Guild Wars 2

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Idolicious.6091:

Pet dodge when the Ranger dodges? Who really thinks that is a good idea?

I sure as hell do not want to be the only class forced to blow their stamina due to stupid pet AI or their inability to not get destroyed by anything and everything that isn’t a singular white level 80 mob in the open world. Okay, I exaggerate (only a bit, mind you), but my point stands.

That has to be one of the dumbest suggestions I’ve ever heard (no offense to anyone), and I can’t even believe more than one single person thinks that it is a good idea.

If you don’t mean to give offense, than don’t say things that can easily be taken with offense. Just because the idea wouldn’t solve the problem, doesn’t mean it can’t be a springboard for other ideas.
“A way to make pets dodge would be good” is what I took away from it. What if a button existed that could make your pet dodge roll, or gave it evasion for a few frames (no animation!) It could be called the “Dodge!” button, and every time I used it I could make a DBZ Abridged joke to my mates on TS.

But that doesn’t solve the problem. It’s a cool thought that I can bring up with folks, but wouldn’t solve the problem of pets in dungeons while possibly adversely affecting PvP. Making the numbers bigger doesn’t work either (trust me, we’ve tried)

Giving a on-demand evade to the pet would solve every problem in all dungeons where the pet is instagibbed by aoe. Ar resistance is a separate issue

Robert i’m going to be honest with you, The pet system in general needs a massive rework.

You borrowed a system from previous games that simply doesn’t work well in this game because of the way you designed it.

There is not a whole lot of Diversity in the pets, I mean really you could remove probably 50% of the pets we have and we simply wouldn’t notice.

Our pets are limited by constraints of your PVE system making them kind of bloody awful because everything in this game AOE’s.. and taking your eye off them for a second = Dead pet.

Other games have experienced this as well, and they’ve had to introduce the aoe damage cap on pets to counter it.

I understand what you’re saying about 2 Rangers being able to solo everything in the game if you lowered the damage pets take, however that is because the system you designed doesn’t work at all with previous systems from games (Pets)

You probably should of just made the Pets an Extension of the ranger similar to how spirit weapons were before you gutted them on the Guardian. A non targetable AI that did a specific ability and such. Mobs wouldn’t have attacked it and it would of been far more manageable then its current form.

At this point though, I don’t think you have the development resources to actually rework the Ranger, so i suspect it’ll lag behind the rest of the classes for pretty much the entire games life.

Indeed, well said. Pets seem to be an afterthought in this game. Most of them are utterly useless compared to a few others and all of them are horribly unresponsive.

Is my understanding that this is about dungeon and fractals, because if so if I recall pets in GW1 were naturally infused against the Mursaat’s Spectral Agony and had 33% damage reduction. Anyway is it possible to give pet their own traits like cower which have to be activated by the pet A.I which reduces damage taken by a Percentages for oh let 6sec. While cowering your pets movement speed or damage is reduced by Certain percentage. This way it stop the pet from dieing so quickly to AOE.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.
As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.
Also, I find that a ranged pet does better in dungeons. My typical pet setup for dungeons is Hyena (because having 2 knockdowns and another hyena is super good), and a Drake (almost any). I know this is contradictory to what I just said about ranged pets being good, but I use the keybinds a lot and that dramatically increases survivability when taking 2-3 hits is all you want the pet to do.
Spiders and devourers can be really good to bring because of the fact that they are ranged. Devourers have an escape from melee ability as well, and spiders have CC, which helps keep them alive while you reposition and pet-swap (or return) in a more favorable place. Tankier pets require more management, but once you get there and know how to use it (in combination with pet swap), you’ll find you’re not facing the death cooldown as often as before.
That and you can name your spiders “Cuddles” and your devourer “Citizen Snips” and get a good laugh out of people’s reactions.

Thanks for breaking the 4 month silence on the ranger’s forum Rob, you and John Smith (trading post dev) are the best.

It’s nice to know you guys have tried reducing AOE’s damage received by pets. It’s too bad it didn’t work on GW as this seemed to be the most obvious solution used on games like WOW where pets takes reduced damage as long it or the owner aren’t holding agro.

I hope eventually your team figures out a way to improve pets on dungeons.

Ursan.7846:

vespers.1759:

it’s not a generalization. most 80s don’t do PVE unless it is for the 100% map or dailies and then they are already geared and roll through it with zero fear.

