Guild Wars 2

Ranger needs the option to stow their pet permanently.

The mechanic is poorly designed and breaks the game. I am not even asking to give bonus dmg or speed.

the pet is a huge liability cuz it doesnt know how to dodge.

in pve you have instances where you could not progress due to this mechanic. The leyleecher in the most recent living story is an example where you could not win because the mob would just leech the life of ur non responsive pet to get back to full. in wvw a necro could epidemic off ur mindless pet and spread it to the zerg, and in pvp people just get free stealth off the pet…. This is not a skill thing. it is poor design…

WE NEED the OPTION to stow!!!please do it!

…or maybe you don’t know how to use it, ’cause everyone is able to do what you are saying is “undoable”…

Actually he is correct, you cannot stow the pet permanently. if you end up in combat it pops back out, and there is no hot hey to stow the pet. It would be nice if Rangers had one.

Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.

emkelly.2371:

Actually he is correct, you cannot stow the pet permanently. if you end up in combat it pops back out, and there is no hot hey to stow the pet. It would be nice if Rangers had one.

Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Petless-Ranger-Please-Yes-this-again

This has been debated ad nauseam at this point.

TLDR Anet is not inclined to oblige the people who picked the pet class and now want to get rid of the pet. The solution is to reroll if it bothers you that much. And no, I’m not trying to sound mean when I say this.

idevourwater.3149:

Ranger needs the option to stow their pet permanently.

The mechanic is poorly designed and breaks the game. I am not even asking to give bonus dmg or speed.

the pet is a huge liability cuz it doesnt know how to dodge.

in pve you have instances where you could not progress due to this mechanic. The leyleecher in the most recent living story is an example where you could not win because the mob would just leech the life of ur non responsive pet to get back to full. in wvw a necro could epidemic off ur mindless pet and spread it to the zerg, and in pvp people just get free stealth off the pet…. This is not a skill thing. it is poor design…

WE NEED the OPTION to stow!!!please do it!

I won’t speak to WvW or PvP but if npcs are taking advantage of your pet, put it on passive and they’ll generally be ignored by mobs. Also, try using a ranged pet such as the bristleback or the devourer.

Irijia.6073:

emkelly.2371:

Actually he is correct, you cannot stow the pet permanently. if you end up in combat it pops back out, and there is no hot hey to stow the pet. It would be nice if Rangers had one.

Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Petless-Ranger-Please-Yes-this-again

This has been debated ad nauseam at this point.

TLDR Anet is not inclined to oblige to people who picked the pet class and now want to get rid of the pet. The solution is to reroll if it bothers you that much. And no, I’m not trying to sound mean when I say this.

where did you get that i was bothered by it? all i pointed out was that the OP was correct that rangers have no way to permanently stow the pet and that it would be nice to have a hot key for it or to not be dependent on it. I’m not debating anything.

They just need to bring back the flag system from GW1 so you can actually control your pet.
-This would keep it from revealing (allow you to misdirect opponents) your location when you stealth
-Sort out a ton of PvE issues
-Allow you to move/keep them out of AoE
-Allow you to place them far enough away that they aren’t a free target for things like C&D, cleansing ire, etc. when fighting certain classes

emkelly.2371:

Actually he is correct, you cannot stow the pet permanently. if you end up in combat it pops back out, and there is no hot hey to stow the pet. It would be nice if Rangers had one.

Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.

And who was talking about the possibility to permanently stow the pet? He said we should have (or better, we NEED) this option because he seems unable to do a single kitten thing in game because of the pet, which is ridicoulous (and false), since there are thousands of rangers/druids out there doing everything without problems.
He can always put him on passive mode, if he doesn’t want it to go in front of an enemy, npcs will not attack him, players will ALWAYS focun on you, and NOT the pet.

We COULD have that option to stow the pet permanently, but for sure we don’t NEED it.

And asking for a pet class to get rid of the pet, btw, is ridicoulous and would need a complete rework of the class itself. At his point, reroll a guardian or warrior.

emkelly.2371

where did you get that i was bothered by it? all i pointed out was that the OP was correct that rangers have no way to permanently stow the pet and that it would be nice to have a hot key for it or to not be dependent on it. I’m not debating anything.

“Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.”

