Guild Wars 2

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Did you actually just call for a ranger Nerf?

If you as a thief cannot fend off a ranger pet I’d say it’s L2P issue. I don’t mean that to sound snarky, it’s just basic thief play.

Dagger 5 on the pet and you go invisible, or use any of your other stealths.
Teleport away by any of 5 skills.
Caltrops slow pets as you moonwalk away.
If you have the revealed debuff on, blind the pet which is on a zero second cool down and it cannot damage you.

I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll get zero sympathy on a ranger forum about your thief issues.

runeblade.7514:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

runeblade.7514:

That isn’t a third option.

Despite hearing horror stories of pets, I never really had a problem with pets not hitting targets in PvE or in PvP. But that is for another discussion.

So lets assume that pets do hit targets 100% of the time. What would be wrong with this suggestion?

I’ve never had problems with pets and targeting in PvE, either. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, or that it’s not an issue. There’s enough reports to take it seriously as a complaint.

And what’s wrong with the suggestion? Pets hitting 100% of the time, infallibly. There’s something extremely wrong there.

So in other words, your third option is just a second option.

So in other words, you didn’t really read what I wrote and just want to complain about it.

“You want Rangers to be a fully pet class and don’t want Rangers to ever see a choice to dismiss a pet.”

I said to start this your suggestion for how to benefit from stowing a pet didn’t feel right to me, figured out a big reason why, and posted it. You put out a bad detail (100% hit chance) to try to get me to agree with your idea as being sound, and when I said that wasn’t useful you came back at me with trying to force me into one of two camps . . . both of which you could safely dismiss as not mattering.

I don’t mind the option to dismiss a pet, what I do mind are ideas which make it more attractive to play without a pet and turn the class into “warrior lite”.

wolfyrik.2017:

No, they’d be Rangers like we had in Guild Wars, you know, ones that worked. Which I’m kind of fine with.

Rangers in Guild Wars could function fine with the pets, due to three things I had a lot of use out of my pet:

First, they could lock a second target if I needed them to. I would like this back please. It allowed me to use the pet’s damage to help spread pressure and that was one thing a ranger could do decently enough.

Secondly, the bulk of their damage was not tied up in the pet, it was the same range as everyone else with a longbow and the proper Requirement being met (Marksmanship). The pet skill replaced one of eight skills on the bar . . . which was either inconsequential to the build or was incredibly important depending on how you built the bar.

Lastly, Comfort Animal meant my pet rarely had to take a dirt nap for 60 seconds. So uptime was much better, excluding things like “Frozen Earth” preventing resurrection skills. (I honestly don’t remember if pets could be picked up through it or nor. I didn’t often have to deal with it.)

There were builds which said “no pet” and there were builds which used the pet. They were both viable. The problem with the ranger in GW2 is primarily how there’s said to be a portion of our DPS potential tied up in the pet which is why our own output isn’t as high, and the pet tends to find 1001 ways to die quickly.

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

large post, bear with me, also equipping bow * cough *

After seeing so many pet discussion I just can’t help myself thinking about the pet more. So here it goes…

On analysis of the pet, especially in relation to the argued ‘class mechanic’ comparison with other classes, I came to the conclusion that it is not the pet that is the class mechanic, it is the [F2] player controlled skill that offers the class mechanic… It is this small skill with recharge time that is mostly comparable with Thief stealing, with Clone shattering, with the Engineer F skills, also the Warrior burst and the Necro shroud… all these mechanics have some sort of downtime related to them, and based upon that downtime (or charge up) the ‘class mechanic’ offers a certain amount of ‘functionality’.

The pet itself is ‘part of the ranger’, that happens to be tied into the profession-mechanic, where it having it’s own skills contributes to the strength of the ‘profession mechanic’. This may well be ‘why’ all the F2 skills on the pets are far from spectacular. It’s because this F2 skill only takes part of the ‘profession-mechanic-strength’, and shares some of it with the pet skills. And to complement, the ranger shares some of it’s strength with the pet as well, to make up for the rest of the strength of the pet…

Where a problem lies is Pet UPTIME, and this may well be the reason why there are various mechanics in the pet that focus on killing it, and possibly also why pets are so darned squishy, and hit for crap, and have long recharges. It is because the ‘profession mechanic’ is designed to have down/charge-time build into it. The pet simply has to perform bad, and die loads, because else it would provide to much ‘uptime’ for a profession mechanic balance situation, OR, the pets should loose strength (and be even weaker) to compensate for the fact it is up all the time… Obviously the ‘problem’ that stems from this is that the pet also takes a considerable amount of damage from the ranger, and the downtime that the profession mechanic needs is counterproductive to the uptime the ranger needs…

In this sense the statement that Allie made, where the pet makes ‘the Ranger’, is not correct (in my view). It isn’t the pet that makes the ranger, it is the pet-death that makes the ranger. Simply because the pet HAS TO DIE, it has to have downtime, to compensate for the fact that it utilizes profession-mechanic-power which by balance demands it has to have downtime …

I think originally the Pet & Ranger had strengths to compensate for this, mainly, due to the profession-mechanic needing downtime, and the pet also having ranger strength build in (which needed uptime). The ranger and pet had more strength during the ‘uptime’ of the pet, while ‘suffering’ during the down-time of the pet. What we have seen though, is a continued nerf’ing of this extra power, as the ranger was (and was so by design) stronger during the ‘uptime-phaze’ than anything around, while there has been little to no compensation during the ‘down-time’ of the pet, or improvements to increase the uptime to compensate for the power loss. It is what pretty much made us the least desirable profession for most formats in the game…

And to make matters more exact, the community that likes pets, doesn’t like to kill of their pet! They prefer ‘uptime’, and see ‘downtime’ as a mechanical weakness. Which, after the nerfs to the uptime, they are claiming ‘somewhat’ rightfully so…

This leads though to a counter intuitive conclusion:
As the pet increases it’s uptime, and reliability, it should likely loose some strength (so it becomes more in line with 30% ranger strength – and yes I know it’s nowhere near that now); at the same time the [F2] skills should increase in strength, to come more in line with profession mechanic strength divided over 2x [F2] where the ‘down-time’ of the mechanic is fully provided by the recharge time of the [F2] skill.