When you said “nobody,” it is a generalization.

1. Not everyone who does open world PvE is an 80
2. Not everyone has an 80.
3. Not all 80s are fully geared
4. Many 80s do PvE for reasons aside from 100% map completion/dailies

Again, please refrain from generalizations. It really does not contribute to good discussion.

it’s called an exaggeration. you know your argument fails when that’s all you can attack.

fact is open world PVE is a tiny portion of endgame.

i think pets should teleport back when recalled. why? because it’s the sluggish controls that kills them.

i recall pets from red circles all the time but only about 10% of the time do they make it out in time. i don’t think an instant recall would make them overpowered.

vespers.1759:

it’s called an exaggeration.

No kitten Sherlock? I realize, which is why I called you out on it. Exaggerations don’t contribute to good discussion.

vespers.1759:

you know your argument fails when that’s all you can attack.

That’s good, because that’s all my original “attack” was. Good that you admitted to hyperbole though. Please refrain from it for the sake of good discussion (Which we are having, happily enough).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.
As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.
Also, I find that a ranged pet does better in dungeons. My typical pet setup for dungeons is Hyena (because having 2 knockdowns and another hyena is super good), and a Drake (almost any). I know this is contradictory to what I just said about ranged pets being good, but I use the keybinds a lot and that dramatically increases survivability when taking 2-3 hits is all you want the pet to do.
Spiders and devourers can be really good to bring because of the fact that they are ranged. Devourers have an escape from melee ability as well, and spiders have CC, which helps keep them alive while you reposition and pet-swap (or return) in a more favorable place. Tankier pets require more management, but once you get there and know how to use it (in combination with pet swap), you’ll find you’re not facing the death cooldown as often as before.
That and you can name your spiders “Cuddles” and your devourer “Citizen Snips” and get a good laugh out of people’s reactions.

Easy. Make mobs prioritize players over minions for aggro so that ranger’s can’t swap aggro.

Really, why do pets or minions need to hold aggro? Is there a particular reason? That’s the very reason pets and necro minions die to begin with and nobody is pleased. If pets were out of the aggro table and had 70% less damage from aoe, you’d see these builds become more plentiful.

Yes, you can call them to you, that only really works for ranged gameplay, since if you are melee the return command does nothing while you yourself may not need to get out of melee range.

What’s worse, you’re advocating retreating half of your damage (the pet is seriously half to 40% of the ranger’s damage, and even a larger proportion of his burst capacity) be constantly made inactive.

No other class needs to have its damage halved like that because they just switch to range if they need to wait for a heal and maintain full damaging capacity.

Even worse, the ranger has no cleaving because most pets do not do conal cleave damage like melee weapons, only the ranger himself who is half of the total damage. So half of his damage is already restricted to a single target whereas a warrior and guardian and mesmer can melee to full effect.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro.

This sounds more like an issue with dungeon mechanics than with pets themselves. Most dungeon bosses are just fat sacks of HP that deal a lot of damage. There’s nothing stopping a team of two [insert class here] from taking down most dungeon bosses.

I would like to see more bosses that require some simple team coordination, like the evolved destroyer in the crucible of eternity. Something that requires at least 3 people, but can still be done with less than 5 if necessary.

Grawl Shaman is another example. I think in general encounters would benefit a lot more if players needed to do more than kite a boss that will 2-shot them. Make management of key adds important in encounters.

You know, for all the grief Simin may cause, she’s the right idea because people actually need to do different tasks while dealing with her. Ditto for several of the Arah bosses. Applying secondary mechanics to fight and making bosses not be sandbags of doom themselves will test player coordination much better than just learning the dodging mechanisms for one boss’s attack patterns.

It’s possible for a really, really good player of some professions to take out a dungeon boss solo. No exploits, just near perfect play with a near perfect build. There is no problem with this. A great player beat your content by playing great. No one cares and it certainly doesn’t warrant nerfs that negatively impact the entire profession, while you move the goal post due to an inability to just appreciate great play.

Now, that two really good Rangers might be able to pet tank a dungeon boss somehow negates fixes that the profession really needs?

I see a trend here.

Stop holding back the rest of the game and eroding it’s very foundation due to an obsession over what a top 1% player might be able to accomplish in a dungeon that you’ve decided that no one, ever, should be able to accomplish alone or in a duo.

