Guild Wars 2

Anyone who has played Hunters in WoW knows how amazing pets can be. This is why I am here. If Anet wants to rework the pet, PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE PET. A Hunter in WoW also has a ton of mechanics attached to the pet, meaning if the hunter pet died, the hunter would be in a lot of trouble.

You would expect Hunters to be weak in this game right? WRONG! Hunters are known for their extensive crowd control, pet utility, and many actually consider them OP! I know this might come as a shock to some of you, but Anet can make the pet much, much more useful if they implemented some things in GW2 pets that were in WoW pets.

World of Warcraft has a large amount of hunter-pet synergy. There are a number of pet-based skills and customization, micromanagement options & multi-role-filling. WoW pets are also very hardy. The pet controls are also very good, and macroable—you can recall your pet at will by hitting Follow (unless you have DoTs on the target, which makes a pet on Assist ignore you >.>), or position it in place for a screenshot. The pet follows tight on your left side at all times in a proper obedience dog Heel position. They do not kitten around wherever they want like they do in GW2.

WoW pets have an ability which reduces AoE damage by 90%!!!! This is why pets are known as absolute tanks in this game when a hunter is soloing. Not only this, but hunters have a cast-and-forget spell that heals their pet 5% HP each and every second, for 10 seconds, and it has no cooldown at all. If GW2 pets had sturdier pets, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting completely destroyed just because their pet dies, just like Hunters would have a major disadvantage especially a beast mastery hunter. GW2 isn’t WoW, so the AoE reduction doesn’t have to be 90%. Hell, all you have to do is make the pet dodge with you -_-

The pet AI in WoW is also so so so so much better I can’t even begin to explain. The fact that pets actually travel AHEAD of where the players are going, makes it so that they get so much more hits in than GW2 pets does, and therefore, increases the pets reliability on damage output. I can’t tell you how many times a frost mage in WoW froze me in an ice cube but my pet manage to kill it even as he was running away CCing the pet, it’s because the pet got a head start. Did I forget to mention they respond INSTANTLY to your commands?

Pets in WoW have so many abilities to have keep up with an enemy. They have a move that increases their movement speed when activated, very useful for getting hits in. They also have an ability called blink strike if you decide to unlock it, it makes your pet instantly teleport to the enemy on a 30 sec cooldown, how amazing is that? Someone just CCd your pet and now it’s far behind? NP, blink strike!

Pets are NOT a flawed mechanic. PLEASE keep them in the ranger class. Just do it right Anet, I beg of you. If you can’t think of ideas, look at hunters and their trusty pets who could own a ranger pet in pretty much anything

tl;dr
1. Give us control of all pet abilities.
2. Make pets respond to them instantly.
3. Give pets a broader range of utility abilities.

they cant change the pet mechanic. theyve said itd break the game.

tl;dr
1. make pets more survivable in dungeons/wvw by giving them AoE damage reduction or dodging with you
2.improve pet AI
3. Basically your #3

If WoW can do it, Gw2 can too. The pet is not just a stupid mechanic like so many believe. It can be a part of the ranger

kiwituatara.6053:

they cant change the pet mechanic. theyve said itd break the game.

It would break the game to add AoE reduction and more skills?

If Blizzard can improve pet AI like they did in WoW, why can’t Anet without breaking it?

kiwituatara.6053:

they cant change the pet mechanic. theyve said itd break the game.

It is what Blizzard said about Hunter pets way back in 2004, when hunters were considered the worst class in the game. Then, Blizzard actually listened to their player base and made the pets not suck.

Lévis.5489:

kiwituatara.6053:

they cant change the pet mechanic. theyve said itd break the game.

It is what Blizzard said about Hunter pets way back in 2004, when hunters were considered the worst class in the game. Then, Blizzard actually listened to their player base and made the pets not suck.

1 Year later…..just words, words, and more empty words

“words are void without deed”

Blizzard cared to listen and took action for their player base.

and what did they merit in return?

Enrichment of Prosperities

Before this praise of Blizzard goes any further, I’d like to point out that the WoW Hunter forums contained almost exactly the same level of complaining about the class. It’s spooky.

