don’t attack anything for X seconds, and don’t make them come out of passive until told to attack or F2 is hit.

3.) Shouts shouldn’t be useless, that’s a fact. I’m not sure we’d open up enough utility with the shouts for them ever to be our ‘bread and butter’ as you put it. Honestly, the pet should be our bread and butter. The pets should just have a passive ‘aura’ that does stuff depending on the pet family you have out. This aura can be improved via BM traits or inclusion of spirits (per my idea on page 1). This in conjunction with pets being effectively minions when on passive gives us plenty of value….

4.) I agree. And this is the direction the whole aspect discussion was going until Allie asked us to move off it.

Terravos.4059:

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

I already suggested in an official proposal that the range be increased to 480 or 600. And moas will heal in melee range but in melee it seems random which skill they use so you don’t know when the heal will go off.

Terravos.4059:

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

Chances are that any pet is dead. That’s not a Moa issue.

misterdevious.6482:

Terravos.4059:

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

I already suggested in an official proposal that the range be increased to 480 or 600. And moas will heal in melee range but in melee it seems random which skill they use so you don’t know when the heal will go off.

I’m referring to their suckiness right now..

Make them 800 Range, and it might be useful…. and make it off the Rangers Health.

Anyway i tried testing that Melee thing how since ya said it seems random.. and I really do think they won’t heal unless the bird drops in health..I let a mob pet beat on a mob while it beat on me, and i let it get me down to 1k health, not once did the Bird use the heal…the second I let it the bird tank (swapped gear) it would pop its health soon as it dropped in health

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

Chances are that any pet is dead. That’s not a Moa issue.

Well, Bears can survive, mainly cause they have the invul they can pop..

Anything else though, you’re pretty much correct..It’ll die.

Terravos.4059:

Anyway i tried testing that Melee thing how since ya said it seems random.. and I really do think they won’t heal unless the bird drops in health..I let a mob pet beat on a mob while it beat on me, and i let it get me down to 1k health, not once did the Bird use the heal…the second I let it the bird tank (swapped gear) it would pop its health soon as it dropped in health

Yeah, being injured is a prerequisite for this skill, which I listed in my earlier post.

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.

Actually some of us disliked pets from the get go but had no option for playing a ranger effectively without one.

Taking the pet away, or providing an option to not use it, does not make the character a non-ranger. It makes the character a ranger without a pet. There is something inherently wrong with defining a character as someone who is inherently and by design weaker, in and of himself, than every other profession in the game.

The Ranger loses damage because a significant portion of his damage is tied up outside of himself, without an option to build around this limitation. Other profession specific mechanics are not so limiting. No amount of AI improvement will give that damage back to my character. All such a change will do is allow another entity (cat, bird, whatever) use my damage differently. My character will still be weaker than others, still be reliant on help from another being to a degree that is not the case for any other profession.

Other professions get some degree of utility that adds to their overall viability from their class mechanic. Rangers have their viability tied to theirs.

Although I like some of the ideas in the summary two additions seems to push beastmaster rangers into using one family of pets.

1. Cleansing Swap: it encourages the player to swap for the condi cleanse and not to utilize the other pet. The best way to make this effective as it is describe is for the player to take two of the same pet families. This way when the player decides they need a condi cleanse they can switch pets without worrying about the effectiveness of their other pet.
i.e. A ranger in a group whose goal is dps takes a feline. Normally they might take a moa or a hound for the extra suppor/controll but because one of their active condi cleanse is linked two swapping they might pick another feline to not inhibit their main goal of dps.

2. Having stats scale with pets is needed, having these weighted by family is against using varied pets. My interpretation of the weighted by family is that one family, lets say bears, gets more of on stat (via percentage of masters stats), vitality, than another family. The reason this forces players to grab pets of the same family (or a limited number of families) rather than for personal play style or content is because non-ideal pets (pets who’s family do not specialize in the stats of the rangers gear) get less benefit than ideal pets. This would mean that an ideal pet would get a greater number of stats (larger numerical value) if its family lines up with the rangers stats then if it didn’t.
While have pets game the same stats seems a little unfair and that is might lead to bears being kinda tanky and doing the same damage as a feline, I do not believe this would be the case. The families stats benefits are already limited by their abilities. Felines could be given better scaling with less base damage then a bear so they would gain the same about of hp and toughness as a bear but would need power to be beneficial.

As far as the increased scaling for the new beastmaster stat, would it be additive or multiplicative? If it were additive it would help less the impact of non-ideal pet families but if it were multiplicative it would increase the impact on non-ideal pet families.

P.S Sorry i got a little worried and carried away

misterdevious.6482:

Terravos.4059:

Anyway i tried testing that Melee thing how since ya said it seems random.. and I really do think they won’t heal unless the bird drops in health..I let a mob pet beat on a mob while it beat on me, and i let it get me down to 1k health, not once did the Bird use the heal…the second I let it the bird tank (swapped gear) it would pop its health soon as it dropped in health

Yeah, being injured is a prerequisite for this skill, which I listed in my earlier post.

Which if you think about it, Makes zero bloody sense to have it setup that way. Mainly cause The Moa isn’t a Tanky pet..You generally don’t want it to be tanking….

So requiring the Heal to be based off what the Moa’s health is just seems crazy.