We play the game to have fun. Stop designing to the top 1% and start giving some consideration for the rest of us. Honestly, there has to be a better use for your time than hunting down extremes and finding ways to crush them, no matter the cost to everyone else.

I main a Ranger and use an evasion centered build, running knight’s and 30 in beast mastery. I’ve been running it since launch…

I play beastmaster classes in almost any RPG possible and while I agree that making pet will make them entirely broken I think that the problem with pet lies in them dieing to any powerful attack.

Rather then buffing pets, can you tweak some traits ?

For instance the dodge trait, you could make it so the player still gets 2 seconds of protection but gives the pet 2 seconds of aegis. This way the pet can have a mechanic close to player dodge which will allow more player control over the pet. The ranger will have to sacrifice his own dodge to protect his/her pet. It’ll be more of a strategic choice.

Another tweak could be removing the 20% reduction on pet swapping trait and just reducing it for all builds while replacing the trait with something with more flavour. This will give pets more uptime while retaining their overall “power level” without breaking them.

As for Fractals… I really think AR should just apply to your pet or at least pets should have some AR built in. You cannot avoid Agony, you cannot remove it, you cannot do anything vs it pet-wise…

I’m not a ranger and frankly I have no idea what your talking about. But from what I grasped your pets are having trouble in fractals. If you don’t want to unbalance pets for the rest of the game why not give them a special buff when they are in fractals only? Dunno if it’s possible but to me that seems like the simplest solution.

Aegis for pet on player’s dodge, i really like that idea. question is, have devs gone over that at all? in what ways may that not be sufficient for rangers in dungeons? or better yet how can that be over powered?

The spec specific solutions are always interesting but kind of missing the problem.

Dungeon Pet survivability when you spec into it is actually very good. Maybe even too good, if I’m being honest. The problem is how miserably pets perform if you don’t.

Vox Hollow.2736:

The spec specific solutions are always interesting but kind of missing the problem.

Dungeon Pet survivability when you spec into it is actually very good. Maybe even too good, if I’m being honest. The problem is how miserably pets perform if you don’t.

Maybe whatever easy dungeon you’re running. I sure as hell know no amount of speccing saves a pet from ascalonian warriors or mages let alone the grawl shamans in fractals.

I actually don’t have issues with pets in dungeons, and I’ve been playing one since the beginning. The trick is to know what pet to use in which dungeon. For example, Twilight Arbor: Main Pet of choice would be the Brown Bear couple him with the signet of renewal and the team has to worry less about conditions. On top of all that, the Bear category is designed for tanking. Looking for a pet with tons of chances of evasion, go with a bird class (Raven, Owl, Hawk, and Eagle). Great damage, but if they do get hit they tend to take the hit.

The ranger is more about support, strategy, and tactics despite what people want to believe. I find myself changing my pet constantly in a dungeon just so I can be ready for the boss, or I find out it’s just the incorrect pet for the dungeon.

I was considering the idea of pet dodge tonight in a dungeon, then found this forum, what kept running through my head was utility Pet Dodge, give them an endurance bar above their health on the pet bar, no real cool down but what like the players, if endurance then available. Though thinking on it more this would really be a must have utility and would not be as great losing a slot for it. So, now my thoughts lean towards same idea with the endurance bar, but give them another ability on the pet bar for dodge. Place it at F5. It should not be tied to the players dodge imo. I don’t want a smarter AI pet that does it on his own.

Have you tried the idea of reducing dead-pet-cooldown from 60s to 30s? Maybe even down to 20s, so it doesn’t matter whether the pet was dead or not.

The main annoying thing about pets dying in dungeons is that they’ll be stuck in a 60s cooldown, which is a very long time. And switching pets early doesn’t really help, because the next pet could easily be dead within the 20s cooldown on swap. And when the first pet dies, you’ll get a 60s cooldown. The next pet will die within that 60s timeframe for certain, so the next swap will be 60s cooldown again. Which results in being stuck in an infinite loop of 60s cooldown on pet swap once the first pet dies.

I don’t have any points in the BM line and I use two bear pets on “Avoid Combat” (so I can use Protect Me and Search & Rescue more reliably), but even those passive bears often die. I’m talking fractals mostly here I think.

