Guild Wars 2

In the recent state of the game Jon said Anet is afraid to give us more control over pet skills because it will make the ranger skill floor way too high. So i’m making this post to get some feedback from you guys. Do you think it would become too hard to manage pets if we could control all pet skills?

I’ll give my opinion right away. I believe that micro-managing the pet now is a lot harder than it would be with this system. Because you have to deal with an unpredictable AI. You can only rely on something you cannot control when said thing is really powerful and with the recent nerfs to pet damage it is simply not possible. Here’s how i imagine this system:

• Red Moa
  F1 – Attack/Return toggle
  F2 – Furious Screech
  F3 – Harmonic Cry
  F4 – Frenzied Attack

Cooldowns remain the same, pet swap becomes a specific keybind you can select on the options and all skills can be toggled to auto attack so you have the option to just leave it to the AI.

Really five extra skills to press in a certain combination? wow that skill floor is way too high, seriously.. people actually believe these things..

kitten i’d hate to play a game with say 30 skills then, that would explode players minds…

Necros get 5 or six extra skills when they enter shroud why does no one die from this extra skill floor, also we get 4 extra skills while downed the skill floor is too kitten high…

We are already forced to micro-manage to be effective. And we are forced to predict how the pet will operate. Were we given direct controls we could micro-manage much more easily.

And if the argument is that we shouldn’t need to micro-manage … well … we do, at least if we want to be halfway useful.

Personally I can see their reasoning behind it. We’d be playing like we have an Engi toolbelt, in addition to keeping an AI controlled pet alive.

I could live with having pet skills on F2-F4 but have an option to set them on autocast so players can still leave pet control on the AI.

Currently when I run with fellow rangers they do not bother to Target/Return/Stow and sometimes even swap pets unless its dead, if a few people have problems with managing their basic f1-f4 skill. Giving them full control of their pets would be chaotic, but It would be nice if they gave us more control our pets with the ranger being able to turn it on or off. I would have way more DPS if my hawk just slashed all day long(PVE)

On the other hand giving rangers more control of their pets in TPVP/PVP would be amazing but as it is right now other classes complain that we have a over powered downed skill/ we can use our pets while downed, So why can “I” not use my minions/my phantoms/ my f1-f4 skill while i am down.

planetarian.9154:

Currently when I run with fellow rangers they do not bother to Target/Return/Stow and sometimes even swap pets unless its dead, if a few people have problems with managing their basic f1-f4 skill. Giving them full control of their pets would be chaotic, but It would be nice if they gave us more control our pets with the ranger being able to turn it on or off. I would have way more DPS if my hawk just slashed all day long(PVE)

On the other hand giving rangers more control of their pets in TPVP/PVP would be amazing but as it is right now other classes complain that we have a over powered downed skill/ we can use our pets while downed, So why can “I” not use my minions/my phantoms/ my f1-f4 skill while i am down.

You make very good points. There are still people that just use pets as a fire-and-forget meat shield and this would overwhelm them. But higher skilled people can take this and make wonderful plays with this. Can you imagine spider immobilize + 3 traps?

Also, good job pointing out bird DPS when it doesn’t use Quickening Screech. It would also give birds a whole lot more utility because we can have an on demand 10 seconds of swiftness!

…Kinda’ yeah.
I mean, the general majority still cowers at Kohler.

But, I wonder if you couldn’t get the best of both worlds? Like getting to set the F2 skill to any family skill you wanted?

A Large portion of ranger can’t manage what they have now. While those of us who manage 80-100% uptime on pet would benifit greatly from more controll. There is a very larger majority that would be totally overwhelmed with more controll.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

A Large portion of ranger can’t manage what they have now. While those of us who manage 80-100% uptime on pet would benifit greatly from more controll. There is a very larger majority that would be totally overwhelmed with more controll.

I think you are not giving humans beings the proper credit sure a few below par or incredibly lazy people wont like this, but on a whole most human beings shine at micro management.

Really starting to wonder where the human race is heading when 5 extra skills on a Virtual pet becomes too much!

