Guild Wars 2

If you’re tired of the ranger and its mechanics, hate the pet and want it gone, love it and want to improve it, or are just bored and want to try new ideas, this is your thread. No limits, go wild, talk about whatever you want.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the ranger?

Few personal ideas to start the thread:

Idea 1 – Pet replacement

The most suggested ranger suggestion ever, pet removal, or options to replace it. Now, I don’t think it’s viable to remove it altogether. Yeah, this is a no-limits thread, and I would love to see ranger redesigns without the pet or with the pet as an optional addition, but for now I’m going to try to fix it without breaking the core principles.

The first thing to know about the pet, is that it sacrifices ranger base stats. Second, many slot skills have effects on both the ranger and the active pet. With this in mind, what could be the solution to pet-less ranger without removing the pet?

What about a new type of pet? Something like spirits, or wisps.

They would be invulnerable to direct damage and conditions (but not crowd control), and provide a passive stat bonus to the ranger. They would have some support skills, which could be interrupted by enemies. They wouldn’t have any automatic attacks. Their hp bar would be replaced by a break bar.

They could be a druid exclusive, or part of core ranger. If they are thematically too similar to spirit slot skills, just remove spirits and replace them with small plant-towers or whatever.

If this isn’t satisfying enough, another alternative could be to change all pets and give them a secondary spirit form, where they disappear. How would this work?

Pets wouldn’t be real pets, but animal spirits, that you’d manifest using magic. You could stow pets, even in combat. This would give you a buff, increasing a few stats. For example, you have a tiger, stow it and get a “blessing of the tiger” buff. So you choose between the pet or the buff.

It’s kinda lore-unfriendly, though. The pet is supposed to be this real physical companion, even if pet swap doesn’t make too much sense lore-wise.

So a third alternative, “spirit boosting”.

A combination of the two previous, your pet would have a spirit form. However, it wouldn’t disappear this time, staying nearby, and giving you various buffs. Like the wisp idea, in this form your pet would be invulnerable to damage, and its health bar would become a break bar.

You would be able to have your pet in this spirit form as long as you want, and it would be pretty much a walking decoration with minor support skills. Dead pets would become spirits, giving them more usability.

A fourth and final alternative would be to let the ranger equip “utility equipment” in the pet slot, and have it provide various buffs, with no pet whatsoever. For example, have a special quiver with flaming arrows in one of the pet slots, and when you switch to it you get burning effects every few attacks, and then you can swap back to the pet.

Idea 2 – Alternatives to the pet system

Moved below to make space for links

Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours!

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Full list of redesign threads:

Elementalist – Mesmer – Necromancer

Engineer – Ranger – Thief

Guardian – Revenant – Warrior

And core game elite specializations.
Toss pet and beastmastery traitline in it.

This is in regards to PVP I don’t wvw or pve much.

Make short bow/longbow pierce baseline not the extra affect of the traits just the pierce effect

1) I’d like Anet to bring older pets up to par with the new pets introduced in HoT and I agree that we should have more control over where we place the pet and perhaps a toggle in the settings for people who want to stow the pet until they are ready to bring it out so that all the “make petless ranger a thing” threads can die. I don’t agree with buffing the ranger without a pet as no class should be able to dump a core mechanic without consequence. It’s better for said mechanic to be improved instead of trying to shoehorn in a gameplay style that will call for a massive overwork of existing trait lines.

2) The other thing is to give pigs a better F2 skill as it’s the only pet that I simply won’t use.

3) More pets because I don’t believe there is such a thing as too many. =P The stable would probably have to be reworked though to keep it from being too crowded.

Get rid of druid as healer…
Up our dps by a lot… and I do mean a lot!! An awful lot
I’m constantly outperformed on DPS statistics by basically every other class…. DH doing +up to 200k dps when comparing statistics…

And make Greatsword a viable dps option as well

I wanted to be a Ranger to use a bow but with so much projectile hate these days, other options are better. Make the bow a first choice of weapon for a Ranger…not a staff or a sword.

I don’t have a PvP perspective, but it seems like pets are a huge limiting factor in PvE because they allow the ranger to divert aggro. It seems like a lot could be changed if pets couldn’t be aggro’ed.

Ranger should have better synergy with bows, the Marksmanship tree is pretty mediocre.

The Druid spec is interesting, but it really is just for healing. When you think of Druids you think of some connection with nature, and the Druid spec doesn’t really accomplish that well. More emphasis on the nature aspect of the Ranger would make it more interesting, I feel.

cough I’d probably do it by changing the players instead, so that they went over and played berserker LB condi warriors, or dragonhunter LB guards, rather than asking that rangers mutate into something that plays very much like them.

Moved content from the main post to make space for links to the other redesign threads:

Idea 2 – Alternatives to the pet system

What if instead of reworking the pet, we just give alternatives to it, by letting you equip other things than pets in your pet slot?

The options could be as follows:

• Hunter: Two pets, with pet swap. Current version.
• Beasmaster: Two pets of the same type at the same time. Giving orders only affects one at a time, so if you select a target and command attack, only one pet will obey. You can select another target and command attack, and the second pet will go instead of the first. Dead pets respawn after a while.
• Marksman: No pet. Instead, you get a resource bar and a special F1 attack, depending on your main-hand weapon. This attack gets more powerful the longer you hold the F1 button, and you can hold it longer the more resource you have. Think of aiming with the bow, and then firing at the right time.
• Druid: One pet, but swap changes it to spirit form, where it becomes invulnerable and gets new skills. Similar to the replacement ideas above. Using Celestial Avatar changes the pet as well. Option only available for druids.

