Guild Wars 2

I have been playing ranger since game release. No actually I haven’t. I used to play ranger but I don’t play it anymore. It’s not downgraded to the rank of an additional bank just cos I’d feel sry for the character I still consider my main.

This is not a qq thread about ranger effectiveness in pve/pvp/wvw since I don’t really care about it. I love the ranger archetype and I always play nature-based classes whenever possible. Well to be honest I do care about effectiveness since I used to play spvp a lot back when I considered it at least approximately fun and I still play high lvl fractals, but I don’t pick my class based on how effective or broken it is. Assuming the ranger to be the worst class in game (which is probably true lol but w/e) I’d still play it IF it was at least fun or well designed. It’s not. And the reason is its class mechanic aka pets.

Let me specify I’m not against pets and I’m pretty much ok with them. I’m not asking for the devs to remove pets or give us a perma-stow option since it will never happen because: 1-the devs are stubborn and will never change their flawed philosophy; and 2-they have screwed up the traits so much (by binding almost all of them to the pet) it would require a whole class redesign.

I admit the f2 skills fix was a move in the right direction and helped a lot. But It’s not enough, not even close. I don’t care if they manage to make pets work somehow, I don’t (and every other ranger player truly attached to this fantasy archetype should feel the same) want to play a slapdash class. Pets are literally like consumables, there’s NO connection with the character, no immersion in game. Pet swap is probably the worst idea they have ever come up with. Seriously I cannot really conceive how this band-aid idea was implemented in game.

I’m not a roleplayer, but I’m a perfectionist and I put a lot of care into my characters. And since I play this game also for its story and lore, I’d like a bit of immersion. Well I feel nothing for my pet, it’s not my companion, it’s just one of those (ugly, most of them) animals I have into my personal pokemon petting zoo. There’s no pet customization, they don’t even remember their name lol (and that’s not a bug they didn’t even contemplate this feature cos this is, again, a slapdash class) and since we are forced into choosing a different one every now and then lots of people don’t even name their pets anymore. The result? I cannot even tell which one is mine, they are all the same. We cannot even choose for real which pet we want to play with, since we cannot even change the stats.
Do you want a dps pet? Too bad bro you can’t use your bear cos in tyria, you know, bears don’t go much to the gym and are weaker than a dog as a result. kitten those dogs on roids. Do you need a ranged pet cos melee ones are dead more often than not in most endgame pve content? Grab a spider or devourer. Oh you wanted to play with a bird? Sry man your bird is a dps melee pet, bad luck. This is so annoying. Also most of those pets are either ugly, useless, or both. Pigs? Really? The murellow? I cannot even stare at that one.
There are NO exclusive pets to obtain in game. I remember in gw1 we had lots of beautiful pets. Here we have some decent-looking ones. That’s it.

Let’s talk about our awesome pet-swap mechanic. I feel this one got introduced cos even the devs at some point realised their pet mechanic wasn’t really working that well in game (aka the class was unplayable), so they had to remedy to that really fast. Is the pet dying too often? No problem let’s fix this the easy way…let’s add another pet you can swap to. Awesome. And, to add disgrace to the devastation, let’s make the character say “I choose you” so we can turn this game into something even more childish. Let’s attract those teenage pokemon fans (sry pokemon fans, no disrespect).

I still remember one interview where an anet dev was talking about the living story excited like a kid on christmas and he was like “ohhh we all love Frostbite (rox’s pet) it’s our favourite character in the studio bla bla”. Cool isn’kitten Why doesn’t rox have an additional pet she is forced to swap to? I can tell you why…cos it would break game immersion. For the same reason every other ranger main npc in game has only a single pet (Eir). I understand lots of ppl don’t pay attention to details but I also believe many others do, like me. I want to choose a pet I like, choose the stats I like and feel some sort of emotional attachment to it. I think this is the goal of a good designed pet class. Not to mention Master’s Bond trait. Dunno if that has changed but as far I can remember all bonuses are lost on pet swap. A clear example of synergy between class mechanic and its traits lol. They should have added some sort of heal skill for the pet (an ability to refill its hp bar or something like that) instead of this pet swap thing.