Arena Net devs hinted to, in the past, that the pet AI is tied up to the general monster AI in some fashion. And that they would have to fundamentally change the general monster AI to accommodate a better pet AI.

The way I see it, they will have to upgrade the current monster AI and change their priority system to better account for pets. This means that they may have to forcibly set the monsters to prioritize the player over the pet, and does this mean the pet must be ignored fully, or would a BM pet, that would deal more DPS then the player, be prioritized over the player again?

This means, that in order to make ranger pets viable, not only in WvW, every other profession would see an increased difficulty in the open world content and dungeon content. As now, the entire difficulty level would have to be raised to accommodate the pet’s “refurbished” power. This means that overall, the entire GW2 balancing system must be looked over and overhauled to account for the power/difficulty creep. This again WILL introduce a power creep that WILL influence WvW, which WILL put rangers in a bad spot once more.

Rather then pushing for changes to the pet, we should slowly work our way there. One trait or pet at a time if need be. The last thing we need is to have a massive overhaul that ends up setting rangers back to where they were just after the pet nerf.

Mabuse.2879:

Before this praise of Blizzard goes any further, I’d like to point out that the WoW Hunter forums contained almost exactly the same level of complaining about the class. It’s spooky.

Fun fact; Most pet profession/classes does. Especially if they are able to/supposed to, use a bow.

Mabuse.2879:

Before this praise of Blizzard goes any further, I’d like to point out that the WoW Hunter forums contained almost exactly the same level of complaining about the class. It’s spooky.

That’s because hunters in Vanilla and Burning Crusade were as horrible as rangers we have today. Blizzard overhauled the pet system in Wrath of the Lich King.

Please don’t call a game where turning off growl and dismissing the pet before a jump within an instance are the only management that a pet needs, as an example to follow. Sure you have some other abilities, i even have fond memories of eyes of the beast, or having to feed the pet but please, pets in that game are shoot and forget.

Welcome to GW2! Where managing a pet truly matters, where there’s reward/punishment on timing returns and swap pets, where choosing the right pet matter.

when was the last time you brought a ranged pet to fight and walked to a certain spot and “placed” your pet to act as a pewpew turret? Do you use “guard” at all? Shame on you, because the ranger as a whole even though not perfect, is awesome! They even buffed the HP to dumb it down, which i totally was against it and still there’s complaint.

Get that in your head: you came from a “stay out of the poo” and “don’t mess your rotation” game to ACTIVE COMBAT. The business here is dodge or die and since business is booming, why on earth would the pet management be less active?

Dudes and dudettes face it please: it’s YOU! The “fix” is for YOU! YOU are broken!

And those who know me already here’s the… 6th, 7th? (I lost track) challenge: add my gametag, i’m EU, let’s do a <insertcontent> i’ll show you how to keep the pet alive.
Spoilers: nobody takes up this challenge, ppl complaint for the sake of it.

Ariete.6509:

Please don’t call a game where turning off growl and dismissing the pet before a jump within an instance are the only management that a pet needs, as an example to follow. Sure you have some other abilities, i even have fond memories of eyes of the beast, or having to feed the pet but please, pets in that game are shoot and forget.

Welcome to GW2! Where managing a pet truly matters, where there’s reward/punishment on timing returns and swap pets, where choosing the right pet matter.

when was the last time you brought a ranged pet to fight and walked to a certain spot and “placed” your pet to act as a pewpew turret? Do you use “guard” at all? Shame on you, because the ranger as a whole even though not perfect, is awesome! They even buffed the HP to dumb it down, which i totally was against it and still there’s complaint.

Get that in your head: you came from a “stay out of the poo” and “don’t mess your rotation” game to ACTIVE COMBAT. The business here is dodge or die and since business is booming, why on earth would the pet management be less active?

Dudes and dudettes face it please: it’s YOU! The “fix” is for YOU! YOU are broken!

And those who know me already here’s the… 6th, 7th? (I lost track) challenge: add my gametag, i’m EU, let’s do a <insertcontent> i’ll show you how to keep the pet alive.
Spoilers: nobody takes up this challenge, ppl complaint for the sake of it.