The only downside of this idea is that it would leave the ranger in a much more advanced state than the other professions regarding customization of mechanics, but that can be fixed by making the other professions more advanced as well.

If this is too complex, we could take the marksman idea, and apply it when you stow the pet, giving something in exchange of stowing the pet, without caring about the pet type or status.

So your drake is killing stuff, and you stow it. Now you have an additional weapon skill. You can use it, and then bring the pet back. The pet would kinda hide and you’d be able to focus and make that powerful F1 attack.

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Moved content ends here.

Justine.6351:

And core game elite specializations.
Toss pet and beastmastery traitline in it.

Could be interesting to do that with every profession. No need to have 5 different mechanics for core, 3 would be enough. Then elite specializations could use 100% new mechanics, instead of upgrading those from core.

Maritel.8763:

I don’t have a PvP perspective, but it seems like pets are a huge limiting factor in PvE because they allow the ranger to divert aggro. It seems like a lot could be changed if pets couldn’t be aggro’ed.

Ranger should have better synergy with bows, the Marksmanship tree is pretty mediocre.

The Druid spec is interesting, but it really is just for healing. When you think of Druids you think of some connection with nature, and the Druid spec doesn’t really accomplish that well. More emphasis on the nature aspect of the Ranger would make it more interesting, I feel.

I think the problem with the druid is lack of variety and choice.

Imagine we had 3 celestial avatars to choose from. For example:

• Moon: Current version, for healers.
• Sun: Condition damage, burning and blind, for dps.
• Bloom: Support through plant turrets.

You’d choose one outside of combat, or maybe we could have the 3 of them active, and you’d choose which one to use in combat, maybe swapping from one to another whenever you want to.

Another thing I dislike about the Celestial Avatar is that it’s too powerful but too short. I would prefer if it went the way of the Death Shroud altogether, letting you use it whenever you want, and not just at 100%.

tie pet usage to beastmastery line
lawl idk

Personally I’d like to see the Ranger more like the Hunter in WoW. Now hear me out before you flame about things being like WoW and how we should hate everything about that game and so on.

The pet in WoW has a lot more functionality than the one here, and the Hunter doesn’t have to devote her abilities or her kit, for the most part to making her pet viable, it just /is/ due to its abilities. But she can support them and make them better.

Here, however? Their AI is terrible, their abilities are sparse, and to really make them viable you have to utilize your utility bar for pet-specific utilities such as Guard, Protect Me, etc. It’s terrible. That takes /your/ utility away and gives it to one of the entities with the worst AI in the game.

Yet if you don’t spec for your pet then there really isn’t much point in having one other than the damage they /might/ do if they can keep up to your target or aren’t dead in a corner somewhere.

Two simple fixes would make the pets so much better, allow melee pets to attack while moving, like literally every player already can, and allow us to utilize a “guard” like ability that’s just naturally on the pet’s bar and not a utility, letting us put our pet someplace for an indefinite amount of time and keep it there as long as we don’t get too far away from it.

In redesigning the Ranger I’d make it so that all of the pet boons would be associated to the BM tree. The beast mastery tree would unlock one or two extra abilities for the pet, make it so that certain things are passively applied always or in certain circumstances, and perhaps even have one of the new abilities be an additional “use” ability like F2 or whichever it is already that lets you use the pet ability.

Then all of your utilities could be focused entirely around you, the Ranger. If you don’t spec int BM then you’d personally be stronger but your pet wouldn’t make as much of an impact, meaning you’d probably be focused more heavily by mobs and the like, whereas if you go BM then your pet will compensate for your less damage, or support if you spec that way instead of say.. damage or tanking (since there’s three options in each “tier” of the spec having them as sort of “support, damage, and tank” makes sense to me.)

Overall I feel as though the Ranger’s pretty solid, the problem is that ANet at the same time tries to make the Ranger and Pet both one being and totally separate beings and that just ends up making them this weird… grey.. mass of… not super functional. Yet by doing this it would allow the ranger to keep their utilities for themselves and make the pet actually viable.

Those are the only real changes I feel I’d make to the Ranger as it currently is.

The ranger / druid pets are literally useless and a liability in many situations, too many to count. The pets need to be completely fixed.

1. Give players total and complete control of pets.
2. Fix the AI and / or replace with manually player controlled pet abilities.
3. Balance it for PVP and PVE group play.

Alternatively:

4. Seperate the ranger from the pet a lot more. Not saying remove it, but concentrate it on a single trait / utility line much like necro minions. Necros can function perfectly well without any minions, rangers should have the same option.

Other then the pet issues rangers are OK except for one thing. lack of stab on insta stun breaks. This a real big one as combined with the pet crap it is what limits ranger use in WVW group play. 1, or preferrably 2 opposing of our stun break utilities need to provide stab, but they don’t.

But 1st and foremost, as posted above, I would like to see ranger pets to be overall assets like in WOW, not overall burdens as they currently are here.

I played plenty of WoW ranger and … y’all are making the same complaints — literally the same — about the pet AI, utility, etc, that the WoW players do. Like, you could change “WoW” to “GW2” and post in a WoW ranger forum, and nobody would notice.