Because as long as the ‘profession-mechanic-power’ is shared on the pet, the pet will remain to need ‘downtime’ by design, and seeing we are not getting ‘extra power during uptime’ to compensate for the loss of 30% power during downtime of the pet, and we all want more reliable uptime. It means the ‘profession-mechanic’ needs to have its downtime come from something else and thus it’s power increased.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

The only thing about the first suggestion is it still runs along that line of “I can safely ignore the pet” other players do already. Either that or they stomp on it so it goes away since it dies so fast, problem solved.

So in the first suggestion, if we take raw damage off the pet and move it to the ranger, then there has to be something put there to replace that.

And I’d rather the uptime be improved, since that has the added effect of not making it easy to “pound on the pet til it goes away for 60”.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

The only thing about the first suggestion is it still runs along that line of “I can safely ignore the pet” other players do already. Either that or they stomp on it so it goes away since it dies so fast, problem solved.

So in the first suggestion, if we take raw damage off the pet and move it to the ranger, then there has to be something put there to replace that.

And I’d rather the uptime be improved, since that has the added effect of not making it easy to “pound on the pet til it goes away for 60”.

I think the pet should be loaded with either defensive support for the ranger and party or offensive support by debuffing the enemy or CCing him.
Furthermore, pet could apply vulnerability (if traited for), so they can’t be completely ignored.
The survivability aspect has to be encountered with an AI overhaul.
The first step to do this would be in my mind to switch the control over the pet to the clients. Right now the pet functions like this: Player hits Button > Client puts a request > server calculates > server responds: “Your request is the 3rd in the actionqueue”
If the control would be on the clientside, you could override actions and the overall reaction speed would be higher.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

The only thing about the first suggestion is it still runs along that line of “I can safely ignore the pet” other players do already. Either that or they stomp on it so it goes away since it dies so fast, problem solved.

So in the first suggestion, if we take raw damage off the pet and move it to the ranger, then there has to be something put there to replace that.

And I’d rather the uptime be improved, since that has the added effect of not making it easy to “pound on the pet til it goes away for 60”.

I think the pet should be loaded with either defensive support for the ranger and party or offensive support by debuffing the enemy or CCing him.
Furthermore, pet could apply vulnerability (if traited for), so they can’t be completely ignored.
The survivability aspect has to be encountered with an AI overhaul.
The first step to do this would be in my mind to switch the control over the pet to the clients. Right now the pet functions like this: Player hits Button > Client puts a request > server calculates > server responds: “Your request is the 3rd in the actionqueue”
If the control would be on the clientside, you could override actions and the overall reaction speed would be higher.

Oooooor, you’d see lots of hacking…

Switching client-side is a bad idea…

Solution seems to be to reduce downtime, since uptime advantage has been taken off?
Or make the difference between downtime/uptime less meaningful…

continued long post, bear has long since died, hope your attention hasn’t

To line up with the post that Tobias made, just above mine…

The pet in GW1 was a slot skill, and consequently it was balanced around that principle. It was basically a walking weapon that did x-damage/s in line with all other skill balance. It wasn’t until late in GW1 time, where power creep likely warranted ‘comfort animal’ to exist (as it didn’t originally, and wasn’t until after a lot of lobbying from the ranger community). It improved the use of the pet a lot… as a necro/ranger I had a spider pet in my curses build, specifically to trigger ‘mark of pain’, as it needed specific physical damage to trigger, and the meta for a lot of physical providing classes made them have non physical weapon mods. As a pugger I needed reliable triggers of the Mark, so I took the pet. (and loved it, as it being an UnderWorld spider it felt thematically right, also ressing it a lot made it somewhat feel like a minion, which, made it feel thematically right as well)

The biggest concern with the pet in GW1 though, was the fact that the ranger had to take all the skills for it. And if you truly wanted a good pet, you yourself ended up being ‘just a weapon, doing x damage/sec’, while still struggling with the AI. The one Hammer/Pet build aside (in pvp). ‘We’ (as in the GW1 pet interested players) were rather stoked to see the pet get their own skills in GW2. ‘But’ (unforeseeable) due to the removal of tank/healer and the introduction of more dynamic (moving) gameplay, the pet suffered even more, no more ‘still standing’ targets around a warrior to hit, and moving while casting (so no catch-up time). And instead of having skills on the pet we could control ourselves, we have to rely more on AI. And all sorts of problems more, (also see the thread) likely caused by the issues raised in my previous post above here…

Which ‘to me’, makes me long for a situation where the pet is simply a utility again. So it can be balanced as a utility, and improved through going for beast master traits (similar to putting points in BM in GW1). No [F2] skill control, just a pet with a bit more stuff on it besides an auto attack, a ‘guard/’heel’ command build in the ‘capture signet’ and a ‘resurrect pet’ change of skill once it dies. In fact, I would love to have 3 of these ‘capture signets’ available, so that I can have 3 pets at a time. (a beast-master has always been a ‘white’ minion master, with beasts instead of undead, and never a ‘boy and his pet’, or rather ‘the guard and his dog’. ) Possibly with a set of direct commands as we have (shouts) now. Complemented with f/e the Wand & ‘focus’ with more pet commands put on them as a designated weapon set for ‘pet mastery’.

To then have our ‘class mechanic’ be 3 preperations and scavenge:
F1 Serrated edges (bleed)
F2 Poisoned edges (poison)
F3 Hardened edges (penetration)
F4 Scavenge
Or something along those lines…

I have to wonder if people are serious about some of these suggestions or if it’s just an emotional reaction. You can’t suggest good design on an emotional, upset premise. You have to think about logistics and the developer’s core goal with the design. I think the problem Allie faces is that the OP didn’t draw the line solidly enough to curb posts born of bitterness and resentment instead of clear-headed design.

