Guild Wars 2

Hi all, especially balance team of arena.net! As we all know ranger’s pets are awesome fun, until they come face to face with red circle of death that just cannot be facetanked. To allevate the problem in a flexible and adaptive way i thought of the following solution:

Pet ward command - when activated it would act in reverse way to “protect me” shout. Pet would take no damage, instead it’s master would take the brunt of any hits that the pet would otherwise receive. However unlike the pet, the ranger has many ways to mitigate or completely negate that damage, such as:

• any form of evasion
• any form of blocking
• any form of reflection
• any form of damage reduction

In short rather then giving pet some sort of poor man’s defeses such as aegis or a dodge when ranger dodges, it could get the full package by letting ranger himself handle those hits.

Being a command the skill would have no cooldown and instant cast, and it would be a toggle skill – use it once to initiate pet ward, use it again to cancel it and have pet deal with it’s own hits.

WIth that in place a ranger and hit pet would get significant advantages in battle as long as the ranger is willing to up his pet micromanagement game.
Here are the clear advantages of pet ward:

• ability to use all evasion granting skills to protect your pet, not just regular dodge.
• that gs counter attack too
• no loss of pet’s damage – it stays there and hits, you handle the defense when needed
• you decide when to protect it and for how long – what if pet is dying of condition and pet swap is on cooldown? With pet ward you have control and can take some pain until swap is possible
• and when to not – what if dodging with you would cause the pet to dodge off a cliff? Once again here you decide, and nothing is left to luck.
• freedom of builds for ranger – “bearbow” worked because being away from pet you can call it out of AoE damage range. Now you can go in any configuration, getting up close and personal with a champ will not spell sure death of your pet when he casts AoE.
• a player skill based solution – this defense is as good as the player using it. Death for the unskilled, blessing for skilled rangers.

Additional ideas that would support pet survivability in tough battles

• pet getting aegis on dodge trait - alone it would be terribad, due to aegis shortcomings, but if used as a trait that would support pet survival and not replace pet ward, it would be great. [that idea is not mine, mine is to put it in along with pet ward not instead of it]

• “Guard” shout being insta-cast and not 1 sec cast - 10 seconds protection for pet with short cd talks. But 1 sec cast time kills any chances of using is a response to incoming aoe attack without getting pulverized yourself. Plus shouts are supposed to be instant by default.

Post with your support or criticism below i will ofc defend my ideas with logic and examples where possible;) Also to bump this thread so a dev can take a look at it and post what they think, and confirm they know about the ideas:)

This is awfully complicated don’t you think? Wouldn’t just granting the pet aegis every time the Ranger dodges or uses a skill with an evade with an internal cooldown of X seconds (where X is the magic balanced number between 4 and 6 seconds) do the trick?

Atherakhia.4086:

This is awfully complicated don’t you think? Wouldn’t just granting the pet aegis every time the Ranger dodges or uses a skill with an evade with an internal cooldown of X seconds (where X is the magic balanced number between 4 and 6 seconds) do the trick?

Aegis only blocks one attack. I’d rather just have dodge apply Xs of invul to the pet. Even if it had to be a trait that’d be 100 times better than currently. We could even change “Instinctual Bond” to something like that and you wouldn’t even have to change the name as it still fits perfectly (if not better). This gives the Ranger the power of doing so but not just for free.

Ranger is supposed to be about skilled and challenging gameplay by managing two characters (you and pet), not just one. And pet ward is as simple to activate and deactivate as tapping one button.

Aegis on the other hand might sound simple, but offers far to little protection to be meaningful. It protects only from one single hit! How will that protect your pet against:

• big aoe that rather then hit once, hit few times but too fast to walk out of it on time anyway
• Killer damage 1 hit aoe rings, but with tendency to overlap way too much
• unblockable skills, or multihit targetted skills, such as risen illusionist’s mesmer beam

To name a few things where aegis just doesn’t get the job done.

@Castaliea.3156

Glad you see the aegis shortcomings, but your idea also has major hole. Were a trait like that put in there, then there would be no flexability. You’d have rangers who took it, and “pet corpse providers” that did not. Any build without it would be considered “idiot’s choice” without a right to exist.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Ranger is supposed to be about skilled and challenging gameplay by managing two characters (you and pet), not just one. And pet ward is as simple to activate and deactivate as tapping one button.