Complete and total control of your pet turns out to be indistinguishable from what you have in GW2 – I mean, it’s an additional “move to here” option, and the ability to turn off a couple of their auto-attacks in favor of manually keybinding them, if you really, really feel the need.

Using F1 for “bite this”, F3 for “don’t bite the thing”, and you are done. Same level of pet control you got over in WoW.

Fix the AI is pretty much the standard complaint for anything run by the game. I don’t think you are likely to see significant improvements absent something like mentioned elsewhere, “player written AI outside the game engine”, and that turns into a big problem fairly quickly in its own way.

Balancing is … well, that’s opinion, but I’d suggest that if you think the team are not balancing it today, you are mistaken. You might want to focus on collecting evidence and, ideally, ways to reproduce unbalanced specific situations and asking about getting them fixed.

Finally, non-pet rangers … just play a DragonHunter, or a Long Bow or Rifle Warrior. (or, if the rumors stick, rifle thief in the next xpac.)

It’s going to be easier to find the fantasy you want there, despite the class name, than to advocate for completely rebuilding the Ranger class into it.

trianglecubed.3750:

Overall I feel as though the Ranger’s pretty solid, the problem is that ANet at the same time tries to make the Ranger and Pet both one being and totally separate beings and that just ends up making them this weird… grey.. mass of… not super functional. Yet by doing this it would allow the ranger to keep their utilities for themselves and make the pet actually viable.

Been thinking about that, too.

Maybe the way to fix the pet is not to further separate the ranger from the pet, but instead make them work better together.

For example, what if some weapon skills affected the pet as well? Either instantly, by chains, or combined. Some examples

• Instant skill: The pet goes into a frenzy. Similar to the slot skills.
• Chain skill: First step, the ranger rolls backwards. Second step, the pet launches against the target to knock it down.
• Combined skill: The ranger stabs the enemy, making him bleed, and the pet bites him, making him bleed too. If both hit, extra bleeding is applied.

The idea is that instead of a standalone element that chases enemies around, the pet stands by your side, and is an extension of your weapons. Imaging having a floating sword that attacks together with you. Now change it for a pet, and that’s it.

Pets would need to be reorganized, and get specific skills for each of these situations, based on family or weight. AI would need to be improved as well, so specific pets stay behind you, or position themselves behind the enemy to flank him while you face him.

Pets chasing the enemy would disappear, or be restricted to specific pets only. Since the pet now stands by your side, it could have health removed altogether, and be made immortal, still suffering knock downs and such, or keep the health but adjust it depending on the role, so they die faster or slower depending on what they are meant for. All other stats would be removed, and the pet wouldn’t have damage of its own, basing it on the specific skills and ranger’s attributes instead.

All the pet commands would be gone too, since the pet would always stand by your side, and only move to perform skills and then come back. All pets would move faster than you, and never be left behind easily.

The only problem with this idea comes during situations where the ranger is using a longbow, and the pet is melee-only. Maybe stay defensive, and apply a passive stance bonus to the ranger? Need to think further.

I still think this could be a good idea to fix the pet mechanic, but it needs more work.

I’m affraid you propose no redisign of the ranger in this thread but you indeed sort out some E-spec possibilities.

In order to “redesign” the ranger, one would simply have to replace the pet system by another mechanism. Which mean replace a lot of trait and a whole traitline (beast mastery). This would allow beast mastery to become an E-spec and maybe they could then work on a pet system that would work.

As for the idea leading to new E-spec, I had proposed some concept a while ago :

1st E-spec : add an F5 skill tat seal the pet into your weapon. The pet is somehow stowed but is still affected by the boons and different buff you share. It’s auto attack/damage happen on an on hit extra effect with your weapon. You have access to F2 which affect you instead of your pet and F4 may be traited in order to directly summon a sealed pet. When you are downed or killed the seal broke.

2nd E-spec : Well, you suggested something close. It’s an E-spec that gain a bunch of exclusive pets which would be immune to most damage at the cost of doing almost no damage by themself. The ideal F2 for those pets would be an F2 that support the ranger with raw stat and have an active skill more or less interesting like most of the common signet. My fantasy also lead me to imagine some utility skills that transform those pets into spell effect allowing the ranger to somehow control their positionning while doing damage/support.

3rd E-spec : The concept was probably the most simple. Go further into the reasoning of giving effect to pet when using skills. It was an E-spec that relyed a lot on evade skills (since we got a lot of those on our weapons) and movement skills. Evade skills would grant our pets a blur effect and movement skill would grant us stealth. with a trait that allow us and our pet to share stealth it would have opened some new way to play without straying far from the original ranger.

4th E-spec : Probably the most unreasonable, this was an E-spec which introduce a echanism that let us give some of our stats to our pet in order to strengthen them greatly at the cost of our own ability. I had toyed with this E-spec in such a way that some traits would allow this strengthening to be reversed with a much lower strengthening for the ranger.

Dadnir.5038:

I’m affraid you propose no redisign of the ranger in this thread but you indeed sort out some E-spec possibilities.

In order to “redesign” the ranger, one would simply have to replace the pet system by another mechanism. Which mean replace a lot of trait and a whole traitline (beast mastery). This would allow beast mastery to become an E-spec and maybe they could then work on a pet system that would work.

