Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Add-a-pounce-to-melee-pet-auto-attacks/first#post3412450

Please feel free to pitch in and bump this my fellow rangers! I think its too long that we’ve been treated as a pet-dependent class yet seen no non-trait utilities added to pets to truly equip the pets to do their job properly. It’s time ArenaNet throw the pets a bone, and I believe there is a way to augment ranger melee pets (currently the ones functioning the most poorly) WITHOUT breaking the animations system.

To once again outline the band-aid nature of such a change, this wouldn’t be a miracle change. The pet’s AI and lack of quick responses would still hold us back at times, but the overall output should theoretically be higher when they would be spending less time slowly waddling towards mobile foes. (Which is atm completely insufficient even with permanent swiftness.) But it would be a step in the right direction while ArenaNet figures out how to deal with the tecnical challenges posed by the animations system.

Furthermore, I don’t want people to feel this is all I think the pets need, I still feel the pet system needs massive overhaul. Moa heals need to be player controlled, Porcines need a drastically reduced time on their f2 functionality. Devourers need harder hitting f2s and a better skill in place of their basically useless evade, and/or some overall dps increase to truly make them a viable alternative to spiders. Spider’s poison field needs to last for more than 1 second (Seriously? Why is it so short? It’s near impossible to utilize.) or just removed if they don’t want us doing poison field combos with it.

would make pets extremely OP.

If you do a BM Bunker spec, with a pet doing constant 1-2k AA’s in addition to Ranger Direct/Condition damage, the BM Bunker spec alone would surpass and or match the DPS done by many non-bunker builds on other professions

Prysin.8542:

would make pets extremely OP.

If you do a BM Bunker spec, with a pet doing constant 1-2k AA’s in addition to Ranger Direct/Condition damage, the BM Bunker spec alone would surpass and or match the DPS done by many non-bunker builds on other professions

Back to this logic? That if Ranger pets actually hit when they were supposed to we’d be overpowered? Tell you what… lets actually get pets into a position where they actually work and then we’ll worry about how overpowered they’d be.

I don’t understand how some people consider any improvement to the Rangers OP? Allowing our pets to hit our targets makes them op?

When I look at things like the warriors insane mobility with high defence and damage, the guardian’s insane defence, utility, and uptime for retaliation, thieves endless stealth, and mesmers following suit..

Is asking our pets to connect on every single attack OP? Even the idea thrown around on making Rangers longbow range 1800 or 2000 for WvW only, how it’d break the game. How exactly is it game breaking considering what other classes bring?

What’s more game breaking?

Guardians continuous uptime on retaliation making AoE on zergs a death trap or a ranger trying to hit a target from far away with an easily avoidable arrow? Or replace that with a pet that connects on all it’s attacks?

How about perma stealth thieves vs pets connecting on most of their attacks? Or a LB range of 1800..

Prysin.8542:

would make pets extremely OP.

If you do a BM Bunker spec, with a pet doing constant 1-2k AA’s in addition to Ranger Direct/Condition damage, the BM Bunker spec alone would surpass and or match the DPS done by many non-bunker builds on other professions

You seem to fail to understand the class mechanic. Let me explain. Ranger damage is tuned down on the basis that a portion of our classes’ damage is invested in our pet. If our pet can only land 10% of its attacks against for example, an kiting necro pulsing AoE chill or whatever.. then that ranger, no matter how skilled is doomed to either lose that bout or at best, equal out his foe even if he outskills him since the only real damage landing is that which comes from the ranger and not the pet, which makes it like fighting with an uplevel char. It’s not like the pet’s damage is scaled in such a way to compensate for its lack of accuracy and time spent chasing foes and not actually landing hits, which in comparison to a true melee char like the melee ranger, warrior or thief is abnormally high as the melee pets can only run towards their foes. This combined with the scripting to attack from maximum distance means the majority of its attacks are easily sidestepped, allowing the enemies to conserve the majority of their endurance for the majority of the ranger’s big moves; Maul, rapid fire or what not which only leaves you with stun combos, which unless you haven’t noticed other classes have and can utilize much better than the ranger class.

While we may be able to hit higher dps on a non moving target, we’re an extremely weak class against anything with a smidgeon of intelligence and mobility. If 25%-30% of your character is spending 70% of its time chasing kiting enemies and only lands 30-40% of its auto attacks or less when it uses them, and this not at a cost of any endurance on part of your enemies.. than that is a broken class mechanic and a critical weakness that needs to be addressed.

