Guild Wars 2

Well if you want pets to be such a huge part of the ranger gameplay you should probably find a way to balance their usefulness gap between open pve, dungeons, spvp and Wv3.

At the moment said gap throws the entire ranger gameplay out of balance. That’s what happens when you build a class around a mechanic like that. Plus open pve is hardly a problem for any class. What good is a mechanic that gives a class an advantage in open pve only?

Additionally, staggering pathfinding issues, constant misses on moving targets, the fact that they seem to stop moving in order to attack/use F2 skills, the fact that you really have very little control over their behaviour by default (attack and call back only? really?) and need to waste a skill slot on something as simple as “guard this spot” imho makes pets way too problematic and limited a feature to build the ranger class around.

Arekai, before throwing the suggestions in again, you should read what Robert said. He already gave a reason why pets taking less aoe wouldn’t work.

Robert, can the f3 skill be used to make the pet passive as well as to come back to our side? You can add a cooldown to when the pet can be sent to battle again, even if its just a second, so that it doesn’t become overpowered.

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. (NOTE: This is a springboard idea for pets being able to avoid damage)
-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.
-Lick wounds not always working. Pet just runs back and stands on your body.
-Search and Rescue buggy
-F2 skills activating faster.

nominating Rob for Bauss Designer Who Cares About Rangers (BDWCAR) position. fly high brother.

Give pets an inherent evade ability that auto fires with 100% perfect timing, but put a cool down timer (3-5 secs maybe fore starters) on it so that if you leave a pet in the hot zone too long it’ll get still get killed, just not as fast.

Or just just give them auto evade, but an actual endurance stat to cap their dodges to the same end effect; and it makes vigor finally useful to them too.\

The AI does not really need to be smart in implementation, just in the emergence of design. If the player knows the pet has a full end bar and will auto dodge the first two attacks, that can be planned around but does not grant immortality to the pet either.

Having played a bit of CoE with my ranger lately, I wouldn’t want to have to time both my dodge and my pets dodge every time Subject Alpha decides to AoE half the room.

Having the pet dodge when you do, or having it so that you can toggle the pet dodge button to activate when you dodge could be very useful in some dungeons.

I would also love to have more then 2 states of basic AI mode. Maybe have the current actions be split between 4 states instead of only 2, or being able to limit the “active” state. What I mean is that right now you have the choice for your pet to be either fully passive or fully agressive, where he will fight your target, then defend you from attackers and then enter the follow mode when there’s no more targets availlable. Having the option to put the pet in an attack only mode, where he attacks your target but doesn’t defend you from attackers, or having a defense only mode, where he doesn’t attack your target, but attacks anything that attacks you, could be very useful.

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.

This is a good idea it can work, the previous suggestion that pets gain swiftness on recall is also good and I think it actually should be implemented regardless of what other changes/tweaks were to be made I can’t see such a feature ever becoming unbalanced under any circumstance.

I don’t like the idea of getting a buff other than invulnerability+prevent the pet from attacking while the buff is active with a cool-down to it;

Because I think it can get overpowered if the buff stays, since we’ll just call it back to buff the pet with swiftness or aegis for example then send it back.

Unless it’s dungeon exclusive there might be a balance issue.

Gunsei.4870:

Having played a bit of CoE with my ranger lately, I wouldn’t want to have to time both my dodge and my pets dodge every time Subject Alpha decides to AoE half the room.

Having the pet dodge when you do, or having it so that you can toggle the pet dodge button to activate when you dodge could be very useful in some dungeons.

I would also love to have more then 2 states of basic AI mode. Maybe have the current actions be split between 4 states instead of only 2, or being able to limit the “active” state. What I mean is that right now you have the choice for your pet to be either fully passive or fully agressive, where he will fight your target, then defend you from attackers and then enter the follow mode when there’s no more targets availlable. Having the option to put the pet in an attack only mode, where he attacks your target but doesn’t defend you from attackers, or having a defense only mode, where he doesn’t attack your target, but attacks anything that attacks you, could be very useful.

It’d be nice if sometime down the line we could have an advanced settings menu for the pet AI to help customized their behavior. Different players have different play styles and need their pet’s AI to react in different ways. As pets are such an integrated part of the ranger class, it would be nice if I could tweek and customize its behavior to compliment my play style. For example, I wouldn’t like the dodge on my dodge feature, but other players or certain situations it would be nice to turn that behavior on.