Keeping pet alive is nothing interesting nor hard. Using the pet in competitive environment and trying to make any use of it’s damage or RNG gamble utilities is what people complain about.

Ariete.6509:

Please don’t call a game where turning off growl and dismissing the pet before a jump within an instance are the only management that a pet needs, as an example to follow. Sure you have some other abilities, i even have fond memories of eyes of the beast, or having to feed the pet but please, pets in that game are shoot and forget.

Welcome to GW2! Where managing a pet truly matters, where there’s reward/punishment on timing returns and swap pets, where choosing the right pet matter.

when was the last time you brought a ranged pet to fight and walked to a certain spot and “placed” your pet to act as a pewpew turret? Do you use “guard” at all? Shame on you, because the ranger as a whole even though not perfect, is awesome! They even buffed the HP to dumb it down, which i totally was against it and still there’s complaint.

Get that in your head: you came from a “stay out of the poo” and “don’t mess your rotation” game to ACTIVE COMBAT. The business here is dodge or die and since business is booming, why on earth would the pet management be less active?

Dudes and dudettes face it please: it’s YOU! The “fix” is for YOU! YOU are broken!

And those who know me already here’s the… 6th, 7th? (I lost track) challenge: add my gametag, i’m EU, let’s do a <insertcontent> i’ll show you how to keep the pet alive.
Spoilers: nobody takes up this challenge, ppl complaint for the sake of it.

You are so wrong and it’s painfully obvious, while other classes dont have such a drawback – rangers limp handicapped in hint sight, ofc NOT only because the pet is utter crap but for tons of other reasons too ie. traits skills & weapons (which i assume is everything a class usually has[except for visual effects lol])
Rangers are hopeless as it seems, so I’m sticking to my ez mode mesmer to kitten ez mode thieves.

Rym.1469:

Keeping pet alive is nothing interesting nor hard. Using the pet in competitive environment and trying to make any use of it’s damage or RNG gamble utilities is what people complain about.

My Wolf, drakdhound, spider, Raven, a bunch of pigs, drakes and moas want to have a word with you. Plus i’m pretty sure i’ve had ppl hammering their desks when i train some of these with Malicious training.

Sasajoe.1509:

You are so wrong and it’s painfully obvious, while other classes dont have such a drawback – rangers limp handicapped in hint sight, ofc NOT only because the pet is utter crap but for tons of other reasons too ie. traits skills & weapons (which i assume is everything a class usually has[except for visual effects lol])
Rangers are hopeless as it seems, so I’m sticking to my ez mode mesmer to kitten ez mode thieves.

Funny my mesmer never made it past lvl 50ish and got deleted while my thief still sittin at 20ish for the longest.

Painfully obvious is that we all have different tastes perception and abilities.

The mistake is to force our opinion into constitute fact.

Ariete.6509:

Please don’t call a game where turning off growl and dismissing the pet before a jump within an instance are the only management that a pet needs, as an example to follow. Sure you have some other abilities, i even have fond memories of eyes of the beast, or having to feed the pet but please, pets in that game are shoot and forget.

The irony of this is that while WoW is ages old and the gameplay is stale like that, pets in that game are still in a better place than in GW2.

Ariete.6509:

Welcome to GW2! Where managing a pet truly matters, where there’s reward/punishment on timing returns and swap pets, where choosing the right pet matter.

I somewhat agree, however the lack of response to the F2 command is the main issue. How I would love to be able to reliably use a wolf’s howl to fear a thief out of his shadow refuge. I did that once y’know. By chance (I cast the command before the thief hit his shadow refuge.) It was beautiful. I tried to do it again in the same fight. My pet responded by the time the shadow refuge was already gone.

Ariete.6509:

when was the last time you brought a ranged pet to fight and walked to a certain spot and “placed” your pet to act as a pewpew turret? Do you use “guard” at all?

Ranged pets? WvW zerging as usual. The spider’s poison field actually comes in handy every once in a blue moon. Using “Guard!”? Please don’t tell me you use this for anything other than triggering Nature’s Voice. I need my utility slots for y’know… utility. And frankly, the last time I did use it my pet still strayed about 3x its’ range away from the designated area to chase its’ target around.

