Ok, first to say, I am pleased with the ranger. It’s my main and I enjoy it. Using pets for semi-tanking while throwing traps and positioning to utilize shortbow.
It’s not perfect, but this is not an thread about that.
This is a idea about a profession mechanic that the ranger could have used during development but can now evolve to fit some new profession. If something similar was written, I am not aware of that, and please bring it up.
It’s not about changing the ranger, it’s about hearing thoughts.
Alternative Pet Mechanic – Spirit bond
The Ranger connects so strongly to his pet that they share life force.
The pet has no health of its own, there is only one health orb, but he gets his own boons and conditions.
By default the Ranger is normal and the Pet is ethereal, ghostly.
He is still controlled by AI, and goes around dealing damage and using skills.
But! He is immune to damage (and heals). Tho he can still be disabled (knock down, stun, slow etc.) and buffed (fury, might, etc.), nothing done to him can lower (or raise) the Ranger’s health bar.
Ranger can normally be damaged, get conditions and boons.
Mechanic Skill button: F1 – Spirit Swap
Hitting F1 swaps spirits, so your pet becomes fleshy and the Ranger ethereal and ghostly.
The Ranger is now immune to damage (and healing) but not disables (and boons).
Nothing done to him can now change the health bar.
The pet, on the other hand, can be normally damaged and everything done to him normally changes the health bar.
It would come with a decent cooldown.
Mechanic Skill button: F2 – Pet Skill
This remains unchanged.
Other buttons would now be unnecessary, since the pet has no health of its own. So no passive/aggressive and change pet.
Lock Target and Return are under consideration.
There you go. Thoughts?
I believe this would create more interesting situations in PvP, and it would require reading enemy actions and being ahead of situation for Swap, even in PvE.
But, as the Ranger is probably set in stone, this could fit a profession like the Chronomancer, where his “pet” would be a time-shifted version of itself.