Is there any reason why most people wouldn’t read this as get rid of the pet? You already don’t have to depend on your pet unless you trait for it. Perhaps you weren’t trying to restart the debate but trust when I say this statement and variations of it have been put forth multiple times and a definitive answer has also been given multiple times by Anet about perma stow. Unfortunately, it always inevitably leads to people then asking for buffs as “compensation” for the pet they chose but then decided they didn’t want.

shalywen.9548:

players will ALWAYS focun on you, and NOT the pet.

Bullkitten.
I’ve abused the kitten out of pets when fighting rangers. They are prime targets for epi bombing the hell out of another group in small to medium scale fights.

I utilize the crap out of my pets when playing my ranger but they are a huge weakness when fighting smart players on certain professions.

(Deleted, because it was not worth arguing over)

Jim Hunter.6821:

They just need to bring back the flag system from GW1 so you can actually control your pet.
-This would keep it from revealing (allow you to misdirect opponents) your location when you stealth
-Sort out a ton of PvE issues
-Allow you to move/keep them out of AoE
-Allow you to place them far enough away that they aren’t a free target for things like C&D, cleansing ire, etc. when fighting certain classes

Made this vid longtime ago,

Justine.6351:

Jim Hunter.6821:

They just need to bring back the flag system from GW1 so you can actually control your pet.
-This would keep it from revealing (allow you to misdirect opponents) your location when you stealth
-Sort out a ton of PvE issues
-Allow you to move/keep them out of AoE
-Allow you to place them far enough away that they aren’t a free target for things like C&D, cleansing ire, etc. when fighting certain classes

Made this vid longtime ago,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyTRm2tYS8c

yeh i agree to bring back the skill guard but this time as a command for the pet.

That skill had a lot of uses but not as an utility skill simply because we can’t spare even 1 slot for that. But that utility is a must for a pet class as we should have complete control over were we want our pet to stay.

Heheh. Epidemicbombing pet. More than cruel

shalywen.9548:

emkelly.2371:

Actually he is correct, you cannot stow the pet permanently. if you end up in combat it pops back out, and there is no hot hey to stow the pet. It would be nice if Rangers had one.

Another thing, It would be nice to not have to depend on your pet.

And who was talking about the possibility to permanently stow the pet? He said we should have (or better, we NEED) this option because he seems unable to do a single kitten thing in game because of the pet, which is ridicoulous (and false), since there are thousands of rangers/druids out there doing everything without problems.
He can always put him on passive mode, if he doesn’t want it to go in front of an enemy, npcs will not attack him, players will ALWAYS focun on you, and NOT the pet.

We COULD have that option to stow the pet permanently, but for sure we don’t NEED it.

And asking for a pet class to get rid of the pet, btw, is ridicoulous and would need a complete rework of the class itself. At his point, reroll a guardian or warrior.

Well, in reality, pets hover between being overpowered and totally useless. In order to avoid complain in PvP about AI killing players, pet have a very bad AI and (yes I’ll say it) skills with awfull design.

The inabilities that plague the pets in the whole game is to the point that nobody really can qualify the ranger as a “pet class”. A real “Pet class” would have to rely on it’s pet and on carefull management of this pet. Right now, the ranger and even more the druid is far from this state. You can even say that except the fact that the weapon damage suffer from the fact that the ranger do have a pet, nothing in the ranger or the druid make the pet into an absolute asset of this class.

What rangers need may not be the possibility to permanently stow the pet but at least ranger need anet to redefine the place of the pet in the game. If the pet have to stay as a special “mechanism” of the ranger then Anet have to make sure that this mechanism cover a role that make it usefull without hindering the ranger. In a lot of situation, and thus since launch, the pet have been proven to be more of an hindrance and a dead weight than anything else. They more or less patched them in PvE (making the pets, now, pretty sturdy) but in the game as a whole, it’s far from being satisfactory.

I have my own opinion on what they should do in order to make the pet mechanic an healthy mechanic. All in all, the idea would be to get rid of the pet as a direct damage source. That done, there would be absolutely no excuse not to correct the survivability of those pet (in all game mode), the direct damage done by the ranger’s weapon, the inability of the pets to home their skills and the horrendous design of the pet’s skill (cool down/cast time)

thanks for everyone’s feedback. Admittedly, my choice of words may not be the best.

I think Dadnir summarizes the issues of a pet best.

