I like where pet damage and utility are at right now. But the pet has two problems. You can reproduce them by having your melee pet attacking the moving heavy golem in the mists.
1. After a pet attacks in melee, it stops and sits there for 2 seconds, then it tries to catch up to the target to hit again.
suggestion: speed up the end part of the pet’s attack animation so it can continue chasing after the target sooner. keep the time between attacks the same, but the pet must pick itself up and follow earlier.
2. if the target makes sharp turns (even without swiftness), the pet will get juked every single time and miss the strike. it will overshoot by a few steps, then backtrack. it seems the pet is incapable of moving in an arc, it just moves in zig zags
suggestion:is it possible to make the pet move in an arc?
3. pets are melted by stray damage. they absorb whatever they walk in front.
suggestion: give pets AOE resistance. it took Blizzard 5 (?) years to learn this, maybe you can make some changes earlier? due to poor pathing of pets, unfortunately, we cannot micro the pets well enough. one workaround to not making pets OP is to either make em stick to their targets most of the time, so they are extremely responsive to master’s commands; or simply give them more survivability if theyre gonna be bouncing around aimlessly as they struggle to pathfind.
4. Shouts are often dropped for a more practical utility skill.
-Sick ’Em simply does not do enough; 15% dmg is decent, but ultimately lackluster, and the speed buff is not useful due to poor pathing of the pet (it will run, overshoot, turn a few times before finally catching up to land one hit)
-Guard: not much to explain here. the stealth is entirely pointless because the pet drops it upon attacking, and it does not last long enough to act as an “ambush”; the protection buff is nice, but thats all.
-Search and Rescue: simply way too situational to warrant a utility slot
suggestion: Sick ’Em needs utility; add something like cripple, or fury; something. Guard would be really cool if stealth and/or protection lasted way longer, and the pet got some sort of damage buff; Search and Rescue – give it a function when there are no dead players in the area; it needs to be less situational; for the pet to rez someone reliably every once in a while, give it stability, teleportation and a knockback.
5. Lackluster BM traits:
-+300 to healing. why? what is the reasoning behind this design decision?
- Nature’s Wrath: why would i be stacking healing?
- Natural Healing: this is simply not a grandmaster trait, period. this passive regen does little for us, even in a 1v1 scenario. in a larger battle, it is entirely useless. if you wish to make this a grandmaster trait, increase the regen bonus by like 300%
- Master’s Bond: this is in complete opposition to the idea behind the BM tree, which is to encourage pet swapping for different situations. even if im able to keep my pet alive for 10 kills or so, id never give up the quickness on swap in a realistic scenario for a few more attribute points
- Stability Training: highly, highly situational. who would blow their CC on a pet?
- Instinctual Bond: is this supposed to encourage me to enter the downed state? it is really silly because im doing everything i can to not get downed, and often i roam for many minutes before getting downed. highly situational at best
- Compassion Training: i can see this being ok with Search and Rescue, but again, too situational. the design flaw behind pets rezzing downed teammates is that they will never get there before the stomp.
in conclusion, despite decent dps and utility, pets are merely situational due to poor pathfinding and animations. they simply dont connect with the target frequently enough. investing more than 15 points into BM is simply a waste for pvp.
i would love to hear if ANet thinks whether or not pets have problems. in the eyes of just about every ranger player, they do. are devs in agreement with the players?
(edited by nerva.7940)