Guild Wars 2

Kazoo Cherry.7921:

Wow all this talk of pet dodges etc and my flesh golem still stands around and does nothing for about 25% of the time. When are necro’s gonna get some love?

I’m guessing english it not your preferred language but when one arranges letters R A N G E and R all in row that spells Ranger not Necromancers. Hence talking about Ranger pets in Ranger forums is probably more likely to happen than talking about Necromancers minions.

In the short time I’ve played Ranger in dungeons, I’ve never had problems with my pets. I guess I was overzealous in micromanaging them while leveling, but I find it more than feasible to manipulate the pet away from danger, swapping out when needed and properly assigning targets. If one of my pets dies, it’s almost always my fault for not watching out for them. /shrug

I’ve noticed some wild inconsistencies in CoE, however. Subject Alpha’s dragon tooth and earth spikes both damage my pets, but the HUGE overlapping ice attacks never seem to damage it, even when it’s sitting right in the middle of a multi-faceted venn diagram. I’m not complaining, since both my bear and hound can help immensely in regen and condi cleanse during the fight and will pretty much never die, but it would be nice to have some clarification as to certain areas of the game that pets have that sort of systematic protection. At least, I hope it’s intended.

Kinda funny that reason one aspect of GW2 can not be buffed for ranger is because it would effect another part of game. Why is it important to balance Ranger across modes but other classes have received buffs and in case of WvW no nerfs even though they might be weak or OP in other area. Take Mesmers nerfs that “where” to balance for sPvP yet hurt in PvE a area mesmers already was lacking in.

Other games had pets working properly for almost a decade now, there’s no reason for GW2 to be different here.

Of could GW is not other games, but when other games have certain mechanics that are better than the equivalent than the GW2 take on those mechanics, maybe learning from the other games is a really really good idea if your goal is to make GW2 a better game.

Robert said giving pets aoe reduction would make the pets tank bosses in dungeons too easily.
Suggestion: put pets way at the bottom of the aggro table for dungeon bosses, just like every single other MMORPG released in the past 10 years did where this has been proven to be a good solution.

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.

Rob, I would like to join others here to say thanks for responding in the Ranger Forum. While some here (including me) may not like the answers we get, at least they are answers.

I have a question about your concern that two rangers could team up to take down end game bosses.

Why should two rangers (with two pets) not be able to accomplish what one exceptional solo warrior or one exceptional solo thief can do? Without explanation that seems to be a significant discrepancy in ArenaNet’s view of the game.

Pedra.4381:

Why should two rangers (with two pets) not be able to accomplish what one exceptional solo warrior or one exceptional solo thief can do? Without explanation that seems to be a significant discrepancy in ArenaNet’s view of the game.

This. I have even seen devs appraising some players for them soloing dungeon bosses but 2 rangers doing the same thing would result in unbalance?

And why there still isn’t agony resistance for pets in any form? I personally wont touch fractals but it really isn’t fair to handicap ranger in such way. Altough it’s on par with all other aspects of the rangers game, gimped in wvw,gimped in dungeons.

edit. thanks for taking the time to visit the ranger forums though, that takes some spine as this isn’t exactly the most positive part of these boards :P

@Robert

I do not know if you still watch this thread, but if you still happen to check in on it, please take a look at my suggestion for pets;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Revolutionizing-the-way-we-use-pets/first#post1561428

As for pet management, yes it can drastically increase a players performance, but the majority, if not the wast majority, have yet to reach a “level”. In which their pet management come as natural to them as attacking and evading incoming attacks.
I fear that the balance team is greatly over-estimating the players ability to multitask. In an open world arena, rangers have the leisure of space to stay alive. Dungeons. PVP, and especially WvW, doesn’t have that same luxury. Making multitasking stressful and sometimes night impossible.

Bots are their problem not mine so they should stop using their lack of control as a reason to keep the class down. I noticed that he did not mention wvw or fractals where the issues are even more noticeable.

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.

Absolutely + 1 to this, I was going to make the same suggestion. Dodge on F3 seems like this simplest solution to me, either giving pets their own endurance bars or just limiting them to 1 or 2 dodges per pet swap. If pet is unable to dodge, F3 functions as normal.

