Guild Wars 2

So, a certain lead game designer has admitted pet F2s and general AI cannot be fixed without touching every creature in the game because they share code during the infamous CDI events…. Great. Ok. Lets do something about that. Since the Ranger class is balanced with a broken class mechanic that is expected to have 100% uptime, why not give the option to stow the pet for a buff and transfer 100% damage output returned to the Ranger? There should be an option for those of us who don’t want to use a broken class mechanic. After playing other characters that have class mechanics that work as intended it makes me hate my pet that much more… and don’t get me wrong, I love playing my Ranger but hate playing a Ranger with the pet. Until they are fixed or we are given the option not to use them and given control over 100% of our damage output, the Ranger will always be handicapped.

This has been suggested a lot of times, but there are a lot of utilities, traits connected to pets. If we could perma stow our pet and got all our damage back, we still would be without a lot of utility provided by them (protect me, emphatic bond, buffs, knockdowns, immobilizes). I think a better way to handle this was to introduce/change traits, so we get a benefit out of our pet being hit/dead/useless. Drastically reducing the 60 second cooldown would also go a long way, although it definetly wouldn’t be the solution.

It’s been suggested 1000s of times in various forms.

I’m currently trying out a BM build (after the Dec 10th patch just to see and so far it is still crap) but I normally run traits that have nothing to do what so ever with pets. It is completely possible and viable to do so. There’s no reason not to give an option not to use an openly admitted handicapped class mechanic. The only option now is to always leave it on passive (which is what I have done up until a month or so ago). Just about always only have jungle striker and red moa for might and fury. With defiance there’s no reason to bring CC. With condi caps there’s no reason to bring a condition build based pet. Knock downs, immobilizes, etc may be useful in WVW/PVP but useless in my experience because of defiance so I’m not going to waste a pet slot on a useless f2 when I can bring the stalker or moa for might and fury. Thats pretty much the fix until they give us an option out or rewrite all the creature AI to be worth a kitten .

the pet is here to stay. The only other thing ANet has said on Rangers of note other than they can’t fix their problems, is that the Ranger is meant to be a pet class. And realistically speaking, the pet works marginally well in PvE and to a lesser extent PvP. The place the pet is a complete waste is WvW.

Personally speaking, I’m fine with the pet. I don’t want it. I’d much rather be an Archer, but I’m fine with it being a part of the class. What I have issue with is how the F2 (and lesser pet abilities) are so unresponsive and don’t even work half the time assuming your pet is even alive to use them.

I think ANet needs to waive the white flag and simply make all of the pets do the same damage, increase Ranger weapon skill and utility coefficients to match, and find some realistic solution to the F2 problem given how the overwhelming majority of the class’ utility comes from their pet.

Due to the largely unpredictable nature of pet AI, it is often a waste of a trait to use a major trait that affects the pet. A large overhaul of such traits to be either more player centric or affect both the pet and the player would make them more appealing.

Another Ranger issue is signets. Change signets to also affect the player by default and remove Signet of the Beastmaster.
Again, this is related to pets. There are some nice signet related traits in the marksmanship line, but they aren’t very appealing.
However, signet actives only affect ranger pets. As has been established, pet AI is poor. As a result, using signet actives, as with using traits, is often a waste of a utility slot.

The Signet of the Beastmaster grandmaster trait allows signet actives to affect rangers too. This is barely worth it except in occasional situations.
These are- using Signet of Stone to become immune to damage, and Signet of the Hunt to do 150% damage on your next attack.

Requiring a Grandmaster trait to make those signets somewhat useful is very limiting.

Another extremely useful, but probably difficult to add feature would be some way to easily see the boons and effects on your own pet. A secondary keybind that lets you select your pet would be great.

Even a pet spot dodge on a cooldown would help a lot for managing pets.

Right now, it’s pretty much impossible to tell what boons or conditions your pet has, which, considering how much of a Ranger’s class is centered around the pet, is very frustrating.

I agree I love my ranger and despise the pet. Whether Anet declared Rangers a pet class or not is irrelevant – its not working and something needs to be done.

Current Ideas on Rangers and their role need to be revamped and decisions on how ranger pets work and how much control a player has over the pets presence in the battle field need to be reviewed and changed.

