Guild Wars 2

What’s your opinion of ranger pets?
http://goo.gl/forms/43PhmcWDyd

A “Stow Pet” hotkey would be a nice QoL improvement for BM specs using Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training.

I’m okay with the way most of the pets are. Only thing I would improve or change is the attack animations of birds. They tend to have very long swooping animations that take longer to hit and is hard to hit moving targets with.

I do believe birds have a longer range on their attacks though compared to other melee pets (300 vs 130). I haven’t made a study of how often birds miss compared to other melee pets though.

Hmm, I was curious about this form you created and was dissapointed. The pet AI is fine imo. It functions the same as any of the other AI in the game with the unique ability that we can actually help control their movements. The amount of functionality that is available from F3 – F1 skill cancel is actually quite significant, allowing for control (at least for me) of 1/2 active skills available (working on the third). Could it be easier to use these skills, sure. However, I do believe it would open up a can of worms in terms of balance.

My issues:
- Pet AI does not use F2 skills at their current position but run to the target (absolutely brutal in sPvP when I NEEEEEED that fear RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE not over there in a couple seconds. Doing the finger dance to get my pet to fear right here right now (especially when I lost my target to stealth) is a huge nuisance and makes playing a ranger at top tier incredibly difficult given the fast pace of the game.
- we cannot entirely choose when the other pet active skills are used.

Fixing those two issues would make a huge headway imo.

Eurantien.4632:

- we cannot entirely choose when the other pet active skills are used.

Agreed. I think a simple fix would be to have the pet “attack” and “return” both be F1. That is, if the pet is attacking, hitting F1 would return the pet to you. If it’s next to you, F1 would make it attack the target. It would serve as a toggle combat command leaving F3 as the second pet active skill (wolf knockdown, drake blast, etc). It could open up a lot of control that you just can’t count on in situations when you need it right now.

Eurantien.4632:

Hmm, I was curious about this form you created and was dissapointed.

I wasn’t aiming for comprehensive, I was more trying to take the pulse of the community on how players felt about the pet being compulsory and where pets are lacking.

Personally I hate the compulsory pet, mainly because I think the whole pet implementation is very lazy/sloppy and wasn’t thought through well at all, eg: pets are basically pointless or are an outright liability in most of WVW.

I also find pets to be really unbalanced as well, with at least half of all available pets being far below the power level of the upper tier pets.

Also, the controls are so poor that – as you said – even the best players of this class struggle to make best use of the available skills.

Would it really be too much to ask if AOE pet skills used the same targeting reticle that players use to place their own AOE skills? Why are the cast-times of pets skills so much longer than comparable player equivalents? Given that player control of pet position is virtually non-existent in this game (only attack this target, or come straight back to me), why isn’t there any kind of passive/active defense(s) available? WOW for example has passive AOE dmg resistance and 3 entire trait lines devoted just to the pet.

In short, pets and pet skills in this game are second-class citizens, which I’m fine with, because i like the class not the pet, but given its current state I think Anet ought to just make having the pet a utility skill and be done with it.

Survey is missing options… I mainly find the support skills on land pets lacking. Birds’ quickening screech is a skill you usually hope the bird won’t use, moas’ healing skill never seems to activate. Pigs’ environmental weapons can be fun but pigs overall aren’t that strong. Would have been nice with a support pet with ranged attacks. Jellyfish are well designed though.

Eurantien.4632:

- Pet AI does not use F2 skills at their current position but run to the target (absolutely brutal in sPvP when I NEEEEEED that fear RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE not over there in a couple seconds. Doing the finger dance to get my pet to fear right here right now (especially when I lost my target to stealth) is a huge nuisance and makes playing a ranger at top tier incredibly difficult given the fast pace of the game.
- we cannot entirely choose when the other pet active skills are used.

Yup. These and the autoattack failure are my issues.

To be fair, these don’t come up that much against most players, but when you’re trying to squeeze that extra bit out against a good player, it hurts. I could make a Benny Hill video of me paralyzing engineers at max range with a drakehound, but I could also make a video of me getting stomped while being rezzed by 3 players because the wolf fear didn’t go off in the right place.

Edit: I just noticed there is in fact a Benny Hill video post near this one.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Survey is missing options… I mainly find the support skills on land pets lacking.

um, that would be either “skills are too weak/underpowered” and/or “lack of depth”.

quite a few pets are fantastic, in conquest at least where opponents are forced to fight on node. birds, canines, devourers, spiders, felines to an extent. SB is strong with any pet for the cripple spam and daze/stun.

basically Id want control of another active skill (f3), and for the crappy pets to get buffed. I also wouldn’t mind more depth to pet-ranger interaction, like extra boons or abilities based on family and bond with ranger (feline, canine, etc giving a specific feel to the ranger style).

How would one buff crappy pets? Take bear for example as its the most loved to hate. It seems the entire thing with it is to be a tank, however that doesn’t work against other players who just avoid it.

Remember, ‘more damage’ isn’t the option Anet looks at. They already nerfed pet output badly once, so its not like crappy pets can just be buffed in the damage department.

Which leads me to believe some pets are just unfixable.

QoL: Pet stow LOCKED until it ordered to do something, and while Pets are not attacking (just moving around us or even on stow), We Rangers get some buff.

Since this is the only way that keeps us in balance when AN wants to sacrifice our powers on behalf of a terribly stupid AI Pet.

scerevisiae.1972:

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Survey is missing options… I mainly find the support skills on land pets lacking.

um, that would be either “skills are too weak/underpowered” and/or “lack of depth”.

True, that’s what I ticked (well, missed the depth one).

RoyalPredator.9163:

QoL: Pet stow LOCKED until it ordered to do something, and while Pets are not attacking (just moving around us or even on stow), We Rangers get some buff.

Since this is the only way that keeps us in balance when AN wants to sacrifice our powers on behalf of a terribly stupid AI Pet.

This would be really nice. To elaborate I’d envision the pet in this scenario working out something like a Signet in that different pet families would offer a passive buff when stowed so that in environments where pets are useless and/or a liability you’re no penalized for bringing your Ranger. Also something like this could be a trait instead of a base-level passive.

Ranger is my favorite class, but when the survey reminds me that I can choose only 3 shortcomings it makes me chuckle. Nice survey, mice.

Gotejjeken.1267:

How would one buff crappy pets? Take bear for example as its the most loved to hate. It seems the entire thing with it is to be a tank, however that doesn’t work against other players who just avoid it.

Remember, ‘more damage’ isn’t the option Anet looks at. They already nerfed pet output badly once, so its not like crappy pets can just be buffed in the damage department.

Which leads me to believe some pets are just unfixable.

There are many other things that can be improved that are not just damage bumps. Eg: the notion of a pet family-specific buff or “aspect”, eg: what if the “bear aspect” allowed 15% of incoming damage to the ranger to be re-directed to the pet? That’s one way to make tank pets relevant across both PVE and PVP.

There’s a ton more that could be done along the lines of species-specific perks.

For instance, why shouldn’t birds be able to attack enemies on walls? Or spiders be able to path directly up wall geometry. It’s not like these things aren’t particularly hard to implement or anything, they just haven’t seen fit to do it.

Feline pets ought to be innately faster than other pets, because, well that’s what they do.

Bears ought to hit like a truck, but be slower to compensate.