Idea to fix rangers: Stow Pet Change
I love my pets, always have in most of the ranger classes I’ve played in ALOT of MMO’s, but do feel that the ranger should be given the choice to play with or without its pet, with a more permanent stow pet option… if this gives you a bonus or not when stowed, that is debatable.
But other classes have their own mechanism and they are given the coice to use them or not, the necro, the warrior, the thief, the elemetalist, etc… why force something onto the ranger ?
With this said, I will 99% of the time will still have my pet out.
80 Human Druid of Piken
Stomp for Píken [PS]
Stomp for Píken [PS]
I may be alone here… but does anyone else approach their pet like some merciless owner to a dog fighting ring throwing bait animals into the pens to rile up the dogs? I mean this is how ANet encourages us to play… throw pets into the fray with the hope they’ll last 30 seconds so you can simply swap pets, bet your BM buffs, and keep moving.
This is about the limit to ANet’s thought process for pets and the ranger’s damage is being drastically reduced for this?
I still say unlinking the pet from the ranger’s damage entirely so the pet is little more than a basic DOT from another class and then putting much of the ranger’s utility and burst damage in the pet is the best option to this class. If anything, doing this will make pets more significant to the class, not less.
The problem is the pet mechanics aren’t working in this game.
The problem is the class has no utility in PvE and it’s not being brought along.
The problem is the class has no utility or burst in PvP and can’t compete.
The problem is the class has such a horrible list of traits and powers to choose from.
So the pet needs some improvements, especially with regards to AI (I’m looking at you ‘likes to run waaaaaay ahead’ bug). I’ve never argued they don’t, what I’m arguing is they don’t need throwing away because they have problems with can most likely be patched out. I’d rather not see a repeat of other developers when an overall enjoyable thing is criticized. (If you want a specific example: Bioware with the vehicle sections or inventory system from Mass Effect I.)
The other three points aren’t even related to the pet: utility skills are pretty miserable but that’s hardly a secret, Anet themselves have said as much and we’re expecting a patch to buff them up tomorrow.
The traits are dodgy with either lacklustre abilities or bizarre placement (traps that rely on condition damage have trap related traits in the… critical chance/critical damage trait line? The best Beastmaster traits are not in the beastmaster trait line?)
Out of the four problems you list three are unrelated to the pet. You’re using it as a scapegoat when the biggest problem is actually with the ranger itself. There are currently a handful of utility skills that are worth bringing and some of those require traits to be worth it anyway. The traits themselves are all over the place.
Since only a handful of traits and utility skills are really useful, they’re the only ones that are ever seen, so only a handful of builds are really being seen. Gutting the pet system isn’t going to change that, and at worse would distract people from the main problem.
But other classes have their own mechanism and they are given the coice to use them or not, the necro, the warrior, the thief, the elemetalist, etc… why force something onto the ranger ?
This is a point that no-one has really touched on. I’m not sure myself. I personally believe it’s because the pet – can – have a much bigger impact.
The Warrior’s adrenaline system is an extra attack. It’s a snazzy extra attack, and they can do useful things like an AoE stun or bleed spike or damage spike, but it’s also potentially negated quite easily. On the other hand, adrenaline is also easy to get.
Guardian’s got some buffs that they keep/sacrifice, however beyond the ‘every few hits you burn them’ they have a long cooldown, especially if activated. Activated at the right time they can make a difference (mass aegis for everyone just before a one-shot attack anyone?) but generally it’s few and far between.
Necromancers have an attrition style combat encouraged with the life meter, allowing you to slowly grind the target down while keeping most of your health (in theory). I suppose I should mention the undead minions too, even if they’re technically a utility and not the class skill: they are much squishier, but they’re also more disposable in general. After all, the Minion ones are kamikaze bombers.
Ranger… gets something that if it’s been traited for can quite happily maul a target (even several) to death on it’s own and usually survive a fairly nasty pummelling as well. It can revive fallen allies if you take the utility, allowing the ranger to continue attacking something else, keeping pressure up or vice versa. It can inflict conditions, snare, knockdown or buff the party. All the time. It’s a constant, powerful presence if you trait into it.