Your fears are unfounded from lack of understanding of this class.

For example, I’m running a rather powerful power bunker build. But I can tell you right now I could push a similar build far better on a warrior simply because I wouldn’t have any damage invested in an incompetent and incapable AI. This difference is not acceptable, it means every class the ability to outdo us with minimal effort by simply exploiting pet AI functionality when they consider how they move their character when attacking the ranger. If ArenaNet is determined to keep us tied to the pet, “The two fighting as one”.. then that mechanic needs to work better. For that the first step is to properly equip all the ranger pets with the tools they need to function as a part of our class.

This is just a basic thing what’s worse, don’t even get me started on how pets can’t evade toward their opponents means that any engi can nuke them easily even if the ranger can dodge a lot of his attacks by playing very skillfully and carefully.

Also for one thing, 1-1.2k AAs.. the only pet capable of that on any frequency is the jaguar for the most part, which is obviously what you’re citing. Using the jaguar and felines comes at the great risk that they are very, very, very easily targeted and killed leaving the ranger on generally dangerous cooldown. That just means more classes would have to learn2play as some would put it vs. rangers and not fight mindlessly. You’re not supposed to have the luxury of doing that on a skilled player to begin with.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I don’t understand how some people consider any improvement to the Rangers OP? Allowing our pets to hit our targets makes them op?

When I look at things like the warriors insane mobility with high defence and damage, the guardian’s insane defence, utility, and uptime for retaliation, thieves endless stealth, and mesmers following suit..

Is asking our pets to connect on every single attack OP? Even the idea thrown around on making Rangers longbow range 1800 or 2000 for WvW only, how it’d break the game. How exactly is it game breaking considering what other classes bring?

What’s more game breaking?

Guardians continuous uptime on retaliation making AoE on zergs a death trap or a ranger trying to hit a target from far away with an easily avoidable arrow? Or replace that with a pet that connects on all it’s attacks?

How about perma stealth thieves vs pets connecting on most of their attacks? Or a LB range of 1800..

What’s worse is, I’m not even asking for it to land every single hit. Just more. This would give it a distance gapping skill but do nothing to accommodate for the nature of how they attack and which range they automatically trigger skills from. Their would still be a lot of sidesteps, but at least a fair amount less.

But… but…. how would warriors kill me from range before my pet even gets to them then? OP!

In all seriousness though I am getting really frustrated doing absolutely terrible damage solely because our “pet based” class is doomed to rely on a pet who apparently is hungover kitten since he can’t even walk straight half the time. I love the ranger class and have always played classes like this but pet AI combined with how the maps are designed makes pets essentially useless, leaving rangers as really, really, REALLY crappy versions of warriors.

The sad thing is that even with this change I am sure they would not pounce over ledges etc. and would still be “vertically challenged” so I doubt people would even notice this, much less cry about it being OP.

I do like the idea though!

(talking from the perspective of pvp, mostly spvp, for reference)

Problem is, our pets use to do more damage and ANet nerfed the damage across the board (PvP, WvW, PvE) because they said that the bunker BM ranger was to powerful in sPvP. So instead of only nerfing the pet in sPvP they nerfed it across the board. Then they lowered the pet health across the board. then they only buffed the pet health in PvE after that. Now they said that they will not be touching pet’s anymore. So for those of us who purchased this game to play the ranger, we payed real money for something defective, something that they admit to being defective, and they said they will never fix. Our pets, using guard, use to be able to go down the fort wall and attack players on the other side, they also nerfed that so now when we’re on the wall, our dps is almost halved since we have no pet attacking.

Akisame.9508:

Now they said that they will not be touching pet’s anymore.

“Stuff”
Edited, nvm I read another statement of yours that explains everything.

Why doesn’t ANet just change the AI universally then? It’s not like PvE is so hard anyway. Most folks just run past non-Orrian mobs as they chase them just out of reach.

They should recode pets as what they are, pets. Not a copy of an npc that will be causing global issues if tampered with. They coded Necro pets correctly, they coded mesmer clones correctly, they coded the thief elite that spawns two thief’s to help them correctly. They should have done the same thing with us. Now they admit to pets having issue’s but they refuse to fix it. You can’t get any lazier then that! In the end, ranger’s paid full retail for a defective game which they refuse to fix.

Thanks for the attention and support guys. I really hope something can make it through to the dev team on this, because for so many of us.. it’s only ever the pets that is the truly critical issue.

