Guild Wars 2

Hey all

Considering we were shown a potential snippet of the coming balance patch

What are your thoughts on ‘aspects of animal x’

To gain certain attributes or skills bound to the F keys whilst representing this beast

IE. Aspect of the reef drake

Passive – + toughness +vitality (passives relate to animal family)
Drake family skill: knock back 450 – 20 sec CD
Reef drake skill: shrieking arrow => 3/4 sec cast time
Stacks 5 stacks on confusion on target
(Edit: the knock back would be single target – similar to engi’s personal battering ram)

Thoughts and ideas welcome

-Phyrak

Edit: my animal aspect – I mean your pet disappears but you gain its abilities
So, no pet out to be stomped into the ground by AOE, rather you gain abilities and passives as the example above and gain an extra element of damage or utility

450 knock back is mentel, they nurfed the area control on the thumper turret for that reason , it was ment to disrupt not control.

the drake should be treated the same and its good as is.
the reef drake skill is a cone and applies 5 stacks anyway.

i wouldn’t mind a 1/2 sec off the cast of the drake f2 attack , though.

Edited drake knockback
Edited meaning of aspect

just nope to aspects, specs and stats must be balanced and fair .
giving this to us would be like Ascended armour 2.0.

Anything that gave me my pets potential damage for even a limited time would be nice. Instead of it running around chasing things and hitting them once every 35mins I could actually use that damage to better effect. This wouldn’t effect the balance as it’s just giving you back what you’re already losing to other classes as your pet wanders around aimlessly.

No. Just no. Either completly remove pet, redesign entire profession or give us a true mechanic with 100% controlable pet acting as one with PC.

No bonuses for dead AI. Ever.
ArenaNet challanged themselves with creating Pet profession, I expect and demand them to deal with it now.

Gonna pop your bubble now, something this major would absolutely have been covered in the skill bar, I would not hope for this change anytime soon lol.

That being said Anet DID seem to like the idea of aspects, so we may very well still see it in the future, but it’ll sure as hell not be the next balance patch lol.

On second though, it’s possible that it’ll be announced at gamescon… But if it’s not announced there don’t expect it soon.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

450 knock back is mentel, they nurfed the area control on the thumper turret for that reason , it was ment to disrupt not control.

the drake should be treated the same and its good as is.
the reef drake skill is a cone and applies 5 stacks anyway.

i wouldn’t mind a 1/2 sec off the cast of the drake f2 attack , though.

Not thumper turret, that was the 2pt adept trait in explosives that’s “turrets blow up when they die”

Thumpers active is very much meant to control, that’s why the turret itself pulses cripple on people and has a launch as its active ability.

Also, Point Blank Shot knocks people back a lot further than 450….

People have been suggesting a Spirit / Aspect mode for pets forever, and it IS a good idea.

I might disagree with the power of the actives you listed, but those are probably just examples.

What matters is that we have an option to gain stats for durability or damage normally provided by our pets in situations where pets are a non-viable mechanic (majority of boss fights, large group wvw, e.g. half of the endgame).

Raven.9603:

People have been suggesting a Spirit / Aspect mode for pets forever, and it IS a good idea.

I might disagree with the power of the actives you listed, but those are probably just examples.

What matters is that we have an option to gain stats for durability or damage normally provided by our pets in situations where pets are a non-viable mechanic (majority of boss fights, large group wvw, e.g. half of the endgame).

I feel like the stat bonus should honestly be weaker than what we gain from the pet, but the actives make up for it, it’d be more interesting that way. There’s distinct advantages and disadvantages for using both.

PERSONALLY, I’d like to see aspects replace swapping between 2 pets, but that’s just me.

i didnt mean not to have actives, i meant that his specific actives in his examples might not be balanced. the idea of actives replacing the F2 is still a neat one.

I want to pickup my Sun Spirit and gain a new weapon! Fire Long Bow! Kinda like Ele conjured weapons…

Durzlla.6295:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

450 knock back is mentel, they nurfed the area control on the thumper turret for that reason , it was ment to disrupt not control.

the drake should be treated the same and its good as is.
the reef drake skill is a cone and applies 5 stacks anyway.

i wouldn’t mind a 1/2 sec off the cast of the drake f2 attack , though.

Not thumper turret, that was the 2pt adept trait in explosives that’s “turrets blow up when they die”

Thumpers active is very much meant to control, that’s why the turret itself pulses cripple on people and has a launch as its active ability.