There also isn’t another way to revive a pet than to swap. We used to be able to revive them by hand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s gone, but I think a reduced cooldown would certainly be in order.

I also read yesterday that there was a Signet in the alpha version of the game that revived the pet; or fully healed it and cured all its conditions. This might need to return as maybe a BM trait that does the same thing when you use a shout (followed by the execution of said shout skill). This would instantly make shouts way more reliable. I’m already looking forward to having my pet heal to full when I tell it to Protect Me or to Search & Rescue, because those skills often fail with a damaged pet. The trait would probabaly need an internal cooldown though.

And while we’re at it, fully heal the pet and remove its conditions with the “Lick Wounds” command (in downed state) as well, because that skill is more useful with a dead pet than with a living one.

how about reworking the ranger to where they are not so dependent on the pet? Rangers lose around 40% of their dps from 1)having to call back the pet, 2) keeping him on passive(to keep him out of AoE) 3) when pet dies 4) fighting from walls of keep or tower or fight enemies that are on walls.

IMO the best thing to do with the pet is rework the numbers to the point that the pet is around 10% of the total dps.

how many other professions automatically lose a huge portion of their dps if they make a mistake and time their F1-F4 abilities wrong or for trying to defend their keep?

Majik.8521:

how about reworking the ranger to where they are not so dependent on the pet? Rangers lose around 40% of their dps from 1)having to call back the pet, 2) keeping him on passive(to keep him out of AoE) 3) when pet dies 4) fighting from walls of keep or tower or fight enemies that are on walls.

IMO the best thing to do with the pet is rework the numbers to the point that the pet is around 10% of the total dps.

how many other professions automatically lose a huge portion of their dps if they make a mistake and time their F1-F4 abilities wrong or for trying to defend their keep?

I don’t really have an issue with my pet gone and having no dps; with the shortbow I can easily out damage my pet and more often than not, accidently pull agro from any mob because of all the stacks of bleeding I put on the enemy.

Though as a Sylvari Ranger I have the option of taking root and summon 5 to 7 seed turrets that do damage in case my pet downs on me.

Fiontar.4695:

I see a trend here.

Stop holding back the rest of the game and eroding it’s very foundation due to an obsession over what a top 1% player might be able to accomplish in a dungeon that you’ve decided that no one, ever, should be able to accomplish alone or in a duo.

But, they so enjoy that approach. I could list several examples, but for the sake of brevity I’ll reference one only. The Lifetime Survivor Achievement (or whatever it’s called). There’s an exchange on the forums where one of the developers explains why they coded it so that if you change maps you must start over. He states that it’s a fix to prevent players from cheating death and also a fix to an exploit where a crafty player could use a personal story mode instance waypoint to cheat and achieve it. How many people would do that? Probably less than your 1% reference, yet they used that to create a system that inconveniences everyone (designing to that 1%).

The real funny thing. It was all for naught. You can achieve it with crafting. That’s real survival.

Majik.8521:

how about reworking the ranger to where they are not so dependent on the pet? Rangers lose around 40% of their dps from 1)having to call back the pet, 2) keeping him on passive(to keep him out of AoE) 3) when pet dies 4) fighting from walls of keep or tower or fight enemies that are on walls.

IMO the best thing to do with the pet is rework the numbers to the point that the pet is around 10% of the total dps.

how many other professions automatically lose a huge portion of their dps if they make a mistake and time their F1-F4 abilities wrong or for trying to defend their keep?

QFT.

There’s no future for this game as an e-sport if you expect viewers to spectate a bot. The more you tip the ratio towards the pet, the more imbalance, randomness and skill debasement you introduce to the meta. That is not skill. That is not exciting to watch. You guys are shooting yourself in the foot not just with the community but with your end goal.

Make pets change your attack style, change your stats, do combos, CC, a combination of the above, anything but focus on DPS.

Hello Robert!
Nice to have someone from the team with us!

Man It’s been ages since we’ve had a dev post in here. Keep it up!

Robert, I hope you read this. You can skip most of it and just read the first paragraph.
I have a Ranger and I like him a lot, but there are many many bugs.
I know devs are working at it, but could you mind asking one of them (possibly one who has to do with ranger bug fixes) to make a post where he states what bugs they’re currently aware of and what bugs will get attention?
We have a big list of bugs here, but almost no dev posts in there and we don’t know what the devs really see as a bug and we don’t know what is currently in the work.