That’s personally why I think there’s such a discrepancy. The other classes can largely ignore the primary attribute (in terms of investing traits) while still finding it regularly useful. In contrast the ranger gets something that, if invested in, is a threat in it’s own right.
(edited by Loki.4871)
my 2 cents:
“Ranger” doesnt come from “ranged” as in distance, it merely comes from the word “range” as used in a “row or line of men/soldiers”. Aragorn didnt use Bows, he used a sword and warhorn. Hell of a cool Ranger :P
A Ranger can be a wanderer, soldier, policemen, someone who guards something / an area. So Archery / Ranged Combat isnt really what this class is mainly about, sorry for you Guys who took this misleading with an Archer / Sniper.
Yes we could play without a Pet in GW1. Want to compare those games, then fine, take away Thieves Stealth, since they didnt have it in GW1 either, I wouldnt mind that.
Loki, this is a suggestion thread… I listed those issues because the suggested resolution to those problems is to move the damage away from the pet and move the utility and burst to the pet to compensate for moving the raw damage for the class to the ranger itself.
Once we have an acceptable baseline to work from they can then work on fixing the traits so beastmastery gives more damage to the pet, marks can give more damage to the bow etc.
But right now we have, what others claim, is a 50/50 split between ranger damage and supposed pet damage (which given how terrible the class is, it’s probably assumed the ranger will have a pet up 100% of the time dealing damage 100% of the time). This is simply too much focus on a pet that a player has next to no real control over, has numerous game breaking bugs, and simply doesn’t work and hasn’t worked since its implementation.
If the pet was working perfectly, the split should still be something closer to 80/20 which is still miles above what other games with pet classes offer.
Everyone in this thread understands your stance that you don’t want this class to function without the pet. I honestly don’t want it to function without it either. But I want you and ANet to at least be realistic: there is never going to be a legitimate reason for the pet to account for 50% of this class’ worth. Even 20% is pushing it even if the pet actually worked as intended.
Pets aren’t broken if you know how to use them. If your pet is dying all the time, it’s because you aren’t paying attention to its health to swap it for a different pet or call it back from a dangerous attack or aoe. I personally despise this idea. Pets are an incredibly fun and powerful mechanic for those who can use it right. It’s just that those who don’t know how to use it like to blame their failures on the mechanic rather than on themselves. Once I started swapping my pets almost every time the CD was up, and healing it even when I didn’t need a heal, I’ve had few problems with survivability.
Pets aren’t broken if you know how to use them. If your pet is dying all the time, it’s because you aren’t paying attention to its health to swap it for a different pet or call it back from a dangerous attack or aoe. I personally despise this idea. Pets are an incredibly fun and powerful mechanic for those who can use it right. It’s just that those who don’t know how to use it like to blame their failures on the mechanic rather than on themselves. Once I started swapping my pets almost every time the CD was up, and healing it even when I didn’t need a heal, I’ve had few problems with survivability.
And this is yet another reason the pet really doesn’t do anything for this class. Instead of a player trying to invest in the pet, they just send the pet into the fray and pray it lasts 30 seconds so it can be swapped out to give you haste just like some merciless dog fighter would throw puppies into a ring to get the dogs all riled up.
The mechanics behind pets aren’t complicated or difficult to learn. They simply don’t work as advertised. They don’t fire off their utility when asked, they don’t return when pressed, they don’t path correctly, and AE in some situations is simply unavoidable when you have to risk your pet being hurt or losing half of your class’s damage on an encounter.
Thankfully this is MMOlite and we can just cycle the pet every 30 seconds. Any other MMO would have resolved the problem in a meaningful way.
Loki, this is a suggestion thread… I listed those issues because the suggested resolution to those problems is to move the damage away from the pet and move the utility and burst to the pet to compensate for moving the raw damage for the class to the ranger itself.
Which means a total redesign of how the class works, less than six months into the game being released. The big changes were in Alpha/Beta, and unless something is going utterly, horribly, catastrophically wrong with the class and nothing can fix it beyond a total remake of the class, there won’t be one.
The class isn’t broken either.