I understand well the fears involved in tweaking the pet but the bottom line is :

1) AI can never truly match human response time margins already making rangers a risky class with such a high distribution of output to the pet. A class as reliant on AI will be by very nature watered down in those high level, competitive “MLG” style fights ArenaNet is trying to encourage.

2) Pets currently don’t cut it. Unfortunately last time there was discussion on this topic, some dev team member just threw out some meaningless spvp statistics of ranger participation which shows to me they actually lack understanding on this issue. All that proved was that ranger is a popular class due to the similitude of having pets/companions in contrast to real life, that the thought of that connects with many players.. that and that there are many dedicated rangers still trying hard to make this work. This speaks nothing of how they function, or how the pet contributes to rangers, and rangers of all builds and not just condi bunker builds and really high-damage tuned builds that can afford to roll spiders with its higher hit ratio and immobilize.

For one thing, I don’t SPvP much.. but balancing the whole class in how it functions against other players with only analyzing how it does fighting in a cap point with very limited space is a borked analysis to begin with. You cannot balance based on SPvP if you’re talking about confining players to a very limited space with a very limited number of builds. You’d be amazed the number of good ranger builds you eliminate without food buffs, for example. But I digress, when players movements aren’t limited by a cap point, that’s where the true show of skills begins, and that where you see rangers failing massively as his melee pets cannot carry their weight unless their target decides for some reason to stop moving. Players get hit by pets more when their movements are limited to a very small capture point circle, so you don’t see ranger’s opponents playing in ways that limit the ranger as much as they do when their is no capture circle objective.. So for SPvPers you probably will see this more on the SPvP side in duel dedicated games, but still nowhere near as much as in WvW due to many such having player imposed rules to balance things. (Ie. the stick in the arena rule in the middle of the map and junk like that.) In this case though I can say, it shouldn’t in theory break SPvP since the pets will in theory land more attacks there than in WvW anyways, and should only at best bring rangers or at least more ranger builds to parity with the other classes. (Although it most likely wouldn’t even accomplish that.)

But yet surprisingly even expert rangers that SPvP all the time and fight within cap points most of the day still tell me this is an issue when we get into discussions. And for any power build, it’s much, much more an issue than it is for condi bunker builds.

Detharos.3157:

-snip-

Best joke so far this year, it even beat whatever Ather can make up. Thanks for the premature Christmas present

Give it a cool-down; put it in their melee auto skill rotation, and if feeling frisky make a training trait that upgrades the gap closer to be similar to either:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bull%27s_Charge
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Savage_Leap

Just be sure to re-balance the damage per activation to not exceed the default auto-attack.

I can dream, kitten.

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

would make pets extremely OP.

If you do a BM Bunker spec, with a pet doing constant 1-2k AA’s in addition to Ranger Direct/Condition damage, the BM Bunker spec alone would surpass and or match the DPS done by many non-bunker builds on other professions

Back to this logic? That if Ranger pets actually hit when they were supposed to we’d be overpowered? Tell you what… lets actually get pets into a position where they actually work and then we’ll worry about how overpowered they’d be.

Actually, it’s true, in 10s of a pet being a Moa with 0 in BM they can 100% to 10% you while you’re running for your life in rabid gear, it’s quite kittening horrifying….

Granted I do think that they should make it so that all pet attacks “lunge” at the target (clearly makes NPCs able to land attacks regularly) but they tone down the damage a little to make up for it, otherwise the overwhelming screams of QQ will block out the sun and even the mighty warriors would weep in the shade.

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

Well if you go and get moa morphed all the skills lunge you towards your target,that is what is making it so they land more often, it was patched to do that (for EVERYONE not just NPCs) a while ago because it used to have the same issue our pets had, AKA you had to stop moving to attack so you didn’t hit anything while moad.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

Well if you go and get moa morphed all the skills lunge you towards your target,that is what is making it so they land more often, it was patched to do that (for EVERYONE not just NPCs) a while ago because it used to have the same issue our pets had, AKA you had to stop moving to attack so you didn’t hit anything while moad.

Then I have no faith that ANet will patch it into the game anytime soon seeing how they operate for a long time, they probably figure that if that is the solution they go with, then they would have to redo the animations for all of the different pets and make sure attacks “make sense” for them to be leaping, and then they would have to rebalance and retweak all of the numbers.