Bobe.3759:

I don’t like the idea of getting a buff other than invulnerability+prevent the pet from attacking while the buff is active with a cool-down to it;

Because I think it can get overpowered if the buff stays, since we’ll just call it back to buff the pet with swiftness or aegis for example then send it back.

Unless it’s dungeon exclusive there might be a balance issue.

This is why I suggested the Heel dynamic in my previous post. The pet only gets it when Passive and returned entirely to you. It disappears as soon as you attack, or it leaves you to use an F2 ability.

I think that having better pet control is vital to the success for rangers but I don’t see it making much of a difference on why we get denied pug in dungeons.

dallywolf.1906:

I think that having better pet control is vital to the success for rangers but I don’t see it making much of a difference on why we get denied pug in dungeons.

I don’t know about this. The major complaints I see in guild is pets pulling extra agro, causing issues with certain mobs bosses. I do think if we could get to a stage where the pets don’t grab random agro when Passive we would be much more welcome.

I mean I’ve had situations where my pet was on passive. I’ve run forward to join my group, the pet has continued on an extra 20ft and agro’d mobs. or you jump off a rock the pet goes around the rock picking up 10 extra mobs.

I think it is important that after a pet has returned to you, after you have it Passive. (I’m not talking about the return journey from the enemy, but after it has come to heal after you have set it to Passive) it should not gain extra agro and drag in new mobs due to bad pathing until you set it to Aggresive again or make it attack.

I don’t for a second expect AI pathing to always be 100% correct or sensible, I don’t expect the pet to always stick to you like glue. I’m a realist. But if it is meant to be sticking to you like glue and doesn’t, you and your group shouldn’t be penalised for it.

Ok let me preface this that unless you have countless hours as a 80 ranger trying to do end game content and then seeing the difference when rolling to other classes (then doing the same content) you will THINK this is overpowered but in fact it is not. Remember that our pets are 30-40% of our dps and are basically useless in most end game content and are constantly doing stupid things. Plus the thought of me having to dodge roll through necro wells in wvw and then guessing that my pet is about to go through 1 as well and possibly dodging (using a different button) simultaneously? Umm yeah I’ll pass.

Here’s what I was thinking after reading a different suggestion here. We have 2 pets available at any time right? Well if we choose to have them in passive mode (and both must be alive) we get some sort of buff to compensate for the lack of dps we have lost. So as to prevent abuse it has say a 60-120 sec cd and also resets on death. Thus we can’t put pets on passive to gain buffs, send them to attack, and then bring them right back for the buffs. Sort of like a perma stow option that buffs us. Hell I’d be happy if it only lasted say 5-10 minutes max w/ that cd.

Now here is what I was thinking. Here are the pets we have http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet. Let’s say I have eagle and hawk both available for pet swap and I perma stow them. Well I get 5% passive swiftness from both of them for a total of 10% while they are stowed. It goes along w/ their Quickening Screech (Grant swiftness to nearby allies) skill they already have. I have a Lynx [Maul (Slash a foe multiple times and make them bleed)] I get increased bleeds f/ attacks and I have a Alpine Wolf [Brutal Charge (Leap at your foe and knock them down)] we get say a 5-10% chance to knock down foes with each attack.

So in essence I sacrifice 30-40% of my dps by perma stowing my pets. Whatever 2 pets I have perma stowed grants me some type of passive bonus. Each pet grants something different. Before everyone trolls me saying it is game breaking think of it this way. Rangers currently almost constantly lose 30-40% of their dps in end game content. Giving us something to compensate such as 10% swiftness is game breaking? Go look at the amount of Rangers in wvw that are not upleveled and are not using a bear class pet (pathetic damage but has a chance to somewhat survive while zerging). Pets are instant dead in fotm 20+ and cause so many issues in many dungeons doing dumb crap. Who the hell EVER runs/worries about a ranger in wvw in open field?

Ratty.5176:

dallywolf.1906:

I think that having better pet control is vital to the success for rangers but I don’t see it making much of a difference on why we get denied pug in dungeons.

I don’t know about this. The major complaints I see in guild is pets pulling extra agro, causing issues with certain mobs bosses. I do think if we could get to a stage where the pets don’t grab random agro when Passive we would be much more welcome.

I mean I’ve had situations where my pet was on passive. I’ve run forward to join my group, the pet has continued on an extra 20ft and agro’d mobs. or you jump off a rock the pet goes around the rock picking up 10 extra mobs.