Having a CDR Ranger Balance thread chuck full of emotional outcries doesn’t help the Ranger profession, guys. The best way to have got results from this was to simply suggest great, REASONABLE design changes or buffs. Or playing the ball in the court they want and talking more about what you want from the pet AI instead of trying to kick it aside. There are many no-pet suggestion threads you could have gone to respectfully.

Jocksy.3415:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

The only thing about the first suggestion is it still runs along that line of “I can safely ignore the pet” other players do already. Either that or they stomp on it so it goes away since it dies so fast, problem solved.

So in the first suggestion, if we take raw damage off the pet and move it to the ranger, then there has to be something put there to replace that.

And I’d rather the uptime be improved, since that has the added effect of not making it easy to “pound on the pet til it goes away for 60”.

I think the pet should be loaded with either defensive support for the ranger and party or offensive support by debuffing the enemy or CCing him.
Furthermore, pet could apply vulnerability (if traited for), so they can’t be completely ignored.
The survivability aspect has to be encountered with an AI overhaul.
The first step to do this would be in my mind to switch the control over the pet to the clients. Right now the pet functions like this: Player hits Button > Client puts a request > server calculates > server responds: “Your request is the 3rd in the actionqueue”
If the control would be on the clientside, you could override actions and the overall reaction speed would be higher.

Oooooor, you’d see lots of hacking…

Switching client-side is a bad idea…

Solution seems to be to reduce downtime, since uptime advantage has been taken off?
Or make the difference between downtime/uptime less meaningful…

Not more than you see now. Furthermore you can simply report them.

Fancy Fool.1743:

I have to wonder if people are serious about some of these suggestions or if it’s just an emotional reaction. You can’t suggest good design on an emotional, upset premise. You have to think about logistics and the developer’s core goal with the design. I think the problem Allie faces is that the OP didn’t draw the line solidly enough to curb posts born of bitterness and resentment instead of clear-headed design.

Having a CDR Ranger Balance thread chuck full of emotional outcries doesn’t help the Ranger profession, guys. The best way to have got results from this was to simply suggest great, REASONABLE design changes or buffs. Or playing the ball in the court they want and talking more about what you want from the pet AI instead of trying to kick it aside. There are many no-pet suggestion threads you could have gone to respectfully.

Please, this is no emotional uprise, atleast for the most part. The AI is broken and it will stay broken. There are many good suggestions about how to bypass the AI.
Fact is, that the AI will never be as potent, that the damage of the ranger will be
on a competitve level. An AI can serve many purposes. Dealing mandatory damage is none of those.

Specific Game Mode: PvE

Proposal Overview
Change functionality of Beastmaster II adept trait — Master’s Bond.

Goal of Proposal
Make the trait more attractive while better aligning it to the overall mechanic of the profession. It is a fine trait, but the one thing that keeps it from being used more is that stacks are lost on pet swap. Generally, the profession encourages pet swapping, especially in the Beastmastery line with traits like Mighty Swap. To have a trait that encourages to not swap in the same line is counter-intuitive. My proposal is to keep everything about the trait the same, but allow for stacks to be maintained with pet swapping.

Proposal Functionality
In relation to the rest of GW2, stacks gained from elements like Sigil of Bloodlust or Sigil of Perception are lost on player being downed or defeated. Changing this trait to work on just pet downed/defeated would correlate to that precedent.

Associated Risks
A player could use this to build the stacks for themselves, and then keep the pet on passive to have stacks that would be hard to remove. This is mostly why this isn’t a PvP suggestion. I think there is some counter to this inherent in the fact that having your pet on passive lowers your DPS.

Specific Game Mode

Pv[all]

Pet Design

Proposal Overview

This proposal seeks to fix a fundamental flaw in ranger design. Currently in Fractals, dungeons, and large open world events such as Lion’s Arch at this time, pets die fast with many dying after a single hit or two and far faster than commands can save. In terms of damage and utility they are minor with single person content being the biggest benefit to their abilities. Many groups in Fractals and Dungeons ask rangers to place pets on passive even going so far as to Ostracize the whole Class for this fact. This proposal seeks to change the dynamics of pets, making them more easily commanded and increasing diversity in pet choice for encounters.

Goal of Proposal

The goal of this proposal is to increase the utility, viability and overall community satisfaction with pet design. With current design on pets they feel unfinished and are an element of a class that is sorely in need of reworking. The below functional changes should help to bring the pet more utility while maintaining a unique feel of the class.

Proposal Functionality
How I propose this is done is a shift in pet design: First, make pet names stick when not on current use list. It will make Rangers more invested in their pets in general. Second, Having the pet take less damage from AOE attacks will make their damage more meaningful and presence have more impact. Third, have buff list for each Pet or pet family for Rangers to choose from allowing for two Skills per pet. This makes pet management more important as pets give out more influence on the battlefield. Forth, have some pet skills usable when the pet is down. This does not mean all skills but some Passive effects such as might or fury. This would maintain some management of pets even when the pet cannot attack. Lastly: Pet AI requires some work with many world Boss encounters pets and even pet skills like hounds or Mist wolf do not attack as they see no spot they can. This needs fix as currently it makes the events seemed glitched.

Associated Risks

The main risk I see is the time for these changes to truly effect the negative perception placed on Rangers due to this oversight. While the goal is to increase the utility and community perception of rangers the damage one might say has been done and so any change made will take time to change this perspective to a positive one. The other risk is giving too much for utility skills on the pet bar. But this could be minimized by overlapping skills and minimal choices. Finally the only other risk I can see would be a lack of testing these changes and thus leaving the pet potentially worse off as a result.

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Not entirely sure if this has been suggested already, it may have been but possibly not as suggested here below. This idea came to me after the previous two posts…

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Make pets the actual profession mechanic by giving us the choice to slot 4 pets on F1-F4.

Goal of Proposal
Make the pets function as a true profession mechanic and have the balance methods for this mechanic build into it. The Ranger remains the ‘pet class’ but functions more like a beast master, as it has access to more pets, but they only assist the ranger for a limited amount of time.