I think that pet AI improvement would go a long way to help out beginner players just trying to get used to managing their pet, but the idea that having greater control would be too difficult in terms of the skill floor is just nonsense. I offer you the ele attunement mechanic as an example: proper use requires solid knowledge of and situational control with 20 individual skills, 4 attunement swaps, and 20 cooldowns to track (ignoring slot skills), and people manage to figure it out. Or compare to other games that don’t limit the number of skills available at any given time, but make all class skills available and usable on clickable skill bars (I’m sure you can all think of at least one or two games like that), and people seemed to do OK there too.

I really would love to see an improvement to the AI, but honestly, the idea that beginners wouldn’t be able to cope with more pet control is just insulting.

What’s the point of an AI companion if you have to control it? What is the strength of having a pet if it comes at an opportunity cost (splitting DPS and utility between the two classes) with no advantages? More micro would mean you have to control the pet even more to reach the same level of efficiency as a warrior. Already you have to be aware of your pets location an health in addition to your own, add to this controlling its attacks and you’re essentially playing two characters at once, but only the effectiveness of a single character.

It’s also very pet specific. Some pets have skills where you would want to have this control (drake blast finishers, canine leaps, spider immobilise) whereas others are less appealing. It would be tempting having Harmonic Cry on demand, or even Endure Pain on the bear (but that would mean you’re using a bear). We also have a lack of responsiveness on F2 already, so an additional skill to be frustrated by isn’t too appealing.

I think something more important to consider is what other ways can a ranger interact/use/benefit from the pet which don’t involve controlling their skills? Something like changes to shouts or weapon skills to be more in sync with the two working together rather than the two simply both being present. I’d like to see more pet effects tacked onto weapons, similair to winter’s bite and hunter’s shot.

Why play a class that needs to control two characters to do the same thing as a class that only needs to control one?

To answer the original question, micromanaging all skills would be too difficult for most players to you use since you would have to add more F-buttons (F5, F6, F7). For a few players this would be fine, but when in a large fight most players would not be able to keep with micromanaging their pet along with all the AoE, other players, minions/clones, positioning, cooldowns, etc. I would like the #3 skills for pets to be able to be micromanaged, since they tend to be the most useful of the 3; but the auto-attack and #2 would be too much for most players. For example, controlling the drake blast finisher would be helpful, but it’s Bite skill and auto-attack should typically be used as often possible.

One of the best improvements that can be made to pets still involve AI improvements instead of micromanagement. The bigger issue that someone pointed out a while back was the reliability of the pet. The reason most people would want to be able to micromanage or stow their pet is because it is often doing something unhelpful or not using their skills effectively. I’d rather have the pet act smarter on its own instead of having to micromanage its skills.

That said, there are improvements that could be made to the pet interface. Robert Hrouda posted multiple times in a long thread a few months ago that had some good ideas in it, and there was the idea that the current F-skills bar could be possibly be compressed to open up space for a new function. I think it went something like:
F1: Tells your pet to attack your target and changes it to aggressive. Pressing it again with no target selected causes it to return to you, thus combining the current F1 and F3 actions.
F2: Pet special (same as current functionality).
F3: New ability, like the pet’s #3 skill.
F4: Swap pet (same as current functionality).

Thus the number of buttons doesn’t increase, the current functionality stays nearly the same, and a new function could be added. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard much about those ideas in a while.

Edit: Found the thread from 3 months ago. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Robert-Hrouda-on-pets-in-dungeons/first

planetarian.9154:

Currently when I run with fellow rangers they do not bother to Target/Return/Stow and sometimes even swap pets unless its dead, if a few people have problems with managing their basic f1-f4 skill. Giving them full control of their pets would be chaotic, but It would be nice if they gave us more control our pets with the ranger being able to turn it on or off. I would have way more DPS if my hawk just slashed all day long(PVE)

On the other hand giving rangers more control of their pets in TPVP/PVP would be amazing but as it is right now other classes complain that we have a over powered downed skill/ we can use our pets while downed, So why can “I” not use my minions/my phantoms/ my f1-f4 skill while i am down.

Yes, lets hold everyone back because a few people can’t be bothered to learn to micro manage the core mechanic of the class. Yes. YES! That makes fantastic sense! Like in grade school. Punish the class because one idiot decided to act up.

You know what would solve this? Let me perma-stow my pet. Then I, or any new comer to the class, won’t have to worry about micro-managing it.

I just posted a possible solution to this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Pet-Micro-W-New-Players-Solution/first#post2339306

Well, part of the solution, really.