Guild Wars 2

Happy new year, everyone.

Below I will present a suggestion on how I think the Pet system could be improved to make the Ranger feel more unique and fun.

First, this does not mean I wish Ranger to be more unique or better than other professions.
Feel free to make your own thread on how to improve other professions, but don’t bring jealousy into this thread.

Second, I know alot of players see the Ranger as a pet profession.
However, I think GW’s Ranger had more options and depth, and GW2’s Ranger should inherit some of that.

In Guild Wars 1, you had plenty of skills dedicated to pets, usually in the form of shouts, affecting the pet’s next action.
You could fill your Action Bar with skills that enhance your pet, or both you and your pet.
However, you could also choose to not use a pet at all.

My suggestion is the following:

1. Make Pet Special Skill (F2) more responsive, like a Shout. The Pet should stop everything and immediately perform that action.
2. Make Pets able to attack and use Skills while moving.
3. (by FourTwo.7613) Make your Return (F3) command also give your pet evasion for a short duration (1 second).
4. Give Rangers the option to choose to not have a pet, but make it fair for all rangers, whatever their choice is. The way I see this can be done, is by introducing 2 Modes:
   Beast Mode
   Passive Effect – All Weapon Skills grant your pet a bonus/boon.
   Advanced – The bonuses may vary with the pet’s family (Bear, Spider, etc).
   Note: Currently, only 1 skill per Weapon gives your pet a bonus, such as Crippling Shot (Short Bow); Hunter’s Shot (Long Bow); Pounce (Long Sword); etc.
   F1 – commands the active pet to attack the current target.
   F2 – activates the pet-specific skill of the active pet.
   F3 – commands your pet back to you.
   F4 (without pet) – calls the highlighted animal to become the active pet.
   F4 (with pet) – calls the alternate animal to become the active pet.
   (new) F5 (with pet) – Stow pet.
   (new) F5 (without pet) – Changes to Hunter Mode.
   If you are in combat, can only be used 30 seconds after you Stow Pet.
   —-
   Hunter Mode
   Passive Effect – All Weapon skills have an additional effect (instead of giving your pet a bonus).
   Advanced – the additional effect may vary with the highlighted Animal’s family (Bear, Spider, etc).
   (new) F2 – activates a Special Skill that is based on your highlighted Animal
   (new) F4 – Switch Special Skill to the one based on your alternate Animal
   (new) F5 – Changes to Beast Mode.
   If you are in combat, prevents you from calling a Pet for 30 seconds.

In short, even in Hunter Mode, your highlighted animal affects your Special Skill (F2) and bonuses.

Thanks for reading and try to avoid being hyperbolic in your hypotetical scenarios.

I really like this, provides a sense of the ranger’s abilities being tied to the pet yet if balanced correctly allows rangers to be without a pet in situations where pets are not desired.

A slight suggestion i would like to add is if you call your pet back, provide it with a 1s evade (which has a cooldown). This should add additional survivability to the pet by making a “pet dodge” if you will, as opposed to relying on switching pets or running way back to then call your pet back, out of an aoe. More micro abilities, increasing the skill ceiling of any class would be nice.

I really like these ideas. It would improve the whole overall feel of the ranger. I would be delighted to see a non-pet option for the ranger. I do like the Hunter Mode idea with the special skills being affected by the pets you have hidden away.

Something needs to be done to improve pets dramatically as they are more of a hindrance than anything else and I believe something like this could be the best thing for the class.

Thanks alot for the replies.
I really liked your idea, FourTwo.7613. Added it to the OP (with due credits).