So even though I find it alarming that it isn’t a top priority to make big changes to improve quality of life gameplay, I can see how their “low hanging fruit” balance philosophy continues to relegate pet issues to the backburner.

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

Well if you go and get moa morphed all the skills lunge you towards your target,that is what is making it so they land more often, it was patched to do that (for EVERYONE not just NPCs) a while ago because it used to have the same issue our pets had, AKA you had to stop moving to attack so you didn’t hit anything while moad.

Then I have no faith that ANet will patch it into the game anytime soon seeing how they operate for a long time, they probably figure that if that is the solution they go with, then they would have to redo the animations for all of the different pets and make sure attacks “make sense” for them to be leaping, and then they would have to rebalance and retweak all of the numbers.

So even though I find it alarming that it isn’t a top priority to make big changes to improve quality of life gameplay, I can see how their “low hanging fruit” balance philosophy continues to relegate pet issues to the backburner.

Yeah, thats one thing that’s always bugged me big time about Anet, pets always seem to be an Afterthought even though they are a prof mechanic, and as such kitten over an entire prof if you don’t have it working with pets… or have pets working…

I have a cheap (aka cheese) solution :
make ranger pets a DOT that runs near the target and jumps around.
It would only do dmg while the ranger is within a certain range of the pet.
That or add more dmg to all ranger weaps and remove damage from pets.
The pets still run around but dmg only comes from weapons.
OP ?

As far as I understand, there are 2 main issues with pets:

1- The pets not landing attacks which is a game-play mechanic issue.
2- The pets lag when using the f2 skill which is due to the AI.

First issue, is that pet attacks are sort of cast while not moving which means when the pet gets in range it’ll start casting but the target moves out of range making it miss. Having the attacks lunge will theoretically solve our problems, but like people were saying it’ll be extremely OP. I honestly don’t agree with that because from the very start out pets should be landing their attacks unless other players make the effort to dodge/evade/LoS them. If having our pets connect their attacks becomes an issue you can just balance the damage their attacks cause. Another solution would be to increase the attack cast time on pet attacks which would make it harder to evade but not impossible, but I’m sure they thought of that solution and it probably didn’t work.

The AI is the tricky part since our pets are basically NPC mobs that we have control over their F2 skill. What happens is that when you give your pet an action it first has to check with its queue of actions on the server and then allocate the action you want done. How this affects the F2 skill is that it checks for actions first on the server (causing some lag on the pet side) and then allocating the skill in the soonest possible spot in the queue (which is usually after wtv action its currently doing, causing more lag). This ends up with your pet just standing around waiting for the a response from the server (server gets the action and then reorders the queue then sends response to pet). A theoretical solution to this (I’m no programmer but I did some programming in college) would be having the F2 skill clear the queue of actions the pet does on the server and add the F2 skill at the start. Technically speaking here, clearing the queue should get rid of most of the lag at least and if it backfires then your pet might lag AFTER it gets the F2 skill off.

Feel free to correct me on my knowledge on how the pet AI works if I’m wrong, but that’s what I understood during the Dec 10th discussion.

After analyzing condi bunker builds more closely, I agree with some of the above posters that may be right on condi builds becoming overpowered with such a change. Nevertheless I am still pushing for this change. If such builds are getting too high of a damage to survivability ratio to justify this change, then that damage needs to be normalized; meaning a reduction/nerf to condi damage base output; and such a change ushered. In such a scenario, the end result would be the same, if done properly… you condi builds would lose a bit of damage from your conditions but gain it from a higher ratio of pet hits.

TBH though I think it’s pretty cruel of those of you running such builds to try to shut down any call for a reasonable change just because one or two builds are working really well. Many power builds are lagging behind because of this exact issue simply because our delivery method of damage is different; and for us, to see our damage constantly lagg behind what it should be simply because of the pet.. for the pet, our very class mechanic to hold us back, even if its anywhere from a mere 20%-30% damage.. its not acceptable. And I know that you all know as well as I do that the numbers are not kitten droppings. For many of us, rolling an equivalent physical damage builds with for example a warrior or guardian or anything else would yield better results and a better damage to survivability ratio for reasons of that exact problem; a large portion of our damage would not be negated to sidesteps due to being invested in a poor AI with no plans for a fix.