I think it is important that after a pet has returned to you, after you have it Passive. (I’m not talking about the return journey from the enemy, but after it has come to heal after you have set it to Passive) it should not gain extra agro and drag in new mobs due to bad pathing until you set it to Aggresive again or make it attack.

I don’t for a second expect AI pathing to always be 100% correct or sensible, I don’t expect the pet to always stick to you like glue. I’m a realist. But if it is meant to be sticking to you like glue and doesn’t, you and your group shouldn’t be penalised for it.

But all of these things are manageable under the current system but you just have to be on top of your pet management. When I jump off a ledge and don’t want to pull mobs/aggro I swap pets and he appears right next to me bypassing the funky routes. If your pet is getting to far ahead you call him back or set to no combat. Personally when the pet is on Guard it shouldn’t attack anything that hasn’t targeted the ranger first.

Rawthorne.8675:

Ok let me preface this that unless you have countless hours as a 80 ranger trying to do end game content and then seeing the difference when rolling to other classes (then doing the same content) you will THINK this is overpowered but in fact it is not. Remember that our pets are 30-40% of our dps and are basically useless in most end game content and are constantly doing stupid things. Plus the thought of me having to dodge roll through necro wells in wvw and then guessing that my pet is about to go through 1 as well and possibly dodging (using a different button) simultaneously? Umm yeah I’ll pass.

Here’s what I was thinking after reading a different suggestion here. We have 2 pets available at any time right? Well if we choose to have them in passive mode (and both must be alive) we get some sort of buff to compensate for the lack of dps we have lost. So as to prevent abuse it has say a 60-120 sec cd and also resets on death. Thus we can’t put pets on passive to gain buffs, send them to attack, and then bring them right back for the buffs. Sort of like a perma stow option that buffs us. Hell I’d be happy if it only lasted say 5-10 minutes max w/ that cd.

Now here is what I was thinking. Here are the pets we have http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet. Let’s say I have eagle and hawk both available for pet swap and I perma stow them. Well I get 5% passive swiftness from both of them for a total of 10% while they are stowed. It goes along w/ their Quickening Screech (Grant swiftness to nearby allies) skill they already have. I have a Lynx [Maul (Slash a foe multiple times and make them bleed)] I get increased bleeds f/ attacks and I have a Alpine Wolf [Brutal Charge (Leap at your foe and knock them down)] we get say a 5-10% chance to knock down foes with each attack.

So in essence I sacrifice 30-40% of my dps by perma stowing my pets. Whatever 2 pets I have perma stowed grants me some type of passive bonus. Each pet grants something different. Before everyone trolls me saying it is game breaking think of it this way. Rangers currently almost constantly lose 30-40% of their dps in end game content. Giving us something to compensate such as 10% swiftness is game breaking? Go look at the amount of Rangers in wvw that are not upleveled and are not using a bear class pet (pathetic damage but has a chance to somewhat survive while zerging). Pets are instant dead in fotm 20+ and cause so many issues in many dungeons doing dumb crap. Who the hell EVER runs/worries about a ranger in wvw in open field?

This is what I think as well. Give us a way to get back that 30% dps we lose in most boss scenarios. Even if we can gain 20% increase in dps it would at least put us in the same ball park as the rest of the classes that our other skills would make up the rest.

I still like the Dodge from Ranger applying Aegis to its pet.

That’d fit with Ranger pretty good.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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)

my oversimplified and generalized 2 cents for your original post combined with the above snip…

well, to be fair, you can get by easily in pve most of the time by pressing #1, dodge rolling and using your self heal while watching your favorite tv program or studying. i sincerely hope that open world pve does not remain the standard of measure for professions and combat for the long run.

while rangers can perform well in open world pve, they seem to fall apart or perform less than some other professions in dungeons, wvwvw and spvp. the difficulty some players are facing (or not really happy about) is that professions were advertised as being able to fill any role but that’s not really true and each class suffers from performance issues in different environments. if y’all want everyone capable of doing everything then that needs to happen by giving every profession access to similar powers/abilities set ups. city of heroes did a pretty decent job of accomplishing this while still offering diversity and uniqueness so maybe start by looking how they did it there.

i understand there are tons of factors involved with designing professions, combat and such, but i think this game would benefit from having a hard separation between pve/dungeons and wvw/spvp (solo and team dungeon options with difficulty sliders wouldn’t hurt either). also, currently the game lacks a lot of diversity for individual profession building (outside of gear) and suffers from too many performance lows vs extremes between profession, powers, skills… i think y’all can (and should) “make the numbers bigger” for all the professions equally while still offering unique class “features” and “make the numbers bigger” for the end game and future content to match and challenge players.