2nd E-spec : Well, you suggested something close. It’s an E-spec that gain a bunch of exclusive pets which would be immune to most damage at the cost of doing almost no damage by themself. The ideal F2 for those pets would be an F2 that support the ranger with raw stat and have an active skill more or less interesting like most of the common signet. My fantasy also lead me to imagine some utility skills that transform those pets into spell effect allowing the ranger to somehow control their positionning while doing damage/support.

I’ve seen you describe something along these lines where you make it so that the ranger pet is basically useless as dps and just used as utility and, I have to ask you, on what planet does this sound like fun game play or class fantasy? What person goes out of their way to tame all of their fierce pets and then says, “My tiger totally wouldn’t jack someone up if given the chance. They just like to tickle my enemies a bit and roar occasionally to buff me”?

While I agree that pets could use some help, most of the re-designs proposed in this thread seem to be from a PvP perspective. There is more than one game mode and this idea sounds fantastically lame for most normal people who just want to be able to fight in tandem with their pet in PvE (the reason most people pick Ranger given it’s the primary mechanic that separates them from any other class).

Too many of the ideas in this thread are attempting to overcomplicate (unintentionally, I think) what is a an extremely straightforward profession for the benefit of only a portion of the playerbase. It would be nice to see a few suggestions that would improve what we already have versus gutting and rebuilding our trait lines while attempting to turn us into another class completely.

Change is good when it’s done well and does a good job of connecting the old with the new. Changes made to appease a small subset will almost always fall flat and cause division. What changes could be made that won’t ruin the core game play of the Ranger?

Hm. Hmmm.

Right, I’d likely do it as follows: (this will be baseline, obviously, not an e-spec)

We Are As One: Nature ritual (sorry for the GW1 talk): instead of taming a living beast, you summon forth the spirit of a great matriarch/patriarch beast of your choice and it lends its power to you – no pet or spirit is actually summoned though, it’s just stats and extra stuff. The stats and extra features gained changes depending on the pet family: canine and ursine aren’t the same, nor is avian or saurian etc. Each family gives something different, so you need to be prepared to adapt to different situations.

Example: Saurian spirit, gain condition damage and gain Glass Arrows, which causes all ranged attacks to have a chance to inflict bleeding.

Example 2: Feline spirit, gain power and precision and gain Tiger’s Fury, which increases the duration of Swiftness and Quickness on you.

(How to do it? If you have a canine as your pet, and cast this ritual, the pet becomes stabled, you gain the stats and features, until such a time you recast the spell, at which point the pet is resummoned. Has… shall we say… 120-180 second cooldown? It’d be a buff icon on the same bar as Opening Strike is currently).

Irijia.6073:

Dadnir.5038:

I’m affraid you propose no redisign of the ranger in this thread but you indeed sort out some E-spec possibilities.

In order to “redesign” the ranger, one would simply have to replace the pet system by another mechanism. Which mean replace a lot of trait and a whole traitline (beast mastery). This would allow beast mastery to become an E-spec and maybe they could then work on a pet system that would work.

2nd E-spec : Well, you suggested something close. It’s an E-spec that gain a bunch of exclusive pets which would be immune to most damage at the cost of doing almost no damage by themself. The ideal F2 for those pets would be an F2 that support the ranger with raw stat and have an active skill more or less interesting like most of the common signet. My fantasy also lead me to imagine some utility skills that transform those pets into spell effect allowing the ranger to somehow control their positionning while doing damage/support.

I’ve seen you describe something along these lines where you make it so that the ranger pet is basically useless as dps and just used as utility and, I have to ask you, on what planet does this sound like fun game play or class fantasy? What person goes out of their way to tame all of their fierce pets and then says, “My tiger totally wouldn’t jack someone up if given the chance. They just like to tickle my enemies a bit and roar occasionally to buff me”?

While I agree that pets could use some help, most of the re-designs proposed in this thread seem to be from a PvP perspective. There is more than one game mode and this idea sounds fantastically lame for most normal people who just want to be able to fight in tandem with their pet in PvE (the reason most people pick Ranger given it’s the primary mechanic that separates them from any other class).

Too many of the ideas in this thread are attempting to overcomplicate (unintentionally, I think) what is a an extremely straightforward profession for the benefit of only a portion of the playerbase. It would be nice to see a few suggestions that would improve what we already have versus gutting and rebuilding our trait lines while attempting to turn us into another class completely.

Change is good when it’s done well and does a good job of connecting the old with the new. Changes made to appease a small subset will almost always fall flat and cause division. What changes could be made that won’t ruin the core game play of the Ranger?

Well… I happened to answer everything but I lost my wall of text so I’ll sum it up.

1 : none of the thing that I suggest here change in the sligthest the core ranger. Basically, I use E-spec to work around the current system and open new door to the ranger which would satisfy what you think are the minority of the players.

2 : I’m affraid you are one of a kind. People usually do not chose the ranger because it’s a pet class. Most people use it because the profession name make them fantasize about an archer character which is hy we got our share of a certain well known elf name from the lord of the ring novel.

3 : with your mindset, every redesign thread is bound to make you frown. a redesign call for profound change not to keep safe thing that do not work properly.

4 : Pets are lacking in many way and not only in pvp and wvw. In order to fix the fact they are lacking, Anet will have to either seriously work on the pet (skill balance, glaring issues… etc.) or create E-spec that bend the pet system like what I suggest. Druid was the perfect example of anet turning a blind eye on thing that don’t work and that’s why people still complaint about pets even 4 year after game release.

