Guild Wars 2

Rangers have the lowest DPS of all classes because their pet don’t fill their intended function well enough, especially true in PVP where people use movement skills, teleport etc.
We shouldnt have to rely on swap pets in order to reach our target.
They are a bunch of updates late compared to other class F-skill mechanic.

Suggestions to improve their efficiency:

- Add F5 skill that allow us to control 1 more pet skill,
no more random Quickening Screech when downed or Harmonic Cry when full health.

- Pet autoattack should be able to cast while moving like any autoattacks

- Create a jump animation for pets so that they cleverly shorten the path to their target when possible instead of running all the way around because of a 1 meter high ledge.

- F3 should remove the pet’s current target and toggle superspeed on it.

Feel free to add your view of what’s wrong with pets, and on how to improve it realistically.

I would really like to see pets have specific order in which they use there skills or better yet let us give them an order to use there skills in. I really hate when i press paralyzing venom and my spider decides that rather than go stick stuff its going to spend 2 seconds casting a venom ball that NEVER hits anything and then after words shoots its web directly into a block. Haveing a skill order would really help damage pets as well imagine a stealth cat that would always use bite from stealth or a drake that would always tail swipe or hyenas that would always tackle. I feel like a skill order would go a long way towards making pets more reliable in combat.

Also pets would be way better if the condition pets actually had condition damage in their stats rather than having to waste a trait slot on a kitten trait that does next to nothing anyway. Maby if the trait gave more condition damage and your pet had condition because it might actually do damage and be useful for stacking up conditions. Why does a devourer need power?

If we had control over one more pet skill and pets had a slighter longer melee range pets would be in a pretty great spot for PVP to be honest. Though I feel our pets would also benefit from non-nerfed health pools given the amount of damage flying around.I don’t understand why they separated pet HP pools between SPVP and everything else to begin with.

Beyond that, cut the pet death penalty in half. 30 seconds without a pet is rough but doable. 60 seconds is a nightmare.

RevanCorana.8942:

Feel free to add your view of what’s wrong with pets

Giving us back the leash range we had before sPvP got it nerfed. Since now the game can accomodate sPvP separately, let them enjoy the nerf but give us the leash range back in other modes.

Oh, and since we’re dreaming, let’s also hear it for ‘Guard’ making them scale walls again.

Allow players to stow pets without any reward or pay-off for doing so.

Make pet attacks hit the enemy targets on the move (Sword mechanic, Range increase, deal damage at the beginning, not end of the cast… Any of that).

Every and any trouble fixed immediately.
I freaking want to keep my pet alive for moment I need the pet. Not when arena-net thinks I need it (die phase). Also for skipping.
There are moments when I want to save my pet for later. A-net just has to deal with it.
Also, the damage will become reliable. That’s everything we need, our pets got buffed in survivability by a lot.

Padra.1678:

I would really like to see pets have specific order in which they use there skills or better yet let us give them an order to use there skills in. I really hate when i press paralyzing venom and my spider decides that rather than go stick stuff its going to spend 2 seconds casting a venom ball that NEVER hits anything and then after words shoots its web directly into a block. Haveing a skill order would really help damage pets as well imagine a stealth cat that would always use bite from stealth or a drake that would always tail swipe or hyenas that would always tackle. I feel like a skill order would go a long way towards making pets more reliable in combat.

Also pets would be way better if the condition pets actually had condition damage in their stats rather than having to waste a trait slot on a kitten trait that does next to nothing anyway. Maby if the trait gave more condition damage and your pet had condition because it might actually do damage and be useful for stacking up conditions. Why does a devourer need power?

Agreed the F5 skill for venom ball would fix this as with many other pets having similar issues.

And for the last skills the one that would still proc randomly they should add a specific condition for when the pet should use it.

Ehecatl.9172:

If we had control over one more pet skill and pets had a slighter longer melee range pets would be in a pretty great spot for PVP to be honest. Though I feel our pets would also benefit from non-nerfed health pools given the amount of damage flying around.I don’t understand why they separated pet HP pools between SPVP and everything else to begin with.