Well, to be honest, I’m one of the ones that believes ranger’s shouldn’t have pets, but to be constructive to this thread, I have an idea for you. I think that ranger’s have enough going on with pet management to be not only looking for a red ring around themselves for dodging but now we will have to look for a red ring around out pets too? All the ranger’s in GW2 will become cross eyed very quickly. Why not have a function that works somewhat like this, on a successful player dodge, the pet gains a ‘dodge next area effect buff’. Give it an icon like opening strike does, then when he’s in a circle, he either takes no damage or moves away from the circle before returning back to combat. He won’t be able to get this buff again until the player character does another successful ‘dodge’. I think this is a better option then having to keep your finger by the f3 key and jumping back and forth between yourself and your pet to see who needs to dodge first.

Xsorus.2507:

I still like the Dodge from Ranger applying Aegis to its pet.

That’d fit with Ranger pretty good.

I very much agree, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel here. A simple 5 secs of Aegis to the pet on your dodge would go a very long way in helping pets in dungeons. A seperate dodge mechanic for pets is not needed; and given how often Rangers are dodging in dungeons, the Aegis idea would be far more beneficial.

Robert, you’re my hero for posting here and showing us rangers that we are not forgotten.

Panic
Right now our buttons are fairly panic proof… one attacks, one pulls back. Panicky hitting of improved behavior toggle could result in it Attacking and Being Aggro on the thing you didn’t want it to aggro, especially if you accidentally left it in passive mode last time you pulled it out of combat. If it was on passive and fighting via F1 or F2, then you would have to hit the behavior toggle twice to get it to disengage?

F3+F5+F5
If a good ranger is already using F3 now to pull his pet away from big attacks, and assuming the defensive skill would have a cooldown, the good ranger may end up using both F3 & Behavior Togglex2 to keep his pet alive? Or would the purpose of defensive F3 be to eliminate the need to use Return to Me as a survival tool?

While we’re on the subject of Pets, I’d like to bring up Porcines. I love em (they’re hearty and have a knockdown). Their foraged items are incredible and tons of fun to use (heals, stealth, chaos field, etc). However, their F2 is really clunky, especially when fighting at range. Having to stop my action to pick up the item, lose my weapon skills, and then use the foraged itemimmediately is clunky. And allowing enemy players to pick up the item seems really counter-productive. Nobody will ever use them in PvP knowing their own weapon could backfire.

Can you make it function more like a thief’s steal ability. Pet forages, F2 becomes the item for a duration (say 10s or so). Only I can use it but then it’s actually useable. Or haveit function like Ele summoned weapons: 1 appears in my hand, another at the pet’s location. This way it’s still a team item but not so clunky I can’t use it effectively.

My concern with a button to make the pet “dodge” is for those multi red ring aoe situations… Some of them I barely have enough notice to dodge out myself… Now I have to double tap a dodge for me while hitting f3 for my pet? Seems a bit cumbersome.

I haven’t read the full topic so there might be some suggestions that were already made but here are my wishes for the pets:

1) Pet Speed
While pets are incredibly fast when they come back to you they are not really fast when running to a target / chasing it.
I know this is a balancing issue and I guess that was the reason why you made pets slow in chasing. But as we know the pet is a part of our damage and without the pet damage the ranger is handicapped.
Now if we chase someone for example our pet will reach the enemy hardly ever if the enemy uses any charges/rushes/escape skills. And if once the pet hits a target it stands still for about a second and it will take alot of time for the pet to again reach the target to do the next attack.

This issue also seems to make kiting the pet in circles possible. You may want to work around that problem by letting the pet hit while continuing to move so that it doesn’t have to stand still for that moment which makes it miss when circle kited.
That way also chasing would work.

The other option would be to give the pets 10% more passive movement speed. In the end pets are animals and animals are very fast!

To prevent endless chasing and to enable escapes from the ranger make the pet only run faster up to 1200 range away from the ranger which is also a rangers usual attack range (1200 SB, 1500 LB if specced). After that range the pet loses motivation to run so fast because its owner is too far away and it will run at the same speed as now.
I think this would fit well to the idea behind the ranger class that the pet is 30-60% of the ranger damage and it would not be overpowered because it is basically the same as if for example the shortbow did the additional damage the pet does now.
Actually the shorbow would be alot more reliable in hitting than the pet atm.
I guess you see my point: if the ranger needs the pets damage for its full potential -> if the pet can’t deliver its damage the ranger is handicapped

2) Ranged Pet Problem
Another issue is the 900 range. I would really enjoy ranged pets having about 1000-1200 range like our ranged weapons. I guess that would also make it easier for them to stay away from danger and they wouldn’t have to reposition so often to be able to hit a target.
Somehow it also seems to me that ranged pets often go too close before they attack. It’s very tricky to make them stop at 900 range from enemies. Sometimes it seems to me they go to 400-600 range before they attack.

