Guild Wars 2

So, here’s an idea I had for those of us that prefer our pets to be big and strong, and I think it could potentially solve a few pet related problems we have at the moment. By necessity, it’d have to be part of a Grandmaster trait, probably as part of the Beastmastery line, or as part of an Elite Spec.

Here’s the idea; in certain places, you can tame overgrown versions of the normal pet types. A drake broodmother, for example, a siege devourer, whatever the hell Sourfang is, and so forth. However, there’s a condition. To tame these animals, you need to have the trait in question, and you need to keep it to have such pets out – if you swap out your trait, you’ll automatically be forced to pick a different pet, but the big ones you’ve tamed will still be available when you swap your trait back to Great Pets. Or perhaps for convenience’s sake, the trait simply upgrades the pets you already have out.

By allowing for this, it opens up certain things. For example, increased size of pets means that increased attack distance would be available, making the whole “pets can’t track targets” much less of a problem because they don’t need to track the target as far. Increased base damage would make the points when it does hit more meaningful, and increased vitality and toughness would solve an issue that many complain about (though I’ve never had an issue with) in that a lot of pets are easily killed.

There’d have to be a tradeoff, as this would be a huge upswing for Rangers, and without an overhaul of certain things it’d become basically a required trait, which is something to be avoided. A damage debuff for the ranger in question seems like a decent answer to me – maybe something to the tune of 10% or 15%, but I don’t think more than a 20% reduction would be at all wise for a variety of reasons. This’d move the focus away from the ranger being kitten with their scruffy animal tagging along and more to their pet being a powerhouse supported by their trainer.

Maybe it’s not an amazing idea, but it’s been kicking around in my head for over a month now and I figured it was time to share it, see what the community thinks. Maybe it wouldn’t solve every problem, but it’d solve several, and that’s a step in the right direction.

Too much work for Anet.
I don’t think it’d happen.

This idea has been around for awhile, it is more akin to the first Guild Wars where many have suggested investing into Beastmastery would make your “Juvenile” pet become an adult with a visible size and stat increase.

Only hope that with the many changes Anet are doing they add this feature to pets in the future.

You could always just make a GM trait for BM that made your pet Enlarged, like the active of SoTW.

Enlarged: You deal 25% more damage and move 50% faster.

It’s a neat idea, but i’d prefer it to be part of a pet-focused specialization in the future, rather than in default traitlines/part of the druid.

also p.s., sourfang is a rockdog. they’re pretty common pets of the centaurs.

Yeah, I’m thinking this’d probably be better served as a “Mechanics change” as part of an elite spec, since they seem to like the idea of adjusting a character’s profession mechanic with a given elite spec. A sort of Warbeast Tamer or something to that effect.

And yeah, I know Sourfang is a Rock Dog. I was just commenting on how extremely different he looks froma rock dog, but I guess that little jibe fell flat.

Harnel.6810:

And yeah, I know Sourfang is a Rock Dog. I was just commenting on how extremely different he looks froma rock dog, but I guess that little jibe fell flat.

Ah. my apologies, when I personally think of rock dogs, I actually think of these guys https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_War_Beast so I didn’t understand the joke :P

such huge pets would cause massive screen clutter. also how would they move through narrow passages? Certain aoes that benefit from size target (looking at staff ele) would destroy the pet far easier then it’s small counterpart.

And that wouldn’t do much to fix issues of regular pets which would still make 90% of your pet options.

That’d be a problem in WvW, but you don’t really see that type of Ele in sPvP. It’d be a problem in maybe one or two unfortunate situations and really good in all the rest.

I run into staff eles quite often in my matches. Probs cause for some baffling reason turret engis are still a thing (if they call for bakcup that is).

So you played world of warcraft and liked exotic pets huh?

Uh, no. That’s a thing WoW does?

Harnel.6810:

Uh, no. That’s a thing WoW does?

Lol yes I was only joking but it’s exactly what they did in wow, certain rare pets were labeled exotic and only full beastmasters were able to tame them if they had the right trait/talent.

WoW has something like that. If you go for beastmastery line you can tame exotic pets – at least it was like this until Cata or so.

Would appreciate it.