Beyond AI issues (some of which have apparently been worked on for tomorrow’s patch) the pet in itself is okay in almost all situations.
“But it doesn’t work in situation X or Y or Z!”
Nothing works in every sitation, and if it does it gets nerfed (see the bottom).
So is it because situation X/Y/Z is just not friendly to that sort of thing? Would engineer turrets or necromancer minions or ranger spirits suffer as badly there? Or is it a pet-only problem? Is it, not to put too finer point on it, miserably bad pet management from inexperienced players, or muppets who keep thinking the ranger is TeH 5|\|1PAR class of pwnage and resent having a pet in the first place?
Beause if the answer to those questions is “No, it’s just a problem with the pet itself” then fine, we need to sit down and think how that can be sorted without immediately going “(Bleep) it, LET’S UTTERLY REDO THE ENTIRE CLASS.” That should be the utterly Final Solution to a class mechanic’s problem.
I know I’m sounding like a patronising miserable git constantly pouring cold water on these ideas. I prefer to think of myself pouring cold realism. The ranger is never going to match the DPS of a warrior on it’s own. Asking/demanding/begging for it is as likely as a dedicated healer class being added and every class’ self heal being reduced in effectiveness accordingly.
Fact: In the beta weekends, the ranger could do enough damage to match warriors, allowing rangers to ignore their pets.
Fact: This meant other classes, especially the warrior, were undercut and made redundant, because with the pet and spirits and traps, the ranger was insanely versatile.
Fact: This was nerfed, and the pet was buffed to compensate, reinforcing the pet’s importance to the class.
(edited by Loki.4871)
The class isn’t taken in PvE groups because it has no utility.
The class isn’t taken in PvP because it has no burst.
The class isn’t taken on X, Y, Z because the class does 50% of the damage it’s supposed to because the pet doesn’t work.
I fail to see how reducing pet damage by 50%, increasing ranger damage by 25%, and giving the class the utility and burst it needs to actually get brought along to the above amounts to a complete redesigning of the class.
But hey, we’re not going to agree apparently, but I’ve yet to see a single suggestion come from you to make it so pets legitimately deserve to account for 50% of this class’ damage even though they’re only up about 75% of the time and even when up, this is still just half a class because no one seems interested in bringing rangers along for anything.
So I think a really great tweak to the ranger class would be to change the way stow pet button works. I propose something like this:
Stow Pet – Pet no longer automatically comes out upon entering combat. While pet is stowed, Ranger gets +15% damage.
That’s basically it. I think this would encourage more/different builds and also solve a lot of problems people have with pets at the moment.
You can already do this. It’s called rerolling warrior.
Pets aren’t broken if you know how to use them. If your pet is dying all the time, it’s because you aren’t paying attention to its health to swap it for a different pet or call it back from a dangerous attack or aoe. I personally despise this idea. Pets are an incredibly fun and powerful mechanic for those who can use it right. It’s just that those who don’t know how to use it like to blame their failures on the mechanic rather than on themselves. Once I started swapping my pets almost every time the CD was up, and healing it even when I didn’t need a heal, I’ve had few problems with survivability.
And this is yet another reason the pet really doesn’t do anything for this class. Instead of a player trying to invest in the pet, they just send the pet into the fray and pray it lasts 30 seconds so it can be swapped out to give you haste just like some merciless dog fighter would throw puppies into a ring to get the dogs all riled up.
The mechanics behind pets aren’t complicated or difficult to learn. They simply don’t work as advertised. They don’t fire off their utility when asked, they don’t return when pressed, they don’t path correctly, and AE in some situations is simply unavoidable when you have to risk your pet being hurt or losing half of your class’s damage on an encounter.
Thankfully this is MMOlite and we can just cycle the pet every 30 seconds. Any other MMO would have resolved the problem in a meaningful way.
Err I don’t know about you but my pet does everything I command it to. Learn to watch the pets actions, notice how even in our skills you can’t cancel a skill with another skill?
Same for the pet.
(im a girl btw)
I fail to see how reducing pet damage by 50%, increasing ranger damage by 25%, and giving the class the utility and burst it needs to actually get brought along to the above amounts to a complete redesigning of the class.
