Guild Wars 2

Hi folks!

Just another one of those long posts with ideas that have probably been mentioned before, but I still wanted to get it out here, for all to comment and improve on, before I post this in the Suggestions part of the forums. These ideas are from my point of view, which is mainly PvE, some zerging in WvW and a total of one played PvP match since release, so all I mention about WvW and PvP is just what I’ve heard from others. Any numbers (health percentaged, recharge times) I give are just what I think would be fair, but are of course subject to balancing.

I’ve limited myself to the system itself, so no specific skill changes etc. Also, I’ve tried to keep Anet’s vision in mind, meaning two things:

- The pet will remain the Ranger’s unique ability, and Rangers will have to play with the pet to fulfill their highest potentials. This also means the pet AI can’t do too much on its own: it still has to be the player that makes the pet effective, not the other way around.
- The system will have to fit inside the boundaries already in place, meaning no more than four buttons may be used to control the pet (F1-F4).

The Issues

Looking at my own experiences and those of others (posted here on the forums) the problems I/we have with the pet system right now can be summarized as follows (don’t hesitate to reply if I forgot something crucial):

1) Control over the pet is lacking:

• Unresponsiveness to commands makes many commands activate too late resulting in either a loss of damage/utility or the pet’s death. A chill or immobilize has to be timed correctly, for example just when your foe enters your flame trap, or it is useless.
• The ‘return to me’ command (F3) I’ve found useful in only two cases: to get my ranged pet close to me so I can keep an eye on him and calling the pet back when it’s attacking something while I’m running away. Calling it back to prevent it from dying while waiting for a heal or swap to recharge either doesn’t work fast enough or doesn’t seem worth the loss of the damage the pet would deal before dying/healing/swapping. It is also completely useless while fighting in melee.
• Not knowing what buffs and conditions the pet has impacts the decisions we have to make. It is entirely possible to waste a heal on a pet that will still die from those stacks of poison and bleeding. It’s also possible to wate a pet swap because you think the pet is starting to get serious damage while it is actually just an AoE burn it picked up and isn’t even worth a heal. Wasting an F2 attack on a blind is also just a possibility. Right now there just isn’t enough information at hand to be able to control our pet as we should.

2) Pet swapping is mandatory. I use my two slots for pets that are useful in different situations, mainly one ranged and one melee pet. When fighting a champion a ranged pet is clearly the main choice, but being forced to send out my Snow Leopard because the Devourer is dying or already dead while knowing the Snow Leopard will not survive for even 5 secs doesn’t seem right.

3) Pets are unfit for challenging content. While content is evolving, requiring more active play from the players with each update (a very good thing btw!), pets are left behind. The dungeon in Flame and Frost, Canach with his mines, the Aetherblade Retreat, Queen’s Gauntlet, the Maw in Fractals and pretty much every champion or legendary boss out there: all examples of places where at one moment the pet loses any usefulness due to the fact it dies immediately from stuff the players can (and have to) evade. This makes Rangers a less viable option for this type of content (and by extend all new content I would love to see in the future) than other professions. This already starts to reflect on the Ranger profession as a whole as we see reports from Rangers being refused in PUGs (and even guild parties) every day.

4) Sometimes, pets are just not wanted. There are two cases which I’ve heard plenty of times:

• In a WvW-zerg the pet is just an easy mark for a rally, making Rangers not fit well in the more organized groups. Controlling your pet really won’t help much if 10 enemies target it to help their friends up, as it just can’t do anything against it. The alternative, just keeping it on passive at your side, really isn’t the way we want to or should have to play.
• In jumping puzzles, it just blocks the view, for the Ranger and for everyone else. Also, having to restow it every time I bump my toe on a rock gets annoying fast.

(post 2/3)
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The Solutions

To solve our problems with the pet, apart from improving the AI, I propose the following changes (some might be stolen from other players, some things I’ve read might have stuck with me. Sorry!):

A) Combine F1, F3 and the guard/avoid modes into one single button (F1). Pressing F1 will change the pets status from guard to avoid and vice versa.

• While in guard mode, the pet will attack your target unless otherwise instructed.
• While in avoid mode, the pet will return to you and not gain new agro or trigger traps. When at your side, it will regen health at a decent rate (will have to be balanced out, but I guess 1/15th of max health per second would be a good place to start).
• Switching to guard mode will set your target as the pets target. To send the pet to a different target than the one it’s currently on, double tap F1 (cycling from guard to avoid back to guard).
• Both modes should activate immediately, cancelling all other actions.

B) Add a player-controlled evade on F3. This will function much like the dodge we players have, the difference being that an attacking pet will just perform a stationary evasive maneuver. Pets that are moving will also get the movement part of a dodge. Pets will have only 1 dodge ready, with a recharge timer (5 seconds recharge per dodge seems fair). Dodging will cancel the pets current action, so just dodging constantly will lower your pets dps significantly.

C) Increasing the information available. This can simply be done by showing effects right above the current bar. It might be useful to add the Paw symbol to the icons to make clear these effects belong to your pet and not yourself.

