Guild Wars 2

I see so many people asking for pets to be optional or completely removed from Rangers when a better solution would be making pets good. Pets are non-threatening and that’s the main problem. Send a pet after a real player and all they need to do is walk to be able to reduce the pets damage by 50% or more. Pet are slow, their movement speed is slow and their skill have too long a cast time and are way too small scale. Get pets to be something a player might actually fear and I think they would be in a much better state than they are now.

My Jaguar crits heavy golems for 6k, if that isn’t something to be feared I don’t know what is. While I will agree that pets could use some minor improvements, they are far from being useless like many people here think.

People just need to use the right pets for the situation. If you’re running a longbow build where you want to kite your opponent don’t run felines or melee pets because they will just be chasing all the time hardly ever hitting. But if you are using GS or Sword with gap closers your melee pets can do a ton of damage if you know when to switch them in.

If they where to implement all the changes you are suggesting pets would become extremely overpowered. Can you imagine a traited jaguar or raven sticking to your opponent like glue with skills like sic em, attack of opportunity, and quickness. Or having 2 canines with reduced knockdown cooldowns? Combine that with the damage of the Ranger and having the ability to swap pets every 15 seconds?

If you really want your pet to be the main output of your damage just roll a beastmaster spec. We rangers have a TON of access to cripples, chills, and immobilizes which will let your pet catch up and do decent damage.

You can’t have a class that has it all, you have to make sacrifices in some areas. Do you want a build that focuses on your own damage or a build that focuses on your pet while you stay back and apply conditions and just stay alive.

Most of the issues people are having is because they don’t know how to play the class and want it to be easier. Rangers and their pets can be just as good as any other class in the right hands. When I die to another class I don’t sit there going “Man this is bs I would have killed them if my pet/class wasn’t pure garbage.” I think “what did I do wrong, where can I improve, what part of my build isn’t optimal?”. There is a reason why every competitive team runs rangers as part of their team in almost every match.

All the situations you talk about are full offense; Full zerker, strongest pet, when you fail to mention that you’re sacrificing any form of AoE or survivability in which case, yes, the pet should absolutely be doing absurdly good damage. If a persons literally able to walk to remove 50% or more of the damage a pet provides, there’s a serious problem.

I also fail to see how the players choice of weapon should have any effect on the pet choice or pet effectiveness. Logically there’s nothing that support this, and from a game design standpoint it’s 100% incorrect. The weapon changes nothing in how effective the pet is in reaching and dealing damage to the target. I’ve had plenty of cases where I’d be chasing a target and my pet is just running along behind me, longbow or greatsword. The pet doesn’t just magically appear on the targets kitten if I leap over to them. It’s also worth mentioning, greatsword is the only real gap closer ranger have, and by your logic greatsword is the only weapon where rangers should be using melee pets.

Now you’re going to tell me that the majority of the GW2 community “don’t know how to play” and you’re in the right?

Hammerguard.9834:

All the situations you talk about are full offense; Full zerker, strongest pet, when you fail to mention that you’re sacrificing any form of AoE or survivability in which case, yes, the pet should absolutely be doing absurdly good damage. If a persons literally able to walk to remove 50% or more of the damage a pet provides, there’s a serious problem.

I also fail to see how the players choice of weapon should have any effect on the pet choice or pet effectiveness. Logically there’s nothing that support this, and from a game design standpoint it’s 100% incorrect. The weapon changes nothing in how effective the pet is in reaching and dealing damage to the target. I’ve had plenty of cases where I’d be chasing a target and my pet is just running along behind me, longbow or greatsword. The pet doesn’t just magically appear on the targets kitten if I leap over to them. It’s also worth mentioning, greatsword is the only real gap closer ranger have, and by your logic greatsword is the only weapon where rangers should be using melee pets.

Now you’re going to tell me that the majority of the GW2 community “don’t know how to play” and you’re in the right?