You keep talking about moving the damage onto the ranger and removing it from the pet, but you can’t seem to actually read what I’m saying: damage was moved from the ranger onto the pet because during the beta the ranger being able to belt out so much damage on it’s own murdered balance. You’re saying “Let’s return to the beta,” the one that made the ranger get quite drastically changed to what it is now.
I fail to see how reducing pet damage by 50%, increasing ranger damage by 25%, and giving the class the utility and burst it needs to actually get brought along to the above amounts to a complete redesigning of the class.
You keep talking about moving the damage onto the ranger and removing it from the pet, but you can’t seem to actually read what I’m saying: damage was moved from the ranger onto the pet because during the beta the ranger being able to belt out so much damage on it’s own murdered balance. You’re saying “Let’s return to the beta,” the one that made the ranger get quite drastically changed to what it is now.
They moved too much damage from the ranger to the pet… they also changed too much in beta too quickly to offset the rangers damage without concern for the value of the class.
That’s your opinion. Mine is that until the pet issues are fixed there’s little point crying over them, especially when it’s a class specifically designed to work with and rely on the pet.
That’s your opinion. Mine is that until the pet issues are fixed there’s little point crying over them, especially when it’s a class specifically designed to work with and rely on the pet.
That’s a pipe dream. It’ll never be fixed.
I’ve yet to see a balanced bot implemented in a pvp game. Make them hit on the run consistently and it’s over powered because you’ve doubled the damage source but the target only has the same amount of mitigation. Make them dumb like they are now, and your DPS goes down.
It’s futile to try and find this “balance”. When you’re talking about a PVP game, it should be you playing the toon, not letting the bot do half of your work. Damage ratio has to and always should be put towards the player and not the bot.
I don’t know why Anet is trying to reinvent the wheel. LOL, no one will take this game seriously when you have to watch a person getting pwned by a bot.
And no, please don’t try to argue hitting attack and withdraw involves skill. This class is not only broken ATM, it’s extremely shallow. All the suggestions so far involves only sliding the class to the extremes of either Skynet bot going on a rampage or removing it all together. There’s a happy medium in there some where.
I’ve yet to see a balanced bot implemented in a pvp game
I’ve always thought Engi in TF2 was pretty well done.
PvP game, automated AI , large chunk of damage done by pet and not the player. All red flags to MMORPG folks, but pretty standard fare for TBSs.
Engi’s Turret has quite alot of burst damage, but it’s not so much about killing people as it is getting them to dodge and find cover and generally get the holy heck away from the area you’re defending. TBSs don’t have classic control skills in the sense that MMORPGs know them, they only really have Damage and Heals. So it’s not just damage for damage sake, it’s damage as area control. Despite the fact the turret’s a hearty damage dealer, it’s not particularly imbalanced because turrets don’t really have to stack up against other classes on an invisible DPS meter and come up even, that’s just not the point of them.
I think what Ranger really needs is something like that in PvP, to use the extra entity to somehow allow them to accomplish something that relates to space or the capture points directly. So how pet damage stacks up against other classes is non-issue, because that’s just not what a pet is there for.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
just reminding the community they are starting to change things with pets and if they get them right THIS TIME, pets might actually be a major advantage to have, so lets wait to see the fruits of what they already said is comming before we go off on pets being compleat trash, and yes being able to stow pets or keep them on some invuln passive and recieve a dmg boost would be great for some areas such as some boss fights as well as Loooooooonnnngggg distance shooting… expecially from walls. but please keep the talk pets being usless at a minimum till we see where they are going with the new patches, a few minority posters are over reacting of their usability i think >.>
Giant spiders of the world are just misunderstood creatures, they love to snuggle too.
I think what Ranger really needs is something like that in PvP, to use the extra entity to somehow allow them to accomplish something that relates to space or the capture points directly. So how pet damage stacks up against other classes is non-issue, because that’s just not what a pet is there for.