I think it’s time we all started agreeing on some reasonable changes to make the ranger function as it should; and a change that works for all builds, not just condition bunker/tank/high evade condi builds alone. We NEED our damage delivery to count just as much as any other class; It’s simply not appropriate to roll this theme of ranger and pet fighting as one; the pet always being present; and then in turn deliver a combat system that sees the pet chasing moving targets and failing to land the majority of its attacks, what’s worse on crippled and chilled enemies. I don’t know about all of you, but I created my ranger with different things in mind than tossing torches and traps at opponents while my pet runs in circles and accomplishes next to nothing. And let’s be honest, that’s the theme of the class right now; “ranger and pet fight as one”, not that unparalleled archer junk. Yet there’s no skills that truly synergize well to live out that vision ArenaNet has for us in the first place. All I’m asking therefore is for the class mechanic to work as intended. For the majority of builds it doesn’t therefore it needs to be fixed. This change wouldn’t even fix what’s broken TBH; the pet would still hold us back for many reasons including f2 problems. It would simply be a step in the right direction.

This is why people keep asking for things like the ability to disable the pet and return the damage to the ranger. Because we have better control of our attacks and the ability to make them land, so that even a little extra damage on them would make the difference. But in addition to ArenaNet being adamantly opposed to that, many rangers continue to call that a distasteful request. I’m not even asking that; I like the idea of the pet, but with the current damage ratio so funky in how it’s invested in the pet; it needs to count, and it needs to work.

Despite having a variety of issues with the pet; critical damage and other certain stats not affecting the pet makes it synergize poorly with countless builds; low hit ratios, long f2 cast times and activation times and problems with skill cancels and misfires causing it to be hard to combo with, slow responsiveness especially when swapped out limiting burst effectiveness… and a countless myriad of issues we continue argue amongst ourselves what a balanced, positive change looks like while ArenaNet continues look ONLY at traits. Fix the class mechanics before you touch the traits!

We need to be in agreement as a class that these are very real issues, or we’re only ever going to have these IMO, boring condition builds having the greatest “bang for your buck”. Our class mechanic is supposed to be the strength and appeal of the class, not its greatest weakness and an overall undesirable mechanic.

Detharos.3157:

After analyzing condi bunker builds more closely, I agree with some of the above posters that may be right on condi builds becoming overpowered with such a change. Nevertheless I am still pushing for this change. If such builds are getting too high of a damage to survivability ratio to justify this change, then that damage needs to be normalized; meaning a reduction/nerf to condi damage base output; and such a change ushered.

Here’s the problem with how I see Anet handling this.

* A) They made a bunch of classes who operate under the same combat mechanics.
* B) Then they gave each a unique F1-F4 class mechanic.
* C) They gave each class unique 6-9 utility skills. These are effectively multipliers, which improve the efficacy of (A)

The easiest way to balance this is at step (A) you make all the classes equal (e.g. their unique weapon skills do about the same DPS). At step (B) you make each F1-F4 skillset equal (they add a similar amount of DPS or utility). And at step (C) you make the 6-9 utility skills equal (add a similar amount of DPS or utility). The net result is then:

A*C + B

(Simplified, since not all skills fall into the categories I’ve outlined.) For variety you could make A bigger and C smaller, or vice versa (e.g. the engineer). So long as the product A*C remains about the same.

For most of the classes, this is how it works. Then you get to ranger. For some (misguided?) reason, they decided to make a whole bunch of the utility skills improve the pet instead of the ranger. The net result is then:

Ar + Br*Cr.

So you end up with a class whose capability without Br (the pet) is worse than the other classes, because the utility skills don’t synergize well with regular gameplay (A*C > Ar). Then they looked at the pet independently and saw it was getting improved by the utility skills making ranger F1-F4 significantly better than other classes’ F1-F4 (Br*Cr > B ). To fix this, instead of nerfing the pet or reworking the utility skills so they affected the ranger instead of the pet, they nerfed the ranger weapon skills instead (reduced Ar so Ar + Br*Cr = A*C + B ). This makes Br more important since it’s a larger fraction of overall damage. And is why so many here complain about the ineffective pet AI in PvP (the AI doesn’t matter as much in PvE).

The reduction to Ar means you end up with a class who when specced offensively does more DPS with a warrior banner than its native weapons (which replaces Ar with A). And when specced defensively doesn’t lose much from the weapon nerf, and thus does more DPS (via Br/the pet) than a defensive build for other classes (0.5Ar + Br*Cr > 0.5A*C + B).

