Guild Wars 2

Hey all, just spitballing, but I think this would be workable.

Instead of having an actual animal companion, what if F1-F4 summoned the spirit of an animal? Something that would work more like the Guardian’s Virtues?

Say, you’re a new ranger, and you only have the starter pet – then you can summon the spirit of the bear by pressing F1, and your pet brown bear shows up, clears all conditions, and disappears again. As you tame more pets, you gain access to more skills.

The 4 skills would be customisable from the pet menu, but you wouldn’t be allowed to, for example, have 4 brown bear summons at one time.

There would be one for each tamable pet in the game, and I’m basing them around existing F2 pet skills.

Examples:

Brown Bear: Cure all conditions on allies in range.

Black Bear: Nearby foes suffer 10s of weakness.

Polar Bear: Target foe and nearby foes are chilled for 3s

Fern Hound: Nearby allies gain 10s of regeneration.

Drake Hound: Nearby foes are Feared for 5s

Wolf: Target foe is immobilized for 3s

Reef Drake: Target for and nearby foes are confused for 5s.

Marsh Drake: Create insect cloud (poison field) at target foes location for 5s.

Melandru’s Stalker: Nearby allies gain 5 stacks of might for 10s

Jaguar: Gain 6s stealth.

Jungle Spider: Your next attack immobilizes your foe.

And so on.

Anyone think it’s workable?

Edit: I picture the animation being like swoop or maul in it’s execution. Fast, distinct, but not something that’s going to cause major distraction or FPS issues.

Great to me as we would get to doll out 100% of our damage vs splitting it with the AI controlled pet. I’d be quite happy with it.

Its kinda good idea..But in my head is something more than Pets are spirits that attack with F1 and F2…F2 is the same skill as it is now and it summons a animal spirit in x range infront of the Ranger and executes the skill…If you choose a brown bear spirit it will shown up and remove one condition in a small aoe…The F1 skill will execute the same way another skill..If you have Drake it will do the aoe attack,if you have a wolf it will knock down your foe,if you have Moa it will heal aoe…This way we can control our actions,we can have back our dmg and opens so many possibilities.But i doubt this will ever happen,it requires a lot of work and i dont think Anet agrees with that kind of pets…Anet wanted pets to be this way,good or bad they make the game,not us

TC, I would KILL for that to happen. Because then I could go full support with the Stalker, the Moas, and the Brown Bear in dungeons.

Dardamaniac, I like that idea as well, Pretty much anything that gives us control over the abilities, without the handicap that the pet is (undodging, bad pathing, can’t hit moving targets, and our damage is kitten as a side effect.)

I actually had a similar idea as this!

My twist on it though was to have an “Aspect” mechanic.

It would be the same as it is now, where you can only “equip” two aspects at any time (like how you can only equip 2 pets). Whatever Aspect you have active gives a bonus passive effect and +stats associated with it plus an F2 activation.

For example:

A ranger may equip “Aspect: Brown Bear” in one slot, and the passive effect would be “chance to gain regeneration on melee attack”, +Vitality & +Power stats, and like you’ve suggested, the F2 would be the aoe condition removal (and maybe go so far as summoning an actual bear/spirit that acts as a temporary pet).

All bears would have the same passive and +stats. Only the F2 would differ from bear to bear.

And with the ability to equip 2 of these at once, you could switch to whatever your play style/situation calls for.

I think the easiest way to do this from a code perspective would be to add a new pet/pet family, which is perma-passive, but grants the various effects. You basically trade pet offence and damage for those effects.

Since you don’t ever need to issue attack or return commands, you could effectively have manual control over non always-on 3 active buffs or effects (F1 to F3) and a 4th always on buff effect. This pet would be a killable buff-source essentially.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Its kinda good idea..But in my head is something more than Pets are spirits that attack with F1 and F2…F2 is the same skill as it is now and it summons a animal spirit in x range infront of the Ranger and executes the skill…If you choose a brown bear spirit it will shown up and remove one condition in a small aoe…The F1 skill will execute the same way another skill..If you have Drake it will do the aoe attack,if you have a wolf it will knock down your foe,if you have Moa it will heal aoe…This way we can control our actions,we can have back our dmg and opens so many possibilities.But i doubt this will ever happen,it requires a lot of work and i dont think Anet agrees with that kind of pets…Anet wanted pets to be this way,good or bad they make the game,not us

I really don’t care if Anet wants it this way…what about all of the GW1 rangers who want their playstyle back? Hell, does anyone at Anet even main ranger and care what happens to the profession? I tried to like the change, I really did, but putting a third of our damage and cc on something which can’t dodge or block, in a game whose combat system is entirely based on dodging and blocking, was fundamentally flawed. What were they thinking?

Dardamaniac.1295:

But i doubt this will ever happen,it requires a lot of work and i dont think Anet agrees with that kind of pets…Anet wanted pets to be this way,good or bad they make the game,not us

Anet wants to keep its customers, and they’ve upset a lot of them with their failure to make rangers effective. I’m most upset that they won’t communicate with us at all about this…they’ve tried making changes on their own, without consulting the player base, since the game came out. The pet system is currently abysmal. Most of the pets are completely useless in any competitive or reasonably challenging setting, and the rest are still bad. There are no options; you can run a defensive pet and recall it constantly to keep it alive, thus having poor effectiveness…or you can run the pet that you want and just let it limp around dead the entire time.

Ugh no, if I wanted to be an engineer I’d be an engineer, I chose ranger for having my pets.

Granted, I wouldn’t be opposed to us summoning the pet (does the F2 immediately) and then helps us fight for X seconds before leaving, that would be totally fine in my book.

Durzlla.6295:

Ugh no, if I wanted to be an engineer I’d be an engineer, I chose ranger for having my pets.

Granted, I wouldn’t be opposed to us summoning the pet (does the F2 immediately) and then helps us fight for X seconds before leaving, that would be totally fine in my book.

^this is
on the day when pet removed from the ranger is stop playing

Durzlla.6295:

Ugh no, if I wanted to be an engineer I’d be an engineer, I chose ranger for having my pets.

Granted, I wouldn’t be opposed to us summoning the pet (does the F2 immediately) and then helps us fight for X seconds before leaving, that would be totally fine in my book.

I wish this was the mechanic more than the current one though. +1

I honestly read the title as “Pedo ranger.”

I think I need therapy.

Quarktastic.1027:

I honestly read the title as “Pedo ranger.”

I think I need therapy.

You could probably assume the brown bear is pedo bear. :P

On topic, this was suggested before a few months back.

Personally, I chose this class because I knew it was a pet class so it’s gonna hurt my current play style. I like having the choice of having a pet do DPS/heavy CC/light CC/support without me having to change my gear or traits.

But If they do remove it, it’s fine, I’ll adapt like I always do.

Bambula.3649:

Durzlla.6295:

Ugh no, if I wanted to be an engineer I’d be an engineer, I chose ranger for having my pets.

Granted, I wouldn’t be opposed to us summoning the pet (does the F2 immediately) and then helps us fight for X seconds before leaving, that would be totally fine in my book.

^this is
on the day when pet removed from the ranger is stop playing

I don’t want them to remove it completely. I want them to give us the option to play without it, like we had in GW1. There is no GW2 equivalent to about 90% of the bow builds in GW1.

Ok, “Pedo Ranger” made me snort coffee all over the keyboard. Quark, you are a sick and twisted individual – Pedobear approves.

I like Durzilla’s suggestion better than my original one, to be honest – and it would be far easier to code.

I miss being a ranger, not a beastmaster.

We’ve asked for this before, to no avail. I’d be fine with having a trait that did this.