Esp with the low low radius it has

If you want healing, i’m pretty sure the Fern Hound is far far better then Moa is and ever will be.

PvX

Guys guys, I just got a brilliant idea for a elite skill that possibly could revolutionize solo spvp, solo wvw roaming and soloing / group play in general!!! I’m not sure if its already suggested.

How about this

Listen.. You listening?

Here it goes

What about an elite skill that allows the ranger to have both pets active and fighting beside you for a short duration?

Say you have chosen the alpine wolf and a drake as your primary pets and you are using the alpine wolf for the moment and then you use the elite skill and your other pet(the drake) pops up and fights beside you together with your alpine wolf for say…. 15~25 seconds.

Using the this elite skill also gives 3seconds of quickness, 10 seconds of fury, 1-2 might and 20 seconds of speed(can be adjusted to not make it to overpowered)
When this elite skill is activated and if your current pet is dead or are at low health it will be revived/healed.

Least i didn’t suggest permastowing or removing pet which is btw my favorite suggestions so far.

PvE

Goal
To remove some of the randomness from the shortbow in PvE

Proposal
Removing the flanking requirement from the shortbow 1 skill.

Reasoning
First, the Ranger is suppose to be a skirmisher and not bursting. This means that their 1 skills should be reliable as they will be used throughout the fight (as opposed to ideal burst where you opponent would be dead after using all you abilities). Right now the shortbow has a bit of unpredictability when it comes to its constant damage in pve settings. This is due to the lack of an aggro function. Since aggro can not be controlled and it often switch between players it is hard, if not impossible, to guarantee every attack will be flanking. This is a problem because some fight have time sensitive components (due to damage outputs, risk of mistakes, achiev) and unreliable dps like from the shortbow holds back the user.

Risks
If this is implemented in pvp there is a risk of the bleed spam being too strong. If not implemented in pvp there is a risk that the associated damage adjustments would make the weapon weak in pvp

If the moa is in a place where damage is being taken, that’s where the heal should be… wouldn’t make sense for the moa to heal in an area based on what the ranger was experiencing far away.

Rangers need serious cleaving/aoe options. It’s one of the main reasons they’re useless in large scale WvW and undesired in PvE.

Just making pets take 80% less damage from aoe and cleaving, giving them their own separate heal on the pet bar, and a baseline speed increase would help a lot.

Remove the 45 sec cd on pet death. Keep the cd at 15 seconds per swap.

Buff pet f2 because their utility is miserable for the cd the f2 has, make it instant or 0.5 sec and usable on the move.

Pet CC skills and stuff like moa cry should not be randomly activated by the AI. It should be under player control.

But we’ve been talking about this for over 1.5+ years so who knows if anything will change considering Jon Peters announced shortly after release that rangers would be revised, and there’s yet to be any meaningful revision. In fact, the biggest changes to rangers for the most part have been nerfs to the condi bunkers for spvp’s sake.

The beastmaster trait line special stat should be made into pet ability cd reduction and not an increase to stat investment.

By cd reduction I mean to both the passive abilities used by the pet and the active abilities (F2).

The reason for this is two fold, first is a ranger wants a pet that is a complementary role to their own role, i.e. tank/dps, bruiser (tankydps)/support, they would be more punished because they went into the pet traitline compared to other pet trait line rangers using pets of the same role (dps/dps) than their non beastmaster counterpart. This is because a tanky pet does not take full advantage of dps stats as a dps pet or vice versa but they take similar advantage of cool down reduction on their abilities.
The second reason is that support and control pets do not get as large of an increase off of more stats than dps or tank pets. This is due to the majority of their functions coming from abilities the do not scale with main stats (except for maybe healing power). This forces the trait line to focus on dealing damage or mitigating it, instead using each pet to the best of its functions.

Having the stat be cd reduction would solve both of the problems. An offensive bear would get tankier because they could use defy pain more often and a defensive feline would become more of an offensive threat because they could maul and bite their foes more often. Also this would increase the effectiveness of support pets because they could support more often (moas could heal more often and spiders could imobilize more often)

This change would allow increase the effectiveness of every pet family equally for every ranger, rather than just those that compliment the rangers stats.

SkiTz.4590:

AEFA.9035:

Hey. I dont mean to offend anyone here. But since most of you are arguing and have a good topic, as i was reading about pets and their sucky skills. Might as well do something productive and make a lists of broken traits that the devs should change. what i dont like is when people argue and push on problems that rangers know instead of creating a solution to the problem.

You dont like something? Pile them up and propose a solution since most of you are at it arguing about pet family skills, drakes cone shape inaccurate shrieks, moa cone shrieks etc. Propose a solution, bigger problem are as follow, not sure if its been solved:

1. Traps moving to another trait. Allie mentioned this is on the menu. Question is where to put them

2. Ranger pets in WvW

3. Someone mentioned Shouts before offering different boons to allies when traited 30 deep in NM. This is the bread and butter IMO that could open up team support as ranger in wvw than spirits.

Ex: protect me traited gives allies and pet protection for 6 secs in a 600 radius

4. Pet family and skill. Youre all at it, might as well theory craft or revised the whole pet skills per family. I dont see why not.

