This is probably a tricky one to do but I believe it will not be hard to understand.
As a Pet-designed class, Ranger’s skill should be determined by his ability to manage his pet.
The sad truth is – we have close to zero control of our pet. The only thing we can control is whether it attacks at all, who it attacks and we have the luxury of controlling 1 of it’s abilities.
We can’t control their movement, we can’t control their DPS, we can’t control their utilities and we can’t control their survivability, either.
That – for a pet-class is horrible.
Proposed Changes:
F1 – Current Attack
F2 – Current Pet ability. F3 (changed) – Pet Longest CD ability (Knock for Devourers, Immobilize for Spiders)
F4 – Current stance system F5 (new) – Hold Position (Guard-like – pet will passively occupy a certain spot, no CD)
(I’m aware F5 is stolen from another MMO. It’s well designed, though. Who can blame them)
Guard (Shout) – your pet receives stealth and protection and it’s next attack applies cripple (same CD)
With treatment to F5, we could control most of our traits and abilities. This wouldn’t buff rangers by any slightest spot since the only thing it does is promote use of all skill families for certain situations and environments while not giving access to anything we wouldn’t have today. The only thing it would achieve is differing Good Rangers from the bad ones.
The change to Guard is due to it’s position functionality being moved into F5. Other shouts need treatment, too. But that I will address in my next topic.
This would go a very long way to making pets more versatile while also increasing the level of skill needed to play a ranger optimally.
Additionally, as a roleplayer the ability to position my pet would be a massive quality of life improvement. I’m tired of having to dance around and play with pet swap to get my pet to sit in a position that doesn’t look awkward when chatting in town.
This is probably a tricky one to do but I believe it will not be hard to understand.
As a Pet-designed class, Ranger’s skill should be determined by his ability to manage his pet.
The sad truth is – we have close to zero control of our pet. The only thing we can control is whether it attacks at all, who it attacks and we have the luxury of controlling 1 of it’s abilities.
We can’t control their movement, we can’t control their DPS, we can’t control their utilities and we can’t control their survivability, either.
That – for a pet-class is horrible.
Proposed Changes:
F1 – Current Attack
F2 – Current Pet ability. F3 (changed) – Pet Longest CD ability (Knock for Devourers, Immobilize for Spiders)
F4 – Current stance system F5 (new) – Hold Position (Guard-like – pet will passively occupy a certain spot, no CD)
(I’m aware F5 is stolen from another MMO. It’s well designed, though. Who can blame them)
Guard (Shout) – your pet receives stealth and protection and it’s next attack applies cripple (same CD)
With treatment to F5, we could control most of our traits and abilities. This wouldn’t buff rangers by any slightest spot since the only thing it does is promote use of all skill families for certain situations and environments while not giving access to anything we wouldn’t have today. The only thing it would achieve is differing Good Rangers from the bad ones.
The change to Guard is due to it’s position functionality being moved into F5. Other shouts need treatment, too. But that I will address in my next topic.
You forgot to mention that pressing f1 again should call back your pet to come near you.
You forgot to mention that pressing f1 again should call back your pet to come near you.
I was actually thinking about it for a while.
The problem with that is simple. If you sent your pet to attack a specific enemy, and you went for another – and decided you want to call your pet into action – it would require to needlessly click it 2 times.
Furthermore, if it was made as a toggle… It would be like an 80% resemblance to stances themselves.
While it would help at some cases – it would be unwanted at other.
In this proposed state – you can have pet set on passive – sending it in for attack like you can now with perfect functionality. If you decide you want the pet out of the harm – you send him to a specific place until you decide to send him back again – still amazing.
If you feel like it’s too complicated and you want it on less skill cap – you don’t call your pet back at all – you save him via Pet Stow proposed changes.
If you decide to have your pet on aggressive – you only need to send him on different targets (attack order only) and save him from harm (Hold Position only).
There are no cases where you’d need to recall your pet if you have set him on passive and you didn’t order him to attack.