3) Ranged DPS pet
The spiders and devourers deal one of the lowest damage of all pets but have good survivability or control.
What is really missing is a ranged damage pet. A ranged pet which doesn’t use any crowd controls but the damage is like 20% less than the cats for balancing reasons. Actually from my tests devourers/spiders deal about half of the damage of a jaguar

I’m really glad that finally we are talking about pet agony resistance! I was really hoping this would come one day and that alone will make fractals not the pain it was before at high levels.
Thanks alot for visiting the ranger forums

Seras.5702:

While we’re on the subject of Pets, I’d like to bring up Porcines. I love em (they’re hearty and have a knockdown). Their foraged items are incredible and tons of fun to use (heals, stealth, chaos field, etc). However, their F2 is really clunky, especially when fighting at range. Having to stop my action to pick up the item, lose my weapon skills, and then use the foraged itemimmediately is clunky. And allowing enemy players to pick up the item seems really counter-productive. Nobody will ever use them in PvP knowing their own weapon could backfire.

Can you make it function more like a thief’s steal ability. Pet forages, F2 becomes the item for a duration (say 10s or so). Only I can use it but then it’s actually useable. Or haveit function like Ele summoned weapons: 1 appears in my hand, another at the pet’s location. This way it’s still a team item but not so clunky I can’t use it effectively.

If the Pet foraged worked like Steal from a thief, Pigs would instantly be far more usable then they currently are.

Right now Pigs are a huge pain in the kitten

Another idea:
How about drakes turning into the direction of the target while channeling. Like you can’t avoid a bow or rifle shot by simply walking a few steps aside it shouldn’t be that easy to avoid the drake F2 attack. You can still dodge the attack or get some range / run fast so that it misses even while firing.
If you plan to make the drake F2 pretty much instant this won’t be needed but if it stays as it is this would be an important change.
You can limit it’s turning speed of course so that it won’t turn 180° in 0.1 seconds^^

F2 reliability in general could be looked at. When you press F2 it should immediately do the F2. At the moment sometimes it takes a few seconds really. On birds it sometimes even cancels and goes on cooldown if you press too often because it simply won’t do the attack.

In general I have to say I like the idea of pets. They give awesome possibilities at the cost of some work to control the pets but thats worth it.
So don’t delete the pets as some players would like it to happen. I know you won’t anyways^^ it was the idea behind the class.

God, why does it have to be hard?

Just make all dungeon mobs do less damage to pets. That’s it.

Hi Robert—
First of all, god bless you. This li.d of dialogue is exactly what we the community needed.

Next question. I know that gw2 tries to keep its class mechanics to just 4 buttons like the rest of the classes but I think it can be beneficial to have more than four buttons to control a pet. We already have stow pet and stance swap unbound. What are your thoughts on letting there be more buttons, like as in attack/skill/dodge/stance/swap/stow? That would make six, all potentially nice to have a key for.

Plus, have you thought about giving players the ability to control pet non f2 skills, like the knockdown wolves do, for people who would be rewarded by that level of micro?

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.

Thank you for answering us in the ranger forum.

I like this idea, maybe something to expand on it:

When you use the F3 dodge skill, it takes 25% of the ranger their stamina, meaning that you can use it 4 times in a row before you run out. After two dodges, when you run low on stamina, you will have to make a choice, use the last bar of stamina to save your own butt or sacrifice most of your hp / take the hit to save your pet …

I believe this would actually create a whole new level of difficulty as several encounters can put great pressure on you or your pet easily.

I picked 25% as this will allow two dodges before you have to decide for your last bar.

Aegis on dodge is a better idea. Also, making them a bit tougher can help and faster in the sense that they can run faster and attack faster so that rangers don’t lose their damage.

PLEASE make it so that f3 makes them passive and run to your side! Everytime I call my pet back he sometimes runs a bit and attacks again, is really irritating.

Xsorus.2507:

If the Pet foraged worked like Steal from a thief, Pigs would instantly be far more usable then they currently are.