We have tried since release to create solutions… anet can’t do it, when will you get that?

the last 1.5 years have been nothing in terms of making rangers and their pets viable
What makes you think anet will all of a sudden make it work now

Theres almost 50 pages worth of solutions in this thread alone
Want more? the devs can read the ranger forums for even more specific ones

The solutions are already out there
Community has given their ideas and feedback, its up to anet now to make something of it.

Well first of all, a negative mind will never give you a positive outcome. And you all wonder why we barely see Dev’s responding in Ranger forums back then and now is because of people like this in game who cry and cant forget about the past. The CDI is now, meaning the chance for a change is now and half of the thread are people arguing. I wish I have that much time in my life to demoralize people online.

Game Mode: PVE

Goal: These changes is to give a different perspective to, in my opinion, one of the most underused family of pets in game.

Functionality: Currently the porcine family are barely use because of its random skill forage, this is a big problem to a player when your pet may or may not be able to provide the certain item/support that you need in that exact moment. Also picking up the foraged item makes them more less desirable than other pets.

Risks: No associated risk. Just improvements.

Porcine family rework

- Brutal Charge to have reduced cast time of 2 seconds, down from 2.5 seconds. Speed improved to increase chance of hitting foes.

1. Boar
from its forage items, it is safe to assume that this porcine specializes on crown control.

New F2 skill Headbutt: Leap. Deals # damage to your foe, leaving them stunned for 3s. Range: 300 radius. (CD: 30 secs)

2. Siamoth
from its forage items, it is safe to assume that this porcine specializes on stealth and blinding foes.

New F2 skill Track: Reveals stealth or camouflage enemies in a 600 radius for 3 seconds. (CD: 30 secs)

3. Pig
from its forage items, it is safe to assume that this porcine specializes on team support.

New F2 skill Healing Seed: Gives regeneration and cures condition for you and your allies in a 600 radius for 4 seconds. (CD: 45 secs)

4. Warthog
from its forage items, it is safe to assume that this porcine specializes on inflicting conditions.

New F2 skill Body Slam: Deals # damage to your foe, inflicting weakness and cripple for #s. Range: 300 radius. (CD: 30 secs)

Phalaphone.1642:

Although I like some of the ideas in the summary two additions seems to push beastmaster rangers into using one family of pets.

1. Cleansing Swap: it encourages the player to swap for the condi cleanse and not to utilize the other pet.
snip

2. Having stats scale with pets is needed, having these weighted by family is against using varied pets.
snip

1. any traits encourage the player to play in a certain way, and the way I understood it, was that it would be a trait… So just don’t take “on swap” traits, build works like you want it to…

2. If I build zerk using a zerk pet zerk pet will deal even more damage, using a bunker pet? Well bunker pet is still gonna be tanky, but will also deal damage.
If one build tanky having a tanky pet, pet will be even more tanky, but if taking a damage pet, it will also have more life.
I find it’s great that synergy with the pet would be increased, while allowing a more startegized build.
+ for those having ascended, pet scaling with gear is badly needed…

Phalaphone.1642:

The beastmaster trait line special stat should be made into pet ability cd reduction and not an increase to stat investment.

By cd reduction I mean to both the passive abilities used by the pet and the active abilities (F2).

The reason for this is two fold, first is a ranger wants a pet that is a complementary role to their own role, i.e. tank/dps, bruiser (tankydps)/support, they would be more punished because they went into the pet traitline compared to other pet trait line rangers using pets of the same role (dps/dps) than their non beastmaster counterpart. This is because a tanky pet does not take full advantage of dps stats as a dps pet or vice versa but they take similar advantage of cool down reduction on their abilities.
The second reason is that support and control pets do not get as large of an increase off of more stats than dps or tank pets. This is due to the majority of their functions coming from abilities the do not scale with main stats (except for maybe healing power). This forces the trait line to focus on dealing damage or mitigating it, instead using each pet to the best of its functions.

Having the stat be cd reduction would solve both of the problems. An offensive bear would get tankier because they could use defy pain more often and a defensive feline would become more of an offensive threat because they could maul and bite their foes more often. Also this would increase the effectiveness of support pets because they could support more often (moas could heal more often and spiders could imobilize more often)

This change would allow increase the effectiveness of every pet family equally for every ranger, rather than just those that compliment the rangers stats.

I get your second argument, which could be remediated by having all stats apply to pet, and not just an add to their base stats, but I really don’t get your first… If I would put 30 in BM line, I would expect all my pet’s attribute to go up, not only its main… 300 more attack to a tanky pet, and 300 more life/toughness to an attack pet are not negligible…
and what… 30 points to have a 30% reduction in CD, VS 30 points to get my pets to be at the same time more tanky and stronger in their attack… I’d rather have the stronger in everything than a mere 30% CD reduction on skills I don’t even get to control…

AEFA.9035:

The CDI is now, meaning the chance for a change is now and half of the thread are people arguing. I wish I have that much time in my life to demoralize people online.

Ahem.

AEFA.9035:

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.

I couldn’t resist.

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.

As some others have pointed out the 2×4 analogy is a bit off as pets are closer to a foundation issue (houses are leveled to fix the foundation). While I can see the rebalancing of rangers as a lot of work I feel it is long overdue.

The pet stow idea fixes this issue as damage reverts to the player.

Rebalancing the 70% 30% fixes this issue.

If you can fix the pets attacking and F2 issues and give them more survivability then kudos and thank you. But unless those fixes are ready to roll out now, we are left waiting for a fix to an issue that should have been fixed in beta.