D) Bring resurrecting pets back, but instead of making it an interact (F) just change skill F2 or F3 to a ress when the pet is downed. A 5 second channel would be nice, ressed pets will ress at 25% health.

E) A permanent pet buff, to be applied in PvE only, that limits the amount of damage a pet can take from a single attack. Will also have to be carefully balanced, but 40% would be my guess to start with. Normal foes will never do such damage, so it will only affect battles versus champion and legendary (like) foes. Clearly the buff would have to be named ‘Natural Resistance’.

F) The much requested perma-stow. Would prevent a lot of frustrations. Make stowing and unstowing available while in combat, but put a 20s recharge on it to prevent it from being used as an evade. No button required, stowing will take a little more effort this way. The only argument I’ve heard against perma-stow is that players will just stow it and play without (which is kind of the point of a perma-stow), but in situations we would stow pets they are already being ignored.

Solutions A, B and C will provide a solution for problem 1. Solutions A and D will make calling your pet back a viable option (problem 1), as well as solve problem 2. Problem 3 will be adressed by solutions A to E, and solution F clearly solves problem 4.

(post 3/3)
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Closing

To finish this post, I’d like to quickly share which ideas I have dismissed from my list:

• Complete overhaul of the Ranger mechanics. Pets fit the Ranger and can be quite fun, they just need to work well enough.
• Introducing perma-stow with a stat bonus to the Ranger when the pet is stowed. Just ignoring your professions mechanic should not reward you with stats. With the suggested improvements, it shouldn’t be necessary either.
• Pet dodges when the player dodges. Would look weird and makes absolutely no sense to me.
• Reduce damage dealt by pet, increase damage done by Rangers. Will just make us even less interested in our mechanic.
• Make pets take less dmg from attacks and/or AoE in general. Overall damage really isn’t the issue and this solution would be OP in fighting everything that is not a champion or legendary (like) foe.
• Showing additional pet information in either the party screen or in a redesigned Pet Management screen. The party section might not be supported by the systems in place (pets must not show up in the party section of your teammates, just in yours) and would not really add anything, as the (de)buff icons can also be shown above the current bar. Other information it provides is also already at hand in the existing bar. A redesigned Pet Management screen will take too much space, and although it might give BMs a lot of extra info I think it will be too much for the casual players like myself. Also would duplicate information already at hand.
• I’ve not proposed an idea for making our F2 attacks land when we want to, because I think the current situation is something we can live with. If timing is crucial we will have to use our own skills and we can use our control skills to make it easier for the pet to hit. Now I don’t use these skills extensively, so I expect some of you will have other ideas on this matter. I guess a reduction in activating times would help, I just don’t know what it would do to the balance, nor do I have any data on the matter of missing attacks which is why I didn’t include it in the solutions above.
• Adding a ‘go there’ command (like Guard) to the basic controls. Although it would be nice to choose from where your ranged pet will be attacking or to be able to send your melee pet away if necessary, at this moment I prefer an evade. If there would be a fifth button available, this would definitely be up there with the other suggestions, but right now all buttons have a rather crucial function.

If you got this far, thanks for sticking with me! Please let me know if I’ve missed something crucial or if I’m talking complete BS in some way, I’d like to make my post in the Suggestions forums the best it can be. If we just keep asking for changes with detailed and well thought out suggestions we might just get it! (Yes, optimistic, I know)

First, very nicely written.

Unless I missed something, (which is possible) I still see nothing that will improve our function in large groups. I love your write up but even with all of these changes all this does is let us “stow” our mechanic in such instances and play without one admitting it’s a complete waste. This does nothing to increase our group viability or role, it simply gives us an increasingly complex pet interface (not that I’m against that as more control and information is better).

Having a working pet system will indeed not change anything on the topic of role inside a group (which is a completely different discussion). However, I feel the proposed changes will help Rangers keep their pets alive and active. This would make a lot more pets viable for instanced group content, and pets can bring a lot of utility to whatever role you are trying to fill.

actually I though about something very simmilar but in a little another way:
first that can not be taken well – one pet without swap – why? because in that way we have F4 free for more importatn things.
F1 – as OP said – guard/avoid
F4 – stationary evade manuveur (something like 2 sec of evade/block depending on the pet type – f.e. felines will be evading, but drakes, or bears will be blocking instead) – change to ress if pet is dead
F2-F3 – type and race dependand skill – actually I fough about actuall F2 to be still F2 and more usefull skill of the pet to be F3 (heal on moas/bears etc.) and pet by themself would have only their autoatack.

in that way we should have nearly full control over the pet, with the cost of pet swapping (which would not be needed more imo)

I thought about it for a while, and at this moment it’s my opinion that an extra skill slot does not warrant the loss of utility coming from having two pets to swap between.

Swapping itself can be viewed at as a resurrect and a recall. Having two pets gives you the possibility to either specialize or split your assets. With two pets we also still have 2 different skills available.

Also, I’m not convinced having full control over all of the pet’s skills is desirable, I prefer letting them have some kind of independence. Of course, the AI controlling these skill could use an upgrade, but that accounts for the pet AI as a whole.