Ariete.6509:

Get that in your head: you came from a “stay out of the poo” and “don’t mess your rotation” game to ACTIVE COMBAT. The business here is dodge or die and since business is booming, why on earth would the pet management be less active?

You nailed it buddy. Now let’s talk about making our pets dodge.

My current spec has guard to trigger nature’s voice with the bonus 6 from soldier runes.

The moving turret was more pve inspired although after its nerf to wall climbing and reduced range it became not worth it EDIT:for any tactical use other than the shout trigger in wvw.

Our pets don’t dodge but we can give them protection on our dodge with a minor trait, at least the glass is half full

I don’t know why the guys think that when a thief kills me on my ranger I ( or any other ranger ) have/s no skill

& then the same thief i wtf stomp with my mesmer… i don’t think the problem is in the skill level though.

In the same manner thieves say most rangers are noobs (because thieves are op actually) should i claim the same – thieves are noobs – when i kitten them with my mesmer ? People are so stupid these days

Lévis.5489:

Mabuse.2879:

Before this praise of Blizzard goes any further, I’d like to point out that the WoW Hunter forums contained almost exactly the same level of complaining about the class. It’s spooky.

That’s because hunters in Vanilla and Burning Crusade were as horrible as rangers we have today. Blizzard overhauled the pet system in Wrath of the Lich King.

It did improve, but the whining in the forums continued at the same level.

Ariete.6509:

Please don’t call a game where turning off growl and dismissing the pet before a jump within an instance are the only management that a pet needs, as an example to follow. Sure you have some other abilities, i even have fond memories of eyes of the beast, or having to feed the pet but please, pets in that game are shoot and forget.

I take it you were never a PvPer with your hunter. Abilities like Bad Manners (monkey stun), Ankle Crack (crocolisk cripple), and Roar of Sacrifice (that could prevent crits on you or any ally) were essential to battleground and arena play. If you weren’t casting abilities like these, you were only playing half your hunter. And you would lose to a decent opponent, since you needed every move.

For good examples, see this clip (starting at 5:00) and note the phrase “instantly monkey stun” among others.

Oh, and “guard” is great for completing events while you make a cup of tea.

Oh no, take me as a player who only played Hybrids in WOW. What i know of the hunter is by ear, long talks with a friend that mained one
. The other thing i came to know was that hunter pets could potentilly bring any buff a raid team needed. Also i believe spiders were important choices due to web snare and being in the class of tenacity, but i believe we digress…

Not really a digression. You made me explicitly point out how WoW pets were superior (useful to the thread) but also point out how WoW hunter players whined all the time even so (relevant, because MMO design should never be controlled by user forums). I have thoughts about why this is the case, but that really would be a digression!

I just hope some day my Magikarp will have something besides splash ._.

Ariete.6509:

And those who know me already here’s the… 6th, 7th? (I lost track) challenge: add my gametag, i’m EU, let’s do a <insertcontent> i’ll show you how to keep the pet alive.
Spoilers: nobody takes up this challenge, ppl complaint for the sake of it.

People don’t want to take up this “challenge” of yours because pet management is not hard at all, so i have no idea why you keep acting as if it is.

It’s bizarre, in a lot of threads that contain different suggestions to fix the pet, here you are, coming in with the same stuff, telling people need to learn about pet management and that the fix for pets is down to the player and not Anet, even though Anet themselves confirmed pets need fixing, but they do no know when or how they can fix the issue.

Dudes and dudettes face it please: it’s YOU! The “fix” is for YOU! YOU are broken!

Hilarious.

Crossfire you are right, stupid people everywhere.

[quote=3455700;CrossFire.8037:]

CrossFire.8037:

People don’t want to take up this “challenge” of yours because pet management is not hard at all, so i have no idea why you keep acting as if it is.

It’s bizarre, in a lot of threads that contain different suggestions to fix the pet, here you are, coming in with the same stuff, telling people need to learn about pet management and that the fix for pets is down to the player and not Anet, even though Anet themselves confirmed pets need fixing, but they do no know when or how they can fix the issue.

