Guild Wars 2

Pet ranger as they are todays are a pale shadow of what the class used to be… what im proposing here is something a lot of player might deem absurd… blasphemous even!

What im proposing is the reverse of the pet removal… the pet stat focus as the ranger itself withdraw from the scene and work as the actual directing hand.

The curent balance of damage power in ranger even on a BM is about of
40% – ranger
to
60% – pet

What im proposing is a return to the beastmaster of guild wars 1 via a trait aka

1% – ranger
to
99% – pet

Now how does this work… Ranger technicaly sacrifice its whole power, ferocity, precision and condition damage stats and transfer it to its pet aka a stat transfer of 100% of damage done. The interest of it is ranger still can cause various crowd control or effect that power up his pet via weapon ability and utility but becomes a passive tamer behind the beast whos purpose is to take command and direct it (the guild wars 1 staff beastmaster 16 BM 14 expertise) The cool stuff is pet actualy now gets to deal serious direct damage and act as melee hammer of the same damage lvl as a warrior where the ranger can keep a distance and buff from affar. However as a cost to the ranger finaly behing able to reunite all its damage coeficient in a single attacker the ranger itself is technicaly unable to deal damage (or at least act as a minor dot at best) and must fight trought its beast companion.

Put a trait in grandmaster or master beastmastery and call it ‘’beast tamer’’ it would definitively open up a new form of specialisation to ranger or at least make it into a full archtype of its own.

Well… No

Let me explain. As a BM in GW2 you’ve got to actively buff your pet to max their effective damage and most of these “buff” to your pet are provided trough a fight. This mean that you will grant might to your pet each time you crit or might on sword AA. Protection on dodge, special condition on skill… etc.
This mean that if you sacrifice all your stats to your pet you also sacrifice your ways to buff them.
My second point would be that it would be terribly op in a way because pets already have high primary stats. How many health would have a bear with full sentry gear? 70 000? A cat with full zerk gear would have easily 100% crit chance and could potentially one shot people.

So in a sense what you propose would make pets OP, leading to nerf base stat and at the same time bring down the relation between the ranger and his pet.

Dont you wish you could hit chains like warrior and guardian for 16k+? Im just proposing to put the pet to the same lvl as them at the cost of making the ranger inefective damage Wise. Im not talking about health point and armor just about damage as a general rule. Of course we would be fighting… but at this point once axe/longbow/shortbow deals the same damage as sword/greatsword… wich would you think youd choose to buff up your pet with might stacks? If we blurr the lines off damage to the point its more of a question of utility rather then dps done is longbow/axe so bad yet? I dont think so, and actively buffing the pet trought fight doesnt necesarily mean dealing damage. If longbow/axe actualy happened to deal the same damage as sword they both would be in a better line for beast mastery spec then sword would.

As a reminder many of those ‘’pet buff’’ traits are stuck in the wrong traitline in the first place and should be removed from the game or recalled back to beast mastery as many player subjested. What im proposing here is a true pet based build without the risk of having the ranger dealing overpowered combined damage by recalling all this damage back to the pet when traited as such.

This also bring in a new fighting circonstance to the game

Today: ignore the useless pet focus the ranger
Tomorow: burn down the dangerous pet then aim for the vulnerable ranger

One of my favorite builds in RA and some PvE was the Cheerleader (as I called them) builds where you stood waaaaaaaay in the back and cheered your pet to victory while violently twirling your baton, it was a very fun, and imo unique, way to play ranger, and I would not be upset if it was brought back.

Additionally the build was generally very hard to take down since the ranger was pretty tanky while the pet was alive, and the pet was fairly tanky due to some of the buffs you gave them, but if you shut that pet down (I’m looking at you assassins and burst eles!!) then the ranger was left without damage and without survivability until he could pick his pet back up and buff it.

Idk how they’d implement this in GW2 though, I’d imagine it’d either be a Grandmaster BM trait (for obvious reasons) or maybe even an Elite Skill. Would be cool.

Dadnir.5038:

Well… No

Let me explain. As a BM in GW2 you’ve got to actively buff your pet to max their effective damage and most of these “buff” to your pet are provided trough a fight. This mean that you will grant might to your pet each time you crit or might on sword AA. Protection on dodge, special condition on skill… etc.
This mean that if you sacrifice all your stats to your pet you also sacrifice your ways to buff them.
My second point would be that it would be terribly op in a way because pets already have high primary stats. How many health would have a bear with full sentry gear? 70 000? A cat with full zerk gear would have easily 100% crit chance and could potentially one shot people.

So in a sense what you propose would make pets OP, leading to nerf base stat and at the same time bring down the relation between the ranger and his pet.

In GW1 there was an option to be one of 3 ranger types 1) totally pet reliant (as OP stated) 2) pet and ranger in unison (as ranger currently is in 99% of GW2 builds) where both bring something the other needs to the table, yet neither is useless without the other, just heavily kitten and 3) absolutely no pet reliance, and almost always had no pet (there were some where a pet was brought to die, IE “I Will Avenge You!”)