Before your post here, a pretty long time (months afaik) no dev posted here and we (or at least I) feel a bit like getting ignored (meaning most bugs from the start of the game are still here), this is no offense, i’d just be (and many others probably too) very happy to see a post and see what devs know from the bugs and what they’re working on.

Personally I think most urgent bugs have to do with our pet:
Things like Search and Rescue not working, Pet being very slow when called back, Pet not evading, no AR for my Pet, F2 Skills take up to 5 Second, Lick Wounds doesn’t always work etc
One bug that could’ve been easily fixed long time ago was the AR for pets. Pets are a class mechanic. And they’re not meant to die (like mesmers illusions). Just share the AR with the player and that would be fine. (even though they’ll still be dead most of the time in boss battles, but at least not from agony)

Instead of focusing solely on pet survivability, would making it possible for us to revive our pet in some way other than swapping help the problem or break the system? It seems like a ranger would care about his pet and not just ignore it when it is downed.

I would like to have the guard shout switched into a shout that makes your pet dash to you and then you pick it up (similar to a engineer kit or something). While being held your pet heals out of downed state. This also could let you carry your pet through areas where the ai pathing causes problems. Of course picking up a pet would look weird on asura probably, and the animations and stuff to be added are probably too much to be added at this point so this is not a serious suggestion.

Another thing that comes to mind is putting a pet avoidance mechanic on the signet of the hunt. It may be because I am a noob, but that signets active does not seem noticeable or worth losing the speed for activating most of the time. If activating it gave your pet a dodge or aegis or something it seems like it could help in higher dungeons without affecting other areas much.

Mr. Hrouda just did a wonderful job giving us a framework for discussion.
Let’s try and stay within those limits, to try and keep the discussion productive.
I’ll try and summarize what I’ve caught for clarity;

- Must improve survivability in high dodge/kite situations like Dungeons, without improving the survivability in low dodge/kite situations like open-world PvE.

- Can’t involve changing or adding a statistic across the board (AOE reduction), the solution should try to involve Player Actions, Mechanics, AI, etc.

- Pet Mechanics must be the same across all game-modes.

mr horuda i have a question, you mention pets having condition damage or rangers having condition damage but this leads me to think of something

pets have 0 critical damage and 0 condition damage

why is this? why is there no way for pets to get more condition damage on their page
why cant pets get some of the stats the ranger has for example condition or crit damage

only some not all, it would greatly help the pets who love ocondition damage such as eagle or devourer

What I’m getting from Robert’s responses is that the only solution comes from the player managing the pet better and the solution to the pet might come from better management tools.

However pet management already requires additional effort for no benefit compared to other classes. I’m fine with common sense management like not sending your pet into dangerous situations, but making us babysit the pet like some people seem to want, constantly recalling it to avoid attacks or using a separate dodge button like was suggested, is not the answer.

Pets actually aren’t too bad most of the problems stem from them dying to high dmg non-aoe attacks, or aoe projectiles that often require dodging to dodge (also and agony).

Having pets run out of aoe circles would not fix the aoe projectiles as the dmg happens too fast, having pets flank the opponent could work on non-aoe dmg but could be OP in pvp.

I do wish I could have an option to set my pet on a mode (not guard or avoid combat that would prevent it from running into aoe so I don’t have to macro as much)

Edit: Having pets dodge would only create more problems and is not a good idea.

rynkusu.2035:

The ranger is more about support, strategy, and tactics despite what people want to believe. I find myself changing my pet constantly in a dungeon just so I can be ready for the boss, or I find out it’s just the incorrect pet for the dungeon.

Lol nope. Ranger is all about gimping your team in every possible scenario. Ranger is the only prof without ANY unique strengths. I say that with over 700 hours on mine. All explorable dungeons, and extensive tpvp and wvw experience.

I just want to say THANKS for at least talking about ranger / pets issues!

It’s nice to know you guys are working on the case :-)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. ……

……As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.

Hi Robert,

Thank you for taking time to answer this problem to us.
Let me ask you few question and share my opinion for a bit.