I think this would be an excellent solution, I just hope the devs actually see it as there are so many posts in this thread now.

To be honest, I think this problem goes beyond just pets. It’s also a matter of the ranger’s traits.
A lot of them are buggy, or simply so ineffective that they might as well do nothing (Sharpened Edges, anyone?). On top of that, the trait lines don’t make any sense. What are traps and beastmastery traits doing in the Skirmishing line?
Wouldn’t traps be more suited to Wilderness Survival?
Why are greatsword and spear traits in Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic?

And let’s not even start on a lot of utilities. Spirits die in a single hit, signets are honestly boring and don’t help your team very much, what’s left is traps and survival, since pet shouts aren’t really worthwhile apart from Guard.

Then there’s the severe nerfs to Ranger weapons during the betas, when they were honestly too strong. These nerfs were needed, but not in one fell swoop and at such a great magnitude. Balancing should be done in more careful iterations. This is something that Arenanet has been lacking in since GW1 (Smiter’s Boon/Paragons).
There’s also the issue of mainhand sword being a death sentence because the autoattack chain roots you into place, preventing you from dodging and sometimes even cancelling your dodge animation. I could go on.

Rangers need a thorough looking at that goes far beyond just pets. But that’s not Robert’s territory.

Bailey.6892:

I noticed that he did not mention wvw or fractals where the issues are even more noticeable.

You need to read all his posts, or you missed the one where he said he was at fractal level 54 with his ranger and understands the insta death issues with the pets.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

On that behalf, would you be bothered to make a video of a few dungeon runs? Given that you have experience in pet management, and range use in dungeons, it may help a long way to actually improve our situation if we can actually see a “professional” ranger in play, rather then being told “you aren’t useless, you just need to work harder”.

It is hard to improve when the few mentors around rather log a different profession, or simply goes off making frag vids in WvW, when alot of us would rather see some “suggestions” on how to play a “proper” high-end dungeon.

Dungeons that may be of interest would be;
Fractals (20+)
Arah
Waves
CoF
CoE
—————-
Optional, making a pet survive even a simple run through Orr.

Would be very appreciated if we could atleast get some insight into how to manage a pet better.

Thank you for your time.

I hope the Pet AI problems includes Lick Wounds and Search & Rescue not working half the time.

I think rangers will finally get their day.

Thrutian.7931:

I hope the Pet AI problems includes Lick Wounds and Search & Rescue not working half the time.

i recon those issues could be “fixed” by making our hitbox bigger upon death, thus making it easier for pet “action” to affect the character… this may however lead to bugged healing through walls and such. Who knows, time will show.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. I’m currently composing a list of ideas and statements from this thread to bring to our balance meetings (held multiple times per week), that I can present to at least talk about with the group.
I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

Core problems: (Note: we are very aware of both of these things)
-Pet AI.
-Pet management tools

Things to investigate:
-Pets auto attacks only hitting a single target.
-On “return” command, your pet gains swiftness so it can escape out of red rings more easily.
-A button that makes your pet momentarily not take damage. A sort of “Dodge” button for you to control. This is mainly due to us making sure players know how to use their dodge-roll or damage mitigation skills, which pets don’t have, and don’t always know how to escape properly when recalled without a direct pet swap.
-Pet/minion AR that is shared with the master’s stats.
-More defensive pet skills.
-Vigor applied to pets turns into swiftness or protection.
-In dungeons, pet’s get more health/armor.

What about issues with getting obstructed and out of range against targets that are not obstructed when firing bows. Often times a player can completely dodge what should be a 3k longbow crit by stepping strafing left and right.

Hey Rob, I think you missed my post in the dungeon forums after yours, so I’ll quote it here where it might be more relevant:

Rising Dusk.2408:

To be honest, open world PvE is very easy for all classes. I don’t think what the ranger needs is a large buff, but they need a buff. The SB is fine, and the Sword/Torch combo is pretty darned good too. I can’t believe Rob uses a dagger, because the torch is way better if you’re running a condition build, but the cripple is sort of useful. It’s no wonder you don’t experience the problems with the class, though, because you don’t use the weapons that really suffer.

The Ranger still has numerous problems, and in particular against stronger mobs the likes of which you see in dungeons. I’ve enumerated a few key ones to fix first below.