For the most part I find that I am forced to always use my pets on passive, only sometimes sending it to attack in the last few moments of a fight, especially if up against any kind of boss in fractals and dungeons. I find that because I am forced to keep my pet on passive I am already handicapped in the fights. I keep my pet on passive because if I don’t I will suffer a significant penalty to my abilities when the pet is one shot in the first 10sec of a fight , causing me to lose my supposed class mechanic for 60 sec.

Im tired of the excuses about fixing the pet or allowing us to permanently stow them. Its unjustified.

Atherakhia.4086:

the pet is here to stay. The only other thing ANet has said on Rangers of note other than they can’t fix their problems, is that the Ranger is meant to be a pet class. And realistically speaking, the pet works marginally well in PvE and to a lesser extent PvP. The place the pet is a complete waste is WvW.

Personally speaking, I’m fine with the pet. I don’t want it. I’d much rather be an Archer, but I’m fine with it being a part of the class. What I have issue with is how the F2 (and lesser pet abilities) are so unresponsive and don’t even work half the time assuming your pet is even alive to use them.

I think ANet needs to waive the white flag and simply make all of the pets do the same damage, increase Ranger weapon skill and utility coefficients to match, and find some realistic solution to the F2 problem given how the overwhelming majority of the class’ utility comes from their pet.

I guess we have different expectations for pets. They are little more than meat missiles that you fire off and forget right now. I’m not fine with the class I love to play the most out of the 7 that I have access to having a band-aided class mechanic. Pets should not be here to stay if they cannot make them work as intended, because if they were clearly working as intended the people complaining about them would be extremely small in number and myself not among them. I would love them to bring the coefficients up. F2 problem will remain band-aided as stated by a lead game designing Dev during the CDI because of the complete creature AI redesign that is required to make it work as intended… I’m confused though how you can be fine with the pet but at the same time not want it because not wanting it means you aren’t fine with it as it is right now.

One of the easiest fixes they could do for Ranger pets to help with hitting things is to make it so each attack is a thrust attack, like how you see the attacks with a person as a moa due to Moa Morph. It’ll allow the attacks to connect properly, taking away SOME of the problems with pets hitting things.

For the F2…would it be hard to set up a variable that overrides the actions of the pet at the time, but only if the action hasn’t reached the point where damage would connect? You know, basically making it so using the F2 automatically interrupts the pet and causes them to do the action. For example, the fernhound is currently doing it’s attack, or rather starting it, and the player presses F2. It’d cancel the animation as if it was interrupted, and instead instantly use the F2 ability.

If they increased the radius of the attack range that would help as well… but then what does it break? Because everything they say they could do would break everything in the game.

Seems like they’ve done about all they can which is why we haven’t seen anything in months on improving F2 response time.

Oh, and another dev thats sharp on things said in a STOG that we don’t get to have more control over the pet because that kind of control would scare away new players… Have y’all ever rolled an ele? Jesus… There’s 20 something options for weapon type attacks! How that is not overwhelming but having additional control over a pet is overwhelming… Just… I can’t say more without be insulting to the person who utter these words on the STOG.

I personally think that they were BSing when they said that. How would adding more control over a pet chase people away when they could do what FF14 did with pet classes…make it so the pet automatically uses the skills as they see fit (like they do now) until you use the action Obey, which shuts off all but their normal attack, and allows you to use them. Using Sic, or in the case of GW2, F1, would instantly shut off the manual control over the pet’s skills and set it back to auto. It’s really not that hard to set up.

Dont forget that one of those SOTG conversations somehow went from asking for Pets being fixed to Warriors dualwielding Greatswords.

thefantasticg.3984:

I’m confused though how you can be fine with the pet but at the same time not want it because not wanting it means you aren’t fine with it as it is right now.

I think he means the same thing as me, I don’t mind playing a class that has a pet, but as a ranger I would prefer to just be me and my bow. If they want to add a pet to the class then fine but I rather be without one.

Honestly, Since they already admitted that Pet is broken and they also admitted that they will not do any changes to pets anymore. This means that they have given up on the Pet mechanic for rangers. If this is true then the least they can do is return the 30% damage that the pet is SUPPOSE to do and give it back to the ranger so we are not handicapped anymore. Keep the pets in, remove the damage from the pets which we know they can do this since they have already nerfed the damage of the pets. By doing this you still have a pet class, the PC has full 100% control over his/her damage while the NPC/Pet has full control over the CC’s, stuns, knockdowns, buffs, etc. I believe this is the best solution to the pet problem right now and probably the easiest solution for ANet.