In GW2 #1 and #3 don’t exist, OP is suggesting that #1 is brought into GW2, and imo if that’s done then #3 should ALSO be an option, however in all honesty it’d be much easier for Anet to bring in OPs suggestion into the game before petless because they want ranger to be balanced around the pet and all it’d take is a trait to shift your damage more pet ward.

16-14 cheerleader could indeed do a comeback in GW2 and with the possible addition of staff as a ranger weapon it would actualy make much sense. Cheerleader was actualy one of the best form of symbiotic build in the game… the pet hits the ranger heals… the ranger direct the pets the pet deals damage, the ranger heal itself the pet heals, the ranger shout at the pet the pet go for the kill. Having a big angry rainbow pheonix or a jingle bear never felt so fun since (i can still taste their fear… and tears)

Since Number 1# would exist in the form of aspect wich the dev actualy got interested in why would the reverse not exist as well?

Interesting idea. I wasn’t some sort of hardcore player in GW1 but I remember that “Enraged Lunge” ranger build, was a lot of fun back then

i actualy prefered brutal strike (the damage equivalent to ranger of warrior final trust without the ridiculus adrenaline cost and a somewhat short cooldown) coupled with the Lucky 7 bleed/poison degen heal as one symbiotic link build wich both had the damage and the survivability in it :/ sad you ned to keep charm animal in pvp else id had brought myself even more damage XD

Enraged lunge was also mighty but lacked the self survivability of heal as one (7 second cd 180 heal + endless pet ressurection… woot?)

Brutal Strike was my main damage skill too, it hit like an absolute TRUCK, especially when they get into the kill zone!

Got to love the doubled damage Under 50% and mass degen with heavy damage was all the point of it at that point the pet was like a constant 33% increased attack speed sword/shield warrior with high movement speed or improved damage that had uber survivability + the ability to ressurect constantly but had its deep wound replaced with poison instead.

Those guys where all like (Oh its just a ranger… what is she doing with a staff and a pet? OMG help its eating me!)… ill remember those assasins screams for years…

I did not play gw1, so I sure don’t know how it might turn out.

But I’m playing WvW, and unless we have some real control over the pet, just like we can have over our character, this would be a big no.

Do we need an even more passive play than pew-pew form a distance with a pet tanking?
Do we really need to put more reliance on a pet that’s unable to avoid AoE’s, and pretty easily kiteable (foe just have to jump on a rock for our damage to be negated), and the way the environment is, most of the time, if we put ourselves in a “safe spot” pet has an insane travel distance to go, while jumping over things foes can get right at us…

I’d rather they focus on making the pet less of a liability than try to bring too much into play.

You couldn’t move and attack at the same time in GW1 on any class (although high skill players could make this almost non-noticeable with some really well timed button pushing.) That meant pet AI wasn’t very important. You either kited the pet and did nothing yourself, or it hit you.

People complain about ranger being passive. It’s just that most ranger attack look the same. Most of are utility aren’t attack like it is for some other classes. I can have every skill on cd in spvp and the guy I killed will say nice 1111111.

So I guess I kind of agree with trying to go with a the ability for pet to do almost all the damage. I personally really hated bm builds in gw. However I think It would be good for the Ranger core to have a full bm option.

What they could do is give rangers another weapon set. lets say a whip capable of being used in the main hand as well as off hand.
Like say a whip or more pet friendly item like a whistle.

Equipped in the main hand those corresponding skill would do damage related skill like a extra damage and or rush attack to help pets hit moving targets or maybe quickness for your pet only.

Off hand skill would give pets maybe block and dodge skills.

I guess people could still afk if the extra damage skill was the aa (damage would have to be high enough to make-up for the ranger not doing any damage.)

I also think there would be a need for a single target 1handed range attack weapon (maybe a one handed cross bow main hand only).

I don’t know just think out loud.

One other thing Guard need to be given back the ability to let pets go to any location. If a mesners clones can go anywhere like thought gates in WvW rangers need to be-able to have it too. Considering that a full bm would be really lame because you cant defend/attack a keep.

I am really tired of the special rules they have for Mesmer’s only. I mean a mes can generate a clone what like ever 3 seconds. While Ranger can have a new pet ever 20 second unless it dies the you have a 60 second cd. Don’t clones scale with gear as well.

Sorry for going off thread.

I really liked pure BM builds in GW1 too, even in PvE. My PvE build was Enraged Lunge, Scavenger Strike, Brutal Strike, Otyugh’s Cry, Great Dwarf Weapon, Feral Agression, Comfort Animal, Strength of Honor. 16 BM, 11 Expertise and 8 Smiting. Did amazing damage and was so fun to play!

A weapon that actualy proc pet attack the same thing as Guild Wars 1 Beast mastery moveset? Sure why not, i dont see them making utility to proc stuff like brutal strike anyway but why not on a weapon? Staff has been the beast master emblem for generations until spear/shield took over.

I like the whip idea but what would the other class do with a whip (unless they make it a transformation skill for the ranger only?).