Beyond that, cut the pet death penalty in half. 30 seconds without a pet is rough but doable. 60 seconds is a nightmare.

Death penalty cooldown is more a balance thing than a pet rework, besides I’d rather have a better pet and a 2min cooldown if he’s defeated than a 30sec cooldown in their current iteration.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Allow players to stow pets without any reward or pay-off for doing so.

Make pet attacks hit the enemy targets on the move (Sword mechanic, Range increase, deal damage at the beginning, not end of the cast… Any of that).

Every and any trouble fixed immediately.
I freaking want to keep my pet alive for moment I need the pet. Not when arena-net thinks I need it (die phase). Also for skipping.
There are moments when I want to save my pet for later. A-net just has to deal with it.
Also, the damage will become reliable. That’s everything we need, our pets got buffed in survivability by a lot.

Making our pet autoattack leap on each strike would be cool, but maybe too good.
It would also require lot of animation rework.
Making them able to move while auoattacking is simpler imo.

Why would you stow your pet during a fight anyway lol!
It’s your class main mechanic

not sure if this is already mentioned here or not but make pets stats and dmg 100% same as pve so it DOESNT LOSE HP AND DOESNT LOSE DMG JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE IN PVP

Redemer.2601:

not sure if this is already mentioned here or not but make pets stats and dmg 100% same as pve so it DOESNT LOSE HP AND DOESNT LOSE DMG JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE IN PVP

They’re not going to do this because they gave all pets like 50% more HP in PvE as a fix for them not dodgerolling at all, ever.If that were also in PvP, my bear would have 50k HP and would be the most annoying meat shield on earth.

The only changes i really want to see is to give pets some condi damage baseline, a lot of our pets are clearly supposed to deal condi damage of some sort, but because they have 0 condi damage it’s completely negligible. If they were to do that some of the pets we have, like pigs, and devourers might actually see use since they don’t do ANY damage at the moment (less than a bear), on top of being pretty useless in the utility department.

I’d also like to see a few of our pets skills reworked, mainly every devourer ability (come on just make its autos 100% chance to poison, and give it moves that are actually worth bringing), the moas vuln ability (2 vuln is nothing, and it’s rooted for like 3 seconds, give it another screech or a cripple or something), the birds swiftness ability (either make it instant cast or make it deal aoe damage or evade, or something to make the long cast time not worthless), and the spider poison gas ability, this one should be the lowest on the list, but it feels lacking.

If they did those changes i’d be pretty happy with our pet mechanic as a whole, sure the additional micromanagement would be nice, but I feel like it’s fine as is since our pets use their abilities in pretty obvious scenarios, so as long as you’re paying attention you’ll know when they’re about to use what.

EDIT: Being able to have a CD on their abilities though, THAT would be nice. It’d be nice to see “Ok my dog will be able to leap again in 10s i’ll leave him in.” instead of having to guess how long until he’ll have his abilities back up.

• Increase range on some melee pet attacks
• Increase number of targets on most pet attacks
• Reworked pet ratios to have more diversity
• Keybinds for Pet commands like Attack My Target & Return To Me
• F1 & F3 changed to the other 2 non-auto attack skills
• Default Healing Power, Ferocity, & Condition Damage added to some pets

That’s my list of what would (in my view) fix pets on a whole.

RevanCorana.8942:

Making our pet autoattack leap on each strike would be cool, but maybe too good.
It would also require lot of animation rework.
Making them able to move while auoattacking is simpler imo.

Why would you stow your pet during a fight anyway lol!
It’s your class main mechanic

Because there is a part of the fight that is flooded by AoE. And you know your pet is going to die.
So if I could stow my pet, and bring it out only after the “die phase”, I could actually save my pet from being utterly useless for 1 whole minute.

If I decide to stow my pet – I am willing to trade 30% of my DPS and utility in order to save it for the time when I really freaking need it.
That’s the point.

RevanCorana.8942:

Making our pet autoattack leap on each strike would be cool, but maybe too good.
It would also require lot of animation rework.
Making them able to move while auoattacking is simpler imo.