NB.: Keep in mind that E-spec are supposed to not be mandatory, which mean that if their design can relieve a bit of the stress of what you think is the “minority” of the player, it’s basicaly a good thing for everybody since it can only shut up complains while keeping intact the content that your “majority” like.

i think a new elite specialization would be the best way to introduce a pet-less playstyle

Dadnir.5038:

Well… I happened to answer everything but I lost my wall of text so I’ll sum it up.

1 : none of the thing that I suggest here change in the sligthest the core ranger. Basically, I use E-spec to work around the current system and open new door to the ranger which would satisfy what you think are the minority of the players.

2 : I’m affraid you are one of a kind. People usually do not chose the ranger because it’s a pet class. Most people use it because the profession name make them fantasize about an archer character which is hy we got our share of a certain well known elf name from the lord of the ring novel.

3 : with your mindset, every redesign thread is bound to make you frown. a redesign call for profound change not to keep safe thing that do not work properly.

4 : Pets are lacking in many way and not only in pvp and wvw. In order to fix the fact they are lacking, Anet will have to either seriously work on the pet (skill balance, glaring issues… etc.) or create E-spec that bend the pet system like what I suggest. Druid was the perfect example of anet turning a blind eye on thing that don’t work and that’s why people still complaint about pets even 4 year after game release.

NB.: Keep in mind that E-spec are supposed to not be mandatory, which mean that if their design can relieve a bit of the stress of what you think is the “minority” of the player, it’s basicaly a good thing for everybody since it can only shut up complains while keeping intact the content that your “majority” like.

To address each of your points.

1) I don’t dislike all of your suggestions, mostly the one where pets do no damage and are just used for utility as I feel it makes for incredibly boring gameplay and makes little sense why those abilities wouldn’t simply be baked into the ranger.

2) You are giving people far too much credit. Regular folks pick their class by going to a game website and reading the class descriptions. Maybe they’ll read a forum post or two or watch a YouTube video of the gameplay. Not everyone is a nerd like us who will post and meditate on ways to improve the class. While you are absolutely correct that some people want to play their fantasy archer Legolas type of class. Anyone who just picks up this game and reads this page, https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/, is not going to immediately conclude that it’s an archer class. They will conclude that it is pet class with the option to use bows and arrows and they will always be the majority.

3) Re-design threads that improve existing core mechanics are good. Like I said, I do not dislike all of your suggestions but too many of the other ones in this thread keep aiming for a pet-less ranger. There needs to balance for the fantastically small portion of the player base that wants to be Legolas all by his lonesome and who also bother to post on this board and for the people out in the game who did nothing more than read the class description and decided they wanted to be an archer/melee fighter with a pet.

4) I can’t say the Druid didn’t fill a gameplay niche that Rangers weren’t able to fulfill before. Again, I agree that pets can be improved and I hope that they do that next expansion but I also fully expect that any requests that require a massive redesign of the existing trait lines to accommodate a pet-less Ranger E-Spec are going to be ignored again because it doesn’t fit Anet’s goal with the class.

1) I don’t dislike all of your suggestions, mostly the one where pets do no damage and are just used for utility as I feel it makes for incredibly boring gameplay and makes little sense why those abilities wouldn’t simply be baked into the ranger

I don’t understand why you are firmly opposed to that. After all it’s just an optional E-spec from my point of view, and it open new play style. Now, while tons of us drool at the idea of Anet finally trying to make pet viable in all gamemode, we are also aware that at this point it’s impossible to expect something vastly different than the flawed thing that anet serve us.

When people suggest to limit pet damage and instead use them as an utility source, they actually take into account all the pet traits of the ranger. Simply put, this would be a small sacrifice that would shut most of the complaints about the pet and make tem viable and aknowledged in all game mode. As a bonus, it would reduce and even make disapear stupid practice like afk farming (which could only improve the ranger reputation).

Honestly there is no loss in changing the pet into an ornament that support you. Even while keeping your gameplay, the only thing that would change would be you doing more damage and your pet doing less. The pets would still try their hardest to catch the foes, they would still buff you or put a condition on critical hit, nothing would change except their direct damage.

Dadnir.5038:

Honestly there is no loss in changing the pet into an ornament that support you.

This statement right here, shows that you do not in any way, shape, or form understand why a significant portion of the population chose a pet class to play. There actually is a psychology to it which is why, even though it is a pain for companies to code and balance, they continue to create pet classes. The complaints people have about pets are not unique to this game. Go to most any other mmo and you will see the same thing and the same minority that insists on making the pets a non-factor because they feel they shouldn’t have to reroll to go petless.

You also do not seem to understand why Anet created pets like the bristleback and smokescale, changed “Call of the Wild” to make pets unblockable, and even did a little thing like making it so that pets finally remember their name (something people have been requesting for almost as long as people have asked for Ranger to go sans pet). And there is also a high chance that even more pets are going to be introduced come next expansion. What sense would it make to then introduce an E-spec that reverses on all of that with a pet that does no damage and is just a buff bot?

What you keep proposing would literally be the exact opposite of where Anet is clearly taking the class and as much as you keep saying that it would help a ton of you, you understand that you are the holdouts. The people who want your specific type of game play and don’t feel like waiting for it have already rerolled to other classes like dragonhunter, thief, or warrior after determining that this isn’t the class for them. Anet literally has no reason to create the E-spec you are proposing outside of appeasing people who regret choosing a pet class and don’t want to level another class.

