Alright, so, it’s no secret that pets are considered pretty bad. One demand a fair amount of the fanbase seems to have latched onto is the idea of getting rid of pets entirely so that you can focus on being an archer, but that’s not what this thread is for. This thread is also not for complaints about rangers in general – we get enough of that in other threads.
Instead, here we talk about what you believe would make pets viable and fun to use. To this end, I put up a poll: http://strawpoll.me/3691897
- The oft dreamed of lunge attack. The simple idea is that a pet, when attacking, moves a bit to follow their target. the main reason this is so in demand is because pets have to be stationary when attempting to hit something, so PvP players that are worried about an enemy ranger’s pets will simply stay moving, cutting the number of times a pet can actually hit down by half if the pet has a speed boost, by more if it doesn’t. It makes it somewhat difficult to play beast masters in any sort of PvP scenario
- Is kind of a way around the above – A pet damage increase means that your pets would operate the same way they always have, but doling out more damage per hit when they do actually hit. I’m not really in favor of this myself, but I can see how some would prefer it, so it’s included.
- Adding cleave to pets provably makes them stronger. At the moment, the Drake is the only pet that cleaves on attacks, and it’s so strong (despite only having on the low end of medium damage with a couple burst abilities) that it’s one of, if not the most, used pet type outside of pvp where wolves are king.
- A control effect added to pets is powerful – it’s why the wolf is pointed at as the greatest pvp pet in the game. A knockdown, a fear, and a cripple all have a home in the Wolf, and it has respectable damage to boot. The purpose of this particular option would be to add a control effect to every pet – taunt to drakes and bears, for instance, perhaps fear or knockdown to cats, and so on.
- A team buff from all pets. This is a sort of roundabout way of making pets more useful, as they make the team stronger already. A couple pets already do this – the fern hound’s regenerative howl, the jungle stalker’s might-giving roar, and the Red Moa’s fury screech – but certainly not enough to call them support options
- I’m not so conceited as to think I have every solution. If you have a viable alternative to the above suggestions, I think opening them to discussion is a great idea.
I’ll post the poll’s results in a few days of leaving this up, once votes taper off.
I know a good many of us would enjoy playing beast mastery rangers if the pets were an honestly viable source of power versus the position they’re in now – the best you can get out of a pet at the moment is using it as a tank in PvE or as a controller in PvP. and while I won’t say they’re useless, because that’s far from the truth, they’re simply not as useful as they should be, and it hurts the ranger as a whole due to the fact that we have to rely on our pets quite a bit; the only reason longbow is considered broken in pvp is because we have a vast array of mediocre tools at out disposal that somehow add up to something fairly good when we actually have a good weapon to use. The pet being one of those tools in literally every Ranger build means we need to pay attention to what the pet can do for us and see how it can be improved, as it’ll improve the class as a whole.
The purpose of posting this now is because it should be early enough in development for the Devs to include changes to pets by the time HoT rolls around, so it’s the perfect time to discuss.
(edited by Harnel.6810)