On the first part of the quote:
Why is it a problem if a ranger can actually 2 man a boss in a dungeon. With only the pet holding the aggro for 2 player would take ages to finish off a boss and still what is the reward for it? Nothing. They still only get the same reward for finishing a dungeon like they would get with 5 player.
In the other hand. I spend most of the time in WvW. Pets melt there from AOE in 1 second even in “not aggressive” mode. There is no chance to manage them if you fight trough a 40 man zerg. And this way you not just loosing the 40% of your dmg but their F2 ability aswell.

On the second part of the quote.
It is great. We are managing the pet. We learn it. I can call it back anytime, i have it locked on my mouse. BUT the main problem again: While every other class can use their full power/DPS on a boss i have to swap (new pet run into fight – 2 sec) or call back my pet from action ( if swap is on CD) loosing again a quite big part of my DPS until i can swap again or until my pet regenerates up. This could last in an unfortunate situation a 12-60 sec serious DMG loss comparing to other classes. I am not a whiner but how is this fair?

BR Gabe

Robert Hrouda.1327:

“A way to make pets dodge would be good” is what I took away from it. What if a button existed that could make your pet dodge roll, or gave it evasion for a few frames (no animation!) It could be called the “Dodge!” button, and every time I used it I could make a DBZ Abridged joke to my mates on TS.

I wonder if this could be automated…
…Pets could secretly have an endurance bar just like playars (and subject to the vigor buff too, giving them better synergy opportunities). Then if the pet has at least 1 bar of endurance, when it would be hit by an AoE it automatically avoids it without animation and spending 1 bar of endurance and gaining 1 second of evade results. The nice thing about automated but limited dodges is it works well for Necros who cannot manually control a whole swarm of pets.

Another idea if you want constant player management of ranger pets is to use the aggressive/passive toggle. While agressive they act like they do now. While passive they get MASSIVE AoE resistance (like 70%-80%). That way if you see or know an AoE is comming you can stand them down to avoid it, and click the same button to put them back into action.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Ursan.7846:

Anyways Robert, I’m assuming there’s just technical limitations with the program when trying to apply AR to your pet? Or do you not want to do that. If so, may I ask why?

I’m of the opinion that your pet and summon should share the master’s AR. That seems like the simplest most straight-forward solution. We all agree the AR is a problem that has potential fixes, it’s just figuring out how best to fix it and making sure whatever we choose works.

AR RESIST It should probably be 5-10 AR higher than the Masters as pets/minions can’t choose to actively heal through the damage like players can. But I agree it should be linked to the Masters AR.

PET DODGE A dodge on F3 Callback, with some kind of internal cooldown (possibly modified by vigor) to stop spamming might well be a good way of dealing with the issue. We are already used to using callback defensively to attempt to get our pets out of circles (though due to it waiting for the current attack to finish makes it less than optimal), so having it do a dodge would feel natural to Rangers. It would work very cleanly in the framework laid out. (IE. No new key to learn etc.)

Note: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to F3 Callback while it’s on cooldown, just you wouldn’t get the Dodge component if you did.

STOWING PETS If you were going to alter Stow, I feel the easiest solution would be to stop the pet popping out when you take damage if it’s set to passive (blue dove icon). But have it act as it currently does (popping out when you take damage) if set to aggressive (red icon).

LACK OF KEYBINDING I would also love to be able to keybind the Change Mode and Stow on my pet. It’s a real pain trying to hit a tiny icon on the screen when you need it, especially as nothing else needs you to click on screen.

RELIABILITY Currently certain skills like Lick Wounds & Search and Rescue are fairly unreliable in dungeons, I don’t even use S&R on my bar any more, as your pet will rush off and heal NPCs, or just fail to do anything due to rough ground.

In a team situation having some of our best team support so unreliable makes us much less desirable.

POOR SUPPORT A similar issue is present with Spirits which are generally seen to be poorer than other classes team support like Shouts (not our Shouts as they are pet buffs more than anything else), As they generally die very fast and don’t give significant buffs while they are out. This leads to them being rarely used in Dungeons at all.

Nike.2631:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

_It could be called the “Dodge!” button, and every time I used it I could make a DBZ Abridged joke to my mates on TS.