====
- LB auto attack is awful and makes it an absolutely bad weapon to main. You currently have to use 3>2>5 and 4 if needed, then you switch to something that doesn’t suck as a weapon. The LB 1 desperately needs work, and this weapon should honestly be the bread-and-butter of Ranger ranged power dps, but currently isn’t. It either needs to attack about 33% faster or do way more damage per hit.

- Sword 1’s chain locks your character’s movements and doesn’t allow you to break the chain to dodge. This means that auto-attacking with sword puts you at risk of getting faceblasted by any number of positionally varying mob and boss skills in dungeons. This is not a big deal in open world PvE where your pet can facetank most things.

- Greatsword is a bad weapon. Please save this.

- We desperately need AR on pets, but you said you’re actively looking for solutions to that, so yay.
====

That’s about it. The class is fine otherwise in high-end PvE.

I also agree with whoever suggested that Vigor on pets be converted into something actually useful.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

Robert, you earned my absolute respect by doing what you’re doing in this and the other (the dungeon one) thread. I believe that you just sort of became Ranger community’s favourite developer and Ranger’s guardian angel. This is an inspirational effort.

I don’t play ranger extensively, I don’t main it per se, but I think it’s a great profession that is extremely fun and the Community is blessed by having a person like You.

I hope that the players can stay soft on you

In an unrelated note, is it possible for you to say, who’s this kind of representative for Necromancer? I understand that sharing such info isn’t necessarily something you could or would like to do, so I won’t be surprised if you refrain from answering.

Once again, you’re a superstar, Mr Hrouda.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. …

Things to investigate:

Could you please ask someone to make sure drakes (and other pets with a life steal “bite” attack) don’t heal the enemy? It isn’t game-breaking, but it is an obvious error, if it’s still happening.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. I’m currently composing a list of ideas and statements from this thread to bring to our balance meetings (held multiple times per week), that I can present to at least talk about with the group.
I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

Core problems: (Note: we are very aware of both of these things)
-Pet AI.
-Pet management tools

Things to investigate:
-Pets auto attacks only hitting a single target.
-On “return” command, your pet gains swiftness so it can escape out of red rings more easily.
-A button that makes your pet momentarily not take damage. A sort of “Dodge” button for you to control. This is mainly due to us making sure players know how to use their dodge-roll or damage mitigation skills, which pets don’t have, and don’t always know how to escape properly when recalled without a direct pet swap.
-Pet/minion AR that is shared with the master’s stats.
-More defensive pet skills.
-Vigor applied to pets turns into swiftness or protection.
-In dungeons, pet’s get more health/armor.

Robert, please … PLEASE .. NOT this: – “A button that makes your pet momentarily not take damage. A sort of “Dodge” button for you to control. This is mainly due to us making sure players know how to use their dodge-roll or damage mitigation skills, which pets don’t have, and don’t always know how to escape properly when recalled without a direct pet swap.”

For the love of god, we already have enough things to juggle while fighting swarms of mobs in a dungeon ! —- I’m sure it will be fine for all the “PRO” players, but for us mere mortals – it will solve NOTHING>

I do however love this: "-In dungeons, pet’s get more health/armor. "

For what it’s worth, I’d just as soon see the pet dodge bound to my dodge as separate. I’m not sure I could hit two dodge keys fast enough when we are both imperiled. I realize this could be seen as a waste of my endurance, but wilderness survival gives a lot of endurance regen. I know this isn’t everyone’s ideal.

Could we possibly get an option to permanently store our pets? Sometimes I just want to run through an area without having to worry about whether my pet will aggro onto something.

didnt you think another dodge button will make it hard for player ? i think its better with pet more survivability against aoe, or player can resurect their pet, oh and could you maybe add the button for pet guard or attack mode ? cause to switch mode we really need to click it, button could make it better, and pet agony resistance…. it really need some fix really its been 3++ month about those agony, ranger at fotm boss really is a petless ranger

Not sure if this has been mentioned or not, but what about how agro is handled with regards to pets? If agro behaved slightly differently based on the type of pet (dps/tanky) rangers would have a little bit more control over how mobs react to them or their pet.