Thank you! I know it isn’t!!! Then why does op bring yet again the reduced aoe and this time… bravo! But why ask for “only” 90%, oh hell let’s settle for a 100% damage reduction.

Who am i to quote mine Anet, but i believe the admitance was in regard of F2 responsiveness… but hey who cares what i think, since even for that undeniable issue i found a few tricks to lessen the frustration and even making them work reliably.

in this thread: some players argue that gw2 pets are good.

in this game: gw2 pets cannot hit moving targets and are insta melted when zerging. They are instant killed by a large amount of dungeon bosses because of one shot mechanics, and suffer on dungeon trash because of cleave.

GW2 did a lot of amazingly good things, but did pets worse than any previous major MMO. Dead horse is dead horse.

lol i remember, i played wow when hunters sucked, to be honest i stopped playing just before lich king arrival so i never saw the new changes to ranger and such, not many of them. But yea the Hunter forums were full of complains, riots, protesting and everything. Even famous rangers at the time with 2k+ arena rating protested and got banned, forgot the name of the guy. When he got banned the forums became crazy with spam and messages to free him lol, it was caos. But i think all was worth it, AoE dmg reduction (i played at that time and did saw that change) were very nice, dont know why Anet cant implement something similar, would probably fix a lot of wvw problems with pets and dungeons.

Someone once said that they’ll fix ranger pets when they can find a way to charge us real money for it. Back then, I thought he/she was joking. Well, here we are 17-18ish months after release and I honestly think they may be right.

While I despise all this ranger doom n’ gloom on the forum, pets could use some changes or even a revamp.

If we are to be a real pet based class, then pets should be strong (and I mean strong) plus having more than 1 skill for utility on a long cd. I wouldn’t mind if that came along with a ranger dps nerf in order to ballance it with pets. They should be much much more resistant to AoE and have 3-4 skills that add player AND group utility.

(yes I know it will never come and if it ever does I won’t be here to see it thanks to ESO ;P)

NemesiS.6749:

lol i remember, i played wow when hunters sucked, to be honest i stopped playing just before lich king arrival so i never saw the new changes to ranger and such, not many of them. But yea the Hunter forums were full of complains, riots, protesting and everything. Even famous rangers at the time with 2k+ arena rating protested and got banned, forgot the name of the guy. When he got banned the forums became crazy with spam and messages to free him lol, it was caos. But i think all was worth it, AoE dmg reduction (i played at that time and did saw that change) were very nice, dont know why Anet cant implement something similar, would probably fix a lot of wvw problems with pets and dungeons.

lol

Ariete.6509:

CrossFire.8037:

People don’t want to take up this “challenge” of yours because pet management is not hard at all, so i have no idea why you keep acting as if it is.

It’s bizarre, in a lot of threads that contain different suggestions to fix the pet, here you are, coming in with the same stuff, telling people need to learn about pet management and that the fix for pets is down to the player and not Anet, even though Anet themselves confirmed pets need fixing, but they do no know when or how they can fix the issue.

Thank you! I know it isn’t!!! Then why does op bring yet again the reduced aoe and this time… bravo! But why ask for “only” 90%, oh hell let’s settle for a 100% damage reduction.

Who am i to quote mine Anet, but i believe the admitance was in regard of F2 responsiveness… but hey who cares what i think, since even for that undeniable issue i found a few tricks to lessen the frustration and even making them work reliably.

I wasn’t demanding it to be 90%. I was just saying what worked in WoW. I said SPECIFICALLY that because this isn’t WoW, the AoE reduction does not need to be so high, and I’ll settle for pets dodging with their rangers

Wolf Legacy.3791:

I wasn’t demanding it to be 90%. I was just saying what worked in WoW. I said SPECIFICALLY that because this isn’t WoW, the AoE reduction does not need to be so high, and I’ll settle for pets dodging with their rangers

I bet AoE damage reduction is significantly easier to code. I bet one of the reasons the pets suck is that their movement is server-side (like mobs) whereas your character’s movement is client-side.

I grant that i’m probably annoying to discuss with but some complaints are… so pets not hitting moving targets hein?

Well if that’s what’s troubling you, Agility Training is probably a must have in your build for 10pts in skirmish, to grant your pet 30% movement increase. Apart from that, there’s the Signet of Hunt option for 25%.