I know there are many more problems related to our pets, like bad AI, but tbh I doubt they will ever fix those kind of problems since it took them 2 YEARS to fix f2 skills.

you know, there is no-one forcing you to play the class if you do not like it…

I’ve changed class already, my guild is running dungeons and ranger is not really efficient for that anymore.
Anet knows the ranger has problems and it’s not only a pet problem. Whether they want to fix those is up to them.

Prysin.8542:

you know, there is no-one forcing you to play the class if you do not like it…

That’s why I’m not playing it anymore. But, you know, I still like the archetype and I’d like a well designed ranger class in gw2, that’s the reason lots of ppl post complaints and suggestions on these forums. Sadly there is another well-represented category of ppl who accept blindly everything they are given.

and then there is yet another category that goes onto the forum to present a biased, illogical and ill presented, also often spiteful and hateful, post about why they do not like function X Y Z on their designated profession. They then parade around saying “i quit the class long ago, not playing it anymore. Lol warrior much better”

I agree with most you said regarding pets and trait synergy but I still love playing ranger though and feel it’s a well working class overall, one other thing that irritates me is how useless most pets are overall, there’s really only a few that you will pick depending on what you do.

Prysin.8542:

and then there is yet another category that goes onto the forum to present a biased, illogical and ill presented, also often spiteful and hateful, post about why they do not like function X Y Z on their designated profession. They then parade around saying “i quit the class long ago, not playing it anymore. Lol warrior much better”

I don’t find my post biased nor illogical. I was complaining about poor game immersion caused by a slapdash pet mechanic. And it’s a fact. It is hateful tho and it’s not like I’m denying that. If you think my post is illogical feel free to demonstrate why it is so, keeping in mind the subject which is game immersion and class design and not pet effectiveness in game. And yes I quit the class cos I don’t enjoy playing it cos I feel like playing a beta. I wish I could go back to my ranger tho. And no I don’t play warrior I’m playing necro, since I really like the way they had designed its class mechanics. Why should I play a warrior? I told you I don’t pick a class based on its effectiveness, and I wasn’t complaining about ranger being weak. Looks like it’s you bringing up illogical arguments, I don’t feel like belonging to that category you mentioned.

nor did i direct my post at you, yet you feel like i did. That however, is all on you. I said nothing about you, nor your post.

Let’s speculate, you didn’t, as I did not direct mine at you. If I thought such a thing you would likely ask me to demonstrate my assumption, which is obviously something I wouldn’t be able to do. This kind of logic debates are neverending so yea let’s put this to an end.

Try to stay on topic people…

OP makes a lot of good points, and I agree this is without reservation or exaggeration, the game with the worst implementation of a pet class I’ve played in 20+ years of gaming.

GW1 had a better and more involved pet system and pet combat. That alone should speak volumes when people would prefer a direct port of the old system over the new system.

But for my overall issue with it because I shouldn’t directly compare games, GW2 is mobility based combat in which movement is the most important determining factor in fights. Most of the combat in the game takes place while mobile (as opposed to rooted attacks). Attacks that root the player are often times compensated by being big, important skill, both to land as the user and avoid as the intended victim.

At which point we get to pets, where none of there attacking abilities are mobile, and yet almost none of their abilities are strong enough to justify being rooted abilities. The downside to this is especially evident versus other players, who generally are smarter than the AI to the degree that they can use their intelligence as a player to negate the effectiveness of their opponents AI. However, their effectiveness (30% damage before factoring in utility function) is completely and totally tied to that AI, meaning that now, that player has to “trick” or force the AI into being intelligent enough to compete with your intelligence to the point where it lands some of its damage or abilities.

This is especially difficult in terrain based kiting, where in certain situations players are smart enough to figure out that they can kite pets on terrain that those pets won’t be able to traverse, essentially handicapping ranger players by 30% of their damage on top of utility being lost.

That is a huge issue. I have no doubt that eventually ANet will be able to iron out details with Pet AI versus content, but versus other players, to some degree, I think that rangers are always going to have to work harder to get their pet mechanic to work than other classes and their mechanics, and I don’t see ANet compensating ranger players for their disadvantages with any clear advantages (like eles get with having such high DPS but having to manage so many skills and a low health pool).