Right now Pigs are a huge pain in the kitten

I would immediately drop my current pets and equip 2 Porcine pets. They have so much fun potential. I would sacrifice the damage my Raven or Jaguar do for the utility and flavor of Porcine Forages.

Xsorus.2507:

I still like the Dodge from Ranger applying Aegis to its pet.

That’d fit with Ranger pretty good.

I like that as well actually. I like the idea of it a lot.

Seras.5702:

Xsorus.2507:

If the Pet foraged worked like Steal from a thief, Pigs would instantly be far more usable then they currently are.

Right now Pigs are a huge pain in the kitten

I would immediately drop my current pets and equip 2 Porcine pets. They have so much fun potential. I would sacrifice the damage my Raven or Jaguar do for the utility and flavor of Porcine Forages.

Pigs would instantly be one of the better pets that’s for sure.

I’d probably do the same far as damage is concerned.

I doubt Anet would make this change though…Thieves would complain for example..

If we could just make it so that the pet can cast while running, that would improve things a lot. Toggling the avoid combat and attack(guard) with a button would be nice. the pet should try to run from enemies when “avoiding combat”, at least that’s what I’ve tried to use f3 Return to me as. I’m not sure what type of issues could arise if your pet is running circles around you. Perhaps it could also treat AOE circles as enemies?

As for defensive skills, if you’re referring to Moa’s heal spell it would be nice to be able to control that or at least have it care about when we’re injured.

I’m not sure why reviving pets was taken out I really enjoyed it. Is there any chance of it coming back or at least be revived when we kill a enemy?

By the way thank you Mr.Hrouda for replying to our questions and concerns.

Aden Celeste.3650:

Aegis on dodge is a better idea. Also, making them a bit tougher can help and faster in the sense that they can run faster and attack faster so that rangers don’t lose their damage.

PLEASE make it so that f3 makes them passive and run to your side! Everytime I call my pet back he sometimes runs a bit and attacks again, is really irritating.

The problem with aegis on dodge is that multi hit attacks will go right through it, as will multiple circles on top of each other.
I’d still rather have a “short leash mode” where your pet moves with you and gets dodge frames when you do. For this to work, you would have to range-match your pet, so you wouldn’t need to dodge two sets of circles, but I still think this would be the closest thing to player-controlled pet dodges that woulnd’t require keeping track of threats simultaneously, with the added benefit that you would have better control about it’s positioning (think: cleaving bosses).

First, thank you, Robert Hrouda! We have been yearning for some active dev feedback in the Ranger subforum! Thank you!

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

Most definitely.

Also, in light of the change to the Guard utility in the recent patch, we have to slot a utility just to gain control over our pet that most MMOs gave as a default part of the pet management controls.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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. (NOTE: This is a springboard idea for pets being able to avoid damage)
-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.
-Lick wounds not always working. Pet just runs back and stands on your body.
-Search and Rescue buggy
-F2 skills activating faster.

I see no issues with giving AR to pet/minions. The AR, from my understanding, is a bit of a gear-check for players in fractals. If the player meets the check the pet/minion should not have to separately.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by defensive pet skills, but honestly I’d prefer that be handled by pet families. i.e. Bears have multiple “defensive” abilities with their damage immunity and self heal while Cats do not have anything like that.

The swiftness on return would be quite helpful. There are plenty of times I hit return on my pet as soon as the red circle shows up or the animation begins but players have to dodge roll from melee to avoid some things so the pet walking back to me is insufficient to avoid the hit(s).

The button for a “pet dodge” sounds quite promising, but then I imagine we would have to either manage our pet’s endurance or it would have a cooldown otherwise a ninja pet could cause mayhem.

The vigor conversion idea is great. I think protection would make more sense, especially if you’re going to also give swiftness when calling the pet back. However, if giving pets endurance and dodge this could be unnecessary.

The bugs are bugs and I’m simply happy to see them acknowledged. Again, thank you.

Helequin.2608:

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).

I like this quite a lot! I’ve often wondered why I couldn’t simply have attack = aggressive and heel = passive on top of their obvious effects.

Seras.5702:

While we’re on the subject of Pets, I’d like to bring up Porcines. I love em (they’re hearty and have a knockdown). Their foraged items are incredible and tons of fun to use (heals, stealth, chaos field, etc). However, their F2 is really clunky, especially when fighting at range. Having to stop my action to pick up the item, lose my weapon skills, and then use the foraged itemimmediately is clunky. And allowing enemy players to pick up the item seems really counter-productive. Nobody will ever use them in PvP knowing their own weapon could backfire.

