Guild Wars 2

Death.

Pet death is an absolute nightmare to any Ranger. It’s bad enough to see your pet die(assuming you even cared about it in the slightest, which in all honesty as a Ranger you should for one reason or another) but even worse when you’re actually trying to keep it alive. Sadly, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep the poor thing alive as the game evolves. With the addition of more pet swap effects and pet active effects via traits it’s becoming even more important than ever to the Ranger to keep their pets alive and as active as possible. This is much easier on paper than practice unfortunately. In WvW a frontline Ranger will never have an active pet and therefore an entire profession mechanic (and more) is lost. As PvE content becomes “more challenging” the pet is placed in greater and greater risk at every turn. When do we sit down and decide that it has become simply too much? What are we going to do at that point? Death penalty for players was removed from the game so why do our poor, faithful allies, who charge in side-by-side (and often times a little ahead) of us despite knowing they’re at an immeasurably higher risk than us still suffer from it.

I personally think this is the time to see the 60s timer applied when swapping a dead pet out removed in the PvE and WvW environments. The original goal of this timer was to force the ranger to actively monitor the pet and punish poor play however it’s gotten to the point where this no longer punishes simply poor play but all play as well. No player should lose access to numerous traits in addition to an entire profession mechanic simply because the game is not designed around being AI friendly and, in all honesty, why should it be? At the end of the day if you pick an ill-advised pet for the job it’s still going to die within seconds meaning you cant use your profession mechanik until you can swap again. That sure sounds like a punishment. This change does not negate the important choice of specific pets, it simply prevents those who made the right choices from suffering longer than they should be expected to.

I’s sure people can argue “Yay” and “Nay” for days on end but what it really comes down to is this:
Is it fair to that one, even if it’s just that one, Ranger who made smart pet choices and played perfectly to still lose not only a profession mechanic but also traits simply because the system is designed against him? Not in the slightest. Please don’t continue to punish him or anyone else.

Please honestly consider this request and Thank You for reading.

Sincerely,
A hopelessly desperate Ranger who really, really, really, hates pet death.

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PS. For all those wondering: I had to spell “mechanic” with a “k” instead of a “c” because the following word was “until” whose first 3 letters “unt” do not mix well with the letter “c” from the correct ending of the previous word under the strict censoring of this forum. Sorry if that annoys you as much as it does me and thank you for understanding.

shouldn’t have a problem with this when the patch hits. barkskin is amazing, and you get a lot of extra stats for the pet. you can also trait for another 300 toughness. pets are looking better than ever before.

mistsim.2748:

shouldn’t have a problem with this when the patch hits. barkskin is amazing, and you get a lot of extra stats for the pet. you can also trait for another 300 toughness. pets are looking better than ever before.

I’m really sorry but this is going to rather mean but please keep in mind I don’t mean it as such.

I’m well aware of the stat buff. Trust me. I’m overjoyed. But I also specifically mentioned being a “Frontline” Ranger in WvW. Are you going to be over 90% HP much? No. Bark Skin gone. Also, 300 Toughness is not even going to save a bear when those zergs collide and bears are pretty much garbage if only because of their completely lack-luster actives as most pets are. People are always trying to find ways to “save the pet” in extreme situations and there have been some truly ridiculous suggestions when it comes to keeping the pet alive but that’s not the answer. The Answer is to not overly punish a player for forces outside of his/her control.

Yes I’m happy to see pets looking so great ON PAPER. But as I said, paper is no substitute.

there are multiple viable frontline builds. personally, im gonna go with 6/0/6/0/6, probably double bear. bears have innate invulnerability, so they should last long enough to cast Beastly Warden. that’s all you need the pet for.

alternatively, you can go for a quickdraw build (6/6/6/0/0), or an insanely tanky one (6/0/6/6/0).

your tears are delicious. if youre so upset about how things look on paper, then maybe you should test a build for a few hundred hours before crying.

mistsim.2748:

there are multiple viable frontline builds. personally, im gonna go with 6/0/6/0/6, probably double bear. bears have innate invulnerability, so they should last long enough to cast Beastly Warden. that’s all you need the pet for.

alternatively, you can go for a quickdraw build (6/6/6/0/0), or an insanely tanky one (6/0/6/6/0).

your tears are delicious. if youre so upset about how things look on paper, then maybe you should test a build for a few hundred hours before crying.

What are you doing to CC? Or are you one of those people who think simply walking through the enemy zerg is “good enough”? Do you WvW?
A frontliner’s role is Tank and CC.
We can tank well enough to be considered “viable”. No one is arguing against that. Almost every class can tank “good enough”.
We don’t CC. At all. Some of our pets do. (A recent trait made this even better!) This means you’ll never be told “yeah its okay to run your ranger” instead of “please use your Guardian or Warrior” so long as you get locked out of using a profession mechanic and therefore traits which rely on it for minutes on end.

So go ahead and sit there thinking you’re so high and mighty and when you get into WvW and get asked to get out of the frontline because you’re “sub-optimal” for the simple reason of having a de-activated profession mechanic and traits through no fault of your own don’t you dare ever come post on the forums about it.