Although the biggest solution lies in snares. If you think of it, from the entire ranger’s kitten nal, only two off-hand weapons don’t have any crowd control. Besides, from those two, the Warhorn at least has a speed buff that also affect your pet.

The bottom line is that snaring is the bread and butter of the ranger and to add insult to the injury, you also have 2 traps, 1 survival skill, 2 spirit’s active and one elite to an overkill of snaring. Oh and did i mentioned that some pets bring even more to the table. Oh snap i forgot predatory insict got buffed recently to add yet another form of CC.

After all of this, are your pets not hitting their targets?

Please… if they were to add another form/fix/adjustment to make pets hit moving targets, all of these would have less weight than they have now to a ranger.

Make pets like phantasms.. make them scale with the rangers stats and make the BM line reduce their F2/swap times instead of buffing their stats.

SWG pets > WoW pets > GW1 pets > GW2 pets…. Kinda sad when your kittening first game has better AI than your second and there was no MANDATORY pet in the first one….

Also, WoW may have had better pets, but thank god Anet doesn’t balance like blizzard (aka they don’t) or PvP would be completely 100% skill less.

As it has been mentioned, pets are bound to NPC beasts around the maps in a major way. They perform attacks in the same manner etc. It’s been, whoa, is the same in World of Warcraft I believe. However, there’s a kitten major difference : in WoW pets, the attack and numbers are far more important than animation GW2 we meet opposite situation.

If you wish your pet to hit any target, it has to stop (as it is currently in the entire game, if you move during stationary cast, you “break” the skill – fatal design, preventing from big possible aspect of the game, known as “fakecasting” and preventing people from kiting properly), target the enemy, start executing the cast and full animation. If full animation is complete, the actual damage and numbers are counted. Then, pet suffers from “aftercast” when he’s commanded to return to normal animation and skeletal position. And then, finally, it gets the command to move again.

In WoW it’s much simpler. When players commands the pet to do damage, it goes to be in-range (as far as I remember (Cata), all pets are melee. However, most of their crucial skills are either range or with built-in charge move, both totally can abuse all obscures/terrain just to execute the skill) and game instantly inflicts counted numbers to the target, before actual animation ends. Heck, pets in past had even a manner of sliding on the ground towards the enemy during the animation, just to attack it and be in-range.

That’s the major pet system difference:
-World of Warcraft: gameplay, usefulness>looks
-Guild Wars 2: looks>gameplay, usefulness

I only played WoW for a couple months and hunters beat up my priest guy pretty bad on pvp server, at low levels anyway. Nerf hunters I say.

Ariete.6509:

After all of this, are your pets not hitting their targets?

No, they aren’t. Not when the targets are players. Pets stop at maximum range. Even a crippled and chilled player who moves away at all will avoid their attack.

Rym.1469:

If you wish your pet to hit any target, it has to stop …, target the enemy, start executing the cast and full animation. If full animation is complete, the actual damage and numbers are counted. …

This is the problem in a nutshell. GW2 mobs have to stop and have a think. (And they have an ability queue.)

In GW2, you can avoid damage from nearly all mobs by simply running through them. You can run through zones full of mobs without paying any attention.

In WoW (when I played it) this behaviour would get you killed, because the game decided that you were going to get damaged no matter where you were when the animation completed. This sometimes felt very weird, as you’d see the “hit” at odd times, especially when the network lagged. When there was lag you’d sometimes apparently receive a killing blow from miles away. Of course, you weren’t miles away when that was decided, but I can totally understand why GW2 decided to keep animations and damage in sync as much as possible.

Some sort of compromise might be enough, where pets are able to cast on the move, just like players, instead of stopping at max melee range while they ponderously consider their next move.

Kilger.5490:

I only played WoW for a couple months and hunters beat up my priest guy pretty bad on pvp server, at low levels anyway. Nerf hunters I say.

Hunters always used to rule 10-19. Blizzard paid very little attention to balance below the level cap. I ran a priest with a 10-19 team and it was very strong. But, hey, teamwork.