The problem is that you are treating the pet as a separate entity from your class. The pet is just a tool in your belt. It should compliment your attributes, weapon choice, and traits. First, the ranger has 3 weapons with gap closers : Sword #2, GS #3, and off-hand axe #4. The primary axe is arguably a good weapon for melee pets because of its #3. What I mean when I say use gap closers to give your pet an advantage is swap them in when you close the gap its an instant cast. Assuming we are talking only PvP the only melee pets that should ever be used with a primarily ranged build are canines because of their knockdown and cripple giving them a much better chance at hitting your opponent. The sooner people realize this the sooner they can start enjoying the class.

Here are 2 Builds that utilize the pet effectively one is focused mainly on burst damage and decent survivability and the other its a bunker build focused mainly on your pet and apply conditions with aoe and tons of survivability.

Burst Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJAVRnEqQJL2KIusAXLGYPQWFo9wb7YnZUoMWqCZSA-TVSBABXcEACc/hHeAARcBAwS53iKBxTXAmq/AwhAIAACwNvZ28mBO6RP6RP6R7oH9mH9mHtQAmXAA-w

for example: You’re in a middle of a fight with your Shortbow pop wolf fear (600 range) #5 Concussion Shot swap to GS ->#3Swoop->Swap to Jag->F2 Stealth+Sic Em->#5Hilt Bash→Maul. This build gives your jag +120% Damage with ~4s of stun where it can do devastating damage, combined with your own burst this build will decimate almost anyone who isn’t careful.

Bunker Beastmaster:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fnUqQrgWwCWsAVLG4QoaXCXwIwKAeXsHbzexHlIB-TFTAABK8AAow8Xd6GMSFhnU+ZnqBAcBA64IA4xBBQXlgApGjN7PAA-w

Makes you and your pet near impossible to kill through all of the regen from Natural healing, Signet of the Wild, and Dwayna runes with 1200+ HP. Simply stack the bleeds with your SB and kite em around while your Fern Hounds knocks them down and cripples them. If they decide to get too close swap to sword torch and jag or lynx drop bonfire and dance around while they try to hit you through all your evades, meanwhile your conditions are ticking away while your pet mauls them to death.
If you wanted to be on the offensive and come to them simply swap to sword and use monarch leap followed by the pet swap, your pet will be close enough to get its attacks off and you apply cripple with sword. Drop Entangle, if you want a guaranteed Entangle almost every time use brown wolf for fear then Entangle. While they are immobilized your pet will wreck them.

There are two builds that utilize the pet in an efficient way, and they are just a small fraction of the possible hundreds of builds if you use your head. Ranged weapons don’t go well with most melee pets because the whole idea is to kite your opponent, but by doing that you are effectively kitting your own pet. Using melee weapons means your pet has to do a lot less running around. If you want to use LB use spiders, they give you tons of access to immobilize and they don’t mind if a person moves because they are ranged.

By the way it’s not the majority of the GW2 community on here complaining about pets, its a small vocal minority.

Something I have been saying since launch:

Guild Wars 2 with it’s sPvP being the main focus of balance and its dream of e-sport had ultimately done the Ranger and the professions players a disservice. The Ranger was design to have a profession mechanic that is the major focus of the profession performance, but that aspect uses AI function. This feel that the Ranger is now painted in the corner so to speak. If the pet function at the level it was designed to do then the Ranger can be criticized as a “easy-mode” profession or that the pet does all the work.

Absolutely. They are stupid weak and easily taken out by a single AOE. In order for pets to be on the level with non-pet classes they have to be immune to a large portion of all AOE skills like 85-90% damage reduction. They have to have roles. They have to be smart enough to move out of AOEs or move from places that will suddenly get hit by one. And they have to have enough defense and hitpoints otherwise that players using standard single target attacks won’t take them out in 2 hits. In PVE they need to generate threat, that’s the whole point in taming them duh.

I also find it really sad that their F2 skills aren’t automatic and aren’t faster. Have you ever seen a panther in real life take 3 seconds to pounce on something? I sure haven’t because they’d be extinct if it took that long in real life! Same goes for the game. I also find it odd that these cats would have an in combat only stealth skill that one has to use manually? I mean hello they wouldn’t have survived in the wild if that were the case for how they use that. They need a permastealth option outside of combat for that to even be a thing.