Can you make it function more like a thief’s steal ability. Pet forages, F2 becomes the item for a duration (say 10s or so). Only I can use it but then it’s actually useable. Or haveit function like Ele summoned weapons: 1 appears in my hand, another at the pet’s location. This way it’s still a team item but not so clunky I can’t use it effectively.

I would love this change to pigs as well. I’ve been having this exact same thought for a while now.

I like most of what you’ve written down Robert Hrouda and I’m glad you returned here today to tell us about it.

The only thing I don’t like is the idea of having to micro-manage a dodge button for the pet and changing the pet interface. But I might be misunderstanding it.

I’ve just been thinking about what to do, but don’t have anything definitive. Here are some random brainstorm ideas anyway:
- pets instantly respawn at the player’s side when F3 is pressed. This could serve as the needed dodge button, but it would also solve the issue where the pet takes the scenic route when the player jumps off a ledge.
- pets in Avoid Combat mode can’t aggro mobs. This would allow you to remove the stow function and would also solve the issue where pets run too far ahead of the player and gets attacked. (edit: would be fun to see the pet run away from the mob when the pet enters the mob’s aggro range)
- on top of the pet-dodge button you suggested, it should also be automatically activated when the player dodges. I often dodge out of a red circle, but then my pet dies and I don’t like the idea of having to press 2 dodge buttons at the same time.

Ratty.5176:

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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?

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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.)

As someone who has given up on my ranger due to the varied pet problems, this is the most sensible idea in the entire thread. Give the pets their own vigor bar, so bashing F1, F3, F1, F3 won’t allow for an immortal pet, and we’re laughing.

I’ve always wondered why pets don’t have their own dodge/evasion abilities, considering that quite a few mobs in the open world eg. bandits, flying-types have evasion built in to their abilities, and use them relatively frequently. Birds might benefit from something like that greatly.

GW1 had flagging, after Nightfall.
GW2 pets should be flaggable without “Guard!”
Create an f5 skill for flagging pets.

How about reworking a utility to help keep the pet alive for that “ohmagawsh the boss is about to fire his lazerz ability.”

Guard could now cause the pet to “guard” essentially, where it would gain invuln for 1s or something. Kinda like distortion on mes. Maybe it could also grant the ranger a 1s protection buff or something to validate using it on a bar and not cause too much micro of dodging for pet and ranger. Although saving 40% of your damage output is a good reason to slot it.
Then Sig of Stone could be changed for a diff active so the invuln wouldn’t be op if chained and mixed with pet swapping. Or perhaps changed to a new signet like Signet of the Marksman- gives bonus power on passive and on active it could make next 3 attacks (or other balanced number) do say 50% more damage. This could make rangers a little more bursty and actually make sense for this sig in the marks trait line.

This could also address some concerns about having the grandmaster trait, with actives on signets affecting ranger too, being in the marksmanship line, so rangers dont have to drop 30 pts in marks to get that invuln.

I like the idea of F3 being a defensive dodge for the pet, with perhaps 1~3 seconds of swiftness and stability, depending on how stress testing this functionality goes. I would hate for it to be an exploit in which F3 can be used in conjunction with F1 to gain the upper hand; it is not what the tool is designed to allow the pet to do. The default action is simple: dodge the attack and return to me, get out of the danger zone, (we can also hope it works for not letting that thief grab a cloak and dagger off you).

We can command the pet to attack by press F1 right after F3 animation occurs. The animation of the dodge + swiftness + stability, albeit short, will not be interrupted by going nuts hitting the F1 key; just as roll-dodging cannot be interrupted by tapping the attack keys for a normal player. This action needs to be understood.

We can also take a step in a different direction and make F3 a dodge skill for the pet, receiving the boons that it is allowed to receive for performing such action, 100% dependent on the ranger skill tree or perhaps a default boon (like swiftness or stability or aegis or all of them). However, this time the pet will remain in combat with the target. In this case all rangers will really want to make a hotkey out of F3 for those situations in FoTM where you are trying not to die from Agony.

Which brings up another point, perhaps the pet should dodge when the ranger does? I am already commanding my pet to do whatever I tell it to, so why can’t it mimic me dodging? Naturally all the options here need to be tested and then implemented if one or all of them truly make game play fair and better.