Pets should be improved but making a special version that is essentially useless for direct DPS outside of the occasional button press for utility – making them more akin to spirits but with the ability to follow a target – is not the way to go about it and is guaranteed to kitten a lot of people off. Honestly, if Anet increased their attack speed, buffed older pets to be more inline with Hot pets, gave us just a bit more control over positioning and when we do or do not have them out, I think it would improve the gameplay of the class (not that I view it as unplayable now, mind you) without massively overhauling it and changing the core reasons why people often pick pet classes in the first place.

E-specs should supplement a class (Like the way Druid supplements Nature Magic), not make an existing core mechanic a non-factor or (I hate to say it) completely change the flavor of a class.

It’s not so much that I want the pet gone. It’s just the horrible implementation/AI that I want fixed.

For example, the F2 ability on the electric wyvern: Even on a stationary target, it lunges forward and like 80% of the time it overshoots and misses. The AoE circle doesn’t make contact with the enemy.

And the bristleback in PvP. It takes a legit 4-5 seconds for its F2 ability to start firing. And when it does, it’s extremely telegraphed and easy to dodge. There goes basically all my damage as a bunker druid.

Fix the kitten AI. Make the F2 ability instant and accurate. Make them switch targets as soon as you do.

Agent Mulder.4531:

It’s not so much that I want the pet gone. It’s just the horrible implementation/AI that I want fixed.

For example, the F2 ability on the electric wyvern: Even on a stationary target, it lunges forward and like 80% of the time it overshoots and misses. The AoE circle doesn’t make contact with the enemy.

And the bristleback in PvP. It takes a legit 4-5 seconds for its F2 ability to start firing. And when it does, it’s extremely telegraphed and easy to dodge. There goes basically all my damage as a bunker druid.

Fix the kitten AI. Make the F2 ability instant and accurate. Make them switch targets as soon as you do.

And I am 100% behind you in this. I think this, more than anything else – fixing the attack speed and accuracy – would eleviate the majority of complaints that people have about the Ranger. Paired with a bit more control over pet stowing and positioning and it would definitely be a huge step up.

I’d change the Ranger like this.

@irija : I do agree with you that pets need to be improved and fixed. However, your argument are twisted and biased around your own ideology. The way you see anet’s balanced change on ranger clearly show this point. I’ll say it to you, there is plenty of example in anet’s changes that directly impact the pet that prove you wrong. (there first way to raise pet’s survivability is one of these laughable example or how they screw “Guard!” in the early days. Even more, the so called druid which was the best way anet had to actually dodge the numerous glaring issues that plague our pet.)

What I see here is that you are not open minded enough to allow other player to imagine gw2’s ranger with a mechanic that allow them to keep their pet without the very issues that those poorly designed thingy have to bear. You are not open minded enough to even accept this as an optionnal E-spec. Are you perhaps thinking that if such an E-spec were to appear it would become popular among the player base, thus threatening your ranger’s ideology?

NB.: Don’t get me wrong, In the early game, before they gut the pet’s auto attack your ideology was worth it and I enjoyed to play the ranger this way. However the various nerf that followed destroyed any possibility to return to this state. That’s also why I know that you are the one that don’t understand the various recent balance change on the ranger and their pet. Anet doesn’t want a strong pet class, they are merely trying to not see the “pet problem”.

Dadnir.5038:

You are not open minded enough to even accept this as an optionnal E-spec

You’re joking, right? E-specs are not optional, they are mandatory. And every new E-spec will be overpowered just as an additional leveredge to make you buy new expansion.
As I understood from your earlier discussion, you want a petless E-spec. If that thing hits live servers it will push everything else from meta, as it was with Druid E-spec. You don’t want to play it? Sorry, no slot for you in fractal/raid group. There is no option here.
Oh, and one more thing. The most important one. I love my pets. Even if they act stupid and I lack control over them. Please don’t mess with my pets. Ranger always was (and will be) a pet class. Its icon is a pet paw, not a bow or Legolas face. Without a pet it will become just a medium armor warrior/dragon hunter clone. If you want it please go and play warrior or dragon hunter.
So, please, leave poor pets alone. All they need is:
1) ability to bite targets while moving;
2) extended control options;
3) better survivability – either sharing evasion frames with our dodge rolls or immunity to boss AoE skills.

Ider.1276:

Dadnir.5038:

You are not open minded enough to even accept this as an optionnal E-spec

You’re joking, right? E-specs are not optional, they are mandatory. And every new E-spec will be overpowered just as an additional leveredge to make you buy new expansion.
As I understood from your earlier discussion, you want a petless E-spec. If that thing hits live servers it will push everything else from meta, as it was with Druid E-spec. You don’t want to play it? Sorry, no slot for you in fractal/raid group. There is no option here.
Oh, and one more thing. The most important one. I love my pets. Even if they act stupid and I lack control over them. Please don’t mess with my pets. Ranger always was (and will be) a pet class. Its icon is a pet paw, not a bow or Legolas face. Without a pet it will become just a medium armor warrior/dragon hunter clone. If you want it please go and play warrior or dragon hunter.
So, please, leave poor pets alone. All they need is:
1) ability to bite targets while moving;
2) extended control options;
3) better survivability – either sharing evasion frames with our dodge rolls or immunity to boss AoE skills.