That’s the point. It’s flawed mechanics to allow a bot to account for 40/50% of your damage. It’s just a terrible can of worms to open. Doubly so when you cannot enforce specs, traits and weapon selections on the other side of the equation like an FPS so it’s like trying to build on shifting sands because nothing is even set in stone, so nothing is ever balanced.
How do you even account for the beastmastery line? If you pump 30 points into it, pets could in theory do more than 50% then if you run birds since they crit pretty hard, which means then your weapons side damage has to be capped.
If you don’t put any into Beastmastery, then because your weapon side is capped, you’re not getting nearly 100% of the damage just from using your weapons. It’s a catch 22. At the most, pets should only account for 20% or so of damage so you know your weapon side is going to do 80%. And stats you pump into the pet should give you other things and not just affect damage. What about if you pump enough points into it, a tanking pet like a bear or drake could physically block melee players from getting to you? There are far more interesting things to do instead of just making pets doing straight DPS; that breaks things in pvp.
Someone here posted a great idea weeks ago where if you change pets, you get different stats bonuses. Like a bear makes your toughness related stats go up, eagle makes your crit go up etc. So switching pets becomes like a fighter switching stance so you move and fight differently. You can even take it a step further and give different utilities or skill sets depending on the pet. Like a lightning drake would infuse your weapon attacks with electricity, or eagles giving your arrows faster flight or whatever bonus that’s unique and pet themed related. Give rangers 4 pets each on land and water and and let people play a fully fleshed out toon instead of half a toon and a bot.
Anet had it right in the description of the class selection screen. Pets should “distract enemies”, or be a walking utility/CC and if it gets in a few hits, then it’s a just bonus.
The current situation is a no win. Just watch the QQ come the next patch. If Anet overdoes it, people will complain that pets chased them down the whole time. The alternative would be the ranger community asking wth got fixed? It’s still not hitting enough when targets are running! They need to do something outside of the box as this is a futile exercise.
I don’t think my point didn’t quite hit home.
What I’m saying is sidestep these concerns entirely, by redefining the purpose of a pet in Conquest so that whatever damage there is or isn’t will be incidental because it only exists as a means to an end. I’m not calling for any particular alteration to the amount of damage a pet does (unless the ends requires it), only that this damage serves an ultimate purpose and not exist for it’s own sake.
It’s like you’re agonizing over the size of your apple compared to everyone else’s and I’m suggesting to eat a potato instead, and then somehow you’re talking about apples again.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
I don’t think my point didn’t quite hit home.
What I’m saying is sidestep these concerns entirely, by redefining the purpose of a pet in Conquest so that whatever damage there is or isn’t will be incidental because it only exists as a means to an end. I’m not calling for any particular alteration to the amount of damage a pet does (unless the ends requires it), only that this damage serves an ultimate purpose and not exist for it’s own sake.
It’s like you’re agonizing over the size of your apple compared to everyone else’s and I’m suggesting to eat a potato instead, and then somehow you’re talking about apples again.
When you say conquest, that means only spvp? Then what’s the point of them in WvW? And you can never balance something if you ignore the damage aspect. Even things involve no damage needs to be balanced, which is why something like fear has a cool down.
You’re merely trying to re-characterize the issue while ignoring the results. Saying an engineer turret is not to do damage but as an area denial tool, completely ignores the fact that you wouldn’t be dodging in the first place, if it didn’t do enough damage. Even behind that simple setup, there’s damage balance in that: down time on the player to patch up turret so you don’t have a constant 2 vs 1, and the class only having a shotty which has low rate of fire.
Pretending the issue isn’t there doesn’t make it go away.
Pets need fixing that’s all. While no doubt not easy and just one thing on a long to-do list of things that need to be fixed it’s still simpler than the idea of completely changing the whole prof design. Ranger has a pet that pet is a substantial portion of the damage and personally I don’t want that changed. By swapping pets in combat there are two pet life spans in longer fights the cooldowns up so in effect you have more than 2. If ppl don’t want a pet there’s warrior which is good both ranged and melee – the best warrior type I’ve played in any game.
