Guild Wars 2

So…I was thinking about ANet’s recent tendency as regards WvW and WXP, the idea of leveling up individual skills, spending points to focus in on area or the other, and the thought occurred to me that a similar approach might be taken with pets.

The idea being, that pets would be not come with a baked-in set of skills and stats, based on pet and trait selection, but instead come from families as they do now, that once selected, could then be ‘bred’ through point application over time to open up or develop various skills. These skills would be unique therefore as they are between families, but also be unique within families for pets owned by different players.

Pets would have experience, you would level them, they would grow with you and be more personal, so you’d have more attachment to them, and most importantly, they would be much more customized than they are now. Coupled with more control over their skills, perhaps reduced in number by 1, you could breed a pet of any family to be damage, condition, crowd control or support based.

This I think would be a fantastic way to revitalize the pet mechanic, and make it a more meaningful experience. In PvP you would do as you do now for Traits, be given the total amount of points to use when selecting and raising your pet. For PvE and WvW, it would be much like WXP….picture different pets like the arrow cart, ballista or trebuchet lines…so you could build your pet and those skills the same way other players do with their powers, as your character levels to 80.

Of course those at 80 would simply be issued the total points etc.

In this way, even using the existing pet skill packages as example, you could get better value out of your pet. If you like the Moa’s Vulnerability attack, but feel it’s Heal is useless, you would spend those points accordingly, and end up with more satisfying pet than the current system gives you.

In any case, lots to consider, but if ANet were to apply the same methods they have to WvW and Siege etc, you could get a pretty cool mechanic for Rangers and their Pets.

This is almost identical to how WoW worked. While I do find WoW’s interpretation of the Ranger the best of any modern MMO (because I like ranged. I’m sure those who like melee Rangers probably don’t agree), it’s simply too much far too late for this game I’m afraid.

But you’re right… as of right now the pet is little more than a fire-and-forget homing missile or effectively a DOT. And worse still… it’s a DOT that only works 70% of the time and when told to do something other than DOT it only works half the time. For a year now mind you.

But as much as I would love WoW style pets, it will never… ever, happen.

I don’t know if it’s too late, given the changes that have been made and are ongoing for WXP and the new abilities there…but either way, I definitely think it would be preferable.

With all this talk about upping stats on weapons, the fact we won’t gain 100% of the bonus because it doesn’t effect our pet which does so much of our damage, ought to be our main concern. If not we will continue to fall behind the 8 ball in dps performance.

A good point, and another reason to do something like this mechanic change at the same time, where pets could be rebalanced to match.

It’s a cool idea, but I doubt anything like this would be implemented. Its just too much work do be done for one class. Besides, each pet does have its unique abilities, even though pets of the same family have the same base attacks, their f2 abilities are all different and serve different purposes.
Also, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by having the pets level up and gain experience with you. As in, making it necessary to level each pet separately? If that was the case, that would be extremely tedious and would probably upset a lot of rangers.
Once again, its a cool idea, but I’m not sure if how you are presenting it would be the way to go. I do agree that the pet system is in need of some buffing, but a complete overhaul doesn’t seem necessary, and may only serve to offset newer players from the ranger class.

Ok maybe this is not going to be implemented but when they adjust weapon damage will they think of how rangers only get 60% of total damage from weapons?

That really is all they need to do and adjust based on that.

I want to see an advanced pet menu in which you can set the AI behaviour (in order of importance):
- setting the priority on skills
- disabling skills
- giving the pet control of the F2 skill
- allowing any skill to become the F2 skill (except the auto attack ofcourse)

There is room for a ton more custimization, but we also have to remember it’s “just” our class mechanic, so we shouldn’t expect too much. But ANet also made pets more than “just” a class mehcanic, so I think these few additions are fine to expect.

This game has a lot of unreached potential.