Do you guys realize how silly this is? Who cares if you can’t agree on the severity of the problem? Both sides acknowledge a problem exists. Why not move the conversation back over to the Post CDI thread instead of bickering over who deserves to be at the bottom of the barrel more?
I will step away from the term “broken”. “Broken” implies that something isn’t working. The pet however does work, it’s just far from being optimal. There are a vast number of examples when the pet is suboptimal. I take it for granted that everybody knows some of these situations.
There are two major flaws with the pet:
1) The server is the one who controls the pet.
This leads to it’s clunky behavior. The pet can’t follow directly at your side, all commands you give are getting delayed. The simple reason for this is because the server, and not your client, executes the commands you’ve given.
This should not be an excuse for the awful AI, that has to be addressed too. But it would be the first and a mandatory step towards a working AI.
2) The pet holds a huge portion of our damage.
The ranger is the only class which has a handicap as classmechanic. The pet has positive aspects aswell, but they don’t make up for the huge damageloss the ranger has to pay in order to justify the existence of the pets.
An AI will never be as effective as the player will be. Besides, why should the pet do something we already do? Why can’t the pet do something else while we deal the damage?
So how could ArenaNet fix these flaws?
1) The client should control the pet; it would be way more responsive.
The only argument against this is that the client could be hacked to boost your pet.
But this would be hardly more an issue than the current hacks, which you can use to travel faster or to use noclip.
2) The ranger should get all the damage he currently loses due to his pet.
The pet should furthermore still deal 5-10% additional damage of ours.
The main purpose of the pet should not be dealing damage but supporting the ranger.
Investing points in Beastmastery should diminish the damage the ranger is doin by up to 30%. The pet gains, additionally to all the stats it’s currently gaining through beastmastery, the damage the ranger is losing.
In a nutshell: Shift the damagepatern from (70%/30%) to (100%/5%-10%). Investing 6 points in Beastmastery will shift the damage back to (70%/35%-40%). The pet’s new purpose is to support the ranger.
I will give some examples what the new supporty purpose of the pet could look like:
Bears:
- Lower their movementspeed by 20%
- Each Autoattack should knock the enemy down (for less than 0.25 seconds)
Feline:
- Increase their movementspeed by 20%
- New skill “sprint”: charge at a foe with increased movementspeed. Cripple the enemy with the next attack.
Eagle:
- F2 marks an enemy. All projectiles will hit definitely hit the target if it’s not out of range or obstructed. Furthermore, the enemy is revealed for the duration of the skill.
Raven:
- F2 commands the raven to repeatedly hit the enemy and blinding him with each hit.
Spiders:
- Each Autoattack will remove 1 stack of stackable boons or 1 (or 0.5) second of non-stacking boons.
Drakehound:
- The Drakehound is able to scent stealthed enemies and will follow them.
- F2 reveals all enemies in an AoE without them getting the revealed debuff.
Owl:
- The owl can see and attack stealthed enemies.
Wolves:
- Wolves should get some new wolf pack related skills
Moas:
- Moas should constantly buff the ranger (might per hit, fury per hit, vigor per hit, …)
Porcine:
- Porcine should constantly debuff the enemy (vuln per hit, weakness per hit, roots, cripples)
And there should be one pet which gives on demand swiftness and one which gives auras (zerg optimised pet).
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)