Guild Wars 2

I think much of the problem of pets is the inability to use the skills they have because some were clearly designed with AI in mind. People say “ok, make ai better”.

Why not instead remake skills that the current ai can use more effectively. What?!!?!?! Make stat stick pets? Well not precisely. Make skills that a pet uses whenever it feels like actually do something and are not counter productive.

I chose devourer because of just how kitten y lame it is for a pet. A ranged tank that hates melee, does no damage or any useful cc.

My take on devourer:
Power: 2000
Precision: 0
Toughness: 1750
Vitality: 15k health

1.) Twin Darts: Same except, instead of 10% chance of poison, applies poison on targets below 10% heath and are not suffering other conditions.
2.) Devourer Charge: Pet charges its target foe if they come near dazing them for 1/4sec. Basically the warrior’s shield bash but only enough daze to interrupt the foe. Thinking 10-15 second CD.
3.) Chitin: Passive. Once every 10 seconds the devourer ignores the damage of an attack that would deal more then 10% of its life. If the devourer takes fatal damage it instead burrows for 3 seconds becoming immune and Chitin goes on CD for 60 seconds.

4.)
Lashtail
Devourer Feast:
Passive: While dealing damage steal 100 health per condition devourer is suffering.
Active: Transfer 3 conditions from ranger to devourer. 20 second CD, does not remove passive.

Whiptail:
Passive: Range: 0-300/ +0% damage, 300-600/ +10% damage, 600-900/ +20% damage.
Active: Kick dirt at foe blinding(3sec) them while tunneling in a evasive retreat. 15 second CD, does not remove passive.

Carrior:
Passive: Range: 600-900/ +0% damage, 300-600/ +15% damage, 0-300/ +30% damage.
Active: Tunnel into the ground moving towards your target breaking through the ground at your targets feet crippling nearby:180 foes for 1 second. 10 second CD, does not remove passive.

Basically removed ridiculous amounts of toughness on a pet that is predominately ranged in favor of a guardian’s passive aegis type effect to prevent hard hitting spikes from wiping it out in an instant. Added more stable damage in trade by removing its precision. Adjusted its random poison to something more intelligent. Kept a way for it to deal with melee foes but still not too aggressive since it has its Chitin skill to help protect it. Gave it a passive/active skill similar to elementalist traited signets which allows for 3 types of devourer, ranged, melee-ish and necro-ish.

Id consider this version of the devourer more friendly foe newer people as its chitin skill, aswell as evade tunneling, would be quite forgiving. Still it wouldn’t be completely useless with its moderate damage, timely poison, soft cc in the form of blind/cripple/daze options and potentially its condition removal.

Have some thoughts on the other pets but figured I would start here.

Ty and sorry about wall of text ;-)

Removing the precision and making the poison application even more unreliable means that your changes are an overall nerf. The only real positive here is that they no longer overaggro by evasive tunneling.

I would very much like a melee version of devourer.

10% of health is often less than 2-3k hp which is way under the threshold for when healing skill is most effective.
I say raise it to 15% per shot.

It looks you just pulled out some random ideas from wherever and didn’t consider balance to play a role. Ranged pet’s toughness is good for kiting and body-blocking enemy projectiles.

With a spider, it’s possible to keep it in the middle even in melee fights so that any targeted projectile’ish skill will hit the spider instead.