Hi Rangers! First time poster here so please be gentle.
While playing my Mesmer as my alternative toon these few months, I’ve come up with the following ideas to maybe fix the Ranger Pet. However it requires some overhauls to the current pet mechanic and probably it will have little to no chance of ever being considered by the devs but I’ll just throw it out here for you guys to have a looksee.
1. Remove pet auto attacks, remove pet health and make pets invulnerable. Pets also follow Rangers around with a short leash range.
Pets, for me, now feel like fire-and-forget missiles right now. They single mindedly chase their target to the ends of the world, either succeeding in not hitting their target or meeting their demise in all the AOEs. We have no control over which skills they use when they should be using it. Unless there’s a significant AI upgrade that teaches the pet to identify hostile AOEs, dodge enemy attacks, hang back to regenerate or heal etc, I personally feel that allowing the current pet mechanics to continue in its current state is a lost cause.
Which is why I proposed the above bold letter words. This is the easy and lazy way out but it circumvents the need to code complex AI behavior and lays the foundation for my other ideas.
My justification for making pets invulnerable is that unlike Mesmer clones, pets aren’t readily summonable and not as expendable as the clones and phantasms. Being invulnerable also prevents Rangers to become greatly disadvantaged when the pets die. I believe others have pointed out that Rangers is the only class that can lose access to all their core class mechanics when an AI toon dies. To balance this, pets do not attack targets nor use any skills. They will permanently follow the players around like a mini pet.
2. Replace F1 with a high damage Single Target or AOE attack.
Like the Mesmer, F1 is an AOE burst attack skill but carried out by the pet. However, each pet species will have its own unique range and area of effect. For example: (NOTE: All numbers and descriptions below are just examples, so don’t scream OP this and OP that please)
a. Bears will do a bull rush attack that damages and knocks back a maximum of 5 targets in front of the player. The effective area could be a 600(l) x 300(w) rectangle.
b. Birds (except Moa) will teleport (maybe do a flying up animation then swooping down at the target) and attack a single target at 1200/1500 range. Hopefully this allows birds to attack targets on walls like they are supposed to.
c. Drakes swipes their tails or something and damages up to 5 enemies in a fan shaped area in front or behind the player.
d. Pigs summon a charging horde of other pigs in a horizontal line (going from left to right) at max 900 range from player.
e. Spiders can immobilize and poison a circular area up to 1200 range, etc.
I believe that this will give Rangers full control over a pet’s damage output and also provide them with much needed AOE powers. The different area of effects would give some uniqueness to the class and allows players to have fun choosing the right pet for the job.