Would be the opposite. Moving while attacking would have more animation work put into it so pets don’t slide & shuffle constantly while on a target. Extending the range is the simpler solution, as long as it’s not a significantly large increase, the shuffle (as per Moa morph skills) are not as apparent and appear as leaps.

F2 skills

• Roars or screech should be instants. The moment I press that F2 skill, I want it done already. Put the roars and screeches animation as aftercast instead of cast time. Wolf Fear can still have the cast time.
• Leaps, breathes and strikes should shadowstep the pet directly onto the target.
• Porcine pets should change the F2 key like the thief has it.

This will make me appreciate pets more because I can actually use their skills reliably. I want a reason to get off my wolf pet. But almost every other pet is just trash.

Allow us to mix-and-match pet abilities to make the pet most to our liking.

Several types of pets with different purposes. List time.

Birds: Your glass cannon of pets. Birds have the undisputed HIGHEST damage per second ratio. Yes, HIGHEST. I have tested extensively and if you use skills correctly and actively birds are top of the line. However, they are squishy and die to stiff breezes. To top this off, birds currently have an “I have been summoned” animation that needs to go. I don’t care that my bird is excited and needs to do victory loops in the air, I need it to go attack my target. Only birds have this problem.

Bears And Arcodotus(er whatever it is): Your utility tanks. Do no damage, take tons of damage, somehow gather aggro. Usually have utility (clear a condi, weaken a crowd, etc). Not much else to say.

Boars: Main purpose is to be Search Tanks. Same thing as bears, but instead of utility they will find random objects that may or may not help you in any conceivable manner. However, finding Stick has to be the most gratifying feeling.

Devourer: Ranged condi applicants. In need of buffs. They are supposed to be half tank, half condi- the Dire attribute chart among pets. Problem is, they fill neither role. They do not aggro very heavily, they do not apply conditions in an effective manner, and they do not provide any sourt of peel.

Drakes: Your Crowd Control tanks. Skills range from confusion to burning, often have tail sweep (a knockdown or stun, not sure which). They are high stat, high damage, high tank…just cumbersome. They fit their theme, but the pvp meta has sped up and they see little to no gameplay in this area. Speed up drakes, you will see them played far more often. Taunt was a good way to do so WITHOUT running over toes. This directly buffs fire drakes.

Hounds: Second place dps, often provide utility. Might, Stealth, Weakness, Clones. All of them have a knockdown. If you need crowd control with a high dps output, grab these. Hyena, Wolf, and Drakehound do well. Hyena needs buffs, but because of the double knockdown possibility they are unlikely to receive any. Fern Hound is fantastic imo, but it needs a better regeneration number.

Moa: They…uh…Utility. Nothing else to say. Protection to daze to weakness, they channel some kind of ability to some moderate effect. Radius is far too low and whenever they go off seem to be telling everyone “BACK THE F@#$ OFF” which is counter productive as their effects are often too weak. Needs buffs. Fun to use, hardly effective.

Spiders: Sneaky bug fixes are sneaky. Pre specialization patch, these spiders did NOT apply their venoms 100% of the time. Now, they are perfect. They are squishy high condition application units from far away. IF you are playing condi, you want THIS or Drake. Always, no exceptions. Devourer is too weak, and with Taunt Drakes do fantastic jobs. I apply Spiders when I want a bit more hidability in my pet and Drake when I want people to know that they done F@#$ed up.

Those are my takes, all in all I stated what needed to be done. I don’t think I missed any pet category, and if I did it clearly needs buffs. I playtested every one of these while I was remaking builds ranging from speed nuke, to high burst, to condi destruction, and then ending in the tankiest thing on the known Tyrian universe. Yes, I outtanked a 1v3 (I did not win, but I did not DIE). It was rather dumb. Grain of salt with my post, but nothing I said was wrong. Pets are not garbage, our dps is not garbage, we are the Utility class. We bring things others do not. Mesmers and Rangers do so differently. Rangers are more durable utility and mesmers are more burst. Guess who wins an evenly matched fight despite Mesmer buff? Rangers. I have not lost a 1v1 on any Mesmer duels thus far. Especially against power or stun Mesmers.