My biggest problem with pets is how bad they become vs moving targets. They’re almost useless. Second is the kitten skills need to be faster and more responsive. I don’t see why they’re all above 1 second cast time. Pet skills should be very fast considering AI are the ones using them. Pets now just feel too slow in movement and attack and I always feel like they’re dragging me down. I need pets to be able to keep with the fast pace gameplay that GW2 was designed around.

First the quote:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Now that is out of the way the developers don’t want to give Rangers more control over the pets. The state reasons include, but are not limited to after on the skill floor/ceiling and it would give the ranger more skills than they were balanced around.

So with these ideas in mind how exactly are they even attempting to continue “balancing” the profession while leaving the core mechanic sub-par and under developed.

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t see why they’re all above 1 second cast time.

It’s worse than a simple one second cast time. The skill gets added to the pet’s to-do list, and only starts when it’s finished whatever animation it’s currently doing. In some cases you can get a fairly quick response as an opener, if you keep your pet out of combat until you need its skill, or recall the pet to cancel its current action. More detail in this video

Mabuse.2879:

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t see why they’re all above 1 second cast time.

It’s worse than a simple one second cast time. The skill gets added to the pet’s to-do list, and only starts when it’s finished whatever animation it’s currently doing. In some cases you can get a fairly quick response as an opener, if you keep your pet out of combat until you need its skill, or recall the pet to cancel its current action. More detail in this video

And then other times it decides that its 25 auto attacks are MUCH more important than getting off that interrupt so they use it 3 minutes later, after the fights pretty much been won…. Or better yet, they never use it because they decided to interrupt themselves by moving and now it went on full cool down, thanks good AI!

The bird pet is the only pet that reliably hits a moving target on time. So it’s a DPS increase on things like actual players where movement is important. It doesn’t have the burst a jungle stalker or the good CC a wolf/boar has, but if you’re looking for just DPS in PvP… then the bird is your friend.

Here is the real fix:

Make pets a mobile back pack with buffs.

Each pet group (Dogs, Cats, Drakes ect.) provide a unique buff. Something like dogs provide swiftness on crit and cats fury on crit… Whatever. Their main role is to haul our kitten around as a function.

Then they need to delete the RANGER title and call the class Archer. Then focus on the class appropriately. Done!

Oh yeah and I’d make the fleshy buffing bags customizable so we could increase or decrease their size and change their colours. I always wanted a lime green wolf that doubled as a swiftness buffing bag with 20 slots.

Mabuse.2879:

Kilger.5490:

I only played WoW for a couple months and hunters beat up my priest guy pretty bad on pvp server, at low levels anyway. Nerf hunters I say.

Hunters always used to rule 10-19. Blizzard paid very little attention to balance below the level cap. I ran a priest with a 10-19 team and it was very strong. But, hey, teamwork.

Hehe I know, part of the reason that game turned me off, its really just pve with some pvp clothing for show.

Edit: Also was thinking, pretty sure part of the reason Anet wants pets to do the animation first instead of just applying damage is because of the dodge mechanic. You cant dodge if you cant see the pet wind up etc.

My problem with the pets is that there are a select few that can actually take damage or regen health without me constantly having to mash my heal skill. I agree with the original poster on the WoW subject. Honestly without the pets the ranger class will be severally under-powered and defenseless. Every ranger class in any game comes with a pet because that is what makes the ranger class (hunter) so successful and enjoyable to play. Without my pet I would have died way too many times to count but with them there it makes it a little bit harder because YOU are not the main focus of enemies attacks. If they could add more to the skill and make it to where you can level the pet up how you want them like WoW it would make that class a little more fun and not so taxing to play.

Ragnar.1546:

Here is the real fix:

Make pets a mobile back pack with buffs.

Each pet group (Dogs, Cats, Drakes ect.) provide a unique buff. Something like dogs provide swiftness on crit and cats fury on crit… Whatever. Their main role is to haul our kitten around as a function.

Yea I suggested this as a “spirit animal” option a few times, its very workable and takes out the headache if you dont want to deal with a pet. They dont even have to change what they have, just put a new area in where you can pick up the new junvenile pets. They give buffs, dont attack and are (perhaps) indestructible.