Again, thank you for your posts.

Still slogging through the thread so my apologies if this has been suggested already. This should be fairly easy to implement:

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Have traps last as long as I’m on the map and provide a visual and audible indicator of when they are triggered no matter how far away from me they are.

Goal of Proposal
I’ve noticed that when I leave an untriggered Ambush Thief trap and walk away from it, if it gets triggered later on, an NPC Thief will appear next to my Thief, even if I’m nowhere near the trap. This is very useful in WvW to provide a warning if an enemy, including a stealthed thief, crosses a choke point that’s out of sight. For example, I could sit in Langor or Quentin Lake in the Eternal Battlegrounds and drop a trap at both entrances to Danelon that would warn me if a group of enemies was trying to slip in and flip the camp before they even started attacking the NPCs there. Since a trap ranger could drop three traps, they could cover quite a bit of ground that way. This would be particularly useful on servers with low WvW populations that can’t have players watching everything directly. Also can be useful for detecting Thieves and Mesmers running around inside of friendly structures.

Proposal Functionality
Rangers traps should remain in place until they are triggered, redeployed, or the Ranger leaves the map. When the trap is triggered, the ranger will get a visual cue containing the trap’s icon (so they can tell which trap was triggered) and a brief sound effect that’s different for each trap type warning the ranger that the trap has been triggered, even if they are nowhere near it.

Associated Risks
This could make surprise capping unwatched targets in WvW harder, but I don’t personally consider making empty camps, towers, and keeps harder to take and warning defenders they are in danger a problem.

Yoh.8469:

Atherakhia.4086:

xallever.1874:

Tryxtr.6295:

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

How do you guys visualize the pet ought to perform in WvW?

In a zerg encounter for instance, what do you expect the pet ought to do for you?

The arguably better archers like thieves or warriors also don’t bring too much into the table during such encounters. The thieves can put a poison field, but also die quite easily if they are targeted.

The thing is that if the Rangers are meant for single encounters, they are better suited as roamers. Just that at this juncture, thieves and mesmers (and arguably eles too) perform much better than rangers.

I don’t see it problematic that certain professions bring more to the table in a zerg situations such as guardians, warriors and eles. Just that currently every other profession can do what the Ranger can do better.

There are 2 scenarios that work…

You either make pets highly survivable but remove the swap mechanic so players aren’t overwhelmed. Or you scale back the focus of the pet and make it an inconsequential part of the game overall.

The first would be ideal and simply making the pet take 75% less damage from AE’s that don’t have the pet targetted would solve almost all of the survivability issues. They aren’t like phantasms and clones that can be replaced almost immediately. Plus if you remove the swap mechanic from the game, players can choose to kill the pet quickly and the Ranger is then stuck with a 30% dps loss.

The alternate scenario is you just reduce the impact the pet has and you effectively turn it into a class specific DOT. All pets do the same damage, that damage is about what a 6 stack of bleed is capable of, and you call it a day. You then increase the Ranger’s damage and coefficients up to a competetive level and make the F2 functions spawn ‘sprites’ that do their pet specific abilities instead of worrying about the pet being alive or dead at the time of activation.

Neither is ideal, but both methods solve the problems players have with the pets.

Actually I can think of a third option.
A great deal of the problems with pets stem from the fact that they are both always on and non-optional. We don’t have these problems with Mesmer Illusions, even thou they are non-optional, but we do have similar problems with Necromancer Minions that are always on.

So what if the pet wasn’t always on, but rater a summon?
You summon them, they do their thing while also giving you a pet skill, then they go away. Sort of like a Phantasm that can change targets, and a great deal tougher.
You could have up to 4 pets this way bound to each of the F1-F4 keys, and once summoned the bar changes to what we have now, with F4 recalling your pet and putting it on cooldown so you can summon another pet.

Then the Power and Effectiveness of the Ranger vs the pets can be reworked, you can have pets that are very powerful, but don’t last long. And the Ranger isn’t as required to have a chunk of their power go towards having the pet around at all times.
They could share a similar relationship between a Mesmer and their Illusions.

This way they wouldn’t have to survive an AOE encounter, as they could be traited for on death effects, and you would have enough backup pets to fall back on, some of which might be better for dealing with that situation.
It would solve a whole lot of problems, and I think it’s a good compromise between permastow and not.

Thoughts on this idea?

misterdevious.6482:

If the moa is in a place where damage is being taken, that’s where the heal should be… wouldn’t make sense for the moa to heal in an area based on what the ranger was experiencing far away.

Seeing as how it’s not controllable either way there’s no difference. But as a player attempting to use a faulty mechanic to their best ability, the move should go off whenever off cooldown much like every other pet skill.

Ideally ANet would give us control of the secondary skills and this whole discussion would be moot.

Still slogging through the thread. I’ve seen this suggested before so it’s probably already been mentioned, but wanted to make sure it’s mentioned in case it hasn’t been:

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Combine Piercing Arrows and with the Reduced Recharge into Crack Shot to match the Warrior trait under the Ranger Skirmishing trait line. Add a new trait to Marksmanship line that increases Critical Hit chance with Bow attacks.