Also, Point Blank Shot knocks people back a lot further than 450….

… stop talking like i don’t know what point blank shot does.
ah ok so it was The trait knock backs Still you knew my point with that the Drakes in the same boat, i would not like to see Chained Drake Aoes knocking mobs or People away 450 yards or even if it was combined with PBS thats a lot more than the max 900 knock back from Pbs , then at 900 yards the drake knocks back other 450.

1350yards it may not happen much or often but that alone is kitten.

Okay, so there some potential but it would be an interesting thing to balance

As well as the option of pets too

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

450 knock back is mentel, they nurfed the area control on the thumper turret for that reason , it was ment to disrupt not control.

the drake should be treated the same and its good as is.
the reef drake skill is a cone and applies 5 stacks anyway.

i wouldn’t mind a 1/2 sec off the cast of the drake f2 attack , though.

Not thumper turret, that was the 2pt adept trait in explosives that’s “turrets blow up when they die”

Thumpers active is very much meant to control, that’s why the turret itself pulses cripple on people and has a launch as its active ability.

Also, Point Blank Shot knocks people back a lot further than 450….

… stop talking like i don’t know what point blank shot does.
ah ok so it was The trait knock backs Still you knew my point with that the Drakes in the same boat, i would not like to see Chained Drake Aoes knocking mobs or People away 450 yards or even if it was combined with PBS thats a lot more than the max 900 knock back from Pbs , then at 900 yards the drake knocks back other 450.

1350yards it may not happen much or often but that alone is kitten.

You’d never get them that far, he literally just said it’d be like the battering ram engies have (IE point blank AoE, a kitten and a half to land, but very satisfying when you do), this would push them out of the 600 knock back range and into the 500, this would make it IMPOSSIBLE to knock them back further than 950 using those two alone.

Additionally, If you know what Point Blank Shot is why did you even bother comparing it to the engi trait that’s getting nerfed when we have a knock back with 1200 range (NOT close range), and knocks them back for 50 less than his suggested one AND has a shorter cooldown (pre traits) AND can be significantly stronger than that.

thats on the basis of having one pet drake now add two into the Equations.

hence why i said chained Drake knockbacks read properly.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

thats on the basis of having one pet drake now add two into the Equations.

hence why i said chained Drake knockbacks read properly.

Again, he said “like personal battering ram” which again, is a POINT BLANKsingle target ability. You could not chain them no matter how much you tried. That’s also assuming that with aspects we keep the second pet (since aspects themselves would solve the issue pet swapping is there for), AND that we’d get 2 aspects to swap between.

Read properly

by all means it is a replancement f2 by getting rid of the pet, but the pet is here to stay .

Personal battering ram or not , giving the charater him self the personal ability is giving the class a 4th utlity and thats not allowed unless it is something that swaps your weapon out like a kit or a loch form/panther norn or animal transformation.

its been said may times before by anet the pet won’t be going anywhere , its the strenght and the bane of this class.

these kind of changes create more problems than they solve.

It’s uninteresting and not fun to play with.

Fun factor is very often poorly represented in many ideas and proposals. Sure, it may be even number balanced, but if the idea is not grabbing me and making to say “Oh, that’s amazing, I want more of that!”.

A button you can press once in a while, with no further depth and is fairly situational as profession mechanic. Sorry, it doesn’t grab me at all.

That’s why I’m all after expanding Necromancer’s, Ranger’s and Warrior’s mechanics, making them more intuitive, funnier to play with and less “yea, you can press that one button from time to time, but that doesn’t change anything really”.

Pet is Ranger’s mechanic. You won’t get rid of it.

Instead think what could be possibly done to expand the Pet mechanic, how to further bound Ranger with his Pet and how to solve exisiting Pet issues.

Rym.1469:

Pet is Ranger’s mechanic. You won’t get rid of it.

Instead think what could be possibly done to expand the Pet mechanic, how to further bound Ranger with his Pet and how to solve exisiting Pet issues.

Look, we’ve already told them what needs to be done. Pets have to be able to hit moving players, they have to be able to live through boss fights and they have to be able to survive WvW group encounters. Those are really easy things to do that every other major MMO since pretty much DAoC has accomplished. Reduce the amount of damage they take from AOE mechanics or cap the amount of damage they can take in a single hit.

