After leveling to 80 with the ranger I have to first of all say that I love the class. I do wish we could use rifles and pistols as a trade off for a torch and warhorn, but what we have is quite entertaining.
I would like to comment on the pet system because after all it is what in my opinion sets rangers apart. We have the ability to tame and control pets, other classes may have pets but we are masters of the wild! We can call on a a very large variety of pets to fit many different situations and I for one love it.
What I dont love though, is the UI. I understand this game is meant to be different but the UI is reminiscent of something from ten years ago. Why should I not be able to control every aspect of my pet? I understand some people would rather take the “Ron Popeil – Set it and forget it” approach with their pet management, but I am certain that I am not the only one that wishes I had a but more control of what our pet is up to.
The first comparison I would draw is from WoW. Now I am not asking you to straight adopt that pet system, but I like the ideas that they have implemented. I can macro pet abilities into my attacks, I can set him to only attack once I have been injured, or I can just not have a pet with me at all until I am ready for him to be out.
A-Net has already acknowledged some of our concerns with pet ability responsiveness, and I am eager to see changes to help minimize the issue. However I must point out that for some reason the pets neglect their other attacks 90% of the time to simply auto attack a target. A great example of this is one of the many Moa’s available. It will auto attack forever, and I can use the screech ability if I spam the heck out of my f2 key, however did you know that they also have a nearly 3k heal that never gets cast.
There needs to be some better prioritizing of pet abilities so they use all the abilities they have. Sure the other attacks go off every now and then, but not nearly as often as they should.
Lastly I need to be able to not have to mouse click over the attack/avoid button. I want the ability to put that to a hotkey for better pet management. Many times I will have my pet on passive so that he doesnt run off into the enemy pack in Wv3. I will get into closer combat with a target where I would like my pet to get in on the action but I have to move my mouse over the action bar and click it…this is not a great way to have to play in higher levels of pvp. Another situation occurs when my target runs back to the enemy lines and my pet gets obliterated…I am no where near the front lines, but my pet chases away. Their needs to be a 1200 yd range on the pets b4 they just turn around and stop chasing. If i cant hit the target, I dont need my pet out that far anyway.