For example: Lets say you have a tanky pet and a dps pet. You could start out with a burst against a mob using your dps pet, then if you start taking too much pressure (because the mob is more attracted to you than your pet) you can swap out to your tanky pet.

Not sure how easy or effective that would be, but thought I’d throw the idea out there.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I am still here and watching. I’m currently composing a list of ideas and statements from this thread to bring to our balance meetings (held multiple times per week), that I can present to at least talk about with the group.
I go to the meetings as a representative for rangers and dungeons, since I play both of those things extensively. Here’s how my list is looking so far:

Core problems: (Note: we are very aware of both of these things)
-Pet AI.
-Pet management tools

Things to investigate:
-Pets auto attacks only hitting a single target.
-On “return” command, your pet gains swiftness so it can escape out of red rings more easily.
-A button that makes your pet momentarily not take damage. A sort of “Dodge” button for you to control. This is mainly due to us making sure players know how to use their dodge-roll or damage mitigation skills, which pets don’t have, and don’t always know how to escape properly when recalled without a direct pet swap.
-Pet/minion AR that is shared with the master’s stats.
-More defensive pet skills.
-Vigor applied to pets turns into swiftness or protection.
-In dungeons, pet’s get more health/armor.

Thank you for taking the time to come in to the forums, it is appreciated.

As for things like adding a button that is a kind of dodge, this is a poor idea…..do not do it! Their are more than enough things for a ranger to try and watch and manage let alone this.

Add to the fact that the game is already known as not being handicap friendly this would be yet another mistake and one that would isolate players who are handicapped. People have already asked that we be able to re arrange our hot bars and the order skills are displayed with no luck, adding yet another button would just compound the issues.

Lets get rid of pets before we do something like that! Would solve issues with the botters, agony resistance our lack of dps due to pets and their ease of kiting and or killing.

i know its a bit self-centered, but i hope you saw my suggestions posted above. XD

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Robert-Hrouda-on-pets-in-dungeons/page/3#post1575902

Also, I’ve noticed recently that if you command a pet to attack, then you move away from that spot, pets do an awkward turn (going to your original position) before finally going to the ranger. that kinda messes up the timing for dodging red circles

Thank you so much for taking the time to read the concerns and ideas in this thread Robert

Since you’re taking notes and this is my opportunity to say something, these features would help me immensely in dungeons and are much easier to fix/change than rewriting pet AI:

- Fix Search and Rescue and Lick Wounds (failure has caused a party wipe too many times)
- Passive pet staying passive after using its F2 skill (would help me keep my pet alive with minimum micro managing!)
- Different color (yellow, red?) for the bar that represents my pet is dead but is healing or something. Being a slightly darker shade of green has made me misjudge whether my pet is alive or not a number of times (and has made me failcast Search and Rescue, putting me in the 85 sec cool down)
- Perma stow pets. Helpful for Jade Maw and jump puzzles! Alternatively, let my pet go pick up a crystal for Jade Maw if I tell it to.
- Let me see my pets buffs and conditions without having to click it, just as I could my fellow party members.

Also please keep in mind during these discussions that as a user, as a ranger I already have a lot of micro managing to do. I really couldn’t handle one more button or to constantly keep an eye on my pet when I, myself, and trying not to get downed when fighting the Grawl Shaman! As a user of a gaming mouse that has, literally, 20 mapped buttons on it to keys, I don’t know how someone with a basic mouse + keyboard can managing keeping themselves and their pet alive in these situations.

Ranger is a challenging class, but if any of the points I listed earlier are fixed/changed, I’d be one happy pet owner!

Maybe adding something similar to a downed-state;
When pet gets killed it can have a chance to deal extra damage or recover;
It might be something like the F2 skill being replaced by something more defensive;
It can be exlusive to dungeons too so it doesn’t break the game balance.

- Different color (yellow, red?) for the bar that represents my pet is dead but is healing or something. Being a slightly darker shade of green has made me misjudge whether my pet is alive or not a number of times (and has made me failcast Search and Rescue, putting me in the 85 sec cool down)

I agree this is a minor thing but simply changing the bar to Red when my pet was dead would make a hell of a difference while playing, so often have I looked at my health bar thinking my pet was on 25% health only to notice it limping 4 or 5 secs later.