Goal of Proposal
Rangers have too many traits critical to being an effective bow specialist concentrated into the top two tiers Marksmanship trait line — Spotter, Piercing Arrows, & Eagle Eye, also competing with the very desirable but unrelated Signet of the Beastmaster for trait points. This would move one of the critical traits into another trait line and combine it with another related trait to bring it into line with what another class (Warriors) already have, which opens up more build options.

Proposal Functionality
Combine Piercing Arrows and with the Reduced Recharge into a Crack Shot trait that replaces Reduced Recharge in the Skirmishing trait line. Replace Piercing Arrows with another useful ranged attack trait such as an improved critical chance (another trait type that Warriors already have). Another option would be another trap-oriented trait such as increased condition duration for traps.

Associated Risks
Warriors already have traits like those suggested so the risks should be minimal.

Area: PvE
Main comment is that i’ve seen you say that people like the pet just not how it’s controlled, but i love ranger, always played since gw1 release and i loved the fact that i could play ranger with the choice of not having that selected.

gw2 forces you to have a pet, and then when you want to stow it because it gets in the way ( so annoying) 2 seconds later it’s back again…
i think you should be able to select whether you want a percentage of damage to be given to AI or whether you want 100% of dmg through your bow ^^
sorry i love ranger, i just thought and have always thought pets a stupid XD

i have no idea about the goal of the proposal.. XD and i dont know about the risks, just know that all my ranger friends would prefer no pet… ^_^ That’s all

Flytrap.8075:

Thoughts on this idea?

No, for the mere fact that some pets are HoM rewards and hold some prestige. We should be rewarding with more customization, not less. I want my dire pets back and ability to buy silly hats. Everyone who doesn’t like it can play another class.

That’s the whole ridiculous thing here. We have pets like rock dogs and dolphins among others that really could be used, but are not because we are too busy discussing how to get rid of them.

Meanwhile I honestly think Anet is holding back on everything because in the back of their mind pets are still OP. After all of the nerfs, some dev somewhere believes that truly fixing pets is going to cause a huge issue. Look at the uproar when our ‘dumb’ pets hit harder and were able to run farther. Now you want to make them smarter?

I know the CDI is very illusive man in nature, but could we at least get a top 10 ideas post? Or at least something that indicates what the devs foresee working and not working? We can sit here and argue about always out, perma stow, magic animal summons, aspects, etc. and none of it actually matters if it is considered OP by a dev.

Tia Silvensong.6840:

Area: PvE
Main comment is that i’ve seen you say that people like the pet just not how it’s controlled, but i love ranger, always played since gw1 release and i loved the fact that i could play ranger with the choice of not having that selected.

gw2 forces you to have a pet, and then when you want to stow it because it gets in the way ( so annoying) 2 seconds later it’s back again…
i think you should be able to select whether you want a percentage of damage to be given to AI or whether you want 100% of dmg through your bow ^^
sorry i love ranger, i just thought and have always thought pets a stupid XD

I completely agree.

If pet stow was permanent we would be in control of 100% of our damage

I’m not trying to kill pets or builds. If you enjoy your pet use it! if your build or playstyle or dungeon don’t require pets, stow them! It takes nothing away from the class in fact it adds viable builds.

Terravos.4059:

-too long to quote-

Xorsus, it doesnt matter if he runs concentration training or not, that trait does not work.
Tested it with all moas, dogs, jungle stalker – NOTHING.
The tooltip says one duration, but the actual boon duration remains the same (just hover over your boon line and watch as you activate, you’ll see moa fury/protection or jungle stalker might is the same every time. regardless if you slot concentration training or load up with full boon duration gear on yourself.
Pet boon durations are bugged and locked at basic duration. me and several others reported this bug in the bug section over half a year ago and it has not even been adressed.

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.

We wouldn’t dislike pets if they were reliable.
We also lost hope of you ever fixing them. You tried and failed multiple times and you yourselves said fixing pets would be lots of work and as such it would not be possible.

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?

Let me share a piece of Monty Python script i think is relevant here.

“King of Swamp Castle: When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.”

If i remember correctly the fourth castle eventualy sinks into the swamp.

Where i’m getting at is, you’ve been bringing in new 2×4′s to rebuild the castle … i mean, patching pets for one and a half years, but the profession sinks into the swamp every time.

runeblade.7514:

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.

This.

This would make much more sense for ranger viability during certain scenarios.

-Running into massive AoE, stow pet, gain a passive buff. Release pet when needed.
-Fighting a PU mesmer, stow pet so it doesn’t unnecessarily kill clones and make your life difficult.

I love my pet, but there are just some situations where I think “hmm, I wish I could get rid of you for a bit” and being able to do so AND get a small buff for doing so would be great – The pet aspects being discussed would fit into this greatly and allow various new builds to be designed.

Seriously though, how come the warriors get adrenaline and an extra attack but if they trait themselves, they can get a passive health regen for not using their class feature and we’re stuck with being forced to use it?

Not just warriors:
- Mesmer that don’t use their shatters still have their clones as distractions..
- The thief doesn’t have any negative aspects involved with not using their steal. (same with engie, necro and elementalist with their function buttons even if they are more effective when using them, they aren’t necessary)
- Guardians that don’t activate their virtues gain passive buffs.

Fact is, when pets die, we become less effective and there are too many situation wherein pets will not survive. Why shouldn’t we have the option to “stow” them and receive a buff to compensate?