Either give rangers
1. the ability to have more control over its unique pet mechanic , or
2. The option to remove it at will to prevent unintended consequences

I will try the leyleecher with passive mode. hopefully that helps. Thanks again

Agreed with OP. This is also very true in pvp. You may dodge that warrior adrenaline building move or necro shout, but your pet won’t and it’s a free 100% sure gain for ’em, despite you doing your job dodging/blocking.

you could counter a leeching attack on your pet by swapping your pets, at least in most pve situations.
usually the CD’s of those attacks are longer than your pet-swap timer, so you should be able to counter the next attack the same way.

I didn’t check the story leecher but in pve the mordrem cannot and will not attempt to leech from your pet.

I happen to agree with the OP, though never enough to start a thread about it.
It strikes me as one of those QoL things — giving the ranger full control of when they decide to and not to utilize their class feature.

Still, this isn’t something I care enough about to start an argument over.

~ Kovu

Next spec that have fusion skill that fuse ranger and pet to powerful form giving some of pets atribute to you and new weapon skills or utility skills.

Mara.6782:

Next spec that have fusion skill that fuse ranger and pet to powerful form giving some of pets atribute to you and new weapon skills or utility skills.

This kind of idea is a good ay to break the game thanks to some mechanism that already exist in game. Anet will most likely never do this kind of foolish mistake.

The most realist possibility in case of a “fusion” would be to transform the pet into a sigil like effect that occur on it and with an internal cool down. Something with absolutely no short coming that could backlash and anger all other professions because : “Please nerf ranger huge damage with sigil/bundle/conjure weapon due to high stats!”. Giving more raw stats to a profession is the worst idea possible for the game as a whole.

Not to mention that it hurt most traits and ranger’s utility skills. This would become “proc wars 2” .

Oh, and there was some mention of pets ruining the kiting effectiveness of stealthed rangers. If that’s the case, make sure the pet is on aggressive before you stealth so it attacks something instead of following you. Obviously this won’t work if you’re not in combat, but if that’s the case you can just stow the pet.
It’s just a bit of extra micro management, but that’s how ranger do.

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

Oh, and there was some mention of pets ruining the kiting effectiveness of stealthed rangers. If that’s the case, make sure the pet is on aggressive before you stealth so it attacks something instead of following you. Obviously this won’t work if you’re not in combat, but if that’s the case you can just stow the pet.
It’s just a bit of extra micro management, but that’s how ranger do.

~ Kovu

Doesn’t work if your pets have died, which happens a lot when your poking at enemy zergs.

Bringing a ranger to a large group fight is your first mistake.

*is glared at

Okay, okay. In that situation keep your pet on passive and swap when its low on health. Sending the pet in to die is never a good idea. As a druid you have lots of heals and even as a core ranger your heal skill in conjunction with pet swapping should be enough to manage any aoe damage that comes your pet’s way.

If the enemy zerg is explicitly going out of their way to target your pet, good for them.

Oh, and running tankier pets in group fights never hurts. You’re not locked to bristleback/smokescale/wolf. If they’re going to be on passive, pets with useful F2 abilities are better over those with more damage. Regen (mostly for af generation), condition removal, smoke field, cc are all options.

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

Bringing a ranger to a large group fight is your first mistake.

*is glared at

……….I don’t “bring my ranger to a large group fight”. I solo roam. During the course of my roaming I often encounter large enemy groups k-training or fighting, and being the annoying kitten that I am I start picking away at the fat kids that can’t keep up with the group.
More often than not I’ll have a sizable chunk of the zerg break ranks to try and chase me down and even though I can use leaps, stun breaks, dodges etc. to escape, my brainless pet gets snagged in the cc bombs and dies.

Sure would be nice if we had something like…. hmmmm… I don’t know, the flag system they used in GW1 so I can stick my pet in a safe spot since it can’t be used offensively in that situation anyway. It would be fantastic to stick the smokescale about 1200 range behind you so the smoke cloud is ready for you as your running.

But let’s just keep on pretending like the garbage control system (that is somehow worse than the original games) is fine because you can make it work sometimes, if everything goes as planned and no one is throwing around aoe condi’s.

~Puck

Have you tried utilizing the options provided?

You’ll find that if you micromanage your pet to not attack someone while the enemy group is passing through they’ll survive longer, and that swapping pets automatically restores your pet’s health to full.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Sometimes the pet will die. That’s life.