The ranger can regain a large portion of the power it shared with the pet previously, while the pets power can be scaled and balanced for the amount of damage it is supposed to do as a profession mechanic during a certain period of time.

Pet downtime is an inherent feature of the profession mechanic. And the actual mechanic has a ‘perma stow’ function build in. It could be ignored, but is more then likely utilized for it’s added functionality. By giving the option to slot 4 pets and retaining the F2 functionality, pets can be set to deal with specific situations.

Proposal Functionality
Make pets the actual profession mechanic by giving us the choice to slot 4 pets on F1-F4 . The pets are summoned and ‘up’ for a specific time frame, followed by a cooldown. The cooldown also starts when the pet is defeated. During the time the pet is ‘up’ the [F] key corresponding with the pet turns into the current F-key associated with the pet. Once a certain pet is chosen all other pets can’t be summoned until the cool down is over.

Associated Risks
People wont have a pet on their sides during normal playtime, aka. no companion with them.

Proposal Overview

Improve shouts to make them more attractive while increasing ranger – pet synergy

Goal of Proposal

Ranger shouts are lackluster. Sickem has evolved to just being an anti stealth counter. Protect me hurts your pet. Guard is just used to spam Natures Voice. And I don’t even think search and rescue is worth mentioning.

Proposal Functionality

Sickem – 25 second cool down.
Your next attack immobilizes target for 3 seconds.
For 5 seconds your loose control of your pet and it gains + 40% speed and + 30% damage.
This helps pets hit their targets more and is helpful synergy.

Protect Me – Cool down made to 30 seconds
Your pet gains weakness for 6 seconds. You and your pet gain protection for 6 seconds. Your pet also steals 2 conditions from you.
This improves build diversity by adding active condition removal it removes a need for every build to have Empathetic Bond. It also won’t kill your pet as a damage transfer but still can be great against burst damage. It still retains the weakened pet functionality as pets won’t hit hard with weakness

Guard – Cool down increased to 25 seconds. Cast time reduced to .25 seconds
Your pet protects a target territory for 60 seconds. Your pet gains Stability, Protection, and Retaliation for 8 seconds.
There are so many ways to share offensive boons with pet, this is great for pet defense and helps out the AOE problem in PvE and WvW. I get the need for a cast time on a ground target AoE as well but this can be sped up to the speed of necro wells or marks.

Search and Rescue – Cool down decreased to 60 seconds.
Your pet locates a downed ally in the area and attempts to revive them. If a no downed allies are found the pet attempts to rez a defeated player and the cool down goes to 150 seconds.
This makes it worthy of being taken, now even if something were to happen it can still rez a defeated player but it is balanced out by going on a long cool down

Associated Risks

It’s a rework of shouts, Natures voice spamming builds would be effected but in turn might opt to use more of these better shouts to proc it which is actually a positive in my mind.

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Yes, you can do that now…

When pets are boosted enough so they aren’t 100% useless in WvW though? I would hope it would be a little more complicated.

And I’ve never played an MMO where they could instantly resummon a dead pet. They did have resurrect spells, but they were on 5min cooldowns and/or long channel times.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Addressing either how the split works or how often the pet can be on “active time” would be preferable to an option to just remove it.

I’m in favor of the first suggestion but yeah, you’re right.

The only thing about the first suggestion is it still runs along that line of “I can safely ignore the pet” other players do already. Either that or they stomp on it so it goes away since it dies so fast, problem solved.

So in the first suggestion, if we take raw damage off the pet and move it to the ranger, then there has to be something put there to replace that.

And I’d rather the uptime be improved, since that has the added effect of not making it easy to “pound on the pet til it goes away for 60”.

I think the pet should be loaded with either defensive support for the ranger and party or offensive support by debuffing the enemy or CCing him.
Furthermore, pet could apply vulnerability (if traited for), so they can’t be completely ignored.
The survivability aspect has to be encountered with an AI overhaul.
The first step to do this would be in my mind to switch the control over the pet to the clients. Right now the pet functions like this: Player hits Button > Client puts a request > server calculates > server responds: “Your request is the 3rd in the actionqueue”
If the control would be on the clientside, you could override actions and the overall reaction speed would be higher.

You both have excellent points. It seems to me that shifting the damage to the ranger and increasing the pet utility would be more sound. Increasing CC which arguably the Ranger lacks, would help to increase it’s own damage as well as improving LB into the bargain, by increasing hit rate. It’d have to have it’s Aggro increased by default though or risk becoming innefective in PvE when drawing fire/ offtanking while the ranger helps the team etc. Ohoni’s idea of increasing the attack range of the pet along with the queue cancelling ANET have already suggested, would help it land CC’s and be more useful while doing less damage overall. If different pet classes had varied degrees of aggro, that could help towards some interesting pet meta.
I’d still be concerened however, that this wouldn’t affect situations where the pet becomes a liability or with obstacles in dungeons.

So far the best suggestion I’ve read re: pet Ai was the one to move shouts to the F1 skills, combine the two. It ould work spectacuarly, especially if spirits were attached to pets, as others have suggested. Imagine sending your pet off with Spirit of Nature using the Guard function to direct it’s location, while you continuedto fight. You could have it accurately res multiple allies, with your Ranger at a distance. The possibilites could be remarkable

Possible Risks: Rangers could be gods in PvE…..

Proposal Overview

Add an additional way to revive pet other than reviving them or swapping

Goal of Proposal

What if you want to bring back your pet but cant in the heat of battle?

Proposal Functionality

Version 1
Instinctual Bond
Trait changed to, using a heal skill revives a downed pet to 25% health.

Version 2
Heal as one
Heals downed pets to 25% health.

Associated Risks

Using either version and then swapping pets can be abused to keep the pet cool down timer low.

Perhaps adding an ICD to the pet swap when you heal and having another trait remove this ICD.

Aidenwolf.5964:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Did you actually just call for a ranger Nerf?

If you as a thief cannot fend off a ranger pet I’d say it’s L2P issue. I don’t mean that to sound snarky, it’s just basic thief play.