I’d definitely be down for that, Akisame… even better if they gave me the option to stow it no matter what just to give up that utility that the pet would offer as I’m interested only in direct damage… which means I’d still be using the jungle stalker/red moa on passive but at least I’d have all my damage controlled by me.

They can fix it. They have just chosen to ignore it because it’s “too hard” to fix. Which annoys the hell outta me and makes them appear as lazy and uncaring. It’s cool they made a mistake, they’re only human, but to not even try to dig in and fix it makes them look worse.

I would like the option for permanent stow for stuff like jumping puzzles where they get in the way. However, I have heard that in PvE the pet will normally stand between you and your target which should help defend you somewhat from ranged attack’s. Not sure how true or helpful this is but it’s something I guess.

Thats why I want to be able to stow my pet during combat. If you take fall damage that pet is popping out like a Janet Jackson nip slip.

Jaysin X.6740:

They can fix it. They have just chosen to ignore it because it’s “too hard” to fix. Which annoys the hell outta me and makes them appear as lazy and uncaring. It’s cool they made a mistake, they’re only human, but to not even try to dig in and fix it makes them look worse.

Thats what the Dev said. They could fix it but they won’t because of the resources involved from rewriting all creature AI and then testing of the millions of things it would break… paraphrasing of course.

In other words, it would be nice if, since the dev-acknowledged broken pet system isn’t going to be touched, that at least the traits and skills that interact with pets be adjusted to represent this.

Too many times in PvE do you swap pets, mash f1 in the hopes that the pet will react, then press f2, only to have your pet look in a completely wrong direction, channel their f2 skill for a second, then have it go on cooldown. It’s even worse in PvP, where simply by constantly moving, it’s fairly easy to make melee pets non-issue.

This is ridiculous!

In certain fights (I’ve had this against golem in CoE and archie 2 in Cliffside) when you swap pet your newly swapped pet is already downed. I don’t know why, but it’s kind of annoying.

Akisame.9508:

thefantasticg.3984:

I’m confused though how you can be fine with the pet but at the same time not want it because not wanting it means you aren’t fine with it as it is right now.

I think he means the same thing as me, I don’t mind playing a class that has a pet, but as a ranger I would prefer to just be me and my bow. If they want to add a pet to the class then fine but I rather be without one.

Honestly, Since they already admitted that Pet is broken and they also admitted that they will not do any changes to pets anymore. This means that they have given up on the Pet mechanic for rangers. If this is true then the least they can do is return the 30% damage that the pet is SUPPOSE to do and give it back to the ranger so we are not handicapped anymore. Keep the pets in, remove the damage from the pets which we know they can do this since they have already nerfed the damage of the pets. By doing this you still have a pet class, the PC has full 100% control over his/her damage while the NPC/Pet has full control over the CC’s, stuns, knockdowns, buffs, etc. I believe this is the best solution to the pet problem right now and probably the easiest solution for ANet.

THIS!
I don’t see why a utility slot can’t be used if you really want the pet out. The pet stow ability is absolutely useless if you take damage.
As it stands now, the pets are all over the place, there’s absolutely NO pet functionality for us. Pressing F1 and F2 is just a waste of time now. ex: Bear “shake it off” Bear runs to Jormag and growls :/
If Anet is adamant about being unable to fix this, how about giving an option in the new character selection.
Hunter (for example)without pet or Ranger with pet???

I gotta agree here.

They have admitted the pet is broken, but they won’t fix it. Um…okay, fine. But then they won’t rework the class to work without the pet. What? How does this not blow everyone’s mind? The core mechanic of our class is flawed, but we are given neither a fix nor a way out. I guess one could almost argue that the class works “good enough,” but the fact is it’s not working as it should.

I honestly don’t know what else to say. Something needs to be done and I don’t see how giving us minor buffs here and there is going to solve the issue. They’re nice, sure, but they don’t fix the real problem.

Jaysin X.6740:

They can fix it. They have just chosen to ignore it because it’s “too hard” to fix. Which annoys the hell outta me and makes them appear as lazy and uncaring. It’s cool they made a mistake, they’re only human, but to not even try to dig in and fix it makes them look worse.