I’m so excited to see we will finally have the tools to fulfill the role after this update, which we have been lacking since day one, I don’t wan to see anyone being told that its still not good enough just because of an out-dated design. It’s not right or fair to anyone.

im glad you asked. there are many things you can do. I was thinking about running 2 shouts (HaO and RaO), 3 signets (SoR, SoS, SoW); remorseless/empathic bond/beastly warden. so you get double stability, a stunbreaker, very low CD heal. you can also do 3 shouts and 2 signets for double invuln and double stab. GS/s/axe. with Remorseless, you can probably run mostly cavalier stats.

if you want more CC than an aoe taunt every 15s, you can go with a quickdraw/trap build in which you just slot spike trap for the knockdown. something like 0/6/6/0/6. add entangle to that, so then you have aoe taunt, knockdown, and aoe immob as icing on the cake. of course, as an experienced ranger, you’d be casting entangle on the backliners when your zerg penetrates to the rear. you would also be using Path of Scars liberally to fish people out of the safety of their zerg. so that’s a ton of hard CC.

the frontline build is probably the second one i’ll test, and when I come up with something that works i’ll put out a guide. ive always been interested in the frontline ranger.

mistsim.2748:

im glad you asked. there are many things you can do. I was thinking about running 2 shouts (HaO and RaO), 3 signets (SoR, SoS, SoW); remorseless/empathic bond/beastly warden. so you get double stability, a stunbreaker, very low CD heal. you can also do 3 shouts and 2 signets for double invuln and double stab. GS/s/axe. with Remorseless, you can probably run mostly cavalier stats.

if you want more CC than an aoe taunt every 15s, you can go with a quickdraw/trap build in which you just slot spike trap for the knockdown. something like 0/6/6/0/6. add entangle to that, so then you have aoe taunt, knockdown, and aoe immob as icing on the cake. of course, as an experienced ranger, you’d be casting entangle on the backliners when your zerg penetrates to the rear. you would also be using Path of Scars liberally to fish people out of the safety of their zerg. so that’s a ton of hard CC.

the frontline build is probably the second one i’ll test, and when I come up with something that works i’ll put out a guide. ive always been interested in the frontline ranger.

I hope you play better than you listen. Not that it’ll mater once your pet dies. And it will no matter how much Invul you stack on it.

Too bad. I woulda liked to talked builds too. We’re getting so much great stuff.

im not stacking invuln, it automatically goes off when the bear is taking damage and lasts 5 seconds. I don’t even have to micromanage it.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defy_Pain

previously it didn’t make sense to use bears as they did virtually nothing. but now any pet can do an aoe taunt.

> I personally think this is the time to see the 60s timer applied when swapping a dead pet out removed in the PvE and WvW environments.

Use / Cancel a tonic – It resets the timer. Works the PvE and WvW environments.

Welcome to what the Ranger is forced to do :/

mistsim.2748:

im glad you asked. there are many things you can do. I was thinking about running 2 shouts (HaO and RaO), 3 signets (SoR, SoS, SoW); remorseless/empathic bond/beastly warden. so you get double stability, a stunbreaker, very low CD heal. you can also do 3 shouts and 2 signets for double invuln and double stab. GS/s/axe. with Remorseless, you can probably run mostly cavalier stats.

if you want more CC than an aoe taunt every 15s, you can go with a quickdraw/trap build in which you just slot spike trap for the knockdown. something like 0/6/6/0/6. add entangle to that, so then you have aoe taunt, knockdown, and aoe immob as icing on the cake. of course, as an experienced ranger, you’d be casting entangle on the backliners when your zerg penetrates to the rear. you would also be using Path of Scars liberally to fish people out of the safety of their zerg. so that’s a ton of hard CC.

the frontline build is probably the second one i’ll test, and when I come up with something that works i’ll put out a guide. ive always been interested in the frontline ranger.

You’d be better off running main hand axe over sword. The swords animations screw with your movements way too much when you are trying to push through a zerg. It’s fun to leap frog your way through them to the back but it doesn’t help you stay on tag.

yeah, axe/axe was gonna be my second choice. the weapon set just lacks survivability though. getting stuck in it would be certain death.

Will pets be able to stay on a moving target, thats what im wondering, the potential dps loss. How much will the BM 30 runspeed trait vs none help? Id love to see any pet have same function as Moa AA leap attack, but maybe that is to strong or not needed with the trait revamp

nacario.9417:

Will pets be able to stay on a moving target, thats what im wondering, the potential dps loss. How much will the BM 30 runspeed trait vs none help? Id love to see any pet have same function as Moa AA leap attack, but maybe that is to strong or not needed with the trait revamp

All “flying” birds have a 300 range AA, so that is 50 better than the Moa Morph 250 range and they will also have perma 30% speed with 50% uptime of 33% speed through swiftness (WOW ). Birds were already pretty good before, but with a constant run speed of +30% they are going to be awesome.