Dagger 5 on the pet and you go invisible, or use any of your other stealths.
Teleport away by any of 5 skills.
Caltrops slow pets as you moonwalk away.
If you have the revealed debuff on, blind the pet which is on a zero second cool down and it cannot damage you.

I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll get zero sympathy on a ranger forum about your thief issues.

He’ll also get zero sympathy from other thieves. If you die to a Ranger, you suck as a thief, PERIOD. This is from a former Ranger main currently playing Thief (and why I want Rangers to be better).

Shadowbane.7109:

Now you plan on taking the spirits away and adding it to the kitten pet.

Someone else agrees with me! Removing the spirits diminishes the ranger’s roleplaying options. You might as well rename the vitality traitline if you remove spirits, because the spirits are the only “nature magic” a ranger does.

Just going to reiterate that making spirits automatically follow you, non-targetable, and dependent on the ranger’s health (not the pet’s) would be a much better solution.

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Yes, you can do that now…

When pets are boosted enough so they aren’t 100% useless in WvW though? I would hope it would be a little more complicated.

And I’ve never played an MMO where they could instantly resummon a dead pet. They did have resurrect spells, but they were on 5min cooldowns and/or long channel times.

Rift let ya do it (Make your next spell instant, then pop the pet spell), DAOC let ya do it to some extent (Some classes this wasn’t viable, Bonedancers for example)

I’m trying to remember if I could resummon my Warlock pet in WoW, i think I could..its been a while (Looked it up, yea i could… 2 minute cooldown)

Warhammer Had Squig herders, and they had a fairly short cast time on pets (2 seconds) I don’t remember if I had to be out of combat to cast them…. I don’t think I did.

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

Terravos.4059:

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

This game pet is just a PvE mob, it’s like a mistfire wolf you can heal on a 60s when it dies.

RyuDragnier.9476:

He’ll also get zero sympathy from other thieves. If you die to a Ranger, you suck as a thief, PERIOD. This is from a former Ranger main currently playing Thief (and why I want Rangers to be better).

Not really, I main a ranger and honestly, I love running into a thief since I’m pretty confident I’ll win 80% of the time. Thieves are fun as hell to fight as a ranger, except when they abuse stealth and backstab. But honestly, there aren’t many classes that can properly counter the backstab thief build. I have a level 80 thief and it’s painfully obvious that some of their builds are just plain OP.

People need to let go of the whole “if you die to a ranger, you suck” thing. Rangers need a fix and a few buffs, but we’re not a terrible class.

Terravos.4059:

Rift let ya do it (Make your next spell instant, then pop the pet spell), DAOC let ya do it to some extent (Some classes this wasn’t viable, Bonedancers for example)

I’m trying to remember if I could resummon my Warlock pet in WoW, i think I could..its been a while (Looked it up, yea i could… 2 minute cooldown)

Warhammer Had Squig herders, and they had a fairly short cast time on pets (2 seconds) I don’t remember if I had to be out of combat to cast them…. I don’t think I did.

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

Don’t forget guild wars 1, it had 2 skills that resurrected your pet quickly.

My memory is awful so I checked the wiki to verify but ‘Comfort Animal’ revived the pet, had a 1 second activation and a 1 second cooldown and ‘Revive Animal’ had a 6 second activation and a 20 second cooldown but it revived all allied pets.

Plus, pets in gw1 were brutal when used properly – there were so many times when I died first and I didn’t have to worry about letting my team down too much since my pet was there to save the day and murder things.

God I miss how the pets ‘grew up’ as they levelled.

My question is how can developer design rangers to not have burst and yet expect any of their power builds to be viable?

They said they wanted to make ranger more sustained but nerfed endurance regen for ALL ranger specs, including the weak power/offensive ones who depended on that endurance dearly for survival.

afoot.6932:

Shadowbane.7109:

Now you plan on taking the spirits away and adding it to the kitten pet.

Someone else agrees with me! Removing the spirits diminishes the ranger’s roleplaying options. You might as well rename the vitality traitline if you remove spirits, because the spirits are the only “nature magic” a ranger does.

Just going to reiterate that making spirits automatically follow you, non-targetable, and dependent on the ranger’s health (not the pet’s) would be a much better solution.

The simple truth is that spirits in their current form are ridiculously toxic in sPvP. They require no skill and offer far too much passive power. The whole strategy behind the build is essentially to spam your auto-attack and to hide in the zoo clutter.

I don’t think that Ranger’s “roleplaying options” should be placed ahead of balancing the class.

Specific Game Mode
PvP/WvW
Proposal Overview
Fixing some Ranger traits and modifying pet attacks so that there are less worthless pets
Goal of Proposal
Reliance upon Empathic bond forcing rangers to go 30 into wilderness survival, useless pets
Proposal Functionality
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-WvW-Realistic-Ranger-Changes/first#post3735529
Linking my thread since the list is rather long
Associated Risks
Some things might need to be toned down, but I tried to keep it balanced

Flytrap.8075:

afoot.6932:

Shadowbane.7109:

Now you plan on taking the spirits away and adding it to the kitten pet.

Someone else agrees with me! Removing the spirits diminishes the ranger’s roleplaying options. You might as well rename the vitality traitline if you remove spirits, because the spirits are the only “nature magic” a ranger does.

Just going to reiterate that making spirits automatically follow you, non-targetable, and dependent on the ranger’s health (not the pet’s) would be a much better solution.

The simple truth is that spirits in their current form are ridiculously toxic in sPvP. They require no skill and offer far too much passive power. The whole strategy behind the build is essentially to spam your auto-attack and to hide in the zoo clutter.

I don’t think that Ranger’s “roleplaying options” should be placed ahead of balancing the class.

To be quite honest, mesmers and minion necros make spirits look quite clean/unobtrusive in comparison. I usually have no trouble locating even an Asuran Ranger in the middle of spirits because they are opaque.

Spirit Ranger is currently only taken now for the Elite Spirit and the healing is getting nerfed by 33% soon. This nerf is justified, but spirits in PvP otherwise are in a good place.

