Guild Wars 2

Jaguar-stalk also grants the player stealth

Birds- quickening screech no longer causes a delay

Pig/warthog- forage skill will replace the f2 skill and it is applied by pet instead.

Moa-auto attack increase

Bears-roar radius applied around player instead of pet

wolf/dog- decrease the f2 cooldown to reflect closer to bird cooldowns.

Pets Prowess should be baseline.

All pets should get increase to base vitality/toughness.

Pack alpha increases pet’s stats by 10%.

Pets being killed should not increase the duration of ability to pet swap as it cripples builds reliant on pets being alive (example empahic bond).

thoughts on changes?

Only one I can agree with is the Forage item becomes our [F2] and maybe Quickening Screech. Anet likes their stuff fancy, so the best you can hope for is a reduced cast time on Quickening Screech, or have Swiftness replaced with Quickness.

Good changes, increase the radius of the heal on moa as well , same with the fern hound’s heal

A “bug” (as in unintended consequence to changes) is that Rangers must switch pets out very very frequently to sustain a buff that our class seems to have been balanced around Devs assuming it is always up… This means every 25 seconds, you switch your pet and the new one is forced to run or fly from you to the target. For ranged Rangers, this can be yet another large dps loss as pets take kittened pathing. Essentially, it is a punishment for ranged Rangers using the class mechanic. Furthermore, ranged pets like devour or spiders are unusable because the f2 skill is instant and will only hit those in proximity… They will not run closer to insure skills hit.

An example of the detriment of these changes to pets is obvious in Forest of Nif. Rangers can not take the high ground up top because pets have to literally run down, around, and up the stairs in each pet swap.

… Imo pets should teleport to target x.x

Since theres a thread for it now id like to put one of my own concerns in if I can.

devourer: Its projectile speed is too slow to offset its offcenter flight path. Basically causing it to have hte same issue longbow rangers had before where there arrows could be accidentally avoided without evasion of any type.

It’s evasion skill takes way too long to cast/travel. And the evasion frames are unreliable. Its not uncomeon to see this skill kill your pet more often than it saves it. As it moves directly back from an opponent directly into a well.

The travel/cast times on carrion devourer f2s have the same issue as there auto attacks.

Drakes: I have no problem with some drakes. The only ones I have issues with are the ones with cone type f2s. So Ice/Reef/Salamander drakes. Marsh/River drakes are reliable in there damage as long as you position them correctly.

The cone effect f2s have multiple issues. They take way to long to cast for a melee range skill. There effect is far to narrow to be reliably applied (less than character width movement to either side will cause you to avoid it completely). And even with taunt active a players natural movement will cause the attack to miss. (Player moves to the side of the drake towards the ranger. Drake taunts. Players last bit of movement has moved it to an angle of the drake. Drake f2 misses). I really want to reccomend having these changes to the bolt type attack pattern of the river and marsh drakes. Which can be made to reliably hit with trait support (Zephyr’s Speed)

Birds: Quickening Screech takes way to long to cast when quite often the pet already has swiftness. I’t would be a much more understandable skill if the bird only casts this skill when its out of range of its target and it does NOT have swiftness. Giving it chase capabilities but not interrupting its attack patterns to give itself something it doesn’t need att.

Canines: I have little trouble with canines. But I would like to mention that the windup on their leap skill is so long that a player with swiftness can avoid the attack without dodging simply by running past it at an angle.

A jaguar in stealth is already very good as it’s attacks don’t break stealth. Very handy and doesn’t need to apply to the ranger.

The pet’s F2 should come from the pet so I disagree on the bear part.

Canines are already our best pets by a fairly large margin. They do not need such a huge buff. Fear and immobilize on a 15 second cooldown? That would make using any pet aside from a canine dumb.

I don’t have a strong opinion on the other changes.

The biggest buff they could give pets is the simple ability to jump. Jump down a ledge to get the enemy so rangers can utilize ledges and high spaces more effectively without losing their pet damage would be a huge help, and it’d make kiting pets around ledges more difficult.

Alice.5360:

… Imo pets should teleport to target x.x

I agree. Or maybe a baseline leap added to all melee pets. Your pet’s buffs should also apply throughout the swap. Meaning if you have SotW or “SotP!” it applies to your swapped pet and any buffs are passed on. We should be rewarded for pet swapping, not punished. Half the time 3 seconds of quickness and a few might are not worth swapping pets. If nothing happens, they should add an extra second of quickness. Have you seen the amount of quickness a thief can get traited? 4 seconds wouldnt break anything and would put it in line with Heightened Focus.

Why can’t I use two Jaguars? The same pet on swap. Make it happen. And/Or make pet stats and skins interchangeable. Want a pet pig that has cat stats and skills? In PvP I could see a concern about countering an unknown pet, if it is make it PvE only.

Edit: Companions might should be added as a minor trait in beastmastery.