As it stands now pet classes are terrible in this game. Is it any wonder they keep getting nerfed. I believe that the developers are part of the people in every game I’ve ever been in who put a stigma on pet classes entirely, that somehow they are all op and should be nerfed eternally. It’s sad too because they could have had a great set of pet heavy builds to add to the diversity of this game but they chose to stigmatize these classes and make them weak.

You’re right, but at the same time, the pet needs changes. Even now, there are still players who feel that the pets need more nerfing.

Pet’s do no need a nerf, in fact just the opposite! There are two very simple sollutions they need to make pets viable in PvE, and that is the following…

1) The option to permanently dismiss and recall your pet incobat WITHOUT a cooldown! This cannot work on ‘downed’ pets for obvious reasons, however swapping to 2nd pet can then be dismissed, but that’ll cost you the usual cooldown.

2) Make pets immune to AoE! This sounds overpowered, but it’s really not. you can still single-target a pet in PvP (that’s not different than having to tab onto mesmer phantasms etc) and in PvE means that pets are acutally useful and not dead 24/7 in combat coz you cannot dismiss them to avoid damage.

A perfect example of this is the Fractal boss “Mai Trin” with her turret phase. My pet ALWAYS dies on that phase because it cannot avoid AoE and is useless. If I could dismiss my pet for that phase, it’d be great, then recall it when the boss returns. Not forced to waste a 60sec cooldown just to have a pet all the time, because you’ll need that when her bleeds kill the pet!

I’m currently fighting Boom-Boom in the Pavilion and my cat is one-shot by any one of the multiple bomb aoe’s on the floor! One bomb takes at least 3/4 my pet hp, meaning if I want to use it’s F2 skill, it needs to be at my side, and even then still manages to die because it cannot avoid stuff.

Rentapest.6503:

Pet’s do no need a nerf, in fact just the opposite! There are two very simple sollutions they need to make pets viable in PvE, and that is the following…

1) The option to permanently dismiss and recall your pet incobat WITHOUT a cooldown! This cannot work on ‘downed’ pets for obvious reasons, however swapping to 2nd pet can then be dismissed, but that’ll cost you the usual cooldown.

2) Make pets immune to AoE! This sounds overpowered, but it’s really not. you can still single-target a pet in PvP (that’s not different than having to tab onto mesmer phantasms etc) and in PvE means that pets are acutally useful and not dead 24/7 in combat coz you cannot dismiss them to avoid damage.

A perfect example of this is the Fractal boss “Mai Trin” with her turret phase. My pet ALWAYS dies on that phase because it cannot avoid AoE and is useless. If I could dismiss my pet for that phase, it’d be great, then recall it when the boss returns. Not forced to waste a 60sec cooldown just to have a pet all the time, because you’ll need that when her bleeds kill the pet!

I’m currently fighting Boom-Boom in the Pavilion and my cat is one-shot by any one of the multiple bomb aoe’s on the floor! One bomb takes at least 3/4 my pet hp, meaning if I want to use it’s F2 skill, it needs to be at my side, and even then still manages to die because it cannot avoid stuff.

Let’s not forgot the fractal with the mad asura, on the stairs your pet literally exists to get you killed. One hit aggros you popping your pet out and right into another of the moving traps triggering a second explosion killing you and your team mates. Then there’s arrow carts in wvw, all other classes can trudge through ac fire and not have their dps affected…rangers on the other hand lose their pet and a major source of dps.

A simple option over the stow pet tab to “lock” it from popping out when aggroed would save everyone so much grief. I’m not suggesting to get rid of pets, just give us more control over the kitten things.

The only “Oh S**T” moment I could think of is having a skill that stealths the player for like 20 seconds so you can take control of your pet with certain skills or changing the “F” key functions so they can have more special attacks (I.E. Running at a target to KD them, then while they are down you can do Cripple/Bleed) Or.. Add Deep wound back into the game and have the pets use it ;p