Aegis on the other hand might sound simple, but offers far to little protection to be meaningful. It protects only from one single hit! How will that protect your pet against:

• big aoe that rather then hit once, hit few times but too fast to walk out of it on time anyway
• Killer damage 1 hit aoe rings, but with tendency to overlap way too much* unblockable skills, or multihit targetted skills, such as risen illusionist’s mesmer beam

To name a few things where aegis just doesn’t get the job done.

@Castaliea.3156

Glad you see the aegis shortcomings, but your idea also has major hole. Were a trait like that put in there, then there would be no flexability. You’d have rangers who took it, and “pet corpse providers” that did not. Any build without it would be considered “idiot’s choice” without a right to exist.

How is tying it to a trait any different from what Companion’s Defense is now?

If the pet is broken, then you fix the pet, not the traits. Besides any trai that would fix the pet, would become “one to rule them all”, and any builds that would not include it, would be "vastly subpar, dead weight, bad move etc.

Also solving pet issues with traits is not my idea. I proposed a new profession mechanic in the first post:)

Chrispy.5641:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Ranger is supposed to be about skilled and challenging gameplay by managing two characters (you and pet), not just one. And pet ward is as simple to activate and deactivate as tapping one button.

Aegis on the other hand might sound simple, but offers far to little protection to be meaningful. It protects only from one single hit! How will that protect your pet against:

• big aoe that rather then hit once, hit few times but too fast to walk out of it on time anyway
• Killer damage 1 hit aoe rings, but with tendency to overlap way too much* unblockable skills, or multihit targetted skills, such as risen illusionist’s mesmer beam

To name a few things where aegis just doesn’t get the job done.

@Castaliea.3156

Glad you see the aegis shortcomings, but your idea also has major hole. Were a trait like that put in there, then there would be no flexability. You’d have rangers who took it, and “pet corpse providers” that did not. Any build without it would be considered “idiot’s choice” without a right to exist.

How is tying it to a trait any different from what Companion’s Defense is now?

Because Invul > protection. That trait should trigger after a dodge to provide an additional duration of damage reduction after the dodge is performed. It should not be a substitute for a dodge.
I mentioned making it a trait because some people like to shout OP,OP,OP at everything. Personally I think the whole pet mechanic needs to be either removed or have an alternative profession mechanic provided. It’s just that broken and has always been.

If 100 people have one idea and one genius has another i’d go with the genius’ one.

All posts shouting “OP OP OP,” or “this idea is stupid” aren’t worth considering unless a solid, logical reason is provided why given idea is bad.
I’d hate to live in a world where something new and creative gets butchered cause of few loudmouth naysayers that can’t even muster some decent counter-arguments.

to resume
1. give pet invulnerability on ranger dodge for the same time as the ranger
2. give pet actual power scaling as alternative to running condition damage
3. Better shout response

Invulnerability when ranger dodges sounds sweet, but it’s very limited. Dodge means just the endurance eating regular dodges. Will it work? Sure!

But it’s very shallow. There’s no depth, no challenge and no risk vs reward in it.
If regular dodges provided by endurance were all it takes for those biggest, baddest fights, then that would be fine. But in some cases (lupi for one), it’s not. And Ranger and his pet fight as one. If you need many more “saves” then just regular dodge, then so does your pet.

On top of that, ranger dodging because his pet is about to get hit feels unnatural. Dodging because the damage is directly threatening you (activated pet ward) makes much more sense.

Pet Ward is also a tool to optimize your hp levels with pet. Suppose you have 80% hp, pet’s not doing so well – 30%. Given next few hits to pet won’t be killer 1hko, but regular hits, you could turn pet ward on, and tank a bit for you furry friend to keep you both in combat, then turn off when it’s gets to hot. The end result might be you both being at 30% hp, and healing skill ready to heal you both.
Without pet ward you’d have one ranger who doesn’t need healing just yet, and one dead pet for which it’s too late.

Unlike those stiff “dodge for invul/protect/pet dodge” solutions, pet ward is the much higher level of defense, because it gives you the full control you need, offering much broader defense options and tactical opportunities, while posing a fair amount of challenge to the ranger.
And hey if you want pet evade on dodge, just activate pet ward, dodge, deactivate. All done. Maybe bit more fuss, but that’s just tip of the iceberg, unlike a fixed solution.

As for better shout response – i’ll buy that for a dollar!
Pet power scaling – i’m totally not familiar with that subject so i’ll zip it on that one.