This is their philosophy with 90% of the game’s problems, unfortunately. This is why we see living story content instead.

It never quite made sense to me how Rangers get penalized for having pets when no other class has to deal with that for their class mechanic.

Okay, so we have pets, and so our own damage output took a hit to make up for that? I would rather pets do next to no damage and be there strictly for utility if it means we got to do more damage.

Part of what annoys me about this so much is how much more adversely it effects power rangers than condition rangers.

What about a “kit” (similar to engi kit) which gives a direct control on every pet skills?

With this kit-skill, we could:

1. Direct control on pet
2. More skills for pet (5)
3. solve f2 problems
4. Less passive gameplay
5. More active (skilled) gameplay

I’ve ceased to wait for any meaningful changes to the Ranger in the foreseable future after it has been admitted that pets share any part of their AI with regular mobs.
The pet itself may not be the best idea for a mechanic in a game that relies on movement and positioning as much as GW2. But it’s nowhere near being as bad of a design choice as some people make it sound. The problem is that someone at the Anet HQ got increadibly lazy. Or simply wanted to conserve resources. Any of the two makes that person highly incompetent to say the least, because it should’ve been already obvious at that stage, that utilizing the same AI for both the mobs and the class mechanic will cause tons of problems.

The only reliable way to fix anything now is to create Pet-exclusive AI from scratch. One that they’ll be able to tweak and balance in sort-of sterile environment (which is the way they manage large part of this game’s balance anyway, at least that’s the impression I’m getting when I look at the results). Otherwise, even if they somehow find a way to fix the current situation while leaving the core of the problem as it is, the moment when they introduce any new content that will somehow make the pets inadequat in any way, we’ll be back at the starting point.

Consequently, I doubt we’ll see any improvements in the nearest future. Creating new AI would require time and resources they clearly try to avoid spending. But the alternative solution, removing the pet, is no different at all in that aspect. It would require coming up with a new class mechanic (enough with the Preparations already, various successors of them are already in the game as utility skills, so a class mechanic like that is most likely not going to happen). Moreover, a major rework of traits would be required, including complete transformation of BM line into a line to support the new class mechanic.

To sum it all up – the class is screwed, and unless Anet changes its policy radically, it’s going to remain like that for a longer time.

The thing that kittenes me off at this point is something slightly different. That they’re actually working on some changes in AI of mobs (hence the Toxic Alliance soldiers being able to dodge), but instead of using it where it counts, they put it into the Living Story.

I would love to see a change to give 90% of the dmg to the player and 10% to the pet.

Let the F1 attack and if the pet is already attacking, call it back. Use F4 for a 1 or 2 sec evade and let the players choose what skills they want to use for F2 and for F3.

F2 could be like the current ones (but with better response time please ) but from the pet family (Lynx with stealth yes pls) and F3 a attack that already exists for the pets, like swiftnes from birds. The pets would just use the normal attack if F2 and F3 isn´t activated.

Jine.6130:

I would love to see a change to give 90% of the dmg to the player and 10% to the pet.

That’d be nice.

I still don’t understand why Passive/Active isn’t on a keybind yet… That should have been in since Beta weekends.

Would be nice to get a reply from a dev with some idea’s they are having in changing our mechanic since they already admitted that the pet mechanic is not working as intended and they do not intend in fixing it. Any word on what you do plan on doing to make Ranger a viable class in WvW, dungeons, etc?

We can only hope that one day this will happen or that they fix the pets or both happen. But I have no more hope, ran out a long time ago.

I’ll still hold out some hope, Clint… Thats just how much I like playing my Ranger.

If thief can have a dual mechanic (steal + ini system), why can’t ranger? Add something else unique to the class to round it out, maybe like 2s weapon swap cooldown, or a pet bond meter that builds with damage and has special effects while your pet hasn’t died.

Personally I would prefer being able to swap between having a pet and preparations.

This game is dead already, they are not going to fix it …

Well, Mr. Sad Pants, until they shut down the servers the game ain’t dead. Until then I’ll hold out hope they’ll fix my favorite class to play.

thefantasticg.3984:

Well, Mr. Sad Pants, until they shut down the servers the game ain’t dead. Until then I’ll hold out hope they’ll fix my favorite class to play.

I sure will be glad if your hope is not in vain … but mine is already gone.