That IMHO is what’s causing all the problems we’re seeing in terms of damage, utility, and balance with certain builds, as well as the disparity between PvE (where you get nearly 100% of Br*Cr) and PvP (where you only get a fraction of Br*Cr because the pets can’t hit). They’ve painted ranger into a design corner. They cannot improve the offensive ranger without making the defensive ranger too powerful. They cannot decrease the pet’s effectiveness to tone down the defensive ranger without nerfing the offensive ranger into oblivion.

Your proposed solution (reduce ranger condition damage) is just another reduction to Ar, which while it may have the desired effect in specific cases, would make Br (the pet and its broken AI) even more important to overall ranger damage, as well as screw over people like me who like to run hybrid DD + condition builds.

Ultimately the easiest solution is to rework the class to de-emphasize the pet. Make it only as useful as the other classes’ F1-F4 skills. This means switching ranger from the Ar + Br*Cr formula to the A*C + B formula the other classes use. A whole bunch of skills and traits have to be reworked to affect the ranger fist, the pet second.

Something like reworking the f1-f4 slots to be low cool down summons of fragile pets whom perform a scripted set of abilities until either killed or dismissed (to reduce cool down even more). One gets killed? No biggie, summon the next. Then rework the pet traits to account for the more disposable pets.

You’d end up with something like a cross between Pokemon and a Phantasm Mesmer, and it would likely work better than reliance on a more static pet system in the current game mechanics.

Overkillengine.6084:

Something like reworking the f1-f4 slots to be low cool down summons of fragile pets whom perform a scripted set of abilities until either killed or dismissed (to reduce cool down even more). One gets killed? No biggie, summon the next. Then rework the pet traits to account for the more disposable pets.

You’d end up with something like a cross between Pokemon and a Phantasm Mesmer, and it would likely work better than reliance on a more static pet system in the current game mechanics.

Yes, I suggested this many times a while back. If they turned them into a cross between Engie tool-belt skills and Guard/Neco summons/minions it would be perfect. Select your 4 pets from the pet window like currently. Hit FX once to summon the pet. Hit the same one again to use the F2. The pets wouldn’t have a duration greater than about 30s with a 60s base cooldown.

I’d rather ditch the pet at this point and have Preparations back. Perhaps F1 will give your attacks poison, F2 could be a minor weapon-skill IAS, F3 could be a minor damage amp, and F4 could increase projectile move speed. They’d last either for x seconds and/or x attacks, whichever is found to be more balanced. Also, only one could be active at a time; any new Preparation used would simply over-write the currently active one.

Shadow Phage.9084:

I’d rather ditch the pet at this point and have Preparations back. Perhaps F1 will give your attacks poison, F2 could be a minor weapon-skill IAS, F3 could be a minor damage amp, and F4 could increase projectile move speed. They’d last either for x seconds and/or x attacks, whichever is found to be more balanced. Also, only one could be active at a time; any new Preparation used would simply over-write the currently active one.

I think it should vary on the prep whether it’s time or charge based, personally I’d like a prep that made your next 2 attacks daze

Durzlla.6295:

Shadow Phage.9084:

I’d rather ditch the pet at this point and have Preparations back. Perhaps F1 will give your attacks poison, F2 could be a minor weapon-skill IAS, F3 could be a minor damage amp, and F4 could increase projectile move speed. They’d last either for x seconds and/or x attacks, whichever is found to be more balanced. Also, only one could be active at a time; any new Preparation used would simply over-write the currently active one.

I think it should vary on the prep whether it’s time or charge based, personally I’d like a prep that made your next 2 attacks daze

Yeah, mine were just examples heavily borrowed from GW1 preps (Apply Poison, Rapid Fire, Expert Focus/Glass Arrows, Read the Wind.) I know preps were in some of the early (closed?) betas, but were taken out because they were ‘too op.’ Granted, at that time I think the Ranger-to-Pet damage split was like 90%/10%. BUT, since pets haven’t panned out as planned, something needs to change.

Shadow Phage.9084:

Durzlla.6295:

Shadow Phage.9084:

I’d rather ditch the pet at this point and have Preparations back. Perhaps F1 will give your attacks poison, F2 could be a minor weapon-skill IAS, F3 could be a minor damage amp, and F4 could increase projectile move speed. They’d last either for x seconds and/or x attacks, whichever is found to be more balanced. Also, only one could be active at a time; any new Preparation used would simply over-write the currently active one.