@Dadnir

Ider puts it very passionately but I do feel along the same lines and I’m not inclined to apologize for it since I picked Ranger specifically because it fits that stated playstyle. So of course I’m biased, anyone who picks a profession in any mmo is expressing a bias because personal preference is a thing. =)

I’ll say it again, I don’t disagree with all of your ideas, merely the one that makes pets non-DPS, moble utility slots. Also, nerfing a mechanic does not mean that Anet wants pets to be useless, what they’ve been doing is more forcing players to manage their pet to get the most out of them. A person can set and forget their pet and it will do alright-ish DPS but to do best with them, a person must manage and work with their pet (again, why they’ve made changes to things like “Call of the Wild”).

To put it succinctly, the missing piece here is that the management needs improvement on multiple fronts to make this goal more viable.

The only real change I would like to see is the option to select your pets F2 ability. Take for instance the fire wyvern. Maybe you can select the fireball instead of the torched ground aoe. Or better yet the ability to chose between two seperate attacks for their F2 ability that share the same cooldown. It would allot for more versatility without drastically changing the character. My first character was a ranger and I still play it quite often.

Reason I choosed to play ranger was that I wanted to play nature themed character because I simply like nature, animals, plants and all that stuff. For that reason I like pets. If you only wanted to play archer and none of other options satisfy you as well I believe we will see more archers in next expansion. Anyway pets in my opinion working pretty well for archers in PvE, because even if you are not using pets actively they’re taking a lot of damage instead of you.

Pets redesign
- Put all pets at similar power level. They suppose to have powerful abilities to compensate delay for its execution.
- Depending on the pet type lower their toughtness (agro) and compensate their survivability other way. Pulling agro from you is often helpful but it also can be contraproductive depending on your build.
- Add small aoe to auto-attack of melee pets and increase attack speed of range pets to compensate this advantage.
- It would be nice to have effect for pet swap because right now actual pet just suddenly disappear and new one suddenly appear.
- crazy one – I would love to see more interactions between character and pets. For example be able ride on pets or be able to use skills which combine character and pet attacks to single combo attack.

Druid redesign
- In general if your build is not focused on healing, this specialization has almost nothing to offer. Celestial avatar is all about healing, staff skills are about healing and traits are mostly about CA, staff or healing. Healing. Just look at minor traits you can’t even choose yourself. Druid can benefit from other specializations however other specialization can’t really benefit from Druid. It feels like completely different class. For this reason I would like to see druid completely redesigned.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

The only real change I would like to see is the option to select your pets F2 ability. Take for instance the fire wyvern. Maybe you can select the fireball instead of the torched ground aoe. Or better yet the ability to chose between two seperate attacks for their F2 ability that share the same cooldown. It would allot for more versatility without drastically changing the character. My first character was a ranger and I still play it quite often.

This would be really useful too. Although the fire wyverns animation is cool, it takes soooooo long and drops agro off of your pet so it’s a pain to take advantage of the field combo.

AkantorCZ.8952:

Pets redesign
- Put all pets at similar power level. They suppose to have powerful abilities to compensate delay for its execution.
- Depending on the pet type lower their toughtness (agro) and compensate their survivability other way. Pulling agro from you is often helpful but it also can be contraproductive depending on your build.
- Add small aoe to auto-attack of melee pets and increase attack speed of range pets to compensate this advantage.
- It would be nice to have effect for pet swap because right now actual pet just suddenly disappear and new one suddenly appear.
- crazy one – I would love to see more interactions between character and pets. For example be able ride on pets or be able to use skills which combine character and pet attacks to single combo attack.

These are all nice suggestions. I especially agree that if they are determined to leave the attack delay on, then pets could stand to be buffed a bit.

You last suggestion sounds pretty nice especially for people who like to melee. I’d also like to add that I wish pets had access to more combo fields.

You’re joking, right? E-specs are not optional, they are mandatory.

Just saying this is wrong in itself. E-specs as long as there are many of them are de facto optional and not mandatory. Simply because you can only select one e-spec at a time. Druid may be mandatory if you are glued to the meta but in fact core ranger spec are also in a good place atm (at least when it come to condi dps).

again, why they’ve made changes to things like “Call of the Wild”

Nope, Call of the wild being making the pet unblockable is not a testimony of anet wanting to make the pet’s dps worthwhile. An unblockable pet is a pet that continue to buff it’s master and continue to proc what he is supposed to proc (traits effects). To make it simple it’s the very bad way anet found to say : “Now shut up! We’ve done something about pets not being able to hit their target, we won’t do anything else because we feel that it would make the ranger imbalanced”.

I’ll say it again, I don’t disagree with all of your ideas, merely the one that makes pets non-DPS, moble utility slots.

Again, a pet doing dps or not doesn’t change the fact that you play a summoner, play along with your pet or whatever. It’s just a different approach of how to interact along with a pet, a different way to play the same class. From my point of view, you should be more wary of :

1st E-spec : add an F5 skill tat seal the pet into your weapon. The pet is somehow stowed but is still affected by the boons and different buff you share. It’s auto attack/damage happen on an on hit extra effect with your weapon. You have access to F2 which affect you instead of your pet and F4 may be traited in order to directly summon a sealed pet. When you are downed or killed the seal broke.

since the sealing effect remove your pet and effectively get rid of it.

Than an e-spec that merely remove the dps of your summoned pet.