I wonder if this could be automated…

Is there a way to keybind an audio recording?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.
As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.
Also, I find that a ranged pet does better in dungeons. My typical pet setup for dungeons is Hyena (because having 2 knockdowns and another hyena is super good), and a Drake (almost any). I know this is contradictory to what I just said about ranged pets being good, but I use the keybinds a lot and that dramatically increases survivability when taking 2-3 hits is all you want the pet to do.
Spiders and devourers can be really good to bring because of the fact that they are ranged. Devourers have an escape from melee ability as well, and spiders have CC, which helps keep them alive while you reposition and pet-swap (or return) in a more favorable place. Tankier pets require more management, but once you get there and know how to use it (in combination with pet swap), you’ll find you’re not facing the death cooldown as often as before.
That and you can name your spiders “Cuddles” and your devourer “Citizen Snips” and get a good laugh out of people’s reactions.

I really liked the GW1 pet system.

Since we do get"juvenile" pets. How about letting them lvl up, with their own trait system? Also i wouldn’t mind their survivability, if we could get some pet rezz skills or a player trait that allows for pets to rezz in certain conditions.
i guess we will never see these changes, because it would be a too big change. But i would prefer to be able to “train” your pet and change it’s offense/defense into a certain direction. pet armor/trinkets would also be similar.

Buff the pets. So what if this leads to 2 rangers going into dungeons for hours and hours on end completing it by themselves? It’s not a big deal. Warriors can already solo dungeons. The benefits of buffing pets far outweigh the cons. I say it again, so what if 2 rangers want to sweat it out in a dungeon for hours and hours on end just by themselves.

Ratty.5176:

PET DODGE A dodge on F3 Callback, with some kind of internal cooldown (possibly modified by vigor) to stop spamming might well be a good way of dealing with the issue. We are already used to using callback defensively to attempt to get our pets out of circles (though due to it waiting for the current attack to finish makes it less than optimal), so having it do a dodge would feel natural to Rangers. It would work very cleanly in the framework laid out. (IE. No new key to learn etc.)

Note: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to F3 Callback while it’s on cooldown, just you wouldn’t get the Dodge component if you did.

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STOWING PETS If you were going to alter Stow, I feel the easiest solution would be to stop the pet popping out when you take damage if it’s set to passive (blue dove icon). But have it act as it currently does (popping out when you take damage) if set to aggressive (red icon).

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LACK OF KEYBINDING I would also love to be able to keybind the Change Mode and Stow on my pet. It’s a real pain trying to hit a tiny icon on the screen when you need it, especially as nothing else needs you to click on screen.

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RELIABILITY Currently certain skills like Lick Wounds & Search and Rescue are fairly unreliable in dungeons, I don’t even use S&R on my bar any more, as your pet will rush off and heal NPCs, or just fail to do anything due to rough ground.

In a team situation having some of our best team support so unreliable makes us much less desirable.

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POOR SUPPORT A similar issue is present with Spirits which are generally seen to be poorer than other classes team support like Shouts (not our Shouts as they are pet buffs more than anything else), As they generally die very fast and don’t give significant buffs while they are out. This leads to them being rarely used in Dungeons at all.

This is an excellent place to start.

Some other suggestions include

1. Giving us control over pet AI. (Neverwinter Nights did this)
2. Having pets react to red circles.
3. Giving us other pets with the F2 ability of going incorporeal. AKA a crab, or maybe let a breeze rider (flying jellyfish) be tamed and phase out of existance for 5 seconds with F2.

vespers.1759:

i think pets should teleport back when recalled. why? because it’s the sluggish controls that kills them.

i recall pets from red circles all the time but only about 10% of the time do they make it out in time. i don’t think an instant recall would make them overpowered.

Not only that, their stupid running about the place kills them too alot of times where you recalled them well ahead of an AOE only to have them bolt straight back into it for no reason at all and die when set to passive at your side, it’s times like that you really start wondering if you actually enjoy this class after all.

I wish pets would be given more health atleast to an extent where they could live long enough to be able to run out of AOEs before dying if that is possible I don’t think this would make them OP unless you have to increase it too much for it to be a possible fix, perhaps this would be a viable and simpler way if you only reduced the heals we can give our pets slightly.

Secondly I would be very happy if some of the petdamage would be tranferred to the ranger having overall the same damage capability only more from the ranger and less from the pet I don’t think that would be OP either seeing as rangers likely are at the bottom of the DPS chart as it is they would just not be as severly penalized for having a pet that at times is useless.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.

The thing that kind of bothers me about statements like this is when you have devs in another thread praising how awesome it is that people are soloing lupicus…

How about when you stop, and your pet runs 20 feet in front of you for no reason and then stops.