Following up on that it would be really helpful have our pet panel open. So we can see it’s status when we are downed. We have 0 way of knowing whether our pet is alive or dead to use Lick Wounds on us. This is minor, not nearly as important as the healthbar issue.

Now that the major issues are on the list… a couple smaller ones.

1. Guard Tooltip: Guard grants your pet Stealth and 10 (or more) seconds of Protection. These 2 functions are highly useful and should be displayed. It seems to help pets quite a bit when I’ve solo’d in dungeons, but many posters claim this skill has no use at all.
2. Three-Tailed Devourer: Simple player behavior, such as… standing behind your pet, can effectively block projectiles and make some ranged fights much easier. If the pet becomes too hard to kill, the ranger can sometimes stand around unscathed, even while he has aggro. Is this considered in balance discussions?
3. There is an epic feeling to soloing Bloody Victoria after a bloody long fight, on the 7th try… from downed state while being kept alive by your pet. Thanks dungeon team!

I’ll post this here too. Sorry if this has already been covered.

I think a solution to the dungeon problem would be to give us the ability to “Soul Merge” with our pet. Basically we could merge powers with our pets and they “stow” away and are not visible. When soul merged we’d increase damage by 15%+- (taken from pet). In an advanced scenario I’d love to see the stats of what ever beast we merge with be added to ours. Merge with the brown bear and gain extra vitality, devourer gain toughness, felines gain precision, etc.. according to the stats merged. Stay merged until we untransform.

Make this an elite skill that lasts for an hour with a 360s cool-down. Make a permit part of the stow feature. Set it so the pet must be at 100% health and in non-combat. I don’t really care but the fact is in certain places (like most dungeons) a pet is more of a crutch then a help. In most PvE scenarios I don’t see this feature being used a lot as it won’t really change the max DPS of ranger but in places where our pet is auto killed I’d rather not be ham-stringed by the pet and be in control of the damage.

—Dallywolf

I have been playing these games for a very long time and pets have been an issue in everyone of them. Wow tried time and again to fix them for dungeon’s and finally gave up and reduced the damage from AOEs to pets. I am not sure you are ever going to find the perfect solution. I think the problem many are having is it seems that no one is even working on it, so this thread may go along way toward fixing that. I just hope we don’t have another 4 months of the same. meaning you came and talked to rangers and nothing is ever done.

Hmm.
Just a thought, but maybe look into revising the Swap and Return functions so they’re fluid to work with and help us manage the spacial element better?

I kind of think there’s a bit of functional overlap between Swap and Return. Swap and Return can both be used to help guide your pet away from harm, but Swap does it far better than Return does while also being married to the functionality of changing to the next pet. I wonder if Swap should just be Swap, and Return should handle all the defensive elements by itself.

That is to say;

- Change Swap so pet #1 replaces pet #2, but pet #2 appears in the same physical location as pet #1. If pet #1 is dead, pet #2 appears beside you as it does now.

- Change Return so the pet teleports to your side, and is temporarily suspended from the aggro table (much how stealth now works). The pet stays within 150 range of you and no longer adopts the pathing AI of trying to ‘stay ahead’ of where your character is facing.

It’s not very fluid or intuitive to work with Return as a defense.
Because of the time it takes your pet to travel physically, it’s more effective when used proactively than reactively. So it works best on the kind of cyclical static predictable boss encounters the dungeon revisions probably shouldn’t be aiming for anyway.

Swap is a very fluid defense, it happens instantaneously, it clears the pet from the aggro table, and returns it to your side so you can manually manipulate the pet’s movement on the field. But marrying that functionality with access to the second HP bar/the next set of pet skills is also a bit unwieldy and necessitates a 20 second timer that doesn’t always align with how often you’d like to get a pet out of harm’s way. Additionally, our defenses need to be more sensitive to space, and honestly I kind of think there’s just no better way to control how your pet is handling space than to manually do it yourself. I think this could be accomplished by making the Return mode involve a tighter, firmer, closer handle on where the pet is located in relation to you – so that when you move to avoid an AOE your pet is close enough to your heels to avoid it too.