I think it should vary on the prep whether it’s time or charge based, personally I’d like a prep that made your next 2 attacks daze

Yeah, mine were just examples heavily borrowed from GW1 preps (Apply Poison, Rapid Fire, Expert Focus/Glass Arrows, Read the Wind.) I know preps were in some of the early (closed?) betas, but were taken out because they were ‘too op.’ Granted, at that time I think the Ranger-to-Pet damage split was like 90%/10%. BUT, since pets haven’t panned out as planned, something needs to change.

They weren’t even taken out…. They were quite literally moved to thief and renamed with the exception of sharpening stones….

Personally, I think it is odd that four legged pets and pets with wings can’t move any faster than a character.

I would suggest that pets become the fastest moving minions in the game. They should run you down (but they don’t get any less squishy doing it).

Speed > pounce. Speed up animations too.

Bombsaway.7198:

Personally, I think it is odd that four legged pets and pets with wings can’t move any faster than a character.

I would suggest that pets become the fastest moving minions in the game. They should run you down (but they don’t get any less squishy doing it).

Speed > pounce. Speed up animations too.

In GW1 pets moved 25% faster than everything else, and they could still be boosted faster (IE: cap was set on being + a % movement speed not an exact speed) watching pets run people down was great!

…how about putting in +pet move speed as one of the stat bonuses of BM?

Anyone wanting to make much use of the melee pets is likely to have at least some points there anyways.

Honestly, with pets hitting targets, I think the easiest coding change would be to make the pet unaffected by “in combat” movement speeds, and basically always have an out of combat movement speed (obviously this isn’t suggesting that they retain the warp they do when you return them from long distances or they hit their leash).

That way, you throw on swiftness, or Agility Training, or Signet of the Hunt, and now the pet has up to a 33% out of combat movement speed.

Then just balance damage accordingly for certain pets, because I think it’s pretty obvious that some of our pets hitting as often as I’m suggesting with as hard as they currently hit, is a bit ridiculous, at least without the pet scaling off of the players stats.

Overkillengine.6084:

…how about putting in +pet move speed as one of the stat bonuses of BM?

Anyone wanting to make much use of the melee pets is likely to have at least some points there anyways.

Move speed isn’t really the issue. It’s that pets root themselves for their attack animations. You could make the pet move 30% faster by default, but it’d still miss most of its attacks. All it would do is get back to the target faster. Not saying that they shouldn’t have an inherent move speed advantage, just I don’t think it would actually do much for them at this point in time.

Adding either a small lunge to their attacks, as others have suggested, or removing the animation root altogether is what will probably do the most towards fixing the issue.

I find it funny how people argue against blatant design blunder fixes by saying how it will make stuff OP . Who gives a kitten!!! Fix the game to work properly then deal with balance.

Solandri.9640:

Here’s the problem with how I see Anet handling this.

• A) They made a bunch of classes who operate under the same combat mechanics.
• B) Then they gave each a unique F1-F4 class mechanic.
• C) They gave each class unique 6-9 utility skills. These are effectively multipliers, which improve the efficacy of (A)

The easiest way to balance this is at step (A) you make all the classes equal (e.g. their unique weapon skills do about the same DPS). At step (B) you make each F1-F4 skillset equal (they add a similar amount of DPS or utility). And at step © you make the 6-9 utility skills equal (add a similar amount of DPS or utility). The net result is then:

A*C + B

(Simplified, since not all skills fall into the categories I’ve outlined.) For variety you could make A bigger and C smaller, or vice versa (e.g. the engineer). So long as the product A*C remains about the same.

For most of the classes, this is how it works. Then you get to ranger. For some (misguided?) reason, they decided to make a whole bunch of the utility skills improve the pet instead of the ranger. The net result is then:

Ar + Br*Cr.

So you end up with a class whose capability without Br (the pet) is worse than the other classes, because the utility skills don’t synergize well with regular gameplay (A*C > Ar). Then they looked at the pet independently and saw it was getting improved by the utility skills making ranger F1-F4 significantly better than other classes’ F1-F4 (Br*Cr > B ). To fix this, instead of nerfing the pet or reworking the utility skills so they affected the ranger instead of the pet, they nerfed the ranger weapon skills instead (reduced Ar so Ar + Br*Cr = A*C + B ). This makes Br more important since it’s a larger fraction of overall damage. And is why so many here complain about the ineffective pet AI in PvP (the AI doesn’t matter as much in PvE).