That kills my pet a lot as well, I’m well outside the AOE area, but my pet has decided he’s going to stand 20 feet away from me in the AOE area.

Things like that annoy me, Look at the Squig Herder pet in Warhammer Online, That bloody pet stuck to my side and didn’t leave it unless I commanded it to, It was like 2 feet from me at all times.

You also have other factors that annoy me about the pet as well, Thieves Cloak and Dagger off my pet, I can’t stop it..I can’t even bloody stow my pet to stop it because my pet will auto pop out when I take damage.

My only recourse is kiting back, and not sending my pet in.

All these little things add up and make the pet a Huge Hassle some of the times.

I mean i like my pet, I enjoy how it can take care of my weakness’s in terms of Burst damage for example.

However at the same time, I know what a huge pain in the kitten the mechanic is.

Giving pets even more controls isn’t the right direction to take. While giving pets a dodge is a novel idea, it just isn’t feasible for players to accurately control the pet in a way to use it effectively.

Just make the pets more responsive:

Allow the F2 abilities to go off instantly. If this means they are rooted in place to finish their animation, so be it. But the effect should be instant (or in the case of birds and cats, go off instantly when the pet is within range like it does now).

Make it so when a pet is recalled back to the ranger, it does this immediately regardless of if it’s in the middle of an animation or not. It does this in a straight path. And it does this at an accelerated movement speed.

Ideally, you would be able to remove the recall button and combine it with the pet attack button removing one more obstacle in the way of player control too. By making it so if we tell the pet to attack a target it’s already attacking, it will retreat but if you tell it to attack a target it isn’t actively targetting, it switches targets, we can remove one of the pet functions and the controls would still be intuitive and easy to use.

I honestly don’t know how removing AE damage would dramatically change things, but if the devs say they’ve tested this then so be it. It’s not an issue in other games though, but it’s probably an issue with the threat system in this game. But as stated above, 100% agony scaling would resolve a great deal of the probelms for fractals. the above changes will help with normal AEs.

Atherakhia.4086:

Ideally, you would be able to remove the recall button and combine it with the pet attack button removing one more obstacle in the way of player control too. By making it so if we tell the pet to attack a target it’s already attacking, it will retreat but if you tell it to attack a target it isn’t actively targetting, it switches targets, we can remove one of the pet functions and the controls would still be intuitive and easy to use.

This doesn’t quite work as you currently can use the Attack to make it change targets when it already is in combat. Also I would prefer not to have a situation where I’m not sure whether my pet is going to run forward or back when I hit a button.

Ratty.5176:

Atherakhia.4086:

Ideally, you would be able to remove the recall button and combine it with the pet attack button removing one more obstacle in the way of player control too. By making it so if we tell the pet to attack a target it’s already attacking, it will retreat but if you tell it to attack a target it isn’t actively targetting, it switches targets, we can remove one of the pet functions and the controls would still be intuitive and easy to use.

This doesn’t quite work as you currently can use the Attack to make it change targets when it already is in combat. Also I would prefer not to have a situation where I’m not sure whether my pet is going to run forward or back when I hit a button.

Wouldn’t matter if your pet is in combat or not. All it’s checking for is if the pet is currently attacking the target you have selected when you give it the order to attack. If it’s not attacking the target you have selected when you tell it to attack, it switches to the target you have selected. If it’s already attacking the target you have selected, it will retreat back to the ranger.

I created the same thing with zHunter Mod in WoW. Worked perfectly and made it much easier to control the pet.

just to add to the discussion, I remember there being several good suggestions before.

1. Have the pet rally off of the ranger’s kills.
   - Might be a bit OP in PvE if there are a lot of trash mobs around
   - Absolutely useless in boss fights where there are no adds. (like the CoF P3 final boss)
2. Have the downed pet get hp when the ranger uses a healing skill.
   - Given the cooldown of ranger healing skills, it will effectively cut down the rez time in half if the pet can be resurrected with 2 Healing Springs.
   - Will require Signet of Wild since it still gives passive regeneration to the pet even when its downed.
3. Have a limit to the amount of damage a pet so it can’t be instakilled. Similar to the way pets are in D3.
   - No more one-shots
   - Multiple big hits can still kill the pet (overlapping Alpha AoE)

Each has advantages and disadvantages, just throwing these out there for discussion