Guild Wars 2

Changing the role of the pet – TL;DR at bottom

Please note: this is just a suggestion, and I want your thoughts on the current role of the pet. Are you happy with it as it is, or do you think we need an overhaul like this?

As it currently stands, we’re looking at roughly a 75/25 split in damage between ranger/pet (depending on pet used).

This is a problem. A combination of poor pet AI, lagged f2 casting (which thankfully is being addressed) and generally defensively weak pets means that 25% of our damage is far too easy to disappear.

Rather than saying “oh just fix pet AI”, perhaps we need to take a step back and look at changing the role of the pet.

Proposal: what if the pet was made much weaker in terms of physical DPS, changing the ratio to around 90/10 or even 95/5, and instead shifting the pet focus to being a provider of boons and much more defensive?

The ranger itself would require a slight physical damage boost to fill in for the reduced pet damage, allowing us, the players, to take more control over our DPS. This is something desperately needed. The pet on the other hand would become more tanky and provide either multiple boons or single, strong boons depending on the pet. These boons however would be more viable or stronger than the ones our pets are currently capable of giving us at the moment. Perhaps condition removal too?

Shifting the pets to a support-focus would not only increase their general usefulness and heavily reduce the need for improved AI (e.g. We’re not tearing our hair out because the fact that we need the jaguar to chase the target to provide damage no longer matters much), but it would also pave the way for more build diversity and a better role in dungeons.

Naturally this would require a re-work of some pet skills, and the replacement of some of the pets’ auto-chain damage-based skills with boons. General themes shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with (e.g. feline pets could have a might & fury-based boon set).

I think many of us who main the ranger profession (and who have done since launch) feel that a fairly substantial overhaul of the profession mechanics like this are going to be required to give the Ranger a positive perception amongst the GW2 community.

TL;DR

- pets own too much of our damage and are unreliable at delivering it: we need to take control of our DPS

- shifting pets to a defensive, boon-providing and perhaps condition-removing type role would:

1. Reduce the need for improved AI (no longer require them to run after targets so much)

2. Prove much more useful to the individual and team in ALL scenarios (dungeons, WvW, PvP, PvE general)

3. Improve the perception of the Ranger as a profession and perhaps become more welcomed in dungeons etc.

4. Improve pet survivability, reducing our handicap upon their death during AoE-intense zerg battles or other such scenarios.

5. Keep the pet mechanic central to the role of the Ranger profession, in line with Anet’s vision.

Thoughts?

I think that currently any change we see with the pets/pet system are going to continue to be band-aid fixes.

Your changes would require the Beastmastry tree to be completely redesigned, not to mention the numerous ranger traits that are there to work along side the pet not being effect by the ranger’s gear, nor possessing gear of it’s own.

Interesting idea. I’d love to see how this plays out

@Bran but do you think it would be worth a beastmastery redesign for this kind of change?

That would definitely need to be discussed. I was thinking that in putting those changes in that the increase on pet stats would need to be looked at as the pet in that design shift would no longer need half of the normal main stat, power and precision would be moot.

Then there would be the traits that increase secondary stats (example pet’s prowess of skirmishing) not to mention companion’s might and few other effects.

But if it could be made into a working model (and both the players and designers both agree that it fulfills what ranger is) and the developers are willing to put the necessary working in it then it could work.

Thought driven discussion should have a place on the forum and I thank you for asking me to participate in the discuss, I will check back in with more detail, but now a late lunch beckons me.

Your TL:DR was too long so I didn’t read it.

Thanks for the constructive input.

I agree with your overall reasoning and intentions, I don’t quite agree with where you went with it.

I do think the most successful examples of AI companions I’ve ever come across all serve very clear and specific functions for their master and the gameplay at large, so I totally agree with getting some clarity on the mechanic. And I do think trying to make the pet serve a DPS role is a lost cause because it’s crowded out by other profession mechanics that are honestly just better suited to the task, it fubars power building, and also seems like a bit of a logistics nightmare.

So that leaves a ranger’s pet and purpose as ultimately specializing in either support or control. And I gotta’ admit, when I look at my Ranger….it’s not like Support is the first thing that jumps out at me. You know?

I mean, shoot, even our bloody support utilities have control on them.

I’ve posted this suggestion myself several times.

If they are not going to fix the ai, this is the only acceptable alternative. Also, there are a lot of possibilities to this and they are underutilizing the pet mechanic to a large degree (think of a pet that you can swap positions with, or one that reacts automatically when you are stunned, etc). +1

I agree with the idea. I think the two best…and most realistc (since it wouldn’t take a ton of Anet resources to implement) are

1. Turn pets into buff bots
2. Give option to stow pets…and increase Ranger damage

What they have now doesn’t work…and will never work with the way NPC movement works in this game.

Your idea is very similar to mine. My idea(In a nutshell) is as follows…

Ranger Damage: 90%
Pet Damage:10-15% (Full Utility pets would be around 10% while High Damage pets would cap around 15%)

The pet skills with the exception of the F2 would be reworked to be like the Moa form from Mesmers “Polymorph Moa” elite where each of the attacks will lunge.

As long as the pets close enough to attack, it will hit. This change turns our pet attacks into steady dps where its reliable (Just strafing is not enough to avoid) but vulnerable to control skills (Cripple, immobilize, ect).

F2’s work the same. High damage pets that have damage based F2’s despite having a lower autoattack damage coefficient should still be allowed strong f2’s (Similar to their current damage as of now) especially given that they are telegraphed. That would also help create balance between Utility vs Damage pets and keep f2 based traits relevant.

This would however de-emphasize the BeastMastery traitline, I leave it up to Anet to figure out how to make that traitline more viable and usable, though perhaps your method of allowing the pets to give more boons could be utilized through Beastmastery traits.

I don’t see this being a viable method of reasonably reworking pets.
First off, if pets are supposed to provide support and control under your new system, while bother with the token 5%? You might as well go all in for the Ranger’s sake.

Stemming from the previous issue, your idea basically removes most of the DPS pets, ie Birds, Cats, and Drakes, from the game as they currently are.

In addition, if pets exist solely to provide boons and buff, why not just skip the middleman? Besides tanking, which the existence of high damage near OHKs and dodging invalidates, pets become nothing more than skills that enemy players can target and “kill.”

Finally, the amount of work seems completely beyond what ANet would dedicate to a part of the game that is not Living World or generating them revenue. I’m surprised the PvP is getting some attention next update.