Someone here posted a great idea weeks ago where if you change pets, you get different stats bonuses. Like a bear makes your toughness related stats go up, eagle makes your crit go up etc. So switching pets becomes like a fighter switching stance so you move and fight differently. You can even take it a step further and give different utilities or skill sets depending on the pet. Like a lightning drake would infuse your weapon attacks with electricity, or eagles giving your arrows faster flight or whatever bonus that’s unique and pet themed related. Give rangers 4 pets each on land and water and and let people play a fully fleshed out toon instead of half a toon and a bot.
I’m still waiting for that idea to be implemented, as it gives us a bit more flavor depending on the pet. Hell, I could imagine the Fern Hound giving the party a passive HP regen that stays even if the pet is killed, as long as it’s not switched out. It’d be negligible enough to not be overpowered, and heal enough to where we’d be able to help out the party a bit.
[hS]
PvE Main – Zar Poisonclaw – Daredevil
WvW Main – Ghost Mistcaller – Herald
PvE Main – Zar Poisonclaw – Daredevil
WvW Main – Ghost Mistcaller – Herald
If it’s something generic enough and human-reaction specific enough, should be gravy for both without mucking pve balance. Hard to say without actually putting forward an idea (just saying it’d be nice if there was an idea like this)
I just wanted to clarify altering damage wasn’t the point of what I was saying, not that it couldn’t be manipulated in the process of finding a purpose. I acknowledge a turret uses high burst damage to control people, didn’t I basically say as much?
But I get what you’re saying with the second point. You’re right, I didn’t mean to imply you could justify anything under the ‘incomparable’ angle, but that kind of is how it sounds. I’m trying to more to get across the idea that it removes the need to balance on the head of a pin as straight comparisons, not that it’s a complete carte blanche.
(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)
That’s your opinion. Mine is that until the pet issues are fixed there’s little point crying over them, especially when it’s a class specifically designed to work with and rely on the pet.
That’s a pipe dream. It’ll never be fixed.
I’ve yet to see a balanced bot implemented in a pvp game. Make them hit on the run consistently and it’s over powered because you’ve doubled the damage source but the target only has the same amount of mitigation. Make them dumb like they are now, and your DPS goes down.
It’s futile to try and find this “balance”. When you’re talking about a PVP game, it should be you playing the toon, not letting the bot do half of your work. Damage ratio has to and always should be put towards the player and not the bot.
I don’t know why Anet is trying to reinvent the wheel. LOL, no one will take this game seriously when you have to watch a person getting pwned by a bot.
And no, please don’t try to argue hitting attack and withdraw involves skill.
All your personal opinion again. The pet was always useful in GW1, even before buffs, and became quite obnoxious when used properly. The necromancer often relied on summons to do their job and (in theory-hello again dodgy AI!) they can do so in GW2. The “it takes no skill because it’s a drone” argument smacks of elitism. Considering how many people regularly complain their pets die in the first five seconds of a fight, let alone in a dungeon, while I can go almost an entire dungeon without a pet being downed unless I’ve made a mistake/not paid attention, I would argue there is some skill involved.
Do mesmers take no skill because they keep using ‘drone’ phantasms and illusions? Or ranged weapons on melee armed characters, because they can’t fight back? Those arguments make as little sense as “the pet takes no skill”.
That’s your opinion. Mine is that until the pet issues are fixed there’s little point crying over them, especially when it’s a class specifically designed to work with and rely on the pet.
That’s a pipe dream. It’ll never be fixed.
I’ve yet to see a balanced bot implemented in a pvp game. Make them hit on the run consistently and it’s over powered because you’ve doubled the damage source but the target only has the same amount of mitigation. Make them dumb like they are now, and your DPS goes down.
It’s futile to try and find this “balance”. When you’re talking about a PVP game, it should be you playing the toon, not letting the bot do half of your work. Damage ratio has to and always should be put towards the player and not the bot.
I don’t know why Anet is trying to reinvent the wheel. LOL, no one will take this game seriously when you have to watch a person getting pwned by a bot.
And no, please don’t try to argue hitting attack and withdraw involves skill.