Dadnir.5038:

You’re joking, right? E-specs are not optional, they are mandatory.

Just saying this is wrong in itself. E-specs as long as there are many of them are de facto optional and not mandatory. Simply because you can only select one e-spec at a time. Druid may be mandatory if you are glued to the meta but in fact core ranger spec are also in a good place atm (at least when it come to condi dps).

again, why they’ve made changes to things like “Call of the Wild”

Nope, Call of the wild being making the pet unblockable is not a testimony of anet wanting to make the pet’s dps worthwhile. An unblockable pet is a pet that continue to buff it’s master and continue to proc what he is supposed to proc (traits effects). To make it simple it’s the very bad way anet found to say : “Now shut up! We’ve done something about pets not being able to hit their target, we won’t do anything else because we feel that it would make the ranger imbalanced”.

I’ll say it again, I don’t disagree with all of your ideas, merely the one that makes pets non-DPS, moble utility slots.

Again, a pet doing dps or not doesn’t change the fact that you play a summoner, play along with your pet or whatever. It’s just a different approach of how to interact along with a pet, a different way to play the same class. From my point of view, you should be more wary of :

1st E-spec : add an F5 skill tat seal the pet into your weapon. The pet is somehow stowed but is still affected by the boons and different buff you share. It’s auto attack/damage happen on an on hit extra effect with your weapon. You have access to F2 which affect you instead of your pet and F4 may be traited in order to directly summon a sealed pet. When you are downed or killed the seal broke.

since the sealing effect remove your pet and effectively get rid of it.

Than an e-spec that merely remove the dps of your summoned pet.

1) The point I was making about “Call of the Wild” had almost nothing to do with the amount of damage and everything to do with Anet increasing how much we manage the pet and by extension doubling down on the fact that we are a pet class. It’s only a small fix to mitigate the issues brought up in this thread and is not enough. Again, I agree with you that pets need to be improved. I just do not agree with you that pets should be cosmetic buff bots like you are proposing.

2) What you propose and what the person you are quoting is proposing sound like nothing more than two sides of the same coin. He wants the pet to disappear but give you all of the buffs as if he were still around. You want the pet to be completely useless as anything more than an occasional button press and contribute no DPS, just hang out until you need it. You are still trying to take the pet out of the equation but making them more or less a larger version of a companion mini and calling it a day as if that is supposed to be satisfactory or engaging fantasy and gameplay.

I am going to keep repeating it until you get it, that’s not why people play pet classes.

Ill try and throw my 2 cents in and not say things that have already been said; I would like the ranger to incorporate a bit more stealth and some sort of unique damage mitigate gimmick.

As it stands for stealth they have LB 3, Druid trait in shadow, and combo with sword 2/ GS 3/ staff 3 + smokescale f2 (might be 2 more other ones).

For evades they have standard 2 charges, and sword 2, 3 + dagger 4 and I am happy with that but we look at Mesmers who can slip away dead fast and gain distance, then murder ball you with clones that are just as powerful as our pets – ok.

Daredevils have an extra dodge and blinds and stealths with bursty burst (but once you catch them on a stun they drop and have to run to reset so we can use that time for us as well). I can go on and on but it just seems like Ranger doesn’t get a lot of love and I say this as someone who plays everything BUT ranger.

Players can draw out the pets while running away, jump back on the ranger while the pet is catching up and thats damage lost from the ranger (and spirits are lame now). Now saying to give the ranger more melee dmg is just being lazy and introduces the potential for imbalance so I would argue that instead use the same theory with squishy profs like mes and thief to give them avoids and stealth we could do the same for ranger. After all, lorewise they stalk, hide, camouflage.

I’d tweak the numbers on a few utilities and alter/tweak/change nearly all of the traits. I’d even leave pets as-is if traits were redone.

skystorm.9280:

Ill try and throw my 2 cents in and not say things that have already been said; I would like the ranger to incorporate a bit more stealth and some sort of unique damage mitigate gimmick.

As it stands for stealth they have LB 3, Druid trait in shadow, and combo with sword 2/ GS 3/ staff 3 + smokescale f2 (might be 2 more other ones).

For evades they have standard 2 charges, and sword 2, 3 + dagger 4 and I am happy with that but we look at Mesmers who can slip away dead fast and gain distance, then murder ball you with clones that are just as powerful as our pets – ok.

Daredevils have an extra dodge and blinds and stealths with bursty burst (but once you catch them on a stun they drop and have to run to reset so we can use that time for us as well). I can go on and on but it just seems like Ranger doesn’t get a lot of love and I say this as someone who plays everything BUT ranger.

Players can draw out the pets while running away, jump back on the ranger while the pet is catching up and thats damage lost from the ranger (and spirits are lame now). Now saying to give the ranger more melee dmg is just being lazy and introduces the potential for imbalance so I would argue that instead use the same theory with squishy profs like mes and thief to give them avoids and stealth we could do the same for ranger. After all, lorewise they stalk, hide, camouflage.

More stealth sounds good and I’m with you on spirits being pretty bleh now. It’s not that they don’t have their uses but them not moving with you and their activation having such a so-so range (even traited) before they die makes them too situational.

Part of me would also like it if we could trait shouts to have a pet taunt built into all of them instead of just “Guard” to allow us more control over bouncing aggro between us and the pet. Might be a bit too strong in some cases though. =/