Guild Wars 2

So i know many people here have talked about how to improve pets etc and some have been pretty good ideas. I was wondering what people thought of having pets act more like virtues with the guardian.

How this would work is would be that pets are not actually an extension of the ranger but a ranger ability that would spawn the pet to accomplish a specific task.

i.e. if someone is using a bear and presses F1 then the bear would spawn and run up to the target and hold agro for 5 seconds. F2 would be the bear spawning to inflict a bleed effect. F3 would spawn the bear who would increase the rangers Toughness for x% for the next 5 seconds.

Beast master traits would cater to improve abilities of pets and reduce the cd of pet summons/abilities.

you would be able to then remove the shared dmg that pets do with the rangers while still enabling the pets to be part of the game play. It would also mean you would have more clear cut pets for sPvP wPvP and PvE (Solo/Group).

I know it would mean a massive change to the pet system but it would remove heaps of problems currently faced with rangers.

Its just a suggestion and would love to hear feedback from the community oh the viability of this suggestion. (while I understand it probably wont happen its at least something for the devs to consider down the track).

It’s too late for something like this. The pet mechanic already exists in it’s current form and it would be a complete abandonment of the class to move in this direction.

That would require a change to ranger utilities, traits, and just about everything else. It’s an interesting idea for a pet based class, but I don’t think they are going to completely scrap a class mechanic. Improving it is one thing, but swapping it out for something else is different.

Its been brought up before, making pets less like NPCs and more like pure support. And I hate it every time its brought up. I rolled a Ranger because I want a companion who fights beside me, not a mobile sprite / turret that floats around and fires off a special attack every once in a while.

The idea itself isn’t terrible, it would be an interesting mechanic in and of itself. If they introduced a Druid class with mechanics as described in the OP which used animal spirits instead of actual animals (they could still be gotten from juveniles, but instead of charming the actual animal you “commune with its spirit” or something) I’d totally play that class. They could even split off some of Ranger’s current skills like spirits to that class and give Ranger new ones, let Druids handle the “one with nature and commanding nature’s power” theme and just make Rangers more huntsman simply familiar and comfortable in the wild.

But I don’t want to have them simply change Ranger pet mechanics altogether to something like this.

Pets fading in and out of existence to accomplish a 5-second task would break my suspension of disbelief, I think. That sort of mechanic only works with the Warhorn call-bird ability due to the nature of the summons (and even that is really odd-looking when you, say, call down the birds on a giant-sized MOB and they appear gigantic as well… looks silly). No other ground-based pet would look believable. At least, to me.