All your personal opinion again. The pet was always useful in GW1, even before buffs, and became quite obnoxious when used properly. The necromancer often relied on summons to do their job and (in theory-hello again dodgy AI!) they can do so in GW2. The “it takes no skill because it’s a drone” argument smacks of elitism. Considering how many people regularly complain their pets die in the first five seconds of a fight, let alone in a dungeon, while I can go almost an entire dungeon without a pet being downed unless I’ve made a mistake/not paid attention, I would argue there is some skill involved.
Do mesmers take no skill because they keep using ‘drone’ phantasms and illusions? Or ranged weapons on melee armed characters, because they can’t fight back? Those arguments make as little sense as “the pet takes no skill”.
By virtue, all opinions are personal so I’m not sure what your point is. I hold these opinions because they’re supported by facts.
Funny you called the pets obnoxious. So you basically agree with me. It’s either too effective or not at all. There’s no happy medium. No one likes to fight against a bot because it reeks of chance and not in a good way like Texas holdem because only your class has that much exposure to it versus everyone having to deal with the randomness of chance like in holdem. If a fight could be decided by whether your dog would CC the target and you have no control over it. How is that skill?
Sorry it sounds elitist. But that’s what’s involved in a real competition. If the ultimate goal of spvp is e-sport, which it is, you better have mechanics that showcases actual skill. Hitting attack/retreat/F2 and praying for a CC to come out is an extremely low skill cap and that’s half of the current class.
You do not get to play without a pet. This was very similar to the way people wanted elementalists to focus on one element and get bonuses for that rather than use all four.
People who followed development would know they once had an archer and a warden (nature magic) profession, and at one point there was no ranger at all. This is the final profession Anet felt had brought enough uniqueness and value to the game—the archer did not.
“Petless bow-wielder” was probably dull as dirt and didn’t offer anything warrior/thief weren’t already doing and loads more that come with those professions.
The only reason rangers in GW dominated with the bow was because no other profession had the lead attribute, Expertise, to take advantage of ranger skills.
The companion stays. It needs reworking and I have a healthy amount of skepticism, but if you pull the pet out of the equation, might as well delete the ranger and be done with it.
I logged in just to post this…
Situations in which my pet has gotten me killed:
1) Grawl fractal, final boss. Was downed, attempt to use pet revive, pet gets targeted with bosses exploding shield thing. Dead ranger.
2) WvW, bouncing attacks, dead ranger.
3) Dredge fractal, final boss,couple group members have gone afk for bio in front of door. Pet reaches door, runs WAAAY out there. Boss aggros.
Situations in which my pet has made a fight or activity needlessly long or difficult:
1) Jade Maw. Eye Beams. If you’ve run this, you know what I’m talking about.
2) Running away in WvW and attempting to hide, pet gets killed and gives away position as it limps to my side.
3) Pet keeps me in combat in jump puzzles, proceeds to make jumps more difficult.
4) Nearly dead person rallies off my injured pet in pvp.
Situations in which I have been grateful for my pet:
1) Those occasions it has killed something to rally me.
2) Those occasions when downed ability 3 has actually rezzed me.
3) Leveling when Snuggles acts as my tank.
Things that make me dislike or feel no connection to my pet.
1) Switching pets still caused them to lose their names the last time I tried it.
2) That damn audio bug that triggers way too often for reasons unknown. This makes me hate my pet and wish it death and firey doom.
3) It gets one shot and then comes back later through no intervention on my part. I realize this was changed for convenience. I still feel it cheapens the idea of having a loyal pet to rely on that also relies on you.
4) My pet seems stupid. It stands in the fire a lot. I can tell it to retreat, or tell it to attack, but if the boss has dangerous things on one side, Snuggles will still attack from that side. On the other hand, Snuggles controls all his own abilities except the one I actually want him to use. Either pets are fire and forget, or they’re micro managey (in which case we need more controls). Pick one and run with it. They’re either dumb or smart, but make a decision and make the gameplay feel unified. Most of all, make me feel like my pet is not a hindrance, but a unique strength to be proud of.
These are the thoughts of one admittedly mediocre ranger. Make of them what you will. I won’t be back.
I hold these opinions because they’re supported by facts.
I’m still waiting to see them.