That said, I feel I should make it clear that I am not anti-pet (I love using them) but I’d like to be allowed to not use them when necessary.

Tl;dr – Stow pet for aspect buff – good. Pets permanently on and dying in AoE, leaving us at a disadvantage – bad.

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

I’m fairly happy with how Rangers work in PvE because the NPCs, for the most part, behave predictably and obediently enough that I can whittle them down over time and defeat them. The only time this is frustrating is with timed events and bosses that occasionally reset if kited too far after being whittled most of the way down. Of course this is never going to make a Ranger anyone’s first choice for speed dungeon runs, but I can live with that.

This is also true when dealing with NPCs in WvW, where I can solo supply camps pretty well and take out dolyaks quickly. But it doesn’t work well at all against human players and (ignoring the problem of allies showing up to help when combat goes on too long in WvW here) I think this gets to the gist of the problem for me:

WatchTheShow.7203:

Firstly, there is no real “kiting” in Guild Wars 2. In WvW, just about every weapon and class have multiple gap closers. Gap closers are good and healthy for the game. Without gap closers, no melee players would ever be able to catch up to a ranged player and kill them. The ranged player would plink away at their health until the melee person died. This never happens in Guild Wars 2 because of the many condition removals, gap closers and dodge rolls we have. Not to mention the CC some classes have access to.

Even if I manage to whittle a player down in WvW, most them can simply run away from me before I can kill them because they all have ways of moving faster than me. In practice, it seems like every other class can pretty much catch me or run away from me at will (a bit of an exaggeration but not much). (There are also classes that can fire off heals faster than I can do damage, but that’s a different problem that often comes with acceptable trade-offs.)

So my question is why shouldn’t a Ranger have the movement capabilities necessary to plink away at an enemy and kill them unless the enemy works to get away from it? Shouldn’t the class that needs to spend the most time to kill it’s enemies have more control over the duration of the encounter than their enemies? Why shouldn’t a ranger be able to keep up with an enemy trying to run away or run away, themselves, if faced with massive burst damage or a larger group? I’m not saying that a Ranger should always be able to plink away at a melee enemy until they die but that it never happens is absurd, especially if that’s the intended mode of play for the class.

Note that I often find myself specifically targeted by enemies when I’m in a group because they view Rangers as an easy kill that can’t get away. They certainly aren’t taking me out because they are afraid of the damage I’ll do or my pet will do.

So, all of that said:

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Increase Ranger movement boosts to make them one of the fastest classes on the map so that it’s actually difficult to hunt them down or get away from them.

Goal of Proposal
For the “whittle down” strategy to work, the Ranger needs to be able to control the duration of encounters so they can keep up the damage over a long time. Rangers are also very vulnerable to bursty high-damage classes and have trouble leaving combat with them thanks to their closing skills. Thieves and Mesmers have effective strategies for entering and leaving combat at whim and there is no reason why Rangers shouldn’t have a similar capability since there are similarities with their niches.

Proposal Functionality
Signet of the Hunt: Increase Passive Movement Increase to +33%. This would allow Rangers to normally move at the burst speed that many other classes move at. In practice, many small groups and zergs maintain this speed though a series of AoE boosts making it very hard for a single character to be able to escape them.

Make all Swiftness applied by rangers increase Movement by +50% instead of +33%. For players and allies, this would include Call of the Wild, Quick Shot, Storm Spirit, Rampage as One, Tail Wind, Healer’s Celerity, Nature’s Voice.

Alternately, give Rangers a toolkit of other abilities that can be sued to control the distance and duration of a combat encounter that other classes have available — teleports, CC abilties, and so on, but I think increasing a Ranger’s movement is actually a simpler way to fix much of the problem.

Associated Risks
May be too powerful for PvP and should probably not apply there. I think it would largely be irrelevant in PvE, since I can already run away from just about an mob in PvE with the existing Signet of the Hunt or Traveler Runes. All it would mean is that I could cross a map a bit faster without using speed boosts and a bit faster still if I do.

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Increase Revealed from Sic Em to 10 seconds to give Rangers time to actually do damage to the revealed opponent.

Goal of Proposal
If Rangers are intended to deal steady damage that whittles down an opponent rather than burst damage to bring them down quickly, then they need abilities like this to give them time to take advantage of them. This would also give Rangers a role as Thief hunter in WvW. Note that there are certain benefits to putting classes into a Paper-Rock-Scissors relationship, which Rangers become the Rock that smashes the perma-stealth Thief Scissors. Note that I’ve had trouble DPSing down good thieves who know how to dodge and run in WvW even when given 30 seconds of Revealed by a Stealth Disruptor trap so I don’t think this is too powerful.

Proposal Functionality
Increase Revealed provided by Sic Em to 10 seconds.

Associated Risks
Potentially too powerful for PvP. May require additional adjustments to Thief and/or Mesmer to compensate for how much Revealed makes them vulnerable.

Ranger does not mean Beast Master
Rangers are solo or small group wilderness experts who can adapt to any situation, and that’s why we love them. This class is interesting and I don’t want to make them into a warrior, I already have a warrior alt. But this issue about pets is holding the class back.

Spirits are an important part of a ranger’s bag of tricks, but I only use them in sPvP and dungeons, it’s my choice.