As an aside;
Swap causing your pet to spawn at your side has always really mucked with the flow of combat when you’re ranged. When you’re in melee of your target, you move from one pet to the next without missing a beat. When you’re ranged, you have to pause your output and wait for the pet to path to the target. This is more problematic when the target is on-the-go, because a good amount of offense in that case is trying to hold a target still or slow it down enough that the pet can capitalize on the opportunity. Except that Swapping is part of how you offensively capitalize on an opportunity, by accessing the next F2 and the immediate-use family skills. So when you’re ranged, you often can’t capitalize on offense opportunities that open up because somebody else slowed the mob down, because the process of doing so causes your pet to become so far away from the target the opportunity slips by.

F2 skills need to activate a lot faster— the animation times are so painfully long…

Moa pets need some loving, I think extending the range of their support abilities would help, while increasing the duration of their boons to match cooldowns.

You also need to look at the shouts for moas. Not all shouts are created equal — protectection is much more valuable than a few seconds of fury, so the fury screech should be lower cd. What’s more, the protection screech should include something more like vigor or swiftness for thegroup, while the fury screech should consider adding might. Same for fern wolf. Such a long cd for some seconds of regen boon is out of line with the boons other classes can bring at much shorter cooldowns and longer durations.

Also, what’s the point of having DPS pets if they will not be viable in high end content. Do you want to restrict rangers away from DPS specs by making the jaguars and birds disappear in dungeons? Why can’t melee pets cleave to match the damage dealing capabilities of other melee classes? The ranger has very little aoe options and that’s largely why they are not wanted in dungeons.

Would a status bar for pets visible near their health bar be a reasonable request? Being able to see what conditions/boons/other buffs your pet has without having to click on them (as clicking on them mid-fight is not only usually difficult but takes time away from your own actions) would be wonderful.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

Yes please. This sounds like a dream come true. Don’t listen to people crying about micromanagement. Don’t play a pet class if you don’t want to manage your pet.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

I actually think this would work very well. I was on the side of not having any extra buttons to manage, but this would give us the function without any.

Unholey.3264:

Would a status bar for pets visible near their health bar be a reasonable request? Being able to see what conditions/boons/other buffs your pet has without having to click on them (as clicking on them mid-fight is not only usually difficult but takes time away from your own actions) would be wonderful.

Either there, or in the party interface would be a huge improvement for me. I run supportive beastmaster, and not having to target the pet to check it’s status would be great!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

Would this mean we could then customize where these and other attacks are on our hot bars? If not then I have to say no thank you, although please keep trying.

P.S. I still want a return to me command for the pet, it’s AI is just not good enough to have it roaming all feral and stuff

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

It’s looking closer to a viable system, even better if we could have stance swap keymapped to F4, Pet Change F5. So we have a way of returning our pet when we need to without clicking on the screen.

How would the pet behave when different commands are stacked. Eg. Would it work thus

Passive F1 – Pet attacks target, keeping at range if it has ranged attacks, if target is killed it returns to you and will not agro another target.

Aggresive F1 – Pet will engage target, If target is killed it moves onto next nearest enemy mob.

Similarly, If the pet is not attack an enemy, you are passive, would F2 cause it to move into range of your current enemy cast it’s F2 then return?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

That sounds nice, yeah. Another suggestion posed by a guildie of mine references pets and heroes in gw1 which had a middle ground (named “guard”), between attack and heel (on pets) and avoid combat (on heroes). The middle ground would have them attack what you attacked, but not attack if only being attacked. A feature like this would more easily allow us to run around with our pet attacking what we want without it running off into the distance to attack something which attacked us.

Granted, switching between the current attack and passive modes allows for the same thing, but it’d be nice to have the option of that middle ground. As for the pet attacking, would it be possible to lock the pet onto a certain target? As is, if I command my pet to attack target A and I start to attack target B, it will automatically switch over to target B. Again, not a must have, personally. But I think it would be a nice option to have for whenever you may find it useful.

Removing the “come back” skill would mean your pet pulls even more aggro of things you don’t want anything to do with.
We already mentioned good ideas a thousand times but due to getting ignored it doesn’t get through.