I called it obnoxious because I used a pet in pvp and pve. It was good in both, and well balanced in pvp: you could focus entirely on the pet, however that would make you vulnerable unless you took the elite Heal As One.
Then Anet decided to buff the pet stupidly in pve and… yeah. Obnoxiously powerful, not that many other people ever seemed to notice. A ‘side effect’ of these buffs was the pet became viable even if you didn’t max the trait line. It also had Scavenger’s Strike, which was one of the few energy management skills for rangers.
I expect you’ve probably read them by now, but in case you didn’t, I suggest you go check the patch sticky Sic ‘Em is being engineered to be the burst mechanic, and the design philosophy makes it clear that the ranger is supposed to do good damage with the pet. If the damage is mainly on the ranger, the pet being little more than eyecandy, the wording would be different. Besides, as I believe I stated before, the ’ranger with most of the damage, the pet doing largely token stuff’ was how the ranger worked in the betas, where it was very brutally ‘nerfed’ in the sense the damage was partially transferred to the pet.
I hold these opinions because they’re supported by facts.
I’m still waiting to see them.
I called it obnoxious because I used a pet in pvp and pve. It was good in both, and well balanced in pvp: you could focus entirely on the pet, however that would make you vulnerable unless you took the elite Heal As One.
Then Anet decided to buff the pet stupidly in pve and… yeah. Obnoxiously powerful, not that many other people ever seemed to notice. A ‘side effect’ of these buffs was the pet became viable even if you didn’t max the trait line. It also had Scavenger’s Strike, which was one of the few energy management skills for rangers.I expect you’ve probably read them by now, but in case you didn’t, I suggest you go check the patch sticky Sic ‘Em is being engineered to be the burst mechanic, and the design philosophy makes it clear that the ranger is supposed to do good damage with the pet. If the damage is mainly on the ranger, the pet being little more than eyecandy, the wording would be different. Besides, as I believe I stated before, the ’ranger with most of the damage, the pet doing largely token stuff’ was how the ranger worked in the betas, where it was very brutally ‘nerfed’ in the sense the damage was partially transferred to the pet.
You can regurgitate what you perceive to be Anet’s philosophy, but I really don’t care what their design philosophy is because as I’ve said already, it’s flawed at least for this class. The end result speaks for itself. Recognizing the philosophy is different from critiquing it. You seem to choose to drink their koolaid; I don’t. So I’ll guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
No matter what you say or think, there’s no proper balance in trying to allocate damage from two sources, especially when one source is heavily automated, because damage mitigation is mostly based on a single source for every class in the game. The more you tip the ratio towards the pet, the more imbalance, randomness and skill debasement you introduce to the meta. I don’t see how anyone can deny this. That kind of balance is hardly conducive for something that’s supposedly destined for e-sport.
+1 to something like this and or adding in pet aoe damage immunity/resistance for dungeons.
So I think a really great tweak to the ranger class would be to change the way stow pet button works. I propose something like this:
Stow Pet – Pet no longer automatically comes out upon entering combat. While pet is stowed, Ranger gets +15% damage.
That’s basically it. I think this would encourage more/different builds and also solve a lot of problems people have with pets at the moment.
Well now I didn’t read the entire thread, only the author’s post, but this suggestion is not good at all in my opinion.
Anet really wants us to use the pets as much as possible, and this suggestion would just cause people to stop using a really cool mechanic in favor of some simple damage buff :p
I just started playing. I don’t have any problems with controlling my pet. I just want to be able to perma stow it. If it is stowed and I need it, any of the F Keys should bring it out.
I don’t want it for jump puzzles and I don’t want it unknowingly picking up aggro and putting me “in combat” when I don’t want to be (setting it from passive to aggro back to passive isn’t always a good option). I don’t want it’s AI causing problems for group mates in non-combat situations, or in situations where the AI isn’t effective enough to keep the battle from being managed properly.
I also think that stow pet, whether it is altered or not, should have a hot key bind option.
Looking forward to some reasonable change. I don’t mind being at a DPS/offensive disadvantage when I stow it. That seems fair to me. I like the pet for the most part.