Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I’m here to make what has possibly been done many times, but hey, we gotta keep doing it so Anet know that we need changes to the ranger class.

So, i’ve seen a couple of times Anet devs saying they don’t want a pet ui because it’s too micro management and so forth and casuals don’t want/like it and also they want to keep from having one class with too much micro-management. Well…they are right, it is micromanagement but the ranger class needs it. But there is a simple way to get around this. Make it optional! Here’s a simple way as to how:

- By default, the pet will behave like it does now. (Random use of it’s skill and so on)
- By pressing K, instead of getting the pet window, we get a skill UI that we can place wherever we want to.
- With this UI we can deactivate the pet skills to fire automatically and they become manually activated. (Similar to Ctrl+click for our skills)
- Also add commands like Go Here. (and get rid of that useless skill Guard replacing it with something else)
- Also add an extra behavior for the pet, so we’d have: Aggressive (pet attacks targets that the ranger attacks or that attack the pet, same as before), Assist (Pet only attacks when the ranger attacks; yes a mix of Aggressive and Passive but i still feel it should be there) and Passive (Pet does not attack unless manually commanded to do so, also like before) .
- Also allow us to map a key to change the pet behavior and activate skills (By default, they wouldn’t be mapped so those who don’t want to micromanage the pet don’t have to worry about it)

This way, those who don’t want to micro manage the pet can keep that way, and those who want to play rangers can cross out one of the classes main issues off the list.

I believe this will help please both casual and hardcore players bases. Not to mention it’s probably much easier to implement than changing the pet AI which seems to be the only option the community is giving.

Feel free to give your opinion. And of you know of a way to help make this suggestion reach the devs in a batter way, please do/say so.

Cheers!

That’s a pretty good idea. Taking taking over and repurposing that mostly usefull pet screen, that only Ranger have access to, would be a great start. Just change it to something similar to the old GW1 Hero bar and it’d be perfect.

It doesn’t take much effort really. All they need to do is make F1 a basic attack/withdraw toggle and make F2 the primary attack of the pet like it is now and make F3 the secondary attack of the pet.

F1: If you have an enemy targetted and your pet is not actively on that target, attack that target. If you have an enemy targeted and your pet is actively on that target, return. If you have nothing selected and you tell your pet to attack, it returns.

That simple. No need for a UI overhaul.

Now this all said, it really doesn’t make any difference so long as pets remain as unresponsive as they currently are. Until F2 is made to work reliably, there’s no reason to change the secondary attacks from being auto-cast.

+1

I for one would LOVE full control of my pet.

Getting really annoyed when i go down and use my 3 skill only to find out my pet is on a different server.

Since our class mechanic is our pets i think we deserve a better pet hub.
Being able to see Conditions and boons would be a start.

Also i know arenanet has talked about not giving us have full control of our pets skills but least give us something that shows the cooldown of their skills so we can actively play around that instead of always having no clue when they are going to use their abilities again.
Only control we really have right now is the pet will always use their 3rd skill first this works fine but sometimes doesn’t always work out as planned especially when you swap a pet in combat. When swapping pets in combat your pet will stand their for 2 seconds ruining your combo chain or that little bit of damage you needed to get in within those few seconds.

List of Pet hub upgrades
1. Show pet conditions
2. Show pet boons
3. Show pet skill cooldown

(this makes zephyr’s speed only give 1 second of quickness to your pet)

Pet attack on middle mouse button, works very well for me Just let your pet get first strike, and you are (almost) always safe. Pet on “Avoid Combat” all the time of course.

Edit: Just like I played hunter in that “other game”…

Well, basiclly, World of Warcraft pet system. I don’t say it’s bad, because it’s excellent pet management. In fact, Hunter class from WoW around late Wrath of the Lich King/Late Cataclysm was probably best example of how classes like it should work and be played. It was most skill demanding classes of all considering competitive PvP with good high skill=reward system. Throwing best aspects of Hunter class from those times into GW1 Ranger based class would make GW2 Ranger probably most fun class ever. I mean, I don’t mean only bow builds, hell no. Mixed with GW type, we’d be able to have decent defensive, kiting, trapping, hiding, action-combat skills including both ranged and melee when either would be useful. But meh, won’t happen. I’d still welcome UI that shows everything I need to know about my pet. And less passive play, for god sake…

I’d like to thank the devs for adding Hitpoints number to the pet HP bar. I’m hoping they add in pet conditions and boons above their HP bar so we don’t have to click on pets every time we need to check.