The fact is that good spirit ranger gameplay involves activating pet skills and spirit skills at the right time while paying attention to teammates health and dropping healing spring for group cleansing, evading burst, keeping the spirits alive, managing pet targets, interrupting necro and thief heals, and applying poison to warriors and guardians.

However, Crossfire IS very good for keeping up pressure on squishies like S/P thief as soon as they enter the fight. But if you’d like to make Thieves even stronger, then yeah, nerf shortbow.

psizone.8437:

People need to let go of the whole “if you die to a ranger, you suck” thing. Rangers need a fix and a few buffs, but we’re not a terrible class.

The thing is, I run apothecary build thief, with only Shadow Refuge and Steal as my sources of Stealth, and Signet of Malice always on. I always kill a Ranger 1v1 unless the Ranger is also running regen build. Considering my damage is crap and the only conditions I’m throwing out are bleed and poison, this should tell you either every ranger I fight is crap, or Rangers as a whole are pretty much easy prey.

Arghore.8340:

The biggest concern with the pet in GW1 though, was the fact that the ranger had to take all the skills for it. And if you truly wanted a good pet, you yourself ended up being ‘just a weapon, doing x damage/sec’, while still struggling with the AI. The one Hammer/Pet build aside (in pvp). ‘We’ (as in the GW1 pet interested players) were rather stoked to see the pet get their own skills in GW2. ‘But’ (unforeseeable) due to the removal of tank/healer and the introduction of more dynamic (moving) gameplay, the pet suffered even more, no more ‘still standing’ targets around a warrior to hit, and moving while casting (so no catch-up time). And instead of having skills on the pet we could control ourselves, we have to rely more on AI. And all sorts of problems more, (also see the thread) likely caused by the issues raised in my previous post above here…

Well, my pet was serviceable enough using two of eight skills (post-Comfort change): “Comfort Animal” and “Never Rampage Alone”. Throughout most of the PvE content I never really had to take them off, with the notable exception of HM Underworld. And when I did take it off, I didn’t have a lot of fun with two extra skills.

You’re right on the lack of pet skills to slot (with them being on the pet) makes it feel like they’re less a part of the class even with them hard-set into being there. It’s why I pulled two issues which . . . might . . . be able to be done without totally rewriting the behavior scripts.

Which ‘to me’, makes me long for a situation where the pet is simply a utility again. So it can be balanced as a utility, and improved through going for beast master traits (similar to putting points in BM in GW1). No [F2] skill control, just a pet with a bit more stuff on it besides an auto attack, a ‘guard/’heel’ command build in the ‘capture signet’ and a ‘resurrect pet’ change of skill once it dies. In fact, I would love to have 3 of these ‘capture signets’ available, so that I can have 3 pets at a time. (a beast-master has always been a ‘white’ minion master, with beasts instead of undead, and never a ‘boy and his pet’, or rather ‘the guard and his dog’. ) Possibly with a set of direct commands as we have (shouts) now. Complemented with f/e the Wand & ‘focus’ with more pet commands put on them as a designated weapon set for ‘pet mastery’.

Three pets active at the same time, or three pets to swap between? What I’d like to see is more this:

Pet Active/Alive
F1 – Lock Target
F2 – Activate F2/Offensive Skill
F3 – Block (Pet channels for 2s and will block an attack made during that time.)
F4 – Heel/Switch Pets (Heel if in an attack animation, Switch if not. Pets may be switched again in 30 seconds after a switch.)
(Can still toggle Attack/Guard separately)

Pet Inactive/Dead
F1 – Call of Vengeance (Gain a damage bonus for the next 3 attacks, pet heal timer reset. Cooldown 20s)
F2 – Comfort Animal (Restore 25% health to the pet and it gets up.)
F4 – Switch Pets (Dead pet may return in 30s)

Basically letting the F# buttons have more control over a living pet, and letting you help a dead pet back up quicker.

Wow I didn’t even think of swapping the two leaps on the sword 2 attack (first in, then out). That, along with ‘dodge overrides skill 1 animation’, would make the ranger instantly way more appealing.

Terravos.4059:

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Magician in EverQuest was a rather maligned class for having a pet with behavior which sometimes was problematic. But if you knew your pets and knew how to control them, it wasn’t that bad. You did have to be careful because you couldn’t just summon a new pet – it had a long casting time and you could get interrupted easily.

The elemental pets were not terribly more powerful than in GW2, because they lacked anything other than really rudimentary behavior and required the owner to control via hotkeys. They attacked, they might have a special procedure effect (“proc”) which would go off nearly randomly, and they could hold weapons conjured for them to adjust their DPS.

There were four basic pets: One of them could go invisible and had less hit points and defenses, one of them could root targets and had the largest health/armor of the four, one had a damage shield and was fairly good at offense but died quickly when focused, and one could backstab and was the second heartiest.

(Yes, there were other options. No, I’m not getting into them since I both didn’t really use them much and the one was a “legendary” kind of pet.)

Magicians could buff their pets with items conjured and handed over to them, notably weapons which changed the default damage/delay mechanic. They could tell their pets to back off and stop attacking (unique to mages), attack a target, guard them (i.e. not attack any target that didn’t swing on the magician first), or just stand there and wait for further instructions. And that’s the basic commands, there were others which had more behavior on them.

( Link )

They were the pet class I recall as “the pet class” and were given a lot of micromanaging control over the pets other classes didn’t get. If rangers are going to be “the pet class”, we should have some more control over the pets at least.

Hi Allie!

Can you do me a favor? Take your ranger to the lvl80 content please! (If you don’t have any you can ask one of the programmers to"cheat" you one)
Equip full ascended with legendary weapon. No-no, gear does not matter, it’s a choice of you!

Done? Great!

Now take this ranger to the new LA event! Do you know what’s going to happen?
1st second: entering combat
2nd second: your pet goes into combat
3th second: your pet dies
4th second: swap pet
5th second: set pet on passive
6th second: pew-pew
7th second: AOE incoming
8th second you dodge
9th second: your pet dies

Great, isnt’ it?

Now head to a random wvw map!

