Guild Wars 2

Symbiosis (Elite): Enter a symbiotic fusion with your pet, becoming one, powerful being.
Toggleable.

Your F1-F2-F3-F4 skills become the 1-2-3-4 skills of the pet you fused with, and you can use them as your pet normally would.
Your weapon skills instead remain the same.

Based on what pet you have a symbiosis with, you get different bonuses.
Bear: +10% dmg, +500 toughness, +500 vitality.
Moa: +15% dmg, +500 healing power, +250 toughness +150 vitality.
Bird: +20% dmg, +500 precision, 20% to gain swiftness on crit.
Feline: +30% dmg, +250 precision.
(these are just examples not optimal values)

This would obviously allow a ton of depth to the class.
You can become tanky with a Bear fusion due to buffed stats/Endure Pain but your damage will be bad, while a Feline fusion would make you into a DPS monster with little survivability.
Every type of animal you fuse with is a new build basically.

I really like this idea alot. It reminds me a bit of a Vanguard Shaman where you would go down a line based on your pet. Aka if you aligned with bear you would have specific traits based on the bear or if you went with a caster type of pet you would be different etc.

Its quite a bit different obviously than shaman in vanguard but having the option to “allign” yourself with your pet would be amazing. I know a few other games who do similar and its a blast

love it, but it would probably take a lot to implement. Bears could grant stability too.

How (if at all) would you suggest this would change your appearance – e.g. would it be like norn elites or simply an aura like RaO, same question for when then using the pet’s skills – would your charachter maul with his half-bear hands after sheathing his bow? would your character do the same even if hes not half-bear? I think it would be ok to have a similar animation to GS 2/3 etc for using these

Seems interesting, how would points in the BM tree alter this? Cast and/or CD? Or could you fuse w/ pet mid combat to save it and then split again?

Would you have to do the dance like in DBZ?

neodome.7401:

I really like this idea alot. It reminds me a bit of a Vanguard Shaman where you would go down a line based on your pet. Aka if you aligned with bear you would have specific traits based on the bear or if you went with a caster type of pet you would be different etc.

Its quite a bit different obviously than shaman in vanguard but having the option to “allign” yourself with your pet would be amazing. I know a few other games who do similar and its a blast

Yeah, bonding with a pet would allow you to control all aspects instead of the AI, and would really make you feel like a half-bear, half-wolf etc.
It would give a more animalistic feeling to the Ranger, along with adding a ton of depth to a lackluster class.

Wanderer.5471:

love it, but it would probably take a lot to implement. Bears could grant stability too.

How (if at all) would you suggest this would change your appearance – e.g. would it be like norn elites or simply an aura like RaO, same question for when then using the pet’s skills – would your charachter maul with his half-bear hands after sheathing his bow? would your character do the same even if hes not half-bear? I think it would be ok to have a similar animation to GS 2/3 etc for using these

It might indeed take a while to code this, but Ranger in a such desperate need of depth and viability that it deserves this.
And animations like Maul shouldn’t be too hard to do, they are transparent and with a very basic texture.

Durzlla.6295:

Seems interesting, how would points in the BM tree alter this? Cast and/or CD? Or could you fuse w/ pet mid combat to save it and then split again?

I think the BM tree should be for beastmasters… those that use the pet for all their dmg.
But CD reductions could apply why not.