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

Have you tried utilizing the options provided?

You’ll find that if you micromanage your pet to not attack someone while the enemy group is passing through they’ll survive longer, and that swapping pets automatically restores your pet’s health to full.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Sometimes the pet will die. That’s life.

~ Kovu

Did you read a kittening word I wrote?
I know how to manage my pets, I know what options are provided. The whole point of this thread is to discuss better options because the current ones are mediocre at best. There are far too many situations where the pet is a liability and that’s only the case because anet kitten their development.

There is simply no arguing against the fact that there is a huge amount of room for improvement when it comes to the pets.

~Puck

Aye, I generally make it a habit of reading the posts I reply to.
And yes, as was pointed out in the first post I wrote in this thread there is definitely room for improvement in regards to pet interaction (and the AI). However, people constantly having their pets dying in various situations and blaming it on the system are incorrect for several reasons I’ve listed in previous posts.

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

Aye, I generally make it a habit of reading the posts I reply to.
And yes, as was pointed out in the first post I wrote in this thread there is definitely room for improvement in regards to pet interaction (and the AI). However, people constantly having their pets dying in various situations and blaming it on the system are incorrect for several reasons I’ve listed in previous posts.

~ Kovu

And people pretending a system is fine when there are multiple examples of how kittened up it is are incorrect for several reasons as I’ve listed in previous posts.

~Puck

Kovu.7560:

Have you tried utilizing the options provided?

You’ll find that if you micromanage your pet to not attack someone while the enemy group is passing through they’ll survive longer, and that swapping pets automatically restores your pet’s health to full.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. Sometimes the pet will die. That’s life.

~ Kovu

You probably don’t play much wvw, were you have your pet in passive and still die from random AoE that is not even reaching you.

The pet system is very bad designed, the leash (distance the pet takes from you) is too great so is even annoying to use some skills because the pet is never were is supposed to, even when is on passive, and most of the times too short when you want it to attack something (the message “your pet is too far from your target” should be gone and the pet should attack it, if i can target it my pet should be able to reach it)

The lack of cleanses, stun breaks and evades makes the pets perfect targets for epidemic and makes the pets die pretty quickly.

So although i like the pet idea Anet must do a good job to not alienate the players and it is not lik that right now.

I’m done playing devil’s advocate. While Jim seems to prefer ignoring the points I make about successfully managing the system we have, I don’t disagree that certain elements of the pet mechanics could use a QoL overhaul. I’ve said as much twice, I’m tired of rehashing. I’ll leave it at that.

~ Kovu

Kovu.7560:

I’m done playing devil’s advocate. While Jim seems to prefer ignoring the points I make about successfully managing the system we have, I don’t disagree that certain elements of the pet mechanics could use a QoL overhaul. I’ve said as much twice, I’m tired of rehashing. I’ll leave it at that.

~ Kovu

First off, the points you made don’t apply in the situations I described.

Secondly pretty much everyone in this thread has been around awhile, I’ve been playing the game since the betas and GW1 since ’05. Pointing out the obvious is condescending and pointless.

Lastly, people playing devil’s advocate around here is getting old as kitten. There are a lot of things that rangers have needed to be fixed for years and every time they are brought up there is always 1 or 2 players arguing against a fix even when they don’t really care or in your case actually agree that the thing needs to be changed. This is why we see nerfs in <24 hours but it takes months/years/never to get things fixed. If you aren’t going to help than don’t bother typing.

At this point the best solution is to add non-combat pets, that instead of attacking and whatever, they just boost allies.

Kinda like spirits. So, if you don’t like pets, you take those, and don’t worry about pet management anymore, since they will be there, idle, just boosting your stats (and maybe your allies’ too).

I agree with Jim Hunter on this. I don’t zerg much in all honesty and my pet doesn’t die against 1vX even with my pet on guard stance since I mostly spam the living kitten out of the F3 button out of preference. It is a matter of how well people are at pet management, but even with my experience, it would make things so much better if they gave us, at the very least, a permanent stow option. That would be the easiest thing for Anet to implement, and as much as I liked the GW1 flag system, I don’t know how difficult it would be for them to create in GW2.

