Guild Wars 2

I really don’t understand why you give them path finding and ‘AI’ when all of them are lackluster one-shot abilities that have them run out of fuel and self destruct in 5 seconds.

How about something like this? There’s a lot I need to cover, so apologies.

When idle, equipped but inactive gyros fly by your side like the function gyro. In this state they can’t be harmed and are standing by for command. They must be by your side like this to use the corresponding tool belt skill.

Using the slot skill button will either order that gyro to an enemy or ally, or to a general area, this can be done repeatedly to give them new orders. This way, you can order your medic or stealth gyro to heal and follow specific allies. Gyros can be ordered around like this until they run out of fuel, at which point they automatically return. Their fuel can be represented by the ammo count number.

Using your tool belt while a gyro is deployed will call that gyro back for repair and refueling manually. Refueling rate will depend on the gyro. A Gyro can be launched again before having maximum fuel, but there would be a small 5-10 second minimum cool down period.

If destroyed, the gyro skill will go on a longer cool down, and resume refueling once it’s repaired.

That’s roughly it. Make them more like robotic flying minions rather than mentally kittened field skills that struggle to reach their target.

The ‘fix’ for mesmer clones was to add a trait that gives super speed when you shatter them. The same ‘fix’ would apply to gyros as well. Not only is the pathing pretty awful, but my personal favorite is that stealth gyro can’t keep up with your character even if the pathing was immaculate.

Also as a bonus, I like how stealth gyro interacts with any skill that has ‘bounces’ as enemies can target your gyro and it will bounce to you even though you are in stealth.

Pet AI is still awful, but in HoT they found a work around: give the pets cheap abilities that negate the pathing such as repeatedly shadow stepping to the target (to prevent dodging a single big hit or effect) with Smoke Assault or a 1200 range multi-hit attack that tracks the target (again to prevent dodging a single big hit or stepping out of the way once the attack animation starts up) with Spike Barrage.

In PvE they made pets/summons take massively reduced damage so them standing in damage and getting instantly destroyed wouldn’t be a thing anymore. It’s not because pet AI is ‘better’.

I still like the idea of them acting with a bit more control.
Maybe their movement could be a bit more ‘scripted’ rather than being a literal object? Like, instead of fudging around trying to find a path, just literally fly in a direct path if it’s not directly obstructed?

The way gyros work just makes no sense to me.

Sneak gyro could just as well be an engineer stealth emitter
Shredder gyro could be, I dunno, a spinning blade you throw on the ground, why an overly complicated gyrocopter?
Blast gryo… just a projectile bomb you could throw directly, the pathing is idiotic.
Medic gyro? Could just be a special effect that floats by your head and shoots a healy beam at wounded targets.

All of it is gimmicky trash that could be done better with something more simple.

If they’re going to make them overly complicated, then I want that complexity to pay off with versatilty, which is where ordering them around and managing them like fighter squads off a carrier comes in.