Sasajoe.1509:

thefantasticg.3984:

Well, Mr. Sad Pants, until they shut down the servers the game ain’t dead. Until then I’ll hold out hope they’ll fix my favorite class to play.

I sure will be glad if your hope is not in vain … but mine is already gone.

Even against the odds I’ll still hope!

I’ll say it again, Since the Dev’s have already confirmed that pets are not working as intended and they do not have the resources or time to fix them because of the changes it will cause to all other NPC’s in-game, are there at least talks of changing our class mechanic for something that does work? As I mentioned earlier on this thread, removing the damage from pets and leaving them as buff and condition tools and giving the removed damage back to the PC/ranger? It was said that PC’s damage was reduced in order for the damage to balance out with the damage the pet is doing. Since the pet is so unreliable at the moment we are handicapped because of it. It makes sense to remove it and it won’t break any of the NPC codes that your afraid of breaking because you have already nerfed the pet damage in the past with no side effects to NPC’s. The pet will still be there applying fear, knockdowns, bleads, stuns, boons, etc. just no damage. In essence we are still a pet class relying on our pets for many of our utilities, etc.

If not can you at least tell us what you have planned to bring us up to par with the other professions? Or is there no talk about helping the ranger’s out?

well best way to fix this would be to scale pet power with ranger power wich could actualy provide effective pets in pve. as in pvp this would actualy give player a serious reason to run a bow or an axe to begin with and this reason is called cripple. If pets actualy did damage high enought to be worth the burst on a target that is unable to evade the hit (aka a crippled monk in guild wars 1) likely the pet AI would be of little consequance + the ranger would officialy have a place in parties damagewise.

You guys all talk about stowing the pet did it ever hit your head that pet wasnt meant to be stowed out of battle and that the issue is actualy one of simple effectiveness? Just give the pet proper damage and it all make senses

Sadly, kyubi, it’s more complicated then simply buffing pet damage with scaling. Had it been that simple to fix it would have been done already. I’m sorry your head has never been hit with that thought. For the pet to hit that would mean the range of melee attacks has to be increased. Why? Because of the rooting from the animation. Plenty of times enemies have easily moved out of the way of the pets attack causing it to miss because of the long animation time that causes rooting. Enemies have the same problem.

I, and I’m sure others, would not be alright with the pet responsible for MORE of our total damage output. And yes, it would have to be more because they balance ranger power now with a 100% uptime pet that goes without scaling with ranger stats. So, for them to increase scaling of the pet the Ranger would be toned down.

We know good and well that the pet was intended to be out during battle. Painfully obvious since you can’t stow it in battle. It simply is not effective and I know at least a dozen people my self not included that use pets for the buffs then fire them off like a missile because there is very little micro managing you can do if you are in melee range to keep the pet alive (of course that is situational but thats my experience much of the time). I even made a pet dodge macro so that when I was at range with my shortbow I could hit the button and I would basically F3-wait 4 seconds-F1. Why did I do this? Because pets aren’t immune to AOE and there’s no dodge so they eat all of the damage.

The more ascended becomes the norm, the weaker the ranger will be. With half of the damage supposedly coming from the pet, why can’t I have ascended pet damage? It makes no sense.

For this reason, ascended armor and weapons are wasted on a ranger. You get half of the additional damage that other classes gain from ascended upgrades.

Buttercup.5871:

The more ascended becomes the norm, the weaker the ranger will be. With half of the damage supposedly coming from the pet, why can’t I have ascended pet damage? It makes no sense.

For this reason, ascended armor and weapons are wasted on a ranger. You get half of the additional damage that other classes gain from ascended upgrades.

hance power scaling. this would make pet damage related to your gear and not to some base flat numbers. Anet doesnt need to tone down our damage unless you actualy run sword/cat you likely deal less damage then everyone else and your spec is somewhat an underdog everywhere. Tbh Anet should give ranger better damage then heavy armor class (its a medium armor class having more damage then heavies would be simply logical) and highly boost the damage of ranged weapon such as longbow axe and shortbow. Why run shortbow/longbow/axe? because those weapon have slowing effect wich highly helps the pet to take down moving targets.