I know of many situations in both PvE and PvP where it would have served me greatly if I could just keep the pet stowed. In PvE for instance as I run through areas where you can’t avoid combat tag (which unstows the pet) or in PvP where people can and will (I do it all the time against other rangers) exploit the pet in some fashion, (eg. hunter’s shot for stealth or even GS auto spam if I’m desperate for a dodge).

Both QoL updates to the pet – Permanent Stow and Flag System – are necessary to round-off the pet as a mechanic. For now, all we can do is deal with what we got (obviously).

I’m kind of done with nicey-nice on this topic. People who are opposed to this option are ridiculous, including people at Arenanet that oppose it.

Even if the pet worked perfectly, the Ranger is a Ranger, not a Beastmaster. Beastmastery is only one facet of what they do. There’s no reason it should be so forcefully shoved down anyone’s throat who wants to play a class with a ranger/druid theme. The fact that the pet frequently causes gameplay management problems other classes don’t have to deal with is just icing on the cake for why a perma-stow needs to be kittening option.

This topic always reminds me to Ragnarok, a game i played for years. There the alchemist job had an homunculus which is basically like pets here. The thing is the default AI was a complete trash and the homunculus was kittened (just like pets here).

In order to prevent bothering other players in group content or just with aggro issues in general content, the GM’s advised everyone to use custom and free external AI’s programmed by other players.

Over the time these external AI’s made the homunculus extremely intelligent, the homunculus kept dancing constantly over your character so other players would missclick and attack the homunculus instead of you. It could detect and dodge telegraphs by himself, If the enemy ran too far the homunculus would drop the aggro and return to you, but if the enemy got close again the homunculus would remember him and attack him without you pressing any key.

This lead to tanky alchemists defeating other players just by sitting and letting the homunculus do the work (they’re a little stronger than pets here).

So yeah, my opinion is the AI needs improvements, not asking for an interface to program your pet, but they need to be more responsive IN GENERAL and you should be able to move the pet and put them on stand by or defend a spot.

A problem a lot of the melee pets have is that they all seem to have to stand still in order to attack you. If ANet took that restriction away that would be a big improvement as a whole.

However offering more control over your pets, hell, control that another game with pets, World of Warcraft, (Ooh no, she mentioned WoW! HATE HATE HATE, FLAME FLAME FLAME!) No, no, just hear me out, now.

While it’s been a while since I’ve played that game I have to say that as a hunter with a pet the control system for said pets was pretty on par. You could make them go to an area to guard, you could make them passive, set them to super aggro, etc, and, best of all, they could attack while moving.

I mean.. come on, we shouldn’t need ranged pets just to attack moving targets. Virtually every class has the ability to move while attacking, there are only a few things that we actually have to stand still for and yet.. our pets really can’t. Our pets are just like standard mobs, if you’re moving around, especially if you’re ahead of them, they can chase you.. but that’s pretty much it.

It’s sad. Frankly I think those two things would alleviate a lot of the problems that pets have. To recap, make it so pets can attack while moving and make it so you can have them “guard” an area until we recall them or go a certain distance away from them. It should also be on the pet bar and not use a utility slot (because using a utility slot for guard is literally the stupidest idea ever and the person that came up with that should be demoted.)

These two things would fix a lot of issues with pets.

However if you wanted to make them even better, make it so that if a pet is on passive mobs simply don’t even “see” them, won’t attack them, won’t go after them, won’t target them, etc. Could also make it so that they can’t be affected by conditions, aoes, etc. However if you use a pet-based skill, or if you change their “stance” in combat they remain targetable and are no longer considered passive. Though that’s just a suggestion, the other two are absolute necessities.

Thoughts?

trianglecubed.3750:

However if you wanted to make them even better, make it so that if a pet is on passive mobs simply don’t even “see” them, won’t attack them, won’t go after them, won’t target them, etc.

That’s how they work currently.

Agreed, being able to stow pets in combat would be a really nice option to have.

One workaround is to simply use a tonic when you don’t want the pet to be there, for example when the Vampire HP in Verdant Brink starts leeching from the pet or at those turrets in Arah that will fire on the pet while everyone else is stealthed. It’s buggy though and revives the pet you have on swap so they might even patch out this option soon enough.

If we don’t have our pet out then this class should be renamed to Archer.

Besides who would want to stow my blue moa Gregory Peck?

He’s glitter sexy.