Guild Wars 2

Just a few compiled ideas to make Pet’s more viable / survivable. I had to get this off my chest.

• Pet’s are not effected by Agony // OR // Pet’s get 100% of the Ranger’s Agony Resistance
• Pet’s are not effected by “unfair” Boss Mechanics such as the worms on Phase 1 on Giganticus Lupicus in Arah or The Big Boss’ laser eye beam in Fractals. (To add on this, sometime’s the Big Boss in Fractals will target your pet over and over and over, even when your pet is dead.)
• Pet’s take 60% less damage from AOE’s
• Pet’s receive a percentage of the Ranger’s stats (unsure of how much).
• Lower the pet swap CD on dead pets to 45 seconds (currently at 60 seconds)
• Give us an ability to resurrect our pets (EXAMPLE : A utility skill or something we can Trait for)
• Further improve on letting our pet’s attack moving targets (which I know is being worked on).
• Allow us to “Stow Pet” permanently if we choose to (To add on this idea, all Ranger’s can Stow their Pet’s permanently if they choose to, but let us spec for a Trait that will increase our damage while our pet is Stowed. Obviously put a CD on Stow Pet (IE: 45 seconds). This way, it gives player’s more breathing room and versatility with their builds and play style. People who want to use pet’s can use their pets, but people who don’t can trait for stowing their pet. Everyone wins!)
• Give us full access to our Pet’s bars. “Attack, F2, Follow” is not enough. Let us have access to our other pet’s abilities so we may use them when the Ranger want’s to use them, not when the pet “feels like it.”
• Make our Pet’s F2 skills instant or atleast close to instant. Some of the animations take far too long to cast and it makes it really clunky to use.

Feel free to add more ideas. Personally, my biggest pet peeve about pets is their lack of survivability in Dungeon’s and WvWvW.

Honestly, if Anet hasn’t already been alerted about these and all the other ranger flaws / shortcomings, it’s no use to keep shouting here in the forums.

At this moment, EVERYTHING that is bugged or needs some attention & fixing has already been mentioned in the hundreds / thousands of posts.

If they really wish to balance the ranger, they have enough suggestions and ideas from player feedbacks on this forum!

We just keep repeating the same ideas and fixes over and over again.
Now it’s Anet’s turn to show some action.

We used to be able to res the pet and then they took it away from us for reasons I still don’t fully understand to be honest. It even worked like player rezing so it would go faster the more people joined in on it. It used to be a pet would limp back to you in the zerg and be back out in a few seconds.

Well, my major gripe is the fact that with full exotic knights gear, my pet is absolutely unable to take any aggro whatsoever. If I send it to attack anything, standing very far away, the enemy dashes straight past the pet and attacks me, even if I haven’t fired my bow once.

Am so bored of my pet dying at the first 20 sec of a fight cuz its get 1 shotted, even my BEAR TANK pet cant use abillity to recive immunity before it takes to much damage.
I bet my pet would do 20-40% of my Rangers total dmg if it coud stay alive and on target.
u cant even call ur pet back from AOEs, first it runs a cricle around the objects in the way (ally, other nopcs) then comes back dead. Agreed Brett NPCS needs Better AI for sure.

Main problems.

pets got to little sustain even tank pets.. or they dont use their tank abilitys in time.

pathing of all NPCs

Long cast time on f2

AOE in dungeons doing to much dmg on pets. like u said give pets reduced AOE dmg taken.

I agree with the OP. I just started leveling my ranger not too long ago and already the pet is my major gripe. I can’t really vouch for “all the other ranger flaws” because he’s only lvl 25 at the moment. If it’s that easy to realize so early on, being new to the class, that the pets kinda suck then something should be done.

If the pet is our class mechanic why does it have to suck so bad.

Maybe make some of the pet signets actually heal the pet (passively or otherwise). “Cool my pet has stability. Now if only he could hit anyone in WvW anyways.”

The command having the pet return to you should be a soft swap (they instantly teleport to your side as if they had been swapped in, without triggering swap effects of course, etc)

Pets should be completely invulnerable and only be useful as extra dps and the f2 key.

At least this is how I feel when I am using my trusty eagle.

My main gripe with the pet, is when trying to sneak around areas and then realising the pet has aggroed 20 other kitten-ing npc enemies. Waste time killing and then get killed by a passing enemy player.

Stow/call pet should be instant or at least aggro should be very minimal.

Substance E.4852:

We used to be able to res the pet and then they took it away from us for reasons I still don’t fully understand to be honest. It even worked like player rezing so it would go faster the more people joined in on it. It used to be a pet would limp back to you in the zerg and be back out in a few seconds.

I remember that. I think they removed it because when you’d interact with objects or whatever (F), and you’d end up unintentionally interacting with your dead pet instead. Same with other players. They could try to pick you up from “downed” and instead of the interact button intelligently interacting with the Player, it’d just target the pet instead. That’d be my guess anyways, it ended up being a nuisance. Though I really think they should have compensated better than putting a 1 minute CD on our pet swap.

Brett.4305:

I have never played WOW. One player had described the Hunter pets in that game as
behaving like a “living DoT.”

From a hunter, how much truth is there to that description?

BTW, I agree with the recommendations of the OP.

This is true for the most part. Hunter pet’s rarely ever died, they had a lot of sustain. I think it’s due to a number of reasons :

• WoW pet’s can have talent points. Different talent points for different species of pets. Thus, you can build your pet to be however you want them to be. This also included new skills.
• Not sure if they have this anymore, but they also had a Pet Talent that would instantly resurrect your pet if it died (it had a cooldown on it).
• You had an option to heal and resurrect your pet
• WoW pet’s took less damage from AOE’s
• WoW pet’s were not prioritized in a lot of boss mechanics, unlike in Guild Wars 2. GW2 PVE will treat a Ranger’s pet as if they were a player, thus your pet is more inclined to die from things that are beyond their means of escaping.
• Buffs (or “boons”) were shared with your pet by default (you have to trait for it in GW2).
• Special skills from a WoW pet were instant and responsive.
• WoW pet’s have a variety of commands to use by default, but in GW2 you have to consume utility slots just to be able to control your pets in certain ways (IE: Stay, Guard, etc)

I really don’t care for World of Warcraft, but I really miss their pet system. Actually, WoW’s pet system is the best I’ve seen in an MMORPG. That’s the only good thing you’ll hear me say about that game lol.