Being able to use the other 2 cooldowns skills on demand that our pets use would be a huge start. But the ANet devs think “that’s too hard for ranger players.” But just like ANet’s shock with how fast the Tequatl revamp was beaten versus the time frame they were expecting, they seem to have a habit of gauging the intelligence and abilities of their playerbase a lot lower than where they actually are.

The mechanic is broken beyond repair. I’d seriously like them to just give thieves longbows since they’re already down a weapon combination and it would appeal to every non-pet archer ranger in the game.

The problem with having pets is that not only our single target DPS is lower, our cleave hits less targets and we have very little AOE. Furthermore, our weapon and utility skills are worse off because we have a pet.

It seems to me that every lack of buffs, or any weakness with the class is because we have a pet . I find it insulting.

I agree with u OP. The ranger-pet relation lacks bonding and immersion. I’d rather have one pet Active than two actually. The taming procedure could be far more immersive than just interact “tame” and poof – tamed! And yes, better looking ones and more useful ones wouldnt hurt either. And the masters bond trait (that I use) is annoying when u go for a swim or swap pets…. Swapping weapons doesnt do that to stacking sigils. Why does it do that to our pets?

Not the ‘worst pet system ever made’. The old EQ1 pets were aggro magnets are would regularly bring unwanted enemies to your door, usually in large numbers.

Hands down the worst pet system I’ve ever seen was FFXI Summoner.
EQ pets were a pain to micromanage, but at least they were still generally useful, unlike my Summoner’s pets who mostly got used once every 2 hours.

But, I agree OP,
There’s alot they could do to refine the mechanic on a bonding level, and I’m also not entirely sure the Swap mechanic is really working out

Vox Hollow.2736:

Hands down the worst pet system I’ve ever seen was FFXI Summoner.

I don’t know man. I had quite an issue with it when I started but macros really helped fix their issues. Plus, I mean come on…Carbuncle <3. That said I was a Corsair main =P.

He was cute as a button, I’ll give you that.

Prysin.8542:

you know, there is no-one forcing you to play the class if you do not like it…

I’m sick to death of people saying this. There is no class for fans of archery. There is no class in this game for fans of the GW1 ranger. Nobody is forcing me to play ranger, but since they also removed dervishes (my other favorite class) completely, I’m not sure exactly what the hell I’m supposed to do instead. It seems that there is no medium armored general combat class. Engineers are all about their kits, while thieves lack staying power and don’t even have a 1200 range weapon. Meanwhile, rangers, who should fit the playing style and aesthetic we prefer, are chained at the wrist to pets. Even if we play perfectly, 30% of our DPS can simply miss because of terrible AI. Want condition removal? Too kitten ed bad, because if your pet dies (from 1-hit-kill attacks meant to be dodged), you have pretty much none. That isn’t even mentioning how stupid it is that ranger condition removal (already harder to access than on other classes) just puts the conditions on the companion which represents about a third of your damage. On thief, I can remove conditions every time I stealth using a basic trait and always with sword 2; on ranger, you need a kitten ed grandmaster trait just to periodically move them to your pet! I want an archer with medium armor and no bugged, easily outmaneuvered AI pet with traits that work. GW1 had it, GW2 does not.

DeceiverX.8361:

The mechanic is broken beyond repair. I’d seriously like them to just give thieves longbows since they’re already down a weapon combination and it would appeal to every non-pet archer ranger in the game.

Absolutely. Besides, some world bosses are just painful to fight when your maximum range is 900.

The bow ranger had its problems in GW1 (in PVP it was all utility and no damage, whereas in PVE the opposite was true), but they did have some significant advantages: tough to kill, mobile, amazing condition removal, extremely effective at long distances (whether ‘effective’ is in terms of PVP disruption or PVE damage spikes). In GW2, though, you can’t wear the enemy down with sustained pressure and interrupts because everyone takes decent healing and there is no resource to run them out of. The interdependence of opposing players in GW1 also made rangers effective: if an assassin or elementalist decides to sacrifice healing and condition removal in favor of more damage and disruption, you can punish them for it using your more flexible build. In GW2, obviously, this doesn’t work. Just as troublesome is how they’ve treated condition removal; in GW1, warriors had arguably the worst condition removal while rangers had some of the best. Now, their positions are reversed, and look how things have changed. Rather than each having a place in a party, warriors are extremely popular and easy to use while rangers are difficult to use and unwanted in most parties.