I would suggest making f3 swap between your utilities and your pet’s skills, so that you are in control of all of them. That might actually raise the skill ceiling enough that they could buff ranger into sPvP viability. Then, you could make f2 be a dodge roll (or evade in place) for the pet, because you don’t need control over pet auto attack and the current f2 would be covered by f3+utility 1. It would force rangers to swap through skills like an engineer or elementalist in order to be effective, but the tradeoff would be worth it I think.
Your F5 is redundant. Look at my F1 suggestion in the pet rework thread linked in my signature, to see a better version.
Yep, I admit.
But I still think ANet would drop it for too much coding. Your idea is better by far, hands down. I tried to keep the changes as simple and as least impacting the current functionality as possible.
That is the thing, sure we can all come up with totally better mechanics and ideas than are implemented, but if they are too hard to actually implement into the live game, they are pointless suggestions. Better to stick with reality.
That is the thing, sure we can all come up with totally better mechanics and ideas than are implemented, but if they are too hard to actually implement into the live game, they are pointless suggestions. Better to stick with reality.
Anet has yet to see the merit of adding something as simple as an F5 to controll one of the pet famility skills. The’ve done quite the opposite, deeming it “too hard for players”. The reality is that it is kittening pointless at this point. They’re just gonna continue the mediocrity and ignore even the most obvious suggestions.
I have a small slimmer of hope that they might alter something as a part of introducing the druid, but I seriously doubt it.
We still have the current “Pet Stance Change” button that is unique to our class within Key Bindings.
I currently set it on F3 (thinking that’s the bind from my mouse), not keeping my mind on that.
There’s still space in control options for pet swap button. I just made a mistake at this. Having it on F4 or F5 or as a special Key Bind is not really what’s the point here.
I was thinking along similar lines about how the pet mechanic could be improved, and came up with this:
F1 (with enemy targeted)- No change.
F1 (no target)- Pet aggressively acquires a nearby target.
F2- No change.
F3- Pet moves to a targeted location and attacks enemies in a small radius there (similar to Guard, but without the buffs).
F4- No change.
F5- Same as current F3 (may or may not be needed?)
Additional changes- when the Ranger dodges or uses a weapon/utility skill that evades, the pet gains Blur (evade all attacks) for 1 second. Give it a visual similar to Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy (maybe less intense) to indicate this to enemy players.
With pet swap, the ability to control pet movement with F3, and shared evasion, pets should be much more survivable in PVE. Additionally, these changes don’t SEEM like they would require a ton of new coding (aside from the F1 with no target, which would largely be a convenience thing and is therefore not essential).
I made a suggestion along these lines, but a little more advanced.
F1 – Toggle between current functionality of F1 (Go to target) and F3 (Come to me)
F2 – Special Pet Skill
F3 – Toggle between Passive and Aggressive
F4 – Swap Pet
Pressing F1 (Go to target) while on F3 (Aggressive Mode), could work like the current F1. Pet would run to the target and attack
Pressing F1 (Go to target) while on F3 (Passive Mode), could send the pet to the target, but the pet would not attack or draw aggro.
Pressing F1 twice while the pet is engaged (i.e. come to me, no go to target) would pull the pet of the target they are fighting and make them come to your current one
This system could be further improved by adding an on-hold skill to each of the F1-4 skills
Hold F1 – Go There (Ground Targetted)
Hold F2 – Pet will activate skill at current location (rather than running to target or player first)
Hold F3 – Guard (Ground Targetted) – Pet will not move more than a set distance from the targetted spot, and attacks things that come within distance, but wont follow them away.
Hold F4 – Ressurect a currently active, but dead pet
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I was thinking some time ago that the stow option could work in combat like a high risk for the ranger to save a pet, loosing almost all or all skills, like the engi elexir s (without the invu fonction) and then the pet would appear at your location (without full HP like with the tonic.)
@borya
Actually, I suggested the pet stow in combat at every single thread mentioning pet stow.
Now that I think about it… Didn’t I mention it in any of my “change required” threads?
I found a solution on Ranger’s suggestions involving F1 toggle mechanic of Attack/Follow.
If they made Attack=baseline able to toggle to Follow and made it reset back to Attack if the Pet’s target dies
It would save 90% of unnecessary double tapping just to send pet to attack a specific target (especially for Passive stance users)