The reduction to Ar means you end up with a class who when specced offensively does more DPS with a warrior banner than its native weapons (which replaces Ar with A). And when specced defensively doesn’t lose much from the weapon nerf, and thus does more DPS (via Br/the pet) than a defensive build for other classes (0.5Ar + Br*Cr > 0.5A*C +.

That IMHO is what’s causing all the problems we’re seeing in terms of damage, utility, and balance with certain builds, as well as the disparity between PvE (where you get nearly 100% of Br*Cr) and PvP (where you only get a fraction of Br*Cr because the pets can’t hit). They’ve painted ranger into a design corner. They cannot improve the offensive ranger without making the defensive ranger too powerful. They cannot decrease the pet’s effectiveness to tone down the defensive ranger without nerfing the offensive ranger into oblivion.

Your proposed solution (reduce ranger condition damage) is just another reduction to Ar, which while it may have the desired effect in specific cases, would make Br (the pet and its broken AI) even more important to overall ranger damage, as well as screw over people like me who like to run hybrid DD + condition builds.

Ultimately the easiest solution is to rework the class to de-emphasize the pet. Make it only as useful as the other classes’ F1-F4 skills. This means switching ranger from the Ar + Br*Cr formula to the A*C + B formula the other classes use. A whole bunch of skills and traits have to be reworked to affect the ranger fist, the pet second.

Excellent excellent post. Your significant other should cook you your favorite dinner, buy you a liter of your favorite alcohol, and be your slave in bed tonight…if only for the sheer thoughtfulness and formulaic breakdown of the pet problem that you gave to us. I salute you.

My two cents would be to use Durzlla’s idea(old idea now lol) and give us at least the option to replace the pet with Preps, or some similar mechanic. How the insanely obvious pet issue made it through development like it is now is beyond reasoning.

Imho buffing pet speed for melee pets is the best idea.
Add a little autoattack casttime reduction and we have a pet that can actually hit things.

Shadow Phage.9084:

Overkillengine.6084:

…how about putting in +pet move speed as one of the stat bonuses of BM?

Anyone wanting to make much use of the melee pets is likely to have at least some points there anyways.

Move speed isn’t really the issue. It’s that pets root themselves for their attack animations. You could make the pet move 30% faster by default, but it’d still miss most of its attacks. All it would do is get back to the target faster. Not saying that they shouldn’t have an inherent move speed advantage, just I don’t think it would actually do much for them at this point in time.

Adding either a small lunge to their attacks, as others have suggested, or removing the animation root altogether is what will probably do the most towards fixing the issue.

True, the animation rooting is pretty heinous. One can experience it by doing certain renown hearts in the Norn starting area that involve getting transformed into animals. Horribad even with a human at the helm.

I like the suggestions of giving us the choice to roll with a pet or not as I always have, but I don’t think ArenaNet is willing to give us that choice judging by the history of their posts in the ranger forums. One suggestion I made as well was to in this case let us control the character to pet damage ratio so we could reduce how much character output is invested into the pet AI and use it more for stun or heal utilities. It would still be there but victory would hinge far less on whether or not the pet is able to hit the opponent’s but on the player instead. (Or alternatively they could have the choice to upscale the pet damage ratio for those who love the pet reliant builds.) Unfortunately the suggestion never picked up much attention and consequently support.

However making the pet an option (and the consequential damage distribution that results to support it) WOULD be the best option IMO if ArenaNet were willing to do that. But since the opposite seems to be the case, there are at least some alternatives which I believe are very viable that could at least be.. entertained on some level. Some I’ve suggested like here in this thread, some others have suggested here in this thread and other places. I just think its high time these things got taken seriously. Build diversity is hurting pretty badly in many cases and any major change outside the minor trait adjustments we’ve continued to receive would be a breath of fresh air. I don’t believe or agree at all that the ranger classes issues are the type of thing you can solve “One trait at a time”. The current process sees us waiting month after month for small changes with this idea that over the course of maybe a year and a half the total of the trait and pet tweaks if we’re lucky we might finally near the leeway in character building that the other classes have to begin with.

Month after month more and more die hard rangers seem to quit for other games or re-roll their characters because you can simply accomplish more of what they’re aiming for on other classes. I think its high time this pet issue really got looked at with more than a standard reply variation along the lines of “It’s broken, and we can’t fix it.. it would break animations, let’s see if we’ve chanced upon something in a couple months and discuss it then.”