1, pew-pew
2, zerg incoming
3 your pet dies
4, you swap pet
5, your pet dies

Even if you keep your pet full passive on the ENTIRE content it dies.

Try this and tell us the story about your experience. Until you did not try our shoes you have no kittening idea how frustrating this bullkitten is.

@Tobias,
I am actually getting more enthusiastic by my suggestion further above, and I think in some form it has been suggested earlier.

The idea of summoning pets instead of ‘having one always active’, is actually more beast master like then having an active pet around all the time. It also has a perma-stow option build in, while still keeping the pet as a very defining Ranger Mechanic. It offers the ranger a selection of 4 pets, making the mechanic a lot more varied as you can slot pets for different situations. And by making the pets more of a situational AI aid, it will need a lot less micromanagement. Possibly only an ‘Aggressive, follow my lead’/‘Heel, passive (do not ever attack or do anything for the duration of your uptime)’ switch could be enough. And these ‘pets’ could still be assigned tasks through shouts (I already made a few in a full utility remake I am almost finished with). These shouts have a certain ‘power value’ to them (based upon balance) and thus you could assign an added uptime to the summoned pet (or rather a ‘stop the clock’) while it does a certain specific task that is related to the shout. Hopefully i’ll be done with writing it all out soon so I can link the suggestion. This all from the players’ side.

The other thing is, as pets become these F1-4 summons that help you out during a specific timeframe, ArenaNet can buff up their reliability considerably. As they do not have to take into account that the ‘profession mechanic’ needs downtime, as they can put that part into a recharge mechanic. They can also scale the pet attacks and recharges to the ‘profession mechanic’ instead of the ranger strength, and view that entirely separate from their ‘survival reliability’. Mainly, the pet needs to roughly be strong enough to apply the power/utility that is to be expected from the ‘profession mechanic’ during the timeframe the pet is around. Which makes the whole thing a lot easier to manage and monitor. This in turn would likely make the pets a lot more reliable, which in turn might warrant making the pets take a couple of % (like 5% or so) of the ranger strength on their ‘attack side’. As long as the recharge isn’t to ridiculous and the survivability increased by a lot. It is going to despawn anyways, so their left over HP do not cause extra uptime of the pet and thus do not unbalance the profession mechanic!

I personally think doing it this way makes everybody happy in the end. There is a perma stow (just not use the mechanic – which I doubt many would do with this kind of functionality), people get access to more combat pets (be it by giving up a permanent companion, which might sadden some, but that is largely during ‘non combat’ phazes, grab a mini ^^ ). And most important I think, ArenaNet gets to keep their Pet as the defining mechanic for the Ranger, they actually see more pets in the ranger mechanic, its just not always around. We all don’t get exactly what we want, but we also keep what we mostly desire, and our mechanic could well become fairly reliable and varied. More like a monkey up your sleeve, instead of a dog by your side. But is that truly something different from a beast master point of view?

psizone.8437:

RyuDragnier.9476:

He’ll also get zero sympathy from other thieves. If you die to a Ranger, you suck as a thief, PERIOD. This is from a former Ranger main currently playing Thief (and why I want Rangers to be better).

Not really, I main a ranger and honestly, I love running into a thief since I’m pretty confident I’ll win 80% of the time. Thieves are fun as hell to fight as a ranger, except when they abuse stealth and backstab. But honestly, there aren’t many classes that can properly counter the backstab thief build. I have a level 80 thief and it’s painfully obvious that some of their builds are just plain OP.

People need to let go of the whole “if you die to a ranger, you suck” thing. Rangers need a fix and a few buffs, but we’re not a terrible class.

lol, no, you aren’t winning against 80% of the thieves 1v1. Nice try though…

I’m kinda surprised people Aren’t talking about how pets just equal additional DPS. That is SO.. BORING.. They need to do more actively varied things. tbh, i’d rather they be 0 DPS & all kd,kb,interrupt,heal,stun, barriers etc.. something ACTIVE. Not just dps & conditions. that’s so bland.

And their “synergy” between pets & ranger is essentially “pet enhances your deeps” or “some weak boon”.
Why can’t they do things like make a barrier or stun line from your pet to you. or kb the mob to you, or something unique & active that has directly to do with the both of you. One of the things that is interesting about pets is that you can essentially be in 2 places at once. Rangers have a unique opportunity to do something with positioning. (which Anet made a big deal about) & they have almost nothing that uses that. the one thing they once had was that they could resurrect ppl.. (which was already pathetically situational)Now it’s totally worthless. The entirety of the pet/ranger, should be positional synergy, currently it’s “pet give debuff to increase deeps. pet adds direct deeps. pet gives buff for deeps” SO… BORING.

Flytrap.8075:

The simple truth is that spirits in their current form are ridiculously toxic in sPvP. They require no skill and offer far too much passive power. The whole strategy behind the build is essentially to spam your auto-attack and to hide in the zoo clutter.

I don’t think that Ranger’s “roleplaying options” should be placed ahead of balancing the class.

Allie’s suggestion wasn’t regarding removing the passive effects, it was that spirits no longer be visible and that the effects are carried by your pet to remove “visual clutter.” The change would have no effect on spirit passive effects being overpowered in PvP. In fact, putting the passive effect on pets would probably make spirit skills more powerful in PvP, since you wouldn’t be able to see that spirits are in play as easily as you can now.

afoot.6932:

Flytrap.8075:

The simple truth is that spirits in their current form are ridiculously toxic in sPvP. They require no skill and offer far too much passive power. The whole strategy behind the build is essentially to spam your auto-attack and to hide in the zoo clutter.

I don’t think that Ranger’s “roleplaying options” should be placed ahead of balancing the class.

Allie’s suggestion wasn’t regarding removing the passive effects, it was that spirits no longer be visible and that the effects are carried by your pet to remove “visual clutter.” The change would have no effect on spirit passive effects being overpowered in PvP. In fact, putting the passive effect on pets would probably make spirit skills more powerful in PvP, since you wouldn’t be able to see that spirits are in play as easily as you can now.