Make pets take less damage from aoe.
Give them either more range or let them autoattack while running, not stopping for seconds for every single punch.
Make them use the ballistic pathfinding, or how you call it, running to the direction where the player is headed, thus, cutting its path, like arrows.
Shorten the F2 activations on ALL pets, not only pets nobody uses anyway. The mighty roar from the canine takes like 5-6 seconds for 5 might stacks(?) or something. Other classes have three times as much when facerolling over the keyboard in less than a second. Not to mention your pet does nothing when it roars.
Make it use skills while running would be a fix.

Vox Hollow.2736:

[…] making the Return mode involve a tighter, firmer, closer handle on where the pet is located in relation to you – so that when you move to avoid an AOE your pet is close enough to your heels to avoid it too. […]

Something along those lines would be great too. So pet can live through an AoE targeted at the player when it’s on ‘Avoid Combat’ mode.

The primary use to this would be to keep buffing pets alive.

It can be done through adding some temporary buff to make it avoid damage when the player dodges (when it’s on passive) or as it was said making the pet stick close enough to the player so it avoids the damage if the player succeeds to exit the red circles.

Edit: This way there will be less micro-management to do when pet is not in combat.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

I think I like that idea, at least something in this general direction. The “dodge” (or whatever the defensive button actually does) should probably really be seperate from the “come back to me” button, since we rarely want the pet to actually disengage in combat, so that’s good.

For what it’s worth, while you are at it, I think I personally would like the “heel” and “be passive” stances do be different (not neccessarily mutually exclusive though). To iterate on that: whenever I am playing ranged and use a ranged pet, or in melee, using a melee pet, I would probably like the pet to stick really close to me (like glued to my hip close), to help positioning and generally keep it out of bosses’ cleave attacks without actively micro managing it each time a boss changes directions. Now I know it shouldn’t always do that, but I’d surely like it as a toggle for some situations.

I don’t know if this would work with the pet’s animations, since at the moment, it seems it does have to stand still to attack, but I think it could help in situations where people are already calling for ways to permanently stow the pet away, without really foregoing the pet entirely. In effect, a pet that matches your range that is used this way would require less micro managing and would maybe show less of it’s current, often suboptimal behaviour.

edit: and btw, I really appreciate what you are doing here. I see how devs don’t generally have that much times to browse the forums and comment on everything, but chiming in from time to time to just pick up some the ideas people are brainstorming around is something I’d love to see more from you guys, especially if this should prove to be successfull. =)

Robert – you may be on to an idea there. I still wonder if “Attack and be aggro” and “Heel and do nothing” are a bit too polar. An inbetween setting or two would be highly useful (especailly in a WvW zerg where I want my bet to be active, but close by) if you can get this to work while keeping the interface managable.

Also, pet which is currently heeling could use some utility. Sure, I call the pet back so it doesn’t get killed – at which point it is useless except for eisting and thereby allowing me to use my condition removal. I know not all pets have buffs, but they should continue to use skills like this when called back to the ranger and left on “heel” mode. Or perhaps there could be an automatic buff for each pet type when on passive, immediately cancelled when the pet is sent to any kind of attack (so the player cannot stack them).

Perhaps:
F1 – Attack
F2 – Special
F3 – Dodge-like thing
F4 – Swap
F5 – Toggle Behaviour (as suggested ealier, please bind this as it’s a small icon. Even more critical it also functions as a return).

My main issue with this setup is lets say you pet runs off at an enemy and you want it to return, you have no real way to do this but to switch stance, and I’m not even sure whether it would even return to you in this case?

What about some kind of automatic stance change.

F1 – Attacks your current target and places the pet into Aggresive mode, once it has killed target it will move to the next target.

F2- Pet uses special skill, if in Passive mode it will return to you immediately after casting.

F3- Pet current action is interrupted, it immediately makes a dodge towards you and then sets itself to Passive mode, returning to you. Once in Passive mode and the pet has reached you it will go onto Heel (No longer gaining any enemy agro, possibly become immune to AOE once in a Heeled state)

F4- Swap Pets.

What this would allow you to make it perform a dodge by hitting F3 and then return it to your target by immediately hitting F1. It would give you complete control on 4 buttons, retiring the Stance Change button. And stop pets running past you 20ft and agroing mobs, because once at Heal they no longer Agro.

Note: by Heel, I mean coming to Heel, next to Ranger in Passive state (I realise I mispelled it Heal originally.)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

That would be brilliant.