They are not going to fix pets, ever. Why? Either they can’t, or they feel that making the changes necessary to allow pets to live and hit moving targets would ultimately be exploited. Considering PvE since launch has been nothing but one giant exploitation fest, we can conclude that they simply “can’t.”

Now, with that out of the way, we still need what the pet is failing to provide in boss fights, group wvw and in general against any moving target. If the pet cant provide it, then providing the players with a spirit/aspect mode where they gain stats to compensate for what the pet shouldve been doing is really the only logical way. While you may not find it interesting or fun, the idea has been suggested so many times since launch that it would seem many people do find it an interesting, fun solution.

it would even bring new decision pointsto the class: man, i really want the Jaguar spirit active ability and passive bonuses, but if I’m in situation where I want to have a pet out I’m going to want Wolf’s control… who should I bring with me…

Raven.9603:

Rym.1469:

Pet is Ranger’s mechanic. You won’t get rid of it.

Instead think what could be possibly done to expand the Pet mechanic, how to further bound Ranger with his Pet and how to solve exisiting Pet issues.

Look, we’ve already told them what needs to be done. Pets have to be able to hit moving players, they have to be able to live through boss fights and they have to be able to survive WvW group encounters. Those are really easy things to do that every other major MMO since pretty much DAoC has accomplished. Reduce the amount of damage they take from AOE mechanics or cap the amount of damage they can take in a single hit.

They are not going to fix pets, ever. Why? Either they can’t, or they feel that making the changes necessary to allow pets to live and hit moving targets would ultimately be exploited. Considering PvE since launch has been nothing but one giant exploitation fest, we can conclude that they simply “can’t.”

Now, with that out of the way, we still need what the pet is failing to provide in boss fights, group wvw and in general against any moving target. If the pet cant provide it, then providing the players with a spirit/aspect mode where they gain stats to compensate for what the pet shouldve been doing is really the only logical way. While you may not find it interesting or fun, the idea has been suggested so many times since launch that it would seem many people do find it an interesting, fun solution.

it would even bring new decision pointsto the class: man, i really want the Jaguar spirit active ability and passive bonuses, but if I’m in situation where I want to have a pet out I’m going to want Wolf’s control… who should I bring with me…

Adding onto this, During the CDI Anet really liked the aspect idea and said they’d discuss it (didn’t promise or even say it’ll actually happen, just that they liked the idea and may play around with it).

And also, the reason pets can’t do some of the things we want (like hitting while moving) is due to them being tied to all other NPC AI, so if they changed how the pets attacks work then the NPCs would be running around smacking you in the face as you moved as well.

Personally I would encourage that since it’d make pure zerker slightly less viable (IE steps in the right direction), but anet seems to think it’d be too difficult for players…. god knows how…

The problem is, you cannot simply reduce AoE damage pets take by 90% like in WoW. Because how would you classify cleave/splash? What about AoE condition applications?

Besides, Pets being nearly immune to AoE would mean that they could solo PvE AI which only does AoE/cleaving attacks.

I’ve come up with something more complicated, but perfectly doable instead some time ago:

Rym.1469:

1. Pets take 90% less damage and regenerate 1% (2% PvE) of their health every 2 seconds. All condition applied to pets are full-duration, although their damage is lowered by 90%. Movement-impairing conditions are of the same strenght, but reduced by 50% duration by default.

• Targeted * When Pet is set as Target for Player/NPC it looses it’s damage reduction and health regeneration, gaining undispellable debuff “Targeted” visible as a small red icon above Pet’s portrait. During the debuff, all condition damage done by targeting foe is regular damage.
  Debuff lasts until the Pet is swapped, downed or distargeted.

3. Left from the portrait, is the place for Boon/Condition/Debuff affecting your pet in form of regular icons.

I believe it could be the answer. It takes off the burden of pets dying from random AoE while also making it perfectly possible to kill them if that’s your wish.

Targeting required is some “no-no” but honestly, many attacks in this game require target already. So I think the game would be fine with one more.

Alrighty, seems a 60 for/ 40 against

Now some theory for discussion

Would it link into the beast mastery traits or goes with the spirits with traits of its own?

What would suit such an idea best?

Phyrak.7260:

Alrighty, seems a 60 for/ 40 against

Now some theory for discussion

Would it link into the beast mastery traits or goes with the spirits with traits of its own?

What would suit such an idea best?

I’d say link it with Beast Mastery, but that’s partly tied to my whole “If we get Aspects I want that to replace our second pet.” Thing.

IE: we would have one pet and an aspect.