I can almost guarantee you they would give the pet a massively obvious aura that showed it was in “spirit mode”.

They aren’t going to just take spirits and stick them on an always mobile mob with more health and armor than before and not make it obvious they are there. We’ll probably have to sacrifice the active effect of the spirit as well for the reasons I just listed.

Substance E.4852:

I can almost guarantee you they would give the pet a massively obvious aura that showed it was in “spirit mode”.

They aren’t going to just take spirits and stick them on an always mobile mob with more health and armor than before and not make it obvious they are there. We’ll probably have to sacrifice the active effect of the spirit as well for the reasons I just listed.

I just want the roleplaying affordance that spirits provide to be preserved. What would they even call the skill if we’re not actually summoning a spirit? It’s not a clean solution.

How about this: the effect is moved to pets as Allie suggested, and for the visual indicator, they just have the spirits follow our pet around, but they’re not targetable and they die with our pet. That’d make us both happy—rangers are still summoning the same nature spirit, but with the same strategic change that moving the spirit bonuses to pets would provide. The only people who would lose anything are those who don’t like visual clutter.

Substance E.4852:

lol, no, you aren’t winning against 80% of the thieves 1v1. Nice try though…

Do you always feel the need to insult people on the internet?

Edited out my counter argument to prevent pointless arguing here. I’ll just say that you overestimate the majority of the thieves in WvW.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
A rework of the class to give my perspective of how the ranger could look if various of the suggestion here were implemented. Obviously from my biased opinion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-typed-out-for-the-CDI/first#content

Goal of Proposal
All of the problems in this thread, besides the weapon issues and suggestions…

Proposal Functionality
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-typed-out-for-the-CDI/first#content
Do keep in mind that in this proposal the pets function in a whole different way, meaning we should get 30% more power to our skills. Also remember that we can only slot 3 utilities and not all

Associated Risks
- Changing a class obviously runs into new balance issues, and some may not like the result of change.
- While I found it is hard to balance skills within a new format while not knowing exactly what balance parameters there are (mainly have existing skills to go by). I may still have made things to powerful.

ps. I have still to do the traits, and haven’t entirely come up with how to do them, I want to play a bit today as well, and thus that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Yes, you can do that now…

When pets are boosted enough so they aren’t 100% useless in WvW though? I would hope it would be a little more complicated.

And I’ve never played an MMO where they could instantly resummon a dead pet. They did have resurrect spells, but they were on 5min cooldowns and/or long channel times.

Rift let ya do it (Make your next spell instant, then pop the pet spell), DAOC let ya do it to some extent (Some classes this wasn’t viable, Bonedancers for example)

I’m trying to remember if I could resummon my Warlock pet in WoW, i think I could..its been a while (Looked it up, yea i could… 2 minute cooldown)

Warhammer Had Squig herders, and they had a fairly short cast time on pets (2 seconds) I don’t remember if I had to be out of combat to cast them…. I don’t think I did.

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

Like I said, exceptionally long cooldowns and cast times. Resurrect pet was like 8 seconds. Summon Daemon was 8 seconds I believe. Never played rift. Squig Herder was 6 seconds iirc. In WoW, the Warlock could use the daemonology talent to instant summon like you mentioned. All of which in a game with a single pet.

The whole point is that in other games, the pet is a meaningful part of the class. To lose one comes at great expense (long cast, or at the expense of a long cooldown). In GW2, the pet is meaningless. We almost want to throw it away.

I wish it were like pets in WoW where they were a positive addition to the class and something we wanted to use and keep alive. They’ll have to be this if they’re ever expected to work in WvW at all. But the price to pay for a meaningful pet instead of the meaningless ones we have today will likely be at the expense of losing our ability to swap between 2 pets more often.

I’m personally fine with this. So long as the pets are a beneficial part of the class which is entirely the opposite of what they are today.

I’ll just leave this here because we could all use a good laugh and Anet obviously needs to be reminded why we got voted #1 in need of help by an overwhelming majority.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Ranger-Pets-Overpowered/first

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Change to functionallity of LB#5

Goal of Proposal
Giving the ranger more fast AoE damage, since the skill currently is easy to dodge and does require the ranger to stay in place

Proposal Functionality
Change the skill into shooting a marked arrow/flare arrow to call in support from fellow rangers, bombarding the targeted area with arrows over a short period of time, also possible inflicting root or condition(s), or boon(s) for the ranger

Associated Risks
Might create issues if the damage is to high and rangers will lose one of their highest damage AoE skills, however since it rarely hits all of it’s duration anyway it seems unlikely.

phys.7689:

the interaction for quickness was essentially the idea of you and your pet getting hyped when you see them again. I do understand your saying, though. but quickness on swap for both is pretty cool.

I think someone else had a good suggestion saying they should have an on swap skill as soon as you swap them in. This would be a simple means to give more control, and also more combos.

In my experience the quickness on swap only mattered if you were in melee range, had a ranged pet or if you wanted them to F2 right away. The time it took for a pet to “aggro” (a lot of pets stand there for a second ro two) and run to their target usually lasted long enough that the pet’s quickness ended before they had any use out of it.

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

This is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Hi Allie!

Can you do me a favor? Take your ranger to the lvl80 content please! (If you don’t have any you can ask one of the programmers to"cheat" you one)
Equip full ascended with legendary weapon. No-no, gear does not matter, it’s a choice of you!

Done? Great!

Now take this ranger to the new LA event! Do you know what’s going to happen?
1st second: entering combat
2nd second: your pet goes into combat
3th second: your pet dies
4th second: swap pet
5th second: set pet on passive
6th second: pew-pew
7th second: AOE incoming
8th second you dodge
9th second: your pet dies

Great, isnt’ it?

Now head to a random wvw map!

1, pew-pew
2, zerg incoming
3 your pet dies
4, you swap pet
5, your pet dies

Even if you keep your pet full passive on the ENTIRE content it dies.

Try this and tell us the story about your experience. Until you did not try our shoes you have no kittening idea how frustrating this bullkitten is.

What exactly does your post accomplish?