I just want to second the opinion of the OP. One of my biggest issues is not really the viability of the class since in long running MMOs that tends to be a sine wave of patches and nerfs. It really comes down to my pet and generating any sort of attachment to him.

The playstyle does seemed alot like Pokemon though the NPCs suggest otherwise. I have tried to care about my pet but with the no-challenge taming system and no customization (plus whenever I switch pets it clears their name anyway) it is impossible. The issue is so built into the system I don’t see how it is fixable without a major overhaul, unlike viability in pve/pvp.

Pet switching option is stupid. This is why pet’s cannot be buffed or customizable because of the dumb switching. The fact that family skills trees even exist is beyond dumb. The pet system for GW 2 is so outdated it’s not even funny. Pet family tree skills shouldn’t be locked, there shouldn’t be tank/buff/dps pets, it should be how YOU make your pet.

Sunshine.4680:

Pet switching option is stupid.

That’s a deep insight..

Sunshine.4680:

This is why pet’s cannot be buffed or customizable because of the dumb switching. The fact that family skills trees even exist is beyond dumb.

My both pets have their own name, they get buffs, they buff me.. And yes, I switch them very often.. Am I misreading something here?

Sunshine.4680:

Pet family tree skills shouldn’t be locked, there shouldn’t be tank/buff/dps pets, it should be how YOU make your pet.

So…. you want to have a hawk that can solo a champion or so?
The fact that some pets are more DPS oriented than others (who are more utility oriented) is nothing more than (in my opinion) logic..

Tribio.8531:

So…. you want to have a hawk that can solo a champion or so?
The fact that some pets are more DPS oriented than others (who are more utility oriented) is nothing more than (in my opinion) logic..

It’s fallacious to say that pets must be hard linked to attributes.

Guild Wars 1, this game’s very own precursor had a very different system, pet attributes in GW1 were derived from training, depending how you used your pet (Not even stats assignment off a screen, actual gameplay), it would develop to be more tanky, or more aggressive.

The species of a pet was almost purely aesthetic. Because your pet actually “developed” under you, how you could name them and pick a species you liked aestheticlly, it felt like there was a much closer relationship between ranger and pet , than in GW2, where pets are just an extra utility spot, and a lacklustre minion (Not to mention GW1 rangers had DIRECT control of their pet’s special attacks, and those attacks wern’t just attacks, but actual formed combo chains in tandem with the ranger)

Not the worst.

At the start of World of Warcraft sometimes my ol’kitty was charging bravely into the enemy, but somewhere along the way was deciding “eh, screw it, imma go run in circle”. So it was running in between me and target.

But it’s certainly the worst design which lasted that long. Two years, two kitten years and still there’s no light

Tribio.8531:

My both pets have their own name, they get buffs, they buff me.. And yes, I switch them very often.. Am I misreading something here?

By “switching” he probably meant the selection of a different pet, not the swapping between the two pets you have active at a certain moment. Therefore if you need let’s say a tanky pet and neither of your pets suit that requirement then you will have to select a different one. Maybe one whose look you don’t like.

Tribio.8531:

The fact that some pets are more DPS oriented than others (who are more utility oriented) is nothing more than (in my opinion) logic..

Absolutely, no way I can argue against that. But at this point by logic a bear should be stronger than a dog. I agree there’s a logic behind pets fixed stats. But it’s just an online game…I mean players just want to use what they like, especially in a game like gw2 which is an appearance-driven game.

Yeah, that is something I miss from GW1, before GW2 launch I used to run as a spear/BM build and with a Black Moa with dire evolution, when I read that I could have my Black Moa in GW2 I was really happy, just to find that all the pet stats and skills are hard locked. I wouldn’t even mind if Icould pick one of the regular moas skill to be my black moa version, but no, you HAVE to use the pink moa skill if you want to run with a black one.

A certain degree of customization should be allowed, like pet stats could have a range for each trait and an amount of points, so a cat for example, will never have more VIT than a bear, but you could custom it to have more VIT but less Power than the current cat, also pick any of the cats F2 skill.