Something a bit different from the topic, I always find it a bit much memorizing what boons I apply my pet when a certain action is performed, or what it applies me. If I could actively see the pet boons it would help me improve my pet use 100% guaranteed instead of clicking on it which becomes very tedious, you don’t always have the luxury of paying attention solely on your pet when in dungeons/wvw, especially if you’re leading people.

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. (NOTE: This is a springboard idea for pets being able to avoid damage)
-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.
-Lick wounds not always working. Pet just runs back and stands on your body.
-Search and Rescue buggy
-F2 skills activating faster.

Good list.

I would suggest this as a start before all that though: Change F1 to a toggle between attack and retreat. That way you free up F3 to do pet dodge or any other pet function that can be implemented. Even if you added nothing new, using F3 as a bindable active/passive pet mode is a better use than the current layout. Using F3 as retreat only is wasted real estate.

Oh my god a dev. That mains a Ranger. In the Ranger forums. Engaging in active discussion.

CRIES

I like the idea of F3 being turned into a pet evade of sorts, and the rationale given in favor of that (that setting our pets to passive serves the same function) versus something drastic like an AI/engine overhaul is sound to me, particularly if we expect to see such a change happen anytime soon.

The problem with an F3 dodge is there are times in the game where you just lose track of your pet completely. In dungeons, this isn’t an issue, but if you are using the longbow in WvW and you pet runs off into the enemy zerg-sea-of-red-names 1000+ units aways the only thing you can really do is queue up an f2 and keep an eye on its health to return/swap it.

Before I start I’d like to honestly say how much better in general balance is in this game in comparison to others I have played and since I have looked through some of the dev posts I can see why, as they seem to play the game and think through the balance carefully.

I think pets dying too fast against bosses designed to combat multiple players is a problem that would be best solved by altering traits in the beastmastery line, or other lines that aren’t useful at the moment. I think this would fit in better with the existing game better than some of the other suggestions.

For example a trait that would give all pets the “Defy Pain” skill (allowing you pet to take no damage for 5 seconds) that is currently exclusive to the bears. If this was used cleverly by the pet (I don’t know if this is doable) the “Defy Pain” would be activated just before the pet takes a huge single hit or if lets say it looses more than 50% of its health over the course of say 0.3 seconds. This would mean that the lower health pets could fight without getting almost instantly killed but wouldn’t have the drawback of simply increasing the vitality/toughness of pets which as was said by Robert would make them too powerful in open world (as it wouldn’t activate when fighting enemies that deal moderate damage over time) and due to its cooldown would mean that it couldn’t be used to tank bosses over time as it would only give a second chance but not a third.

Lastly if that did ever happen it would be good to get some sign that “Defy pain” or whatever it would be, had been activated so that people could pull their pets out or become more cautious.

Or if that is too much just give or change an existing trait so pets get distortion as soon as you call their special ability’s (F2s) – this could be used as this dodge people are talking about.

Thanks for reading (if you did)

Thanks Robert for posting in ranger forums. May we have a HP and stamina bar for our pet above its face icon and also boons and conditions icon to the left of our stamina bar so that we can monitor our pets in an easier way.

A different icon indicator in the mini map would also help since our pet right now appear as normal party member in mini map if we’re in a party for dungeon.

achensherd.2735:

Oh my god a dev. That mains a Ranger. In the Ranger forums. Engaging in active discussion.

CRIES

^^This a dozen times over! Thanks, Rob!

I realize this plea is unlikely to be acknowledged, but I’ve got to put it out there again:

Please, either create a separate profession that is better with the bows, change the class mechanic, and/or make pets optional.

I played ranger all 7 years of the original Guild Wars. The class had highs and lows and sometimes felt as though ANet forgot about it, though never quite the way it’s been for the previous 4 months of GW2 (again, thanks so much for breaking this trend, Rob).

However, through all those years, I almost never used a pet. I didn’t play ranger because I wanted a pet. I played ranger because I wanted somebody who was good with a bow. I played ranger because his chief attribute, Expertise, gave him the ability to adapt and use lots of different weapons and builds to fill different roles and bring along whatever a group needed. At the same time, it didn’t give him everything in one package and break the game.

I picked the ranger in GW2 looking again for somebody good with a bow and, hopefully, the versatility he also packed in the first game. Unfortunately, the current pet system forces us to be one-trick ponies who typically can’t even pull off that one trick.

Regardless, thanks Rob for taking a look at ranger issues and listening to the community sound off on our beloved profession.

what about having the pet drop off smaller cliffs with you rather then turning around and walking down the path aggroing everything in site?? that tends to get rather annoying when you are running past things —