Unless I run a beastmaster build, I don’t want my pet taking damage from me. I would like that choice.

Add a grandmaster trait that gives us 100% of the power for our class and this issue goes away.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Add a grandmaster trait that gives us 100% of the power for our class and this issue goes away.

I don’t think that we should have to spend trait points to get to 100% of our base power.

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a larger pool of pets to rotate through than 2. I suggest 3-5. Don’t trigger the switching cooldown counter until the pet attacks.

Goal of Proposal
The death of a pet is less of a problem if the Ranger has has more healthy pets to rotate through. This also gives the ranger a lot more tactical flexibility to pick the right pet for an encounter without having to swap out pets between combat. This would also mitigate the problem of losing pet names when the pet is changed.

Proposal Functionality
Add another 1-3 pet slots for a total of 3-5 (starting with adding one more would be a good fairly safe way to kitten how powerful and useful it is). Hitting the swap pet control would flip to the next pet in the rotation. The cooldown counter for swapping pets wouldn’t trigger until the pet attacks something so that a player could flip past one pet to get to another.

Associated Risks
Having trouble flipping to the right pet. Getting stuck with the wrong pet if it attacks before it’s flipped. May be too powerful for PvP.

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a pet with a block or reflection ability to help them survive ranged AoE attacks.

Goal of Proposal
Make it easier for pets to survive AoEs, bosses, and other players.

Proposal Functionality
Add a pet that can Block and/or create a Reflection bubble as their special skill.

Associated Risks
May be too powerful for PvP.

Joiry.2504:

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

I think they could learn a lot by going back and taking a look at 1st Edition AD&D and other tabletop role-playing games and wargames when it comes character roles and tactical complexity because they share much in common in that regard. See: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/elements01nov02.html

“As a system weakens character niche, it reduces tactical play. Universal Resolution systems, lack of character differences, sole dominating weapon selections, all these things can combine to create a tactically bland experience where the answer to any problem is obvious and unchanging.”

Note that in most tabletop RPGs, ranged attacks are also weaker than melee attacks but Rangers are generally given other abilities including stealth comparable to Thieves and abilities that let them track down enemies.

Berk.8561:

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a larger pool of pets to rotate through than 2. I suggest 3-5. Don’t trigger the switching cooldown counter until the pet attacks.

Goal of Proposal
The death of a pet is less of a problem if the Ranger has has more healthy pets to rotate through. This also gives the ranger a lot more tactical flexibility to pick the right pet for an encounter without having to swap out pets between combat. This would also mitigate the problem of losing pet names when the pet is changed.
-snip-

Specific Game Mode
WvW/PvE

Proposal Overview
Give Rangers a pet with a block or reflection ability to help them survive ranged AoE attacks.

Goal of Proposal
Make it easier for pets to survive AoEs, bosses, and other players.
-snip-

I can’t say that I like the idea of pet shuffling between 3-5 pets- I personally think the prospective risks you outlined outweigh the benefits of implementing it like that. Perhaps 4 pets? Kind of like Engineer toolbelt skills, but with pets! Having to iterate through your pets to get the “right one” would be a weird mechanic though.

I do like the idea of more reflect/block pet skills. I think the only one we have right now is the Reef Drake underwater skill. It makes a feedback bubble at its location, which is super cool (in your face, krait!)! Having a skill like that on land would definitely be interesting- but it would be cooler still if we didn’t have to rename our pets when we wanted a reflect (I know, I know, I keep going on about that).

Jocksy.3415:

1. any traits encourage the player to play in a certain way, and the way I understood it, was that it would be a trait… So just don’t take “on swap” traits, build works like you want it to…

2. If I build zerk using a zerk pet zerk pet will deal even more damage, using a bunker pet? Well bunker pet is still gonna be tanky, but will also deal damage.
If one build tanky having a tanky pet, pet will be even more tanky, but if taking a damage pet, it will also have more life.
I find it’s great that synergy with the pet would be increased, while allowing a more startegized build.
+ for those having ascended, pet scaling with gear is badly needed…

1. Sorry that i didn’t make it clear, or even remotely state my problems with this trait, I do not think it belongs on in the beastmaster line as it promotes swapping pets for a function ignoring the actual change of pets. I like the trait as it is but I feel that both thematically and functionally it would fit better into another trait line as the interaction with the pet is more of a side effect rather than the point of the ability.

2.I am 100% for pet scaling, the problem I have is with the weighted stats for pet families (or at least how i understood it). My interpretations is that pets would get x% of the masters stats for all stats except for the primary stats of the master where they would get y% (where y>x). The reason I am against this is that pets would get different amounts of total stat points from their masters. This is a simplified example that I am using to communicate my idea more clearly. Lets assume we have 2 rangers, one with 200 power and 100 vitality and one with 100 power and 200 vitality. We also have two different families feline who’s main stat is power (for the sake of representation lets just say main stats get 10% of the rangers stats and all others get 5%) and the bear who’s main stat is vitality. This means that the bear gets 10 power and 10 vitality from the power ranger and 5 power and 20 vitality from the vitality ranger. The feline gets 20 power and 5 vitality from the power ranger and 10 power and 10 vitality from the vitality ranger. Why I have a problem with this is that non-ideal pets, i.e. feline with vitality ranger, get less stat points than ideal pets (25 versus 20 point in our example). This might seem small but depending on the numbers the divide could be a larger percentage.
I believe even stat gains would function (every pet gets x% of every stat from the ranger) because each family already has greater benefits from certain stats. The cats (currently) passively casted abilities deal damage and scale off of power where the bears do not for example.