You talk about risk/reward? well ranger currently has a way lot more risk then the warrior or the guardian because it has less armor so how comes the ranger ranged damage isnt at least on par with the warrior and the guardian melee damage? I can understand the fact ranged weapon actualy let you avoid melee attack but it doesnt prevent you from taking a spell in the face, there is little excuse for melee units to back their dps behind the fact that they are actualy fighting at melee range, they already got the armor to cope for it and save for the thief wich actualy can stack crowd control like a pro and go invisible (thats his defence) they all are already compensated with a better armor level. Ranger should have better ranged dps then that, you talk about pet behing unable to hit well then go ahead and cripple your targets? Even sword AA has a crippling effect as well as your 2 so whats the excuse for why your pet cant actualy reach its target, its practicaly immobilised right under you, and in pve it just wont move.

Just another anecdote to add to this about pets:

Just did Crucible of Eternity Path 1. Had to kill a bunch of bomb golems. My drake just bounced around like a pinball, attacking nothing, just switching aggro over and over, and drawing aggro to itself. Ridiculous.

It was on passive, right? I can’t take my pet into a dungeon without it being on passive 100% of the time because of the aggro problem. On passive they won’t take aggro even if hit or if the Ranger is hit.

thefantasticg.3984:

It was on passive, right? I can’t take my pet into a dungeon without it being on passive 100% of the time because of the aggro problem. On passive they won’t take aggro even if hit or if the Ranger is hit.

They’ve fixed that for the most part, actually. Pets no longer draw aggro at all unless you attack first.

Perhaps one solution to this problem would be to introduce a new trait in the marksmanship or skirmishing tree:

-Companion’s Vengeance:
While your pet is in the downed state, you deal 15-20% more damage.

This trait has considerable risk vs reward. Since pets regenerate the trait will eventually reset itself, especially quicker after combat. However, this trait will allow people who wish to not use their pet do just that, assuming their enemy decides to kill their beloved (maybe) partner. It would be a great punishment in PvP for those players that destroy pets just to nullify the ranger’s full potential. I figure a ranger will be so distraught by losing their faithful compatriot, they’d go into rage to enact some revenge on their enemy.

That would be nice. Damage buff while put is down. Someone has mentioned that before in the Ranger subforum. Basically since the pet is supposed to be so special to the Ranger why not make it get mad about the pet being down? I think they called the buff “Rage” or something.

Black Box.9312:

thefantasticg.3984:

It was on passive, right? I can’t take my pet into a dungeon without it being on passive 100% of the time because of the aggro problem. On passive they won’t take aggro even if hit or if the Ranger is hit.

They’ve fixed that for the most part, actually. Pets no longer draw aggro at all unless you attack first.

For the most part, and for the record I’m well aware they fixed the aggro’ing problem we use to have on the pet. Made me hate the pet less, but not by much. I’m talking specifically about the part that isn’t. Of course, that time when the pet can still draw aggro can be negated by putting it on guard or inactive… the problem with that is that the freakin active/passive still isn’t on a keybind! Honestly, my pet experience would be a lot better if they was a keybind for active/passive.

Agree pets are pretty bad.

I’d start by making F2 skills a lot better, most of them are >1sec cast and very short range.

IMO they should be mostly in the 0 – 0.25sec range, with 600 as the minimum range.

I’d also like to see the range of F2 skills expanded, eg: a smoke field, more venom-granting pets, AOE dmg pets.

Perma stow + 30% damage boost to weapon skills and trap damage. Only fix that will fix.

They’ve stated flat out that they won’t be addressing the AI, and they’ve also stated that it’s broken. Doesn’t really leave a whole lot of wiggle room.

Ways to make it happen? Make some traits the default behaviour for pets:

- alpha training
- agility training
- fortifying bond

Merge others:

- malicious training/expertise training
- pet’s prowess/carnivorous training
- concentration training/compassion training

and move ALL of the pet traits to beastmastery. (delete or merge to make room) and replace them with actually useful traits.

- Make the signets all affect the ranger AND pet by default,
- Make SoR not require a pet. (passive stays the same – active becomes “cure all conditions” recharge stays the same)

Bam, there we go. People who aren’t into the petting zoo have a class that’s not handicapped by a broken mechanic – those who like the furries can trait for them more directly. The two can blissfully ignore each other.

stale.9785:

Perma stow + 30% damage boost to weapon skills and trap damage. Only fix that will fix.

That’s a Rangers wet dream right there..