Jocksy.3415:

I get your second argument, which could be remediated by having all stats apply to pet, and not just an add to their base stats, but I really don’t get your first… If I would put 30 in BM line, I would expect all my pet’s attribute to go up, not only its main… 300 more attack to a tanky pet, and 300 more life/toughness to an attack pet are not negligible…
and what… 30 points to have a 30% reduction in CD, VS 30 points to get my pets to be at the same time more tanky and stronger in their attack… I’d rather have the stronger in everything than a mere 30% CD reduction on skills I don’t even get to control…

Two things first, since conditions duration and boon duration and very difficult to gear for (with these being the main benefiting stats for support or control pets) making every stat be improved by the trait line it would not make it a completely even bonus for every pet it would help.

Secondly, stats and scaling would need to be balanced so an un-invested pet is not useless and a fully invested pet is not op. Also my interpretation of the new traitline stat would be and increase in stats from the ranger (so un-invested gets x% and a fully invested gets 3x% for example). My fear is that this change would mean that general pet survialebility would be decrease (being remedied by the aspect for non-beastmaster rangers). Since all scaling is based off of the rangers stats (no longer a flat 300 vit and toughness for a zerker ranger) that a fully invested zerker ranger would have a super squishy pet because the ranger has nothing invested in vitality and toughness (I don’t want a tanky cat for everyone but I want a noticably more tanky cat for a beastmaster ranger than non-beastmaster). My suggestion would alleviate this fear and some potential problems because the range of stats would decrease (would now be proportional to the rangers gear instead of rangers gear and points in beastmasters line) but the range of effectiveness would still exist.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ashen.2907:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Add a grandmaster trait that gives us 100% of the power for our class and this issue goes away.

I don’t think that we should have to spend trait points to get to 100% of our base power.

I agree. I’d actually prefer this.

Rebalance the 70% 30% split to 95% 5% and add a minor trait in BM that allows you change back to the 70% 30% if you rely on on your pet.

Treat pets as an addition to rangers the same way spirits are. Rangers are an A la carte class, so please allow us to not order a double helping of pet.

Or just balance it to 95%-5% and make the BM Pet Attribute Bonus something like -5% ranger damage per 10 points and +10% pet damage per 10 points.

Aridia.3042:

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.

Please propose these questions to the Devs:

1. How often should a pet land a hit on a pvp target?

2. Should the number of landed hits be affected by how deeply you spec into BM?

3. How do you propose to have a coherent framework of factoring avg pet damage for this class (and balance the weapon damage accordingly) when some pets hit way harder than another and you can’t predict what pets will be used and how deeply one will spec into BM? (e.g. 30BM Jag vs 0 BM Brown Bear)

I suspect when you get them to answer those questions truthfully, you’ll realize that part of the house never called for a 2×4 but rather really needed some concrete walls.

Don’t see how ur questions show anything, its essentially the same as whether a player is specced for beserker or some hybrid.

As far as how often should they hit, that should depend on movement speed difference and dodges.

Right now its too easy to dodge a pet for some classes, but they could change that by fixing pets. One problem is players used to be like pets, evwey skill rooted. And thwy had long cast times. They never fixed this. Do any heart where you get transformed into a pet and you’ll see how bad their casting is. if they corrected it for players, they can do it for pets.

Do they want to? I don’t know

Just wanted to chime in and voice something of a great step in the right direction:
Viper’s Nest updated to the Poison Field.

What possibility does this open up?

When Drakes perform their Blast finisher, they also apply weakness to foes… But since they’re using a blast finisher, it will also trigger the weakness from Viper Nest.

By using two Drakes to blast the Poison combo field, you can stack 25-30 seconds of AoE Weakness on foes, within only the space of a few seconds. On a very low cool-down as well, of only 20 seconds.

It’s worth noting Asura could already do this using Radiation Field, and stack much higher duration of AoE weakness. However, what makes Viper Nest unique is its low cool-down.

It took awhile for me to realize how amazing a change this is, and ever since then, I have been incredibly excited for this buff.

Phalaphone.1642:

Snip

I see your concerns, now

I agree the pet swapping option shouldn’t be in BM, I guess I just assumed it would be better in WS

The way I saw BM scaling is that BM line would still apply, though better, becaus right now 30 points in BM gives the pet 150 bonus points (not sure of the number), instead of the expected 300…

And the way I see pet’s stats scaling with rangers’, is that, lets say pet gets an overall 10% reduction in it’s base stats, 10% of these ranger’s stats would apply to pets, that is, untraited, really just a way to take into account the ascended stuff and the fact that pets are balanced around exotics.
So logically for a zerk ranger in exotics with a zerk pet, the pets stats would be approximately the same, overall (adding them together), though it would have less vitality/toughness and more attack power than it does now… But if the pet has a PVT ranger, it will have a bit more vitality an toughness than the current one, but will also hit for less.
It would be somewhat harder to have a condi/heal/bunker ranger with a direct damage pet that hits like a truck, but it seems ok to me, especially if they can make the pet reliable…